Today’s News 7th August 2021

• Escobar: Iran Embraces Its Eurasian Future
  Escobar: Iran Embraces Its Eurasian Future

  Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

  New Iranian leader expected to shift emphasis from the West to Global South and neighboring countries including China and Russia…

  

  Ebrahim Raisi’s election as Iranian president was marred by a low turnout and the banning of moderate opponents. Photo: AFP

  Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi was sworn in as the 8th president of Iran this Thursday at the Majlis (Parliament), two days after being formally endorsed by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Khamenei.

  Representatives of the UN secretary-general; OPEC; the EU; the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU); the Inter-Islamic Union; and quite a few heads of state and Foreign Ministers were at the Majlis, including Iraq President Barham Salih and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

  The Islamic Republic of Iran now enters a new era in more ways than one. Khamenei himself outlined its contours in a short, sharp speech, ‘The Experience of Trusting the US’.

  Khamenei’s strategic analysis, conveyed even before the final result of the JCPOA negotiations in Vienna in 2015, which I covered in my Asia Times ebook Persian Miniatures , turned out to be premonitory: “During the negotiations I repeatedly said they don’t uphold their promises.” So, in the end, “the experience tells us this is a deadly poison for us.” During the Rouhani administration, Khamenei adds, “it became clear that trusting the West doesn’t work”.

  With perfect timing, a new, six-volume book, Sealed Secret, co-written by outgoing Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and two top JCPOA negotiators, Ali Akbar Salehi and Seyed Abbas Araghchi (who’s still involved in the current, stalled Vienna debate) will be published this week, for the moment only in Farsi.

  Professor Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran summed up for me the road map ahead: “Iran’s foreign policy decisions are pretty clear. Iran will be putting less emphasis on Western nations, especially European, and more emphasis on the Global South, the East, neighboring countries, and of course that will include China and Russia. That doesn’t mean the Iranians are going to ignore Europe altogether, if they decide to return to the JCPOA. The Iranians would accept if they abide by their obligations. So far, we have seen no sign of that whatsoever.”

  Marandi could not help referring to Khamenei’s speech: “It’s pretty clear; he’s saying, ‘we don’t trust the West, these last 8 years showed that’, he’s saying the next administration should learn from the experience of these 8 years.”

  

  Outgoing president Hassan Rouhani (L) and Iran’s newly inaugurated President Ebrahim Raisi arriving for the handover ceremony in Tehran, August 3, 2021. -Photo: AFP / Iranian Presidency

  Yet the main challenge for Raisi will not be foreign policy, but the domestic framework, with sanctions still biting hard: “With regard to economic policy, it will be tilting more towards social justice and turning away from neoliberalism, expanding the safety net for the disenfranchised and the vulnerable.”

  It’s quite intriguing to compare Marandi with the views of a seasoned Iranian diplomat who prefers to remain anonymous, and very well positioned as an observer of the domestic conflict:

  “During Rouhani’s 8 years, contrary to the Supreme Leader’s advice, the government spent lots of time on negotiations, and they have not been investing on internal potential. Anyhow the 8 years are now finished, and contrary to Rouhani’s promises we currently have Iran’s worst economic and financial record in 50 years.”

  The diplomat is adamant on “the importance of paying attention to our internal capacities and abilities, while having powerful economic relations with our neighbors as well as Russia, China, Latin America, South Africa as well as maintaining mutual respectable ties with Europeans and the US government, if it changes its behavior and accepts Iran as it is and not always trying to overthrow the Iranian state and harm its people by any possible means.”

  Iranians are heirs to a tradition of at least 2,500 years of fine diplomacy. So once again our interlocutor had to stress, “the Supreme Leader has never, ever said or believed we should cut our relations with Europeans. Quite the opposite: he deeply believes in the notion of ‘dynamic diplomacy’, even concerning the US; he said multiple times we have no problem with the US if they deal with us with respect.”

  And now, let’s time travel

  There are no illusions in Tehran that Iran under Raisi, much more than under Rouhani, will remain the target of multiple “maximum pressure” and/or Hybrid War tactics deployed by Washington, Tel Aviv and NATOstan, crude false flags included, with the whole combo celebrated by US Think Tankland’s analyses penned by “experts” in Beltway cubicles.

  All that is irrelevant in terms of what really matters ahead in the Southwest Asia chessboard.

  The late, great René Grousset, in his 1951 classic L’Empire des Steppes, has pointed out “how Iran, renewing itself for fifty centuries”, has “always given proof of astonishing continuity.” It was because of this strength that Iranian civilization, as much as Chinese civilization, has assimilated all foreigners that conquered is soil, from Seljuks to Mongols: “Every time, because of the radiance of its culture, Iranism reappeared with renewed vitality, on the road to a new renaissance.”

  The possibility of a “new renaissance”, now, implies a step beyond the “neither East or West” first conceptualized by Ayatollah Khomeini: it’s rather a back to the (Eurasian) roots, Iran reviving its past to tackle the new, multipolar, future.

  The political heart of Iran lies in the sophisticated urban organization of the northern plateau, the result of a rolling, pluri-millennial process. All along Grousset’s “fifty centuries”, the plateau has been the house of Iranian culture and the stable heart of the state.

  Around this central space there are plenty of territories historically and linguistically linked to Persia and Iran: in Eastern Anatolia, in Central Asia and Afghanistan, in the Caucasus, in Western Pakistan. Then there are Shi’ite territories of other ethnic groups, mostly Arab, in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon (Hezbollah), Yemen (the Zaidites) and the Persian Gulf (Bahrain, the Shi’ites in Hasa in Saudi Arabia).

  

  A handout picture provided by the office of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on January 8, 2021 shows him delivering a televised speech on the occasion of the 43rd anniversary of 1978 revolt in Qom which ignited the Iranian Revolution. Photo: AFP via KHAMENEI.IR

  This is the Shi’ite arc – evolving in a complex Iranization process that is foremost political and religious, and not cultural and linguistic. Outside of Iran, I have seen in my travels how Arab Shi’ites in Iraq, Lebanon and the Gulf, Dari/Farsi Shi’ites in Afghanistan, those of Pakistan and India, and Turcophone Shi’ites in Azerbaijan look up towards political Iran.

  So Iran’s large zone of influence relies mostly on Shi’ism, and not on Islamic radicalism or the Persian language. It’s Shi’ism that allows political power in Iran to keep a Eurasian dimension – from Lebanon to Afghanistan and Central Asia – and that reflects once again Grousset’s “continuity” when he refers to Persian/Iranian history.

  From Ancient History to the medieval era, it was always out of imperial projects, born in Southwest Asia and /or the Mediterranean basin, that came the drive to attempt the creation of a Eurasian territory.

  The Persians, who were halfway between Mediterranean Europe and Central Asia, were the first who tried to build a Eurasian empire from Asia to the Mediterranean, but they were halted in their expansion towards Europe by the Greeks in the 5th century B.C.

  Then it was up to Alexander The Great, in pure badass blitzkrieg mode, to venture all the way to Central Asia and India, de facto founding the first Eurasian empire. Which happened to materialize, to a large extent, the Persian empire.

  Then something even more extraordinary happened: the simultaneous presence of the Parthian and Kushan empires between the Roman Empire and the Han Empire during the first two centuries of the first millennium.

  It was this interaction that first allowed commercial and cultural trade and connectivity between the two extremities of Eurasia, between the Romans and the Han Chinese.

  Yet the largest Eurasian territorial space, founded between the 7th and 10th centuries, following the Arab conquests, were the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates. Islam was at the heart of these Arab conquests, remixing previous imperial compositions, from Mesopotamia to the Persians, Greeks and Romans.

  Historically, that was the first truly Eurasian economic, cultural and political arc, from the 8th to the 11th century, before Genghis Khan monopolized The Big Picture.

  All that is very much alive in the collective unconscious of Iranians and Chinese. That’s why the China-Iran strategic partnership deal is much more than a mere $400 billion economic arrangement. It’s a graphic manifestation of what the revival of the Silk Roads is aiming at. And it looks like Khamenei had already seen which way the (desert) wind was blowing years before the fact.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/06/2021 – 23:40

• "It's Magical Thinking" – Most Law Degrees Are No Longer Worth The Tuition
  “It’s Magical Thinking” – Most Law Degrees Are No Longer Worth The Tuition

  A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal published a report about overpriced masters’ degree programs offered by Ivy League Universities and other top-ranked private colleges that often left graduates “financially hobbled for life”. The story appeared to resonate, and was one of the most popular stories on the WSJ website for days after its publication, while sparking discussion on social media, as many chimed in with similar personal experiences.

  Schools like Columbia (one of the worst offenders, according to WSJ) have been churning out MFAs and Masters in Fine Arts degrees at a surprisingly rapid pace given the paucity of well-paying jobs in those fields. Ultimately, the story showed the government was partly culpable, as no-limit loans for masters’ degrees helped create the incentives for schools to make useless masters’ degrees part of the higher education boom.

  One student, who earned a Masters in Fine Arts from Columbia in 2018, described having “2 a.m. panic attacks where you’re thinking, ‘How the hell am I going to pay this off?'” While we sympathize with the student, we can’t help but wonder what was going through his mind when he signed up for the program. In many cases, the classes are stocked with the children of wealthy parents, who happily foot their rent and tuition (while letting them carrying around daddy’s credit card).

  

  Of course, it’s one think to go broke after taking out a quarter of a million dollars in loans for your MFA. It’s quite another when the ‘worthless degree’ you shelled out for is a law degree, or an MBA. At least the students who enrolled in those programs had a reasonable expectation that they might find work in their chosen field after graduation.

  But as the old saying goes, “lawyers are a dime a dozen”, and for students of non-target law schools, the time has come to ask: was this degree really worth it?

