Month: March 2021

Authored by Thomas DiLorenzo via LewRockwell.com,

“The Great Reset” is the latest deceptive euphemism for totalitarian socialism that is being promoted by yet another group of wealthy corporate elitists who think they can centrally plan the entire world economy.  They are essentially the ideological heirs of Frederick Engels and his intellectual puppet Karl Marx.  “The Great Reset” follows in the rhetorical footsteps of such euphemisms for socialism as “economic democracy,” “social justice,” “liberation theology,” “progressivism,” “market socialism” (an oxymoron, like “jumbo shrimp” or “military intelligence”), “environmentalism,” “fighting climate change,” “sustainable development,” and “green new deal,” to mention just a few.

The main figure of this movement is wealthy German engineer Klaus Schwab, founder of the “World Economic Forum,” who champions what he calls “transhumanism,” the integration of nanotechnology into the human body so that humans can be controlled remotely by the state. As Ron Paul has noted, “Included in Schwab’s proposal for surveillance [of every citizen] is his idea to use brain scans and nanotechnology to predict, and if necessary, prevent, individuals’ future behavior .  This means that anyone whose brain is ‘scanned’ could have his . . . [constitutional] rights violated because a government bureaucrat determines the individual is going to commit a crime.”

Placed in the hands of politicians, this would create a level of totalitarianism the Soviets could only have dreamed of.  In other words, Schwab is reminiscent of that famous twentieth-century German who also fantasized about creating a master race and ruling the world.

This is nothing new, Antony Mueller points out, as eugenics, which was all the rage among so many ruling class elitists of the early twentieth century “is now called transhumanism.” Among the most prominent late nineteenth-and twentieth-century eugenicists were H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Charles Darwin’s son Leonard, John Maynard Keynes, Irving Fisher, Winston Churchill, and Bill Gates, Sr.  Bill Gates, Jr. is an enthusiastic funding source for “transhumanism” research and, like his father, is fond of eugenics.

During a recent “Ted” talk Gates, Jr. complained that “The world today has 6.8 billion people . .. that’s headed up to about 9 billion.”  Have no fear, he said, because if “we” do “a really great job on vaccines [with anti-fertility drugs? Poisons?] health care, reproductive health services [including abortion?], we could lower that by perhaps 10 to 15 percent.”  That in turn will lower carbon dioxide levels on the planet and address “climate change” as well, said Gates.

Keynes was treasurer of the Cambridge University Eugenics Society and director of the Eugenics Society of London.  He called eugenics “the most important and significant branch of sociology” [Eugenics Archive].  Irving Fisher, icon of the Chicago School of Economics, literally wrote the book on the subject, entitled Eugenics.

When he was the British Home Secretary (1910-1911) Winston Churchill advocated “the confinement, segregation, and sterilization of a class of persons contemporarily described as the ‘feeble minded’” [International Churchill Society].  His stated goal was “the improvement of the British breed”.  Accordingly, he supported “compulsory detention of the mentally inadequate”; the “sterilization of the unfit”; and “proper labor colonies” for “tramps and wastrels.”

World Government, Anyone?

Antony Mueller also wrote of how the first attempt to create some kind of global governing institution to centrally plan the world was the League of Nations (1920), followed by the United Nations in 1945 under the leadership of Stalin, FDR, and Churchill.  Although Churchill was fond of citing F.A. Hayek, especially The Road to Serfdom, FDR was essentially a fascist whose domestic policies differed very little from fascist Italy and Germany, and of course Stalin was a mass-murdering communist.

Churchill was voted out of office and replaced by the socialist Labor Party’s Clement Atlee in 1945.  The three “allied powers” of World War II were then led by two socialists and the political heir to FDR’s economic fascism, Harry Truman.

The U.N. immediately created UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and the World Health Organization (WHO), whose stated goal was to “manipulate human development.”  Eugenicist Julian Huxley was the first director of UNESCO who lamented that Marxism’s attempt to create a new type of human (“socialist man”) had already failed because it lacked a “biological component.”

Neo-Malthusianism and the Birth of “Environmentalism”

[S[ocialism . . . is . . . the society that must emerge if humanity is to cope with . . . the ecological burden that economic growth is placing on the environment . . . .  [C]apitalism must be monitored, regulated, and contained to such a degree that it would be difficult to call the final social order capitalism.”

– Robert Heilbroner, “After Capitalism,” The New Yorker, Sept. 10, 1990

The above quotation by socialist economist, the late Robert Heilbroner, was written in the context of an article that lamented and mourned the worldwide collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.  The great debate between capitalism and socialism was over, he said, and Ludwig von Mises was right about socialism all along, said a man who had spent the past half century promoting socialism in his teaching, speaking, and writing.  But do not despair, he told his fellow socialists, for there is one more trick up our sleeves, namely, the Trojan Horse of achieving socialism under the guise of “environmentalism.”

The basic strategy was then, as it is now, to constantly frighten the gullible public with predictions of The End of the World from environmental catastrophe unless we abandon capitalism and adopt socialist central planning. This has always been the one constant theme of the environmentalist movement (not to be confused with the conservation movement which is actually interested in the health of the planet and the humans who occupy it) since the 1960s.  It ignores the fact that the twentieth-century socialist countries like the Soviet Union and China had by far the worse environmental problems on the planet, orders of magnitude worse than in the capitalist countries.

In 2019 the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) published “Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions” by Myron Ebell and Steven Milloy.  The study is a compilation of reprints of newspaper and magazine articles that illustrate the seemingly never-ending false scare stories spread by the “environmentalistS” and their media puppets.  The real founder of the modern environmental movement was entomologist Paul Ehrlich, not Rachel Carson, author of the widely-cited novel, Silent Spring.  Ehrlich was supported by a group of wealthy socialists known as “The Club of Rome.”  His book, The Population Bomb, was incredibly successful, selling millions in just a couple of years, warning that the entire world will soon be destroyed by capitalism unless it is ended NOW and “severe” regulatory measures are taken.

The first article displayed by CEI was from the November 17, 1967 Salt Lake Tribune announcing that Professor Paul Ehrlich of Stanford said the “time of famines” is upon us and will be “disastrous” by 1975 because of over-population.  Such talk was a resurrection of the hoary, thoroughly-discredited Malthusianism of the nineteenth century, cloaked in the words of “modern science.”  Birth control may have to be made “involuntary, said Ehrlich, and accompanied by “putting sterilization agents into staple foods and drinking water.”  The Catholic church needs to be “pressured” by government to support his, said Ehrlich, who became one of the most celebrated, rich, and famous academics of the twentieth century.

The New York Times quoted Ehrlich on August 10, 1969, as predicting that “unless we are extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam n 20 years.”

Ice Age Hysteria of the ‘70s

Global cooling that would create a new ice age was the next scare tactic.  An April 18, 1970 Boston Globe article quoted “pollution expert” James P. Lodge, Jr. as saying “air pollution may obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the next century.”

Ehrlich chimed in, naturally.  An October 6, 1970 Redlands, CA Daily Facts article quoted him as predicting that “the oceans will be . . . dead . . . in less than a decade” because of pollution caused by capitalism.  And they will be frozen over.  A July 9, 1971 Washington Post article quoted a Dr. S.I. Rasool of NASA and Columbia University who said that pollution will cause an average temperature drop of as much as ten degrees that “could be sufficient to trigger an ice age!”

On December 3, 1972 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sent a letter to President Nixon predicting a “global deterioration of climate” never before seen by “civilized mankind” that would lead to a new ice age.

A January 29, 1974 article in The Guardian was headlined, “Space Satellites Show New Ice Age Coming Fast.”  This was followed by a June 24, 1974 Time magazine article warning that “telltale signs are everywhere” that we were already in a new ice age.  Global cooling hysteria was still alive and well in 1978.  A January 5, 1978 New York Times article was headlined, “International Team of Specialists Finds No End in Sight to 30-Year Cooling Trend in Northern Hemisphere.

Pivoting on a Dime:  Global Warming Hysteria

By 1988, after more than a decade of warnings of a new ice age unless capitalism is destroyed failed to produce the desired result, many of these same “scientists” and bureaucrats all of a sudden began warning of an earthly apocalypse caused by global warming.  The “greenhouse effect” of pollution was discovered/invented, with nationwide warnings like one in the June 24 Miami News declaring that “’88 On Way to be Hottest Ever as World Temperatures Up Sharply.”  James Hansen of NASA warned in the Lansing State Journal on December 12, 1988 that Washington, D.C. would “go from its current 35 days a year over 90 degrees to 85 days a year” and “the level of the ocean will rise” by as much as six feet.  “Rising seas could obliterate nations,” a “U.N. official” informed the Associated Press on June 30, 1989.  In reality, as CEI points out, is that the number of 90+ degree days in Washington, D.C. peaked in 1911 and continues to decline.

By 2000 the mantra of the global warming hysterics included predictions that “snowfalls are now just a thing of the past,” and “children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” The Independent announced on September 12, 2015, quoting another environmentalist “expert” from the University of East Anglia.

By 2013 “the Arctic will be free of sea ice” predicted James Hansen in 2008, as reported by The Argus Free Press of Owosso, Michigan.  In the same year Al Gore informed us that “the North polar ice cap would be gone,” as reported by the Associated Press on June 24, 2008.   For such predictions Massachusetts Senator ed Markey designated Hansen as “a climate prophet.”

The renowned atmospheric scientist Prince Charles told The Independent on July 9, 2009 that “the price of capitalism and consumerism is just too high.”  The planet will be destroyed by 2017 if capitalism is not essentially destroyed immediately, said the mega-wealthy prince whose preferred method of travel is by gas-guzzling Rolls Royce and private jet.

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown outdid the prince by informing The Independent on October 20, 2009 that “we have fewer than fifty days to save our planet from catastrophe.”  When New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez publicly announced in 2019 with perfect certainty that the world will end in in twelve years, she was referring to a 2018 United Nations “study” of “climate change” that said the same thing.  The world will likely end in twelve years, said the U.N. bureaucrats, unless the U.N. is given vast new governing powers over all countries of the world, and vast sums of additional tax revenue.

NONE of these widely-touted and celebrated predictions came true.  Birds did not even disappear from the planet as predicted in Silent Spring.   capitalism was not replaced by worldwide socialist central planning; so the environmental “scientists” pivoted on a dime once again and adopted the language of climate change.  It now does not matter whether the climate’s temperature is increasing or decreasing; either will cause a “catastrophe” that can only be avoided by replacing what’s left of capitalism with some kind of worldwide socialist central planning, they inform us.

