- Escobar: No Respite For France As A 'New Africa' Rises
Escobar: No Respite For France As A ‘New Africa’ Rises
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,
Like dominos, African states are one by one falling outside the shackles of neocolonialism. Chad, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and now Gabon are saying ‘non’ to France’s longtime domination of African financial, political, economic, and security affairs.
By adding two new African member-states to its roster, last week’s summit in Johannesburg heralding the expanded BRICS 11 showed once again that Eurasian integration is inextricably linked to the integration of Afro-Eurasia.
Belarus is now proposing to hold a joint summit between BRICS 11, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s vision for the convergence of these multilateral organizations may, in due time, lead to the Mother of All Multipolarity Summits.
But Afro-Eurasia is a much more complicated proposition. Africa still lags far behind its Eurasian cousins on the road toward breaking the shackles of neocolonialism.
The continent today faces horrendous odds in its fight against the deeply entrenched financial and political institutions of colonization, especially when it comes to smashing French monetary hegemony in the form of the Franc CFA – or the Communauté Financière Africaine (African Financial Community).
Still, one domino is falling after another – Chad, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and now Gabon. This process has already turned Burkina Faso’s President Captain Ibrahim Traoré, into a new hero of the multipolar world – as a dazed and confused collective west can’t even begin to comprehend the blowback represented by its 8 coups in West and Central Africa in less than 3 years.
Bye bye Bongo
Military officers decided to take power in Gabon after hyper pro-France President Ali Bongo won a dodgy election that “lacked credibility.” Institutions were dissolved. Borders with Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and the Republic of Congo were closed. All security deals with France were annulled. No one knows what will happen with the French military base.
All that was as popular as it comes: soldiers took to the streets of the capital Libreville in joyful singing, cheered on by onlookers.
Bongo and his father, who preceded him, have ruled Gabon since 1967. He was educated at a French private school and graduated from the Sorbonne. Gabon is a small nation of 2.4 million with a small army of 5,000 personnel that could fit into Donald Trump’s penthouse. Over 30 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day, and in over 60 percent of regions have zero access to healthcare and drinking water.
The military qualified Bongo’s 14-year rule as leading to a “deterioration in social cohesion” that was plunging the country “into chaos.”
On cue, French mining company Eramet suspended its operations after the coup. That’s a near monopoly. Gabon is all about lavish mineral wealth – in gold, diamonds, manganese, uranium, niobium, iron ore, not to mention oil, natural gas, and hydropower. In OPEC-member Gabon, virtually the whole economy revolves around mining.
The case of Niger is even more complex. France exploits uranium and high-purity petrol as well as other types of mineral wealth. And the Americans are on site, operating three bases in Niger with up to 4,000 military personnel. The key strategic node in their ‘Empire of Bases’ is the drone facility in Agadez, known as Niger Air Base 201, the second-largest in Africa after Djibouti.
French and American interests clash, though, when it comes to the saga over the Trans-Sahara gas pipeline. After Washington broke the umbilical steel cord between Russia and Europe by bombing the Nord Streams, the EU, and especially Germany, badly needed an alternative.
Algerian gas supply can barely cover southern Europe. American gas is horribly expensive.
The ideal solution for Europeans would be Nigerian gas crossing the Sahara and then the deep Mediterranean.
Nigeria, with 5,7 trillion cubic meters, has even more gas than Algeria and possibly Venezuela. By comparison, Norway has 2 trillion cubic meters. But Nigeria’s problem is how to pump its gas to distant customers – so Niger becomes an essential transit country.
When it comes to Niger’s role, energy is actually a much bigger game than the oft-touted uranium – which in fact is not that strategic either for France or the EU because Niger is only the 5th largest world supplier, way behind Kazakhstan and Canada.
Still, the ultimate French nightmare is losing the juicy uranium deals plus a Mali remix: Russia, post-Prighozin, arriving in Niger in full force with a simultaneous expulsion of the French military.Adding Gabon only makes things dicier. Rising Russian influence could lead to boosting supply lines to rebels in Cameroon and Nigeria, and privileged access to the Central African Republic, where Russian presence is already strong.
It’s no wonder that Francophile Paul Biya, in power for 41 years in Cameroon, has opted for a purge of his Armed Forces after the coup in Gabon. Cameroon may be the next domino to fall.
ECOWAS meets AFRICOM
The Americans, as it stands, are playing Sphynx. There’s no evidence so far that Niger’s military wants the Agadez base shut down. The Pentagon has invested a fortune in their bases to spy on a great deal of the Sahel and, most of all, Libya.
About the only thing Paris and Washington agree on is that, under the cover of ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States), the hardest possible sanctions should be slapped on one of the world’s poorest nations (where only 21% of the population has access to electricity) – and they should be much worse than those imposed on the Ivory Coast in 2010.Then there’s the threat of war. Imagine the absurdity of ECOWAS invading a country that is already fighting two wars on terror on two separate fronts: Against Boko Haram in the southeast and against ISIS in the Tri-Border region.
ECOWAS, one of 8 African political and economic unions, is a proverbial mess. It packs 15 member nations – Francophone, Anglophone and one Lusophone – in Central and West Africa, and it is rife with internal division.
The French and the Americans first wanted ECOWAS to invade Niger as their “peacekeeping” puppet. But that didn’t work because of popular pressure against it. So, they switched to some form of diplomacy. Still, troops remain on stand-by, and a mysterious “D-Day” has been set for the invasion.
The role of the African Union (AU) is even murkier. Initially, they stood against the coup and suspended Niger’s membership. Then they turned around and condemned the possible western-backed invasion. Neighbors have closed their borders with Niger.
ECOWAS will implode without US, France, and NATO backing. Already it’s essentially a toothless chihuahua – especially after Russia and China have demonstrated via the BRICS summit their soft power across Africa.
Western policy in the Sahel maelstrom seems to consist of salvaging anything they can from a possible unmitigated debacle – even as the stoic people in Niger are impervious to whatever narrative the west is trying to concoct.
It’s important to keep in mind that Niger’s main party, the “National Movement for the Defense of the Homeland” represented by General Abdourahamane Tchiani, has been supported by the Pentagon – complete with military training – from the beginning.
The Pentagon is deeply implanted in Africa and connected to 53 nations. The main US concept since the early 2000s was always to militarize Africa and turn it into War on Terror fodder. As the Dick Cheney regime spun it in 2002: “Africa is a strategic priority in fighting terrorism.”
That’s the basis for the US military command AFRICOM and countless “cooperative partnerships” set up in bilateral agreements. For all practical purposes, AFRICOM has been occupying large swathes of Africa since 2007.
How sweet is my colonial franc
It is absolutely impossible for anyone across the Global South, Global Majority, or “Global Globe” (copyright Lukashenko) to understand Africa’s current turmoil without understanding the nuts and bolts of French neocolonialism.
The key, of course, is the CFA franc, the “colonial franc” introduced in 1945 in French Africa, which still survives even after the CFA – with a nifty terminological twist – began to stand for “African Financial Community”.
The whole world remembers that after the 2008 global financial crisis, Libya’s Leader Muammar Gaddafi called for the establishment of a pan-African currency pegged to gold.
At the time, Libya had about 150 tons of gold, kept at home, and not in London, Paris, or New York banks. With a little more gold, that pan-African currency would have its own independent financial center in Tripoli – and everything based on a sovereign gold reserve.
For scores of African nations, that was the definitive Plan B to bypass the western financial system.
The whole world also remembers what happened in 2011. The first airstrike on Libya came from a French Mirage fighter jet. France’s bombing campaign started even before the end of emergency talks in Paris between western leaders.
In March 2011, France became the first country in the world to recognize the rebel National Transitional Council as the legitimate government of Libya. In 2015, the notoriously hacked emails of former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton revealed what France was up to in Libya: “The desire to achieve a greater share in Libyan oil production,” to increase French influence in North Africa, and to block Gaddafi’s plans to create a pan-African currency that would replace the CFA franc printed in France.
It is no wonder the collective west is terrified of Russia in Africa – and not just because of the changing of the guard in Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and now Gabon: Moscow has never sought to rob or enslave Africa.
Russia treats Africans as sovereign people, does not engage in Forever Wars, and does not drain Africa of resources while paying a pittance for them. Meanwhile, French intel and CIA “foreign policy” translate into corrupting African leaders to the core and snuffing out those that are incorruptible.
You have the right to no monetary policy
The CFA racket makes the Mafia look like street punks. It means essentially that the monetary policy of several sovereign African nations is controlled by the French Treasury in Paris.
The Central Bank of each African nation was initially required to keep at least 65 percent of their annual foreign exchange reserves in an “operation account” held at the French Treasury, plus another 20 percent to cover financial “liabilities.”
Even after some mild “reforms” were enacted since September 2005, these nations were still required to transfer 50 percent of their foreign exchange to Paris, plus 20 percent V.A.T.
And it gets worse. The CFA Central Banks impose a cap on credit to each member country. The French Treasury invests these African foreign reserves in its own name on the Paris bourse and pulls in massive profits on Africa’s dime.
The hard fact is that more than 80 percent of foreign reserves of African nations have been in “operation accounts” controlled by the French Treasury since 1961. In a nutshell, none of these states has sovereignty over their monetary policy.
But the theft doesn’t stop there: the French Treasury uses African reserves as if they were French capital, as collateral in pledging assets to French payments to the EU and the ECB.
Across the “FranceAfrique” spectrum, France still, today, controls the currency, foreign reserves, the comprador elites, and trade business.
The examples are rife: French conglomerate Bolloré’s control of port and marine transport throughout West Africa; Bouygues/Vinci dominate construction and public works, water, and electricity distribution; Total has huge stakes in oil and gas. And then there’s France Telecom and big banking – Societe Generale, Credit Lyonnais, BNP-Paribas, AXA (insurance), and so forth.
France de facto controls the overwhelming majority of infrastructure in Francophone Africa. It is a virtual monopoly.
“FranceAfrique” is all about hardcore neocolonialism. Policies are issued by the President of the Republic of France and his “African cell.” They have nothing to do with parliament, or any democratic process, since the times of Charles De Gaulle.
The “African cell” is a sort of General Command. They use the French military apparatus to install “friendly” comprador leaders and get rid of those that threaten the system. There’s no diplomacy involved. Currently, the cell reports exclusively to Le Petit Roi, Emmanuel Macron.
Caravans of drugs, diamonds, and gold
Paris completely supervised the assassination of Burkina Faso’s anti-colonial leader Thomas Sankara, in 1987. Sankara had risen to power via a popular coup in 1983, only to be overthrown and assassinated four years later.
As for the real “war on terror” in the African Sahel, it has nothing to do with the infantile fictions sold in the West. There are no Arab “terrorists” in the Sahel, as I saw when backpacking across West Africa a few months before 9/11. They are locals who converted to Salafism online, intent on setting up an Islamic State to better control smuggling routes across the Sahel.
Those fabled ancient salt caravans plying the Sahel from Mali to southern Europe and West Asia are now caravans of drugs, diamonds, and gold. This is what funded Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), for instance, then supported by Wahhabi lunatics in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.
After Libya was destroyed by NATO in early 2011, there was no more “protection,” so the western-backed Salafi-jihadis who fought against Gaddafi offered the Sahel smugglers the same protection as before – plus a lot of weapons.
Assorted Mali tribes continue the merry smuggling of anything they fancy. AQIM still extracts illegal taxation. ISIS in Libya is deep into human and narcotics trafficking. And Boko Haram wallows in the cocaine and heroin market.
There is a degree of African cooperation to fight these outfits. There was something called the G5 Sahel, focused on security and development. But after Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, and Chad went the military route, only Mauritania remains. The new West Africa Junta Belt, of course, wants to destroy terror groups, but most of all, they want to fight FranceAfrique, and the fact that their national interests are always decided in Paris.
France has for decades made sure there’s very little intra-Africa trade. Landlocked nations badly need neighbors for transit. They mostly produce raw materials for export. There are virtually no decent storage facilities, feeble energy supply, and terrible intra-African transportation infrastructure: that’s what Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects are bent on addressing in Africa.
In March 2018, 44 heads of state came up with the African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA) – the largest in the world in terms of population (1.3 billion people) and geography. In January 2022, they established the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) – focused on payments for companies in Africa in local currencies.
So inevitably, they will be going for a common currency further on down the road. Guess what’s in their way: the Paris-imposed CFA.
