Dec 29

Today’s News 29th December 2020

  • 2020: The Year We Lost Our Common Sense, Courage, & Civil Liberties
    2020: The Year We Lost Our Common Sense, Courage, & Civil Liberties

    Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Once it became clear to the Western elite that their subjects would readily accept draconian anti-Covid measures, it encouraged them to usher in a code-red lifestyle where there will be no ‘return to normal’ in the foreseeable future and, possibly, never.

    If nothing else, nobody can say we were not warned about the madness that would descend upon leap year 2020, making it one of the worst 366 days ever recorded on the Gregorian calendar.

    On October 18, 2019, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, together with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted the incredibly visionary Event 201, an exercise that simulated the outbreak of a pandemic “transmitted from bats to people that eventually becomes…transmissible from person to person.”

    The simulation proved to be so uncannily similar to the real thing that started just three months later – from imagining a dramatic drop in air travel and business, to breaks in the global supply chain – that Johns Hopkins eventually felt compelled to release a statement saying their exercise was not intended to be a prophecy of future events.

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    “To be clear, the Center for Health Security and partners did not make a prediction during our tabletop exercise,” the statement read, in what just might be the creepiest caveat ever.

    “For the scenario, we modeled a fictional coronavirus pandemic, but we explicitly stated that it was not a prediction… We are not now predicting that the nCoV-2019 outbreak will kill 65 million people.”

    Shortly after the global elite played Nostradamus, on January 15th to be exact (the very same day, incidentally, that the Democrats presented articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump in the Senate), the first Covid-positive person arrived in Seattle from Wuhan, the Chinese city where the disease is said to have sprung to life. From there it has been a non-stop roller-coaster ride of government-sponsored insanity.

    Before continuing, it is important to remember the context with which the pandemic has been happening, that is, in the most consequential U.S. presidential election in recent memory. It should thus come as no surprise that the Democrats and Republicans would use the scourge to achieve some sort of advantage, demonstrating Machiavellian opportunism at its very best. Indeed, such is the nature of the political beast.

    For example, although Trump shut down the U.S. border on January 31 to Chinese nationals, the Democrats and leftist media pounced, saying the U.S. leader responded too late to make a difference. Even Trump’s use of the term ‘Chinese virus’ was slammed by his opponents as ‘racist.’ Meanwhile, it was the Democrats themselves who were the pioneers in taking the first draconian steps of locking down society to stop the contagion.

    On March 16, 2020, six counties in northern California and the city of Berkley ordered an unprecedented stay-at-home order for some 7 million Bay Area residents. This was all part of “flattening the curve” logic that would “buy time for hospitals to gear up for the onslaught…” Well, 233 days later political leaders are not only still flattening the curve, but flattening their economies as well. Today, although the survival rate for those infected with Covid-19 is reported to be in the neighborhood of 99.85 percent, harsh lockdowns continue to wreak havoc, not least of all for small businesses.

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    Consider the situation in California, where Governor Gavin Newsom has mandated yet another ‘shelter-in-place’ order, which has shuttered, among other businesses, hair salons, barbershops, personal care services, movie theaters, wineries, bars, breweries, family entertainment centers and amusement parks. What is hard to fathom, however, is how the corporate big-box stores are considered “essential businesses,” apparently immune to the scourge, while the small business owner is trashed as expendable.

    By way of example, consider the tragic plight of Angela Marsden, the owner of Pineapple Hill Saloon and Grill in Los Angeles. In an effort to comply with the ever-changing anti-Covid rules, Marsden spent over $80,000 to build an outdoor patio so she could stay in business during the pandemic. With Newsom’s latest lockdown restrictions, however, city officials denied her permission to serve clients on location, even in the parking lot.

    To add insult to injury, the authorities granted permission for a film company to set up a large outdoor eating area for its staff just across the road from where Marsden had built her patio.

    “I’m losing everything,” she exclaimed in a video posted to Twitter that has been watched almost 10 million times. “Everything I own is being taken away from me. They have not given us money and they have shut us down. We cannot survive; my staff cannot survive…”

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    For the Fortune 500 companies, however, the pandemic has translated into a windfall. Between April and September, at a time when thousands of small business were quietly getting crushed underfoot, 45 of the 50 most valuable publicly traded American companies turned a profit, according to the Washington Post.

    At the same time, at least 27 of the 50 largest firms slashed their workforce this year, collectively cutting more than 100,000 workers, while at the same time distributing billions of dollars to shareholders. As just one example, Walmart distributed more than $10 billion to its investors during the pandemic while terminating 1,200 office staff.

    To put these figures another way, since mid-March – when President Donald Trump declared a national emergency – America’s 614 billionaires saw their net worth explode by $931 billion in total. Jeff Bezos, for example, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, saw his private wealth go from $73.2bn since the start of the crisis to a record $186.2bn.

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    It would probably come as no surprise that the very individuals who helped pave the way for astronomic wealth generation among the 1 percent, are the same ones breaking their own rules. Governor Newsom and his wife, for example, attended a birthday party with a dozen friends at the French Laundry restaurant in San Francisco. Equally maddening is that Dustin Corcoran, the CEO of the California Medical Association, was also in attendance. And who could forget the photo of Nancy Pelosi walking through a California hair salon when such businesses were deemed ‘super spreaders’?

    Such incidences only served to reinforce the idea that the draconian lockdowns, the worst of which are centered on Democratic-controlled states, were specifically designed not to contain a contagion, but to foster as much anger and frustration among the general population in the most consequential presidential election in many decades. After all, unhappy people have a tendency to vote out their leaders whom they believe are responsible for such dire circumstances. And with the mainstream media almost totally in the Democratic anti-Trump camp, placing the blame on the president has proven no difficult task.

    So where do we go from here? Now that we have reached the end of 2020, will the situation begin to improve? Will political leaders begin to loosen the screws and let some semblance of normality return once again? Or will people be forced to rise up and demand the return of their freedom and liberty?

    At this great loggerhead in human history, there has been much talk about creating ‘freedom passes’ that will be demanded from people before they are allowed to travel or visit any sort of entertainment again.

    “People who test negative for coronavirus could get a five-day freedom pass to attend big events or access public buildings, under plans being considered by public health experts running a trial program in England,” reported Bloomberg in November.

    Already, five global airlines – United Airlines, Lufthansa, Virgin Atlantic, Swiss International Air Lines and JetBlue – have announced they will observe the so-called CommonPass to passengers on some flights from December.

    “The project, developed by non-profit group The Commons Project and backed by the World Economic Forum, uses a digital certificate downloaded to a mobile phone to show a passenger has tested negative for Covid-19,” according to the Financial Times. Here is the kicker:

    “The airlines are not making the CommonPass mandatory, but in time it will also be used to provide proof of vaccination.”

    It seems rather obvious where all of this is heading: mandatory vaccination for anyone who ever wishes to board an aircraft or visit another entertainment venue again. Over time, it is not difficult to imagine a vaccine regimen extending to all human activities, including shopping and even getting a job. Yet what about the millions of people who have expressed extreme skepticism in being administered a vaccine that has been developed so quickly?

    Whatever the case may be, should such a plan of action become mandatory, peoples’ lives will be entirely dominated by fears over a virus, together with an endless bureaucratic process of being tested and approved to move about. Vaccines will become a regular requirement since viruses are in a state of constant mutation, which makes them the authoritarians dream instrument of domination.

    Such a system of totalitarian control, should it ever come into fruition, will have achieved in mere months what fascism could not in years: the pacification and unification of a great swath of the world’s population not by bayonet, but by syringe. In fact, today the people of London are fleeing their fair city not out of fear of the virus per se, but out of fear of the lockdown restrictions put in place by the authorities. To put it otherwise, the world gave an inch and the globalists took a mile, and a person would have to be a fool to believe it could have turned out any other way.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 23:40

  • Bass Blasts "Deeply Corrupt" EU Over Imminent Landmark China Investment Deal
    Bass Blasts “Deeply Corrupt” EU Over Imminent Landmark China Investment Deal

    In contrast to the EU, the US Congress passed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act in June 2019, and on September 22, 2020, the US House of Representatives passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.

