Jan 07

Today’s News 7th January 2023

  • McCarthy Elected Speaker Of The House After 15 Rounds
    McCarthy Elected Speaker Of The House After 15 Rounds

    Update (0030 ET): After a dramatic 14th vote which saw Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) Kevin McCarthy’s 14th bid for House Speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has finally won – ending a dramatic impasse.

    Interestingly, the House was set to adjourn for the evening, but then something changed and they held a 15th vote.

    The vote is still ongoing, but at least five of the GOP holdouts – including Gaetz, voted ‘present’ on the 15th ballot, giving McCarthy just enough votes to stumble over the finish line.

    Those who switched their votes to ‘present’ included Gaetz, Eli Crane, Lauren Bobert, Bob Good and Andy Biggs.

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    Update (2313 ET): After a dramatic Friday evening in the House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) failed to clinch the Speakership after 14 rounds of voting, after Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) voted ‘present’ – sending the entire chamber into disarray.

    The official count for the vote was:

    • McCarthy: 216
    • Jeffries: 212
    • Jordan:2
    • Biggs: 2

    At one point a visibly angry Rep. Mike Rodgers bolted towards Gaetz and had to be restrained.

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    Gaetz could still flip tonight, but as it stands now, is now pushing for a Monday vote.

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    Update (1550ET): The House has adjourned until 10 p.m. ET, with McCarthy telling reporters “We’re going to win.”

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    Indeed, things seem tense within the “Never Kevin” camp.

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    Update (1400ET): After four days and 13 votes, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has lost his bid for House Speaker yet again.

    That said, he’s been able to flip 15 holdouts, the latest being Andy Harris of Maryland. During the vote, Harris could be seen standing in the back of the chamber, several rows behind the 6 GOP holdouts.

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    Harris had been seeking a subcommittee gavel on the appropriations panel, according to CNN‘s Manu Raju.

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    Update (1341ET): Rep. Kevin McCarthy is on track to lose his 12th ballot for House speaker, though he has picked up 14 votes from GOP holdouts.

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    According to CNN, McCarthy’s team sees Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) as their biggest obstacle now, and see him trying to “gin up opposition.’

    The seven current holdouts are Gaetz, Biggs, Boebert, Crane, Good, Harris and Rosendale.

    Gaetz thinks he can hold back 10 votes from McCarthy, however McCarthy’s side thinks they can overcome the opposition by isolating Gaetz – who wasn’t invited to negotiations on Wednesday but showed up anyway.

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    The current bid for House leadership is now the longest speaker contest in 164 years.

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    Update (1045ET): The chaos continues! After initial reports that there was a deal, McCarthy walked it back, saying there isn’t one, but they are in a ‘great place.’

    He then started shouting at journalists to get off the call.

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    Chip Roy has also denied a deal has been reached.

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    Update (1035ET): Kevin McCarthy said on today’s GOP call that he and holdout leader Chip Roy have struck a deal.

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    After losing 11 votes, the most since before the Civil War, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is now confident that a deal for his ascension to House Speaker is imminent.

    Rep. Kevin McCarthy passes reporters as he returns to the House chamber on Thursday. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

    “We’re going to make progress today, we’re going to shock you,” he told reporters ahead of a 10:15 a.m. ET call on Friday.

    “We’ll have to see you know we have a couple members who have some family issues,” he said when asked about the current framework for a deal, adding “we’re going to get it done.“

    As Punchbowl News reports, however, the situation is ‘highly fluid,’ to say the least.

    As House Republicans enter the fourth day of this internecine struggle, the GOP leadership’s plans seemingly change at a moment’s notice. One minute they’re going to move to adjourn, the next, they’re ready to start another round of voting. At times it seems like significant progress is being made, only for that to turn out to be a mirage.

    Yet GOP leaders now believe they’re reaching a tipping point. Either a large bloc of McCarthy’s 20 conservative opponents moves in his direction following yet another round of negotiations or McCarthy’s quest to become speaker may have stalled out permanently.

    The House is set to reconvene at Noon, ET.

    According to Punchbowl, McCarthy may ‘grind it out’ and hold votes over the weekend – or as long as it takes until the speaker’s race is wrapped up.

    “We shouldn’t leave. Why should we leave if we haven’t got our work done?” he told the outlet at 9:45 p.m. Thursday night.

    When asked if his allies are pressuring him to step aside in favor of another Republican, such as Majority Leader Steve Scalise, he said “Have you seen any drop [in my support]? But you would’ve thought” that would occur.

    “Who else can get to 218?” he added.

    “I feel good today, really. I felt very positive yesterday. I feel more positive today. I think we had really good discussions. I think it’s really come to a really good point.”

    McCarthy is still 18 votes or so shy of becoming speaker.

    Rep. Matt Gaetz talks to fellow House members during the second day voting on Wednesday. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

    McCarthy’s backers who have been working on a deal include Reps. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), French Hill (R-AR), Bruce Westerman (R-AR), Garret Graves (R-LA), Jim Jordan (R-OH), plus Emmer and his chief deputy, Rep. Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania. This team has been burning the midnight oil with conservative hardliners Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX), Scott Perry (R-PA) and Byron Donalds (R-FL).

    if Roy is able to reach a deal with the pro-McCarthy faction on the rules package, Roy needs to bring along 10 or so Republicans with him. McCarthy can then try to pressure the final conservative holdouts to move to his side. It’s a high-wire act that needs to be executed impeccably. So far, it hasn’t yielded the results McCarthy has hoped for, obviously. -Punchbowl

    The anti-McCarthy crew want, among other things, changes in rules and changes in policy.

    “There are some of the others … who want changes in the rules and there are some others who care about policy,” said Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) to CNN on Wednesday. “So I think if Steve (Scalise) meets those three needs, he will be able to move forward and take the speakership.”

    Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina says he won’t budge on McCarthy unless he’s “willing to shut the government down rather than raising the debt ceiling.”

    McCarthy can also try to find a few Democrats to form a coalition and cross the aisle in order to edge out the hardline Republicans.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 01/07/2023 – 00:19

  • What To Expect From The Government In 2023? More Of The Same
    What To Expect From The Government In 2023? More Of The Same

    Authored by John and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.”

    – Montesquieu, Enlightenment philosopher

    For those wondering what to expect from the government in 2023, it looks like we’re going to be in for more of the same in terms of the government’s brand of madness, mayhem, corruption and brutality.

    Digital prisons. Unceasingly, the government and its corporate partners are pushing for a national digital ID system. Local police agencies have already been given access to facial recognition software and databases containing 20 billion images, the precursor to a digital ID. Eventually, a digital ID will be required to gain access to all aspects of life: government, work, travel, healthcare, financial services, shopping, etc. Before long, biometrics (iris scans, face print, voice, DNA, etc.), will become the de facto digital ID.

    Precrime. Under the pretext of helping overwhelmed government agencies work more efficiently, AI predictive and surveillance technologies are being used to classify, segregate and flag the populace with little concern for privacy rights or due process. All of this sorting, sifting and calculating is being done swiftly, secretly and incessantly with the help of AI technology and a surveillance state that monitors your every move. AI predictive tools are being deployed in almost every area of life.

    Mandatory quarantines. Building on precedents established during the COVID-19 pandemic, government agents may be empowered to indefinitely detain anyone they suspect of posing a medical risk to others without providing an explanation, subject them to medical tests without their consent, and carry out such detentions and quarantines without any kind of due process or judicial review.

    Mental health assessments by non-medical personnel. As a result of a nationwide push to train a broad spectrum of so-called gatekeepers in mental health first-aid training, more Americans are going to run the risk of being reported by non-medical personnel and detained for having mental health issues.

    Tracking chips for citizens. Momentum is building for corporations and the government alike to be able to track the populace, whether through the use of RFID chips embedded in a national ID card, microscopic chips embedded in one’s skin, or tags in retail products.

    Military involvement domestically. The future, according to a Pentagon training video, will be militaristic, dystopian and far from friendly to freedom. Indeed, all signs point to the battlefield of the future being the American home front. Anticipating this, the government plans to have the military work in conjunction with local police to quell civil unrest domestically.

    Government censorship of anything it classifies as disinformation. In the government’s ongoing assault on those who criticize the government—whether that criticism manifests itself in word, deed or thought—government and corporate censors claiming to protect us from dangerous, disinformation campaigns are, in fact, laying the groundwork now to preempt any “dangerous” ideas that might challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.

    Threat assessments. The government has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state. Before long, every household in America will be flagged as a threat and assigned a threat score. It’s just a matter of time before you find yourself wrongly accused, investigated and confronted by police based on a data-driven algorithm or risk assessment culled together by a computer program run by artificial intelligence.

    War on cash. The government and its corporate partners are engaged in a concerted campaign to shift consumers towards a digital mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient. This push for a digital currency dovetails with the government’s war on cash, which it has been subtly waging for some time now. In recent years, just the mere possession of significant amounts of cash could implicate you in suspicious activity and label you a criminal.

    Expansive surveillance. AI surveillance harnesses the power of artificial intelligence and widespread surveillance technology to do what the police state lacks the manpower and resources to do efficiently or effectively: be everywhere, watch everyone and everything, monitor, identify, catalogue, cross-check, cross-reference, and collude. Everything that was once private is now up for grabs to the right buyer. With every new AI surveillance technology that is adopted and deployed without any regard for privacy, Fourth Amendment rights and due process, the rights of the citizenry are being marginalized, undermined and eviscerated.

    Militarized police. Having transformed local law enforcement into extensions of the military, the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the FBI are moving into the next phase of the transformation, turning the nation’s police officers into techno-warriors, complete with iris scanners, body scanners, thermal imaging Doppler radar devices, facial recognition programs, license plate readers, cell phone extraction software, Stingray devices and so much more.

    Police shootings of unarmed citizens. Owing in large part to the militarization of local law enforcement agencies, not a week goes by without more reports of hair-raising incidents by police imbued with a take-no-prisoners attitude and a battlefield approach to the communities in which they serve. Police brutality and the use of excessive force continues unabated.