A quarter of a century of “climate change” hysteria has still not led to the desired result.  The next step in this more-than-a-century-old political crusade for worldwide socialism, therefore, is “The Great Reset.”

The Great Nonsense of The Great Reset

Klaus Schwab holds doctorates in engineering and economics, although he seems ignorant of the most elementary economic concepts when he contends that the entire world economy can somehow be stopped by a god-like hand, push-button style, and “reset” and “built back better,” one of his favorite slogans.   He is the founder of the “World Economic Forum,” touted as an organization that promotes “Public-Private Cooperation.”  As Ayn Rand once said, however, whenever the private sector “partners” with government, government is always the senior and controlling partner.

Schwab seems totally unaware of how the institutions of capitalism have evolved over the centuries by ingenuity and efforts of millions and were not magically set or reset by any single man or government committee.  Money evolved on the free market and did not originate from governmental edits. Even language evolved, and was not invented by any government bureaucracy.  There is no recognition at all in any of Schwab’s books that he understands (or cares) anything about the spontaneous order of markets, the importance of private property and free-market prices, the economy-smothering effects of government bureaucracy, or the economic reasons for the inevitable failures of socialism.  Like all other socialist ideologues, he does not even bother to address the critics of socialism as he blindly makes his case for world socialism.  It can work, he insists, if only he and his corporate elitist comrades could be in charge.

The “logic” of The Great Reset can be stated in a syllogism:

1) Socialism has failed disastrously everywhere it has been implemented;

2) Everyone knows this;

3) Therefore, what the world needs is more socialism on the biggest scale ever.

Schwab is an engineer and believes that world society can be socially “engineered” by corporate elitists like himself.  The Soviets would label this kind of thinking “scientific socialism.”

Destructionism

Like all socialist ideologues, Schwab’s starting point is what Ludwig von Mises called “destructionism.”  All socialists, Mises said, advocated the destruction of the existing institutions of society, especially capitalism, the family, and religion, all of which form a barrier between the individual and the controlling dictates of the state. Only then can society be “reset” to create a socialist utopia.  For “Socialism is . . . the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created.  It doesn’t build; it destroys.  For destructionism is the essence of it . . . each step leading towards socialism must exhaust itself in the destruction of what already exists.”

This is why Schwab, Gates, Biden, and other proponents of “the great reset” so enthusiastically celebrate the lockdowns that occurred during the so-called pandemic of 2020 and declare that it is time to “build back better.”  Destroy what exists, they tell us, and then trust them to “build back” the entire planet “better.”  In fact, they were caught on video at their annual World Economic Forum meeting in early 2021 cheering a video of empty city streets and closed-down businesses caused by the government-mandated lockdowns that plunged literally millions into poverty worldwide. The lockdowns are “improving cities around the world,” said Schwab.  They may even moderate “climate change,” he triumphantly chortled.  The unemployed and impoverished residents of those devasted cities would obviously disagree with this rosy scenario.

A “team of researchers” at the University of East Anglia, an institution that is notorious for its “studies” of global warming/cooling/climate change hysteria, has also chimed in to advocate a “global lockdown” every two years to supposedly reduce carbon dioxide emissions as required by the “Paris Climate Accord.”  These lockdowns would not be related to any virus but would simply be designed to intentionally destroy much of the world economy, leaving millions in abject poverty, causing untold illness and death, for the sake of “fighting climate change” and of course, to achieve their real objective of destroying capitalism and adopting a version of worldwide socialist central planning.

Abolition of Private Property

The Word Economic Forum (WEF) socialists reveal themselves as classic Marxists in the sense that many of them call for the abolition of private property which, coincidentally, was the first plank of the ten planks of The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels.  Former Danish Minister of the Environment Ida Auken was given a platform at a WEF event to explain her definition of “a good life” that entailed the abolition of private property:

“Welcome to the year 2030 . . . . I don’t own anything, I don’t own a car.  I don’t own a house.  I don’t own any appliances or any clothes . . . someone else is using our [house] whenever we do not need it . . . .  I have no real privacy . . . everything I do . . . is recorded [by the state].  All in all, it is a good life.”

Auken here is obviously dreaming of “a good life” where governments own all property and rent or lease everything to their subjects.  Of course, that means that politicians will decide for you what you need.  There would be no such thing as consumer sovereignty any more than there was in the Soviet Union (apart from the black markets).  And as Hayek famously said, in such a system the only power worth having would be political power.  Bribery, corruption, and rent seeking run amok would be pervasive in any such society.

They want to spy on your every move, using the latest nanotechnology which probably means implanting devices into your body.  There will no privacy, and that’s all good with Ida Auken and her WEF colleagues.

Auken speaks fondly of how, if she wasn’t “using” a room of her house, it would be perfectly fine for strangers to occupy it in her absence.  Government-approved strangers, of course.  This is eerily reminiscent of how the Soviets socialized housing and forced strangers to live in extremely cramped spaces in communal housing.  It is easy to imagine an Auken army doing the same in the name of “sustainability.”

After receiving criticism of this outrageous view, Auken attempted to soft pedal and disguise her true beliefs by saying that such a world was not actually her “utopia” but only what she believes is the inevitable.  This is another old socialist gimmick – to argue that socialism is inevitable, and it is therefore futile to oppose it.  Her argument that she was just explaining an inevitable future is not believable.

In fact, the inevitability gimmick is the main theme of all of Schwab’s books on the subject.  They tend to go into excruciating detail about the digitalization of life, nanotechnology, etc., portray it all as “inevitable,” and then make a pitch for why this supposedly means that centralized political control of all societies is necessary .

Exactly the opposite is true, however.  As Hayek pointed out in almost all of his life’s work.  The more complex society becomes, the greater is the need to rely on voluntarism, private property, and free markets, the only known means of achieving an effective use of knowledge in society.  Complexity requires the use of many minds (and bodies) to make effective use of increasingly complex knowledge in order to advance.  Not only many minds, but many minds in a regime of economic freedom is necessary — again the polar opposite of “the great reset” ideology.

The Soviet Union had many brilliant people but they were largely forbidden to apply their talents in a way that would improve the lives of their fellow citizens.  They were viewed by the state instead as tools to aggrandize the state, not to serve the citizenry. To deny this is to engage in what Hayek called a “fatal conceit.”

The “Stakeholder” Subterfuge

The WEF elitists also employ another subterfuge as a means of essentially abolishing private property.  They do this by advocating the replacement of corporate shareholders with “stakeholders,” which includes just about every type of group of individuals in any community which are said to have a “right” to affect corporate decision making on a day-to-day basis.  Such groups usually involve various left-wing political pressure groups such as labor unions, environmentalists, the “civil rights”/affirmative action lobbyists, ad infinitum.  Libertarians and free-market economists never seem to appear on the lists of “stakeholders” that are espoused by leftist stakeholder theorists.

Public choice economics teaches us, however, that such large groups tend to be disorganized because of their size, diversity, and consequently high decision-making costs and are therefore rarely effective.  It would also subject corporate decision making to profit-destroying bureaucracy and indecision, effectively turning corporations into versions of say, the Department of Motor Vehicles or the U.S. Postal Service in terms of efficiency.

The “stakeholder” advocates surely understand this, which is why they propose that people such as themselves serve as unelected spokesmen for all the various “stakeholders.”  This will require the heavy hand of government to empower them to order corporations to do as they say, not as their customers and shareholder owners say.  It is de facto nationalization, in other words, an effective abolition of private property in corporations.

In addition to offering no clue that he understands elementary economic principles, Schwab also seems completely clueless about the long history of classical liberal ideas such as private property, free markets, limited constitutional government, decentralized government, the rule of law, and much else.  Or, he simply doesn’t care because he is a megalomaniacal tyrant.  He is no different, in other words, than all the other twentieth century socialists who were either ignorant of these things or openly attacked them as barriers to their totalitarian intentions.

Moreover, Auken’s utopian daydream is reminiscent of the late nineteenth century book, Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy.  This was another utopian socialist daydream in the form of a novel whereby one Julian West falls asleep in 1887 and awakens 113 years later in the U.S. in the year 2000 when the country had been turned into a socialist utopia.  Auken apparently believes it would only take a single decade to achieve her (and Schwab’s) socialist utopia, however.

The Great Reset as Super Fascism

The World Economic Forum claims to exist in order to promote an integration of private enterprise and the state.  This is a perfect definition of economic fascism.  Economic fascism in Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany allowed ostensibly private enterprises to exist (unlike the Russian socialists), but only if it was subjected to a totalitarian regulatory regime that forced all production to serve “the common good” as defined by the political ruling class, not the ruled. Consumer sovereignty was not at all a concern.  Schwab uses this same language of “the common good” to describe his “great reset” agenda.

It is basically a plea to turn the entire world economy into a version of Chinese fascism.  In the past several decades the Chinese communist government allowed more and more private enterprises to exist, but they are all still very heavily regulated, regimented, and controlled by the state.  Of course, the same can be said of the U.S. economy; it’s all a matter of degree.  As Robert Higgs has said, the American economic system is a system of “participatory fascism,” by which he meant a combination of economic fascism and democracy instead of dictatorship.

After claiming that the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” in the form of the “digitalization” of just about everything is inevitable, and arguing that that means there is a need for the most centralized government the world has ever known, Klaus and his associates drag out the same tired, old socialist platitudes that Leftists have been promoting for generations as the alleged answers to all of society’s problems.  They advocate shutting down more and more of the world economy with more lockdowns (destructionism); a huge expansion of the catastrophically-failed welfare state with the unlimited printing of money by central banks in order to hand out “universal basic income” to everyone; the eventual abolition of beef in order to fight “climate change” allegedly caused by cow flatulence; the abolition of virtually all other kinds of meat, replacing it with grass and insects as part of the average diet (presumably not their diet, however); the abolition of the energy industries and their replacement with windmills and solar panels; communal housing, Soviet style; the “leveling” of wage differences by regulating labor markets essentially null and void, which would create communistic chaos; and the effective nationalization of whatever is left of private society with a 400% increase in taxation (for starters).

There is supposed to be no opposition to this recipe for totalitarian utopia because it is all being done in the name of “equity and inclusion” (the mating call of Leftists everywhere), “sustainability,” and “the common good.”  To oppose this latest proposal for a totalitarian world order is, therefore, to be an enemy of society.  The “common good before individual good,” by the way, was also the explicitly-stated theme of the 1920 Nazi Party Platform.  According to the World Economic Forum crowd this is the “new” ideology that is supposed to lead us all through the twenty-first century’s “Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

A truly novel “oil for vaccines” plan is being floated Venezuela’s “rogue” leader (in the language of Washington) Nicolás Maduro as the impoverished socialist country struggles to obtain enough jabs for its population.

