Today’s News 7th May 2022

• The Pragmatic American: "Can 'We, The People' Be Trusted?"
  The Pragmatic American: “Can ‘We, The People’ Be Trusted?”

  Authored by Tony Woodlief via RealClearBooks,

  The following essay is excerpted from “I, Citizen: A Blueprint for Reclaiming American Self-Governance“.  This is Part 1 in a symposium that seeks to answer the question posed within this essay: “Can ‘We the People’ be trusted?”

  The Pragmatic American

  “I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty.”

  – William F. Buckley, Jr.

  While American partisans have altered their policy opinions to match the ideologies of the political class, regular Americans have ignored that marching order. Partisans no longer agree with the Other Side on anything, but average Americans don’t let team allegiance dominate their views. Even most Americans who are registered as Democrats or Republicans still favor some policies desired by majorities in the other party. Average citizens demonstrate greater independence of thought than the ideological conformists so revered by political scientists.

  Political scientists still contend, however, that Americans are in no condition to vote responsibly, let alone engage in self-governance. By evaluating citizens through a unidimensional, ideological lens, they’ve concluded that there’s neither rhyme, reason, nor consistency behind our voting patterns. In the words of Kinder and Kalmoe, “many Americans simply don’t know what they want from government.”

  Is the fact that most Americans don’t flock to either pole on the ideological spectrum proof that their opinions aren’t held together by an underlying value system? Some opinion researchers have pondered the possibility that force-fitting survey answers to the liberal/conservative spectrum incorrectly casts everyday Americans as flighty and unserious. “Perhaps ordinary citizens’ issue preferences lacked ‘constraint,’” speculate Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, “because they had thoughtfully constructed their own personal political belief systems transcending conventional ideologies and party lines?”

  

  I, Citizen: A Blueprint for Reclaiming American Self-Governance, Encounter Books

  Despite more than a hint of derision in this question, there is indeed evidence that when we unpack the liberal/conservative continuum, Americans aren’t as scatterbrained as scholars make them out to be. Researchers have separated American opinions about foreign policy and defense, economic policy, and moral issues, and found that we hold somewhat consistent beliefs within those issue areas. The problem for theorists is that, when taken in total, those beliefs don’t fit onto their unidimensional, ideological spectrum. Many Americans, for example, are very religious and oppose abortion, which political scientists would consider conservative. Yet these same people also embrace government aid to minorities and laws that ensure equal access to job opportunities, which are typically considered liberal positions. Likewise, a significant portion of America embraces free enterprise and limited government spending, but also abortion rights and gay adoption. We’re “liberal” on some things, and “conservative” on others, and this drives theorists batty.

  The damning reality about Americans, however, which makes political scientists so confident in their negative assessments, is that our political opinions fluctuate from year to year. One year we favor more aid to minorities; two years later we oppose it. We say the government should provide health insurance, then we say it shouldn’t. We believe the US should intervene less in foreign affairs, then we’re for war. If average Americans did have an underlying value structure informing their policy preferences, goes the reasoning, their survey answers wouldn’t jump around so much. Maybe there’s an ideology that leads someone to be for both free trade and government-provided health insurance, but there’s no ideology that leads a person to favor these policies one year, and disapprove of them the next.

  Before we throw in the towel on the American mind, however, let’s consider a pretend survey question. It asks you to express, on a seven-point scale, your agreement or disagreement with this statement: “People will be better off if they have children.” One means you very strongly disagree; seven means you agree very strongly.

  Before you protest that this question lacks all context (“What people?” “How old are they?” “How many children will they have?”), let me remind you that I didn’t make the survey rules. Here’s a real statement, for example, that the American National Election Studies has used for more than sixty years to evaluate American opinions about foreign policy: “This country would be better off if we just stayed home and did not concern ourselves with problems in other parts of the world.”

  Let’s tease that one out before returning to my hypothetical childbearing question. Imagine a survey respondent in 2002 who has just recently watched President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” speech. Inspired by the urgent imperative to stop weapons of mass destruction from proliferating in the hands of evildoers, he might feel strongly that the US will be worse off if it doesn’t get more involved overseas. So, he chooses “disagree” on the survey.

  Fast forward to 2012. American soldiers have suffered terrible casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. Reports of civilian deaths and dismemberments, meanwhile, are staggering. It now appears clear that intelligence failures, even deliberate misstatements, were used to justify our military interventions. No weapons of mass destruction were found, and many of the people we told ourselves we were going to liberate want us out of their countries.

  Our same citizen, finding himself once again contemplating this survey question, has significantly cooled toward military interventions. Maybe he still believes some kind of action was warranted against the people who masterminded the September 11th attacks, but he no longer supports wholesale invasions. So, this time he chooses “agree.”

  This is entirely reasonable logic. One might even argue that this citizen has better judgment — and certainly more humility — than the politicians and bureaucrats who remain resolutely unapologetic for plunging America into a twenty-year war costing $6.5 trillion and more than 7,000 American lives. Yet still this respondent will be judged as inconsistent by pollsters, because he changed his answer to their survey question.

  Now, imagine what might go through someone’s mind when answering my hypothetical survey question about having children. One respondent has just been around parents yelling at their kids in the local park. Another has an unmarried teenage niece with a six-month-old baby. Still another recently watched her daughter win a state championship in wrestling. Do you think this personal context matters? If it does, do you think the very same people, two or four or eight years later, might give significantly different answers that will have been colored by their recent experiences? If so, does this prove they have inconsistent beliefs about children and parenting?

  Of course it doesn’t. Ordinary people, when asked abstract philosophical questions, will draw on recent, concrete experience to inform their answers. Cognitive psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman labeled this tendency “availability bias.” “Perhaps the most obvious demonstration of availability in real life,” they wrote in the academic journal Cognitive Psychology, “is the impact of the fortuitous availability of incidents or scenarios.” Asked to evaluate abstractions, the natural human response is to draw upon experience, and often our most recent experience is the most accessible. You may hold bedrock beliefs that are proven out in the way you live and how you treat others, yet which don’t shine through in opinion surveys that, lacking sufficient context, invite emotion, varied interpretations, and recency to affect your choice of a number on a scale.

  With that said, there is a small group of people whose answers to the parenting question wouldn’t vary: those with such strong convictions about childbearing that context doesn’t matter. Some people have firm religious beliefs, for example, that everyone is called to “be fruitful and multiply,” and that God will work out the circumstances. Others believe the world’s resources are so depleted that it’s imperative for everyone to stop having children before the planet dies.

  People who believe a principle should be adhered to no matter what the cost — ideologues, in other words — are likely to be much more consistent in survey after survey than the rest of us. What’s more, they’ll struggle to imagine how people whose responses depend on context can be anything other than shallow. If they happen to be the scholars constructing the surveys and interpreting the results, well, you get today’s near-consensus about American public opinion, which is that most citizens are shortsighted, biased, forgetful, and relatively unprincipled. Not well-suited, in other words, to govern themselves according to the vision of the American Founders.

  It’s worth noting that a more charitable view of their fellow man might evoke curiosity among scholars about why their surveys indicate citizenship incompetence among a wide swath of Americans. Given a well-established psychological literature revealing the human tendency to explain one’s own behaviors (and inconsistencies) with more grace than one generally affords others, we might be justified in saying to the professors who hold such a damning view of everyday Americans: “Physician, heal thyself.”

  The plain truth is that the machinery of public-opinion surveys, crafted by ideologues, is geared to detect ideology. Ideology is the only mechanism they imagine can drive political opinion in a coherent, predictable direction. There are entire academic treatises on the nature of ideology, its formation and its actualization. The fact that you obey the law, pay your taxes, and participate in the market economy is proof, in some interpretations, that you are embedded in a web of ideology. That discussion is not worth delving into here. The question at hand is whether Americans have shared beliefs that not only lead them to respond to surveys with answers that cut across the academic conceptualization of liberal vs. conservative, but which also explain the variation in their policy preferences over time. 

  Can “We the People” Be Trusted?

  This isn’t just a philosophical question. What’s at stake is the American republic. If most citizens really are indifferent, and the remainder blindly partisan, then the faith of the Founders was mislaid, and we are in no condition to govern ourselves. Far better to leave all those policy decisions to the attentive politicos in DC, provided we can find a way to keep them from plunging us into civil war.

  In short, where we go from here depends on an honest answer to this question: is there something other than capriciousness and low information that drives the political opinions of average Americans? Something that makes their desires for our country trustworthy?

  I believe there is, for two reasons.

  First, public-opinion scholars assess citizens’ knowledge of issues and politics like they’re grading a midterm exam. Political scientist James Gibson points out, for example, that President Richard Nixon repeatedly mangled the name of the man he himself nominated to the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist. Coding standards applied by the American National Election Studies would have required pollsters to record Nixon as not knowing his own Supreme Court nominee. So were real survey respondents, when presented with William Rehnquist’s name, recorded as not knowing who he was if they answered with something like: “head honcho of the Supreme Court.” Using a more reasonable standard of knowledge, Gibson found that 72 percent of responses recorded as wrong were in fact correct. The surveys employed to prove most Americans are ignorant, in other words, appear to be off the mark.

  More importantly, surveys of American beliefs about government focus almost exclusively on policy levers. They ask whether respondents believe government should provide health insurance, and whether it should spend more or less on welfare, public health, education, crime—even space exploration. They ask whether courts should be harsher or more lenient with criminals, and whether more or fewer immigrants should be allowed into the country. This is like asking an average person to diagnose his car trouble from the driver’s seat. He can no more tell you how much welfare spending is adequate than he can determine how much transmission fluid he’s lacking. If you force him to offer diagnoses, he’s going to grasp at impressions. Wasn’t there a grinding sound last week? Didn’t I notice a funny smell?

  Ask him repeatedly over the years, and his answers are going to jump around. All his seeming schizophrenia proves is that he isn’t a mechanic. It doesn’t mean that he has no consistent vision of where he wants his car to go, and how he wants it to get there. Likewise for Americans when it comes to their conceptualizations of government and the common good. Everyday people don’t know how much money government at all levels spends on education, or how much it should spend. This doesn’t mean they lack coherent opinions about what a child’s education ought to look like. 

  Instead of Survey Respondents, Citizens

  Imagine that instead of asking Americans to be government mechanics, we instead asked them to think like citizens. Rather than quiz them regarding what policy levers ought to be pulled, they would be questioned about what outcomes they believed were best for our country. People disagree vehemently about government-provided health insurance, for example, but share a desire to see as many Americans as possible receive the medical care they need. People disagree about whether parents should be allowed to divert public funds to private schools, but share a desire to see every American child receive a suitable education. We’re divided over what levers to pull, but not nearly so divided as the political class when it comes to the ends we want to achieve, because we are far more united in our core values than they are.

  How do I know? Most directly, I have experienced this reality firsthand — as I suspect you have as well — in many conversations with friends, neighbors, relatives, coworkers, and fellow parishioners whose political opinions vary. Beyond one’s own sense from those conversations, hints of an underlying consensus on American values can be found in the same surveys used by scholars to claim American beliefs are incoherent. Occasionally, a question on those broad national surveys reveals — perhaps without meaning to — values and desires of Americans regarding public policy and the common good.

  The American National Election Studies, for example, has asked Americans for decades how they feel about government support for people who need jobs. Between 1956 and 1960, on average 58 percent of Americans said the government should see to it that people who needed jobs should get them. Opposing that goal were 26 percent of respondents, with another 17 percent stating either that they didn’t know or didn’t care. In 1964, however, the percentage of respondents who agreed with this lofty aspiration fell almost by half, to 31 percent. Those who disagreed, meanwhile, rose to 43 percent.

