Today’s News 27th September 2021

• Mercedes-AMG Boss Says V-8 Engine Will Be In Demand For "Next Ten Years"
  Mercedes-AMG Boss Says V-8 Engine Will Be In Demand For “Next Ten Years”

  Mercedes’ parent company Daimler has proposed tens of billions of dollars in battery-electric vehicle development between 2022-2030 and could go fully electric by the end of the decade. The company’s move from combustion engines to electric wasn’t entirely shared by the head of AMG, Maybach, and G-Class. 

  In a recent interview, Mercedes-AMG head Philipp Schiemer told Road & Track that he expects the V-8 engine to stick around for another decade or so.

  “I think there will be a future, yes,” Schiemer said. “I think for the next ten years we will see the V-8s, for sure. We have a lot of customers who love their cars and I still think that we will see those people buying the [V-8] cars for a long time.”

  He said there is still “very high demand for” V-8 luxury and high-performance vehicles worldwide despite the push to greenify the industry. 

  AMG Chief Technical Officer Jochen Hermann provided an example of the V-8’s future with the Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S e-Performance, which has hybridization built into it. 

  “You have this extra power, like low-end torque which is usually more of an issue for a combustion engine. We get that instant torque, whereas, you know, on a German Autobahn[…] this is where the V-8 engine really kicks in,” Hermann said.

  

  He noted combining the V-8 with a performance hybrid system increases the vehicle’s performance. 

  The hopes of winding down the use of combustion engines in new vehicle production might not entirely be the case for some high-performance Mercedes models. It appears AMG is still a huge fan of the V-8 engine. 

  Greta Thunberg and her gang of climate alarmists will likely be displeased by the comments made by AMG heads to keep the V-8 engine in production for a decade or more. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/27/2021 – 02:45

• The Harsh Truth Behind Europe's Energy Crisis
  The Harsh Truth Behind Europe’s Energy Crisis

  Authored by By Cyril Widdershoven via OilPrice.com,

  Europe’s energy crunch is continuing, as gas storage volumes have shrunk to 10-year lows. A possible harsh winter could lead to severe energy shortages and possible shutdowns of large parts of the economy.

  

  While the main discussion is currently focused on the potential role of Russia in the energy crisis, a new narrative could soon make the headlines. In a surprise move, the Dutch government has indicated that in a severe supply crunch situation, the Groningen gas field, Europe’s largest onshore gas field, could partially and temporarily be reopened. It seems that the term Dutch Disease could get a new meaning, from being the paradox of a rentier state suffering from plentiful resources to a show of Europe’s lack of realism when it comes to energy transition risks and current market powers.   Dutch Minister Stef Blok has indicated that he is considering the potential reopening of the Groningen field, in particular five wells, especially the one at Slochteren, as indicated by Johan Attema, director of the Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij (NAM), the operator of the Groningen field. The reopening of the field, even in the case of an emergency or an energy crisis, is politically controversial.

  Until recently, the plan was that Groningen would be closed completely by 2023, ending the large-scale gas production and export by the Netherlands with a bang.

  The Dutch media is speculating that minister Blok will be asking for a possible reopening of the Groningen field, a decision that must be made before October 1. If the Minister decides to change the current shutdown plans, the whole Groningen debacle, as some see it, will be prolonged. It is clear, looking at the current deplorable situation of the European energy sector, that Groningen is still needed. The ongoing energy crunch could have grave consequences for the economies and wellbeing of EU member states, changing the narratives in Brussels and the respective European capitals.  

  The lack of supply of natural gas by Russia (or the political will to supply more), the difficulty of ramping up Norwegian gas or other gas imports quickly, is jeopardizing Europe’s energy situation. At the same time, a possible shutdown of several electricity-intensive industries in Europe, such as fertilizers, chemicals, and steel/aluminum production is on the table.

  Political leaders will have to face the direct implications of higher energy bills or possible energy deficits for consumers and the industry. Both could lead to protests or political landslides during upcoming elections. Threats of an energy crisis are being discussed widely, but no real solutions except lower taxes are available. Due to higher energy costs, a possible record price level of $100 MMBtu or $250 per barrel of crude oil equivalent is very bad news for politicians, especially in the Netherlands, Germany, France, and the UK.  

  It remains unclear, however, whether European politicians are aware of the role that their own policies have played in creating this crisis. Even with the partial restart of the Groningen field, which could relieve some of the pain in Western Europe, there is a larger problem that must be addressed. 

  By opening up the gas market for liberalization, without giving the necessary tools to parties, and pushing for a spot market, instability was introduced into the system. Geopolitical powers are still at play, while utilities and European suppliers have seen little support from their governments.

  At the same time, when oil price-indexed long-term contracts with Russia were thrown out of the window, many did not understand that this could mean handing over full market powers to NOCs, such as Gazprom. Putin has been celebrating, knowing that he has been handed the key to European markets, with the option of manipulating fundamentals and prices at the same time. In the meantime, Europe has failed to sufficiently diversify supply.  

  European leaders desperately need to reconsider their position towards Russian gas supplies and the future role of NordStream 2, which is still being threatened by US sanctions and Eastern European opposition.

  It seems that Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin, however, is holding all the cards when it comes to natural gas in Europe. Without substantially more natural gas supply to Europe, consumers and industry may well be facing a winter of discontent. Europe’s gas supply diversification strategy has been a failure, not only due to EU tactics and regulations but also because of the ongoing one-sided emphasis on a rapid energy transition, hydrocarbon divestment, and full-scale investments in renewables, without realizing that the backbone of the European economic system is still hydrocarbon fueled.  

  The current situation shows one main fact of life, the success of the energy transition is not based on a one-sided approach. By relying too much on renewables, the market became destabilized, but politicians and others didn’t want to admit it. Destabilization could and should be prevented, by acknowledging the fact that for the foreseeable future hydrocarbons, including coal, will be playing a significant role in the European energy market.

  At the same time, European politicians also should acknowledge that without hydrocarbons, not only does energy supply become threatened, but the hydrocarbon economy suffers. It is not yet fully understood by most, but without hydrocarbons, especially natural gas and oil, food and other primary sectors will be hit hard. The first shutdowns of fertilizer and steel companies have already been reported.  

  Brussels, London, Berlin, and even The Hague, should start to change their approach to energy and the economy of the future. Politicians should start to listen to market analysts that have been warning of a disruption in energy markets.

  The European long-term energy strategy should acknowledge the position of hydrocarbons as a backbone while investing in renewable options at the same time. Investments in storage, diversified supply, and domestic production are crucial.  Without these, supply giants such as Putin’s Russia are holding all the cards.  

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/27/2021 – 02:00

• "Damn You To Hell, You Will Not Destroy America" – Here Is The 'Spartacus COVID Letter' That's Gone Viral
  “Damn You To Hell, You Will Not Destroy America” – Here Is The ‘Spartacus COVID Letter’ That’s Gone Viral

  Via The Automatic Earth blog,

  This is an anonymously posted document by someone who calls themselves Spartacus. Because it’s anonymous, I can’t contact them to ask for permission to publish. So I hesitated for a while, but it’s simply the best document I’ve seen on Covid, vaccines, etc. Whoever Spartacus is, they have a very elaborate knowledge in “the field”. If you want to know a lot more about the no. 1 issue in the world today, read it. And don’t worry if you don’t understand every single word, neither do I. But I learned a lot.

  The original PDF doc is here: Covid19 – The Spartacus Letter

  

  Hello,

  My name is Spartacus, and I’ve had enough.

  We have been forced to watch America and the Free World spin into inexorable decline due to a biowarfare attack. We, along with countless others, have been victimized and gaslit by propaganda and psychological warfare operations being conducted by an unelected, unaccountable Elite against the American people and our allies.

  Our mental and physical health have suffered immensely over the course of the past year and a half. We have felt the sting of isolation, lockdown, masking, quarantines, and other completely nonsensical acts of healthcare theater that have done absolutely nothing to protect the health or wellbeing of the public from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

  Now, we are watching the medical establishment inject literal poison into millions of our fellow Americans without so much as a fight.

  We have been told that we will be fired and denied our livelihoods if we refuse to vaccinate. This was the last straw.

  We have spent thousands of hours analyzing leaked footage from Wuhan, scientific papers from primary sources, as well as the paper trails left by the medical establishment.

  What we have discovered would shock anyone to their core.

  First, we will summarize our findings, and then, we will explain them in detail. References will be placed at the end.

  Summary:

  • COVID-19 is a blood and blood vessel disease. SARS-CoV-2 infects the lining of human blood vessels, causing them to leak into the lungs.

  • Current treatment protocols (e.g. invasive ventilation) are actively harmful to patients, accelerating oxidative stress and causing severe VILI (ventilator-induced lung injuries). The continued use of ventilators in the absence of any proven medical benefit constitutes mass murder.

  • Existing countermeasures are inadequate to slow the spread of what is an aerosolized and potentially wastewater-borne virus, and constitute a form of medical theater.

  • Various non-vaccine interventions have been suppressed by both the media and the medical establishment in favor of vaccines and expensive patented drugs.

  • The authorities have denied the usefulness of natural immunity against COVID-19, despite the fact that natural immunity confers protection against all of the virus’s proteins, and not just one.

  • Vaccines will do more harm than good. The antigen that these vaccines are based on, SARS-CoV- 2 Spike, is a toxic protein. SARS-CoV-2 may have ADE, or antibody-dependent enhancement; current antibodies may not neutralize future strains, but instead help them infect immune cells. Also, vaccinating during a pandemic with a leaky vaccine removes the evolutionary pressure for a virus to become less lethal.

  • There is a vast and appalling criminal conspiracy that directly links both Anthony Fauci and Moderna to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

  • COVID-19 vaccine researchers are directly linked to scientists involved in brain-computer interface (“neural lace”) tech, one of whom was indicted for taking grant money from China.

  • Independent researchers have discovered mysterious nanoparticles inside the vaccines that are not supposed to be present.

  • The entire pandemic is being used as an excuse for a vast political and economic transformation of Western society that will enrich the already rich and turn the rest of us into serfs and untouchables.

  COVID-19 Pathophysiology and Treatments:

  COVID-19 is not a viral pneumonia. It is a viral vascular endotheliitis and attacks the lining of blood vessels, particularly the small pulmonary alveolar capillaries, leading to endothelial cell activation and sloughing, coagulopathy, sepsis, pulmonary edema, and ARDS-like symptoms. This is a disease of the blood and blood vessels. The circulatory system. Any pneumonia that it causes is secondary to that.

  In severe cases, this leads to sepsis, blood clots, and multiple organ failure, including hypoxic and inflammatory damage to various vital organs, such as the brain, heart, liver, pancreas, kidneys, and intestines.

  Some of the most common laboratory findings in COVID-19 are elevated D-dimer, elevated prothrombin time, elevated C-reactive protein, neutrophilia, lymphopenia, hypocalcemia, and hyperferritinemia, essentially matching a profile of coagulopathy and immune system hyperactivation/immune cell exhaustion.

  COVID-19 can present as almost anything, due to the wide tropism of SARS-CoV-2 for various tissues in the body’s vital organs. While its most common initial presentation is respiratory illness and flu-like symptoms, it can present as brain inflammation, gastrointestinal disease, or even heart attack or pulmonary embolism.

  COVID-19 is more severe in those with specific comorbidities, such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. This is because these conditions involve endothelial dysfunction, which renders the circulatory system more susceptible to infection and injury by this particular virus.

  The vast majority of COVID-19 cases are mild and do not cause significant disease. In known cases, there is something known as the 80/20 rule, where 80% of cases are mild and 20% are severe or critical. However, this ratio is only correct for known cases, not all infections. The number of actual infections is much, much higher. Consequently, the mortality and morbidity rate is lower. However, COVID-19 spreads very quickly, meaning that there are a significant number of severely-ill and critically-ill patients appearing in a short time frame.

  In those who have critical COVID-19-induced sepsis, hypoxia, coagulopathy, and ARDS, the most common treatments are intubation, injected corticosteroids, and blood thinners. This is not the correct treatment for COVID-19. In severe hypoxia, cellular metabolic shifts cause ATP to break down into hypoxanthine, which, upon the reintroduction of oxygen, causes xanthine oxidase to produce tons of highly damaging radicals that attack tissue. This is called ischemia-reperfusion injury, and it’s why the majority of people who go on a ventilator are dying. In the mitochondria, succinate buildup due to sepsis does the same exact thing; when oxygen is reintroduced, it makes superoxide radicals. Make no mistake, intubation will kill people who have COVID-19.

  The end-stage of COVID-19 is severe lipid peroxidation, where fats in the body start to “rust” due to damage by oxidative stress. This drives autoimmunity. Oxidized lipids appear as foreign objects to the immune system, which recognizes and forms antibodies against OSEs, or oxidation-specific epitopes. Also, oxidized lipids feed directly into pattern recognition receptors, triggering even more inflammation and summoning even more cells of the innate immune system that release even more destructive enzymes. This is similar to the pathophysiology of Lupus.

