Oct 02

Today’s News 2nd October 2021

  • COVID-19 Detention Camps: Are Government Round-Ups Of Resistors In Our Future?
    COVID-19 Detention Camps: Are Government Round-Ups Of Resistors In Our Future?

    Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “No doubt concentration camps were a means, a menace used to keep order.”

     – Albert Speer, Nuremberg Trials

    It’s no longer a question of whether the government will lock up Americans for defying its mandates but when.

    This is what we know: the government has the means, the muscle and the motivation to detain individuals who resist its orders and do not comply with its mandates in a vast array of prisons, detention centers, and FEMA concentration camps paid for with taxpayer dollars.

    It’s just a matter of time.

    It no longer matters what the hot-button issue might be (vaccine mandates, immigration, gun rights, abortion, same-sex marriage, healthcare, criticizing the government, protesting election results, etc.) or which party is wielding its power like a hammer.

    The groundwork has already been laid.

    Under the indefinite detention provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the President and the military can detain and imprison American citizens with no access to friends, family or the courts if the government believes them to be a terrorist.

    So it should come as no surprise that merely criticizing the government or objecting to a COVID-19 vaccine could get you labeled as a terrorist.

    After all, it doesn’t take much to be considered a terrorist anymore, especially given that the government likes to use the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.

    For instance, the Department of Homeland Security broadly defines extremists as individuals, military veterans and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely.”

    Military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan may also be characterized as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats by the government because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.”

    Indeed, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

    Moreover, as a New York Times editorial warns, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the police if you are afraid that the government is plotting to confiscate your firearms, if you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law, or if you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car.

    According to the FBI, you might also be classified as a domestic terrorism threat if you espouse conspiracy theories or dare to subscribe to any views that are contrary to the government’s.

    The government also has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state.

    This is what happens when you not only put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police but also give those agencies liberal authority to lock individuals up for perceived wrongs.

    It’s a system just begging to be abused by power-hungry bureaucrats desperate to retain their power at all costs.

    It’s happened before.

    As history shows, the U.S. government is not averse to locking up its own citizens for its own purposes.

    One need only go back to the 1940s, when the federal government proclaimed that Japanese-Americans, labeled potential dissidents, could be put in concentration (a.k.a. internment) camps based only upon their ethnic origin, to see the lengths the federal government will go to in order to maintain “order” in the homeland.

    The U.S. Supreme Court validated the detention program in Korematsu v. US (1944), concluding that the government’s need to ensure the safety of the country trumped personal liberties.

    Although that Korematsu decision was never formally overturned, Chief Justice Roberts opined in Trump v. Hawaii (2018) that “the forcible relocation of U. S. citizens to concentration camps, solely and explicitly on the basis of race, is objectively unlawful and outside the scope of Presidential authority.”

    Roberts’ statements provide little assurance of safety in light of the government’s tendency to sidestep the rule of law when it suits its purposes. Pointing out that such blatantly illegal detentions could happen again—with the blessing of the courts—Justice Scalia once warned, “In times of war, the laws fall silent.”

    In fact, the creation of detention camps domestically has long been part of the government’s budget and operations, falling under the jurisdiction of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

    FEMA’s murky history dates back to the 1970s, when President Carter created it by way of an executive order merging many of the government’s disaster relief agencies into one large agency.

    During the 1980s, however, reports began to surface of secret military-type training exercises carried out by FEMA and the Department of Defense. Code named Rex-84, 34 federal agencies, including the CIA and the Secret Service, were trained on how to deal with domestic civil unrest.

    FEMA’s role in creating top-secret American internment camps is well-documented.

    But be careful who you share this information with: it turns out that voicing concerns about the existence of FEMA detention camps is among the growing list of opinions and activities which may make a federal agent or government official think you’re an extremist (a.k.a. terrorist), or sympathetic to terrorist activities, and thus qualify you for indefinite detention under the NDAA. Also included in that list of “dangerous” viewpoints are advocating states’ rights, believing the state to be unnecessary or undesirable, “conspiracy theorizing,” concern about alleged FEMA camps, opposition to war, organizing for “economic justice,” frustration with “mainstream ideologies,” opposition to abortion, opposition to globalization, and ammunition stockpiling.

    Now if you’re going to have internment camps on American soil, someone has to build them.

    Thus, in 2006, it was announced that Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, had been awarded a $385 million contract to build American detention facilities. Although the government and Halliburton were not forthcoming about where or when these domestic detention centers would be built, they rationalized the need for them in case of “an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs” in the event of other emergencies such as “natural disasters.”

    Of course, these detention camps will have to be used for anyone viewed as a threat to the government, and that includes political dissidents.

    So it’s no coincidence that the U.S. government has, since the 1980s, acquired and maintained, without warrant or court order, a database of names and information on Americans considered to be threats to the nation.

    As Salon reports, this database, reportedly dubbed “Main Core,” is to be used by the Army and FEMA in times of national emergency or under martial law to locate and round up Americans seen as threats to national security. There are at least 8 million Americans in the Main Core database.

    Fast forward to 2009, when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released two reports, one on “Rightwing Extremism,” which broadly defines rightwing extremists as individuals and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely,” and one on “Leftwing Extremism,” which labeled environmental and animal rights activist groups as extremists.

    Incredibly, both reports use the words terrorist and extremist interchangeably.

    That same year, the DHS launched Operation Vigilant Eagle, which calls for surveillance of military veterans returning from Iraq, Afghanistan and other far-flung places, characterizing them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.”

    These reports indicate that for the government, so-called extremism is not a partisan matter. Anyone seen as opposing the government—whether they’re Left, Right or somewhere in between—is a target, which brings us back, full circle, to the question of whether the government will exercise the power it claims to possess to detain anyone perceived as a threat, i.e., anyone critical of the government.

    The short answer is: yes.

    The longer answer is more complicated.

    Despite what some may think, the Constitution is no magical incantation against government wrongdoing. Indeed, it’s only as effective as those who abide by it.

    However, without courts willing to uphold the Constitution’s provisions when government officials disregard it and a citizenry knowledgeable enough to be outraged when those provisions are undermined, it provides little to no protection against SWAT team raids, domestic surveillance, police shootings of unarmed citizens, indefinite detentions, and the like.

    Frankly, the courts and the police have meshed in their thinking to such an extent that anything goes when it’s done in the name of national security, crime fighting and terrorism.

    Consequently, America no longer operates under a system of justice characterized by due process, an assumption of innocence, probable cause and clear prohibitions on government overreach and police abuse. Instead, our courts of justice have been transformed into courts of order, advocating for the government’s interests, rather than championing the rights of the citizenry, as enshrined in the Constitution.

    We seem to be coming full circle on many fronts.

    Consider that two decades ago we were debating whether non-citizens—for example, so-called enemy combatants being held at Guantanamo Bay and Muslim-Americans rounded up in the wake of 9/11—were entitled to protections under the Constitution, specifically as they relate to indefinite detention. Americans weren’t overly concerned about the rights of non-citizens then, and now we’re the ones in the unenviable position of being targeted for indefinite detention by our own government.

    Similarly, most Americans weren’t unduly concerned when the U.S. Supreme Court gave Arizona police officers the green light to stop, search and question anyone—ostensibly those fitting a particular racial profile—they suspect might be an illegal immigrant. A decade later, the cops largely have carte blanche authority to stop any individual, citizen and non-citizen alike, they suspect might be doing something illegal (mind you, in this age of overcriminalization, that could be anything from feeding the birds to growing exotic orchids).

    Likewise, you still have a sizeable portion of the population today unconcerned about the government’s practice of spying on Americans, having been brainwashed into believing that if you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.

    It will only be a matter of time before they learn the hard way that in a police state, it doesn’t matter who you are or how righteous you claim to be, because eventually, you will be lumped in with everyone else and everything you do will be “wrong” and suspect.

    Indeed, it’s happening already, with police relying on surveillance software such as ShadowDragon to watch people’s social media and other website activity, whether or not they suspected of a crime, and potentially use it against them when the need arises.

    It turns out that we are Soylent Green, being cannibalized by a government greedily looking to squeeze every last drop out of us.

    The 1973 film Soylent Green, starring Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson, is set in 2022 in an overpopulated, polluted, starving New York City whose inhabitants depend on synthetic foods manufactured by the Soylent Corporation for survival.

    Heston plays a policeman investigating a murder who discovers the grisly truth about the primary ingredient in the wafer, Soylent Green, which is the principal source of nourishment for a starved population. “It’s people. Soylent Green is made out of people,” declares Heston’s character. “They’re making our food out of people. Next thing they’ll be breeding us like cattle for food.”

    Oh, how right he was.

    Soylent Green is indeed people or, in our case, Soylent Green is our own personal data, repossessed, repackaged and used by corporations and the government to entrap us in prisons of our own making.