  On the surface, this appears to be another example of American ideological schizophrenia. Either that, or a sizable portion of Americans lost their charitable instincts in four short years. A closer look at the question’s wording, however, reveals that between 1956-1960, Americans were asked to either agree or disagree with this statement:

  The government in Washington ought to see to it that everybody who wants to work can find a job.

  The statement’s wording was altered in 1964, however, replacing a simpler declaration with this version:

  In general, some people feel that the government in Washington should see to it that every person has a job and a good standard of living. Others think the government should just let each person get ahead on his own. Have you been interested enough in this to favor one side over the other?

  This is a very different question, isn’t it? Before, Americans were asked whether they wanted government to help everyone willing to work find a job. The revised question, in contrast, asked whether Americans believed government should provide everyone a job (no mention of willingness to work), and beyond that a good standard of living. The dramatic change in subsequent survey responses doesn’t simply illustrate the sensitivity of surveys to how questions are worded. It illuminates, as demonstrated with greater proof below, a core conviction that informs how everyday Americans think about everything from welfare to immigration, namely that we should help people who are trying to help themselves.

  This is a widespread and stable value that directly affects how Americans feel about welfare, preferential hiring, aid to minorities, immigration, and other policies. The majority of survey questions about these topics, however, pretend this sentiment doesn’t exist. The two most consistently administered and academically rigorous survey batteries in America — the American National Election Studies (University of Michigan) and General Social Survey (University of Chicago) — don’t ask Americans to distinguish between welfare recipients who have one child out of wedlock versus three, or immigrants willing to work versus those who subsist on crime or welfare. Yet these are exactly the considerations, as anyone who’s talked to regular Americans for even a few minutes about these topics can attest, that determine how generous or stingy most Americans will be. Little wonder responses to survey questions about how much we should spend on social services, or how many immigrants we should allow into the country, fluctuate. Lacking context, respondents base their answers on what’s prominent in the news or other media, alongside immediate personal experiences.

  Another effect of the aforementioned change to the wording of the jobs question reveals something else about how Americans respond to surveys. When surveyors altered the wording in 1964, the percentage of respondents who subsequently replied that they either didn’t know or didn’t care rose by more than half, from 17 percent to 26 percent. When the surveyors switched, eight years later, from a Yes/No format to a seven-point scale, the “don’t know” responses fell by half. Forty-two percent of respondents, furthermore, placed themselves in the middle of the scale, choosing a three, four, or five.

  Between 1964-1972, in other words, ANES administrators forced respondents to consider a false choice: either government guarantees everyone a job and a good standard of living, or it leaves people to fend for themselves. Anyone acquainted with everyday life understands there’s a third alternative in which assistance comes from families, churches, and communities. This isn’t an uncommon phenomenon in surveys. Ideologically-minded researchers manufacture false choices, and Americans respond by either opting out of the questions altogether, or placing themselves in the middle of a scale when it’s available, which gets interpreted as mindless moderation borne of ignorance and shallow beliefs. Americans appear schizophrenic to academics on many policy issues because they’re being asked the wrong questions.

  Fortunately, some academics have invested in the more painstaking work of asking Americans what they think about government, public policies, and the common good, and recording what respondents have to say in their own words.

  The findings of these scholars offer a sharp — and encouraging — contrast to the work of pollsters.

  While survey researchers paint a picture of Americans as ignorant and indifferent, scholars who take the time to actually talk with the subjects of these surveys describe people who sound like they’re capable of — and willing to be — the kinds of citizens the American Founders envisioned.

  *  *  *

  Tony Woodlief is Executive Vice President at State Policy Network, a nationwide community that cultivates and supports state-based organizations working on behalf of citizen freedom and self-determination.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/06/2022 – 23:40

• President Xi Insists China's COVID Lockdowns Will "Stand The Test Of Time"
  President Xi Insists China’s COVID Lockdowns Will “Stand The Test Of Time”

  Shanghai residents who have been trapped in lockdown conditions that have barely eased over the span of a month-and-a-half were given a sense of false hope on Friday, when Chinese news outlets mistakenly reported that Disneyland in Shanghai was preparing to open with limited capacity.

  *Ignore: Chinese news outlets mistakenly publish report that “Shanghai Disneyland resort to reopen with limited capacity from May 11”. Reopening happened in 2020, not 2022.
  CURRENTLY NO TIMELINE FOR REOPENING OF SHANGHAI DISNEYLAND RESORT.

  — CN Wire (@Sino_Market) May 6, 2022

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  Those reports were quickly retracted, and instead, the Politburo doubled down on China’s “COVID zero” policy, while President Xi insisted that the lockdowns would withstand the test of time, and that pledged to combat any attempts to “distort” or “question” the CCP’s heavy handed policies.

  

  The SCMP reported that this marked the first time that Xi has spoken out in defense of the country’s lockdown in Shanghai.

  Meanwhile, in Beijing, local authorities have closed public transport routes, told people to work from home and ordered mass testing in an effort to stop the capital outflows.

  In a statement issued after the latest meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee, the Politburo insisted that the Chinese people must stand strong in the face of COVID.

  “We must be firm in overcoming thoughts of indifference and self-righteous thinking, and underestimating the epidemic,” a statement issued after the meeting said.

  “We must keep a clear head and unwaveringly adhere to the general policy of dynamic zero-Covid. We must struggle against speech and acts that distort, question or reject our country’s anti-epidemic guidelines and policy.”

  That President Xi has felt the need to directly address the lockdowns is hardly a surprise. As we have noted, the lockdown in China’s financial and economic capital has led to an intense blowback among the public (well, as intense as criticism of the government ever gets in China), with residents complained of food shortages, difficulties in gaining medical treatment and fences being set up outside residential buildings to stop residents leaving.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/06/2022 – 23:20

• Adam Kinzinger Executes Neocon Vision For Ukraine
  Adam Kinzinger Executes Neocon Vision For Ukraine

  Authored by Patrick Macfarlane via The Libertarian Institute,

  As the war in Ukraine approaches its tenth week, the steady flow of ominous headlines has grown to a floodwater deluge. Dissenting observers are made to watch, seemingly helpless, as the broader levy of sanity threatens to break, unleashing a torrent of death and destruction across Eastern Europe, and likely, the globe.

  Leading the bad news cycle, on Sunday, May 1, Congressman Adam Kinzinger proposed a new Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) in the U.S. House of Representatives. The legislation, if passed, would allow President Joe Biden to deploy American forces to restore “the territorial integrity of Ukraine” in the event that Russia uses chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. When Kinzinger announced the legislation on Meet the Press, he stated that he “doesn’t think we need to be using force in Ukraine right now.” However, as Antiwar.com opinion editor Kyle Anzalone ominously noted, in 2002, then-Senator Joe Biden similarly downplayed the danger of war before voting for the 2002 AUMF—under which President George W. Bush later prosecuted the invasion of Iraq.

  

  If bad Ukraine policy amounts to a downpour, Rep. Adam Kinzinger has been performing a rain dance for years now.

  Kinzinger was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010. In March 2014, while sitting on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Kinzinger pledged that the House would back the Obama administration’s efforts in Ukraine. Further, he stated the House would consider legislation calling for increased aid to Ukraine, up to and including adding Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. Kinzinger’s pledge came soon after the conclusion of the 2014 Euromaidan Coup, where the US State Department played an instrumental role in ousting then-president Viktor Yanukovych. By April, 2014, Ukraine would launch a civil war against pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

  In 2016 Kinzinger co-authored H.R. 5094, the Stability and Democracy for Ukraine Act (the STAND for Ukraine Act). On September 21, 2016, the STAND for Ukraine Act passed the U.S. House unanimously by voice vote. It was engineered to “contain, reverse, and deter Russian aggression in Ukraine, to support the sovereignty of Crimea against Russia’s illegal annexation, and to ultimately assist Ukraine’s democratic transition.” The STAND for Ukraine Act cemented sanctions as a permanent fixture of American policy by making it “effectively…impossible to remove certain anti-Russian sanctions unless Crimea is returned to Ukraine.”

  Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Kinzinger has repeatedly pushed to escalate a situation that his policy helped to create. On March 3, 2022, he publicly called for a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine to “prevent Russian air attacks.” If enforced, a no-fly zone in Ukraine would see U.S. forces shooting down Russian planes and even attacking targets in Russia.

  Kinzinger’s corresponding press release cited his experience piloting an intelligence aircraft in Iraq as being some sort of qualification for such a daft and dangerous proposition:

  Representative Kinzinger understands what being a hero means…Maybe Congress and President Joe Biden should listen to him. Kinzinger thinks that war with Russia might be inevitable. We would have the advantage now when few people would die. It looks as if we will find out.

  Kinzinger likely wouldn’t state his true credentials for pushing such maniacal Ukrainian policy. Indeed, through his years advocating—near universally—for an aggressive U.S. foreign policy, Kinzinger has been immersed in the neoconservative think-tank circuit.

  George W. Bush just met with Zelensky over Zoom. He might as well. Most US politicians today sound indistinguishable from Bush circa early 2000s, with their newfound “freedom agenda”-style rhetoric pic.twitter.com/pr9XZ2CHXm

  — Michael Tracey (@mtracey) May 5, 2022

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  On March 24, 2014, Kinzinger joined the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) for a panel discussion involving arch-neoconservative Fredrick Kagan. During the panel, Kinzinger “underlined the…potential dangers associated with leaving [Afghanistan]” in the wake of the Karzai government.

  For all the seven years of U.S. support for the Kabul government between Kinzinger’s 2014 panel appearance at AEI and his April 15, 2021 reprisal, the withdrawal had the same predictable result. In a matter of weeks, the Afghan National Army washed away like water breaking upon stone. The Kabul government disintegrated with it.

  In 2022, nearly nine months after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the “potential dangers” Kinzinger foretold have failed to materialize—at least for the American public. Instead, Afghanistan has vanished from the U.S. news cycle. The AEI, who so loudly virtue-signaled for the rights of Afghanistan women, is now silent about the consequences of the twenty-year U.S. war there—except to the extent that it could be used to justify even further intervention. Beyond AEI, on May 26, 2016, Kinzinger attended an event hosted by the ultra-neoconservative Foreign Policy Initiative and The Hudson Institute. He stated:

  Our involvement in NATO is not because we just want to defend Europe out of the goodness of our heart, but because without NATO we never would have been able to drop the Iron Curtain and bring freedom to millions of people and make us safer…Are there challenges? Of course. But that needs to be done in the context of “how do we get NATO reengaged” versus “let’s just get out of the rest of the world. That’s a narcissistic foreign policy.”

  The Foreign Policy Initiative was founded in 2009 by Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol and Brooking’s Institute Fellow Robert Kagan. In the 1990s, Kristol and Kagan founded the now-infamous Project for a New American Century are largely credited as being architects of the Global War on Terrorism.

  Robert Kagan’s wife, Victoria Nuland, served as assistant secretary of state during the 2014 Euromaidan Coup in Ukraine. In a leaked phone call with the then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Nuland lamented the European Union’s decision to limit its involvement. She then stated “Yats is the guy, he’s got the economic experience,” referring to opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk. The first prime minister of the post-Madian interim government was none other than Arseniy Yatsenyuk. The Hudson Institute is:

  part of a closely-knit group of neoconservative institutes that champion aggressive, Israel-centric U.S. foreign policies. Founded in 1961 by several dyed-in-the-wool Cold Warriors, including Herman Kahn–a one-time RAND nuclear war theorist notorious for his efforts to develop “winnable” nuclear war strategies [emphasis added]. Kinzinger has also spoken at the Atlantic Council, a think tank that has long pushed increasing confrontation between the US and Russia over Ukraine. It is funded, to the tune of millions, by weapons manufacturers, the UAE, the Rockefeller Foundation, Goldman Sachs, Facebook, JP Morgan–Chase, and Palantir.

