Apr 04

Today’s News 4th April 2021

  • Biden Administration And Iran: Secret Deals And Appeasement Back On The Table?
    Biden Administration And Iran: Secret Deals And Appeasement Back On The Table?

    Authored by Majid Rafizadeh via The Gatestone Institute,

    The Biden administration is ratcheting up its appeasement policies towards the Iranian regime in an apparent effort to revive the 2015 nuclear deal — which by the way, Iran never signed.

    US President Joe Biden made his intention to return to the nuclear deal public before he took office; after, he appointed as Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman — a key negotiator in the talks which led to the nuclear deal in 2015 during the Obama administration. Biden actually publicized Sherman’s professed accomplishment:

    “She has successfully rallied the world to strengthen democracy and confront some of the biggest national security challenges of our time, including leading the U.S. negotiating team for the Iran Deal”.

    The administration proceeded to revoke the designation of the Houthis, an Iran-backed terror group, as an officially-designated terrorist organization.

    Republican foreign policy leaders in Congress are now requesting from the Secretary of State Antony Blinken answers to questions about the secret talks held with South Korea that resulted in South Korea giving the Iranian regime $1 billion in ransom money. The letter was “led” by Congressman Bryan Steil (WI), Congressman Greg Steube (FL) and Republican Study Committee (RSC) Chairman Jim Banks (IN). Steil pointed out:

    “The Biden administration appears to be using loopholes when dealing with the Iranian regime. I am again asking direct, yes or no questions on the United States’ involvement in facilitating a South Korean ransom payment to Iran. If the Biden administration is involved in transferring funds to Iran, Congress and the American people must be informed. Biden administration officials continue to deflect and refuse to answer questions from members of Congress regarding this issue. I want answers. Congress must be informed of the administration’s actions”.

    In January, the Iranian regime, apparently as part of an extortion maneuver, had seized a South Korean ship in the Gulf and demanded ransom for its release. Congressman Banks stated:

    “The Biden administration has to stop stonewalling and must come clean regarding whether they facilitated sanctions relief for the thugs in Tehran. I’m glad to co-lead this letter with my colleagues Rep. Bryan Steil and Rep. Greg Steube. The RSC will continue to investigate until we get to the bottom of what is going on”.

    Secret talks to appease the Iranian regime should not come as surprise. When President Biden was vice president during the Obama administration, the administration was all too eager to grant concessions to the Iranian regime and, it turns out, made multiple secret deals with the mullahs. One of the secret deals consisted of allowing the Iranian regime to have access to US dollars by sidestepping sanctions. “The Obama administration misled the American people and Congress because they were desperate to get a deal with Iran”, said Senator Rob Portman (R-OH), who chaired the Senate panel conducting the investigation at the time.

    The Obama administration also secretly agreed to remove sanctions on several Iranian banks, including Bank Sepah and Sepah International. These banks had long been sanctioned by the United Nations due to their illegal activities in financing missile development and skirting UN Security Council resolutions regarding the arms embargo. These secret deals meant that when sanctions against Iranian banks were lifted and permission given to the leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to resume conducting business, there was no longer any mechanism to check or stop Iran’s illegal activities such as advancing its ballistic missile program.

    When, in return for Iran releasing hostages, the Obama administration released Iranian-born prisoners, some of whom were threats to the US national security, it shocked many and infuriated some of the officials at the Justice Department — as did shipping $400 million in cash to Tehran as ostensibly a “not quid-pro-quo” ransom for the hostages. In addition, according to a report by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, the Obama administration agreed “‘in secret’ to allow Iran to evade some restrictions” in the last year of the nuclear agreement. David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector, stated that “The exemptions or loopholes are happening in secret, and it appears that they favor Iran.” These are only few examples of the secret deals conducted with the Iranian regime to appease it.

    In addition to the secret deals, Iran also received dangerous and unprecedented concessions from the Obama administration for the Islamic Republic’s 2015 “nuclear deal,” the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The major concession was that the deal paved the way for Iran legally to become a full-blown nuclear state. The sunset clauses, which enshrined that commitment, had set a firm expiration date for restricting Iran’s nuclear program, after which the country’s leaders would be free to have, legitimately, as many nuclear weapons as they like. The Obama administration also helped swiftly to lift all four rounds of UN sanctions against Iran — sanctions it had taken decades to put in place. Iran’s military sites also were exempted from inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency; other inspections were only to be at the times and places of Iran’s choosing — if ever. Iran then rejoined the global financial system with full legitimacy — plus billions of dollars flowing into the treasury of the IRGC and its expanding militias across the Middle East.

    Another concession, usually overlooked, is that Iran never even signed the JCPOA deal — what sort of deal, then, is that?

    Appeasement policies, secret deals and generous concessions to predatory regimes do not work, as history has repeatedly shown. They only empower and embolden leaders whose record reveals that they have no intention of honoring whatever they agreed to in the first place, and for whom commitments have been mainly a means of buying time to accomplish the goals they really want.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/03/2021 – 23:30

  • USAF Prepares For Imminent Hypersonic Missile Test 
    USAF Prepares For Imminent Hypersonic Missile Test 

    The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) regarding airspace restrictions in the Pacific Ocean near the Point Mugu Sea Test Range, which will be closed through April 1. 

    “The block of restricted airspace described in the NOTAMs is what one would expect to see during a missile test,” said The Drive. 

    The NOTAM comes as the first flight of the U.S. Air Force’s AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW, could be imminent. 

    On March 5, the service announced the first ARRW test would take place “in the next 30 days” over the Point Mugu range.

    The hypersonic test missile was delivered to Edwards Air Force Base in California on March 1. The ARRW will be air-launched from the wing of a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress. 

    The U.S. military frequently tests weapons off the coast of southern California. But to issue a NOTAM suggests a more extended range test, covering multiple areas where other stages of the missiles, or other debris, could plunge back to Earth. Once the rocket is air-launched from the bomber, the ARRW glider will fly at hypersonic speed, above Mach 5, or about 6,174 mph. 

    The Air Force provided a complete description of ARRW’s planned test earlier this month:

    The ARRW BTF-1 will demonstrate the booster’s ability to reach operational speeds and collect other important data. In addition to booster performance, the test vehicle will also validate safe separation and controllability of the missile away from the carrier B-52H, through ignition and boost phase, all the way up to separation of a simulated glide vehicle. The simulated glider will not sustain flight, and will safely disintegrate soon after separation. The 412th Test Wing will conduct the ARRW BTF series over the Point Mugu Sea Range in California.

    The service provided no information if the unpowered hypersonic boost-glide warhead will strike a mock target. 

    As it now stands, the first ARRW flight test may have already taken place or will take place by Thursday. More information about the test is likely to come in the near-term. 

    Our recent coverage on ARRW’s progression from development to testing suggests it could soon become the US’ first operational hypersonic weapon:  

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/03/2021 – 23:00

  • So MLB Is Fine With Games In Cuba & Training In China, But Georgia Has A Human-Rights Problem?
    So MLB Is Fine With Games In Cuba & Training In China, But Georgia Has A Human-Rights Problem?

    Authored by Monica Showalter via AmericanThinker.com,

    You could tell that the Major League Baseball (MLB) decision to pull its All-Star game out of Atlanta was a deeply unpopular one, based on the ambivalent reaction of far-left failed gubernatorial candidate, Stacey Abrams. Here’s the money quote from her Twitter statement:

    After all, isn’t she the one who pushed through most of the fraud-enabling laws on the books in Georgia which triggered the recent legislative action? The blacks-are-too-dumb-to-have-voter-ID idiotic notion, so by extension, nobody should have to show voter ID to vote, even though everyone needs to show ID to buy a beer at a MLB ball game, or buy a ticket to one? She needs to make up her mind.

    So which is it? Not wanting to see families hurt, or being all-in for the boycott of Atlanta, which certainly should affect the city tax base? She wants to have it both ways, boycott but nobody hurt. That’s because unlike MLB, she wants to win public office, and knows that screwing over black businesses, which will get it in the teeth with this MLB maneuver, is going to make her unpopular.

    Here’s the MLB statement:

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    Abrams’ response is just the tip of the iceberg of the hypocrisy and contradictions seen from this MLB maneuver — stiffing black-owned American small businesses just emerging from a pandemic to protest a U.S. law they are perfectly free to campaign for to change otherwise through elections, or else playing the ball game without politics and drawing a big audience. Which is it for them? And by the way, how many of their baseball players are American citizens?

    Unlike Abrams, they chose, and chose poorly, because what they chose will probably have some consequences for the MLB organization, given its nuclear level of hypocrisy.

    Here’s another hypocrisy: Will MLB now move its All-Star game to Delaware, Joe Biden’s home state, where, unlike Georgia now, there is no early voting at all? Will they stop advertising and selling merchandise in that state? Or New York, or New Jersey, which also don’t have early voting as they now do in Georgia? These MLB virtue-signallers would be hypocrites if they didn’t.

