- UN Forced To Admit Gates-Funded Vaccine Is Causing Polio Outbreak In Africa
UN Forced To Admit Gates-Funded Vaccine Is Causing Polio Outbreak In Africa
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 23:45This really should be one of the biggest scandals in public health, but it’s given little attention – mainly because of the high-profile nature of the people and organisations involved.
The United Nations has been forced to admit that a major international vaccine initiative is actually causing the outbreak of the very disease it was supposed to wipe-out.
While international organisations like the World Health Organization (WHO) will regular boast about supposedly ‘eradicating polio’ with vaccines, the opposite seems to be the case. Their decades-long campaign to eradicate polio is now killing scores of innocent young people living in poor countries.
Now it seems that health officials are beginning to admit that their plan to stop ‘wild’ polio is backfiring, as scores children are being paralyzed a deadly strain of the pathogen derived from a live vaccine – causing a virulent of polio to spread.
Health officials administers polio vaccine to children at refugee camp in Maiduguri, Nigeria, Aug. 28, 2016 (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)
This latest pharma-induced pandemic has broken out in the African countries of Chad and Sudan, and the culprit has been identified: a vaccine-derived polio virus type 2. Officials now fear this new dangerous strain could soon ‘jump continents,’ causing further deadly outbreaks around the world.
Shocking as it sounds, this Big Pharma debacle is not new. After spending some $16 billion over 30 years to eradicate polio, international health bodies have ‘accidentally’ reintroduced the disease to in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and also Iran, as the central Asia region was hit by a virulent strain of polio spawned by the corporate pharmaceutical vaccine distributed there. Also, in 2019, the government of Ethiopia ordered the destruction of 57,000 vials of type 2 oral polio vaccine (mOPV2) following a similar outbreak of vaccine-induced polio.
It’s important to note that the oral polio vaccine being pushed on to the African population by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), a consortium which is supported and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
All of this should be a cause for concern, especially with western governments and transnational pharmaceutical giant all rushing to roll-out their new Gates-funded experimental coronavirus vaccine for the global population.
Currently, the first experimental COVID-19 vaccine is being tested on the African population through GAVI Vaccine Alliance, another organization funded by the Gates Foundation. A large round of human trials will take place in South Africa, locally managed by the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg—yet another Gates-funded institution.
This latest revelation from Africa should prompt media and health advocates to ask hard questions about the efficacy and safety of the much-hyped COVID ‘miracle’ vaccine.
AP News reports…
The World Health Organization says a new polio outbreak in Sudan is linked to an ongoing vaccine-sparked epidemic in Chad – a week after the U.N. health agency declared the African continent free of the wild polio virus.
In a statement this week, WHO said two children in Sudan — one from South Darfur state and the other from Gedarif state, close to the border with Ethiopia and Eritrea — were paralyzed in March and April. Both had been recently vaccinated against polio. WHO said initial outbreak investigations show the cases are linked to an ongoing vaccine-derived outbreak in Chad that was first detected last year and is now spreading in Chad and Cameroon.
“There is local circulation in Sudan and continued sharing of transmission with Chad,” the U.N. agency said, adding that genetic sequencing confirmed numerous introductions of the virus into Sudan from Chad.
WHO said it had found 11 additional vaccine-derived polio cases in Sudan and that the virus had also been identified in environmental samples. There are typically many more unreported cases for every confirmed polio patient. The highly infectious disease can spread quickly in contaminated water and most often strikes children under 5.
In rare instances, the live polio virus in the oral vaccine can mutate into a form capable of sparking new outbreaks.
Last week, WHO and partners declared that the African continent was free of the wild polio virus, calling it “an incredible and emotional day.”
On Monday, WHO warned that the risk of further spread of the vaccine-derived polio across central Africa and the Horn of Africa was “high,” noting the large-scale population movements in the region.
More than a dozen African countries are currently battling outbreaks of polio caused by the virus, including Angola, Congo, Nigeria and Zambia.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, many of the large-scale vaccination campaigns needed to stamp out polio have been disrupted..
- The Decline Of American's Upward Mobility In One Chart
The Decline Of American’s Upward Mobility In One Chart
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 23:25For decades, a majority of Americans have been able to climb the economic ladder by earning higher incomes than their parents. These improving conditions are known as upward mobility, and form an important part of the American Dream.
However, as Visual Capitalist’s Marcu Lu explains below, each consecutive generation is finding it harder to make this ascent. In this graphic, we illustrate the decline in upward mobility over five decades using data from Opportunity Insights.
Understanding The Chart
This graphic plots the probability that a 30-year-old American has to outearn their parents (vertical axis) depending on their parent’s income percentile (horizontal axis). The 1st percentile represents America’s lowest earners, while the 99th percentile the richest.
As we move from left to right on the chart, the portion of people who outearn their parents takes a steep decline. This suggests that people born into upper class families are less likely to outearn their parents, regardless of generation.
The key takeaway, though, is that the starting point of this downward trend has shifted to the left. In other words, fewer people in the lower- and middle-classes are climbing the economic ladder.
Declines can be seen across the board, but those growing up in the middle-class (50th percentile) have taken the largest hit. Within this bracket, individuals born in 1980 have only a 45% chance of outearning their parents at age 30, compared to 93% for those born in 1940.
Stagnating Wage Growth a Culprit
One factor behind America’s deteriorating upward mobility is the sluggish pace at which wages have grown. For example, the average hourly wage in 1964, when converted to 2018 dollars, is $20.27. Compare this to $22.65, the average hourly wage in 2018. That represents a mere 11.7% increase over a span of 54 years.
However, this may not be as bad as it sounds. While the prices of some goods and services have risen over time, others have actually become more affordable. Since January 1998, for example, the prices of electronic goods such as TVs and cellphones have actually decreased. In this way, individuals today are more prosperous than previous generations.
This benefit is likely outweighed by relative increases in other services, though. Whereas inflation since January 1998 totaled 58.8%, the costs of health and education services increased by more than 160% over the same time frame.
Income Distribution
While wages have been stagnant as a whole, it doesn’t paint the full picture. Another factor to consider is America’s changing income distribution.
Like the data on upward mobility, the middle class takes the largest hit here, with its share of U.S. aggregate income falling by 19 percentage points. Over the same time frame, the upper class was able to increase its share of total income by 20 percentage points.
Is It All Bad News?
Americans are less likely to earn more than their parents, but this doesn’t mean that upward mobility has completely disappeared—it’s just becoming less accessible. Below, we illustrate the changes in size for different income classes from 1967 to 2016.
The upper middle class has grown significantly, from 6% of the population in 1967 to 33% in 2016. At the same time, the middle class shrank from 47% to 36% and the lower middle class shrank from 31% to 16%.
The data suggests that some middle class Americans are still managing to pull themselves up into the next income bracket—it’s just not an effect that was as broad-based as it’s been in the past.
Does The American Dream Still Exist?
The American Dream is the belief that upward mobility is attainable for everyone through their own actions. This implies that growth will be continuous and widespread, two factors that have seemingly deteriorated in recent decades.
Researchers believe there are numerous complex reasons behind America’s stagnating wages. A decline in union membership, for example, could be eroding employees’ collective bargaining power. Other factors such as technological change may also apply downwards pressure on the wages of less educated workers.
Income inequality, on the other hand, is clearly shown by the data. We can also refer to the Gini-coefficient, a statistical measure of economic inequality. It ranges between 0 and 1, with 0 representing perfect equality and 1 representing perfect inequality (one person holds all the income). The U.S. currently has a Gini-coefficient of 0.434, the highest of any G7 country.
Long story short, the American Dream is still alive—it’s just becoming harder to come by.
- Rationalizing 'The Great Reset'
Rationalizing ‘The Great Reset’
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 23:05A few weeks after the World Economic Forum launched their ‘Great Reset‘ initiative, it was followed up with the release of a new book titled, ‘Covid-19: The Great Reset‘, authored by the executive chairman of the WEF, Klaus Schwab, and Senior Director of the Global Risk Network at the institution, Thierry Malleret.
Having read the book I wanted to share with you some initial thoughts on the potential significance of the publication.
As touched upon in my last article, there are 5 planks to the Great Reset – economic, societal, geopolitical, environmental and technological – all of which the book covers in detail. But I want to focus largely on the conclusion, as it is here where the author’s motivations and rationale for championing a Great Reset, in the wake of Covid-19, become clearer.
Schwab and Malleret characterise the future direction of the world as ‘The Post Pandemic Era‘, a phrase that is repeated ad nauseam throughout. Rather than define it to a particular outcome, the authors opt instead to ask whether this new era will be marked by more or less cooperation between nations. Will countries turn inward resulting in the growth of nationalism and protectionism, or will they sacrifice their own interests for greater interdependence?
No firm prediction is made either way, but we do manage to gain a degree of insight into the authors’ way of thinking when they discuss what they call ‘the direction of the trend.’ They write that concerns over the environment (primarily through the prism of climate change) and the advancement of technology (integral to the Fourth Industrial Revolution) were pervasive long before Covid-19 entered the picture. With the economic and health implications of the lockdowns now ingrained within society, Schwab and Malleret contend that long established worries amongst citizens ‘have been laid bare for all to see‘ and ‘amplified‘ because of the pandemic. In other words, if minds were not concentrated on the problems and threats the world faced before Covid-19, then they certainly are now.
And whilst the direction of these trends on the environment and technology may not have changed, with the onset of Covid-19 it ‘got a lot faster.’ It is why Schwab and Malleret believe that these two issues in particular ‘will force their way onto the political agenda‘ due to increasing public pressure. A movement such as Extinction Rebellion is one example. Another is the rapid growth of the Fintech community which is leading people to question what constitutes money ‘in the digital age.’
As for where they see things going in the future, the suggestion is that current trends are pointing towards a world that will be ‘less open and less cooperative than before the pandemic.’
Effectively, the WEF have presented the world with two potential outcomes. The first is that the Great Reset can be achieved relatively peacefully with nations acquiescing to the objectives being pushed by global planners. The second outcome, they warn, would be far more disruptive and damaging. It would come about through countries failing to address the ‘deep rooted ills of economies and societies‘, which could see a reset being ‘imposed by violent shocks like conflicts and even revolutions.’
