The political official of the Libyan National Struggle Front, Ahmed Gaddaf al-Dam, announced Monday he’s initiated first steps to sue former US presidential candidate and ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on charges of spreading destruction and supporting terrorism in Libya.
The cousin of the late Libyan president, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, said in an exclusive interview with Russia’s Sputnik that he had assigned his legal team to sue the former U.S. Secretary of State.
Ahmed Gaddaf al-Dam, cousin of Libya’s former president Muammar Gaddafi, via Reuters.
Gaddaf al-Dam added that he provided the legal team with other documents not released by the U.S. State Department to prosecute Hillary Clinton on charges of spreading destruction and supporting terrorism in Libya.
No further details were released and it is not clear where the lawsuit will be filed.
Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State under U.S. President Barack Obama, when NATO intervened in the Libyan Civil War in 2011.
Under heavy bombardment by NATO, Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi was forced to abandon Tripoli and take refuge near the city of Sirte, where he was later captured by anti-government forces and subsequently killed by his captors in 2011.
Libya has since 2011 seen multiple warring governments and militias vie for turf and control of the country’s oil resources, remaining essentially in a state of anarchy, including witnessing the rise of ISIS and slave markets where such things had never before existed.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3j0JJrd Tyler Durden
Rudy Giuliani Promises To Share More “Private Text Messages” From “The Biden Crime Family” Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 18:38
As the furor over Twitter and Facebook’s attempts to censor Wednesday morning’s New York Post bombshell intensifies, Rudy Giuliani, who was named as the source of the documents in the NY Post story, just dropped a new video on Twitter where he outlines some of the alleged transgressions of “the Biden Crime Family”.
Earlier, the NYP exposed never-before-publicized emails suggesting that Joe Biden’s involvement with his son’s business endeavors was much more active than he led the world to believe.
In other words, if the emails are genuine (and nobody has offered any credible evidence yet to suggest that they aren’t) then it’s clear the Biden lied about having never discussed business with his son.
In a tweet, Giuliani confirmed that he has more material that has yet to see the light of day, and teased the public that it would soon be made available on his website, which he said he launched to stop big tech from censoring the story.
The emails obtained from Hunter Biden’s hard drive reveal Joe Biden lied about Burisma, and more.
Tonight I react and share a private text message that describes the ongoing schemes by the Biden Crime Family.
e teased more evidence and outlined more allegations against not only Hunter Biden, but “the Biden Crime family”, which he alleged benefited personally (and in the form of large payouts) from Joe Biden’s various “point man” posts during his time as vice president.
Giuliani starts off with Hunter, first relitigating the scandals in Ukraine and China, before claiming that Hunter Biden is was not a recovering crack addict at the time he was making these deals, but an active crack addict, a label Giuliani applied with emphasis.
He went on to claim that some of the photos he has revealed, and more material he has yet to publish (though he teased that more would be coming soon) make Hunter Biden and the activities of the “Biden Crime Family” a national security risk, by making Biden liable for blackmail.
“Every time Joe Biden was named point man by Barack Obama, Joe Biden negotiated for the United States. Each time he negotiated, he failed. Each time, the Biden Crime family got millions of dollars from that country,” Giuliani said.
Giuliani cited Iraq, what he said was the first example of this, outlining a scheme involving a $1.5 billion contract and Biden’s brother, James Biden.
The former NYC mayor continues: “The question is, why did Joe Biden lie about it? The New York Post on its front page shows that Joe Biden has been lying about Burisma for 7 years,” Giuliani added, again claiming that Biden “committed a crime”.
Specifically, he named Hunter Biden, James Biden, Joe Biden and Sarah Biden, along with other unnamed family members, as “the Biden Crime Family.”
The “crime family” framing of course harkens back to the “Clinton Crime family”, as well as Giuliani’s work as a prosecutor where he famously helped break the Mafia’s stranglehold on the underworld, and much of the legitimate business happening in the territories they controlled.
