- Nissan Preparing To Build Its Own "Gigafactory" In The U.K.
Nissan Preparing To Build Its Own “Gigafactory” In The U.K.
Gigafactories aren’t just for Tesla anymore.
Perhaps a sign of how far the rest of the EV market has come or perhaps just trying to keep up with legacy automakers like Ford (who announced yesterday they were tackling EVs head on), Nissan has announced it is in talks with the U.K. government to build its own Gigafactory in Sunderland.
The new factory would go at the company’s existing site in Sunderland, FT wrote this week, and would be run by Nissan’s Chinese battery supplier Envision AESC. Nissan already makes batteries for its Nissan Leaf at a facility run by Envision near the proposed Sunderland site.
The purpose of the facility would be to support 200,000 battery cars per year and thousands of jobs.
A possible announcement for a deal could be scheduled for this summer, the report notes, “ahead of Britain hosting the COP26 climate summit this year.”
Nissan is seeking “tens of millions of pounds” in financial support fort the project. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders has called battery investment “essential”.
Surely, the U.K. will be thinking back to when Tesla passed on the location in favor of Germany to build one of the company’s factories.
“We are dedicated to securing gigafactories, and continue to work closely with investors and vehicle manufacturers to progress plans to mass produce batteries in the UK,” a spokesperson for the U.K. government’s business department told FT.
The site would be expected to produce 6 gigawatt hours of battery capacity per year and could open toward the end of 2024. The Sunderland area’s current battery plant has a capacity of 1.9GWh. Nissan has referred to its already-existing facilities in Sunderland as “one of the best plants in the world for Nissan in terms of competitiveness” and that it has “played a pioneering role in developing the electric vehicle market”.
The U.K. is phasing out sales of ICE and diesel models by 2030 and Nissan is seeking to make its Leaf model the predominant EV in the country.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 05/28/2021 – 02:45 - Is Europe Changing Its Strategy Toward China?
Is Europe Changing Its Strategy Toward China?
Authored by June Teufel Dreyer via The Epoch Times,
The answer might be yes… and no. The European Parliament’s May 20 resolution freezing any consideration of a long-awaited Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) with China, along with advocacy of a strengthened European Union screening regulations on foreign investment and increased cooperation with the United States on a Transatlantic Dialogue on China, certainly seemed to symbolize a changed European attitude toward China.
A container ship from China Shipping Line is loaded at the main container port in Hamburg, Germany, on Aug. 13, 2007. Northern Germany, with its busy ports of Hamburg, Bremerhaven and Kiel, is a hub of international shipping. Hamburg is among Europe’s largest ports. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Undoubtedly, European leaders have become more wary than those who met with members of a visiting U.S. congressional commission two decades ago. Warned by commissioners against lifting an embargo on arms sales that had been passed after the massacre in Tiananmen Square, they replied stoutly and virtually in unison that China “is not the same country that it was in 1989.” They dismissed evidence that, although China was incontestably not the same country that it had been in 1989, it was in fact more repressive than it had been, and was getting more so.
Both Eurocrats and politicians seemed intrigued by the notion of strategic partnerships that China held forth, denying that they had any military implications, even when shown that the ideograph for the first character in strategic 戰略, shows a man holding a spear. Possibly their receptivity had something to do with Beijing’s hints at the prospect of lucrative deals for purchases of the wares of European defense contractors as well as the hordes of Chinese tourists eager to visit the continent’s castles, cathedrals, and department stores. Interestingly, the Western European states who had never lived under communism were the most trusting of Chinese promises whereas the Eastern European states, which had, were far more skeptical.
Fast forward twenty years and the picture changes dramatically. Not overnight, to be sure, but incrementally in rough proportion to increases in Chinese assertiveness. Enthusiasm for lifting the arms embargo waned after China’s National People’s Congress in 2005 passed an anti-secession law formally asserting Beijing’s determination to use non-peaceful means against the separation of Taiwan from China and in any scenario where unification [read: annexation] became otherwise impossible. So as well did China’s moves to enforce its claims to contested areas of the South China and East China seas as seen in its outright rejection of the 2016 ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) that China’s nine-dash line had no basis in international law, and its willingness to use force, as it did against Vietnam in 2020. Revelations about the treatment of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, and the steady diminution of the rights of residents of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region that had been guaranteed under a 1984 treaty between Great Britain and China made it difficult to believe that Beijing cared about the rights of its peoples and international law. Or that post-1989 China was evolving toward the kind of liberal democratic state that European leaders had seemed so confident of.
An aerial photo taken though a glass window of a Philippine military plane shows the alleged on-going land reclamation by China on Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, west of Palawan, Philippines, on May 11, 2015. (Ritchie B. Tongo/Pool/Reuters)
Reports on the suppression of religion and the persecution of believers were widely reported, but had few policy consequences. It was not so much that Europeans did not care about human rights issues as that they were eclipsed by concerns with the lure of a rapidly expanding Chinese market and their desire to get a larger share of it for themselves and their countries, often in competition with other European states.
There was no lack of awareness that China was negotiating with European countries one deal at a time, skillfully playing one against another, but also no consensus about what to do about it. French President Jacques Chirac declared 2004 the Year of China and bathed the Eiffel Tower in red for visiting counterpart Hu Jintao, with lucrative business deals signed during the latter’s four-day stay. And after German Chancellor Angela Merkel met with the Dalai Lama in 2007, she was criticized for jeopardizing German business opportunities in their rivalry with France.
Most European states welcomed Xi Jinping’s signature “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR, later renamed the “Belt and Road Initiative”) project that would facilitate Sino-European trade. Enthusiasm cooled markedly when it was discovered that too many of the railway cars that brought Chinese goods to Europe were being shipped back empty: a rueful quip was that OBOR should be renamed OBOW: One Belt One Way. In addition, it was noticed that European companies had slipped in global rankings even as Chinese companies like State Grid and Sinopec climbed into Fortune’s top ten.
With its 28, now 27, members, the European Union, finds it difficult to reach an agreement on most issues, let alone ones as contentious as dealing with China. Until the 2021 decision on CAI, the results tended to be tepid. Maritime law expert Peter Dutton deemed the EU statement on the PCA’s decision on the nine-dash line, a “deeply disappointing statement from a government that likes to consider itself one of humanity’s strongest supporters of international law. They could have … and should have … said they support the tribunal’s decision. Period.”
China was also able to take advantage of economic downturns in the Euro economy to acquire strategically important assets at low prices. China’s State Grid Corporation began acquiring stakes in the power networks of cash-strapped southern European countries, including Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Italy, raising concerns that Beijing might exercise control of their operations. In response to a query by Reuters, a State Grid official replied, “This is not a financial investment, [it’s] more like a strategic investment.”
When chided by the EU for allowing Chinese shipping company COSCO to acquire rights in Piraeus, Greek officials responded angrily that the EU had done little to help their country in its hour of need and that they would welcome more investment from China. COSCO now has a 67 percent stake in Piraeus, one of the largest ports in the Mediterranean and strategically situated close to the Suez Canal. The Chinese-Greek partnership has had consequences for EU decision-making, as when Greece refused to sign an EU letter on the South China Sea and, later, on China’s alleged torture of detained human rights lawyers. Hungary, where China had pledged to spend billions of dollars on a railway project, likewise declined to sign. Concerns grew that China could be targeting smaller countries with weaker economies in order to penetrate the region. And, when in 2012 China set up the 16 (later 17)+1 partnership with central and eastern European states, EU leaders fretted that this was a mechanism to try to divide Europe.
A view of old warehouses in the port of Piraeus which will be transformed to five-star hotels, on Oct. 18, 2018 – Chinese shipping giant Cosco said it has ambitious plans for the Greek port of Piraeus, including a boost on already-bustling container and car piers but also five-star hotel expansion. (Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP via Getty Images)
Chinese interests were not confined to penurious southern and eastern European states. German firms specializing in engineering and technology were prime targets for acquisition. In 2016, news that China’s Midea group planned to acquire cutting-edge robotics firm Kuka raised anxieties about loss of intellectual property. However, Chancellor Merkel declined to intervene, making Kuka essentially a Chinese company despite charges that German engineers were now designing robots for the People’s Liberation Army (Chinese military).
Vigilance, however, had been heightened. Shortly after the Kuka purchase, Germany’s economics ministry withdrew its earlier approval of chipmaker Aixtron by China’s Fujian Grand Chip Investment Fund LP, with Chinese officials accusing Germany of protectionism. Although German sources gave as their reason the lack of reciprocity in their dealings with China—which is true—the underlying issue was security. For example, Aixtron’s new, highly efficient semiconductor technology are able to boost the power of military radar transmitters while consuming less electricity. Not all concerns were economic: Berlin-based scholar journalist Didi Kirsten Tatlow’s meticulously documented study of China’s Einheitsfront (united front) operations, concluded that Beijing’s deliberate influencing in an orchestrated manner cannot be ignored, and that most Germans underestimate the CCP’s (Chinese Communist Party) will to power.
Similar revelations occurred in Britain bringing to an end what both sides called the “golden era” of bilateral relations, especially when, shortly after leaving office, former Prime Minister David Cameron accepted the headship of a fund to create new investment links between China and the UK. Security concerns were raised about Chinese participation in the UK’s Hinkley Point nuclear power station. News of the persecution of Uyghurs and the crackdown on pro-democracy Hong Kong residents deepened concerns, with Hong Kong being a particularly sensitive issue in Great Britain since it violated the 1984 treaty under which the UK agreed to return its colony to Chinese jurisdiction. These were exacerbated when the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced that the agreement “no longer has any practical significance and is not at all binding for the central government’s management over Hong Kong.”
