Tag: news

Two weeks ago, when the world was still transfixed by the historic US foreign policy failure which allowed the Taliban to overrun Afghanistan in a matter of hours which has made the Biden administration the laughing stock of both the developing and developed worlds, we said that “for all the focus on the humanitarian crisis unfolding at an unprecedented pace in Afghanistan, many are forgetting that an even worse economic disaster awaits the “Islamic Emirate” of Afghanistan now that the Taliban are in charge.”

So today, as the Taliban were celebrating and parading in their brand new US military hardware, behind the scenes a far more catastrophic scene was unfolding: the economic disaster we warned would happen within weeks.

As Reuters reports, now that the initial adrenaline rush is gone, Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers are struggling to keep the country functioning after the final withdrawal of U.S. forces, with foreign donors alarmed about an impending humanitarian crisis. Indeed, two weeks since the Taliban’s sweep into Kabul brought a chaotic end to 20 years of warfare, the Islamist militants have yet to name a new government or reveal how they intend to rule.

In the administrative vacuum, prices have soared, the currency has crashed, commercy has ground to a halt, and crowds have gathered at banks to withdraw cash. Meanwhile, as heavily armed fighters imposed control on the capital, Taliban officials were grappling with keeping hospitals and government machinery running following the end of a huge airlift of foreigners and Afghans who had helped Western forces.

The Taliban, which enforced harsh fundamentalist rule from 1996 to 2001 and fought an insurgency in which thousands of Afghans died, returns to power after U.S.-led forces withdrew. Images from 1996 to today: https://t.co/7sJasnZrlI pic.twitter.com/eXYEuEdETH

— Reuters Pictures (@reuterspictures) August 31, 2021

The new, Taliban-appointed central bank head – who has no formal experience but after all, how difficult can it be to hit CTRL P – has sought to reassure banks the group wants a fully functioning financial system, but has so far given no detail on how it will supply funds for it.

Amid the chaos, Qatar’s Al Jazeera television reported that Qatari technical experts had arrived at the Taliban’s request to discuss resuming operations at Kabul airport, currently inoperable. The foreign minister of neighbouring Pakistan, which has close ties to the Taliban, said he expected Afghanistan to have a new “consensus government” within days. Then again, this is

In Washington, where the end of America’s longest war has sparked the biggest crisis of President Joe Biden’s administration, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland said the United States is looking at all possible options and routes to continue to help Americans and legal permanent residents leave Afghanistan.

Washington would keep having conversations with the Taliban that serve U.S. interests, she told reporters, adding the United States would look at how it could give aid to Afghanistan without benefiting any government that it forms. This is the same Victoria Nuland who said “Fuck the EU” during the CIA’s botched Ukraine coup.

Meanwhile, with the airport now in Taliban hands, people fearful of life under Taliban rule rushed to the borders.  In Panjshir province, members of local militias and remnants of former military units were still holding out under the leadership of Ahmad Massoud. Senior Taliban leader Amir Khan Motaqi called on them to put down weapons and negotiate.

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is home for all Afghans,” he said in a speech, apparently forgetting the brutal scenes of murder of Afghani allies just days earlier, and which were caught on video.

Amusingly, the Taliban have declared an amnesty for all Afghans who worked with foreign forces, calling on Afghans to return home and help rebuild – of course some or all of those gullible enough to believe this call may be killed, and even though the Taliban have promised to protect human rights in an effort to present a more moderate face than their first government, which enforced a strict version of sharia law, including banning women from education and employment, so far this has all been a farce.

But while rounding up the population under false pretenses will take time, the Talibans’ more immediate concern is staving off economic collapse. Afghanistan desperately needs money, and the Taliban are unlikely to get swift access to the roughly $10 billion in assets mostly held abroad by the Afghan central bank.

The acting central bank governor, Haji Mohammad Idris, met members of the Afghanistan Banks Association and other financiers this week, said two bankers who attended the meeting. The militant group was working to find solutions for liquidity and rising inflation, they quoted Idris as saying.

“They were very charming and asked banks what their concerns were,” said one of the bankers who requested anonymity.

Maybe they should try crypto while they still have some hard currency?