He proposed the initiative at a news conference Sunday, announcing “Venezuela has the oil vessels and has the customers who will buy our oil.” And then he said, “We are ready and prepared for oil for vaccines, but we will not beg anyone,” according to Reuters. 

Tenemos listos dos métodos para obtener las vacunas, a través del mecanismo Covax: Con la liberación del dinero que nos tienen secuestrado, y con el Plan Petróleo por Vacunas. ¡Venezuela tiene dignidad y cuenta con los recursos para garantizar la salud del pueblo venezolano! pic.twitter.com/PD5SCYwXPF

— Nicolás Maduro (@NicolasMaduro) March 29, 2021

Currently Venezuela has received coronavirus vaccine deliveries or further planned-for shipments from Russia and China – who have both it must be remembered been key players in helping Caracas export some of its “banned” oil, following the Trump administration ordered “blockade” of state oil exports which is still in effect. 

Maduro said further that Western countries which have helped enforce US-led sanctions must unfreeze Venezuela’s money and accounts in order for it to get the jabs it needs to stave off the spread of the pandemic. 

So far it’s been able to rely on limited supplies of Russia’s Sputnik V, and earlier this month Caracas health authorities approved the purchase of the Sinopharm vaccine, which is a Chinese company.

Currently Venezuela has confirmed over 156,600 COVID-19 cases out of a total population of 28.5 million; however, due to lack of testing for months into the pandemic along with the dire, near-collapsed state of healthcare this figure is believed to be much higher.

Venezuela’s plummeting oil production due in large part to sanctions and derelict facilities over the past half-decade…

via OPEC & Baker Hughes data/Offshore-Technology.com

Fueling the broader crisis of decaying and collapsing infrastructure and social services in many areas, the country’s crude and refined oil exports have recently hit their lowest level in over seven decades.

Authored by Glenn Greenwald via TK News,

The daily newspaper USA Today is the second-most circulated print newspaper in the United States — more than The New York Times and more than double The Washington Post. Only The Wall Street Journal has higher circulation numbers.

On Sunday, the paper published and heavily promoted a repellent article complaining that “defendants accused in the Capitol riot Jan. 6 crowdfund their legal fees online, using popular payment processors and an expanding network of fundraising platforms, despite a crackdown by tech companies.” It provided a road map for snitching on how these private citizens — who are charged with serious felonies by the U.S. Justice Department but as of yet convicted of nothing — are engaged in “a game of cat-and-mouse as they spring from one fundraising tool to another” in order to avoid bans on their ability to raise desperately needed funds to pay their criminal lawyers to mount a vigorous defense.

In other words, the only purpose of the article — headlined: “Insurrection fundraiser: Capitol riot extremists, Trump supporters raise money for lawyer bills online” — was to pressure and shame tech companies to do more to block these criminal defendants from being able to raise funds for their legal fees, and to tattle to tech companies by showing them what techniques these indigent defendants are using to raise money online.

The USA Today reporters went far beyond merely reporting how this fundraising was being conducted. They went so far as to tattle to PayPal and other funding sites on two of those defendants, Joe Biggs and Dominic Pezzola, and then boasted of their success in having their accounts terminated:

As of Wednesday afternoon, the Biggs fundraiser was listed as having received $52,201. Pezzola had received $730. Biggs’ campaign disappeared from the site shortly after USA TODAY inquired about it….

Friday, a USA TODAY reporter donated to Pezzola’s fundraiser using Stripe. Stripe told USA TODAY it does not comment on individual users. A USA TODAY reporter was able to make a $1 donation to Pezzola’s fundraiser using Venmo, a payment app owned by PayPal. After being alerted by USA TODAY, Venmo removed the account. 

Soon a PayPal account took its place. PayPal caught that and removed it, too. 

Wow, what brave and intrepid journalistic work: speaking truth to power and standing up to major power centers by . . . working as little police officers for tech giants to prevent private citizens from being able to afford criminal lawyers. Clear the shelves for the imminent Pulitzer. Whatever you think about the Capitol riot, everyone has the right to a legal defense and to do what they can to ensure they have the best legal defense possible — especially when the full weight of the Justice Department is crashing down on your head even for non-violent offenses, which is what many of these defendants are charged with due to the politically charged nature of the investigation.

The right to a vigorous defense has always been a central cause of mine as a lawyer and a journalist (it also used to be a central cause of left-wing groups like the ACLU, years ago; it was that same principle that caused then-candidate Kamala Harris to solicit donations last summer that went to protesters charged with violent rioting). A federal prosecutor was recently referred for disciplinary procedures for publicly threatening to charge some of these Capitol protesters with sedition, one of the gravest crimes in the U.S. Code. That is how grave the legal jeopardy is faced by these people trying to raise money for lawyers.

What makes all of this extra grotesque is that, as The Washington Post reported, most of those charged with various crimes in connection with the January 6 Capitol riot, including many whose charges stem just from their presence inside the Capitol, not the use of any violence, are people with serious financial difficulties: not surprising for a country in the middle of a major economic and joblessness crisis, where neoliberalism and global trade deals have destroyed entire industries and communities for decades:

Nearly 60 percent of the people facing charges related to the Capitol riot showed signs of prior money troubles, including bankruptcies, notices of eviction or foreclosure, bad debts, or unpaid taxes over the past two decades, according to a Washington Post analysis of public records for 125 defendants with sufficient information to detail their financial histories. . . . The group’s bankruptcy rate — 18 percent — was nearly twice as high as that of the American public, The Post found. A quarter of them had been sued for money owed to a creditor. And 1 in 5 of them faced losing their home at one point, according to court filings.

This USA Today article is thus yet another example of journalists at major media outlets abusing their platforms to attack and expose anything other than the real power centers which compose the ruling class and govern the U.S.: the CIA, the FBI, security state agencies, Wall Street, Silicon Valley oligarchs. To the extent these journalists pay attention to those entities at all — and they barely ever do — it is to venerate them and mindlessly disseminate their messaging like stenographers, not investigate them. Investigating people who actually wield real power is hard.

Instead, the primary target of the Trump-era media has become private citizens and people who wield no power, yet who these media outlets believe must have their lives ruined because they have adopted the wrong political ideology. So many corporate journalists now use their huge megaphones to humiliate and wreck the lives of ordinary private citizens who they judge to have bad political opinions (meaning: opinions that deviate from establishment liberalism orthodoxies which these media outlets exist to enforce).

We have seen this over and over. CNN confronted an old woman on the front lawn of her Florida home for the crime of having used her little Facebook page to promote a pro-Trump event they claimed was engineered by Russians. The same network threatened to expose the identity of another private citizen who created an anti-CNN meme unless he begged and promised not to do it again. HuffPost doxed the real-life name of an anonymous critic of Islam (whose spouted views I find repellent) and ruined her business.

A Florida woman who ran a Trump supporters page that unwittingly promoted a Russian-coordinated event on Facebook says she doesn’t believe that she was influenced by Kremlin-linked trolls https://t.co/DmgDRFRwyn pic.twitter.com/OAz5julCyA

— CNN (@CNN) February 21, 2018

Just last week, The Daily Beast decided to expose the identity of a private citizen at Spring Break in Miami and detail his marital and legal problems because a video of him went viral due to his being dressed as the Joker and uttering “COVID truther” phrases. The same outlet congratulated itself for unearthing and exposing the real name of an African-American Facebook user whose crime was posting videos mocking Nancy Pelosi.

My principal critique of the contemporary media posture — and my governing view of the real purpose of journalism — is summarized by this:

If you think the real power centers in the US are the Proud Boys, 4Chan & Boogaloos rather than the CIA, FBI, NSA, Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and spend most of your time battling the former while serving the latter as stenographers, your journalism is definitionally shit.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 16, 2021

ut increasingly, the largest corporate media platforms are used to punish ideological dissent and thought crimes by powerless, private citizens. They do not criticize or investigate real power centers, but serve them. And what makes it worse — so, so much worse — is that, as they assault, dox and harass private citizens, these journalistic bullies depict themselves as the real marginalized people, as those who are so fragile, voiceless, powerless, and vulnerable that criticizing them is tantamount to bullying, harassment, and violence.

This new journalistic tactic of weaponizing and misappropriating the language of marginalization, abuse, harassment and oppression and applying it to themselves — all to render any criticism of their work a form of assault and abuse — is one I have written about several times before. The last time was when a major front-page reporter at the most influential paper in the country, The New York Times’ Taylor Lorenz, got caught lying twice in six weeks, and those (such as myself) who criticized her for it — who criticized her journalism for the Paper of Record — were branded toxic, misogynistic bullies who were inciting dangerous hate mobs against her. And thus was criticism of this powerful journalist somehow manipulatively converted into an act of morally reprehensible harassment.

What these journalists are doing is as transparent as it is tawdry. They insist that you not treat them as what they are: people who wield extreme power and influence to shape political discourse, widely disseminate disinformation, wreck people’s reputations, expose the identity of private citizens, and propagandize the public. No, increasingly they are demanding that you treat them as exactly the opposite: the most marginalized, vulnerable, endangered and fragile members of society whose standing is so tenuous that publicly criticizing them should be barred as an act of violence, and those expressing critiques of their work must be consequently shunned as harassers and abusers.

This is the demented framework that allowed CNN’s coddled, blow-dried, manicured and pedicured millionaire TV personality Jim Acosta, with a straight face, to write an entire book casting himself on the cover as someone in danger. What enabled Jim Acosta of all people to cast himself as a victim, to the point where so many liberals bought this book that it ended up on The New York Times bestseller list? He was criticized by the President and his supporters for his journalism. That’s it.

And just like that, the real victims in America are not the jobless or the homeless or residents of addiction-ravaged communities or victims of violent crime but, instead, the rich, famous TV personalities for CNN. This is the fictitious melodrama — with themselves cast as the stars — that they are demanding you ingest to treat them with deference and respect.

As I’ve noted before, I’ve been harshly criticized for my journalism for years. I was publicly attacked in deeply personal ways by the President of Brazil many times, and endlessly slandered by his movement. That’s not fun, but it is also not persecution. What is real persecution is being prosecuted or imprisoned or threatened with prison for your reporting. Real persecution is what is being done to Julian Assange. Criticism, even harsh criticism, comes with the territory: the cost of the immense privilege of having a public platform to shape debate. If you do not want to be criticized or called names, don’t become a journalist or seek out public platforms.