    Without constitutional protections in place to guard against encroachments on our rights when power, technology and militaristic governance converge, it won’t be long before we find ourselves, much like Edward G. Robinson’s character in Soylent Green, looking back on the past with longing, back to an age where we could speak to whom we wanted, buy what we wanted, think what we wanted, and go where we wanted without those thoughts, words and movements being tracked, processed and stored by corporate giants such as Google, sold to government agencies such as the NSA and CIA, and used against us by militarized police with their army of futuristic technologies.

    We’re not quite there yet, but as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, that moment of reckoning is getting closer by the minute.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/01/2021 – 23:40

  • Georgia Arrests Ex-President Saakashvili After Return From 8-Year Exile In Ukraine
    Georgia Arrests Ex-President Saakashvili After Return From 8-Year Exile In Ukraine

    The Republic of Georgia’s former President Mikheil Saakashvili made a surprise announcement earlier this week, confirming that he had returned to Georgia after eight years in exile – during which time he mostly lived in Ukraine, and was still politically active, even rising to prominence in Ukrainian politics.

    On Friday the government of Georgia issued the “shock” announcement that authorities have arrested Saakashvili, though perhaps entirely expected given the ex-president’s 2018 conviction in absentia stemming from accusations of abuse of office. “I want to inform the public that the third president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, is arrested. He was transferred to a penitentiary institution,” Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili informed a news conference Friday.

    In the prior conviction he had been handed a six year prison term, and recently had been warned that his return to his home country would result in arrest. Interestingly he said at the time the attempt to arrest him was orchestrated by Putin and pro-Russian actors. 

    Often described as a “flamboyant pro-Western reformer” who ended his second term as president in 2013, he oversaw the disastrous August 2008 Russo-Georgia War, which many observers still blame on his series of blunders and initiating border aggressions while under the illusion that powerful Western allies like the US would back him. During his Ukraine exile, he had actually briefly served as governor of Odessa, before his dual citizenship was revoked, which officials said he wasn’t supposed to have been issued in the first place. 

    But his homecoming appears to have been calculated precisely to stir up mass opposition rallying and anger just ahead of national municipal elections targeting the ruling Georgian Dream Party, which Saakashvili has denounced as a “usurper government”.

    According to AFP, his very arrest is likely to stir things up, potentially leading to clashes in the streets among political rivals:

    In a video posted on social media on Friday evening, Saakashvili said he was in Tbilisi and believed he was about to be detained, calling on supporters of his United National Movement to mobilize for Saturday’s elections.

    “Go to the polls, vote and on (Sunday) we will all together celebrate our victory,” he said. “I am not afraid of anything and you also should not be afraid.”

    In an earlier video message, Saakashvili said he was in the western city of Batumi and had risked his “life and freedom” to return to Georgia from Ukraine.

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

    A local media video capturing the moment of his arrest showed a smiling and defiant ex-president as he was led away to the Rustavi penitentiary institution.

    One regional expert cited in Al Jazeera aptly described that “Now it seems he has put all his cards on the table and he’s hoping that somehow this return will have an impact on Georgian politics – which is very fractious at the moment.”

    Meanwhile Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili has indicated she has no plans to issue Saakashvili a pardon. So short of a mass upset change in Georgian politics, he’s likely to be in prison a while for at least the immediate future. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/01/2021 – 23:20

  • How Autonomous Weapons Could Be More Destabilizing Than Nukes
    How Autonomous Weapons Could Be More Destabilizing Than Nukes

    Authored by James Dawes via TheConversation.com,

    Autonomous weapon systems – commonly known as killer robots – may have killed human beings for the first time ever last year, according to a recent United Nations Security Council report on the Libyan civil war. History could well identify this as the starting point of the next major arms race, one that has the potential to be humanity’s final one.

    Autonomous weapon systems are robots with lethal weapons that can operate independently, selecting and attacking targets without a human weighing in on those decisions. Militaries around the world are investing heavily in autonomous weapons research and development. The U.S. alone budgeted US$18 billion for autonomous weapons between 2016 and 2020.

    Meanwhile, human rights and humanitarian organizations are racing to establish regulations and prohibitions on such weapons development. Without such checks, foreign policy experts warn that disruptive autonomous weapons technologies will dangerously destabilize current nuclear strategies, both because they could radically change perceptions of strategic dominance, increasing the risk of preemptive attacks, and because they could become combined with chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons themselves.

    As a specialist in human rights with a focus on the weaponization of artificial intelligence, I find that autonomous weapons make the unsteady balances and fragmented safeguards of the nuclear world – for example, the U.S. president’s minimally constrained authority to launch a strike – more unsteady and more fragmented.

    Lethal errors and black boxes

    I see four primary dangers with autonomous weapons.

    The first is the problem of misidentification. When selecting a target, will autonomous weapons be able to distinguish between hostile soldiers and 12-year-olds playing with toy guns? Between civilians fleeing a conflict site and insurgents making a tactical retreat?

    Killer robots, like the drones in the 2017 short film ‘Slaughterbots,’ have long been a major subgenre of science fiction. (Warning: graphic depictions of violence.)

    The problem here is not that machines will make such errors and humans won’t. It’s that the difference between human error and algorithmic error is like the difference between mailing a letter and tweeting. The scale, scope and speed of killer robot systems – ruled by one targeting algorithm, deployed across an entire continent – could make misidentifications by individual humans like a recent U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan seem like mere rounding errors by comparison.

    Autonomous weapons expert Paul Scharre uses the metaphor of the runaway gun to explain the difference. A runaway gun is a defective machine gun that continues to fire after a trigger is released. The gun continues to fire until ammunition is depleted because, so to speak, the gun does not know it is making an error. Runaway guns are extremely dangerous, but fortunately they have human operators who can break the ammunition link or try to point the weapon in a safe direction. Autonomous weapons, by definition, have no such safeguard.

    Importantly, weaponized AI need not even be defective to produce the runaway gun effect. As multiple studies on algorithmic errors across industries have shown, the very best algorithms – operating as designed – can generate internally correct outcomes that nonetheless spread terrible errors rapidly across populations.

    For example, a neural net designed for use in Pittsburgh hospitals identified asthma as a risk-reducer in pneumonia cases; image recognition software used by Google identified African Americans as gorillas; and a machine-learning tool used by Amazon to rank job candidates systematically assigned negative scores to women.

    The problem is not just that when AI systems err, they err in bulk. It is that when they err, their makers often don’t know why they did and, therefore, how to correct them. The black box problem of AI makes it almost impossible to imagine morally responsible development of autonomous weapons systems.

    The proliferation problems

    The next two dangers are the problems of low-end and high-end proliferation. Let’s start with the low end. The militaries developing autonomous weapons now are proceeding on the assumption that they will be able to contain and control the use of autonomous weapons. But if the history of weapons technology has taught the world anything, it’s this: Weapons spread.

    Market pressures could result in the creation and widespread sale of what can be thought of as the autonomous weapon equivalent of the Kalashnikov assault rifle: killer robots that are cheap, effective and almost impossible to contain as they circulate around the globe. “Kalashnikov” autonomous weapons could get into the hands of people outside of government control, including international and domestic terrorists.

    The Kargu-2, made by a Turkish defense contractor, is a cross between a quadcopter drone and a bomb. It has artificial intelligence for finding and tracking targets, and might have been used autonomously in the Libyan civil war to attack people. Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, CC BY

    High-end proliferation is just as bad, however. Nations could compete to develop increasingly devastating versions of autonomous weapons, including ones capable of mounting chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear arms. The moral dangers of escalating weapon lethality would be amplified by escalating weapon use.

    High-end autonomous weapons are likely to lead to more frequent wars because they will decrease two of the primary forces that have historically prevented and shortened wars: concern for civilians abroad and concern for one’s own soldiers. The weapons are likely to be equipped with expensive ethical governors designed to minimize collateral damage, using what U.N. Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard has called the “myth of a surgical strike” to quell moral protests. Autonomous weapons will also reduce both the need for and risk to one’s own soldiers, dramatically altering the cost-benefit analysis that nations undergo while launching and maintaining wars.

    Asymmetric wars – that is, wars waged on the soil of nations that lack competing technology – are likely to become more common. Think about the global instability caused by Soviet and U.S. military interventions during the Cold War, from the first proxy war to the blowback experienced around the world today. Multiply that by every country currently aiming for high-end autonomous weapons.

    Undermining the laws of war

    Finally, autonomous weapons will undermine humanity’s final stopgap against war crimes and atrocities: the international laws of war. These laws, codified in treaties reaching as far back as the 1864 Geneva Convention, are the international thin blue line separating war with honor from massacre. They are premised on the idea that people can be held accountable for their actions even during wartime, that the right to kill other soldiers during combat does not give the right to murder civilians. A prominent example of someone held to account is Slobodan Milosevic, former president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, who was indicted on charges against humanity and war crimes by the U.N.’s International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

    But how can autonomous weapons be held accountable? Who is to blame for a robot that commits war crimes? Who would be put on trial? The weapon? The soldier? The soldier’s commanders? The corporation that made the weapon? Nongovernmental organizations and experts in international law worry that autonomous weapons will lead to a serious accountability gap.