Until then, however, Afghanistan has hyperinflation to look forward to. Long lines have formed at banks, the currency is sinking, inflation is rising and many offices and shops remain shut. “Everything is expensive now, prices are going up every day,” said Kabul resident Zelgai. Someone should tell him it’s all “transitory.”

Hilariously, the Taliban have ordered banks to reopen, but strict weekly limits on withdrawals have been imposed. And it’s not like the banks have cash.

Outside the capital, humanitarian organizations have warned of impending catastrophe as severe drought has hit farmers and forced thousands of rural poor to seek shelter in the cities. But foreign donors are unsure about whom to speak to. Taliban officials have said the problems will ease once a new government is in place, and have urged other countries to maintain economic relations, by which they mean crates of inbound cash. That however is unlikely.

Some have finally grasped the enormity of the situation – there is simply nobody within the Taliban population who is capable of running a monetary system, let along a country. Bankers outside Afghanistan said it would be impossible to get the financial system running again without the bank specialists who joined the exodus. “I don’t know how they will manage it because all the technical staff, including senior management, has left the country,” one banker said.

There is the additional problem that many foreign governments view the Taliban as terrorists: the European Union will need to engage with the Talibanbut will not rush into formally recognizing them as the new rulers of Afghanistan, a senior EU official said.

Meanwhile, more than 123,000 people were evacuated from Kabul in the U.S.-led airlift after the Taliban seized the city in mid-August, but tens of thousands of Afghans at risk remained behind. With Kabul’s airport out of action, efforts to help Afghans fearful of the Taliban focused on arranging safe passage across the borders with Iran, Pakistan and central Asia.

Afghan men in uniform board buses to a refugee processing center after landing at Dulles International Airport in Virginia. More images of the thousands of evacuees arriving in America: https://t.co/gLbYAKpzxL 📷 Kevin Lamarque pic.twitter.com/ayHb1GL70O

— Reuters Pictures (@reuterspictures) September 1, 2021

At Torkham, a crossing with Pakistan just east of the Khyber Pass, a Pakistani official said: “A large number of people are waiting on the Afghanistan side for the opening of the gate.” Uzbekistan’s border with northern Afghanistan remained shut.

Britain and India held separate talks with Taliban officials in Doha amid fears that up to half a million Afghans could flee.

The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Wednesday that Afghans had so far largely stayed within Afghanistan and only small numbers had fled to neighbouring countries.  It called for $300 million in international funding for the humanitarian emergency. 

Sayed Sadaat used to be communications minister in the Afghan government before moving to Germany last September in the hope of a better future. Now he is a delivery man in the eastern city of Leipzig. Read more: https://t.co/8RZF3b7fjl 📷 Hannibal Hanschke pic.twitter.com/vcWiDj35GB

— Reuters Pictures (@reuterspictures) August 26, 2021

The Taliban said they had surrounded forces in Panjshir, the only province still resisting, and called on them to negotiate a settlement.

Meanwhile, some Taliban leaders mocked the United States.

“Your power is gone, your gold is gone,” Anas Haqqani, a Taliban leader, said on Twitter, posting a photo of himself holding discarded shackles as he toured Bagram prison, where he was held for years by U.S. forces.

انس ته د مرګي ګواښونه مه کوه باګرامه
ستا زور له منځه تللی دی ستا زر له منځه تللی
ـــــــــــــ https://t.co/AUlUYbKSU8

— Anas Haqqani(انس حقاني) (@AnasHaqqani313) September 1, 2021

Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com,

Ever since Edward Snowden received asylum from Russia in 2013, Obama officials have repeatedly maligned his motives and patriotism by citing his “choice” to take up residence there. It has long been clear that this narrative was a lie: Snowden, after meeting with journalists in Hong Kong, intended only to transit through Moscow and then Havana on his way to seek asylum in Latin America. He was purposely prevented from leaving Russia — trapped in the Moscow airport — by the very Obama officials who then cynically weaponized his presence there to imply he was a civil-liberties hypocrite for “choosing” to live in such a repressive country or, even worse, a Kremlin agent or Russian spy.