Sunday’s USA Today article which tried to destroy the ability of these criminal defendants to raise donations for their legal fees contained the names of three journalists in its byline. The lead reporter — the one who the paper’s editors put first, Brenna Smith — took to Twitter to boast of this monumental journalistic exposé. After I saw several commenters criticizing the story, I added my own critiques of this story:

Congratulations on using your new journalistic platform to try to pressure tech companies to terminate the ability of impoverished criminal defendants to raise money for their legal defense from online donations. You’re well on your way upward in this industry for sure: https://t.co/pvpmX3DaaW

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 28, 2021

Note that the critique I voiced is about the reporting she had just published in one of the largest and most influential newspapers in the country. I also engaged the journalist whose name was listed last — a person named Will Carless — in a lengthy discussion expressing similar criticisms.

My criticism of Carless, a white straight male listed last on the byline, attracted no criticism for some reason. But my criticism of Smith, the lead reporter, caused such an explosion of indignation and rage from the corporate media class that it caused my name to trend on Twitter (yet again) as a dastardly online villain: that’s how grave my moral transgression was.

What was my moral offense here? According to these media mavens and the self-serving, manipulative framework they are trying to implant, I did not voice criticisms of a piece of journalism in one of the most influential newspapers in the country. Instead — in their hands — they converted it, just as they did with criticisms of Lorenz, into a narrative in which I bullied a poor, fragile, young lady who is too weak and too vulnerable to handle public critique.

They emphasized that she is just an intern: in their eyes the equivalent of a high school junior — even though she has a long history of writing deranged articles for the U.S.-Government-funded Bellingcat and was, at least in the view of her editors, competent and professional enough to be the lead reporter on what they treated as a major news story designed to harm the lives of numerous private citizens. If she is “merely an intern,” then why is she listed as the lead reporter on a major news story? And if her editors determine that she is capable of fulfilling that role, then you can’t simultaneously demand she be treated like a young debutante off-limits from critique.

Do you see what they are doing here? They are working to create a moral framework where it is always impermissible to criticize their journalism, no matter how shoddy, deceitful and amoral it is. They constantly concoct reasons why the journalist in question is too marginalized and too vulnerable to legitimately criticize. They are all apparently competent and sophisticated enough to be trusted to byline news reporting in major corporate outlets — and we must treat them as tough, talented professionals when it comes time to deference due — but we are then simultaneously instructed that they are not mature or strong enough to endure criticisms of that work. If she had not been an intern, they still would have decreed criticisms of her off limits on the ground that any criticism will stoke misogynistic abuse: after all, Lorenz is a borderline-middle-aged reporter, not an intern, but that is how criticisms of her are delegitimized.

What is even more remarkable is how these liberal media figures invoke the most long-standing sexist, racist and homophobic tropes to erect this shield of immunity around themselves that they demand you honor. Look at how they transformed this journalist from what I see her as and what she is — an adult professional reporter who has sufficiently risen in the profession to byline a major story in a national newspaper — into an offensive sexist caricature straight out of the 1950s. In their manipulative hands, she — like Taylor Lorenz of The New York Times — becomes not a professional adult journalist but just a fragile little china doll who cannot withstand any critiques.

A senior USA Today editor actually emailed me to chide me for my inappropriate behavior — i.e., critiquing the journalism of the reporter they placed first on the byline. And here is how USA Today’s former “diversity and inclusion editor” Hemal Jhaveri — who just got fired for posting a series of racist decrees about how white people are the root of all evil — decided to interpret this event:

Two USA TODAY reporters getting targeted in the span of days isn’t by chance. What is happening to Brenna Smith is not a coincidence.

Top editors showed they would cave at the slightest provocation. Now, female journalists through the org will be more susceptible to harassment. pic.twitter.com/TrDjfmWH8x

— Hemal Jhaveri (@hemjhaveri) March 29, 2021

Journalists with these outlets wield immense power and influence. These are not the voiceless, marginalized, powerless people in society. They’re the ones who attack, expose and ruin marginalized people if they dare express political views of which these journalists disapprove.

It is not just morally repugnant but quite dangerous for them to try to place themselves off limits from criticism this way. The whole point of journalism — the reason why a free press is vital — is because it is the only way to hold accountable powerful institutions and powerful actors. Corporate media outlets and those they employ as reporters are among the most powerful and influential actors in society and, as such, are completely fair game for criticisms, protests, and denunciations.

What they are trying to do by exploiting the language of oppression and marginalization to cast themselves as vulnerable victims who cannot be criticized is despicable. It deserves nothing but contempt. That is precisely why I intend to heap scorn on it every time they try it, precisely because these in-group, swarming corporate journalists are the real bullies, trying to stigmatize and destroy the reputations of ordinary citizens who commit the crime of criticizing their journalism or expressing political opinions they want banished.

They know that the public — for very good reasons — has lost faith and trust in their work at unprecedented levels. They know that their industry is failing. When journalism turns its guns not on the powerful but on the powerless — descending as low as trying to prevent them from raising needed money for a legal defense — the contempt is well deserved. The demographic characteristics of the journalists doing this disgraceful, cowardly journalism is irrelevant. The only reason they even mention it is because they think they can weaponize it against their critics.

This lowly tactic will succeed only if people are cowed and intimidated by it. It will fail, as it should, if people ignore it and treat them like any other power centers by freely expressing the criticisms you think their journalism merits regardless of what names they call you as a result.

Boston Dynamics on Monday revealed a new warehouse robot called “Stretch,” designed to move 800 boxes per hour, equivalent to a typical human employee. The new robot could be a solution for Amazon to replace some of its human warehouse employees as unionization threats emerge at various warehouses.

Two years ago, the robotics company released a variant of Stretch, which we first noted in March 2019. Back then, Boston Dynamics called the prototype robot “Handle.” Though the robot today appears to be improved with a new base for more stability. 

Stretch was built for one task and one task only, replace humans in warehouses. It uses cameras and other sensors to navigate aisles and uses a suction pad mounted on the arm to grab and transport 50 lbs boxes. 

“Stretch is a versatile mobile robot for case handling, designed for easy deployment in existing warehouses,” according to Boston Dynamics’ Stretch information page.

“Unload trucks and build pallets faster by sending the robot to the work, eliminating the need for new fixed infrastructure.”

Michael Perry, vice president of business development for Boston Dynamics, told Reuters that Stretch was mainly designed for unloading trucks at warehouses. 

“We heard pretty much universally across warehousing that truck unloading is one of the most physically difficult and unpleasant jobs … And that’s where Stretch comes into play,” Perry said. 

“We’re looking at picking up boxes around 50 pounds (23 kilograms), and our maximum rate of picking up and moving boxes can reach up to 800 cases per hour. So, it’s a fast-moving, highly versatile robot,” Perry said.

Perry said the time to integrate the robot in warehouses is now. Many warehouses aren’t designed for automation, and that’s where these robots could create a boom for the company as the technology-driven Fourth Industrial Revolution takes hold. 

Here’s a mock run of two Stretch robots unloading shipping containers. 

The warehouse robot is expected to be available for commercial use in 2022. Humans can learn to operate the robots within hours, which means Stretch can be easily integrated into a warehouse. 

The development of Stretch comes as unionization in America reaches a century low and is set to inevitably rise under the Biden administration.

One of the biggest pushes to unionize is at an Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama. The vote to unionize ends on Monday. There have also been talks of unionization at Baltimore, New Orleans, Portland, Denver, and Southern California fulfillment centers. 

The best defense Amazon and other companies have against unionization is automation and artificial intelligence to displace human workers, resulting in rising technological unemployment. 

Authored by Paul Alexander via The American Institute for Economic Research,

The acute focus in this writing is on the vaccination of children under 12 years of age with the Covid-19 vaccines as this raises very serious and urgent issues that must be confronted by societies in terms of possible unnecessary harms to our children.

SARS-CoV-2 virus that leads to Covid-19 disease may be used interchangeably in this report.

Why this focus? Because there is now a major effort to test the new mRNA-based vaccines against SARS CoV-2 virus in young children. 

What is the rationale for this and what is the basis? Why would there be a push to vaccinate six-month-old babies? Vaccinate two-year-old infants? Vaccinate six-year-old children? Ten-year-old children? Via an experimental vaccine that delivers genetic code into your cells instructing it to produce a mock portion of the virus? 

Before examining this issue directly, we wish to situate the illogicality and real concerns of vaccinating children within the devastating Covid-19 societal restrictions.

We point out that lockdowns, school closures, and mask mandate policies have made no sense whatsoever (particularly the prolonged restrictions) and as a consequence of their implementation, societal devastation has occurred and is still occurring and the impact on children’s health and well-being has yet to be examined in toto. The crushing harms are amplified and thus even more dramatic on women and the poorer members of society. 

We also know that masks can be potentially dangerous to children. In terms of children and Covid-19, we know children do not transmit Covid-19 virus and that the concept of asymptomatic spread has been questioned severely, particularly for children. Children, if infected, just do not spread Covid-19 to others readily, either to other children, other adults in their families or otherwise, nor to their teachers. This was demonstrated elegantly in a study performed in the French Alps. The pediatric literature is settled science on this.

Not only is there an absence of evidence supporting the notion that children spread Covid-19 virus in any meaningful way, but there is direct evidence showing that they simply do not spread this disease! This has been shown in school settings and as published in other papers. Children typically, if infected, have asymptomatic illness. It is well-noted that asymptomatic cases are not the drivers of the pandemic; something particularly important in relation to children as they’re generally asymptomatic. 

In this regard it is evident that neither children (nor asymptomatic adults) are the key drivers of SARS-CoV-2. In the rare cases where a child is infected with SARS-CoV-2, it is exceptionally rare for the child to get severely ill or die. And to reiterate, teachers are not at risk of transmission from children and schools are to be reopened immediately with no restrictions. They should have never remained closed and we knew this for one year now. The pediatric literature suggests that this is now settled science. Yet it seems that the ‘television’ medical experts and prominent US agency representatives, as well as government advisors and bureaucrats either do not read the science, do not understand the science, do not ‘get’ it, are blinded to it, or are just ignorant to the data and science. Most of what we have just stated we have known for one year now. This is not ‘new’ evidence, this has been settled for one year now, and certainly since last fall 2020. 

