Today’s News 8th July 2021

• Russia Expels Detained Consul As Estonia Calls Spy Charges A "Setup"
  Russia Expels Detained Consul As Estonia Calls Spy Charges A “Setup”

  Estonia’s St. Petersburg consul has now been given 48 hours to leave Russia following his Tuesday detention by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) over allegations he was “caught red-handed” receiving classified files from a Russian national.

  “On 7 July, Charge d’Affaires of the Estonian Embassy in Russia Ulla Uibo was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry. The Russian side expressed a strong protest in connection with the intelligence gathering activities by Estonian Consul to St. Petersburg Mart Lätte, which are incompatible with the diplomatic status of the Consul,” an official statement from the ministry read, with Russian media reporting that the top diplomat earlier identified as Mart Lätte has been ordered to leave the country.

  

  The FSB apprehended him Tuesday on charges of “receiving classified information from a Russian citizen.”

  The agency’s full statement had been forceful and insistent on his guilt:

  “The Russian Federal Security Service in St. Petersburg have detained Estonian diplomat — consul of the Consulate General of the Republic of Estonia in St. Petersburg Mart Lätte — caught red-handed while receiving classified materials from a Russian citizen,” the FSB’s Center for Public Relations (CPR) was cited in Russian news agency Interfax as saying.

  The incident appears a tit-for-tat style “answer” to recent allegations which have seen Russian diplomats and military attaches get kicked out of Europe for mirror image charges, and particularly from NATO member Estonia.

  Estonia is rejecting the allegations, instead slamming the ordeal as a “set-up” and “provocation” by Russian intelligence:

  Estonia’s Foreign Ministry said the detention was another example of Russia choosing confrontation with the European Union.

  …The Kremlin has expelled Estonian diplomats two times this year, both in retaliation for Estonia’s expulsion of Russian diplomats.

  #Estonia Calls #Russia‘s Detention Of Its Consul In St. Petersburg A ‘Setup’ https://t.co/93nrCW97px

  — Ville Kostian (@Kostian_V) July 6, 2021

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

  Additionally it comes after the FSB in April arrested Ukrainian consul Alexander Sosonyuk in St. Petersburg on very similar allegations of spying. Sosonyuk had been held and interviewed for hours at an FSB office before release. Upon his presence being declared by Russian authorities as “unwanted” he left the country.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 07/08/2021 – 02:45

• Escobar: The Chinese Miracle, Revisited
  Escobar: The Chinese Miracle, Revisited

  Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,

  Western exceptionalists may continue to throw a fit 24/7 ad infinitum: that will not change the course of history.

  

  The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) centennial takes place this week at the heart of an incandescent geopolitical equation.

  China, the emerging superpower, is back to the global prominence it enjoyed throughout centuries of recorded history, while the declining Hegemon is paralyzed by the “existential challenge” posed to its fleeting, unilateral dominance.

  A mindset of full spectrum confrontation already sketched in the 2017 U.S. National Security Review is sliding fast into fear, loathing and relentless Sinophobia.

  Add to it the Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership graphically exposing the ultimate Mackinderian nightmare of Anglo-American elites jaded by “ruling the world” – for only two centuries at best.

  The Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping may have coined the ultimate formula for what many in the West defined as the Chinese miracle:

  “To seek truth from facts, not from dogmas, whether from East or West”.

  So this was never about divine intervention, but planning, hard work, and learning by trial and error.

  The recent session of the National People’s Congress provides a stark example. Not only it approved a new Five-Year Plan, but in fact a full road map for China’s development up to 2035: three plans in one.

  What the whole world saw, in practice, was the manifest efficiency of the Chinese governance system, capable of designing and implementing extremely complex geoeconomic strategies after plenty of local and regional debate on a vast range of policy initiatives.

  Compare it to the endless bickering and gridlock in Western liberal democracies, which are incapable of planning for the next quarter, not to mention fifteen years.

  The best and the brightest in China actually do their Deng; they couldn’t care less about the politicizing of governance systems. What matters is what they define as a very effective system to make SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound) development plans, and put them in practice.

  The 85% popular vote

  At the start of 2021, before the onset of the Year of the Metal Ox, President Xi Jinping emphasized that  “favorable social conditions” should be in place for the CCP centennial celebrations.

  Oblivious to waves of demonization coming from the West, for Chinese public opinion what matters is whether the CCP delivered. And deliver it did (over 85% popular approval). China controlled Covid-19 in record time; economic growth is back; poverty alleviation was achieved; and the civilization-state became a “moderately prosperous society” – right on schedule for the CCP centennial.

  Since 1949, the size of the Chinese economy soared by a whopping 189 times. Over the past two decades, China’s GDP grew 11-fold. Since 2010, it more than doubled, from $6 trillion to $15 trillion, and now accounts for 17% of global economic output.

  No wonder Western grumbling is irrelevant. Shanghai Capital investment boss Eric Li succinctly describes the governance gap; in the U.S., government changes but not policy. In China, government doesn’t change; policy does.

  This is the background for the next development stage – where the CCP will in fact double down on its unique hybrid model of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”.

  The key point is that the Chinese leadership, via non-stop policy adjustments (trial and error, always) has evolved a model of “peaceful rise” – their own terminology – that essentially respects China’s immense historical and cultural experiences.

  In this case, Chinese exceptionalism means respecting Confucianism – which privileges harmony and abhors conflict – as well as Daoism – which privileges balance – over the boisterous, warring, hegemonic Western model.

  This is reflected in major policy adjustments such as the new “dual circulation” drive, which places greater emphasis on the domestic market compared to China as the “factory of the world”.

  Past and future are totally intertwined in China; what was done in previous dynasties echoes in the future. The best contemporary example is the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – the overarching Chinese foreign policy concept for the foreseeable future.

  As detailed by Renmin University Professor Wang Yiwei, BRI is about to reshape geopolitics, “bringing Eurasia back to its historical place at the center of human civilization.” Wang has shown how “the two great civilizations of the East and the West were linked until the rise of the Ottoman Empire cut off the Ancient Silk Road”.

  Europe moving seaward led to “globalization through colonization”; the decline of the Silk Road; the world’s center shifting to the West; the rise of the U.S.; and the decline of Europe. Now, Wang argues, “Europe is faced with a historic opportunity to return to the world center through the revival of Eurasia.”

  And that’s exactly what the Hegemon will go no holds barred to prevent.

  Zhu and Xi

  It’s fair to argue that Xi’s historical counterpart is the Hongwu emperor Zhu, the founder of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). The emperor was keen to present his dynasty as a Chinese renewal after Mongol domination via the Yuan dynasty.

  Xi frames it as “Chinese rejuvenation”: “China used to be a world economic power. However, it missed its chance in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and the consequent dramatic changes, and was thus left behind and suffered humiliation under foreign invasion …we must not let this tragic history repeat itself.”

  The difference is that 21st century China under Xi will not retreat inward as it did under the Ming. The parallel for the near future would rather be with the Tang dynasty (618-907), which privileged trade and interactions with the world at large.

  To comment on the torrent of Western misinterpretations of China is a waste of time. For the Chinese, the overwhelming majority of Asia, and for the Global South, much more relevant is to register how the American imperial narrative – “we are the liberators of Asia-Pacific” – has now been totally debunked.

  In fact Chairman Mao may end up having the last laugh. As he wrote in 1957, “if the imperialists insist on launching a third world war, it is certain that several hundred million more will turn to socialism, and then there will not be much room left on earth for the imperialists; it is also likely that the whole structure of imperialism will utterly collapse.”

  Martin Jacques, one of the very few Westerners who actually studied China in depth, correctly pointed out how “China has enjoyed five separate periods when it has enjoyed a position of pre-eminence – or shared pre-eminence – in the world: part of the Han, the Tang, arguably the Song, the early Ming, and the early Qing.”

  So China, historically, does represent continuous renewal and “rejuvenation” (Xi). We’re right in the middle of another one of these phases – now conducted by a CCP dynasty that, incidentally, does not believe in miracles, but in hardcore planning. Western exceptionalists may continue to throw a fit 24/7 ad infinitum: that will not change the course of history.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 07/08/2021 – 02:00

• The Second Amendment's Right To Bear Arms: What It Means
  The Second Amendment’s Right To Bear Arms: What It Means

  Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

  – The Second Amendment to the US Constitution

  You can largely determine where a person will fall in the debate over gun control and the Second Amendment based on their view of government and the role it should play in our lives.

  

  In the first group are those who see the government as a Nanny State, empowered to look out for the best interests of the populace, even when that means overriding our rights as individuals and free will.

  These individuals tend to interpret the Second Amendment to mean that only members of law enforcement and the military are entitled to own a gun. Case in point: President Biden recently (and wrongly) asserted that “the Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own. You couldn’t buy a cannon.”

  In the second group are those who see the government as inherently corrupt.

  These individuals tend to view the Second Amendment as a means of self-defense, whether that involves defending themselves against threats to their freedoms or threats from individuals looking to harm them. For instance, eleven men were recently arrested for traveling on the interstate with unlicensed guns that were not secured in a case. The group, reportedly associated with a sovereign citizens group, claimed to be traveling from Rhode Island to Maine for militia training.

  And then there is a third group, made up of those who view the government as neither good nor evil, but merely a powerful entity that, as Thomas Jefferson recognized, must be bound “down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” To this group, the Second Amendment’s assurance of the people’s right to bear arms is no different from any other right enshrined in the Constitution: to be safeguarded, exercised prudently and maintained.

  How to exercise this right is the question that keeps jockeying for supremacy before the U.S. Supreme Court. After declaring more than a decade ago that citizens have a Second Amendment right to own a gun in one’s home for self-defense, the Court has now been tasked with deciding whether the Constitution also protects the right to carry a gun outside the home. The case, NY State Rifle & Pistol Assoc. v. Corlett, takes issue with a state law that requires a license in order to carry a concealed gun outside the home.

  On the heels of Corlett is another legal challenge to the state’s authority to regulate—or ban outright—gun ownership outside the home. The attorneys general of 21 states—including Louisiana, Arizona, Montana, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming—have filed an amicus brief in Young v. Hawaii asking the Supreme Court to uphold Hawaiians’ Second Amendment rights to bear arms outside their homes.

  Unfortunately, while the various federal circuit courts of appeal continue to disagree over the exact nature of the rights protected by the Second Amendment, the government itself has made its position extremely clear.

  When it comes to gun rights in particular, and the rights of the citizenry overall, the U.S. government has adopted a “do what I say, not what I do” mindset. Nowhere is this double standard more evident than in the government’s attempts to arm itself to the teeth, all the while viewing as suspect anyone who dares to legally own a gun, let alone use one in self-defense.

  Indeed, while it still technically remains legal to own a firearm in America, possessing one can now get you pulled over, searched, arrested, subjected to all manner of surveillance, treated as a suspect without ever having committed a crime, shot at, and killed. (This same rule does not apply to law enforcement officials, however, who are armed to the hilt and rarely given more than a slap on the wrists for using their weapons against unarmed individuals.)