    Here’s the big one: MLB made a big deal about its move out of Georgia being a human rights issue, and them being all concerned about human rights, you see.

    Can they explain for us why they recently held a ball game in brutal totalitarian military dictatorship of Cuba? A place Cuban ball players flee from to freedom, which in come cases includes MLB salaries made possible only by living in a free, democratic society that exists already? They aren’t fleeing to a hellhole, which is what MLB is now claiming about Georgia.

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    Can they explain to us why they hold a training camp in China, home of the Uighur slave-labor laogai and the broken-treaty de-democratization of Hong Kong? You’d think an organization that concerned about voting rights that willing to disrupt its own business and make itself politically unpopular in Georgia in the interest of virtue-signalling on voting might just take an interest in voting and transparency practices over in communist China.

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    These things to them are fine, but Georgia is an affront to their delicate democratic sensibilities.

    The hypocrisies pile up on top of the hypocrisies and the only people who suffer here are the little black-owned Atlanta businesses who otherwise would get an increased payday from all the knock-on traffic from the All-Star game. Big businesses, such as MLB, have always been happy to crush the little-guy upstart businesses, some of whom might grow into competitors. That, and the press releases with fawning media coverage, is all they end up doing as a means of feathering their nests. Leftists have always yelled about calling corporations persons, and in this case, they are right, corporations are not persons making personal decisions, they are a big ‘it’ whose decisions are always in the end about profits.

    Their hypocrisy surrounding this maneuver to appease senile Joe Biden and all his leftist flying monkeys circling his his sorry corpus is an outrage. Maybe a full boycott from viewers, as President Trump, who always has his finger on the pulse of the people, is what it will take to get that message to this big ‘it’ which wants to have things all ways.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/03/2021 – 22:30

  • "Huge Breach" – Personal Data Of 533 Million Facebook Users Leaked Online  
    “Huge Breach” – Personal Data Of 533 Million Facebook Users Leaked Online  

    Personal information of over 533 million Facebook users was leaked on a low-level hacking forum, according to Business Insider. Facebook users from 106 countries, including more than 32 million users in the US, 11 million in the UK, and 6 million in India, had their Facebook IDs, full names, phone numbers, locations, birthdates, bios, and in some cases, email addresses, leaked online. 

    Insider journalists examined the leaked data and confirmed several Facebook users’ data matched up with the leaked data on the list. 

    Insider reviewed a sample of the leaked data and verified several records by matching known Facebook users’ phone numbers with the IDs listed in the data set. We also verified records by testing email addresses from the data set in Facebook’s password reset feature, which can be used to partially reveal a user’s phone number. -Insider 

     Alon Gal, CTO of cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, has been one of the first to post about the leak. He tweeted Saturday morning: 

     All 533,000,000 Facebook records were just leaked for free. This means that if you have a Facebook account, it is extremely likely the phone number used for the account was leaked. I have yet to see Facebook acknowledging this absolute negligence of your data.

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    He said the hack included: 

    Phone number, Facebook ID, Full name, Location, Past Location, Birthdate, (Sometimes) Email Address, Account Creation Date, Relationship Status, Bio. Bad actors will certainly use the information for social engineering, scamming, hacking and marketing.

    Gal posted a partial list of the number of users affected by the hack by country:

    “A database of that size containing the private information such as phone numbers of a lot of Facebook’s users would certainly lead to bad actors taking advantage of the data to perform social engineering attacks [or] hacking attempts,” Gal told Insider, adding that he first discovered the leak in January on a low-level hacking forum. 

    This isn’t the first time Facebook has dealt with hackers exposing the personal information of users. Over the years millions of people’s personal information have been scrapped from Facebook’s servers. 

    Gal warned that there’s not much Facebook can do at this point because their credentials are already online. 

    “Individuals signing up to a reputable company like Facebook are trusting them with their data and Facebook [is] supposed to treat the data with utmost respect,” Gal said. “Users having their personal information leaked is a huge breach of trust and should be handled accordingly.”

    Another monumental failure by Facebook would suggest a future congressional hearing would be held. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/03/2021 – 22:00

  • Greenwald: The Enduring Terror Of Violent Crime Victimhood
    Greenwald: The Enduring Terror Of Violent Crime Victimhood

    Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com,

    A harrowing story of a violent crime in Oakland was reported by San Francisco television reporter Dion Lim. On Tuesday night, four armed men invaded the family home of a couple and their seven-year-old daughter. The criminals broke in as the mother was preparing to put her young daughter to bed. They tied up the couple, brutally beat the father, repeatedly threatened to murder all of them — specifically threatening that they would first shoot the daughter — and then ransacked their home over the course of a full hour, stealing all of their possessions and much of their life savings.

    A GoFundMe page has been created by a family friend to tell the story and help them financially recover (their identities are being concealed pending the apprehension of the criminals). I have donated to it and encourage anyone who can to do so. But I also want to convey why this particular recent crime resonated for me and produced particularly strong levels of empathy. It is because, weeks ago, I experienced something quite similar — though thankfully without my children involved — and largely wanted to share what happened for the insights it provided me and to explain why violence of the kind this Oakland family just suffered is so brutalizing.

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    On March 5, I was at a farm that we have been renting during the pandemic that is roughly 90 minutes from our home in Rio de Janeiro. It is isolated and beautiful. I’ve begun my day for the last five months by feeding the chickens, rabbits, ducks, swans and peacocks that are there: a perfect way to connect to farming life. My husband and our two children had spent the week in Rio because the kids had school entrance exams that required a faster internet connection than is available at the farm. Because March 5 was the day before my birthday, they had all planned to come to the farm that day, but decided at the last second that they would come early the next morning instead.

    So that night I was alone there with one off-duty police officer who works with our family to provide security. At roughly 9:30 p.m. that night, I was speaking with a friend on the telephone when I noticed that our dogs — twelve of whom were at the farm, with the rest at home — were barking incessantly and intensely for a sustained period of time, which is unusual. I ended the call to see why they were so agitated and walked out of the house toward the gate where I heard them.

    Within seconds, three men wearing full black face masks descended on me, all pointing guns at me. They told me to walk toward a small stand-alone room near the house and began pushing me to go faster. Soon as I entered, I saw that two other armed men had detained the security guard, the off-duty cop, and had him laying face-down on the floor as they stood over him with guns pointed at his head.

    My first thought — given a series of particularly disturbing threats we had been receiving, some of which I published — was whether this was a targeted political attack. I was relieved, to the extent one can be in such a situation, when they began demanding money. Because most of what we have has remained in our home, I did not have much of value there: a couple hundred dollars, some kitchen appliances, and clothes for ourselves and our kids. They did not believe that, which drove them to a considerable amount of anger.

    They ended up staying for an hour, though it seemed like much longer. Driven by the belief that I was hiding valuables — refusing to believe my assurances that I would not do that with five men pointing guns at me — they attempted various forms of psychological terror. They repeatedly threatened to shoot the police officer in the head, repeatedly kicked him so hard that they cracked several of his ribs, ordered me to open my mouth and stuck a gun in it as they demanded to know where the rest of the money was, smashed my phone and tablet against a wall when they could not figure out how to erase the hard-drive, and just generally tried to create a climate of extreme fear. Most of the hour was spent with them ransacking every part of the farm, including our kids’ rooms.

    Once they were finally done, they demanded the keys to the car we had there. They then ordered both of us to go to a separate small house near the back of the farm. They put us in a room, used cords to tie our arms behind our backs and bound our legs together, then locked the door. Once we heard the car leave, we worked on freeing ourselves, which took roughly fifteen minutes, and then used the computer they had idiotically left to call my husband and the other police officers who work with us at the farm. By sheer coincidence, the electricity in the area was shut off roughly ten minutes after they left, leaving us in the pitch dark as we waited. Within thirty minutes, multiple officers arrived.

    It was clear to me almost from the start that these were not professional criminals. They were more nervous, agitated, desperate and disorganized than brutally or cooly efficient. That night, after leaving, they foolishly committed at least three other armed invasions of stores in the area using the car they stole from us: a car registered in the name of my husband, a member of Congress. As a result, they ended up filmed by several security cameras. The police found the abandoned car the next day, and their investigation quickly uncovered the identity of the thieves. Between the five of them, they stole, at least from us, no more than two thousand dollars worth of value: a small amount of cash, a microwave, kitchen appliances and even food such as large packs of rice and beans. The most valuable item they took was the police officer’s gun.

    As I reflected on what happened over the last few weeks, certain insights stayed with me. One baffling aspect was the behavior of my dogs: all twelve of them — typically quite agitated when people they do not know are near us and who, like all dogs, are able to feed off energy: they know when a person is fearful or threatening and when they are friendly — somehow knew to sit calmly and remain distant. As a result, none, miraculously, was hurt. Dogs perceive and understand the world in ways that I am convinced humans have not fully apprehended (and from which we can learn).

