- France's Charlie Hebdo Sparks Turkish Fury With Cartoon Of "Erdogan In Private"
France’s Charlie Hebdo Sparks Turkish Fury With Cartoon Of “Erdogan In Private”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/29/2020 – 02:45A new satirical cartoon from the French weekly Charlie Hebdo has sparked fury in Turkey and is worsening the diplomatic spat between Turkey and France after Paris already recalled its ambassador when President Erdogan questioned Macron’s mental health while accusing the French president of attacking Islam over remarks made in the wake of the horrific beheading of a middle school teacher Samuel Paty on October 16.
The latest edition of the newspaper, first released online Tuesday night, features a front page cartoon mocking President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – he’s in his underpants, holding a can of beer and gazing up a skirt of a hijab wearing woman.
“Ooh, the prophet!” the character says in the French speech bubble, with the title reading: “Erdogan: in private, he’s very funny”.
Erdogan : dans le privé, il est très drôle !
Retrouvez :
👉 Laïcité : zoom sur le CCIF par @LaureDaussy
👉 Voyage dans la crackosphère parisienne par @AntonioFischet8 et Foolz
👉 Reportage à Lunéville et son théâtre par Juin➡ Disponible demain ! pic.twitter.com/jxXqKrvXbK
— Charlie Hebdo (@Charlie_Hebdo_) October 27, 2020
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It has set off outrage among the Turkish public especially after Erdogan shot back Wednesday saying the “worthless” cartoon had nothing to do with free speech but is in reality an attack on Islam. He accused European countries of wanting to “relaunch the Crusades”. There’s also been growing demonstrations in other parts of the Middle East over charges of France’s “anti-Islamic” stance.
Erdogan’s top press aide, Fahrettin Altun, additionally said in a tweet: “We condemn this most disgusting effort by this publication to spread its cultural racism and hatred.”
“French President Macron’s anti-Muslim agenda is bearing fruit! Charlie Hebdo just published a series of so-called cartoons full of despicable images purportedly of our President,” he added.
On Monday Erdogan called for a Turkish boycott of all French goods over what he called France’s ‘anti-Islamic’ stance towards Muslims and the Turkish people. Erdogan had said during a televised speech in Ankara: “As it has been said in France, ‘don’t buy Turkish-labelled goods’, I call on my people here. Never give credit to French-labelled goods, don’t buy them.”
Meanwhile Erdogan is threatening to sue every European leader that posts or defends the cartoons, as is happening with a Dutch politician:
European leaders were out in force again today against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, amidst news that he is suing a Dutch politician for posting a cartoon of him.
Here’s how the growing standoff between Europe and Ankara started 🧵https://t.co/cGIKykOOWs
— POLITICOEurope (@POLITICOEurope) October 27, 2020
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Macron has emphasized a freedom of speech message, vowing that the French “not give up our cartoons” – in reference to both the latest row but also the events and controversy surrounding the January 7, 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre, which left 12 people dead after the newspaper published a series of cartoons perceived as mocking the founder of Islam Muhammad.
According to Reuters, Turkey has launched an investigation into the French newspaper, saying it will take “all necessary legal, diplomatic steps against Charlie Hebdo caricature on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.”
- The Armenian-Azerbaijani War After One Month
The Armenian-Azerbaijani War After One Month
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/29/2020 – 02:00Submitted by SouthFront.org,
After a month of war, the Turkish-Azerbaijani bloc continues to keep the initiative in the conflict, exploiting its advantage in air power, artillery, military equipment and manpower. The coming days are likely to show whether Ankara and Baku are able to deliver a devastating blow to Armenian forces in Karabakh in the nearest future or not.
If Armenian forces repel the attack on Lachin, a vital supply route from Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh, they will win the opportunity to survive till the moment when the ‘international community’ finally takes some real steps to pressure Turkey and Azerbaijan enough to force them to stop the ongoing advance. If this does not happen, the outcome of the war seems to be predetermined.
Meanwhile, Azerbaijani forces continue their advance in the region amid the failed US-sponsored ceasefire regime. Their main goal is Lachin. In fact, they have been already shelling the supply route with rocket launchers and artillery. The distance of 12-14km at which they were located a few days ago already allowed this. Now, reports appear that various Azerbaijani units are at a distance of about 5-8 km from the corridor. Armenian forces are trying to push Azerbaijani troops back, but with little success so far.
The advance is accompanied by numerous Azerbaijan claims that Armenian forces are regularly shelling civilian targets and that the ongoing advance is the way to deter them. Baku reported on the evening of October 27 that at least four civilians had been killed and 10 wounded in Armenian strikes on Goranboy, Tartar and Barda. On the morning of October 28, the Armenians allegedly shelled civilian targets in Tovuz, Gadabay, Dashkesan, and Gubadl.
On the morning of October 28, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry claimed that in response to these Armenian violations its forces had eliminated a large number of enemy forces, an “OSA” air-defense system, 3 BM-21 «Grad» rocket launchers, 6 D-30, 5 D-20, and 1 D-44 howitzers, 2 2A36 «Giatsint-B» artillery guns, a 120 mm mortar, a “Konkurs” anti-tank missile and 6 auto vehicles.
On October 27, Azerbaijani sources also released a video allegedly showing the assassination of Lieutenant General Jalal Harutyunyan by a drone strike. Azerbaijani sources claim that he was killed. These reports were denied by the Armenian side, which insisted that the prominent commander was only injured. Nonetheless, the Karabakh leadership appointed Mikael Arzumanyan as the new defense minister of the self-proclaimed republic.
On the evening of October 27 , the Armenian Defense Ministry released a map showing their version of the situation in the contested region. Even according to this map, Armenian forces have lost almost the entire south of Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijani forces are close to the Lachin corridor. An interesting fact is that the Armenians still claim that the town of Hadrut is in their hands. According to them, small ‘enemy units’ reach the town, take photos and then run away.
Al-Hadath TV also released a video showing Turkish-backed Syrian militants captured during the clashes. Now, there is not only visual evidence confirming the presence of members of Turkish-backed militant groups in the conflict zone, but also actual Syrian militants in the hands of Armenian forces.
Experts who monitor the internal political situation in Armenia say that in recent days the Soros-grown team of Pashinyan has changed its rhetoric towards a pro-Russian agenda. Many prominent members of the current Pashinyan government and the Prime Minister himself spent the last 10 years pushing a pro-Western agenda. After seizing power as a result of the coup in 2018, they then put much effort into damaging relations with Russia and turned Armenia into a de-facto anti-Russian state. This undermined Armenian regional security and created the conditions needed for an Azerbaijani-Turkish advance in Karabakh. Now, the Pashinyan government tries to rescue itself by employing some ‘pro-Russian rhetoric’. It even reportedly asked second President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan to participate in negotiations with Russia as a member of the Armenian delegation. It should be noted that the persecution of Kocharyan that led to his arrest in June 2019 was among the first steps taken by Pashinyan after he seized power. Kocharyan was only released from prison in late June 2020. Despite these moves in the face of a full military defeat in Karabakh, the core ideology of the Pashinyan government remains the same (anti-Russian, pro-Western and NATO-oriented). Therefore, even if Moscow rescues Armenia in Karabkah, the current Armenian leadership will continue supporting the same anti-Russian policy.
- Will They Really Get Away With It?
Will They Really Get Away With It?
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/28/2020 – 23:45Authored by Chris Farrell via The Gatestone Institute,
Obama administration officials committed crimes against the constitution. They engaged in a seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States.
Will they really get away with it?
Forty government officials were indicted or jailed as a result of Watergate. White House staffers H.R. Haldeman and John Erlichman went to jail. White House counsel John Dean went to jail. Attorney General John Mitchell went to jail. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy, Charles Colson and James McCord – all jailed. Nixon Press Secretary Ronald L. Ziegler called Watergate a “third-rate burglary.” It toppled a president.
“Obamagate,” or the “Russia Hoax” is a political and criminal scandal exponentially more serious and damaging to the constitution. Like the Richter Scale measurements of earthquakes, Obamagate can be measured in “orders of magnitude” greater seriousness than the third-rate burglary. Obamagate is the First American Coup. Not from the militaristic right, as fantasized by liberal Hollywood. Oh, no – from the “fundamental transformation” artists of the Bolshevik Left.
Writing in the New York Post on October 24, 2020, columnist Michael Goodwin listed his reasons for voting for Donald Trump, again. His reasoning included:
“The other side must not be rewarded for its efforts to sabotage and remove a duly-elected president.
“Russia, Russia, Russia was a scam that ruined lives and put a cloud over the White House for nearly three years. The sequel was partisan impeachment, a clumsy coup attempt orchestrated by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Trump haters in Congress, the deep state, and the media.
“The press corps’ bias of 2016 has morphed into full-blown partisanship on a daily basis at print, digital and broadcast outlets. Facebook, Twitter and other platforms openly use their power to censor pro-Trump news and opinion while promoting anything that makes the president look bad.
“It’s not the algorithms; it’s the people behind them.
“Their decision to block The Post’s groundbreaking reports on Hunter Biden’s business deals and Joe Biden’s involvement should scare anyone who treasures the First Amendment. To censors, Orwell’s nightmare is their dream.
“All fairness has been abandoned in a frenzy to destroy Trump and everything he represents. This culture war extends backward, too.”
This is all very important stuff. It is still defective in one key area: it ignores (largely) the crime. The details of the criminal seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States.
How are we still missing this?
The (awesome and formidable) law enforcement and intelligence powers of the United States were perversely twisted and abused to advance a partisan political agenda by the sitting president (Barack Obama); his paid political operatives; and officers, agents and employees of the United States Government against Candidate Trump, President-elect Trump and President Trump.
There are handy references to keep track of the cast of characters involved in the coup plot. The Epoch Times has a resource, as does the Capital Research Center. One hopes John Durham has a reference, file or graphic that is something close to those analytical pieces. He seems to need some sort of help, since he apparently is unable to move past the anemic, pathetic Clinesmith indictment.
Seasoned investigators and attorneys can take the publicly available records and assemble sufficient facts, documentation and evidence to meet the legal threshold (“probable cause”) for successfully presenting a bill of indictment to a grand jury.
Why is there reluctance today? How is it that Attorney General William Barr and John Durham are consumed with prosecutorial ennui when the crimes and cover-ups are so painfully obvious? One is left to conclude that it really all comes down to political will. Do Barr and/or Durham have the stomach to seek the indictment of people like James Comey, John Brennan, Andy McCabe and (many) others?
Granted, Lindsey Graham is certainly no Sam Ervin; and Richard Burr abdicated the running of the Senate Intelligence Committee to Mark Warner years ago – but AG Barr and Prosecutor Durham do not need committees of Congress for “cover” to pursue the criminality of the Obama administration and their operatives in the Department of Justice, FBI, CIA and State Department.
Just remember: 40 jailed for Watergate.
- Russia's Top Arms Dealer Reveals New Multi-Caliber Sniper Rifle
Russia’s Top Arms Dealer Reveals New Multi-Caliber Sniper Rifle
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/28/2020 – 23:25Russia’s armed forces have benefited from a decade of investment, resulting in widespread modernization efforts and an increased defense-industrial base.
