Nov 28

Today’s News 28th November 2020

  • What A Biden Administration Means For Border Security
    What A Biden Administration Means For Border Security

    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 11/28/2020 – 00:00

    Authored by Chris Farrell via The Gatestone Institute,

    A Biden administration means two dramatic and dangerous reversals on Trump policies that will endanger the American public: 1. Termination of President Trump’s signature 2016 campaign issue — The Wall; and 2. Loosening of immigration restrictions.

    “There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration, No. 1,” Biden told National Public Radio earlier this year.

    “I’m going to make sure that we have border protection, but it’s going to be based on making sure that we use high-tech capacity to deal with it.”

    Biden is not really promising any border protection at all. It sounds good, but it is a hollow falsehood. Most of the American public does not know about or has forgotten the $30 billion dollar disaster known as “SBInet.” We have been down this “high-tech virtual wall” road before. The only winners were defense contractors. The virtual wall does nothing to deter or prevent unlawful entry across the border. It merely provides surveillance and recording of the illegal activity. Thousands of hours of video recordings of such crossings are available on the internet right now. Technology contractors are encouraged that a Biden administration would like to continue watching and recording millions of people entering the country illegally.

    The Americans paying the very high price for Biden/Harris reckless open borders policy are in border communities. Biden’s reversals spell doom for overloaded (and closed) hospitals, schools, public housing, and courts. Remember: Biden (and the rest of the Democratic presidential field) promised free healthcare to all illegal aliens.

    Biden will reverse Trump policies and rules governing legal immigration. He will — no doubt — cancel Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban” that barred immigrants from certain countries and curtailed legal immigration, including restrictions on asylum claims.

    Biden has a long public record, so you will not be surprised to learn that a few years ago he was proudly in favor of building 700 miles of border fence. Biden had a border hawk position back on November 27, 2006 at a Q&A with a Columbia, SC Rotary Club meeting. Notably, Biden has faced criticism for his past track record on immigration issues. Obama/Biden deported 3 million illegal aliens. The Trump administration deported fewer than 1 million over the last 3+ years.

    Court battles will continue, of course. Some Trump administration initiatives are still working their way through the judicial process. Biden has committed to restoring the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which gives deportation relief and work permits to those brought illegally to the U.S. as children. Please remember, many of those “children” are now in their early 30s. The Trump administration tried to end the program, but that effort was blocked by the Supreme Court.

    Biden has also glommed onto the “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” mantra, and vowed to initiate a complete system overhaul not accomplished since Reagan’s well-intentioned error of 1986. While making that pledge, Biden disavowed workplace enforcement raids and sees no reason why illegal aliens cannot immediately begin receiving public assistance from taxpaying Americans.

    Setting aside big national policy considerations, let us focus again on the border communities and the Americans directly at risk. Almost seven years into a Judicial Watch investigation dealing with Mexican Cartel penetration of federal, state and municipal law enforcement organizations in the El Paso, Texas region, we uncovered facts that resulted in the Department of Justice Inspector General taking direct action. Corrupt law enforcement officials at the federal, state and municipal level were removed. Other corrupt officials were effectively “neutralized” through exposure and pressure, even if they were not publicly acted against criminally or administratively. We also uncovered and exposed an El Paso-based narco-terror ring headed by Al Qaeda’s director of operations for North America, Adnan El Shukrijuma (deceased), targeting Chicago landmarks. A 48-minute documentary explaining the plot, “The Sun City Cell,” can be found on YouTube.

    What are Americans in El Paso, Texas, Nogales, Arizona, and San Diego, California concerned about with respect to Biden administration border security? Over the past two weeks, in emails and phone interviews, border residents provided the following observations:

    • “Whenever Obama was in there, drug cartels were so bad that it didn’t seem like anybody was fighting the drug cartels… the cartels ruled everything. They ran the dope, they trafficked the young girls, and there were so many more killings.”

    • “Trump had more Customs and Border Patrol agents at the border. Cattle crossings from Mexico were checked, inspected and limited. The cartels have used cattle to move dope for years. Now they’ll go back to moving cattle and laundering money back through the crossing here [Santa Teresa, NM] with less law enforcement. It will be a serious step backwards.”

    • “What happens when the next ‘caravan’ from Honduras and Guatemala shows up? Does everyone gain immediate access to the country and get free healthcare, no questions asked? That’s what they promised. They show crying women and children on the news, but that is a tiny percentage of the people in the ‘caravans’ — they are almost all young men — but the media lies about that and doesn’t show the real story. God, help us!”

    U.S. Customs Service Officer Patricia Cramer, president of the Arizona chapter of the National Treasury Employees Union, revealed in an interview that persons crossing into the United States from Mexico are not health-screened in any way. No temperature taken, no cursory visual exam, nothing. The “locked-down border” under President Trump is a lie. Now, imagine the health and safety conditions under a Biden administration. Remember: In “COVID-world,” you cannot go to the gym, and you must “social distance” in absurd ways — but the border is open, and no one is screened.

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    The (purportedly incoming) Biden administration is promoting a 4 to 6 week national lockdown. The country is in the midst of an “Alice in Wonderland” public health crisis — and the Biden administration is promoting border security and immigration policies that are completely contradictory to what American citizens are enduring.

    Is this what we all have to look forward to over the next four years?

  • How US Presidents Rank For Clemency
    How US Presidents Rank For Clemency

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 11/27/2020 – 23:30

    President Trump has granted a pardon to his former national security advisor Michael Flynn in a rare act of clemency. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with Russian officials and he was fired after just 23 days on the job.

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    However, despite the media uproar over Trump’s actions with Flynn, Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes that throughout his time in the White House, Trump has used pardons, commutations and other forms of leniency less frequently than other presidents, particularly his direct predecessor.

    Infographic: How U.S. Presidents Rank For Clemency | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    As one of the final acts of his eight years in office, President Obama announced that he was commuting the sentences of 330 prisoners, most of whom had been serving time for minor drug offences. Just before his second term ended, the White House announced that Obama had granted more commutations than any president in U.S. history.

    In terms of total executive clemency actions, Obama granted the most since Harry S. Truman, according to Department of Justice data published by the Pew Research Center. He primarily focused on commutations, orders that cut somebody’s prison sentence short. These are different to pardons, which are usually granted after a person has served their time, a forgiveness gesture which also restores somebody’s rights (which a commutation does not do).

  • 10 Hypocritical Dems Who Prattle On About Masks & Lockdowns But Personally Act Like They're All BS
    10 Hypocritical Dems Who Prattle On About Masks & Lockdowns But Personally Act Like They're All BS

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 11/27/2020 – 23:00

    Authored by Victoria Taft via PJMedia.com,

    There are our betters who ignore the COVID rules and then there are the rest of us.

    We’re the people like the Georgia shopper in the tweet below who got hassled at Costco because his son wasn’t wearing a mask. To be clear, the Costco member was wearing a mask but grew upset when store management threatened to toss him out over his kid. The next thing you know, two unmasked police officers were handcuffing the masked father and taking him into custody.

    Yeah, we’re that guy.

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    Two standards, no waiting. Unless it’s for toilet paper, Postmates deliveries, or for schools to finally open.

    Democrats publicly applaud mask mandates (U.S. Senate Democrats), losses of freedom (Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, Chris Cuomo), and cutting off power to your house for having a party (Eric Garcetti). They take pleasure in virtue-signaling to the public about wearing masks, distancing, and not commingling for meals, yet don’t actually follow their own advice when they believe the cameras are off.

    Stay separated, they say. Don’t sing or “exert” yourself with others!  But these scolds give away the game when they do nothing and say nothing about antifa and Black Lives Matter screaming, chanting, rioting, looting, and burning things down.

    Rules for thee but not for me.

    With this in mind, we begin our list of Ten Hypocrite Democrats Who Prattle on About Masks and Lockdowns But Personally Think They’re BS with:

    1. NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio

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    The New York City dictator has presided over the hollowing out of the City That Never Sleeps with his onerous, hypocritical rules. He ordered people not to take anything but essential walks, whatever that means, and closed down the gyms to deny his lockdown victims convenient places to stay strong and healthy. He’s closed schools and sports parks. Yet, and you know where this is going, he took walks with his wife and ordered his own gym to let him in. This while he’s used police to stop large gatherings – not of rioters and protesters – of Jewish children and families. He’s done little to curb violent protests. He has encouraged unrest, in fact, by directing protesters to his hand-painted target. He’s stoked riots at which his daughter has been arrested.

    In this rogue’s gallery, Bill de Blasio is the absolute worst.

    2. California Governor Gavin Newsom

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    The dinner party photos above gave away the game for California Governor Mask-Between-Bites.

    Stay distant, mask between bites, masks inside and outside, no more than three households at the table, stay six feet apart, eat outside, went Gavin Newsom’s ceaseless Thanksgiving and other coronavirus diktats. He even had rules for your outdoor tents. The governor, who sits by idly while petulant teachers’ union bosses keep kids at home on Zoom classes, has his own children in in-person classes in private school. His own business remains open, despite his closure of other wineries for a time.