  While it is unclear exactly how much influence the above-named think tanks have had on Kinzinger’s policy positions, it is clear that Kinzinger has played a starring role in escalating diplomatic tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine.

  Just as in the Global War on Terror, this time with Kinzinger as their thrall, the same ghouls slither forth from their crypts for another orgy of death. Is our best hope another twenty-year, society-eating slog? Or will the NeoConservatives’ Ukrainian denouement detonate a flash ending?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/06/2022 – 23:00

• $50 Million Of Cocaine Found At Nespresso Factory
  $50 Million Of Cocaine Found At Nespresso Factory

  Employees at a Swiss Nespresso factory were shocked after discovering about a half-ton of cocaine in a shipment of coffee beans delivered to the plant from Brazil. 

  According to AFP, workers at the Nespresso plant in Romont, in western Switzerland, notified authorities on Monday after discovering mysterious white powder inside mounds of coffee sacks in shipping containers. 

  Local police seized more than 500 kilos (1,103 pounds) of cocaine from five containers. 

  

  The shipment originated from Brazil, police said, adding the seized cocaine was 80% pure and had a street value of $50 million (48 million euros). 

  “It appears that all of the drugs were destined for the European market,” police said.

  

  The Nespresso plant is a subsidiary of the multinational food and drinks processing conglomerate Nestlé. The Romont plant specializes in producing single-serve coffee capsules. 

  Bloomberg’s top commodity expert Javier Blas recently told Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway in an Odd Lots podcast that in physical trading of commodities, such as agricultural, metals, and energy, traders “don’t have to disclose anything.” 

  Several years ago, a much larger shipment of cocaine was seized on a containership owned by JP Morgan Chase. U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized 20 tons from the ship, worth an estimated street value of $1.3 billion. 

  If it’s Nestlé or a JP Morgan ship, drug cartels have somehow tapped large supply chains owned by large Western companies to smuggle drugs into the developed world. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/06/2022 – 22:40

• China Has 'Financial Nuclear Bombs' If West Levies Russia-Style Sanctions, Beijing Warns
  China Has ‘Financial Nuclear Bombs’ If West Levies Russia-Style Sanctions, Beijing Warns

  Multiple analysts at Chinese state-linked think tanks and banks have weighed in on the Biden administration’s recent threats to punish the world’s second-largest economy over China’s refusal to condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine, and amid US charges that it could be helping Moscow evade sanctions, or even quietly resupplying Putin’s military machine (charges which at this point have remained without evidence).

  “It is necessary to speed up the construction and external connection of the cross-border yuan clearing system CIPS … [But] the primary choice is to continue to strengthen cooperation with Swift,” Wang Yongli, a former vice-president with the Bank of China and a former board member for Swift, was cited as saying in a fresh South China Morning Post report this week.

  However, China is taking note and studying its own preparedness and future options in the wake of the US drastic measure of freezing Russia’s central bank assets overseas. On this, Yongli underscored to the SCMP that “The huge foreign exchange reserves are hard-won, and they are China’s ‘financial nuclear bombs’ with a powerful deterrent effect. It must be used properly rather than arbitrarily, and cannot be easily slashed.”

  

  Officials in Beijing are putting counterparts in Washington on notice – pointing out that “China is no Russia” given China’s immensely larger role in nearly every facet of the global economy. They’ve also said that any potential Taiwan reunification scenario with the mainland would not be like Russia-Ukraine, and yet it’s understood well due to the current crisis and the West’s anti-Russia sanctions constitute a “textbook warning for China”:

  “The expansive economic sanctions that US-led Western countries have imposed on Russia can be seen as a textbook warning for China – on how far [the sanctions] can go,” said He Weiwen, former economic and commercial counsellor at the Chinese consulates in New York and San Francisco.

  The SCMP report lists a number of short and long-term strategies being mulled in a crisis scenario with the West, predicated on geopolitical factors like a showdown over Taiwan.

  For example, “China has been stepping up efforts to diversify its foreign exchange reserve assets in the past two decades, according to data from the State Administration Of Foreign Exchange.” The report recommends, “One countermeasure China can take is to expand its economic and financial opening up to the outside world, and encourage foreign investors to hold more Chinese assets, according to Chinese government advisers.”

  Below are some key sections from the analysis outlining various possible scenarios…

  Unintended Consequences

  “China and the US have a stake in each other, so for the US, China is totally different from Russia. The political calculations will inevitably be restrained by economic conditions.”

  Lu Xiang, a senior fellow with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), also said that if the same sanctions were levied against China, they would have unintended consequences for the nation or global bloc imposing them.

  “The effects of any sanctions are mutual,” Lu said. “We have assets in the US and Europe, and so do they in China.”

  “Some US sanctions will inevitably remain in place, and perhaps more will come, but the unfolding of the sanctions will follow its original pace,” according to Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at Renmin University and an adviser to the State Council, the country’s cabinet.

  “A sharp and sudden escalation is quite unlikely,” Shi said.

  Playing with Ambiguity

  “The United States is now playing with ambiguity,” a Beijing-based foreign diplomat was quoted as saying. “China also wants to know, clearly, under what specific circumstances it would be sanctioned.”

  Accordingly, the Chinese government, along with state-owned banks and enterprises that have business relations with Russia, have been adopting a very prudent approach since the war began, according to Professor Shi with Renmin University.

  “Such a Western attitude [towards Russian aggression] has probably been fully anticipated by China, so to protect Chinese assets, I think so far, China has been acting very cautiously,” Shi said.

  China is conducting “stress tests” to see how its economy will cope and respond if the U.S. imposed Russia-style sanctions on it

  Russia’s narrative that sanctions on it are a prelude to Western economic warfare against China is gaining traction in Beijing

  — Samuel Ramani (@SamRamani2) May 5, 2022

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  Slashing Reserves?

  According to the report, “There has been talk inside China of slashing its huge holding of reserves, but experts say this is not feasible, as a sudden change in the volume could have catastrophic consequences in global markets.”

  Wang Yongli explained, “…Of course, this does not rule out China increasing its purchase of gold or other strategic materials, or adjusting the currency and country composition of foreign exchange reserves, to further reduce its US dollar reserves, but we avoid this as much as possible to use it as a means of confrontation with the US.”

  Read the rest of the SCMP report here.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/06/2022 – 22:00

• 80 'Suspicious Actors' And 'Material Witnesses' Under Scrutiny By Jan. 6 Defense Attorneys
  80 ‘Suspicious Actors’ And ‘Material Witnesses’ Under Scrutiny By Jan. 6 Defense Attorneys

  Authored by Joseph M. Hanneman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Defense attorneys seek to identify and investigate 80 suspicious actors and material witnesses, some of whom allegedly ran an entrapment operation against the Oath Keepers on January 6, 2021, and committed crimes including the removal of security fencing, breaching police lines, attacking officers, and inciting crowds to storm into the Capitol.

  

  In a motion (pdf) and supplement (pdf) filed after 11 p.m. on May 5 in federal court in Washington, attorney Brad Geyer listed 80 people, some of whom he said could be government agents or provocateurs. The people are seen on video operating in a coordinated fashion across the Capitol grounds on January 6, the attorney alleged.

  Geyer’s suggestion of an entrapment scheme will resonate with dozens of January 6 defense attorneys, coming shortly after two men were acquitted of an alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). There was a hung jury on charges against two other defendants. The jury in that case was allowed to consider FBI entrapment as a defense.

  Geyer, who represents Oath Keepers defendant Kenneth Harrelson, is seeking a court order from U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta compelling federal prosecutors to help identify the individuals and disclose whether they were working for law enforcement or any government agency on January 6. Geyer wrote that the information is exculpatory, which compels the government to produce it. Other Oath Keepers defendants are expected to join in the motion.

  The May 5 filing comes on the heels of an April 12 Oath Keepers motion that alleged at least 20 “assets” from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) were embedded in the crowds on January 6.

  

  According to the new filing, video evidence the defense gained access to only recently shows that some of the 80 people attacked police, other people, and members of the Oath Keepers; entered the Capitol on the west side “with apparent permission or acquiescence of government actors”; opened the Columbus Doors on the east side of the Capitol “from the inside, possibly with even further assistance of government actors”; and deployed “sophisticated crowd-behavior techniques,” orienting themselves between protesters and police.

  Suspicious actors are seen on video “associating, conferring and traveling with others, engaging in behavior to confuse law enforcement through body masking, facial masking, clothing changes, and disorienting skirmishing behavior,” Geyer wrote.

  The suspected people used earpieces, satellite phones, and other communication equipment. “Often it appears that these communications devices do not seem to be affected by capacity restriction or sophisticated jamming that was evident throughout the day,” Geyer wrote.

  “If it can be established that these SAs [suspicious actors] were government agents, this could amount to entrapment defense that will dispose of this 7th indictment prior to trial,” the motion said.

  “If it can be established that SAs, even without established government agency, from the west or elsewhere, were let into the Capitol and/or were assisted in opening the Columbus Doors from the inside—a reasonable inference from video evidence—a reasonable jury might conclude that one or more SAs had government sponsorship,” Geyer wrote.

  Eleven members of the Oath Keepers were charged on January 12 with seditious conspiracy, obstruction of a government proceeding, and other counts. The government alleged the Oathkeepers committed the crimes to prevent the certification of Electoral College votes from the 2020 presidential election.

  Two Oath Keepers defendants of the original 11 accepted deals offered by prosecutors and pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and obstruction. Another Oath Keepers member from North Carolina was charged May 4 with the same counts and pleaded guilty on May 5. All three are expected to assist the FBI with its ongoing January 6 investigations.

  Geyer suggested the Oath Keepers who entered the Capitol Rotunda through the famous Columbus Doors atop the east stairs were entrapped by suspicious actors who boxed them in and attempted to push them into the Capitol after the doors were opened from the inside.

  “Prima facie evidence of an entrapment scheme (very possibly without formal government agency) is becoming impossible to ignore on video,” Geyer wrote.

  Video shot by a French television crew, and surveillance footage under court seal raise “significant concerns of informants, influencers, and inciters whose activities are now clearly observable,” said a footnote in the motion.

  Suspicious Examples

  “The now observable behavior suggests the exact kind of specialized training, coordination, logistical support, timing, and common goals and objectives that the government attributes to the Oath Keepers,” Geyer wrote. “Conduct alleged against the Oath Keepers seems to have been perpetrated by others before the Oath Keepers were brought in front of the Columbus Doors.”

  The new video evidence “not only exculpates defendant Harrelson and the Oath Keepers in compelling ways, it also shows a large group of SAs that actually carry out the crimes of which the Oath Keepers are accused and which is the centerpiece of the government’s case,” the motion said.

  The many unidentified individuals in the court filing are referred to by the hashtag nicknames assigned by the Sedition Hunters website.

  “James Dean Wannabe” stood on a column near the Columbus Doors and led “vicious attacks by SAs on police with chemicals and mace,” Geyer wrote.

  As soon as the inner doors to the Rotunda opened, James Dean Wannabe shot inside the door and began violently pulling protesters into the Capitol, the document said. He also helped to trap Oath Keepers member James Dolan into a tight space with a Capitol Police officer, the report alleged. He was later seen on the east steps after changing clothes and removing his hat.

  “Lemony Kickit” and “Lemon Zest,” both known for their colorful hats, appeared at the first and second breach points of the day near Ray Epps, the alleged provocateur who was captured on video on January 5 and 6 imploring protesters to go into the Capitol.

  Video also showed Lemony Kickit and Lemon Zest pushed at police and breached the police line on the east steps before they moved up the stairs to the Columbus Doors.

  Columbus Doors Were Closed

  Videos referenced in Geyer’s motion show that the 17-foot-high, 20,000-pound bronze Columbus Doors were closed when the crowd gathered at the bottom of the steps and then breached the police line. When the crowd reached the top, the fortress-like doors were still shut. It’s not clear when, or why, the doors were opened.

