The 2024 Summer Olympics are finally set to get underway in Paris today amid some substantial safety concerns like ISIS threats and this morning, large-scale vandalism of France’s train network. These high-level issues are momentarily distracting observers from another train wreck affecting most Olympic Games: cost overrun.
Spending more than you have budgeted for has become the norm for host cities, but as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports,Paris is actually not the worst of the bunch (as of current estimates) despite an overrun of more than 100 percent landing it at a cost of $8.7 billion for hosting the Games (excluding investments in urban and transportation infrastructure).
This is easily topped by Barcelona, which ran 266 percent over cost in 1992 and Rio de Janeiro in 2016, which was a whopping 352 percent over budget. Winter Games can also be more costly than expected, for example in the Russian town of Sochi in 2014, where the event was 289 percent more expensive than expected at a record-breaking 28.9 billion, or in Norway’s Lillehammer in 1994, there a 277 percent overrun occurred (but the total cost was still nowhere near as high).
While hosting an event like the Olympics is sometimes touted as an opportunity to improve city infrastructure, the enduring legacy of the Games sometimes ends up being a slew of abandoned and overgrown venues that no one uses due to poor long-term planning. That remains the case to this day in past host cities such as Sarajevo, Athens, Beijing and Rio, to name just a few, where crumbling stadia and forgotten Olympic villages serve not as proud monuments to athletic achievement, but rather as somber symbols of catastrophic financial mismanagement.
Some have taken these past mistakes to heart and Hamburg, Germany, is a notable example for taking back its 2015 bid on cost grounds after a public referendum. Other cities have learned that the financial consequences can be dire only after hosting the Games.
“State intervention is always bad, because it’s based on coercion, on force, and nothing based on coercion can be good.”
~ Javier Milei, speaking at The Hoover Institution in May, 2024
Today we take a break from our road-tripping adventure to offer a quick update from the other End of the World…
Long time readers will recall our fascination over what we’ve been calling, with immodest grandiloquence, The Greatest Political Experiment of Our Age.
The story so far is that, down at the southern end of the Americas, in our chosen country of self-exile, Argentina, the locals have sensibly chosen to “throw the bums out.”
That is, in November of last year, the gauchos voted for a man who promised to finally cut their overfed Peronist government down to size. (He even campaigned with a chainsaw, to avoid confusion among the nuance-averse.)
Javier Milei was elected in a landslide and has since taken his motosierra to the thorny brambles of the State with admirable gusto (though, rather to this observer’s disappointment, the nation’s Banco Central, which Milei promised to burn to the ground, remains standing. Still, one lives in hope…)
Doomsday Mongers
The Argentine experiment is particularly interesting in that it represents the first time in modern history that a sizable population (Argentina is home to ~45 million mostly-carnivorous human beings) voluntarily, peacefully, voted to “cancel” their own state. Nor did El Presidente renege on his promise to do just that.
On day one in office, Sr. Milei abolished or consolidated half the federal ministries, laying off tens of thousands of government parasites in the process and promising more of the same in the days ahead. And just last month, in a major legislative victory, his so-called “Ley de Bases” and fiscal reform package was signed into law, paving the way for sweeping privatization across multiple key industries along with much needed labor market deregulation.
Needless to say, bed-wetting nanny statists around the planet, from Buenos Aires to the DC Beltway to Brussels and beyond, promptly set about prophesying a doomsday scenario, whereby the proud republic of Argentina would shortly descend into a Dantean hellscape the likes of which the civilized world has never known.
It is to their great and enduring dismay that such a scene has not materialized, though that hasn’t stopped them painting the picture in their newspaper columns just the same. Here’s the latest from our lease-mongering colleagues over in the popular presses…
The worst economic crisis in decades puts Argentine ingenuity to the test under President Milei ~ The Associated Press
Milei’s market honeymoon ends as investors question economic plan ~ The Financial Times
Milei’s Austerity Plan Pushes Argentina Into Recession in First Quarter ~ Bloomberg
And yet, despite having been bequeathed a raging currency conflagration, in which the hot potato peso was inflating at the fastest rate in the world, Milei has been able to avert that all-too-familiar path to catastrophe. Both general and core inflation have collapsed since Milei took office in December, with the latter plummeting from over 30% month-over-month to just 2.3% on a four week rolling basis (through July).
Trend Reversal
Not only that, but workers in the private sector are faring far better under Milei than when Sergio Massa (his main opponent in the presidential election) was serving as finance minister under the previous administration.
