Today’s News 9th July 2021

• US Navy Calls Black Sea Drills "Essential" As Russia Threatens Military Response
  US Navy Calls Black Sea Drills “Essential” As Russia Threatens Military Response

  One might hope that after the dramatic close call June 23rd events on the Black Sea which saw a Russian patrol ship fire warning shots to deter a UK warship which came near Crimea – all of which was reportedly monitored by an overhead US reconnaissance plane (as Putin has alleged) – “cooler heads” would prevail and that the West would seek de-escalation in the waters. 

  But this is hoping way too much as instead the US Navy is calling expansive military drills on Russia’s doorstep “essential” in deterring Russian “aggression”. The words were issued by Commander Daniel Marzluff of the US Navy’s Sixth Fleet at a moment the large multi-nation Sea Breeze 2021 exercises are ongoing, which Moscow has deemed a serious “provocation”. 

  

  This year’s Sea Breeze drills are led by the US and Ukraine with military hardware made up from over 30 participant nations crowding the region in and around the Black Sea. This has prompted Russia to hold its own drills in the southwest part of the country.

  Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov also this week issued further warning to foreign vessels and military aircraft to not get too close to Russian territory:

  “They would be better off leaving their provocations aside next time and staying away from that area because they will get clocked in the nose,” Ryabkov said.

  Commander Marzluff’s strong words, however, suggested anything but ‘de-escalation’ and avoidance of hostilities with Russia:

  Commander Daniel Marzluff, the U.S. Sixth Fleet’s Black Sea Region Engagement Lead, told Newsweek Tuesday that the Sea Breeze drills as “essential” in deterring Russian aggression and asserting U.S. and NATO backing for Ukraine, which remains at war with Moscow-backed separatists in the east of the country.

  “This is clearly the most effective way to bring a unified front to this kind of rogue action,” Marzluff told Newsweek from the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, referring to the ongoing exercises.

  CBS News’ Holly Williams embarked on the USS ROSS, which is taking part in the Sea Breeze naval exercises in the Black Sea with NATO partners and allies. They set sail to see how the U.S. is helping ensure the Black Sea is open to all. pic.twitter.com/YwSOtzBMES

  — CBS News (@CBSNews) July 4, 2021

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

  The US commander further called regional allies like Ukraine the US military’s “greatest strategic advantage” in confronting Russia. He described additionally: 

  “Here in the Black Sea, we have three NATO allies that are poised and ready to respond to any type of Russian aggression.”

  This reference includes Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey – while Ukraine has of late been increasingly vocal on wanting a path to full NATO membership, which Russia has declared a ‘red line’ that would certainly trigger major conflict.

  And yet Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has continued pushing for greater Washington intervention in the region, just this week in a press conference alongside Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda urging greater ‘help’ from the United States toward ending the conflict in Eastern Ukraine.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 07/09/2021 – 02:45

• The Visegrad Nations Have Nailed Their Complaints To The EU's Door
  The Visegrad Nations Have Nailed Their Complaints To The EU’s Door

  Authored by Tim Kirby via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  The Visegrad nations in the center of Europe are challenging the orthodoxy of the EU elite and throughout history direct challenges to enforced dogmas spark a lot of chaos, change, and empower others to stand against the status quo.

  Right before the Protestant Revolution in Europe many significant players doubted the necessity of Rome and had some qualms about certain dogma, but they dared not speak heresy, at least not publicly. When Martin Luther nailed his list of complaints to that church door it instantly shifted the Overton Window just enough to make yesterday’s unspeakable blasphemy, become a possible option with many lethal consequences. Luther’s heresy (or bravery depending on your religious views) opened the door for others to follow and led to the downfall of the Catholic Church in many nations, ending Western European Christian unity. It looks like history is yet again repeating itself as certain leaders are spreading a new heresy, openly and loudly against the sacred dogma of 21st century Europe.

  We have all heard about the famous Russian law that bans “homosexual propoganda”. This has been blasted by the mainstream media but it is very much an external problem from their standpoint. In the minds of today’s spineless and genderless European hipster serfdom Russia is a distant backwards realm locked eternally in the Dark Ages. The Western subconscious mind is held together by the glue of belief in its own inherent superiority. This makes the Russians eternally bad, but that bad is an “out-group” sort of bad.

  

  Image: Viktor Orban has chosen the path of most resistance in Europe or even perhaps career martyrdom.

  But now in the heartland of the EU itself, the Hungarians, under the full weight of Brussel’s bureaucratic yoke and decades of Hollywood influence, have passed a similar set of laws to those in Russia about banning LGBT propaganda. This is happening at home and in the heart of Europe by members of the in-group. At the very least the Hungarians under Orban are now spreading a heresy against the core values of the EU.

  Since the end of WWII Conservatives have utterly failed on all fronts to counter the changes to society that have happened. There has really only been a Liberal Agenda at high speed vs. a slower incremental Liberal Agenda that is slowed down by the human road bumps that are the modern Right. Rather than simply resisting the “inevitable” rise of gay marriage and adoption, Hungary is actually for the first time actively pushing in the opposite direction which could be that Martin Luther or Rosa Parks moment. The Silent Majority clearly sees that it is wrong to destroy the idea of gender and the family for the sake of the feelings of a tiny percent of the population and cradle-to-the-grave propaganda has failed to change this in the former Warsaw Pact nations. The absolute majority of humanity does not want to go to the back of the bus anymore for the ability of drag queens to dance upon the centuries of culture and struggle that got humanity to where it is today.

  Czech President Milos Zeman has come out vocally and openly to support the legislation made by his neighbors. While joyously smiling, he told CNN that if he were younger he would “get trains and busses full of heterosexuals to come to Prague in order to show how absurd it (LGBT) is”. That is a very blasphemous thing for an EU leader to say. Zeman, who has already been deemed a Russian agent by the Mainstream Media, perhaps simply feels he has nothing to lose as he nears the end of his life. It is easy to be bold at the end of the road.

  Of course the reaction from mainstream dogmatic EU officials has been shock and horror with calls coming to excommunicate Hungary. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte declared that because of this move by Orban, Hungary “has no place” in the European Union. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was a bit softer, saying “This Hungarian bill is a shame”. The EU bureaucracy has also called this law and similar Polish maneuvers to be “grotesque”.

  

  Image: The Visegrad Group has a much more “European” vision for the EU.

  The Hungarians passing some bill to ever so partially block LGBT, with the Poles trying shenanigans of their own with praise from an elderly Czech president may not sound that important, especially to those living in countries that have a more normal view on gender roles. However, we cannot ignore that for the Western elites LGBT is a core inarguable dogma. This is something that the EU takes dead serious and is a core element of their agenda.

  Every corporation, every embassy, every school and every advertisement over the last 10 years has become increasingly rainbow ridden. The LGBT movement is vastly louder in its promotion from the West than Capitalism or Democracy ever were during the Cold War. Gay parade promotion has become a symbols of Westernness and Globalism and are a real foreign policy objective for the USA/EU. The push is on and has been on for quite some time. As we have seen standing up against this movement in the west is essentially career suicide at the least. This article does not use the terms “heresy” and “blasphemy” to be cute, this is really the dynamic at play – a zealous and extreme hatred of the family and traditional gender roles that has zero tolerance of any thoughts or actions to the contrary.

  The Visegrad nations in the center of Europe are challenging the orthodoxy of the EU elite and throughout history direct challenges to enforced dogmas spark a lot of chaos, change, and empower others to stand against the status quo.

  The strategic consequences of the Visegrad nations’ moves against Euro Dogma.

  • The EU could simply wait this out. Hungary is the most uppity nation but they have no border with the Russians, meaning they simply cannot leave the union. They would be surrounded and starved out like a poorly defended Medieval castle. Generation upon generation of people are becoming more liberal and perhaps in another two generations Hungary will “grow up” to be as submissive and self-loathing as Germany.

  • There are no legal methods to expel Hungary from the EU. But there were not any in the Soviet Union either and look what happened there. Perhaps if you calmly remove the first domino the others will not fall. See Brexit, as a good example of controlled demolition. Even the most delusional human suits in Brussels have to see that everything to the east is full of barbarians and is Polish migrant labour really worth some future risks of a mass exodus? Perhaps it would be best for stability to just go back to exploiting Africa for cheap labour and cut the Slavs loose.

  • Poland (and to an extent the rest of the Visegrad Group) is traditionally terrified of Russia, thus given the choice of being cut loose from the EU or going “gay”, there is a strong chance that Warsaw would side with even the most Satanic and self-destructive EU model rather than bow to Moscow. Ironically the threat of being expelled could actually make these nations far more compliant.

  • As individual nations the Visegrad Group are nothing, as a block they are something, and their Traditionalist efforts need to be coordinated in order to be effective. The EU must keep them as divided as possible.

  • Any person who is not 100% for LGBT is the enemy in the West. The Mainstream Media will try to turn Orban and other Visegrad leaders into mini-Putins in Europe’s backyard that must be stopped because of freedom. The demonization for them is only just beginning.

  • Russia will somehow be blamed for this. Russia should plead guilty regardless of the truth of the accusation because it gives even more credibility to them as the “last true Christian nation”.

  • If the Visegrad Group were to become more or semi-independent then the Ukraine would be divided with the Russians within a few days’ time. All parties would agree that they want certain parts of that region to come back home. A Kiev trapped between “Visegradia” and Russia would be doomed to partitioning.

  • The weaker the West is, the better Russians can sleep in peace. Russia needs to expand its ideological influence deeper and deeper into the Visegrad nations on all fronts. The EU must find a new way to repackage their Liberal Agenda because out East, they are not buying it.

  • A system of apologetics/argumentation for traditional families in the XXI century will become more finalized soon and will be the greatest weapon for everyone on the “wrong” side of the Berlin Wall.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 07/09/2021 – 02:00

• Biden Does Not Need A Domestic "Terrorism" Agenda Unless He Is About To Violate American Rights
  Biden Does Not Need A Domestic “Terrorism” Agenda Unless He Is About To Violate American Rights

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

  The federal government is a kind of self perpetuating blob; a cannibalistic creature that must continue to feed on the public and the systems around it in order to survive, but it also must create reasons for its existence so that it may go on feeding uninterrupted. Now, don’t get me wrong – I realize that the apparatus in Washington DC is nothing more than a tool for the power elite to grow their scope of control as well as grow their wealth. That said, without a large federal government the establishment oligarchy would have no ability to project the force they need to compel the population to comply with their agenda.