    I also was struck by how desperate these armed invaders seemed to be. At one point, when two of them took me to a different structure near the back of the farm where I told them there was a little more cash, one of them said to me — almost with a bit of compassion and gentility — that I did not need to worry as long as I did not react, because they were there not to kill anyone but to steal because, he said, they had no jobs. But then minutes later, they were back to threatening, and it was after that that they physically assaulted the officer and put the gun in my mouth. They would frequently issue demands — such as telling me to get a credit card to use phone apps to transfer money to their account — only to abandon the plan seconds later and frenetically move to some other idea. The main concern was that with five of them, you only need one to be sufficiently unhinged or impetuous for real violence to start.

    I was reluctant to write about this — up until the moment I hit “publish” — only because there is always a discomfort with writing about one’s own life, the danger that it seems too self-referential. But I was encouraged to do so by several colleagues and friends who argued it is beneficial to remind people of the impact of this kind of violent crime, especially given what just happened to this family in Oakland. For whatever reasons, I recovered fairly quickly but the police officer had it much worse than I did.

    Unlike me — who was able to sit in a chair for most of the hour and watch what they were doing and talk to them, which bestows a type of control and a task: to remain calm — he was forced for the full hour to stare at the floor, not knowing what was happening except that he was being constantly threatened and then physically assaulted. That it is very common in Brazil for criminals to automatically kill police officers naturally intensified his anxiety. He was on the floor just a few feet from where I was sitting and my greatest fear was that they would shoot him in front of me, knowing that once that kind of violence starts, it is likely not to be contained. It took three weeks for him to physically recover and is now, quite understandably, on psychiatric leave from the force.

    But by far the most consuming thought I had was how grateful I am that my two children were not there. Had my husband not decided at the very last minute to come the next morning rather than that night, they would have been there. And — beyond what would certainly have been the added danger of having more people present— I just cannot fathom what that would do to a child, and how terrifying it would be for yourself to know your children could be harmed. I could not go back to the farm after that day — I wanted to — because I knew the memories would be too vivid. The deprivation of security that it imposes on your brain is intense no matter who you are, so I have zero doubt that trauma would stay with a child forever.

    That, more than anything, is what made me so affected by reading about the story of what happened to this family. They had to endure it with their seven-year-old daughter present. The home invaders threatened explicitly to shoot her first. And in the interview which this sympathetic reporter did with the child, she spoke of how she cannot escape the feeling that they are going to come back, a fear I am certain will remain with her for a long time if not forever:

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    Is it striking how many similarities there were in that invasion and the one I experienced a few weeks ago. According to Lim’s report, “the ordeal lasted about an hour.” At one point, one of the robbers said to the mother: “don’t worry we won’t kill or rape you we come here for money. You know [with] COVID-19, we have no jobs no money. That’s what’s making us do this.” All of the robbers wore full face masks. And most of the hour was spent with them ransacking their entire house, something that ends up feeling far more enduringly and deeply invasive — violative — than one might expect.

    But what they endured was so, so much worse. That is so true not only because of the material loss: “They took not only much of the family’s life savings but her brother’s sneaker collection and mom’s jewelry” along with “sentimental items that were passed from their ancestors” and “their sense of security.” And the family is “left with no money to cover bills and medical expenses.”

    So much worse, they now have a young girl who is psychologically traumatized, unsafe in her own home, in ways I cannot fathom. And I am sure that the parents, once the father physically recovers, will have enormous amounts of difficulty recovering from the hour-long terror of fearing that, as they helplessly watched, their daughter would be shot.

    It is tempting and easy for all of us to view experiences we have not had as an abstraction. That definitely includes violent crime, particularly where it involves an invasion into the one place it is psychologically vital to feel safe: one’s own home. But it is worth remembering how devastating it can be for families like this one even if they physically survive the violence. You can read about their plight and how to help here.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/03/2021 – 21:30

  • "Structural Collapse Could Occur At Any Time": Florida County Evacuates Residents Near Imminent Radioactive Wastewater Spill
    “Structural Collapse Could Occur At Any Time”: Florida County Evacuates Residents Near Imminent Radioactive Wastewater Spill

    Florida residents located within a one of a phosphate processing plant in Manatee County were evacuated this weekend as officials warned that a pond containing radioactive wastewater could collapse “at any time,” according to CBS News.

    “A portion of the containment wall at the leak site shifted laterally,” said Manatee Director of Public Safety Jake Saur, after the Piney Point processing plant developed a “significant leak” according to county officials cited by WTSP-TV. Saur said that a “structural collapse could occur at any time.” Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency for the area on Saturday.

    On Friday, the Manatee County Public Safety Department sent out emergency evacuation notices to those living within a half-mile of the facility, only to expand the orders to those within one mile north, and half-mile south of the reservoir’s stacks of phosphogypsum – a radioactive fertilizer waste product left over when phosphate ore is processed into a fertilizer component.

    Nearby stretches of highway were also closed to traffic according to the report.

    Mandatory evacuations were extended an additional half mile west and one mile southwest of the site on Saturday evening. Manatee County Public Safety Department said that 316 households are within the full evacuation area. –CBS News

    “In addition to high concentrations of radioactive materials, phosphogypsum and processed wastewater can also contain carcinogens and heavy toxic metals,” said the Center for Biological Diversity in a Saturday statement. “For every ton of phosphoric acid produced, the fertilizer industry creates 5 tons of radioactive phosphogypsum waste, which is stored in mountainous stacks hundreds of acres wide and hundreds of feet tall.”

    According to Manatee County Commissioner Vanessa Baugh, the “public must heed that notice to avoid harm.”

    Officials are on site conducting a controlled release of water, roughly 22,000 gallons a minute. 

    The water that is currently being pumped out by officials in order to avoid a full collapse is a mix of sea water from a local dredge project, storm water and rain runoff. The water has not been treated. 

    “The water meets water quality standards for marine waters with the exception of pH, total phosphorus, total nitrogen and total ammonia nitrogen,” said officials in a statement. “It is slightly acidic, but not at a level that is expected to be a concern, nor is it expected to be toxic.”

    State Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried said in a Saturday letter to DeSantis that an emergency session of Florida’s cabinet is in order to discuss the situation, adding that the leaking water is “contaminated, radioactive wastewater,” and not the plant’s first.

    “For more than fifty years, this Central Florida mining operation has caused numerous human health and environmental disasters and incidents,” she wrote. “There have been numerous, well-documented failures — which continue today — of the property’s reservoir liner, including leaks, poor welds, holes, cracks and weaknesses that existed prior to purchase by the current owner, HRK Holdings, and exacerbated since.”

    Read the rest of the report here.

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/03/2021 – 21:00

  • Iowa Governor Signs Bill Into Law Letting Residents Buy, Carry Guns Without Permits
    Iowa Governor Signs Bill Into Law Letting Residents Buy, Carry Guns Without Permits

    Authored by Lorenz Duchamps via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed legislation into law on Friday lifting some restrictions to buy or carry a handgun in the state for law-abiding citizens.

    The NRA-backed legislation named “House File 756” will take effect on July 1 and eliminates the requirement for law-abiding Iowans to obtain a permit to purchase a handgun from private non-licensed sources. Additionally, to carry a weapon, people will no longer need to have a permit as well.

    Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on Nov. 16, 2020. (Kelsey Kremer/Des Moines Register/Pool)

    Individuals will still have to follow federal law and go through an instant background check to buy from licensed sellers each time they purchase a gun.

    People who fail to commit to the new law will be charged with a Class D felony, which is punishable by up to five years in prison. It will become a felony if a person sells, rents, or loans a firearm to someone the seller “knows or reasonably should know” isn’t legally allowed to get a gun or is intoxicated.

    “Today I signed legislation that protects the 2nd Amendment rights of Iowa’s law-abiding citizens while still preventing the sale of firearms to criminals and other dangerous individuals,” Reynolds said in a statement after signing the bill.

    “This law also takes greater steps to inform law enforcement about an individual’s mental illness helping ensure firearms don’t end up in the wrong hands,” she added. “We will never be able to outlaw or prevent every single bad actor from getting a gun, but what we can do is ensure law-abiding citizens have full access to their constitutional rights while keeping Iowans safe.”

    The new law has been supported by the National Rifle Association (NRA), which applauded the governor for signing the bill allowing law-abiding adults to carry a concealed firearm without first asking the government’s permission for a permit.

    On March 22, House File 756 passed 60–37, with all Republicans voting for it, along with Democrat state Rep. Wes Breckenridge. Republicans have a majority in the Senate and previously passed a similar piece of legislation through a committee.

    Iowa now becomes one of 19 states in the U.S. that no longer requires law-abiding citizens to get a permit before carrying a gun for self-defense.

    The 18 other states that eliminated this requirement are: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

    Democrats have opposed the bill, saying the reversal is dangerous and a “reckless disregard for the safety and well-being of Iowans.”

    “Our communities aren’t safer when criminals can legally purchase a handgun without a background check,” Iowa Democratic Party Chair Representative Ross Wilburn said in a statement in reaction to Reynolds signing the bill.

