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The United States has warned both Iran and Venezuela that it will not tolerate any attempt of the Islamic Republic to ship long-range missiles to the Maduro government. 

“We will make every effort to stop shipments of long-range missiles, and if somehow they get to Venezuela they will be eliminated there,” White House Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela Elliott Abrams said.

“Every delivery of Iranian arms destabilizes South America and the Caribbean and is especially dangerous to Venezuela’s neighbors in Brazil, Columbia, and Guyana,” he added.

“Iran has announced its intention to engage in arms sales, and Venezuela is an obvious target because those two pariah regimes already have a relationship,” Abrams alleged.

“Venezuela is paying in gold to buy gasoline from Iran, and there is an Iranian presence in the country. Venezuela’s economy has collapsed, so every bar of gold for Iran is tens of thousands of dollars the Venezuelan people need for food and medicine.”

Though there’s no evidence that it’s happened yet, Maduro – himself long targeted for US-backed regime change – is indeed naturally the first country to likely pursue Iranian weapons purchases. Recently it’s become clear there’s been some significant advances in the Islamic Republic’s domestic production capabilities, which the country ramped up as it found itself so isolated under sanctions. 

Following the expiration of the Oct.18 UN arms embargo on Iran, its Ministry of Defense indicated it is ready and willing to sell weapons to “countries despised by the US” – as one state media headline read at the time. And as another report emphasized, “The end of the embargo means Iran will legally be able to buy and sell conventional arms, including missiles, helicopters and tanks.”

It’s widely believed that for years Iran was already covertly shipping ballistic missiles to Yemen’s Shia Houthi rebels, considered a game-changer in terms of ability to strike deep in side Saudi territory, as happened with the Aramco Abqaiq–Khurais attack involving small drones but also likely missiles. 

The potential for Iranian ballistic missiles to be in Venezuela would raise the question of such advanced weapons actually being able to reach the US mainland and locations in the Caribbean. Abrams comments at the start of this week emphasized the US military would likely take them out once they reached Venezuelan soil.

Submitted by The Gold Observer

During the Trump administration political ties between the U.S. and Germany have critically deteriorated. Recently, the U.S. imposed sanctions on companies working on Nord Stream 2, and announced to withdraw 12,000 troops from Germany. In 2013, when Germany repatriated gold from the U.S., the Germans communicated: we will not be threatened.

Gold is a political metal. “Whoever has the gold makes the rules,” as the saying goes. Because gold serves as the backstop of the international financial system, the global distribution of gold influences the balance of power. This is true for gold ownership, but it also applies to storage locations. The more of its gold reserves Germany stores at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the more leverage the U.S. has over Germany. It wouldn’t be the first time the U.S. freezes gold assets in New York to pressure foreign nations.

Since the launch of the Eurosystem Germany has been repatriating gold. Currently, Germany has 1,698 tonnes (50%) stored on its own soil, 1,236 tonnes (37%) stored in the U.S., and 432 tonnes (13%) in the U.K. Officially, Germany has the second largest gold reserves in the world at 3,366 tonnes.

Introduction

In a previous article we discussed how the last remnants of the gold standard were dissolved in 1971 (chapter: “The Rise and Fall of Bretton Woods”). During Bretton Woods the U.S. dollar was the world reserve currency, backed by gold at a fixed parity of $35 per troy ounce. All other currencies were pegged to the dollar. In 1959, the U.S. had printed and exported more dollars than it had gold backing them. Initially, European allies provided support to defend the gold-dollar parity in the free market through the London Gold Pool, and stabilize the international monetary system.

There was considerable critique of U.S. monetary policy, though. Surplus countries such as Germany blamed the U.S. for exporting inflation. As the U.S. kept exporting dollars through a balance of payments deficit, Germany had to print Deutsche marks to maintain their peg to the dollar.

Eventually, the London Gold Pool collapsed in 1968, and the U.S. suspended dollar convertibility in 1971. Bretton Woods came to an end.

