Tag: news

Authored by Brandon Smith via Al-Market.us,

Six months ago amid the panic and the hype surrounding the coronavirus outbreak the New Zealand government made an announcement that went mostly unnoticed by the mainstream media. It was a policy decision that the whole western world should have been up in arms about, but at the time the public was still processing the pandemic chaos. New Zealand was instituting what amounted to covid prisons – Medical “quarantine facilities” where ANY citizen suspected of being a covid carrier could be detained without due process for as long as the government saw fit.

Not only that, but these covid camps would fall under the jurisdiction of the military. In other words, the NZ covid response was quietly being shifted into martial law.

The hyper-totalitarian measures were implemented in the face of a mere 22 covid deaths for the entire nation at that time. The media has been applauding the NZ response in recent weeks, arguing that heavy handed policies today will mean more freedom and a better economy tomorrow when infection numbers have been reduced. However, as I have been warning since the beginning of the pandemic, the lockdowns are designed to last forever.

We might be allowed “partial reopenings” and brief moments of relief, but covid mandates have nothing to do with public health and everything to do with public submission. The virus is nothing more than a useful crisis to be exploited as a rationale for tyranny.

Currently, New Zealand is facing further travel restrictions due to the discovery of a “covid mutation” in the UK. The government has indicated that any sign of renewed infection will be met with hard lockdowns once again. Citizens that think they have crossed the precipice and are on the verge of freedom are being conned.

In my article ‘The Totalitarian Future Globalists Want For The Entire World Is Being Revealed’, published in August, I stated:

“I believe the reason Australia and New Zealand have been targeted with this level of restrictions first is because they have been almost fully disarmed and have no means to defend themselves from government overstep. That said, I see signs that similar measures will be attempted in the US as well. In states like New York, there are low key programs to set up covid checkpoints stopping and checking vehicles coming into the state. This is where heavier restrictions start.”

It would seem my prediction might come to pass sooner than I thought. New York State Assembly Bill A416 has been dredged up by leftist lawmakers and its contents are rather horrifying. To summarize, A416 allows the NY governor dictatorial powers to detain and imprison any citizen determined to be a “threat to public health safety” during ANY viral outbreak. This power could be interpreted very broadly, perhaps even to include people who refuse to take the covid vaccine. The bill also allows for people to be imprisoned in “medical facilities” or other facilities; in other words, quarantine camps.

The bill was originally introduced in 2015 around the time of the Ebola outbreak scare, but it was shelved when that particular crisis didn’t pan out. The coronavirus pandemic is giving the bill new life, and this is not at all surprising. Just as we saw right after 9/11, any time a major crisis gains traction the government seeks to fast-track draconian laws which the public never would have tolerated in the past; laws that were collecting dust before but are suddenly pushed to the forefront today.

I wrote an article during the Ebola scare several years ago titled ‘An Ebola Outbreak Would Be Advantageous For Globalists’, in which I pointed out that a pandemic could be used as a perfect cover event for the enforcement of martial law-style measures. I was particularly concerned about the possibility that resistance to virus lockdowns would be limited and that this would give the government a free hand to start arresting liberty minded people that resist collectivist enforcement. They might even be able to achieve this without too much public scrutiny.

Luckily, the covid death rate stands at only 0.26% nationwide for anyone not living in a nursing home and the resistance to the lockdowns is growing everyday. Americans are just not going to put up with violations of their civil liberties much longer.

The NY bill is, in my opinion, a litmus test for the rest of the country. The establishment will attempt to see how much resistance they get in a hard leftist state first, and if they can get A416 passed they will then try to pass similar bills in other Democrat controlled states. If we have a Biden presidency in the next month, then expect a federal version not long after.

I think the timing of the rehashed bill is not coincidental. The fact that it is now being pushed again in the NY Assembly at the same time that the covid vaccine is meeting so much resistance suggests that the goal will be to use the threat of covid camps as a tool to frighten the public into compliance with the barely tested vaccine. Polls taken over the course of 2020 indicate that a majority of Americans are wary of the safety of the vaccines and at least 30% plan to refuse it outright.

With potential dangers of a deadly autoimmune response or infertility caused by the experimental treatment, who can blame them?