    As The Gatestone Institute’s Judith Bergman notes, the US has sanctioned at least 28 Chinese officials over their actions in Xinjiang. The list includes senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials, such as current Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, who executes Chinese government policy in the region. He is also the current First Political Commissar of the XPCC, a role in which he has exercised control over the entity. According to the US Department of the Treasury:

    “The XPCC is a paramilitary organization in the XUAR that is subordinate to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The XPCC enhances internal control over the region by advancing China’s vision of economic development in XUAR that emphasizes subordination to central planning and resource extraction. The XPCC’s structure reflects a military organization, with 14 divisions made up of dozens of regiments… [Chen Quanguo]… has a notorious history of intensifying security operations in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, where he was deployed before arriving in Xinjiang…”

    Meanwhile, the European Council, consisting of the heads of state of the EU member states and that is currently presided over by Germany, is unlikely to demand anything from China, let alone sanction it or do anything that might jeopardize its trade with Europe. This year, for the first time, China became the EU’s largest trading partner, surpassing the US.

    Crucially, the EU does not want to jeopardize the finalization of the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, which the EU and China have sought to realize for seven years now.

    And, as The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports, China and the EU could complete the deal this week, with the 27 countries in the trade bloc unanimously approving the agreement despite earlier reservations.

    An EU diplomat with knowledge of the discussions said that on Monday representatives of the EU member states were briefed by EU negotiators who had “reported on recent positive developments in the negotiations with China including on labour standards”.

    The representatives “broadly welcomed the latest progress in the EU-China talks”, the diplomat said.

    “After four years of Donald Trump, the EU is sending a very clear message that it will go its own way on China,” said Noah Barkin, an EU-China specialist with Rhodium Group, a research firm.

    “This doesn’t doom transatlantic cooperation with Biden, but it shows just how difficult it will be. The big winner if this deal does come together is Beijing.”

    Erik Brattberg, director of the Europe programme at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the EU’s “last-minute push” to complete the deal with China “has already raised eyebrows in Washington”, adding:

    “It risks undermining the credibility of the EU’s call for a joint transatlantic China strategy with the US even before the new Biden administration settles in.”

    The unanimous support from the EU member states came despite France and Poland previously raising reservations about the deal.

    Franck Riester, the minister delegate in charge of trade in the French foreign ministry, said last week that if the EU failed to commit to abolishing forced labour “we cannot facilitate investment in China”.

    Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau also warned that Europe would need more consultations and transparency to win over its transatlantic allies.

    By moving forward with the deal, Brussels also turned a blind eye to a thinly veiled warning from Jake Sullivan, Biden’s designated national security adviser, who said the Biden administration “would welcome early consultations with our European partners” on the concerns about China’s economic practices.

    Outspoken China hawk, and hedge fund billionaire, Kyle Bass summed it up succinctly:

    “Europe is so deeply corrupted by Chinese money that this deal was a fait accompli.”

    Simply put, the EU is willing to turn a blind eye to any and every action by China against the world in the interests of money flowing into the failing super-state.

    If reached, the deal would come hard on the heels of China’s success in creating the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership with 14 other Asia-Pacific nations, and the EU’s post-Brexit agreement with Britain.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 23:20

  • Biden Meddles With Donald Trump's Middle East Legacy At His Peril
    Biden Meddles With Donald Trump’s Middle East Legacy At His Peril

    Authored by Con Coughlin via The Gatestone Institute,

    The incoming Biden administration has indicated that one of its top priorities will be to adopt a new approach in Washington’s dealings with the Middle East. In particular it wants to revive the flawed nuclear deal with Iran as well as re-establish a dialogue with the Palestinian leadership, which imposed a three-year boycott on the Trump administration.

    Yet, while the new Biden team, the majority of whom are relics from the Obama administration, are keen to assert a new policy agenda for the region, they also need to take care that, in so doing, they do not squander the impressive legacy US President Donald Trump has built up in the region.

    It is worth remembering that, when Mr Trump took office, the region was still reeling from the dire consequences of former US President Barack Obama’s inept and naive handling of the region.

    By early January 2017, when Mr Trump took office, Iran was squandering the tens of billions of dollars it received for signing the nuclear deal, which Mr Obama had helped broker in 2015, on expanding its malign influence across the landscape of the Middle East.

    This malign influence included supporting the Assad regime in Syria, the Hizbollah terrorist organisation in Lebanon, pro-Iranian Shia militias in Iraq and the Houthi rebels in Yemen, which regularly employed Iranian-made drones and missiles to attack Saudi Arabia, a key US ally.

    Attempts to revive the Israeli-Arab peace process, meanwhile, were going nowhere because of the Obama administration’s antagonistic attitude towards Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as maintaining its hopeless quest for a more constructive relationship with the Palestinian leadership.

    In addition, Mr Obama’s ambivalence about becoming involved in Syria’s brutal war meant that US forces were hampered in their attempts to destroy the Islamist fanatics of ISIS, which had succeeded in capturing large swathes of northern Iraq and Syria.

    Mr Trump therefore deserves enormous credit for achieving a complete turnaround in America’s standing in the region during his tenure at the White House.

    Thanks to Mr Trump’s robust approach to Iran, where he withdrew from the nuclear deal and re-imposed crippling sanctions against Tehran, the Iranian economy has been seriously diminished, thus limiting the ayatollahs’ ability to peddle their pernicious creed throughout the region.

    ISIS, and its dream of establishing a self-governing “caliphate”, has been completely destroyed, mainly because, soon after taking office, Mr Trump gave US commanders the authority and freedom to intensify the military campaign against the Islamist fanatics.

    Arguably, Mr Trump’s greatest achievement in the Middle East, though, has been the success he has enjoyed in breaking the impasse in the Israeli-Arab peace process, with a clutch of Arab regimes – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco — establishing diplomatic relations with Israel under the so-called Abraham Accords, with many other Arab governments — including Saudi Arabia — said to be giving serious consideration to following suit.

    Mr Trump’s Middle East legacy is not only impressive — it has completely redefined the landscape of the region from the chaos and conflict that prevailed when Mr Obama left office. Nowadays, the momentum in the region is moving towards peace, not conflict, as was so often the case during Mr Obama’s presidency.

    So the challenge for the incoming Biden administration now will be to see how it can pursue a different foreign policy agenda without jeopardising the very significant achievements that have been accomplished during Mr Trump’s tenure.

    Certainly, if the incoming Biden administration makes any serious attempt to undermine Mr Trump’s legacy in the Middle East, it will do so at its peril.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 23:00

  • "People Are Fed Up": California Out Of Excuses As Coronavirus Defies Militant Lockdowns
    “People Are Fed Up”: California Out Of Excuses As Coronavirus Defies Militant Lockdowns

    California’s response to COVID-19 ranks slightly below China welding people inside apartment buildings in terms of militancy, yet the for all the measures taken by the Golden State, it’s become one of the nation’s worst epicenters for the pandemic, according to Politico.

    Registered Nurse Allison Shiftar puts on protective glasses as she gets ready to go into one of the triage rooms to care for a Covid-19 positive patient in the emergency department at Sutter Roseville Medical Center in Roseville, Calif. | Renee C. Byer/The Sacramento Bee via AP, Pool)

    And if Politico is calling out California, whose Democratic governor deems himself above his own rules, you know it’s bad.

    America’s most populous state has become one of the nation’s worst epicenters for the disease, setting new records for cases, hospitalizations and deaths almost every day. Things are so bad in Southern California that some patients are being treated in hospital tents, while doctors have begun discussing whether they need to ration care.

    The turnabout has confounded leaders and health experts. They can point to any number of reasons that contributed to California’s surge over the past several weeks. But it is hard to pinpoint one single factor — and equally hard to find a silver bullet. –Politico

    The state of nearly 40 million residents has seen almost 2 million cases and 22,000 deaths despite strict mask mandates, school and playground closures, and restrictions on dining that are destroying small businesses across the state.

    “Nationally, there has been a kaleidoscopic application of every imaginable type of lockdown order with California being the most restrictive and inflicting the most devastation on small businesses and the most economically vulnerable service workers. And still, we are none the better as far as COVID is concerned,” said California Restaurant Association President and CEO Jot Condie, adding “In fact in L.A. where indoor and outdoor dining are completely shut down, with indoor dining [closed] since July, the virus rages on.”

    Meanwhile, the state – like many others, is suffering from spikes in crime, mental illness and suicide.