But now we have absolute, definitive proof that Snowden never intended to stay in Russia but was deliberately prevented from leaving by the same Obama officials who exploited the predicament which they created. The proof was supplied unintentionally in the memoir of one of Obama’s senior national security advisers, Ben Rhodes, entitled The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House. It is hard to overstate how dispositively Rhodes’ own book proves that Obama officials generally, and Rhodes specifically, lied blatantly and cavalierly to the public about what happened: a level of sustained and conscious lying that can be explained only by sociopathy.

The memoir of Rhodes, now appropriately an MSNBC contributor, is an incredibly self-serving homage to himself that repeatedly attempts to demonstrate his own importance and accomplishments. The passage about Rhodes’ conduct regarding Snowden is very much aligned with those goals. While repeatedly emphasizing how traumatic the Snowden revelations were for the Obama administrations, Rhodes boasts of the crucial role he played in preventing Snowden from leaving Russia as the NSA whistleblower was desperately attempting to do so — exactly the opposite of what people like Rhodes and Hillary Clinton were telling the public about Snowden.

It is really beyond words how willing these people are to lie. One chapter of Rhodes’ book is devoted to the Obama administration’s efforts to normalize relations with Cuba. Rhodes explains that the deep distrust between the countries that had endured for decades began to subside due to two events which he helped engineer. The first was the two countries’ agreement to improve the prison conditions for two prisoners: an American imprisoned by Cuba, the other a Cuban imprisoned by the U.S. The second even “more important signal” sent by Cuba showing its genuine desire to improve relations was their capitulation to Rhodes’ threats that they had better withdraw the permission they had granted Snowden to allow him to pass through Havana once he left the Moscow airport as planned, on his way to Latin America where he intended to seek asylum.

In other words, Rhodes — who has spent years insinuating that Snowden is a Russian spy and traitor given his “choice” to flee to Russia — knew in real time that Snowden never planned to stay even one day in Russia. He had only flown to Moscow from Hong Kong with the intent to immediately fly from Moscow to Havana, and then on to either Ecuador or Bolivia to obtain asylum. Prior to landing in Moscow, Snowden and his representatives had secured a commitment from the Cuban government to allow him safe passage through Havana on his way to South America.

The only reason Snowden is in Russia is because of the actions of Rhodes and his fellow Obama officials to deliberately trap him there: first by invalidating his passport so that he could not board any international flights, and then by threatening the Cuban government that any chance for normalization with the U.S. would be permanently destroyed unless they withdrew their guarantee to Snowden of safe passage through Havana, which they then did. Here’s Rhodes in his own words, boasting about what he regards as his success:

There was one other, more important signal. Around the time of our second meeting, Edward Snowden was stuck in the Moscow airport, trying to find someone who would take him in. Reportedly, he wanted to go to Venezuela, transiting through Havana, but I knew that if the Cubans aided Snowden, any rapprochement between our countries would prove impossible. I pulled Alejandro Castro aside and said I had a message that came from President Obama. I reminded him that the Cubans had said they wanted to give Obama “political space” so that he could take steps to improve relations. “If you take in Snowden,” I said, “that political space will be gone.” I never spoke to the Cubans about this issue again. A few days later, back in Washington, I woke up to a news report: “Former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden got stuck in the transit zone of a Moscow airport because Havana said it would not let him fly from Russia to Cuba, a Russian newspaper reported.” I took it as a message: The Cubans were serious about improving relations.

Could this admission be any clearer? From the very beginning, Obama officials including Rhodes knew that Snowden had not traveled to Russia with the intention of staying there, but instead was — in Rhodes’ own words — “stuck in the Moscow airport” and was “trying to find someone who would take him in.” (Leave aside Rhodes’ other lie that Snowden intended to “go to Venezuela”; the NSA whistleblower’s plan was to travel from Moscow through Havana to Bolivia or Ecuador, but Rhodes, knowing how Americans view Caracas, purposely replaced Venezuela as the intended destination to further impugn Snowden’s motives). Rhodes then tells us how proud he is of himself for having successfully bullied Cuba out of allowing Snowden to fly through Havana as he intended, thus — in Rhodes’ own words — causing “Snowden [to] get stuck in the transit zone of a Moscow airport.”

