- UK Will Release Digital "Vaccine Passport" & "Green List" Of Travel Destinations Next Month
UK Will Release Digital “Vaccine Passport” & “Green List” Of Travel Destinations Next Month
The British government’s effort to create a digital “vaccine passport” app has officially been embraced by the UK’s former Continental partners.
As the EU scrambles to implement a vaccine-passport system that will enable tourists from wealthy vaccinated countries (like the US and UK) to flock to beaches in Greece and Spain over the summer, British Transport Secretary Grant Shapps revealed in a TV interview Thursday that he will be able to give details on which countries have made it on to the UK’s “green list” “in the next couple of weeks”.
The introduction of the UK’s “Green List” follows a series of US State Department Travel Advisories that placed 80% of the world’s countries on the highest level travel advisory. But while the US advisory carries no restrictions, the UK’s “green list” will feature all the countries where Britons can travel without being required to quarantine upon their return (though they will still need to be tested for COVID-19 upon their return).
“…in the next couple of weeks, I’ll be able to tell you about which countries will have made it into the traffic light system and that ‘green’ list in particular are the countries where you’ll be able to go to without needing to quarantine on your return.
“You will still need to take a pre-departure test and one test on your return.
“I think people are getting very used to testing now, not least because we provide testing up to twice a week for everyone in the country right now. So I don’t think a test itself is a big deal.
Shapps also confirmed an NHS app will be used to allow Britons to demonstrate whether they have had a COVID jab, or tested negative for the virus, before traveling abroad.
“It will be the NHS app that is used for people when they book appointments with the NHS and so on, to be able to show you’ve had a vaccine or that you’ve had testing,” he added.
“I’m working internationally with partners across the world to make sure that system can be internationally recognised.”
Government sources clarified the app would not be the NHS COVID app – currently used to “check in” to venues such as pubs and restaurants for contact-tracing purposes – but would instead be the NHS app used to book general appointments.
Shapps added that he was awaiting data from the government’s Joint Biosecurity Center, which is necessary to state which countries would be deemed “green”, “amber” or “red” under the traffic light system.
He also reiterated that there was a need to be “very cautious” about allowing Britons to freely travel abroad again.
“Beyond our shores we are seeing the highest levels of coronavirus that we have seen so far in the entire pandemic, right now,” he added.
“So we do need to make sure we do this very, very carefully – we don’t want to throw away the lockdown, we don’t want to throw away our remarkable rollout in this country of the vaccination.
Meanwhile, European nations are eager to welcome British tourists as they hope this summer will see a significant improvement over last year. Portugal’s ambassador to the UK, Manuel Lobo Antunes, told Sky News he was “hopeful” British travelers would be able to return to Portugal by the middle of next month.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/30/2021 – 02:45 - Lavrov Calls Out Perfidious Albion In EU Diplomat Spat
Lavrov Calls Out Perfidious Albion In EU Diplomat Spat
Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
The British establishment likes to boast that they “punch above their weight” in terms of influence beyond their territorial size. It’s not hard to see how they manage such a feat. It’s called duplicity, intrigue, lies, and dividing and ruling.
Britain is fomenting a diplomatic crisis between the European Union and Russia, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Evidence and precedent indicate Lavrov has his sight well-trained.
The British establishment’s notorious ability for machination and intrigue – hence the ancient moniker Perfidious Albion – can be seen as stirring the escalating row between the European Union and Russia in which diplomats are being expelled pell-mell.
This week, Russia ordered the withdrawal of representatives from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia. That came in response to the expulsion of Russian diplomats from those countries. Russia has also ordered home more diplomats from the Czech Republic. Poland and Italy have also been caught up in diplomatic antagonism with Moscow.
The row blew up last week when the Czech Republic accused Russian state agents of being responsible for twin explosions on its territory back in 2104. The blasts caused the deaths of two workers at an ammunition depot near the village of Vrbetice close to the border with Slovakia. Until recently, the Czech authorities had concluded that the explosions were an industrial accident.
What prompted the Czechs to revise their ideas and to now blame Russia for sabotage is the interpolation of Britain in providing “new information”. Specifically, it was the MI6-sponsored media group Bellingcat (a so-called private investigatory agency) which appears to have furnished the disinformation which purports to show the involvement of Russian military intelligence (GRU). Incredibly, the British claim their “evidence” shows that two of the GRU agents were also the same individuals who were alleged to have been involved in poisoning the Russian traitor-spy Sergei Skripal in England in 2018. The British claim to have passport information to support their claims, but such methodology is rife with forgery – a black art that the British are all-too skilled at.
On leveling the accusation against Russia, the Czech Republic then ordered the expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats. Moscow responded angrily, saying that the claims of sabotage were a “dirty fabrication” and pointing out that Prague did not provide any information for verification. Russia took swift reciprocal action by banishing 20 Czech diplomats from its territory.
However, the row continues to flare with the Baltic states entering the fray by banning Russian officials in “solidarity” with the Czech Republic. The move by the Baltic states is predictable as they are supercharged by anti-Russian political sentiment. It’s a case of any excuse for them to inflame relations.
The dispute comes at a fraught time when the European Union is discussing imposing more sanctions on Russia over wider concerns about the conflict in Ukraine, the imprisonment of blogger Alexei Navalny and a Russian security crackdown on Navalny’s shadowy Western-backed “opposition” network.
The skirmishing over diplomats is a convenient way to further damage relations between the EU and Russia, especially as the strategically important Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline project nears completion – a project that Washington wants to eviscerate for its own selfish commercial reasons. Uncle Sam’s junior partner Britain may be obliging in that regard and thus trying to curry favor for garnering an American trade deal in the post-Brexit world.
Certainly, Russia’s top diplomat Sergei Lavrov is clear about the stealthy British hand in recent events. In a media interview this week, Lavrov mentioned the United Kingdom in wary terms, saying: “As far as the relations between Russia and Europe are concerned, I still believe that the UK is playing an active and a very serious subversive role. It withdrew from the European Union, but we see no decrease in its activities on this track. On the contrary, they are trying to influence EU member states’ approaches to Russia to the maximum possible extent.”
It should be recalled that Britain has played a starring duplicitous role in demonizing Russia and poisoning international relations.
It was Bellingcat (MI6) that pushed the narrative that Russia was complicit in the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner in 2014 over Eastern Ukraine with the loss of nearly 300 lives. Based on British “evidence” (which has been debunked as fabrication), a Dutch investigation into the disaster has accused Russia. That affair has hardened European prejudices against Russia which has fomented the imposition of sanctions.
It was a former British MI6 operative Christopher Steele who was instrumental in promoting the Russiagate dossier around 2016 which destroyed bilateral relations between the United States and Russia, and which continues to fuel fabrications about Moscow’s interference in American and European politics (even those Steele’s “dirty dossier” is a risible load of rubbish and has been debunked).
And it was the Skripal saga in Salisbury in March 2018 which Britain hatched to further poison international relations with Russia. That saga – with no proof against Russia – has become a concocted “standard proof” for the subsequent saga of “poisoning” the blogger conman Alexei Navalny. Western governments and media refer to the “Kremlin plot” to kill Skripal as “evidence” for another “Kremlin plot” to assassinate Navalny. This is tantamount to one fiction being used to prove another fiction. The same saga is now feeding into the Czech explosion row. And it all comes back to the devious ingenuity of Perfidious Albion.
Foreign Minister Lavrov added a further incisive comment on the role of Britain. He said:
“At the same time, you know, they send us signals, they propose establishing contacts. This means, they do not shy away from communication [with Russia], but try to discourage others. Again, probably [this can be explained by] their desire to have a monopoly of these contacts and again prove that they are superior to others.”
The British establishment likes to boast that they “punch above their weight” in terms of influence beyond their territorial size. It’s not hard to see how they manage such a feat. It’s called duplicity, intrigue, lies, and dividing and ruling. Perfidious Albion par excellence.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/30/2021 – 02:00 - European Parliament Approves Resolution On Far-Reaching Sanctions For 'Russian Aggression'
European Parliament Approves Resolution On Far-Reaching Sanctions For ‘Russian Aggression’
On Thursday European Parliament passed a resolution that calls for far-reaching EU sanctions on a number of fronts against Russia, and which most notably seeks to require a Russian ban on access to the SWIFT payment system if there’s ever a future move against Ukrainian sovereignty.
The European Parliament “Demands that the EU should reduce its dependence on Russian energy, and urges the EU institutions and all Member States, therefore, to stop the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and to demand a stop to the construction of controversial nuclear power plants built by Rosatom,” the now approved resolution says.
569 members of the European Parliament voted for approval while there were 67 against the resolution’s adoption. As we explained previously, it appears a ‘preventative’ and threatening measure in the instance of any future scenario of another major Russian troop build-up in Crimea and along Ukraine’s border such as occurred over the last month.
“Should military build-up lead to an invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the EU must make clear the consequences for such a violation of international law and norms would be severe, MEPs agreed,” a European Parliament press release stated. “Such a scenario must result in an immediate halt to EU imports of oil and gas from Russia, the exclusion of Russia from the SWIFT payment system and the freezing of assets and cancellation of visas for Europe of all oligarchs tied to the Russian authorities.”
And further it underscored the EU member states must no longer be “welcoming places for Russian wealth and investments of unclear origin” as well as “the Kremlin’s strategic investments within the EU for the purposes of subversion.”
#EuropeanParliament considers #Russia‘s disconnection from SWIFT, the international payment system, in a draft resolution that addresses a potential escalation in eastern #Ukraine.https://t.co/4o1GDSbSDE
— Sonalika Kumar (@sonalika_kumar) April 29, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Needless to say, if the trigger were ever actually pulled on what are at this point these official threats to “require” immediate EU action in the face of “Russian aggression” – it would be all out economic and diplomatic war – or worse.
Previously the Kremlin warned that such a drastic move as cutting off Russia from SWIFT would indeed be considered an “act of war” – but this is precisely what officials in Kiev have been seeking to pressure Brussels to do.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/30/2021 – 01:00 - Red States Are Fighting Back Against The Reset – What Does This Mean For The Future?
Red States Are Fighting Back Against The Reset – What Does This Mean For The Future?
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,
The past year I have been writing extensively about what I call the “great conservative migration”; a shift in US demographics not seen since the Great Depression. Approximately 8.9 million Americans have relocated since the beginning of the covid lockdowns according to the US Postal service, and a large portion of these people are leaving left-leaning blue states for conservative red states in the west and the south. States like California, Illinois, New York and New Jersey were at the top of the list of states people wanted to escape.
