Month: June 2021

Russia’s Defense Ministry has lobbed an explosive accusation at a moment tensions with the West are soaring in the wake of the Belarus Ryanair incident on May 23rd. Spokesman for the ministry, Major General Igor Konashenkov on Wednesday said that NATO is preparing to use upcoming summer Black Sea sea exercises to smuggle tons of weaponry to Ukraine and “extremist” paramilitaries allied with Kiev.

Referencing the annual US-NATO Sea Breeze exercise in the Black Sea region, expected from June 28 through July 10 and including some 4,000 troops, Gen. Konashenkov claimed, “Advanced armaments, munitions and materiel are planned to be delivered precisely to that region for Ukrainian troops under the guise of holding the drills.”

“Eventually, as was the case in previous years, all this weaponry will be delivered to the Ukrainian troops and nationalist formations stationed close to the areas in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions uncontrolled by Kiev,” he added.

Russia is essentially the only major state bordering the Black Sea that will not take part or cooperate in some way with the exercises which further will involve at least 40 warships and other vessels, along with 30 aircraft – all with the involvement of 29 NATO member and ‘partner’ countries.

Leading the way will be United States, Canada, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, Latvia and perhaps most notably other non-member allied or partner countries like Ukraine.

Russia’s defense ministry spokesman made the explosive charge in a Wednesday statement…

#Russia‘s General Exposes True Goal Of Sea Breeze 2021 Exercises In #Ukraine

Its main participants are Ukraine, #USA, #Canada, #GreatBritain, #Netherlands, #Romania, #Bulgaria, #Greece, #Turkey, #Latvia and partner countries.
#SeaBreeze

⚡️🔥💥NATO Playing with Fire? 💥🔥⚡️ pic.twitter.com/kvMAaQcq4Z

— It@8848 Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil. (@Orpheus_111) June 3, 2021

The Kremlin is more or less casting this year’s NATO drills as a dress rehearsal for future invasion of territory the West sees as “occupied” by pro-Russian forces, most notably Donbas and Crimea. And adding context to this suspicion is the fact that Sea Breeze war games prior to 2014 had been often conducted from Crimea.

Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,

“The entire Belt and Road initiative is based on forced labor,” according to Li Qiang, director of China Labor Watch.

“Chinese authorities want the Belt and Road projects for political gain and need to use these workers.”

A new report, “Silent Victims of Labor Trafficking: China’s Belt and Road workers stranded overseas amid Covid-19 pandemic” by China Labor Watch, published on April 30, details the conditions of some of those overseas Chinese workers, who are building China’s Belt and Road infrastructure projects across the world. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) forms a crucial part of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) foreign policy and is a key tool in China’s ambition to become a global superpower.

China Labor Watch spoke to approximately 100 Chinese BRI workers in Indonesia, Algeria, Singapore, Jordan, Pakistan and Serbia. Many shared similar stories. According to the report:

“They were promised a job with good pay to support their families back in China. Upon arriving in the host countries, however, Chinese employers confiscated their passports, and told them that if they wanted to leave early, they had to pay a penalty for breach of contract, which is often equivalent to several months’ worth of their salary.”

China Labor Watch found that most of the indicators of forced labor in the definition used by the International Labour Organization (ILO) were present concerning the Chinese workers they interviewed.

Almost all the workers had been deceptively recruited with promises of certain wages and legal work visas. Instead, their passports were confiscated right after they disembarked the plane, leaving them unable to leave unless they paid a heavy fine to the Chinese employer. They received no legal work permits, making them illegal workers. They were locked up in poor living and working conditions on the work premises, which were guarded by security guards. If they wanted to leave the premises, they needed permission from the guards. They suffered excessive work hours of up to 12 hours a day, 7 days a week with no holiday allowance and insufficient labor protection and safety equipment. Many workers were injured during work with no access to medical treatment, leading some to permanent disability. After a worker from a Chinese mining company in Indonesia was diagnosed positive for Covid-19 in November 2020, he was put in isolation in an empty dormitory room for more than 20 days without any medical treatment. Later other workers found his dead body. According to the report:

“We have found that in some Chinese steel and mining companies, workers are frequently detained and beaten by the company’s security guards due to disobedience, attempting to strike, or other disputes with management. In a WeChat group of Chinese steel workers in Indonesia, someone posted a video of a worker being repeatedly reprimanded and slapped until the uniform was covered with blood from his nose. Then other members of the group commented that a factory’s translator was the one who beat them.

“Intimidation and threats are common for controlling Chinese workers in forced labor at some BRI projects. The most commonly used threats include deportation, reprisal after returning home, high fines and penalties. It is also common to force workers to sign a waiver of rights to sue the employer and to force workers to delete evidence of labor rights violations on their phones.”

Most workers received “late payments… and unexplained deductions.”

“A worker who went to Jordan worked in the desert for five months but only received his salary for the first six days. In Algeria, when an installation project of a subcontracting company was close to completion in 2019 two workers were left behind for maintenance and installation. They could not refuse the arrangement because their employer threatened them with six months of salary that had not yet been paid.”

There was no place where the workers could complain.

“Several workers said they tried to call the Chinese Embassy to report that their passports were detained by their employing company. The embassy’s reply was that it had no right to intervene and the workers were told to file a report at the local police station. However, these workers, cannot even get out of the gate of the work site, and they also face language barriers. It is quite unrealistic for them to call the local police. Moreover, workers are afraid that they will be punished or fined if the police find out that they do not have legal work status.”

The Chinese embassy also seems to have actively worked to suppress their complaints.

“Two volunteers we interviewed who are concerned about stranded overseas Chinese workers told us that what they published on their personal accounts about overseas migrant workers were often deleted by WeChat [a Chinese messaging and social media app] admins within a few hours. Once, after publishing an article mentioning a specific company name, an author received a call from the Chinese Embassy and company executives, telling him to delete the article and not to continue to focus on these workers.”

That the Belt and Road Initiative may be based on forced labor, as alleged by the report, is not surprising. Forced labor exists in two distinct forms in China. One form is modern slavery, not directly sanctioned by the state, as exemplified by the BRI workers mentioned above. According to the 2018 Global Slavery Index:

“[O]n any given day in 2016 there were over 3.8 million people living in conditions of modern slavery in China, a prevalence of 2.8 victims for every thousand people in the country. This estimate does not include figures on organ trafficking.”

The other form of forced labor is systematic and legal under China’s penal system. Communist China has used forced labor and labor camps, citing “reeducation”, since the 1950s. In 2013, the CCP claimed that it was abolishing the practice, only to reinstate it again some years later to “reeducate” Uyghurs. According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), the Chinese government has built nearly 400 detention camps in Xinjiang. “By most estimates, about 10% of Uighurs and other Muslim nationalities in Xinjiang have found themselves arbitrarily detained in these camps,” according to Nathan Ruser, a researcher at the ASPI.

“Tens of thousands of former detainees are likely to have been transferred into forced labour programmes… Xinjiang’s continuing detention camps …underpin a vast network of labour programmes where consent is impossible. They contaminate the supply chains of hundreds of multinational companies with forced labour, and they implicate not only Chinese authorities, but much of the rest of the world in a concerted campaign of ethnic replacement that credible reports suggest may well amount to genocide”.