    At more than 100 new daily cases per 100,000 residents, California’s case rate is second only to that in Tennessee, according to the nonprofit tracking site Covid Act Now — though it’s a state that does not mandate mask wearing and allows indoor gatherings of up to 10 people. The website Covid Exit Strategy shows a 97 percent rise in Covid throughout California, which has gone in the opposite direction from its West Coast counterparts, Oregon and Washington. -Politico

    “We are facing a very, very difficult and very dangerous time in our county, in our region and in our state. All of our numbers are going in the wrong direction, and our reality is rather grim at the moment,” said Santa Clara County public health officer Sara Cody last Wednesday. “If we have a surge on top of a surge… we will definitely break.”

    Officials have few answers for what’s going on – blaming gatherings such as postseason viewing parties when the Dodgers and Lakers won championships this fall. Others have blamed the strict rules themselves – arguing that frustrated Californians couldn’t take it any longer and decided to live their lives – fueled in part by narrative-busting findings such as a Colorado study concluding that there is ‘no statistically significant‘ link between gyms and COVID cases.

    Politico notes that the state – while imposing strict lockdowns – has very little capability to enforce, instead relying on its regulatory agencies to make examples out of the worst-offending establishments. Meanwhile, several Sheriffs have publicly announced that they will not enforce the state’s stay-at-home restrictions and other pandemic measures,

    “It’s a big state. We get big numbers when things go wrong,” says UC San Francisco professor of epidemiology and statistics, George Rutherford.

    Shame?

    According to Gov. Gavin Newsom, residents need to rely on ‘social pressure’ to keep people apart. The state has spent tens of millions of dollars on billboards and advertisements promoting ‘responsible’ behavior. Newsom himself, however, made headlines when he broke his own guidelines to attend an upscale dinner party with lobbyists.

    And perhaps thanks to Newsom’s hypocrisy, people are now ignoring his edicts.

    In the biggest shopping month of the year, parking lots at malls and retail centers are packed. Such stores are among the few indoor operations allowed to stay open with stated capacity limits. Mobility data from Google suggests that Newsom’s December stay-home orders have barely made a dent in keeping people home compared to previous months, though the baseline doesn’t say whether it may have tamped down traffic compared to last December.

    …

    Critics have questioned the science behind the regional lockdown orders. Public and industry pressure has already convinced state health officials to reopen playgrounds and relax limits on grocery store capacity. A Los Angeles trial court judge also said the county’s prohibition on outdoor dining was “arbitrary” and that there was insufficient evidence showing it was a source of virus spread. -Politico

    According to state Assemblyman Jordan Cunningham (R-Templeton), the state’s attempt to “shut down types of human interaction without seeing if that’s effective” created a backlash, which is “driving people to higher-risk activity” such as holding large gatherings at homes instead of restaurants.

    “The public health officials have lost credibility with a huge section of the populace. They’re just tuning them out now,” says Cunningham. “The goalposts are moving all the time. … People are fed up with it and they don’t think it makes any sense, and they’re not wrong.“

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 22:40

  • "The Elements Of The China Challenge": A Reply To Critics
    “The Elements Of The China Challenge”: A Reply To Critics

    Authored by Peter Berkowitz via RealClearPolitics.com,

    In mid-November, the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff — I serve as the director — published “The Elements of the China Challenge.”

    The paper argues that the core of the challenge consists of the concerted efforts by the Chinese Communist Party to reconfigure world order to serve the CCP’s authoritarian interests and aims. It explains the errors that nourished the hope on both the right and the left that economic liberalization in China, coupled with Western engagement and incorporation of Beijing into international organizations, would bring about China’s political liberalization. It describes the characteristic practices of the communist dictatorship, traces China’s brazen programs of economic co-optation and coercion in every region of the world, examines the Marxist-Leninist dogma and hyper-nationalist beliefs that provide the intellectual sources of the CCP’s quest for global supremacy, and surveys China’s vulnerabilities — both those endemic to authoritarian regimes and those specific to the People’s Republic of China. In conclusion, the paper lays out a framework for securing freedom.

    Reaction to the paper has been instructive. The Chinese Communist Party responded with ritual denunciation. In contrast, public intellectuals, scholars, and public officials from around the world have expressed appreciation for the Policy Planning Staff’s efforts to gather in one place the evidence of the CCP’s  predatory policies, to distill the party’s governing ambitions, and to sketch a way forward for the United States and all nations dedicated to preserving the free, open, and rules-based international order. The best of the American responses to the paper have coupled praise, in some cases grudging, with strictures, sometimes angry, about the paper’s limitations. The domestic criticisms are especially revealing, both for the serious issues they raise and for the misconceptions that they promulgate.

    “The Elements of the China Challenge” has its origins in Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s reorientation of the State Department — consistent with the Trump administration’s 2017 National Security Strategy and a number of other administration documents — around the new round of great-power competition launched by the CCP. The administration’s attention to the China challenge does not entail — as many mistakenly suppose — that the United States must turn its back to the rest of the world.

    To the contrary, the Policy Planning Staff paper stresses that to counter China’s quest for global supremacy, the United States must renew its alliance system and must reform international organizations so that they serve America’s vital interest in preserving an international order that is composed of free and sovereign nation-states and that is grounded in respect for human rights and the rule of law.

    Trump administration policy reflects this reorientation. For starters, the administration has led in exposing the CCP’s initial cover up of the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent disinformation campaign. The administration intensified efforts to combat China’s massive intellectual property theft. It placed the United States at the forefront of efforts to hold China accountable for gross human rights violations, especially the brutal imprisonment of more than a million Uyghurs in re-education camps in Xinjiang — the United States is the only nation to impose sanctions on CCP officials for these unconscionable abuses. It terminated Hong Kong’s special trading status in the spring, when the CCP crushed freedom in the city. It increased weapons sales to Taiwan, embarked on an inaugural U.S.-Taiwan economic dialogue, and signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Taiwan on health, science, and technology. It invigorated the Quad (Australia, India, Japan, and the United States) and, with its strategy for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific, affirmed the region’s critical importance. It revamped the Development Finance Corporation and reformed the Export-Import Bank to improve the ability of United States and its allies and partners to invest in other nations’ physical and digital infrastructure. And, the Trump administration has convinced more than 50 countries and counting to join the Clean Network, which promises secure telecommunications — unlike the technology offered by Chinese “national champions” Huawei and ZTE, which are CCP extensions whose hardware and software threaten individual privacy and national security.

    By stepping back, taking a broader view, and documenting the pattern and purpose of China’s actions, “The Elements of the China Challenge” explains why these policies are urgently needed, and why much more must be done. And by identifying 10 tasks that the United States must undertake — from restoring civic concord at home to, where possible, cooperating with Beijing based on norms of fairness and reciprocity, and to championing freedom abroad — the Policy Planning Staff paper lays the foundations for refashioning U.S. foreign policy to meet the China challenge.

    A common theme of the critics, reputable as well as disreputable, is that the paper falls short of the work of George Kennan, a career foreign service officer who in 1947 founded the Policy Planning Staff and became its first director. At the dawn of the Cold War, Kennan’s 1946 “Long Telegram” from Moscow and his 1947 Foreign Affairs article “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” illuminated the threat to freedom posed by the Soviet Union. The most influential documents produced by a State Department official, they served as sources of inspiration for the Policy Planning Staff, but we did not seek to replicate them since, as Kennan well understood, different challenges and moments demand different undertakings and emphases. Above all, today’s Policy Planning Staff learned from Kennan’s insistence on the combination of “ideology and circumstances” that determines great-power conduct, and took to heart his counsel that “to avoid destruction the United States need only measure up to its own best traditions and prove itself worthy of preservation as a great nation.”

    As for the disreputable critics, they give no evidence of having read the paper.

    The Global Times, a daily tabloid and wholly owned subsidiary of the Chinese Communist Party, was first out of the gate. The CCP newspaper dismissed “The Elements of the China Challenge” the day after it appeared as an “insult to Kennan” amounting to little more than “a collection of malicious remarks from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other anti-China U.S. politicians and senators.” At his regular press conference the following day, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian denounced the Policy Planning Staff paper as “just another collection of lies piled up by the those ‘living fossils of the Cold War’ from the U.S. State Department.”