    His hypocrisies are almost as long as his list of Dolores Umbrage-like Hogwarts ‘decrees.” There’s little to no criticism of his rules and no demand for the underlying science that supposedly supports them. The Santa Anas blow, but Governor Hair Gel demands you wear a mask outside. Reporters, who want to date him, nod their agreement like the bobbleheads they are.

    3. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

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    San Francisco’s hair salons were closed, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi got herself a private, black-market blow-out in San Francisco and it was all done without a mask. Later, the stiletto-wearing octogenarian blamed the salon owner for setting her up

    The Democrat House Leader, who went to Chinatown to record a video urging everyone to come on down when the Wuhan virus was taking hold, now has professionally handmade and coordinated face masks for her designer suits. And you should too.

    4. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot

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    The Beetlejuice doppelgänger pulled a Pelosi and got her hair done during her imposed salon shutdown because, she sniffed, she’s too important to look bad. She is so important, as a matter of fact, that she symbolically repealed her own ban on large gatherings to go to a Joe Biden rally, which, it is widely believed, dwarfed any gathering he had during his actual basement campaign.

    5. CNN Host Chris Cuomo

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    It’s likely that most of what you know about Governor Andrew Cuomo’s kid brother, Fredo, is what you see on Fox News. Chris Cuomo is the whole hypocritical package. Like many New Yorkers, he got coronavirus. CNN made a literal show of his quarantine.  Cuomo hosted his program from the basement of his estate and held forth with withering criticism of people who didn’t quarantine, wear masks or conduct their lives to his exacting standards. Then we found out that in his off time, he was out looking for houses with his wife. And at his other abode in Manhattan, he wasn’t wearing a mask.

    This Cuomo doesn’t hand down diktats like his brother, Governor Nipple Ring, but picks targets, such as people who act as he does, on live TV giving his viewers the green light to go after them.

    6. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer

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    The Michigan governor has been so dictatorial in her response to coronavirus that an impeachment effort has been launched against her. Her diktats included banning the sale of garden seeds and ordering people not to get in their boats and escape to their second homes, which is exactly what her husband understandably tried to do to escape his dictator-wife’s rules. Whitmer brushed off her husband’s planned Memorial Day escape in their boat as him simply joking around. No one was amused.

    7. Oregon Governor Kate Brown

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    Oregon’s machine politician has at one point of the coronavirus shutdown pulled every political lever to keep the state locked down. She’s closed struggling stores, sicced the cops on Thanksgiving revelers, closed every house of worship, and called every Trump supporter racist and a white supremacist (no, it doesn’t matter if you’re a person of color, you’re a white supremacist). And at the same time she dictated there be no large gatherings for the law-abiding, she not only failed to even attempt to stop weeks-long widespread rioting by her antifa and Black Lives Matter allies in Portland, but filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration to try to stop the president from doing it. She is the poster child of hypocrisy.

    For her Thanksgiving messages, she urged people to “uninvite” loved ones and on Thanksgiving Day posted a list of elderly people who died with coronavirus.

    8. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo

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    Behold Governor Andrew Cuomo. Though he’s not the biggest hypocrite in the bunch, he is the most rewarded hypocrite in the bunch. The New York governor is the author of a book about his noble and near-single-handed crusade to close schools and put grannies in coronavirus-infected nursing homes. Fortunately for him, Cuomo’s self-adulating COVID news conferences, featuring his unhinged rants and crazed bravado, have been noticed by the International Emmy awards people, who rewarded Governor Nipple Ring with one of the ersatz metal statues.

    As the New York Post notes, Cuomo sure talks a lot about masks! masks! masks! but doesn’t actually wear them much, except in his Twitter avatar and photo ops.

    9. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser

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    Where to start. The woman who holds news conferences in a mask so you can barely understand what she’s saying has undertaken coronavirus diktats with the seriousness of an East German guard. She lets her pet protesters and rioters loot, terrorize, intimidate and burn things down. She recently broke her own rules and took a trip to Delaware for a Joe Biden rally. The woman who wants to put Bobby Beltway in quarantine for going to Grandma’s called her trip “essential.” But yours isn’t.

    10. Tie Governor Ralph Northam, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock

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    Governor Sheets Blackface issued forth a directive to the masses to wear their masks and then “forgot to bring” his to the Virginia coast. He did selfies with constituents without a mask. Of all the people to forget a mask, it was the man who notoriously donned one in medical school photos and dressed in blackface.

    And 30 minutes before he boarded a plane to see his family for Thanksgiving, Mayor Michael Hancock urged Denver residents not to travel because, you know, COVID and stuff.

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    Hypocrisy is what’s for dinner this Thanksgiving. Eat up, there’s plenty to go around.

    *  *  *

    Victoria Taft is the host of “The Adult in the Room Podcast With Victoria Taft” where you can hear her series on “Antifa Versus Mike Strickland.” Find it  here.  Follow her on Facebook,  Twitter, Parler, MeWe, Minds @VictoriaTaft 

  • This Is How Much Space $300,000 Buys In Cities Around The World
    This Is How Much Space $300,000 Buys In Cities Around The World

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 11/27/2020 – 22:30

    The bull market in hot urban retail and commercial real estate markets lasted for pretty much the entire post-crisis recovery period. But COVID has turned things around, and as people flee to the suburbs, it’s worth taking a look at how valuations have declined.

    While urban real-estate markets have taken a hit as people flee to the suburbs and more space, it’s worth taking a look at how much space costs in different cities around the world. While foreign cities are of course cheaper than the top American metropolises, the numbers in some cases might surprise you.

     

    The median American home price, which is roughly $300,000, can buy a whopping 2,100 square feet in Houston, and nearly 1.5x that in Johannesburg. But in San Francisco and Singapore, that number buys just 300 square feet.

    • The median U.S. home price, $300,000, buys almost 5,000 square feet in Delhi, but only 144 square feet in Hong Kong.
    • Looking at the two extremes in America, homebuyers in Houston could get seven times more space compared to their fellow house-hunters in San Francisco.
    • In Canada, Ottawa offers the most space for $300,000, while Lisbon, Portugal would be a buyer’s best bet of all the European cities included in the analysis.

    Hong Kong’s infamously tiny apartments are probably not the ideal place for riding out a pandemic. But that’s why the city’s real estate market has taken such a hit (well, at least that’s one reason).

    In the US, Houston appears to be the city that offers the best value, as buyers get the highest ratio of square footage per dollar. With the added bonus of living in one of America’s largest and most economically vital cities.

     

    As the formerly city-loving millennial generation sets its sights on the suburbs, and young adults who have fallen on hard times move back in with their middle-class parents, is it possible that cities like NYC could see the economic progress of the last 30 years slip away? Crime is already rising at an alarming rate, and not only in New York.

  • We Haven't Seen This Much Suffering On Thanksgiving Since The Great Depression
    We Haven't Seen This Much Suffering On Thanksgiving Since The Great Depression

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 11/27/2020 – 22:00

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

    In my entire lifetime, there has never been a Thanksgiving like this.  39 million Americans don’t have enough to eat right now, more than 70 million claims for unemployment benefits have been filed so far during this calendar year, and people are waiting in line for hours at food banks all over the nation just for some Thanksgiving handouts.  If you and your family have plenty of turkey to eat, you should be very thankful, because many Americans can no longer even take Thanksgiving dinner for granted these days. 

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    On Tuesday, vehicles were lined up for hours in New Jersey as people waited to receive prepackaged Thanksgiving meals at a local food bank…

    Video obtained by CNN on Tuesday from the Meadowlands entertainment complex in New Jersey showed residents waiting for several hours to obtain prepackaged boxes of meals for the Thanksgiving holiday.

    “If it wasn’t for this place, we wouldn’t know where we would get our food,” one distraught woman told CNN of the food bank in East Rutherford, N.J.

    Of course we have been seeing similar wait times all over the nation.  At one food bank in Texas, demand for Thanksgiving meals was more than eight times higher than normal…

    Food bank officials in Dallas, Texas, have also noticed a staggering increase in demand for food assistance. North Texas Food Bank representatives told the Dallas Morning News that they handed out roughly 8,500 meals to local families during a giveaway on Saturday that in years past has seen fewer than 1,000 show up for donations.

    You can see a stunning photograph of vehicles lined up for that food distribution event right here.

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    There are a lot of really nice vehicles in that picture.  Many of those individuals are probably accustomed to living comfortable middle class lifestyles, but just like I warned in my new book they are “suddenly” in need of food because this economic downturn has turned their worlds completely upside down.

    Yes, there have always been hungry people in America, but what we are witnessing now is hard to fathom.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 12 percent of all Americans did not have enough food to eat between October 28th and November 9th…

    As the coronavirus pandemic continues to surge, more Americans are reporting going hungry, a Washington Post analysis found.

    In data collected by the Census Bureau between Oct. 28 and Nov. 9, around 12 percent of all American adults reported not having enough food to eat, a figure higher than at any other point since the pandemic began earlier this year.