Now, we can’t help but wonder: will Giuliani drop the Hunter Biden sex tape
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3nR4dWZ Tyler Durden
Delivery Of 2 Million Flu Vaccines To Iran Blocked By US Sanctions On Banks Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 18:25
Last Thursday the US Treasury announcedfresh sanctions on 18 Iranian banks in order to “stop illicit access to U.S. dollars” — a move widely seen as the most aggressive and devastating measure against Iran’s financial sector to date.
Given it effectively blacklists the entire Iranian financial system, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin tried to proactively address European allies and international critics’ concerns that this would only massively increase the suffering of the common Iranian people amid a raging pandemic. His statement last week vowed that certain exemptions will“continue to allow for humanitarian transactions to support the Iranian people.”
But now Iranian health officials say they’ve been prevented by US sanctions from importing 2 million influenza vaccines, amid a desperate and deteriorating health crisis inside the country.
Iran’s Red Crescent says due to the new US sanctions against Iranian banks, the humanitarian organization is not able to purchase two million doses of flu vaccines that were supposed to be distributed for vaccination of medical staff, high risk patients and pregnant mothers. https://t.co/7Tl9Wgw8wh
Iran’s Red Crescent Society announced on Twitter that new US sanctions on Shahr Bank are to blame.
The bank is reportedly largely responsible for foreign-currency purchases of drugs, but has now “been sanctioned by the U.S. government and the vaccines haven’t reached the Red Crescent.”
According to Bloomberg, this has left the health organization scrambling:
The Red Crescent said it was attempting to source replacement vaccines through neighboring countries. Some 200,000 flu doses had been delivered to the ministries of health and education, the organization said in a subsequent tweet, without giving more details.
Iran’s leaders have been outraged, also alleging over the past days the United States has intentionally severely exacerbated the impact of the coronavirus pandemic inside the Islamic Republic, essentially kicking the country while it’s already down, choking off even humanitarian and medical supplies via sanctions and threats against those willing to trade with Iran.
“Amid Covid19 pandemic, U.S. regime wants to blow up our remaining channels to pay for food & medicine,” Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted last week. “Iranians WILL survive this latest of cruelties.”
Amid Covid19 pandemic, U.S. regime wants to blow up our remaining channels to pay for food & medicine.
Iranians WILL survive this latest of cruelties.
But conspiring to starve a population is a crime against humanity. Culprits & enablers—who block our money—WILL face justice. pic.twitter.com/n0fnXPNik8
It remains unclear just how the US is ‘ensuring’ humanitarian aid is not touched, also given there have been growing complaints that Western companies which are already skittish about doing any level of humanitarian goods transactions in Iran are over-complying for fear of US repercussions.
File image via CGTN
European allies have been warning the US-led actions are taking Iran to the brink of total economic collapse, which will be felt most by the common populace, while failing to dislodge the regime.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3nOFylP Tyler Durden
American diplomat George Messerschmidt found himself in an awkward situation while attending a luncheon in Kiel, Germany in August of 1933.
As lunch came to a close, the attendees erupted into song with arms outstretched in the Nazi salute.
First they belted out Germany’s national anthem, followed by the anthem of the Stormtroopers– the paramilitary ”Brownshirts” who violently enforced Germany’s new social rules.
Messerschmidt was the US Consul-General overseeing America’s diplomatic ties with Germany, so he politely stood at attention. But he did not salute or sing along.
Germans were required by law to render the Nazi salute, especially during the anthem; Hitler had been awarded supreme executive authority only a few months before, and he made the mandatory salute law of the land.
Foreigners, however, were explicitly exempt from saluting or singing the anthem.
But that didn’t help Messerschmidt.
Even though he was legally excused from making the Nazi salute, angry Brownshirts menacingly glared at him for not participating in their rituals.
Messerschidt later wrote in his memoirs that he felt threatened, as if the Brownshirts were ready to attack him.
