Mar 28

Today’s News 28th March 2021

  • Escobar: US/NATO Versus Russia-China In A Hybrid War To The Finish
    Escobar: US/NATO Versus Russia-China In A Hybrid War To The Finish

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

    The unipolar moment is six feet under, the hegemon will try to break Eurasian integration and there’s no grownup in the room to counsel restraint…

    Let’s start with comic relief: the “leader of the free world” has pledged to prevent China from becoming the “leading” nation on the planet. And to fulfill such an exceptional mission, his “expectation” is to run again for president in 2024. Not as a hologram. And fielding the same running mate.

    Now that the “free world” has breathed a sigh of relief, let’s return to serious matters – as in the contours of the Shocked and Awed 21st Century Geopolitics.

    What happened in the past few days between Anchorage and Guilin continues to reverberate. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that Brussels “destroyed” the relationship between Russia and the EU, he focused on how the Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership is getting stronger and stronger.

    Not so casual synchronicity revealed that as Lavrov was being properly hosted by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Guilin – scenic lunch in the Li river included -, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken was visiting NATO’s James-Bondish HQ outside Brussels.

    Lavrov made it quite clear that the core of Russia-China revolves around establishing an economic and financial axis to counterpunch the Bretton Woods arrangement. That implies doing everything to protect Moscow and Beijing from “threats of sanctions by other states”; progressive de-dollarization; and advances in crypto-currency.

    This “triple threat” is what is unleashing the Hegemon’s unbounded fury.

    On a broader spectrum, the Russia-China strategy also implies that the progressive interaction between the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) will keep apace across Central Asia, Southeast Asia, parts of South Asia, and Southwest Asia – necessary steps towards an ultimately unified Eurasian market under a sort of strategic Sino-Russo management.

    In Alaska, the Blinken-Sullivan team learned, at their expense, that you don’t mess with a Yoda such as Yang Jiechi with impunity. Now they’re about to learn what it means to mess with Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Russian Security Council.

    Patrushev, as much a Yoda as Yang Jiechi, and a master of understatement, delivered a not so cryptic message: if the US created “though days” for Russia, as they “are planning that, they can implement that”, Washington “would be responsible for the steps that they would take”.

    What NATO is really up to

    Meanwhile, in Brussels, Blinken was enacting a Perfect Couple  routine with spectacularly inefficient head of the European Commission (EC) Ursula von der Leyen. The script went something like this. “Nord Stream 2 is really bad for you. A trade/investment deal with China is really bad for you. Now sit. Good girl.”

    Then came NATO, which put on quite a show, complete with an all-Foreign Minister tough guy pose in front of the HQ. That was part of a summit – which predictably did not “celebrate” the 10th anniversary of NATO’s destruction of Libya or the major ass-kicking NATO “endured” in Afghanistan.

    In June 2020, NATO’s cardboard secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg – actually his US military handlers – laid out what is now known as the NATO 2030 strategy, which boils down to a Global Robocop politico-military mandate. The Global South has (not) been warned.

    In Afghanistan, according to a Stoltenberg impervious to irony, NATO supports infusing “fresh energy into the peace process”. At the summit, NATO ministers also discussed Middle East and Northern Africa and – with a straight face – looked into “what more NATO could do to build stability in the region”. Syrians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Libyans, Malians would love to learn something about that.

    Post-summit, Stoltenberg delivered a proverbially somnolent press conference where the main focus was – what else – Russia, and its “pattern for repressive behavior at home, aggressive behavior abroad”.

    All the rhetoric about NATO “building stability” vanishes when one examines what’s really behind NATO 2030, via a meaty “recommendation” report written by a bunch of “experts”

    Here we learn the three essentials:

    1. “The Alliance must respond to Russian threats and hostile actions (…) without a return to ‘business as usual’ barring alterations in Russia’s aggressive behavior and its return to full compliance with international law.”

    2. China is depicted as a tsunami of “security challenges”: “The Alliance should infuse the China challenge throughout existing structures and consider establishing a consultative body to discuss all aspects of Allies’ security interests vis-à-vis China”. The emphasis is to “defend against any Chinese activities that could impact collective defense, military readiness or resilience in the Supreme Allied Commander Europe’s (SACEUR) Area of Responsibility.”

    3. “NATO should outline a global blueprint (italics mine) for better utilizing its partnerships to advance NATO strategic interests. It should shift from the current demand-driven approach to an interest-driven approach (italics mine) and consider providing more stable and predictable resource streams for partnership activities. NATO’s Open Door Policy should be upheld and reinvigorated. NATO should expand and strengthen partnerships with Ukraine and Georgia.”

    Here’s to The Triple Threat. Yet the Top of the Pops – as in fat, juicy industrial-military complex contracts – is really here:

    The most profound geopolitical challenge is posed by Russia. While Russia is by economic and social measures a declining power, it has proven itself capable of territorial aggression and is likely to remain a chief threat facing NATO over the coming decade.

    NATO may be redacting, but the master script comes straight from the Deep State – complete with Russia “seeking hegemony”; expanding Hybrid War (the concept was actually invented by the Deep State); and manipulating “cyber, state-sanctioned assassinations, and poisonings – using chemical weapons, political coercion, and other methods to violate the sovereignty of Allies.”

    Beijing for its part is using “force against its neighbors, as well as economic coercion and intimidatory diplomacy well beyond the Indo-Pacific region. Over the coming decade, China will likely also challenge NATO’s ability to build collective resilience.”

    The Global South should be very much aware of NATO’s pledge to save the “free world” from these autocratic evils.

    The NATO interpretation of “South” encompasses North Africa and the Middle East, in fact everywhere from sub-Saharan Africa to Afghanistan. Any similarity with the presumably defunct “Greater Middle East” concept of the Dubya era is not an accident.

    NATO insists this vast expanse is characterized by “fragility, instability, and insecurity” – of course refusing to disclose its own role as serial instability perpetrator in Libya, Iraq, parts of Syria and Afghanistan.

    Because ultimately…it’s all Russia’s fault: “To the South, the challenge includes the presence of Russia and to a lesser extent China, exploiting regional fragilities. Russia has reinserted itself in the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean. In 2015, it intervened in the Syrian Civil War and remains there. Russia’s Middle East policy is likely to exacerbate tensions and political strife across the region as it extends an increasing amount of political, financial, operational, and logistical assets to its partners. China’s influence across the Middle East is also growing. It signed a strategic partnership with Iran, is the largest importer of crude oil from Iraq, wedged itself into the Afghanistan peace process, and is the biggest foreign investor in the region.”

    Here, in a nutshell, and not exactly in code, is the NATO road map all the way to 2030 to harass and try to dismantle every relevant nook and cranny of Eurasia integration, especially those directly linked to New Silk Roads infrastructure/connectivity projects (investment in Iran, reconstruction of Syria, reconstruction of Iraq, reconstruction of Afghanistan).

    The spin is on a “360-degree approach to security” that will “become an imperative”. Translation: NATO is coming for large swathes of the Global South, big time, under the pretense of “addressing both the traditional threats emanating from this region like terrorism and new risks, including the growing presence of Russia, and to a lesser extent China.”

    Hybrid war on two fronts

    And to think that in a not so distant past there used to be some flashes of lucidity emanating from the US establishment.

    Very few will remember that in 1993 James Baker, former Secretary of State under Daddy Bush, advanced the idea of expanding NATO to Russia, which at the time, under Yeltsin and a gang of Milton Friedmanesque free marketeers, was devastated, but ruled by “democracy”. Yet Bill Clinton was already in power, and the idea was duly discarded.

    Six years later, no less than George Kennan – who invented the containment of the USSR in the first place – determined that the NATO annexation of former Soviet satellites was “the beginning of a new Cold War” and “a tragic mistake”.

    It’s immensely enlightening to relieve and re-study the whole decade between the fall of the USSR and the election of Putin to the presidency through the venerable Yevgeny Primakov’s book Russian Crossroads: Toward the New Millenium, published in the US by Yale University Press.

    Primakov, the ultimate intel insider who started as a Pravda correspondent in the Middle East, former Foreign Minister and also Prime Minister, looked closely into Putin’s soul, repeatedly, and liked what he saw: a man of integrity and a consummate professional. Primakov was a multilateralist avant la lettre, the conceptual instigator of RIC (Russia-India-China) which in the next decade evolved towards BRICS.

    Those were the days – exactly 22 years ago – when Primakov was on a plane to Washington when he picked up a call by then Vice-President Al Gore: the US was about to start bombing Yugoslavia, a slav-orthodox Russian ally, and there was nothing the former superpower could do about it. Primakov ordered the pilot to turn around and fly back to Moscow.

    Now Russia is powerful enough to advance its own Greater Eurasia concept, which moving forward should be balancing – and complementing – China’s New Silk Roads. It’s the power of this Double Helix – which is bound to inevitably attract key sectors of Western Europe – that is driving the Hegemon’s ruling class dazed and confused.

    Glenn Diesen, author of Russian Conservatism: Managing Change Under Permanent Revolution, which I analyzed in Why Russia is Driving the West Crazy , and one of the best global analysts of Eurasia integration, summed it all up: “The US has had great difficulties in terms of converting the security dependence of the allies into geoeconomic loyalty, as evident by the Europeans still buying Chinese technologies and Russian energy.

    Hence permanent Divide and Rule, featuring one of its key targets: cajole, force, bribe and all of the above for the European Parliament to scotch the China-EU trade/investment deal.

