Month: July 2024

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

Federal health officials reported that the number of measles cases so far in 2024 has already tripled the total for all of 2023.

According to data published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on July 26, at least 188 cases of measles have been reported across the United States for 2024. In all, 26 states and Washington, D.C., have reported cases of the virus, which officials say can cause severe disease in children.

In 2023, a total of 58 measles cases were reported across the United States, the CDC data shows.

During 2024, there have been 13 outbreaks so far, which the CDC defines as three or more related cases, and about 65 percent of cases are related to outbreaks, according to the agency. Children under the age of 5 account for nearly half of the cases in 2024.

Cases this year have been reported in Arizona, California, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York City, New York State, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, the agency said.

No deaths from the virus have been reported so far in 2024, according to the CDC, but 93 patients have been hospitalized.

Local health authorities have issued multiple alerts this year due to infected individuals with a recent history of international travel, potentially exposing other people to measles in airports, including an incident in late May at the Philadelphia International Airport. In early July, public health departments in Washington state and Ohio issued similar warnings.

“Measles is a very contagious infection and if you don’t yet have immunity, you can get it just by being in a room where a person with measles has been,” Eric Chow, an official in the King County Public Health agency, said in a release.

In March, the CDC sent out a health alert regarding an increase in “global and U.S. measles cases,” saying that people traveling internationally should take caution before leaving the country.

But despite the recent increase, the numbers are far below those reported in 2019, when about 1,300 cases were reported across the U.S.

Worldwide, measles cases increased 18 percent and deaths rose 43 percent between 2021 and 2022, according to a report issued by the U.N. World Health Organization (WHO) and the CDC in late 2023.

Migrant Shelter Outbreak

A significant number of measles cases reported in the United States this year have been connected to the spread of the virus at a Chicago shelter that houses illegal immigrants. As of May, 57 cases were associated with the shelter outbreak, the CDC said in a report.

“Most cases occurred in unvaccinated persons. A prompt and coordinated response with a high-coverage mass vaccination campaign reduced the size and duration of the outbreak,” the agency stated, referring to the Chicago outbreak.

The CDC added that the setting allowed measles to spread quickly to the 2,100 potentially “exposed shelter residents” starting in early March.

Symptoms

Authorities say measles, a highly infectious virus, generally shows up in two stages. In the first, most people develop a fever higher than 101 degrees Fahrenheit, runny nose, watery red eyes, or cough. These symptoms generally start seven to 14 days after exposure.

Officials say the second stage of measles starts two to three days after the initial symptoms. Some people develop what is known as Koplik spots—tiny white spots—inside the mouth, the CDC says.

Three to five days after the first symptoms begin, the telltale measles rash starts to appear on the patient’s face near the hairline area before it spreads to the rest of the body.

“Small raised bumps may also appear on top of the flat red spots,” and the “spots may become joined together as they spread from the head to the rest of the body,” the CDC says on its website. “When the rash appears, a person’s fever may spike to more than 104 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Authored by Tyler Winklevoss via American Greatness,

In June, Cameron and I were invited to a crypto round table in DC with the White House in attendance. Two weeks later, we were disinvited because we publicly endorsed former President Donald Trump. 

The Biden-Harris Administration did not want us there and refused to attend the event if we were present. While this is totally their choice, it perfectly captures this Administration’s unwillingness to sincerely engage with our industry beyond paying lip service. If you are truly looking to engage with our industry — after waging war on it for the past 4 years — and understand its points of view in earnest, then certainly you would want to hear from and welcome the most vocal and critical voices, the people who have been most negatively impacted by your policies, even if their minds are made up. That is how you get real signal and perspective for self-reflection.

Disinviting your critics from a round table discussion because they support an opposing candidate (who by the way promised in no uncertain terms to end your war on crypto) is exactly the kind of behavior that makes crypto partisan.

Not only is this behavior petty, it’s fake engagement that only serves to create a meaningless echo chamber. But it also begs a deeper question.

Who exactly from the White House disinvited us from this round table?

President Biden?

Doubtful. He didn’t even show up.

Was he even aware that this round table was being convened and happening?

Again, doubtful given all that we now know and have seen.

So, who exactly is in charge here?

Is it the same people who one week say that President Biden is “sharp as a tack” and the next week sideline him? Who are these people and how can we look them in the eye and get assurances that the next 4 years will be different? I’d love to know.

