Who’s running the West right now?

It’s the Fu Er Dai. Or the adult version the Guan Er Dai. Which is a Chinese name for “spoiled rich kid from a super-billionaire”. These children are so used to being pampered and treated like royalty that they become arrogant bastards or the female equivalent.

Daddy will always “bail them out” of trouble. So they have NEVER seen the consequences of their actions. They believe that they are untouchable, and that this factor comes direct from God.

The term "Fuerdai" literally translates to 'rich second generation'. It describes Chinese people born into families of high socioeconomic status, who inherited their wealth but did not create it.

The term is often used in a derogatory manner, with emphasis on their overindulgent lifestyles and materialistic attitudes.

The term has also seen limited use as a general label for anyone with rich parents and who enjoyed a privileged upbringing as a result. Non-Chinese figures, such as Fidel Castro and Donald Trump, have been described by Chinese media as Fuerdais.

-Wikipedia

Who are these people running the USA, and what is going on?

When a civilization achieves its primary goal (namely being self-sufficient) it stops striving. This is because once having attained its goal, it no longer NEEDS to strive.

Older civilizations realize that once the primary initial goals are achieved, a series of subsequent long-term goals must be implemented. Otherwise a long-duration malaise would seep into the society.

But young nations, well, they don’t realize this. And you know, the United States is a very young nation.

Such is the nature of life.

When you do a task well, you move it aside and, behold! there is another one right behind it.

Fix the stove so you can find the problem in the gas line; replace a clogged pipe in the garden and watch the new stronger water pressure blow up a few corroded sprinkler heads.

As a society ages, it moves from a calling to a job. The calling consists of survival, and you get perhaps not immediate feedback, but at least it’s “concrete”  feedback. You are either cold, wet, and hungry surrounded by predators or you are not; you are warm, dry, and fed.

When a calling becomes a job, it moves from ends-over-means to means-over-ends.

In a calling, you set up an objective and do it however you have to, based on the situation and what works. In a job, you stick to methods prescribed by those above you for the “optics” of working hard, obeying, and helping others.

With any job, we see the problem of success. If one person uses a certain method and succeeds, it becomes de facto obligatory for the rest of the group to emulate that. Therefore, you get an impassable groupthink, and that spurs on a contrarian, ironist, and novelty-based movement.

This group turns on the idea of success itself.

They do not want to emulate what others have done, and they instead seek to declare reality unreal so that they can pursue what makes others around them feel good, which gives these anti-success people more social popularity and therefore power.

People of this nature aim to always be seen as the good guy in a social situation because they know it keeps others from attacking while building their own control over others. This makes them feel safe from attack, although since it is never certain this power is weak and like a dictator, they must constantly reinforce it.

The interesting thing here is that they no longer care about whether their ideas work in reality.

The idea — the symbol, the feelings, the theory — replaces reality.

This is because the symbol is being used to manipulate others by creating joyful feelings in them.

This mirrors how control-based civilizations work, namely that they exclude all methods which scare the group or debunk the dominant paradigm.

By choosing from among what is left, people unconsciously reinforce the system and therefore, feelings of safety, pacifism, and relevance.

In other words, people choose political opinions for the social benefit of having those opinions.

And they have become entirely disconnected from the effects of those opinions.

This is a type of mandated narcissism which quickly influences all levels of the society and individual behavior.

Manipulation also forces you to scorn those you manipulate and see them as lesser even when saying to their faces how equal and good they are. The point is to benefit yourself by manipulating these marks and rubes, not to help them. They help you.

In this way, the late stage society becomes a pathological place where everyone lies to each other in the hopes of swaying enough others to have power. How do people enslave themselves? They adopt a system of manipulation, at which point no sanity will be tolerated.

Such a society breaks down into two mirror-image groups, the “do the stuff that always works” party and the “do anything but the stuff that always works” party. The latter has better symbols but no goal except not the other goal, so they have no consistency; forever rationalization, they seek reasons to justify what they want, and have no actual reasons for what they do.

Sure, some decent ones get caught up in it too, the true believers. They believe the message of pacifism, which is that if we remove the differences in situation, people can get along and actually like each other. It is a pleasant dream.

Saner people simply opt for fairness, but realize that it has nothing to do with redistribution wealth, status, and power. Instead it means accepting people as they are and rewarding the ones who do good so that the others know what they must do.

Roots conservatives such as your scribe here see things even more simply: reward only the good, and remove the bad each generation, so that the next season you have people who are inherently and inwardly better, instead of trying to force bad people to behave as if they are good.

Better than tolerance, this is acceptance. You recognize the good as what they are, and also recognize the bad as what they are, and you send the bad away because they are incompatible with what you want. You take them as what they are and do not pretend, which is more honorable than manipulation.

This process of decay has no masters; it occurs naturally in human groups because, unless guided by kings who push the group to new heights, every group falls back on dividing up the spoils and pursuing the individualistic as a moral good.

For this reason it proves hard to fight. You are not fighting against people, but their illusions. You defeat them only by revealing the emptiness of those illusions. Otherwise, you are just killing your own people for another pointless war over symbols.

Well, with that on to the way… where is the collective West in Late Stage Democracy today?

In America, it seems the Supreme Court has pushed back on abortion, the States are gaining power, and the federal government has doubled down on its Carter-style pursuit of ideologically-symbolic actions on environmentalism, diversity, poverty, and sexual liberation.

But America is not the world.

The bigger factor will probably be the global currency market. US dollars are in high demand when we drop interest rates because the dollar becomes like BitCoin, an easy way to acquire relatively untraceable cash in many countries for quick business deals.

As time goes on however it has become quite clear that the dollar is losing actual value because we have too many in circulation that are not backed by anything tangible. They are simply paper of a value that is no longer tangible.

The rest of the world realizes this.

The markets realize that FAANG stocks are not worth nearly what the label says; there is distrust of the American economy because of our heavy debt public and private, our instability arising from diversity, and our complete political inconsistency.

In the meantime, all of the problems that the West has blown off for generations are coming home to roost. Climate change is nonsense, but the Ecocide is real. Water and food supplies are declining. Pollution is in everything. Affirmative action, unions, globalist treaties, a surplus of laws and regulations, and high taxes have killed quality of life.

This means that change is on the wind.

The American Left is fighting a rearguard action now, trying to make their retreat as devastating as possible while keeping their networks in place. However, they have lost the middle of the voting population, and as the Great Replacement becomes clear, they are going to lose many of the others.

When change comes it is first met with [1] panic, then [2] denial, then [3] tantrums, and finally [4] acceptance, after which point people start to see the potential bright side.

America is somewhere in the first two steps. And right now, the West is starting it’s plummet towards the third step. It’s an exciting step as global democracy, worldwide Leftism, fiat currency, multicultural diversity, and international finance begin their graceful arc of descent…

… accelerating as they go…

…until they reach ballistic conditions …

…where steering is no longer possible…

…and impact …

…an absolute certainty.

Man denied giving blood after refusing to answer if he was pregnant

Sinclair, of Stirling in central Scotland, was told to complete a form asking whether he was with child or had been pregnant in the last six months, prompting him to reply that the question did not apply to a man in his late 60s.

Sinclair told a staffer at the Albert Halls clinic in Stirling it was “impossible” for him to be pregnant, but soon learned that he needed to answer the query in order to give blood. He now has no plans on returning to the donation center.

The secret to the West is careerism.

Someone got promoted for writing that “stunning and brave” question into the script. This gave the bosses bragging rights at the club about how progressive they were and satisfied the insurers, politicians, and lawyers, who wanted to make sure that no one would be sued for discrimination.

Only when those same people get their careers wrecked and end up working at Tesco will the insanity stop.

In the meantime, institutions like this run on the goodwill of decent, normal people and more of them will stay away, so the voters (who have slept through all of this) will wake up when they find out that the only blood available at hospitals is being bought from teenage drug addicts who need the money.

Texas Could Vote to Secede From U.S. in 2023 as GOP Pushes for Referendum

Under a section titled “State Sovereignty,” the platform states: “Pursuant to Article 1, Section 1, of the Texas Constitution, the federal government has impaired our right of local self-government. Therefore, federally mandated legislation that infringes upon the 10th Amendment rights of Texas should be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified.

“Texas retains the right to secede from the United States, and the Texas Legislature should be called upon to pass a referendum consistent thereto.”

Texas has a solid argument for secession: the fraudulent 2020 election.

If Texas is being manipulated by fraudulent votes, it can consider its agreement with the United States to provide fair and balanced elections to be in breach, and therefore make a solid legal argument — going back to English common law — for secession.

If Texas were to break away and roll back its policies to 1980s America levels, it would quickly become a home for most of the business in North America if not the world.

If it scrapped the majority of rules and entitlements, it would dominate the world economy. And, unlike Ukraine, it would most likely retain its nuclear weapons.

Holy Mackerel, the Confederacy Just Won

Thoughts by an American on the latest rulings by the Supreme Court. -MM

by Brett Stevens on June 24, 2022

Suspicious about military content, Nepal rejects US disaster mitigation programme

Article HERE

NATO claims Vladimir Putin and Xi Jingping collude to subvert the global order

Madrid | NATO has accused Beijing of conspiring with Moscow to subvert the international rules-based order...

... as part of a new 10-year blueprint that identifies China for the first time as a global threat...

... and brands Russia the most significant and direct threat to security, peace and stability in Europe.

Beijing reacted angrily to the new NATO Strategic Concept, agreed to at its summit in Madrid, accusing the 32-member alliance of trying to launch a new cold war.

Full article HERE

Homemade Potato Chips

Forget buying a bag of potato chips at the grocery store when you can make these at home. This quick and easy recipe will delight everyone in the family. —Taste of Home Test Kitchen

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, China has been pointing its finger at the U.S. and NATO on multiple occasions. But NATO's attention to the China-Russia partnership began even before Moscow's military operations in its neighbor. It has also been openly talking about China for some time.

