Today’s News 9th September 2021

• Turkey, Iran & Pakistan Rapidly Bolster Border Security To Halt Afghan Refugee Wave
  Turkey, Iran & Pakistan Rapidly Bolster Border Security To Halt Afghan Refugee Wave

  Regional countries near Afghanistan are busy bolstering their border security and sending troops to halt an expected explosion of Afghan refugees across their territories seeking to escape new Taliban rule. 

  Turkey, for example, is rapidly expanding its three meter high wall it began constructing in 2017 along its over 330-mile long border with Iran, including adding razor wires, ditches, and thermal cameras along with additional troop presence. This after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan assessed last month as US troops were on their way out of Kabul that Turkey is “facing an increasingly intensifying Afghan migration wave coming via Iran.”

  

  Nikkei reports that by all indicators, regional governments are doing everything possible to keep the Afghan waves out: “Governments from Islamabad to Ankara and Tehran have bolstered border restrictions in anticipation of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the new regime in Kabul,” the report says. 

  Historically, fleeing Afghans’ first stop en route to the West has been neighboring Iran, which shares a 570+ mile border with Afghanistan; however, the typically porous border was closed to all Afghans starting Aug.18 as it was clear the security situation inside the war-torn country was unraveling amid the US exit. Further some Iranian newspapers have reported that Iranian authorities are actively sending Afghans back to their country.

  And further, “Pakistan’s army claims to have sealed all irregular crossings from Afghanistan, though domestic media have reported increased human trafficking across the border,” Nikkei writes. “Reluctance or refusal to allow in large numbers of refugees is widespread. In some cases — Turkey again a prime example — allowing such an inflow can create a serious domestic political backlash.”

  Turkey is expected to feel the shock first of the beginning refugee wave coming out of Afghanistan, given it’s already long been for years a jumping-off point for Afghans making the arduous trip to Europe. The past decade alone has seen some 600,000 Afghans settle in Turkey – all the while a mass wave of Syrian refugees exited there as well, many which are still along Turkey’s southern border (over 3 million).

  

  Nikkei also documents some offers from other regional countries to accept a meager number of refugees, unlikely to blunt the problem given the millions that are looking to get out:

  Some countries in the region with interests in Afghanistan have offered limited, and short-term, help. The United Arab Emirates has agreed to temporarily host 5,000 evacuated nationals who will go to third countries, following a request from the U.S. The UAE, along with Qatar and Saudi Arabia, have called for peace and political stability in Afghanistan.

  Another country that’s been involved in rebuilding Afghanistan over the past two decades is India, which hosts more than 15,000 Afghan refugees from long ago. As of March 2021, a total of 41,315 refugees and asylum-seekers were registered with the UNHCR India, with Afghans making up the second-largest subgroup, at 37%, behind those from Myanmar, at 54%.

  All of this serves to highlight that the current climate of proclamations of international sympathy and support for the plight of Afghans is not resulting in any level of changed policies at borders on the ground, but is just stopping at mere rhetoric. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/09/2021 – 02:45

• "Housing Is A Human Right": Rent Activists Step Up Pressure Ahead Of German Elections
  “Housing Is A Human Right”: Rent Activists Step Up Pressure Ahead Of German Elections

  By Imogen Goodman of TheLocal.de,

  In a demonstration taking place in the German capital on September 11th, 2021, numerous campaign groups will take to the streets, among them the Berlin-based Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co. campaign, the national Rent Freeze campaign and the Mannheim-based Action Alliance Against Desperation and Rent Madness.

  

  They are demanding a national rent freeze for the next six years to halt rising rents, along with a focus on building more affordable homes and the transfer of property from private landlords into state hands.

  “With this rents demonstration, we’re protesting against the massive, persistent pressure that renters are facing in the whole of Germany,” campaigners said in a statement announcing the upcoming protest.

  “Whether it’s Frankfurt, Dresden, Munich, Leipzig, Berlin, Hamburg or Cologne, rents are incessantly rising or have already reached unreasonable levels – und not just in the big cities.

  “In many places, the availability of affordable living space has sunk dramatically for those entering a new housing contract. Homelessness is rising further and with it, the number of people who live on the streets without any shelter at all.”

  Sharp rise in rents

  Of all the cities in Germany, Berlin has by far the fastest rising rents: a recent study by housing portal Immowelt found that asking rents in the capital have soared by more than 40 percent over the past five years alone. However, the same study also found that middle-sized German cities like Heidelberg and Kaiserslautern were experiencing significant rent hikes over the same period, while the country’s priciest cities like Munich and Stuttgart continued to see rents go up – though not quite as steeply as in previous years.

  

  As Germany prepares to head to the polls on September 26th in both the federal and a number of state elections, the campaign is aiming to step up pressure on the next government to embark on a “radical change of course” in the country’s housing policy.

  In Berlin, people with German citizenship will also be given a vote in a referendum on whether the state government should buy out thousands of flats owned by for-profit landlords with 3,000 or more properties – including Vonovia and Deutsche Wohnen – in order to better control rents and living standards.

  “On September 26th, Berliners have a unique, historical chance to stand up against the selling off of our cities,” Rouzbeh Tehari, spokesman for the Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co. campaign, told The Local.

  “The referendum to nationalise large property firms offers the opportunity to remove hundreds of thousands of apartments from capitalist speculation and manage them as social housing.”

  Even if the referendum passes, however, the campaign expects to face a fierce battle with the newly elected Berlin Senate to see the policy put into law.

  “We won’t stop after the vote,” Tehari explained. “We know we’re facing strong opposition and it will be difficult to get it implemented.”

  Either way, the success of the campaign – which managed to collect well over the 170,000 petition signatures needed to call a referendum – will have sent a strong message to the venture capitalists that speculating on Berlin housing is a “high risk” strategy, he said.  

  A national rent cap?

  The national Rent Freeze campaign, one of the key activist groups involved in Saturday’s demo, is calling for a new six-year rental cap – but says it must be done on a national level. Earlier this year, attempts to impose a six-year rent freeze in Munich and Berlin were both rejected by Germany’s Constitutional Court on the basis that such as move couldn’t be done on a state or regional level.

  In the case of Berlin, the rent cap had been in place since 2018, but was removed after the court found the law to be unconstitutional.

  ++ Laut neuen Studien ist ein bundesweiter #Mietendeckel möglich.++
  Allein was fehlt, ist der politische Wille. Deshalb braucht es den Druck unserer Mieter*inennbewegung!
  So zum Beispiel bei der großen #Mietendemo am 11.09.
  in #Berlin #btw21 #Mieten https://t.co/T4Thu27MTH

  — Zwangsräumung Verhindern #Berlin (@BuendnisZRV) September 1, 2021

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

  At the time, renters were dealt a double blow as the court ruled that landlords also had the right to reclaim back-dated rent for the entire duration of the cap – leading some tenants to be presented with bills amounting to thousands of euros.  But the national Rent Freeze campaign, which started in Bavaria, has now amassed support from around 140 other organisations and activist groups, and is gaining momentum ahead of the elections.

  “Many tenants are desperate,” said Matthias Weinzierl of the Rent Freeze campaign. “They’re legitimately afraid of losing their homes because rents continue to rise and Covid-19 hasn’t changed a thing. “That’s why we’re calling for a national six-year rent freeze now, which must be brought in directly after the new government has been elected. Such a rent freeze would be an acute help for tenants – and it’s also urgently needed.”

  ‘Existential threat’

  The date of the demo is the national Day of the Homeless, and was selected to highlight what campaigners see as the real threat of the housing crisis.

  “In many places, high rents are becoming a genuine poverty risk and loss of housing is becoming an existential threat,” said Ulrich Schneider, CEO of the Parity Welfare Association, which is also supporting the demo.

  

  “It’s completely unreasonable to force single parents, people with disabilities or those in need of care, for example, to give up their homes and lose their entire social environment.” 

  The protest on Saturday has also received support from the National Working Group for Help for the Homeless (BAGWH), who have linked unaffordable rents to a rise in the number of employed people losing their homes.  In one recent study, BAGWH found that 15 percent of people classified as ‘homeless’ are currently employed – suggesting that rents in Germany are now outstripping wages, especially for lower earners. Commenting on the findings, Werena Rosenke, CEO of BAGWH, said that the figures were “proof of the precarious living conditions in which many people find themselves in this country and the trends that are emerging in our society”. 

  Any new government elected after September 26th must face this issue head on, she added. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 09/09/2021 – 02:00

• How The FBI's War On Drugs Helped 9/11 Happen
  How The FBI’s War On Drugs Helped 9/11 Happen

  Authored by Brian McGlinchey via Stark Realities,

  The story of 9/11 is filled with painful “what-ifs.” Among the most prominent:

  • What if the CIA hadn’t blocked two FBI agents from alerting Bureau headquarters that a future 9/11 hijacker had obtained a multi-entry US visa?

  • What if the FBI hadn’t nixed agents’ request for a warrant to search the computer of “20th hijacker” Zacharias Moussaoui after his arrest in August 2001?

  • What if the FBI hadn’t ignored a Phoenix agent’s July 2001 recommendation to contact aviation colleges across the country, on suspicion that Osama bin Laden was preparing extremists to “conduct terror activity against civilian aviation targets”?

  Those what-ifs give us all pause, but they weigh heaviest on those who were closest to them, such as retired FBI counterterrorism agent Ken Williams, author of the so-called “Phoenix memo.”

  Though his unheeded warning about extremists at flight schools looms large in the saga of 9/11, Williams is haunted by two more what-ifs that are lesser-known but equally gut-wrenching:

  • What if his request for a surveillance team to monitor bin Laden disciples at an Arizona aviation school hadn’t been declined in favor of the FBI’s pursuit of drug smugglers?

  • What if he hadn’t been ordered to suspend his investigation of those extremists for several months to help with an arson case?

  

  For Williams, the answer is all too clear: His investigation would have led to the scrutiny of two future 9/11 hijackers—and that scrutiny may have started unraveling the entire plot.

  Extremists at Embry-Riddle

  In April 2000, Williams received an important tip from a confidential informant who’d once been a member of a Middle Eastern terrorist organization. The informant had built a stellar reputation for providing valuable information. “I used to refer to him as my E.F. Hutton,” says Williams. “When he spoke, you listened.”

  The informant told Williams that two foreign students were attempting to recruit Phoenix-area Muslims to an organization called Al-Muhajiroun, or “The Emigrants.” Founded in Saudi Arabia and then banned by the kingdom in 1986, Al-Muhajiroun was unabashedly extremist. Before 9/11, the group referred to itself as “the eyes, the ears and the mouth of Osama bin Laden,” says Williams.