“I felt really quite fortunate that the incident took place within doors. . . For if it had been in a street gathering, or in an outdoor demonstration, no questions would have been asked as to who I was, and that I would have been mishandled is almost unquestionable.”
Messerchmidt was one of the few US officials who grasped just how dangerous the Nazis were in 1933. Others had to witness it first hand before they understood.
A similar event unfolded when a US radio host and his family found themselves amidst an impromptu Nazi parade in Berlin.
And in order to avoid Hailing Hitler, they turned their backs to the parade and gazed into a store window.
But several Brownshirts quickly surrounded the family and demanded to know why they did not salute.
The family explained that they were from the US and didn’t know the customs in Germany. But the Brownshirts didn’t care. The family was assaulted as police officers watched… and did nothing to stop the violence.
News of these sorts of incidents quickly made their way overseas, and foreigners read the about Americans traveling in Germany being savagely beaten or threatened for not engaging in Nazi rituals.
But more surprising is that many foreigners actually sided with the Nazis.
Even the daughter of the US Ambassador to Germany defended the Nazis and their Brownshirt enforcers.
She said that news reports of these assaults and beatings were “exaggerated by bitter, close-minded people” who ignored the “thrilling rebirth” Hitler had ushered in for Germany.
Of course, we know in retrospect that these early warning signs were not at all an exaggeration. They were a small preview for what would come next.
Today we are obviously in a different time dealing with totally different circumstances.
But it would be foolish to ignore the early warning signs and pretend as if what’s happening now is not a preview for what could come next.
This is perhaps best illustrated by a CNN reporter in Kenosha, Wisconsin back in August who stood in front of burning cars and buildings, with a violent mob all around him, yet declared the protests “fiery but mostly peaceful.”
This willful ignorance of the undercurrent coursing its way through the Western world will not save anyone from the destruction it brings.
For example, just this past Monday, “peaceful protesters” in Portland, Oregon celebrated Columbus Day with an “Indigenous People’s Day of Rage.”
They weren’t even pretending to be peaceful. They called it what it is: RAGE. That’s literally the name they gave to their own actions.
Hundreds of people dressed in all black, covered their faces, and armed themselves with shields and nightsticks. They marched their way through the city, smashed windows, and forced any witnesses to stop filming and delete photographs.
A man who filmed from his apartment’s terrace had lasers shined in his eyes and was doused in some sort of liquid.
The protesters tore down statues of Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. They smashed the windows of the Oregon Historical Society building, and unfurled a banner that said “stop honoring racist colonizer murderers.”
Police did not even attempt to intervene until the rioters had been on the streets for hours and had already caused havoc and destruction.
(Ironically, much of the mainstream media still refuses to acknowledge that this group ‘antifa’– the fascists who call themselves anti-fascists– even exists.)
It’s obvious that a small, fringe, ideological minority has started to take control.
They have squashed civil discourse and free speech. Dissent is met with violence and intimidation. And if you dare to speak out, you become a target.
That could mean being “cancelled” by the Twitter mob. Or being accosted in public and forced to raise your fist. Several people have already been killed in protests across the nation.
This is far from the first time in history that a tiny fraction of the population has resorted to violence and extremism to force their agenda on an entire nation.
But you don’t have to watch helplessly as the born-again Brownshirts destroy everything you have worked for.
The first step is to recognize that the radical movement will not simply go away on its own. This has been growing for some time, and history tells us that it could become much worse.
Second, have a rock solid Plan B. This means deciding– in advance, when you’re still calm and rational– what steps to take in order to secure your family’s safety, your prosperity, and your freedom in a worst case scenario.
After all, you don’t want to be thinking about your next move when some antifa thug ‘peacefully’ hurls a molotov cocktail through your window.
Wells Fargo Fires Over 100 Employees For Illegally Pocketing Virus Relief Funds Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 17:47
First JPMorgan admitted that over 500 of its generously paid employees had “illegally pocketed” covid-relief funds – and then summarily fired most of them – and now it’s chronic lawbreaking recidivist Wells Fargo’s turn.
