Euroscepticism Grows In Germany As 63% Say EU Is Excessively Bureaucratic

Euroscepticism Grows In Germany As 63% Say EU Is Excessively Bureaucratic

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Confidence in the European Commission is on the decline in Germany. It is just one of several signs of rising Euroscepticism .

“Dexit” Is the New Brexit

Deutschland Exit, Dexit, is the New Brexit Discussion.

Germany’s far-right AfD party vowed to campaign for an end to coronavirus restrictions, a tougher line on migration and an exit from the EU as it finalised its election manifesto on Sunday.

The AfD had on Saturday voted to include a call for Germany to leave the European Union in its manifesto, as well as vowing to demand an end to coronavirus measures, complaining of a “politics of fear”.

Persistence of Euroscepticism

I saw that article a week ago and initially dismissed it as AfD only has 10-15% support.

Dexit is headed nowhere, for now. 

Yet, Eurointelligence takes Rising Euroscepticism very seriously.

Germans have lost confidence in the European Commission. Only 21% of Germans say that they have a either a lot or some degree of confidence in the Commission, down from 30% in 2019. This is in contrast to 50% who would say the same about the German government. 

8% say that Germany has benefited from the EU’s vaccine purchases, while 46% said no. But what is really striking is creeping euroscepticism. 39% wants repatriation of competences from the EU to member states. Only 12% want more competences for the EU. 63% think the EU is excessively bureaucratic, and 58% believe that Germany has to pay for over-indebted eurozone countries. 

We believe the AfD Dexit campaign is more dangerous than it appears. The AfD’s internal division might overshadow everything. But the party has the potential to attract protest votes from disgruntled CDU voters, especially in the east. And it is the only party willing to fish in the pool of anti-EU sentiment. The Allensbach numbers don’t suggest that Germans are in their majority in favour of leaving the EU. But they do tell us that euroscepticism is large and persistent.

We keep reminding ourselves that this is how Brexit started.

I disagree with the political wishes of Eurointelligence, but they give a very good perspective on what’s really going on. 

Other than politicians and the Green party who is it that really believes in “More Europe”? 

Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/24/2021 – 08:10

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“It’s On” – Germany, France Back EU Push To Sue AstraZeneca Over Botched Vaccine Rollout

“It’s On” – Germany, France Back EU Push To Sue AstraZeneca Over Botched Vaccine Rollout

Following reports that Germany and other major EU members were reluctant to sue AstraZeneca over the botched rollout of its COVID-19 vaccine, it looks like Berlin and Paris have actually signed on. According to the latest round of reports, almost every EU country has now signed on, opening the door for the EU Commission to launch the lawsuit as soon as Friday.

As Politico reminds us, 5 or 6 major EU nations had expressed some reservations about a lawsuit when EU ambassadors met earlier this week, arguing that legal action could further worsen AstraZeneca’s already-tarnished image. But as many member states continue to impose age limits on the AstraZeneca jab, it seems they’ve given up on these concerns. One by one, each country reportedly fell in line, with France backing the lawsuit on Thursday night, followed by Germany Friday morning, according to a pair of diplomats who weren’t named in the report. Hungary backed the lawsuit as well on Friday morning, a sign that the lawsuit has broad support among EU members.

AstraZeneca infuriated the EU by failing to deliver on its delivery commitments. The company delivered only 30 million out of the 100 million doses promised for the first quarter in a contract that will likely be the focus of the suit.

The lawsuit, however, will likely focus on the company’s continued inability to deliver doses in the second quarter. The EU wants AstraZeneca to commit to supplying 90 million doses by the end of June, approximately half of what the company originally committed to send in the second quarter. Instead, AstraZeneca told the EU it plans to supply just 70MM doses in that time period. During the first three months of 2021, AZ delivered only 30M doses, a fraction of the 100M it promised.

EU members aren’t the only ones who will be suing AstraZeneca. Already, family members of victims who died from rare blood clots believed to be linked to the vaccine are suing for more information as they consider pushing for monetary rewards.

A spokesperson for AstraZeneca said the company is “not aware of any legal proceedings” and that the company “continues to hold regular discussions on supply with the Commission and Member States.”

Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/24/2021 – 07:35

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Bursting Pantsirs, Falling Bayraktars: Turkish-Russian Virtual War

Bursting Pantsirs, Falling Bayraktars: Turkish-Russian Virtual War

Submitted by South Front,

On April 22nd, Turkish defense company Roketsan released a video hyping up its Akıncı UAV.

The video shows the drone use a MAM-T smart bomb, which hits a Russian Pantsir-S1 in a desert setting and destroys it .

Apparently, this is a response to a video report on Russian TV, in which Russian “Lancets” destroy Turkish drones.

On April 18th, The Turkish media drew attention to the fact that in a report on military developments aired on the state Russian TV channel, an animated video was presented in which Russian “Lancets” destroy Turkish UAVs Bayraktar TB-2.

Still, Selcuk Bayraktar, CEO of Baykar, the maker of the TB2 and Akinci UCAV has stated that it is NOT an Animation and more like reality. More advertisement videos of the MAM-T were released.

