- Cyber Polygon: Will The Next Globalist War Game Lead To Another Convenient Catastrophe?
Cyber Polygon: Will The Next Globalist War Game Lead To Another Convenient Catastrophe?
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,
Back in April I published an article titled ‘Globalists Will Need Another Crisis In America As Their Reset Agenda Fails’. In it I noted an odd trend which many of us in the liberty media have become aware of over the years – Almost every major man-made catastrophe in the US and in many other parts of the world in the past couple decades has been preceded by a government or globalist “exercise”. These exercises and war games tend to mimic the exact disaster that would eventually strike the public only days or weeks later. Sometimes the mock disaster exercises and the real events happen at the same time.
The covid pandemic was no exception. It’s quite miraculous…
I have specifically outlined the bizarre “coincidence” of the World Economic Forum’s Event 201 exercise, a war game co-funded by Bill Gates and Johns Hopkins and launched in October of 2019. Event 201 simulated a global novel zoonotic coronavirus pandemic (supposedly spread from bats to people) that “required” a global lockdown response. Only two months later the real thing actually happened. Almost every aspect of the Covid event has played out exactly as was practiced during the WEF war game.
One very disturbing element of the covid response has been the coordinated suppression campaign by Big Tech platforms from YouTube to Facebook and Twitter. This campaign has sought to undermine or destroy any facts, data and opinions which run contrary to the government narrative on covid, even if the official narrative on covid ends up being completely wrong. The strategy was described in detail during Event 201 and it was executed with extreme efficiency among supposedly disconnected companies and governments around the world. It’s almost as if they KNEW a coronavirus pandemic was about to happen, and they were already staged to control the public reaction well in advance.
And let’s be clear because I do not want to seem ambiguous; the World Economic Forum and their globalist partners have been the prime beneficiaries during the pandemic. As WEF head Klaus Schwab has excitedly noted over and over again, the pandemic is a perfect “opportunity” for globalists to fast track what they call the “Great Reset” agenda – A plan to completely dismantle the current political and economic framework of the world and rebuild it into a highly centralized socialist civilization in which they are in complete control and personal freedom is a faded memory.
This is why recent revelations of Covid’s probable lab origins are not at all surprising. Just mentioning this idea a year ago in social media was enough to get you banned. And, if you want to know where to find the truth, always look first to the subjects you are not allowed to discuss. As I stated in my article ‘How Viral Pandemic Benefits The Globalist Agenda’, published in January of 2020 at the very beginning of the outbreak:
“I have a hard time ignoring the strange “coincidence” of the high level biohazard labs in Wuhan in favor of the idea that the virus was launched by chance due to the odd diets of central Chinese people. Given the evidence it appears that the coronavirus was gestated in a lab, not in someone’s bat and snake soup. In 2017, scientists outside of China warned that these labs were not secure and that a virus might escape one of the facilities…..I would use the term “escape” loosely, as there is a possibility that this event was created intentionally…”
Elites like Dr. Anthony Fauci (a close associate of Bill Gates and Bill Gates SR.) directly funded studies at the Wuhan Lab through the NIAID since 2015, and specifically funded the study of the infectious transfer of coronaviruses from bats to other mammals including humans. And yes, the NIAID was in fact involved in “gain of function” experiments using SARS and coronavirus variants at this time, despite Anthony Fauci claiming otherwise. The National Institute Of Health’s own website confirms this.
All of these facts support the argument that covid is a lab created bioweapon, and in my view according to the evidence so far it was released deliberately in close alliance with the Chinese government. Fauci even somehow “predicted” in 2017 that Donald Trump would face a “surprise infectious disease outbreak” during his presidency, stating that “We will definitely get surprised in the next few years…”
The scheme has certainly worked to an extent. In large portions of Europe, Asia and Australia the WEF is getting what it always wanted.
That said, some things did not go as planned. For example, Event 201 predicted an initial 65 million people dead within the first year of the pandemic; this did not happen, and it was not because governments saved any lives. In fact, government lockdowns and restrictions did nothing to stave off the spread of covid and independent studies have proven mask mandates to be completely ineffective in stopping the virus. The reason for the comparatively small body count is the fact that Covid’s death rate is only 0.26% among otherwise healthy people. The only place wear covid is a true threat is in nursing homes among elderly people with preexisting conditions.
Because of the miscalculations of the elites, the reset agenda appears to be failing in some parts of the world. In the US, resistance to the lockdowns as well as the experimental vaccines has grown exponentially to the point that dozens of states are now passing laws which prohibit enforcement of covid restrictions and “medical passports”.
The alternative media has also proven resilient against censorship and information suppression, and we have been proven to be right time and time again. We were the first people to warn that the death rate of covid was being exaggerated (the WHO and other establishment institutions predicted a death rate of at least 3%, FAR above the reality). We were the first people to warn that the lockdowns and mask rules did nothing to stop the spread (states that removed restrictions ended up with FALLING infections and deaths). And, we were the first people to warn that the virus was behaving more like a bioweapon, and that its origin was more likely the Level 4 lab in Wuhan, China, right down the street from the animal market that the Chinese government originally claimed was the source of the outbreak.
We were also the first people to warn that the pandemic would be used as a rationale for the enforcement of vaccine passports, which would create a two tear society designed to force people who do not want to take the mRNA vaccines into compliance. We have been proven right once again as the state of Oregon has become the first in the US to demand proof of vaccination (a passport) before residents are able to enter any businesses or establishments.
We have consistently been called “conspiracy theorists” throughout this event by government bureaucrats and the media. But, we were were right about almost everything, and the mainstream media has been wrong about almost everything. Either that, or they have been knowingly lying about almost everything.
This dynamic is important to understand because I believe the situation is far from over and that more crisis events are about to be engineered (or they will magically happen by coincidence).
My biggest concern right now is the upcoming ‘Cyberpolygon’ exercise being headed by the WEF this July. The war game is meant to “simulate” a cyberattack on vital infrastructure that would lead to a shutdown of the global supply chain, or at least the supply chains within certain nations. As I warned in April, the timing of Cyberpolygon is suspicious. As the covid lockdown agenda is breaking down in the US and the vaccine passports are not winning favor among a large percentage of Americans, the globalists will need another crisis even if they hope to achieve their goals for their Great Reset.
Only weeks after I published my initial concerns about Cyberpolygon, a massive cyberattack was reported which struck the 5,500 mile Colonial Pipeline. The pipeline supplies gasoline to most of the eastern seaboard and after a week of being shut down numerous states were reporting gas shortages. The story has since quietly faded from mainstream news cycles.
In the past few days, yet another major cyberattack has been reported against JBS, a meat company that supplies around 23% of all US beef and pork. Production at JBS has shut down, and now there is the possibility of meat shortages across the country if the problems are not solved soon.
Again, is it just coincidence that these large scale cyberattacks are happening with greater frequency in the lead-up to a WEF’s Cyberpolygon simulation? Or, is Cyberpolygon another Event 201? Is it a beta test for a disaster that is planned for the near future? The WEF is openly comparing future cyber attacks to covid outbreaks, so I’m inclined to suspect the latter:
The supply chain issue has come to the forefront in the wake of the pandemic as retailers have had to deal with intermittent shortages, and manufacturers are facing a lack of components. Not only that, but inflationary troubles are also weighing on supplies. That said, a cyberattack is another animal entirely; whether or not the event is real or staged, the supply chain is fragile because of global interdependency. In the US, there are many necessities that rely on foreign manufacturers or the “just in time” freight system. Preparedness and long term storage are not a part of the vocabulary of the common US business.
I don’t really know if the supply chain could be shut down completely using a cyberattack, but in combination with inflation and draconian pandemic restrictions, it is possible to disrupt the flow of goods for weeks at a time. It is also impossible to predict how many people are prepared for such a calamity. My hope is that more than 30% of Americans have at least begun the path to prepping, but undoubtedly a majority of the country has not. All it would take is a couple weeks of shortages or a grid down scenario and most people would be facing starvation, among other things.
If Event 201 is any indication, then we should remain vigilant and watch carefully for another major cyberattack affecting the supply chain within two months of the WEF’s Cyberpolygon exercise in July.
* * *
If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch. Learn more about it HERE.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/05/2021 – 23:30 - AI 'Smart Potty' Monitors Bowel Health For Gastro Issues
AI ‘Smart Potty’ Monitors Bowel Health For Gastro Issues
According to Duke Today, researchers at Duke announced an artificial intelligence tool that could easily be mounted on a standard toilet to analyze patients’ stools and give gastroenterologists suggestions about bowel health.
Associate Research Professor for Duke University Dr. Sonia Grego is working on the ‘smart toilet’ that takes stool images and sends them directly to a doctor for review.
The device uses an algorithm to monitor a patient’s stool (i.e., loose, normal, or constipated) and the presence of blood, allowing them to diagnose the patient and provide proper treatment.
To develop the artificial intelligence image analysis device, researchers had to train a deep learning algorithm with 3,328 unique stool images and accurately classify anomalies in the stool that would suggest a patient is experiencing gastrointestinal problems.
