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Submitted by SouthFront,

The Syrian government seems to be deploying Pantsir-S1 air defense systems to Libya to assist forces of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar in their battle against the Turkish-controlled Government of National Accord.

An unusual Pantisr-S1 air defense system was for the first time spotted in Libya last week, when local activists released a video of a Libyan National Army convoy moving towards the port city of Sirte besieged by Turkish-led forces.

A spokesman for the GNA forces in the region, Brig. Abdul Hadi Draa, also said that the Pantsir-S1 systems and other weapons were deployed at the Sirte airport on July 11. One of the convoys moving towards the airport included the Pantsir-S1 system on the unusual KAMAZ-6560 8×8 chassis. Previously, all the Pantsir-S1 systems operated by the LNA were based on the German MAN SX 45 8×8 chassis. This variant was supplied by Russia to the UAE, which later supplied systems to the LNA.

Other discriminant marks of the filmed Pantsir-S1 were a desert yellow paint and the older passive electronically scanned array search radar. The only country in the Middle East that operates Pantsir-S1 systems with such specifications and supports the Libyan National Army is Syria.

Damascus also sees the Libyan National Army and the House of Representatives as a natural ally because they also fight against the occupation of their country by Turkey.

In the last few weeks, Syrian Il-76 cargo planes made several unusual flights between Damascus International Airport and the al-Khadim Air Base in northeast Libya. The base is known to be hosting service members of the UAE that are involved in the assist and advice mission to support Haftar’s forces. The Pantsir-S1 system spotted on the road to Sirte may have been shipped from Syria to Libya during one of these flights.

At the same time, the Syrian government currently have good relations with Egypt, the UAE – the main backers of the Libyan National Army, and obviously with Russia – the producer of Pantsir-S1 systems and the country that provides background diplomatic support to the UAE-Egypt bloc in the conflict.

The Syrian Air Defense Forces operate dozens of Pantsir-S1 systems. Most of the Syrian systems are equipped with the advanced active electronically scanned array search radar. Therefore, Damascus may have opted to sell a part of its older systems to Haftar.

If this is confirmed, this move will likely allow Syria to improve its relations with the Libyan National Army, the UAE and Egypt, complicate Turkish plans to capture Srite, and last but not least strengthen the Syrian regional positions, which were significantly undermined by the ongoing war inside the country.

It’s been 17 years since Aerospatiale/BAC Concorde, a turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner, flew passengers across the Atlantic at Mach 2.04 (1,341 mph). Come October, that could all change, as Boom Supersonic will unveil its supersonic demonstrator.

 

The Denver-based aerospace startup will rollout the XB-1 on October 7, powered by three GE J85-15 engines. The demonstrator will be one-third-scale but used in trial flights for the eventual debut of the 55-passenger Overture supersonic airliner by mid-2020s. 

For the first time since Concorde, a new supersonic civil aircraft will be unveiled. XB-1 rolls out this October. You’re invited to see the event.

RSVP: https://t.co/Bzgmst1R4J#SupersonicReturns #XB1Rollout pic.twitter.com/PXdI2KuMvn

— Boom Supersonic (@boomaero) July 8, 2020

Supersonic travel was popular in the late 1970s, 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. Concorde was the only game in town, flying 20 jets (6 non-commercial aircraft) for 27 years. The end of commercial supersonic flight was in 2003 when Air France Flight 4590 struck debris on the runway and crashed shortly after takeoff.  

“With XB-1, we’re demonstrating that we are prepared to bring back supersonic,” said Blake Scholl, Supersonic Boom founder and CEO. “We’re ensuring that the supersonic future is safe and environmentally and economically sustainable. We’ve learned that the demand for supersonic has grown even faster than we anticipated.”

Supersonic returns. Our supersonic demonstrator, XB-1, rolls out this October. See the aircraft paving the way for faster travel and RSVP at https://t.co/QyyAxNjIfm. pic.twitter.com/TIniq4QQBo

— Boom Supersonic (@boomaero) July 10, 2020

“To design and build XB-1, Boom has recruited a team of experts from around the industry, established supplier relationships, and built a strong safety culture. XB-1 is the first aircraft program to announce a 100% carbon-neutral flight test program. The company’s innovations include one of the highest-efficiency civil supersonic intakes ever tested, demonstrating Boom’s ability to deliver a breakthrough in propulsive efficiency for Overture. XB-1 will begin its test program later this year and is slated for first flight in 2021,” the release stated. 

The aerospace startup said a full-scale aircraft (Overture) would take to the skies in the mid-2020s and shuttle passengers around the world at Mach 2.2 (1,688 mph) by 2030. 

Before the pandemic, the company locked in more than $6 billion worth of pre-orders for Overture, which costs $200 million per plane, with buyers included Japan Airlines and Virgin Group. 

The development of commercial supersonic jets has gained momentum in the last five years. In 2019, we noted NASA’s X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology (QueSST) plane is set to hit the skies in the near term. The purpose of the test flight is to design future planes that generate a sonic thump (rather than sonic boom) when planes travel faster than the speed of sound. 

The good news for Boom Supersonic is that Overture won’t carry passengers until 2030 or at least five years after the global recovery in air travel will be seen from the 2020 virus-induced crash.