According to the Twitter post, the first test firing of the Turkish MAM-T ammunition, which was developed for higher warhead efficiency and longer range, was successfully carried out from AKINCI TİHA.

The first flight under the ammunition flight test campaign at Akıncı PT-3 took place on 17 April. On April 21, a second test flight with ammunition took place, and today the first firing has taken place. In a test led by the head of Baykar Technology Selcuk Bayraktar at the Akıncı Flight Training and Testing Center in наorlu, northwestern Turkey, all three test ammunition without warheads that were fired from Akinci TİHA through laser aiming were able to accurately hit targets.

Baykar Makina issued a press bulletin and said that Akıncı PT-3 UCAV took off for its first use of weapon campaign. The UCAV carried Roketsan’s MAM-L, MAM-C and MAM-T ammunitions.

It is known that the first two ammunition are converted from Roketsan’s Umtas Long-Range Anti-Tank Missile and Cirit Missile. The third missile, however, is new to the public. The press released stated that Akıncı used all three ammunition and hit the target successfully.

Smart Micro Munition MAM-T has been developed for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and light attack aircraft.

The ammunition can engage both stationary and moving targets like armoured vehicles or buildings and naval targets with high precision, thanks to its semi-active laser seeker.

The MAM-T Block-1 has a 30+ km range capability in UAVs. It weighs 94kg. Thanks to its semi-active laser homing and wings, the MAM-T has a 30 km range when released from UAV, 60 km range when released from light aircraft and 80 km range when released from a fighter jet.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/24/2021 – 07:00

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The Reasons Why Leftists Will Never Successfully Disarm Americans

The Reasons Why Leftists Will Never Successfully Disarm Americans

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

Gun confiscation has always been the Holy Grail of totalitarian regimes. Without disarmament, fully centralized control of a population is not possible. And though it is true that not every evil regime seeks to disarm every single citizen (at least not right away), they always disarm the people they specifically intend to hurt the most.

For example, gun control advocates today like to point out that the Third Reich in Germany did not disarm the entire German population. This is a rather bizarre position for leftists as they continually wail and scream about Nazis around every corner and behind every tree, but they will STILL defend their gun grabbing policies by arguing that the Nazis were not as bad as conservatives assume. Of course, what they rarely mention is that the Nazis DID disarm millions of people; most of them Jews and political opponents under 1938 German gun laws.

The National Socialists disarmed the people they planned to destroy. It’s not hard to figure out why; they didn’t want their targets to be able to fight back. They allowed their political supporters to keep their weapons legally; this is not a relaxation of gun laws, in fact, it’s the reverse – It is selective enforcement of gun confiscation based on ideological loyalty.

Hilariously, leftists in the US when confronted with this fact double down on their gun control arguments. Instead of admitting their foolish error they will say: “Yes, the Nazis disarmed the Jews and others, but having guns would have made no difference in saving their lives…” And there you have it – The most backwards circular logic of all time. If Jews and others owning guns was not a deterrent to their slaughter, then why would the Nazis bother disarming them in the first place? Leftists have no answer to this question.

They are trying to argue against facts using a hypothetical; really, how would they know? Maybe owning guns might have saved the lives of millions of people the Nazis had deemed enemies of the state? Maybe it would have acted as a deterrent to the Holocaust? Maybe the Nazis would have been afraid to expand tyranny into Europe if they had to worry about their own population fighting back and disrupting their momentum? Maybe, WWII would have never happened? We could argue hypotheticals all day long…

What we do know for certain is that disarmament is ALWAYS one of the first steps by totalitarians in cementing their control of a population, and this is most common among the biggest political killers in modern history – And no, it’s not the Nazis; it’s the communists.

While a debate rages over the exact number of deaths attributed to communist governments, it is estimated that they are responsible for approximately 65 million to 100 million murders over the course of the last century, a genocide beyond anything history has ever seen before. These deaths were caused by direct means, such as shooting dissidents, or indirect means, such as imprisoning dissidents until they died from complications, or stealing food supplies from rural communities and allowing them to starve en masse.

Stalin in particular declared any theft of state property a crime punishable by death. He then at the same time declared that all production including food production was state property. So, if you eat food that was not granted to you by the state, you are stealing, and could therefore be shot. See how that works?

None of this would have been possible without gun control and confiscation laws put in place before the larger genocide was enacted. In 1918 the Bolsheviks and the Council of the People’s Commissar mandated that Russian citizens turn in their firearms under penalty of prosecution. Gun restrictions and penalties were increased over the years until WWII, when the Soviets were loath to arm their own population in response to Nazi invasion. In fact, the ease by which the Nazi army rolled through the Eastern front was partly due to the disarmament of the Russian population.

Communist governments only allow people to have firearms in their hands when they are fighting against the ideological and foreign foes of the regime. You are allowed to be cannon fodder for the elites, you are not allowed the means to defend yourself from those same elites.