The bank, whose stock tumbled today after reporting dismal results and then was hit with even more selling after cutting its net interest income outlook, has fired more than 100 employees for illegally getting covid relief funds which were meant to help small businesses, Bloomberg reported citing a person familiar.
Warren Buffett’s favorite bank uncovered dozens of employees who defrauded the Small Business Administration “by making false representations in applying for coronavirus relief funds for themselves,” according to an internal memo reviewed by Bloomberg. Similar to JPMorgan, the abuse was tied to the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program and was outside the employees’ roles at the bank, according to the memo.
“We have terminated the employment of those individuals and will cooperate fully with law enforcement,” David Galloreese, Wells Fargo’s head of human resources, said in the memo. Wells Fargo’s actions follow JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s finding that more than 500 employees tapped the EIDL program which hands out as much as $10,000 in emergency advances that don’t have to be repaid, and dozens did so improperly.
The bank “will continue to look into these matters,” Galloreese added, saying the employees’ abuse didn’t involve customers… for once. “If we identify additional wrongdoing by employees, we will take appropriate action.”
As Bloomberg notes banks were urged by the SBA to look out for suspicious deposits from the EIDL program to their customers and even their own staff, after an analysis identified that at least $1.3 billion was sent out from the SBA for suspicious payments. While the program offers loans to businesses, much of the concern has focused on its advances of as much as $10,000 that don’t have to be repaid.
Wells Fargo is best known for its role in a massive account fraud scandal in which the bank created millions of fraudulent savings and checking accounts on behalf of Wells Fargo clients without their consent over a 14-year period. The fallout led to the bank paying $3 billion to settle criminal charges and former CEO John Stumpf losing his job after a historic Congressional grilling, while also agreeing pay a personal $17.5 million fine. In 2018, Wells Fargo agreed to an unprecedented consent order from the Fed which capped the size of its balance sheet and limited how many loans the bank can issue, one of the factors behind the dismal performance of its stock in recent years, which even prompted Warren Buffett to finally dump some of his Wells Fargo holdings.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3lKGaaj Tyler Durden
We’d all like to believe that the United States is on the road to economic recovery and that things are going to get better. Everyone wants to think the store shelves are just a few cargo ships away from being refilled. People want to believe that once 2020 is over, life will return to “normal” and that we’re just having a really bad year.
But someone pointed out an article I published four and a half years ago and when you look at the things which happened there and compare them to our situation, you may notice some uncanny similarities.
Here’s how Venezuela ran out of food.
In February of 2016, I wrote about what an economic collapse really looks like, using Venezuela as an illustration.
Venezuela:
The article begins when prepping began to be frowned upon by the Venezuelan government.
In 2013, many began to suspect that the outlook for Venezuela was grim when prepping became illegal. The Attorney General of Venezuela, Luisa Ortega Díaz, called on prosecutors to target people who are “hoarding” basic staples with serious sanctions.
Early in 2020, supplies began to be difficult to find due to the outbreak of COVID-19 and the potential of a lockdown. When folks couldn’t find basics like toilet paper, fingers immediately began to point at “preppers” and “hoarders.”
The word “hoarding” is being repeatedly used throughout news reports. They’re already working to paint preppers as bad and selfish people. They’re already vilifying those who hurry out to fill any gaps in their supplies. They’re making it seem like a mental illness to get prepared for what could potentially be a long stretch of time at home with only the supplies you have on hand.
This is a frequent trick of propagandists everywhere. Repeat a word often enough and suddenly everyone begins using it. Everyone begins to believe that the people labeled with an ugly word are terrible, selfish, and threats to decency. (source)
This dialogue is still in place, with people being shamed for large purchases, when in fact, they’re simply getting necessities for a large family. A friend of mine with a large family has said she’d have to shop every two days with the original limits stores posted to keep everyone in her household well-fed.
Venezuela:
It wasn’t long until the basics were incredibly difficult to acquire.