Authored by Rob Slane via The BlogMire,

On the first day of “lockdown”, I wrote this:

“So that seems to be that. The end of Britain as we knew it. … I must say I am astonished and saddened that this has happened to the country I love, because of an illness which will likely turn out to kill no more than might die during a very bad flu season*. Astonished and saddened by the fact that we are risking economic meltdown and the untold misery this could bring to the lives of millions in lost jobs, decimated businesses and a plunging into poverty. Astonished and saddened that a once free people are being caged like prisoners, at a huge risk to their mental health, general wellbeing and future liberties. Astonished and saddened that so many freeborn people seem to be welcoming all this.”

*[Covid-19 has killed around 550,000 in more than 6 months worldwide, and the W.H.O. estimates that flu kills between 290,000 and 650,000 in a season]

Months later, and after having done all I could think of to warn people and plead with them about what is happening to them and what is being done to them, both on this blog, on Twitter, and elsewhere, through analysis of data, by pointing to true experts who are ignored by the media, and by careful argumentation, the astonishment I once had for these things has morphed into something like a shrug of resignation. Months into the most dangerous social experiment ever conducted; with no political or media opposition to be seen; with a tsunami of unemployment coming our way; with social and public life frozen due to the ongoing restrictions; with millions still petrified and panicked by a virus that has indeed turned out to be roughly as deadly as a severe flu season; with local “lockdowns” now being implemented for no rational reason whatever; and with Schedule 21 — perhaps the most sinister legislation this country has seen for centuries — being passed without a peep of controversy, and apparently millions still cannot see what is happening to them and what is being done to their lives and their country. What can one do except shrug?

When I wrote that piece in March, I intuitively sensed that something had happened from which we would not recover for years, decades, perhaps even generations. I marvelled at those who kept saying it would soon be over — three weeks to flatten the curve and all that — not because of any intuition I might have felt, but because the report which was used to put us into “lockdown” — Neil Ferguson’s “boggy mess” “angel hair pasta” report — could hardly have been plainer that this was not going to be the case:

“When examining mitigation strategies, we assume policies are in force for 3 months, other than social distancing of those over the age of 70 which is assumed to remain in place for one month longer. Suppression strategies are assumed to be in place for 5 months or longer.

And there was this:

“A minimum policy for effective suppression is therefore population-wide social distancing combined with home isolation of cases and school and university closure. To avoid a rebound in transmission, these policies will need to be maintained until large stocks of vaccine are available to immunise the population – which could be 18 months or more [my italics].

Be honest, those who supported the “lockdown” policy and believed it would be all over soon: did you actually read the report that put us into it to find out what was in store for us? Somehow, I doubt it.

Yet, even without looking at Ferguson’s hopelessly wrong report (click here to see just how hopelessly wrong), it was plainly obvious that it wasn’t going to be over in three weeks, and that we were moving into an era of what I would call a Medical Tyranny, or Health & Safety Despotism, take your pick. Why? Because once a people have accepted that these actions are right and proportional to the threat of a virus with a similar mortality to a bad flu season, how exactly do you propose going back to normal? If hysteria, fear and panic are created on those kind of levels, rather than calmness, reason and proportionality, all you’ve done is set a new benchmark for all future threats, from which there is only one escape — that is, to admit that the whole thing has been a monumental blunder, and vow never to repeat it again.

One of the few people in the public eye to really grasp this was the Swedish epidemiologist, Johanne Giesecke. Where others appeared to look not much further than the end of their nose, he was looking way off into the future, not just in terms of the Swedish herd immunity strategy (which is, I think, now largely achieved), nor the economic and social consequences. No, he also foresaw with amazing prescience the conundrum we would face, whereby on the one hand we could not keep lockdown indefinitely, since it would destroy our society:

“But then, what next? No democratic society can remain in lockdown for many months or years. Their economies cannot withstand it, and the public won’t allow it.”

Yet on the other hand, according to Giesecke, we wouldn’t be able to lift it fully, because having acted in this way for such a virus, we’d have to continue with the same treatment for every virus of similar lethality that comes along, or even the same one if it doesn’t go away, because we had created a precedent and because public fear would demand it:

“You’ve painted yourself into a corner. What are you gonna do for the next 30 years? I don’t know how you gonna handle that. But that’s your problem!”

Well quite. What are we going to do if Covid-19 comes back in the winter? Or Covid-20 comes along next year? Not to mention Covids-21,22,23 etc? Or maybe even a really bad influenza? Are we going to shutter our economy every time? Are we going to quarantine millions of healthy people again? The precedent has been set, the fear has been created, the Pandora’s Box has been opened. How do we shut it?

We have, by accepting the policy of quarantining millions of healthy people for whom Covid-19 posed almost no danger (fact: the number of under-60s who have died of Covid-19 with no pre-existing condition in English hospitals is 302), shutting places of worship, cafes, pubs, restaurants etc, and allowing the Government to stoke up fear, acted rather like a person with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Instead of accepting that the world is a dangerous place, life is risky, and we’re all going to die one day, we have instead allowed the apparent threat of a virus to dominate us, to shape our whole way of life, to alter our thinking and our being, to destroy the good things we had, to rid ourselves of the chance to live properly like free people. Most appallingly, in my view, is what we have done to children, who are being treated like lepers, denied the opportunity to have normal childhoods in a normal environment (fact: the number of under 19s that have died in English hospitals from Covid-19 is 16 with underlying conditions, and 4 without).