Americans (primarily conservative Americans) have an in-depth understanding of this dynamic. While leftists are more concerned with rewriting history to their benefit, we are more concerned with learning from it. We know where gun control leads, and so did the Founding Fathers of our nation, which is why they codified gun ownership into the US constitution as an inalienable right under the 2nd Amendment. Here are the reasons why leftists, globalists and communists will NEVER be able to disarm the American population as they have done in previous nations…

We Know The History Of Gun Control

As noted above, we have studied the history of tyrants. There is no tyranny that has ever existed that did not try to disarm the population, or disarm the portion of the population the government intended to enslave or destroy. Leftists froth at the mouth trying to re-imagine history in a way that circumvents or ignores the tyranny issue when it comes to gun control. They are wasting their time.

They are never going to convince conservatives and moderates that gun confiscation was not a key step in the establishment of various tyrannies in modern history. All the mental gymnastics and manipulation, all the energy they spend trying to rationalize away genocide as somehow “inevitable” regardless of gun rights – it’s all for nothing. We are far smarter then they are. We are well versed in the legacy of gun control, and this makes their tactics useless.

We Understand Incrementalism – We Know All The Tricks

The level of dishonesty involved in gun control advocacy is astonishing. Leftists often use lies as a means to gain political capital; if they were completely honest about their intentions they would not receive much support from the general population for their efforts. Gun grabbers are very careful in most cases to use phrases like “common sense” when talking about new restrictions. They try to refrain from admitting what they really want is complete disarmament, at least, they tried until recently.

Incrementalism was the name of the game for decades, but in the past year they are going for broke. Some leftist politicians are openly admitting their true goals, because frankly the song and dance wasn’t working and they know conservatives aren’t going to allow any further encroachment on their rights.

I find it interesting that leftists are so astonished at our refusal to compromise on any further gun restrictions. They seem to think that any new violent shooting buys them new gun control capitol. Maybe that’s how things used to work, but not any longer. Frankly, these shootings are irrelevant to our gun rights. Punishing everyone for the crimes of a handful is no longer acceptable to conservatives because we know that if we give gun control advocates an inch, they will take a mile.

Kamala Harris, now Vice President of the US, is one of the many Democrats now openly seeking mandatory government buybacks of firearms and the dismantling of gun rights. However, it was Beto O’Rourke who really took the mask off when it came to the true intentions of gun grabbers.

Joe Biden is famous for his statements admonishing military grade weapons in civilian hands and telling people that a “double barreled shotgun” is “superior” to the AR-15 for home defense. Obviously, a two shot weapon with a limited effective range of around 50 yards or less makes it very difficult to fight back against government tyranny. And, we all know that eventually even the shotguns would be taken away.

Biden’s specific focus, though, seems to be Red Flag gun laws, which allow authorities to confiscate firearms from people not involved in criminal activity, and this is based on hearsay testimony and without due process. Criteria includes any “suspicion of mental illness”, which is completely subjective. Conservatives have been accused of mental illness because they oppose Covid lockdowns, they question vaccine safety, they question the legitimacy of Global Warming fear mongering in the media, etc. ANYTHING could be labeled a mental illness by the state and therefore make a person susceptible to Red Flag confiscation.

This is targeted incrementalism and selective enforcement of gun control, much like that used by the Nazis. Red Flag laws allow the government to attack political and ideological opponents one at a time and disarm them, just as the Nazis selectively targeted their political opponents for disarmament. We know where all of this is going. We’ve seen it before.

BLM Race Riots

Despite the false claims of the mainstream media, we have seen first hand the destruction and insanity perpetrated by Marxist groups like Black Lives Matter. They are anything but “peaceful”, they are dangerous in their lack of intelligence and logic, and their social justice ideology is a cancer that infects and debilitates every vital organ of Western civilization.

In his movie ‘Platoon’, Oliver Stone’s character Chris Taylor says: “Hell is the impossibility of reason”. If this doesn’t describe the social justice movement today then I don’t know what does.

If a group of people is determined to make every single tragedy about racism and “white supremacy” despite all facts to the contrary, and then use those tragedies as an excuse for mass violence, then they are zealots, and zealots cannot be reasoned with. They are cultists with a mission, and they will do anything to accomplish that mission.

In this case, the mission of Marxists within BLM and the globalist foundations that fund them (like Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundation) is to destroy the very fabric of America, “burn it to the ground”, and then rebuild it into an unrecognizable husk devoid of principles or freedom.

Yeah, I don’t think conservative gun owners are going to go along with that. Burning down their own neighborhoods is one thing, but they have tried to spread beyond the borders of their own garbage cities in the past, and we aren’t going to allow them to act violently. For this reason alone, conservatives will never disarm.

The Control Agenda Is Out In The Open

There is a reason why leftists and globalists are so obsessed with taking away combat ready firearms from Americans, and it’s not about “saving lives”. These weapons act as a deterrent to full blown tyranny. As long as they exist, our ability to take back our other rights and freedoms exists.