Then, just over a year ago, it became even more apparent that the country was falling. when long lines for basic necessities such as laundry soap, diapers, and food became the norm rather than the exception. Thousands of people were standing in line for 5-6 hours in the hopes that they would be able to purchase a few much-needed items. (source)
People from all over the country have reported in the comments the bare spots in their local stores, with a few exceptions who say that everything in their part of the nation is back to normal. Many areas still have limits on how many packages of toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and canned goods customers can purchase months after the original panic-fueled shopping sprees.
Venezuela:
Shortly after the story broke to the rest of the world, the propaganda machine shifted into high gear. As the government began to ration electricity, it was announced that this was not due to economic reasons at all, but instead was a measure of their great concern for the environment. (source)
As stores struggled to provide the essentials to customers, the government stepped in to “help.”
As the situation continued to devolve, farmers in Venezuela were forced to hand over their crops last summer. They assumed control of essential goods like food, and began putting retail outlets out of business. Then, once they had control of the sales outlets, they began forcing farmers and food manufacturers to sell anywhere from 30-100% of their products to the state at the price the state opted to pay, as opposed to stores and supermarkets.
But that wasn’t enough to keep the population fed. (Isn’t it astonishing how much less motivated people are to produce food and supplies when they are no longer allowed to benefit from their hard work? Historically, collectivism and farming have never gone successfully hand in hand.) This January, the government told citizens that they would need to produce their own food. The Ministry of Urban Farming was created to oversee this. While self-reliance sounds great, it isn’t so great in Venezuela. Just so the urban farmers don’t get too self-reliant, a registry of the crops and livestock will be required. (And obviously, they’ve already proven that they have no issue forcing farmers to hand over what they’ve produced.) (source)
The United States:
As our supply chain devolved, it was learned that farmers in the United States were unable to get their products to the market due to logistics issues, closed packaging plants, and a totally different marketplace. The President signed an Executive Order to force people to go back to work at meat packaging plants and also tried to organize a way to get food that was just being thrown out to the people who desperately needed it.
One of the issues processing. With meat, in particular, this is difficult – most folks aren’t even going to be willing to process their own chickens and it’s wildly unrealistic to imagine a family in the city processing a cow or a pig. With produce, it becomes a little bit easier – anyone can wash fruits and vegetables – but employees are still needed to harvest the food.
A lot of that scarcity could be remedied if we could reallocate things – if janitorial supplies could be sold to the general public, if farmers could sell directly to stores or consumers, and if farmers could donate unpurchased items to food banks.
So while nobody has insisted farmers hand over their crops without compensation, the government is clearly getting involved in the distribution of food.
Venezuela:
Eventually, all the measures the government of Venezuela took to hide the catastrophic collapse from citizens could hold up no longer.
Venezuela is out of food.
After several years of long lines, rationing, and shortages, the socialist country does not have enough food to feed its population, and the opposition government has declared a “nutritional emergency.” This is just the most recent nail in the beleaguered country’s slow, painful economic collapse.
Many people expect an economic collapse to be shocking, instant, and dramatic, but really, it’s far more gradual than that. It looks like empty shelves, long lines, desperate government officials trying to cover their tushes, and hungry people. For the past two years, I’ve been following the situation in Venezuela as each shocking event has unfolded. Americans who feel that our country would be better served by a socialist government would be wise to take note of this timeline of the collapse. (source)
It only took 3 years from the first report (about making “hoarding” illegal) for the once oil-rich country to fall into a ruin so extreme that there wasn’t enough food for everyone.
I’m sure it’s merely a coincidence but Venezuelans lost their firearms at around the same time “hoarding” was deemed illegal.
Were you aware that Venezuela banned guns for private citizens a mere four years ago, in 2012? Although the country was already in trouble, it seems like that was the beginning of the end.
Under the reign of Hugo Chavez, the government introduced a law that banned personal purchases of firearms and ammunition in an attempt to “improve security and cut crime”. The law was designed to keep guns in the hands of only police, military, and some security companies.
