- German Parking Garage Unveils Dedicated Spaces For LGBTQ And Migrant Drivers
German Parking Garage Unveils Dedicated Spaces For LGBTQ And Migrant Drivers
Today in “our obsession with inclusiveness is once again leading us back to segregating people” news, a car park in Germany is unveiling dedicated parking spaces for LGBTQ and migrant drivers.
The three “diversity” parking spaces were put up in an underground car park in Hanau city centre, according to the Daily Mail.
Hanau is considered a city of diversity already, the report noted. Hanau’s population was “already ethnically diverse” before the 2015 migrant crisis.
The aim of the spots was to “help people who feel a special need for protection,” according to Thomas Morlock, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the lot.
Morlock told the Daily Mail the spaces were built to set a “conspicuously colourful symbol for diversity and tolerance”.
He said they “are not necessarily meant” to be used by a “seperate group of people”.
And of course, as the Daily Mail puts it, the kicker:
“It is not immediately clear how the authorities intend to monitor whether people who park in the spaces are in fact part of the LGBTQ community or migrants…”
Keep up the great work, Herr Morlock.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/07/2021 – 02:45 - France & The Fraying Of NATO
France & The Fraying Of NATO
Authored by Gary Leupp via Counterpunch.org,
Biden has infuriated France by arranging the agreement to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia. This replaces a contract to purchase a fleet of diesel-powered subs from France. Australia will have to pay penalties for breach of contract but the French capitalists will lose around 70 billion dollars. The perceived perfidy of both Canberra and Washington has caused Paris to compare Biden to Trump. The UK is third partner in the agreement so expect post-Brexit Franco-British relations to deteriorate further.
This is all good, in my opinion!
It’s also a good thing that Biden’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan was poorly orchestrated with the lingering “coalition partners” such as Britain, French and Germany, producing angry criticism. It’s great that the British prime minister proposed to France a “Coalition of the Willing” to continue the fight in Afghanistan following the U.S. withdrawal—and better that it was dead in the water. (Maybe the French better than the Brits remember the Suez Crisis of 1956, the disastrous joint Anglo-French-Israeli effort to reimpose imperialist control over the canal. Not only did it lack U.S. participation; Eisenhower rationally shut it down after warnings from the Egyptians’ Soviet advisors.) It’s good that these three countries heeded the U.S. command to uphold their NATO promise to stand with the U.S. when attacked; that they lost over 600 troops in a fruitless effort; and that in the end the U.S. didn’t see fit to even involve them in the end plans. It’s good to wake up to the fact that the U.S. imperialists could care less about their input or their lives. but only demand their obedience and sacrifice.
It’s wonderful that Germany, despite obnoxious U.S. opposition, has maintained its involvement in the Nordstream II natural gas pipeline project along with Russia. The last three U.S. administrations have opposed the pipeline, claiming it weakens the NATO alliance and helps Russia (and urging purchase of more expensive U.S. energy sources instead—to enhance mutual security, don’t you see). The Cold War arguments have fallen on deaf ears. The pipeline was completed last month. Good for global free trade and for national sovereignty, and a significant European blow to U.S. hegemony.
It’s great that Trump in Aug. 2019 raised the ridiculous prospect of purchasing Greenland from Denmark, indifferent to the fact that Greenland is a self-governing entity, within the Kingdom of Denmark. (It is 90% Inuit, and led by political parties pressing for greater independence.) It’s marvelous that when the Danish prime minister gently, with good humor, refused his ignorant, insulting and racist proposal, he exploded in rage and cancelled his state visit including state dinner with the queen. He offended not only the Danish state but popular opinion throughout Europe with his boorishness and colonial arrogance. Excellent.
Trump personally, needlessly insulted the prime minister of Canada and the chancellor of Germany with the same childish language he’d used against political opponents. He raised questions in Europeans’ and Canadians’ minds about the value of an alliance with such vileness. That was a major historical contribution.
Good also that, in Libya in 2011, Hillary Clinton working with the French and British leaders secured UN approval for a NATO mission to protect civilians in Libya. And that, when the U.S.-led mission exceeded the UN resolution and waged full-out war to topple the Libyan leader, enraging China and Russia who called out the lie, some NATO nations declined to participate or turned back in disgust. Another U.S. imperialist war based on lies creating disorder and flooding Europe with refugees.
It was good only in the fact that it exposed once again the utter moral bankruptcy of the U.S.A. so widely now associated with images of Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantanamo. All in the name of NATO.
* * *
Over the last two decades, with the Soviet Union and “communist threat” receding memories, the U.S. has systematically expanded this anti-Soviet, anti-communist postwar alliance called NATO to surround Russia. Any unprejudiced person looking at a map can understand Russia’s concern. Russia spends about a fifth of what the U.S. and NATO spend on military expenses. Russia is not a military threat to Europe or North America. So—the Russians have been asking since 1999, when Bill Clinton broke his predecessor’s promise to Gorbachev and resumed NATO expansion by adding Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia—why do you keep trying to expend to surround us?
Meanwhile more and more Europeans are doubting the leadership of the United States. That means doubting the purpose and value of NATO. Formed to confront an imaginary Soviet invasion of “western” Europe, it was never deployed in war during the Cold War. Its first war indeed was the Clintons’ war on Serbia in 1999. This conflict, which severed the Serbian historical heartland from Serbia to create the new (dysfunctional) state of Kosovo, has since been repudiated by participants Spain and Greece who note that the UN resolution authorizing a “humanitarian” mission in Serbia explicitly stated that the Serbian state remain undivided. Meantime (after the bogus “Rambouillet agreement” was signed) the French foreign minister complained that the U.S. was acting like a hyper-pouissance (“hyperpower” as opposed to mere superpower).
The future of NATO lies with the U.S., Germany, France and the UK. The last three were long members of the EU, which while a rival trading bloc generally coordinated policies with NATO. NATO has overlapped the EU such that virtually all of the countries admitted to the military alliance since 1989 have first joined NATO, then the EU. And within the EU—which is after all, a trading bloc that competes with North America—the UK long served as a kind of U.S. surrogate urging cooperation with Russian trade boycotts, etc. Now the U.K. has split from the EU, unavailable to, say, pressure Germany to avoid deals with the Russians Washington opposes. Good!
Germany has a number of reasons to want to increase trade with Russia and has now shown the will to stand up to the U.S. Germany and France both challenged George W. Bush’s Iraq war based on lies. We should not forget how Bush (promoted lately as a statesman by the Democrats!) rivaled his successor Trump as a vulgar, lying buffoon. And if Obama seemed a hero in contrast, his magnetism ebbed as Europeans learned that they were all being monitored by the National Security Agency, and that the calls of Angela Merkel and the Pope were bugged. This was the land of freedom and democracy, always boasting about liberating Europe from the Nazis and expecting eternal payoff in the form of bases and political deference.
It has been 76 years since the fall of Berlin (to the Soviets, as you know, not to the U.S.);
72 since the founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO);
32 since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the promise by George W. H. Bush to Gorbachev NOT to expand NATO further;
22 since the resumption of NATO expansion;
22 since the U.S.-NATO war on Serbia including the aerial bombing of Belgrade;
20 since NATO went to war at U.S. behest in Afghanistan, resulting in ruin and failure;
13 years since the U.S. recognized Kosovo as an independent country, and NATO announced the near-term admission of Ukraine and Georgia, resulting in the brief Russo-Georgia War and Russian recognition of the states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia;
10 years since the grotesque NATO mission to destroy and sew chaos in Libya, producing more terror throughout the Sahel and tribal and ethnic violence in the crumbling country, and producing more waves of refugees;
7 since the bold, bloody U.S.-backed putsch in Ukraine that placed a pro-NATO party in power, provoking the ongoing rebellion among ethnic Russians in the east and obliging Moscow to re-annex the Crimean Peninsula, inviting unprecedented ongoing U.S. sanctions and U.S. pressure on allies to comply;
5 since a malignant narcissist moron won the U.S. presidency and soon alienated allies by his pronouncements, insults, evident ignorance, a belligerent approach, raising questions in a billion minds about the mental stability and judgment of the voters of this country;
1 year since a career warmonger who has long vowed to expand and strengthen NATO, who became the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine after the 2014 coup, his mission being to clean up corruption to prepare Ukraine for NATO membership (and who is the father of Hunter Biden who famously sat on the board of Ukraine’s leading gas company 2014-2017 making millions for no apparent reason or work done) became president.
1 year since the world saw repeatedly on TV the 9 minute video of an open, public police lynching on the streets of Minneapolis, surely many among the views wondering what right this racist nation has to lecture China or anyone on human rights.
9 months since the U.S. capitol was stormed by U.S. brown shirts brandishing Confederate flags and fascist symbols and calling for the hanging of Trump’s vice president for treason.
It is a long record of terrifying Europe with seemingly unstable leaders (Bush no less than Trump); harassing Europe with demands it minimizes trade with Russia and China and obey U.S. rules on Iran, and demanding participation in its imperialist wars far from the North Atlantic to Central Asia and Northern Africa.
It is also a record of provoking Russia while expanding the anti-Russian juggernaut. It has meant actually using NATO militarily (as in Serbia, Afghanistan, and Libya) to cement the military alliance under U.S. direction, the stationing of 4000 U.S. troops in Poland, and threatening flights in the Baltic. Meanwhile, multiple U.S. agencies work overtime to plot “color revolutions” in the counties bordering Russia: Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine.
NATO is dangerous and evil. It should be terminated. Opinion polls in Europe suggest a rise in NATO skepticism (good in itself) and opposition (better). It was already split seriously once: in 2002-2003 over the Iraq War. Indeed the manifest criminality of the Iraq War, the obvious willingness of the Americans to use disinformation, and the buffoonic personality of the U.S. president probably shocked Europe as much as the beastly Trump.
The amusing thing is that Biden and Blinken, Sullivan and Austin, all seem to think none of this happened. They really seem to think that the world respects the United States as the (natural?) leader of something called the Free World —of nations committed to “democracy.” Blinken tells us and Europeans we’re confronting, “autocracy” in the form of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela all threatening us and our values. They seem think they can return to the 1950s, explain their moves as reflections of “American Exceptionalism,” posture as champions of “human rights,” cloak their interventions as “humanitarian missions,” and arm-twist their client-states into joint action. At present NATO is being pushed by Biden to identify (as it did in its last communique) the PRC as a “security threat” to Europe.