Although the worst aspects of the national physical “lockdown” may have been lifted, what I would describe as Psychological Lockdown is here to stay. We see it in the increasing pressure, and soon-to-be state-mandated wearing of face coverings, which is something I had previously associated with some of the more intolerant regimes in the Middle East. The mandated wearing of these secular burkas is hideous, dehumanising, and extremely unnerving, and the thought of my children having to wear these things and cover their faces is most distressing. It is remarkable that people accept being told to wear these things by a Government which just three months ago went out of its way to tell us that they were unnecessary and that there was no evidence for their efficacy (which there isn’t). I also find it incredible that people can blithely put them on now, of all times, when deaths from the virus have almost come to an end, and yet it doesn’t occur to them to ask why — if the things are oh so necessary — the Government advised against wearing them in March. Is this cognitive dissonance on steroids? Perhaps, but then again, I have recently come to realise that many do not simply believe that the Government follows the science; they believe the Government is the science, even if that involves believing utterly contradictory messages from day to day, or month to month:

In many ways, this psychological lockdown is the culmination of a number of things.

Firstly, we have put death out of sight, at least partly by building crematoriums out of town, where nobody can see them as they drive past, and so we hardly see death as a thing anymore. And so when people were shown the potential of death coming to their doorstep, and when they were bombarded with spurious figures from this deeply irresponsible Government (Governments are supposed to govern, which requires calm leadership, not fearporn night after night), they freaked out. To this day, people freak out when they hear of another 100 Covid deaths or so, seemingly oblivious to the fact that death claims 1,400-1,500 people in this country every day of the year.

Secondly, one of our great national idols, Health and Safety, has rendered us unable to look at life and ask the simple question: is a life spent trying to avoid all risks and permanently sanitising everything even worth living? Sounds utterly ghastly, soul and freedom-destroying to me, but it is also counter-productive even on its own terms. The practice of sanitising our lives means that we do not build up the immunity we should, and so ironically we become more susceptible to illnesses than if we’d got on with our lives and let our kids muck about together in the mud. Oxford University’s Professor Sunetra Gupta has warned precisely of this in relation to so-called “social distancing”, which would of course be amazingly ironic, and yet entirely foreseeable. We live in a world of trade-offs and consequences, and we are supposed to think about the possible long-term costs before we take actions — especially drastic ones. But unfortunately, our Health & Safety Commissars have convinced people that it is not so, and that we can eliminate almost all risk. Well no we can’t, and quite frankly who (apart from Health & Safety Commissars) really wants to live such an insipid existence anyway?

And thirdly, it is the culmination of decades of inviting the state and its scientists to manage our lives. C.S. Lewis saw this way back when:

“On just the same ground I dread government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in. In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. They ‘cash in’. It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science. Perhaps the real scientists may not think much of the tyrants’ ‘science’ — they didn’t think much of Hitler’s racial theories or Stalin’s biology. But they can be muzzled.”

In our desire to pretend death is not a thing; to put health and safety so far above the desire to live like free people; and to trust state scientists to order our lives for us, this is what we’ve become.

A nation in psychological lockdown, unable to get back to normality, because we have accepted abnormality as a price worth paying for protecting us against a virus that is harmless to all but a few, who could have been protected but were not.

A nation in psychological lockdown, unable to get back to normality, because we have accepted the arbitrary, unscientific diktats of a Government that spooked millions, and are now ready to accept their every imposition in the name of being kept safe.

A nation in psychological lockdown, in denial about the tsunami of job losses, business closures, resultant increase in poverty, resultant decrease in life expectancy awaiting us, and yet utterly unable to accept that it was not the virus that did it, but the disproportionate response.

As I said at the beginning, after months of trying to warn people of where this is heading, only to be smeared with insults or met with sheer apathy, I now simply shrug my shoulders in a sort of, “Oh well, have it your own way,” sort of manner. Of course, I continue to pray fervently that the future would be other than the bleak picture I have painted, and as a rampantly Post-millennial Christian, I am 100% persuaded that one day this will indeed be so. But for the foreseeable future, I’m afraid we’ve chosen a course where we decided to hand in the keys of our lives and our freedoms to the Government in return for the illusion of safety. From this there is only one escape — but that would involve something I’m not sure we’re yet ready to do.

Authored by Tim Kirby via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Usually when there are protests, however minor, happening in a nation that has run afoul of the United States the “International Community” and “Human Rights Activists” rally to push for regime change. However, now that there are mass protests exploding over the United States these types of voices are completely silent. American police are free to destroy CHAZ and other camps however they see fit. This is the power of America, however this time around there sure are a lot of red flags and Communist sentiments in the mouths of the protestors. If we were still in the Cold War the Soviet Union would have been instantly blamed as spark that lit BLM. But interestingly in today’s world the only powerful Communist nation on Earth left standing is getting 0% of the blame. This is the power of China.