The Biden-Harris Administration had an opportunity to try and reset the relationship with the crypto industry this week. In direct contrast to how we all have been stonewalled and disinvited the last 4 years, and despite an infinite number of reasons not to, the The Bitcoin Conference graciously and magnanimously extended an invitation to Kamala Harris to speak to and engage with our industry in Nashville this weekend. That’s an olive branch of real engagement. Harris declined.

Which of course is no engagement at all.

But to her defense, did she really? Maybe she wanted to speak but the same people who installed her a week ago would not let her.

We don’t really know, and that’s the problem. The only way to solve for this confusion and broken trust is for whoever is in charge to demonstrate real concrete action before November.

Demanding that Harris, or whoever calls the shots, take action before November is the most non-partisan position of all. As an industry, we should be completely aligned on this. We should demand to know, among other things, who the next chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is before we head to the ballot box. This is table stakes, and this is how you make crypto bipartisan. No more guessing. No more hoping. No more surprises. Our industry should not tolerate any possibility of a repeat of the last 4 years. We need to see tangible change and a proof of commitment to treating our industry fairly and dealing with it in good faith going forward.

My hope is that in the not-too-distant future there are no politicians at any Bitcoin or crypto conferences. Not because they are not welcome, but because crypto is so universally accepted that it is no longer a campaign issue and therefore would be a waste of their time.

Like going to a conference on whether or not email or the Internet should be legal or allowed. I’d like to get back to building full-time and I know all of you would too. In order to do this, we, as an industry, must demand that both parties embrace our industry, treat it fairly, and do everything in their power to ensure that America is the best home in the world for crypto. The Biden-Harris Administration has 4 years of terror to unwind and only 101 days before November to do it. The ball is in their court.

Via HeadlineUSA.com,

(Glenn Minnis, The Center Square) With the city of Chicago already spending as much as $1.5 million a day for migrant housing and thousands of new illegals expected in the weeks ahead, local activist Tio Hardiman is renewing his call for the city to reverse its sanctuary city status.

For the past two years, Chicago has received more than 45,000 foreign nationals from the southern U.S. border, where border communities have been inundated with border crossers. The taxpayer costs for Illinois and the city of Chicago continue with the new state budget that started this month setting aside more than $900 million for health care, housing, food and even legal subsidies.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently went on record with his plan to continue busing people to Chicago, where local law enforcement are prohibited from assisting enforcement of federal immigration laws. Earlier this week, a Chicago City Council committee heard from the budget director they have not budgeted for the expected surge.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was asked about the potential of thousands of more non-citizen migrants being transported to the city leading up to the Democratic National Convention next month.

“We have right now, currently, roughly 5,600 new arrivals that are still in our shelters. Our collective resources are prepared for as many as 15,000 but we certainly hope that Gov. Abbot finds Jesus Christ as his lord and savior and don’t do that,” Johnson said Thursday.

Hardiman said he’s had enough of all the politics coming from both sides.

“The Democrats may be looking at the migrant situation like, in the next two or three years, all those migrants will become registered voters,” he said.

“The Republicans are looking from a lens where they’re trying to penalize some of the Democratic cities.”

Overall, the city has paid out at least $185 million to care for migrants over the last six months. Hardiman said policies have to change.

“Let’s bring an end to sanctuary cities because the city is not prepared,” Hardiman said.

Hardiman’s calls for the city to reverse course goes back to 2023, when he argued state lawmakers were not doing nearly enough to help the longtime downtrodden residents of the state and that its newfound migrant problem is one wholly created by bad policy.

All the runaway spending sends a clear and irrefutable message, he said.

“The state, city and county have already spent close to … $800 million or more on the immigrant crisis here, and all those resources are going to the illegal immigrants and the resources should be going to those that are already here struggling each and every day,” he said.

“The message is going out that elected officials care more about the illegal immigrants than they care about the people that have been there their whole life struggling.”

Through all the back and forth, Hardiman said one thing remains clear to him.

“I’m never going to sit up and agree that we should be a sanctuary city and allow illegal immigrants to come over and receive all the resources in this state and you got people here starving right now,” he said.

The surge of migrants is expected to coincide with the Democratic National Convention that begins in Chicago Aug. 19.

It was just days ago we wrote that Paris’ mayor was going swimming in the Seine to dispel rumors that the water was too dirty for athletes to use.

How quickly the (sh*t filled) tide has turned. 

Questions about the Seine River’s water quality have persisted into the 2024 Olympics, leading to the cancellation of a pre-race triathlon event on Sunday, according to the New York Post.

Organizers scrapped the swimming leg after a meeting with World Triathlon and local authorities about water quality tests.