  Now the Biden Administration is setting its sights on gun control.

  Mark my words: gun control legislation, especially in the form of red flag gun laws, which allow the police to remove guns from people “suspected” of being threats, will become yet another means by which to subvert the Constitution and sabotage the rights of the people.

  Giving police the power to preemptively raid homes in order to neutralize a potential threat is a powder keg waiting for a lit match.

  Under these red flag laws, what happened to Duncan Lemp—who was gunned down in his bedroom during an early morning, no-knock SWAT team raid on his family’s home—could very well happen to more people.

  At 4:30 a.m. on March 12, 2020, in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic that had most of the country under a partial lockdown and sheltering at home, a masked SWAT team—deployed to execute a “high risk” search warrant for unauthorized firearms—stormed the suburban house where 21-year-old Duncan, a software engineer and Second Amendment advocate, lived with his parents and 19-year-old brother.

  The entire household, including Lemp and his girlfriend, was reportedly asleep when the SWAT team directed flash bang grenades and gunfire through Lemp’s bedroom window.

  Lemp was killed and his girlfriend injured.

  No one in the house that morning, including Lemp, had a criminal record.

  No one in the house that morning, including Lemp, was considered an “imminent threat” to law enforcement or the public, at least not according to the search warrant.

  So what was so urgent that militarized police felt compelled to employ battlefield tactics in the pre-dawn hours of a day when most people are asleep in bed, not to mention stuck at home as part of a nationwide lockdown?

  According to police, they were tipped off that Lemp was in possession of “firearms.”

  Thus, rather than approaching the house by the front door at a reasonable hour in order to investigate this complaint—which is what the Fourth Amendment requires—police instead strapped on their guns, loaded up their flash bang grenades and acted like battle-crazed warriors.

  This is what happens when you adopt red flag gun laws, which Maryland did in 2018, painting anyone who might be in possession of a gun—legal or otherwise—as a threat that must be neutralized.

  Meanwhile, the government’s efforts to militarize and weaponize its agencies and employees is reaching epic proportions, with federal agencies as varied as the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration placing orders for hundreds of millions of rounds of hollow point bullets. Moreover, under the auspices of a military “recycling” program, which allows local police agencies to acquire military-grade weaponry and equipment, $4.2 billion worth of equipment has been transferred from the Defense Department to domestic police agencies since 1990. Included among these “gifts” are tank-like 20-ton Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, tactical gear, and assault rifles.

  Ironically, while the Biden administration’s gun control efforts have helped to spike gun sales nationally, the government has made no effort to curtail its own addiction to weapons of war, a significant number of which have conveniently been “lost” and used in violent crimes in communities across the U.S.

  We’re talking about rifles, pistols, machine guns, shot guns, and grenades. Some of these weapons were lost through gross negligence. Others, however, were trafficked by military police.

  The U.S. military boasts weapons the rest of the world doesn’t have, and it continues to develop even more weaponry, each deadlier than the last.

  Make no mistake: every last one of these weapons will eventually make its way back to domestic police forces to be used against the American people.

  Included in the government’s military arsenal are armed, surveillance Reaper drones capable of reading a license plate from over two miles away; an AA12 Atchisson Assault Shotgun that can shoot five 12-gauge shells per second and “can fire up to 9,000 rounds without being cleaned or jamming”; an ADAPTIV invisibility cloak that can make a tank disappear or seemingly reshape it to look like a car; a PHASR rifle capable of blinding and disorienting anyone caught in its sights; a Taser shockwave that can electrocute a crowd of people at the touch of a button; an XM2010 enhanced sniper rifle with built-in sound and flash suppressors that can hit a man-sized target nine out of ten times from over a third of a mile away; and an XM25 “Punisher” grenade launcher that can be programmed to accurately shoot grenades at a target up to 500 meters away.

  What the government has yet to acknowledge, however, is that its own gun violence—inflicted on unarmed individuals by battlefield-trained SWAT teams, militarized police, and bureaucratic government agents trained to shoot first and ask questions later—is not making America any safer.

  Indeed, the U.S. government may be the most egregious perpetrator of gun violence in America, bar none.

  All the while gun critics continue to clamor for bans on military-style assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and armor-piercing bullets, the U.S. military is passing them out to domestic police forces.

  Under the auspices of a military “recycling” program, which allows local police agencies to acquire military-grade weaponry and equipment, more than $4.2 billion worth of equipment has been transferred from the Defense Department to domestic police agencies since 1990. Included among these “gifts” are tank-like, 20-ton Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, tactical gear, and assault rifles.

  There are now reportedly more bureaucratic (non-military) government agents armed with high-tech, deadly weapons than U.S. Marines.

  While Americans have to jump through an increasing number of hoops in order to own a gun, the government is arming its own civilian employees to the hilt with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment, authorizing them to make arrests, and training them in military tactics.

  Among the agencies being supplied with night-vision equipment, body armor, hollow-point bullets, shotguns, drones, assault rifles and LP gas cannons are the Smithsonian, U.S. Mint, Health and Human Services, IRS, FDA, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Education Department, Energy Department, Bureau of Engraving and Printing and an assortment of public universities.

  This is the double standard at play here.

  How is it that while violence has become our government’s calling card, from the more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans by heavily armed, black-garbed commandos and the increasingly rapid militarization of local police forces across the country to the drone killings used to target insurgents, “we the people” are the ones who must be regulated, restricted and banned from owning a weapon?

  If we’re truly going to get serious about gun violence, why not start by scaling back the American police state’s weapons of war?

  I’ll tell you why: because the government has no intention of scaling back on its weapons.

  We’ve allowed ourselves to get so focused on debating who or what is responsible for gun violence—the guns, the gun owners, or our violent culture—and whether the Second Amendment “allows” us to own guns that we’ve overlooked the most important and most consistent theme throughout the Constitution: the fact that it is not merely an enumeration of our rights but was intended to be a clear shackle on the government’s powers.

  When considered in the context of prohibitions against the government, the Second Amendment reads as a clear rebuke against any attempt to restrict the citizenry’s gun ownership.

  As such, it is as necessary an ingredient for maintaining that tenuous balance between the citizenry and their republic as any of the other amendments in the Bill of Rights, especially the right to freedom of speech, assembly, press, petition, security, and due process.

  Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas understood this tension well. “The Constitution is not neutral,” he remarked, “It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.”

  In this way, the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights in their entirety stand as a bulwark against a police state.

  To our detriment, these rights have been steadily weakened, eroded and undermined in recent years. Yet without any one of them, including the Second Amendment right to own and bear arms, we are that much more vulnerable to the vagaries of out-of-control policemen, benevolent dictators, genuflecting politicians, and overly ambitious bureaucrats.

  When all is said and done, the debate over gun ownership really has little to do with gun violence in America. It’s also not even a question of whether Americans need weapons to defend themselves against any overt threats to our safety or wellbeing.

  Truly, the debate over gun ownership in America is really a debate over who gets to call the shots and control the game.

  In other words, it’s that same tug-of-war that keeps getting played out in every confrontation between the government and the citizenry over who gets to be the master and who is relegated to the part of the servant.

  The Constitution, with its multitude of prohibitions on government overreach, is clear on this particular point. As 20th century libertarian Edmund A. Opitz observed in 1964, “No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words ‘no’ and ‘not’ employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights.”

  In a nutshell, as I make clear in Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms reflects not only a concern for one’s personal defense, but serves as a check on the political power of the ruling authorities.

  It represents an implicit warning against governmental encroachments on one’s freedoms, the warning shot over the bow to discourage any unlawful violations of our persons or property.

  As such, it reinforces that necessary balance in the citizen-state relationship. As George Orwell, who plays a starring role in my new novel The Erik Blair Diaries, noted, “That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer’s cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 07/08/2021 – 00:05

• Surprise!? Womens' Rights Group Urge Newsom To End Prison Transgender-Mixing After Numerous Attacks, Rapes
  Surprise!? Womens’ Rights Group Urge Newsom To End Prison Transgender-Mixing After Numerous Attacks, Rapes

  File this under “another liberal experiment blows up that every rational thinking human could have seen coming”…

  

  On January 1, a law went into effect in California (foreshadowing Democrats’ “Equality Act” bill – requiring people to be treated according to their gender identity, not biological sex), holding that state prisoners must be housed in a facility consistent with their gender identity, regardless of their anatomy.

  Six months later and guess what has occurred…

  There has been numerous complaints of assaulted, abused, and traumatized women at the hands of male inmates transferred into their prisons.

  

  And one group of traditionally progressive activists – the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) – has sent a letter to Goverror Gavin Newsom, accusing the state of violating the constitutional rights of incarcerated women by allowing men into their living quarters to “prey on women.”

  WoLF Legal Director Lauren Adams said:

  “We are working with a woman who was punched in the face so hard by a new transfer that she couldn’t chew for three days. He was taken away and released back in a different yard with no restrictions,” Adams said.

  “He was her cellmate. She had to sleep with him.”

  Other women have been sexually abused in the past and must now contend with nude men sharing communal showers, Adams said.

  “One woman went in there with two naked men showering who still had penises,” Adams added.

  “It was incredibly traumatic and scary, to know for, [possibly], the rest of their lives they are going to be subjected to this.”

  Yahoo News reports that the state currently has 273 transfer requests; 266 are from people housed at male institutions requesting to be transferred to a female institution, and seven are from people at female institutions requesting to be transferred to a male institution, according to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

  Currently, 24 male prisoners have been transferred to female institutions.

  In a shockingly truthful (and sure to get you canceled) comment, WoLF theorizes that many men transferring into women’s prisons are not transgender but are just trying to escape their current living situation.

  “A lot of these men checking the box and trying to get transfers are probably trying to save their lives. I wouldn’t want to be in the men’s prison,” Adams said.

  “You are giving them a way to get out of that, but now it’s the women who are in danger.”

  WoLF is asking the governor to halt all new transfers and remove the inmates who have already transferred until a safety assessment can be made.

  Finally, remember Karen?

  The most famous transgender prison rapist in England is a man calling himself Karen White who was sent to prison after stabbing a neighbor. Despite a history that included sexual assault, exposure, sexually abusing minors, and cruelty to animals, he ended up in a women’s prison, where he promptly sexually assaulted women.

  

  The problem isn’t limited to England.

  It seems “Karen” has come to America… just as we warned.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/07/2021 – 23:45

• Almost Overnight, Standards Of Color-Blind Merit Tumble Across American Society
  Almost Overnight, Standards Of Color-Blind Merit Tumble Across American Society

  By Richard Bernstein, of RealClearInvestigations

  A broad revolution is underway in the United States as traditional standards used to measure achievement and provide opportunity are being rejected by schools, corporations, and governments in favor of quotas based on race and gender.

  On taking office, President Biden signaled that the nation’s long-held principle of equality for all had come to an end, signing executive orders to advance racial equity “across the Federal Government” — equity referring to the idea that merely treating everybody the same is not enough, and that an equal outcome for all people has to be the goal.