    False flags and terrorist attacks. Almost every tyranny being perpetrated by the U.S. government against the citizenry—purportedly to keep us safe and the nation secure—has come about as a result of some threat manufactured in one way or another by our own government. This has become the shadow government’s modus operandi regardless of which party is in power: the government creates a menace—knowing full well the ramifications such a danger might pose to the public—then without ever owning up to the part it played in unleashing that particular menace on an unsuspecting populace, it demands additional powers in order to protect “we the people” from the threat.

    Endless wars to keep America’s military’s empire employed. The military and security industrial complexes that have advocated that the U.S. remain at war, year after year, are the very entities that will continue to profit the most from America’s expanding military empire abroad and here at home.

    Erosions of private property. Private property means little at a time when SWAT teams and other government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, wound or kill you, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family. Likewise, if government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with friends in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, you’re no longer the owner of your property.

    Overcriminalization. The government has increasingly adopted the authoritarian notion that it knows best and therefore must control, regulate and dictate almost everything about the citizenry’s public, private and professional lives. Overregulation and overcriminalization have been pushed to such outrageous limits that federal and state governments now require on penalty of a fine that individuals apply for permission before they can grow exotic orchids, host elaborate dinner parties, gather friends in one’s home for Bible studies, give coffee to the homeless, let their kids manage a lemonade stand, keep chickens as pets, or braid someone’s hair.

    Strip searches and the denigration of bodily integrity. Court rulings undermining the Fourth Amendment and justifying invasive strip searches have left us powerless against police empowered to forcefully draw our blood, forcibly take our DNA, strip search us, and probe us intimately. Individuals—men and women alike—continue to be subjected to what is essentially government-sanctioned rape by police in the course of “routine” traffic stops.

    Censorship. First Amendment activities are being pummeled, punched, kicked, choked, chained and generally gagged all across the country. Free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws and a host of other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors have conspired to corrode our core freedoms. The reasons for such censorship vary widely from political correctness, safety concerns and bullying to national security and hate crimes but the end result remains the same: the complete eradication of what Benjamin Franklin referred to as the “principal pillar of a free government.”

    Taxation Without Any Real Representation. As a Princeton University survey indicates, our elected officials, especially those in the nation’s capital, represent the interests of the rich and powerful rather than the average citizen. We are no longer a representative republic. With Big Business and Big Government having fused into a corporate state, the president and his state counterparts—the governors—have become little more than CEOs of the Corporate State, which day by day is assuming more government control over our lives. Never before have average Americans had so little say in the workings of their government and even less access to their so-called representatives.

    Year after year, the government remains the greatest threat to our freedoms, and yet year after year, “we the people” allow ourselves to be suckered into believing that politics will fix what’s wrong with the country.

    Indeed, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this is the very definition of insanity.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/06/2023 – 23:40

  • Taliban & Chinese Firm Sign Historic Afghan Oil Extraction Deal
    Taliban & Chinese Firm Sign Historic Afghan Oil Extraction Deal

    Many observers expected that in the wake of America and NATO’s somewhat frantic and ugly (to put it mildly) pullout from Afghanistan and Kabul airport in August 2021, it was only a matter of time before China would move in, securing significant resource and infrastructure deals. All along there have even been persistent rumors China was eyeing takeover of the large former US base at Bagram. 

    On Friday a major deal for oil extraction inked between a Chinese company and the Taliban government has been revealed, centered in northern Afghanistan’s Amu Darya basin.

    Acting minister of mines and petroleum Shahabuddin Dilawar (L sitting); China’s ambassador to Afghanistan Wang Yu (R). AFP/Getty Images

    CNN details that “The agreement with China’s Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Co is the first major international energy extraction deal the Taliban has signed since taking control of Afghanistan in 2021.”

    It underscores that the Taliban increasingly sees Beijing as a desperately needed economic lifeline amid its global isolation, collapsed post-wartime economy, and facing continued Western-led sanctions and as tens of billions in foreign reserves remain under seizure. 

    The contract signing included a rare press conference and photo-op involving the Taliban’s Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar sitting alongside the Chinese ambassador to Afghanistan Wang Yuon Thursday.

    The Taliban’s Baradar suggested there’d be more deals for Afghanistan’s rare materials to come: 

    “In terms of natural resources, Afghanistan is a wealthy nation. In addition to other minerals, oil is the wealth of the Afghan people on which the economy of the country can rely,” Baradar said.

    A statement by Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Co said that “The project directly provides job opportunities for 3,000 Afghans,” and previewed that the company plans to invest up to $150 million a year in the project, with an expected increase to $540 million in three years.

    Approximate Location of Major Hydrocarbon Basins in Afghanistan, via Afghan govt data:

    Internationally the Taliban’s rule over Afghanistan is yet to be formally recognized by any country, though multiple nations still have embassies in Kabul, China and Russia among them. 

    The Taliban has meanwhile come under near unanimous global condemnation for its recently banning all forms of women’s education – resulting in the shuttering of schools and the outlawing of females on college campuses. In many ways it has already returned brutal tactics it became notorious for in the 1990’s, including soccer stadium executions for violations of Islamic laws.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/06/2023 – 23:20

  • For Teachers Unions, Parents & Children Come Last
    For Teachers Unions, Parents & Children Come Last

    Authored by Star Parker via The Epoch Times,

    Schools in the Rochester school district in Michigan include in their curriculum a course called “History of Ethnic and Gender Studies.”

    If my child were attending school there, I would wonder why this is in the curriculum as part of K–12 education and what is taught.

    One mother, Carol Beth Litkouhi, wondered enough that she went to the school and asked for details about what will be conveyed to her child in this program.

    The response she got from the school amounted to “sorry, none of your business.”

    Excuse me. A mother has no right to know what her child is being taught?

    Litkouhi turned to the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, which filed a lawsuit against the school district. A request was made under the state’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to release to this mother details about the program. But this request also went nowhere.

    Now the Oakland County Circuit Court has ruled supporting the school district’s claim that because teachers belong to a teachers union, they are not public employees subject to the FOIA.

    Mackinac will appeal this absurd ruling.

    But let’s forget the legalities for a moment and just consider the outrageous reality being perpetrated against America’s parents and children by public school bureaucracies and teachers unions.

    Look at the website of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the nation’s second-largest teachers union. It is an unapologetic megaphone for America’s left.

    According to Investopedia, “A labor union is an organization formed by workers … for the purpose of improving pay, benefits, and working conditions.”

    But teachers unions are much more than this. They exist to further an uncompromised left-wing agenda, targeting our children.

    AFT issued a press release after the November elections headlined “American Voters Reject Extremism in Win for Democracy and Freedom.”

    Can it really be that an organization that claims to value democracy and freedom opposes parents knowing what their children are taught in school?

    That same press release talks about women’s “right to reproductive health.”

    The teachers union believes women have a right to abort their children but parents have no right to know what their children are taught in school.

    Other AFT press releases include praise for newly passed federal legislation codifying protections for same-sex marriage and praise for President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness initiative.

    What does this stuff have to do with “improving pay, benefits, and working conditions”?

    The PAC political contributions of the AFT were 16th-highest in spending in the nation in the 2021–2022 cycle, making $2,150,500 in campaign contributions to candidates.

    Percentage of contributions to Democrats? 100 percent. Percentage of contributions to Republicans? 0 percent.

    Jason Riley of The Wall Street Journal reported, “AFT shaped the guidelines used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to slow the full reopening of schools.”

    The dividends for this show up now in the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress(NAEP)—the “nation’s report card.” Results show the largest declines in math scores for grades four and eight since NAEP started testing in 1990 and also declines in reading scores.

    Michigan, where the circuit court just ruled in favor of unions over parents, has among the biggest declines in scores in the country.

    WalletHub ranks state school systems nationwide using rankings based on “quality” and “safety.”

    Michigan stands 38th in the nation.

    I hope that the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation succeeds in its appeal of the circuit court decision regarding application of Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act.

    But this still is not the answer.

    Education should be freed from the diabolical control of bureaucrats and unions. We need a free market in education, with power given to parents to choose where to send their children to school.

    All businesses put their customers first. In a free, competitive school system, the customers—parents and their children—would come first.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/06/2023 – 23:00

  • These Were The Most Important Science Headlines Of 2022
    These Were The Most Important Science Headlines Of 2022

    Scientific discoveries and technological innovation play a vital role in addressing many of the challenges and crises that we face every year.

    The last year may have come and gone quickly, but, as Visual Capitalist’s Mark Belan and Nick Routley details below, scientists and researchers have worked painstakingly hard to advance our knowledge within a number of disciplines, industries, and projects around the world.

    Over the course of 2022, it’s easy to lose track of all the amazing stories in science and technology.

    At a Glance: Major Scientific Headlines of 2022

    Below we dive a little deeper into some of the most interesting headlines, while providing links in case you want to explore these developments further.

    January 2022

    The James Webb Space Telescope Arrives at its Destination

    What happened: A new space telescope brings promise of exciting findings and beautiful images from the final frontier. This telescope builds on the legacy of its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, which launched over 30 years ago.

    Why it matters: The James Webb Space Telescope is our latest state-of-the-art “window” into deep space. With more access to the infrared spectrum, new images, measurements, and observations of outer space will become available.

    » To learn more, read this article from The Planetary Society, or watch this video from the Wall Street Journal.

    April 2022

    Complete: The Human Genome

    What happened: Scientists finish sequencing the human genome.

    Why it matters: A complete human genome allows researchers to better understand the genetic basis of human traits and diseases. New therapies and treatments are likely to arise from this development.

    » To learn more, watch this video by Two Minute Papers, or read this article from NIH

    May 2022

    Monkeypox Breaks Out

    What happened: A higher volume of cases of the monkeypox virus was reported in non-endemic countries.

