Jan 09

Today’s News 9th January 2021

  • Luongo: Tiananmen Avoided In D.C. As Trump Era Ends
    Luongo: Tiananmen Avoided In D.C. As Trump Era Ends

    Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

    Her name is Ashli Babbitt.

    On January 6th, 2021 the Trump Era of U.S. history ended. Nothing will be the same after the events on Capitol Hill. There is no going back. That much is obvious.

    The shock of those events wasn’t Trump calling a rally of his supporters to the Capitol or that they were seething with anger over what is clearly a stolen election.

    The shock was that they “aimed to misbehave” after coming to the realization that the America they thought they lived in no longer existed.

    I’ve said many times in 2020 that this election was the last chance to keep a lid on their anger. It was, in their minds, their last non-violent way of choosing the rules they lived under.

    As long as the results looked even remotely fair they would be willing to accept them and make the best of it. That’s the contract right?

    But they would not accept fraud.

    Because fraud is theft. And theft is force. Theft is ultimately violence.

    So everyone clutching their pearls today over the ‘violence’ of January 6th needs to remember that violence is baked into this story at every level.

    In fact, the worst pearl clutchers are the ones whose power is most threatened, i.e. Congress, and the cowards unwilling to stand next to those facing them down.

    Her name is Ashli Babbitt.

    Because as George Washington almost certainly didn’t say …

    Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, – it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action

    Force was on display fully at the capitol but it wasn’t coming from the people. It was coming from Congress who knowingly certified a fraudulent election hiding behind their cowardice and corruption.

    And the people called them out on it.

    The most moving thing I saw all day was thousands of people singing the national anthem as they tried to get into the Capitol building.

    After certifying the election Vice President Mike Pence said,

    “To those who wreaked havoc in our capitol today, you did not win. Violence never wins. Freedom wins. And this is still the people’s House.”

    No Mike, violence won. Rule by men won. And standing proud while taking your thirty pieces of silver only further ensures that violence will keep winning.

    Her name is Ashli Babbitt.

    But violence is now inevitable. And the first shots were fired. Not by the people but by those agents of force themselves, the government.

    During the George Floyd riots our current rulers could barely bring themselves to denounce the very real violence in Minneapolis, Portland, Atlanta, etc.

    BLM and Antifa vandals burned down whole city blocks, beat people indiscriminately and destroyed the lives of the very black people they were supposed to be protesting for.

    They were brave freedom fighters. Whoever said protests were supposed to be polite, right Chris Cuomo?

    If you want to be heard by people who aren’t listening then you have to make a lot of noise to get their attention.

    So, the idea that hundreds of thousands of disenfranchised conservatives shouldn’t gather and say no to a blatant fraud is laughable. In the end, their main crime was a little disorganized mayhem inside the Capitol building.

    Denouncing that as ‘insurrection,’ as alleged in the circulating articles of impeachment against Trump, are equally laughable.

    It’s also indicative of just how thin the veneer of their power is. Because the people who came to D.C. to protest knew exactly who their enemies were — Congress, the media and the police who turned their backs on them.

    What’s clear is that January 6th was on the ‘white board’ of The Swamp that if things got out of control, or were allowed to, they were prepared for the protest to turn ugly enough to warrant unbridled use of military force.

    It failed.

    Her name is Ashli Babbitt.

    Because during the height of the commotion the Pentagon refused a request for the National Guard to be brought in.

    Things had to get far worse than what happened for that step to occur.

    When sifting through the wreckage of these events, breaking into the Capitol and wandering around isn’t really all that dangerous.

    Was it a little embarrassing? Yes.

    Did it warrant at any point lethal force? No.

    If it did the cops in the building wouldn’t have been standing around for the most part chatting amiably with the ‘insurgents.’

    What they wanted another Fort Sumter where the rebels panicked and fired the first shot. They wanted unbridled violence to erupt as the madness of crowds took over.

    That never really materialized. And so, no justifiable massacre ensued.

    What did happen was the opposite.

    They fired first. They lost their cool. It was a wholly unjustified shooting by a U.S. Capitol Police Officer.

    He just panicked and shot an unarmed woman climbing through a window.

    Her name was Ashli Babbitt.

    In any version of reality there was no imminent threat to him, just like the antics around the Capitol posed no imminent threat to the U.S. or Congress.

    No riot happened, however, because the protestors believe in something greater than power, unlike the feckless jackals of Congress trying to hound Trump into exile.

    Even Antifa agent provocateurs couldn’t incite a riot. They were pulled down off the building by the MAGA folks who ultimately chanted ‘Stop the Steal’ a lot between refrains of the Star Spangled Banner, which D.C. police stepped on like it was a nuisance.

    These are people who showed discipline in equal measure to their righteous anger. The Powers That Be never thought these people could be provoked to even the level seen on January 6th.

    But I remind you that quiet men, men of character, take a lot to rile to overt anger. Our leaders and the commies who think they are winning today mistake temperance for weakness.

    But when you take everything else away from them, what comes next you will have invited.

    We got only a taste of the anger and resolve of the folks showed up to support their man Trump. And today they realize just how bad things actually are. They understand it now in their bones how deeply flawed the Myth of America is.

    That myth, as I talked about recently, is a powerful one, not without its merits. Trump fed that myth because, I think, he believes in it. But it is still a myth and one which will have to be updated.

    Trump, I think, understands this and knows that this is not about him. His message and the way he handled the past four years was that they are scared of the people, not him.

    His job, as he saw it, was to give us the courage to stand up to these horrific people, see them for what they are and afford them zero respect. That’s the legacy of the Trump Era.

    And that’s why they hate him so much. Because we were never supposed to find out just how much they hate us.

    In the coming weeks Pelosi, Schumer and the rest will double down on control. They have to, having staked out the moral high ground now. That was the trap Trump set for them, nothing more.

    They will enter the Biden Era passing new insane laws, pushing for gun control, persecuting and silencing these ‘deplorable’ people. All the while they will think that these edicts will insulate them from their anger.

    But it won’t. Because they shot first. They took the bait. And they committed the ultimate sin.

    Her name is Ashli Babbitt.

    *  *  *

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    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/08/2021 – 23:45

  • Alien Debris Was Discovered In 2017, Harvard Astronomy Professor Claims
    Alien Debris Was Discovered In 2017, Harvard Astronomy Professor Claims

    A Harvard professor is officially making the argument that in 2017, scientists found the “first sign of intelligent life outside Earth”.

    Avi Loeb, a Harvard University professor, is releasing a book called “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” that explains why he thinks an object that came close to Earth in 2017 could be of alien origin. 

    Hawaiian scientists in 2017 saw  “an object soaring through our inner solar system, moving so quickly that it could only have been from another star,” the book says. In the book, Loeb makes the argument that the object was actually “space junk” from another galaxy. The object was called “1I/2017 U1 ‘Oumuamua”.

    “There was only one conceivable explanation: the object was a piece of advanced technology created by a distant alien civilization,” the book says, according to Yahoo. 

    NASA described the object as “the first confirmed object from another star to visit our solar system, this interstellar interloper appears to be a rocky, cigar-shaped object with a somewhat reddish hue.”

    Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate said when it was discovered: “For decades we’ve theorized that such interstellar objects are out there, and now – for the first time – we have direct evidence they exist. This history-making discovery is opening a new window to study formation of solar systems beyond our own.”

    Publisher Houghton-Mifflin says: “In late 2017, scientists at a Hawaiian observatory glimpsed an object soaring through our inner solar system, moving so quickly that it could only have come from another star. Avi Loeb, Harvard’s top astronomer, showed it was not an asteroid; it was moving too fast along a strange orbit, and left no trail of gas or debris in its wake…”

    “In Extraterrestrial, Loeb takes readers inside the thrilling story of the first interstellar visitor to be spotted in our solar system. He outlines his controversial theory and its profound implications: for science, for religion, and for the future of our species and our planet. A mind-bending journey through the furthest reaches of science, space-time, and the human imagination, Extraterrestrial challenges readers to aim for the stars—and to think critically about what’s out there, no matter how strange it seems.”

    Anne Wojcicki, CEO and cofounder of 23andMe, said the book “convinces you that scientific curiosity is key to our future success.”

    Loeb is a professor of science at Harvard, with a doctorate in physics and is also chair of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy.

    His book will be released January 26, 2021. 

    “Your new book is called ‘The End of the World’. Now, can you tell us when it’s going to be – or do we have to buy the book?”

     

     

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/08/2021 – 23:25

  • Wednesday's Other Story: Taibbi
    Wednesday’s Other Story: Taibbi

    Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

    Just before the madness at the Capitol broke out Wednesday, news came from London. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who seemed Monday to be the luckiest man alive when a judge denied an American request to extradite him, was now denied bail on the grounds that he might “fail to surrender to court to face” the inevitable U.S. appeal. He goes back to legal purgatory, possibly a worse outcome than extradition, which might be the idea.