From Our Archive: The Blessing Letter

All of Germany’s official gold reserves have been accumulated in between 1951 and 1968, but Germany hardly ever redeemed dollars for gold at the U.S. Treasury. Most of its gold was acquired through trade with nations other than the U.S. Although Germany had the largest dollar holdings at the time, it didn’t redeem them because the U.S. protected Germany from the Soviets; a service that came with conditions.

In 1967, the President of the German central bank (Bundesbank) was Karl Blessing. The Chairman of the American central bank (Federal Reserve) was William Martin. In a letter written by Blessing on March 30, 1967, he reaffirmed Martin that Germany wouldn’t redeem dollars for gold at the Treasury. From the Blessing letter:

By refraining from dollar conversions into gold from the United States Treasury the Bundesbank has intended to contribute to international monetary cooperation and to avoid any disturbing effects on the foreign exchange and gold markets. You may be assured that also in the future the Bundesbank intends to continue this policy and to play its full part in contributing to international monetary cooperation.

Sincerely yours,

Karl Blessing

On the webpage titled “From our archive: The Blessing letter,” which was launched by the German central bank in 2013 just before it repatriated 300 tonnes of gold from New York, the Bundesbank cites an interview with Blessing from 1971. In the interview, Blessing calls himself into question regarding earlier concessions:

I state to you now [1971] that I feel myself to be personally culpable in this matter. I should have been more rigorous with regard to the US. The dollars that we were accumulating should simply have been rigorously converted into gold.

The Bundesbank adds on its website:

He [Blessing] explained that, at the time, fears of foreign policy implications, which would have led to the withdrawal of American troops from Germany, had been one of the factors that led him to give in to US demands.

Because the U.S. threatened Blessing to withdraw American troops, he was forced to promise not to redeem dollars for gold. Naturally, the U.S. wanted to have as few dollars redeemed as possible to sustain the dollar hegemony.

More information is in the full interview with Blessing (1971, Der Spiegel):

BLESSING: … then came the story of the troops.

QUESTION: You mean the Americans’ threat: If you don’t support the dollar, we will withdraw the troops from Germany?

BLESSING: … the threat was always in the background. Former U.S. High Commissioner McCloy once visited the German government and said: “Look, we’ve now had a Senate decision; there is soon a majority that we will withdraw our boys. We have to do something.” So, he called me at home on a Sunday afternoon at half past three and said: “I have to fly back tonight, can’t we see each other?” And I said to him: “My dear McCloy, your situation is clear, this is a balance of payments problem for you, nothing more. You have seen that we are sensible and do not convert our dollars into gold. I am even willing to give you that in writing for a certain time.” Unfortunately, the letter that I wrote back then is still valid today.

The Break Up

From day one Trump took office he has criticized other NATO members for not spending enough on defense, which impaired political ties with European allies. The situation escalated in 2019 when Trump imposed sanctions on firms working with Russia’s state-owned gas company, Gazprom, to finish the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany. Trump wants to block Russia supplying gas to Europe, and demands the E.U. to buy American gas. Last July, the U.S. confirmed it would withdraw 12,000 troops from Germany.

Germans are no fan of Trump. The annual “The Fears of the Germans” survey, performed by R+V Versicherung, shows that in 2020 the people in Germany fear nothing more than Trump’s foreign policy.

I assume that after the Second World War, West-Germany mostly feared the Russians. But the tables have turned. In a survey by YouGov from 2019, it appears Germans see Trump as the greatest threat to world peace. Not Putin.

Conclusion

During the hostage crisis (1979) the U.S. blocked Iran’s gold account in New York. Germany wants to prevent such a scenario. Storing gold with allies provides safety, but when political ties weaken, storing gold abroad becomes a hazard.

When Germany started repatriating 300 tonnes from New York in 2013, and published the Blessing letter on the Bundesbank’s website, it communicated it will not be threatened again. Why else dust off the Blessing letter and his interview with Der Spiegel just before repatriating gold?