But the reference to China was controversial. And NATO is divided on the matter of China. Some states do not see much of a threat and have every reason to expand ties with China, especially with the advent of the Belt and Road projects. They know that China’s GDP will soon exceed that of the U.S. and that the U.S. is not the economic superpower it was after the war when it established its hegemony over most of Europe. It has lost much of its basic strength but, like the Spanish Empire in the eighteenth century, none of its arrogance and brutality.
Even after all the exposure. Even after all the shame. Biden flashing his trained smile announces “America is back!” expecting the world—especially “our allies”—to delight in the resumption of normalcy. But Biden should recall the stony silence that met Pence’s announcement at the Munich Security Conference in February 2019 when he conveyed Trump’s greetings. Do not these U.S. leaders not realize that in this century Europe’s GDP has come to match the U.S.’s? And that few people believe that the U.S. “saved” Europe from the Nazis, and then staved off the Soviet Communists, and revived Europe with the Marshall Plan, and continues to this day to protect Europe from the Russia that threatens to march west at any moment?
Blinken wants to pick up and move on and lead the world forward. Back to normal! Sound, reliable U.S.leadership is back!
Oh really? the French might ask. Stabbing a NATO ally in the back, sabotaging a signed $66 billion deal with far-off Australia? “Doing,” as the French foreign minister put it, “something Mr. Trump would do”? Not only France but the EU has denounced the U.S.-Australia deal. Some NATO members question how the Atlantic Alliance is served by a business dispute between members that pertains to what the Pentagon calls the “Indo-Pacific” region. And why—when the U.S. is attempting to secure NATO’s participation in a strategy of containing and provoking Beijing—it is not bothering to coordinate with France?
Is Blinken unaware that France is an imperialist country with vast holdings in the Pacific? Does he know about the French naval facilities at Papeete, Tahiti, or the army, navy and air force bases in New Caledonia? The French conducted their nuclear blasts at Mururora, for god’s sake. As an imperialist country, does not France have the same right as the U.S. to gang up on China with Australia, in France’s corner of the Pacific? And if its close ally the U.S. decides to undermine the deal, should not etiquette have dictated that it at least inform its “oldest ally” about its intentions?
The French condemnation of the submarines deal has been unprecedentedly sharp, in part, I imagine, due to the implicit disparagement of France as a great power. If the U.S. is urging its allies to join with it in confronting China, why does it not consult with France about an arms deal designed to do that, especially when it supplants one already openly negotiated by a NATO ally? Isn’t it clear that Biden’s appeals for “alliance unity” mean uniting, behind U.S. leadership around preparations for war on China?
Gradually NATO is fraying. Again, this is a very good thing. I had worried that Biden would quickly work to integrate Ukraine into the alliance, but Merkel seems to have told him no. Europeans don’t want to be dragged into another U.S. war, especially against their great neighbor whom they know much better than Americans and have every reason to befriend.
France and Germany, who (recall) opposed the U.S. war-based-on-lies on Iraq in 2003, are finally losing patience with the alliance and wondering what membership means other than joining with the U.S. in its quarrels with Russia and China.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/07/2021 – 02:00 - Ivermectin – Truth & Totalitarianism
Ivermectin – Truth & Totalitarianism
Authored by Justus R. Hope via TheDesertReview.com,
Calling out the lie
“Merck stock surged 10% Friday after it said its investigational pill cuts the risk of hospitalization and death in COVID-19 patients…The pill reduced the risk of hospitalization or death by about 50%,” Merck and its partner, Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, said in a statement Friday.
“This is a phenomenal result. This is a profound game-changer to have an oral pill that had this kind of effect, this magnitude of effect in patients who are at high risk who are already symptomatic,” former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said Friday on CNBC about results of the interim analysis.
“Meanwhile, shares of COVID vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna fell 2.5% and 10%, respectively.”
This puts Dr. Scott Gottlieb between a rock and a hard place.
On the one hand, as a member of Pfizer’s Board of Directors, he is paid handsomely to attend a few board meetings per year, yet on the other hand, he must not be too glowing in his praise of the antiviral, which might lead people away from the Pfizer vaccine. Moreover, it could affect sales just as it has already dropped the stock price.
In 2020, Gottlieb was paid $338,587 by Pfizer. In 2020, he also earned $525,850 as a director of Illumina. Due to his former FDA Chief status, Gottlieb is in high demand as one word of favor from him can send a stock price soaring.
He has served on multiple other boards, including Tempus Labs, National Resilience, and the Mount Sinai Health System. It must be a daunting task to walk the line by promoting one corporate interest while not offending any of the others.
But the good news is that soon, Pfizer, too, will be peddling their antiviral drug, which should make up for any drop in their vaccine sales.
Roche and Atea are not far behind with their antiviral pills, and soon all of Big Pharma can get in on the action. They have timed it perfectly.
While shutting down any competition from repurposed drugs like HCQ or Ivermectin, they deftly rolled out the vaccines first, making sure not to confuse the consumer with antiviral pills that would only be allowed AFTER the majority of the population had been vaccinated.
The one glitch is that Merck’s Molnupiravir only surfaced AFTER a prominent scandal involving Merck lying three times.
Just as Peter would disown Christ three times before the cry of the rooster, Merck would turn their back on their creation with three lies about Ivermectin before they would accept the payoff from the United States government.
Lie #1: No scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against COVID-19 from preclinical studies;
FALSE: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166354220302011
Lie #2: No meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with COVID-19 disease.
Lie #3: A concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies.
FALSE: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/36858/pdf/
However, the Monash preclinical study disproved the first statement showing a massive 99.98% reduction in viral load with a single Ivermectin treatment in cell culture.
The second statement is disproved by the FLCCC’s Public Statement issued January 18, 2021, that reports colossal evidence for Ivermectin’s clinical activity and efficacy against COVID-19 in clinical settings:
a. Large reductions in mortality rates;
b. Shorter durations of hospital stay;
c. Profound reductions in the infectivity rate in both pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis studies;
d. Faster times to clinical recovery;
e. Faster times to viral clearance.
Finally, the third statement concerning “lack of safety data” contradicts the published WHO safety data. In 3.7 billion doses of Ivermectin given over four decades, Ivermectin has proven exceedingly safe.
Moreover, more than anyone, Merck is in the position to know Ivermectin’s true safety profile as they provided those billions of doses for the Mectizan Donation program.
However, lying was required, and the payoff came on Wednesday, June 9, 2021, when Merck got a fat reward. They announced the US government had agreed to pay $1.2 billion for 1.7 million doses of their new antiviral, Molnupiravir, BEFORE clinical testing showed either effectiveness or safety. Our hard-earned tax dollars were irresponsibly handed over to Merck by an agency charged with a fiduciary duty to protect our health.
So in the end, Scott Gottlieb did not endanger Pfizer’s bottom line. Just as Moderna was choreographed to go first in the vaccine rollout, Merck was first with the antiviral, and Pfizer first with the booster. They would take turns as there was more than enough profit to go around. Soon it would be Pfizer’s turn at the antiviral trough, but they had to be patient for now. There was an order and method to this.
But the craftiest strategy of all was Merck’s: Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty.
This quote has been variously attributed to Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister. Regardless of its source, it has proven remarkably effective as a propaganda tactic throughout modern history, and Merck was betting on this to sell the public on Molnupirivar. However, the move backfired. In the case of Ivermectin, they falsely argued that it was ineffective and unsafe while their own drug suffered from both.
For example, one could argue, “There is a concerning lack of safety data” regarding Molnupirivar. Indeed, it does not have decades of safety data like Ivermectin; it does not even have years. The little safety data pertains to a dearth of Phase II and Phase III clinical trials, which total less than a few thousand patients.
While Ivermectin’s safety data with over 40 years of treatment in over 3.7 billion doses is truly robust, Molnupiravir’s safety numbers are barely rudimentary. In short, Molnupiravir’s safety data is concerning because of its lack.
Of more concern is a recent study showing the alarming potential of Molnupiravir’s metabolite, NHC, to induce mutations. In a peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the author writes, “The mutagenic effect of NHC has been shown in animal cell cultures, raising concerns on the potential risk of molnupiravir-induced tumorigenesis and the emergence of detrimental mutations in sperm precursor cell generation and embryo development.”
I don’t know about you, but that would be enough for most of my patients to decide against this drug. With all due respect to Dr. Gottlieb, if the choice were between a drug with a 40-year safety profile of excellence versus a new experimental one that could introduce mutations into germ cells, it would be a no brainer.
As if this were not enough, another group of researchers at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center associated with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are also concerned.
They write, “The concern would be that mutations in host DNA could contribute to the development of cancer or cause birth defects either in a developing fetus of through incorporation into sperm precursor cells.”
This may be the best time to mention that cheap, repurposed drugs, all FDA approved as safe for other conditions, are one of the best ways to address terminal cancers. They have well-defined and often long-term safety profiles, and cocktails of such old drugs hold great promise as adjuncts in cancer prevention and treatment. Moreover, unlike experimental new medicines with little safety testing, repurposed drugs will not give you cancer.
As for meaningful clinical activity or efficacy in patients with COVID-19, there are also concerns with Molnupiravir. The hospital trials were stopped early. Where is the data for inpatients? Where is the data for patients on ventilators? Where is the evidence for pre-exposure prophylaxis?
The limited trials that have been performed only suggest a correlation between Molnupiravir use and a lower rate of hospitalization and fewer deaths based on low numbers of patients. But the evidence is lacking on safety, prevention of disease, and treatment of late disease. This is where the evidence on Ivermectin is overwhelming.
However, the evidence of effectiveness for Molnupiravir is sketchy at best.
Moreover, on the use of Molnupiravir in mild and moderate disease, we have one study – only partially completed – showing 7.3% death OR hospitalization in the drug group versus 14.1% of those receiving placebo. The fact that deaths were combined with hospitalizations does not mean that 48% fewer in the treatment group died. It means the sum of deaths and hospitalizations was 48% lower in the treatment group.