    To hold a soldier criminally responsible for deploying an autonomous weapon that commits war crimes, prosecutors would need to prove both actus reus and mens rea, Latin terms describing a guilty act and a guilty mind. This would be difficult as a matter of law, and possibly unjust as a matter of morality, given that autonomous weapons are inherently unpredictable. I believe the distance separating the soldier from the independent decisions made by autonomous weapons in rapidly evolving environments is simply too great.

    The legal and moral challenge is not made easier by shifting the blame up the chain of command or back to the site of production. In a world without regulations that mandate meaningful human control of autonomous weapons, there will be war crimes with no war criminals to hold accountable. The structure of the laws of war, along with their deterrent value, will be significantly weakened.

    A new global arms race

    Imagine a world in which militaries, insurgent groups and international and domestic terrorists can deploy theoretically unlimited lethal force at theoretically zero risk at times and places of their choosing, with no resulting legal accountability. It is a world where the sort of unavoidable algorithmic errors that plague even tech giants like Amazon and Google can now lead to the elimination of whole cities.

    In my view, the world should not repeat the catastrophic mistakes of the nuclear arms race. It should not sleepwalk into dystopia.

    *  *  *

    Get the best science, health and technology stories. Sign up for The Conversation’s science newsletter.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/01/2021 – 23:00

  • Housing's On Fire… Literally: Burned-Out Boston Home Selling 'As Is' For $400K
    Housing’s On Fire… Literally: Burned-Out Boston Home Selling ‘As Is’ For $400K

    If you’re looking for more evidence the housing market is in a bubble, look no further than this single-family home in Melrose, a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. 

    A little more than a month ago, the 1,857 sqft, three-bedroom home built in the 1960s was severely damaged in a fire where much of the inside was charred now for sale for a whopping $399,000. 

    The burned-out house, sitting on a 4,500 sqft lot, or about 1/10th of an acre, is listed on multiple real estate websites. The agent selling the home writes in the description: “attention contractors!” referring to the idea that contractors can buy at a steep discount and flip the house for a potential profit in an environment of low inventory. Here are comparables in the neighborhood: 

    “House is in need of a complete renovation or potential tear down and rebuild. Buyer to do due diligence. House being sold as-is,” the listing states.

    The listing comes as home-priced growth soared to a new record in July as low inventory sparked bidding wars across the country. According to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index, a measure of home prices across 20 major cities, rose 19.95% YoY (yet another record high)…the 14th straight month of accelerating price increases. July was the highest annual rate of price growth since the index began in 1987.

    “The last several months have been extraordinary not only in the level of price gains but in the consistency of gains across the country,” said Craig Lazzara, managing director and global head of index investment strategy at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

    There are plenty of examples of homeowners selling burnt-out homes or even uninhabitable shacks for impressive sums of money amid the latest housing craze. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/01/2021 – 22:40

  • Orwell And The Woke
    Orwell And The Woke

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

     “Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

    – George Orwell, “Animal Farm”

    What were we to make of multimillionaire Barack Obama’s 60th birthday bash at his Martha’s Vineyard estate, and the throng of the woke wealthy and their masked helot attendants?

    Was socialist Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) suffering for the people when she wore a designer dress to the more than $30,000-a-ticket Met gala? Her entourage needs were certainly well-attended to by masked Morlock servants.

    Did the leftist celebrities at the recent Emmy awards gather to discuss opening Malibu beaches to the homeless when the (unmasked) stars virtue-signaled their wokeness?

    For answers about these hypocritical wokists, always turn first to George Orwell.

    In his brief allegorical novella, “Animal Farm,” an array of animal characters — led by the thinking pigs of the farm — staged a revolution, driving out their human overseers.

    The anti-human animal comrades started out sounding like zealous Russian Bolsheviks (“four legs good, two legs bad”). But soon they ended up conned by a murderous cult of pigs under a Joseph Stalin-like leader. And so, the revolution became what it once had opposed (“four legs good, two legs better”).

    Our own woke, year-zero revolution is now in its second year. Yet last year’s four-legged revolutionaries are already strutting on two legs. They are not just hobnobbing with the “white supremacists” and “capitalists,” but outdoing them in their revolutionary zeal for the rarified privileges of the material good life.

    The Marxist co-founder of BLM, Patrisse Cullors, is now on her fourth woke home. She has moved on from the barricades to the security fences of her Topanga Canyon digs in a mostly all-white, all-rich rural paradise–the rewards for revolutionary service.

    Professor Ibram X. Kendi has evolved from the edgy revolutionary work of flying all over the country, hawking his Orwellian message of “All racism bad! But some racism good!” Now he has mastered the art of zooming the wannabe woke for his $20,000 an hour avant-garde hectoring.

    What of Colin Kaepernick, the mediocre second-string quarterback turned sudden firebrand? He refused to stand for the national anthem and spread his “take a knee” kitsch throughout professional sports.

    Kaepernick became a boutique revolutionary multimillionaire. For $12 million a year, he pitches Nike sneakers, often made in Chinese forced-labor camps.

    Woke NBA star LeBron James, from his $23 million Brentwood mansion, blasts America for its endless unfairness–in service to his totalitarian Chinese paymasters who will ensure his good life with an eventual lifetime $1 billion payout for hawking their goods.

    Our other elite wokists navigating around the revolution are even more cynical. The corporate and Wall Street capitalists feel that a little virtue signaling, showy diversity coordinators, and woke advertising will more or less buy off the latest version of Al-Sharpton-like shake-down artists.

    Then there are the trimmers and enablers. These are the wealthy, rich, and the professional classes. They feel–in abstract–absolutely terrible about inequality, but hardly enough in the concrete to mix with the unwashed.

    For them, wokism is like party membership in the late ethically bankrupt Soviet Union. It is necessary for peace of mind and good income, but otherwise not an obstacle for the continuance of the privileged, comfortable life.

    The more TV news hosts rant about “systemic” this and “supremacy” that, and the more college presidents write stern penance memos to their faculty about “that’s not who we are,” the more they feel not just good about themselves, but relieved of any real obligation to live and socialize with the Other.

    As for the self-declared non-white Other, wokism is also a top-down revolution of celebrities, intellectuals, actors, activists, academics, grifters, lawyers, and the upper-middle class and rich. And they are not calling for a Marshall Plan to bring classical education to the inner city. They themselves have little desire to move in or spread their wealth. They rarely mentor others on their shrewd capitalist expertise that made themselves rich.

    They are far more cynical than that. The regrettable violence of the street, the 120 days of 2020 looting, death and arson, are the levers of the woke professionals. They fight with the various tribes of the same class and mindset over the slices of the same coveted elite pies. But they bring to the scrap the unspoken cudgel that without greater non-white de facto quotas in comic books, TV commercials, Ivy League faculties and students, symphonies, and sit-coms, then “systemic racism” could once again ignite downtown Portland or Seattle or Baltimore.

    Orwell would say of the woke Obamas, Nancy Pelosi, AOC, Bernie Sanders, LeBron James, or Ibram Kendi–and their supposedly unwoke, but similarly rich and privileged enemies — “It was impossible to say which was which.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/01/2021 – 22:20

  • US Trade Chief To Give Major Speech Monday Belatedly Unveiling Biden's China Trade Strategy
    US Trade Chief To Give Major Speech Monday Belatedly Unveiling Biden’s China Trade Strategy

    While President Biden has kept Trump’s tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese imports in place he’s simultaneously remained generally quiet on anything touching long-term policy, particularly as regards China’s non-market trade and subsidy practices.

    But that’s expected to change, with all eyes on a major speech set for 10 a.m. EDT on Monday by US Trade Representative Katherine Tai, who will finally unveil the Biden admin’s strategy for tackling the complicated deadlocked US-China trade relationship.

    US Trade Representative Katherine Tai

    She’ll present the strategy in remarks to a Washington think tank, the Center for Strategic Studies, with a question-and-answer session scheduled to follow. It comes after her office has been engaged in what she’s dubbed a “top-to-bottom review” of US trade policy with China.

    Tai has recently admitted “very large challenges” in the China trade relationship for which she’s sought from Congress authorization of new trade law tools to help the US check and ultimately counter Chinese state subsidies for high-technology sectors.

    Here’s a preview of Tai’s much anticipated talk on Monday via Reuters:

    Tai’s remarks at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) on Monday will mark the start of the final three months of the “Phase 1” U.S.-China trade deal struck that Trump struck with Beijing at the start of 2019, easing a tariff war between the world’s two largest economies. It called for China to boost purchases of U.S. farm and manufactured goods, energy and services by $200 billion over the two years to the end of 2021 compared to 2017 levels.

    Biden administration officials say China has not met its Phase 1 trade deal commitments and they intend to hold it to its international trade commitments.

    In an interview published Thursday in Politico she indicated that Biden intends to “build on” existing tariffs to “confront” Beijing.