While the forced labor of Uyghurs has received much international attention in recent years, a much less known fact is that China also subjects Tibetans to forced labor on a large and organized scale. In the first seven months of 2020, China drove more than half a million Tibetans into forced labor, according to a 2020 report, “Xinjiang’s System of Militarized Vocational Training Comes to Tibet,” by Adrian Zenz for the Jamestown Foundation. According to the report, the CCP has been “reeducating” Tibetans in Tibet in ways that are similar to the forced-labor to which it subjects Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The report states:

“In 2019 and 2020, the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) introduced new policies to promote the systematic, centralized, and large-scale training and transfer of ‘rural surplus laborers’ to other parts of the TAR, as well as to other provinces of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In the first 7 months of 2020, the region had trained over half a million rural surplus laborers through this policy…The labor transfer policy mandates that… farmers are to be subjected to centralized ‘military-style’… vocational training, which aims to reform ‘backward thinking’ and includes training in ‘work discipline,’ law, and the Chinese language…”

Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“It is just when people are all engaged in snooping on themselves and one another that they become anesthetized to the whole process. As information itself becomes the largest business in the world, data banks know more about individual people than the people do themselves. The more the data banks record about each one of us, the less we exist.”

– Marshall McLuhan, From Cliche To Archetype

We’re being spied on by a domestic army of government snitches, spies and techno-warriors.

This government of Peeping Toms is watching everything we do, reading everything we write, listening to everything we say, and monitoring everything we spend.

Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it is all being recorded, stored, and catalogued, and will be used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government’s choosing.

This far-reaching surveillance has paved the way for an omnipresent, militarized fourth branch of government—the Surveillance State—that came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum.

Indeed, long before the National Security Agency (NSA) became the agency we loved to hate, the Justice Department, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration were carrying out their own secret mass surveillance on an unsuspecting populace.

Even agencies not traditionally associated with the intelligence community are part of the government’s growing network of snitches and spies.

Just about every branch of the government—from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between—now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to spy on the American people. For instance, the U.S. Postal Service, which has been photographing the exterior of every piece of paper mail for the past 20 years, is also spying on Americans’ texts, emails and social media posts. Headed up by the Postal Service’s law enforcement division, the Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) is reportedly using facial recognition technology, combined with fake online identities, to ferret out potential troublemakers with “inflammatory” posts. The agency claims the online surveillance, which falls outside its conventional job scope of processing and delivering paper mail, is necessary to help postal workers avoid “potentially volatile situations.”

Then there are the fusion and counterterrorism centers that gather all of the data from the smaller government spies—the police, public health officials, transportation, etc.—and make it accessible for all those in power. And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the complicity of the corporate sector, which buys and sells us from cradle to grave, until we have no more data left to mine.

It’s not just what we say, where we go and what we buy that is being tracked.

We’re being surveilled right down to our genes, thanks to a potent combination of hardware, software and data collection that scans our biometrics—our faces, irises, voices, genetics, even our gait—runs them through computer programs that can break the data down into unique “identifiers,” and then offers them up to the government and its corporate allies for their respective uses.

All of those internet-connected gadgets we just have to have (Forbes refers to them as “(data) pipelines to our intimate bodily processes”)—the smart watches that can monitor our blood pressure and the smart phones that let us pay for purchases with our fingerprints and iris scans—are setting us up for a brave new world where there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

For instance, imagine what the government could do (and is likely already doing) with voiceprint technology, which has been likened to a fingerprint. Described as “the next frontline in the battle against overweening public surveillance,” the collection of voiceprints is a booming industry for governments and businesses alike. As The Guardian reports, “voice biometrics could be used to pinpoint the location of individuals.”

We are now the unwitting victims of an interconnected, tightly woven, technologically evolving web of real-time, warrantless, wall-to-wall mass surveillance that makes the spy programs spawned by the USA Patriot Act look like child’s play.

Fusion centers. See Something, Say Something. Red flag laws. Behavioral threat assessments. Terror watch lists. Facial recognition. Snitch tip lines. Biometric scanners. Pre-crime. DNA databases. Data mining. Precognitive technology. Contact tracing apps.

These are all part and parcel of the widening surveillance dragnet that the government has used and abused in order to extend its reach and its power.

The COVID-19 pandemic has succeeded in acclimating us even further to being monitored, tracked and reported for so-called deviant or undesirable behavior.  

Consequently, we now live in a society in which a person can be accused of any number of crimes without knowing what exactly he has done. He might be apprehended in the middle of the night by a roving band of SWAT police. He might find himself on a no-fly list, unable to travel for reasons undisclosed. He might have his phones or internet tapped based upon a secret order handed down by a secret court, with no recourse to discover why he was targeted.

This Kafkaesque nightmare has become America’s reality.

Despite the fact that its data snooping has been shown to be ineffective at detecting, let alone stopping, any actual terror attacks, the government continues to operate its domestic spying programs largely in secret, carrying out warrantless mass surveillance on hundreds of millions of Americans’ phone calls, emails, text messages and the like.

The question of how to deal with government agencies and programs that operate outside of the system of checks and balances established by the Constitution forces us to contend with a deeply unsatisfactory and dubious political “solution” to a problem that operates beyond the reach of voters and politicians: how do you hold accountable a government that lies, cheats, steals, sidesteps the law, and then absolves itself of wrongdoing?

Certainly, the history and growth of the NSA tracks with the government’s insatiable hunger for ever-great powers.

Since its official start in 1952, when President Harry S. Truman issued a secret executive order establishing the NSA as the hub of the government’s foreign intelligence activities, the agency—nicknamed “No Such Agency”—has operated covertly, unaccountable to Congress all the while using taxpayer dollars to fund its secret operations. It was only when the agency ballooned to 90,000 employees in 1969, making it the largest intelligence agency in the world with a significant footprint outside Washington, DC, that it became more difficult to deny its existence.

In the aftermath of Watergate in 1975, the Senate held meetings under the Church Committee in order to determine exactly what sorts of illicit activities the American intelligence apparatus was engaged in under the direction of President Nixon, and how future violations of the law could be stopped. It was the first time the NSA was exposed to public scrutiny since its creation.

The investigation revealed a sophisticated operation whose surveillance programs paid little heed to such things as the Constitution. For instance, under Project SHAMROCK, the NSA spied on telegrams to and from the U.S., as well as the correspondence of American citizens. Moreover, as the Saturday Evening Post reports, “Under Project MINARET, the NSA monitored the communications of civil rights leaders and opponents of the Vietnam War, including targets such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Mohammed Ali, Jane Fonda, and two active U.S. Senators. The NSA had launched this program in 1967 to monitor suspected terrorists and drug traffickers, but successive presidents used it to track all manner of political dissidents.”

Senator Frank Church (D-Ida.), who served as the chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence that investigated the NSA, understood only too well the dangers inherent in allowing the government to overstep its authority in the name of national security. Church recognized that such surveillance powers “at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.”