  In 1998, the group’s leader issued a fatwa, or religious decree, declaring jihad against the US and British governments and their interests—including airports. After 9/11, Al-Muhajiroun became notorious for organizing a “magnificent 19” conference in London in honor of 9/11’s 19 hijackers.

  The informant gave Williams one of the flyers the pair had been using in their recruiting drive. The phone number on the flyer belonged to Lebanese student Zakaria Soubra. Via surveillance of Soubra, Williams and his team identified his counterpart as a Saudi named Ghassan al-Sharbi. Both were students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona. Williams describes it as a prestigious school providing an “Ivy League” education in aviation and related sciences.

  Soubra was studying aviation security, while al-Sharbi studied engineering. The two were also making frequent, two-and-a-half-hour drives to Phoenix to recruit new members of Al-Muhajiroun from area mosques. Williams and another agent traveled to Prescott to interview them at the small room they shared at a cheap motor lodge. Williams quickly noticed it was decorated with photos of Osama bin Laden, Ibn al-Khattab of the Arab Mujahideen in Chechnya, and wounded mujahideen fighters.

  In his years of experience, Williams had grown accustomed to Middle Eastern students being “meek, mild and intimidated as shit when you show up at their door”—the product of growing up in countries with iron-fisted security forces. Soubra, however, was a jarring exception.

  “He told me he considered the FBI, the United States military and the United States government legitimate military targets of Islam, and he described bin Laden as a great Muslim brother,” says Williams. “He was raising his voice, and you could see the veins on the side of his temples start to pop out of his head.”

  “Trust me, I did everything in my power to get him to assault me or my partner…try to push us or do something so we could arrest him for assault on a federal officer,” says Williams. On the way out, he told them, “We know what you’re all about and we’re not going away. If you cross that line, you will go to jail. We’ll find you wherever you’re at.”

  “I don’t generally don’t make those kind of threats, because they’re idle, but I wanted to kind of up-it a notch with them,” says Williams.

  Links to Possible 9/11 “Dry Run”

  Williams discovered that Soubra and al-Sharbi were driving a car registered to Muhammad al-Qudhaieen, a Saudi student living three hours away at the University of Arizona. Months earlier, in November 1999, al-Qudhaieen and Hamdan al-Shalawi, a Saudi attending Arizona State, were involved in an incident that prompted an America West flight to Washington, D.C. to make an emergency landing in Columbus, Ohio.

  Crew members said the two had asked a variety of suspicious technical questions, and that al-Qudhaieen twice attempted to open the cockpit door. He told investigators in Columbus he’d mistaken it for the bathroom door.

  Noting that these were students at a top-notch university with experience traveling internationally, Williams says he finds the excuse ridiculous. “They were conducting an intelligence-collecting operation on board the aircraft, to see how the flight crew was going to react and see how far away they could get with doing things,” he says.

  US President Joe Biden’s order requires the US attorney general to publicly release the declassified documents over the next six monthshttps://t.co/oPnsA81g2h

  — Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) September 4, 2021

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  The America West incident has been cited in ongoing civil litigation in which 9/11 families, survivors and insurers allege various Saudi officials helped facilitate the al Qaeda plot. Al-Qudhaieen and al-Shalawi were traveling at Saudi expense to an event at the Saudi embassy. The pair were released after questioning. Immediately after the incident, Williams says, they held a press conference in Washington and claimed to have been victims of Islamophobia.

  Williams says the public relations move was likely part of al Qaeda’s strategy: Well-publicized, embarrassing accusations of bigotry against America West would make other airline and airport employees reluctant to react to future suspicious behavior.

  Al-Qudhaieen and al-Shalawi’s profession of innocence was undermined in November 2000, when the FBI received reports that al-Shalawi trained in Afghanistan to conduct attacks like the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers housing facility in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 American service members and injured hundreds.

  After being questioned by Williams, Al-Sharbi fled the United States. In the wake of 9/11, he was arrested in Pakistan with Abu Zubaydah, who was then one of the world’s most-hunted al Qaeda associates. Add it all up and Williams was clearly onto something big in the year 2000.

  However, since his investigation subjects hadn’t committed any overt criminal acts, building a case would require a lot of work, with an emphasis on visual surveillance—tracking comings and goings, identifying associates by photographing them and checking their license plates, noting places subjects and their associates routinely visit.

  It’s a highly labor-intensive undertaking. In the FBI, doing it well means calling in the agents of the Special Operations Group (SOG). “Surveillance is the only thing these agents do,” says Williams. “They’re given extensive training on the tradecraft of whatever enemy they’re looking at…(including) how al Qaeda functions. They study whatever we have in our intelligence quivers so they know what to look for when they’re out there,” says Williams.

  “Every agent can do some surveillance,” he continues, “but these guys have old beater automobiles, they have aircraft capabilities, electronic capabilities, photographic capabilities—video and still—and they’re trained how to use all this stuff.” Their observations are summarized in a daily report provided to the lead agent on the case.

  However, none of that would be available to Williams: Despite the disturbing set of facts and associations he’d uncovered, his request for SOG support was denied. Chalk it up to a warped set of institutional priorities: In the pre-9/11 FBI, counterterrorism often took a back seat to drug investigations.

  “I’ve got this threat I’ve identified through my training and expertise. I’m telling my command staff ‘these guys are the real deal, this is no bullshit,’ yet (my bosses are) still held accountable to meeting what headquarters has set as priorities for the southwest border states—and that’s drug interdiction and that’s taking down cartel members,” says Williams.   

  Williams says he doesn’t blame his Phoenix supervisors, because they were following priorities dictated in Washington. He does, however, resent that the FBI had to pursue drug cases at all.

  “What angers me about it and what I get upset about is—that’s what the whole Drug Enforcement Administration was created to counter. We were the only agency at that time that protected the United States from terrorists. You’ve got the DEA, every police agency and their mother looking at drugs. Why can’t the FBI get out of the drug trafficking arena and concentrate on protecting the national security of the United States of America in the areas where we have the sole purview to do it? If we don’t do it, nobody’s doing it at that time,” Williams says.

  America’s powerful post-9/11 marijuana legalization trend makes the de-prioritization of his counterterrorism case all the more aggravating in retrospect.

  “Some of the stuff we were competing with were marijuana smuggling cases. Now, for chrissakes, every other corner out here has a marijuana dispensary. They’re as frequent as Starbucks,” says Williams.

  Denied SOG support, Williams and his teammates soldiered on without it, conducting their own off-and-on surveillance as best they could. “I was doing it haphazardly. I was doing it by myself and maybe with a couple squad mates,” says Williams. “But there’s a huge degree of difference between having an SOG team on a target and a group of non-SOG-trained agents who do it part-time at best.”

  Even in well-resourced situations, pursuing such a case can take a lot of time. “Some people think 12 months in an investigation is a long time—not when you’re working these kinds of cases like Soubra and Al Sharbi,” says Williams.

  Collecting intelligence, trying to recruit informants, and amassing the information needed to obtain more investigative authority is a slow grind. The lack of SOG support made it all the more difficult. The prioritization of drug cases was a major drag on Williams’ investigation, but things were about to come to a screeching halt.

  An Arsonist Unwittingly Abets al Qaeda

  In December 2000, someone started setting fire to million-dollar houses under construction along the border of the Phoenix Mountains Preserve. One of them was even burned twice. Eleven structures were torched in all. The media speculated that the arson was the work of an eco-terrorist organization—perhaps the Earth Liberation Front or something akin to it. In messages at the crime scenes and elsewhere, the perpetrator started identifying as the “Coalition to Save the Preserves,” and seemed to revel in taunting police.

  The arson spree was racking up millions of dollars in damage and commanding high media attention. Between public pressure amid mounting concerns the fires could take a deadly turn, Phoenix police asked the FBI for help.

  Williams received a profoundly unwelcome order: He and every member of the Phoenix counterterrorism squad would have to shelve their current investigations and pursue the arson case full-time.

  “I went to my supervisor at the time, Bill Kurtz, and I said, ‘Bill, you can’t take me off this case. This is the real deal…these guys are with this al Qaeda group that we’re starting to learn about, that blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania’.”

  The decision stood. And the timing couldn’t have been worse.The very month Williams was forced to turn his eyes away from Arizona’s network of al Qaeda sympathizers, Hani Hanjour and Nawaf al-Hazmi moved from Southern California to Phoenix.

  Nine months later, they would hijack American Airlines Flight 77. Hanjour himself would steer the Boeing 757 into the Pentagon.

  Williams is confident that, had he not been diverted to the arson case, Hanjour and al-Hazmi would have come under his scrutiny: “There’s no question in my mind. I’m convinced we would have crossed paths with them. Guarantee you.”

  “All these guys were in the same circle. We got the two guys on America West Airlines doing their dry run and collecting intel. We’ve got Ghassan al-Sharbi who was arrested with Abu Zubayda, so he was kind of a big shot. And then we’ve got these two guys getting ready to kill themselves on September 11th coming into our area. All these guys are living within miles of each other. They would’ve been bouncing off each other, I guarantee,” he says.

  Williams did help solve the arson spree, which turned out to be the work of a lone, thrill-seeking arsonist named Mark Warren Sands, who was indicted on June 14, 2001. By that time, Hanjour and al-Hazmi had left Arizona, arriving in Falls Church, Virginia in April.

  Williams gives his former supervisor Kurtz full credit for expressing regret to the 9/11 Commission about having taken Williams off the terror case. He holds lingering anger, however, for the arsonist who put Kurtz in a tough position.

  “I wish I could prosecute him for something tied to 9/11, because he really took our eyes off the guys in Prescott,” says Williams. With the arson case closed, Williams ramped his counterterrorism investigation back up, posting his now-famous “Phoenix memo” on July 10.

  With his investigation first slowed by a lack of surveillance assets and then halted for months by the arson investigation, his recommendation for a nationwide FBI campaign to contact civil aviation universities and colleges in search of extremist students was submitted just two months before 9/11—and then ignored until it was too late.

  A Reunion with al-Sharbi

  Having been arrested in Pakistan with Abu Zubaydah, Ghassan al-Sharbi—the quieter of Williams’ two Prescott investigation targets—is now detainee #682 at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A 2016 government profile said “he has been mostly non-compliant and hostile with the guards…his behavior and statements indicate that he retains extremist views.”