Moreover, the study only involved 775 patients. This is far too few on which to base an approval. Right? Isn’t that what we have been told regarding Ivermectin? After all, we now have over 32 randomized controlled trials of Ivermectin in COVID, reflecting a 58% improvement in the Ivermectin groups compared to placebo. Thus, we have 65 clinical trials in total involving 655 scientists and 47,717 patients. We have been told this is insufficient evidence, so the Merck data on 775 patients cannot possibly be enough if we use the same standard.
With Ivermectin, we see an average of 86% improvement in 14 prophylaxis studies, a 66% improvement in 29 early treatment trials, a 40% improvement in 22 late treatment trials, a 57% improvement in the 26 mortality trials. This data has been updated to October 1, 2021.
So, even assuming Molnupiravir effectively reduces death PLUS hospitalization by 48%, we still do not know how reliable this figure will be when looking only at death. Ivermectin’s reduction in death in mild to moderate COVID-19 surpasses this number.
Assuming more studies confirm Molnupiravir’s lesser effect at reducing mortality in mild to moderate disease, we are still left with uncomfortable questions about its safety. However, Ivermectin’s excellent long term safety profile is solid, and this alone will lead many to choose Ivermectin OVER Molnupirivar, especially when factoring in the possibilities of mutagenesis and gene toxicity.
The price of around $700 per course of treatment which involves ten pills, makes it vastly more expensive than Ivermectin, which might be fine if it were considerably more effective. But it isn’t, it is less effective, and it is potentially MUCH more dangerous. The fact the choice is being “forced” does not make it more appealing.
The mandates have been fraught with division among leading scientists, including Dr. Robert Malone. Dr. Robert Malone discovered in-vitro and in-vivo RNA transfection and invented mRNA vaccines while he was at the Salk Institute in 1988. He helped draft “The Physicians Declaration,” which was announced at the Global COVID Summit held in Rome, Italy.
The Physician’s Declaration is not unlike the US Declaration of Independence, as both documents enumerate a series of injustices that create the need for a Declaration.
In the case of the US Declaration of Independence, those injustices included taxation without representation, not providing fair hearings or trials – the lack of due process – and “exciting domestic insurrections amongst us.”
In the case of the Rome Physician’s Declaration, these injustices include public policymakers who have forced a “one size fits all treatment strategy” to the Pandemic resulting in “needless illness and death.” In addition, physicians have been subject to censorship of ideas, barriers from pharmacies, threats of censure, and loss of license for upholding their Hippocratic Oath to do no harm.
Censorship of Senate testimony of Harvard and Yale-educated physicians by YouTube at the behest of government agencies should not be tolerated in a democratic society.
When the WHO and CDC degenerate into captured agencies that no longer serve the medical interests of the people, something needs to change.
As of today’s date, some 10,000 physicians and health scientists have also signed the modern Physician Declaration and accused the public health agencies of “crimes against humanity.”
Physicians have declared through this document that they “must be free to practice the art and science of medicine without fear of retribution, censorship, slander, or disciplinary action” and that physicians shall not be restricted from prescribing safe and effective treatments. A fully informed patient should have the right to choose or decline medical treatment. This absolute right MUST be restored.
Taking a stand for truth is what is essential now. Over the last 18 months, Americans, indeed citizens of the developed world spanning from the United Kingdom to Australia, have been fed a steady diet of propaganda by Big Pharma and Big Regulators being aided and abetted by complicit governments, media, and Big Tech.
These corrupt organizers seem to be driven by a desire for money, power, and control. Most citizens are either willing participants or are those who feel powerless to object. Most physicians who are part of organized medicine dare not speak out for fear of consequences. The NIH influences most of the world’s medical research through the strategic use of its nearly $50 billion annual budget. As a result, it can affect most medical societies, medical journals, most research, and thus it can and does control the way data is analyzed.
These same medical journals have appointed questionable figures to investigate the origins of COVID-19, those with ties to coverups, and those who are likely to maintain the coverup.
From the AMA to the FDA to the New England Journal to the Lancet, the NIH controls organized medicine around the globe. But it cannot do so alone, especially abroad, which is why the WHO also figures prominently.
The WHO budget is about 10% of the NIH at $5.8 billion.
The Gates Foundation contributes roughly 10% of the WHO budget. Thus both Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIAID – an arm of the NIH, and Bill Gates, vaccine proponent of the world, play significant roles.
All those physicians who signed Dr. Malone’s Physician Declaration are genuinely courageous, just as were Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and John Hancock, those men of courage who signed the US Declaration of Independence.
And, whether or not most recognize it, we, the citizens of the United States, those of Australia, and the United Kingdom, are living in an increasingly totalitarian world, run by Big Pharma, Big Regulators, and Big Tech where the politicians and governments are secondary.
Our world’s current soft totalitarianism goes unrecognized by most because it is so different in appearance from that of the Soviet Union, yet it is every bit as deadly. In quoting Dreher, totalitarian society is defined by, “An ideology (that) seeks to displace all prior traditions and institutions with the goal of bringing all aspects of society under control of that ideology…A totalitarian state is one that aspires to nothing less than defining and controlling reality.”
In this Pandemic, those who do not conform to lockdowns, mask wear, or vaccination protocols are vilified, regardless of the science. As Greenwald observes, our totalitarianism is couched in the guise of “helping and healing others.” We live in a totalitarian “therapeutic culture.” Those who do not conform are branded as “the enemy (of the state).”
Dreher writes, “It masks its hatred of dissenters from its utopian ideology of helping and healing…In therapeutic culture, which has everywhere triumphed, the great sin is to stand in the way of the freedom of others to find happiness as they wish.”
As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn often said, the antidote to totalitarianism has always been exposing the truth and then living in truth. It is what is essential now. Just as evil hates the light, lies hate the truth.
Dreher correctly observes that living in truth requires courage to stand up for what is right. For example, he offers this quote from a Slovakian dissident:
“The question is, which is going to win: fear or courage?” he says. “In the beginning, it was mostly a matter of fear. But once you started experiencing freedom—and you felt it, you felt freedom through the things you did— your courage grew. We experienced all this together. We helped one another to gradually build up the courage to do bigger things, like join the Candle Demonstration.”
Fear is now falling while courage is rising. The word is slowly getting out through alternative media. Doctors are organizing resistance groups. Whereas six months ago, few patients had heard about Ivermectin, today most know about it, and many take it.
There is a reason that so many health care professionals are speaking out against the mandates, and it may have something to do with the fact healthcare is their field. For example, if airline pilots, experts in their field, refused to fly on a specific model of 747 aircraft, would an average person wish to know why, or would they blindly jump on that plane – because the FAA declared it safe? Help get the truth out.
To patients everywhere, to all those whose voices have been silenced during this Pandemic, I advise the courage to live in the truth, share this message with others, and never yield to fear by remaining silent. Please share this article with your physician(s), share the link below, and ask them to sign the Physician’s Declaration. We are at 10,000 signatures now. When I started a petition on www.change.org this spring, it was taken down by the censors. However, this declaration cannot be taken down.
Let us reach at least a million signatures. Then, when the signature box is opened for signing by the general public, please sign as well.
I now invite all physicians and medical scientists to join in truth with Dr. Malone, Dr. Fareed, Dr. McCullough, Dr. Tyson, and Dr. Kory and sign the Rome Physician’s Declaration here. Let us stand for truth, freedom, and Human Rights, which shall always prevail over totalitarianism. Let us honor our sacred Hippocratic Oath.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/07/2021 – 00:10 - US Stealth Jets Become First Fighters To Fly From Japanese Ship Since WWII
US Stealth Jets Become First Fighters To Fly From Japanese Ship Since WWII
In yet another move signaling the deepening US-Japan military relationship, two US stealth fighters practiced taking off and landing on Japan’s largest warship, the JS Izumo. The flights happened Sunday, with Japan’s Ministry of Defense releasing photos and video of the event early this week, hyping the major advance in its Maritime Self-Defense Force’s operations.
Crucially it marked the first time since World War II that fixed-wing aircraft operated from a Japanese warship. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger was earlier quoted as saying, “We’re not going to go on deployment but we’re actually going to fly U.S. Marine Corps F-35s off of a Japanese ship.”
3 OCT, the #JMSDF conducted verification of takeoff and landing of the USMC F-35B to JS #IZUMO.
The JMSDF continues to steadily carry out the necessary modifications to the IZUMO class to acquire the capability to operate the F-35Bs. pic.twitter.com/0gtPNzrxQC— Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (@jmsdf_pao_eng) October 5, 2021
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Japan’s military is working on adapting 24,000-ton Izumo class helicopter carriers for fixed-wing operations. The pair of US aircraft – Marine Corps F-35B Lighting II Joint Strike Fighters – conducted successful short takeoff, vertical landings from the mid-sized carrier’s deck.
The period of joint Japanese and Marine aircraft trials are set to continue aboard the Izumo through October 7. One aviation analysis monitoring site hailed in its headline that “Japan rejoins aircraft carrier club with USMC F-35B landing.”
Of course, China is sure to take note given also given no less than five total navies currently engaged in warship exercises off Japan, including the US and UK:
Two U.S. carrier strike groups drilled with the United Kingdom’s Carrier Strike Group 21 (CSG21) and a Japanese big-deck warship over the weekend in a major naval exercise in the waters off the southeast of Okinawa, Japan.
The exercise involved six different navies – the U.S Navy, the U.K. Royal Navy, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, the Royal Netherlands Navy, the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal New Zealand Navy – making up a total of 17 surface ships, which included four aircraft carriers.
JS Izumo file image The drills come after a tense weekend over contested skies near Taiwan, which saw China PLA jet incursions set multiple records in terms of number of aircraft breaching the self-ruled island’s defense identification zone – including 56 jets on Monday alone.
The Drive, meanwhile, further details Japan’s near-term carrier ambitions and cooperation with the US Marines as follows:
After the concept of fixed-wing operations is proven aboard the Izumo, that warship will then undergo more extensive revisions to better support F-35Bs during routine operations over sustained periods. So far, the vessel has received a heat-resistant flight deck to cope with the F-35B’s scorching exhaust, as well as changes to the lighting and deck markings.