  COVID-19’s pathology is dominated by extreme oxidative stress and neutrophil respiratory burst, to the point where hemoglobin becomes incapable of carrying oxygen due to heme iron being stripped out of heme by hypochlorous acid. No amount of supplemental oxygen can oxygenate blood that chemically refuses to bind O2.

  The breakdown of the pathology is as follows:

  SARS-CoV-2 Spike binds to ACE2. Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2 is an enzyme that is part of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system, or RAAS. The RAAS is a hormone control system that moderates fluid volume in the body and in the bloodstream (i.e. osmolarity) by controlling salt retention and excretion. This protein, ACE2, is ubiquitous in every part of the body that interfaces with the circulatory system, particularly in vascular endothelial cells and pericytes, brain astrocytes, renal tubules and podocytes, pancreatic islet cells, bile duct and intestinal epithelial cells, and the seminiferous ducts of the testis, all of which SARS-CoV-2 can infect, not just the lungs.

  SARS-CoV-2 infects a cell as follows: SARS-CoV-2 Spike undergoes a conformational change where the S1 trimers flip up and extend, locking onto ACE2 bound to the surface of a cell. TMPRSS2, or transmembrane protease serine 2, comes along and cuts off the heads of the Spike, exposing the S2 stalk-shaped subunit inside. The remainder of the Spike undergoes a conformational change that causes it to unfold like an extension ladder, embedding itself in the cell membrane. Then, it folds back upon itself, pulling the viral membrane and the cell membrane together. The two membranes fuse, with the virus’s proteins migrating out onto the surface of the cell. The SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid enters the cell, disgorging its genetic material and beginning the viral replication process, hijacking the cell’s own structures to produce more virus.

  SARS-CoV-2 Spike proteins embedded in a cell can actually cause human cells to fuse together, forming syncytia/MGCs (multinuclear giant cells). They also have other pathogenic, harmful effects. SARS-CoV- 2’s viroporins, such as its Envelope protein, act as calcium ion channels, introducing calcium into infected cells. The virus suppresses the natural interferon response, resulting in delayed inflammation. SARS-CoV-2 N protein can also directly activate the NLRP3 inflammasome. Also, it suppresses the Nrf2 antioxidant pathway. The suppression of ACE2 by binding with Spike causes a buildup of bradykinin that would otherwise be broken down by ACE2.

  This constant calcium influx into the cells results in (or is accompanied by) noticeable hypocalcemia, or low blood calcium, especially in people with Vitamin D deficiencies and pre-existing endothelial dysfunction. Bradykinin upregulates cAMP, cGMP, COX, and Phospholipase C activity. This results in prostaglandin release and vastly increased intracellular calcium signaling, which promotes highly aggressive ROS release and ATP depletion. NADPH oxidase releases superoxide into the extracellular space. Superoxide radicals react with nitric oxide to form peroxynitrite. Peroxynitrite reacts with the tetrahydrobiopterin cofactor needed by endothelial nitric oxide synthase, destroying it and “uncoupling” the enzymes, causing nitric oxide synthase to synthesize more superoxide instead. This proceeds in a positive feedback loop until nitric oxide bioavailability in the circulatory system is depleted.

  Dissolved nitric oxide gas produced constantly by eNOS serves many important functions, but it is also antiviral against SARS-like coronaviruses, preventing the palmitoylation of the viral Spike protein and making it harder for it to bind to host receptors. The loss of NO allows the virus to begin replicating with impunity in the body. Those with endothelial dysfunction (i.e. hypertension, diabetes, obesity, old age, African-American race) have redox equilibrium issues to begin with, giving the virus an advantage.

  Due to the extreme cytokine release triggered by these processes, the body summons a great deal of neutrophils and monocyte-derived alveolar macrophages to the lungs. Cells of the innate immune system are the first-line defenders against pathogens. They work by engulfing invaders and trying to attack them with enzymes that produce powerful oxidants, like SOD and MPO. Superoxide dismutase takes superoxide and makes hydrogen peroxide, and myeloperoxidase takes hydrogen peroxide and chlorine ions and makes hypochlorous acid, which is many, many times more reactive than sodium hypochlorite bleach.

  Neutrophils have a nasty trick. They can also eject these enzymes into the extracellular space, where they will continuously spit out peroxide and bleach into the bloodstream. This is called neutrophil extracellular trap formation, or, when it becomes pathogenic and counterproductive, NETosis. In severe and critical COVID-19, there is actually rather severe NETosis.

  Hypochlorous acid building up in the bloodstream begins to bleach the iron out of heme and compete for O2 binding sites. Red blood cells lose the ability to transport oxygen, causing the sufferer to turn blue in the face. Unliganded iron, hydrogen peroxide, and superoxide in the bloodstream undergo the Haber- Weiss and Fenton reactions, producing extremely reactive hydroxyl radicals that violently strip electrons from surrounding fats and DNA, oxidizing them severely.

  This condition is not unknown to medical science. The actual name for all of this is acute sepsis.

  We know this is happening in COVID-19 because people who have died of the disease have noticeable ferroptosis signatures in their tissues, as well as various other oxidative stress markers such as nitrotyrosine, 4-HNE, and malondialdehyde.

  When you intubate someone with this condition, you are setting off a free radical bomb by supplying the cells with O2. It’s a catch-22, because we need oxygen to make Adenosine Triphosphate (that is, to live), but O2 is also the precursor of all these damaging radicals that lead to lipid peroxidation.

  The correct treatment for severe COVID-19 related sepsis is non-invasive ventilation, steroids, and antioxidant infusions. Most of the drugs repurposed for COVID-19 that show any benefit whatsoever in rescuing critically-ill COVID-19 patients are antioxidants. N-acetylcysteine, melatonin, fluvoxamine, budesonide, famotidine, cimetidine, and ranitidine are all antioxidants. Indomethacin prevents iron- driven oxidation of arachidonic acid to isoprostanes. There are powerful antioxidants such as apocynin that have not even been tested on COVID-19 patients yet which could defang neutrophils, prevent lipid peroxidation, restore endothelial health, and restore oxygenation to the tissues.

  Scientists who know anything about pulmonary neutrophilia, ARDS, and redox biology have known or surmised much of this since March 2020. In April 2020, Swiss scientists confirmed that COVID-19 was a vascular endotheliitis. By late 2020, experts had already concluded that COVID-19 causes a form of viral sepsis. They also know that sepsis can be effectively treated with antioxidants. None of this information is particularly new, and yet, for the most part, it has not been acted upon. Doctors continue to use damaging intubation techniques with high PEEP settings despite high lung compliance and poor oxygenation, killing an untold number of critically ill patients with medical malpractice.

  Because of the way they are constructed, Randomized Control Trials will never show any benefit for any antiviral against COVID-19. Not Remdesivir, not Kaletra, not HCQ, and not Ivermectin. The reason for this is simple; for the patients that they have recruited for these studies, such as Oxford’s ludicrous RECOVERY study, the intervention is too late to have any positive effect.

  The clinical course of COVID-19 is such that by the time most people seek medical attention for hypoxia, their viral load has already tapered off to almost nothing. If someone is about 10 days post-exposure and has already been symptomatic for five days, there is hardly any virus left in their bodies, only cellular damage and derangement that has initiated a hyperinflammatory response. It is from this group that the clinical trials for antivirals have recruited, pretty much exclusively.

  In these trials, they give antivirals to severely ill patients who have no virus in their bodies, only a delayed hyperinflammatory response, and then absurdly claim that antivirals have no utility in treating or preventing COVID-19. These clinical trials do not recruit people who are pre-symptomatic. They do not test pre-exposure or post-exposure prophylaxis.

  This is like using a defibrillator to shock only flatline, and then absurdly claiming that defibrillators have no medical utility whatsoever when the patients refuse to rise from the dead. The intervention is too late. These trials for antivirals show systematic, egregious selection bias. They are providing a treatment that is futile to the specific cohort they are enrolling.

  India went against the instructions of the WHO and mandated the prophylactic usage of Ivermectin. They have almost completely eradicated COVID-19. The Indian Bar Association of Mumbai has brought criminal charges against WHO Chief Scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan for recommending against the use of Ivermectin.

  Ivermectin is not “horse dewormer”. Yes, it is sold in veterinary paste form as a dewormer for animals. It has also been available in pill form for humans for decades, as an antiparasitic drug.

  The media have disingenuously claimed that because Ivermectin is an antiparasitic drug, it has no utility as an antivirus. This is incorrect. Ivermectin has utility as an antiviral. It blocks importin, preventing nuclear import, effectively inhibiting viral access to cell nuclei. Many drugs currently on the market have multiple modes of action. Ivermectin is one such drug. It is both antiparasitic and antiviral.

  In Bangladesh, Ivermectin costs $1.80 for an entire 5-day course. Remdesivir, which is toxic to the liver, costs $3,120 for a 5-day course of the drug. Billions of dollars of utterly useless Remdesivir were sold to our governments on the taxpayer’s dime, and it ended up being totally useless for treating hyperinflammatory COVID-19. The media has hardly even covered this at all.

  The opposition to the use of generic Ivermectin is not based in science. It is purely financially and politically-motivated. An effective non-vaccine intervention would jeopardize the rushed FDA approval of patented vaccines and medicines for which the pharmaceutical industry stands to rake in billions upon billions of dollars in sales on an ongoing basis.

  The majority of the public are scientifically illiterate and cannot grasp what any of this even means, thanks to a pathetic educational system that has miseducated them. You would be lucky to find 1 in 100 people who have even the faintest clue what any of this actually means.

  COVID-19 Transmission:

  COVID-19 is airborne. The WHO carried water for China by claiming that the virus was only droplet- borne. Our own CDC absurdly claimed that it was mostly transmitted by fomite-to-face contact, which, given its rapid spread from Wuhan to the rest of the world, would have been physically impossible.

  The ridiculous belief in fomite-to-face being a primary mode of transmission led to the use of surface disinfection protocols that wasted time, energy, productivity, and disinfectant.

  The 6-foot guidelines are absolutely useless. The minimum safe distance to protect oneself from an aerosolized virus is to be 15+ feet away from an infected person, no closer. Realistically, no public transit is safe.

  Surgical masks do not protect you from aerosols. The virus is too small and the filter media has too large of gaps to filter it out. They may catch respiratory droplets and keep the virus from being expelled by someone who is sick, but they do not filter a cloud of infectious aerosols if someone were to walk into said cloud.

  The minimum level of protection against this virus is quite literally a P100 respirator, a PAPR/CAPR, or a 40mm NATO CBRN respirator, ideally paired with a full-body tyvek or tychem suit, gloves, and booties, with all the holes and gaps taped.

  Live SARS-CoV-2 may potentially be detected in sewage outflows, and there may be oral-fecal transmission. During the SARS outbreak in 2003, in the Amoy Gardens incident, hundreds of people were infected by aerosolized fecal matter rising from floor drains in their apartments.

  COVID-19 Vaccine Dangers:

  The vaccines for COVID-19 are not sterilizing and do not prevent infection or transmission. They are “leaky” vaccines. This means they remove the evolutionary pressure on the virus to become less lethal. It also means that the vaccinated are perfect carriers. In other words, those who are vaccinated are a threat to the unvaccinated, not the other way around.

  All of the COVID-19 vaccines currently in use have undergone minimal testing, with highly accelerated clinical trials. Though they appear to limit severe illness, the long-term safety profile of these vaccines remains unknown.

  Some of these so-called “vaccines” utilize an untested new technology that has never been used in vaccines before. Traditional vaccines use weakened or killed virus to stimulate an immune response. The Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines do not. They are purported to consist of an intramuscular shot containing a suspension of lipid nanoparticles filled with messenger RNA. The way they generate an immune response is by fusing with cells in a vaccine recipient’s shoulder, undergoing endocytosis, releasing their mRNA cargo into those cells, and then utilizing the ribosomes in those cells to synthesize modified SARS-CoV-2 Spike proteins in-situ.

  These modified Spike proteins then migrate to the surface of the cell, where they are anchored in place by a transmembrane domain. The adaptive immune system detects the non-human viral protein being expressed by these cells, and then forms antibodies against that protein. This is purported to confer protection against the virus, by training the adaptive immune system to recognize and produce antibodies against the Spike on the actual virus. The J&J and AstraZeneca vaccines do something similar, but use an adenovirus vector for genetic material delivery instead of a lipid nanoparticle. These vaccines were produced or validated with the aid of fetal cell lines HEK-293 and PER.C6, which people with certain religious convictions may object strongly to.

  SARS-CoV-2 Spike is a highly pathogenic protein on its own. It is impossible to overstate the danger presented by introducing this protein into the human body.

  It is claimed by vaccine manufacturers that the vaccine remains in cells in the shoulder, and that SARS- CoV-2 Spike produced and expressed by these cells from the vaccine’s genetic material is harmless and inert, thanks to the insertion of prolines in the Spike sequence to stabilize it in the prefusion conformation, preventing the Spike from becoming active and fusing with other cells. However, a pharmacokinetic study from Japan showed that the lipid nanoparticles and mRNA from the Pfizer vaccine did not stay in the shoulder, and in fact bioaccumulated in many different organs, including the reproductive organs and adrenal glands, meaning that modified Spike is being expressed quite literally all over the place. These lipid nanoparticles may trigger anaphylaxis in an unlucky few, but far more concerning is the unregulated expression of Spike in various somatic cell lines far from the injection site and the unknown consequences of that.