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    Amid continuing widespread speculation on the direction the admin will go, here’s a comment from Rabobank…

    The rumor is that 1/3 of the US tariffs on Chinese goods will be removed. 

    That might bring the price of some goods down marginally, but will do nothing to increase supply given China cannot get the goods to market, and energy and shipping prices are going to make them more expensive anyway. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/01/2021 – 22:00

  • "The Great Reset" Is The Road To Socialism Mises Warned Us About
    “The Great Reset” Is The Road To Socialism Mises Warned Us About

    Authored by Tho Bishop via The Mises Institute,

    Through the sheer power of his intellectual output, Ludwig von Mises established himself as one of the most important intellectuals of the twentieth century. His work Human Action remains a foundational text of the Austrian school. His critique outlining the impracticality of socialism was vindicated with the fall of the Soviet Union and remains without a serious intellectual challenge today.

    Just as important, but often overlooked, is his work on the economic system that continues to infect the world today: interventionism.

    Like contemporaries such as James Burnham, Mises discerned that the true threat to free markets in the West was not a true socialist revolution, but rather a “middle of the road” approach that so attracted an intellectually shallow political class.

    In 1950, during one of his most important speeches, Mises identified the most dangerous ideology on the global stage:

    They reject socialism no less than capitalism. They recommend a third system, which, as they say, is as far from capitalism as it is from socialism, which as a third system of society’s economic organization, stands midway between the two other systems, and while retaining the advantages of both, avoids the disadvantages inherent in each. This third system is known as the system of interventionism. In the terminology of American politics it is often referred to as the middle-of-the-road policy.

    This ideology succeeded where communism failed, successfully toppling governments around the world that never had true respect for property rights.

    But as Mises understood, however, this “managerial revolution” could not last as a sustainable form of government. Interventionism may be politically convenient, but ultimately it is grounded in volatile inconsistencies. It must be rejected completely, or it will inevitably lead to more and more power shifting to the state.

    This is precisely what we have seen.

    The twentieth century witnessed governments hostile to communism abroad become increasingly accepting of growing statism within.

    The regulatory state grew. The welfare state grew. The warfare state grew.

    The spending at home and domestically was so great that it forced the American government to break the dollar’s tie with gold, giving the American technocracy new ways to extract the wealth of the people and reward loyal institutions.

    The only remaining checks to the state come from what the public will put up with, and from competition between governments seeking to attract financial and human capital.

    In 2021, would-be central planners in national governments and globalist institutions have identified the opportunity to transcend these remaining limits.

    Under the guise of “public health,” proud “liberal democracies” have imprisoned their own citizens without due process. They have shut down economies and destroyed countless small businesses. They have mandated medical procedures. With the help of regulated corporations, they have silenced political dissidents.

    In response to the economic consequences of these actions, they are seeking to eliminate tax competition among states, harmonize medical mandates, control the prices of select industries, and debank those who resist.

    With this new playbook and global ambitions, institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are seeking to use similar tools in the future, in the name of whatever crisis they deem worthy.

    Climate change. Overpopulation. Domestic extremism. Misinformation. The cause of the day may change, but the playbook remains.

    We will own nothing, we will have no privacy, we will do what we are told, and we will like it—or else.

    As Mises understood, it doesn’t have to be this way.

    “[T]his outcome is not inevitable. The trend can be reversed as was the case with many other trends in history.”

    How? By people like yourself arming each other with the intellectual tools necessary to identify and respond to this creeping authoritarianism. The challenges we face will not be solved with shallow bumper stickers and the façade of democratic elections, but by inspiring new generations of courageous individuals prepared to resist.

    This is the mission of the Mises Institute, to inform and educate individuals around the world in the ideas necessary for rejecting the intellectual sins of the twentieth century and the authoritarian horrors of our existing neoliberal order, and restoring a civilization grounded in a respect for individual liberty, property rights, and peaceful coexistence.

    In the words of Ludwig von Mises,

    Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us.

    Join us in this battle with a donation today.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/01/2021 – 21:40

  • Military Suicides Jump By Alarming 15% – Pentagon Downplays Pandemic's Impact
    Military Suicides Jump By Alarming 15% – Pentagon Downplays Pandemic’s Impact

    It’s been no secret that two decades of the largely failed ‘war on terror’ started under the Bush administration has led to increased suicides and rates of depression among US military veterans. This trend is likely also to only continue in the wake of the horrific Afghan evacuation debacle and final pullout from August. “What was it all for?” – many veterans have asked, no doubt compounding mental health problems for many who have also returned from multiple deployments in places like Iraq.

    New data released by the defense department Thursday reveals military suicides have increased by a hugely alarming 15% from last year. Army and Marine Corps leadership, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is calling it “troubling”, the Associated Press reports, prompting top brass to call for “action” and greater intervention. 

    US Air Force photo illustration

    Most deaths among the major branches occurred in the Army and Marine Corps, with 580 suicides from both, a number up from 504 the year before.  Navy suicides actually barely dropped from 81 to 79, the total Air Force suicides saw no change, at 109 deaths.

    AP details of the data that “Of those, the number of suicides by Army National Guard troops jumped by about 35%, from 76 in 2019 to 103 last year, and the active duty Army saw a nearly 20% rise.” And further, “Marine Corps suicides went up by more than 30%, from 47 to 62; while the Marine Corps Reserves went from nine deaths to 10.”

    Defense Secretary Austin reacted to the new figures by saying, “Suicide rates among our service members and military families are still too high, and the trends are not going in the right direction.”

    Often on-job stress is described as a potential contributing factor to troop suicides, but perhaps more often the strains on marriages due to military life, or financial and other personal issues. Naturally the question of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic is being examined, however, some military commanders have downplayed this: 

    Army Maj. Gen. Clement Coward, acting executive director for the Force Resiliency office, said the department did not see a “statistical change in suicide rates” to indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic had an impact.

    Via The Associated Press

    He argued that for the pandemic to have been a significant or observable cause in the rise since last year, there’d have to be greater statistical increase per 100,000 service members. 

    But given percentage-wise the military numbers generally track with civilian rates across the states, deaths by suicide in the armed forces may just be a reflection of rates in the American population at large. And like the broader US population data reveals, “By far, the most common method of suicide was a gun, followed by hanging or asphyxiation.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/01/2021 – 21:20

  • The Streets Of Major US Cities Are Being Flooded With Far More Drugs Than Ever Before
    The Streets Of Major US Cities Are Being Flooded With Far More Drugs Than Ever Before

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

    An endless tsunami of illegal drugs is turning the streets of our major cities into desolate wastelands, and yet our politicians seem powerless to do anything about it.  In fact, in some of our biggest cities the politicians actually don’t seem interested in doing anything about it.  As I will discuss below, open air drug markets are operating freely right in the heart of New York City at this moment.  Dealers and addicts go about their business without the slightest fear that the police will do anything.  Meanwhile, the national death toll just continues to rise.  An all-time record 93,000 Americans died as a result of a drug overdose last year.  That was an increase of nearly 30 percent from the year before, and authorities are already warning that there will be another huge jump when the final numbers for 2021 come in.

    Federal law enforcement authorities are trying to do what they can, but they know that they are fighting a losing battle.  On Thursday, they announced that they just seized 1.8 million counterfeit pills, but in the big picture that is only a drop in the bucket.

    Right now, federal officials are warning that more fake medications are circulating on our streets than we have ever seen before, and a very large proportion of them contain fentanyl.  According to the DEA, the number of fentanyl-laced counterfeit pills that they have been able to intercept has risen by almost 430 percent since 2019…

    Counterfeit pills are more lethal than ever before. The number of DEA-seized counterfeit pills with fentanyl has jumped nearly 430 percent since 2019. DEA lab testing reveals that 2 out of every 5 pills with fentanyl contain a potentially lethal dose.

    This is one of the biggest reasons why vast hordes of mindless addicts now endlessly roam the streets of our major cities like zombies.

    For these addicts, their primary goal in life is always the next fix, and what most Americans don’t realize is that “most of the counterfeit pills coming into the United States are produced in Mexico and China”…

    “Drug traffickers, both here and abroad, are increasingly using counterfeit pills to package and distribute the poison that illicit fentanyl is,” said Thomas Hodnett, acting special agent in charge of the DEA’s Philadelphia Division. Law enforcement officials say most of the counterfeit pills coming into the United States are produced in Mexico and China.

    You see, the truth is that the drug war never actually ended, and it is being won by the Mexican drug cartels and the Chinese.

    And thanks to social media, counterfeit pills are now easier to distribute than ever before…

    The DEA said the counterfeit pills — made to look like real opioid medications such as oxycodone, Percocet or Adderall — are sold on the street by dealers or online, including through social media platforms.

    “If you have a smartphone and you’re sitting on the sofa at home … your drug dealer is right there in your hands,” DEA spokesperson Anne Edgecomb said in an interview with NPR.

    Of course dealers are constantly having to search for new customers because so many of their existing customers end up dying.

