Today’s News 2nd April 2022

• The Necro-Neologism Of Lethal Legal Experts
  The Necro-Neologism Of Lethal Legal Experts

  Authored by Laurie Calhoun via The Libertarian Institute,

  The power of language is magical to behold. Through the mere pronouncement of words, people can be persuaded to do what they would never have thought to do, left to their own devices. The playbook with the most success in this regard is that of war. When people are “informed” that they and their families are in mortal danger, they can and often will acquiesce to any and all policies which government authorities claim to be necessary in order to protect them.

  Young people can be coaxed into killing complete strangers who never did anything personally to them. Citizens can be brainwashed to believe that suitably labeled persons can and indeed must be denied any and all human rights. When the stakes are claimed to be life and death, even apparently intelligent people can be goaded to accept that the mere possession of a divergent opinion is evil, and the expression of dissent a crime. The use of military weapons to execute obviously innocent, entirely innocuous civilians, including children, suddenly becomes permissible, so long as the victims have been labeled collateral damage. All any of this takes is to identify “the enemy” as evil.

  

  In centuries past, “the laws of war” were said to require the humane treatment of enemy soldiers. They were diagnosed as suffering from “invincible ignorance,” misled and mistaken about the dispute said to necessitate recourse to war, but still acknowledged as persons capable of being courageous combatants who found themselves through historical fortuity on the wrong side. An enemy soldier was to be provided with the opportunity to lay down his weapon and surrender in order to save his own life. Disarmed or incapacitated soldiers were not to be executed by their captors, for they had already been neutralized and posed no more danger than unarmed civilians. Prisoners of war were to be treated as human beings, and when they were tortured or summarily executed, this constituted a war crime. Such “laws of war,” which form the basis of international agreements, including the Geneva Conventions, have needless to say often been flouted, but, in theory, they were to be upheld by civilized people.

  After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, political leaders and government officials proclaimed that “everything changed.” The Bush administration legal team deployed linguistic innovation to issue in an entirely new era of warfare, wherein the “laws of war” would still be said to obtain, but they would be inapplicable to entire classes of human beings. Jihadist soldiers for radical Islamist causes were labeled unlawful enemy combatants, whose “unlawful” status was said to imply that they were protected by neither international norms such as the Geneva Conventions nor the laws of civil society.

  Under this pretext, terrorist suspects were tortured while held captive at prisons in Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and Baghram, in addition to many black sites around the world. Ever keen to cover their tracks, the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) also flatly denied that they ever tortured anyone, by redefining as enhanced interrogation techniques the abusive practices inflicted on hundreds, if not thousands, of men in an effort to extract from them actionable intelligence. And just in case any of this “logic” was called into question by pesky human rights advocates, Bush administration officials also derided the Geneva Conventions as “quaint.”

  Imminent vs. Immediate in the Global War on Terror

  The “peace candidate” Barack Obama was elected in 2008 on the promise to rein in the excesses of the Bush administration, including what Obama characterized as the “dumb” war on Iraq. The new president publicly denounced “enhanced interrogation techniques” as torture but then proceeded to take linguistic neologism to an entirely new level by not only redefining assassination as targeted killing but also labeling any suspect eliminated through the use of lethal drones as an Enemy Killed in Action (EKIA).

  The slaughtered “soldiers” were assumed to be guilty of possible complicity in future possible crimes, a preposterous position never fully grasped by Obama’s devotees, who somehow failed to recognize that the specific implement used to kill does not distinguish various types of homicide from one another, morally speaking. The extrajudicial execution of individual human beings in civil society is illegal, but the Obama administration effectively maintained that the targeting of suspicious persons and their associates in lands far away was perfectly permissible, so long as the victims were killed by missiles launched from drones, thereby rendering them “acts of war.”

  The entire drone program, whether within or far from areas of active hostilities (i.e., war zones), was portrayed by Obama and his administration as just another facet of “just war.” Blinded to the moral atrocity of this new lethal-centric approach to dealing with suspected enemies, whereby they would be executed rather than taken prisoner, Obama’s loyal supporters blithely embraced the propaganda according to which he was a smart warrior. After demonstrating his death creds to the satisfaction of hawks, by killing not only Osama bin Laden, but also U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, suspected of complicity in factional terrorism, Obama was reelected for a second term in 2012, despite having summarily executed thousands of men—mostly brown-skinned, unnamed, and unarmed—located in their own civil societies, far from any U.S. citizen, and in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions.

  The deft deployment of two simple words, immediate and imminent, played a key role in allowing Obama to get away with murder, even of U.S. citizens such as Anwar al-Awlaki and his sixteen-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. Guided by drone-killing czar John Brennan, Obama’s lawyers calmly explained in public addresses and official documents that suspects who posed imminent threats to the United States could be targeted by lethal drones because an imminent threat did not imply immediacy. In other words, they could be killed even when they were currently unarmed and living in their own civil society, surrounded by family members and friends, and even when the future crime of which they were vaguely suspected was merely hypothetical and therefore had no specific date.

  When targets were “nominated” for execution, the administration operated under the assumption that they were guilty unless specific information was brought forth to demonstrate their innocence. The victims themselves obviously could not do this, initially, because they were not informed that they were being targeted and, later, because they were dead. Meanwhile, local residents and journalists on the ground who knew these people’s names and dared to assert that the victims were not terrorists were either denounced as propagandists or cast as misguided persons hoodwinked by the rhetoric of jihadists.

  As the death toll mounted, outspoken critics in the vicinity of the missile strikes became progressively more terrified of being themselves eliminated for seeming to support terrorist groups. Their concerns were not unfounded, for they risked being affixed with the lethal label associate and added to hit lists for execution if they dared to question the drone warriors’ narrative. This oppressive climate needless to say served actively to suppress dissent from the U.S. government’s official story of what they had done, even among locals who witnessed the grisly scenes where entirely innocent community members were incinerated by missiles launched from drones.

  Imminent vs. Immediate in the Opioid Crisis

  Improbably enough, the very same two words, imminent and immediate, used by the Obama legal team to invert the presumption of innocence to a presumption of guilt in the case of terrorist suspects located abroad, proved to be deadly in an entirely different context during the twenty-first century as well.

  The causes of the sudden and shocking increase in the number of narcotics addicts and overdose deaths all over the United States are manifold, but a tidal wave of diversion was made possible by drug-dealer doctors and the notorious “pain clinics” where they plied their trade. Manufacturers produced and pharmacies dispensed billions of pills as demand multiplied in tandem with the creation of more and more new addicts, who could no longer function without narcotics.

  Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family are widely regarded as the prime movers of the opioid crisis, having undertaken a highly successful campaign to coax doctors into believing that their patented time-release prescription narcotic Oxycontin was nonaddictive and could be safely provided to patients even for moderate pain. This marketing feat was achieved by influencing key players at the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), who not only approved the medication but permitted it to be sold along with a package insert falsely suggesting that it was less prone to abuse than other narcotics.

  In its quest to sell as many pills as possible, the pharmaceutical industry repeatedly pivoted to neologize in lethal ways over the two decades following the launch of Oxycontin in 1996. When it emerged that the pills sometimes wore off before the twelve-hour time release period, marketers and sales representatives claimed that those patients were suffering from breakthrough pain, the remedy for which was (surprise!) to double their dose. The narcotics marketers indulged in flat-out sophistry when they insisted that patients who appeared to be addicted to their painkillers were in fact suffering from pseudoaddiction, the remedy for which was (surprise!) even higher doses of their drugs. As farcical as these arguments may seem in retrospect, with the benefit of hindsight and in the light of the overdose epidemic now running rampant, many doctors appear to have been persuaded to believe that their patients’ miserable condition was not indicative of addiction but a manifestation of their ongoing and unbearable pain, the solution to which was to ply them with yet more powerful narcotics.

  Pharma-coopted lawmakers were notified of the proliferating addiction problem early on but refused to stop the runaway train by demanding that the FDA cease playing along with Purdue’s insane pro-narcotics marketing campaign. Other companies needless to say contributed as well, through promulgating the “pain epidemic” propaganda so as to expand the market niche of such products, which had previously been reserved for terminally ill patients. Johnson & Johnson played a causal role in what became the opioid crisis by growing tons of poppies (in Tasmania) to meet the enormous increased industry need for raw opium, without which the billions of pills prescribed could not and would never have been produced.

  As the opioid crisis began to become recognized for what it was, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) sought to issue “Immediate Suspension Orders” (ISOs) against the three major drug wholesale distributors to pharmacies, Cardinal Health, McKesson, and Amerisource Bergen. Through issuing such orders, Joe Rannazzisi, the deputy director of the Office of Diversion Control, hoped to halt the ongoing mass shipments of opioids to retailers such as CVS in cases where the sheer volume of prescriptions could not be explained by ordinary medical practice and so was a clear indication that widespread diversion of narcotics was underway.

  Rannazzisi ended up being hobbled by a team of corporate lawyers and lobbyists who managed to cobble together a new law in 2014 which, despite its beneficent-sounding name, “The Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act” (HR4709), served to protect, above all, drug manufacturers and distributors. The Act rewrote the law already on the books through redefining the imminent danger required to issue an ISO to mean “a substantial likelihood of an immediate threat.” One of the new Act’s enthusiastic promoters, Linden Barber (a former DEA officer and lawyer who had left his government position to represent the drug distributors), persuasively explained on the floor of Congress that “having a clear legal standard is always better.” The measure passed unanimously, without a roll call vote, for the simple reason that it sounded like a policy to which no decent person could object. But rather than stemming the tide of the opioid crisis, the Act severely hampered the DEA’s ability to issue ISOs, for it was prohibitively difficult for officials to meet the newly stipulated legal standard of imminence as requiring immediacy.

  President Obama signed the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act of 2014 into law, and the marketing campaign used to promote the use of highly addictive time-release narcotics barreled ahead. The DEA’s sudden inability to call a halt to the shipment of tons of narcotics to retailers effectively guaranteed that the number of dependent persons would multiply, as potent prescription pills continued to be diverted for recreational uses and thereby create more addicts. But more addicts meant more overdoses, not only from the potent pills themselves, but also because the street supplies of heroin to which many users eventually turned were often cut with extremely dangerous fentanyl.

  Unfazed by the death tolls, which had already soared to many thousands by 2014, the pharmaceutical giants insisted that the sorry situation of addicts was no argument against helping patients genuinely in pain, who would in fact be wronged if their access to narcotics were curbed. The addicts dropping like flies were painted as solely responsible for their plight, despite ample evidence that many of the overdose victims began as legitimate pain patients, who became aware of their dependency only upon reaching the bottom of their amber vials.

  The Role of Obamacare in Propelling and Augmenting the Opioid Crisis

  “Everything changed” in the twenty-first century, not only with the war on terror, the rebranding of torture, and the normalization of assassination, but also in the pharma-friendly approach to healthcare ushered in by President Barack Obama. By pushing through his signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010, which leftists were led to believe would create a system of socialized medicine (referred to by many as Obamacare), the president notoriously bowed to drug makers and the insurance industry, extending to those sectors the very form of crony corporate welfare already enjoyed by companies in the military industry.