From hypersonic weapons to fifth-generation fighter jets to drones to advanced main battle tanks to new service weapons, Russia has been busy upgrading its military as geopolitical tensions soar.
Some of these new weapons were displayed at an international military-technical forum “Army-2020” outside Moscow in August.
Russia’s state arms seller Rosoboronexport recently unveiled a new multi-caliber sniper rifle developed by Lobaev Arms at the “Interpolitex 2020” defense show held in Moscow last week, reported TASS News.
“The new sniper rifle is more compact in its dimensions compared to the guns earlier developed by Lobaev Arms,” said Rosoboronexport Senior Expert Alexander Slobodyanyuk, in the company’s video presentation on its YouTube channel.
“The DVL-10M3 rifle’s weight has been reduced to 4.5 kg while it features a barrel length of 500mm. The gun’s effective firing range is up to 1 km,” the Rosoboronexport senior expert said.
“It [the DVL-10M3] is characterized by a very good accuracy of fire that does not exceed 0.38 minute of arc, and can be used together with a silencer,” he added.
TASS notes the sniper’s barrels are interchangeable with 7.62x51mm, 6.5x47mm Lapua, and 6.7mm Federal.
Russia’s military-modernization efforts indicate that not only is it growing its defense-industrial base but has ambitions to become more dominant in the world as the US supremacy fades.
- Hunter Biden Documents Mysteriously Vanish From Overnight Envelope, Tucker Carlson Says
Hunter Biden Documents Mysteriously Vanish From Overnight Envelope, Tucker Carlson Says
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/28/2020 – 23:05Authored by Ivan Pentchoukov via The Epoch Times,
A collection of confidential documents related to the Biden family mysteriously vanished from an envelope sent to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the host said on Wednesday night.
Carlson’s team allegedly received the documents from a source on Monday. At the time, Carlson was on the West Coast filming an interview with Tony Bobulinski, the former business partner of Hunter Biden and James Biden. Carlson requested the documents to be sent to the West Coast.
According to Carlson, the producer shipped the documents overnight to California using a large national package carrier. He didn’t name the company, saying only that it’s a “brand name company.”
“The Biden documents never arrived in Los Angeles. Tuesday morning we received word from our shipping company that our package had been opened and the contents were missing,” Carlson said. “The documents had disappeared.”
Damning Hunter Biden documents suddenly vanish pic.twitter.com/B2qsajZlID
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 29, 2020
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The company took the incident seriously and immediately began a search, Carlson said. The company traced the package from when it was dropped off in New York to the moment when an employee at a sorting facility reported that the package was opened and empty.
“The company’s security team interviewed every employee who touched the envelope we sent. They searched the plane and the trucks that carried it. They went through the office in New York where our producers dropped the package off. They combed the entire cavernous sorting facility. They used pictures of what we had sent so that searchers would know what to look for,” Carlson said.
“They far and beyond, but they found nothing.”
“Those documents have vanished,” he added.
“As of tonight, the company has no idea and no working theory even about what happened to this trove of materials, documents that are directly relevant to the presidential campaign just six days from now.”
Executives at the shipping company were “baffled” and “deeply bothered” by the incident, Carlson said.
Carlson’s interview with Bobulinski aired on Tuesday night. In the interview, Bobulinski opined that Joe Biden and the Biden family are compromised by China due to the business dealings of Hunter Biden and James Biden. Joe Biden has not publicly responded to Bobulinski’s allegations, but during a presidential debate on Oct. 22 said he had “not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life.”
Bobulinski provided more than 1,700 pages of emails and more than 600 screenshots of text messages to Senate investigators and handed over to the FBI the smartphones he used during his business dealings with the Bidens. The documents detailed a failed joint venture between a billionaire tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and a company owned by Hunter Biden, James Biden, Bobulinski and two other partners.
While the corporate documents don’t mention Biden by name, emails sent between the partners suggest that either James Biden or Hunter Biden held a 10 percent stake for the former vice president. In the email, the stake is assigned to “the big guy,” who Bobulinski says is Joe Biden.
- Tsunami Of Empty College Dorms Risks Student Housing Market Implosion
Tsunami Of Empty College Dorms Risks Student Housing Market Implosion
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/28/2020 – 22:45Fall enrollment has plunged, some colleges are shuttering operations, revenues across the entire higher education industry are collapsing, and the shift from physical to virtual education due to the virus pandemic could prick the next bubble: the student housing debt market.
Our warning about the coming implosion of the higher education industry (see here from 2014), as a whole, has become louder and louder over the last six-plus years as the student debt bubble has recently swelled to more than $1.6 trillion. Years ago, no one at the time, could’ve forecasted a virus pandemic would doom colleges and universities.
Credit rating agency Moody’s recently downgraded the entire higher education sector to negative from stable, and the American Council on Education estimates colleges and universities will experience a $23 billion decline in revenues over the next academic year.
Bloomberg outlines the increase of virtual education in a virus pandemic has resulted in an abundance of empty dorms at colleges and universities, creating a $14 billion headache for the student housing debt market.
“West Virginia State University, already hit with a 10% enrollment drop, plans to give money to a school foundation so it can meet its bond covenants for residence hall debt. A community college in Ohio is using part of a $1.5 million donation for a financially-strapped student housing project. And officials at New Jersey City University, which serves largely first-generation and lower-income students and has recorded years of deficits, are prepared to shore up a dorm there,” Bloomberg said.
The squeeze on university finances comes as the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center warned about a 16% drop in first-year undergraduate students enrolled for the fall semester. This means new revenue streams are quickly drying up for overleveraged colleges and universities.
“The limiting factor is some of these schools themselves are facing uncertainty with many of their revenue streams,” S&P Global Ratings analyst Amber Schafer said in an interview. “It’s a matter of not only willingness, but if they’re able to support the project.”
“Typically, privatized student housing debt is paid off by the revenue generated by the dorms — meaning there’s little recourse for bondholders if things go south,” Bloomberg said. With occupancy rates already declining as coronavirus cases are surging, well, this could be bad news for colleges and universities heading into 2021.
“Borrowers have begun revealing how empty residence halls are as the pandemic spurs many campuses to keep classes online. According to the school foundation that sold the debt, West Virginia State University’s dorm is 71% full, putting it about 20 percentage points from where it needs to be to satisfy debt covenants. Other privatized student housing projects, like two on Howard University’s campus, are virtually empty due to online-only instruction there,” Bloomberg said.
Bloomberg warns: “Privatized dorms are struggling the most given that they weren’t structured to withstand 20% to 30% drops in occupancy — or no students at all.”
“West Virginia State University may have to step in to help student housing bonds at risk of violating a debt service coverage ratio, Moody’s warned this month. The historically-black college faces “considerable” challenges in backstopping the bonds, Moody’s said.
The nearly 290-bed residence hall with rents of $3,881 per semester was just 71% occupied this fall, while it needed to be about 92% occupied, said Patricia Schumann, president of the university foundation that sold the debt. Schumann said the university is projected to provide a $75,000 payment in January. In the meantime, she said the school was working to bolster its financial position and boost recruitment and donations.
“We’re not standing still,” she said.
Ohio’s Terra State Community College, which has more than 2,100 students, was downgraded deeper into junk over the risk posed by a dorm owned by a nonprofit, given that the school “appears to provide an unconditional guarantee” to meet the debt obligations, Moody’s said. The project was financed through a bank note.
The dorm’s occupancy fell to 62%, and the college is using a previously-received donation to cover a shortfall in project revenue amounting between $500,000 to $600,000, the ratings company said in a report this month.
At New Jersey City University, a student housing project financed though a separate entity will likely miss a required debt service coverage ratio. The public school having to step in to help the bonds would be a challenge, but a surmountable one, said Jodi Bailey, the university’s associate vice president for student affairs. The student housing bonds aren’t a debt of the university, so the school would be choosing to provide financial support, according to bond documents.
The school is working to cut expenses related to the dorm. “Is it a harder year? Most definitely,” she said.
The student housing bonds, issued by West Campus Housing LLC in 2015, were slashed deeper into junk in September by S&P, which said in a report that residence halls’ occupancy there had fallen to 56% so the school could accommodate social-distancing guidelines,” said Bloomberg.
To summarize, plunging enrollments, resulting in falling occupancy rates for dorms, is a debt bomb waiting to go off for many overleveraged colleges and universities that are panicking at the moment to divert enough funds to service debts, as the usual revenue streams, that being rent checks from students, are nowhere to be found as virtual learning keeps young adults in their parents’ basements and out of dorms.
If occupancy rates continue to slide through 2021, then we must revisit what we said months before the virus pandemic began in the US:
“…20% of colleges and universities will shut down or merge in the next ten years, and probably more.”
Absent of a federal bailout, things could get ugly for colleges and universities in 2021.
- America's Imperial Expenditures And Escapades Are Stranger Than Fiction
America’s Imperial Expenditures And Escapades Are Stranger Than Fiction
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/28/2020 – 22:25Authored by Major Danny Sjursen (ret.) via AntiWar.com,
Who needs dystopian novelists or absurd satirists when otherwise banal bureaucrats of the U.S. national security state do the job for them? It’s an old story with a new tech-savvy twist. The late great Joseph Heller knew a thing or two about war’s foundational farce. He joined the army air corps at age 19 and flew 60 combat missions as a bombardier on World War II’s Italian front.
In his classic 1961 novel Catch-22, his wounded protagonist lamented that “outside the hospital the war was still going on. Men went mad and were rewarded with medals.” Yet in today’s confusing modern twist, with the citizenry and even soldiery now opposing America’s endless wars, the only men going mad are inside Washington. Even now they’re looking for reasons to keep awarding medals to overtaxed and unenthused overseas warriors.
It makes for a strange state of affairs here in year 20 of the crusade formerly known as the “war on terror.” Just last week, two assumedly unrelated stories offered case studies (or are they clinics) in America’s national security politics and procedures of absurdity.
Fit for Heller: An (Open) Secret Intel Budget
First, there was a passing annual footnote in the Pentagon’s bland bureaucratic budget line.
Part of that military budget goes to what DefenseNews labeled the “Pentagon’s secret intelligence fund” – last year they went with “black intel funding.” Its officially titled the more mundane Military Intelligence Program, or MIP. Last week’s obligatory announcement was that Congress appropriated $23.1 billion for its operations in fiscal year 2020, a nine year high. In fact, the boys on the Hill tacked on a $100 million dollar bonus on top of the Pentagon’s request. So super sleuth are the MIP’s black ops, that the DOD waits until after the fiscal year to admit how many tax dollars unknowingly funded missions the tax-payers aren’t allowed to know about.
It’s a shadowy program by its very nature, separate from the “white-side” National Intelligence Program (NIP), and vaguely described as “defense intelligence activities intended to support operational and tactical level intelligence priorities supporting defense operations.” That’s a 15-word method of saying nothing at all.
