- In A Civil War The Authoritarian Left Would Be Easily Beaten – But It Won't End There
In A Civil War The Authoritarian Left Would Be Easily Beaten – But It Won’t End There
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,
There are a lot of assumptions and misconceptions when it comes to the notion of a second civil war within the US.
What I see most often is the argument that the political left has “already won” the war without firing a shot and that a rebellion would be crushed under the heel of a newly a-wokened military industrial complex and a leftist controlled federal government.
The problem is, this argument is extremely naive and ignores the bigger picture.
I think there are a couple of reasons why certain people press the leftist supremacy theory:
First, they greatly fear the idea of a kinetic war breaking out and find the idea of combat repellent. So, they act as if a shooting war cannot ever be won. They hide their fear behind a veil of “rationalism” and thin hopes of a completely passive resistance. They figure that if they can’t fight and win, then no one else can fight and win.
Second, the motives of some of these people are more nefarious than fearful. One of the primary functions of 4th Generation (psychological) warfare is to convince a target population that “resistance is futile.” If you can make them believe that winning is impossible then they may not fight at all, and thus the prophecy is self fulfilling.
Luckily this method of propaganda does not seem to be working on a large number of Americans. That said, there are many layers to the scenario of civil war. While the extreme cultism of leftists is relegated to a small percentage of the population, they are supported by almost every major institution in our nation. The federal government supports and protects them. Some state and local governments support and protect them. The mainstream media avidly sings their praises. Most corporations and Big Tech platforms support them and spread social justice doctrine along with them. And, all globalist foundations support, organize and even fund them.
All the people that the political left used to consider evil are now on their side. This gives their small cult unprecedented social power and a number of political weapons to use when they desire to threaten or harm people who disagree with them. For now, most of this power is actually used to terrify other people on the left.
There are many moderate democrats that have a distaste for the lunacy of social justice warriors, but they are so afraid of being labeled heretics, racists, fascists, etc. that they keep their mouths shut or support draconian policies because they think they have to in order to defend their political team. Limp-wristed moderates and old school democrats that go along to get along are almost as big a problem as hardcore leftists because they don’t have the guts to stand up to the bullies in their own political circles.
This is how we end up with around half the country in support of vaccine passport mandates, a totalitarian agenda which would give government complete control over the health decisions of individual Americans, complete control over how businesses operate and who they are allowed to hire, not to mention complete control over the economic participation of the average citizen.
Vaccine passports are the ULTIMATE POWER in the hands of government to decide the life and death of individuals and their families. And, not surprisingly, the political left and democrats are by far the biggest group backing the government and the globalists on this agenda.
This places our nation in a difficult position; the political left desperately wants to control the lives of others while conservatives and some moderates just want to be left alone. We are at an impasse.
We cannot share the same spaces, we cannot share the same government and we may not even be able to share the same land mass.
Our ideals are mutually exclusive. We believe in freedom and individual responsibility and they simply do not.
Make no mistake, an outright conflict is coming in the US and the people in alternative media circles that fear it need to come to terms with that fear and accept the inevitability of war. The sooner they do this the sooner they can take action to mitigate the damage to their families and communities. There will come a day very soon when you will have to defend your freedoms and the freedoms of future generations with your life. Embrace the suck and move on.
In recent articles I have outlined peaceful steps that can be taken by conservative states and counties to combat the establishment’s tyrannical medical mandates as well as Critical Race Theory propaganda and other trespasses against free thinking people. These steps include offering sanctuary to people and businesses that are under attack by the federal government for non-compliance, as well as the steps states need to take to pursue soft secession (Read my article ‘How States And Communities Can Fight Back Against Biden’s Covid Tyranny’).
Breaking away from the political left and starting fresh is socially and economically possible. It’s not as far fetched as some people believe. But then again, authoritarians usually can’t stand the idea of letting people just walk away and separate. They have a desperate need to micromanage and dominate EVERYONE. I hold out very little hope that leftists or globalists will allow us to live in peace; they will try to force their ideology on us at the barrel of a gun.
When it comes down to average leftists, their movement is a paper tiger, a mirage. In the event of civil war the political left in the US would be easily annihilated. There are some that argue otherwise, and these are the standard claims they usually make:
A Woke Military? Let’s Not Get Ahead Of Ourselves…
The primary paranoia over confrontation with leftists is the new woke propaganda being spread by the Department of Defense in the form of military recruitment ads. Firstly, as I outlined in detail in my article ‘There Will Never Be A Woke US Military – Here Are The Reasons Why’, polling of military personnel shows around 30% identify as Republican and 40% identify as Independent, with the majority of the independents being Libertarians and Constitutionalists. In other words 70% of the US military leans conservative in their principles.
The military brass going woke is meaningless if the majority of soldiers are not going to follow them into battle to oppress their own people. We are seeing this already in terms of the current serving that are refusing to take the experimental covid vaccines. Polling in the summer suggested that at least 50% of soldiers would refuse to take the mRNA vax. The DoD claims that at least 70% of soldiers are now vaccinated but this is unconfirmed and probably an exaggeration designed to manufacture a false consensus. We will soon know the real stats because the Biden Administration is threatening “dishonorable discharges” for soldiers that refuse to comply.
The assertion here is that with freedom minded people leaving the services in droves, this opens the door to a fully woke military of the far left. This presupposes that woke leftists actually want to join the military or that they are capable of meeting the bare minimum standards. They are not.
Over 75% of Americans ages 18-24 are ineligible for the US military because of lack of education, obesity, physical problems, psychological problems and criminal history. This negates 24 million people from the 34 million in this age range for recruitment. Since 70% of the military is conservative/libertarian, this means that either more young conservatives are healthy enough to pass the recruitment phase, or, far more conservatives are interested in volunteering; or it could be both factors combined.
Sure, the DoD could drastically lower their recruitment standards, but then they would have a woke gaggle of weaklings as a fighting force. This only works in our favor.
In any case, just because 30%-50% of soldiers leave in the face of the vaccine mandates, this does not mean that the void will be filled by leftists. In fact, it is likely that the void will not be filled at all and the military will be left to stagnate as recruitment collapses. The pool of talent is already small and the DoD just shrank their options by at least 30% more.
To summarize, there will never be a woke US military. The institution would collapse before it ever reached such a “lofty” goal. Biden’s vaccine mandates are in a way highly beneficial for conservatives and freedom advocates, because they are forcing the current serving off the fence. Soldiers will now need to consider what liberties they are willing to violate just to stay in the military, because it’s not going to stop with a couple forced vaccinations, it’s going to escalate. We may see a massive influx of discharged soldiers joining the liberty movement in the near future because of Biden’s totalitarian behaviors.
But lets say that Biden is hypothetically able to muster a combined force of alphabet agencies and portions of the military into an army of jackboots to suppress the population, what about all the technology and weaponry they would have at their disposal? Well, superior technology didn’t help the military much in the war in Afghanistan, and American civilians have access to far superior training and equipment compared to the Taliban. Conventional armies are notoriously weak against asymmetric warfare tactics. In the end wars are won by people and tactics, not weaponry.
Conservatives Own The Gun Culture And Firearms Training
Beyond the military, US gun culture is dominated by civilian conservatives. Leftists are slowly beginning to realize that being anti-gun is sabotaging their own agendas, and many started buying firearms in the past 18 months. But owning guns is not the same thing as knowing how to use them. It would take leftist many years, perhaps decades to catch up to the pure knowledge base that conservatives have when it comes to firearms and tactical training. These things have been passed down through conservative families for generations. And, again, most combat veterans are also conservative.
This is not to say that there are no leftists out there that are firearms proficient. I’m sure there are a few. But most of the time when leftists get together with guns the results are either painfully embarrassing or dangerous. Just check out THIS VIDEO from Angry Cops on the BLM inspired “Not F$%king Around Coalition” (NFAC) group. Not only do they end up shooting each other, but their representatives don’t even understand the basics of how their own rifles function when they argue that the negligent discharge was the “gun’s fault.”
And let’s not forget the good old ‘John Brown Gun Club’ and their rocken’ recruitment videos that made us choke on our own tears of laughter a few years ago. The leftists are shockingly inept when it comes to guns and combat skills. They are a minimal threat to conservatives if civil war is the issue.
You Can’t Win If You’re Not Willing To Die For What You Believe In
Leftists are adamant about their ideologies and they are keenly interested in demanding OTHER people die for the cause. But, when they are forced to face personal risk to achieve their directives, they will usually run. You can see this in the mob confrontation with Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha; a horde of leftists were perfectly willing to chase him down with the intention of killing him, but when he turned to fight and a few of them got shot (including Joseph Rosenbaum, a convicted pedophile), the mob’s enthusiasm suddenly evaporated.
Why do they run? Because their religious fervor for Marxism is an act. It’s not real. Deep down, they don’t even believe in what they are doing, and this is what separates freedom fighters from all other armed forces. We accept the possibility of death and fight in the face of overwhelming odds because the goal of freedom is worth it. Most authoritarians and useful idiots, when faced with dying for their ideology, will abandon the cause. They have entered the fight with a built-in disadvantage.
The Real Fight Will Not Be With Average Marxist Leftists
Half the states in the US now have some form of anti-mandate laws or executive orders in place. Half the country is vehemently against the vaccine passports. If Biden continues on his current path, a soft secession of red states will begin and the mandates will be ignored. This will leave Biden with a handful of options. He will invariably seek to punish red states using economic pressure and cutting off federal funds, and when that doesn’t work he will have to put boots on the ground and use Orwellian methods to attack dissidents.
Should civil war erupt (and I’m positive at this point that this is unavoidable), leftists will not last long. The majority of veterans and a large portion of the military are not going to fight against their own people, and they may even step in to assist. A large number of police and sheriff’s are also conservative and are unlikely to intervene. So, the question is, who is willing to die for leftists and their cult? I suspect not many.
But, the people behind the leftist movement, the globalist foundations that fund them, have a vested interest in eliminating conservative ideals and heritage. Globalist institutions working with the Biden Administration will surely seek to intervene. They will call us “white supremacists” even though many conservatives are black and brown. They will call us evil nationalists, even though there is nothing wrong with a national identity that values freedom. They will say we are “insurrectionists” even though we will be acting in self defense against an authoritarian regime. They will call us terrorists while using terrorist tactics and false flags against us. And, they will claim that we are far too dangerous to be allowed to maintain our own nation or our own states.