Noting that the NSA could enable a dictator “to impose total tyranny” upon an utterly defenseless American public, Church declared that he did not “want to see this country ever go across the bridge” of constitutional protection, congressional oversight and popular demand for privacy. He avowed that “we,” implicating both Congress and its constituency in this duty, “must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.

The result was the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and the creation of the FISA Court, which was supposed to oversee and correct how intelligence information is collected and collated. The law requires that the NSA get clearance from the FISA Court, a secret surveillance court, before it can carry out surveillance on American citizens. Fast forward to the present day, and the so-called solution to the problem of government entities engaging in unjustified and illegal surveillance—the FISA Court—has unwittingly become the enabler of such activities, rubberstamping almost every warrant request submitted to it.

The 9/11 attacks served as a watershed moment in our nation’s history, ushering in an era in which immoral and/or illegal government activities such as surveillance, torture, strip searches, SWAT team raids are sanctioned as part of the quest to keep us “safe.”

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush secretly authorized the NSA to conduct warrantless surveillance on Americans’ phone calls and emails. That wireless wiretap program was reportedly ended in 2007 after the New York Times reported on it, to mass indignation.

Nothing changed under Barack Obama. In fact, the violations worsened, with the NSA authorized to secretly collect internet and telephone data on millions of Americans, as well as on foreign governments.

It was only after whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 that the American people fully understood the extent to which they had been betrayed once again.

Even so, nothing really changed.

Since then, presidents, politicians, and court rulings have come and gone, but none of them have done much to put an end to the government’s “technotyranny.”

At every turn, we have been handicapped in our quest for transparency, accountability and a representative democracy by an establishment culture of secrecy: secret agencies, secret experiments, secret military bases, secret surveillance, secret budgets, and secret court rulings, all of which exist beyond our reach, operate outside our knowledge, and do not answer to “we the people.”

Yet the surveillance sector is merely one small part of a shadowy permanent government comprised of unelected bureaucrats who march in lockstep with profit-driven corporations that actually runs Washington, DC, and works to keep us under close watch and, thus, under control. For example, Google openly works with the NSA, Amazon has built a massive $600 million intelligence database for the CIA, and the telecommunications industry is making a fat profit by spying on us for the government.

Most recently, the Biden Administration indicated it may be open to working with non-governmental firms in order to warrantlessly monitor citizens online.

This would be nothing new, however. Vast quantities of the government’s digital surveillance is already being outsourced to private companies, who are far less restrained in how they harvest and share our personal data.

In this way, Corporate America is making a hefty profit by aiding and abetting the government in its militarized domestic surveillance efforts.

Cue the dawning of what The Nation refers to as “the rise of a new class in America: the cyberintelligence ruling class. These are the people—often referred to as ‘intelligence professionals’—who do the actual analytical and targeting work of the NSA and other agencies in America’s secret government. Over the last [20] years, thousands of former high-ranking intelligence officials and operatives have left their government posts and taken up senior positions at military contractors, consultancies, law firms, and private-equity firms. In their new jobs, they replicate what they did in government—often for the same agencies they left. But this time, their mission is strictly for-profit.”

The snitch culture has further empowered the Surveillance State.

As Ezra Marcus writes for the New York Times, “Throughout the past year, American society responded to political upheaval and biological peril by turning to an age-old tactic for keeping rule breakers in check: tattling.”

This new era of snitch surveillance is the lovechild of the government’s post-9/11 “See Something, Say Something” programs combined with the self-righteousness of a politically correct, technologically-wired age.

Marcus continues:

“Technology, and our abiding love of it, is crucial to our current moment of social surveillance. Snitching isn’t just a byproduct of nosiness or fear; it’s a technological feature built into the digital architecture of the pandemic era — specifically when it comes to software designed for remote work and Covid-tracing… Contact tracing apps … have started to be adapted for other uses, including criminal probes by the Singaporean government. If that seems distinctly worrying, it might be useful to remember that the world’s most powerful technology companies, whose products you are likely using to read this story, already use a business model of mass surveillance, collecting and selling user information to advertisers at an unfathomable scale. Our cellphones track us everywhere, and our locations are bought and sold by data brokers at incredible, intimate detail. Facial recognition software used by law enforcement trawls Instagram selfies. Facebook harvests the biometric data of its users. The whole ecosystem, more or less, runs on snitching.”

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, what we are dealing with today is not just a beast that has outgrown its chains but a beast that will not be restrained.

The War Zone has released more information about a mysterious drone encounter in controlled airspace in Tucson, Arizona, on the night of Feb. 9.

The Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, and the Tucson Police Department’s Air Support Unit tracked an unidentified drone that evaded both agencies’ helicopters. The FBI released a statement indicating it was a “highly modified drone.”

A source with direct knowledge of the incident told The War Zone the drone was “highly unlikely to be battery-powered based on the altitude, distance, and speed at which it flew.” The source said the drone was equipped with high-tech sensors, such as an infrared camera, to operate at night. They added it’s “only logical that it was looking towards DM’s [Davis Monthan AFB] flight line” based on its location.

The source said the drone penetrated Class C airspace surrounding the US Air Force’s Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, 5 miles south-southeast of downtown Tucson, Arizona, and was hovering near a complex of fuel tanks west of Runway 12. 

“The description of the drone’s initial observed location would appear to match the location of a terminal owned by Kinder Morgan, an energy company that operates fuel pipelines and other energy infrastructure,” The War Zone said. About 40% of all natural gas flows through Kinder Morgan’s pipes. 

A user of JetCareers.com wrote on the online airline community, dated Feb. 10, about the drone’s initial observed location:

Last night, there was one just east of KTUS at about 1200′ AGL cruising eastbound. It passed about 30′ away co-altitude with a police helicopter flying the opposite direction. Helo made a 180 turn to give chase. The quad copter was described as approximately 5 feet long by about 3 feet wide, with a single green flashing LED light. It continued east into KDMAs airspace and began orbiting the base over the parallel taxiway near the fighter jet ramp. TUS and DMA towers were unaware of it, as was U90 [an FAA approach tower] controllers. The operator apparently realized by this time that the drone was being followed, because it then proceeded northwest at high speed and climbing, with the helo and another LE helo in trail. The copter began to climb and flew out of the TUS area about 50 miles to the northwest of town into the middle of nowhere desert out by the mine west of KAVQ. It was last seen climbing through 14,000′ and into the undercast, where it disappeared. The helos remained in VMC [Visual Meteorological Conditions] obviously, and one hung around for about an hour, to see if it would reappear descending, or if there was any vehicles driving through the middle of nowhere as either the operator or someone to potentially recover it. Neither appeared. U90 informed their FAA chain of command about it, but that’s as far as I’ve heard so far.

Interesting in both the range and the altitude, both control-wise in terms of line of sight, as well as battery life as it comes to the endurance of the thing. The concerns with it being around air traffic and a near mid-air, as well as it being over an Air Force base with security-sensitive aircraft, are all concerning. Definitely not something commercial off-the-shelf that one would buy at the local store.