Per annual tradition, the Pentagon’s four sentence statement declared that beyond the top line amount, “No other MIP budget figures or program details will be released, as they remain classified for national security reasons.” But have no fear, the war department – which hasn’t even eked out a minor war since Gorbachev sat in the Kremlin – assures us all that cash “is aligned to support the National Defense Strategy.” After all the abject adventurism and counter-productivity of America’s agents and analysts, this seems explanation feels exceedingly inadequate.
No one is asking for the Pentagon – or Langley, for that matter – to release info on their sources and methods for stymying still active terror plots. Then again, these days, odds are Langley’s spooks (at least) might do just that if it served the designedly “politically independent” Agency’s political interests. But why aren’t check-writing citizens entitled to more than the current description – which clocks in at $6 billion-per-sentence – of what’s being cashed in their name?
After all, given the hardly distinguished recent track record of America’s 17 different intelligence agencies – eight of them within the DOD – a bit more oversight and skepticism seems sensible. Especially since, in any given year, combined intelligence programs account for some 11 percent of the total defense budget. Call me crazy, but it seems that an Intel community known for their mischievousness can do plenty of mischief carrying a cool $23 billion in unsupervised cash.
Even ex-Captain Joseph Heller might chuckle at a secret Intel program too vital not to fund, but too secret to reveal what’s being funded. He might mumble, “That’s some catch, that Catch-2020;” to which a better read Defense Secretary Mark Esper might quip: “It’s the best there is.”
In other words, trust us. And, after lying on, then botching up, minor matters like 9/11, Iraq’s WMD, torture, Libyan regime change, Syria’s “moderate rebels,” and Russian “bounties” – why of why wouldn’t we? The whole thing strikes me as an Obi-Wan Kenobi “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for” mind-trick. Welcome to the Star Wars universe…come to think of it, didn’t Trump recently stand-up a literal Space Force?
Fit for Orwell: JSOC’s “Taliban Air Force”
Which brings us to last week’s second textbook profile in absurdity: according to a Washington Post (no, an Onion) headline, “The U.S. is secretly helping the Taliban fight ISIS in Afghanistan.” Beyond their shared commitment to that S-word, the two reports may be more linked than it seems.
That’s because, thanks to a 2019 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report we do have some vague idea of who nets some of those black intel bucks: US Special Operations Command, to pursue “several current acquisition efforts focused on outfitting aircraft — both manned and unmanned, fixed and rotary wing…that will work in multiple environments.” And guess which outfit has reportedly been surveilling and bombing on the Taliban’s behalf in our impalable 19-year enemy’s fight with the local chapter of ISIS-wannabes? The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) counterterrorism task force, of course – which has been “using strikes from drones and other aircraft to help the Taliban.” According to a member of the elite team, “What we’re doing with the strikes against ISIS is helping the Taliban move,” by pinning down or destroying ISIS defenders.
In reality, most foot-soldiers for the “Khorasan Province” (ISIS-K) of the now defunct Iraq-Syria-centered caliphate aren’t Arab – but disgruntled Afghans (often ex-Taliban), or Pakistani Tehrik-i-Taliban refugees from Islamabad’s crackdown on its own incubated Islamists. Furthermore, much of the fighting and US airstrike assistance described in recent reports unfolded in Kunar Province’s Korengal Valley – where some 40 US troops have been killed in rather infamous combat over the years. There, as even WaPo admits, the Taliban, U.S.-backed Kabul government, local criminal gangs, and now ISIS(K), have often really “tussled for control of the Korengal and its lucrative timber business.” It’s about wood as much as Wahhabism.
If the US taking and switching sides in a 10,000 miles-from-home lumber war seems strange, remember that what the CIA – these days in tandem with JSOC – lacks in competence it compensates with consistency. Notice that every time – and there’ve been a lot of times – the Agency founds or fuels some jihadi Frankenstein’s Monster, it quickly loses control of it. Then it all but inevitably turns on America or its allies As if that wasn’t bad enough, another more monstrous splinter or offshoot rises like a problematic Phoenix. This, of course, prompts panic and expedient alliances with the original ogres – themselves threatened by more radical challengers. Only it turns out “enemy of my enemy” friendships rarely endure.
Patient Zero: “American” Iraq
Indeed, Washington – spearheaded by its intelligence agencies and special operators – has a long and sordid history of switching enemies without skipping a beat or bothering to explain.
Take just Iraq:
Long before President George H.W. Bush hinted that he was a Hitler-reprise, Sunni-secularist Saddam Hussein was seen as a necessary counterweight to revolutionary Iran. Thus, Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan essentially green-lighted, then definitively backed, Iraq’s 1980-88 invasion of the Islamic Republic. Saddam was our autocrat; that is until he invaded Kuwait in 1990. After a touch of waffling, Bush’s team rhetorically transformed Saddam into the fuhrer himself. Therefore, anything less than a full-fledged U.S.-led counterattack was akin to “Munich” style appeasement.
Just before kicking Saddam’s overrated army out of Kuwait, Bush’s had perhaps a triumphal flight of fancy and – speaking at a Raytheon plant! – encouraged Iraqi Shia to “take matters into their own hands” and rise up. Yes, the very same Shia Washington once feared as a potential Iranian Fifth Column. Sure enough, they did revolt; but Bush lost his nerve (or thought better of it) and abandoned them. Saddam slaughtered at least 30-60,000 of them.
In 2003, when Bush’s less-savvy son conquered a country that hadn’t an iota to do with the 9/11 attacks, the once-jettisoned Iraqi Shia were suddenly back in favor. They’d form the democracy’s vanguard for the whole Arab World. Unfortunately it turned out their leaders largely sprung from expat-Shia Islamist parties, militias, and terror outfits. Having sought refuge in Iran – some even fighting against their countrymen in the eight-year war – many were uncomfortably close to their recent hosts. Plenty were a tad too authoritarian, to boot.
By 2005-06, we US military occupiers found ourselves propping-up a corrupt, legitimacy-challenged Shia sectarian regime. American troops were also regularly attacked by Shia militias, various Sunni (nationalist and Islamist) factions, and jihadi foreign fighters. Bush II’s team finally realized something had to give. So, in a fresh turnabout, the Sunni tribes – many with ample American blood on their hands – were rebranded the “Awakening,” and billed as the next last great hope for democracy on the Tigris. That let President Barack Obama tardily pull US troops, but the Shia plurality clung to power and proceeded to sideline and suppress America’s Sunni frenemies.
Boosted by the U.S.-aggravated chaos over Syria’s porous border, Iraq’s Al Qaeda faction (AQI) staged a striking comeback and regained the allegiance of alienated Sunnis. Radicalized, empowered, and fed on a healthy diet of triumphalist delusions of caliphate grandeur, a significant AQI splinter pronounced itself the Islamic State (ISIS) and ran roughshod over Iraq’s hollow U.S.-raised and -trained army. After conquering huge swathes of the country’s west/northwest and driving to Baghdad’s outskirts, Iraq’s desperate government announced a wholesale Shia levée en masse – conscripting all comers, who counted a cornucopia of militia loyalties. Many were vaguely aligned with Iran.
Unwilling to see America’s troubled Iraqi progeny go extinct, Obama sent drones, planes, and “non-combat” combat advisors to steady a wavering Iraq’s soldiers and melange of green militiamen. The US advisers were advised to avoid getting themselves killed, and stay mute about embarrassing contradictions and cleavages among the sundry Shia cannon-fodder sent to the front. Appearances and all. By December 2017, when Baghdad’s U.S.-assisted gypsy army had retaken all significant caliphate territory, some 26,000 Iraqi and at least 20 American soldiers had been killed – along with a mid-range estimate of 8,000 civilians killed.
One might think Washington would make nice with its tacit Iranian allies and the Tehran-backed Shia militias after their shared victory over ISIS, then bolt back out of Baghdad. No such luck. Instead the aptly-titled US mission “Inherently Resolved” to inevitably persist under the guise of an ISIS-mop-up operations. The real reason for staying constitutes another American open secret – admitted by hawkish think-tankers, mainstream Democrats, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, alike: to “balance” and/or “contain” Iran and “reign in” its Shia militias. Of course, the latter only attack US forces because they’re there – uninvited, I’d add. American service members have overstayed their welcome by almost 11 months – Iraq’s parliament voted to expel them last January. Details, mere details.
Finally (for now), in the wake of ISIS’s de facto defeat, its aggressive escalation of tensions with Iran – including assassinating its top general and national icon in Baghdad – and Iraq’s parliamentary expulsion vote, Washington’s tacked back towards the wayward Sunnis and any pliant Shia figureheads willing to work with their sectarian rivals. One of the “sophisticates” over at the Brookings Institution even recommends the Baghdad government pin its post-ISIS, post-COVID recovery hopes on petro-princelings heading the Sunni Gulf States – the very countries who’ve long-fueled assorted Islamist groups, including (initially) ISIS itself.
To review Iraq’s cursory case study by the numbers: since 1979, the loosely Shia side has switched from American enemy-to-ally at least four times; the sketchy Sunni squad did so five times and counting.
Orwell in Afghanistan
That’s just one extreme example among among many. In other words, there’s plenty of precedent for the Taliban-ISIS-K swap – and the latter group is itself consequence and outgrowth of counterproductive US policies in Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan. Plus, the merger between ISIS-K and Tehrik-i-Taliban was a product of Washington’s sometime Pakistani proxies own devil’s bargains. They raised and fostered Pashtun Islamists to control Afghanistan and harass India’s occupation of Kashmir. When these groups predictably turned on on the state, Islamabad’s resultant bloody crackdown sent plenty of fighters to the Afghan hills – whence many offered bayat (loyalty pledge) to the Taliban’s ISIS-K competitors.
Washington’s and its proxies’ games of ally-enemy musical chairs have almost been too easy. The sad fact that those few citizens keeping tabs and throwing rational barbs have generally been dismissed as cranks and conspiracy theorists counts as proof positive.
Look to the breezy, offhanded nature JSOC-jocularity. The operators’ inside jokes about serving as the “Taliban’s Air Force” go beyond the standard darkness of soldierly sarcasm. There’s something resignedly fatalistic about their acceptance – almost expectation – of such absurd mission twists. After all, the more senior leaders among them have likely swapped sides, ditched friends, and befriended ex-enemies a time or two – and on a few continents – during their own careers. According to recent headlines Afghan veteran fathers are now watching their sons deploy to the same war. This grotesque scenario conjures Orwell’s dystopian classic, 1984:
Winston could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war…war had literally been continuous, though strictly speaking it had not always been the same war. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil.
Americans were once told by Reagan that the Soviets represented an absolute “evil empire.” Therefore helping raise, fund, and arm the Taliban’s Islamist precursors to fight off Moscow’s invasion was deemed obligatory – in fact it had already begun, under President Carter. After 9/11, the Taliban – which Washington had long tolerated even as they terrorized the populace – became the new absolute evil incarnate. We had to win what Bush called, nineteen Octobers ago, “a war between good and evil” – and save those embattled Afghan women we hadn’t cared a lick about a few months before.