A few cosmetic measures still guarantee direct control by the French Treasury on any possible new African currency set up, preference for French companies in bidding processes, monopolies, and the stationing of French troops. The coup in Niger represents a sort of “we’re not gonna take it anymore.”
All of the above illustrates what the indispensable economist Michael Hudson has been detailing in all his works: the power of the extractivist model. Hudson has shown how the bottom line is control of the world’s resources; that’s what defines a global power, and in the case of France, a global mid-ranking power.
France has shown how easy it is to control resources via control of monetary policy and setting up monopolies in these resource-rich nations to extract and export, using virtual slave labor with zero environmental or health regulations.
It’s also essential for exploitative neocolonialism to keep those resource-rich nations from using their own resources to grow their own economies. But now the African dominoes are finally saying, “The game is over.” Is true decolonization finally on the horizon?
Tyler Durden
Wed, 09/06/2023 – 02:00 - The Global War On Thought Crime
The Global War On Thought Crime
Authored by David James via The Brownstone Institute,
Laws to ban disinformation and misinformation are being introduced across the West, with the partial exception being the US, which has the First Amendment so the techniques to censor have had to be more clandestine.
In Europe, the UK, and Australia, where free speech is not as overtly protected, governments have legislated directly.
The EU Commission is now applying the ‘Digital Services Act’ (DSA), a thinly disguised censorship law.
In Australia the government is seeking to provide the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) with “new powers to hold digital platforms to account and improve efforts to combat harmful misinformation and disinformation.”
One effective response to these oppressive laws may come from a surprising source: literary criticism. The words being used, which are prefixes added to the word “information,” are a sly misdirection. Information, whether in a book, article or post is a passive artefact. It cannot do anything, so it cannot break a law. The Nazis burned books, but they didn’t arrest them and put them in jail. So when legislators seek to ban “disinformation,” they cannot mean the information itself. Rather, they are targeting the creation of meaning.
The authorities use variants of the word “information” to create the impression that what is at issue is objective truth but that is not the focus. Do these laws, for example, apply to the forecasts of economists or financial analysts, who routinely make predictions that are wrong? Of course not. Yet economic or financial forecasts, if believed, could be quite harmful to people.
The laws are instead designed to attack the intent of the writers to create meanings that are not congruent with the governments’ official position. ‘Disinformation’ is defined in dictionaries as information that is intended to mislead and to cause harm. ‘Misinformation’ has no such intent and is just an error, but even then that means determining what is in the author’s mind. ‘Mal-information’ is considered to be something that is true, but that there is an intention to cause harm.
Determining a writer’s intent is extremely problematic because we cannot get into another person’s mind; we can only speculate on the basis of their behaviour. That is largely why in literary criticism there is a notion called the Intentional Fallacy, which says that the meaning of a text cannot be limited to the intention of the author, nor is it possible to know definitively what that intention is from the work. The meanings derived from Shakespeare’s works, for example, are so multifarious that many of them cannot possibly have been in the Bard’s mind when he wrote the plays 400 years ago.
How do we know, for example, that there is no irony, double meaning, pretence or other artifice in a social media post or article? My former supervisor, a world expert on irony, used to walk around the university campus wearing a T-shirt saying: “How do you know I am being ironic?” The point was that you can never know what is actually in a person’s mind, which is why intent is so difficult to prove in a court of law.
That is the first problem.
The second one is that, if the creation of meaning is the target of the proposed law – to proscribe meanings considered unacceptable by the authorities – how do we know what meaning the recipients will get? A literary theory, broadly under the umbrella term ‘deconstructionism,’ claims that there are as many meanings from a text as there are readers and that “the author is dead.”
While this is an exaggeration, it is indisputable that different readers get different meanings from the same texts. Some people reading this article, for example, might be persuaded while others might consider it evidence of a sinister agenda. As a career journalist I have always been shocked at the variability of reader’s responses to even the most simple of articles. Glance at the comments on social media posts and you will see an extreme array of views, ranging from positive to intense hostility.
To state the obvious, we all think for ourselves and inevitably form different views, and see different meanings. Anti-disinformation legislation, which is justified as protecting people from bad influences for the common good, is not merely patronising and infantilising, it treats citizens as mere machines ingesting data – robots, not humans. That is simply wrong.
Governments often make incorrect claims, and made many during Covid.
In Australia the authorities said lockdowns would only last a few weeks to “flatten the curve.” In the event they were imposed for over a year and there never was a “curve.” According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2020 and 2021 had the lowest levels of deaths from respiratory illness since records have been kept.
Governments will not apply the same standards to themselves, though, because governments always intend well (that comment may or may not be intended to be ironic; I leave it up to the reader to decide).
There is reason to think these laws will fail to achieve the desired result. The censorship regimes have a quantitative bias. They operate on the assumption that if a sufficient proportion of social media and other types of “information” is skewed towards pushing state propaganda, then the audience will inevitably be persuaded to believe the authorities.
But what is at issue is meaning, not the amount of messaging. Repetitious expressions of the government’s preferred narrative, especially ad hominem attacks like accusing anyone asking questions of being a conspiracy theorist, eventually become meaningless.
By contrast just one well-researched and well-argued post or article can permanently persuade readers to an anti-government view because it is more meaningful. I can recall reading pieces about Covid, including on Brownstone, that led inexorably to the conclusion that the authorities were lying and that something was very wrong. As a consequence the voluminous, mass media coverage supporting the government line just appeared to be meaningless noise. It was only of interest in exposing how the authorities were trying to manipulate the “narrative” – a debased word was once mainly used in a literary context – to cover their malfeasance.
In their push to cancel unapproved content, out-of-control governments are seeking to penalise what George Orwell called “thought crimes.”
But they will never be able to truly stop people thinking for themselves, nor will they ever definitively know either the writer’s intent or what meaning people will ultimately derive.
It is bad law, and it will eventually fail because it is, in itself, predicated on disinformation.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/05/2023 – 23:40 - Six Red Flags Pointing To China's Economic Slowdown
Six Red Flags Pointing To China’s Economic Slowdown
The People’s Republic of China is the world’s second-largest economy, responsible for one quarter of global GDP growth this millennium – so when the country catches a cold, the world notices.
The past several months have seen an avalanche of bad economic news for China, putting the country’s post-pandemic recovery, and global economic growth, in jeopardy.
In this visualization, Visual Capitalist’s Chris Deckert looks at six important indicators that point to China’s economy slowing down. Data comes from the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the People’s Bank of China, and the General Administration of Customs, to see what is flashing red.
Six Red Flag Indicators on China’s Economy
1. GDP
China’s annual GDP growth rate has averaged 9% since 1978, when the country opened itself up to the global market under Deng Xiaoping.
However, growth seems to have slowed to a crawl, down to 0.8% (quarter-to-quarter) in the second quarter of 2023 driven by weakness in the Tertiary Sector, which includes retail spending and the troubled real estate sector. This follows a more robust 2.2% figure in Q1, which was driven by pent-up demand released by the end of COVID-era lockdowns.
On an annual basis, China’s GDP expanded 6.3% year-over-year, below the forecasted 7.3% rate.
2. Exports
Exports fell by 14.5% in July, marking the third straight month of declines, and hitting lows not seen since February 2020. Meanwhile, imports fell 12.4%, reflecting the cautious consumer mood.
On a regional basis, exports fell year-over-year to China’s three biggest customers, ASEAN, the EU, and the U.S., by 17.4%, 15.1%, and 20.8% respectively.
There was one bright spot, however: exports to sanction-burdened Russia increased 51.8%, but that wasn’t nearly enough to offset the overall downward trend.
3. Consumer Price Index
The consumer price index moved into deflationary territory for the first time since 2021, with prices falling 3% year-over-year. The decline was led by Household Articles and Services, Food & Tobacco, and Transportation and Communications.
At the same time, the prices that producers paid for industrial products (PPI) fell 4.4% (year-over-year), the tenth month in a row with a negative reading.
4. Youth Unemployment
And while the headline unemployment rate remained steady at 5.3% in August 2023, up slightly from 5.2% the month before, it papers over serious weakness for urban youth, aged 16 to 24.
In July, the urban youth unemployment rate reached 21.3%, the highest ever recorded in the country, leading the National Bureau of Statistics of China to suspend future releases.
5. Yuan vs. USD
Given the stream of economic bad news, it’s no surprise that the yuan fell to a 16-year low against the U.S. dollar on August 16, 2023 in offshore trading.
In an effort to stabilize the currency, major state-owned Chinese banks were seen buying up yuan in offshore money markets. At the same time, the spread between the fixed exchange rate set by the People’s Bank of China and the offshore rate, rose to more than 1,000 basis points.
6. New Loans
Adding to the dismal economic mood, people borrowed less money according to the most recent figures provided by the government.
New bank loans fell to ¥346 billion in July, down from ¥3.05 trillion in the month before. This was the lowest reading since late-2009, and less than half of the ¥780 billion economists had forecast.
What’s Next?
Foreign Affairs recently published an article with the provocative title “The End of China’s Economic Miracle,” arguing that China’s troubles could be a U.S. opportunity.
And while this may be somewhat premature, the Middle Kingdom has some serious structural issues to contend with, many of them of their own making. Some of the top challenges include crackdowns on the tech sector, a collapsing real estate market, a larger debt crisis, and a shrinking population.
But large-scale government intervention does not appear to be in the offing, beyond exhortations for consumers to spend more and blaming Western media for engaging in “cognitive warfare.”
It’s no wonder that consumer confidence has plunged so low. At least we think so: the Chinese government stopped publishing that too.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/05/2023 – 23:20 - Russia, China & North Korea To Launch Trilateral War Games
Russia, China & North Korea To Launch Trilateral War Games
Authored by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute,
South Korea’s intelligence services believe that Russia, China and North Korea are preparing to conduct joint military drills. Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang have all frequently complained about American war games near their borders.
According to Yoo Sang-bum, a South Korean legislator, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu likely proposed that North Korean soldiers join Russian and Chinese troops for military exercises during a July meeting with Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un. Yoo says he learned the information during a closed-door discussion with South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.
The report comes as Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang have become increasingly frustrated with Washington and its allies conducting war games near their borders.
Last week, US and South Korean soldiers wrapped up the Ulchi Freedom Shield annual joint military exercises which included sending American strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula. In response to the drills, Kim ordered his forces to conduct a test of their nuclear capabilities.
In the South China Sea, Washington contests Beijing’s territorial claims by sending warships into Chinese waters and claiming the deployment is a “freedom of navigation operation.”
Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin explained that NATO war games in Ukrainian territory were viewed as an intense provocation by Moscow.
On Saturday, the Kremlin’s envoy to Pyongyang, Alexander Matsegora, explained North Korea’s participation in joint military exercises with China and Russia was an “appropriate” response to “constant bilateral and trilateral exercises” being held by the US and its “junior partners in Asia.”
On Monday, Shoigu confirmed Moscow was planning to conduct joint military drills with Pyongyang. When asked about deepening defense cooperation, he said per Reuters:
“Why not, these are our neighbors. There’s an old Russian saying: you don’t choose your neighbors and it’s better to live with your neighbors in peace and harmony,” Interfax news agency quoted Russia’s Defence Minister, Sergei Shoigu, as saying on Monday.
When asked about the possibility of joint exercises between the two countries, he said “of course” they were being discussed, it said.
Additionally, the Russian defense minister said Kim was planning to travel to Russia for an upcoming meeting with Putin.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/05/2023 – 23:00 - How Student-Teacher Ratios Vary Across The Globe
How Student-Teacher Ratios Vary Across The Globe
Around the world, schools have been struggling to recruit teachers before the start of the school year.
As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, it’s a phenomenon not only seen in the U.S. but also in Canada, Australia and in Europe, as low salaries, long hours, stress and burnout from the pandemic have led to a mass exodus from the profession.
According to NPR, it is children living in isolated rural areas and big city districts in the U.S. that are particularly impacted. This is because these schools may not be able to compete for teachers with the better-funded suburban schools that can offer higher pay.
The following chart shows how there are fairly significant differences in class sizes between countries.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Of the OECD countries listed, Norway and Belgium appear as examples of teachers working with smaller classes, with an average of around 10 pupils per teacher in public education (primary and secondary). By contrast, classes are fairly busy in Mexico. The country has the highest student-teacher ratio of the study, with around 24 to 27 students per teacher. In the U.S., there are usually around 15 students per teacher in both public elementary and secondary education.