  That significant revelation backs up arguments made in January by attorney Jonathon Moseley, who told prosecutors his client, Kelly Meggs, could not have breached the doors because they are controlled from inside the Capitol.

  “The outer doors cast from solid bronze would require a bazooka, an artillery shell, or C4 military-grade explosives to breach,” Moseley wrote in a letter to federal prosecutors. “That of course did not happen. You would sooner break into a bank vault than to break the bronze outer Columbus Doors.”

  

  The towering Columbus Doors that lead into the Rotunda on the east side of the U.S. Capitol are secured by magnetic locks that can only be opened from the inside by using a security code controlled by Capitol Police, Moseley wrote in an eight-page memo in January.

  The two inner doors are secured by magnetic locks and cannot be opened from the outside. Twice within an hour on January 6, suspicious actors opened the inner doors from inside the Rotunda, surveillance video shows.

  According to Geyer’s filing, a large number of suspicious actors controlled the scene directly in front of the Columbus Doors after the giant doors were opened. They chased away regular protesters with pepper spray and moved other actors into place. The Oath Keepers, each of whom was shadowed by at least one suspicious actor, were positioned and coaxed toward the entrance.

  Six to eight suspicious actors attacked police with mace in preparation to breach the entrance, Geyer wrote.

  “The dynamic of the crowd makes this almost invisible or fleeting to almost all publicly available camera angles, so most people in the crowd could not have known these chemical assaults occurred and certainly no one could have known who was standing on the steps which is where the Oath Keepers were positioned at exactly this moment.”

  The net effect is that the Oath Keepers, who had come up the east stairs, were swept into the Capitol with the group of suspicious actors, the document alleged. The actors attacked police, breached the doors, and led a crowd inside the Rotunda.

  

  Some of the video evidence referenced in the court motion was redacted from the document because it is part of the more than 14,000 hours of video under a protective court seal.

  The court filing will bring fresh attention to the issue of provocateurs at the U.S. Capitol. Epps, a former Oath Keepers member from Arizona, denies he was working as a government informant on Jan. 5 and 6.

  Federal prosecutors announced earlier this year they would disclose more information about Epps, whose photo was removed from the FBI’s Jan. 6 most-wanted list. He has not been arrested or charged, despite urging crowds to enter the Capitol and being present when police lines were breached by protesters.

  Some of the suspicious actors on Geyer’s list were also seen in the hallway outside the Speaker’s Lobby where Ashli Babbitt was shot at 2:44 p.m. on Jan. 6. There are a number of other unidentified individuals who stood near Babbitt before she tried to climb out of the hallway and was shot and killed by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd.

  Three witnesses to the Babbitt shooting were removed from the FBI’s most-wanted list in April 2021 without explanation. Those men have not been identified or charged.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/06/2022 – 21:40

• Americans Prefer Low-Tech Approach To High-Tech Security
  Americans Prefer Low-Tech Approach To High-Tech Security

  With life moving more and more into the digital domain and hybrid work solutions potentially creating more vulnerabilities concerning sensitive data, adequate password security is one of the key concerns for the cybersecurity sector. However, as Statista’s Florian Zandt details below, although programs like password managers and built-in password vaults in browsers are geared towards maximizing security by generating and storing complicated passphrases, 41 percent of U.S. Americans still rely on memorizing techniques to store their passwords.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  As data from a joint survey of security.org and YouGov shows, an additional 30 percent of respondents claimed to have their passwords written out on paper. While this is technically a safe way to store your passphrases, it’s rarely convenient and can still be a potential attack point when using said notes outside of the confines of your own home. 24 and 23 percent keep their passwords in their browser or a digital note file, respectively, while one fifth of survey participants commit one of the cardinal sins of cybersecurity: Reusing the same few passwords again and again.

  For the 20 percent who use password managers, which are programs that can generate passwords, store them in a digital vault locked behind a master password and enable synchronization across devices, LastPass, Keeper and McAfee True Key are the most popular solutions.

  Following an initiative by chipmaker Intel in 2013, every first Thursday in May is observed as World Password Day. This international observance is meant to underline the importance of using secure and strong passwords to protect users’ data and privacy. These efforts still seem to fall short, though: According to an analysis of a database containing over 275 million passwords by NordPass, the three most common passwords used in 2021 were 123456, 123456789 and 12345.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/06/2022 – 21:20

• Financial War Takes A Nasty Turn
  Financial War Takes A Nasty Turn

  Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

  The chasm between Eurasia and the Western defence groupings (NATO, Five-eyes, AUKUS etc.) is widening rapidly. While media commentary focuses on the visible side of the conflict in Ukraine, the economic and financial aspects are what really matter.

  There is an increasing inevitability about it all. China has been riding the inflationist Western tiger for the last forty years and now that it sees the dollar’s debasement accelerating wonders how to get off. Russia perhaps is more advanced in its plans to do without dollars and other Western currencies, hastened by sanctions. Meanwhile, the West is increasingly vulnerable with no apparent alternative to the dollar’s hegemony.

  By imposing sanctions on Russia, the West has effectively lined up its geopolitical opponents into a common cause against an American dollar-dominated faction. Russia happens to be the world’s largest exporters of energy, commodities, and raw materials. And China is the supplier of semi-manufactured and consumer goods to the world. The consequences of the West’s sanctions ignore this vital point.

  In this article, we look at the current state of the world’s financial system and assess where it is headed. It summarises the condition of each of the major actors: the West, China, and Russia, and the increasing urgency for the latter two powers to distance themselves from the West’s impending currency, banking, and financial asset crisis.

  We can begin to see how the financial war will play out.

  

  The West and its dollar-based pump-and-dump system

  The Chinese have viewed the US’s tactics under which she has ensured her hegemony prevails. It has led to a deep-seated distrust in her relationship with America. And this is how she sees US foreign policy in action.

  Since the end of Bretton Woods in August 1971, for strategic reasons as much as anything else America has successfully continued to dominate the free world. A combination of visible military capability and less visible dollar hegemony defeated the communism of the Soviets and Mao Zedong. Aid to buy off communism in Africa and Latin America was readily available by printing dollars for export, and in the case of Latin America by deploying the US banking system to recycle petrodollars into syndicated loans. In the late seventies, banks in London would receive from Citibank yards-long telexes inviting participation in syndicated loans, typically for $100 million, the purpose of which according to the telex was invariably “to further the purposes of the state.”

  Latin American borrowing from US commercial banks and other creditors increased dramatically during the 1970s. At the commencement of the decade, total Latin American debt from all sources was $29 billion, but by the end of 1978, that number had skyrocketed to $159 billion. And in early-1982, the debt level reached $327 billion.[i] We all knew that some of it was disappearing into the Swiss bank accounts of military generals and politicians of countries like Argentina. Their loyalty to the capitalist world was being bought and it ended predictably with the Latin American debt crisis.

  With consumer price inflation raging, the Fed and other major central banks had to increase interest rates in the late seventies, and the bank credit cycle turned against the Latins. Banks sought to curtail their lending commitments and often (such as with floating-rate notes) they were paying higher coupon rates. In August 1982, Mexico was the first to inform the Fed, the US Treasury, and the IMF that it could no longer service its debt. In all, sixteen Latin American countries rescheduled their debts subsequently as well as eleven LDCs in other parts of the world.

  America assumed the lead in dealing with the problems, acting as “lender of last resort” working with central banks and the IMF. The rump of the problem was covered with Brady Bonds issued between 1990—1991. And as the provider of the currency, it was natural that the Americans gave a pass to their own corporations as part of the recovery process, reorganising investment in production and economic output. So, a Latin American nation would have found that America provided the dollars required to cover the 1970s oil shocks, then withdrew the finance, and ended up controlling swathes of national production.

  That was the pump and dump cycle which informed Chinese military strategists analysing US foreign policy some twenty years later. In 2014, the Chinese leadership was certain the riots in Hong Kong reflected the work of American intelligence agencies. The following is an extract translated from a speech by Major-General Qiao Liang, a leading strategist for the Peoples’ Liberation Army, addressing the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee in 2015:

  “Since the Diaoyu Islands conflict and the Huangyan Island conflict, incidents have kept popping up around China, including the confrontation over China’s 981 oil rigs with Vietnam and Hong Kong’s “Occupy Central” event. Can they still be viewed as simply accidental?

  I accompanied General Liu Yazhou, the Political Commissar of the National Defence University, to visit Hong Kong in May 2014. At that time, we heard that the “Occupy Central” movement was being planned and could take place by end of the month. However, it didn’t happen in May, June, July, or August.

  What happened? What were they waiting for?

  Let’s look at another timetable: the U.S. Federal Reserve’s exit from the Quantitative Easing (QE) policy. The U.S. said it would stop QE at the beginning of 2014. But it stayed with the QE policy in April, May, June, July, and August. As long as it was in QE, it kept overprinting dollars and the dollar’s price couldn’t go up. Thus, Hong Kong’s “Occupy Central” should not happen either.

  At the end of September, the Federal Reserve announced the U.S. would exit from QE. The dollar started going up. Then Hong Kong’s “Occupy Central” broke out in early October.

  Actually, the Diaoyu Islands, Huangyan Island, the 981 rigs, and Hong Kong’s “Occupy Central” movement were all bombs. The successful explosion of any one of them would lead to a regional crisis or a worsened investment environment around China. That would force the withdrawal of a large amount of investment from this region, which would then return to the U.S.”

  For the Chinese, there was and still is no doubt that America was out to destroy China and stood ready to pick up the pieces, just as it had done to Latin America, and South-East Asia in the Asian crisis in 1997. Events since “Occupy Central” will have only confirmed that view and explains why the Chinese dealt with the Hong Kong problem the way they did, when President Trump mounted a second attempt to derail Hong Kong, with the apparent objective to prevent global capital flows entering China through Shanghai Connect.

  For the Americans the world is slipping out of control. They have had expensive wars in the Middle East, with nothing to show for it other than waves of displaced refugees. For them, Syria was a defeat, even though that was just a proxy war. And finally, they had to give up on Afghanistan. For her opponents, America has lost hegemonic control in Eurasia and if given sufficient push can be removed from the European mainland entirely. Undoubtedly, that is now Russia’s objective. But there are signs that it is now China’s as well, in which case they will have jointly obtained control of the Eurasian land mass.

  Financial crisis facing the dollar

  The geopolitics between America and the two great Asian states have been clear for all of us to see. Less obvious has been the crisis facing Western nations. Exacerbated by American-led sanctions against Russia, producer prices and consumer prices are not only rising, but are likely to continue to do so. In particular, the currency and credit inflation of not only the dollar, but also the yen, euro, pound, and other motley fiat currencies have provided the liquidity to drive prices of commodities, producer prices and consumer prices even higher. In the US, reverse repos which absorb excess liquidity currently total nearly $2 trillion. And the higher interest rates go, other things being equal the higher this balance of excess currency no one wants will rise.

  And rise they will. The strains are most obvious in the yen and the euro, two currencies whose central banks have their interest rates stuck below the zero bound. They refuse to raise them, and their currencies are collapsing instead. But when you see the ECB’s deposit rate at minus 0.5%, producer prices for Germany rising at an annualised rate of over 30%, and consumer prices already rising at 7.5% and sure to go higher, you know they will all go much, much higher.

  Like the Bank of Japan, the ECB and its national central banks through quantitative easing have assembled substantial portfolios of bonds, which with rising interest rates will generate losses which will drive them rapidly into insolvency. Furthermore, the two most highly leveraged commercial banking systems are the Eurozone’s and Japan’s with assets to equity ratios for the G-SIBs of over twenty times. What this means is that less than a 5% fall in the value of its assets will bankrupt the average G-SIB bank.