We even know of the early ‘potent’ seminal study calling into question ‘asymptomatic’ spread in Covid-19 which was published in Nature and was not covered by the media or television medical experts, and which showed that in a sample of ten million, when all positive ‘asymptomatic’ cases were followed and all close contacts were traced (n=1,174), there were zero (0) no instances of asymptomatic spread. Kerkhove from the World Health Organization (WHO) stated “From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual.” We agree with this based on the sum total of evidence we have seen to date. At the same time, the Covid-19 responses and dictates by the medical experts have taken on a sense of absurdity and ridiculousness now and our reading of Dr. Fauci’s explanations of why masking and social distancing is still needed after vaccination borders on the absolute confusing if not ridiculous. 

Just consider the confusing and some would say ‘reckless’ statements of Dr. Anthony Fauci when he first stated that it is para ‘common sense’ to wear double masks, to then soon after retract the double mask request. Dr. Fauci again caused tremendous angst and confusion when questioned in the Senate and in an exchange with Senator Rand Paul about mask wearing after being vaccinated or having had prior infection and cleared it and recovered. We know that there is no study, no evidence of significant reinfection after being vaccinated or having had prior ‘natural’ infection from Covid-19. None. “Reinfections appear to be very rare. Out of tens of millions of Covid-19 cases reported worldwide, there have been only fewer than five with properly documented reinfections. That’s a rate of 1.25 per 10 million infections based on crude analysis.” Also, no evidence of reinfection in the US from variants, yet Dr. Fauci still could not articulate why one must wear masks after recovering from Covid-19 or having been vaccinated, but he is calling for masks as protection. 

In this light, a seminal study found that 95% of Covid survivors were protected from reinfection for at least 8 months, if not more. The team at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology led by Dr. Shane Crotty measured the levels of antibodies, memory B cells and two kinds of T cells in the blood of 188 Covid-19 patients. They “tracked a group of Covid-19 survivors for up to eight months after their infection, and found about 95 percent had strong levels of bespoke immune cells specially tailored to fight SARS-CoV-2,”…their findings suggest the vast majority of Covid-19 survivors have the immune cells needed to fight reinfection for at least eight months and potentially much longer, based on projections from the data gathered so far… “it certainly looks like there’s going to be immune memory for multiple years and it wouldn’t be surprising for there to be substantial immune memory for ten years.”

Senator Paul took the necessary step by telling Dr. Fauci in Senate testimony that the mask wearing after the vaccine is ‘just theater’ with no evidence of significant transmission and reinfection after vaccination or natural exposure infection. All this is to say that Dr. Fauci’s call for double masks or continued mask wearing then seemed illogical, unscientific, and absurd, as does his new position on vaccination of children under 12 years of age. The latter raises very serious questions. 

As we focus specifically on the issue of children being vaccinated for Covid-19, whatever arguments there may be for consenting adults – children should not be carte blanche subjected to the same policies as adults without careful examination of the benefits versus the risks. Of course, zero risk is not attainable – with or without masks, vaccines, therapeutics, distancing or anything else medicine may develop or government agencies may impose. 

Focusing on Covid-19 vaccination of children, we are against this and question the decision-makers as we feel this is entirely illogical based on all we know. The campaigns for Covid-19 vaccination have begun in earnest across the globe. Inexplicably, there has been a recent flurry of statements supporting the vaccination of children. Of course, this also means that the experimental vaccines must be tested in children prior to mass introduction and use! We consider this to be irrational given there are no data whatsoever that could be used to support the need for vaccination of children in this Covid-19 pandemic. And because of the absence of any supportive data, we suggest that the concept of testing this vaccine in children and/or simply starting to administer this vaccine to children is irresponsible at best. 

We cannot fathom how it is possible to suggest, as has Dr. Fauci, that children require vaccination for prevention of Covid-19! This is so abhorrent an idea that once again we realized that we had to take a stand against testing and/or provision of any of the current vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 in children. And unless Dr. Fauci has access to data that we have not seen (or are we expected to just trust and judgements and opinions?), we are compelled to demand that this atrocity (for that’s what it is) not go forward. Is this the situation Dr. Fauci recently opined upon when he said para ‘often there is no data or evidence in Covid-19, so we must go on trust and judgements… his judgements’? We must remind Dr. Fauci that this is not science and that we and he must not make medical decisions or develop medical guidelines that are based on speculation, assumption, or supposition. These are much more serious decisions that require more than an ‘assumption.’ 

In trying to understand what underlies the decisions to promote vaccination of children we have some other thoughts that might explain what’s going on. Do we do it for the children?  Sometimes the answer is yes.  But the first rule of medicine is first do no harm (Primum non nocere).  For nearly all children under 20 years of age the risks from getting Covid-19 are exceedingly small and for children the risk is basically near zero in this population— it is the closest to zero we can get to — the cost-benefit argument against using an essentially untested vaccine is heavily in favor of risk and virtually no benefit. The potential risk of unknown and serious side effects from the brand-new and barely tested vaccines are — in truth — completely unknown.  That’s because it is almost unheard of for a vaccine to be released to the public this quickly.  That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get the vaccine. 

We’re certainly not anti-vaxxers and certainly children should receive their measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines among others, as these have had a dramatic effect on morbidity and mortality for decades. For populations where the risk of death or serious illness from Covid-19 is substantial — middle-aged and older adults or individuals with other chronic medical vulnerabilities like serious respiratory, cardiac, or immunological problems — using a new and barely tested vaccine is not only reasonable, it may and can be the most prudent and responsible thing to do.  Indeed, for a population of otherwise healthy children under 20 and then when we look at children under 12 — where the risk of death or even serious complications from Covid-19 is very low — in fact, exceedingly rare, the cost-benefit argument against using an essentially untested vaccine is off the charts and not in favour of the vaccine. 

People might ask; haven’t these vaccines been proven safe and reliable?  Haven’t they been developed by the world’s best scientists?  The “miracle vaccines” against Covid-19 developed in the last year are true miracles — but not only because of their noteworthy scientific achievements.  They have arrived well ahead of any previously imaginable vaccine that has been developed which en face looks rather miraculous. But in this case, the government was able to waive the normal testing rules and remove bureaucratic, regulatory, and associated hurdles (e.g. simultaneous development, manufacture, and logistics) with the government absorbing all the risk out of the gate. No doubt, the prior Trump administration deserves tremendous credit for the capacity to innovate nimbly in this emergency.  Bear in mind however, that these vaccines received the “Emergency Use Authorization” (EUA) and not the time-tested Biologic License Application (BLA) where rigorous and thorough testing and analysis preceded the issuance of such a license.

For comparison, consider that the measles vaccine was also developed quite quickly — the science wasn’t that difficult.  But it wasn’t released —even after the scientists hung up their lab coats — until teams of statisticians and painstaking researchers had nearly 20 years to test it.  Fortunately, they didn’t find any problems with that one — and hopefully that will prove true of the Covid-19 vaccines as well.  But the truth is, it is extremely premature to even guess what might be any longer time side effects of the current vaccines.  And we must emphasize here that it isn’t that we don’t trust the science behind the vaccine development — it is simply impossible to predict what the longer-term (1-5 years as an example) effects of these new vaccines are at this point. The issues pertaining to longer-term sequelae that could be associated with the vaccines cannot be balanced off by including more and more people in short-term studies. We need ‘time’ to evaluate the vaccines’ safety.

This is a real cause for concern, in particular for our children. To compare, we point out that the Polio vaccine, from inception of the vaccine concept in 1931 (10 years after FDR was stricken with Polio), took 20 years before Jonah Salk used the vaccine to vaccinate his family and then the world. Over the years, vaccines have saved countless lives and will continue to do so. We believe that vaccines have a large and important role in protecting human lives, but these protections have been the result of a thorough and sometimes tedious ritual of testing along with long-term assessment over a period of years in order to be confident that any one new vaccine is both safe and effective. Unfortunately, we cannot apply these time-tested requisites to the current crop of new vaccines. But again, we reiterate that it’s one thing to let adults decide, after informed consent, to be vaccinated but it is another thing entirely to go about vaccinating our children without evidence for long-term safety, especially when their risks of either becoming ill, or suffering severe illness from SARS-CoV-2 are infinitesimally small.

Physicians are entrusted to above all else “Do No Harm.” We certainly demand the same at this juncture. In response to the pandemic emergency situation, we believe that those individuals, elderly over the age of 70 years, frail, with comorbid conditions identified as potential risks for infection, serious illness and where potential for loss of life is high, vaccination might prove beneficial. Under such circumstances, there is an acceptable trade-off. But when the “downside” of contracting Covid-19 becomes very, very small — as it is for children — taking even a “moderate” risk of serious side effects from a barely tested vaccine may be . . . the word that comes to mind is irresponsible.  There is little if any benefit given the low risk in the first place, but the potential harm is real and very troubling. 

Dealing with concerns of the general public at large, perhaps the best mechanism of action would be to tailor the needs of those at highest risk (prioritize them for vaccines) and then subsequent cohorts of lower age groups down to the 30-40-year-olds. Below that age group, the risk of serious illness is very low (approximately 0.01%) and balance of risk and benefit are outweighed on the side of caution. By then we are likely to have herd immunity (due to a combination of vaccine and natural infection), so the social argument for more vaccinations will likely be moot.  We must keep in mind that the infection fatality rate (IFR) is close to zero for children (zero) and young adults. 

Even in six months to one year we will have a little more experience with side effects, but the reality is it normally takes years — sometimes decades — to be reasonably sure a vaccine is safe enough to use on persons under 20. Yes, it takes that long and thus why risk our children now? Given the low risks of contracting it and spreading it or getting seriously ill. We feel that an informed parent, informed as to the very little if any benefit, yet more certain potential harm, would place more value on their child avoiding that more certain harm, and as such, will opt for no vaccine at this time. 

The need to write this piece is related in large part to the fact that Moderna Inc. has recently announced that it is beginning a mRNA vaccine study on children 6 months to 11 years in the U.S. and Canada, in the latest effort to broaden the mass-vaccination campaign beyond adults. “This pediatric study will help us assess the potential safety and immunogenicity of our Covid-19 vaccine candidate in this important younger age population,” Moderna Chief Executive Stéphane Bancel has stated. On the basis of the literature we’ve discussed here, it is clear that his statement is patently false. Alarmingly, we have come to learn that dosing has already been started by Moderna. 

We already know that there is no emergency in children regarding Covid-19. And so why would Moderna Inc. seek to trial this vaccine on children with a death rate in this group of 0.003% (IFR 0.00003)? Moderna must show us why it is not dangerous to put this vaccine in children, and they have not. This potentially poses a monumental risk to the children in our opinion and based on the foregoing analysis of how vaccines have been developed and implemented to protect the population. Short-term analysis of a few weeks or months can potentially lead to long-term irreversible harm especially to a younger and growing populace of children with 70-100 years of life ahead of them. The potential harms may lead to a future healthcare crisis from such harm of biblical proportions if tried and tested safety guardrails are removed.