VIDEO: Japan’s Largest Warship Launches U.S. Marine F-35s; First Fighters to Fly from Japanese Ship Since WWII – USNI Newshttps://t.co/zOS6Rc1WeI pic.twitter.com/HHeJ7MIv7W
— U.S. Naval Institute (@NavalInstitute) October 5, 2021
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Amid the major joint exercises off Japan, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said to reporters on Monday, “We urge Beijing to cease its military, diplomatic, and economic pressure and coercion against Taiwan,” and added that the US will “continue to assist Taiwan in maintaining a sufficient self-defense capability.”
Notably, Japan has lately become more vocally and firmly in Washington’s corner of late on the Taiwan issue – also as Japan is engaged in its own small contested island dispute with China off its south – so Beijing is sure to see the latest warship and carrier exercises as aimed in its direction.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/06/2021 – 23:50 - Colorado Hospital Set To Deny Kidney Transplant For Unvaxxed Woman
Colorado Hospital Set To Deny Kidney Transplant For Unvaxxed Woman
Now that vaccines are widely available and 56% of the US population is vaccinated (significantly missing President Biden’s Jul. 4 target of 70%), a little less than half of the country is unvaxxed and subjected to shocking and dehumanizing discrimination, making life very stressful.
Across the country, the hot-button subject entering the fall is COVID vaccination passes for restaurants and football stadiums in certain cities, counties, and or even states. This has made life painful for the unvaxxed (as planned by the administration) who can’t go to their favorite eatery or cheer on their favorite sports team.
However, the latest discrimination story of an unvaxxed person is terrifying.
A Colorado woman with stage 5 kidney failure is scrambling to find a new hospital because she and her donor are unvaxxed, and the hospital system has given them 30 days to get vaccinated or be taken off the transplant list.
UCHealth, a healthcare system headquartered in Aurora, Colorado, adopted new transplant rules requiring patients to be fully vaccinated.
“Here I am, willing to be a direct donor to her. It does not affect any other patient on the transplant list,” Jaimee Fougner, Leilani Lutali’s kidney donor, told Colorado-based news station CBS4.
(credit: Leilani Lutali and Jaimee Fougner) “How can I sit here and allow them to murder my friend when I’ve got a perfect kidney and can save her life?” Fougner said.
Lutali received a letter from UCHealth last week explaining she and Fougner had until the end of October to begin the vaccine process, or they would be removed from the transplant list.
“I said I’ll sign a medical waiver. I have to sign a waiver anyway for the transplant itself, releasing them from anything that could possibly go wrong,” said Lutali. “It’s surgery, it’s invasive. I sign a waiver for my life. I’m not sure why I can’t sign a waiver for the COVID shot.”
In August, UCHealth told Lutali that being vaxxed wouldn’t be a requirement for the surgery. “At the end of August, they confirmed that there was no COVID shot needed at that time,” she said. “Fast forward to Sept. 28. That’s when I found out. Jamie learned they have this policy around the COVID shot for both for the donor and the recipient.”
Lutali received this letter from the hospital:
Both met at bible study almost a year ago, and for either religious reasons or too many uncertainties, they refuse to take the vaccine.
“It’s your choice on what treatment you have. In Leilani’s case, the choice has been taken from her. Her life has now been held hostage because of this mandate,” Fougner added.
They’re still searching for a hospital in Colorado that will do the transplant for unvaxxed people. This is the latest in the shocking discrimination against unvaxxed people.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/06/2021 – 23:30 - WHO Approves First Malaria Vaccine After 30 Years Of Development
WHO Approves First Malaria Vaccine After 30 Years Of Development
More than three decades after scientists at GlaxoSmithKline started developing it, a malaria vaccine was finally approved Wednesday by the WHO. The vaccine could help save the lives of 400,000 people who still succumb to malaria every year (more than 50% are children under 5), most in sub-Saharan Africa. The vaccine is formulated for inoculating young children as well as adults.
Per WSJ, the WHO’s endorsement is a critical step for enabling production and the rollout of the jab, which unfortunately could take years to come into wide use across the continent of Africa.
The malaria jab will be administered in four doses. It has already been used to inoculate more than 800K children in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi as part of a long-running pilot program.
In a press release announcing its approval, the WHO said the jab offers “a glimmer of hope” for the Continent’s most vulnerable children and others.
“Today’s recommendation offers a glimmer of hope for the continent which shoulders the heaviest burden of the disease and we expect many more African children to be protected from malaria and grow into healthy adults,” said WHO Regional Director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti in the release.
Notably, the vaccine – called TS,S or Mosquirix – is the first jab to ever be deployed against a parasitic disease. The jab was designed to work against Plasmodium falciparum, the most common malaria parasite in Africa, and the deadliest.
“This is a historic moment. The long-awaited malaria vaccine for children is a breakthrough for science, child health and malaria control,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in the press release.
But before anybody gets too excited, WSJ points out that the vaccine was only shown to reduce severe malaria cases by 30%. Because of this, and the difficulty of distribution, it could take years to see how effective the vaccine is in the real world.
While it typically doesn’t overwhelm hospitals, malaria has been steadily killing people by the hundreds of thousands for years.
Yet its development and approval wasn’t considered an emergency?
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/06/2021 – 23:10 - NYT Gives Russia-Gate CPR, WSJ Pronounces It Dead
NYT Gives Russia-Gate CPR, WSJ Pronounces It Dead
Authored by Ray McGovern via AntiWar.com,
Those who may still think it was Russia that “interfered” with the 2016 election owe it to themselves to read the Sussmann indictment/charging document.
Spoiler:
It was the very top officials of the Clinton campaign aided by a lawyer crooked as a hound’s hind leg that interfered in 2016.
The tricks tried by Sussmann and associates might make even GOP “strategists” like Lee Atwater and Karl Rove blush.
One must recall that back in 2016 the Clinton campaign folks and their well-heeled coterie of attorneys were sure Mrs. Clinton would win. As the Sussmann charging document shows, there was some expectation of high-level posting in the “incoming” Clinton administration and – alas – absolutely no thought of indictment. This goes a long way to explain the brazenness of it all.
As discredited former FBI Director James Comey put it in his apologia-sans-apology book, A Higher Loyalty,
“I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president …”
Needless to say, a Clinton presidency would confer automatic immunity on key campaign miscreants and lawyers like Sussmann. Worse still for them, it appears likely that others of their breed may also find themselves criminally referred to the Department of Justice.
High Stakes
Were the stakes not so high, one might find it amusing how hard the Times tries to stanch the stench of that long-dead red herring about Donald Trump colluding with the Russians and blaming his victory on – inter alia – Russian “hacking”. But the stakes remain high, and too many people are still suffering from Mad-Maddow/Trump Derangement Syndrome, with the attendant dangers of adding to the current high tension with nuclear-armed Russia.
In Friday’s article, Times authors Charlie Savage and Adam Goldman bend over backwards in an attempt to “make the worse case the better.”
Socrates was accused (falsely) of precisely that, but there is no sign yet that anyone at the Times is about to take the hemlock.
In contrast, The NY Times pettifoggery is absent from today’s Wall Street Journal authoritative piece by the Journal’s Editorial Board, titled “Durham Cracks the Russia Case.”
Referring to the Sussmann indictment, the Journal editors write:
“This is no ho-hum case of deception. The special counsel’s 27-page indictment is full of new, and damning, details that underscore how the Russian collusion tale was concocted and peddled by the Clinton campaign. …
“Sussmann is accused of making false statements to then-FBI general counsel James Baker in a Sept. 19, 2016 meeting when he presented documents purporting to show secret internet communications between the Trump Organization and Russia-based Alfa Bank.
“The indictment adds new details about the sweeping nature of the Clinton campaign’s effort to falsely tag Donald Trump as in bed with the Russians. The document alleges this extended far beyond the opportunity-research firm Fusion GPS and the fake “dossier” produced by Christopher Steele – though both played a role in the broader effort.”
“Campaign Lawyer-1” mentioned in the indictment has been identified as former Perkins Coie lawyer/Clinton campaign general counsel, Marc Elias. The indictment makes clear that Elias brought up to date Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, communications director Jennifer Palmieri and foreign policy adviser (now Biden’s national security adviser) Jake Sullivan a few days before Sussmann is said to have lied to the FBI. The latest news is that more indictments may be in the offing.
This week came additional information suggesting that Durham has still more up his sleeve. A new set of subpoenas is reported to have been served on Perkins Coie after Sussmann was charged.
So it seems possible – just possible – that special counsel John Durham may be allowed to proceed to full-scale prosecution – this time. His record, however, counsels caution. He had the goods on CIA torturers, for example, and sneaked meekly off when he was told to stop. And so it goes.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/06/2021 – 22:50 - Hollywood Stagehands Vote Overwhelmingly For Authorization To Strike
Hollywood Stagehands Vote Overwhelmingly For Authorization To Strike
Members of Hollywood’s International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees have authorized its union to strike over the weekend.
The decision comes after “months of failed negotiations” between the union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, CNBC reported this week.
Matthew Loeb, president of IATSE, said in a statement Monday: “The members have spoken loud and clear. This vote is about the quality of life as well as the health and safety of those who work in the film and television industry. Our people have basic human needs like time for meal breaks, adequate sleep, and a weekend. For those at the bottom of the pay scale, they deserve nothing less than a living wage.″
This means a strike is now on the table if talks break down further. It marks the first time the IATSE has authorized a strike, with over 90% of eligible ballots cast and about 98% of voters authorizing the strike.
“We deeply value our IATSE crew members and are committed to working with them to avoid shutting down the industry at such a pivotal time, particularly since the industry is still recovering from the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic,” the AMPTP responded.
Recall, we wrote days ago about how negotiations were breaking down.
The union has a membership of about 60,000, most of whom are based in Los Angeles. They are threatening to walk off the job, should the union’s leadership – which is countrywide – decide. This means that a strike would affect studios across the U.S., not just in Los Angeles.
In total, 1 million jobs “directly tied to film and TV production” could be affected.
Alongside of a historic labor shortage coming back from the pandemic, production has been on the rise as the studio arms of companies like Netflix and Amazon look to build out their content. Both Netflix and Walt Disney have told shareholders that the lack of new content has been a headwind for streaming sign-ups.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers says it “put forth a deal-closing, comprehensive proposal that meaningfully addresses the IATSE’s key bargaining issues.”