Teachers warn that teacher shortages and increased class sizes could lead to a detrimental impact on pupils’ progress, attainment and behavior. This is because it makes it harder to provide adequate provision of learning resources to children, while teachers say they can’t meet the needs of all pupils under those circumstances.
While the student-staff ratio alone does not guarantee academic success, with teaching styles, teaching methods and extra-curricular choices also influencing factors, many teachers believe it is important.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/05/2023 – 22:40 - Pennsylvania High School QB Needs 'Miracle' After Collapsing Mid-Game, Family Says
Pennsylvania High School QB Needs ‘Miracle’ After Collapsing Mid-Game, Family Says
Authored by Lorenz Duchamps via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A high school football player in Pennsylvania needs “a miracle” after collapsing on the field in the middle of a game on Sept. 1, according to his family, who said in a health update on Sept. 3 that the 17-year-old has been in critical condition for more than 36 hours.
A customized football in Pacific Palisades, Calif., on May 26, 2018. (Meg Oliphant/Getty Images) Mason Martin, a quarterback for Karns City High School, suffered a “significant brain bleed as well as a collapsed lung,” his family told KDKA-TV.
The matchup between the Karns City Gremlins and Redbank Valley Bulldogs was cut short in the third quarter when referee Mike Vasbinder noticed Martin started to stagger after he received a hit during the game.
Despite the hit, the quarterback continued to play defense without any apparent issue until he left the field for the extra point and then came back for the return kick-off. However, the referee noticed something was off before the play started, prompting him to blow his whistle as Martin collapsed.
“I had to talk to him, and when I asked if he was alright, he told me, ‘no,'” Mr. Vasbinder said, according to the Butler Eagle. “So that’s when I knew something was wrong.”
The game was stopped early and the Redbanks were named the winner as they were leading 35–6 when the incident occurred.
Mr. Vasbinder said the medical emergency led staff members to enforce a series of protocols, including some of which the referee never had to follow in a game before last week’s incident.
“When we saw it got to the point where they were bringing on an ambulance, we talked to Redbank Valley’s coach and Karns City’s coach, who was obviously with his player,” he said. “And we just tried to stay back and keep calm, so things didn’t escalate.“
Martin was taken off the field in a Karns City ambulance before being flown to UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh in a STAT MedEvac helicopter, D9Sports.com reported.
His mother, Stacy King Martin, shared an update on her son’s health condition in a statement on social media on Sept. 3, thanking everyone for their love and support.
“Mason remains in critical condition with little change over the last 36 hours,” her message reads. “The truth is we need a miracle. I’m not saying that to sound grim, but to let you know that we need the strength of your prayers.”
“No one believes in this kid more than us, but he needs everyone’s strength and prayers,” the message continues. “Right now, we have to wait for the swelling to go down to assess the extent of the damage to the brain. So please pray the way he has always played the game, all out holding nothing back, maybe a little angry, definitely aggressive.”
The Karns City Gremlin Football Program also issued a lengthy statement after the incident, saying the school has counselors available for students and staff who need to talk to someone after witnessing Martin’s serious on-the-field injury.
— Karns City Football (@KC_GremlinFball) September 2, 2023
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Brittany Thompson, a spectator who was there with her daughter, said the situation was reminiscent of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s collapse during the Jan. 2 game against the Cincinnati Bengals.
“We’re not from this school district, but my daughter wanted to come to the game,” Ms. Thompson said, the Butler Eagle reported. “It’s just really scary.”
Mr. Hamlin revealed the official cause of his collapse during a press conference in April, saying he collapsed due to a condition that mostly happens to teenagers playing baseball.
“The diagnosis of what happened to me was basically commotio cordis. It’s a direct blow at a specific point in your heartbeat that causes cardiac arrest,” he explained. “And five to seven seconds later, you fall out.”
Cardiac Issues Among Young Athletes
News of Martin’s medical emergency comes about a month after Lebron James’s son, Bronny James, suffered a sudden cardiac arrest while he was practicing for the USC basketball team.
A spokesperson for the family said on Aug. 26 that a congenital heart defect likely caused the cardiac arrest. The condition had been identified “after a comprehensive initial evaluation” at the center and follow-up evaluations at the Mayo Clinic and Atlantic Health/Morristown Medical Center.
“It is an anatomically and functionally significant Congenital Heart Defect which can and will be treated,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
However, soon after the medical situation, rampant speculation emerged on social media, including a post from X owner Elon Musk suggesting that the cardiac incident was associated with the COVID-19 vaccine.
“We cannot ascribe everything to the vaccine, but, by the same token, we cannot ascribe nothing. Myocarditis is a known side effect. The only question is whether it is rare or common,” the Tesla CEO said in late July.
At the same time, CNN interviewed its own medical analyst, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who asserted that the younger James’s health scare, as well as similar sudden cardiac arrest events involving young athletes, are “more common than people realize.”
Last month, the death of Caleb White, 17, from Alabama’s Pinson Valley High School also became a hot topic online as inquiries continue into the unclear links between COVID-19, COVID-19 vaccines, and heart issues.
“24 hours ago, my grandson Caleb White collapsed on the basketball court, went into cardiac arrest and all attempts to resuscitate him failed. This was similar to the illness Labron James’ son experienced as he was working out,” Caleb’s grandfather, George Varnadoe Jr., said in a Facebook post on Aug. 11.
Studies on Vaccine Risks
A study funded by the South Korean government has confirmed that COVID-19 vaccines can cause sudden death. In June, authorities said that eight people died suddenly after receiving an mRNA vaccine due to myocarditis.
All the sudden cardiac deaths (SCD) occurred in people aged 45 and younger. One of the victims was a 33-year-old man who died just one day after he received the second shot of the Moderna vaccine. Another case involved a 30-year-old woman who died three days after getting her first dose of a Pfizer vaccine.
The results show the need for “careful monitoring or warning of SCD as a potentially fatal complication of COVID-19 vaccination, especially in individuals who are ages under 45 years with mRNA vaccination,” the study said.
In an interview with The Epoch Times, Dr. Andrew Bostom, a retired professor of medicine in the United States, said that the results show why mandating COVID-19 vaccines for young people was flawed.
“These are people who ostensibly did not need the vaccine,” he said. “That’s what adds insult to injury.”
Aldgra Fredly and Naveen Athrappully contributed to this report.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/05/2023 – 22:20 - Musk-The-Merciless? SpaceX Launching "80% Of All Earth Payload Mass To Orbit"
Musk-The-Merciless? SpaceX Launching “80% Of All Earth Payload Mass To Orbit”
According to Elon Musk, SpaceX has exceeded the previous year’s rocket launch count, delivering 80% of all Earth payload mass to orbit for the year so far. He said China accounts for the other 10%.
Great work by the @SpaceX team successfully launching 61 Falcon rocket missions this year!
If tomorrow’s mission goes well, we will exceed last year’s flight count.
SpaceX has delivered ~80% of all Earth payload mass to orbit in 2023. China is ~10% & rest of world other ~10%.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 2, 2023
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On Sunday night, SpaceX launched 21 Starlink internet satellites to low Earth orbit atop a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The mission was the 62nd of the year, setting a new record for the most flights in a year. The previous record was set in 2022 by the company.
Musk said, “Aiming for 10 Falcon flights in a month by the end of this year, then 12 per month next year.”
Aiming for 10 Falcon flights in a month by end of this year, then 12 per month next year
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 2, 2023
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He explained, based on the 2024 launch schedule, “SpaceX will deliver ~90% of all Earth payload to orbit,” adding, “Starship will take that to >99% in future years.”
Based on the Falcon launch plan for next year, SpaceX will deliver ~90% of all Earth payload to orbit.
Starship will take that to >99% in future years.
These magnitudes are madness to consider, but necessary to make consciousness multiplanetary.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 3, 2023
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Musk’s latest predictions about SpaceX’s rocket launch monopoly come as new aerial images show Starship is preparing for the second test flight (the first flight ended with a bang).
On Tuesday, X account RGV Aerial Photography posted a timelapse video of Starship, explaining, “Starship full stack!”
Timelapse pic.twitter.com/xig5TZ0aZg
— RGV Aerial Photography (@RGVaerialphotos) September 5, 2023
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Musk said the world’s largest rocket underwent a successful static fire in recent weeks. He said, “Getting ready for the next Starship flight.”
RGV Aerial Photography posted a list of milestones Starship has completed and what still needs to be achieved ahead of the next launch (list courtesy of blog spacex.information):
Milestones for #Starship Integrated Flight Test #2:
Ship 25
– Cryogenic Proof Test:✅
– Engine installation (3 RCs V2 & 3 RVacs V2):✅
– Spin Prime test:✅
– Static Fire test:✅
– Engine shielding installation: ✅
– Heat Shield installation: ✅Booster 9
– Cryogenic Proof… pic.twitter.com/DVmEQ3HU2y— DJ Esmerald (@DJEsmeraldMusic) September 5, 2023
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Meanwhile, Musk has managed to infuriate Democrats as they weaponize government agencies, such as the DoJ and SEC, against him…
Is this how Dems see Musk?
… and a former Obama administration official recently declared: “The US government needs to end its relationship with Musk immediately.”
Good luck with that one. Then no Starlinks for Ukraine.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/05/2023 – 22:00 - The Third World Revolt
The Third World Revolt
Authored by Christopher Roach via American Greatness,
Back in my high-school debating days, policy debate teams frequently concluded their arguments with an extreme and somewhat absurd parade of horribles. This was a testament to their intelligence and creativity, plus being dead wrong carried few consequences. Through convoluted chains of logic, they argued that some small change in environmental or trade policy would lead to nuclear war or America’s domination by the “global south.”
Even then, this all struck me as ridiculous. How could the Third World, with its periodic famines and coups, ever threaten the United States? Back then we were fully dominant over the entire world after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.
A lot has changed.
The Birth of the Nonaligned Movement
During the Cold War, the various nations on the periphery acted, in some ways, as judges of the two competing systems. While the United States and Soviet Union were accused of manipulating the Third World for selfish reasons, the manipulation went both ways. Being coy, Third World leaders often managed to squeeze real benefits, like infrastructure projects, discounted military equipment, and other forms of aid by siding with one side or the other.
During the Cold War, the nations of the Third World were wary of being compelled to take sides, risking conflicts orthogonal to their own interests and sacrificing their sovereignty through excessive dependence on a patron. This is why the nonaligned movement gained power, with India in particular at the forefront, where it was joined by interested Middle Eastern, African, and Latin American nations.
These nations, which had gained sovereignty only very recently from their colonial masters, were understandably touchy about their independence. They did not want to exchange a formal colonial structure for an informal one.
When the Cold War ended, the United States remained the sole superpower for some time, but, rather than achieving worldwide assent, this instead fueled envy, fear, and resentment. No longer able to chart their own path, every nation became subordinate on some level to American power.
Aggressive Idealism Fuels Anti-Americanism
At the height of its military power, starting during the Clinton presidency, American leaders began to embrace an aggressive “idealism” that set out to change the character, values, and customs of other countries. Purely “humanitarian” interventions like Kosovo and Somalia became common.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, this idealism meant feminism and democracy. In Eastern Europe, it meant the promotion of gay rights and secularism, alienating the conservative and religious people who once idealized the United States. In Latin America, idealism demanded capitalism and loosened trade restrictions.
The invocation of “Freedom” and “Democracy,” while it sounds noble and idealistic to our ears, began to sound like a threat to nations who were out of step with the West’s ruling classes. Unilateral American military intervention in such diverse places as Panama, Iraq, Serbia, Syria, and Libya made nations on the sidelines wary that they could be next.
Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa—the so-called BRICS—do not have much in common. They have diverse economic and political systems, distinct languages, very different histories, and members appeared on both sides of Cold War alliances. But they share a common orientation to American power: our aspirations to maintain “sole superpower” status threatens their national power and independence. Perceiving this as a zero-sum game, they seek to pivot world attention, prosperity, and power away from the United States and its Western European allies.
Among these American competitors, China and Russia stand out most of all. Through their de facto alliance, they now dominate the Eurasian landmass. Their industrial capacity has revealed significant advantages in a war of attrition. And, finally, with their history as former American enemies, they have a habitual and strong resistance to American interference with their destinies.
While Russia and China’s conduct is easily understood, the growing and diverse anti-American coalition, along with these other nations’ willingness to accept Russian and Chinese leadership, needs explanation. The heart of the matter is sovereignty. American demands and desires currently constrain each of the BRICS nations and the many smaller nations of the Third World, whether it is in energy, central banking, sanctions, trade, or even domestic policies on issues like feminism and gay rights.