  As WSJ begins, “law school was once considered a surefire ticket to a comfortable life. Years of tuition increases have made it a fast way to get buried in debt.” One professor quoted in the story said law schools “foster this kind of cruel optimism” in students, letting them think six figure salaries are attainable when in reality, those high-paying jobs are largely reserved for students at only the top-ranked law schools. Law schools encourage a kind of ‘magical thinking’ to keep the lights on.”

  We suspect the situation is probably similar for students who graduate from non-target MBA programs: stories abound of students shelling out a quarter of a million dollars to get degrees at Fordham, or even NYU, and coming out making less than many graduates of top ranked schools who have only undergraduate degrees.

  One of the schools featured in the WSJ report was the Unversity of Miami Law School, once of the most expensive in the country. Federal data show the value of law degrees from non-elite schools has fallen substantially. Salaries haven’t kept pace with inflation over the past 20 years, while tuition has soared. A thre-year JD program including living expenses, costs more than $250K now.

  

  Source: WSJ

  Meanwhile, law school graduates earn a median $72.5K the year after graduation, according to the National Association for Law Placement. That means half of them earn less than that.

  The end result of all this is that ‘graduate degree debt’ has emerged as a trouble spot in the modern economy.

  In fact, the only way to practically guarantee that law school will pay off is by attending one of the country’s top law schools. Out of roughly 200 law programs, only a dozen of the country’s top schools leave students earning salaries two years after graduation.

  At UMiami’s law school, tuition and fees have risen by 43%, to $57K for the coming school year, according to the ABA. That’s more than double the rate of inflation. The result is that students graduate and can only afford the minimum payment on their loans (unless they have help from parents). For those who don’t, they’re essentially condemned to decades of having their income garnished by a debt that will have swollen by more than 100% over the duration of the loan.

  Laura Cordell, a 2019 graduate, said she chose Miami for the prestige, particularly within Florida. “You go to any courthouse in Miami and the judge went to UM, the judge is a teacher at UM, there’s some sort of connection to UM,” she said.

  “When I was looking for law schools, I wasn’t looking at price as much as what would be good for my career,” said Ms. Cordell, 30 years old, who said she turned down another school that offered her a large scholarship. “I didn’t have an understanding of the gravity of the amount I was borrowing.”

  Ms. Cordell owes $334,000 in federal loans for her time at Miami. She now makes an $80,000 base salary, with a bonus of about $12,000, working at a firm that specializes in insurance. Because her debt load is so high, she said, she can’t afford more than the minimum payment on an income-driven plan, which sets her monthly payments according to her income.

  Why is that UMiami can get away with raising tuition, even though wages for its graduates are stagnating? The answer is government-backed loans: Schools know graduates can tap the government’s Grad Plus loan program, which permits borrowing for whatever the cost of tuition, fees plus living expenses. It’s still the fastest growing federal student loan program, even as law school enrollment dropped substantially after the financial crisis.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/06/2021 – 23:20

• Larry Sanger: The Astonishing Hubris Of A Global Experimental Vaccine
  Larry Sanger: The Astonishing Hubris Of A Global Experimental Vaccine

  Authored by Wikipedia Co-Founder Larry Sanger via larrysanger.org (emphasis ours),

  It is an objective, indisputable fact: never in the history of the world has there been a global push to administer an experimental medicine to all of humanity, billions of us, at the same time.

  I want you to stop and reflect on that. Imagine the hubris it required both to carry out this plan and to propagandize the world to carry it out.

  “Hubris?” you ask. “What do you mean?”

  

  The Covid vaccines are experimental. The FDA has not approved them. Most vaccines require years to test and approve, in no small part because we want to make sure they don’t have dangerous long-term side effects, which they can have; the CDC has published a list of problems with selected approved vaccines. Many experimental vaccines never make it out of the experimental phase. CNN made similar points back when Trump was, wrongheadedly (I thought so at the time) pushing for rapid approval of the Covid vaccines. Of course, the mercurial news organization hastened to forget all that when the Biden administration decided rapid vaccine deployment was a good idea. They shouldn’t have: for all the good they certainly have done, physicians warn us that vaccines can be dangerous for some, and experimental vaccines are, naturally, even more so.

  Again, my point is simple and absolutely factual. Again:

  • experimental vaccine

  • billions of people (over two billion)

  • at the same time

  You have to be willing to trust the welfare of billions of people not just to the honesty of our leaders and scientists—because things can go wrong for decent people. You must also trust their competence—and not just that, because competent people can make surprising, unforeseeable mistakes. You must also trust that we avoided the worst, that we dodged a bullet, and that they actually succeeded in making a more or less safe vaccine.

  Of course, maybe they did. I sure hope so. But what if we discover some horrifically high incidence of catastrophic side-effects that do not show up for two or five or ten years? Scientists tell us that that is possible. It is unfortunately possible that more people will die from these experimental vaccines than would have died from a virus that kills fewer than 1% of those who contract it.

  Do not misunderstand me. I am not claiming that is happening. I am not even saying that it is terribly likely. I am saying it is possible, because these are experimental vaccines.

  Frankly, the hubris required for carrying out this plan, and for taking the lead in propagandizing the world to carry it out, is jaw-dropping and scary to me. If a world leader is willing to take such gambles with all of humanity, what else are they prepared to do? I really wonder. If suddenly you became a president or top medical system leader or media organization owner, would you want to take an action that, if you were wrong, might spell the death of millions? First, do no harm. We haven’t heard that old medical byword very much recently.

  My family received our childhood vaccinations, by the way, with no issues. I am not an anti-vaxxer. I am an anti-global-all-at-once-experimental-vaxxer. There is a big difference.

  This is not even to touch the question whether these experimental vaccines should be mandated, i.e., if you should lose your basic civil rights if you fail to be vaccinated. Maybe I will write about that question, definitely a non-medical question, separately another time. There is indeed much, much more to say.

  But my present point is simple: experimental vaccine—billions of people—at the same time. It utterly boggles the mind that so many otherwise reasonable people have been influenced to think this is a good idea.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/06/2021 – 23:00

• Mercedes-Benz Unveils Armored S-Class Can Withstand AK-47 Bullets
  Mercedes-Benz Unveils Armored S-Class Can Withstand AK-47 Bullets

  Mercedes-Benz has tapped into the armored car market by releasing a new S-Class saloon that can survive a hail of machine-gun bullets. 

  The S 680 Guard 4MATIC is the armored version of the German carmaker’s full-size luxury sedan. It costs more than $650,000 but comes armored to the teeth to protect high-ranking officials, politicians, heads of state. 

  For instance, the Guard has the highest level of ballistic protection plates for a civilian vehicle. The polycarbonate windows are nearly 4 inches thick. The vehicle comes with a built-in oxygen tank and fire suppression system in case of an attack. 

  The armored plating and other modifications take Mercedes-Benz an extra 51 days to install. The weight of the vehicle is 4.2 tons, or about double the standard S-Class saloon.

  Pictures of the vehicle look like any other Mercedes-Benz. Non-descript or blending into the environment is what the German automaker is going after. 

  

  Mercedes-Benz appears to be entering the armored car market about two years after Russia unveiled a bulletproof saloon for heads of state worldwide. The cost of the Russian saloon is a lower-cost option to the Benz. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/06/2021 – 22:40

• 'Preppers' Quietly Stock Up For The 'Perfect Storm'
  ‘Preppers’ Quietly Stock Up For The ‘Perfect Storm’

  Authored by Allan Stein via The Epoch Times,

  A crippling ice storm that left Travis Maddox and thousands of other Missouri residents without power in 2007 had an “almost apocalyptic feel to it.”

  “No one could move. It just shut the whole region down for two weeks. I wasn’t as prepared as I thought,” said Maddox, a burly man of 43 sporting a long black beard, T-shirt, cargo pants and baseball cap, while tending his garden.

  

  Those two weeks made Maddox realize that being prepared—“prepping,” as it’s called today—was the key to a life of self-reliance and personal freedom.

  As an Eagle Scout, he never forgot the Boy Scout motto: Be prepared.

  “To me, the ultimate level of prepping is being self-sufficient. You’re still being modern, but you’re in control,” Maddox told The Epoch Times in a phone interview on Thursday.

  In 2009, Maddox launched his YouTube channel, “The Prepared Homestead,” which now has over 32,000 subscribers.

  People, he said, are waking up to the worsening reality of supply chain disruptions and food shortages, and rapid political and social changes that all point toward “a perfect storm” just ahead.

  The COVID-19 lockdowns and empty store shelves served only to heighten popular sentiment that the “old normal” is gone, he said.

  “When the pandemic struck we started seeing all this panic buying,” Maddox said.

  “What’s really increased is the number of people that contact me. These are really personal emails. They’re not crazy extremists. These are single moms, elderly people, disabled people, regular working people. They’re realizing that things are changing. They can just feel things are changing rapidly,” he said.

  “The riots [of 2020] were bad. The election was bad. Now what’s happening is the whole world is starting to change,” Maddox added.

  Talk of a global political and economic “Great Reset” and vaccine passports have done little to diminish anxiety among the unvaccinated that society is about to turn its back on them. And so they and others prepare—with food, water, alternative power sources, survival gear, and plans to leave the city if possible for the relative safety of rural areas.

  Along with The Prepared Homestead, a host of other YouTube channels cater to the seasoned and beginning preppers, including “Magic Prepper” in North Dakota, “Angry Prepper” in New York City, “Alaska Prepper”, “Ice Age Farmer”, and many others.

  Maddox said The Prepared Homestead began as a way to share basic gardening tips that grew in scope as political and economic circumstances changed.

  Now, he produces at least six videos a week, touching upon controversial topics such as forced vaccination, firearms confiscation, and “cultural secession”—living apart from the government and its “woke” culture—while using careful language to avoid the YouTube censors.