Civil liberties not only in China but in the UK itself also began to be threatened with incidents such as Chinese students at the London School of Economics, likely acting on suggestions from their embassy, demanding that an LSE globe depicting Taiwan as separate from China be altered. The Chinese Embassy then threatened Oxford University’s Vice-chancellor Louise Richardson with the withdrawal of Chinese students unless she stopped Chancellor Chris Patten from visiting Hong Kong. Both efforts were unsuccessful: LSE’s globe remains unaltered and Richardson refused the embassy’s request. Patten subsequently said that “China had betrayed the people of Hong Kong and the West should cease kowtowing to Beijing for an illusory pot of gold.” And a February 2021 study of academic cooperation with Chinese entities found many UK universities “unintentionally generating research that is sponsored by China’s military conglomerates including those with activities in the production of weapons of mass destruction, intercontinental ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, and other items of massively destabilizing weaponry.”
Oxford University in Oxford, United Kingdom, on Sept. 20, 2016. (Carl Court/Getty Images)
Similarly high-handed statements from Chinese official sources occurred elsewhere. When meeting pushback, they tended to elicit insults. The ambassador to Sweden, reacting to its government’s complaints about the arrest of one of its nationals and, separately, evidence that an incident of Chinese tourists being bullied was fabricated, declared that his country had fine wines for its friends but shotguns for its enemies. Replying to widespread criticism of his words, the ambassador responded that Sweden was “not important enough to threaten.” After a French scholar defended the rights of parliamentarians to visit Taiwan, tweets from the Chinese embassy called him a “little hoodlum,” “ideological troll,” and “mad hyena.” When Lithuanian intelligence services accused China of increasingly aggressive espionage campaigns and the use of tech companies as surveillance assets, the Chinese ambassador countered that his country was being demonized and charged Lithuania with cold war-ism. Eighteen months later, Lithuania’s foreign minister announced his country’s withdrawal from the 17+ 1 organization and called on the other member states to do the same.
The EU’s tepid statement on Beijing’s rejection of the PCA ruling on the South China Sea did not diminish the concerns of nations with major shipping interests in the area. Britain and France announced plans to send naval vessels to emphasize the importance they attached to freedom of navigation in the area. France, which has geographically extensive territories in the South Pacific, was particularly articulate on this issue. After the ruling, then-defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called for joint EU patrols of the maritime areas of Asia and the establishment of a “regular and visible presence there” and, with China clearly in mind, Le Drian argued that if the rule of law and freedom of navigation were not respected in the South China Sea today, they will next be challenged in and around Europe. More surprising than the British and French FONOPs was Germany’s decision, although it has no territories in the area, to send a frigate to the area as part of a newly-adopted Indo-Pacific strategy.
What does this mean for the future of Sino-European relations? Unquestionably, attitudes in major EU countries have hardened. In Germany, the Green party’s candidate for chancellor, the Greens having a realistic chance to become the ruling party in the country’s September election, has vowed to be tough on China. The smaller Free Democratic Party, which has a reputation of being a kingmaker, has pointedly removed the “one-China” clause from its party platform. Britain has banned Chinese telecommunications provider Huawei from its 5G networks, offered UK passports to British National Overseas residents of Hong Kong, revoked state-owned broadcaster CGTN’s UK broadcast license, and expelled three Chinese for spying. In Czechia, attempts to build influence in politics backfired and there was discontent when a number of promised investments failed to materialize. The Czech senate president visited Taipei in defiance of Chinese orders and declared “I am Taiwanese;” Prague’s mayor publicly refused to accept a “one-China” clause and flies Tibetan flags from city hall.
Prague City Mayor Zdeněk Hřib talks to media about China during his visit to Taiwan on March 29, 2019. (Zdeněk Hřib, Mayor of Prague/Facebook)
Yet it would be foolish to overinterpret these events. China is defiant, with the Global Times editorializing that the conditions imposed for resuming the ratification process are “rough and arrogant,” that the sanctions imposed by China are actually countermeasures against the EU’s sanctions over Chinese officials and entities, and that there is no way that China will lift those sanctions under pressure from the European parliament. EU organizations other than the EP and many more European countries, the paper pointed out, want the CAI to come into force.
Global Times may well be correct. The CAI was, and presumably continues to be, a major priority for Chancellor Merkel because of China’s importance to the German automobile industry: if ratified, it would allow European companies to own majority stakes in their Chinese subsidiaries rather than forcing them to operate though joint venture with Chinese partners and share trade secrets. China is Germany’s largest trading partner.
In less wealthy countries, the lure of Chinese largesse is a powerful force for leaders even where there is opposition from the general public. Czech president Milos Zeman, who has been described as “ostentatiously pro-China,” has vowed to make his country China’s gateway to Europe, even welcoming Xi Jinping with a 21-gun salute—an honor not accorded to any foreign leader for more than fifty years. Most recently, he praised China as “the only country that helped us and sent medical supplies” in the pandemic. In Serbia, although complaints about the environmental and political aspects of Chinese investment grew, its elected leaders, despite their aspiration to join the EU and claims to share its democratic values, lean further toward China, which offers big loans, vaccines, and investments without the constraints that the EU would impose. Mutatis mutandis, there is a similar situation in Montenegro, whose government has asked Brussels for financial assistance to refinance a loan to China for an expensive only partially built highway that, according to European analysts, was a risky proposition to start with. China holds a quarter of Montenegro’s debt; if it defaults, the terms of the contract give China the right to access the country’s land as collateral.
It is also possible that the EU sanctions themselves may end up hurting Western companies as much or more than China. Beijing has imposed boycotts on companies such as Sweden’s H&M, among others, for its “suicidal” remarks on so-called slave labor in Xinjiang, thereby impacting an important market for the apparel maker. A Xinjiang factory manager, admitting an initial downturn in international purchases of cotton, stated that his factory had made up the difference by shifting to domestic orders.
In sum, European strategy toward China has evolved beyond the so-called golden years, and present tensions are unlikely to abate in the foreseeable future. With the emotional naivete of the past now spent, European statespersons would do well to concentrate on the realistic economic and security aspects of the relationship. Given the democratic principles that undergird both Eurogovernance and those of Europe’s component states, Beijing will always have the upper hand in playing one off against another. How long this can continue depends on many factors outside the scope of this study. Meanwhile, however, the EU’s dream of a partnership between a united Europe and a liberalizing China seems to have fallen victim to Xi Jinping’s China Dream.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 05/28/2021 – 02:00 - Thousands Flee Eastern Congo Amid Further Risk Of Volcanic Eruptions
Thousands Flee Eastern Congo Amid Further Risk Of Volcanic Eruptions
In the city of Goma in eastern Congo, residents were advised by authorities to pack up their bags and head to the next town as another volcanic eruption by Mount Nyiragongo could be imminent, according to The Guardian.
“Current data on seismicity and the deformation of the ground indicate the presence of magma under the urban area of Goma, with an extension under Lake Kivu,” the local military governor, Gen Constant Ndima, said in a public address.
“We can’t rule out an eruption on land or under the lake, which could happen very soon and without warning. The situation can change rapidly, and is being constantly monitored.”
An update from our team in #Goma after Sat’s volcanic eruption: the ground is still shaking every few mins, with a magnitude 5.3 quake registered by Rwandan authorities. Cracks are visible in the city splitting roads in two — with some cracks up to 10cm wide. pic.twitter.com/21HQjCMnnq
— Concern Worldwide (@Concern) May 26, 2021
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Tens of thousands of people have already fled 12 miles west of Goma to another city called Sake. Thousands of others have already crossed the Rwandan border for refuge.
A massive evacuation is underway.
Update: A crowd of Congolese people from #Goma are evacuating to #Sake region in #DRC after #Gvt order of evacuation plan before the threat of #Earthquakes & #EruptionOfNyiragongo is completely eliminated basing on Scientists suggestions. pic.twitter.com/qfMo3JyAsE
— Christophe Uwizeye (@ChristopheUwiz) May 27, 2021
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#Evacuation de @Goma vers @Sake @fatshi13 @awdf01 @focusdroits @lebonkasamira @Le_HCR @IfokuMarijo @Evebazaiba à Sake , manque d’eau propre pic.twitter.com/n5m0q4ILAz
— Grâce Peninah (@GracePeninah) May 27, 2021
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Les images et Videos de la population a Goma. Une evacuation de peur d’une autre explosion, une autre eruption volcanique ou un tremblement de terre. Que Dieu sõit avec vous 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏 pic.twitter.com/WQSQg7LtTs
— WILLY KALALA (@Willyetaisici) May 27, 2021
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#RDC🇨🇩: En union de prière avec nos compatriotes de goma qui sont dans l’obligation de se mettre à l’abri de leur ville pour quelques semaines sur décision du gouvernement congolais.
Nous demandons au gouvernement @LukondeSama de tout mettre en place pour une évacuation digne. pic.twitter.com/jn7cL2wCnx
— Bukasa Emmanuel (@BukasaEmmanuel2) May 27, 2021
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Goma, a city of about two million people, is located six miles from Mount Nyiragongo volcano, which erupted last Saturday. Lava flows spilled into Buhene neighborhood, a suburb of the city, destroying hundreds of structures.
Image of destruction in #DRC #GOMA after #Nyiragongo Volcano Erupts pic.twitter.com/KvnycIKXXO
— Abdallah Nduhirabandi (@ANduhirabandi) May 23, 2021
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Saturday’s eruption spared central Goma, but now it appears to be coming under threat as hundreds of aftershocks have been felt across the region, suggesting another eruption could be nearing.
The displacement of tens of thousands of people in the eastern Congo could develop into a humanitarian crisis.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 05/28/2021 – 01:00 - Drivers Beware: The Deadly Perils Of Blank Check Traffic Stops
Drivers Beware: The Deadly Perils Of Blank Check Traffic Stops
Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“The Fourth Amendment was designed to stand between us and arbitrary governmental authority. For all practical purposes, that shield has been shattered, leaving our liberty and personal integrity subject to the whim of every cop on the beat, trooper on the highway and jail official. The framers would be appalled.”
– Herman Schwartz, The Nation
We’ve all been there before.