Their main rationale will probably fall to the US nuclear arsenal. They will claim that a nation of terrorists cannot be allowed to possess nuclear weapons, and at the first sign that Biden (or Kamala) is losing control, there will be a call for UN intervention. Count on it. An international force would be organized to try to stop us from existing. This is where the REAL fight would begin.
The political left is a footnote, and while we should continue to remain vigilant as they push their agenda it is important to remember that there are much bigger fish to fry and we need to plan for the next dozen battles, not just the first. How we conduct ourselves from here on may determine whether or not freedom survives for many decades to come.
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Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/02/2021 – 23:30 - "What The F**k Is That" – Video Of Secret Stealth Aircraft Goes Viral
“What The F**k Is That” – Video Of Secret Stealth Aircraft Goes Viral
A mysterious stealth aircraft was spotted at Lockheed Martin’s Helendale radar-cross section measurement facility in the Mojave Desert, not far from the company’s Skunk Works headquarters at Plant 42 in Palmdale, California.
Skunk Works has played a significant role in the development of stealth aircraft in the last four decades and could be in the process of developing yet another one.
A video, first spotted by Twitter handle “Ruben Hofs,” said he first “stumbled upon a very interesting TikTok video of an unknown shape on a flatbed trailer.”
Hofs was able to geolocate the TikTok video to “the Helendale Radar Cross Section Facility,” which tests and evaluates aircraft designs’ radar signatures.
The video itself is short and shows the aircraft being transported on a flatbed trailer, while a voice asks: “What the f**k is that?”
The video: pic.twitter.com/Unhq9lsHwE
— Ruben Hofs (@rubenhofs) September 22, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The aircraft does seem to resemble some similarities with the US Air Force’s sixth-generation fighter jet prototype.
The Drive’s Joseph Trevithick spoke with Jeff Babione, the head of Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, about the video that has gone viral on social media. Babione declined to comment on the stealthy, advanced fighter aircraft at the Helendale radar-cross section facility. He also said he wasn’t aware of the video.
By now, we’re sure the Chinese have taken all seven seconds of the clip and are trying to replicate the design.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/02/2021 – 23:00 - Disinfo Vs. Democracy
Disinfo Vs. Democracy
Authored by Nadine Strossen via TabletMag.com,
Using accusations of ‘disinformation’ to suppress scientific criticism, steer media coverage, and silence political opponents is not part of the operating system of a free society…
First Amendment principles permit the government to punish false speech when it directly and immediately causes specific and serious harm. But unlike defamation, fraud, perjury, and other examples of punishable false speech, the term “disinformation” (or “misinformation”) has no specific legal meaning. “Disinformation” is widely used to designate false or misleading speech that cannot constitutionally be punished precisely because its potential harms are indirect and speculative—what the U.S. Supreme Court has called “an undifferentiated fear or apprehension” of negative consequences.
To be sure, even though the harmful potential of disinformation is more inchoate than that of false speech that is constitutionally punishable, the potential for harm is still real. The many current advocates of restricting disinformation stress that it can cause serious harm, including to individual and public health, and even to democratic self-government itself. Yet expanding government power to punish such expression would also cause harm that is at least as serious—including to the very same values of health and democratic governance.
The negative impact of censoring disinformation comes from its inherent vagueness and subjectivity. The authorities tasked with censorship invariably enforce this malleable concept in ways that reinforce dominant political and societal interest groups, and disadvantage minority groups and perspectives. This predictable dynamic is illustrated by recent experience in a number of other countries, from Russia to South Africa, and also in the United States before the Supreme Court enforced strict limits on punishing false speech.
While the relevant legal analysis focuses on government censorship of disinformation, many of the same concerns also apply to censorship implemented by dominant technology firms. Although these private sector entities are usually not constrained by the First Amendment, their enormous power and influence over public discourse means that their restrictions on disinformation have adverse consequences similar to government restrictions. Moreover, in recent months, mounting evidence suggests that the dominant platforms’ content restrictions on disinformation (and other controversial speech) may have been sufficiently induced by or coordinated with government officials that we should seriously consider treating such restrictions as tantamount to government action and hence subject to First Amendment limits.
Arguments for restricting disinformation consistently focus on the harm that such speech can potentially cause, without analyzing other issues that should be considered before concluding that censorship is justified. First, it is important to underscore the important fact noted above: The harmful potential of disinformation—unlike constitutionally punishable forms of false speech—is indirect and speculative. While the old nursery rhyme is wrong in declaring that “words will never hurt me,” it is equally untrue that “words will always hurt me.” The impact of speech on a single human mind, let alone an entire community or society, results from the complex interplay of multiple factors, and hence cannot be confidently predicted, or even clearly assessed after the fact. For example, what has been the net impact of disinformation about the 2020 election? Surely disinformation spurred some negative outcomes, including motivating participants in the events of Jan. 6. Just as plausibly, though, disinformation about the election spurred some positive outcomes too, including increased efforts to promote healthy skepticism, media literacy, fact-checking, and other measures that would remain necessary even if disinformation were censored. Because we can never completely eliminate the supply of disinformation, the most effective response is to curb the demand for it.
Even if we made the purely hypothetical assumption that certain disinformation has a significant negative impact on balance, it still would not follow that government should restrict it. Logically, one could justify restrictions only by analyzing three additional questions:
(1) Does the restriction materially reduce either the prevalence of such speech or its potential adverse impact?
(2) Does the restriction have any adverse consequences (including unintended ones), such as increasing the prevalence or potential adverse impact of the targeted speech, or suppressing other speech that even censorship advocates agree should be protected?
(3) Are there other steps we could pursue to reduce the prevalence or potential adverse impact of the targeted speech that would be at least as effective, but would not entail as many adverse consequences?
This additional line of questioning makes common sense. We might well be willing to give up some free speech rights for the sake of advancing some other important goal—such as, in the case of disinformation, preserving our democratic form of government. But we shouldn’t be willing to forfeit free speech if the sacrifice does not actually have the desired impact, or worse yet, if it actually makes the problem worse—in this case, by undermining democracy. Indeed, government punishment of disinformation is fundamentally antithetical to democracy. As the Supreme Court declared in United States v. Alvarez (2012), which struck down a federal law criminalizing certain false statements, “Our constitutional tradition stands against the idea that we need Oceania’s Ministry of Truth.”
As current debates illustrate, one person’s cherished truth is another’s despised “fake news.” Speech that critics seek to suppress as disinformation almost never consists of objectively verifiable facts alone, but also involves subjective matters of interpretation and analysis. After all, speakers who intentionally or recklessly utter false statements of fact that directly cause specific harm may constitutionally be punished under existing laws, such as those that ban fraud, defamation, and perjury. In contrast, our legal system scrupulously avoids punishing statements that go beyond straightforward facts and incorporate matters of interpretation or opinion. As the Supreme Court declared in Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (1974): ‘’Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea. However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries but on the competition of other ideas.”
While some may bristle at the notion that government is prohibited from silencing “false ideas,” surely the alternative is far worse. If government were permitted to determine which ideas should be deemed “false” and hence punishable, any ideas that depart from prevailing orthodoxy—including those critiquing government policy—would be jeopardized. Such a course could not be more inimical to the most fundamental precepts that undergird our democratic republic. As the Supreme Court eloquently declared in its landmark 1943 decision in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette: “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion …”
Until the Supreme Court reined in the concept of defamation in its groundbreaking 1964 ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan, Southern officials systematically persecuted civil rights leaders and organizations, as well as the national media that covered them, for even slight misstatements of fact. Those officials pursued multiple defamation lawsuits with the specific goal of imposing ruinously large damages judgments in order to stifle both the civil rights activists themselves and the national media that disseminated information about their efforts across the country. Without that national audience, and the resulting political and financial support for the civil rights movement, it likely would have foundered; that was precisely the point of the libel lawsuit strategy. In a nutshell, the pre-Sullivan libel laws, which gave government undue discretion to punish disinformation, were unsurprisingly weaponized against the government’s critics.
To this day, advocates for racial justice, including supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement, have seen their own speech assailed—and even suppressed on social media—as disinformation. For instance, a May 25, 2021, National Public Radio story quoted Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, as stating: “I feel that Black Lives Matter is one of the greatest sources of disinformation … They have manipulated the good nature of many people.” The story also quoted Gonzales, Rudolph Giuliani, and other BLM critics charging that the movement falsely portrays itself as a racial justice group, whereas its actual goal is “to advance a Marxist agenda.” While the NPR story quoted critics charging BLM with purveying disinformation, it also quoted BLM leaders who returned the very same charge, complaining that the disinformation accusations themselves constituted disinformation.
The unavoidable problems with censoring disinformation have predictably plagued recent laws, including those touted as restricting pandemic-related disinformation in order to protect public health. As the Economist reported in February 2021, “Censorious governments are abusing ‘fake news’ laws,” invoking the pandemic as “an excuse to gag reporters” and to silence critics of pandemic-era policies. In February 2020, Amnesty International noted that Singapore’s 2019 law against “online falsehoods and manipulation” was “repeatedly used to target critics and political opponents.” The Singaporean government could not deny this, but instead claimed that the law’s consistent enforcement against opposition party members was a “coincidence.” To the contrary, these patterns necessarily result from restrictions on such a vague, broad category of speech, even in democratic regimes.
That is why the American Civil Liberties Union brought a 2020 lawsuit challenging disinformation laws that the government of Puerto Rico had recently passed for the asserted purpose of protecting public health and safety. One such law makes it a crime to share “false information” about the government’s post-pandemic emergency and curfew orders with the intent to cause “confusion, panic, or public hysteria.” Shortly after the law went into effect, the Puerto Rican government charged a prominent clergyman with allegedly disseminating false information on WhatsApp about a rumored executive order to close all businesses. In fact, only a short time later, the governor did issue such an order.
Even beyond the speech that disinformation laws directly stifle, these laws also suppress incalculable amounts of important expression, including information about the pandemic that could literally be a matter of life or death. That’s because the laws deter scientists and other experts from providing information to journalists, and journalists are in turn deterred from conveying information to the public, for fear of transgressing—or being charged with transgressing—the laws’ blurry boundaries. The ACLU’s complaint in the Puerto Rico case was filed on behalf of two prominent investigative journalists, who explained that “developing stories on matters of immense public concern are often complex, contentious, and murky,” and thus “inadvertent inaccuracies are inevitable even in the most thoroughly vetted reporting.”