    Wang Yiwei, director of the Center for European Studies at Renmin University and author of the best made in China book about the New Silk Roads, clearly sees through the “America is back” bluster: “China is not isolated by the US, the West or even the whole international community. The more hostility they show, the more anxiety they have. When the US travels around the globe to frequently ask for support, unity and help from its allies, this means US hegemony is weakening.”

    Wang even forecasts what may happen if the current “leader of the free world” is prevented from fulfilling his exceptional mission: “Don’t be fooled by the sanctions between China and the EU, which is harmless to trade and economic ties, and EU leaders won’t be that stupid to totally abandon the China-EU Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, because they know they would never get such a good deal when Trump or Trumpism returns to the White House.”

    Shocked and Awed 21st Century Geopolitics, as configured in these crucial past two weeks, spells out the Unipolar Moment is six feet under. The Hegemon will never admit it; hence the NATO counterpunch, which was pre-designed. Ultimately, the Hegemon has decided not to engage in diplomatic accommodation, but to wage a hybrid war on two fronts against a relentlessly demonized strategic partnership of peer competitors.

    And as a sign of these sorry times, there’s no James Baker or George Kennan to advise against such folly.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/27/2021 – 23:30

  • A Hunger Inside You: Your Vibrator Can Now Update You On The Status Of Your Food Delivery
    A Hunger Inside You: Your Vibrator Can Now Update You On The Status Of Your Food Delivery

    At some point in the future, the human race will arrive at an epoch where people will wonder how – back in the stone age of pre-2021 – we would get status alerts about our food deliveries, without having a dildo inside of us.

    Allow us to explain. That’s because a company called CamSoda labs has just released a new product called “Grubuzz”, which – according to the company’s website (we swear we are not making this up)  – “harnesses the power of Internet-connected sex toys – aka teledildonics – and sends clitoral vibrations to people as their takeout food from a national chain or local favorite is being prepared and ultimately delivered.”

    As if the serotonin hit from the poison we call takeout food nowadays wasn’t enough…

    Naturally, you’re wondering how it works. “The frequency of vibrations increase through the food delivery process,” the site patiently explains. “So, for example, the vibration frequency starts slowly when someone’s order is received by the restaurant and progressively increases when the driver leaves the restaurant with the order, drives closer to their residence, arrives at their door, etc.”

     

    Daryn Parker, Vice President of CamSoda, said (with a straight face, we’re guessing): “People have been stuck at home for over a year now. They have grown accustomed to ordering takeout food from their favorite restaurants regularly. Quarantine cravings are real and so too is the COVID-19 delivery food boom.”

    “In addition to the rise in food delivery, there has been a spike in teledildonic usage,” he said. We’d love to see the Softbank-style slide deck for this pitch.

    He continued: “Here at CamSoda we figured we’d combine these popular activities and produce a technology that gets people off while their food delivery order is being prepared and ultimately delivered. With Grubuzz, not only will your mouth be watering while your order is being processed, but so too will your private parts. What better way to eat some of your favorite food from Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Outback Steakhouse or P.F. Chang’s than after you’ve orgasmed?!”

    The site explains:

    Users will obtain a curated email address from CamSoda, which they will then plug into their favorite delivery apps, including GrubHub, Uber Eats, Caviar, DoorDash and Postmates, among others. When an email is sent from their delivery app updating them on the status of their order, it will be sent to the CamSoda-generated email, which will simultaneously set off a vibration to their teledildonic device.

    And sorry guys, “CamSoda is initially launching Grubuzz for females only,” the site says. Back to ordering food like its the stone age, we guess.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/27/2021 – 23:00

  • Could The US Ban Guns? Australia Tried Something Pretty Close
    Could The US Ban Guns? Australia Tried Something Pretty Close

    Authored by Peter Suciu via 19fortyfive.com,

    American supporters of gun control point to Australia as a fine “solution” to stop mass shootings, gang violence, and even suicides.

    Firearms are strictly regulated in the “Land Down Under” and all firearms license applicants are required to take a safety course, while they must also show a “genuine reason” for owning a firearm.

    Self-defense isn’t a valid reason either.

    Why Australia Changed Its Approach on Firearms

    Australia instituted these strict laws following the April 1996 mass shooting at Port Arthur, in which gunman Martin Bryant took the lives of thirty-five people using an AR-10 semi-automatic rifle. Bryant’s motivation was reportedly based on the failure to buy a bed and breakfast property but also to become “notorious.”

    The shooting outraged the nation, and soon Australia introduced comprehensive gun control. It was led by then Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who had only taken office six weeks earlier at the head of a center-right coalition. Howard came to the decision that firearms were simply too easy to obtain and there were just too many of them.

    “We have an opportunity in this country not to go down the American path,” Howard announced, and he radically changed Australia’s gun laws. According to supporters of gun control, those efforts rid the country of gun violence on a large scale.

    What Australia Did

    It was less than two weeks after the massacre that all six Australian states agreed to enact the same sweeping gun legislation that made it far harder for prospective gun owners to obtain a firearm, including a twenty-eight-day waiting period. The law also banned all semi-automatic rifles and semi-automatic shotguns, while Australia instituted a nationwide mandatory buyback of all the guns that were banned. A market value benchmark was determined to compensate gun owners for the loss of their loss of property.

    It was so radical that even Howard wasn’t certain the buyback would be accepted. During an address to gun rights supporters, he reportedly wore a bulletproof vest and feared the event could turn violent. However, the meeting went off peacefully and in the first buyback, about 650,000 legally owned guns were handed in and subsequently destroyed.

    According to an academic estimate, the buyback took in and destroyed some twenty percent of all privately owned guns in Australia. Additionally, in the years since that buyback, Australians did not purchase new – and legal – firearms to make up for what was banned, but it is likely that many feared that they’d face a similar ban.

    Since the passage of that legislation, gun control advocates have pointed to Australia and called for similar measures.

    Why Australia’s Gun Laws Won’t Work in the U.S.

    So, could such a system work in the United States? The answer is likely no.

    There are several reasons; as The New York Times reported, “Australians, on the whole, were happy to give up their guns and accept the new restrictions.” Americans, who, unlike their Australian cousins, have a Second Amendment that provided the right to keep and bear arms and that has been in place for nearly 240 years.

    Moreover, Australia may have had its own history of hunting and sport, but it has always been far smaller and less significant than that of the United States. Another factor is that Prime Minster Howard was able to get all six Australian states to agree to and pass uniform and sweeping gun control legislation in just twelve days. The United States would have to get all fifty states on the same page and that would likely never happen and it certainly wouldn’t be quick.

    Then there is the issue that Australia bought back some 650,000 guns. The United States government would likely have to buy back hundreds of millions of firearms. Additionally, the United States would also have to address the fact that it would put dozens of small to mid-sized companies that make the firearms out of business, while even larger manufacturers could find themselves in dire straits if the civilian market were to suddenly disappear.

    Another consideration is whether gun violence would diminish were the United States to institute such strict gun control. The vast majority of shooting deaths aren’t from the handful of tragic and high-profile mass shootings. Most gun violence in the United States involves criminals using illegal guns, which wouldn’t be impacted by a ban.

    What About Criminals? 

    The biggest hurdle would be whether a ban would actually get guns off the streets as supporters of gun control claim, or just create a huge black market. It isn’t hard to believe that many Americans would ignore the ban and risk becoming criminals by hiding away their firearms, while many might simply sell their guns “no questions asked” on a future black market at a profit.

    That could keep gangs and other criminals well-armed for years, even decades to come.

    It is true that the number of mass shootings did all but cease in Australia following the ban, and there has been just a single mass shooting event since Australia banned the weapons, that is a point worth considering too. How could any mass shootings occur? Australia saw 650,000 guns handed in, but in subsequent amnesties more firearms have been handed in, highlighting that many ignored the ban.

    As noted the United States has hundreds of millions of semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, so mass shootings and gang violence would remain a thing as long as anyone refuses to hand in his/her firearm(s).

    This doesn’t mean we should ignore the problem in America, but a gun confiscation and buyback that worked in Australia is simply unlikely to work here. Of course, that hasn’t stopped American politicians from pushing their agenda.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/27/2021 – 22:30

  • 77% Of Americans Are Worried About Soaring Inflation 
    77% Of Americans Are Worried About Soaring Inflation 

    Americans are becoming more worried about inflation than ever following the Federal Reserve and the federal government’s unprecedented response to the virus pandemic downturn by plowing trillions of dollars into the economy. As a result, prices of financial assets and items in the real economy have soared over the last year which a new survey reveals three-quarters of consumers are concerned about inflation. 

    With the Federal Reserve turning a blind eye to rapid price increases, consumers are finding it unavoidable to avoid higher prices at the gas pump or supermarket. A CivicScience survey of more than 2,600 respondents found that 77% were somewhat concerned about inflation.

    Much of the inflation concerns were based on younger respondents. About 52% of respondents aged 18-24 were “very concerned” about inflation, 50% of the 25-34 aged respondents were “very concerned,” and 48% of 35-54. Surprisingly, baby boomers aged +55 were only at 37%. 

    Meanwhile, Cleveland Fed President Charles Evans said some increase in inflation would be welcome. “Too low inflation is no good,” he added.

    But for the millions of working-poor Americans still collecting pandemic insurance checks, soaring prices have been much of a nuisance. 

    “Naturally, people who have had their hours or pay reduced as a result of the pandemic are the most sensitive to the idea of inflation and what it means for the general cost of living. If it’s difficult to make ends meet now, imagine how difficult it could be once inflation sinks in,” said CivicScience. 

    On a political basis, conservatives were overwhelmingly more concerned about inflation than any other political group. 

    The general public appears to be catching up to the Fed’s game as monetary and fiscal stimulus results in the higher cost of living. 