The proposed “multipolar world” has a lot of momentum because it does not require submission to a particular Chinese or Russian model for internal governance. Russia and China are mostly agnostic about internal affairs, unlike the “idealistic” United States. Rather, the alternative promotes a more organic (and potentially chaotic) distribution of power from the current system.
Finally, neither Russia nor China could displace the United States. Thus, at most, they can usher in a world of “multipolarity,” where all countries will be less constrained, and larger countries like them have, at most, regional strength.
Ukraine War Now Existential for the American Empire
The current war in Ukraine is bringing a lot of things to a head. The United States and Europe imagined the rest of the world would view the conflict as a morality play: a big, powerful bully dominating its innocent and unassuming neighbor. This, indeed, is how most leaders and many people in the West perceive events.
But this has been a tough sell in the Third World, which is the chief reason sanctions have faced resistance. While Russia is bigger than Ukraine, Ukraine is big relative to its separatist eastern provinces, with whom it has had a conflict since 2014. Since most developing nations began as anti-colonial movements for national liberation, Ukraine’s attempts to forcibly reintegrate the East does not look so different from the types of struggles Brazil and India had during their independence movements.
Moreover, with Ukraine aligned so closely with the West—using NATO tanks, NATO mercenaries, and NATO money to prosecute its defense—much of the world does not perceive a bully pushing around its stalwart neighbor, but rather an American bully using its Ukrainian lackey for realpolitik designs against Russia. This is a particularly popular view in China, of course. But, judging from editorials and open source comments, it is also widely held in places like Africa and India, where many people view Russia in a positive light because of its opposition to the United States.
Until now, American power rested on actual American superiority in economics, military power, and cultural influence. The United States soundly defeated Iraq in the first Gulf War, emerged from the Cold War intact and wealthy, and soon proceeded to project power with great skill in the early days of the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. But since that time, we have departed Afghanistan and Iraq without a victory. In parallel, we spread chaos in Libya and Syria, failing to conclude regime change operations in the latter.
American military prowess is no longer undisputed or inevitable, undermining the broader claim of America as the “sole superpower.” This was all avoidable, but having overextended itself, the visible evidence of American decline is now confirmed. This is what happens when a nation is ruled by disloyal, short-sighted, and foolish people.
To state the obvious, losing wars is never good for an empire. The Ottoman and Russian empires dissolved under the stresses of the First World War. While part of the victorious allies, World War II cemented the subordinate status of France and the United Kingdom, and their empires fell apart after the war. Finally, and most recently, the Soviet Union broke apart after its costly and controversial campaign in Afghanistan.
Russia’s attempts to assert power in its near-abroad fueled America’s interest in the current Ukraine War. The theory was that we would pursue our interests on the cheap, prevent challenges to American hegemony, with the added benefit that Ukrainians would be doing the dying. Because of our military and economic superiority, supporters claimed the war would kill Russians, weaken their military, and destabilize Putin’s hold on power.
Proponents of the war did not really consider what would happen in the reverse case. What if not Russia, but the United States found itself strained economically, losing critical and hard-to-replace weapons in a war of attrition, visibly demonstrating its impotence and weakness on the world stage? Wouldn’t the same dire consequences intended for Russia now happen to us?
Indeed, they would. Luckily, actual American security does not depend on the continuation of America’s dominance of the globe, nor does American prosperity. Indeed, our prosperity has declined as the requirements of the military industrial complex and the behemoth welfare state devalue our currency and impoverish taxpayers. Further, our aspirations to maintain sole superpower status has endangered us by fueling anti-Americanism, while encouraging significant moral compromise at home.
Although losing a war and taking a blow to prestige can be a painful process, the American people’s interests require the dismantling of the American empire. Our current course risks manifesting the dire and once-implausible scenarios popular on the high school debate circuit. It is time to change course.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/05/2023 – 21:40 - AirBnBust: New York "Effectively Bans" Short-Term Rentals
AirBnBust: New York “Effectively Bans” Short-Term Rentals
Last week, we wrote that the bursting of the AirBnB bubble will also pop the broader housing bubble, which has shown remarkable resilience in the face of the highest interest rates since Volcker (although today’s ominous tumble in homebuilder stocks is certainly a concern), largely the result of a staggering divergence between effective mortgage rates (since almost everyone refinanced into a 30Y mortgage when rates were at record lows a few years back and is locked into a nice, low rate for a long, long time… or until they sell) and current 30Y mortgages, which at 7.5% nobody can afford.
So back to the coming AirBnB fiasco, last Wednesday the real estate experts at RedFin wrote that investor home purchases fell 45% from a year earlier in the second quarter, outpacing the 31% drop in overall home sales. That’s the biggest decline since 2008 with the exception of the quarter before, when they dropped 48%.
The drop in purchases has brought the total number of homes bought by investors below pre-pandemic levels, which is a major concern for a market where investors remained the last remaining support pillar now that most average Americans seeking to buy their first home are simply unable to afford it and are stuck renting indefinitely.
Real estate investors bought roughly 50,000 U.S. homes in the second quarter, the fewest of any second quarter in seven years, with the exception of the start of the pandemic.
The decline comes as this year’s relatively cool housing and rental markets makes investing in homes less attractive than it was during the pandemic-driven homebuying frenzy of 2021 and early 2022, when record numbers of AirBnB were purchased as hotel and lodging surrogates.
There is another, more tangible reason why the AirBnBoom is turning into an AirBnBust: starting today, the short-term rental landscape is changing drastically in New York City, and according to the company itself, will be “effectively banned” threatening the entire AirBnB model in the Big Apple, and other big cities to follow.
As the RealDeal reports, beginning Tuesday, short-term rental hosts in New York City will be required to register their units, which will likely have a significant impact on platforms like Airbnb and potentially steer travelers toward hotels or New Jersey.
The new regulation, known as Local Law 18, includes several rules that may prove inconvenient for travelers and hosts:
- Limit on Guests: Short-term rentals can accommodate no more than two paying guests at a time, regardless of the property’s size or the number of bedrooms.
- Host Presence: Hosts are required to be physically present while their properties are being rented.
- Unlocked Doors: Hosts and visitors must leave the interior doors within the rental unlocked, allowing occupants access to the entire unit.
The measure aims to curb illegal short-term rentals (which is basically every AirBnB listing), enhance guest safety, and alleviate housing market pressures. It could also drive travelers away from short-term rental platforms altogether, as the restrictions effectively eliminate the appeal of staying in apartments, and forces them to share space with strangers or opt for hotel rooms.
“Unless it is a really big unit, I think a lot of travelers will find it uncomfortable to stay in an apartment that fully complies with and abides by the city’s new regulations,” Sean Hennessey, a professor at New York University’s Jonathan M. Tisch Center of Hospitality, told the outlet. And if there is one thing New York does not have a lot of, it is “really big” apartments.
For those hoping to follow and comply with the regulatory framework, good luck: as of Aug. 28, the Office of Special Enforcement in New York City had received over 3,250 applications for short-term rental listings. They reviewed 808 submissions, granted 257 certificates, rejected 72, and returned 479 for further information or corrections, according to the Post.
The OSE also maintains a Prohibited Buildings List of units that can’t be rented short-term due to lease terms or rent regulations.
Penalties for hosts for violations of these regulations can range from $100 to $1,000 for the first offense, while guests will not face penalties for staying in an illegal property.
Naturally, Airbnb sued to have the law gutted, claiming it was effectively a ban on short-term rental but a judge dismissed the lawsuit in August.
The company said that listings without a registration number will be unable to accept new reservations once the law is activated. To minimize disruptions to existing bookings, Airbnb will honor reservations made before Tuesday for stays through Dec. 1, refunding the service fee. After Dec. 1, Airbnb will cancel and refund reservations at uncertified properties. The platform, along with hosts, are attempting to work with local officials to pass a less-restrictive version of the measure.
With New York City’s tourism market already experiencing high demand, with more than 63 million travelers expected in 2023, the outlet reported, Airbnb alternatives are rapidly emerging to try and fill the short-term rental gap. Some of these alternatives, however, will face similar predicaments to the short-term rental giant.
San Francisco-based Sonder could provide one alternative. The company has units in the Financial District and elsewhere that aren’t covered by the short-term rental law. The company’s business model, however, is reliant on receiving business from other platforms, including Airbnb.
Additionally, Sonder has had some issues of its own. In the spring, the startup was warned that it had until mid-October to improve its share price or face delisting from Nasdaq. The company, which manages and leases rentals itself (unlike Airbnb), has experienced multiple rounds of layoffs in recent months.
Kindred is a startup that charges residents to join a cohort of travelers and homesharers to host or swap homes without money changing hands directly. There are more than 1,000 residents registered in the New York metro area, co-founder Justine Palefsky told Crain’s.
The biggest beneficiaries from the suspension of AirBnB, are traditional hotels, but even some luxury brands are willing to at least partially embrace a short-term rental model. The Ritz-Carlton in NoMad has 16 short-term rental units up for grabs for $9,000 a night.
Finally, even if the New York crackdown seems too regional to crush the company’s business model, it is the other abovementioned trends that have sealed AirBnB’s coffin, and assure that the short-term rental company will be the proverbial canary in the housemine. And for those who were in kindergarten during the bursting of the 2007 housing bubble and today are AirBnB moguls, the following refresher from BowTiedBroke will be a useful walkthru for what comes next:
It has begun:
Since I went through Short Sales, Deed in Lieu’s and straight up Foreclosures with my RE adventures of ‘01-‘09, here is how the process plays out. I firmly believe heavy Airbnb markets are going to feel some pain.
The question is: How many first time STR owners/over-leveraged STR owners are out there and how will getting their credit ruined affect other markets or sectors in the US. I have no clue how the trickle down will go.
But, here are the steps:
1) Cash flow isn’t covering the mortgage and other expenses.
2) You stop making the payments
3) The bank QUICKLY reaches out to see what they can do to “help you” continue making payments to them. They won’t call daily, but they do call at least once/week, sometimes every few days.
4) You have no way to make the payments so the bank may offer to allow you to try a “Short Sale”, selling the home for less than the amount you owe and being forgiven of the difference (maybe).
5) You get an offer on the home. Bank rejects it. (There are instances where they accept..maybe more so now, but I never had any short sale offers accepted in ‘’08-‘09 by BofA or Wells Fargo)
6) If no offers are accepted by the bank, the next step is to try a Deed in Lieu. You attempt to hand keys back to the bank for a “sum” and they take over property. You write a check for a negotiated dollar amount, they send you all types of paperwork which will often say “We can still come after you for the forgiven difference one day”.
7) To do the DIL, the person at bank you’re negotiating with is not the one making the decision. It’s usually their supervisor. So your hardship “story” is usually being relayed to another person that you never even get to talk to who has the final say.
8) If the DIL is rejected, it’s straight up Foreclosure through the courts.
9) You get a wonderful 1099-C. Cancelation of Debt Form. Let’s say you owe $1,000,000. They foreclose and resell your property at auction and the bank gets $750,000 for it. They forgave $250,000 of your debt. It’s their “gift” to you. So you get to pay taxes on a $250,000 gift. Fun times.
The other issue with all of the above: Your credit is shot from the get go. Even in the short sale process, you aren’t making your payments. So each month that passes just dings your credit more and more. Say goodbye to having any ability to purchase anything on credit for around 5 years. At the 7 year mark, it falls off if they finalize your DIL or foreclosure, but your purchasing power is shot for a long time. My credit was 790 in 2008. By 2009, it was 400. Literally everything after this process has to be purchased with cash or some type of high interest hard money loan.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/05/2023 – 21:20 - Proud Boys Leader Enrique Tarrio Handed 22-Year Prison Term For Jan. 6 Attack
Proud Boys Leader Enrique Tarrio Handed 22-Year Prison Term For Jan. 6 Attack
Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman and Jackson Richman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Henry “Enrique” Tarrio Jr., the Florida-based former chairman of the Proud Boys accused of being the mastermind of a seditious conspiracy to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison on Sept. 5 by U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly.
Mr. Tarrio, 39, of Miami, received the longest prison term among all Jan. 6 defendants, eclipsing the previous record of 18 years given to Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III in May, and Mr. Tarrio’s co-defendant, Ethan Nordean, on Sept. 1.