And yet, countless Obama officials — including, most amazingly, Rhodes himself — have spent years lying to the public by claiming exactly the opposite. Over and over, they impugned Snowden’s patriotism and strongly implied he was a Russian spy and a traitor as evidenced by his “choice” to go to Russia. As but one example, listen to the player embedded below to hear what Rhodes told his fellow former Obama national security official Tommy Vietor in February of 2017, on Vietor’s Pod Save America program (where Rhodes is now also a co-host). For a full hour, Rhodes impugned Snowden’s patriotism and motives, repeatedly citing his choice to flee to Russia as his primary proof (along with the fact that Snowden went to meet with journalists in “China” — by which Rhodes means Hong Kong):

Cause again like, a whistleblower doesn’t conspicuously pass through China to Russia, you know, reporters are always saying ‘Are you telling me that you know that he was working for the Russians?’, or what have you, I’m like, I’m not, I’m telling you what I see, which is this guy went to China and Russia, the two most adversarial intelligence competitors to the United States; he could’ve gone to some very liberal European country that probably would’ve taken him in, or he could have faced the music here; the choice of those destinations speaks volumes.

Does lying get any more flagrant or deliberate than this? Rhodes knows for certain that what he’s saying here about Snowden is an absolute lie. He knows that Snowden did not “choose” Russia as his “destination.” He knows that Snowden did exactly what Rhodes said he should have done: sought refuge in other countries. He knows that the only reason Snowden is in Russia is because Rhodes himself trapped him there by preventing him from leaving. We know that Rhodes knows all of this because he boasted about all of it in his book, in the above-quoted passage. And yet, over and over, Rhodes told the public the exact opposite of what he knew to be the truth.

As indicated, Rhodes was far from alone in knowingly disseminating this lie to the American public. In 2014, Hillary Clinton, in a Guardian interview, condemned Snowden by falsely claiming that he flew from Hong Kong to Russia with the intention of seeking asylum from Putin. Listen to her flagrantly lie:

From the perspective of the twenty-four-hour news cycle, this may not be the timeliest revelation. But it is only within the last several days that I read Rhodes’ book and could barely believe how clearly he laid out his own lies and those of his Obama administration colleagues. This level of conscious lying — spending years implying that Snowden was a traitor or Russian spy because he fled to Russia when you know that he wanted to leave and did everything possible to do so but it was your actions that trapped him there against his wishes — requires an unlimited willingness to lie the moment one’s interests are served by doing so.

We do not usually have a case where the evidence of lying is this conclusive — where it is offered by the liars in the first place — but this behavior is far from uncommon. This is what the National Security State of the U.S. breeds, and it is vital always to remember that when listening to these people speak.

(Our request to Rhodes for comment and an attempt to reconcile with public claims with this passage in his book was not answered at the time of publication; it will be added if one is supplied.)

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As the US prepares to roll out booster shots for its citizens, depriving the developing world of badly needed supplies, scientists have continued to warn about new COVID variants emerging in various corners of the world. Yesterday, we focused our attention on a new variant emerging in South Africa that scientists fear may be capable of surpassing vaccine-produced antibodies.

But the WHO revealed during its weekly briefing on Tuesday that it’s monitoring a new variant that was first identified in Colombia back in January. Known alternatively as “Mu” and B.1.621, the variant has been classified as a “variant of interest”, according to WHO’s weekly pandemic bulletin, making it one of a small handful of mutant strains that are actually at risk.

Certain mutations identified in the variant suggest it could be resistant to vaccines and stressed that further studies were needed to better understand it.

“The Mu variant has a constellation of mutations that indicate potential properties of immune escape,” the bulletin said.

Concerns about new variants emerging have intensified as infection rates have continued to climb globally, with the highly transmissible delta variant taking hold. Since first emerging in Colombia back in January, the Mu variant has spread to other South American nations, as well as some parts of Europe. Despite adding ‘Mu’ to its monitoring list, the WHO says the strain only has a 0.1% global prevalence among sequenced cases.

The addition of the Mu strain to the list of ‘variants of interest’ marks the first time a mutated version of the virus has been added to the list since June, when the Lambda mutation – which was also initially detected in South American (this time in Peru) – was added.

