Month: June 2021

Authored by Alex Wu via The Epoch Times,

The COVID-19 epidemic in Guangdong province continues to worsen. The Epoch Times has learned that one of the busiest commercial streets in the mega city of Shenzhen has just been closed due to infection. Meanwhile, in the provincial capital of Guangzhou city, food and medicine shortages have been reported in locked down areas.

Shenzhen’s busiest commercial street – the East Gate Pedestrian Mall and the Baima Clothing Wholesale City in Luohu District are closed due to COVID-19 outbreak. June 2, 2021. (Screenshot of online video)

On June 2, posts about a COVID-19 case in the Baima clothing wholesale market in Luohu District, Shenzhen, were circulating on Chinese social media. They said that the customer was a visitor from Guangzhou. It has caused a major commercial street—the East Gate Pedestrian Mall where the clothing market is located—to be closed down.

A shop owner in the East Gate Pedestrian Mall told The Epoch Times that the commercial street has a large number of visitors, and now all shops on the street have been required to close, with all customers told they have to get tested for COVID-19.

The Epoch Times obtained a video showing the commercial street in locked down.

On June 2, Shenzhen reported two more locally infected cases taking the official case reports to 15, while 16 more local cases were reported in Guangzhou taking the official case reports to 58.

The actual number of infected people and the true scale of the pandemic in China still remain unclear. The large-scale lockdowns and testing have caused many residents to suspect the officially reported infection numbers given the Chinese communist regime’s history of downplaying or covering up crises.

A netizen posted on Twitter that his friends in Guangzhou had told him that many cases were not being officially reported but that locals could tell that the situation was more severe that authorities were admitting from the semi-locked down state of the city and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) central authorities sending a special epidemic team to visit Guangdong on May 30.

On June 2, 38 areas in Guangzhou were put under lockdown, with outbound travel restricted.

A child is tested for COVID-19 in Guangzhou in China’s southern Guangdong province on May 30, 2021. (AFP via Getty Images)

Some are also doubting the effectiveness of Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines against variants reported in the outbreak cases.

According to Chinese state-run media, as of May 31, 10.11 million people in the city of 15.3 million have received their first vaccine, and another 3.25 million are fully vaccinated with two doses.

A staff member from the Shenzhen Municipal Health Commission told The Epoch Times on May 25 that Shenzhen residents were receiving the China-made CoronaVac and Sinopharm vaccines. They said that, like the non-Chinese vaccines, vaccination doesn’t guarantee full protection from COVID-19. They declined to comment on the efficacy of Chinese vaccines against COVID-19 variants.

The director of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao Fu, also said of the recent outbreak that the vaccines are not used for preventing infection but to prevent severe symptoms and death. He said earlier that a third dose of the Chinese-made vaccines might needed to boost its efficacy. He also suggested mixing vaccines of different technologies, such as inactivated virus vaccines and mRNA ones.

Food and Medicine Shortage

On June 2, a number of posts were circulating on social media about the chaos and difficulties facing citizens in locked down areas of Guangzhou.

Residents in Jushu Village in Liwan District told The Epoch Times on June 2 that there was no notice before the sudden lockdown of their village on May 28. People went to work in the morning and found out that they could not leave the village. It’s been six days, and food, medicine, and formula milk for babies are severely lacking.

Zhao Li (alias) said that all stores in the village are out of stock, and things can’t be shipped in. People can only buy over-priced rationed food packages provided by the CCP’s village committee.

A Jushu villager posted on social media, “So far, 90 percent of us have not received the so-called free food and supplies provided by the authorities. Now, the village committee has started to drive up prices for the rationed food, and many people trapped here cannot afford the high-priced vegetables. The boxed lunches that cost 15 yuan ($ 2.3) before are now selling for 60 yuan ($ 9.2).”

Over-priced rationed food provided by the CCP’s Hainan village committee in Liwan District of Guangzhou on June 2, 2021. (Supplied to The Epoch Times)

Wang Hua (alias), another villager in Jushu, told The Epoch Times that up to now, the CCP’s village officials have not effectively arranged food supplies for the community. She said, “They just lock us in here, and don’t care if we are alive or dead. Many tenants who don’t usually cook have no preparations, and now they only have porridge and snacks to stay alive.”

She added, “I thought that after a whole year of fighting the epidemic, the state would not let me come to the situation that I have no food to eat, so I didn’t stock up much. However, I’ve found out that the supermarkets and food markets have all been closed. And nobody has ever told me where I can buy food and how can I get basic supplies. I can only depend on myself.”