“Researchers found that the algorithm accurately classified the stool form 85 percent of the time and gross blood detection was accurate in 76 percent of the images,” Duke Today said.
“We are optimistic about patient willingness to use this technology because it’s something that can be installed in their toilet’s pipes and doesn’t require the patient to do anything other than flush,” said Sonia Grego, PhD, founding director of the Duke Smart Toilet Lab and a lead researcher on the study. “This could be especially useful for patients who may not be able to report their conditions, such as those who live in a long-term care facility.”
The prototype smart toilet is promising but has yet to be commercialized as it must undergo more testing.
In some respect, this technology makes a lot of sense, considering more people can’t remember what their stool looked like a day before or don’t regularly record their bowel movements. But like any smart device, there are privacy issues and risks that private stool data could be hacked.
If Duke researchers ever get to the commercialization stage, these smart toilets will likely be installed at long-term care facilities and hospitals. Now convincing the everyday person, such as a baby boomer, that an algorithm will monitor their stool and automatically send pictures to their doctor is a whole other challenge.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/05/2021 – 23:00 - Bovard: Will Treason Mania Destroy America?
Bovard: Will Treason Mania Destroy America?
Authored by James Bovard via The Future of Freedom Foundation,
At the start of the Biden era, America is being torn apart by more allegations of treason than at any time since the Civil War. Historian Henry Adams observed a century ago that politics “has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.” And few things spur hatred more effectively than tarring all political opponents as traitors.
The Founding Fathers carved the Constitution in light of the horrific political abuses that had proliferated in England in prior centuries. That was why there was a narrow definition of treason in the Constitution: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”
After the end of Reconstruction, treason charges became relatively rare in American politics. Wars were probably the biggest propellants, with anyone who opposed American intervention abroad being tagged with the scarlet T. But by the late 1960s, when the futility of the Vietnam War was becoming clear, treason charges had largely lost their political clout. Gen. Alexander Haig, who later became Richard Nixon’s last White House chief of staff, denounced the Pentagon Papers as “devastating … a security breach of the greatest magnitude of anything I’ve ever seen … it’s treasonable” But the Nixon administration’s protests failed to sway the Supreme Court to block the New York Times from publishing the secret official records of decades of U.S. government deceit on Indochina.
Unfortunately, the political exploitation of the 9/11 attacks included reviving treason accusations against anyone who did not cheer George W. Bush’s promise to “rid the world of evil.” On December 6, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft informed the Senate Judiciary Committee, “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and … give ammunition to America’s enemies.” At that point, Bush had already suspended habeas corpus and his underlings were busy sabotaging laws limiting federal surveillance of American citizens. But regardless of how many civil liberties were actually destroyed, critics were traitors.
Run-up to 2016
While Bush was rehabilitated by the mainstream media in recent years as a reward for criticizing Donald Trump, his 2004 reelection campaign relied on tacit treason accusations to tarnish Democrats, liberals, and even a few libertarians. At the 2004 Republican National Convention, keynote speaker Democratic Sen. Zell Miller implied that political opposition was treason: “Now, at the same time young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats’ manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief.”
There was no evidence that such criticism of Bush’s foreign policy was ripping America asunder — but trumpeting the accusation made Bush critics appear a pox on the land. Other Republicans used the same theme. John Thune, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate in South Dakota, denounced Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle: “His words embolden the enemy.” Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman condemned the Kerry campaign for “parroting the rhetoric of terrorists” and warned, “The enemy listens. All listen to what the president said, and all listen to what Senator Kerry said.” Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, stumping for Bush, told audiences, “Political criticism is our enemy’s best friend.” Six weeks before the 2004 election, the Washington Post noted, “President Bush and leading Republicans are increasingly charging that Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry and others in his party are giving comfort to terrorists and undermining the war in Iraq — a line of attack that tests the conventional bounds of political rhetoric.”
In 2006, the New York Times revealed that the Bush administration was illegally seizing personal financial information of millions of Americans. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, declared, “We’re at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous.” Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) also labeled the Times guilty of “treason.” Rep. Ted Poe (R-Tex.) suggested that the Times had become the “Benedict Arnold Press.”
After Barack Obama was elected in 2008, treason allegations simmered down, except for occasional allegations that Obama was a secret Muslim scheming to impose Sharia law on America. Former NSA employee Edward Snowden’s leak of NSA documents was the biggest treason boomlet of that era. Numerous congressmen called for Snowden to be charged with treason, though the Founding Fathers neglected to include “embarrassing the government” in the Constitution’s definition of treason. House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and former NSA chief Michael Hayden publicly joked about putting Snowden on a government kill list.
But the Snowden uproar was a kerfuffle compared to the Pandora’s box opened by the 2016 presidential campaign. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton repeatedly effectively asserted that Republican nominee Donald Trump was a Russian tool, betraying the nation.
Treason in the White House
After Trump’s surprise victory in November 2016, treason became the coin of the realm for denigrating political opposition. Democratic politicians, activists, and their media allies responded to Hillary Clinton’s surprise defeat by smearing Donald Trump for colluding with Russia. Leaks to the media from the FBI, CIA, and other federal agencies spurred raging controversies that contributed to Trump’s firing FBI chief James Comey. That resulted in the appointment of Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to investigate Trump. Endless wrangling followed, including a claim by prominent Democrats claiming that Republicans would be guilty of treason if they released a memo detailing the FBI’s abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Mueller quickly became sacrosanct; liberals even bought votary candles with his likeness. A piece I wrote for The Hill on Mueller’s lawless record as FBI chief spurred 1,500 comments, including denunciations of me as a treason weasel, bearded grifter, Alt-moron, lackey, lickspittle, and librarian (some folks can’t spell “libertarian”). In April 2019, Mueller finally admitted that there was no substantive evidence of collusion but that did not stop the endless “RussiaGate” refrain and treason accusations from Trump critics. Most of Trump’s presidency was permeated by charges of treason against him.
But the Mueller-induced treason prattle was child’s play compared to what followed disputes over the 2020 presidential election. As law professor Jonathan Turley noted, after the media announced Biden won, “All court challenges [to election results] then became unethical for lawyers and all congressional challenges became sedition for members.” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro this past December denounced one challenge to the election results as a “seditious abuse of the judicial process” that was guilty of “misleading the public about a free and fair election and tearing at our Constitution.” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) wailed, “The most serious attempt to overthrow our democracy in the history of our country is under way.” Twitter’s left-wing tilt has helped spur hashtags such as #GOPSeditiousTraitors and #TreasonAgainstAmerica. One leftist activist got 65,000 “likes” when he declared that “Donald Trump should replace Benedict Arnold in history as America’s most reviled traitor.”
On the other side of the political divide, some Republicans sounded equally hellbent on demonizing any opposition to their demands. Republican lawyer Lin Wood declared that Vice President Pence would be guilty of treason for certifying the election results and that he “will face execution by firing squad.” The Pro-Trump duo Diamond and Silk tweeted, “After listening to the leaked call put out by the Washington Post we are convinced that Georgia’s secretary of state and his lawyer need to be arrested for Treason!”
After protesters crashed into the U.S. Capitol on January 6 (some crashed into the building while others sauntered in), treason accusations went into overdrive. The definition of treason was vastly expanded to include members of Congress who filed a lawful challenge against the 2020 electoral tally. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that Republicans who signaled they would not ratify the Electoral College results earlier that month “gave aid and comfort to [protesters] with the idea that they were embracing a lie … that the election did not have legitimacy.” A court of law would never convict Republican members of treason, but Pelosi can convict them in the court of public opinion, thanks to the hanging judges at CNN and MSNBC.
Civil War politics
Many Trump opponents are invoking 1861, denouncing any Republican challenges to the election as the same type of treason supposed to have been committed by states that exited the union. But the Civil War illustrates the catastrophic damage that can result from broad-brush definitions of treason. Northern politicians quickly persuaded their supporters that all Southerners were traitors — a capital offense. In 1864, Gen. William Sherman wired the War Department in Washington, “There is a class of people — men, women, and children — who must be killed or banished before you can hope for peace and order.” Union armies in Virginia, Georgia, and elsewhere late in the war intentionally devastated civilian populations who were considered collectively guilty of secession and treason.
Unfortunately, many pundits and politicians know only a fairy-tale version of the Civil War. The fact that Trump had high support in many southern states is spurring bizarre proposals that would be the final coffin nails into any hope for a semblance of peaceful coexistence between Americans with different views and values. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the media’s favorite progressive congresswoman, declared, “The only way our country is going to heal is through the actual liberation of southern states.” She didn’t specify whether she favored the type of military dictatorship that was ended only by a historic compromise after the fraud-ridden 1876 presidential election. Politico, one of the most respected Washington publications, printed a piece titled, “What Ulysses Grant Can Teach Joe Biden about Putting Down Violent Insurrections.” The piece stressed, “Grant’s approach relied on a combination of brute military force and a drastic curtailment of civil liberties, yet it nevertheless has relevance for the current moment.” The article stressed the need for “overwhelming force” to suppress the type of people who violated the sacred space of the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
Any federal attempt to expunge political dissent in America with “brute military force and a drastic curtailment of civil liberties” would very likely provoke a civil war. But that could be the end result of current trends of presuming that political opponents are traitors who must be exterminated. While Democratic members of Congress and some Biden officials are comforted by the thousands of National Guard troops now occupying Washington at their behest, they would be unwise to presume the troops would obey orders to scourge their countrymen in every nook of the land.