Prosecution of Mr. Tarrio and his Proud Boys lieutenants included the most extended Jan. 6 criminal trial—more than four months—held in the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Tarrio was the last of his trial group to be handed a sentence by Judge Kelly, an appointee of former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Nordean was sentenced to 18 years, Joseph Biggs 17 years, Zachary Rehl 15 years, and Dominic Pezzola 10 years.
Federal prosecutors sought a 33-year prison term for Mr. Tarrio, described in court documents as a “naturally charismatic leader, a savvy propagandist, and the celebrity chairman of the national Proud Boys organization.” Prosecutors claimed he exhibited “pernicious, violence-oriented leadership.”
During a nearly four-hour sentencing hearing, defense attorneys said 15 years would be a sufficient prison term.
Mr. Tarrio expressed remorse for Jan. 6, for letting down his grandfather and his family, and for not respecting law enforcement.
He asked the judge for leniency so he could return to society and turn away from “my selfish endeavors.” Mr. Tarrio said the trial has humbled him and he no longer wants anything to do with rallies or politics.
“I am not a political zealot,” he said.
Calling seditious conspiracy a “serious offense,” Judge Kelly said Mr. Tarrio was the “ultimate leader” of the conspiracy who schemed to have government buildings taken over on Jan. 6. What happened that day was a “disgrace,” the judge said.
Although Mr. Tarrio was not physically present in Washington on Jan. 6, Judge Kelly applied a sentence enhancement for terrorism based on the attack on Capitol fencing by Mr. Biggs and Mr. Nordean. Judge Kelly said the seditious conspiracy made Mr. Tarrio complicit in the fence destruction and deserving of the terrorism enhancement.
On May 4, Mr. Tarrio was found guilty by a jury of seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to use force, intimidation, or threat to prevent officers of the United States from discharging their duties, interference with law enforcement during civil disorder, and destruction of government property.
Mr. Tarrio was found not guilty of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers. The jury could not reach a verdict on two other counts.
Much like the Oath Keepers put on trial in 2022 and 2023, Mr. Tarrio was accused of plotting to thwart the “peaceful transfer of power” from President Donald J. Trump to Joseph Biden Jr.
Defense attorney Sabino Jauregui rejected the idea his client is a terrorist.
“My client is no terrorist,” Mr. Jauregui said, instead describing Mr. Tarrio as a “misguided patriot.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Conor Mulroe disagreed, describing Jan. 6 as a “calculated act of terrorism.”
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/05/2023 – 21:00 - US Officials Say Chinese "Tourists" Engaged In 'Gate-Crashing' US Bases For Espionage
US Officials Say Chinese “Tourists” Engaged In ‘Gate-Crashing’ US Bases For Espionage
Fresh reporting in The Wall Street Journal has reviewed and presented a series of instances which are being dubbed low-level Chinese intelligence collection efforts, often involving Chinese nationals posing as tourists who attempt to gain access to military bases in the US, sometimes in bizarre and forceful ways.
US officials have tracked a dramatic increase in these incidents, citing that they’ve occurred as many as 100 times in recent years. These episodes have also been called ‘grate-crashing’ incidents.
“The Defense Department, FBI and other agencies held a review last year to try to limit these incidents, which involve people whom officials have dubbed gate-crashers because of their attempts—either by accident or intentionally—to get onto U.S. military bases and other installations without proper authorization,” the WSJ wrote.
High secure facility at U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) in Socorro, New Mexico. Image via MIT. Documenting some of the more interesting examples, the report said, “They range from Chinese nationals found crossing into a U.S. missile range in New Mexico to what appeared to be scuba divers swimming in murky waters near a U.S. government rocket-launch site in Florida.”
The people involved are not likely Chinese intelligence officials themselves, but possibly assets pressed into service by their country while they are in the states. In many cases, the phenomenon appears a low-level and easy attempt at testing security practices at high secure American government installations.
These instances have reportedly come under renewed scrutiny after the Chinese ‘spy balloon’ shootdown incident off the South Carolina coast in early February.
The FBI has said, “The Chinese government is engaged in a broad, diverse campaign of theft and malign influence without regard to laws or international norms that the FBI will not tolerate.” But of course, Beijing has responded by rejecting the “groundless accusations” and “Cold War mentality” which the foreign ministry says has been on display by the US. “The relevant claims are purely ill-intentioned fabrications,” the Chinese embassy in D.C. told the Journal.
According to one example offered in the report:
Officials described incidents in which Chinese nationals say they have a reservation at an on-base hotel. In a recent case, a group of Chinese nationals claiming they were tourists, tried to push past guards at Fort Wainwright, Alaska, saying they had reservations at a commercial hotel on the base. The base is home to the Army’s 11th Airborne Division, which is focused on Arctic warfare.
In numerous other examples, Chinese “tourists” take photos, or even deploy recreational drones, to capture images of sensitive military sites.
Another example US officials described to the WSJ involved Chinese visitors going to White Sands National Park – only to wander onto the neighboring missile testing range and facility. Similar scenarios have even happened at the White House, where Chinese visitors on group tours appeared to have focused their photo-taking on security guard houses and Secret Service guard infrastructure, before being told to leave.
“Chinese nationals, sometimes posing as tourists, have accessed US military bases and other sensitive sites as many as 100 times”
“No cases appear to have resulted in espionage charges.”
“individuals are typically Chinese nationals pressed into service”https://t.co/PUrcVzV3AM
— Jeff M. Smith (@Cold_Peace_) September 4, 2023
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In a further example…
In another incident, Chinese nationals appear to have been found scuba diving off Cape Canaveral, home to the Kennedy Space Center. The area is the launch site for spy satellites and other military missions. A spokesman for Homeland Security Investigations’s Tampa, Fla., field office said the incident was part of a continuing investigation and declined to comment further.
They were reportedly taking photos near the launch site, but at the same time there’s some ambiguity and “cover” given they simply claimed they were scuba diving and were engaged in harmless recreation in public waters.
The report says that often the Chinese nationals are only briefly detained and then put on a plane and sent out of the country and back to China early. US officials believe that this is an organized probing effort of the Chinese government and its intelligence services.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/05/2023 – 20:40 - Shellenberger: Government Intel & Security Agencies Behind NGO Demands For More Censorship By X/Twitter
Shellenberger: Government Intel & Security Agencies Behind NGO Demands For More Censorship By X/Twitter
Authored by Alex Gutentag and Michael Shellenberger via Public Substack,
Groups leading the advertiser boycott of X/Twitter receive money from and have a history of spying for governments…
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO, ADL; MP Damian Collins, CCDH Advisory Board Member; Sasha Havlicek, CEO of ISD
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) are nongovernmental organizations, their leaders say. When they demand more censorship of online hate speech, as they are currently doing of X, formerly Twitter, those NGOs are doing it as free citizens and not, say, as government agents.
But the fact of the matter is that the US and other Western governments fund ISD, the UK government indirectly funds CCDH, and, for at least 40 years, ADL spied on its enemies and shared intelligence with the US, Israel and other governments. The reason all of this matters is that ADL’s advertiser boycott against X may be an effort by governments to regain the ability to censor users on X that they had under Twitter before Musk’s takeover last November.
Internal Twitter and Facebook messages show that representatives of the US government, including the White House, FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as well as the UK government, successfully demanded Facebook and Twitter censorship of their users over the last several years.
ADL is waging a very similar campaign against X/Twitter that it successfully waged against Facebook in 2020. In just three days, 800 companies, including $129 billion consumer products giant Unilever, withdrew tens of millions of dollars in ad revenue from Facebook until it agreed to ADL’s censorship demands. “The Facebook caved to far-left pressure groups and now allows them to silently dictate policy in exchange for ad money,” said Musk yesterday. “That is the relationship they’ve had with X/Twitter for many years. Presumably, they have that with all Western search or social media orgs.”
It’s possible that there has been an increase in hate on X since Elon Musk bought the company. With greater free speech policies comes the possibility of more offensive speech, including racist or antisemitic speech. Bigotry does exist, and it should be challenged.
But there is no good evidence of that. Public has debunked claims by ISD and CCDH of an increase. And researchers have repeatedly debunked ADL’s claims of rising antisemitism for years. In 2009, an Israeli filmmaker found that ADL could not support its claims of an antisemitism crisis. Wrote NPR in a review of the film, “When he presses ADL staffers for evidence to back up their claims of a sharp spike in North American anti-Semitism in 2007, they can offer only wan transgressions…”
Eleven years later, Liel Leibovitz noted in Tablet that ADL had, for a report, “counted hundreds of threatening calls to Jewish community centers made by a mentally troubled Israeli teenager. You had to read the report’s fine print to learn that the number of violent attacks against Jews that year had actually decreased by 47%.”
ADL, ISD, and CCDH have not presented any good evidence that offensive speech online directly causes “hate-motivated violence,” nor that censorship prevents it. Moreover, last week Public reviewed evidence suggesting that the best way to combat hate speech is through open and public debate, which allows people to change their minds, not censorship.
ADL’s main goal is supposed to be stopping “the defamation of the Jewish people,” but the organization is using the legacy of antisemitism and the Holocaust to justify unrelated censorial advocacy work. This is exploitative, and it is defamatory to say that Jews, in general, need and favor censorship. Many Jews on both the left and the right have argued that ADL does not represent their interests. By claiming to speak for all Jewish people while demanding highly unpopular policies, the ADL may be inadvertently driving antisemitism.
As troubling as these highly partisan ideological biases are, what’s most dangerous are the past and present ties between ADL, ISD, CCDH, and governments, particularly security and intelligence organizations, which we detail below.
Neither ADL, ISD, nor CCDH have responded to multiple requests for more information or an interview.
ADL’s Spying For Governments
FBI Director Robert Mueller gives the keynote speech at the Anti-Defamation League’s 2005 National Commission Meeting November 3, 2005 in New York City. Mueller, who was joined by U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, spoke on terrorism, extremism and other global topics that are the centerpiece of this years ADL National Commission Meeting. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Although ADL is currently focused on demonizing Trump supporters as “domestic terrorists,” it has a history of partnering with the state and law enforcement to target the Left.
…
Today, ADL’s ties to intelligence and security organizations are closer than ever. It works with the FBI by holding a training session with agents and hosting FBI Director Christopher Wray as a featured speaker. According to Greenblatt, the FBI works directly with ADL “every day.”
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We do not have firm proof that there is a conspiracy by the intelligence and security agencies of the United States and Britain to control the content on social media platforms like X and Facebook through their control over CCDH, ISD, and ADL. Perhaps ideological, cultural, and political alignment alone explain the remarkable coordination we have documented. Perhaps the US and UK government funding for CCDH and ISD is insignificant compared to their nongovernmental funders.
But there is enough evidence of conspiracy for members of Congress and Parliament to investigate CCDH, ADL, ISD, and other so-called “nongovernmental” organizations for the advocacy of censorship. Who is funding them? What are their relationships with government officials? What is their role in intelligence and security organizations?
…
What’s clear is that we also need to change our view of ADL, CCDH, and ISD. They cannot be considered “nongovernmental organizations.” Their ties to the government, particularly the national security state, are too strong.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/05/2023 – 20:20 - CDC Repeatedly Advised People With Post-Vaccination Conditions To Get More Doses
CDC Repeatedly Advised People With Post-Vaccination Conditions To Get More Doses
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
A network composed of experts from inside and outside the U.S. government repeatedly recommended that people who suffered adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination receive additional shots, even when the experts could not rule out the vaccines as the cause of the events, documents obtained by The Epoch Times show.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Ga., on Aug. 25, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times) The network, the Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment (CISA) Project, is run by a doctor who has received extensive funding from pharmaceutical giants, including the top two COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, according to other records.
In one example, CISA was presented with records showing a 63-year-old woman experienced chronic kidney disease, with symptoms including kidney swelling, after receiving a second dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
CISA subject matter experts (SMEs) said that the diagnosis could not be definitively confirmed without a kidney biopsy but that they still felt comfortable using a causality algorithm for the presumed diagnosis developed in part by Dr. Kathryn Edwards, CISA’s principal investigator.
Applying the algorithm to the case resulted in an “indeterminate” designation, or an inability to rule out the vaccine causing the problem, in part because there was no evidence of other causes. But that inability did not stop the program from recommending additional shots.
“Weighing the potential risks of COVID-19 vaccination and the benefits of preventing COVID-19, the SMEs provided their opinion that the patient should receive future COVID-19 vaccinations,” the Feb. 24, 2023, letter to the patient’s doctor stated.
At the time, the effectiveness of the vaccines against symptomatic infection had been shown to start low and wane quickly, while protection against severe disease began higher but also rapidly dropped.