But the union isn’t amused. It wrote to its members: “As you may be aware, negotiations with the major producers have reached a standstill. They refused to reply to our last proposal.”
The union is pushing for rest and meal breaks, as well as higher pay for its lowest earners, some of whom only make $15 per hour.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/06/2021 – 22:30 - The Deep Politics Of Vaccine Mandates
The Deep Politics Of Vaccine Mandates
Authored by Charles Lipson via RealClearPolitics.com,
The debate over President Biden’s vaccine mandates has focused, understandably, on the tradeoff between individual rights to make medical choices and the potential harm the unvaccinated pose to others.
That tradeoff is unavoidable.
It is simply wrong for Biden to say, “It’s not about freedom.” It is.
It is equally wrong for some Republican governors to say it is all about freedom.
It’s also about the external effects of each person’s choice. To pretend that tradeoff doesn’t exist is demagoguery. But then, so is most American politics these days.
What’s missing or underappreciated in this debate?
The most important thing is that the Biden administration’s “mandate approach” is standard-issue progressivism. The pushback is equally standard. The mandates exemplify a dispute that has been at the heart of American politics for over a century, ever since Woodrow Wilson formulated it as a professor and then president. That agenda emphasizes deference to
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Experts, not elected politicians,
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Rational bureaucratic procedures,
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Centralized power in the nation’s capital, not in the federal states, and
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A modern, “living constitution,” which replaces the “old” Constitution of 1787 and severs the restraints it imposed on government power.
Implemented over several decades, this progressive agenda has gradually become a fait accompli, without ever formally amending the Constitution. The bureaucracies began their massive growth after World War II and especially after Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society initiatives of the mid-1960s (continued, with equal vigor, by Richard Nixon).
The judicial shackles were broken earlier, when Franklin Roosevelt threatened to pack the Supreme Court in 1937. Although FDR never followed through, his threat did the trick. The justices yielded to his pressure and began rubber-stamping New Deal programs that, until then, they had rejected as unconstitutional. Gradually, the older judges retired and Roosevelt picked friendly replacements. These judicial issues have reemerged now that progressives no longer dominate the Supreme Court. They are again threatening to pack the court and demanding that today’s justices stick with precedents set by their progressive predecessors (“stare decisis”).
The pushback against vaccine mandates is partly a debate about these progressive issues concerning the president’s authority and constitutional strictures.
Mandate opponents say the federal government lacks the constitutional authority to impose these requirements, at least beyond its own workforce. They add that, if the president does wish to impose new rules, he and his executive agencies must go through the normal regulatory process. That process is slow — indeed, too slow to cope with an emergency.
Biden himself seemed to recognize these constitutional limitations before deciding to ignore them — the second time he’s done so in his brief presidency. That’s a very troubling development, even if the courts overrule his decisions.
The first time was his fiat decision to extend the moratorium on rent payments, which had been imposed during the worst days of the pandemic. Biden explicitly stated his unconstitutional rationale: It would take the courts time to rule against him and, until then, he could implement the policy. Of course, he also had a political rationale: to placate his party’s far left, which had mobilized over this issue.
Biden’s extension on the rent moratorium had a second, troubling dimension. It was promulgated by the Centers for Disease Control as a “public health issue.” That was a transparently false rationale in summer 2021 and dealt with housing issues far beyond the CDC’s expertise. The unintended consequence of the moratorium extension, beyond bankrupting small landlords, is to undermine the basic rationale for all progressive rulemaking: that the rules are being made by experts who know much more about their specialized area than do ordinary citizens or their elected representatives. What, pray tell, do experts on infectious disease know about the complexities of the U.S. housing market? Zero.
Progressive politics depends on public acceptance that experts really know what’s best and that their decisions will produce good outcomes. But trust in experts has collapsed alongside trust in all American institutions over the past half-century. The turning point was the disastrous war in Vietnam, advocated by LBJ’s Harvard advisers and the Whiz Kids in Robert McNamara’s Pentagon. Their failure was captured in the title of David Halberstam’s 1973 bestseller, “The Best and the Brightest.” The calamitous Afghan withdrawal underscored Halberstam’s sarcastic point.
So did the failure of so many Great Society programs, begun with such hope and fanfare. The most painful experience was “urban renewal,” especially the massive program of building high-rise towers for welfare recipients. Before those towers were torn down, they had destroyed two or three generations of families. Part of the tragedy was that, like so many federal programs, the towers were built everywhere at once. If they had been tried out in a few cities, the problems would have been obvious, the failures remedied or the program abandoned. But Washington almost never does that. Congress funds and the bureaucracies implement mammoth, nationwide programs with no opportunity for feedback or mid-course corrections.
As public mistrust of institutions grew, a few institutions initially escaped the scorn. The military, for instance, was highly regarded until recently. It will take a heavy blow from the Afghan failure and the new, high-priority program of ideological training for troops. Government health officials were also highly regarded, at least until the botched rollout of Obamacare and the scandals at Veterans’ Affairs hospitals. Still, the public trusted the CDC and Dr. Anthony Fauci at the beginning of the pandemic. They trust them far less today, thanks to false and misleading statements, secrecy about funding the Wuhan virology lab, the absence of clear guidance on many issues, and blunt regulations that ignore important variations, such as natural immunity.
The effect of this growing mistrust was painfully apparent in President Biden’s mandate announcement. He didn’t rely on persuasion or trust in federal experts. He hectored, demonized, shamed, politicized, and threatened. That has become his routine, along with his refusal to answer the public’s pressing questions.
Biden’s political problem is that he faces real resistance from voters if he can’t solve the COVID problem, both because it is so serious and because he ran on being able to handle it better than Trump. Since Biden’s speech last week spent a lot of time attacking Republican governors, it was also an exercise in preemptive blame-shifting, in case the mandates fail.
His approach makes political sense, but it has at least two problems beyond the constitutional questions. One is that it politicizes vaccinations, which could have unintended consequences. Among the most obvious, it shifts the issue away from doctors and public health professionals and into the contentious political arena. Another is that it raises questions about the administration’s hypocrisy. Why do all federal employees, including those with natural immunity, need to get vaccinations but not the illegal immigrants arriving from Central America? That’s clearly a political decision, not a medical one, and it undermines the legitimacy of Biden’s whole approach, which stresses public health and medical experts.
The president’s speech had another major feature: It relied on vitriolic “wedge politics.” But Biden was elected partly because he promised to end the vitriol and divisiveness of the Trump years. He hasn’t done that. The poster child for his tendentious governing strategy is the second, $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” bill. Not only does it have no Republican support, it has met serious resistance from centrist Democrats. On his signature spending bills, like his vaccine mandates, Biden is pursuing a unilateral, aggressively partisan approach.
There’s no question the delta variant poses serious health risks and that, in general, vaccinations help both the individuals who get the jab and everyone around them. But there are serious questions about whether sticks or carrots are the best way to increase vaccination rates; how to convince people to get the vaccine now that trust in public-health experts has eroded; whether politicizing the issue is self-defeating; and what authority Washington has to impose mandates beyond its own workforce.
The questions about the federal government’s authority — its effectiveness, its constitutionality, and its potential overreach — are among the most important in American politics. They have been for a century, and they won’t be resolved anytime soon.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/06/2021 – 22:10 -
- White House Discloses Number Of Nukes In US Stockpile For 1st Time In Years
White House Discloses Number Of Nukes In US Stockpile For 1st Time In Years
For the first time in years, and in a stark reversal from the Trump presidency – who had ordered a blackout of the data during his administration – the Biden White House has made public the number of nuclear weapons in the US stockpile.
Citing the importance of “increasing transparency” the State Department said in a Tuesday official report that it is “releasing newly declassified information on the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile to update the information previously released in September 2017.” The report indicated 3,750 nuclear warheads currently in America’s stockpile, and among these 2,000 waiting to be dismantled.
Biden and Trump had been clearly divided on the issue during the 2020 presidential campaign, with Biden at the time vowing that “administration will work to maintain a strong, credible deterrent while reducing our reliance and excessive expenditure on nuclear weapons.” Trump for his part had greatly ratcheted up spending on the Defense and Energy departments to sustain and modernize the nuclear arsenal, having last requested $44.5 billion for fiscal year 2021.
According to the newly released official count by the State Dept:
As of September 2020, the U.S. stockpile of nuclear warheads consisted of 3,750 warheads. This number represents an approximate 88 percent reduction in the stockpile from its maximum (31,255) at the end of fiscal year 1967, and an approximate 83 percent reduction from its level (22,217) when the Berlin Wall fell in late 1989. The below figure shows the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile from 1945 through September 30, 2020.
The bulk of this dismantling of non-strategic nuclear weapons occurred since 1991 – which correspond to the collapse of the Soviet Union – with the stockpile of nuclear weapons declining over 90% since the end of the Cold War.
Via US State Department This involved the US dismantling 11,683 nuclear warheads from 1994 to 2020, and an additional 711 nuclear warheads since September 30, 2017, according to the numbers.
The official report gave as rationale for making the numbers public, including to US ‘enemies’ and rivals like Russia and China, the following: “Increasing the transparency of states’ nuclear stockpiles is important to nonproliferation and disarmament efforts, including commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and efforts to address all types of nuclear weapons, including deployed and non-deployed, and strategic and non-strategic,” the State Department said.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/06/2021 – 21:50 - Biden Tells Japan's New PM That US Will Defend Senkaku Islands From China
Biden Tells Japan’s New PM That US Will Defend Senkaku Islands From China
Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,
President Biden told Japan’s new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in a phone call on Monday that the US would defend the Senkaku Islands in the event of a Chinese attack.
The Senkakus, known as the Diayous in China, are a group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. They are currently controlled by Japan and are also claimed by China and Taiwan.
Via Tokyo Review In a statement on the call, Japan’s Foreign Ministry said that Biden had “reaffirmed the US’s unwavering commitment to the defense of Japan including the application of Article V of the Japan-US Security Treaty to the Senkaku Islands.”
Article V is the section of the US-Japan Security Treaty that outlines the mutual defense agreement between the two countries. Kishida told reporters on Tuesday that President Biden had given “strong remarks on the US commitment to defend Japan, including Article V.”