Perhaps the ultimate cause of the proliferation of treason accusations is that politicians have captured far too much control over Americans’ lives. The more power politicians seize, the more unhinged political rhetoric becomes.
American politics is increasingly becoming toxic because presidents nowadays are elective dictators. Rather than a process of selecting a chief executive who will uphold the Constitution and enforce the laws, elections nowadays confer a license to run amok over the lives and property of practically anyone who falls under federal sway. Government has amassed so much power that the vast majority of Americans no longer trust Washington.
The surest recipe for curtailing political vitriol is to reduce political power so elections are not demolition derbies that doom losing sides. Thomas Jefferson in 1799 offered the ideal that can rescue America from strife today: “In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” And if presidents and members of Congress choose to openly scorn their oaths of office and constitutional constraints on their power — well, many Americans would consider that to be treason.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/05/2021 – 22:30 - A Map Of The Online World In Incredible Detail
A Map Of The Online World In Incredible Detail
The internet is intangible, and, as Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang points out, because you can’t see it, it can be hard to comprehend its sheer vastness. As well, it’s difficult to gauge the relative size of different web properties. However, this map of the internet by Halcyon Maps offers a unique solution to these problems.
Inspired by the look and design of historical maps, this graphic provides a snapshot of the current state of the World Wide Web, as of April 2021. Let’s take a closer look!
But First, Methodology
Before diving into an analysis, it’s worth touching on the methodology behind this graphic’s design.
This map highlights thousands of the world’s most popular websites by visualizing them as “countries.” These “countries” are organized into clusters that are grouped by their content type (whether it’s a news website, search engine, e-commerce platform, etc).
The colored borders represent a website’s logo or user interface. In terms of scale, each website’s territory size is based on its average Alexa web traffic ranking. The data is a yearly average, measured from January 2020 to January 2021.
Along the borders of the map, you can find additional information, from ranked lists of social media consumption to a mini-map of average download speeds across the globe.
According to the designer Martin Vargic, this map took about a year to complete.
Top 10 Most Popular Websites
Google and YouTube take up a lot of space, which is unsurprising—they’re the two highest-ranked websites on the list:
Google has held the title as the internet’s most popular website since 2010. While Google’s popularity is well understood, the company’s dominance might be even more widespread than you’d think—across all Google-owned platforms (including YouTube) the company accounts for 90% of all internet searches.
The third highest ranked website is Tmall. For those who don’t know, Tmall is a Chinese e-commerce platform, owned by Alibaba Group. It focuses on Business-to-Consumer (B2C) transactions, and has established itself as the most popular e-commerce website in China—in Q1 2021, Tmall accounted for more than 50% of China’s B2C online transactions.
A High Level Look
When it comes to the top 50 websites overall, a majority are either social networking platforms, search engines, or online marketplaces—while this may not come as a surprise, it’s still powerful to see visualized. For instance, even a huge, well-known website like the New York Times is just a tiny country on this map.
And of course, a map of the internet isn’t complete without mention of the dark web.
While it’s challenging to determine its true size, research indicates that the dark web accounts for a large portion of the internet’s true size. And apparently, it’s growing steadily, with the help of anonymous cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
For the most part, it’s believed that the dark web is used for unsavory reasons – however, it’s not all bad. Because of its anonymous nature, it can be used as a safe space for whistleblowing or activism.
Overall, this map, and the internet as a whole, has many places for us to explore. When you dive in, what “countries” catch your eye?
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/05/2021 – 22:00 - CJ Hopkins: Covidian Push Toward A New Totalitarian 'Normal'
CJ Hopkins: Covidian Push Toward A New Totalitarian ‘Normal’
In a recent interview with Fox News, author and playwright C.J. Hopkins describes the current pandemic paradigm as a worrying prelude to the normalization of a brutal technocratic brand of authoritarianism.
https://video.foxnews.com/v/embed.js?id=6257082211001&w=466&h=263Watch the latest video at foxnews.com
Fox News reports…
As millions of vaccines are distributed around the world each day, mask mandates are lifted, and daily life takes on a semblance of normalcy, one German-based satirist is ringing the alarm bells about what he views as “nascent totalitarianism” seeping its way into society.
C.J. Hopkins is an American playwright and author living in Berlin and a self-described “creature of the left.” Over the past year and a half, Hopkins has been increasingly concerned about long-term implications of what he deemed the “radical restructuring of human society” toward a post-COVID “New Normal,” a term often used by the political class.
“I’m a free speech advocate, against racism, discrimination – anti-authoritarian, basically. And watching our societies transform into this type of authoritarianism, and I go so far as to call it nascent totalitarianism, is horrifying,” Hopkins said in an interview with Fox News.
While Hopkins’ ideological beliefs have aligned with the political left more often than not throughout his career, he has never been one to silently fall in line.
In fact, Hopkins has been openly critical of the lies and deceit coming from the left since the election of President Donald Trump in 2016.
“It was fascinating to watch and track the reaction of the establishment to Donald Trump. He became a figurehead for this populist push back against global capitalist ideology,” said Hopkins.
This “global capitalist ideology” he described, or “GloboCap” as he’s taken to calling it in his writings, is an ideologically monolithic global-capitalist societal structure. Essentially, a ruling class made up of globalist oligarchs.
“It was just so clear they set out to destroy him, make an example of him, and demonize everybody who put him in office,” said Hopkins.
He claimed the demonization of Trump during his four years in office was this ruling class “reminding us who’s in charge and what happens if we elect unauthorized presidents who haven’t been approved by the system.”
Admittedly not a fan of Trump, Hopkins couldn’t help but laugh at all of the ways in which the former president was vilified. “First, he was a Russian intelligence asset, then he was literally Hitler and was going to overthrow the U.S. government with some underground White supremacist militia,” Hopkins recalled, claiming the accusations were “pure fantasy that was taken seriously.”
According to Hopkins, this push toward a post-COVID “New Normal” society in which people are willing to lockdown in their homes when told, wear masks when asked, and carry around their COVID-19 vaccination cards in order to be allowed into public spaces is a continuation of the invisible ruling class asserting its dominance.
“One thing that I’ve been saying to try to get through to people,” said Hopkins, “is just the whole idea of lockdowns. ‘Lockdown,’ this is a prison term, right? And when do you lock down the prison? When the prisoners are rioting and getting rebellious. It’s a way of reminding everyone, ‘Hey, you’re in prison and we’re in charge.’”
“It isn’t really about the vaccines or the tests,” he said in regards to newly implemented guidelines.
“What it’s about is training us, conditioning us to live in a society where we accept this type of control.”
Another aspect of this “synchronization of culture,” as Hopkins called it, and which he finds particularly terrifying is the ideological uniformity being spread by “big supranational entities and corporate media” on behalf of the establishment.
“It’s tearing societies apart, it’s tearing relationships apart, it’s tearing families apart, this extreme polarization and intolerance of dissent and differing views,” he said.
“I feel like if I start questioning or challenging the official COVID narrative, if I start pointing out facts, I’m treated like a suppressive person in the Church of Scientology.”
“The reaction is not one of strong disagreement, anger or to prove me wrong,” he continued.
“The reaction is to shut me up, silence me and make me go away. When a society gets to that place, where dissent is treated that way, that is a really dangerous development.”
Hopkins compared the “suffocating” atmosphere in Berlin to a German word, Gleichschaltung, which arose in the Nazi era and was used to describe the process by which Nazi Germany established a system of totalitarian control over the individual, as well as close coordination of all aspects of society.
All is not doomed, however, according to the American political satirist, who said he has been greatly encouraged by the pushback exhibited in parts of the U.S., naming states like Florida and Texas. Sadly, no such rebellion against the shift toward totalitarianism exists in Germany.
As an artist and a creature of the left, speaking out about the left wing’s authoritarian power grab has been particularly painful for C.J. Hopkins.
“I’m an artist and 99% of the art world has just gone completely ‘New Normal,’” he said, admitting many of his personal relationships have been ruined by him sharing his unpopular opinions.
“Most often I get attacked by folks on the left and liberals who are now telling me that I’m some kind of far-right extremist, but I haven’t changed.”
For Hopkins, remaining silent and falling into line is no longer an option.
“There are some times in history when you need to put those types of career considerations and personal considerations aside because the stakes are that high, and I feel like the stakes are that high this time.”
