Dec 30

Today’s News 30th December 2020

  • 2020: The Year The Tree Of Liberty Was Torched
    2020: The Year The Tree Of Liberty Was Torched

    Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “The people are unaware. They’re not educated to realize that they have power. The system is so geared that everyone believes the government will fix everything. We are the government.”

    – John Lennon

    No doubt about it: 2020 – a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for freedom – was the culmination of a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad decade for freedom.

    Government corruption, tyranny, and abuse coupled with a Big Brother-knows-best mindset and the COVID-19 pandemic propelled us at warp speed towards a full-blown police state in which nationwide lockdowns, egregious surveillance, roadside strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, censorship, retaliatory arrests, the criminalization of lawful activities, warmongering, indefinite detentions, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, police brutality, profit-driven prisons, and pay-to-play politicians were accepted as the norm.

    Here’s just a small sampling of the laundry list of abuses—cruel, brutal, immoral, unconstitutional and unacceptable—that have been heaped upon us by the government over the past two decades and in the past year, in particular.

    The government failed to protect our lives, liberty and happiness. The predators of the police state wreaked havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government didn’t listen to the citizenry, refused to abide by the Constitution, and treated the citizenry as a source of funding and little else. Police officers shot unarmed citizens and their household pets. Government agents—including local police—were armed to the teeth and encouraged to act like soldiers on a battlefield. Bloated government agencies were allowed to fleece taxpayers. Government technicians spied on our emails and phone calls. And government contractors made a killing by waging endless wars abroad.

    The American President became more imperial. Although the Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers, in recent years, American presidents (Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc.) claimed the power to completely and almost unilaterally alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill. The powers that have been amassed by each successive president through the negligence of Congress and the courts—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whoever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability. The presidency itself has become an imperial one with permanent powers.

    Militarized police became a power unto themselves, 911 calls turned deadly, and traffic stops took a turn for the worse. Lacking in transparency and accountability, protected by the courts and legislators, and rife with misconduct, America’s police forces continued to be a menace to the citizenry and the rule of law. Despite concerns about the government’s steady transformation of local police into a standing military army, local police agencies acquired even more weaponry, training and equipment suited for the battlefield. Police officers were also given free range to pull anyone over for a variety of reasons and subject them to forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases.

    The courts failed to uphold justice. With every ruling handed down, it becomes more apparent that we live in an age of hollow justice, with government courts more concerned with protecting government agents than upholding the rights of “we the people.” This is true at all levels of the judiciary, but especially so in the highest court of the land, the U.S. Supreme Court, which is seemingly more concerned with establishing order and protecting government agents than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution. A review of critical court rulings over the past two decades, including some ominous ones by the U.S. Supreme Court, reveals a startling and steady trend towards pro-police state rulings by an institution concerned more with establishing order and protecting the ruling class and government agents than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

    COVID-19 allowed the Emergency State to expand its powers. What started out as an apparent effort to prevent a novel coronavirus from sickening the nation (and the world) became yet another means by which world governments (including our own) could expand their powers, abuse their authority, and further oppress their constituents. While COVID-19 took a significant toll on the nation emotionally, physically, and economically, it also allowed the government to trample our rights in the so-called name of national security, with talk of mass testing for COVID-19 antibodies, screening checkpoints, contact tracing, immunity passports, forced vaccinations, snitch tip lines and onerous lockdowns.

    The Surveillance State rendered Americans vulnerable to threats from government spies, police, hackers and power failures. Thanks to the government’s ongoing efforts to build massive databases using emerging surveillance, DNA and biometrics technologies, Americans have become sitting ducks for hackers and government spies alike. Billions of people have been affected by data breaches and cyberattacks. On a daily basis, Americans have been made to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world.

    America became a red flag nation. Red flag laws, specifically, and pre-crime laws generally push us that much closer towards a suspect society where everyone is potentially guilty of some crime or another and must be preemptively rendered harmless. Where many Americans go wrong is in naively assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or harmful in order to be flagged and targeted for some form of intervention or detention. In fact, all you need to do these days to end up on a government watch list or be subjected to heightened scrutiny is use certain trigger words (like cloud, pork and pirates), surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, limp or stutter, drive a car, stay at a hotel, attend a political rally, express yourself on social media, appear mentally ill, serve in the military, disagree with a law enforcement official, call in sick to work, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, appear confused or nervous, fidget or whistle or smell bad, be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun (such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane), stare at a police officer, question government authority, appear to be pro-gun or pro-freedom, or generally live in the United States. Be warned: once you get on such a government watch list—whether it’s a terrorist watch list, a mental health watch list, a dissident watch list, or a red flag gun watch list—there’s no clear-cut way to get off, whether or not you should actually be on there.

    The cost of policing the globe drove the nation deeper into debt. America’s war spending has already bankrupted the nation to the tune of more than $20 trillion dollars. Policing the globe and waging endless wars abroad hasn’t made America—or the rest of the world—any safer, but it has made the military industrial complex rich at taxpayer expense. The U.S. military reportedly has more than 1.3 million men and women on active duty, with more than 200,000 of them stationed overseas in nearly every country in the world. Yet America’s military forces aren’t being deployed abroad to protect our freedoms here at home. Rather, they’re being used to guard oil fields, build foreign infrastructure and protect the financial interests of the corporate elite. In fact, the United States military spends about $81 billion a year just to protect oil supplies around the world. This is how a military empire occupies the globe. Meanwhile, America’s infrastructure is falling apart.

    Free speech was dealt one knock-out punch after another. Protest laws, free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws, shadow banning on the Internet, and a host of other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors (and championed by those who want to suppress speech with which they might disagree) conspired to corrode our core freedoms, purportedly for our own good. On paper—at least according to the U.S. Constitution—we are technically free to speak. In reality, however, we are only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow. The reasons for such censorship varied widely from political correctness, so-called safety concerns and bullying to national security and hate crimes but the end result remained the same: the complete eradication of free speech.

    The Deep State took over. The American system of representative government has been overthrown by the Deep State—a.k.a. the police state a.k.a. the military/corporate industrial complex—a profit-driven, militaristic corporate state bent on total control and global domination through the imposition of martial law here at home and by fomenting wars abroad. The “government of the people, by the people, for the people” has perished. In its place is a shadow government, a corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House. Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law. This is the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry. This shadow government, which “operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power,” makes a mockery of elections and the entire concept of a representative government.

    The takeaway: Everything the founders of this country feared has come to dominate in modern America. “We the people” have been saddled with a government that is no longer friendly to freedom and is working overtime to trample the Constitution underfoot and render the citizenry powerless in the face of the government’s power grabs, corruption and abusive tactics.

    So how do you balance the scales of justice at a time when Americans are being tasered, tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, hit with batons, shot with rubber bullets and real bullets, blasted with sound cannons, detained in cages and kennels, sicced by police dogs, arrested and jailed for challenging the government’s excesses, abuses and power-grabs, and then locked down and stripped of any semblance of personal freedom?

    No matter who sits in the White House, politics won’t fix a system that is broken beyond repair.

    For that matter, protests and populist movements also haven’t done much to push back against an authoritarian regime that is deaf to our cries, dumb to our troubles, blind to our needs, and accountable to no one.

    So how do you not only push back against the government’s bureaucracy, corruption and cruelty but also launch a counterrevolution aimed at reclaiming control over the government using nonviolent means?

    You start by changing the rules and engaging in some (nonviolent) guerilla tactics.

    Take your cue from the Tenth Amendment and nullify everything the government does that flies in the face of the principles on which this nation was founded. If there is any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march towards outright dictatorship, it may rest with the power of juries and local governments to invalidate governmental laws, tactics and policies that are illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional.

    In an age in which government officials accused of wrongdoing—police officers, elected officials, etc.—are treated with general leniency, while the average citizen is prosecuted to the full extent of the law, nullification is a powerful reminder that, as the Constitution tells us, “we the people” are the government.

    For too long we’ve allowed our so-called “representatives” to call the shots. Now it’s time to restore the citizenry to their rightful place in the republic: as the masters, not the servants.

    Nullification is one way of doing so.

    America was meant to be primarily a system of local governments, which is a far cry from the colossal federal bureaucracy we have today. Yet if our freedoms are to be restored, understanding what is transpiring practically in your own backyard—in one’s home, neighborhood, school district, town council—and taking action at that local level must be the starting point.