    We sell politics in American media as a soap opera, and the personalities make for lively copy, but properly following the bouncing ball means watching institutions, not characters. Where are armies, banks, central banks, intelligence services, the press? Whose money is talking on the floor of the House and the Senate? How concentrated is financial and political power? How do public and private institutions coordinate? When they coordinate, what are their collective aims? How transparent are they or aren’t they? How accountable?

    Assange became a celebrity at a time when popular interest in these questions was at its zenith in the United States. Eight years of the Bush administration inspired profound concern about the runaway power of the state, especially a new secret state-within-a-state the Bush administration insisted 9/11 gave them the moral mandate to build.

    Our invasion of Iraq had been a spectacular failure — unlike pictures of returning coffins, that couldn’t be completely covered up — and Americans learned about grotesque forms of war profiteering. These included the use of mercenaries to whom the taxpayer unknowingly paid lavish sums, to commit horrific war crimes like the Nissour Square Massacre, also known as “Baghdad’s Bloody Sunday.”

    One of Donald Trump’s most indefensible (and bizarrely, least commented-upon) acts was the pardon of the four Blackwater guards who shot and killed those seventeen Iraqi civilians, including women and children. The New York Times story covering the Blackwater pardon spent just four paragraphs on the case, sticking it below apparently more outrageous acts like the pardon of George Papadopoulos.

    “Baghdad’s Bloody Sunday” took place in 2007, by which time we were bombing and kidnapping all over the world, disappearing people off streets like the Bogey Man of fairy tales. Detainees were taken to secret prisons where, we later learned, efforts by prisoners to starve themselves out of their misery were thwarted by a diet of raisins, nuts, pasta, and hummus rocketed up the back door through “the widest possible tube.”

    Even years later, one Gitmo prisoner would waive his right to appear in court because “rectal damage” made it too painful to sit. We made mistakes in who we selected for this treatment, grabbing people with no connection to anything for torture, as films like Taxi to the Dark Side documented. However, Americans seemed to lose interest in these policies once the Iraq misadventure came to a sort-of end, and a new president was elected.

    The rise of Wikileaks introduced an uncontrollable variable into our drift toward authoritarianism. The WMD episode had shown again that our press, the supposed first line of defense against abuses, could not be relied upon. For every expose like Abu Ghraib, there were a hundred stories that either went uncovered or advanced official deceptions.

    Wikileaks anticipated a future in which the press would not only be pliant accomplices to power in this way, but where information itself would be tightly controlled by governments using far-reaching and probably extralegal new technological concepts, deploying misleading excuses for clampdowns.

    One of the first Wikileaks document dumps involved the Thai government’s blacklist of Internet sites, which was billed as a way to stop child pornography but had in fact been used to remove as many as 1200 sites critical of the Thai royal family, among other things. “The Thai system was used to censor Australia reportage about the imprisoned Australian writer Harry Nicolaides,” Assange noted, in 2009.

    Wikileaks also released the Camp Manual for Guantanamo Bay, which among other things revealed that children as young as 15 were being held, along with 900+ other files about a place essentially closed off to even theoretical press review. Another early dump involved the Minton report, about toxic dumping in the Ivory Coast by the firm Trafigura, which in yet another preview of a future of information control had obtained a court order to prevent The Guardian from printing.

    In the 2010 Collateral Murder video, an Apache helicopter crew falsely claims to have encountered a firefight and lights up a Baghdad street, killing a dozen people, including two Reuters employees. Somehow even more disturbing than the killing is the dialogue captured between pilots and base. They’re laughing in parts, saying things like, “Just fuckin’ once you get on ‘em, just open ‘em up,” “All right, hahaha, I hit em,” and “Hey, you shoot, I’ll talk.”

    For all the talk about the madness of Donald Trump — and I wrote one of those pieces — this was something more dangerous, i.e. institutional insanity. We were factory-producing sociopathic murder, by air, in a process that would become more depersonalized. As early as 2011 we learned the Pentagon was working on a software-based system for identifying and eliminating targets by drone, in an effort to remove the potentially complicating variable of human conscience. The implications of this are the stuff of sci-fi movies: outsourcing feeling, judgment, and responsibility to machines, which incidentally would eventually use similar software to determine how much about these questions could be disclosed to human audiences.

    Collateral Murder came out when Americans were also learning about serious corruption at home. After the 2008 financial crash, the Obama administration made historic decisions to reorganize the economy through a series of bailouts and interventions that not only rewarded the worst actors, but super-concentrated power in the hands of newly merged financial institutions. The most significant decisions were made in secret, including at a remarkable post-crash meeting of financial leaders at the Fed whose lurid story would be reinvented as heroic fairy tale in Too Big To Fail.

    Wikileaks would go on to release financial secrets as well, including the draft charter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and, far more damaging, eighty pages of transcripts of paid speeches Hillary Clinton to Wall Street banks, where again the most damaging revelations were lingual. Clinton was shown admitting she was “far removed” from ordinary life because of the “economic, you know, fortunes that my husband and I now enjoy,” while speaking to Goldman, Sachs about the importance of developing “a middle class that can buy the products.”

    By 2016 Assange had been peeled away from many public supporters. A long campaign of surveillance and multiple scandals dimmed his star, with lowlights including the issuance of a Swedish arrest warrant over an alleged sexual assault. People will argue about whether or not he brought this fate on himself. To me it’s irrelevant: the issue, again, is the institution, not the person. The institutional concept of an unregulated leak site has always been the target in this story, far more than Julian Assange.

    Even if one stipulates that every piece of negative news ever written about Assange is true, his story is still primarily about the closing of an informational loophole during a time of ambitious efforts to throw a net of secrecy around the expansion of executive power. It was big news in the Bush years when an American named Jose Padilla was whisked away as an enemy combatant. In the Obama years, the pushed envelope was the first droning without trial of an American, al-Qaeda’s Anwar al-Awlaki. Was he the most sympathetic victim? Maybe not, but the widened principle mattered. And there was the matter of his sixteen-year-old son, whom we also killed. These decisions took place in an increasingly large space exempt from public review of any kind.

    When Assange disappeared into the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012, there were already discussions about bringing him to the United States to face treason charges. This was a death penalty offense, the Brookings Institution noted, not worrying at the oddness of charging a foreigner with such a crime. Long before 2016, when Assange lost the support of most liberals for good through the release of the Podesta and DNC files, politicians like Joe Biden were calling Assange a “high-tech terrorist,” language that ought to have raised serious questions given the practices revealed in Collateral Murder, and cases like al-Awlaki’s: we kill terrorists, after all.

    Assange isn’t there yet, but he’s on his way, a health wreck. As Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi explained in our interview on Useful Idiots this week, Assange has not been outside since 2012. He seems destined to end up sharing the fate of those Gitmo prisoners in head-bags whose condition was one of the first Wikileaks scoops: kept in a kind of legal nowhere forever, unable even to escape through suicide.

    Like the Blackwater pardon, the Assange prosecution was simultaneously one of Trump’s worst and least-commented-upon acts. This was a real act of authoritarianism, not some piddling conspiracy with Giliuanis and Stones, but an act made in full cooperation with the awesome power of the American state. We’ll learn a lot about the Biden administration’s real attitude toward Trump’s “authoritarian” leanings by their handling of the case. It should tell people something that the same Obama White House that prosecuted eight leakers under the Espionage Act hesitated to go there with Assange. They understood the implications.

    When interviewed about the case in 2019, former Attorney General Eric Holder was asked if a publisher should be charged criminally. “If you are acting in a pure journalistic sense, no,” he said. “You look at the leaker you don’t look at the journalists.” However, he said, “if you’re acting at the behest of a foreign power, you are in a fundamentally different position.”

    The Assange indictment, however, is not about working with a foreign power, but entirely about Collateral Murder-era actions. Seventeen of the eighteen counts are Espionage Act charges that criminalize the obtaining, possessing, and publishing of “national defense information”:

    The last count is about the alleged offer to help Manning crack a security hash. Given that each of the Espionage Act counts carries a potential ten-year sentence, this case is about making not just the release, but even the solicitation of material like Collateral Murder punishable by life sentence.

    You don’t have to like Julian Assange to grasp the gravity of this. The application of the Espionage Act in this fashion means that reporting going forward will only be legal when not really damaging. This is the outcome Nixon wanted in the Pentagon Papers case (“Goddamn it, somebody’s got to go to jail on that!”). It makes the reporter on the next My Lai or Abu Ghraib a potential criminal or unperson.