We noted weeks ago that swimming in the Seine has been banned for over a century and since 2015, organizers have invested $1.5 billion to prepare the river for the Olympics and ensure a cleaner Seine for Parisians post-Games.

This plan included building a massive underground water storage basin in central Paris, renovating sewer infrastructure, and upgrading wastewater treatment plants.

Originally planned for June, Hidalgo’s swim was delayed due to snap parliamentary elections. During that time, the hashtag “jechiedanslaSeine” (“I’m pooping in the Seine”) trended on social media as a protest against the Olympics.

Previous attempts to clean the Seine, including a pledge by former French president Jacques Chirac in 1988, were unsuccessful. Hidalgo followed French Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, who swam in the Seine on Saturday wearing a full-body suit.

Concerns about the Seine’s flow and pollution levels continue, leading to daily water quality tests by Eau de Paris. Early June tests showed unsafe E. coli levels, but results in July seemed to have improved heading into the opening ceremony.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo took a swim in the Seine River earlier this month in an effort to prove the “long-polluted” river was now clean enough to host swimming during this year’s Olympic Games.

Earlier this year the water showed unsafe levels of E. coli bacteria, AP reported. 

During her swim she was joined by swimmers from local clubs, Paris 2024 chief Tony Estanguet and the top government official for the Paris region, Marc Guillaume, the report says. 

Hidalgo said during the swim: “The Seine is exquisite. The water is very, very good. A little cool, but not so bad.’’

She called the day “a dream” and a “testimony that we have achieved a lot of work”.

More like a testimony of the efficiency of government…

Authored by Christopher Rivituso via AGMetalMiner.com,

• Ukrainian steel production and exports increased by one-third in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023.

• The removal of import duties on Ukrainian steel into the European Union contributed to the surge in exports.

• Ferrexpo, a Ukrainian iron ore producer, also reported an 83% year-on-year increase in its pellets production during the same period.

For the first half of 2024, Ukrainian steel manufacturing increased finished and semi-finished production by about one-third year on year. According to a July 15 report from Kyiv-based steelmaking association Ukrmetallurgprom, volumes for the first six months came to 3.14 million metric tons, representing a 32% rise from an estimated 2.37 million metric tons.

The association also cited the State Customs Service of Ukraine as saying that steelmakers exported almost 2 million metric tons, or 63.6% of that total. In comparison, Ukrmetallurgprom pointed out that exports in H1 2023 were 52.9% of the total at 1.25 million metric tons. 

One source told MetalMiner that the removal of import duties on Ukrainian steel into the European Union in early June 2022 was behind the increases. The move specifically intended to aid the economy of Ukraine following Russia’s invasion of the country in February 2022.

Steel Manufacturing Totals Indicate Significant Changes 

Semi-finished products comprised over 45% of the exports within H1 2024 exports. Ukrmetallurgprom noted that this figure remained practically unchanged from H1 2023. According to the State Customs Service of Ukraine, the country’s main export markets were EU-27 at 77.1%, other Europe at 6.9%, and Africa at 6.4%.

Billet is a primary export for steel manufacturers in Ukraine. Due to its proximity to the Black Sea, many Turkish rollers purchase the semi-finished product to make rebar, wire rod, and merchant bar. However, Ukrmetallurgprom also noted that flat-rolled products totaled 41.7% of exports in H1 2024, an increase from the 33.6% seen in H1 2023.

The share of exports represented by longs products declined sharply from almost 20.5% to just 12% of the total. Flat products also dominated finished steel imports into Ukraine at slightly over 80% of the total, against 18.3% for longs in H1. Data from Ukrmetallurgprom showed that those percentages remained largely unchanged since H1 2023.

Ferrexpo Also Reported Increases 

Upstream, Ukrainian iron ore producer Ferrexpo reported an 83% year-on-year increase in its pellets production for the first six months of 2024, thanks in part to the opening of the Black Sea maritime corridor.

“Since the corridor was opened in late 2023, it is estimated that over 800 ships have safely passed through, including 90 with ferrous commodities,” the company said on July 8. “The increased number of owners prepared to charter vessels to Ukrainian ports resulted in improved availability. However, freight rates and insurance risk premiums remain high, not only for the passage to Ukraine, but also through the Red Sea.”

Ferrexpo’s Premium Pellets Surge 55% in Stunning H1 Performance

Ferrexpo noted that total commercial production for H1 exceeded 3.73 million metric tons, against more than 2.03 million metric tons over the same time in 2023. Meanwhile, company data showed that concentrate production was up 171% to 429,865 metric tons from 158,594 metric tons around a year ago.