    Why it matters: Trailing in the shadow of a global pandemic, researchers are keeping a closer eye on how diseases spread. The sudden spike of multinational incidences of monkeypox raises questions about disease evolution and prevention.

    » To learn more, read this article by the New York Times.

    June 2022

    A Perfectly Preserved Woolly Mammoth

    What happened: Gold miners unearth a 35,000 year old, well-preserved baby woolly mammoth in the Yukon tundra.

    Why it matters: The mammoth, named Nun cho ga by the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation, is the most complete specimen discovered in North America to date. Each new discovery allows paleontologists to broaden our knowledge of biodiversity and how life changes over time.

    » To learn more, read this article from Smithsonian Magazine

    July 2022

    The Rise of AI Art

    What happened: Access to new computer programs, such as DALL-E and Midjourney, give members of the general public the ability to create images from text-prompts.

    Why it matters: Widespread access to generative AI tools fuels inspiration—and controversy. Concern for artist rights and copyright violations grow as these programs potentially threaten to diminish creative labor.

    » To learn more, read this article by MyModernMet, or watch this video by Cleo Abram.

    August 2022

    Dead Organs Get a Second Chance

    What happened: Researchers create a perfusion system that can revitalize organs after cellular death. Using a special mixture of blood and nutrients, organs of a dead pig can be sustained after death—and in some cases, even promote cellular repair.

    Why it matters: This discovery could potentially lead to a greater shelf-life and supply of organs for transplant.

    » To learn more, read this article by Scientific American, or this article from the New York Times

    September 2022

    DART Delivers A Cosmic Nudge

    What happened: NASA crashes a spacecraft into an asteroid just to see how much it would move. Dimorphos, a moonlet orbiting a larger asteroid called Didymos 6.8 million miles (11 million km) from Earth, is struck by the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft. NASA estimates that as much as 22 million pounds (10 million kg) was ejected after the impact.

    Why it matters: Earth is constantly at risk of being struck by stray asteroids. Developing reliable methods of deflecting near-Earth objects could save us from meeting the same fate as the dinosaurs.

    » To learn more, watch this video by Real Engineering, or read this article from Space.com

    November 2022

    Falling Sperm Counts

    What happened: A scientific review suggests human sperm counts are decreasing—up to 62% over the past 50 years.

    Why it matters: A lower sperm count makes it more difficult to conceive naturally. Concerns about global declining male health also arise because sperm count is a marker for overall health. Researchers look to extraneous stressors that may be affecting this trend, such as diet, environment, or other means.

    » To learn more, check out this article from the Guardian.

    December 2022

    Finding Ancient DNA

    What happened: Two million-year-old DNA is found in Greenland.

    Why it matters: DNA is a record of biodiversity. Apart from showing that a desolate Arctic landscape was once teeming with life, ancient DNA gives hints about our advancement to modern life and how biodiversity evolves over time.

    » To learn more, read this article from National Geographic

    December 2022

    Fusing Energy

    What happened: The U.S. Department of Energy reports achieving net energy gain for the first time in the development of nuclear fusion.

    Why it matters: Fusion is often seen as the Holy Grail of safe clean energy, and this latest milestone brings researchers one step closer to harnessing nuclear fusion to power the world.

    » To learn more, view our infographic on fusion, or read this article from BBC

    Science in the New Year

    The future of scientific research looks bright. Researchers and scientists are continuing to push the boundaries of what we know and understand about the world around us.

    For 2023, some disciplines are likely to continue to dominate headlines:

    • Advancement in space continues with projects like the James Webb Space Telescope and SETI COSMIC’s hunt for life beyond Earth
    • Climate action may become more demanding as recovery and prevention from extreme weather events continue into the new year
    • Generative AI tools such as DALL-e and ChatGPT were opened to public use in 2022, and ignited widespread interest in the potential of artificial intelligence
    • Even amidst the lingering shadow of COVID-19, new therapeutics should advance medicine into new territories

    Where science is going remains to be seen, but this past year instills faith that 2023 will be filled with even more progress.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/06/2023 – 22:40

  • Israeli Army Says It Will Not Take Orders From Extremist Security Minister
    Israeli Army Says It Will Not Take Orders From Extremist Security Minister

    Via The Cradle,

    A special report by Israeli TV Channel 12 revealed that outgoing Israeli army Chief of Staff (CoS) Aviv Kochavi informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of his decision not to follow orders issued by his coalition ministers. Kochavi’s words were in reference to ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who have been granted extended power by Netanyahu under the coalition deal to influence the Israeli army’s chain of command.

    The outgoing CoS elaborated in his recent phone call with Netanyahu that he will only answer to Minister of Defense Yoav Galant and will resist orders from elsewhere. Kochavi will oppose Smotrich and Ben-Gvir’s commands and ensure they will not be implemented.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and outgoing Israeli army Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi on 15 January 2019. AFP via Getty Images

    This situation is expected to create a lot of confusion since Smotrich has been given a role within the Ministry of Defense as a minister who oversees the government’s activities in the occupied territories.

    As a result, the leader of the Religious Zionist Party is now in a position to appoint generals to lead the civil-military agency in the West Bank and manage civil issues in Israeli settlements.

    This jurisdiction conflicts with the tradition that stipulates that the major general in charge of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) is appointed by the minister of defense after being vetted by the army CoS.

    Additionally, Netanyahu’s coalition agreement with Ben-Gvir expands his role as Minister of National Security and Police, and puts him in charge of the border police, stripping the Ministry of Defense of its command.

    Such a decision would create two leaderships to the Israeli forces in the West Bank, as the border police currently operates jointly with the Israeli army under the command of the CoS.

    In light of this development, Kochavi told Netanyahu that he would not allow a dual chain of command due to the repercussions it could cause, and is ready to order the withdrawal of the border police in its entirety.

    “If control of the Border Police is transferred out of the IDF’s command in Judea and Samaria, and out of the command of the blue [national] police [inside Israel], we will deploy soldiers and reservists [rather than the Border Police],” Kochavi was quoted by Channel 12.

    Kochavi is set to retire on 16 January and will be replaced by his deputy Major General Herzi Halevi.

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    His concern is echoed by legacy officers in the Israeli army and thousands of other soldiers, including about 1,197 former Israeli air force officers who sent a letter to the Israeli supreme court on 26 December against the new government.

    The air force officers considered it a threat that would “destroy Israel’s democracy,” and end the “co-existence of the Israeli community.”

    “We are on a very slippery slope of the politicization process of civil-military relations or the military, generally speaking,” said the former Director-General of Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, Kobi Michael.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/06/2023 – 22:20

  • SC, ID: Two States, Two Very Different High Court Rulings On Abortion Laws
    SC, ID: Two States, Two Very Different High Court Rulings On Abortion Laws

    Thursday brought two very different state supreme court rulings on the constitutionality of anti-abortion laws: The Idaho Supreme Court upheld multiple laws and the South Carolina Supreme Court rejected a six-week abortion law.  

    Thursday’s South Carolina ruling was the first such finding of a state-level right to abortion since last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court overturning of Roe v Wade. That June decision rightly restored jurisdiction over abortion policy to state governments and courts.

    In a 3-2 vote, the South Carolina Supreme Court said the state’s ban of abortions after six weeks violated rights that were implied by the state constitution’s protection of privacy. As a result, abortion will be legal in the Palmetto State up to 20 weeks into pregnancy. 

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    In its 147-page ruling, the justices said “any such limitation [of privacy] must be reasonable” and “afford a woman sufficient time to determine she is pregnant and take reasonable steps to terminate that pregnancy.” The six-week timeframe in the now-invalidated state law is “quite simply, not a reasonable period of time for those two things to occur.”

    Here’s the South Carolina constitution‘s privacy clause, in which a majority of the justices see an early-pregnancy abortion right: 

    “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures and unreasonable invasions of privacy shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, the person or thing to be seized, and the information to be obtained.”

    A few hours after the South Carolina ruling, abortion foes in Idaho emerged victorious, as that state’s high court upheld three laws that effective ban all abortions other than cases of rape, incest or situations where a pregnancy jeopardizes the life of the mother. One of the laws upheld in Idaho is a Texas-style measure that enables enforcement via civil courts. 

    Idaho’s 3-2 decision said the laws were valid under the Gem State constitution, since the state has a “legitimate interest in protecting prenatal fetal life in all stages of development, and in protecting the health and safety of the mother.” 

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    Unlike in South Carolina, Idaho’s majority opinion rejected the notion of an implied right to an abortion. Finding such an implied right, Justice Robyn Brody wrote, requires establishing that the right is “deeply rooted” in Idaho’s traditions and history at the time the purported abortion-enabling constitutional provisions were written. However, wrote Brody: 

    “The relevant history and traditions of Idaho show abortion was viewed as an immoral act and treated as a crime. Thus, we cannot conclude the framers and adopters of the Inalienable Rights Clause intended to implicitly protect abortion as a fundamental right.”

    Brody noted that Idaho’s citizens and lawmakers were free to pursue an amendment to the state constitution to incorporate a purported right to abortion.  

    Similar challenges to state abortion laws are pending in Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Indiana, Iowa, North Dakota, Ohio, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming. 

    Meanwhile, in Portland: 

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    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/06/2023 – 22:00

  • The Borders Between US States Are Obsolete
    The Borders Between US States Are Obsolete

    Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

    In recent years, we’ve seen the issue of changing US state borders come up repeatedly. For example, activists in some Colorado counties in 2013 proposed breaking off to form a new state. Since 2021, a similar idea has persisted in having Weld County, Colorado join the State of Wyoming. In 2016, California activists sought a vote on splitting the enormous state into 6 states. It failed to get enough signatures, but in 2018, a similar proposal for 3 new states did get enough signatures. A statewide vote was only avoided because the State Supreme Court panicked and pulled the measure from the ballot with little legal justification.