    Fentanyl is extremely potent, and it only takes a couple of milligrams to kill you…

    Mexican drug cartels increasingly are manufacturing the pills with fentanyl, which is at least 30 times more potent than heroin and is fatal in doses of as little as two milligrams.

    “It’s everywhere,” says Robert Bell, head of the DEA’s Chicago field division. “They’re available in street deals, for purchase online, in schools. It’s very scary.”

    This is a major national security crisis, because it is absolutely devastating communities all across the nation.

    But as I stated at the top of the article, many of our politicians don’t even seem interested in finding a solution.

    In New York City, the Garment District has become a horrifying drug-infested cesspool…

    The block bordered by 35th and 36th streets, and Seventh and Eighth Avenues, is “littered with used needles, broken glass crack pipes, trash, urine, and feces” as junkies shoot up and dealers brazenly sell drugs, lamented one neighbor on social media. “I’ve personally seen dozens of deals go down. I’ve seen a person OD and nearly die.”

    During a single walk around the block last week, The Post witnessed three different people injecting needles in their wrists or fingers in the middle of the afternoon. Each addict sat on the sidewalk or in empty storefronts. Dozens of other junkies sat or lay nearly comatose, many of the men shirtless, on the same block.

    But instead of doing something about it, the politicians in New York have apparently told the police “to let junkies roam free”…

    The NYPD appears to have only a token presence. Two cops stood on Eighth Avenue between 35th and 36th, leaning up against a police van while staring into their phones, as illicit activities swirled around them.

    But cops have been “effectively ordered” by city and state leaders to let junkies roam free, said Manny Gomez, a former NYPD sergeant and FBI special agent who now heads MG Security Services.

    Of course whenever you have large numbers of addicts concentrated in one location you are going to see a spike in crime, and that is precisely what we are witnessing in the Garment District…

    Crime in the Midtown South Precinct, which includes the Garment District, is up 41 percent this year through Sept. 19 compared to the same period in 2020, according to NYPD crime data.

    The most eye-popping spikes are in the number of robberies – which increased 189 percent from 97 to 280 – and felony assaults – which increased 151 percent from 131 to 329.

    Sadly, New York is far from alone.  For a very long time I have been warning that major cities all over America were being transformed into crime-ridden, drug-infested hellholes, and it is getting worse with each passing year.

    It has been estimated that approximately 23 million Americans are addicted to drugs, but nobody knows the real number.  It isn’t as if there is any sort of a “drug census” that would give us a more accurate count.

    But what we do know is that the problem is bigger than it has ever been in our entire history.

    We have raised entire generations of Americans to believe that their only purpose in life is to serve our soulless, corrupt system.  Of course millions of people do eagerly get on the hamster wheel and try to grab as much money and stuff as they can because they think that they will eventually achieve fulfillment that way.  But millions of others quickly realize that the game is meaningless and they search out other ways to make themselves happy.  A lot of drug addicts didn’t start out as bad people, but their search for happiness ended up taking them down some paths that they never should have gone down.

    If you are searching for meaning in life, our society doesn’t have any answers for you.  Those that run things just want to control and manipulate you as they make themselves even richer and more powerful.

    It is imperative that we all learn to think for ourselves, because many of those that don’t learn to think for themselves end up being stuck in their little game for their entire lives.

    *  *  *

    It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/01/2021 – 21:00

  • Pompeo: "No Apologies" For Alleged Plan To Kill Assange
    Pompeo: “No Apologies” For Alleged Plan To Kill Assange

    Former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo has responded to a recent Yahoo News investigation detailing Trump Administration plans to kidnap or kill Wikileaks founder Julian Assange that he makes “no apologies” for whatever measure his agency planned to take to safeguard “sensitive information” – covered in the latest Ron Paul Liberty Report.

    Pompeo in his first public response and comments on the bombshell Yahoo News investigation said:

    “I make no apologies for the fact that we and the administration were working diligently to make sure we were able to protect this important sensitive information from whether it was cyber actors in Russia, or the Chinese military, or anyone who was trying to take this information away from us.”

    Pompeo had further said Yahoo News’ “sources didn’t know what we were doing” in attempting to disparage the main revelations in the story as inaccurate or false. 

    So far the government’s responses to the report have been a variety of “no comment” – with former top Trump administration officials like Pompeo not giving much information either.

    “Pompeo did not respond to multiple interview queries by Yahoo News, and a detailed request for comment, sent over a two-month period prior to the story’s publication.”

    But his “no apologies” statement was perhaps the closest he’ll come to an admission that many of the details in the Yahoo report are indeed correct. He also called for leakers that provided key revelations in the report (a number of Trump-era intel officials divulged information) to be prosecuted.

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    Further White House spokesperson Jen Psaki had also been asked about US intelligence attempts to kill or kidnap Julian Assange during the years-long period he was holed up at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. She simply referred questions to the DOJ and CIA, refusing to provide White House official comment in statements issued Tuesday.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/01/2021 – 20:40

  • Liberal Justice Sotomayor Rejects NYC Teachers' Pro-Choice Vaccine Plea
    Liberal Justice Sotomayor Rejects NYC Teachers’ Pro-Choice Vaccine Plea

    Update (2000ET): This is going to take some serious cognitive dissonance – the most pro-choice of Supreme Court Justices just refused to block NYC’s teachers’ vaccine mandate that stands in direct contradiction of the ‘my body, my choice’ doctrine when it comes to medical intervention.

    Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor – who is responsible for emergency matters originating from New York – refused to block a requirement that all of New York City’s public school teachers and employees be vaccinated, specifically denying a challenge by a group of teachers and teaching assistants who sought to halt the city’s vaccine mandate while litigation over the dispute continues in lower courts.

    Among the most liberal of the Justices, Sotomayor rejected the emergency request without providing an explanation.

    She also did not refer the case to the full nine-member court for review.

    Teachers were ordered to be vaccinated by 5 pm today or face being placed on unpaid leave until September 2022.

    This marks the second time the court has refused to take up a vaccine mandate case. The first one was from a group of students who sued Indiana University over its vaccine requirements.

    *  *  *

    As The Epoch Times’ Zachary Stieber detailed earlier, a group of teachers on Thursday filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court, asking justices to block New York City’s school COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

    Lawyers for the plaintiffs, a group of teachers, said in a 99-page petition that the mandate “threatens the education of thousands of children in the largest public-school system in the country and violates the substantive due process and equal protection rights afforded to all public-school employees.”

    The mandate forces teachers and other school workers to get a COVID-19 vaccine to remain employed unless they are approved for a religious or medical exemption.

    A federal judge last week granted a temporary injunction against it but a federal appeals panel on Monday decided to let the mandate take effect. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel did not explain their ruling.

    Thousands of teachers will lose their jobs when the order imposes punishment at 5 p.m. on Oct. 1 even though municipal employees who don’t work for schools can opt-out of a separate mandate by submitting to weekly testing, lawyers for the teachers wrote to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an Obama nominee.

    That amounts to discrimination against public school workers, they argued, appealing for intervention from the nation’s top court.

    “Applicants will suffer irreparable harm if their request for injunctive relief is denied,” they said.

    Emergency requests can be filed to the Supreme Court by lawyers who think lower courts have ruled wrongly and who believe “irreparable harm” will result if a stay is not granted. The requests are sent to a single judge, who has the power to deny them or to agree, which would temporarily block the mandate and move the matter to the full court for consideration.

    Danielle Filson, a spokeswoman for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat who announced the vaccine mandate, said on social media that the teacher plaintiffs “have no valid claims.”

    New York City’s Department of Education “has the authority to implement a mandate that is firmly grounded in science & the expertise of public health officials from across the nation,” she added.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/01/2021 – 20:29

  • Most Trump Supporters Agree It's 'Time To Split The Country': Poll
    Most Trump Supporters Agree It’s ‘Time To Split The Country’: Poll

    A new poll from the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia reveals that 52% of Trump voters and 41% of Biden voters ‘at least somewhat agree’ that red and blue states should secede from the union, splitting the country.

    Via Mediaite:

    The idea that the nation’s political divide has become so toxic that we should prepare from some sort of “national divorce” has largely been left to clever thought experiments best left for dinner parties and ironically detached columns. However, we’ve now arrived at a point where more than half of Trump voters “somewhat agree” that the time for secession is nigh.

    From the Center for Politics report:

    Significant numbers of both Trump and Biden voters show a willingness to consider violating democratic tendencies and norms if needed to serve their priorities. Roughly 2 in 10 Trump and Biden voters strongly agree it would be better if a “President could take needed actions without being constrained by Congress or courts,” and roughly 4 in 10 (41%) of Biden and half (52%) of Trump voters at least somewhat agree that it’s time to split the country, favoring blue/red states seceding from the union.

    *  *  *

    The poll also finds that while roughly 80% of Trump and Biden voters prefer democracy  to a non-democratic form of government, 60% of Trump voters don’t see America as a representative democracy – and instead more of a system run by and rigged for the benefit of the wealthy.