Sources confirmed the radar track of the Tucson Police Department helicopter that pursued the drone, a Bell 206B JetRanger II, was the helicopter that supported CBP’s.

Whatever the drone was, it had enough power to evade two helicopters, each capable of 150-180 mph. 

Considering all the supply chain disruptions happening in the country, we wonder if an adversary state operating within the US or in Mexico was planning an attack on the Kinder Morgan terminal or surveilling Davis Monthan AFB.  

Similar incidents have been reported over America’s largest nuclear power and near other sensitive structures. 

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

The deification of Anthony Fauci is unraveling; it is time to learn a meta lesson. The issue isn’t Anthony Fauci’s failings. The problem is Faucism, the fantastical belief that wise and beneficent experts should rule.

Fauci will fall because of the one blunder that the public will never accept: Evidence is mounting that gain of function research in China, possibly funded by Fauci as head of NIAID, may have led to the pandemic. Worse for Fauci, he is on record as arguing the “benefits of such [gain of function] experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks” including the risk of pandemics. 

In coming months few will continue to deify Fauci. Fauci’s veneer of charm and brilliance will chip away and the political flip-flopper will be revealed. Increasingly the public will become aware that Fauci and his apostle politicians used the shield of false science to lie about such issues as herd immunity, the dire need for school closings, and other destructive policies. 

Michael Brendan Dougherty, writing in the National Review, offers two explanations for Fauci’s role.  Either he “purposely manipulated viral narratives and circumstances in order to assert his own authority” or Fauci is “just a big-mouth wannabe out over his skis.”  

Blame and rejection may come Fauci’s way, but few will learn the real lesson of why it is wrong to give one person so much power.

If Faucism is to die, the beliefs that give life to Faucism must be exposed and rejected.

We need to understand why a concentration of power creates errors. All “experts” given the power to control others are over-their-head big-mouth wannabes. 

The Nature of Knowledge, Risk, and Science

Most Faucists have never read Hayek’s “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” They do not know why the idea of allowing one man to determine policy is absurd: 

“The knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess.”

“Our ignorance is sobering and boundless,” observed philosopher Karl Popper. Faucists don’t believe that about their beloved leader. Who else should decide, they proclaim, but our most learned expert? 

Popper continued with what could be a credo for individuals willing to humbly explore their beliefs and admit the limits of individual knowledge: “With each step forward, with each problem which we solve, we not only discover new and unsolved problems, but we also discover that where we believed that we were standing on firm and safe ground, all things are, in truth, insecure and in a state of flux.” 

If the world is full of challenging problems and individuals with boundless ignorance, it is not surprising that Popper believed, “There are no ultimate sources of knowledge.” We can only “hope to detect and eliminate error” by allowing criticism of the theories of others and our own. 

To put it more succinctly, physicist Richard Feynman wrote, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”

Of course, in today’s world Faucists are busy censoring views that dissent from their beloved leader and his apostles

University of Pennsylvania professor Philip Tetlock has been a skeptic of the ability of expert forecasters, who are “often mistaken but never in doubt.” Despite the poor track record of forecasters, they never lack followers. Tetlock writes, “We need to believe we live in a predictable, controllable world, so we turn to authoritative-sounding people who promise to satisfy that need.” 

Psychologist Paul Slovic is a leading authority on risk. He explains, “[T]here is no such thing as ‘real risk’ or ‘objective risk.’” Like the rest of us, experts suffer cognitive biases. Thus, Slovic concludes that the public’s view of risk should not be trumped by experts with greater political power. 

Dougherty observed that, “The public-health consensus around COVID-19 and the proper or necessary interventions to take against it shifts all the time.” Once we understand the nature of knowledge and the subjective nature of risk, how can it be any other way? The problem is that this consensus is filtered and defined by few people, such as Fauci, and then translated into rigid rules. Alternative views are then suppressed. Dougherty continues,

“This consensus shapes public policy and leaks out into respectable mainstream news outlets; most insidiously, it becomes encoded as a quasi-official public line that every individual on social media is obliged to repeat and share or else be subject to demonetization, warnings, censorship, and accusations of spreading disinformation. The polarization of our politics and of public-health elites has left us with two categories of thought on COVID: the Science, and dangerous (sometimes racist) conspiracy theories. Half the time, the conspiracy theories become the Science. Belief in the efficacy of masks or in the lab-leak theory made these transitions. But these shifts don’t happen upon the publication of credible new scientific studies. There is almost no public jousting and argument among scientists and researchers. There is just a sliding from one position to another when it becomes safe. Long after these shifts take place, CDC guidance often comes to incorporate them.”

Dougherty illuminated what was paramount in Fauci’s mind in the early days of the crisis. In March 2020, during a briefing by economic advisors to President Trump, Vice President Pence, and the coronavirus task force, the severity of the impact of lockdowns on the economy “stunned everyone into silence” except for Fauci. Fauci “immediately turned to Vice President Pence and asked… ‘I’m still in charge, right?’”

In his book The Wisdom of Crowds, journalist James Surowiecki, echoing Hayek on knowledge, explains “[T]here’s no real evidence that one can become expert in something as broad as ‘decision making’ or ‘policy.’”

For those who believe in decision making by elite experts, Surowiecki has counterintuitive conclusions: “If you can assemble a diverse group of people who possess varying degrees of knowledge and insight, you’re better off entrusting it with major decisions rather than leaving them in the hands of one or two people, no matter how smart these people are.”

Medical Hierarchies

Dr. Peter Pronovost is a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University. In his book Safe Patients, Smart Hospitals, Pronovost reveals a common mindset among physicians and medical professionals and explores why this mindset increases medical errors and compromises patient safety.

Pronovost relates, “[Doctors] are taught to ignore the crowd and trust their own training and education.” Referring to Surowiecki’s book, Pronovost explains that doctors have no use for the wisdom of crowds—nurses, physicians from other specialties, and others. As you read, notice how Pronovost’s mindset is Hayekian:

“Each of the members of a patient’s team, including a parent if the patient is a child, sees problems through a different set of lenses that is shaped by personal experiences and training. Each of those lenses provides valuable information, information that helps us make wise decisions. Nurses see things differently than doctors, junior doctors see things differently than senior doctors; patients see things differently than clinicians; and family members have their own lenses.” 

Understanding that knowledge is dispersed leads to humility, not a desire to make your view supreme. Pronovost continues,

“No lens is more accurate than the other; they are just different. Each has a partially incomplete view of a complex puzzle. The fewer the lenses the more distorted the view, the worse the decision, and the greater the risk for preventable harm. A team approach does not detract from the physician’s talent, authority, or power. It only enhances them by ensuring that he or she makes the best possible decisions.”

Contrast the team approach Pronovost describes with the tenet of Faucism whereby the authority of the leader makes the leader’s view supreme. Pronovost relates many tales of white-coat supremacy resulting in harm, but who could have imagined a doctor with the power to harm millions?