Throughout the pandemic, we have witnessed constantly evolving and shifting views among expert individuals and agencies, as they steadily gather and analyze additional data. Yesterday’s life-endangering “disinformation” can and has become today’s life-protecting gospel. Recall, to cite only the most obvious example, the CDC’s changing edicts about mask-wearing.
Inherently subjective disinformation restrictions can easily be wielded for ulterior purposes, including to promote partisan interests. Consider, for instance, recent evidence that the Biden administration has been pressuring social media companies to restrict content that purportedly purveys disinformation about COVID, in light of allegations that the actual concerns may well involve politics at least as much as public health. Republican members of Congress have claimed that platforms have restricted “conservative” posts on issues related to the pandemic in response to pressure from administration officials, even though the posts contained no factual misrepresentations and simply conveyed perspectives with which the administration disagreed. Whether or not these claims are factually correct, it is true that the concept of disinformation is so open-ended that it could be deployed against particular communications for partisan reasons.
The inevitable manipulability of restrictions on disinformation is well illustrated by YouTube’s recent removal of a video for violating its “medical misinformation policy.” The video, which had been posted by New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, was of an August 2021 news conference in which she announced a lawsuit challenging New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “vaccine passport” as an invasion of privacy and an unreasonable mandate on small businesses. Although Malliotakis supports vaccination, she believes that the mandate constitutes government overreach—a position that the Supreme Court might well end up sharing. After Malliotakis appealed YouTube’s removal, the company said that it was “taking another look” and ultimately reinstated the video, thus underscoring the inherent elasticity of the misinformation concept. Whether or not YouTube actually had a good-faith health reason for its initial removal of the video, the fact remains that the vague policy can easily be invoked as a pretext, masking other motives.
All the more reason, then, to be suspicious of even sincere attempts by public and private authorities to prevent the harm that disinformation can cause. Recall that Southern officials based their libel lawsuits against activists and journalists during the civil rights movement on the dissemination of inaccurate information. What we learned in that era is that disinformation is unavoidable in any vigorous discussion of fast-breaking public issues, and that making it punishable by law can only inhibit democratic debate. It’s time we relearn that lesson.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/02/2021 – 22:30 - "Take The Money And Run" – Artist Goes Dark After Punking Museum Into Giving Him $84K For Blank Canvas
“Take The Money And Run” – Artist Goes Dark After Punking Museum Into Giving Him $84K For Blank Canvas
We love to squawk whenever some ridiculous piece of modern art or pixelated NFT sells for a ridiculous sum that this is just another obvious symptom of the asset bubble blown by the global monetary gusher (either that, or somebody’s trying to launder $60MM and spotted a cost-effective opportunity to do so).
But this latest example of art-world excess is heavy on the meta-commentary. It’s also extremely Scandinavian.
Here’s what happened: Danish artist Jens Haaning was given $84K by a museum – the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, Denmark – and promised to use the money to create a work of art that would be featured as part of an exhibit. After receiving the money – $84K in US dollars – Haaning emailed the exhibit’s curator, saying he had changed his mind about the project, and had changed the title to “Take the Money and Run”. He then delivered the project – but kept the cash, which was supposed to be used as part of the project (the new piece was supposed to be part of a series where the artist used actual euros to depict the average annual income of different European countries).
“Take the money and Run”
The Museum says it will wait to see if the artist returns the money by Jan 16 as he is contractually obligated to do. If he doesn’t, the museum’s director told CBS News that “we will of course take the necessary steps to ensure that Jens Haaning complies with his contract.”
But in the mean time, the museum is trying to spin the incident as a kind of double-win (although there’s no guarantee that they will get the money back).
Here’s more from CBS News:
Indeed, the frames meant to be filled with cash were empty.
“The staff was very surprised when they opened the crates. I was abroad when the crates were opened, but suddenly received a lot of mails,” Andersson said.
When he finally saw “Take the Money and Run,” Andersson said he actually laughed. “Jens is known for his conceptual and activistic art with a humoristic touch. And he gave us that – but also a bit of a wake up call as everyone know wonders were did the money go,” he said.
According to Haaning’s press release, “the idea behind was to show how salaries can be used to measure the value of work and to show national differences within the European Union. But by changing the title of the work to “Take the Money and Run” Haaning “questions artists’ rights and their working conditions in order to establish more equitable norms within the art industry.”
“Everyone would like to have more money and, in our society, work industries are valued differently,” Haaning said in a statement. “The artwork is essentially about the working conditions of artists. It is a statement saying that we also have the responsibility of questioning the structures that we are part of.
And if these structures are completely unreasonable, we must break with them. It can be your marriage, your work – it can be any type of societal structure”.
While the artist technically violated the spirit of the deal, he does contractually have until Jan. 16 to deliver on the project – or return the money.
“…while it wasn’t what they had agreed on in the contract, the museum got new and interesting art. “When it comes to the amount of $84,000, he hasn’t broke any contract yet as the initial contract says we will have the money back on January 16th 2022.”
Now, as for whether the artist will return the money, we’re curious as to whether maybe there might be a “Part II” to the this exhibit involving the spending of $84K in US dollars.
They should probably check all the strip clubs near the guy’s house.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/02/2021 – 22:00 - Buchanan: Who Is Killing 10,000 Black Americans Every Year?
Buchanan: Who Is Killing 10,000 Black Americans Every Year?
“Unfortunately, Jan. 6 was not an isolated event,” warned FBI Director Christopher Wray last winter:
“The problem of domestic terrorism has been metastasizing across the country for a long time now, and it’s not going away anytime soon.”
Since he became director in 2017, said Wray, FBI domestic terrorism investigations had doubled in number to more than 2,000, and FBI investigations of white supremacists had tripled.
Listening to Wray, one came away with the impression that right-wing terrorism was our foremost internal security issue, that the Jan. 6 riot was a manifestation of that terrorism, and that white supremacists top the list of dangerous enemies inside our own country.
The vast turnout of police and press for the Sept. 18 protest on the Mall to demand fairness for the Jan. 6 “patriots” suggested that our elites shared Wray’s alarm.
All seemed disappointed when the brownshirts failed to show up.
Yet, with this week’s release of FBI statistics on violent crime in America, showing a record 30% surge in homicides in 2020 over 2019, questions arise.
What caused the number of U.S. victims of murder and manslaughter to explode by almost 5,000 last year to reach a total of 21,500? Why are homicides rising another 10% this year? Why are murders and manslaughters rising so dramatically in the USA?
For that number of killings, 21,500 in 2021, is three times the number of U.S. soldiers dead in 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The New York Times and Washington Post both made the FBI figures front-page news. And the Times gave some insight as to who the victims of homicide in this country were and are.
Here is the relevant passage in the Times story:
“The (FBI) report … breaks down last year’s homicide victims by race, ethnicity and sex, although not all law enforcement agencies provided such data. Of the people killed in 2020, at least 9,913 were Black, 7,029 were white, 497 were from other races and 315 were of unknown race. There were at least 14,146 men killed and 3,573 women.”
The startling number here: There were nearly 3,000 more Black victims who wound up dead in America from criminal violence than there were white victims, though Blacks, at 12-13% of the U.S. population, are only one-fifth the size of the white population.
Translation: Black Americans are being shot, stabbed and beaten to death at a rate six to seven times that of whites. And by the end of this year, well over 10,000 Blacks will have been made the victims of homicide in America.
That figure breaks down to roughly 200 Black folks dead every single week in this country from gunshot wounds and other criminal violence — a weekly death toll that rivals U.S. losses in Vietnam at the height of the war.
The question unanswered and unasked in the Times’ and Post’s stories is: Who is doing this? Who is killing all these Black people?
If, as the slogan proclaims, “Black lives matter,” why is there not greater public alarm at BLM in who is killing so many Black people?
About the number of dead in the infamous Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, histories and historians differ. Some say the number of Black victims was no more than 30. Others say it was as high as 300.
But, again, in one year, the number of Blacks killed in violent crimes in America, 3-in-4 by gunshots, will exceed 10,000.
Who is doing this? How many of these Black folks are victims of the right-wing extremists and white supremacists that Wray sees as our greatest domestic security threat?
How many Blacks in 2021 and this year were victims of the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers or 3 Percenters or neo-Nazis or the Klan?
If rogue white cops are the scourge of Black America, as we have been instructed to believe, how many killings of unarmed Blacks were done by white cops this year and last?
In 2020, homicides in Washington, D.C., rose for the third straight year, reaching almost 200, the deadliest year in the city since 2004. More than 920 people were shot in 2020, a 64% increase from three years ago. Again, how many of these Washington shootings, averaging three a day, were the lethal work of Washington white supremacists?
Within the Post and Times there were explanations offered for the 30% surge in homicides. Among them were the proliferation of guns and gun ownership, and the “police legitimacy crisis.”
In the wake of George Floyd’s death, “Defund the Police!” became the chant of 100 leftist protests.
Police funds were cut. Elites turned hostile to cops they once hailed as “first responders.” Demoralized, many police ceased to be proactive. Police resignations and retirements came in record numbers.
When the peace forces in our society were morally disarmed, their natural enemies, the criminal element, seized the opportunity.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/02/2021 – 21:30 - Russia Becomes First Country To Ban Scientology As A "Threat To National Security"
Russia Becomes First Country To Ban Scientology As A “Threat To National Security”
Russia’s Justice Ministry is waging a war on Scientology, this week banning the organization from operating on Russian soil. It’s not the first time Moscow has moved legally against the group, however, in an updated list released Friday two key Church of Scientology entities have now been blacklisted as “undesirable” – the most severe designation ever taken by the Russian government.
Calling the group a “threat to the security of the Russian Federation” a media statement described that that “On October 1, the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises International, L. Ron Hubbard Library as well as the ENEMO were added to the list of organizations whose activity is deemed undesirable in Russia by the Prosecutor General’s Office.”
Image via The Guardian The two entities named are California-based holdings and are said to be vital to Scientology operations in foreign countries. Being added to the “undesirable” list means all local offices are closed down by the state and assets frozen.