Presently, the WHO has identified four strains as “variants of concern,” including Alpha, which has spread to 193 countries, and Delta, which has fueled a rise in cases across the globe. Five strains, now including Mu, are being monitored as “variants of interest.”

The WHO currently identifies four Covid-19 variants of concern, including Alpha, which is present in 193 countries, and Delta, present in 170 countries. Five variants, including Mu, are to be monitored.

Submitted by Charles Hugh Grant from Of Two Minds

No nation can produce less of lesser quality, and squander more on infinitely greedy and corrupt elites, all funded by issuing trillions of new units of currency, and imagine that this asymmetry will never have consequences.

As I have often noted, historian Michael Grant identified profound political disunity in the ruling class as a key cause of the dissolution of the Roman Empire. Grant described this dynamic in his excellent account The Fall of the Roman Empire, a book I have been recommending since 2009.

I’ve been writing about the fractures in America’s ruling elites for many years, as well as the erosion of the foundations of society that lead to systemic collapse, for example, Collapse, Part 2: The Nine Dynamics of Decay (June 2015), Going to War with the Political Elite You Have (May 14, 2007) and The Conflict within the Deep State Just Broke into Open Warfare (March 10, 2017)

America’s elites are fracturing along multiple tectonic fissures: while the conventional media focuses on the ginned-up bread and circuses of Red and Blue political games (i.e., The Purple Empire), the real conflicts are within the camps running the Red and Blue games, the Imperial Project of global hegemony (a.k.a. The Deep State), the New Nobility of Big Tech attempting to overthrow the Old Nobility, the Nationalists versus the Globalists and the Financial Gamesters versus The New Foundation.

These are my informal acronyms, of course, but the conflicts are real and intensifying as extreme policies reach new extremes and the risks of breakdown increase.

The most dangerous elites are the ones clinging to the perverse but compelling faith that the Federal Reserve and Treasury can conjure endless trillions of U.S. dollars without any consequence other than continued global hegemony, the faith that the Federal Reserve has god-like powers to tweak the dials so that 1) the U.S. dollar remains the pre-eminent reserve currency 2) but not so strong that it sinks the emerging market economies and 3) magical enough that there are no limits on how many can be absorbed by global stock, bond, debt, risk and commodity markets and 4) remains the primary method of limiting the global financial leverage of geopolitical rivals. Uh, sure. No problem, the Fed is all-powerful, right?

The fundamental problem for the Imperial Project is the dollar must serve both the domestic elites profiting from Federal Reserve expansion of asset bubbles and the global markets that rely on a stable dollar for reserves, credit and transactional liquidity. While America’s billionaires are cheering the Fed’s endless largesse to the already wealthy, those tasked with maintaining hegemony are looking ahead and seeing the debauchery of the U.S. dollar as the Fed and Treasury spew trillions, very little of which is actually flowing into productive investments, i.e. the ultimate foundation of hegemony.

It’s instructive to observe the institutional symmetries between the Federal Reserve and its elite backers and the Soviet agencies which oversaw Chernobyl, a history illuminated in Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe.

It seems the only agency with a comprehensive grasp of the Soviet nuclear power industry was the KGB, which had sources within every nook and cranny of the state, economy and society. State secrets were protected to the point that even political elites did not have access to the potential for failure and the consequences of failure.

Just as in the final throes of Imperial collapse in the Soviet Union, nobody seems to be in charge in the U.S. It’s difficult to tell if incompetence is now the default setting everywhere in the American State or if there are a couple of competing chess games being played behind the curtain. When failure is so absolute, incompetence alone doesn’t seem quite up to the task. Perhaps failure received a nudge. After all, the cliff edge is already crumbling and it doesn’t take much to help a rival lose their footing.

As I have argued recently, inflation is not transitory; the trends have reversed and inflation is now embedded via two fundamental dynamics: the endless trillions being created out of thin air by the Fed and Treasury are not increasing the productivity or resilience of the U.S. economy; rather they are fatally weakening the economy and society by institutionalizing soaring wealth-income-power inequality, and 2) globalization’s increase of global supplies and optimization of global supply chains has reversed; scarcities can no longer be filled by exploiting another developing-economy via neocolonial-neoliberal pillage. That oh-so-profitable game is over, but few believe it’s possible: isn’t there always another place and people to pillage?