Germany might be waiting for the elections in the U.S., because Biden can change America’s foreign policy. If Trump wins, and trans-Atlantic alliances further deteriorate, I wouldn’t be surprised if Germany brings more gold home. The consequences will be significant. One, if Germany repatriates because of a political dispute, this can incentivize other countries to repatriate from New York as well, causing a run on the Fed. Second, Germany would emphasize the importance of gold, which hurts the credibility of the dollar. 

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Doctors across Spain have walked out on Tuesday in what media outlets have called the first medical strike to rock the country in 25 years.

As the coronavirus pandemic rages across Spain, where the Health Ministry reported another 18,418 new daily cases on Tuesday, doctors are beginning the strike, which was called in defiance of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s latest emergency order, which was implemented on Sunday.

The order requires doctors and nurses to report to any of a range of assignments that could be handed to them by the government during the state of emergency, which could be in place for months.

Doctors complained that the new law violated their rights, and compromised the standard of care for patients, as doctors would end up working in an area they weren’t specialized in.

The strike will continue indefinitely, with doctors set to continue striking on the last Tuesday of every month until a deal has been reached.

For the first time, 200,000 new cases were confirmed in Spain over the previous two weeks, and cases on Tuesday were up 33% compared with the prior week. And over the last 24 hours, another 267 people have died.

“The Health Ministry hasn’t even dignified us with a meeting to try and get us to call off the strike,” he told Spanish health journal iSanidad.

Spain’s hospitals harbor nearly 16,700 active COVID-19 patients – up more than 600 compared to Monday, with one quarter of all the country’s ICU units used to treat those with an infectious disease.

Doctor’s strikes in Spain follow similar demonstrations in India during the early months of the pandemic as physicians dealt with unprecedented harassment from the public.

Authored by Barry Brownstein via The American Institute for Economic Research,

It’s no surprise that Dr. Anthony Fauci, with a vested interest in perpetuating the current Covid-19 narrative, has called the Great Barrington Declaration “nonsense and very dangerous.” Just as angry and closed-minded are the social media reactions from some ordinary people. 

We will lose many lives, they warn, if we give credence to the Declaration. The fearful are sure only they, not the signers of the Declaration, care about the lives of others. 

As Don Boudreaux writes, “Much of humanity today appears to perversely enjoy being duped into the irrational fear that any one of us, regardless of age or health, is at the mercy of a brutal beast categorically more lethal than is any other danger that we’ve ever confronted.” 

Those reacting against the Declaration seem to be stuck in time, living in March 2020 when ignorance of the virus’s virulence was peaking. There is so much more we now know about Covid-19, yet the fearful will not consider new information or alternative theories.

The Covid-19 Context Has Changed 

In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s parable The Little Prince, the prince meets a lamplighter who is continuously lighting and putting out the streetlamp.

The prince asks, “Why have you just put out your lamp?” The lamplighter replies, “These are the instructions,” and then, “he lighted his lamp again.” 

A few more rounds of lighting and putting out the lamp go on. “I do not understand,” said the puzzled prince. 

“’There is nothing to understand,’ said the lamplighter. ‘Instructions are instructions.’”

Then the lamplighter explained his dilemma to the prince. Once, he had a “reasonable” job lighting the lamp in the morning and putting it out in the evening. but then the planet “turned more rapidly and the orders have not changed.” 

As the length of the day changed, the context of a lamplighter’s job changed, yet the lamplighter’s instructions did not.  

Famed Harvard psychology professor Ellen Langer, in her book Mindfulness writes, “A context is a premature cognitive commitment, a mindset.” We think we know, and we miss a lot. Langer continues, “Context depends on who we are today, who we were yesterday, and from which view we see things.”

If we see the world as something to be controlled by big government, it was natural to applaud the March lockdowns. 