  Obama’s collaboration with pharmaceutical and insurance company executives in crafting the ACA allowed them to secure advantageous pricing arrangements to ensure the maximization of their profits, while at the same time massively increasing the sheer volume of sales. The pharmaceutical industry was greatly enriched through the provision of virtually limitless free psychiatric medications to low-income patients through government programs such as Medicaid and Medicare, and to veterans through the VA (Veterans Administration). Mental health-based disability claims soared, and the sales of SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), anti-anxiety, atypical anti-psychotic medications and other psychotropes, including narcotics, increased accordingly. The millions of new prescription medications dispensed to formerly uninsured Americans ended up being paid for by the middle class, who were mandated by law to sign up for Obamacare or else face a hefty tax penalty, should they decline to comply.

  Despite what may have been Obama’s initial good intention, to make healthcare available to uninsured persons, Obamacare ultimately made medical treatment in the United States prohibitively expensive for many middle class families, whose copays, premiums and deductibles increased dramatically. The new mandatory healthcare program skyrocketed the salaries of health industry executives while pricing drugs and procedures out of reach for many persons who had previously been able to afford them. Millions of people in the United States have filed medical bankruptcy in recent years. In cases where prescription narcotics addicts became uninsured because they lost their jobs, they turned to the streets for their needed drugs, given the impossibility of paying out of pocket for extraordinarily expensive prescription pills.

  Given the story of Obamacare, perhaps no one should be surprised that when the Obama administration finally took action to address the opioid epidemic, most of the allocated $1.1 billion was for the alternative medication of already existing addicts. The pharma-friendly approach prevailed once again, encouraging the sale of more and more drugs (such as Suboxone) to help addicts to wean themselves off their narcotics. Obama’s dilatory and pro-pill approach to the opioid crisis ultimately generated even more people who, in order to kick their narcotics habit, would need to avail themselves of further pharmaceutical means, effectively trading one drug for another. In other words, both the problem of opioid overprescription, facilitated through Obamacare by providing easy access to narcotics to formerly uninsured persons, and the measures implemented by the Obama administration in response to the overdose epidemic, served to increase pharmaceutical industry profits.

  The Death Connection

  Whether or not one wishes to connect any further dots in the cases of drone assassination and the opioid epidemic, it does seem worth pointing out that Obama’s own attorney general, Eric Holder (2009-2015), was a former legal counselor to Purdue Pharma, who in fact defended the company in a 2004 lawsuit alleging deceptive marketing of Oxycontin. This is noteworthy because it was none other than Eric Holder who, in an infamous White Paper and various public addresses, so adamantly defended the creative interpretation of imminence as not implying immediacy, the crucial linguistic maneuver used to defend and promote Obama’s drone killing spree.

  The normalization of assassination achieved by the Obama administration expanded the domain of what was said to be legitimate state killing by inverting the burden of proof on suspects while simultaneously claiming (illogically enough) that “areas outside active hostilities” were in fact war zones. Together, all of these linguistic tricks generated a veritable killing machine, opening up vast new market niches and dramatically increasing the profit potential for companies in the shockingly lucrative business of state-inflicted homicide. Not only weapons manufacturers but also logistics and analytics companies were able to reap hefty profits through eliminating as many people pegged as “terrorist suspects” as possible.

  The imminent vs. immediate dichotomy was inverted and redeployed, but in the opposite direction, by pharmaceutical company legal teams and collaborating lawmakers in 2014 to permit the promiscuous sale of narcotics to continue on despite the opioid overdose epidemic on display throughout the United States. The Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act of 2014 ironically “ensured” only profits for drug companies, as millions of new addicts would be created during the second decade of the twenty-first century, accelerating and multiplying the domino effect of diversion and overdoses already ravaging communities all across the United States. It matters not that pharmaceutical company executives sought not to kill people but to sell pills. They aggressively pushed narcotics without regard for the likely future consequences of their drive for profit. Indeed, they persisted in pushing narcotics even as drug overdose deaths reached record levels.

  Under Obama, more than two thousand suspects outside areas of active hostilities were premeditatedly and intentionally incinerated by missiles launched from drones. The tally of overdose deaths in the United States exceeded 100K for the single year ending in April 2021. The long-range effects of the normalization of assassination, however, are likely to be more deadly than the opioid crisis, given that many other governments have followed suit in acquiring lethal drones for their own use, having been persuaded by the precedent set by the U.S. government that this form of state-inflicted homicide is perfectly permissible. In contrast, the promiscuous opioid prescription practices of doctors in the United States has been curtailed and was not emulated in the UK or in Europe, although the pharmaceutical giants do appear to have continued their morally dubious marketing practices in other countries abroad, especially in less-developed lands.

  As both the drone program and the opioid prescription debacle illustrate, when government agencies such as the Pentagon and the FDA have been captured by industry forces focused above all on maximizing profits, they will simply look the other way as the corpses pile up, denying responsibility for any and all “collateral damage.” This tendency of bureaucrats and corporate leaders to shirk responsibility for the negative consequences of their policies helps to explain the ease with which lawmakers are coopted by lobbyists from not only the military but also the pharmaceutical industry. The recent deployment of imminent and immediate by lethal legal “experts” serves to underscore why the censorship of language by government officials themselves is inherently dangerous, given that their policies in recent years have multiplied, not prevented, the deaths of human beings.

  In a representative democracy, the lawmakers promote the interests of the voters who elected them. What kind of government sacrifices the lives of human beings in order to maximize the profits of corporate leaders?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/01/2022 – 23:40

• The Frozen Russian Superyachts (And Those That Got Away)
  The Frozen Russian Superyachts (And Those That Got Away)

  Reports about the superyachts of sanctioned Russian billionaires being frozen or detained came a dime a dozen in the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine by the country at the end of February. But are these floating displays of obscene wealth now closely watched over in European harbors and marinas big or little fish when considering the most valuable superyachts owned by Russian billionaires?

  

  The answer to this question is: they kind of are.

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, among the megalomaniac yachts detained in Europe are some of the biggest known to be owned by now sanctioned Russians. This is according to information by the Russian Asset Tracker and several media reports by Forbes and others.

  The Crescent, currently being held in Tarragona on the Spanish Mediterranean coast, is linked to sanctioned Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin. At an approximate value of $600 million and a length of 443 feet, it is one of the largest yachts in the world and is said to feature a large glass-bottom pool, a helicopter hangar and a two-story glass atrium.

  Another enormous vessel – nabbed by authorities while undergoing repairs in Hamburg, Germany – is the Dilbar, owned by Metalloinvest’s Alisher Usmanov. It is the world’s largest yacht measured by interior volume and has a staggering length of 511 feet. The yacht is believed to have been even more expensive upon delivery in 2016 than the Crescent, which was finished in 2019. Finally, the world’s largest sailing yacht, three-master SY A, was detained in Trieste, Italy. It is owned by Andrey Melnichenko of EuroChem and coal company SUEK.

  But several more of the biggest boats owned by sanctioned Russian oligarchs are currently out of reach of Western authorities.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  These vessels have been sighted in the Maldives, Dubai or Turkey – all countries that haven’t imposed sanctions on Russian individuals and have no extradition agreements with the West. The latter nation is currently hosting two boats of yacht afficionado and soon-to-be former Chelsea F.C. owner Roman Abramovich.

  Compared to the value of these massive boats, some other superyachts that European countries detained seem rather modest despite their luxurious furnishings. The only ones valued at more than 100 million dollars were Sergei Chemezov’s Valerie, which was frozen by Spanish authorities, and another one of Igor Sechin’s yachts, Amore Vero, which was detained in France. Only the price at the time of delivery was available for the two boats, meaning the current value of the boats built in 2013 and 2011, respectively, would be lower now.

  Other highly publicized detainments of superyachts included Alexey Mordaschov’s Lady M and Gennady Timchenko’s Lena, both held up in Italy. The vessels are valued at comparably low $27 million and $8 million, considering loss of value after delivery. The only other yacht of a value of more than $50 million belonging to a sanctioned Russian billionaire was detained in the islands of Mallorca – Victor Vekselberg’s Tango. The latest catch was a $38 million superyacht belonging to an unnamed Russian businessman, which was frozen by British authorities in London’s Canary Wharf in connection with sanctions, The Guardian reported Tuesday.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/01/2022 – 23:20

• This Is Why Your 'Locally Butchered' Beef Might Actually Come From China
  This Is Why Your ‘Locally Butchered’ Beef Might Actually Come From China

  Authored by Wesley Shank via The Epoch Times,

  Misleading label claims are everywhere…

  

  They bombard you while walking down the grocery store aisles.

  They creep up on you while scanning a slick marketer’s website.

  They shock you when even your best friend recommends an industrial organic brand… “Hey, it’s a lot cheaper and they say it’s just as good!”

  “Well… how do I know?”

  I admit this is the hard part because the big guys don’t want you to know! They spend tens of thousands of dollars to design the label and marketing claims to subtly deceive you without you knowing.

  And they’ve done a good job… many people are fooled.

  It’s time to pull back the shroud to expose the industrial reality that lies behind.

  Deceptive Label Claims to Be Aware of:

  1. Cage-Free, Free-Range, and even Pastured

  The big guys describe their chickens flawlessly. Their websites show lovely pictures of birds walking in lush grass with sunshine streaming around them.

  Yes, they do look… almost pastured… until you notice the sprawling industrial “CAFO barn” at the edge of one picture (in the video link).

  That barn could be holding 10,000+ birds. Maybe 5% of them will venture outside during their short lives—but probably not.

  

  Truly no comparison…

  There is so much more to share and explain… I’ll devote an entire email to this as soon as possible.

  And I didn’t even start on the same problem with CAFO Industrial Organic Dairy farms. More on that next week…

  2. “Grass-fed,” Beef

  Some “grass-fed” beef is actually fed a corn and soy based diet for the last 3-5 months of its life in a feedlot.

  Sure doesn’t sound like grass-fed to me!

  But like so many of these label claims, they have a kernel of truth mixed in to make a very tricky logic.

  Most cattle are raised on grass for the first half of their lives before being grain-finished in a CAFO feedlot. So the industrial guys say…

  “Of course I can label my beef as ‘grass-fed’!”

  These cattle eat grass for part of their lives and the regulations don’t say how much grass they need to eat before I sell this as ‘grass-fed beef.’

  Too bad for the customers if they don’t know what my ‘grass-fed’ means!”

  I’m not making this up.

  This is the logic that gets cheap “grass-fed” beef into supermarkets.

  If you want truly grass-fed beef, you must ask for 100% grass-fed & grass-finished. And make sure it’s chemical-free too! Even grasses are commonly sprayed in the industrial world.

  

  3. Product of the USA Meat

  Beef and Pork can be raised and slaughtered in Australia, New Zealand, Uruguay, Brazil, China, etc…

  It’s then shipped over here to be cut into your supermarket steaks, roasts and burgers…

  And legally labeled as “Product of the USA!”

  Sad, but true.

  Those cattle and pigs didn’t breath a single breath of United States air to merit this status. But shoppers will never know the difference.

  A Stone Barns Center report says 75-80% of all “USA” grass-fed beef sold online or in grocery stores is imported from overseas.

  It is shocking that United States label regulations allow this.

  But in some ways, the next one is even crazier!