  Over the last few months, many Ivy League and flagship state universities have moved away from a seemingly neutral measure long used to assess applicants – standardized test scores – to give minorities a better shot at admissions.

  In May, Hewlett-Packard, the technology company with 50,000 employees worldwide, decreed that by 2030 half of its leadership positions and more than 30% of its technicians and engineers have to be women and that the number of minorities should “meet or exceed” their representation in the tech industry workforce. 

  That same month, United Airlines announced that half of the 5,000 pilots it would train at its proprietary flight school between now and 2030 will be women or people of color, with scholarships provided by United and JPMorgan Chase helping with tuition. There was nothing in the United announcement showing that there were enough qualified blacks and women in the pipeline so that a black/female quota of 2,500 new pilots could be filled, and nothing about what the company would do if there weren’t enough qualified candidates.

  Delta Airlines, Ralph Lauren, and Wells Fargo are among other major American companies to announce hiring quotas recently as a way to redress racial imbalances, according to Bloomberg News. 

  These are just some of the many “woke” initiatives embraced by many of the pillars of American society in the year since social justice protests erupted across the country in response to the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

  Supporters argue that racial preferences and quotas are necessary to end deeply entrenched disparities. Critics say that they are a new form of discrimination, no more justified than old forms that are widely rejected. And while the stated goal of affirmative action was to simply eliminate unfair discrimination, the equity movement is rooted in a far more expansive and pessimistic view of the United States as irredeemably white supremacist, a view meant to continually challenge American institutions and values.

  The rapid transition from equality of treatment to equality of outcomes tests one of the basic post-civil rights principles of American life, namely that the same standards should be applied to all people. Once a measure is applied, not to the unique individual but to that individual’s group identity, the idea that there are neutral, common, universally applicable standards gives way to something else, something subjective and political, with different measures applied to different people, depending on their sex, race, or other characteristics.

  The issue of standards, moreover, is not just a matter of values or fairness. With the United States falling behind other countries in math and science, most notably China, standards are matters of competitiveness and national security — even as the military, CIA and other federal agencies embrace equity.

  

  But discontent over the pace of racial progress, fueled in the past year by the Black Lives Matter movement, has led to an explicit rejection of meritocracy and a call for old standards to make way for new ones. Explaining the company’s adoption of quotas, Hewlett-Packard Chief Diversity Officer Lesley Slaton Brown said the COVID-19 epidemic and the George Floyd murder has “really allowed us to do the double-click down on racial equality and the systematic and structural discrimination that exists.”

  In the recent past, that effort often involved working with the existing ideological framework of equality of opportunity and merit to identify worthy candidates. Now, the trend is to reject and redefine those standards.

  “As a community, we need a more comprehensive framework for what constitutes ‘best’ in hiring faculty and staff,” Gregory Washington,  the president of George Mason University in Virginia, wrote in an email sent recently to the entire school. Washington, who is GMU’s first ever black president, denied that his call for greater diversity amounted to a quota system; instead, he said, “it is a recognition of the reality that our society’s future lies in multicultural inclusion.”

  Certainly it is true that the American future is multicultural. Still, to say that the concept of “best” needs to be redefined in racial terms is already a significant departure from the idea of neutral standards. To go from there to the notion that meritocracy is a racist stratagem is a sea change, but there is a lot of evidence that that is exactly where society is going, in both small ways and large.

  In May, the Princeton University classics department announced that in an effort to combat “systemic racism,” it would no longer require classics majors to take Latin or Greek. This may be a good thing or a bad thing, but certainly it says that what was until recently a foundational qualification for the study of “the classics” — the ability to read texts in their original language — no longer applies, because some students, especially minority ones, didn’t have the opportunity to study Latin or Greek in high school. But is it really OK for future professors of classics not to know Latin? Is that simply a new standard or a decline in standards?

  From a very different area of American life, none other than the very august American Medical Association announced in May a new Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity in medical education and practice.

  The 80-page plan calls for, among other things, an expansion of “medical school and physician education to include equity, anti-racism, structural competency, public health and social sciences, critical race theory, and historical basis of disease.” It doesn’t say whether adding those subjects to the medical school curriculum, which sounds a lot like instruction in the indelibly racist nature of America, will take away time from such other subjects as anatomy, microbiology, and genetics that are clearly more germane to the practice of medicine.

  “Scientific evidence tells us that racism has caused significant harm to people – and their health – throughout our nation’s history,” Gregory E. Harmon, M.D., the AMA’s president elect, who is white, said in an email to RCI, explaining the initiative.

  Perhaps the most striking passages in the AMA document are those that have to do with equality and meritocracy, which it calls “malignant narratives.”

  “Seeking to treat everyone the ‘same’ ignores the historical legacy of disinvestment and deprivation,” the document says of equality, while meritocracy is “a narrative that attributes success and failure to individual abilities and merits. It does not address the centuries of unequal treatment that have historically robbed communities of the vital resources needed to thrive.”

  Some critics have noted that the Strategic Plan says nothing about competency; several doctors posting to the blog Legal Insurrection asked if members of the AMA would be comfortable allowing them or their families to be treated, as one of them put it, “by those who have MD attached to their names solely in the name of equity … not because of meritocracy or qualification.”

  The AMA rejects that view.  “Not only must we follow our oath to do no harm,” Harmon said in his email to RCI, “we must also prevent the harm that that inequity inflicts on communities and our nation.”

  There is, of course, some truth to the assertion that standards have been misused in the past. There was a time not that long ago when social connections, a genteel manner, even just having an Anglo-Saxon name, not to mention being white, were deemed to be qualifications in themselves, while to be black, female, or gay was disqualifying.

  But what the AMA document, like “woke” doctrine in general, ignores is that the national effort to redress past wrongs has been going on for a long time in American life, making the matter of racial advantage and disadvantage more a matter of multivariable calculus than simple arithmetic. To be sure, there are racial imbalances. Only 3.2% of senior corporate executives, for example, are black. It’s easy to see the demand for this number to increase, but there are many questions, involving both practicality and principle, about the use of racial quotas to achieve that goal.

  

  On the practical side are the people hurt by them, both those unprepared for the roles as well as the qualified passed over. There is also the question of whether efforts like those at United and HP may simply run into the inconvenient fact that, for many complicated reasons, there simply aren’t enough qualified minority candidates around to meet goals for rapid increases in their representation.

  According to the National Science Foundation, black men and women, who are 12% of the general population, make up just 5% of working engineers — this despite affirmative action programs and numerous other efforts over the years to recruit minorities into engineering programs in colleges and universities. How dramatic increases in a very short period can happen now remains unexplained.

  As for American medicine, it’s been a very long time since it was a white male preserve, as just about any visit to a large urban hospital, with their many Filipino and Indian physicians both male and female, will show. For several years now, more women have been accepted to medical schools than men, but while the numbers of blacks going to medical school has also increased, only 5% of physicians in the country are black or African American.  

  This is the case even though black students are now accepted into medical school at almost the same rate as whites, 41% of black applicants compared to 45% of whites. Medical schools, like other professional schools, have, moreover, been eager to increase these numbers for years, so that blacks, whites, and Asians are already being admitted under different criteria. In 2018, Princeton Review reports, blacks accepted at medical schools scored an average 505.7 on the MCAT, the standardized med school admission test – putting them in the 69th percentile of all test takers. By comparison, the average score for admitted whites was 512.2 (the 86th percentile) and 513.8 for Asians. Average undergraduate GPAs: 3.53 for blacks, 3.77 for both whites and Asians.

  The Strategic Plan offers no concrete suggestions for further increasing the numbers of blacks in medical school, and it makes no analysis of whether it’s even possible to do that. Is there a pool of qualified candidates that, somehow, is not being considered?  Should medical school admission committees admit some of the applicants rejected in the past, even though that would increase the gap in test scores and GPAs between them and other students? Will teaching critical race theory to existing medical students increase minority representation? 

  Asked about medical school admissions, Harmon pointed to studies showing that medical students with “midrange” scores on the MCAT “mostly succeed in medical school,” though “there is a tendency to overlook these applicants in favor of those with higher scores.” 

  The authors of the studies argue that admitting students with lower MCAT scores would “diversify the physician workforce.” But given that black students are already being admitted at a significantly lower standard, at least as defined by MCAT, than whites and Asians, how much lower can the standard go? The studies give no answer to that question.

  The AMA Plan also fails to address the question of principle raised by applying different standards to different groups. Is it fair to effectively prevent some qualified individuals from becoming doctors because their gender or race requires them to score higher than other genders or races? It’s the same question that applies to the different standards applied to Asians, compared to both whites and blacks, in school admissions, a matter that is the subject of several lawsuits.

  “We are taught to study for the test, to get good grades,” Kenny Xu, author of a forthcoming book “An Inconvenient Minority: The Attack on Asian American Excellence and the Fight for Meritocracy,” said in an email. “Why? Because those good grades and test scores will, and should, lead to rewards in the future.

  “How would you feel if someone who studied a third as much as you did got an opportunity you’ve been wanting for years?  That would be absolutely unfair. And yet, that is what woke ideology does.”

  

  Despite views like those, standardized tests have been under assault for years as obstacles to minority advancement, especially tests for elite high schools in such cities as New York, Boston, and San Francisco, and the SAT used for college admissions.

  Elite schools including Lowell High School in San Francisco have dropped their admissions test in favor of a lottery system. This may increase racial diversity, but will the school be able to maintain its high academic standards?  The same question applies to other elite schools such as the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia, rated by U.S. News as the best high school in the country, which is also jettisoning its former standardized test in favor of “holistic” admissions.

  Similarly, last year, in what might prove to be a watershed decision, the regents of the University of California voted to phase out the SAT in admissions for the entire system, whose nine campuses make up the largest public university in the country.

  All of this raises the possibility that the elimination of common, neutral standards will bring an end to the existence of elite schools for very gifted, very high-achieving students of the sort who will ensure American competitiveness in the future.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if in two or three years standardized testing is eliminated altogether,” William Jacobson, a law professor at Cornell who runs the Legal Insurrection website, said in a Zoom interview. “You see people saying that the whole concept of meritocracy is a device to maintain white supremacy. But if you eliminate testing that has commonality to it, how do you judge people?”

  A similar rejection of the idea of merit lies behind another initiative in California, where the state Board of Education has adopted a “Framework” proposing that all gifted programs in math instruction be eliminated, along with all “acceleration” and “tracking” – that is, grouping students in different classes according to their math aptitude.

  “The subject and community of mathematics has a history of exclusion and filtering rather than inclusion and welcoming,” the Framework states. “We reject ideas of natural gifts and talents … and the cult of genius.” Very early on, women and minorities get “fixed labels of ‘giftedness’ and are taught differently” in a system “designed for privileged white boys,” the Framework says.

  No doubt, there’s truth to the idea that some children are discouraged early when it comes to math, and that that holds them back. But the idea, as the Framework puts it, that “all students are capable of becoming powerful mathematics learners and users” seems utopian at the very least. Can all students become great mathematicians, violinists, or professional athletes, or is the very difference in natural abilities due to labels arbitrarily applied to children largely on the basis of their sex or race?     