  You’ll recall that Williams closed his Prescott interview of al-Sharbi with a warning: “If you cross that line, you will go to jail. We’ll find you wherever you’re at.” Little did Williams know it would happen halfway around the world.

  After al-Sharbi was captured, Williams traveled to Gitmo to question him. When Williams entered the room, he says al-Sharbi’s face signaled his recognition—with an expression that said, “Oh, shit.”

  Williams greeted him by saying, “I told you we’d find you.” Recalling the scene with a chuckle, Williams says, “It was a Hollywood moment. You couldn’t script it any better.”

  A New Focus: Making a Case Against Saudi Arabia

  While that moment gave Williams something to smile about, 9/11 remains a constant and grim presence in his life. There’s no escaping the nagging question of how the world may be different had he received the surveillance support he’d requested, or if he hadn’t been reassigned to the arson case.

  “I what-if that every day of my life and I will til the day I die,” he says. “How close were we?”

  “My ex-wife used to say I was obsessed with it, but I’d say, ‘Well, how can you not be obsessed with it? There’s thousands of people dead and you’re somehow associated with this,” recalls Williams.

  In 2017, Williams hit the FBI’s mandatory retirement age of 57. He soon found a perfect outlet for his 9/11 obsession: He’s working with attorneys representing the families and survivors of the 9/11 attacks in their civil suit against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is still in the pre-trial phase.

  His work is done under a protective order that prevents him from sharing what he’s learned from depositions and from reviewing still-classified documents from Operation Encore, the FBI’s investigation of Saudi government links to 9/11. However, he’s unequivocal about what it adds up to: “The evidence is there.”

  His work on the case goes against the wishes of the FBI. As Williams told me in a 2018 story that broke the news, a lawyer from the FBI’s Office of the General Counsel told him not to join the plaintiffs’ legal team, saying it could impact “other pending litigation” and undermine the pursuit of warm relations with Saudi Arabia.

  This time, though, Ken Williams gets to set his own priorities.

  *  *  *

  Stark Realities undermines official narratives, demolishes conventional wisdom and exposes fundamental myths across the political spectrum. Read more and subscribe at starkrealities.substack.com

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/08/2021 – 23:40

• China Mulling Eventual Takeover Of Bagram Airbase In Afghanistan: Report
  China Mulling Eventual Takeover Of Bagram Airbase In Afghanistan: Report

  A new bombshell report in US News & World Report claims that China’s military is looking to move into what was previously America’s single most important and iconic airbase in Afghanistan – Bagram airfield. 

  “The Chinese military is currently conducting a feasibility study about the effect of sending workers, soldiers and other staff related to its foreign economic investment program known as the Belt and Road Initiative in the coming years to Bagram, according to a source briefed on the study by Chinese military officials, who spoke to U.S. News on the condition of anonymity,” the report says. 

  

  The sprawling airfield, which goes all the way back to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, lies an hour outside Kabul and was considered the busiest US base in the world during the two-decade long US war.

  The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Tuesday vehemently denied and condemned the allegation that China’s PLA military was poised to take the base over, essentially calling it ‘fake news’. “What I can tell everyone is that that is a piece of purely false information,” spokesman Wang Wenbin said.

  US News’ sources suggested any such move would be at least two years out, and would require the invitation and consent of the Taliban government.

  A week ago Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Italian newspaper La Repubblica that China will be Afghanistan’s “most important partner” as the new government is seeking infrastructure investments. “China is our most important partner and represents a fundamental and extraordinary opportunity for us, because it is ready to invest and rebuild our country,” Mujahid explained.

  The spokesman added that there are “rich copper mines in the country, which, thanks to the Chinese, can be put back into operation and modernized. In addition, China is our pass to markets all over the world.” It’s long been no secret that wherever China sees an opportunity to expand its Belt and Road Initiative projects across Asia, it seeks to boost its security presence in the host nation. 

  General Milley: Bagram “not much value added…”

  China: We will take it … https://t.co/9Ox85bhrtN

  — Jim Banks (@RepJimBanks) September 7, 2021

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  Despite Beijing’s denials, it’s clear that Chinese officials understand well the symbolic and strategic importance of possessing Bagram: 

  Beijing has already recognized the geostrategic importance of Bagram overtly. Its state media almost immediately hopped on the sudden and surprise U.S. departure from the key logistics hub in July, sending a video crew, which gained easy access to it, to document the aftermath of what it described as a “hasty withdrawal” and “humiliating defeat.”

  Indeed Chinese state media has taken every opportunity to point out that the US is an empire in retreat from the world stage, particularly after the chaos of the botched evacuation and final exit of last month. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/08/2021 – 23:20

• "COVID Zero" New Zealand Has Completed Its Transformation Into A Full-Blown Police State
  “COVID Zero” New Zealand Has Completed Its Transformation Into A Full-Blown Police State

  Authored by Jordan Schachtel via ‘The Dossier’ substack,

  New Zealand, the last of the dedicated “COVID Zero” nations on earth, has completed its transformation into a full-blown tyrannical regime, and shockingly, it has come with the consent of the vast majority of Kiwis.

  Meanwhile,
  A poll conducted by Kantar and published by The New Zealand Herald shows 85 percent of Kiwis support the elimination goal, compared with 13 percent arguing to “live with” the virus.<= Publicerad idaghttps://t.co/UKY9gSsQ4F

  — Trötter (@Trtter6) September 2, 2021

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  Once hailed as the media and “public health experts’” favorite COVID-19 managerial “success story,” the puff pieces have been increasingly hard to find, as Wellington has spawned a dystopian concoction of insane, despotic government edicts, claimed as an absolutely necessary part of their everlasting fight against a disease with a 99.8% recovery rate.

  Exclusive: Dr Anthony Fauci on why NZ ‘rose to the top’ in Covid battle https://t.co/c6FHHWGbja pic.twitter.com/RBAHaltFWA

  — nzherald (@nzherald) December 6, 2020

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  Just observe what has happened in the Five Eyes partner nation during this week alone:

  1) Virtually the entire country is once again under an indefinite lockdown, after a few COVID-19 cases were reported throughout the nation.  A single case necessitates a “snap lockdown,” in which all rights of millions of citizens are immediately restricted and indefinitely subject to the containment of a seasonal respiratory disease. The current lockdown has been extended over Auckland until at least mid September, with many predicting a much lengthier sentence. According to past precedent, Kiwis will not receive their freedom back until — this is the truly insane part of Zero COVID — there is zero community spread of COVID-19.

  And the second another case pops up on the radar, the entire country goes back to square one of the Zero COVID protocol.

  Covid 19 coronavirus Delta outbreak: Auckland lockdown could last ‘three to four weeks’, expert says, via @nzherald https://t.co/y5dK7T0Bm5

  — Nino Brodin (@Orgetorix) September 2, 2021

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  2) A man is being shamed by his countrymen for having the audacity to “escape” from a government-sanctioned COVID internment camp. The camps have been described in a more positive, but false light by the press and government officials as “quarantine hotels,” but it is most certainly an internment facility, as leaving is not allowed, and it carries a fine and lengthy prison sentence.

  The Hill reported: “The person was charged with failing to comply with New Zealand’s coronavirus health order. Under a new law passed last year, he could face a fine or up to six months in jail if convicted.”

  Man facing charges after escaping quarantine hotel in New Zealand https://t.co/6pzI6x3aTF pic.twitter.com/85iHWJICrc

  — The Hill (@thehill) September 2, 2021

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  3) The country’s police and military services are installing security checkpoints throughout New Zealand in an effort to make sure citizens are not traveling during the lockdown. Freely traveling during the lockdown now carries a massive fine and/or prison sentence as punishment.

  Police set up checkpoints across Auckland to prevent non-essential travel as New Zealand recorded 75 new cases of COVID-19. Auckland will remain in a strict level 4 lockdown for another two weeks, but restrictions for the rest of the country were loosened https://t.co/9BC92LkTRq pic.twitter.com/qipRa7dxds

  — Reuters (@Reuters) September 1, 2021

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  Police checkpoints in Auckland as New Zealand records 75 new Covid cases https://t.co/Rt9ZZhtPba pic.twitter.com/m2Lg343WbU

  — City A.M. (@CityAM) September 1, 2021

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  New Zealand is now the only country in the world left that is dedicated to COVID Zero, the pursuit of the total elimination of a virus from their nation, which has been under a government-sanctioned self-siege since the beginning of 2020. All of the other nations that attempted to pursue the pseudoscience behind COVID Zero have failed in catastrophic fashion. New Zealand has transformed from a highly-touted COVID “success story” to a full-fledged house of horrors, and sadly, there is no end in sight to the ongoing madness.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/08/2021 – 23:00

• ECB Preview: The First Taper, But Don't Call It That
  ECB Preview: The First Taper, But Don’t Call It That

  Summary

  • ECB policy announcement due Thursday 9th September; rate decision at 12:45BST/07:45EDT, press conference 13:30BST/08:30EDT
  • Consensus looks for a slowdown in the pace of PEPP purchases during Q4
  • A decision on the future of PEPP is not expected to take place at the upcoming meeting
  • Economic forecasts are set to see upgrades to 2021 growth and inflation. 2023 inflation is set to remain sub-target

  OVERVIEW: As Newsquawk writes in its ECB preview, the ECB is set to stand pat on rates whilst leaving the size of the PEPP envelope unchanged at EUR 1.85 tln. Focus for PEPP will instead fall on the Q4 pace of purchases which is set to be lowered from the current “significantly higher” level of EUR 80bln/month. Those looking for clues on the future of PEPP when it concludes in March next year are set to be disappointed with the matter seemingly not on the table for the upcoming meeting. The press conference will likely see President Lagarde caution that any slowing in the pace of purchases for PEPP will not be regarded as a “taper” as purchases are not on track to reach zero and policymakers will vow to maintain favorable financing conditions. Spoiler alert: it is a taper, as the recent blowout in bund yields has amply demonstrated. The accompanying economic projections are set to see upgrades to 2021 growth and inflation. 2023 inflation is set to remain sub-target.

  Nomura’s visual forecast of the ECB’s tapering is below.