In its annual summit in Brussels last June, the traditionally Russia-focused military alliance asserted, for the first time, that it needed to respond to Beijing's growing power. The language the bloc used at the time also echoed the E.U.'s phrase of "systemic rival," and the U.K.'s "systemic competitor" when describing China.

Highlighting NATO's new focus on China, the gathering of world leaders in Madrid, both inside the bloc's summit and on its sidelines, included many from Asian nations.

It was the first time that the leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand were invited to a NATO summit. They participated in a NATO session on new global challenges after holding a side meeting outside of the summit.

We have not been so ripe for regime change since 1776. A ruling Party of Chaos is doing absolutely everything to disorder our lives and there really is no generous interpretation for its motives.

Let’s face it: most people will not read Justice Alito’s carefully crafted arguments about what the constitution says or doesn’t say about abortion, or the meaning of “ordered liberty” through our history.

We do not live in history. We live in the time of our time.

And, until just recently, this has been a time that discarded former modes of conduct between men, women, and children as inconvenient to the presumably greater project of self-actualization.

To be-all-that-you-can-be is a stirring notion, and it seemed to work nicely within the colossal techno-industrial armature of the past century, with all its inducements to thrive personally, at least for the comfortable elites who pulled the levers of that system — though not so much for those below caught in the gears, who produced children despite all the novel means for avoiding it.

For the fortunate, motherhood became just another “no” box to check off, while fatherhood merged into the odious mists of obsolete patriarchy.

History is made up of things that seem like good ideas at the time. The hard part now is moving out of a familiar time into the undiscovered country of a new time.

The support system for all that is going, going, gone and in the ensuing flux all that rousing self-actualization starts to look more like Thomas Hobbes’s war of all against all, a savage and pre-human state of nature. As this occurs, all human beings have to fall back on are modes of conduct that include a moral and ethical dimension, which is to say, what is right and what is wrong, not just what is allowed at a given moment.

Which is also to say: maybe the time of smashing boundaries is over. As that scaffold of techno-industrial comfort and safety disintegrates, and all the dazzling promises of becoming transhuman dissolve — sorry, Klaus Schwab — we will likely have to settle for being human again, and in the best way, not the worst way. That includes a certain reverence for our nature and for each other. That suggests not killing children.

These days, this place on the planet that used to be a nation groans under a tribulation of bad ideas, bad choices, bad conduct, bad management, and bad faith. We have not been so ripe for regime change since 1776.

A ruling Party of Chaos is doing absolutely everything to disorder our lives and there really is no generous interpretation for its motives.

Everything it touches breaks, wilts, withers, splinters, rots, poisons, and infects the body politic, driving it deeper into derangement. It doesn’t even pretend to make sense because that would require making distinctions between what is true and what’s not true. We follow-the-science into pure evil.

What awaits is the abandoned scaffold of the family and the community as opposed to the brute hierarchies of mere lonely, forsaken persons under the leviathan state and the behemoth corporation, which have produced mainly new kinds of cruelties, such as: the deadly “vaccine” mandates, the no-knock FBI visitations, the surveillance cameras, the robotic phone trees with their interminable holds, the obtuse insults of the HR departments, the drag queens twerking in your children’s faces, and much more.

You might not know it from the news — what is the news now, anyway, except mercenary shuck-and-jive — but these giant governments and corporations are thrashing in their death throes.

Get out of their way if you possibly can.

Form the bonds you can with people and cherish them. For many, they will be all you’ll have for a while.

You can’t overstate the havoc that we’ll have to live with in the months ahead, short of blowing up the whole joint, one can hope.

And it will happen just as a gigantic set of pretenses to a New Order of things rolls out to thumping failure. Forget about central bank digital currencies. Don’t believe that the very people who have severed the relationship between actual capital and money can just magically conjure a new order of money that they propose to control and you don’t.

Meanwhile, the old-school money they created too much of is headed for the biggest gaping black hole imaginable because that’s what happens when money based on debt is not paid back. So, for a while, there will be too much money and then there will be not enough, and then nobody will have money.

All that happens as the supply of every kind of stuff in the world stops moving from Point A to Point B, including replacement parts for every sort of machine, distribution of petroleum and its products, and food.

And at the same time, it finally becomes too obvious to ignore the fact that many millions are dying or becoming disabled from the effects of the mRNA vaccines foisted on the public, especially in the USA and Europe.

Out of all that suffering will eventually come a new respect for human life and reconstructed relations between men and women, with all the abstruse ambiguities, pretensions, and nebulosities about sex put aside for some future age of decadence.

It won’t require further agonizing reappraisals by any high courts to figure it out. Children are the consequence of sex. Children are required to carry on the human project.

"This investment that they're making is contingent upon Congress passing the CHIPS Act. The [GlobalWafers] CEO told me that herself, and they reiterated that today," U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told CNBC, the same day GlobalWafers announced its development plan.

Asian herbal‐tobacco cigarettes: “not medicine but less harmful”?

From HERE

Rationing Has Already Started In Europe As The Entire Globe The West Plunges Into A Horrific Economic Nightmare

If countries in Europe are already beginning to ration certain things due to “supply problems”, how long will it be before it starts happening in the United States?

Up until the past couple of years, many of us in the western world always considered shortages to be something that only “unsophisticated” poor countries on the other side of the planet had to deal with.

But the last couple of years have shown us that painful shortages can happen to wealthy countries in the western world too.

At first we were told that they were “just temporary”, but the months went by and we just kept having more shortages.

In fact, in 2022 “supply problems” have become so serious that many supermarkets in Europe have been forced to strictly ration essential items at various times.  For example, it was being reported that due to the war in Ukraine flour, sunflower oil and sugar were all being rationed by stores in Greece…

After limiting the sale of some flours and sunflower oil online, Greek supermarkets are turning to rationing the sale of sugar as well, now including in their stores, over supply problems.

The AB Vassilopoulos is setting a maximum limit on the purchase of all brands of corn and sunflower oil and of flour per customer while Mymarket put a ceiling on sunflower oil purchases and Sklavenitis has added sugar to the rationed sales of corn oil through its online store, with a maximum of four packs, the products in high demand from restaurants, some of which said they have to stop selling french fries and other fried foods.

Over the past few months we have seen similar measures implemented in other major European nations as well.  For example, the war in Ukraine prompted some pretty severe rationing in Spain…

Sporadic shortages of products like eggs, milk, and other dairy products also hit Spain since the war in Ukraine began. And major supermarkets including Mercadona and Makro began rationing sunflower oil earlier this month.

Now, stores will temporarily be allowed to limit “the number of goods that can be bought by a client,” according to information in the Official State Gazette published on Wednesday.

Looking forward, natural gas rationing is the next big thing that many people in Europe are talking about.  The flow of Russian natural gas into Europe has been cut back, and it appears that this may soon cause widespread rationing in Italy…

Italy may start rationing natural-gas consumption to certain industrial giants, after Russia’s Gazprom halved supplies on Friday.

On the weekend, the newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that the Italian government and energy industry would meet Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss the crisis, with the likely outcome being the introduction of a state of alert under the country’s gas emergency protocol.

And CNN is reporting that Germany is “one step closer to rationing supplies” now that Russia has decided to reduce the flow of natural gas going to that country…

Europe’s biggest economy is now officially running short of natural gas and is escalating a crisis plan to preserve supplies as Russia turns off the taps.

Germany on Thursday activated the second phase of its three-stage gas emergency program, taking it one step closer to rationing supplies to industry — a step that would deliver a huge blow to the manufacturing heart of its economy.

Of course there are other parts of the globe that are dealing with problems that are far, far more serious than what Europe is facing right now.

As I discussed in an article that I posted earlier this week, significant numbers of people are starting to literally drop dead from starvation in portions of eastern Africa.  Global food supplies just keep getting tighter, and the head of the UN is openly telling us that the world is heading into an “unprecedented global hunger crisis”.

So if you have plenty of food to eat tonight, you should be thankful.

Here in the United States, economic conditions are deteriorating fairly rapidly, and most Americans are completely and totally unprepared for any sort of a major economic downturn.

Earlier today, I came across yet another survey that shows that about 60 percent of all Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck…

“We find that consumers in all income brackets — including those who make more than $100,000 annually — are living paycheck to paycheck. PYMNTS’ research finds that 61% of U.S. consumers were living paycheck to paycheck in April 2022, marking a 9 percentage point increase from 52% in April 2021, meaning that approximately three in five U.S. consumers devote nearly all of their salaries to expenses with little to nothing left over at the end of the month.”

So what is going to happen when those people start losing their jobs in large numbers?

Already, we have seen the number of tech layoffs greatly accelerate over the last couple of months.

Sadly, the layoffs will get much worse in the months ahead.

And as inflation continues to systematically eat away at our standard of living, Americans are turning to credit cards at a record pace…

As Americans grapple with the highest inflation in 40 years, the number of new credit cards have surged as more Americans rely on them to keep up with high prices. According to a recent report from the Federal Reserve, revolving credit (credit cards and lines of credit) increased by 19.6% from the previous year to $1.103 trillion.

Going into credit card debt is not a solution.

At best, it can buy you a little bit of time.

And it is especially a bad idea to go into credit card debt as we plunge into a recession.

At this point, almost everyone realizes that things are going to get bad.  According to one recent poll, a whopping 85 percent of all Americans believe that the U.S. is “headed in the wrong direction”…

The national dissatisfaction is bipartisan. Most Americans, 85%, say the country is headed in the wrong direction. A majority of Republicans have been unhappy with the direction of the country since Biden’s election. Democrats had been positive about how things were going, but now 78% say the country is headed in the wrong direction.

I was astounded to see that 78 percent of Democrats believe that the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction with a Democrat in the White House.

I have never seen a number like that ever before.

But this is just another indication that the hour is late and that things are about to start getting really crazy out there.

For the moment, life is still at least somewhat normal in the western world.

Sadly, it won’t stay that way for long, and so I would recommend using your time wisely.

European road connectivity has been completely cut from Russian GPS maps

NATO sanctioned the world into self isolation. It is time for the civilized world to work and trade exclusively with each other without the crusader nations. 