  “A huge portion of our country is saying you’ve gone too far,” Maddox said.

  “We’re seeing not just a rapid change in politics and policies and the economy, we’re seeing a rapid change in the heart and soul of America.”

  

  A storage room stacked with food is seen at a preppers ranch in Mathias, West Virginia, on March 13, 2020. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

  While many individual preppers and prepper organizations try to remain anonymous, the number of people preparing appears to be growing. In the last year alone, roughly 45 percent of Americans, or about 116 million people, said they spent money preparing for hard times or spent money stockpiling survival goods, according to Finder.com.

  Maddox, however, said there’s a big difference between prepping and “hoarding.”

  “Prepping is something most people did all the time” in bygone years.

  “Our grandparents were preppers. I suspect if things continue to worsen preppers will be made to be the bad guys,” he said.

  In the months following the pandemic lockdowns, online stores that serve a growing number of preppers have experienced record-breaking sales and interest in their products.

  Keith Bansemer, president of My Patriot Supply in Salt Lake City, said his business has grown exponentially amid widespread fear of a return to COVID-19 lockdowns, empty store shelves, and forced vaccinations that will limit personal freedoms.

  “For those that choose not to be vaccinated, the fear is that it’s going to restrict their access to certain things,” Bansemer told The Epoch Times.

  In a word—food.

  “Since mid-July, we have seen a [six-fold] increase in orders and are shipping several thousand orders daily from our centers in Utah, Missouri, and Ohio,” Bansemer said.

  “Americans are quietly preparing.”

  Bansemer said My Patriot Supply has provided over 1 million families in the U.S. with emergency foods, water filtration, and other survival products since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.

  “We own and operate three large warehouses covering over 500,000 square feet. We spent the last year adding 10 times the additional capacity to our operations to best serve our customers during times of crisis and emergencies during spikes in orders like we are seeing now,” Bansemer said.

  “An increasing number of those new to preparing have placed orders recently. They are primarily purchasing our large food kits that average over 2,000 calories per day and last up to 25 years in storage. The most popular item right now is our 3-Month Emergency Food Kit,” he added.

  In the end, he said, being prepared isn’t about politics—it’s that “people just need to eat.”

  

  A prepper collects eggs from his chickens which he raises at his home in Sebastopol, California on March 30, 2017. (Monica Davey/AFP via Getty Images)

  At South Carolina-based Practical Preppers, a supplier of emergency preparing supplies, President Scott Hunt said COVID is “definitely a driver of increased demand.”

  “The social and political divisions are also making people nervous,” Hunt told The Epoch Times.

  The Texas ice storm and the Colonial pipeline ransom earlier this year “really caused people everywhere to pursue independence,” he said.

  “Electrical independence is very high on everyone’s list. I predict demand will outstrip supply this month or the next. Shipping difficulties play a very large role in this. Port congestion and trucking shortages are contributing to this perfect storm,” Hunt said.

  As a seasoned prepper, Maddox said homesteading is the next level preparing for hard times. Both he and his wife and daughter live in a family-built house tucked away in the pristine Ozarks with the goal of living off the grid.

  The family raises goats, chickens, sheep, turkeys, and grows a variety of fruits and vegetables including squash, corn, and asparagus in a large garden.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/06/2021 – 22:20

• These Are America's Most-Searched And Visited News Sites In Each State
  These Are America’s Most-Searched And Visited News Sites In Each State

  America is known to have significant distinctions at the state-by-state level, and data suggests this trend extends to popular news sources.

  To learn more, Visual Capitalist’s Aran Ali shows this infographic from SEMRush ranks U.S. news websites by search volume and popularity across U.S. states.

  

  Here’s how the top 10 news sites compare when ranked by monthly visitors, as well as the number of states the news source is most searched for in:

  

  Political affiliation plays a large role in determining each state’s favored news sites. Blue states lean towards Google News and CNN, while red states overwhelmingly choose Fox News.

  The Most Popular News Sites

  Yahoo News is the most popular news website in America, bringing in a massive 175 million monthly visitors. In addition, they’re the most searched for news site in 12 states—the highest of any website. The company’s history has been a roller coaster ride and at different times Yahoo intended to acquire Google and Facebook. Both companies went on to be worth over $1 trillion each, while Yahoo shrank some 90% from when it was once worth $125 billion.

  The New York Times has 60 million monthly visitors, but in recent years, has pivoted towards the coveted and trending paid subscription model. This decision is paying off well, as the site now has 6.1 million paid subscribers—more than any of its competitors. Consequently, the New York Times’ share price hit a record high in December 2020.

  HuffPost, and their audience of 110 million, were bought by BuzzFeed from Verizon in November of 2020. The two organizations have some history together, as BuzzFeed co-founder Jonah Peretti was also one of the early founders of HuffPost.

  CNN is seeing a fall in ratings ever since Donald Trump left office. By some measures has witnessed a 36% decline in primetime viewers in the new year.

  Google News experiences 125 million visitors a month, ranking second overall. That said, they stand tall relative to their competitors by overall visits to their main site. Here, Google hits 92.5 billion monthly visits, while Yahoo experiences a more modest 3.8 billion. Unlike legacy media news companies, Google has managed to increase their market share of U.S. advertising revenues, due to more ads going digital.

  The Modern News Landscape

  Overall, the modern news industry has been a tough landscape to operate in. Here are some of the reasons why:

  First, the internet has removed barriers to where people obtain information, and revenue streams have been disrupted in the process. The advertising business model of news organizations is cutthroat to compete in, and there has been plenty of consolidation and layoffs.

  Lastly, trust in traditional news and media organizations has been declining amongst Americans, from nearly 60% to 46% since 2019.

  

  To add to this, on a global basis, the U.S. ranks well below most major countries based on trust in news media.

  Some organizations like The Washington Post and The New York Times have opted out of the advertising model, moving towards the direction of premium subscriptions. But only 20% of the Americans pay for their news, which could lead to stiff competition down the road.

  The Future Of News

  There are serious concerns about the future of news in the era of spreading misinformation. Up to 43% of Americans say the media are doing a very “poor/poor job” in supporting democracy. But despite this waning trust, 84% of Americans view news media as “critical” or “very important”.

  What will the future of media look like throughout the 21st century and how will this impact the most popular news sites of today?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/06/2021 – 22:00

• Time To End Another Failed California Gun Control Law
  Time To End Another Failed California Gun Control Law

  Authored by John Seiler via The Epoch Times,

  Gun control laws don’t work.

  Yet politicians eager to curb Americans’ Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms” keep pushing for tighter laws to grab more guns.

  

  A good example is California’s Armed and Prohibited Persons System (APPS), defined by Attorney General Rob Bonta’s website as “a database populated with data from a number of existing DOJ databases.”

  How’s that for a bureaucratic phrase?

  The APPS data “identify criminals who are prohibited from possessing firearms subsequent to the legal acquisition of firearms or registration of assault weapons.”

  In English, they’re felons or others who previously had bought guns, but were banned from owning them. Yet they continued to hold the guns, or are suspected of having them.

  “The APPS program”—weirdly defined by the AG as a system and a program—“is a highly sophisticated investigative tool that provides law enforcement agencies with information about gun owners who are legally prohibited from possessing firearms.”

  APPS was actually started by Republicans with Senate Bill 950 in 2001, by Senate Minority Leader Jim Brulte (later party chairman). It passed unanimously in both houses and was signed by then-governor Gray Davis.

  Trying to get ahead of the curve on crime issues, Republicans periodically decry the backlog of APPS cases, a safe way to seem tough on crime while not directly offending their pro-gun constituency. One example was a 2018 letter by the Senate GOP Caucus to then-attorney general Xavier Becerra (now a U.S. Senator), blasting him for allowing 10,226 delinquent cases.

  SB 950’s Senate floor analysis from 2001 actually explained it in clear language: “This bill will provide a way for law enforcement to find out which proven felons are still possessing weapons.”

  And it provided the reason: “The Attorney General [Bill Lockyer, the powerful former Senate majority leader] is sponsoring the bill in the wake of the mass slaying in February 2000 at Navistar’s International Truck and Engine Plant in Melrose Place, Illinois. In that case, the murderer was a twice-convicted felon who had previously, before his convictions, purchased firearms. Thus, even though he was prohibited and in possession of firearms, there was no way for law enforcement to find out and he was left to commit murder.

  “The bill was brought to the [attorney general] at the urging of law enforcement agencies in the state and it will provide them with a tool that will disarm these proven law-breakers before they can break the law again. If the state is going to find that some people are too dangerous to possess a gun, then we should make it as easy as possible for law enforcement to ensure that these laws are enforced.”

  Failed Potential

  On July 27 CalMatters reported, “But what seemed at the time like a straight-forward approach to the enforcement of existing gun laws has instead become mired in chronic shortcomings, failing for years to make good on its potential. Successive administrations have vowed to fix the problems, but all have fallen short.

  “Today, the state is struggling to recover thousands of guns from people who have been ordered to surrender them. At the start of the year, the list compiled by the state Department of Justice had swelled to 24,000 individuals, the most ever. The pandemic only worsened the mounting backlog of cases when some state Justice Department agents were pulled from field enforcement.”

  That assumes there actually was any “potential.”

  For perspective, I turned to John Lott, the nation’s top gun expert. I reviewed his book “More Guns, Less Crime” when it was released two decades ago. He recently was a senior adviser for research and statistics at the Office of Justice Programs at the U.S. Department of Justice. He now heads the Crime Prevention Research Center.

  “The notion that you will stop criminals from getting guns simply because you stop them from having legally acquired guns seems as likely to succeed as preventing criminals from buying illegal drugs, which obviously has worked flawlessly,” he told me, with a touch of irony.