If anything has convinced gun owners of the need for firearms, it has been the past year of pandemic fear mongering. What have we learned so far? Well, we are now fully aware of the “Great Reset” agenda, which has been promoted nonstop by the World Economic Forum and various political leaders. This agenda calls for years of economic lockdowns and medical mandates, forced vaccination, medical passports without which a person might be completely removed from the economy, a new cashless society, a shared economy in which you will “own nothing and like it”.

The medical or vaccine “passports” are particularly disconcerting. For one, governments don’t necessarily have to enforce them right away. Rather, they can simply allow their corporate partners to demand said passports from anyone that wants to get a job or shop in their stores. Once this system is ingrained into the consumer world, governments can then step in and make passports a legal requirement. Eventually, the passports give the establishment the ability to control and micro-manage every aspect of every individual life. Without compliance to every whim, the technocrats can easily void your passport, and then you die from poverty and starvation.

This would be impossible to do in a country where a majority of the population is armed. I think it’s safe to say most Americans do not want to live in the dystopian world that the globalists at the WEF envision, and we will fight to ensure it does not happen.

Tyranny Is Enforced By Armed Men On The Ground

My favorite mantra of gun grabbers is the claim that “Your AR-15 isn’t going to help you against an Abrams tank or a predator drone”. These people don’t understand how totalitarian systems function. In order to control a population, you have to have loyal troops on the ground…everywhere. Not only that, but you also need loyal civilians, a large percentage of the population, to act as your eyes and ears and sometimes brute force. And finally, you need anyone who might oppose you to be afraid to take action to defend themselves. You need them docile and passive.

There are a lot of moving parts to tyranny, and tanks and planes are secondary to basic manpower. And where there are troops and others enforcing tyranny, there are numerous targets. Where there are firearms, there is a means to eliminate a tyrant at the top of the pyramid with a single well placed bullet. Furthermore, you don’t need armored vehicles and stealth jets to fight tyranny; what you need is a good firearm to remove the people driving and flying those machines. A smart rebel might even take those weapons for his own arsenal in the process.

A lot of gun owners are also military veterans, and they have seen how things played out in places like Afghanistan, where all the military might in the world was ineffective against tribesman with old AK-47s and roadside IEDs. It’s about force of will along with minimal necessary firearms. Guerrilla wars are not fought in terms of battles, they are fought in terms of attrition. Americans understand this better than most.

For all these reasons and more the gun grabber ethos is essentially pointless. They can have total dominance in the federal government, they could have every state government on their side and pass hundreds of laws and executive orders making every gun owner a criminal, and it still would not matter. We will not budge, we would rather fight.

Elitists and leftists just don’t seem to get it. Maybe it’s the way their brains work. Maybe they just can’t comprehend the idea that some people will not compromise certain freedoms no matter the cost. They think everyone has a limit; that everyone has a price. They think anyone can be bought, or that anyone can be leveraged into submission. The truth is, many of us can’t. Some of us have no price, and we cannot be compelled to comply.

We are the people that keep freedom alive, and totalitarians are terrified of us; gun grabbing is merely a natural extension of their fear and doubt. Wherever an oligarchy is seeking to disarm the population this is a sure sign they are about to grasp for even more control, and they are afraid that the population might dethrone them. And honestly, they should be afraid.

*  *  *

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Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/23/2021 – 23:40

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Robo-Dogs Spotted At SpaceX’s Texas Launch Facility 

Robo-Dogs Spotted At SpaceX’s Texas Launch Facility 

A pair of Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot dogs were spotted Thursday wondering SpaceX’s Texas launch facility. 

Twitter user “BocaChicaGal,” who is part of the website NASASpaceFlight.com, tweeted a video from SpaceX South Texas launch site, located in Boca Chica approximately 20 miles east Brownsville, Texas, showing two Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot dogs walking the launch site. 

BocaChicaGal said the robots’ names were “Zeus and Apollo,” but did not point out which. In the past, these four-legged robots have been spotted roaming past wreckages of Starships. 

It’s not clear the goal of today’s mission, but one of the robots had an inspection sensor mounted on its rear. 

Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/23/2021 – 23:20

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2RZT5eZ Tyler Durden

The State-Corporate Convergence In Our State Of Emergency

The State-Corporate Convergence In Our State Of Emergency

Authored by Michael Rectenwald via The Mises Institute,

Perhaps the most pressing matter today for advocates of freedom is the prospect of the Left completing the institution of a totalitarian state. There is no other way to read the multiprong approach and the political maneuverings that political operatives are taking to rule under “Biden.” I put “Biden” in quotation marks here because the current president of the United States is not a singular person named Joe Biden. It is a central executive committee consisting of party rulers and advisers, plus corporate-state apparatuses.

Make no mistake, the power grab that the Left is undertaking poses the most grievous threat to liberty in recent history, regardless of its effects on the Republican Party.

The signals could not be any clearer. In addition to the swath of executive orders, clearly composed by executive committee members and aimed at either ingratiating and expanding the Democratic Party’s base or extending federal power, the Democrats have initiated a growing body of laws which would, if passed, ensure uniparty rule for the foreseeable future.