  Messenger RNA is normally consumed right after it is produced in the body, being translated into a protein by a ribosome. COVID-19 vaccine mRNA is produced outside the body, long before a ribosome translates it. In the meantime, it could accumulate damage if inadequately preserved. When a ribosome attempts to translate a damaged strand of mRNA, it can become stalled. When this happens, the ribosome becomes useless for translating proteins because it now has a piece of mRNA stuck in it, like a lace card in an old punch card reader. The whole thing has to be cleaned up and new ribosomes synthesized to replace it. In cells with low ribosome turnover, like nerve cells, this can lead to reduced protein synthesis, cytopathic effects, and neuropathies.

  Certain proteins, including SARS-CoV-2 Spike, have proteolytic cleavage sites that are basically like little dotted lines that say “cut here”, which attract a living organism’s own proteases (essentially, molecular scissors) to cut them. There is a possibility that S1 may be proteolytically cleaved from S2, causing active S1 to float away into the bloodstream while leaving the S2 “stalk” embedded in the membrane of the cell that expressed the protein.

  SARS-CoV-2 Spike has a Superantigenic region (SAg), which may promote extreme inflammation.

  Anti-Spike antibodies were found in one study to function as autoantibodies and attack the body’s own cells. Those who have been immunized with COVID-19 vaccines have developed blood clots, myocarditis, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, Bell’s Palsy, and multiple sclerosis flares, indicating that the vaccine promotes autoimmune reactions against healthy tissue.

  SARS-CoV-2 Spike does not only bind to ACE2. It was suspected to have regions that bind to basigin, integrins, neuropilin-1, and bacterial lipopolysaccharides as well. SARS-CoV-2 Spike, on its own, can potentially bind any of these things and act as a ligand for them, triggering unspecified and likely highly inflammatory cellular activity.

  SARS-CoV-2 Spike contains an unusual PRRA insert that forms a furin cleavage site. Furin is a ubiquitous human protease, making this an ideal property for the Spike to have, giving it a high degree of cell tropism. No wild-type SARS-like coronaviruses related to SARS-CoV-2 possess this feature, making it highly suspicious, and perhaps a sign of human tampering.

  SARS-CoV-2 Spike has a prion-like domain that enhances its infectiousness.

  The Spike S1 RBD may bind to heparin-binding proteins and promote amyloid aggregation. In humans, this could lead to Parkinson’s, Lewy Body Dementia, premature Alzheimer’s, or various other neurodegenerative diseases. This is very concerning because SARS-CoV-2 S1 is capable of injuring and penetrating the blood-brain barrier and entering the brain. It is also capable of increasing the permeability of the blood-brain barrier to other molecules.

  SARS-CoV-2, like other betacoronaviruses, may have Dengue-like ADE, or antibody-dependent enhancement of disease. For those who aren’t aware, some viruses, including betacoronaviruses, have a feature called ADE. There is also something called Original Antigenic Sin, which is the observation that the body prefers to produce antibodies based on previously-encountered strains of a virus over newly- encountered ones.

  In ADE, antibodies from a previous infection become non-neutralizing due to mutations in the virus’s proteins. These non-neutralizing antibodies then act as trojan horses, allowing live, active virus to be pulled into macrophages through their Fc receptor pathways, allowing the virus to infect immune cells that it would not have been able to infect before. This has been known to happen with Dengue Fever; when someone gets sick with Dengue, recovers, and then contracts a different strain, they can get very, very ill.

  If someone is vaccinated with mRNA based on the Spike from the initial Wuhan strain of SARS-CoV-2, and then they become infected with a future, mutated strain of the virus, they may become severely ill. In other words, it is possible for vaccines to sensitize someone to disease.

  There is a precedent for this in recent history. Sanofi’s Dengvaxia vaccine for Dengue failed because it caused immune sensitization in people whose immune systems were Dengue-naive.

  In mice immunized against SARS-CoV and challenged with the virus, a close relative of SARS-CoV-2, they developed immune sensitization, Th2 immunopathology, and eosinophil infiltration in their lungs.

  We have been told that SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines cannot be integrated into the human genome, because messenger RNA cannot be turned back into DNA. This is false. There are elements in human cells called LINE-1 retrotransposons, which can indeed integrate mRNA into a human genome by endogenous reverse transcription. Because the mRNA used in the vaccines is stabilized, it hangs around in cells longer, increasing the chances for this to happen. If the gene for SARS-CoV-2 Spike is integrated into a portion of the genome that is not silent and actually expresses a protein, it is possible that people who take this vaccine may continuously express SARS-CoV-2 Spike from their somatic cells for the rest of their lives.

  By inoculating people with a vaccine that causes their bodies to produce Spike in-situ, they are being inoculated with a pathogenic protein. A toxin that may cause long-term inflammation, heart problems, and a raised risk of cancers. In the long-term, it may also potentially lead to premature neurodegenerative disease.

  Absolutely nobody should be compelled to take this vaccine under any circumstances, and in actual fact, the vaccination campaign must be stopped immediately.

  COVID-19 Criminal Conspiracy:

  The vaccine and the virus were made by the same people.

  In 2014, there was a moratorium on SARS gain-of-function research that lasted until 2017. This research was not halted. Instead, it was outsourced, with the federal grants being laundered through NGOs.

  Ralph Baric is a virologist and SARS expert at UNC Chapel Hill in North Carolina. This is who Anthony Fauci was referring to when he insisted, before Congress, that if any gain-of-function research was being conducted, it was being conducted in North Carolina.

  This was a lie. Anthony Fauci lied before Congress. A felony.

  Ralph Baric and Shi Zhengli are colleagues and have co-written papers together. Ralph Baric mentored Shi Zhengli in his gain-of-function manipulation techniques, particularly serial passage, which results in a virus that appears as if it originated naturally. In other words, deniable bioweapons. Serial passage in humanized hACE2 mice may have produced something like SARS-CoV-2.

  The funding for the gain-of-function research being conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology came from Peter Daszak. Peter Daszak runs an NGO called EcoHealth Alliance. EcoHealth Alliance received millions of dollars in grant money from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (that is, Anthony Fauci), the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (part of the US Department of Defense), and the United States Agency for International Development. NIH/NIAID contributed a few million dollars, and DTRA and USAID each contributed tens of millions of dollars towards this research. Altogether, it was over a hundred million dollars.

  EcoHealth Alliance subcontracted these grants to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a lab in China with a very questionable safety record and poorly trained staff, so that they could conduct gain-of-function research, not in their fancy P4 lab, but in a level-2 lab where technicians wore nothing more sophisticated than perhaps a hairnet, latex gloves, and a surgical mask, instead of the bubble suits used when working with dangerous viruses. Chinese scientists in Wuhan reported being routinely bitten and urinated on by laboratory animals. Why anyone would outsource this dangerous and delicate work to the People’s Republic of China, a country infamous for industrial accidents and massive explosions that have claimed hundreds of lives, is completely beyond me, unless the aim was to start a pandemic on purpose.

  In November of 2019, three technicians at the Wuhan Institute of Virology developed symptoms consistent with a flu-like illness. Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszak, and Ralph Baric knew at once what had happened, because back channels exist between this laboratory and our scientists and officials.

  December 12th, 2019, Ralph Baric signed a Material Transfer Agreement (essentially, an NDA) to receive Coronavirus mRNA vaccine-related materials co-owned by Moderna and NIH. It wasn’t until a whole month later, on January 11th, 2020, that China allegedly sent us the sequence to what would become known as SARS-CoV-2. Moderna claims, rather absurdly, that they developed a working vaccine from this sequence in under 48 hours.

  Stephane Bancel, the current CEO of Moderna, was formerly the CEO of bioMerieux, a French multinational corporation specializing in medical diagnostic tech, founded by one Alain Merieux. Alain Merieux was one of the individuals who was instrumental in the construction of the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s P4 lab.

  The sequence given as the closest relative to SARS-CoV-2, RaTG13, is not a real virus. It is a forgery. It was made by entering a gene sequence by hand into a database, to create a cover story for the existence of SARS-CoV-2, which is very likely a gain-of-function chimera produced at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and was either leaked by accident or intentionally released.

  The animal reservoir of SARS-CoV-2 has never been found.

  This is not a conspiracy “theory”. It is an actual criminal conspiracy, in which people connected to the development of Moderna’s mRNA-1273 are directly connected to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and their gain-of-function research by very few degrees of separation, if any. The paper trail is well- established.

  The lab-leak theory has been suppressed because pulling that thread leads one to inevitably conclude that there is enough circumstantial evidence to link Moderna, the NIH, the WIV, and both the vaccine and the virus’s creation together. In a sane country, this would have immediately led to the world’s biggest RICO and mass murder case. Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszak, Ralph Baric, Shi Zhengli, and Stephane Bancel, and their accomplices, would have been indicted and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Instead, billions of our tax dollars were awarded to the perpetrators.

  The FBI raided Allure Medical in Shelby Township north of Detroit for billing insurance for “fraudulent COVID-19 cures”. The treatment they were using? Intravenous Vitamin C. An antioxidant. Which, as described above, is an entirely valid treatment for COVID-19-induced sepsis, and indeed, is now part of the MATH+ protocol advanced by Dr. Paul E. Marik.

  The FDA banned ranitidine (Zantac) due to supposed NDMA (N-nitrosodimethylamine) contamination. Ranitidine is not only an H2 blocker used as antacid, but also has a powerful antioxidant effect, scavenging hydroxyl radicals. This gives it utility in treating COVID-19.

  The FDA also attempted to take N-acetylcysteine, a harmless amino acid supplement and antioxidant, off the shelves, compelling Amazon to remove it from their online storefront.

  This leaves us with a chilling question: did the FDA knowingly suppress antioxidants useful for treating COVID-19 sepsis as part of a criminal conspiracy against the American public?

  The establishment is cooperating with, and facilitating, the worst criminals in human history, and are actively suppressing non-vaccine treatments and therapies in order to compel us to inject these criminals’ products into our bodies. This is absolutely unacceptable.

  COVID-19 Vaccine Development and Links to Transhumanism:

  This section deals with some more speculative aspects of the pandemic and the medical and scientific establishment’s reaction to it, as well as the disturbing links between scientists involved in vaccine research and scientists whose work involved merging nanotechnology with living cells.

  On June 9th, 2020, Charles Lieber, a Harvard nanotechnology researcher with decades of experience, was indicted by the DOJ for fraud. Charles Lieber received millions of dollars in grant money from the US Department of Defense, specifically the military think tanks DARPA, AFOSR, and ONR, as well as NIH and MITRE. His specialty is the use of silicon nanowires in lieu of patch clamp electrodes to monitor and modulate intracellular activity, something he has been working on at Harvard for the past twenty years. He was claimed to have been working on silicon nanowire batteries in China, but none of his colleagues can recall him ever having worked on battery technology in his life; all of his research deals with bionanotechnology, or the blending of nanotech with living cells.

  The indictment was over his collaboration with the Wuhan University of Technology. He had double- dipped, against the terms of his DOD grants, and taken money from the PRC’s Thousand Talents plan, a program which the Chinese government uses to bribe Western scientists into sharing proprietary R&D information that can be exploited by the PLA for strategic advantage.

  Charles Lieber’s own papers describe the use of silicon nanowires for brain-computer interfaces, or “neural lace” technology. His papers describe how neurons can endocytose whole silicon nanowires or parts of them, monitoring and even modulating neuronal activity.

  Charles Lieber was a colleague of Robert Langer. Together, along with Daniel S. Kohane, they worked on a paper describing artificial tissue scaffolds that could be implanted in a human heart to monitor its activity remotely.

  Robert Langer, an MIT alumnus and expert in nanotech drug delivery, is one of the co-founders of Moderna. His net worth is now $5.1 billion USD thanks to Moderna’s mRNA-1273 vaccine sales.

  Both Charles Lieber and Robert Langer’s bibliographies describe, essentially, techniques for human enhancement, i.e. transhumanism. Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum and the architect behind the so-called “Great Reset”, has long spoken of the “blending of biology and machinery” in his books.

  Since these revelations, it has come to the attention of independent researchers that the COVID-19 vaccines may contain reduced graphene oxide nanoparticles. Japanese researchers have also found unexplained contaminants in COVID-19 vaccines.

  Graphene oxide is an anxiolytic. It has been shown to reduce the anxiety of laboratory mice when injected into their brains. Indeed, given SARS-CoV-2 Spike’s propensity to compromise the blood-brain barrier and increase its permeability, it is the perfect protein for preparing brain tissue for extravasation of nanoparticles from the bloodstream and into the brain. Graphene is also highly conductive and, in some circumstances, paramagnetic.

  In 2013, under the Obama administration, DARPA launched the BRAIN Initiative; BRAIN is an acronym for Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies®. This program involves the development of brain-computer interface technologies for the military, particularly non-invasive, injectable systems that cause minimal damage to brain tissue when removed. Supposedly, this technology would be used for healing wounded soldiers with traumatic brain injuries, the direct brain control of prosthetic limbs, and even new abilities such as controlling drones with one’s mind.