Moscow has long argued it’s a “business masquerading as a religion” – similar to arguments made by detractors in the West, who have also long lobbied Washington to revoke Scientology’s tax exempt status.
In most countries across the globe, the group is officially considered a religion and thus enjoys tax exempt status, with the major exception of Russia. In the US, where it was born over a half-century ago when American science fiction novelist L. Ron Hubbard wrote its foundational texts (numbering thousands upon thousands of pages), it’s attracted huge controversy.
The controversy and media spotlight has grown especially over the last decade in the US. After a number of high profile Scientologists, including celebrities like Tom Cruise and John Travolta (though there are rumors the latter has moved away from it), became outspoken public advocates – which included defending some bizarre practices like forcing women to “stay silent” during child birth – but which resulted in backlash as more and more documentaries emerged delving into the strange belief system.
The Prosecutor General’s Office in Russie said the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises International and the Church of Spiritual Technology “pose a threat to the security of the Russian Federation.”https://t.co/nOvgeXKgGF
— Religion News Service (@RNS) September 28, 2021
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According to Russia’s RT News, the Kremlin has long eyed Scientology going back to its presence just after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990’s:
The decision follows a decades-long campaign to ban Scientology from illegally profiting on Russian territory, with the first major effort to restrict the group dating back to 1996, back in the Boris Yeltsin-era and some twelve years after the organization gained a foothold in what was then the Soviet Union.
However, it was not until the 2010s when authorities really cracked down on Scientology groups, investigating major branches in Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as their leaders, on charges of illegal business activities and extremism.
Scientology is known to employ an army of lawyers, often making it extremely difficult for local, state, or central governments to go after the group – which often wins court cases based on presenting itself as a valid religion.
Tom Cruise Worried About John Travolta Distancing Himself From Scientology? https://t.co/gxjQrjoGdW
— Suggest (@suggestonline) September 24, 2021
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Other European countries like Belgium and France have recently seen high profile cases thrust Scientology into the media spotlight, with some European officials labeling it a “cult”. However, Russia now stands out as the country with by far the most restrictive laws against the organization.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/02/2021 – 21:00 - India's Ivermectin Blackout: The Secret Revealed
India’s Ivermectin Blackout: The Secret Revealed
Authored by Justus R, Hope via TheDesertReview.com,
On May 7, 2021, during the peak of India’s Delta Surge, The World Health Organization reported, “Uttar Pradesh (is) going the last mile to stop COVID-19.”
The WHO noted, “Government teams are moving across 97,941 villages in 75 districts over five days in this activity which began May 5 in India’s most populous state with a population of 230 million.”
The activity involved an aggressive house-to-house test and treat program with medicine kits.
The WHO explained, “Each monitoring team has two members who visit homes in villages and remote hamlets to test everyone with symptoms of COVID-19 using Rapid Antigen Test kits. Those who test positive are quickly isolated and given a medicine kit with advice on disease management.“
The medicines comprising the kit were not identified as part of the Western media blackout at the time. As a result, the contents were as secret as the sauce at McDonald’s.
The WHO continued, “On the inaugural day, WHO field officers monitored over 2,000 government teams and visited at least 10,000 households.”
This news story was published on the WHO Official Website in India. The website details the WHO’s work against COVID-19 in India, including a discussion about their “Online course for Rapid Response Teams.”
Such teams are the very government teams discussed above assigned to conduct the house-to-house test and treat program in Uttar Pradesh. In discussing the role of the Rapid Response Team (RRT), the WHO site reports,
“RRTs are a key component of a larger emergency response strategy that is essential for an efficient and effective response…WHO has produced and published this course for RRTs working at the national, sub-national, district, and sub-district levels to strengthen the pandemic response with support from the National Center for Disease Control, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
The Rapid Response Teams derive support from the United States CDC under the umbrella of the WHO. This fact further validates the Uttar Pradesh test and treat program and solidifies this as a joint effort by the WHO and CDC.
Perhaps the most telling portion of the WHO article was the last sentence, “WHO will also support the Uttar Pradesh government on the compilation of the final reports.”
None have yet been published.
Just five short weeks later, on June 14, 2021, new cases had dropped a staggering 97.1 percent, and the Uttar Pradesh program was hailed as a resounding success.
According to ZeeNews of India, “The strategy of trace, test & treat yields results.”
“The Yogi-led state has also been registering a steep decline in the number of Active COVID Cases as the figure has dropped from a high of 310,783 in April to 8,986 now, a remarkable reduction by 97.10 percent.”
By July 2, 2021, three weeks later, cases were down a full 99 percent.
On August 6, 2021, India’s Ivermectin media blackout ended with MSM reporting. Western media, including MSN, finally acknowledged what was contained in those Uttar Pradesh medicine kits. Among the medicines were Doxycycline and Ivermectin.
On August 25, 2021, the Indian media noticed the discrepancy between Uttar Pradesh’s massive success and other states, like Kerala’s, comparative failure. Although Uttar Pradesh was only 5% vaccinated to Kerala’s 20%, Uttar Pradesh had (only) 22 new COVID cases, while Kerala was overwhelmed with 31,445 in one day. So it became apparent that whatever was contained in those treatment kits must have been pretty effective.
News18 reported, “Let’s look at the contrasting picture. Kerala, with its 3.5 crore population – or 35 million, on August 25 reported 31,445 new cases, a bulk of the total cases reported in the country. Uttar Pradesh, the biggest state with a population of nearly 24 crore – or 240 million – meanwhile reported just 22 cases in the same period.
Two days ago, just seven fresh positive cases were reported from Uttar Pradesh. Kerala reported 215 deaths on August 25, while Uttar Pradesh only reported two deaths. In fact, no deaths have been reported from Uttar Pradesh in recent days. There are only 345 active cases in Uttar Pradesh now while Kerala’s figure is at 1.7 lakh – or 170,000.”
“Kerala has done a much better job in vaccination coverage with 56% of its population being vaccinated with one dose and 20% of the population being fully vaccinated with a total of 2.66 crore – or 26.6 million – doses being administered.
Uttar Pradesh had given over 6.5 crore – or 65 million – doses, the maximum in the country, but only 25% of people have got their first dose while less than 5% of people are fully vaccinated. Given the present COVID numbers, Uttar Pradesh seems to be trumping Kerala for the tag of the most successful model against COVID.”
This author reviewed the reasons behind Kerala’s failed treatment model in two articles, “The Lesson of Kerala” and “Kerala’s Vaccinated Surge.”
By September 12, 2021, Livemint reported that 34 districts were declared COVID-free or had no active cases. Only 14 new cases were recorded in the entire state of Uttar Pradesh.
On September 22, 2021, YouTube hosted a video by popular science blogger Dr. John Campbell detailing the Uttar Pradesh success story. He gave a breakdown of the ingredients and dosages of the magical medicine home treatment kit responsible for eradicating COVID in Uttar Pradesh. The same kit was also used in the state of Goa.
Dr. John Campbell broke India’s Ivermectin Blackout wide open on YouTube by revealing the formula of the secret sauce, much to the dismay of Big Pharma, the WHO, and the CDC. Readers will want to watch this before it is taken down. See mark 2:22.
Each home kit contained the following: Paracetamol tablets [tylenol], Vitamin C, Multivitamin, Zinc, Vitamin D3, Ivermectin 12 mg [quantity #10 tablets], Doxycycline 100 mg [quantity #10 tablets]. Other non-medication components included face masks, sanitizer, gloves and alcohol wipes, a digital thermometer, and a pulse oximeter. See mark 2:33.
Campbell reports that the exciting things in the kit that grabbed his attention were: Zinc, Vitamin D3, Ivermectin, and secondary antibiotic treatment. “Interesting, that’s what the government decided to give.” See mark 3:40
John Campbell has reviewed repurposed drugs for COVID before. He has interviewed both Dr. Tess Lawrie and Dr. Pierre Kory. Repurposed drugs hold the potential for benefitting many conditions, not the least of which include viruses and cancers.
Dr. Campbell noted that there had been no recent cases in 59 Uttar Pradesh districts. In addition, out of 191,446 tests completed in the previous 24 hours, only 33 samples were positive for a test positivity rate of only 0.01%. Dr. Campbell called this low number “staggering.” See mark 5:05.
By September, cases had fallen dramatically. Out of the entire state of 200 million plus inhabitants, only 187 active cases were left compared to the peak in April of 310,783 cases. See mark 5:41.
Dr. Campbell attributes their success to many factors, including early detection and early treatment with kits costing a mere $ 2.65 per person. See mark 6:20.
Notice that Dr. Campbell does not mention a single person who had any toxicity from those ten 12 mg pills of Ivermectin – in the entire state of over 200 million. Not one poisoning was reported. No Indian poison control articles or telephone calls were reported. Out of millions of distributed medicine kits, each containing 120 mg of Ivermectin, not one person in Uttar Pradesh was reported to have had a problem with the drug.
Notice that Dr. Campbell at no time criticizes the medicine kit as “fringe” or ineffective. After all, it would be improper to accuse a WHO-sponsored program such as the Uttar Pradesh test and treat – coordinated by WHO – of being “fringe.”
Contrary to what little we receive – at great expense – from the government in the United States, these kits are efficient and contain gloves, a thermometer, and an oximeter. The last time I purchased an oximeter some ten years ago, it cost some $200.00. This entire kit – including the oximeter – costs only $2.65.
And notice that a government can purchase over one thousand home treatment Ivermectin containing kits for the price of one course of Remdesivir. Remdesivir runs $3,100, and it is an impractical drug as it must be given late in the disease during hospitalization. Moreover, it is a drug that does not save lives.
On the other hand, the Ivermectin kits are highly correlated with eliminating COVID-19 in Uttar Pradesh. Indeed with less than 11% of their population fully vaccinated, the Uttar Pradesh model of test and treat is superior not only to Kerala, with a much higher percent vaccinated. Uttar Pradesh beats the UK, the US, and nearly everywhere else in the world in terms of the lowest active COVID cases.
Rather than turning a blind eye to Uttar Pradesh, perhaps it is time to analyze its success. It is time for all to realize that far from being dangerous, Ivermectin is safer than hand sanitizer or plain Tylenol, judging from the number of United States poison control calls.