You’re driving along and you see a pair of flashing blue lights in your rearview mirror. Whether or not you’ve done anything wrong, you get a sinking feeling in your stomach.
You’ve read enough news stories, seen enough headlines, and lived in the American police state long enough to be anxious about any encounter with a cop that takes place on the side of the road.
For better or worse, from the moment you’re pulled over, you’re at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.”
This is what I call “blank check policing,” in which the police get to call all of the shots.
So if you’re nervous about traffic stops, you have every reason to be.
Trying to predict the outcome of any encounter with the police is a bit like playing Russian roulette: most of the time you will emerge relatively unscathed, although decidedly poorer and less secure about your rights, but there’s always the chance that an encounter will turn deadly.
Try to assert your right to merely ask a question during a traffic stop and see how far it gets you.
Juanisha Brooks—black, 34 years old and on her way home at 2:20 am—was pulled over, handcuffed, arrested and charged with resisting arrest, eluding the police, reckless driving and failure to use headlights after repeatedly asking police why she had been stopped. When Brooks—a Department of Defense employee—filed a complaint, prosecutors conceded that the traffic stop had been carried out without “proper legal basis” and dropped all charges.
Caron Nazario, a uniformed Army officer returning home from his duty station, was stopped for not having a rear license plate (his temporary plates were taped to the rear window of his new SUV). Nazario, who is Black and Latino, pulled over at a well-lit gas station only to be pepper sprayed, held at gunpoint, beaten and threatened with execution.
Zachary Noel was tasered by police and charged with resisting arrest after he questioned why he was being ordered out of his truck during a traffic stop. “Because I’m telling you to,” the officer replied before repeating his order for Noel to get out of the vehicle and then, without warning, shooting him with a taser through the open window.
Despite complying with all police orders when ordered to show his identification and exit his parked vehicle, Jeriel Edwards was subjected to excessive force and brutality, including being thrown to the ground, tasered, and placed in a chokehold that rendered him unconscious and required his hospitalization for three days. Although dash cam video of the arrest confirms that Edwards was peaceful, did not defy police orders, and did nothing to provoke police, a federal court ruled that Edwards’ trouble understanding police directions during the encounter constituted “resistance” that justified the force used by the four police officers involved in the violent arrest. Edwards is African-American.
Gregory Tucker, also black, was stopped by police for a broken taillight, only to be thrown to the ground, beaten and punched in the face and body more than 20 times, then arrested and hospitalized for severe injuries to his face and arm, all for allegedly “resisting arrest” by driving to a safe, well-lit area in front of his cousin’s house before stopping.
No wonder Americans are afraid of getting pulled over by police.
Mind you, all of these individuals complied with police. They just didn’t do it fast enough to suit their purposes.
At a time when police can do no wrong—at least in the eyes of the courts, police unions and politicians dependent on their votes—and a “fear” for officer safety is used to justify all manner of police misconduct, “we the people” are at a severe disadvantage.
Add a traffic stop to the mix, and that disadvantage increases dramatically.
According to the Justice Department, the most common reason for a citizen to come into contact with the police is being a driver in a traffic stop.
On average, one in 10 Americans gets pulled over by police.
According to data collected under Virginia’s new Community Policing Act, black drivers are almost two times more likely than white drivers to be pulled over by police and three times more likely to have their vehicles searched. As the Washington Post concludes, “‘Driving while black’ is, indeed, a measurable phenomenon.”
Historically, police officers have been given free range to pull anyone over for a variety of reasons.
This free-handed approach to traffic stops has resulted in drivers being stopped for windows that are too heavily tinted, for driving too fast, driving too slow, failing to maintain speed, following too closely, improper lane changes, distracted driving, screeching a car’s tires, and leaving a parked car door open for too long.
Motorists can also be stopped by police for driving near a bar or on a road that has large amounts of drunk driving, driving a certain make of car (Mercedes, Grand Prix and Hummers are among the most ticketed vehicles), having anything dangling from the rearview mirror (air fresheners, handicap parking permits, toll transponders or rosaries), and displaying pro-police bumper stickers.
Incredibly, a federal appeals court actually ruled unanimously in 2014 that acne scars and driving with a stiff upright posture are reasonable grounds for being pulled over. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that driving a vehicle that has a couple air fresheners, rosaries and pro-police bumper stickers at 2 MPH over the speed limit is suspicious, meriting a traffic stop.
Equally appalling, in Heien v. North Carolina, the U.S. Supreme Court—which has largely paved the way for the police and other government agents to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance—allowed police officers to stop drivers who appear nervous, provided they provide a palatable pretext for doing so.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the lone objector in the case. Dissenting in Heien, Sotomayor warned, “Giving officers license to effect seizures so long as they can attach to their reasonable view of the facts some reasonable legal interpretation (or misinterpretation) that suggests a law has been violated significantly expands this authority… One wonders how a citizen seeking to be law-abiding and to structure his or her behavior to avoid these invasive, frightening, and humiliating encounters could do so.”
In other words, drivers beware.
Traffic stops aren’t just dangerous. They can be downright deadly.
Remember Walter L. Scott? Reportedly pulled over for a broken taillight, Scott—unarmed—ran away from the police officer, who pursued and shot him from behind, first with a Taser, then with a gun. Scott was struck five times, “three times in the back, once in the upper buttocks and once in the ear — with at least one bullet entering his heart.”
Samuel Dubose, also unarmed, was pulled over for a missing front license plate. He was reportedly shot in the head after a brief struggle in which his car began rolling forward.
Levar Jones was stopped for a seatbelt offense, just as he was getting out of his car to enter a convenience store. Directed to show his license, Jones leaned into his car to get his wallet, only to be shot four times by the “fearful” officer. Jones was also unarmed.
Bobby Canipe was pulled over for having an expired registration. When the 70-year-old reached into the back of his truck for his walking cane, the officer fired several shots at him, hitting him once in the abdomen.
Dontrell Stevens was stopped “for not bicycling properly.” The officer pursuing him “thought the way Stephens rode his bike was suspicious. He thought the way Stephens got off his bike was suspicious.” Four seconds later, sheriff’s deputy Adams Lin shot Stephens four times as he pulled out a black object from his waistband. The object was his cell phone. Stephens was unarmed.
Sandra Bland, pulled over for allegedly failing to use her turn signal, was arrested after refusing to comply with the police officer’s order to extinguish her cigarette and exit her vehicle. The encounter escalated, with the officer threatening to “light” Bland up with his taser. Three days later, Bland was found dead in her jail cell. “You’re doing all of this for a failure to signal?” Bland asked as she got out of her car, after having been yelled at and threatened repeatedly.
Keep in mind, from the moment those lights start flashing and that siren goes off, we’re all in the same boat. However, it’s what happens after you’ve been pulled over that’s critical.
Survival is key.
Technically, you have the right to remain silent (beyond the basic requirement to identify yourself and show your registration). You have the right to refuse to have your vehicle searched. You have the right to film your interaction with police. You have the right to ask to leave. You also have the right to resist an unlawful order such as a police officer directing you to extinguish your cigarette, put away your phone or stop recording them.
However, there is a price for asserting one’s rights. That price grows more costly with every passing day.
If you ask cops and their enablers what Americans should do to stay alive during encounters with police, they will tell you to comply, cooperate, obey, not resist, not argue, not make threatening gestures or statements, avoid sudden movements, and submit to a search of their person and belongings.
Unfortunately, there are no longer any fail-safe rules of engagement for interacting with the police.
In the American police state, compliance is no guarantee that you will survive an encounter with the police with your life and liberties intact.
Every day we hear about situations in which unarmed Americans complied and still died during an encounter with police simply because they appeared to be standing in a “shooting stance” or held a cell phone or a garden hose or carried around a baseball bat or answered the front door or held a spoon in a threatening manner or ran in an aggressive manner holding a tree branch or wandered around naked or hunched over in a defensive posture or made the mistake of wearing the same clothes as a carjacking suspect (dark pants and a basketball jersey) or dared to leave an area at the same time that a police officer showed up or had a car break down by the side of the road or were deaf or homeless or old.
More often than not, it seems as if all you have to do to be shot and killed by police is stand a certain way, or move a certain way, or hold something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or ignite some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.
Now you can make all kinds of excuses to justify these shootings, and in fact that’s exactly what you’ll hear from politicians, police unions, law enforcement officials and individuals who are more than happy to march in lockstep with the police.
However, to suggest that a good citizen is a compliant citizen and that obedience will save us from the police state is not only recklessly irresponsible, but it is also deluded and out of touch with reality.
To begin with, and most importantly, Americans need to know their rights when it comes to interactions with the police, bearing in mind that many law enforcement officials are largely ignorant of the law themselves.
A good resource is The Rutherford Institute’s “Constitutional Q&A: Rules of Engagement for Interacting with Police.”
In a nutshell, the following are your basic rights when it comes to interactions with the police as outlined in the Bill of Rights:
You have the right under the First Amendment to ask questions and express yourself. You have the right under the Fourth Amendment to not have your person or your property searched by police or any government agent unless they have a search warrant authorizing them to do so. You have the right under the Fifth Amendment to remain silent, to not incriminate yourself and to request an attorney. Depending on which state you live in and whether your encounter with police is consensual as opposed to your being temporarily detained or arrested, you may have the right to refuse to identify yourself. Not all states require citizens to show their ID to an officer (although drivers in all states must do so).
As a rule of thumb, you should always be sure to clarify in any police encounter whether or not you are being detained, i.e., whether you have the right to walk away. That holds true whether it’s a casual “show your ID” request on a boardwalk, a stop-and-frisk search on a city street, or a traffic stop for speeding or just to check your insurance. If you feel like you can’t walk away from a police encounter of your own volition—and more often than not you can’t, especially when you’re being confronted by someone armed to the hilt with all manner of militarized weaponry and gear—then for all intents and purposes, you’re essentially under arrest from the moment a cop stops you. Still, it doesn’t hurt to clarify that distinction.