Wang revealed to The Epoch Times that the shortage of medicine is another serious problem facing lockdown areas. She said that her friend’s husband’s feet were ulcerated, bloody, and in need of urgent medical assistance. They had called emergency services, hospitals, pharmacies, and all other official channels but have received no help. When they tried to buy medicine online, their order got cancelled, as no deliveries are being allowed in the lockdown areas. Later, they posted to a group chat on social media asking for help. Someone in the group had a similar symptom and shared his medicine with them.

In the US, the first winners of the “vaccination lotteries” being adopted by a growing number of states – including West Virginia (which is offering guns, trucks & “piles of cash), California and a handful of others – are taking home life-changing money, all because they decided to get vaccinated.

And according to WSJ, the incentives that these programs create are already having a positive impact on the vaccination rate, which has finally eclipsed 50% of American adults. The program is also having some success in Hong Kong.

But while it’s impossible to determine exactly how many people are getting vaccinated because of the potential monetary rewards created by the vaccination lotteries, the anecdotal evidence is clear, as the Toledo Blade showed in a recent story about one of Ohio’s “Vax-a-Million” winners who happened to be a Toledo resident.

“I kept hemming and hawing about it, and I work all the time, and when the Vax-a-Million thing started I immediately went down there and got it. It pushed me over the edge,” he said.

Mr. Carlyle said after he hung up with the governor, he then called his girlfriend to let his family know he had won.

“It’s overwhelming. I don’t know what to do. I’m still dreaming,” he said.

In Ohio alone, 3.2MM people entered the drawing – all of whom hadn’t been previously vaccinated despite being eligible for weeks or months. And Ohio’s Gov. ike DeWine credited the lottery enticements for a recent spike in vaccinations in the Buckeye State.

More than 3.2 million Ohioans entered the drawing to win the $1 million prize, and nearly 133,000 Ohioans ages 12 to 17 entered the college scholarship drawing, according to the Ohio Department of Health and the Ohio Lottery. The entry period for the next Ohio Vax-a-Million drawing ends June 6, 2021 at 11:59:59 p.m.

Governor DeWine credited the lottery enticement for a spike in new vaccinations after his initial announcement, but the numbers show the rate has again leveled off.

WSJ’s Mike Bird added that the efficacy shown so far is evidence that vaccination lotteries create benefits that far outweigh their costs.

It’s difficult to overstate just how small the lottery payouts are relative to the economies they cover. In Hong Kong’s case, a real-estate developer is offering an apartment valued at roughly $1.39 million. That prize, though highly valuable to the winner, is equivalent to 0.0004% of the city’s already-reduced 2020 GDP.

Faster vaccinations enable more rapid economic normalization, especially in places that still have significant international travel restrictions in place. That normalization is worth far more than any plausible prizes. One percentage point of GDP growth for Hong Kong would be equivalent to around 2,500 such apartments. The same is true for Ohio’s million-dollar payouts, in an economy with output in the hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

What’s more, there’s evidence from a study in Singapore showing financial incentives are effective at boosting vaccination rates.

But there is evidence that financial incentives work. Vouchers worth just 10-30 Singapore dollars ($7.56 to $22.69) could boost take-up of influenza vaccines by 4.5% to 9.2% in one study, with the strongest effect among elderly recipients. A review of the literature by the U.S. Community Preventive Services Task Force showed vaccination rates rising by a median of 8 percentage points in the studies assessed.

At the very least, using financial incentives is certainly more humane than coercing people by allowing employers to effectively require all new hires to be vaccinated, which risks excluding people who object to vaccination for religious or other reasons from the workforce.

Authored by Cathy He and Jen Jekielek via The Epoch Times,

A proposed Chinese wind farm in Texas poses national security concerns, warned China-watcher and hedge fund manager Kyle Bass.

The Blue Hills Wind development in southwest Texas’s Val Verde County has attracted heightened scrutiny in recent months, with lawmakers and experts signaling concern that the Chinese project could be used as a cover for espionage and to disrupt the state’s power grid.

The proposed wind farm site is about 30 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border and near the Laughlin Air Force Base, the U.S. Air Force’s largest pilot training facility.

The land for the wind farm is owned by a Chinese company called GH America Investments Group, which has since 2015 bought 130,000 acres of land—an area the size of Tulsa, Oklahoma—in Val Verde County. The man behind the firm is Sun Guangxin, a businessman from the northwestern Xinjiang region in China, who has strong ties to the communist regime.