These include especially H.R. 1, or the For the People’s Act, passed by the House. Should it pass the Senate (with the eradication of the filibuster), H.R.-1 would grossly favor Democratic candidates in federal elections. Notwithstanding the expansion of the Democratic base through various means, including overriding existing voter ID laws in many states and mandating that all states allow mail-in ballots without IDs, it would further centralize federal election oversight and, according to the Institute for Free Speech, “[e]xpand the universe of regulated online political speech (by Americans) beyond paid advertising to include, apparently, communications on groups’ or individuals’ own websites and e-mail messages.”

The legislative maneuverings include the ‘‘Judiciary Act of 2021,’’ which would simply expand the Supreme Court to twelve members plus the chief justice. This move, which would amount to adding four Democrat-approved justices, would essentially effect a legislative takeover of the Supreme Court, as the Democratic-controlled Supreme Court would increasingly “legislate from the bench” and likewise expand the power of the Democratic-controlled legislative and executive branches beyond official perimeters. The odds of its passage, as is, are slim, but the overture is indicative of an attempted power grab not seen since FDR.

But the most conspicuous sign of the nearing consolidation of totalitarian government is the effective merger of corporate and state functionaries, with corporations and other organizations acting as appendages of the government and enforcing corporate-state desiderata. The indications of this merger are so many and sundry that any exhaustive recounting of them would entail a book-length treatment.

But take, for example, the calls by Congressperson Maxine Watters (D-CA) that “protestors” “get more confrontational” if the Derrick Chauvin verdict is unacceptable. Given the widespread rioting since George Floyd’s death, Watters’s language is a call to nationwide insurrection. Yet this language meets the approval of the corporate-government-media complex, despite the Left’s insistence that Trump had done just that before the Capitol breach. Libertarians should take note of the double standard not as a sign of the continued diminishment of the Republican Party but of a doublespeak characteristic of totalitarian regimes.

The most conspicuous example of a corporate-state merger is the extension of governmental power to corporations and other organizations with the covid crisis response measures, which have now exceeded lockdowns and masking to include the issuance of vaccine passports that corporations and other organizations may enforce or are already enforcing. The best hope for resisting these totalitarian measures is a refusal on the part of state and local governments to allow such corporate implementations of governmental dicta.

The old saw that “these are private companies” does not hold water, because clearly these corporate bodies have been enrolled as state apparatuses. Operation Warp Speed was rolled out by the federal government and has enlisted private organizations—first and foremost Big Pharma—to execute it. The state has enabled Big Pharma to profit enormously by instituting a state-of-emergency regime which in the US makes non-FDA-approved vaccines legal. On the other hand, Big Pharma—along with the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—legitimizes the state-of-emergency regime, which in turn augments state power.

The enrollment of corporations in the scheme to vaccinate the population and to require such vaccinations for social participation should not be considered in terms of the prerogatives of private organizations but as part of the incursions of the state into private industry. What we are witnessing, and should be resisting, is a merger into a corporate-government complex, wherein government can bypass the legislative branch and enforce unpopular mandates by colluding with corporations and other organizations to make “policy.”

Perhaps the most egregious element of this corporate-state stranglehold on the population is the participation of Big Digital and the mainstream media. Big Digital conglomerates eliminate media outlets and voices that challenge the official covid narrative, including information about lockdowns, masking, and vaccinations, although the official narrative has not only changed willy-nilly but also has been proven factually wrong, as well as socially devastating. Big Digital and the media serve both the state and Big Pharma by eliminating oppositional views regarding the lockdowns, masks, and vaccines, and by pushing fear-inducing propaganda about the virus and its ever-proliferating variants.

As I have written in Google Archipelago, Big Digital must be considered an agent of a leftist authoritarian state—as a “governmentality” or state apparatus functioning on behalf and as part of the state itself. “Governmentality” is a term that should become well known in the coming days and weeks. I adopted the term from Michel Foucault and have emended it to refer to corporations and other nonstate actors who actively undertake state functions. These actors will be doing this in droves with vaccine passports, which will vastly augment state power under a state-corporate alliance.

Similarly, other major corporations perform state-sanctioned roles by echoing and enforcing state-approved ideologies, policies, and politics: indoctrinating employees, issuing woke advertisements, policing the opinions of workers, firing dissidents, and soon demanding vaccine passports from employees and customers.

The overall tendency, then, is toward corporate-state monopolization over all aspects of life, with increasing control by approved principals over information and opinion, economic production, and the political sphere. As the consolidation accelerates, the broad global state will require the elimination of noncompliant, disaffected, and “untrustworthy” economic and political actors. In the United States, with the elimination of political opposition, the tendency is toward uniparty rule, and with it, the merging of the party and state into a singular organ.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/23/2021 – 23:00

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3gwERfP Tyler Durden

Crypto Investors Are Spending Millions Buying NFTs On Virtual Real Estate

Crypto Investors Are Spending Millions Buying NFTs On Virtual Real Estate

With the invention of non-fungible tokens during the midst of an insane real estate boom fueled by the Fed’s ongoing coke-bender of a stimulus package, it was only natural that crypto “investors” would start buying up virtual real estate. 