Tacit knowledge is knowledge gained from experience and wisdom that can be difficult to express. Pronovost explains how guidelines from central authorities, such as the CDC, suppress tacit knowledge. He writes, “One of the greatest sources of knowledge in medicine comes from what physicians and nurses learn on the job. This tacit knowledge develops and spreads into a ‘tribal knowledge’ of techniques at work and these techniques are soon practiced by a number of physicians and nurses.”

Pronovost explains that much of “this [tacit] wisdom is not from the published literature, and some of it may not be very effective, but it is one of the ways physicians learn.” Pronovost adds “there is no existing system for capturing this knowledge and sharing it with the medical world.” Today, notice how tacit knowledge is stamped out as physicians developing effective treatments for Covid are ridiculed and censored.

Pronovost’s work has helped to flatten medical hierarchies and deflate the egos of doctors resulting in improved medical practices, notably reducing central line infections in intensive care units resulting in many saved lives.

Live Not by Lies

Pronovost has faced challenges as he exposed white-coat supremacy, but he never had to contend with vested interests trying to defame him.

During the pandemic, brave doctors such Scott Atlas, Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta, and Jay Bhattacharya have been vilified. These doctors have not been willing to, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn would say, live by lies. 

In 1974 when Solzhenitsyn was arrested, and exiled to the West, the text of his short essay “Live Not by Lies” was released. Solzhenitsyn railed against those who complained about the destructive policies of the ruling “they” while pretending they themselves were “helpless:” 

“We are approaching the brink; already a universal spiritual demise is upon us; a physical one is about to flare up and engulf us and our children, while we continue to smile sheepishly and babble: ‘But what can we do to stop it? We haven’t the strength.’”

Solzhenitsyn describes the mindset of helplessness, “We have internalized well the lessons drummed into us by the state; we are forever content and comfortable with its premise: we cannot escape the environment, the social conditions; they shape us, ‘being determines consciousness.’ What have we to do with this? We can do nothing.”

Helplessness is a common state of mind today. One may say, If vaccine passports become mandatory, what can I do? I must keep my job. Another may say, I am a family physician with reservations about administering the experimental vaccine to those at low risk for Covid. Yet, I must keep my mouth shut or risk censure by the administration of my hospital-owned practice.  

Solzhenitsyn writes, “But we can do—everything!—even if we comfort and lie to ourselves that this is not so. It is not ‘they’ who are guilty of everything, but we ourselves, only we!”

Solzhenitsyn shows us the way; he provides a list of ways we can stop passively lying. Even if we are unwilling to risk our jobs, we can understand that authoritarians and totalitarians rule by lies. Through that understanding, we find “the most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation in lies! Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: Let their rule hold not through me!”

Solzhenitsyn adds, 

“For when people renounce lies, lies simply cease to exist. Like parasites, they can only survive when attached to a person.

We are not called upon to step out onto the square and shout out the truth, to say out loud what we think—this is scary, we are not ready. But let us at least refuse to say what we do not think!”

Our job is infinitely easier than was Solzhenitsyn’s. The big lie of Faucism is that rule by benign experts is possible when it is never possible. We must admit the limits of individual knowledge. Authoritarians and totalitarians rule by lies; their ignorance is as sobering and boundless as ours. Is it too much to ask of Americans that they learn why Faucism is a bankrupt philosophy? Is it too much to ask that they refuse to cooperate anymore in the censorship and canceling of others?

In place of helplessness, we can choose not to participate in lies. “Let their rule hold not through me!” is the key to our liberation. We can be open and eager for public jousting and arguments from diverse points of view. If this is too much to ask, we will lose our remaining freedoms. 

Up until this morning, the big risk heading into tomorrow’s payrolls report was for yet another subpar print (as a reminder last month’s jobs report showed a paltry 266K jobs were added, a huge miss to expectations), but then today’s blockbuster ADP report, which showed 978K private jobs far above the highest forecast, changed everything (even if the ADP report has a reputation of being chronically incorrect, with zero predictive power).

Still, as Newsquawk notes, labor market indicators have generally been encouraging in May (if maybe not to the same degree as April and we know how that ended): ADP’s gauge of payroll growth surprised to the upside, initial jobless claims declined to a fresh pandemic low in the corresponding survey week, while continuing claims fell near to the post-pandemic low (both continued to make progress in the subsequent reports too). Business surveys like the ISM reports as well as the Fed’s own Beige Book allude to tight labor market conditions where firms are struggling to fill vacancies, and are having to offer financial incentives like signing-on fees and higher wages to attract staff. However, the Conference Board’s measure of consumer confidence was more mixed: although consumers’ view of the labour market improved, their views on wage growth are not quite as bullish as business surveys are signalling.

Traders have suggested that the May jobs data is more important than other recent reports, since it will be influential in the market’s perceptions about the timing of the Fed’s taper of asset purchases; for what it is worth, even if the report comes in on the strong side, officials will likely highlight the great deal of slack that remains, while there are still multiple-millions that remain out of work vs pre-pandemic levels. Furthermore, to catch up to the pre-covid trendline by mid/late-2022, the economy will need to add roughly 1 million jobs every month (which isn’t very likely).

In his preview of tomorrow’s jobs number, JPM Chief Economist Mike Feroli has a sub-consensus forecast of +550k jobs while Economist Jesse Edgerton’s alternative data suggests +476k jobs. Both numbers are below the current consensus of +656k. If either  Mike or Jesse is correct this would be a disappointment, which would fail to push yields higher. A weak jobs print combined with higher commodity prices likely pushes real yields more negative. This would be positive for both gold and Tech stocks.

Goldman’s economists are more optimistic, and estimate that nonfarm payrolls rose by an above consensus 750k in May. Following the surprisingly weak April report, Goldman believes the further easing of business restrictions more than offset a moderate drag from labor supply factors and seasonality. While Big Data measures were mixed between the April and May survey weeks, the signals Goldman tracks generally indicate sharply higher employment levels relative to March. Goldman’s optimistic goalseek narrative aside, the bank sees uncertainty ahead of tomorrow’s report to be higher than usual, and Goldman notes the possibility that the establishment survey undercounts job gains from reopening establishments, which other things equal would result in a relatively stronger household survey.