And, apparently, we do not have much time to decide our fate. What we have now, according to the authors, is ‘a rare and narrow window of opportunity to reflect, re-imagine and reset our world‘. If a ‘proper reset‘ is to be realised, it can only occur through an increased level of collaboration and cooperation between nations. As Schwab and Malleret see it, the alternative is a world entrenched in perpetual crisis which would eventually lead to the disintegration of the post World War Two ‘rules based global order‘ and a global power vacuum.
There is, therefore, a very real risk of the world becoming ‘more divided, nationalistic and prone to conflicts than it is today.’
One thing the authors do write on from a position of clarity is that never can the world return to normal. Or more to the point, be allowed to return to normal. Their view is that before Covid-19 took hold, a ‘broken sense of normalcy prevailed‘. The situation now is that the virus ‘marks a fundamental inflection point in our global trajectory.’ In a very short space of time it ‘magnified the fault lines that beset our economies and societies‘.
If it was not already obvious, then the authors confirm over the last few pages of the book that the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development programme is intertwined with the Great Reset. This is evident when studying the WEF’s Strategic Intelligence unit. Sustainable Development and the Great Reset go hand in hand.
For Agenda 2030 to be implemented successfully, Schwab and Malleret offer an alternative to the possibility of countries failing to come together. As you might expect, it revolves around collaboration and cooperation. In their eyes no progress can otherwise be made. Covid-19 offers the opportunity to ‘embed greater societal equality and sustainability into the recovery‘. And, crucially, this would ‘accelerate rather than delay progress towards 2030 Sustainable Development Goals‘.
But it does not end simply with the full implementation of Agenda 2030. Schwab and Malleret want to go further. Their aim is that the open exposure of weaknesses within existing global infrastructure ‘may compel us to act faster by replacing failed institutions, processes and rules with new ones that are better suited to current and future needs.’ To convey the importance of this statement, the authors state that this alone is ‘the essence of the Great Reset’. What they appear to be seeking is global transformation where systems and the age of the algorithm take precedent over political institutions. We are already beginning to see moves by major global institutions like the Trilateral Commission, the World Trade Organisation and the European Union to ‘reform‘ and ‘rejuvenate‘ both their work and membership. Covid-19 has undoubtedly straightened the hand of global planners and their quest for reformation.
As ‘Covid-19: The Great Reset’ was published, it was accompanied by an article written by Schwab and Malleret. Called, ‘COVID-19’s legacy: This is how to get the Great Reset right‘, they stated plainly that not only will a lot of things change forever, ‘the worst of the pandemic is yet to come’:
We will be dealing with its fallout for years, and many things will change forever. It has wrought (and will continue to do so) economic disruption of monumental proportions.
Indeed, no industry or business will be able to avoid the impact of the changes ahead. Either they adapt to fit in with the Great Reset agenda (assuming they have the resources to do so), or they will not survive. According to Schwab and Malleret, ‘millions of companies risk disappearing‘, whilst only ‘a few‘ e.g. corporate monoliths, will be strong enough to withstand the disruption. It is your smaller companies and independent run businesses that are faced with ruin, opening the door to a new era of mergers and acquisitions that will further erode consumer choice and competition.
Schwab and Malleret tell us that the worst of the pandemic is yet to come, and from an economic standpoint I would not doubt them. But let’s look at the health aspect for a moment. Global media coverage of Covid-19 has characterised it as a deadly virus that kills with impunity, and without the antidote of a vaccine could devour communities whole.
Perhaps surprisingly, the authors offer up a little fact based logic. They admit that Covid-19 is ‘one of the least deadly pandemics in the last 2000 years‘, and barring something unforeseen ‘the consequences of the virus will be mild compared to previous pandemics.’ At the time the book was published, 0.006% of the global population were reported to have died from Covid-19. But even this low figure is not altogether accurate.
In the UK for instance the way the death rate has been calculated has meant that people who have been diagnosed with the virus and then succumbed to an accident within 28 days of being tested will have their cause of death marked as Covid-19.
To quote Professor Yoon Loke, from the University of East Anglia, and Professor Carl Heneghan, from Oxford University:
Anyone who has tested COVID positive but subsequently died at a later date of any cause will be included on the PHE COVID death figures.
Schwab and Malleret could not be clearer when they write that Covid-19 ‘does not constitute an existential threat or a shock that will leave its imprint on the world’s population for decades‘. As it stands the Spanish Flu and HIV/AIDS have a larger mortality rate.
It was not an uncontrollable spread of Covid-19 that caused governments around the world to shut down their national economies, but the data modelling of unaccountable technocrats like Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London that predicted hundreds of thousands of people were at immediate risk of dying without the imposition of social restrictions, which we now know to be a combination of social distancing and lockdown measures.
When Schwab and Malleret talk about Covid-19 leaving it’s imprint on the world, the truth of the matter is that it is the measures imposed in the name of Covid-19 that have caused widespread economic destruction, not the virus itself. That distinction is one that mainstream outlets in particular refuse to engage with.
In summary, if we are to take the authors at their word, then they see a rise in nationalism and protectionism off the back of Covid-19 as a detriment to the quest for a Great Reset. The much coveted Sustainable Development Goals could even be at risk should nations turn inward. IMF Managing Director has said the world has a choice between the Great Reset or the Great Reversal (the Great Reversal being ‘more poverty, more fragmentation, and less trade‘) I would argue that there is another way of looking at it.
In the book Schwab and Malleret describe how in an interdependent world – which is precisely the kind of world that global planners have been championing since at least the end of World War Two – ‘risks conflate with each other, amplifying their reciprocal effects and magnifying their consequences‘. When nations are interdependent, ‘the systemic connectivity between risks, issues, challenges determines the future.’ It is the old cliche of dominoes falling. Once one falters it sets off a chain reaction, which was evidenced back in 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed.
The scale of change that globalists are calling for through the vehicle of a Great Reset, which by definition is global in nature, will in my view require the implosion of the current world order to lay the foundations for a new world order. The old must make way for the new. And the one method for how that could be achieved is through increased kickback against interdependence. Sustained crises offer many opportunities for global planners. The potential for a contested U.S. election, an upcoming no deal Brexit and warnings of ‘vaccine nationalism‘ are three eventualities that if brought to bear could be exploited and used to advance the cause for a Great Reset. I would say that the further the world appears from collaboration and cooperation, the more people are going to call for those very same things if they become increasingly desperate.
The authors say that there is only a narrow window of opportunity for the Great Reset. Let’s keep in mind though that so far it is only global institutions like the WEF that are promoting the initiative, not national administrations. When it starts to permeate politics is when you know the agenda is advancing. But what exactly will the economic and societal conditions be when the Great Reset becomes part of the global conversation? Has what we have seen up to now been enough to compel people to call for change on a global scale? Has there yet been enough degradation and material change to living standards for citizens to implore global institutions to take action? I would argue not.
Already ‘solutions‘ like Universal Basic Income have been touted. But as yet there is not a widespread clamouring for change.
But that time is coming.
Whether it be in the name of Agenda 2030 (aka Sustainable Development), The Green New Deal or The Great Reset, it would amount to largely the same outcome – the subjugation once and for all of national sovereignty where the nation state is subordinate to global governance.
- MacKenzie Bezos The World's Richest Woman After Adding $30 Billion To Net Worth In 2020
MacKenzie Bezos The World’s Richest Woman After Adding $30 Billion To Net Worth In 2020
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 22:45It’s amazing what a little Fed intervention during a stock market pullback can do for the extremely wealthy, isn’t it?
In addition to her ex-husband’s wealth eclipsing $200 billion, MacKenzie Bezos (now known as MacKenzie Scott) has now become the world’s richest woman, with Amazon reaching a valuation of over $1.7 trillion in recent weeks.
Bezos/Scott has tacked on a stunning $30.3 billion to her net worth in 2020 so far as a result of Amazon – and the overall market – moving higher despite depression-level macroeconomic realities caused by Covid-19.
She now has a net worth of about $67.4 billion, which pushes her past heiress Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, who sports a net worth of $66.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
This makes Bezos/Scott the 12th richest person in the world. Recall, she received 20 million shares of Amazon as a condition of her divorce with ex-husband and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. The couple’s combined fortune today would be worth over $270 billion.
Scott has given away $1.7 billion to 116 organizations “that included four historically Black colleges and universities” this summer and has also “signed onto the Giving Pledge initiative, founded by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates,” according to CNN.
Recall, last week we also noted the ballooning wealth of billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Bill Gates as a result of the market’s rigged V-shaped recovery.
Although both Mackenzie and her ex-husband had a tough week, losing billions…
- Iranian Resistance Axis Strikes Back: Convoys With US Equipment Blowing Up In Iraq
Iranian Resistance Axis Strikes Back: Convoys With US Equipment Blowing Up In Iraq
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 22:25Submitted by South Front,
On September 3, an explosion of an improvised explosive device (IED) targeted a convoy with equipment of the US-led coalition in the southern Iraqi province of Dhi Qar.
Iraqi troops that were escorting the convoy suffered no casualties. According to local sources, no significant damage was caused to the equipment. Following the incident, security forces detained 2 suspects near the explosion site. The investigation is ongoing.
However, it is no secret that the attack was likely conducted by one of multiple pro-Iranian Shiite groups that surfaced in the country following the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and several prominent Iraqi commanders by a US strike in Baghdad in January.
Earlier, the Guardians of Blood (also known as Islamic Resistance in Iraq) released a video showing an IED attack on another convoy with US equipment. The attack took place near Camp Taji, north of Baghdad on August 23. During the last few months, such attacks became a regular occurrence across Iraq.
Pro-Iranian forces not only created a wide network of active cells that carry out these operations, but also successfully track movements of US forces and their equipment. According to local sources, a large number of Iraqi security personnel involved in the guarding of US forces and facilities in fact support the Iranian-backed campaign against the United States as well as the public demand of the full US troop withdrawal from Iraq.
