- The Mainstream Is Circling The Wagons: "They're Coming For All Of Us…It's An Orchestrated Attack Against Truth"
Via Mac Slavo of SHTFPlan.com,
Within hours of the election of Donald Trump the mainstream media, their politico counterparts and social media operatives began spreading the narrative that the President was only elected as a result of the dissemination of fake news. The term itself became a rallying cry for everyone from major search engines to massive social media websites who said they would create fact checking teams within their organizations to ensure only legitimate news and information would be listed on their respective platforms. Soon, the leftist media began spreading lists, none of which were backed with any actual evidence, of supposed “fake news” purveyors and Russian propaganda websites. The lists included some of the most highly trafficked non-mainstream websites and aggregators around the world. As these Silicon Valley behemoths and popular news organizations mobilized, so too did mainstream advertising agencies, one of which quickly pulled advertising from the purported king of fake news, conservative leaning news organization Breitbart.com.
The battle was clearly on. And to this day, it continues in earnest. Legitimate news is being buried in feeds and search engine pages, while the effort to directly attack the revenue of alternative media websites continues to expand.
Several weeks ago Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com penned an alert in which he reported that a shadow organization had contacted him with an offer to either help them take down Infowars founder Alex Jones, or be destroyed. Adams, being a long-time proponent of free speech and liberty, took to the internet to expose them instead. Naturally, the skeptics laughed it all off as another conspiracy theory.
Except just days after Natural News posted the warning, Infowars was suddenly dropped by one of the world’s largest online advertising agencies, reportedly costing the network some $3 million in revenue. And within a week of that attack, the largest search engine in the world delisted some 140,000 NaturalNews.com pages from their search results.
While this may seem like no big deal for the average reader today, what these recent actions demonstrate is that a conglomerate of traditional news media, big business and political operatives are actively working to suppress the reporting of information that runs counter to the mainstream agenda.
First they come for the purveyors of truth and information that has remained hidden from the masses for decades. Next they will come for those who publicly discuss their views and and ideas on social media and other forums. And while you may not fall into any of these two categories, make no mistake, as SGT Report warns in the following must-watch report, one day they will come for you, too.
They’ll be coming for all of us… Because this is an orchestrated attack against truth… I cannot imagine living in a time in the United States of America where this is allowed to stand…
As of this morning Google has reinstated NaturalNews.com, though the original reasons provided by Google, which claimed this was a technical issue involving a small number of outdated pages on the website, were unable to be duplicated by numerous well known SEO websites and cyber sleuths. Curiously, as Health Ranger Mike Adams notes in his statement on the censroship, the very same technical issues actively exist on mainstream websites like CNN and Huffington Post, though their pages have yet to be delisted in the same manner as Natural News.
Based on the evidence, we are hard pressed to find any legitimate reason for why Mike Adams’ 140,000 pages would have been delisted, save for the fact that this was a direct attack against his alternative viewpoints on health, politics and a number of other issues. And though Google as an organization may not have been fully aware of the reasons behind the delisting, someone had to push the button. That the button push came just days after the aforementioned warning Mike received to either play ball or be destroyed is highly suspicious.
There is a concerted effort to shut down views and ideas that run counter to the status quo. Today it has come in the form of silencing the most vocal critics. Tomorrow, they may try to silence you.
Mike Adams discusses the delisting and reinstatement of his website on The Common Sense Show:
- NEW UNCOVERED INFORMATION: Why Central Banks Were Forced To Rig The Gold Market
By the SRSrocco Report,
According to newly uncovered information in the gold market, it provides additional evidence of why the Fed, Central Banks and the IMF were forced to RIG the gold market. Not only was the dropping of the Gold-Dollar peg going to release a great deal of pressure on the manipulated gold price, but forecasts of a massive increase in gold demand was going to totally overwhelm supply.
Thus, this new information provides clear evidence that the gold market was being assaulted on “two fronts.” Not only was the gold market suffering from a decades of price suppression schemes via the Fed and Central Banks, but also that surging gold demand in the jewelry and industrial sectors was going to lead to severe shortages in the gold market.
Which means, the gold market was experiencing a great deal more stress than complications stemming from the debasement of the U.S. Dollar due to massive money printing. Actually, looking at this new information, I had no idea of the amount of Fed, Central Bank and IMF gold market intervention until I put all the pieces together.
Now, when I say “new information”, it pertains to new information and data that I dug up from older official documents. While most of the folks in the precious metals community realize that the Fed and Central Banks have sold gold into the market to depress the price, this new evidence puts the gold market it in an entirely DIFFERENT LIGHT.
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PRECIOUS METALS INVESTORS…. if you think your getting the “BEST PRICE” for purchasing gold and silver, or you are receiving the best “FEE” for storing your metals, than you need not look any further. However, if you haven’t checked out our new PRECIOUS METALS INVESTING section or our new LOWEST COST PRECIOUS METALS STORAGE page, I highly recommend you do.