    In conjunction with the widespread recent crackdowns on other kinds of speech by tech platforms, the continued exile of other transgressors like Snowden, and the rehabilitation of people like former CIA chief John Brennan, who committed perjury about these issues in the congressional chamber whose violated sanctity so infuriated America this week, it’s an enormous power grab — not a temporary one like the Capitol occupation, but a permanent, far-reaching assertion of institutional dominance.

    In our discussion with Maurizi this week, she talked about having her phone seized and its contents stolen by yet another American mercenary firm, as part of a sweep apparently done to every visitor to Assange in the embassy years. “They secretly unscrewed my phone,” she said, adding that data and pictures from her sim card were downloaded, her conversations with Assange recorded. “And they knew I was a journalist,” she said.

    Even though at least one of the affected journalists visiting the embassy was from the Washington Post, there was almost no reaction here at all. We’ve become inured to these violations. The authoritarian behaviors that freaked people out in the Bush and early Obama years have become as invisible as air to most Americans, who, lucky for many, mostly stopped following that bouncing ball the moment Trump arrived. Now Trump is on his way out, but the lockdown era is just beginning. You’ll forgive me if I’m more scared of that than the other thing.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/08/2021 – 23:05

  • Nissan Source Code Leaked Online After Servers Infiltrated Using Default "Admin" Password
    Nissan Source Code Leaked Online After Servers Infiltrated Using Default “Admin” Password

    As if Nissan didn’t have enough issues with its plunging sales, the company’s source code for its North American mobile apps and internal tools has now leaked online.

    The leak came as a result of the company misconfiguring one of its own Git servers – which Nissan inadvertently left exposed online with its default username and password, according to ZDnet. 

    The server was left with a default username and password combo of admin/admin, ZDnet reported. Was Solarwinds123 already taken as a password?

    Tillie Kottmann, a Swiss-based software engineer, learned about the leak from an anonymous source and analyzed the data on Monday. Kottmann told ZDnet that the leak included source codes for:

    • Nissan NA Mobile apps

    • some parts of the Nissan ASIST diagnostics tool

    • the Dealer Business Systems / Dealer Portal

    • Nissan internal core mobile library

    • Nissan/Infiniti NCAR/ICAR services

    • client acquisition and retention tools

    • sale / market research tools + data

    • various marketing tools

    • the vehicle logistics portal

    • vehicle connected services / Nissan connect things

    • and various other backends and internal tools

    Photo: ZDnet

    A rep for Nissan said: “We are aware of a claim regarding a reported improper disclosure of Nissan’s confidential information and source code. We take this type of matter seriously and are conducting an investigation.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/08/2021 – 22:45

  • Iraq Court Issues Arrest Warrant For Trump Over Militia Leader Killing
    Iraq Court Issues Arrest Warrant For Trump Over Militia Leader Killing

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    An Iraqi court issued an arrest warrant for President Trump for the killing of Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was killed in a US drone strike alongside Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani last January.

    Al-Muhandis was the leader of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a group of mostly Shia state-sponsored militias that was formed in 2014 to fight ISIS.

    Gen. Qassem Soleimani, and the late Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (right)

    The Iraqi warrant comes after Iran issued a “red notice” to Interpol for President Trump and dozens of other US officials for the killing of Soleimani. It was the second time since June that Iran requested the international police agency arrest Trump for the assassination, but the request has not been acted on.

    According to Middle East Eye:

    The Baghdad court issued the warrant for Trump’s arrest under Article 406 of the Iraqi penal code, which provides for the death penalty in all cases of premeditated murder, according to the judiciary.

    …“The investigation procedures are continuing to find out the other participants in the execution of this crime, whether they are Iraqis or foreigners,” the court said.

    Sunday, January 3rd, marked the one-year anniversary of the US assassination of Soleimani and al-Muhandis. Leading up to the day, US military officials were warning of Iranian or “Iranian-backed” attacks on US forces in Iraq. But the day came and went with no violence, although protesters took to the streets of Baghdad, demanding the US pull out of Iraq.

    After al-Muhandis and Soleimani were killed, Iraq’s parliament voted unanimously to expel US forces. Currently, the US is in the process of drawing down troops in Iraq. By January 15th, there are expected to be 2,500 US troops left in the country.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/08/2021 – 22:25

  • China Power Demand Hits Record As Polar Vortex Split Pours Arctic Air Into Region
    China Power Demand Hits Record As Polar Vortex Split Pours Arctic Air Into Region

    The Beijing meteorological station recorded one of the coldest temperatures in decades this past week, sending power demand through the roof. 

    Lei Lei, the chief forecaster for Beijing meteorological station, told China Daily that the first cold wave in 2021 features a “dramatic temperature drop,” “significant wind-chill effect,” and “prolonged period of low temperature.”

    On Jan. 7, Beijing recorded the coldest day since the 1960s while cities such as the eastern port city of Qingdao recorded the lowest temperature in history, according to Reuters. 

    China’s State Grid reports peak power load hit record highs in at least nine provincial grid systems in northern China. These areas are considered China’s industrial belt, where a manufacturing recovery is underway. 

    “The (latest) historic peak load came as extremely cold weather increased demand for electricity-powered heating facilities, which account for 48.2% of total load,” an official from the State Grid was quoted by Reuters. 

    China has spent the last several years swapping out coal-burning power stations for electricity-fueled heating devices as part of a green energy campaign to combat air pollution in northern regions. Power demand has been so high because of the severe cold that state-backed China Huaneng Group had to fire up a coal plant earlier this month to meet surging electricity demand. 

    Last month, China imported a record volume of liquefied natural gas as heating fuel demand soared for tens of millions of households. 

    According to Goldman Sachs, colder temperatures may increase the probability of COVID-19 outbreaks. This week alone, China implemented travel restrictions in Hebei, a province neighboring Beijing after a spike in coronavirus cases. 

    A possible theory behind the wicked cold weather in China could be sudden stratospheric warming pushing colder air into Asia. 

    If SSW theory is correct, this would mean a weakening polar vortex would also bring colder air into Europe and the US. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/08/2021 – 22:05

  • The Capitol Riot Wasn't A Coup. It Wasn't Even Close
    The Capitol Riot Wasn’t A Coup. It Wasn’t Even Close

    Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

    On Wednesday, a mob apparently composed of Trump supporters forced its way past US Capitol security guards and briefly moved unrestrained through much of the capitol building. They displayed virtually no organization and no clear goals.

    Five people reportedly died during the events – one apparently unarmed female protester died of a gunshot wound, three other protesters “suffered medical emergencies” that resulted in their deaths (one crushed, one heart attack, and one stroke); and a police officer died from a blood clot on his brain reportedly triggered while physically engaging with protesters.

    [ZH: Here is one ‘terrifying scene’ from the clashes as ‘rioters’ began their ‘coup’]…

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    Yet, the media response has been to act as if the event constituted a coup d’etat. This was “A Very American Coup” according to a headline at The New Republic. “This is a Coup” insists a writer at Foreign Policy. The Atlantic presented photos purported to be “Scenes From an American Coup.”

    But this wasn’t a coup, and what happened on Wednesday is conceptually very different from a coup. Coups nearly always are acts committed by elites against the sitting executive power using the tools of the elites. This isn’t at all what happened on Wednesday.

    What Is a Coup?

    A gang of disorganized, powerless mechanics, janitors, and insurance agents running through the capitol isn’t a coup. And if it was a coup attempt, it was so far from anything that might hope to succeed as a coup that it should not be taken seriously as such.

    So how do we know a coup when we see one?

    In their article “Global instances of coups from 1950 to 2010: A new dataset,” authors Jonathan M. Powell and Clayton L. Thyne provide a definition:

    A coup attempt includes illegal and overt attempts by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting executive.

    There are two key components of this definition. The first is that it is illegal. Powell and Thyne note this “illegal” qualifier is important to include “because it differentiates coups from political pressure, which is common whenever people have freedom to organize.”

    In other words, protests, or threats of protest don’t count as coups. Neither do legal efforts such as a vote of no confidence or an impeachment. 

    But an even more critical aspect of Powell’s and Thyne’s definition is that it requires the involvement of elites.

    This can be seen in any stereotypical example of a coup d’etat. This generally involves a renegade military detachment, military officers, and others from within the state apparatus who can employ knowledge, skills, influence, coercive tools gained through membership in the regime’s elite circles.

    The attempted coup in Japan in 1937, for example, was carried out by more than 1,500 officers and men of the Japanese imperial army. They nonetheless failed, likely because they miscalculated the amount of support they enjoyed among other officers. More recently, in the 2009 Honduran coup, the bulk of the Honduran Army turned on the president Manuel Zelaya and sent him into exile. That was a successful coup. More famously, Chile’s 1973 coup was successfully led by Agusto Pinochet, the commander-in-chief of the Army, and this enabled him to shell the Chilean executive palace with military hardware.