I suspect that if these kinds of laws are put in place in any state let alone multiple states there will be a severe backlash. Conservatives will continue to relocate to more free counties and states while taking their businesses and tax dollars with them. Leftist states will then try to restrict people from moving away, or they will try to institute financial penalties as legislators in California have tried to do.

Eventually, the establishment of covid camps will lead to a violent reaction. It is inevitable.

I would suggest to leftist lawmakers that this is a path they do not want to go down, and establishment elites would not be safe either from the anger many Americans will feel when faced with forced vaccinations or imprisonment over a virus that well over 99% of the population is unaffected by. There are certain lines we will not allow them to cross, and this is one of them.

Incrementalism of a collectivist state is giving way to a rapid free-fall. As I have been noting the past couple of months, it seems as though the elites are in a rush; this suggests that resistance from the public is much larger than they anticipated and they are starting to panic.

The NY bill is only a taste of what is to come in terms of tyrannical legislation. Let’s not forget that the next stage will be medical passports for everything from travel to going to the movies to eating at restaurants. To get a medical passport you will be required to submit to vaccination and contact tracing (being tracked through your cell phone 24/7). Every time a new covid mutation is found, get ready for more lockdowns and new vaccinations. Your old medical passport will be void and everything starts all over again.

The cycle will be perpetual, and this is by design. Covid concentration camps seem to be a Hail Mary concept meant to terrify the populace. Implementing such measures will be difficult, but the IDEA of them can be used to pressure the public into conformity with vaccines and contact tracing.

The notion that the government has the legal option to black-bag you at any given moment and ship you off to some obscure lockup without due process could inspire ultimate fear in the citizenry. Why not just accept the jab and the tracking apps on your phone so you can sleep at night, right?

But it doesn’t stop there. Like the British “Star Chamber” courts used to disappear dissenting voices in the days leading up to the American Revolution, covid legislation that allows for unilateral imprisonment could also be exploited as a weapon against ANYONE for any reason. All the government has to do is claim that you have covid, even if you have been vaccinated, and if they consider you a problem you simply find yourself snatched up one day.

That said, the harsher the mandates the more galvanized Americans will feel in refusing to comply. The more rebellion the elites run into the more they will try to turn to the “law” to legitimize their criminality, but this will not help them in the long run. It is all rather predictable, which is why the legislation does not particularly worry me. I think that even if it passes it will only inspire greater unification of liberty minded people; it will have the opposite effect the elites intend.

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In a rare instance of a Left-wing Latin American leader siding with Trump, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has condemned controversial actions taken by major US social media platforms to block Trump messages. He’s long had warm relations with the US president even as other regional leaders have remained cold.

Recognizing the extreme dangers and abuse of big tech censorship for political speech, especially statements by elected government officials, Mexico’s president underscored that it’s an egregious violation and alarming precedent-setting severe abuse of power by Twitter and Facebook – both of which have blocked President Trump’s official accounts this week.

“I don’t like anybody being censored or taking away from the the right to post a message on Twitter or Facebook. I don’t agree with that, I don’t accept that,” López Obrador said. 

He further compared the extreme action to the infamous episode of the Inquisition in medieval Europe under the Catholic monarchs:

How can you censor someone: ‘Let’s see, I, as the judge of the Holy Inquisition, will punish you because I think what you’re saying is harmful,’” López Obrador said in an extensive, unprompted discourse on the subject. “Where is the law, where is the regulation, what are the norms? This is an issue of government, this is not an issue for private companies.”

He branded Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as “arrogant” in the comments. “I felt he was very self-important and very arrogant,” Lopez Obrador said.

He was also pressed by reporters as to his thoughts on Wednesday’s storming of the Capitol and brief occupation of Congress by pro-Trump supporters who were intent on blocking the election certification, to which he made no comment.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s presidential spokesman Jesús Ramírez reaffirmed the official condemnation of the social media giants’ actions saying in a follow-up Twitter message, “Facebook’s decision to silence the current leader of the United States calls for a debate on freedom of expression, the free exchange of information on the web, democracy and the role of the companies that administer (social) networks.”

The blockages of Trump’s accounts, which further includes Instagram, are expected to be in effect until at least after Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan.20.

López Obrador indicated he was not planning on traveling to D.C. to attend Biden’s inauguration, for which there’s also likely to be further mayhem – or at the very least on the peripheries of the event amid tightened security.