    It would have been more accurate to refer to “the living victors of the Cold War,” but more telling still is the CCP’s failure to notice that the Policy Planning Staff distinguishes the China challenge from the Soviet challenge. While underscoring that, like the former Soviet Union after World War II, China today presents the foremost threat to freedom, the paper also stresses the distinct forms of power at work. “The Soviet Union,” the paper argues, “primarily enlarged its dominions and sought to impose its will through military coercion.” In contrast, and notwithstanding its development of a world-class military, China “primarily pursues the reconfiguration of world affairs through a kind and quantity of economic power of which the Soviets could only have dreamed.”

    Of the reputable critics, Odd Arne Westad, a Yale history professor and China scholar, is among the most distinguished. In a Foreign Affairs essay titled “The U.S. Can’t Check China Alone,” he asserts that the “report correctly sees China as the greatest challenge to the United States since the end of the Cold War, showing how Beijing has grown more authoritarian at home and more aggressive abroad.” The paper also, according to Westad, “rightly recognizes how China has tried to gain an advantage by applying economic pressure and conducting espionage — as well as by exploiting the naiveté that causes many foreigners to miss the oppressive nature of the Chinese Communist Party.”

    Nevertheless, Westad charges, “the report is limited by ideological and political constraints; given that it is a Trump administration document, it must echo President Donald Trump’s distaste for international organizations, even though they are key to dealing with China.” The professor also takes the paper to task on the grounds that it “almost completely ignores the most basic fact about the current situation, which is that the United States can compete effectively with China only through fundamental reform at home.”

    A meticulous scholar of Chinese history, Westad imputes to the Policy Planning Staff paper opinions not found there and overlooks arguments it prominently features. It is not true that our paper, as Westad writes, “suggests that it is now in the United States’ interests to destroy and then selectively rebuild existing international institutions.” Rather, the Policy Planning Staff calls for a reassessment of international organizations to determine where they serve freedom and where they no longer advance the objective for which they were created, arguing for reform where possible and the establishment of new institutions where necessary.

    Contrary to Westad, moreover, the Policy Planning Staff highlights the domestic foundations of effective foreign policy. Five of the 10 tasks we identify as crucial to securing freedom involve reform at home — from the renewal of American constitutional government and the promotion of prosperity and civic concord to restoring the U.S. educational system at all levels.

    Hal Brands, another reputable critic and leading scholar, finds “valuable insights” in “The Elements of the China Challenge.” Despite the juvenile taunt in the title of his Bloomberg op-ed, “There’s No George Kennan in the Trump Administration,” Brands — a professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies as well as a Bloomberg columnist — writes that the paper “explains, more completely than any prior U.S. policy document, the sources of Chinese conduct — namely the mix of Marxist-Leninist ideology, extreme nationalism and quasi-imperialism that drives the Chinese Communist Party.” In addition, according to Brands, the paper “shows that China’s objectives are not limited to its immediate periphery, but include fundamental changes in the international system”; it “details the troubling aspects of Chinese behavior, from economic predation to Beijing’s menacing military buildup, as well as the deep vulnerabilities — endemic corruption, inescapable demographic problems, economic instability — that threaten its continued ascent”; and it “outlines reasonable steps America should take to strengthen its position.”

    Yet Brands faults “The Elements of the China Challenge” for failing to rise to the ranks of Kennan, whose “brilliance lay in his ability to define an ambitious but ultimately achievable end-state.” Whereas Kennan envisaged a containment policy that would cause the Soviet Union to disintegrate from within, today’s Policy Planning Staff, Brands maintains, “provides no plausible theory of victory” and fails to “clarify what the U.S. seeks to achieve vis-à-vis Beijing.”

    It’s true that in a case in which so many have been so wrong for so long and so consequentially about China’s conduct and intentions, the Policy Planning Staff did not pretend to have a knowledge of the future that it does not possess. Indeed, one cannot safely rule out the several possibilities that Brands contemplates: U.S. firmness impelling the CCP to abandon its expansionist aims or triggering internal collapse, or, notwithstanding American firmness, the CCP holding power for generations to come.

    Brands, however, misses that the Policy Planning Staff lays out a framework for developing concrete policies consistent with all three possibilities. The paper repeatedly states that the goal of U.S. foreign policy must be to advance American interests by preserving an international order composed of free and sovereign nation-states and grounded in human rights and the rule of law while identifying essential tasks — beginning with adhering to our founding principles and preserving the best in our constitutional tradition — on which the achievement of that goal depends.

    Understanding the elements of the China challenge, which encompasses not only knowledge of China but of ourselves, is an indispensable condition for fashioning policies that secure freedom.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 22:20

  • Russia Issues Alexei Navalny An Ultimatum: Return Now Or Face Prison
    Russia Issues Alexei Navalny An Ultimatum: Return Now Or Face Prison

    The Kremlin just upped the ante amid soaring tensions with Germany and the EU over the Alexei Navalny affair, on Monday giving the allegedly poisoned Russian dissident an ultimatum: return to Russia right away for face prison.

    Reuters details that “Russia’s prison service on Monday gave Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny a last minute ultimatum: Fly back from Germany at once and report at a Moscow office early on Tuesday morning, or be jailed if you return after that deadline.”

    Russian officials have repeatedly condemned Berlin’s refusal to allow Russian investigators access to either any of the evidence or Navalny himself, following Germany’s prior conclusion that Russian intelligence tried to assassinate him using Soviet-made Novichok nerve agent in August. 

    Alexei Navalny in court in Moscow in 2017, via TASS/Getty Images

    Russian officials have also been adamant that Navalny was relatively unknown and obscure even among the domestic population, much less on a global stage, but is now basking in the international limelight simply by accusing Russia and Putin directly, as the now recovered Kremlin critic has done in multiple interviews.

    Russia has adamantly denied this narrative of events, instead claiming Navalny is serving as a stooge of Western intelligence in choreographed efforts to gain more political leverage over Moscow, and as justification for further sanctions. The EU recently imposed sanctions on top Russian intelligence officials over the Navalny case, to which Russia responded this month by announcing its own travel ban on select EU officials.

    This new Russian ultimatum apparently stems from a prior criminal case and Navalny’s allegedly violating a suspended prison sentence agreement previously brokered with authorities.

    Reuters explains, “The Federal Prison Service (FSIN) on Monday accused Navalny of violating the terms of a suspended prison sentence he is still serving out over a conviction dating from 2014, and of evading the supervision of Russia’s criminal inspection authority.”

    That initial case centered on theft allegations, something Navalny has long claimed was cooked up by his political enemies in order to damage his reputation as an opposition figure. Certainly at this point, he’s not going to return to Russian soil any time soon and will likely be offered a path to citizenship by Germany.

    The Charité hospital in Berlin where he had been emergency airlifted from Russia in September had announced that after 32 days in care, Navalny’s condition had “improved sufficiently for him to be discharged from acute inpatient care.” He was said to be completely recovered with no symptoms of the prior alleged August poisoning by early October, something the Kremlin has said is deeply suspicious and makes no sense given how deadly or at the very least permanently damaging Novichok is.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 22:00

  • Will Students Return To Public Schools After The Pandemic?
    Will Students Return To Public Schools After The Pandemic?

    By Will Flanders and Cori Petersen of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty; submitted by RealClearEducation.

    “She’s a happy kid, a good student, and the virtual learning was a disaster for us,” said Erin Haroldson of Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, whose eight-year-old daughter was receiving virtual education from her local public school last spring. When it looked like schools would go virtual again this fall, Haroldson asked her daughter if she would rather continue at Mount Horeb or start in person at a new school, where she would need to make new friends.

    When her daughter responded “Mom, I want to go to a new school,” the Haroldsons enrolled her in High Point Christian School in Madison.

    The Haroldsons are not alone. According to a new Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) study, the state’s public schools saw an unprecedented enrollment decline this fall, and the school districts that started virtual learning at the outset of the school year lost the most students. Across the Badger State, the average district saw an enrollment decline of 2.67%. Districts that went fully virtual drove this decline, seeing an average 3% decline in enrollment.  

    These numbers may seem small, but they represent a meaningful number of kids. In Madison, enrollment declined by 995 students; in Milwaukee, by 2,335 students. These drop-offs were driven in part by smaller pre-kindergarten and kindergarten enrollment. 