    It is estimated that the current population of the United States is 328 million.

    If you take 12 percent of 328 million, you get more than 39 million Americans that are going hungry right now.

    And this is just the beginning.  Thanks to the new lockdowns that are being instituted all over the country, the number of Americans that are filing for unemployment benefits is starting to rise again…

    The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose last week to 778,000, evidence that the U.S. economy and job market remain under strain as coronavirus cases surge and colder weather heighten the risks.

    The Labor Department’s report Wednesday said jobless claims climbed from 748,000 the week before. Before the virus struck hard in mid-March, weekly claims typically amounted to roughly 225,000.

    Overall, more than 70 million new claims for unemployment benefits have been filed in 2020.

    As I discussed yesterday, we have never seen anything like this before in all of U.S. history.

    At this point, even Hollywood is conducting mass layoffs.  More job loss announcements just keep rolling in with each passing day, and I expect that to continue all throughout the very dark winter ahead.

    Other economic numbers also tell us that the U.S. economy is definitely heading in the wrong direction…

    The data firm Womply says that 21% of small businesses were shuttered at the start of this month, reflecting a steady increase from June’s 16% rate. Consumer spending at local businesses is down 27% this month from a year ago, marking a deterioration from a 20% year-over-year drop in October, Womply found.

    If you think that anyone is going to be able to wave a magic wand and fix this mess, you are just being delusional.

    There are millions upon millions of Americans that have already been pushed to the breaking point by this pandemic.  One of those individuals is a 38-year-old California resident named Andrew Lee…

    “I’ve exhausted all of my unemployment benefits. I’ve had to resort to food stamps and [California’s Medicaid program] for the first time in my life. I’m backdated on my rent and my credit has been ruined,” said 38-year-old Andrew Lee, who lives in a suburb of Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

    Lee lost his job as a business development director several months before the pandemic. But once it hit, it became that much harder to find work. And he didn’t initially qualify for any pandemic-related unemployment benefits.

    His car has been repossessed and his wife’s car has also been repossessed.

    So even if they could find jobs, how are they supposed to get to work?

    Lee is just like so many other hurting Americans.  First he ran through all of his savings, and then he started relying on his credit cards.

    Now that his unemployment benefits have been exhausted, he is out of options, and his family is a step or two from becoming homeless.

    In the months ahead, tens of millions of others will find themselves facing similar scenarios.

    This is what an economic collapse looks like.  The United States hasn’t had to face anything like this since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and what we have experienced so far is just the start.

    In 2019, I received quite a bit of criticism because the economy was relatively stable and to many people it seemed like an “economic collapse” was not even remotely a possibility.

    But now an economic collapse has officially arrived, and all of the things that I have been warning about are starting to happen one right after the other.

    The “perfect storm” is upon us, and most Americans still do not understand the horrors that lie ahead.

    *  *  *

    Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

  • Russia Warns US It Will "Respond" To Future Border Violations In Sea Of Japan
    Russia Warns US It Will "Respond" To Future Border Violations In Sea Of Japan

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 11/27/2020 – 21:30

    Russia’s foreign ministry said Friday that it’s lodged a formal protest with the United States over this week’s incident in the Sea of Japan, calling it a “provocation designed to disturb the peace”. 

    Russia further said Friday it’s military won’t hesitate to “respond” the next time the US Navy brazenly violates its maritime borders. During the Tuesday encounter a Russian warship was described as chasing the US destroyer out of the area.

    “We warn the US not to repeat the violation. We reserve the right to respond in the future,” a foreign ministry statement said.

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    Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain. Source: US Navy

    The incident happened Tuesday and involved a Russian destroyer threatening to ram the USS John S McCain warship which the Kremlin alleged violated sovereign Russian waters by up to 2km:

    According to the Russian defense ministry, its Pacific Fleet destroyer the Admiral Vinogradov used an international communications channel to warn the US ship about “the possibility of using ramming to get the intruder out of the territorial waters”.

    “The Russian Federation’s statement about this mission is false,” said a spokesman for the US Navy’s 7th Fleet, Lt Joe Keiley. “USS John S McCain was not ‘expelled’ from any nation’s territory.”

    It’s essentially a matter of the border not being recognized by the United States.

    The US Navy early this week had responded bluntly: “By conducting this operation, the United States demonstrated that these waters are not Russia’s territorial sea and that the United States does not acquiesce in Russia’s claim that Peter the Great is a ‘historic bay’ under international law.”

    The US 7th Fleet confirmed it was “approached aggressively” by the Russian ship and condemned the provocative behavior.

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    Here’s how the US 7th Fleet framed the question of the maritime border dispute in its formal response to the Russian charge:

    In 1984, the U.S.S.R declared a system of straight baselines along its coasts, including a straight baseline enclosing Peter the Great Bay as claimed internal waters. This 106-nautical mile (nm) closing line is inconsistent with the rules of international law as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention to enclose the waters of a bay. By drawing this closing line, the U.S.S.R. attempted to claim more internal waters – and territorial sea farther from shore – than it is entitled to claim under international law. Russia has continued the U.S.S.R. claim.

    While it’s not the first time an intercept incident has occurred in disputed waters in the Sea of Japan, this latest certainly marks a severe escalation given the rare Russian direct threat of ramming.

  • Are Students Liberal? Yes – But Not Everywhere
    Are Students Liberal? Yes – But Not Everywhere

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 11/27/2020 – 21:00

    Submitted by RealClearEducation, authored by Samuel Abrams, professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

    This article is part of a series of opinion essays on the topic of free speech on campus, coinciding with the launch of the 2020 College Free Speech Rankings…

    When it comes to making news about protests and action for liberal causes, schools in New England seem to dominate the news. We’ve seen violence and protests surrounding visits from Charles Murray and Ryszard Legutko at Middlebury College. Brown University spent hundreds of millions of dollars in response to student protests related to questions of diversity and inclusion. Yale has seen numerous protests and student arrests and students there attacked and harassed a faculty couple who headed a residential college in 2015 claiming that they felt unsafe because of an email message about Halloween costumes.

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    While protests in other parts of the county do make news, such as the recent troubles relating to the police at Northwestern, it appears that students in New England are far more likely to engage in such actions.

    Thanks to new data behind the 2020 College Free Speech Rankings from RealClearEducation, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and survey firm College Pulse – representing the largest study of student attitudes toward speech to date – we know that students enrolled in the higher education institutions in New England are appreciably more liberal and open to shutting down speech and expression than the overwhelming majority of college students.

    With almost 20,000 students in FIRE survey sample, it is possible to break the national sample down into regional groups and the data makes it abundantly clear that those enrolled in New England are notably different.

    The General Social Survey shows that political ideology in the United States has been remarkably consistent since the 1970s and that liberals are not dominant. In the most recent sample, the survey found that 28% of Americans identify as liberal, 31% as conservative, and the balance of 37% are in the middle as moderates. In contrast, 50% of college students are liberal, 26% are conservative and the minority – 23% – are moderates. College students demonstrate a significant liberal lean.

    But this lean is not uniform. In New England, the data reveal that college students live in a huge bubble where there are 5 liberals for every 1 conservative. 71% of New England college students identify as liberal and just 15% conservative and 14% moderate. This is by far the most lopsided region in the nation.

    The most similar regions to New England, ideologically, are the West Coast and Mid-Atlantic regions. 59% of students in both regions identify as liberal with just a fifth of their students holding conservative views, meaning there are three liberal undergraduates for every conservative student in those regions. This breakdown is far off the national average.

    Looking at other regions in the United States, the liberal student dominance disappears. Take the Mountain region – 8 states that are mixed ideologically with rural areas and big and growing cities such as Denver and Phoenix – and the ideological balance is far less extreme. Here about a quarter of students are moderate and in the middle with a little more than a third identifying as conservative and 41% stating that they are liberal. In fact, if one excludes the three extreme liberal regions, the remaining 6 divisions are far more diverse with 46% of students being liberal, a quarter moderate, and about a third (30%) conservative.

    The differences between some schools are striking. At the University of Arizona in Tempe there are 1.5 liberals for every conservative. But Brown in Rhode Island has 12 liberal students for every conservative.

    Ideological imbalance is problematic in and of itself if you value viewpoint diversity in the classroom, but it is also the case that students in New England are far more likely to believe that actions to shut down speech are acceptable.

    When asked whether it is ever appropriate to shout down or try to prevent someone from speaking on campus, 61% of students found that this was acceptable, nationally. But in New England 70% of students thought preventing a speaker was talking was justified in at least some circumstances. This is in stark comparison to regions like East South Central, home to the Universities of Tennessee and Alabama, where just half of the students found such behavior acceptable.

    Similarly, when asked about the acceptability of blocking other students from entering a campus event, almost half (48%) of New England students thought this tactic would be an acceptable way to protest a campus speaker. About 30% of students in the East South Central, the Mountain, West North Central, and West South Central – a nearly 20-point difference – felt that blocking an entrance was acceptable.