  Various methods have been proposed for achieving this, including optogenetics, magnetogenetics, ultrasound, implanted electrodes, and transcranial electromagnetic stimulation. In all instances, the goal is to obtain read or read-write capability over neurons, either by stimulating and probing them, or by rendering them especially sensitive to stimulation and probing.

  However, the notion of the widespread use of BCI technology, such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink device, raises many concerns over privacy and personal autonomy. Reading from neurons is problematic enough on its own. Wireless brain-computer interfaces may interact with current or future wireless GSM infrastructure, creating neurological data security concerns. A hacker or other malicious actor may compromise such networks to obtain people’s brain data, and then exploit it for nefarious purposes.

  However, a device capable of writing to human neurons, not just reading from them, presents another, even more serious set of ethical concerns. A BCI that is capable of altering the contents of one’s mind for innocuous purposes, such as projecting a heads-up display onto their brain’s visual center or sending audio into one’s auditory cortex, would also theoretically be capable of altering mood and personality, or perhaps even subjugating someone’s very will, rendering them utterly obedient to authority. This technology would be a tyrant’s wet dream. Imagine soldiers who would shoot their own countrymen without hesitation, or helpless serfs who are satisfied to live in literal dog kennels.

  BCIs could be used to unscrupulously alter perceptions of basic things such as emotions and values, changing people’s thresholds of satiety, happiness, anger, disgust, and so forth. This is not inconsequential. Someone’s entire regime of behaviors could be altered by a BCI, including such things as suppressing their appetite or desire for virtually anything on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

  Anything is possible when you have direct access to someone’s brain and its contents. Someone who is obese could be made to feel disgust at the sight of food. Someone who is involuntarily celibate could have their libido disabled so they don’t even desire sex to begin with. Someone who is racist could be forced to feel delight over cohabiting with people of other races. Someone who is violent could be forced to be meek and submissive. These things might sound good to you if you are a tyrant, but to normal people, the idea of personal autonomy being overridden to such a degree is appalling.

  For the wealthy, neural laces would be an unequaled boon, giving them the opportunity to enhance their intelligence with neuroprosthetics (i.e. an “exocortex”), and to deliver irresistible commands directly into the minds of their BCI-augmented servants, even physically or sexually abusive commands that they would normally refuse.

  If the vaccine is a method to surreptitiously introduce an injectable BCI into millions of people without their knowledge or consent, then what we are witnessing is the rise of a tyrannical regime unlike anything ever seen before on the face of this planet, one that fully intends to strip every man, woman, and child of our free will.

  Our flaws are what make us human. A utopia arrived at by removing people’s free will is not a utopia at all. It is a monomaniacal nightmare. Furthermore, the people who rule over us are Dark Triad types who cannot be trusted with such power. Imagine being beaten and sexually assaulted by a wealthy and powerful psychopath and being forced to smile and laugh over it because your neural lace gives you no choice but to obey your master.

  The Elites are forging ahead with this technology without giving people any room to question the social or ethical ramifications, or to establish regulatory frameworks that ensure that our personal agency and autonomy will not be overridden by these devices. They do this because they secretly dream of a future where they can treat you worse than an animal and you cannot even fight back. If this evil plan is allowed to continue, it will spell the end of humanity as we know it.

  Conclusions:

  The current pandemic was produced and perpetuated by the establishment, through the use of a virus engineered in a PLA-connected Chinese biowarfare laboratory, with the aid of American taxpayer dollars and French expertise.

  This research was conducted under the absolutely ridiculous euphemism of “gain-of-function” research, which is supposedly carried out in order to determine which viruses have the highest potential for zoonotic spillover and preemptively vaccinate or guard against them.

  Gain-of-function/gain-of-threat research, a.k.a. “Dual-Use Research of Concern”, or DURC, is bioweapon research by another, friendlier-sounding name, simply to avoid the taboo of calling it what it actually is. It has always been bioweapon research. The people who are conducting this research fully understand that they are taking wild pathogens that are not infectious in humans and making them more infectious, often taking grants from military think tanks encouraging them to do so.

  These virologists conducting this type of research are enemies of their fellow man, like pyromaniac firefighters. GOF research has never protected anyone from any pandemic. In fact, it has now started one, meaning its utility for preventing pandemics is actually negative. It should have been banned globally, and the lunatics performing it should have been put in straitjackets long ago.

  Either through a leak or an intentional release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a deadly SARS strain is now endemic across the globe, after the WHO and CDC and public officials first downplayed the risks, and then intentionally incited a panic and lockdowns that jeopardized people’s health and their livelihoods.

  This was then used by the utterly depraved and psychopathic aristocratic class who rule over us as an excuse to coerce people into accepting an injected poison which may be a depopulation agent, a mind control/pacification agent in the form of injectable “smart dust”, or both in one. They believe they can get away with this by weaponizing the social stigma of vaccine refusal. They are incorrect.

  Their motives are clear and obvious to anyone who has been paying attention. These megalomaniacs have raided the pension funds of the free world. Wall Street is insolvent and has had an ongoing liquidity crisis since the end of 2019. The aim now is to exert total, full-spectrum physical, mental, and financial control over humanity before we realize just how badly we’ve been extorted by these maniacs.

  The pandemic and its response served multiple purposes for the Elite:

  • Concealing a depression brought on by the usurious plunder of our economies conducted by rentier-capitalists and absentee owners who produce absolutely nothing of any value to society whatsoever. Instead of us having a very predictable Occupy Wall Street Part II, the Elites and their stooges got to stand up on television and paint themselves as wise and all-powerful saviors instead of the marauding cabal of despicable land pirates that they are.

  • Destroying small businesses and eroding the middle class.

  • Transferring trillions of dollars of wealth from the American public and into the pockets of billionaires and special interests.

  • Engaging in insider trading, buying stock in biotech companies and shorting brick-and-mortar businesses and travel companies, with the aim of collapsing face-to-face commerce and tourism and replacing it with e-commerce and servitization.

  • Creating a casus belli for war with China, encouraging us to attack them, wasting American lives and treasure and driving us to the brink of nuclear armageddon.

  • Establishing technological and biosecurity frameworks for population control and technocratic- socialist “smart cities” where everyone’s movements are despotically tracked, all in anticipation of widespread automation, joblessness, and food shortages, by using the false guise of a vaccine to compel cooperation.

  Any one of these things would constitute a vicious rape of Western society. Taken together, they beggar belief; they are a complete inversion of our most treasured values.

  What is the purpose of all of this? One can only speculate as to the perpetrators’ motives, however, we have some theories.

  The Elites are trying to pull up the ladder, erase upward mobility for large segments of the population, cull political opponents and other “undesirables”, and put the remainder of humanity on a tight leash, rationing our access to certain goods and services that they have deemed “high-impact”, such as automobile use, tourism, meat consumption, and so on. Naturally, they will continue to have their own luxuries, as part of a strict caste system akin to feudalism.

  Why are they doing this? Simple. The Elites are Neo-Malthusians and believe that we are overpopulated and that resource depletion will collapse civilization in a matter of a few short decades. They are not necessarily incorrect in this belief. We are overpopulated, and we are consuming too many resources. However, orchestrating such a gruesome and murderous power grab in response to a looming crisis demonstrates that they have nothing but the utmost contempt for their fellow man.

  To those who are participating in this disgusting farce without any understanding of what they are doing, we have one word for you. Stop. You are causing irreparable harm to your country and to your fellow citizens.

  To those who may be reading this warning and have full knowledge and understanding of what they are doing and how it will unjustly harm millions of innocent people, we have a few more words.

  Damn you to hell. You will not destroy America and the Free World, and you will not have your New World Order. We will make certain of that.

  *  *  *

  This PDF document contains 14 pages, followed by another 17 pages of references.

  For those, please visit the original PDF file at Covid19 – The Spartacus Letter.

  *  *  *

  We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, you are now not just a reader, but an integral part of the process that builds this site. Thank you for your support. Support the Automatic Earth in virustime. Donate with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 09/27/2021 – 00:00

• Fire At IRGC Research Facility In Tehran Injures 3 Revolutionary Guardsmen
  Fire At IRGC Research Facility In Tehran Injures 3 Revolutionary Guardsmen

  A mysterious blaze broke out at one of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) research centers in the capital of Tehran on Sunday evening (local time), multiple international reports have said. 

  Three IRGC members have been wounded in the fire, the cause of which is as yet unknown. Details as to its extend are also unknown – only that it was soon reported contained at that the injured were transported to a nearby hospital. 

  

  Iran state TV quoted a statement from IRGC officials as confirming, “On Sunday evening a fire broke out in one of the IRGC … research centers in the west of Tehran. Three people were injured and the fire has been contained.”

  The facility is located in western Tehran, and given the high security nature of IRGC locations, it’s unlikely that many details will be divulged. This naturally tends to lead to immediate speculation by observers about the possibility of an Israeli sabotage operation. 

  Just days ago, it was revealed that top Israeli officials and the White House have resumed a ‘Plan B’ working group and intelligence sharing initiative focused on the Islamic Republic. The group is said to be planning ‘alternative’ actions against Iran should the currently stalled nuclear talks in Vienna fail.

  This tends to be widely interpreted – at least from the Israeli side and in Israeli media – to mean clandestine operations involving sabotage and likely cyberattacks on Iranian nuclear facilities. Concerning the Sunday fire in Tehran, one Washington-based think tank analyst said, “Oh the timing here is very interesting.”

  Israel killed Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh last year using a remote-controlled machine gun and artificial intelligence | via New York Timeshttps://t.co/8Vi8rXlH8c

  — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) September 19, 2021

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  In August Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz had hinted at possible ramped-up sabotage operations, which weren’t initially confirmed by the US side. Sounding threatening and ominous in statements which was a thinly veiled threat at military action, Gantz said at the time:

  “The United States and Israel share intelligence information, and the cooperation with the United States in this field is only getting stronger. We are working with them in order to establish a Plan B and to demonstrate that if there is no deal, other activities will begin…”

  When Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was hosted for the first time at the White House in late August, both sides confirmed they would resume the secretive sessions, focused on intelligence planning and ‘alternate’ scenarios to jointly pursue of nuclear talks fail.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/26/2021 – 23:30

• "We Face Huge Pressure" – China's Developer Cash Crunch Spreads To Sunac
  “We Face Huge Pressure” – China’s Developer Cash Crunch Spreads To Sunac

  By Sofia Horta e Costa, Bloomberg markets commentator and analyst, who follows up on our Friday article “The Housing Market Is Almost Frozen” – An Even Bigger Problem Emerges For China” in which we discussed the spread of Evergrande’s contagion to Sunac

  Sunac has become the latest Chinese developer to run into liquidity issues, underscoring the challenging environment for the industry as the nation’s property slowdown deepens.

  The Hong Kong-listed real estate firm asked authorities in the city of Shaoxing for assistance after local housing curbs affected sales at one of the company’s projects, according to a letter from a subsidiary seen by Bloomberg. The market is almost frozen, the company said in the letter, addressing the local government. “We face huge pressure.”

  Sunac’s plea for help shows the urgency of the cash crunch affecting the country’s indebted developers as the central government maintains rules to cut leverage in the industry and cool housing activity. China’s home prices are at risk of “meaningful downside” regardless of what happens to Evergrande, Citigroup analysts wrote in a recent note.

  Sunac’s dollar bonds slumped on Friday after the letter circulated among credit traders, with the 5.95% note due 2024 dropping to the lowest price on record. Sunac has the third-biggest weighting on a Bloomberg index of Chinese high yield dollar bonds, after Kaisa and a riskier note sold by ICBC this month.

  

  Sunac’s shares have slumped 50% this year, cutting the wealth of billionaire founder and chairman Sun Hongbin. He had a 44% shareholding in the company as of June, according to the data compiled by Bloomberg. The Tianjin-based business reported revenue of 230.6 billion yuan ($33 billion) in 2020.

  The property market fallout is hurting companies in a stronger financial position than Evergrande. Sunac, which has high speculative-grade ratings at the three global credit risk accessors, has about half the liabilities of its larger peer Evergrande. Sunac complies with two of China’s debt metrics known as the three red lines, and it’s looking to sell assets including its indoor ski parks business to raise cash.

  The Sunac group as a whole has “run into big hurdles and difficulties in terms of cash flow and liquidity,” it said in the letter.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/26/2021 – 23:00

• "They Were Seeing Blood": Bombshell Report Details CIA's 'Kidnap Or Kill' Plans Against WikiLeaks' Assange
  “They Were Seeing Blood”: Bombshell Report Details CIA’s ‘Kidnap Or Kill’ Plans Against WikiLeaks’ Assange

  A bombshell Yahoo News investigation published Sunday is being called the most important deep-dive exposé in years detailing the lengths the CIA and US national security state went to nab WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange while he was holed up at the Ecuadoran embassy. US officials were even having meetings discussing possible assassination of the man who exposed so many secrets of American military and clandestine actions abroad.