    “Background checks are wildly popular, even among gun owners, as a common-sense way to keep people safe,” he said. “Legislation like this serves no purpose other than appeasing the gun industry and its powerful lobbyists.”

    Mark Olivia, director of public affairs at the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told The Epoch Times that laws restricting gun ownership have dubious origins.

    “The history of gun control laws really has its roots in Jim Crow-era racist laws that are designed to deny people their rights,” he said. “Your permit is your Second Amendment right. The idea of having to get a permit to be able to exercise your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is antithetical to what your rights are as an American at birth.”

    Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/03/2021 – 20:30

  • Apple Knowingly Sold Defective Macbook Pros, Says California Judge 
    Apple Knowingly Sold Defective Macbook Pros, Says California Judge 

    When Apple launched a new butterfly keyboard with the MacBook Pro some years ago, it was slapped with a class-action lawsuit for its defective keyboards. Now a second class-action lawsuit could be in the making called “flexgate.”

    According to The Verge, Apple opted for fragile flex cables instead of beefier wires for its screens on MacBook Pro models in 2016. The new lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, is over the MacBook Pro developing “stage light” issues at the bottom of the screen, eventually leading to a complete failure. 

    Law360 reports that US District Judge Edward Davila decided this week to allow the “flexgate” lawsuit to move forward, ruling that Apple knew it was selling defective MacBook Pros. 

    A California federal judge has trimmed a proposed class action against Apple claiming it hid display defects on 15-inch MacBook Pro laptops but left intact fraudulent omission claims after determining the proposed class adequately alleged Apple failed to disclose information concerning the alleged defect.

    US District Judge Edward Davila determined that the consumers’ allegations of Apple conducting intensive pre-release testing, which the consumers say was conducted by a team of “reliability engineers” who carried out stress tests and other procedures that would have alerted Apple to defects behind the display failures, sufficiently demonstrate that Apple was aware of the alleged defect.

    The judge added that consumer complaints concerning the alleged display defect also would have put Apple on alert.

    “The court finds that the allegations of pre-release testing in combination with the allegations of substantial customer complaints are sufficient to show that Apple had exclusive knowledge of the alleged defect,” the judge wrote in his opinion.

    The problem that Apple incurred was that it switched to a thinner ribbon cable in the affected models that would result in a tear and eventual failure of the screen. The problem was so widespread, consistent, and infuriating to tens of thousands of Apple users that it was mindboggling Apple CEO Tim Cook would even allow the defective models even to be sold. 

    But while Cook had to please shareholders at the expense of selling defective MacBook Pros, the company ran across a significant issue to swap out the $6 cord. Apple’s design made it nearly impossible to replace. The $6 problem was transformed into a $600 disaster as Apple eventually had to replace the already sold MacBook Pro cables. 

    The lawsuit also accuses Apple of deleting Official Apple Support Community posts complaining about the issue.

    At the moment, there are nine different plaintiffs lined up for the case against Apple knowingly selling defective Macbook. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/03/2021 – 20:00

  • Saturday Satire? Dems 'Will Not Legitimize Georgia's Racist Election Law By Reading It To See What It Says'
    Saturday Satire? Dems ‘Will Not Legitimize Georgia’s Racist Election Law By Reading It To See What It Says’

    Straight news or satire? You decide…

    Democrats are condemning the racist racism of Georgia’s racist election law.

    To show how very angry and opposed to the law they are, Democrats are refusing to read the law to find out what it actually says. 

    “Listen– this law was passed by Republicans,” said one Democrat leader.

    “That’s all you need to know to understand this bill is pure racism and a billion-trillion times worse than Jim Crow. We will not legitimize this racist Jim Crow KKK White Supremacist voter-suppression hate-law by reading it to find out what’s actually in it.”

    “I haven’t read the law either, but the news told me it was racist, so that’s all I need to hear,” said local voter Caddy Shamberton, who is not a racist.

    “Whenever the news tells me something is racist, I will automatically hate that thing without taking any time to look at the facts myself. That’s just common sense.”

    According to sources, several media figures attempted to read the bill in its entirety but collapsed on the ground in horrible agony from all the racism in it.

    “Just trust us, it’s racist,” they all said. 

    *  *  *

    Source: The Babylon Bee

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/03/2021 – 19:30

  • 'Tweeting Is Easy, Governing Is Hard': AOC Deemed Among 'Least Effective' Lawmakers According To Study
    ‘Tweeting Is Easy, Governing Is Hard’: AOC Deemed Among ‘Least Effective’ Lawmakers According To Study

    While Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might be great sophist – skilled in the arts of dramaticism and hubris, her record on Capitol Hill leaves much to be desired according to a survey from the nonpartisan Center for Effective Lawmaking.

    Of the 21 “substantive” bills she’s introduced, her legislation has received absolutely no action in committees; no floor votes and no laws, according to the Center – a joint project between Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia, according to the New York Post.

    “She introduced a lot of bills, but she was not successful at having them receive any sort of action in committee or beyond committee and if they can’t get through committee they cannot pass the House,” said Vanderbilt political scientist, Alan Wiseman, who co-directs the center.

    “It’s clear that she was trying to get her legislative agenda moving and engage with the lawmaking process,” he added. “But she wasn’t as successful as some other members were — even among [other] freshmen — at getting people to pay attention to her legislation.”

    When looking at the legislative effectiveness of all congressional Democrats, AOC was ranked 230th out of 240 Democrats. Among the 19 Dem lawmakers from New York state, she ranked dead last.

    Among the bills that died at birth were a federal overhaul of public housing, a ban on fracking, and a mandate to provide full federal public benefits to illegal aliens.

    Democratic House insiders said many of Ocasio-Cortez’s colleagues found her approach alienating. -NY Post

    “Tweeting is easy, governing is hard. You need to have friends. You need to understand the committee process, you need to be willing to make sacrifices,” said one of AOC’s colleagues. “Her first day in Congress … she decided to protest outside of Nancy Pelosi’s office.”

    Another Democratic insider who worked with AOC in the New York delegation told the Post that “legislation was never her focus. It was media and narrative.”

    Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Brooklyn/Staten Islannd) told the Post “Her ludicrous policy ideas would destroy our country — Americans should be thankful she’s not effective.”

    Oddly, AOC may be trying to curry favor with fellow Democrats – having donated $5,000 to several vulnerable House Democrats has “raised awkward questions among her colleagues as some swing-district Democrats fret over whether to return her money before the GOP can turn it into an attack ad,” according to Politico.

    And while Ocasio-Cortez may be bad at lawmaking, her fellow “Squad” members were a bit more productive – with Rep. Ilhan Omar sponsoring 33 bills (which also went nowhere), while Rep. Rashida Tlaib saw three of her ‘substantive’ bills advance into committee, with one even becoming law.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/03/2021 – 19:00

  • Archegos Bikini Atolls: How Many More Tactical Financial Nuclear Bombs Exist?
    Archegos Bikini Atolls: How Many More Tactical Financial Nuclear Bombs Exist?

    Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

    Do you remember the end of Dr. Strangelove? When the Russian ambassador reveals the existence of the Doomsday device Strangelove makes the point that such weapons only have deterrent power if everyone knows about them.

    Secret weapons have no ability to deter cataclysmic violence.

    The reply from the Russian ambassador is one for the ages, “It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday.”

    Remember this when we consider the curious question of the demise of Archegos Capital.

    Because sometimes I watch something unfold and I have zero opinion on it whatsoever.  The Suez blockage was one of them.  I had to will myself to care beyond the obvious, “this is bad” reaction. The more I think about it, however, the more significant it becomes (more on that in future posts).

    On the other hand, the minute I read a single article about the vaporization of Archegos capital on Moday morning I smelled a rat, or least something vaguely rat-like.  And what immediately popped into my head was this thing is important, but not for the reasons anyone will admit to on CNBC or in the financial press.

    In fact, they would go out of their way to demonize Bill Hwang, the head of Archegos, who ‘acted irresponsibly,’ ‘ran a scam,’ et cetera while everyone goes into cover thine own ass mode.

    The first thing that stuck out at me was who got hit.  Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Nomura.  Today we can add Goldman-Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, UBS, Deutsche Bank in Europe, to Nomura and Mitsubishi Financial Group. There may even be others.

    All Western Institutions. Clue #1

    Zerohedge has done impeccable work helping us to understand this story. Today’s article puts the whole thing together (which I heartily recommend you read from top to bottom… twice). The background is in this graf:

    As a reminder, and as we previously discussed, we already knew how Archegos was building up stakes in its various holdings: unlike most other investors, the fund never actually owned the underlying stock or even calls on the stock, but rather transacted by purchasing equity swaps known as Total Return Swaps (TRS) or Certificates For Difference (CFD). Similar to Credit Default Swaps, TRS exposed Archegos to the daily variation margin on the underlying stock, and as such while the fund would benefit economically from increases in the underlying stock price (and, inversely, would be hit by price drops forcing it to put up more cash as margin any day the stock price dropped) it would never be the actual owner of record of the underlying stock. Instead, the stock that Archegos was long would be “owned” by its prime broker, the same entity that allowed it to enter into TRS in the first place. As such Archegos also never had any disclosure requirements, allowing it to transact completely in the dark while being fully compliant with SEC disclosure requirements – since it didn’t own the underlying stock, Archegos did not have to disclose it. Simple and brilliant.