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Furthermore, additional data points to a “Gold Supply & Demand” situation that would have gone completely out of control, if the Fed, Central Banks and IMF did not step in.
To preface this subject matter, the Central Banks dumped a lot of gold into the market during the 1960’s to maintain (suppress) the official gold price. This was known as the “London Gold Pool” where an estimated 78 million oz (Moz) of gold were dumped into the market between 1961 and 1968. I explained this in my THE GOLD REPORT- Investment Flows.
However, when Nixon dropped the Dollar-Gold Peg on August 15, 1971, the problems with the global monetary system were just beginning. In a report published in November, 1972, by the U.S. Congress and Subcommittee on International Payments of the Joint Economic Committee for the purpose of “De-emphasizing gold as a reserve asset”,it stated the following:
Not only did the committee suggest and permit the “voluntary” sale of official gold into the market, but also to “prohibit” against Central bank purchases. Which meant the committee was proposing a plan to only allow the DUMPING of gold into the market, but forbid any OFFICIAL BUYING. This of course was supporting the “FREE MARKET” fundamentals for proper gold price discovery…. LOL.
At the bottom of that quote, the committee went on to state that when the international monetary reform had been achieved (to an IMF SDR basket), all prohibitions of gold (investment) purchases by American citizens would be promptly abolished.
So, the wonderful folks up in government had an ingenious method to their madness. According to their assessment, it would have not been prudent to allow Americans to start purchasing and hoarding gold until the completion of the new fiat monetary system was achieved.
Again, most of us in the precious metals community understand that the Central banks dumped a lot of gold into the market during the 1960’s London Gold Pool to maintain the official gold price. However, new uncovered gold supply and demand data suggests there was another FACTOR that forced even more dumping of official gold during the 1970’s.
Forecast Of Massive Gold Supply & Demand Imbalance
The reason that Nixon dropped the Gold-Dollar Peg in August 1971 was to keep U.S. gold from flowing overseas as the U.S. Government had been printing a great deal of paper money. Thus, countries such as France were exchanging Dollars for real gold. This forced Nixon to drop the convertibility of Dollars into gold so the United States could hold onto its remaining gold reserves.
But, and here is a BIG BUT… converting Dollars into physical gold was only one part of the monumental problem facing the gold market and industry. Up until now, this was the only real problem that I was aware of as it pertained to the gold market in the 1970’s. However, forecasts of future Gold Supply & Demand factors were going to totally disrupt the market unless the Fed and Central banks stepped in.
This next quote comes from the USGS 1971 Gold Yearbook. The highlighted area shows just how bad the gold supply and demand situation was going to be at the end of the decade:
According to a gold expert at Consolidated Gold Fields Ltd., global gold demand was forecasted to reach 63 million oz (Moz) by 1980, up from 42.5-45 Moz in 1972. You see… this was a BIG PROBLEM. Why? Because gold mine supply was also forecasted to decline to 38-41 Moz in 1980. This would have resulted in a huge net deficit.
So, how well did the Consolidated Gold Fields Ltd., forecast turn out? Let’s look at the chart below:
Actually, it turned out pretty darn accurate. Global gold production declined from its peak of 46.5 Moz in 1970, to 38.8 Moz in 1980. This was mainly due to the peak and decline of South African gold production. I would imagine very few individuals in the precious metals community realize just how much gold South Africa produced.
No other country has come anywhere near the record annual gold production achieved by South Africa at its peak in 1970:
South Africa produced an amazing 1,000 metric tons of gold in 1970… 32 Moz. Here are the annual peak production figures from three leading gold producing countries:
1) China = 478 mt (15.4 Moz) 2014
2) USA = 366 mt (11.8 Moz) 1998
3) Australia = 276 mt (8.9 Moz) 2015
China holds the second highest annual gold production record at 478 mt (15.4 Moz) set in 2014. However, this is still less than half of the 1,000 mt that South Africa produced in 1970. According to GFMS 2016 Gold Survey, South Africa’s gold production was 151 mt (4.8 Moz) in 2015. The once mighty South African gold production has declined 85% from its peak in 1970.
Now, taking the 1980 forecasted supply and demand data by Consolidated Gold Fields Ltd. above, here is the result:
If the forecast of a 63 Moz gold demand figure was true, then the market would have suffered a 25 Moz deficit in 1980. So, not only did U.S. President Nixon stop the bleeding of gold flows out of the U.S. Treasury, but in addition, public demand for gold that decade was going to explode.
This just could not fly. Which is why the Congress and the Subcommittee on International Exchange and Payments (listed above) were highly motivated to promote “Official Gold Sales” while prohibiting “Official Gold Buying.” This was a “ONE-WAY PLAN” for gold… and that was the dumping of a massive amount of the yellow metal into the market.
The Fed, IMF and Official Government Gold Sales During the 1970’s
It’s hard to tell how much gold was dumped into the gold market during the 1970’s decade. I have plans on putting together a more comprehensive report on the details of what took place in the gold market from the 1960’s to present. This will include more detailed data on Official gold sales.