Authored by Mark Jeftovic via OutOfTheCave.io,

Four years ago, after the unthinkable happened and the ‘wrong guy’ won the US election of 2016, I wrote an article about how I had feared a type of “cultural purge” from within the corporate media, Big Tech and cancel culture spheres.

Like everybody else, I didn’t expect Trump to win (like most other Libertarians, I was holding my nose and pulling for Gary Johnson, whose running mate, Bill Weld, endorsed Hillary Clinton during the election campaign).

What I expected then, after Trump would have unceremoniously lost the 2016 election,  was a type of cultural purge against anybody and everybody who enabled his run or supported him. What surprised me was that after he won the cultural purge proceeded anyway. In retrospect it seems obvious, at the time it blindsided me.

For the next four years we watched any (remaining) semblance of objectivity and impartiality wither away from the mainstream media. Even more troubling, was that it was also happening within Big Tech. Everything polarized and all judgement calls became characteristically asymmetrical. As I noted on occasion, that compared to the post 9/11 era when the Neocons controlled the narrative and the word “liberal” was a slur, everything flipped. Now it was the word “conservative” that was unusable and being a single micron to the right of centre was equated with being “literally Hitler”.

I could list the countless examples of deplatformings, cancellations, character assassinations and careers destroyed in the intervening time. It became so ridiculous, so devoid of any attempt at a claim to due process or fairness that an entire counter-culture has formed around criticizing or ridiculing it. I wrote a book about defending from deplatform attacks, which I started giving away for free in April when Big Tech started deplatforming deviant reporting on the COVID-19 crisis. Babylon Bee sprang into existence and quickly rivalled The Onion, riffing on cancel culture and hitting headwinds on multiple occasions when their scathing satire was indistinguishable from the reality they were lampooning.

TL,DR: Cancel culture is a right-wing conspiracy promulgated by Qanon Incels

More than once I thought “This is it, this has to be Peak Outrage”, and then somebody else’s career or business would be destroyed, sometimes for imagined transgressions that may or may not have taken place years ago or even before the target even started a position they’d just been canceled from having (David Collum’s section on cancel culture, featuring his own cancelation, lays many of these out in his famous Year In Review series, the 2020 issue).

Once the 2020 election was finally in the rear-view mirror and it appeared likely the administration had changed I thought, once again, that the worst was over. The world was mired in lockdown fatigue, we’re not even dealing with the economic fallout of COVID yet, and “ding dong the witch is dead”. Surely cancel culture and social justice extremism would taper off, if only out of exhaustion.

i’m fucking exhausted pic.twitter.com/gjmsQtgBFh

— Jordan Lancaster (@jordylancaster) October 13, 2020

Boy am I wrong, again.

The ignominy with which TheDonald has chosen to close out his term, the lack of humility, of which is he likely congenitally incapable of, will instead reignite the flames of the culture wars and propel them to new heights.

I don’t even want to get into the gory details of the events of Jan 6, the storming of the capital, the riots, other than to say that when we talk about the twilight of the nation state and the rise of the Network State in our #AxisOfEasy podcasts, these are the sort of disorderly episodes we fear punctuating or worse, defining, this oncoming societal shift.

We certainly seem to be into The Fourth Turning now, a book I have been rereading and was just finishing up listening to the day of the DC riots. Their prescience is creepy, especially as they outlined the “climax” phase of the Crisis period, which, by their reckoning started around… 2020 and would last another 6 to 10 years:

One or both of today’s dominant parties could go the way of the Whigs…History warns that when a crisis catalyzes, a previously dominant political party or regime can find itself perceived or blamed for direct mistakes that led to the national emergency.

Whoever holds power when the Fourth Turning arrives could find themselves joining the ranks of the 14th century Lancastrians, circa 15th century Catholics, circa 1680 Stewarts, circa 1770 Tories, circa 1860 Democrats, and circa 1929 Republicans. That party could find itself out of power for a generation.

Key persons associated with it could find themselves defamed, stigmatized, harassed, economically ruined, or even personally punished”

Since that day, Big Tech and corporate media moved at a new speed that I found dizzying. Twitter pile-ons are ugly enough spectacles and that’s just watching end-users gang up on the sacrificial deviant of the day. But watching Shopify of all companies, pile on to Facebook and Twitter’s deplatforming of a sitting president (which at this moment he is, like it or not), Simon and Schuster canceling their contract to publish Sen Josh Hawley’s book on Big Tech censorship (which I wanted to read) and I’m sure the list will go on after I’m done writing, this is just fucking crazy.