After the woman received her next shot, the CISA experts said, the doctor should check in on her to see if she experienced recurrent hematuria, or blood in her urine.
“Although the CDC’s subject matter experts claim to have no idea if inflammation of the kidneys in a 63-year-old woman was caused by the mRNA COVID-19 biological, they tell the attending physician to go ahead and give the woman another COVID shot. That amounts to a challenge/re-challenge experiment on a sick woman without informed consent,” Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, told The Epoch Times in an email.
“Government officials admitting ignorance about a biological product’s potential side effects but directing a doctor to risk a patient’s life by continuing to inject the product into a patient, who already has suffered an injury following use of that product, is immoral,” she added. “We expect and deserve government health officials to adhere to a higher professional and ethical standard of care.“
Some people who experience a problem after a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine have experienced a recurrence of the problem following another dose, according to case studies and surveillance data.
Dr. Edwards, until recently of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and the CDC did not respond to requests for comment.
Other Letters
The Epoch Times obtained, through the Freedom of Information Act, letters sent by CISA to physicians.
CISA features experts with the CDC and other institutions, including Vanderbilt University, Boston Medical Center, and Johns Hopkins University collaborating to respond to doctors who ask the program to review patient cases and provide recommendations.
“CISA provides consultations for U.S. healthcare providers with complex vaccine safety questions about their patients and conducts vaccine safety clinical research,” the CDC states on its website.
The first COVID-19 vaccines were authorized and recommended in December 2020. From Dec. 1, 2020, through June 1, 2023, CISA provided 48 recommendations to doctors dealing with COVID-19 vaccines, the records show.
In 39.5 percent of the cases, CISA recommended another vaccination. In 23 percent of the cases, CISA recommended against another vaccination. In 14.5 percent of the cases, CISA said there were no reasons patients could not receive more doses. In the remaining cases, CISA advised reassessing the matter down the road or advising a patient who had not yet received a vaccine to receive a vaccine.
The recommendations for future doses came even in cases where CISA was unable to say the vaccine did not cause the adverse event.
In a letter dated May 4, 2021, CISA experts said there was “no evidence” to support non-vaccine causes for the patient’s condition but that there was “no definitive known association” between the condition and Pfizer’s vaccine, leading to an indeterminate designation in the causality algorithm.
While one of the experts said that in a person “with the right immunologic makeup,” the vaccine “could be an initial inciting injury” causing the condition, many of the experts advised the patient to receive another dose.
The patient might want to receive Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which uses different technology than the Pfizer and Moderna messenger RNA shots, CISA said in the letter. “Support for this guidance included that it would avoid the lipid envelope and the mRNA presentation of the antigen to this patient,” they wrote.
In another letter, dated Jan. 18, 2022, CISA experts also found no evidence for non-vaccine causes for the patient’s condition, which appeared after Pfizer vaccination. But they repeated the claim that there was no definitive association between the vaccine and the condition, leading to an indeterminate designation.
CISA experts “strongly felt that the risk of COVID-19 infection was higher than the potential risk from another dose of vaccine,” according to the letter, and recommended a second Pfizer dose.
In a third letter, dated May 23, 2022, CISA experts said the causality algorithm resulted in an indeterminate designation “due to lack of strong evidence against a causal association.” They described a “very perplexing case” and acknowledged the patient’s condition was “not understood.”
But CISA experts still advised the patient, who suffered an event after a Pfizer dose and had also recovered from COVID-19, to receive another shot.
“This would be especially important in light of the current surge in circulating Omicron variants,” they wrote.
Small Number of Causal Determinations
A small number of cases led to the determination that the vaccination caused an adverse event.
In six instances, CISA experts determined that the event was “consistent with causal association,” or caused by the vaccination, because the condition suffered by each patient was “a known possible adverse event following immunization.”
In all six cases, experts recommended against additional doses while advising the doctors caring for the patients to follow up with the patients to figure out which non-COVID vaccines the patients could safely receive.
CISA experts also advised against additional COVID-19 vaccine doses in five other cases. The designations in those cases were also indeterminate, making the differences between them and those that resulted in recommendations for future doses unclear apart from several involving people who had expressed opposition to receiving more shots.
In seven other cases, CISA experts said there were no contraindications, or no reasons for not receiving at least one additional dose. The CDC has maintained a short list that currently includes just two contraindications for the COVID-19 vaccines—a history of severe allergic shock or a history of a known diagnosed allergy to a component of one of the shots.
Patients with other conditions, such as heart inflammation after COVID-19 vaccination, are generally advised to avoid additional doses, the CDC says in the list. But that is only a “precaution,” not a contraindication.
CISA also advised doctors of nine of the patients to reassess future COVID-19 vaccination down the road and, in two of the cases, told doctors that patients who had not yet received a COVID vaccine could receive one.
Read more here…
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/05/2023 – 20:00 - Chicago Criminals Get Green Light To Rob, Loot And Steal As Odds Of Punishment Collapse To Near Zero
Chicago Criminals Get Green Light To Rob, Loot And Steal As Odds Of Punishment Collapse To Near Zero
By Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner of Wirepoints
The decision to commit a crime in Chicago has never been easier. Criminals are almost guaranteed to profit because the chances of getting caught and punished have collapsed to near-zero.
It’s a big reason why the city is on target to hit a post-pandemic high in major crimes in 2023, currently up 32 percent vs. last year. It’s also why crime is unlikely to slow down significantly any time soon. Mayor Brandon Johnson doesn’t show any signs of imposing a higher cost on the city’s criminals. And Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and Cook County Chief Judge Tim Evans haven’t changed their soft approach to crime either.
The math is pretty straightforward. A demoralized, restricted police force. Plus a 1 in 20 arrest rate. Plus a high rate of unreported crime. Plus a dismal 911 response rate. Plus a city leadership that’s soft on crime. All that equals a near-zero chance of criminals ever getting punished.
Not until the costs of committing crime go way up – and the equation changes – will Chicagoans see any relief.
Equation inputs
Arrests
The chance of getting arrested in Chicago for a major crime collapsed to just 5 percent in 2022. It was already a low 10 percent just four years ago.
More than 68,000 major crimes were reported in Chicago last year. Only 3,228 of them resulted in arrests. Wirepoints’ calculations are based on the Chicago City Data Portal: Crime – 2001 to Present.
The arrest rate for criminal sexual assault? Just 3 percent. Ditto for Motor Vehicle Thefts. Burglaries were at only 4 percent and Robberies, 5 percent.
For thefts over $500, the chance of getting busted is even lower, at just 1 percent. There were just 201 arrests out of 20,041 crimes reported last year. And you’ll avoid arrest 96 times out of 100 across any form of theft, which The New York Times recently reported.
Unreported crimes
It gets even better for Chicago criminals. The above data is just for crimes that are actually reported. The Bureau of Justice Statistics found that nationally in 2019, “Only 40.9% of violent crimes and 32.5% of household property crimes were reported to authorities.” So the real chance of getting caught is even lower than the 5 percent.
Soft-on-crime leadership
Criminals are far more likely to get verbal support for the crimes they’ve committed, not condemnation, from Mayor Brandon Johnson. Kids just being “silly,” he said of the city’s recent teen takeovers. They’re not “mob actions,” he argued. We captured both those moments here and here.
And there’s the fact that even if criminals do get caught, the chances of being convicted and sentenced are low. State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and Chief Judge Tim Evans continue their light treatment of felony weapons charges and issue plea deals on the cheap.
Criminals also know they’re less likely to be detained pre-trial, which Wirepoints covered in Close the revolving door for high-risk offenders in Cook County. There are about 800 more violent defendants out on electronic ankle bracelets at any one time – many of them felons – than there were in 2016. There are thousands more defendants out without any tracking.
With the SAFE-T Act now law, the number of alleged criminals back on the streets before trial will increase further.
911 calls
Yet another part of the calculus is the fact that Chicago’s police aren’t responding to more than half of the urgent 911 calls they receive, part of what are called RAPs, or Radio Assignments Pending. Last year we reported on the 2021 data, which showed just over half of all priority 911 calls weren’t immediately handled.
It was even worse in 2022. Of the more than 780,000 Priority 1 and 2 911 service calls, 60 percent had no Chicago police available to respond.
Those delays included:
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Over 4,700 robbery-related calls, including 470 robberies in progress
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Over 19,400 calls of batteries in progress
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Nearly 2,000 reports of sexual assault, including 150 assaults in progress
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Over 18,000 reports of a person with a gun
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Over 1,200 reports of citizens shot
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Nearly 1,000 reports of citizens stabbed
Making it worse
The simple calculus of Chicago’s criminals is clear when you look at the city’s latest criminal fad: robberies.
The ease of stealing cars like Kias and Hyundais, in combination with new laws prohibiting police from foot and car chases, has emboldened criminals even more.
Criminals are now using those stolen cars to go on robbery sprees neighborhood to neighborhood, sometimes committing as many as 20 robberies within hours of each other, confident they won’t get caught or even chased.
That’s resulted in headlines like these:
The story that perhaps best captures the restrictions placed on officers to do their jobs is in a recent article by CWB Chicago: At least 23 armed robberies reported Sunday as Chicago cops *again* see a robbery in progress, but don’t chase the offenders:
…CPD police officers on patrol and in a surveillance camera operations center witnessed an armed robbery in progress in the 6500 block of North Western Avenue. “I can see them right now,” the officer radioed. “They got long guns. There’s a unit on scene.”
That patrol unit tried to pull the Durango over as they snaked through the North Side. Officers said four men were inside the SUV with their faces covered, bearing at least one rifle. But not long after the unit started to chase the SUV loaded with armed, masked men who had just robbed someone as Chicago police officers watched, a CPD sergeant ordered the squad car to terminate their efforts to stop the Durango.
At least eleven people were robbed that night, including some after the police supervisor decided to let the group of armed robbers get away.”
More victims of crime
Add all the above and it’s easy to see why criminals face a near-zero risk of punishment.
That also helps explain why the city’s crime numbers continue to rise. Chicagoans have been victimized more than 51,000 times during the first 8 months of 2023 – already more than they were over the entirety of 2019, 2020 or 2021. Only homicides are down compared to last year, by 8 percent – a small decline compared to other major cities.
If the lawbreaking trend continues, 2023 major crimes will total 78,000, some 17% more than in 2022.
For sure, there’s a lot to be done to solve the crime crisis in Chicago. The social challenges and poor educational outcomes plaguing the city will take years, if not decades, to unwind.
But to save lives in the meantime, and to make Chicago safer – one of Mayor Johnson’s key goals – the near-zero cost of committing crimes must rise dramatically. And that means reforging the chain of criminal justice, from arresting to prosecuting to sentencing.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/05/2023 – 19:40 -
- These Are The Most Popular US Undergrad Degress Of The Last Decade
These Are The Most Popular US Undergrad Degress Of The Last Decade
In an era of soaring tuition fees and mounting student debt, choosing which undergraduate degree to pursue has become a crucial decision for any aspiring college student. And it always helps to see which way the winds are blowing.
As Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao shares below, this visualization by Kashish Rastogi, based on data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), examines the changing landscape of undergraduate degrees awarded between the 2010–2011 and 2020–2021 academic years.
Undergraduate Degrees Growing in Popularity
The NCES classifies all four-year bachelor degrees into 38 fields of study. Of these fields, 21 saw an increase in graduates in 2020–2021 compared to 2010–2011.
While only those with more than 30,000 graduates have been shown in the graphic (to prevent overrepresentation of large changes in small pools of graduates), the full list is available below.
Rank Field of Study 2010–2011 2020–2021 % Change 1 Business 363,919 390,781 +7% 2 Health Professions 143,463 268,018 +87% 3 Biomedical Sciences 89,984 131,499 +46% 4 Psychology 100,906 126,944 +26% 5 Engineering 76,356 126,037 +65% 6 Computer Sciences 43,066 104,874 +144% 7 Communication 83,231 90,775 +9% 8 Security & Law
Enforcement47,600 58,009 +22% 9 Interdisciplinary
Studies42,473 54,584 +29% 10 Leisure &
Fitness Studies35,934 54,294 +51% 11 Public Administration 26,799 34,817 +30% 12 Physical Sciences 24,338 28,706 +18% 13 Mathematics 17,182 27,092 +58% 14 Agriculture Sciences 15,851 21,418 +35% 15 Natural Resources
& Conservation12,779 20,507 +61% 16 Engineering
Technologies16,187 18,562 +15% 17 Transportation 4,941 5,993 +21% 18 Legal 4,429 4,589 +4% 19 Military Technologies 64 1,524 +2,281% 20 Science Technologies 367 532 +45% 21 Library Science 96 119 +24% Note: Field of study names have been edited slightly from their NCES labels for better readability.