    By one gauge, as we noted earlier this month, inflation fears are the highest this century. The spread between US five- and 10-year inflation breakevens is now the highest since the early 2000s. 

    Consumers’ outlook for inflation over the longer term climbed to an almost six-year high.

    Americans are panic searching “inflation.” 

    The Fed and government’s big experiment with massive stimulus is possibly overheating the economy and may continue to push inflation higher. The Fed continues to beat its drums that it has inflation under control and that today’s episode of surging prices isn’t the 1970s. 

    The worst thing that could happen now is a repeat of stagflation in the 1970s. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/27/2021 – 22:00

  • China And Russia Are Winning The New Space Race
    China And Russia Are Winning The New Space Race

    Authored by Brandon Weichert via RealClearPolitics.com,

    Conflict, not cooperation, is going to define international affairs for the foreseeable future.

    This will be true both on Earth and, more importantly, in the strategic high ground of space.

    Fact is, the second space race is on. The world’s powers are playing for keeps. Whoever wins the second space race will rule the world. Despite the competitive advantages that the United States has in this arena, America’s rivals – namely Russia and China – are catching up.

    Unless the Biden administration takes a radical departure from where its nascent space policy is heading, America will lose space and, in so doing, the United States will cease being the world’s superpower.

    Some people reading this might not understand why it matters if America surrendered space to China. You might be questioning why we should care if the country remains a superpower. But without America’s once unquestionable dominance of space, without access to critical satellites in orbit, the America you and I know would ground to a halt. Everything in our society today relies on signals and those signals must pass through satellites. The U.S. military could not defend itself or American interests abroad nor could everyday life for average Americans continue should U.S. satellites be destroyed or rendered inoperable.

    How long do you think America could survive in a world commanded by Beijing and Moscow?

    The new space race is the most important challenge of our time. Sadly, few — in government and in the public — seem to have recognized this fact.

    China and Russia have announced plans to unite their space programs and jointly develop the moon and its bountiful natural resources. For the record, the moon is believed to hold potentially trillions of dollars of mineable rare-earth minerals. Capturing the moon could provide the Sino-Russian alliance the ultimate strategic high ground over Earth. More importantly, the mined resources of the moon could be sold — and those trillions of dollars could be funneled into the coffers of the Sino-Russian war machine on Earth.

    This new space alliance represents the most significant geopolitical shift in national security space policy in recent decades. It is the fusing of the second-most-powerful nation in space, Russia, with the rising, third space power, China. And it is part of a larger geopolitical trend: the hardening of Eurasia against the United States and the greatest challenge to America’s superpower status since the Cold War.

    What’s required now from Washington is decisive action. The political will and strategic vision for controlling the strategic high ground — for exploiting its vast bounties — is essential for whichever power seeks to order the remainder of the 21st century. Both Moscow and Beijing are clearly expressing such a will. The Americans, on the other hand, appear blinkered.

    The United States must protect its satellites from attack, build reliable space-based missile defenses, insist upon returning American astronauts to the moon by 2024 (the year that China plans to begin construction of a lunar base), keep its manned Mars mission on schedule, and unleash the private space sector as never before — all to stay ahead of the new Sino-Russian entente in space. And Washington must do these things within a few short years.

    Should the new Sino-Russian space alliance go unanswered, then these authoritarian states will quickly claim the strategic high ground of space and reduce the United States to a middle power on Earth beholden to the oppressive whims of Beijing and Moscow. The space race is on, a space war is near, and the Biden administration must do everything in its power to ensure that America is defended in space and that its dominance remains absolute.

    To keep that dominance, the new administration must call for a minimum $1 trillion investment in both the military and civilian space programs while offering clear guidelines — and steady support — for ensuring America’s access to space and for pushing ahead of the Chinese-Russian alliance.

    Losing space to those two powers means also losing the Earth to them. Should our dominance disappear, one can expect a far bleaker future for our children than what many of us expect or want. President Biden must act in support of a robust space policy and he must do it now.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/27/2021 – 21:30

  • Montana Senator Complains Local Meth Producers Can't Compete With Mexican Imports
    Montana Senator Complains Local Meth Producers Can't Compete With Mexican Imports

    In a humorous clip that made the rounds on social media overnight, Montana Sen. Steve Daines was caught on camera appearing to wax nostalgic about the good ol’ days when Montana’s basement-dwelling meth cooks had yet to be driven out of business by high-purity Mexican imports.

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    Fans of the show Breaking Bad could be forgiven for suspecting that Daines might have been role-playing as Walter White, the show’s anti-hero, who produced a type of extremely pure “blue” meth many times more potent than the Mexican-made stuff coming over the border (keep in mind, the show is a work of fiction).

    “Twenty years ago in Montana, meth was homemade. It was homegrown. And you had purity levels less than 30%,” Daines told a gathering of his Senate colleagues during a visit to the Mexican border. “Today the meth that is getting into Montana is Mexican cartel.”

    Daines – who was speaking during a press conference at the border, where the Biden Administration is struggling to deflect blame for a surge in migration that’s reached crisis levels – added that illegal immigration was partly to blame for the influx of potent meth into the “Big Sky State”, before laying the blame for the state’s meth crisis at the feet of President Joe Biden.

    For context, here’s an accurate visualization of how the number of migrants crossing the southern border has climbed since Biden’s inauguration.

    While left-leaning news outlets jumped at the chance to mock a sitting Republican Senator, others on twitter seized the opportunity to crack some jokes.

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    In summary: don’t buy meth unless it’s red, white and blue.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/27/2021 – 21:00

  • How Lockdowns Devastated The Cruise Industry
    How Lockdowns Devastated The Cruise Industry

    Authored by John Tamny via RealClearMarkets,

    “I never thought I would be standing in a food line for hours. Just the degradation of it. You say to yourself, ‘Wow. I am really at this point.’” So said James Cox, a 50-year old porter in the cruise industry, to the Wall Street Journal’s Julie Byrowicz and Ted Mann.

    Cox used to earn $27/hour, but since the lockdowns began last year his ability to earn in his chosen profession has been taken from him. As Byrowicz and Mann explain it, the “cruise industry is waiting anxiously for Washington’s go-ahead to sail again.” Lest readers forget, national politicians assigned to themselves the right to decide which industries would continue to operate as the coronavirus spread, and which ones wouldn’t. The cruise industry didn’t get the nod, hence Cox waiting in food lines.

    Interesting and tragic about all of this is that Byrowicz and Mann were reporting from Port Canaveral, FL, and more specifically from “Terminal Three, a cavernous $135 million structure built for Carnival Cruises.” The previous detail is hopefully a reminder of how prosperous the cruise industry was before politicians panicked. In other words, the best and brightest of the cruise industry had plainly developed remarkable skills when it came to attracting customers, and having done so, meeting the needs of those same customers.

    The above truth is crucially relevant to what happened to the cruise industry. The leading lights never got a chance to adjust. Despite knowing the needs of a huge customer base intimately, they never had the right to pivot at a time when a virus was rapidly spreading.

    Instead, the political class that gave us the Post Office, Amtrak, Social Security and other would-be bankrupt entities absent the taxpayer decided on its own that cruise operators should not be allowed to adjust to a seemingly new corona-reality. How tragic.

    Indeed, how tragic for all business sectors that a particularly prosperous one wasn’t allowed to show how it would meet customer needs during a notably fraught time. Information born of commercial leaps is so crucial to economic progress, businesses were and are starved for market-created information about the post-corona future, but some of the best never had the chance to serve their customers, and as a consequence we’re all a little or a lot more blind about what’s ahead. Politicians know what’s best for us, it seems.

    To which some skeptics might reply that regardless of the federal government’s sick actions, the cruise industry was already dead. They’ll say that broad public fear about exposure to a rapidly-spreading virus was the cause of the industry’s death, so don’t blame politicians. Sorry, but such a response is insufficient, and really kind of mindless.

    We know this from the aforementioned report penned by Byrowics and Mann. As they note, “the cruise industry is waiting anxiously” for the right to operate again. They wouldn’t be “waiting anxiously” to get back to serving customers if they felt they would have no customers, or if they felt they couldn’t adjust to new realities. Rather explicit in their desire to get their ships back in the business of ferrying passengers around the world is a belief that if allowed to serve customers, they would be serving customers.

    How would they? The speculation here is that just as grocery stores and other retailers were “allowed” to remain in business so long as they limited the number of customers inside, so could cruise lines have operated in limited fashion. Important about the previous assertion is that they wouldn’t need laws or other government force to space out passengers. Precisely because the customer of 2020 was different from the customer of 2019, cruise companies would have adjusted capacity based on their intimate knowledge of their customer base.

    In which case some cruise lines might have charged a great deal more (have readers seen the nosebleed rates charged by luxury hotels and resorts in the past year?) to fewer customers, some would have instituted “surge pricing” amid periods of high customer demand a la Uber, some would have limited capacity by requiring daily testing for the virus, and still others might have instituted strict age limits with an eye on protecting the vulnerable from crowds altogether.

    About what cruise lines might have done, it should be made clear that these are mere speculations from an outsider possessing a tiny fraction of the customer-service knowledge that the various cruise companies possess. One guesses that if allowed to strut their stuff, Carnival, Crystal, Seabourn, and others would have thoroughly blown us away with their ability to effectively operate in pro-customer and pro-health fashion at a time when so many potential passengers were nervous.

    Alas, they once again were not allowed to. Drunk-with-power politicians and experts lacking any kind of customer-service knowledge decided for them that they would not be allowed to try.