Despite loud statements and the handing over of several US bases to the Iraqi military, Washington is not reducing its military presence in the country. Rather it’s regrouping its forces and strengthening the security of the remaining facilities. Tensions are on the rise not only in Iraq.
On September 3, Israel’s ImageSat International released satellite images showcasing the impact of the recent Israeli strikes on Iranian-linked targets near the Syrian capital of Damascus, and in the province of Homs. The report claimed that the strike on the Damascus International Airport destroyed a headquarters and a warehouse used by Iranian forces. The same area was the target of an Israeli attack in February. The strike on the T4 airport in Homs damaged the main runway and an apron. As a result, the air base was temporary placed out of service.
A few days earlier, the Israeli Defense Forces claimed that they had hit approximately 100 Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip in August. This supposedly included 35 hits on Hamas weapons manufacturing sites, along with 30 underground sites, 20 observation posts and 10 sites linked to the group’s aerial capabilities such as drones. According to the Israeli side, these strikes were a response to rocket and other attacks from the Gaza Strip. Palestinian groups claim that they just retaliate to permanent pressure and acts of aggression from the Israeli side.
Taking into account the war in Yemen, a large part of the Middle East has been turned into a battleground of the conflict between the Israeli-US bloc and the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance.
- Visualizing The Social Media Universe In 2020
Visualizing The Social Media Universe In 2020
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 22:05Social media has seeped into virtually all aspects of modern life. The vast social media universe collectively now holds 3.8 billion users, representing roughly 50% of the global population.
With an additional billion internet users projected to come online in the coming years, Visual Capitalist’s Aran Ali notes that it’s possible that the social media universe could expand even further.
How the Networks Stack Up
To begin, let’s take a look at how social networks compare in terms of monthly active users (MAUs)—an industry metric widely used to gauge the success of these platforms.
Here’s a closer look at individual social platforms, and their trials and tribulations:
Facebook
To put it mildly, Facebook has had its hands full. A flurry of companies are boycotting Facebook’s ads, while the platform struggles to fend off the spread of misinformation.
Yet, its stock price continues to advance to new highs while the traditional economy faces less than rosy forecasts. Facebook still possesses the largest cohort of users, inching closer to the 3 billion MAU mark—a breakthrough yet to be achieved by any company.
Snapchat
Snapchat and founder Evan Spiegel have had a bumpy road since their IPO in 2017. The stock price reached its nadir near $4 in 2018, reflecting investor concerns tied to the introduction of Instagram Stories. In recent times, the stock has advanced past the $20 mark, although there is still long-term unclarity around monetization and profitability.
YouTube
YouTube competes head on against traditional television and streaming programs for eyeballs. The platform raked in revenues of $15.1 billion in 2019, nearly double their figures in 2017.
Parent company Alphabet has invested in YouTube with new rollouts like YouTube Music (merged with what was once Google Music) and YouTube Premium—a bundled subscription-based platform providing music, ad-free content, and YouTube Originals. By the looks of it, the future of YouTube will be much more than just videos.
WeChat
The biggest social platform in China, WeChat has flourished, now holding a whopping 1.2 billion MAUs. As part of the Tencent Holdings conglomerate, they belong to the BATX group that is seen to lock horns with America’s Big Tech.
Reddit
There have been whispers of a Reddit IPO on Wall Street for some time now. While such an event has not yet materialized, Reddit’s success certainly has. With 430 million MAUs relative to 330 million in 2018, the company continues to attract a larger audience. The notion of community has taken on a different meaning in the digital age, and Reddit represents this transition with their ever-growing network of users.
Instagram
Instagram has been vital to Facebook’s success, since its $1 billion acquisition in 2012. The platform attracts a younger audience compared to Facebook and it has demonstrated an ability to remain versatile, specifically by implementing Instagram Stories and Reels.
Twitter
Busy schedules don’t seem to faze Jack Dorsey who has not one, but two CEO jobs in Twitter and Square. Twitter has been able to achieve profitability in the last two years, reporting net income figures of $1.2 and $1.5 billion in 2018 and 2019 respectively. They no doubt have their work cut out for them as they continue to combat fake news and similar controversies on their platform.
TikTok
If any publicity is good publicity, then 2020 has been TikTok’s year. Headlines include privacy breaches with alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party, a banning of the app by India Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and now, talks of a partial U.S. acquisition. Potential acquirers include leaders Microsoft, Twitter, and Oracle.
Social Media Under Trial?
Despite the list of headwinds social media has faced, about half of the world is now on it—and there seems to be no end in sight for future growth.
How have companies with exposure to the social media universe fared in 2020 so far?
Widespread participation in social media comes with its fair set of problems. Some companies such as Facebook have found themselves in the crosshairs on both sides of the political spectrum. As concerns grow around privacy and data, social media will be front and center in shaping the future of government, business, and politics.
Only time will tell just how high user counts will reach. The long-term trajectory suggests there’s more room left in the engine. There are still parts of the world that are just beginning to possess the technological infrastructure for social media to be a possibility. It’s plausible future growth will come from that avenue.
If stock prices of companies linked to social media are of relevance, their performance this year paired with the fact that they are trading near all-time highs supports such a growth thesis.
- Why DC Statehood Is A Suicidal Gamble
Why DC Statehood Is A Suicidal Gamble
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 21:45Authored by Pat Buchanan, op-ed via Townhall.com,
When U.S. cities erupted after the death of George Floyd, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser was in the vanguard of the protests, renaming a section of downtown Black Lives Matter Plaza, and painting the name in letters on the street so huge they could be seen from space.
Thursday, however, Bowser awoke to those same BLM protesters yelling outside her home, denouncing a “D.C. police murder of a Black Man,” and demanding the mayor fire Police Chief Peter Newsham.
18-year-old Deon Kay had been shot and killed Wednesday afternoon in an encounter with cops. While this was the fifth shooting by D.C. cops this year, it was the first fatality.
There have been 130 other homicides in D.C. in 2020, mostly of Black folks that involved other Black folks, and not the cops.
“We believe the suspect had a gun at the time,” Newsham told reporters.
Witnesses challenged the chief’s claim.
But this is only the latest problem bedeviling Bowser.
While she has been blaming “outside agitators” for the mayhem in the city, the Washington Times reports that 82 percent of the 541 people arrested for riot-related crimes were residents of D.C., Maryland or Virginia.
On Tuesday, the mayor’s office made national news by releasing a list of monuments and memorials in Washington that should be “removed, replaced or contextualized.”
Among them are the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial and Columbus’ statue at Union Station.
The name of Alexander Graham Bell should be erased from Bell Multicultural High School, Bowser’s working group said. Like Winston Churchill and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the inventor of the telephone believed in eugenics.
Presidents James Madison, author of the Constitution, John Tyler, who annexed Texas, and Zachary Taylor, who led the U.S. army to victory in the Mexican-American War, are also candidates for having their memorials and monuments “replaced, removed or contextualized.”
Woodrow Wilson’s name should be removed from Wilson high, and the names of Founding Father Ben Franklin and author of the national anthem Francis Scott Key should be erased from buildings named in their honor.
Eleanor Holmes Norton, the D.C. nonvoting representative in Congress, explained that the working group formed by Bowers to look into monuments and memorials did not mean the statues were to be pulled down but that plaques should be added informing visitors that these sites are dedicated to men who had a perverted view of human rights.
Norton wants the Emancipation Proclamation statue featuring Abe Lincoln and an unshackled slave, unveiled at an 1876 ceremony attended by President Grant, at which Frederick Douglass spoke, removed. She also wants the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square removed.
Yet, it was General Jackson who saved the Union from being torn apart at the 1815 Battle of New Orleans, while the defenders of Washington and the White House fled from the attacking British, letting the nation’s capital be burned in August of 1814.
D.C. officials are today running away from the plans of the mayor’s working group, but those plans testify powerfully to what an act of folly and a capitulation to political correctness it would be for the Congress to vote statehood for D.C., as Nancy Pelosi’s House did this year.
D.C. is unrepresentative of America and undeserving in any way to be raised to statehood.
Since given the franchise 60 years ago, it has never voted Republican for president. Its three electoral votes have gone to the Democrats in every election since LBJ in ’64. Republican nominee Donald Trump got 4 percent of the D.C. vote. Hillary Clinton got 90 percent, a margin of 22-1.
Moreover, D.C. has a smaller population than 19 other American cities and is smaller in geographic size than 150 other U.S. cities. Rhode Island, our smallest state, is geographically 20 times the size of D.C.
The D.C. government has been in the headlines countless times for personal scandals and financial crises. One four-term mayor, Marion Barry, was sent to prison and returned to be reelected to office.
As for D.C. public schools, the problem is not that they are named for presidents but that they produce some of the lowest test scores in the nation.
More significant, as the protests, attended by riots since May, have shown, the D.C. government, a hostile province when a Republican is in the White House, is the domicile of a permanent regime of leftist and radical media, tens of thousands of federal and city bureaucrats, lawyers and lobbyists, all yoked to big government.
As the “peaceful protests” of June and July showed, with Georgetown sacked and statues demolished, D.C.’s government is an incompetent custodian of the nation’s historic monuments and memorials, and incapable of protecting the White House.
What does Joe Biden, who approved of the removal of statues of Confederate soldiers, generals and statesmen, think of D.C.’s scheme to “remove, replace or contextualize” the statues of so many men who held the office he now seeks?
- DHS Braces For 'Potential EMP Attack' As Presidential Election Nears
DHS Braces For ‘Potential EMP Attack’ As Presidential Election Nears
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 21:25The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a new report warning about a “potential” electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack against the U.S.
DHS’s warning published Thur. (Sept. 2), or about 60 days until the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3, indicates there are “evolving threats against the American homeland, most recently highlighting efforts to combat an Electromagnetic Pulse attack which could disrupt the electrical grid and potentially damage electronics.”
The department released an EMP status report via the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) that said the “key actions to address known EMP-related vulnerabilities to critical infrastructure.”