    More from the Center for Politics report:

    — Majorities of Trump and Biden voters express support for several elements of the bipartisan infrastructure and reconciliation bills being debated in Congress, but there are marked differences in their levels of support.

    — Majorities — often large majorities — of both Biden and Trump voters express some form of distrust for voters, elected officials, and media sources they associate with the other side. A strong majority of Trump voters see no real difference between Democrats and socialists, and a majority of Biden voters at least somewhat agree that there is no real difference between Republicans and fascists.

    — Significant numbers of both Trump and Biden voters show a willingness to consider violating democratic tendencies and norms if needed to serve their priorities. Roughly 2 in 10 Trump and Biden voters strongly agree it would be better if a “President could take needed actions without being constrained by Congress or courts,” and roughly 4 in 10 (41%) of Biden and half (52%) of Trump voters at least somewhat agree that it’s time to split the country, favoring blue/red states seceding from the union.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/01/2021 – 20:20

  • 'Human Error' Caused Contaminated Moderna Vaccines In Japan
    ‘Human Error’ Caused Contaminated Moderna Vaccines In Japan

    Moderna’s Japanese distributor, Takeda, said on Friday that “human error” caused metal particles that ‘react to magnets’ to contaminate batches of Covid-19 vaccines doses, leading to the suspension of 1.63 million vials.

    At least two people died within days of receiving jabs from contaminated batches, however it is unclear if the contaminants caused the deaths, as they fit the profile of vaccine-induced myocarditis.

    According to Reuters, Takeda – which imports and distributes the vaccine in Japan, said in a new report that the Spanish factory where the vaccine was manufactured had discovered contaminants in some vials which they say was caused by incorrect assembly due to a ‘visual misjudgement of the required 1mm gap’ between the stopper lids on the affected vials and the machinery which is used to insert them.

    Five total lots were affected by the issue, three of which were shipped to Japan after passing inspection before they were recalled. The last two lots were withheld by the Spanish manufacturer, Rovi, after failing inspection on July 2.

    A total of five, sequential lots of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine manufactured at Rovi between June 27 and July 3 were investigated. The first three were shipped to Japan and later recalled after the discovery of particles, later determined to be stainless steel, inside 39 vials.

    But a fourth lot failed inspection after the discovery of particles on July 2, and a fifth lot was also held back by Rovi. The problems with Lots 4 and 5 were reported to Moderna, Takeda and Japan’s health ministry, but the first three lots were released for use because they “had passed inspection and were not considered to be impacted.” –Reuters

    The report said that the manufacturing process would use a new precision tool to prevent the issue from recurring.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/01/2021 – 20:00

  • Despite DHS Panic Over 400K Migrants In October, Agency Issues 'No-Arrest' Guidelines
    Despite DHS Panic Over 400K Migrants In October, Agency Issues ‘No-Arrest’ Guidelines

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

    New guidelines promulgated by a top Biden administration official on Thursday advise immigration enforcement agents that being in the country illegally is not by itself enough reason to arrest somebody.

    More than 11 million illegal immigrants are estimated to be in the United States, but Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not have the resources to arrest and seek to remove all of them, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a memorandum laying out the guidelines. He urged agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an office inside DHS, to exercise “discretion” in enforcing immigration rules.

    “The fact an individual is a removable noncitizen therefore should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them,” he wrote.

    “We will use our discretion and focus our enforcement resources in a more targeted way. Justice and our country’s well-being require it,” he added.

    Only illegal immigrants who pose a threat to national security, pose a threat to public safety, or pose a threat to border security should be targeted for removal, according to the guidelines.

    Triggers include a noncitizen committing certain crimes or having a serious prior criminal record; being engaged or suspected of terrorism or espionage; or being apprehended while trying to illegally enter the United States at the border.

    Being in the country without a green card or other legitimatization documents means a person can be removed under U.S. law. The new guidelines mean the administration is acknowledging that it won’t enforce the law, critics immediately charged.

    “The person who swore an oath to uphold immigration law *as written by Congress* has declared that immigration law will be upheld according only to his diktats,” NumbersUSA, which advocates for lower immigration levels as a way to “allow present and future generations of Americans to enjoy a stabilizing U.S. population,” wrote in a social media post.

    Level of Illegal Immigration Setting Record

    The guidance comes as the United States under President Joe Biden sees record-setting levels of illegal immigration. Some experts believe a new fiscal year record will likely be set when the numbers for September come in and are almost certain that at the current pace of border crossings—which rose during the hot summer months instead of following the typical trendline—the yearly record will be eclipsed.

    “As many as 400,000 migrants” are heading to the U.S. border, NBC News reports.

    “An unprecedented number…nearly doubling the stunning numbers we’ve seen the last two months, which were a 21-year high.”

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    Biden upon taking office halted construction of the border wall, stopped the Trump era “Remain in Mexico” program, and curtailed use of emergency pandemic powers to expel illegal immigrants. The policies have served to entice illegal immigration, according to experts, immigrants, and members of Congress from both parties.

    Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) linked the jump in illegal immigration to the increasing lack of in-country enforcement seen in Mayorkas’s memo.

    “The Biden administration has welcomed the flood of illegal aliens crossing our border and is now promising those same illegal aliens that they may stay in the U.S. without repercussions,” he said on Twitter.

    Mayorkas, nominated to his post by Biden and approved by the Senate, sees it differently.

    He said in a statement that the guidelines will “require an assessment of the individual and take into account the totality of the facts and circumstances.”

    “In exercising this discretion, we are guided by the knowledge that there are individuals in our country who have been here for generations and contributed to our country’s well-being, including those who have been on the frontline in the battle against COVID, lead congregations of faith, and teach our children. As we strive to provide them with a path to status, we will not work in conflict by spending resources seeking to remove those who do not pose a threat and, in fact, make our nation stronger,” he added.

    The guidelines are poised to take effect on Nov. 29.

    But they’re likely to face legal challenges. The enforcement priorities they’re replacing, which were issued by ICE’s acting director, Tae Johnson, in February, were blocked in August by a federal judge.

    Johnson attempted to direct agents not to focus on detaining and removing certain illegal immigrants. But U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton, a Trump nominee, found that the Executive Branch was, through Johnson’s memo, trying to “enforce a law enacted by Congress in a way that is contrary to the plain language of the law.”

    An appeals court panel, though, earlier this month largely overturned the decision.

    A separate challenge over the February memo was filed over the summer by ICE agents and sheriffs. That case has not been decided yet by a federal district court in Texas.

    Other lawsuits have been lodged against other aspects of the administration’s immigration policies, including its widespread release of illegal immigrants into the U.S. interior, including one filed by Florida this week.

    *  *  *

    Interestingly, as the New York Post notes, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled that the Biden administration could maintain a Trump-era public health authority that would allow for the rapid deportation of migrant families due to the Covid-19 pandemic, known as Title 42.

    US District Judge Emmet Sullivan wrote in his Sept. 16 ruling that “in view of the wide availability of testing, vaccines, and other minimization measures, the Court is not convinced that the transmission of COVID-19 during border processing cannot be significantly mitigated.”

    The appeals court’s decision came hours after NBC News reported that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had asked top Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials whether they were prepared for up to 400,000 people to try to enter the US in October if Sullivan’s order was upheld. -NY Post

    Is Nancy Pelosi going to call this xenophobic?

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/01/2021 – 19:40

  • Record-Smashing Total Of 38 PLA Jets Breach Taiwan Airspace On China's National Day
    Record-Smashing Total Of 38 PLA Jets Breach Taiwan Airspace On China’s National Day

    In what’s without doubt the largest group of Chinese aircraft to fly near Taiwan in a long while, the PLA military mounted a huge show of force aimed at the democratic island and its Western backers on China’s National Day – which commemorates the formal proclamation of the establishment of the communist People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949.

    Taiwan’s defense ministry said 25 total jets breached its air defense identification zone Friday (ADIZ), causing the self-ruled island to once again scramble air patrols and track the aircraft with anti-air missile defenses which were put on high alert. Later into the evening, 13 more were recorded breaching the ADIZ in a separate breach, totaling a record-smashing 38 Chinese aircraft.

    PLA fighters, image via Bloomberg

    The first incident included 18 J-16 fighter jets alongside two H-6 bombers, and other aircraft, a military statement indicated.

    Friday’s incursion comes on the heels of another large PLA flight from last week, which saw a total two dozen fighter jets approach Taiwan on two separate occasions. Last April had also seen a PLA incursion of up to 25 warplanes, which up to that point had been the biggest all year.

    That prior incident came simultaneous to Taiwan’s provocative announced intentions to joint the trans-Pacific trade group which China also applied to join (namely the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP). 

    International reports detailing Friday’s incursion cited a map Taiwan’s military released, which indicated the PLA planes near the disputed Pratas Island, with the two bombers coming near the the adjacent atoll.

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    And later in the evening (local time), another incursion included 13 more PLA aircraft.