However, we have some clues in the text from different USGS Gold Yearbooks. First, we have foreign gold at the Federal Reserve sold into the market in 1973 and 1974:
As we can see, 2.14 Moz of foreign held gold at the Fed were dumped into the market in 1974 and 1.69 Moz in 1973. Unfortunately, official sales of gold into the market did not deter the rising gold price. The gold price jumped from an average $65 in January 1973 to a high of $200 at the end of 1974.
Well, the Central banks could not let this exploding gold price to continue. Which is why the IMF made this official statement in August, 1975:
The IMF – International Monetary Fund, announced in August, 1975 to sell one-sixth of its gold stocks. At the time, the IMF held 153.4 Moz of gold. Thus, it planned to sell 25.5 Moz over the next several years to supposedly provide capital for low-interest loans to developing countries. I wonder why the IMF did not make this statement back in 1973 or 1974? And why would the IMF have to sell gold to provide capital for developing countries?? Wasn’t there a new FIAT MONETARY REGIME??
Wasn’t gold now a “Barbarous Relic?”
With the IMF “strategic”announcement that it would sell 25.5 Moz of gold into the market, it had a profound impact on the gold price in 1975:
After the IMF gold sale announcement, the gold price plummeted 21% in just one month from $165, down to a low of $130. Before I came across this information, I just believed that the gold price was due for a correction…. stated by several websites, such as by analysts on King World News. However, this wasn’t a typical market correction. Rather… this was a MARKET INTERVENTION FORCED CORRECTION. Big difference.
So, why the IMF gold sale announcement? Was it due to a response to the rapidly rising price.. or did rising demand play a part. If we look at this next quote taken from the USGS 1974 Gold Yearbook, we find our answer:
According to the data, private gold holdings and investment surged 5-fold in 1974 to 27.3 Moz. The report also stated that total gold jewelry and industrial demand was 23 Moz in 1974. Thus, total gold demand exceeded 50 Moz in 1974.
I would imagine if private gold investment didn’t jump 5-fold from the previous year, the IMF would have not considered it necessary to announce the sale of 25.5 Moz of its gold reserves in 1975.
In order to make good on its promise, the IMF did sell 3.9 Moz of gold in 1976 and another 6 Moz in 1977 into the market:
In just the first two years after its proposed 25.5 Moz gold sale in August 1975, the IMF sold 9.9 Moz, or nearly 40% of its planned amount. If we read the first quoted text above (1976), the gold price reached a low in August 1976 after the second IMF gold sale.
Oh, did I forget to mention that another 2.14 Moz of foreign held gold at the Federal Reserve was dumped into the market in 1976?? So, between these two official institutions, over 6 Moz of gold were sold into the market in 1976 alone to guarantee there was a FREE MARKET PRICING mechanism for gold.
I have to make a comment here. I spend a lot of time at energy and precious metals blogs. I am completely surprised at the lack of intelligence by individuals who are supposedly very “BRIGHT” in their respective industries. When I hear comments that gold is nothing more than a “13th Century Middle Ages Relic”, and that digit currency is the new monetary system… the Good Lord Almighty must be enjoying one hell of a BELLY-ACHING LAUGH.
These folks who seem to understand the ramifications of falling cheap energy production upon the global markets still cling to a FIAT MONETARY SYSTEM that needs an ever-increasing supply of cheap oil to survive. How on earth are they unable to CONNECT THE FRICKEN DOTS is beyond me.
Regardless, the Fed, Central banks and IMF have been rigging the gold market for quite some time… and continue to do so.
During the 1960’s Gold Pool it was more a physical market intervention as they dumped 78 Moz of gold to maintain the official gold price of $35 an ounce. Then when Nixon dropped the Gold-Dollar Peg in 1971, these official institutions combined “Physical gold dumping” along with the “Creation of a Paper Gold Futures Market in 1975” to rig the gold market during the wild 1970 decade.
I don’t have a lot of data on the paper futures market in this article (will be in future Paid Report), but here is a tidbit on some of the trading volume:
Global Paper GOLD EXCHANGE Annual Trading Volume:
1975 = 84 Moz
1977 = 190 Moz
1979 = 1,027 Moz
From the beginning of paper gold trading on the Global Exchanges, it increased from 84 Moz in 1975 to an astonishing 1,027 Moz (1.03 billion oz) in 1979. The tremendous trading of paper gold contracts (later on including options) sucked in a massive amount of funds. Thus, paper gold trading funneled a great deal of money away from physical gold and into worthless paper gold.
As I mentioned, I don’t have a full reporting of all the official gold that was dumped into the market from 1971-1980. That will be included in an upcoming report. However, it was stated in the USGS 1980 Gold Yearbook, that the IMF did complete its final gold auction in May 1980. This was their final gold sale that equaled a total of 25.5 Moz from 1976 to 1980.