The warring elites will have to choose an economic side soon: either go with the Fed’s plan for an ever-more unequal future America in which inflation stripmines the bottom 90% while the technocrat class and its billionaire owners become ever-wealthier and the world loses confidence in the predictability of the U.S. dollar’s value, or the debt and phantom capital of the Fed’s sand castles are wiped away and the dollar is re-anchored to the nation’s economic foundations of improving productivity via newly enforced competition, transparency and accountability and the resilience of a reshored industrial base.

Hopefully America’s equivalents of the KGB have an equivalently sound grasp of just how prone to failure America’s financial fantasy has become. No empire can survive the debauchery of its currency, for the empire’s power flows not from hard power (military) or soft power (cultural influence) but from the currency that funds both hard and soft power.

There is no win-win at this late date: one elite will lose, and America will itself be lost if those debauching the dollar are allowed to win. The rationalizations are as absurd and extreme as the policies: as long as the trillions flow into the assets owned by billionaires, there can’t be any inflation, and so on, an endless spew of excuses by those profiting from the debauchery of the dollar.

No nation can produce less of lesser quality, and squander more on infinitely greedy and corrupt elites, all funded by issuing trillions of new units of currency, and imagine that this asymmetry will never have consequences.

It’s not yet clear that there is any leadership left in America. What’s playing on stage are warring camps of self-interested elites fighting to secure their power even as the foundations crumble beneath their feet.

The ‘carbon neutrality’ of 3D printing food, especially meat, is a fast-moving trend in the culinary world that may be coming to a restaurant near you. The entire process of printing food is pitched as a “sustainable” alternative to commercial farming – which involves significant amounts of land, water, feed, and fossil fuels to operate anything from generators to farm equipment to transport trucks. Then, of course, the slaughterhouse, packaging, and then transport the finished product to supermarkets and restaurant suppliers. 

Within the next five years, the cost to print 3D meat may have come down to the point at which supermarkets may start carrying lab-grown offerings. Readers may recall we’ve already mentioned 3D printed ribeyes, chicken breasts, and chicken nuggets, among others. 

Now, Japanese scientists from Osaka University have managed to 3D print wagyu beef, according to a press release. 

Wagyu is some of the most sought-after and expensive meat globally, known for its marble texture and richness in flavors.

“Using the histological structure of Wagyu beef as a blueprint, we have developed a 3D-printing method that can produce tailor-made complex structures, like muscle fibers, fat, and blood vessels,” lead scientist Dong-Hee Kang said. The team used two different stem cells from cows, called bovine satellite cells and adipose-derived stem cells – and under the right laboratory conditions – researchers then printed artificial Wagyu beef.

“Individual fibers including muscle, fat, or blood vessels were fabricated from these cells using bioprinting. The fibers were then arranged in 3D, following the histological structure, to reproduce the structure of the real Wagyu meat, which was finally sliced perpendicularly, in a similar way to the traditional Japanese candy Kintaro-ame. This process made the reconstruction of the complex meat tissue structure possible in a customizable manner.”

Scientists didn’t mention if they partnered with a food producer that could scale the technology to a commercial size or if fake wagyu meat would be less expensive than real wagyu meat. 

So, while the global elites may hope that the 3D printing revolution will eventually eliminate commercial farming and livestock farming ‘as a path to a more sustainable green future’…

… if you don’t want to eat lab-grown meat – now is the time to buy some farmland (in a non-drought area) and start raising your own beef cattle. Or locally source beef from mom and pop farms in the countryside. 

The ongoing digital revolution is leading to fundamental transformations in how we may carry our government-issued IDs. Apple announced today it’s working with six states to bring state IDs and driver’s licenses into a mobile app included within the operating system.

Apple’s iOS 15 will allow users from Arizona and Georgia to be the first states to support digital IDs via the Apple Wallet. Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Utah will follow shortly.  

Also, the Transportation Security Administration will allow select airport security checkpoints and lanes to accept the Apple Wallet IDs. Apple didn’t mention which airports. 