If we remove relevant issues related to feelings and sexuality the real big story over the last five to ten years has been the rise of the Chinese economy with all sorts of “predictions” grounded in the biases of those making them. The more Fox News/Republican you are the more Chinese “Communism” seems gilded at best and for those on the other side of the line they see China taking the 21st century as its own due to the failures of “late stage Capitalism”. We’ve all lived through years of speculation about where China is going, but finally according to Max Keiser (who is far from perfect himself in predicting the future, but has better results than most mainstream economists) it looks like this is the year the Red Chinese will finally overtake the Rugged Individualists and become the largest economy in the world.

To be clear he argues that this “achievement” will be due to weathering the global economic downturn that is coming in the wake of the Covid-19 Pandemic. For the tinfoil hat crowd, yes it does seem awfully convenient that the country that started the plague may wind up benefiting the most from it.

Photo: China is rising but how far can it go?

So is China in the near future going to become like a post-WWII United States – damaged from battle but in vastly better condition than any of its competitors ready to reach out across the globe to secure its Superpower status? Let’s take a look at some arguments for and against this and Mr. Keiser’s prediction.

Arguments Against:

• China has nowhere to expand to. There will be no “Red Marshall Plan” for the post Covid world and Chinese goods have already saturated international markets. This is what gave Beijing the chance to rise but does it really have anywhere new to go? Can China somehow explode further and become even more pervasive than it already is? Probably not. Perhaps this fact is why the Chinese economy (according to a variety of sources) is starting to slow down if not stagnate.

• China has economic successes over the competition, not cultural ones. Countries with pathetic geopolitical influence like Japan produce more media consumed abroad than China. America has been able to export some sort of universal attractive picture of itself as a Soft Power aphrodisiac for decades. One has to be “cool” to be a king of the world and China thus far only knows how to speak to its own people internally.

• It is unknown if the People’s Liberation Army is up to the impossible task of policing the planet. The United States spends $750 billion on it per year and seems to be barely hanging on. Could China really maintain some sort of global presence?

• The Financial Times lays out a laundry list of social problems that the Chinese have not resolved. From a massive gender imbalance to a surprisingly shrinking workforce that is aging rapidly. China’s biggest asset its population, like its economy is also stagnating.

• Add in some large debts and parts of the economy resting on the value “ghost towns” and we see there could be some rough waters ahead for the internal side of the Chinese economy.

• China generally steals ideas and makes them on the cheap, or produces them well for foreign creators. It is hard to imagine a dominant world power that has no ideas of its own producing plastic widgets for its vassals as a key source of income. China’s role as the world’s factory excludes it from becoming the global executive.

Arguments For:

• China still has the ideal conditions for a 21st century economy. Over a billion people mostly packed together around the coast, willing to work for cheap with the ability to export everything for pennies by boat. (And, even if that fails or is sabotaged by America they New Silk Road is a fantastic Plan B). China has these advantages, and although others like India want to pretend that they do, in actually they are not even close. In this way China is an “exceptional” nation as it has the collective mentality and organized manpower to win.

• At the very least China plays an important role in every national economy on Earth. Even in countries a bit more trade dependent on America, they still have the Chinese coming at #2. The USA was about 50% of the world economy after WWII and today it has 23%. China is at 15% and rising, perhaps if it could hit 33% it would enter in to its own 1950s like utopia by 2050.

• Things like a “lack of free press” or “rule of law” have been very overblown in their importance in a powerful economy and China is proof of this. Any of these emotional “boo-hoo they aren’t like us” arguments are garbage that needs to be burned and should be ignored.

• There is nothing besides the United States stopping China from using mafia tactics to shut down competition. What are some manufacturing plants in Malaysia or South Korea going to do when the PLA threatens to break their legs? They will probably instantly back down and surrender. If Washington wants “controlled chaos” in the Middle-East – you’re done. If the Chinese want you to work less in a post American world then enjoy your permanent vacation time, or else.

As mentioned above people who write analysis pieces are very often blinded by their ideology, and when one is an advocate for a Multipolar World it is possible to see “Multipolarity” in everything, but it seems unlikely that our era will truly become “China’s Century”. Just because the world’s only Hyperpower is on the decline does not mean that a new one has to take its place. When Rome fell no other Mediterranean city automatically took its place as the lord of the West. China as nation will remain strong, it will not collapse, but it will not become a post-WWII United States. This simply does not seem to be in the cards.

While every effort has been made in China to paint a picture of a recovering ‘back to normal’ economy with production rebounding dramatically, it appears, as we noted earlier, that the demand side of the equation is not keeping pace with supply.

Case in point, China’s passenger car sales broke the v-shaped recovery narrative in June, slumping back 6.5%, despite soaring auto production data.

So what happened to all those cars?

We have the answer…

Wuhan, the epicenter of the CCP virus, is one of the major automaking towns in China. Dongfeng Motor Group, China’s third-biggest state-owned automaker, is headquartered in the city.

On June 30, a woman was shocked to see thousands and thousands of unsold new cars sitting idle on Dongfeng Motor land.