(I paused writing this to take a meeting, an hour later I come back to finishing it off and a friend, who fled Chicago this past summer because of the complete breakdown of civil order there, among other US cities at that time, sent me this story. It outlines numerous other firings and cancelations of Chicagoans who attended the DC rally (but not necessarily involved in the violence), and businesses who even commented in social media about it.)

Translation: a social media mob demanded we cancel one of our employees with zero due process or time to consider, so we did. Who do you want us to fire next?

Think it through people.

Do you want to live in a society where Facebook and Twitter decide not what is permissible to say but even which narratives can be explored and which ones can’t?

Yes I know, “private companies, their own AUP, blah blah blah” – I’m a libertarian and a tech company CEO, so I know all this. I’ll preempt these objections with what I said in my book, which is that when tech companies base platform/deplatform decisions on something that is happening outside of their platforms, they are in effect, exercising jurisprudence and adjudicating international law. All any company can competently assess is what is happening on within their respective platforms, how their employees are fulfilling their roles and serving the businesses customers and nothing else.

Would you be ok with your employer firing you if enough strangers who don’t know you, don’t do business with your company and have no first hand knowledge of events or what your circumstances are scream at your boss to cut you loose?

Do you want contracts to be subject to negation by  public sentiment of events 2 or 3 or more degrees separated from the contracted parties?

Do you want to have every aspect of your life scrutinized by somebody else’s measure of moral and ideological purity before you can say anything online? How about before you can book a hotel room? Fill up your car with gas? Go shopping? Get on a plane?

After all, we have big data and AI now, so this is all doable. 

Do you really want to live within the constraints of a type of societal social credit system where your every action, your very thoughts are bounded by external and ever shifting, subjective and revisionist social mores? Many of them defined by the most oversensitive, self-absorbed hysterics on social media?

Be very careful if you think this is a good thing, because sooner or later, you’re going to be on the wrong side of it. By then it’ll be too late.

So, the first week of the year brought us – the worst first day for stocks in two decades, the “darkest day in American democracy”, a dismal jobs print (far worse than expected), ISM beats that were almost entirely predicated on model misattribution of global supply chain disruptions, a blue-sweep of government (fiscal-palooza), and the highest levels of COVID “cases” and deaths.

What really mattered? The Fed said “no taper” anytime soon, and promises of more $2000 checks and more and more – both of which sparked ‘reflation’ trades everywhere with cryptos soaring, bond yields spiking and Small-Caps surging relative to Big-Tech.

After the S&P 500’s worst start to a year since the Dot-com mania, markets took off with Small Caps by far the week’s biggest gainers…

Everything was fine today until a) 10Y Yields broke above 1.10% (VaR shock impacts on stocks), and b) Sen. Manchin spoiled the party by saying he would not support $2000 checks)…

But Biden saved the day late-on with promises of lots of money for all…$15 min wage for all… and stimulus in the trillions… stocks went wild! (Small Caps had a down day today)

Small Caps continue to push up towards the key downtrend against Nasdaq…

Source: Bloomberg

The S&P 500 was noisy around the 3800 level, before being panic bid after Biden spoke…

Which, as SpotGamma notes, is a key technical level from the options market…

Banks were bid as yields rose all week but fell today as the velocity of the yield spike spooked some…

Source: Bloomberg

Biotechs soared all week (until this afternoon) with Nasdaq Biotech Index topping 5000 for the first time…

Source: Bloomberg

And then there’s TSLA!!… which surpassed FB in market cap today with its best week since July…

Source: Bloomberg

It’s been quite a wild ride…

Source: Bloomberg

Bond yields surged higher on the week – the biggest spike in 30Y yields since June 2020…

Source: Bloomberg

10Y Yields broke out this week…

Source: Bloomberg

…back to their highest since March…

Source: Bloomberg

Real Yields soared this week (biggest spike since March 2020), after hitting record lows, weighing heavily on gold prices…

Source: Bloomberg

Notably for European and Japanese traders, FX-hedged Treasury yields are the most attractive since 2017…

Source: Bloomberg

Additionally, Japan’s 30-year bond yields have dropped below currency-hedged 10-year Treasury yields for the first time since 2017…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar rallied on the week with a decent spike yesterday and follow through today…

Source: Bloomberg

Cryptos were the major headline makers on the week, with ETH up over 60% and BTC up 40%…

Source: Bloomberg

With Bitcoin tagging $42,000 intraday at its peak…

Source: Bloomberg

And Ethereum nearing $1300 twice…

Source: Bloomberg

Is Bitcoin tracking 1970s gold?