    Responding to unmet local needs and reacting to injustices is what grassroots activism is all about. Attend local city council meetings, speak up at town hall meetings, organize protests and letter-writing campaigns, employ “militant nonviolent resistance” and civil disobedience, which Martin Luther King Jr. used to great effect through the use of sit-ins, boycotts and marches.

    The power to change things for the better rests with us, not the politicians.

    As long as we continue to allow callousness, cruelty, meanness, immorality, ignorance, hatred, intolerance, racism, militarism, materialism, meanness and injustice—magnified by an echo chamber of nasty tweets and government-sanctioned brutality—to trump justice, fairness and equality, there can be no hope of prevailing against the police state.

    We could transform this nation if only Americans would work together to harness the power of their discontent and push back against the government’s overreach, excesses and abuse.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the police state is marching forward, more powerful than ever.

    If there is to be any hope for freedom in 2021, it rests with “we the people.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/30/2020 – 00:05

  • Chinese Submarine Drone Discovered Near Gateway To Indian Ocean
    Chinese Submarine Drone Discovered Near Gateway To Indian Ocean

    Indonesian fishermen found an underwater drone on December 20th, local media reported. Analyzing photos of the drone, Naval News concludes that the drone is closely related to the Chinese Sea Wing family.

    The drone was discovered near Selayar Island in the South Sulawes, far away from China’s adjacent waters. The location is close to two potential routes between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, according to Naval News. These routes, the Sunda Strait and Lombok Strait, “may be important in wartime” and “Intelligence gathered by the drone may be valuable to the Chinese Navy if their submarines intend to use these straits” according to the report.

    The discovered object is a type of drone known as a glider. These are unpowered and use something called variable-buoyancy propulsion. This involves inflating and deflating a balloon-like device filled with pressurized oil. This causes them to sink before rising to the surface again. As they do so they travel along, aided by “wings”, gathering data on the ocean environment.

    Indonesian based security & defense poster @Jatosint was quick to post the find on Twitter, and make the connection to the Chinese-made Sea Wing glider. Note that the device is upside down in the photos.

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

    The drone collects such data as temperature, turbidity, salinity, chlorophyll and oxygen levels. While this data may sound innocuous and it is often used for scientific research, it can also be extremely valuable to naval planners. Especially supporting submarine operations. The better a navy knows the waters, the better it is able to hide its attack subs.

    The US, France and other countries build and operate similar gliders. However, key characteristics of the Chinese type, which are not found on other similar underwater glides, are present. The nose cone has three circular sensor windows with the central one larger than the outer two. The wings have a folding mechanism and the antenna extends directly out of the center of the tail cone. The vertical stabilizer, like a tail fin, is seen underneath.

    Sea Wing gliders are known to be launched by China’s specialist survey ships. In December 2019 the survey ship Xiangyanghong 06 launched around 12 of the drones into the Eastern Indian Ocean. The one found may be one of these, but it seems unlikely given the ocean currents.

    Another Sea Wing glider was found by Indonesian fishermen in March 2019. This was in the Riau Islands, much closer to the South China Sea. The exact variant of Sea Wing was different, but the craft was very similar. However this is enough to suggest that they were deployed at different times and likely in different places. Additionally, camera-like sensors were apparently still operating when it was recovered. This suggests that it was deployed more decently.

    Where the glider was originally deployed, and what it was doing, remains unclear. But these craft can provide valuable military intelligence.

    China previously protested when it found a similar US Navy glider in international waters near its coast. On December 15, 2016 a Chinese ship plucked a US Navy LBS-G ( Littoral Battlespace Sensing-Glider) out of the South China Sea. The glider was in the process of being recovered by USNS Bowditch. The drone was only returned after the incident escalated.

    This particular incident is unlikely to escalate in a similar fashion, but it does draw attention to China’s increasingly assertive maritime activities in the South China Sea and close to major naval lanes. These gliders may serve as evidence that China is analyzing  potential submarine routes into the Indian Ocean through Indonesian waters.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 23:45

  • Australian Lawmaker Predicts War Between US & China In "Three To Five Years"
    Australian Lawmaker Predicts War Between US & China In “Three To Five Years”

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    With US-China relations at their lowest point in decades, one of Washington’s closest allies in the Pacific is gearing up for a potential war between the two superpowers. In an interview with Australia’s Seven News, Australian Senator Jim Molan said he expects a conflict to break out soon.

    “We are likely in the next three to five years or in the next five to ten years to be involved in a war between China and the United States,” Molan said. The senator made the comments while discussing the budget and capabilities of Australia’s military. “The ADF (Australian Defense Forces) has never been better than it is now,” he said.

    Major General Jim Molan (ret.) former commander of forces in Iraq, now a federal parliamentarian. Source: Australian Dept. of Defence.

    Molan voiced his concern over Washington’s current military capabilities, particularly the size of the US Navy. “In 1991, the US Navy was 600 warships strong. Now it’s less than 300,” he said. The politician who is a prominent voice in national political commentary is also a former major general in the Australian Army.

    He said further:

    “It is not inevitable and if we prepare, there is a chance it will not happen,” Mr Molan told Sunrise. The former Australian Army Major-General said China has been primed for war for a “long time” as well as the US.

    “They [China] are picking fights with their neighbors around the world and they have extraordinary military capability, not just in rockets and aircraft but in overall capability to do things,” he said.

    Like Washington, Canberra has taken an increasingly hostile stance against Beijing in recent years, and China-Australia relations have been rapidly deteriorating. Both the US and Australia have taken steps to boost military partnerships in the Indo-Pacific with the aim of countering Beijing.

    The US, Australia, Japan, and India make up the informal alliance known as the Quad. In November, Australia joined the other quad countries in the annual Indian-led military exercises known as the Malabar.

    It was the first time since in over a decade that the Quad countries held military drills together.

    Australia and Japan recently reached an agreement on a new military pact that will allow their militaries to operate on each other’s soil. Once the pact is implemented, it will mark the first time in 60 years that Japan allows another foreign military besides the US on its soil. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 23:25

  • Russia Unveils Orion Attack Drone With Missiles For First Time
    Russia Unveils Orion Attack Drone With Missiles For First Time

    Russia’s Defense Ministry has published two calendars for the year 2021, showing the Orion long-range drone, in two forms: strike and reconnaissance versions, according to Russian state news agency TASS. 

    “The Defense Ministry of Russia shows the ‘Inokhodets’ reconnaissance and strike unmanned aerial vehicle,” the ministry said in a statement.

    The Orion drone (the ‘Inokhodets’ experimental design work) is a medium-altitude, long-range unmanned aerial system. 

    TASS noted that the calendar release is the world’s first view of the drone with beam holders under the wings for attaching missiles. 

    With a maximum take-off weight of 2,000 pounds, the drone has a maximum payload weight of 440 pounds. 

    The calendar also shows the Sukhoi Su-57 stealth fighter, the BMPT-72 Terminator tank, the T-14 Armata main battle tank, and other military hardware. 

    SU-57

    BMPT Terminator

    Russia’s new weapons are part of Moscow’s rapid modernization effort to improve armed forces’ combat readiness. 

    Besides new drones, fifth-generation fighter jets, and new tanks, Bank of America’s aerospace and defense analyst Ronald J. Epstein outlined in a new report on Monday that a great power competition is underway between the US, Russia, and China. 

    On the subject of hypersonic weapon development, Epstein wrote the US is following behind the technological curve. 

    “The US typically exerts weapons superiority over its adversaries. There is a perception in the defense community that the US has lost some advantage over its near-peers (China and Russia) in hypersonic weapon development,” he said. 

    Despite the trillions of dollars in taxpayers’ monies, President Trump has plowed into the military, Russia and China, at a fraction of the US military budget, are advancing their respective militaries at a much quicker pace. 

    The question we ask: Is American exceptionalism in decline? 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 23:05

  • Mysterious Disappearance Of Flu In San Diego Prompted Call For Audit Of COVID Records
    Mysterious Disappearance Of Flu In San Diego Prompted Call For Audit Of COVID Records

    Via 21stCenturyWire.com,

    One of the most bizarre features of the alleged COVID-19 ‘global pandemic’ has been the mysterious disappearance of the seasonal flu in medical and public health record keeping. It’s as if the Flu just vanished into thin air after being the most common perennial seasonal respiratory virus.

    As it turns out, recorded seasonal influenza cases have literally nosedived by 98% across the globe.

    This improbable phenomenon has led a number of experts to ask, “Has Covid killed off the flu?”