  

  There are only two real mandates for the government, only two reasons for its existence in our republic: To secure America’s borders from invasion and to protect the freedoms of the citizenry. That’s it. It is not the job of the government to compel you to take an experimental and questionable covid vaccine over a virus that 99.7% of people will easily survive. It is not the job of the government to create artificial “social equity” by favoring one group or ethnicity over another. It is not the job of the government to spy on millions of Americans because they do not agree with the leftist ideology. It is not the job of government to make war on the very people it is mandated to protect.

  Yet, this is exactly what the government is doing today while its totalitarianism is disguised as “humanitarianism”. In other words, they are essentially arguing that they must make war on the people in order to protect the people from themselves.

  One of Joe Biden’s first actions upon entering the White House was to initiate a 100 day review of the government’s domestic terrorism policies, and I think this says a lot about what path his presidency is bound to follow. Yes, the media continually argues that the Capitol protest on Jan 6th was a vast conspiracy on the part of conservatives to “overthrow” the democratic process and commit insurrection. In fact, all it really amounted to was a large protest which was less violent than the majority of Black Lives Matter protests across the nation over the past year.

  The media also incessantly mentions the five deaths that occurred on the day of the protest while continuing to ignore the fact that NOT ONE of those deaths has been attributed to the direct actions of protesters, and at least three of the deaths were due to natural causes.

  Why does the mainstream media keep lying by omission? Because they have to keep the narrative alive that the capitol protest is a sign of some underlying conservative “evil” that must be contained or destroyed. We don’t really give them much to work with, so they have to create reasons out of thin air to convince people to hate us.

  Biden’s review of domestic terrorist policy was finally released last month and the propaganda has been building ever since.  It has now culminated in Big Tech conglomerates like Facebook calling for people to report family and friends that might be exhibiting “signs of extremism”.  The is the Soviet Cheka or the Est German Stasi all over again.  

  Two of the administration’s primary findings in their report included the assertion that domestic threats are “motivated by racism and white supremacy”, and that they are driven by anti-authority. For many this might sound like bizarro world.

  What the hell does racism have to do with the capitol protests or anything else that conservatives have been fighting for the past year?

  Biden is a white guy, after all, so protesting his entry into the White House is hardly race motivated. And, if you ask the majority of patriots why they are angry you will find that most of them have grown tired of the pandemic restrictions and medical tyranny, which they know will only continue to get worse under Biden. Is this viewpoint “anti-authority”, or just anti-authoritarianism?

  Keep in mind that these days almost anything can be labeled racist or extremist.  The interpretation is wide open and arbitrary.  This is how informant culture works.  Anyone can be a target for any reason and one is treated as guilty until proven innocent.

  Obviously Biden and his handlers are not concerned with what is ACTUALLY causing Americans to rebel by the millions. They already know that THEY are the real cause, along with their attempts to undermine American civil liberties. What this is really about is gaslighting.

  Yes, that classic strategy used by narcissists and psychopaths; the method an abuser uses to make his victims think they deserve the treatment they are getting. The establishment takes away your freedoms and abuses your rights, then if you react to defend yourself they call you a racist and a terrorist. It’s a tried and true maneuver.

  First, I would point out that the racism issue is irrelevant at its core. No one except crazed social justice warriors thinks that institutional racism is a legitimate issue in America in 2021. There’s no proof whatsoever to support the incoherent ramblings of critical race theorists. By extension, it’s also not illegal to be a bigot. In America, you are welcome to dislike any group of people you want and the government cannot punish you for it. There is no such thing as “hate speech”, there is only speech which some people hate.

  This is a strategy by leftists to create a weakness in the armor of free speech laws and grind them down. If they can regulate some speech, they can eventually regulate ALL speech. Biden is merely acting as a conduit for the critical race theory agenda, and he is attaching it to every single policy in the hopes that it will stick somewhere.

  Second, let’s all be honest and acknowledge who the real target of Biden’s domestic terrorism policies is: Conservatives in general. And, it’s not just because of the capitol protests.

  Here is my concern: Whenever psychopathic regimes are about to pursue an egregious action that will degrade freedoms and enrage the public, they have a tendency to preemptively demonize (and often disarm) the people they are about to abuse. To put it another way, Biden is obsessed with attacking conservatives as “racists” and “extremists” not because of what we have done (we haven’t done anything), but because of what we are ABOUT TO DO.

  And how does Biden know what we are going to do in the future? He knows because he is going to take actions that he and his handlers know will piss us off. Biden is clearly planning to enforce more policies which will directly violate the constitutional rights of Americans and he is preparing in advance for the fallout by making it appear as if conservatives and patriots are the aggressors.

  As I have noted in previous articles, this is the common mantra of the tyrants:

  “Those that disagree with me are wrong because I will never allow them to prove they are right. Those that defend themselves against my attacks are evil because if they fight back they might harm me. Those that demand the truth do not understand how important my lies are to the stability of the world I have built for them. Why would I engage in battle when I can get others to fight my battles for me? When people are free, it means they are free to criticize or ignore me, so I must take away their freedom, so that they are made to revere me and recognize my importance. Morals are relative and principles are for suckers. The ends justify the means, and the greater good of the greater number is paramount – And as long as I am the one that determines what the definition of the “greater good” is, then I am the one that controls everything else.”

  It is hard to say what Biden is about to do that requires so much preemptive demonization of liberty minded people. Forced vaccinations and vaccine passports are a hard line in the sand for the majority of conservatives, and we simply won’t allow such policies to remain. We will fight if we have to in order to stop them.

  Disenfranchisement of conservatives from the economy or from the internet is another line that we will not back away from. The leftist mob is already attempting to make it acceptable to “cancel” conservatives on social media simply for being conservative, and by extension they are also seeking to normalize the punishment of conservatives for their views by threatening them with joblessness. This sort of ideological cleansing of America is not going to end well. Eventually, yes, conservatives will go to war over this because if we don’t our values of freedom, individualism, voluntarism and meritocracy will be erased from the public square and there will be no meaningful future for generations not yet born.

  New gun control measures and gun bans are not going to fly, either. There is no chance that conservatives will comply with a Biden gun control plan, red flag gun laws, gun buybacks, etc. It’s not going to happen. Biden and the establishment knows this, so perhaps gun confiscation is next on the agenda?

  Finally, it is possible that the establishment will go for broke during the next crisis event and Biden will seek to implement martial law. It might be an economic crash or a crash of the dollar. It might be a major cyberattack (look up the World Economic Forum’s “Cyberpolygon” event happening this week). It might be a new “variant” of covid that they use as an excuse to bring back nationwide lockdowns. Whatever the case may be, any attempt at martial law by Biden will be met with immediate and explosive resistance from conservatives, and frankly, I doubt that the Biden Admin would survive the duration.

  So, yes, in a way Biden is right. The biggest threat to the system today is a domestic conflict, IF the system intends to attack the citizenry and their liberties. That said, the establishment is not sacrosanct, and when a government violates the rights of the people the people have a duty to overthrow it. We would only be “terrorists” in the eyes of the people who started the conflict to begin with.

  At this point we have to ask ourselves, “Who does the federal government actually represent when they do these things?” Do they represent us? Or do they represent special interests, such as globalists and career Marxists? Are they tearing away our freedoms at record pace for our benefit, or the benefit of people with malicious intentions? If they are acting in the interests of evil people, then isn’t rebellion inevitable? And who is to blame for that inevitable conflagration? Them, or us?

  *  *  *

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  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 07/09/2021 – 00:20

• Bill To Decriminalize Psychedelics In California Gains Momentum
  Bill To Decriminalize Psychedelics In California Gains Momentum

  Earlier this year, State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, unveiled a bill to decriminalize the personal possession of several psychedelic drugs, which has gained traction through the California State Assembly. 

  Senate Bill 519 would legalize psilocybin (magic mushrooms), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), dimethyltryptamine (DMT), ibogaine, and mescaline, except for peyote, recently passed the State Senate on a 21-16 floor vote, according to Bay Area news KPIX5. 

  “This bill would make lawful the possession for personal use, as described, and the social sharing, as defined, of psilocybin, psilocyn, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), ibogaine, mescaline, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), ketamine, and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), by and with persons 21 years of age or older,” the bill wrote. 

  The bill’s journey through the California State Assembly comes as evidence shows psychedelics may hold the key to treating many debilitating disorders such as addiction, PTSD, and depression.

  

  “And I want to say there’s been a lot of deliberate misinformation about this bill,” Wiener said. “We need to be very ,very clear. This bill is not about children, this is about people 21 and older.”

  Wiener said support to legalize psychedelics, such as magic mushrooms, is to help military veterans who suffer from a wide variety of mental health issues, including PTSD and depression, and to “end the failed War on Drugs.”

  “The racist War on Drugs, which has fueled mass incarceration and torn apart communities, particularly communities of color, but not made us any safer, the War on Drugs needs to end,” the senator said. “People are using drugs right now, and we want them to be able to use drugs in a safe way where they’re not in the shadows, where they’re not stigmatized.”

  “I turned to psychedelics as a last-ditch effort to survive. And fortunately, it worked amazingly well,” Jesse Gould, a former Army Ranger. “I will say this unequivocally psychedelics have, and will, save veteran lives.”

  So what are psychedelics? 

  Psychedelics are psychoactive substances that can alter perception, mood, and cognitive processes. There are two broad classifications of psychedelics that relate to chemical structure.

  • Entheogenic Plants: Plants or fungi that produce chemical substances that can cause hallucinations
  • Synthetic Drugs: Drugs created in laboratory setting to mimic the effects of entheogenic plants

  Here are seven of the most common psychedelic substances explained:

  

  – Visual Capitalist’s Katie Jones

  Even though research has shown psychedelics work by binding to serotonin receptors in the brain, which produces psychoactive effects and alters the brain’s structure and potentially rewires or repair circuits, hence the healing powers, there are opponents to the bill. 

  “We are spending far too much time writing lazy policy that slaps a band-aid on drug use, as opposed to writing policies that aid in behavioral health issues, like nutrition, access to job resources, access to family care,” said Tak Allen, President of International Faith-Based Coalition and Congress of Racial Equality, who is opposed to SB519. 

  “I don’t need science to tell me that this is a stupid and dangerous piece of legislation,” said Nina Salarno Besselman, Crime Victims United of California. “SB519 is akin to fixing the problem of too many red lights out in our streets, by removing them altogether.”