    Contrast this with nameless MAGA-hat-wearing flag wavers, and the inappropriateness of the term “coup” in this case should be blatantly obvious. With real coups, power is seized by a faction of the elite which has the ability to take control of the machinery of state indefinitely. Although some of Trump’s critics claim he was somehow responsible for Wednesday’s mob, it is clear that Trump was not coordinating or directing any sort of military operation through Twitter posts. There was no plan for holding power. Had those who invaded the capitol building managed to take control of the building for a time, there’s no reason to think this would somehow translate into control of the state. How would it? The real coercive power remained well ensconced within an apparently undivided military apparatus.

    Moreover, it has been clear for years that the permanent technocracy which controls the day-to-day execution of federal administrative power (i.e., “the deep state”) has long been committed to undermining the Trump administration—from high ranking FBI agents, to military diplomats, to Pentagon officials. From where would Trump draw the necessary cooperation from elites to overturn more than 200 years of established norms in transfers of presidential power? In any case, the Biden administration is likely to be better for the state’s elites than the Trump administration. There is no reason for any group of them to contemplate a coup against Biden.

    Thus, if any of Wednesday’s capital rioters thought they were about to bring about a coup by smashing some windows in the capitol, they were engaging in thoroughly amateurish thinking. It’s unlikely, however, that more than a few of the rioters thought there was a coup d’etat afoot. It’s more likely most of them simply wanted to dramatically display their displeasure with the federal regime and to signal they weren’t going to placidly submit to whatever the American bureaucracy decided to dish out.

    Nonetheless, we should not be surprised that the media has rushed to apply the term to the riot. This phenomenon was examined in a November 2019 article titled “Coup with Adjectives: Conceptual Stretching or Innovation in Comparative Research?,” by Leiv Marsteintredet and Andres Malamud. The authors note that as the incidence of real coups has declined, the word has become more common, but with modifiers attached.

    Examples of these modifiers include “soft,” “constitutional,” “parliamentary,” and “slow-motion.” Numerous critics of the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, for example, repeatedly called it a “soft coup.” The authors note this is no mere issue of splitting hairs, explaining that “The choice of how to conceptualize a coup is not to be taken lightly since it carries normative, analytical, and political implications.”

    Increasingly, the term really means “this is a thing I don’t like.” But the term’s use paints the non-coup participants as criminals poised to seize power illegally. By applying this term to the acts of a disorganized group of Trump supporters with no base of support among state elites, the pundits know exactly what they’re doing.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/08/2021 – 21:45

  • Rapes, Robberies Fall In Los Angeles While Homicides Reach Highest In Decade
    Rapes, Robberies Fall In Los Angeles While Homicides Reach Highest In Decade

    Crime in Los Angeles went “absolutely haywire” in 2020 according to Capt. Paul Vernon, head of the LAPD Compstat crime-tracking division.

    According to the Los Angeles Times, robberies, rapes and small-scale property crimes were down on the year, while killings, shootings and auto robberies spiked.

    After years of sustained declines, homicides reached the highest level in a decade, while shootings were up by around 40%. Robberies, however, were down 17%, while rapes fell 25%. The city exceeded 300 homicides in a single year for the first time since 2009, something which takes Chicago about  six months to achieve. In December, Los Angeles saw 14 killings and 45 shootings in one week, vs. four killed and 17 shot in 2019. The Times estimated that there were 349 homicides in 2020, a 38% boost over 2019. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js“You can only make inferences [based on] what’s happening and what’s not happening,” said Vernon, who analyzed shifts in major crimes on a 2020 timeline of significant events and concluded that COVID-19, and the ensuing lockdowns had a major impact on these trends starting in March.

    “I cannot say enough that cops count, police matter, the presence of our officers in communities makes a difference,” said LAPD Chief Michael Moore in a statement to the Times.

    Between January and February, gun violence was above the trend vs. the first two months of 2019, while other crimes were in-line. After the lockdowns began, however, the numbers “radically” changed, according to the Times, with property crimes, street robberies, sexual assaults and other violent offenses falling significantly. As Summer began, however, shootings and killings spiked, increasing as time went on. Perhaps stir-crazy Californians were sent over the edge? Critics of the police suggest that increasing funding for social services for the poor, homeless, mentally ill and addicts would go a long way towards helping.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/08/2021 – 21:25

  • U Alabama Under Investigation For Possible Ties To Wuhan Lab
    U Alabama Under Investigation For Possible Ties To Wuhan Lab

    Authored by Wyatt Eichholz via Campus Reform,

    The U.S. Department of Education has requested information from the University of Alabama regarding alleged undisclosed ties between the university and the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

    “It appears that UA has failed to report an alleged partnership with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China,” a letter sent to UA President Stuart Bell on Dec. 22 stated.

    “The WIV, owned by the Chinese government’s Academy of Sciences, includes a maximum biocontainment laboratory (“MCL”) that may be closely linked to the origin and/or spread of the Chinese COVID-19 virus,” the letter continued.

    The investigation was initiated in light of the fact that the University of Alabama is listed as an international partner on the Wuhan Institute’s official website.

    “The UA reference on the Wuhan Institute of Virology website was brought to our attention earlier this year,” the university said in a statement provided to Campus Reform.

    “At that time, we reviewed any possible related institutional records to determine the basis for the reference. We found no ties or connection between UA and WIV, and no reason for UA to be listed on the website.”

    “University officials reached out to WVI to question the reference and requested the UA reference on the website be removed, but never received a response,” the statement continued. “We have relayed this information to the Department of Education.”

    The Department of Education’s letter requested that UA provide any documents with information relating to the Wuhan lab to the department within 30 days. The request cited Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965, a law concerning the financial relationships between U.S. universities and foreign sources.

    “Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. § 1011f) requires institutions of higher education (IHEs), including the University of Alabama (UA), to fully report statutorily defined gifts, contracts, and/or restricted and conditional gifts or contracts from or with a foreign source to the U.S. Department of Education (Department),” the letter explained.

    An Education Department spokesman declined to provide additional information, saying, “As a policy, we don’t comment on matters involving Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 until a letter has been posted on our website.”

    The Wuhan Institute of Virology could not be reached for comment. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/08/2021 – 21:05

  • China Threatens US With "Heavy Price" For "Crazy Provocation" Of Top Ambassador's Trip To Taiwan
    China Threatens US With “Heavy Price” For “Crazy Provocation” Of Top Ambassador’s Trip To Taiwan

    China is warning the United States to be ready to pay a “heavy price” should it move forward with sending its Ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft on an official trip to Taiwan next week.

    “We wish to remind the United States that whoever plays with fire will burn himself,” the Chinese mission to the UN said in a statement. “The United States will pay a heavy price for its wrong action,” 

    “China strongly urges the United States to stop its crazy provocation, stop creating new difficulties for China-U.S. relations and the two countries’ cooperation in the United Nations, and stop going further on the wrong path.”

    Beijing demanded that the visit be canceled, saying China “firmly opposes” the provocative action, and suggested strongly it would be seen as a violation of the ‘One China’ policy.

    Craft will visit officials in Taipei from January 13 to 15, which will “reinforce the US government’s strong and ongoing support for Taiwan’s international space,” according to a US diplomatic statement.

    A series of lower level administration officials visited the island last year, also at a tense moment that US weapons sales to Taiwan were being brokered and finalized, which Beijing also condemned. 

    But this upcoming trip will be arguably the highest profile and most visible figure under the Trump administration to go to Taipei thus far.

    Chinese state media has also been busy underscoring that the continuing US delegations are a violation of Chinese sovereignty, also while continuing military exercises in and near the Taiwan Strait.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/08/2021 – 20:45

  • Children's Hospitals Grapple With Wave Of Mental Illness
    Children’s Hospitals Grapple With Wave Of Mental Illness

    Authored by Carmen Heredia Rodriguez via Kaiser Health News,

    Krissy Williams, 15, had attempted suicide before, but never with pills.

    The teen was diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was 9. People with this chronic mental health condition perceive reality differently and often experience hallucinations and delusions. She learned to manage these symptoms with a variety of services offered at home and at school.

    But the pandemic upended those lifelines. She lost much of the support offered at school. She also lost regular contact with her peers. Her mother lost access to respite care — which allowed her to take a break.

    On a Thursday in October, the isolation and sadness came to a head. As Krissy’s mother, Patricia Williams, called a mental crisis hotline for help, she said, Krissy stood on the deck of their Maryland home with a bottle of pain medication in one hand and water in the other.

    Before Patricia could react, Krissy placed the pills in her mouth and swallowed.