  

  PRIOR MEETING: As expected, the ECB stood pat on rates and the sizes of its bond-buying operations (PEPP and APP). In its newly formatted policy statement, the Governing Council adjusted forward guidance on interest rates to reflect its new symmetric 2% inflation target vs. its previous “close to, but below 2%” approach. One of the more interesting nuances of the statement was that its inflation mandate will be targeted via actual inflation outcomes and that rates will remain at present or lower levels until “it sees inflation reaching two per cent well ahead of the end of its projection horizon and durably for the rest of the projection horizon”. Emphasis on the projection horizon and on a durable basis was received dovishly by the market, alongside the ECB stressing that the medium-term outlook for inflation is still well below the Governing Council’s target. Sources in the immediate aftermath noted dissent from Weidmann and Wunsch on the new guidance due to the length of the commitment and lack of clarity on a potential exit strategy. Those looking for any clues on the future of the PEPP and APP purchases were left disappointed, with the statement reaffirming that PEPP will run until at least the end of March 2022 and, in any case, until it judges that the coronavirus crisis phase is over whilst forward guidance was maintained on APP. That said, sources the following day noted that policymakers were not expecting to make a decision on the future of PEPP bond purchases in September given the persistent uncertainty posed by the pandemic. Instead, a decision in October or December was seen as more likely. On the economic outlook, the ECB judged that the recovery remains on track with activity seen returning to precrisis levels by Q1 2022, that said, the Delta variant posed a source of uncertainty for the outlook.

  RECENT DATA: On the inflation front, Eurozone Y/Y CPI in August rose to a ten-year high of 3.0% from 2.7% with a pronounced jump in the core (ex-food and energy) reading to 1.6% from 1.4%. Note, economists still anticipate inflation to slip back below the ECB’s 2% target in early 2022. Q2 GDP metrics released since the prior meeting revealed Q/Q growth of 2.0% vs. the 0.3% contraction seen in Q1. Survey data for August saw the Eurozone-wide IHS Markit Composite PMI reading slip to 59.0 from 60.2 with the report noting “.. another strong quarter-on-quarter rise in GDP is on the cards for the third quarter, and we’re certainly on track for the eurozone economy to be back at pre-pandemic levels by the end of the year, if not sooner”. Unemployment in the Eurozone fell to 7.6% in July from 7.8% as reopening efforts in the region continued to pick-up and furlough schemes suppress the headline metric. In terms of COVID milestones, the EU Commission recently announced that 70% of the EU population is now fully vaccinated against the virus.

  RECENT COMMUNICATIONS: Given the summer break at the ECB, rhetoric up until the past few weeks had been relatively light. However, more recently, interjections from officials have helped shape expectations for the upcoming meeting. Comments from Chief Economist Lane drew attention after noting that it is too early to discuss the conclusion of PEPP (a viewpoint echoed by Villeroy and Kazaks) at the upcoming meeting, adding that such a conversation should take place in the Autumn. Furthermore, Lane downplayed the decision for Q4 purchases under PEPP as a “local adjustment”. Lane also stuck to his assessment that upside pressures in inflation are transitory whilst citing the absence of large increases in wages; a viewpoint that was later echoed by Stournaras. Elsewhere, VP de  Guindos suggested that the accompanying economic forecasts could be upgraded whilst noting that the Delta variant is not having as great an impact as the Bank had projected four months ago. De Guindos went on to note that “If things start to return to normal, as is currently the case, the extraordinary measures will have to be gradually withdrawn. – We are not there yet, but we are gradually and continually moving towards that point”. Hawkish members of the GC have been vocal ahead of the meeting with Knot stating that the outlook may allow slower ECB stimulus and PEPP to conclude in March, whilst Holzmann suggested the central bank is in a position to think about reducing pandemic aid.

  RATES: From a rates perspective, consensus looks for the Bank to stand pat on the deposit, main refi and marginal lending rates of -0.5%, 0.0% and 0.25% respectively. Current forward guidance notes that rates will “remain at their present or lower levels until it sees inflation reaching two per cent well ahead of the end of its projection horizon and durably for the rest of the projection horizon, and it judges that realised progress in underlying inflation is sufficiently advanced to be consistent with inflation stabilising at two per cent over the medium term.”. Market pricing is not indicative of a move in rates by the ECB any time soon.

  BALANCE SHEET: Although the size of the PEPP envelope is set to be left untouched at EUR 1.85tln, market participants are focused on the level of purchases set to be carried out in Q4, and what will happen to the Bank’s emergency bond-buying when the program draws to a close. On the former, the June meeting saw a rollover of the level of purchases in Q2 into Q3 (at circa EUR 80bln/month), which were conducted at a “significantly higher pace than during the first months of the year.”

  This time around, a poll by Bloomberg News suggests that purchases could be slowed to around EUR 50bln/month. Such a reduction would see the ECB use up most of its EUR 1.85tln envelope with just EUR 70bln not used. In terms of specific house views, UBS expects the Executive Board will opt to slow the pace of purchases to EUR 50-60bln, which would be “roughly on par with the pace in Q1, which [chief economist] Mr Lane remarked was also ‘pretty high’.” Barclays (who expect purchases to slow to EUR 60-70bln/month) suggests that the “significantly higher” line within the statement could be replaced by something along the lines of ““slightly higher than during (or close to) the first months of the year”. The ECB has been given cover to make such a decision given that financing conditions in the Eurozone are perceived to be easier than at the time of the June meeting. Note, Lane has already downplayed the upcoming decision as a “local adjustment.” Furthermore, Lagarde will likely caution that any slowing in the pace of purchases for PEPP will not be regarded as a “taper” as purchases are not on track to reach zero and policymakers will vow to maintain favourable financing conditions. With regards to “life after PEPP,” those looking for any clues on this are likely to be left disappointed, with Lane already noting that it is too early to discuss the conclusion of PEPP, and discussion on the matter is set to take place in the Autumn. When the PEPP concludes, consensus expects the APP to be bolstered to a monthly purchase amount of EUR 40bln/month; this time around the pace of purchases is set to be held at EUR 20bln/month.

  ECONOMIC PROJECTIONS: For the accompanying economic forecasts, UBS looks for an upgrade to the 2021 GDP projection from 4.6% to 5.0% amid the strong performance seen in H1. Next year’s projection is set to see a modest downgrade to 4.6% from 4.7% amid softer-than-anticipated spill overs from H2 2021, whilst 2023 should remain at 2.1%. On the inflation front, UBS expects 2021 to be upgraded to 2.1% from 1.9% with 2022 and 2023 set to be raised by 10bps each to 1.6% and 1.5% respectively with the latter projection still below-target for the ECB.

  • Current Inflation Projections (Jun’21): 2021 at 1.9% (prev. 1.5%), 2022 at 1.5% (prev. 1.2%), 2023 at 1.4% (prev. 1.4%)
  • Current GDP Projections (Jun’21): 2021 at 4.6% (prev. +4.0%), 2022 at 4.7% (prev. +4.1%); 2023 at 2.1% (prev. +2.1%)

  Finally, courtesy of ING, here is a scenario analysis of what to expect tomorrow:

  

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/08/2021 – 22:40

• Media Liable For Comments Posted On Their Facebook Pages: Australian High Court
  Media Liable For Comments Posted On Their Facebook Pages: Australian High Court

  Authored by Daniel Y. Teng via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  In a landmark decision, Australia’s apex judicial body, the High Court, has dismissed an appeal from major media outlets claiming they were not responsible for comments posted by readers or audience members on their social media pages.

  

  Experts believe the judgement will have wider ramifications across not just media outlets but businesses, government entities, and community organisations, who will have to moderate comments even more stringently—or remove the option altogether—to ensure defamatory comments are not publicised.

  The case in question revolved around Dylan Voller, a former inmate at the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre.

  Voller sued the publishers of news outlets The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, and Sky News Australia over comments posted by individuals on their Facebook pages in 2016 and 2017.

  

  While the news stories posted online were not defamatory, Voller’s lawyers argued that the comments featured in the posts were defamatory and that the media companies were legally liable.

  An initial case was heard in 2019 by the Supreme Court of New South Wales (NSW), who found it in Voller’s favour. In 2020, the NSW Court of Appeal again ruled in Voller’s favour agreeing that the media outlets were the “publishers.”

  The media companies appealed once more to the High Court of Australia—the final appellate body in the country—which found in favour of Voller with a five to two majority.

  The news company’s lawyers had argued that they were not instrumental to—or were participants in—the allegedly defamatory third-party comments.

  However, the court disagreed and found that in creating a Facebook page and posting content, the news outlets facilitated, encouraged, and therefore, assisted in the publication of comments, meaning they should be deemed the publishers.

  

  The High Court also found that it did not matter that the comments function in Facebook could not be disabled at the time.

  “The appellants’ attempt to portray themselves as passive and unwitting victims of Facebook’s functionality has an air of unreality,” Justices Stephen Gageler and Michelle Gordon said in the judgement (pdf) on Sept. 8.

  “Having taken action to secure the commercial benefit of the Facebook functionality, the appellants bear the legal consequences,” they added.

  Dissenting Justice Simon Steward argued a more stringent standard needed to be applied to who was deemed a “publisher,” saying it should be established whether they “procured, provoked or conducted” the comments.

  His concern was that it could make all Facebook page owners liable for third-party comments.

  A later court hearing at the Supreme Court of New South Wales will determine whether the comments were defamatory in nature. The three media outlets were ordered to pay the costs of the action.

  David Rolph, professor of law and expert in defamation at the University of Sydney, said the decision had wider implications across all social media outlets—not just Facebook—including Twitter, Instagram, and even websites with comments sections.

  

  “Today’s ruling may mean if you post something to a social media platform and encourage or invite third party comments, you could be liable for any comments that follow,” he wrote in The Conversation on Sept. 8.

  “So, it could affect individuals, online community groups, neighbourhood Facebook pages, the local P&C Facebook page, and so on,” he added.

  David Flint, emeritus professor of law and former chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Authority, said the public debate would suffer as a result, with media outlets potentially closing off comments to unknown readers.

  “I think the analogy would be having a noticeboard on the wall around your property and inviting people to make comments there as a community facility—under this ruling, you would be liable for any defamatory comments,” he told The Epoch Times in an email, noting as well that a similar case under U.S. law would have been unsuccessful due to the “public figure” rule.

  “This decision will only encourage more litigation, including ‘ambulance chasing.’ Solutions other than damages should be considered,” he added.

  “For example, if a media organisation is not aware of a potentially defamatory comment, once its attention is drawn to this, it should be sufficient if it takes this down and, if requested, hands over known contact details with the person who posted the comment.”

  

  Rolph noted that under new defamation laws on July 1 in NSW, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, and the Australian Capital Territory, a “concerns notice” must be sent before any legal action is taken. In Voller’s case, his lawyers sued immediately.