  The ancient psychedelic industry (explained here & here) could be in the early stages of revival. Perhaps Western medicine could learn from Mother Nature instead of embracing synthetic chemicals to treat complex mental health issues that may not always work. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 07/09/2021 – 00:00

• Convicted Murderer Wins Election To Office In DC From Behind Bars
  Convicted Murderer Wins Election To Office In DC From Behind Bars

  Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times,

  A still-incarcerated convicted murderer made history in the nation’s capital when voters recently elected him to one of the District of Columbia’s Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, which advise the local government on neighborhood issues such as police protection, parking, zoning, liquor licenses, and trash collection.

  

  Joel Caston, 44, has been imprisoned for 26 years after a jury convicted him of first-degree murder in the Aug. 14, 1994, ambush slaying of Rafiq Washington, 18.

  He is expected to be released from the D.C. Central Detention Facility either this or next year.

  Getting elected while behind bars is difficult, but not impossible.

  For example, Joseph D. Morrissey, originally a Democrat, was reelected as an independent candidate to the Virginia House of Delegates in January 2015 the month after he was sentenced to six months in jail on a misdemeanor charge for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Morrissey is now a member of the Virginia Senate and is once again a Democrat.

  In a campaign video, Caston said:

  “My platform will be used to restore the dignity of incarcerated people, that we will no longer be judged by our worst mistake and to establish equality for both the male and the female populations. I will be your biggest advocate to make sure your voice and your concerns are heard.”

  In a candidate questionnaire he completed, Caston wrote,

  “I have a proven track record of rehabilitation and striving for excellence which serves as an indication of the passion I will bring to my tenure as the ANC Commissioner.”

  A writer, Caston has taken for-credit courses through Georgetown University’s Prison Scholars Program, mentored young men in jail, practiced yoga, and edited a prisoner newspaper.

  He was elected June 15 to the Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) for Ward 7, becoming the first incarcerated person to be elected to public office in the District of Columbia.

  Each ward is divided into zones, and in Ward 7, each zone is identified with a letter from B through F. The 7F Commission is further divided into seven single-member districts, and Caston represents 7F07, which consists of the jail, the Harriet Tubman Women’s Shelter, and Park Kennedy, an apartment complex across the street from the jail in Southeast Washington. The position is unpaid. The term of office is two years.

  Caston bested four other candidates, all of whom reside in the jail with him, the community newspaper The Washington Informer reported.

  After Caston was elected, Tyrell M. Holcomb, the chairman of the 7F Commission, said, “Representation is an important part of equity and inclusion. I could not be more excited of a new colleague (a resident of the DC Jail) joining the 7F commission.”

  Ward 7 resident John Koufos, national director of reentry initiatives at Right on Crime, a project of the Austin-based Texas Public Policy Foundation, told The Epoch Times that Caston will bring important perspectives to local government. Right on Crime promoted the First Step Act, a criminal justice reform measure that then-President Donald Trump signed into law.

  Koufos, who was previously profiled by The Epoch Times, is a convicted drunk driver who spent time in prison and lost his license to practice law but who is now dedicating his life to helping to reform the complex system that ex-cons face when reentering society.

  “As a D.C. resident raising a family in Ward 7, I think Joel’s unique experiences provide him with an unmatched insight into some of the reentry issues D.C. needs to grapple with. His election has nothing to do with the First Step Act, but people with criminal records have started to hold elected office (like Tarra Simmons, in the Washington state Senate),” Koufos said.

  Simmons, a Democrat previously jailed for theft and drug offenses, was elected to the Washington House of Representatives last year, becoming the first felon to be elected as a state lawmaker in the Evergreen State. She graduated from law school in 2017 but couldn’t sit for the state bar exam because Washington did not allow felons to take it. She challenged the rule in court and won. Simmons was sworn in as an attorney the next year.

  “Whenever people with criminal records can break barriers in a way that does not run counter to public safety principles, it is a good thing,” Koufos said.

  “Mr. Caston’s election will help show employers that people with criminal records can be valuable in leadership roles.

  “I do think that there are certain offices, especially in the states, where a person in prison would have difficulty executing the duties of the office. However, ANC is not one of those types of offices, and Mr. Caston’s election is a reflection of his desire to better himself and his community.”

  Caston couldn’t be reached for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 07/08/2021 – 23:40

• Thousands Of Convicts Freed During Pandemic Will Soon Be Sent Back To Prison
  Thousands Of Convicts Freed During Pandemic Will Soon Be Sent Back To Prison

  Across the US, thousands of formerly incarcerated prisoners were released from prison (albeit with the understanding that their limited freedom would likely be temporary) as COVID swept through America’s prisons, sparking riots and unrest in some penitentiaries.

  

  Carr

  Now, there’s probably no other group in America that is more anxious to see the Delta variant spark another wave of official paranoia. Since they were freed by a provision of the Cares Act, the second stimulus package passed by President Trump and Congress last spring, the DoJ’s official interpretation of the law will eventually determine when (or if) they’re returned to prison to finish out their sentences.

  According to the guidance left in place by the Trump Administration – guidance that still stands – many of the inmates will return to prison when the pandemic is declared officially over.

  In a story about the dilemma facing the freed prisoners, Bloomberg cited as an example a former FBI agent serving a 15-year sentence after being convicted on bribery charges.

  The cafeteria at the federal prison camp in Fairton, N.J., is rarely the site of much celebration. But one afternoon in spring 2020, the room was buzzing. A provision of the pandemic-relief package passed by Congress had given some of the inmates the chance to leave prison early and serve time under home confinement.

  With dozens of prisoners gathered in the cafeteria, a Bureau of Prisons official read aloud a list of inmates who’d qualified for the new program. The names were greeted with high-fives and cheering. Among them was Robert Lustyik, an ex-F.B.I. agent who was about halfway through a 15-year sentence for bribery. “It was a feeling as if I had won the Heisman Trophy,” Lustyik says.

  A few weeks later, Lustyik, 59, moved back in with his wife and two children in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., next door to the cemetery where Washington Irving is buried. Over the past year, he’s started a personal-training business out of his garage and complied with all the rules of home confinement, wearing an ankle bracelet and checking in with prison officials every day.

  But as the pandemic approaches an end, the clock is ticking for Lustyik and thousands of other federal prisoners released under the Cares Act.

  The former agent, who is currently living at home with his wife and children, was “heartbroken” by the DoJ memo, and the prospect of returning to prison, potentially for years. When he left his last camp at Fairton, a prison counselor told him he was leaving for good. And despite Democrats’ reputation for being anti-police and soft on crime, the Biden Administration has so far refused to change the policy, despite lobbying from major prison advocacy groups.

  And he’s not alone: there are thousands of inmates convicted on non-violent crimes who will likely be returned to prison by the end of the year.

  “The waiting is horrible,” says Kevin Ring, the president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, an advocacy group that has fought the Justice Department policy. “Some got home and immediately got a job and started going to school. Others really have focused on reconnecting with their families and, in a lot of cases, helping take care of families.”

  Over the past few months, the DoJ has been tight-lipped: “This will be an issue only after the pandemic is over,” a department spokeswoman said in a statement.

  Among many concerns, these former prisoners fear being sent back will trash the good will they have built up with friends and family.

  That stance has left people like Brian Carr wondering how long their freedom will last. Carr, 31, was given a seven-year sentence in late 2015 after he pleaded guilty to drug dealing. His whole life had felt like a series of accumulating setbacks, he says—until he found out last year that he could leave prison. When he called his mother to share the news, his hands were shaking with excitement. “I couldn’t even remember her number by heart, and I know her number by heart,” he says.

  Now living in Baltimore, Carr plans to enroll in technical school and eventually start a logistics company that transports cars to dealerships across the country. A return to prison would put all that on hold. He’d also have to figure out a way to break the news to his young children. “That’s going to be hard to explain,” Carr says. “They’re gonna feel like I did something wrong again, and I actually didn’t.”

  One potential issue is that many of these freed prisoners have found jobs. And with the labor shortage currently afflicting the American economy, they’re incarceration could leave employers in the lurch.

  For some of the prisoners released last year, it’s taken months to acclimate to living at home. Last December, Jackie Broussard welcomed back her daughter, Stephanie White, after she was released under the Cares Act. “She wouldn’t open a door, she wouldn’t open a refrigerator, she wouldn’t ask for anything; she wouldn’t really talk,” Broussard says.

  Since then, White, 32, has slowly adjusted to her new life, getting a job operating the forklift at a warehouse near her mother’s home in Fort Worth, Texas. But two and a half years remain on her sentence for a drug conviction. “I’m going to be terrified the day the federal government says the pandemic is over,” Broussard says.

  Still, most experts agree the Biden Administration likely won’t reverse the guidance. A lucky few may receive clemency from the president or governors since they’ve already been officially deemed “low risk.”

  “They’ve been vetted by the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons as being low-risk, and most have already served a significant amount of time in prison,” says Shon Hopwood, a criminal justice expert at Georgetown University. “I don’t think anyone—DOJ included, and even the Bureau of Prisons—thinks that, as a matter of policy, it’s wise to send those people back.”

  Many prisoners have found an interesting loophole that they believe might help them stay out longer: they’re refusing to get vaccinated for COVID. The former FBI agent is one such prisoner: “I’m willing to sacrifice my own health” to stay out of prison, he said.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 07/08/2021 – 23:20

• Naming The Capitol Police Officer Who Killed Unarmed Jan. 6 Rioter Ashli Babbitt
  Naming The Capitol Police Officer Who Killed Unarmed Jan. 6 Rioter Ashli Babbitt

  Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClearInvestigations.com,

  

  At top, pistol drawn in the House chamber, a plainclothes black officer who fits the description of Michael L. Byrd.  His name was apparently divulged at a hearing as the cop who shot Ashli Babbitt.

  Most police departments — including Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police — are required to release an officer’s name within days of a fatal shooting. Not the U.S. Capitol Police, which is controlled by Congress and answers only to Congress. It can keep the public in the dark about the identity and investigation of an officer involved in a shooting indefinitely.

  Which is what happened with the Jan. 6 shooting of Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed protester in the U.S. Capitol riot who was fatally wounded by a plainclothes police lieutenant as she attempted to breach a set of doors inside the building. 

  

  Video shot at the riot shows the Capitol officer in a hall outside the House chamber carefully advancing (at around 34:55), aiming … 

  

  … and then shooting, hitting Babbitt, above, as she tried to climb through a smashed window, Trump flag on her back. The fatal gunshot blew her backward.

  For the past six months, as Congress has proposed legislation to reform  police departments across the country, the Capitol Police has stiff-armed government watchdogs, journalists and even lawyers for Babbitt, who have sought the identity of the officer and additional details about the shooting. The USCP still refuses to release his name, in stark contrast to recent high-profile police shootings around the nation.