The Senkaku Islands have turned into a potential flashpoint for a conflict between the US and China since the Obama administration when the US first affirmed it would come to Japan’s defense if the islands were attacked.
The Biden administration first made the pledge that it would defend the Senkakus to Japan back in January when Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin first spoke with his Japanese counterpart.
Kishida said that he and Biden agreed to work together on “challenges facing neighboring regions such as China and North Korea.” The Japanese leader said he wants to strengthen military ties with the US as well as other “democracies” in Asia and Europe.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/06/2021 – 21:30 - "Osama Bin Laden Is Probably More Popular" – NY Dems Scoff As De Blasio Reportedly Explores Run For Governor
“Osama Bin Laden Is Probably More Popular” – NY Dems Scoff As De Blasio Reportedly Explores Run For Governor
Whether Democrats or Republicans, there’s one political question that most Americans can agree on: Mayor Bill de Blasio is leaving NYC in much worse shape than he found it eight years ago.
Yet, despite facing near-universal criticism, and polling at under 1% nationally during his presidential campaign (which became the butt of endless jokes), political reporters in New York State are sounding the alarm Wednesday morning that the mayor best known for surging crime rates and economic inequality (and eating his pizza with a fork and knife) is exploring a run for governor of the Empire State.
Earlier this morning, the NYT‘s Katie Glueck reported on Twitter that she had spoken with at least three people close to the mayor who say he’s been holding talks about a potential gubernatorial run, while sounding out some former aides about their potential interest in joining his campaign.
News: Bill de Blasio has begun to tell people that he plans to run for governor of New York, per 3 people w/direct knowledge of convos. He has also sounded out trusted former aides about their interest in a potential campaign.
W/ @danarubinstein https://t.co/laaROU4LYm— Katie Glueck (@katieglueck) October 6, 2021
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Shortly after breaking the news, Glueck shared some amusing comments about de Blasio’s prospects, shared by fellow Dems who clearly weren’t concerned about protecting their identities. “Osama bin Laden is probably more popular in Suffolk County than Bill de Blasio,” said said Rich Schaffer, the chairman of the county’s Democratic committee, who has already endorsed sitting governor Kathy Hochul (the state’s first female governor) in her bid for a full term.
turns out some NY Dems have some thoughts on this.
“Osama bin Laden is probably more popular in Suffolk County than Bill de Blasio,” said the chairman of the county’s Democratic committee.https://t.co/laaROUmnmW
— Katie Glueck (@katieglueck) October 6, 2021
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As the NYT reminds us, there was one memorable moment during the race for the Democratic Primary for mayor where the candidates were asked during a debate whether they would accept de Blasio’s endorsement. Only Andrew Yang raised his hand (though there was some speculation that de Blasio was ‘secretly backing’ Eric Adams, the primary’s winner, who will very likely be elected to succeed de Blasio at Gracie Mansion).
He’s also already facing significant competition, and not just from Hochul: New York AG Letitia James, who burnished her rep by leading the investigation into former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s sexual transgressions, is believed to be running. So is Jumaane Williams, a progressive Brooklyn Democrat and the city’s current public advocate (a job that once belonged to de Blasio), who is popular with NYC’s professional-class progressives. Should James win the governorship, she would be the first black woman elected governor in any state in the country.
What does de Blasio have to say about that? Per the NYT:
Asked whether New York should have another white male governor – Ms. Hochul is the first woman to lead the state; Ms. James and Mr. Williams are Black, and Ms. James could be the first Black woman to govern any state in the country – Mr. de Blasio appeared to brush aside the question last week.
“We need people of all backgrounds to be involved in government,” he said.
We’re starting to suspect that even de Blasio doesn’t support a de Blasio candidacy. But as another NY political reporter pointed out, de Blasio doesn’t need to win the governorship to benefit from his campaign. The game is a popular one in the US: run to build up a war chest, then use that war chest not to campaign, but to influence other politicians (because that money can then be given away).
Like now ex-Democrat Andrew Yang, de Blasio doesn’t have to win to gain much. He can raise a campaign chest and then use that to leverage influence. More or less what the Manhattan DA investigated him for when de Blasio brokered pass-through contributions via county committees.
— Alyssa Katz (@alykatzz) October 6, 2021
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But we thought Democrats were supposed to be the ‘principled’ ones?
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/06/2021 – 21:10 - Dry Bulk Shipping Rates Hit $80,000 Per Day As Buyers Scramble For Coal
Dry Bulk Shipping Rates Hit $80,000 Per Day As Buyers Scramble For Coal
By Greg Miller of FreightWaves,
Yet another sign of stress for energy supplies and global supply chains: Spot rates for large dry cargo ships just topped $80,000 per day for the first time since 2009, and freight derivatives for the fourth quarter — a period when rates for these vessels normally pull back — just spiked.
Not long ago, it was a different story. On Sept. 20, headlines were dominated by Chinese property developer Evergrande and its impending collapse; fallout to construction and steel demand would assumedly hit future Chinese buying of commodities carried on dry cargo vessels.
Dry bulk stocks plunged. While spot rates for Capesizes (bulkers with capacity of around 180,000 deadweight tons) held firm at $53,800 per day, forward freight agreement (FFA) derivatives did not. Amid what one broker called “mayhem,” the Q4 FFA contract sank to $36,750 per day, with the December contract all the way down to $29,500. The FFA market signaled: Party over.
Two weeks later, it has a new message: Party not over. Festivities shall continue until year-end.
As of Tuesday, spot Capesize rates were up to $80,877 per day, based on the Baltic Exchange 5TC index. That’s 50% higher than two weeks ago when sentiment briefly dimmed.
Fears on Chinese property development still loom large, but now there’s an even bigger spotlight on Chinese factory blackouts due to electricity rationing and dwindling coal supplies in both China and India.
More coal to keep the power on in the winter should equal higher bulker rates.
And as with container shipping, rampant port congestion is slashing effective ship supply, adding more support to rates. Braemar ACM Shipbroking estimates that 5.7% of the entire global dry bulk fleet is now waiting offshore of China.
FFAs have shot up even faster than physical rates, accelerating their rise on Tuesday. “There are few superlatives appropriate for the price moves,” wrote brokerage Clarksons regarding Tuesday’s FFA trading, citing “monstrous gains.”
The Q4 Capesize FFA closed at $61,500 per day, up 67% from levels on Sept. 20, with October contracts up 78%, November 59% and December 63% over the same two-week stretch.
Dry bulk shipping stocks rallied. The Breakwave Dry Bulk Shipping ETF, an exchange-traded fund that buys FFAs, rose 9% Tuesday and hit its highest level since its debut in 2018.
Shares of Navios Holdings jumped 16%. Shares of Diana Shipping rose 9% and Eagle Bulk 7%. Golden Ocean, Safe Bulkers and Star Bulk gained 6%, and Genco Shipping 5%.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/06/2021 – 20:50 - China Manipulating Google, Bing Search Results To Advance Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories
China Manipulating Google, Bing Search Results To Advance Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories
China has been taking advantage of a ‘data void’ in order to flood social media platforms with Chinese-backed conspiracy theories regarding the origins of Covid-19, which in turn affects algorithmic results from popular search engines such as Google and Bing, according to the Washington Post, citing a Tuesday report by the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD).
The Chinese posts have almost exclusively focused on a theory that Covid-19 was created in a lab at Fort Detrick, home to the US Army’s Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) – which will ring a bell for anyone who read The Hot Zone, and was then purposefully spread throughout Wuhan, China during the October 2019 Military World Games.
Illustration via China’s state-run Global Times By saturating social media platforms with this theory, it now crops up when people search for other things via popular search engines.
What’s particularly noteworthy about the campaign, researchers said, is that the officials have tapped into a highly effective means for spreading misinformation and disinformation: filling the Internet with misleading content on issues where there’s a dearth of reliable information. The result is that when users search for these more obscure topics — when they type “Fort Detrick” into Google or Bing — they are more likely to see Chinese-backed conspiracy theories.
…
According to the report, news search results for Fort Detrick across Google, YouTube and Bing were “dominated” by state-run Chinese media such as CGTN and the Global Times at various times since May. Researchers called the outlets “central to Beijing’s information operations.” -WaPo
“It gives an advantage to those who are trying to promote this conspiracy because they continue to publish on it over and over and over and over, so that when someone who’s not familiar with the term just Googles it … you tend to get the conspiracy theorist’s point of view,” said Bret Schafer, a media and digital disinformation fellow at ASD who co-authored the report.
China’s disinformation campaign conceals their own involvement
We know from government contracts, FOIA records, and leaked emails that the US government was conducting risky gain-of-function research on US soil until former President Obama banned it in 2014 over ethical questions raised by the scientific community. The ‘research’ included manipulating bat Covid to be more transmissible to humans. Instead, the research was shifted overseas to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and laundered through New York nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance – whose CEO Peter Daszak secured lucrative contracts to study and manipulate bat coronaviruses in Wuhan China four months before Obama’s ban.
The first $666,442 installment of EcoHealth’s $3.7 million NIH grant was paid in June 2014, with similar annual payments through May 2019 under the “Understanding The Risk Of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” project.
Then, in 2017, a subagency of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci – resumed funding a controversial grant to genetically modify bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China without the approval of a government oversight body.
Notably, the WIV “had openly participated in gain-of-function research in partnership with U.S. universities and institutions” for years under the leadership of Dr. Shi ‘Batwoman’ Zhengli, according to the Washington Post‘s Josh Rogin.
In 2017 the “Potential Pandemic Pathogens Control and Oversight (P3CO) Framework was formed within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS),” which was tasked with evaluating the risks involved with enhancing dangerous pathogens, as well as whether proper safeguards are in place, before a grant into ‘gain-of-function’ or similarly risky research can be issued. Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) – the subagency which funded EcoHealth – didn’t think the grant needed review, and resumed their relationship with Daszak without flagging it for the P3CO committee, an NIH spokesperson told the Daily Caller.
We also know (thanks to a FOIA lawsuit by The Intercept) that Daszak wanted to release ‘Chimeric Covid Spike Proteins‘ Into Bat Populations Using ‘Skin-Penetrating Nanoparticles,’ only to be denied by DARPA on the grounds that it was too risky.