In the virtual world, now being called the “metaverse”, people aren’t just spending $69 million for digital art, like Vignesh Sundaresan recently did. They are also spending on “land, buildings, avatars and even names” as NFTs, Reuters reported

Sundaresan counts himself among the world’s biggest NFT investors, amassing a $189 million fund of NFTs and digital assets. 

Anand Venkateswaran, aka Twobadour, who runs the Metapurse fund, said: “The current Cambrian explosion of NFTs that you see is all about acquisition – people want to buy up NFTs, gobble as many of them as they can. But it’s just the tip of the iceberg. The real explosion will happen when they’re able to … experience these NFTs as they were intended. If it’s a plot of virtual land, you ought to move around in it, have an immersive experience in it.”

Corporations are starting to join the party, as well. For example, Atari said it’s going to be launching its own blockchain-based virtual world. Frederic Chesnais, head of Atari’s blockchain division and the company’s former CEO, told Reuters online environments would be “very very big”. NFT real estate could fetch millions eventually, he said.

“The Sandbox” real estate map

The most well known blockchain-based environments are Decentraland, Cryptovoxels, Somnium Space and The Sandbox. Decentraland sports $50 million in total sales, and has sold patches of “land” for as much as $572,000 and $283,567. There were 334 buyers in March in Decentraland and monthly sales volumes blew past $4 million, up from $767,000 in February. 

The “rush” is being compared to the early days of snapping up domain names. 

Another NFT investor named “Whale Shark” has a portfolio of more than $20 million in “assets”. The $60,000 he shelled out for real estate in “The Sandbox” is now worth about $400,000. Meanwhile, Decentraland’s MANA currency has itself risen more than 3500% over the last year. 

Twobadour said: “All of virtual land and these virtual spaces are basically real estate on which experiences will start to centre, on which attention will start to focus. That’s where all of the attention is and that’s monetisable in a million different ways.”

But it isn’t all optimism. Ben Nolan, founder of the virtual world Cryptovoxels, said: “I expect that there’ll be a crypto winter in the next couple of months, the whole NFT boom will explode and then all the value will absolutely collapse. Doing NFTs as an investment or as a way to make money is really ill-advised.”

“Do I think most people will use virtual worlds? Probably not, but I think a lot of people will and I think NFTs are a big part of that growth. Actually walking around with another person in a virtual space and looking at art together is a really nice way to spend time.”

 

Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/23/2021 – 22:40

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The United States Of 2 Americas

The United States Of 2 Americas

Authored by John Mills, op-ed via The Epoch Times,

If you haven’t noticed, the United States is reorganizing itself into two Americas – blue and red. Although there is a president of the United States, state governors are in many ways now driving the national narrative in this new America.

The president and the vice president are who they are now because six Republican-controlled states forwarded questionable electoral votes, and Vice President Mike Pence missed a historic opportunity to challenge those votes. The current president and vice president seem trapped in foggy and abstract ideological slogans rather than providing executive leadership. Vague generalities and virtue signaling aren’t replacements for executive leadership.

And who are the true executive leaders of the two Americas? Florida and Texas on one side, California and New York on the other side. Their governors essentially dominate the bully pulpit formerly occupied by a sitting president. Many of the rest of the American states have aligned with one side or the other.

The American political conversation has become a modern Dr. Seuss’s “Sneetches With Stars” on steroids as Americans are now beginning to group, assemble, and march separately according to our ideologies. Both sides have equal ownership of this behavior – neither side should be excused or let off the hook on this matter.

Two Americas/Two Systems

A part of this blue/red separation is the manifest “Digital Apartheid” that is being applied by the blue side to the red side to create two social media systems. This Digital Apartheid is pervasive and driven by the new, vicious, lockstep, “social justice” mantra that has taken over the automatons who lead U.S. social media.

We are experiencing an unprecedented shakedown by groups such as Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa who broadcast through their relentless bullhorn of social media and old media.

There are now two business systems in America – blue and red. Many of the businesses that lead major market sectors have now revealed themselves to be de-facto thought police to enforce Social Justice.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is the poster child of this, as he has been targeted for elimination by the self-appointed high priests of “wokism.”

We’re also finding out there are two financial systems in America, as those with capital now act as the gatekeepers of who receives capital and who is excluded. Bank of America has become “Bank of who I decide to allow access to the capital system.” That’s a far cry from the intent of their founder who wanted to make sure all had access. The modern bank staff has now become an appendage of the virtue-signaling synchronized chorus.

There are now two media systems in America. The Hollywood award shows are now a Roman circus of self-loathing, lecturing, and virtue signaling. Few are watching these award shows, in fact, few are watching legacy media as ratings collapse.

It’s curious from an agnostic business perspective how CNN even survives at this point in time. Somehow, the citizen’s pocketbook is being fleeced by corporations and advertisers who recycle ad revenue through “woke” media to keep them alive when it’s patently obvious the viewership has imploded—but that’s the beauty of the new era of crony capitalism (which is a transition phase to socialism).