  Moreover, the assertion that the system is “designed for privileged white boys” runs into someinconvenient facts: one is that plenty of “privileged white boys” can’t do math to save their lives; another  is that Asians, both boys and girls, many of them immigrants from very modest circumstances, outperform these privileged white boys by considerable margins.  In addition, overall, girls get at least equal or higher grades than boys in math from elementary to high school, despite the stereotyping “labels” that, according to the Math Framework, hold them back.

  As for gifted programs favoring whites while keeping minorities out, according to the very statistics included in the Math Framework, 32% of Asian boys and girls in California are in “gifted” programs, compared to 8% of whites and 4% of blacks. So it would seem indisputable that to eliminate these programs would have the effect of placing many Asians, but not many whites, in slower classes.

  The solution to math disparities, according to the Framework, is to group all students of all aptitudes in the same class and for teachers to give “differentiated work and more open math questions” to all of them.

  The Framework doesn’t say exactly why this would be better than grouping more proficient math students in their own classes. Emails asking that and other questions were acknowledged by the Board of Education press office, but it did not respond to the actual questions.

  American high school students have steadily been falling behind their Asian and European counterparts in math and science, most recently ranking 37th in the PISA, the Program for International Student Assessment, which gives a test to 15-year-olds in countries around the world. China’s Shanghai ranks No.1.

  The California Math Framework does not acknowledge that in Shanghai, the entirely opposite ideas about testing and standards are followed and implemented, with students tested early and often and placed into classes in accordance with their scores.

  “Regarding minorities in particular, public K-12 education all too often produces students unprepared to compete, thus leading to large disparities in admissions at universities, graduate programs and faculty positions,” three math professors recently wrote in the online journal Persuasion.

  “This disparity is then condemned as a manifestation of structural racism. Resulting in administrative measures to lower the evaluation criteria. Lowering standards at all levels leads eventually to even worse outcomes and larger disparities, and so on in a downward spiral.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/07/2021 – 23:25

• Delta Could Disrupt Emerging World's Post-COVID Recovery, Goldman Warns
  Delta Could Disrupt Emerging World’s Post-COVID Recovery, Goldman Warns

  Now that the Delta variant has revived fears about renewed COVID outbreaks from the US to Europe to Asia, a team of analysts at Goldman Sachs has published its analysis of the risks posed by the mutated strain. The conclusion: since full vaccination remains effective at preventing infections, countries with low vaccination rates are the most vulnerable to another outbreak of the Delta variant.

  As Goldman pointed out in an earlier note, the Delta variant represents a growing share of new COVID cases.

  

  Accordingly, the Goldman team sees the risk of high hospitalizations and fatalities, followed by economy-damaging lockdowns, as rising most rapidly in Russia, South Africa, and Indonesia.

  

  However, a more important takeaway involves the difficulty of achieving “COVID zero”, something no country – not even China – has managed to achieve. If nothing else, the rise of the Delta variant likely increases the risk that COVID will become endemic like the flu.

  Of course, most countries have already come to terms with the fact that “COVID zero” probably isn’t a realistic public health goal.

  But in Australia, Israel and China, it could complicate authorities efforts to move past the crisis (though Goldman expects a gradual H2 recovery in consumption as infections “stabilize” in Australia and continue to decline in China).

  The most likely scenario implies a slightly slower global reopening, with the risk highest in countries with low vaccination rates. Still, “our global GDP growth forecasts of 6.6% in 2021 and 4.8% in 2022 therefore remain optimistic in absolute terms, although they are now closer to the consensus than at any point since April 2020.”

  

  The rest of Goldman’s note consisted of a Q&A where analysts answered clients’ questions:

  Q. The Delta variant (first identified in India) is estimated to be 50-60% more transmissible than the Alpha variant (first identified in the UK). How effective are the Western vaccines against the Delta variant?

  A. While the Delta variant weighs on the efficacy of vaccines (and especially single doses) at preventing infections (especially asymptomatic infections), Pfizer and AstraZeneca full vaccinations remain highly effective at protecting hospitalizations, and Moderna and J&J lab results look encouraging

  A study from Public Health England estimates elevated Delta-specific efficacies at preventing hospitalizations of 94%/96% after one/two Pfizer doses and 71%/92% after one/two AstraZeneca doses. Public Health England estimates lower efficacies at preventing symptomatic disease after two doses for Pfizer of 88% and 60% for AstraZeneca. Similarly, a new study from Canada also estimates an 87% efficacy of full Pfizer vaccinations to prevent symptomatic disease. The symptomatic efficacy, however, is lower after one dose and estimated at one-third for both Pfizer and AstraZeneca in the English study, and 56%/72% for Pfizer/Moderna in the Canadian study

  Yesterday, Israel’s Health Ministry reported a 64% effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine in preventing any infections and a 93% effectiveness in preventing hospitalizations. The 64% estimate likely corresponds to the effectiveness to prevent both asymptomatic and symptomatic infections while the studies from England and Canada and clinical trials assess symptomatic infections. Taken at face value, these headline numbers suggest a reduced ability of the Pfizer vaccine to stop the transmission of Delta infections relative to previously dominant strains, although the “additional” infections are more likely to be asymptomatic.

  Finally, in vitro studies from Moderna and Johnson & Johnson demonstrate their ability to neutralize the Delta variant with neutralizing titers that were lower compared to the ancestral strain but higher than for the Beta variant (first identified in South Africa), where high efficacy against severe disease was clinically demonstrated.

  Q. How effective are the Eastern vaccines against the Delta variant?

  A. Although data remain very limited, Chinese and Russian expert commentary and clinical trial results from India’s Bharat Biotech suggest that the Sinopharm, Sputnik V, and Bharat Biotech vaccines provide solid protection against severe disease.

  Q. What about Delta’s impact on reinfection risk?

  A. Although the data are particularly limited, research and experts suggest that prior infections continue to provide some protection against Delta, especially against severe disease.

  Q. The UK is experiencing a surge in infections although hospitalizations and especially fatalities remain relatively low (Exhibit 2). What drives this “decoupling” and will it continue?

  A. This mostly reflects the concentration of new infections among younger individuals but also a stronger vaccine protection against hospitalizations than against infections (especially for AstraZeneca). We therefore expect this decoupling to continue.

  

  

  Q. Are infections and hospitalizations/fatalities also “decoupling” outside of the UK?

  A. Most other economies with high vaccination rates and Delta outbreaks are also experiencing this decoupling, although it is particularly pronounced in the UK. We expect hospitalizations to remain relatively low in high vaccination countries.

  Q. Does the virus still matter for activity in North America and Europe if hospitalizations stay low?

  A. Yes. The virus GDP drag should, however, be much diminished and reflects travel restrictions, consumer risk aversion, and lingering softness in labor supply

  Q. Twenty-two US states have vaccinated less than half of their populations (Exhibit 11) and infections are rising rapidly in several low vaccination states. Do we not expect sharp Delta-induced rises in hospitalizations and substantial economic damage in these states too?

  

  A. While hospitalizations have already picked up in Arkansas, Missouri, and Nevada and are likely to increase further, we expect relatively limited economic damage for three reasons. First, higher elderly vaccination rates should limit the increase in hospitalizations (Exhibit 11). Second, the generally higher immunity rates from prior infections in these states should also limit the increase in hospitalizations (Exhibit 12, left panel and appendix). Third, the virus sensitivity of economic activity tends to be lower in low vaccination states (Exhibit 12, right panel).

  

  Q. The Delta variant has raised the theoretical bar to achieve herd immunity to probably at least 85% of the population. Does vaccine hesitancy imply that countries will never approach such high immunity levels?

  A. Not necessarily, and many medical experts believe the coronavirus will eventually turn from a pandemic to an endemic stage. The Delta variant likely implies higher ultimate vaccination rates (and immunity rates). In fact, further outbreaks appear to be sharply boosting demand in several countries, including the US, China, Australia, Israel, and especially Portugal (Exhibit 13).

  

  * * *

  Source: Goldman Sachs

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/07/2021 – 23:05

• Remington CEO: "We're Working 24/7 To Get Ammo Back On The Shelves" 
  Remington CEO: “We’re Working 24/7 To Get Ammo Back On The Shelves” 

  Shell shocked consumers have experienced a nationwide ammunition shortage since the virus pandemic began. In a video update Tuesday, Remington Ammunition President Jason Vanderbrink said the company is working “24/7 to get ammo back on the shelves.” 

  Vanderbrink said, “We’re working 24/7 so that you can find Remington ammo back on the shelves at your local retailer.” He provides a map of the country where ammo is reappearing on store shelves. 

  

  He addressed the ammo shortage and said, “We know it has been hard finding Remington ammo, but rest assure that our all-American factory in Arkansas is working 24/7 to get ammo made.” 

  Vanderbrink shows that Remington ammo is returning to retailers “all over the country.” 

  In a separate video in late April, Vanderbrink spoke of an ammo shortage and surging prices per round. He also addressed bullet primers, a device responsible for initiating the propellant combustion that pushes the bullet out of the barrel, were also in short supply. 

  However, relief has been coming to the ammo market as prices per round for various calibers have decreased since May. Though we must note, it’s unlikely that prices will return to pre-COVID levels. 

  

   On a percentage basis, the cost per round compared to pre-COVID is coming down but still elevated. 

  

  The great ammo shortage of 2020/21 could be normalizing, though with millions of new gun owners in the last year, demand for ammo, weapons, and parts will remain high. 

  We wonder if Remington would consider building a manufacturing facility in West Virginia since lawmakers are now offering substantial tax credits to ammo and gunmakers. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/07/2021 – 22:25

• Largest Teachers' Union Quietly Scrubs Pro-CRT Agenda Items From Website
  Largest Teachers’ Union Quietly Scrubs Pro-CRT Agenda Items From Website

  Authored by GQ Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The nation’s largest teachers’ union has quietly taken down a series of adopted and proposed resolutions from its website, including one that calls for the organization to defend the teaching of Marxism-rooted critical race theory (CRT) in public schools.

  

  The National Education Association (NEA), which represents more than 3 million employees in public education, previously showed on its website resolutions proposed during its 100th Representative Assembly. As of the morning of July 6, three days after the online convention concluded, visitors could use the website to track the status of those proposals, including whether they were approved, denied, or referred to a committee.

  On Tuesday afternoon, however, a number of those agenda items disappeared from the NEA’s website. Their pages now redirect visitors to the 2021 assembly home page instead.

  Among the now-hidden approved resolutions was Business Item 39, which would cost the union at least $127,600 to advance a pro-CRT agenda. According to the plan, the NEA would share and publicize information about “what CRT is and what it is not,” dedicate a “team of staffers” to assist union members who “want to learn more and fight back against anti-CRT rhetoric,” and provide a study that critiques “power and oppression” in American society, including “white supremacy,” “cisheteropatriarchy,” and capitalism.

  The measure would also affirm the NEA’s opposition to attempts to ban CRT or the New York Times’ highly controversial “1619 Project,” which recasts American history on the claim that the United States was founded, and remains today, a racist nation.