Now is precisely the moment to point out that Dr. George Fareed, Dr. Peter McCullough, and Dr. Harvey Risch were correct in their U.S. Senate Testimony on November 19, 2020. They advised that early outpatient treatment was essential and would save hundreds of thousands of American lives if adopted. It wasn’t.
Now is the right moment to notice the onslaught of United States poison control articles attempting to smear Ivermectin, a drug proven safe and effective in the Uttar Pradesh test-and-treat program administered under the auspices of both the WHO and CDC.
It is appropriate to remind the reader that the WHO and CDC possess direct and recent knowledge of Ivermectin use for COVID-19 in India. Moreover, they know better than anyone the colossal effectiveness and overwhelming safety of Ivermectin used in those millions of Uttar Pradesh test and treat kits.
Perhaps it is also time to ask why exactly Dr. Tess Lawrie’s peer-reviewed meta-analysis was given an Altimetric score of 26,697, making it number eight out of some 18 million publications.
This rank is far better than the top 1%, which would only need a ranking of 180,000 for it to rank in the top 1%. It would only need 18,000 for it to rank in the top .1%. Ranking in the top .001% would mean #180. Therefore, at number eight, it is 8/180 of the top .001% or roughly the top 4.4% of the top .001%. This article ranks in the top 5% of the top .001%!
In other words, only seven articles in the world out of those 18 million are ranked higher.
This peer-reviewed paper is one of the most cited of medical references of all time – period. That should alert any reader – immediately – to its historical significance. Dr. Tess Lawrie is a 30-year veteran WHO evidence synthesis expert. Her conclusion is every bit as meaningful as the article’s rank. Here are those words,
Maybe it is time to ask why Dr. Pierre Kory’s peer-reviewed narrative review of Ivermectin ranks #38 out of the same 18 million publications.
If Dr. Lawrie’s paper is ranked in the top 5% of the top .001% of all such published medical articles of all time, then Dr. Kory’s is not far behind. His is 38/180 of the top .001% or the top 21% of the top .001%
Thus, both articles would rank in the rarified atmosphere of nearly one in a million.
Therefore, the reader must now ask why two magnificent independent reviews from two different continents, coming to the same conclusion, are both ignored by our world’s medical leaders?
Uttar Pradesh is one such population that experienced a considerable drop in COVID-19 morbidity and mortality months AFTER Dr. Kory’s article was published on April 22, 2021. Therefore, one must ask that if Ivermectin so predictably and safely eradicates COVID-19, then why is it not being systematically deployed over all the world, as Dr. Kory and Dr. Lawrie suggest?
Perhaps every reader needs to ask themselves this question – Why is it that BOTH Dr. Lawrie’s and Dr. Kory’s supremely-rated expert review articles, published in the medical literature on PubMed, the National Library of Medicine, are BANNED from Wikipedia?
Although India’s Ivermectin victory over COVID may have been lost on bent-on-vaccinating-everyone Big Pharma and Big Regulators, the message seems to have gotten through to the man on the street. If Google Trends is any indicator, interest in Ivermectin is exploding, and for good reason. We are all being systematically deceived by influential organizations in the name of profits.
A daily onslaught of media propaganda bombards us with messages attempting to steer us away from the safest and most effective treatments.
Interest in Ivermectin and India is only increasing and has now reached an all-time high.
India’s conquest of COVID-19 is concealed no longer. The secret is out.
And perhaps, at long last, that much-anticipated WHO Final Report detailing the most successful Pandemic campaign of any place on earth will be published.
* * *
Justus R. Hope, M.D. is the author of the book “Ivermectin for the World”, released as a call to action for the use of Ivermectin to end the humanitarian crisis in India with the COVID-19 Pandemic
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/02/2021 – 20:30 - "People Are Moving Back" – NYC Rentals Become Scarce As City Life Returns
“People Are Moving Back” – NYC Rentals Become Scarce As City Life Returns
The number of available apartment rentals in New York City has fallen back to pre-pandemic levels as people return to city life for urban work and schooling.
According to Bloomberg, citing data from real estate firm StreetEasy, in the week ending Sept. 26, inventory of apartments for rent stood at 15,541, compared with 16,649 at the start of March 2020. This is a considerable decline from the 48,753 rentals available in September 2020.
The borough of Manhattan is one of the hottest rental markets in all of the city, said Nancy Wu, an economist at StreetEasy.
“Manhattan residents were more mobile and had the ability to move. That’s where we saw the biggest drops in rents [during the pandemic], and the biggest gains back up in the city,” Wu said.
She said it’s a “sign we’re getting to a recovery in the rentals market, which means people are moving back.”
Prices have yet to rebound back to pre-COVID levels, and there are still plenty of good deals, allowing renters room to negotiate.
The median rent for an apartment in New York has risen since May and hit $2,700 in August. According to Wu, it’s still lower than the median of $2,995 in April 2020. Prices are expected to edge higher.
“I do expect this winter to be busier than what we usually see because people will be moving back the city and adding to the pool of demand,” she said.
Wall Street firms such as Deutch Bank, among others, are returning their employees to offices in the financial district over the next six months, which has boosted demand for rentals. If inventories get low enough, a rental bidding war could be seen.
… and while residential real estate is making a comeback, commercial real estate still remains in a great deal of stress.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/02/2021 – 20:00 - Russia Joins China In Saying AUKUS Threatens Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Russia Joins China In Saying AUKUS Threatens Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,
Russia has warned that the new military pact between the US, the UK, and Australia threatens global nuclear non-proliferation. The pact, known as AUKUS, is a military technology-sharing deal that is meant to counter China. Under the agreement, Australia will get access to technology to build nuclear-powered submarines, which would make Canberra the first non-nuclear armed state to have them.
“It’s a great challenge to the international non-proliferation regime,” said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, according to the Russian news agency TASS.
Australian Defence Force/Getty Images Ryabkov said Russia is “concerned” about the “partnership that will allow Australia, after 18 months of consultations and several years of attempts, to obtain nuclear-powered submarines in sufficient numbers to become one of the top five countries for this type of armaments.”
Ryabkov also said Russia is concerned over the UK’s plans to expand its nuclear arsenal that was announced earlier in the year. “We are concerned especially by the statements produced earlier in the year in London on future prospects for expansion of its nuclear capabilities,” he said.
In March, the British announced that they are increasing their nuclear stockpile for the first time since the Cold War. London will set its cap of nuclear warheads at 260, up from the current limit of 180.
Last month after the AUKUS pact was first unveiled, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian had condemned the partnership as it “greatly undermines regional peace and stability, aggravates the arms race and hurts the international non-proliferation efforts.”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/02/2021 – 19:30 - A Dip In Shipping Rates: The End Of The Nightmare, Or Just The Eye Of The Hurricane
A Dip In Shipping Rates: The End Of The Nightmare, Or Just The Eye Of The Hurricane
This year, spot ocean container rates have reached record highs and could be at a crucial inflection point this week. News of 40-foot container rates on the world’s most important shipping lane, that is, China and the U.S., plunged amid a power crunch shutting down factories across multiple Chinese provinces leading speculators to sell their shipping spots, according to Chinese media outlet Caixin Global.
Caixin spoke with an executive at a Shanghai freight company Thursday who said 40-foot container rates from China to the U.S. West Coast sank this week, plummeting from $15,000 to just $8,000. For the same container, the spot rate for China to the U.S. East Coast dropped from $20,000 to around $15,000.
The decline in international shipping costs is primarily due to at least 20 Chinese provinces and regions making up more than 66% of the country’s GDP have announced some form of power cuts in recent weeks, which has shuttered energy-intensive manufacturing industries and so their need for containerized shipping has diminished.
We have noted Foxconn, the world’s biggest iPhone assembler and a key supplier of Apple and Tesla, halted production earlier this week. Another Apple supplier, Unimicron Technologies, suspended operations. There are countless reports of other energy-intensive companies that suspended operations.
An analyst at Tianfeng Securities Co. Ltd. said the decline in shipping rates was primarily caused by the imminent off-season and a reduction in manufacturing due to China’s power crunch. The analyst said rates should decline as export growth in China will decrease in the fourth quarter, and seasonally ocean freight slows down.
A report by CSC Financial Co. Ltd. outlined rates will stay stubbornly high for the next two weeks as port congestion remains a problem in China and the U.S. But after that, rates may stall on slow growth from China.
We so far understand China’s power crunch is having a sizeable impact on economic growth and has resulted in a slump for containerized shipping demand. What comes next is either shipping rates continue a downward spiral or bounce back as China will ultimately restart its manufacturing base near term.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/02/2021 – 19:00 - Inspector General Audit Finds "Widespread" Problems With FBI's FISA Applications
Inspector General Audit Finds “Widespread” Problems With FBI’s FISA Applications
Authored by Jack Phillips and Ken Silva via The Epoch Times,
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz issued a report (pdf) on Sept. 30 on the FBI’s applications to surveil U.S. citizens, finding “widespread” failure that “raises serious questions” and criticizing agents for not fixing flaws spotted in previous audits.
The inspector general (IG) reviewed about 7,000 applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants—the same used to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page in 2016—and found that the agency had failed to follow key rules, the Woods Procedures, in the program. In December 2019 review, Horowitz discovered 17 significant errors and omissions in the FISA surveillance application targeting Page.
The most recent audit of the agency’s Woods Procedures—rules that the FBI follows to ensure that FISA applications are “scrupulously accurate”—found sweeping “non-compliance” that “raises serious questions about the adequacy and execution of the supervisory review process in place at the time of the applications we reviewed,” Horowitz said, stating that the FBI’s quality-control officials apparently missed these problems.
His office also identified 183 FISA applications that had a missing or incomplete Woods file, which is a document meant to ensure the accuracy of statements made to the secretive FISA court. The report also found hundreds of other cases where there were instances of noncompliance with the agency’s Woods procedures.
“A failure to adhere to the Woods Procedures … could easily lead to errors that do impact probable cause—and therefore potentially call into question the legal basis for the government’s use of highly intrusive FISA warrants,” Horowitz wrote.
Horowitz recommended that the FBI attempt to make “additional efforts to communicate and emphasize to its workforce the importance” of the bureau’s own standards when applying for FISA warrants.
In a statement released after Horowitz’s report, the FBI told media outlets on Sept. 30 that it appreciated the IG’s “determined focus on the FBI’s FISA process, especially given the significant changes and policy enhancements that we have worked to make in concert with, and in many instances, prior to the issuance of this most recent OIG Audit Report.”