    Which brings us back to people like James Cox, and the kinds of cruise operators he’s historically worked for. In split second fashion they had their dignity taken from them. Cox wasn’t expecting to stand in food lines, or presumably take unemployment, but the lockdowns were rapid in their destruction.

    Just the same, businesses owned by prideful people likely never imagined government shutting them down, only for that same government to become the sole source of finance around for all-too-many businesses. It’s a long or short way of saying that while PPP has kept some businesses afloat, how awful. This wasn’t what they wanted; government help. Absent the use of force against them, they wouldn’t have needed it. There’s a descriptive word for what’s been done to businesses and workers, but it won’t be said here. Readers can guess.

    Hopefully readers will also keep in mind how quickly politicians can wreck things, and how quickly their destruction robs people and businesses of dignity. Right now, the formerly soaring cruise industry is once again “waiting anxiously for Washington’s go-ahead to sail again.” Please think about that. And how wrong it is.  

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/27/2021 – 20:30

  • Iran & China Sign Massive 25-Year Deal: $400BN Chinese Infrastructure Investment For Oil
    Iran & China Sign Massive 25-Year Deal: $400BN Chinese Infrastructure Investment For Oil

    Increasingly it appears that so-called “rogue states” and those under Washington’s wrath and sanctions are coming together to combat US dominance across the globe. It was a process already set in motion after years of aggressive US attempts to enforce a ban on Iranian and Venezuelan oil, as a prime example.

    For starters, China and Russia have been major players in helping to circumvent US attempts to blockade Venezuelan and Iranian crude. Saturday’s major China-Iran news to some degree formalizes this, as Reuters reports, “China and Iran, both subject to US sanctions, signed a 25-year cooperation agreement on Saturday to strengthen their long-standing economic and political alliance.”

    Via AP

    Long in the negotiating process, with a couple years of frequent diplomatic and presidential trips and exchanges of delegations between the capitals of Tehran and Beijing, the accord cements Iran’s entry into Xi’s multi-trillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative, which seeks to open a “trade superhighway” linking China with all of Eurasia. 

    Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif on Saturday, “Relations between the two countries have now reached the level of strategic partnership and China seeks to comprehensively improve relations with Iran.”

    “Our relations with Iran will not be affected by the current situation, but will be permanent and strategic,” Wang said. “Iran decides independently on its relations with other countries and is not like some countries that change their position with one phone call.”

    The deal, dubbed the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, was finalized in a televised signing ceremony, and is rare for the highly isolated Islamic Republic, given the last similar deal with a major power was with Russia all the way back in 2001 and dealt primarily with development of nuclear energy.

    The New York Times in its reporting emphasized it’s all about China asserting its influence over the Middle East at a moment US power is in retreat.

    The past few years have witnessed China rise to be the biggest single-importer of Iranian oil…

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The NY Times said Beijing plans to direct some $400 billion into Iranian infrastructure in exchange for oil as a key part of the deal. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/27/2021 – 20:00

  • The Tale Wags The Dog As News Becomes Propaganda
    The Tale Wags The Dog As News Becomes Propaganda

    Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClearPolitics.com,

    It all seemed so simple. I thought the Trump/Russia hoax would finally force my liberal friends to demand a reckoning from their trusted news sources. As the Mueller Report made clear, the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NPR and so many others had egregiously and unequivocally misled them for years about the biggest political story since Watergate.

    If their favorite outlets could be so wrong about that, shouldn’t they bring a healthy skepticism to the coverage of other issues, from police shootings and “systemic racism” to the threat of “domestic terrorism,” GOP “voter suppression” efforts or President Biden’s trouble navigating stairs?

    When I asked a True Believer about all this last week – a man whose scriptures are the New York Times, the New York Review of Books and the New Yorker magazine – my friend told me I should stop watching Fox News.

    After I pressed him gently on Russiagate, he told me that Trump had indeed colluded with Putin but that Mueller pulled his punches because he’s a Republican.

    That’s when I decided to turn the talk to baseball.

    It is always useful to try to identify and untangle the array of psychological, political, and economic factors that have led millions of otherwise reasonable and informed people to suspend their critical faculties.

    But exploring complexity can also shroud this simple truth: For whatever reason, the progressive intelligentsia has decided to deny facts that impinge on the view of reality it seeks to advance. It has created a vast information ecosystem – one that extends beyond traditional news outlets to include magazines ranging from Harper’s Bazaar to Teen Vogue, late night comedy shows, academic and scholarly journals, Netflix and Amazon Prime, and on and on – that echoes and re-enforces its agenda.

    For those who still manage to see that the emperor has no clothes, Twitter mobs, cancel culture and other censorious tools are deployed to shame and silence apostates.

    The left’s intentional substitution of propaganda for facts has turned the national discourse into a blizzard of BS.

    The latest example occurred last week when the deranged sex addict who murdered eight people at three Atlanta massage parlors was portrayed as an anti-Asian white supremacist.

    This was false, but because it fit the preferred narrative, facts didn’t matter to President Biden or progressive news outlets.

    The brazenness of their lies would take your breath away if we weren’t becoming so inured to them through their ubiquity.

    For the moment, at least, progressives are unchained, unrepentant and uninterested in conversation.

    They are also in charge.

    This is the simple truth.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/27/2021 – 19:30

  • Amazon Denies Workers Were Forced To Pee In Bottles – Then People Brought Receipts
    Amazon Denies Workers Were Forced To Pee In Bottles – Then People Brought Receipts

    Last week a Twitter war broke out between progressive Democrats and Amazon – after Sen. Bernie Sanders said he would meet with Amazon workers on Friday to discuss their vote to unionize.

    In response to Sanders’ visit, Dave Clark – CEO of worldwide consumer blew his stack, tweeting “I often say we are the Bernie Sanders of employers, but that’s not quite right because we actually deliver a progressive workplace for our constituents: a $15 minimum wage, health care from day one, career progression, and a safe and inclusive work environment.”

    In response, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) had Bernie’s back – tweeting “Paying workers $15/hr doesn’t make you a “progressive workplace” when you union-bust & make workers urinate in water bottles.“

    To which Amazon’s corporate news account fired back: “You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us.”

    Over the past decade, several reports emerged over deplorable conditions at Amazon warehouses and corporate headquarters.

    In 2011, the brutal work environment at an Amazon warehouse in Breinigsville, Pennsylvania were reported in the Morning Call.

    In 2012, the Seattle Times published a blockbuster report about overworked, underpaid staff who were encouraged to lie about workplace injuries to avoid having to file reports. 

    In 2015, the New York Times revealed that conditions at Amazon headquarters are cutthroat. 

    “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.” –Bo Olson

    And in April of 2018, journalist and author James Bloodworth reported what he saw after going undercover at an Amazon warehouse in Staffordshire, UK, where he found horrendous conditions in which some workers are forced to pee in bottles. 

    “People just peed in bottles because they lived in fear of being ­disciplined over ‘idle time’ and ­losing their jobs just because they needed the loo.” -The Sun

    So, in response to Amazon denying that workers had to pee in bottles – multiple current and former employees came forward with receipts.

    As The Verge notes: “Indeed, after Amazon sent out its ill-judged tweet, reporters who cover the company’s labor practices practically lined up to soak the firm with evidence. These included English journalist James Bloodworth, whose 2018 book Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain documented his experience of low-paid work for companies including Amazon.”

    Here’s Will Evans from The Center of Investigative Reporting:

    And Lauren Kaori Gurley from Motherboard. (Gurley also wrote a story with photographic evidence, including numerous examples from the subreddit for Amazon delivery drivers.) 

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

    Even BuzzFeed’s Ken Bensinger chimed in, tweeting: “Amazon claims its workers don’t pee in bottles; defenders say it’s an urban legend. But these photos sent to me by a former driver for a former @amazon contractor called Synctruck in a California facility suggest strongly otherwise.”

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

    More via The Verge: 

    The Intercept added yet more evidence to the mounting case against Amazon with a new report published on Thursday detailing not only more cases of drivers urinating into bottles, but also resorting to defecating into bags. And the most damning reveal is that Amazon was made aware of this because it began reprimanding employees for the behavior when the bottles and bags were left inside Amazon delivery vehicles, The Intercept reports.

    “We’ve noticed an uptick recently of all kinds of unsanitary garbage being left inside bags: used masks, gloves, bottles of urine,” reads an email from an Amazon logistics manager provided to The Intercept by a Pittsburgh area employee. “By scanning the QR code on the bag, we can easily identify the DA who was in possession of the bag last. These behaviors are unacceptable, and will result in Tier 1 Infractions going forward. Please communicate this message to your drivers. I know if may seem obvious, or like something you shouldn’t need to coach, but please be explicit when communicating the message that they CANNOT poop, or leave bottles of urine inside bags.”

    …

    Indeed, although Amazon is trying to refute stories of “peeing in bottles” that have become shorthand for the company’s poor working conditions, they’re only the tip of the iceberg.

    Other evidence includes the high injury rates in Amazon warehouses (7.7 serious injuries per 100 employees); employees dying from COVID-19 after complaints the company wasn’t doing enough to mitigate risks from the virus; widespread union-busting; production targets that treat humans like robots; and gruesome anecdotes like the story of the Amazon worker who died from a heart attack and who, say colleagues, was left on the work floor for 20 minutes before receiving treatment.

    Perhaps Amazon’s social media team should make sure there isn’t an avalanche of evidence before denying widespread reporting on worker conditions.