    “The disappearing act began as Covid-19 rolled in towards the end of our flu season in March. And just how swiftly rates have plummeted can be observed in ‘surveillance’ data collected by the World Health Organisation (WHO),” reported the UK’s Daily Mail.

    WHO spokesperson, Dr Sylvie Briand, recently claimed during a press briefing that “literally there was nearly no flu in the Southern hemisphere” of the planet Earth in 2020, but gave no real explanation as to why. She then went on to extend this magical thinking saying that, “We hope that the situation will be the same in the Northern Hemisphere.”

    Truly extraordinary science by the health experts at the WHO.

    Earlier in December, Southern California news outlet KUSI raised the alarm which prompted an audit of COVID statistics in their region…

    SAN DIEGO (KUSI) – COVID-19 cases continue to increase across California, and here in San Diego County, but flu cases remain extremely low in comparison to this time in previous years.

    We are well into flu season, but San Diego County’s data for flu infections only shows 36 reported cases so far this year. Carl DeMaio tweeted out this shocking revelation, comparing it to this time in other years saying, “In a typical year we get over 17,073 on average!”

    DeMaio explained, “if you are going to use a set of numbers like COVID stats to shut down the economy, to take people’s livelihoods away, then we have to really look closely at what those numbers really mean, and whether those numbers are giving us the right picture.”

    Continuing, “my concern has been from the get go, that we are relying on numbers from government agencies, that may have a different agenda at stake. We would benefit from having a different set of eyes looking at them, such as an auditor or a citizens review committee. Because again, the decisions being made on these data sets are sweeping, the lockdowns are far reaching in terms of their impact.”

    DeMaio then said San Diego County has refused to have any look over or vet our local COVID-19 numbers.

    Chairman of Reform California, Carl DeMaio, joined KUSI’s Jason Austell on Good Morning San Diego to explain why he is calling for a “full audit of the COVID-19 data we are seeing reported from our public health system.”

    As different pressure groups and journalists begin to demand answers from the various health authorities, it’s becoming clear now that there has likely been some degree of widespread, systemic administrative fraud designed to over-inflate COVID-19 numbers to the detriment of every other normal seasonal illness or disease.

    Paul Craig Roberts from the IPE expanded on all of this in a recent piece:

    Is there no flu this year or is flu “the second wave of Covid?” Don’t expect any honest answer from health authorities. They have the fear running strong, so strong that people are submitting to needless lockdowns that are causing economic havoc to their lives and to mask mandates that do more harm than good.

    What is it all about?

    Is it simply about vaccine profits for Big Pharma?

    Or is it about getting people accustomed to arbitrary orders unsupported by legislation? Isn’t what we are experiencing a takeover of our lives by the executive part of government?

    So much for those warnings of a “twindemic”…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 22:45

  • A Map Of US Military Presence Near China
    A Map Of US Military Presence Near China

    According to recent media reports, the Republic of Palau has invited the US to build joint use facilities (ie. bases, ports, and airfields) on its island located strategically in close proximity to the Philppines, Indonesia, Malaysia and, of course, China. This, as Bank of America rhetorically points out, “would improve US access in the Pacific.”

    The offer was reportedly made during Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s trip to the island nation in early September. The Republic of Palau is made up of 340 islands (180 sq mi) and located in the western Pacific Ocean.

    Whether the US takes up Palau on its offer remains to be seen, but in the meantime, here courtesy of BofA is a map of US military bases and presence in the Pacific Ocean and, specifically, in proximity to China. One wonders how US citizens would feel if China had over a dozen military touch points in close proximity to the continental US.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 22:25

  • 2020, The "Worst Year Ever"?… You're Joking, Right?!
    2020, The “Worst Year Ever”?… You’re Joking, Right?!

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    So party on, because “the worst year ever” is ending and the rebound of financial markets, already the greatest in recorded history, will only become more fabulous.

     

    Of the lavish banquet of absurdities laid out in 2020, one of the most delectable is Time magazine’s December 14 cover declaring that 2020 was the “worst year ever.” You’re joking, right? In history’s immense tapestry of human misery, it’s not even in the top 100 worst years.

    Consider 1177 B.C., when many of the great civilizations of the Mediterranean Sea and Mideast collapsed, and the survivors struggled through a pre-modern Dark Ages. This book assembles what is known about this catastrophic era: 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed.

    Then there’s 1644 A.D., when the Ming Dynasty was overthrown by the Manchu invasion, a series of self-reinforcing misfortunes stemming from extremes of climate (a.k.a. The Little Ice Age) that left millions hungry and vulnerable to disease and the predation of roving bandit armies.

    The Little Ice Age and the famine, conflicts, civil wars, coups, revolts and rebellions it launched killed between a quarter and a third of Eurasia’s population. Entire villages melted away as starvation drove the survivors to desperation. The misery stretched from western Europe to China, and lasted for decades.

    This fascinating history lays it all out: Global Crisis: War, Climate Change, & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century.

    Though it is now relegated to a footnote in history, the Antonine Plague of 165 – 180 A.D. decimated the Mediterranean, Mideast, North African and Eurasian regions, toppling regimes that had endured for ages and very nearly brought the Roman Empire to an inglorious end. Roughly one-fourth of the population died as the novel disease was distributed along Rome’s numerous trade routes, which stretched from Northern Europe to Africa and India.

    Western Rome’s eventual decline and fall was also the result of pandemics and climate change as well as the usual suspects of war, political in-fighting, overtaxation and the stranglehold of self-serving elites: The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire.

    Europe’s inhabitants circa 1350 A.D. would have chosen the years 1347 – 1351 as “the worst ever” as the Black Plague took the lives of a third of the population: The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe.

    The inhabitants of North and South America would have selected the years following 1492 and the arrival of Europeans carrying novel diseases as the worst years ever as the diseases carried away between 50% and 90% of the people who were alive in 1491: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.

    Declaring 2020 “the worst year ever” reveals much about the psychology of our delusional state of affairs. It reflects an absolutely abysmal grasp of human history and a self-absorbed desire to exaggerate the calamity so the rebound will be gloriously triumphant.

    It also embodies our delusional addiction to measuring the well-being of the human populace with financial markets: as long as stocks are hitting new highs, we’re all doing wonderfully.

    So party on, because “the worst year ever” is ending and the rebound of financial markets, already the greatest in recorded history, will only become more fabulous.

    *  *  *

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 22:05

  • Japan Gave Key Intel On China's Uighur Crackdown To U.S. And Britain
    Japan Gave Key Intel On China’s Uighur Crackdown To U.S. And Britain

    Are relations between China and Japan about to enter another deep freeze?

    According to Japan Times, which quoted “a person close to Japan-U.S. relations” Japan provided intelligence to the United States and Britain last year showing evidence of China’s forceful detainment of the Muslim Uighur minority on condition of keeping the source confidential. Using on that information, the United States stepped up criticism against China’s alleged crackdown on Uighurs in the Xinjiang autonomous region, the source said.

    The move shows Japan has already been sharing key intelligence with partners behind the scenes amid calls within the government to join the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing alliance to better respond to increasing threats by North Korea and China. The intelligence-sharing network involves Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.

    Britain joined the United States in pressing Beijing over its crackdown on Uighurs, but Japan has only said it “is closely watching the situation with concern.”

    Japan seeks to maintain friendly ties with China – its largest trading partner – without hurting relations with its top security ally, the United States. In retrospect, that may prove extremely impossible now that Japan’s backroom backstabbing of Beijing has leaked.

    Given that Tokyo’s relations with Beijing had been improving, it was preparing for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first visit as a state guest in spring 2020, although the planned visit was later postponed after the outbreak of the global coronavirus pandemic.

    US President Donald Trump’s administration has put in place a series of sanctions on Beijing for alleged human rights abuses against Uighurs, such as visa restrictions on Chinese officials, increasing bilateral tensions.

    Vice President Mike Pence severely criticized China in a July 2019 speech in Washington, claiming that the “Communist Party imprisoned more than a million Chinese Muslims, including Uighurs, in internment camps where they endure around-the-clock brainwashing.”

    China has, naturally, responded with anger and urged Western counties to mind their own problems, slamming  criticisms as interference in its internal affairs.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 21:45

  • Great Reset: Tiny Houses Pushed As Solution To Climate Change
    Great Reset: Tiny Houses Pushed As Solution To Climate Change

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    Social engineers are pushing tiny 200-sq-ft Ikea houses as the solution to climate change in another example of how our living standards are set to be lowered.