  A concerns notice is a formal letter informing an individual or organisation of defamatory content and giving them an opportunity to make amends.

  Rolph also noted that a “serious harm threshold” existed, which could protect individuals from lawsuits.

  “This clause aims to rule out trivial defamation cases because while it’s true anyone can cause serious harm to a person’s reputation on social media, there is also a lot of banter and to-ing and fro-ing which might be offensive but might not cause serious harm to a reputation,” he wrote.

  Meanwhile, Nine media, who own The Sydney Morning Herald, hoped national defamation law reform would take into account the High Court’s decision.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/08/2021 – 22:20

• Credit Suisse Closes Account Of Chinese Dissident Ai Weiwei As Western Banks Fear Angering Beijing
  Credit Suisse Closes Account Of Chinese Dissident Ai Weiwei As Western Banks Fear Angering Beijing

  Credit Suisse has endured an onslaught of embarrassing headlines already this year following the collapse of Greensill and the blowup of Archegos, incidents that cost the bank billions of francs and damaged its reputation.

  But while this latest controversy probably won’t impact the bank’s bottom line, it does offer a glimpse of the conflicts and difficult decisions certain banks must make if they decide to grow their business in China. In a blog post published this week, Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei revealed that Credit Suisse had decided to close his foundation’s bank account because of his “criminal record” in China. Despite the fact that the dissident has never been convicted of a crime.

  

  Ai is one of China’s most well-known artists, who received acclaim for designing Beijing’s bird nest stadium from the 2008 Olympics, but eventually fell out of favor and fled the country because of his dissident politics. Ai now lives in Portugal, where he apparently wrote an opinion piece for Artnet decrying Credit Suisse’s decision to close his organization’s account, which was almost certainly made after being pressured by Beijing.

  Though, oddly, news of the decision was reported by the SCMP, which is owned by Alibaba founder Jack Ma is known for a subtle pro-CCP bias.

  Credit Suisse declined to comment to SCMP for its story. “Credit Suisse initially informed me that they had a new policy to terminate all bank accounts which are related to people with criminal records,” Ai said. The bank asked that the funds be moved by September.

  Ai was never formally charged with a crime, but he was detained for 81 days in 2011, an experience that featured into his later artwork.

  Ai said he was first contacted by the bank’s managers in June and asked about an interview he had done with a Swiss newspaper several days before, in which he criticized Swiss people for voting in favor of tighter “anti-immigrant policies”. Ai said this interview was cited as a reason for the closure. He added that some funds still remain in the account, but that they must be moved soon and that the account was mostly frozen.

  But that was most likely a ruse. As global megabanks jockey for favor with the CCP, they’re being extremely careful not to do anything that might lead to them being shut out of the extremely lucrative private wealth business in China. CS and others have already conducted reviews of all their clients in Hong Kong, looking for ties to the pro-democracy movement in the city. Any clients with ties were immediately let go.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/08/2021 – 22:00

• South Dakota Governor Restricts Access To Abortion Drugs
  South Dakota Governor Restricts Access To Abortion Drugs

  Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem issued an executive order on Tuesday to restrict telemedicine abortion and chemical abortions in the state.

  

  The executive order (pdf) states that abortion drugs can only be prescribed and dispensed after an in-person consultation with a doctor licensed in South Dakota.

  Under South Dakota law, doctors are already required to meet in person with a pregnant woman and carry out an examination before scheduling a surgical or chemical abortion.

  Noem’s order was made in anticipation that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) later this year will allow abortion drugs to be dispensed through the mail or virtual pharmacies.

  Subsequently, the order blocks abortion-inducing drugs from being delivered through delivery services and telemedicine, and also prevents the drugs from being provided in schools or on state grounds.

  In restricting chemical abortions, Noem’s order directs the state’s Department of Health to require licenses for abortion clinics that only prescribe abortion drugs. It also requires the department to collect data on how often chemical abortions are being carried out as a percentage of all abortions.

  The department is also required to collect data on any related health complications that need a medical follow-up. The department is required to enhance reporting requirements on emergency room complications related to taking abortion-inducing drugs.

  According to Noem’s office, the governor “plans to work with the South Dakota legislature to pass legislation that makes these and other protocols permanent in the 2022 legislative session.”

  ‘A Strong Pro-Life State’

  President Joe Biden issued a statement on Thursday in response to a ruling by the Supreme Court in favor of a Texas law (pdf) that bans abortions if the fetus has a heartbeat, with the exception of a medical emergency.

  Biden, a Democrat, said that he was seeking to launch a “whole-of-government effort” to respond, especially to “see what steps the Federal Government can take to ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions.”

  Noem, a Republican, accused the Biden administration of moving to leverage telemedicine abortions to undermine state laws.

  “The Biden Administration is continuing to overstep its authority and suppress legislatures that are standing up for the unborn to pass strong pro-life laws. They are working right now to make it easier to end the life of an unborn child via telemedicine abortion. That is not going to happen in South Dakota,” Noem said in a statement.

  “I will continue working with the legislature and my Unborn Child Advocate to ensure that South Dakota remains a strong pro-life state.”

  Janna Farley, the communications director of the American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota, told The Associated Press, “Having an abortion is a private medical decision, one that is protected under the U.S. Constitution, and it’s disappointing that Governor Noem continues to insert herself into the patient-doctor relationship,” adding, “It’s clear that the attacks on our abortion rights are not letting up in South Dakota.”

  Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony List, praised Noem for what she calls a “bold action that will save lives from dangerous chemical abortions, which have a fourfold higher rate of complications compared to surgical abortion.”

  “The Biden administration would turn every post office and pharmacy into an abortion center if they had their way, leaving women alone and at risk of severe heavy bleeding, physical, emotional, and psychological stress, and more. States must take action. Governor Noem is setting a courageous model today that we hope more state leaders across the nation will soon follow,” Dannenfelser added.

  Catherine Glenn Foster, president and CEO of Americans United for Life, also praised the governor.

  “I applaud Governor Noem’s action today to stop dangerous chemical abortion drugs from being mailed to South Dakota women,” she said in a statement. “This is no longer about ‘a woman and her doctor,’ but a woman—or girl—and a stranger on the internet. States can no longer depend on the FDA to regulate abortion drugs in any meaningful way, and I am pleased to see Gov. Noem step up for her state. Abortion is never safe, but it’s far more dangerous when women are abandoned by physicians and left to manage their complications alone.”

  South Dakota law currently also requires that a pregnant woman must wait 72 hours before the abortion procedure. Pregnant women seeking to undergo an abortion after the 12th week of pregnancy are required to have the procedure performed in a hospital. Abortions are outlawed after the 22nd week of pregnancy, with the exception of medical emergencies.

  The Associated Press contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/08/2021 – 21:40

• Australia Is Now Confiscating Booze Delivered To People Forced Into Lockdown
  Australia Is Now Confiscating Booze Delivered To People Forced Into Lockdown

  In but the latest sign that Covid locked-down Australia has abandoned all pretenses of a democratic society and has effectively become a police state, Aussies are now having their booze confiscated in the name of ‘health monitoring’.

  Apartment blocks subject to lockdown measures in New South Wales, which is home to Sydney and other large population centers, are reportedly being monitored by the government’s NSW Health agency. “Residents in apartment blocks locked-down by NSW Health are having their alcohol deliveries policed as part of a policy to limit the number of drinks being consumed each day,” according to https://news.com.au.

  

  Residents of one particular building have accused authorities of doing random searches of their private mail and care packages sent by family members and friends. “They are searching all bags and things coming into the building… They confiscated a series of gifts,” one resident of Mission Australia’s Common Ground building in Camperdown said. “So things like bottles of spirits, we weren’t allowed to have those and we still (aren’t).”

  The complaints came after NSW Health took control of select apartment buildings ostensibly in order to monitor and limit the spread of the coronavirus, which means in some cases where infections have been found, all residents were forced into isolation. These buildings are deemed under strict lockdown and have a police presence around them, apparently even intercepting mail.

  A statement in national media confirmed that health authorities are enforcing the following restrictions:

  Residents are allowed to receive a ration of one of the following: six beers or pre-mixed drinks, one bottle of wine, or one 375ml bottle of spirits.

  Excess alcohol is being confiscated until lockdown rules are lifted.

  Throughout most of the pandemic pubs in large cities like Sydney have remained close, along with other public venues like gyms, hairdressers, and restaurants.

  

  This fueled a rise in online alcohol sales and home deliveries. But apparently authorities are sweeping in to take this ‘option’ away too.

  Australian health authorities are promising that pubs will once again soon open, but only after they implement a state vaccine passport app which will enable clients to be screened at the door over whether they’ve been double-jabbed yet. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/08/2021 – 21:20

• White House Signals New COVID-19 Measures Coming For People Who Are Unvaccinated
  White House Signals New COVID-19 Measures Coming For People Who Are Unvaccinated

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  Ahead of President Joe Biden’s announcement Thursday about new COVID-19 measures, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that there may be new measures that will be imposed on unvaccinated people.

  “There are six steps the president’s announcing, there will be new components,” Psaki told reporters on Wednesday.

  “Some of that will be related to access to testing, some will be related to mandates, some will be related to how we ensure kids will be protected in schools.”

  When asked about how the new steps would impact Americans’ lives, Psaki said that “it depends on if you’re vaccinated or not.”

  

  Psaki provided few details on what mandates could be imposed on unvaccinated Americans.

  On Tuesday, she told reporters on Air Force One that the federal government lacks the authority to mandate vaccines for everyone.

  “There will be new components that sure, will of course impact people across the country, but we’re also all working together to get the virus under control, to return to our normal lives,” Psaki also said, without elaborating, on Wednesday.

  Biden, who was scheduled to meet with his COVID-19 advisers on Wednesday, delivered a speech about six months ago saying the United States has “made real progress” against the virus.

  Since that date, about 142 million Americans have received COVID-19 vaccines and about 950,000 people are getting vaccinated each day, according to data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

  Data released daily by the CDC’s COVID-19 tracker suggests that the United States’ new cases and deaths may have hit a plateau or is on the decline. The seven day-average for cases as of Tuesday was 140,000 and deaths were 1,022, respectively, while as of Sept. 1, the seven-day average for cases was 156,000 and deaths were 1,141, respectively.

  The president’s speech on Thursday could make reference to a recent announcement from the heads of several federal health agencies that third doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, or booster shots, would be provided around Sept. 20. However, the Food and Drug Administration has yet to approve the booster doses.