    Efforts to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus in the United States have led to drastic changes in the way children and teens learn, play and socialize. Tens of millions of students are attending school through some form of distance learning. Many extracurricular activities have been canceled. Playgrounds, zoos and other recreational spaces have closed. Kids like Krissy have struggled to cope and the toll is becoming evident.

    Government figures show the proportion of children who arrived in emergency departments with mental health issues increased 24% from mid-March through mid-October, compared with the same period in 2019. Among preteens and adolescents, it rose by 31%. Anecdotally, some hospitals said they are seeing more cases of severe depression and suicidal thoughts among children, particularly attempts to overdose.

    The increased demand for intensive mental health care that has accompanied the pandemic has worsened issues that have long plagued the system. In some hospitals, the number of children unable to immediately get a bed in the psychiatric unit rose. Others reduced the number of beds or closed psychiatric units altogether to reduce the spread of covid-19.

    “It’s only a matter of time before a tsunami sort of reaches the shore of our service system, and it’s going to be overwhelmed with the mental health needs of kids,” said Jason Williams, a psychologist and director of operations of the Pediatric Mental Health Institute at Children’s Hospital Colorado.

    “I think we’re just starting to see the tip of the iceberg, to be honest with you.”

    Before covid, more than 8 million kids between ages 3 and 17 were diagnosed with a mental or behavioral health condition, according to the most recent National Survey of Children’s Health. A separate survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found 1 in 3 high school students in 2019 reported feeling persistently sad and hopeless — a 40% increase from 2009.

    The coronavirus pandemic appears to be adding to these difficulties. A review of 80 studies found forced isolation and loneliness among children correlated with an increased risk of depression.

    “We’re all social beings, but they’re [teenagers] at the point in their development where their peers are their reality,” said Terrie Andrews, a psychologist and administrator of behavioral health at Wolfson Children’s Hospital in Florida. “Their peers are their grounding mechanism.”

    Children’s hospitals in New York, Colorado and Missouri all reported an uptick in the number of patients who thought about or attempted suicide. Clinicians also mentioned spikes in children with severe depression and those with autism who are acting out.

    The number of overdose attempts among children has caught the attention of clinicians at two facilities. Andrews from Wolfson Children’s said the facility gives out lockboxes for weapons and medication to the public — including parents who come in after children attempted to take their life using medication.

    Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., also has experienced an uptick, said Dr. Colby Tyson, associate director of inpatient psychiatry. She’s seen children’s mental health deteriorate due to a likely increase in family conflict — often a consequence of the chaos caused by the pandemic. Without school, connections with peers or employment, families don’t have the opportunity to spend time away from one another and regroup, which can add stress to an already tense situation.

    “That break is gone,” she said.

    The higher demand for child mental health services caused by the pandemic has made finding a bed at an inpatient unit more difficult.

    Krissy Williams, pictured with her brother, lives with schizophrenia. The disruption to her school and health services caused by covid-19 worsened her mental health. In October, she tried to take her own life. (Patricia Williams)

    Now, some hospitals report running at full capacity and having more children “boarding,” or sleeping in emergency departments before being admitted to the psychiatric unit. Among them is the Pediatric Mental Health Institute at Children’s Hospital Colorado. Williams said the inpatient unit has been full since March. Some children now wait nearly two days for a bed, up from the eight to 10 hours common before the pandemic.

    Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Ohio is also running at full capacity, said clinicians, and had several days in which the unit was above capacity and placed kids instead in the emergency department waiting to be admitted. In Florida, Andrews said, up to 25 children have been held on surgical floors at Wolfson Children’s while waiting for a spot to open in the inpatient psychiatric unit. Their wait could last as long as five days, she said.

    Multiple hospitals said the usual summer slump in child psychiatric admissions was missing last year. “We never saw that during the pandemic,” said Andrews. “We stayed completely busy the entire time.”

    Some facilities have decided to reduce the number of beds available to maintain physical distancing, further constricting supply. Children’s National in D.C. cut five beds from its unit to maintain single occupancy in every room, said Dr. Adelaide Robb, division chief of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

    The measures taken to curb the spread of covid have also affected the way hospitalized children receive mental health services. In addition to providers wearing protective equipment, some hospitals like Cincinnati Children’s rearranged furniture and placed cues on the floor as reminders to stay 6 feet apart. UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital in Pittsburgh and other facilities encourage children to keep their masks on by offering rewards like extra computer time. Patients at Children’s National now eat in their rooms, a change from when they ate together.

    Despite the need for distance, social interaction still represents an important part of mental health care for children, clinicians said. Facilities have come up with various ways to do so safely, including creating smaller pods for group therapy. Kids at Cincinnati Children’s can play with toys, but only with ones that can be wiped clean afterward. No cards or board games, said Dr. Suzanne Sampang, clinical medical director for child and adolescent psychiatry at the hospital.

    “I think what’s different about psychiatric treatment is that, really, interaction is the treatment,” she said, “just as much as a medication.”

    The added infection-control precautions pose challenges to forging therapeutic connections. Masks can complicate the ability to read a person’s face. Online meetings make it difficult to build trust between a patient and a therapist.

    “There’s something about the real relationship in person that the best technology can’t give to you,” said Robb.

    For now, Krissy is relying on virtual platforms to receive some of her mental health services. Despite being hospitalized and suffering brain damage due to the overdose, she is now at home and in good spirits. She enjoys geometry, dancing on TikTok and trying to beat her mother at Super Mario Bros. on the Wii. But being away from her friends, she said, has been a hard adjustment.

    “When you’re used to something,” she said, “it’s not easy to change everything.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/08/2021 – 20:25

  • New Hyper-Infectious "Mutant" COVID Strain May Already Be Spreading In US
    New Hyper-Infectious “Mutant” COVID Strain May Already Be Spreading In US

    Despite scientists’ insistence that mutated strains of the original SARS-CoV-2 virus had little significance, so-called “variants” discovered in the UK and South Africa have been found to be more infectious than the original. And while vaccine makers insist that their jabs will be just as effective against these hyper-infectious strains, the reality is there isn’t much data to comfortably back up these assertions.

    And while the world waits to see just how effective the various coronavirus vaccines will be in practice, members of Joe Biden’s coronavirus task force have warned that dangerous mutant strains that have yet to be isolated might already be spreading across the US.

    A report sent by the WH task force to various US states dated Jan. 3 warns of the possibility of a “USA variant”, which might explain Thursday’s record-breaking tally of new deaths (more than 4K).

    “This fall/winter surge has been at nearly twice the rate of rise of cases as the spring and summer surges. This acceleration suggests there may be a USA variant that has evolved here, in addition to the UK variant that is already spreading in our communities and may be 50% more transmissible,” the report said.

    The task force called for “aggressive mitigation…to match a much more aggressive virus” – which of course includes more restrictive lockdown measures and mandatory mask-wearing.

    “Without uniform implementation of effective face masking (two or three ply and well-fitting) and strict social distancing, epidemics could quickly worsen as these variants spread and become predominant.”

    Once again, we feel justified in asking: are these warnings legitimate, or is this just another ‘white lie’ cooked up by Dr. Fauci and the White House task force to scare Americans into compliance?

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/08/2021 – 20:05

  • Trump Tweets From POTUS Account, Twitter Then Immediately Deletes It
    Trump Tweets From POTUS Account, Twitter Then Immediately Deletes It

    Update (2100ET): At 8:29pm ET, Trump – having been suspended from his personal twitter account  – decided to use the official twitter account of the US president, @POTUS, saying that “Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my accounts from their platform to silence me – and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me.” Trump then said that “Twitter may be a private company, but without the government’s gift of Section 230 they would not exist for long.”

    Trump, who has yet to create his own Parler account, continued: “We have been negotiating with various other sites, and will have a big announcement soon, while we also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future.”

    “We will not be SILENCED! Twitter is not about FREE SPEECH. They are all about promoting a Radical Left platform where some of the most vicious people in the world are allowed to speak freely” the president boomed.

    He concluded with an all caps “STAY TUNED!”

    Just moments later, twitter deleted all of the above tweets from the @POTUS account. The last remaining tweet on that account which at 33.4 million has a little over a third of Trump’s original 88 million followers, is from December 23.

    The deletion was followed by a tweet from none other than Trump’s nemesis, Hillary Clinton, who gloated that Trump’s account has indeed been deleted as she urged him to do just before she lost the 2016 election to him.

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    Shortly after, Trump also tweeted using his campaign, @TeamTrump account. Literally 10 seconds later the account was suspended.

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    The deletion was confirmed by the TeamTrump social media director:

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    According to VOA reporter Steve Herman, a twitter spokesperson said that “As we’ve said, using another account to try to evade a suspension is against our rules. We’ve permanently suspended the @TeamTrump account.”