The bid was submitted by Daszak, who was hoping to use genetic engineering to cobble “human-specific cleavage sites” onto bat Covid ‘which would make it easier for the virus to enter human cells’ – a method which would coincidentally answer a longstanding question among the scientific community as to how SARS-CoV-2 evolved to become so infectious to humans.
Daszak’s proposal also included plans to commingle high-risk natural coronaviruses strains with more infectious, yet less deadly versions. His ‘bat team’ of researchers included Dr. Shi Zhengli from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, as well as US researchers from the University of North Carolina and the US Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Center.
“This is a roadmap to the high-risk research that could have led to the current pandemic,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of U.S. Right To Know, a group that has been investigating the origins of Covid-19 (via The Intercept).
And so – China’s Fort Detrick propaganda completely ignores the international collaboration between the US NIH and Wuhan scientists.
Further reading:
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/06/2021 – 20:30 - Would Americans Benefit From A Government Default?
Would Americans Benefit From A Government Default?
Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
The Biden administration’s rhetoric on the debt ceiling has become nothing short of apocalyptic.
The Treasury Department has announced that a failure to increase the debt ceiling “would have catastrophic economic consequences” and would, as NBC news claims, constitute a “doomsday scenario” that would “spark a financial crisis and plunge the economy into recession.”
Apparently, the memo went out to the debt peddlers that they are not to hold back when sowing maximum fear over the thought that the US might government might pause its incessant debt accumulation even for a few days.
The reality, however, is quite something else. While a failure to raise the debt ceiling would no doubt cause short-term disruptions, the fact is the medium- and long-term effects would prove beneficial by reining in the regime’s chokehold on the American economy and financial system.
This is explained in a recent column by Peter St. Onge in which he examines just how much of a problem default really is:
In 2021 the US government plans to spend $6.8 trillion. Of which about half is borrowed — $3 trillion. So if they can’t raise the ceiling, they’d have to cut that $3 trillion.
Mainstream media, naturally, claims this is the end of the world. CBS estimates it would cost 6 million jobs and $15 trillion in lost wealth—comparable to the 2008 crisis, which was also caused by the federal government. CNN, more colorfully, claims cascading job losses and “a near-freeze in credit markets.” They conclude, falsely, that “No one would be spared.”
Considering the source, we can guess these predictions are overblown. So what would happen?
Well, $3 trillion is a lot of money—roughly 15% of America’s GDP. But we have to remember where that $3 trillion came from. The government, after all, doesn’t actually create anything, every dollar it spends came out of somebody else’s pocket. Whose pocket? Part of the $3 trillion was bid away from private borrowers like businesses, and the rest was siphoned from peoples’ savings by the Federal Reserve creating new money.
This means that, yes, GDP would decline sharply. But wealth would actually grow, perhaps substantially. The businesses would be able to buy things they need, while the savers keep their money that was doing useful things like paying their retirement.
So GDP drops, wealth soars.
Now, there will be near-term pain, simply because the GDP drop comes before the private borrowing ramps up, while those retirement savings are no longer being siphoned to pay for parties at strip clubs or, say, another trillion for farting cows.
So, yes, it will be a sharp drop in GDP. But so long as government stays out of the way, choosing the prudent 1920 response of doing nothing, the recovery will be very rapid. Why would they do nothing? After all, governments don’t like staying out of the way these days. Because a government that suddenly loses half it’s budget is going to find a lot of things not worth doing. Given a choice between defunding government workers’ pensions or defunding economy-crushing Green New Deals, governments will choose their own.
So that’s short-term: pain, but less than it seems. And that’s where the magic begins. Because ending deficits fundamentally reduces governments’ long-term ability to prey on the people’s wealth.
This is because debt and money printers are much less obvious than taxes, which are painful and make more enemies. So a default becomes a “back door” to move government back towards its traditional “parasite” role rather than the “predator” role it’s taken on since Nixon unleashed the money printers. Especially since Covid-19, when lockdowns were bought with fresh money and deficits. I wrote about this predatory evolution a few months ago, but the bottom line is government default is a tremendous investment in our future prosperity.
Ultimately, when a media pundit or Janet Yellen predicts the end of the world if debt doesn’t continue to skyrocket ever upward, they are simply calling for a continuation of the status quo.
And what does the status quo mean? It means a world in which the US government continues to spent trillions of dollars it doesn’t have, made possible through monetizing massive amounts of debt and forcing taxpayers to devote ever more of their own wealth and income to paying off an ever-more-huge chunk of interest.
It also means more government spending, which—regardless of whether it’s funded by debt or by taxes—causes malinvestment and, through the redistribution of wealth, rewards the politically powerful at the expense of everyone else. In other words, its keeps Pentagon generals and Big Pharma executives living in luxury while the taxpayers are lectured about the need to “pay America’s bills.”
Rather, as Mark Thornton noted in 2011, the right thing to do is lower the debt ceiling. Thornton explains the many benefits, ranging from effective deregulation to freeing up capital for the private sector:
If Congress passed legislation that systematically reduced the debt ceiling over time, the economy could be rebuilt on a solid foundation. Entrepreneurs in the productive sectors would realize that an ever-increasing proportion of resources (land, labor, and capital) would be at their disposal, while companies that capitalized on the federal budget would have an ever-declining share of such resources.
Congress would have to cut the pay and benefits of its employees (FDR cut them by 25 percent in the depths of the Great Depression) as well as the number of such employees. Real wage rates would decline, allowing entrepreneurs to hire more employees to produce consumer-valued goods.
Congress would have to cut back on its far-flung regulatory operations, which are in fact one of the biggest drags on the economy due to the burden and uncertainty that Obama and Congress have created in terms of healthcare, financial-market, and environmental regulations. A recent study by the Phoenix Center found that even a small reduction of 5 percent, or $2.8 billion, in the federal regulatory budget would result in about $75 billion in increased private-sector GDP each year and the addition of 1.2 million jobs annually. Eliminating the job of even a single regulator grows the American economy by $6.2 million and creates nearly 100 private-sector jobs annually.
Under a reduced debt ceiling, the federal government would also have to sell off some of its resources. It has tens of thousands of buildings that are no longer in use and tens of thousands of buildings that are significantly underused—about 75,000 buildings in total. It also controls over 400 million acres of land, or over 20 percent of all land outside of Alaska, which is almost wholly owned by the government. There is also the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and many other assets that could be sold off to cover short-term budget shortfalls.
Of course, reducing the debt ceiling would force the government to stop borrowing so much money from credit markets. This would leave significantly more credit available for the private sector. The shortage of capital is one of the most often cited reasons for the failure of the economy to recover.
Lowering the debt ceiling would force federal-government budget cutting on a large scale, and this would free up resources (labor, land, and capital) and force a cutback in the federal government’s regulatory apparatus. This would put Americans back to work producing consumer-valued goods.
Unfortunately, the public has been fed a steady diet of rhetoric in which any reduction in government spending will bring economic Armageddon. But it’s all based on economic myths, and Thornton concludes:
Passing an increase in the debt ceiling merely perpetuates the myth that there is any ceiling or control or limit on the government’s ability to waste resources in the short run and its willingness to pass the burden of this squander onto future generations.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/06/2021 – 20:10 - Top Secret CIA Cable Admits "Dozens" Of Agents Abroad Are Being Captured, Killed
Top Secret CIA Cable Admits “Dozens” Of Agents Abroad Are Being Captured, Killed
It was revealed this week in a bombshell New York Times report that the CIA has raised the alarm with all its overseas stations and officers that an unusually high number of US informants are being captured and executed abroad. There are “dozens” of such instances, according to an agency memo.
The report is an incredibly rare instance of the media getting hold of a fresh, very recent highly classified memo that’s also sure to be embarrassing for the agency. “The message, in an unusual top-secret cable, said that the CIA’s counterintelligence mission center had looked at dozens of cases in the last several years involving foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or most likely compromised,” the NYT writes.
“Although brief, the cable laid out the specific number of agents executed by rival intelligence agencies — a closely held detail that counterintelligence officials typically do not share in such cables.”
Image: AFP/Getty The cable warned its officers across the globe against put “mission over security” – which it strongly suggested was a key cause that’s leading to poor tradecraft, putting agents at risk. “Agents” in this context means foreign and local assets recruited by the CIA to spy in their home countries, a dangerous endeavor which puts all the risk on the foreign person (and their family) who feeds sensitive information to their CIA handler.
The cable also cited the growing capabilities and awareness on the part of foreign and rival agencies of US intelligence’s methods. According to the NY Times synopsis of what’s in the top secret memo:
The cable highlighted the struggle the spy agency is having as it works to recruit spies around the world in difficult operating environments. In recent years, adversarial intelligence services in countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan have been hunting down the CIA’s sources and in some cases turning them into double agents.
Especially the growing biometric technology deployed by China is seen as a serious problem for maintaining local assets’ cover.
The report continues by spelling out, “The large number of compromised informants in recent years also demonstrated the growing prowess of other countries in employing innovations like biometric scans, facial recognition, artificial intelligence and hacking tools to track the movements of CIA officers in order to discover their sources.”
Pakistani intelligence very effective at hunting down CIA sources and flipping them into double agents, according to this must-read NYT reporting on a secret agency cable.
— Rupert Stone (@RupertStone83) October 5, 2021
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Though this wasn’t addressed in the cable, there’s also the possibility of leaks and the question of double-agents gaining compromising material, further exposing other assets.
The NY Times report further quotes former CIA operatives who described a somewhat flawed internal system and bureaucracy that’s set up to reward ambition but not recognize when officers prudently exercise restraint. Promotions are often handed out to operatives who recruit the most agents abroad.