Ferrexpo also indicated that total pellet production rose 76% to 3.29 million metric tons from 1.87 million metric tons. Premium pellets were up 55% to 2.83 million metric tons from 1.82 million metric tons, while Ferrexpo’s “Other Pellets” category showed a five-fold rise to 298,465 metric tons from 49,911 metric tons.

The War Continues to Cause Problems for Steel Manufacturing 

Despite the notable year-on-year increases, Ferrexpo’s latest H1 total production figure came in one-third lower than the 5.71 million metric tons the company reported for its H1 2021 results. This, of course, was before Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ferrexpo noted several challenges due to the ongoing conflict with Russia, stating, “Other cost pressures continue to rise during the second quarter, especially electricity prices.” Representatives added that, “Attacks on energy generation and transmission infrastructure have greatly reduced Ukraine’s domestic power supply. Ferrexpo moved early to source alternative power from Ukraine’s European neighbors, which has so far resulted in minimal disruption to its production activities.”

Every four years the Summer Olympics come around and athletes vie for medals, sporting glory, and the success of their country.

Athletes in peak condition stun crowds, create new records, and push the limits of the human body. And over time, those bodies have gotten noticeably bigger.

Using data from Sports Reference (via Kaggle), Visual Capitalist’s Georgios Karamanis plotted the average height and weight of Olympic athletes by sport to show how their body dimensions have changed over the years.

Sports Where Olympic Athletes are Getting Bigger

At first glance, all sports seemed to have moved to the right and ascended up the chart (a higher average weight and height) over the last 50 years.

Here’s a table of the average weight of male Olympians, in kilograms, categorized by sport. Only sports where a direct comparison could be made between 1960 and 2016 were included:

Sport	1960 (Kg)	2016 (Kg)	% Change
Athletics	72.4	74.6	+3.04%
Basketball	83.9	100.2	+19.43%
Boxing	65.9	67.8	+2.88%
Canoeing	75.1	82.8	+10.25%
Cycling	69.9	73.6	+5.29%
Diving	66.2	66.9	+1.06%
Equestrianism	68.5	73.4	+7.15%
Fencing	72.5	79.5	+9.66%
Football	70.2	74.1	+5.56%
Gymnastics	65.1	63.1	-3.07%
Hockey	69.8	77.3	+10.74%
Modern Pentathlon	71.0	74.2	+4.51%
Rowing	79.2	86.7	+9.47%
Sailing	76.6	77.3	+0.91%
Shooting	75.8	80.2	+5.80%
Swimming	75.2	81.3	+8.11%
Water Polo	82.4	94.6	+14.81%
Weightlifting	76.3	87.8	+15.07%
Wrestling	72.2	85.9	+18.98%

The biggest example of the phenomenon is in basketball, where the average weight for men has gone up by more than 16 kilograms (35 lbs). The average height has also increased by 12 centimeters (5 in) as seen in the next table.

Sport	1960 (Cm)	2016 (Cm)	% Change
Athletics	178.40	181.00	+1.46%
Basketball	188.20	200.50	+6.54%
Boxing	171.50	175.60	+2.39%
Canoeing	177.50	182.40	+2.76%
Cycling	174.70	179.60	+2.80%
Diving	170.60	172.20	+0.94%
Equestrianism	174.10	179.50	+3.10%
Fencing	177.30	183.90	+3.72%
Football (Soccer)	174.10	179.60	+3.16%
Gymnastics	168.70	167.40	-0.77%
Hockey	174.50	179.90	+3.09%
Modern Pentathlon	176.80	182.80	+3.39%
Rowing	182.70	189.90	+3.94%
Sailing	176.60	181.30	+2.66%
Shooting	173.90	177.80	+2.24%
Swimming	179.30	187.60	+4.63%
Water Polo	182.00	191.20	+5.05%
Weightlifting	167.90	170.80	+1.73%
Wrestling	171.20	176.10	+2.86%

Wrestling, weightlifting, and water polo have also seen significant increases in weight and height for men. Under the Body Mass Index (BMI), all three have pushed clearly into overweight classification, with weightlifting especially close to obese.

On the women’s side, though more sports have been included in the Olympics since 1960, the sport-by-sport differences in average weight and height are less meteoric. Swimming, canoeing and diving saw the most change, though all three still fall well within normal BMI classification.