  4. “Fresh,” and “Never-been-frozen,” Poultry

  According to the USDA, poultry can be sold as “fresh” if it has never been below 26° F.

  Excuse me, but isn’t 32° usually considered the freezing point?

  And there’s another misleading claim. This one is especially important with turkey season here.

  Poultry can be sold as “never been frozen” as long as it hasn’t been stored below 0° F. Read it in the USDA’s own words.

  This. is. crazy.

  “Never been frozen” says quite clearly that it, well… has never been frozen. I know from experience that chickens and turkeys at 10° are quite solidly frozen!

  But not to the industrial guys. As long as last year’s turkey didn’t go below 0° they can thaw it out and sell it to unsuspecting families as a beautiful “never-been-frozen” Thanksgiving Turkey.

  That’s the level of integrity you get with the Industrial Organic food system.

  Industrial Organics are not all bad. They help cut down on our nation’s chemical and antibiotic use.

  BUT.

  The deceptive marketing claims are wrong. We need to pull back the Industrial Curtain layer by layer so everyone in this country can see what lies behind.

  Please help spread the word.

  It’s time more people wake up and start supporting small farms across the country again. Those farms are where the real, truly pastured organics all began.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/01/2022 – 23:00

• US Army Set To Order 30,000 Next Generation Squad Weapons
  US Army Set To Order 30,000 Next Generation Squad Weapons

  Buried deep within the DoD FY23 budget request by weapon system, the US Army has officially chosen the contractor(s) for the Next Generation Squad Weapons (NGSW) program. 

  NGSW is a prototyping effort by the Army that consists of a new rifle (NGSW-R) and automatic rifle (NGSW-AR), chambered in a new high tech 6.8mm cartridge, set to replace the aging M16, M4A1 Carbines and the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, chambered in a 5.56 NATO round. 

  The NGSW has been in competitive prototyping testing with three defense firms, including SIG Sauer, General Dynamics – OTS, and Textron Systems. 

  

  On page 53/106 of the budget request, the Army expects to procure 29,046 NGSWs in 2023.

  “Starts funding for the procurement and fielding of 1,704 NGSW-AR, which is the planned replacement for the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) within the Close Combat Force; Procurement and fielding of 15,348 NGSW-R which is the planned replacement for the M4A1 Carbine within the Close Combat Force; and procurement and fielding of 11,994 Next Generation Squad Weapons Fire Controls,” the document read. 

  

  The document didn’t mention the prime contractor(s), though that should be announced later this year. 

  The Army will be fielding these new main battle rifles and machine guns next year — just as tensions with Russia heat up.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/01/2022 – 22:40

• War, Disease, Economic Agony (And Surging Gas Prices) Will Probably Not Deter Hospitality Sector
  War, Disease, Economic Agony (And Surging Gas Prices) Will Probably Not Deter Hospitality Sector

  By Dees Stribling of Bisnow

  Already grappling with long-term pandemic-fueled troubles, the travel and hospitality industry finds itself confronting yet another adversary: surging fuel prices.

  The sector had managed to claw its way back to a tolerable recovery in 2021 — and 2022 was shaping to look a little more like the days before the coronavirus. Summer vacations to the beach and further afield were anticipated. Business travel was ticking back up with conferences and in-person meetings on the rise.

  For a while, things were looking up.

  Then Russia invaded Ukraine. 

  Oil prices are now spiking beyond $100 a barrel, driving sharp increases for gas at the pump and for pricy jet fuel — which, if conventional wisdom holds true, will inevitably mean higher costs for U.S. travelers this spring and summer.

  So, less travel and another big knock on the hospitality industry? Maybe not.

  Travel and hospitality experts told Bisnow this week that they remain optimistic for 2022, citing the fact that bookings are still strong — apparently because last year didn’t satisfy Americans’ demand for travel. Travelers might adjust their plans a bit this year, but mass cancellations don’t seem to be in the cards — yet.

  

  “As concerns around omicron subside, we see very strong demand for leisure travel in the second quarter this year and beyond, and are expecting the travel market to continue to recover,” said Hayley Berg, head of price intelligence at Hopper, a booking service for airlines and hotels.

  Bookings are still strong now despite gas prices that are about 70 cents higher than in mid-February, at an average of $4.26 a gallon, according to AAA, and $1.37 higher per gallon than a year ago.

  The price of airline tickets is up as well, with Berg expecting airfare to climb to an average of $360 per round-trip through May, a 10% increase from current prices, though rates will taper off some by the end of the summer, as they do every year.

  The spike in gas prices has certainly caused pain for many millions of people. That was already the case late last year when gas prices crept up slowly but steadily. Low-income Americans or those on fixed incomes, as well as small businesses that use a lot of transport, are all suffering.

  Yet for that large portion of the population with steady incomes, leisure travel is still very much on the table. Spring break travel helped boost U.S. hotel performance for the week of March 19, STR reports, with some industry metrics showing improvements compared with 2019, though occupancy is still down from that period.

  For the week, occupancy stood at 66.9%, off 3.7 percentage points off 2019, while the average daily rate was up 13.6% and revenue per available room increased 9.5%, STR reports. The weekly occupancy level, though down compared with before the pandemic, was nevertheless the highest since the week ending Aug. 7, 2021.

  More pertinent for the outlook for summer travel, a number of organizations are reporting a sharp increase in bookings for planned travel in the next few months.

  “There’s still a lot of demand for travel this year now that vaccines have been widely distributed and restrictions are easing,” Berg said.

  Pent-up demand for travel had already been in evidence early this year, Berg said. Hopper’s bookings in Q1 2022 were up about 50% compared with the fourth quarter of 2021 and up a whopping 300% or so over Q1 2021.

  Travelers are booking trips to warmer destinations in record numbers, according to booking data from AAA that the organization reported in early March. For March, April and May, bookings to places such as Florida, Mexico and Hawaii were all up more than 200% compared with 2021 and up 10% over 2019.

  In mid-February, a AAA survey found that 52% of Americans plan to take a vacation this summer. That was before the war-inspired spike in gas prices, though prices had been creeping upward for some time. In any case, among those planning a trip early this year, 42% said they would not consider changing their travel plans regardless of the price of gas.

  Pent-up demand isn’t the only factor that stands to keep travel strong during the summer in the face of high gasoline and jet fuel prices, AAA spokesperson Ellen Edmonds told Bisnow. Despite inflation and supply chain woes, other metrics point to a strong economy with a lot of job creation, higher wages and higher savings.

  “As a result, people have more discretionary income to spend from not traveling for two years, though they are dealing with high gas prices,” Edmonds said.

  For this summer, AirDNA, which tracks peer-to-peer short-term rents, is seeing higher demand than last year, which was a record-breaking year for U.S. short-term rentals. The main difference this year, according to the company was in the locations chosen: urban areas are losing out to coastal and mountain destinations, as guests looked for nature experiences. 

  “As we look towards the summer, we see similar booking trends as 2021, though with 46% more nights booked compared to last year,” AirDNA Vice President of Research Jamie Lane said.

  Bookings this summer may be also boosted by the return of international travel, though rising fuel prices could keep Americans traveling a little closer to home as well, Lane said — but still traveling. 

  “It remains to be seen what effect fuel prices will have on U.S. vacation rental bookings this summer, but at the moment we aren’t seeing any decrease in demand, while supply is increasing to keep up,” Lane said.

  

  “We continue to be optimistic that there’s still a significant tailwind for leisure demand,” Marriott International CEO Tony Capuano said during the company’s most recent earnings call in February, just ahead of the gas price spike.

  “We already have more leisure on the books for months further out than we did in the same months last year,” Capuano said, adding that he believes that working from anywhere has been an accelerant for leisure demand. 

  “And as more and more borders open, we think that influx of international leisure travel will also serve to accelerate the pace of leisure demand growth,” Capuano said.

  That optimism in the hotel industry extends to the point that new hotel development is still underway, despite the rough time the industry had during 2020.

  “There’s a lot of enthusiasm in the industry, particularly around new hotel development, because cap rates have been so compressed and it’s so expensive to acquire existing hotels,” Reveille Hospitality CEO Marco Roca Sr. said.

  Roca adds that the wider pattern of inflation is actually a net positive for hotel owners. 

  “Hard-asset businesses such as hotels do well in an inflationary environment, especially because they can adjust their rates as needed,” he said. 

  Driving destinations reported strong business in 2021, and expect this year to be similar, and for a similar reason — people want to hit the road. 

  “People were really sick at being cooped up last year and hit the road,” Wall Drug Inc. Chairman Rick Hustead said. “For us, last year was a record-breaker.”

  Wall Drug is a storied tourist attraction in South Dakota, near I-90 and Badlands National Park, with cowboy-themed and other stores, a number of restaurants, an art gallery and an 80-foot brontosaurus sculpture.

  As for this year, March has seen about as many visitors as last year, which was a good month, Hustead said, and he’s optimistic about the summer, even though gas is more expensive.

  Another reason not to overestimate the impact of higher gas prices on summer travel is that the U.S. has been through this situation before.

  Back in the summer of 2008, ahead of the recession, gas prices were at record levels. People traveled anyway, even without the spur of two previous years when travel was more difficult or impossible.

  “After a reasonably good start to 2008, the industry fell into an extremely negative pattern during the last four months of the year,” STR President Mark Lomanno said in a statement at the end of that year.

  That is, despite high gas prices that year — actually higher than now, adjusted for inflation — travel and hospitality didn’t particularly suffer until the bottom dropped out of the economy with the global financial panic in September. That summer, Americans might have grumbled about the price of gas, but they continued to take summer vacations. 

  Data at the time did show that people started to drive less as a result of high gas prices, and use less gas, a pattern that seems to be reasserting itself in 2022. In 2008, the Federal Highway Agency reported, the number of miles Americans drove dropped 3.5% during the first 10 months of the year in response to high gas prices, while the gas consumed has declined by about 4%. 

  There is a short-term response to high gas prices: drive less. And there’s also a longer-term one: buy more efficient cars, the government reported, a trend that doesn’t impact leisure travel as much.

  “In the long run, there is general agreement in the literature that about two-thirds of this (fuel consumption decline) results from the purchase of more fuel-efficient vehicles and only about a third results from reduced travel,” the FHA reported.

  Much of that reduced travel seems to be in day-to-day living, rather than leisure travel, which people tend to plan well in advance and save for, Placer.ai says in a report on the impact of gas prices on retailers.

  Rising gas prices tend to cause consumers to consolidate their shopping trips, and as consumers try to limit their gas expenditures, they don’t drive as far as they used to for everyday purchases, according to Placer.ai.

  “People still feel cooped up even after last year,” Wall Drug’s Hustead said. “Travel is still worth it to them, even if driving is more expensive this year.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/01/2022 – 22:20

• Tone-Deaf Fed President Jokes About "Whopping" Golf Membership Fees 
  Tone-Deaf Fed President Jokes About “Whopping” Golf Membership Fees 

  An ominous sign about today’s high inflation environment, and quite clearly the Federal Reserve is behind the hiking curve, is a contact close with the Fed complaining about out-of-control golf membership prices. 

  Yes, you heard that correctly. Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Patrick Harker’s speech cited “one of our contacts,” presumably a Wall Street banker or corporate elite, complained about the “whopping membership fee increases at his golf club.”