Only we couldn’t. It took an utterly ridiculous president, Donald J. Trump, to admit as much and try making messy peace instead of endless war with the Taliban. Now the US has not-so-tacitly allied with evil to defeat an ostensibly eviler evil ISIS-K outfit birthed by America’s ludicrous folly in Iraq.
The American people aren’t meant not to notice. Orwell described such matters in 1984 – when Great Britain’s fictional facsimile suddenly switched enemies in its own forever war:
The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.
Funny, if – and I’m just spit-balling here, of course – a vocal wing of senior military officers, their now retired superiors-turned-pundits, plus a basically conjoined political-media establishment wanted to indefinitely prolong the Afghan zombie war, shifting its justification to a nasty franchise facsimile of ISIS might seem just the trick. Especially if Trump’s “peace” deal appeared to end US involvement in a wildly unpopular war had rendered Taliban-baiting obsolete. No one much cares about the reigning king of the pundit-generals, H.R. McMaster, and his protestations that the done-deal is (you guessed it!) a “Munich” appeasement “travesty.”
Which raises the question: when do conspiracy theories stop being conspiratorial? Unlike their black budget’s details, the intelligence community’s past policy fiascoes are public record, and they read like broken ones. Time and again the spooks find an enemy to justify their funding and relevance – short of that, they’ll produce or provoke one.
Establishment Republican and Democratic politicians and their media mouthpieces – who are utterly out-of-step rank-and-file – have prolonged the Afghan War and the broader interventionist apparatus that funds it (and their campaigns) for a good while. Even those who once opposed the war now oppose ending it because they don’t like the ender. Informed citizens ought fear the new U.S.-Taliban anti-ISIS alliance will be used to justify and breathe life into a walking dead Afghan deployment. Washington’s war-hawks have done it before, and they’ll try it again – regardless of who wins the White House a week from today.
Joking about serving as a Taliban air force is clearly counterintuitive, paradoxical, and absurd – but taken to its logical conclusion it’s also dangerously dystopian. The thing about an empire shuffling and substituting enemies is that eventually the war-state’s shuffled substitute becomes the citizenry itself. In 1984, the state’s ultimate targets were domestic dissenters like the novel’s protagonist, Winston. Brought before the government’s torturers, he assumes he’s meant to confess but is quickly corrected by the inquisitor:
We are not interested in those stupid crimes that you have committed. The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. We do not merely destroy our enemies, we change them.
After two decades, the America’s military and intelligence forces are clearly incapable of destroying the Taliban, so now Washington may once again change enemies and ally with its old jihadi friends and reminisce about the good old Cold War battles against those bad old Soviets. The real target though, the real audience, is us. Victory for the state isn’t defined militarily anymore – that ship has sailed. True victory comes when the people hardly notice the foe-flipping at all. Changing thought, compliance through apathy – that’s the trick.
In Heller’s classic satirical antiwar novel Catch-22, when the semi-autobiographical protagonist, the bombardier Captain Yossarian, takes shrapnel in the thigh, he awakes to find the lead pilot of tending his wound mid-flight. Confused and suddenly struck with growing horror, Yossarian asked “Who’s minding the store?” Though quickly assured that Lieutenant Nately (played by Art Garfunkel in the 1970 film version) was “at the controls” of the soaring bomber, it’s clear that Heller – through Yossarian – was really asking about the cockpit of the broader war. And so should we still.
Whether it’s the annual furtive funding gymnastics or another round of friend-foe contortionism in Afghanistan, such stories never fail to engender head shakes at my youthful naïveté. Back when, at 17, I followed uncritical patriotism, aspirational masculinity, and visions of martial glory to West Point – and for much of the next five years – whenever a U.S. policy seemingly failed efficacy or ethics tests, I, like most Americans, assumed some “they” must know something a Main Street “we” didn’t. Trust the process and policy, no matter how strange, became way of life and sanity-defense mechanism.
I wanted to believe, needed to believe – even in the face of mounting evidence of early blunders and own goals – that some omniscient and benevolent insiders were manning the nation’s controls. In my case, the delusion had an expiration date of October 2006 – as I took the reins in tiny sub zones of treacherous backwater sub-districts of Southeast Baghdad.
It’s remarkable how stark a turnabout can result from fighting two wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) sold and waged on lies, watching two others (Libya and Syria) born of the same, plus launching countless raids against innocents – instigated by embarrassingly bad intel. What first I feared, then suspected, and finally knew at ground-level applies to the aggregate – and Americans ought learn it fast:
Whether in Washington, Arlington, or Langley – there are no adults “in the room“…or minding the store.
- Nurses Were 36.3% Of All COVID-19 Healthcare Worker Hospitalizations This Spring: CDC Study
Nurses Were 36.3% Of All COVID-19 Healthcare Worker Hospitalizations This Spring: CDC Study
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/28/2020 – 22:05Proof continues to emerge that nurses, who are usually the first line of help in any hospital setting, are bearing the worst brunt of the Covid epidemic amongst healthcare workers.
More than 33% of all healthcare workers that have been hospitalized with Covid-19 between March and May turned out to be in nursing-related positions, a new report from Becker’s Hospital Review notes, citing CDC analysis.
In general, healthcare workers have accounted for about 6% of total adults that have been hospitalized due to Covid. 36.3% of these hospitalizations have been nurses or Certified Nurses Assistants.
The CDC analysis looked at 6,760 hospitalizations across 13 states, including New York, Ohio and California. It also revealed that 90% of healthcare workers hospitalized due to Covid-19 had underlying conditions, such as obesity.
28% of those hospitalized were admitted to the ICE and 15.8% required invasive ventilation. 4.2% of those admitted died during hospitalization. The analysis didn’t differentiate whether or not the healthcare workers caught Covid-19 as part of their job duties, or within their respective communities.
The CDC stated: “Healthcare workers can have severe COVID-19-associated illness, highlighting the need for continued infection prevention and control in healthcare settings as well as community mitigation efforts to reduce transmission.”
And while the study doesn’t take into account pay associated with being a nurse, we’re willing to bet that they are hardly being compensated appropriately for the risks they have been taking across the nation.
Recall, months ago, this was an issue we pointed out with EMTs. We noted that many were leaving their jobs in “alarming numbers” because the Covid pandemic had made it overwhelming and not worth the menial salary they were making.
Robert Baer, an EMT in New York City who was formerly one of the first responders on September 11, told CBS several months ago: “I knew it would probably kill me if I went out there and had multiple exposures — and I’m not a chicken. I love the job, but my doctors were telling me I shouldn’t be going in the field, that it was very dangerous.”
He was supposed to be deployed to Elmhurst Hospital in Queens back in March, but decided his risks were too high and, instead, quit his job. As a result of the September 11 response, he suffers with asthma, chronic bronchitis and sleep apnea that put him at a higher risk for Covid.
Oren Barzilay, president of the FDNY-EMS Local 2507, representing New York City medics noted that about 60 EMTs had left the department over the last 4 months. Many of those retiring are over the age of 50.
Barzilay said: “Some people like to complete 30 years on the job so they can maximize their pension, but I noticed a trend in recent weeks that they aren’t really concerned about that anymore. As soon as they reach their eligibility, which is 25 years, they are leaving.”
“They see the risks associated with the job and the low pay, and it’s just not worth it,” Barzilay continued. EMTs start at just $30,000 per year in New York and pay tops out at about $50,000. Nationally, the job pays just $38,830 per year on average.
- Trump's Executive Order On Race And Sex Lessens The Political Madness Thrown At Men
Trump’s Executive Order On Race And Sex Lessens The Political Madness Thrown At Men
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/28/2020 – 21:45Authored by Wendy McElroy via The Mises Institute,
On September 22, President Trump signed the Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping. The order speaks of “race or sex stereotyping,” which is defined as the act of “ascribing character traits, values, moral and ethical codes, privileges, status, or beliefs to a race or sex, or to an individual because of his or her race or sex.” Federal agencies or entities that receive federal funds are prohibited from stereotyping in their training or educational procedures. If an organization wants federal money, for example, its material cannot claim that individual males are racist, sexist, or oppressive simply because they are male, white, or heterosexual. Doing so is racial and sexual stereotyping.
The order has teeth in two ways. Presumably, the executive can compel compliance within its own federal agencies. Tax recipients, including contractors, who do not comply can be defunded or stripped of “licenses”; a university could lose federal money, student access to federal loans, or accreditation.
People object to government involvement in issues of discrimination, and justly so, because individuals have a right to freedom of association. The law has no business regulating peaceful interactions or refusals to interact. But government is already involved to the hilt, and the executive order seeks to take several steps back. Moreover, the dynamic of discrimination or stereotyping changes when it is a government agency or tax-funded entity that is discriminating. They are accountable to the public for how tax money is used, or they should be. And the pool of money should never be used to promote the unequal treatment of people because of their race or sex. (Whether the laws or funding should exist at all is an important but separate discussion.)
Discrimination against males is currently commonplace in government agencies and with federal tax recipients. Recent decades have turned men into an underclass who are virtually shut out of federal services, such as DOJ-funded domestic violence (DV) programs.1 The executive order’s redefinition of discrimination—race and sex stereotyping—is a long-overdue challenge and rejection of identity politics and its dogmatic mantra that men oppress women, that men and women are class enemies, and that men have it coming. Only after discrediting the ideology of identity politics can the laws, policies, and institutions based on it be dismantled.
What specifically does the order redefine?
It begins with Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous statement.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Today, King’s dream has been turned inside out so that justice to his children is said to require discrimination based on race and sex. The content of character is secondary, at best.
Two ideological trends accomplished this feat: identity politics and critical race theory.
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Identity politics claims individuals are not defined by their choices or character but by the class(es) to which they belong—white or minority, male or female, for example.
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Critical race theory is a postmodern framework by which all institutions and dynamics of society are analyzed in terms of race and hierarchy.
The executive order summarizes these trends, “Many people are pushing a different vision that is grounded in hierarchies based on collective social and political identities rather than in the inherent and equal dignity of every person as an individual.”
This vision sees America as “an irredeemably racist and sexist country” in which “some people, simply on account of their race or sex, are oppressors.” By contrast, the executive order returns to King’s dream by defunding the tax-paid diversity and antiracism training that is based on identity politics and critical race theory.
In theory, the order means that all such federally funded training will cease.
This seems to be a serious push. A September 4 memorandum issued by the Office of Management and Budget broke ground for the executive order. “Training in Federal Government” instructed agencies to “begin to identify all contracts or other agency spending related to any training on critical race theory” or institutional racism. The memo outraged and alarmed its targets, of course, who seem equally serious about resisting the push. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents seven hundred thousand federal and DC employees, quickly condemned it.
“As racial injustice continues to rock this nation,” the AFGE national president declared, “we ought to be building more bridges of understanding. But all this president seems to know how to do is build walls of division.”
Obstruction in some form is likely.