In the first five months of last year, inflation handily surpassed private-sector wage growth (42.2% to 39.4%). Even as inflation rocketed in the back half of last year, wage growth now outpaces inflation (81.7% versus 71.9%). Here’s the chart:
(Tip ‘o the Hat to @OppenheimerAR)
Here is another look at the trajectory of real salaries – that is, adjusted for inflation – on the rise across the economy. (Milei assumed office on Dec. 9, 2023):
(Source: Argentina’s National Institute of Statistics)
Drill, Baby, Drill!
Meanwhile, despite Argentina having the worst projected economic growth of any major economy this year (at least according to the IMF), it nonetheless continues to defy expert forecasts.
Economic activity rose 1.3% for the month of July, the first month of positive GDP data since Milei assumed office and well above the 0.1% median growth estimates from analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Year over year economic activity likewise surprised to the upside, shooting 2.3% higher and far exceeding the negative –2.5% expected by those same analysts.
And here’s unconventional (shale) oil and gas production in the Vaca Muerta oil fields, reaching an all time record…
(Source: Secretaría de Energía, Argentina)
[Translation: Unconventional oil and gas production in Vaca Muerta registered a historical record in June. In that month, 372 thousand barrels of oil and 78 million m3 of gas were obtained per day.]
Of course, you’re unlikely to hear about any of this in the mainstream news. And that’s hardly surprising…
That Argentina’s success proceeds to the chagrin of rabid interventionists and meddling do-gooders around the world serves only to underscore just how important this experiment in free markets and free people truly is. Long may it continue.
FedEx plans to significantly slash daily flights and the number of U.S. cities served by air during the daytime when its air cargo contract with the U.S. Postal Service expires on Sept. 29, resulting in significant pay cuts for pilots, senior managers informed crews this week.
Shedding daytime flying capacity in response to the lost postal business is part of a broader FedEx (NYSE: FDX) initiative to boost corporate profits that includes restructuring airline operations to align with lower parcel demand and improve efficiency.
The parcel logistics giant will reduce daytime domestic flying time by 60% and the number of city destinations by 55%, which will add about 500 pilots to the existing surplus, said Justin Brownlee, senior vice president for flight operations and network planning, in a letter to airline workers obtained by FreightWaves. No pilots will be hired for the foreseeable future, he added.
The company now has 5,500 pilots, down from 5,800 at the start of the year. With the workforce redundancy, remaining flight hours will be divided up among the entire cohort, resulting in a “significant” reduction in the minimum number of flight hours guaranteed to pilots starting in October, Brownlee told the flight team.
The Postal Service in early April selected UPS (NYSE: UPS), instead of incumbent FedEx, as its air cargo carrier for the next 5 1/2 years. The last day FedEx will provide service to the Postal Service is Sept. 29, but the company has already been scaling back flights as the agency transitions volumes to UPS. FedEx recently said losing the Postal Service business will drag down operating income by $500 million in the current fiscal year.
Lower postal volumes left FedEx with surplus equipment for its daytime air network and higher operating costs per unit. Management previously said the Postal Service contract wasn’t making money. Postal revenue in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2022, fell $236 million to $1.9 billion and was expected to continue decreasing. The contract previously generated annual revenue of at least $2 billion.
Equity research analysts argued that FedEx’s airline was much bigger than necessary, partly because of commitments to fly postal shipments during the daytime in addition to its overnight express operation.
FedEx officers earlier this year said expiration of the Postal Service contract gives them more flexibility to reorganize the daytime air network because aircraft won’t be dedicated to a single customer.
Pat DiMento, vice president flight operations and training, provided pilots more details about the network changes in a follow-up memo, also shared with FreightWaves. The route map in October will go from 75 to 28 cities served – a 63% reduction versus the 55% mentioned by Brownlee, with daily flight trips in an average week falling nearly two-thirds. Cities losing daytime service include Atlanta; Austin, Texas; and Baltimore. Weekly flight hours will tumble from 2,045 to 1,203 (down 60%). Airbus A300 freighters, for example, will experience an 81% reduction in weekly daytime flight legs while Boeing 767 trips will be cut 70%, going from nearly 700 to 209 per week.
Executives stressed that the tentative October schedule was released now to give flight operations personnel pertinent information as early as possible, but that adjustments could still be made.
“The above plan will likely change as we settle into the new system form and other business opportunities develop. Our company is rapidly moving towards the network efficiencies that will ensure we remain the leader in the incredibly competitive cargo and logistics industry. We appreciate the significant impact these changes will have on your schedules and value your commitment to FedEx as we navigate these changes together,” DiMento wrote.
Despite the reduced daytime flying, FedEx expects to maintain fleet size at current levels because the number of aircraft is primarily dictated by the priority overnight network and the company is working to attract other cargo business, Brownlee said.