CISA said an EMP attack could “disrupt, degrade, and damage technology” embedded in critical infrastructure systems. Widespread blackouts could be seen if an EMP was to damage the nation’s electrical grid, resulting in additional flare-ups of socio-economic turmoil.
“EMP attacks are part of the emerging threats against our nation and demand a response,” said Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli.
“That is why DHS is taking these contingencies very seriously, working diligently to mitigate our risks and equipping our state and local partners with the resources they need to do the same. We’ve made significant progress and look forward to work ahead,” Cuccinelli said.
CISA Director Chris Krebs said top priorities of the agency is to mitigate threats associated with EMPs:
“Over the past year, we have worked with interagency and industry partners to identify the footprint and effects of EMP threats across our National Critical Functions, and are developing sustainable, efficient, and cost-effective approaches to improving the Nation’s resilience to EMPs,” Krebs said.
To combat these emerging threats, President Trump signed an executive order in March 2019, delegating power to the White House for EMP preparedness.
We recently quoted Peter Vincent Pry, ex-chief of staff of the Congressional EMP Commission, who wrote an op-ed that said the virus pandemic from China has “exposed dangerous weaknesses in U.S. planning and preparation for civil defense protection and recovery, and those weaknesses surely have been noticed by our potential enemies: China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and international terrorists.”
Pry warned that “China has been planning to defeat the U.S. with an EMP and cyber “Pearl Harbor” attack for a quarter-century.”
DHS nor CISA gave any more information on ‘evolving EMP threats’ on the American homeland. There was not mention of whether the threat could be from a solar storm or EMP weapons. However, the EMP status report did mention DHS is currently running EMP pilot tests to assess EMP vulnerability on infrastructure:
“Finally, DHS is partnering with other federal departments and agencies, state, local, tribal, and territorial entities and the private sector to field test a more resilient critical infrastructure. There are a number of field demonstration (or pilot) projects planned and underway by both DHS and DOE to assess EMP vulnerability and then deploy, evaluate, and validate EMP mitigation and protection technologies.
“One such pilot is the San Antonio Electromagnetic Defense Initiative, designed to show how an entire region can become resilient against an EMP. These pilots are multisector, multifunction efforts, seeking to ensure key capabilities continue to function in a post EMP environment and that by maintaining those key functions we can expedite a full recovery. Working with federal interagency partners, DHS will play a major role in ensuring communications systems remain operational and, by ensuring key systems which are protected against EMP, are also protected against other threats such as cyber-attacks.” – EMP status report
One EMP-expert and friend-of-the-site summed up the report perfectly:
“We recognize the threat and we’re working on it and you don’t need to know any more than that, thank you for asking…”
The warning comes just two months before the U.S. presidential election…
- Luongo: A False Flag Is Biden's Only Chance To Win
Luongo: A False Flag Is Biden’s Only Chance To Win
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 21:05Authored by Tom Luongo via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
The Black Revolution is in full swing in the U.S. Over the next sixty days we will be treated to the greatest political show on Earth as the Democrats and their handlers in The Davos Crowd pursue the biggest lie since Climate Change.
The events of 2020 are lining up for a climax to this story that ends with only one outcome, a contested election which fuels a coup attempt after the election results come in on November 3rd.
And because of this now obvious plan, setting up a false flag around the election is the most likely means to produce election results close enough to support this course of action.
I’m not the only one thinking in these terms at this point. Joaquin Flores, writing for Fort Russ, mused similarly last week.
As the polls shift towards Donald Trump and the Democrats run around concocting fairy tales after allowing Joe Biden out of his gimp cellar long enough for people to see how far he has fallen mentally, I’m nearly convinced this is likely.
Color revolutions unfold in predictable stages. The first stage is destroying the local economy. Usually this means the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury pull back on available dollars through tight monetary policy and sanctions to create mass unemployment in the target nation.
Then foment violence from the youth who are disproportionately affected by the economic destruction after NGO’s lay the ideological foundation for revolution. Use the most convenient pretext. In the U.S. it means stoking racism and hatred of ‘the rich.’
Pick a color under which to unite them, in this case black and blame the leader for every single bad thing that happens, which is usually the work of agent provocateurs who amplify the organic frustration into targeted attacks which are then amped up by the media into a news story.
If the leader is stupid he acts like any garden-variety paranoid dictator by clamping down on the violence making him easy prey for the media to brand him a dictator.
Then bringing a mob to the capital is easy, because now there are too many people to be effectively policed and the potential for violence to boil the whole thing into a coup is very real.
All of this works if the oligarchs who run the political system of the target country are on board with this. In the U.S., it’s obvious from the response from all major corporations they approve this message. Note how it failed in Belarus recently for lack of this corporate sponsorship.
Looking at the way the Democrats have positioned themselves for this election it is clear that they are preparing the field for this outcome after election day.
They used the lockdowns to create an army of ready-made protestors with nothing else to do and little hope for the future.
They structured all aid to the middle class the run out during the height of the election campaign while blocking any further assistance even though the Treasury Dept. raised nearly $2 trillion to deploy as support and stimulus.
The media endlessly stoked fear over COVID-19 to push as many voters to consider mailing their votes in (or create the illusion that is what will happen) to delay certification of the election on election night.
But to his credit, President Trump hasn’t acted the way he was supposed to. He has governed this chaos exactly the way a majority of Americans want him to, as a Federalist. Even though he has the authority to do so, he’s refrained from sending Federal troops into rioting cities, laying bare just how much local authorities are aiding the violence.
He didn’t institute national lockdowns and draconian restrictions due to COVID-19, instead offering aid and allowing the data to eventually vindicate him to the point where even the CDC is now backtracking on how dangerous the virus actually is.
And his opponents in New York, for example, now look like out-of-touch, lying grandma murderers.
Eventually crisis fatigue sets in, people adjust to the new circumstances and the worst parts of their fear abates. And even if they don’t look at the new data, they realize enough costs have been born and it’s time to move on with our lives.
That’s what is now showing up in the polling data, even though it is still highly suspect. And this puts Trump in the driver’s seat for the election on November 3rd. As of today, the election looks like it is his to lose.
And yet the Democrats insist that the election will not be resolved on election day. In fact, it’s obvious they are prepping the narrative that Trump will only appear to win on election night but, in fact, the torrent of mail-in ballots will change the outcome of the election over the next few days.
Of course, this would fly in the face of decades of electoral statistics where the outcome of the election is almost certainly decided by the time 25% of the votes have been counted and a run-rate to completion can be calculated.
A report from Axios outlines what we can expect.
A top Democratic data and analytics firm told “Axios on HBO” it’s highly likely that President Trump will appear to have won — potentially in a landslide — on election night, even if he ultimately loses when all the votes are counted.
Why this matters: Way more Democrats will vote by mail than Republicans, due to fears of the coronavirus, and it will take days if not weeks to tally these. This means Trump, thanks to Republicans doing almost all of their voting in person, could hold big electoral college and popular vote leads on election night….
… By the numbers: Under one of the group’s modeling scenarios, Trump could hold a projected lead of 408-130 electoral votes on election night, if only 15% of the vote by mail (VBM) ballots had been counted.
And that’s what concerns me most. Because if all of this prep work has failed and Trump clearly wins an electoral college victory, but they are planning to harvest votes for days afterwards, how do they shift the dynamic back in Biden’s favor between now and then to keep the election close enough for them to steal?
More violence is how.
We are two weeks away from White House Siege beginning on September 17th. Organized by Adbusters, which is a front for George Soros’ partner in crime, David Brock and Media Matters For America, White House Siege is a planned 50-day protest in Lafayette Square in Washington D.C., ostensibly to protest President Trump ‘stealing the election.’
This is a ready-made recipe for a Maidan-like orgy of violence in the nation’s capital to create a false flag event which reflects badly on Trump. Think snipers on rooftops shooting both protestors and cops similar to what happened on the Maidan square in Kiev in 2014.
D.C. is not a state. It’s not governed by the same rules as the states, where the Governors are in charge.
Trump can, and in my mind should, as a matter of strategy, take control over D.C. to keep to possibility of violence to a minimum. D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser is trying to walk back her support of the protests after the violence after the Republican National Convention by urging U.S. Attorneys in D.C. to charge the people the police arrest.
This is Bowser trying to publicly keep Trump from doing exactly what I just said he should do. Because with cities looted and burned, with Democrat politicians losing the respect of their constituencies they have no political legs left to stand on.
Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York said in a press conference Trump better bring an army if he plans to set foot in his state. This is tantamount to sedition, for which a case can be made by nearly every major Democrat for statements made in the past six months.
“He better have an army if he thinks he’s gonna walk down the street in New York. New Yorkers don’t want to have anything to do with him,” the Democrat said, all but threatening the commander-in-chief.
Meanwhile Cuomo is now the target of a Dept. of Justice investigation into his handling of the COVID-19 crisis while Trump withholds Federal funds from the state, which prompted Cuomo’s bravado.
Between this and Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling Republicans “domestic enemies of the state” is the kind of language you don’t come back from. The Democrats and the U.S. Deep Stat are all in on removing Trump from office by any means necessary.
I don’t think the worst of the violence is behind us after Kenosha. I think the worst is still in front of us.
- "Build It From Scratch!" – 19 Black Families Buy Land To Create 'Safe City' For Black People
“Build It From Scratch!” – 19 Black Families Buy Land To Create ‘Safe City’ For Black People
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 20:45The great reset could be underway as a “social-bomb” explodes across American cities due to the virus pandemic, depressionary unemployment, and social unrest. Much of the destabilization is happening in Democratically controlled metropolitan areas as residents flee for suburbia and or rural communities.
About five months into the exodus, city dwellers are continuing to leave big cities. We’ve noted this trend could be red hot for a couple of years.
As the outbound migration from cities gains momentum, people are now leaving in groups, pooling capital together, buying land, and building towns of their own. This is precisely what’s happening in Georgia.
Georgia-based realtor Ashley Scott started The Freedom Georgia Initiative with her investor friend, Renee Walters, calling the movement to purchase land an opportunity to build a safe town for black people to thrive.