To ground the coming conflict in practical reality: Which sort of agency is being targeted, and specifically for what? Three examples are instructive. The order singles out:
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The Department of the Treasury, an executive department, which held a seminar that argued “virtually all white people…contribute to racism.” Attendees were instructed to avoid advocating either color blindness or letting people’s “skills and personalities be what differentiates them.” Judging people on merit is considered racist.
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Argonne National Laboratories, a federal entity, which stated in its material that racism is “interwoven into every fabric of America” and described “color blindness” or advocating a “meritocracy” as “actions of bias.”
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The Smithsonian Institution, heavily funded by federal money, claimed that concepts like “[o]bjective, rational linear thinking,” “[h]ard work,” and the “nuclear family” were divisive “aspects and assumptions of whiteness.”
Clearly, the new policy will apply aggressively across the board.
The most interesting institutions to watch may well be universities.
They are wellsprings of identity politics and critical race theory, as well as pioneers in the demonization of men. Virtually all universities receive federal funds—if not directly then indirectly through mechanisms like student loans. In theory, this means all of them will drastically alter both their training material and probably their curricula. Academics have also reacted with outrage and alarm. In a joint statement, the deans of all five University of California law schools gave an unusually passionate defense of critical race theory, calling Trump’s “rhetoric redolent of McCarthyism and the Red Scare.” Obstruction in some form is likely.
The universities have reason to be scared, because a day of reckoning may be nigh. Consider just one way in which this policy change could alter the American campus. Every women’s studies program promotes the theory of patriarchy, which is defined as an “unjust social system that subordinates, discriminates or is oppressive to women.” The oppressors are males as a class; the victims are women and minorities. This makes every women’s studies program guilty of the sex stereotyping described in the order. In theory, these programs need to abandon their ideology or face defunding and the possible loss of accreditation.
The words in theory must be emphasized when discussing the executive order’s impact, because a bureaucratic backlash is inevitable, and it will be fierce. Universities are bastions of impenetrable infrastructure that closes ranks when under attack. Exposing the system as intellectually corrupt, rawly discriminatory, and vicious toward young men in its care will make the wagons circle. Universities are the hill on which this executive order may die.
The bill is due. This time the cost is falling on universities rather than male students. Will the system pay up? If happens on campus, then it will happen everywhere else.
Or universities could become the springboard for a saner method of how people should associate with each other—that is, as individuals who connect based on their own assessment of each other’s merit. Social justice spilled out of the campus onto Main Street; perhaps the same can be true of reason and a respect for the individual.
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- "God Of Chaos" Accelerates Towards Earth With 2068 Impact Date
“God Of Chaos” Accelerates Towards Earth With 2068 Impact Date
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/28/2020 – 21:25An asteroid measuring 300 meters across is gaining speed as it tacks towards Earth – and could be on a collision path with the planet by 2068, experts at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy revealed on Tuesday.
Astronomers at UH warned, the asteroid, named 99942 Apophis, or has been dubbed by some as the “God of Chaos” – is speeding up due to something known as the Yarkovsky effect. This means the asteroid’s speed is increasing because of thermal radiation from the sun.
99942 Apophis “The new observations we obtained with the Subaru telescope earlier this year were good enough to reveal the Yarkovsky acceleration of Apophis,” UH astronomer Dave Tholen said.
“They show that the asteroid is drifting away from a purely gravitational orbit by about 170 meters per year, which is enough to keep the 2068 impact scenario in play,” Tholen sad.
Apophis will make an “extremely” close pass by the Earth in April 2029:
“We have known for some time that an impact with Earth is not possible during the 2029 close approach,” he said.
The asteroid’s size and proximity to the Earth have resulted in NASA categorizing it as a “Potentially Hazardous Asteroid.” NASA scientists are aware of the asteroid’s track could shift from now till the potential impact date.
If, for whatever reason, the asteroid strikes Earth in 2068, its potential impact would be the equivalent of 880 million tons of TNT, making it 65,000 times more destructive than Hiroshima.
A horrifying simulation shows what could happen if Apophis hits Earth.
- A Tale Of Two Chicagos
A Tale Of Two Chicagos
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/28/2020 – 21:05By John Hirschauer, via Real Clear Education,
A recent survey of nearly 20,000 undergraduates at 55 major American colleges and universities suggests that students at the University of Chicago enjoy the most robust free-speech rights – and not just on paper, but in practice.
The 2020 College Free Speech Rankings is a joint venture of RealClearEducation, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and research firm College Pulse. Questions gauge students’ commitment to free expression and their perception of peer and administrative tolerance for controversial speech. Responses were coded and partitioned by institution and were used to create an Overall Score, grading the colleges and universities on their relative commitment to free speech. The Overall Score aggregates an institution’s performance in five areas: tolerance, openness, administrative support for free speech, self-expression, and the existence of speech codes on campus.
Of the 55 institutions included in the survey, none ranked higher than the University of Chicago. Its Overall Score of 64.2 outpaced second-ranked Kansas State (57.3) by 6.9 points, a larger gap than the one between 10th-ranked University of Arizona (55.3) and 50th-ranked Oklahoma State University (49). Chicago ranked first in student tolerance of controversial speakers, student perception of administrative support for free speech, and students’ perception of their ability to express themselves on campus.
Ninety-two percent of Chicago’s students felt confident that the administration would defend an embattled speaker caught in a free-speech controversy—by far the highest mark received by any institution. In a press release, FIRE quipped that while the Ivy League “offers students sterling credentials,” students should “try the University of Chicago instead” if they’re interested in being “offer[ed] free speech.”
Chicago created the Committee on Free Expression in 2014 and charged it with “articulating the University’s overarching commitment to free, robust, and uninhibited debate and deliberation among all members of the University’s community.” The Committee’s final report, released in January 2015, affirmed Chicago’s commitment “to free and open inquiry in all matters” and promised “all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn.”
The resulting “Chicago Statement” is widely considered a landmark in the ongoing battles over speech on campus. FIRE president Greg Lukianoff said that Chicago “should be proud” of the university’s free speech statement and compared it with other canonical free-speech declarations, like Yale University’s Woodward Report and the American Association of University Professors’ Declaration of Principles.
Some Chicago students dispute the survey’s depiction of the situation on campus. Undergraduate Evita Duffy claims that if her university was considered a leader on free-speech issues, then the “repression of conservative ideas on campuses is worse than most people think.”
Duffy highlighted an open letter signed by more than 120 faculty members in January 2018, which called for the disinvitation of former White House adviser Stephen Bannon from a scheduled debate, as an example of Chicago’s intolerance for controversial speech on campus. The letter’s signatories argued that Bannon “should not be afforded the platform and opportunity to air his hate speech on this campus” and implicitly accused the event organizers of “normalizing hate speech by granting it a privileged forum.”
The university released a statement defending Bannon’s right to speak on campus but failed to condemn the faculty members who wanted to deny him a platform. As of this writing, the debate in which Bannon was scheduled to participate has not occurred.
A University of Chicago spokesman told RealClearEducation that it was because of the University’s commitment to free inquiry and free expression that it refused to condemn the faculty members’ attempted disinvitation of Steve Bannon.
“The University does not limit the speech of faculty or mandate apologies for their speech, unless there has been a violation of University policy or the law,” the spokesman said. “Nor does the University insulate speakers from criticism of the manner or content of their speech or writing.”
Seventy-four percent of Chicago students identified themselves as liberal on the survey, while only 11% identified as conservative. Still, Chicago would rank third overall in the College Free Speech Rankings even if only the opinions of conservative students were considered. And when the views of all students are taken into account, the university is a clear leader over its peers.
Located just seven miles away, the University of Illinois at Chicago did not fare nearly as well, placing 44th in the survey rankings. More than half of UIC students surveyed said that shouting down a speaker on campus might be acceptable, and only 55 percent were confident that the university administration would support a speaker embroiled in a free-speech controversy.
Many students found the atmosphere on campus hostile to certain points of view. One self-described “moderate” student noted that “UIC is a very safe and protected place to speak if you’re liberal” but is “an incredibly prickly and volatile place to express any view that’s not in keeping with liberal . . . principles.” Several students expressed fear of reprisal from faculty members if they disagreed with a professor’s political opinions in class.
FIRE gave UIC a “Red” speech-code grade after reviewing the university’s codes of conduct, highlighting several passages in campus regulatory documents that could stifle students’ exercise of their First Amendment rights. By contrast, the University of Chicago earned FIRE’s “Green” speech-code grade, reflecting the institution’s strong written policies on student speech.
At the time of publication, the University of Illinois at Chicago had not responded to multiple requests for comment.
- ECB Meeting Preview
ECB Meeting Preview
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/28/2020 – 20:45Submitted by NewsSquawk
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ECB policy announcement due Thursday 29th October; rate decision at 1245GMT/0745CDT, press conference 1330GMT/0830CDT
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The upcoming meeting takes place against a backdrop of a resurgence in COVID-19 which has led to the reimposition of various lockdown measures in the EZ
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Policymakers are likely to wait until December to unveil any further easing measures, at which point the GC will have greater clarity on the impact of recent developments
OVERVIEW: Policymakers are once again expected to stand pat on rates with the balance sheet remaining the tool of choice for the Governing Council. Expectations are for an eventual expansion of the current Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP) remit of EUR 1.35trl and extension of its duration, however, consensus suggests that December is viewed as a more opportune time for this action. In December, policymakers will be able to present their winter economic projections and have greater clarity on the impact of various lockdown measures on the Eurozone economy. As such, the upcoming meeting will be more of an opportunity to set the stage for further stimulus, rather than unleash it in the immediacy.
PRIOR MEETING: At the prior meeting, policymakers opted to stand pat on rates, whilst leaving policy settings unchanged for its bond-buying operations, as was expected. The introductory statement noted that incoming data suggested a strong rebound in activity, which was broadly inline with previous expectations, though, ultimately activity will remain at pre-pandemic levels. The GC’s conviction in its outlook resulted in just minor tweaks to the accompanying growth projections which saw the 2020 GDP forecast raised to -8% (prev. -8.7%), 2021 held at +5.0% and 2022 tweaked lower to 3.2% from 3.3%. The 2021 HICP outlook was upgraded to 1% (prev. 0.8%) with 2020 and 2022 held at 0.3% and 1.3% respectively. With regards to the EUR, in an interesting turn of events, Lagarde’s comments were front-run by a sources piece suggesting that the ECB were in agreement that there is no need to “overreact” to EUR gains. Lagarde herself remarked the ECB does not target an FX level but will continue to monitor developments, including the EUR. With regards to further stimulus, the press conference offered little beyond the guidance provided in the policy statement with Lagarde suggesting that there was no discussion on an expansion to the PEPP envelope and a reiteration that the Governing Council’s baseline scenario envisages a full usage of that envelope.