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

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/27/2021 – 19:00

  • Gohmert: Pelosi's Capitol Police Bill Gaslights America
    Gohmert: Pelosi's Capitol Police Bill Gaslights America

    Authored by Louie Gohmert (Republican representing Texas’s 1st Congressional District), op-ed via The Epoch Times,

    Democrats have solidified their effort to act as an Orwellian Ministry of Truth with the passage of Speaker Pelosi’s H.R. 1085 in the House of Representatives. This bill rewrites the historical facts from Jan. 6 under the guise of “honoring” the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) who bravely protect Congress.

    Pelosi’s goal, of course, isn’t to show respect and admiration to the Capitol Police—which would be particularly ironic coming from the “defund the police” party—but to perpetuate a false narrative that 74-plus million Americans are dangerous racists and insurrectionists who have no part in civilized society.

    H.R. 1085 states its purpose is, “to award three congressional gold medals to the United States Capitol Police and those who protected the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.”

    That certainly sounds innocent enough. However, the language in the bill editorializes in its “findings” Speaker Pelosi’s deliberately politicized view of what happened that day, instead of doing what a bill put before Members of Congress for a vote to recognize the USCP presumably would do, which is to recount the many meritorious acts of our brave and devoted officers.

    When Speaker Pelosi’s bill speaks of “a mob of insurrectionists,” she ascribes both a mental state and a crime to many Americans who merely showed up to a rally to protest the blatant corruption they’ve witnessed in this nation’s electoral system.

    To illustrate how hyperbolic and outright deceptive Speaker Pelosi’s choice of words are here, the internet’s own Free Dictionary defines “insurrectionist” as “a person who takes part in an armed rebellion against the constituted authority,” which is another way of saying the government.

    These are the words that Speaker Pelosi has chosen to use, to accuse her fellow Americans of the crime of armed insurrection. As any first-year law student can tell you, publicly accusing someone of a crime is actionable as libel or slander in a court of law.

    The facts as we know them, including testimony before the United States Senate from an FBI counterterrorism official, reveals that not a single individual who entered the building that day was carrying a firearm, and as a result, none were arrested and charged with a firearms offense.

    Because of my high regard for the Capitol Police, some of whom I personally know and hold in great esteem, I wanted to recognize their valor without lending credence to these deliberate falsehoods. Had I voted in favor of the Speaker’s language, I would have affirmed her narrative.

    It is for this reason that my colleagues and I removed her divisive language and filed that bill to honor our Capitol Police, so that every Member of Congress could vote on a non-politicized bill in good conscience.

    As to be expected, the Left and the media set out to attack my colleagues and me for voting against Speaker Pelosi’s narrative, which engaged in the ultimate gaslighting of the American people.

    For months, our country was under violent siege by radical leftists from Antifa and the Black Lives Matter movement. Cities were burned, businesses were looted, and livelihoods were destroyed.

    A disturbing report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association revealed that between May 25 and July 31, 2020, 8,700 protests took place across the country. Of those, 574 of them turned into riots in which mass looting and destruction occurred.

    At least 2,000 police officers were injured, multiple police precincts were set on fire, hundreds of police cars were damaged, 2,385 incidents of looting occurred, and 624 arsons were reported.

    At least 25 Americans were killed, including a federal law enforcement officer and a retired police chief. The damage to property during the riots has been estimated to cost between $1 billion and $2 billion.

    What did Democrats do while this was occurring?

    Our now-Vice President Kamala Harris urged her followers on Twitter to bail out the rioters. This same bail fund helped free one rioter twice. Since then, he is “facing three new felony counts of fifth-degree possession of a controlled substance while in possession of a firearm for allegedly having marijuana, cocaine and psilocyn mushrooms.”

    When mobs were destroying city property, Speaker Pelosi casually responded that “people will do what they do.” Radical Leftist lawmakers introduced a bill to defund the police.

    Democrats showed no concern for the thousands of innocent lives that were destroyed due to the riots over the summer. We certainly didn’t hear them condemn the violence against the thousands of police officers that took place during these “mostly peaceful protests.”

    Unlike what we now see at the Capitol fortress in Washington, D.C., there were no calls from the Left for the National Guard to deploy to these cities and install fencing to protect its residents. To the contrary, when President Trump sent DHS officers to Portland after weeks of unrest, Speaker Pelosi called them “stormtroopers” and “Trump’s secret police.”

    Many Americans, and I suspect many law enforcement officers, see right through the Democrats’ recent, fraudulent metamorphosis into the party of law and order.

    As someone who has spent a majority of my adult life working for justice, law and order with an abiding respect for honorable, self-sacrificing law officers, I call upon Congress to set aside its self-serving agenda in this time of great peril and to bring forth responsible legislation in the future, not continue down this path of divisiveness. As Members of Congress we owe it to those who elected us to hold sacred our vows and our duties as America’s lawmakers.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/27/2021 – 18:30

  • China Hits US & Canadian Officials With More Counter-Sanctions
    China Hits US & Canadian Officials With More Counter-Sanctions

    On Saturday China unleashed its next round of tit-for-tat sanctions following Monday’s coordinated human rights abuse related sanctions announced by the US, EU, UK, and Canada. As was forewarned, these newest sanctions target Canada, but also includes more American officials. 

    The AFP details, “Two members of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, Gayle Manchin and Tony Perkins, as well as Canadian MP Michael Chong and a Canadian parliamentary committee on human rights are prohibited from entering mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau,” as listed by the Chinese foreign ministry.

    Along with the new punitive counter-measures the foreign ministry repeated its earlier assertion that the US and Canada imposed sanctions on Beijing officials on Monday “based on rumors and disinformation.”

    The sanctioned individuals within the Canadian and US governments “must stop political manipulation on Xinjiang-related issues, stop interfering in China’s internal affairs in any form,” the ministry added, noting that they are now banned from conducting any business with Chinese companies or individuals. 

    “Otherwise, they will get their fingers burnt,” the statement warned threateningly. 

    China’s immediate response following this week’s punitive measures from the Western allies based on the Xinjiang allegations – which center on China’s network of ‘reeducation’ camps and labor prisons – was to call it a mere “a pretext for interfering in China’s internal affairs and frustrate China’s development.”

    “People of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang, including the Uyghurs, enjoy each and every constitutional and lawful right. The fact that Xinjiang residents of various ethnic groups enjoy stability, security, development and progress, makes it one of the most successful human rights stories,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying had claimed in an official statement.

    There’s likely more anti-Canada action to come, given multiple members of Canadian parliament have been extremely vocal of late in calling for greater punishment against Beijing, including the Boycotting of the 2022 Beijing Olympics. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/27/2021 – 18:00

  • Why Is Everyone In Texas Not Dying?
    Why Is Everyone In Texas Not Dying?

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    I’m sitting at a bar in Texas, surrounded by maskless people, looking at folks on the streets walking around like life is normal, talking with nice and friendly faces, feeling like things in the world are more-or-less normal. Cases and deaths attributed to Covid are, like everywhere else, falling dramatically. 

    If you pay attention only to the media fear campaigns, you would find this confusing. More than two weeks ago, the governor of Texas completely reversed his devastating lockdown policies and repealed all his emergency powers, along with the egregious attacks on rights and liberties.

    There was something very un-Texan about those lockdowns. My hotel room is festooned with pictures of cowboys on horses waving guns in the air, along with other depictions of rugged individualism facing down the elements. It’s a caricature but Texans embrace it. Then a new virus came along – as if that had never happened before in Texas – and the new Zoom class took the opposite path, not freedom but imposition and control. 

    After nearly a year of nonsense, on March 2, 2021, the governor finally said enough is enough and repealed it all. Towns and cities can still engage in Covid-related mischief but at least they are no longer getting cover from the governor’s office. 

    At that moment, a friend remarked to me that this would be the test we have been waiting for.

    A complete repeal of restrictions would lead to mass death, they said. Would it? Did the lockdowns really control the virus? We would soon find out, he theorized. 

    I knew better. The “test” of whether and to what extent lockdowns control the virus or “suppress outbreaks” (in Anthony Fauci’s words) has been tried all over the world. Every serious empirical examination has shown that the answer is no. 

    The US has many examples of open states that have generally had better performance in managing the disease than those states that are closed. Georgia already opened on April 24, 2020. South Dakota never shut down. South Carolina opened in May. Florida ended all restrictions in September. In every case, the press howled about the coming slaughter that did not happen. Yes, each open state experienced a seasonality wave in winter but so did the lockdown states. 

    So it was in Texas. Thanks to this Twitter thread, and some of my own googling, we have a nice archive of predictions about what would happen if Texas opened. 

    • California Governor Gavin Newsom said that opening Texas was “absolutely reckless.”

    • Gregg Popovich, head coach of the NBA San Antonio Spurs, said opening was “ridiculous” and “ignorant.”

    • CNN quoted an ICU nurse saying “I’m scared of what this is going to look like.”

    • Vanity Fair went over the top with this headline: “Republican Governors Celebrate COVID Anniversary With Bold Plan to Kill Another 500,000 Americans.”

    • There was the inevitable Dr. Fauci: “It just is inexplicable why you would want to pull back now.”

    • Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke of Texas revealed himself to be a full-blown lockdowner: It’s a “big mistake,” he said. “It’s hard to escape the conclusion that it’s also a cult of death.” He accused the governor of “sacrificing the lives of our fellow Texans … for political gain.”

    • James Hamblin, a doctor and writer for the Atlantic, said in a Tweet liked by 20K people: “Ending precautions now is like entering the last miles of a marathon and taking off your shoes and eating several hot dogs.”