Does that mean athletes are becoming unhealthier? Not necessarily. Muscular athletes often have a high BMI because the index doesn’t differentiate between weight from fat, muscle, or bone. BMI also tends to exaggerate obesity in tall people, and thin-ness in short people.

The Outliers

Again, though most sports have seen athletes get bigger over time, there are some outliers.

Notably, gymnastics bucks the trend for both men and women in the chart. The average gymnast in 2016 was both lighter and shorter than their counterparts in 1960. Women gymnasts in particular weighed 4 kilograms (9 lbs) less and were nearly 3 centimeters (1 in) shorter.

Here’s a table of all the changes in weight for female Olympians:

Sport	1960 (Kg)	2016 (Kg)	% Change
Athletics	63.2	60.0	-5.06%
Canoeing	63.4	66.8	+5.36%
Diving	52.9	55.1	+4.16%
Equestrianism	57.2	58.6	+2.45%
Fencing	58.7	63.5	+8.18%
Gymnastics	54.1	49.7	-8.13%
Sailing	65.0	63.1	-2.92%
Swimming	60.3	63.9	+5.97%

In gymnastics, studies have shown that “smaller gymnasts with a high strength-to-mass ratio” have greater potential for performing rotations. One notable example is American gymnast Simone Biles, the most decorated gymnast in history, who measures 142 centimeters (4’8″) or a full 14 centimeters shorter than the average female gymnast at the 2016 Olympic games.

Here’s a table of the height changes for women Olympians.

Sport	1960 (Cm)	2016 (Cm)	% Change
Athletics	168.6	169.2	+0.36%
Canoeing	166.6	170.0	+2.04%
Diving	159.0	161.2	+1.38%
Equestrianism	167.0	168.2	+0.72%
Fencing	164.8	171.7	+4.19%
Gymnastics	159.2	156.4	-1.76%
Sailing	168.0	169.4	+0.83%
Swimming	165.9	174.2	+5.00%

Female Olympians also saw weight decreases in athletics and sailing, even as they logged height increases in the same sports.

However, as the Olympics have added and removed categories from the games over the years, several sports don’t have direct comparisons available. For women in particular, only eight categories of sport from the 1960s were still present in the Rio Olympics. For men, that number goes up to 19 sports.

We’ll have to wait for the next few Olympics to see if this trend continues or starts to plateau at an ideal height and weight combination for athletes competing at the highest levels of sport.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

A top Russian expert candidly analyzed their country’s newly signed gas pipeline Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Iran from late June in two interviews with Sputnik and Azerbaijan’s News.Az. Igor Yushkov, who’s described by the prestigious Russian International Affairs Council as a Professor at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation and leading expert at the National Energy Security Fund, strongly suggested that this might be more about optics than substance.

This agreement appears to be a game-changer at first glance since some of the 300 million cubic meters of gas per day that Russia plans to export to Iran, which Sputnik calculated roughly equals the maximum output of the now-defunct Nord Stream pipelines, could also meet some of India’s growing energy needs. The primary obstacle though will be in getting the approval of all Caspian states for an undersea pipeline, which Yushkov hinted to his country’s media might be much more difficult than it seems.

He elaborated more on this to Azerbaijani media, explaining that the estimated $10 billion worth of investments required wouldn’t make the venture profitable if Kommersant’s report about the gas being sold at around $100 per thousand meters is true. That’s close to the price paid by the CIS countries and is 62% lower than what China pays for importing gas from the Power of Siberia pipeline. He concluded that the plans “seem unrealistic and are most likely pursuing political rather than economic goals.”

Yushkov might be onto something too since it’s important for readers to remember that Russia is reportedly embroiled in a pricing dispute with China over the Power of Siberia II pipeline that was analyzed in this piece here from early June shortly after Putin’s latest trip there the month prior. In brief, Russia wants to get the highest price possible while China wants the lowest, with each believing that the other will bend to their demands the longer that the talks drag on.

From Russia’s perspective, the US’ impending “Pivot (back) to Asia” will inevitably lead to more credible threats against the maritime energy supply chains that China is dependent upon for powering its economy, thus compelling the People’s Republic to agree to higher prices for more reliable Russian gas. Meanwhile, China’s view is that growing financial pressures on Russia will compel it to agree to lower prices for reasons of convenience, helped along as they are by the difficulty of selling its gas elsewhere.

With these competing calculations in mind, the newly signed Russian-Iranian gas MoU might actually be a ploy for improving Moscow’s negotiating leverage with Beijing by showing the latter that it does indeed have supposedly viable alternatives for selling its gas to Asia. As for what Kommersant reported regarding the low rate that Russia allegedly agreed to sell its gas to Iran for, it’s either inaccurate or a preliminary understanding that could very well change as the talks towards a final deal evolve.