  In addition, the measure called for an “accurate and honest” teaching of “unpleasant aspects of American history,” and described CRT as an appropriate framework for educators to address those topics.

  “The Association will further convey that in teaching these topics, it is reasonable and appropriate for curriculum to be informed by academic frameworks for understanding and interpreting the impact of the past on current society, including critical race theory,” it said.

  Another erased resolution, classified as New Business Item 2, essentially called for NEA to “research” into organizations that are pushing back against efforts to indoctrinate American children with CRT, such as The Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based conservative think tank that has been hosting vocal CRT opponents. It was passed with an initial annual budget of $56,500.

  Also removed was New Business Item 33, which was not approved. Proposed by a representative from Oakland, California, it called for “mandatory safe and effective COVID-19 vaccinations and testing for all students and staff before returning to face-to-face instruction in the fall.”

  The disappearance of NEA resolutions was first revealed and posted to social media by Jessica Anderson, the executive director of Heritage Action, the lobbying arm of The Heritage Foundation.

  Here’s the recovered link from earlier today:https://t.co/PmAHhz9NSI pic.twitter.com/PLR01au96n

  — Jessica Anderson (@JessAnderson2) July 6, 2021

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  “3 days after their annual meeting concludes, [National Education Association], the nation’s largest teacher’s union, scrubs the agenda items announcing their nationwide campaign to push CRT from their website,” Anderson wrote on Twitter. “Why are they covering up their support for CRT?”

  The NEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why the resolution pages were removed from its website or whether they will be made public again in the future.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/07/2021 – 22:05

• 4 Dead, 2 "Presumed Assassins" Arrested In Haiti President's Killing
  4 Dead, 2 “Presumed Assassins” Arrested In Haiti President’s Killing

  (Update 2200ET):  Four suspected killers of President Jovenel Moise were fatally shot by police, and two others were arrested, AP reported citing Haiti Police Chief Léon Charles. Three police officers who had been held hostage were freed in the incident, AP said.

  Haiti’s Communications Secretary Frantz Exantus said police had arrested Moise’s “presumed assassins” in an upscale neighborhood of Petionville, a suburb of the capital Port-au-Prince, AP previously reported. Acting Prime Minister Claude Joseph earlier said the president was murdered by highly trained and heavily armed killers who stormed the presidential residence in the early hours of Wednesday.

  * * *

  Update (1609ET): Haitian President Jovenel Moise was assassinated in an attack in the early hours of Wednesday at his private residence. Many are wondering how assassins penetrated the security perimeter of his heavily fortified home.

  Perhaps new insight from The Miami Herald shows “assailants claimed to be agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, according to videos taken by people in the area of the president’s home.”

  

  The Herald continued:

  On the videos, someone with an American accent is heard yelling in English over a megaphone, “DEA operation. Everybody stand down. DEA operation. Everybody back up, stand down.”

  However, sources told the newspaper that the assailants, one of whom spoke English, were not with DEA but rather imposters. 

  “These were mercenaries,” a high-ranking Haitian government official said.

  Here’s the video:

  Insider Paper points out that in an interview on Democracy Now!, Haiti Liberté journalist Kim Ives said that while it is not yet clear who was behind the killing, “clearly this was a fairly sophisticated operation.”

  Haiti is reeling from news that President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated at his home early Wednesday, following months of unrest over his unconstitutional term extension. “Clearly this was a fairly sophisticated operation,” says journalist Kim Ives (@kimives13). pic.twitter.com/34EI1sH78S

  — Democracy Now! (@democracynow) July 7, 2021

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  Biden Administration officials rejected the idea of DEA involvement.

  * * * 

  Haitian President Jovenel Moise was shot dead by unidentified attackers in his private residence overnight in a “barbaric act” shortly after midnight on Wednesday morning the government said, stirring fears of escalating turmoil in the impoverished Caribbean nation.

  

  The 53-year-old president’s wife, Martine Moise, was also shot in the attack that took place around 1 a.m. local time and was receiving medical treatment, Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph said in a statement. “A group of unidentified individuals, some of them speaking Spanish, attacked the private residence of the president of the republic and thus fatally wounded the head of state,” he said.

  Haitian President Jovenel Moise has been assassinated at home, according to the country’s interim prime minister.

  Get more on this story: https://t.co/KczwOrKjVm pic.twitter.com/4xMBNnEk2h

  — Sky News (@SkyNews) July 7, 2021

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  The assassination coincided with a wave of gang violence in Port-au-Prince as armed groups have battled with police and one another for control of the streets in recent months, turning many districts of the capital into no-go zones.

  Joseph denounced the assassination in what he described as a “hateful, inhumane and barbaric act.” The PM added the police and army had the security situation under control though gunfire could be heard throughout the crime-ridden capital of 1 million people after the attack.

  With Haiti politically polarized and facing a growing humanitarian crisis and shortages of food, fears of widespread chaos are spreading. The Dominican Republic said it was closing the border it shares with Haiti on the island of Hispaniola.

  Joseph asked the public to remain calm, and the “security situation of the country is under the control of the National Police of Haiti and the Armed Forces of Haiti.” He said, “all measures are taken to ensure the continuity of the State and protect the Nation. Democracy and the Republic will win.” 

  The Caribbean country has been plagued with economic, political, and social instabilities, with out-of-control gang violence surging in the capital of Port-au-Prince. Food and fuel inflation has spiked as the average wage per day is around $2. There’s been a lot of disgust around the Moise administration from a large swath of the civilian population. There have been calls for his removal from office before his term ends. 

  A UN peacekeeping mission – meant to restore order after a rebellion toppled then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004 – ended in 2019 with the country still in turmoil. In recent years, Haiti has been buffeted by a series of natural disasters and still bears the scars of a major earthquake in 2010.

  Moise, a banana exporter-turned-politician, faced fierce protests after taking office as president in 2017. This year, the opposition accused him of seeking to install a dictatorship by overstaying his mandate and becoming more authoritarian. He denied those accusations.

  “All measures are being taken to guarantee the continuity of the state and to protect the nation,” Joseph said.

  Moise had ruled by decree for more than a year after the country failed to hold legislative elections and wanted to push through a controversial constitutional reform.

  The United States is assessing the “tragic attack” and President Joe Biden will be briefed on the assassination, the White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in Washington. The U.S. Embassy said in a statement it would be closed on Wednesday due to the “ongoing security situation”.

  The United States had on June 30 condemned what it described as a systematic violation of human rights, fundamental freedoms and attacks on the press in Haiti, urging the government to counter a proliferation of gangs and violence

  “We stand ready and stand by them to provide any assistance that’s needed,” she said. “Of course our embassy and State Department will be in close touch but it’s a tragedy. We stand with them and it’s important that people of Haiti know that.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/07/2021 – 22:01

• Millennials Face Another Housing Market Challenge, As Supply Of Starter Homes Dries Up
  Millennials Face Another Housing Market Challenge, As Supply Of Starter Homes Dries Up

  Not only have many millennials been priced out of the home market, as we have been documenting over the last few months, but now a supply constraint of starter homes is feeling like yet another roadblock. Starter homes are generally homes with smaller footprints and lower selling prices that allow first time buyers to enter the market.

  27 year old Samantha Berrafato told the Wall Street Journal: “It just feels like every little thing keeps getting put on hold. I’ve been putting having kids on hold, and I had put having a wedding on hold because we just couldn’t afford it. Now it’s like [that with] the house buying.”

  Berrafato and her husband started looking for a home about three months ago and only found one after including fixer-uppers and foreclosures to their search. 

  The Journal noted that supply of “entry-level housing”, defined as homes under 1,400 square feet, is at a five decade low. There is also rising prices and broad competition to tend with. 

  Ed Pinto, director of the AEI Housing Center at the American Enterprise Institute, said: “There just aren’t enough of these homes to fulfill the demand. It’s creating this ‘Great American Land Rush,’ as I call it. People are moving around and there’s tremendous demand, but the inventory is down.”

  

  Additionally, the median age of the first time home buyer has risen to 33 years old, from 30 years old a decade ago, according to the National Association of Realtors. 

  Sam Khater, chief economist and head of Freddie Mac’s Economic and Housing Research division, said: “This is a big deal. We need to think about how we talk about affordable housing, because for most people, when they hear affordable housing, there’s an instant negative reaction. They think ‘low-income,’ right? The issue now is these fissures have not just invaded the middle class. It’s now going up into the upper-middle-income strata.”

  Robert Dietz, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders, added: “It’s been the hardest kind of home to build over the last five, six or seven years.”

  35 year old Matthew Libassi is also looking for a home with a budget of about $500,000. He told The Journal: “We don’t have a crazy list of demands. But the stuff that we’re seeing is just major overhauls and with putting all the money that we have in, it’s just not doable.”

  Pinto concluded by stating that he believed many buyers were going to move outside of metro areas: “We think this is going to continue for some time, for years. Bottom line is, if you’re in an area like Phoenix or Raleigh or Austin, the people who are the current residents who would normally want to get on the first rung of that ladder—they’re going to have a much harder time.”

  Recall, we wrote back in May that millennials were resorting to “fixer-upper” homes because they were being priced out of the market. 

  

  That report noted that the U.S. has been underbuilding homes since the Great Recession, pushing millennials toward their “second housing crisis in 12 years”. Demand from millennials has “only exacerbated the shrinking inventory” and “led to cutthroat competition rife with bidding wars”, Business Insider noted at the time.

  Finally, we pointed out the growing number of housing-related Instagram pages like Cheap Old Houses, which focuses on historic homes selling for no more than $100,000 that offer fixer-upper opportunities. The account has grown to 1.5 million followers from 750,000 early last year. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/07/2021 – 21:45

• FBI Confiscates Lego Capitol Set; Agents Confirmed Among Jan 6th "Rioters"
  FBI Confiscates Lego Capitol Set; Agents Confirmed Among Jan 6th “Rioters”

  Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

  An accused U.S. Capitol protester spoke with an undercover Washington police officer on Jan. 6 who later connected the man to an undercover FBI worker, according to a new court filing.

  

  Fi Duong is facing charges for allegedly entering the Capitol during a joint session of Congress in January, for disrupting the session, and for impeding the session. He faces decades in prison.

  In an affidavit accompanying the criminal complaint, FBI special agent Jason Jankovitz said that Duong and an associate introduced themselves to an undercover Metropolitan Police Department officer on the morning of Jan. 6. Duong allegedly described himself as an “operator” and asked if the officer was a “patriot,” to which the employee responded in the affirmative.

  Officers later ascertained Duong was inside the Capitol several hours later.

  A week later, the undercover Washington officer linked Duong with an FBI undercover employee. The FBI worker learned that Duong belonged to an unnamed group comprised of “loosely affiliated” and “like-minded individuals,” that Duong is said to have compared to a known militia group located in northern Virginia.

  Duong said, according to the court filing, that the mission was to “build resistances and what not, in terms of planning for what will inevitably come as a worst, right? Worst case scenario for any people that, freedom loving, liberty minded, pro 2A type of folks.”