    This year, voters in San Bernardino County in California approved a proposal to “study” secession as a first step in separation. Meanwhile, in Oregon, voters in 11 counties have voted to direct county officials to pursue “relocation of the state border.” In Illinois, activists in Madison County (near St. Louis) have led an effort in which voters in three counties have voted to “explore” secession from Illinois.

    When activists propose changes to the current boundaries of US member states, a common reaction from supporters of the political status quo is to scoff. “Not gonna happen” is what they often say, and it’s assumed that such measures are both impractical and unnecessary. As usual, we’re told that “democracy” will somehow magically solve any conflicts that have been growing between the states’ metropolitan cores and their distant, outlying frontiers far from the seats of power.

    The knee jerk opposition we so often encounter to such measures is rather odd given that the nation’s current state borders were drawn, in most cases, well over a century ago. In many cases state boundaries were drawn more than two centuries ago. During that time, changes in migration, demographics, and political institutions have re-drawn the political landscape in a myriad of ways. Nonetheless, state boundaries are often treated as if they were created by the hand of the Almighty, and that it would be an unspeakably radical move to simply allow modern state boundaries to reflect modern demographics and populations. 

    This policy of clinging to the lines on a map drawn many decades ago is a recipe for political conflict and resentment.

    State Boundaries Have Become Functionally Obsolete 

    Functional obsolescence occurs when a something no longer serves the function for which it was originally designed. For example, a bridge can become functionally obsolete when it becomes too narrow or too weak to support the types of new vehicles most people now drive. A canal can become functionally obsolete when it is too narrow to allow passage for the types of ships preferred by merchants. Historically, houses could also fall prey to similar problems. For example, a home with asbestos, ancient wiring, or a coal furnace no longer is compatible with modern needs and realities.

    Such is the case with many state boundaries as drawn decades or centuries ago. After all, we can see the arbitrary nature of state boundaries out west where many boundaries are simply straight lines drawn by committees. For example, when Colorado residents sought to form a separate territory—which would later become a state—the mapmakers more or less just drew a big trapezoid around the Denver area. Much of the boundary between California and Nevada is similarly arbitrary. And, of course, the state lines that are also international borders—such as the border between Arizona and Mexico—is simply the product of a treaty born out the US’s brutal war of conquest against the Mexicans.

    These lines, however, endured without much controversy for decades because so much of the Western US was so sparsely populated for so long. Populations tended to be small, agricultural, and driven by similar economic interests. Moreover, small populations often tend to have less diversity, and when Colorado was added to the Union in 1876—for instance—it had fewer than 150,000 people. When Idaho became a state in 1890, it has fewer than 90,000 people. California, when it became a state, had fewer than 100,000 people spread over 163,000 square miles. 

    These populations in the nineteenth century were also spread out more evenly within states. When the borders of most western states were drawn—when they were territories and not even yet states—only a handful of areas had population densities above 18 people per mile. Most areas had far fewer than that. After the twentieth century, began, however, inequalities in population density took off. Some counties reached densities well over 50 people per square mile while many other counties at this time continued to have agricultural populations with densities below 5 people per square mile. The divergence has only grown since then, and this has fueled political conflict as populations became less uniform.

    The End of Territorial Representation and the Switch to Purely Majoritarian Politics

    The problem this presented was often mitigated, however, by the fact that at least one house in many state legislatures were apportioned based on territory or factors other than population. Most states apportioned representatives based on population in their houses of representatives, but in the state senates, representation was often apportioned regionally. This was recognized as a means of providing an electoral counterbalance to highly populated urban areas within the state. 

    Critics often framed this a matter of rural areas having “disproportionate political power.” That, of course, was the idea. The goal was to provide a means for populations outside the urban centers to veto especially objectionable legislation at the state capital. This could been seen in very large differences in the size of legislative districts. In Nevada, Idaho, and Utah, for example, some districts had populations that were more than 50 or 100 times the size of other districts. This meant some agricultural districts with only a few hundred people might enjoy their own state senator, equalizing their representation with a state senator from an urban district with 10 times as many people. This served an anti-majoritarian function similar to that seen in the US senate today. 

    This system was swept away in 1964 by the Warren Court (in Reynolds v. Sims), however, when it ruled that all legislatures must be apportioned in line with a one-man-one-vote principal. This means all legislative districts within the states have to be roughly the same size in terms of population. This has turned the state senates into nothing other than smaller versions of each state’s house of representatives. (The US Senate’s two-per-state scheme survived only because the chamber’s make-up is so explicitly stated in the US constitution.) 

    Since then, regional populations that may be economically or demographically unlike the major population centers have had few ways to be heard in state governments. This has accelerated conflict between state metros and the periphery in each state. 

    What is the Answer? 

    Unless state governments are willing to press the issue in federal courts of returning to representation based on factors other than population, the only reasonable solution is to redraw state boundaries to better reflect demographic and ideological realities. 

    This is hardly a novel idea, given that the classical liberals of the nineteenth and early twentieth century recognized that it only makes sense to change political boundaries as populations changed. This idea can be seen in the work of Ludwig von Mises who recognized that if populations are to enjoy rights of “self-determination” they cannot be locked into any particular political association by immovable borders. For Mises, self-determination means populations ought to be able to vote for themselves as to which government they will live under. This could be done at the regional level or even down to the village level. These preferences will change over time as the realities of local economic and cultural conditions change. In his examination of Mises’s views of nationalism and migration, Joseph Salerno notes that Mises advocated for “the continual redrawing of state [by which Mises meant a national state] boundaries in accordance with the right of self-determination and the nationality principle.” In this scheme, Salerno concludes, “the borders of states would move with the migration of peoples and nations.” Activists seeking to re-draw state boundaries are far less radical than this. They’ not even seeking to change any national boundaries that might have repercussions to global trade or geopolitics. The size or shape of the United States as a political entity wouldn’t change. Yet, the opposition to the idea of changing these arbitrary lines is quite feverish, indeed.

    It’s been more than 150 years since most state boundaries were drawn on the US map. That’s an eternity in political terms as can seen by consulting a map of Europe or Asia from 150 years ago. Since then, factors such as domestic migration, foreign immigration, urbanization, industrialization, and the rise of the federal welfare state have enormously changed population and settlement patterns across most states. The idea that today’s state lines drawn so long ago represent the “correct” borders should be regarded as absurd and obsolete. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/06/2023 – 21:40

  • How Long Is Compulsory Military Service Around The World?
    How Long Is Compulsory Military Service Around The World?

    Taiwan is extending its mandatory military service in 2024 from four months to one year, as tensions continue to rise with China.

    Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen announced early last week that conscription will include more intense training so that the country is better equipped should China invade. Conscripts will also receive a higher monthly stipend, increasing from NT$6,500 (US$211) to NT$26,307 (US$856), which is roughly akin to minimum wage. In a poll conducted by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation in December, 73 percent of respondents supported the move.

    Fewer than 30 countries worldwide still require whole age cohorts to complete military service.

    But among those that do, four months is a relatively short period of time. Taiwan had originally stipulated two years of service, however this was gradually cut down to four months as of 2013, with the intention of relying more heavily on volunteer forces instead.

    As Statista’s Anna Fleck shows in the chart below, North Korea stands at the other end of the spectrum in terms of duration, although media reports vary. The Guardian reported 10 years for men and 7 for women as of 2015, while the Indian Express puts the figures closer to 8 years for men and 5 for women. According to media reports, those in the elite class are usually able to avoid conscription.

    Infographic: How Long Is Compulsory Military Service? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Israel too has a fairly long and rigorous conscription, albeit far shorter than North Korea. Most Israeli men over the age of 18 who are Jewish, Druze or Circassian must serve in the Israel Defense Forces for 32 months and women for 24 months, according to the IDF. Meanwhile, in Egypt, conscription is compulsory for men aged between 18 and 30 for up to 36 months. As with several countries on the chart, service can be pushed back until students finish their studies and there are a number of clauses that exempt men from joining the forces, for example, if they are the only son/sole breadwinner of the family.

    South Korea, which is technically still at war with North Korea, also has mandatory conscription for all able-bodied men for a period of 18 months to 21 months, depending on the posting. Some athletes and classical artists are allowed to postpone or forgo the draft entirely. The K-Pop group BTS brought the issue to light recently, with debate over whether they could be excused from service. The decision was made that men can delay their military draft until the age of 28 and those working in the entertainment industry are now allowed to postpone their service until they turn 30. The oldest member of BTS, Jin, has now started his mandatory draft.

    There’s huge variation in the rules for how long citizens must join the military in the countries that still have mandatory conscription as well as possible reasons for exemptions. For instance, in Turkey, new laws introduced in 2019 decreed that instead of the mandatory six months of military training, conscripts could do one month and buy-out the remaining five months for a fee of 31,000 Turkish Lira ($1,651), according to the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Conscripts’ levels of higher education can also impact the type and length of their post.

    Punishments for not enlisting vary too. In Eritrea, anyone evading or attempting to evade compulsory military service could face imprisonment of one to three years. According to DFAT, this could increase to 7-10 years imprisonment in a time of emergency or war.

    While most countries with conscription only draft men, a handful of countries including North Korea, Israel, Norway, Sweden, Eritrea and Mozambique conscript women too.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/06/2023 – 21:20

  • Diversity Through Obscurity: Applicants Told To Delete Names Of Schools On Their Resumes
    Diversity Through Obscurity: Applicants Told To Delete Names Of Schools On Their Resumes

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Colleges and universities have been implementing controversial new diversity reforms, including dropping standardized test scores, that eliminate objective criteria in academic admissions or advancement.

    Now, HR&A Advisors, the TriBeCa-based real estate consultancy, has drawn attention to its LinkedIn posting asking applicants to remove “all undergraduate and graduate school name references” from their résumés. In order to achieve diversity goals, the company wants applicants to only list the degree and not where it came from. It is equity through obscurity. It is as irrational to eliminate any consideration of an academic institution as it is to rely exclusively on the academic institution.

    The company insists that it is adopting this new policy as part of “ongoing work to build a hiring system that is free from bias and based on candidate merit and performance.” However, the identification of these institutions does reflect “merit and performance.”