* * *
C.J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist, and is author of the dystopian classic, Zone 23. His plays have been produced and have toured at theatres and festivals in North America and Europe, and is a featured writer at The Consent Factory.Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/05/2021 – 21:30 - "We Took Out The June 2007 Highs": Morgan Stanley's Sell Signal Just Hit An All Time High
“We Took Out The June 2007 Highs”: Morgan Stanley’s Sell Signal Just Hit An All Time High
For the past several months, Morgan Stanley’s fundamental analysts have been turning increasingly bearish on stocks, with the pessimistic sentiment plateauing earlier this week when chief equity strategist Michael Wilson said that there is far too much optimism in the market, and that while earnings are slowly rising, forward PE multiples are far too high and are set to slide, with “the de-rating about 75% to go or an approximate 15% decline in P/Es from here.” As a result, in Wilson’s view – which is rapidly emerging as the most bearish on Wall Street – “earnings revisions will not be able to offset that de-rating, leaving the overall market vulnerable to a 10-15 % correction over the next 6 months.”
It now appears that Morgan Stanley’s fundamental bearishness has spilled over into the bank’s technical analyst team and as the bank’s chief Euro equity Strategist Matthew Garman writes, for only the fifth time in over 30 years, each of Morgan Stanley’s five market timing indicators are giving a sell signal at the same time.
Not only that, but the bank’s Combined Market Timing Indicator – which has been in sell territory since March – just hit a new all time high of 1.19, surpassing the previous record high seen in June-2007, right around the time of the first great quant crash and before the market collapsed.
According to Garman, the only time equities have risen after a “Full House” Sell Signal was in Feb 17, shortly after the Shanghai Accord kicked in to prevent a global recession. The other previous occasions where there was a “Full House” Sell Signal were Mar-90, May-92, Jun-07. According to MS, “in the 6M post the initial Full House Sell Signal, MSCI Europe has fallen on average 6%.”
So with every in house risk indicator screaming sell, does that mean that Morgan Stanley will have the balls to tell its clients to sell? Why of course not, because in this market where stuff like the AMC, GameStop and Bed Bath squeezes force analysts to admit they no longer have any idea what’s going on…
… Morgan Stanley is keeping the hope and assuming that the current period will be similar to 2017 – the only other time when a massive sell signal did not result in a market plunge.
Back in 2017, we remained constructive despite the signal given i) strong EPS growth, ii) an early cycle environment, iii) EU inflows, iv) low sentiment and v) a rise in M&A. Sentiment metrics may look more elevated than in 2017, but many of those factors remain in place today. While we see a trickier risk-reward for equities globally, we maintain our view that there is a compelling case for Europe to outperform global peers.
Yet even Morgan Stanley is forced to admit that while Defensives may just scrape by after a record sell signal, cyclicals are about to be hammered. The next chart shows the relative performance of Cyclicals versus Defensives after a Full House Sell Signal on. As MS notes, “perhaps unsurprisingly, given the poor performance at the market level, Cyclicals have struggled. In the 6M post the four initial Full House Sell Signals, Cyclicals have underperformed Defensives on average 12%, and this drops to -15% looking at any day
when the MTIs have all said sell at the same time.”This was true even in 2017 when equity markets rose: “we previously cited similarities with the 2017 Full House Sell Signal as reasons to not get overly cautious on equity markets in aggregate at this moment in time. After the February-2017 Full House Sell Signal, MSCI Europe continued to rise pretty consistently through the rest of the year. However, despite strong performance from the market in aggregate, the performance of Cyclicals versus Defensives was much poorer. Between February and June 2017 Cyclicals underperformed Defensives by 6%.”
It’s not just the bank’s sell signal that is prompting concerns about the future returns of cyclicals: Borrowing a page from our own warnings (see “China’s Credit Impulse Just Turned Negative, Unleashing Global Deflationary Shockwave“), Morgan Stanley looks at “a number of China data points which are giving warning signs” first and foremost the collapse in China’s credit impulse, to wit:
While credit tightening has been front-loaded in 1H21, as outlined here, our economists remain constructive on China’s growth recovery. Having said that, a number of Chinese data points do suggest the Cyclical bounce looks overextended. China’s credit impulse has just turned negative, and historically this has provided a lead indicator for the year-on-year performance of European Cyclicals (Exhibit 5). Similarly, the relative performance of Cyclicals versus Defensives has closely tracked moves in Chinese 10Y bond yields, which are now at their lowest levels since September 2020, standing in sharp contrast to the performance of Cyclicals.
Putting it all together, readers have to ask themselves if what is coming will be an analog of the one and only episode on history when the market did not plunge after all Morgan Stanley market timing indicators hit a sell (and were at an all time high), or will this case be similar to Mar-90, May-92, Jun-07 when the outcome was anything but a happy ending.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/05/2021 – 21:00 - High-Ranking Chinese Defector Reportedly Working With DIA Has "Direct Knowledge" Of China's Bioweapons Program
High-Ranking Chinese Defector Reportedly Working With DIA Has “Direct Knowledge” Of China’s Bioweapons Program
Authored by Jennifer Van Laar via RedState.com,
A person believed to be among the highest-ranking defectors ever to the United States from the People’s Republic of China has been working with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for months, sources inside the intelligence community have told RedState on condition of anonymity.
The defector has direct knowledge of special weapons programs in China, including bioweapons programs, those sources say.
The information provided to RedState corroborates and clarifies Thursday evening’s reporting by journalist Adam Housley.
Being told the increased pressure on China in recent days is due to a defector with intimate knowledge. In fact, Wray didn’t know right away because they wanted to make sure they got all they needed before telling him.
— Adam Housley (@adamhousley) June 4, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
RedState’s sources say that’s partially true. FBI Director Christopher Wray was “ambushed” with the information, they say, and Langley was also unaware. Sources say DIA leadership kept the defector within their Clandestine Services network to prevent Langley and the State Department from accessing the person, whose existence was kept from other agencies because DIA leadership believes there are Chinese spies or sources inside the FBI, CIA, and several other federal agencies.
Also…US intelligence believes China is trying to produce variants that suggest it came from bats to cover up that it originally came from a lab. The belief is still that it escaped accidentally, but was allowed to spread.
— Adam Housley (@adamhousley) June 4, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Again…what I reported tonight. US intelligence has a Chinese defector with Wuhan info. AND China is trying to produce variants that suggest it came from bats to cover up that coronavirus originally came from a lab
— Adam Housley (@adamhousley) June 4, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
More information will be published as it becomes available to RedState.
* * *
UPDATE 12:30 PM PDT, June 4, 2021
Sources tell RedState the defector has been with the DIA for three months and that he has provided an extensive, technically detailed debrief to US officials. In DIA’s assessment, the information provided by the defector is legitimate.
Sources say the level of confidence in the defector’s information is what has led to a sudden crisis of confidence in Dr. Anthony Fauci, adding that U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) personnel detailed to DIA have corroborated very technical details of information provided by the defector.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/05/2021 – 20:30 - An Inconvenient Truth: EVs May Offer A "Negligible" CO2 Difference From ICE Vehicles
An Inconvenient Truth: EVs May Offer A “Negligible” CO2 Difference From ICE Vehicles
Are the carbon footprints of EVs really as drastically lower than that of internal combustion engine vehicles? When considering the amount of carbon and CO2 created from assembling lithium ion batteries, one firm thinks the difference could be “negligible”.
Such was the topic of a new blog post by natural resource investors Goehring & Rozencwajg (G&R), a “fundamental research firm focused exclusively on contrarian natural resource investments with a team with over 30 years of dedicated resource experience.”
The firm, established in 2015, posted a blog entry entitled “Exploring Lithium-ion Electric Vehicles’ Carbon Footprint” this week, where they call into question a former ICE vs. EV comparison performed by the Wall Street Journal and, while citing work performed by Jefferies, argue that there could literally be “no reduction in CO2 output” in some EV vs. ICE comparisons.
Their analysis “details the tremendous amount of energy (and by extension CO2) needed to manufacture a lithium-ion battery.” Because a typical EV is on average 50% heavier than a similar internal combustion engine, the analysis notes that the “embedded carbon” in an EV (i.e., when it rolls off the lot) is therefore 20–50% more than an internal combustion engine.
The report notes:
Our analysis suggests a modern lithium-ion battery has approximately 135,000 miles of range before it degrades to the point of becoming unusable. An extended-range Tesla Model 3 has an 82 kWh battery and consumes approximately 29 kWh per 100 miles. Assuming each charge cycle has a ~95% round-trip efficiency and a battery can achieve 500 cycles before starting to degrade, we conclude a Model 3 can drive 134,310 miles before dramatically losing range.
Incidentally, Tesla’s Model 3 warranty covers the battery for the lesser of eight years or 120,000 miles and does not apply until the battery has degraded by at least 30%. If the Jefferies analysis is correct (and we believe it is), then an EV will reach carbon-emission parity with an internal-combustion vehicle just as its battery requires replacement. This will come as a huge disappointment for those believing that EV adoption will have significant impacts on CO2 reduction.
The blog post then goes on to critique a WSJ analysis that concluded it would only take 20,000 miles to “break-even” with an internal combustion engine:
First, it compares a Tesla Model 3 (a sedan) with a Toyota Rav4 (an SUV). An entry-level Honda Civic, which we believe is a more appropriate comparison, would improve the ICE fuel efficiency by 20%. Next, after consulting the footnotes, The Wall Street Journal article assumes 80 kg of CO2 emission per of battery. This estimate appears to come from a 2019 Swedish Energy Agency report in which they reduce their carbon intensity by half compared with the year prior.