    Put somewhat differently, 51% of Yale students would approve of tactics which would prevent students from hearing an opinion on their campus, but just 35% at the Universities of Missouri – which itself made national attention when a faculty member and students tried to forcibly block the press from covering a demonstration – would be willing to block others from attending an event.

    New England schools are collectively an outlier in terms of both student liberalism and their willingness to shut down speech. And the perception that protests against speakers are more common in New England is born out in the data. This lopsided liberal trend matches earlier work, which revealed a similar imbalance, where liberal professors outnumber conservative professors 28 to 1 for New England colleges and universities. And while finding a conservative professor in New England is exceedingly rare and far out of step with the national ratio of 6 to 1, many regions in the country are not as homogenous.

    Ideological imbalance among students is a problem, especially in New England. It is crucial that students of all ideological backgrounds encounter a multitude of ideas in college.

    But it’s important to note that the student imbalance in New England is far less one-sided than the faculty imbalance there. And faculty imbalance may be a far more pressing problem if one values viewpoint diversity. It’s more readily fixable too, if schools would only prioritize the hiring of a more ideologically diverse faculty and work to ensure that all faculty strive to present a multitude of views and intellectual traditions in their classrooms.

  • "Dark Winter" – Millions Of Americans Are Expected To Lose Their Homes
    "Dark Winter" – Millions Of Americans Are Expected To Lose Their Homes

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 11/27/2020 – 20:30

    A dark covid winter is descending on the working-poor of America as millions of adults face eviction or foreclosure in the next few months. Bloomberg, citing a survey that was conducted on Nov. 9 by the U.S. Census Bureau, shows 5.8 million adults face eviction or foreclosure come Jan. 1. That accounts for 32.5% of the 17.8 million adults currently behind rent or mortgage payments. 

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    h/t Bloomberg 

    On Monday, we noted that on Dec. 31 many of the key provisions in the CARES Act are set to expire if there is no action from Congress. This could be catastrophic for 12 million America who will lose access to their Emergency unemployment benefits activated in the aftermath of the covid pandemic, which alone could be a drag of up to 1.5% to growth in 1Q, according to a recent Bank of America report. 

    Additionally, the expiration of eviction moratorium, mortgage forbearance programs, and suspension of student loan payments could compound the working poors’ financial stresses, many of whom, about 21 million of them, are unemployed and receiving benefits from the government.  

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    h/t Bloomberg 

    The survey points out at least half of households in Arkansas, Florida and Nevada are not current on rent and mortgage payments – equating to 750,000 could face an eviction come early 2021. 

    On a city by city basis, New York City, Houston, and Atlanta had the greatest threat of evictions come early next year. 

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    The most concerning part about the expiration of various CARES programs starting on Jan. 1 is that it removes safety nets for the working poor. A lapse from when expirations hit to Congress and the new Biden administration expected to strike a stimulus deal is expected be short-lived. 

  • Shots Fired: China Slaps "Distressing" Tariffs Up To 212% On Australian Wine
    Shots Fired: China Slaps "Distressing" Tariffs Up To 212% On Australian Wine

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 11/27/2020 – 20:30

    China has drastically ramped up its trade conflict with Australia, on Friday slapping a whopping 200% tax on all Australian wine, in a move being widely described as the first shot fired in what went from behind-the-scenes bureaucratic punitive actions to now an open trade war.

    “The Ministry of Commerce imposed import taxes of up to 212.1%, effective Saturday, which Australia’s trade minister said make Australian wine unsellable in China, his country’s biggest export market,” the AP reports. The lead industry body Wine Australia, said the country’s total shipments to China in the first nine months of 2020 accounted for 39% of all Australian wines.

    Australia has been among those countries, foremost among them the United States under Trump, leading the charge of criticism aimed at Beijing over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, lately calling for a formal international probe into the deadly virus’ origins there. 

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    China is the top market for Australian wine exports, via Reuters.

    “This is a very distressing time for many hundreds of Australian wine producers, who have built, in good faith, a sound market in China,” Australia trade minister Simon Birmingham responded on Friday.

    The growing tensions between the two trade partners has also included tit-for-tat travel restrictions and in a couple notable cases the detention of journalists with dual nationality by Chinese security services. This amid China taking measures early this month to block a wide array of key Australian exports from lobsters to coal.

    But as one analyst cited by AP has observed of what’s increasingly obvious, Australia has become a “one-trick pony export-wise to China” and thus Beijing holds all the cards, with Canberra scrambling to play on the defensive while China extracts political concessions by threatening to torpedo Australia’s commodities exports.

    China’s Ministry of Commerce justified the wine tariffs as a necessary response after rampant complaints that Chinese producers were hurt by improperly low-priced Australian imports.

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    Prime Minister Scott Morrison has lately slammed Beijing practicing blatant “economic coercion” with regard to an increasing array of its exports being held up at port for what are seen as contrived inspections procedures, which sometimes end in large shipments going bad, such as lobster. 

    Beijing has also recently began taking aim at Australia’s tourism industry by discouraging tourists and students from visiting the country.

    Via Trading Economics: Australia exports to China was US$103 Billion during 2019, according to the United Nations COMTRADE database on international trade. 

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    On news of this latest 200% wine tax Australia’s main stock market index fell by 0.5%. China’s foreign ministry was quick to capitalize by demanding Australia “do something conductive” to change course and improve relations but without diving into details:

    “Some people in Australia adhering to the Cold War mentality and ideological prejudice have repeatedly taken wrong words and deeds on issues concerning China’s core interests,” said the spokesman, Zhao Lijian.

    Australia should “take China’s concerns seriously, instead of harming China’s national interests under the banner of safeguarding their own national interests,” Zhao said.

    Further fueling China’s dramatic actions is Australia’s impending mutual defense treaty with Japan which is still being deeply negotiated.

    Japan is of course a prime strategic rival to China heavily involved in pressing anti-China rhetoric on its expansion of militarized artificial islands in the South China Sea. 

  • Suicides In Japan Jumped 39% In October…
    Suicides In Japan Jumped 39% In October…

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 11/27/2020 – 20:00

    Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

    Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity… and on occasion, inspiring poetic justice.

    *  *  *

    And the Emmy Goes to the Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo

    Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York, recently released a book he allegedly wrote called, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic,” congratulating himself for being an amazing leader.

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    So the first time I saw the headline that Cuomo had won an Emmy, I thought it was a joke, poking fun at the Governor for his self-aggrandizing book.

    But this is not The Onion: Cuomo, will receive an Emmy award for his 111 televised COVID-19 briefings this spring.

    The academy, which typically awards Emmys to actors in TV series, said Cuomo’s leadership had people around the world tuning in– “New York tough became a symbol of the determination to fight back.”

    The fact that New York has the second highest per-capita COVID-19 death rate of any state hasn’t stopped the praise for this Dear Leader.

    That is why Cuomo clearly deserves the Emmy. He must be a good actor to convince so many people that his utter failure in leadership should be celebrated.

    Click here to read the full story.

    *  *  *

    Just One Liar Triggered a Lockdown for Millions

    Authorities in South Australia don’t think you should blame them for a sudden, strict, six day lockdown that affected 1.7 million Australians.

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    Blame the pizza guy!

    A new Covid patient claimed he contracted COVID-19 from a pizza box.

    This led authorities to fear that the virus had mutated to become more easily transmissible, which prompted their draconian response to lock everyone down again.

    It turns out the man was an employee of the pizza shop, and picked up the virus while working alongside an infected coworker.

    The state’s senior officials blamed the pizza guy, claiming he lied to them, and this is why the lockdown took place.

    Yep. Blame it on the pizza guy. Clearly we can’t hold government officials responsible for the decisions they make, the hysteria they create, or the freedoms they destroy.

    Obey.

    Click here to read the full story.

    *  *  *

    Suicides in Japan Jumped 39% in October

    More Japanese people died by suicide in October alone than have died from COVID-19 throughout the entire pandemic.

    In 2019, Japan saw its lowest suicide rate ever recorded during the 40 years it has kept track.

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    Then suddenly in July 2020, the suicide rate began to skyrocket again. Gee I wonder why.

    October 2020 saw a 39% spike in suicides compared to October 2019.

    17,000 people have died by suicide this year in Japan, while fewer than 2,000 have died from COVID-19.

    Click here to read the full story.

    *  *  *

    Katy Perry Gets a Big Bowl of Hate for Urging Political Tolerance

    Pop singer Katy Perry was delighted with how the Presidential Election has shaped up so far.

    But rather than stoke more division, she Tweeted, “The first thing I did when the presidency was called is text and call my family members who do not agree, and tell them I love them and am here for them.”

    In other words, she reached out with kindness to people who have different opinions than she has. And that seems like a perfectly mature and tolerant thing to do.

    But not to the Twitter Mob!

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    Twitter jumped on the singer immediately for refusing to hate people with opposing political views.

    Apparently she doesn’t realize that 70+ million Americans are guilty of thought crimes and need to be ridiculed, shamed, and exiled.