If we include this amount with the sales of foreign gold at the Federal Reserve and other official gold sales, the amount of gold sold during the 1970 decade was quite an impressive amount… probably something north of 50 Moz.
Again, this was all done to guarantee a FREE MARKET price discovery for gold. Today, most Americans and citizens around the world have no idea just how undervalued gold is. No idea whatsoever.
Since the peak of the gold price in 1980, the Fed and Central Banks continued to dump physical gold into the markets at various times up until 2009. However, “Official gold sales” turned into net “Official purchases” in 2010. This put a severe KINK in the Western Central Bank plan of gold market rigging. Just seems like those problematic Chinese and Russians have a much different idea about REAL MONEY than the West.
To continue rigging the gold market in the 1990’s and onwards, the West had to introduce “Gold Leasing” and more exotic “Gold Derivatives” to keep the gold price from going completely BONKERS. Again, this has been done while the public remains completely in the dark.
In conclusion, the Fed and Central banks were in serious trouble in 1971. Not only was the dropping of the Gold-Dollar Peg in 1971 a sign that things were about to get very interesting with the gold price, but the forecast of exploding gold demand would have resulted in a 25 Moz deficit by 1980. This forced the Fed, IMF and Central banks to dump a massive amount of gold into the market to meet the insatiable demand.
Which means, gold became too valuable to be used as money in the U.S. and Global economy. Yes, that sounds strange… but that is the truth. I mentioned this in a previous article on why silver was removed from U.S. coinage. It was due to the same reason.
When I say, “too valuable to be used as money”, I mean it in the way that money has degraded to. There are no real banks in the world. A bank should hold stored “ECONOMIC ENERGY” as stated by Mike Maloney. When someone deposits gold at a bank, that is REAL MONEY. A bank is supposed to store real money. Instead, banks store DIGITAL IOU balances, or worse yet, highly leveraged loans.
Since Nixon dropped the Dollar-Gold Peg in 1971, the amount of debt in the world has skyrocketed. The Central Banks designed a two-tiered system to remove gold as a reserve asset:
- Dump physical gold into the market to suppress or maintain price. Then add a Paper Futures Market to funnel funds away from a limited supply of physical gold and into an unlimited supply of paper gold contracts.
- Increase world debt to such massive levels, that interest rates had to fall towards zero.. or negative. Thus creating a 30+ year artificial Bond Market Rally. If interest rates rise… the entire system BLOWS UP.
While the ultimate revaluation of gold and silver has taken more time than most of us in the precious metals community anticipated, THAT DAY IS COMING.
As I have mentioned in several articles and interviews, the timing of this event will be known by what takes place in the energy markets as they are the drivers of our economy… and the highly leverage Fiat Monetary System.
Investors should not try to time the markets by selling Stocks, Bonds or Real Estate before the crash comes and then move into physical gold and silver. Rather, that should be done on an ongoing basis as the TIMING of the event is impossible to predict.
However, it is much wiser to do be in the metals a DAY EARLY than a DAY LATE.
Lastly, if you haven’t checked out our new PRECIOUS METALS INVESTING section or our new LOWEST COST PRECIOUS METALS STORAGE page, I highly recommend you do.
Check back for new articles and updates at the SRSrocco Report.
- Austria To Stop Giving Food, Shelter To Rejected Asylum Seekers
In a bill aimed at encouraging asylum seekers to leave voluntarily, Austrian lawmakers are considering halting the provision of food and accommodation to migrants who are denied asylum and refuse to leave the country.
Austria took in roughly 90,000 asylum seekers in 2015, more than 1 percent of its population, as it was swept up in Europe's migration crisis when hundreds of thousands of people crossed its borders, most on their way to Germany. As Reuters notes, it has since tightened immigration restrictions and helped shut down the route through the Balkans by which almost all those people – many of them fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and elsewhere – arrived. Asylum applications fell by more than half last year.
Asylum seekers in Austria get so-called basic services, including free accommodation, food, access to medical treatment and 40 euros ($42.41) pocket money a month.
But now, Austria's centrist coalition government on Tuesday agreed on a draft law which would allow authorities to stop providing accommodation and food to rejected asylum seekers who refuse to leave the country.
“The first thing is basically that they don’t get anything from the Austrian state if they don’t have the right to stay here. Is that so hard to understand?”
As Politico reports, Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said, said the law, which will need approval by parliament, was designed to encourage rejected asylum seekers to leave voluntarily.
According to the minister, some 4,000 people receive basic services but should have left the country. Of those, around half could be affected if the law is passed because they are deemed healthy enough to travel to their home countries.
Most rejected asylum seekers in Austria in 2016 were from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. Asylum applicants who lie about their identities face a €5,000 fine or three weeks in jail.
The Austrian office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said the bill was "highly questionable" and urged lawmakers to think hard about agreeing to it.
- "What Is To Be Done?"