“In preparation for the conclusion of our air freight contract with the United States Postal Service, we have begun implementing adjustments to network operations that support postal volume. These adjustments include a reduction in daytime flight hours,” said Caitlin Adams Maier, FedEx’s director of public affairs, in a statement to FreightWaves. “As we transform our network and operations for the future, we remain committed to delivering world-class service to our customers around the world while providing outstanding service to the USPS through the contract’s completion in September.”
Pilots have made substantially less money the past year because they share a smaller pool of flying assignments. No progress has been made on a new labor contract since June 2023, when members of the pilots’ union rejected a tentative contract. Negotiations remain in federal mediation. Company officials have privately suggested that a new ratified contract would incentivize pilots to retire, which would help address overstaffing.
The Air Line Pilots Association, which represents the FedEx pilots in collective bargaining, urged management to resolve the contract talks so that the business transformation can fully achieve the desired financial outcome.
Brownlee’s comments that aircraft count will stay the same while overstaffing levels increase “are contrary to one another and conveniently ignore the negative impact of the Drive and Tricolor [restructuring] on our pilots. We are certainly wondering how exactly management intends to implement Network 2.0 and Tricolor with a misaligned crew force,” said Jose Nieves, chair of ALPA’s FedEx Master Executive Council in a message to members and the company.
Fleet plan
The airline’s mainline fleet has shrunk from 417 aircraft in fiscal year 2022 to 389 as more aircraft are put out of service than are being added to modernize the fleet. FedEx last quarter permanently retired 22 Boeing 757-200 freighter aircraft as part of the downsizing effort. The older 757s were expendable because they are less fuel-efficient than other planes operated by FedEx, which still has 92 of the narrowbody freighters in the fleet. The company also retired nine MD-11s in the fiscal year ending May 31 and plans to phase out the tri-engine aircraft by mid-2028, subject to changes in customer demand.
FedEx last year received 14 freighter aircraft from Boeing (four 777s and 10 767-300s medium widebodies). The company is scheduled to take delivery of two factory-built 777 freighters in the next 12 months and 14 B767s over the next two years, according to its latest statistics.
Meanwhile, as part of the new effort to consolidate the Express and Ground networks into one integrated system, FedEx in late January began repainting mainline cargo jets to present a unified brand, said Brownlee. That means aircraft will no longer show Express markings. The new paint scheme, which features a larger logo and different positioning to reflect a more modern look, has been applied to 18 freighters so far.
Tricolor drive
FedEx is now implementing its Tricolor strategy for streamlining its global air network with the goal of segregating the fleet according to various product categories and demand. Brownlee said new flights are being added to the Orange network to accommodate nonparcel cargo growth.
The so-called Purple network is geared toward international customers willing to pay the most for the fastest speeds using dedicated aircraft that are well timed to go overnight into FedEx hubs for next-day delivery. Fewer large freight shipments will be mixed in to maximize density on aircraft and sorting efficiency, executives explained in the spring.
Orange-designated flights will operate during the daytime and focus on priority international freight. Management describes this deferred air network as an extension of its European and U.S. less-than-truckload networks, designed to attract high-yield freight, such as pharmaceuticals, perishables, electronics and automotive components, that is more profitable per pound than heavier, general consignments. FedEx says it will mix in deferred parcels to fill out the aircraft.
The White network will handle e-commerce and other low-priority shipments, much of it processed through the company’s freight forwarding arm, FedEx Trade Networks. Those loads will utilize the belly space of commercial passenger aircraft operating between major international gateways that can be integrated into the FedEx Ground network in the U.S.
Starting in September and October, FedEx will add a Boeing 777 route between Liege, Belgium, and its regional hub in Oakland, California; a route connecting Miami, Guatemala City and San Pedro Sula, Honduras, operated with a Boeing 757 freighter; and a Miami-Buenos Aires-Santiago, Chile-Quito, Ecuador-Miami route with a Boeing 767, according to Brownlee’s letter.
In addition to those routes, the logistics integrator is expanding the Orange network in the Asia, Middle East and Africa operating out of a hub in Guangzhou, China. FedEx in early June also launched an MD-11 route from Guangzhou to Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, with stops in Tokyo and Anchorage, Alaska, and bypassing the global hub in Memphis, Tennessee.
“This route provides parcel and freight growth opportunities by directly connecting the East Coast and Asian markets while improving service levels by removing unnecessary touch points in our U.S. domestic network, which prevents more congestion” in Memphis, said Brownlee.
He also disclosed that FedEx launched an intra-China flight between Guangzhou and Beijing utilizing a Boeing 737 freighter operated five times per week by Tianjin Air Cargo. As a foreign airline, FedEx does not have regulatory authority to operate the flight itself. Brownlee said the flight strengthens FedEx’s position in the China market and “provides freight growth opportunities by feeding additional volume into the global international air network” without displacing any company aircraft.