Source: Bloomberg

Gold was clubbed like a baby-seal this week after a strong start up to pre-vaccine levels…

WTI continued its post-election, post-Fed, post-vaccine (and now post-Saudi fold) surge nearing $52 this week…

Copper closed higher on the week but was weak today…

Finally, there’s Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon:

“The markets have been quite ebullient as of late. You know, I think there’s some excess in markets.”

“I think there’s a lot of retail participation in markets that’s certainly making markets a little bit more ebullient. I’d be cautious about some of that.”

And then there’s Fed Vice Chair Clarida who said he’s “not worried by stock market values… they’re adjusting to a more positive outlook.”

Very positive indeed.

Source: Bloomberg

Of most note today though was the reaction of stocks to bond yields’ spike – be careful what you wish for…

Source: Bloomberg

Despite what feels like countless examples over the last few years of Teslas experiencing what owners called “unintended acceleration” (like this), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Friday that it would “not grant a petition seeking a formal review of 662,000 Tesla vehicles for claims of sudden unintended acceleration,” according to Reuters.

The regulator said that the review of a December 2019 petition, which we previously reported on here, found out that the incidents in question “were caused by pedal misapplication. NHTSA found no evidence of fault in the accelerator pedal assemblies, motor control systems, or brake systems that contributed to the cited incidents.”

The petition included 232 complaints to the NHTSA about unintended acceleration. Of these, there were 203 crashes. 

The NHTSA says its Office of Defects received the defect petition on December 19, 2020 and that the request applied to model year 2012 through 2019 Tesla Model S vehicles, model year 2016 through 2019 Tesla Model X vehicles and model year 2018 through 2019 Tesla Model 3 vehicles. 

The agency commented that “there is no evidence of a design factor contributing to increased likelihood of pedal misapplication. The theory provided of a potential electronic cause of SUA in the subject vehicles is based upon inaccurate assumptions about system design and log data.”

Last summer we reported that two dozen Tesla owners had signed onto a lawsuit in the Bay Area that alleges the company’s Model 3 vehicles can dangerously accelerate on its own. The suit was filed originally in January by eight plaintiffs in six states and the suit has now expanded to include 23 plaintiffs in 11 different states, according to the East Bay Times. The company “has been intentionally overlooking a dangerous problem while rushing its vehicles to market,” the lawsuit claimed.

But, the NHTSA appears to have said that these hundreds of Tesla owners are all just imagining things…

We stick by what we said almost one year ago to the day: “…t is no surprise to us that the NHTSA has not made a determination as to whether or not an investigation is warranted regarding the new petition yet. Because if it isn’t clear as day to them at this point, we’re not sure what it’s going to take to wake these regulators from the half decade long slumber they’ve been in.”

Certainly, videos like this didn’t seem to sway their opinion. Just normal driver error, according to the NHTSA:

China Tesla M3 owner reports sudden acceleration and brake failure in this accident caught on tape. This is at least the second incident this year where a $TSLA M3 made viral news in China due to alleged brake failure. pic.twitter.com/XSr8dHQxfA

— Stultus (@StultusVox) August 19, 2020

But we digress…

The military may allow the National Guard in Washington D.C. to carry firearms and batons ahead of the inauguration, according to a report from the Associated Press, citing the Secretary of the Army.

Restrictions on the use of force are currently under review by Defense leaders, as they brace for more protests surrounding the January 20 inaugural, Rob Quirk of KOAA reports.

Defense leaders are reviewing restrictions on the use of force by National Guard members and could allow troops to carry batons or guns in Washington, D.C., as they brace for more protests and possible violence around the Jan. 20 inaugural, The Associated Press has learned. @AP

— Rob Quirk (@KOAARobQuirk) January 8, 2021

Developing…