These two banks aside, here is what consensus expects:

• JOB GROWTH: Non-farm Payrolls (exp. 650k, prev. 266k); Private Payrolls (prev. 600k, prev. 218k); Government Payrolls (prev. 48k); Manufacturing Payrolls (exp. 24k, prev. -18k).
• JOBLESSNESS: Unemployment Rate (exp. 5.9%, prev. 6.1%); Participation Rate (prev. 61.7%, vs 63.3% in Feb 2020); U6 Underemployment (prev. 10.4%, vs 7.0% in Feb 2020); Employment-Population Ratio (prev. 57.9%, vs 61.1% in Feb 2020).
• WAGES: Average Earnings M/M (exp. +0.2%, prev. +0.7%); Average Earnings Y/Y (exp. +1.6%, prev. +0.3%); Average Workweek Hours (exp. 35.0hrs, prev. 35.0hrs)

Job Gains

• Initial jobless claims data that coincides with the BLS employment situation report survey period showed weekly claims falling to a post-pandemic low at 444k, and the data series continued to show progress the next week too; continuing claims also declined in the corresponding survey window to 3.64mln, although that was not a fresh pandemic low.
• The ADP measure of nonfarm payrolls surprised to the upside, seeing 978k private payrolls added to the economy in May, above the forecast range, where the most optimistic forecast saw gains of 900k. ADP’s chief economist said that private payrolls had shown a marked improvement from recent months, and the strongest monthly gain since the early days of the recovery; “While goods producers grew at a steady pace, it is service providers that accounted for the lion’s share of the gains, far outpacing the monthly average in the last six months,” she added, “companies of all sizes experienced an uptick in job growth, reflecting the improving nature of the pandemic and economy.”
• ISM’s manufacturing PMI saw the employment sub-component fall by 4.2ppts to 50.9, still in expansion for the sixth straight month, but with momentum cooling (a manufacturing employment index above 50.6, over time, is generally consistent with an increase in the BLS data on manufacturing employment). ISM said that continued strong new-order levels, low customer inventories and expanding backlogs continue to indicate employment strength, but panellists are struggling to meet labor-management plans, and the commentary indicates that an overwhelming majority of companies are hiring or attempting to hire, though more than 50% of manufacturing firms have expressed difficulty in doing so. Similarly, the employment sub-component within the Services ISM declined too, by 3.5 points to 55.3; respondents said that “competition for labor continues to intensify due to lack of available talent pool” and “working to fill vacant positions; difficulty in finding qualified candidates.”

Slack

• The Conference Board’s gauge of consumer confidence was mixed regarding the labour market; consumers’ assessment of current labour market conditions improved – with the number saying jobs are plentiful rising while those claiming that jobs are hard to get declining, which in aggregate bodes well for the May jobs report. However, optimism in the short-term outlook waned, CB said, with the number expecting business conditions to improve over the next six months falling, while the number expecting business conditions to worsen rose. CB also said that consumers were less upbeat about the job market ahead, with the proportion expecting more jobs in the months ahead falling, while those anticipating fewer jobs rose.
• But even if the data surprises to the upside (range is 400k to 1mln), some desks expect Fed commentary to remain cautious, and continue to note that there remain a significant number of Americans out of work. Indeed, the aggregate nonfarm payroll additions since March last year still leaves a deficit of 8.2mln who remain out of work vs pre-pandemic levels, if you judge the amount purely based on the totals of the nonfarm payrolls figures, and potentially even more when accounting for underemployment.
• Fed officials are looking beyond the headline unemployment rate to try and gauge the levels of slack that remains; accordingly, the U6 Underemployment metric, Participation Rate, as well as the Employment-toPopulation ratio have gained in importance; last month, U6 stood at 10.4% (vs 7.0% in February 2020), Participation was at 61.7% (vs 63.3% in February 2020), and the Employment-Population Ratio was at 57.9% (vs 61.1% in February 2020), all three of these indicating that there is still some way to go, and reclaiming this lost ground is not going to happen in the immediate short-term.

Wages

• Data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas showed monthly job cut announcements picking up a touch in May, to 24.6k from around 22.9k in April, but the trend remains solid, and announced job cuts were still some 93.8% lower vs May 2020 levels. “Many employers, especially those hit hard during the pandemic, such as Retailers and Hospitality and Leisure companies, are having a difficult time finding workers, and many are offering signing bonuses or higher wages to attract workers,” Challenger said, adding that “as the labour market tightens, workers may find employers offering more attractive perks and benefits, including higher starting wages, as they look for positions.”
• However, according to Conference Board data, the number of consumers expecting incomes to rise over the next six-months pared back a touch in May (to +14.5% from +17.4%), though the number of Americans expecting incomes to decline in the next six-months also dropped back. Anecdotes leaning towards this were also noted in the Fed’s recent Beige Book (which was conducted before 25th May), which stated that while overall wage growth was moderate, a growing number of firms were offering signing bonuses and had increased starting wages to attract and retain workers.

Arguing for a better-than-expected report:

• Reopening. Sharply lower infection rates and a further easing in the severity of business restrictions likely supported job growth in virus-sensitive industries between the April and May survey period. For example, restaurant seatings on OpenTable rebounded to -17% during the May survey week, compared to -35% in that of April.

• Big Data. High-frequency data on the labor market were mixed between the April and May survey weeks, with outright declines in three of the seven measures Goldman tracks (gray bars in Exhibit 2). However, most measures nonetheless indicate sharply higher employment levels relative to March. Taking into account last month’s divergence with nonfarm payrolls, the majority of the signals would argue for an above-consensus reading, on our estimates (blue bars below). We find that Homebase (75% directionally correct vs. consensus since May 2020), Dallas Fed(75%), the USC Understanding America Survey (67%), and the Census Small Business Pulse have been among the most reliable predictors of the jobs report over the last year. Given the diverging messages from these indicators, we believe uncertainty ahead of tomorrow’s report is higher than usual.

• ADP. Private sector employment in the ADP report increased by 978k in May, well above consensus expectations for a 650k gain. We continue to believe the ADP panel methodology undercounted workers returning to their previous employers,and this would argue for a larger gain in tomorrow’s report.
• Job availability. The Conference Board labor differential—the difference between the percent of respondents saying jobs are plentiful and those saying jobs are hard to get—surged to +34.6 in May (from +21.6 in April) and is now at pre-pandemic levels.Job cuts. Announced layoffs reported by Challenger, Gray & Christmas fell by 30%nin May after declining by 23% in April (mom, SA by GS). Announced layoffs reported by Challenger, Gray & Christmas fell by 30% in May after declining by 23% in April(mom, SA by GS). Layoffs were at the lowest level since 1989.e at the lowest level since 1989. Employer surveys.

Arguing for a weaker-than-expected report:

• Labor supply constraints. Labor supply appears to be tighter than the unemployment rate suggests, likely reflecting the impact of unusually generous unemployment benefits and lingering virus-related impediments to working. We also believe that the survey period of tomorrow’s report is too early to reflect state-level changes to UI benefit availability and generosity, as benefits will be curtailed in onehalf of US states starting in June.

Neutral/mixed factors:

• Seasonality. In April, reopening effects likely overlapped with normal seasonal hiringn patterns, resulting in less-impressive job gains on a seasonally-adjusted basis. In normal times, many service industries ramp up operations in the spring ahead of peak-season demand. This year, however, firms in heavily-impacted industries may simply have been more focused on bringing back their pre-crisis permanent workforces than on expanding their businesses and adding temporary seasonal labor. If so, seasonality should weigh on the May report as well, as the May BLS adjustment factors generally anticipate at least 300k of net hiring (vs. over 800k in April).
• Employer surveys. The employment component of our manufacturing survey tracker decreased (-1.4pt to 58.5), while the employment component of our services survey tracker increased (+0.6pt to 56.6), but both remain around 2018 levels.
• Jobless claims. Initial jobless claims declined during the May payroll month, averaging 505k per week vs. 656k in April. Across all employee programs including emergency benefits, continuing claims remained roughly unchanged between the payroll survey weeks.