  Already, Biden required all federal employees and contractors to get the COVID-19 vaccine or adhere to strict testing and social distancing protocols. He also ordered nursing homes to require their staff to get the vaccine to continue getting Medicare and Medicaid funding.

  One of Biden’s top confidants, White House chief of staff Ron Klain, during a CNN interview over the weekend, was reluctant to provide a specific date when the boosters would be made available to the public.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/08/2021 – 21:00

• Quebec Orders All Health-Care Workers To Get Vaccinated Or Be Suspended Without Pay
  Quebec Orders All Health-Care Workers To Get Vaccinated Or Be Suspended Without Pay

  The province of Quebec has become the latest local government (and the first in Canada) to decree that all nurses working in the province will need to get vaccinated by Oct. 15, or they will be suspended without pay, according to the province’s health minister, Christian Dubé, who made the announcement on Tuesday.

  The decision isn’t exactly a surprise. Dubé and Quebec Premier François Legault have said in recent weeks that they intended to make vaccination mandatory for health-care workers, but they didn’t specify a deadline or consequences for workers who didn’t follow the mandate until Tuesday, when Dubé made the announcement during a provincial update.

  

  For weeks, such events have been led by Dubé, accompanied by Public Health Director Dr. Horacio Arruda. But given the gravity of the announcement, Legault returned to lead the news conference himself for the first time in weeks.

  Legault noted the number of hospitalizations in the province had climbed to 171 from 55 a month ago. And when asked which workers will be affected by the mandate, Dubé responded: “Everybody … 100 per cent of employees.”

  Vaccine passports will also be required for visitors to hospitals, he added.

  It’s not just nurses who will be affected: doctors, midwives, professionals in private clinics and volunteers will all need to be vaccinated before entering a hospital.

  With COVID cases rising once again in the province, Legault said Tuesday that Quebec would need to reorganize its hospital system: “For a while, we’re going to have to accept a certain amount of risk. We don’t want another lockdown, so we’re going to have to accept that there will be hospitalizations for COVID-19 for a while.” “We are going to have to reorganize the health-care system.”

  One strategy is they are trying to convince people who have left the profession to return.

  Others criticized the policy, saying they’re not sure it’s the right call.

  Jeff Begley, head of the federation of health and social services union, said he wasn’t surprised by the government’s announcement, but he wasn’t sure they had made the best decision.

  “We’re not sure that it’s the best means going forward,” he said.

  Begley explained that most hospitals have eliminated their “hot” sections for COVID patients (since most people are vaccinated now). Begley believes this may have been a mistake, and that COVID patients must be quarantined in hospitals to avoid infecting others.

  As of Tuesday, 87% of Quebecers have had at least one dose of the vaccine. Legault pleaded with those watching to try and convince at least one person who hasn’t been vaccinated to get the jab.

  Still, if the province is trying to improve its ability to deal with the pandemic, suspending nurses and doctors from their jobs without pay doesn’t seem like the best way to go.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/08/2021 – 20:40

• Protein And Transpacific Power: China's Emergent Struggle For Food Security
  Protein And Transpacific Power: China’s Emergent Struggle For Food Security

  Authored by Fortis Analysis via Human Terrain,

  [Author’s Note: this is the first of two articles focusing on the factors impacting China’s food security and associated geopolitical maneuvers.]

  “The thoughts of the Chairman [Mao] are always correct. If we encounter any problems, any difficulty, it is because we have not followed the instructions of the Chairman closely enough, because we have ignored or circumscribed the Chairman’s advice.”
  Lin Biao, January 1962

  “When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.”
  Mao Zedong, 1959

  ”It was the greatest contribution towards the whole of human race, made by China, is to prevent its 1.3 billion people from hunger.”
  Xi Jinping, 2009

  When Hurricane Ida made landfall on Sunday, 29 August at southern Louisiana as a violent and dangerous Category Four storm, there were reasonable fears of total devastation of the petrochemical infrastructure in the region. Given its location astride the Mississippi River delta river transportation hub (Image 1), and the region’s vast hydrocarbon supply chain activities (Image 2), the seaboard of Louisiana has become an indispensible energy resource for the United States.

  

   

  

  Most of the attention post-Ida has thus focused on quantifying damage to the region’s energy industry, especially as Ida made landfall directly on top of Port Fourchon, the gateway hub for servicing the offshore drilling industry in the Gulf of Mexico. With the port now in absolute disarray, the offshore rigs are at a production standstill for up to several weeks, leaving refiners with reduced inventory to process into fuels and chemicals. Understandably, this makes policy-makers, refiners, and consumers extremely nervous about a spike in prices for a whole range of petrochemical products ranging from gasoline to polypropylene to resins.

  Overlooked in much of the mainstream analysis of Ida’s impact, however, is the critical role southern Louisiana plays in the United States’ agriculture industry. The various terminals (Image 3) in the lower Mississippi River (the 250-mile stretch of river from Baton Rouge to the Gulf of Mexico) are responsible for some 59% of US corn exports and 60% of US soybean exports, as of 2020.

  

  Further, volumes of corn exports via the region’s terminals skyrocketed in the most recent marketing year (1 Sep 2020 – 31 Aug 2021), with a 42% year over year increase for the first six months of 2021 versus 2020. We can adjust for the demand drag of those early months of the COVID-19 pandemic by comparing previous years:

  • Q1/Q2 2021 vs. 2019: 102% increase

  • Q1/Q2 2021 vs. 2018: 48% increase

  • Q1/Q2 2021 vs. 2017: 40% increase

    Data via Port of South Louisiana

  The story is a bit different for soybeans, however. Exports fell by 4% from Q1/Q2 2020, with a similar decrease versus previous years.

  • Q1/Q2 2021 vs. 2019: 9% decrease

  • Q1/Q2 2021 vs. 2018: 5% decrease

  • Q1/Q2 2021 vs. 2017: 7% decrease

    Data via Port of South Louisiana

  Some of the difference can be accounted for by the fact that the US exports a larger percentage of its soybeans via ocean container from the heartland than corn. This is due to corn requiring 40-foot containers, while soybeans can use 20- or 40-foot units, a feature of soybeans being able to pack more densely than corn, making more efficient use of the cargo weight limits per container (i.e. more bushels in less space). Further, many of the US’ non-China soybean customers prefer containers over bulk due to being able to purchase in smaller quantities, stabilizing their import supply chains.

  However, the pandemic-driven disruption to supply chains has had a major knock-on effect for containerized grain and oilseed exporters: lack of containers in the interior, and chassis to move the containers on the road. The extreme volume increase of imports – and resulting congestion – in such a relatively short time has caused ocean carriers to begin restricting container flow to major rail-served interior markets. This has particularly choked container availability in Chicago, from where a significant portion of the US’ containerized agri exports originate.

  Taken together, the hopes of farmers, exporters, and buyers were pinned on the ports and terminals of South Louisiana being able to pick up the slack for export capacity as the US enters harvest. Unfortunately, this will not be the case until at least October or even November. Both of Cargill’s terminals in the region impacted by Ida are offline, with the 6-million bushel capacity facility in Reserve suffering extreme damage that could take months to repair. CHS Inc.’s primary export terminal at Myrtle Grove also suffered damage to the power lines that serve the facility, along with water intrusion to the grain handling equipment. Similarly, Archer Daniels Midland, Zen-Noh, LDC, and Bunge have reported power interruptions and varying degrees of damage at their regional facilities. Lastly, navigation on the lower Mississippi River continues to be slowed by flotsam and power outages.

  Now, what does this have to do with China and the immediate future of the Transpacific power struggle?

  In short – China is desperately short of crucial grains and oilseeds needed for domestic human and animal consumption. Understand, food security is not an unknown issue in China. So too is it widely known that CCP media organs and official ministries routinely lie about a range of food-related issues, from grain and oilseed production to hog population and slaughter figures. The CCP even went so far as to engineer the collapse and takeover of Swiss agriculture and chemical conglomerate Syngenta several years ago to short-path China’s rise to being a tier one agriculture research powerhouse alongside the United States, Japan, and the European Union.

  The immediate causes of China’s food security woes are twofold:

  1. An ongoing, multi-year outbreak of African Swine Fever

  2. Two consecutive years of reduced grain and oilseed production due to widespread catastrophic flooding

  Despite China’s rosy claims about its 2020 production, its year-long buying binge for available global inventory of grains and oilseeds indicates significant flooding-related production woes in several major agricultural reasons in the Yangtze River and Amur River basins. 2021 is shaping up to be potentially as bad. Notably, the critical crop-producing province of Heilongjiang (16% of China’s total corn production, and 40% for soybeans) is showing significant excess moisture stress during the critical corn development stages between pre-tassel and silking, with excess moisture also being a major factor in yield drag for soybeans during seed-fill. The general time period for both crops to reach these reproductive stages are July through end of August.

  Closely related to the trade indicators for grain production, import, and consumption is the issue of animal feed. Contra its massive buying spree throughout 2020 and early 2021, China’s imports have now slowed a touch, ostensibly due to hog growers feeding cheaper available wheat in lieu of pricier soybeans, corn, and their various co-products. But as indicated by the article from The Economist linked above, it’s more likely a signal that pork production is falling dramatically due to the re-emergence of African Swine Fever. Note that at its peak in 2018-2019, ASF was estimated to have forced China to cull at least 50% of its hog population and store the infected carcasses in freezers all over the country.

  Bringing it full circle to the devastation to US agri export capacity wrought by Hurricane Ida, there is now an imbalance of supply and demand such as we have not seen in a long time. Whereas before, China was able to make up shortfalls in domestic production by sourcing from the US, Brazil, Ukraine, Europe and others, that optionality is gone. The US’ primary grain and oilseed export hub of southern Louisiana lies in disrepair, with US yields expected to be basically at trendline, with unknown impact to grain and oilseed quality due to drought stress in some regions. Early indicators of crop quality are a bit worrisome, with the most recent USDA Crop Progress Report released on 30 Aug 2021 showing corn conditions at 60% Good/Excellent (62% last year) and soybeans at 55% Good/Excellent (66% last year). What is available to China will likely be of reduced quality and more expensive to transport from alternate US origins.