At the time, Chavez’s government said that “the ultimate aim is to disarm all civilians.” Shortly after the law passed, Chavez lost a battle to cancer, and bus driver Nicolas Maduro became the new president.
Most readers of this website are well aware of concentrated efforts across the United States to undermine the Second Amendment over the past 9 years it has been operating. For more information on these efforts, check out these articles.
Pompeo Claims State Department Doing ‘Everything We Can’ To Release Unseen Hillary Clinton Emails Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 17:05
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the State Department is doing “everything we can” to release emails from Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State under President Obama, according to Bloomberg.
“We’ll continue to do the right thing, we’ll make sure that all these emails get to the right place,” Pompeo told reporters on Wednesday. “We will do everything we can to make sure that the American people get a chance to see as much as we can equitably produce.”
The secretary of state has been on the defensive after Trump said last week that he wasn’t happy with Pompeo — one of his closest advisers — because the State Department still hadn’t released some of Clinton’s emails. At the time, Pompeo said there will be “more to see before the election.” On Wednesday he described the release of the emails as an “ongoing” process. –Bloomberg
In 2016, FBI Director James Comey declined to prosecute Clinton for sending classified emails through her private server kept at her home – after the agency downgraded the language regarding Clinton’s conduct from the criminal charge of “gross negligence” to “extremely careless.”
The State Department has published some 35,000 of Clinton’s emails, however President Trump has demanded that thousands more be made public.
Last week, Trump tweeted that he has “fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents” related to the ‘Russia Hoax’ and the ‘Hillary Clinton Email Scandal’ with ‘No redactions!’
I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions! https://t.co/GgnHh9GOiq
After the shrieking hysterical shitshow that was the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, everybody knew that the Amy Coney Barret hearings would be contentious, given the perceived stakes.
An initial attempt was made to paint Coney’s adoption of black children from Haiti as somehow colonial or a thinly veiled attempt to cover her inherent racism.
Some White colonizers “adopted” Black children. They “civilized” these “savage” children in the “superior” ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity. https://t.co/XBE9rRnoqq
That was quickly aborted when pretty well everybody (including me, the adoptive father of a black child) found that indefensible and disgusting.
Now a new front has been opened on the nominee.
This time it’s her use of the word “preference” when she indicated that she would exercise jurisprudence without judging sexual preference.
Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) called her use of it “offensive and outdated”, before asking Coney if she’d ever sexually assaulted anyone.
Bluecheck Twitter immediately seized the baton, decreeing in true 1984-style that using the phrase “sexual preference” was offensive, has always been offensive and shall evermore be, offensive.
On it’s own, this would be just another tiresome episode of the Woke Social Order on a mission to be offended, trying to head off what they see as a disastrous outcome for the replacement of the late great Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who, tangentially, described Brett Kavanaugh as “very decent and very smart” after he joined SCOTUS. Oh, and she also used the term “sexual preference” in 2017, btw).
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who Mazie Hirono called “our champion” on Monday, used the term “sexual preference” in 2017. Hirono jumped on Amy Coney Barrett for saying it Tuesday, calling it “offensive and outdated.” pic.twitter.com/8bHIQTSVFkhttps://t.co/JlcRA35g59
But it has been pointed out that the venerable institution that documents the literal meaning of words, Merriam Webster, quickly modified the definition of “preference”, to include:
5 offensive, see usage paragraph below : ORIENTATION sense 2b sexual preference:
Usage of Preference
The term preference as used to refer to sexual orientation is widely considered offensive in its implied suggestion that a person can choose who they are sexually or romantically attracted to
This negative connotation was not there before Hirono’s remarks.
“Widely considered” my ass. Literally nobody in the world thought this yesterday morning. Seriously. Twitter is alight with countless examples of Leftist mavens using the exact phrase which offended exactly zero people, anywhere, until now (Meanwhile, I imagine woke bluechecks are frantically scrubbing their timelines of “sexual preferences” as you read this).