Tricolor is part of a comprehensive restructuring program launched two years ago to strengthen profits after the pandemic surge wore off, specifically aimed at reducing redundant infrastructure and associated costs.
The Drive initiative to take out $4 billion in structural costs by mid-2025, coupled with pickup and delivery efficiencies from a new consolidation of separate operating companies into one organization, has helped achieve four consecutive quarters of operating income and margin expansion despite revenue declines.
FedEx’s adjusted operating profit increased 5.6% year over year to $1.9 billion last quarter on a 1% gain in revenue, underscoring the company’s progress in containing costs amid soft market conditions. It was the first time FedEx had year-over-year revenue growth after six quarters of declines.
The company achieved $1.8 billion in structural savings last year and is targeting an additional $2.2 billion in savings from its transformation program in fiscal year 2025.
134-Year-Old American Furniture Chain Files For Bankruptcy, Closes All 553 Stores
Conn’s, a 134-year-old American furniture chain has filed for bankruptcy and is shuttering all of its 553 stores after experiencing a slowdown in recent years that affected both sales and liquidity.
According to a July 23 Chapter 11 bankruptcy filed in the Southern District of Texas, the company has started closing sales at several of its locations, and has asked the court to allow them to continue with the sales.
CEO Norman J. Miller said in another court filing that the company faced “significant headwinds” in recent years, which include “drastic shifts” in consumer behavior, as well as interest rate pressures, inflation, integration delays, and increased costs related to the store’s 2023-2024 merger.
“The resulting slowdown in the Company’s growth has placed a strain on the company’s sales and liquidity position,” said Miller, who probably shouldn’t have done that whole merger thing.
As the Epoch Times notes further, Conn’s key debtors reduced the debt limit available to the firm, and the company was forced to take in loans at higher costs.
The company sought alternative financing arrangements to stabilize its financial position. However, none of these attempts bore fruit.
Given the macroeconomic headwinds faced by Conn’s and the poor merger and acquisition environment in the consumer retail sector, the firm chose to commence Chapter 11 proceedings, the filing said.
Conn’s voluntary bankruptcy petition states that it has between 25,001 and 50,000 creditors, with assets and liabilities in the range of $1 billion to $10 billion.
The furniture retailer has already listed 71 stores that it intends to close down soon. The store closures affect outlets in 13 states. Florida is set to see the highest number of closures at 18, with single digits in other states. The firm has outlets in 15 states in total and employs roughly 4,000 individuals.
Shares Crash
The company’s shares have crashed significantly over the past year, with its value declining by more than 92 percent. On July 24 alone, shares fell by more than 30 percent.
Late last month, Conn’s received delinquency notification from the NASDAQ exchange after it failed to file a quarterly report for the period ended April 30. The firm was given until Aug. 19 to rectify the issues.
During an earnings call in April, Mr. Miller said not to expect “any variance” in store counts in the near future.
While “there could be some consolidation” in store numbers, “I wouldn’t expect that to happen probably until next fiscal year,” he said in the call.
Mr. Miller said that a recent acquisition made by the company would result in one-time costs in the April–June quarter. However, the company expected to produce “accelerating revenue and earnings growth through this year.”
“I want to reiterate my optimism for our path going forward. Over the coming quarters, I am confident we will start to benefit from the powerful financial model we are creating, which is supported by our premium shopping experience, best-in-class payment offerings, leading e-commerce capabilities, and unique dealer network,” he said.
Conn’s is the latest big brand to file for bankruptcy in 2024. Some of the largest bankruptcies so far this year involving companies with more than $1 billion in liabilities include IT firm Dynata, seafood chain Red Lobster, biotechnology company Invitae Corp., and Enviva, the world’s largest industrial biomass producer, according to S&P Global.
A total of 3,016 commercial Chapter 11 bankruptcies were filed in the January–June period this year, an increase of 34 percent from last year, the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI) said early this month.
“The continued increase in bankruptcy filings reflects the growing economic strain on businesses and households,” ABI Executive Director Amy Quackenboss said.
Businesses have been battered in an environment of high inflation and interest rates. The 12-month inflation rate has been hovering above 3 percent since June last year, although some analysts calculate that it may be much higher than that.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has kept interest rates within a range of 5.25 percent to 5.50 percent since July last year. This combination of higher expenses is putting pressure on businesses.
History Of Olympic Bans: Only Official Enemies Of The Western Allies
The 2024 Paris Olympic Games have kicked off, but this year without any flags or teams from the Russian Federation or Belarus present. This stems from an IOC announcement last January saying Russian and Belarusian athletes cannot represent their country, but can participate as neutrals.