One former CIA operative, Douglas London, told The Times, “No one at the end of the day is being held responsible when things go south with an agent.” But of course in general it remains that few if anyone are ever held accountable for failures when it comes to Washington’s massive national security state bureaucracy.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/06/2021 – 19:50 - DOJ Announces Launch Of National Crypto Enforcement Team As FDIC Mulls Insuring Stablecoins
DOJ Announces Launch Of National Crypto Enforcement Team As FDIC Mulls Insuring Stablecoins
One of the catalysts behind crypto’s impressive surge in the past week emerged last Friday, when the WSJ reported that the Biden admin was seeking to regulate stablecoin issuers as banks and was “considering ways to impose bank-like regulation on the cryptocurrency companies that issue stablecoins, including prodding the firms to register as banks.” Coming at the same time as both Jerome Powell and Gary Gensler said they did not seek to bank crypto, the news was confirmation that the regulatory apparatus was seeking to integrate the crypto space within the confines of the state – especially since taxes on cryptos are expected to generate tens of billions in government revenues to the Democrats “deficit neutral” multi-trillion spending plan. In short, this was very good news for digital tokens as it eliminated the worst possible outcome: a China-style terminal crackdown on the sector.
Today, we got more good news when Cointelegraph reported that an official from the Office of the Attorney General said the United States government is going to take a more active role in enforcement action against actors using cryptocurrencies for money laundering and other cybercrimes. In effect, the DOJ is already policing cryptos as if they were securities, providing an implicit security to investors even though the formal regulatory treatment of cryptos remains nebulous.
Speaking at the Aspen Institute Cyber Summit on Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said the Justice Department had launched the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, who aim is to target platforms “that help criminals launder or hide their criminal proceeds.” Monaco cited her office’s work against Darknet-based Bitcoin (BTC) mixing service Helix in August but said the U.S. government should be doing more.
“We want to strengthen our capacity to dismantle the financial ecosystem that enables these criminal actors to flourish and — quite frankly — to profit from what they’re doing,” said Monaco. “We’re going to do that by drawing on our cyber experts and cyber prosecutors and money-laundering experts.”
Monaco, who has often been a central figure in the U.S. government’s response to major ransomware and cyberattacks involving cryptocurrency payments, added that “cryptocurrency exchanges want to be the banks of the future. We need to make sure that folks can have confidence when they’re using these systems, and we need to make sure we’re poised to root out abuse that can take hold on them.” She should know: she was part of a task force that “found and recaptured” millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin paid to the allegedly Russia-based DarkSide hackers following an attack on the Colonial Pipeline system in May.
What Monaco didn’t say is that by accelerating enforcement actions, the DOJ was in effect providing confidence to millions of retail investors that someone was looking after their interest in a market which the government had for years depicted as the “wild wild west.” Needless to say, such as intervention will only increase retail participation.
Meanwhile, in a clear indication that the government is already planning how to capitalize, and not penalize, the incipient stablecoin industry, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, or FDIC, a key U.S. banking regulator, is reportedly studying whether certain stablecoins might be eligible for its coverage, Coindesk reported citing five people familiar with the agency’s thinking said.
The agency is trying to analyze what so-called pass-through FDIC insurance might look like for the reserves that stablecoin issuers hold at banks, the sources said. Such coverage would insure holders of the tokens against losses up to $250,000 if the bank holding the collateral were to fail.
The FDIC is also looking at what regular, direct deposit insurance might look like for banks that want to issue stablecoins, people familiar with the discussions said.
“This is all part of a process by which they are trying to bring stablecoins into the banking system in a responsible manner,” one insider said. “It depends on what’s backing the stablecoins. If it’s backed by reserves at the Fed[eral Reserve] for cash then I think you just make the argument that it’s a deposit. If it’s backed by Treasurys, I think you’ll have a hard time treating it as a deposit.”
That all may be, but once again it misses the forest for the trees, namely that the government is taking increasingly permissive steps to give new investors some implicit comfort that the government is watching out for their interests and, in the case of stablecoins, that they may even be insured from total losses should the stablecoin issuer collapse.
That said, it wasn’t exactly clear how an FDIC backstop would work for stablecoins: if the FDIC went ahead and provided deposit insurance for stablecoins, it would apply only if a bank that was banking a stablecoin issuer or that was issuing a stablecoin itself went into receivership. Even in this scenario, it’s rare that FDIC insurance would enter into the picture because the agency generally takes a failed bank’s assets and deposits and sells them to a healthy bank.
“The FDIC is probably looking at whether stablecoins can count as deposits or whether someone’s ownership of a stablecoin is a deposit at the stablecoin issuer,” said Todd Phillips, a former FDIC lawyer who is now the director of financial regulation and corporate governance at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank.
The coverage could present challenges for issuers. Typically, these companies identify customers when they deposit cash for stablecoins or redeem the tokens for cash. But since stablecoins run on open, public blockchain networks (usually Ethereum), theoretically anyone with a crypto wallet that hasn’t been blacklisted can receive stablecoins from and send them to other wallets.
“One thing to remember is that each person has insurance of only up to $250,000,” said Phillips. “So, the stablecoin issuer would need to keep track of who is the current holder of their stablecoin, and how many they own.” Whatever the FDIC insures has to not compromise the rest of the agency’s mission, he said.
How the agency proceeds could potentially help protect consumers, Phillips added.
“The FDIC basically has one overriding mission which is to ensure the safety of the Deposit Insurance Fund, the DIF,” Phillips said. “If the FDIC were to insure a stablecoin, that insurance would come out of the DIF and the FDIC will want to be very sure that they are on legal footing and that whatever they do doesn’t risk the DIF.”
“The FDIC has strict rules as to which institutions may call themselves FDIC-insured or use the FDIC logo for advertising,” he said. “Just as how the FDIC’s logo on a bank’s website allows savers to be confident that the bank is a safe, insurance of particular stablecoins and permission to use the FDIC logo would provide clarity about which stablecoins, up to the insurance limit, will not lose value.”
It’s likely that the agency will ask for public comment from the industry before any actual policy change is taken, Phillips said.
“I also imagine there are conversations going on between the four FDIC directors, since you need a majority of them to approve a new regulation,” he said.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/06/2021 – 19:31 - Inventory At US Car Dealers Falls To New Record Low
Inventory At US Car Dealers Falls To New Record Low
As discussed yesterday, US light vehicle sales for September came at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 12.2MM per Wards and 12.3MM per Motor Intelligence, a number below consensus expectations of 12.5MM. A US SAAR in the low 12MM range is down about 25% yoy from about 16.3MM in September 2020 and down in the mid single digits sequentially from the August SAAR of about 13.1MM. The biggest reason for the decline is the continued record low inventory levels.
Some more details:
In September, car sales were down about 33% yoy, SUV sales were down about 20% yoy, and pickup truck sales were down about 30% yoy. Pickups and SUVs as a percent of total units were 19% and 55%, respectively (vs. 20% and 51% in September 2020). Per Motor Intelligence, Ford sales were down about 18% yoy and GM sales were down about 53% yoy in September. Ford’s market share in September increased yoy to 15% from 14%, and GM’s market share declined yoy to 11% from 17%. We believe that GM faced particularly acute challenges in 3Q21 (after doing relatively better in 2Q).
Contrary to ICEs, September EV sales were up about 26% yoy, and hybrid sales were up about 32% yoy, per Motor Intelligence. Notably, Tesla does not report monthly sales. That said, Tesla reported strong 3Q21 global deliveries that were +73% yoy, implying that its EV sales in September in the US were likely strong.
Incentive spending per vehicle was down over 40% yoy, and down about 3% sequentially in September. Not surprisingly, in a market that has never been tighter, September’s industry incentive spending per vehicle was down over 40% yoy and down about 3% sequentially to about $2.4K per vehicle (per Motor Intelligence). Industry pricing should remain strong as component shortages continue to weigh on production in the short term, and dealer inventory remains low.
Inventory
Finally, the punchline: according to Goldman, inventory at US dealers declined sequentially to ~900k from just below 1.0 mn in August 2021, and down from 2.6 mn in September 2020. Industry DOI came in at 22 days compared to 23 days in August 2021 and 48 days in September 2020. Pickup truck DOI was 35 days (vs. 32 in August 2021 and 48 in September 2020), SUV DOI was 20 days (vs. 21 in August 2021 and 47 in September 2020), and car DOI was 16 days (vs. 18 in August 2021 and 51 in September 2020).
Inventories at dealers continued to fall from already historically low levels, and it will take time for inventory at dealers to return to normalized levels given the strong demand for vehicles coupled with ongoing supply chain challenges (particularly with semiconductor chip shortages, but also due to shipping constraints).
Implications
Similar to prior months, historically low inventory levels at dealerships continue to weigh on industry sales, and since nothing is likely to change in the short-term, finished vehicle inventory supply/demand will remain tight over the near to intermediate term and weigh on industry sales, driven primarily by supply chain issues (such as semiconductor shortages) coupled with strong sell-through (demand indicators are generally strong, albeit moderating slightly). As a result, most strategists expect new vehicle pricing to remain at a high level in 2021 and decline only modestly over the course of 2022.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/06/2021 – 19:10 - As US Stocks Stumble, SecState Blinken Suddenly Urges China To "Act Responsibly" On Evergrande
As US Stocks Stumble, SecState Blinken Suddenly Urges China To “Act Responsibly” On Evergrande
Since the crisis in China’s housing market begin to explode as Evergrande’s massive ponzi pile-up started to plunge – which followed China’s tech crackdown that smashed Chinese tech firms lower, and China’ education system crackdown which pummeled China’s education stocks – the ‘expected’ contagion has apparently been modest at worst and Washington’s politerati have been quiet on the issues “over there.”
However, the last couple of weeks have seen the teflon market in the US start to shake a little…
Which may help to explain why Secretary of State Antony Blinken has suddenly decided to chime in, demanding China “act responsibly” in how it addresses (translation: bails out) the potential impact of an Evergrande default crisis.
“China has to make sovereign economic decisions for itself, but we also know that what China does economically is going to have profound ramifications, profound effects, on literally the entire world because all of our economies are so intertwined,” Blinken said Wednesday in an interview in Paris with Bloomberg Television.
“So certainly when it comes to something that could have a major impact on the Chinese economy we look to China to act responsibly and to deal effectively with any challenges,” he added.
In other words – “fix it!” – before this things blows up all the good work we have done by puking trillions of free money into markets. Ironically, this demand is coming as US political chaos escalates.
We look forward to Beijing demanding that Washington “act responsibly” in dealing with USA’s sovereign risk…
Source: Bloomberg
The message: “Don’t throw stones in glass houses (or shower there).”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/06/2021 – 18:50
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