As recently as last month, Webster’s Dictionary included a definition of “preference” as “orientation” or “sexual preference.” TODAY they changed it and added the word “offensive.”
Insane – I just checked through Wayback Machine and it’s real.
Merriam Webster’s page for “preference” shows that it was updated on October 13, 2020, which would have been immediately after all this broke loose.
Screengrabs via Waybackmachine and archive.is show that there was no offensive meaning in the word definition prior to this manufactured outrage.
This is important
Because it means that words no longer mean what is defined in an ostensibly impartial dictionary.
They now mean what politically über-correct social justice warriors say they mean. And if that’s the case, it means nobody can ever take issue or dissent from the Woke Social Order’s belief system without being, literally “by definition”, morally reprobate and wrong headed.
When I imagine “the word committee”, or whoever it is at Webster’s who decide what goes into the dictionary or when to change the meaning of a word, I always pictured a musty boardroom lined with books and a bunch of stodgy, learned academics slumped over the table, adorned with cobwebs … and every 10 or 20 years some clerk comes in with a list of word additions or meaning modifications and one of them just lifts up a rubber stamper that says “NO” and wordlessly hammers it down, sending the hapless intern on their way.
I guess I was wrong, and what it really must be now is some energized, hipster cultural Marxists cobbling new words and meanings off of Twitter and fashioning them to suit the far-left outrage du jour. Maybe we should be contacting the staff at MW and asking them about the review and vetting process that has them arbitrarily changing the meaning of words in their dictionary based on a twitchunt.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/312GcT5 Tyler Durden
WTI Holds Above $41 After Large Crude & Product Inventory Draws Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 – 16:35
Oil prices rallied today on the back of a weaker dollar and somewhat optimistic report from IEA, which decided to leave its 2020 forecast for oil demand unchanged at 91.7 million barrels per day while painting a picture of contracting supply, penciling in a 4-million-barrel-a-day drop in the fourth quarter.
But there is a lot of noise in the data still…
“Inventories are famously all over the board as a hurricane comes in,” said Flynn, in a note. Hurricane Delta made landfall on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast last week. The supply numbers “will be skewed enough and will cause more confusion than really shed any light.”
But the algos will get triggered one way of the other…
API
Crude -5.422mm (-2.3mm exp)
Cushing +2.199mm
Gasoline -1.513mm (-1.8mm exp)
Distillates -3.93mm (-2.5mm exp)
After last week’s surprise crude build, analysts continue to expect another draw and got a really big one (-5.42mm vs 2.3mm exp). Products also showed notable draws…
Source: Bloomberg
WTI hovered around $41 ahead of the print and held those gains after the bigf draws…
Going forward, OPEC+ members “will likely adopt a wait-and-see approach and not pursue new policies, since the market seems to be in balance and they will be cautious not to mess with the fragile recovery recently achieved,” said Manish Raj, chief financial officer at Velandera Energy.
“OPEC+ has shown its willingness to step in to rebalance the market, should that be necessary, but they will not risk prematurely tilting the balance in either direction,” he told MarketWatch.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3k0cwgR Tyler Durden
Better not to risk any radical evolution that might fail, and so failure is thus assured.
When times are good, modest reforms are all that’s needed to maintain the ship’s course. By “good times,” I mean eras of rising prosperity which generate bigger budgets, profits, tax revenues, paychecks, etc., eras characterized by high levels of stability and predictability.
Since stability has been the norm for 75 years, institutions and conventional thinking have both been optimized for incremental change. This is an analog of natural selection in Nature: when the organism’s environment is stable, there’s little pressure to favor random mutations, as these can be risky.
Why risk big changes when everything’s working fine as is?
Absent any big changes in their environment, organisms’ genetic programming remains stable. Unlike natural selection’s process of generating random mutations and testing their efficacy and advantages over the existing programming, human organizations quickly habituate to stable eras by institutionalizing incremental changes as the only available process for reform / change.