Let’s take a look at the areas of study that were most popular, as well as some of the fastest growing fields:
Computer and Information Sciences
Bachelor’s degrees in this discipline have grown by 144% since 2010–2011, with over 100,000 graduates in 2020–2021. The allure of the tech sector’s explosive growth likely contributed to its popularity among students.
Health Professions
Undergraduate degrees in health professions saw an 87% increase, attracting nearly 260,000 graduates in 2020–2021. This field accounted for 13% of the total graduating class, reflecting the growing appeal of the healthcare sector.
Engineering
There were 50,000 more engineering graduates in the U.S. in 2021, up 65% from 2011. With a median income over $100,000 per year, engineering graduates can usually rely on good wages as well as versatility in future careers, capable of finding jobs in tech, design, and communication fields, and of course, becoming future entrepreneurs.
Biomedical Sciences
University graduates in this field, which focuses on the integration of the study of biology with health and medicine, grew by 46%. A subset of this category—epidemiology—has been in the limelight recently thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Business
While this category recorded a modest 7% growth in graduates, its popularity has been indisputable in the last decade, representing the largest proportion of the graduating class in both 2011 and 2021.
Fields with Declining University Graduates (2011‒2021)
Meanwhile, 17 areas of study experienced declines in the number of completed university degrees. We explore some of the notable ones below:
Rank Field of Study 2010–2011 2020–2021 % Change 1 Social Sciences 142,161 1,37,908 -3% 2 Visual &
Performing Arts93,939 90,022 -4% 3 Education 104,008 89,398 -14% 4 Liberal Arts 46,717 41,909 -10% 5 English 52,754 35,762 -32% 6 History 35,008 22,919 -35% 7 Human Sciences 22,438 22,319 -1% 8 Foreign Languages 21,705 15,518 -29% 9 Philosophy
& Religion12,830 11,988 -7% 10 Architecture 9,831 9,296 -5% 11 Ethnic, Cultural
& Gender Studies8,955 7,374 -18% 12 Theology 9,073 6,737 -26% 13 Communications Tech 4,858 4,557 -6% 14 Personal &
Culinary Services1,214 594 -51% 15 Construction Trades 328 221 -33% 16 Mechanic & Repair 226 221 -2% 17 Precision Production 43 28 -35% English
Popular in the 1970s, the English undergraduate degree has gone through peaks (80s and 90s) and troughs (2000s and 10s) of popularity in the last 50 years. Between 2010–2011 and 2020–2021, the number of students with an English degree has fallen by a third.
The state of English’s woes are even making its way to pop culture, like in Netflix’s The Chair, which follows the head of a struggling English department at a major university.
Education
The existing teacher shortage in the United States does not seem to be getting fixed by a burgeoning supply of new grads. In fact, the number of university graduates in Education fell 14% between 2011 and 2021. With concerns around stagnant wages, burnout, and little to no support for supplies, many teachers are seeing an already demanding job becoming harder.
Liberal Arts
In the classic era, the liberal arts covered seven fields of study: rhetoric, grammar, logic, astronomy, mathematics, geometry, and music. Now, liberal art degrees include several other subjects: history, political science, and even philosophy—but students are meant to primarily walk away with critical thinking skills.
The modern world rewards specialization however, and a wider-scope liberal arts degree is seeing fewer takers, with a 10% drop in graduating students.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/05/2023 – 19:20 - Mainstream Media Finally Wakes Up To The Gaping GDP-GDI Recession Discrepancy
Mainstream Media Finally Wakes Up To The Gaping GDP-GDI Recession Discrepancy
Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
Not exactly timely, Bloomberg notes “The widening gap between gross domestic income and gross domestic product is a worrying signal.”
The difference between GDP and GDI is the biggest in US history. It should be identical, but it isn’t. pic.twitter.com/erjWHysI1g
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 30, 2023
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GDP vs GDI Chart Notes
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Real means inflation adjusted
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GDP is Gross Domestic Product
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GDI is Gross Domestic Income
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Real Final Sales is the bottom line assessment of GDP. It excludes inventories which net to zero over time.
GDI was negative for two consecutive quarters and has been weaker than GDP for four quarters. GDI is now positive, but it is subject to greater revisions than GDP.
GDP numbers from the BEA, chart by Mish
Bloomberg opinion columnist Aaron Brown says Summer’s End Is Ushering In a Recessionary Chill, emphasis mine.
In theory, GDP and GDI measure the same thing — the total value of goods and services produced in a geographic area and sold to end-users at arms-length prices during a quarter — but in different ways. If the economy had a single cash register, GDP would measure the money coming into the till, GDI would measure where the money went — to wages, supplies, taxes, interest, dividends or left in the till for owners and stockholders. But since the economy has billions of transactions, many complex and not all captured in official numbers, GDP and GDI have different measurement errors, and thus different values. They’re usually pretty close, however, differing by 0.8% on average.
Using two successive down quarters as the signal for recession, from 1947 to 1973 GDP and GDI agreed all but once. They both signaled four recessions at the same times, and they both missed the 1961 recession. GDP did give one false alarm in 1947.
Since 1973, however, GDI has done much better. Four times it signaled recession before GDP and once it caught a recession that GDP missed. Twice the two triggered at the same time, and once GDP gave a false alarm.
There’s been more news recently suggesting that a recession began at the end of 2022. Second-quarter GDP growth was revised down. Job openings are plunging. The labor leverage ratio — the proportion of workers quitting to those let go by employers — is falling as well, suggesting workers fear a weak job market and have little power to get increased wages. Corporate profits are falling as well. If current trends continue, and if GDP declines a significant share of the roughly 1.5% needed to fall in line with GDI, the economic numbers released from late September through October could well prompt the NBER to announce a recession.
This has three main implications, two political and one economic. Politically, NBER declaring a recession would support the Republican story that the Biden administration hurt the economy and denied obvious economic reality for three years to push left-wing policies. It would make Democratic painting of Bidenomic prosperity seem hollow or even dishonest.
I have been talking about the GDP vs GDI discrepancy, negative revisions, the discrepancy between jobs and employment, corporate profits, and the job leverage ratio for months, and in far more detail. Let’s take a look at some of my recent posts.
Negative Revision to 2nd Quarter GDP, Huge Discrepancy with GDI Continues
The lead chart and the second chart are from my post Negative Revision to 2nd Quarter GDP, Huge Discrepancy with GDI Continues
Real GDI peaked in the third quarter of 2022.
Discrepancy Between Jobs and Employment
Employment levels and jobs data from the BLS, chart by Mish.
Payrolls vs Employment Gains Since May 2022
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Nonfarm Payrolls: 4,377,000
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Employment Level: +3,185,000
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Full Time Employment: +1,446,000
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Only 45.4 percent of the employment gains for the last 15 months was full time employment.
Jobs Rise by 187,000 But 110,000 Negative Revisions and Unemployment Soars by 514,000
On September 1, I noted Jobs Rise by 187,000 But 110,000 Negative Revisions and Unemployment Soars by 514,000
Accounting for negative revisions, jobs effectively increased by 77,000 while unemployment surges as people looking for work can’t find it. Bloomberg labeled this “Goldilocks”.
Unemployment rose by 514,000. Over half a million people wanted jobs but couldn’t find them.
Full time employment is down by 150,000 since January of 2023.
Here is a blurb I have posted in my monthly jobs reports for eight straight months.
Because of annual benchmark revisions, the way the BLS reports revisions, and the relatively small sample sizes of monthly jobs reports, we cannot, with strong confidence, suggest these reports portray an accurate picture of either jobs or employment.
Of the 894,000 rise in employment in January, 810,000 was due to annual benchmark revisions. And the BLS does not say what months were revised, just poof, here you go.
The monthly jobs report by the BLS samples a mere 6 percent of jobs. The Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) payroll employment data represents 95 percent of the data.
The BLS will not incorporate March of 2023 until January of 2024. Lovely.
The Labor Leverage Ratio, a Measure of Wage Bargaining Power, Is in Retreat
Data from the BLS, the Labor Leverage Ratio (LLR) is defined as Quits / (Layoffs + Discharges)
The BLS comments “the quits rate can serve as a measure of workers’ willingness or ability to leave jobs.”
The LLR is a refinement to the quits rate.
I have commented on labor leverage several times this year, most recently in The Labor Leverage Ratio, a Measure of Wage Bargaining Power, Is in Retreat
Philadelphia Fed GDPplus Measure Sure Looks Like Recession Started in 2022 Q4
The Philadelphia Fed has a measure called GDPplus that’s a blend of GDP and GDI, not an average. It appears to lean more heavily on GDI.
In 100 percent of the cases, with no false signals, no misses, and no lead times more than two quarters, every time GDPplus had two consecutive quarters of negative growth, the economy was in recession.
On closer inspection, all but once, and the exception was a mere -0.1 percent, every time GDPplus had one quarter of negative growth, the economy was or would soon go into recession. By soon, I mean within two quarters.
GDPplus accurately forecast the 1961 recession but GDP and GDI both did.
GDPplus Recession Signals
Mish compilation of recession lead times based on DGPplus data
GDPplus Recession Signals Synopsis
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GDPplus signaled every recession
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GDPplus was on time 4 times, early by a quarter 3 times, and early by 2 quarters twice.
This makes it appear as if GDPplus is a leading indicator. It isn’t because the data is heavily revised.
The BEA makes revisions frequently, especially on GDI. Since GDPplus is more reliant on GDI, it also has significant swings. However, GDPplus is the best recession indicator yet.
One quarter is sufficient and barring positive revisions to GDI and by implication GDPplus, the economy went into recession in the fourth quarter of 2022.
For more discussion of GDPplus, please see Philadelphia Fed GDPplus Measure Sure Looks Like Recession Started in 2022 Q4
Mainstream media is finally waking up to these discrepancies, albeit without any detailed analysis.
It’s quite possible a recession has come and gone. The NBER already had one instance of declaring a recession after it was over so don’t be surprised if it happens again.
It’s possible that a recession has come and gone with an interlude due to Inflation Reduction Act inflationary Nonsense.
If so, expect a rare double dip.
* * *
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/05/2023 – 19:00 -
- 'In Broad Daylight & In Front Of Kids': Disturbing Video Shows Maryland Cop Getting Into Backseat With Woman
‘In Broad Daylight & In Front Of Kids’: Disturbing Video Shows Maryland Cop Getting Into Backseat With Woman
A viral video shows a police officer in Prince George’s County, a county in Maryland that borders Washington, D.C., taking what appears to be a young woman into the back of his police cruiser in broad daylight while kids play just feet away. It’s unclear what the officer and young woman did in the back of the cruiser.
A video posted on TikTok of a Prince George’s County Police officer has gone viral… I think I might know why 🤔 pic.twitter.com/sTX08SsNxh
— MoCo PG News (@MoCoPGNews) September 5, 2023
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Maryland Bureau Chief for 7News DC Brad Bell confirmed on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Prince George’s County Police Department’s “command staff is aware” of the viral video circulating on multiple social media platforms. He said the police department has “opened an investigation into the circumstances.”
.@PGPDNews says “command staff is aware” of this viral video and they’ve opened an investigation into the circumstances. https://t.co/XdG4P1BEsc
— Brad Bell (@Brad7News) September 5, 2023
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… and it appears the officer was suspended.
#BREAKING: @PGPDNews spokesperson says the department has suspended the officer seen in the viral video of him getting into the back of a police cruiser with a female (unidentified).
Unclear if PGPD will release the office’s name @fox5dchttps://t.co/St8Be8eUmm
hicle-with-woman— Lili Zheng (@lzhengtv) September 5, 2023
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One X user pointed out, “Across the playground in broad daylight is wildd levels of horny.”
“Prince George’s County Police sure do love black booty right in front of the immigrants and the kids,” another said.
Someone said, “It’s a PG County cop and folks are acting shocked my this…”
“In broad daylight where kids were playing at that smh. He couldn’t drive down the street?! And that girl looked MAD YOUNG to me. This is so foul smfh,” X user said.