She shot the video from an overpass above Dongfeng’s car lots…

So now we know, the old mantra of “if we build it, they will come” is thoroughly debunked in the case of China’s COVID comeback.

Authored by Eddie van der Walt, macro commentator at Bloomberg

Even when hedge funds have a world of risk-protection products at their disposal, such as going short the S&P 500 or going long the volatility of volatility, many still buy gold. Why? Because it offers broad protection against unknowns, rather than targeted insurance against identified risks.

During the darkest days of March, the supposed haven metal fell alongside equities and other risky assets as investors rushed to the liquidity of short-end Treasuries. Even forgiving that failure, it’s a blunt instrument compared with other forms of portfolio insurance.

Yet the price of gold has been chased to eight-year highs above $1,800/oz. Investors in exchange-traded funds built a stockpile large enough to supply global gold demand for three quarters of a year. And luminaries including Paul Singer, David Einhorn, and Crispin Odey have told backers they’re bullish.

The first reason usually presented is the inverse relationship with real rates. As a non-yielding asset with perceived inflation-protection qualities, gold tends to do well when central banks turn dovish in the face of slow growth. But there are more precise ways of achieving this, for instance, via inflation swaps.

Such a trade will introduce counterparty risk, which is the second excuse often given for resorting to gold. But unless we’re talking about the collapse of the global financial system these risks can be met through collateral and clearing houses.

Instead, it’s gold’s bluntness as a tool that makes it useful. It offers broad insurance against the unknown, whereas a credit default swap offers protection against a very specific event.

This can be illustrated by how it moves relative to other assets. In normal times, the best input to explain the tick-by-tick movements in gold is the dollar, the two having a correlation of -0.5 since the turn of the century.

But it’s not stable over time. In periods of acute stress, particularly if the stress is perceived as outside the U.S., gold and the dollar can move in tandem. In fact, gold often takes the opposite side of the biggest perceived risk factor in global markets.

Anecdotally, periods of heightened uncertainty in the euro zone, including the sovereign debt crisis and then the Greek bailout referendum in 2015, saw stronger-than-usual inverse links between the euro and gold priced in that currency.

It was the same case with the pound during the Brexit vote, when the mathematical relationship between sterling and bullion priced in sterling went from its 10-year average of -0.2 to -0.84.

And it works on a statistical level, too. Across major equity indexes and the most liquid currencies, the correlation between gold and the counter asset becomes more inverse as the volatility of the other asset increases.

The table below shows the average correlation to gold in changing volatility regimes, with data for the last two decades compiled on a rolling 60-day basis by Bloomberg. For currencies, the cross-correlation was measured to gold priced in that currency.

This shows that the nature of gold’s protection changes as the risk factors change. Preoccupations shift from trade wars to geopolitics to hyperinflation, and gold’s offers the all-purpose protection hard to achieve with a short against the S&P 500.

So in the hyper-speed coronavirus world, it’s no wonder hedge funds still love gold.

A heavily modified Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter jet formally entered mass production this month, according to a new report via South China Morning Post (SCMP), who spoke with military sources about the development surrounding the fifth-generation fighter jet with upgraded Russian engines. 

China held a ceremony last week, unveiling the modified J-20B stealth fighter jet. The source said, “production of the J-20B started on Wednesday. It has finally become a complete stealth fighter jet, with its agility meeting the original criteria.” 

“The most significant change to the fighter jet is that it is now equipped with thrust vector control,” the source said. 

Thrust vector control (TVC) is cutting-edge aviation technology that is currently dominated by the US and Russia, gives these nation’s stealth jets better combat capability. 

“TVC involves a movable thrust nozzle that enables a fixed-wing plane to change the direction of its engine exhaust. This allows the pilot to raise the aircraft’s nose cone vertically while maintaining forward momentum so the plane effectively “sits” on its own tail in an aerodynamic stall caused by low speed and a high angle of attack. 

“The use of such technology extensively boosts the maneuverability of a fighter jet, providing advantages in aerial combat, especially during close-range dogfights,” said Defense Aerospace.  

Thrust vectoring capabilities will allow J-20Bs to take on US’ Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II that Washington has spent several years deploying to allied countries around China, effectively building an “F-35 friends circle.” 

SCMP notes Chinese engineers were working on a TVC system of their own but failed to materialize into promising results. 

“The Chinese engine designed for the J-20s still failed to meet requirements, but its development is going quite smoothly, and it may be ready in the next one or two years,” the source said.

Chinese engineers then decided to go with Russian Saturn AL-31 engines as the “ultimate goal is to equip the J-20B fighter jets with domestic engines,” the source said. 

“The launch of the J-20B means this aircraft now is a formal fifth-generation fighter jet,” the military source said, adding that Chengdu Aerospace Corporation (CAC), which manufactures the J-20s, had received “heavy orders” from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). – SCMP 

In 2019, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAF) said an upgraded J-20 (likely referring to the J-20B) will achieve “overwhelming superiority” over the F-35. 

Authored by Joakim Book via The American Institute for Economic Research,

In August 2018, Greta Thunberg first began skipping school to protest outside the Swedish parliament. Almost two years later, her fame is global; everybody knows her name, climate activist or climate change denier, politician, or janitor. 