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    There was more: just before 10pm, Trump campaign digital director Gary Coby tweeted Dan Scavino to use his account for Trump… and was suspended moments later:

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    Trump’s son, Donald Jr., – whose twitter account has surprisingly not been banned yet – tweeted “Free Speech Is Under Attack! Censorship is happening like NEVER before! Don’t let them silence us. Sign up at DONJR.COM to stay connected!”

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    The night is not over yet, and as the great purge continues, nobody knows how many more voices will be silenced.

    And while we wait, it appears that America’s most popular talk show host in history, terminal cancer patient and close friend of Donald Trump, did what so many others will do in the coming days, and nuked his own account.

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    * * *

    Update (2000ET): As the purge accelerates, color us not so completely stunned that Google has just suspended Parler from its Play Store:

    “In order to protect user safety on Google Play, our longstanding policies require that apps displaying user-generated content have moderation policies and enforcement that removes egregious content like posts that incite violence.

    All developers agree to these terms and we have reminded Parler of this clear policy in recent months.

    We’re aware of continued posting in the Parler app that seeks to incite ongoing violence in the U.S.

    We recognize that there can be reasonable debate about content policies and that it can be difficult for apps to immediately remove all violative content, but for us to distribute an app through Google Play, we do require that apps implement robust moderation for egregious content.

    In light of this ongoing and urgent public safety threat we are suspending the app’s listings from the Play Store until it addresses these issues.”

    – José Castañeda, a Google spokesperson.

    President Trump’s son, Don Jr, summed things up quite succinctly:

    We are living Orwell’s 1984. Free-speech no longer exists in America. It died with big tech and what’s left is only there for a chosen few.

    This is absolute insanity!

    So the ayatollah, and numerous other dictatorial regimes can have Twitter accounts with no issue despite threatening genocide to entire countries and killing homosexuals etc… but The President of the United States should be permanently suspended.

    Mao would be proud.

    “Red Wedding” anyone?

    *  *  *

    Update (1830ET): With a post published on its blog, accompanied by a tweet from Twitter’s “Twitter Safety” account, the social media company has officially caved to pressure from a growing chorus of leftists, and agreed to permanently ban President Trump from twitter.

    It’s the capstone of a long day of growing censorship of Trump and conservative voices across the web, from Shopify to Apple (which as we noted below is trying to shadowban Parler).

    Here’s Twitter’s statement:

    Permanent suspension of @realDonaldTrump

    After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.

    In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action. Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open.

    However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things. We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement.

    The below is a comprehensive analysis of our policy enforcement approach in this case.

    Overview

    On January 8, 2021, President Donald J. Trump tweeted:

    “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

    Shortly thereafter, the President tweeted:

    “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”

    Due to the ongoing tensions in the United States, and an uptick in the global conversation in regards to the people who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, these two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks. After assessing the language in these Tweets against our Glorification of Violence policy, we have determined that these Tweets are in violation of the Glorification of Violence Policy and the user @realDonaldTrump should be immediately permanently suspended from the service.

    Assessment

    We assessed the two Tweets referenced above under our Glorification of Violence policy, which aims to prevent the glorification of violence that could inspire others to replicate violent acts and determined that they were highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

    This determination is based on a number of factors, including:

    • President Trump’s statement that he will not be attending the Inauguration is being received by a number of his supporters as further confirmation that the election was not legitimate and is seen as him disavowing his previous claim made via two Tweets (1, 2) by his Deputy Chief of Staff, Dan Scavino, that there would be an “orderly transition” on January 20th.
    • The second Tweet may also serve as encouragement to those potentially considering violent acts that the Inauguration would be a “safe” target, as he will not be attending.
    • The use of the words “American Patriots” to describe some of his supporters is also being interpreted as support for those committing violent acts at the US Capitol.
    • The mention of his supporters having a “GIANT VOICE long into the future” and that “They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” is being interpreted as further indication that President Trump does not plan to facilitate an “orderly transition” and instead that he plans to continue to support, empower, and shield those who believe he won the election.
    • Plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021.

    As such, our determination is that the two Tweets above are likely to inspire others to replicate the violent acts that took place on January 6, 2021, and that there are multiple indicators that they are being received and understood as encouragement to do so.

    Twitter shares dropped in after-hours trading on the news.

    Trump Campaign Adviser Stephen Miller tweeted immediately after (and we suspect will not be long before he is also suspended indefinitely) that “Big Tech wants to cancel; all Trump supporters.”

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    * * *

    Update (1705ET): Big tech is on a cancel crusade today – with Twitter suspending General Michael Flynn, attorney Sidney Powell and various other pro-Trump accounts (see below).

    Meanwhile, Apple is set to remove Twitter competitor Parler from its app store unless they enact a series of draconian crackdowns on free speech.

    Via BuzzFeed: 

    Apple has given Parler, the social network favored by conservatives and extremists, an ultimatum to implement a full moderation plan of its platform within the next 24 hours or face expulsion from the App store.

    In an email sent this morning and obtained by BuzzFeed News, Apple wrote to Parler’s executives that there had been complaints that the service had been used to plan and coordinate the storming of the US Capitol by President Donald Trump’s supporters on Wednesday. The insurrection left five people dead, including a police officer.

    “We have received numerous complaints regarding objectionable content in your Parler service, accusations that the Parler app was used to plan, coordinate, and facilitate the illegal activities in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021 that led (among other things) to loss of life, numerous injuries, and the destruction of property,” Apple wrote to Parler. “The app also appears to continue to be used to plan and facilitate yet further illegal and dangerous activities.”

    …

    Apple said that “to ensure there is no interruption of the availability of your app on the App Store,” Parler was required to submit an update and a “requested moderation improvement plan within 24 hours of the date of the message,” which was sent on Friday morning. Apple said if it did not receive an update from the company within that time frame, the app would be removed from the App store.

    An Apple spokesperson declined to comment.

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

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    Now, the Washington Post reports that hundreds of Twitter employees demanded in a Friday letter that the company permanently suspend President Trump’s account over Wednesday’s ‘storming’ of the US Capitol, after police simply let protesters into the building.

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

    “In an internal letter addressed to chief executive Jack Dorsey and his top executives viewed by The Washington Post, roughly 350 Twitter employees asked for a clear account of the company’s decision-making process regarding the President’s tweets the day that a pro-Trump mob breached the U.S. Capitol. Employees also requested an investigation into the past several years of corporate actions that led to Twitter’s role in the insurrection,” writes the Post.

    “Despite our efforts to serve the public conversation, as Trump’s megaphone, we helped fuel the deadly events of January 6th,” reads the letter. “We request an investigation into how our public policy decisions led to the amplification of serious anti-democratic threats. We must learn from our mistakes in order to avoid causing future harm.”

    *  *  *

    Update (1625ET): Twitter has suspended both General Michael Flynn, President Trump’s first National Security Adviser, and attorney Sidney Powell, as part of a crackdown on accounts engaging in ‘harmful activity.’

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    More purgings:

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    Check back for updates…

    *  *  *

    Cancel culture is back with a vengeance, after Reddit banned yet another pro-Trump forum, /r/DonaldTrump, from the public square in yet another example of leftist technocrats using outlier groups of extremists – in this case, the Capitol ‘raid’ – to justify their actions, while having given their own side a pass during four years of violence and incendiary rhetoric.

    “Reddit’s site-wide policies prohibit content that promotes hate, or encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence against groups of people or individuals. In accordance with this, we have been proactively reaching out to moderators to remind them of our policies and to offer support or resources as needed,” a Reddit spokesperson told an undoubtedly giddy Axios, who added “We have also taken action to ban the community r/donaldtrump given repeated policy violations in recent days regarding the violence at the U.S. Capitol.“

    In June, Reddit banned /r/The_Donald – one of the site’s largest political communities, right as the 2020 election began to heat up.

    The company’s Friday ban-hammer comes on the heels of several other platforms taking actions against Trump or his supporters. As Axios notes:

    • Twitch and Snapchat disabled Trump’s accounts.
    • Shopify took down two online stores affiliated with the president.
    • Facebook and Instagram banned Trump from posting for at least the next two weeks, and faced calls to boot him permanently, including from former First Lady Michelle Obama and high-ranking Hill Democrats.
    • Twitter froze Trump out of his account Wednesday before reinstating him Thursday once he deleted problematic tweets.
    • YouTube says it’s accelerating its enforcement of voter fraud claims against President Trump and others based on Wednesday’s events.
    • TikTok is removing content violations and redirecting hashtags like #stormthecapitol and #patriotparty to its community guidelines.

    Meanwhile, Facebook has removed the ‘Walk Away’ campaign from its platform and has banned founder Brandon Straka and his team – which had over 500,000 people who shared their testimonial videos about leaving the Democratic party.