This really is a question of risk-management and parents must seriously consider that Covid-19 is a far less dangerous illness for children than influenza. Parents must be brave and be willing to assess this purely from a benefit versus risk position and ask themselves: ‘If my child has little if any risk, near zero risk of severe sequelae or death, and thus no benefit from the vaccine, yet there could be potential harms and as yet unknown harms from the vaccine (as already reported in adults who have received the vaccines), then why would I subject my child to such a vaccine?’ And in the presence of the potential risks, as well as the fact that a vaccine for Covid-19 is simply not indicated in children, why would a loving parent allow their child to be vaccinated with still-experimental vaccines? The children should live normally, and if exposed to SARS-CoV-2 we can rest assured that in the vast majority of cases, they will have no to only mild symptoms while at the same time developing naturally acquired immunity, and harmlessly; an immunity that is definitely superior to that which might be caused by a vaccine. This approach would also accelerate the development of the much needed herd immunity about which much has been written. 

In addition to concerns related to immediate or long-term sequelae of the new mRNA vaccines in children, there are emerging data suggesting that the vaccines might not be as effective as initially reported. They do not provide so-called sterilizing immunity or neutralizing antibodies as initially proposed. Bansal for example stated as to the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines “[i]t is still unclear whether they protect people from becoming infected, or from spreading the virus to others. That poses a problem for herd immunity.” Could Dr. Fauci and the CDC’s plea to wear face masks and social distance after vaccination be a tacit ‘veiled’ admission that the Covid-19 vaccine does not work effectively? If so, this is a real problem and concern for this is not how the vaccine is being sold to the public, especially now that they are being told even with the vaccine, you still cannot travel or visit family etc. or get back to ‘normal’ life.

In addition, there is the concern of “disease enhancement” whereby “in the past for a few viral vaccines where those immunized suffered increased severity or death when they later encountered the virus or were found to have an increased frequency of infection.” Harms and adverse events (e.g. blood clots) are being reported in the CDC’s VAERS system as well as globally and we need urgent study of the temporal relationship of reported adverse events to administration of the vaccines. Currently, there have been approximately 1,900 vaccine-related deaths reported to VAERS as of March 15th 2021. It is too early to tell how this will play out with these Covid-19 vaccines and reported harms and we remain cautiously optimistic yet cognizant that the trials have not run for the optimal duration of time to assess safety. 

We are hoping this works out. But we are concerned that insofar as testing of safety is concerned, the sample size of 6,750 or so children reported by Moderna is not powered to detect anything significant about safety, which is a critically important issue. Safety is one of the most important if not the most important primary endpoint when it comes to vaccination in general and vaccination of children who don’t even need the vaccine in the first place in particular. Indeed, as indicated, there are initial reports of adverse events post-vaccination and as such these must be clarified and validated. However, there is a safety signal here with these vaccines and any other drug or device or vaccine with these signals, then there would have been a pause put in place by now. 

Why then? Why move to vaccinate children? The expedited emergency use of vaccines is also creating turmoil in the European Union, where 19 countries have suspended the use of the Astra Zeneca vaccine due to concerns related to ‘excess clotting and related deaths after vaccinations.’ Physicians and scientists are asking for answers to the questions of such encountered harms in Europe. The physicians state, “We note that a wide range of side effects is being reported following vaccination of previously healthy younger individuals with the gene-based Covid-19 vaccines… While we recognize that these occurrences might, every one of them, have been unfortunate coincidences, we are concerned that there has been and there continues to be inadequate scrutiny of the possible causes of illness or death under these circumstances, and especially so in the absence of post-mortems examinations.” These physicians state further, “There are serious concerns, including but not confined to those outlined above, that the approval of the Covid-19 vaccines by the EMA was premature and reckless, and that the administration of the vaccines constituted and still does constitute “human experimentation,” which was and still is in violation of the Nuremberg Code.”

Let us be clear. We have serious concern with this position adopted by Dr. Fauci and the reported coming Moderna trial of children and ask that this be reversed as it has no basis and entirely not needed given the exceedingly low risk profile of children and the potential for harms. In this situation, the harms far outweigh any possible benefits and this must not go forward, as we argue. We base this on the existing children’s risk evidence. In conclusion, the issue of vaccines in children is really a risk management question for parents and any decision-maker. We insist that the CDC and Dr. Fauci as well as the NIH wait at least 2 to 3 years for the safety data to emerge from the current vaccines and then allow for full regulatory approval of these vaccines and not move forward with experimental vaccines in children. The science as to exceedingly low risk for children is defined and is settled. Yet we have zero, zero long-term studies on the safety of these vaccines both in adults and now threateningly, our children. 

We ask the CDC and other governmental agency spokespersons to give clarity to this burgeoning societal risk. As indicated above, we ask that testing of the vaccines in children be halted post-haste. This is based not only on putative risks associated with mass vaccination but even more specifically because, and as we have said above, children simply do not need a vaccine for Covid-19. Further, we request that governmental agencies elucidate the risk-benefits of such vaccines to the children before proceeding to another “emergency use authorization” of vaccines in this population.

We also write this as a call for caution. This really is about risk management decisions we as free people (as parents) are allowed to make in the USA. This is not only about science. It seems that the medical experts and Moderna are ignorant of the risk data in children as well as the current epidemiology of Covid-19. We ask them to urgently consult the body of pediatric evidence. Remember also, children cannot give proper informed consent e.g. an 8-month-old, a one-year-old. This is a very important ethical matter. The death rate in children under 12 is as close to zero as we can get. We have masked our children, closed schools, locked them down, driven surges in suicides in adults as well as our children due to these policies, and now we seek to vaccinate children with an experimental vaccine for which we have no data on the long-term harms. This is very unsafe in our opinion. The long-term safety data is not there nor will be there based on what Moderna has proposed. 

Moreover, with such low risks in children for getting and spreading Covid-19 virus, or getting seriously ill from it, then we ask again, why not allow our children to live reasonably normal lives, free, being exposed naturally as part of day-to-day life, and developing natural immunity harmlessly, with sensible precautions and simultaneous societal mitigations (which must always be in place as a key aspect of responding) that focuses on doubling down and tripling down on safeguards for our high-risk e.g. elderly, persons with comorbidities, and obese persons? With an aggressive focus on hygiene, sanitation, and disinfecting. Even study of the role of orofecal spread that has been sidelined. If the goal is population-level herd immunity, then low-risk exposure and infection in children and young persons who are well and healthy in any society is the one tried and true strategy for getting there harmlessly and faster. Why subject our children to a vaccine with possible side effects when we can get there harmlessly? What level of side effects would Dr. Fauci and the vaccine makers want to accept in subjecting our low-risk children to this? This makes absolutely no sense. Are there factors other than science at play here? 

In closing, our children are not ‘tiny adults’ and their physiological response will be drastically different to adults. In fact, it could be devastating to the vaccine. It is not even if they show that the vaccine is safe for kids, the issue is there is no basis for it, none! The CDC and experts like Dr. Fauci have been wrong on lockdowns, on school closures, and on mask mandates. Just plain wrong! They have all created an utter mess for our societies as we begin emerging from the pain of the punitive unsound lockdowns and school closures. Parents must now step up and demand that Dr. Fauci, CDC, NIH, and Moderna and other vaccine developers (and any entity with interests in the development of these vaccines) make their case for vaccinating their children. Do not simply accept this for there is no credible reason for it. We ask you as parents to adopt the words ‘risk-management’ and ‘cost-benefit’ as your guiding principles now on all things Covid-19, especially for your children’s sake. You have to assess the facts and demand these from them. You must question these medical experts who have been wrong on pretty much all things Covid-19-related. Catastrophically wrong! Do not shy away from this responsibility for the implications are way too great to do otherwise. Do not let our governments and media medical experts put a ‘chill’ on us as parents and guardians of our children, and silence us from pushing back and asking needed questions. 

You should know that the scientific community and dissenters, contrarians, and skeptics are already attacked, slandered, and smeared by the media, politicians, and even other scientists. I am and was, yet today, myself and our anti-lockdown anti-closure positions are being championed and embraced for what was done was a pure failure. We were guilty of considering the ‘totality’ of the risks, particularly those from the societal restrictions as they caused more harms and deaths than the virus itself. Our positions focused around an ‘age-risk’ targeted and more focused approach that secured the elderly and high-risk persons principally. Top preeminent scientists such as Dr. Scott Atlas, Dr. John Ioannidis, Dr. Carl Heneghan, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Dr. Kulvinder Gill, Dr. Harvey Risch, Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Ramin Oskoui, Dr. Jonas Ludvigsson, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and Dr. Abir Ballan are slandered and smeared in lieu of real substantive scientific debate. They are assaulted and names and careers severely damaged by the media. Even United States Senators such as Ron Johnson (Wisconsin) are slandered and smeared by the media television medical experts for his questioning of the vicious lockdown decisions and championing of early outpatient therapy for Covid-19 symptomatic persons (combined and sequenced antivirals, corticosteroids, and anti-platelet therapeutics that are safe, effective, available, and cheap). 

Vaccinating our children with a possibly harmful (untested) vaccine to them and with no basis given their risk profile, must be pushed back upon hard by parents. Like these mentioned contrarians and skeptics who have raised the ‘inconvenient truths’ surrounding Covid-19 responding, parents now have a very equal, sensitized, focused, and critical role in raising the right questions and taking a stand. Parents are the voices of their children now on vaccinating their children and on the other looming disaster, Covid-19 ‘vaccine passports,’ that are as illogical and dangerous as vaccines for children under 12! Americans must stand up now to this! 

We end by saying, we should think twice, then think twice again, and then even think again one more time, before vaccinating kids against Covid-19. The data or evidence or science is not there to support this.

*  *  *

Contributing Authors

• Paul E Alexander MSc PhD, McMaster University and GUIDE Research Methods Group, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada elias98_99@yahoo.com

• Howard C. Tenenbaum DDS, Dip. Perio., PhD, FRCD(C) Centre for Advanced Dental Research and Care, Mount Sinai Hospital, and Faculties of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

• Dr. Parvez Dara, MD, MBA, daraparvez@gmail.com

Monday morning saw further adoption of both cryptocurrencies in general, and more specifically, bitcoin. First, Visa announced it would be one of the first major payment networks to settle transactions in USD Coin as part of a pilot program with Crypto.com. 