    Click here to read the full story.

    *  *  *

    Solomon Islands Considers Banning Facebook

    In the name of national unity, the Solomon Islands is looking to ban Facebook.

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

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

    Personally I think Facebook is atrocious. But it’s up to individual people to decide whether or not to use it.

    And surely it must be a total coincidence that a few weeks ago, Facebook was instrumental in spreading leaked documents that showed how COVID-19 economic relief funds had been misspent by the Solomon Islands government.

    Click here to read the full story.

    *  *  *

    On another note… We think gold could DOUBLE and silver could increase by up to 5 TIMES in the next few years. That’s why we published a new, 50-page long Ultimate Guide on Gold & Silver that you can download here.

  • Airport Deploys 'Virus-Killing Robots' During Holidays As Mall Santas Turn To Plexiglass Barriers And 'Sanitation Elves'
    Airport Deploys 'Virus-Killing Robots' During Holidays As Mall Santas Turn To Plexiglass Barriers And 'Sanitation Elves'

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 11/27/2020 – 19:30

    Holidays during the pandemic were always going to be interesting, as fears over a second wave have been met with a flood of lockdowns and restrictions on gatherings.

    Yet, many Americans aren’t buying it, or don’t care about a virus that kills less than 1% of those it infects – as over 1 million travelers flew through US domestic airports last Friday, the 2nd highest daily total since the pandemic hit last spring.

    Airlines, meanwhile, are jumping through all sorts of hoops to keep regulators and worried passengers happy – mandating that passengers wear masks throughout their flights, while airports employ measures of their own such as thermal imaging to scan for fevers (which has ‘accuracy issues‘ per experts). Airports are also employing touchless kiosks and attempting to enforce social distancing recommendations.

    San Antonio International Airport in Texas has gone one step further – deploying a virus-fighting robot that shoots powerful bursts of UV light onto surfaces, according to the Washington Post.

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    It’s called LightStrike, and other airports are considering whether to invest in the $125,000 device that has been shown to be effective against the coronavirus. Some airports are watching to see whether travel improves over the coming weeks, according to officials at Xenex, the company behind the device.

    …

    Xenex says that its robot business has increased 600 percent amid the pandemic. Most of the increase is related to the health-care industry, but the robot also has entered new markets such as hotels, professional sports facilities and police stations. –Washington Post

    “When you bring something like SARS-CoV-2 into focus, institutions like hotels, airlines, professional sports teams, they’re looking for what’s best-in-class to kill it,” according to Xenex CEO, Morris Miller.

    The 43″ tall UV-producing robots with a seven-foot effective radius were initially developed for hospitals as a method of eliminating viruses and antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and was recently picked up by a local school district in Texas, according to the report.

    It’s been known for decades that UV radiation can destroy viruses by chemically altering their genetic material. However, different pathogens are susceptible to UV light at varying wavelengths. Many traditional UV devices use low-intensity mercury bulbs, which means they may take longer to kill organic material such as viruses. By contrast, LightStrike robots have a powerful xenon UV-C light source capable of damaging the DNA and RNA of viruses in a matter of minutes. –Washington Post

    In a test conducted by the Texas Biomedical Research Instituted in San Antonio, the LightStrike robot destroyed COVID-19 in two minutes, and has shown to be effective at killing certain superbugs such as C. diff. 

    Meanwhile, mall santas have also been forced to adapt to Christmas with COVID – with some now appearing for photos from inside ‘acrylic snow globes’ and other barriers.

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    Old Saint Nick will pose for photos from inside an acrylic snow globe in Richmond. He’ll be barricaded behind a eight-foot picture frame in Lakewood, Colo. And in Gruene, Tex., Cowboy Kringle, who wears red leather chaps and a cowboy hat, will keep socially distant by asking visitors to sit on a saddle positioned six feet away.

    This year’s holiday photos will have a decidedly pandemic feel: No more sitting on Kriss Kringle’s lap or whispering in his ear. Instead, venues are increasingly requiring reservations, masks and temperature checks. Santa is hosting drive-through events, attaching face shields to his hat and trading in his white cloth gloves for disposable ones to protect himself — and others — as coronavirus cases skyrocket to new highs around the country. –Washington Post

    “Everything is different this year, but people are finding a way to keep that traditional Santa experience,” said Mitchell Allen, owner of the Hire Santa staffing firm – where ‘virtual bookings have grown tenfold,’ yet only constitute a fraction of the company’s total revenue according to the report.

    “It’s unexpected, to be honest.”

    At Bass Pro Shops, which also owns Cabela’s, Saint Nick is stuck behind an acrylic shield, while elves serve as “Santa’s sanitization squad,” as some 95,000 families stopped by for photos during Santa’s first week at 176 stores.

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    Santa’s helper works to keep things disinfected at the Springfield Bass Pro Shops store. (Annaliese Nurnberg/The Washington Post)

    With struggling retailers being sent into bankruptcy thanks to a sharp dropoff in foot traffic during the pandemic, mall santas have been a longstanding reason for families to set foot in malls. And with Santa-booking companies reporting a 40% dropoff in appointments, and many Santas dropping out of the workforce over health concerns.

    Santas are also nervous. Many are in their 70s and 80s and have health conditions such as diabetes that put them at particularly high risk of coronavirus complications. Brenneman, who owns the booking firm Santa Claus and Co. in Phoenix, said about half of the 30 white-bearded men he employs are sitting the season out, and a few are doing only outdoor events. -WaPo

    In trying to adjust to the ‘new normal,’ mall owners “have spent months — and tens of thousands of dollars — trying to reimagine Santa’s Wonderland for the coronavirus era. The goal, they say, is to spread holiday cheer (but not the virus),” according to the report.

    “Santa can’t give out hugs or candy canes this year, but people still want to see him,” said 70-year-old Mark Brenneman, who has been playing Santa for nearly 50 years. “They want hope. They want normal.“

  • Infographic: The 4-Year-Long Campaign Against Trump
    Infographic: The 4-Year-Long Campaign Against Trump

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 11/27/2020 – 19:00

    Via The Epoch Times,

    The post-election push to pressure President Donald Trump to concede, despite numerous credible allegations of voter fraud and ongoing legal challenges, is not an isolated incident.

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    It is the culmination of a four-year-long campaign against him, which started during his first run for president in 2016 when the FBI launched a politically motivated investigation of his campaign. During his subsequent four years in office, there have been consistent efforts to remove him from office, first through the Russia-collusion narrative and then through impeachment.

    The Epoch Times here provides an overview of some of the main efforts made against the sitting president of the United States.

    This is an issue that transcends party lines, as it is not only an assault on Trump, but an assault on the office of the presidency, and with it, an assault on the foundation of America.

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    Click on infographic to enlarge.

    Politically Motivated Investigation

    The FBI under the Obama administration in 2016 launched a politically motivated investigation of the Trump campaign. Based on publicly available information, we know the investigation was initiated based on the thinnest of evidence: remarks made by a junior Trump campaign adviser to the Australian ambassador in London. In reality, the investigation primarily relied on the discredited “Steele dossier,” produced by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

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    President Donald Trump boards Air Force One in Butler, Pa., on Oct. 31, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

    The Trump–Russia Shadow

    While the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation itself would not find any evidence of Trump–Russia collusion, the ongoing investigations, including selective leaks to the media, would create the public narrative that Trump had colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. This cast a shadow over the first few years of his presidency and constrained his actions both domestically and internationally. Some members of Congress had gone so far as to call for Trump’s impeachment over the false allegations.

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    Former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation James Comey, speaks via a TV monitor during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 30, 2020. (Stefani Reynolds/Pool/Getty Images)

    FBI Under Comey and McCabe

    The FBI under Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe pro-actively worked against Trump. McCabe was directly involved in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, working with FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page. After Comey was fired by Trump in May 2017, McCabe actively pushed the agency to further investigate Trump. McCabe’s FBI went as far as suggesting Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr reach back out to Steele, despite that many of the claims in his dossier had been disproven by that time and the FBI had cut ties with him over his leaks to the media.

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    The New York Times building is seen in New York City on Feb. 7, 2013. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

    Media

    Perhaps one of the most powerful forces working against Trump during his presidency has been the news media. Over the past five years, they have relentlessly published skewed and inaccurate information about Trump while minimizing or ignoring his accomplishments, seeking to portray him publicly as an illegitimate president. This type of reporting has created a climate of anger, hate, and instability in America. It has resulted in threats made to the president’s life and acts of violence against his supporters.