    And in what’s got to be the icing on the cancel cake, Lehigh University just revoked a 33-year-old honorary degree given to President Trump in 1988, after the school’s board of trustees voted to do so on Thursday following the violence in the Capitol. 

    It seems like these institutions were just waiting for the right excuse…

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    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/08/2021 – 20:01

  • Enough With The Outrage
    Enough With The Outrage

    Authored by John Hinderaker via PowerLine blog,

    Like pretty much all conservatives, I have consistently criticized riots and other forms of political violence for many years. That includes yesterday’s Washington, D.C. riot.

    You can’t say the same about liberals, however. Until yesterday, one might have thought that liberals consider rioting and other forms of political violence to be as American as apple pie.

    You could write a book in support of that proposition, but for now let’s cite just a few examples.

    Do you remember when President Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017? Leftist Democrats rioted in Washington that day. That riot was arguably worse, more violent and more destructive, than what happened in D.C. yesterday. The liberal rioters destroyed stores, set vehicles on fire and battled with the police. Six police officers were wounded. Here is a video reminder:

    I don’t recall a single Democratic office-holder denouncing the Democrats’ Inauguration Day riot, and the Associated Press came perilously close to praising the rioters.

    Over the ensuing four years, Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioted countless times, bringing devastation to cities like Portland, Seattle, Kenosha and Minneapolis. Did any Democrats denounce these riots? Not that I remember. Many Democrats endorsed them, or seemed to do so. Kamala Harris, for example, said about the riots in June:

    They’re not going to stop. They’re not going to stop. This is a movement, I’m telling you. They’re not gonna stop. And everyone beware because they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop before Election Day and they’re not going to stop after Election Day. And everyone should take note of that. They’re not gonna let up and they should not.

    This was after 12 people had been killed in Democrat-sanctioned rioting, and billions of dollars in destruction committed. Have any Democrats denounced Black Lives Matter for its role in the riots? Not one. Has any Democrat denounced Antifa? Not that I know of, and some, like Keith Ellison, have specifically endorsed Antifa’s political violence.

    Democratic Party journalists have joined the party’s politicians in excusing riots. The New York Times, for example, published an admiring profile of Antifa. The Washington Post, likewise, has carried water for Antifa.

    The litany could go on for a long time. Yesterday’s assault on the Capitol was outrageous, but let’s not forget that last time out-of-control demonstrators interrupted business at the Capitol, shouted down senators and pounded on the doors of the Supreme Court, it was Democrats objecting to the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

    And speaking of assaults on capitols, did any Democrats object when leftists occupied the Wisconsin Capitol in Madison for four months, destroying property, impeding public business and violently assaulting conservatives? Not a peep.

    Minnesota’s capitol has come under attack, too–or at least, Republicans who tried to gather there. In March 2017, Antifa Democrats besieged the state Capitol:

    On March 4, Antifa members…flooded the Capitol building to disrupt local Trump supporters who were gathering in conjunction with the national March 4 Trump movement.

    Many Antifa members attempted to conceal their identity by covering their faces with bandanas and goggles. [T]he rioters used mace, tasers, smoke bombs, and firecrackers on members of the pro-Trump rally, and punched others in the face.

    One of those arrested and prosecuted for carrying out this criminal violence was Linwood Kaine, son of Senator and Vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine. Yawn. Democrats couldn’t be bothered to criticize rioting by their own supporters, let alone their own family members.

    And let’s not forget James Hodgkinson, even though every reporter in America apparently has. Hodgkinson was the Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer who tried to assassinate the entire House Republican baseball team and very nearly succeeded, inflicting grievous and permanent injuries on Congressman Steve Scalise. Hodgkinson was not the usual 20-something loner, he was a middle-aged union official who was not insane, but just full of hate. His Facebook page was festooned with over-the-top attacks on Republicans, taken directly from speeches by Bernie Sanders and every other prominent Democrat.

    Sanders issued a one or two line statement distancing himself from his volunteer’s would-be murder spree. But neither Sanders nor any other Democrat wondered whether Hodgkinson’s attack was related to their own crazed conspiracy theories (Russia hoax, etc.) and other lies that they routinely direct against Republicans.

    This could go on and on, but the point is obvious: Democratic Party politicians and reporters have no standing to complain about political violence (let alone mostly peaceful protests) until they get their own house in order.

    Today we are awash in ritual denunciations of President Trump, based on yesterday’s riot. Democratic House members have introduced new articles of impeachment, which I assume charge him with responsibility for the disorder. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi have urged Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment, alleging that President Trump is disabled or incompetent so as to remove him from office.

    These initiatives are ridiculous on their face. Trump will be out of office in a matter of days, long before any such “remedies” could be implemented, even if they were even remotely warranted. What is going on, obviously, is not an attack on Trump, but on his legacy. The Democrats–aided and abetted by some Republicans, unfortunately–are trying to discredit the president so thoroughly that not just his personality, or unjustifiable acts like his apparent encouragement of those who “wouldn’t stand for” the Democrats’ widespread voter fraud are denounced, but, far more important, his many accomplishments in office.

    Trump was, despite his flaws, a very good president. He has impressive achievements to his name, almost all of which the Democrats want to reverse, to the great prejudice of the American people. This is what Chuck Schumer et al. are trying to achieve–a comprehensive repudiation of Trump’s positive legacy.

    Tax cuts? Discredited! An America-First foreign policy? Discredited! Enforcing the immigration laws, which is the president’s constitutional duty? Discredited! Stopping the China sellout? Discredited! Standing up to Russia? Discredited! Supporting the Israelis? Discredited! Cutting back on unproductive federal regulations? Discredited! Encouraging U.S. energy production and independence? Discredited! Objecting to political correctness and cancel culture? Discredited! Standing up for America as a positive force in world history? Discredited!

    It is blindingly obvious that in the last days of the Trump administration, the Democrats are laying the groundwork for a comprehensive repudiation of the considerable achievements of the last four years, tying them all to Trump’s sometimes-unfortunate personality, and in particular to yesterday’s riot, which was small beer compared with countless riots that the Democrats have either cheered on or indulgently tolerated.

    What is important for conservatives is not to defend Donald Trump’s personality, still less the events of the last 24 hours, but rather to defend, aggressively, the solid achievements of an administration that surmounted four years of hysterical and dishonest obstructionism by the Democrats. It is unfortunate that some Republicans, joining in the Democrats’ hyena troop, do not seem to understand this.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/08/2021 – 19:45

  • "Sudden Stratospheric Warming" May Trigger Wild Winter Weather For Northeast 
    “Sudden Stratospheric Warming” May Trigger Wild Winter Weather For Northeast 

    Readers, some troubling developments in the Arctic may impact weather conditions in the US and Europe. In about a week, from late December to early January, temperatures miles above the Arctic have soared. This means that the polar vortex could be splitting in two and may produce wild winter weather in the weeks ahead, according to CBS. 

    The massive spike in temperatures is happening miles above the North Pole. The sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) event, experts say, could produce significant winter events across the Northern Hemisphere. 

    This could mean parts of the US and Europe may soon experience paralyzing snowstorms and frigid temperatures. 

    SWW involves warming temperatures 50,000 to 100,000 feet above the Arctic that disrupts the Arctic stratosphere, known as the polar vortex. 

    Last winter, there was limited disruption as the cold air was limited to the Arctic, which resulted in less snow for Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states. But happening now, the SWW is weakening the polar vortex as it wobbles and can split off into two, pushing colder air into the US, Europe, and Asia. 

    CBS News Meteorologist Jeff Berardelli tweeted an image to illustrate what is happening in the Stratosphere right now. He said, “polar Vortex, which typically would be near the North Pole and very cold (purple) is displaced south and split as the Sudden Stratospheric warming occurs.” 

    Weather models suggest the first round of colder temperatures will occur over Europe and eastern Asia through mid-January. Then the US by late month. 

    “Along with a gradual building of cold air over the coming weeks in the East, the jet stream setup will provide many opportunities for snowstorms. While many will not materialize, with a prolonged pattern favorable for extreme winter weather, the odds are that pieces of the puzzle will come together for a couple of memorable winter storms,” CBS News said. 

    Dr. Judah Cohen, an expert of SSW events at Atmospheric and Environmental Research, expects extreme winter weather from the SSW could last for at least a month. 

    “Following an SSW, the period of increased risk of cold air outbreaks and snowstorms usually lasts from four to eight weeks. It is not cold and snowing continuously, but rather it is episodic,” Cohen explained.

    BAMWX’s Kirk Hinz outlined earlier this week that “we are starting to see a change in the forecast atmospheric pattern drivers ahead that *could* lead to a more favorable pattern for wintry risks beyond Jan ~15th.” 