In total, 19 black families pooled together funds and bought nearly 100 acres in Toomsboro, Georgia, with plans to create a “new black Wall Street” and a community where black people aren’t murdered by police.
“We figured we could try to fix a broken system, or we could start fresh,” Scott wrote in a post on the about section of the initiative’s Facebook page.
“Start a city that could be a shining example of being the change you want to see. We wanted to be more involved in creating the lives we really want for our Black families, and maybe, just maybe, create some generational wealth for ourselves by investing in the land. Investing in creating a community that is built around our core values and beliefs,” she continued.
Scott encouraged black families to ‘build the town for ourselves’, but while doing, tap into the US municipal bond market and “go get all the money” the US has to offer.
“Now is the time to organize ourselves on the local scale and build new cities. Now is the time to vote locally and nationally. Now is the time of the new Black Independent Party. Now is the time for you and your Black families and friends to go build independent private assets, residuals, trusts and yields.
“Amass land, develop affordable housing for yourself, build your own food systems, build manufacturing and supply chains, build your own home school communities, build your own banks and credit unions, build your own cities, build your own police departments, tax yourselves and vote in a mayor and a city council you can trust. Build it from scratch! Then go get all the money the United States of America has available for government entities and get them bonds. This is how we build our new Black Wall Streets. We can do this. We can have Wakanda! We just have to build it for ourselves!” – The Freedom Georgia Initiative
The initiative shared a Facebook post on Monday afternoon updating the status on their new land.
The group wrote in a post:
“This is how one family out of 19 decided to enjoy their Sunday on the unincorporated land of what’s soon to be known as Freedom Georgia.”
Is the great reset where people flee major cities and construct micro-communities of their own?
- The Economy Continues To Unravel Despite All Stimulus Measures
The Economy Continues To Unravel Despite All Stimulus Measures
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 20:25Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
Since the pandemic lockdowns were first implemented in the US I have been more concerned with the government and central bank response than the virus itself. As I have noted in past articles, the pandemic restrictions and subsequent economic and social crisis events they help to create will cause far more deaths than Covid-19 ever will. Not only that, but the actions of the Federal Reserve continue to con the American public into believing that there is some kind of “plan” to stop the crash that THEY engineered.
The only agenda of the Fed is to increase the pain in the long term; they have no intention of actually preventing any disaster.
This is evidenced in comments by voting members of the Fed, including Neel Kashkari who recently argued for the enforcement of hard lockdowns for at least six weeks in the US, all because the US savings rate was going up. Meaning, because Americans are saving more in order to protect themselves from economic fallout, Kashkari thinks we should be punished with an economic shutdown that would force us to spend whatever we have been able to save.
Do you see how that works?
Fed members and government officials demand hard lockdowns, depleting public savings and destroying small businesses. Then, the public has to beg the Fed and the government for more and more stimulus measures so that they can survive. The people and the system become dependent on a single point of support – fiat money creation and welfare. Yet, the evidence suggests that this strategy is failing to do much of anything except stall the inevitable for a very short time.
If the goal was really to reduce the pain of the pandemic as much as possible, then the strategy should be to keep the economy as open as possible and let the virus run its course. By initiating lockdowns, all we are doing is extending the economic damage over the span of years instead of months. We can deal with the comparatively minimal deaths associated with the virus; we cannot handle the disaster that is about to befall the financial system.
The small business sector appears to be the most fragile element of the economy right now. The PPP loans that were supposed to shore up small businesses failed miserably, with data showing only 13% to 19% of applicants getting a loan of any kind. Over 64% of small businesses that received a loan are also worried about being approved for loan forgiveness. In other words, of the few small business owners that got a PPP loan more than half do not have the ability to pay the loan back if they end up not qualifying for exemption.
This problem does not seem to be affecting the corporate sector, however. International companies are enjoying incredible cash infusions from the Fed through overnight loans as well as Fed stimulus propping up stock markets (at least for now). Tech companies in particular are enjoying a rush of investment as the assumption in the daytrading world is that the central bank will not allow these companies to fail.
Maybe they are right, but stock markets today DO NOT reflect the health of our system in any way. Stock tickers are a placebo, a Pavlovian trigger for the public, a tool to make people believe that the situation is improving merely because share values are going up. This is not the case.
Small businesses in the US account for around 50% of all employment and job creation. They are a vital part of the economy. Yet, government and central bank measures seem to have left them out in the cold to die.
To be sure, the $600 weekly unemployment enhancement created through the CARES Act passed in March did boost consumer spending, primarily on durable goods such as computers, TVs, cellphones, etc. Spending on services declined though, which is where the majority of small businesses make their money. And, considering the fact that most durable goods are manufactured overseas, this means that the majority of stimulus dollars that went to consumers did not go into the US economy, but foreign exporters like China.
Now, the unemployment enhancement has ended and its return is in question. It will be interesting to see if the boost to purchases of goods will continue without that extra $600 weekly stimulus. Consumer spending rose in July by 1.9%, but this was already a weak print compared to the increases during the previous two months.
Unemployment numbers have declined due to soft reopenings in numerous states, and at the very least some part time jobs appear to be returning, but nowhere near the level needed to erase the millions of jobs lost since February after the initial lockdowns began. If you count U-6 measurements and unemployed people who have been removed from the rolls for being jobless for too long, the REAL unemployment rate is closer to 30% of working age Americans. This is essentially Great Depression levels of joblessness.
US GDP has continued to decline by 32% according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (despite statistical rigging by the Fed and government agencies), and while it’s possible that stimulus slowed the effects of GDP loss, there is no indication what the trillions of dollars created by the Fed have actually bought other than a few months of time and a massive bubble in the stock market.
The economy cannot survive extreme lockdown conditions for any length of time, let alone almost two more months. And, if you want to know what it means when elites in government and central banking call for a “hard lockdowns”, just look at Level 4 restrictions in places like Australia and New Zealand, where only one person can leave home at any given time, can only travel 3 miles from home and only for food and supplies, and anyone caught not wearing a mask is subject to arrest or a $10,000 fine.
This mother in Melbourne, Australia was arrested because of a Facebook post calling for protests over the lockdown restrictions. She later had to take the post down and offered an apology, saying she did not know it was illegal to post such statements on social media:
Yeah, this kind of Orwellian response will do wonders for any economic recovery, and this is what Kashkari is calling for in the US. It’s almost as if the Fed and certain politicians WANT a financial collapse in America…
The REAL solution is to stop the lockdown restrictions altogether. If the goal is truly to protect as many American lives as possible for the “greater good”, then the pandemic response must stop. Luckily, it seems that more and more people are beginning to see through the facade and are rejecting the restrictions. Even in Europe and Australia there have been some signs of protest and rebellion. The problem is that, at least in terms of the economy, it may be too late.
We have to consider the fact that once a large portion of the business sector (like small businesses) takes a massive hit like the one they have suffered over the past several months, many such businesses and jobs will simply not come back. There are many reasons for this, but primarily it’s a matter of debt. The average small business owner carries almost $200,000 in debt for 3-5 years before he reaches profitability or breaks even. This is assuming that there are no major economic catastrophes in that time.
With the pandemic, the riots, the restrictions, etc., businesses will have to take on much more debt with little guarantee of recovery in the next few years let alone the next few months. Chapter 11 business bankruptcies in the US rose over 26% in the first half of 2020 alone.
Even if lockdown restrictions were completely eradicated tomorrow, a large number of businesses would go bankrupt anyway. The “Retail Apocalypse” has been growing over the past decade, LONG before the coronavirus was on issue. Thousands of businesses shut down last year and tens of thousands more are slated to close this year. The virus and lockdowns simply accelerated the existing decline.
This is why large banks are cutting off loans to business owners and consumers right now; they know exactly where all this is headed.
Banks act as middlemen for the PPP loans financed by the Fed, yet those loans are not getting to most businesses. Banks have also cut credit card lending in the past few months, and general lending has crashed. All of this despite low interest rates for banks receiving stimulus injections from the Fed. Where is all of the money going? They are keeping it for themselves, buying up hard assets as well as propping up the stock market. As noted above, the elites have NO INTENTION of saving the economy, only themselves.
If the stimulus is not getting to the main-street economy then the only purpose it serves is to give the public a false sense of comfort. The people who gain the most from the ongoing pandemic chaos are establishment elites that want severe restrictions on personal liberty. Not to mention, the virus and lockdowns offer a convenient scapegoat for the financial crisis that was already brewing due to central bank mismanagement of stimulus, inflation and interest rates. The bottom line is, the banks do not want the crisis to end. Why would they? The longer the panic continues, the more they benefit.
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- World's First Logistics Operation With 'Helio-Drone' Lifts Off With 3D Printed Cargo
World’s First Logistics Operation With ‘Helio-Drone’ Lifts Off With 3D Printed Cargo
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 20:05A helicopter drone flew a 3D-printed part to an offshore gas platform in the Troll gas field off the west coast of Norway. The operation was the world’s first logistics operation using a drone to an offshore installation, read a press release from oil and gas company Equinor.
“Development is rapid, and we see the huge potential within drone technology that could transform the way we operate, both under and above the sea surface. Equinor aims to lead the way in utilizing new technology on the Norwegian continental shelf,” said Equinor’s executive vice president for Development and Production Arne Sigve.
“Drones could reinforce safety, boost production efficiency and contribute to lower CO2 emissions from Norwegian oil and gas. Drones will also play a role as we shape new energy solutions on the Norwegian shelf,” Nylund continued.
The helicopter drone traveled about 50 miles to the platform in the Troll field, at an altitude of 5,000 feet. The delivery of a 3D printer part was the first of its kind, where a freight operation was conducted with a helio-drone.
The operator of the Schiebel Camcopter S-100 was the Sandnes-based company Nordic Unmanned. Equinor worked with the drone operator and with the Civil Aviation Authority, Avinor Air Navigation Services, and the Norwegian Communications Authority to conduct the trial flight.
“Over the longer term, we expect to see the new infrastructure for logistics and support operations, which can reinforce what we already have within vessels and helicopters,” said Alena Korbova Pedersen, who leads supply chain development for Equinor.