The federal law enforcement bureau will accept Horowitz’s recommendations detailed in the report and has adopted about half of them already, according to the statement. FBI officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The audit report is an extension of a report that was issued by Horowitz in March 2020, when he reviewed 29 FISA applications. According to that report, the inspector general couldn’t review four of the applications because the FBI wasn’t able to locate them. Of the 25 he could review, all of them had flaws—209 errors in total, Horowitz said.
“Our testing of FISA applications … identified apparent errors or inadequately supported facts in all of the 25 applications we reviewed, and interviews to date with available agents or supervisors in field offices generally have confirmed the issues we identified,” he said in his March report.
Horowitz lamented in the Sept. 30 audit that the FBI hasn’t taken his earlier report seriously.
“In response to the findings in our December 2019 FISA report and March 2020 [report], the FBI Director publicly acknowledged the seriousness of the identified problems and announced numerous steps the FBI was undertaking to address them,” he said.
“However, we believe certain public statements from the FBI and NSD in 2020 failed to recognize the significant risks posed by systemic non-compliance with the Woods Procedures, and during our audit, some FBI field personnel minimized the significance of Woods Procedures non-compliance.”
The IG report was likely referencing statements FBI Director Christopher Wray made to Congress in February, when he told representatives that they shouldn’t “lose any sleep” over the December 2019 IG report.
“The vast majority of the FISAs we do, both the initial applications and the renewals, are the kinds of applications that I am quite confident—we don’t know each other, but you wouldn’t lose any sleep over, and we wouldn’t want to grind to a halt,” Wray told Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) at the time.
Following the release of the latest report, Jordan took to Twitter to blast Wray for downplaying earlier concerns.
“Feb. 5, 2020: FBI Director Christopher Wray dismisses concerns about the FISA process. Says Americans shouldn’t ‘lose any sleep’ over it.
Today: IG Horowitz releases damning report about the FBI’s broken FISA process,” Jordan wrote.
“It was worse than we ever thought.”
The FBI’s failure to adhere to surveillance rules has led to criminal charges in some instances.
After Horowitz’s findings were released in 2019, special counsel John Durham later filed charges against former FBI Attorney Kevin Clinesmith for falsifying a document used in a FISA application to surveil Page. He pleaded guilty in August 2020.
In August, Durham’s office indicted Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who represented the Democratic National Committee, for allegedly lying to the FBI when he spoke to a top bureau official, James Baker, in 2016. On Sept. 17, Sussmann pleaded not guilty to the charge.
According to the indictment, Sussmann had passed along a claim alleging that there was a secret communications channel between a Russian bank and the Trump Organization. Durham alleged that Sussmann told Baker that he wasn’t representing a specific client, but was actually secretly representing Democrats, Clinton’s campaign, and an unnamed technology company executive.
How the process is supposed to work and more on Horowitz’s findings, from The Reactionary’s Techno Fog:
The FISA Court is a secret court where the government is present but the accused is not. As IG Horowitz explains:
“Unlike the use of other intrusive investigative techniques (such as wiretaps under Title III and traditional criminal search warrants) that are granted in ex parte hearings but can potentially be subject to later court challenge, FISA orders generally have not been subject to scrutiny through subsequent adversarial proceedings.”
Because this is an ex parte hearing, the DOJ/FBI have heightened duties of candor. According to the FISA Court’s local rules, the government is required to disclose all material facts and correct any misstatements of material facts:
This latest audit by IG Horowitz focused on the FBI’s compliance with the Woods procedures. This is how the process works:
Last year, IG Horowitz reviewed 29 random FISA applications. He found “that the FBI was not meeting the expectations of its own protocols.” As he reported in March 2020:
“We identified numerous instances of non-compliance with the Woods Procedures in the 25 Woods Files that were made available to us to review; and we reported that the FBI was unable to produce the original version of the remaining 4 Woods Files we requested.”
More concerning are the latest discoveries after an audit of more FISA applications. These include:
“over 400 instances of non-compliance with the Woods Procedures in connection with those 29 FISA applications”
“over 7,000 FISA applications authorized between January 2015 and March 2020, there were at least 179 instances in which the Woods File required by FBI policy was missing in whole or in part”
The more material errors (aside from losing their own files) included:
To put this into context, in December 2019, after IG Horowitz detailed substantial issues with the Carter Page FISA applications, the FISA Court noted that the misconduct was serious and ordered the FBI to conduct remedial measures to fix the problems of the FBI’s own creation. The FBI promised to take corrective action.
One can’t help but speculate that the FISA Court won’t do much about these latest issues, aside from ordering the FBI to conduct more training. After all, the then-presiding judge of the FISA Court, Judge Boasberg, refused jail time for FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith after he altered an e-mail and lied about Carter Page’s relationship with the CIA.
Knowing the history of the FISA Court excusing government misconduct, we present the same question now that we did after the Clinesmith sentencing: What does it say about the FISA Court’s “heightened duty of candor” if there aren’t heightened punishments for violating that duty?
And we have one final question – one that has applied to Director Wray for the last few years: how could the FBI Director allow these abuses to continue?
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/02/2021 – 18:30 - Taiwan Bristles, Lashes Out After China's Largest Ever Aerial Show Of Force
Taiwan Bristles, Lashes Out After China’s Largest Ever Aerial Show Of Force
Taiwan is expressing outrage after China flew a total 38 military aircraft inside the island’s Air Defense Identification Zone on Friday. In a Saturday statement Taiwan Premier Su Tseng-chang blasted China as having been “wantonly engaged in military aggression” which is “damaging regional peace”.
The Friday flyovers came in two separate incursions, which happened on China’s ‘National Day’ which marked the establishment of the communist People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949. Initially Taiwan’s defense ministry said 25 total jets breached its air defense identification zone Friday (ADIZ) in the first incident.
The self-ruled island scramble air patrols and additionally put its anti-air missile defenses on high alert. Later into the evening, 13 more were recorded inside the ADIZ in a separate breach, totaling a record-smashing 38 Chinese aircraft.
Oct. 1 wasn’t a good day. The #PLAAF flew 38 warplanes into #Taiwan‘s ADIZ, making it the largest number of daily sorties on record. Threatening? Of course. It’s strange the #PRC doesn’t bother faking excuses anymore. JW
(📸 via @MoNDefense) pic.twitter.com/U2fHUwV5uK
— 外交部 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ROC (Taiwan) 🇹🇼 (@MOFA_Taiwan) October 2, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Prior to the ROC premier’s Saturday statement, Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said in a Friday tweet:
“Oct. 1 wasn’t a good day. The PLAAF flew 38 warplanes into Taiwan’s ADIZ, making it the largest number of daily sorties on record. Threatening? Of course. It’s strange the PRC doesn’t bother faking excuses anymore.”
Both Chinese aerial formations were sent through contested airspace near the disputed Patras islands, as The Hill describes based on official statements:
Taiwan’s defense ministry said that on Friday night another round of Chinese military aircraft flew toward Taiwan, including 10 J-16 fighter jets, two H-6 bombers and one KJ-500 early warning aircraft. According to Reuters, those planes flew around the Bashi Channel.
Previously the record number of aircraft to breach the Taiwan ADIZ stood at 25, which had happened on a couple of occasions, with the first last April.
Taiwan jets scrambled in response to prior PLA incursion, via AFP These threatening PLA incursions have only caused Taipei to double down on increased military spending, as well as its willingness to receive weapons from Washington.
For example Taiwan’s defense ministry said in a statement a week ago that “In the face of severe threats from the enemy, the nation’s military is actively engaged in military building and preparation work, and it is urgent to obtain mature and rapid mass production weapons and equipment in a short period of time.”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/02/2021 – 18:00 - "Panic Buying" – A Rush To Hoard
“Panic Buying” – A Rush To Hoard
By Ryan Fitzmaurice, senior commodity strategist at Rabobank
Summary:
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A confluence of bullish factors propelled oil prices to new multi-year highs this week
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The Chinese government has reportedly given state-owned energy companies a directive to secure winter energy supplies at all costs in response to recent shortages
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The last time oil prices were this high was back in early October 2018, right before prices crashed in the fourth quarter of that year, although the setup is much different this time
Panic buying
Spot oil prices continued their ascent this week, setting new multi-year highs in the process as a confluence of factors worked to bid up nearby futures. This recent show of strength is largely inline with our expectations and notably, oil prices have shrugged off news of a Chinese SPR release, a stronger US dollar, and a risk-off event with relative ease, continuing higher unabated.
Moreover, China appears to have made an abrupt and key policy change with respect to their commodity markets approach. To that end, recent reports are indicating that the central government there has given state-owned energy companies a directive to secure winter energy supplies at any and all costs. As many are aware, commodity inflation is soaring and pressuring large importers and particularly China, and at the same time, supply shortages are becoming more and more frequent across the globe. Up until now though, China was more focused on trying to pressure commodity and oil prices lower by releasing strategic reserves and tightening import licenses, however, things have changed. Now the plan is to hoard all available supplies no matter the cost, to support continued economic growth, especially in a cold winter scenario.
This is a potential game-changer for energy markets and is likely to kick off a panic buying spree such as we saw in toilet paper and other household items in the early days of the pandemic and even more recently in the UK’s ongoing supply chain crisis. Further to that end, the oil markets already have the herd of systematic traders on the bid-side of the market, as well as inflation-driven macro flows, and with plenty of room for those positions to grow. In addition to the speculative interest, the world’s biggest commodity importer is now going on a historic buying spree. As such, this buying is a strong tailwind for oil, as supply certainty trumps price in the near-term.
This time is different
The last time oil prices were this high was back in early October 2018, right before prices crashed in the fourth quarter of that year. At the time, we were bearish on oil prices as the speculative “long” oil trade was extremely crowded with money managers holding the largest position on record with net exposure reaching an impressive 1.08 million contracts between the ICE Brent and NYMEX WTI crude oil benchmarks at the peak. Furthermore, the macro backdrop was bearish in 2018 with Chinese equity markets registering ytd losses of more than 20% in October of that year. On the supply-side, OPEC+ had much less pricing power back then as the US shale drillers were still in aggressive growth mode. On top of that, and as many market participants will remember, the US surprised the oil market by issuing temporary oil sanction waivers to Iran in an effort to pressure prices lower. The ploy ultimately sent the market into a free-fall, in large part due to the extreme “long” positioning that had to be unwound in short order.