  The news is not much better in China’s traditional breadbasket. Brazil’s safrinha (second corn crop) has historically been the export-maker for the country, with China a major buyer each year. However, due to disastrous planting conditions and weather challenges, production is expected be 20% lower versus last year, dragging corn exports down by 33% year-over-year. Though Brazil’s soybean production is about 9% higher than 2020, availability of bulk cargo vessels is constrained, with global dry bulk freight rates roughly 40% higher than the previous five-year peak (pre-2021) set in Q3 of 2019.

  It appears Ukraine and Russia will have to pick up the slack from the grains side, as both countries are projecting 29% and 19% production increases over 2020, respectively. In terms of overall cost on an “FOB” basis (Free On Board, a term of sale that reflects cost to purchase the product and transport it from an origin port), Argentina is still the most competitive source of corn for China, but only produces about half the volume as Brazil. Oilseed (especially soybeans) availability looks stable worldwide with no significant production issues noted so far, but logistics constraints impact the trade as much as it does for corn, as well as enduring worries about weather challenges to crop quality (if not quantity).

  An understanding on major grain trade factors is important to understanding the rest of the series of articles to come on this, as a significant portion of Chinese demand and consumption for corn and soybeans is tied to animal feed. A fantastic global overview of grain and oilseed trade flows prepared by Rabobank showcases just how much of a demand bull China is for these commodities (Image 4 – click here for a zoomable version).

  

  The simple reason is that China consumes enormous quantities of animal protein products. Though it is middle of the pack in annual per-capita consumption at 49.3 kg (compared to the US at 100.7 kg), the overall appetites of 1.41 billion people generates demand for more than 90 million tons of pork, poultry, and beef products. The US, with its population being roughly a quarter of China’s, uses around 44 million tons of the same proteins per year. Further, China is far and away the global leader in aquaculture production (“farmed” marine protein, vice “capture” fisheries in the world’s oceans) at 68.4 million tons produced annually, while the US checks in at 490,000 tons. Similarly, China’s capture fishing activities utilizing its massive commercial fishing fleet is reported to generate another 14.4 million tons of protein, while US fishing is comparatively much smaller at 5.35 million tons. And yet with all of that effort, China cannot catch a break as Brazil has been forced to temporarily suspend all beef exports to China over an outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or “mad cow disease”), cutting off China’s source of around 71,000 tons per month of beef.

  Adding all of this up, we see that China has an astoundingly large quantity of protein to produce and import for its population. Taken together with the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s fears of social upheaval due to food insecurity (and the stain upon the party from the Great Leap Forward), the impetus for much of China’s belligerence in global fishing and crackdowns on commodities trading become clear. Broadly speaking, the confluence of supply side and logistics disruptions has formed into a perfect storm, where China cannot as readily meet its current food demand through production, trade, acquiring foreign food manufacturers, and even illegal activities such as illicit fishing.

  Which begs the question – what can we extrapolate from this information to better-predict China’s behaviors in the coming months, the US’ responses, and the impact to global stability?

  The next newsletter will dive into that question.

  Thank you for reading.

  Dum spiro spero,

  -RK

  Follow the author on Twitter

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/08/2021 – 20:20

• Watch: Joe Rogan Says He May Sue CNN For "Making Sh*t Up" About Him "Taking Horse Dewormer"
  Watch: Joe Rogan Says He May Sue CNN For “Making Sh*t Up” About Him “Taking Horse Dewormer”

  Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

  Podcast king Joe Rogan threatened to sue CNN on a broadcast this week, saying that the network is constantly spreading lies about him taking Ivermectin, after CNN claimed that the medicine is horse de-wormer, when it is not.

  

  “Do I have to sue CNN? They’re making sh*t up,” Rogan said during the episode of The Joe Rogan Experience.

  “They keep saying I’m taking horse dewormer. I literally got it from a doctor. But CNN keeps saying I’m taking horse dewormer. They must know that that’s a lie,” Rogan added.

  Rogan was prescribed ivermectin to treat COVID symptoms, along with monoclonal antibodies, Z-pak, prednisone, and an IV vitamin drip. Rogan says he got better in three days.

  While it hasn’t been officially approved to treat COVID, the medicine is on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines, and is FDA-approved as an antiparasitic agent.

  “What they didn’t highlight is that I got better,” said Rogan.

  “They’re trying to make it sound like I’m doing such wacky sh*t that’s completely ineffective. CNN was saying that I’m a distributor of misinformation.”

  “It’s an American company,” Rogan said of the manufacturer Merck.

  “They won the Nobel prize in 2015 for use in human beings,” he continued, adding “Multiple doctors told me to take it.”

  Rogan’s guest Tom Segura noted that he was inundated with messages from leftists wishing he had gotten sicker from the virus.

  Rogan responded, noting that the fact he got better so quickly was their “worse case scenario”, adding “They’re weak bitches.”

  Watch:

  *  *  *

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  In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here.Support our sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/08/2021 – 20:12

• KFC Fried Over Lack Of Chicken, Can't Advertise Tenders On TV
  KFC Fried Over Lack Of Chicken, Can’t Advertise Tenders On TV

  The entire restaurant industry continues to face massive supply chain issues. Taco Bell, Starbucks, KFC, and McDonald’s have been some of the most recent fast-food chains to warn customers about limited menu items or shortages.

  KFC announced last month some menu items weren’t available for UK customers. Now the fried chicken chain has told Bloomberg that it cannot promote its breaded chicken tenders on US television because there’s a persisting chicken shortage. 

  “On chicken tenders, we have enough to supply demand, but we would love to have more to be able to aggressively promote it on TV,” KFC US President Kevin Hochman told Bloomberg’s Leslie Patton.

  “In terms of advertising and promotion, we’re going to focus on things we have abundant quantities of,” he said, noting that bone-in chicken is more plentiful now,” Hochman. 

  

  The poultry industry has been in tight supply all year due to labor shortages of workers at slaughterhouses, making it difficult for KFC and other fast-food chains to stock enough chicken. 

  While supply issues persist, the growing demand for chicken may force KFC to lose market share as customers seek chicken nuggets and sandwiches elsewhere. 

  During COVID, the most popular meat in the US was broiler chicken, at roughly 96 pounds per capita in 2020. Demand for on-the-go chicken snacks at KFC has been on the rise as well. The first news of a chicken shortage to impact the fast-food chain was in April. 

  However, there is some good news: Hochman notes the poultry supply chain for Yum! Brands Inc.-owned KFC is beginning to normalize. 

  Untangling complex supply chains appears to be a challenging task that may persist well into 2022. At one point, the KFC shortage in the UK got so severe that people started calling police about unavailable menu items. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/08/2021 – 20:00

• My University Sacrificed Ideas for Ideology. So Today I Quit.
  My University Sacrificed Ideas for Ideology. So Today I Quit.

  Op-Ed authored by Peter Boghossian via Common Sense with Bari Weiss,

  Peter Boghossian has taught philosophy at Portland State University for the past decade. In the letter below, sent this morning to the university’s provost, he explains why he is resigning.

  

  Dear Provost Susan Jeffords,

  ​​I’m writing to you today to resign as assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University.

  Over the last decade, it has been my privilege to teach at the university. My specialties are critical thinking, ethics and the Socratic method, and I teach classes like Science and Pseudoscience and The Philosophy of Education. But in addition to exploring classic philosophers and traditional texts, I’ve invited a wide range of guest lecturers to address my classes, from Flat-Earthers to Christian apologists to global climate skeptics to Occupy Wall Street advocates. I’m proud of my work.

  I invited those speakers not because I agreed with their worldviews, but primarily because I didn’t. From those messy and difficult conversations, I’ve seen the best of what our students can achieve: questioning beliefs while respecting believers; staying even-tempered in challenging circumstances; and even changing their minds. 

  I never once believed —  nor do I now —  that the purpose of instruction was to lead my students to a particular conclusion. Rather, I sought to create the conditions for rigorous thought; to help them gain the tools to hunt and furrow for their own conclusions. This is why I became a teacher and why I love teaching.

  But brick by brick, the university has made this kind of intellectual exploration impossible. It has transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender, and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division.

  Students at Portland State are not being taught to think. Rather, they are being trained to mimic the moral certainty of ideologues. Faculty and administrators have abdicated the university’s truth-seeking mission and instead drive intolerance of divergent beliefs and opinions. This has created a culture of offense where students are now afraid to speak openly and honestly. 

  I noticed signs of the illiberalism that has now fully swallowed the academy quite early during my time at Portland State. I witnessed students refusing to engage with different points of view.  Questions from faculty at diversity trainings that challenged approved narratives were instantly dismissed. Those who asked for evidence to justify new institutional policies were accused of microaggressions. And professors were accused of bigotry for assigning canonical texts written by philosophers who happened to have been European and male.  

  At first, I didn’t realize how systemic this was and I believed I could question this new culture. So I began asking questions. What is the evidence that trigger warnings and safe spaces contribute to student learning? Why should racial consciousness be the lens through which we view our role as educators? How did we decide that “cultural appropriation” is immoral?

  Unlike my colleagues, I asked these questions out loud and in public. 

  I decided to study the new values that were engulfing Portland State and so many other educational institutions — values that sound wonderful, like diversity, equity, and inclusion, but might actually be just the opposite. The more I read the primary source material produced by critical theorists, the more I suspected that their conclusions reflected the postulates of an ideology, not insights based on evidence.

  I began networking with student groups who had similar concerns and brought in speakers to explore these subjects from a critical perspective. And it became increasingly clear to me that the incidents of illiberalism I had witnessed over the years were not just isolated events, but part of an institution-wide problem.

  The more I spoke out about these issues, the more retaliation I faced. 

  Early in the 2016-17 academic year, a former student complained about me and the university initiated a Title IX investigation.  (Title IX investigations are a part of federal law designed to protect “people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance.”) My accuser, a white male, made a slew of baseless accusations against me, which university confidentiality rules unfortunately prohibit me from discussing further. What I can share is that students of mine who were interviewed during the process told me the Title IX investigator asked them if they knew anything about me beating my wife and children. This horrifying accusation soon became a widespread rumor. 

  With Title IX investigations there is no due process, so I didn’t have access to the particular accusations, the ability to confront my accuser, and I had no opportunity to defend myself. Finally, the results of the investigation were revealed in December 2017. Here are the last two sentences of the report: “Global Diversity & Inclusion finds there is insufficient evidence that Boghossian violated PSU’s Prohibited Discrimination & Harassment policy. GDI recommends Boghossian receive coaching.”

  Not only was there no apology for the false accusations, but the investigator also told me that in the future I was not allowed to render my opinion about “protected classes” or teach in such a way that my opinion about protected classes could be known — a bizarre conclusion to absurd charges. Universities can enforce ideological conformity just through the threat of these investigations.