The response from leftist states has been amusing. California, for instance, has tried to obscure the data on population loss and has dismissed the existence of the migration. They claim that the state population is actually rising, but fail to mention that most of California’s population “gains” have been from babies born along with an increase in illegal immigration. This has not offset the 267,000 individuals and families that left the state in the last three months 2020 alone. That’s an entire city of people, gone in 90 days.
And where are these people going? Places like Idaho, Texas, Tennessee, Florida, etc. ALL red states that are fighting back against draconian covid mandates and other unconstitutional measures. The only outlier seems to be Oregon, which also has seen a population spike, and this indeed appears to be a migration of Californians to the north.
This leads some conservative groups to believe there is an “invasion” going on of liberals into red states. After looking at the data and meeting many people moving to my own area in Montana, I find the “liberal invasion” narrative to be fraudulent.
Leftists don’t relocate to red states, at least not very often. They do not run away from their safe spaces. Rather, they relocate an hour or two from the cities they are addicted to. This is what the data from San Francisco shows. With over 80% of people moving from the city staying within California. In other words, some leftists want to get out of the cities, but they don’t want to move far from their beloved progressive Utopias and they certainly don’t plan on embedding in conservative strongholds and trying to “take over”.
Why this theory persists is beyond me as it has no basis in reality.
No, the people moving across state lines today are mostly conservatives, they are congregating en masse in red states, and the effects have been rather dramatic. Home prices have skyrocketed due to extreme demand. In Montana, people are buying real estate sight unseen, a lot of it raw land that they are trying to build on. Lumber prices have tripled, and anyone in the construction business is booked a year and a half out. There are new residents actually scouring the message boards looking for ANYONE that can do work for them. There is nobody available. No one I know has seen anything like it in their lifetime.
Luckily, a lot of these people seem to be on the same page in terms of principles. Those I have met are all conservative and the majority of them are preppers. They moved here because they know what is coming and they want to be surrounded by like minded neighbors when the manure hits the fan. Specifically, they do not want to be caught isolated in a blue state where vaccine passports, masks and lockdowns become a regular part of life for them and their children. They want to remain free.
On the other hand, I am also hearing rumors that the relatively small number of leftists that live in my county want to leave. Some have expressed the need to “get out” and vacation in places like Portland, Oregon, where they “feel safe” because “everyone wears masks”. And I say, good for them. Hopefully they will stay there. These types of people are miserable excuses for human beings and they make everyone else around them miserable by constantly whining about how “no one follows the rules”.
As a point of reference, there have been only 17 deaths from covid in my county in well over a year. The death rate is non-existent, and the virus already swept through the area with almost everyone either infected or asymptomatic. No one in Montana is afraid of this virus except a handful of weak minded progressives.
My suspicion is that when all is said and done by the end of 2021 the US will essentially be split into two distinct nations: A leftist Marxist nation that continues to degrade into tyranny, and a conservative nation that people want to escape to so they can keep their liberties. Leftists won’t want to live near us, and we certainly will not want to live near them. Hypothetically, it should be a win-win situation, but there are other factors to consider.
We must also take into account red counties. For example, the blue state of Virginia is actually only blue in a handful of counties. The majority are conservative and have stood in defiance of attempts by gun grabbing governor Ralph Northam, saying they will ignore any new gun laws Northam and the state legislature passes. County governments and county sheriffs are in agreement; Northam has no power in these places.
In Eastern Oregon and Northern California, there is a push by multiple counties to actually join Idaho and become a part of the conservative state. The majority of voters in these counties supported the transition. The idea being that this is not a secession, and so the move will be far easier to accomplish with less legal obstacles. The decision will be voted on by county residents in May, and of course there will be attempts by congress to obstruct if the outcome is favorable.
Even if the movement is not successful, the fact that voters in red counties are unified in their goal to get away from leftist political control should be taken very seriously. This is not just about states defying federal dictates, it’s also about counties defying state governments that do not represent their values.
The bottom line is this – The leftist ideology is collectivist and totalitarian in nature. It is completely incompatible with the conservative principles of liberty, self determination, meritocracy, limited government and free market economics.
The social justice cult has gone so far into extremism that reason and logic are actually vilified by them. They openly support mass censorship, mass violence against innocent people, mob intimidation against the citizenry, they argue in favor of economic lockdowns and unconstitutional covid mandates, they support draconian vaccine passports, and they are partners with Big Tech corporations as well as globalists institutions like the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundation. They are diametrically opposed to everything that conservatives and lovers of liberty hold dear.
Honestly, it is unlikely that we will be able to share the same land mass, let alone the same cities and states, but I’ll get to that in a moment…
At the state level, there has been a dramatic push-back against constitutional trespasses by the federal government under Biden, and these include measures which are aggressively promoted by the World Economic Forum and other globalist institutions in the name of the “Great Reset”. Multiple red states have passed laws or executive orders making it illegal to require proof of vaccination (vaccine passports). Some blue states have also “claimed” they will not require vaccinations, but the devil is in the details when dealing with the political left.
In Montana, the governor and the state legislature will not allow government enforcement of vaccine passports, AND, they also will not allow corporations to demand vaccine passports either. In blue states like Illinois, the government might keep its word on passports, it might not, but they don’t really need to enforce vaccinations; all they have to do is allow major corporations to do it for them.
With colleges (public institutions posing as private), airlines, hotels, hospitals, and major retail chains requiring a vaccine passport for employment or to make purchases, the effect of medical tyranny will be the same.
Without state legal protections in place to limit social engineering by corporate behemoths the establishment still has all the tools it needs to assert covid controls.
These companies do not represent private business or free markets anymore. Instead, they are appendages of establishment power that receive billions in taxpayer dollars to finance their operations. They should no longer be treated as if they have the same rights as normal businesses.
Another interesting development is the number of red states that are passing laws which prevent the enforcement of any new federal gun controls. In Montana, Greg Gianforte just signed a bill nullifying federal gun bans. Federal rules do not apply here and state law enforcement agencies are prohibited from helping federal agencies enforce such laws. Similar legislation has been passed or is being considered in other red states like Utah and Arizona.
It is unclear what would happen if the ATF or FBI tried to make arrests within Montana based on federal gun restrictions. I suspect that without extra protection from local law enforcement these agencies would be much more vulnerable in their operations. If they met with stiff resistance, they would be on their own. I also would not be surprised if sheriffs in most Montana counties stood in their way.
The mainstream media has been almost completely silent on these developments. They barely even acknowledge the conservative migration. I doubt they will speak of the separation at all until the latest census data and postal data is more thoroughly examined. However, the changes to our nation are going to have far reaching consequences, and the consequences will be obvious in the near term.
The “Great Reset” is meant to be a global project; meaning, no one is allowed to opt out. Leftists and globalists are notoriously plantation-minded; they believe that society is involuntary, and their rules for society should apply to all people. Those who wish to leave are actually seen as traitors, because the very act of leaving suggests that the system is flawed, and doubt creates questions, and questions create demands, and demands lead to defiance, and defiance leads to rebellion.
The progressive/globalist plantation becomes an exercise in antagonistic self affirmation – You cannot leave the system, because everything is fine, and if you left people might think something is wrong and then everything would not be fine, so why would you want to upset the balance and ruin what is already perfect?
In my last article I noted that red states in the US are the ONLY places in the world where freedom from the Reset is ingrained and people have the means to fight back. I still stand by that assertion. Some conservatives assume countries like Russia are going to fight the Reset, yet Putin and the Russian government enforced extensive covid restrictions recommended by the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization, just like every other government. The head of the Russian Parliament’s committee on public health, Dmitri Morozov, stated that vaccine passports were “very important and needed in Russia”.
Let’s face it, no major government is coming to save us; these delusional fantasies of Russia or any other foreign nation fighting against the Reset need to stop. The bottom line is this: The American red states are probably the only regions in the world that are resisting the reset agenda while also having the arms to back their resolve. If a rebellion is going to start against the globalists, it will start here.
What does this mean for the future? It means we are going to be targeted. This is how I see the situation playing out…
I have no doubt that the first step by the federal government under Biden will be to start cutting off federal funds to red states while flooding blue states with stimulus money. The strategy being that blue states will have unlimited free goodies while red states languish in poverty. Biden will be betting that red state citizens reliant on government checks will become despondent or angry. Of course, these taxpayer backed funds belong to all the states, but that won’t matter to Biden or to leftists; they will claim we are getting what we deserve.
The logical response by red states will be to stop paying taxes, and to take over federal lands and the resources within their borders. Red states and red counties could also negate all EPA and BLM restrictions on resource usage and launch an epic revitalization of industry. In my area, I believe the logging industry which has been stifled by the federal government will return in full force. With lumber prices nearing hyperinflationary levels, it makes perfect sense. This will enrage the feds.
The next step would be to make travel to and from certain red states difficult in order to isolate them. The feds may shut down airline flights while proclaiming that red states are “havens for covid infection”. This will not go over well with conservatives, and we will start demolishing any checkpoints that are meant to keep us in. Leftist controlled states and counties will start checking license plates and ID and harassing or arresting anyone from a conservative area. Travel will stagnate as people will not know which places are safe and which are dangerous.
There will also be attempts to use federal agencies to insert into conservative areas to make arrests based on federal laws that have already been nullified. The goal will be to make examples out of some people, and send a message that conservatives “are not safe”, even in their own states. Eventually, the shooting will start and federal agents will die. Biden will demand a martial law response.
If everything develops as described, the question arises, how many people in the military are actually willing to die for Biden? My guess is not that many, but with the right excuses and rationalizations who knows? Conservatives have been demonized for many years now, there may be a large enough chunk of the military that believes the propaganda, but I am doubtful.
It could take two full terms of Biden for these events to happen. It could take far less time. I would not hold my breath for a 2022 or 2024 election to defuse matters. I think most conservatives learned their lesson on the futility of politics the last four years. The best possible outcome right now is that conservatives congregate, unify and organize from the local level to the state level to the point that we act as a deterrent to future tyranny.
We all know one day the establishment is going to come for us, and if so then we’ll greet them with a long range love letter (if you get my meaning). But at least we will know where we stand. At least we will be living among kindred spirits, and at least there will be a glimmer of hope for the world. Sometimes the greatest act of rebellion is to offer people an alternative, a place where the rules of tyrants hold no weight. Conservative states and counties are doing this today, and it is a beautiful thing.
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Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/29/2021 – 23:50 - China Creates Countrywide 'No-Pig Zones' To Limit African Swine Fever
China Creates Countrywide ‘No-Pig Zones’ To Limit African Swine Fever
The African Swine Fever (ASF) decimated China’s hog population in 2018 and has since been brought under control as the country rebuilds its hog herd. China released a novel plan to reshape the entire hog industry to mitigate future spreading, according to Bloomberg.