After all, if Russia is supposedly desperate enough for revenue that it’ll begin the long process of trying to seek all Caspian states’ approval for an undersea pipeline which can’t be assured and which’ll require a huge investment that’ll barely pay off in the event that they agree, then it doesn’t make sense to hold off on a deal with China. The Power of Siberia II could begin construction immediately after the contract is signed, would predictably cost less, and wouldn’t face anywhere near the same technical challenges.

For these reasons, it’s apparent that everything isn’t as clear-cut as it seems when it comes to the Russian-Iranian gas MoU, with this agreement being less of a game-changer than it appeared at first glance upon further scrutiny and much more like a ploy of sorts to bolster Russia’s hand in talks with China. Iran is probably playing along since the optimistic reports that followed from friendly media drew awareness to its crucial geostrategic position and accordingly improved its soft power at no cost to itself.

Altogether, it can therefore be concluded that their newly signed understanding is a mutually beneficial way to advance their respective ulterior interests and isn’t as substantive as some might have initially thought. To be sure, it would indeed be a game-changer if their envisaged undersea pipeline is built and Russian gas either directly travels to India or is provided to it by Iran via a swap arrangement, but that’s unlikely to happen. Absent any serious progress, most people might even forget about this by next year.

Over 2 billion people are current drinkers, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

This map, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, shows the percentage of the population over 15 years old that consumed alcohol in the previous 12 months by region. The data is from 2019 and was published in the 2024 Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health and Treatment of Substance Use Disorders.

According to the World Health Organization’s definitions, the map is divided into six regions.

European Countries Have the Highest Percentage of Drinkers

The level of drinking is highest in European countries. Seven of the 10 countries with the highest alcohol consumption in 2019 were members of the European Union.

Countries in North Africa and the Middle East have the lowest alcohol consumption rates due to cultural and religious factors. On the map, these countries can mostly be seen in the WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean classification, where just 4% of the population consumes alcohol on a semi-regular basis.

Health Consequences of Alcohol Consumption

According to WHO, 2.6 million people (2 million of them men) die from alcohol-related causes each year.

The highest levels of alcohol-attributable deaths per 100,000 people are observed in countries in Africa and Europe.

Globally, an estimated 400 million people, or 7% of the world’s population aged 15 years and older, live with alcohol use disorders, and an estimated 209 million (3.7% of the adult world population) live with alcohol dependence.

If you liked this post, check out Ranked: Which Countries Drink the Most Beer? This graphic compares global beer consumption by country.

Authored by Robert Malone,

Surveillance capitalism is a novel economic system that has emerged in the digital era. It is characterized by the unilateral claim of private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data. In this version of capitalism, predicting and influencing behavior (political and economic) rather than producing goods and services is the primary product. This economic logic prioritizes extracting, processing, and trading personal data to predict and influence human behavior by exploiting those predictions for various economic (marketing) and political objectives. 

In many cases, surveillance capitalism merges with PsyWar tools and technologies to power the modern surveillance state, giving rise to a new form of Fascism (public-private partnerships) known as techno-totalitarianism.  Leading corporations employing the surveillance capitalism business model include Google, Amazon and Facebook.  Surveillance capitalism has now fused with the science and theory of psychology, marketing, and algorithmic manipulation of online information to give rise to propaganda and censorship capabilities that go far beyond those imagined by the twentieth-century predictions of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell.

Key Features of Surveillance Capitalism

1. One-way mirror operations: Surveillance capitalists engineer operations to operate in secrecy, hiding their methods and intentions from users, who are unaware of the extent of data collection and analysis.

2. Instrumentation power: Surveillance capitalists wield power by designing systems that cultivate “radical indifference,” rendering users oblivious to their observations and manipulations.

3. Behavioral futures markets: The extracted data is traded in new markets, enabling companies to bet on users’ future behavior, generating immense wealth for surveillance capitalists.

4. Collaboration with the state: Surveillance capitalism often involves partnerships with governments, leveraging favorable laws, policing, and information sharing to further entrench its power.

Historical Development

Surveillance capitalism has its roots in the early days of the internet, when companies like Google and Facebook exploited the “ungoverned spaces” of the digital realm. The dot-com bust, the success of Apple’s consumer-centric approach, and the surveillance-friendly environment created by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and CIA’s investments in the “war on terror” all contributed to the rise of surveillance capitalism.