The citizens of our nation have consciously or unconsciously chosen sides. If you’re angry at yourself for not being woke enough and have righteous virtue-signal signs in your yard lauding BLM, you’re likely on the blue side. If the drivel of virtue signaling makes no sense to you, you’re probably on the red side.

US Population Relocates

The biggest manifestation of this rapid reset of America into blue and red camps is the incredible internal movement of Americans.

Americans are moving to Texas from California in significant numbers. California has seen its first decline in population since 1900Americans are on the move, and it’s mostly from blue to red, with Texas and Florida receiving the refugees from New York and California. My dreams of a large, inexpensive home in Florida have evaporated with the rise in home prices in my target localities.

I would suggest the numbers are even greater than what is being reported. This type of socio-economic data traditionally lags in reporting due to the time it takes to collect, aggregate, sort, and analyze. I would say there is easily six months to a year of lag in this reporting.

Last year, I found it difficult to find data on the population flows. Yet, at the same time, anecdotal data pointed to a strong movement not yet reflected. I was in New York in July 2020 and was shocked by the abandoned streets, yet little data pointed to movement at that time.

The data is starting to hit now. Among blue locales, Washington state is still showing population gains—I would suggest they’ve hit their apogee and will start down the backside of an arc as Seattle expands its footprint of boarded-up stores and restaurants, and major companies leave, as well as population.

We’re seeing the beginnings of the “Detroit Syndrome” on scale in blue states as Americans vote with their feet. The common refrain from conservatives is “I’m concerned this will flip Texas and Florida!” I, however, prefer to look at this from an optimistic perspective as an opportunity.

Where Are We Headed?

Despite the attempts of the current administration to transform American society with uncontrolled borders, I see unanticipated consequences of the Blue strategy that will work in the red state’s favor. Big Government’s plans always go awry and deliver unintended consequences.

Trend lines are bad for blue—the elites can socially engineer all they want—their blue states are collapsing because of the brilliant plans of the leaders of the four corners of deceit in modern America: Big Tech, Big Finance, Big Government, and Big Academia.

By fortifying Washington, D.C.—in a way that is eerily reminiscent of the American Civil War—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has rendered fortified our capital of diminishing relevance. Austin, Tallahassee, and most importantly, Mar-A-Lago, are now the centers of gravity for America.

Big Tech can manipulate search results all they want, they are now living in their self-made Ministry of Truth and will go the way of MySpace and the Sears catalog as innovators such as  Lindell and others establish alternatives.

The real game, the one that I haven’t mentioned yet, is the fast-approaching showdown with China. Red states, in many ways, control the world’s food and energy supplies—both of which China is desperate for. The third leg of strategic essentials for national success is access to the world’s capital markets, and financial firms are beginning to exfiltrate to red areas from New York.

China is estranged from access to capital, which is the lifeblood of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Hopefully, the evolving United States is able to deter open conflict with an increasingly isolated CCP, but if kinetic conflict begins, likely nothing will be off the table for the CCP, and the blue states are still highly concentrated with their diminishing populations, which make them very vulnerable to additional biological, and God forbid, nuclear strikes from the CCP.

Bottom line, let blue wallow in their destructive and nihilistic French Revolution bloodbath of trying to out virtue signal each other. They’ll never be happy, never satisfied, and seem to be removing themselves from the gene pool on their own accords. The rest of us can focus on defeating the CCP.

*  *  *

Retired Col. John Mills is a national security professional with service in five eras: Cold War, Peace Dividend, War on Terror, World in Chaos, and now, Great Power Competition. He is the former director of cybersecurity policy, strategy, and international affairs at the Department of Defense. On Gab: @ColonelRETJohn. On Telegram: Daily Missive

Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/23/2021 – 22:20

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3sNgo8y Tyler Durden

‘Ever Given’ Crew Could Be Stranded For Years Amid Court Battle 

‘Ever Given’ Crew Could Be Stranded For Years Amid Court Battle 

Ever since Egyptian authorities seized “Ever Given,” the massive container ship that notoriously blocked the Suez Canal for almost a week and demanded hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation from its owners, the world has forgotten about the vessel and its crew. But as the ship is moored on the side of Great Bitter Lake in the middle of the Suez Canal for nearly a month. New concerns mount that Ever Given’s owners might be unwilling to pay the court-ordered fine, which could strand the vessel for months if not years.

According to The Guardian, crew members trapped on commercial vessels involved in international disputes are not uncommon. The British newspaper details the fate of one sailor who’s been trapped on an abandoned container ship moored off the Gulf of Suez for two years. 

Mohammad Aisha is the custodian of the 4,000-tonne MV Aman. The vessel is involved in a prolonged legal battle to sell the vessel and pay the crew. 

It is surprisingly common for ships and their crews to be stranded and sometimes abandoned due to disappearing owners, pay disputes and management troubles – widespread enough that the International Labour Organization maintains a database of cases of abandoned seafarers. – The Guardian

Last week, representatives from the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), an umbrella union representing seafarers, checked on the crew’s wellbeing of Ever Given as it appears the court battle could be a long-drawn-out process. 