While technology is always going to be a double-edged sword, with the gadgets that are the most useful to us in our daily lives—GPS devices, cell phones, the internet—being the very tools used by the government to track us, monitor our activities, and generally spy on us, cell phones are particularly useful for recording encounters with the police and have proven to be increasingly powerful reminders to police that they are not all powerful.
Knowing your rights is only part of the battle, unfortunately.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the hard part comes in when you have to exercise those rights in order to hold government officials accountable to respecting those rights.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 05/28/2021 – 00:00 - US Sitting On 'Raft' Of Unexamined Virus Intel; Former Official Says 'Almost No Evidence' Of Natural Origin
US Sitting On ‘Raft’ Of Unexamined Virus Intel; Former Official Says ‘Almost No Evidence’ Of Natural Origin
Hours after President Biden promised to release the ‘full report’ from US Intelligence community’s 90-day examination of where COVID-19 originated – unless there’s something he’s unaware of…
…the New York Times reports, there’s things he’s unaware of.
Namely, ‘a raft of still-unexamined evidence that required additional computer analysis that might shed light on the mystery,” according to anonymous senior administration officials.
In other words, the US government has been sitting on a large collection of intelligence in perhaps the most important investigation into an economy-wrecking global pandemic, as China destroyed evidence and has refused to cooperate with international probes. According to the report, Biden’s call for the new investigation was in response to the ‘new’ evidence.
While officials declined to describe the new evidence, they are hoping to apply ‘an extraordinary amount of computer power’ to analyze what the Times speculates may be ‘databases of Chinese communications, the movement of lab workers and the pattern of the outbreak of the disease around the city of Wuhan.”
Biden’s call was also meant to spur American allies and intelligence agencies to scour their own evidence, such as “intercepts, witnesses or biological evidence — as well as hunt for new intelligence,” to assess whether the Chinese government covered up what happened.
Astute readers will note that the NYT substitutes its own facts, framing any lab release as of course “accidental,” and suggesting that Biden only dismissed the lab origin theory “until the Chinese government this week rejected allowing further investigation by the World Health Organization.”
In reality, plenty of evidence existed which the entire leftist establishment and their media surrogates flatly branded a ‘debunked conspiracy theory’ after then-President Trump promoted it, while the World Health Organization (WHO) and US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) parroted CCP propaganda that the virus could have only emerged via ‘natural origin’ (as opposed to the Chinese lab manipulating bat coronaviruses in the same city that the pandemic started).
Meanwhile, China isn’t playing ball.
So far, the effort to glean evidence from intercepted communications within China, a notoriously hard target to penetrate, has yielded little. Current and former intelligence officials say they strongly doubt anyone will find an email or a text message or a document that shows evidence of a lab accident.
One allied nation passed on information that three workers in the Wuhan virological laboratory were hospitalized with serious flulike symptoms in the autumn of 2019. The information about the sickened workers is considered important, but officials cautioned that it did not constitute evidence that they caught the virus at the laboratory — they may have brought it there.
The White House is hoping that allies and partners can tap their networks of human sources to find additional information about what happened inside the laboratory. While the United States has been rebuilding its own sources in China, it has still not fully recovered from the elimination of its network inside the country a decade ago. As a result, having allies press their informants about what went on inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology will be a key part of the intelligence push ahead.
The inquiry has not reached a dead end, a senior Biden administration official said. Officials would not describe the kind of computational analysis they want to do.
According to the Times, both scientists and spies will be working to unravel how the pandemic started, as “Senior officials have told the spy agencies that their science-oriented divisions, which have been working on the issue for months, will play a prominent role in the revitalized inquiry.“
Will the Five Eyes rally around the lab leak?
According to the report, US allies have been providing evidence since the beginning of the pandemic. Australia, a member of the so-called Five Eyes partnership which also includes Britain, Canada and New Zealand, has strongly promoted the lab-leak theory. And while US intelligence agencies are reportedly coming together “around the two likely scenarios,” a former State Department official says the evidence to support the natural origin theory is virtually non-existent.
“We were finding that despite the claims of our scientific community, including the National Institutes of Health and Dr. Fauci’s NIAID organization, there was almost no evidence that supported a natural, zoonotic evolution or source of COVID-19,” said former State Department official David Asher in a statement to Fox News. “The data disproportionately stacked up as we investigated that it was coming out of a lab or some supernatural source.“
Asher, the lead contractor on the subject, said the team investigated the two chief hypotheses for the virus’ origins, the other being the lab-leak theory that has gained credence after widespread media dismissal over the past year.
…
Asher has a history of investigative work tracking money for the AQ Khan network, North Korea’s nuclear program, and top Al Qaeda leaders, but has fallen under scrutiny from former State Department officials.
Asher was critical Thursday of former Assistant Secretary of State Chris Ford, who expressed reservations about the investigation’s findings and cautioned against the lab theory. Ford told Fox News that the AVC probe had been kept secret from him and bypassed department and intelligence community biological experts, although adding the lab origin theory was “very possible.” –Fox News
“That was the epicenter of synthetic biology in the People’s Republic of China, and they were up to some very hairy stuff with synthetic biology and so-called gain-of-function techniques,” said Asher, adding that the odds of natural origin were ‘extremely long.’
“To say this came out of a zoonotic situation, it’s ridiculous,” he concluded.
https://video.foxnews.com/v/embed.js?id=6256307843001&w=466&h=263Watch the latest video at foxnews.com
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/27/2021 – 23:40 - Assad Elected Through 2028 After Predictable Landslide Syria Election, Denounced By West
Assad Elected Through 2028 After Predictable Landslide Syria Election, Denounced By West
This week war-torn Syria took to the voting polls and as expected the result was a landslide victory for Syrian President Bashar Assad, ushering in a fourth seven-year term after he came to power in the year 2000 after the death of his father Hafez, who had been the Syrian Arab Republic’s first strongman Baath ruler going back to 1971.
The results were announced from Damascus early Thursday (local time), making it official that Assad is to rule Syria through at least 2028 – having received 95% of the vote in an election widely denounced as a sham and ‘illegitimate’ by Western leaders, as well the anti-Assad jihadist groups in control of Idlib.
Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma cast their ballots in Douma – a highly symbolic location. Via Reuters Out of 18 million eligible voters (in government areas), a little over 14 million participated (78% participation according to Syrian government figures). While the Syrian state urged the participation of the over five million refugees currently outside the country, it appears this only happened on any significant scale in neighboring Lebanon.
Alongside the armed insurgent jihadist groups obviously boycotting the election, the US-backed Kurdish areas of the oil-rich northeast which are still under American troop occupation also banned the election.
Overnight upon the election results being announced, celebrations broke out in Damascus and other cities with strong loyalist support like Tartus, with fireworks being seen over the Syrian capital and guns being fired into the air.
ساحة الأمويين بدمشق… من احتفالات السوريين بفوز الدكتور #بشار_الأسد بمنصب رئيس الجمهورية العربية السورية#سورية_تنتخب_2021#الانتخابات_الرئاسية_26_أيار_2021 pic.twitter.com/o6yzY9P6ql
— سانا عاجل (@SanaAjel) May 27, 2021
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Perhaps the most interesting line of commentary and reporting came via an AFP journalist on hand during the Syrian election:
Syria’s Bashar al-Assad said Western criticism of Wednesday’s presidential election has “zero value” as he cast his ballot in a Damascus suburb.
Commenting on US and EU criticism branding the vote “neither free nor fair,” Assad said: “Your opinions have zero value”, an AFP journalist reported.
The US and EU had on Tuesday issued a joint statement saying, “This fraudulent election does not represent any progress towards a political settlement.”
Rally in Tartous in support of president Assad short time before elections results are announced. #Syria prevails! 🇸🇾 https://t.co/0f9Edquv5E
— Sara_Haj 🇱🇧 (@Sara_Haj) May 27, 2021
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While the Assad victory was fully expected, the once in seven year voting process within the context of the war which raged since 2011 has fundamentally become a moment where Syrians in government areas (now the majority of the country) take to the streets en masse to show support for the state, and simultaneously their “defiance” to West-backed regime change efforts which sought to overthrow Assad.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/27/2021 – 23:20 - China Braces For Summer Of Floods As 97 Rivers Exceed Warning Levels
China Braces For Summer Of Floods As 97 Rivers Exceed Warning Levels
China braces for another dangerous flood season with 97 rivers already exceeding warning levels as of Thursday, according to Chinese state media Global Times. Major floods are expected this summer, and Western media will soon be drumming up headlines about how confidence in China’s flood control capabilities is faltering.
Water levels along the Yangtze River basin and its tributaries are expected to increase over the next week, the Ministry of Water Resources said, adding that major floods are possible throughout the country from June to August.
Wang Wei, an official with the flood and drought disaster prevention office of the Ministry of Water Resources, told state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) that total flood control capacity is approximately 69.5 billion cubic meters – most of the reservoirs have been discharged to full levels. He said the water level of the Three Gorges Reservoir is about 150.83 meters as of Wednesday and will decline through June 10.
Sun Chunpeng, director of the hydrological information and forecast center under the water resources ministry, told CCTV rivers of southern China are experiencing record-high levels. More precipitation is expected in the weeks ahead and could push river levels to even higher dangerous levels.
The country’s largest freshwater lake, called Poyang Lake, located in Jiangxi Province, could have water above warning levels by the end of the week.
“This year’s rainy season has come earlier than usual, but it is still within the normal range. Last year, China recorded record heavy rainfall, so the chance of this year being the same is low, but extreme weather is unpredictable due to the impact of global warming,” Cheng Xiaotao, the former head for the Institute of Flood Control and Disaster Reduction, with the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, told the Global Times.
QingMa Investment, a hedge fund based in Shanghai China, shows flooding risks are climbing for China.