Fast forward to today though, and the backdrop couldn’t be more different and the same is true of our bullish outlook this time around. As for fundamentals, OPEC+ has much more pricing power now and is in full control of the supply-side given US production is well off the pre-pandemic highs with much slower growth expected in the coming years as ESG investor pressures and local court rulings stifle production growth from the shale drillers and oil majors. On the demand side, we can now throw price insensitive Chinese buying into the equation as well. On the macro front, an inflationary backdrop has taken a strong hold, resulting in significant money flows into commodity index products in the first half of the year.
This is a trend we fully expect to continue into 2022 as asset managers and institutional money play catch up and increase commodity allocations albeit on a lag.
Finally, on the positioning side of markets, the “long” oil trade remains far from “crowded” by many metrics. In fact, the current net position held at money managers sits well below the highs of 2018 at just 610k contracts, so nearly 500mb off the highs. This is perhaps the most important aspect as speculators have plenty of dry powder at hand to bid the market higher, especially in light of the recent buying directive out of China coupled with tremendous amounts of central bank liquidity flushing through global financial markets. As such, we are viewing this as a rare setup for oil markets where fundamentals and quantitative signals are bullish, the macro backdrop for commodities is as strong as its been in over a decade, and speculators are underinvested.
Looking Forward
Looking forward, we see scope for a potential bullish OPEC+ surprise at next week’s supply meeting, as we explained here. Beyond that though, we are viewing the recent directive out of China to secure energy supplies at all costs, as very bullish for oil and commodity markets in the months ahead. Furthermore, this new policy has the potential to trigger panic buying in physical markets, which will likely spill over into financial markets as institutional money chases returns.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/02/2021 – 17:30 -
- National School Board Association Demands Biden Give Them FBI Protection From "Terrorist" Parents
National School Board Association Demands Biden Give Them FBI Protection From “Terrorist” Parents
The tension between parents and American school-board members has worsened since we first reported that members of the boards were quitting en masse over “toxic” parents opposing masks, vaccine mandates and CRT.
And according to the National School Boards Association, an organization that represents school board members, the risks of violence breaking out involving a parent and a school-board member have intensified to such a degree that the organization is asking the federal government to start providing security to board members and teachers to protect them from “terrorist” parents.
Terrorists?
The organization made its demands in a letter to President Biden, signed by NSBA President Viola Garcia and Interim Executive Director and CEO Chip Slaven. They called on Biden to personally use his executive authority to mobilize the FBI and other federal agents to guard school officials, according to the Daily Mail.
“The National School Boards Association (NSBA) respectfully asks for federal law enforcement and other assistance to deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation,” the letter to Biden begins.
The letter also mentions “threats of actual acts of violence”” against school staffers alleging that “angry mobs” have hindered their ability to hold school board meetings, because of reported outbursts from ‘extremist’ parents irate over vaccine and mask mandates being pressured upon their students in order for them to go to school.
Let’s get this straight: In an era when school shootings are seen as a constant threat, these people want security guards…for the teachers?
“As these threats and acts of violence have become more prevalent,” the org asserts in the note, “NSBA respectfully asks that a joint collaboration among federal law enforcement agencies, state and local law enforcement, and with public school officials be undertaken to focus on these threats.”
It adds that the threats are “impacting the delivery of educational services to students and families,” and also cites several examples of disruptions at school board meetings around the country.
The rest of the letter mostly pleaded with the president to put the proper “safeguards in place” and that this is a “critical time,” before asking for “immediate assistance” in the form of federal agents playing security guard.
“There also must be safeguards in place to protect public schools and dedicated education leaders as they do their jobs,’ the note asserts, then labeling the outraged parents showing up at school board meetings across the county as right-winged radicals.”
“As the threats grow and news of extremist hate organizations showing up at school board meetings is being reported, this is a critical time for a proactive approach to deal with this difficult issue,” the statement reads.
Federal resources could help “investigate, intercept, and prevent the current threats and acts of violence against our public school officials.”
As if to try and curry favor with the president, the note goes on to praise the Biden Administration and the president’s “leadership to end the proliferation of COVID in our communities and our school districts.”
The thing is, now that California has ordered mandatory vaccination for its students, and other states are set to follow through, President Biden has the perfect excuse to authorize something like this, if he was so inclined.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/02/2021 – 17:00 - First Responders: From Heroes To Zeroes
First Responders: From Heroes To Zeroes
Authored by Grace Curley via SpectatorWorld.com,
The rule-makers are not as concerned with medicine, science or health as they purport to be…
At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, first responders were the toast of the town. Most of us appreciated that while we binge-watched Tiger King in our sweatpants and attempted to make sourdough bread from scratch, not everyone was lazily locking down.
Nurses, doctors and healthcare professionals were on the frontlines of the fight, taking on a virus the world knew little about. This sacrifice did not go unnoticed.
Americans proudly stuck signs on their front lawns that read ‘thank you first responders!’ McDonald’s gave out free ‘thank you meals’ to those who were helping fight COVID-19. Dr Anthony Fauci wasn’t the only one who made the TIME 100 List last year. The magazine also dubbed healthcare workers 2020’s ‘Guardians of the Year’.
‘On the front line against COVID-19, the world’s healthcare workers displayed the best of humanity — selflessness, compassion, stamina, courage — while protecting as much of it as they could,’ the fawning piece read.
Companies like Google, Dove and Adidas (to name but a few) produced commercials focused on celebrating first responders for their courage and bravery. In a time of division and frustration, the gratitude for productive and resilient members of our society was refreshing and well-deserved.
Sadly, something has quickly shifted.
Those who just one year ago were celebrated are now being vilified. The architects of this drastic rebrand? The ruling elite.
In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Saturday that she would call in the National Guard to replace healthcare workers who did not meet Monday’s vaccination deadline.
Dr Marty Makary, a professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins, tweeted in response to the story, ‘Swapping out experienced nurses with nat guard who are not familiar with a hospital’s systems, local ways of doing things & emerg protocols has risks. Recognize natural imm, instead of demonizing our heroes who put their lives on the line and got COVID.’
He is right — Hochul is creating a nightmare for hospitals.
Bringing new employees into the fold is tricky in any job — let alone in the medical field. Hochul is eliminating a number of skilled, willing workers at hospitals that desperately need them — all in the pursuit of making a point.
If Joe Biden’s ‘righteous’ drone strike in Afghanistan showed us anything, it is that innocent people often pay a high price for politically motivated PR stunts.
The fact that some of the most fervent and outspoken opponents of vaccine mandates are healthcare workers is another interesting aspect of this highly publicized debate.
No, I am not about to go down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories about how the medical community knows something we don’t! There is something they aren’t telling us!
There is a much more logical explanation for their hesitancy. A great deal of essential workers came in contact with the virus early on in the pandemic.
Unlike members of what Karol Markowicz calls the pajama class, healthcare workers didn’t have the luxury of performing their jobs on Zoom call happy hours inside their cozy apartments.
It makes sense that these workers, who operated for months in the real world, might refuse a vaccine if they already have antibodies due to natural infection. Antibodies which, for the record, appear to offer a higher level of immunity than the COVID shots. So why are they being forced to either take the Fauci ouchie or the pink slip?
In August during a San Diego County Board of Supervisors meeting, Heather Cauvel, a registered nurse, railed against vaccine mandates.
‘It was no problem working in the healthcare system over the last 18 months, without a vaccine, but now, all of a sudden, I’m a threat to public health?’
Cauvel went on to resign from her position.
The truth is that the rule-makers are not as concerned with medicine, science or health as they purport to be. This is about submission. Power-hungry pols do not care about protecting people. They are far more interested in controlling people. That’s why all of our freedoms over the last 18 months have been contingent on whether or not we follow the rules.
The heroes of the pandemic were applauded by the left when they pushed the correct agenda. When the first responders had bruise lines below their eyes from tight goggles, they were useful and welcome additions to the storyline du jour.
But when those same people pushed back against the diktats and questioned the mandates — they went from first responders to second-class citizens in a New York minute.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/02/2021 – 16:30 - Iran Says "War With Israel Has Already Begun" Amid Fresh Covert Attacks
Iran Says “War With Israel Has Already Begun” Amid Fresh Covert Attacks
Amid a recent spate of covert espionage attacks on Iranian infrastructure – some publicly known and more that are possibly unknown – Iran’s foreign ministry has declared that “war with Israel has already begun”.
A foreign ministry spokesmen told the major Israeli national Hebrew-language daily newspaper Maariv that “Israel has carried out attacks that were intended to destroy our nuclear program for peaceful purposes.” Saeed Khatibzadeh declared “the war with Israel has already begun” – in an ominous message intended as a warning to the Israeli public and leadership.
Prior Israeli attacks inside Syria targeting ‘Iranian assets’, via Reuters The spokesman added that Israel “has murdered nuclear scientists and harmed the Iranian people. Iran is blamed for terrorism, but there is no good or bad terrorist. The entire crisis in the region is the fault of Israel.”
Rare or unlikely as it is for a top Iranian official to speak to Israeli publication, it’s the closest Tehran has come in years to direct communication with Israeli entities. It’s a sign that the two countries are truly on the brink of direct conflict.
“Israel severely harmed our civilian and research system,” he described. “They speak about the Iranian nuclear threat, but Israel has hundreds of bombs, and it never signed the non-proliferation treaty for nuclear weapons.”
He’s no doubt referencing the prior Natanz nuclear facility sabotage attack – now widely believed an act of covert espionage by Israel (likely via cyberattack) – as well as the brazen assassination outside of Tehran of top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizade by a “remote controlled gun”. There’s also the near weekly Israeli attacks on Syria, which Tel Aviv says is part of campaign to disrupt Iranian and Hezbollah operations there.
In the interview Khatibzadeh also alleged that the United States too is still waging a campaign of “soft terror” through far-reaching sanctions. He said that the Iranian people are even prevented from obtaining crucial life-saving medicines through Washington sanctions. By design the US-led sanctions also pressure and punish any nation wishing to transfer goods into Iran, including European Union countries which have long taken are more sympathetic stance to the Iranians’ plight.