The motivation for lowering their estimates was the use of “close to 100 percent fossil free energy […] which is not common yet, but likely will be in the future.” In other words, the cost and carbon-intensity of lithium-ion batteries is predicated on renewable energy which itself requires cheap and carbon-efficient lithium-ion batteries.
“Even if The Wall Street Journal figures are accurate, we believe most investors still do not appreciate how little the magnitude of potential carbon savings from lithium-ion EVs is,” G&R writes.
The post concludes with some starkly “inconvenient truths”: that if a global analysis was performed using figures put together by Jefferies, instead of those used by the Wall Street Journal analysis, “the difference would be negligible — there would be no reduction in CO2 output.”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/05/2021 – 20:00 - 3 Points The Media Is Still Getting Wrong About Wuhan Lab Theory (& The Documents To Prove It)
3 Points The Media Is Still Getting Wrong About Wuhan Lab Theory (& The Documents To Prove It)
Authored by Sharyl Attkisson, op-ed via The Epoch Times,
1. U.S. Taxpayer Money Did Go to Controversial ‘Gain of Function’ Research
Thanks to some confusing verbal gymnastics by Dr. Anthony Fauci, some in the media are giving the impression that there’s no proof U.S. tax money funded “gain of function” research or that, perhaps, the research didn’t qualify as gain of function. However, the evidence on this point is clear cut.
A 2015 published study specifically discloses that the research is gain of function research that took bat coronavirus that was harmless to people—and made it infectious in humans. The study further states that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) approved continuation of the research even amid a general ban on such studies. (See study excerpt below.)
Excerpt from controversial 2015 gain of function study funded by NIH and approved to continue beyond publication date. (Screenshot via Nature.com)
The research was conducted by numerous U.S. scientists including Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina with the lead virologist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology: Shi Zhengli. (See study authors below.)
Excerpt from controversial 2015 gain of function study funded by NIH and approved to continue beyond publication date. (Screenshot via Nature.com)
2. The Gain of Function Research with China Did Not Only Receive U.S. Support and Money Through the Nonprofit ‘EcoHealth Alliance,’ but Also Directly
Many media reports refer to several millions of dollars in tax money sent from the NIH to the Wuhan lab via the New York-based nonprofit “EcoHealth Alliance.” However, research with the lab, and the lab itself, received significant additional U.S. support including:
-
Grants directly from the NIH.
-
Grants directly from Dr. Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the NIH. (See grant numbers highlighted below.)
Excerpt from controversial 2015 gain of function study funded by NIH and approved to continue beyond publication date. (Screenshot via Nature,com)
-
Additional funds from EcoHealth Alliance that were initially undisclosed. (See correction to the study below.)
Excerpt from a correction issued on the controversial 2015 gain of function study. (Screenshot via Nature.com)
-
Assistance from the University of Texas. (See excerpt from study below.)
Excerpt from controversial 2015 gain of function study. (Screenshot via Nature.com)
-
Resources from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). (See study disclosure below.)
Excerpt from controversial 2015 gain of function study. (Screenshot via Nature.com)
3. The Chinese Wuhan Lab Received Direct U.S. Support, in Addition to the Indirect Grants From EcoHealth Alliance
State Department cables from January 2018 detail assistance from the University of Texas Medical Branch, including university “researchers … helping train technicians who work” in the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab. The Texas lab is supported by Dr. Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under NIH. (See excerpt from cable below.)
Excerpt from State Department cables from January 2018. (Screenshot via Washington Post)
* * *
Sharyl Attkisson is the New York Times bestselling author of “Stonewalled,” a five-time Emmy Award winner, and the host of Sinclair’s national investigative television program “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/05/2021 – 19:30 -
- IRS To Ultra Rich Looking To Dodge Taxes In Puerto Rico: 'We're Waiting For You'
IRS To Ultra Rich Looking To Dodge Taxes In Puerto Rico: ‘We’re Waiting For You’
Last month we noted how hedge fund managers have been descending on Puerto Rico in the hopes of dodging Biden tax hikes, and to take advantage of tax incentives rolled out in 2012 which have lured high net-worth individuals, corporations and cryptocurrency traders alike.
If you fall under any of the above and you’re falsely claiming to be a resident of Puerto Rico, the IRS has a message for you: ‘We’re waiting for you…’
According to Bloomberg Tax, the agency has been the focus of a “sweeping” review to examine individuals who took advantages of the tax incentives. According to the report, “More than 4,000 mainland U.S. residents and firms have moved to the territory between 2012 and 2019, revealing potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in lost tax revenue to the U.S. government, according to an IRS report delivered to Congress.”
At issue are taxpayers who may have excluded income subject to U.S. tax, or failed to file and report income altogether when they moved to Puerto Rico, according to the IRS notice. The agency is also targeting those who claim to be bona fide residents of Puerto Rico but may be “erroneously reporting” U.S. income to evade taxes.
The IRS’s push is taking place as Biden’s proposed tax increases have triggered moves by America’s wealthiest from high-tax states like New York and California, while hedge funds like Izzy Englander’s Millennium Management and ExodusPoint Capital Management have moved to establish subsidiaries on the island. An ExodusPoint spokesman declined to comment, while a representative for Millennium did not respond. -Bloomberg Tax
Tax attorneys who advise HNW clients on Puerto Rican tax incentives are already reporting that they’ve received requests for information from the IRS, while more audits are expected now that the US tax filing deadline has passed.
“The IRS doesn’t start a campaign and not follow through,” said international tax layer J. Clark Armitage. “There are going to be a lot of audits.”
The Puerto Rico crackdown is part of a wider sweep by the Treasury Department, which estimated that wealthy taxpayers are hiding billions of dollars in income. According to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the tax gap between what’s owed and what’s collected could grow to $7 trillion over the next decade if nothing is done.
“One of the purposes of a campaign is to stop whatever fraud is going on while you’re doing the investigations and audits,” said former IRS commissioner John Koskinen. “You like to stop people in their tracks.”
Campaigns by the IRS often take years to organize, as agents begin to detect factual patterns that indicate a significant loss of revenue due to non-compliance. In the case of Puerto Rico, much of the focus will be on establishing whether individuals are truly island residents and whether they properly sourced income to Puerto Rico.
Unlike previous IRS efforts, the campaign’s origins began in Congress after lawmakers requested a report from the agency in their 2020 appropriations bill over concerns Puerto Rico’s tax laws may be enabling tax avoidance and that federal and state governments were being shorted revenue.
“Every revenue authority everywhere is facing the same issue of needing to find an efficient process when there are fewer resources and budget constraints,” said Sharon Katz-Pearlman, global head of dispute resolution and controversy for KPMG.
The IRS’ report to Congress calculated that more than 1,924 applicants—corporations, LLCs, partnerships, and other types—had been granted tax benefits under the Exports Services Act (formerly known as Act 20) as of March 2020 based on partial information provided by Puerto Rico. Act 20 offers entities a 4% corporate rate on business income and 100% tax exemption on dividends. That provision along with the Individual Investors Act have now been consolidated into a new incentive law to attract individuals and investments to the island.
Read the rest of the report here.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/05/2021 – 19:00 - Watch Live: Trump Returns To Political Stage At NC GOP Convention
Watch Live: Trump Returns To Political Stage At NC GOP Convention
Donald Trump will return to the political stage Saturday night with a speech at the North Carolina Republican Convention – his first major speech since CPAC in February, but more importantly – his first since he was vindicated over the possibility that COVID-19 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
It also comes after anti-Trump GOP Congresswoman Liz Cheney (WY) was outed from her leadership position due to her frequent criticism of Trump.
In a Friday statement, the former president said that it would be “a great honor to be speaking at the North Carolina GOP convention,” adding “I understand the place will be packed, all records broken!”
Trump carried North Carolina during both of his presidential bids – visiting the state 14 times during the final year of his presidency. He’s scheduled to speak at 7 p.m. to a sold out audience of 1,250 people.
Watch:
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/05/2021 – 18:45 - COVID, Learned Helplessness, And Control
COVID, Learned Helplessness, And Control
In the post-vaccination era, why don’t people remove their masks? Learned helplessness, employed as a control tool.
Learned helplessness is well-documented. It takes place when an individual believes he continuously faces a negative, uncontrollable situation and stops trying to improve his circumstances, even when he has the ability to do so. Discovering the loss of control elicits a passive reaction to a harmful situation. Psychologists call this a maladaptive response, characterized by avoidance of challenges and the collapse of problem-solving when obstacles arise. You give up trying to fight back.
An example may help: you must keep up with ever-changing mask and other hygiene theatre rules, many of which make no sense (mask in the gym, but not the pool; mask when going to the restaurant toilet but not at your table, NYC hotels are closed while Vegas casinos are open, Disney California closed while Disney Florida was open) and comply. You could push back, but you have been made afraid at a core level (forget about yourself rascal, you’re going to kill grandma if you don’t do what we say) and so you just give in. Once upon a time we were told a vaccine would end it all, yet the restrictions remain largely in place. You’re left believing nothing will fix this. Helpless to resist, you comply “out of an abundance of caution.”
American psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven Maier created the term “learned helplessness” in 1967. They were studying animal behavior by delivering electric shocks to dogs (it was a simpler time.) Dogs who learned they couldn’t escape the shock simply stopped trying, even after the scientists removed a barrier and the dog could have jumped away.
Learned helplessness has three main features: a passive response to trauma, not believing that trauma can be controlled, and stress.
Example: you are being stalked by a killer disease which often has no outward symptoms. There is nothing you can do but hide inside and buy things from Amazon. The government failed to stop the virus initially, failed to warn you, failed to supply ventilators and PPE gear, and failed to produce a vaccine quick enough. You may die. You may kill your family members along the way. You have lost your job by government decree and are forced to survive on unemployment and odd stimulus check, manufactured dependence. It is all very real: WebMD saw a 251 percent increase in searches for anxiety this April.
Americans, with their cult-like devotion to victimhood, are primed for learned helplessness. Your problems are because you’re a POC, or fat, or on some spectrum. You are not responsible, can’t fix something so systemic, and best do what you are told.
The way out is to allow people to make decisions and choices on their own. This therapy is used with victims of learned helplessness such as hostages. During their confinement all the important decisions of their life, and most of the minor ones, were made by their captors. Upon release, many hostages fear things as simple as a meal choice and need to be coaxed out of helplessness one micro-choice at a time.
Example: you cannot choose where to stand, so follow the marks on the floor. Ignore the research saying three feet apart is as useful/useless as six feet apart. Don’t think about why the rules are the same inside a narrow hallway and outside in the fresh air but don’t apply at all on airplanes.
Kin to learned helplessness are enforcers. Suddenly your waitress transitions from someone serving you into someone ordering you to wear a mask, sit alone, eat outside, etc. Flight attendants morph from delivering drinks to holding the power to have security haul you to jail for unmasking when not actively eating. Companies once run by entrepreneurs are today controlled by the harassment stalking undead from HR. We’ve become a republic of hall monitors. And there it is. The wrong people are in charge.
One of the better examples of learned helplessness is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a great book made into an impressive movie starring a lean Jack Nicholson. Nurse Ratched cows a group of mentally ill men into complete learned helplessness, encouraging them to rat each other out for small offenses, and to follow her every order no matter how absurd. The kicker comes near the end when we learn all of the men (except Nicholson) are free to leave the hospital at any time. They just… can’t.
It is amazing how fast people stepped into the Nurse Ratched roll. Within moments of COVID’s arrival in the national conscience, officials like California’s Gavin Newsom, and New York’s power bottom twins Andrew Cuomo and Bill De Blasio raced to assume dictatorial emergency powers. They spent not one moment assessing the impact of their decisions to lock down against the effects of the lockdown. They ignored information questioning the value of lockdown. They turned topsy-turvy the idea in a free society the burden of proof is on those who would restrict freedom and not on those who resist such restrictions.
They were aided in manufacturing learned helplessness by the most sophisticated propaganda operation ever created. Already engorged with the coin of three years of fake news, the legacy media saw the value of a new crisis toward their two real goals: make as much money as possible garnering clicks, and defeating Donald Trump. Previous shows, Russiagate with a hat tip to 9/11 when Americans demanded fewer freedoms to feel safer, illustrated the way. On a 24/7 basis America were injected: you are helpless and Donald “COVID” Trump will kill you. Your only hope is to comply fully with the people at CNN who are administering the electric shocks.
Truth is useless to propagandists, actually a threat. Look at what turned out to be false (in addition to Russiagate): we never ran out of ventilators or PPE or nurses or ICU beds or morgues. Masks were not really needed outdoors. We did in fact develop a vaccine, several in fact, in less than a year. Almost everyone who died was elderly or had serious comorbidities but we salivated over “new case numbers” as the primary metric anyway because they went up so much faster. When people questioned the real world view against the media portrayal, they were told about “asymptomatic COVID” or shunned as hoaxers. Everyone makes mistakes. But just as with Russiagate, all the media mistakes swung one way.
It worked. Condo boards boarded up their gyms. Restaurants forced diners to eat outside in the rain. Entire industries, such as tourism and hospitality, disappeared overnight. New groups were shoved into poverty and unemployment. Children were denied education, criminals released from jails. People were told not to hug their loved ones. Saving Grandma meant she died untouched in a hospital room. The government denied you the chance to say one final goodbye to the person who raised you and you didn’t fight back? Now that’s control.
Every time a bit of dissenting information popped up — Florida opening its beaches for Spring Break, for example — the media rushed in to declare everyone was gonna die. Texas was declared dead, South Dakota was declared dead, and Americans believed it all even when reports of survivors started drifting out of Disney World. Learned helplessness is hard to unlearn. One Harvard professor explains our brains evolved to encode fear so well, it’s hard to turn off.
Americans are not comfortable accepting their lives being manipulated at this level, the way for example many Russians assume it to be so. We tend to dismiss such things as conspiracy theories and make an Oliver Stone joke. But ask yourself how many of the temporary security and surveillance measures enacted after 9/11 are still controlling our lives almost 20 years later. Is the terror threat still so real the FBI needs to monitor our social media in bulk? Was it ever?
Nothing here is to say vaccines don’t work, or are themselves dangerous. That’s another debate. This is about the politics of mass control. Add up the “doesn’t really make sense but we do it anyway” COVID rules and try to make sense of them. Why would otherwise smart leaders implement such rules, for example in New York’s case, purposely impoverishing a city or seeking to defund the police in the midst of triple digit rises in crime? Every time your answer is “it just doesn’t make sense” consider a scenario beyond coincidence where it would make sense however out there that might be. It might be the most important thing you can do.
Then look out the window. Remember “10 days to flatten the curve?” With no voting or debate, a system based on a medical procedure capable of controlling our travel, which businesses we can visit, which hotels we can stay in, what jobs we can hold, what education we can access, at which point it is no more “voluntary” than breathing, was put into place. We no longer need to ask what is happening. The real question is always why.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/05/2021 – 18:30 - Watch: Delta Fight Attendant Tackles Would-Be Hijacker
Watch: Delta Fight Attendant Tackles Would-Be Hijacker
Delta Flight 386 from Los Angeles to Nashville on Friday was diverted to New Mexico after a passenger attempted to breach the cockpit and hijack the plane.
Albuquerque International Sunport received distress calls from the plane after a passenger attempted to breach the cabin, airport spokeswoman Stephanie Kitts, who was quoted by USA Today.
Cellphone video captured the incident and one brave flight attendant who “tackled and zip-tied the man before anyone was harmed,” said Fox 11 Los Angeles.
— 💡 (@1WaySuggs) June 4, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Another video shows the would-be hijacker was zip-tied with his hands behind his back.
— 💡 (@1WaySuggs) June 4, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Twitter handle “@1WaySuggs” uploaded both videos to Twitter which have since gone viral. He tweeted, “y’all a n**ga tried to hijack my plane on God we just had to emergency land the done hogtied this nigga up on God my life wild.”
A photo of the flight attendant who apprehended the passenger was later seen seated with hands together and his head down after the incident. He must have had so much adrenaline running through his body after his heroic action.
@Delta this man needs an award.. just saved the plane. LA flight to Nashville.. pic.twitter.com/WZWO7bK4L5
— rich (@NoKapRich) June 4, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
When the flight landed in New Mexico, airport police took the man into custody, who was later turned into the Albuquerque FBI.
On Friday evening, Albuquerque FBI tweeted: “The #FBI is responding to a report of a diverted flight at @ABQSunport . There is no threat to the public at this time.”
Delta released a statement but left out the fact that a passenger attempted to hijack the plane. Delta spokesman Anthony Black said Flight 386 landed without incident in Albuquerque, and he praised the crew and passengers on the flight for “detaining an unruly passenger.”
At the time, the 737-900 had 162 passengers and six crew members.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/05/2021 – 18:00 - A Couple Things About Inflation
A Couple Things About Inflation
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
The higher they push phantom “assets” based on exponential increases in leverage, the greater the air gap between essential tangibles and fantasy.
Inflation is in the news, but there are a couple of things about inflation that don’t get much coverage. Let’s start with the trope that inflation is always a monetary phenomenon. Actually, no.
When nutrient-rich soil and fresh water reserves are depleted, crop yields decline and as human population and appetites for animal protein soar, food becomes scarce. When food becomes scarce, prices rise accordingly. It doesn’t matter what you do with money supply, prices will rise in relation to everything used as “money:” gold, shells, paper with colorful pictures printed on it, giant stone disks, quatloos, cryptocurrencies, etc.
You could eliminate “money” entirely and the relative cost of food would rise even in a barter-only system.
What few seem to grasp is that there is a hierarchy of needs that ruthlessly separates “needs” from “wants,” and the value of “wants” quickly drops to zero in real scarcities. When you’re hungry, I mean really hungry, the value of your yacht, collectible muscle car, NFT, etc. falls to zero if those with food have zero interest in your “valuables.” An ounce of gold for an egg? It all depends on what’s actually a need.