    The next thing that came out of this article that didn’t shock me in the very least is that Hwang refused to purchase any downside protection for his $100 billion Ponzi Scheme of leveraged credit lines. Clue #2

    As Bloomberg adds, at several points during those exchanges, bankers implored Hwang to buy himself breathing room by selling some stocks and raising cash to post collateral. But “he wouldn’t budge.” [emphasis mine]

    Now let’s get into what actually happened here.

    Archegos is a Chinese family office.  The Biden administration is rapidly descending into anti-diplomatic relations with Russia, China and Iran.  Every possible provocation of the Chinese nd the Russians you can think of is happening.  On March 24th, Ukraine quietly declared war on Russia by making it Ukrainian security policy to retake Crimea (H/T to Mike Snyder at Economic Collapse Blog for finding this little goodie).

    Earlier this week we have the Ambassador from the U.S. call Taiwan ‘a country’ in the worse kind of calculated offense and escalation you can think of.

    So I have to ask the question, “If you were the Chinese and you were now in a hybrid war with the U.S. how would you send a message back across the Pacific?”

    This state of hybrid war, in effect a proxy for a direct military World War III began with the coup in Ukraine in 2014, and has been escalating for years. The entire Trump administration was one big hybrid war exercise of asymmetric attacks on each others’ capital markets and internal domestic policies — sanctions, counter-sanctions, tariffs, currency manipulations, etc.

    Would you send warships some place or would you attack our credit markets?

    Or more importantly would you plant literal financial tac nukes across multiple sectors of the financial world to combat any big push from the U.S. and Europe to foment a financial crisis on the eve of a conflict going kinetic?

    When we go back over the past few weeks of FOMC statements and assess the placidity of the Fed in the face of one of the biggest quarterly moves up in long-term interest rates in U.S. history we have to ask these questions.

    The dollar has been rising since the beginning of the year. Russia and China have been accumulating gold like mad to protect themselves from this which has been under sincere attack since last August’s flirtation with $2100 per ounce.

    Gold’s Q1 performance was abysmal.

    I’ve said before I thought this approach from the Fed was deliberate despite the markets screaming for it to do something. And when all the Fed does to change policy in March is to open up the limits banks can use to access the repo window (from $30B to $80B) while this is happening, again, I ask the question, what are they preparing for?

    So, if I’m China and I’m reading the tea leaves coming from the lack of diplomatic skill, if not intentionally amateurish behavior from the Biden administration, what would I do?

    How hard is it to think that there aren’t 20 or 30 family offices, unregulated and opaquely trading in CFDs and TRSs, out there with positions just like Archegos’ ready to go off if the Fed continues to allow a rising dollar and rising long-term rates.

    The biggest useable weapon the U.S. has is monetary policy.  If you want to blow up China’s rising economy right now you have to allow the dollar to rise, liquidity to drop and induce panic all throughout emerging and frontier markets many of whom are now allies of Russia and China, think Turkey for example.

    If you were China how would you defend against that?  By creating asymmetric time bombs that blow back on western capital markets the second the dollar begins to drain overseas liquidity.

    To quote Zerohedge, “Simple and brilliant.”

    In any prelude to kinetic war there is always a financial war that precedes it.  First give the world excessive amounts of easy money and allow overseas export markets to overlever to supply U.S. consumption markets, then pull the punch bowl away and watch the cheap dollars become albatrosses around their necks.

    Welcome to Russia and SE Asia in 1997-99, Turkey in 2018, etc.

    There’s been a massive correction in Chinese large caps since the dollar began strengthening in January.  As the Dow Jones Industrials climb higher, the MSCI A50 China Large Cap Index has given back nearly 40% of its gains since last March.

    If I’m China, I allow Archegos to go poof and then watch the plumbing of the financial West clog up like the Suez was last week.

    This is how you play the real game. And I would be shocked if this is the only family office nuclear time bomb out there.  

    Look at the stocks they bought and targeted… Viacom, Discover, Tencent Music, Baidu, etc.  

    Remember the first rule of derivatives trading: notional becomes net when the other guy can’t pay. It’s why these prime brokers were running around all weekend selling off major blocks of stock at steep discounts to avoid a deeper panic while assuring us that all is well.

    In order to really play this game you have to think a couple of moves ahead.

    I’m sure that Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and the others all thought they had these derivatives owned by Archegos properly hedged, but only if Archegos paid up. They never expected to be on the wrong side of the trade.  

    What if these were intentionally poison pills? The goal being to take the positions, allow market conditions to blow them up never intending to raise the capital to pay but rather leave the prime brokers of your enemy up the creek?

    Because Hwang would never have gotten that kind of credit to play with to make this kind of ‘rookie mistake.’ This wasn’t incompetence on his part. Why else would he steadfastly refuse to buy himself some downside protection?

    $10 billion seems a small price to pay to send that kind of message on behalf of the Chinese government.

    Zerohedge is again right when it reminds us that the most likely response by the U.S. here is nothing, because to do so would invite real scrutiny as to how many of these tactical nuclear financial bombs exist and how much panic that knowledge would induce.

    Which, when you think of it that way, was exactly the point of the lesson Archegos just taught everyone. The Party Congress on Monday announced this to the world.

    Boom.

    *  *  *

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/03/2021 – 18:30

  • LA Port Chief Implores Importers To Speed Cargo Pickup As Congestion Crisis Worsens
    LA Port Chief Implores Importers To Speed Cargo Pickup As Congestion Crisis Worsens

    For many months ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have dealt with massive congestion of ships as trillions of dollars in stimulus results in one-sided trade with Asia. The congestion is so bad at the US West Coast port that the port’s head told importers to expedite container pickup to alleviate congestion on Tuesday. 

    “The container dwell time is much higher than it was pre-pandemic,” Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka told CNBC, referring to the duration a container spends at the port. 

    “We’re asking our importers to pick up the cargo as quickly as they can, devan the products and return those containers back to the port,” Seroka said, who added the port is the busiest in North America. 

    Data compiled by Marine Exchange of Southern California shows a massive congestion crisis of moored container ships waiting to unload their cargo. 

    It’s not just a ship pileup Californian ports are dealing with; one-sided trade with Asia (mainly China), sparked by fiscal stimulus, has resulted in the greatest demand-pull of consumer products ever. Over the months, we’ve documented the massive container shortage in Asia as containers pileup at US West Coast ports. 

    “The time it takes for the importer to pick up their cargo at the port is now over four days, but it’s off its high of five days sitting under dwell,” Seroka said, adding there’s been improvement in other metrics, too.

    “Truck turn times — the amount of time that it takes a trucker to move in and out of the port to drop off and pick up containers — has decreased to 77 minutes from 88 back in December. So we’re starting to see some of the trendings in the right direction,” he said.

    With ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach a complete mess, it’s unlikely congestion issues will diminish as the Biden administration continues to hand out free money to US consumers who turn around and purchase products that are not manufactured in the US. With no easing in sight, Seroka warns higher volume periods will continue and spike at the end of summer due to demand for back-to-school goods and importers preparing for holidays. 

    “Before we know it, August will be upon us and we’ll start to see back-to-school goods, other sale items, and then the year-end holidays, the all-important season for retailers,” he said.

    As long as the Biden administration continues handing out stimulus checks to Americans who are buying things made in Asia and or the rest of the world, the trade deficit is evidence of this, port congestion on US West Coast ports will continue. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/03/2021 – 18:00

  • About Those Armed Protestors At The Capitol… The Georgia Capitol
    About Those Armed Protestors At The Capitol… The Georgia Capitol

    Authored by Stacey Lennox via PJMedia.com,

    Georgia State Representative Park Cannon returned to the State Capitol on Monday following an arrest on May 25, 2021, for making a scene banging on the door to the office where Governor Brian Kemp was signing the election security bill. How that works out is of little interest to me personally. She is not my state representative and legislators who pull stunts to make themselves the story rather than their accomplishments annoy me.

    She claimed that she should be able to watch Kemp sign the bill along with the activists who accompanied her. Cannon could have done that by pulling out her phone and watching on YouTube. She claimed she was arrested for fighting voter suppression when she was actually arrested for refusing to follow the police’s instructions and stomping on one officer’s foot repeatedly. That’s conduct unbecoming her position, in my humble opinion.