  

  Harker said the contact even “suggested it may be a good time to play at your local muni instead” of a private course. 

  As Matt Taibbi of TK News notes,

  “I know I’m a little out of practice, because just as I was about to begin speaking, I made sure my mute button wasn’t on,” he cracked. “In all seriousness…”

  Shifting to a graver theme, he mentioned the old saw about being cursed to live in “interesting times.” The novel coronavirus, he said, “has tragically killed at least 6 million people globally and around 1 million here in the United States,” adding, “That’s the equivalent of a city larger than San Francisco or Seattle.” Russia has also invaded Ukraine, he said, “fomenting death and destruction and spurring a humanitarian crisis in the heart of Europe.”

  Next in this parade of calamities: the scourge of inflation, a problem so serious that it touched him and his colleagues personally.

  “One of our contacts, for instance, mentioned whopping membership fee increases at his golf club,” Harker said, “suggesting this summer may be a good time to play at your local muni instead.”

  *  *  *

  The Fed member continued to say “generous fiscal policies, supply chain disruptions, and accommodative monetary policy have pushed inflation” to a four-decade high. 

  Notice Harker’s listing of inflation’s culprits and how “accommodative monetary policy” is last. In our view, that should be first, though the Fed will never admit creating money out of thin air is the root of all inflation. 

  The voting Fed member is onboard for “methodical hikes as the year continues and the data evolve.” He also anticipated that the Fed’s balance sheet of Treasury securities, agency debt, and mortgage-backed securities would be reduced. 

  He said he agrees with the current Fed view of seven rate hikes, estimating the Fed to move quickly toward a neutral federal-funds rate target of approximately 2.5% later this year. 

  Harker’s speech comes hours after the 2s10s Treasury curve inverted, the most-monitored, the most-studied, and the most accurate predictor of recession the market offers.

  Last week, Fed Governor Christopher Waller told an audience that his home searching in Washington, D.C., ran into a brick wall due to low inventory and high prices. 

  For two top Fed members to point out inflationary woes at the highest levels, even affecting themselves or other elites, suggests they’re way behind the hiking curve. 

  For a sense of just how far behind, the Taylor Rule suggests given the current inflation rate and unemployment rate, the Fed needs to hike by an absurd-sounding 1155bps to get back to ‘normal’…

  

  Today’s ongoing phenomenon of high inflation is not fading and has been exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which might call for aggressive rate hikes in upcoming FOMC meetings. Happy hiking Powell, the bond market sees danger ahead, and a soft-landing has never been achieved.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/01/2022 – 22:00

• Fauci Says China Was "Extremely Secretive" But "Didn't Necessarily" Cover-Up Pandemic
  Fauci Says China Was “Extremely Secretive” But “Didn’t Necessarily” Cover-Up Pandemic

  Authored by Michael Washburn via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  

  White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said that Chinese officials were “extremely secretive” about the possible origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, though he stopped short of accusing Beijing of deliberately covering it up.

  The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease was asked on BBC’s “Sunday Morning” program on March 27 what his response was to claims by World Health Organization (WHO) investigators that China prevented them from “seeing key details and from speaking to key people” when they were probing the pandemic origins in Wuhan in early 2021.

  “You know, I don’t want to create any or mention any disparaging remarks about that,” Fauci responded.

  “But the Chinese are very closed, in a way of being very reluctant, particularly when you have a disease that evolves in their country, they become extremely secretive, even though there’s no reason to be secretive,” he continued.

  Fauci then suggested that embarrassment over global reactions may have driven the Chinese regime to be less than totally forthcoming on the origins and spread of COVID-19.

  “I think they were very concerned and maybe embarrassed that the virus evolved from their country but there’s nothing wrong with that,” he said.

  “So when they see something evolving in their own country, they tend to have a natural reflex of not necessarily covering things up, but not being very open and transparent.”

  U.S. officials and others have repeatedly decried Beijing’s denying access to key data and facilities amid ongoing investigations to find out the source of the pandemic.

  In addition, the Chinese regime in the early stages of the initial outbreak in Wuhan suppressed information about the severity and spread of the disease, allowing the virus to transmit around the world that was still unaware of the dangers of the new coronavirus.

  Many lawmakers and experts have accused the communist regime of covering up both the origins of the pandemic and the initial spread of the outbreak.

  At the heart of the debate on the source of the outbreak is whether it leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan or if the virus was transmitted naturally before jumping to humans. While there are proponents for both theories, the Chinese regime’s refusal to allow independent scrutiny of the lab makes it extremely difficult to fully investigate the matter.

  Admitting that he was “never certain” in the early days about when and where COVID-19 might have originated, Fauci said that the similarities he observed between Covid-19 and such earlier diseases as SARS CoV-1 in the early years of the millennium suggested a possible origin for the current pandemic.

  “I said, as did many other virologists, that the most likely etiology was a jumping species from the animal to the human,” Fauci commented.

  Fauci added that he does not see anything suspicious about the existence of a research laboratory in Wuhan and this fact does not influence his view of the Chinese regime’s conduct in the matter.

  “It’s not at all surprising that there is a research lab there. The Chinese were trying to figure out, and did figure out, what the original etiology was of SARS CoV-1,” he said, referring to the SARS virus that spread from China from 2002 to 2003. Scientists ultimately traced that virus to horseshoe bats in China’s Yunnan, which jumped to the intermediary of Asian civets before spreading to humans.

  “[The SARS outbreak] made it very very clear there would be a possibility we would have another pandemic outbreak from the animal-human interface, so it makes sense that the Chinese would be studying this to find out how you could prevent another outbreak,” Fauci said.

  Emails disclosed earlier this year suggested that Fauci not only initiated efforts to cover up evidence pointing to a lab origin of COVID-19 but actively shaped a highly influential academic paper that excluded the possibility of a laboratory leak.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/01/2022 – 21:40

• California Man Arrested After Two "Expended" Rocket-Launchers Found In Trash-Can Near School 
  California Man Arrested After Two “Expended” Rocket-Launchers Found In Trash-Can Near School 

  Police in California arrested a man after discovering two “expended” rocket launchers and a practice grenade in a dumpster near a school. 

  “Today, two AT-4 launchers and an MK69 practice grenade were found by construction crews in the county area of Winchester. While all items were expended, these items do not go into dumpsters,” Riverside County Sheriff’s Bomb Squad said in a Facebook post. 

  The bomb squad’s statement includes pictures of the Swedish AT4s, a single-shot, disposable, recoilless smoothbore anti-tank weapon, and was deemed “expended” – meaning they were either fired or could no longer be fired. 

  

  “These items are “generally” NOT legal to possess (there are some limited exceptions),” the agency said, adding that people in possession of these weapons should “dispose of them legally” or “return them to the military.” 

  

   

  Through video footage and fingerprint evidence, the sheriff’s office was able to track and trace Christopher Whetstone, 41, back to the weapons. 

  “During the service of a search warrant, evidence of the original crime was located, along with narcotics, and a bazooka,” said Riverside County Sgt. Edward Soto.

  Soto said, “Although there is a school located directly behind the concerned residence, a school was not directly involved in the incident.” 

  Whetstone has been charged with tampering with a motor vehicle, possession of tear gas, and grand theft. He has yet to face federal charges for what the National Firearms Act calls grenades and bazookas “destructive devices.” Perhaps because the AT4s were already spent and are single-shot, though considering California, there could be other legal ramifications he may face on a state level. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/01/2022 – 21:20

• Humans Infected With 'Mind-Altering' Parasite Seen As More Attractive
  Humans Infected With ‘Mind-Altering’ Parasite Seen As More Attractive

  Authored by Ross Pomeroy via RealClear Science,

  The single-celled protozoan Toxoplasma gondii is a fascinating parasite. Replicating only in cat intestines, it is excreted in feces and subsequently spreads to many other organisms, not just felines. Inside these critters, it winds its way to the brain and transforms into numerous cysts, patiently waiting to return to its desired nine-lived host. But, though dormant, it is not entirely inert. T. gondii actually alters its host’s behavior. Mice, for example, grow less fearful of cats, making them easier prey. Just like T. gondii wanted…

  

  Humans are also affected by T. gondii. About one in ten Americans and a third of people globally host the parasite. And yes, it seems to sneakily mess with our minds, too. Studies suggest that infested humans have ever-so-slightly impaired motor skills, undertake additional risks, and get into more automotive accidents. The parasite’s presence is also linked to an elevated risk of schizophrenia.

  Curiously, as as new study published in PeerJ finds, T. gondii may also change humans’ physical appearance. An international team turned up a link between a latent infection and facial attractiveness. The researchers recruited 213 healthy college students at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, all of whom had previously been tested for T. gondii. Thirty-five subjects (22 men and 13 women) had the parasite, while 178 (86 men and 92 women) did not. The researchers then asked the subjects various questions and took pictures of their faces.

  Next, another 205 participants each viewed a random collection of twenty of these pictures, ten of Toxoplasma-positive subjects and ten of Toxoplasma-negative subjects, rating each pictured participant for facial attractiveness and perceived health on a 10-point scale. (Raters were not told of participants’ Toxoplasma status.) Overall, raters judged Toxoplasma-positive subjects to be significantly more attractive and healthy-looking than Toxoplasma-negative subjects.

  

  “T. gondii infection may produce changes in facial symmetry of its hosts through changes in endocrinological variables such as testosterone levels,” the researchers wrote. “These changes, both in the endocrinology system and in facial symmetry, would ultimately benefit the spread of the parasite by increasing the attractiveness of its hosts.”

  Indeed, as the researchers measured, participants with T. gondii tended to have more symmetrical faces. Facial symmetry is commonly associated with beauty.

  Other parasites are known to affect the physicial characteristics of their animal hosts. Moreover, previous studies showed that men infected with T. gondii have higher testosterone levels. However, a simpler explanation for the association is that attractive people are more likely to contract T. gondii as they might engage in more sexual activity. (T. gondii can be transmitted sexually.) The researchers did find that Toxoplasma-positive subjects reported having more sexual partners.

  More research is needed to confirm the study’s intriguing finding, so don’t go seeking out cat feces just yet in the hopes of making your face more alluring.

  Source: Borráz-León JI, Rantala MJ, Krams IA, Cerda-Molina AL, Contreras-Garduño J. 2022. Are Toxoplasma-infected subjects more attractive, symmetrical, or healthier than non-infected ones? Evidence from subjective and objective measurements. PeerJ 10:e13122 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.13122 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/01/2022 – 21:00

• These Are The Most Downloaded Apps In Russia In March
  These Are The Most Downloaded Apps In Russia In March

  In early February, the most downloaded app from the App Store in Russia was ‘Persona’, a makeup filter app, followed by video conferencing provider Zoom and the online retailer AliExpress (according to a review of app data sources by The Economist).

  However, as Statista’s Martin Armstrong details below, since the invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing sanctions, pull outs and censorship, people in the country have been far more focused on finding a VPN or internet privacy app, as shown by this infographic based on analysis by Sensor Tower and Quartz.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  On March 15, the internet privacy app 1.1.1.1. was the most downloaded app in Russia when taking into account the numbers from Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store.

  The top 8 list is dominated by VPN providers, with the encrypted messaging service Telegram making an appearance, too.