The Prince George’s officer is taking ‘protect and serve’ to a whole other level. None of this is shocking in the Democratic stronghold county that borders DC.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/05/2023 – 18:40 - Don't Dismiss The Possibility Of Gold Confiscation
Don’t Dismiss The Possibility Of Gold Confiscation
Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,
If you hold precious metals in your portfolio, there is a good chance you fear hyperinflation and the crash of fiat currencies.
You probably distrust governments in general and believe they are self-serving and have no interest in your economic well-being. It is likely that your holdings in gold are your lifeline – your hope to get you through these times while holding on to your wealth.
But have you ever given any thought to the possibility of having this lifeline confiscated by the authorities?
In my conversations with friends and associates, I have often raised this question. The typical responses:
“They’d never do that.”
“I’ll deal with that if and when it happens.”
“I just wouldn’t give it to them.”
I consider these “wishful thinking” responses.
It’s an interesting thought that the greatest threat to gold and silver investment might not be the possibility of losing on the speculation, but the government taking it away from you. It’s a thought that I’ve found few want to even think about, let alone discuss.
If you fall into this camp, you’re in good company. Some of the forecasters whom I respect most highly also treat it either as unlikely or at best, “something we may need to look at in the future.” To date, in conversing with top advisors worldwide, the two primary reasons they believe gold will not be confiscated are:
1. “Confiscation would mean the government acknowledges the reality of the value of gold.”
Yes, this is quite so. They would be changing their official view… which, of course, they do all the time. But I submit that all that they need to do is put the proper spin on it.
2. “They would meet greater resistance than they did back in ’33.”
I expect that this is also true, but that a plan will be put in place to deal with that resistance.
We’ll address both of these assertions in more detail shortly, but first, a bit of history.
In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt came into office and immediately created the Emergency Banking Act, which demanded that all those who held gold (other than personal jewelry) turn it in to approved banks. Holders were given less than a month to do this. The government then paid them $20.67 per ounce – the going rate at the time. Following confiscation, the government declared that the new value of gold was $35.00. In essence, they arbitrarily increased the value of their newly purchased asset by 69%. (This alone is reason enough to confiscate.)
Today, the US government is in much worse shape than it was in 1933, and it has much more to lose. The US dollar is the default currency of the world, but it’s on the ropes, which means the US economic power over the rest of the world is on the ropes.
I think that readers will agree that they will do anything to keep from losing this all-important power.
The US government has essentially run out of options. At some point, the fiat currencies of the First World will collapse, and some other form of payment will be necessary. Yes, the IMF is hoping to create a new default currency, but that, too, is to be a fiat currency. If any country were to produce a gold-backed currency in sufficient supply, that currency would likely become the desired currency worldwide. Fractional backing would be expected.
As most readers will know, the Chinese, Indians, Russians, and others see the opportunity and are building up their gold reserves quickly and substantially. If these countries were to agree to introduce a new gold-backed currency, there can be little doubt that they would succeed in changing the balance of world trade.
That said, the US government is watching these countries just as we are, and they are aware of the threat of gold to them.
The US government ostensibly has approximately 8,200 tonnes of gold in Fort Knox, although this may well be partially or completely missing. Additionally, it ostensibly holds a further 5,000 tonnes of gold in the cellar of the New York Federal Reserve building. Again, there is no certainty that it is there. In general, the authorities don’t seem to like independent audits.
In fact, there are rumors that the above vaults are nearly or completely empty and that the above quoted figures exist only on paper rather than in physical form. While there is no way to know this for sure, it’s not out of the question.
Either way, if the US and the EU could come up with a large volume of gold quickly, they could issue a gold-backed currency themselves. It’s a simple equation: The more gold they have = the more backed notes they can produce = the more power they continue to hold. By seizing upon the private supply of their citizens, they would increase their holdings substantially in short order.
Either that or they could just give up their dominance of world trade and power… What would you guess their choice would be?
It is entirely possible that the US government (and very likely the EU) has already made a decision to confiscate. They may have carefully laid out the plan and have set implementation to coincide with a specific gold price.
So how would this unfold? Let’s imagine a fairly extreme scenario and ask ourselves if it could be pulled off effectively:
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The evening news programs announce that the economic recovery is being hampered by wealthy private investors who, by hoarding gold, are skewing the value of the dollar and threatening the middle and poorer classes. The little man is being made to suffer while the rich get richer. A press campaign to equate gold ownership with greed ensues.
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The government announces the Second Emergency Banking Act, advising the public that “the first EBA was instituted by FDR to solve this same problem during the Great Depression. This act was instrumental in helping the little man ‘recover.’” (As the average man on the street doesn’t know his history nor how wrong this statement is, he’ll believe it. Besides, the announcement has a “feel-good” message, and that’s all that matters.)
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Possessors of gold, who make up a small minority of the population, would become pariahs. It won’t matter that the guy who owns two gold Maple Leafs is not exactly a greedy, rich man. No one will wish to be seen as resisting confiscation. Neither will they wish to go to prison for resisting, no matter how remote the possibility.
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The US pays for the gold in US dollars, which are rapidly headed south. Yes, the Fed will need to print more fiat dollars in order to pay them off, but this suits their purpose, as it inflates the dollar even more. Those who have turned in their gold will do whatever they can to unload the US dollars as quickly as possible and will need to find another investment at a time when there are very few trustworthy investments other than gold. The stock market would likely rise, showing the public how the gold confiscation program is “working.”
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One last scary possibility: The government demands that gold is turned in immediately and that settlement will occur following confiscation. After confiscation, it announces that, as there has been such a large number of cases of rich people ripping off the little man, processing them all could take months, possibly even a year or more. A further announcement states that some investors have made an unreasonable profit on the backs of the poor and that they should not be granted this profit. This profit must be returned to the people. (You can almost hear the cheers of the people.) Then it sets about making assessments. The bureaucrats find that most investors do not have formal, acceptable receipts for every coin in their possession. So if you paid $1,200 for a Krugerrand a couple of years ago, you get paid $1,200. If you bought it at $250 in 1999, you get paid $250. But if you have no receipt in an acceptable form, you get a “fair,” median payment, say, $500, regardless of when you bought it.
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Appeals: Each investor will be allowed up to one year to appeal the decision of the Treasury as to what is owed him. Of course, the investor knows that the dollar is sinking rapidly and that he would be wise to shut up and take what he is being offered.
Again, this hypothetical scenario is an extreme one.
The reader is left to consider just how likely or unlikely this scenario is and what that would mean to his wealth.
But bear this in mind: If the above scenario were to take place soon, the average citizen would have mixed feelings. They would be glad that the “evil rich” had been taken down a peg, but they would worry about the idea of the government taking things by force, because they might be next. It would therefore be in the government’s interests to implement confiscation only after the coming panic sets in – after the next crash in the market, after it becomes plain to the average citizen that this really is a depression and he really is in big trouble. Then he will be only too glad to see the “greedy rich” go down, and he won’t care about the details.
As terrible as the thought is, it seems unlikely to me that the government will not confiscate gold, as they have little to lose and so much to gain.
Those who own gold would prefer to think that this cannot happen, but they have quite a lot riding on that hope and precious little evidence to support it.
It is entirely possible that this scenario will not take place, just as it is possible that confiscation will not take place. The purpose of this article is to spark some serious discussion – both for and against the possibility.
Investors are, by their very nature, planners. It may take a community of investors to develop a legal plan to deal with the above eventuality. Time to get started.
The government can’t easily confiscate what’s outside its own borders, which is why it’s working night and day to make it as difficult as possible for you to protect your assets abroad. This sad reality means that you need to take action before it’s too late. Your first step? Learn how to start internationally diversifying your wealth – and your life. From investing in international markets and opening offshore bank accounts to setting up an offshore LLC or annuity.
* * *
Unfortunately, there’s little any individual can practically do to change the trajectory of broke governments in need of more cash. There are still steps you can take to ensure you survive the turmoil with your money intact. That’s precisely why bestselling author Doug Casey and his colleagues just released an urgent new PDF report that explains what could come next and what you can do about it. Click here to download it now.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/05/2023 – 18:20 -
- People Rarely Transmit COVID-19 Before Experiencing Symptoms: Lancet Study
People Rarely Transmit COVID-19 Before Experiencing Symptoms: Lancet Study
Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
In a blow to the COVID-19 “silent spreader” narrative that has been used to push for universal masking, including controversially among schoolchildren, a recent study published in The Lancet suggests that people who are non-symptomatic rarely have the ability to infect others.
A protestor holds a sign against mask mandates in Costa Mesa, Calif., on June 10, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times) Silent transmission is the idea that those who are infected with COVID-19 but show no symptoms can still spread the virus to other people.
While all relevant studies show that presymptomatic and asymptomatic “silent spreaders” account for some proportion of infections in other people, the degree of silent transmission is less clear.
A number of early studies—in some cases affected by limitations that may have led to their proportion of presymptomatic transmission to be “artifactually inflated”—suggested that silent transmission accounted for around half of secondary infections, or even more.
The early studies led public health authorities to argue that everyone should wear a mask at all times when out in public or crowded places. This, in turn, helped drive draconian universal masking policies, including in schools, in a bid to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
For instance, Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), initially discouraged universal mask-wearing early in the pandemic but later did a U-turn.
Initially, “we didn’t realize the extent of asymptotic spread,” Dr. Fauci said in July 2020, adding that later, “we fully realized that there are a lot of people who are asymptomatic who are spreading infection.”
“So it became clear that we absolutely should be wearing masks consistently,” Dr. Fauci said at the time.
But new research calls into question the significance of the threat of silent transmission, which comes as COVID-19 cases are on the rise in America, driving what some are calling a renewed pandemic “hysteria” and calls for a fresh round of restrictions, including mask mandates.
‘Very Few Emissions’ Before Symptom Onset
The new study, published in the August issue of The Lancet’s Microbe journal, shows that people who are sick with COVID-19 but don’t show any symptoms have a limited ability to spread the virus to other people.
Participants in the British study, which was carried out by researchers at Imperial College London, were unvaccinated healthy adults aged 18-30 who were intentionally infected with COVID-19.
The subjects were monitored under controlled circumstances while self-reporting symptoms three times per day, and researchers collected nose and throat swabs from them daily, checking for the presence of the virus.
The researchers also tested the inside of masks worn by the participants, checked their hands, and examined the air and surfaces of rooms that the subjects were kept in for a minimum of 14 days.
Ultimately, the researchers found that less than 10 percent of the viral emissions from infected participants took place before the first symptoms emerged.
“Very few emissions occurred before the first reported symptom (7%) and hardly any before the first positive lateral flow antigen test (2%),” the authors of the study wrote.
The new study—which takes the form of a rigorous, controlled “challenge study” rather than the earlier modeling studies that relied on subjective inputs and assumptions of researchers—contradicts earlier research that set the tone for much of the prevailing narrative. That early research appears to have inflated the perceived threat of presymptomatic spread.
The latest study, suggesting that silent transmission is far less significant, comes amid a growing drumbeat of alarm as COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are on the rise—along with calls in some circles for renewed restrictions.
By contrast, many are calling for cool heads to prevail—or are urging civil disobedience if lockdowns or other mandates are reimposed.
‘Artifactually Inflated’?
Some early studies, such as one published in August 2020 called “Temporal Dynamics In Viral Shedding and Transmissibility of COVID-19,” suggested that people who were presymptomatic or asymptomatic accounted for a large proportion of secondary infections.
This particular study estimated that 44 percent of secondary cases were infected during the presymptomatic stage, while concluding that “disease control measures should be adjusted to account for probably substantial presymptomatic transmission.”
The authors of the study admitted that it had several limitations, however, including potential “recall bias” that may have tended towards a delay in recognizing first symptoms.
“The incubation period would have been overestimated, and thus the proportion of presymptomatic transmission artifactually inflated,” meaning that the study may have exaggerated the proportion of people who spread the virus before showing symptoms, they said.
Another study from July 2020 called “The Implications of Silent Transmission for the Control of COVID-19 Outbreaks” went even further, suggesting that people were most infectious during the presymptomatic phase and concluding that silent transmission was the “primary driver of COVID-19 outbreaks and underscore the need for mitigation strategies, such as contact tracing, that detect and isolate infectious individuals prior to the onset of symptoms.”
That study relied on a range of assumptions and models, with different presymptomatic, asymptomatic, and symptomatic transmission rates calculated based on a complex mathematical model from another study.
Findings from earlier studies like the ones cited above led public health officials to argue that silent spreaders were a big factor in COVID-19 transmission and so to recommend that everyone should mask up.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/05/2023 – 17:40
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