    Her return was quite a spectacle with a presser and an entourage that garnered additional media attention, including from national outlets like Fox News. There were many pictures on social media and in the press showing the activists supporting her. Here is an example from the ACLU of Georgia:

    Here is the video from Channel 11:

    The circus and attention-seeking have not stopped. Cannon is raising funds and still getting in front of microphones. She is also wearing a sling for what may or may not be an injury related to her arrest. You may make your own assessment. And the entourage seems permanent. On Wednesday, members of the Georgia Republican Party were on-site to witness the spectacle, and they noticed something interesting: an armed guard escorting the entourage. Georgia GOP Chairman David Shafer tweeted the images after eyewitnesses sent them to him:

    It is unclear if this group was present earlier in the week, as I have not found any images of them on social media from Monday or Tuesday. However, ignoring this element of the entourage would be typical of the media and the Left. At the end of March 2021, armed radical left protestors swarmed the Oregon State Capitol to disrupt a Freedom Rally — to crickets in the establishment press. Only new media covered the story. Many Americans probably do not even know it happened or that antifa destroyed personal vehicles, along with other things.

    Yet when armed protestors showed up at the Michigan State Capitol to protest draconian lockdowns or rallied in Virginia to support their Second Amendment rights, the corporate media gave pearl-clutching coverage in advance. The establishment media still reference the U.S. Capitol riot in January after weeks of showing the same reels repeatedly. No arrest to date of someone who entered the Capitol that day includes charges for possession of a firearm.

    Here is the full video of Cannon entering the Georgia Capitol on Wednesday:

    I will give these individuals the benefit of the doubt regarding the legality of their guns. This article is not a commentary on open carry by legal gun owners. Instead, I intend to point out which type of protestors with firearms the media chooses to comment on and which ones they don’t. The premise for covering the protests in Michigan and Virginia involving members of the political Right was that emotions were high on significant policy issues. Georgia is in the same circumstance now, with the erroneous national and local coverage of the election security law. Even President Biden received four Pinocchios from the Washington Post for his incorrect comments.

    The eyewitness who took the video gave PJ Media his impression of what he witnessed:

    A half dozen heavily armed militia surrounded the state legislator who was arrested last week for assaulting a state trooper, presumably to protect her from another arrest. It was surreal. There was no clash between the leftists and the state troopers although we saw one trooper with a rifle. There were a half dozen more who were similarly dressed but not openly bearing firearms.

    If Cannon has received threats requiring this type of security, providing it requires licensure in the state. If not, the rank hypocrisy of her allowing this on her behalf is pretty astonishing. Here she is at the March for Our lives in 2018, which advocates for gun control, including outlawing the very guns these individuals are carrying:

    She also called Representative Lucy McBath (D-Ga.) her mentor, and McBath ran on a gun control agenda:

    You can bet if armed citizens showed up to escort a Republican legislator amidst the election security bill controversy, it would have made national coverage. When left-wing groups do it, it is completely ignored. Perhaps Cannon has just adopted the Democrat ruling class perspective “guns for me but not for thee.” You don’t see anyone in Hollywood or Washington D.C. giving up their armed guards while advocating for commonsense gun control. It makes complete sense to them that you shouldn’t have one.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/03/2021 – 17:30

  • Feds Warn Mortgage Firms: "Tidal Wave Of Distress" Coming As Forbearance Programs Set To Lapse 
    Feds Warn Mortgage Firms: “Tidal Wave Of Distress” Coming As Forbearance Programs Set To Lapse 

    The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) warned mortgage firms Thursday “to take all necessary steps now to prevent a wave of avoidable foreclosures this fall.” 

    As of March 30, approximately 2.54 million homeowners remain in forbearance or about 4.8% of all mortgages, according to the latest data from Black Knight’s McDash Flash Forbearance Tracker.

    CFPB said mortgage firms should “dedicate sufficient resources and staff now to ensure they are prepared for a surge in borrowers needing help.” To avoid what the agency called “avoidable foreclosures” when the forbearance relief lapses, mortgage servicers should begin contacting affected homeowners now to guide them on ways they can modify their loans.

    “There is a tidal wave of distressed homeowners who will need help from their mortgage servicers in the coming months,” said CFPB Acting Director Dave Uejio. He said,

    “There is no time to waste and no excuse for inaction. No one should be surprised by what is coming.” 

    The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act provided a safety net for borrowers with federally-backed mortgages who could access forbearance programs. With millions of borrowers in the program set to lapse in the second half of the year, unavoid foreclosure will occur despite the government trying everything under the sun to keep people in their homes.

    “Our first priority is ensuring struggling families get the assistance they need. Servicers who put struggling families first have nothing to fear from our oversight, but we will hold accountable those who cause harm to homeowners and families,” Uejio said. 

    With the CFPB focused on preventing avoidable foreclosures, the government’s forbearance programs ends in September, which could result in the quick unraveling of the social fabric for many households who may find themselves homeless. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/03/2021 – 17:00

  • This Week's Absurdity: Harmful Masks, 'Hurtful' Mums, & Heretical Media
    This Week’s Absurdity: Harmful Masks, ‘Hurtful’ Mums, & Heretical Media

    Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

    Are you ready for this week’s absurdity?

    Here’s our weekend roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity… and on occasion, inspiring poetic justice.

    Parents against critical race theory placed on enemies list

    A Facebook group called “Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County,” a weathy suburb of Washington DC, includes teachers, school board members, and even the county prosecutor.

    This group saw fit to create an enemies list to name and target parents who have criticized critical race theory.

    We’ve talked about critical race theory in schools before. It teaches children to view themselves as either victims or oppressors, based on superficial characteristics like skin color.

    One member of this “anti-racist” parents group decided anyone who doesn’t want their child indoctrinated in racially divisive identity politics is a “racist”.

    She asked for volunteers who could help list people who were opposed to critical race theory in schools, and “expose these people publicly.”

    She also wanted to find people who could “create fake online profiles and join these groups to collect and communicate information, hackers who can either shut down their websites or redirect them to pro-CRT/anti-racist informational webpages…”

    Sadly, other members of the group eagerly provided the names, locations, and other information on people who don’t believe in the holy faith of critical race theory.

    One parent landed on the enemies list because she criticized the banning of Dr. Suess, and because she was “very carefully neutral” about critical race theory.

    A teacher in the district accused another teacher’s husband of blasphemy against critical race theory.

    One mom commented, “Ian Prior spoke about First Amendment concerns… Austin Levine criticized the School Board.”

    This is a religious inquisition to exile non-believers from society.

    Because the group encouraged actual crimes to be committed against these people, law enforcement is now investigating.

    Click here to read the full story.

    Masks containing harmful chemical distributed to schoolchildren

    Masks distributed to schoolchildren in Quebec were found to contain harmful chemicals.

    Health Canada is now warning schools not to distribute the masks since there is a risk of “early lung damage associated with inhalation of microscopic graphene particles.”

    Keep in mind that children are the least likely demographic to suffer serious complications from Covid-19— or even notice they have it.

    But now in the name of slowing the spread, they have been exposed to a much bigger health risk, with the potential to cause long term health effects.

    Once again the cure may be far worse than the disease.

    Click here to read the full story.

    World-renowned infectious disease expert censored by Twitter for Covid heresy

    Harvard Professor Martin Kulldorff, one of the most cited epidemiologists and infectious -disease experts in the world, was censored by Twitter for saying not everyone needs a vaccine.

    HERESY! REPENT!

    When asked if he thought everyone needed a vaccine, he replied:

    “No. Thinking that everyone must be vaccinated is as scientifically flawed as thinking that nobody should. COVID vaccines are important for older high-risk people, and their care-takers. Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children.”

    Twitter slapped the Tweet with a Covid misinformation warning, and blocked it from being liked or retweeted.

    Only Twitter can decide which science is true.

    Click here to read the Tweet.

    Yet CNN says you can’t tell a baby’s sex at birth; NOT censored by Twitter

    The governor of South Dakota recently banned biological men from participating in female sports.

    In response, CNN promptly reported that “It’s not possible to know a person’s gender identity at birth, and there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth.”

    Don’t you love the phrasing of, “assigning” sex at birth, as if the doctor just arbitrarily decides, or flips a coin before announcing, “It’s a girl!”

    The “consensus” for all of human history has been that, if a baby has a penis, it is “assigned” to the male biological sex, and that if it has a vagina, its a female.

    But the science deniers at CNN decided that proper woke journalism requires editing that history out of existence.

    Honestly I dislike covering stories like this, because I’m very much in favor of everyone having the freedom to be whoever they want to be. If someone wants to identify as a seedless watermelon, so be it.

    But when they start reinventing biology, their social justice propaganda goes way too far.

    Ironically, though, Twitter, had no problem allowing CNN’s story (which is decidedly anti-science) to be shared… while the highly-respected infectious disease expert I wrote about in the previous story was censored.

    Click here to read the original story using the web archive.

    Elizabeth Warren says Senators should be too powerful to heckle

    Senator Elizabeth Warren and Amazon got into a Twitter spat on taxation. Amazon said that Warren was one of the people who writes the tax code, and Amazon follows the rules to perfectly legally minimize their tax bill.