The question in the title is V.I. Lenin’s question. His answer was to create a revolutionary “vanguard” to spread revolutionary ideas among the workers, the economic class that Karl Marx had declared to be the class rising to the ascendency of political power. Finally, democracy, frustrated by upper class interests in its earlier manifestations, would become reality. The workers would rule.
Given the presence of evil and human failing, it did not work out in that way. But Lenin’s question remains a valid one. Americans whose economic life and prospects for their children have been destroyed by the offshoring of American manufacturing and tradable professional skills jobs, such as software engineering, answered the question by electing Donald Trump.
The Americans, dispossessed by the offshoring corporations, elected Trump, because Trump was the only American running for a political office who called attention to the problem and declared his intention to fix it.
By standing up for Americans, Trump alienated the global corporations, their executives and shareholders, all of whom benefit from stealing the economic life of Americans and producing abroad where labor and regulatory costs are lower. Neoliberal junk economists describe this labor arbitrage, which reduces the real incomes of the American labor force, as the beneficial working of free trade.
These offshoring firms not only have destroyed the economic prospects of millions of Americans, but also have destroyed the payroll tax base of Social Security and Medicare, and the tax base of local and state governments, with the consequence that numerous pension systems are on the verge of failure. The New York Teamsters Road Carriers Local 707 Pension Fund has just failed. This failure, experts predict, is the beginning of a tsunami that will spread into municipal and state pension systems.
When you add up the external costs of jobs offshoring that are imposed on Americans, the costs far exceed the value of the profits that flow to the One Percent. Clearly, this is an intolerable situation.
Dispossessed Americans rose up. They ignored the presstitute media, or perhaps were driven to support Trump by the hostility of the media. Trump was elected by dispossessed America, by the working class.
The working class is out of favor with the elite liberal/progressive/left which abhors the working class as racist, misogynist, homophobic, gun nuts who oppose transgendered toilet facilities. Thus, the working class, and their chosen representative, Donald Trump, are under full assault by the presstitutes. “Trump Must Go” is their slogan.
And well he might. Trump, in a fit of stupidity, dismissed his National Security Advisor, Gen. Flynn, because Flynn did what he should have done and spoke with the Russian ambassador in order to avoid a Russian response to Obama’s provocation of expelling Russian diplomats at Christmas.
Russians have been demonized and ascribed demonic powers. If you speak to a Russian, you fall under suspicion and become a traitor to your country. This is the story according to the CIA, the Democratic Party, the military/security complex, and the presstitute media.
Once Trump put Flynn’s blood in the water, he set the situation for the sacrifice of other of his appointees, ending with himself. At the present time, “the Russian connection” black mark is operating against Trump’s Attorney General, Jeff Sessions. If Sessions falls, Trump is next.
Let’s be clear. As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sessions met with the Russian ambassador, just as he met with a number of other countries’ ambassadors. There is nothing unusual or surprising about a US senator meeting with foreign diplomatic representatives.
Those who accuse Sessions of lying are misrepresenting the facts. Sessions met with ambassadors in his capacity as a US Senator, not in his capacity as a Trump representative. As a former US Senate staffer, I can attest that it is perfectly normal for US Senators to meet with diplomats. John McCain and Lindsey Graham even fly to the Middle East to meet with terrorists.
Despite the facts, the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN and all the rest of the CIA’s media whores are consciously and intentionally misrepresenting the facts. Americans do not need any more evidence that the entirety of the American media is totally devoid of integrity and respect for truth. The American media is a collection of whores who lie for a living. The presstitutes are despicable, the scum of the earth.
The real question is how has contact with Russian government officials become criminalized, grounds for removing a National Security Adviser, an Attorney General, and impeaching a President himself. President John F. Kennedy had ongoing contact with Khrushchev, the head of the Soviet government, in order to resolve the Cuban/Turkish missile crisis without nuclear war. President Nixon had ongoing contact with the Russians in order to achieve SALT I and the anti-ballistic missile treaty. President Carter had ongoing contact with Russians in order to achieve SALT II. President Reagan worked with the Russian leader in order to end the Cold War. I know. I was there.
But if President Trump wants to defuse the extremely dangerous tensions that the reckless Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes have resurrected with a powerful thermo-nuclear state that only wants peace with the US, President Trump and any of his appointees who spoke to a Russian are unfit for office! This madness is the position of the idiot liberal/progressive/left, the CIA, the Democratic Party, the right-wing morons of the Republican Party such as Lindsey Graham and John McCain, and the two-bit whores that comprise the Western media.
Dear reader, ask yourself, how did communications with Russians in the interest of peace and the reduction of tensions become a criminal act? Have laws been passed that it is forbidden for US officials to speak with Russian officials? Are you so utterly stupid that a presstitute media that has never in your entire life told you anything that was truthful can convince you that those who seek to avoid a conflict between thermo-nuclear powers are “Russian agents”?
I have no doubt that the vast bulk of Western populations are insouciant. But if there is no intelligence and awareness left anywhere in the population, and most certainly there is none whatsoever in the governments of the West or in the Western media or the Identity Politics of the liberal/progressive/left, then don’t expect to be alive much longer.