The Chinese agriculture ministry recently announced that the country would split into five regions from May. Pigs in each region will not be transported into other areas to mitigate the potential threat of ASF spreading.
Source: Bloomberg Senior analyst Lin Guofa at consultancy Bric Agriculture Group said approximately 20% of the country’s pigs, or about 140 million live animals, are transported across the country each year and increase the chances of spreading diseases. The main transportation route for farmers is from the northeast to the south to meet the large demand for fresh meat in metropolises.
With new guidelines expected to be in place in a matter of days, areas known for little or no pig farming will have to increase capacity.
“Some areas that used to call themselves no-pig counties or no-pig cities will have to build pig farms,” Guofa said.
Under the guidelines, the only way for pork to be transported across regions will have to be in frozen meat form, leading to an expansion of the cold-chain industry, added Guofa.
Pigs are a significant source of protein in China. According to data from the Dalian Commodity Exchange, the country is the world’s top consumer of pork, with annual sales of around $308 billion per year.
Chinese consumers have caught a period of relief after nearly two years of elevated pork prices due to the culling of millions of pigs countrywide during the ASF outbreak. Wholesale pork prices are down 30% year-to-date.
Source: Bloomberg “The controls will depress prices in the north in the short term and push them up in the south,” according to Wang Zhong, chief consultant at Systematic, Strategic & Soft Consulting Co. “That may eventually prompt big pork producers — including Muyuan Foodstuff Co., New Hope Liuhe Co. and Wens Foodstuff Group Co. — to build more hog farms in the south and more slaughtering facilities in the northeast and northwest,” Bloomberg said.
The new guidelines are similar to ones in Brazil and Spain that limit farmers from transporting live animals around the country. Such a measure has been successful in eradicating ASF from both countries.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/29/2021 – 23:30 - The Shaky Foundations Of LA's Housing "Entitlement" For The Homeless
The Shaky Foundations Of LA’s Housing “Entitlement” For The Homeless
Authored by Christopher Rufo via RealClearInvestigations.com,
In 2016 influential political leaders, activists, and media outlets in Los Angeles said they had a simple solution to homelessness: build more housing. Echoing an argument heard across the country, they claimed that rising rents have thrown people onto the streets and that by directly providing free “permanent supportive housing,” cities can reduce the number of people on the streets and save costs on emergency services.
In response, 77% of Los Angeles voters approved a $1.2 billion bond for the construction of 10,000 units for the city’s homeless. That commitment made Los Angeles the most significant testing ground for the “Housing First” approach that has become the dominant policy idea on homelessness for West Coast cities. Even before the passage of the bond, the concept’s creator, Sam Tsemberis, was lavished with praise by the national media. In 2015, the Washington Post wrote that Tsemberis had “all but solved chronic homelessness” and that his research “commands the support of most scholars.”
Sam Tsemberis: He has been hailed by the Washington Post as having “all but solved homelessness.” But Los Angeles, above, challenges his “Housing First” model.
In the years since, “Housing First” has taken even greater hold in California and the across the West. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti recently declared that “we need to have an entitlement to housing.” California Gov. Gavin Newsom went a step further, arguing that “doctors should be able to write prescriptions for housing the same way they do for insulin or antibiotics.”
Five years in, the project has been plagued by construction delays, massive cost overruns, and accusations of corruption. The Los Angeles city controller issued a scathing report, “The High Cost of Homeless Housing,” which shows that some studio and one-bedroom apartments were costing taxpayers more than $700,000 each, with 40% of total costs devoted to consultants, lawyers, fees, and permitting. The project is a boon for real estate developers and a constellation of nonprofits and service providers, but a boondoggle for taxpayers. The physical apartment units are bare-bones — small square footage, cheap flooring, vinyl surfaces — but have construction costs similar to luxury condos in the fashionable parts of Los Angeles. Meanwhile, unsheltered homelessness has increased 41%, vastly outpacing the construction of new supportive housing units. Los Angeles magazine, which initially supported the measure, now wonders whether it has become “a historic public housing debacle.”
Before completing a single housing unit, the city reduced its projected construction from 10,000 units to 5,873 units over 10 years, with the potential for further reductions in the future. But the long-term problem runs much deeper: Even if one accepts that permanent supportive housing is the solution, there are currently more than 66,000 homeless people in Los Angeles County. Under the best-case scenario, Proposition HHH will solve less than 10% of the problem over the course of a decade.
Arrested development: Five years in, most of LA’s homeless projects are barely off the ground.
Despite Housing First’s uncertainties, other West Coast cities desperate to solve homelessness, including Seattle and San Francisco, have been captured by its seductive messaging and promise of respite. As Los Angeles grapples with the unforeseen consequences of its big bet on “Housing First,” the federal, state, and local governments, especially in major metropolitan areas, are preparing to commit billions of dollars to the program, whose track record remains woefully underexamined.
As Los Angeles’s “Housing First” program has failed to meet expectations, Mayor Eric Garcetti is now downplaying it as just one of several needed approaches to homelessness.
Ever since clinical psychologist Tsemberis pioneered the model in New York City in the 1990s, political leaders, activists, and academics have insisted that Housing First is an “evidence-based” intervention that reduces homelessness, saves taxpayer money, and improves lives. Supporters frequently argue that the program reduced costs in a study of chronic alcoholics in Seattle, consistently demonstrates high retention rates in multiple academic surveys, and eliminated chronic homelessness in Utah. “We’re going to stem this crisis by building supportive housing in every neighborhood throughout Los Angeles,” City Council member Herb Wesson recently claimed.
These studies, however, are not as persuasive as activists suggest. Although the study of chronic alcoholics in Seattle does show a net reduction in monthly social service costs of $2,449 per person, this figure does not include $11 million in capital and construction costs for the housing units themselves; in other words, Housing First saves money if the cost of housing is not included. Even on its own favorable terms, the study’s purported savings aren’t as dramatic as they appear: While the Housing First participants showed a 63% reduction in service costs over six months, a wait-listed control group that was not provided housing showed a 42% reduction in service costs over the same time period, raising questions about the specific effectiveness of the intervention.
Claims that studies show one-year retention rates of roughly 80% for Housing First participants are open to question. In a meta-study of three best-in-class Housing First sites, researchers found that 43% remained in housing for the first 12 months, 41% were “intermittent stayers” who left and returned, and 16% abandoned the program or died within the first year. These findings challenge the argument that Housing First is a long-term solution to homelessness.
Finally, advocates and the media have long touted Utah as the gold standard of Housing First. “The Daily Show” called the state’s program “mind-blowing,” the Los Angeles Times reported in 2015 that Utah “is winning the war on chronic homelessness,” and dozens of media outlets announced that the state “reduced chronic homelessness by 91%.” These miraculous results, however, were not the result of Housing First policies, but apparently clerical manipulation by state officials. According to the Deseret News and economist Kevin Corinth, “As much as 85% of Utah’s touted reductions in chronic homelessness … may have been due to changes in how the homeless were counted.” It’s not that all of the chronically homeless were housed; they were simply transposed onto a new spreadsheet. Moreover, between 2016 and 2018, the number of unsheltered homeless in Utah nearly doubled – hardly the victory that Housing First activists had declared.
Media, including Comedy Central’s “Daily Show,” hailed “Housing First” in Utah. But stats were fudged.
The recent debate surrounding Housing First has predominantly been focused on the physical and budgetary metrics of housing retention and cost reductions. But these surface-level concerns obscure a deeper question: What happens to the human beings in these programs? The results, according to the vast majority of studies, point to a grim conclusion: Housing First does not meaningfully improve human lives.
Although housing programs are often an effective solution for families experiencing a temporary loss of shelter, Housing First programs do not have a strong track record improving the lives of the unsheltered homeless — the people in tents, cars, and on the streets — who often suffer from more severe challenges. According to research by the California Policy Lab, 75% of the unsheltered homeless have substance abuse condition, 78% have mental health conditions, and 84% have physical health conditions. In theory, Housing First would address these problems. In every program, residents are offered a wide range of services. At the Pathways to Housing program in New York City, a flagship program founded by Sam Tsemberis himself, residents are served by an “interdisciplinary team of professionals that includes social workers, nurses, psychiatrists, and vocational and substance abuse counselors who are available to assist consumers 7 days a week 24 hours a day.” However, despite this massive intervention, the Pathways program shows no reduction in substance abuse or psychiatric symptoms over time – in fact, those conditions often worsened.
This basic finding is confirmed by a range of studies showing that residents of Housing First programs show no improvement regarding addiction and mental illness. They are housed but broken, wracked by the cruelest psychoses, compulsions, and torments – all under the guise of medical care.
Los Angeles’s “Housing First” produces homes, but fails to address the problems of the once-homeless.
A Housing First experiment in Ottawa, Canada, illustrates this paradoxical outcome in stark terms. Researchers divided the study into two populations: an “intervention” group that was provided Housing First and access to primary care, medically assisted treatment, social workers, and on-demand services; and a non-intervention “control” group that was not provided housing or services – they were simply left on the streets. To the shock of the researchers, after 24 months the non-intervention control group reported better results regarding substance abuse, mental health, quality of life, family relations, and mortality than the Housing First group. In other words, doing nothing resulted in superior human outcomes than providing Housing First with wraparound services.
One explanation may be that Housing First programs are deliberately not oriented toward recovery, rehabilitation, and renewal. They operate on the “harm reduction” model, which allows residents to continue using drugs such as alcohol, heroin, and methamphetamine, and does not require mental health treatment as a condition of residency. In theory, this permissive policy would help “reduce harm” to the individual; in practice, however, it may create a community-level effect that makes it hard for any individual to find recovery. Here is the basic chain of events: Homeless individuals with substance abuse and psychiatric disorders are placed together in a residential facility where they are allowed to continue the way of life they had on the streets. Despite the availability of services, there is no incentive to use those services and no disincentive to the problematic behavior associated with street homelessness. Consequently, widespread addiction often becomes the norm within Housing First programs.
Preferring Homelessness
This chain of events is not just a thought experiment. In Birmingham, Ala., researchers inadvertently created this exact problem when they put participants of two different programs – one “recovery” program and one “harm reduction” program – in the same apartment complex. Immediately after beginning the experiment, the recovery group “began abandoning the provided housing, complaining that their proximity to persons not required to remain abstinent (i.e., the other trial group) was detrimental to their recovery. They claimed that they preferred to return to homelessness rather than live near drug users.” The researchers quickly stopped and reorganized the trial, writing that “this unexpected reaction shows one possible risk to housing persons with active addiction.”