  Looking for solutions to problems of a far more serious nature, Quartz reports that the most downloaded app in Ukraine on this day was ‘Air Alarm‘, which as described by the developer “generates a loud alert warning of an airstrike, chemical attack, technological catastrophe or other types of civil defence alerts.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/01/2022 – 20:40

• Election Watchdog Finds 137,500 Ballots Unlawfully Trafficked In Wisconsin
  Election Watchdog Finds 137,500 Ballots Unlawfully Trafficked In Wisconsin

  Authored by Steven Kovac via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  At least 137,500 absentee ballots were cast through unlawful vote trafficking throughout several of Wisconsin’s largest cities in the 2020 election, according to research presented last week to the state Assembly’s Committee on Campaigns and Elections by the public interest organization True the Vote (TTV).

  

  Ballot trafficking is an activity in which absentee ballots and votes are solicited, sometimes in exchange for money or other valuables. They are then collected through a process called “harvesting” and delivered to drop boxes by intermediaries (someone other than the voter), who are often paid a per-ballot fee by partisan actors.

  “An organized crime against Americans” is how TTV cyber expert Gregg Phillips described to the committee what happened in Wisconsin and elsewhere during the 2020 election.

  

  Based on his 15-month study of election practices in Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Michigan, Phillips estimates that at least 4.8 million votes were trafficked nationally.

  4.8 MILLION ballots trafficked in the 2020 Election

  7% of mail-in ballots were trafficked in every Swing State True the Vote has looked in

  “It’s an organized crime that was perpetrated on Americans” pic.twitter.com/cseftCWhB7

  — Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) March 31, 2022

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  According to the True the Vote report, 242 intermediaries in metro Atlanta made 5,668 stops at drop boxes during elections in late 2020. In its report, TTV said it obtained 4 million minutes of drop box video surveillance tape that helped to document its Georgia findings.

  “Many of the traffickers we spoke with do not recognize what they are doing as being a problem,” TTV spokesperson Catherine Engelbrecht said.

  The study found that in Arizona, 202 intermediaries made 4,282 separate visits to ballot boxes in Maricopa County.

  Several Arizonans have since been indicted for election law violations, with at least one conviction, according to Phillips.

  

  Phillips told the committee that, in the states studied, TTV purchased from commercial brokers 10 trillion unique cell phone identity signals called “pings.”

  Human rights organization First Freedoms funded the time-consuming and costly project.

  Using a technique called geospatial mobile device signal analysis, Phillips said researchers are able to reconstruct a four-dimensional “pattern of life” of cell phone holders.

  “From these pings, it can be determined where you work, where you sleep, and even what floor you are on within inches,” he said.

  The Wisconsin study focused primarily on the Milwaukee County area, with some partial initial data coming from Racine and Green Bay, where the study will soon be further expanded, Phillips said.

  In those three areas, TTV’s cell phone ping research found that in the two weeks from Oct. 20 through Nov. 3, 2020, 138 individuals each visited the location of a nongovernmental organization at least five times and made a combined total of 3,588 trips to absentee ballot drop boxes.

  “That’s an average of 26 trips per person to drop boxes in the Milwaukee area,” Phillips said.

  “Is this evidence of fraud?” committee member Lisa Subeck, a Democrat, asked.

  “Vote trafficking is being done through the process. It is illegal,” replied Engelbrecht, who stated that every vote cast illegally cancels the vote of a legitimate voter.

  Wisconsin Statute 6.87 (4)(b)1 provides that an absentee ballot envelope, in which the cast absentee ballot is placed, must be “mailed by the elector, or delivered in person, to the municipal clerk issuing the ballot or ballots.” The Circuit Court in Waukesha County in Teigen v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, has agreed, holding that use of drop boxes for absentee voting violates Wisconsin law.

  Drop boxes, if unattended by a municipal clerk or in an unauthorized location, are illegal under Wisconsin law. The law is currently being challenged in the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

  In her testimony, Engelbrecht stressed that the TTV report was focused on the process and wasn’t attempting to prove the 137,551 votes were illegal votes.

  State Rep. Dave Murphy, a Republican member of the committee, stated: “If you vote in an illegal way, it is an illegal vote. If the process is illegal, the vote is illegal.”

  Earlier in March, the report of special counsel Michael Gabelman on voter fraud revealed that some personnel of nongovernmental organizations are suspected of coordinating the 2020 ballot harvesting operations in Wisconsin’s five largest heavily Democrat-run cities—Milwaukee, Kenosha, Green Bay, Madison, and Racine.

  When asked by Rep. Donna Rozar, a Republican, to name the NGOs in the study that were repeatedly visited by intermediaries, Phillips declined.

  A spokesperson for Micah Inc., a leading Milwaukee nonprofit philanthropic organization, told The Epoch Times that Micah does conduct “voter engagement efforts,” but declined to say more.

  Phillips and Engelbrecht testified that enormous nonprofits, such as National Vote at Home, are promoting voting from home and favor doing away with in-person voting on Election Day entirely.

  “Most countries around the world vote in person on election day, including Ukraine,” Phillips said.

  Engelbrecht argued that some countries have perfected secure blockchain electronic voting and said she thinks U.S. technology is advanced enough to at least ensure accurate election data.

  She said that some U.S. election jurisdictions view inaccurate voting rolls as a “feature rather than a bug.”

  “Our rolls are abysmal. Bad records are the gateway to fraud,” Engelbrecht said.

  “If you can’t verify identity, you can’t do anything else,” Phillips said.

  Rep. Ron Tusler, a Republican, asked if TTV could identify the 138 alleged ballot harvesters (also known as “mules”).

  “We know the names but are not disclosing them,” Phillips said. “Anyone can buy them commercially. However, law enforcement would need a warrant.”

  In the other states studied, government-made video surveillance tapes of ballot drop boxes obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests were used as part of the process of estimating how many ballots were trafficked, along with personal interviews with intermediaries and other tipsters and cell phone ping data.

  Engelbrecht told the committee that in Wisconsin, in September of 2020, her organization set up a hotline to receive tips from informants.

  Unlike other states where video surveillance footage of the drop boxes was made available to TTV investigators, Engelbrecht said that only one of the 17 Wisconsin localities studied provided TTV with video.

  Engelbrecht stated that in the summer of 2020, the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) announced it approved of video surveillance of the state’s drop boxes, as recommended by the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

  “WEC did not follow through,” she said.

  Neither did WEC provide to localities written guidelines based on CISA’s recommendations for the locations where the drop boxes were to be placed, according to Engelbrecht.

  She testified that across the country, the majority of the ballot drops surveilled typically happened between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m.

  

  She told the committee that the removal of 234,000 problem names from Wisconsin’s registered voter rolls, as recommended by the Electronic Registration Information Center, was stopped by a lawsuit.

  Forty-nine-year veteran elections attorney James Bopp Jr. came before the committee to provide a legal perspective to the facts presented in the TTV report.

  Bopp has litigated 200 election lawsuits and is currently legal counsel to TTV. He is also representing special counsel Gabelman in several lawsuits against him stemming from his investigation.

  Bopp testified that filing an avalanche of lawsuits was part of a years-long effort by Democrats “to make the whole system more susceptible to fraud and abuse.”

  He said 425 lawsuits were filed across America by Democratic Party operatives or front organizations in the runup to the 2020 election.

  Bopp asserted the suits were designed to ensure ineligible people were maintained on voting rolls; to expand voting to every voter on the rolls, whether active or inactive; and “to tear down every other anti-fraud protection, such as prohibiting signature verification and striking down witness requirements for absentee voting.”

  Turning to Wisconsin, Bopp pointed the committee to what he called “the corrupt and illegal activity and administration of election laws for partisan ends engaged in by your Wisconsin state government and municipalities designed to maximize the number of Democrat votes.”

  Addressing the alleged embedding of partisan get-out-the-vote efforts within local governments in Wisconsin’s largest cities, Bopp said the practice evades federal and state campaign contribution limits of just a few thousand dollars, and gives real-time, hour-by-hour, cost-free access to voter rolls to partisan actors.

  Bopp said the practice disguises its partisan nature, disguises the identity of out-of-state billionaire donors contributing millions, thereby violating the principle of transparency and exceeding contribution limits.

  “Despite clear and unequivocal state law, drop boxes created the infrastructure to accomplish all of this,” he said. “Drop boxes left unstaffed and located anywhere clearly violated state statutes.”

  He criticized what he said was the “grossly partisan, corruptly political, and blatantly illegal” actions of the people administering Wisconsin election laws.

  Bopp asserted that the actions in Wisconsin gave significant partisan political advantage to Democrats, exactly the people the plan was designed to help.

  “Ruthlessly exploited by large-scale organized and illegal ballot harvesting operations, involving not-for-profits and the people working with them, (the scheme) could very well have influenced the outcome of the 2020 election,” he said.

  “What has been disclosed—and, in my view, proven—is that there were sufficient irregularities in the 2020 election that a court, at the time, could have reached the conclusion that the true result cannot be determined. But that time has passed.

  “It’s not about overturning the 2020 election. It’s about the future. The situation is crying for reform.”

  Rozar reminded the audience that numerous election reforms passed by the legislature have been vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat.

  Neither Evers nor state Attorney General Josh Kaul, also a Democrat, responded by press time to requests for comment.

  *  *  *

  [ZH: and for more on this from Liz Harrington]

  In Milwaukee on one day 4 ballot traffickers went to 20 drop boxes pic.twitter.com/gOBCjvYRIT

  — Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) March 31, 2022

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  Organized ballot trafficking caught in San Luis, AZ

  Ballots collected from elderly, gathered in one location to be paid, one trafficker drops off stacks and stacks of ballots pic.twitter.com/4vqnogPYQv

  — Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) March 31, 2022

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  Remember TIME Magazine let that cat out of the bag pic.twitter.com/rBUTBl3D30

  — Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) March 31, 2022

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

  “It was not the most secure election ever. It was, quite possibly, one of the least…

  “It was planned.” pic.twitter.com/t4c00vBCCj

  — Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) March 31, 2022

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  Widespread. pic.twitter.com/dTiEp7FrWK

  — Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) March 31, 2022

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  “My Democrat colleagues started their testimony talking about situations in which votes were cast illegally…[and] tried to [say] if a vote came from a voter that was registered…somehow that makes it all right.

  “If a vote is cast in an illegal process, it’s an illegal vote!” pic.twitter.com/SdttteWZQQ

  — Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) March 31, 2022

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  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/01/2022 – 20:20

• Miami Beach Mayor Says No Curfew This Weekend As Spring Break Chaos Subsides 
  Miami Beach Mayor Says No Curfew This Weekend As Spring Break Chaos Subsides 

  As Spring Break winds down, Miami Beach has decided not to implement a curfew this weekend following last week’s chaos, according to NBC Miami. 

  Mayor Dan Gelber said, “It won’t happen this weekend unless there’s some metric or something happens that changes our mind. We’re not viewing it as the first resort, I think we had this as the last resort.” 

  “Hopefully it will be tamer, there are fewer colleges on break, typically April is better than March,” Gelber added. 

  Miami Beach’s midnight curfew went into effect last Thursday morning and expired on Monday morning after a series of shootings, street fights, and stampedes. 