This has led to only 15 athletes from Russia and 18 from Belarus competing as “Individual Neutral Athletes,” or AINs. They had to first demonstrate to an IOC review panel that they have never expressed support for Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. Further they had to show that they don’t have any affiliations with sports clubs tied to Russia’s military.
This has led some pundits to point out a glaring double standard: Israel’s invasion of Gaza has by any estimate resulted in far more civilian deaths than the Ukraine war, yet the IOC has not considered banning Israeli athletes.
George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq resulted in – according to various estimates – between 500,000 and one million Iraqi civilian deaths. What’s more is that it was only within years later the entire case the Neocons made for the invasion was proven an absolute fraudulent lie. Where were the IOC punitive actions against American athletes? It wasn’t even a thought.
Similarly, Washington’s bombing and invasion of Afghanistan turned into a more than two-decade long quagmire full of civilian death and destruction for entire towns and villages. And not a peep from the IOC or any Olympic officials.
The clear pattern has been that only those enemies and rivals of the Western allies get banned from the games.
Al Jazeera has provided a helpful summary of all countries which have been barred from competing in the Olympics in the past some 100 years as follows:
The first ban came in the 1920 Summer Olympics held in Antwerp, Belgium where Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey were banned due to their role and involvement in World War I.
Germany was also banned from the 1924 games in Paris as an extension of the previous ban and the ramifications of World War I.
The 1948 Summer Olympics held in London saw the ban of Germany and Japan as a consequence of their role in World War II and the devastation it wrought.
South Africa was banned from the Olympic Games from 1964 to 1992 due to racial segregation as a result of the apartheid regime.
In 1972, Zimbabwe, then known as Rhodesia, was banned from the games in Munich due to international pressure and protests against the country’s policies of racial segregation.
In 2000, Afghanistan was banned from the Melbourne games due to the ruling Taliban’s stance on women. This year, with the Taliban back in power in Kabul, Afghan athletes are participating — but not under the Taliban’s flag. Instead, they will compete under the red, green and black flag of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, which the Taliban overthrew in 2021.
Kuwait was suspended by the International Olympic Committee in October 2015 due to government interference in the country’s Olympic committee. As a result, Kuwaiti athletes participated in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics as independent Olympic athletes under the Olympic flag.
During the 2022 Beijing Winter Games, North Korea was banned due to its decision to withdraw from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, citing COVID-19 concerns, which violated the Olympic Charter.
Despite not being banned completely from the 2016 Olympics, many Russian athletes were barred from competing in Rio due to state-sponsored doping. This also continued into the 2018 Winter Olympics and the 2020 summer olympics Tokyo.
The IOC has again banned Russia from the Olympics. This time they actually meant it – just 15 Russian athletes will compete (down from 335 in Tokyo)
That leaves a lot of medals on the table for the rest of the world, USA included. https://t.co/7fbEQDMG7o
These punitive bans are much like the UN’s World Court operates: it remains a common sight to only see an African dictator or Serb Balkan warlord on trail for crimes against humanity. But never will a Dick Cheney or Tony Blair be on trial at the Hague.
A series of disasters, including Gulf Coast hurricanes, California wildfires, Midwest flooding, and severe thunderstorms, combined with post-COVID construction cost increases, have severely impacted the insurance industry.
As a result, according to Insurance Journal, companies like Church Mutual, GuideOne, and Brotherhood Mutual, which insure churches, have seen their reserves shrink and have dropped high-risk churches to cut losses.
Hundreds of United Methodist churches in the Rio Texas Annual Conference lost property insurance last November, leaving officials scrambling.
Over six months later, some churches found new insurance at higher costs, while others remain uninsured, said Kevin Reed, conference board of trustees president.
Reed noted the conference had about a month’s notice before their property insurance was canceled, which wasn’t enough time to secure new coverage, leaving local churches to fend for themselves.
“We have not found a good solution. It continues to be a significant problem for our churches,” he said.
The report says that United Methodist churches in Iowa have also lost insurance following severe weather, according to the Iowa Annual Conference.
Rev. Ron Carlson, the conference treasurer, said both small rural and larger churches were affected. The conference urged churches to proactively check their insurance instead of waiting for renewal offers.
The UMC’s Book of Discipline requires full replacement and liability insurance for church buildings, which Carlson noted is not feasible for some. The conference is working to address what happens to these uninsured churches.
Finding new insurance is challenging since churches are a high-risk, niche market. They are open to the public, serve various age groups, run social services, and often have large, expensive buildings with little oversight, said Charles Cutler, president of ChurchWest Insurance Services.