Still, Housing First advocates insist that their policy is working. When reached for comment, Tsemberis insisted that the Washington Post headline declaring that he had “solved homelessness” is true. “The most effective way to end homelessness for people with mental health and addiction is to provide housing and wraparound support,” Tsemberis said. He points towards rates of “housing stability” as the key metric, while conceding that Housing First does not provide “a cure for mental illness and addiction.” This is a suggestion that policymakers have “solved homelessness” simply by bringing people indoors, no matter their addictions, mental illnesses, and human torments.
Advocates portray Housing First as a science that transcends politics. The policy was first adopted by the George W. Bush administration and has gained support from Republicans and Democrats alike. As the Washington Post observed, it is “a model so simple children could grasp it, so cost-effective fiscal hawks loved it, so socially progressive liberals praised it.
However, the real-world evidence from cities such as Los Angeles challenges this narrative. If Housing First has demonstrated anything, it is this: It provides a stable residential environment for the homeless to live out their pathologies, subsidized by the public and administered by the social-scientific sector. It does, not however, address addiction, mental illness and other factors that limit human potential and lead to homelessness.
A defensive Garcetti: “Nobody embraces only housing. It’s got to be housing with services together.”
In Los Angeles, despite the insistence that Housing First is the answer, some uncertainty is creeping in. Mayor Garcetti is now on the defensive, as homelessness in Los Angeles continues to increase despite billions in spending. After the federal government released a study questioning the premises of Housing First, Garcetti backed away from the unidimensional approach, telling reporters with irritation in his voice: “Sometimes people parody Housing First as ‘only housing.’ Nobody embraces only housing. It’s got to be housing with services together.”
In more bad news for public officials and supporters of Housing First, there is an emerging body of evidence that calls into question the “cost savings” of the program. A recent study in Massachusetts shows that Housing First does not reduce rehospitalization and service utilization, while another study in Chicago suggests that Housing First might increase overall costs. Furthermore, researchers have concluded that the purported cost savings in earlier Housing First studies would not apply to the 82% of the homeless population that is not chronically homeless.
Ron Galperin: The Los Angeles controller has found the city’s housing program to be riddled with high costs and delays.
In Los Angeles, this could spell disaster. In the most optimistic scenario laid out by the controller’s office, the city will build 5,873 supportive housing units at an initial cost of $1.2 billion, plus an estimated $88 million in annual service costs associated with the Housing First model. The recipients of this housing will not meaningfully improve their lives in terms of addiction, mental illness, and spiritual well-being — and there will still be 60,000 people on the streets across Los Angeles County. In other words, even under its own theoretical assumptions, Proposition HHH is doomed to fail.
The City of Los Angeles did not return a request for comment.
The potential silver living might be that a reconsideration of the Housing First approach could lead to a wider reckoning for policymakers and political leaders. At the end of the Housing First experiment in Los Angeles, the city will be responsible for thousands of wards of the state with little hope for recovery, as well as tens of thousands of campers in its public spaces. A few curious citizens will read through the academic literature and find a vast discrepancy between the ideological promises of Housing First and its real-world outcomes. They might then conclude that proponents should have known better.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/29/2021 – 23:10 - "We've Seen Some Deaths" – StanChart Scrambles To Find Oxygen For COVID-Stricken Staffers In India
“We’ve Seen Some Deaths” – StanChart Scrambles To Find Oxygen For COVID-Stricken Staffers In India
If the last year has taught us anything, it’s that dealmaking doesn’t come to a stop just because of a once-in-a-century global pandemic. And although some have written the obituary for the SPAC boom, there’s clearly still enough dealmaking activity happening in India to warrant investment banks pushing ahead even as the second wave of the country’s COVID-19 pandemic leads to unprecedented devastation.
And as banks work to ensure their employees can grind on regardless of the circumstances, Bloomberg reported that StanChart is attempting to buy medical grade oxygen for workers in its Indian offices who have become stricken with COVID-19.
Chief Financial Officer Andy Halford says the London-based bank is “actively” attempting to find oxygen concentrators with hundreds of the company’s 20K-plus staff based in India infected.
“I think we have got 800 cases currently of Covid and I think in total we have had some deaths among our employees in India to date,” Halford said in a phone interview after the bank published first-quarter earnings.
“We are actively out there seeing what we can do make vaccine more available, and particularly offer more locations where staff can get it,” he said. However, he added the bank was reluctant to use “connections that would be inappropriate.”
Standard Chartered is one of the biggest international banks operating in India. As well as providing banking and wealth management services in the country it also operates major back-office hubs in Bangalore and Chennai.
StanChart CEO Bill Winters said that in reaction to the crisis, the bank is looking to transfer work away from India to service centers in Kuala Lumpur, Tianjian and Warsaw to help support employees within the country. “We are looking carefully at how we can rebalance loads,” Winters reportedly told the bank’s analysts on Thursday.
“We have material case counts amongst our population, both in our services center and in the bank itself, consistent with what we are seeing across the country,” Winters said. “We’ve kept most of our branches open, banks are considered essential services, so we have had a disproportionate share of the cases in the branches’ staff, very unfortunately.”
While most of the bank’s staffers are working from home, especially in hard-hit cities like Bangalore and Chennai, where the bank has thousands of employees, some 10% of front-office personnel are still working in the office at least part time.
Their efforts helped the bank post an 18% jump in Q1 pre-tax profit as it cited the economic “recovery” seen in many of its key international markets (including India) as COVID-19 restrictions were loosened. To be sure, some of the bank’s strong quarterly performance was due to the bank dedicating less cash to offset feared loan losses, but trading, dealmaking and particularly strong performance in the bank’s wealth management business also contributed to the jump in profits.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/29/2021 – 22:50 - "Election Panic" Coming In 2022, Martin Armstrong Warns "It's Going To Turn Violent"
“Election Panic” Coming In 2022, Martin Armstrong Warns “It’s Going To Turn Violent”
Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,
According to a recent poll, 51% of Americans think Joe Biden cheated to get into the White House. The breakdown is 74% Republicans and an astounding 30% Democrats think cheating played at least a part of the 2020 Election outcome. In Arizona, the 2020 Election ballots are finally being audited as court battles to stop it continue. Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong is predicting an election “panic in 2022.”
Armstrong explains, “It means extremely high volatility…”
” Despite whatever they want to say, there is a large proportion of the population that do not believe the election. Polls are saying it’s at 51%, but it’s probably close to 60% or 70%. You are also seeing that 60% of Americans want a third party, and you are talking about Democrats and Republicans…
I think because we have such a high number of people who do not trust the election results, I don’t think they are going to be able to get away with rigging the elections again. It’s going to turn into violence. There is no question about that.”
Armstrong also sees Biden Administration tax plans on things like capital gains causing problems in the not-too-distant future. Armstrong says,
“If they raise capital gains, I don’t care if you are Republican or Democrat, you are going to have to sell. Your accountant is going to say if you don’t sell, you going to pay twice or three times as much in taxes next year. So, they can create a serious, serious collapse in the world economy. This is in addition to all this Covid nonsense that they have created.”
Armstrong has been saying for months that deflation would be the overarching theme in the economy. Is that going to continue or has there been a change? Armstrong says, “Deflation is now over…”
” People have to understand. It has nothing to do with the supply of money. . . . If you don’t see a bright rosy future, what do you do? You save your money. . . . One of the number one selling objects in Europe is a safe. People are storing cash.
Biden was the straw that broke the camel’s back. People are now seeing that things are going to cost more in the future than they do today. They have also created shortages because of these lockdowns. The inflation is just beginning to start now. It’s based on shortages, and it will continue going into about 2024.”
The bottom line on the cause of inflation, according to Armstrong, is “a loss of confidence in government.”
Armstrong also predicts,
“We are looking at the prospect of a serious war between 2025 and 2027. All this is completely because of this great reset nonsense. They have been using the Corona Virus as an excuse to try and shut down the economy. If you look at rents in New York City, they are in a freefall. Real estate is going crazy outside of the urban centers. In Florida, what was a $500,000 house last year is now more than $1 million.”
On Trump, Armstrong says, “I don’t see him returning to office before 2024.”
But, if massive ballot fraud is proven with the Arizona audit going on right now, Armstrong predicts, “The state legislature can recall a Senator” who won by election rigging.
Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One in this in-depth interview (60 mins. in length) with Martin Armstrong of ArmstrongEconomics.com. (What is written above is a very small sample of the actual interview.)
* * *
To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here
Martin Armstrong also told me there are a number of events that could cause the stock market to sell-off quickly and plunge deeply. So, stay on guard, and stay hedged and protected for unforeseen developments. There is some free information, analysis and articles on ArmstrongEconomics.com. To get a copy of Armstrong’s latest book “The Cycle of War and the Coronavirus,” click here. There is also a PDF version of “The Cycle of War and the Coronavirus” you can get by clicking here.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/29/2021 – 22:30 - White House Says Afghanistan Troop Drawdown Has Officially Begun
White House Says Afghanistan Troop Drawdown Has Officially Begun
Following the earlier this month Biden-ordered full troop exit from Afghanistan slated to be completed by Sept.11 of this year, the White House on Thursday announced the military withdrawal has now officially begun.
While traveling aboard Air Force One, the deputy White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed to reporters that “A drawdown is underway,” but also added the caveat that, “While these actions will initially result in increased forces levels, we remain committed to having all of US military personnel out of Afghanistan by September 11, 2020.”
Via Reuters “The President’s intent is clear, the US military departure from Afghanistan will not be rushed.… It will be delivered and conducted in a safe and responsible manner that ensures the protection of our forces,” Jean-Pierre explained.
Previously Pentagon officials have described “increased forces levels” as constituting the security and personnel required to oversee a safe logistical exit from the country that includes a vast amount of military equipment and defense facilities that have accumulated over the course of the two-decade long war and occupation.
CNN details that “Fewer than 100 troops, along with military equipment, have been moved largely by aircraft to execute President Joe Biden’s order to begin the withdrawal process no later than May 1, according to several US defense officials.”
“There have been about 2,500 US troops in Afghanistan that are openly acknowledged, plus several hundred additional special operations forces. All of them will depart under the President’s orders,” the report adds. NATO at the same time is signaling a full draw down within months.
It’s likely these slew of new statements Thursday are intended to seek to assure the Taliban that an exit is indeed in motion. But Saturday could see a proverbial all hell breaking loose given May 1 is the deadline (from the Taliban’s perspective) based on the prior Trump admin-Taliban deal that was inked in February 2020.
“There is remarkable consensus within the region and the international community against a military takeover by the Taliban.”