“If we are to develop the logistics solutions of the future on the Norwegian shelf, where drones could play an important role, we must cooperate across all of the industry’s players; operating companies, suppliers, the authorities, and the trade union and safety interests,” Pedersen continued.
Over the long-term, the adoption of drones for logistical flight missions will cut down operation costs for all sorts of companies, not just oil and gas ones. The caveat to this is the decline in pilot demand for helicopters, though a boom for drone pilots (read: “Airline Pilots Learn To Fly Drones Amid Mass Carrier Layoffs”).
- The Fed's Latest Lie: It Can Make Everything Go Back To Normal
The Fed’s Latest Lie: It Can Make Everything Go Back To Normal
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 19:45Authored by Brendan Brown via The Mises Institute,
The Fed Emperor’s New Clothes Show is a continuous comedy without laughter. The latest act, the virtual Jackson Hole conference (August 27), was dreadful.
The show’s audiences are accustomed to the Fed chair and his board delivering solemn pronouncements about their aims—low inflation, high employment, and financial stability. These officials play their parts according to script. They never explain how they will fulfill their promise—it is all boast and no substance. The assembled courtiers, including the financial media representatives who form part of the Fed’s propaganda machine, never ask difficult questions. Those inclined toward skepticism fear exposing their own lack of knowledge or losing their jobs.
In the just finished Jackson Hole episode, Chief Powell revealed that the Fed is now to target an average 2 percent inflation over the medium and long run, meaning that it will “steer” inflation above that level as needed to compensate for periods when it has languished below. Yet in the contemporary monetary system without anchor, there is no high-powered money aggregate whose growth firmly sets boundaries to the long-run path of goods and services prices. Instead, the Fed seeks to achieve its target by employing the blunt and highly imprecise instruments of interest rate manipulation, while counting on inertia of inflation and inflation expectations. That is always a recipe for huge economic and financial instability.
The essence of the policy framework review, just unveiled by Chief Powell, is that the Fed will be slower than in recent cycles to adapt that blunt instrument to any incipient buildup of monetary inflation symptoms in goods and services markets. Accordingly, the danger of an inflation breakout at some point in the future has increased. An extended deep recession through the present pandemic and beyond would delay that point.
Speculation on this Fed policy adjustment has been rife for many months. Similar shifts are occurring abroad, notably in Europe and Japan. The reality, though, is that the army of PhD economists at the Fed has not made a discovery in econometric science which would now reliably link the path of manipulated interest rates to the price level over time.
In fact, Chief Powell announced that his economics staff have discarded at last one notorious component of their craft, the notorious Phillips curve (purporting to relate the level of unemployment to inflation) while putting nothing in its place. And the chief has joked about the r stars and u stars (neutral interest rate and natural unemployment rate estimates) which once featured so heavily in Fed econometrics, notably in the application of the notorious “Taylor rule.”
Many of us already are so disenchanted with the central bankers led by the Fed hegemon that we just ignore the daily, weekly, or monthly theatricals – unless we are trying to profit from the asset price fluctuations which these give rise to in the short run. We should not, though, in our nonattendance of these shows overlook the degradations that monetary decisions announced there are inflicting on ourselves, whether in terms of our personal freedoms or of our reasonable hopes of enjoying economic prosperity.
As regards liberty, this Jackson Hole policy review blasts another wide gap in the constitutional guardrails which are meant to guarantee the right of US citizens to enjoy sound money. Of course, those guardrails were damaged severely almost a century ago when the Supreme Court ultimately approved the Roosevelt administration’s monetary radicalism. But now we have the Federal Reserve expanding and enforcing its 2 percent inflation standard without any challenge in prospect, whether from Congress, to which the Fed is “answerable,” or from the courts.
As regards the threat to economic prosperity, consider the present unique historical situation of Fed-created asset and credit market frenzy in the midst of a vast supply shock induced by pandemic. The sequel could yet be steep further recession, notwithstanding some recent rebound in economic aggregates as governments lift lockdowns.
The combination of pandemic with the interest income famine created by Fed policy has proved remarkably fertile ground for two speculative narratives.
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The first is that “determined action” by the Fed (and foreign central banks), including huge asset market purchase programs financed by money-printing, has removed solvency risk; hence the vast demand for high-yield (risky) credit during this pandemic.
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The second relates to monopoly profits from accelerated digitalization. According to this narrative, these present or potential mega-profits will far outlive the pandemic.
All this speculative froth has added to the appearance of giant monetary stimulus.
The froth, however, could dissipate suddenly—well before the arrival of any postpandemic boom economy. The mother of all monetary stimuli could turn out to be worse than a dud—a catalyst to a slide into further recession just as the supply shock of pandemic recedes. The Fed’s efforts to avoid financial crisis during the height of the pandemic could yet precipitate a still bigger crisis
No one can predict (in honesty) the dynamics of massive momentum trading into “pandemic stocks” and high-yield credit driven by highly dubious narratives of thirty years of high monopoly rents ahead or the Fed having extinguished insolvency risks. That depends on knowing when a round of investors deciding to take profits in these quasi Ponzi schemes finds there is no new layer of investors to sell to and the other potential buyers—shorts closing their position—have long since exited the field, in most cases terrified by losses to date.
We do know, however, that the collateral against huge amounts of credit is tied in value to expanses of malinvestment, whether in emerging markets, global supply chains, or the brick-and-mortar economy, including commercial real estate, travel, energy extraction. Feared and actual destruction of collateral value is what drives the dynamics of recession and depression and this will likely transcend the journey of the pandemic.
The economic damage of pandemic as witnessed to date does not spare us from further revelation of huge misallocation and waste in consequence of the great asset inflation from 2013–20. The supply shock has highlighted some areas of malinvestment (especially aircraft, travel, shopping centers) while camouflaging others (for example excessive digitalization). Banks and credit institutions, especially in Europe, are critically vulnerable to collapse in collateral values. Neither fantasy about big tech monopoly rents nor vaccines and drug therapies can wipe away accumulated malinvestment and related credit losses.
The emperor in the show, whether we take this as Chief Powell or ultimately the president in the White House who appointed him, is now promising the audience a return to the “prosperity of the pre-pandemic economy.”
Whether this would have endured ostensibly much longer without the interruption of pandemic is dubious. But the prosperity which the big monopolists are now promising us, based on accelerated digitalization driven by the exigences of the pandemic, is surely a mirage.
Meanwhile Chief Powell blatantly fails to reveal that the biggest beneficiary of his reformed inflation target will be big government, for whom his institution is now a mammoth tax collector, with emphasis at first on monetary repression tax, and later on inflation tax.
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- Nigerian Meddling: 80 Charged By FBI In "Massive Conspiracy" To Steal Millions Using Online Scams
Nigerian Meddling: 80 Charged By FBI In “Massive Conspiracy” To Steal Millions Using Online Scams
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 19:2580 people have been charged by the FBI in a “massive conspiracy” to defraud millions of dollars from businesses, the elderly and vulnerable women, according to Oxygen. Most of those charged were Nigerian nationals, according to the report.
Those charged were accused of using various online scams to deceive targets and convince them to hand over “at least $6 million”. The group “attempted to steal another $40 million” after that.
The suspects were said to have used both “romance scams” and “business schemes” that allowed them to hack into company escrow accounts. U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna said: “We believe this is one of the largest cases of its kind in US history.”
One scheme uncovered was a Japanese woman who thought she had been conversing with a U.S. Army captain stationed in Syria.
The two were pen pals before the relationship turned romantic and the man – we swear we are not making this up – “claimed he had discovered a bag of diamonds in Syria.” He sought the woman’s help and asked her to send money. The woman borrowed from family, friends and even her ex-husband, before sending over $200,000 to the man over the course of 10 months.
Authorities later revealed the scheme was being run by “two Nigerian men based in Los Angeles” who relied on associates in Nigeria and other countries to assist them. The woman was “extremely depressed and angry about these losses,” the federal complaint against the men stated.
About a week ago, the United State’s Attorney’s Office Central District of California unsealed a 252-count federal grand jury indictment charging 80 people in the “massive conspiracy.” The two ringleaders of the group, Valentine Iro, 31, and Chukwudi Chrisogunus Igbokwe, 38, oversaw an “extensive money laundering network,” the complaint says.
They are among 17 who have been arrested by authorities. Many other suspects live in other countries and Federal authorities are seeking to work to extradite those charged. They face conspiracy to commit fraud, conspiracy to launder money, and aggravated identity theft charges.
Hanna concluded: “This case is part of our ongoing efforts to protect Americans from fraudulent online schemes and to bring to justice those who prey upon American citizens and businesses. Today, we have taken a major step to disrupt criminal networks that use BEC schemes, romance scams and other frauds to fleece victims. This indictment sends a message that we will identify perpetrators – no matter where they reside – and we will cut off the flow of ill-gotten gains.”
- Facebook Removes 'Patriot Prayer' Pages Days After Member Killed By "100% Antifa" Gunman
Facebook Removes ‘Patriot Prayer’ Pages Days After Member Killed By “100% Antifa” Gunman
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 19:05As Mark Zuckerberg continues to cave to the ‘woke mob’ driving the corporate advertiser boycott of his business, Facebook has reportedly removed several pages related to the “Patriot Prayer” group, a conservative group that has been routinely identified as “white supremacist” by left-wing reporters with an agenda.
Described by RT as “a mainstay at pro-gun rallies and street protests”, the group received attention from the national media last weekend when a rumored member was shot and killed by a man who described himself as “100% Antifa” in an interview. The shooter, Michael Forest Reinoehl, was himself shot and killed by police after confessing to the shooting in an interview with – who else? – Vice News.
A Facebook spokesman told Reuters the company pulled the pages as part of “ongoing efforts to remove Violent Social Militias from our platform.” That’s presumably a reference to street brawls between members of the group and armed left-wing groups.
Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson tweeted about the victim, addressing him by the name “Jay”, and claiming to have known him through the group. Gibson’s own personal page was also caught up in the ban.