Apple today announced that it is working with several states across the country, which will roll out the ability for their residents to seamlessly and securely add their driver’s license or state ID to Wallet on their iPhone and Apple Watch. Arizona and Georgia will be the first states to introduce this new innovation to their residents, with Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Utah to follow. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will enable select airport security checkpoints and lanes in participating airports as the first locations customers can use their driver’s license or state ID in Wallet. Built with privacy at the forefront, Wallet provides a more secure and convenient way for customers to present their driver’s licenses and state IDs on iPhone or Apple Watch.

Apple said the digitalization of licenses and state IDs in the Apple Wallet would “provide an easy, fast, and more secure way for people to present their driver’s license or state ID using their iPhone or Apple Watch.” 

Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s vice president of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet, had this to say about the march towards digitization of the physical wallet: 

“The addition of driver’s licenses and state IDs to Apple Wallet is an important step in our vision of replacing the physical wallet with a secure and easy-to-use mobile wallet,” said Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s vice president of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet. “We are excited that the TSA and so many states are already on board to help bring this to life for travelers across the country using only their iPhone and Apple Watch, and we are already in discussions with many more states as we’re working to offer this nationwide in the future.”

The push behind the digitalization of the physical wallet comes as central banks, governments, and corporations modernize economies through digital currencies. While there are many advantages to digital currencies or programmable money, there are caveats, such as elites will gain more power over the masses. 

Just imagine a future where elites could automatically suspend your digital license or expire the digital currency in your digital wallet because your social credit score plunged for speaking negatively on social media about politicians. 

In fact, this system of control is already happening in China. For more on the subject, founder of TrishIntel.com Trish Regan warns: 

Digital wallets, while in theory sound promising, we’re already seeing the effects in China of how they can be manipulated. 

The CCP’s goal is to be able to strategically allocate “cash” or liquidity to those that they want to target — the problem is, it’s once again an opportunity for big government (and in the case of China, VERY big government) to pick the winners and losers. While simultaneously quite deliberately injecting immediate cash into the populations that they want to target.

Not to mention, there’s no privacy. All in all, if not properly safeguarded, digital wallets will continue eroding citizens’ rights. 

Under the Biden administration, the race to implement a society based on digital wallets and social credit systems is closer than you think. 

It might already be here… 

A teacher in Sacramento, California was busted on hidden camera admitting to a Project Veritas journalist that he bribes his students with extra credit if they attend local Antifa events.

“I’m probably as far left as you can go,” says AP Government Teacher, Gabriel Gipe, who works at Inderkum High School.

“I have 180 days to turn them [students] into revolutionaries…Scare the f*ck out of them,” he later added.

BREAKING: California High School AP Gov Teacher Admits Communist Indoctrination of Students

“I have an ANTIFA FLAG on my[classroom] wall”

“I have 180 DAYS to turn them into REVOLUTIONARIES”

‘There’s a reason why these kids[GenZ] are becoming FURTHER LEFT’ pic.twitter.com/NiwpArVAyJ

— veritastips@protonmail.com🇺🇸 (@EricSpracklen) August 31, 2021

More via Project Veritas:

Gipe said he keeps track of his students’ political inclinations. He is also perplexed when a student expresses discomfort with the decorations in his public-school classroom.

“So, they take an ideology quiz and I put [the results] on the [classroom] wall. Every year, they get further and further left…I’m like, ‘These ideologies are considered extreme, right? Extreme times breed extreme ideologies.’ Right? There is a reason why Generation Z, these kids, are becoming further and further left,” he said.

“I have an Antifa flag on my [classroom] wall and a student complained about that — he said it made him feel uncomfortable. Well, this [Antifa flag] is meant to make fascists feel uncomfortable, so if you feel uncomfortable, I don’t really know what to tell you. Maybe you shouldn’t be aligning with the values that this [Antifa flag] is antithetical to.”

The public-school teacher went on to suggest that a viable solution for society’s problems is a violent overthrow of the U.S. Government.

“Like, why aren’t people just taking up arms? Like why can’t we, you know — take up arms against the state? We have historical examples of that happening, and them getting crushed and being martyrs for a cause and it’s like — okay well, it’s slow going because it takes a massive amount of organization,” Gipe said.