Then, digital payments and financial technology company Mogo said it was going to be expanding its bitcoin cashback rewards program to include its MogoMortgage. The program will kick back up to $3,100 in bitcoin to member rewards accounts after people use Mogo to open a new mortgage, or re-finance. 

David Feller, Mogo’s Founder and CEO, commented: “Our bitcoin rewards program is all about giving our members more ways to accumulate bitcoin. It’s clear that we’re still in the beginning stages of seeing consumers add bitcoin to their financial portfolios, just as we’re seeing corporations add it to their balance sheets.”

He continued: “Given the volatility and speculative nature of bitcoin, there’s an increasing number of Canadians who are looking for ways to participate without risking their own money, and our bitcoin rewards program meets this demand. As an independent mortgage brokerage, our goal has always been to help members get the best rate and the right mortgage, and now our new bitcoin rewards program will reward them with up to $3,100 in bitcoin.”

“Unlike traditional reward programs, bitcoin rewards have the unique characteristic of being an asset class that can rise in value over time – $3,100 invested in bitcoin 5 years ago would be worth over $350,000 today.”

“The residential mortgage market in Canada is a massive market estimated at about $1.7 trillion, and we’re pleased to provide Canadians with a great way to get a mortgage, while also earning bitcoin,” said Greg Feller, Mogo’s President and CFO.

The company said that members can apply at any time through their Mogo app. 

…as if Canadians (and Americans) needed another reason to take out a mortgage aside from manipulated interest rates sitting at 0%. 

Authored by David Messler via OilPrice.com,

One of the things that doesn’t get a lot of discussion in the press is the under-the-table relationship Iran and China have had when it comes to oil. At first glance, they wouldn’t seem to have a lot in common. One is a theocracy with a radical view of non-believers and the other is probably the only example of a successful communist dictatorship since this form of government was created. But, if you look a little deeper they have a couple of things that align their mutual interests strongly. The first is they are both absolute dictatorships, meaning the institutions of government and national policies can be changed at the whim of those at the top. The second thing they have in common, and this is the main takeaway, both countries have serious geopolitical issues with the United States.

Iran suffers from years of sanctions imposed primarily by the U.S. to compel them to comply with U.N. resolutions regarding their atomic program. China views this century as the one in which they displace America as the world’s dominant Super Power. The place where these two authoritarian government’s worldviews align is in their opposition to the U.S.

It’s worth noting China’s apparent success has been funded by western economies over the last 75-years, thanks to our desire to buy everything as cheaply as possible. In that time, China has become the manufacturing center for the world and amassed immense wealth in doing so. The pandemic has caused a rethinking of the wisdom of outsourcing strategic commodities to despotic regimes, but for now, if you buy something other than food odds are it was made in China.

What interests us primarily is the extent to which China and Iran have found common ground in thwarting the U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil sales. Many countries have fallen in lock-step with the American sanctions and have refused to do business with Iran. A few have not, and notably among them China. One of the few countries which can flout U.S. edicts with relative impunity, China has opened their ports wide to tankers carrying Iranian crude thus dulling the effect of the sanctions. A win-win for each country on a number of fronts.

China and Iran in modern times

As Dr Mamdouh G Salameh details, the Iran-China strategic relationship is based on three pillars.

• The first is their enmity to the United States.

• The second is their geopolitical ambitions and

• the third pillar is crude oil.

The three pillars are linked to both the United States and oil.

The two countries have a multi-decade history of finding commonality when it comes to heading off U.S. interests. Beginning in the late 1980s when Iran first began to flex its military muscles outside its own borders, China has supplied the regime with ship-killer Silkworm missiles to enable it to directly threaten U.S. fleet movements through the straits of Hormuz. Over the decades, China has often been Iran’s backstop in the geopolitical theatre, and now the two countries have embarked on an ambitious partnership that could lead to a vastly expanded commercial and military Chinese presence in Iran. The New York Times is quoted as saying-

“The partnership, detailed in an 18-page proposed agreement obtained by The New York Times, would vastly expand Chinese presence in banking, telecommunications, ports, railways, and dozens of other projects. In exchange, China would receive a regular – and, according to an Iranian official and an oil trader, heavily discounted – supply of Iranian oil over the next 25 years.”

And there you have it. China has secured a steady supply of Iranian oil for the foreseeable future. We will now discuss some possible implications that might emerge over the next few years in the oil and geopolitical arenas.

China’s Iranian oil buying binge

China, whose economy had largely recovered from the virus by the spring of 2020, has been on an oil buying rampage to meet the demands of its restarting economy. That isn’t really news. What is news is how the two countries have collaborated to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions. Sanctions which if we are honest, have not delivered on their intent-compelling the rogue Islamic country to turn away from its nuclear ambitions. Perhaps now we see why.

In an article carried in World Oil’s March 11th issue, Bloomberg delved into the full extent of China’s oil buying from Iran.

Chinese imports of Iranian crude will hit 856,000 barrels a day in March, the most in almost two years and up 129% from last month, said Kevin Wright, a Singapore-based analyst with Kpler. His figures take into account oil that’s undergone ship-to-ship transfers in the Middle East or in waters off Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia to obscure their origin.

China buys a lot of oil, almost 12 mm BOPD from a variety of sources to meet its incredible demand of over 30 mm BOPD. So makes sense that it distributes its business among a number of suppliers. What has made Iranian oil purchases particularly compelling is the discounting the rulers of Iran have applied to cargoes, in times when oil prices have been rising dramatically. The Bloomberg article noted that cargoes from Iran are priced $3-5/bbl less than typical benchmarks like Brent. When you are buying the quantities that Beijing is, that turns into real money very quickly.

But, there are deeper implications in this rabid consumption of oil.

China is building storage tanks at a break-neck pace

China is stockpiling oil at a pace unrivaled in the developed world. An example of this tank building spree was discussed in a Reuters article. In a marked dichotomy with the U.S., China is building oil inventories by design. And in another shift from tradition, private firms are playing a lead role in what is estimated to be a 100 mm bbl addition in 2021 to China’s oil storage capacity.

Reuters Satellite image showing new tank construction in a commercial oil storage facility in Rizhao.

China’s oil buying helped stabilize the market in 2020 when prices crashed. This activity also gave them access to huge volumes of crude at discounted prices.

As China imports about 75% of the oil it uses it just makes sense for it build inventories. This is particularly true given its belligerent stance regarding the U.S. presently. A stance that may in some measure be a subliminal message to America to back off. In 2019 the U.S. sanctioned Cosco shipping, China’s primary oil tankering company for transporting Iranian oil. Sanctions that were partially reversed not long after in trade negotiations with China.

Having a huge inventory of crude gives China a buffer if oil shipping lanes are shut down for any lengthy period of time.

Putting all of this together

China announced to the world in 2013 that it would embark on an ambitious plan, called the “Belt and Road” (BRI) initiative to vastly expand its influence across dozens of Middle Eastern and Asian countries. This was a signature mark of the then newly installed Chinese President Xi Jing Ping, (who now seems to be “President for Life.”)

Introduced with a lot of pomp and circumstance, the BRI was couched in language that recalled the “Silk Road” trade routes of yesteryear, a parallel goal, but really provided a shield for China’s true intentions. That being filling a void left by waning American influence in these regions and promoting their Chinese Century ambition in which they displace the U.S. as the reigning global economic and military power. An article published by the Council of Foreign Relations- a think-tank that publishes position papers on global topics, summarized the BRI concerns for affected countries in a few words.

United States shares the concern of some in Asia that the BRI could be a Trojan horse for China-led regional development and military expansion.

Source

Singling out Iran for special emphasis fits neatly into China’s global strategy to project its power across the economic and geopolitical spectrum. What better way for the Asian superpower to announce to the world its arrival on the world stage than to thwart key UN resolutions on the country? Resolutions primarily enforced and supplemented by the country it is determined to displace from the top, The United States of America.

Taiwan: A possible trouble spot that could be the spark

The U.S. and China Alaska talks last week yielded a lot of fiery rhetoric amid grandstanding on both sides. The U.S. came to lecture China on human rights issues, its aggressive posture with a close neighbor-Taiwan, and repression of democracy in Hong Kong, and cyberattacks in the U.S. mainland. 

China wasn’t hearing it and served it right back to America’s senior diplomatic officials, calling out its foreign interventionism, notably in Iran and Venezuela (Another country China has backstopped against U.S. geopolitical edicts.), race relations in the U.S., and the apparent decline in domestic confidence in U.S. democracy. This was summed up by China’s foreign policy official coming out of the meeting, and quoted in the Wall Street Journal-

“Mr. Yang, a member of the party’s ruling body, channeled that sentiment in responding to Mr. Blinken on Thursday. “The United States does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength,” Mr. Yang said. He accused the U.S. of being condescending and waved his finger at Mr. Blinken and Mr. Sullivan.”

WSJ

Paramount in the U.S.’ concerns was China’s increasingly hostile rhetoric vis a vis Taiwan, a country China refers to as a province of the mainland. The U.S. and Taiwan have mutual defense agreements in place that call for one to come to the aid of the other in the event of an attack. For its part, China has made it clear since Henry Kissinger first flew to Beijing 50-years ago, to meet with China’s then Premier, Zhou Enlai, that it had no more important foreign policy imperative than the reincorporation of Taiwan with the People’s Republic of China, PRC.’

“No matter what other issues Kissinger raised — Vietnam, Korea, the Soviets — Zhou steered the conversation back to Taiwan, “the only question between us two.” Would the U.S. recognize the People’s Republic as the sole government of China and normalize diplomatic relations? Yes, after the 1972 election. Would Taiwan be expelled from the United Nations and its seat on the Security Council given to Beijing? Again, yes.”

Bloomberg

In modern times China through President Xi Jing Ping has made it clear that this remains a prime objective for the country.

“It is for this reason, above all others that Xi has presided over a huge expansion of China’s land, sea, and air forces, including the land-based DF-21D missiles that could sink American aircraft carriers.”

Bloomberg

There is an opinion among analysts that the ongoing upgrade by the U.S. of Taiwanese defensive armament may present a closing window to China, impelling them to act precipitously to achieve their aims.

In that event, China’s strategy of stockpiling oil for the inevitable interdiction of oil tankers toward its ports in response makes perfect sense. Some military strategists see this scenario playing out as early as 2025.

What might this mean for the tightening oil markets in 2021?