    In an article entitled ‘Ikea tiny homes can help fight climate change by giving small footprints a big toehold’, Carl Pope, former head of the Sierra Club, gushes over the micro-homes (basically trailers) that sell for $47,550.

    “Housing is an important source of climate pollution — directly responsible for about 5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States plus their electricity. Given Ikea’s emphasis on recycled and reusable materials, the company seems likely to accelerate some important shifts in the housing market. Ikea will also almost certainly take advantage of what it learns in the “tiny” segment of the building market to establish a foothold in the broader, potentially highly green, manufactured building space,” writes Pope.

    While solar panels would struggle to heat larger homes, this isn’t an issue for the tiny homes, so long as you’re content living in a box.

    “The use of rooftop solar panels to generate power and the replacement of propane heating with a heat pump run by those solar panels is likely to become the standard in many states for manufactured homes,” he adds. “They will gravitate toward all-electric mobile homes because propane is a significant factor in the threat of fires to mobile home parks.”

    “When utopia is achieved, we will be forced to live in tiny playhouses — for our own good, because living in a rabbit hutch will improve the weather,” writes Dave Blount.

    “Winter could mean praying for sunny weather so that the heat comes on. That way we will be cozy and snug when we are placed under house arrest the next time a virus comes around.”

    As we previously highlighted, last year CNN promoted the idea of young people living in ‘pods’ in the center of huge cities where they have no privacy.

    Houses are now becoming so unaffordable for debt-stricken millennials that young people are also now literally living in decorated sewer pipes.

    They’re called OPod Tube Houses and literally consist of reclaimed bits of industrial piping renovated inside with other left over pieces from building sites to make them into micro apartments.

    *  *  *

    New limited edition merch now available! Click here. In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, I urgently need your financial support here.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 21:25

  • UAE Identified As "Hub" For Companies Helping Venezuela Evade US Oil Sanctions
    UAE Identified As “Hub” For Companies Helping Venezuela Evade US Oil Sanctions

    A detailed investigative report by Reuters has found Washington-ally United Arab Emirates has been helping Maduro’s Venezuela skirt sanctions which the Trump administration has used as pressure for regime change. 

    The UAE is alleged to have stepped up its sanctions-busting activities as a major “hub” allowing Venezuela to export its oil, especially after a half dozen tankers under well-known firms were hit by Washington sanctions in June. 

    Here’s what happened quickly in the wake of those targeted sanctions: “Within weeks, a little-known company based in the United Arab Emirates took over management of several tankers that had been shipping Venezuelan oil. The vessels got new names. And then they resumed transporting Venezuelan crude,” according to Reuters.

    While Russia has remained a major buyer of Venezuela’s crude, this is the first time it’s been revealed that a crucial Gulf ally has been quietly assisting in defying US sanctions meant to choke off Caracas’ revenue from the trade. This is nothing too surprising for those familiar with the Turkey-Iran gas for gold scandal revealed in 2013.

    Here’s what Reuters found as part of its investigation:

    The company, Muhit Maritime FZE, is one of three UAE-based entities identified by Reuters that have shipped Venezuelan crude and fuel during the second half of this year. Their role emerges from an examination of internal shipping documents from Venezuela’s state oil company as well as third-party shipping and vessel tracking data. Tankers managed by the firms have transported millions of barrels of oil produced by state-run Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, since June, according to the internal documents and a publicly available shipping database.

    It demonstrates the trend that the moment a particular tanker or company is targeted by US punintive action, there are others immediately ready to fill the void. Three companies in total are named as part of the UAE-based scheme in the report: Muhit Maritime, Issa Shipping FZE and Asia Charm Ltd.

    In many cases when a new unknown buyer of Venezuelan crude emerges it’s often assumed to be a Russian-based firm. But the report’s findings suggest other international buyers are fast emerging who are taking risky steps to conceal ownership, as Reuters underscores, “Now, a similar pattern is emerging with companies involved in transporting the oil.”

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    A UAE government statement appeared to confirm the contents of the new report:

    The UAE government said in a statement that “a thorough and comprehensive investigation is fully underway into” Muhit Maritime, Issa Shipping and Asia Charm. That includes using recent legislative changes “designed to improve corporate transparency through a framework for reporting and registering beneficial ownership,” it said.

    “The UAE takes its role in protecting the integrity of the global financial system extremely seriously. This means actively administering and enforcing economic and trade sanctions,” the government added.

    As for the US, the State Department said in response: “We are closely tracking these kinds of creative efforts by companies to evade sanctions.”

    And responding specifically to UAE-registered firms engaged in the transport of Venezuelan oil, the US said further that it’s fully aware of the many shell companies being used by various entities. “Those behind shell companies would not be wise to consider themselves shielded from sanctions,” the statement said.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 21:05

  • The Top 10 Most-Suppressed News Stories Of 2020
    The Top 10 Most-Suppressed News Stories Of 2020

    Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics.com,

    Back in the day, when I was managing editor at the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont., I enjoyed the end-of-year ritual of voting in the Associated Press’s poll of the Top 10 news stories.

    When I started participating in the year 2000, my list would include many of the same stories that made the final AP list, although often with differences in ranking. But by the time I retired in 2018, my view of the news had sharply diverged from the AP’s consensus view. I’d become something of a gadfly by then, questioning what seemed to be an ever more transparent left-leaning bias in mainstream reporting.

    That divergence was probably magnified by the 2016 candidacy of Donald Trump and the bright light he had shined on Fake News, but my disenchantment with my profession had been growing for years, as chronicled in my book “The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake?”

    Still, there is no way that even as recently as four years ago I would have predicted just how abysmally irresponsible the media would become by 2020. Major newspapers are winning Pulitzer Prizes for blatantly false reporting on topics such as “Russian collusion.” Meanwhile, Silicon Valley oligarchs have appointed themselves censors — warning the American people not to read or watch anything that hasn’t been “fact-checked” by their hand-picked thought police.

    The situation has gotten so bad that it’s no longer worth ranking the top news stories of the year because so little that is covered is news and so much that is news is written off as a “conspiracy theory.” That’s why I’m introducing Heartland Diary USA’s first annual presentation of “Last Chance to Wake Up and Smell the News They Tried to Kill.”

    So here are five of the biggest suppressed stories of 2020. Pardon me if I don’t go into great detail on them, but the closer I get to the truth, the more likely that Google, Twitter and Facebook will bury my story, too.

    5) Mysterious mutating lockdown:

    Has anyone ever figured out why it is OK for grocery store workers to remain on the job during an international pandemic while serving the needs of the entire population with no restrictions other than wearing a mask, but it is considered dangerous for gyms to open or, most ludicrously, for anyone other than spouses of governors to take their boat for a quick spin around the lake? It seems like the lockdown can turn into whatever is convenient for politicians. The uneven effects of the lockdown on different states and different sectors have resulted in the shift of trillions of dollars of capital in ways that will reshape the economy for generations to come, yet we are not supposed to talk about it.

    4) Hydroxychloroquine:

    If you know anything about this drug, it is probably just that some guy in Arizona died after drinking it, and that maybe President Trump was somehow responsible. Well, as they say, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The guy in Arizona didn’t take hydroxychloroquine; he took a fish tank cleaner called chloroquine phosphate. And Trump never told anyone to take either the drug or the fish-tank cleaner. He just said hydroxychloroquine was a promising treatment against COVID-19. Of course, as soon as he said it, the radical academic leftists who control medical journals and associations warned that hydroxychloroquine had no benefit as a treatment and was potentially dangerous even though it had been safely used against malaria and various immune deficiency syndromes for decades. Fortunately, many doctors who were familiar with the drug continued to use it as a therapy in the early stages of COVID infections, and many patients around the world have been spared the most dire effects of the virus as a result. Just don’t expect to read about it in the New York Times.

    3) Trump’s vaccine victory:

    While the president has been painted as anti-science, it was his administration’s support that led to the fastest turnaround ever from viral discovery to viral vaccine — essentially less than a year. Even as House Democrats are poised to launch investigations into Trump’s supposed crimes against humanity for being president during the COVID crisis, lives are being saved as a result of his policies. Just don’t expect to read about it in the mainstream media, which spent much of 2020 ridiculing Trump for his prescient predictions that a vaccine would be developed by the end of the year.