  I eventually became convinced that corrupted bodies of scholarship were responsible for justifying radical departures from the traditional role of liberal arts schools and basic civility on campus. There was an urgent need to demonstrate that morally fashionable papers — no matter how absurd — could be published. I believed then that if I exposed the theoretical flaws of this body of literature, I could help the university community avoid building edifices on such shaky ground.

  So, in 2017, I co-published an intentionally garbled peer-reviewed paper that took aim at the new orthodoxy. Its title: “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct.” This example of pseudo-scholarship, which was published in Cogent Social Sciences, argued that penises were products of the human mind and responsible for climate change. Immediately thereafter, I revealed the article as a hoax designed to shed light on the flaws of the peer-review and academic publishing systems.

  Shortly thereafter, swastikas in the bathroom with my name under them began appearing in two bathrooms near the philosophy department. They also occasionally showed up on my office door, in one instance accompanied by bags of feces. Our university remained silent. When it acted, it was against me, not the perpetrators.

  I continued to believe, perhaps naively, that if I exposed the flawed thinking on which Portland State’s new values were based, I could shake the university from its madness. In 2018 I co-published a series of absurd or morally repugnant peer-reviewed articles in journals that focused on issues of race and gender. In one of them we argued that there was an epidemic of dog rape at dog parks and proposed that we leash men the way we leash dogs. Our purpose was to show that certain kinds of “scholarship” are based not on finding truth but on advancing social grievances. This worldview is not scientific, and it is not rigorous. 

  Administrators and faculty were so angered by the papers that they published an anonymous piece in the student paper and Portland State filed formal charges against me. Their accusation? “Research misconduct” based on the absurd premise that the journal editors who accepted our intentionally deranged articles were “human subjects.” I was found guilty of not receiving approval to experiment on human subjects. 

  Meanwhile, ideological intolerance continued to grow at Portland State. In March 2018, a tenured professor disrupted a public discussion I was holding with author Christina Hoff Sommers and evolutionary biologists Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying. In June 2018, someone triggered the fire alarm during my conversation with popular cultural critic Carl Benjamin. In October 2018, an activist pulled out the speaker wires to interrupt a panel with former Google engineer James Damore. The university did nothing to stop or address this behavior. No one was punished or disciplined. 

  For me, the years that followed were marked by continued harassment. I’d find flyers around campus of me with a Pinocchio nose. I was spit on and threatened by passersby while walking to class. I was informed by students that my colleagues were telling them to avoid my classes. And, of course, I was subjected to more investigation.

  I wish I could say that what I am describing hasn’t taken a personal toll. But it has taken exactly the toll it was intended to: an increasingly intolerable working life and without the protection of tenure.

  This isn’t about me. This is about the kind of institutions we want and the values we choose. Every idea that has advanced human freedom has always, and without fail, been initially condemned. As individuals, we often seem incapable of remembering this lesson, but that is exactly what our institutions are for: to remind us that the freedom to question is our fundamental right. Educational institutions should remind us that that right is also our duty.  

  Portland State University has failed in fulfilling this duty. In doing so it has failed not only its students but the public that supports it. While I am grateful for the opportunity to have taught at Portland State for over a decade, it has become clear to me that this institution is no place for people who intend to think freely and explore ideas. 

  This is not the outcome I wanted. But I feel morally obligated to make this choice. For ten years, I have taught my students the importance of living by your principles. One of mine is to defend our system of liberal education from those who seek to destroy it. Who would I be if I didn’t?

  Sincerely,

  Peter Boghossian

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/08/2021 – 19:40

• "Public Health" Propaganda
  “Public Health” Propaganda

  Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

  Let me tell you about an under-the-table immunity deal:

  Dr. Fauci lied to Congress about US funding of gain of function research at Wuhan to protect US institutions. And to show their appreciation, the institutions will protect Dr. Fauci by declining to prosecute his lies.

  

  The Intercept Reporting.

  Revelations from The Intercept’s FOIA requests, which the US government took a year to release to the public (and only after litigation was pursued), show federal funds were used “to fund bat coronavirus research at the Chinese laboratory.” The Intercept continues:

  According to Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, the documents contain critical information about the research done in Wuhan, including about the creation of novel viruses. “The viruses they constructed were tested for their ability to infect mice that were engineered to display human type receptors on their cell,” Ebright wrote to The Intercept after reviewing the documents.

  The documents show the goal of the project, led by EcoHealth Alliance, was to “understand what factors increase the risk of the next CoV [coronavirus] emerging in people.” This included modifications to the coronaviruses collected by EcoHealth Alliance. As stated in the project summary:

  

  Enter Dr. Fauci

  If EcoHealth Alliance sounds familiar, it is because its president, Peter Daszak, led the effort to mislead the public about the origins of COVID-19 and the likelihood it leaked from the lab. It was Daszak who organized and signed an influential “scientific” statement in The Lancet disregarding the lab leak theory – while concealing his role in the research “and creating the impression of scientific unanimity.”

  It was also Daszak who worked in conjunction with the US Government – in particular, Dr. Fauci – to push the false narrative that COVID couldn’t have been leaked from a lab. In April 2020, Dr. Fauci was congratulated by Daszak for helping “dispel the myths being spun around the virus’ origins.”

  

  Remarkably, this came after Dr. Fauci was warned that COVID-19 had “unusual features” that “look engineered.” It also came after Dr. Fauci had been informed gain of function research had been approved by NIH.

  

  After the article from The Intercept published, Dr. Fauci has been (again) under fire for lying to Senator Rand Paul about the US government’s funding of gain of function research at Wuhan.

  Of course, Dr. Fauci wasn’t the only public official lying to the public. Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the NIH, was asked point-blank by radio host Hugh Hewitt about this funding. Here is what Dr. Collins said:

  Hugh Hewitt: But can you rule out, Dr. Collins, the United States having funded any sort of gain of function research in Wuhan?

  Dr. Francis Collins: We absolutely did not fund gain of function research in Wuhan.

  Understanding what this is.

  Properly understood, the two most powerful public health officials in the United States – Dr. Collins and Dr. Fauci – are running an intelligence operation against the American people. Assisting in the operation is the Biden Department of Justice, who apparently refuses to prosecute Dr. Fauci for his false statements to Senator Paul. Also providing help are those within the government who have been obstructing public and media FOIA requests into the funding of gain of function research.

  We observe, however, that their deceit, while effective, are also self-defeating, undermining their position that COVID-19 was of natural origins. You see, to an astute observer, the lies by Dr. Collins and Dr. Fauci are circumstantial evidence of guilt.

  The depth of that guilt is yet to be fully understood.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/08/2021 – 19:00

• Watch: White Woman In Gorilla Mask Assaults Larry Elder With Eggs
  Watch: White Woman In Gorilla Mask Assaults Larry Elder With Eggs

  Larry Elder was assaulted on Wednesday in Los Angeles by a bicyle-riding woman wearing a gorilla mask.

  The woman threw at least one egg towards the black gubernatorial challenger to Gavin Newsom, while verbally assaulting Elder and his staff.

  

  The woman’s cohorts then became physically aggressive – shoving Elder’s staff, slapping them, and hitting them with more eggs – before one begins ranting “Democrats control everything!”

  Watch:

  This Larry Elder assault video is deeply concerning.

  His attacker wears a monkey mask while the others call his staff “boy”. Then what looks like a reporter laughs. Then a man screams “DEMOCRATS RUN EVERYTHING!”

  Vengeful totalitarianism. pic.twitter.com/bWEUYZndUt

  — Raheem J. Kassam (@RaheemKassam) September 8, 2021

  The party of the KKK shows its true colors once again.

  The Left pic.twitter.com/dZRJVnpdmq

  — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) September 8, 2021

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

  If white Republicans had done to a black Democrat running for office what white Democrats did to Larry Elder, you can bet major parts of the country would be afflicted by burning and looting by mostly peaceful protesters right now.

  — Rising serpent 🇺🇸 (@rising_serpent) September 8, 2021

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

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/08/2021 – 18:40

• Blinken Says US Getting 'Closer' To Giving Up On Iran Nuclear Deal
  Blinken Says US Getting ‘Closer’ To Giving Up On Iran Nuclear Deal

  US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned Iran that Washington is getting ‘closer’ to giving up on hopes of returning to the restoration of the JCPOA nuclear deal. 

  This after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued two confidential reports Tuesday which charged Iranian officials with blocking access to sites, all the while allegedly expanding its nuclear activity. The IAEA said its inspection efforts are being “seriously undermined”.

  

  The Vienna talks have been on hold since June 20th, after they had been temporarily suspended reportedly by the Iranian side pending the entry into office of the newly elected president, Ebrahim Raisi.

  Blinken spoke to reporters while in Germany meeting with his German counterpart Heiko Mass: “I’m not going to put a date on it but we are getting closer to the point at which a strict return to compliance with the JCPOA does not reproduce the benefits that that agreement achieved,” after he was specifically asked about stalled negotiations and the point of no return. 

  Foreign Minister Heiko Maas condemned Iran’s delay as “far too long” and said he had urged Iran’s foreign ministry to demand that Iran “return more swiftly to the negotiating table,” according to AFP.

  Sensing the frustration of the West, on Monday Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh attempted to lay all doubts to rest: “We will definitely continue the negotiations,” Khatibzadeh said according to state media. 

  However, the Iranians have so far refused to set a date for the resumption of the next round of talks in Vienna. This is leading to suspicions that the new administration in Tehran is intentionally stalling as long as possible while covertly expanding its nuclear capabilities, as The Wall Street Journal explains:

  European and U.S. officials have said the period for reviving the nuclear deal isn’t open-ended. They are concerned that with Iran expanding its nuclear activities and knowledge, it may soon be impossible to recreate a centerpiece of the 2015 deal, keeping Iran at least one year from being able to accumulate enough weapons-grade enriched uranium for one weapon.

  Meanwhile the IAEA is still accusing the Islamic Republic of “stonewalling”. 

  Iran warns West of IAEA move as U.S says time running out to save nuclear deal https://t.co/00Bry2Y53p pic.twitter.com/cu6djD93gb

  — Reuters (@Reuters) September 8, 2021

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

  Tehran has consistently blamed the US for refusing to immediately provide sanctions relief, which the Iranians say is the reason for the collapse of the deal – after Trump initially took the US out of the deal in May 2018. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 09/08/2021 – 18:25

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