  “I know from a PR point of view it’s not terrific to have an emergency declaration but honestly, if there was another route, we would have taken it but I just don’t know that there was one.

  “I’m never happy with Spring Break because it just doesn’t seem to flow easily, and I don’t like having to worry every evening when I fall to sleep and I’m wondering who’s gonna wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me about something that happened,” Gelber said. 

  Here are some of the chaotic scenes from last week. 

  Things got HEATED on the streets of Miami Beach as spring breakers caused chaos, leading to injuries and the implementation of a curfew.

  RELATED: https://t.co/XZLh1BdA7U pic.twitter.com/vH2hBjB94G

  — Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) March 29, 2022

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  It is a tricky business to maintain the hot nightlife of Miami Beach mixed with the explosiveness of chaotic college students. 

  “We have wrangled with spring break for a long time, other cities have wrangled with spring break. I think the challenge is always gonna be when your city is a venue for a rite of passage for young people you get conduct that is very hard and inconsistent with a residential community,” Gelber said.

  The curfew left a sour taste in everyone’s mouths. Tourists complained they couldn’t party on national television, and businesses reported steep weekly financial losses as they shuttered operations for several nights. 

  Again, the mayor is on a tightrope to ensure law and order but not discourage tourists. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/01/2022 – 20:00

• Judge Ousts Five School Board Members After Pennsylvania Parent Petition
  Judge Ousts Five School Board Members After Pennsylvania Parent Petition

  Authored by Beth Brelje via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A Pennsylvania judge on Tuesday ordered five elected school directors be immediately kicked off the nine-member West Chester Area School board.

  

  On Wednesday the same judge, William P. Mahon in the Chester County Court of Common Pleas, vacated Tuesday’s order and scheduled an argument for Friday.

  It is all in response to a February petition filed by West Chester Area School District parent Beth Ann Rosica. In the petition, Rosica calls for the removal of five school board members, Sue Tiernan, Joyce Chester, Karen Herman, Kate Shaw, and Daryl Durnell.

  Students returning to in-person classes after two years of remote learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic were required to wear masks over their mouth and nose. When Pennsylvania ended mandatory school masking, the West Chester Area School District was among a handful of schools that kept masking in place.

  “When that was lifted, all of us parents started emailing, calling, showing up at school board meetings, asking our school board to amend their health and safety plan and allow for optional masking,” Rosica told The Epoch Times.

  “They didn’t lift it for the West Chester School District, so we began to work on a petition to remove school board members because we believed that their actions were illegal and unconstitutional.”

  Eventually, the district did lift the mask mandate, but the petition request remained relevant because, in August, the board passed a new health and safety plan which allows the board to impose future mandatory masking at various levels of COVID-19 transmission.

  “For high levels of transmission, our current approved health and safety plan still requires masking, and we believe that that is illegal. We want this answered because we don’t want them to impose it come next fall, or any point in time when cases start growing up again,” Rosica said.

  The petition was based on a seldom-used Pennsylvania education statute that allows for the removal of school directors for “failure to organize or neglect of duty.”

  The statute says any ten resident taxpayers in the district may present a petition to the court to have them removed. But that argument was not addressed in Tuesday’s decision.

  The court favored for Rosica, citing West Chester Area School District’s failure to respond. It also ordered Rosica and the four remaining board members to each submit a list of five proposed replacements for the board, to be appointed by the court to fill out the exiting board members’ terms.

  Attorney Kenneth Roos of the Wisler Pearlstine law firm in Bule Bell, Penn. represents the school board. He told The Epoch Times in a phone call that he filed a motion for reconsideration of Tuesday’s decision, late Tuesday night. He had no other comment on behalf of the school board.

  The motion disputes the time frame that the school had to respond, arguing it should have had until April 4 to answer. The judge agreed and allowed the board members to stay in place while the petition is argued on Friday.

  Rosica is more than a mother of two students in the district. She is executive director of Back to School PA, a political action committee that advocated for reopening schools closed by COVID-19 mitigation measures. It aims to get pro-parent and pro-student candidates elected to school boards.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/01/2022 – 19:40

• Bunker Contamination Crisis Hits Singapore As Ships Hit With "Blackouts" 
  Bunker Contamination Crisis Hits Singapore As Ships Hit With “Blackouts” 

  A major bunker fuel contamination has been reported in Singapore, the world’s largest bunkering hub, with dozens of ships receiving tainted high sulfur fuel oil (HSFO) that has led to dangerous power blackouts, according to Bloomberg. 

  Fuel testing firm Veritas Petroleum Services (VPS) reports 34 vessels were identified to have received HSFO from two unidentified Singapore suppliers between February and March. The marine fuel contained up to 2,000 parts per million (ppm) of chlorinated hydrocarbons.

  “These bunker fuel contaminations have affected 14 vessels so far and the impact has been failure of the fuel system to the auxiliary engine resulting in loss of power and propulsion creating a blackout. 

  “Fuel system failure arose from seizure of the fuel pumps and plunger and barrel corrosion, caused by the bunker fuel contaminants,” VPS said in the statement.

  Out of the 34 vessels, almost half experienced power blackouts with the loss of propulsion systems, creating a hazardous situation if the ships were underway.  

  

  Such incidents could dent demand for bunker fuel in Singapore which is at the crossroads of a centuries-old trade route that links Asia to Europe and the Middle East to the US. 

  Maritime news website Splash 247 reported in early March that the contaminated fuel contains “abrasive particles that could cause accelerated wear of diesel engine components.” 

  This is just another wrench thrown into the snarled global supply chain as one can only imagine the affected ships would need to go down for maintenance and repairs. 

  For some color on the state of the current global supply chain, Goldman Sachs’ Jordan Alliger notes this week, “we are past peak bottlenecks.” Even though congestion remains elevated, supply chains around the world are normalizing. 

  

  As for the vessels affected by contaminated marine fuel, no information was given on what type of ships were affected nor size or maintenance and repair timelines. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/01/2022 – 19:20

• John Ioannidis: 'Public Health Officials Need To Declare The End Of The Pandemic'
  John Ioannidis: ‘Public Health Officials Need To Declare The End Of The Pandemic’

  Authored by Ross Pomeroy via RealClear Science,

  John Ioannidis, a Professor of Medicine, of Epidemiology and Population Health and by courtesy, of Statistics and of Biomedical Data Science at Stanford University, lauded for championing evidence-based medicine, has been harshly criticized over the past two years. Like many highly-credentialed health experts, Ioannidis made some predictions during the pandemic that eventually proved to be incorrect. During a once-in-a-century pandemic replete with unknowns, that’s to be expected. But perhaps the greatest reason he has come under fire is for questioning the orthodoxy of strict lockdowns, divisive vaccine mandates, and other restrictive measures to manage the pandemic. Ioannidis is sure to court more controversy with a new commentary published to the European Journal of Clinicial Investigation in which he argues that it’s time to declare the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

  “This does not mean that the problem is inappropriately minimized or forgotten, but that our communities move on with life,” he writes.

  “Pandemic preparedness should be carefully thought and pre-organized, but should not disrupt life.”

  

  While Ioannidis recognizes that there are no quantitative definitions for the end of a pandemic like COVID-19, he contends that the amount of immunity now present worldwide exceeds the threshold needed to declare SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, endemic – constantly present but not a public health emergency.

  “By end 2021, probably 73-81% of the global population had been vaccinated, infected or both,” he says. Pockets of low immunity, such as in places that pursued zero-COVID policies and/or with limited access to effective vaccines, may persist, causing regional outbreaks, but we will likely never see COVID-19 again trigger a global emergency.

  Declaring the pandemic phase of COVID-19 to be concluded means understanding and accepting a new “normal”.

  “A decrease of COVID-19 deaths back to typical seasonal influenza levels may not necessarily happen in 2022 or even beyond,” Ioannidis cautions. “With an increasingly aging global population, “normal” may still correspond to higher death counts… This should not be mistaken as a continued pandemic phase.”

  Easing out of the pandemic requires a widespread mental shift, as well. This means focusing more on indicators like hospital intensive care admissions to guide policy rather than just infections.

  “If perception of risk focuses on number of documented cases, the spurious perception of emergency situations may be difficult to quell,” Ioannidis writes.

  Exiting the pandemic also means reducing fearmongering coverage of COVID-19 in the popular media, the propagation of which undoubtedly contributed to the public’s warped perception of COVID’s risks throughout the pandemic. On average, Americans believed in early 2021 that 8% of deaths had occurred in people under the age of 24. The actual percentage as of today is 0.3%. Moreover, a third of the population has consistently believed that COVID leads to hospitalization in over half of infections. During the most recent Omicron wave, the proportion was 3% or lower.

  Declaring an end to the pandemic phase of COVID-19 has benefits, Ioannidis says. For example, it could allow public health organizations to refocus their time and money on more pressing global health issues, like poor nutrition and hunger, which collectively claim the lives of 9 million people each year, including 3.1 million children. For comparison, at least 6.2 million people have died from COVID-19 over the past two years, the vast majority over age 65. Accepting endemicity and reducing societal restrictions and disruptions would also permit economies to stabilize more rapidly, alleviating hardship, easing inflation, and reducing global inequality. Lastly, moving on from the pandemic could ease some of the political divisions that have fractured societies across the globe.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/01/2022 – 19:00

• Number Of US Workers Testing Positive For Marijuana Reaches 2-Decade High
  Number Of US Workers Testing Positive For Marijuana Reaches 2-Decade High

  Thanks in part to the widespread legalization of marijuana, so many American workers are testing positive for marijuana (and other drugs) that business owners in the US are being forced to relax and reassess their policies on pre-employment drug screens in order to accommodate workers who, just a few years ago, wouldn’t have been welcome in the labor pool.

  

  According to WSJ, of the more than six million urine screens processed through Quest Diagnostics (one of the country’s largest drug-testing laboratories), 3.9% came back positive for marijuana, the highest level in two decades. That represents an 8% increase over the number of positive tests from 2020, and a 50% increase since 2017.

  During that time, the number of states where marijuana has been legalized for recreational has increased to18 from eight (plus Washington DC).

  Surging rates of marijuana positivity are prompting fewer companies to even bother testing their employees for THC (for those who are unfamiliar, THC is the active ingredient in marijuana that’s primarily responsible for its effects) in the first place. And in some states, employers have been legally barred from factoring in marijuana test results into their hiring decisions.

  But in states that haven’t embraced legal marijuana, this trend is becoming a significant barrier to entry that’s having a cascading effect across the labor pool, as one ‘expert’ quoted by WSJ pointed out.

  “We certainly heard from some of our employer customers that they were having difficulty finding qualified workers to pass the drug test…”

  Unfortunately, marijuana isn’t the only drug that’s showing up more frequently in urine screens.

  Over the past year, the share of American workers who have tested positive for other drugs has risen 4.6% to the highest level since 2001 (the heyday of the American prescription painkiller crisis), according to Quest.

  One employment agency said it has tried to convince some of its clients to ease its policies on positive drug tests for THC (except for jobs where federal regulations require negative drug tests). But this lax attitude has sometimes had unintended consequences.

  For example, more workers have become comfortable with showing up to work high, or reeking of marijuana smoke. One recruiter shared a story about one employee being fired after openly hitting their marijuana vape pen at work.