    Wisconsin’s experience is consistent with national trends. New York City Public Schools, the nation’s largest school district, is enrolling about 19,000 fewer students. According to Chalkbeat, the city’s most affluent public schools have seen a decline of 12%, while enrollment at the city’s lowest-income schools has dropped 4%. Enrollment in the Los Angeles Unified District, the nation’s second-largest district, has been dropping since its peak in 2003, when it reached 750,000 students. As of April, EdSource reported that enrollment had dropped to below 600,000. According to NPR, Los Angeles Unified is down about 11,000 students this fall. 

    If students are going to receive a virtual education, some parents prefer that they be taught by the remote-learning experts – virtual charter schools. Enrollment in K12, the largest virtual charter school in the U.S., grew from 123,000 last year to 170,000 as of August. In Wisconsin, some parents are using the state’s open-enrollment program to send their children to one of the 44 districts with a virtual charter school; these districts have seen an average 4.5% increase in enrollment relative to others. In Oklahoma, virtual charter schools went from educating 19,000 students to 33,000 this year, and, according to ChalkBeat, virtual charters in states such as Michigan, Oregon, Utah and Pennsylvania have experienced similar growth. 

    Other parents, however, like the Haroldsons, still want their children to be educated in person, despite the pandemic. They believe that the benefits of in-person education outweigh the potential consequences, since children are low risk. This belief is consistent with guidance released in August by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other scientific research. A research effort led by economist Emily Oster from Brown University looked at data from 200,000 students across 47 states and found that students seem less susceptible to COVID-19 and don’t spread the virus like adults do. 

    But if the science says it is low risk for students to be in person – and many parents agree, to the extent that they’re willing to arrange alternative in-person schooling for their children – then why are these districts going virtual? A study that WILL released last month suggests that teachers’ unions played a big role in these decisions. In fact, in Wisconsin, the presence of a teachers’ union in a district played a larger role in whether schools went virtual than the presence of COVID-19 in the community. Of the 36 Wisconsin school districts that began the year virtually, 81% had a teachers’ union. A national study, put out in September by Cory DeAngeles and Christopher Makridis, suggests that strong teachers’ unions played a leading role in shuttering districts across the U.S. They found that in states with right-to-work laws, schools were 14 percentage points more likely to open than in states without those laws.  

    The Haroldsons plan to keep their daughter at High Point Christian even after the pandemic is over. Wisconsin’s choice programs are growing fast, enrolling more than 2,700 new students throughout this last year. Whether it’s through such choice programs outside of public schools, or through public school programs such as open enrollment between districts, enabling parents to make the educational choices that they feel are best for their children is more important than ever. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 21:40

  • China To Overtake US By 2028; Ushering In Dollar's Demise? 
    China To Overtake US By 2028; Ushering In Dollar’s Demise? 

    Americans must wake up to the ugly reality that China will overtake the U.S. to become the world’s largest economy in 2028, five years earlier than previously anticipated, after weathering the virus pandemic much better than Western countries, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), a UK-based consultancy group.

    In 2017, CEBR initially reported that China would surpass the U.S. to become the world’s largest economy by 2032. However, the pandemic and corresponding economic fallout have rapidly brought forward the economic power shift from West to East. 

    “The Chinese authorities reacted vigorously and as a result, the Chinese economy has sustained less economic damage than any other major economy,” CEBR wrote in the report. 

    “Thanks to a strict early response, China has managed to avoid re-introducing the harshest pandemic-fighting measures after the first wave,” the consultancy group continued, adding that Beijing’s “skillful management of the pandemic” may have tipped the Sino-U.S. competition in China’s favor.

    “The big news in this forecast is the speed of growth of the Chinese economy,” said Douglas McWilliams, the CEBR’s deputy chairman. “We expect it to overtake the U.S. a full five years earlier than we did a year ago,” he added.

    CEBR’s annual league table of the growth prospects of 193 countries shows a major power shift and potential economic demise of the West. 

    It was noted China might expect average economic growth of 5.7% between 2021-2025 before slowing to 4.5% from 2026 to 2030. 

    The U.S. could experience a strong debt-fuelled rebound in 2021, with growth slowing to 1.9% between 2022-2024 and then falling to 1.6% towards the end of the decade. 

    Japan, the world’s third-biggest economy, is expected to be overtaken by India by 2030. Germany will be pushed down to fifth.

    “Other Asian economies are also shooting up the league table. One lesson for western policymakers, who have performed relatively badly during the pandemic, is that they need to pay much more attention to what is happening in Asia rather than simply looking at each other,” McWilliams said. 

    While the economic shift from West to East will happen much quicker than anticipated, American exceptionalism won’t fade overnight but will take a number of years; with that, the dollar is likely to enter a period of downward pressure. 

    JPMorgan’s latest “Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions” report highlights an extended period of U.S. “exceptionalism” – in growth, interest rates and equity market performance – may be coming to an end. As a result, we expect the dollar to weaken in most crosses over this cycle, with notable falls coming against EUR, JPY, and CNY.”

    Americans must wake up to the ugly fact that China is ahead of schedule at displacing the U.S. as the world’s greatest economic superpower. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 21:20

  • Trump's Parting Shot: China Rips Pro-Taiwan & Tibet Measures In Spending Package
    Trump’s Parting Shot: China Rips Pro-Taiwan & Tibet Measures In Spending Package

    China has reacted fiercely to what it says is anti-China language and policies contained in the huge $2.3 trillion spending package President Trump signed Sunday night, namely centered on Tibet Policy and Support Act and the Taiwan Assurance Act.

    China’s foreign affairs minister Zhao Lijian expressed the Chinese Communist Party’s anger, saying the country is “resolutely opposed” to the two measures as they unfairly “target China” and constitute blatant interference in its own foreign affairs and relations.

    Urging Washington to not enforce those parts of the two bills within the spending package, Lijian said further that “The determination of the Chinese government to safeguard its national sovereignty, security, and development interests is unwavering,” according to Reuters.

    The sections are part of a controversial series of foreign aid related massive spending stipulations contained within the nearly 6,000 pages which have now become law.

    The Tibet Policy and Support Act further bans China from establishing new consulates in the US until the US is able to do so freely in Tibet.

    Moreover, the bill specifically directs the secretary of state to establish an American consulate in Tibet, which has long been claimed by China in a situation parallel to the historic standoff over the Republic of Taiwan..

    The bill also targets Chinese officials for travel bans if they are deemed “complicit in identifying or installing a government-approved candidate” to succeed the Dalai Lama.

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    As for the Taiwan Assurance Act, it aims to solidify a 1979 US law that affirms “substantive ties” between the US and Taiwan, including more weapons sales and increased moves toward normalization.

    This after over the past months the US and Taiwan have inked deals for a record breaking series of advanced weapons transfers, which Beijing sees as a blatant violation of the previously agreed upon longtime ‘One China Policy’ status quo.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 21:00

  • Iran Vows "Massive Response" If Israel Crosses 'Red Lines' With Sub Presence In Gulf
    Iran Vows “Massive Response” If Israel Crosses ‘Red Lines’ With Sub Presence In Gulf

    Just a little over three weeks to go until President-Elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan.20 and tensions in the Persian Gulf are at boiling point given not only the presence of a US nuclear submarine but allegedly a major Israeli presence as well. A week ago Israeli sources confirmed that an Israeli submarine had crossed the Suez Canal visibly above water en route to the Persian Gulf as a clear “message” to the Islamic Republic.

    On Monday Iran’s foreign ministry warned that Israel now risks crossing “red lines” should it enter deeply into the Gulf and thus Iran’s own backyard, with ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh warning that Israel should be “aware of the risks of crossing Iran’s red lines.”

    “Everybody knows what the Persian Gulf means to Iran, and what policy Iran pursues about its national interests and security,” Khatibzadeh said according to Tasnim news agency. The build-up in Persian Gulf waters comes after the November assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh near Tehran in a sophisticated operation widely blamed on Israeli intelligence.

    Khatibzadeh added that Iran has sent “messages to the US government and our friends in the region warning the current US regime not to embark on a new adventure in its final days at the White House.”

    Separately on Monday a top level Iranian parliament member issued a more directly threatening response to the Israeli sub presence. According to new statements by the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Abolfazl Amouei:

    Iran will not hesitate to give a “strong and massive” response to any Israeli submarine in the Persian Gulf, a lawmaker says, after the Washington Post  claimed that Tel Aviv was sending one to the strategic waters. 

    “Israel must know that our response to aggression against our national security will be strong and massive,” Amouei added, speaking on behalf of Iranian lawmakers.