“Because of the First Amendment and the separation of church and state, ministries are largely unregulated. And unregulated businesses are difficult to underwrite,” Cutler said.
The church insurance market, like the broader industry, has faced significant challenges recently, according to the report.
Supply chain issues and rising construction costs post-pandemic have increased rebuilding expenses, leading insurers to hike rates. Natural disasters like hurricanes, wildfires, and severe thunderstorms have further strained insurance companies’ reserves, causing AM Best to review Church Mutual and downgrade Brotherhood Mutual’s ratings. GuideOne was only stabilized by a $200 million investment from Bain Capital.
The high-risk nature of insuring churches, combined with pressure from reinsurers to reduce coverage, has left many congregations struggling.
Churches, already dealing with declining memberships and donations, now face skyrocketing insurance costs. The situation has forced some to cut programs, delay essential maintenance, or even contemplate closing.
Olympics Opening Ceremony Features Dancing Drag Queens And Bizarre Symbology
Sports spectacles like the Olympics, the Super Bowl, the Commonwealth Games and a host of other events have become increasingly political in their messaging and their pageantry in recent years. Furthermore, the symbology on display during these performances has become more and more bizarre.
As we noted in May, the signs were not good for the Summer Games when it was revealed that drag queens and trans activists would be carrying the Olympic Torch in preparation for opening ceremonies. Olympic torch bearers are supposed to be chosen from a list of people with significant contributions to their communities. It’s hard to say what contributions trans activists have made to any community, but the announced “theme” of the Summer Games held in Paris helps to explain their presence.
The stated tenets for Olympics 2024 are: Community, Diversity and The Collective. In other words, the theme of this year’s Olympic Games is woke.
The event was planned by “queer artistic director” Thomas Jolly (pictured below), who said he “wants everyone to feel represented.” Yet another example of gay activists unable to control their impulse to project their sexual preferences on everything, even sporting events.
Opening Ceremonies have launched in France with much fanfare, though the rest of the world is not very interested. In the US, the Summer Games in Paris are expected to hit record low ratings; even lower than the Winter Games in Beijing in 2022. When you see what has become of the Olympics today, it’s easy to understand why.
The ceremony in Paris features strange performances from a horde of drag queens, including sexualized dancing and an LGBT recreation of The Last Supper.
Yikes. That’s not the kind of thing most people want to sit down to watch on a nice summer evening with their kids. Another example of odd symbology was the display of a metal horse with a rider in white galloping across the River Seine.
The horse and rider, more disturbing than beautiful, were followed by 85 boats carrying almost 7,000 athletes from 205 countries down the River Seine. The display came just hours after a sabotage attack on the high-speed rail networks caused travel chaos across France. The opening ceremony was the first in Olympics history to be featured outside of the main stadium.
The metallic horse is oddly reminiscent of a performance at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in the UK, which featured “dreamers” worshiping and appeasing a giant metallic bull while commentators discussed the enslavement of women.
Make of this what you will, but it’s clear that major national and international games have changed dramatically in the past decade. The spectacle is no longer meant to entertain, but to propagandize. And, just as we have seen with woke theatrical entertainment and the collapse of the movie box office in recent years, audiences are dwindling for sporting events with political messaging.
The world’s first climate-related social rewards scheme came into being two weeks ago, when the city of Copenhagen officially launched it’s new “CopenPay” system.
Through the CopenPay scheme, tourists visiting the city will be rewarded for “green actions” – such as using public transportation or cycling – with access to “cultural experiences”, free meals etc.
For example, arriving at the CopenHill dry ski slope by foot or on a bike will get you 20 free minutes of ski time, while anyone who volunteers at an organic urban farm will get a free lunch (vegetarian, naturally).
The official CopenPay website describes the purpose of the system as follows:
…to encourage sustainable behaviour and enrich the cultural experience of visitors and residents in Copenhagen by transforming green actions into currency for cultural experiences.
There is a need to change the mindset of tourists and encourage green choices […]Through CopenPay we therefore aim to incentivize tourists’ sustainable behaviour while enriching their cultural experience of our destination. It is an experimental and a small step towards creating a new mindset […] The hope is not only to continue the pilot project, but also to inspire other cities around the world to introduce similar initiatives.
Now, complimentary organic meals and free windsurfing lessons might seem benign enough, but any talk of “changing mindset” and/or “encouraging behaviour” makes my brain itch.
It’s pretty easy to see through the happy-clappy tone of the promotion to the heart of the issue, it’s right there in their own words: Transforming green actions into currency.
This is climate change based behavioral modification. This is a social credit system. Small scale and optional, sure, but there’s no denying that’s what it is.