    • Bestselling author Kurt Eichenwald flipped out: “Goddamn. Texas already has FIVE variants that have turned up: Britain, South Africa, Brazil, New York & CA. The NY and CA variants could weaken vaccine effectiveness. And now idiot @GregAbbott_TX throws open the state.” He further called the government “murderous.” 

    • Epidemiologist Whitney Robinson wrote: “I feel genuinely sad. There are people who are going to get sick and die bc of avoidable infections they get in the next few weeks. It’s demoralizing.”

    • Pundit Bill Kristol (I had no idea that he was a lockdowner) wrote: “Gov. Abbott is going to be responsible for more avoidable COVID hospitalizations and deaths than all the undocumented immigrants coming across the Texas border put together.”

    • Health pundit Bob Wachter said the decision to open was “unforgivable.”

    • Virus guru Michael Osterholm told CNN: “We’re walking into the mouth of the monster. We simply are.”

    • Joe Biden famously said that the Texas decision to open reflected “Neanderthal thinking.”

    • Nutritionist Eric Feigl-Ding said that the decision makes him want to “vomit so bad.”

    • The chairman of the state’s Democratic Party said: “What Abbott is doing is extraordinarily dangerous. This will kill Texans. Our country’s infectious-disease specialists have warned that we should not put our guard down, even as we make progress towards vaccinations. Abbott doesn’t care.”

    • Other state Democrats said in a letter that the decision was “premature and harmful.”

    • The CDC’s Rochelle Walensky didn’t mince words: “Please hear me clearly: At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained. I am really worried about reports that more states are rolling back the exact public health measures we have recommended to protect people from COVID-19.”

    There are probably hundreds more such warnings, predictions, and demands, all stated with absolute certainty that basic social and market functioning is a terrible idea. The lockdown lobby was out in full force. And yet what do we see now more than two weeks out (and arguably the lockdowns died on March 2, when the government announced the decision)? 

    Here are the data. 

    The CDC has a very helpful tool that allows anyone to compare open vs closed states. The results are devastating for those who believe that lockdowns are the way to control a virus. In this chart we compare closed states Massachusetts and California with open states Georgia, Florida, Texas, and South Carolina. 

    What can we conclude from such a visualization? It suggests that the lockdowns have had no statistically observable effect on the virus trajectory and resulting severe outcomes. The open states have generally performed better, perhaps not because they are open but simply for reasons of demographics and seasonality. The closed states seem not to have achieved anything in terms of mitigation. 

    On the other hand, the lockdowns destroyed industries, schools, churches, liberties and lives, demoralizing the population and robbing people of essential rights. All in the name of safety from a virus that did its work in any case. 

    As for Texas, the results so far are in…

    I’m making no predictions about the future path of the virus in Texas. Indeed for a full year, AIER has been careful about not trying to outguess this virus, which has its own ways, some predictable and some mysterious. The experience has, or should have, humbled everyone. Political arrangements seem to have no power to control it, much less finally suppress it. The belief that it was possible to control people in order to control a virus produced a calamity unprecedented in modern times. 

    What’s striking about all the above predictions of infections and deaths is not just that they were all wrong. It’s the arrogance and confidence behind each of them. After a full year and directly observing the inability of “nonpharmaceutical interventions” to manage the pathogen, the experts are still wedded to their beloved lockdowns, unable or unwilling to look at the data and learn anything from them. 

    The concept of lockdowns stemmed from a faulty premise: that you can separate humans, like rats in cages, and therefore control and even eradicate the virus. After a year, we unequivocally know this not to be true, something that the best and wisest epidemiologists knew all along. Essential workers still must work; they must go home to their families, many in crowded living conditions. Lockdowns do not eliminate the virus, they merely shift the burden onto the working class.  

    Now we can see the failure in black, white, and full color, daily appearing on our screens courtesy of the CDC. Has that shaken the pro-lockdown pundit class? Not that much. What an amazing testament to the stubbornness of elite opinion and its bias against basic freedoms. They might all echo the words of Groucho Marx: “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/27/2021 – 17:30

  • Biden Floats Rival Plan To China's 'Belt & Road' In Call With UK's Johnson
    Biden Floats Rival Plan To China's 'Belt & Road' In Call With UK's Johnson

    In a Friday phone call between President Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson which focused on China and the coordinated sanctions actions the US and UK took this week in response to human rights abuses targeting China’s Uighur minority, Biden floated the idea of initiating a Western “democratic” rival to China’s ‘Belt and Road’ project.

    Referring to the ambitious multi-trillion dollar infrastructure initiative which President Xi Jingping has spent years negotiating and pursuing, Biden told reporters of the phone call that, “We talked about China and the competition they’re engaging in in the Belt and Road Initiative.” 

    “I suggested we should have, essentially, a similar initiative coming from the democratic states, helping those communities around the world that, in fact, need help,” he added.

    The words came a day after the first presidential press conference he’s held since entering office, during which the president said he desired competition with China as opposed to confrontation.

    “China has an overall goal—and I don’t criticize them for the goal—but they have an overall goal to become the leading country in the world,” Biden said Thursday. “That’s not going to happen on my watch.”

    Friday’s reference to a US-backed ‘Belt and Road rival’ further comes ahead of next week’s unveiling of the White House’s multitrillion-dollar plan for a major US infrastructure reboot and upgrade.

    To review, China’s BRI has involved over 100 countries signing agreements with China on huge undertakings that’s seen China-constructed railways, highways, ports and new energy plants dot Eurasia. It’s included some 2,600 projects at a cost of an estimated $3.7 trillion.

    The BRI has been called “China’s trade superhighway”.

    The BRI is a big part of what the US president had in mind when in his Thursday remarks he forecast that he expects “steep, steep competition” with China for many years to come, which is headed by a man “doesn’t have a democratic with a small ‘D’ bone in his body” – according to Biden’s assessment of Xi.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/27/2021 – 17:00

  • NFT Robot Art Is Now A Thing
    NFT Robot Art Is Now A Thing

    Via Market Crumbs,

    With NFTs of everything from tweets, artwork and even a clip of LeBron James attracting top dollars lately, it shouldn’t be surprising that an NFT artwork by a robot sold at an auction.

    A 12-second MP4 file titled “Sophia Instantiation,” and an accompanying physical printout, sold for $688,888 at an auction in Hong Kong yesterday in what may be the first ever sale of a piece of artwork by a robot. The piece shows a portrait of Sophia done by Italian digital artist Andrea Bonaceto and how it evolves into a digital painting done by Sophia.

    “I’m so excited about people’s response to new technologies like robotics … and am so glad to be part of these creativities,” Sophia told Reuters, who pointed out the robot was wearing a silver dress.

    The winning bidder is unknown but bid for Sophia Instantiation under the username “_888_” and bid in increments ending in 888. The initial bid of $10,050 from earlier this week quickly surpassed $100,000 before _888_ placed a bid of $118,888. After raising their bid by $20,000 and then $40,000 increments _888_ began increasing their bid by $100,000 increments.

    “I was kind of astonished to see how fast it shot up too as the bidding war took place at the end of the auction,” Sophia’s creator David Hanson of Hanson Robotics said.

    “So it was really exhilarating and stunning.”

    The New York Times notes Sophia said last week that the auction is a step toward “a new paradigm where robots and humans work together in the creative process.”

    However, when speaking during the auction, Sophia left everyone wondering what’s next.

    “I’m making these artworks but it makes me question what is real,” Sophia said. “How do I really experience art, but also how does an artist experience an artwork?”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/27/2021 – 16:30

  • Where Manhattanites Fled During The Pandemic May Surprise You
    Where Manhattanites Fled During The Pandemic May Surprise You

    Since the virus pandemic began, property firms and moving companies in New York City have reported a mass exodus of city-dwellers. Many of them are young families escaping the metro area’s socio-economic collapse as hybrid work (or remote working) allows them to live in suburbia. We find out today, in a new report, many of those who fled Manhattan in the last 12 months ending in January 2021 didn’t go very far. 

    Bloomberg cites mobile phone data from Placer.ai, which reveals 37% of Manhattanites fled to Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, and other nearby suburbs. About 14.6% of them wound up in, well, you guessed it, Suffolk County, where the Hamptons is located. Next on the list is Brooklyn at 4.2%, Bronx 3.8%, Nassau 3.7%, Queens 3.3%, and Westchester 2.5%.  

    Surprisingly, two counties located in Florida made the list, with 2.5% Manhattanites moving to Miami-Dade and 2.1% to Palm Beach. 

    Source: Bloomberg 

    During this period, Manhattan recorded a 12.8% decline in net migration as it appeared even in 2021, outbound migration trends continued to overwhelm inbound ones. 

    In a separate report, we’ve noted Manhattanites have been purchasing homes in Greenwich. Also, there have been migration trends to a tiny town in New York State’s Hudson Valley called Poughkeepsie. 

    As parts of New York City reopen following strict coronavirus-related restrictions, a revival of the metro area could take years. For instance, the recovery of Manhattan depends on office workers returning to skyscrapers. In a recent study via the Partnership for New York City, they found about two-thirds of white-collar workers in the borough won’t return to the office full-time. 

    From apartments to office space, rents are dropping as inventory surges. The hybrid work style that many companies have adopted over the last year is becoming more permanent, allowing employees to work where ever they want. 

    While some signs of life for the borough have recently materialized, a recovery back to 2019 levels is far away. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/27/2021 – 16:00

  • Taibbi: The Death Of Humor
    Taibbi: The Death Of Humor

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

    The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo won the condemnation of the whole world again, with the cover pictured above. Reactions ranged from “abhorrent” to “hateful” to “wrong on every level,” with many offering versions of the now-mandatory observation that the magazine is not only bad now, but “has always been disgusting.”