By taking away Russian foreign reserve money and private assets at will, the crusaders alerted the civilized world that their currencies are untrustworthy. 

So, it is time for the civilized world to follow Putin the Great policy to stop accepting $, £, € as trading currencies as these currencies can become worthless anytime the looting civilization decided to take away from you. 

In Chinese language, the term currency is called 货币，货 is goods, 币 is money. The meaning is, only when a money able to established it trust worthiness and values in a market in exchange for goods and services, can be called currency. 

Apparently, putin the Great policy has effectively reduced the image of the crusaders currencies into its true form: untrustworthy, can become worthless anytime. The outcome is:

When The crusaders make a few hundred billions fast money from robbing the Russian reserved currency and private assets inside their countries, they alerted the world that their so-called currency are untrustworthy. So, in a foreseeable future, the crusaders will become more and more isolated from the rest of the world. Their economy will drastically reduced in size, and that they can no longer relying on printing money to maintain their economy. 

As a result , the money they print will turn into currency depreciation and domestic inflation as the civilized world no longer trust their currency. 

The speed of the crusader nations internal chaos and disintegration will be so fast that beyond most people expectations. 

The risk of the crusaders starting another world war is at all time high. However, my assessment is that, they have already lost the capability to win, so the chances of them starting another world war is reduced. Their economy will collapse sooner than they could start another war. 

Z: the number of days the crusaders live on looting the world is coming to an end:

Record numbers leaving Germany’s churches

Hundreds of thousands of people have resigned their memberships in Germany’s Protestant and Catholic churches. Fifteen years ago, 61% of Germans belonged to churches, a number that has now dropped below 50%.

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An important development toward the makeup of a new, new world order.

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Full article HERE

Chinese And Russian Navies Circle Japan In “Show Of Force”

This article is curious in that it displays the absolute ignorance of the writer. -MM

In yet another example of the increasingly close alliance between Russia and China, the Chinese Navy and Russia’s Pacific Fleet have been engaging in war game operations, seemingly in tandem around Japan, according to the Japanese Defense Ministry.

Reports of coordinated military exercises have not been officially acknowledged by Russia or China, though Japan continues to post regular updates on ship movements.  The naval exercises were apparently focused around the islands of Miyako and Okinawa, which hold 50,000 US forces, as well as a 70-mile wide corridor between the island of Yonaguni and Taiwan.

While not unheard of, military cooperation in the Pacific between Russia and China has grown in frequency, with naval exercises increasing over the past month.  While Japan calls these movements a “show of force,” they may very well be practice for a conflict planned in the near future.

After the recent BRICS summit in Beijing and the reaffirmation of China’s economic support of Russia during its war with Ukraine and NATO sanctions, it only makes sense that the economic relationship would evolve into at least a loose military agreement.  The latest decision on the induction of Sweden and Finland into NATO as well as naval escalation in the South Pacific are only going to drive Eastern interests closer together over time.

China is nursing a compulsive obsession when it comes to absorbing Taiwan into the CCP, and with the West overly focused on Russia and Ukraine, they may act soon.  If an invasion of Taiwan is planned it would have to take place sometime in September/October when weather conditions in the region are favorable to naval operations.  Leaked reports from Russian intel in March seem to indicate that a fall invasion of Taiwan was indeed in the works.  Some believe that the Russian war with Ukraine will force China to scuttle such plans, but there is also a chance that Ukraine will provide excellent cover for an action against Taiwan; forcing western governments to split their efforts and focus on two fronts instead of one.

The bigger question is:  Will Russia and China form an official military alliance?  There is no debate now over their trade alliance, but the notion of military cooperation between the two countries will lead many people to scoff.  Keep in mind, however, that there were numerous skeptics that argued only a week ago that the Turkish government under Erdogen would “never” agree to Finland and Sweden joining NATO, and yet that is exactly what they did.

The geopolitical landscape is changing fast and the old rules no longer seem to apply.

The Most Optimistic Woman On Wall Street Now Says That The U.S. Economy Has Entered A Recession

June 28, 2022 by Michael

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Even the most wild optimists are starting to sound like “doom and gloomers”.  In fact, even the most optimistic woman on Wall Street is now telling us that the U.S. economy is in a recession right now.

At one time, Cathie Wood seemed like she could do no wrong.  Many of her wildly optimistic stock predictions kept coming true, and she gained hordes of Internet followers that hung on her every word.

In 2020, her ARK Innovation fund outperformed the S&P 500 by a very wide margin, and pundits such as Jim Cramer were calling her a “genius”…

In 2020, Wood’s predictions appeared to be on their way to coming true. She was riding high atop the Fed-driven bull market: Her ARK Innovation fund, often known by its ticker as ARKK, returned some 157 percent during that first year of the pandemic, compared to just 18 percent for the S&P 500 as a whole. It was a legendary performance that drew accolades from various market watchers, including CNBC’s Jim Cramer, who in February of last year tweeted, “Cathie Wood is a genius.”

But these days Cathie Wood sounds like she could be writing for The Economic Collapse Blog.  The value of her ARK Innovation fund is down 67 percent over the past year, and she just did an interview with CNBC in which she stated that she believes that the U.S. economy has already plunged into a recession…

Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood said Tuesday that the U.S. is already in an economic downturn, and she admitted that she underestimated the severity and lasting power of inflation.

“We think we are in a recession,” Wood said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Tuesday. “We think a big problem out there is inventories… the increase of which I’ve never seen this large in my career. I’ve been around for 45 years.”

Of course she is far from alone.

Economist Stephen Moore also believes that the U.S. economy has entered a recessionary period…

Economist Stephen Moore warned on Monday that the United States is already in a “soft recession,” noting that the “real question” is now whether the Federal Reserve can achieve a soft landing.

Moore, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, provided the insight on “Varney & Co.” Monday, reacting to former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers contradicting President Biden on Sunday by saying that a recession was “almost inevitable” in the next two years.

Peter Schiff is even more pessimistic.

In fact, he is using the word “crash” to describe what is ahead for our economy…

Stockbroker Peter Schiff, the chief economist and global strategist of Euro Pacific Capital, went a step further a couple of weeks ago by tweeting that most citizens have given up on the thought of a soft landing for the economy after the Fed’s interest rate hikes and now expect a harder fall.

“The only landing possible is a crash, where everyone on board dies,” Schiff tweeted. “That’s why the Fed won’t even attempt to land and give up its pretend inflation fight.”

Sadly, all three of them are correct.

At the moment, what we are currently experiencing could definitely be described as a “soft recession”, and it will inevitably get a whole lot worse.

And U.S. consumers certainly are not hopeful about the future at this point.  On Friday, we learned that U.S. consumer confidence has now dropped to the lowest level ever recorded…

A closely followed University of Michigan survey released Friday found that US consumer sentiment hit a new record low in June -— the lowest recorded level since the university started collecting the data 70 years ago.

The June index saw a 14.4% drop since May as consumers became increasingly alarmed about inflation. About 79% of those consumers said they expected bad times for business conditions in the upcoming year, the highest level for that metric since 2009.

Just think about that for a moment.

In 70 years, U.S. consumers have never been more pessimistic than they are right now.

That is incredible.

Unfortunately, most consumers are also highly vulnerable.

One recent survey found that 58 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.  So when harder times come and many start losing their jobs, a lot of them are going to be in financial trouble very rapidly.

The pace at which things are now changing really is breathtaking.

Exactly one year ago, it seemed like the U.S. economy was riding high and stock prices would keep going up forever.

But now it appears that the first half of 2022 will end up being the worst first half of a year for the stock market since 1970…

Stocks are about to turn in the worst first half in fifty years when the second quarter wraps on Thursday as inflation sits at a 40-year high.

The S&P 500, the broadest measure of stocks, is down nearly 18% this year the worst since 1970, as tracked by Dow Jones Market Data Group. That makes 2022 the fifth-worst half performance on record.

Trillions upon trillions of dollars of paper wealth has already been wiped out, and we continue to get more bad economic news with each passing day.

And now that the Federal Reserve has decided to foolishly raise rates just as an economic downturn is picking up speed, there is no hope that things will turn around any time soon.

The reckless optimists on Wall Street didn’t see this coming in advance.  If Cathie Wood had understood which direction things were about to go, her fund would not be down 67 percent over the past year.

But of course there are countless others on Wall Street that have been hit extremely hard as well.

The end of a party can often come very abruptly.  In this case, many investors that didn’t get out in time are now feeling an extraordinary amount of pain.

Unfortunately, a lot more pain is coming for Wall Street and for the economy as a whole.

Irrelevance

by Brett Stevens on June 29, 2022

People from the first world get weirded out when they go to the third world (and its enclaves in the first world) and see people kill each other over even the mildest slight. If you disrespect someone, meaning do not acknowledge their relevance, you have basically ranked them as worthless.

It is easy to make fun of these incidents until you understand why two pieces of chicken are worth killing for:

The 57-year-old victim said he took two pieces of chicken from another resident and ate them. Akron police said the other man became upset, grabbing the victim by the throat and throwing him to the floor.

Keeping with the chicken theme:

In a Monday, June 27, Facebook statement an MPD spokesperson added: “Officers were advised by the staff that a customer was upset about $2 worth of change and chicken sandwiches.”

“The suspect made threats to do bodily harm to the female employees, and knocked the cash registers off their stands onto the floor, causing $10,000 worth of damage.”

Chicken is serious business. If you get in a dispute over it, you may end up getting shot:

Around 8:30 p.m., two men pulled into the drive-thru lane of the KFC at 6301 15th Street E. in Sarasota and got into an argument with the restaurant’s employees at the window about the food they ordered, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.

Minutes later, two employees left the restaurant and met the customers in the parking lot, where the argument escalated. During the dispute, one of the employees was shot, the sheriff’s office said.

These barbecue-related slayings seem to form a trope:

“He said the food was too cold and he just started getting a real bad attitude about it so we were like OK, OK, if you don’t want it, we will give your money back to you. So that’s what we did,” said Bautista.