  “The major source of illegal guns is drug dealers, who have to have weapons to protect their very valuable property.”

  The Brady Background Check System was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1993. That’s what you go through when you buy a gun, and is used with APPS.

  But, Lott pointed out, “There is no real evidence that the Brady system has reduced violent crime [even gun control people agree, but they now claim that is because it didn’t go far enough]. I would argue that there is no evidence that background checks on the private transfer of guns have reduced violent crime or mass public shootings.”

  He pointed to his research on those issues in Chapter 10 of the 3d Edition of “More Guns, Less Crime,” which came out in 2010.

  Does Not Compute

  Then there’s the problem of fingering innocent people. A lot of Americans hold the same names. As noted above, the California DOJ claims its APPS database “is a highly sophisticated investigative tool.” If that’s really the case, then it’s the only efficient computer system run by the state government.

  Despite being the home of Silicon Valley, the Golden State’s government is known for its pyrite data systems. The most notorious is the system of the Employment Development Department, which collapsed under the load of millions of newly furloughed workers when COVID hit. A December 2020 report by California Auditor excoriated its computer system because, “[N]early half of the claims EDD processed in the first six months of the claim surge required additional intervention to complete filing after claimants submitted them online.”

  Let’s not forget the California DMV, a byword for bureaucratic incompetence. Government Technology magazine reported in February, “Personal information for possibly millions of California drivers may have been accessible to hackers this month after a company contracting with the California DMV suffered a security breach earlier this month.”

  Getting back to guns, Lott said, “The background check system that we have is a mess, with about 99 percent of the 3.8 million who have been stopped being mistakes. It is one thing to stop a felon from buying a gun, but it is something else to stop a law-abiding person simply because they have a name similar to a felon.”

  With racial tensions rising since the killing of George Floyd more than a year ago, the last thing we need to do is make that worse over guns. But that’s what’s happening.

  “The error rate is very high among minorities because people tend to have names similar to others in their racial groups,” Lott said.

  “When I was recently working at the [U.S. department of justice] the error rate for black males was three times their share of the population and for Hispanic males was 2.5 times their share of the population.”

  That is, the minorities’ Second Amendment rights were violated at a much higher rate than were those of whites.

  Lack of Data

  The CalMatters article summarized numerous problems with the APPS being unable to go after a lot of people who aren’t supposed to have guns, but still have them. It noted, “Experts on the system—who note that thousands of guns have, in fact, been removed from individuals—say stakeholders throughout government must summon the resolve to finally fix the system’s deepening problems.”

  But get this, CalMatters also found, “Although the state does not track how many individuals, if any, commit crimes while they continue to remain armed, the agency has good reason to be concerned.”

  But if there’s no data, there’s just smoke. The state has no idea what’s going on.

  And this: “At the time of its adoption, the Armed and Prohibited Persons System was seen as the low-hanging fruit of gun-control measures—taking firearms from known owners who legally shouldn’t have them.

  “But today, the inability of state and local agencies to make it work as envisioned has raised questions about how they can begin to confront the wider menace posed by the thousands of illegal firearms circulating throughout California or the new wave of untraceable ‘ghost guns,’ assembled at home from mail-order kits.’”

  Ghost Guns

  Ah, yes, the bogeyman of ghost guns, which President Joe Biden also demanded be regulated in his Feb. 14 speech attacking the Second Amendment. They’re made by 3D printers. Which means the only way to stop them is by banning or regulating 3D printers. The designs can be downloaded from Internet sites located around the world.

  It reminds me how, in the Soviet Union, Xerox copiers were numbered and regulated to prevent “samizdat”—self-published underground publications—from being circulated. That’s what tyrannies do.

  The fact is, unless you live in a city like Chicago or Baltimore that’s run by Democrats defunding the police, your chances of being murdered are quite low, by guns or other means. It’s a gigantic country of 330 million people. So bad things will happen, including massacres that lead the news cycle.

  The Armed and Prohibited Persons System was a mistake enacted 20 years ago that should not be fixed, but ended. Of course, if police in the course of their work come across someone who shouldn’t own a gun, then they should enforce the law. But a special program sending officers to people’s homes – often the wrong homes – in search of alleged violators went too far.

  We need to get back to the American reflex to always bend our laws toward freedom.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/06/2021 – 21:40

• FBI Busts International Plot To Take Out Myanmar's UN Ambassador In New York
  FBI Busts International Plot To Take Out Myanmar’s UN Ambassador In New York

  Myanmar’s junta rulers have maintained an iron grip on the country since the February 2021 coup d’etat which saw elected leaders of the National League for Democracy get rapidly deposed and placed under arrest by the army.

  But given the United Nations has not recognized the coup government under the generals, Myanmar’s ambassador to the UN Kyaw Moe Tun has actually remained in place despite him also saying he does not recognize the new government. He’s continued to represent the now deposed National Unity Government at UN meetings in New York City.

  

  But the military has said he no longer represents the country. State TV announced last February that he’d “betrayed” Myanmar and was fired, particularly after his public calls for outside countries to employ “all means necessary” to reverse the army takeover. 

  This week it was revealed that a mysterious threat on his life was made, which got the FBI involved and resulted in beefed up personal security. Reuters reported earlier in the week:

  Myanmar’s ambassador to the United Nations, denounced by his country’s military rulers, said on Wednesday that an apparent threat had been made against him and U.S. authorities had stepped up his security.

  “Reportedly there is some threat. The police are working on it. Necessary security has be provided by the police,” Kyaw Moe Tun told Reuters. He was made aware of the threat on Tuesday.

  On Friday US Attorney’s Office Southern District of New York announced the arrest of two Burmese nationals believed behind the plot against Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun. A press statement described a plan to “assault and make a violent attack upon Myanmar’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations.”

  He was “wanted” by the junta…

  

  US federal charges were filed after agents were tipped off to the plot. US Attorney Audrey Strauss detailed in the Friday statement: “As alleged, Phyo Hein Htut and Ye Hein Zaw plotted to seriously injure or kill Myanmar’s ambassador to the United Nations in a planned attack on a foreign official that was to take place on American soil.”

  In what sounds like something out a Hollywood movie, the pair were alleged to have been touch with an international arms dealer out of Thailand who helped coordinate a murder-for-hire plot.

  “In the course of those conversations, HTUT and the Arms Dealer agreed on a plan in which HTUT would hire attackers to hurt the Ambassador in an attempt to force the Ambassador to step down from his post,” a detailed statement from the DOJ described. “If the Ambassador did not step down, then the Arms Dealer proposed that the attackers hired by HTUT would kill the Ambassador.”

  “Shortly after agreeing on the plan, ZAW contacted HTUT by cellphone and transferred approximately $4,000 to HTUT through a money transfer app as an advance payment on the plot to attack the Ambassador,” the statement continues. “Later, during a recorded phone conversation with ZAW, HTUT discussed how the planned attackers would require an additional $1,000 to conduct the attack on the Ambassador in Westchester County, and for an additional payment the attackers could, in substance, ‘finish off’ the Ambassador.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/06/2021 – 21:20

• America's "Re-Education" Camps
  America’s “Re-Education” Camps

  Authored by William Choslovsky via RealClearPolicy.com,

  We rightly criticize and condemn China for sending more than one million Uighurs – Muslims – to “re-education” camps. At the “camps” the Uighurs are “educated” in a process their Chinese elders describe as “washing brains, cleansing hearts, strengthening righteousness and eliminating evil.”

  Again, this is sick and wrong, a human rights abuse, something that should disgust us all.

  But we have our own, milder, version of “re-education” camps that indoctrinate, all for a supposed good, evolved cause. We call our re-education camps public schools.

  

  Here is one example, from Evanston, right outside of Chicago, of what first and second graders are now “taught” in school:

  

  DEEMAR V. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY OF EVANSTON/SKOKIE

  This is not a one-off or a rogue teacher. This is the curriculum, endorsed by the superintendent and school board. 

  Likewise, teachers are forced to acknowledge that “white identity is inherently racist.” They are actually separated by race during training. And if teachers object or question the practice, the district brands them “racists.”

  Students are also separated at times by race. During “Black Lives Matter Week,” the science department is required to teach a lesson called, “Black Women and Unapologetically Black.” Fifth grade teachers are even required to indoctrinate – I mean “teach” – that “color blindness helps racism.”

  Teachers are instructed “to disrupt the Western nuclear family dynamic as the proper way to have a family” and instead to promote the “Black Village,” which is a “collective village that takes care of each other.”

  Again, this is the curriculum for teaching seven year olds. It covers more than 7,000 kindergarteners through eighth graders attending 15 schools.

  Amidst all of this, sadly fewer than half of the district’s students meet or exceed the state’s math and English standards. And in the name of “equity,” the district recently eliminated geometry for its advanced students.

  This can’t be dismissed as “oh, that’s just wacky Evanston,” or that’s just “cuckoo Berkeley.” This is increasingly the norm across America. If not there already, it may be coming to a school near you.

  In short, it is an entire curriculum based on race. The student handbook even prominently states that the district “is committed to focusing on race as one of the first visible indicators of identity.” 

  In this respect the district arguably promotes the exact opposite teachings of what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. espoused and demanded: Namely, a colorblind society where his children were “judged on the content of their character, not the color of their skin.”

  What Evanston – and schools across the country – are doing is unequivocally misguided. It is dangerous. It is divisive. It hinders, not helps, inclusion, healing, progress, community, and self-worth. 

  And as we will soon learn, it might be illegal.

  In fact, our country fought this battle almost 70 years ago in the courts. It took the famous case of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 to end our nation’s shameful practice of “separate but equal.” There the Supreme Court ruled that “separate but equal” is “inherently unequal,” thankfully ending the sanctioned practice of government segregation by race.