The relentless rise to international fame for this teenager – becoming Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2019 – was cut short only by the corona pandemic. Media teams followed her through lockdown, where she eagerly expressed her love for learning and repeated her frequent message of listening to the learned.  

Now, however, she’s back, crushing the audience records of the Radio Sweden show “Summer in P1.” This 60-year-old tradition consists of a public figure given free range for 90 minutes to tell the story of their lives and choose the appropriate music that accompanies it. Monologues by these hosts, often musicians, politicians, business leaders or cultural personalities of one kind of another, are often deeply personal. Once a day between June 20 and August 16, the host of the day tells us about their great adventures and emotional journeys.  

When Greta Thunberg became internationally renowned for her climate activism last year, it was only natural that Radio Sweden – with the same biases and skewed climate emphasis that Americans may recognize from NPR or the pages of the New York Times – would jump at the chance of hosting Greta. Starting off this year’s round of summer hosts, her show broke all previous records: over a million Swedes, a tenth of the population, listened to her show, and the BBC will broadcast the English version on July 11. 

The format is no stranger to difficult topics, both politically and personally. Usually, the themes are biographical and very emotional: celebrities have been known to unearth secrets and talk about the most intimate of feelings. To this day, the lugubrious words of Kristian Gidlund, the drummer in the band Sugarplum Fairy, still bring me to tears. Having been diagnosed with an incurable cancer in his twenties, Gidlund hosted the show in June 2013, just a few months before he died. Most memorably, he read a letter to the beloved child he will never have, imagining his or her life and Gidlund’s journey as a parent.

Greta’s talk is less grim but equally powerful – and one of the better ones she’s given. As a fellow Swede, I’ve always admired her devotion and seeming aura of calmness and factfulness. Throughout, her programme is delivered in a calm voice, balanced and sane, even though the topic she addresses is huge and cataclysmic. Remarkably, with all the world’s attention over the last few years, she has avoided delusions of grandeur and resisted having her self-image distorted. 

Or at least so she says. I distinctly recall her World Economic Forum statement, where she said “Our house is on fire,” and where climate change was “the greatest and most complex challenge that Homo Sapiens have ever faced.” When she ushered world leaders to panic, she wasn’t exactly balanced and calm.

In this longer-form talk, she dismissed most of the interactions she has had with world politicians as futile virtue-signaling. The listener can clearly detect Greta’s detest for people talking the talk but not walking the walk. Bureaucrats and journalists are eager to snap selfies with the face of climate activism, but take almost no actions in their ostensible support of said climate activism. Hashtags and Instagram pictures won’t do, Greta repeatedly points out, her voice full of frustration and discontent. 

She recounts her much-publicized United Nations speech, from which everyone mistakenly took away only “How dare you,” when her intended message was: “We don’t accept these odds” and “Listen to the scientists!” She tells of meeting after meeting where people, politicians as well as strangers on the subway, wish to congratulate her on her speech and celebrate her achievements: “What for?” she exclaims, noticeably surprised and annoyed, “Another meeting is over; empty words are all that remain.” 

And in those few words, she captured the essence of politics. 

Repeatedly during her show, she asks us, commonsensically, to listen to the science. The problem, she explicitly admits, is of course which science. In contrast to what Greta seems to believe, environmentalism is not a question of climate scientists vs climate deniers – that ship, as she persuasively points out, has sailed. Unfortunately, she overlooks the more difficult battle between the sciences and how the object of their inquiry interacts with human societies. Economy is not ecology. 

While the full details are fuzzy, the impact that humans have on our world is pretty clear: our carbon-using activities leading to glaciers melting, storms getting worse and unpredictable, harvests and agricultural cycles being altered. That’s not controversial and, to my knowledge, in this Greta is mostly correct. 

The science about how best to safeguard human flourishing, however, is controversial and a topic that the teenage activist rarely addresses. How climate change affects human societies and how best to protect us against a slightly changed nature is far from clear. According to the climate models of William Nordhaus, the co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in economics, the optimal rise in global mean temperature is around 3.5 degrees Celsius – much higher than the 1.5-degree target espoused by the UN and echoed by Greta. Perhaps Nordhaus is wrong, but he’s hardly a climate change denier, and he has at least thought long and hard about the aggregate pros and cons of a warmer planet.

Many of the topics that Ms. Thunberg raises are real ecological dangers – she’s serious and honest enough not to make stuff up. But they’re much less troublesome than she thinks, and many available solutions are vehemently detested by her fellow climate activists: nuclear power, geoengineering, economic growth, capitalist innovation.  

Indeed, adopting policies that severely cut back humanity’s use of fossil fuels such that the 1.5-degree target would be achievable, are likely to make humanity much poorer than not doing anything at all. As we’ve learned recently from the corona debacle, cures are often much worse than the disease they intend to fix. 

In contrast to the cataclysmic nature of Greta’s talk, humans have never been more well-protected from the awesome power of mother nature. Damages from U.S. hurricanes, adjusted for population and prices, have shown no upward trend in the last 120 years. Damages from wildfires, so vividly in the news last year, have similarly not been made worse by anthropogenic climate change. 