Just in the past week there’s been more possible attacks on Iranian military sites…
Before & after: An explosion occurred (27 September 2021) at an #IRGC secret missile base of Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group pic.twitter.com/OYnsijeXiq
— ImageSat Intl. (@ImageSatIntl) September 30, 2021
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The official also charged that Israel is actively seeking to subvert high level nuclear talks in Vienna, which have been stalled since last June, though US and Israeli officials have blamed the Iranian side for the stall.
“The region is tired of wars,” Khatibzadeh added, while arguing Iran is honestly seeking a diplomatic and peaceful breakthrough with Western powers in Vienna. “We must find a new approach to solve the problems according to United Nations decisions. All of the sides must display a political desire to reach agreements.”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/02/2021 – 16:00 - After Defunding Police, Portland To Give Firefighters Bulletproof Vests Amid Surging Gun Violence
After Defunding Police, Portland To Give Firefighters Bulletproof Vests Amid Surging Gun Violence
After slashing the police budget by $15 million last year in response to the ‘defund the police‘ movement, Portland is now giving its firefighters bulletproof vests as violent crime surges in the Democratic stronghold.
According to Portland Fire & Rescue, the decision was the result of a “changing landscape” which includes more calls involving ‘aggressive patients and bystanders.’
According to Oregon Live, many details surrounding the vests are still unclear – including when the vests will be worn (on top of the 45 lbs of gear they’re already wearing), how many will be purchased, and when they will become available.
“We always will do anything and everything to keep firefighters safe because that’s what keeps people in Portland safe,” said Isaac McLennan, vice president of the Portland Fire Fighters’ Association, who added that the decision is fully supported by the firefighters union.
Firefighters have been more concerned for their safety because of responders being attacked or stabbed in Oregon and other parts of the country, McLennan said.
McLennan referenced a 2018 fire in Springfield where a man started shooting at firefighters responding to a house fire. Police said authorities believed the man intentionally set the 4 a.m. blaze to ambush emergency responders.
No one was seriously injured, but the attack left fire truck windshields riddled with bullet holes. -Oregon Live
McLennan said that the vests would be used in situations where firefighters go in to rescue an injured person while police are securing an area with an active shooter.
The decision comes amid a year of surging violence in Portland – as the police logged 837 shootings through August, with the largest increase occurring in the city’s North Precinct – where 383 shootings as of Aug 31 brings the increase over last year to more than 100%.
Gun violence in particular has become so bad in Portland that DA Mike Schmidt announced that the city will spend $1 million to hire four new prosecutors and two investigators to handle cases.
As of Sept. 24, 65 people died in homicides in the city – approaching the city’s all-time record of 70 homicides in 1987. The vast majority of victims were killed in shootings.
“For many of the prosecutors in my office who have been doing this for 20, 30 years, this is a once in a career surge in violent crime,” said Schmidt.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/02/2021 – 15:00 - Klain Coaches Progressives On Playing Chicken With Manchin, Sinema; Biden Handlers Quash Another Q&A
Klain Coaches Progressives On Playing Chicken With Manchin, Sinema; Biden Handlers Quash Another Q&A
While Democrats claimed a minor victory last week – passing a Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the federal government from defaulting until December 3, deep divisions between Senate moderates and House progressives have turned into an embarrassing game of chicken for Democratic leadership.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), head of the 96-member Congressional Progressive Caucus; Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) At issue are two massive spending packages; the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal which the Senate has already passed – only to be held up by House progressives – unless the Senate agrees to pass a $3.5 trillion economic blueprint which moderate Democratic Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) refuse to support unless it undergoes major legislative surgery to shed around $2 trillion. Manchin and Sinema’s votes are crucial, as the only way Democrats can hope to pass the economic blueprint is via reconciliation – which requires the two holdouts to achieve a simple majority of 50 votes, with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tiebreaker.
In an ill-advised attempt to outwit Manchin and Sinema, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain has apparently been coaching house progressives to “hold firm” against the infrastructure vote until the holdout Senators fold.
As I read this reporting in the NYT, the White House chief of staff (Klain) appears to be counseling House progressives to hold the line while Speaker Pelosi was trying to get the infrastructure bill passed first.
All while the president on the sidelines.
What a cluster. pic.twitter.com/NALyUslzhi
— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) October 2, 2021
Andrew, why didn’t you let the President take questions from his own democratic caucus yesterday? https://t.co/lIKOeuUl2f
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) October 2, 2021
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Klain’s coaching resulted in a win for progressives on Friday, after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) canceled a Friday vote on the infrastructure package when negotiations with the 96-member progressive caucus broke down. According to the Wall Street Journal, at least 50 members of her group were willing to withhold their votes from the $1.2 trillion bipartisan legislation.
“I am so proud of our caucus; I have never seen our caucus so strong,” said Jayapal before the vote was canceled. “And I am a very good vote counter also,” she added. “Maybe not quite as good as Nancy Pelosi sometimes. But I’m excellent.”
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) Both Manchin and Sinema, however, appear to be holding strong – with Sinema slamming Pelosi for canceling the vote, calling it “an ineffective stunt to gain leverage over a separate proposal,” adding “Over the course of this year, Democratic leaders have made conflicting promises that could not all be kept — and have, at times, pretended that differences of opinion without our party did not exist…”
.@SenatorSinema unloads after the House delays a vote on her infrastructure bill:
“inexcusable, and deeply disappointing for communities across our country.”
“ineffective stunt to gain leverage over a separate proposal”
“betrays the trust the American people have placed” pic.twitter.com/Vu4jNy8qy4
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) October 2, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsPresident Biden, it seems, has taken a back seat to Klain and other White House officials.
On Friday, he said it would be irresponsible if Senate Republicans block a vote on suspending the US debt ceiling – which is set to hit around Oct. 18 according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. If this happens, the US could lose its AAA sovereign rating according to Fitch. Of course, Democrats have furiously resisted raising the debt limit via reconciliation – the only explanation being that they want to share blame for recklessly driving up the national debt.
“Well, I hope Republicans won’t be so irresponsible as to refuse to raise the debt limit and to filibuster the debt limit,” said Biden, adding “That would be totally unconscionable. Never been done before. So I hope that won’t happen.”
NO QUESTIONS
For anyone still questioning Biden’s figurehead status, Biden’s handlers prevented yet another Q&A session on Friday – preventing him from taking any questions during a Democratic caucus meeting on Capitol Hill.
According to Politico‘s Sarah Ferris, Biden offered to take questions, “but his staff jumped in.”
INSIDE the caucus:
At the end of his remarks, BIDEN offered to take questions from members but his staff jumped in.
He didn’t take any questions.
— Sarah Ferris (@sarahnferris) October 1, 2021
Who’s really running the show?
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/02/2021 – 14:30 - Duterte Announces Retirement From Philippines Politics As Manny Pacquiao Launches Bid For Presidency
Duterte Announces Retirement From Philippines Politics As Manny Pacquiao Launches Bid For Presidency
Known for his violent crackdown on drug dealers and other unorthodox policy decisions that won him both admiration and hatred, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced Saturday that he would be retiring from politics after dropping his bid for the presidency.
That Duterte is ending his political career so soon is ironic. Many western political analysts and high-handed scribes once condemned Duterte as a violent authoritarian who would shift the Philippines’ political system closer to that of Russia’s.
However, that never happened. And now, Duterte, who is constitutionally forbidden from seeking another term as president, has decided not to run as Vice President in 2022, claiming “the public” doesn’t support him potentially subverting the country’s constitution to extend his rule (but we thought he was an authoritarian?)
Duterte’s decision comes with a twist: his former top aide and now Senator Christopher “Bong” Go, who was believed to be the ruling PDP-Laban Party’s candidate to succeed Duterte as president, has instead filed paperwork to run for the vice presidential spot, now that Duterte has withdrawn his candidacy.
“Today, I announce my retirement from politics,” he said, appearing at the Commission on Elections center in Manila alongside Go, who also announced his decision to seek the VP spot instead of Duterte. “The overwhelming… sentiment of the Filipinos is that I am not qualified and it would be a violation of the constitution to circumvent the law, the spirit of the constitution,” Duterte said.
There’s reason to believe that Duterte’s retirement is part of a strategy of stepping aside to allow his daughter, Sara, to seek the presidency either in this cycle, or the next.
On Saturday, Sara Duterte-Carpio filed her certificate to run again for her current role of mayor of Davao City. However, Sara has been leading recent presidential polls, even as she has maintained her focus on getting re-elected in her home city. According to Bloomberg, back in August, presidential spokesman Harry Roque said Duterte could drop his bid for vice president if Sara were to seek the top job. And Duterte-Carpio has previously said she wouldn’t seek the top job with her father on the VP ticket, so his decision to step down could open the door for his daughter, who has already won her father’s old job as mayor of Davao City.
But if that is indeed the plan for the Duterte political dynasty, there’s one major obstacle in their way: Boxing legend and Philippine politician Manny Pacquiao, the only boxer to hold titles in 8 different weight divisions, became the first to file paperwork to seek the presidency on Friday.
Ironically, Pacquiao officially announced on Wednesday that he would be retiring from boxing to focus on his bid for the presidency.
“I just heard the final bell. Boxing is over,” Pacquiao said. “This is the hardest decision I’ve ever made, but I’m at peace with it. Chase your dreams, work hard, and watch what happens.”
To the greatest fans and the greatest sport in the world, thank you! Thank you for all the wonderful memories. This is the hardest decision I’ve ever made, but I’m at peace with it. Chase your dreams, work hard, and watch what happens. Good bye boxing. https://t.co/Bde4wO82sA
— Manny Pacquiao (@MannyPacquiao) September 29, 2021
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As for whether this is really the end of the road for Duterte, who has been described as the ‘Filipino Trump’ due to his brash style and law-and-order approach, it’s worth noting that this isn’t Duterte’s first “retirement” from politics. Duterte said he would retire back in 2016 before launching his successful bid for the presidency.
Candidates must register their intention to run in next year’s vote with the Commission on Elections by Oct. 8. However, the final list of presidential contenders won’t be ready until mid-November. This means other rival politicians might emerge as potential contenders during a final attempt to join the race, a strategy that would be similar to that used by Duterte.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 10/02/2021 – 14:00
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