I’m guessing the Taliban doesn’t care. https://t.co/hKUEd1qUiK
— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) April 28, 2021
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The Taliban has vowed to strike at any American targets should troops remain in the country after that date. US leaders are now worried that the Taliban could hit hard just as the Pentagon is in the midst of its draw down; and in the medium to longer term it’s expected that entire major cities could once again fall to the hardline Islamic fundamentalist group.
To protect the exiting US troops, over the past weeks the US has sent additional B-52 bombers to the region to safeguard the pullout, along with the presence in regional waters of the USS Eisenhower aircraft carrier.
Many pundits ultimately see this whole spectacle as just a recipe for continuing to stay far past Biden’s anticipated Sept.11 exit, given there’s a seeming endless number of ways this could go wrong. So it’s worth asking: will we still be seeing similar headlines of “drawdown has begun” a few years from now as the prior pattern has shown when it comes to America’s longest ever running war?
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/29/2021 – 22:10 - Biden Erased Decades Of Historic Crimes In His Speech To Congress
Biden Erased Decades Of Historic Crimes In His Speech To Congress
Authored by Glenn Greenwald and Siraj Hashmi via Outside Voices Substack, (emphasis ours)
Biden’s claim that the Capitol Riot was the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” is ahistorical garbage…
As President Biden wrapped up a 65-minute joint address to Congress to mark his administration’s first 100 days, what was shared in the lead-up to his speech sowed discord over the entire affair:
Biden to refer to Jan 6 insurrection as “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” in speech tonight. pic.twitter.com/rW6L2ybDRQ
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) April 28, 2021
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Sure enough, the President delivered on this. Opening his address, Biden stated, “I took the oath of office — lifted my hand off our family Bible — and inherited a nation in crisis. The worst pandemic in a century. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
Yes, the January 6th siege on the U.S. Capitol building, often alluded to as an “insurrection,” was an embarrassing day for our country. But to suggest that it was “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” is disingenuous at best. At worst, it’s a malicious attempt to whitewash the history of attacks carried out both by and on the government that have had much more catastrophic results.
Apart from the September 11th terrorist attacks that targeted the country’s financial system, Al Qaeda terrorists attacked the defenders of our democracy when a hijacked American Airlines flight 77 flew into the Pentagon. Were it not for the heroes who resisted against the hijackers of United flight 93, Al Qaeda’s attempt to fly a commercial airline into the White House or U.S. Capitol building would have come to fruition. Despite being a horrific tragedy, 9/11 has been dismissed by some as being explicitly a “foreign attack,” not one from within.
So, let’s explore attacks on our democracy from within.
Following 9/11, the Bush administration, in conjunction with Congress, expedited the passage of the Patriot Act, a wide-sweeping national security law that infringed on the civil liberties of every American in the name of fighting terror. The Fourth Amendment became a relic of the past as the government’s power to surveil and spy on its own citizens reached its peak. Individuals who shared names with persons of interest or suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens, landed on government no-fly lists, restricting their right to freely move about the country for dubious reasons and with no due process or recourse. And even worse, many had their right to due process eviscerated when they were detained by the newly-created Department of Homeland Security and found themselves at Guantanamo Bay without even being charged with a crime.
Yet this is not the first time that American citizens, or even permanent residents for that matter, had their rights infringed upon by the government.
As the FBI was formed in the early 20th century, Americans whose ideologies were at odds with the government’s interests were often targeted by the agency’s longest-serving director, J. Edgar Hoover. In the eyes of the FBI Director, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a suspected communist given his ties to Stanley Levison, whose suspected pro-communist activities were monitored by the FBI in the 1950s. Although Dr. King has been viewed as one of the most consequential leaders in American history due to his role in the civil rights movement, at the time, Hoover and many in the FBI viewed him as a threat to our democracy, ushering in communism under the guise of “civil rights.” The FBI infamously blackmailed Dr. King by sending him a letter advocating he commit suicide.
J Edgar Hoover (1895 -1972) points his finger while testifying before the House on Un-American Activities Committee, Washington, DC. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
The Red Scare was so severe in the United States that the government actively sought to chip away at Americans’ First Amendment rights to prevent the spread of such ideas. And through the Lavender Scare in the early 1950s, thousands of people were forced out of government service for simply for being suspected of being homosexual.
When the United States entered the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Act of 1917 into law, which then gave way to the Sedition Act of 1918. These two laws worked in conjunction to strip away the First Amendment rights of every American and demand undying fealty towards the U.S. government. Expressing even the slightest bit of criticism of the U.S. or associating with groups like the Communist Party could result in, at the very least, a government wiretap, and, at worst, a hefty prison sentence and possible execution. In the same token that President Franklin Roosevelt interned approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II in fear that they might side with the Japanese Empire, the Espionage and Sedition Acts under President Wilson explicitly targeted German-born American residents during World War I, with over 2,000 arrested and sent to internment camps.
While the FBI has had its fair share of attacking our democracy, its intelligence counterpart, the CIA, has interfered in the affairs of other countries countless times. As Americans decry countries like Russia, China, and Iran for interfering in our electoral process, the CIA has had a hand in interfering in the affairs of well over a dozen nations. For as many autocratic regimes as the CIA tried to topple in places like Cuba, Indonesia, and the Dominican Republic, the CIA had a hand in the overthrow of democracies as well in countries like Iran, Chile, and Guatemala.
For decades, J. Edgar Hoover — the notorious FBI Director after whom the law enforcement’s DC headquarters continues to be named — assaulted democracy in every way imaginable. Hoover kept dossiers on political leaders to enforce his will over them. His agency tried to blackmail Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. into suicide with threats to expose alleged adultery. FBI agents routinely infiltrated anti-war and civil rights groups as part of its COINTELPRO program and other similar domestic spying activities. And the NSA notoriously spied on millions of American citizens without warrants.
There is a strong argument to be made that the CIA is responsible for interfering in American democracy, too.
The first impeachment of President Donald Trump in 2019 occurred when a whistleblower within the CIA filed a complaint after Trump had a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump asked his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate his political rival, Joe Biden, in exchange for $400 million in military aid.
But it didn’t end there.
The story of the Russian Bounty program on U.S. troops in Afghanistan that broke publicly in the summer of 2020 made a significant impact in tipping the scales during the 2020 presidential election. The CIA produced the initial intelligence assessment in 2019, which later broke publicly in the summer of 2020, further cementing the perception that Trump was in the pocket of Russian President Vladimir Putin––a claim that was exacerbated when then-President Trump dismissed the allegations outright, calling it “fake news.” However, in April 2021, Trump would be vindicated as the U.S. government revealed that the Intelligence Community had “low to moderate confidence” in the intelligence assessment. In other words, there was little evidence to prove that it was real.
On top of these government abuses that took place on a wide scale impacting every American, there was a long-drawn-out period since the Civil War that impacted millions of Americans that has had consequences that last to this day: Jim Crow.
Following the Civil War and Reconstruction, the implementation of Jim Crow laws in Southern former slave states not only segregated black people from the white population, but also barred them from fully participating in society as equal members. Through policies like poll taxes, literacy tests, and increased residency requirements, black people had their right to vote stripped away, essentially removing them from the political process, keeping them further ostracized from society. It was authoritarianism in the most sinister manner, targeting a racial group that was perceived to be subhuman to their white counterpart, all in the name of protecting democracy.
A young boy drinks from the ‘colored’ water fountain on the county courthouse lawn, Hallifax, North Carolina, April 1938. (Photo by John Vacha/FPG/Getty Images)
Despite all these examples in which our democracy––and the democracies of other nations––were attacked with our government playing the central antagonist, there were a half dozen times where the sitting U.S. president and, by extension, our democracy were attacked from within. Since the Civil War, four U.S. presidents were assassinated (Lincoln in 1865, Garfield in 1881, McKinley in 1901, and Kennedy in 1963) and two presidents were injured in assassination attempts (Roosevelt in 1912 and Reagan in 1981). These were six attacks on the duly elected leaders of the people of the United States. Not only does changing the leadership alter the trajectory for a nation, but due to its status, it has lasting effects for the rest of the world.
If President Biden is to suggest that the siege on Capitol Hill on January 6th was “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War,” then we should demand that our leaders be honest about what does and does not constitute an “attack on our democracy.” Attacks on our democracy aren’t just reserved for storming the U.S. Capitol and targeting U.S. lawmakers with historically low approval ratings. If that’s the case, that a certain set of rules only applies to the political elite and not the people, then it’s safe to say that we do not truly live in a democracy.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/29/2021 – 21:50 - China PMIs Disappoint Again As Production, New Orders Slide
China PMIs Disappoint Again As Production, New Orders Slide
For the 4th time in the last 5 months, China’s Services and Manufacturing PMIs missed expectations in April.
China’s official manufacturing purchasing managers index declined to 51.1 in April from 51.9 in March (and well below the 51.8 expectations), according to data released Friday by the National Bureau of Statistics.
The non-manufacturing gauge, which measures activity in the construction and services sectors, dropped to 54.9 (from 56.3 in March), compared to 56.1 projected by economists.
While the trend is not the friend of the Chinese economy, we do note that both PMIs remain above the 50-level demarcating an expansion in output. The reading has now remained in expansionary territory for 14 straight months.
The subindex measuring production fell to 52.2 from 53.9 in March. Total new orders also dropped to 52 from 53.6 in March, and new export orders fell from 51.2 in March to 50.4, but stayed in the expansionary territory for two straight months.
Surveyed manufacturers said chip shortages, international logistics jams and rising delivery costs have weighed on their operations, the statistics bureau said.
The non-manufacturing PMI again outpaced manufacturing, supporting the view of the services sector is catching up and manufacturing activity peaking.
The one potential silver lining, looking ahead, is that China’s economy could be about to get a boost as Deutsche Bank notes that from June onward, the credit impulse -on a YoY basis – should mechanically rebound thanks to base effects. More importantly, as the chart below shows, higher frequency leading indicators are also consistent with a recovery in the credit impulse.
Indeed, recent easing of financial conditions suggests the credit impulse should converge towardsa zero. In turn, this would be consistent with stable PMI manufacturing new orders. And even more notably, for those paying attention to supply chain disruptions and inflationary impulses worldwide, a stabilization of China’s manufacturing is key given that it tends to lead global manufacturing and is a key driver of global inflation expectations.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/29/2021 – 21:38 - Paris Mayor Backs Military Chiefs Who Threatened To Seize Control From Macron Over Inaction On Radical Islam
Paris Mayor Backs Military Chiefs Who Threatened To Seize Control From Macron Over Inaction On Radical Islam
A Paris Mayor who was raised in a devout Muslim household by Algerian immigrant parents threw her support behind a controversial letter by current and former military chiefs who said that if nothing is done about the “laxist” policies on radical Islam, it would require “the intervention of our comrades on active duty in a perilous mission of protection of our civilizational values.”