Last summer’s rainy season was the second-highest level since 1961, which triggered massive flooding and fears of the giant Three Gorges Dam failure that circulated across Western media.
It’s about that time Western media becomes obsessed with China flooding stories and persuades the world that China’s flood control capabilities are lacking.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/27/2021 – 23:00 - Lockheed Martin Put Executives Through Training to Unlearn ‘White Male Privilege’: Report
Lockheed Martin Put Executives Through Training to Unlearn ‘White Male Privilege’: Report
Authored by Brittany Bernstein via National Review (emphasis ours),
Lockheed Martin, the nation’s largest defense contractor, put top executives through a three-day training to deconstruct their “white male culture” and unlearn their “white male privilege,” according to a new report.
Thirteen employees, including a former three-star general and the vice president of production for the $1.7 trillion F-35 fighter jet program, attended a program on Zoom last year led by the consulting firm White Men As Full Diversity Partners, according to City Journal’s Christopher Rufo. The firm works to help white men “awaken together.”
The program was led by the consulting firm White Men As Full Diversity Partners, which specializes in helping white males “awaken together.” The participants included a former three-star general and the vice president of production for the $1.7 trillion F-35 fighter jet program. pic.twitter.com/x5YU2bBNbn
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) May 26, 2021
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The training began with a “free association” exercise which asked the Lockheed executives to list words associated with “white men.” The trainers listed “old, racist, privileged, anti-women, angry, Aryan Nation, KKK, Founding fathers, guns, guilty, can’t jump,” according to Rufo.
The diversity trainers posed the question, “What’s in it for white men?” A list of responses included, “I won’t get replaced by someone who is a better full diversity partner,” “[I will] improve the brand, image, reputation of white men,” and “I [will] have less nagging sense of guilt that I am the problem.”
The consulting firm claims that the “roots of white male culture” include traits such as “rugged individualism,” “a can-do attitude,” “hard work,” “operating from principles,” and “striving towards success” – which are “devastating” to women and minorities.
The employees were also asked to recite and internalize 50 “white privilege statements,” including:
“My culture teaches me to minimize the perspectives and powers of people of other races”;
“I can commit acts of terrorism, violence or crime and not have it attributed to my race.”
After the participants finished their white privilege statements, they were asked to recite and internalize 59 “male privilege statements,” including: “My earning potential is 15-33% higher than a woman’s”; “My reproductive organs are not seen as the property of other men, the government, and/or even strangers because of my gender.”
For the final step, the employees recited and internalized 59 “heterosexual privilege statements,” including:
“I am not asked to think about why I am straight”;
“I can have friendships with or work around children without being accused of recruiting or molesting them.”
The training concluded by asking the participants to read a list of “I’m tired” statements attributed to fictitious people of color and woman, such as “I’m tired of being Black”; “I’m tired of Black boys/girls being murdered”; “I’m tired of … the concept that we should be ‘colorblind.’”
“This is pure neoracism from a company that receives billions of taxpayer dollars every year,” Rufo said in a tweet thread sharing his reporting.
“I call on the United States Senate to launch an immediate inquiry into the racist practices at @LockheedMartin. We must shut this down before it endangers our national security.”
* * *
Meanwhile, never mincing words is Paul Joseph Watson of Summit News:
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/27/2021 – 22:40 - America's Lone Carrier In Asia-Pacific Will Depart Region For Afghan Troop Withdrawal
America’s Lone Carrier In Asia-Pacific Will Depart Region For Afghan Troop Withdrawal
Currently the sole US aircraft carrier based out of the Asian-Pacific, specifically with a home port in Yokosuka, Japan, is the USS Ronald Reagan – but it’s now set to depart the region for the first time in years in preparation for the complete withdrawal of US troops in Afghanistan.
Pentagon officials told The Wall Street Journal the new carrier mission will see the Reagan depart Asian-Pacific waters this summer in support of ensuring a safe US troop exit from Afghanistan by the time of Biden’s Sept. 11 deadline. There’s growing concern that given Americans are now staying well past the previously agreed upon May 1st exit (based on the prior deal under the Trump White House), departing soldiers could face severe Taliban attacks, a scenario which is more likely the longer they stay. But now Congressional hawks worry about the glaring “gap” to be created should ongoing tensions with China escalate.
USS Ronald Reagan, via US Navy The carrier presence is expected to assist in thwarting any such attacks via air operations or other missions which require calling in major firepower.
Lack of a carrier presence near the South and East China seas could (perhaps as an inadvertent byproduct ) actually help to cool continually rising tensions with China – hawks inevitably sounding the “alarm” notwithstanding – following over a dozen contentious sail-throughs of warships in the Taiwan Strait and waters claimed by Beijing, such as the recent Paracel island incident.
“While it is away, the Navy will go without an aircraft carrier presence in the Asia-Pacific region for at least part of that time, the officials said,” WSJ describes. This strongly suggests another carrier may be later called upon to enter the waters.
“The U.S. Seventh Fleet, based in Japan, has dozens of other ships and aircraft, but the redeployment of its only available aircraft carrier represents a significant diversion away from Asia, which President Biden has called a priority for the military,” WSJ continues. The current carrier operating in the Middle East, which has been active in the north Arabian sea since last month, is the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower – but it’s scheduled to return to port in Virginia in July.
Already on Thursday this is sparking controversy over the largest navy in the world “not having enough ships”…
Senate Armed Services Comm top Republican @JimInhofe worries abt reported redeployment of #USSRonaldReagan from @INDOPACOM to help w/ #Afghanistan withdrawal@SecDef “should not have to choose btw providing force protection & keeping an aircraft carrier in the priority theater” pic.twitter.com/BaDhAApCxe
— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) May 27, 2021
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This appears part of US Central Command commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie’s promise to the Senate Armed Services Committee made last month wherein he stated, “We will bring additional resources in [to the region] in order to protect the force as it comes out” of Afghanistan, which is by far America’s longest running war. “That’s normal in any kind of disengagement operation, and I don’t want to go into the detail of those operations right now, but we will have additional capabilities and I’m confident that we and our coalition partners will be able to extract ourselves,” McKenzie said.
And Rabobank comments on the matter: “…at a time of heightened tensions around the South China Sea, due to the US leaving Afghanistan in July–opening up USD1-3trn in mineral resources for anyone brave enough to dive in–the US Navy is shifting the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan to help with the logistics. For the first time in a long time, the US has no aircraft carrier in the Pacific. The symbolism is clear: and it leaves some wondering what might happen if push comes to shove.”
The US has further of late reportedly beefed up its bomber presence in the Gulf region, also as the major logistical feet of pulling out a 20-year build-up of equipment and military hardware continues.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/27/2021 – 22:20 - Brain-Computer Interfaces: Don't Worry, It's Just A "Game"
Brain-Computer Interfaces: Don’t Worry, It’s Just A “Game”
Authored by Robert Wheeler via The Organic Prepper blog,
Valve, the company behind Life and Counter-Strike, has just announced that the video games giant is ushering humanity into a Brave New World. How so? By merely including new technologies called brain-computer interfaces in its games.
BCIs will work on our feelings by adjusting the game accordingly
The head of Valve, Gabe Newell, has stated that the future of video games will involve “Brain-computer interfaces.” Newell added that BCIs would soon create superior experiences to those we currently perceive through our eyes and ears.
Newell said he envisions the gaming devices detecting a gamer’s emotions and then adjusting the settings to modify the player’s mood. For example, increasing the difficulty level when the player is getting bored.
Valve is currently developing its own BCIs and working on “modified VR head straps” that developers can use to experiment with signals coming from the brain. “If you’re a software developer in 2022 who doesn’t have one of these in your test lab, you’re making a silly mistake,” Newell said.
VR headsets will collect data by reading our brain signals
Valve is working with OpenBCI headsets. OpenBCI unveiled a headset design back in November that it calls Galea. It is designed to work alongside VR headsets like Valve’s Index.
“We’re working on an open-source project so that everybody can have high-resolution [brain signal] read technologies built into headsets, in a bunch of different modalities,” Newell added.
“Software developers for interactive experience[s] — you’ll be absolutely using one of these modified VR head straps to be doing that routinely — simply because there’s too much useful data,” said Newell.
The data collected by the head straps would consist of readings from the players’ brains and bodies. The data would essentially tell if the player is excited, surprised, bored, sad, afraid, or amused and other emotions. The modified head strap will then use the information to improve “immersion and personalize what happens during games.”
The world will seem flat and colorless in comparison to the one created in your mind
Newell also discussed taking the brain-reading technology a step further and creating a situation to send signals to people’s minds. (Such as changing their feelings and delivering better visuals during games.)
“You’re used to experiencing the world through eyes,” Newell said, “but eyes were created by this low-cost bidder that didn’t care about failure rates and RMAs, and if it got broken, there was no way to repair anything effectively, which totally makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, but is not at all reflective of consumer preferences.”
“So the visual experience, the visual fidelity we’ll be able to create — the real world will stop being the metric that we apply to the best possible visual fidelity.
“Where it gets weird is when who you are becomes editable through a BCI.” ~ Gabe Newell
Typically your average human accepts their feelings to be how they truly feel. Newell claims that BCIs will allow for an edit of these feelings digitally.
“One of the early applications I expect we’ll see is improved sleep — sleep will become an app that you run where you say, ‘Oh, I need this much sleep, I need this much REM,’” he said.
Newell also claims that another benefit could be the reduction or complete removal of unwanted feelings or brain conditions.
Doesn’t something good come from this technology?
Newell and Valve are working on something beyond merely the improvement of the video game experience. There is now a significant bleed over in the research conducted by Newell’s team and the prosthetics and neuroscience industries.
Valve is trading research for expertise, contributing to projects developing synthetic body parts.
“This is what we’re contributing to this particular research project,” he said, “and because of that, we get access to leaders in the neuroscience field who teach us a lot about the neuroscience side.”