In a similar fashion, real scarcity separates phantom intangible assets from real assets. If you glance at the chart of tangible and intangible assets below, you’ll note that phantom intangible assets are now the overwhelming majority of what’s laughably called “assets.”
You want to trade your shares in XYZ Corporation for a 50-pound bag of rice? How do I know the “value” of shares in XYZ Corporation won’t be zero tomorrow? No, thank you. Come back when you have something tangible and tangibly useful (i.e. it will hold its value tomorrow) to trade for the rice.
We inhabit a fantasy world in which scarcity has been banished by the gods of globalized markets and phantom assets built on sandcastles of leverage are the most valuable assets on the planet. Global stocks are now worth $115 trillion, woo-hoo.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the vast majority of humanity trades their labor for food and other essentials. The funny thing about human labor is that thanks to population growth, globalization and financialization, the relative value of labor has been in decline for decades. (see chart below) This means that as prices of essentials rise due to scarcities, the quantities of tangibles that labor can buy decline, meaning those trading their labor for essentials can afford fewer essentials.
In other words, their prosperity is in a free-fall as scarcities push up prices of essentials.
This free-fall of labor’s value and thus of prosperity is visible in the RAND chart of income 1975-2018 and in the Federal Reserve database chart of the wealth held by the bottom 50% of American households. The RAND chart of income by the top 1%, top 9% and bottom 90% shows that 25% of the bottom 90%’s income–virtually all from labor–has been transferred to the top 1% (the share of taxable income going to the top 1% rose 2.5-fold) and to a lesser degree, to the top 9%. (Recall that the top 9% mostly rely on earnings from labor, hence their modest increase compared to the top 1%.)
The pathetically thin slice of wealth held by the bottom 50% of American households has fallen to near-zero. It’s fallen by 2/3 since the recent peak in the mid-1990s, the last “boom” that trickled down to the bottom 90%.
The bottom 50% have no reserves to draw upon as prices of tangible essentials rise. They have no wealth to sell, and the value of their labor as measured in purchasing power of essentials is in an accelerating decline.
This is a longstanding reality of civilization. As productivity rises, the human population expands up to the carrying capacity of the biosphere. Labor’s earnings rise as producers expand production to meet rising demand. Human population and appetites for goodies keep expanding, overshooting sustainable supply while labor expands to the point that it is in oversupply. Wages decline and labor thus loses purchasing power just as prices of essentials soar. Discontent and disorder increase and states and civilizations fall.
I’ve long recommended these books on the fundamental cycle of civilization:
The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History
This leads us to the last chart of diminishing returns on the phantom fixes of monetary manipulation and bread and circuses free money. The Federal Reserve can create currency out of thin air but it can’t conjure up productive land, fresh water, copper ore, oil, or food.
The Fed can conjure up phantom “wealth” based on leverage but this relies on a heavily hyped faith in a fantasy world in which all tangible scarcities are magically turned to abundance by central bank money creation and low interest rates, and a splash of technocrat pixie dust: carbon taxes, windmills and drones flitting about.
The returns on fantasies and phantom “assets” are also in a free-fall. Monetary and fiscal stimulus is skyrocketing to keep the travesty of a mockery of a sham “prosperity” from collapsing into a putrid sinkhole of failed financial farce.
The higher they push phantom “assets” based on exponential increases in leverage, the greater the air gap between essential tangibles and fantasy.
* * *
If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.
* * *
My recent books:
A Hacker’s Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).
Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World (Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).
Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).
The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)
Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/05/2021 – 17:30 - Hong Kong Parking Spot Sells For Record-Breaking $1.3 Million
Hong Kong Parking Spot Sells For Record-Breaking $1.3 Million
Even as thousands of Hong Kongers flee to the UK or elsewhere to escape China’s crackdown on political freedoms, the city-state’s property market is breaking yet another record.
Citing a report in the Hong Kong Economic Times, Bloomberg reports that Wharf Holdings and Nan Fung Group sold a parking space for HK$10.2 million ($1.3 million) at the luxury Mount Nicholson residential project, according to a source. The price beat the previous record of HK$7.6 million for a spot in an office tower set back in 2019, before Hong Kong’s protest movement triggered a crackdown by Beijing that has engulfed the territory’s future in uncertainty, especially since China can simply snatch anyone – foreign nationals or otherwise – from Hong Kong’s jurisdiction.
Mount Nicholson has a reputation for being one of the most iconic upscale projects in Hong Kong. At one point, an apartment in the project was the most expensive in Asia before the title was taken by CK Asset Holdings Ltd.’s 21 Borrett Road in February.
As that record-breaking sale might suggest, the parking spot record isn’t a total surprise. HK has been seeing a comeback in the luxury home market in recent months, seeing record-breaking transactions as buyer’s confidence returns. A house on Hong Kong’s famous Peak (a luxury residential area overlooking the rest of the city) just rented for HK$1.6 a month in May.
Still, despite its recent sharp rebound, Hong Kong’s economy “isn’t out of the woods just yet,” according to Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Edward Yau. HK’s economy grew 7.9% in the first quarter of 2021 vs. a year ago, marking the first economic expansion after six consecutive quarters of contraction. Yau appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” Thursday morning to discuss it.
While retail sales have seen a strong rebound, tourism remains weak, and the expansion is on uneven footing, Yau said.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/05/2021 – 17:00 - The Case Of Joe Rogan: Vaccine Policy And Freedom Of Speech
The Case Of Joe Rogan: Vaccine Policy And Freedom Of Speech
Authored by Finn Andersen via The Mises Institute,
Recently, Joe Rogan, one of the largest podcast hosts in the United States (10.6 million YouTube subscribers), expressed the following opinion about the vaccination of young adults:
If you are 21 and ask me if you should get the vaccine, I would say “no”. If you are a healthy person and exercise all the time, and are young and eat well, I don’t think you have to worry about this.
Joe Rogan is correct about the COVID vaccine for kids & young healthy people.pic.twitter.com/AxGwFxAMVB
— Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) April 27, 2021
This comment created a furor in the United States, where the government’s target is vaccination of the entire adult population.
For these few sentences he received a sharp reprimand from the White House and Dr. Fauci, who accused Rogan of being selfish and endangering vulnerable members of society.
Given the very low covid risk for this age group, Rogan’s comments seem to make some sense. Wouldn’t it be more altruistic, rather than selfish, to let a vaccine dose first go to someone who needs it more? Either way, such criticism is ludicrous when it comes from a government that so often acts contrary to the interests of society.
Additionally, considering the way in which the covid vaccines were launched, some skepticism on the part of Joe Rogan, and the general population, seems warranted. Indeed, these vaccines have become available so quickly that their Phase II and the Phase III development has been conducted in parallel and is not yet completed. In the US, the covid vaccines are currently approved only as emergency measures by the FDA, though nearly 260 million Americans have already been vaccinated.
In the case of AstraZeneca, the pressure to get a vaccine out as quickly as possible caused an issue in the dosage during the first distributions. In many European countries this vaccine has not been recommended to young people because of a perceived risk of blood clots. In Russia, an antibody test is recommended before vaccination to ensure that the patient is not already immune, in order to avoid wasting doses and to avoid overloading the body with antibodies.
In this context, it does not certainly seem shocking to suggest, like Joe Rogan, that healthy young adults may not really need to get vaccinated.
Government Agents Attacking the Opinions of Private Citizens
In reality, the real question is not whether Joe Rogan was right or wrong in saying what he said. Criticism of a citizen by the US government is disturbing regardless of the comments that were made. What about freedom of speech when the state criticizes an individual’s speech?
The protection of freedom of speech and of the press in the USA is among the strongest that exists. The First Amendment to the Constitution in theory offers extremely robust protection with its famous words: “Congress will not make any law curtailing freedom of speech, or of the press.”
But this implies that it is not unconstitutional for the authorities to publicly judge the speech of its citizens, such as Rogan.
As reported by Glenn Greenwald, this represents in practice a government control of speech. He quotes a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner who notes that:
Politicians have realized that they can silence the speech of those with different political viewpoints by public bullying.
For politically “sensitive” subjects, authorities do not accept deviations from their official story. This deleterious situation has existed since long before the pandemic. Today, it is about vaccine policy, but yesterday, about the war on terrorism, about Russiagate, about the corruption of Joe Biden, and many other topics. Greenwald explains:
When it comes to censorship of politically adverse content, sometimes explicit censorship demands are unnecessary. Where a climate of censorship prevails, companies anticipate what those in power want them to do by anticipatorily self-censoring to avoid official retaliation. Speech is chilled without direct censorship orders being required.
Concretely, this means that when Joe Rogan is publicly criticized by the authorities, countless other content is never published. This process of media self-censorship, without open and direct coercion from the state, is of course part of the propaganda system that Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky famously called “manufacturing consent.”