  It is no wonder that foreign depositors in these banking systems are taking fright. Not only are they being robbed through inflation, but they can see the day when the bank which has their deposits might be bailed in. And worse still, any investment in financial assets during a sharply rising interest environment will rapidly lose value.

  For now, the dollar is seen as a haven from currencies on negative yields. And in the Western world, the dollar as the reserve currency is seen as offering safety. But this safety is an accounting fallacy which supposes that all currency volatility is in the other fiat currencies, and not the dollar. Not only do foreigners already own dollar-denominated financial assets and bank deposits totalling over $33 trillion, but rising bond yields will prick the dollar’s financial asset bubble wiping out much of it.

  In other words, there are currently winners and losers in currency markets, but everyone will lose in bond and equity markets. Add into the mix counterparty and systemic risks from the Eurozone and Japan, and we can say with increasing certainty that the era of financialisation, which commenced in the 1980s, is ending.

  This is a very serious situation. Bank credit has become increasingly secured on non-productive assets, whose value is wholly dependent on low and falling interest rates. In turn, through the financial engineering of shadow banks, securities are secured on yet more securities. The $610 trillion of OTC derivatives will only provide protection against risk if the counterparties providing it do not fail. The extent to which real assets are secured on bank credit (i.e., mortgages) will also undermine their values.

  Clearly, central banks in conjunction with their governments will have no option but to rescue their entire financial systems, which involves yet more central bank credit being provided on even greater scales than seen over covid, supply chain chaos, and the provision of credit to pay for higher food and energy prices. It must be unlimited.

  We should be in no doubt that this accelerating danger is at the top of the agenda for anyone who understands what is happening — which particularly refers to Russia and China.

  Russia’s aggressive stance

  There can be little doubt that Putin’s aggression in Ukraine was triggered by Ukraine’s expressed desire to join NATO and America’s seeming acquiescence. A similar situation had arisen over Georgia, which in 2008 triggered a rapid response from Putin. His objective now is to get America out of Europe’s defence system, which would be the end of NATO. Consider the following:

  • America’s military campaigns on the Eurasian continent have all failed, and Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was the final defeat.

  • The EU is planning its own army. Being an army run by committee it will lack focus and be less of a threat than NATO. This evolution into a NATO replacement should be encouraged.

  • As the largest supplier of energy to the EU, Russia can apply maximum pressure to speed up the political process.

  The most important commodity for the EU is energy. And through EU policies, which have been to stop producing carbon-based energy and to import it instead, the EU has become dependent on Russian oil, natural gas, and coal. And by emasculating Ukraine’s production, Putin is putting further pressure on the EU with respect to food and fertiliser, which will become increasingly apparent over the course of the summer.

  For now, the EU is toeing the American line, with Brussels instructing member states to stop importing Russian oil from the end of this year. But already, it is reported that Hungary and Slovakia are prepared to buy Russian oil and pay in roubles. And it is likely that while other EU governments will avoid direct contractual relationships with Russia, ways round the problem indirectly are being pursued.

  A sticking point for EU governments is having to pay in roubles. Otherwise, the solution is simple: non-Russian, non-EU banks can create a Eurorouble market overnight, creating rouble bank credit as needed. All that such a bank requires is access to rouble liquidity to manage a balance sheet denominated in roubles. The obvious providers of rouble credit are China’s state-controlled megabanks. And we can be reasonably sure that at his meeting with President Xi on 4 February, not only would the intention to invade Ukraine have been discusseded, but the role of China’s banks in providing roubles for the “unfriendlies” (NATO and its supporters) in the event of Western sanctions against Russia will have been as well.

  The point is that Russia and China have mutual geopolitical objectives, and what might have come as a surprise to the West was most likely agreed between them in advance.

  The recovery in the rouble from the initial hit to an intraday low of 150 to the dollar has taken it to 64 at the time of writing. There are two factors behind this recovery. The most important is Putin’s announcement that the unfriendlies will have to pay for energy in roubles. But there was a subsidiary announcement that the Russian central bank would be buying gold. Notionally, this was to ensure that Russian banks providing finance to gold mines could gold and other related assets as collateral. But the central bank had stopped buying gold and accumulated the unfriendlies currencies in its reserves instead. This was taken by senior figures in Putin’s administration as evidence that the highly regarded Governor, Elvira Nabiullina, had been captured by the West’s BIS-led banking system.

  Russia has now realised that foreign exchange reserves which can be blocked by the issuers are valueless as reserves in a crisis, and that there is no point in having them. Only gold, which has no counterparty risk can discharge this role. And it is a lesson not lost on other central banks either, both in Asia and elsewhere.

  But this sets the rouble onto a different course from the unbacked fiat currencies in the West. This is deliberate, because while rising interest rates will lead to a combined currency, banking, and financial asset crisis in the West, it is a priority of the greatest importance for Russia to protect herself from these developments.

  A new backing for the rouble

  Russia is determined to protect herself from a dollar currency collapse. So far as Russia is concerned, this collapse will be reflected in rising dollar prices for her exports. And only last week, one of Putin’s senior advisors, Nikolai Patrushev, confirmed in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta that plans to link the rouble to commodities are now being considered. If this plan goes ahead, the intention must be for the rouble to be considered a commodity substitute on the foreign exchanges, and its protection against a falling dollar will be secured.

  We are already seeing the rouble trending higher, with it at 64 to the dollar yesterday. Figure 1 below shows its progress, in the dollar-value of a rouble.

  

  Keynesians in the West have misread this situation. They think that the Russian economy is weak and will be destabilised by sanctions. That is not true. Furthermore, they would argue that a currency strengthened by insisting that oil and natural gas are paid for in roubles will push the Russian economy into a depression. But that is only a statistical effect and does not capture true economic progress or the lack of it, which cannot be measured. The fact is that the shops in Russia are well stocked, and fuel is freely available, which is not necessarily the case in the West.

  The advantages for Russia are that as the West’s currencies sink into crisis, the rouble will be protected. Russia will not suffer from the West’s currency crisis, she will still get inflation compensation in commodity prices, and her interest rates will decline while those in the West are soaring. Her balance of trade surplus is already hitting new records.

  There was a report, attributed to Dmitri Peskov, that the Kremlin is considering linking the rouble to gold and the idea is being discussed with Putin. But that’s probably a rehash of the interview that Nickolai Patrushev recorded with Rossiyskaya Gazeta referred to above, whereby Russia is considering fixing the rouble against a wider range of commodities. At this stage, a pure gold standard for the rouble of some sort would have to take the following into account:

  • History has shown that the Americans and the West’s central banks manipulate gold prices through the paper markets. To fix the rouble against a gold standard would hold it a hostage to fortune in this sense. It would be virtually impossible for the West to manipulate the rouble by intervening in this way across a range of commodities.

  • Over long periods of time the prices of commodities in gold grams are stable. For example, the price of oil since 1950 has fallen by about 30%. The volatility and price rises have been entirely in fiat currencies. The same is true for commodity prices generally, telling us that not only are commodities priced in gold grams generally stable, but a basket of commodities can be regarded as tracking the gold price over time and therefore could be a reasonable substitute for it.

  • If Russia has significant gold bullion quantities in addition to declared reserves, these will have to be declared in conjunction with a gold standard. Imagine a situation where Russia declares and can prove that it has more gold that the US Treasury’s 8,133 tonnes. Those who appear to be in a position to do so assess the true Russian gold position is over 10,000 tonnes. Combined with China’s undeclared gold reserves, such an announcement would be a financial nuclear bomb, destabilising the West.

  • For this reason, Russia’s partner, China, for which exporting semi-manufactured and consumer goods to the West is central to her economy activities, would prefer an approach that does not add to the dollar’s woes directly. The Americans are doing enough to undermine the dollar without a push from Asia’s hegemons.

  Furthermore, a mechanism for linking the rouble to commodity prices has yet to be devised. The advantage of a gold standard is it is a simple matter for the issuer of a currency to accept notes from the public and to pay out gold coin. And arbitrage between gold and roubles would ensure the link works on the foreign exchanges. This cannot be done with a range of commodities. It will not be enough to simply declare the market value of a commodity basket daily. Almost certainly forex traders will ignore the official value because they have no means of arbitrage.

  It is likely, therefore, that Russia will take a two-step approach. For now, by insisting on payments in roubles by the unfriendlies domestic Russian prices for commodities, raw materials and foods will be stabilised as the unfriendlies’ currencies fall relative to the rouble. Russia will find that attempts to tie the currency to a basket of currencies is impractical. After the West’s currency, banking, and financial asset crisis has passed then there will be the opportunity to establish a gold standard for the rouble.

  The Eurasian Economic Union

  While it is impossible to formally tie a currency which trades on the foreign exchanges to a basket of commodities, the establishment of a virtual currency specifically for trade settlement between jurisdictions is possible. This is the basis of a project being supervised by Sergei Glazyev, whereby such a currency is planned to be used by the member states of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). Glazyev is Russia’s Minister in charge of integration and macroeconomics of the EAEU. While planning to do away with dollars for trade settlements has been in the works for some time, sanctions by the unfriendlies against Russia has brought about a new urgency.

  We know no detail, other than what was revealed in an interview Glazyev gave recently to a media outlet, The Cradle [ii]. But the desire to do away with dollars for the countries involved has been on the agenda for at least a decade. In October 2020, the original motivation was explained by Victor Dostov, president of the Russian Electronic Money Association:

  “If I want to transfer money from Russia to Kazakhstan, the payment is made using the dollar. First, the bank or payment system transfers my roubles to dollars, and then transfers them from dollars to tenge. There is a double conversion, with a high percentage taken as commission by American banks.”

  The new trade currency will be synthetic, presumably price-fixed daily, giving conversion rates into local currencies. Operating rather like the SDR, state banks can create the new currency to provide the liquidity balances for conversion. It is a practical concept, which being relatively advanced in the planning, is probably the reason the Kremlin is considering it as an option for a future rouble.

  That idea of a commodity basket for the rouble itself is bound to be abandoned, while a successful EAEU trade settlement currency can be extended to both the wider Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the BRICS members not in the SCO.

  China’s position

  We can now say with confidence that at their meeting on 4 February Putin and Xi agreed to the Ukraine invasion. Chinese interests in Ukraine are affected, and the consequences would have had to be discussed.

  The fact that Russia went ahead with its war on Ukraine makes China complicit, and we must therefore analyse the position from China’s point of view. For some time, America has attacked China’s economy, trying to undermine it. I have already detailed the position over Hong Kong, to which can be added other irritations, such as the arrest of Huawei’s chief financial officer in Canada on American instructions, trade tariffs, and the sheer unpredictability of trade policy during the Trump administration.

  President Biden and his administration have now been assessed by both Putin and Xi. By 4 February their economic and banking advisors will have made their recommendations. Outsiders can only come to one conclusion, and that is Russia and China decided at that meeting to escalate the financial war on the West.

  Their position is immensely strong. While Russia is the largest exporter of energy and commodities in the world, China is the largest provider of intermediate and consumer goods. Other than the unfriendlies, nearly all other nations are neutral and will understand that it is not in their interests to side with NATO, the EU, Japan and South Korea. The only missing piece of the jigsaw is China’s commoditisation of the renminbi.

  Following the Fed’s reduction of its funds rate to the zero bound and its monthly QE increase to $120bn per month, China began to aggressively stockpile commodities and grains. In effect, it was a one-nation crack-up boom, whereby China took the decision to dump dollars. The renminbi rose against the dollar, but by considerably less than the dollar’s loss of purchasing power. This managed exchange rate for the renminbi appears to have been suppressed to relieve China’s exporters from currency pressures, at a time when the Chinese economy was adversely affected first by credit contraction, then by covid and finally by supply chain disruptions.