    At 38 total Chinese fighters entering Taiwan’s air defense identification zone on Friday, this marks the greatest number of single-day incursions recorded since Taipei started publicly releasing the data…

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    So far these threatening PLA incursions have only caused Taipei to double down on increased military spending, as well as its willingness to receive weapons from Washington. For example Taiwan’s defense ministry said in a statement a week ago that “In the face of severe threats from the enemy, the nation’s military is actively engaged in military building and preparation work, and it is urgent to obtain mature and rapid mass production weapons and equipment in a short period of time.” 

    Meanwhile the increasingly large incursions – and ramped up frequency (almost daily at this point) – leaves open the possibility of a ‘live fire’ incident that could spark major war.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/01/2021 – 19:20

  • Bill Gross Found Guilty Of Contempt, Ordered To Spend Five Days In Jail In Suspended Sentence
    Bill Gross Found Guilty Of Contempt, Ordered To Spend Five Days In Jail In Suspended Sentence

    The good news: the ridiculous Laguna Beach saga involving billionaire Bill Gross and his millionaire neighbor trying may be finally ending.

    The crazier news: Orange County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Knill found Gross and his wife Amy guilty of contempt of court, ruling Friday that they flagrantly violated an order she issued last year prohibiting them from playing music too loudly in their backyard. The judge then ordered Bill Gross to spend five days in jail for flouting her order not to annoy his neighbor with loud music, but since rules don’t apply to the rich, she immediately put the jail sentence on hold, citing the Covid-19 pandemic, and fined the Grosses $1,000 each while ordering Gross and his wife to do two days community service.

    It is what Bloomberg called a “surreal turn of events” for the man once known as the “Bond King,” whose obsessive drive brought him to a pinnacle of the financial world, managing billions of dollars at Pimco (he quit after leaving a handwritten resignation letter in the middle of the night) and whose excessive and at times erratic behavior has now culminated in an incarceration for a dispute that for many could’ve been resolved over a garden fence.

    Gross personal life followed the arc of his career, and in 2017 his 31-year marriage to Sue Gross ended in a bitter, widely publicized divorce that became the subject of tabloid reports after it was revealed that Gross allegedly left dead fish and other vile smelling liquids in the Southern California mansion he shared with his ex-wife Sue. Gross has said he’s been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and believes it helps explain not only his success but also why he could, by his own admission, rub people the wrong way.

    That’s when crazy really got going, and what should have otherwise been a quiet retirement quickly devolved into yet another feeding frenzy for the tabloids. Shortly after purchasing a multilevel home on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Laguna Beach in 2018 for $35.8 million…

    … Gross raised the ire of his neighbor, tech entrepreneur and millionaire Mark Towfiq, by putting a protective net over a Dale Chihuly sculpture in his yard.

    The details of the spat are by now the stuff of legends: the fight between the two cliffside neighbors boiled over after Gross installed a large glass art installation near the property line they share with Towfiq and his wife, Carol Nakahara, according to court records. After unsuccessful attempts to privately resolve the dispute with Gross and his staff over several months, Towfiq reported the matter to Laguna Beach.

    The glass art installation at Bill Gross’ home that sparked a feud with his Laguna Beach neighbor. Courtesy of Orange County Superior Court

    After Towfiq complained, Bill and Amy Gross responded by blasting music outside, including repeatedly playing television theme songs such as “Gilligan’s Island.” Towfiq said the Grosses were trying to pressure him to drop the complaint with the city.

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    At one point, Bill Gross – who was filmed semi-naked by his neighbor – pulled his best Walter Sobchak impression, saying “I’ve been in Vietnam and I’ve faced bullets from the Viet Cong. I’m not saying this incident was anything like that.”

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    Judge Knill agreed with Towfiq and in December ordered the couple to stop playing music when they weren’t outside and to abide by municipal codes and not disturb their neighbor’s peace. That lasted about six months, Towfiq said.

    Towfiq and his wife testified they were jolted out of bed while watching TV in July by loud music coming from the Grosses’ property. Towfiq took videos to record the music and Nakahara called the police. Although officers urged the Grosses to turn off the music, and expressed sympathy to Towfiq and his wife, no charges were filed. Bill and Amy Gross insisted the music was within the legal limit of 60 decibels and they turned it off shortly after being asked to do so by the police.

    During the trial, Knill toured the two properties and got to hear what the music sounds like from Towfiq’s home at various levels. She was also shown videos from Towfiq’s phone, security camera and one from Amy Gross’s iPhone that showed the former professional tennis player yelling “I am outside,” while in the pool. She said she had to announce she was outside so Towfiq wouldn’t call the police.

    Ultimately, both neighbors claimed they were the victim of the others’ harassment.

    Gross’s lawyer Patricia Glaser then accused Towfiq and Nakahara of weaponizing the judge’s December order, while Amy Gross testified she feared going into her own backyard.

    “I couldn’t have my wedding reception there,” Amy Gross, who married Bill at their home in Indian Wells in April, told the judge. “I couldn’t have my birthday there.”

    Meanwhile, Gross testified his ongoing feud with the neighbor has him feeling like he’s in prison, but vowed he wasn’t going to be forced out of the house.

    But Nakahara said she felt helpless because neither the judge’s December order, or calling police, has changed the Grosses’ behavior.
    “What else are we supposed to do?” she asked the judge.

    In the end, one can only hope that the suspended sentence will finally bring peace to billionaire’s alley in Laguna Beach. Then again, it probably won’t:

    *GROSS SAYS CALIFORNIA JUDGE WAS BIASED AGAINST HIM, WIFE

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/01/2021 – 19:00

  • Declassified Report Definitively Debunks 'Havana Syndrome' Attacks That US Officials Blamed On Russia
    Declassified Report Definitively Debunks ‘Havana Syndrome’ Attacks That US Officials Blamed On Russia

    The mysterious Havana Syndrome “sonic attacks” have been back in the media of late, especially after Vice President Kamala Harris’ August tour of Southeast Asian countries was briefly disrupted over claims of a Havana Syndrome attack on US Embassy personnel in Vietnam. And most recently this week it was revealed that last month a CIA officer was evacuated from Serbia after suffering mysterious symptoms which US officials believe was the result of a “directed energy” attack.

    Since 2017 there’s been an estimated 200 possible Havanda Syndrome incidents. This week The Wall Street Journal called attention to “a steady expansion of attacks on American spies and diplomats posted overseas by unknown assailants using what government officials and scientists suspect is some sort of directed-energy source.” Top US has officials have used the mysterious ailment to cast suspicion and blame on everyone from the Russians, to the Cubans and Iranians – to any nefarious US enemy and foreign spooks bent on unleashing mayhem from the shadows using James Bond style high-tech devises that have never been recovered or revealed.

    Source of “devious attacks”…

    Recall that starting in 2016 into 2017 there were bizarre reports that nearly two dozen American diplomats – and a handful of Canadians – serving at embassies in Havana suffered hard-to-pin-down symptoms from the alleged “sonic attacks”. Personnel reported experiencing everything from vomiting to concussions to chronic headaches to minor brain injuries.

    But from the start anything in the way of actual evidence was lacking – other than the reports of the strange symptoms themselves (something which varied from person to person, and remained highly subjective in terms of description or severity). The whole initial episode focused on the US Embassy in the Cuban capital gave rise to endless theories.

    One prime theory that emerged in 2019 ascribed it to a natural phenomenon due to sounds produced by crickets in Havana. This particular theory wasn’t merely based on the musings of some random US officials, but was advanced by a team of scientists, and was featured in The Guardian in 2019. Other scientists had simultaneously posited the possibility of mass hysteria among staff serving in a high stress environment. 

    This week the whole narrative advanced by Washington officials has further unraveled, given Buzzfeed has obtained a new declassified government paper showing government-commissioned scientists themselves say the original Havana Syndrome incidents were “most likely” caused by insects: 

    Noises linked to mysterious injuries among US diplomats in Cuba were most likely caused by crickets — not microwave weapons — according to a declassified scientific review commissioned by the US State Department and obtained by BuzzFeed News.

    The State Department report was written by the JASON advisory group, an elite scientific board that has reviewed US national security concerns since the Cold War. It was completed in November of 2018, two years after dozens of US diplomats in Cuba and their families reported hearing buzzing noises and then experiencing puzzling neurological injuries, including pain, vertigo, and difficulty concentrating.

    The report was originally classified as “secret” but was made public via journalists’ FOIA request. It directly takes aim at the official narrative of a directed energy weapon or sonic attack, calling these possibilities “highly unlikely”. 

    The now declassified paper spells out: 

    “No plausible single source of energy (neither radio/microwaves nor sonic) can produce both the recorded audio/video signals and the reported medical effects,” the JASON report concluded. “We believe the recorded sounds are mechanical or biological in origin, rather than electronic. The most likely source is the Indies short-tailed cricket.“

    The State Department acknowledged the Buzzfeed exposé in a statement, “We are grateful to the JASON Group for their insight, which while coming to no firm conclusions, has assisted us in our ongoing investigation of these incidents,” it said. 