  Dozens of US intelligence officials, including many who had served under the Trump administration, are now confirming the CIA considered “options” for kidnapping and/or assassinating Assange and that plans were mulled over at the highest levels of CIA leadership. “More than 30 former U.S. officials — eight of whom described details of the CIA’s proposals to abduct Assange,” are sourced in the report, which further reveals the CIA targeted journalists who worked closely with WikiLeaks, including Glenn Greenwald.

  

  Among the many key new revelations in the report includes that then CIA chief Mike Pompeo was itching for revenge against WikiLeaks and Assange after the “Vault 7” leaks, considered a massive embarrassment to the agency almost without parallel. This began years-running US intelligence “war” on the whistleblower organization publisher of leaked and classified materials, which had the end goal of destroying it and Assange. 

  WikiLeaks itself had publicized on multiple occasions reports of its legal and media team being victims of “professional operations” by CIA assets, and even provided surveillance footage of a “grab team” at various points camped outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London. We also learn that attempts to tie WikiLeaks to the Russian government was part of a CIA propaganda campaign tied to its ‘dirty war’ on the media entity.

  Here’s how the lengthy and stunning investigative report begins:

  In 2017, as Julian Assange began his fifth year holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London, the CIA plotted to kidnap the WikiLeaks founder, spurring heated debate among Trump administration officials over the legality and practicality of such an operation.

  Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration even discussed killing Assange, going so far as to request “sketches” or “options” for how to assassinate him. Discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred “at the highest levels” of the Trump administration, said a former senior counterintelligence official. “There seemed to be no boundaries.”

  The conversations were part of an unprecedented CIA campaign directed against WikiLeaks and its founder. The agency’s multipronged plans also included extensive spying on WikiLeaks associates, sowing discord among the group’s members, and stealing their electronic devices.

  This was during a period of time that then CIA director Mike Pompeo began publicly calling WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service” – which the report says was an attempt to introduce legal justification for targeting its members and close journalist associates.

  RELEASE: Infra-red footage of covert @JulianAssange “grab team” stake out operation reading mission briefing notes

  Full file: https://t.co/v39ljjlwzp#grabteam1 pic.twitter.com/Kz8XOOCdNp

  — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) May 23, 2018

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  But increasingly the question of ‘legality’ mattered less and less, as one source cited in the report highlights:

  Pompeo and other top agency leaders “were completely detached from reality because they were so embarrassed about Vault 7,” said a former Trump national security official. “They were seeing blood.”

  Below is a summary thread providing an overview of the full report by journalist Kevin Gosztola, who in the past has provided close coverage of Assange’s legal saga from London for Shadowproof (emphasis ours)…

  * * *

  WikiLeaks’ publication of “Vault 7” materials from the CIA was hugely embarrassing. Even though the CIA had increased spying operations against WikiLeaks, they still were surprised the media organization obtained a trove of the agency’s extremely sensitive files.

  CIA director Mike Pompeo was afraid President Donald Trump would learn about the “Vault 7” materials and think less of him. “Don’t tell him, he doesn’t need to know.” But it was too important. Trump had to be informed.

  The CIA was already engaged in ramped up operations against Assange and WikiLeaks because the media organization assisted NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. We learn that US intelligence officials lobbied the White House under Obama to redefine WikiLeaks—and high-profile journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras—as “information brokers.” This could help CIA argue they were “agents of a foreign power” and valid targets.

  “More than 30 former U.S. officials — eight of whom described details of the CIA’s proposals to abduct Assange,” were sources for the report. One of these officials professes to lobbying for a redefinition of journalists—a clear attack on principles of press freedom. Pompeo and the CIA seized on a “carveout” to authorize operations against Assange and WikiLeaks over “Vault 7” publication. They’d treat WikiLeaks as a spy service and anything conducted would be “offensive counterintelligence” activity.

  Recall, CIA director Mike Pompeo’s speech at CSIS, a Washington think tank, where he labeled WikiLeaks “a non-state hostile intelligence service.” That was all to fuel a climate for aggressive action targeted against Assange, WikiLeaks staff, and associates. 

  The CIA could not prove WikiLeaks was working at the behest of the Russian government. So rather than claim authority to target WikiLeaks that way officials sought to reframe the organization as a “hostile entity.” Then it wouldn’t matter that they weren’t working for Russia.

  Here is why I’ve said for the past couple of years the CIA was out to destroy WikiLeaks. The “hostile entity” designation allowed them to target the media organization for disruption. This is a list of activities they believed they could engage in at any time…

  Here is why I’ve said for the past couple of years the CIA was out to destroy WikiLeaks. The “hostile entity” designation allowed them to target the media organization for disruption.

  This is a list of activities they believed they could engage in at any time: pic.twitter.com/quW3OuVpFJ

  — Kevin Gosztola (@kgosztola) September 26, 2021

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  The Yahoo! report appears to confirm Andy Müller-Maguhn, a former spokesman for Chaos Computer Club in Germany and friend of Assange, was targeted for disruption by the CIA. He is a German citizen. A key question is whether German intelligence operatives were aware.

  We can now say CIA Director Mike Pompeo wanted to kidnap WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Pompeo wanted to put him on a rendition flight to the United States. The US intelligence operatives UC Global Director David Morales and others referenced worked at the highest levels. Note key detail related to the proposal of kidnapping Assange. Pompeo was not raising a fresh and crazy idea.

  “…the notion of kidnapping Assange preceded Pompeo’s arrival at Langley…” So under Obama there were meetings where kidnapping Assange was discussed. President Donald Trump reportedly “spitballed” on whether the CIA could kill WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

  And “agency executives requested and received ‘sketches’ of plans for killing Assange and other Europe-based WikiLeaks members with access to Vault 7 materials.” John Eisenberg, who was a top lawyer for the National Security Council under Trump, apparently opposed rendering Assange to US without criminal charges. He urged DOJ to accelerate drafting of charges and was concerned Pompeo was freezing out lawyers from Assange discussions.

  This is not a spy movie. This is reality. CIA considered killing #Assange, even killing @wikileaks associates. Although it’s no surprise for those of us who have been on CIA’s spy list, this is huge and @POTUS should drop #Assange charges immediately.https://t.co/dF1Xvz1nEM

  — Srećko Horvat (@HorvatSrecko) September 26, 2021

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  British government agreed not to drop bail-jumping charge against Assange after Swedish investigation into sexual allegations was dropped in May 2017. This bail-jumping charge helped keep him in Belmarsh during extradition hearing and after prevailed in district court. 

  At the conclusion of the report, it reads: “Spy services are increasingly using a WikiLeaks-like model of posting stolen materials online.” Trump administration gave the CIA “aggressive new secret authorities” for hack-and-dump operations.

  To sum this all up: The Justice Department was afraid the CIA might kidnap or kill WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. They abandoned any hangup they had over “the New York Times problem” of charging a publisher and drafted an indictment. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/26/2021 – 22:30

• Morgan Stanley: We Are Approaching An Inflection Point In China Policy Easing
  Morgan Stanley: We Are Approaching An Inflection Point In China Policy Easing

  By Chetan Ahya, Chief Economist and Global Head of Economics at Morgan Stanley

  The past two months have seen successive waves of headlines from China, first on the broad regulatory reset and then this week’s focus on property developers facing near-term funding pressures. The policy goals of these measures are first to ensure social stability and second to make economic growth more sustainable by reducing income inequality and addressing imbalances and excesses. However, they have raised concerns about a potential rise in systemic risks and a sharper slowdown in growth.

  Investors’ focus has shifted from tech to the property sector, which faces challenges on two fronts. First, property developers are required to adhere to the “three red lines” – maintaining healthy liabilities-to-assets, net gearing and cash-to-short-term debt ratios – which were announced in August 2020.

  

  What we are experiencing now is a direct effect of that regulatory action, which aimed to reduce systemic risks with benchmarks to curb excessive property sector borrowing. In addition, property demand in China has slowed in the last two months, as the front-loading of mortgage lending quotas in the first half of the year has weighed on property sales, increasing headwinds for property developers.

  As things stand, most property developers are on track to comply with the three red lines, but a number face challenges in meeting the mandated ratios. Our China property analyst estimates that the total debt exposure of property developers is around Rmb 18.4 trillion, which is now similar to annual sales. This indicates that leverage in aggregate is manageable – hence, so is the deleveraging process.

  Nonetheless, the pressure to reduce leverage means that defaults in China’s property sector are likely to increase. From past experience, policy-makers have mechanisms in place to prevent systemic risks. For instance, debt restructuring will take place at the holding company level of property developers in default, while operating companies remain in business and construction projects move forward. Credit committees will oversee this process, with representation from the financial regulators, the central bank and local governments.

  Vis-à-vis the banking system, the property risk exposure of China’s banks appears manageable. Development loans totaled 6.9% of banks’ total loan balances, and individual developers’ loan balances are limited to 0.3% of banks’ total loan balance or less. NPL formation has also dropped to multi-year lows in 1H21. In addition, the risks related to peer-to-peer consumer loans and shadow banking credits have largely been addressed over the last three years. Hence, our China financials analyst sees ample room for the domestic banking system to deal with property sector risks this year. The exposure of global investors to the China property sector as holders of the debt or global banks as lenders to the sector is relatively small, which reduces the potential for global systemic risks.

  While we expect the restructuring process and immediate spillovers to the financial system to be orderly, we are mindful of potential knock-on effects in the broader economy. Although inventory levels are low, the economy will see some downside pressure from weaker housing starts in the near term.

  The property and adjacent sectors – residential property investment, related services and downstream goods consumption – account for ~15% of China’s GDP. Our chief China economist Robin Xing estimates that a 10pp slowdown in residential property activity could exert a ~1pp drag on GDP growth. Further spillovers could take the form of a negative wealth effect: reduced private consumption, the decline in property investment weighing on fixed asset investment in other upstream manufacturing sectors, and the impact on property sector employment exacerbating weaker consumption.

  

  These spillover effects are creating downward pressure on growth at the same time that production cuts to meet energy intensity targets are weighing on growth, the regulatory reset is weighing on corporate sentiment and consumption is softening because of intermittent Covid-related restrictions.

  We therefore see a risk that spillovers from the property sector would keep 4Q21 growth below 5% on a 2Y CAGR basis. This is a low starting point relative to next year’s growth target of 5.5%. Moreover, a sharper growth slowdown could increase the risk of a material impact on the labour market, which would run counter to the policy objective of ensuring social stability. It is in this context that we expect policy-makers to manage the process and pace of adjustment while providing meaningful countercyclical easing, just as they did in 2H15, 4Q18 and 2H19.

  

  Indeed, we think that we are approaching an inflection point in policy easing. Further measures in the pipeline include: faster fiscal spending to support infrastructure projects in September-December; another 50bp RRR cut in mid-to-late October; some easing of mortgage quotas and fine-tuning of production cuts to meet energy intensity targets in 4Q21; and front-loading of loan quotas and local government special bonds in January-February 2022.

  In the coming weeks, we will be watching for (1) communication from policy-makers on the details of the restructuring plan for property developers, and (2) policy easing signals and announcements.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/26/2021 – 22:00

• Watch: Australian C-17 Globemaster Conducts Insane Maneuver Between Skyscrapers
  Watch: Australian C-17 Globemaster Conducts Insane Maneuver Between Skyscrapers

  An Australian Boeing C-17 Globemaster III transport jet, one of the largest in the world, conducted one of the most insane aerial stunts as it weaved in between skyscrapers on Thursday. 

  

  The extremely low fly-by in Brisbane, Australia, was in preparation for the annual Sunsuper Riverfire festival today, Sat. 25, according to a RAAF press release.

  Here’s the video of the C-17 in downtown Brisbane. You can hear the person filming the rehearsal flight saying, “holy shit.” 

  While the video looked amazing, Task & Purpose spoke with one USAF C-17 pilot who said the low fly-by was extremely dangerous. 

  “If the crew’s timing is off or if they are slow to react, the jet would collide with a building. Very risky,” said the pilot, who wanted to remain anonymous. 

  He explained in the US, C-17 pilots must fly 1,000 feet above building structures in populated areas. Even during flyovers for sporting events, the transport plane cannot fly below building tops. 

  “Those Brisbane videos are insane,” the pilot said. “We could never do something like that in the USAF. If we did, we would lose our wings immediately — never fly again.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/26/2021 – 21:30

• "This Is Completely Avoidable" – New York Hospitals Prepare For Staffing Crisis As Vaccination Mandate Forces Mass Firings
  “This Is Completely Avoidable” – New York Hospitals Prepare For Staffing Crisis As Vaccination Mandate Forces Mass Firings

  With President Biden’s federal vaccine mandate set to take effect on Monday, health-care systems around the country are suspending elective in-patient surgeries and refusing to accept ICU patients from other hospitals as they brace for potentially hundreds of firings of nurses and other critical staffers, potentially even doctors.

  According to the NYT, the Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo is planning to do all that and more, as it says it may soon fire about 400 employees who have chosen not to get the single job required by the edict (which was pushed through despite being blocked by a federal judge).

  Similarly, officials at Northwell Health, the state’s largest health-care provider, estimate that NWH might be forced to fire thousands of people who have refused to get vaccinated.