RECENT DATA: The upcoming meeting will take place against a backdrop of Y/Y CPI remaining in negative territory of -0.3%, with the core-reading at 0.4%. Q3 growth data will not be published until the day after the meeting, however, survey data signals a waning of activity in Q4. The latest PMI releases saw the EZ-wide composite reading fall into contractionary territory of 49.4 (prev. 50.4) with IHS Markit warning that “the eurozone is at increased risk of falling into a double-dip downturn as a second wave of virus infections led to a renewed fall in business activity”. On the labour market front, the unemployment rate sits at 8.1%, however the true extent of the damage from COVID-19 continues to be masked by various government support schemes. The greatest cause of concern for policymakers will be the recent reimposition of lockdown measures across the region. Restrictions thus far have not been as harsh as those seen in the spring, however, they will provide a greater headwind to activity than envisaged at the prior meeting.
RECENT COMMUNICATIONS: Since the September meeting, President Lagarde has continued to stress the Bank’s willingness to provide further stimulus if required whilst attempting to reassure markets that the Bank’s toolbox has not been exhausted. That said, remarks have done little to suggest that any further easing is on the cards for the upcoming meeting. Chief Economist Lane, who many regard as one of the thought-leaders on the Governing Council, has drawn attention from his warnings that “there is no room for complacency” in the Bank’s efforts to restore inflation back to target with the central banker cautioning that the resurgence of COVID cases is “posing new problems”. Interestingly, Lane has suggested that there is “no indication that we are hitting the lower bound in rates”. Potentially of greater interest moving forward (subject to no policy tweaks this week) will be assessing the balance of views at the Bank and whether or not a consensus will be reached at the December meeting. The hawks have been vocal in their stance with Germany’s Weidmann opining that the current policy stance is “appropriate” and cautioning that relaxing PSPP constraints could present legal issues. Additionally, Austria’s Holzman recently remarked that it would need a significant worsening in the economy before more stimulus would be required; it’s unclear exactly how bad things would need to get before he would consider further easing. On the opposite side of the spectrum, the peripheral nations whose economies have been hit harder by the crisis are likely to lean more in favour of further stimulus, however, the calls for such action at the upcoming meeting have not been made, yet.
RATES: From a rates perspective, consensus looks for the Bank to stand pat on the deposit, main refi and marginal lending rates of -0.5%, 0.0% and 0.25% respectively. Despite holding the deposit rate at -0.5% throughout the crisis, recent remarks from Chief Economist Lane and Germany’s Weidmann have noted that the reversal rate (the rate at which accommodative monetary policy reverses its intended effect) is yet to be reached, with the latter suggesting that rate cuts are possible at some stage. As a guide, markets currently have around 2bps of further loosening priced in by year-end and around 10bps by the end of 2021.
BALANCE SHEET: With the balance sheet seen as the preferred easing tool for the Governing Council, focus remains on any adjustments to its bond-buying operations. Its PEPP currently has an envelope of EUR 1.35trl and is set to run at least until the end of June 2021, whilst its regular Asset Purchase Programme (of which the Public Sector Purchase Programme is a component) runs at a monthly pace of EUR 20bln together with the purchases under the additional EUR 120bln temporary envelope until the end of 2020. As mentioned above, no action on this front is expected to be taken at the upcoming meeting as policymakers wish to see how the economy responds to the reimposition of lockdown measures and the presentation of the December economic forecasts. From a technical perspective, the ECB has also been given some opportunity to hold fire on a decision given that PEPP purchases are set to run until the middle of next year as planned, according to SEB (who assume H1 2021 will see around EUR 83bln PEPP per month). As such, market participants will be looking for any indication of the nature and extent of potential easing in December. Investors will be looking to see if policymakers have any preference over whether any balance sheet expansions will come via the PEPP or PSPP. A recent Bloomberg News poll suggested that surveyed economists predict on average that EUR 500bln will be added to the EUR 1.35trl PEPP, with most anticipating action in December. In terms of house views, Goldman Sachs look for a EUR 400bln PEPP extension until the end of 2021 and a lengthening of the PEPP reinvestment commitment at the December meeting with the Bank highlighting that the account of the September meeting shows that PEPP remains the primary tool at the Bank. Taking a contrary view, ING lean in favour of an expansion to the PSPP in December on the basis that “PEPP was aimed at bringing inflation expectations and projections back to their pre-Covid-19 levels, while in the second stage PSPP should be used to bring these expectations and projections from their pre-Covid-19 levels in line with the ECB’s own aim.”
EUR: The EUR exchange rate could provide another line of inquiry for journalists at the accompanying press conference, however, since EUR/USD has failed to venture meaningfully close to 1.20 since the prior meeting, there is little need for President Lagarde to weigh in further on the matter. As such, the central bank chief will likely reiterate that the “ECB does not target an FX level” and will “continue monitoring developments, including the exchange rate”.
STRATEGIC REVIEW: One issue lingering at the Bank is its ongoing strategic review. The review has been delayed by the pandemic with its findings now not due to be released until September 2021. However, on the 30th September, President Lagarde delivered a speech in which she highlighted some preliminary considerations for the review. Lagarde noted that the ECB would be considering whether or not to depart from its current inflation target of “below, but close to 2%” and move towards a more “symmetric” target that would tolerate overshooting the 2% threshold. Morgan Stanley suggests that accelerating the release of the outcome of the review could amount to another policy option for the Bank. However, MS notes that given the current H2 2021 timeframe, it seems implausible that the findings could be released in the near-term, particularly given reports of differing views on the Governing Council, which will make fostering consensus a more difficult task.
TLTROs: After easing terms of Targeted Longer-Term Refinancing Operations (TLTROs) in April, TLTROs have also been seen as another potential policy tool for the Bank with the account of the September meeting noting that they remain in the toolbox. However, no action is expected to be taken on this front at the upcoming meeting. Adjustments to TLTRO-III are likely to be more of a feature of the December meeting, at which Goldman Sachs expect further operations to be announced and a sweetening of their terms.
TIERING: Morgan Stanley notes speculation that the current tiering multiplier of six (exempt from negative interest rates) might need to be increased as a result of rising excess liquidity in the Eurozone. However, the Bank suggests that such a move would be unlikely unless accompanied by a rate cut; something that the Bank’s economists do not currently forecast.
SCENARIO ANALYSIS: Finally, courtesy of ING Economics here is a brief recap of all the possible scenarios in tomorrow’s announcement:
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- The Golden Solution To America's Debt Crisis
The Golden Solution To America’s Debt Crisis
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/28/2020 – 20:25Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,
Right now, the United States is officially $27 trillion in debt. Nearly $7 trillion was added since President Trump took office.
This year’s budget deficit is projected at $3.3 trillion, over three times last year’s estimate. The coronavirus is responsible, and the number should be an outlier. But annual deficits will be at the trillion dollar level for the foreseeable future.
Basically, the United States is going broke.
I don’t say that to be hyperbolic. I’m not looking to scare people or attract attention to myself. It’s just an honest assessment, based on the numbers.
Now, a $27 trillion debt would be fine if we had a $50 trillion economy. But we don’t have a $50 trillion economy. We have about a $21 trillion economy (at least we did), which means our debt is bigger than our economy.
When is the debt-to-GDP ratio too high? When does a country reach the point that it either turns things around or ends up like Greece?
Economists Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart carried out a long historical survey going back 800 years, looking at individual countries, or empires in some cases, that have gone broke or defaulted on their debt.
They put the danger zone at a debt-to-GDP ratio of 90%. Once it reaches 90%, they found, a turning point arrives…
At that point, a dollar of debt yields less than a dollar of output. Debt becomes an actual drag on growth. What is the current U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio?
About 130% (the reaction to the pandemic caused a spike. It was previously about 105%).
We are deep into the red zone, that is. And we’re not pulling out. The U.S. has a dangerous debt to GDP ratio, trillion-plus dollar deficits, more spending on the way.
We’re heading for a sovereign debt crisis. That’s not an opinion; it’s based on the numbers. How do we get out of it?
For elites, there is really only one way out at this point is, and that’s inflation.
And they’re right on one point. Tax cuts won’t do it, structural changes to the economy wouldn’t do it. Both would help if done properly, but the problem is simply far too large.
There’s only one solution left, inflation.
Now, the Fed printed trillions over the past several years, and trillions more over the past several months. But we’ve barely had any inflation at all.
Most of the new money was given by the Fed to the banks, who turned around and parked it on deposit at the Fed to gain interest. The money never made it out into the economy, where it would produce inflation.
The bottom line is that not even money printing has worked to get inflation moving.
Is there anything left in the bag of tricks?
There is actually.
The Fed could actually cause inflation in about 15 minutes if it used it. How?
The Fed can call a board meeting, vote on a new policy, walk outside and announce to the world that effective immediately, the price of gold is $5,000 per ounce.
They could make that new price stick by using the Treasury’s gold in Fort Knox and the major U.S. bank gold dealers to conduct “open market operations” in gold.
They will be a buyer if the price hits $4,950 per ounce or less and a seller if the price hits $5,050 per ounce or higher. They will print money when they buy and reduce the money supply when they sell via the banks.
The Fed would target the gold price rather than interest rates.
The point is to cause a generalized increase in the price level. A rise in the price of gold from $1,900 per ounce to $5,000 per ounce is a massive devaluation of the dollar when measured in the quantity of gold that one dollar can buy.
There it is — massive inflation in 15 minutes: the time it takes to vote on the new policy.
Don’t think this is possible? It’s happened in the U.S. twice in the past 80 years.
The first time was in 1933 when President Franklin Roosevelt ordered an increase in the gold price from $20.67 per ounce to $35.00 per ounce, nearly a 75% rise in the dollar price of gold.
He did this to break the deflation of the Great Depression, and it worked. The economy grew strongly from 1934-36.
The second time was in the 1970s when Nixon ended the conversion of dollars into gold by U.S. trading partners. Nixon did not want inflation, but he got it.
Gold went from $35 per ounce to $800 per ounce in less than nine years, a 2,200% increase. U.S. dollar inflation was over 50% from 1977-1981. The value of the dollar was cut in half in those five years.
History shows that raising the dollar price of gold is the quickest way to cause general inflation. If the markets don’t do it, the government can. It works every time.
But what people don’t realize is that there’s a way gold can be used to work around a debt ceiling crisis. I call it the weird gold trick, and it’s never seen discussed anywhere outside of some very technical academic circles.
It may sound weird, but it actually works. Here’s how…
When the Treasury took control of all the nation’s gold during the Depression under the Gold Reserve Act of 1934, it also took control of the Federal Reserve’s gold.
But we have a Fifth Amendment in this country which says the government can’t seize private property without just compensation. And despite its name, the Federal Reserve is not technically a government institution.
So the Treasury gave the Federal Reserve a gold certificate as compensation under the Fifth Amendment (to this day, that gold certificate is still on the Fed’s balance sheet).
Now come forward to 1953.
The Eisenhower administration was up against the debt ceiling. And Congress didn’t raise the debt ceiling in time. Eisenhower and his Treasury secretary realized they couldn’t pay the bills.
What happened?
They turned to the weird gold trick to get the money. It turned out that the gold certificate the Treasury gave the Fed in 1934 did not account for all the gold the Treasury had. It did not account for all the gold in the Treasury’s possession.