For the ITF and its partners at the National Union of Seafarers of India (NUSI), the priority in the case of the Ever Given is ensuring that the 26-person Indian crew are protected as a legal battle rages around the ship. It is now at anchor in the Great Bitter Lake after it was dislodged from the banks of the Suez Canal. – The Guardian

Last week, an Egyptian court ordered Ever Given’s Japanese owner, Shoei Kisen Kaisha, to pay a whopping $916 million in damages due to the six-day blockage. Ahram Gate, a state-run website, reported early last week that Egyptian authorities seized the vessel until owners pay the fine. 

Ever Given’s Current Location (as of 0944 ET Friday) 

The compensation payment Egypt seeks includes lost revenue from the ships that would have transited the waterway during the blockage and damages to the canal and the equipment and labor to dislodge the mega container ship from the canal’s bank. 

According to Osama Rabie, chairman of the Suez Canal Authority (SCA), Ever Given’s owners are contesting the compensatory damages, and “they do not want to pay anything.” That’s where things could get complicated in court and why Ever Given and its crew of 26 Indians could be moored in the Great Bitter Lake for an extended period. 

“Figuring this out between all the international corporations and insurance companies and government agencies could take years,” said Jalopnik, adding that the ship, “sailing under the Panamanian flag, owned by a Japanese company, operated by a German company, staffed by Indians and stuck in Egypt has no international guarantees of rights for its workers not to end up in a kind of floating solitary confinement.”

It’s anyone’s guess when the Ever Given court battle will be solved.  

Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/23/2021 – 22:00

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DARPA’s Aerial Dragnet Hunts Drones With Drones

DARPA’s Aerial Dragnet Hunts Drones With Drones

Via Southfront.org,

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing the Aerial Dragnet.

It is a system that provides a wide-area surveillance capability that uses sensors mounted on drones to detect, classify and track small drones in dense urban environments.

DARPA’s Aerial Dragnet program aims to achieve the technically difficult goal of detecting and tracking small UAS in urban terrain. The program seeks innovative technologies to provide persistent, wide-area surveillance of all UAS operating below 1,000 feet in a large city. While Aerial Dragnet’s focus is on protecting military troops operating in urban settings overseas, the system could ultimately find civilian application to help protect U.S. metropolitan areas from UAS-enabled terrorist threats.

“We’re using drones to find drones, essentially,” Paul Zablocky, a program manager with the DARPA Strategic Technology Office said, during a C4ISRNET Conference on April 21st.

The government is concerned about the various dangers posed by small UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems), which can be armed with explosives or used to collect sensitive information.

“A small drone certainly poses a threat, and we’ve seen that at airports. We’ve seen on the news where they’ve been equipped with explosives. We’ve seen them used for ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] capabilities. And these can be used against our soldiers as well as civilian populations, so there’s certainly a threat there, and they are widely available,” explained Zablocky.

DARPA wants Aerial Dragnet to eventually be able to interface with C-sUAS (Counter Small Unmanned Aerial Systems), passing along its tracking data from optical sensors, acoustic sensors and inexpensive radars so that the weapon system can defeat the threat.

Aerial Dragnet was tested in San Diego in 2019 and more recently in Rosslyn, Virginia.

The San Diego event was the first test of the system in a dense urban environment, and Zablocky said he was surprised how much clutter showed up in the data. Using data from that test, DARPA has been able to refine its signal processing algorithms, he said.

Essentially, DARPA is done testing the system, and it is looking into transitioning the program to another organization for further testing and development.

“We’re in conversations now with transitioning that program over. There’s still a lot of research and development to do,” said Zablocky. “So we’ve brought down a lot of the risks. We’ve — as I said — collected a lot of data and have a much better understanding of what needs to be done, but to really turn this into a capability or product will still take some work, so we are in conversations with various organizations to pick it up and continue to run with it.”

As per the tender that’s currently posted by DARPA, the system’s capabilities and specifications are set out.

“DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals for persistent, wide-area surveillance of small unmanned aerial systems (UASs) in urban terrain on a city-wide scale. Proposals are solicited for a scalable network of sensors on aerial platforms performing threat-agnostic UAS detection, classification, and tracking by looking over and into complex terrain.

Aerial Dragnet seeks to perform persistent wide-area surveillance of multiple small unmanned aerial systems (UASs) in urban terrain on a city-wide scale. Small UASs are rapidly becoming low-cost aerial platforms for hostile reconnaissance, targeting, and weapon delivery.”

This is important, since the US expects to fight more in an urban environment in the future.

“In future urban battlegrounds, U.S. forces will be placed at risk by small UAS which use buildings and naturally-occurring motion of the clutter to make surveillance impractical using current approaches. The rapid proliferation of commercial UAS with increasing endurance and payload capacity drives the need for a future urban aerial surveillance system that can detect, track, and classify many different UAS types at longer ranges in urban terrain.”

Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/23/2021 – 21:40

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