    2) Hunter Biden’s laptop:

    The ability to bury the Hunter Biden story throughout the 2020 presidential campaign ranks as one of the greatest victories in the history of propaganda. Hunter is the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, and his acknowledged history as a drug addict is now considered his strong suit. The Senate Homeland Security Committee found extensive evidence that Hunter has made hundreds of millions of dollars for the Biden family by selling access to his father, so when Hunter’s laptop turned up with first-person incriminating evidence, it was pretty obvious that Joe Biden had a lot of answer for. Except that the media never made him answer for anything. It preferred to rest on the bizarre assertion from 50 former U.S. intelligence officials that clear evidence of foreign collusion on Hunter’s laptop had all the earmarks of a “Russian disinformation” campaign. This was errant nonsense. Reporters, read the emails!

    1) Election fraud:

    It turned out that everything that happened in 2020 before Nov. 3 was just prologue for the greatest deception in American history — namely the hijacking of a presidential election through means both legal and illegal. Most importantly, every state that changed its election procedures without the consent of its legislature violated the U.S. Constitution. That’s why Republicans plan to challenge the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6. Whether you like Donald Trump or not should be irrelevant. You either follow the Constitution or you don’t. The fact that Trump increased his support in almost every demographic since 2016 and yet lost the election will apparently remain a mystery because the Democratic Party, with an assist from weak Republicans, is intent on continuing the charade that Joe Biden is a beloved elder statesman even more popular than Barack Obama.

    I should add a disclaimer here. My list will not be your list. This is 2020, and there is plenty of suppression to go around.

    You are hereby invited to submit your own contributions in the comments section below. In the meantime, rounding out my Top 10, here are some of the other major stories suppressed in 2020:

    • The communist links to antifa and Black Lives Matter;

    • how the Russian hoax was exposed but left unpunished;

    • how the policies of a certain governor in New York state led to thousands of COVID deaths in nursing homes;

    • the successful campaign of billionaire George Soros to subvert American jurisprudence by electing pro-criminal district attorneys;

    • and of course the suppression of news itself.

    Big Tech, take a bow!

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 20:45

  • Palestinians Hold First Ever 'Joint Military Drills' In Gaza; Israel Says Iran Behind It
    Palestinians Hold First Ever ‘Joint Military Drills’ In Gaza; Israel Says Iran Behind It

    After days ago a brief flare-up in fighting saw rockets exchanged between Gaza and the Israeli army, the Palestinian hardline Islamist group Hamas conducted what it called joint military exercises as a show of strength with competing militant factions.

    Israeli media for its part said these unprecedented exercises ultimately had Iran’s hand behind them, as Reuters reported, “An array of Palestinian militant groups launched rockets into the Mediterranean Sea off the Gaza Strip on Tuesday at the start of what they called their first-ever joint exercise, which Israeli media described as a show of force organized by Iran.”

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    Multiple live-fire drills were conducted throughout Tuesday, including infantry simulations, small drone flights, and provocatively the launching of rockets into the Mediterranean, which the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) monitored closely.

    The Palestinian factions further produced videos of the exercises, described as follows:

    Eight rockets streaked through a cloudless sky in Gaza towards the Mediterranean after Abu Hamza, spokesman for Islamic Jihad, delivered a speech launching the drill. It will include land and coastal exercises described by the groups as a test of their preparedness for any future confrontation with Israel.

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    Israel is highlighting the presence of a large portrait of slain Iranian IRGC Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani on a main coastal road in Gaza ahead of the exercises.

    Israel says this and other displays are proof enough that Tehran is also exhibiting its long reach with the drills, some of which included sophisticated weaponry. 

    One exercise was even staged using old non-functioning Israeli tanks left on the battlefield.

    Elaborate military drills were also conducted along Gaza’s beachfront, for which Hamas had banned all fishing for the day.

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    The rare exercise included Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and what’s called Popular Resistance Committees, as well as smaller factions. 

    “The exercise comes as part of efforts to boost the joint action and cooperation between the military wings of the Palestinian factions,” Abu Hamza, an Islamic Jihad spokesman had announced. “This exercise aims to simulate expected threats by the Israeli enemy,” the armed group said in Gaza City.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 20:25

  • McMaken: The American Revolution Was A Culture War
    McMaken: The American Revolution Was A Culture War

    Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

    Two hundred and forty-seven years ago this month, a group of American opponents of the Crown’s tax policy donned disguises and set about methodically destroying a shipment of tea imported into Boston by the East India Company. The vandals trespassed on privately owned ships in Boston Harbor and threw the tea into the ocean. These protesters were thorough. Not content with having destroyed most of the company’s imported tea that night, the activists later discovered another tea shipment which had been unloaded at a warehouse in Boston. The activists then broke into the warehouse and destroyed that tea, too. Total damages amounted to more than $1.5 million in today’s dollars. 

    This was the work of the Sons of Liberty, a group led in part by Samuel Adams and which would become known for acts of resistance, arson, and violence committed against tax collectors and other agents of the Crown. Notably, however, as time went on, acts of resistance in America escalated, at first into widespread mob violence, and then into military action and guerrilla warfare. 

    Why did many Americans either engage in this behavior or support it? The simplistic answer has long been that the colonists were angry that they were subjected to “taxation without representation.” This is the simplistic version of history often taught in grade school. The reality, of course, is that the conflict between the “patriots” and their former countrymen eventually became a deeply seated (and violent) culture war.

    It Wasn’t Just about Taxes

    The taxation-without-representation argument endures, of course, because it is useful for the regime and its backers. Advocates for the political status quo insist there is no need for anything like the Boston Tea Party today because modern Americans enjoy representation in Congress. We are told that taxation and the regulatory state are all necessarily moral and legitimate because the voters are “represented.” Even conservatives, who often claim to be for “small government,” often oppose radical opposition to the regime—such as secession—on the grounds that political resistance movements are only acceptable when there is no political “representation.” The implication is that since the United States holds elections every now and then, no political action outside of voting—and maybe a little sign waving—is allowed. 

    It’s unlikely the Sons of Liberty would have bought this argument. The small number of millionaires who meet in Washington, DC, nowadays are hardly “representative” of the American public back home. The 1770s equivalent would have consisted of throwing the Americans a few bones in the form of a handful of votes in Parliament, with seats to be reliably held by a few wealthy colonists, far beyond the reach or influence of the average member of the Sons of Liberty.

    But attempts to frame the revolution as a conflict over taxes largely misses the point. Political representation was not the real issue. We know this because when the 1778 Carlyle Peace Commission offered representation in Parliament to the Continental Congress as part of a negotiated conclusion to the war, the offer was rejected. 

    The Revolution Was Partly a Culture War 

    By the late 1770s, the fervor behind the revolution had already gone far beyond mere complaints about taxation. This was just one issue among many.

    Rather, the revolution quickly became a culture war in which self-styled “Americans” were taking up arms against a foreign, immoral, and corrupt oppressor. Mere offers of “representation” were hardly sufficient at this point, and it’s unlikely any such offers were going to be enough after the events of 1775, when the British finally marched into Massachusetts and opened fire on American militiamen.

    After that, the war had become, to use Rothbard’s term, a “war of national liberation.” 

    This ideological and psychological divide perhaps explains the ferocity with which the American revolutionaries resisted British rule. 

    The “Patriots” Initiated Real Violence—against Innocents

    For example, when we consider the many other protest actions by the Sons of Liberty in the lead-up to the revolution, many of them could easily be described as acts of nondefensive violence, intimidation, and destruction. Many tax collectors resigned from their offices in fear. Others, including citizens merely suspected of supporting the British, were tarred and feathered (i.e., tortured) by the protestors.

    Known loyalists were routinely threatened with physical harm to themselves, their families, and their property. Many loyalists fled the colonies in fear for their lives, and after the closure of Boston Harbor, many fled to inner Boston seeking protection from the mobs. Loyalist homes were burned, and theft committed by members of the Sons of Liberty was routine (hundreds of pounds were stolen from Governor Hutchinson’s private home after it was ransacked by a mob of poor and working-class Bostonians). Caught up in all of this, it should be remembered, were children and spouses of the guilty parties, who in many cases were just low-level bureaucrats.

    In the southern theater of the war, for example, the British Army armed loyalist militias who engaged in a scorched earth campaign against the rebels. They burned private homes to the ground, cut up and murdered pregnant women, displayed the severed heads of their victims, and employed other tactics of terrorism.

    The rebels responded in kind, attacking many who had no role in the attacks on patriot homes, including women, and torturing suspected Tories with beloved torture methods such as “spigoting” in which the victims are spun around and around on upward-pointing nails until they are well impaled.