  Duong related that his family spent two generations “running from communists,” first in China and then in Vietnam, and his belief that at some point, “you just gotta make a stand.”

  During the same meeting, Duong allegedly said he was in Washington on Jan. 6 and that he was dressed that day in all-black to try to look like a member of Antifa, a far-left, anarcho-communist network that has carried out violence in the United States.

  Duong added the FBI undercover agent to an encrypted messaging platform chat room and on Jan. 18, the agent asked if he was “masked up in the Capitol.” Duong answered yes, and said he was aware that people were being arrested for being inside the Capitol. He later described himself as “documenting” what took place in the building.

  The agent in February met with Duong and other members of the group for a Bible study and on other occasions participated in other meetings, including one on June 9. The group soon started to surveil the Capitol, according to the undercover worker. At one point, the FBI agent and Duong met with another undercover FBI agent at the site of a former jail, where Duong allegedly wanted to test Molotov cocktails he’d constructed.

  Duong was arrested on July 2, according to court records. He was ordered released later that day.

  A public defender representing Duong declined to comment.

  More than 535 defendants have been charged in the six months following the Capitol breach, officials said this week.

  

  In this image from video, a security video shows Vice President Mike Pence being evacuated as rioters breach the Capitol, as House impeachment manager Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands) speaks during the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump in the Senate at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Feb. 10, 2021. (Senate Television via AP)

  FBI Seizes Lego Set

  In another case linked to the breach, the FBI said it seized a Lego set from an accused rioter.

  While arresting Robert Morss on June 11, law enforcement recovered a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, a black tourniquet, and a notebook with writings that included “Step by Step to Create Hometown Militia,” according to a memorandum that asks a judge to keep Morss in jail until a trial.

  “Law enforcement also recover[e]d a fully constructed U.S. Capitol Lego set,” the filing states.

  [ZH: The same Lego set that anyone over 12 is legally able to buy and build]

  

  Morss is in custody on charges including civil disorder and violent entry of a building on Capitol grounds.

  Authorities allege Morss stormed the Capitol while wearing tan camouflage clothing with a tactical-style vest. They say he was part of a group of rioters who pushed past police guarding the Capitol, that he later violently attacked officers inside a tunnel leading to the building, and ultimately gained entrance to the building through a broken window.

  “In this case, the Defendant was part of a violent mob that engaged in one of the most intense and prolonged clashes between the rioters attempting to overrun Capitol on January 6 and the law enforcement officers charged with protecting it,” prosecutors said.

  If Morss is released, they added, he poses a danger to the community and a flight risk.

  A public defender representing Morss did not return a request for comment. The attorney asked, and was granted, more time to compile a defense for the man, according to the court docket. A bail hearing is set for July 13.

  [ZH: Seriously…]

  Based On LEGO Evidence, FBI Believes Capitol Rioter Was Also Planning Attack On Hogwarts Castle https://t.co/J4hhl9EN1d

  — The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 7, 2021

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

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/07/2021 – 21:25

• Sydney Extends Delta-Inspired COVID Lockdown For Another 2 Weeks
  Sydney Extends Delta-Inspired COVID Lockdown For Another 2 Weeks

  Public health authorities in Australia have continued to confirm small numbers of new COVID cases despite Sydney’s latest economy-crushing lockdown. And with the Delta “scariant” helping to keep COVID paranoia at a fever pitch, authorities have decided to extend what was supposed to be a two-week lockdown for another two weeks.

  

  Authorities cited the “vulnerability” of Australia’s mostly unvaccinated population as the reason why such draconian measures must be extended, despite pleas from restauranteurs and other small business owners pleading with the government to consider other strategies.

  Parents are also griping since the extension also means school-age children won’t return to school next week.

  “The situation we’re in now is largely because we haven’t been able to get the vaccine that we need,” New South Wales state Health Minister Brad Hazzard said.

  Only 9% of Australian adults are fully vaccinated.

  State Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the decision to extend the lockdown through July 16 was made on the advice of the government’s advisors.

  Of 27 new infections attributed to the delta variant reported in latest 24-hour period on Wednesday, only 13 had managed to isolate while infectious, officials said, raising the risk of further spread. The delta variant is considered more contagious than the original coronavirus or other variants.

  Sydney isn’t the only part of Australia facing lockdown. Last week, almost 50% of Australia’s population was locked down as cities on the east, west and north coasts tightening pandemic restrictions due to clusters. However, most of those lockdowns have now been lifted. Sydney and its suburbs, representing a sizable piece of New South Wales, the country’s largest state, are the only part of Australia still facing lockdown restrictions.

  By the standards of most developed nations, Australia has done remarkably well. Australia has been relatively successful in containing clusters throughout the pandemic, registering fewer than 31K cases, and only 910 deaths total. Of those, Australia has recorded only a single COVID-19 death since October: an 80-year-old man who died in April after being infected overseas and diagnosed in hotel quarantine.

  Of the 27 new infections of the delta variant reported during the last 24 hours, only 13 had been in isolation while infectious, officials said, which raises the risk that the variant might be spreading more quickly than authorities realize.

  Additionally, there are 37 COVID-19 cases in Sydney hospitals. Of those, seven are in intensive care, the youngest in their 30s.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/07/2021 – 21:05

• Buchanan: As America Recedes, China Rises
  Buchanan: As America Recedes, China Rises

  Authored by Pat Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

  As our July Fourth celebrations were beginning, the U.S. quietly closed and abandoned Bagram Air Base, the largest American military base between the Persian Gulf and the South China Sea.

  Afghan looters were soon seen scavenging inside the base.

  The long retreat of the American Empire is underway, and this longest war is likely to end in bloody retribution for the Afghans who sided with us against the Taliban and are left behind.

  When the last American departed Bagram, The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. is making plans for “an emergency evacuation of the American embassy in Kabul amid concern that a worsening security situation in Afghanistan could imperil the remaining military and diplomatic corps.”

  Apparently, we are preparing for a possible Saigon ’75 finish to the war launched by George W. Bush 20 years ago. Pressed by reporters on the grim situation in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden did not want to reflect on or talk about what might be coming.

  “I want to talk about happy things, man,” Biden told reporters.

  “Look, it’s Fourth of July … it’s the holiday weekend. I’m going to celebrate it. There’s great things happening.”

  In that same edition, the Journal reported that China has moved 50,000 troops to the border region with India where forces of the two nations, in June 2020, had their bloodiest skirmish in decades.

  Other reports suggest that China intends to fill the vacuum left by the departure of America’s power and provide billions from its Belt and Road Initiative to build a highway from Kabul, Afghanistan, to Peshawar, Pakistan.

  As America executes its strategic retreat from Central Asia, China is on the move.

  

  In addition to militarizing its frontier with India, China is reasserting its maximalist claims to the South China Sea, ending independence and crushing democracy in Hong Kong, continuing cultural genocide against the Uyghurs, and regularly sending swarms of warplanes toward Taiwan to transmit the message to Taipei that annexation is but a matter of time.

  Nor was Chinese President Xi Jinping’s address on the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party an exercise in nuance.

  “We’ll never accept insufferably arrogant lecturing from those ‘master teachers!’” said Xi, drawing a roar from the crowd of party members and veterans.

  Clad in a Mao suit, Xi had other warnings for those who seek to stand in the way of Communist China’s destiny:

  “The Chinese people will never allow foreign forces to bully, oppress or enslave us … Whoever nurses delusions of doing that will crack their heads and spill blood on the Great Wall of steel built from the flesh and blood of 1.4 billion Chinese people.”

  Undeniably, Xi and his predecessors have an awesome record, as the Financial Times relates:

  “China’s emergence over the past four decades ranks as the biggest and longest-run economic boom in history. Its annual gross domestic product rose from a mere $191bn, or $195 per capita, in 1980 to $14.3tn, or $10,261 per capita, in 2019. It has raised more than 770m people from poverty and transformed the Chinese economy into a high-tech powerhouse that is on course to eclipse America’s in size. This transformation is the landmark achievement of the Chinese Communist party, which celebrates its 100th anniversary on Thursday.”

  China’s growth could not have been achieved had it not been for the U.S. decision to throw open the world’s largest consumer market to Chinese-made goods, to bring Beijing into the World Trade Organization, and to sit idly by as a huge slice of U.S. industry and manufacturing was transshipped to China for production there and not here.

  Between 1990 and 2021, U.S. imports of Chinese-made goods provided Beijing with the trillions it has accumulated to finance its strategic objective of becoming the first power on earth.

  But this is water over the dam. Where do we go from here?

  China’s assets are impressive. At 1.4 billion people, it has the largest population on earth. If its growth rate continues, it will have the largest economy. Its strategic arsenal of nuclear weapons is a fraction of ours, but given the horrendous damage these weapons can do, a nuclear war would be ruinous if not mortal for both countries.

  In terms of conventional military — ships, soldiers, planes, guns, missiles and bases in the East Asia-Western Pacific theater where any war between us would be fought — China’s advantages are greater.

  And of the issues over which we might fight — islands, rocks, reefs in the South and East China Seas, and Taiwan — none of them is claimed by us or vital to us. All are claimed by China as rightly theirs.

  In the Cold War with the USSR, time, it turned out, was on our side. But in the last decade, Xi Jinping might fairly see time as having switched sides. Either way, we are surely better off relying upon our abilities rather than our weapons to win the competition and settle the rivalry that may settle the future of mankind.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/07/2021 – 20:45

• 'Cash For Junkies' – California Dems Want To Pay Meth Addicts To Seek Treatment
  ‘Cash For Junkies’ – California Dems Want To Pay Meth Addicts To Seek Treatment

  In keeping with President Biden’s push to approve “evidence-based” policies to help combat the worsening US drug overdose crisis (overdoses jumped to a new annual record last year according to data from the CDC) – not to mention the explosion of crime (both petty and violent) and homelessness that have rendered San Francisco almost unlivable for families – Democratic lawmakers in California have devised a new plan that we’d like to call “cash for junkies”.

  The same political party that embraced housing the homeless in expensive hotel rooms has proposed using public money to pay drug addicts to stay in treatment, and away from the growing street encampments.

  

  Senate Bill 110 would make “contingency management,” a therapy centered around positive reinforcement, a legal form of treatment in California eligible for payment by Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program. In other words, addicts will be given “incentives” to attend treatment, including what are essentially bribes.

  The program will be targeted specifically at meth abusers, one of the fastest-growing contingents of California’s addict population (since all the opioid users are dying from the fentanyl poisoning the drug supply).

  “Contingency management has proven to be the most effective method of treatment for methamphetamine addiction, and is frequently used as a treatment program by the Veterans Affairs Administration,” Weiner’s office said in a news release. “This intervention program gives those struggling with substance use disorder financial rewards if they enter substance use treatment programs, stay in the program, and get and remain sober. This positive reinforcement helps people reduce and even fully stop substance use.”