“We started walking away and something told me to turn around. When I turned around he had gone inside the house and then comes back out and he had a gun,” said Bautista.

You want more chicken-related violence?

Bountiful Police say Suliafu’s father returned home with food for Suliafu. When he discovered the wings were not the variety he liked, Suliafu became upset and began arguing with his father. During the argument, police say Suliafu went into another room, retrieved a firearm from his father’s bag, and pointed the gun at his father.

The chicken-related carnage continues:

A female passenger in a car was reportedly involved in an altercation with employees over a spicy chicken sandwich.

After the altercation, the pair left then returned in the car, firing multiple shots from the road into the parking lot, the affidavit said.

And the stunner of chicken redrum:

That’s when police say Munn’s mother got into a heated argument over “guests getting too many pieces of chicken” with another family member, according to court documents.

The family continued the argument outside in the front yard, where police say Rogers pulled out two guns and shot Dandridge seven times.

If you are following the mainstream narrative, you should pretend to be shocked here. These are seemingly pointless crimes over things of low value, so a modern citizen sees them as laughably absurd risk of jail for almost no gain.

That is because modern societies do not understand our primitive origins as a human species.

In those egalitarian or communal hunter-gatherer societies that Leftist praise in the science magazines, in theory when there is a hunt or harvest the people who found the food bring it back and share it equally with everyone in the tribe.

But in reality, no food goes to those who are disrespected and irrelevant. At the very least, they stand in the back of the line because their social status is low. When food is scarce, they may simply die in the bush if they cannot snag some bush meat, pick fruit, or dig up edible roots.

Under ideal conditions, this process works to gradually exclude those who are incompetent. They are after all “useless eaters” who want part of the profits of the hunt or harvest, but are unable to provide anything of value on their own.

Some duck out of the process by being submissive. Homosexuals, for example, seem to exist in every society as a type of domestic help and source of labor for occupations shunned by aggressive males, like interior decorating and hair cutting.

Other males accept their low status and form a gang around someone more powerful. Their loyalty and henchman status buys them some of the food, although they are usually angling for more whenever their boss starts looking weak, old, or confused.

In this way the egalitarian tribe preserves hierarchy without formally doing so, which would offend its pretense of egalitarianism, which is how it keeps the tribe together. It is a soup line with a few added conditions, essentially, namely loyalty in time of attack.

But because this society handles redistribution, your public image matters more than reality. The reality is that you do not really care about chicken that much, but if someone disrespect you, your status will get lowered if you do not fight back right away.

Even if you lose and end up in the hospital, you retain your status as someone not to be messed with. If you walk away from a fight, everyone assumes that you were going to lose, and so they see you as a loser. Only those who enforce their status through pointless violence keep rising in the public eye.

In primitive hunter-gatherer societies and many tropical societies today, you become irrelevant unless you are willing to step up over even a mildly symbolic slight. Like superstition, symbolism manipulates human minds with the belief that the symbol can be a universal, absolute cause like magic or divinity.

In other words, you are the symbol. When your symbol ceases to mean a willingness to fight over trivial displays of status, you lose ground and are on your way toward irrelevance, starvation, and death. It was never about the fried chicken; it is about your standing in the community.

The third world manages image by violence generally because this is understandable by even lower-IQ populations like we see in the third world and underclasses of the first world. The top quarter of the Bell Curve in the first world uses a different quantum of measurement.

Where in the third world, individuals preserve status through violence, in the first world they manage their rank in the hierarchy by maintaining a group mental state of cooperation. When you make others feel hopeful about our ballistic trajectory, paranoid and superstitious egalitarianism, and inflated defensive sense of self-worth, then you gain status in the middle class West.

To do that is to be seen as relevant, where those who oppose the current System are seen as irrelevant because nothing that they say or do helps anyone get ahead in the current regime. If you instill good feelings in everyone, they quiet down and do the obvious necessary things, which makes you a hero of the Party or local equivalent.

When you exist in an egalitarian society, whether first world or third world, you have nothing permanent. Your role is subject to your obedience. Non-egalitarian societies do not have this problem because you exist in a niche and level of a hierarchy, so you always have a role and place.

Relevance in nature comes from structural overlap. Different species in an ecosystem are relevant to each other; ideas which form continuous thoughts addressing some aspect of reality show relevance. Ideas unrelated to reality connect to nothing enduring and are irrelevant.

When social pressures take over from thinking, a market for importance is created, as measured in popularity, media attention, wealth, and power, all of which combine to form a factor known as status. Unless you constantly generate status, you become irrelevant.

Egalitarian societies therefore tend to be narcissistic and shape people to be narcissists. Since everyone must manipulate others in order to have status, manipulation becomes the psychology of that society and everyone follows that lead because it succeeds in the System.

Eventually they become solipsists, or those who are entirely atomized and isolated from everything else. This makes them irrelevant, except in the eyes of others, so they become pathological manipulators who care nothing for those they manipulate or the results that are achieved.

In this way, society in its end stages divides into two groups. The solipsists want to avoid inner change, and they will demand any amount of power for others to give them meaning through external influences like politics, pop culture, ideology, and symbolic religions.

The other group, realists, want to escape all of the noise and get back to what is true and real in not just the world but their inner selves. Realism, since it forces thinking about consequences and end states, leads to an exploration of intuition to find what is good.

Most people simply want jobs. There they are told what to do, and if something goes wrong, no real consequences come their way, like starving on a farm because of a failure to produce food. They succeed by being narcissistic and manipulating others but this is easy and does not require inner change.

When enough people who simply want jobs appear in a society, which happens when it reaches success and also simultaneously loses sight of any objective because it has succeeded in its first objectives, it goes down the path to egalitarianism and narcissism.

At that point, relevance contradicts reality, and so you get this silly End of Rome type stuff where people stunt and try to be as outlandish as possible in order to draw attention to themselves. It is the same impulse as killing a man over fried chicken, just buried in layers of abstraction and neurosis.

Apple in-house 5G chip for iPhones fails – to continue with Qualcomm

Earlier today, well-known Apple analyst, Ming-Chi Kuo said that Apple’s 5G chip development may have failed. This means that the 2023 iPhones will still use Qualcomm chips. In fact, the American chip maker will still get 100% of Apple’s orders. According to previous reports from Kuo, Apple’s 2023 iPhones would use Apple-designed modem chips instead of Qualcomm chips. Furthermore, Otakara, citing sources from the industry chain claims that Apple has actually been developing its own baseband. However, this is a very long project. The source did not entirely describe it as a failure because it needs more time. The original plan is to use this chip in 2023 but this did not survive. Otakara claims that this is a delay in the production process.

According to Apple’s plan, it will use self-developed baseband chips next year, while TSMC is still their exclusive foundry. The chip will use the 5nm process with an annual production capacity of 120,000 pieces. In fact, Qualcomm hints that Apple’s in-house baseband will soon be put into use. The company also hints that its share of iPhone baseband orders will drop to about 20% in 2023.

Why is iPhone 5G baseband delaying

Regarding the reason for the delay, people in the industry chain claim that the baseband is different from other chips. Since the design and production are not direct, there is a need for testing in a full range of different operators. This process is long, and the pandemic did not help matters. All these are slowing down Apple’s progress.

In addition, the testing of Apple’s baseband by many operators around the world is also slower than Cook expected, so it will be postponed. At the close of U.S. stocks on March 29, Qualcomm (QCOM) shares rose 3.48% to $131.6 per share, with a total market value of $147.39 billion. One-day market capitalization increased by $4.95 billion. Apple (AAPL) fell 2.98% to $137.44 per share, with a total market value of $2.2 trillion, and a single-day market value of $68.3 billion evaporated.

Article HERE

Happy Cats, Coffee Shops And Carefree Times In TAO’s Cheerful, Detailed And Nostalgic Illustrations

As she explains on her Tumblr profile, Sapporo-based illustrator TAO is particularly fond of cats, Showa Era things, and sneakers. With their cheerful tone and kawaii characters enjoying relaxing moments, coffee mug in hand, her artwork will surely put a smile on your face or dispel any clouds hanging over your head.

Her most recent illustration perfectly encapsulates the feel-good, relaxing mood and Showa Era nostalgia that characterizes much of her work.

The happy, relaxed mood and the cute cats are an obvious plus, but the nostalgia factor can largely be attributed to the cocktail table mahjong video game. Previously a fixture in most Japanese coffee shops, they’re all but extinct.

Behind the Tin Curtain: BRICS+ vs NATO/G7

Pepe Escobar • June 28, 2022

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Once upon a time, there existed an Iron Curtain which divided the continent of Europe.

Coined by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the term was in reference to the then-Soviet Union’s efforts to create a physical and ideological boundary with the west.

The latter, for its part, pursued a policy of containment against the spread and influence of communism.

Fast forward to the contemporary era of techno-feudalism, and there now exists what should be called a Tin Curtain, fabricated by the fearful, clueless, collective west, via G7 and NATO: this time, to essentially contain the integration of the Global South.

BRICS against G7

The most recent and significant example of this integration has been the coming out of BRICS+ at last week’s online summit hosted by Beijing.

This went far beyond establishing the lineaments of a ‘new G8,’ let alone an alternative to the G7.

Just look at the interlocutors of the five historical BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa): we find a microcosm of the Global South, encompassing Southeast Asia, Central Asia, West Asia, Africa and South America – truly putting the “Global” in the Global South.

Revealingly, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s clear messages during the Beijing summit, in sharp contrast to G7 propaganda, were actually addressed to the whole Global South:

• Russia will fulfill its obligations to supply energy and fertilizers.
• Russia expects a good grain harvest – and to supply up to 50 million tons to world markets.
• Russia will ensure passage of grain ships into international waters even as Kiev mined Ukrainian ports.
• The negative situation on Ukrainian grain is artificially inflated.
• The sharp increase in inflation around the world is the result of the irresponsibility of G7 countries, not Operation Z in Ukraine.
• The imbalance of world relations has been brewing for a long time and has become an inevitable result of the erosion of international law.