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    The White House stands at dusk in Washington on Feb. 5, 2020. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    Impeachment

    The House of Representatives on Dec. 18, 2019, impeached Trump along partisan lines. Though the Senate would later dismiss the charge, it left a mark on his presidency and dragged the country through months of public attacks in the media. At the center of the impeachment was a phone call Trump made on July 25, 2019, to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which Trump expressed his hope that allegations of potential corruption involving former Vice President Joe Biden would be investigated. Given even the publicly available information at the time, there were legitimate concerns that American political influence and taxpayers’ funds were misused in Ukraine. At the time, it was publicly known that Biden’s son Hunter had received tens of thousands of dollars a month from a Ukrainian energy giant, while then-Vice President Biden—in his own words—had pressured the Ukrainian president to fire a prosecutor as a prerequisite for receiving $1 billion in foreign aid. That same prosecutor had been investigating the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, as well its board, which included Hunter Biden.

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    A medical worker in protective suit conducts nucleic acid testings for residents at a residential compound in Wuhan, the Chinese city hit hardest by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, Hubei province, China, on May 15, 2020. (Aly Song/Reuters)

    CCP Virus

    Trump’s opponents have accused the president of mishandling the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly referred to as the novel coronavirus, by acting too late. This, however, is contrary to the events of early 2020. The Trump administration on Feb. 2, 2020, banned all foreign travel from China, the source of the CCP virus. This decision was made by the president against the advice of some of his top advisers and exceeded actions taken by most other nations at the time. Meanwhile, his opponents in politics and media described it as xenophobic and an overreaction. In hindsight, the decision proved immensely valuable in helping to slow the spread of the virus. As the virus spread in the United States, the Trump administration increased testing capacity, coordinated with state governments to provide them with the federal assistance they needed, used the defense production act to compel companies to produce critical health equipment such as ventilators, and provided billions in federal funding and eased federal regulations for major drug companies to push for the development of a vaccine.

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    Chinese troops march during a military parade in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, on Oct. 1, 2019. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

    Foreign Interference

    It would be accurate to say that Trump is communist China’s biggest adversary. The president broke a decades-long U.S. policy toward China that was based on the belief that, through engagement and economic development, the People’s Republic would evolve from a totalitarian regime toward a more democratic country. In reality, this strategy of appeasement merely resulted in trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs going to China. And instead of becoming more democratic, the Chinese regime used this wealth to advance its dictatorship, creating the most technologically advanced tyranny the world has ever witnessed. The CCP has consistently worked against Trump during his presidency, both publicly and behind the scenes. Beijing has used its domestic and overseas propaganda channels—often by relying on the United States’ own media—to vilify Trump, going as far as to suggest that the outbreak of the CCP virus in Wuhan was because of the American military.

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    A police armored vehicle patrols an intersection while a building set afire by rioters burns in Kenosha, Wis., on Aug. 24, 2020. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

    Black Lives Matter

    Black Lives Matter (BLM) has been behind the riots that have plagued American cities for much of this year. The group has hijacked the concerns people have over racism and used them to justify its advance of a Marxist agenda. In a 2015 video, BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors described herself and her fellow founders as “trained Marxists.” Just like in Russia, China, Cuba, and Venezuela, trained Marxists have hijacked righteous causes to advance the communist agenda. Many of those who lived through the Cultural Revolution in China in the 1960s have commented that the riots in the United States over the summer, which included the toppling of historical statues, were eerily similar. The result is a climate of chaos and insecurity that affects the entire country.

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    Antifa extremists in Berkeley, Calif., on Aug. 27, 2017. (Amy Osborne/AFP via Getty Images)

    Antifa

    Dressed in full black gear including armor, helmets, and masks, and trained in agitation and basic combat, Antifa extremists have been involved in numerous acts of violence during Trump’s presidency. In many cases, these acts of violence, which include the use of weapons, rocks, and Molotov cocktails, were directed at law enforcement and government property. But Antifa members have also directly targeted unarmed common citizens for simply supporting Trump. We saw this happen twice in Washington, where those who had gathered to support Trump were later attacked when alone in the city at night. Antifa’s use of a militia-style force to intimidate and physically attack citizens for their political beliefs creates a powerful climate of fear and stands against the most basic American values.

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    Aerial photo of the Washington Memorial with the Capitol in the background in Washington D.C. in this file photo. (Andy Dunaway/USAF via Getty Images)

    The Permanent Government

    Though Trump as president is the leader of the executive branch, when he came to office he inherited a federal government staffed with hundreds of thousands of employees. It’s no secret that many career officials in the U.S. government have actively sought to undermine or even openly work against Trump. Many in government have been led by false information published by media organizations to believe that they are doing the right thing, and that by working against Trump, they are putting the interests of the country first. In fact, they have done the country a disservice by blocking a rightfully elected president from executing the will of the people.

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    Robert Mueller in Washington, on May 29, 2019. (Reuters/Jim Bourg)

    Mueller Special Counsel Investigation

    Following the firing of FBI Director Comey, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein assigned former FBI Director Robert Mueller to continue the FBI’s investigation of alleged Trump–Russia collusion. Mueller would conclude in a final report that there was no evidence of such collusion. But this only came after a nearly two-year-long investigation, giving the media and Trump’s political opponents leeway to portray Trump as an illegitimate president because of his supposed affiliation with Russia.

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    President Donald Trump speaks on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Oval Office of the White House on Jan. 28, 2017. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    Illegal Leaks

    Throughout the past four years, the Trump administration has been plagued by selective leaks aimed at damaging Trump’s presidency. Some of these leaks have been criminal in nature, such as the leak of the transcripts of Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders—a felony offense. Treasury official Natalie Edwards was found guilty of illegally leaking suspicious activity reports (SARs) on financial transactions by former Trump campaign associate Paul Manafort, among others.

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    Poll workers board up windows so ballot challengers can’t see into the ballot counting area at the TCF Center where ballots are being counted in downtown Detroit on Nov. 4,2020. (Seth Herald/AFP via Getty Images)

    2020 Election Fraud

    Following the Nov. 3 elections, dozens of credible allegations of voter fraud or other illegal acts connected to the counting of ballots have emerged. Dozens of poll workers across multiple states have given testimony in sworn statements—under penalty of perjury—detailing irregularities in how ballots were counted, as well as how the workers were instructed to make otherwise illegal changes to ballots, how they were unable to properly observe ballot counting, and how they witnessed new ballots mysteriously appear out of nowhere. The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee launched a number of lawsuits to challenge the process. They’ve argued that in Pennsylvania alone, 600,000 ballots should be invalidated, as Republican election observers weren’t allowed to witness the ballot processing.

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    President Donald Trump speaks at Trump Tower, fielding questions from reporters about Charlottesville, in New York City, on Aug. 15, 2017. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    Manufactured Narratives

    The use of manufactured narratives to attack Trump has been pervasive since he assumed the presidency. Perhaps the most notable is the claim that he defended neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, when in fact he said that that there were “very fine people on both sides,” referring to people who “were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.” Trump specifically added, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally—but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.” Yet despite this being on public record, Trump would continue to be asked throughout his presidency, especially during the election season, whether he was ready to “denounce white supremacy,” despite having done so on many occasions, even before becoming president

  • New Study Exposes Alleged Accounting Error Regarding COVID Deaths
    New Study Exposes Alleged Accounting Error Regarding COVID Deaths

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 11/27/2020 – 18:00

    Authored by Ethan Yang via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    At the time of this writing, the United States currently maintains the highest number of Covid-19 deaths and ranks 11th for the highest deaths per capita. There have been approximately 262,000 recorded Covid-19 deaths in the United States, which is certainly a concerning number. 

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    However, a new study (link removed but now available at Archive.org) published by Dr. Genevieve Briand at Johns Hopkins University notes some critical accounting errors done at the national level.

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    The study – which is still being vetted – simply examines the raw data that should have been questioned months ago.

    The overall conclusion is that Covid-19, at least according to collected data, is not the killer disease that it is currently hyped up to be. AIER is not endorsing the study as is without further study, but we are interested in the argument being examined and discussed.

    Viewing Covid-19 Deaths in Context

    It is already well established that Covid-19 is a disease that is most dangerous to those over the age of 65 and who have preexisting conditions. In the United States, there has been an observed 2.1% mortality rate, with elderly individuals making up over half that number. 

    Young and healthy people are not by any significant capacity threatened by Covid-19. 

    One of the most important factors when it comes to Covid-19 is preventing excess death. According to the CDC, 

    “Estimates of excess deaths can provide information about the burden of mortality potentially related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including deaths that are directly or indirectly attributed to COVID-19. Excess deaths are typically defined as the difference between the observed numbers of deaths in specific time periods and expected numbers of deaths in the same time periods.”

    Essentially, there is an average number of deaths every year due to a variety of causes that for the most part have remained constant through the years. This includes morbidities such as heart disease, which has long been the leading cause of death, and cancer, which has long plagued our existence. For Covid-19 to be a serious cause of alarm, it would need to significantly increase the number of average deaths. 

    However, according to the study,

    “These data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.”

    Total deaths in the United States show no significant change and even mirror past trends of seasonal illness. 