For intrepid journalists who still take the risk of publicly challenging the official consensus, the lucrative and prestigious positions in mainstream media are no longer accessible. As shown by Greenwald, the risk to their reputation that they incur is real, because they are also then systematically victims of unscrupulous practices, such as being accused of being a conspiracy theorist or of inciting terrorism. These accusations, usually completely unfounded, can destroy careers in the toxic politically correct environment that exists in the United States.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. The authorities go much further than these mafia methods of intimidation. The main social networks in the US are now filled with reliable servants of the state, who filter and censor persons or publications at the request of various state institutions, the same way that mainstream media has behaved for ages.
With respect to covid vaccine policy, for example, Facebook and YouTube today systematically censor comments and videos that are not in line with the official version of governments, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the World Health Organization (WHO). The fact that these institutions have often changed their opinion about which health policy to recommend does not seem to be a problem.
A Constitution Is Not Sufficient Protection
This situation with Joe Rogan should remind everyone that the fight for individual freedoms, including freedom of speech and of the press, is a permanent struggle. No document, be it the US Constitution or the Declaration of Human Rights, gives an absolute guarantee against the violations of these freedoms by the state, as shown by many historical examples.
The authoritarian tendencies of nominally democratic governments are nothing new. Indeed, these governments have a natural interest in trying to influence—not to say shape—public opinion. Recent history shows that in collaboration with traditional mainstream media and now social networks, the government is willing to do almost anything to prevent the electorate from understanding its real behavior. The fame of Joe Rogan will at least have contributed a little to exposing this truth.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/05/2021 – 16:30 - "Unloading A Revolver Into The Head Of Any White Person": Yale Features Violent, Racist Diatribe By Psychiatrist
“Unloading A Revolver Into The Head Of Any White Person”: Yale Features Violent, Racist Diatribe By Psychiatrist
An official event at the Yale School of Medicine featured a New York-based psychiatrist telling students she fantasizes about “unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way.”
Disturbingly the talk entitled “The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind” was held as part of the continuing program, the Child Study Center Grand rounds. The event was held in April, but audio only late this week of New York-based Dr. Aruna Khilanani gleefully musing about murdering white people became available and was posted on journalist Bari Weiss’s Substack.
Getty Images The presentation by Khilaniani, who is described in a separate interview as a “Forensic Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst, with expertise in violence, racism, and marginalized identities” has since gone viral and earned widespread condemnation for its brazen and overt racism, which includes expressing a desire to commit genocide.
“I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a fucking favor,” Khilanani said at one point in the talk.
Prior to this, she had told the Yale students, “This is the cost of talking to white people at all. The cost of your own life, as they suck you dry. There are no good apples out there. White people make my blood boil.”
And more…
We are now in a psychological predicament, because white people feel that we are bullying them when we bring up race. They feel that we should be thanking them for all that they have done for us. They are confused, and so are we. We keep forgetting that directly talking about race is a waste of our breath. We are asking a demented, violent predator who thinks that they are a saint or a superhero, to accept responsibility. It ain’t gonna happen. They have five holes in their brain. It’s like banging your head against a brick wall. It’s just like sort of not a good idea.
NEW – NYC psychiatrist tells Yale University panel she fantasizes about shooting dead white people. Audio of her 50-minute “lecture” was published on Substack on Friday.https://t.co/POCjatbd8r
— Disclose.tv 🚨 (@disclosetv) June 5, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
She further advocated not even talking directly to white people about racial issues, calling the endeavor “useless” as all white people “sound demented” according to her.
We need to remember that directly talking about race to white people is useless, because they are at the wrong level of conversation. Addressing racism assumes that white people can see and process what we are talking about. They can’t. That’s why they sound demented. They don’t even know they have a mask on. White people think it’s their actual face. We need to get to know the mask, Khilanani said.
A poster from the event confirmed the whole thing was officially sponsored by Yale.
This kind of extremist rhetoric has seemed commonplace of late at Yale and other Ivy League institutions. Over the past years there’s further been a number of firings of faculty or staff who dare to question it, or what it has to do with giving students an authentic academic formation and experience.
Rod Dreher at The American Conservative observed of audio of the event that “it’s hard to come up with a better example of the woke totalitarian capture of elite institution.”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/05/2021 – 16:00 - Undetected Chinese Fishing Fleets Suspected Of Invading Argentina's Waters: Report
Undetected Chinese Fishing Fleets Suspected Of Invading Argentina’s Waters: Report
Authored by Rita Li via The Epoch Times,
A recent report documented up to 6,000 foreign fishing vessels that disabled their public tracking devices for more than 24 hours along the border of Argentina’s national waters, sounding the alarm that they could be illegally fishing in the country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
“The Chinese fleet was responsible for 66 percent of these incidents,” said the June report by Oceana, a Washington-based non-profit organization dedicated to protecting and restoring the global oceans. The report claims that hundreds of Chinese fishing vessels mainly target shortfin squid, which is vital to both Argentina’s economy and ecosystem.
A Chinese-flagged ship is seized in the Galapagos Marine Reserve for carrying some 300 tons of fish, including several endangered species such as the hammerhead shark, on Aug. 25, 2017. (Juan Cevallos/AFP via Getty Images)
The analysis concludes that from January 2018 to April this year, undetected fishing activities took up more than 600,000 total hours, and many vessels turned off their Automatic Identification System (AIS) within one mile of Argentina’s EEZ.
The AIS from Global Fishing Watch, an online technology platform launched in 2016 by Oceana, SkyTruth, and Google, monitors and records data of the vessel’s name, flag state, and location.
Oceana’s report showing Chinese vessels along Argentina’s national waters. (Courtesy of Oceana)
“To me, it is particularly concerning and suspicious when fishing vessels have these gaps in tracking data so close to the edge of another country’s EEZ,” Marla Valentine, Oceana’s illegal fishing and transparency campaign manager, told The Epoch Times in an email.
“When vessels disable their AIS devices it can hide activities such as fishing, transshipment, and vessel locations from public view and could mask potentially illegal behavior, such as crossing into Argentina’s EEZ to fish,” she wrote.
These foreign fleets mainly fish for Illex argentinus, commonly known as the Argentine shortfin squid. The economically important species is found along the Argentinean coast, Uruguay, and Brazil, contributing an average of $597 million and sometimes up to $2.4 billion per year for South America’s economy.
Shortfin squid is also the food for fish such as tuna and swordfish. The report warns that losses of these populations can result in ecological devastation.
The report also found that more than 800 foreign vessels have engaged in about 900,000 hours of reported fishing, 69 percent of which were taken up by over 400 Chinese vessels. Others came from Taiwan, Korea, and Spain.
In contrast, Argentina’s local fishing vessels conducted less than one percent of the fishing operations in the same waters.
China, the world’s largest fishing nation, owns a quarter of the world’s fishing vessels and more than a third of the world’s total catch, according to VOA News.
“Our oceans need protection, not reckless fishing from China and other distant water fleets,” Valentine said in a June 2 press release.
She suggests governments to better control the imported seafood to ensure product safety and legality.
“Being able to trace the path of a fish from the boat it was caught on [and] to the time it lands on a consumer’s plate is key to reducing the chance of products of IUU [Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated] fishing being imported,” she said.
China’s fisheries authorities set penalties for illegal and abusive fishing in 2020, yet experts say it is unclear how these measures are being enforced, VOA reported.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/05/2021 – 15:30 - Three US Senators Visit Taiwan Sunday In Another Shot Across China's Bow
Three US Senators Visit Taiwan Sunday In Another Shot Across China’s Bow
Taiwan is about to be front and center again this coming week as Washington prepares for its next shot across China’s bow – this time by another high level US delegation, something which China has long condemned as “signaling pro-democracy forces” on the island in contradiction to the official One China policy.
Reuters has confirmed in a weekend report that “Three US senators will visit Taiwan on Sunday and will meet President Tsai Ing-wen to discuss security and other issues, Taiwan’s government and the de facto U.S. embassy in Taipei said on Saturday, a trip that will likely irritate China.” The meeting is expected to be held at a military wing of the island’s main international airport.
Getty Images But “irritate” is an understatement given Beijing’s fierce reaction over prior such trips, which had increased under the Trump administration. Biden appears to be continuing Trump’s policy of approving high level delegations to Taipei, despite having no official or formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan given the One China status quo.
The senators making the trip include Tammy Duckworth and Dan Sullivan of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Christopher Coons of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“The bipartisan congressional delegation will meet with senior Taiwan leaders to discuss U.S.-Taiwan relations, regional security, and other significant issues of mutual interest,” a statement issued by the American Institute in Taiwan said.
And a Taiwan presidential office statement on the visit noted it will be the “first international visit planned by the Federal Senate Armed Services Committee since the global epidemic broke out last year.”
“The Presidential Office sincerely welcomes the three senators who firmly support Taiwan to visit Taiwan at this moment,” it added.
Washington has typically referenced these an “unofficial delegations” in order to claim adherence to international norms amid accusations of violating Chinese “sovereignty” over the island. It also comes after ramped up US naval sail throughs of the contested Taiwan Strait since Biden took office in January.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/05/2021 – 15:00
Digest powered by RSS Digest
Saving...