When asked about his views on the Chinese Communist Party, Gipe explained how lessons from China’s disastrous Cultural Revolution could be applied in the United States.

“You need a two-pronged system, which is exactly what Huey Newton and Fred Hampton [Black Panther Party] understood. You need propaganda of the deed — your economics — and cultural propaganda as well. You need to retrain the way people think. So, the Cultural Revolution in the 60s was fixing the problem that came about after the economic one,” he said.

“What can we do now to root out this culture that keeps perpetuating hyper-individualism, hyper-competitiveness, capitalist exploitation and consolidation of wealth…I do think that it’s important to understand that as an extension of an economic revolution, they [Chinese Communist Party] were changing the base, and then they went to change the superstructure. You cannot change one without the other. You can’t have cultural shifts without the economic shift, and vice versa,” he said.

Read the rest of the report here.

One week ago, when the S&P was suddenly finding itself sliding lower, we reported that SpotGamma, Nomura and Morgan Stanley all warned that the S&P was on the verge of a very painful drawdown if stocks dipped below the key 4,350 support level, at which point a selling wave could quickly pull the S&P to 4,100 or lower. However that did not happen, preventing what could have been a very painful wipeout, as if some magical force lifted stocks higher on Thursday just as they were set to drop below they key critical.

And, as we reported, we now know what that “force” was: according to Bank of America, just as the S&P was about to drop the abovementioned critical gamma level, “Financials’ weekly buybacks were the largest on record since 2010 (and near-record as a percent of market cap).”

And while buybacks saved the market last Friday, they have also done miracles in all of 2021 because as BofA adds, “YTD, trends are already the second highest level on record (since 2010) after 2019’s record, which was 16% higher than today’s.”

Since that post, stocks have continued their merry meltup hitting a fresh all time high on Monday, and while many have been scratching their heads what was behind this relentless grind higher, we now may have an answer: the same catalyst that averted a painful slide on August 18: even more bank buybacks. Actually scratch that, make that record bank buybacks.

According to Bank of America’s client flow strategists, while buybacks by corporate clients decelerated slightly vs.the prior week, Financials buybacks accelerated, hitting another record high.

While the implications are obvious, BofA’s Jill Carey Hall reminds us that she noted last week that “the S&P 500 sector buying back the largest dollar amount in a given week has tended to outperform over the next several months with a >50% hit rate.“

Expect even more buybacks ahead: as BofA calculates, YTD, corporate client buybacks across sectors are +54% y/y but are still far from
pre-COVID levels: -13% vs. 2019 at this time, and one of the weakest years postcrisis so far when normalized by market cap.

Translation: expect many more buyback-driven ramps every time stocks are about to dip below a key support level, as the banks do everything and anything to avoid a gamma wipeout.

Joe Rogan, the popular podcast host and archnemesis of the mainstream media (which has excelled at producing a non-stop stream of hit pieces claiming he’s “losing influence” based on no actual evidence), has just revealed that he has tested positive for the coronavirus, according to an announcement on his Instagram page.

He said in the video that he “immediately threw the kitchen sink at it”, taking several medications including the anti-parasite drug ivermectin. Rogan is vaccinated, though the media will likely still paint him as an anti-vaxxer seeing as he had the temerity to question whether vaccines were really necessary for young patients (turns out they are far more susceptible to serious side effects than the FDA realized)

On Wednesday, Rogan told his Instagram audience he “got back from the road Saturday night feeling very weary. I had a headache. I felt just run down.”

 

 

 

 

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His symptoms progressed during the following day, and the next day, he tested positive for COVID-19.

“So we threw the kitchen sink at it, all kinds of meds,” Rogan said, adding that he took a Z-Pak (aka the antibiotic azithromycin), prednisolone (a corticosteroid used to treat inflammation) and Ivermectin, which is a drug used to treat parasitic worms in horses.

“I did that three days in a row,” he said. “And here we are on Wednesday, and I feel great. I really only had one bad day — Sunday sucked.”

Rogan also announced that he’s postponing a show he had scheduled for Friday at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. The new show date is October 24.