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    Source: CDC Data, Methodology Included in this Video

    According to this graph constructed using data provided by the CDC from the last 6 years, total deaths have remained relatively constant and increases can be explained by various factors such as a larger population. The spikes in deaths in 2020 are consistent with historical trends, only topping 2018 by 11,292 deaths. There have been over 262,000 deaths attributed to Covid-19 in the United States, yet total deaths have not increased in any alarming capacity; they have only mirrored existing trends. In short, according to 6 years of data collected by the CDC, Covid-19 has not led to any significant increase in deaths.

    Diving Deeper 

    What is even more interesting if not more alarming is that the spike in recorded Covid-19 deaths seen in 2020 has coincided with a proportional decrease in death from other diseases. 

    Yanni Gu writes

    “This suggests, according to Briand, that the COVID-19 death toll is misleading. Briand believes that deaths due to heart diseases, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia may instead be recategorized as being due to COVID-19.” 

    Deaths have remained relatively constant, yet reported deaths due to deadly conditions such as heart disease have fallen while reported Covid deaths have risen. This suggests that the current Covid death count is in some capacity relabeled deaths due to other ailments. According to the graph, reported Covid deaths even overtook heart disease as the main cause of death at one point, which should raise suspicion.

    This aligns with many other well-established facts about the virus, such as those with comorbidities are the most at risk. According to the CDC, about 94% of Covid deaths occur with comorbidities. This suggests that it could be possible that a large number of deaths could have been mainly due to more serious ailments such as heart disease but categorized as a Covid-19 death, a far less lethal disease.

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    Source: John Hopkins News-Letter, provided by Genevieve Briand

    According to this graph provided by the study, deaths labeled under Covid-19 increased while deaths labeled under others decreased. It is important to note that this sample only applies to the month of April as the author notes these were the weeks with the highest reported deaths. Gu writes 

    “The CDC classified all deaths that are related to COVID-19 simply as COVID-19 deaths. Even patients dying from other underlying diseases but are infected with COVID-19 count as COVID-19 deaths. This is likely the main explanation as to why COVID-19 deaths drastically increased while deaths by all other diseases experienced a significant decrease…

    “If [the COVID-19 death toll] was not misleading at all, what we should have observed is an increased number of heart attacks and increased COVID-19 numbers. But a decreased number of heart attacks and all the other death causes doesn’t give us a choice but to point to some misclassification,” Briand replied.”

    Furthermore, Briand’s research notes that the percentage of death has remained relatively constant through all age groups. Covid death statistics seem to mirror the normal distribution of death amongst age groups, further lending credence to the argument that many Covid deaths are recategorized deaths.

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    Briand provides this graph constructed from CDC data that shows that deaths amongst various age groups have remained relatively constant. 

    By simply looking at the raw data presented by the CDC Gu writes that

    “All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers. We found no evidence to the contrary,” Briand concluded.

    What Do We Do With This Information?

    Briand and likely many others suppose that the extreme emphasis on Covid-19 has led to the unintended classification of the disease as the cause of death. She further stresses that although this data challenges the idea that Covid is an unprecedented and lethal disease, we should still be concerned with mitigating death in general. 

    However, it is clear that this significant accounting error regarding Covid deaths, if true, is not productive. It has caused mass hysteria and misinformed public policy. Closing down communities to fight a virus that according to the data, has had no significant contribution to total deaths, reduces our overall capacity to build a healthy society. 

    [ZH: Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) noted on Twitter: “Folks: I know a lot of you are referencing this Johns Hopkins paper that’s been pulled. Unfortunately it is wrong. The excess deaths are real. Yes, they’re very, very skewed by age, but they’re real. Pretending otherwise doesn’t help.”]

    Lockdowns have resulted in severe damage to our capacity to improve the general health of society. From the catastrophic economic damage that lowers the standard of living for everyone to surgeries being deemed “unessential,” our current policies are not helping in preventing deaths in general; they are likely leading to more. Suicides and substance abuse are up, mental and physical health are down, all due to lockdowns. 

    The late Dr. Donald Henderson, who led the eradication of smallpox, noted in 2006 that 

    “Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted.”

    The hysteria over Covid-19 has likely led to the alleged accounting error noted in Briand’s study, the reclassification of expected deaths from all causes into Covid deaths.

    That accounting error has likely led to a number of policy decisions that have drastically crippled our ability to support the general welfare of society, economically, socially, and spiritually. Going forward these findings should give us pause and reconsideration over the threat Covid-19 actually poses and realize how much avoidable damage we have done to ourselves as a result.

  • The Background for Black Friday's All-Time Highs
    The Background for Black Friday's All-Time Highs


    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 11/27/2020 – 17:55

    Real Vision managing editor Ed Harrison and senior editor Ash Bennington discuss the all-time highs set on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite on this holiday-shortened trading day in U.S. equity markets. Harrison and Bennington also take a step back to evaluate the broader context for rising stock prices during the month of November. Specifically, the pair explores the apparent recent decrease of political risk in the U.S., the impact of increasing case counts and virus fatalities, the potential effects of a Covid-19 vaccine on the global economic climate, and the risk of future lockdowns and growing geopolitical uncertainty in the Middle East.

  • Carter Page Sues Comey, DOJ And Others For $75 Million Over Crossfire Hurricane Abuse
    Carter Page Sues Comey, DOJ And Others For $75 Million Over Crossfire Hurricane Abuse

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 11/27/2020 – 17:30

    Former 2016 Trump Campaign aide Carter Page has filed an eight-count complaint against the Department of Justice, the FBI, former FBI Director James Comey and others.

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    Filed in the DC District Court, Page seeks at least $75 million in damages over, amongst other things, obtaining four illegal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against him.

    More via The Federalist‘s Margot Cleveland:

    Page’s 59-page complaint lists as defendants a veritable “Who’s Who” of the SpyGate scandal, including former FBI Director James Comey, Assistant Director Andrew McCabe, and the disgraced team of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Also singled out were Kevin Clinessmith, who earlier this year pleaded guilty to falsifying an email to hide Page’s past service as a source to the CIA, and FBI Agents Joe Pientka, Stephen Somma, and Brian Auten, with additional defendants identified merely as John Doe 1 – 10 and Jane Doe 1 – 10.

    ­The first four counts of his complaint allege claims under FISA, with one count seeking damages for each of the four FISA court orders the defendants obtained against Page. FISA provides a private right of action to allow “an aggrieved person. . . who has been subjected to an electronic surveillance or about whom information obtained by electronic surveillance of such person has been disclosed,” to sue those responsible.

    While Page’s attorneys are filing a civil claim under FISA, the filing notes that the same act makes it a criminal offense to illegally “engage in electronic surveillance under color of law.”

    Page also claims that the United States government is responsible for civil wrongs “in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances,” a Federal tort claim which allows Page to sue the government for wrongful conduct, as if it were a private person.

    Meanwhile (thanks to expert analysis by Cleveland – a lawyer and CPA), Page alleges a Bivens claim, named after a Supreme Court case in which a plaintiff was determined to be entitled to damages from the individual government actors responsible for violating their Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure – “which describes precisely what the Crossfire Hurricane team did in submitting the four false and misleading FISA applications to the FISA court.”

    Lastly, Page seeks justice in a pair of complaints under the federal Privacy Act – the first of which seeks to force the DOJ to update his “individual records,” and the second which seeks an injunction to force the government to do so – as he says “he was falsely portrayed as a traitor to his country.”

  • Was Wednesday A Super Spreader Event, One Bank Asks
    Was Wednesday A Super Spreader Event, One Bank Asks

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 11/27/2020 – 17:14

    From DB’s Jim Reid

    Wednesday was the busiest day at US airports since the pandemic began. The Transportation Security Administration screened  more than 1.07 million people at US airports on Thanksgiving eve. For context this number was still down 41% on the same Wednesday last year.

    We are very positive about the chance of a return to normal life in 2021, especially from Q2 onwards. However it is quite clear that Thanksgiving and Christmas pose Covid super spreader event risk in various countries. Canada held Thanksgiving on October 12th and many public health officials there have blamed this for the recent spike in cases.

    If the US follows this pattern, tighter restrictions and weaker activity could still dominate in the near term before the positive trends of vaccines and mass testing kick in across the globe as we go through Q1.

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  • Here Is Who Will Get The COVID Vaccine First According To Goldman
    Here Is Who Will Get The COVID Vaccine First According To Goldman

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 11/27/2020 – 17:00

    Last week, Moncef Slaoui, the head of Washington’s “Operation Warp Speed”, laid out the ‘official’ timeline for vaccinating the American population, culminating in the extremely optimistic projection that the American population would reach 70% vaccination threshold – supposedly enough to achieve ‘herd immunity’ in May. The first doses, on the other hand, are expected to be administered on Dec. 11 and Dec. 12, Slaoui said.

    Now, according to a team of analysts at Goldman Sachs, most major developed-market economies aren’t expecting to make meaningful progress in inoculating their populations until later into the second half of Q2.

    Looking ahead, the FDA has already set up Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines to receive emergency-use approval perhaps as soon as next week, while based on comments from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is likely to authorize the three leading vaccines by year’s end.