  But now it’s back, just trumpeted as a good, evolving, progressive thing this time. 

  Though people will equivocate, rationalize, and seek to justify, little commentary is necessary when first graders are taught “whiteness is a bad deal” and separated at times from their black peers based only on their race.

  If it’s wrong and bad for the Chinese to “re-educate” Uighurs based on their race or religion – and spoiler alert, it is very wrong and very bad – so too it is wrong to do so with our kids based on their skin color.

  The phrase the “road to hell is paved with good intentions” comes to mind. 

  Imagine if there were schools that openly taught – as part of the approved curriculum – that “Blackness is a bad deal,” separated kids and teachers at times by race, and told the black kids they were bad for being black.

  We would rightly be abhorred. It would not be tolerated. Yet today – just flip the labels – it is celebrated and made part of the curriculum.

  This is not to say there is no place in our schools to discuss racism and its history. Of course there is, but just the same you don’t remedy one set of wrongs by perpetuating another. As the Supreme Court stated in 2007 when prohibiting public schools from admitting kids based on race: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

  So, What to Do?

  If you think this is wrong, there are two things to do, one political and one legal. 

  On the political front, you can use the ballot box and elect school board members who reject such practices. 

  People are finally realizing that what actually affects their daily lives more is not who sits in the oval office in Washington, but the nameless folks who set policy for the schools down the street, where their kids spend more of their waking hours than at home. 

  Those boring local elections matter. A lot.

  And if that fails, people can, and should, consider filing lawsuits. To be sure, it takes courage. Stacy Deemar, a 20 year veteran teacher in Evanston, recently did so. 

  Like the plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education, Deemar is stepping up and saying the Evanston practices violate our Constitution’s requirement of “equal protection” under the law and must stop. Her 34 page complaint boils down to one sentence: “District 65 continues to treat individuals differently based on their race.”

  I applaud her. In short, no matter who is doing the “oppressing,” and no matter their motivation, treating people differently based on their race is wrong. Period. 

  All said, if you want to protest government “re-education” camps, sadly you don’t need to go to China. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/06/2021 – 21:00

• "He's A Pathological Liar": Cornell Chemistry Professor Dave Collum Unloads On Dr. Fauci And Covid Hysteria
  “He’s A Pathological Liar”: Cornell Chemistry Professor Dave Collum Unloads On Dr. Fauci And Covid Hysteria

  Friend of Zero Hedge and Cornell Professor Dave Collum appeared on the Quoth the Raven podcast this week and offered his unfiltered (and often profane) 2 hour long take not only on the development of the Delta variant hysteria, but also on Dr. Fauci, vaccinations and the state of lockdowns across the globe. 

  Collum is the Betty R. Miller Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell University and holds a PhD, Columbia University, MS, Columbia University, MA, Columbia University and BS, Cornell University.

  The duo of Collum and podcast host Chris Irons first talked about Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the chief medical advisor to the president, whom Collum referred to as a “pathological liar”.

  When asked about the FOIA request for Fauci’s emails, Collum responded: “They were heavily redacted. One could only imagine what the redaction was. I got the feeling, reading the emails, Fauci was smart enough to know to not, himself, say anything. So Fauci didn’t say incriminating things, it was emails to Fauci that were incriminating.”

  Collum also took exception with the state of the country locking down again. “This is where it just keeps getting darker,” he said. “It started out as ‘flatten the curve’ and that made total sense…at the time it seemed like the scramble was to try and understand it, which I gave credit for them. It was really garbled because everything was ‘Anti-Trump’ at the time…but where I went off the rails is that it was looking like the pandemic was starting to subside and they weren’t stopping.”

  He continued: “So now what I see, what is confounding to me, which takes me down really dark places. I see panic. Panic, authoritarian levels that we vaccinate. And it’s Soviet style propaganda, it’s coercion, it’s bludgeoning.”

  

  Collum and Irons then discussed the lab leak theory, which Irons had ruminated about in-depth during a previous podcast days earlier. 

  “I’d call it a crime against humanity,” Collum said while talking about on the possibility of a lab leak cover-up. 

  “It’s interesting to look back now know what we know about Fauci’s communication,” host Chris Irons says. “It does look like a cover-up. What else are we going to find out? It’s been 18 months and the idea of a lab leak has gone from ‘completely batshit conspiracy theory’ to ‘this is the most common sense explanation’.” 

  “It’s not just that,” Collum responds. “Serious biochemists have looked at the sequencing and said ‘that does not make sense’.”

  “There’s no ethical guidelines for some of the egomaniacs in science,” Collum said.

  The discussion then moves on to vaccines, where Collum is quick to point out non-sequiturs in the “official” narrative: “It’s incoherent because they’re saying if you get vaccinated you’ll be protected and then they’re saying the people who are not vaccinated are risking the other people who are vaccinated and I’m like ‘which is it?'”

  “To vaccinate kids is nuts,” he says. “And you know what else is psychotic? The moment where it crossed the dotted line was December 2020. The vaccine had been out for a very brief period. The CDC Tweeted, I can recite it almost verbatim, although there are no studies, there’s no reason pregnant women shouldn’t get the vaccine.”

  He continued, exasperated: “You’re telling these women who are told don’t even drink a fucking glass of wine’ to get a god damn MRNA vaccine even though there’s no studies?”

  “That showed you the sociopathy of the campaign,” Collum concludes.

  You can listen to the entire interview here:

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/06/2021 – 20:40

• Why Did China Crack Down On Its Ed-Tech Industry?
  Why Did China Crack Down On Its Ed-Tech Industry?

  Authored by Lizzi Lee via TheDiplomat.com,

  Beijing’s latest move is a response to long-held public grievances about educational inequality and the resulting pressure to keep up…

  

  The Chinese regulatory authorities have been keeping investors on the edge of their seats this year. Domestic fintech firms were among the first targeted by Beijing. Next came ride-hailing and food delivery. Now ed-tech giants have rounded out the lineup.

  To understand the latest development, it is crucial to unpack the chronic love-hate relationship between Chinese parents and China’s private tutoring industry, says Zak Dychtwald, founder of the advisory firm Young China Group. “There’s enormous pressure on parents and children to give their kids a head start and to get them into the best school possible.”

  It all starts with the idea of “the project of childhood,” defined as the laser-focused drive to get ahead early in life, where having a leg up early on can define a child’s competitiveness from the middle school market, the high school market, the college and professional market, to the marriage and housing market, before reaching full circle as their offspring undergo the same ritual.

  Savvy business minds leaped at the opportunity, creating alluring promises of miracle grade boosters. Marketers tapped parents’ guilt mentality of not giving their kids the best chances they deserve with anxiety-inducing pitches. Scammers prey on low-income households with misleading free trials and deep discounts, which subsequently lock families into expensive multi-year contracts.

  On Chinese social media, where grievances about civil society are tightly controlled, signs of dissatisfaction surfaced.

  Tracking the emergence of neologisms, China Media Project has identified a fabric of buzzwords in recent years reflecting this mentality. The so-called “996” culture describes the expectation that employees work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week. “Chicken child” (鸡娃), a subtle dig at the tiger mom concept, mocks parents who push their children extremely hard to excel at all costs. The emergence of “little joys” (小确幸) and a “buddha-like” (佛系) lifestyle reflects the conscious choice of a more relaxed, hands-off approach to life, arising from a broad sense of the desperation of “involution” (内卷). This term refers to the meaningless rat race in which “one does not grow or progress but merely spins in place, becoming more and more exhausted in the process.” Then comes “tang ping” (躺平), or “lying flat.”

  In April 2021, a short Baidu post titled “Lying Flat Is Justice” emerged. “The stresses of life have been primarily generated by established ways of thinking and by the older generation,” says the post. The post resonated with so many that it created an overnight sensation.

  “Gaping educational inequality, along with the perception that you have to enter the rat race of getting ahead, is the single biggest source of anxiety in the Chinese society,” says Yale Law School professor Zhang Taisu.

  “People in policymaking circles and intellectual circles understand this. If you see this, then the crackdown seems a natural, long-overdue course correction.”

  To Xiaobo Lü, associate professor at the Department of Government, the University of Texas at Austin, the new regulations aim to kill two birds with one stone. “The Chinese central government has been increasingly wary about the role of private capital in the private education sector, or more broadly, the tech sector.”

  Still, as with almost all policy changes, there are winners and losers. The entire private tutoring and test prepping industry has been dealt a fatal blow. Reports of large-scale lay offs in the sector have surfaced on Chinese social media. Small-to-medium-sized providers face an existential crisis, expected to fold within a year if the current policy persists.

  Tantalizing proposals for reorienting existing business models, including investing in extracurricular programs excluded from the new regulations, have been circulated.

  “I think it’s going to be very difficult for them. It’s as if Ford couldn’t make the F-150 [truck] anymore. It’s their core competitive product and 80 percent of their balance sheet that got hit.” says Dychtwald.

  But not all is lost, argues Dychtwald. “If there’s ever an entrepreneurial group in the world who is good at adapting, adopting, and evolving at incredible speed, it’s China. Chinese entrepreneurs, in many ways, are products of their ecosystem, where regulation can change on a dime,” says Dychtwald.

  “The root of the problem is the widening social inequality, and the privileged and wealthy will come up with alternative ways to maximize their children’s education advantages, such as hiring private tutors to teach at home,” says Syracuse University Sociology professor Yingyi Ma.

  A ream of bank think-pieces indicates Wall Street equity strategists are connecting the dots. Instead of tracking the fast-moving economic landscape and profit projections, investors would be better positioned by selling businesses that are perceived to exacerbate inequality, such as education and housing, and buying ones aligned with Beijing’s stated long-term policy goals.