  With respect to supply chains, current lockdowns in Shanghai and the logjam of container vessels in the Roads look set to emasculate Western economies with supply chain issues for the rest of the year. All we know is that the authorities are making things worse, but we don’t know whether it is deliberate.

  It is increasingly difficult to believe that the financial and currency war is not being purposely escalated by the Chinese-Russian partnership. Having attacked Ukraine, the West’s response is undermining their own currencies, and the urgency for China and Russia to protect their currencies and financial systems from the consequences of a fiat currency crisis has become acute.

  It is the financial war which is going “nuclear”. Talk in the West of the military war escalating towards a physical nuclear war misses this point. China and Russia now realise they must protect themselves from the West’s looming currency and economic crisis as a matter of urgency. To fail to do so would simply ensure the crisis overwhelms them as well.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/06/2022 – 21:00

• Nantucket Gives The OK For Going Topless On Its Beaches
  Nantucket Gives The OK For Going Topless On Its Beaches

  There once was a man from Nantucket…

  But seriously, there could wind up being many more “men from Nantucket” now that the island has opened its beaches up for topless sunbathing. 

  Residents voted for the measure at the annual town meeting this week and it passed 327-242. But it was the way the measure passed that some may find interesting: it passed as a “Gender Equality on Beaches bylaw amendment”, the New York Post wrote this week.

  Sex educator Dorothy Stover proposed the amendment and celebrated the measure by writing on Instagram: “Thank you thank you thank you for choosing equality.”

  Stover also runs the online Nantucket Love School, according to the report. She brought up that men have been allowed to go topless on beaches for nearly 90 years. She made arguments about human anatomy and the history of the beach, the report said. 

  At the meeting to vote on the issue, she said: “Being topless is not being nude. This bylaw would not make beaches nude beaches. This bylaw would allow tops to be optional for anyone that chooses to be topless.”

  

  She talked about how she came up with the idea: “This past summer, I was at the beach and I wanted to lay out topless. And I thought, ‘Why can’t I do that?’ In Europe, it’s completely normal to be topless, you don’t even think about it.”

  A supporter of the proposal said at the meeting: “Nantucket women have always practiced and lived gender equality. Now I may not choose to go topless … but I think other people should have that choice … I would suggest that we vote for this so that we have choice.”

  She continued: “I’ve had more support than I thought I would. It’s been surprising seeing who supports it and who is pushing back. They say women’s breasts are sexual, and I said no, they’re sexualized, not sexual. We have the exact same makeup — men have mammary glands and nipples — and so I started reaching more into it and men can go topless but we can’t.”

  “Some men have bigger breasts than I do,” she quipped. 

  One man who expressed concern said: “Speaking as a father, I just feel as though this is opening a can of worms, for which we may not be able to control.”

  The official amendment reads “in order to promote equality for all persons, any person shall be allowed to be topless on any public or private beach within the Town of Nantucket,” the New York Post reported. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/06/2022 – 20:40

• Beijing Aggression Has Turned Australia Into Crucial Pillar Of US Defense: Expert
  Beijing Aggression Has Turned Australia Into Crucial Pillar Of US Defense: Expert

  Authored by Victoria Kelly-Clark via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The emergence of a more authoritarian and militarising Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has transformed Australia into a crucial component of U.S. defence plans to maintain its influence over the Pacific.

  

  John Blaxland, professor of international security and intelligence studies at the Australian National University, told The Epoch Times that middle powers are stepping up as the United States wrestles with its position in the international community.

  “Geo-strategically, and as a backup to the United States, Australia’s become more significant than ever for America’s plans and contingencies,” the former head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre said. “And that’s, I think, in part because of the rise of China. The emergence of a more authoritarian and powerful, increasingly militarised state that is much more prepared to throw its weight around than we had previously anticipated.”

  

  As a counter to China’s increasingly belligerent behaviour, Blaxland noted that it wasn’t just Australia, but also Japan and South Korea that have stepped forward in the Asia-Pacific to help maintain the security environment.

  “My sense is that the QUAD has become more and more important, particularly the role of Japan and Australia in contributing to helping the United States maintain its resolve and assuring the U.S. of being a welcome security partner in this part of the Indo-Pacific,” he said.

  Likewise, China’s assertiveness has also driven a more focused multilateral response from Australia, according to Blaxland.

  “When initially touted in 2007, the Quad was quite easily derailed by Chinese protestation. Australia gave priority to allaying their fears and showing due deference [under former Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd],” he said. “But the reinvigoration of the Quad in recent times would not have been possible without China’s assertiveness, particularly under President Xi. The member states now see their interests more closely aligned.”

  Blaxland also noted that interoperability between the United States, Australia, Japan, and Korea has been increasing over the past 20 years, allowing Australia to be able to “plug and play” as part of a U.S.-led coalition in the region.

  ‘Cut Australia from the Herd’

  Australia’s support for the United States has made it a target of the CCP however, firstly via soft power and more recently through economic coercion.

  Blaxland believes that the latter was an attempt by Beijing to isolate Australia from the Anglosphere and its allies.

  “I think there’s enough circumstantial evidence to mount a reasonably strong case that they are trying to and have been trying to for a number of years to wean us off United States security lines. To be honest, in the last few months, it’s backfired,” he said. “We’ve been a U.S. and UK ally for 100 plus years. So, if you’re able to break that bond, wouldn’t that be powerful? Yes, it will be very, very powerful.”

  The comments from Blaxland follow those that Kurt Campbell, the Indo-Pacific coordinator under the Biden administration, said on July 2021 in an address to the Asia Society.

  “I think from our perspective, it looks at least [on] some level that there is an attempt to cut Australia out of the herd, and to try to see if they can affect Australia to completely change how it both sees itself and sees the world,” Campbell said.

  

  He noted that the relationship between Canberra and Washington has deepened as a result.

  “We’re not going to leave Australia on the field—that’s just not going to happen,” Campbell said.

  Blaxland says that Beijing has been surprised at how difficult it has been to sever Australia–U.S. ties.

  “Xi has miscalculated on Australia because our sense of honour and our interests are now more divergent than ever. And I don’t think he appreciated how that would manifest and what the implications would be,” he said.

  Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in April that Australia is currently dealing with a very different China than in the past.

  “They’ve been coercing; they’ve been bullying; they’ve been intimidating in our region,” he said. “This is why we stepped up.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/06/2022 – 20:20

• All Hell Breaks Out At Apple China Factory As Workers Clash With Guards Over Lockdowns
  All Hell Breaks Out At Apple China Factory As Workers Clash With Guards Over Lockdowns

  Chaos broke out at Apple’s MacBook factory in China after hundreds of employees clashed with authorities and jumped isolation barriers following weeks of intense lockdowns, reported Bloomberg, citing local media sources. 

  Radio Free Asia (RFA) China posted a video early Friday morning showing an uprising of hundreds of workers who were angered with the continuous “closed-loop production” (which means they were kept on-site and quarantined to keep production humming) at the MacBook factory in Shanghai, owned by Taiwan’s Quanta Computer Inc. The incident reportedly occurred Thursday evening. 

  “[Suspected of dissatisfaction with “closed-loop production” epidemic prevention is too strict] [Quanta’s Shanghai plant was shocked to hear that employees “rioted”] Shanghai Dafeng Electronics, a subsidiary of Shanghai Quanta, which has just partially resumed work, experienced an employee “riot” on the evening of Thursday (5th).

  “As seen in the video, hundreds of young employees did not obey the command, jumped over the gate and ran away, and rushed out of the blockade to clash with the guards. It is reported that employees are dissatisfied with the epidemic prevention and control and want to go out to buy civilian materials,” RFA China tweeted. 

  【疑不满「闭环生产」防疫太严】
  【广达上海厂惊传员工「暴动」】
  刚局部复工的上海广达子公司上海达丰电子周四（5日）晚发生员工「暴动」。影片所见，数百名年轻员工不听指挥，纷纷跳过门口闸门跑开，集体冲出封锁线与警卫发生冲突。据悉员工因不满疫情防控，欲外出购买民生物资。 pic.twitter.com/3GpeBjHqG3

  — 自由亚洲电台 (@RFA_Chinese) May 6, 2022

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

  Taiwanese media outlet UDN said the riots occurred after Quanta “prevented employees who had returned to work from returning to the dormitory area during off-duty hours, causing employees to panic and worry about returning to a strict state of isolation and control. Therefore, the group rushed into the dormitory area to cause riots, mainly because of dissatisfaction with the strict epidemic control.” 

  

  

  Quanta is Apple’s top Macbook factory and has conducted closed-loop production at the factory for the last month to keep workers from getting infected. Bloomberg noted that the discontent was resolved Friday morning, and the factory returned to normal operations. In its latest earnings report, Apple warned that supply constraints would cost the company $4 billion to $8 billion in the current quarter. 

  Shanghai has enforced a zero-COVID strategy (supported by China’s Politburo) across Shanghai, locking down nearly 25 million people for more than a month. Reuters reports the city’s epidemic prevention and control situation is “improving.” Some companies opted for closed-loop production to keep factories open. This helped restart 70% of production in the manufacturing hub, while 90% of 660 top industrial companies have resumed output.

  “But it’s unclear how long the closed loops can be sustained, given the resources required to feed and house thousands of workers at a time. The system also requires that workers avoid contact with anyone outside the loop, including family members,” Bloomberg explained. 

  The situation at Quanta on Thursday night shows workers are getting frustrated with strict controls and could lead to more uprisings at other factories. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/06/2022 – 20:00

• Former Tesla Engineer Aims To Build Next Generation Electric Battery Material Plant In The US By 2024
  Former Tesla Engineer Aims To Build Next Generation Electric Battery Material Plant In The US By 2024

  Authored by Bryan Jung via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Sila Nanotechnologies, a battery startup founded in 2011 by a former Tesla engineer, announced on May 3 plans for a new plant based in the United States that will mass-produce material for low-cost next-generation batteries with a longer range and is not dependent on manufacturing in China.

  “In a commitment to ensure America retains global leadership in the world’s transition to the new energy storage era, Sila, a next-generation battery materials company, today announced the purchase of a facility with more than 600,000 square feet of space located in Moses Lake, WA to be used to manufacture Sila’s breakthrough lithium-ion anode materials at automotive volumes and quality,” announced the company in a May 3 press release.

  “Powered with hydropower, the facility is located on 160-acres of land close to rail lines for convenient and efficient shipping,” said Sila.

  

  Sila’s CEO Gene Berdichevsky told Reuters that the company will invest a few hundred million dollars to build the new factory in Washington state, which is set to open in the second half of 2024, with full production beginning in early 2025.

  The cost of electric car batteries has yet to fall to a more affordable price as was earlier anticipated, when Tesla jump-started the demand for batteries after its founding in 2003, due to material situations, explained the CEO to Reuters.

  Berdichevsky said that his materials could be used to build up to 500,000 chips, which would help lower the cost to consumers, making electric vehicles less expensive.

  The battery company had raised an additional $590 million in 2021, raising its valuation to an estimated $3.3 billion.

  “The U.S. has always excelled at innovation. Now we must also excel at manufacturing that innovation,” said Berdichevsky, who said that his company “is delivering proven next-generation anode materials today.”

  “Our new Washington state plant builds on that momentum offering the manufacturing capacity to meet the needs of our auto partners on their way to a fully electric future. We’ve been working towards automotive quality standards and scale since our start to ensure longer range, faster charge times, and lower battery cost.”

  “With this scale-up, we have a pivotal piece to realize the full potential of next-generation materials at the volumes required to make a global impact,” Berdichevsky concluded.

  The battery CEO said that Sila’s new plant in Moses Lake would make silicon-based anode materials, which he claims can store 20 percent more energy than anodes that typically use graphite, of which 70 percent comes from an increasingly unreliable China.