  But as the number of job openings continues to outpace the number of workers available to fill them, how much longer until pre-employment drug screens become a thing of the past for most workers.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/01/2022 – 18:40

• What's Going On With Joe Biden?
  What’s Going On With Joe Biden?

  Authored by Sheldon Richman via The Libertarian Institute,

  What’s going on with Joe Biden? Is he oblivious to the fact that Russia has about as many strategic nuclear weapons as the United States has? Is he taking advice from the neocons, who apparently believe that we should not fear a nuclear holocaust because that’s exactly what Vladimir Putin wants us to do? (I presume Putin also wants us to believe that the earth is round. Should we give that up too?)

  How else to explain Biden’s astounding statements in recent days, particularly while meeting with NATO representatives in Brussels and with U.S. troops in Poland? That’s right: 9,000 U.S. troops are now in southeast Poland, not far from the Ukrainian border. Poland of course is a member of NATO, which means that if Poland clashes with Russia, the U.S. government has treaty obligations to its ally.

  

  To be clear, here’s Article 5, which embodies the principle that NATO describes as being “at the very heart” of the treaty:

  The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area. [Emphasis added to indicate ambiguity in the provision that isn’t often acknowledged.]

  Are Biden’s off-the-cuff-and-wall remarks signs of dementia? Or are they just the Bidenesque “Kinsley gaffes” we’ve become accustomed to? (A Kinsley gaffe occurs when someone important speaks his mind when he or his handlers know he shouldn’t.)

  By now, Biden’s irresponsibly provocative remarks have made the rounds. He has said that Russia’s use of chemical weapons in Ukraine would bring a NATO response, but left the nature of the response vague. His administration seems to be shying away from explicitly declaring “red lines.”

  And yet, when ABC News asked Biden, “If chemical weapons were used in Ukraine could that trigger a military response from NATO?” Biden responded, “It would trigger a response in kind. Whether or not — you’re asking whether NATO would cross — we’d make that decision at the time.” (Emphasis added.)

  Say what? Response in kind? Does that mean he might order a chemical-weapons counterattack?

  As others have pointed out, even a de facto red line is an invitation for a false-flag attack in which a Ukrainian group, hoping to bring NATO into the fight, would use chemical weapons while making the perpetrator appear to be Russian. This sort of thing seems likely to have happened in Syria.

  Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelensky is still lobbying for even more NATO intervention (in addition to arms and sanctions) in the form of a no-fly zone, which is now called “close the sky.” The shameless public appeal includes this video, with the lyric “If you don’t close the sky/I will die.” The lyricist neglected to point out that if the sky is closed and the U.S. Air Force shoots down a Russian jet, we all could die in a nuclear exchange.

  This degraded society asking for an apocalypse! https://t.co/Xuex2dRNLz

  — Sabina 🏔 (@Sabina_91521) March 29, 2022

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

  Biden still says no to closing the sky, but if he started saying the opposite, who’d be surprised?

  As everyone knows, while abroad Biden also seemed to call for regime change in Russia with this ad-lib: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” History teaches that implied policies such as that do not facilitate ceasefires and peace. The Gaffer-in-Chief and his people tried to walk it back, but the attempts were lame. “I was expressing the moral outrage that I feel,” he said while insisting he wasn’t walking back his statement, “and I make no apologies for it.” (American presidents are always morally outraged whenever countries they don’t like do what the U.S. government regularly does.)

  A White House official dutifully insisted that what his boss meant “was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.” If you buy that, they have a bridge you might be interested in.

  Biden also appeared to tell U.S. troops stationed near the Ukrainian border in Poland that they would soon be in the war zone and that in fact some have already been on the other side of the border: “You’re going to see when you’re there, and some of you have been there, you’re gonna see — you’re gonna see women, young people standing in the middle — in front of a damned tank just saying, ‘I’m not leaving, I’m holding my ground.’”

  In clarification mode, Biden explained that the words when you’re there referred to the training of Ukrainian forces in Poland. Oh really? They’re going to see women and young people blocking Russian tanks in Poland? What’s he trying to tell us now? The Deputy Assistant White House Gaffe-Follow-Upper quickly clarified, “The president has been clear we are not sending US troops to Ukraine and there is no change in that position.”

  Yeah, yeah. So that means the guy’s head is full of cotton.

  Finally, Biden amazingly said two important things about the sanctions he’s imposed on the Russians: first, that he never said the sanctions would force the Russian government to alter its Ukraine policy because he knew they wouldn’t have that effect, and second, that sanctions will create food shortages (and so higher prices) for Americans and by implication, other non-Russians the world over.

  As to the first, that was an outright lie or a case of senility. A long list of administration officials did indeed say the sanctions would work. As to the second, how can Biden — father of noted entrepreneur Hunter Biden — justify making innocent people go hungry?

  Given the two things Biden has admitted, what is the point of the sanctions? Does it make him feel better?

  Joe Biden, what the hell?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/01/2022 – 18:20

• Russian Central Bank Eases Capital Controls As Ruble Erases Losses
  Russian Central Bank Eases Capital Controls As Ruble Erases Losses

  Now that the Russian ruble has erased all of its post-incursion losses…

  

  …the Russian Central Bank decided on Friday that it would loosen restrictions on the transfer of funds abroad, much to the relief of ordinary Russians (particularly the wealthy, as well as the Middle class, who have increasingly been turning to the UAE, Israel and other locales as havens for their capital and assets).

  

  CBR said it would allow Russians and non-residents from countries that don’t support sanctions to transfer up to $10,000, or its equivalent in another currency, each month.

  Shortly after Russia’s “special military operation” began last month, Russia’s central bank tightened restrictions on money flowing abroad, barring non-Russians from transferring more than $5,000 a month out of the country.

  Transfer limits will be determined using the CBR’s official exchange rates for the ruble against other currencies, the bank said.

  Still, Russia will retain a tight grip on its currency market even with the easing of these capital controls. Russian brokerages still aren’t allowed to let foreign clients sell securities, one of a retinue of policies intended to support the ruble.

  CBR has also restricted the amount of dollars that Russians can withdraw from bank accounts denominated in foreign currencies. Russian banks have been barred from selling foreign currencies to Russians until early September as the Russian banking system continues to face the repercussions of the seizure by the West of hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of foreign-currency reserves held in accounts abroad.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/01/2022 – 18:00

• Ethereum Founder Defends Bitcoin Maximalism In A World Of 'Honest' Vs 'Grifter' Cryptos
  Ethereum Founder Defends Bitcoin Maximalism In A World Of ‘Honest’ Vs ‘Grifter’ Cryptos

  Authored by Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum,

  In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism

  We’ve been hearing for years that the future is blockchain, not Bitcoin. The future of the world won’t be one major cryptocurrency, or even a few, but many cryptocurrencies – and the winning ones will have strong leadership under one central roof to adapt rapidly to users’ needs for scale. Bitcoin is a boomer coin, and Ethereum is soon to follow; it will be newer and more energetic assets that attract the new waves of mass users who don’t care about weird libertarian ideology or “self-sovereign verification”, are turned off by toxicity and anti-government mentality, and just want blockchain defi and games that are fast and work.

  But what if this narrative is all wrong, and the ideas, habits and practices of Bitcoin maximalism are in fact pretty close to correct? What if Bitcoin is far more than an outdated pet rock tied to a network effect? What if Bitcoin maximalists actually deeply understand that they are operating in a very hostile and uncertain world where there are things that need to be fought for, and their actions, personalities and opinions on protocol design deeply reflect that fact? What if we live in a world of honest cryptocurrencies (of which there are very few) and grifter cryptocurrencies (of which there are very many), and a healthy dose of intolerance is in fact necessary to prevent the former from sliding into the latter? That is the argument that this post will make.

  We live in a dangerous world, and protecting freedom is serious business

  Hopefully, this is much more obvious now than it was six weeks ago, when many people still seriously thought that Vladimir Putin is a misunderstood and kindly character who is merely trying to protect Russia and save Western Civilization from the gaypocalypse. But it’s still worth repeating. We live in a dangerous world, where there are plenty of bad-faith actors who do not listen to compassion and reason.

  A blockchain is at its core a security technology – a technology that is fundamentally all about protecting people and helping them survive in such an unfriendly world. It is, like the Phial of Galadriel, “a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out”. It is not a low-cost light, or a fluorescent hippie energy-efficient light, or a high-performance light. It is a light that sacrifices on all of those dimensions to optimize for one thing and one thing only: to be a light that does when it needs to do when you’re facing the toughest challenge of your life and there is a friggin twenty foot spider staring at you in the face.

  

  Source: https://www.blackgate.com/2014/12/23/frodo-baggins-lady-galadriel-and-the-games-of-the-mighty/

  Blockchains are being used every day by unbanked and underbanked people, by activists, by sex workers, by refugees, and by many other groups either who are uninteresting for profit-seeking centralized financial institutions to serve, or who have enemies that don’t want them to be served. They are used as a primary lifeline by many people to make their payments and store their savings.

  And to that end, public blockchains sacrifice a lot for security:

  • Blockchains require each transaction to be independently verified thousands of times to be accepted.

  • Unlike centralized systems that confirm transactions in a few hundred milliseconds, blockchains require users to wait anywhere from 10 seconds to 10 minutes to get a confirmation.

  • Blockchains require users to be fully in charge of authenticating themselves: if you lose your key, you lose your coins.

  • Blockchains sacrifice privacy, requiring even crazier and more expensive technology to get that privacy back.

  What are all of these sacrifices for? To create a system that can survive in an unfriendly world, and actually do the job of being “a light in dark places, when all other lights go out”.

  Excellent at that task requires two key ingredients: (i) a robust and defensible technology stack and (ii) a robust and defensible culture. The key property to have in a robust and defensible technology stack is a focus on simplicity and deep mathematical purity: a 1 MB block size, a 21 million coin limit, and a simple Nakamoto consensus proof of work mechanism that even a high school student can understand. The protocol design must be easy to justify decades and centuries down the line; the technology and parameter choices must be a work of art.

  The second ingredient is the culture of uncompromising, steadfast minimalism. This must be a culture that can stand unyieldingly in defending itself against corporate and government actors trying to co-opt the ecosystem from outside, as well as bad actors inside the crypto space trying to exploit it for personal profit, of which there are many.

  Now, what do Bitcoin and Ethereum culture actually look like? Well, let’s ask Kevin Pham:

  

  Don’t believe this is representative? Well, let’s ask Kevin Pham again:

  

  Now, you might say, this is just Ethereum people having fun, and at the end of the day they understand what they have to do and what they are dealing with. But do they? Let’s look at the kinds of people that Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, hangs out with:

  

  Vitalik hangs out with elite tech CEOs in Beijing, China.

  

  Vitalik meets Vladimir Putin in Russia.

  

  Vitalik meets Nir Bakrat, mayor of Jerusalem.

  

  Vitalik shakes hands with Argentinian former president Mauricio Macri.

  

  Vitalik gives a friendly hello to Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and advisor to US Department of Defense.

  

  Vitalik has his first of many meetings with Audrey Tang, digital minister of Taiwan.