  In a speech delivered at the Communist Party’s Central Party School in January, Xi Jinping called on the government to proactively reduce the ever-growing income gaps to improve people’s sense of “empowerment, happiness, and security.” Reiterating the importance of “common prosperity,” Xi “warned it is “not only an economic issue but also a major political issue.”

  This might sound like mundane, abstruse Communist jargon until one realizes China has joined the club of capitalist countries with the most skewed wealth distribution. According to a new paper by Thomas Piketty, Li Yang, and Gabriel Zucman, the share of national income earned by the top 10 percent of the Chinese population has increased from 27 percent in 1978 to 41 percent in 2015, while the share earned by the bottom half of the population has dropped from 27 percent to 15 percent.

  The crackdown reflects Xi’s broader desire to take China out of its Gilded Age, as well as his preferred method to achieve that via command, argues Yuen Yuen Ang, associate professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

  “He genuinely wants a society that is less corrupt and more equal. And he intends to do so through commands. Have poverty? Command its eradication. Have corruption? Command its eradication. Have unequal education access? Command its eradication,” writes Ang.

  While acknowledging that these commands could be highly popular among the lower classes, Ang cautions that no leader can “command social problems out of sight.”

  Further, when a government can electrocute an entire industry with a snap of its fingers, investors have good reason to be alarmed. The series of regulatory crackdowns has wiped some $400 billion off the value of U.S.-listed Chinese companies, setting off a fanatic run for exit last week.

  “[The authorities] spent much of the summer going after private firms. There is a sense that they want to get everything done in one fell swoop,” says Zhang,

  “If you have the gears of the bureaucracy churning in such a way, you might as well take advantage of that momentum.”

  Dexter Tiff Roberts, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Asia Security Initiative, writes in a report: “While the importance of the private sector to China’s economy has not lessened, its status in the eyes of China’s top officials has undergone a real downgrading in recent years, and earlier efforts to make a fairer playing field have stalled.”

  Barry Naughton, professor at the University of California, San Diego, and one of the world’s top researchers on China’s economy, cautions that the recent regulatory assaults are part of the great initiative of increasing government control.

  “What’s the unifying feature of all these dramatic moves that the Chinese government has taken in the last couple of months? I think the answer is Beijing has decided that it has the ability and wants to even more actively steer the economy than it had before,” says Naughton.

  Xi Jinping himself has been unabashed about his desire to contain the unchecked expansion of the education sector. Online education has been “hijacked by capital,” concludes People’s Daily, the paramount CCP mouthpiece.

  If one looks close enough, the new raft of stringent regulations against China’s booming private-tutoring industry has long been on the official agenda. Still, to many, Beijing’s most recent abrupt moves feel like unpredictable bursts of wrath.

  “China’s volatile style of policymaking… often leads to a policy control mechanism that fluctuates between very lax and very harsh enforcement,” posits Angela Zhang, director of the Center for Chinese Law at the University of Hong Kong, in a new article.

  “It is a substantial reorientation in the attitude of the Chinese government, and I do not think that investors are overreacting,” says Naughton.

  When China’s stock market imploded in 2015, authorities scrambled to stem the losses. “This time Chinese government is acting as if they don’t care if the stock market crashes,” says Naughton.

  *  *  *

  Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/06/2021 – 20:20

• Retiring Baby Boomers Must Avoid Living In These States
  Retiring Baby Boomers Must Avoid Living In These States

  Millions of Baby Boomers retire each year from the US labor force. They must make the difficult decision if their current home state is worth living out their “golden years” of adulthood. 

  

  To simplify the process of what states are the best for retirees in 2021. The finance website Bankrate provides new data of the worst states to retire in this year. 

  Bankrate examined five essential factors: affordability, wellness, culture, weather, and crime for each state. Affordability and wellness were weighted the most, 40% and 20%, respectively. 

  The survey found that Maryland, Minnesota, and Kansas were the worst three states to retire in.

  “It’s a complicated formula to figure out what’s going to attract people to your state and how to create the best climate for them,” Jeff Ostrowski, Bankrate analyst, told CNBC. “It’s a combination of factors, some in the control of the state and its leaders and some that are not.”

  Ostrowski said Maryland ranked the worst because of complaints about the state’s tax burdens. 

  Here’s the full list of the eleven worst states to retire in this year: 

  11. Washington

  • Affordability rank: 36
  • Wellness rank: 8
  • Culture rank: 27

  9. TIE: Idaho

  • Affordability rank: 22
  • Wellness rank: 39
  • Culture rank: 30

  9. TIE: Connecticut

  • Affordability rank: 49
  • Wellness rank: 7
  • Culture rank: 9

  8. Alabama

  • Affordability rank: 8
  • Wellness rank: 44
  • Culture rank: 43

  6. TIE: Arkansas

  • Affordability rank: 19
  • Wellness rank: 49
  • Culture rank: 42

  6. TIE: Maine

  • Affordability rank: 40
  • Wellness rank: 29
  • Culture rank: 1

  5. Alaska

  • Affordability rank: 25
  • Wellness rank: 23
  • Culture rank: 20

  4. Montana

  • Affordability rank: 33
  • Wellness rank: 33
  • Culture rank: 3

  3. Kansas

  • Affordability rank: 24
  • Wellness rank: 26
  • Culture rank: 38

  2. Minnesota

  • Affordability rank: 39
  • Wellness rank: 15
  • Culture rank: 34

  1. Maryland

  • Affordability rank: 47
  • Wellness rank: 4
  • Culture rank: 39

  The timing of the Bankrate report comes as the number of retired Baby Boomers has surged post-pandemic, according to Pew Research Center analysis data from late 2020. 

  

  “We’re not expecting that someone’s going to make their life decision based on one index; it’s just another data point to consider,” Ostrowski said.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/06/2021 – 20:00

• Biden Administration Drops Lawsuit Protecting Pro-Life Nurses
  Biden Administration Drops Lawsuit Protecting Pro-Life Nurses

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  The Biden Administration took a little discussed but significant action this month in dropping a lawsuit against the University of Vermont Medical Center for allegedly forcing pro-life nurses to participate in abortions. It is not clear if the Biden Administration believes that pro-life nurses can be forced to participate in procedures that they consider to be immoral. However, it is clear that they are not willing to protect those religious views in this important action despite the faith-based claims under federal law. Indeed, the nurse believed the procedure constitute murder of the unborn and the Trump Administration agreed that she should be able to decline.

  

  According to the prior findings letter,  the medical center refused the request of the nurse to excuse herself from the abortion procedure. Other nurses were all allegedly forced to help despite such objections. There was no evidence that the Center could not accommodate the religious objectors by using other nurses.

  During the Trump Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)  asked the DOJ to investigate the matter as a civil rights violation. However, Biden Secretary Xavier Becerra asked for the investigation and lawsuit to be terminated.

  The HHS told Fox News:

  After a detailed evaluation of the underlying legal theory used to issue a referral to the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services withdrew the original referral and requested DOJ dismiss the suit against the University of Vermont Medical Center, a request which was granted.

  In line with this, HHS removed the Notice of Violation issued against UVMCC last Friday. HHS continues to evaluate the underlying facts of the matter and notified all the parties about its actions last Friday.

  That says virtually nothing. It is particularly glaring in light of the prior findings. The prior Administration found:

  UVMMC forced the nurse complainant to assist in an abortion against the nurse’s religious or moral objection. The nurse had expressed an objection for many years and was included in a list of objectors, but UVMMC knowingly assigned the nurse to an abortion procedure. The nurse was not told the procedure was an abortion until the nurse walked into the room, when the doctor—knowing the nurse objected to assisting in abortions—told the nurse, “Don’t hate me.” The nurse again objected, and other staff were present who could have taken the nurse’s place, but the nurse was required to assist with the abortion anyway. If the nurse had not done so, the nurse reasonably feared UVMMC would fire or report the nurse to licensing authorities.

  The prior referral was based on the view that this violated the the Church Amendments by forcing employees to participate in abortions against their moral or religious objections. 42 U.S.C. § 300a-7(c)(1) of the Church Amendments which state:

  “(c)Discrimination prohibition

  (1)No entity which receives a grant, contract, loan, or loan guarantee under the Public Health Service Act [42 U.S.C. 201 et seq.], the Community Mental Health Centers Act [42 U.S.C. 2689 et seq.], or the Developmental Disabilities Services and Facilities Construction Act [42 U.S.C. 6000 et seq.] after June 18, 1973, may—

  (A) discriminate in the employment, promotion, or termination of employment of any physician or other health care personnel, or

  (B) discriminate in the extension of staff or other privileges to any physician or other health care personnel, because he performed or assisted in the performance of a lawful sterilization procedure or abortion, because he refused to perform or assist in the performance of such a procedure or abortion on the grounds that his performance or assistance in the performance of the procedure or abortion would be contrary to his religious beliefs or moral convictions, or because of his religious beliefs or moral convictions respecting sterilization procedures or abortions.”

  The Center received $1.6 million in federal aide in the prior three years.

  HHS did not explain the basis for the withdrawal and just said it was “continuing to evaluate” the situation. The Biden Administration needs to be more clear on the government’s positions on religious objections. These nurses deserve better than a perfunctory, conclusory statement when they feel they are being forced to choose between the jobs and their faith.

  What is interesting is that the Biden Administration is planning on the controversial step withholding federal funds from hospitals and other institutions that do not impose a mandatory vaccine requirement. However, it is dropping an enforcement action to withhold funds to protect religious objections to participating in abortions.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/06/2021 – 19:40

• 65% Of American Workers Would Take A 5% Pay Cut To Be Able To Permanently Work From Home
  65% Of American Workers Would Take A 5% Pay Cut To Be Able To Permanently Work From Home

  It looks like the idea of working from home is sticking.