Consequences

1. Loss of autonomy: Surveillance capitalism erodes individual autonomy as users are manipulated and influenced by algorithms designed to predict and shape their behavior.

2. Threat to democracy: The concentration of power in the hands of surveillance capitalists undermines democratic processes, as they use their influence to shape public opinion and policy.

3. Economic inequality: The wealth generated by surveillance capitalism exacerbates economic inequality, as those who own and control the data and algorithms reap the benefits while users are exploited as free commodities.

Resistance and Reform

To counter surveillance capitalism, it is essential to:

1. Promote transparency and accountability: Demand greater openness about data collection and processing practices and mechanisms for users to exercise control over their data.

2. Regulate surveillance capitalism: Establish robust regulations to limit the power of surveillance capitalists, protect user rights, and promote fair competition.

3. Foster alternative economic models: Encourage the development of alternative economic systems that prioritize human well-being, autonomy, and democracy over profit and surveillance.

“Surveillance Capitalism unilaterally claims our private human experience as a free source of raw material for its own production processes. It translates our experience into behavioral data. Those behavioral data are then combined with its advanced computation capabilities, what people today refer to as AI machine intelligence. Out of that black box come predictions about our behavior, what we will do now, soon and later. Turns out there are a lot of businesses that want to know what we will do in the future, and so these have constituted a new kind of marketplace, a marketplace that trades exclusively in behavioral futures, in our behavioral futures. That’s where surveillance capitalists make their money. That’s where the big pioneers of this economic logic, like Google and Facebook have become so wealthy by selling predictions of our behavior first to online targeted advertisers, and now of course, these business customers range across the entire economy, no longer confined to that original context of online targeted advertising.

All of this is conducted in secret. All of this is conducted through the social relations of the One-Way mirror. Ergo surveillance, the vast amounts of capital that have been accumulated here are trained to create these systems in a way that keeps us ignorant. Specifically the data scientists write about their methods in a way that brags about the fact that these systems bypass our awareness so that they bypass our rights to say yes or no. I want to participate, or I don’t want to participate. I want to contest, or I don’t want to contest. I want to fight, or I don’t want to fight. All of that is bypassed. We are robbed of the right to combat because we are engineered into ignorance. We saw these same methods being used by Cambridge Analytica with those revelations a year ago with only a tiny difference. All they did was take these same every day routine methods of surveillance, capitalism, pivot them just a couple of degrees toward political outcomes rather than commercial outcomes, showing that they could use our data to intervene and influence our behavior, our real world behavior, and our real world thinking and feeling in order to change political outcomes.”

Authored by Artis Shepherd via The Mises Institute,

In modern America, an obsessive fixation on “safety” has given rise to a culture of fear, paralyzing action and warping decision-making across all levels of society. The conditioning begins early, with children trained to be fearful rather than competent in facing challenges or unfamiliar situations. In their formative years, children are inundated with rules and guidelines, ostensibly designed to maintain safety. But this only stunts their adventurous spirit, undercuts the development of real confidence, and provides an excuse to avoid the uncertain striving necessary for growth.

Corporations and commercial establishments claim “safety is the highest priority” while failing to understand what that statement entails when taken to its logical extreme. If safety is indeed the highest priority, then we should all stay home and slowly decompose.

Without irony, governments use the safety of the citizenry as a pretext to commit brutal acts of war and strip away natural freedoms at the point of a gun. The same is done to provide cover for merging the state with the economy, to the detriment of most and the benefit of a politically connected few.

It is evident that the pursuit of safety, with fear as the motivator, prevents one from living a good life — one consisting of productive work driven by the attainment of values through reason and effort, the result of which is true self-esteem.

Rather than safety, pursue competence. Genuine safety lies in acquiring the skills necessary to deal with life’s challenges, not simply avoiding them.

Baby Kneepads

In her book “Free Range Kids,” Lenore Skenazy discusses her decision to let her 9-year-old son ride the New York City subway by himself. By her telling, he was ready, capable and prepared. So she let him do it, and he did. Her son had just accomplished something of which he could be proud and which would be challenging for many adults.

Unfortunately, the response to Ms. Skenazy’s decision was not one of approbation. National media, so-called parental experts and the frightened masses all learned about the event and condemned it. She was called horrible names and dubbed “America’s Worst Mom” by the U.S. media.

The people who attacked Ms. Skenazy view the world as a scary place, one where selective observation substitutes for rational thinking — where the risk-reward equation is reduced to a big neon “RISK” sign flashing red. These are the same people who put kneepads on their babies when they learn to crawl.