    There can be vast differences in the academic rigor of academic institutions. To only go by the degrees is manifestly illogical. It is akin to saying that you competed on a baseball team but not reference the specific team or league to gauge the level of performance. You could have played for the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp or the New York Yankees.

    I certainly agree that schools can perpetuate an elitist culture through such rankings. Moreover, many students cannot afford to go top universities or were faced with economic or social barriers in their elementary, middle, or high school educations.

    Additionally, there can be too much importance placed on school affiliation. Despite my personal and intellectual regard for him, I was highly critical of the late Justice Antonin Scalia when he told American University law students that they should not envision Supreme Court clerkships. I have also been a long-standing critic of the hold of Harvard and Yale on the makeup of the Court.

    However, the problem of blind elitism is getting better overall. There is not a huge divide between the top ten and the many of the college and universities in this country. Moreover, many top schools have been criticized for standards that devalue or undermine academic excellence.

    Nevertheless, there remain significant differences in the quality of education between many schools. That is particularly the case on the graduate level. It is also true that some schools excel in particular areas. For example, with a son about to go to medical school, I have learned that the top medical schools do not track the conventional rankings when it comes to many specialties. In weighing the selection of a doctor in primary care, you would necessarily consider the applicant’s medical school to appraise their training.

    Likewise, the ranking of top social working schools have universities like the University of Chicago but also schools that are not ordinarily competitors like Case Western, Brandeis, and Pittsburgh. Students in these areas work extremely hard to gain admission and to train at these top schools. These schools invest heavily in these areas to stay competitive with top faculty and ample resources.

    HR&A Advisors obviously is free to adopt any evaluation system that it sees fit for new applicants. Yet, removing the name of the academic institution for applicants denies many applicants a measure of their prior work and achievement. It also denies the employer relevant data or information on the background of an applicant.

    All of these applicants achieved the distinction of securing undergraduate or graduate degrees. However, it is willful blindness to suggest that all degrees are the same or that there is no difference in particular degrees between institutions. Many students make considerable financial and familial sacrifice to go to a more rigorous university or a university with a top program. That effort should not be simply discarded by employers.

    Finally, the approach of HR&A Advisors appears virtue signaling without real substance on a practical level. If students submit their transcripts or faculty references, the identity of their schools will be obvious. Moreover, in interviews, it will be hard for applicants to discuss their academic training while redacting any reference or hint at the academic institution. For example, if a student studied under a well-known figure in real estate or business studies, is she supposed to avoid mentioning the professor’s name to conceal her educational institution?

    It would seem to be more logical to have training or guidelines to address threshold bias. The school affiliation alone should not be a determinative factor in decisions. It can be weighed with a variety of other factors in a holistic consideration of the candidate’s record. Identification of the potential bias can go a long way to reducing its impact on hiring decisions.

    The alternative is to treat educational institutions as the equivalent of bleach, products that are largely identical on a chemical level. Is the difference between academic institutions merely the bottle and the label? Even as a critic of the current orthodoxy controlling higher education, I do not believe that all universities are fungible. The solution to bias is not blindness but balance.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/06/2023 – 21:00

  • Japan Minister Calls For New World Order
    Japan Minister Calls For New World Order

    Japan’s trade and industry minister said on Thursday that a ‘new world order’ is needed to counter the rise of authoritarian regimes which have thrived in post-Cold War free trade and economic interdependence.

    Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura speaks to the Center of Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), regarding Japan’s 2023 G7 priorities on Jan. 5, at CSIS headquarters in Washington. (AP Photo)

    “Authoritarian countries have amassed tremendous power, both economically and militarily,” said Yasutoshi Nishimura, Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, adding “We must rebuild a world order based on the fundamental values of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.”

    Will citizens be allowed to speak freely over the internet in this “new world order?” Or oppose radical ideologies in schools? Or question the results of an election? Or will it just be another form of authoritarianism with a PR campaign? We digress.

    Nishimura spoke ahead of a visit to Washington next week by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for talks expected to cover issues including Ukraine, North Korea and China’s tensions with Taiwan. That summit will be preceded by talks between defense and foreign ministers of the two countries.

    Kishida said this week he would discuss Tokyo’s new security policy after Washington’s key ally in countering China’s growing might in Asia last month unveiled its biggest military build-up since World War Two. –Reuters

    “We might need to make preparations to identify the choke points of countries wanting to engage in coercion and then take countermeasures if necessary,” said Nishimura, who warned that democracies need to protect their industrial power and guard against technology theft – particularly those which could be used for military applications.

    He also encouraged US-Japan cooperation beyond semiconductors, biotech, AI and quantum science, and promised to work more closely with Washington on export controls.

    “It is … absolutely imperative for us to reinforce our cooperation in the area of export controls,” he added. “We will implement strict export controls grounded in international cooperation while engaging closely in the exchange of views with the United States and other relevant countries.”

    Prior to his speech, Nishimura met with US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. The pair was joined by executives from IBM and Japan’s Rapidus Corp, to discuss their collaboration on semiconductor R&D.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/06/2023 – 20:40

  • Why We Shouldn't Underestimate China's Petro-Yuan Ambitions
    Why We Shouldn’t Underestimate China’s Petro-Yuan Ambitions

    Authored by Alex Kimani via OilPrice.com,

    • Credit Suisse’s Zoltan Pozsar: the de-dollarization of the global oil industry is in full swing–even if we can’t see the final end game from here.

    • Some 40% of proven oil reserves belonging to OPEC+ members is owned by Russia, Iran and Venezuela–all of whom are selling to China at major discounts.

    • Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged to ramp up efforts to promote the use of the yuan in energy deals.

    The de-dollarization of the global oil industry is in a treacherous mission creep phase. Things like this don’t happen quickly, but determinedly and gradually, not exactly fitting into today’s media headline game that only considers instant developments. But it is happening and the tide will not be turned based on current and near and medium-term geopolitical developments.  Credit Suisse’s Zoltan Pozsar recently warned clients, in essence, that the de-dollarization of the global oil industry is in full swing–even if we can’t see the final end game from here. 

    And it’s all about China, of course. Pozsar does the OPEC math for us. 

    Some 40% of proven oil reserves belonging to OPEC+ members is owned by Russia, Iran and Venezuela–all of whom are selling to China at major discounts, and all of whom are on board with Beijing’s petro-yuan plan. 

    The countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)–most notably Saudi Arabia and the UAE–account for another 40% of proven oil reserves, and they are increasingly cozying up to China. 

    The remaining 20% is also accessible to China, and China is already the largest importer of crude in the world. 

    What it all means is that de-dollarization is marching to the beat of a fairly steady drum. In terms of global trade, the yuan accounts for around 2.7% of settlements, while the dollar accounts for 41%. These are the numbers that prompt the new trend of instant gratification to suggest this is not an imminent threat to the dollar. They are wrong. The biggest threats take a significant amount of time to develop. From here on out, the pace will pick up momentum. 

    China and the GCC

    As Oilprice.com reported earlier in December, Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged to ramp up efforts to promote the use of the yuan in energy deals, suggesting at a summit in the Saudi capital that the GCC countries should make full use of the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange to carry out its trade settlements in yuan. 

    The year we just exited should be considered the year in which the petro-yuan really took hold, as China forges a path of increasingly oil and gas purchases from places that are petro-yuan friendly. Russia’s war on Ukraine and the Western sanctions response has only acted as a further catalyst. 

    In a note to clients carried by the Irish Times, Pozsar warns: “China wants to rewrite the rules of the global energy market”, and it will do it by first removing the dollar from the orbit of the Bric countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) that have been affected by the “weaponization” of dollar foreign exchange reserves meant to punish Russia and keep Putin from filling his wartime coffers. 

    What’s happened here is a window of enormous opportunity for Beijing, which has now told the Gulf countries that they are absolutely guaranteed buyers for oil and gas, for payment in yuan, with Xi promising to “import crude oil [and natural gas] in a consistent manner and in large quantities from the GCC”.

    Xi’s trip to Saudi Arabia in early December was precisely about the yuan. This was the defining moment for the petro-yuan. It was an invitation, and it was well-received. China and Saudi Arabia signed over $30 billion in trade deals during the visit. That’s $30 billion in leverage that will only help further promote the petro-yuan plan. 

    More than 25% of China’s crude imports come from Saudi Arabia, and it seems inevitable that the GCC will gradually adopt the petro-yuan, even if there will be a lot of roadblocks along the way due to their exposure to Western financing. 

    What Western minds are banking on–quite literally–is the fact that China alone has $1T in U.S. Treasury bonds. And as for the Saudis, they are truly tied to the Western financial system and the petrodollar. De-pegging the riyal from the dollar, though it has been discussed very quietly (only from a purely research perspective), would be a rather dramatic shock for the Kingdom–one the Crown Prince won’t likely be willing to risk for a very long time. But he will actively discuss oil deals with China in yuan. 

    The Chinese goal is much more patient than any Western mind can fathom. It’s about slowly chipping away at the dollar’s throne in oil and commodities markets, and as the reserve currency of choice. That is what Brics and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is all about. 

    And with every geopolitical upset on the level of Russia-Ukraine, and with every tightening of the sanctions screws by the West, Beijing gets a little further with its petro-yuan goals. 

    There won’t be any announcement. There won’t be any loud noise. It will happen gradually. It will happen very slowly. And the West will struggle to find its footing when a new global energy order emerges in the longer-term future. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/06/2023 – 20:20

  • Bolton Says Possible 2024 Presidential Bid Would Be To Stamp Out Trump Influence
    Bolton Says Possible 2024 Presidential Bid Would Be To Stamp Out Trump Influence

    Ex-Trump advisor and well-known foreign policy ultra-hawk John Bolton is teasing the possibility that he’ll run for the White House in 2024.