Are we equipped to experience things we have never experienced?
Newell briefly mentioned some potential negatives to the technology. For example, he said how BCIs could cause people to experience physical pain, even pain beyond their physical body.
“You could make people think they [are] hurt by injuring their tool, which is a complicated topic in and of itself,” he said.
From the TVNZ article:
Game developers might harness that function to make a player feel the pain of the character they are playing as when they are injured — perhaps to a lesser degree.
Like any other form of technology, Newell says there’s a degree of trust in using it and that not everyone will feel comfortable with connecting their brain to a computer.
He says no one will be forced to do anything they don’t want to do, and that people will likely follow others if they have good experiences, likening BCI technology to cellular phones.
“People are going to decide for themselves if they want to do it. Nobody makes people use a phone,” Newell said.
“I’m not saying that everybody is going to love and insist that they have a brain-computer interface. I’m just saying each person is going to decide for themselves whether or not there’s an interesting combination of feature, functionality, and price.”
But Newell warned that BCIs come with one other significant risk. He says, “Nobody wants to say, ‘Remember Bob? Remember when Bob got hacked by the Russian malware? Yeah, that sucked. Is he still running naked through the forests?’”
Is this just another step in separating us from ourselves?
The truth is we will continue to be told to ignore the implications for this type of technology and the direction in which we are heading. Because, of course, they ARE developing prosthetics, and this is an advance in scientific discovery. Still, one step forward by an agenda and a plan created long ago only brings us that much closer to losing our ability to remember.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/27/2021 – 22:00 - Illinois McDonald's Offers Free Iphones To New Hires Amid Labor Shortage
Illinois McDonald’s Offers Free Iphones To New Hires Amid Labor Shortage
Thanks to President Biden’s trillions in stimmy checks that pay unemployed Americans more for sitting on their ass than having a job, the nationwide job shortage continues to worsen. The service industry has been impacted the most as one fast food restaurant in Illinois offers free iPhones to new hires.
Twitter user “Bragard“ posted a picture of a promotional ad in the window of a McDonald’s in Illinois that read: “Now Hiring – Free iPhone.”
There was no mention of what type of iPhone, but the fine print stated: “After six months employment & meet employment criteria,” the new hire would be rewarded with a new smartphone.
Bragard’s tweet went viral with more than a quarter-million likes and 36k retweets.
A McDonald’s worker at the Altamont, Illinois location confirmed to Bussiness Insider that the promotion was, in fact, real.
A spokesperson for the company told Insider the fast-food chain was increasing recruitment ahead of the summer. It said individual restaurants offered special promotions and a range of benefits, including pay incentives, such as paid time off, sign-on and referral bonuses, and appreciation pay.
The promotion comes as one McDonald’s in Flordia offered people $50 to just show up to an interview. The fast-food industry has been hit the hardest with labor shortages as fewer people are returning to the workforce.
Last month, JPMorgan warned clients of a nationwide labor shortage.
Besides hiring promotions, McDonald’s is raising the hourly wages for its employees at corporate-owned locations by 10% over the next several months. This leaves out stores owned by franchisees.
“If you want to look like you’re raising wages to $15 an hour, then you should actually raise wages to $15 an hour, for every McDonald’s worker in this country, minimum,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said last week.
“We’re not buying it. We’re not falling for it.”
Wage push inflation has a spiral effect – say goodbye to “Dollar Menu” prices.
More or less, soaring labor costs for fast food restaurants will incentivize them to automate to achieve lower costs.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/27/2021 – 21:40 - California Joins The Long List Of States, Companies, & Sports Leagues Bribing Americans To Get Vaccinated
California Joins The Long List Of States, Companies, & Sports Leagues Bribing Americans To Get Vaccinated
With demand for COVID-19 vaccines in the US waning quickly, both individual states and the federal government are pulling out all the stops to try and convince as many American adults as possible to consent to being vaccinated. Some states have pushed promotions offering free money, free beer, and free doughnuts, among other offers. Oregon is even offering a $1 million lottery for which only the vaccinated are eligible.
As more states embrace these types of incentives, California just announced that it was hopping on the vaccination lottery bandwagon Thursday evening by offering 10 vaccinated residents the chance to win $1.5 million each, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Thursday, while another 30 residents will win $50K cash prizes.
The program is being announced as California struggles to boost its vaccination rate (while the national rate of adults who have received at least one dose has just passed 60%).
More than 288 million doses of the vaccine have been distributed across the US, but the daily rate for patients receiving both their first and second doses is slowing.
Source: USA Today
These types of initiatives are being rolled out across the US as rural areas see comparatively little demand when compared with urban areas.
Now that California is in the mix, 7 US states are offering the possibility of cash prizes for those who choose to get the vaccine. Prizes range from a daily $40,000 prize in Maryland to a $5 million jackpot in New York. Here’s a rundown of what other states are offering. Another state, West Virginia, is offering savings bonds to all adults between the ages of 16 and 35.
Ohio
The Buckeye State is offering $1 million vaccine lottery prizes. The state administered a record number of vaccines in the first two days after announcing the $1 million vaccine lottery.
The money is coming from the state’s pandemic relief funds.
New York
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the Empire State will offer a free $20 scratch-off lottery tickets to the vaccinated for a chance at a $5 million Mega Multiplier Lottery. The program, which was announced last Thursday, ends tonight.
Maryland
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said residents over the age of 18 who sign up to receive the COVID-19 vaccine will be entered into the lottery.
“All you have to do to enter is get your shot,” Hogan said Thursday.
The cash prizes will be dispersed in daily $40,000 drawings between May 25 to July 3, ending with a $400,000 jackpot, which will be drawn on July 4.
Kentucky
The Kentucky Lottery is giving a free Cash Ball 225 ticket — which usually costs $1 per ticket — to COVID-19 vaccine recipients ages 18 and older. Lottery officials will give 225,000 free tickets out to vaccinated residents in the state.
“I hope this shot at $225,000 will be the incentive needed for more Kentuckians to get a vaccine,” Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said. “Helping keep our Kentucky communities safe and a free chance at winning hundreds of thousands of dollars is a win-win for everyone involved. “
Oregon
As we noted above, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown unveiled the state’s “Take Your Shot, Oregon” lottery last week.
Vaccination data from the CDC broken down by county shows that the biggest gaps in vaccination rates are largely between rural and urban communities, with rural areas consistently lagging behind their ally with better resources.
Colorado
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis launched the “Colorado Comeback Cash” program to incentivize residents to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Starting June 4 until July 5, one vaccinated resident will be chosen at random to win $1 million, with one winner each week for five weeks.
West Virginia
In West Virginia, in a bid to get more young people vaccinated, the state will give out $100 savings bonds to all 16- to 35-year-olds who get the COVID-19 vaccine, including those who have already received their shot.
People Magazine also published an article with instructions for how readers can get the most free stuff with their vaccine card.
White Castle
The fast food chain is giving out their cake on a stick (take your pick from butter cake, fudge dipped brownie, fudge dipped cheesecake-on-a-stick, or birthday cake) until May 31.
Juniors Cheesecake
The beloved cheesecake chain is offering a free cupcake-sized taste of their famous cheesecake at their flagship restaurant in Brooklyn until May 31 with proof of full vaccination against COVID-19.
Nathan’s Famous
Nathan’s is offering a free hot dog on the same day of your vaccine at their original Coney Island location in Brooklyn, New York.
Krispy Kreme
The doughnut chain is offering one free doughnut per day for the rest of 2021 to customers who present proof of being fully vaccinated.
Sports franchises, including the NFL, are also offering incentives including free Super Bowl tickets.
NFL
The NFL announced during the Global Citizen’s VAX Live: The Concert to Reunite the World event that they would be giving away 50 tickets to Super Bowl LVI to vaccinated people who shared why it was important to get the shot.
MLB
The MLB teams are offering vaccinations at their respective stadiums (Yankee Stadium and Citi Field) and a free ticket to a game as encouragement to get the vaccine.
On the services side, President Biden tweeted that Uber and Lyft would offer free rides to vaccination sites.
Help spread the word: From May 24 until July 4, Uber and Lyft will offer everyone in America free rides to and from COVID-19 vaccination sites.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 18, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Finally, Office Depot and Office Max are offering free lamination for vaccine cards nationwide through July 25.
And it’s not just states that are offering these incentives: Cities and corporations (like Krispy Kreme) are getting in on the action. In NYC, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that tickets to a slew of the city’s top destinations and experiences will be made available at a discount or for free to those who’ve received the COVID-19 vaccine. Meanwhile, the mayor of Long Beach, California (hometown of Snoop Dogg and Sublime) is offering two free tickets to the Aquarium of the Pacific for those getting vaccinated by May 15.
Finally, we have one simple (awkward) question – why are states, companies, and sports leagues having to bribe people to get vaccinated against “the most deadly pandemic in over a century”?
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/27/2021 – 21:20 - Li Auto Predicts 15% Sales Rise In China, As U.S. Competitor Tesla "Runs Foul" Overseas
Li Auto Predicts 15% Sales Rise In China, As U.S. Competitor Tesla “Runs Foul” Overseas
With Tesla falling out of favor in China, one domestic EV maker, Li Auto, is predicting a tailwind.
The Chinese Tesla rival, which produces the Li One SUV, predicts that its sales will rise at least 15% in from April to June as a result of Tesla running “foul of angry Chinese customers,” SCMP reported on Wednesday.
The company’s Li One SUV competes with Tesla’s Model Y. It is an extended-range sport-utility vehicle (SUV) that is priced at 328,000 yuan (US$51,316), according to the report.
Li Auto said on Wednesday that Q2 deliveries would come in between 14,500 units and 15,500 units, up from estimates of 12,579 in the first three months of the year. Li reported a 13% decline in shipment volume in Q1 from 14,464 units the year prior. Now, it believes it is poised to increase its market share due to Tesla’s ongoing rocky relationship with the CCP and Chinese regulators.