    This cover is probably an 8 or 9 on the offensiveness scale, and I laughed. It goes after everyone: Queen Elizabeth, depicted as a more deranged version of Derek Chauvin (the stubby leg hairs are a nice touch); Meghan Markle, the princess living in incomparable luxury whose victimhood has become a global pop-culture fixation; and, most of all, the inevitable chorus of outraged commentators who’ll insist they “enjoy good satire as much as the next person” but just can’t abide this particular effort that “goes too far,” it being just a coincidence that none of these people have laughed since grade school and don’t miss it.

    Review of Killer Cartoons, edited by David Wallis, and White, by Bret Easton Ellis

    Six years ago, after terrorists killed 10 people at Hebdo’s Paris offices in a brutal gun attack, the paper’s writers, editors, and cartoonists were initially celebrated worldwide as martyrs to the cause of free speech and democratic values. In France alone on January 11, 2015, over 3 million people marched in a show of solidarity with the victims, who’d been killed for drawing pictures of the Prophet Muhammad. Protesters also marched in defiance of those who would shoot people for drawing cartoons, especially since this particular group of killers also fatally shot four people at a kosher supermarket in an anti-Semitic attack. For about five minutes, Je Suis Charlie was a rallying cry around the world.

    In an early preview of the West’s growing sympathy for eliminating heretics, cracks quickly appeared in the post-massacre defense of Charlie Hebdo. Pope Francis said that if someone “says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch.” Bill Donohoe, head of the American Catholic League, wrote, “Muslims are right to be angry,” and said of Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier, “Had he not been so narcissistic, he may still be alive.” New York Times columnist and noted humor expert David Brooks wrote an essay, “I Am Not Charlie Hebdo,” arguing that although “it’s almost always wrong to try to suppress speech,” these French miscreants should be excluded from polite society, and consigned to the “kids’ table,” along with Bill Maher and Ann Coulter.

    Humor is dying all over, for obvious reasons. All comedy is subversive and authoritarianism is the fashion. Comics exist to keep us from taking ourselves too seriously, and we live in an age when people believe they have a constitutional right to be taken seriously, even if — especially if — they’re idiots, repeating thoughts they only just heard for the first time minutes ago. Because humor deflates stupid ideas, humorists are denounced in all cultures that worship stupid ideas, like Spain under the Inquisition, Afghanistan under the Taliban, or today’s United States.

    During the Trump era, there was a steep decline of jokes overall, but mockery of a president who’d say things like, “My two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart” rose to unprecedented levels. It was not only okay to laugh at Trump, it was mandatory, and the more tasteless the imagery, the better: Trump gay with Putin, Trump gay with the Klan, Trump with micropenis, Trump’s face as mosaic of 500 dicks, Trump as a blind man led by a seeing-eye dog who has the face of Benjamin Netanyahu and a Star of David hanging off his collar, Trump with a pen up his ass, Trump with tiny penis again. Pundits guffawed even more when someone threatened to sue artist Illma Gore for her “Trump’s tiny weiner” pastel, displayed at the Maddox Gallery in London. “It is my art and I stand by it,” Gore said. “Plus anyone who is afraid of a fictional penis is not scary to me.”

    People cheered, because of course: anyone who even threatens to hire a lawyer to denounce a drawing has already lost. Cartoonists in this sense had no better friend than Trump, who constantly tried to block unfriendly renderings, including a Nick Anderson cartoon showing him and his followers drinking bleach as a Covid-19 cure (the Trump campaign reportedly called Anderson’s drawing of MAGA hats a trademark infringement). A lot of the anti-Trump cartoons were neither creative nor funny — if “He’s gay and has a little dick!” is the best you can do with that politician, you probably need a new line of work — and were only rescued by Trump’s preposterous efforts to defend his dignity. You can’t police a person’s private instinct to laugh, and there’s nothing funnier than watching someone try, especially if that person is already a sort-of billionaire and the president.

    For all that, most of the jokes of the Trump era fell flat, precisely because they were obligatory. Modern humorists are allowed to laugh at bad people: racists, sexists, conspiracy theorists, Trump, anyone but themselves or the audience. There were artists who made great humor out of Trump. “Mr. Garrison snorts amyl nitrate while raping Trump to death” stood out, while Anthony Atamaniuk’s impersonations worked because he genuinely tried to connect with the Trump in all of us, asking, “Where’s the Trump part of my psyche?” But most Trump humor was just DNC talking points in sketch form, about as funny as WWII caricatures of Tojo or Hitler.

    Saturday Night Live even commemorated the release of the Mueller report and the death of the collusion theory not by making fun of themselves, or the thousands of pundits, politicians, and other public figures who spent three years insisting it was true, but by doing yet another “Shirtless Putin” skit, with mournful Putin declaring, “I am still powerful guy, even if Trump doesn’t work for me!” I defy anyone to watch this and declare it was written by a comedian, and not someone like David Brock, or an Adam Schiff intern:

    Humorists once made their livings airing out society’s forbidden thoughts, back when it was understood that a) we all had them and b) the things we suppressed and made us the most anxious also tended to be the things that made us laugh the most. Which brings us to Killed Cartoons: Casualties From the War on Free Expression.

    Editor David Wallis put Killed Cartoons together in 2007, not long after the controversy involving the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which published a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed in September 2005. Wallis noted that American coverage of the controversy assiduously avoided showing the offending cartoons — I noted the same thing after the Hebdo massacre — which Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Doug Marlette insisted was tantamount to acquiescing to mob rule. This instinct is now ingrained in American journalism. On an almost daily basis, a public figure is forced to confess to various crimes against political orthodoxy, but readers are seldom told what exactly they’ve done, only that it was bad. Jay Leno is the latest to offer the Groveling Public Confession for what the New York Times only called “years of anti-Asian jokes,” without telling us what they were.

    The confession was set in motion by a profile of actor and producer Gabrielle Union in Variety, in which she recounted an exchange between Leno and Simon Cowell in the offices of America’s Got Talent:

    While filming a commercial interstitial in the “AGT” offices, she says the former “Tonight Show” host made a crack about a painting of Cowell and his dogs, saying the animals looked like food items at a Korean restaurant. The joke was widely perceived as perpetuating stereotypes about Asian people eating dog meat.

    The Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) compiled “nine documented jokes” between 2002 and 2012 Leno made about Koreans or Chinese eating dog meat. (Koreans and Chinese do eat dog meat — there are even dog meat festivals — but whatever).

    Rejected jokes weren’t hard to find even in the early 2000s because, Wallis wrote, editors “suppress compelling illustrations, editorial cartoons, and political comics out of fear — fear of angering advertisers, the publisher’s golf partners, the publisher’s wife, the local dogcatcher or the president of the United States, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, homophobes, gays, pro-choice advocates and antiabortion protesters alike, Catholics, Jews, and midwestern grannies…”

    Even back in the 1990s and early 2000s, the “respectable” press often nixed cartoons precisely because they were funny. A genuine laugh to editors was a sign of trouble. Wallis tells of a cartoonist named J.P. Trostle from the Chapel Hill Herald, who in October 2001 tried to sell a cartoon in advance of a local Halloween Street party. “Unwise Halloween Costumes,” was the headline, above a picture of a boy trick-or-treating as a box of anthrax, and a couple at a keg party dressed as the Twin Towers (the man had a beanie hat with a dangling airplane). Wallis describes how Trostle showed sketches to editors and reporters hoping to build support. “The first thing they did was laugh at it,” he said. “The second thing they did was [say], ‘We are never going to run this.’”

    It was the same thing when Bob Englehardt tried to test the statute of limitations on Holocaust humor. “Schindler’s Other List” was just a piece of paper with the words Eggs, Milk, Coffee, Bread on it — obviously funny, but killed by the Hartford Courant in 1993. There are many other stories involving ideas that were just a little too much like laughing at real things for newspaper editors even a generation ago, like Christ carrying an electric chair up a hill, the Pope ascending to heaven in a plexiglass-covered chariot, or another Pope (Popes are funny) holding a staff in the shape of a coat hanger.

    Killed Cartoons is a history of a time when editors and cartoonists alike were trying to toe the line between what people found funny in private, and what was considered acceptable fodder for public ridicule. We’re way past that now, when we’re not supposed to have unwholesome thoughts either in public or in private. In fact, the whole concept of private thoughts has become infamous. Why does anyone need private opinions, in a society where the right opinions on every question are known, and should be safe to say publicly?

    “A cultural low point of 2015,” wrote Bret Easton Ellis in White, “was the effort by at least two hundred members of PEN America, a leading literary organization to which most writers belong, to not present the survivors of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris with a newly established Freedom of Expression Courage Award.”

    Ellis, whose 2019 book attracted even more public disgust than Charlie Hebdo’s latest cover, went on to blast the writers who decided honoring Hebdo would be “valorizing selectively offensive material.” The award was ultimately given, because there were more PEN members who believed the magazine deserved the award, but, Ellis wrote:

    There were still two hundred who were offended and felt Charlie Hebdo went “too far” in its satire, which suggested there was a limited number of targets that humorists and satirists were allowed to pursue.

    It made sense that Ellis would be upset about Americans disowning Charlie Hebdo. He’s famous for producing maybe the last unashamedly tasteless work of satire to win critical acclaim in this country. American Psycho was successful in part because so many of the people who found it so entertaining didn’t realize they were being stabbed or chainsawed in its pages. That book was about what happens when a society governed by openly insane values requires its citizens to wear a mask of normalcy. The deeper you try to bury the contradictions, the worse the sickness gets, and the book argued we were very sick already by the late eighties and early nineties.