Rachida Dati, mayor of Paris’ 7th arrondissement, said that the concerns expressed in the letter to Emmanuel Macron were valid. “What is written in this letter is a reality,” Mayor Rachida Dati of Paris’ 7th arrondissement told France Info radio. “When you have a country plagued by urban guerrilla warfare, when you have a constant and high terrorist threat, when you have increasingly glaring and flagrant inequalities … we cannot say that the country is doing well.“
“The hour is grave, France is in peril,” reads the letter, adding that failure to act against the “suburban hordes” would lead to “civil war” and deaths “in the thousands.”
The letter was signed by hundreds of retired soldiers, including 20 retired generals, as well as several active duty members of the military – 18 of whom are to be fired, the country’s armed forces chief confirmed on Thursday, according to the Daily Mail.
Army Corps General Christian Piquemal, 80, was the lead signatory of the 20 retired generals who backed the letter. He is pictured at an anti-Islam rally in Calais in 2016. “The police have become a target for terrorists” said Dati, 55, who served as justice minister under Nicolas Sarkozy from 2007 to 2009. Her comments follow the fatal stabbing last week of a policewoman in the southwest Paris neighborhood of Rambouillet. The suspect, a Tunisian national, had been watching jihadist propaganda videos prior to the attack.
“I am afraid that the police will break down one day,” Dati continued, adding “And if they crack, we go well beyond the disintegration of society.”
Dati’s comments come as France’s Chief of Defense, François Lecointre, called the letter “absolutely revolting,” adding of the active-duty signatories: “I hope that their automatic retirement will be decided.”
“This is an exceptional procedure, which we are launching immediately at the request of the Minister of the Armed Forces,” he added. “These general officers will each pass before a higher military council. At the end of this procedure, it is the President of the Republic who signs a decree expelling them.”
President Macron’s government strongly condemned the letter, which was published on the 60th anniversary of a failed coup d’etat by generals opposed to France granting independence to Algeria, its former North African colony.
Prime Minister Jean Castex said the letter by military figures was ‘against all of our republican principles, of honour and the duty of the army’.
And Florence Parly, the Defence Minister, said: ‘This is unacceptable. There will be consequences, naturally.
The soldiers behind the letter were all said to be anti-immigration activists with racist views and strong ties to the far-Right Rassemblement National (National Rally).
The lead signatory was Christian Piquemal, 80, who commanded the French Foreign Legion before losing his privileges as a retired officer after being arrested while taking part in an anti-Islam demonstration in 2016. –Daily Mail
Supporting the signatories was Marine Le Pen, the Rassemblement National leader, writing in response to the letter: “I invite you to join us in taking part in the coming battle, which is the battle of France.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/29/2021 – 21:30 - China Population Still Growing… For Now
China Population Still Growing… For Now
Earlier this week, we highlighted an interesting article in the FT this according to which China’s population was set to decline for the first time since the 1950s when the national census data is released soon. However, in response to the report which prompted widespread speculation over implications of this demographic inflection point, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) best known for faking every possible piece of data, released a statement this morning saying that the population continued to grow in 2020 ahead of the official release. Watch for 2016-19 revisions though.
So although a decline was avoided, the NBS recently said that China’s demographics “has reached an important turning point”.
Here Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid reminds us that using UN population forecasts, China’s population is predicted to peak in 2031 at around 2% above 2019 levels, so expectations were already that the population was plateauing. With normal margins of error the peak could come notably before (maybe even now) or indeed after. For the record, on the UN’s data, India’s population is expected to climb above China’s in 2027 – to be the largest in the world – and will be 17% above by 2050.
More interestingly, the working-age population peaked in China around 2015 (2013 using NBS data) having surged in the globalization era. In the forty years to 2015 this increased c.97% but is predicted to fall c.-12% over the next 20 years.
As Reid concludes, we can only speculate whether this changes the global inflation outlook. Over the last few decades the surge of global workers and the integration of originally very cheap Chinese labor into the global system has had a very depressing impact on inflation. But as workers become relatively more scarce across the world, including the now much higher-paid Chinese, not to mention with countless supply chains permanently frayed or broken, will there be more pricing power for labor in the years ahead?
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/29/2021 – 21:10 - "Historic Moment!" – China Successfully Launches First Module Of Next-Gen Space Station
“Historic Moment!” – China Successfully Launches First Module Of Next-Gen Space Station
China successfully launched a key module of a new space station Thursday, a mission that shows the country’s ‘space dream’ of dominating low Earth orbit is quickly becoming a reality.
China National Space Administration announced Thursday morning that the Long March-5B Y2 rocket lifted off in the southern province of Hainan with the core capsule of the new Tiangong space station.
Historic moment! Just now #China launched the Long March-5B Y2 #rocket, sending the #Tianhe天和 core module of China’s #SpaceStation into the #space. Tianhe module is China’s first space station core module and the largest spacecraft China has ever made. pic.twitter.com/ey9GYCKOao
— Ambassador Deng Xijun (@China2ASEAN) April 29, 2021
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The next-generation space station will take 18 months to build in low Earth orbit, with a completion year sometime in 2022. The space station is designed as a scientific research outpost for China through the end of the decade since it has been excluded from using the International Space Station (ISS).
When completed, the Tiangong space station will be approximately one-fifth the mass of the ISS and weigh about 90-metric-ton in the shape of a T. The size will be comparable to the Russian Mir space station, which operated from 1986 to 2000.
“We did not intend to compete with the ISS in terms of scale,” Gu Yidong, chief scientist of the China Manned Space program, was quoted by Scientific American as saying.
The ISS recently celebrated its 20 years in operation with an end of lifespan by 2030. Already, the space station has shown signs of wear and tear amid a series of malfunctions, including air leaks.
In early April, Russia said it would pull out of the ISS in 2025 and build a space station by 2030 if Russian President Vladimir Putin provides funding. If not, Russia could soon find itself working with the Chinese in space.
President Xi Jinping has touted China’s space dream as he was cited by state media as saying it’s the path to “national rejuvenation.”
China has recent made no secret of its space ambitions. From the moon to Mars, the country has recently landed multiple spacecraft on these extraterrestrial bodies.
Meanwhile, the US is doing the same as a space race between both countries heats up.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/29/2021 – 20:50 - America Has A Problem With Poorly-Trained Police Officers, Not "Systemic Racism"
America Has A Problem With Poorly-Trained Police Officers, Not “Systemic Racism”
Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
In what just might be the most misguided attempt at ‘utopian’ living ever conceived, progressive Democrats continue to demand the defunding and disbanding of police forces in cities around the country. Yet, like a doctor that has made the wrong diagnosis on a patient, such a radical idea will not bring peace and security to America’s ailing neighborhoods. In fact, it will make them virtually unlivable.
The United States desperately needs a national debate on the root causes of police violence, which the political left has prematurely and wrongly attributed to “systemic racism.” Missing from the bigger picture are questions pertaining to economic hardship, broken homes, drug abuse and street gangs – and perhaps most importantly of all, poorly trained police – as just a few of the contributing factors that have placed law enforcement between a rock and a hard place.
For every Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged in the murder of George Floyd, there are dozens of cops like Nicholas Reardon, who was forced to make a split-second decision after a Black girl, Ma’Khia Bryant, 16, attempted to stab another teenager. Reardon, who shot and killed Bryant, has found himself something of a celebrity not for potentially saving the life of a young girl, but for being the fresh face of “white supremacy.”
NBA star Lebron James led the charge against the cop when he unconscionably tweeted to his 46.5 followers a photograph of Nicholas Reardon with the caption, “YOU’RE NEXT, beside the emoji of an hourglass. Some people may consider that a threat.
Facts do not matter. Only the narrative matters. pic.twitter.com/7yAp5X42Uu
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) April 22, 2021
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In another incident, Kim Potter, a 26-year department veteran of the Minneapolis police force, shot and killed Daunte Wright, 20, just blocks away from where George Floyd was killed. The similarities don’t end there. As was the case with Floyd, Daunte Wright, for whom the police had an outstanding warrant, struggled with the police and even managed to make it back inside of his vehicle before being fatally shot. Potter, who appears to have mistaken her gun for a taser in the chaos that ensued, has been charged with second-degree manslaughter in Wright’s death.
In yet another highly publicized incident, Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old Latino boy, was shot and killed last month by Chicago Police Department officer Eric Stillman following a foot chase down a dark alley. Footage from Stillman’s body cam appears to show Toledo dropping a handgun moments before turning and raising his hands, immediately prior to being killed.
Is it fair to blame the phantom of “systemic racism” for these and other killings that occasionally occur between civilians and the police? That would seem ludicrous, yet that is how these tragic incidences are being framed in the media and by civil rights groups, like Black Lives Matter, who continue to bang the drum for disbanding the police. Would it not make more sense to fight not only for better training in the police ranks, but for getting the word out to the youth that resisting arrest is not the best strategy when confronted by a law enforcement officer? Yet such a rational plan of action would deprive the Democrats of the political points they receive every time a member of the minority gets killed during a run-in with the police. At the same time, it would dry up corporate donations to BLM, which has helped its co-founder and self-described Marxist, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, purchase four luxury homes in the United States alone.
Getting back to the question of police training, why didn’t Nicholas Reardon opt to shoot a warning shot instead, or perhaps “aim low,” as a means to prevent Miss Bryant from stabbing that young lady? And why was Officer Stillman in pursuit of an individual down a dark alley in the West End of Chicago without any backup? And finally, how in the world was it possible for Kim Potter, a trained police officer, to confuse a weighty Glock-22 with a lightweight Taser? Brandon Tatum, a Black American political commentator and former police officer, offered as an alternative to the ‘systemic racism’ theory, the possibility that Potter was part of an affirmative action hiring program.
“They are hiring people to meet quotas,” Tatum commented on his YouTube channel, “and they’re not hiring the best people for the job.”
That is one possible theory to explain police violence that the mainstream media will not be entertaining anytime soon. The question is “why”? Why is the media, just like it is with so many major corporations, hyping and funding the idea of systemic racism as the source of police violence when there are many other far more plausible explanations? While the ultimate motivation for assuming such a dangerous position may never be known, it is clear that anyone who challenges the ‘racist’ narrative risks attracting the wrath of the woke brigade. This would include, perhaps more than anyone, the academics.