Radical reforms are not just frowned on as 1) unneccesary and 2) needlessly risky, there is no institutionalized process to propose, test and adopt radical changes because there is no need for such a process.
Nature has such a process: punctuated equilibirium. When faced with a rapidly changing environment, organisms face intense evolutionary pressure to adapt or die. Mutations which confer a significant advantage in the new environment become part of the species’ genetic programming as those with the adaptation bear offspring who carry the advantageous adaptation. Those without the advantageous adaptation die and those with the adaptation thrive and multiply.
Once the environment stabilizes in “the new normal,” the evolutionary pressure lets up and the species returns to the stability of relatively few changes in its genetic programming.
Organisms which have lost the ability to adapt to rapid change die off once they encounter instability. Species that constantly face instability and rapid change will selectively favor genetic traits which optimize rapid evolution.
Nature tends to retain a basement closet full of fast-evolution tricks just in case the organism faces novel challenges.
Alas, human organizations and conventional thinking have no such closet of fast-evolution tricks. Rather, human organizations and conventional thinking marshal formidable forces to suppress anything which threatens the status quo, because why risk upsetting the feeding trough unless it’s absolutely necessary?
Therein lies the fatal problem: radical adaptation is never absolutely necessary in human organizations and conventional thinking until it’s too late–and even then, the leadership and conventional thinking will fatalistically accept oblivion rather than opt for a risky strategy of testing every mutation and fast-tracking whatever has promise, even though the odds of failure are high since 1) the challenge is novel and therefore unpredictable and 2) most mutations will fail to provide the radical advantages needed to meet the challenge.
In other words, what’s absolutely necessary to human organizations and conventional thinking is the suppression of potentially dangerous novel ideas because the worst-case scenario is that the novel ideas upset the feeding trough all the insiders have come to depend on.
Unfortunately for human organizations and conventional thinking, novel challenges demand precisely what they’re incapable of: risky rapid evolution. The risks will never seem worth it because some insiders might lose their spot at the feeding trough.
Since this loss is viewed as catastrophic by those at risk, they will fight with everything they have to stymie any radical reforms. Ironically, their resistance to rapid evolution only guarantees the demise of the entire organization / status quo, including the spot at the trough they were so eager to defend at all costs.
As the crisis deepens, the default setting in organizations and conventional thinking is that incremental changes and reforms will be enough, because they’ve been enough for four generations. I call this entirely natural default setting the delusional faith in incremental change because this faith isn’t guided by history or the logic of causality; it’s simply convenient and easy.
Nobody gets fired or demoted for agreeing to do more of what’s failed spectacularly.
I’ve prepared a chart of the delusional faith in incremental change showing how each new crisis is met by incremental institutionalized defaults that are completely inadequate to the novel challenges that have arisen. The blindness to the need for radical adaption has been institutionalized as well: this is what worked in the past, so it will work now. Why risk everything when we have procedures that have worked well?
Each stage of the crisis draws whatever conventional response causes the least pain. First, the “rainy day fund” is drained to keep everyone at the feeding trough. Studies of options are funded, and so on.
The recommendations are either too timid and clearly inadequate or they’re too bold and risky. So incremental policy and budget tweaks are adopted as acceptable institutional defaults.
But rifts open in the leadership as the farsighted few demand rapid, radical adaptations and the conventional risk-averse crowd digs in their heels. The farsighted few are pushed out or quit / retire, eliminating the only people who had the ability and experience to actually pull off a radical change of course.
A reshuffling of leadership evokes hope that the modest reforms will work magic. Alas, incremental tweaks only work in eras of stability. They fail miserably in unstable eras of rapidly-evolving challenges.
As everything runs to failure, the only acceptable path is to do more of what’s failed spectacularly, a default to low-risk incrementalism that only accelerates the final inevitable collapse.
The delusional faith in incremental change guarantees systemic failure. Better not to risk any radical evolution that might fail, and so failure is thus assured.