  In fact, Americans are so keen on continuing to work from home that they would even take pay cuts to do so, according to a new Bloomberg report. In addition to just taking a pay cut, many respondents to a new survey said they would also “give up days off or put in more hours” in order to be able to keep working from home.

  

  And amidst a historic labor shortage brought about by the Federal government subsidizing the entire country to sit around and literally lock down, companies are being forced to pull out the incentives to try and get workers to return to the office. Some companies are handing out prizes or even providing things like free lunch, child care, or yoga classes.

  Insurance company Breeze commissioned the survey, which revealed that 65% of Americans said they would take a pay cut of 5% to be able to work from home. Most people said they wouldn’t give up more than 5% – but 15% of respondents said they’d be willing to give up as much as 25% of their salary to work remotely. 46% of respondents said they would give up 25% of their days off and 15% said they would give up “all paid time off” to work from home. 

  

  For employees, it could make sense, especially when factoring in the cost of commuting. For companies, it could make sense because it is another cost reduction for many companies who are already choosing to eliminate office space, and the costs associated with the real estate. 

  The survey included 1,000 people who said they were “employed or looking for work at a job that can be completed entirely remotely.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/06/2021 – 19:20

• Olympic Organizers Refuse To Honor Victims Of 1945 Hiroshima Bombing
  Olympic Organizers Refuse To Honor Victims Of 1945 Hiroshima Bombing

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  Friday marks the 76th anniversary of the United States dropping an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The anniversary coincides with the Tokyo Olympics, but organizers of the games refuse to honor the victims of the massacre.

  Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui sent a letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to hold a moment of silence at 8:15 am on Friday, the time that the bomb was dropped, but the request was denied.

  

  The letter read: “We want athletes and related officials to somehow understand the reality of atomic bombs. Could you please call on them to join in spirit the Peace Memorial Ceremony held in Hiroshima by offering a silent prayer at the Olympic Village or wherever they are?”

  The IOC denial came after the organization’s president, Thomas Bach, visited memorial sites in Hiroshima in July. “I wanted them to take just a bit of time. What did Mr. Bach visit Hiroshima for? We feel betrayed,” said Toshiyuki Mimaki, a 79-year-old of Nihon Hidankyo, an organization of A-bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

  Explaining its denial of the request, the IOC said it made a decision not to call on athletes or officials to hold a moment of silence. The closing ceremony of the Olympics scheduled for August 8th will have a segment commemorating victims of historical tragedies. The IOC said the Hiroshima bombing could be remembered during the closing ceremony but added that the segment would not be about victims of any single incident.

  

  The real death toll of the US bombing of Hiroshima will never be known, but estimates put the number at about 140,000. The estimated population of the city at the time the A-bomb was dropped was approximately 255,000. Nagasaki was bombed a few days later, on August 9th, where an estimated 70,000 people were killed.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/06/2021 – 19:00

• Brace For Astronomical Shipping Costs As China Goes Into Lockdown Mode
  Brace For Astronomical Shipping Costs As China Goes Into Lockdown Mode

  With the latest weekly update of container shipping rates showing that prices – already at all time high – simply refuse to back down, as rates from China to the US surpassing a record $20,000, a new threat looms which could send already sky high prices into orbit. As the delta variant spreads on the mainland, most Chinese ports are now requiring a Covid test for all crew, with vessels forced to remain at anchor until negative results are confirmed, and requiring ships to quarantine for 14-28 days if they previously berthed in India or changed crew within 14 days of arriving.

  That spells further delays, further price increases and, according to Splash, shipping will need to start to make contingency plans should China – the world’s most important nation for shipping movements – emerge as another pandemic epicenter.

  The delta variant has broken through the country’s virus defences, which are some of the strictest in the world, and reached nearly half of China’s 32 provinces in just two weeks. While the overall number of infections — more than 360 so far — is still lower than Covid resurgences elsewhere, the wide spread indicates that the variant is moving quickly with many millions of Chinese now in lockdown.

  

  “For freight markets, the implications include delays at ports as authorities screen crews of incoming vessels and a hit to China’s oil demand if widespread lockdowns are imposed,” a report from Braemar ACM pointed out this week.

  When a Covid-19 outbreak was detected at Yantian Port in late May, operations at the key southern Chinese export hub were slashed by 70% for most of June. Similar disruptions are in the cards in the coming weeks, while shipyards are also likely to see their delivery schedules come under pressure if any wider lockdown measures are taken.

  

  “As long as lockdowns remain confined to China, the impact on freight markets is likely to be muted, especially in the case of wet and dry freight. The container market seems most vulnerable if we see more severe disruptions to manufactured products supply chains,” commented Plamen Natzkoff, senior trade expert at VesselsValue. On the potential tanker ramifications, Natzkoff said: “An immediate impact of a lockdown in China is reduced population mobility which would have a direct impact on demand for transportation fuels, potentially impacting negatively the tanker market.”

  

  On the possible consequences for the container sector, Alan Murphy, CEO of Danish consultancy Sea-Intelligence, reminded readers of what happened in February 2020 when China first went into lockdown. Carriers responded with a wave of blank sailings.

  “Assuming that a strict China lockdown would lead to a scenario as in February 2020, we would expect a drop in production of 15-20% for about a month,” Murphy suggested.

  While that at first might not sound too detrimental, after all that is in rough numbers what happens every normal Chinese New Year, 2021 is not a normal year.

  “Cargo owners, already stressed beyond sanity from devastatingly high freight rates and absurd surcharges, and with no way to secure neither equipment nor space, would suddenly see their procurement costs sky-rocket in addition to their back-breaking logistics costs,” Murphy predicted, adding that the one possible silver lining for shippers could be that as the production decreases start to wave out to the Chinese ports, pressure would start to ease off on the ocean bottleneck, which could start to bring down freight rates.

  The added concern Murphy has is if Chinese ports were not able to run at full capacity, like Yantian earlier this summer.

  “For container shipping, which is more than red-hot at the moment, even a brief halt in Chinese exports is likely to ease the crunch a bit logistically so long as a lockdown only closes manufacturing sectors and not ports and terminals,” commented Peter Sand, chief shipping analyst at BIMCO.

  Nick Ristic, a dry bulk analyst at Braemar ACM, said the sector would not be as badly affected as it was at the start of the pandemic last year.

  “Based on the experience in other countries with prolonged lockdowns, it seems the world has learnt how to keep things running with restrictions in place,” Ristic pointed out. Of greater concern for Ristic is the state of consumer demand and the underlying economy in China, which is starting to slow down.

  “This could take some real steam out of the Chinese economy and manufacturing base. PMIs are already weakening too,” Ristic said.

  Factory activity expanded at the slowest pace in 15 months in China last month as new orders dropped. The Caixin/Markit manufacturing PMI fell to 50.3 in July from 51.3 in June, the lowest since the covid pandemic started.

  

  Bulk carrier congestion in China hit a five-year high of 50.5m dwt over the weekend, rising by 24% year-on-year as new restrictions were put in place in ports across the country. Current queues are 76% above the five-year average according to data from Braemar ACM as Covid-19-related protocols affect all sectors of the dry bulk market, worsening the crew change crisis in the process.

  Newly reported positive Covid-19 cases in China have recently forced the country to re-introduce restrictions to curb the spread of the virus. Most ports in the country are now requiring a nucleic acid test for all crew, with vessels forced to remain at anchor until negative results are confirmed.

  Many ports in the country are also requiring vessels to quarantine for 14-28 days if they previously berthed in India or performed a crew change within 14 days of arriving in China. “While it is unclear how long these measures will be in place for, they will likely tighten the dry market in the near-term,” Braemar ACM suggested in a note to clients yesterday.

  Ralph Leszczynski, global head of research at Banchero Costa, like most analysts contacted by Splash, was adamant that China would not press ahead with a national lockdown. “Larger scale lockdowns would be unsustainable economically, so can happen at local level – in a single neighborhood or city, but not for whole provinces, not to mention nationwide,” Leszczynski said.

  China has managed to carry out one of the largest vaccination campaigns this year, with over 60% of the population already reportedly vaccinated, and an 80% vaccination threshold likely to be reached by September or October.

  “China will certainly try now to contain and eliminate the current outbreak, but if they don’t manage to do that, and it spreads uncontrollably nationwide, I think they are more likely to shift towards more of a living with Covid strategy thanks to vaccination in the autumn, similar to what Singapore has announced recently, rather than shutting down the whole country, which would be unsustainable economically and create discontent,” Leszczynski said.

  Mark Williams, who heads up British consultancy Shipping Strategy, concurred with Leszczynski, telling Splash: “More likely than a national lockdown is a series of targeted lockdowns by province or county. If those lockdowns include coastal regions, key ports and logistics centres, then globalised supply chains will become chaotic.”

  Commenting on the latest developments in the increasingly whacky world of hyperinflating shipping rates, Rabobank’s Michael Every made the following observations:

  • Before this surge in shipping costs, most economists thought logistics were invisible, efficient, and of no interest. Like plumbing, you need it, but don’t let it dictate your plans for the day;
  • Those logistics assumptions were only possible because since 1945 the US Navy has kept global sea lanes open and safe for all maritime traffic. Pirates and hijacking get attention today because they are *rare* – but they did not used to be. Indeed, global sea lanes used to be carved up by empires for their preferred shipping and production, not open to all;
  • That paradigm starting to fray along with the rest of the post-WW2 global architecture;
  • Current price surges are due to massive supply-demand imbalances that are not going to go away any time soon;
  • But imagine shipping costs, and the broader implications, if we get maritime chaos in the Straits of Hormuz, around Suez, or in the South China Sea;
  • Building new maritime capacity from ship to port to warehouse to rail to truck to store to home to address our supply-demand imbalances is tied to the post-Covid economic geography: is it still a post-1945 open economy?; if not, where will things be made? We still don’t know, but we BRI vs. B3W is an example of how things are trending;

  In short, Every concludes, the ship of apolitical logistics has sailed: “Just as ‘a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged’, so a ‘mercantilist is a free trader with squeezed supply chains’.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/06/2021 – 18:40

• The Unvaccinated: The New COVID Scapegoats
  The Unvaccinated: The New COVID Scapegoats

  Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

  They have found a COVID scapegoat. It is you.