Initially, many of those skeptical of big government solutions were also frightened by Covid-19, and then a new context emerged. We know now that Covid-19 death rates are much lower than feared and policies placing Covid-19 patients in nursing homes fueled many deaths. We now know that lockdowns are “overly blunt and costly.” We know now “that children infrequently transmit Covid-19 to each other or to adults.” We know now that we successfully reacted differently to past pandemics.

We know now, as Matt Ridley writes, “the virus spreading among younger people, mostly without hitting the vulnerable, is creating immunity that will eventually slow the epidemic.” Ridley continues,

“If you cannot extinguish an epidemic at the start, the best strategy is for the healthy to get infected first. Lockdowns ensure that the vulnerable and the healthy both get infected with similar probability. School closures, concluded a recent paper in the British Medical Journal, can paradoxically lead to more deaths by prioritising the protection of the least vulnerable.”

Then, why did so many governments adopt the same destructive policies about Covid-19? Why are those same governments refusing to adjust? Fear drives herding behavior, Jeffrey Tucker points out, and leads to political leaders copying each other’s “ignorance and stupor.” Politicians “don’t want to be seen as reversing course on the most catastrophic policies in modern history.”

But enough about politicians who behave like the lamplighter and won’t change even when the context has. A more important question to consider is why won’t your well-meaning neighbor, family member, or colleague consider new information?

Understanding Mindlessness

Mindfulness training is fashionable in personal development. Mindfulness “is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally,” says Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn.

If mindfulness is being present to reality, what is mindlessness? 

Mindlessness is filtering reality through mental biases. Mindlessness is attending to the transitory noisy thoughts in your head without pausing for a reality check.   

Langer writes, “When mindless, people treat information as though it were context-free—true regardless of circumstances.” To advocate policy towards Covid-19 based on changing circumstances is not to deny the reality of the virus; instead it allows for a more nuanced and responsible response. 

Here is a simple test to self-assess mindlessness. When you are certain your anger is righteous, your anxiety is being generated from the world, or a one-size policy fits all, you may have gone mindless.

In a state of mindlessness, one does not take responsibility. Trump is at fault for Covid-19 deaths. Your partner is at fault for your low mood. The other driver is at fault for your anger.

Take the scenario of a driver who is cut off in highway traffic. Anger swells. His heart races. Mindlessly the driver floors his accelerator. He tailgates the offending driver. 

In an instant, the angry driver sees what he is doing. He remembers a time he was distracted and accidentally cut off someone. He wonders what distracted the driver he is following. 

As the context changes from how dare you cut me off, to a realization of a shared humanity, normalcy returns. Before angry thoughts were placed in a broader context there seemed to be just one option, anger leading to a road-rage conflict. The angry driver had been certain his feelings were caused by the behavior of the other driver, but then he mindfully changed his perspective.

Langer observes that in the grip of mindlessness, “One important way in which we limit our options is to attribute all our troubles to a single cause.” Langer continues:

“Such mindless attributions narratively limit the range of solutions we might seek. In research on divorce… people who blame the failure of their marriages on their ex-spouses suffer longer than those people who see many possible explanations for their situation. 

Similarly, alcoholics who see the cause of their problem as purely genetic seem to give up the control that could help their recovery.”

Importantly, “When we have a single-minded explanation, we typically don’t pay attention to information that runs counter to it.” We claim our goal is to save lives, but then ignore the hundreds of millions that are pushed into dire poverty and starvation by the Covid-19 policies we advocate. We claim we are more empathetic than others and ignore millions who have lost their businesses and careers. 

Why We Want to Be Mindless

Many don’t want to hear theories and facts counter to the conventional narrative. 

Why don’t they want to know? New information would change the context of their personal choices. If they knew, they would have to take responsibility for health decisions for not only themselves but for others. Should I take a Covid-19 vaccine? Should my children? Should I get on an airplane and visit an aging parent? The decisions are endless, and there is no one sure answer.

In her book Counterclockwise, Langer writes,

“When faced with a diagnosis and the medical options for a treatment, the patient is caught in a very difficult dilemma. The impulse to surrender our future treatment wholly to the professional hands of medical practitioners is understandable. Leaving the doctors to make all the choices relieves the existential fear of being responsible for a decision that could in the end hurt us. But not to be involved may hurt us more.” 