  An analysis of the legislation, according to media reports, estimated the annual cost for 1K participants would be $179K. In theory, lifting Californians out of addiction would save the state money in other areas (for example, the burgeoning homeless encampments in San Francisco, populated by individuals with mental health and substance abuse issues). And according to one Democratic legislature, “contingency management” (academic-speak for doling out cash to addicts) has “proven to be the most effective treatment for methamphetamine addiction.”

  Generally speaking, drug-abuse treatment in general has very low rates of success. No matter the exact nature of their treatment, most addicts who enter treatment don’t management to stay sober for long. Even after a stay at a pricey rehab, the vast majority of addicts will relapse. What’s more, the vast majority of addicts see money – especially free money that they didn’t need to work to earn – as a potential trigger.

  Additionally, there are federal laws that prohibit bribing people for seeking medical treatment (not that California has any problem with flouting federal law).

  While a similar bill failed to gain traction last year, the new iteration is scheduled for consideration in the Assembly Health Committee on July 13 after receiving unanimous support in the state Senate.

  The key to success, if passed, will lie in not drug testing addicts, making it impossible to determine whether the money they’re receiving is being spent on food and shelter…or just more meth.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/07/2021 – 20:25

• Tensions Run High On Border As Crisis Worsens
  Tensions Run High On Border As Crisis Worsens

  Authored by Charlotte Cuthbertson via The Epoch Times,

  Alison Anderson and her husband, a Border Patrol agent, moved from a remote ranch near Big Bend, Texas, after one too many armed encounters with illegal aliens on their property.

  

  Anderson grew increasingly concerned about her ability to protect her young daughters as groups of men would approach the house while her husband was at work. On multiple occasions, she was left to fend off illegal immigrants with her firearm, as the closest help was an hour away.

  The family moved to Del Rio at the beginning of 2020, and at first she breathed a sigh of relief.

  “We wanted a safe upbringing for our kids,” Anderson told The Epoch Times on June 25.

  “I want them to be able to play outside and not have to worry about a group of 15 people or 24 or 40 cutting through. Or someone snatching my kids.”

  But since January, the masses of illegal aliens traversing through her neighborhood has had Anderson more worried than ever. Border agents caught a convicted rapist several weeks ago on the edge of her property.

  “Having three little girls and having convicted sexual predators in and or around your property is terrifying,” she said. Her girls are aged 5, 3, and 1.

  “It’s terrifying, because I feel like I can’t let my guard down for one second. And that is why we left the ranch – because I couldn’t let my guard down for one second. I had little people depending on me, and I don’t like that feeling. I don’t like all the feelings that come with it – the stress, the anxiety, the constant worry.”

  

  Alison Anderson on her property in Del Rio, Texas, on June 25, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

  Once a relatively quiet region for illegal border crossings, the Del Rio Sector is now the second busiest, after the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas.

  “We’ve seen a tremendous increase. So far this fiscal year, today, we’ve caught 144,000 people in the Del Rio sector,” Sector Chief Austin Skero said on June 24.

  Agents in the sector have also had a 1,400 percent increase in arrests of illegal aliens with sex-related criminal convictions so far this fiscal year, compared to the same period last year, Skero said. A large number of the detainees had convictions for crimes involving a minor.

  “There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t read a paper or a report from my agents that talks about criminal aliens, sexual offenders that they’ve apprehended out there,” newly appointed Acting Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz said at an event in Del Rio on June 24.

  As the crow flies, Anderson’s house is four miles from the international border, and the people she encounters are trying to avoid capture. The property lines up next to a road that has become a pickup spot for smugglers to load their vehicles and make a run to a large city, often San Antonio.

  Anderson said she’s in the process of installing a camera system, and she and her husband plan to build a fence around the house—both things they wouldn’t normally consider.

  Many of her neighbors are elderly and terrified, she said. “I have one neighbor that said she won’t even go out of her house if her husband isn’t home.

  “It’s unacceptable to not uphold and enforce the immigration laws that Congress put in place to keep U.S. citizens safe.”

  Dogs Make the Difference

  Rancher John Sewell said his three Blue Lacy dogs have likely helped change the outcome in his favor during several encounters with illegal aliens, including when a group of five men approached him and said they wanted a ride in his truck.

  “I said, ‘No, y’all just need to keep walking,’” Sewell said. “My car was in the opposite direction to where they should have been walking, but they started walking to my car. Well, of course, when the dogs smelled them, it was just a fiasco.”

  The dogs rounded up the group, but when the illegal aliens started looking for something to pick up in defense, Sewell said he pulled his gun out and told them to get going.

  “Finally, they got 50 feet or 70 feet away; I called the dogs back, and they went on,” he said.

  Sewell’s ranch is in Uvalde County, about 55 miles from the international border. It’s also six miles from a Border Patrol highway checkpoint, which means illegal immigrants use his ranch to skirt the checkpoint by foot before being picked up again on the other side.

  “In 25 years, I’ve never personally carried a gun. In the last five months, I carry one every single day. That ought to tell you all you need to know.”

  He’s getting a camera installed at his main headquarters, and his wife doesn’t answer the door without a gun in her hand.

  “Usually before, if someone came to the house, they were in dire straits—really dehydrated or lost or whatever. Now … they want you to give them a ride,” Sewell said.

  

  John Sewell on his ranch in Uvalde County, Texas, on June 12, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

  Several months ago, as nine men ran straight toward him, Sewell grabbed his rifle and released his dogs, while yelling at them to stop. The dogs headed the men off, and they jumped a fence and ran off.

  “If I hadn’t had the dogs, I don’t know what would have happened. I felt like I was going to have to shoot,” he said.

  “I’m just at my wit’s end. I can’t sustain having to worry about the two out of 10, or two out of 100 bad guys that happen upon me.”

  Sewell estimates Border Patrol is catching about one-third of the illegal aliens that are crossing. Last week, he personally saw 45 people, and his ranch is 27 square miles of remote pasture.

  It’s also a hunting ranch, and he’s concerned about what will happen when the season opens on Oct. 2 and hundreds of people with high-powered rifles are in the area.

  “If it’s anywhere close to this, there’s going to be multiple confrontations every single day,” he said.

  He attributes the dramatic increase in illegal traffic to the Biden administration’s policies and doesn’t see help coming from Washington.

  “It’s not our position to send them more money to keep their people in their own country. It’s our position to protect our borders,” he said.

  “We live in a republic, the last I checked. And that means that our government is supposed to protect us from all of the things like this. But that is not happening.”

  Vice President Kamala Harris has said she is focusing on the “root causes” of illegal immigration and aims to send more aid to Central American countries.

  

  Border Patrol agents apprehend 21 illegal aliens from Mexico who had hidden in a grain hopper on a freight train heading to San Antonio, near Uvalde, Texas, on June 21, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

  Train Traffic

  Archie McFadin lives near Uvalde, adjacent to where Border Patrol stops and inspects the trains traveling from the U.S.–Mexico border to San Antonio. As a train slows down to stop, often a stream of illegal aliens will jump off and run onto his property to avoid Border Patrol.

  “They were down here this morning, a helicopter landed out here in the field and [Border Patrol] picked up some,” McFadin said on June 30.

  McFadin said “everything changed” in January after President Joe Biden took office and revoked several key border security measures.

  McFadin now gets illegal immigrants running around his property at least five days a week. His dog has stopped anyone from entering the immediate area by the house, but the day The Epoch Times visited, McFadin was having a home alarm system installed.

  “We never even locked our vehicles,” he said.

  “Now we live like we’re in prison, and our government is protecting them, not us.”

  This year, Border Patrol has seen a 911 percent increase in the number of illegal aliens on the trains in Uvalde compared to last year.

  “The increase in the number of illegal immigrants that are going through Uvalde on trains has become a serious problem for Border Patrol, local law enforcement, and our community, as most of these individuals have criminal records or gang affiliation and wouldn’t be allowed in our country,” Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin told The Epoch Times on June 23.

  McFadin’s ranch hand now spends up to five hours a day checking and fixing fences on his other property that didn’t have a problem last year.

  “Some of them are small holes where they try to slip through at night to catch a ride out here on Highway 55. Some of them are bigger holes,” he said. “To me, that’s just uncalled for.

  “I wouldn’t even care if they came through here if they just wouldn’t tear up everything we’ve worked all of our lives for.”

  

  Archie McFadin points out a cut fence that was intact that morning, on his property in Uvalde, Texas, on June 30, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

  McFadin replaced a wire fence around a ranch house on his property in February after it had been broken into and ransacked several times. The house now has a tall, steel welded fence with razor wire on top. No one has broken in since then, he said.

  He won’t let his grandkids swim in the pool without an adult present and a firearm handy. His daughter and son-in-law don’t go fishing at the pond anymore.

  Last week, four illegal aliens came up on his wife and one of his daughters as they were driving through a gate on the ranch. They called Border Patrol, but the four weren’t captured.

  He said he’s never been scared of illegal immigrants in the past, but now he’s “very, very cautious” because they’re so aggressive.

  “I honestly don’t know what to do. There’s nothing we can do. Vote, three and a half years from now. That’s the only thing I know of that I hope we can do,” McFadin said.

  “How do we leave? How do we leave our horses? How do we leave our dogs? How do we leave this place? Even if we wanted to sell it, no one would buy it right now because we’re on the railroad track.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/07/2021 – 20:05

• Sky News Shows Taliban Seizing Abandoned US Bases & "Treasure Trove" Of Weapons, Ammo
  Sky News Shows Taliban Seizing Abandoned US Bases & “Treasure Trove” Of Weapons, Ammo

  Simultaneous to global headlines spotlighting the hasty “in the middle of the night” US forces quitting Bagram airbase for good, which briefly resulted in looting as Afghan security was caught by surprise, Sky News has aired exclusive shocking footage of the Taliban seizing freshly abandoned US bases (or perhaps not-so-shocking considering the constant follies of America’s longest ever war).

  “The Taliban are on the march and gaining territory at an astonishing rate,” the Sky News segment narratives. “They smell victory,” the report says. “They want to show us the treasure trove of military riches they seized with it.”

  That’s right – Taliban militants will gear up for the expected offensive on Kabul and other key parts of the country with fresh US-supplied RPGs, rifles, and ammo that were hastily abandoned by exiting US forces. 

  “Many of these boxes supplied by Americans haven’t even been opened before the Taliban got to them,” the Sky report continues.

  A Taliban commander was heard saying, “It does help us a lot to have a lot of new weapons to use in battle.” He went on to estimate some 900 guns obtained from one US base alone, as well as 30 armored Humvees and 30 pick-up trucks. Likely thousands more have been collected elsewhere. This as the Pentagon has estimated some 90% of US forces have now departed.

  Gleeful Taliban: Look at all of our wonderful American toys!

  

  Naturally, the pressing and outrageous question remains: why did the Biden administration and Pentagon fail to secure all this military hardware that can now be used to kill Americans and their Afghan allies and civilians?

  Below: screenshot of Taliban commander reading the weapon’s markings: “U-S-A!” …he proudly and mockingly declares…

  

  Meanwhile, as BBC reports the Taliban continues gobbling up territory: 

  The Taliban have entered a key city in western Afghanistan as they continue a rapid advance before Nato troops leave.