  In an economy with more job openings than workers – 2.2MM more, to be exact – forcing workers to choose between employment and their health or religious compunctions simply isn’t a smart idea.

  Without even a hint of self-awareness, the governor apparently agrees: “What is looming for Monday is completely avoidable, and there’s no excuses,” Ms. Hochul said, pleading for those who have not done so to get vaccinated,” Hochul said during a weekend press briefing.

  But we digress.

  The situation is less dire in NYC, but there will still be plenty of hospitals left with massive staffing holes after mass-firings.

  The city’s largest private hospital network, NewYork-Presbyterian, has more than 200 employees who may face termination because they haven’t received at least one jab.

  Of course, as we have pointed out in recent posts, health-care workers are only a fraction of the worker who will be impacted by shortages across the economy. In California, nurse shortages have reached crisis levels in California, airlines are seeing flights frequently cancelled due to worker shortages.

  

  As of late September, 84% of NY’s 450,000 hospital workers and 83% of nursing home workers – which number around 45,400 – remained unvaccinated. 

  Despite being directly threatened by their superiors, most say they’re refusing the jab on religious or health grounds, or because they’re allergic to certain ingredients.

  In an effort to scare workers into compliance, NY Gov. Kathy Hochul has threatened to find “foreign workers” to staff the Empire state’s hospitals and care homes (despite the fact that vaccination rates are much lower in most of the world outside the US).

  She has also threatened to call in the National Guard or order a state of emergency in a plan unveiled over the weekend.

  NY’s teachers are also facing a mandate to either get vaccinated or kiss their jobs goodbye. Roughly 10,000 public school workers, that’s compared to 75K teachers and tens of thousands of other employees from custodians to paraprofessioanls.

  Circling back to hospitals and care homes, institutions like Northwell are being relatively parsimonious with their exemptions for religious and health reasons, But some are getting through .

  NY’s emergency order doesn’t stipulate how exactly hospitals and nursing homes should enforce it, and there’s a good chance that hospitals serving communities in greater need will be forced to make exceptions. Black and Hispanic New Yorkers have gotten the jab in far lower numbers than white new Yorkers. The NYT points out in its story that some hospitals in the Bronx see unvaccinated rates among doctors and nurses reaching into double-digit territory.

  At St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, about 12 percent of the nearly 3,000 employees had not been vaccinated as of midday on Friday, the chief medical officer, Eric Appelbaum, said in an interview. The group includes roughly 3 important doctors, and plenty of badly eed studiws

  Anecdotally hospitals are reporting a surge in vaccinations among hospital workers who haven’t yet been vaccinated. But who knows what to believe. All we know is that we wouldn’t want to be having an elective surgery or delivering a baby in NY right now.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/26/2021 – 21:00

• Goldman Raises Year-End Oil Price Target To $90
  Goldman Raises Year-End Oil Price Target To $90

  Just days after Goldman’s head commodity analyst Jeff Currie told Bloomberg TV that the bank anticipates oil spiking to $90 if the winter is colder than usual, on Sunday afternoon Goldman went ahead and made that its base case and in a note from energy strategist Damien Courvalin, he writes that with Brent prices reaching new highs since October 2018, the bank now forecasts that this rally will continue, “with our year-end Brent forecast of $90/bbl vs. $80/bbl previously.”

  

  What tipped the scales is that while Goldman has long held a bullish oil view, “the current global oil supply-demand deficit is larger than we expected, with the recovery in global demand from the Delta impact even faster than our above consensus forecast and with global supply remaining short of our below consensus forecasts.”

  

  Among the supply factors cited by Goldman is hurricane Ida – the “most bullish hurricane in US history” – which more than offset the ramp-up in OPEC+ production since July with non-OPEC+ non-shale production continuing to disappoint.

  

  Meanwhile, as noted above, on the demand side Goldman cited low hospitalization rates which are leading more countries to re-open, including to international travel in particularly COVID-averse countries in Asia.

  

  Finally, from a seasonal standpoint, Courvalin sees winter demand risks as “further now squarely skewed to the upside” as the global gas shortage will increase oil fired power generation.

  From a fundamental standpoint, the current c.4.5 mb/d observable inventory draws are the largest on record, including for global SPRs and oil on water, and follow the longest deficit on record, started in June 2020.

  For the oil bears, Goldman does not see this deficit as reversing in coming months as its scale will overwhelm both the willingness and ability for OPEC+ to ramp up, with the shale supply response just starting.

  

  This sets the stage for inventories to fall to their lowest level since 2013 by year-end (after adjusting for pipeline fill), supporting further backwardation in the oil forward curve where positioning remains low.

  

  But what about a production response? While Goldman does expect short-cycle production to respond by 2022 at the bank’s higher price forecast, from core-OPEC, Russia and shale, this according to Goldman, will only lay bare the structural nature of the oil market repricing. To be sure, there will likely be a time to be tactically bearish in 2022, especially if a US-Iran deal is eventually reached. The bank’s base-case assumption is for such an agreement to be reached in April, leading the bank to then trim its price target to an $80/bbl price forecast in 2Q22-4Q22 (vs. its 4Q21-1Q22 $85/bbl quarterly average forecast). This would, however, remain a tactical call and a likely timespread trade according to Courvalin, with long-dated oil prices poised to reset higher from current levels, especially as the hedging momentum shifts from US producer selling to airline buying (a move which Goldman says to position for with a long Dec-22 Brent and short Dec-22 Brent put trade recommendations).

   

  Meanwhile, the lack of long-cycle capex response – here you can thank the green crazy sweeping the world – the quickly diminishing OPEC spare capacity (Goldman expects normalization by early 2022), the inability for shale producers to sustain production growth (given their low reinvestment rate targets) and oil service and carbon cost inflation will all instead point to the need for sustainably higher long-dated oil prices. Remarkably, Goldman now expects the market to return to a structural deficit by 2H23, which leads it to raise its 2023 oil price forecast from $65/bbl to $85/bbl, and the mid-cycle valuation oil price used by Goldman’s equity analysts to $70/bbl.

  

  Translation: expect a slew of price hikes on energy stocks in the coming days from Goldman.

  Finally, where could Goldman’s forecast – which would infuriate the white house as gasoline prices are about to explode higher – be wrong? For what it’s worth, the bank sees the greatest risk on the timeline of its bullish view. On the demand side, it would take a potentially new variant that renders vaccine ineffective. Beyond that, however, the bank expects limited downside risk from China, with its economists not expecting a hard landing and with our demand growth forecast driven by DMs and other EMs instead. This leaves near-term risks having to come from the supply side, most notably OPEC+, which next meets on October 4. And while an aggressively faster ramp-up in production by year-end would soften (but not derail) our projected deficit, it would only further delay the shale rebound, which would reinforce the structural nature of the next rally given binding under-investment in oil services by 2023. In addition, a large ramp-up in OPEC+ production would simply fast-forward the decline in global spare capacity to historically low levels, replacing a cyclical tight market with a structural one.

  

  

  The full report as usual available to pro subscribers in the usual place.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/26/2021 – 20:36

• Power Supply Shock Looms: "Global Markets Will Feel The Pinch Very Soon" Of China's Next Crisis
  Power Supply Shock Looms: “Global Markets Will Feel The Pinch Very Soon” Of China’s Next Crisis

  Distracted by the ‘grandness’ of the collapse of China’s property development market, many have missed the fact that China faces a crisis that could directly hit Asia’s economy just as hard as a financial collapse – a nationwide power supply shock.

  After ramping up its coal-based power production earlier in the year, it appears Beijing has suddenly grown a conscience over its emissions and the ‘average joe’ could be about to feel the pain of that decision.

  Climate change facts: Chinese CO2 emissions are more than double those of the US, and greater than US and EU combined. pic.twitter.com/ZpJCoPaUjB

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 6, 2020

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

  As Bloomberg reports, the crackdown on power consumption is being driven by rising demand for electricity and surging coal and gas prices as well as strict targets from Beijing to cut emissions.

  It’s coming first to the country’s mammoth manufacturing industries: from aluminum smelters to textiles producers and soybean processing plants, factories are being ordered to curb activity or – in some instances – shut altogether.

  “With market attention now laser-focused on Evergrande and Beijing’s unprecedented curbs on the property sector, another major supply-side shock may have been underestimated or even missed,” Nomura Holding Inc. analysts including Ting Lu warned in a note, predicting China’s economy will shrink this quarter.

  As a reminder, China pollutes more than the US and all developed countries combined…

  

  More problematic for Greta and her pals, between the years 2000 and 2020, the amount of electricity generated by burning coal increased more than four-fold in China, hitting around 4,600 terrawatt hours in the past year.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  As the scene below suggests, this is not the first time China has faced winter power demand surges (which prompted many to turn to diesel generators to plug the shortages of power from the electricity grid).

  

  However, this year is different.

  The danger is that, as Zeng Hao, chief expert at consultancy Shanxi Jinzheng Energy, warns: government policies will significantly limit the energy industry’s potential to increase production to meet the demand increase.

  2021’s worsening power crunch in China reflects three specific factors:

  1) Extremely tight energy supply globally (that’s already seen chaos engulf markets in Europe);

  2) The economic rebound from COVID lockdowns that has boosted demand from households and businesses (as lower investment by miners and drillers constrains production); and

  3) President Xi Jinping tries to ensure blue skies at the Winter Olympics in Beijing next February (showing the international community for the first time that he’s serious about de-carbonizing the economy).

  Simply put, it is the third factor – which is all of its own making – that has raised the risk of a severe shortage of coal and gas – used to heat homes and power factories – this winter; and more ominously, expectations of the need to ration power to those deemed worthy.

  “The power curbs will ripple through and impact global markets,” Nomura’s Ting said.

  “Very soon the global markets will feel the pinch of a shortage of supply from textiles, toys to machine parts.”

  As we noted earlier in the year, China needs to shutter 600 coal plants to meet its emissions goals of net zero greenhouse emissions by 2060.

  

  If Xi’s recent actions in the interests of “common prosperity” are really about forestalling social unrest, we suspect his commitment to meeting self-imposed carbon emissions targets may quickly evaporate as the Chinese people are unlikely to stand sustained black-outs for long without upheaval.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/26/2021 – 20:30

• The Importance Of Dune, Part 2: The Jihad
  The Importance Of Dune, Part 2: The Jihad

  Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

  Read Part 1 here

  In 2020 I wrote a pair of editorials for the Gold Goats ‘n Guns Newsletter in sympathy to the movie’s original release for last December. This one appeared in November after the (s)election of Joe Biden as U.S. president. I’ve written a lot about the ideas contained in this essay but I felt it appropriate to revisit it now that we’re in the window of seeing our story play out on the big screen, where art still has the possibility of moving us to action.

  

  The Jihad

  “We Fremen have a saying: God created Arrakis to train the faithful. One cannot go against the word of God.”

  — FRANK HERBERT

  In my last editorial I talked about why Frank Herbert’s Dune was even more relevant today than when it was published in 1965.  As we approached the election, after re-reading Dune, I made it into Herbert’s sequel, Dune Messiah.

  And having not read it in thirty years I was amazed at how good it was.  The whole book is about a moment in time that Paul, who can see into the future, cannot see beyond.  The 2020 election felt exactly that way to me.

  That moment was a singularity, a point we pass through without knowing what lies on the other side.  The parallels were simply too deep for me to ignore.  The trope Herbert used in Dune Messiah has been copied a hundred times since then, but its metaphoric power remains the same.

  A moment like that turns everything on its head when it happens.  It shattered Paul’s life and ushered in the next period of chaos far deadlier than the last.

  Dune left us knowing that with the victory over the entrenched, sclerotic power structure of the great houses there would be a religious jihad by the Fremen which would sweep across the galaxy like a plague of killer locusts.

  That jihad occurred and Paul was powerless to stop it.

  And, like Paul, this is what I fear is coming. The results of the election confirm for me that what comes next will be a terrible thing. 

  The Davos Crowd think they have won the war, that they have been successful in defeating the insurgent Trump and his Deplorable sand rats.  They think there are only a few of us vocally leading a loose contingent of conspiracy theorists on the fringe of society who can be easily controlled and marginalized.

  This was the mistake the establishment made in Dune, thinking the Fremen numbered in the thousands.  In reality, they numbered in the tens of millions and were viciously angry, self-sufficient and disciplined; ready to remake the world and shut off the source of the power, the spice.

  When Dune was written the spice was a metaphor for oil.  Today information is the currency of the realm, and Davos thinks that by controlling all information flow they can control everything else.

  But they don’t control the information anymore, even if it looks that way. Because by cheating and creating false value throughout the society, by degrading the quality of the information, they have raised the value of producing real things with real labor to the point of it being existential to their power.

  And when you marginalize the tens of millions of people who produce the goods which sustain their false reality, when you remove their ability to speak their mind and make their voices heard, when you insult them, berate them, hector them and beat them then you will bear the consequences when the sleeper awakens, in Herbert’s words.

  This isn’t a threat or an open invitation to violence.  This is an observation of what always comes next.  These people know that they have been lied to, their children spiritually separated from them.  The election was a cruel joke meant to rub our noses in their complete power over us.  You can see it every day on Twitter.