Eric Han, a senior manager with Shanghai-based business advisory firm Suolei, commented: “Some Chinese drivers who want to own a premium smart EV are looking at the indigenous brands amid a series of news reports about Tesla’s quality and safety. NIO and Xpeng are also expected to gain a bigger market share.”
Shares of Li Auto are down 30.7% in the U.S. so far after rising more than 150% in 2020.
Recall, about a week ago, we continued to note how Tesla had fallen out of favor in China, with some Chinese government compounds banning the vehicles. Staff at some Chinese government officers were told earlier this month not to park their Tesla cars inside of government compounds “because of security concerns over cameras installed on the vehicles.”
“At least two government agencies” in Beijing and Shanghai had been told the same.
Recall, before making somewhat of an about face on their recent attitude on Tesla (after Musk’s rebuke of bitcoin), Chinese state media had been anything but friendly to the U.S. auto manufacturer.
We have been documenting the ongoing spat between Tesla and the Chinese Communist Party over the last month, apparently (at least publicly) catalyzed by a protestor at the Shanghai Auto Show alleging faulty breaks on Tesla vehicles. This led to intense shaming by Chinese media, who called Tesla’s handling of the situation a “blunder” and suggested it could “inflict serious damage” on Tesla with the Chinese market.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/27/2021 – 21:00 - 'Defund The Police' Atlanta Mayoral Candidate Has Car Stolen By Kids In Broad Daylight
‘Defund The Police’ Atlanta Mayoral Candidate Has Car Stolen By Kids In Broad Daylight
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,
An Atlanta city councilman running for mayor, who last year supported a measure to reduce city police funding by tens of millions of dollars, had his car stolen by children on Wednesday, he and police confirmed.
Councilman Antonio Brown had been attending a ceremony in northeastern Atlanta at 12 p.m. Wednesday when several children jumped into his vehicle and drove away, he said.
“You don’t immediately think, ‘Oh, these kids are going to steal my car,’” Brown told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, referring to the incident, adding that the thieves appeared to be children, although one of them “acted as though he had a gun.”
Brown told officers that he emerged from his car to speak with someone when “several males entered his unlocked car and drove away with it,” according to police. “At this time, officers are gathering information on exactly how this happened and working to identify anyone involved in the incident and locate the stolen vehicle,” the department added.
After the children got into the vehicle and were about to leave, Brown said he held onto his car and was dragged about a block down the road before he let go of it, adding that the driver “started to go faster and faster.”
In an interview with FOX5, the councilman said the children were between the ages of 6 and 12.
“One kid was in the driver’s seat. [Community leader Ben Norman] attempted to open the door to get him out of the car. He fought with Ben. I then engaged and tried to get him out of the car. The three other kids were trying to figure out how to get in the car or stay out of the car. He started to hit on the gas,” Brown added.
Brown defended his stance on law enforcement saying “there’s no amount of officers … that could have stopped this from happening.”
Brown said that he doesn’t plan on filing charges against the children.
“This is a generational poverty issue. These kids, it’s 12:30 in the afternoon. Why aren’t they in school? Why aren’t we enforcing systems to ensure that if they are not in school, they’re in recreational centers?” he told WSB-TV.
Brown called 911 and waited for five minutes to speak to a dispatcher, and then waited 45 minutes for the police to arrive.
Brown is running his mayoral campaign, according to the Journal-Constitution, on a platform of “reimagining public safety,” which is a term generally used by left-leaning officials who want to reduce the budgets of police departments and transfer the money into social programs.
Last summer, in the midst of Black Lives Matter protests and riots, Brown was an avid participant in BLM marches and demonstrations, calling for the resignation of Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms in the wake of an officer-involved fatal shooting of Rayshard Brooks.
Brown and several other Atlanta City Council members last June voted in favor of an ordinance that would have defunded the Atlanta Police Department by about $73 million. The measure failed in a 7-8 vote. Before it was voted down, Brown appeared to be one of the measure’s chief proponents.
The councilman’s car was stolen in the midst of a crime wave that’s hit major metropolitan areas. Atlanta is no different as homicides are up 52 percent from the same time last year, while the number of shootings has increased 40 percent, according to the Atlanta Police Department.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/27/2021 – 20:40 - Lockheed, GM Team-Up To Develop Next-Gen Lunar Rover For Astronauts
Lockheed, GM Team-Up To Develop Next-Gen Lunar Rover For Astronauts
Lockheed Martin and General Motors are teaming to develop the next-generation lunar vehicle for NASA’s upcoming Artemis missions to the Moon.
The Artemis program aims to land astronauts on the lunar surface by the midpoint of the decade. For exploration purposes, astronauts will need “surface mobility that is critical to enable and sustain long-term exploration of the lunar surface. These next-generation rovers will dramatically extend the range of astronauts,” a Lockheed press release read.
The new lunar vehicle “may allow astronauts to explore the lunar surface in unprecedented fashion and support discovery in places where humans have never gone before,” the defense contract continued.
“This alliance brings together powerhouse innovation from both companies to make a transformative class of vehicles,” said Rick Ambrose, executive vice president, Lockheed Martin Space. “Surface mobility is critical to enable and sustain long-term exploration of the lunar surface. These next-generation rovers will dramatically extend the range of astronauts as they perform high-priority science investigation on the Moon that will ultimately impact humanity’s understanding of our place in the solar system.”
NASA’s request for a next-generation lunar vehicle comes as GM, more than half a century ago, helped Boeing to create the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) for the Apollo mission to the Moon in 1969.
“General Motors made history by applying advanced technologies and engineering to support the Lunar Rover Vehicle that the Apollo 15 astronauts drove on the Moon,” said Alan Wexler, senior vice president of Innovation and Growth at General Motors. “Working together with Lockheed Martin and their deep-space exploration expertise, we plan to support American astronauts on the Moon once again.”
GM will leverage its battery-electric technologies and propulsion systems to allow the rover to have a much greater range than the electric Apollo LRV. It will also incorporate autonomous, self-driving systems that will enable the rover to prepare for human landings, provide payload services, and allow astronauts to explore farther distances.
Lockheed Martin said the lunar rover is “being designed to traverse significantly farther distances to support the first excursions of the moon’s south pole, where it is cold and dark with more rugged terrain.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/27/2021 – 20:20 - When Will America Protect Itself Against EMP, Cyber, & Ransomware Attacks?
When Will America Protect Itself Against EMP, Cyber, & Ransomware Attacks?
Authored by Peter Pry, op-ed via The Hill,
“A long-term outage owing to EMP could disable most critical supply chains, leaving the U.S. population living in conditions similar to centuries past, prior to the advent of electric power. In the 1800s, the U.S. population was less than 60 million, and those people had many skills and assets necessary for survival without today’s infrastructure. An extended blackout today could result in the death of a large fraction of the American people through the effects of societal collapse, disease and starvation. While national planning and preparation for such events could help mitigate the damage, few such actions are currently under way or even being contemplated.”
– Congressional EMP Commission (2017)
The people of Rangely, Colo., are not waiting for Washington to protect them from a Great American Blackout caused by a solar superstorm or cyber warfare or electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. Like several other Western municipalities, Rangely, a town of 2,300 in northwest Colorado, home to a community college, has rolled up its sleeves and, in the best traditions of Western pioneering spirit, independence and self-sufficiency, is building redundant microgrids so they can survive anything.
Texas state Sen. Bob Hall and his colleagues aren’t waiting for Washington to “provide for the common defense,” either. Hall’s bill to protect the Texas electric grid from all hazards — including EMP, cyber warfare and sabotage — recently passed the state Senate.
Texans had a small taste of “electronic apocalypse” in February when an ice storm caused statewide rolling blackouts, resulting in property damage totaling billions of dollars, fuel shortages including a reduction in the national fuel supply, industrial accidents, including a major explosion and fire in a chemical plant, and 100 deaths. Experts have cautioned the same could happen during hot, summer weather.
Sen. Hall, a former Air Force officer and an EMP expert, has been warning Texas for years that electric grid vulnerability to EMP and cyber attack could have catastrophic consequences. The Electric Reliability Council Of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the state’s electricity infrastructure, proved in February that they and the utilities are not even prepared to cope with a severe ice storm, let alone existential threats from EMP and cyber warfare.
In South Carolina, Ambassador Henry Cooper, a former Air Force officer, EMP expert and engineer, is working with Duke Energy on the Lake Wylie project to protect a nuclear reactor from EMP — a pilot project that could result in converting 100 U.S. nuclear reactors into “islands of survivability” to help the nation recover in the event of an EMP or cyber attack, or both. The Lake Wylie project began, and continues, as a local grassroots initiative receiving no financial or technical support from the Department of Energy, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or other agencies of the federal government.
Ambassador Cooper says he has lost faith that Washington will ever act to protect the national electric grid and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures from EMP and cyber warfare. According to Cooper, if America is to be protected, it won’t be done by an incompetent federal government but by the people and the states, working “from the bottom up.”
Now the recent Colonial Pipeline cyber attack appears to prove the ambassador is right. The official story is that Russian hackers made a ransomware attack on the business side of Colonial Pipeline’s information technology network, moving the owners, Koch Industries, to shut down the pipeline to exercise “an abundance of caution.” So supposedly, turning off the 5,500-mile artery that supplies 45 percent of petroleum to the eastern U.S. for civilian and military use — causing gas shortages and panic-buying — was self-inflicted.
Or maybe not.
The U.S. government and Koch Industries might not want to admit that Russian hackers turned off Colonial Pipeline — which they could do by manipulating the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system that controls the pipeline valves. A cyber attack could destroy the pipeline by manipulating valves to cause excessive pressure, resulting in an explosion. At minimum, the decision to turn off Colonial Pipeline proves that the ransomware threat was sufficiently credible that the government and Koch did not want to take any chances.