The Treasury calculated the difference, sent the Fed a new certificate for the difference and said, “Fed, give me the money.” It did. So the government got the money it needed from the Treasury gold until Congress increased the debt ceiling.
That ability exists today. In fact, it is exists in much a much larger form, and here’s why…
Right now, the Fed’s gold certificate values gold at $42.22 an ounce. That’s not anywhere near the market price of gold, which is about $1,900 an ounce.
Now, the Treasury could issue the Fed a new gold certificate valuing the 8,000 tons of Treasury gold at $1,900 an ounce. They could take today’s market price of $1,900, subtract the official $42.22 price, and multiply the difference by 8,000 tons.
I’ve done the math, and that number comes fairly close to $500 billion.
In other words,the Treasury could issue the Fed a gold certificate for the 8,000 tons in Fort Knox at $1,900 an ounce and tell the Fed, “Give us the difference over $42 an ounce.”
The Treasury would have close to $500 billion out of thin air with no debt. It would not add to the debt because the Treasury already has the gold. It’s just taking an asset and marking it to market.
It’s not a fantasy. It was done twice. It was done in 1934 and it was done again in 1953 by the Eisenhower administration. It could be done again. It doesn’t require legislation.
Would the government consider the gold trick I just described? I don’t know.
But the real message is that the solutions to current debt levels are inflationary. That means revaluing the dollar either through a higher gold price or marking the gold to market and giving the government money.
There’s a lot of moving parts here, but they all point in one direction, which is higher inflation.
It’s the only way to keep America from going broke. Unfortunately, it will also make your dollars worth less.
- Roughly Half Of Americans Will Do Most, Or All, Holiday Shopping Online This Year: Survey
Roughly Half Of Americans Will Do Most, Or All, Holiday Shopping Online This Year: Survey
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/28/2020 – 20:05As millions of Americans prepare for the holidays, retailers are wondering what the traditional Black Friday shopping stretch is going to look like, now that the CDC has effectively declared sales unsafe.
While customers might not pack into physical stores like they did in years’ past, many expect the virus to hasten the shift toward e-commerce spending.
In a recent report, a team of analysts at Piplsay asked thousands of American adults about their plans and attitudes toward what will undoubtedly be remembered as a unique holiday season.
* * *
Black Friday is coming this year amid the continuing threat of COVID-19. Despite this, consumer expectations remain high as the reopening brings in the sense of normalcy and a return to routine. This report delves into the excitement around the big day and the increasing shift towards online shopping. Retailers can leverage this data in their decision making.
COVID-19 and the focus on social distancing are fast changing the face of Black Friday as we know it. With major retailers like Amazon and Target holding their mega sale just a month prior and several others jumpstarting holiday sales early, Black Friday seems to be slowly losing its clout as the official kickoff day for holiday shopping. Despite the changes, how excited are Americans about the big day, and different will it be this year amid the pandemic? Piplsay polled 30,223 people nationwide to get the insights.
Here is a summary of what we found:
Other Insights
- 34% of women and 23% of men have no plans to shop this Black Friday
- 62% of men are interested in buying electronic goods as compared to just 38% of women
- 51% of Millennials and 46% of Gen Zers plan to do most of their shopping online this year
- 38% of Millennials plan to increase their shopping budget this year as compared to 33% of Gen Zers and 29% of Gen Xers
- A 20-Year-Old Book Suggests China Is Already Quietly At War With The US
A 20-Year-Old Book Suggests China Is Already Quietly At War With The US
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/28/2020 – 19:45Authored by Robert Wheeler via The Organic Prepper blog,
October 14, Chinese President Xi Jinping appeared in Chaozhou City on a visit to the Marine Corps in the Southern province of Guangdong. He addressed the soldiers there and urged them to “maintain a state of high alert” and “put all [their] minds and energy on preparing for war.”
He urged soldiers to be “absolutely loyal” and “reliable” in these times. Jinping did not elaborate on why he needed to voice those words now. He has also recently made and delivered more aggressive and direct statements by CCP members and even Chinese military members.
Why would Chinese President Xi urge soldiers to prepare for war?
It may surprise many readers that the Chinese President would be so bold as to suggest that war is on the horizon. After all, it’s undeniable that the United States, Western Europe, and the United Nations built China from the blood-soaked nation of Communist horror that it was into the industrial powerhouse that it is today.
Western nations, particularly the United States, did so by sending essential manufacturing jobs to China. The U.N. allowed China to join the WTO as a “developing” nation. That description still maintains today. Despite all the international assistance China has received in building itself up to today’s powerhouse, China has always preferred to play the long game. Preparing to become the leader of the world’s affairs and eventually even dominate the United States.
Is China on the verge of becoming the world’s superpower?
After the United States squandered its credibility, economy, and manpower in wars overseas, it seems even more likely China will do just that. The United States’ struggles may be just the opening China needs to advance the Made in China 2025 strategy, an attempt to become the world’s superpower in technology, manufacturing, and cybertechnology. Part of their strategy is to buy up Western businesses.
While the West has been shipping jobs overseas, even manufacturing sectors that are important to national security like medical supplies, China is poised to assume its global standard-bearer role. China has been preparing to take the United States down for at least twenty years.
“Unrestricted Warfare,” the book written by two Chinese colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, focuses on how China can defeat an opponent seen as technologically superior, such as the United States.
Keep in mind Unrestricted Warfare was written in 1999, before China’s leap forward in technological and military development. Still, the book does not focus on direct military vs. military war doctrine but indirect, soft tactics. The book argues that the main weakness of the United States (in strictly military terms) is that the U.S. views the concept of revolution in military thought solely in terms of technology.
Is the U.S. focusing on the wrong tactics and methods to win a war?
The U.S. views the development of military capability directly linked to the development of new technology. The authors of Unrestricted Warfare argue there are many ways to win a war. Not all of those ways involve using military methods.
The writers contend the latter techniques are the ones to which the United States is most susceptible. They also say there are many ways to “reduce” an opponent, and these methods “have the same and even greater destructive force than military warfare…”
Several methods and strategies are mentioned in the book that can be utilized to achieve victory with the absence of military involvement. Keep in mind this book and its description of these tactics was written twenty years ago.
What are some of these 20-year-old methods mentioned?
Trade War – “Some of the means used include: the use of domestic trade law on the international stage; the arbitrary erection and dismantling of tariff barriers; the use of hastily written trade sanctions; the imposition of embargoes on exports of critical technologies; the use of the Special Section 301 law; and the application of most-favored-nation (MFN) treatment, etc., etc. Anyone of these means can have a destructive effect that is equal to that of a military operation.”
Notice that the authors mention trade wars, which are taking place today between China and the U.S. A “trade war” became a necessity if one wanted to claw back the jobs sent to China decades ago since China would not let them go back willingly. It also points out how removing tariffs and “Most-Favored-Nation” trade status used as weapons.
Financial War – What is more, such a defeat on the economic front precipitates a near-collapse of the social and political order. The casualties resulting from the constant chaos are no less than those resulting from a regional war, and the injury done to the living social organism even exceeds the injury inflicted by a regional war.
Many have suggested that WWIII would be an economic one. China was clearly paying attention to the Western tactics used worldwide then (and currently still being used) to destroy sovereign governments who refused to follow Washington’s dictates. Today’s China has been hard at work with the same tactics, creating its version of the book’s foundations.
Terrorism – Due to the limited scale of a traditional terror war, its casualties might well be fewer than the casualties resulting from a conventional war or campaign. Nevertheless, a traditional terror war carries a stronger flavor of violence. Moreover, in terms of its operations, a traditional terror war is never bound by any of the traditional rules of the society at large. From a military standpoint, then, the traditional terror war is characterized by the use of limited resources to fight an unlimited war.
This characteristic invariably puts national forces in an extremely unfavorable position even before War breaks out, since national forces must always conduct themselves according to certain rules and therefore are only able to use their unlimited resources to fight a limited war.
Many terrorist organizations and attacks, such as the simultaneous attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam are mentioned in this portion of the book. Also mentioned are terrorists using new high technologies combined with their other methods. The authors even said these new technologies would evolve into superweapons.
Terrorism and urban warfare described in these paragraphs may have seemed impossible to create on a massive scale in the United States before and even after 9/11. However, decades of economic decay, destruction of the family unit, degradation of the education system, mainstream media, and social media outlets have combined to create the perfect storm for violence. One need only look as far as the recent battles in most major American cities’ streets to see that such urban warfare and abject chaos are beginning to take hold in the United States.
Ecological War – Ecological War refers to a new type of non-military warfare in which modern technology is employed to influence the natural state of rivers, oceans, the crust of the earth, the polar ice sheets, the air circulating in the atmosphere, and the ozone layer. By methods such as causing earthquakes and altering precipitation patterns, the atmospheric temperature, the composition of the atmosphere, sea level height, and sunshine patterns, the earth’s physical environment is damaged or an alternate local ecology is created. Perhaps before very long, a man-made El Nino or La Nina effect will become yet another kind of superweapon in the hands of certain nations and/or non-state organizations.
This one is interesting. The Chinese military knows and is willing to speak openly about a human-made superweapon used to damage the earth. Meanwhile, Western governments continue to claim this is “conspiracy theory” nearly twenty years on.
Are there any other tactics mentioned?
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Psychological War – “Spreading rumors to intimidate the enemy and break down his will” (Example)
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Smuggling War – “Throwing markets into confusion and attacking economic order”
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Media War – “Manipulating what people see and hear in order to lead public opinion along” (Example)
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Drug War – “obtaining sudden and huge illicit profits by spreading disaster in other countries”
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Network War – “Venturing out in secret and concealing ones identity in a type of warfare that is virtually impossible to guard against” (Example)
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Technological War – “creating monopolies by setting standards independently”
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Fabrication War – “presenting a counterfeit appearance of real strength before the eyes of the enemy”
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Resources War – “grabbing riches by plundering stores of resources”
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Economic Aid War – “bestowing favor in the open and contriving to control matters in secret”
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Cultural War – “leading cultural trends along in order to assimilate those with different views” (Example)
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International Law War – “seizing the earliest opportunity to set up regulations”
China is contributing and benefiting from America’s chaos
Brandon Turbeville warned of these strategies in his articles, where he pointed out the Chinese long game. Like the United States, it is a game of empire, but it is the tortoise instead of the hare.
China has finally seen the finish line. America is burning its credibility overseas with each bombed dropped, and it is wasting its valuable resources in the process. It is drumming up hatred and driving developing nations into the arms of China as it threatens and proceeds to overthrow sovereign governments.
Though improving under the Trump administration’s meager implementation of Americanist policies, its economy is a shell of its former self. The American people are more divided than ever, thanks to the insidious mainstream corporate media.
Has a war started without a shot being fired?
China did not cause any of this, but we have to be smart enough to realize that it is and will continue to benefit them and they will take advantage of it.
As an American, watch nearly every aspect of the tactics listed in the “Unrestricted Warfare” book take shape before your eyes and ask yourself, “Has the potential war with China already quietly started without the shooting?”