An alternative system

Putin also directly addressed one of the key themes that the BRICS have been discussing in depth since the 2000s — the design and implementation of an international reserve currency.

“The Russian Financial Messaging System is open for connection with banks of the BRICS countries.”

“The Russian MIR payment system is expanding its presence. We are exploring the possibility of creating an international reserve currency based on the basket of BRICS currencies,” 

…the Russian leader said.

This is inevitable after the hysterical western sanctions post-Operation Z; the total de-dollarization imposed upon Moscow; and increasing trade between BRICS nations.

For instance, by 2030, a quarter of the planet’s oil demand will come from China and India, with Russia as the major supplier.

The “RIC” in BRICS simply cannot risk being locked out of a G7-dominated financial system.

Even tightrope-walking India is starting to catch the drift.

Who speaks for the ‘international community?’

At its current stage, BRICS represent 40 percent of world population, 25 percent of the global economy, 18 percent of world trade, and contribute over 50 percent for world economic growth. All indicators are on the way up.

Sergey Storchak, CEO of Russian bank VEG, framed it quite diplomatically:

“If the voices of emerging markets are not being heard in the coming years, we need to think very seriously about setting up a parallel regional system, or maybe a global system.”

A “parallel regional system” is already being actively discussed between the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and China, coordinated by Minister of Integration and Macroeconomics Sergey Glazyev, who has recently authored a stunning manifesto amplifying his ideas about world economic sovereignty.

Developing the ‘developing world’

What happens in the trans-Eurasian financial front will proceed in parallel with a so far little known Chinese development strategy: the Global Development Initiative (GDI), announced by President Xi Jinping at the UN General Assembly last year.

GDI can be seen as a support mechanism of the overarching strategy – which remains the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), consisting of economic corridors interlinking Eurasia all the way to its western peninsula, Europe.

At the High-level Dialogue on Global Development, part of the BRICS summit, the Global South learned a little more about the GDI, an organization set up in 2015.

In a nutshell, the GDI aims to turbo-charge international development cooperation by supplementing financing to a plethora of bodies, for instance the South-South Cooperation Fund, the International Development Association (IDA), the Asian Development Fund (ADF), and the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

Priorities include “poverty reduction, food security, COVID-19 response and vaccines,” industrialization, and digital infrastructure.

Subsequently, a Friends of the GDI group was established in early 2022 and has already attracted over 50 nations.

BRI and GDI should be advancing in tandem, even as Xi himself made it clear during the BRICS summit that “some countries are politicizing and marginalizing the developmental agenda by building up walls and slapping crippling sanctions on others.”

Then again, sustainable development is not exactly the G7’s cup of tea, much less NATO’s.

Seven against the world

The avowed top aim of the G7 summit in Schloss Elmau at the Bavarian Alps is to “project unity” – as in the stalwarts of the collective west (Japan included) united in sustainable and indefinite “support” for the irretrievably failed Ukrainian state.

That’s part of the “struggle against Putin’s imperialism,” but then there’s also “the fight against hunger and poverty, health crisis and climate change,” as German chancellor Scholz told the Bundestag.

In Bavaria, Scholz pushed for a Marshall Plan for Ukraine – a ludicrous concept considering Kiev and its environs might as well be reduced to a puny rump state by the end of 2022.

The notion that the G7 may work to “prevent a catastrophic famine,” according to Scholz, reaches a paroxysm of ludicrousness, as the looming famine is a direct consequence of the G7-imposed sanctions hysteria.

The fact that Berlin invited India, Indonesia, South Africa and Senegal as add-ons to the G7, served as additional comic relief.

The Tin Curtain is up

It would be futile to expect from the astonishing collection of mediocrities “united” in Bavaria, under de facto leader of the European Commission (EC), Fuehrer Ursula von der Leyen, any substantial analysis about the breakdown of global supply chains and the reasons that forced Moscow to reduce gas flows to Europe.

Instead, they blamed Putin and Xi.

Welcome to the Tin Curtain – a 21^st century reinvention of the Intermarium from the Baltic to the Black Sea, masterminded by the Empire of Lies, complete with western Ukraine absorbed by Poland, the Three Baltic Midgets: Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Czechia and even NATO-aspiring Sweden and Finland, all of whom will be protected from “the Russian threat.”

An EU out of control

The role of the EU, lording over Germany, France and Italy inside the G7 is particularly instructive, especially now that Britain is back to the status of an inconsequential island-state.

As many as 60 European ‘directives’ are issued every year.

They must be imperatively transposed into internal law of each EU member-state.

In most cases, there’s no debate whatsoever.

Then there are more than 10,000 European ‘rulings,’ where ‘experts’ at the European Commission (EC) in Brussels issue ‘recommendations’ to every government, straight out of the neoliberal canon, regarding their expenses, their income and ‘reforms’ (on health care, education, pensions) that must be obeyed.

Thus elections in every single EU member-nation are absolutely meaningless.

Heads of national governments – Macron, Scholz, Draghi – are mere executants.

No democratic debate is allowed: ‘democracy,’ as with ‘EU values,’ are nothing than smokescreens.

The real government is exercised by a bunch of apparatchiks chosen by compromise between executive powers, acting in a supremely opaque manner.

The EC is totally outside of any sort of control.

That’s how a stunning mediocrity like Ursula von der Leyen – previously the worst Minister of Defense of modern Germany – was catapulted upwards to become the current EC Fuhrer, dictating their foreign, energy and even economic policy.

What do they stand for?

From the perspective of the west, the Tin Curtain, for all its ominous Cold War 2.0 overtones, is merely a starter before the main course: hardcore confrontation across Asia-Pacific – renamed “Indo-Pacific” – a carbon copy of the Ukraine racket designed to contain China’s BRI and GDI.

As a countercoup, it’s enlightening to observe how the Chinese foreign ministry now highlights in detail the contrast between BRICS – and BRICS+ – and the imperial AUKUS/Quad/IPEF combo.

• BRICS stand for de facto multilateralism; focus on global development; cooperation for economic recovery; and improving global governance.
• The US-concocted racket on the other hand, stands for Cold War mentality; exploiting developing countries; ganging up to contain China; and an America-first policy that enshrines the monopolistic “rules-based international order.”

It would be misguided to expect those G7 luminaries gathered in Bavaria to understand the absurdity of imposing a price cap on Russian oil and gas exports, for instance. Were that to really happen, Moscow will have no problems fully cutting energy supply to the G7. And if other nations are excluded, the price of the oil and gas they import would drastically increase.

BRICS paving the way forward

So no wonder the future is ominous. In a stunning interview to Belarus state TV, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov summarized how “the west fears honest competition.”

Hence, the apex of cancel culture, and “suppression of everything that contradicts in some way the neoliberal vision and arrangement of the world.” Lavrov also summarized the roadmap ahead, for the benefit of the whole Global South:

 “We don’t need a new G8. We already have structures…primarily in Eurasia. The EAEU is actively promoting integration processes with the PRC, aligning China’s Belt and Road Initiative with the Eurasian integration plans. Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are taking a close look at these plans. A number of them are signing free trade zone agreements with the EAEU. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is also part of these processes… There is one more structure beyond the geographic borders of Eurasia.”

“It is BRICS. This association is relying less and less on the Western style of doing business, and on Western rules for international currency, financial and trade institutions. They prefer more equitable methods that do not make any processes depend on the dominant role of the dollar or some other currency. The G20 fully represents BRICS and five more countries that share the positions of BRICS, while the G7 and its supporters are on the other side of the barricades.” 

 “This is a serious balance. The G20 may deteriorate if the West uses it for fanning up confrontation. The structures I mentioned (SCO, BRICS, ASEAN, EAEU and CIS) rely on consensus, mutual respect and a balance of interests, rather than a demand to accept unipolar world realities.” 

Tin Curtain? More like Torn Curtain.

Slow-Cooker Baked Ziti

I don’t know one family that doesn’t have some crazy, hectic weeknights. This slow-cooker baked ziti recipe was a delicious, easy fix for a busy weeknight dinner for our family. —Christina Addison, Blanchester, Ohio

Ingredients

• 1 container (15 ounces) whole-milk ricotta cheese
• 1 large egg, beaten
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, optional
• 1 jar (24 ounces) meatless pasta sauce
• 2 cups uncooked ziti
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1/4 cup minced fresh basil
• Grated Parmesan cheese, optional

Directions

1. In a small bowl, stir together ricotta cheese, egg, basil, and if desired, red pepper flakes; set aside. Pour pasta sauce into a 5-qt. slow cooker. Evenly top sauce with pasta; pour water over top. Drop heaping tablespoons of ricotta cheese mixture over pasta. Sprinkle with mozzarella cheese.
2. Cover; cook on high until heated through and pasta is tender, 2 to 2-1/2 hours. Top with fresh basil and if desired, Parmesan cheese and additional red pepper flakes; serve immediately.

Chinese PLA Navy transport aircraft hold simulated landing on carrier, ‘indicate 3rd carrier to be equipped with cargo planes’

First in aircraft carrier history: Only deep thinker could come up with strategic deployment ideas beyond simply attack, bombing, and killing!

The crusaders simply cannot comprehend ideas beyond killing, bullying and looting…

China and Russia will change the currently unequal and brutal world controls by the crusaders within the next decade

Full article HERE

Poverty Rate in the United States

U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey (CPS), Annual Social and Economic Supplements (CPS ASEC), Report P60-273: Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020-Current Population Reports (September 14, 2021):

Highlights, Poverty:

• The official poverty rate in 2020 was 11.4 percent, up 1.0 percentage point from 10.5 percent in 2019. This is the first increase in poverty after five consecutive annual declines.
• In 2020, there were 37.2 million people in poverty, approximately 3.3 million more than in 2019 .
• Between 2019 and 2020, the poverty rate increased for non-Hispanic Whites and Hispanics. Among non-Hispanic Whites, 8.2 percent were in poverty in 2020, while Hispanics had a poverty rate of 17.0 percent. Among the major racial groups examined in this report, Blacks had the highest poverty rate (19.5 percent), but did not experience a significant change from 2019. The poverty rate for Asians (8.1 percent) in 2020 was not statistically different from 2019.
• Poverty rates for people under the age of 18 increased from 14.4 percent in 2019 to 16.1 percent in 2020. Poverty rates also increased for people aged 18 to 64 from 9.4 percent in 2019 to 10.4 percent in 2020. The poverty rate for people aged 65 and older was 9.0 percent in 2020, not statistically different from 2019.
• Between 2019 and 2020, poverty rates increased for married-couple families and families with a female householder.
• The poverty rate for married-couple families increased from 4.0 percent in 2019 to 4.7 percent in 2020.
• families with a female householder, the poverty rate increased from 22.2 percent to 23.4 percent. The poverty rate for families with a male householder was 11.4 percent in 2020, not statistically different from 2019.