So why is Colonial Pipeline vulnerable to Russian hackers, and the Texas electric grid vulnerable to ice storms, and all the nation’s life-sustaining critical infrastructure vulnerable to EMP and cyber attacks?
Since President George W. Bush’s administration established the Department of Homeland Security, protection of the nation’s critical infrastructure supposedly has been high priority. But in truth, little has been done.
Much to their credit, Congress passed the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act in 2015, the White House issued an executive order to protect critical infrastructure from EMP in 2019, and Congress in 2020 incorporated the essentials of the order into the National Defense Authorization Act, giving it the force of law. This month, President Biden issued an executive order to improve cybersecurity. The White House and Congress have given the federal government all the direction and legal authority necessary to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure from existential threats — yet, again, little has been done.
The problem may be that there are too many lawyers and non-expert bureaucrats in charge of national preparedness for EMP and cyber warfare who lack deep technical expertise. The problem may be that lawyers are not forged in a national security culture that gives highest priority to winning a World War III. Lawyers are taught negotiation, compromise, achieving consensus among all stakeholders — which means critical infrastructure never will be protected.
Once upon a time, nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer (not a lawyer) led the Manhattan Project to invent the atomic bomb in just three years. Adm. Hyman Rickover, an engineer and not a lawyer, built the U.S. “nuclear navy.” And rocket scientist Werner von Braun, not a lawyer, ran NASA and sent Americans to the moon.
Today what is urgently needed are EMP and cyber warfare experts to run another “Manhattan Project” to quickly protect America’s critical infrastructure. Their maxim should be: “Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way!”
* * *
Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. He served as chief of staff to the EMP Commission, on the staff of the House Armed Services Committee, and was an intelligence officer with the CIA. He is author of “The Power And The Light: The Congressional EMP Commission’s War to Save America.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/27/2021 – 20:00 - Australia Imposes 4th COVID Lockdown On Melbourne As New Cluster Found
Australia Imposes 4th COVID Lockdown On Melbourne As New Cluster Found
Despite essentially cutting off all international travel in an attempt to “raise the drawbridge” and keep out COVID-19 after mostly purging it from their society, Australia is entering its fourth COVID-inspired lockdown in Melbourne, the country’s second-largest city. The lockdown began Thursday and was set to remain in place for a week for Melbourne and the rest of Victoria state after a new cluster of cases was uncovered, yielding 26 new infections, including one person who was sent to intensive care, the AP reports.
Another 10K people have reportedly had some form of contact with those infected.
“Unless something changes, this will be increasingly uncontrollable,” Victoria Acting Premier James Merlino said.
Australia’s federal goverment declared Melourne a hot spot, allowing the city to tap additional federal resources. PM Scott Morrison said 218 military personnel would be dispatched to Victoria to help administer vaccine doses to the population. Additional doses have been sent to Victoria, where only 3.9MM doses have been administered so far among a population of 26MM.
Health Minister Greg Hunt described the lockdown, which begins at midnight, as “highly regrettable, but necessary restrictions under the current circumstances.”
Under the terms of the strict lockdown, people will only be able to leave home to shop for food and essential items, provide or receive care, exercise, work or study if they are unable to do so from home, and to get vaccinated. Masks will be compulsory indoors and outdoors.
Cafes and restaurants will only be able to sell takeout, and schools will close once again, reverting to all-remote instruction for the duration of the lockdown. Professional sports events in Melbourne will continue, but crowds won’t be allowed.
Raising the sense of alarm, Australian authorities said the variant that caused the latest outbreak is the same one first identified in Inda, which has made its way across Europe and the US by now. Australia’s Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly confirmed that it was the Indian variant designated as a “variant of concern” by the WHO.
The new Melbourne cluster was found after a traveler from India became infected while in hotel quarantine in South Australia state earlier this month. The traveler was not diagnosed until he returned home from Adelaide to Melbourne.
The city of 5MM people became Australia’s biggest hot spot for the first time last year when infections peaked at 725 new cases in a single day in August at a time when community spread had been virtually eliminated elsewhere in the country.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/27/2021 – 19:40 - Will The Madness Of 2020 Last?
Will The Madness Of 2020 Last?
Authored by Victor Davis Hanson, op-ed via The Epoch Times,
The COVID-19 pandemic is ending with mass vaccinations. So is the national quarantine. The rioting, looting, and arson that began in the summer of 2020 is finally sputtering out.
The acrimony over the 2020 election is fading. Trump Derangement Syndrome became abstract when Donald Trump left office and was ostracized from social media.
In other words, the American people are slowly regaining their senses after the epidemic of mass hysteria that gripped the nation last year.
But many Americans wonder whether what Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and the hard left wrought last year will last when the nation is no longer gripped by 2020 madness.
Teachers and academics are notorious for furious opposition to administrative bloat. For the last 50 years, administrations have proliferated while the ratio of non-teachers to teachers has skyrocketed—much to the chagrin of teachers unions.
But in the last year, colleges have gone mad in hiring thousands of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” administrators. Their job descriptions may be vague, but certainly they will not contribute to classroom education. Instead, they will monitor the speech and actions of those who do.
How long will mostly left-wing teachers unions continue to support such vast diversions of money to armies of new non-teaching administrators?
Before 2020, the Left demanded “proportional representation” in hiring and admissions. And if minority groups and women were not represented in the workplace according to their percentages of the American population, then prejudice was automatically assumed, and reparatory measures were then taken to hire by race and gender.
“Affirmative action” was the euphemism for such quotas. It was more or less institutionalized because proportional representation was not entirely illogical in a multiracial society, and there was still the common goal to follow Martin Luther King Jr.’s notion of integration and assimilation to make race incidental, not essential, to who Americans are.
Not now. The foundations of the new woke race agenda are mostly anti-white. African American Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot recently decided not to grant interviews to white reporters. The city of Oakland’s entitlement payouts, like those of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, are designed not to be distributed to white people.
A number of black intellectuals now openly envision American life segregated from whites. The Nation’s Elie Mystal envisions his life as “whiteness-free.” Damon Young, a senior editor of The Root and an occasional New York Times contributor, claims, “Whiteness is a public health crisis. It shortens life expectancies …” And Barnard College English instructor Ben Philippe recently wrote a novel envisioning the mass gassing and blowing up of white people.
Such hatred has never been condemned by Black Lives Matter or other civil rights groups. When the country returns to life after COVID-19, will such venom still be tolerable?
For that matter, will the media be able to get away with not covering attacks on Jews in major cities by mostly pro-Hamas or Arab American youth?
Before 2020, the American people had tired of media farces such as the demonization of the Duke lacrosse team, the lies about the Covington Catholic High School kids, and the Jussie Smollett hoax about an attack by white racists. Will Americans return to their earlier skepticism when it increasingly seems as if the media and the government mostly misled them when denying the possibility that COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan lab engaged in the engineering of dangerous viruses?
Will people still believe that “armed insurrectionists” planned a Jan. 6 coup?
As the hysteria fades, we are learning there were no arms anywhere. No one has been charged with treason, conspiracy, or insurrection. There are no conspiracy kingpins in custody.
By the end of the year, will the media-hungry Dr. Anthony Fauci still be a national icon, as the country finally adds up his contradictory communiqués that were constantly changing and often flat-out wrong?
From March 2020 to spring of 2021, the country went through a mass hysteria. Despite its ideological pretensions, the collective insanity was not unlike the Tulip mania in early 17th-century Holland or the June bug epidemic paranoia of 1962.
But as Americans sober up, will they institutionalize or reject the frenzy remaining from the destructive stampede that took the country over the cliff during the most unhinged year in American history?
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/27/2021 – 19:20 - The Fed Explains Why Stocks Melt-Up In Overnight Trading
The Fed Explains Why Stocks Melt-Up In Overnight Trading
By now everyone has seen some iteration of this chart (most recently discussed here), which shows that whereas stocks are generally flat over longer periods of time during the regular “cash”, or day session, they tend to melt up during the overnight hours when liquidity is far lower and when the “pajama trades” come out and play.
And while there is no single, widely accepted reason for this “overnight drift”, the post-closed meltup phenomenon has been one of the most popular and recurring strategies in equity markets, with many traders selling spoos when the day session begins and then re-buying at the market close in pursuit of scarce alpha.
Today, DataTrek’s Nicholas Colas goes right after the $64 trillion question and asks “why do US stocks so often seem to rally overnight rather than during regular trading hours?” He answers by pointing to an analysis published today by the New York Fed which has some notable observations and makes an interesting conclusion..
First, here is what the Fed dubs the “Overnight Drift”. The chart below shows average daily S&P 500 futures returns by hour from 1998 – 2019. The time stamps on the X axis are East Coast US time, starting at 6 pm local. As you can see, the largest returns (when the red line goes parabolic) are from 2am to 3am. During regular trading hours (930 to 1600, right side of the graph) average cumulative returns are basically flat.
The Fed attributes this “Drift” to US equity market makers absorbing excess supply during selloffs at discounted prices going into the 4:00 pm close, which in turn creates an artificially low S&P closing price. The chart below shows the “Overnight Drift” broken down by days with high “RSV” (Relative Signed Volume, the percent of sell imbalances) versus those with no RSV or negative RSV (lots of buy interest at the close). Sure enough, days with high levels of selling at the close have a more pronounced positive “Overnight Drift”.
Takeaway: to the Fed’s thinking, the Overnight Drift is caused by non-US traders sniffing out artificially discounted closing S&P prices and arbitraging them away (albeit with some risk) before the next trading day in the States. As for a practical takeaway, the first chart we showed you says that on average you’re often better off selling equity positions at the open and putting in your Buy tickets in the middle of the afternoon. Market events can always subvert that approach, of course, but on average it has been a productive rule set to follow.
Sources: Fed Overnight Drift analysis: https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2021/05/the-overnight-drift-in-us-equity-returns.html
Tyler Durden
Thu, 05/27/2021 – 19:00
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