    Elizabeth Warren replied:

    “I didn’t write the loopholes you exploit, @amazon – your armies of lawyers and lobbyists did. But you bet I’ll fight to make you pay your fair share. And fight your union-busting. And fight to break up Big Tech so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets.”

    This is hilarious given that Warren started the spat. Amazon only responded, respectfully, with facts and common sense. But to Warren this is heckling, snotty, and shouldn’t be allowed.

    The real irony is that the entire exchange took place on platform built by… a Big Tech company… So Lizzie wants to break ‘em up, but she can’t bring herself to stop using their services. I’d bet she’s an Amazon Prime member too…

    Click here to read the Tweet.

    UK wants more powers to charge protesters

    The UK wants to update public order laws to create a new crime of “Intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance.”

    According to Part 3, Section 59, anyone who “obstructs the public or a section of the public in the exercise or enjoyment of a right” can be charged if anyone in their vicinity “suffers serious distress, serious annoyance, serious inconvenience or serious loss of amenity.”

    And what is the punishment for causing “serious annoyance” or “inconvenience”?

    Ten years in prison

    The rule also applies if a perpetrator puts someone at risk of suffering annoyance, inconvenience, or “disease.”

    Ignore a Covid lockdown rule, potentially exposing others to disease? Ten years in prison.

    This bill is so broad that you could face ten years in prison for walking too slowly on the sidewalk.

    This insane proposal would allow the government to arrest and imprison just about anyone it wants.

    Click here to read the 307 page bill for yourself.

    *  *  *

    On another note… We think gold could DOUBLE and silver could increase by up to 5 TIMES in the next few years. That’s why we published a new, 50-page long Ultimate Guide on Gold & Silver that you can download here.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/03/2021 – 16:30

  • China Encouraging More Capital Outflows To Ease Pressure On Yuan
    China Encouraging More Capital Outflows To Ease Pressure On Yuan

    Back in August 2018 we observed a historic event for China’s economy: for the first time in its modern history, China’s current account balance for the first half of the year had turned into a deficit. And while the full year amount reverted back to a modest surplus, it was only a matter of time before one of the most unique features of China’s economy – its chronic current account surplus – was gone for good.

    Then, a few months later also in 2018, UBS wrote that the upcoming loss of China’s current account cushion would soften domestic activity, which coupled with the emerging US-China trade war, would mean that “for the first time in 25 years, China would have to make a choice between external stability and growth.” This was followed by the Wall Street’s Journal bringing attention to this topic, calling it a “tectonic shift” in China’s economy, which has largely gone unnoticed by investors, and which is “quietly beginning to upend the global financial system.”

    And yet, a few years later such predictions of a “tectonic shift” in both China’s economy and in global fund flows have yet to materlialize for the simple reason that thanks to covid, China’s current account which was on the cusp of turning into a deficit, exploded into a massive surplus the likes of which China had not seen since 2016 thanks to the breakout of the oh-so-convenient-for-Beijing covid pandemic, which crippled global economies and sparked a Chinese export boom (mostly related to items linked to Covid which the world couldn’t find anywhere else).

    Yet while covid proved to be the capital “Hail Mary” Beijing urgently needed, China’s resurgent economy (and current account) brought with it a fresh headache, namely massive capital outflows inflows as a result of global investors flocking into local capital markets as China emerged an island of stability in a world crippled by the pandemic. The result: a unprecedented surge in the Yuan, which reached a level just shy of where it was in 2015 when Beijing was forced to devalue the currency.

    But more importantly, it’s why as Caixing reports, in 2020 China reported its first annual deficit on the financial account in its balance of payments in four years as regulators allowed more money to flow out of the country to ease appreciation pressure on the yuan stemming from rising foreign investment in the country’s capital markets.

    The 2020 deficit, excluding reserve assets held by the central bank, amounted to $77.8 billion, although that’s down from an initial estimate of $175.9 billion given in February, according to revised figures for the balance of payments released by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) on Friday. It’s the first shortfall since 2016 when the country had a financial account deficit for the year, excluding reserve assets, of $416.1 billion. The financial account includes domestic ownership of foreign assets –– such as deposits, loans, securities, commodities and direct investment –– and foreign ownership of domestic assets.

    “The deficit on the financial account excluding reserve assets shows that the accumulation of overseas assets by China’s private sector is continuing,” the administration said in a report (link in Chinese) accompanying the data. “First, domestic residents have increased their investment in overseas securities, which shows that demand to diversify assets (in investment portfolios) is strong. Second, outbound direct investment has been rational and orderly. Third, banks have increased their deposits and loans overseas, as the current account surplus has provided relatively abundant foreign currency liquidity.”

    Meanwhile, as shown in the chart above, the yuan appreciated 8.8% against the U.S. dollar in the second half of 2020, ending the year at 6.50 per dollar, up from 7.13 per dollar at the end of May.

    “Amid the continued appreciation of the yuan since June 2020, China’s foreign exchange policies have focused on increasing the flexibility of the exchange rate, expanding capital outflows and controlling capital inflows,” Guan Tao, chief global economist at BOC International Co. Ltd. wrote in a Feb. 23 report (link in Chinese) on the preliminary balance of payments data. He said he expected this foreign-exchange policy mix to continue as the “orderly expansion of capital outflows is an important policy tool to cope with the appreciation pressure on the yuan.”

    In other words, don’t be surprised to see a fresh flood of Chinese real-estate buyers in Vancouver, California and the Tri-State area.

    Until then, Chinese investors are making do with foreign bonds: according to data from China Central Depository and Clearing Co. Ltd. and the Shanghai Clearing House, outstanding overseas holdings of bonds traded in the onshore interbank market rose to 3.25 trillion yuan ($495 billion) at the end of December, a net increase of 1.1 trillion yuan from a year earlier.

    In an interview with Caixin, Guan said that foreign exchange in the onshore market was abundant in 2020, allowing banks to absorb domestic deposits in foreign currency and then deposit or lend them abroad.

    Growing confidence in China’s recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic as other major economies continued to suffer, and higher yields on Chinese government bonds compared with U.S. Treasuries also contributed to an increase in inflows of foreign capital last year.

    Ironically, three years after fears of a current account deficit sparked worries on Wall Street about how China would fund itself in the global capital markets, the abundance of foreign currency liquidity, especially the U.S. dollar, led to a decrease in the cost of financing in foreign currency which led to an increase in domestic loans made in foreign currency, said Wang Youxin, a senior researcher at a research institute backed by Bank of China.

    Overall, China had a balance of payments surplus of $168.1 billion in 2020, comprising a current account surplus of $274 billion, and a combined capital and financial account deficit of $105.8 billion, the latest data show. That compares with $129.2 billion in 2019 and $177.4 billion in 2018, according to revised SAFE figures.

    The financial account involves equity investment and debt financing, while the current account measures a country’s total trade in goods and services plus earnings on cross-border investments. Under the financial account, direct investment and portfolio investment had a surplus of $102.6 billion and $87.3 billion, respectively, while other investment had a deficit of $256.2 billion, up 160% from 2019, the data show. Other investment includes all financial transactions not considered direct investment, portfolio investment, financial derivatives, employee stock options, or reserve assets.

    In 2020, net outflows in other investment amounted to $314.2 billion, the highest since a deficit of $349.9 billion in 2016. This mainly comprised greater net outflow of deposits of $130.4 billion, 28% higher than in 2019, and a net jump in cross-border loans of $128.2 billion which reversed a net decline of $26 billion in 2019, as banks increased their overseas lending and companies added to their overseas deposits amid ample liquidity, according to the SAFE report.

    Domestic deposits in foreign currency jumped by $131.6 billion in 2020, the largest increase since 2014, while loans in foreign currency grew by $80.2 billion, the most since 2013, according to data (link in Chinese) from the People’s Bank of China.

    For portfolio investment, cross-border funds flowed actively into and out of the Chinese mainland in 2020, SAFE wrote in its report. Last year, domestic investors bought a net $167.3 billion of overseas stocks and other types of securities, while their overseas counterparts purchased a net $254.7 billion in the Chinese securities markets, both hitting a record high since the data series on international balance of payments began in 1982.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/03/2021 – 16:00

  • Biden & The Lockdown Governors Need Canute-Thinking
    Biden & The Lockdown Governors Need Canute-Thinking

    Authored by Jon Sanders via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    In early March, President Joe Biden sharply criticized Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves for allowing businesses to reopen 100 percent and for lifting their mask mandates. Biden accused them of “Neanderthal thinking” and said they were making a “big mistake.” The hand-wringing new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, publicly fretted that “I am really worried about more states rolling back the exact public health measures we have recommended to protect people from Covid-19.”

    In late March, despite Biden and Walensky’s dire predictions, Covid-19 cases had continued to decline in Texas and Mississippi. What also continued was Biden’s criticism and Walensky’s fretting. Posing in two masks, Biden called on “every governor, mayor, and local leader to maintain and reinstate the mask mandate” and bizarrely said it was “a patriotic duty” to “mask up.” Walensky spoke of the “recurring feeling I have of impending doom” and told everyone “right now I’m scared.”