He raged at Facebook for the timing of the ban: “Antifa groups murdered my friend while he was walking home, and instead of the multibillion dollar company banning Portland antifa pages they ban Patriot Prayer and myself,” Gibson said in a statement on Friday. “People can sign up at PatriotPrayerUSA.com for future events.”
Facebook updated its policies last month, promising to ban any groups who “pose significant risks to public safety, including offline anarchist groups that support violent acts amidst protests, US-based militia organizations and QAnon.”
While Facebook says it removed over 980 groups, 520 pages and 160 ads from the platform under the new guidelines, including “some who may identify as Antifa,” conservative critics argue the bans skew in one direction and largely target those right-of-center, despite the platform’s claims of impartiality.
The shooting in Portland hasn’t gotten nearly as much media attention as a shooting allegedly perpetrated by 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, who had ‘blue lives matter’ posts on his social media pages – prompting the media to label him a white supremacist as well.
A man wearing a Patriot Prayer hat was murdered in Portland by a criminal who said he was “100% Antifa” and instead of banning Antifa pages, Facebook banned Patriot Prayer. Truly Orwellian insanity from the Trotskyite garbage babies who run Facebook. https://t.co/Wa8DY5vy0e
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) September 4, 2020
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Zuckerberg has been doing everything he can to appease the growing crowd of pundits blaming him for single-handedly destroying American democracy by hoodwinking the American people into electing Trump. All of this, of course, was orchestrated by the grand puppetmaster himself, Vladimir Putin. Earlier this week, he announced a ban on “new” political ads during the final week before the election, a completely technical and, as far as we can tell, uunremarkable, change that serves only to stand as evidence that the company “did something” to take on this imaginary threat.
- YouTube Removing Videos By Well-Liked Chemist And Pseudoscience-Debunker 'Thunderf00t'
YouTube Removing Videos By Well-Liked Chemist And Pseudoscience-Debunker ‘Thunderf00t’
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 18:45The name “Thunderf00t” is the alias of Phil Mason, a British chemist and video blogger who has become well-known for posting YouTube videos that criticize, among other things, pseudoscience. We have written about him here, specifically, for debunking several of Elon Musk’s worst ideas (i.e. Musk’s rocket roadster and his Boring Company tunnel idea).
His day job is as a scientist in the field of chemistry and biochemistry at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. His tongue in cheek, yet starkly accurate criticisms, have earned him over 950,000 subscribers on YouTube and an aggregate total of more than 220 million views.
And now, YouTube appears to have had enough of him.
Mason has once again taken to the platform and posted a video on Thursday of this week explaining that several of his videos exploring and debunking various theories about the coronavirus had been taken down off the site.
“So, YouTube has deleted another one of my videos – just, zoom – gone!” Mason starts out by saying. He says the videos are being pulled down without YouTube issuing him strikes.
Mason said that YouTube has pulled down 3 videos in two months for “debunking coronavirus conspiracy theories”.
“Even in this last one, they took it down for ‘spreading disinformation about the coronavirus’,” he says about a video that he put up criticizing Dr. Rashid A. Buttar, an osteopathic physician from Charlotte.
“Just so we’re clear, Dr. Rashid Buttar is an absolute fruit loop,” Thunderf00t says, detailing Buttar’s suggestions on how to cure cancer and his theories about the Beirut explosion was caused by a missile. “They’ve been storing ammonium nitrate for 10 years, just so they could blow it up now?” he asks.
“Meanwhile the doctor makes these claims in a gazillion videos,” Mason says, “and his videos are still up”.
Mason explains his other videos have been taken down for debunking “idiots who don’t know anything about science”.
“What are you boys on?” he asks YouTube.
Regardless of your thoughts on whether or not Mason is on the right side of the arguments he is making, one can’t ignore what appears to be a growing, asymmetric, strong arm of censorship that continues to protrude from the country’s top tech titans.
Heading into the election, we have already seen Twitter censor the President, Facebook mull the ideas of pulling down news articles and now, once again, YouTube selecting which global experts are allowed to have a say in matters of current events.
Orwell would be proud.
- China Moves Away From US Dollar, Ahead Of Digital Yuan
China Moves Away From US Dollar, Ahead Of Digital Yuan
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 18:25Authored by Shaurya Malwa via Decrypt.co,
In brief
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China is reducing exposure to the US dollar amidst fears of massive inflation.
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The country has sold over $109 billion worth of US bonds in the first half of 2020.
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Its upcoming digital yuan is a contender to the US dollar’s long-held global dominance.
China is likely to reduce its holdings of US Treasury bonds to just under $800 billion from the current level of more than $1 trillion, according to local news outlet Global Times.
A major reason for the reduced exposure is the record amounts of US dollars being printed by the country’s Federal Reserve, leading to fears among investors and central banks of imminent inflation. Another is US President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on the Chinese administration, the report said.
Currently, China is the world’s second-largest holder of US debts, but it has been reducing its holdings of US bonds in recent years. In the first half of 2020 alone, China sold an estimated $106 billion worth of US bonds – a 3.4% decline compared to 2019.
Xi Junyang, a professor at the Shanghai University in China was cited as saying that China is on track to reduce its holdings of US bonds from $1 trillion to $800 billion. But he added, “China might sell all of its US bonds in an extreme case, like a military conflict.”
Bitcoin critic and gold investor Peter Schiff agreed, tweeting, “My feeling is that China will reduce its exposure by much more. It’s also likely that other nations will do likewise.”
If true this is very significant. In fact, my feeling is that China will reduce its exposure by much more. It’s also likely that other nations will do likewise. That means the Fed is gonna need a much bigger printing press and Americans had better be prepared to really pay up! https://t.co/mcemxItX3o
— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) September 3, 2020
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Schiff added, “That means the Fed is gonna need a much bigger printing press, and Americans had better be prepared to really pay up.”
Rise of the yuan
The report added that many other countries might diversify their foreign exchange reserve assets to decrease the reliance on US-dollar assets. This would be in the hope of minimizing potential risks caused by US debt.
China’s upcoming digital yuan will be a contender. Officially called the Digital Currency Electronic Payment, it will increase the accessibility and accountability of the yuan while increasing international trade on its wholly-digital system.
Experts have already said that the digital yuan may threaten the US dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. Now that it’s getting ready for launch, China may not need the US dollar any more.
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- Daily Briefing – September 4, 2020
Daily Briefing – September 4, 2020
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 18:10Real Vision CEO, Raoul Pal, is joined by senior editor, Ash Bennington, to reflect on a week of extreme price action. They analyze the dramatic crash of U.S. equities on Thursday and its connection to the speculative activity in derivatives markets. After weighing the significance of Softbank’s unmasking as the big “NASDAQ Whale” that has been buying a massive amount of calls on big tech stocks, Raoul and Ash have a broader discussion about how volatility regimes evolve and bleed into each other. Raoul then provides a strategic update on his “unfolding” thesis, shares his thoughts on Europe, and explores the possibility of a W-shaped recession. Finally, Raoul and Ash discuss the “Festival of Learning” that Real Vision hosted this week, as well as give a sneak peek of Real Vision’s new community feature, “The Exchange.” In the intro, Jack Farley and Ash discuss today’s jobs report and look at market volatility. - Reporter Who Brought Down Wirecard Details Sprawling 'Corporate Espionage' Operation
Reporter Who Brought Down Wirecard Details Sprawling ‘Corporate Espionage’ Operation
Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/04/2020 – 18:05As Germany finally officially drops its investigation into the Financial Times over the paper’s pursuit of Wirecard, a campaign for which it was eventually vindicated, the Financial Times investigative reporter who broke the story is opening up about the experience of trying to take down a veritable corporate titan, and how both Wirecard and elements within the German government tried to silence him and the FT.
The above-mentioned investigation is perhaps the most egregious example of this conduct. While Wirecard was carrying on a massive fraud in southeast Asia, conjuring billions of dollars in profits via an elaborate shell game, its now-former CEO Markus Braun was working to strike a deal with Deutsche Bank that could have served as a neat coverup.
In a statement released yesterday, Munich prosecutors said the information reported by McCrum and a colleague was “basically correct”. BaFin, the German financial watchdog that recommended the investigation, said it had no objections to dropping the investigation into the FT, though BaFin says it’s still looking into possible manipulation by short-sellers.
In a story that’s, in some ways, reminiscent of a certain actress’s story about how Harvey Weinstein cowed her into keeping quiet about a sexual assault perpetrated by him, McCrum recounts how German regulators, and later prosecutors, accused him of an illegal conspiracy. Wall Street analysts accused him of unscrupulously working with short sellers. He was stalked by shadowy figures. His emails were hacked, and swarms of twitter bots slandered him online and taunted him about “going to jail”. At times, white-shoe law firms demanded that his employer, the FT, fire him immediately.
At times, McCrum wrote, it felt like “the world had gone mad”. But he persevered, mostly because he had a high degree of confidence in his reporting, and because he and the FT’s editors and lawyers had braced for a long, difficult road from the beginning.
I’d investigated Wirecard since 2014, following a tip that something was awry with the accounts. Together with the FT’s investigations team editor Paul Murphy and in-house libel lawyer Nigel Hanson, we had learnt what to expect from scrutinising the company: furious online abuse, hacking, electronic eavesdropping, physical surveillance and some of London’s most expensive lawyers.
After publishing their first major report on leaked allegations of rampant fraud at the company, Jan Marsalek, the WIrecard COO who is currently a fugitive from justice, started finding ways to push back against McCrum and his reporting by identifying the reporter’s sources and trying to influence them.
It was amid this tumult that Paul Murphy, who at the time edited FT Alphaville, took an odd phone call. A stock market speculator and gossip who Murphy spoke to in private on a pretty regular basis — call him Bill — wanted to make an introduction. Was Murphy really sure about “the stuff on Wirecard” on FT Alphaville, he asked? Bill said he was in touch with someone who vehemently disagreed. His name was Jan Marsalek.