The entirety of the world has been put on the knife edge of existence by the arrogance, stupidity, and hubris of the neoconservative pursuit of American world hegemony. The neoconservative ideology is perfect cover for the material interest of the military/security Deep State that is driving the world to destruction.
- Bacon Boom Busts
Great news America – After soaring to the highest price in three years, wholesale prices for pork bellies, the cut used for making bacon, are heading for a 25% loss over two weeks.
As Bloomberg notes, increased demand had more than doubled prices since August, but now bellies are so expensive that the high costs are stemming demand, according to David Kruse, president of Commstock Investments Inc.
And while the average joe may see his so-called pocketbook better off as pork prices plunge (or will obviously purchase more bacon), the above-average-joes (who drive their Beamers and Benz's) are facing an ever increasing cost for their luxury lifestyles…
The premium gasoline that fuels luxury cars made by Mercedes-Benz to Audi has always been more expensive than regular, but the difference keeps getting bigger.
As Bloomberg points out, premium costs almost 50 cents a gallon extra, nearly doubling in the past four years. And don’t expect the trend to change — environmental rules limiting sulfur that kicked in this year could make the higher-octane fuel scarcer and even more costly in the future.
So, it seems very clear that consumer confidence is soaring because bacon prices are plunging, not Trumptopian hope…
Never mind the collapse in real wages.
- The West Submits To Blasphemy Laws
Via Judith Bergmann of The Gatestone Institute,
- "Now that Islamophobia has been condemned, this is not the end, but rather the beginning…" — Muslim Brotherhood affiliate Samer Majzoub, Canadian Muslim Forum.
- The motion still does not offer any definition or any statistics to support its claim that "Islamophobia" is a problem in Canada.
- However, it should hardly shock anyone that the first motion condemning Islamophobia has so swiftly been followed up by a new motion demanding concrete government measures.
The West is submitting to blasphemy laws. Denmark, for example, has apparently decided that now is the time to invoke a dusty, old blasphemy provision. Denmark still has a provision in the penal code against blasphemy, but until now, it has only been used three times. The last time was nearly half a century ago, in 1971. Denmark's Attorney General has nevertheless just charged a man for burning a Quran.
In the West, blasphemy as a criminal offence has for centuries generally been considered a relic of the past. In a largely godless society, few people take offense to blasphemous comments or acts. Christians do not descend upon alleged blasphemers with guns and knives, and publishers do not worry about "offending" Christians.
In 1997, Danish public service radio financed an artist burning a Bible and broadcast it on national television. No one was charged, even though there were complaints and the state prosecutor investigated the case.
Yet, a Danish man will be prosecuted. He burned his own Quran in his own garden and then posted the video in a public Facebook group, "Yes to freedom, No to Islam," with the accompanying text, "Consider your neighbor, it stinks when it burns". Attorney General Jan Reckendorff stated:
"It is the prosecution's view that the circumstances of the burning of holy books such as the Bible and the Qur'an implies that in some cases it may be a violation of the blasphemy provision, which deals with public mockery or scorn against a religion. It is our opinion that the circumstances of this case require that it should be prosecuted in order for the courts to have the opportunity to take a position on the matter."
The Attorney General may have been mentioning the Bible only out of politeness. After all, no one has been prosecuted for burning the Bible in Denmark, as not even burning it on national television was considered sufficiently offensive. The Quran is clearly a very different matter.
The decision has caused renewed debate about abolishing the blasphemy provision in Denmark — an issue that regularly pops up.
In Norway, the provision against blasphemy was abolished in 2005. A poll conducted in January showed that 41% of Norwegian Muslims believe that blasphemy should be punished, and 7% believe that the penalty for blasphemy anywhere should be capital punishment.
In Britain, at least one man has been prosecuted and sentenced for burning the Quran (in 2011) and several arrested in 2010 and 2014 .
The enforcement of blasphemy provisions, so out of place in a largely post-Christian Europe, brings back the Middle Ages, when blasphemy was ferociously prosecuted by the Church. Is that really an era for modern European society to be aspiring to after centuries of fighting for freedom of speech?
In Canada, meanwhile, anti-Islamophobia motions, aiming gradually to prohibit all criticism of Islam — and part of Muslim blasphemy laws — are being passed. The Ontario Provincial Parliament unanimously passed an anti-Islamophobia motion in February. The motion called on the legislature to "stand against all forms of hatred, hostility, prejudice, racism and intolerance; rebuke the… growing tide of anti-Muslim rhetoric and sentiments" and "condemn all forms of Islamophobia." Needless to say, no such motions were introduced to protect Judaism or Christianity.
In October 2016, Canada's national Parliament unanimously passed an anti-Islamophobia motion, which was the result of a petition initiated by Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Samer Majzoub, president of the Canadian Muslim Forum. At the time, no one knew what they were condemning: Criticism of Islam? Criticism of Muslims? Discussing whether ISIS is a true manifestation of Islam? No one knew, as no one had bothered to define it.