Economic losses due to weather events, composed of both naturally-occurring events and any human-made worsening through emissions, have actually been decreasing over the last thirty years. Similarly, the number of people who die from climate events (floods, storms, droughts etc) has been rapidly falling for a hundred years. While human-made climate change seems to have altered our environment roughly in the ways that Greta outlines, we have at the same time gotten much, much better at protecting ourselves from those extreme events. In no small feat thanks to the fossil fuels that activists detest so much, we have been able to tame nature’s most devastating harms. 

This is the science Greta forgets about. 

My favorite paragraph from an IPCC report that Greta frequently cites and a sister report to the one she famously delivered as testimony to the U.S. Congress reads: 

“For most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts of other drivers (medium evidence, high agreement). Changes in population, age, income, technology, relative prices, lifestyle, regulation, governance, and many other aspects of socioeconomic development will have an impact on the supply and demand of economic goods and services that is large relative to the impact of climate change.” (emphasis added)

Perhaps Greta’s message for politicians to listen to the scientists and take real action has hit home. In one sense, they are already well on the way to following her advice. They read chapter 10 of IPCC’s AR5 report, where they learned that climate change is important – but that other socioeconomic developments matter much more.

The US economy has stalled as the virus pandemic flares up. Real-time data shows slowdowns in consumer foot traffic, restaurant foot traffic, discretionary income, and overall economic activity as virus cases rise in 38 states. 

The US reported its largest single-day caseload increase on Friday, with more than 67,000 new confirmed cases. Six states (Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, and Texas) have seen a surge in cases over the last month – governors in these states are reversing reopening plans, with 15 more states pausing reopenings. 

On top of rising cases, the death toll in the US rose last week for the first time in months, as hospitals in the sunbelt and coastal states become inundated with virus patients. The country reported 4,200 deaths in the last seven days. Virus-related hospitalizations have surged to levels not seen since May, a troubling sign for hard-hit states that suggest the trend will worsen through July. 

The reemergence of the virus cases, forcing governors to pause or reverse reopening plans have stalled out economic activity and risks the shape of the recovery being downgraded from a “V” to “U” or even the dreadful “L.” Also, a looming fiscal cliff risk crashing consumption as more than a quarter of all personal income is reliant on direct deposits from the government.  

Courtesy of Capital Economics, which has compiled a handy breakdown of real-time US indicators, we can see the full extent of how the recovery has stalled. 

Consumer foot traffic for casual dining and malls have yet to revert to pre-corona levels as the bounce stalled in late June. Foot traffic for auto dealers and big-box retailers have almost returned to January levels but plateaued in the same period.

Restaurant foot traffic (measured in person % Y/Y) remains collapsed with recovery stalled through June and reversing in July.

Discretionary consumption (% Y/Y) shows continued depression for air travel, restaurant diners, and hotel occupancy. 

The NY Fed’s Weekly Economic Index does not support the V-shape narrative the Trump administration routinely touts on Twitter.

The stalled recovery is set to pressure employers who will be forced to layoff another round of folks. Americans will be staying home this summer and not traveling as the virus-induced recession has wrecked their finances.   

It’s becoming evident the virus and or the emergence of cases can influence economic recovery shape. Damage from the downturn is widespread, with permanent job loss and deep economic scarring set to derail the recovery.

Here’s Gary Shilling, the president of A. Gary Shilling & Co., take on what could be next for markets as investors figure out the shape of the recovery is an “L.”

“I think we’ve got a second leg down and that’s very much reminiscent of what happened in the 1930s where people appreciate the depth of this recession and the disruption and how long it’s going to take to recover,” said Shilling. 

Shilling said today’s stock market bounce from March lows resembles the initial dip then rebound in 1929 – and we all know what happened next… 

The Fed and Trump administration better unleash another round of MMT or a double-dip recession is ahead for the back half of the year.  

For more color on the stalled recovery via real-time data, here is Bank of America’s latest credit and debit card spending trends. 

Authored by Renée Parsons via Off-Guardian.org,

If given the choice between maintaining a toxic world of fear, pollution and violence controlled by the State or a society of prosperity and compassion based on freedom and individual rights, there is little doubt that the majority of Americans would want the old paradigm of synthetic events to take a hike; except that choice has been distorted under the guise of what the World Health Organization (WHO) has mislabeled the most deadly virus in history.

The coronavirus crisis arrived in a flash with little time to analyze exactly WTF was going on. Americans struggled to process what is real, trustworthy and authentic as the unraveling of deep political decay revealed a behind-the-scenes subterranean power struggle that has surfaced with the intent on disintegration of American Society.

While the country is fast approaching an existential crisis on steroids, millions experienced an inner knowing that some indefinable thing was not right with recognition that the early explanations were hogwash while others, addicted to mainstream/social media who still believed in the illusion of democracy, were on board with the litany of spin from the medical and political establishment.

While the Lockdown could have been a wake up call for humanity to change its consciousness with a paradigm shift – whether it be a spiritual awakening, a political realignment or re-evaluating one’s own personal health choices, since, after all, humanity was locked in a major health crisis. And most importantly, it was an opportunity to acknowledge that the planet itself is ailing from abuse and neglect with CV as a metaphor urging a personal reconnection with Nature.