Marsalek, then just 36 years old, was the chief operating officer of Wirecard and the mastermind of its dirty-tricks operation. A suave dealmaker who lived half his life in private jets and luxury hotels, he thrived where the worlds of business, crime, politics and spycraft intersect, a solid gold credit card tucked in the pocket of his designer suit. We now know that he had a range of secret-service contacts in Russia and Austria, as well as deploying at least a dozen private investigators in multiple countries. Documents seen by the FT indicate Wirecard had a broad toolkit at its disposal, ranging from a cast of social-media sock-puppets spouting propaganda to physical surveillance to sophisticated eavesdropping kit used to mirror iPhones.
However he’d done it, Marsalek had identified one of Murphy’s regular sources — and hoped to use him to influence the FT’s reporting.
Pretty soon, strangers were approaching FT reporters in public, and offering them thousands of dollars to remove critical posts, while also trying to cynically plant positive news that might help bolster the stock.
Within days, Marsalek tried a different route into the FT. Bryce Elder, an equities specialist on the paper, returned from a Mayfair lunch and sat down next to Murphy in the newsroom. “A strange thing just happened to me,” he said. “I was offered money to quietly remove the Wirecard posts from Alphaville. Of course, I told him where to go but he said there’s a takeover bid coming for Wirecard.”
After that incident, Wirecard’s tactics became much more sophisticated, and Marsalek’s behavior even more brazen. Once, Marsalek personally confirmed a phony rumor about an upcoming deal between Wirecard and a major rival based in France.
Dan McCrum
The FT didn’t take the bait, but McCrum and his editors were rattled nonetheless.
In April 2016, rumours started to circulate among London stock market traders that the FT was about to report that Wirecard was in takeover talks, and that the newspaper would issue a correction and an apology for its past coverage. Elder, who keeps his ear close to this rumour mill, was quickly told the terms of the supposed bid: Wirecard would merge with its French rival Ingenico. He also received a name and number to contact for verification of the deal: Jan Marsalek. Marsalek, who was in Moscow at the time, answered his call and confirmed the takeover: Wirecard had supposedly reached heads of agreement with Ingenico in a transaction designed to create a European payment-processing powerhouse. The price would be €60 per share, 70 per cent above the prevailing market price — a bid premium that would stun investors. But as Marsalek spoke, calls were simultaneously going into Ingenico executives from our Paris office. The French were adamant: there were no talks, there was no deal, the story was fictitious. Ingenico even produced an on-the-record statement.
At the FT we were dumbfounded. A senior executive at a large publicly listed European company had brazenly tried to spoof our journalists into running a completely fabricated, highly price-sensitive story. This was simply outside of our experience and, while it cemented our conviction that something was up, it was also deeply intimidating. What other tactics would the company try, I wondered.
Wirecard’s next salvo would strike even closer to home. It included a leaked cache of documents including hacked correspondence from hedge funds betting against Wirecard, as well as copies of McCrum’s emails and doctored chat logs to make it look like the FT was in cahoots with investors, all part of a nefarious conspiracy to pick on an innocent German payments-processing giant.
In December I found out, when screenshots of emails between me and a corporate investigator were posted online for all to see. More worryingly, they appeared along with a collection of doctored chat-message transcripts, presented as evidence that I was synchronising the publication of Wirecard-related content with various hedge funds. Wirecard’s associates, helped by an Indian hacker team, had invented their own “whistleblower” who published this cache of supposed evidence as a file called Zatarra Leaks. It included hacked correspondence between hedge funds, clandestine surveillance photos of investors at their homes — and my emails. This was accompanied by a rabid conspiracy about London-based traders and corrupt journalists ganging up on an innocent German technology company. Panicked, I replaced all my personal electronics and spent days setting elaborate passwords on every device. On the advice of Sam Jones, who covered the security services for the FT, I attached a timer to my WiFi router to turn it off at night and reduce the opportunity for attack.
When the paper pressed on undeterred, Marsalek arranged an interview with McCrum and his editor through a back-channel. The rumor was that he was planning to offer them $10 million to drop the investigation.
In early 2018, Murphy was lunching with one of his regular “bid-gossip” contacts at Signor Sassi, a splashy Italian restaurant near Harrods, when Wirecard came up in conversation. “You know they will pay you good money to stop writing about them,” the market contact stated. Murphy smiled, dismissing the idea. “No, I’m serious, they will pay you proper money,” he insisted. “They will pay you $10m. Go and talk to Bill. He’ll help you.”
Our immediate assumption was that this was a trap — a sting to demonstrate an FT journalist could be bribed. If there was going to be a lunch with Marsalek, we had to monitor it covertly. The meal in question was arranged with surprising speed — for February 16 2018 — and, ultimately, took place at a steak restaurant at 45 Park Lane, where the prices naturally limit the number of people dining on any given day. Along with Marsalek came Bill and his son, plus a mysterious character called Sina Taleb, who couldn’t quite explain why he was there. Nearby, presenting themselves as three “ladies who lunch”, were Cynthia O’Murchu and Sarah O’Connor from the FT investigations team, as well as Camilla Hodgson, then a trainee FT reporter. They discreetly videoed proceedings with a high-tech handbag, while Murphy was covertly mic’d up
It was for naught: Marsalek didn’t offer Murphy $10m. It may be that a last-minute venue switch exposed our amateur surveillance, or he wanted Murphy to make the incriminating “ask”. Marsalek did voice his belief, based on what he claimed was his direct experience, that journalists could be easily bought. And he repeatedly pressed his line that, knowingly or otherwise, I was working with short-sellers to damage Wirecard stock.
During that lunch, McCrum said, Marsalek openly admitted that he was running a spy operation into the FT.
What Marsalek also admitted to, albeit indirectly, was running a spying operation against us. (“Maybe friends of mine did it,” he said.) And he explained, almost candidly, why this was needed: a misinformed or malicious FT story represented an “existential threat” to Wirecard, which, like any financial institution, had to retain the trust of those it did business with. “If we lose our correspondent banking relationships, the business would go down almost overnight,” he said.
In October 2018, McCrum and one of his colleagues finally met in person with a whistleblower in Singapore who leaked a cache of documents to the FT that offered clear proof of manufactured cash flows via a process known as “round tripping”. When the FT moved to publish its next report, editors were surprised when, just hours before it went live, contacts started asking questions about an impending story. Floored by the possibility that they might have a leak, despite all the precautions taken, McCrum and his editor swiftly realized that the leak had come from Wirecard. It was clear Marsalek was now trying to frame the FT for working with speculators.
At Sweetings, he’d taken a call from a market trader, who said he’d heard there was a Wirecard article coming at 1pm and wondered what we were reporting. We sat and rolled through the names of those who knew we were planning to publish that day: the two of us, Nigel the lawyer, Lionel the editor. That was it. The copy wasn’t even in our content-management system yet. There was no leak from the FT. The penny dropped: any leak must have come from Wirecard. Alerted by our questions, it had spread the news through the London market and once again was about to accuse us of collaborating with market speculators. The evidence was in the reference by Murphy’s caller to publishing at 1pm. We were never going to publish at that time; 1pm was simply the deadline given for comment. Right on cue, a letter arrived from Schillings: “Our client has been informed of large and unusual short positions being taken out this morning against it, in anticipation of the publication of damaging information or allegations about it which would negatively impact its share price, as previous Financial Times articles have done . . . The repeated pattern of collusion with market players and, particularly, the timing of the short positions being taken out coinciding with Mr McCrum’s approaches, is particularly suspicious . . . ”
Even more amazing: Almost the entirety of the German business establishment, including BaFin, the German financial regulator, sided with Wirecard over the FT. Soon Munich prosecutors had opened a criminal investigation into McCrum. False claims that McCrum and a colleague had tried to bribe the company’s southeast asian partners also spread. BaFin followed up the investigation with something even more extraordinary: a ban on short-selling in Wirecard shares. This, combined with news that Japan’s SoftBank – back in the news late this week – had just backed Wirecard to the tune of more than $1 billion.
Wirecard shares came roaring back. And yet, despite the company’s seeming invulnerability, Wirecard’s efforts to target critics and shortsellers only intensified. Soon, the company hired a former head of Libyan intelligence, who in turn worked with an old contact from MI5 to build a team of nearly 30 operatives to surveil not just McCrum, but a whole gaggle of reporters and investors bound by the common thread that they were all Wirecard skeptics.
The list of targets included Hedge Fund legend Crispin Odey.
Overseeing the surveillance effort was a maverick Libyan, Rami El Obeidi. He was briefly the head of foreign intelligence in the transitional government installed after the country’s leader Colonel Gaddafi was killed in 2011. He liked to be addressed as “The Doctor” and always stayed at the Dorchester when in London, meeting there with officials from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority to press a case that I was crookedly conspiring with short-sellers to bring Wirecard down.
It was “Dr Rami” who brought in an ex-special forces guy from Manchester called Greg Raynor to work the Wirecard case. He, in turn, reached out to an ex-MI5 counter-terrorism operative, Hayley Elvins, and together they assembled a collection of 28 private investigators to follow me, my colleagues and a baffling array of investors and hedge fund bosses, including Crispin Odey.
It was pretty clear by now that the FT had become a huge moneymaking machine for these black operations pressing back against our reporting. Arcanum Global, owned by Ron Wahid and advised by a string of former senior military, policing and intelligence leaders, had a £3.2m contract with Wirecard. Elsewhere Charlie Palmer, partner in the public relations arm of FTI Consulting, failed to get the Mail on Sunday to reprint nonsense written by newspapers in the Philippines.
In October 2019, McCrum and the FT finally published the story that sealed Wirecard’s fake. After spending months trying to track down Wirecard’s Southeast Asian “partners” – and running into dead end after dead end – the paper published a story claiming most of Wirecard’s revenues from the region, ostensibly its most profitable operation, were fraudulent.
It only took another 8 months of dithering from the German authorities before Wirecard finally collapsed in the face of an auditor report confirming $2.1 billion was missing from Wirecard’s balance sheet.
Now, Marsalek is an international fugitive, and McCrum has clinched the biggest corporate takedown by a crusading journalist since the fall of Theranos.
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