  Graphite is considered by the U.S. government to be a strategic mineral, but not silicon, which can be found largely domestically.

  The Biden administration has said it aims to reduce American reliance on China in the battery supply chain.

  Sila claims that its silicon anode allows more lithium ions to be stored in batteries, thus increasing energy density and creating a battery that is cheaper and contains more energy in the same space.

  Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk announced a plan in 2020 to use silicon-based anodes in its new batteries, but it is not certain whether it has taken advantage of the new technology.

  Sila is currently operating a test production facility at its headquarters in Alameda, California, that can produce battery materials for about 1,000 cars a year, but it is currently limited to making materials used in fitness watches.

  Berdichevsky said the company’s new facility aims to deliver annual silicon-based anode production sufficient to power 10 gigawatt hours of batteries in 100,000 electric vehicles, with a goal to increase the capacity of “150 GWh of cells when used as a full graphite replacement or 750 GWh as a partial replacement—enough to power two to ten million electric vehicles per year.”

  He said that Sila will address the immediate issue of rapidly expanding production to meet the needs of automakers.

  German automaker Daimler AG, meanwhile, has put a minority equity stake in Sila, which also has a contract to produce electric battery materials with its rival, BMW.

  Reuters has contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/06/2022 – 19:40

• Nationwide Baby Formula Shortage Hits "Shocking" Levels, Sparking Panic Among Parents
  Nationwide Baby Formula Shortage Hits “Shocking” Levels, Sparking Panic Among Parents

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  A nationwide shortage in baby formula is worsening, according to a new analysis, as parents have expressed alarm over the worrying trend.

  

  At retail locations across the United States, about 40 percent of the top-selling infant formula products were not in stock for the week ending April 24, said Datasembly. The company said that it tracked baby formula stock at more than 11,000 stores nationwide.

  “This is a shocking number that you don’t see for other categories,” Ben Reich, CEO of Datasembly, told CBS News.

   “We’ve been tracking it over time and it’s going up dramatically. We see this category is being affected by economic conditions more dramatically than others,” Reich added.

  Previously, drugstore chains like Walgreens and CVS have announced they would limit how many baby formula products each shopper can purchase at a given time.

  In a statement, Reich cited inflation, product recalls, and supply chain shortages as why there is “an unprecedented amount of volatility for baby formula.” And he believes that the shortages will continue in the near future.

  “We expect to continue to see the baby formula category being dramatically affected by these conditions,” Reich said.

  “Baby formula stock, which has been one of the more affected categories so far in 2022, and one that will continue to demonstrate higher than average out-of-stock levels.”

  Meanwhile, some parents have expressed alarm on social media about the apparent lack of infant formula on shelves.

  “If the [mainstream media] can talk about the toilet paper shortage ever [sic] hour, they should be talking about the baby formula shortage at least,” Danielle Miller, a mother, wrote on Twitter last week.

  “We ended [up] finding the Amazon brand online but not everyone is so lucky to be able to feed that. Please share. This is every store!”

  “The baby formula shortage is unreal!” GET THESE BABIES SOME FOOD!” another mother wrote on Twitter along with a photo of empty shelves, adding that “it’s a crisis all over.”

  Another parent, Irene Anhoeck of San Francisco, told local media that “we’ve noticed it being difficult to find maybe a couple months ago—two, three months ago—and then just recently we can’t find it.” She added, “We’ve tried all the local Targets. We checked Costco, Costco online, Walgreens, Long’s. Can’t find it anywhere.”

  In February, a major baby formula producer, Abbott Nutrition, recalled numerous lots of its products following reports of bacterial illnesses in infants. Last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a notice to consumers telling them not to consume any products manufactured at Abbott’s facility in Sturgis, Michigan, over concerns of contamination.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/06/2022 – 19:40

• As Average Apartment Size Shrinks, Renters Are Finding Best Deals In The Midwest
  As Average Apartment Size Shrinks, Renters Are Finding Best Deals In The Midwest

  Part of it is due to the trend of Americans increasingly congregating in trendy cities like NYC, but over the past couple of decades, the amount of square footage enjoyed by the average American renter has decidedly shrunk.

  

  Source: Rentcafe

  But in the era of remote work, renters looking to maximize their square footage will be best served by moving to the midwest, with Kansas City, MO emerging as the most obvious candidate among the nation’s major metropolitan areas.

  For renters who would be more at home in the suburbs, three small towns outside Kansas City have even more affordable options, according to a recent report from RentCafe.

  And if Kansas City doesn’t work, RentCafe has crunched the numbers to highlight some other high-value markets, producing a map of some of the most affordable cities (in terms of value by square footage), which readers can find below.

  

  Source: Rentcafe

  Here’s the data represented in another format, which also highlights that the south also offers increasingly strong deals for renters.

  

  Source: Rentcafe

  While the Midwest is the locus for the best deals for renters, its antithesis is – not NYC – but the state of California. Just check out the list of least affordable locales.

  

  Source: Rentcafe

  You’ll notice they all have one thing in common.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/06/2022 – 19:20

• White House Defends Planned Left-Wing Protest At Homes Of Supreme Court Justices
  White House Defends Planned Left-Wing Protest At Homes Of Supreme Court Justices

  Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The White House on May 5 defended the right of left-wing pro-abortion activists to protest at the homes of six conservative Supreme Court Justices, and avoided characterizing them as “extreme,” with outgoing press secretary Jen Psaki instead calling for “peaceful protest.”

  

  After the leak on Monday of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that made abortion legal across the entire United States, protests erupted by progressive pro-abortion activists whom Psaki described as being “outraged.”

  Barricades were erected around the Supreme Court and security was beefed up around the Justices.

  

  Further, the left-wing organization Ruth Sent Us posted the supposed addresses of six conservative Justices and called for a “walk-by” protest on May 11.

  “At the homes of the six extremist justices, three in Virginia and three in Maryland. If you’d like to join or lead a peaceful protest, let us know,” the group’s website states.

  The group also calls for, and offers to pay, muralists and chalk artists to join the protests.

  Psaki conveyed President Joe Biden’s wishes that any protests remained peaceful but stopped short of characterizing them as extreme. This is while Biden on May 4 characterized a spectrum of the GOP—what he called the “MAGA crowd”—as the “most extreme political organization” in recent American history.

  “The president, for all those women, men, others, who feel outraged, who feel scared, who feel concerned, he hears them. He shares that concern and horror at what he saw in that draft opinion,” she told reporters, noting that it wasn’t a final opinion.

  

  Biden’s direct message to anybody feeling frustrated by the Supreme Court’s draft opinion, Psaki said, is to participate in peaceful protest.

  “Ensure it’s peaceful. Have your voice heard peacefully. We should not be resorting to violence in any way, shape, or form. That’s certainly what he would be conveying,” she said.

  Psaki declined to say if Biden also viewed the left-wing activists who are planning protests at the homes of the Justices as “extreme.”

  “Peaceful protest? No. Peaceful protest is not extreme,” Psaki said.

  “Our view here is that peaceful protest—there’s a long history in the United States, in the country, of that. And we certainly encourage people to keep it peaceful and not resort to any level of violence,” she went on to say, ref

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/06/2022 – 19:00

• Putin Issued Rare Apology To Israel In Ukraine-Focused Phone Call
  Putin Issued Rare Apology To Israel In Ukraine-Focused Phone Call

  Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has issued a rare formal apology to Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennet during a Thursday phone call, an Israeli statement has said.

  “The Prime Minister accepted President Putin’s apology for Lavrov’s remarks and thanked him for clarifying the President’s attitude towards the Jewish people and the memory of the Holocaust,” Bennett’s office said.

  

  However, the Russian statement didn’t reference the apology, instead saying the two leaders talked about the Nazi defeat during WWII head of Russia’s Monday ‘Victory Day’ celebrations.

  Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid had days ago slammed remarks made by Russian FM Sergey Lavrov explaining why part of Russia’s war aim in Ukraine is to ‘deNazify’ it when President Zelensky is Jewish as “unforgivable and scandalous and a horrible historical error.”

  “In my opinion, Hitler also had Jewish origins, so it doesn’t mean absolutely anything. For some time we have heard from the Jewish people that the biggest antisemites were Jewish,” Lavrov had controversially stated Lavrov’s words made headlines around the world, and were promptly condemned by US and European officials.

  The remarks had created a days-long diplomatic row between the two countries. Lavrov had further in the interview explained that the “most rabid antisemites tend to be Jews.” Moscow for its part has been outraged that for years Western media and politicians have been cheerleading far-right nationalist groups in Ukraine that have long been widely acknowledged as neo-Nazi in ideology, Azov regiment foremost.

  Also during the Thursday call the standoff at Azovstal iron and steel works was discussed, as the Israeli leader has sought to mediate the situation as calls for a ceasefire and allowance for all remaining civilians to be able to exit the site grow. Fierce fighting has been ongoing there over the past days, also as an emergency UN humanitarian team seeks direct access to the besieged plant.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/06/2022 – 18:40

• Biden Strategy Pushing US Nuclear Deterrence 'Beyond Its Usefulness': Experts
  Biden Strategy Pushing US Nuclear Deterrence ‘Beyond Its Usefulness’: Experts

  Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times,

  The Biden administration’s nuclear policies and budget are too ambiguous or otherwise wide reaching to provide the type of conflict deterrence that is expected of them, according to several experts.

  “How are you going to contain Russia and China?” said Harlan Ullman, a senior advisor at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank. “The policy statements don’t tell you. They’re aspirational.”

  

  Ullman’s comments referenced the few statements made by the Biden administration about its National Defense Strategy (NDS) and National Security Strategy (NSS), neither of which has been released in unclassified form, and which were largely constructed on classified information.

  He noted also that the Pentagon would be unlikely to deliver on any large-scale strategic modernization efforts, given the fact that the nation was at a record $30 trillion in debt and was facing immense economic strain from 40-year record-high inflation.

  Further, Ullman said that the administration’s concept for nuclear deterrence was being pushed beyond its limits, and would prove an Achilles’ heel in the administration’s strategy unless more work was done to credibly improve the nation’s non-nuclear, or “conventional” forces.

  “How are you going to deter Russia and China, and from what?” Ullman said. “Nuclear deterrence has been expanded far beyond its usefulness. It’s going to prevent a major world war, but let’s not believe it can do lots of other things.”

  A Growing Strategy and a Shrinking Military

  Ullman delivered the comments amid a series of discussions on the nature of the Biden administration’s grand strategy at the Brookings Institution, a public policy think tank.

  The talks coincided with a series of Congressional hearings over the past week, which examined the administration’s proposed defense budget for FY23, and the role of the NDS and NSS in guiding that budget.

  Republican lawmakers criticized the budget as being a real cut to military spending given that the budget only allots a 2.2 percent inflation rate instead of the actual 8.5 percent, as well as for proposing to cut the number of ships and aircraft in the military amid growing tensions between the United States, China, and Russia.

  Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said that the proposed budget would place the United States at “real risk.” Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), meanwhile, said that the budget did not meet the needs of President Joe Biden’s own strategy.

  

  China, and the Limits of Nuclear Deterrence

  At the Brookings event, another expert questioned the efficacy of the NDS and NSS for championing the idea that mere nuclear firepower could deter adversaries from engaging in unwanted behavior, especially given the recent failure of just such a strategy in preventing the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

  “Both [the NDS and NSS] viewed and continue to view China as the primary threat to U.S. security,” said Melanie Sisson, a fellow at Brookings. “The NDS, in particular, defines the role of the military in providing American security today, and in this new period of competition, by being prepared to fight and to win a war with China.”