How will the market respond?

The yield curve has failed to move materially over the last month as we received a disappointing NFP print but Fed Mins that show the FOMC is talking about talking about tapering. According to JPM, it may be the case that the bond market needs to see multiple NFP prints that approach the 700k – 1mm jobs range and/or actual tapering talk, before we see a sustained move higher, especially since the latest JPM Treasury survey found the most shorts since 2017. In other words, there is nobody left to short rates.

Meanwhile, as Bloomberg notes, stronger data, including ADP and ISM services, sent real yields and the dollar higher. The risk of the payroll Friday is skewed favorably to the dollar. There’s a wide range of estimates for the payroll, making a clean read more difficult. The average forecast was 667k jobs. But with standard deviation of 147k, anything between 500k and 800k would be considered more or less in line with expectations.

But, as BBG’s Ye Xie notes,  we know from various surveys that demand for labor isn’t an issue. It’s labor supply that is holding back job growth, because of the pandemic, child care and unemployment benefits. So, a low reading would be taken with a grain of salt. Any knee-jerk fall in yields or the dollar could be reversed soon after.

But a higher figure, say close to 1 million, would put the tapering discussion on the table more urgently.

Finally, it is worth noting that after several months of disappointment, the US economy is certainly in need of a strong jobs report and that may explain why moments ago we learned that the president, who already knows the number, is set to discuss it shortly after it is released:

• BIDEN TO GIVE REMARKS ON THE MAY JOBS REPORT AT 10:15AM ET.

That alone was enough to push the whisper number to 1 million.

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

As Sino-Russo-Iranophobia dissolves in sanctions and hysteria, mapmakers carve the post-unilateral order…

It’s the Nikolai Patrushev-Yang Jiechi show – all over again. These are the two players running an up and coming geopolitical entente, on behalf of their bosses Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

Last week, Yang Jiechi – the director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee – visited Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev in Moscow. That was part of the 16thround of China-Russia strategic security consultations.

What’s intriguing is that Yang-Patrushev happened between the Blinken-Lavrov meeting on the sidelines of the Arctic Council summit in Reykjavik, and the upcoming and highest-ranking Putin-Biden in Geneva on June 16 (possibly at the Intercontinental Hotel, where Reagan and Gorbachev met in 1985).

The Western spin before Putin-Biden is that it might herald some sort of reset back to “predictability” and “stability” in currently extra-turbulent US-Russia relations.

That’s wishful thinking. Putin, Patrushev and Lavrov harbor no illusions. Especially when in the G7 in London, in early May, the Western focus was on Russia’s “malign activities” as well as China’s “coercive economic policies.”

Russian and Chinese analysts, in informal conversations, tend to agree that Geneva will be yet another instance of good old Kissingerian divide and rule, complete with a few seducing tactics to lure Moscow away from Beijing, an attempt to bide some time and probing openings for laying out geopolitical traps. Old foxes such as Yang and Patrushev are more than aware of the game in play.

What’s particularly relevant is that Yang-Patrushev laid the groundwork for an upcoming Putin visit to Xi in Beijing not long after Putin-Biden in Geneva – to further coordinate geopolitically, once again, the “comprehensive strategic partnership”, in their mutually recognized terminology.

The visit might take place on July 1, the hundredth anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party – or on July 16, the 20thanniversary of the China-Russia Treaty of Friendship.

So Putin-Biden is the starter; Putin-Xi is the main course.

That Putin-Luka tea for two

Beyond the Russian president’s “outburst of emotions” comment defending his Belarusian counterpart’s action, the Putin-Lukashenko tea for two in Sochi yielded an extra piece of the puzzle concerning the RyanAir emergency landing in Minsk– starring a blogger from Belarus who is alleged to have lent his services to the ultra-nationalist, neo-Nazi-ridden Azov battalion, which fought against the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in the Ukrainian Donbass in 2014.

Lukashenko told Putin he had “brought along some documents so you can understand what is going on.” Nothing has been leaked regarding the contents of these documents, but it’s possible they may be incandescent – related to the fact that sanctions were imposed by the EU against Belavia Airlines even though the carrier had nothing to do with the RyanAir saga – and potentially capable of being brought up in the context of Putin-Biden in Geneva.

The Big Picture is always Eurasia versus the Atlanticist West. As much as Washington will keep pushing Europe – and Japan – to decouple from both China and Russia, Cold War 2.0 on two simultaneous fronts has very few takers.

Rational players see that the 21st century combined scientific, economic and military power of a Russia-China strategic partnership would be a whole new ball game in terms of global reach compared with the former USSR/Iron Curtain era.

And when it comes to appealing to the Global South, and the new iterations of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), emphasis on an international order upholding the UN Charter and the rule of international law is definitely sexier than a much-vaunted “rules-based international order” where only the hegemon sets the rules.

In parallel to Moscow’s lack of illusions about the new Washington dispensation, the same applies to Beijing – especially after the latest outburst by Kurt Campbell, the former Obama-Biden 1.0 assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific who is now back as the head of Indo-Pacific Affairs on the National Security Council under Obama-Biden 3.0.

Campbell is the actual father of the ‘pivot to Asia’ concept when he was at the State Department in the early 2010s – although as I pointed out during the 2016 US presidential campaign, it was Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State who claimed Mothership of the pivot to Asia in an October 2011 essay.

At a gig promoted by Stanford University last week, Campbell said, “The period that was broadly described as engagement [with China] has come to an end.” After all, the “pivot to Asia” never really died, as there has been a clear Trump-Biden continuum.

Campbell obfuscated by talking about a “new set of strategic parameters” and the need to confront China by working with “allies, partners and friends”. Nonsense: this is all about the militarization of the Indo-Pacific.

That’s what Biden himself reiterated during his first address to a joint session of the US Congress, when he boasted about telling Xi that the US will “maintain a strong military presence in the Indo-Pacific” just as it does with NATO in Europe.

The Iranian factor

On a different but parallel track with Yang-Patrushev, Iran may be on the cusp of a momentous directional change. We may see it as part of a progressive strengthening of the Arc of Resistance – which links Iran, the People’s Mobilization Units in Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and now a more unified Palestine.

The proxy war on Syria was a tragic, massive fail on every aspect. It did not deliver secular Syria to a bunch of takfiris (aka “moderate rebels”). It did not prevent the expansion of Iran’s sphere of influence.  It did not derail the Southwest Asia branch of the New Silk Roads. It did not destroy Hezbollah.

“Assad must go”? Dream on; he was reelected with 95% of Syrian votes, with a 78% turnout.

As for the upcoming Iranian presidential election on June 18 – only two days after Putin-Biden – it takes place when arguably the nuclear deal revival drama being enacted in Vienna will have reached an endgame. Tehran has repeatedly stressed that the deadline for a deal expires today, May 31.

The impasse is clear. In Vienna, through its EU interlocutors, Washington has agreed to lift sanctions on Iranian oil, petrochemicals and the central bank, but refuses to remove them on individuals such as members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

At the same time, in Tehran, something very intriguing happened with Ali Larijani, former Parliament speaker, an ambitious member of a quite prominent family but discarded by the Guardian Council when it chose candidates to run for President. Larijani immediately accepted the ruling. As I was told by Tehran insiders, that happened with no friction because he received a detailed explanation of something much bigger: the new game in town.