NYT equates China’s health workers with Adolf Eichmann

A twisted narrative by a paper unhinged by China’s success with Covid-19

by John Walsh January 19, 2022

In a article on the front page of The New York Times on January 13, reporter Li Yuan equated the public health and medical personnel behind China’s successful battle against Covid-19 in the city of Xian to Adolf Eichmann, a principal architect of the Holocaust. The article’s opening sentence views these personnel as typical of “the millions of people who work diligently toward” containing Covid-19 in China.

The anti-Covid campaign in Xian, a city of 13 million, has terminated the spread of Covid-19 without a single death and limited its spread to about 2,000 cases. The Nazi Holocaust designed and managed by Eichmann resulted in the extermination of millions of Jews.

The piece takes aim at the millions of Chinese who have worked tirelessly to do the rapid mass testing, tracing, quarantining and vaccinations and to staffing the lockdowns including ensuring that those under lockdown were supplied with necessities of life.

As a result of their work China has reported about 100,000 cases Covid-19 and fewer than 5,000 deaths. The mortality count has been verified by a count of excess deaths in a peer-reviewed article by a team from Oxford University and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the prestigious British Medical Journal; it is summarized here for the layman.

Peter Hessler, who was living and teaching in Chengdu, Sichuan, during the first of the lockdowns, described these workers as follows in a New Yorker piece in March 2020:

“When I asked if there had been much resistance to the new policies, he [the Communist Party official in charge of the lockdown in Hessler’s neighborhood in Chengdu] shook his head. ‘Ninety percent of the population agrees,’ he said. ‘We have some people who think it’s not convenient, and they want to go out and play mah-jongg or something. But most people follow the rules.’

“From what I had seen, he wasn’t exaggerating. The overwhelming compliance was one of the most impressive features of the lockdown, along with the dedication of grassroots officials. In Wuhan, the government had sent 1,800 teams of epidemiologists, each consisting of at least five people, to trace the contacts of infected citizens. The WHO report noted that the containment effort had been possible because of ‘the deep commitment of the Chinese people to collective action.’” (Emphasis added.)

Contrast that with this from Wikipedia’s entry on Eichmann:

“Eichmann and his staff became responsible for Jewish deportations to extermination camps, where the victims were gassed. Germany invaded Hungary in March 1944, and Eichmann oversaw the deportation of much of the Jewish population. Most of the victims were sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, where about 75% were murdered upon arrival.

“By the time the transports were stopped in July 1944, 437,000 of Hungary’s 725,000 Jews had been killed. Dieter Wisliceny testified at Nuremberg that Eichmann told him he would ‘leap laughing into the grave because the feeling that he had 5 million people on his conscience would be for him a source of extraordinary satisfaction.'”

How can the NYT’s Li Yuan equate the two? The polemic used to justify the equation deserves examination, because it demonstrates how the paper’s construction of the narrative of the day often works.

The tone and target are set by the online headline, which reads ominously, “The Army of Millions Who Enforce China’s Zero-Covid Policy, at All Costs.” (Emphasis added.) Later the case for the Eichmann equation begins as follows:

“The government has the help of a vast army of community workers who carry out the policy [of dynamic zero Covid] with zeal…. The tragedies in Xian have prompted some Chinese people to question how those enforcing the quarantine rules can behave like this.”

What are these tragedies? The author comes up with three presented near the very beginning of the piece.

First was a man with chest pains whose hospital admission was delayed by six hours and later died of a heart attack; the bureaucratic delay related to his living in a medium-risk district.

Second, a pregnant woman whose admission was also delayed because her Covid test appeared invalid; after admission she miscarried.

Third, a young man who was violating a curfew and got into an altercation with security guards.

Certainly, each of the first two these events is a tragic and unacceptable error. The third is hard to judge – if it is true. But in a city of many millions threatened with a deadly outbreak of the Delta variant of Covid, there were bound to be some mistakes. And if these are the worst of them, then it would seem that praise should be heaped on Xian’s hospital and public health workers.

Nevertheless, the first two of these incidents caused an outcry far and wide over the Internet, leading officials to take action. (Note that the disclosure and widespread discussion online belie the idea that there is no opening for criticism in China.)

The mass complaints led to the temporary closure of the hospitals to examine their procedures and ultimately to the punishing of those in charge. A national declaration made it clear that no patient was to be turned away from a hospital under any circumstances.

Building on these three anecdotes and neglecting any context up to this point, reporter Li continues:

“‘The banality of evil’ is a concept Chinese intellectuals often invoke in moments like Xian. It was coined by the philosopher Hannah Arendt, who wrote that Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, was an ordinary man who was motivated by ‘an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement.’

“Chinese intellectuals are struck by how many officials and civilians – often driven by professional ambition or obedience – are willing to be the enablers of authoritarian policies.” 

Who are these unnamed “intellectuals”? That is not clear. Certainly, there are a good many Chinese intellectuals in the country and abroad who are proud of China’s handling of the pandemic.

In summary, the anatomy of the article is a headline, then a cherry-picked set of anecdotes to set the tone. It is important that this mood be set as arrestingly and strikingly as possible. The most outrageous exceptions to the rule must be presented as though they are the norm. Finally based on these anecdotes, far-fetched conclusions are drawn based on the assumption that the anecdotes are representative.

Later on, buried deep in the article some context may be slipped in as a way to cover the writer’s derriere. Noam Chomsky many years ago suggested reading the NYT’s articles beginning with the end, since that is where the real information may lie. Often, any such qualifications are left out, resulting in a giant lie of omission.

That is how it is done.

There is a bright spot, however. Many if not most of the comments posted online, at least at the time of my reading, found Li’s polemic to be baseless, even downright absurd. Americans are not so easily deceived as the NYT editors may think. This is heartening, because the daily demonization of China in the US mass media, relentlessly and prominently so in the NYT, is a prelude to conflict and war.

As author Caitlin Johnstone tells us, “Before they drop the bombs, they drop the narrative.”

The NYT is carpet-bombing us Americans with an anti-China narrative these days.

One must ask in the end, what is the animus that drives this anti-China diatribe? Is it fear of the loss of the US role as global hegemon? Is it the self-righteousness and arrogance of the Exceptionalists? Or is it simply careerism in the service of an evil agenda, the very thing Hannah Arendt deplored?

Istanbul connectivity the new Russia-EU transit hub

By Chris Devonshire-Ellis

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European road connectivity has been completely cut from Russian GPS maps in an illustration of how serious Moscow views the EU’s perspective of the Ukraine conflict, and further evidence that Russia views the EU import and export markets as ‘dead.’

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This of course has significant and long-term implications for all EU businesses conducting trade with Russia and vice-versa, and has made Istanbul (shown as a red dot) the new central point for EU-Russian trade. It is also the nearest and fastest access point between Russia and Europe. It is a 3.5 hour flight between Moscow and Istanbul, coupled with the required connecting flights between Istanbul and all European destinations.

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2021 EU-Russia bilateral trade had reached €257.5 billion, with nearly all of that now looking to be sourced from new routes. Dezan Shira & Associates Chairman, Chris Devonshire-Ellis, is currently in Turkiye looking at facilitation opportunities.

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Article HERE

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RADIOACTIVITY – KRAFTWERK – HD Live

Enjoy the stage show. LOL!

Iran, Argentina apply to join BRICS bloc after recent summit

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Australia’s leading wine authority to close office in China as exports plunge

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Here’s proof of how fast the state of Florida is growing these days. Just wow.

Here is what is going on inside of Florida.

Vladimir Putin ally warns London ‘will be bombed first’ if World War 3 breaks out

London will be the first strategic Nato target to be hit by Russian missiles should a third world war erupt, a close ally of president Vladimir Putin has claimed.

Speaking on Russian state TV, Andrey Gurulyov, an MP who sits on Moscow’s defence committee, described how a possible full-scale invasion of Nato’s Baltic state members would work.

Paywall Article HERE

China’s colonial past is reflected in Semantics

For example, publicist Sima Nan, referring to the publications of a
famous mathematical scientist who appears on social networks under the
pseudonym Shanzhen Azhi, suggests that China’s colonial and
semi-colonial past is reflected in the way some Western countries are
referred to in modern Chinese. In a recent video posted on Chinese
social networks, Sima Nan, discussing China’s history, points out that
“once the Chinese sagged under Western pressure and consciously or
unconsciously began to praise overseas oppressors” and chose
semantically positive characters to name conquering countries. Without
going into the hieroglyphics and phonetic features of the Chinese
language, let us explain that, for example, the two hieroglyphs used to
write down the United States are translated as “Wonderful State”,
England as “Outstanding State”, France as “State of Law”, Germany,
respectively, as “State of Virtue”. The pious names of some European
powers and the United States, which once subjugated the decrepit
imperial China, were reflected in the minds of the Chinese.

According to Shanzhen Achzhi, England, which imposed the opium trade on
China, was called Outstanding, whereas it should have been called Opium,
leaving the sound, only changing the character. Virtuous Germany should
be renamed the Land of Knives, based on the crimes committed by the
“mustachioed artist” in the mid-20th century. We must discard the
incorrectly attributed “legitimacy” of French statehood, which until
very recently took part in the bombing of Libya, Iraq and Yugoslavia,
and assign it the homonymic character “fu” – which has an emotionally
colored negative meaning.