Responsibility and freedom go hand in hand. Life is risky and scary. Some would rather not be free. Better to pretend Dr. Fauci and other media-anointed “experts” know best. If something goes wrong, the experts are to blame. 

Importantly, those who want to turn over responsibility to experts often deny the freedom of others to choose. When others make different decisions and stay healthy, they are reminded they have a choice. Since they don’t want to know they have a choice, they will insist that government violently force you to follow their way. And to justify their support for coercive actions, they will mindlessly dehumanize those who don’t follow the instructions. 

Covid-19 policy decisions are impacting the Orthodox Jewish community in NYC. Recently, the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, claimed the fear of his constituents is driving his policy decisions:

“This is not a highly nuanced, sophisticated response. This is a fear-driven response. You know, this is not a policy being written by a scalpel. This is a policy being cut by a hatchet. It’s just very blunt. I didn’t propose this. It was proposed by the mayor in the city. I am trying to sharpen it and make it better. But it’s out of fear. People see the numbers going up—‘Close everything! Close everything!’”

Cuomo has a history of dodging responsibility for his decisions, but his claim that he can’t adopt a nuanced approach because of fear of New Yorkers has some truth. Tyranny is fed by fear. Fear is fed by a mindless refusal to adopt to changing circumstances.

From Mindlessness to Mindfulness

In her book The Power of Mindful Learning, Langer points out how to go beyond living mindlessly on autopilot:

“A mindful approach to any activity has three characteristics: the continuous creation of new categories; openness to new information; and an implicit awareness of more than one perspective. Mindlessness, in contrast, is characterized by an entrapment in old categories; by automatic behavior that precludes attending to new signals; and by action that operates from a single perspective. Being mindless, colloquially speaking, is like being on automatic pilot.”

Schools, Langer observes, “teach us to be mindless” by teaching “us to seek or accept information as if it were absolute and independent of human creation.” 

Resisting the temptation, Langer advises to move quickly from problem to solution by mindlessly drawing on preconstructed categories. The more relevance we give to our preexisting thinking, the less mindful are our actions:

“Rather than moving directly from problem to solution, a person in a mindful state remains open to several ways of viewing the situation. This flexibility allows us to draw on newly available information rather than to rely exclusively on preconstructed categories that tend to overdetermine our behavior. In other words, we have to maintain what some have called intelligent ignorance to make the best of any situation.”

One of the main authors of the Great Barrington Declaration is Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff. Dr. Kulldorff sees beyond either-or categories. He doesn’t favor doing nothing or general lockdowns. Instead, he says developing a policy of “focused protection” will “drastically reduce mortality.”

“Preconstructed categories” mislead people every day. Over the months, more tests have been administered. Positive Covid-19 test results are reported as cases, even when the individual is not ill. Daniel Greenfield writes, “The daily coronavirus reports have become the equivalent of Soviet harvest reports. They sound impressive, mean absolutely nothing and are the pet obsession of a bureaucracy that… has no understanding of the problem.”

This fall on college campuses across the country, students and faculty are being tested frequently. As of October 5, 2020, of 70,000 positive test results on 50 college campuses, there have been three hospitalizations and no deaths. Yet for those with a “premature cognitive commitment” towards evaluating case numbers, rising cases set off alarm and increase fear.  

The Great Barrington Declaration demonstrates a willingness to consider new information and broaden the context for setting policy. Those who want to sell us centralized “hatchet” solutions prefer a public lulled to mindlessness by one narrative. The mindless will follow instructions. If many people continue to look towards one perspective only, without broadening the context, the natural consequence is that experts and politicians on “automatic pilot” will lead us further down the road to tyranny.

Half eaten kebabs, a broken high heel, a puddle of sick in a shop doorway – typical remnants of a Saturday night out in the city.