  “[But] We can’t assume that being able to win a war with China will create general deterrence, [or] that it will deter China not just from starting a war, but also from behaving badly in other ways,” Sisson added.

  Like Ullman, Sisson believed that the administration was making a mistake in believing that it could credibly deter China merely by establishing capabilities that could win a hypothetical war. As such, she said that the Pentagon would need to do more to illustrate its strategy of “integrated deterrence” in action as opposed to couching its meaning in buzzwords and slogans.

  “Deterrence isn’t a thing that one has,” Sisson said. “It’s an effect that we can produce. It’s the outcome of a strategy.”

  “I really want to know more about what the administration means by ‘integrated deterrence’ and don’t want just the bumper sticker slogan about ‘we’re going to work across all of the domains’,” Sisson added.

  To that end, Sisson said that the administration could provide real value by engaging in targeted initiatives designed to limit the potential for catastrophic conflict with China, such as engaging in talks with Chinese leadership to reach an agreement to take nuclear command and control systems off the table for cyber attacks.

  China Continues Nuclear Development with Eye on Taiwan

  Such efforts are increasingly likely to be deemed necessary as relations between the United States and China continue to bottom out to historic lows amid tensions over trade, IP theft, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the continued de facto independence of Taiwan.

  As tensions have soared, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has continued the historic expansion and modernization of its nuclear arsenal, placing new emphasis on the capability of the United States’ own aging nuclear stockpile.

  Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said that China’s ultimate aim in building such an arsenal was to develop a military capable of ejecting the United States from the Western Pacific, and that the regime was deliberately pursuing military technologies capable of undermining or otherwise circumventing U.S. defense systems.

  The test of a hypersonic weapon by the Chinese military in July was one such example of this effort in practice, he said, and at least one other U.S. official has said that the United States could not defend against such technology.

  The tensions have also highlighted the apparent disparity in growth between the American and Chinese militaries, and led some experts to question whether the United States actually has a strategy in place for potential conflict with China’s communist regime over Taiwan.

  

  To that end, Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) said in April that the United States was effectively “ceding the Indo-Pacific” to China.

  Relatedly, comments delivered by Adm. Charles Richard, the current commander of the United States’ nuclear arsenal, during a hearing of the Senate Strategic Forces Subcommittee on May 4, suggested that U.S. military leadership was uncertain of the exact trajectory of Chinese military capabilities.

  “We don’t know where China is going to end up in capabilities and capacity,” Richard said.

  Richard also noted that China was in the process of a “strategic breakout” that would challenge the world order and that the United States would need to vigorously pursue “competitive overmatch,” or overwhelming superiority in force, to deter the CCP from expansionary or otherwise aggressive behaviors.

  That mission was rendered further complex, he said, by the deepening partnership between the CCP and the Kremlin, which placed the United States in the unprecedented position of needing to simultaneously deter two near-peer nuclear adversaries.

  “We are facing crisis deterrence dynamics right now that we have only seen a few times in our nation’s history,” Richard said.

  Richard further added that the CCP “will likely use nuclear coercion to their advantage in the future” due to its observations of Russia’s success in preventing Western interference in its invasion of Ukraine by threatening nuclear action.

  The remarks echoed similar comments by experts that China’s growing nuclear arsenal could easily be used to give cover to more conventional aggression by allowing China to effectively intimidate the United States away from interfering in any expansionary activities, such as an invasion of Taiwan, which Richard said the CCP planned to carry out by 2027.

  Stuck in the Middle with Nukes

  Caitlin Talmadge, a fellow at Brookings, said that the United States would need to develop a “more coherent way” to use non-nuclear means to achieve deterrence across domains, now that China was developing enough nuclear punch to counter the United States’ nuclear forces. To that end, she said nuclear would nevertheless continue to color military and diplomatic strategy.

  “We’re back to the world where nuclear weapons actually do cast a shadow over conventional and sub-conventional conflict.” Talmadge said.

  Despite this, there was little transformation in U.S. nuclear policy or strategy over the last decade and a half, according to Robert Einhorn, a senior fellow at Brookings, who said that, barring some classified unknown information, there was a broad continuity in nuclear policy through the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations.

  “President Obama rejected a policy of no first use, and he insisted on retaining the option to use nuclear weapons in response to non-nuclear aggression,” Einhorn said. “Trump did the same and Biden will do the same in his [nuclear posture review].”

  As such, Einhorn said that the American public could likely expect a middling approach to nuclear modernization that neither excessively modernized nor shrunk the strategic weapons arsenal of the United States. That approach he said, would take into account the fact that the administration was unlikely to find support for expanding American nuclear capabilities given current fiscal concerns and the risk of triggering an even more costly arms race. Likewise, he said, there was little chance of the administration not pursuing some modernization efforts given the threat-rich environment facing the nation.

  “Given today’s very threatening strategic environment with growing threats from Russia, China, and North Korea, I don’t think there’s going to be much support for limiting U.S. nuclear capabilities and options,” Einhorn said.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/06/2022 – 18:20

• The Idea Of A Four-Day Work-Week Is Spreading Throughout Asia
  The Idea Of A Four-Day Work-Week Is Spreading Throughout Asia

  The idea of the 4 day workweek is starting to make its way through Asia.

  The concept is being tested as long working hours are taking a noticeable toll on workers (and their productivity), a new report from Nikkei Asia says. Leading the charge is Japan, who is notorious for what Nikkei calls a “punishing” work culture.

  Hitachi announced last month that it was going to implement 4 day workweeks for about 15,000 of its employees. They were soon followed by game developer Game Freak, who is the company behind the Pokemon series. 

  Japanese staffing giant Persol Holdings polled about 1,000 workers about what new policies they would like to see implemented. About 23.5% of respondents, the largest group, said they wanted 3 day or 4 day workweeks. 

  Nikkei notes that in the year leading up to March 2021, there were more than 2,800 claims for karoshi, which is literally the term for “death from overwork”. That number is up 43% from 10 years prior. 

  

  Panasonic Holdings and NEC are also considering the change and the idea is spreading across the continent.

  In Indonesia, for example, lending company Alami has been on 4 day workweeks since last year. South Korean education company Eduwill has been working on the schedule since 2019 and was the first in its industry to do so. 

  India is also considering the idea, with the country set to implement four labor codes this year that will alter working hours and wages. The changes will offer workers the option of working four days a week. 

  China and South Korea also have reputations for overworking their citizens, Nikkei reported:

  In China’s “996” work culture, pervasive in its tech sector, employees toil from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. South Koreans on average worked 1,908 hours in 2020, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the highest in Asia and 221 hours more than the OECD average.

  Yoshie Komuro, CEO of Tokyo-based consultancy Work Life Balance commented: “Japan’s overtime is a bargain” for businesses. Governments should also push for companies to “effectively evaluate employees’ productivity,” Kumoro concluded. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/06/2022 – 18:00

• Child-Gang's Violent Spree Shakes-Up Downtown Boston
  Child-Gang’s Violent Spree Shakes-Up Downtown Boston

  Authored by Alice Giordano via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A gang of young juveniles led by an 11-year-old girl is terrorizing random people throughout the popular downtown area of Boston.

  

  According to incident reports released by police, all the children are black and under the age of 14.

  A 13-year-old in the gang already had an outstanding felony warrant for assault with a dangerous weapon at the time of the recent attacks.

  Their victims were all white—with the exception of one victim identified in the reports as a light-skinned Hispanic woman who the gang of juveniles allegedly called a “white [expletive] with braids.”

  The gang has been menacing people throughout the popular Boston Common. (George KUZ/Shutterstock)
  She told police the young minors began punching and kicking her after telling her she could not wear her hair “in the style” because she was “not black.”

  In one incident, the child gang is alleged to have entered a McDonald’s outlet chanting “Black Lives Matter” and ordering customers to say the phrase. They also demanded free food.

  When the McDonald’s owner asked them to leave, they spat at him with an 11-year-old lunging at him with a knife, police reports state.

  They then smashed the glass of the front doors to the establishment.

  Several of their attacks were captured on both surveillance cameras and filmed by bystanders with the 11-year-old leading some of the attacks.

  They included the beating of an elderly man and a violent assault of two college students that left one with head trauma. One of the children stomped on her eyeglasses after they fell off the student’s head in the attack.

  Police arrested, but then released some of the older children.

  In a written statement on the incidents, Boston police said they know the identity of the 11-year-old girl, but cannot arrest her because she is under 12, the cut off for prosecuting a minor under a law passed in 2018 in Massachusetts.

  Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden also cited the law as the reason his office has had a limited response to what he called an “urgent matter.”

  “Under this legislation, the primary responsibility for preventing these attacks instead falls on city, state, and community agencies,” Hayden said in a statement.

  The law also limits their ability to detain minors under the age of 14.

  According to the Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Preventions, 16 percent of members of youth gangs are now under 14.

  Boston’s Mayor Michelle Wu blames the children’s crimes on the pandemic. (Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
  At a press conference on the incident, Boston’s Mayor Michelle Wu blamed the crimes of the children on the COVID-19 pandemic.

  “All throughout our city right now, all through our country right now, there’s an incredible amount of stress and anxiety that’s translating the trauma of the pandemic into mental health challenges across every demographic, across every community.

  “There is really a second epidemic that’s coming out of this pandemic that is related to mental health,” Wu said in response to a question about the level of violence by the children.

  Just weeks after the election in 2021, Wu imposed some of the most restrictive COVID-19 school mandates in the nation, promising to keep them even if schools reached an 80 percent vaccination rate.

  Her “B together” policy, akin to New York City’s proof of vaccine passport, drew angry protesters who camped daily outside her home.

  Wu’s unwavering vaccine mandate for city workers also led to a lawsuit filed against her administration by police and firefighters.

  Wu also ran on a campaign platform for what she called the demilitarization of the Boston police.

  At least three Boston police officers were attacked by members of the child gang, including one that suffered a bloody nose after being punched in the face by the 13-year-old with priors.

  Some of the kids also kicked and spat on the police and caused damage to a police cruiser, the incident reports reveal.

  One of the children made racial slurs and homophobic comments to one of the officers.

  According to a police report, one of the children said he had been “set off” when called a racial slur by a person he asked to buy him ice cream.

  Boston is one of 24 states that set minimum ages for the prosecution of children.

  The National Juvenile Justice Network has called on a national minimum prosecution age of 14.

  As part of its call, it cited a video of a police officer in Rochester, New York, pepper-spraying a 9-year-old girl after she refused to get into a police cruiser, telling the officer she won’t get into the car until her father arrived.

  The child’s school called the police after she allegedly threw a temper tantrum in class.

  There have been similar incidents including a 2019 video of a New Mexico cop slamming an 11-year-old girl to the ground as she sobs and begs the police officer to get off of her.

  The officer, who later resigned, was arresting her because she took milk from the school cafeteria.

  Gangs made up of similar-aged children have for over a year been committing similar crimes in other major U.S. cities including New York, Seattle, and Chicago, where a 10-year-old boy held a woman at gunpoint while stealing her car as part of a string of violent attacks by a child gang.

  Boston, which has few neighborhoods that are not affluent, has until recently been relatively free of violent crimes with incidents mostly confined to the city’s low-income districts of Dorchester, Mattapan, Roxbury, Hyde Park, and Jamaica Plain.

  Boston Common, the vestige to such iconic literary tales as “Make Way For Ducklings” and its iconic Swan Boats, has been a main area for the child gang.

  The gang has also carried out attacks in an area of Boston known as Downtown Crossing, once the city’s red-light district that flourished into a tourist attraction where people flocked from all over to stare into the Christmas decorated windows of Macy’s and the landmark of Filene’s basement.

  At the press conference on the child gang, Wu called for privacy for the minors and suggested some of them have mental health issues and need support services.

  Wu also said there is “never any excuse for violence.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 05/06/2022 – 17:40

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