    He said in a “Good Morning Britain” interview which aired Friday that “I wouldn’t run as a vanity candidate. If I didn’t think I could run seriously then I wouldn’t get in the race.” And then he said, “I would get in to win the nomination and I would do it primarily on the basis that we need a much stronger foreign policy.”

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    Given this is Bolton – the man who has has never encountered a US war he didn’t wholeheartedly support (or himself was a key architect of, as in the case of Iraq)… a “much stronger foreign policy” appears simply code for more war.

    Bolton touted in the interview that he thinks he can beat his old boss former President Trump in securing the Republican nomination due to Trump suffering a “terminal decline” in the numbers of people supporting him.

    “I think Trump’s support within the party itself is in terminal decline,” Bolton said. “I wouldn’t run as a vanity candidate. If I didn’t think I could run seriously, then I wouldn’t get in the race.”

    Last month, the former national security adviser also told NBC that if Republican candidates don’t strongly denounce Trump and distance themselves from his influence, then…

    “If I don’t see that, I’m going to seriously consider getting in,” Bolton said at the time, later adding: “I think to be a presidential candidate you can’t just say, ‘I support the Constitution.’ You have to say, ‘I would oppose people who would undercut it.’“

    In the wake of the British TV interview, The Washington Times reported, “The British network took his comments as confirmation Mr. Bolton would launch a bid, though his team said that is inaccurate.”

    A handful of media outlets are still running headlines which sound as if Bolton confirmed that he’ll run in 2024, but there’s yet to be a definitive statement from him, other than he’s still mulling the idea.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/06/2023 – 20:00

  • California Law Allowing Private Residents To Sue Gunmakers Takes Effect
    California Law Allowing Private Residents To Sue Gunmakers Takes Effect

    Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A new California gun law allowing private citizens to sue manufacturers and retailers for selling banned firearms went into effect this year.

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks to reporters at Del Mar Fairgrounds in Del Mar, Calif., on Feb. 18, 2022. (Nelvin C. Cepeda/The San Diego Union-Tribune via AP)

    California’s new regulations give private citizens the ability to sue anyone who imports, distributes, manufactures, or sells assault firearms, homemade weapons, ghost guns, or .50 BMP rifles.

    The law, Senate Bill (SB) 1327, also restricts the sale of firearms to anyone under 21 years old.

    These restrictions are already enforced by California; however, this new law allows citizens to sue violators for at least $10,000.

    This is modeled after the Texas Heartbeat Act which allows private citizens to sue anyone involved in providing abortions after a doctor has detected a fetal heartbeat. In that law, citizens can file lawsuits against doctors, clinics, or anyone involved in the abortion.

    “California explicitly passed this bill, SB 1327, as sort of a response to Texas’s policy decision,” Attorney Jim Manley, with the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, told The Epoch Times. “This is sort of a weird way of restricting certain rights by not involving the state in the process.”

    The law creates another layer of restrictions for firearms dealers by doubling down on existing California gun bans.

    However, firearms deals are not able to challenge SB 1327 because the state has been removed from imposing the restrictions, and instead, individual citizens would be enforcing them, Manley said.

    “Assault weapons, .50 BMGs, and firearms being sold to people under 21 were already illegal in California,” Manley said. “And the [law] is explicit in saying this does not change that. This just creates another avenue to enforce those restrictions.”

    When California lawmakers first wrote SB 1327, the state did not have restrictions on homemade firearms or ghost guns. But within a month of passing the bill, the state included them.

    It’s rare for a state to institute “double enforcement”—with private cause of action laws and criminal penalties—for the same restrictions, Manley said.

    The additional layer of restrictions means that even if a judge overturned the state’s criminal restrictions on gun laws, private citizens would still be able to enforce them.

    “It’s kind of a weird, convoluted situation,” Manley said.

    The new law was first passed by legislators who included a “fee-shifting” provision allowing the state to collect attorney’s fees from anyone who sued over the law. But a federal judge in San Diego blocked this provision in December.

    The Gun Owners of California organization was against the legislation, saying the law would create “a legal mess and is designed to bankrupt gun businesses.”

    “The judge found [the law] was unconstitutional and he called it tyrannical,” Gun Owners of California Executive Director Sam Paredes told The Epoch Times.

    The group doesn’t anticipate the law to be enforced until the legal resolution is completed.

    “We’re waiting to see what the state’s going to do,” Paredes said.

    The Texas abortion rights law was passed before the Supreme Court issued the historic June 24 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 precedent that legalized abortion in the United States.

    The ruling essentially made Texas’s law moot, said Manley, of the Pacific Legal Foundation.

    The California law would be automatically repealed if the Texas abortion rights law is totally invalidated by the United States or Texas supreme courts.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/06/2023 – 19:40

  • German Doctor Gets 2 Years In Jail For Illegally Writing Thousands Of Mask Exemptions
    German Doctor Gets 2 Years In Jail For Illegally Writing Thousands Of Mask Exemptions

    A doctor in Berlin, Germany was sentenced to two years in jail for illegally writing over 4,000 exemptions from wearing face masks during the Covid-19 pandemic, ABC News reports.

    In addition to the prison sentence, a regional court in the southwestern town of Weinheim handed her a three-year work ban and a 28,000 euro ($29,550) fine – the amount she received for issuing the certificates. Her office assistant was fined 2,700 euros.

    According to the court, the doctor was convicted of “issuing incorrect health certificates” to people across Germany, most of whom she had never met or examined.

    “The process is more reminiscent of a sale of certificates than a medical procedure,” said the court in a statement, adding that she was not faulted for providing certificates to her existing patients.

    During the trial the defendant had argued that wearing masks was harmful to people’s health.

    The doctor’s lawyer intends to appeal the verdict, public broadcaster SWR reported.

    Dozens of supporters gathered outside the court in Weinheim, north of Heidelberg, to protest against the verdict and Germany’s pandemic restrictions. -ABC News

    German ended mask mandates in indoor settings last year, though they are still in place on long-distance trains, in doctors’ offices, hospitals, nursing homes and some regional public transport.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/06/2023 – 19:20

  • With Schools Ditching Merit For Diversity, Families Of High Achievers Head For The Door
    With Schools Ditching Merit For Diversity, Families Of High Achievers Head For The Door

    Authored by Vince Bielski via RealClear Wire,

    Alex Shilkrut has deep roots in Manhattan, where he has lived for 16 years, works as a physician, and sends his daughter to a public elementary school for gifted students in coveted District 2. 

    It’s a good life. But Shilkrut regretfully says he may leave the city, as well as a job he likes in a Manhattan hospital, because of sweeping changes in October that ended selective admissions in most New York City middle schools. 

    These merit-based schools, which screened for students who met their high standards, will permanently switch to a lottery for admissions that will almost certainly enroll more blacks and Latinos in the pursuit of racial integration.  

    Shilkrut is one of many parents who are dismayed by the city’s dismantling of competitive education. He says he values diversity but is concerned that the expectation that academic rigor will be scaled back to accommodate a broad range of students in a lottery is what’s driving him and other parents to seek alternatives.

    Although it’s too early to know how many students might leave the school system due to the enrollment changes, some parents say they may opt for private education at $50,000 a year and others plan to uproot their lives for the suburbs despite the burdens of such moves. 
     
    “We will very likely leave the public schools,” says Shilkrut, adding that he knows 10 Manhattan families who also plan to depart. “And if these policies continue, there won’t be many middle- and upper middle-class families left in the public schools.” 

    A National Battle Over Merit 

    The battle in New York City is an example writ large of a high-stakes gamble playing out in cities across the country – essentially a large experiment in urban education aiming to improve the decades-old lag in performance of mostly black and Latino students. By ending screened admissions that segregate poorer performers and instead placing them in lottery schools with higher achievers, the theory goes, all students benefit.   
     
    But the research cuts both ways on the academic impact of mixed-ability classrooms, and many New York City parents say they don’t want to roll the dice on their kids’ education. If a large number of families do exit the city’s public schools in 2023, it would mean another financial blow to a system that has already lost more than 100,000 students since the beginning of the pandemic. Yet some of these parents may decide to remain in the public system and augment their kids’ education with advanced after-school classes, a common practice. 

    “When desegregation policies have been adopted in other cities, some parents who object stick it out and adapt,” says David Armor, a professor emeritus at George Mason University who has extensively researched integration policies. “But I would expect some degree of middle-class flight in New York City given how the lottery is going to change the academic composition of the middle schools.” 
     
    Diversity advocates – school educators, local politicians, and progressive nonprofits and parents – dismiss the threat of an exodus as scaremongering while they score wins. In Park Slope, Brooklyn, an affluent, progressive NYC neighborhood, it was parents who led the charge to end selective middle schools several years ago in a prelude to the citywide policy shift this fall. But Park Slope isn’t representative of the more moderate politics of much of the city like Manhattan’s District 2, where most parents at a recent series of community meetings strongly backed selective education.  

    Nationwide, about 185 school districts and charters in 39 states have adopted integration policies, ranging from redrawing school boundaries to preferential admissions for low-income and black and Latino students, according to the Century Foundation, an advocacy group. A quarter of them have been implemented since 2017.  

    “Students benefit educationally and socially from racially and economically integrated schools,” says a report from New York Appleseed, an advocacy group that lobbied for the removal of admission screens. “Society and our political systems benefit from the reduction in racial prejudice.”  
     
    But advocates don’t win them all, suffering a remarkable setback in progressive San Francisco in 2022. After the Board of Education angered some parents, particularly Asian Americans, by shifting Lowell, the city’s premier selective high school, to a lottery system during the pandemic, a grassroots campaign formed and successfully recalled three members in a landslide vote. The new board voted to keep screened enrollment at Lowell. 

    NYC Rolls Back Selective Ed 

    The retreat from selective middle schools in New York City gained momentum during the pandemic. Prior to COVID, almost 200 of the city’s middle schools, or nearly half the total, used enrollment screens, typically grades and test scores, to select high achievers.  