    There are two possibilities at play here.

    1. One is that Biden and Walensky are truly concerned about a resurgence and sincerely believe that mask mandates, all evidence to the contrary, are the “critical, critical, critical” way to prevent it.

    2. The other is, speaking of masks, that Biden and Walensky perceive that the mask of the All-Wise Central Planner who can dictate even the progress of a virus is being ripped off publicly.

    It’s been over a year. It’s well past time for that mask to be torn off.

    It’s not that Texas and Mississippi’s results sans masks are unusual. Other states with mask mandates are also seeing case declines. It’s consistent with natural seasonality as well as expanding natural immunity along with vaccine-induced immunity. What it’s showing is that case declines are consistent with those things, the natural progress of the virus, not with mask mandates.

    For Biden and the long list of U.S. governors with their own house blends of distinctions among activities the virus supposedly does and doesn’t allow, what they need (among other things) is an understanding of just how limited their plans and powers really are in the face of a natural force. Arbitrary and capricious Covid orders infest from California and Michigan to New York and Connecticut. My own governor, Roy Cooper in North Carolina, has even distinguished between party buses (safe) and tour buses (banned) and private bars (unsafe) and bars in restaurants, taverns, and breweries (A-OK).

    They need the humility of Canute. 

    According to legend, Canute the Great, an 11th century warrior and king, wearied of the obsequious flatteries of his courtiers and decided to teach them a lesson in the limitations of a sovereign’s power. His choice was a natural phenomenon: the rising tide. 

    Philosopher David Hume introduced the legend well in his History of England: “Canute, the greatest and most powerful monarch of his time, sovereign of Denmark and Norway, as well as of England, could not fail of meeting with adulation from his courtiers; a tribute which is literally paid even to the meanest and weakest princes.” Some asides are evergreen.

    Hume goes on to tell that some of Canute’s flatterers one day even “exclaimed that every thing was possible for him.” That prompted Canute’s lesson (emphasis added): 

    [T]he monarch, it is said, ordered his chair to be set on the sea-shore, while the tide was rising, and as the waters approached, he commanded them to retire, and to obey the voice who was lord of the ocean. He feigned to sit some time in expectation of their submission; but when the sea still advanced towards him, and began to wash him with its billows, he turned to his courtiers, and remarked to them, that every creature in the universe was feeble and impotent, and that power resided with one Being alone, in whose hands were all the elements of nature; who could say to ocean, ‘Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther’; and who could level with his nod the most towering piles of human pride and ambition.

    In the earliest account of Canute’s demonstration, Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon wrote in Historia Anglorum the following:

    [W]hen he was at the height of his ascendancy, he ordered his chair to be placed on the sea-shore as the tide was coming in. Then he said to the rising tide, “You are subject to me, as the land on which I am sitting is mine, and no one has resisted my overlordship with impunity. I command you, therefore, not to rise on to my land, nor to presume to wet the clothing or limbs of your master.” But the sea came up as usual, and disrespectfully drenched the king’s feet and shins. So jumping back, the king cried, “Let all the world know that the power of kings is empty and worthless, and there is no king worthy of the name save Him by whose will heaven, earth and sea obey eternal laws.” 

    The lesson of Canute is this: the forces of nature obey their Creator, not a man who is elevated to rule over other men, but who is still a man. The governed who believe otherwise are simpletons, while the ruler who acts on that belief is destined to be a frustrated tyrant exposed as a fraud.

    To be sure, then, Biden and the other leaders aren’t the only ones who need the lesson of Canute. We all do. Especially since we forgot our own lessons under SARS, H1N1, and the flu of 2018-19.

    If we forsake self-reliance and our own wisdom and experiences, but choose instead to look to government out of fear to save us from a natural force, few leaders will have the humility to admit that such a thing is beyond the reach of the state. They will, as they have, issue ill-conceived edicts in the hopes of placating the public, possibly bringing some mitigation, and (in the words of early Covid research urging masks despite finding their effects “uncertain”) providing “feelings of empowerment and self-efficacy.”

    Keeping the mask of the All-Wise Central Planner “saving” us by forcing certain actions on us for our own good is only possible if every leader does it. When some stop while others never started, and it becomes evident that there’s no link between state mask mandates and natural outcomes, the phoniness is revealed. The tide turns. No wonder the Central Planners are angry and scared.

    Benjamin Franklin warned, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Heaven help us if we prove him right, accepting government mask mandates and personal restrictions ironically for “feelings of empowerment.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/03/2021 – 15:30

  • US Carrier Launches Operations In East Med As Top US Syria Policy Czar Calls Al-Qaeda Leader "An Asset"
    US Carrier Launches Operations In East Med As Top US Syria Policy Czar Calls Al-Qaeda Leader “An Asset”

    Long after the demise of the ‘Islamic State’ and its short-lived territorial caliphate in eastern Syria and western Iraq, the US continues now to seek operations in the Levant ostensibly to “counter ISIS”. Of course, this is but the excuse given to maintain a muscular stance in the region as US pressure continues and the sanctions choke-hold against Assad and the Iranians deepens the regional crisis, also as Russia is more deeply entrenched in Syria. 

    And now in 2021 we are still witnessing headlines like this: “Eisenhower Strike Group Joins Anti-ISIS Effort”. The Pentagon this week announced that the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower strike group has initiated flight operations in the Eastern Mediterranean “to support the continuing campaign against Islamic State remnants in Syria and Iraq.”

    Via Stratfor

    While in the past weeks there’s been an uptick in reports that suggest ISIS might be seeking to stage a major comeback in the region, the carrier presence could also in reality be aimed at thwarting things like the below…

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    In announcing the Eisenhower’s new Eastern Mediterranean deployment, strike group commander Rear Adm. Scott F. Robertson, said “We can provide a wide range of options to our nation and allies in deterring adversarial aggression and disruption of maritime security and regional stability.”

    The carrier presence also comes as Idlib is still occupied by al-Qaeda terrorists (since 2015), which Russia and the Syrian Army have long sought to return to Damascus, but never having launched a final massive assault (in large part due to counter-threats from Washington of US military intervention to “save” Idlib).

    Meanwhile on a related note, this is quite an official admission coming from the United States longtime top Syria policy czar, who just recently retired…

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    Though of course there’s nothing “former” about being leader of al-Qaeda, as if being a notorious terror leader and mass murderer is akin to changing a gym membership.

    According to a new PBS report:

    James Jeffrey, who served as a U.S. ambassador under both Republican and Democrat administrations and most recently as special representative for Syria engagement and special envoy to the global coalition to defeat ISIS during the Trump administration, told Smith that Jolani’s organization was “an asset” to America’s strategy in Idlib.

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    All of these latest developments, most particularly the US carrier presence close to Syria’s coast, strongly suggests as we’ve been reporting lately that the Biden administration considers that it has some “unfinished business” in Syria related to Assad. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/03/2021 – 15:00

  • Students At Florida High School Warned They Will Be "Re-Educated" If Caught Not Wearing A Mask
    Students At Florida High School Warned They Will Be “Re-Educated” If Caught Not Wearing A Mask

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    Students at Clearwater High School in Florida have been warned that they will be “re-educated” on the importance of wearing a mask if they are seen on school premises not wearing a face covering.

    An advisory posted on the school’s website regarding face mask policy tells students, teachers, staff and any visitors that masks are mandatory on all school property as well as on school buses.

    The section on “noncompliance” then spells out the punishment for anyone caught flouting the rules.

    “The wearing of a face covering is a public health issue. Students who do not wear a mask when it is required (or refuse to do so), should first be reeducated on the importance of wearing a mask,” states the advisory.

    “If after reeducation occurs, they still do not comply, the student’s administrator should be contacted,” it adds, outlining that parents will also be contacted and the student will be forced to switch to online learning if non-compliance continues.

    The mask rule remains in place despite Florida Governor Ron DeSantis never issuing a statewide mask mandate and Florida being one of the states that has tried to keep COVID-19 lockdown restrictions to a minimum.

    The term “re-education” is normally used in the context of involuntary political indoctrination and was a concept embraced by historical Communist dictatorships.

    In its modern parlance, the term is applied to dissidents in authoritarian states such as North Korea and China, where political prisoners and minority groups are “re-educated” out of their anti-state beliefs through forced labor and indoctrination while imprisoned in “re-education camps.”

    Leftists and authoritarians have repeatedly suggested that so-called “anti-vaxxers” and people who refuse to wear masks should be arrested and “re-educated” in government facilities.

    Back in December 2019, we also highlighted how disgraced Lincoln Project founder Rick Wilson called for anti-vaxxers to be treated the same way and have their children taken away.

    “Anti-vaxxers are a scourge and a strong argument for re-education camps, the immediate seizure of their property, and putting their children into protective custody,” tweeted Wilson.

    *  *  *

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 04/03/2021 – 14:30

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