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    One biomedical expert cited by Buzzfeed said the formerly classified report “puts to rest” the whole question of alleged sonic attacks – which has been the prime narrative advanced, spanning both Trump and Biden administrations…

    “JASON puts to rest the ‘microwave attack’ theory,” University of Pennsylvania biomedical engineer Kenneth Foster told BuzzFeed News. “While we can’t rule out the idea that somebody might have been trying to harass the US officers, the idea that these were attacks intended to cause injury is supported neither by a smoking gun nor by clearly identified victims.”

    For a past example of the kind of statements advanced in mainstream media accounts of the whole phenomenon, see this quote in a Guardian article from this past summer:

    “It became clear that some of the work [on sonic energy attacks] that was conducted in the former Soviet Union was taken up again by Russia and its satellite proxies.”

    Russia, Russia, Russia!

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    And more from the same report: “But he said Russia was more advanced in understanding the human impact of microwave weapons – partly because it did not face the same ethical constraints.”

    Perhaps the next US government sponsored conspiracy theory to come out of this will be that Putin unleashed special warfare crickets on the Havana embassy in order to torment American personnel there. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/01/2021 – 18:40

  • Watch: Dr. Fauci Confronted About CDC's Unverified Claims About "Breakthrough" Infections
    Watch: Dr. Fauci Confronted About CDC’s Unverified Claims About “Breakthrough” Infections

    In what was probably one of the most difficult media interviews Dr. Anthony Fauci has faced during his entire tenure as President Biden’s top COVID media personality, CNBC’s Sarah Eisen – who revealed at the very beginning that she had tested positive for COVID despite being fully vaccinated (which is why she was calling in from home – laid into the senior White House advisor and NIH chief about the lack of data or disclosures about “breakthrough” infections, and the risks of vaccinated patients spreading the virus to the unvaccinated.

    The interview clarified one point Dr. Fauci had been trying so desperately to conceal: that the incidence of breakthrough infections is much higher than the CDC and the government have claimed, and furthermore, Dr. Fauci even hinted that there might be some new “data” coming offering a more realistic analysis of how effective the vaccines truly are.

    The interview started with a standard question about the major story of the day, Merck’s new early-intervention treatment for COVID, which, despite its universal acclaim, is facing some questions about safety standards from skeptics.

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    Dr. Fauci said that the FDA would review the data and approve the drug as quickly as it can.

    “When you have an orally administered medical intervention that attacks the virus…and has this kind of data….the trial was designed to be given early during the course of infection, its an early administration drug that’s very important.”

    The good doctor insisted he couldn’t commit to a timeline for approval, then claimed that the treatment.would likely be available to both vaccinated and non-vaxxed alike.

    “As for when it will get approved by the FDA, “the company says it will be imminently be sending the data to the FDA, so you need to give the FDA the time to go over the data…I can’t get ahead of them, I can’t tell you what it will be, but without giving a timeline, know that they are working very hard to get it done.”

    “This is a treatment for infection, so whether you get infected following vaccination or without one…I would assume if you’re infected you’re infected, it doesn’t really matter whether you’re vaccinated or not…but let’s leave that for the regulatory authorities…”

    “In my opinion as a public health professional, it’s always better to not get infected than to get infected and rely on a drug to prevent you from getting advanced disease. No drug by any means is 100% effective. Looking at the study, it’s a quite good result, with 50% protection. A 50% increase remember, there were people on the treatment arm who didn’t have a successful result. The best way to not get infected is to get vaccinated.”

    Finally, Eisen Hit Dr. Fauci with a surprise hard ball: She cited “data” collected within her own family, whereby three vaccinated people got COVID and immediately passed it on to two unvaccinated children.

    Eisen then suggested that the CDC might be “too casual” about breakthough infections, and also questioned “How can the CDC keep saying COVID “breakthrough” infections are rare if they have no data?”

    To this, Dr. Fauci replied that the CDC is scrambling to change this, and even hinted that more data on the true rate of breakthrough infections would likely soon arrive.

    “Three vaccinated people got Covid in my house two unvaccinated children got it…are you too casual about the limitations of the vaccine? It seems to me these breakthroughs are happening and they’re happening regularly. You can get it and transmit it and the government hasn’t been warning about that,” Eisen said.

    “Oh yes we have and let me get you the facts. If you are an unvaccinated person you have 11x the likelihood of hospitalization...if you look at the people who have died from COVID-19, overwhelmingly they have been unvaccinated,” Dr Fauci

    Fauci adds that “over 90%” who have been unvaccinated – but of course that vast majority of deaths occurred before the vaccine rollout even started, making this statement slightly misleading.

    As for determining how many unvaccinated have died since the program began, it’s not exactly clear since this data wasn’t being tracked. Though deaths and hospitalizations have fallen since vaccination rates have risen, but there’s still many questions about whether the young and health actually benefit.

    Fortunately, CNBC released this clip.

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    As for the CDC tracking breakthrough infections, Eisen also pressed Dr. Fauci about the fact that “the CDC says on its website that infections occur among…unvaccinated…but the CDC doesn’t even track the breakthrough infections so how do we know that they’re only a small portion and that they’re relatively mild?”

    Dr. Fauci had nothing really to say to this except to admit she was of course correct while offering a flimsy excuse about the CDC working on it.

    “Well in the past the CDC has not tracked real or asymptomatic infections, but there are studies being done that would give the kind of data you’re talking about.”

    “And with the booster program we’re rolling out, we hope to see an improved effect. Israeli data have shown that when you give an at risk person a booster shot, they’re chances of being hospitalizations drop.”

    The interview with a question from CNBC host Wilfred Frost about the risks of any future variants, to which Dr. Fauci responded with the typical fear-mongering.

    “I’ll give an answer that’s totally consistent with what I’ve said before, is the likelihood of seeing something worse…is completely in our own control…if we allow the virus to freely circulate, particularly among unvaccinated people, you give the virus a greater possibility of producing a variant that could create some trouble for our vaccines.”

    But overall, the interview makes clear: the media is starting to get curious about the growing reports of breakthrough infections of public officials like Brett Kavanaugh (whose diagnosis was announced today) to family members and friends.

    Whatever it is, the 90%+ rate they insist on seems increasingly like a stretch.

    Clips of the grilling have started to surface on Twitter, but CNBC has yet to release a clip.

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    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/01/2021 – 18:20

  • Archegos 2.0? Multi-Billion-Dollar "Mr. China" Fund Suffers Huge Loss After Xi Crackdown
    Archegos 2.0? Multi-Billion-Dollar “Mr. China” Fund Suffers Huge Loss After Xi Crackdown

    Remember Bill Hwang, the otherwise omnipotent guru of stock investing that founded Archegos, who suffered stunning (personal and fund) losses earlier in the year and made headlines in the ‘methods’ he used to amass vast leveraged positions without alerting regulators (or bank risk managers), and raising systemic financial system questions.

    Well Bill had a close friend.

    Meet Tao Li, the 41-year-old New York-based hedge fund manager is less known by the world than his buddy, but as Bloomberg reports, is known by a select group of investors as Mr. China for his expertise in that nation’s stocks. Beijing-born Li has deserved that reputation, as his fund has posted annualized returns of almost 30% for the past decade, according to people close to the firm. But that all went pear-shaped this year.

    Hwang and Li were longtime former colleagues (Li joined Hwang’s Tiger Asia in 2004 to cover Chinese companies, and left Tiger Asia in 2011, opening Teng Yue, which means leap or soar, the same year) and, at least before Archegos’s collapse, chatted periodically about investing ideas, according to people with knowledge of their relationship.

    And, as it turns out, Bloomberg reports that Hwang and Li had both piled into the same Chinese online-education company, GSX Techedu Inc., amassing stakes that market participants estimate amounted to a total of about 40% of the shares.

    When Archegos’s portfolio racked up margin calls in March, banks rushed to liquidate its bets, sending GSX tumbling.

    Then it got worse as Chinese Premier Xi unleashed his “common prosperity” plan, cracking down on online-education companies (among many other industries) in an attempt to quell any social unrest and perhaps bring to heel many of the richest people in China.

    That sent GSX Techedu down to record lows.

    Li’s Teng Yue Partners hedge fund, which manages $10 billion including leverage, took a hit and by the end of August was down about 32% for the year, according to people with knowledge of its performance.

    Many are rightfully wondering how exactly Hwang and Li came to pile so heavily into the same stock and whether the pair should have disclosed the massive stakes they were building. Some are questioning whether the overlapping bets might have somehow run afoul of securities laws.

    “I really, really hope the SEC looks at the trading in GSX,” Carson Block, famous for his bearish bets against Chinese companies, said in an interview with accounting firm Marcum BP, adding “just can’t see that these guys went long GSX on such large size because they believed the fundamentals were so good.”

    The question is – what don’t we know? Has Li unwound the positions (he reportedly used total-return-swaps like Hwang)? Which banks are exposed? Are they exposed in the same way as Credit Suisse etc were exposed to Archegos?

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 10/01/2021 – 18:00

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