    Whites and Asians won a disproportionate number of seats in these competitive schools, creating a form of segregation based on academic performance. For instance, at Salk School of Science, a junior high in District 2, these groups accounted for three-fourths of the enrollment, with blacks and Latinos taking less than a quarter of the seats even though they make up two-thirds of all students in NYC’s system. 

    During the pandemic, middle schools suspended screened admissions because standardized testing had been temporarily paused – and that gave diversity advocates an opening to lobby for a permanent end of selective middle schools.  

    NYC Department of Education Chancellor David Banks, a black man who rose up the ranks from school security officer, recently got a taste of bitter politics of integration after making a politically incorrect comment in favor of merit-based education. The blunt-spoken chancellor was pilloried as “evil” on Twitter for saying that students who work harder deserve to go to a top school compared to those who need water thrown on their face to get them to class. As a former principal, Banks was speaking from experience.  

    But perhaps due to the political pressure, rather than ordering the restoration of screening, Banks punted. He told his superintendents who run more than 30 districts to solicit feedback from parents and then decide whether to bring them back. 

    In October, the superintendents mostly sided with progressives, dropping screened admissions permanently in more than 130 middle schools and restoring the practice in almost 60 of them for enrollment in fall 2023. Some parents cheered the sea change, arguing it’s wrong to pressure young children in 4th grade to compete for selective middle schools. 

    “Screens end up excluding black students and English language learners and those from low-income families,” says Nyah Berg, the executive director of New York Appleseed. “It’s fundamentally unsound to judge the worthiness of a student who is nine years old to attend a middle school based on their test scores and grades.” 

    But many other parents, particularly in District 2, are appalled by the rollback of meritocracy. The district covers a large swath of Manhattan, from the affluent Upper East Side and Midtown to Greenwich Village and the financial district. It is also home to a disproportionate share of high performing students. 

    One District 2 mom, who taught in city public schools for six years, says she and her husband have already bought a house in Riverside, Conn., where schools provide accelerated education. They plan to move there if they can’t afford a private school in the city. 

    “It’s 100% certain that our children won’t go to an unscreened school,” says the mother, who asked not to be named because she has two kids in public elementary school. “It’s heartbreaking because I grew up in the city and went to public schools. But the standards are falling now.” 

    The major problem with mixed-ability classrooms, particularly in an unscreened urban school, is the remarkably large difference in skill levels that teachers will likely encounter, says Jonathan Plucker, a professor of education at Johns Hopkins University who researches student achievement gaps. Some middle school students may be at least three years behind their grade level and others three years ahead, making it next to impossible for a teacher to give struggling students the attention they need while challenging advanced students with specialized curriculums.  
     
    “The idea that everyone benefits in a mixed-ability classroom is an ideological statement that flies in the face of all the evidence we have, which is very mixed,” Plucker says. “And not just for advanced students. It’s not clear that struggling students benefit either.”

    The Exodus

    The New York City school system, the nation’s largest, has been losing students for years. With about 1.1 million students at its peak, the system began shedding students in about 2016, which some experts attributed to a decline in the birth rate.  

    The drop-off accelerated in this and other cities nationwide during the pandemic. Many parents left after seeing the harm done to their children by remote learning when teachers, backed by their union, refused to return to the classroom. Families of all races, particularly blacks, and all income levels exited public schools for charters, homeschools, and mostly for an education outside New York City in New Jersey and in southern states like Florida. 

    By 2022, the city’s schools were down to about 900,000 students, a remarkable 10% drop from two years earlier.  

    Nothing is more dangerous to the city’s schools than the loss of students. State funding is based on head count, and the decline already forced Mayor Eric Adams to cut more than $200 million from the education budget this summer.  
     
    Future cutbacks may jeopardize a major reform approved in September that requires the city to reduce the size of its large classes – high school classes now capped at 34 students will go down to 25. The goal is to lift the abysmally low English and math test scores of city public school students, with more than half of them failing to achieve proficiency in these key areas in 2022.

    “I have no doubt that some parents in areas like the Upper East Side will leave the city because of the elimination of screens,” says Ray Domanico, a longtime researcher of the city’s school enrollment both within the system and now at the conservative Manhattan Institute. “With significantly fewer kids enrolled today, the city shouldn’t be pushing policies that could drive more families away.” 

    When the City Lured Families Back 

    Selective middle schools were created decades ago to keep middle-class families in the city as crime was pushing them to the suburbs in large numbers. By the 1990s, as the soaring murder rate began to recede and more people moved into less inhabited areas of District 2, parents began to demand better schools, Domanico says. 

    “The school system chose to respond to those families by setting up screened schools,” he says. “The city wanted to appeal to better-educated parents of all racial groups who had good jobs.” 

    In District 2, officials rolled out screened middle and high schools that quickly gained a reputation for excellence, including the Salk School of Science on East 20th Street in 1995. 
     
    The schools helped lure white and Asian families to the district. In the following two decades, the number of white students in the district rose to 26% in 2020, up from 19% in 2003, according to state enrollment data. More Asian students enrolled in the district too, bringing their total to 22%, while the number of black students fell to 14% from 22%. Latinos, the largest group, declined as well.   

    Chien Kwok, a Chinese-American, was part of that transformation of District 2. He was working in China when his child was accepted into a gifted and talented elementary program in the district, prompting his family to move back to Manhattan.  
     
    “District 2 had a real draw for parents,” says Kwok, the treasurer of the district’s Community Education Council, which gives parents a voice in school policy. “You could work in the city, send your kids to a great gifted and talented elementary program, then to an awesome screened middle school, and high schools are the best. It was a meritocratic feeder system that is now destroyed.” 

    Parents Back Selective Admissions  

    The battle over District 2 middle schools came to a head this fall. At four community meetings attended by the district’s superintendent, Kelly McGuire, a large majority of parents and advocates spoke in favor of restoring screened admissions. The meetings added weight to resolutions already passed by the district’s CEC supporting competitive admissions.  
     

    So in late October, when McGuire announced he was imposing a permanent lottery for admission at all of the about 17 middle schools that had used screens, parents were flabbergasted.  

    It didn’t help his cause that the day before his announcement, McGuire’s wife, Judith Kafka, a professor of educational policy at City University of New York, co-wrote an opinion piece against screened admissions. She said that competition for admission hurts all students, and quoted a parent in Park Slope who prefers a lottery because it ends the stress that comes with striving for high marks and a seat in a good school.  
     
    Parents in District 2 were offended by the article. To them, it suggested that McGuire always intended to ignore their views and instead wanted to persuade them using his wife as a surrogate.  

    At a community meeting in November following McGuire’s decision, parents directed their fury directly at the superintendent.  

    “I am now looking for private schools for my son,” said CEC member Danyela Souza Egorov. “But so many families in our district have reached out to me that they cannot afford it. It’s deeply unfair that your plan does not meet the needs of these families.” 
     
    McGuire responded that he did hear the community’s call for accelerated learning. But rather than restoring competitive schools that stress out families, the superintendent said he’s creating a new honors math course in four middle schools for those who qualify, and all schools will offer eligible 8th graders an advanced biology course and algebra, which is sometimes taught in 9th grade. 

    For reading and writing, McGuire said, middle schools will continue to differentiate instruction, in which students pick books and essay topics to match their own proficiency levels. 

    The changes, he told parents, “dramatically increase the number of accelerated learning options for students in our district.” 

    CEC member Kaushik Das didn’t agree, calling McGuire’s honors offerings “meager scraps.” 

    When Mixed-Ability Schools Fail 

    Parents see a big difference between the defunct selective schools, once full of strivers and bright minds, and the new mixed-ability schools that will try to tailor instruction to learners of widely differing skills and motivation.  

    Hunter Dare’s daughter learned this lesson at Simon Baruch, which became a District 2 lottery school during the pandemic. The sixth grader was three years ahead of her peers in math in a classroom with some students working at the second-grade level. The teacher’s response was to give the girl an algebra textbook for self-study and promised to work with her when time permitted. But that never happened.  

    She was bored in her other classes as well, and was handed only 15 minutes of homework a day. 
     
    “It was bad because she wasn’t challenged and she just lost interest in school and started slipping backwards, not doing things she was supposed to do,” says her father.  
     
    Dare was considering leaving the city for a better school for his daughter. But she got lucky in the 2022 lottery and was placed in the Baccalaureate School for Global Education in Queens, which Dare calls one of the few remaining highly rigorous middle school programs in the city. His daughter’s motivation is back as she tackles at least two hours of homework a night.  

    Another mother in District 2 calls her son’s experience during the pandemic at the unscreened Robert Wagner middle school “a disaster.” In English class on most days, she said, 25 students spent much of the period reading a variety of unchallenging fantasy and sports books. So there was little opportunity for a dynamic class discussion around a compelling literary topic. Instead, the teacher walked around the classroom and briefly talked individually to students. They avoided tackling difficult authors from Toni Morrison to William Shakespeare whose works require more elucidation and class discussion.  

    “Advocates say students learn best in mixed-ability classrooms, but in fact nobody really learned much from their reading in my son’s class, and that’s terrible,” says the mother, who asked not to be named because her children are still in public schools.  

    She says she won’t put her younger child in an unscreened District 2 middle school after seeing one up close. Instead, the family will likely decamp to Connecticut, where they recently bought a home. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/06/2023 – 19:00

  • Watch: NASA Crashes eVTOL Flying Air Taxi
    Watch: NASA Crashes eVTOL Flying Air Taxi

    All-electrical vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft will transform urban transportation. We have shared with readers all sorts of flying taxi concepts, with some of them in the testing phase. There are more than 100 companies worldwide working on eVTOLs for urban air mobility, but before any of them begin commercialization, primarily in the US, NASA researchers want to analyze crash test performance data of eVTOLs to determine the safety of passengers. 

    NASA researchers at the Landing and Impact Research facility at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, dropped a full-size eVTOL from about 30 feet, simulating an emergency landing. 

    “The test was a great success for the crash-worthiness team at Langley.