  In February, USCP issued a press release promising to “share additional information once the investigation is complete.” But Justice Department investigators closed their probe in April, clearing the officer of criminal wrongdoing in Babbitt’s death, which the medical examiner ruled a homicide. And last month, the D.C. Police — which shares jurisdiction with the Capitol Police and has led the investigation into Babbitt’s shooting — concluded its own internal review of the shooting without making any findings, according to spokeswoman Kristen Metzger.Still, USCP continues “stonewalling the public,” according to the head of the police union.

  “That’s my department’s attorneys for you,” United States Capitol Police Labor Committee Chairman Gus Papathanasiou told RealClearInvestigations. 

  “There is definitely a transparency issue. The department needs to answer those questions. They are stonewalling the public.”

  Withholding the name of the officer who fired the fatal shot — the only round fired by anyone during the four-hour siege — has bred speculation on the Internet and led to the mistaken identification of at least one officer. USCP Special Agent David Bailey was wrongly fingered as the shooter on social media and conservative news sites.

  After RCI called attention to the false rumor in an email to USCP, followed by a story on the issue, USCP’s communications chief officially knocked it down as “misinformation.” 

  Now a new name has surfaced in the Babbitt imbroglio — Lt. Michael L. Byrd — and while USCP Communications Director Eva Malecki won’t confirm he is the shooter, in this case she isn’t denying it.

  In a little-noticed exchange, Byrd was cited by the acting House sergeant at arms during a brief discussion of the officer who shot Babbitt at a Feb. 25 House hearing.

  

  Lt. Byrd was investigated for leaving his department-issued Glock-22 firearm unattended in a Capitol restroom. A Glock-22 was used in the Babbitt shooting.

  Both C-SPAN and CNN removed his name from transcripts, but CQ Transcripts — which, according to its website, provides “the complete word from Capitol Hill; exactly as it was spoken” — recorded the Capitol official, Timothy Blodgett, referring to the cop as “Officer Byrd.” His name is clearly audible in the videotape of the hearing (see video embed further below).

  Byrd appears to match the description of the shooter, who video footage shows is an African American dressed that day in a business suit. Jewelry, including a beaded bracelet and lapel pin, also match up with photos of Byrd.

  In addition, Byrd’s resume lines up with what is known about the experience and position of the officer involved in the shooting – a veteran USCP officer who holds the rank of lieutenant and is the commander of the House Chamber Section of the Capitol Police.

  Following the shooting, Byrd’s Internet footprint was scrubbed, including his social media and personal photos.

  “Officer Byrd” is named in a videotape of House testimony (around 39:20).

  Phone calls and emails to Byrd, who lives in Maryland where he remains on paid administrative leave, went unanswered. His attorney would neither confirm nor deny that the 53-year-old Byrd is the shooter, and warned that disclosing his name poses a safety risk to the officer.

  The Babbitt family is frustrated USCP won’t release any information about the incident other than the terse and vaguely written statement it issued on Jan. 7:

  “[A] sworn USCP employee discharged their service weapon, striking an adult female.”

  Because Congress has exempted the USCP from Freedom of Information Act requests, the family is suing the D.C. Police “for documents that identify the officer who shot Babbitt … as well as notes and summaries of what the officer said regarding the shooting and the reasons he discharged his weapon.” (The D.C. Police has led the investigation into Babbitt’s shooting.) A hearing before a judge is scheduled for Sept. 3. Washington-based watchdog Judicial Watch also is suing for the records. 

  

  Aaron and Ashli Babbitt, from “Justice for Ashli Babbitt” on Twitter (@ForAshli.) Aaron Babbitt plans a wrongful-death lawsuit over her killing.

  “They sit back and they completely refuse to release the name of their own police officer that was involved in a shooting of an unarmed woman,” said Ashli Babbitt’s husband, Aaron.

   “It’s ridiculous, it’s absolutely ridiculous.” 

  Babbitt has hired a Maryland lawyer specializing in police-abuse cases who plans to file a wrongful-death lawsuit against USCP and the officer, seeking at least $10 million in damages.

  The attorney, Terry Roberts, said he has received no information from USCP about the case, even though he contacted the department’s general counsel in May. But he said an investigator in his office has positively identified the shooter from a “painstaking” analysis of photos and videos taken by journalists and witnesses inside the Capitol, as well as from tips from citizens and other information.

  He said a key witness is Taylor Hansen, a freelance journalist who films protests around the country and was outside the Speaker’s Lobby with Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran, when she was shot. Hansen claims to have identified Byrd as the officer who opened fired on Babbitt, striking her in the lower left shoulder.

  “Hansen was present when Ashli was shot,” Roberts told RCI.

  “He has spoken with my investigator. He provided a reliable and accurate account of what he saw; he also made a video recording, which proved useful.”

  Roberts said he is not ready to name the officer as a defendant in the lawsuit until he meets federal regulations for filing personal-injury claims against government agencies and employees, which could take several more weeks. However, he told RCI, “He’s a guy who left his service revolver in a bathroom.”

  

  From “Justice for Ashli Babbitt” on Twitter. Slain in the U.S. Capitol at 35, she was an Air Force veteran.

  In February 2019, Lt. Byrd was investigated for leaving his department-issued Glock-22 firearm unattended in a restroom on the House side of the Capitol, even though the potent weapon, which fires .40-caliber rounds, has no manual safety to prevent unintended firing. Fortunately, the abandoned gun was discovered by another officer during a routine security sweep. A Glock-22 was used in the Babbitt shooting.

  Byrd addressed the blunder at a roll call the following morning, reportedly telling fellow officers that he would “be treated differently” because of his rank as a lieutenant.

  At the time, Malecki assured the press that “appropriate actions will be taken” against Byrd. Asked recently what disciplinary actions were administered, the USCP spokeswoman declined comment.

  Unlike other police forces, USCP does not have to disclose records on police misconduct.

  More than 700 complaints were lodged against Capitol Police officers between 2017 and 2019, but brass won’t say what the alleged violations were or how the department resolved them. They also won’t disclose how many complaints are in any individual officer’s file.

  While the USCP has an inspector general, he does not make reports public, unlike other agency watchdogs. His report on Jan. 6 remains secret.

  Critics say the 193-year-old agency is in dire need of reform. They point out that even the Secret Service complies with FOIA requests and releases reports and audits by its internal watchdog. The Capitol Police, in contrast, won’t even reveal how many sworn officers it has on hand.

  “Unlike the [D.C. Police] and the vast majority of local police forces, the USCP provides little public information about its activities,” complained Daniel Schuman, policy director of the D.C. watchdog group Demand Progress, in a recent letter to the heads of the congressional panels who have oversight authority over USCP.

  D.C. law requires police to identify the officer involved in a police shooting within five business days after an officer-involved death or serious use of force. Officials must publicly release the names and body-camera recordings of all officers involved in the death or use of force. The law does not cover the Capitol Police, however, even though D.C. Police work in conjunction with that agency on homicide cases and fatal traffic accidents.

  The Babbitt shooting has thrust this double standard into the national spotlight.

  Some lawmakers on the USCP oversight committees are clamoring for changes, starting with the immediate release of the name of the officer who shot Babbitt. They allege that Capitol Police are protecting an officer who killed an unarmed citizen from public scrutiny.

  “In many instances, when a law enforcement officer kills an individual for any reason, that officer’s name is publicly released. But not in the case of Ashli Babbitt,” said GOP Rep. Paul Gosar, who sits on the House Oversight Committee.

  “Instead, there is a determined effort to cover up the full circumstances of this homicide.”

  Mark Schamel, the Washington attorney defending the officer, warned that revealing his client’s name could put his life in jeopardy. He said the officer has received “credible” death threats and has gone into hiding. He would not provide further details about the type of threats or whether they have been reported to the FBI. Schamel also declined to say if authorities have provided the officer a protective security detail.

  Asked about any threats made against Byrd, USCP General Counsel Tad DiBiase told RCI in an email that “one of our officers has received death threats, threats to his family, and numerous vile, racist sentiments directed at the officer.” Without elaborating, he said “these threats are currently under active investigation by the USCP and the FBI.”

  The only publicly known threat made against the officer who shot Babbitt came from Garret Miller, who was arrested in Texas in part because of threats he made two weeks after participating in the Capitol riot. However, Miller circulated the wrong photos of the officer on Facebook, falsely identifying Officer Bailey, who is also African American. Miller remains in federal custody.

  The FBI and USCP declined to answer when asked if any threats have been directed against Lt. Byrd specifically.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 07/08/2021 – 23:00

• Idaho Resort Town's Workers Live In "Trailers And Tents" As They Can't Afford Housing
  Idaho Resort Town’s Workers Live In “Trailers And Tents” As They Can’t Afford Housing

  The virus pandemic forced millions of Americans to work remotely. In return, those with economic mobility could ditch the city life for rural areas, such as upscale mountain towns. 

  A flood of people poured into small resort towns such as Ketchum, located in Blaine County, Idaho, has created a multi-pronged issue, such as affordable living and labor shortages. 

  Ketchum is a small community of 3,000 people nestled in the Rocky Mountains of central Idaho. The resort community is an outdoor enthusiast’s dream, with four seasons of fun. But ever since the pandemic struck, city-dwellers from around the country descended on the small town, able to work remotely but created a surge in housing prices and a boom in economic activity. 

  

  No one can deny economic booms are great, but logistically, Ketchum was in no shape or form to handle what came next.

  WSJ interviewed low-level workers in the town and found many of them could find jobs but could not afford homes or rentals. 

  Ethan McKee-Bakos worked two jobs in the mountain town and lived in his SUV in the nearby national park for two months because when home prices jumped in the area, so did rental rates. 

  “If you live in Ketchum, there’s no shortage of work. There’s just a shortage of where you can live,” said McKee-Bakos, who works at a local hospital and a bar. “This is the first time I’ve experienced any homelessness.”

  

  As we noted before (read: “Urban Flight During Pandemic Made Rent Less Affordable Across US”), Ketchum faces an affordable housing crisis as supply was gobbled up by out-of-towners trying to escape the pandemic and social-economic woes of major West Coast cities. The rapid demand for homes quickly priced out low-income workers not just from owning a home but also from renting one. 

  WSJ notes that “some workers live in trailers or tents” in Sawtooth National Forest, which is 40 miles away. The waiting list for affordable housing units for sale or rent in the surrounding county is years long. 