    This sort of thing cannot be explained by mere disagreement over taxation. Acts of violence like these represent a meaningful cultural and national divide.

    How Big Is the Cultural Divide in America? 

    For now, the cultural divide in the United States today has yet to reach the proportions experienced during the revolution—or, for that matter, during the 1850s in the lead-up to the American Civil War.

    But if hostilities reach this point, there will be little use in discussions over the size of the tax burden, mask mandates, or the nuances of abortion policy. The disdain felt by each side for the other side will be far beyond mere compromises over arcane matters of policy. 

    And just as discussions over “taxation without representation” miss the real currents underlying the American rebellion, any view of the current crisis that ignores the ongoing culture war will fail to identify the causes. 

    Yet, the culture war has also likely progressed to the point where national unity is unlikely to be salvaged even by charismatic leaders and efforts at compromise. When it comes to culture, there is little room for compromise. It is increasingly apparent that the only peaceful solution lies in some form of radical decentralization, amounting to either secession or self-rule at the local level with only foreign policy as “national” policy. Had the British offered these terms in 1770, bloodshed would have likely been avoided. Americans must pursue similar solutions now before it is too late. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 20:05

  • Portland Homicides Reach Highest Level In 3 Decades After Gun Violence Task Force Disbanded
    Portland Homicides Reach Highest Level In 3 Decades After Gun Violence Task Force Disbanded

    As Antifa and other far-left activists have mounted a national campaign to “abolish the police” – going so far in places like Portland and Seattle as to literally fight the police while declaring so-called autonomous zones – the city that’s become ground zero for the anti-police movement has seen murder rates soar.

    Fox News reports based on local crime statistics that murders are surging in Portland, Oregon. “As of Christmas Eve, this year’s shootings had surpassed last year’s by more than 116%, with 393 shootings reported in all of 2019.”

    2020 numbers dwarf the prior year’s, having reached over 850 shootings. Among these are more single-year homicides than in any year over the prior nearly three decades. 

    The city is so desperate that police chief Chuck Lovell is urging the public’s help in doing “everything we can together” to “break the cycle of violence.”

    “Gun violence has plagued our city at twice the rate of last year,” he underscored in a public statement. “On average, someone is shot in Portland roughly every two days.”

    And almost unbelievably (or actually perhaps very believable given it’s Portland), a frontline special police task force was earlier disbanded because activists claimed it was inherently racist. As homicides and shootings soared, here’s the “action” that far-left activists and woke city officials took, according to local media:

    PPB’s [Portland Police Bureau] gun violence reduction team was disbanded in the summer following the criticism of advocates who said that the gun violence reduction team was stopping people of color disproportionately to others.

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    The dissolution of the 34-person police unit happened in July, and since then shootings across the city have skyrocketed. It was done also in the name of Portland’s “police reform efforts” in the wake of widespread George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests and unrest earlier in the summer.

    A recent headline covering Sunday night violence, for example, has become typical of most weekends in Portland, which is beginning to resemble Chicago levels of violence. Police described “The number of bullets that must have been flying around our neighborhoods, city streets, sidewalks – it’s awful.” The recent headline reads, “Portland police respond to 4 overnight shootings, 2 injured” in which—

    The Portland Police Bureau is investigating four different shootings after two victims walked into local hospitals with gunshot wounds overnight and two more reports were made about gunfire.

    The shootings happened in different parts of the city on the east side… the third shooting of the night was reported just after 11 p.m. on SE 72nd Ave where officers found “at least nine bullet strikes to a residence and multiple casings.” According to police, bullets went through the living room of an occupied home and into multiple bedrooms. Luckily, no one inside the home was injured in the shooting.

    Minutes after the third shooting was reported in Southeast Portland, a fourth was reported in Northeast Portland in the Cully neighborhood.

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    Chief Lovell this week noted that though the city has taken appropriate extreme measures to curtail the spread of the coronavirus, “Violence is also a disease that kills and our community is suffering the consequences.”

    The clearly corelated trend of disbanding police anti-crime units in various cities across the nation leading to spikes in violent crime should be obvious to most Americans, but it is apparently being lost on those city officials allowing themselves to be willing pawns of the woke mob.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 19:45

  • 10 Climate Alarmist Predictions For 2020 That Went Horribly Wrong
    10 Climate Alarmist Predictions For 2020 That Went Horribly Wrong

    Authored by Tyler O’Neil via PJMedia.com,

    Long before Beto O’Rourke claimed the world only had 10 years left for humans to act against climate change, alarmists had spent decades predicting one doomsday scenario after another, each of which stubbornly failed to materialize. It seems climate armageddon has taken a permanent sabbatical.

    Many of those doomsday predictions specifically mentioned the annus horribilus of 2020. Those predictions also failed, some rather spectacularly.

    Steve Milloy, a former Trump/Pence EPA transition team member and founder of JunkScience.com, compiled ten climate predictions for 2020 that fell far off the mark.

    1. Average global temperature up 3 degrees Celsius

    Screenshot of the Oct 2, 1987 edition of the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix

    In 1987, the Star-Phoenix in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, quoted James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. His model predicted an average temperature increase of “between one-half and one degree Celsius by the end of the ’90s.”

    “And within 15 to 20 years of this, the earth will be warmer than it has been in the past 100,000 years,” Hansen said. According to the Star-Phoenix, his model predicted that “by the year 2020 we will experience an average temperature increase of around three degrees [Celsius], with even greater extremes.”

    Milloy cited former NASA climatologist Roy Spencer, whose data suggest global temperatures have risen 0.64 degrees Celsius since 1987. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) shows an increase of about 0.5 degrees Celsius from 1987.

    2. Global emissions

    In 1978, The Vancouver Sun cited a paper in the journal Science. University of Washington researcher Minze Stuiver predicted that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will have doubled by 2020. “We learn that if present trends continue, with economics the only limit on the exploitation of fossil fuels, the CO2 concentration will have doubled by 2020. Forty to 80 years after fuel burning peaks — that will come mid-century — the CO2 concentration will be five to 10 times its present level.”

    Yet the CO2 in the atmosphere hasn’t come close to doubling since 1978. According to NOAA, in March 1978 when the Sun published this article, there were 335 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. In February 2020, NOAA reported 413 parts per million in the atmosphere. That represents an increase of 23 percent, a far cry from doubling the concentration (which would be 670 parts per million).

    3. Emissions from India and China

    In December 2009, The Springfield News-Leader reported that India and China had pledged to cut emissions by 2020. “The developing world, for the first time, is offering its own actions — not straight reductions, but clean-energy projects and other steps to slow the growth of their emissions.”

    “China says it will, by 2020, reduce gases by 40 to 45 percent below ‘business as usual,’ that is, judged against 2005 figures, for energy used versus economic input. India offers a 20 to 25 percent slowdown in emissions growth.”

    While these projections were more promises than predictions, they fell wide of the mark. India and China increased their carbon emissions since 2005. According to the World Bank, India emitted 1.2 million kilotons of CO2 in 2005 and 2.4 million kilotons of CO2 in 2018, the last year data is available, a 200 percent increase. China, meanwhile, emitted 5.9 million kilotons in 2005 and 9.9 million kilotons in 2016, a 168 percent increase.

    4. No snow on Mount Kilimanjaro

    Screenshot of The Vancouver Sun reporting on a scientist’s prediction that the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro will disappear by 2020.

    In 2001, The Vancouver Sun reported, “Snows of Kilimanjaro to vanish by 2020.”

    “‘At this rate, all of the ice will be gone between 2010 and 2020,’ said Lonnie Thompson, a geologist at Ohio State University. ‘And that is probably a conservative estimate.”

    Al Gore’s 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth also predicted that there would be no snow on Kilimanjaro in 2020.

    Yet in February 2020, The Times of London reported that the “Staying power of Kilimanjaro snow defies Al Gore’s gloomy forecast.”

    “The snow has certainly got my clients talking,” Methley Swai, owner of the Just-Kilimanjaro trekking company, told The Times. “Many people have made Kilimanjaro a bucket list priority because of the Al Gore deadline but when they get here they are pleasantly surprised to find lots of snow.”

    The Times screenshot

    5. Rising sea levels in the Sunshine State

    Miami Herald report predicting sea-level rise of 2 feet in Florida by 2020.