“American statehood, built on land taken from the native population,
would also do well to start writing it differently,” argues Sima Nan,
who questions the “beauty” of American history and the virtues of all
Western civilization. Of course, the above said is difficult to
understand for a foreigner not experienced in the wisdom of Chinese
hieroglyphics, but for the Chinese it all has deep meanings, i.e.,
speaking in a more understandable way – “as you call a boat, so it will
float” – the change of names of some European countries and the USA may
be followed by a revaluation of the whole Western civilization by the
Chinese.

Since the middle of the nineteenth century, with the defeat in the Opium
Wars, China became politically, economically and, consequently,
culturally dependent on the West. Global changes in the political map of
the world at the end of the twentieth century expanded China’s economic
ties with the West, but again forced it to maneuver politically. All
this, coupled with the increased mobility of the population and the
advent of the Internet, had by the beginning of this century only
increased the foreign influence on Chinese culture, which seems to have
recently begun to cause open concern among thinking and patriotic
people. Examples of China’s reassessment of values and purging its
national culture of foreign influences abound.

At the end of May, the Chinese segment of the Internet posted about
teaching materials released by the People’s Education publishing house
in 2013 and reprinted many times in the following years. The mother
tongue textbooks used by Chinese schoolchildren for nearly 10 years
appeared to contain a lot of “ideological subversion,” in short: Asian
children in the textbook pictures have clear signs of Down syndrome,
while the blond children are cheerful, red-cheeked, and dressed nicely
and neatly. In the textbooks, the positive heroes have foreign names,
while the bad kids are called by Chinese names. Heroic deeds are done in
stories that took place in the West, and everything bad is given
explicit references to China, etc. As many believe, the “harmful
textbook” scandal is a manifestation of a fierce struggle between
feuding forces in China itself and foreign forces interested in a change
of power in the country.

15 Exquisite Illustrations Which Sum Up Perfectly How Much We Love Our Pets

Pets always fill our home with a carefree, cheerful, and joyful atmosphere, and they don’t expect anything in return. They’re quite simply devoted to us, every day, all day. If you’ve ever been luck enough to own one, then you understand what unconditional love means. You know this feeling from all those times when you waited the whole day to come back home and stroke your cat or pet your dog.

So, we collected the 15 sweetest illustrations we could find which we think really show the incredible depth of love we have for our feline and canine friends. Go and hug your cat or dog right now! They deserve it.

F-35 Stealth Fighters ‘Suppressed’ By Russian Electronic Warfare; Missiles Fail To Hit Target

Unverified reports and videos by local Russian media claim that Israeli F-35 stealth fighters missed hitting their target due to electronic interference.

The reports claim that Israeli jets missed their target because of robust electronic suppression, which disrupted the weapon systems of the Lockheed Martin F-35 jets. According to reports, neither aircraft could strike the target during the military drills, which Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett attended.

At the same time, the report notes that this demonstrates the severe vulnerability of the fifth-generation F-35 fighters to electronic countermeasures.

Parth Satam, a defense analyst at the EurAsian Times, says: the video shows an air-to-ground munition, reportedly fired from an F-35, missing its target, which the website claims are owing to Electronic Warfare (EW) interference from Russian systems.

While it certainly is true that Russian EW systems like the Krasukha-4 have been highly effective in jamming even US drones, Russia’s interference in Israeli military exercises within its territory seems highly unlikely.

The only situation where Russia would interfere in Israeli air operations is in Syria, where they have a deconfliction mechanism to allow IAF to strike Iranian targets. They also helped shoot down Israeli AGMs with the Buk-M2/3 supplied to the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) a few months ago.

But Russia would softly retaliate by electronically interfering in Israeli air operations only around its interests in Ukraine or Syria. The AviaPro report might be valid to the extent that GPS signal disruption has been observed in the Eastern Mediterranean since Russia specifically installed anti-drone and EW systems at its Khmeimem air base in Syria to protect from air and space surveillance.

Russian electronic jammers can disrupt signals from GLONASS, American GPS, European Galileo, and Chinese BieDou satellite navigation systems. Thus aircraft, drones, or missiles will see their GPS receivers go awry.

Even in March 2021, interference was reported on the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellite, which some OSINT experts and telecommunications specialists concluded was radar interference. It was over the Black Sea region.

But assuming Russia did directly interfere in the Israeli domestic military drills, it could be because it calculated that the current tensions with Iran where Israel is trying to ramp up a regional coalition against it, conducting cyber attacks within the country and assassinating its military officers and nuclear scientists have gone out of hand.

Article HERE

Hiroshima ● 1985 ● Another Place (FULL ALBUM)

Enjoy this great background music…

NATO adopts tough line on China at Biden’s debut summit with alliance | Reuters

BRUSSELS, June 14 (Reuters) – NATO leaders warned on Monday that China presents “systemic challenges,” taking a forceful stance towards Beijing in a communique at Joe Biden’s first summit with an alliance that Donald Trump openly disparaged.

The new U.S. president has urged his fellow NATO leaders to stand up to China’s authoritarianism and growing military might, a change of focus for an alliance created to defend Europe from the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The language in the summit’s final communique, which will set the path for alliance policy, came a day after the Group of Seven (G7) rich nations issued a statement on human rights in China and Taiwan that Beijing said slandered its reputation.

“China’s stated ambitions and assertive behaviour present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order and to areas relevant to alliance security,” NATO leaders said in the communique.

Biden also told European allies that the alliance’s mutual defence pact was a “sacred obligation” for the United States – a marked shift in tone from his predecessor, Trump, who had threatened to withdraw from the alliance and accused Europeans of contributing too little to their own defence.

“I want all Europe to know that the United States is there,” said Biden. “NATO is critically important to us.”

Full Article HERE

G7 Leaders’ Communiqué on June 28. The word “China” appears 14 times

From HERE

NATO invites Finland, Sweden to join and eyes ‘direct threat’ from Putin amid Ukraine war

NATO has now officially invited Finland and Sweden to join the alliance, a sign of just how dramatically the Kremlin's war has upended the previous military landscape in Europe.

Earlier in the day, at the start of a summit in Madrid, President Joe Biden announced an increased U.S. military presence in Europe headlined by the first permanent American forces on NATO’s eastern flank and more rotating troops in the Baltic states.

The Western alliance also called Russia its "most significant and direct threat" in a joint statement, a notable shift from its description of Moscow as a "strategic partner" a decade ago.

Article HERE

Putin condemns NATO’s ‘imperial ambitions’, warns Finland, Sweden

Russian President Vladimir Putin has condemned NATO’s “imperial ambitions”, accusing the military alliance of seeking to assert its “supremacy” through the Ukraine conflict.

The Russian leader also said on Wednesday that he would respond in kind if NATO deployed troops and infrastructure in Finland and Sweden after the two Nordic countries join the military alliance.

Putin made his comment a day after NATO member Turkey lifted its veto over the bid by Finland and Sweden to join the alliance when the three nations agreed to protect each other’s security.

Helsinki and Stockholm joining NATO marks one of the biggest shifts in European security in decades.

“With Sweden and Finland, we don’t have the problems that we have with Ukraine. They want to join NATO, go ahead,” Putin told Russian state television after talks with regional leaders in the central Asian ex-Soviet state of Turkmenistan.

“But they must understand there was no threat before, while now, if military contingents and infrastructure are deployed there, we will have to respond in kind and create the same threats for the territories from which threats towards us are created,” he said.

Moscow’s relations with Helsinki and Stockholm would inevitably sour over their NATO membership, he added.

“Everything was fine between us, but now there might be some tensions, there certainly will,” Putin said.

“It’s inevitable if there is a threat to us.”

Article HERE

India’s biggest cement producer is to pay for a $26 million cargo of Russian coal with Chinese yuan.

In what could be a groundbreaking move, UltraTech Cement’s purchase could help insulate Moscow from the effects of western sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine if others follow its lead.

It could also bolster Beijing’s push to further internationalise its currency and chip away at the dominance of the US dollar in global trade.

The location for installing the Rozonans-NE radar was first announced in 2020. According to the most recent claims, the construction work has been going on since July 2021, as seen in the latest satellite images.

The facility is located near the Zapolyarny, a mining town about 10 kilometers from Russia’s border with Norway. The facility comprises four radar modules covering 90 degrees and can scan an entire circular area.

According to reports, the complex is without rotating antennas and has a transmit antenna-feeder and elevation antenna-feeder devices, as well as radar data receiving and processing systems. 

Once finished, the radar will have a sufficient field of operation to keep an eye on the skies above Rovaniemi in Finland and Evenes airport in Norway. These two places are current and future bases for the F-35.

NATO already has a pair of F-35 fighter jets at Evenes. These jets are assigned for Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) missions to intercept Russian aircraft flying out of the Kola Peninsula. The first of Finland’s F-35s, scheduled to enter service in 2025, will be based in Rovaniemi.

In 2020, a Rozonans-NE radar system sold to Iran, according to the Russian state-affiliated news agency TASS, had effectively located and tracked American F-35 fighter jets just outside the country’s borders.

The new radar is one of at least six similar systems that have already been installed or will soon be installed along Russia’s Arctic coastline, from the Kola Peninsula in the west to the Bering Strait in the east. 

Rozonans-NE Radar

The radar system can identify and follow even the most complicated air targets. The Rezonans-NE is a high frequency [VHF] early warning phased-array radar.

It is intended to detect various present and potential air targets, including low-observable cruise and ballistic missiles, hypersonic aircraft, and stealth aircraft, in environments with strong electronic countermeasures (ECM) and clutter.

The radar can run in a predetermined sector or circular scan mode. In addition to tasks for peacetime, it can provide information support for air and air defense warfare operations as well as an early warning of an air attack. 

The Rezonans-NE has four radar modules, each of which can operate independently and offers control in an azimuth sector of 90 degrees. The radar module includes transmit, azimuth, elevation antenna feeders, and the power amplifier. 