  Ketchum Mayor Neil Bradshaw has addressed the housing crisis affecting the working poor, the small town’s economic heartbeat because they are the ones that work at local shops. He even considered erecting a “temporarily” tent city in the town. 

  “Idaho is a beautiful place. People are willing to compromise low wages to live here. Well, now they don’t have a place to live,” said Bradshaw.

  Even though Blaine County didn’t make the National Association of Realtors list of the top ten vacation home counties, housing prices have still risen 20% in the past year, to around half a million dollars. As for apartments, rent for a two-bedroom unit is up 47% over the same period, to $2,525.

  Home and rent price shocks have terrible effects on locals who are being priced out of their own community. The median household income in the area is about $57,000, 2019 census numbers show.

  Even a city council member of Ketchum is having difficulty obtaining a permanent residence. Michael David, a city councilor, told WSJ he had been priced out of buying a home and can no longer afford rent after a rapid surge in prices. 

  Many of the town’s working-poor gathered in May in the town square to address the housing affordability crisis and for officials to embrace a new 56-unit housing project in the downtown region. 

  

  Krzysztof Gilarowski, a front-desk manager at the Limelight Hotel who planned the gathering, said the resort town could begin to lose its working-poor as they have nowhere to live. 

  “If you can’t attract people to work and live here, if guests can’t book a restaurant reservation because there’s not enough staff for the restaurant to open every night, people won’t see Ketchum as such an attractive destination either,” Gilarowski said.

  The mayor has proposed temporary housing measures, such as allowing RVs to park overnight in public areas or private land to address the housing crisis in the intermediate-term. 

  “I’m deeply concerned about the viability of our town if we don’t have the workforce to support our local businesses and entrepreneurs,” he said.

  If working-poor can’t find affordable living, this up-scale resort town may soon experience labor shortages. 

  Homes in the mountains and small resort towns have been hot commodities during the pandemic, as city dwellers wanted clean air and space. However, there’s one unintentional side effect of new money flooding these rural communities, that is, locals and the working-poor are being priced out of homeownership and or enting. 

  WSJ said, “Other resort towns across the West are facing similar problems.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 07/08/2021 – 22:40

• Doug Casey On Why Most People Outsource Their Thinking To "The Experts"
  Doug Casey On Why Most People Outsource Their Thinking To “The Experts”

  Via InternationalMan.com,

  International Man: Thanks to the internet and modern technology, the average person can now access information on almost any topic with relative ease.

  But it seems people are doing less critical thinking than ever.

  Why do you think that is the case?

  Doug Casey: Technology is a double-edged sword when it comes to critical thinking. It’s paradoxical that something so associated with knowledge and research is often at odds with wisdom. I think that’s partly because today’s technology offers instant answers—no thought required. You can go to Google, and an answer is at your fingertips. It doesn’t require research or thought—the answer just appears. It subtly obviates the need for contemplation.

  Let’s first define what critical thinking is. I’d say it’s the process of questioning the validity of the assumptions and the accuracy of the data for everything. A critical thinker never assumes or takes anything for granted.

  We can’t always be sure what the quality of a googled answer is, but most people assume it’s honest and correct. However, considering the nature of the people who run Google, Wikipedia, and websites of that nature, I prefer to assume that the quality of many answers is low.

  In fact, the volume of data available through computer technology is so great that there’s a tendency to confuse all that quantity with quality. When the world, and the data stream, is moving very quickly, it seems you have less time to contemplate its meaning. You can get lost in it and lose perspective.

  It reminds me of a scene out of the original Rollerball movie from the 1970s with James Caan. Books no longer exist. All knowledge is contained in an all-powerful computer. The scientist in charge of the computer is talking to another character and says, “Yeah, for some reason, we’ve lost the 13th century,” and he kicks the machine. It’s the only source of what used to be in millions of books.

  We’re almost in a situation where everything comes from one source—basically Google—rather than researching books, getting answers from a dozen points of view, and thinking critically about their meaning. Sure, Google gives you many references. But how many others have been “cancelled?” How many considered politically incorrect are buried as deep as the 13th century in Rollerball?

  International Man: Whether it’s finance, economics, politics, and many other areas, it seems almost everywhere you look, people are looking to the so-called “experts” to tell them what they should think about a given topic.

  Where does this come from? How did most people come to trust the “experts”?

  Doug Casey: As the amount and complexity of data grows, it’s natural to want an expert to sort it out for you. But experts are known for knowing a lot about a little, not for having broad, integrated knowledge. People understandably look to them to make decisions for them. That’s foolish. Better that you go to a philosopher than a technician when the time comes to decide on something important. But philosophers are in short supply today, so people listen to celebrities.

  A celebrity is someone who’s famous for being well-known. People automatically assume that famous people must know something they don’t. The public doesn’t know much, but they know more about some celebrities than they do about their own friends, neighbors, and relatives. And that engenders trust. People trust a celebrity who endorses something he knows nothing about because they think they know him. It’s another consequence of mass media. The average person is much more likely to accept Google’s, or Wikipedia’s, or some celebrity’s opinion than to research something themselves. Critical thinking is hard work, and questioning authority doesn’t usually make you any friends.

  I see it in the newsletter business all the time. Somebody who’s glib and can present well can be transformed into an instant expert, even though he knows very little—as long as he’s good at presenting and gaining people’s confidence. We see that with the talking heads on TV as well. They’re really just actors who don’t know anything, but they’re good-looking, well-promoted, and have a nice social veneer, so people trust them.

  It makes no sense, and neither does the public’s obsession with credentials. Something like a third of Americans have a college degree—which today only means they’ve spent a lot of money to be indoctrinated over four years. It’s no guarantee of expertise—forget about wisdom or judgment. Over 13% of graduates have master’s degrees or PhDs. That doesn’t prove they’re critical thinkers.

  In most cases, those degrees prove little, other than the recipients think it’s a good idea to spend a lot of time and money for a credential. Credentials should be suspect; critical thinkers don’t assume they’re worth anything. They’re often a camouflage for mediocrity. In today’s world, their main value is to intimidate by making the public assume you know what you’re talking about. They trust the credential, the way they’ve come to trust Google or Wikipedia.

  People are comforted to believe that if they don’t know the answer, someone with a degree does. And they should be in charge. I suspect most higher degree holders think they should be in charge, too. It’s a bad tendency across the board.

  International Man: The COVID hysteria has only accelerated this trend.

  Throughout the pandemic, most people believed the “health experts” robotically and even attacked those who brought forth logical information and data which challenged the established narrative.

  What is your take?

  Doug Casey: The media and the Establishment have selected a set of credentialed health experts, promoted them, and told the public that they know what they’re talking about. Take Anthony Fauci—he has lots of credentials. Like everyone high up in government agencies, whether or not he was ever a competent scientist, you can be sure he’s a very competent political operator. And apparently quite wealthy, with positions in companies under his purview.

  In any event, he’s a life-long government employee. A professional bureaucrat, previously invisible but now elevated from nowhere to near-dictatorial control.

  

  Meanwhile, there are people that have written numerous peer-reviewed papers, done serious lab work, and are currently dealing with patients with boots on the ground whose views are cancelled because they disagree with Czar Fauci.

  The average person never hears about them, and when they do, they’re cancelled by the mass media. The perfect example of this is the use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin in countering the COVID virus—apart from the fact the supposed pandemic itself is greatly overrated.

  Anyone who’s “vaccine hesitant” or—God forbid—a COVID denier is painted as anti-science, a conspiracy theorist. My view is that there are legitimate reasons not to take any experimental vaccine. Especially when there’s a possibility the supposed cure is much more dangerous than the disease itself.

  I’ve met exactly one person who’s gotten symptomatic COVID. He was sick for two days with the flu and fully recovered. So where are all the dead bodies? The casualties have strictly been very old people, very sick people, or very fat people. Occasional anomalous young, healthy, slim people die from it—assuming it was the actual cause of death—just the way young, healthy people occasionally die from the ordinary flu. So, is it a conspiracy? I don’t know. I’m just confident this era will go down as one of the most stupid and embarrassing in world history.

  International Man: Politicians, bureaucrats, and the intelligence community are obvious members of the ruling class that seek power and control.

  Are the “health experts” new members of the political ruling class?

  Doug Casey: Sickness and fear of death get the public’s attention even more than sex and money. And, for what it’s worth, the public has been prepped for decades by loads of sci-fi books and movies featuring a virus wiping out most of humanity. And not without cause. In fact, the chances are overwhelming that biological warfare will be a major element in any future conflict with China.

  Telling people that they’re going to get sick and die, endangering their loved ones, is a powerful motivator to get them to do as they’re told. Still, COVID is 90% hysteria. If someone is old, obese, or sick, they might want to isolate themselves, but it’s insane to lock down the whole planet to unsuccessfully safeguard a few people in danger. And, it’s equally insane for everyone to take risky vaccines against a non-threat.

  Let the people who are worried risk getting the vaccine; although, there seems to be some serious question about how efficacious the vaccine itself is.

  International Man: Where do you think this will all lead, and what are the implications?

  Doug Casey: I’m afraid it’s all leading toward a many-tentacled police state.

  The people who run the State have control of the money supply, the economy, the education system, and the media. They’ve gotten control of the medical system. They’re replacing traditional religion, as well, with what amounts to new secular religions; that’s an interesting twist.

  Christianity is on its way out. It’s already a dead duck in Europe and is hanging on in the US only among the lower classes. The elite no longer believes in traditional religion. It’s being replaced by updated versions of Marxism, which was always a secular religion, even though it claimed to be “scientific”—like Greenism and Wokeism.

  The bad guys—by which I mean the statists and collectivists—have mounted a war on many fronts, and they’re succeeding mightily. They’ll use the Greater Depression to create a genuine police state—a kinder and gentler version of the old USSR, East Germany, but with a higher standard of living and more TV channels.

  The ruling class will blame the collapse of the economy on COVID. As the depression drags on, they’ll also blame it on global warming, not their stupid economic policies.

  COVID and the Global Warming scam are wonderful deus ex machina devices to allow the bad guys to dodge the blame for what’s coming.

  Marxism, statism, and collectivism will once more evade the blame for the consequences of their idiotic economic ideas and evil ethical notions. That’s largely because critical thinking has vanished from the West.