For now it’s optional and only for tourists. They are testing the waters. Barring a catastrophic failure it won’t stay that way for long. They likely won’t ever make it mandatory to take part, rather – like bank accounts and cellphones – opting out will simply be too difficult for most people to bother with.
Eventually “rewarding green actions” will segue into “punishing non-green actions”. The currency of “cultural experiences” replaced with actual currency.
This isn’t guesswork.
We don’t have to guess where this leads, because we know. They told us.
They laid out the world they want to build, and this is just one of the first bricks.
For years the media, “fact-checkers,” and “anti-disinformation” initiatives told the public there was nothing wrong with Joe Biden. A few weeks ago, in the space of five minutes, they flipped. Rapid-onset dementia had struck the President and it was time for change.
The people who claim they can sort truth from fiction spent years lying despite the crippling obvious. What is more baffling is why so many people went along with it for so long. Was it fear? Complacency? Cowardice? An incredible level of discipline was enforced – that has thankfully now unraveled.
Rather than debunking “misinformation,” Biden’s protectors often spread it.
In August 2020 the Aspen Institute coordinated a Hunter Biden laptop pre-bunk exercise that sought to suppress a true story to protect Biden’s wayward son and shield the President from major corruption allegations. A swathe of major media and Big Tech participated in that exercise, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Twitter, Facebook, and many more. Claire Wardle, former director of “anti-disinformation” NGO First Draft (now the Information Futures Lab at Brown University) also participated.
The Party told you to reject the evidence not just of your eyes and ears, but your whole body.
However, perhaps the biggest lie was the years-long campaign to “debunk” suggestions that Biden was growing incapable of commanding the highest office in the land.PolitiFact was very diligent in “fact-checking” “cheap fakes” and other stories that alleged Joe Biden was senile, reassuring us that everything was fine.
In the words of Aspen Hunter Biden laptop pre-bunker Claire Wardle, the Biden cheap fakes are “the weaponization of context. It’s genuine content, but the context changes via minor edits. Anyone can be vulnerable with the right edit.” In fact, as recently as June 21 Wardle was carrying water for Biden. In a New York Timesarticle that sought to debunk “misleading videos that play into and reinforce voters’ longstanding concerns about his [Biden’s] age and abilities,” Wardle explained that “This isn’t a new narrative, it builds on an existing one, which tends to be much more effective.” Yes, adding more true information to other true information tends to make an argument more convincing.
Or take Rebekah Tromble, Associate Professor of Media and Public Affairs and the director of the Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics at George Washington University. According to Tromble “Biden became a main target of deceptive edits.” “These clips draw on a common trope about President Biden that’s popular among his detractors: He’s old, bumbling, and senile, meaning he’s incompetent and incapable of doing this job.” His gaffes and inability to speak clearly are unrelated to his cognitive ability, and are instead because “Biden grew up stuttering.”
PolitiFact is a project of the Poynter Institute which coordinates the biggest network of fact-checkers in the world, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). IFCN is funded largely by Facebook but also by the “Craig Newmark Foundation, the Koch Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the Omidyar Network, the National Endowment for Democracy, Microsoft, and the Washington Post.” This is not a small fringe “fact-checking” outfit; it is one of the leading organizations in the sector.
Perhaps the name makes it clear – it is Politi(cised) Fact-checking.
Newsguard, a “disinformation” ranking service that can punish a news site’s advertising revenue through its rating system, has also been active. Power Line, a conservative online news outlet, alleges they were contacted by Newsguard in 2021 about their claims of Biden’s cognitive decline. In an email, Newsguard asked:
We’ve noticed that the site has repeatedly stated as fact in its article[s] that Joe Biden has dementia, both during the 2020 election cycle and since he became president. Why does the site make this claim without providing credible evidence that he has dementia?
Newsguard’s approach is particularly concerning because of its ability to impact the revenue of media outlets, and due to its strong links to the State Department and intelligence agencies – its board includes former CIA Director Michael Hayden.
Mainstream media have also been a critical part of the lying machine, claiming recent videos that show Biden wandering off at a G7 event were “misinformation” or “cheap fakes” and are part of a concerted effort to “hammer the narrative that Biden is too old to be president.” PolitiFact also “fact-checked” the story with the usual line.
The list could go on and on and on but Matt Orfalea’s amazing “sharp as a tack” compilation puts the nail in the coffin. More “out of context” clips and “cheap fakes” according to the “anti-disinformation” “experts” no doubt.
What is the lesson?
On one hand, censorship and suppression only work for so long. Reality will eventually catch up with you. However, it also tells us that a lot of people can pretend the emperor does have clothes, even when he is stark naked and half the court is screaming and pointing at the top of their lungs – also known as “spreading misinformation.”