Ms. Skenazy highlights the benefits of kids spending time in nature, building skills of self-reliance and eschewing today’s conventional methods of risk avoidance. One gets the sense that children are capable of much more than they’re given credit for. Far from pushing them into danger, allowing children to confront and overcome challenges on their own provides the ultimate safety — a true sense of competence.

The “Fed Put” and Subversion of the Free Market

For over a century, the American economy has been subject to the vagaries of central bank control, including the management of “inflation” — poorly defined as the change in the general price level, an absurd abstraction that’s impossible to accurately measure — and the overall stability of the job market. Another stated goal of the Federal Reserve was ensuring the “stability of the banking system.” Despite this, all of the most severe episodes of bank failure in the U.S. occurred on the Fed’s watch, including the Great Depression.

Since the 1980s, the Federal Reserve has been employing an all-but-explicit program of bailing out the capital markets — the stock market especially — every time there is a significant pullback in prices. Known as the Fed put, this is an especially sickening example of welfare for those of mediocre ability but the right political connections.

While a desire to control — and enrich a small group at the expense of the majority — is at the heart of the motivations in creating the Federal Reserve, or any central bank, the ostensible reasons have to do with safety. In the rationale of the state and its adherents, Americans need to be kept safe from high price inflation, bank failures and other perceived threats of a free market. By this rationale, people need protection from the consequences of voluntarily exchanging goods and services at market prices, unimpeded by a bureaucracy. Heaven forbid.

As a result, the central bank and federal government essentially control most of the economy. For single-family homes, 95% of mortgages are ultimately held and guaranteed by federal government agencies. As a profession, medicine has been subsumed by the requirements of government insurance and research funding. Food is regulated to the extent that obtaining a glass of real milk is impossible in many states. The costs of buying an automobile are substantially due to compliance with government regulations. No industry is untouched.

The Welfare State

As with the creation of a central bank, the forcible redistribution of capital — from the capable and driven to the incapable and indolent — is an attempt to remove the risk of failure from favored groups. Tellingly, these programs are referred to as “safety nets.”

What the welfare state accomplishes, however, is the elevation of weakness as a character trait. Rather than allowing the freedom to achieve, the state acts as a mother with Munchausen syndrome by proxy — facilitating the dependency and helplessness of its wards so as to increase its own relevance via the caretaking process. In keeping with its role as the oppressive mother, one result is that fatherhood has become nonexistent, particularly in those groups most reliant on welfare.

The destruction of the productive spirit is nowhere more obvious than in those reliant on government handouts, who have attempted to trade independence for safety but end up with neither.

The Warfare State

Woodrow Wilson’s slogan for entering World War I at the beginning of the 20th century was “making the world safe for democracy.”

The world, then ostensibly safe for democracy with the entry of the U.S. military, incurred 40 million casualties during that war. That’s before counting the many tens of millions more over the following decades caused by events and regimes, including the Bolshevik Revolution, facilitated by that war. World War II, which would not have happened in the absence of World War I, saw another 75 million deaths, with some estimates north of 100 million.

The war on terror has only reduced freedoms at home while creating increasingly aggressive enemies elsewhere. The cost is in the trillions, with no material benefit of which to speak.

The Covid Panic

Using “public health and safety” as a front, the Trump and Biden regimes, as well as most state governments, implemented one of the most blatant examples of wicked government action in history. People were locked down inside their homes, unable to even enjoy open spaces like parks and beaches. Children were encouraged to gaze into a computer all day instead of going outside or to school. The truly sick, those with cancer and other serious conditions, were discouraged from hospital visits to increase capacity for patients who seemed to have a minor cold virus—one that leaked from a research lab in China.

That government would gin up a crisis out of nothing is expected. It was the lack of pushback from the public that was astounding. There was almost total mask compliance, even in “conservative” states and counties. Low-status individuals took it upon themselves to push the government’s safety propaganda — the only chance for them to wield authority. When an injection was offered — one whose trials had no control arm, an absolute necessity in scientific studies, and blanket immunity for the manufacturers — people lined up to take it, then bragged about it.

The Nature of Risk

In human activity, risk is involved — sometimes a considerable amount. In seeking to manage that risk, one should strive for competence over it, not avoidance of it. This naturally entails confronting fear, especially the fear of failure, and using it for productive gain. The accumulation of skills, confrontation of hurdles and commitment to a process with uncertain outcomes are essential to a life worth living.