  And this is only a small selection. The immediate question that anyone looking at this should ask is: what the hell is the point of publicly meeting with all these people? Some of these people are very decent entrepreneurs and politicians, but others are actively involved in serious human rights abuses that Vitalik certainly does not support. Does Vitalik not realize just how much some of these people are geopolitically at each other’s throats?

  Now, maybe he is just an idealistic person who believes in talking to people to help bring about world peace, and a follower of Frederick Douglass’s dictum to “unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong”. But there’s also a simpler hypothesis: Vitalik is a hippy-happy globetrotting pleasure and status-seeker, and he deeply enjoys meeting and feeling respected by people who are important. And it’s not just Vitalik; companies like Consensys are totally happy to partner with Saudi Arabia, and the ecosystem as a whole keeps trying to look to mainstream figures for validation.

  Now ask yourself the question: when the time comes, actually important things are happening on the blockchain – actually important things that offend people who are powerful – which ecosystem would be more willing to put its foot down and refuse to censor them no matter how much pressure is applied on them to do so? The ecosystem with globe-trotting nomads who really really care about being everyone’s friend, or the ecosystem with people who take pictures of themslves with an AR15 and an axe as a side hobby?

  Currency is not “just the first app”. It’s by far the most successful one.

  Many people of the “blockchain, not Bitcoin” persuasion argue that cryptocurrency is the first application of blockchains, but it’s a very boring one, and the true potential of blockchains lies in bigger and more exciting things. Let’s go through the list of applications in the Ethereum whitepaper:

  • Issuing tokens

  • Financial derivatives

  • Stablecoins

  • Identity and reputation systems

  • Decentralized file storage

  • Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs)

  • Peer-to-peer gambling

  • Prediction markets

  Many of these categories have applications that have launched and that have at least some users. That said, cryptocurrency people really value empowering under-banked people in the “Global South”. Which of these applications actually have lots of users in the Global South?

  As it turns out, by far the most successful one is storing wealth and payments. 3% of Argentinians own cryptocurrency, as do 6% of Nigerians and 12% of people in Ukraine. By far the biggest instance of a government using blockchains to accomplish something useful today is cryptocurrency donations to the government of Ukraine, which have raised more than $100 million if you include donations to non-governmental Ukraine-related efforts.

  

  What other application has anywhere close to that level of actual, real adoption today? Perhaps the closest is ENS. DAOs are real and growing, but today far too many of them are appealing to wealthy rich-country people whose main interest is having fun and using cartoon-character profiles to satisfy their first-world need for self-expression, and not build schools and hospitals and solve other real world problems.

  Thus, we can see the two sides pretty clearly: team “blockchain”, privileged people in wealthy countries who love to virtue-signal about “moving beyond money and capitalism” and can’t help being excited about “decentralized governance experimentation” as a hobby, and team “Bitcoin”, a highly diverse group of both rich and poor people in many countries around the world including the Global South, who are actually using the capitalist tool of free self-sovereign money to provide real value to human beings today.

  Focusing exclusively on being money makes for better money

  A common misconception about why Bitcoin does not support “richly stateful” smart contracts goes as follows. Bitcoin really really values being simple, and particularly having low technical complexity, to reduce the chance that something will go wrong. As a result, it doesn’t want to add the more complicated features and opcodes that are necessary to be able to support more complicated smart contracts in Ethereum.

  This misconception is, of course, wrong. In fact, there are plenty of ways to add rich statefulness into Bitcoin; search for the word “covenants” in Bitcoin chat archives to see many proposals being discussed. And many of these proposals are surprisingly simple. The reason why covenants have not been added is not that Bitcoin developers see the value in rich statefulness but find even a little bit more protocol complexity intolerable. Rather, it’s because Bitcoin developers are worried about the risks of the systemic complexity that rich statefulness being possible would introduce into the ecosystem!

  

  A recent paper by Bitcoin researchers describes some ways to introduce covenants to add some degree of rich statefulness to Bitcoin.

  Ethereum’s battle with miner-extractable value (MEV) is an excellent example of this problem appearing in practice. It’s very easy in Ethereum to build applications where the next person to interact with some contract gets a substantial reward, causing transactors and miners to fight over it, and contributing greatly to network centralization risk and requiring complicated workarounds. In Bitcoin, building such systemically risky applications is hard, in large part because Bitcoin lacks rich statefulness and focuses on the simple (and MEV-free) use case of just being money.

  Systemic contagion can happen in non-technical ways too. Bitcoin just being money means that Bitcoin requires relatively few developers, helping to reduce the risk that developers will start demanding to print themselves free money to build new protocol features. Bitcoin just being money reduces pressure for core developers to keep adding features to “keep up with the competition” and “serve developers’ needs”.

  In so many ways, systemic effects are real, and it’s just not possible for a currency to “enable” an ecosystem of highly complex and risky decentralized applications without that complexity biting it back somehow. Bitcoin makes the safe choice. If Ethereum continues its layer-2-centric approach, ETH-the-currency may gain some distance from the application ecosystem that it’s enabling and thereby get some protection. So-called high-performance layer-1 platforms, on the other hand, stand no chance.

  In general, the earliest projects in an industry are the most “genuine”

  Many industries and fields follow a similar pattern. First, some new exciting technology either gets invented, or gets a big leap of improvement to the point where it’s actually usable for something. At the beginning, the technology is still clunky, it is too risky for almost anyone to touch as an investment, and there is no “social proof” that people can use it to become successful. As a result, the first people involved are going to be the idealists, tech geeks and others who are genuinely excited about the technology and its potential to improve society.

  Once the technology proves itself enough, however, the normies come in – an event that in internet culture is often called Eternal September. And these are not just regular kindly normies who want to feel part of something exciting, but business normies, wearing suits, who start scouring the ecosystem wolf-eyed for ways to make money – with armies of venture capitalists just as eager to make their own money supporting them from the sidelines. In the extreme cases, outright grifters come in, creating blockchains with no redeeming social or technical value which are basically borderline scams. But the reality is that the line from “altruistic idealist” and “grifter” is really a spectrum. And the longer an ecosystem keeps going, the harder it is for any new project on the altruistic side of the spectrum to get going.

  One noisy proxy for the blockchain industry’s slow replacement of philosophical and idealistic values with short-term profit-seeking values is the larger and larger size of premines: the allocations that developers of a cryptocurrency give to themselves.

  

  Source for insider allocations: Messari.

  Which blockchain communities deeply value self-sovereignty, privacy and decentralization, and are making to get big sacrifices to get it? And which blockchain communities are just trying to pump up their market caps and make money for founders and investors? The above chart should make it pretty clear.

  Intolerance is good

  The above makes it clear why Bitcoin’s status as the first cryptocurrency gives it unique advantages that are extremely difficult for any cryptocurrency created within the last five years to replicate. But now we get to the biggest objection against Bitcoin maximalist culture: why is it so toxic?

  The case for Bitcoin toxicity stems from Conquest’s second law. In Robert Conquest’s original formulation, the law says that “any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing“. But really, this is just a special case of a much more general pattern, and one that in the modern age of relentlessly homogenizing and conformist social media is more relevant than ever:

  If you want to retain an identity that is different from the mainstream, then you need a really strong culture that actively resists and fights assimilation into the mainstream every time it tries to assert its hegemony.

  Blockchains are, as I mentioned above, very fundamentally and explicitly a counterculture movement that is trying to create and preserve something different from the mainstream. At a time when the world is splitting up into great power blocs that actively suppress social and economic interaction between them, blockchains are one of the very few things that can remain global. At a time when more and more people are reaching for censorship to defeat their short-term enemies, blockchains steadfastly continue to censor nothing.

  

  The only correct way to respond to “reasonable adults” trying to tell you that to “become mainstream” you have to compromise on your “extreme” values. Because once you compromise once, you can’t stop.

  Blockchain communities also have to fight bad actors on the inside. Bad actors include:

  • Scammers, who make and sell projects that are ultimately valueless (or worse, actively harmful) but cling to the “crypto” and “decentralization” brand (as well as highly abstract ideas of humanism and friendship) for legitimacy.

  • Collaborationists, who publicly and loudly virtue-signal about working together with governments and actively try to convince governments to use coercive force against their competitors.

  • Corporatists, who try to use their resources to take over the development of blockchains, and often push for protocol changes that enable centralization.

  One could stand against all of these actors with a smiling face, politely telling the world why they “disagree with their priorities”. But this is unrealistic: the bad actors will try hard to embed themselves into your community, and at that point it becomes psychologically hard to criticize them with the sufficient level of scorn that they truly require: the people you’re criticizing are friends of your friends. And so any culture that values agreeableness will simply fold before the challenge, and let scammers roam freely through the wallets of innocent newbies.

  What kind of culture won’t fold? A culture that is willing and eager to tell both scammers on the inside and powerful opponents on the outside to go the way of the Russian warship.

  Weird crusades against seed oils are good

  One powerful bonding tool to help a community maintain internal cohesion around its distinctive values, and avoid falling into the morass that is the mainstream, is weird beliefs and crusades that are in a similar spirit, even if not directly related, to the core mission. Ideally, these crusades should be at least partially correct, poking at a genuine blind spot or inconsistency of mainstream values.

  The Bitcoin community is good at this. Their most recent crusade is a war against seed oils, oils derived from vegetable seeds high in omega-6 fatty acids that are harmful to human health.

  

  This Bitcoiner crusade gets treated skeptically when reviewed in the media, but the media treats the topic much more favorably when “respectable” tech firms are tackling it. The crusade helps to remind Bitcoiners that the mainstream media is fundamentally tribal and hypocritical, and so the media’s shrill attempts to slander cryptocurrency as being primarily for money laundering and terrorism should be treated with the same level of scorn.

  Be a maximalist

  Maximalism is often derided in the media as both a dangerous toxic right-wing cult, and as a paper tiger that will disappear as soon as some other cryptocurrency comes in and takes over Bitcoin’s supreme network effect. But the reality is that none of the arguments for maximalism that I describe above depend at all on network effects. Network effects really are logarithmic, not quadratic: once a cryptocurrency is “big enough”, it has enough liquidity to function and multi-cryptocurrency payment processors will easily add it to their collection. But the claim that Bitcoin is an outdated pet rock and its value derives entirely from a walking-zombie network effect that just needs a little push to collapse is similarly completely wrong.

  Crypto-assets like Bitcoin have real cultural and structural advantages that make them powerful assets worth holding and using. Bitcoin is an excellent example of the category, though it’s certainly not the only one; other honorable cryptocurrencies do exist, and maximalists have been willing to support and use them. Maximalism is not just Bitcoin-for-the-sake-of-Bitcoin; rather, it’s a very genuine realization that most other cryptoassets are scams, and a culture of intolerance is unavoidable and necessary to protect newbies and make sure at least one corner of that space continues to be a corner worth living in.

  It’s better to mislead ten newbies into avoiding an investment that turns out good than it is to allow a single newbie to get bankrupted by a grifter.

  It’s better to make your protocol too simple and fail to serve ten low-value short-attention-span gambling applications than it is to make it too complex and fail to serve the central sound money use case that underpins everything else.

  And it’s better to offend millions by standing aggressively for what you believe in than it is to try to keep everyone happy and end up standing for nothing.

  Be brave. Fight for your values. Be a maximalist.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 04/01/2022 – 17:40

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