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- Supreme Court Deals Double-Blow To Republicans In Pennsylvania, North Carolina Ballot Battles
Supreme Court Deals Double-Blow To Republicans In Pennsylvania, North Carolina Ballot Battles
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/28/2020 – 19:40With freshly-confirmed Amy Coney Barrett standing ready on the sidelines, the already-supposedly-conservative-leaning Supreme Court dealt a double-blow to Republicans tonight over mail-in-ballot cases in two key states.
First, the Supreme Court said that it will not intervene before the election to stop Pennsylvania officials from receiving mail-in ballots up to three days after Election Day, refusing a Republican request that the high court expedite review of the issue.
While this is a “loss”, WaPo reports that there is a modest silver-lining in that three conservative justices indicated the votes ultimately might not be counted and signaled they would like to revisit the issue after the election.
“There is a strong likelihood that the State Supreme Court decision violates the Federal Constitution,” wrote Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch.
“The provisions of the Federal Constitution conferring on state legislatures, not state courts, the authority to make rules governing federal elections would be meaningless if a state court could override the rules adopted by the legislature simply by claiming that a state constitutional provision gave the courts the authority to make whatever rules it thought appropriate for the conduct of a fair election.”
As a reminder, Pennsylvania was critical in President Trump’s success during the election four years ago and is once again considered a key battleground state.
Second, as AP reports, the Supreme Court voted 5-3 to allow absentee ballots in North Carolina to be received and counted up to 9 days after Election Day, in a win for Democrats.
The justices on Wednesday refused to disturb a decision by the State Board of Elections to lengthen the period from three to nine days, pushing back the deadline to Nov. 12. The board’s decision was part of a legal settlement with a union-affiliated group.
Under the Supreme Court’s order, mailed ballots postmarked on or before Election Day must be received by 5 p.m. on Nov. 12 in order to be counted.
Three conservative justices, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, dissented.
Trump said earlier that he was depending on courts to keep states from counting ballots received after Election Day.
“Hopefully the few states remaining that want to take a lot of time after Nov. 3rd to count ballots, that won’t be allowed by the various courts,” the president said.
So far things are not going that way.
- Fighter Jet Intercepts "Non-Responsive" Plane Near Trump Rally
Fighter Jet Intercepts “Non-Responsive” Plane Near Trump Rally
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/28/2020 – 19:25A General Dynamics F-16 fighter jet intercepted a plane that breached restricted airspace near President Trump’s rally in Bullhead City, Arizona, Wednesday afternoon.
Video shows Trump looking up at the sky as the fighter jet fired off warning flares. He told the crowd: “Oh, look at that – they [fighter jet] gave the president a little display.”
MOMENTS AGO: Fighter jet flies over Trump rally in Arizona and appears to fire off flares; crowd chants “USA!” pic.twitter.com/8znBkEJrcb
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) October 28, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
After the incident, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) officials tweeted that the plane was intercepted around 1400 MDT after it breached the Temporary Flight Restriction area surrounding Bullhead City.
A second tweet from NORAD said the plane’s pilot was “non-responsive to initial intercept procedures, but established radio communications after NORAD aircraft deployed signal flares.”
NORAD continued: “The aircraft was escorted out of the restricted area by the NORAD aircraft without further incident.”
(2/2) The violating aircraft was non-responsive to initial intercept procedures, but established radio communications after NORAD aircraft deployed signal flares. The aircraft was escorted out of the restricted area by the NORAD aircraft without further incident. #WeHaveTheWatch
— North American Aerospace Defense Command (@NORADCommand) October 28, 2020
- How Long Will It Take To Count All The Votes?
How Long Will It Take To Count All The Votes?
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/28/2020 – 19:05Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,
For months the American people have been told that we may not know the winner of the presidential election right away like we normally do. So if we aren’t going to have a winner on November 3rd, when will we finally have a clear result?
Well, that is going to depend on how long it takes to count the votes, and that is going to be different for each state. I know that is a frustrating answer, but every one of our 50 states has different election laws, and things have been greatly complicated in 2020 by the fact that so many people will be voting by mail.
So far, more than 60 million Americans have already voted by mail, and that number just keeps growing with each passing day. Some states allow mail-in ballots to be counted before Election Day, but a majority of states do not…
A majority of states won’t start actually counting ballots until the morning of Election Day or after polls close. Most counting rules have remained unchanged this year, though some states have adjusted their timelines due to the pandemic to ease the burden of increased absentee ballots.
So that means that there will be tens of millions of mail-in ballots that will be piled up waiting to be counted in addition to all of the ballots that come in on Election Day.
I feel sorry for those that have to open up all of those ballots and get them counted, because that is going to be a monumental task.
As I discussed yesterday, there are six key swing states that are pretty much going to determine the outcome of this election. In three of them, the lack of a sufficient head start in counting ballots is likely to greatly delay voting results…
But final results in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan could be unclear on election night because these states are expected to be the three slowest to count the high volume of absentee ballots.
The reason: Pennsylvania and Wisconsin don’t allow the processing of mail-in ballots to begin until Election Day and Michigan only has a 10-hour start, compared to other states that start that can start the process days or weeks in advance.
Whoever wins Pennsylvania is probably going to win the presidency, but it could be quite a while before we get a final result from that state.
You see, the truth is that counting mail-in ballots is much more tedious that running normal ballots through a machine. There are several steps involved, and each step takes time…
Processing absentee ballots generally includes steps short of tabulating them — such as removing them from the envelope, confirming voter eligibility, matching signatures to what’s on record and scanning them.
And on top of everything else, sometimes unexpected problems occur.
For example, ballot counting machines in one county in Texas have been “rejecting about one-third of mail-in ballots” and authorities are scrambling to get this issue resolved…
Ballot scanning machines are rejecting about one-third of mail-in ballots returned by voters in Tarrant County. The problem has impacted more than 22,000 ballots so far.
Ballot board members are now working in 12-hour shifts to accurately replicate the ballots so they can be counted.
As I have warned before, you will want to vote in person to give yourself the best chance of having your vote actually count.
In addition to everything that I have already discussed, it is important to remember that mail-in votes will continue to be accepted in many states long after Election Day is over.
I know that sounds really bizarre, but this is what is actually going to happen. In fact, Washington State will count votes that are received as late as November 23rd…
The last day to vote in-person in the general election is Nov. 3. Absentee and mail-in ballots also typically must be received or postmarked by that date, if not earlier, depending on a state’s rules. That leaves some room for mail-in ballots to be received after Election Day. In Washington State, mail-in ballots received as late as Nov. 23 are still valid, as long as they were postmarked by Nov. 3.
National polls have shown that Biden voters are much more likely to vote by mail and Trump voters are much more likely to vote in person.
The votes that are cast in person will be counted very quickly. Meanwhile, the votes that are sent in by mail will take weeks to fully count.
The mainstream media and the big tech companies have been working very hard to mentally prepare us for a massive “blue shift” after Election Day. One of the reasons why they are so adamant that Trump should not declare victory on November 3rd is because they are confident that Joe Biden will ultimately win once all of the mail-in ballots are finally counted.
In some states we will have final results almost immediately, but in other states counting could take quite a few weeks.
But the counting cannot take too long, because by law election results must be officially certified by certain deadlines…
According to Ballotpedia, citing state laws, six states must certify election results within a week of the general election; 26 states and Washington, D.C., have a deadline between Nov. 10 and Nov. 30; 14 have a deadline in December, and four do not have deadlines in their state laws.
Among key battleground states, those deadlines range from Nov. 11 (Pennsylvania) to Dec. 1 (Nevada and Wisconsin). For potential battleground Texas, it is Dec. 3.
I don’t know how some of those states are going to possibly meet those deadlines.
In particular, I have no idea how Pennsylvania is going to be done counting by November 11th. Hopefully they have a vast army of counters and a whole lot of coffee.
To give you an idea of how long it takes to count mail-in ballots, just consider what we witnessed in California earlier this year…
Consider this year’s California primary, in which 5.8 million people voted for president. Only 3 million of those ballots were counted by election night; the other 2.8 million votes took an additional seven weeks to count, said John Couvillon, a pollster and political analyst.
If it took California seven weeks to count a couple million mail-in ballots, how in the world is Pennsylvania going to count a similar number of mail-in ballots in just one week?
Personally, I am anticipating that this election is going to be a colossal mess. As I have been documenting on The Most Important News, voting anomalies have already been popping up all over the nation, and I think that counting all of the mail-in ballots is going to take much more time than anticipated.
And any legal battles over the counting of the votes will just make the process even more painful.
We were once a great example for the rest of the world, but in 2020 we are going to show the rest of the planet the exact wrong way to conduct an election, and that is a real shame.
* * *
Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.
- NSA Dodges Questions About Controversial "Backdoors" In Tech Products
NSA Dodges Questions About Controversial “Backdoors” In Tech Products
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/28/2020 – 18:45Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing campaign exposed the National Security Agency in 2013 for having “backdoors” into commercial technology products. The US spy agency worked with some Silicon Valley tech firms to develop covert methods of bypassing the standard authentication or encryption process of a network device so it could scan internet traffic without a warrant.
Snowden revealed the NSA’s special sauce in how it conducted domestic and foreign backdoor operations to collect vital intelligence, resulted in the agency reforming its spying process, and had to formulate new rules to limit future breaches and how it conducts spy operations, three former intelligence officials told Reuters.
However, a recent inquiry into the new guidelines by Senator Ron Wyden, a top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, yielded absolutely nothing as the spy agency dodged questions.
“Secret encryption back doors are a threat to national security and the safety of our families – it’s only a matter of time before foreign hackers or criminals exploit them in ways that undermine American national security,” Wyden told Reuters.
“The government shouldn’t have any role in planting secret back doors in encryption technology used by Americans,” he continued:
The agency refused to comment on its updated policies on current backdoor processes. NSA officials did say they were in the rebuilding trust phase with the private sector.
“At NSA, it’s common practice to constantly assess processes to identify and determine best practices,” said Anne Neuberger, who heads NSA’s year-old Cybersecurity Directorate. “We don’t share specific processes and procedures.”
Three former senior intelligence agency officials told Reuters that before a backdoor operation is conducted, the agency must “weigh the potential fallout and arrange for some kind of warning if the back door gets discovered and manipulated by adversaries.”
Critics of the agency’s spy tools say backdoors create targets for adversaries and undermine US technology trust among buyers across the world. According to Juniper, in 2015, a foreign adversary used the NSA’s backdoor in its equipment. The NSA told Wyden’s aides in 2018 the Juniper incident was a “lesson learned.”
Reuters cites one of the clearest examples of the NSA working with private tech firms to build backdoors:
“… NSA’s approach involved an encryption-system component known as Dual Elliptic Curve, or Dual EC. The intelligence agency worked with the Commerce Department to get the technology accepted as a global standard, but cryptographers later showed that the NSA could exploit Dual EC to access encrypted data.”
What this all suggests is that Snowden’s revelations of NSA’s spy tools really didn’t change the agency’s practices over the last seven years. Backdoors are still being used as the surveillance state marches on.
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