  *  *  *

  The 2020s will likely to be an increasingly volatile time. More governments are putting their money printing on overdrive. Negative interests are becoming the rule instead of the exception to it. One thing is for sure, there will be a great deal of change taking place in the years ahead. That’s precisely why legendary speculator Doug Casey and his team released an urgent new report titled Doug Casey’s Top 7 Predictions for the Raging 2020s.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 07/08/2021 – 22:20

• COVID-19 Death Toll In California County Drops 22% After Revision
  COVID-19 Death Toll In California County Drops 22% After Revision

  The COVID-19 death toll in Santa Clara, California dropped by nearly a quarter after it ‘refined its approach’ to reporting the data, according to KPIX5.

  

  After a review of each COVID-19 fatality and eliminating deaths not directly caused by the virus – including those who tested positive at the time of death, but did not necessarily die from the disease, official COVID-19 deaths dropped from 2,201 to 1,696, or 22%.

  “It is important to go back and do this accounting to see if COVID was actually the cause of death,” said UCSF Prof. of Medicine and Infectious Disease Expert Dr. Monica Gandhi. “I think that transparent communication is an upside, I mean, in the sense that it’s true that if we did this across the nation, it would bring our death rate lower. A downside of that, could be that people will say, ‘Well, it wasn’t as serious as you said.'”

  The refined approach in Santa Clara County comes as county officials try to figure out the true impact of the virus on the community. Last month, Alameda County health leaders refined their approach to reporting COVID-19 deaths as well and also registered a drop in that county’s death toll by about a quarter.

  …

  Gandhi believes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may soon ask all counties to do the same as Alameda and Santa Clara Counties and that the nation could also see a drop in its COVID-19 death toll. -KPIX

  “In the midst of everything COVID people were sort of putting down that cause of death as COVID,” said Gandhi, who somehow believes that the lower numbers might encourage people to get vaccinated.

  “Because a lot of people have kind of said, ‘I’ve heard people are dying anyway of COVID what’s the point?’ and it is very important to say, ‘No, did they die of COVID or were they in the hospital for something else and they died of that?” she continued. “That helps people say, ‘Oh, the risk of breakthrough infection is so low I want to go ahead and get vaccinated.’ So I think it’s very good for vaccine hesitancy.”

  She lost us there.

  Meanwhile, neighboring Alameda county conducted a similar review of deaths in early June, and their death toll dropped by 411 to 1,223 fatalities, or 25%.

   

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 07/08/2021 – 22:00

• From Livestock To Bitcoin: "Legitimacy" & The Evolution Of Money
  From Livestock To Bitcoin: “Legitimacy” & The Evolution Of Money

  Authored by Michael Milano via The Mises Institute,

  Once a society embraces the division of labor, direct exchange becomes increasingly infeasible. Without money, specialization is constrained; without money, dreams of constructing an advanced society are merely a utopian pipe dream. At its core, money is the lubricant for human relations. It simultaneously solves many problems of cooperation while serving as the basis for economic calculation. As awareness of nonsovereign cryptocurrencies has risen dramatically, questions about the history of money have gained salience. How does money arise? From where does it derive its value?

  The following sections will expound upon the cumulative development of money, from livestock to bitcoin, by infusing the concept of legitimacy into Carl Menger’s theoretical framework as outlined in On the Origins of Money.

  

  Legitimacy

  According to ethereum cocreator Vitalik Buterin:

  Legitimacy is a pattern of higher-order acceptance. An outcome in some social context is legitimate if the people in that social context broadly accept and play their part in enacting that outcome, and each individual person does so because they expect everyone else to do the same.

  From Buterin’s perspective, legitimacy operates as a hidden force that guides coordinated behavior. Legitimacy manifests itself through numerous avenues. These include brute force, continuity, fairness, process, performance, and participation. In addition to serving as an intrinsic component of blockchain technology, the concept of legitimacy can be applied as a mediating variable to explain the evolution of money.

  From Protomoney to Store of Value

  Barter societies revolve around economic actors who exchange goods and services directly, without a monetary medium. The impracticality of direct exchange ultimately inhibits societal prosperity and economic progress. Livestock and other agriculture products arose as protomoney within barter societies as early as eleven thousand years ago. In 1200 BC, cowry shells filled the role of a primitive money. Bronze and copper coins did the same two hundred years later in China. Furs, teeth, and wampum were utilized in a similar manner by Native American tribes for centuries.

  An axiom within the marketplace is that not all goods possess the same saleability (i.e., the facility of disposing of said good at a convenient time, while it retains its purchasing power). Among modern foragers, ornamentation has been shown to be universal. The practice of collecting rare items, art, and jewelry remains prevalent worldwide today. Collectibles such as those aforementioned nonperishable commodities were not merely symbolic, however. They served a dual purpose, providing a way to transmit value through time and space, thus presenting individuals the ability to hoard value if desired. As Mises wrote in Human Action:

  But one must never forget that the characteristic feature of human society is purposeful cooperation; society is an outcome of human action, i.e., of a conscious aiming at the attainment of ends. (p. 145)

  A commodity’s transition into a store of value occurs spontaneously, driven by human action, without central planning. In terms of legitimacy, this shift is mainly facilitated through the avenue of participation. Paralleling an exhibition of “dollar voting,” members of barter economies actively participate in elevating the saleability of certain goods.

  From Store of Value to Medium of Exchange

  Over time, a commodity that achieves store-of-value status can evolve into a medium of exchange. A commodity that becomes a medium of exchange is able to procure any other good or service on the market. This monetary transition is aided by the legitimacy that coincides with the passage of time. If it’s generally accepted that a good has value at time T, through the phenomenon of continuity, one’s confidence grows that it will have value at time T + 1.

  To illustrate how legitimacy mediates the first two monetary transitions, imagine a village housing Alice, a potassium-deficient pig farmer, and Bob, a vegan with a banana tree. Without a third party, Alice is unable to strike a deal with her neighbor. As the village expands, more goods enter the scene, and a gold mine is discovered. Gold quickly becomes fashionable for ornamental purposes. In this scenario, it would behoove Alice and Bob to exchange their less saleable goods for those possessing higher saleability. All in the village are individually incentivized to recognize the rising saleability of gold, for doing so would provide a tremendous benefit. Aided by the legitimacy that accompanies participation, gold becomes a store of value. Gold’s portability, divisibility, durability, recognizability, and scarcity boosts the yellow metal’s legitimacy from a performance perspective. With the passage of time, gold’s saleability forms a reinforcing feedback loop wherein legitimacy is further established by continuity. At the end of the second phase, gold fulfills the role of a store of value and a medium of exchange within this village.

  Medium of Exchange to Unit of Account

  A commodity that transitions into a unit of account has reached a rarefied position. At this stage, all other goods in the market are priced in terms of said unit of account. Per Menger, “[M]oney has not been generated by law. In its origin it is a social, and not a state institution.” Governments in the past piggybacked on the medium-of-exchange status of precious metals and then established minting monopolies with the intention of instilling confidence in regard to the genuineness, weight, and fineness of the money supply. Through the stamping of coinage, governments were able to supply different denominations as well as more efficiently collect taxes. Regretfully, per Rothbard, “the emergence of money, while a boon to the human race, also opened a more subtle route for governmental expropriation of resources.”

  The state’s monopoly on the use of violence is an ever-present threat. Legitimacy by brute force allows governments to engage in seigniorage. It similarly gave the US government the power to abandon the gold standard in 1933. Today, the enforcement of legal tender laws by governments stifle competing currencies. The legitimacy that coincides with the ability to incarcerate people facilitates the reckless monetary policies employed by central banks worldwide.

  Bitcoin

  Since bitcoin’s (BTC) genesis block on January 3, 2009, we’ve been witnessing the evolution of a decentralized digital asset. While BTC has been on the receiving end of condemnations for failing to be useful as a medium of exchange, it’s imperative to recognize that this process takes time, just like it did ages ago with gold. Only recently has bitcoin transitioned from a protomoney into a store of value. If BTC becomes entrenched as a store of value, its volatility will decrease, and it will begin its transformation into a medium of exchange.

  As a decentralized protocol, bitcoin has already earned legitimacy through participation and fairness. In the case of the latter, bitcoin has an open-source codebase, along with a transparent immutable ledger. Bitcoin’s participation legitimacy is evidenced by its liquidity, the size of its developer community, and its number of active addresses. With every passing year, confidence in bitcoin’s battle-tested peer-to-peer protocol grows and its brand awareness strengthens. If the Lindy effect is correct, bitcoin’s life expectancy increases proportionally with its current age. Thus, over time, BTC’s legitimacy will be further enhanced through the avenue of continuity if current trends continue.

  Participation, fairness, and continuity, are not enough alone, however. Bitcoin’s transition to a medium of exchange will require legitimacy by performance. This ultimately will depend on the implementation and adoption of scalability solutions (e.g., the Lightning Network). Transactions using layer-two solutions do not occur directly on the base layer (blockchain). If perfected, this technology would exponentially increase the number of transactions per second on the bitcoin network.

  The final stage in bitcoin’s evolution would necessitate a bitcoinization of our world. In this hypothetical future, large swathes of the population would transact in BTC, with no concerns for fiat exchange rates. For these individuals, the preference for sound money over inflationary fiat would be self-evident. Only time will tell if this revolutionary asset can overcome the higher-order acceptance afforded to the state by brute force legitimacy. Unrestricted currency competition opens up the possibility of bitcoin becoming a unit of account, and potentially a global reserve currency.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 07/08/2021 – 21:40

• Baltimore City Police Bust "Ghost Gun" Manufacturing Operation
  Baltimore City Police Bust “Ghost Gun” Manufacturing Operation

  For months we’ve been documenting the rise of “Ghost Guns,” which are untraceable weapons that can be made from 80 percent lower kits or 3D printers, across the Baltimore Metropolitan Area. 

  On Wednesday, one likely source of these unserialized guns was uncovered during a raid of a Northwest Baltimore house by the Baltimore City Police Department (BCPD) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). Agents found drugs and gun manufacturing equipment. 

  “Ghost guns are a fairly new but extremely dangerous phenomenon,” said Special Agent in Charge for HSI Baltimore James Mancuso

  Four people were arrested with “large quantities of narcotics, narcotics manufacturing materials, firearms and firearm manufacturing equipment,” according to local news WMAR. 

  

  “These dangerous firearms and drugs have no place in our city. The Baltimore Police Department and all of the partners that worked on this case are sending a strong message to those that wish to cause harm in our city, “We will find you and hold you responsible for the violence in our city,'” said BCPD Commissioner Michael Harrison.