In 2019, psychologists Joseph Cesario of Michigan State and David Johnson of the University of Maryland examined 917 fatal police shootings of civilians from 2015 to ask a simple question: did the race of the police officer or the civilian play any role in those tragic events? The answer: no they didn’t. Cesario and Johnson concluded there was “no significant evidence of antiblack disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police.” Their findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed journal. Would it surprise anyone to know that “citizen behavior,” i.e. resisting arrest, is the greatest determinate of police behavior?
Perhaps equally unsurprising is the establishment came down hard on the two number crunchers, especially after their research was cited by author Heather MacDonald in an article for the Wall Street Journal entitled, The Myth of Systemic Police Racism.
“It set off a firestorm at Michigan State,” MacDonald wrote. “The university’s Graduate Employees Union pressured the MSU press office to apologize for the “harm it caused” by mentioning my article in a newsletter. The union targeted physicist Steve Hsu, who had approved funding for Mr. Cesario’s research. MSU sacked Mr. Hsu from his administrative position. PNAS editorialized that Messrs. Cesario and Johnson had “poorly framed” their article—the one that got through the journal’s three levels of editorial and peer review.”
As par for course, various student groups took up petitions to have Hsu fired, while the school profusely apologized. In the end, the mob declared yet another victory as Hsu finally stepped down from his position.
The controversial paper’s co-author Cesario told WSJ that he feared the activists would continue “pushing for a narrowing of what kinds of topics people can talk about, or what kinds of conclusions people can come to.”
It appears that Mr. Cesario’s fears have materialized faster than he could have realized as a wall of censorship has been constructed around the world of academia, the one place where the truth on “systemic racism” was being exposed for the lie it is. Now that there is no one left to tell the people, aside from a handful of rigidly regulated and censored truth-seeking publications, America can expect a future of artificially induced racial tensions as a number of good cops are forced to take the blame for a “systemic racism” that only exists on the pages of the mainstream media.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/29/2021 – 20:30 - Manhattan Retail Rents Continue Slide As Recovery Narrative Falls Apart
Manhattan Retail Rents Continue Slide As Recovery Narrative Falls Apart
Manhattan’s “prime” retail real estate market remained under pressure in the first quarter even as COVID-19 vaccines became widely available and public health restrictions eased.
According to Bloomberg, citing a report by Cushman & Wakefield, SoHo, a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan known for designer boutiques, fancy chain stores, and high-end art galleries, experienced the worst slump in retail rents in the first quarter, down 20% from a year earlier to $279 a square foot. The latest surge in long-term leases barely put a dent in overhead supply that has been increasing since the beginning of the pandemic. About 30% of SoHo’s retail space is dormant and available for rent.
We noted in a piece titled “Manhattan Retail Rents Plunge In “Prime” Shopping Areas” that retail rents slid in the fourth quarter of last year.
Besides SoHo, Herald Square and Madison Ave.’s retail rents tumbled 19% over the same quarter last year. Madison Avenue had the most inventory available, with the availability rate at a whopping 40%.
Source: Bloomberg “The bad news is that first quarter of 2021 is showing the true impact of the pandemic on the market,” Steven Soutendijk, an executive managing director at Cushman & Wakefield, told Bloomberg.
Soutendijk continued: “The good news is that landlords are responding and adjusting rents even further downwards to spur leasing.”
Mayor DeBlasio’s solution to mitigate the virus spread has doomed the city. A speedy economic recovery is now questionable.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani recently said DeBlasio has “ruined” the metro area through strict public health orders crushing businesses and liberal policies that have made the area more dangerous.
“Now he’s consistently doing horrible things and destroying my city,” Giuliani said. “He’s ruining it all, he’s doing it in a flash of an eye.”
To revive the city, DeBlasio will spend $30 million on a tourism campaign this summer to attract tourists.
“It’s critical that we deliver the message that New York City is open and welcoming visitors once again,” Fred Dixon, president and chief executive officer of NYC & Company, the city’s official tourism organization, told WSJ.
Tourism accounts for hundreds of thousands of jobs – for a sustainable recovery, there needs to be an influx of tourists to visit attractions, shop at retail shops, eat at restaurants, and stay in hotels.
An exodus of office workers, companies, and residents also adds to the city’s economic woes. Without the uptick in foot traffic on streets, the city should prepare for a new reality, one where its economic recovery lags the rest of the country.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/29/2021 – 20:10 - The Need To Regulate Big Tech – Part 1: Protecting The People From Pernicious Manipulation
The Need To Regulate Big Tech – Part 1: Protecting The People From Pernicious Manipulation
Authored by Bill Blain via MorningPorridge.com,
“Heaven is purpose and principle. Purgatory is paper and procedure. Hell is rules and regulation.”
We had a slew of spectacular Big Tech results this week, but has the time come to regulate them more closely to avoid increasingly monopolistic behaviour, and to protect the population from the pernicious effect of the manipulation of big data? It’s as much an argument about the role of the state as it is about the success of companies. There will be winners and losers.
As always there is lots going on in markets, but the run of superb Tech results has been truly spectacular. Many tech firms have successfully navigated the Pandemic, selling into bored WFH workers, and achieved staggering success. Let’s use the moment to ponder the difficult question of how should we value Tech, and should it be more thoroughly regulated?
To the upside, new value and economic growth is created from new ideas creating new demand and markets. Invention leads to innovation – which is why everyone is so over-excited about the swift adoption potential of AI, Virtual Reality, 3-D printing, Meatless meat, Robotics, autonomous systems from drones to cars and all the other wonderful things we read about in the new tech space. The companies trade on extraordinary multiples based on their perceived potential – and is often exaggerated.
In real reality, (as opposed to virtual), these ideas are often brilliant solutions in search of problems; they take time, effort, and travel many wrong paths on the road to monetisation. We see that repeatedly in the miserable negative profits generated by so many tech unicorns that promised so much. Some stuff works. Much doesn’t.
There is nothing wrong with the Tech adoption process. The massive personal rewards Tech entrepreneurs can make for themselves is a major reason why the West is so innovative. Long may it be encouraged.
On the downside, some Big Tech – most these most closely thriving off the back of the monetisation of data – have been massively profitable. Their success creates a completely different series of moral sentiment dilemmas, as Adam Smith may have put it.
Where do limits on Big Tech need to come?
It’s been said the goal of every entrepreneur is to become a monopoly and reap monopoly-like returns. The goal of legislators is to avoid it happening. Regulatory oversight of profits is not an attractive option for investors who’ve funded the entrepreneur on the basis they’ll get monopoly-like yields.
Google’s results earlier this week were spectacular. So spectacular they have raised fears for the prospect of further government/interventions to rein back on Big Tech money making machines. Google’s success (nobody calls it Alphabet) came on the back of the pandemic spurring up user numbers, web advertising, YouTube and the stock rose to a new record on a $50 bln stock buyback plan – what else would a tech giant find to do with its money, aside from buying Waymo’s driverless car tech and building more data centres?
Facebook posted a beat on earnings and $26 bln revenues on the back of a 30% rise in ad revenue, and an increase in the volume of ads. My Facebook pages are now 80% ads for leather desk mats, outdoor kitchens, light fittings, Scandinavian furniture, wine storage and all the other stuff She-who-is-Mrs-Blain and I have googled as we renovate the house. I barely use the thing any more. My kids don’t touch it. Facebook makes nearly $10 for every user from Ad revenue.
Amazon reports later today, and its looking like another massive winner on the back of boosted pandemic sales, the lack of high street competition due to lockdowns, its increasing dominance, and the fleet of Imperial Star Destroyers it’s planning to use to host drone deliveries…. (Ok.. but soon..)
Apple is different. It sells real stuff, and regular readers will know I’m an addict of its goods and services. Its results were stellar – double digit growth across the product range, revenues of $90 bln – half of which was iPhone sales, 42.5% margins and authorisation for a $90 bln stock buyback programme.
However, Apple is under the regulatory cosh for the way in which it’s using its massively powerful App Store gateway to gouge profits from App Developers – the Fortnite maker Epic Games takes Apple to court next week. Apple can do that because iOS and Mac is its own ecosystem/tech-habitat, and if you want access to its Bright-Shiny-Things you play by their rules.
The problem of Big Tech’s success is its sheer scale, and many firms have passed the innovation/inventive stage into the monetisation phase. That is when some of them will morph from moving society forward into a pure profit play as they seek monopoly status. They stop inventing stuff, and seek to make their stuff pay, becoming increasingly bureaucratic as they do so.
I read recently Matt Stoller of the American Liberties Project pointing out:
“What these firms are doing to get 20-30% returns is capturing market power, they are not creating wealth.”
Many politicians now agree. They see Facebook, Amazon, Google et al as de-facto monopolies reaping unwarrantable windfall profits while creating untold harm to consumers and other firms from anti-competitive business policies. Its a factor legislators around the globe are determined to address. (Especially if it makes them look strong to voters.)
The question is – how much should government intervene to regulate and licence big tech? The Libertarian right would say not at all. But Adam Smith would have recognised the dangers inherent in Big Tech’s control and use of big data. Information is a public good. Rather than allowing Big Tech to own and control it – should it be owned by the people and licenced by the state as a public good? That’s a question, btw, not a statement
Investors will say no – they want the returns. But these companies now utterly dominate their space. They are no longer inventive tech companies expanding the limits of innovation – now they are monopolies milking their data streams.
That’s why Apple’s new privacy controls are so interesting. This week they upgraded the operating system to stop Apps from tracking Apple User’s data. Google is also on board to kill the App tracking cookies. That’s terrifying news for Facebook which has been monetising that data to sell ads. The social media site is on the wires arguing its bad for smaller niche advertisers, and that its just Apple and Google looking to concentrate the data in their own hands.
There is any amount of economic literature to explain why monopolies are such a bad idea. Monopolies that exploit the information revealed by internet users about themselves are perhaps even worse – inserting themselves virus-like into their victims and driving their spending decisions. Its wider than just trying to sell us stuff our browsing history has suggested we might like to buy.
As the degree of polarisation in recent elections has shown, the rising problem of this modern age is that billions of voters think they have free will, but their every action and belief is now increasingly set according to the algorithms dictating what the read, see and buy. In the US, its been the subject of judicial hearings: Algorithms and Amplification: How Social Media Platforms Shape our Discourse and Our Minds.