It seems there is an endless supply of “fact-checking” and “anti-disinformation” sycophants ready to bow and scrape before the mad king.
Ultimately it tells us just how corrupt the “fact-checking” and “anti-disinformation” industries are. Whilst there are an increasing number of people on the outside speaking up, internally cowardice and the silencing of critics have allowed a prolific level of corruption to grow. This is an across-the-board problem in the liberal and progressive spheres where pious bullies have shut down dialogue. This corruption has led progressives and liberals down a disastrous dead end. Barring a miracle, Trump is coming.
If there is any justice a reckoning is also coming for the “fact-checkers” and “anti-disinformation” “experts.”
Does Disney’s Dramatic Decline Reflect Growing Public Opposition To Woke Activism?
The participation of major corporations in the molding of cancel culture should not be overlooked. While many people assumed that companies were “bending the knee” to progressive activists, the opposite was actually true. Woke movements are a minority within western populations and have no boycott power. There’s never been any reason for businesses to be afraid of them.
In fact, without the support of companies like Blackrock, Vanguard, Google, Facebook, Twitter and many others the cancel mob would have little to no power. The situation seems to be changing, or the damage seems to be minimized. One corporate entity reflects this shift more than any other, and that’s Disney.
A lot has happened in the US in the past several years, so much in fact that it might be hard to remember how close the country came to total disaster under the dictates of the progressive hive. The political left had been accumulating social influence with the aid of international corporations, NGOs and government officials since at least 2016. However, after the Biden Administration took office and pandemic hysteria went into full swing, the activists sought to flex their cancel culture muscle in a big way.
The result was a dystopian frenzy in which mass censorship was rampant and speaking out in any way against official narratives might get you booted from social media and even fired from your job. Leftists called it “consequence culture” as a way to justify their behavior, but the consensus was that this was thought-policing on an Orwellian scale. The assumption by leftists being that they are the virtuous arbiters over what words and beliefs should be punished. No one voted for them to do this job.
The smell of blood was in the water and, as with all dystopian societies, certain non-compliant people were made into examples to frighten everyone else.
UFC fighter and actress Gina Carano was one of those people. Carano says she was harassed by Disney management to add “pronouns” to her social media bio to “prove her support for trans lives”. After the actress made an online joke by listing her “pronouns” on Twitter as ‘beeb bop boop’, the company brought pressure to bear in an attempt to force Carano into silence.
Her eventual removal by Disney was heralded by the political left as a great victory and a display of the cancel mob’s power. If they could destroy the career of a Hollywood celebrity then there was a good chance they could destroy the life of almost any average conservative.
Disney then engaged in a slow boil of the theater-going public with DEI propaganda. Many suspected Disney was removing white, straight and male characters from the majority of their productions on purpose. As it turned out, that’s exactly what they were doing.
The pendulum appears to be swinging back on Disney, however. With the help of Elon Musk, Carano has pursued an effective civil suit against the company and a recent court decision blocked attempts by Disney lawyers to have the case dismissed. The lawsuit will be going to trial.
The vast majority of Disney content from films to streaming series have been met with box office failure and audience disinterest. In 2023 alone, Disney had only one film that made a significant profit (Guardians Of The Galaxy) while spending a billion dollars on multiple box office flops (not counting marketing costs). Not one Disney+ series was met with audience acclaim. Streaming subscriber numbers sank.
Disney has consistently used its immense corporate power to legitimize the woke mob. Are they finally getting hit with the karma they deserve?
After Disney publicly declared war on the state of Florida and conservative efforts to stop gender identity indoctrination in public schools, the company was put on notice. They have since been exposed in numerous cases participating in far-left propaganda efforts including implanting LGBT messaging in children’s content.
Disney was also exposed by a VP on hidden camera for DEI practices and race discrimination against white male actors and corporate employees.
Disney’s secret agenda is not so secret anymore. They have been thoroughly defeated by the state of Florida and Ron Desantis in civil court and the company has lost their Reedy Creek autonomy. Disney stock has been hovering near 5-year lows since 2023. Their brand is essentially destroyed and their content is treated by most consumers as radioactive. The sheer size of Disney and their holdings means that they have the capital to survive for years without public support, but the company has already started cutting employees in mass layoffs, including 14% of Pixar in May. Not a good sign.
Is the karmic hammer finally swinging back to hit Disney in the face after nearly a decade of woke bullying? It seems that way. But the bigger question is, does Disney’s decline reflect a larger national move away from the woke mob and cancel culture in general? Are Americans finally fed up with progressive pearl clutching and DEI? This seems to be the case. Disney fueled cancel culture for years only to find themselves canceled in return.