  All government officials in Qala-e-Naw, provincial capital of Badghis province, had been moved to a nearby army base, the local governor told the BBC.

  He said the militants were moving “towards the center of the city” and there was heavy fighting with government troops.

  And they are freeing prisoners everywhere they go – adding more terrorists to their ranks: “Local sources told the BBC the Taliban moved on the prison in Qala-e-Naw and freed about 400 inmates, including more than 100 of the group’s fighters.”

  The Onion 10 years ago, and AP today

  Ten. Fucking. Years. pic.twitter.com/ykEkrRXUbs

  — PanickedJanet (@SIGSYS) July 6, 2021

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

  And then there’s this key line in the BBC report, strongly suggesting precisely what disasters await and are imminent across much of the country: “Afghan forces guarding the prison are reported to have surrendered without a fight.”

  This after US intelligence and defense previously warned that Kabul could fall within six months. Or perhaps it’ll be more like six weeks at this rate.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/07/2021 – 19:55

• Utah BLM Says Anyone Flying American Flag Racist, Vows Donations To AOC
  Utah BLM Says Anyone Flying American Flag Racist, Vows Donations To AOC

  The Soviet-era ‘long-con‘ of destroying America through division and self-hatred, as described by in 1985 by former KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov, continues to bear yet more fruit. Let’s review:

  “Marxism-Leninism ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American students, without being challenged or counter-balanced by the basic values of Americanism and American patriotism … The demoralization process in the United States is basically completed already … Most of it is done by Americans to Americans thanks to lack of moral standards.” –Yuri Bezmenov, 1985

  Fast forward 36 years – as the left seethes with anti-American hatred, we now have the Marxist Black Lives Matter Utah Chapter declaring that anyone displaying the American flag, a “symbol of hatred,” is automatically racist and must be avoided – one day after the Fourth of July.

  In response to the post, BLM UT added: “Welcome racists. We know you are big mad about the racist flag post. You will not be heard here. You will be blocked and your comments will be deleted. We will be donating $1 to AOC’s election campaign for every racist that we block. Thank you for contributing to the re-election of AOC. We will jot down your names and attribute each donation to you. Comment below to help her once again head to Washington.”

  

  Let’s not forget, the New York Times published an article two days earlier proclaiming that flying the American flag ‘from the back of a pickup or over a lawn’ likely means you’re a conservative (and thus a racist).

  The horror. pic.twitter.com/Jx1hpKIzpd

  — George Alexopoulos 🇺🇲 (@GPrime85) July 3, 2021

  So – anyone flying the American flag, who loves their country, is automatically racist, and anyone who has a problem with it will be blocked – with  $1 will donated towards the re-election of socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

  

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/07/2021 – 19:45

• Das Kapital, Dude: Polling Shows Sharp Rise In Support For Socialism Among The Young
  Das Kapital, Dude: Polling Shows Sharp Rise In Support For Socialism Among The Young

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  Polling in the United States and internationally is showing a sharp increase in support for socialism among young people. 

  Support for capitalism is waning as a new generation embraces views of collective economic policies and programs.

  Two hundred years after the birth of Karl Marx, his views are now coming back into vogue despite a long history of economic failures in socialist countries.

  

  A new poll conducted June 11-25 by Momentive on behalf of Axios found that a majority (57% of U.S. adults) still have a favorable view of capitalism. However, the most notable data point is age. Those 18-34 now are evenly split on negative and positive views of capitalism. (46% vs. 49%). The dislike for capitalism rises further at younger age groups.  For those 18 to 24, the negative views outweighing positive views by a margin of 54% to 42%.

  The other groups showing stronger support for socialism are black and female Americans (60% and 45%, respectively).

  The same swing is being reported internationally. A new poll by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) shows younger people growing opposing to capitalism and support for socialism. The paper includes a Forefront Market Research poll of people aged between 16 and 34 in the UK. An astonishing  67 per cent say they would like to live in a socialist economic system.

  Notably, 75 percent view climate change is a specifically capitalist problem despite the terrible record of China and other socialist countries in the area of pollution and climate change.

  Nevertheless, capitalism is being blamed for an increasing number of disasters. Recently, Professor Richard Wolf, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, blamed “privatized housing” for the recent collapse of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida.

  Wolf tweeted on June 30 that “Miami’s collapsed condo shows: privatized housing violates democracy. Only condo owners voted to defer building repair. Delivery workers, condo visitors, repairers knew nothing, didn’t vote, risked injury, death. As irreducibly social, housing must be run democratically by all.”

  As with climate change, the point ignores the building collapses  and lax enforcement in socialist countries. Central control has never translated to better building codes or pollution policies.

  The shift in favor of socialism is no surprise for some of us. My kids were often given material and lessons in their public high schools that criticized capitalism while rarely pointing out the failures of socialist countries like Venezuela.

  Indeed, Venezuela continues to receive support despite a blood-soaked regime that has destroyed free press and free speech rights as well as reducing the country into an economic basket case. Recently, the Democratic Socialists of America (which claims supporters in Congress) visited Venezuelan dictator, Nicolas Maduro.  Previously, we discussed the delegation of Chicago Teachers visiting the country and showering it with praise as political prisoners languished in the jails of Maduro.

  The pandemic has led to a massive increase in government spending which is also likely to shape the views of many on the benefits of government controls and centralized programs.  These polls show a generation coming to age that is ready to embrace aspects of Marx’s Das Kapital over Smith’s Wealth of Nations.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/07/2021 – 19:25

• While Fed Mulls Tapering, China Prepares To Cut Rates As Economy Stalls
  While Fed Mulls Tapering, China Prepares To Cut Rates As Economy Stalls

  With the Fed debating whether to keep talking about tapering or finally do something about it – even if that something means injecting another trillion of liquidity into the economy by the end of 2022 while nipping and tucking $10 billion per month here and there – China is starting to move in the other direction. 

  With China’s economy rapidly cooling, as the latest sharp drop the Caixin Services PMI demonstrated, after badly missing consensus expectations and poised on the edge of contraction…

  

  … a move which was predicted here months ago when we discussed the collapse in China’s all important credit impulse…

  

  … it is not just traders that are speculating that China’s next move may be a rate cut – Beijing itself is starting to make loud noises.

  Pouring gasoline into the debate whether Chinese and U.S. monetary policy will diverge further, overnight a former central bank official said that China should guide market interest rates lower to support economic growth and ease funding pressure on local governments.

  Reasonable rate cuts also would help create space for the PBOC to tighten policy if needed in the future, in order to cope with an expected weakening in the yuan, Sheng Songcheng, former head of statistics at the PBOC, said in a column published late on Tuesday on Sina Finance, a financial news outlet according to Reuters

  “It’s necessary to keep liquidity reasonable and sufficient, and guide the rational and moderate decrease of market interest rates,” Sheng said, adding that economic growth is likely to slow to 5-6% in the second half of the year, from an expected pace of around 8% in April-June.

  Cutting rate is not just to counteract the coming economic slowdown, it’s also to give China more space to hike when the need arises. According to Sheng, policy tightening in the future will help ease depreciation pressure on the yuan caused by rising capital outflows from China once the U.S. Federal Reserve starts to tighten policy from emergency pandemic levels, Sheng said.

  Unlike the Fed, which surprised investors last month by signalling it could start raising interest rates in 2023 or even next year, earlier than expected, Chinese officials have pledged to make no sharp policy u-turns and markets expect key rates will be kept unchanged through at least this year. And while a Chinese central bank official said in April that policy changes by the Fed will have a limited impact on China’s financial markets, Beijing appears to be getting increasingly concerned about a world in which the US is hiking while China’s economy is too weak to follow.

  Sure enough, shortly after Sheng’s comments, in the weekly State Council meeting on Wednesday, China’s Premier Li announced a few measures to “increase support to the real economy”, including “using RRR cuts to support the real economy” and a few other policy measures aiming at increasing income and improving social security support to vulnerable groups of the labor market. Here are key quotes from the meeting:

  • In response to the impact on business operations from the fast increase of commodity prices, and under the broad guideline of “avoiding flooding the economy with liquidity”, policymakers would use monetary policy tools such as RRR cuts to increase support to the real economy and in particular small to medium-sized companies;
  • The statement highlighted the need to push enterprises to pay wages “timely and in full amount”, and to increase social security support to “flexible employment” such as employment in the delivery industry.
  • For migrant workers, the statement also highlighted the need to enhance support for their health care needs, such as “further improving basic medical insurance settlement of medical expenses incurred by the insured away from home”.

  As Goldman’s Maggie Wei writes, in past experiences, PBOC would usually, but not always, follow up with actual RRR cuts after the mention by the State Council on “using RRR cuts” to support the economy. For example, PBOC cut RRR within one to two weeks after the State Council meeting’s hints in 2019 to early 2020, though the exception was in Jun 2020 when PBOC stayed put after the State Council meeting mentioned RRR cuts. That said, the absence of mentioning “using RRR cuts to support the economy” for the past year makes today’s mention notable and probably increases the chance of an actual implementation of the cut in our view. Incidentally, Goldman’s baseline expectation is an RRR cut over the next few weeks.

  Understandably, Chinese treasury futures rose sharply on Wednesday afternoon on Sheng’s comments (and ahead of the RRR commentary). 10-year bond futures surged by the most in over six months after a former central bank official made the case for a rate cut in the second half of the year to safeguard the nation’s recovery and deal with the Federal Reserve’s future tightening.

  10-year bond futures rise as much as 0.42 to 98.72; biggest increase since Dec. 22, 2020, although still well below where China’s bond futures traded for much of the post-covid period. At the same time, overnight repo rates rose as much as 16bps to 2.07%, the highest since June 30, 7-day repo rate rises 9bps to 2.12%

  

  To be sure, not everyone is convinced that a rate cut is coming. Ting Lu, chief China economist at Nomura, told reporters on Wednesday that he expected the central bank to maintain a modest tightening stance, with no rate cuts or rises expected in the second half.

  “China’s policy response towards the COVID-19 pandemic has been different from the past rounds of easing, and one key factor is the strength in exports so that policymakers did not need to resort to mass stimulus in property and infrastructure sectors,” he said.

  Michelle Lam, chief China economist at Societe Generale said that “from the real economy’s perspective, I don’t think we are there yet to discuss rate cuts” adding that we “need to see much weaker data especially on the private-sector recovery.” In Lam’s view, “the domestic economic situation should still be a primary focus for monetary policy.”

  Lam also said that if China sees rising capital outflows they could reintroduce capital control measures as they did in the past; in fact the aggressive crackdown on crypto may be a hint of the coming rate cuts in China even as the rest of the world aggressively hikes to contain soaring prices.

  As for how China – if indeed it does go ahead with a rate cut – it remains a mystery how or why Beijing is convinced that inflation will remain transitory and that a rate cut won’t push prices even higher, sparking public unrest and anger.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 07/07/2021 – 19:05

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