However, as Statista’s Martin Armstrong notes, The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) though, measure a much less visible indicator of a city’s partying habits.

Every year, they analyse waste water samples around the continent for traces of illicit drugs such as cocaine and MDMA.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Looking at traces of cocaine found at the weekend, renowned party town Amsterdam is at the top of the scale with 1,028mg of the drug per one thousand people flowing through the drains.

In second is Swiss banking hub Zurich with 976mg and rounding off the top three is the Danish capital, Copenhagen, with 780mg.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Responding to the beheading of a school teacher by an Islamist in Paris, French ambassador to Sweden Etienne de Gonneville told broadcaster SVT, “France is a Muslim country.”

Yes, really.

Samuel Paty was decapitated by an 18-year-old Chechen jihadist in revenge for showing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad to pupils in a class on free speech.

The country responded with mass protest marches in major cities and President Emmanuel Macron vowed to protect freedom of expression in honor of the victim.

However, Macron’s vow to take the fight to Islamists has caused uproar in many Muslim countries, notably Turkey, who have effectively sided with jihadism by announcing boycotts on French products.

Now France’s ambassador to Sweden has himself appeared to capitulate to Islamists by declaring, “France is a Muslim country.”

Etienne de Gonneville told Sweden’s national broadcaster SVT, “First, France is a Muslim country. Islam is the second-largest religion in France. We have anywhere between 4 and 8 million French citizens who have a Muslim heritage.”

The ambassador then claimed that “al-Qaeda propaganda” and not “Islam” was to blame for Paty’s murder, despite the fact that the local Muslim community had incited retribution against the teacher for showing the cartoons.

“The media must know how to address the issue of Islamic terrorism and not fall into the trap of that idea that it would supposedly offend Islam. Islam is very diverse,” said de Gonneville.

“Those who we hear now are speaking for these radical Islamist outfits. We should not give them more weight than they have. They are a tiny minority.”

As we highlighted yesterday, following the beheading of Paty, 79% of French people believe Islamism has “declared war” on their country.

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While Facebook readies emergency measures to halt the spread of viral election day misinformation, contributing to a bout of social media hysteria that is starting to feel vaguely reminiscent of the perturbation that preceded Y2K, the censors over in Beijing are as busy as ever.

Reuters reports that China’s “top cyber authority” has declared that it will carry out a “rectification” of China’s mobile internet browsers. The campaign is a response to concerns about “chaos” in terms of information being shared online.

Doesn’t sound too different from what’s happening over at Twitter and Facebook. But we digress.

Anyway, the Cyberspace Administration of China, or CAC – the regulator in question – has told mobile browser owners that they have until Nov. 9 to finish a “self examination” (sounds fun) and rectify any previously unaddressed “problems.”

Some suspect that President Trump’s attacks on China, combined with the pro-independence party that continues to rule Taiwan and the pro-democracy protests that preceded a wave of street violence in Hong Kong last year, may push President Xi to drastic action to assert China’s dominance once and for all. If accurate, than this would be only the latest example of China cracking down on what has been an unprecedented year for that, with all that has happened in Hong Kong.

But circling back to the mainland, browsers will need to upgrade their censorship tools surrounding sensationalist headlines and “rumors” spread online. We wonder how they plan on accomplishing all this?

“For some time, mobile browsers have grown in an uncivilised way…and have become a gathering place and amplifier for dissemination of chaos by ‘self-media’,” the CAC said, referring to independently operated social media accounts, many of which publish news.

“After the rectification, mobile browsers that still have outstanding problems will be dealt with strictly according to laws and regulations until related businesses are banned.”

The campaign is focusing on eight of the most widely-used mobile browsers in China, including those operated by Huawei, Alibaba’s UCWeb and Xiaomi, also a major smartphone manufacturer. Others include the QQ platform owned by Tencent, Qihoo-owned 360, Oppo and Sogou.

It’s just the latest reminder that economic engagement in China hasn’t improved political freedoms in China one bit since Mao Zedong’s death.