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    Echoing prior statements of both Iran’s president and the foreign ministry, Amouei alleged that Israel and the outgoing Trump administration were busy looking to provoke a conflict, given the door is closing for such an opportunity as Biden has vowed to immediately restore US participation in the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA).

    “Israel is looking for excuses to drag the region into a tension that creates chaos in the last days of the Trump presidency,” Amouei said in an interview with Al Jazeera.

    However, whether the Israeli sub is currently actually in Gulf waters or even as far as in the Strait of Hormuz remains a different question. Iran’s foreign ministry downplayed this at the same time, calling both recent Israeli and a Washington Post report a “media assumption.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 20:40

  • Police Release Dramatic Bodycam Footage Of Nashville RV Bombing 
    Police Release Dramatic Bodycam Footage Of Nashville RV Bombing 

    Metro Nashville Police have released body camera footage from one of the officers who responded to 2nd Ave N, in Downtown Nashville, on Friday morning, just minutes before the explosion. 

    Officer Michael Sipos’ body camera footage was published on the Nashville Police’s YouTube channel on Monday. There are about twelve minutes of footage. 

    The video starts with a handful of officers around 6:14 am on Christmas morning, requesting residents living on the street where 63-year-old Anthony Q. Warner, the bombing suspect confirmed by local police and federal agents, had parked his recreational vehicle packed with explosives, to vacate the area because “there is something very serious happening down the road,” one officer told a resident. 

    A couple of minutes into the video, Sipos walked in the direction of Warner’s recreational vehicle parked outside the AT&T building. As he approaches the vehicle on the opposite side of the street, a loudspeaker can be heard playing from the vehicle, declaring: “all buildings in this area must be evacuated now.”

    While Sipos and another officer walk to the end of the street, he said, “that building right next to you is the building that houses all the hardlines for phones throughout the Southeast.” 

    As Sipos headed to his police car, around the 3:51 mark of the video, a loud explosion can be heard, illuminating the morning sky as glass and debris could be heard raining down on the officer. 

    Sipos can be seen suiting up with body armor and running back to the scene to find an absolute warzone. 

    Authorities confirmed that human remains at the scene were a match to Warner’s DNA. They are also analyzing if his paranoia over 5G technology was the motive to detonate his recreational vehicle outside the AT&T facility. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 20:18

  • New Jersey Women Arrested For Hosting COVID Speakeasy Where Hundreds Showed Up
    New Jersey Women Arrested For Hosting COVID Speakeasy Where Hundreds Showed Up

    Two New Jersey women were arrested for hosting an illegal “makeshift bar” over the weekend, according to NBC News.

    Officers responded to calls at a Newark warehouse at around 12 a.m. on Sunday where hundreds of patrons were seen eating, drinking and illegally gambling, according to police.

    Anthony Ambrose, Newark Public Safety Director, said 26-year-old Denisse Tinizaray and 28-year-old Katherine Tinizaray, both of Newark, were arrested after the two failed to provide a liquor license.

    Both women were charged with maintaining an illegal alcohol establishment and illegal possession and sales of alcohol. –NBC News

    Meanwhile, three people were arrested in a Newark suburb for allegedly selling alcohol without a permit outside a hookah lounge which hosted over 50 people, according to NBC New York.

    The owner and operators of La Café Hookah hosted over 50 inside the establishment, above Gov. Phil Murphy’s limit of 10 people for indoor gatherings and after 10 p.m. curfew, according to Paterson police.

    None of the employees or customers were wearing any PPE and they were not properly distanced.

    Jamahl Carter, Jamahl Carter Jr. and Erica Bush face several charges including selling alcohol without a license, no entertainment license, smoking indoors and recklessly creating and maintaining a condition endangering public safety.

    When has prohibition ever worked?

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 20:00

  • House Votes To Override Trump Veto On Defense Bill
    House Votes To Override Trump Veto On Defense Bill

    As expected, the House on Monday overwhelmingly voted to override Trump’s veto of the sweeping defense policy bill known as the National Defense Authorization Act. The final vote was 322-87, receiving the two-thirds majority it required with 109 Republicans voting to override Trump’s veto while 20 Democrats voted to sustain it.

    Some Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, voted to sustain Trump’s veto despite supporting the bill earlier this month.

    The Senate is expected to hold its own veto override vote later this week. If the Senate also overrides the president’s veto, it will be the first time Congress has successfully rejected a presidential veto during Trump’s presidency.

    As ABC reports, the $740 billion bill includes pay raises for America’s soldiers, improvements in body armor for women, coronavirus relief, military housing improvements and boosted sexual harassment prevention and response measures, among other items. It has passed both chambers of Congress for 59 years straight with strong bipartisan support.

    Shortly before the vote, GOP Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, urged his colleagues to vote for “the exact same bill” they did before, emphasizing that “not a comma has changed.”

    “I would only ask that as members vote, they put the best interests of the country first,” Thornberry said. “There is no other consideration that should matter.”

    the bill initially cleared both chambers of Congress with veto-proof majorities earlier this month. Trump then vetoed the bill last week because it didn’t include a repeal of Section 230, a law that shields internet companies from being liable for what is posted on their websites by them or third parties. The bill also included a provision that would rename military bases named after Confederates, which Trump opposed.

    The defense bill must become law before noon Jan. 3, when the new session of Congress begins, or it will expire.

    While the veto was expected, in a curious twist, Sen Bernie Sanders said he will hold up vote on overriding the defense bill veto unless Senate votes on $2k checks: “Let me be clear: If Senator McConnell doesn’t agree to an up or down vote to provide the working people of our country a $2,000 direct payment, Congress will not be going home for New Year’s Eve. Let’s do our job”, Sanders said.

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    The move, according to Politico, is meant to further “undermine Republican senators competing in the Georgia run-offs”… as if a few thousand fake mailed ballots won’t be sufficient.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 19:42

  • High School Student Sues Over Leftist "Indoctrination" In Nevada
    High School Student Sues Over Leftist “Indoctrination” In Nevada

    Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

    A high school senior of mixed race is suing a taxpayer-funded charter school in Nevada over the “coercive, ideological indoctrination” that is central to its Critical Race Theory-based curriculum that forces students to associate aspects of their identity with oppression.

    In the lawsuit, Clark v. State Public Charter School Authority, filed Dec. 22 in federal court in Nevada, the young plaintiff William Clark and his mother Gabrielle Clark claim their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights were being violated. Students were allegedly told that by refusing to identify with an oppressive group, they were exercising their privilege or underscoring their role as an oppressor.

    The lawsuit was filed by the Illinois-based group Schoolhouse Rights, whose website describes its mission as supporting “civil rights litigation in defense of students’ freedom of conscience in public education and the rights of parents to guide and direct the upbringing of their children.”

    The student at Democracy Prep in Las Vegas whose mother is black and deceased father was white, claims there was a hostile classroom environment, and that he felt discriminated against in the mandatory, year-long “Sociology of Change” course required for graduation. There is another required class, “Change the World,” in which students carry out a political or social work project.

    Because the so-called civics curriculum implemented by new management carried the same name as the previous curriculum, parents like Mrs. Clark “were not aware of the turn towards coercive, ideological indoctrination until they began seeing the detrimental effects it worked upon their children,” the legal complaint states.

    The new curriculum “inserted consciousness raising and conditioning exercises under the banner of ‘Intersectionality’ and ‘Critical Race Theory.’ These sessions … are not descriptive or informational in nature, but normative and prescriptive: they require pupils to ‘unlearn’ and ‘fight back’ against ‘oppressive’ structures allegedly implicit in their family arrangements, religious beliefs and practices, racial, sexual, and gender identities, all of which they are required to divulge and subject to non-private interrogation.”

    William was directed “in class to ‘unlearn’ the basic Judeo-Christian principles [his mother] imparted to him, and then [the school] retaliated against [him].”

    “Some racial, sexual, gender and religious identities, once revealed,” the complaint states, “are officially singled out in the programming as inherently problematic, and assigned pejorative moral attributes by Defendants.”

    The school principal told Mrs. Clark “that the theoretical basis of the revamped ‘Sociology of Change’ course is known as ‘intersectionality,’ and is inspired by political activist, academic and ‘Critical Race Theory’ proponent Kimberlé Crenshaw,” the complaint states. Crenshaw is a law professor at UCLA and Columbia Law School who is regarded as a leading authority on black feminist legal theory and is said to have coined the term “intersectionality.”