  

  “This operation showcases what law enforcement agencies are capable of achieving when we work together. Criminals and those who refuse to obey the laws don’t stand a chance against a unified team of dedicated officers and agents working toward a common goal,” Mancuso said. “HSI will continue to partner with our law enforcement friends to keep our communities safe and bring those who violate that safety to justice.”

  In the last six months, ghost guns have flooded city streets, making these weapons untraceable if used in crimes.

  BCPD warned in February and June about the worsening situation in the metro area as these weapons are being used in violent crimes. The police department expects ghost gun seizures to hit a record this year. 

  Meanwhile, homicides are estimated to break above the 300-level for the six consecutive years as violent crime spirals out of control. 

  

  Maryland Governor Larry Hogan has blamed the surge in violent crimes on Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s halt on prosecuting minor traffic violations, prostitution, drug possession, and other minor offenses during the virus pandemic.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 07/08/2021 – 21:20

• Watch: Earthquake Swarms Trigger Rockslides In Central California
  Watch: Earthquake Swarms Trigger Rockslides In Central California

  An earthquake rocked Central California, followed by dozens of aftershocks Thursday afternoon. Much of the shaking was recorded in Coleville (Mono County). 

  At 1549 local time, a magnitude 5.9 hit Coleville, approximately 150 miles east of Sacramento, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Shortly after, a swarm of more than two dozen quakes ranging from magnitude 1.0 to 4.6 hit Coleville and surrounding areas.

  

  During the shaking, people across Mono County took out their smartphones and filmed wild scenes of rockslides. 

  Twitter user “Brett Durrant” was traveling on “I395 near Coleville” when he noticed the earthquake started to “wiggle” the road. He uploaded stunning footage of massive rockslides. 

  Earthquake hit us on I395 near Coleville, CA! Boulders all over the road! #earthquake #California #roadtrip @ABC pic.twitter.com/ZoTxLnC6r8

  — Brett Durrant (@brettdurrant) July 9, 2021

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

  Durrant uploaded another video of huge boulders that slid onto the highway.

  pic.twitter.com/2dww9WU625

  — Brett Durrant (@brettdurrant) July 9, 2021

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

  Local news KCRA uploaded a video of another rockslide in Mono County. 

  Whoa! Check out this video of a rockslide in Mono County after several earthquakes were reported in Northern California.

  See more >> https://t.co/aCYGAf44Iz pic.twitter.com/nVGFS96HRo

  — kcranews (@kcranews) July 9, 2021

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

  It’s been reported USGS has upgraded the earthquake to a magnitude of 6.0. The agency is expected to hold a press conference following clusters of quakes. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 07/08/2021 – 21:13

• Majority Of Former Hospitality Workers Refuse To Go Back To Their Old Jobs
  Majority Of Former Hospitality Workers Refuse To Go Back To Their Old Jobs

  While the end of pandemic unemployment benefits in September may finally put an end to the most dysfunctional US labor market in recent history, one where 14 million Americans still collect unemployment benefits yet where the number of job openings has soared to all time highs and is now equal to the number of unemployed workers…

  

  … which in turn is prompting the Fed to continue its $120 billion in monthly QE until such time as the Fed finds “significant progress” on the labor front and giving its a convenient smoke screen to perpetuate its unorthodox monetary policy for years, we wouldn’t be holding our breath for a quick normalization to the US jobs market, and here’s why: according to a survey from Joblist, an employment-search engine, more than half of US hospitality workers wouldn’t go back to their old jobs and over a third aren’t even considering reentering the industry, underscoring the hiring challenges for restaurants, bars and hotels.

  It gets scarier: in a page right out of some socialist “black mirror” episode, the survey of 13,000 job seekers found that no pay increase or incentive would make these workers return to their previous workplace. These former hospitality employees cited wanting – what else – higher pay, a less physically demanding workplace and better benefits. In other words, much more pay and much less work.

  

  Good luck with that.

  The results, according to Bloomberg, show the extent of the unpopularity of the industry as the economy reopens in fits and starts. Meanwhile, the soaring number of unfilled job openings in the country – most in the service sector – point to an inability to meet surging demand from consumers, threatening to slow the overall recovery.

  “The obvious implication is that if firms can’t expand as planned, the outlook for growth will be weaker,” said James Knightley, chief international economist at ING, in a note to clients.

  Addressing this issue, Credit Suisse strategist Robert Griffths said that “probably the most telling part of [Tuesday’s] ISM services release (which fell short of expectations, and drove a fresh leg lower in yields) was the following quotation from one respondent: “Some locations cannot open for business or (have) limited hours, as we cannot staff the restaurant to meet consumer demand.” The number of people in work in the US is still 7.5m below its 2019 peak: you can always find workers, you just have to pay them enough. But for now, companies would rather cut output and stop operating than pay what is necessary to open up their businesses, perhaps because at the marginal wage required to open, they simply wouldn’t make any money.

  Griffiths opines that firms are betting, “probably correctly,” that the worker shortage is temporary and will end in September when the government’s emergency unemployment benefits run out. That’s creating a reluctance to pay more now. As a result, firms will either have to push up wages to satisfy demand, driving a potential inflationary spiral, or hold back on expectation that conditions will normalize, he says. Either outcome leads to an economic mess that persists well into next year at least.

  In any case, the drop in the ISM services index which Griffiths commented on, posted a sharp drop in June from a record print in May, largely due to an unexpected contraction in the employment measure as more people simply refuse to work.

  Separately, yesterday we showed that according to the DOL’s JOLTS report, job openings climbed to a record in May, indicating employers were struggling to fill spots. And while the number of people who voluntarily left their jobs declined, it remained among the highest on record at 3.6 million.

  

  Not surprisingly, the accommodation and food-service industry was among the sectors with the highest number of open positions, along with health care and education. Across the U.S., the leisure and hospitality industry is still down 2.2 million jobs from February, a big chunk of the roughly 6.7 million missing jobs across occupations. That’s despite businesses largely reopening and employers saying they’re desperate for workers.

  “Widespread signs of labor shortages are real and reflect longer-lasting factors,” Capital Economics senior U.S. economist Michael Pearce said in a research note. “While we are confident all three will ultimately be reversed, that could take many years.”

  And that’s why socialist policies like Universal Basic Income, which decimate the labor market and cripple business growth and hiring plans, yet which millions of Americans are now used to, are generally a very bad idea.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 07/08/2021 – 21:00

• Fauci Defends Vaccines As Research Shows Antibodies Don't Protect Against Delta
  Fauci Defends Vaccines As Research Shows Antibodies Don’t Protect Against Delta

  As the world passes 4MM confirmed COVID cases, the NYT has just published new research published in the journal Nature calling into question the efficacy of US-made vaccines in offering protection against the Delta variant.

  

  Shortly before the research was released, Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday defended American COVID vaccines, claiming that the jabs developed by Pfizer, Moderna and J&J are all effective against the Delta variant, a mutant strain that has become the obsession of public health officials who claim that it could ignite another wave of the pandemic. But what they don’t tell you is that epidemiologists believe COVID is now endemic in the human population, and that reaching “COVID zero” simply isn’t possible.

  At any rate, while the vaccine makers are salivating at the opportunity to produce lucrative booster shots offering protection against various variants, the new research previewed by the NYT and published in the journal Nature found that the Delta strain is able to bypass the antibodies produced by vaccination or prior infection.

  Delta, which was first identified in India, is believed to be roughly 60% more infectious than the alpha variant – the strain also known as the “Kent Strain”, or B.1.1.7, which was first identified by scientists in England. This week, as the number of new COVID cases climbed by double-digits from the prior week (while hospitalizations and deaths remained stagnant), Delta was declared the dominant variant found in the US.

  Almost as alarming, the researchers found that while Delta is able to effectively evade the antibody response, the Beta variant, which was first identified in South Africa, can do it even more easily.

  Here’s more from the NYT report on the research:

  The researchers looked at blood samples from 103 people who had been infected with the coronavirus. Delta was much less sensitive than Alpha to samples from unvaccinated people in this group, the study found.

  One dose of vaccine significantly boosted the sensitivity, suggesting that people who have recovered from Covid-19 still need to be vaccinated to fend off some variants.

  The team also analyzed samples from 59 people after they had received the first and second doses of the AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.

  Blood samples from just 10 percent of people immunized with one dose of the AstraZeneca or the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines were able to neutralize the Delta and Beta variants in laboratory experiments. But a second dose boosted that number to 95 percent. There was no major difference in the levels of antibodies elicited by the two vaccines.

  “A single dose of Pfizer or AstraZeneca was either poorly or not at all efficient against Beta and Delta variants,” the researchers concluded. Data from Israel and Britain broadly support this finding, although those studies suggest that one dose of vaccine is still enough to prevent hospitalization or death from the virus.

  What’s more, the delta variant was also found to be resistant to antibody-based treatments, like “bamlanivimab”, the monoclonal antibody cocktail produced by Eli Lilly.

  Meanwhile, Dr. Fauci tells reporters that nine out of ten Americans who died from the virus were unvaccinated. Despite the growing number of vaccinated patients who are being infected and seriously sickened, insisted that the “science” shows the vaccines are extremely effective at preventing infection.

  The logic is confusing, but it goes something like this: Delta is scary, so get vaccinated…but vaccines don’t protect against Delta. It’s just the latest reminder that Dr. Fauci & company don’t care about “the science”. They’re here to protect the narrative and the reputation of the vaccines, or else risk undermining the White House.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 07/08/2021 – 20:40

• Why Is A Fusion GPS Attorney Risking Sanctions?
  Why Is A Fusion GPS Attorney Risking Sanctions?

  Authored by TechnoFog via The Reactionary (emphasis ours)

  

  Fusion GPS attorneys have been accused of violating ethics rules in the case they’re defending against Alfa Bank. What do they want to keep hidden?

  Background

  In 2017, the owners of Alfa Bank (we’ll call them Alfa Bank for the purposes of this article) sued Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson for their publication of false statements accusing the bank of “bribery, extortion, and interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.”

  As a reminder, it was Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson who, along with others, created and spread bogus Trump/Russia dossiers to government officials and the media. This was then used to justify the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance warrants on Carter Page to spy on Page and those associated with President Trump.

  We previously reported that Alfa Bank filed a motion to compel, asking the Court to require Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson to produce documents withheld as privileged. These documents included communications with Glenn Simpson and others concerning the false Alfa Bank allegations.