The lack of definition, however, has not stopped Iqra Khalid, a Member of Parliament from the governing Liberal Party, from introducing a new motion on the back of the previous one, Motion M-103, in the Canadian parliament. The motion demands that "Islamophobia" not only be condemned, but that the government develop a comprehensive approach to reducing or eliminating Islamophobia. The motion still does not offer any definition, or any statistics to support its claim that "Islamophobia" is a problem in Canada. However, it should hardly shock anyone that the first motion condemning Islamophobia has so swiftly been followed up by a new motion demanding concrete government measures. After the first motion was unanimously passed, the man who initiated the original petition, Samer Majzoub, had this to say in an interview with the Canadian Muslim Forum:
"Now that Islamophobia has been condemned, this is not the end, but rather the beginning… We need to continue working politically and socially and with the press. They used to doubt the existence of Islamophobia, but now we do not have to worry about that; all blocs and political figures, represented by Canada's supreme legislative authority, have spoken of that existence. In the offing, we need to get policy makers to do something, especially when it comes to the Liberals, who have shown distinct openness regarding Muslims and all ethnicities… All of us must work hard to maintain our peaceful, social and humanitarian struggle so that condemnation is followed by comprehensive policies."
Does the West really want to go charging quixotically off to the Inquisitions of the Middle Ages again?
- TSA Launches "Invasive" Pat-Downs With "More Intimate Contact Than Before"
As a result of a study, which found that weapons routinely make it past airport security, the TSA is introducing “more rigorous” and “comprehensive” physical inspections at airports around the country, according to Bloomberg. The security agency, which until now had the option of using five different types of physical pat-downs in the screening line, is eliminating the “options” and replacing them with a single, universal method which would involve heavier groping.
The Transportation Security Administration made the announcement to its agents this week, and in the case of Denver International Airport employees, advised employees and flight crews on Thursday that the “more rigorous” searches “will be more thorough and may involve an officer making more intimate contact than before.”
In an ominous warning, TSA spokesman Bruce Anderson told Bloomberg that “people who in the past would have gotten a pat-down that wasn’t involved will notice that the [new] pat-down is more involved.” The shift from the previous, risk-based assessment on which pat-down procedure an officer should apply was phased in over the past two weeks after tests at smaller airports. In their notice, Denver airport officials said employees are subject to search at random locations: “If a pat down is required as part of the operation, badged employees will be required to comply with a TSA officer’s request to conduct a full body pat down.”
The new policy will also apply to pilots and flight attendants, classified as “known crewmembers” who generally receive less scrutiny at checkpoints. The TSA conducts occasional random searches of these employees, and airlines this week inquired as to whether their employees would be subject to more frequent pat-downs. The number of random searches for airline crews isn’t changing and will remain a “very small percentage” of the total, Anderson said. But airport employees may face more random checks.
Anyone who declines use of the TSA’s existing conventional scanner screen will be subject to the new pat-down. The TSA currently screens about 2 million people daily at U.S. airports. The agency doesn’t track how many passengers are subject to pat-down searches after they pass through an imaging scanner.
The TSA has been criticized in recent years for its overall screening techniques after an internal investigation by Homeland Security in 2015 found that the TSA failed an unbelievable 95 percent of airport security tests, allowing undercover agents to successfully and repeatedly smuggle mock explosives and banned weapons through checkpoints in the country’s busiest airports. As a result, the TSA has been in desperate need of change and the physical inspection would be a good place to start.
That said, the agency has been ridiculed for years for causing delays at airports and being largely ineffective at detecting contraband. The good news is that while passengers may find the new patdown more intrusive, Anderson promised that the new screening procedure isn’t expected to increase overall airport security delays. However, “for the person who gets the pat down, it will slow them down.”
As Bloomberg adds, in December, a CNN political commentator, Angela Rye, posted an article online describing her “humiliation” during a TSA agent’s search. Rye wrote in graphic detail about the pat down of her genitals during a search at the Detroit Airport before a flight to New York.
TSA officials didn’t immediately address whether the new universal pat-down protocol will mandate touching of passenger genitals.
While the physical screening process has been a stress point for the TSA practically since its inception, the agency has tried to make travelers more comfortable by pairing them up with people of the same gender for pat-downs and also giving people the option of being inspected in a private room, however at the cost of substantial travel delays. However, as some have mused out, it still doesn’t answer one of the most confounding questions about the TSA: “Is America really any safer because some underpaid worker grabbed a pussy at the airport?”
- Auto Lending Update – Someone Please Explain How This Is Not A Bubble
Experian recently released their Q4 2016 Automotive Finance Market update which includes a lot of statistics that seem to confirm our frequently documented concerns about the sustainability of the current level of annual auto sales (see here, here and here for our recent notes on the topic).