    William Clark was required for assignments the legal complaint says “to reveal his racial, sexual, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities and religious identities,” by his teacher who greeted the students by saying, “Hello my wonderful social justice warriors!” Clark was told the next step would be to determine if parts of his identity “have privilege or oppression attached to it.” Privilege was defined as “the inherent belief in the inferiority of the oppressed group.”

    The legal argument the Clarks make is that William is being compelled “to make professions about his racial, sexual, gender and religious identities in verbal class exercises and in graded, written homework assignments which were subject to the scrutiny, interrogation and derogatory labeling of students, teachers and school administrators.”

    The defendants “are coercing him to accept and affirm politicized and discriminatory principles and statements that he cannot in conscience affirm.”

    The school repeatedly threatened William “with material harm including a failing grade and non-graduation if he failed to comply with their requirements,” the complaint states, and refused to accommodate his requests for reasonable accommodation.

    Resistance

    Steven Hayward lauded the lawsuit at Power Line Blog, saying it heralds the beginning of an “active resistance” and a “counterrevolution” against the far-left takeover of American institutions.

    “While misguided Millennials lean heavily progressive at the moment, the next generation of young people is going to swing sharply to the right out of rebellion against the stifling conformity of the progressive left that went into hyperdrive this year,” Hayward writes.

    The lawsuit comes after President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 13950 on Sept. 22 prohibiting the military, federal agencies, and federal contractors from promoting the “divisive concepts” that are part of Critical Race Theory in workplace trainings.

    The theory is the basis for an intellectual movement whose adherents retired federal Judge Richard Posner, dubbed “the most-cited legal scholar of the 20th century,” has described as the “lunatic core” of “radical legal egalitarianism.” The late Derrick Bell, who was one of former President Barack Obama’s professors at Harvard Law School, was the most prominent scholar to promote the theory.

    While Trump has referred to Critical Race Theory by name, the executive order does not, instead describing it as a “malign ideology [that] is now migrating from the fringes of American society and threatens to infect core institutions of our country,” including in “workplace diversity trainings across the country, even in components of the Federal Government and among Federal contractors.”

    It is an ideology “rooted in the pernicious and false belief that America is an irredeemably racist and sexist country; that some people, simply on account of their race or sex, are oppressors; and that racial and sexual identities are more important than our common status as human beings and Americans.”

    U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman, an Obama appointee based in San Jose, California, issued a preliminary nationwide injunction against EO 13950 on Dec. 22, USA Today reported.

    She agreed with an LGBT diversity training organization that argued the order violated its free speech rights. “Plaintiffs have demonstrated a likelihood of success in proving violations of their constitutional rights … the work Plaintiffs perform is extremely important to historically underserved communities,” Freeman wrote in an order.

    The Epoch Times reached out to Rebecca Feiden, executive director of the State Public Charter School Authority, for a comment over the holiday weekend but had not received a reply as of press time.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 19:40

  • China's Antitrust Crackdown On Tech's Giants Leads To Massive Losses
    China’s Antitrust Crackdown On Tech’s Giants Leads To Massive Losses

    China’s continued crusade against Jack Ma – which may or may not culminate with Beijing tearing apart his fintech giant, Ant Financial on anti-trust grounds – led to a second day of frenetic selling among China’s largest tech firms, driven by an investor panic Beijing’s crackdown on financial intermediaries and antitrust scrutiny would spread beyond Jack Ma’s internet empire and engulf the country’s most powerful corporations.

    As Bloomberg reports, Alibaba and its three biggest rivals – Tencent, food delivery giant Meituan and JD.com – were hammered in the past 48 hours, losing nearly $200 billion in the two sessions since Thursday when regulators revealed a probe into alleged monopolistic practices at Ma’s company, which was followed on Sunday by comments from PBOC deputy governor Pan Gongsheng who slammed the world’s biggest fintech company, Ant Financial, which is also owned by Ma saying it “must return to its origins in online payments and prohibit irregular competition, protect customers’ privacy in operating its personal credit rating business, establish a financial holding company to manage its businesses, rectify any irregularities in its insurance, wealth management and credit businesses, and run its asset-backed securities business in accordance with regulations.”

    Traders were stunned by what appears to be the formal start of the Communist Party’s crackdown on not just Alibaba but also, potentially, the wider and increasingly influential tech sphere; as a result they quickly puked the Chinese tech megacaps, with Alibaba falling 8% Monday in Hong Kong, losing $270 billion of value since its October peak. Tencent and Meituan also tumbled more than 6%. Alibaba rival JD.com slid roughly 2%.

    “The Chinese government is putting more pressure or wants to have more control on the tech firms,” Jackson Wong, asset management director at Amber Hill Capital, told Bloomberg. “There is still very big selling pressure on firms like Alibaba, Tencent or Meituan. These companies have been growing at a pace deemed by Beijing as too fast and have scales that are too big.”

    So far Beijing’s ultimate intentions vis-a-vis Jack Ma and his online tech empire remain unclear, but as we noted yesterday, “the worst case scenario would be for Ant to forgo its money management, credit and insurance businesses, halting its operations in the units that service half a billion people. Its wealth management business which includes the Yu’ebao platform that sells mutual funds and money market funds, accounted for 15% of revenue.”

    Today Bloomberg picks up on this, writing that “investors remain divided over the extent to which Beijing will go after Alibaba and its compatriots as Beijing prepares to roll out the new anti-monopoly regulations. The country’s leaders have said little about how harshly they plan to clamp down or why they decided to act now.”

    As Bloomberg adds, it’s unclear what concessions regulators may try to wring from Alibaba. Under the existing Antitrust Law, which is undergoing revisions to include the internet industry for the first time, Beijing can fine violators up to 10% of their revenue. In Alibaba’s case, that could mean a levy of as much as $7.8 billion.

    Of course, the heavily sold tech names aren’t just sitting their: on Monday Alibaba raised its stock repurchase program by $4 billion to $10 billion, effective for two years through the end of 2022. But the buyback program was overwhelmed by fears that the steps taken against Ant are just the tip of the iceberg. While the central bank stopped short of calling for a breakup, the financial services giant now needs to present specific measures and a timetable for overhauling its business.

    The State Administration for Market Regulation dispatched officials to Alibaba’s Hangzhou headquarters last Thursday and the on-site investigation was completed on the day, according to local news reports. The People’s Daily — the Communist Party mouthpiece — ran a commentary over the weekend warning Alibaba’s peers to take the antitrust investigation into Alibaba as a chance to lift their own awareness of fair competition.

    Meanwhile, as we noted over the weekend, the formerly outspoken Ma has vanished from public view since Ant’s IPO got crushed by Beijing in the last moment in November. As of early December, Ma was advised by the government to stay in the country, a Bloomberg source said.

    What happens next?

    According to Bloomberg, “some analysts predict there’s a crackdown coming, but a targeted one.” They point to language in the regulations that suggests a heavy focus on online commerce, from forced exclusive arrangements with merchants known as “Pick One of Two” to algorithm-based prices favoring new users. The regulations specifically warn against predatory pricing – selling below cost – to weed out rivals.

    “As this latest investigation occurs at a time when China is ready to take action against monopolistic practices, we think SAMR might want to use BABA’s case as a precedent to send a message to the rest of the industry that the authority is determined this time to address the” pricing issue, Nomura analysts wrote in a note Monday.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 19:20

  • Anti-America, Anti-Trump, 'Anti-Racist': The 5 Most Politically-Biased Courses Of 2020
    Anti-America, Anti-Trump, ‘Anti-Racist’: The 5 Most Politically-Biased Courses Of 2020

    Authored by Benjamin Zeisloft via Campus Reform,

    Campus Reform reported on multiple courses in 2020 that pushed left-wing political bias.

    Here are the five most biased courses of 2020.

    1. Vanderbilt University

    More than 800 Vanderbilt students were asked on a class assignment if the U.S. Constitution was “designed to perpetuate white supremacy.” 

    The “correct” answer to the question was “true.”

    The course, entitled “US Elections,” discussed “the presidential and congressional elections, the recruitment of candidates, nomination processes, financing campaigns, media coverage, polling, predictive models, and implications of results.”