  

  Fusion/Simpson have fought the production of the documents, arguing that they are subject to the “attorney-client privilege” and otherwise privileged and not subject to production. We observed these are extremely weak arguments, as the dossiers were political research not subject to the protections afforded by attorney-client privilege. Alfa Bank argued the same to the Court:

  Latest Developments

  Things have taken a strange turn. Today, attorneys for Plaintiffs (Alfa Bank, et. al) informed the Court that Bill Taylor, an attorney for Fusion GPS, was contacting third parties to establish back-channel lines of communication to start settlement talks.

  I’ll let them explain:

  

  Specifically, it is alleged that this settlement overture was made by the Fusion GPS lawyer before discovery allowed each side a look at the other’s “internals.”

  

  As Alfa Bank makes clear, it is against the DC Court’s local rules, as well as the DC Rules of Professional Conduct, to establish such back-channel lines of communication.  

  

  Why this matters.

  This development is quite significant. During litigation, settlement offers are conveyed through the parties’ attorneys – not through back-channels. It seems that the Alfa Bank Plaintiffs are not willing to settle. By reaching out to the third party, the Fusion GPS attorney seems to be desperate to change their minds.

  This leaves us with a question: why would the Fusion GPS attorney violate the rules of conduct – and risk sanctions by the Court?

  We have a feeling that Fusion GPS (or its attorneys… or both) are feeling the heat. There are nearly 500 critically important documents that Fusion GPS has allegedly improperly kept from the other side.

  What will those documents show?

  May 2016 correspondence among Fusion GPS employees/principals, including Glenn Simpson, regarding their early work on Trump/Russia.

  Click here to read the rest, including dates and parties involved in various communications contained within the documents, along with TechnoFog’s takeaway.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 07/08/2021 – 20:20

• Hong Kong Police Arrest Woman "Mourning" July 1 Attacker Who Stabbed A Police Officer Before Killing Himself
  Hong Kong Police Arrest Woman “Mourning” July 1 Attacker Who Stabbed A Police Officer Before Killing Himself

  A woman in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay shopping area was arrested on Wednesday after turning up to the area with flowers — and a box cutter – to “mourn” a week after the death of a man who stabbed a police officer in the back before taking his own life. 

  Days after the stabbing took place, six teens were also arrested in connection with a bomb plot in the area, which some activists have said was the result of Beijing’s “crackdown” in Hong Kong, according to the NY Times. 

  Police were “highly concerned” to find the box cutter, they said on their official Facebook page. “Police are now reviewing and updating the strategies employed in different districts, to specifically stop and search suspicious persons or vehicles, in order to prevent and combat crime,” they wrote. However, it’s possible that police tightening the reins further may only encourage more “activism” from pro-democracy protestors. 

  

  Hong Kong’s No 2 official on Wednesday spoke out against liberal commentators for defending people who laid flowers at the scene of the stabbing. Chief Secretary John Lee Ka-chiu also walked up to the line of free speech by warning “academics and commentators that freedom of speech did not absolve them of social and moral responsibilities”, according to the South China Morning Post. 

  Lee continued: “There are people who tried to play down the adverse consequences and possible harm that the extreme acts could inflict. People, especially those with a legal background, must understand that what they say has an influence on society.”

  “Those who try to play down terrorism will be ‘sinners for 1,000 years’,” he said. 

  Pro-democracy activists have laid flowers at the scene since the July 1 attack, mourning the attacker, who some on social media are calling a “martyr”. 

  Legal scholar Johannes Chan Man-mun said “it was far-fetched for officials to suggest people were promoting terrorism simply by mourning someone’s death,” the report notes.

  

  Lee responded: “In Hong Kong, people can definitely comment on an incident. What I am saying is that people, especially public figures, must bear social responsibility. If they break the law, they need to bear legal responsibility, but their moral responsibility is more important. If they tone down the impact of extreme acts, and someone detonated a bomb that causes casualties, everyone knows who, to a certain extent … has helped terrorism grow.”

  “No unlawful act can be accepted in society. If you find excuses for terrorism … you are encouraging extremists to engage in such acts. We will try to govern the city well. But [in any society], some people will be dissatisfied about their government’s performance, and they must seek solutions through rational and legal means,” he concluded. 

  Activists continue to argue that the government has created “an environment in which lawful, peaceful protest is impossible — leaving residents desperate and, in some cases, radicalized,” the NY Times reported on Tuesday.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 07/08/2021 – 20:00

• Inflation Bombshell: A Market-Based PCE House Rent Measure May Be Coming
  Inflation Bombshell: A Market-Based PCE House Rent Measure May Be Coming

  By Joe Carson, former chief economist at Alliance Bernstein

  The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) is researching the shortcomings of the owner’s rent price index it gets from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) consumer price index as it plans to change its source data for housing services in the GDP accounts. Shifting to a market-based measure of owners’ rents in the PCE inflation measure would be an inflation bombshell.

  Assuming everything else equal, a market-based measure of owners’ rents would permanently lift the PCE inflation, especially during expansions and the dwindling supply of homes for rent, and put an end to the Fed’s elusive chase for 2% inflation. The level of official rates would be markedly higher and sit above inflation rather than below. Could a simple change in the measurement of reported inflation end the decades-long bull market in bonds and equities?

  Owners Housing Costs

  In its May Survey of Current Business, BEA announced that it planned to include a new current dollar estimate for housing services as part of the annual update to the GDP accounts, using data from the American Community Survey. The article stated that the revisions would affect the current dollar estimates and would not affect the deflators for PCE housing services as they planned to continue to use the CPI rental equivalence measure.

  BEA has a dual responsibility, providing an accurate estimation, as best possible, of the nominal and real output values. So, I asked a senior official at BEA why they didn’t move away from the CPI measure of owners’ rent. Using an improper price deflator for owner-housing would over-state the real value of housing services during cyclical upturns and understate PCE inflation.

  The senior official responded, “We are currently in the process of researching possible shortcomings of the current rental equivalence price.” Saying they are investigating the issue does not mean a change is coming. But in the nearly two decades of researching and writing about how the CPI understates housing inflation, this is the first time a senior official from a government statistical agency (BEA or BLS) stated to me that they were looking into the issue. Progress?

  I shared with BEA the research that I presented in 2005 at a panel session, “Housing Costs in the CPI: What Are We Measuring?” at the National Association of Business Economists Annual Meeting in Chicago. The CPI rent index could be statistically explained with a high degree of accuracy by four factors; the vacancy rate in the rental market, the ratio of the vacancy rates in the rental and owners markets, construction cost inflation, and the change in house prices. Of the four, the vacancy rate is the most critical driver of the change in rents.

  Employing the same approach but replacing the vacancy rate of the rental market with that of the owner market help create an estimated implicit rent for owner-occupied housing. The estimated implicit rent index tracked the BLS series, but a significant divergence appeared when BLS stopped sampling the owners market in 1998. And during the housing cycle of the 2000s, the estimated implicit rent ran considerably faster than the official BLS series; in other words, the change in sampling led to an understatement of CPI and PCE inflation from what would have occurred had the change not been made.

  BLS, in its presentation, agreed “that the rental-vacancy rates influence rents, but that it is not clear how the owner-vacancy rate influences the cost of shelter services for owners.” Common sense would tell you that if the vacancy rate is essential in one market, it is equally significant in the other. And it is the relative shift in vacancy rates that drive different rent patterns. Suppose the vacancy rate is declining in the owner’s market while stagnant or rising in the tenant market. In that case, one will expect the rental rate in owner housing to be increasing relative to the tenant market. But for the past two decades, the CPI rent series shows the opposite tenant’s rents rise faster than owners even with higher vacancy rates.

  

  A market-based measure of owner-occupied rents would have zero effect on the economy. But there would be spillover effects on the economy and finance as policymakers respond to a permanently higher reported PCE inflation rate. That’s because the days of monetary policy trying to achieve a 2% inflation rate would be over and replaced by policymakers attempting to limit the cyclical uptick in inflation. The transition would not be seamless, and the payback in finance could be significant as higher reported inflation increases volatility and risks. Stay tuned.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 07/08/2021 – 19:40

• Pfizer To Seek Authorization For "Booster" Dose To Protect Against Delta Variant
  Pfizer To Seek Authorization For “Booster” Dose To Protect Against Delta Variant

  Hours ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci emphatically defended the efficacy of the three American-made vaccines that have received emergency authorization for use by the FDA. His comments weren’t unprompted: reports out of Israel claiming the Pfizer jab is far less effective than advertised have shaken public confidence in the jabs, at a time where President Biden is about to send people knocking on doors to try and encourage more adults (and increasingly, children) to get vaccinated.

  

  It’s no secret that a handful of southern and western states are lagging the rest of the country in vaccine rollout. But not long after Dr. Fauci made his comments (which were picked up by all the major newswires) the NYT published a sneak peak at new research showing how the Delta variant bypasses the antibodies created by the vaccines, and prior infection with another strain of the virus.

  It’s just the latest example of how the authorities don’t care about the “science” so much as protecting the narrative that helps Big Pharma sell the most vaccines. And while the vast majority of  countries are still struggling with vaccination rates below 1% since they simply can’t get the supplies (while unused jabs are piling up across the US) – and Bill Gates doing everything he can to keep it that way – Pfizer and Moderna have apparently spotted an opportunity.

  Pfizer and its partner BioNTech announced Thursday evening that they will seek authorization from the FDA for a third “booster” dose of their COVID vaccines that will offer increased protection against the Delta variant (despite the fact that both Pfizer and its rival Moderna repeatedly insisted that its vaccines are still effective against all known variants including Delta), the Hill reports.

  In a statement, the company referenced the data out of Israel, where government scientists have estimated the real efficacy of the vaccine vs. Delta is somewhere around 64%, while leaving particularly vulnerable patients at risk of severe illness and death. The booster dose would ideally be given within 6 to 12 months post-vaccination.

  “Based on the totality of the data they have to date, Pfizer and BioNTech believe that a third dose may be beneficial within 6 to 12 months following the second dose to maintain highest levels of protection,” the companies said.

  The company said it’s planning to start clinical trials for a reformulated vaccine that’s modified to specifically target the Delta variant. However, the company now believes that a booster dose might be a more effective strategy. The news strikes us as surprisingly aggressive, considering the FDA hasn’t even approved the first generation of vaccines yet (they were all granted emergency authorizations, and the FDA is still evaluating safety data, which is why we know the mRNA jabs cause rare side effects including heart inflammation in a small n umber of men).

  Ultimately, the CDC and FDA will decide whether to recommend a third dose. But they have a pretty strong track record of safeguarding the interests of the Big Pharma companies that produced the vaccines. So, why would they change course now?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 07/08/2021 – 19:20

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