    With investors already shifting their focus to actual distribution, Goldman’s team has published projections for six major advanced economies in five steps:

    1. Global vaccine production: We use monthly global production projections from our health care equity analysts for Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Novavax, and Johnson & Johnson. The projections assume that production gradually rises in early 2021 and achieves the announced targets.

    2. Country vaccine supply: To allocate production across countries, we use data on agreements of purchases and purchase options, shown in the left panel of Exhibit 1, and data on initial deliveries. We assume the production share a country receives from a developer rises in the country’s initial deliveries, confirmed purchases, optional purchases, and population but falls to zero when contracted and optional purchases are delivered or when cumulative deliveries across the five developers exceed 90% of the population.2

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    3. Country vaccine demand: We use responses to the global Ipsos survey question of “From when a vaccine is available, when would you become vaccinated?” (Exhibit 1, right). This survey suggests that most people expect to wait some time before taking it, consistent with wanting to learn more about safety, side effects, and effectiveness. We also assume that demand will be more elevated and front-loaded than reported in the October Ipsos survey, which preceded recent trial results and upcoming public vaccination campaigns. Based on the expected timing of trials for children, we assume vaccinations for children under age 12 start globally in October 2021.

    4. Vaccine distribution capacity: We assume a speed limit on distribution that rises from 10% of the population in December to 20% of the population from February 2021 onwards based on the peak speed of the flu vaccine US distribution this year, corresponding to 20% of the population per month.

    5. Country vaccinations: We estimate monthly vaccination as the minimum of supply, demand, and distribution capacity Exhibit 2 illustrates the estimates of supply (light blue), demand (dark blue), and actual vaccinations (dotted green line) for the US and Canada. In both countries, vaccination is initially significantly limited by scarce supply, until additional capacity allows supply to exceed slowing demand in April. In Canada, the speed limit on distribution binds briefly in April. Demand drives vaccination from April in the US and May in Canada, rises gradually over the summer based on survey estimates, increases significantly with child vaccinations in the fall, and jumps past 70% in October in both countries.

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    Exhibit 3 shows our expected timeline for actual US vaccinations by tiering phase. High-risk groups, mostly health care workers and individuals with comorbid conditions, will likely receive the first available doses from mid-December, likely leading to significant public health benefits from Q1 onwards, followed by widespread vaccination from early April.

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    Looking more broadly, our baseline forecast is that large shares of the population are vaccinated by the end of Q2 in all major DMs (Exhibit 4). The UK is expected to vaccinate 50% of its population in March with the US and Canada following in April. We forecast that the EU, Japan, and Australia reach this 50% threshold in May. As production becomes abundant by mid-Q2, vaccination rises gradually with demand and surpasses 70% across all DMs in the fall when children become eligible.

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    We next explore a downside scenario. This scenario assumes that (1) the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, which are both viral vector vaccines, do not succeed (perhaps reflecting safety events), and (2) vaccine demand measures fall back to October 2020 Ipsos survey levels. In this scenario, supply rises much more slowly in the EU, reflecting a larger reliance on both developers. In the medium run, vaccination levels are the lowest in the EU (assuming no new contracts are signed) but also the US and Japan, where the decline in demand leaves vaccination at relatively low long-term levels. In contrast, Australia and Canada are more resilient, benefiting from diversified supply contracts and relatively strong vaccine demand measures.

    * * *

    Source: Goldman Sachs

    While various governments have released comprehensive and detailed timelines for when their populations will have achieved ‘herd immunity’, Goldman’s analysts warned that European countries are skewed toward “the later timeline” since AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson are lagging behind Pfizer and Moderna.

    Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held a press briefing on Friday to explain the official Canadian vaccination timeline. The PM said he expects most Canadians will be vaccinated by September. The announcement follows Trudeau’s remarks from earlier this week that Canada “won’t be first in line” for a vaccine since it hadn’t struck any major deals with suppliers.

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    But Canada is in much better shape than the vast majority of countries, which have no deals at all. They will need to rely on the kindness of strangers – either the WHO and Bill Gates’s (who are trying via their “Covax” project to raise enough money to vaccinate the whole world) or President Xi and Beijing

  • Pope Francis Criticizes Anti-Lockdown Protesters In New Book 
    Pope Francis Criticizes Anti-Lockdown Protesters In New Book 

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 11/27/2020 – 16:30

    While coronavirus lockdowns triggered widespread social unrest and resulted in the worst socio-economic implosion the world has ever seen – Pope Francis is set to reveal his thoughts on what transpired this year in a new book expected to be released next month, according to AP News. 

    In “Let Us Dream: The Path to A Better Future,” ghostwritten by biographer Austen Ivereigh, Francis champions anti-racism protesters while demonizing anti-lockdown demonstrators. He said those around the world who demonstrated against lockdown restrictions reacted “as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some political assault on autonomy or personal freedom!”

    “You’ll never find such people protesting the death of George Floyd, or joining a demonstration because there are shantytowns where children lack water or education,” Francis wrote in the new 150-page book. “They turned into a cultural battle what was in truth an effort to ensure the protection of life.”

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    Francis touched on Floyd’s police killing that ignited social unrest across almost every US metro area for months. Francis said: “Abuse is a gross violation of human dignity that we cannot allow and which we must continue to struggle against.”

    However, Francis condemned anti-racism protesters’ attempt to erase history by dismantling statues of Confederate leaders. He said there are better ways to create dialogue.

    “Amputating history can make us lose our memory, which is one of the few remedies we have against repeating the mistakes of the past,” he wrote.

    Francis criticized populist leaders who’ve created buzz among supporters at massive rallies and scapegoats others for their countries’ problems. He compared the populist movement of today to the ones from the 1930s. 

    “Today, listening to some of the populist leaders we now have, I am reminded of the 1930s, when some democracies collapsed into dictatorships seemingly overnight,” he wrote. “We see it happening again now in rallies where populist leaders excite and harangue crowds, channeling their resentments and hatreds against imagined enemies to distract from the real problems.”

    He also said the virus pandemic had become an opportunity for the world to reset. Not too long ago, Archibishop Carlo Maria Vigano warned about a global reset intended to undermine “God and humanity”.

    Earlier this month, Francis’ latest Encyclical “Fratelli Tutti” (“Brothers All”) was published and seemed more of a political document than a spiritual guide to the catholic faith. He spoke for a more globalist political system and denounced the global capitalist free market economy.

    In the most recent monthly prayer intention, he called all the good Catholics of the world to “pray that the progress of robotics and artificial intelligence may always serve humankind.”

  • Controversy Intensifies Over Danish 'Zombie Minks' As Company Behind Botched Covid-Culling Identified
    Controversy Intensifies Over Danish 'Zombie Minks' As Company Behind Botched Covid-Culling Identified

    Tyler Durden

    Fri, 11/27/2020 – 16:00

    A Danish company behind a botched culling of 17 million minks which appeared to ‘rise from the dead’ has been identified.

    Copenhagen-based International Service System (ISS) was tasked with the mass burial of the culled minks, which were infected with a mutated form of COVID-19. Controversy erupted however after the minks appeared to rise from the dead – as locals reported mink-movement within the three-foot deep mass graves.

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    According to Bloomberg, ISS says it was contacted by the government to handle two specific mass graves located in Western Denmark – following instructions provided by the military and the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration.

    “When the relevant authorities contacted us, we mobilized a full emergency response within 24 hours,” according to Senior ISS VP Simon Kaiser.
     

    Due to the ‘zombie mink’ controversy, a majority of parties in Danish parliament want the minks exhumed because they believe they were buried too close to a lake which Danes occasionally use for swimming.

    Dead mink were tipped into trenches at a military area in western Denmark and covered with two metres of soil. But hundreds have begun resurfacing, pushed out of the ground by what authorities say is gas from their decomposition. Newspapers have referred to them as the “zombie mink”.

    Jensen’s replacement, Rasmus Prehn, said on Friday he supported the idea of digging up the animals and incinerating them. He said he had asked the environmental protection agency look into whether it could be done, and parliament would be briefed on the issue on Monday. –Reuters

    ​

    Due to the ‘zombie mink’ controversy, a majority of parties in Danish parliament want the minks exhumed because they believe they were buried too close to a lake which Danes occasionally use for swimming.

    After public outrage over the zombified members of the weasel family, Danish police spokesman Thomas Kristensen urged locals to remain calm – explaining that gasses in the decay process can cause the bodies to move.

    “As the bodies decay, gases can be formed. This causes the whole thing to expand a little. In this way, in the worst cases, the mink get pushed out of the ground,” Kristensen said, according to the Guardian.

    ​

    And as The Mind Unleashed notes: “another issue is the fact that the animals were placed in shallow graves because the process was rushed. The graves were just over three feet deep, which allowed some witnesses to see the movement. Now officials are planning to order the graves to be dug twice as deep.

    “This is a natural process. Unfortunately, one metre of soil is not just one metre of soil –it depends on what type of soil it is. The problem is that the sandy soil in West Jutland is too light. So we have had to lay more soil on top,” Kristensen said.”

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