  What comes next will be nothing short of a Fremen-esque jihad by the 70+ million people who voted for Donald Trump.  If his allies prove the systematic thievery of the election, it will fuel what is now a simmering anger to a violent boiling rage with a near-religious frenzy.

  They will be fully justified.

  I get that anger.  I feel it building in me.  Paul saw this coming in Dune and failed in his attempt to control it.  And I can see it coming today.

  Their Jihad will be joined by the people who didn’t want to win by cheating.  There are millions of them, too.  They voted against Trump but don’t view their neighbors as enemies.

  The alternative to it is worse, acquiescence and vassalage to a corrupt system.  And that’s why today it’s clear to me this only ends in violence.  The elites had a choice.  They chose poorly.

  They have their own religious zealots, suffused with the righteous anger at a corrupt system but blaming it on the wrong people, their neighbors. 

  The people have a choice, stand their ground or be ground into paste. 

  This is why I feel the only option for Davos when faced with the coming jihad against them will be to unleash a response to it orders of magnitude deadlier than COVID-19.  That’s a moment I, frankly, don’t want to see beyond.

  *  *  *

  I think it’s quite clear now that we’re in the middle of that next response. The ‘Jihad’ of angry Trump voters hasn’t quite materialized yet, but it has in other parts of the world.

  The descent into random violence with brutal Harkonnen police and embedded Sardaukar mercenaries putting down protests in Melbourne, Australia is not only deeply disturbing but, sadly, wholly predictable.

  The Fremen were trained by Arrakis through privation and extreme thrift imposed on them by the desert to find meaning and beauty in the simplest things. We’re not there yet. But by now brutally imposing vaccination mandates through a terror campaign people have woken up quickly.

  Because they already saw the problem if they didn’t want to believe it would ever come to this.

  The sleeper will awaken here in the U.S. The more they take away from us the more it will feed the burning inside.

  Davos’ Sardaukar are sustained through blood sacrifice and dehumanization, the Harkonnens through good ol’ payola. They serve this system not because they believe in it but because they are fed by it. Australians will begin imposing costs on them that outweigh their comfort and they will collapse.

  It’s already happening in France. It will happen in Germany this fall. And when the U.S. joins the jihad that’s when the violence gets real.

  Fat, roid-freaks running around beating old women and unarmed men with gang tactics will turn into massacres, but not for us, for them. They have told us they are no longer negotiating with us. Become subservient or be destroyed. Their call isn’t a bluff but it ultimately is.

  We have reached that moment today where the choice is clear. Get hard, get in shape, get tough-mined and become #ungovernable or be extinguished. You are not alone.

  Moments like this take generations to build to. Welcome to Arrakis.

  *  *  *

  Join my Patreon if you can see The Jihad forming

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  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/26/2021 – 20:00

• Fauci Flop? New Documentary About COVID Czar Fails To Disclose Box Office Results
  Fauci Flop? New Documentary About COVID Czar Fails To Disclose Box Office Results

  A new documentary called “Fauci,” released by National Geographic Documentary Films two weeks ago, honors Dr. Anthony Fauci’s work to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic and COVID-19 pandemic. Since the release two weeks ago, there’s been no data on ticket sales by major film sites, according to Just The News. 

  The new documentary was released in theaters across York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, D.C., and New Orleans on Sept. 10. No major film site, including RottenTomatoes.com, Boxoffice Pro, IMDB.com, and BoxOfficeMojo.com, has calculated ticket sales or earnings for the film.

  The documentary “follows the renowned infectious disease specialist’s work in two health crises: AIDS and the coronavirus pandemic. Dr. Fauci agreed to participate as long as it didn’t interfere with his work,” NYT tweeted. 

  Shawn Robbins, the chief analyst with Boxoffice Pro, said it’s “incredibly uncommon” for a major studio not to release box office earnings. 

  “Niche distributors often lack the proper resources for data reporting. That may or may not be the case with this particular documentary,” said Robbins. He said it’s too early to suggest “Fauci” has become a flop at theaters, but time will tell. 

  Just The News said the film had one condition before seeing it: patrons of the theater had to show their vaccine cards. 

  On IMDB, the documentary has a 2.2 rating out of 10. About 80% of the reviews rate it as a 1 star. 

  

  IMDB users criticized the documentary as establishment-backed propaganda. Here’s one review: 

  Hilarious how this movie uses George Bush, and Susan Rice, to ascribe credibility for Dr. Fauci 😂 Bush’s false “Weapons of Mass Destruction” Iraq War, and Susan Rice’s “Benghazi” debacle speak for themselves.

  The movie does indeed humanize Fauci with stories about his family. He said they are being harassed because of his work. So what do they do? They put their images and information in the movie….😧

  Then along comes Bono’s interview. I’m still trying to figure out what a singer really has to do with any of this.

  It has interesting interviews, but is a very one sided movie. It’s mostly politicos trying to dig out poor ole Dr. Fauci from the avalanche of his massive PR nightmare. He’s 80 years old, maybe just maybe it’s time to relax and retire.

  The mystery remains why National Geographic continues to withhold the box office earnings of Fauci, but the poor reviews at IMBD suggest the flick might have been a flop, and that is why. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/26/2021 – 19:30

• Frontrunning As A Service: "Flashbots" Can Now Enable Anyone To Skip The Transaction Line On Crypto Networks
  Frontrunning As A Service: “Flashbots” Can Now Enable Anyone To Skip The Transaction Line On Crypto Networks

  Frontrunning isn’t just for Citadel anymore: the same thing is starting to evolve in the crypto space.

  Crypto bots can now spot when other traders on a network are trying to buy a token and can attempt to place an order to get in front of the already-existing order. 

  As Bloomberg noted in a new report, it’s a win/win situation for those managing the bots:

  If you are able to get your purchase done before the other trader, you’ll get a good deal on a coin you know there’s demand for. Your purchase pushes up the price the other buyer has to pay. Completing the sandwich, you sell for an easy profit.

  Undertaking these types of transactions in the world of crypto is far easier than it is on equity markets or futures markets. There’s numerous bots available for download thanks to a free open source tool called Flashbots that makes it easy to create these types of bots.

  

  “There was a high chance that front-running would not happen to you,” before Flashbots came along, Anton Bukov, co-founder of 1inch, a crypto-exchange aggregator, told Bloomberg. “Since it was released, a lot of people got access to this, and they started to front-run all these traders,” he continued.

  The creators of Flashbots attest that they are simply “trying to solve a serious problem” of miners having power to decide which transactions in a block get priority while processing transactions for the ledger.

  Nic Carter, who co-founded research firm Coin Metrics, added: “We haven’t even scratched the surface of shenanigans miners could be up to.”

  And if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em: while Flashbots doesn’t eliminate the frontrunning, it makes it available for everyone. The software “makes a market out of cutting in line,” Bloomberg wrote. 

  In an auction feature it has, the software allows users to bid on positions in the miner queue and then allows miners to benefit from taking a fee from the winner of the auction. Advocates for the practice argue that bringing in out into the open makes it more orderly. 

  Traders can also use the software to pay a miner to ensure their transaction is undertaken at the price agreed upon (i.e. that they aren’t skipped in line themselves). 

  These transparent auctions differentiate crypto from “the predatory, opaque manipulation that goes on in traditional financial exchanges,” according to one of its co-creators, Cornell Ph.D. student Phil Daian. 

  

  “If the current state is the final solution, I’d say it’s a net negative. But in the long run it’s a good steppingstone,” said Tarun Chitra, co-founder of crypto financial modeling platform Gauntlet. 

  Another critic is Ari Juels, a professor at Cornell Tech who is co-author of “Flash Boys 2.0” who advises Daian. He said: “It makes sense only as part of a false narrative that there’s no other way.” 

  Juels says blockchain protocols that ensure orderly transactions are another way to solve the problem, and he likened Flashbots to “a town solving burglaries by selling the right to do it and using the revenue to fund the police”.
   

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/26/2021 – 18:30

• Choice Architecture And Retail Investors
  Choice Architecture And Retail Investors

  By Nicholas Colas, founder of DataTrek Research

  The topic of today’s Story-Time discussion will be the behavioral economics concept of choice architecture, which says that how choices are presented influences what people choose. There’s “good” architecture, which nudges people into beneficial outcomes, and “bad” architecture, which leaves them adrift. Capital markets are rife with the “bad” sort of architecture, especially for the new crop of retail investors: myriad choices, randomly displayed. The only good news: it’s always been this way and capital markets/investors have done fine.

  We’ve been fascinated by the behavioral economics concept of “choice architecture” ever since Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s 2008 book “Nudge”, and it is the topic of this week’s Story Time Thursday.

  The easiest way to explain choice architecture and the complexity it can create is with an example from a 2013 piece by Thaler, Sunstein and Balz (the editor for “Nudge”, link to the work below):

  • The food service director for a large urban school systems discovers that children tend to choose foods by where they appear in the cafeteria queue. Items presented at the start and end of the line are chosen more frequently, as are those placed at eye level.
  • Armed with this knowledge, should the director optimize the daily presentation of options based on 1) the healthiness of the food, or 2) at random, or 3) maximizing profit/minimizing cost?
  • The first option (healthy foods) is certainly what parents would prefer but one can see how choices 2 and 3 might be more popular if in place of a children’s cafeteria we were talking about a restaurant for adults. Choice architecture design is always a function of situation.

  Now, it’s not just children that favor the easy-to-see or first option offered. Packaged goods companies pay supermarkets for shelf placement. Businesses pay Amazon and Google to put their ads at the top of relevant searches. Both examples are choice architecture “hacks” that may not yield the optimal result for the consumer. Regardless, they still work, as Google’s near $2 trillion market cap highlights.

  Since the publication of “Nudge”, the primary way choice architecture has affected how economic choices are presented is in the use of default options to guide (“nudge”) people without taking away freedom of choice. Two examples:

  • Many US companies now make contributing to a 401(k) retirement plan the standard choice with a further default into a target date fund when new employees onboard. They can still choose not to enroll in the program, but that requires an explicit choice rather than the other way around.
  • When governments make organ donation the default option rather than “no donation”, enrollment in such programs increases.
  • Default choices are like salad placed at the start of the cafeteria buffet. You know it’s the “right” option, so you take it and that reduces the possibility that you’ll grab the burger and fries later.

  Now, one area where choice architecture plays a prominent role in current capital markets is in how it effects decisions made by millions of new retail investors. There are thousands of individual listed equities in the US and at least as many exchange traded funds. Expand this investable universe to virtual currencies, and the list grows by another 12,000 potential choices.

  Online broker Robinhood has an interesting approach to helping new accounts choose a stock to own: they simply put a share of a well-known name right into the account on sign-up. It might be JPMorgan (a $160 value) or Ford ($14), but on day 1 the client owns something. This is essentially a “default option” meant to engage the customer in the investment process and, hopefully, encourage further activity. In our view, this is an extremely clever way to break the logjam created by the thousands of potential choices that new investors face.

  Go over to Coinbase, where there are a much smaller number of tradable options (63 just now), and you’ll still see choice architecture hacks meant to put a given option at “eye level”. For example, one offering called fetch.ai offers potential buyers $1 of value in that token for every video about the project that they watch. This is not quite as much of a “default choice” as Robinhood’s stock incentive, but the idea is the same: give users a reason to engage.

  Even with these examples, the myriad of options available to retail investors obviously makes for something of an architectural nightmare, but this is not a novel problem. The new crop of millennial retail investors use sources like Reddit to find ideas amid the thousands of choices on offer. Their Boomer parents may scoff at this approach, but in their (relative) youth they paid 5-8 percent loads on mutual funds in large part because they too were overwhelmed by the choices on offer. Most of those fees went to brokerage firms in compensation for navigating the complex choice architecture that is Wall Street.

  Yes, new retail investors could use some “nudges” to encourage sounder decision-making, but the historical track record shows this is very hard, as this brief personal story shows:

  • In a prior job I (Nick) developed independent research for sales to brokerage firms which had to show this work to their clients in the wake of the 2003 Global Analysts Research Settlement between the SEC, FINRA and 10 large Wall Street firms.
  • My firm made a ton of money on this product because the brokers involved had to pay $450 million over 5 years for work like ours.
  • But the reality was that very few brokerage clients (less than 100/month, typically) ever read the work despite it being both free and prominently displayed on investor portals.
  • On top of that, the further $85 million set aside from the settlement for “investor education” remained largely unused.

  The bottom line to all this is that the choice architecture of investing is like a cafeteria with essentially infinite, randomly displayed choices and every demographic cohort that comes through the doors must find their own way. They make mistakes, they correct, they move on. Yes, it would be great if there were some systematic way to reduce the initial error rate. My own experience with the 2003 Research Settlement tells me there is not. In the grand scheme of things, that’s OK. The more important issue is that retail investors engage with financial markets and stay involved for the long term. Boomers managed this despite the 1987 crash and 2 bear markets. Millennials should be no different, a positive factor when considering long-term US equity returns.