Regulation is never a great solution, but maybe it is time for greater government action over the windfall profits being made by Big Tech behemoths? If Amazon is swamping the high-street because it runs cheaper – even it out by taxing them higher! The logic is simple: Amazon’s success puts high streets out of business and causes additional social welfare, medical and other costs from the workers and businesses it displaces. You can make similar arguments for any Big Tech monopoly…
Except, maybe Facebook. If I can think of any reason not to dump Facebook, I’ll be sure to let you know. Basically it’s just an advertising platform, and its primary advantage of targeted advertising to likely interested, motivate buyers, is about to get much weaker. Sell. There are plenty of other ways to advertise.
I have some further points to make re the need to regulate Tech, looking at it from a slightly different perspective of when Tech is Good or Bad for the environment and ecosystem (not just from the perspective of climate change), but I will save that up for Part 2… It will be about the pros, cons, and potential costs of launching Low Earth Orbit coms satellites, and will ask about the perceived public need vs public good!
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/29/2021 – 19:50 - Zarif-Gate Leak Causes Shake-Up In Iran's Presidential Office As FM Expresses 'Regret'
Zarif-Gate Leak Causes Shake-Up In Iran’s Presidential Office As FM Expresses ‘Regret’
This week’s ‘Zarif-Gate’ audio leak has caused a shake-up in Iran’s presidential office, reportedly leading to the resignation Hessameddin Ashena, head of the Strategic Studies Center (a think tank closely associated with the Iranian presidency), as he was present during the interview with Zarif. The top Iranian diplomat had essentially said it was the military leadership that sets policy.
“Hesamodin Ashena of the Center for Strategic Studies resigned over ‘the theft’ of the three-hour tape of Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif being interviewed at the CSS,” AFP reports Thursday. “Ashena, who held the post of Iranian deputy intelligence minister in the 2000s, has headed the center since 2013 and also serves as adviser to President Hassan Rouhani.”
But it’s not enough for Islamic hardliners representing the clerical and military establishment, who are now calling for Zarif to step down immediately, also given his remarks were taken as disparaging toward the late “national hero” Soleimani.
Iranian FM Javad Zarif, via AP The interview, which was reportedly captured months ago and was never meant to be made public, included Zarif speaking with surprising frankness and criticism toward the role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the Islamic Republic. He bluntly admitted, for example, that the powerful IRGC often overrides government decisions and that the late Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani’s actions often harmed diplomacy. Even Iranian newspapers described the leak as a major “scandal” which embarrassed Iran on the world stage at a moment of “progress” at the Vienna nuclear talks.
In his first public comments since the scandal, Zarif said in an Instagram post that he’s committed to “protecting the interests” of the country and Iranian people. He expressed regret, but stopped short of a direct apology:
“I am very sorry how a secret, theoretical discussion about the necessity of increasing cooperation between diplomacy and the field (the Guard) — in order for the next officials to use the valuable experiences of the last eight years –- became an internal conflict,” Zarif wrote.
“I did not censor myself, because this is a betrayal of the people,” he added.
“I have always been subject to the policies approved by the country and I have strongly defended them. But in expressing my expert opinion, I have considered seeking forgiveness, appeasement, and self-censorship as betrayal,” he said, essentially suggesting it was the leak itself that was a betrayal.
“Zarif also says that by assassinating [Soleimani] in Iraq, the United States delivered a major blow to Iran, more damaging than if it had wiped out an entire city in an attack.” https://t.co/J7tFMnspzg
— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) April 26, 2021
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While the widespread international coverage of the leaked tapes triggered a firestorm of debate within Iran which in typical fashion pitted the Islamic hardliners against ‘moderates’ (Zarif and Rouhani are widely seen within the “moderate” camp that seeks engagement with the West), it appears the Iranian top diplomat’s job is safe, for now.
There’s speculation that the leak was intended to sabotage Vienna talks, which is viewed by deep suspicion within the Iranian hardliner political camp – particularly represented in parliament and among the Shia clerical establishment.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/29/2021 – 19:30 - The Mass Media Will Never Regain The Public's Trust
The Mass Media Will Never Regain The Public’s Trust
Authored by Caitlyn Johnstone,
This year has marked the first time ever that trust in news media dropped below fifty percent in the United States, continuing a trend of decline that’s been ongoing for years.
Mass media punditry is divided on where to assign the blame for the plummet in public opinion of their work, with some blaming it on Russia and others blaming it on Donald Trump. Others, like a recent Forbes article titled “Restoring Public Trust In Technology And Media Is Infrastructure Investment” blame it on the internet. Still others, like a Washington Post article earlier this month titled “Bad news for journalists: The public doesn’t share our values” blame it on the people themselves.
The one thing they all seem to agree on is that it’s definitely not because the billionaire-controlled media are propaganda outlets which manipulate us constantly in conjunction with sociopathic government agencies to protect the oligarchic, imperialist status quo upon which the members of the billionaire class have built their respective kingdoms. It cannot possibly be because people sense that they are being lied to and are fed up with it.
And actually it doesn’t ultimately matter what mainstream pundits and reporters believe is the cause of the public’s growing disgust with them, because there’s nothing they can do to fix it anyway. The mass media will never regain the public’s trust.
They’ll never regain the public’s trust for a couple of reasons, the first of which is because they’ll never be able to become trustworthy. At no point will the mass media ever begin wowing the public with its journalistic integrity and causing people to re-evaluate their opinion of mainstream news reporters. At no point will people’s disdain for these outlets ever cease to be reinforced and confirmed by the manipulative and deceitful behaviors which caused that disdain in the first place.
A propaganda outlet will never be anything other than a propaganda outlet. A lot of half-awake people with one eye open and one eye closed will notice how the news media don’t practice journalism and don’t report the facts, and they’ll assume that something went wrong at some point. “Just do your jobs and report the news!” they’ll shout in frustration.
But nothing has gone wrong, and they are doing their jobs. They are doing their jobs extremely well.
Telling the mass media to “just do their jobs” and report the news is like bursting into a shoe factory yelling “Just do your jobs and start manufacturing dentures!” Their job is not to report the news, their job is to manipulate public perception for the benefit of the media-owning class. And toward that end they’ve been immensely successful.
There’s no point admonishing the mainstream press for the public’s plummeting trust in it, because a thing that has only ever existed to administer propaganda can’t suddenly become journalism. It’s like yelling at a rock for not being a tree.
The mass media are completely and utterly irredeemable, and always have been. It’s a waste of energy to try and get plutocratic propaganda institutions to suddenly begin doing journalism; that’s not what they’re for. Instead, our energy is better spent teaching people to stop seeing them as journalistic outlets.
The other reason the mass media will never regain the public’s trust is that humanity’s relationship with narrative is evolving too far beyond the level that once saw Americans gathered around the television listening with Bambi-eyed faith to the words of Walter Cronkite. That level of widespread blind credulity in the official stories of the day will never again exist.
Our old relationship with narrative is crumbling, and people’s old ways of understanding what’s going on in the world just aren’t holding together anymore.
As cold war tensions with Russia and China continue to mount while the US-centralized empire fights with increasing desperation to retain its dominance, we’re seeing propaganda hit white noise saturation levels to such an extent that we’ll likely soon find out how aggressively the collective consciousness can be pummelled with mass-scale psyops before it snaps.
America just went through four years with a president whose words had no relationship with facts or reality, and who made no attempt to pretend otherwise.
The mainstream public is becoming increasingly aware of the widespread nature of disinformation and propaganda.
Deepfake technology means we soon won’t even be able to trust video anymore.
Ordinary people are hurting financially while Wall Street is booming, a glaring plot hole in the story of the economy that’s only getting more pronounced.
There are numerous different narratives about Covid-19 and the government responses to it running parallel to each other with everyone still to this day absolutely certain that their position is the only correct one.
The entire media class is acting stranger and stranger, now routinely reporting bogus stories en masse like the Russian collusion narrative or the “Bountygate” narrative and then simply acting like it’s no big deal when those stories they’d fed us with such urgency are completely discredited.
Now we’re even seeing headlines about UFOs in esteemed mainstream publications, not just once but regularly, which would have been unthinkable a few years ago.
You can’t twist and shove the collective consciousness around like that without something snapping. Without people beginning to look at the thoughts in their heads with suspicion and beginning to question their sense of reality. Without people wondering if everything they believe is a lie.
Narrative Is Crumbling
“We are now, as a species, collectively squeezing ourselves out of our old unhealthy relationship with narrative.”https://t.co/iYK2oC7YXf
— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) July 26, 2020
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We’ve been seeing signs that humanity is moving into a new relationship with narrative for some time now as people learn across all sectors of society that so many of the seemingly solid rules we once took so seriously are just empty thought fluff that we are free to rewrite at any time.
Atheism and secularism, once fringe positions, are now mainstream as people have discovered that they don’t need to allow their lives to be controlled by words written by long-dead men in far off lands from cultural and historical contexts which have no relevance to our own circumstances.
People are beginning to recognize that money is made up and we can collectively change the rules of how it works whenever we want, with the rising popularity of both socialism and cryptocurrencies capturing the public imagination of what’s possible.
People are beginning to understand that what we call gender is a large network of conceptual constructs which we have overlaid upon human anatomy, and that we are free to disregard and re-author those conceptual constructs if that feels right to us.
People are beginning to understand that romantic relationships don’t need to look the way they’ve been modeled for us across the centuries, with unmarried, same-sex, polyamorous, or other relationship models also being perfectly acceptable options.
People are beginning to understand that “family” doesn’t need to refer to people to whom we are related by blood, with the concept of chosen family gaining in popularity.
People are beginning to understand that the failed drug war is an immoral abuse and that we should be allowed to experiment with our own consciousness using whatever substances we see fit.
These are all signs of a growing awareness that the “How It Is” narratives we’ve been fed by culture do not have the concrete reality to them that we once assumed they did. We’re beginning to see them as what they are: stories. Stories that we are free to ignore or re-write to whatever extent we find useful.
For propagandists whose manipulations depend on their targets imbuing their narratives with a great degree of significance, this recent development is very problematic. If a ‘How It Is’ narrative isn’t taken seriously, it can’t be used to manipulate the way people think, behave, and vote. And this seriousness is exactly what we’re seeing deteriorate in humanity’s relationship with narrative.
This could end up being a very, very good thing. All human destructiveness is ultimately caused by our taking thought seriously instead of simply using it as the tool it’s meant to be and setting it down when we’re done with it; look at any manifestation of human self-destructiveness, no matter how large or how small, and you’ll find a belief being taken too seriously underlying it. This shift in our relationship with narrative could end up being what saves us from our self-destructive patterns as a species.
But it won’t lend itself to trust in the mainstream media. This too would be a very good thing.
* * *
I’m celebrating the hardback release of Woke: A Field Guide For Utopia Preppers by making a pay-as-you-feel PDF available.
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Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/29/2021 – 19:10
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