    In 1986, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Jim Titus predicted that the sea level around Florida would rise two feet by 2020, The Miami Herald reported.

    According to NOAA, the sea level at Virginia Key has risen by about 9 centimeters, which works out to 3.54 inches.

    NOAA chart for sea level in Virginia Key, Florida.

    6. People will become unfamiliar with snow

    In March 2000, David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit of the University of East Anglia in England, predicted that winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event,” The Independent reported.

    “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” Viner said.

    Heavy snow will return occasionally, Viner predicted, but the Brits would not be prepared for it when it does. “We’re really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time,” he said.

    About that. Snow is still very much a thing in the United Kingdom, and Scotland’s snowplows — called “gritters” — have been very much up to the task. Scotland had gotten about 10 centimeters of snow in some places by early December 2020, the Daily Record reported. “Traffic Scotland says that its current winter fleet consists of 213 vehicles that are available for ploughing and spreading salt.”

    7. Pacific islands economies devastated

    In October 2000, a Greenpeace report predicted that global warming “could cause a massive economic decline across at least 13 tiny Pacific nations in the next 20 years,” the Australian newspaper The Age reported. Global warming would devastate most of the Pacific’s coral reefs, devastating the tourism and fishing industries of tiny Pacific nations.

    “Under the worst-case scenario examined, by 2020 some Melanesian nations would lose from 15 to 20 per cent of their gross domestic product, valued at about $1.9 billion [in American dollars] to $2.3 billion, while other mainly Polynesian nations are even more vulnerable and could lose between $4 billion and $5 billion due to climate change,” the report warned.

    “The study shows that the most vulnerable Pacific nations are Tuvalu and Kiribati, the host of this year’s Pacific Islands Forum, followed by Cook Islands, Palau, Tonga and French Polynesia,” The Age reported.

    Yet according to the government of Tuvalu’s Ministry of Finance, “Revenues collected from fisheries access increased from approximately $10 million [Australian dollars] in 2012 to $13.6 million in 2014 to the current situation in which annual revenue is more than $30 million.”

    “The 2019 budget reports that Tuvalu has enjoyed an unprecedented six consecutive years of economic growth ‘on the back of increasing revenues from fishing licenses and back-to-back infrastructure projects that were-funded and administered by development partners,’” the ministry reported.

    Kiribati has also enjoyed healthy GDP growth in the past five years. As with so many predictions of climate armageddon, the great demise of Pacific economies has failed to materialize.

    8. Global conflict and nuclear war

    In 2004, The Guardian reported on a Department of Defense report predicting that climate change could be America’s greatest national security threat. Among other things, the report predicted nuclear war, endemic conflict over resources, and European cities underwater by 2020.

    The Pentagon report claimed that peace occurs when resources increase or when populations die off. “But such peaceful periods are short-lived because population quickly rises to once again push against carrying capacity, and warfare resumes.” In modern times, the casualties have decreased, but “all of that progressive behavior could collapse if carrying capacities everywhere were suddenly lowered drastically by abrupt climate change.”

    As endemic warfare resumes, it will escalate to nuclear war, the report predicted. “In this world of warring states, nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable.”

    Not only has nuclear war failed to materialize, but the world has become more peaceful in the past 30 years. Mathematicians at the University of York created an algorithm to measure battlefield deaths and discovered an “abrupt shift towards a greater level of peace in the early 1990s.”

    9. The end of Arctic ice

    In April 2013, the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette reported that NOAA scientists predicted “ranges for an ice-free Arctic from 2020 to after 2040.”

    “It is reasonable to conclude Arctic ice loss is very likely to occur in the first rather than the second half of the 21st century, with a possibility of loss within a decade or two,” the paper claimed.

    According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado-Boulder, there were 3.9 million square kilometers of sea ice in the Arctic Sea at its annual minimum in September 2020.

    10. Glaciers gone at Glacier National Park

    In March 2009, U.S. Geological Survey ecologist Daniel Fagre predicted that the glaciers in Montana’s Glacier National Park would disappear by 2020.

    “Fagre’s current research reveals that temperatures in Glacier National Park have risen higher than was predicted in 1992. The Montana glaciers are now expected to be gone by 2020,” The Los Angeles Times reported.

    By 2010, Glacier National Park erected signs warning that its signature glaciers would be gone by 2020. This year, the park rushed to change the signs as the glaciers still existed. In truth, the U.S. Geological Survey warned the park back in 2017 that the forecast model no longer predicted a glacier-less 2020, but a park spokeswoman told CNN that the park didn’t have enough money to change the signs.

    The park altered the most prominent placards in 2019, but it was still waiting for budget authorization to update signs at two other locations.

    The new signs will say, “When they will completely disappear depends on how and when we act. One thing is consistent: the glaciers in the park are shrinking.”

    *  *  *

    Climate alarmists have been forecasting doom for more than 50 years, and their predictions fail again and again. In 2018, the tiny Maldives Islands were scheduled to sink beneath the waves due to climate change — yet the islands have actually grown in recent years!

    The truth of the matter is, climate is an extremely complicated science that remains far less than fully understood. While it stands to reason that carbon emissions may have an impact on the global climate, there is little concrete evidence to prove it — and nearly every prediction made on this hypothesis has proven false.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 19:25

  • Pompeo Demands "Lying" China Release Wuhan Citizen Journalist Locked Up For Virus Reporting
    Pompeo Demands “Lying” China Release Wuhan Citizen Journalist Locked Up For Virus Reporting

    US Secretary of State Mike is demanding that China immediately release a citizen journalist jailed for her earlier social media reporting from Wuhan, the global coronavirus epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak. The case has sent shockwaves across the globe given it’s such a blatant crackdown on mere speech and reporting in the Communist-run country.

    Zhang Zhan, the 37-year old former lawyer who essentially live-blogged widely shared posts describing the chaotic and mismanaged efforts of Chinese authorities to get a handle of the virus during its early spread in Wuhan was on Monday sentenced to four years in prison by a Shanghai court for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”.

    Pompeo said in his Tuesday statement: “We call on the PRC government to release her immediately and unconditionally.” He also charged Beijing with “lying” which he called a “feature” of China’s “authoritarian regime”. 

    “The Chinese Communist Party has shown once again it will do whatever it takes to silence those who question the party’s official line, even regarding crucial public health information,” he said in the statement.

    Zhan had initially been arrested in May, with her Monday court proceedings only taking three hours before the stiff sentence was handed down.

    International reports noted the intentional timing of it by authorities who feared it would create an avalanche of international condemnation, which it has. CBS reported the following:

    “The pronouncement of sentence in court was quite rare and unexpected,” said defense lawyer Zhang Keke. “It has something to do with the holiday timing in the West.”

    China’s communist authorities have a history of putting dissidents on trial in opaque courts between Christmas and New Year’s to minimize Western scrutiny. 

    The trial comes just weeks before an international team of World Health Organization experts is expected to arrive in China to investigate the origins of COVID-19. 

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    In his statement Pompeo further underscored Zhan’s trial was “hasty” and not in accord with international standards of justice.

    “Her hasty trial, to which foreign observers were denied access, shows how fearful the CCP is of Chinese citizens who speak the truth,” Pompeo said.

    An EU statement also condemned the proceedings, her sentence, and treatment while in custody. “Ms Zhang has been subject to torture and ill-treatment during her detention and her health condition has seriously deteriorated,” an EU external affairs spokesman said.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 19:05

  • The Best Of Humanity, And The Worst Of Humanity…
    The Best Of Humanity, And The Worst Of Humanity…

    Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

    There are moments that restore our faith in humanity, and there are also moments that destroy it.  We were created to love and to be loved, and in this article I will share a couple examples of incredible acts of love.  But there are many others that have become so twisted that they will engage in unspeakable acts of evil without even thinking twice about it.  Of course on Christmas Day we witnessed an unspeakable act of evil when Anthony Quinn Warner blew himself up in front of the AT&T building in downtown Nashville.  But even in the midst of such a great tragedy, incredible things happened that are making headlines all over the globe.  Light and darkness often coexist side by side, but sometimes things get so dark that we forget that the light is still there.

    One story that encouraged me lately was the story of a 7-year-old boy named Eli that rushed into a burning home to save his 22-month-old sister…

    It was a typical night at the Davidson household in New Tazewell, Tennessee, on December 8. Chris and Nicole Davidson fed their three children dinner, tucked them into bed and were asleep by 8:30 p.m.