  Sources:

  Choice Architecture (Thaler, Sunstein, Balz): https://dl1.cuni.cz/pluginfile.php/958113/mod_resource/content/0/06%20Thaler%2C%20Sunstein%2C%20Balz%20%282012%29%20Choice%20Architecture.pdf

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/26/2021 – 18:00

• As Margins Begin To Slide, Will Corporations Choose To Defend Profits Or Absorb Transitory Shocks
  As Margins Begin To Slide, Will Corporations Choose To Defend Profits Or Absorb Transitory Shocks

  Having spent much of the summer warning that as a result of surging labor costs, commodity prices and generally “transitory hyperinflation”, corporate margins would tumble (which in the view of Morgan Stanley would lead to a 10% correction), three weeks ago we warned that we are about to see a surge in profit warnings as the realization that the current unprecedented ascent in prices is going to be anything but transitory.

  If MS and BofA are right on slumping consumer demand and margin contraction we should start seeing Q3 earnings warnings in the next 2 weeks.

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 30, 2021

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  Sure enough, shortly after we noted that “Profit Warnings Are Coming Fast And Furious As Q3 Profits Brace For Big Hit” it wasn’t until Nike and FedEx’s dismal outlooks that the world finally paid attention to the coming stagflationary wave.

  As we reported last week, Fedex tumbled after it reported that not only did it miss Q1 earnings – just hours after announcing it was raising prices at the fastest pace in decades – but also slashed guidance, warning about sharply higher labor costs and operating expenses.Picking up on this, earlier today Nordea also chimed in saying that “FedEx adjusted down expectations and cited being 35% understaffed in various parts of the supply chain as an important reason why. This is not good!” Yes… after the fact.

  

  We won’t waste our readers’ time on why margins are set to plunge, and drag profits along with them absent a continued surge in revenues – we have discussed that extensively in the past few months – but we will highlight a recent note from SocGen’s Andrew Lapthorne who cuts through the noise and says that corporates now have to make a decision: defend high margins or absorb “transitory” shocks.

  As Lapthorne writes last week, while the rest of the world’s attention turns to China, his charts focused on corporate profitability given the concerns about rising costs, supply disruption and now higher energy costs. According to the SocGen strategist, reported EBIT growth in the US has jumped by over 30% and over 55% in Europe, a remarkable surge which has been accompanied by a sharp increase in profit margins as sales growth has easily outstripped the growth in costs. Indeed, as noted recently, US profit margins hit an all all-time high in Q2, leading to a substantial uplift in profit margins to all-time highs.

  

  Why the focus on margins and profitability? As Lapthorne explains, “profit margins act as shock absorbers. If businesses can absorb price shocks and business disruption into their P&L instead of passing the problems onto customers then logic has it that short-term profitability would be hit, but bigger issues, such as the need for policy tightening, is reduced.”

  And while on aggregate profit margins are healthy enough – for now – to absorb some temporary pain, it will be interesting to see what path the corporates take: to defend margins and risk inflation taking hold, or allow profits suffer for a while?

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/26/2021 – 17:30

• Hedge Fund CIO On China's Crypto Crackdown: Beijing Is Desperate To Ensure Successful Rollout Of Their Digital Yuan
  Hedge Fund CIO On China’s Crypto Crackdown: Beijing Is Desperate To Ensure Successful Rollout Of Their Digital Yuan

  By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

  “When you and I grew up, half the world was covered in communism,” said the CIO. “Global markets and international business provided the keys to liberate the human potential stifled by that system,” he continued. “When we started in the business, there weren’t vast pools of human capital moving piles of paper. But those days are done.”

  Too much of society has become financialized, optimized. Such a structure leads to corrupt incumbents, fragility, instability. “Markets and economics are no longer the answer to the world’s problems. And that’s not to say communism is the solution. It’s not. But it appears clear we’re entering the type of decade you see a couple times a century where politics dominate.”

  Overall:

  “Virtual currency-related business activities are illegal financial activities,” declared the People’s Bank of China, increasingly desperate to ensure the successful rollout of their centralized digital yuan.

  PBOC SAYS ALL CRYPTO-RELATED TRANSACTIONS ARE ILLEGAL

  So the digital yuan is a complete disaster eh?

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 24, 2021

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  “The government will resolutely clamp down on virtual currency speculation, related financial activities and misbehavior in order to safeguard people’s properties and maintain economic, financial and social order.”

  Beijing stopped short of outlawing the ownership of such digital assets. They prefer centrally controlled coercion, slow suffocation. One risk to outlawing the ownership of virtual currencies is that citizens who forfeit them are forever resentful. And states that turn their citizens into criminals at scale do so at great peril. Soviet communists turned such transformation into an art form.

  These are the stakes at play. China’s central bank digital yuan will provide Beijing with unparalleled transactional insight and financial control. It further intends to export this system as an alternative to the US dollar, directing business in China through its new international payments system.

  But the free market has already created parallel systems that lay outside of Beijing’s dominion. Bitcoin is one. Ethereum another. So are stablecoin. Such systems are built to meet market demand for digital versions of an existing fiat currency, such as the US dollar. More than 98% of the $128bln of global stablecoin is linked to the US dollar. Even more impressive, the annual transaction turnover of US dollar stablecoin is over $100trln. It is an astonishing success of blockchain technology applied by the private sector at scale. There is no such demand for the digital yuan – the largest private CNY stablecoin is less than $5mm (see ““I’m Not At All Excited”: China’s Digital Yuan Is Turning Into A Giant Flop“)

  China and the US are, thus, confronting very different positions. China success in the digital currency arena hinges on control – the digital yuan will be used by decree. US success depends on regulators integrating US dollar stablecoin into the mainstream. They will.

  And when they do, these technologies will come under conventional oversight, unlocking exponential growth. Benefits will accrue to the nation with the currency that the market selects. That remains, unambiguously, the US.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/26/2021 – 17:00

• NYC Fast Resembling San Fran & Vancouver 'Cities Of The Walking Dead' As Junkies, Dealers Take Over Midtown Streets With Impunity 
  NYC Fast Resembling San Fran & Vancouver ‘Cities Of The Walking Dead’ As Junkies, Dealers Take Over Midtown Streets With Impunity 

  A lengthy weekend exposé in The New York Post has chronicled how the outgoing de Blasio administration’s long turning a blind eye has allowed the Garment District and some midtown Manhattan streets to increasingly resemble the deteriorating zombie-like feel of the open drug use problem in places like San Francisco, or Vancouver in Canada. It also calls to mind the reputation of an open-air crime infested drug den and “fear city” that came to define daily life and commutes in the 1970s and 1980s – also following more than a year of the Covid-induced exodus of people moving out of the city.

  “New York City has become the city of The Walking Dead,” a former NYPD detective, Michael Alcazar, who also teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told The Post. The publication quoted neighbors and eyewitnesses who live near 35th and 36th streets, who say that busy sidewalks are now “littered with used needles, broken glass crack pipes, trash, urine, and feces” – and one can increasingly see junkies shooting up in broad daylight.

  

  “I’ve personally seen dozens of deals go down. I’ve seen a person OD and nearly die,” one resident of the area said. And separately the aforementioned former detective Alcazar lamented, “This is a city problem. How has the city eroded this far so quickly?” And he concluded, “With lack of treatment and open use of drugs… The city has lost its focus.”

  Businesses which form the heart of the neighborhood are all too aware of the downward slide and increasingly public safety danger, with Garment District Alliance President Barbara Blair cited as saying on their behalf, “We are appalled and disgusted by the drug use and other illicit behaviors that are taking place on our sidewalks in Midtown Manhattan and throughout New York City.”

  The report actually went so far as to feature photographs of the sordid scenes it was documenting in action: drug deals and exchanges happening with impunity in the middle of the day, shirtless homeless men shooting meth on the sidewalk, police standing around checking their phones as if bored, residents and tourists walking past junkies sitting dazed in a trance-like state of oblivion.

  

  After watching what was an obvious drug deal going down on 36th street the Post reporters crucially observed further:

  The NYPD appears to have only a token presence. Two cops stood on Eighth Avenue between 35th and 36th, leaning up against a police van while staring into their phones, as illicit activities swirled around them.

  But cops have been “effectively ordered” by city and state leaders to let junkies roam free, said Manny Gomez, a former NYPD sergeant and FBI special agent who now heads MG Security Services.

  Haven’t seen this in NYC since I was about 6 years old asking my older sister what was wrong with those who were doing this….NYC is now the new Hamsterdam…

  ‘City of the Walking Dead:’ Junkies shoot up in broad daylight in Midtown https://t.co/44vAcJLjYe via @nypmetro

  — Michael Lambert aka That’s Mr. Boomer 2U‼️ (@Mezikenyc) September 26, 2021

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  Images in 2021 increasingly resemble the down and out crime and drug-fueled 1970s and 1980s where venturing down city streets and riding subways were feared especially by outsiders…

  

  All of this has no doubt impacted violent crime in the area, with the report citing NY city numbers to point out that robberies have jumped a whopping 182% this year compared to last, with felony assaults increasing 163% as well.

  This strongly suggests what’s happening on a number of blocks of midtown isn’t merely an inconvenient matter of imaging or a neighborhood aesthetics problem, but will make these neighborhoods increasingly unsafe – not to mention the potential for spread of disease via needles strewn about and a growing feces problem – again akin to San Francisco’s “poop crisis” on the other coast.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/26/2021 – 16:30

• As Biden Releases 12K Haitians Into US, Thousands More Arrive In Panama For Northbound Trek
  As Biden Releases 12K Haitians Into US, Thousands More Arrive In Panama For Northbound Trek

  Thousands of Haitian migrants have somehow made it to Panama, and have passed through the treacherous jungles of the Darien Gap on their way north to the United States, according to Reuters.

  According to the report which cites two Panamanian government sources, between 3,500 and 4,000 migrants are passing through ‘migration reception stations’ in Darien and Chiriqui, according to one source – an official with Panama’s security ministry.

  But wait, there’s more:

  Meanwhile, some 16,000 migrants are stuck in the northern Colombian beach town of Necocli, awaiting their turn on limited boat transport toward the Darien Gap, where smugglers guide groups through one of the most dangerous and impassable regions of Latin America. read more

  Colombia and Panama agreed last month that 500 migrants could cross per day, but local officials have repeatedly urged them to raise the quota, saying it is far too low to keep pace with the up to 1,500 migrants who arrive in town daily. -Reuters

  Meanwhile, the Biden administration has released around 12,000 Haitians into the United States – unvaccinated, while school children are forced to wear masks and unvaccinated Americans are losing their jobs because… science.

  More from Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said Sunday that a significant number of Haitian illegal immigrants who had amassed along the U.S.-Mexico border last week are being released into the United States.

  

  About 12,400 out of 17,000 Haitians are having their cases heard by immigration courts, Mayorkas said, adding that about 5,000 are being processed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Only approximately 3,000 are in detention, he said.

  “Approximately, I think it’s about ten thousand or so, twelve thousand,” Mayorkas told “Fox News Sunday” when he was asked about the number of Haitian illegal aliens who have been released into the interior of the United States. The number could rise as 5,000 more cases are processed, he remarked further.

  Mayorkas added that the figure of those being released “could be even higher” and added that the “number that are returned could be even higher.”

  Striking a defensive tone, Mayorkas said, “What we do is we follow the law as Congress has passed it.”

  “Legislative reform is needed,” he said, adding that the U.S. “immigration system is broken.”

  The Department of Justice in 2017 previously estimated that about 43 percent of illegal aliens released into the U.S. miss their immigration court hearings.

  When asked about what will happen to the 12,000 who were released in the past week, Mayorkas said that “it is our intention to remove” those aliens.

  “We have enforcement guidelines in place that provide that individuals who are recent border crossers who do not show up for their hearings are enforcement priorities, and will be removed,” Mayorkas said.

  Last week, more than 15,000 Haitians congregated underneath a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, and essentially constructed a shantytown before numerous local officials sounded the alarm that a humanitarian crisis was brewing.

  

  Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas updates reporters on the effort to resettle vulnerable Afghans in the United States, in Washington on Sept. 3, 2021. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)

  DHS officials, including Mayorkas, on Sept. 24 said that the encampment under the bridge was cleared out. A day later, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said that the Texas border crossing will be partially reopened.

  The agency also said it is planning to continue flights to Haiti throughout the weekend, ignoring criticism from Democratic lawmakers and some progressive groups.

  The number of people at the Del Rio encampment peaked last weekend as migrants driven by confusion over the Biden administration’s policies and misinformation on social media converged at the border crossing. While Mayorkas and other White House officials have asserted that the border is closed, Republicans have said that the administration’s decisions to rescind a number of Trump-era immigrant orders have triggered a surge of illegal immigration.

  

  All the while, Mayorkas and other senior officials have dedicated a significant amount of time in news conferences condemning some Border Patrol agents who were seen on horseback near Haitians who illegally crossed the border. The photographer who shot those pictures last week said that the agents were not whipping the migrants, as some officials and Democratic lawmakers had claimed.

  “Some of the Haitian men started running, trying to go around the horses,” photographer Paul Ratje told local station KTSM, explaining the situation on the ground.

  “I’ve never seen them whip anyone,” he said, referring to the agents. “He was swinging it, but it can be misconstrued when you’re looking at the picture.”

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 09/26/2021 – 16:00

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