  

  Persuasion to get the COVID vaccines failed with some Americans, as those who seek to persuade – namely government officials and the media – have no credibility. Onto the next step: a collective effort by the press, corporations, and the government to blame and vilify and target the unvaccinated. This is no coincidence, as such efforts help deflect responsibility from those who caused and created this problem in the first place.

  In New York City, you will need proof of a COVID vaccine for indoor dining, gyms, and concerts.

  If you want to participate in society fully, you’ve got to get vaccinated. It’s time.

  You’ll need proof of #COVID19 vaccination for indoor dining, indoor gyms, and indoor concerts and performances in New York City. This is a lifesaving mandate to keep our city safe. https://t.co/hIK99Z8M8A

  — Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) August 3, 2021

  Writing for The Atlantic, Juliette Kayyem (a former Homeland Security official with the Obama Administration) calls for the federal government to institute a “no-fly list for unvaccinated adults.” She desires there to be the establishment of “norms that restrict certain privileges to vaccinated people,” apparently so other “privileges” can be removed if the no-fly list doesn’t encourage enough vaccinations.

  

  Her use of the word “privilege” is intentional. This is because she believes “Flying is not a right.” We disagree. Travel (and thus the manner of travel) is a fundamental right to all Americans, “one of the implied and unremunerated rights reserved to the People.”

  Anyway, the unvaccinated “no-fly list” isn’t solely for the purposes of airplane safety. She concedes that the transmission of COVID is “unlikely” during a passenger flight. This is, instead, a proposed punishment to change the minds of the unvaccinated.

  Of course, there are millions of Americans who don’t fly. Banning them from flying won’t have the desired effect. From there it follows that they will have to remove additional “societal benefits” until compliance with a vaccine that still doesn’t have FDA approval is 100% (or at least until they get herd immunity).

  And on that point, the New York Times states, “the elusive path to herd immunity necessarily runs through vaccinating unpersuadable adults.” If they cannot be persuaded, what are the options? The Times answers that question: Without vaccine mandates, it’s hard to imagine making much progress with this population.”

  You know where they’re going with this. The Times’ Ezra Klein proposes policymakers start “raising the costs of remaining unvaccinated.” As if the people haven’t been through enough.

  Meanwhile, over on Twitter, morbidly obese writer Matthew Yglesias is offended by your health decisions and fantasizing about forced vaccinations (a position he holds but since deleted).

  

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  While they say this is about health, it is clear that it is also political.

  The press revels in condemning conservatives for not getting the vaccine. Self-loathing conservatives like David French say Evangelical vaccine hesitancy is a “spiritual problem.” Conservative governors – those with low COVID death rates in their states – are attacked for not doing enough to encourage vaccination.

  Paul Krugman takes these arguments to the next level, arguing that conservatives seeking personal autonomy are really trying to preserve their while male Christian “privilege” while making minorities pay the price.

  The government – including officials like Dr. Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins – must be happy with the blame-shifting. Just imagine their delight, after having potentially contributed to the creation of COVID-19, that the unvaccinated are now the accused.

  Never one to miss a media appearance, Dr. Fauci is out there saying the unvaccinated are “propagating” the latest outbreak, that we need to “do something to get them to be vaccinated.” This duty that Dr. Fauci advances is the purported obligation to do something to protect others. (One has to ask whether millions of lives would have been saved had they followed this same duty with taxpayer dollars at Wuhan.)

  We believe this is just the start. If persuasion has reached its limit (and there is evidence it has), then please, trust them at their word when they advocate restricting your rights and inflicting punishment if you remain unvaccinated.

  And in considering the institutions of power setting their sights on the unvaccinated – those whose purported crime is of inaction – I leave you with the words of René Girard:

  “The crowd tends toward persecution since the natural causes of what troubles it and transforms it into a turba cannot interest it. The crowd by definition seeks action but cannot affect natural causes. It therefore looks for an accessible cause that will appease its appetite for violence. Those who make up the crowd are always potential persecutors, for they dream of purging the community of the impure elements that corrupt it, the traitors who undermine it.”

  Subscribe here.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/06/2021 – 18:20

• Lake Oroville Hydro Power Plant Shut Down For First Time Due To Megadrought
  Lake Oroville Hydro Power Plant Shut Down For First Time Due To Megadrought

  One of California’s most important hydroelectric plants has ceased operations due to falling water levels, according to the Department of Water Resources (DWR).

  On Wednesday, Lake Oroville fell to a record low of 642-feet above mean sea level. By Thursday, the lake stood at 641-feet above mean sea level. Readers may recall in mid-June, we said if the “640 feet is breached, then officials will likely be forced to close the Edward Hyatt Power Plant for the first time since it opened in 1967.”

  

  Hitting the threshold was enough for DWR to declare the hydroelectric power plant had to cease operations. Lake management officials are in a water preservation emergency amid a megadrought and scorching heat waves. 

  Karla Nemeth, the director of DRW, said the move to shut down the powerplant follows a “climate-induced drought.”

  

  Shutting down the plant is a move to conserve as much water in Lake Oroville as possible. Water in the lake is pumped into an adjacent hydroelectric energy facility known as the Hyatt power plant, which can power 800,000 homes when operational. 

  “DWR State Water Project operations managers have taken the Hyatt Powerplant at Lake Oroville offline due to falling lake levels. This is the first time Hyatt Powerplant has gone offline as a result of low lake levels. However, DWR anticipated this moment, and the state has planned for its loss in both water and grid management. We have been in regular communication about the status of Hyatt Powerplant with the California Independent Service Operator (CAISO) and the California Energy Commission and steps have been taken in anticipation of the loss of power generation.

  “This is just one of many unprecedented impacts we are experiencing in California as a result of our climate-induced drought. California and much of the western part of the United States are experiencing the impacts of accelerated climate change including record-low reservoir levels due to dramatically reduced runoff this spring.

  “DWR will continue to focus on reservoir operations and water storage management at Lake Oroville to preserve as much water in storage as possible. DWR will use the River Valve Outlet System to release some water from the base of Oroville Dam to maintain river temperature requirements and outflows to the Feather River.

  “Falling reservoir levels are another example of why it is so critical that all Californians conserve water. We are calling on everyone to take action now to reduce water use by 15 percent, to preserve as much water supply in storage as possible should we experience another dry year. We are all in this together.” – Nemeth

  The loss of the Hyatt power plant might not trigger blackouts but illustrates a broader challenge facing the state’s power grid operators this year amid multiple climate disasters. 

   Before & After 

  2019 Lake Oroville

  

  2021 Lake Oroville

  

  The power will have to be made up somewhere else to reduce the risk of blackouts: 

  “This is a huge problem. It’s part of the big challenge we are facing this summer,” Severin Borenstein, co-director of the Energy Institute at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, told The Mercury News. 

  The silver lining is that Oroville won’t experience a spillover crisis anytime soon as drought ravages the region. Nevertheless, the federal government could quickly declare the first-ever water shortage in the area, which would prompt cutbacks in water usage. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/06/2021 – 18:00

• Wuhan's 'Bat Lady' Warns Of Coming Covid-19 Mutants
  Wuhan’s ‘Bat Lady’ Warns Of Coming Covid-19 Mutants

  Of all the people on the planet who should probably take a pass on weighing in over the future of Covid-19, the woman suspected of either creating it and/or releasing it is probably at the top of the list.

  Yet, that’s what just happened.

  

  According to Chinese state media cited by the South China Morning Post, top CCP virologist Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology – also known as “Bat Lady” – says the virus will continue to mutate, and we must prepare to coexist with it.

  “As the number of infected cases has just become too big, this allowed the novel coronavirus more opportunities to mutate and select. New variants will continue to emerge,” said Shi, whose lab was working with a US-Funded nonprofit to make bat coronaviruses more infectious to humans.

  

  Fear porn or legitimate concern?

  Aside from the obvious value in having ‘Wuhan’s Bat Lady™’ opine on emerging strains of the virus she’s an expert in – note that she doesn’t discuss how much more or less deadly new strains could be.

  For example, there’s no evidence that the Delta strain – while much more virulent than the original Alpha strain of Covid-19, is any deadlier.

  “There’s no evidence that it’s more deadly,” said Dr. Larry Corey, who is coordinating all of the COVID-19 vaccine research in the U.S (via King5). “There is evidence that it’s more infectious and more infectious to others, i.e., more transmissible. But [is it] actually more severe? There’s really not good hard evidence of that.”

  “Becoming more transmissible and less lethal are absolutely what’s best for the pathogen,” said Troy Day, a professor of mathematics and biology at Queen’s University in Canada, who has studied how infectious diseases – including coronaviruses – evolve (via AP).

  That said, sometimes viruses evolve to become more deadly.

  “…in many instances is never possible, to be more transmissible and also less lethal,” Day added – noting that there are documented cases of animal viruses which have evolved to become more lethal over time.

  Some examples of viruses that became more deadly over time include those that developed drug resistant variants, and animal viruses such as bird flu, which were harmless to humans initially but then mutated to become capable of killing people, according to Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security.

  “Flu viruses have developed resistance to certain antivirals that make them more difficult to treat, and therefore make them more deadly,” said Adalja, noting that this has happened with HIV and certain strains of Hepatitis C.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 08/06/2021 – 17:40

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