    “We successfully tested the eVTOL vehicle concept representing a six-passenger, high wing, overhead mass, multiple rotor vehicle, obtaining more than 200 channels of data, and collecting over 20 onboard and off-board camera views,” Justin Littell, research assistant for Langley’s Structural Dynamics Branch, said in a statement. 

    A video released by NASA shows the eVTOL being hoisted into the air and then released by a swing to simulate a very hard landing. 

    “While we are still going through the data and video, and these results are preliminary, we see that there are two main events that occurred during this test,” said Littell. They include:

    The first event was the floor crushing and seat stroking. The subfloor and energy-absorbing seats functioned as intended and limited the effect of the impact on the crash test dummies.

    The second was the collapse of the overhead structure. The effect of the overhead structure collapse on the crash test dummies is still being determined. 

    Researchers are still determining the crash effects on the cabin structure and the test dummies. 

    “When looking at crash conditions for these types of vehicles, it’s important to note the structural weight and distribution that must be made when examining a specific design,” said Littell.

    Joby Aviation, a US-based eVTOL manufacturer, has been working with the Federal Aviation Administration on a certification process for its S4 air taxi. The certification ensures aircraft can meet the FAA’s safety standards. 

    NASA said a second full-scale crash test is planned for the second half of this year. Low-altitude transport that is ‘zero-emission’ will be coming to major cities before the end of this decade — perhaps even before the midpoint of this decade — as Joby wants to launch aviation services in 2024. 

     

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/06/2023 – 18:40

  • David Stockman On The Flawed Strategy For A So-Called Public Health Crisis
    David Stockman On The Flawed Strategy For A So-Called Public Health Crisis

    Authored by David Stockman via InternationalMan.com,

    The undisputed fact is that the CDC changed rules for causation on death certificates in March 2020, so now we have no idea whatsoever whether the 1.05 million deaths reported to date were deaths because OF Covid or just incidentally were departures from this mortal world WITH Covid. The extensive well-documented cases of hospital DOAs (deaths on arrival) from heart attacks, gunshot wounds, strangulation or motorcycle accidents, which had tested positive before the fatal event or by postmortem, are proof enough.

    More importantly, what we do know is that not even the power-drunk apparatchiks at the CDC and other wings of the Federal public health apparatus found a way to change the total mortality counts from all causes.

    That’s the smoking gun unless you consider the year 2003 to have been an unbearable year of extraordinary death and societal misery in America. To wit, the age-adjusted death rate from all causes in America during 2020 was actually 1.8% lower than it had been in 2003 and nearly 11% lower than it had been during what has heretofore been understood to be the benign year of 1990!

    To be sure, there was a slight elevation of the all-causes mortality rate in 2020 relative to the immediately preceding years. That’s because the Covid did disproportionately and in some ghoulish sense harvest the immunologically vulnerable elderly and co-morbid slightly ahead of the Grim Reaper’s ordinary schedule.

    And far worse, there were also extraordinary deaths in 2020 among the less Covid vulnerable population owing to hospitals that were in government ordered turmoil; and also to an undeniable rise in human malfunction among the frightened, isolated, home-bound quarantined, which resulted in a swelling of homicides, suicides and a record level of deaths from drug overdoses (94,000).

    Still, the common sense line of sight across this 30-year chart below tells you 1000 times more than the context-free case and death counts which scrolled across America’s TV and computer screens day-in-and-day-out.

    It tells you there was no deadly plague; there was no extraordinary public health crisis; and that the Grim Reaper was not stalking the highways and byways of America.

    Compared to the pre-Covid norm recorded in 2019, the age-adjusted risk of death in America during 2020 went up from 0.71% to 0.84%. In humanitarian terms, that’s unfortunate but it does not even remotely bespeak a mortal threat to societal function and survival and therefore a justification for the sweeping control measures and suspensions of both liberty and common sense that actually happened.

    This fundamental mortality fact—the “science” in bolded letters if there is such a thing—totally invalidates the core notion behind the Fauci policy that was sprung upon our deer-in-the-headlights president stumbling around the Oval Office in early March 2020.

    In a word, the above chart proves that the entire Covid strategy was wrong and unnecessary. Lock, stock and barrel.

    *  *  *

    We’ve seen governments institute the strictest controls on people and businesses in history. It’s been a swift elimination of individual freedoms. But this is just the beginning… Most people don’t realize the terrible things that could come next, including Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), the abolition of cash, and much more. If you want to know how to survive what the central bankers and the Deep State have planned, then you need to see this newly released report from legendary investor Doug Casey and his team. Click here to download it now.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/06/2023 – 18:20

  • The Fabric Of Our Society Is Coming Apart At The Seams Right In Front Of Our Eyes
    The Fabric Of Our Society Is Coming Apart At The Seams Right In Front Of Our Eyes

    Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

    One rule that I have always lived by is that crazy people should be avoided.  But what good is that rule now that our entire society has started to go completely nuts?  Everywhere you look, the fabric of our society is being completely shredded.  The thin veneer of civilization that we all used to be able to take for granted is rapidly disappearing, and violence often erupts for seemingly no reason at all.  You simply cannot have a “civilization” without civilized people, and the truth is that we are becoming less civilized with each passing year.  Sadly, this is particularly true for our young people.  Most of them have been brought through our completely amoral system of public education, and most of them have had their minds severely warped by thousands upon thousands of hours of mental garbage that masquerades as entertainment.  As a result, many of them behave like lunatics, and the streets of our cities are no longer safe.

    One of the reasons why so many people like to interact with others through phones and video screens is because the real world has become just so hazardous.

    A video that was trending on social media during the holiday season is a perfect example of this.  An absolutely massive brawl recently erupted at a Waffle House in Austin, Texas, and it got so much attention that Fox News even took notice…

    “Waffle House” is trending on Twitter in reaction to a video of an employee deflecting and slapping down a chair that was thrown at her during a fight at one of the chain’s restaurants in Austin, Texas.

    The original video, which is more than two minutes long, shows the lead-up and fight between multiple Waffle House customers and employees.

    The employee who was struck with two chairs has gone viral for her quick reflexes and impressive deflection.

    This brawl has been watched millions upon millions of times, and the reason why it became so popular is because many viewers found it to be extremely entertaining.

    In particular, many were absolutely fascinated by the Waffle House employee that was seemingly able to deflect chairs that were thrown at her with a flick of her arm.

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

    She is being called “Waffle House Girl”, and people are joking that she is a new superhero.

    But where are all the people that are crying out in anguish for what has happened to this generation of young people?

    An entire generation of young adults seems to have no moral foundation whatsoever, and that has dire implications for the future of our society.

    Every day, there are more brawl videos featuring our young people on social media.

    They are brawling in restaurants, they are brawling at Walmart, they are brawling at sporting events, they are brawling on the subway and they are brawling in the streets.

    And we just act like all of this is perfectly normal.

    These days, if you choose to use public transportation you are literally putting your life on the line.

    One 78-year-old man that lives in Oregon recently found this out the hard way.  He was brutally attacked by a crazed 25-year-old lunatic that tried to chew his face off for apparently no reason at all.  When authorities finally arrived, they could “see the victim’s skull”…

    A suspect is in custody after a grisly attack on an elderly man on a MAX platform in Gresham early Tuesday morning, according to police.

    At about 2:17 a.m., officers responded to the Cleveland Station at 1200 Northeast 8th Street where witnesses reported an attack and a lot of blood.

    Officers found the attacker still on top of the victim, a 78-year-old man from Hillsboro, and pulled him off.

    According to police, the suspect “had chewed off the victim’s ear and part of his face. The injury was so severe that responders could see the victim’s skull.”

    This sort of an attack on a 78-year-old man doesn’t make any sense at all.

    But this is the society that we live in now.

    In fact, senseless violence is even happening right outside of the White House…

    A man allegedly beat another man to death with a metal pipe Wednesday in Washington, D.C., near the White House.

    A jogger found the man at the Ellipse park in downtown Washington, D.C., and then found a nearby Secret Service agent, according to Fox 5. Police were able to obtain video footage that shows an altercation in the same area at around 6:30 a.m.

    If they can’t even keep the area around the White House safe, do you really think that they are able to protect you?

    Hordes of ruthless predators are roaming our streets, and they just keep getting younger and younger.

    In Milwaukee, a 10-year-old boy is being accused of murdering his own mother because she wouldn’t buy him a virtual reality headset…

    A 10-year-old boy who is charged with fatally shooting his mother for refusing to buy him a VR headset seems more preoccupied with his gadgets than the murder as he faces trial, family members say.

    The Milwaukee boy is charged as an adult with first-degree reckless homicide in the November 21 killing of Quiana Mann, 44, who was shot in the face in their home.

    The boy’s aunt Rhonda Reid told WTMJ-TV on Tuesday that when she talks to him in custody, he claims not to remember the shooting and quickly shifts the conversation to his favorite topic.

    10-year-old kids aren’t supposed to know how to kill people.

    What in the world has happened to us?

    At this point, homicide and suicide are two of the most common causes of death for young children in this country…

    Homicide as well as suicide are common causes of death for young age groups in the United States, second only to accidents for those between the ages of 15 and 34.

    After that age, cancer, heart disease and more recently Covid-19 become bigger killers.

    Even for children aged 5-9, homicide is a big danger and was the fourth most common cause of death for the age group in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    For those 10 to 14 years old, both homicide and suicide are among the top 4 killers.

    Are you starting to get my point?

    Yes, the fabric of our society really is coming apart at the seams all around us.

    And the biggest criminals of all are those that are supposed to be running the entire show.

    The most heinous crimes are being committed by those that roam the halls of power, but our society has become so corrupt that most people simply do not care.

    Just like so many great civilizations before us, we will surely fall if our current decline cannot be reversed.

    My hope is that my articles will shock people into realizing that we desperately need change.

    Because time is running out, and at this point most of the population is still in a deep state of sleep.

    *  *  *

    It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/06/2023 – 17:40

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