As it stands, the one positioned as the nearly inevitable winner on June 18 seems to be Ebrahim Raeisi, up to now the chief justice – and close to the Revolutionary Guards. There’s a very strong possibility that he will ask the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to leave Iran – and that means the end of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action as we knew it, with unforeseen consequences. (From the Revolutionary Guards’ point of view, the JCPOA is already dead).

An extra factor is that Iran is currently suffering from severe drought – when summer has not even arrived. The power grid will be under tremendous pressure. The dams are empty – so it’s impossible to rely on hydroelectric power. There’s serious popular discontent regarding the fact that Team Rouhani for eight years prevented Iran from obtaining nuclear power. One of Raeisi’s first acts may be to command the immediate construction of a nuclear power plant.

We don’t need a weatherman to see which way the wind is blowin’ when it comes to the top three “existential threats” to the declining hegemon – Russia, China and Iran. What’s clear is that none of the good old methods deployed to maintain the subjugation of the vassals is working – at least when confronted by real sovereign powers.

As Sino-Russo-Iranophobia dissolves in a fog of sanctions and hysteria, mapmakers like Yang Jiechi and Nikolai Patrushev relentlessly carve the post-unilateral order.

Ars Technica points out that deep within the Department of Defense Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 Budget Estimates, a 462-page book, there is a section about the Air Force leveraging rocket technology to deliver massive amounts of advanced weaponry and military cargo to anywhere in the world within a short notice. 

“The Department of the Air Force seeks to leverage the current multi-billion dollar commercial investment to develop the largest rockets ever, and with full reusability to develop and test the capability to leverage a commercial rocket to deliver AF cargo anywhere on the Earth in less than one hour, with a 100-ton capacity,” the document states.

The section, titled “Rocket Cargo,” does not directly refer to Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship by name, but it’s the only vehicle at the moment with the capability described by the service. 

Ars Technica says the Air Force plans to invest $47.9 million into the “Rocket Cargo” project in the coming fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1.

“The Air Force is not investing in the commercial rocket development, but rather investing in the Science & Technology needed to interface the capability with DoD logistics needs, and extend the commercial capability to DoD-unique missions. Provides a new, faster and cheaper solution to the existing TRANSCOM Strategic Airlift mission. Enables AFSOC to perform current Rapid-Response Missions at lower cost, and meet a one-hour response requirement. 

“Rocket Cargo uses modeling, simulation, and analysis to conduct operational analysis, verify military utility, performance, and operational cost. S&T will include novel “loadmaster” designs to quickly load/unload a rocket, rapid launch capabilities from unusual sites, characterization of potential landing surfaces and approaches to rapidly improve those surfaces, adversary detectability, new novel trajectories, and an S&T investigation of the potential ability to airdrop,” the document concludes. 

Even though SpaceX was not directly mentioned in the budget documents, we noted in October 2020 that the US military and Musk’s company were in talks about developing a 7,500 mph rocket to deliver weapons worldwide.

From a logistical perspective, if this can be pulled off, the US may have the upper hand in deploying gear for quick reaction forces in hot zones. 

By Ye Xie, Bloomberg reporter and Markets Live commentator

Good economic news is bad news for markets now.

A better-than-expected ADP jobs report sent the dollar and bond yields higher and stocks lower Thursday. A strong payroll report Friday would give more ammunition for folks calling for earlier QE tapering. In a sense, policy normalization has already started after the Fed announced plans to wind down its emergency corporate-credit facility. From that perspective, the peak of liquidity is near.

In China, the authorities are already mopping up the dollar liquidity awash in its domestic market. On Thursday, two Chinese policy banks, China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China, announced selling of dollar notes in the onshore market, the first such sales in years. It followed a move Monday when the PBOC required lenders to hold more foreign currencies in reserve.

Both aim to reduce the dollar supply and ease pressure for yuan appreciation. As a result, one-year yuan swap points dropped to the lowest since January, reflecting higher dollar funding costs. The yuan rally has also stalled.

Neither of these moves was large in size. It’s the signaling effect that matters. Beijing doesn’t want a currency overshoot so that when the Fed takes away the punch bowl, it will be less volatile and painful for Chinese markets.

In other news, President Biden amended a ban on U.S. investment in Chinese companies, naming 59 companies with ties to China’s military or in the surveillance industry. Since many of the companies were already on the Trump administration’s list, the market impact was largely a shrug.

It’s worth noting that the trade and economic dialog seem to be back on track after Vice Premier Liu He held “candid and constructive” talks with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Trade Representative Katherine Tai. The two moves — sanctions and dialog — are carried on separate tracks, as was during the trade war in the Trump era. In other words, sanctioning Chinese companies may not necessarily spoil trade talks.

As far as the markets are concerned, the latter is more important.

 

Despite objections from government scientists and prominent businessmen, Japan is planning to move ahead with the postponed 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo next month. In an interview with the Japanese press, the president of the 2020 Games, Seiko Hashimoto, declared that the games would move ahead as planned, with the Japanese government taking certain precautions to prevent an outbreak of mutant COVID.

“We cannot postpone again,” Hashimoto told the Nikkan Sports newspaper via Reuters.

Hashimoto, who competed in seven summer and winter Olympics as a cyclist and skater, also told the BBC that while Japanese were understandably worried, they should be reassured that a “bubble situation” was being carefully constructed.

“I believe that the possibility of these Games going on is 100% that we will do this,” she added. “One thing the organising committee commits and promises to all the athletes out there is that we will defend and protect their health.”

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is betting it all on pulling off the Games as he plans a critical snap election after the Games are over.

Meanwhile, Shigeru Omi, the head of a panel of government experts that has been advising Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, issued his strongest warning yet about the potential risks of holding the games.

“It’s not normal to have the Olympics in a situation like this,” Omi told a parliamentary committee on Wednesday, adding that organizers of the Games should have an explanation for a skeptical public.

Public opinion polls show most Japanese people do not want Tokyo 2020 to be held this year. Medical journals have questioned the wisdom of allowing 90K athletes, media, sponsors, officials and support staff to enter the country in July. Health officials worry this infusion of foreigners will place additional strain on Japan’s health-care system at a particularly vulnerable time.

10K of the 80K volunteers who initially signed up to help with the Games have quit, according to Japanese Broadcaster NHK. But organizers say they won’t need as many volunteers as they once suspected

Japan’s vaccine rollout has picked up over the last week, but it’s still way behind the US and Europe in terms of percentage of adults who have received at least one dose.

Already postponed from last year at the cost of $3.5 billion, a stripped-down Olympics with no foreign spectators allowed is slated to begin July 23.

Most of the capital city’s city council, the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly, are in agreement that the Games should be cancelled.

But just last week, the Japanese government approved extending a state of emergency in Tokyo and eight other prefectures that’s slated to end roughly one month before the Games begin.