    Breaking down the risk for more wintery weather, Hinz showed Jan. 13 to Jan. 20 is a timeframe when increased probabilities of snowstorms from Ohio Valley, Mid Atlantic, and Northeast areas could materialize. 

    Commodity desks tend to look at weather models a couple of weeks out. If an SSW event is underway and colder temperatures are ahead – this could be beneficial for natgas prices. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/08/2021 – 19:25

  • Nearly Half Of U.S. Voters Believe Health Officials Have Been Misleading With COVID Data
    Nearly Half Of U.S. Voters Believe Health Officials Have Been Misleading With COVID Data

    Submitted by Planet Free Will

    Nearly 50% of U.S. voters believe that public health officials have been misleading when providing data on the coronavirus pandemic, a recent Just the News Daily poll shows. According to the poll, forty-eight percent of voters believe public health leaders have “misrepresented the data” to build support for certain policies while 34% of respondents say officials “reported the true facts” on the pandemic. 

    The remaining 18% were unsure one way or the other. 

    As Just the News notes:

    Official study and management of the COVID-19 pandemic has generated massive amounts of epidemiological data such as transmission rates, death rates, and other virological information. Many analysts and commentators have argued that public officials have offered misleading interpretations of these data over the course of the public health crisis.

    The data comes in the wake of Dr. Anthony Fauci admitting he lied to Americans to manipulate their acceptance of a Covid-19 vaccine.

    Fauci admitted in December that he intentionally deceived the public on what percentage of the population will need to be immunized to achieve herd immunity against Covid-19 and bring a return to normalcy.

    “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Fauci said. 

    “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85,” he added.

    Fauci ultimately admitted he doesn’t know the exact number of vaccinated Americans that could result in herd immunity.

    Also likely adding to the mistrust in public data, the World Health Organization admitted last month that the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test – which was once hailed as the gold standard of COVID testing – can produce large numbers of false positives.

    PCR test results have been used by states and countries to justify the lockdown and social distancing policies that have lead to the decimation of small business and mental health.

    The FDA has recently joined the WHO in admitting that there is a notable risk of false results from the standard PCR-Test.

    “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is alerting patients and health care providers of the risk of false results… with the Curative SARS-Cov-2 test,” the FDA announced on Monday.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/08/2021 – 19:05

  • "Chilling Video" – Miami Ambush Caught On Camera As Multiple Shooters Wound Six 
    “Chilling Video” – Miami Ambush Caught On Camera As Multiple Shooters Wound Six 

    The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting downturn in the economy has unleashed a socio-economic bomb across many metro areas. Small and medium-sized companies have shuttered operations, the labor market continues to deteriorate, and violent crime is surging.

    All of this has led to a mass exodus of city dwellers from metro areas, escaping inner cities for quiet suburbs, or better yet, rural communities. 

    As a reminder of why people are fleeing metro areas in droves, CBS Miami released a security video of an intense shootout near Northwest 25th Avenue and 36th Street.

    Miami Police said six people were injured in the incident when multiple shooters ambushed them. 

    The full video shows three people exiting a gray Dodge Charger approach the Honda, and then begin to unleash a hail of bullets. 

    “It’s a very chilling video,” Miami Police Officer Kenia Fallat.

    “When the barrage of bullets took place, they just started running for their lives,” said Fallat.

    Police tell CBS Miami they have no suspects nor a motive behind the shooting. 

    One of the shooters appears to fire a semi-automatic or even an automatic rifle judging by the large muzzle flashes – this type of urban warfare is generally found on the streets of a third world country – not the United States. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/08/2021 – 18:45

  • Insurrection
    Insurrection

    By Philip Marey, Senior US strategist at Rabobank

    Summary

    • Yesterday, Trump supporters stormed Congress. The ever increasing polarization of US politics and society has reached a level that poses a serious threat to the stability of the country.

    • The question is now: is this the culmination of the civil unrest in the United States, or is this just another warning signal that the country is heading toward something worse?

    • If we look at the underlying mechanism of polarization, it appears to be self-reinforcing. New events or information will be interpreted through two different filters.

    • What’s more, economic policies aimed at income redistribution will not appease Trump supporters. It’s not the economy, it’s identity.

    • If the US does not find an off-ramp from this route of increasing polarization, we are only going to see a further escalation of civil unrest.

    Introduction

    Yesterday, Trump supporters stormed Congress as it was debating the ratification of the Electoral College votes. Television showed images that we are used to see in some former second or third world countries. Commentators talked about insurrection, sedition, coup, and even civil war. Meanwhile, President-Elect Biden was explaining on television that America was better than this. Finally, Trump tweeted a video calling for his supporters to go home, but stressed again that the election had been stolen. Today, he stated that there would be a peaceful transfer of power on January 20. However, according to CNN some cabinet members are talking about invoking the 25th Amendment.

    As we noted last year in Civil unrest, in a polarized society trust in institutions is vulnerable. We explained how the polarization in the US is a process that has been decades in the making. No matter who had won the elections, the turbulence in US politics and society was not likely to pass. The ever increasing polarization of US politics and society has reached a level that poses a serious threat to the stability of the country.

    The question is now: is this the culmination of the civil unrest in the United States, or is this just another warning signal that the country is heading toward something worse?

    Polarization

    Last summer, in our special Civil unrest, we addressed the protests against COVID-19 measures and against racism. We argued that they reflected a lack of trust in US institutions that has been growing since the mid-1960s. We also noted that trust in institutions is especially vulnerable in a polarized society. We showed that since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 the US political system had become increasingly polarized. At present, political affiliation has become part of someone’s identity. This explains the extreme hostility between the two parties and especially their hard core supporters. However, from a dynamic perspective this poses a problem. How do we get out of this hostile environment? Some would argue that Americans will be shocked by the insurrection in Washington DC and the country will come together after President Biden takes office. However, Trump supporters seemed euphoric rather than shocked. We should not ignore that many Americans are living in one of two very different worlds. Either you are a Democrat and watch the mainstream media, or you are a Trumpist living on alternative facts. The first group will be shocked, the second emboldened by the insurrection. Invoking the 25th Amendment will only reinforce the Trumpists’ view that the elections were stolen. New events or information will be interpreted through two different filters. This will only reinforce polarization.

    Economy or identity?

    Then there are economists who think this is just a reflection of economic inequality. Four years of income redistribution by a Biden administration would bring back white blue collar workers to the Democratic Party or at least appease them. However, this policy will not work because it is based on the wrong diagnosis. Our statistical analysis in Economy or identity? showed that the data do not support this economic hypothesis. Based on county-level variations in voting behavior, economic conditions and demographic features, we actually found that in 2016 economic factors led to an increased vote for Hillary Clinton. Instead, demographics explained the Trump vote. Therefore, economic policy will not bring back the Trump voters. They have moved to the Republican Party for the same reason that many Southern Democrats changed party affiliation after the Civil Rights Act. Therefore, it is unlikely that Biden’s economic policies will appease the Trump supporters. This is not about economics, although that may be difficult to understand for economists. Americans are living in two different worlds, but they have to find a way to live together in one country. This requires a bipartisan approach aimed at alleviating the anxieties that come with changing demographics. Obviously, this is quite a challenge in this era of extreme polarization.

    Conclusion

    The question was: is this the culmination of the civil unrest in the United States, or is this just another warning signal that the country is heading toward something worse? If we look at the underlying mechanism of polarization, it appears to be self-reinforcing. And it will not be stopped by economic policies that redistribute income. Americans will have to find a way to live together in one country. If the US does not find an off-ramp from this route of increasing polarization, we are only going to see a further escalation of civil unrest.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/08/2021 – 18:25

  • Raoul's Framework for 2021 and Beyond
    Raoul’s Framework for 2021 and Beyond

    Real Vision CEO Raoul Pal returns to the Daily Briefing to share with Ash Bennington his updated thesis for the new year. Raoul argues that the prevailing narrative around reflation is a “one-sided bet” (short bonds, short dollars, long commodities, and long equities) that offers little upside, remains vulnerable to the risk of shutdowns, leaves a lasting scar on the labor market that will take years to recover from, and causes a spike in the U.S. dollar, which would serve as a “wrecking ball” for a host of reflation risk assets. Instead, Raoul prefers bonds, a sprinkling of puts on the S&P 500, and of course crypto, namely Bitcoin and Ethereum. Raoul and Ash reflect on the tremendous rally in Bitcoin and discuss how Metcalfe’s law applies to it and Ethereum. They also discuss the implications of the rise in COVID-19 cases, deaths, and hospitalizations and how those factors will affect markets and the economy. In the intro, editor Jack Farley reports on the latest jobs numbers and reviews price action in Tesla, gold, and silver.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/08/2021 – 18:07

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