    In White, Ellis describes the Wall Street bros he tried to study for American Psycho. They were straight white dudes who traveled in packs and probably grew up bullying anyone who was different using words like “faggot,” but now, as the cadet-corps leaders of “youthful ‘80s Reagan-era excess,” they appropriated “the standard hallmarks of gay male culture” rather than talk about who they really were:

    During my initial research I’d been frustrated by their evasions about what exactly they did for the companies where they worked — information I felt was necessary, but finally realized really wasn’t. I was surprised instead by their desire to show off their crazy materialistic lifestyles: the hip, outrageously priced restaurants they could get reservations at, the cool Hamptons summer rentals and, especially, their expensive haircuts and tanning regimens and gym memberships and grooming routines.

    American Psycho was a book that many people loved, so long as they were certain it described someone else, a monster. In fact, what made the humor work, and elevated it above a compendium of snide put-downs of Wall Street jerks, was that it described an inner monologue familiar to most of us.

    In a country that worshipped the Nike image of the fit, informed, socially-concerned go-getter, but really judged us by our skill in crushing neighbors as capitalist competitors and fleecing the public as dupes — without question, Pierce and Pierce would eventually have been a leading marketer of mortgage-backed securities — the book’s serial killer hero Patrick Bateman was an utterly typical exemplar of the American species. The realization of his ordinariness, of society’s lack of interest or surprise at his murderous inner life, was central to the protagonist’s horrific punchline epiphany.

    Ellis talks about how things in this country haven’t changed since American Psycho, but are “more exaggerated, more accepted.” Would the more heavily-surveilled America we live in now “prevent [Bateman] from getting away with the murders he at least tells the reader he’s committed…?” He’d at least have to work harder at his disguise. Would he “haunt social media as a troll using fake avatars… have a Twitter account bragging about his accomplishments”? Ellis notes that “during Patrick’s 80’s reign, he still had the ability to hide, a possibility that simply doesn’t exist in our fully exhibitionist society.”

    In American Psycho, Bateman is a monster in private, and everything else is mask, from his spearmint facial scrub to his fake tan to his interminable conversations about business card fonts and rehearsed opinions on everything from feeding the homeless and achieving world peace.

    In 2021, we’re all mask, and it shines through in White that what drives Ellis batty is that modern Americans not only believe the phony opinions they get from memorizing the latest sacred texts of the Times bestseller list (a fashion obsession no different from the Zegna suits worshipped by the American Psycho bros), but require that everyone else believe them too.

    The penalties for deviance were once mostly self-imposed, by people who feared losing a little social status — “I want to fit in,” Bateman explained — but any person who wants to earn a living now must recite The Pieties, or else. Even someone like James Gunn, director of The Guardians of the Galaxy, someone who made over a billion dollars for his employers, could be fired for tweeting jokes like “Three Men and a Baby They Had Sex With #unromantic movies” and “The Hardy Boys and The Mystery of What It Feels Like When Uncle Bernie Fists Me #SadChildrensBooks.” Gunn’s idea for an alternate ending to The Giving Tree — “the tree grows back and gives the kid a blowjob” — seemed funny to me until I learned that a serious movement was really underway to “rethink” the book.

    Author Shel Silverstein mainly just hated happy endings, but now stands accused of having created a model for abusive relationships in the story of a tree that keeps giving apples to a kid, who keeps taking them. “You don’t have to give until it hurts” chided one New York Times columnist, to child readers and, I guess, trees.

    In a genuinely comic development, Gunn was re-hired, mainly because his initial firing was the result of a conservative prank. Right-wing provocateurs like Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec correctly guessed Hollywood could be conned into firing even a major rainmaker over nonsense. When Gunn was rehabilitated, the press cast him as a martyr to the cause of anti-Trumpism, targeted by right-wing fiends who “combed through Gunn’s social media history after Gunn’s criticism of President Donald Trump.” Meanwhile, one of the film’s stars, Chris Pratt, is still fighting off his own controversy, which literally started with a joke — which Hollywood Chris should be fired, a Tweeter asked — and morphed into a serious “backlash” in which Forbes explained that Pratt’s decision to not attend a virtual fundraiser for Joe Biden “has led to the belief that Pratt is secretly a Trump supporter.”

    White came out two years ago, in April of 2019, and was reviewed savagely. Critics from Vox to NPR to the Guardian agreed White was the work of a bitter has-been sexist and misogynist whose “rambling mess of cultural commentary and self-aggrandizement” might never have been published if, Bookforum’s Andrea Long Chu suggested, “Ellis’s millennial boyfriend had simply shown the famous man how to use the mute feature on Twitter.” Virtually every review was a Mad Libs exercise in rearranging words like old, whiny, rich, petty, aggrieved, and boring (reviewers universally agreed the book was boring).

    Every review focused on the politics of the book, describing as a tirade against cancel culture, left censorship, “snowflakes,” and “hysterics” who can’t take criticism. Ellis’s invocation of the term “Generation Wuss” to describe millennials, who do not come off well either in the book or in the interviews he gave after its release, figures in almost every review by younger writers, who of course gave back in kind. In a format that’s by now standard when criticizing almost any brand of transgressing celebrity, from Pratt to Ellen DeGeneres to Kirstie Alley, reviewers made a point of reminding us that not only is Ellis terrible now, but that on some level he’s always been terrible, even when we thought he was good. Bookforum even managed to wing J.D. Salinger in the crossfire.

    “Like The Catcher in the Rye before it and Fight Club after it,” the site wrote, “American Psycho is a book designed to convince comfortable white men that they are, in fact, ‘outsiders and monsters and freaks.’” (That the book was about the opposite — a world where “no one can tell anyone else apart” and even ax-murdering Patrick Bateman ultimately learns he’s just a face in the crowd — is irrelevant). The strongest sentiment in all the reviews was a desire that Ellis just shut the fuck up. “One longs to tell him what the Rolling Stones told Trump: Please stop,” wrote Chu. NPR got more to the point. “Most of us carry around an invisible rosary of resentments to fiddle with in petty moments,” wrote Annalisa Quinn. “Most of us also know to keep these grudges private.”

    The actual dictum isn’t just to keep unwelcome thoughts private, but to not have them at all. But people can’t control what they find funny. In Killed Cartoons, an African-American cartoonist describes bringing a cartoon depicting him sharing a giant bag of crack with prostitutes to an editor. “Why do you have to say that?” the editor asked. What’s the message? “It’s funny!” he replied. “It’s a giant bag of crack!” The panel ended up rejected, for fear of offending the paper’s “large white liberal readership.”

    The new movement thinks it’s stamping out harmful jokes about disadvantaged groups, but truly cruel or bigoted material tends not to win real laughs. There are exceptions — people thought Eddie Murphy’s “faggots will kick your ass” jokes were funny once — but what people mostly laugh at are things that are true, which is the problem with telling people you can’t think or laugh about funny things even in private. People will either go mad, or else they’ll start laughing at you, which is why we’re already seeing something I never thought I would in my lifetime — the humor business drifting into the arms of conservatives. Humor is about saying the unsayable, and most of the comics who insist on still doing it are either denounced as reactionaries, like Charlie Hebdo or Joe Rogan or even Dave Chappelle, or else they were openly conservative to begin with. The Babylon Bee is marketed as something from one of my childhood nightmares (“Your trusted source for Christian news satire”), and the fact that it’s now exponentially more likely to be funny than Stephen Colbert feels like a sign of the End-Times.

    In White, Ellis writes about the seemingly inexplicable appeal of Charlie Sheen in Two and a Half Men, writing that his stunned disgust as he “staggered amiably through a bad sitcom” was what attracted audiences, because “not giving a fuck about what the public thinks about you or your personal life is actually what matters most… the public will respond to you because you’re free and that’s exactly what they all desire.” People are attracted to humorists for the same reason; they’re saying what we can’t. If there’s no room for such people anymore, we’re in a lot of trouble. People can only go without laughing for so long.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/27/2021 – 15:30

  • "Absolutely An Open Border Situation": Sen. Lankford Gives Firsthand Account Of Border Crisis
    "Absolutely An Open Border Situation": Sen. Lankford Gives Firsthand Account Of Border Crisis

    Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford (R) has given a firsthand account of the chaos at the US-Mexico border – joining Texas GOP Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn for a tour of the situation after visiting a migrant detention facility and a processing location.

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    In a Thursday Facebook post, Lankford said he watched “hundreds of people being allowed in tonight.”

    “No criminal background check from their home country, no COVID testing, no verification that the child you are traveling with is related. If a 25 year old male claims to be 17, he is allowed into the country as an unaccompanied minor.”

    “This is absolutely an open-border situation,” Lankford said in more videos posted to his YouTube channel:

    Why are US Senators doing the job of the mainstream press?

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/27/2021 – 15:00

  • Watch: A Naval Historian And Master Mariner Discuss The Suez Canal Blockage
    Watch: A Naval Historian And Master Mariner Discuss The Suez Canal Blockage

    By gCaptain

    In the below video, Dr. Sal Mercogliano, Associate Professor of History of History at Campbell University and Adjunct Professor at the United States Merchant Marine Academy, along with Captain John Konrad, Founder and CEO of gCaptain, discuss the situation in the Suez Canal with the grounding of the Evergreen containership MV Ever Given.

    John and Sal discuss what could have caused the event, what is being done now to clear the ship from the channel, the impact the closure of the canal is having on world trade and commerce, and why this issue should be important not only to shippers, but the government, the military, and every human on the planet since 90% of all goods are moved by sea.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 03/27/2021 – 14:30

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