The radar’s data reception and processing system collects and processes data in the four modules. The radar data receiving and processing apparatus, as well as the probe signal generator, are digital devices controlled by specialized processors. The four-module radar, which covers a 100 x 100-meter area, scans a 360-degree sector.

Yuri Knutov, a Russian military expert, previously stated that Rezonans-NE is a highly effective radar system that incorporates artificial intelligence components. This technology enables the station to simulate an electronic image of a target and precisely identify its type with flight parameters.

The Resonance-N radar’s technical capabilities enable it to identify and designate targets at distances up to 600 km for aerodynamic air targets and up to 1,200 kilometers for ballistic targets. The system finds targets at up to 100 kilometers in altitude simultaneously.

The “Resonance-N” radar is being developed in modules. It significantly lowers the cost of its production because all of the station’s nodes are assembled into special containers afterward. The station has a friend-or-foe target recognition system and can function reliably in winds up to 50 m/s at the lowest and highest air temperatures.

During combat operations, the radar is said to be able to track more than 500 targets simultaneously, giving early warning of an air attack and informing aviation and anti-aircraft defense systems about the air situation. The system does not have rotating antennas, typically used to provide all-around visibility. 

Rezonans-NE is typically set up on the ground as a square of four modules. However, the radar can be built in one-module, two-module, or three variants with viewing segments of 90°, 180°, and 270°, respectively, upon the customer’s request.

This system is also exported to a few countries. Presently, the system has already been acquired by Egypt and Iran. Algeria is also said to be a user of this system. It is assumed that the Egyptian Resonance-NE radar monitors all objects in the airspace over Israel, Syria, and other countries besides Egypt.

In Huawei Battle, China Threatens Germany ‘Where It Hurts’: with German Automakers

It’s no longer possible to hurt China without being hurt BADLY in retaliation.

VW, Daimler and BMW sell more cars in China than anywhere else and many already cooperate with Huawei — a dependency Beijing is not shy to exploit.

NYT Paywall. Article HERE

China Orders Government, State Firms to Replace Foreign Computers – Bloomberg

China has ordered central government agencies and state-backed corporations to replace foreign-branded personal computers with domestic alternatives within two years, marking one of Beijing’s most aggressive efforts so far to eradicate key overseas technology from within its most sensitive organs.

Staff were asked after the week-long May break to turn in foreign PCs for local alternatives that run on operating software developed domestically, people familiar with the plan said. The exercise, which was mandated by central government authorities, is likely to eventually replace at least 50 million PCs on a central-government level alone, they said, asking to remain anonymous discussing a sensitive matter.

Article HERE

World Hal Turner 30 June 2022

In a breathtaking admission, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) say they’ve secretly used spyware on Canadians’ devices to get audio and visual recordings of Canadians without their knowledge.

According to sources, the RCMP claim they only use such spyware in the most “serious cases,” such as when there are national security concerns. However, this is the first time the RCMP has openly admitted that they infiltrate mobile devices to collect data, despite having access to the technology for years.

Their admission came after a Conservative MP questioned what government programs are used to gather data on Canadians last week.

“This is a kind of capability that they have done everything possible to keep incredibly quiet,” said UofT senior research associate Christopher Parsons.

“This is a remarkable finding and, for the first time, publicly reveals that the RCMP is using spyware to infiltrate mobile devices, as well as the broad capabilities of their spyware.” Parsons continues, saying that many security experts have been aware of these capabilities but that this is the first time the RCMP has admitted it. He added that this “is the cleanest, most straightforward explanation of what they’re capable of doing that I’m aware of.”

The RCMP claims it only used this technology in 10 investigations between 2018 and 2020.

According to the submitted RCMP document, the decision to use spyware to infiltrate Canadians’ personal devices is in response to new encryption services that make it difficult for officers to conduct court-authorized electronic surveillance.

“In less than a generation, a high number of Canadians migrated their daily communications from a small number of large telecommunication service providers, all of which provided limited and centrally controlled services to customers, to countless organizations in Canada and elsewhere that provide a myriad of digital services to customers,” the document reads.

“That decentralization, combined with the widespread use of end-to-end encrypted voice and text-based messaging services, make it exponentially more difficult for the RCMP to conduct court-authorized electronic surveillance.”

As for the scope of the spyware used, the technology can gather pictures, videos, calendar entries, financial records, audio recordings, text messages, private communications, and “photographic images of persons, places and activities viewable by the camera(s) built into the targeted device.”

What is not being said is that [1] the technology to spy was obtained from the United States, and [2] none of the Huawei systems and towers could be "backdoored". -MM

The Economist rephrases controversial article comparing the amount of food consumption by Chinese with pigs

The Economist rephrases controversial article, clarifies it never intended to cause offense amid accusations of racism - Global Times

Full article HERE

The Economist magazine has rephrased the controversial comparison featured in one of their articles that compares pigs to Chinese people and clarified that it was not intended to cause offense, which, however, failed to convince Chinese netizens outraged by such racist and dehumanizing language.

On Thursday, in an email reply to the Global Times, the magazine writes: "As our intention was never to cause offence, we have rephrased the article to make our meaning absolutely clear."

"In a Graphic setting out how most of the world's grain is fed to animals or used to make biofuel, we observed that 431m tonnes of grain is eaten by pigs and that, if it were a stand-alone country, this would rank at the very top of the league tables for grain consumption. By way of comparison, we pointed out that this is 45% more than the real-life country that consumes the most rice and wheat, which is China," The Economist explained in the email. 

The Economist said it had rephrased the article and attached a note at the bottom after being "contacted by Chinese readers, who object to the comparison."

The now-deleted content was part of an article titled "Most of the world's grain is not eaten by humans" published on June 23. 

"In 2019 pigs ate 432m tonnes of grain, 45% more than the people of China did," it read.

On Thursday, the Global Times found that the comparison has been rephrased to "According to our calculations, if the world's pig population were a stand-alone country, it would rank at the very top of grain-consumption league tables, chomping through as much grain as 2bn people."

In a clarification note attached at the bottom of the article on Wednesday, The Economist said "An earlier version of this article compared the grain-consumption rate of pigs with that of the people of China. We selected China solely because it is the world's leading consumer of both wheat and rice."

However, the rephrase and clarification seemingly still failed to convince the outraged Chinese netizens, as The Economist did not make any apology for the mistake.

"Spitting in our face and then 'rephrasing things,' what's the point??" said a user of China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo.

The previous comparison triggered backlash among Chinese readers as well as overseas netizens after The Economist used it in a Tweet to promote the article on Tuesday.

Although the article mainly focuses on analyzing data of food consumption per country, area, and year, the inappropriate comparison between pigs and the Chinese people was widely criticized for being "awful," "racist" and "dehumanizing."

The Tweet has also been deleted as of Wednesday.

California Just Leaked The Name, Address Of Every Concealed Carry Licensee In The State

The California government has leaked an enormous volume of personal data on the state’s gun owners—including the name and address of every concealed carry permit holder in the state. The data was posted to the internet on Monday—when the California Department of Justice launched its “2022 Firearms Dashboard Portal.”

The readily-downloadable information included

"names, birthdays, addresses, ages, the purchase date and type of firearm permit they possessed, and their Criminal Identification Index numbers, which are used to track state and federal criminal records,"

according to Gizmodo.  ABC30 reports that gender and driver’s license numbers were also exposed.

The state’s assault weapon registry and Dealer Record of Sale (DROS) data were also affected, but the DOJ has not yet determined to what extent associated personal data was compromised.

The personal data was available for downloading with the click of a button on the site’s mapping feature, according to The Reload. The portal was accessible from Monday afternoon until sometime Tuesday morning.

The breach potentially opened a Pandora’s box of harms for law-abiding Californians who acquired firearms and permits for self-protection. Those perils extend far beyond merely being ostracized by liberal coworkers and neighbors. For example:

• A list of gun owners and their addresses is a treasure map for thieves seeking to steal firearms
• Knowledge of an individual’s gun ownership can be used against them via the filing of spurious “red flag” complaints pursuant to the state’s Gun Violence Restraining Order system
• Someone who obtained a firearm for protection from an abusive partner or ex-partner could be endangered if knowledge of that weapon acquisition sends the partner into a rage

The leaked data identified who among the concealed carry permit holders is a police officer or a judge. The Reload studied the posted data for Los Angeles County and found 244 judge permits complete with addresses and other personal data. Another 2,891 ordinary concealed carry permit-holders in the county were also exposed.

California issued 40,000 concealed carry permits in 2021, well off the 2016 peak of 100,000.

In light of the state’s dangerous mass violation of gun owners’ privacy, Monday’s press release promoting the portal’s debut now reads like dark comedy. In it, state attorney general Rob Bonta said,

“Transparency is key to increasing public trust between law enforcement and the communities we serve...Today’s announcement puts power and information into the hands of our communities."

After the leak was discovered, Bonta said,

“This unauthorized release of personal information is unacceptable and falls far short of my expectations for this department.”

As this article is written, those attempting to access the portal are presented with a notice:

"Website temporarily unavailable. Please try again in a few minutes."

California Rifle & Pistol Association (CRPA) president Chuck Michel told The Reload that …

"vindictive sore loser bureaucrats have endangered people’s lives and invited conflict by illegally releasing confidential private information. CRPA is working with several legislators and sheriffs to determine the extent of the damage caused by DOJ’s doxing of law abiding gun owners. Litigation is likely.” 

The portal is meant to provide data on dealer record of sales, Gun Violence Restraining Orders, concealed carry permits, firearms safety certificates, “assault weapons,” and a roster of “certified handguns.”

The mass data dump was discovered by two California sheriffs who were using the new dashboard.

This Japanese Artist Imagined What Cats Would Look Like As Anime Girls

Japanese artist known as DHK recreated funny cat pictures in an anime style, turning the kittens into girls. The recreations are cute and professional. The artist manages to keep the resemblance to the original picture while creating stylish and beautiful characters that will probably make you wonder how your pets would look as humans.

Do you want more?

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