    2. Tulane University

    Tulane University in New Orleans is offering course in spring 2021, entitled “Feminism after Trumplandia,” will look at President Donald Trump’s actions while in office, including the “defunding of Planned Parenthood,” the “Muslim ban,” “assault on pro-choice legislation,” rescinding “protections for transgender students,” and Trump’s “history of sexual assault” as “unprecedented dystopia for women.” 

    Despite the description, the professor teaching the course vows it will not be partisan. 

    “It is more about the movement of feminism from 1950 onward and trying to chart how it has changed under the Trump administration,” she said.

    3. CUNY (Queens College)

    An urban studies class at Queens College made students write about three alleged “thefts” that made President Donald Trump wealthy.

    According to the Jacobin article upon which the project was based, Trump’s thefts included “wage theft from the workers who build and maintain his projects; tax theft from the state that enables him; and land theft from the common spaces he encloses.”

    4. University of Pittsburgh

    The University of Pittsburgh released materials for its first-year, mandatory anti-black racism course. The inaugural semester of “Anti-Black Racism: History, Ideology, and Resistance” was required for all freshmen, who were automatically enrolled in the course.

    The first week of the course introduced students to “critical theories on race and anti-blackness in everyday life.” Multiple weeks of the course discuss Black Lives Matter and its influence as a “contemporary black liberation” movement.

    “I’m glad to say I now have a Ph.D. in racism,” one student told Campus Reform.

    5. CUNY (Brooklyn College)

    A Brooklyn College professor threatened to remove any student from “Fundamental Concepts in LGBTQ Studies” if he or she misgenders another individual; after Campus Reform contacted the university for comment, the professor was instructed to remove the threat.

    “My name is B. Call me B,” wrote the professor in the course’s syllabus. “I am nonbinary, transfeminine…I adhere to a strict policy of respect for the gender, sexual, and racial identities of my students. Intentional misgendering, as with any attempt to slur another student’s personal integrity on the basis of race, ethnicity, or religion, will result in immediate dismissal from class for that session. Continued abuses will result in disciplinary action with the appropriate administrators.”

    The syllabus listed several LGBTQ-related reading assignments, including “Is the Rectum a Grave?” and “How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 19:00

  • UK Journalist Hounded After Pointing Out That Only Old And Sick Die From COVID
    UK Journalist Hounded After Pointing Out That Only Old And Sick Die From COVID

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    A British journalist has been targeted by an angry online mob after pointing out that only a relatively small amount of healthy people have died from COVID, and suggesting that the complete destruction of our way of life is not an adequate response.

    Talkradio host Julia Hartley-Brewer used the National Health Service’s own statistics to point out that “Just 377 healthy people under 60 have died of Covid.”

    “That’s not a typo. There are no zeros missing,” Hartley-Brewer noted urging that while it is sad, it shouldn’t justify the shutdown of the economy and the house arrest of the entire country.

    She further noted that pointing this out doesn’t mean she is saying “to hell with the old and sick”.

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    Some people just will not hear it, however, raging that Hartley-Brewer is a despicable human being:

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    The radio host refused to back down, noting that she had become a target of the “lockdown fanatic rainbow crowd”:

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    Others noted that some people are refusing to accept the horrible reality unfolding infront of their eyes:

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 18:55

  • BMW Will Produce An Additional 250,000 EVs Over Next 3 Years, CEO Says
    BMW Will Produce An Additional 250,000 EVs Over Next 3 Years, CEO Says

    As if Tesla’s inclusion in to the S&P 500 and ARK Invest’s batshit insane impressive fund inflows over the last couple weeks haven’t been enough to make you consider a top in Tesla, the rest of the automotive world continues to close in on the automaker.

    We have now officially seen electric vehicles from manufacturers like Hyundai, Volkswagen and Ford offering up “real world” competition to Tesla, who continues to struggle with quality control defects while focusing on getting their car horns to make fart noises. 

    Now, BMW is throwing their hat in the ring – in a big way. The German manufacturer said this weekend that it plans to produce an additional 250,000 electric vehicles over the next three years.

    The company’s CEO Oliver Zipse said on Sunday: “We already had ambitions growth plans and want to further expand our market position.”

    The CEO says he has remaining concerns about Germany’s transition to electric vehicles will be slowed down by lack of charging infrastructure. He predicted that 15,000 private and 1,300 public chargers would have to be put into operation in the country, every week, starting now. 

    “Unfortunately we are far from that. Therefore, the next big joint project in Europe must be to expand charging infrastructure,” he said, according to Bloomberg.

    Recall, in the U.S., President Elect Joe Biden has already promised 500,000 new EV charging stations in the U.S. 

    This will be part of Biden’s plan to help create “over 1 million jobs by investing in clean energy”, TechStartups wrote last week. 

    The plan will mark a rapid expansion of EV infrastructure across the U.S., which had about 78,500 charging outlets and about 25,000 charging stations as of March 2020. It also means that Biden is going to have to convince Congress to continue to approve subsidies and tax credits, which have led to such wonderful wastes of money as Tesla’s Buffalo plant. 

    The initiative appears to be part of a plan to stop China from “dramatically outpacing” the U.S. in its adoption of EVs, Reuters noted last week. As part of his plan, Biden expects to nominate former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm as his energy secretary. Granholm has experience in taxpayer-funded subsidies, Reuters notes; she helped secure $1.35 billion in the past to incentivize companies to make EVs and batteries in her state when she was governor. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 18:40

  • Neoliberal Champion Larry Summers Opens Mouth, Inserts Both Feet: Taibbi
    Neoliberal Champion Larry Summers Opens Mouth, Inserts Both Feet: Taibbi

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News

    Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, director of the National Economic Council under Barack Obama, president of Harvard, and Chief Economist at the World Bank, wrote a post-Christmas editorial for Bloomberg entitled, “Trump’s $2000 Stimulus Checks are a Big Mistake.” It’s a classic:

    Some argue that while $2,000 checks may not be optimal support for the post-Covid economy, taking stimulus from $600 to $2,000 is better than nothing. They need to ask themselves whether they would favor $5,000, or $10,000 — or more. There must be a limiting principle.

    The genesis of this Summers article is a perfect tale in microcosm about how America’s intellectual elite manages to lose elections to people like Donald Trump. It’s a two-step error. First, they put people like Summers in charge of economic policies. Then, they let them talk in public.

    Summers the day before Christmas appeared on Bloomberg to offer his initial thoughts on why $2000 checks must be bad: he looked at which politicians were supporting the plan, and worked backward. “When I see a coalition of Josh Hawley, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump getting behind an idea, I think that’s time to run for cover,” he said, adding: “When you see the two extremes agreeing, you can almost be certain that something crazy is in the air.”

     After delivering that cheery message, Summers got feces-pelted on the Internet:

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    Seeing that his comments “lit up the Twittersphere,” Summers then sat down to compose an article doubling down on his reasoning. Essentially, he argued that from an econometric point of view, we’re already overdoing it on the help front. If you were under the impression that huge numbers of people are living off meals from food banks and/or are at risk in an eviction crisis, you were wrong.

    Noting that “total employee compensation” is “only running about $30 billion per month behind the Covid baseline,” he insisted that $200 billion more in tax rebates per month over the next quarter would “equal an additional seven times the loss of household wage and salary income over the next quarter.”

    He then showed a graph explaining that “because of the legislation passed in 2020, total household income… has exceeded normal levels relative to the economy’s potential more or less since the pandemic began.” The good news, as a result, is that “the existing stimulus bill is sufficient to elevate household income relative to the economy’s potential to abnormally high levels — unheard of during an economic downturn.”

    The whole piece reads like an extended New Yorker cartoon, in which an evictee with empty pockets is about to dive after a rotten apple core in a dumpster, only to be blocked by a cauldron-bellied Harvard economist in a $3000 Zegna suit. Caption: “Actually, total household income relative to the economy’s potential sits at abnormally high levels.”

    There are of course different positions one could take on the question of stimulus checks, but the issue with people like Summers is the utter predictability of their stances. Summers belongs to a club of neoliberal thinkers who’ve dominated American policy for decades. From Bob Rubin to Tim Geithner to Jason Furman to Michael Froman and beyond, the people one friend jokingly refers to as the “Rubino Crime Family” are all basically the same person, affectless technocrats who play up reputations as giant-brained intellectuals — I always imagine them with bulbous Alien Nation heads — while reveling in cold, hard truths about the limits of government assistance.

    Read the rest here.

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/28/2020 – 18:20

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