One of the things that we have to realize is that oil is a globally traded commodity. The gasoline that you burn in your car may have partially come from a barrel of crude produced in Saudi Arabia, Canada, or a host of other countries.

By and large, the supply line that moves oil around the world consists of massive vessels that can carry one to two mm barrels at a time. These vessels and the installations to which they sail, are particularly vulnerable to piracy, and military interdiction. In recent years both have been on the rise, sometimes for cash, but often as an expression of geopolitical intent. The point here is that the global distribution network is extremely fragile and subject to the whims of extreme factions in countries like Yemen.

A place where a rebel group called the Houthis that are backed by Iran in a struggle with Saudi Arabia, recently have launched drone and missile attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure. Attacks that appeared to be ineffective as not much damage was done, thanks in part to Patriot missile batteries that knocked them out of the air before they reached their targets. Just the same the subtle message was received by the oil markets which spiked sharply on the initial reports before settling lower in a few days as the news cycle moved on to renewed virus fears, slowing inventory drawdowns, and a strong dollar.

EIA-STEO

As shown in the EIA graphic above, oil is forecast to be in a very tight balance between supply and demand this and next. Meaning that any interruption in global shipments could adversely affect importing countries, of which the U.S. is one. While we produce about 11 mm BOEPD, we consume almost twenty. That other 9 mm BOPD comes to us from across increasingly dangerous waters, as potentially bellicose actors like Iran and China exert their influence geopolitically.

Summing it all up

I have felt for a long time that U.S. and Canadian companies do not get the full value for the relative security that comes from having the bulk of their production located within respective national boundaries. I don’t know how exactly to calculate that value as over the last few years, many of these companies have struggled to show relevance in a world that increasingly wants to use “green energy.” Having just passed through a period of massive oversupply these companies are focused on repairing their wounded balance sheets and restoring damaged investor confidence. Expansion of their production base is about the last thing on their corporate minds at present.

There are a few things I can say with confidence though is that if any of the scenarios I posit in this article come to pass.

• The first is that China will be a primary beneficiary of Iran’s oil output. The country has the capacity to produce 3.5-4.0 mm BOEPD. Iran newly emboldened by the change of administration in the U.S. and under the protective blanket of its Chinese partner has begun to ramp production back up. Iran has also shown to be very cagey about shipping its oil under sanctions, leaving port at night, and turning off tracking transponders. The odds are heavy that China will have the most favored nation status if oil shipments become problematic.

• The second is the likelihood of some type of oil shortage is becoming increasingly likely. Production in the U.S. is on a modest downward trajectory, as is the production in many OPEC countries from under-investment by the major IOCs the last few years. Add in the geopolitical ambitions of Iran and China, with the increase in tensions with the U.S., and you have a tinder box, that only needs a spark. As discussed, a likely spark is Taiwan in the near future.

• Finally, the introduction of a war premium to oil prices will cause a commensurate re-evaluation of oil equities in non-belligerent countries.

The modern economy runs on petroleum products and derivatives, and will for many decades.

In an important US-China development addressing the question of “what’s next” in the still burning and spiraling relations amid the trade war, over the weekend President Biden’s new US Trade Representative Katherine Tai told The Wall Street Journal the administration is not ready to lift Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods.

“I have heard people say, ‘Please just take these tariffs off,'” Tai said. Prior to just “yanking off tariffs,” the recently sworn in Tai — who is a Taiwanese American attorney and the first Asian-American to hold the post of the country’s top trade negotiator — said it must be “communicated in a way so that the actors in the economy can make adjustments.”

“Whether they are companies, traders [or] manufacturers, the ability to plan” is important, she added in her comments. Explaining the need for a strategic advantage and prudent use of pressure during any potential new trade deal talks, she quipped, “No negotiator walks away from leverage, right?” 

“Every good negotiator retains his or her leverage to use it,” she posed to her own question. “Every good negotiator is going to keep all of their options open.”

As a reminder this is yet another example of Trump’s foreign policies essentially being adopted as Biden’s foreign policies on many fronts, despite the mainstream media attempting to convey a vast chasm between the two.

Quoting Tai’s words from the Sunday WSJ report, Newsmax correctly put it in context as follows:

Tai echoed Trump’s contention tariffs are intended “to remedy an unbalanced and unfair trade situation.”

The 47-year old Tai served as a staffer of the House Ways and Means Committee during the Trump administration, helping to craft Trump’s U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement that replaced NAFTA.

Honored to serve as @USTRadeRep. I’m ready to walk, chew gum and play chess at the same time!

— Ambassador Katherine Tai (@AmbassadorTai) March 18, 2021

Her ethnic background and outspokenness on China – as well as the fact that she’s a fluent Mandarin speaker – has riled Beijing.

For example a Chinese official’s social media post cited in the latest WSJ report as saying, “This trade representative with Chinese blood has always been a woman who is not friendly to China.”

From New York to Seattle, hate crimes against Asians are on the rise – which, while we’ve been told can be attributed to white supremacists reacting to former President Trump’s anti-CCP rhetoric, appear to be largely committed by other groups. To wit:

Authored by Lorenz Duchamps via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Prosecutors charged a Seattle man with a felony hate crime after he allegedly threatened multiple Asian-Americans on two separate occasions earlier this month.

Christopher Allen Hamner, a 51-year-old well-known Black Lives Matter activist, was arrested Thursday on accusations of committing malicious harassment in the Seattle area, according to a Seattle Police Department (SPD) blotter.

Hamner had his bail set at $75,000 and is being held at the King County Correctional Facility for the felony hate crime charge plus three additional counts of malicious harassment, jail records show.

According to court documents filed to the King County Superior Court, Hamner used offensive language and threw unknown objects towards at least five Asians on two separate occasions. All the incidents happened while on the road, or near a vehicle.

On March 16, he allegedly harassed Pamela Cole, an Asian-American woman, and her two children aged 5 and 10 while they were seated inside their mother’s vehicle.

Hamner allegedly yelled racist obscenities at Cole before “punching his fist together” and telling her to get out of her car while throwing an object at her car.

Cole has been outspoken about the incident and also took multiple pictures of the suspect before reporting to authorities the alleged hate crime, according to the SPD blotter.

“The kids and I were in utter shock and confusion cause we just couldn’t understand why he was targeting us especially since we hadn’t had any interactions with the man,” Cole wrote on her personal Facebook page, explaining what happened.

Three days after the first incident, Hamner targeted two other Asian women on March 19 also while they were inside their car, court documents show.

He has been accused of blocking two victims with his vehicle in the middle of the road, blocking the traffic, and screaming similar insults at the two women. He also again threw projectiles at the victims.

“As victims Wong and Yao were attempting to drive by the defendant’s car, the defendant cut them off, blocked traffic, and yelled ‘F-you Asian,’” the documents allege.

“The defendant then got out of his vehicle, charged at them, and threw an item at their vehicle.”

Hamner’s personal Facebook page is filled with posts supporting Black Lives Matter and condemning racism in the United States.

In June 2020, he also recorded a video of himself participating in the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in Seattle, where he filmed and later posted anti-Trump and anti-police content.

Hamner’s arraignment is scheduled for April 8 at the King County Courthouse.

*  *  *

[ZH: now to see if New York investigators can find and prosecute this Asian-American-hating ‘white supremacist’]

🚨 WARNING: VIOLENCE/BLOOD 🚨
A person violently beats up and punches an Asian male in the head repeatedly in a Manhattan Bound (J) train at Kosciuszko Street Station, chokes him afterwards until he is unconscious. Be on the lookout for this person! pic.twitter.com/FCrqiPcxFc

— Asian Dawn (@AsianDawn4) March 29, 2021

Hugo Boss has joined several other western clothing companies – notably H&M and Nike, which were virtually erased from the Chinese Internet late last week after saying they wouldn’t use cotton sourced from Xinjiang – in criticizing China’s record on human rights in the far-flung western region, and the company’s stock is paying for it Monday morning.

Boss shares tumbled in Frankfurt as Chinese celebrities criticized the brand over its stance on human rights in the country, ensnaring the German brand in a growing boycott of western firms. That boycott appeared to accelerate Monday morning as Chinese landlords started closing some of H&M’s stores, threatening its foothold in what has become the company’s fourth-biggest market.

At one point, Boss shares were down more than 2%, H&M shares declined by a similar magnitude in Stockholm.

At least six stores in the lower-tier cities of Urumqi, Yinchuan, Changchun and Lianyungang have been shut down by the owners of the properties, according to mall operators in those areas who reportedly spoke to Bloomberg. In addition, local Chinese media have reported on more closures, with pictures showing H&M’s brand billboards being removed.

Li Yifeng, an actor and singer who has more than 60MM followers on his Weibo – a Chinese social media platform often compared with twitter – has ended all cooperation with Hugo Boss, according to a post on his agent’s Weibo account. Zhu Zhengting and Wang Linkai, both popular singers, will also stop working with the German firm, according to similar posts from their agents.

Western clothing companies have all found themselves in an uncomfortable position. On the one hand, the US and EU, which recently slapped new human rights sanctions on China, have criticized the CCP for imprisoning more than 1MM ethnic Uyghers in concentration camps. On the other, Beijing has made clear that firms hoping to sell clothes in China can either use cotton from Xinjiang, or risk a public “boycott”.

When confronted about the cotton issue at a press conference last week, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying insisted nearly half the production in the region is “mechanized”, while also slamming America over its own history of slavery. “This was in the US when Black slaves were forced to pick cotton in the fields,” she said.

Hugo Boss initially appeared to try to appease the CCP by posting on its Weibo account last week that it would “continue to purchase and support Xinjiang cotton.” However, a spokeswoman for the company now claims that comment was unauthorized and has now been deleted.

In a separate statement currently posted to its website, Hugo Boss said the company does not tolerate forced labor and insists that its global suppliers follow suit. The company “has not procured any goods originating in the Xinjiang region from direct suppliers.”

Circling back to H&M, mall operators said the closures were ordered by landlords who wanted to punish H&M for showing “disrespect” to China. As Bloomberg put it, H&M appeared to suffer the brunt of the fallout after the statement was called out by the Communist Youth League and the People’s Liberation Army. In addition to the closures, As we have reported, H&M outlets have vanished on Apple Maps and Baidu Maps searches, making it hard for Chinese consumers to locate stores, and it’s been removed from Chinese e-commerce platforms. It’s unclear how long the closures will last, and analysts warned that it could significantly impact the company’s second-quarter sales.

Other brands, including Inditex’s Zara, are still weighing whether to use Xinjiang cotton, or not.