First, there is the staggering growth of auto loans outstanding. It should be readily apparent to almost anyone that a 21% expansion in credit issuance over the course of just two years likely implies there has been at least some degradation in underwriting standards.
But you don’t have to speculate as Experian lays out the facts…and, sure enough, the outstanding loan balances of “Deep Subprime” borrowers have increased by double the amount of any other bucket, other than the plain “Subprime” folks, of course.
Of course, an impaired credit profile has, in no way, hampered America’s entitled consumers’ demand for driving around in style as average subprime loan balances actually exceed “Super Prime.”
But don’t worry, those subprime borrowers can “afford” those loans because they simply offset higher interest costs with stretched out terms…
…which keeps there average monthly payments low.
But, despite all the financial engineering, a look at 60-day auto delinquencies around the country may imply that the auto party is slowly coming to an end.
But sure, auto sales should be perfectly sustainable around 18mm per year…
- Middlebury Professor Assaulted, Injured While Escorting Conservative Speaker
In the latest literal assault on free speech at an allegedly tolerant educational institution, a Middlebury College professor was injured by protesters on Thursday evening as she was escorting a controversial speaker from campus. She was treated at Porter Hospital and released, the Addison County Independent reported.
The night’s event unfolded in two parts.
At first, Middlebury students forced conservative American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray – a political scientist who has been criticized for his views on race and intelligence – to stop his address before a campus audience Thursday night.
Charles Murray looking at an audience of students who had turned their backs on himMurray was invited to speak on campus by a student group, and was set to talk about his 2012 book, “Coming Apart,” and how its analysis of the white-working class explains politics in the age of President Donald Trump. But most of the controversy over the scholar’s appearance at the Vermont-based school related to his 1994 book, “The Bell Curve,” which connected genetics with socioeconomic outcomes and has long been criticized by the Left as “racist.” The Southern Poverty Law Center has called Murray a “white nationalist” who has used “racist pseudoscience.”
According to the Burlington Free-Press, and as seen on the video below, student protesters in the audience refused to give Murray a chance to speak as they turned their backs to him, and chanted and shouted for several minutes before faculty members moved the scheduled speaker to a private room to deliver his address via livestream video without a live audience.
Has to be ten minutes now Murray stands. student chant. #middlebury pic.twitter.com/61j1n4C94c
— Nicole H DeSmet (@NicoleHDeSmet) March 2, 2017
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Despite attempts by faculty and more tolerant students to restore normalcy, the protesters refused to compromise. “We need to foster a climate where we can listen and respect differences,” Middlebury’s dean of students Baishakhi Taylor said in an attempt to calm down the student protesters, according to the Burlington Free Press. “We don’t have to agree with everything. How do we engage in civil discourse?”
Not even appeals to the anti-Trump sentiment would sway the crowd: Alexander Khan, a leader of the American Enterprise Institute Club which invited Murray to speak, tried to appeal to the crowd by citing the scholar’s criticism of Trump. Demonstrators jeered that that doesn’t matter because Murray is “still a racist.”
However, it was what happened next that was more troubling.
As noted above, after the initial chaos, college officials led Murray to another location and a closed circuit broadcast showed him being interviewed by Stanger, the Russell J. Leng ’60 Professor of International Politics and Economics. As Stanger, Murray and a college administrator left McCullough Student Center last evening following the event, they were “physically and violently confronted by a group of protestors,” according to Bill Burger, the college’s vice president for communications and marketing.
Burger said college public safety officers managed to get Stanger and Murray into the administrator’s car.
“The protestors then violently set upon the car, rocking it, pounding on it, jumping on and try to prevent it from leaving campus,” he said. “At one point a large traffic sign was thrown in front of the car. Public Safety officers were able, finally, to clear the way to allow the vehicle to leave campus.”
“During this confrontation outside McCullough, one of the demonstrators pulled Prof. Stanger’s hair and twisted her neck,” Burger continued. “She was attended to at Porter Hospital later and (on Friday) is wearing a neck brace.”
Murray, who apparently was unhurt in the incident, is best known for his 1994 book, “The Bell Curve,” for which he was criticized for an assertion that people of different races have different economic outcomes because of their inherent difference in intelligence.
The incident was so shocking it prompted even well-known neocon Bill Kristol to tweet:
“What happened at Middlebury to Charles Murray threatens not just campus free speech, but free speech–indeed freedom in America–generally.”
What happened at Middlebury to Charles Murray threatens not just campus free speech, but free speech–indeed freedom in America–generally.
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) March 3, 2017
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He then said: “I may have missed them, but in light of Middlebury where are the statements by college presidents, scholars & writers defending free speech?”
I may have missed them, but in light of Middlebury where are the statements by college presidents, scholars & writers defending free speech?
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) March 3, 2017
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In this particular case, Kristol is actually right, and one wonders if the tables were reversed and if a liberal speaker had been abused in similar fashion at one of America’s top liberal colleges, just what would the media’s reaction – which has largely ignored this incident – have been.
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