    Hours later, Nicole Davidson woke up to the smell of smoke. Within minutes, the family’s home was up in flames — and 22-month-old Erin Davidson was trapped in her room.

    Sometimes being really small is a huge advantage, and Eli was able to use his small size to squeeze through a window and grab little Erin from her crib before it was too late…

    “The smoke and fire was so thick there was no way I could get to her,” Chris Davidson told CNN. “We went outside to get to her from the window, but there was nothing for me to stand on to reach up there. So I picked up Eli, who went through the window and was able to grab her from her crib.”

    Acts of great self-sacrifice are representative of the best of humanity, but we are also reminded of the worst of humanity on a daily basis.

    For example, yesterday I came across a story about three men in Florida that I wish I could get out of my mind…

    Three men, including the rapper Splash Zanotti, allegedly demanded $20,000 and sexually assaulted a woman after breaking into a South Florida home, police said.

    Splash Zanotti, whose real name is Kejuan Campbell, along with Dionte Alexander-Wilcox and Antonio James allegedly broke into the Miramar, Florida home in October by pointing a gun at one of the homeowners, according to a federal affidavit. The men, all armed with firearms, proceeded to force both homeowners on the ground and assaulted them.

    The specific details of what they did to the woman are too sickening for this article.

    Men like this have no place in our society, and it is actually a tremendous indictment of our society that we keep producing incredibly sick and twisted people like this.

    But not everyone turns out this way.  In New Jersey, a couple named Rebecca and Robert Kolas have brought six orphaned siblings into their home so that they would not be separated.

    Needless to say, this has not been easy on their finances, and Rebecca says that they have mortgaged their home “as much as possible” in order to pay for it…

    Rebecca, who is managing attorney of the Community Health Law Project which advocates for those with disabilities, and Robert, who works for the Tom River Public Works Department, have asked New Jersey’s Division of Child Protection and Permanency for help in making more space for the kids.

    “My home is mortgaged as much as possible to pay for it,” Rebecca explained.

    Why can’t our society produce more good hearts like that?

    And why can’t we send people like Rebecca and Robert to Washington to represent us?

    Instead, our system of government seems to greatly attract power-hungry control freaks that love to make life miserable for all the rest of us.

    Things have gotten particularly oppressive during this pandemic.  The rules that our politicians have imposed upon all of us have resulted in some very crazy outcomes, and we are seeing things that I never thought we would see in this country.

    For instance, just recently the manager of an AMC Theater in Jacksonville, North Carolina banned a disabled child from entering because she wasn’t wearing a mask…

    Family members were masked up. However, the child, who was in a baby stroller and is non-verbal, was not wearing a mask.

    She reportedly has a condition that precludes her from wearing either a mask or a face shield.

    How cold-hearted do you have to be in order to do something like that?

    When the family indicated that they didn’t want to leave, the manager of the movie theater actually summoned the police…

    Police were summoned to the theater and escorted the outraged family outside.

    Yes, this is actually happening in America in 2020.

    Sadly, the people with the most money and the most power are often the most psychotic of them all.

    By now, you have probably heard that in the name of “science” Bill Gates would actually like to partially block sunlight from reaching our planet…

    A bizarre-sounding plan to save Earth funded by tech guru Bill Gates is “quietly” moving forward.

    The plan — to dim the sun’s rays and their impact on the earth — is reportedly all in the name of helping to revitalize the environment and thus save the human race.

    This is one of the most foolish plans that I have ever heard, but Bill Gates is very serious about this.

    Without the light of the sun, life on Earth could not exist.  We can barely feed everyone on the planet right now during the best of years, and partially cutting off sunlight would make it much more difficult to grow food.

    Why in the world would anyone want to do such a thing?

    We live at a time when evil is out of control all over the planet, and it is only going to get worse in the years to come.

    But whenever the wickedness seems too overwhelming, it will be important for us to remember that love is still changing hearts all over the globe.

    All throughout human history we have witnessed a battle of good vs. evil, and that will definitely be true during this chapter of human history as well.

    And even though hatred is rising all around us, we want to make sure that our hearts are always filled with love, because love will win in the end.

    *  *  *

    Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 18:45

  • China Snubs Rockets And 76ers As NBA Coverage Restarts
    China Snubs Rockets And 76ers As NBA Coverage Restarts

    Chinese streaming giant Tencent halted live broadcasts of NBA games featuring Philadelphia 76ers and Houston Rockets because Daryl Morey, voiced his opinion on Twitter in 2019 about support for the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement, according to The Japan Times.

    At the time, Morey was the general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted (now deleted) “Fight For Freedom Stand With Hong Kong.” 

    That didn’t sit well with the communist government, and it was revealed late last year that the Chinese government insisted the league fire Morey, from the Houston Rockets. 

    Morey has since become the president of the 76ers, as it seems the communist have not forgotten Morey’s political activism in his support of the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement. 

    In an apparent protest to Morey, Tencent has stopped live broadcasts of games involving the 76ers and Rockets for the 2020-2021 season, only offering text updates on a play by play basis. 

    AFP noted that “state broadcaster CCTV, which holds China’s exclusive TV rights for the NBA, has not aired any games since the season opened on December 22.” 

    Tencent’s refusal to air 76ers and Rocket games and CCTV’s blackout of NBA games has cost the league hundreds of millions of dollars. NBA’s revenues could drop by 40% in the 2020-2021 season. 

    The Times also noted that text updates via Tencent were available for the 76ers season opener against Washington Wizards on December 23. 

    The 76ers played New York Knicks and Cleveland Cavaliers over the weekend, as Tencent only provided text updates. 

    Morey recently told ESPN that his now-deleted tweet supporting Hong Kong activists almost ended his career with the league. 

    He added that he has no regrets about what was tweeted though he didn’t expect immediate outrage from the communist. 

    The essential lesson that should be taken from Morey’s tweet and China’s communist government’s action is that government involvement and regulatory oversight in private business is toxic.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 18:25

  • "A Direct And Severe Violation": Court Strikes Down Cuomo's COVID-19 Orders On Churches, Synagogues
    “A Direct And Severe Violation”: Court Strikes Down Cuomo’s COVID-19 Orders On Churches, Synagogues

    Authored by Tyler O’Neil  via PJMedia.com,

    On Monday, a panel of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction against Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D-N.Y.) COVID-19 orders placing strict limits on houses of worship in hot spots.

    The 2nd Circuit panel agreed with the Supreme Court that Cuomo’s order likely does not satisfy the high standard of strict scrutiny and therefore violates the First Amendment.

    “No public interest is served by maintaining an unconstitutional policy when constitutional alternatives are available to achieve the same goal,” Judge Michael Park wrote in the opinion.

    “The restrictions challenged here specially and disproportionately burden religious exercise, and thus ’strike at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty.’ Such a direct and severe constitutional violation weighs heavily in favor of granting injunctive relief.”

    In the 3-0 decision, the panel upheld the claims of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, the Orthodox Jewish group Agudath Israel of America, and two synagogues. The ruling enjoined Cuomo’s October 6 order capping attendance at “houses of worship.”

    Cuomo capped attendance at either 10 people or 25 percent capacity, whichever is lesser, in “red” zones, and 25 people or 33 percent capacity in “orange” zones, even in buildings that seat hundreds.

    While previous rulings had supported Cuomo’s order, the Supreme Court granted an injunction against the order by a 5-4 majority.

    “In light of the Supreme Court’s decision, we hold that the Order’s regulation of ‘houses of worship’ is subject to strict scrutiny and that its fixed capacity limits are not narrowly tailored to stem the spread of COVID-19. Appellants have established irreparable harm caused by the fixed capacity limits, and the public interest favors granting injunctive relief,” the 2nd Circuit panel ruled.

    In the opinion, Park noted that Cuomo “has not asserted that his categorization of businesses as ‘essential’ or ’non-essential’ was based on any assessment of COVID-19 transmission risk.”

    He also argued that Cuomo did not use data or compare religious worship with “essential” activities.

    Cuomo has claimed that the Supreme Court’s ruling had no practical effect because some restrictions were lifted as COVID-19 outbreaks eased.

    Avi Schick, a lawyer for Agudath Israel, said Monday’s decision “will be felt way beyond the COVID context. It is a clear statement … that government can’t disfavor religious conduct merely because it sees no value in religious practice.”

    Randy Mastro, the diocese’s lawyer, said the diocese was “gratified,” and will welcome parishioners to mass “under strict protocols” that keep them safe.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/29/2020 – 18:05

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