In early 2020, Neil Ferguson of the UK’s Imperial College used a scare tactic to predict that 80% of Americans would be infected and that there would be 2.2 million American deaths – neither of which materialized. Yet Ferguson’s extremism accomplished its intended purpose in establishing the basis for draconian Lockdown requirements. Ferguson later retracted his earlier prediction down to 20,000 fatalities.

With current infection fatality rate at 0.20%, Lockdowns have been devoid of science and are based on arbitrary, contradictory and inconsistent requirements.

Just a few examples come to mind, such as liquor stores and big chains are considered ‘essential’ and remain open but stand-alone, independent, mom ‘n pops are not. Barbers may be open but hair salons may not. While it is advised to get tested for Covid19, a colonoscopy or other elective surgery are not allowed. While vitamins C and D and Sunshine strengthen the immune system, all outdoor sport programs have been canceled.

In an unexpected development, a recent JP Morgan study asserted that the Lockdowns failed to “alter the course of the pandemic” as it “destroyed millions of livelihoods” and that as infection rates ‘unrelated to often inconsistent lockdown’ measures decreased, fewer outbreaks were reported as the quarantines were lifted.

As the official narrative of the Covid19 as an existential threat has collapsed, it is interesting to follow how ‘hot spots’ occur just as a particular State, like Florida, announces re-opening.

Those new hot spots encourage a reinvigorated debate over mandatory face masks and social distancing with its success depending on a duplicitous media instilling panic and a naive public still believing Covid19 to be more dangerous than seasonal flu.

WHY LOCKDOWN ASYMPTOMATIC CITIZENS?

Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead of WHO’s COVID19 Task Force threw a monkey wrench in the works recently by stating:

what we really want to focus on.. if we followed all the symptomatic cases, isolate those cases, follow those contacts and quarantine those contacts, we would drastically reduce..transmission. We would do very, very well…”

Dr. Van Kerkhove then explained that transmission of the virus from asymptomatic patients appears to be very rare:

It still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual.”

The next day, there was panic at the WHO but Dr. Van Kerkhove’s uncensored comments were very clear as they validated questioning the purpose of the entire Lockdown process. If an asymptomatic person is not spreading the disease but might publicly increase herd immunity, then why wear a face mask or be quarantined?

House Speaker Pelosi called for a national mask mandate as HHS Secretary Azar reported that Pence and Trump are tested daily and are asymptomatic; therefore not required to wear a mask.

WHY FACE MASKS?

To date, there is no standard for what constitutes a ‘safe’ face mask or instructions for disposal considering that a used face mask will be a contaminated bio-hazard material; ergo a face mask is more of a device to require citizen compliance than a safety precaution.

Adding a partisan narrative to the crisis, the most expansive lockdown restrictions (some with criminal penalties) came from predominantly Democratic Governors and Mayors who offered no science or forensic data to prove that either mandatory face masks or home sequestration have failed to prevent a spread of the virus.

During a House Oversight committee meeting, the mask debate broke down along party lines with Dems dutifully covered while strenuously objecting to their mask-free peers.

A riveting June 23rd Palm Beach County Commission public hearing on a proposed Mandatory Face Mask ordinance drew overwhelming opposition.

While OSHA’s (Occupational Safety and Health Agency) responsibility is to oversee the health and safety of every American worker as each workplace is expected to comply with OSHA standards, its website regarding COVID19 states that cloth-based face masks

will not protect the wearer against airborne transmissible infectious agents due to loose fit and lack of seal or inadequate filtration.“

OSHA goes on to inform that a safe level of oxygen must be maintained as an oxygen deficient atmosphere (defined as below 19.5% by volume) creates a respiratory risk.

While there is no sound science or evidence to prove the benefits of mandatory usage, the NE Journal of Medicine reported that:

We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection […] The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic.”

More recently, NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci declared masks as largely ‘symbolic’ as he was setting an example for what other people should be doing.

There’s also a “Risk of Hypoxia to All Mask Wearers” according to Drs. Russell Blaylock and Zach Bush.

SOCIAL DISTANCING AKA QUARANTINE

With not a whit of science in support, Social Distancing which is a mutually exclusive phrase since there is nothing social about enforced distancing from other humans, has been attributed to a CIA protocol in use since the 1950’s to break a prisoner’s resistance or a teenage science project.

In any case, SD has proven a great way to erode an individual’s normal need for social contact, to effectively starve the brain function of human interaction and comparable to other emotionally unhealthy deprivations. As former Vietnam POW John McCain related “It crushes your spirit more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.”

Rules 3 and 44 of the Nelson Mandela Rules warn of being cut off from the outside world and prohibits more than two weeks of isolation as cruel and inhumane treatment.

*  *  *

While the manufactured COVID 19 health crisis opened the door for the World Economic Forum and its friends to activate One World Government, millions of Americans continue to play the cognitive dissonance game with little awareness they are witnessing a government takeover with increased surveillance and censorship. As coordinated violent protests in Seattle and DC spread a thinly veiled political coup, all accomplished more easily while the American public were in Lockdown.