Sun, a former military officer, is currently the richest person in Xinjiang—where the regime is committing genocide against ethnic Muslim minorities. He has a net worth of $1.9 billion, according to Forbes, and was also the vice chairman of the Xinjiang Provincial Youth Federation.

“My view is that is the reason that he bought the wind farm and wants to put up 700-foot turbines, is he plugs directly into our electric grid. Well, plugging directly into our electric grid is something that should never happen,” Bass, founder and chief investment officer of Hayman Capital Management, told Epoch TV’s “American Thought Leaders” program.

Spurred by these security concerns, the Texas Legislature recently unanimously passed legislation that would ban individuals or companies connected with China, Iran, North Korea, or Russia from entering into contracts relating to the state’s critical infrastructure. The bill has been sent to the governor for signature. If it is signed, it will take effect immediately.

The country’s critical infrastructure has been the target of several cyberattacks in recent months. An annual threat assessment (pdf) by the U.S. Intelligence Community said the Chinese regime’s cyber-capabilities “at a minimum, can cause localized, temporary disruptions to critical infrastructure within the United States.”

Bass said the land was a curious site for a wind farm given that the area is not known to produce high levels of wind. The proposed height of the wind turbines are 700 feet—the height of the Washington Monument—meaning that they could be used to spy on activities at the Air Force base and border security operations at the U.S.-Mexico Border, he added.

Republican state Sen. Donna Campbell, sponsor of the bill, has likened the project to a “Trojan horse.”

“Why do they want to put this in Val Verde County, where the wind doesn’t really blow? Why is this area, where the turbine farm was going to be, 65 miles from our Laughlin Air Force Base, a strategic pilot training base?” Campbell said on the Senate floor in April.

GH America is now reviewing its options in light of the passage of the legislation, News 4 San Antonio reported.

Stephen Lindsey, a vice president of the company, told News 4 that the proposed wind farm was not a threat to the state’s security, and added that he didn’t know if Sun has ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

Bill Ackman’s massive SPAC is reportedly nearing a transaction to take public Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music business, at a valuation of about $40 billion, the WSJ reported citing sources.

Back in July, Ackman’s special purpose acquisition company, called Pershing Square Tontine Holdings Ltd., raised $4 billion in an initial public offering – a record amount for a SPAC to this day, as Ackman said that his firm was on the hunt for a “mature unicorn”:

“We’re in a unicorn mating dance and we want to marry a very attractive unicorn on the other side that meets our characteristics,” he said in a Bloomberg Television interview at the time. “And we’ve designed ourselves to be a very attractive partner.”

Ackman has now found his target. While it is unclear if Universal is a “mature unicorn”, the company has benefited from a jump in revenue from music streaming on services such as Spotify Technology SA. Universal had about €7.4 billion in revenue last year, accounting for nearly half of Vivendi’s total.

The deal, which was hinted at last month when Vivendi said it was considering selling 10% of Universal’s shares to a U.S. investor without naming one, would have a €33 billion ($40 billion) equity value and a €35 billion enterprise value, which also accounts for net debt. A $40 billion deal for Universal Music would be the largest SPAC transaction on record, exceeding the $35 billion that Singaporean ride-hailing company Grab Holdings was valued at in a similar deal recently. It would have a so-called enterprise value, taking into consideration Universal’s debt, of about $42 billion.

Universal, which is a subsidiary of French media conglomerate Vivendi SE, is the record label behind artists including Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and the Weeknd. Its stable also includes classic acts such as Queen and the Beatles, and last year it bought Bob Dylan’s entire publishing catalog. China’s Tencent owns about 20% of Universal after the Chinese internet conglomerate doubled its stake last year in a deal that valued the business at about €30 billion.

A merger with Ackman’s SPAC would mean that Vivendi current plans to monetize its sub would be scrapped. In February the French media conglomerate planned to spin off the business and list it in the Netherlands later this year, with 60% of Universal’s shares distributed to the French company’s investors. As the WSJ notes, it isn’t clear how the Pershing Square transaction affects that plan, and other details couldn’t be learned.

Going public also could give UMG more financial clout to compete with rivals Warner Music Group Corp. and Sony Music Entertainment. Vivendi had originally planned a 2023 IPO for UMG, but said earlier this year that it was now aiming for the business to go public by the end of 2021.

While SPACs, or empty shells that raise money with the sole purpose of looking for a target to merge with and bring public, exploded in popularity in the second half of 2020 and early 2021 as companies sought alternatives to a traditional IPO, in recent months they hit a brick wall with deal flow slowing to a trickle amid a regulatory crackdown on vehicles that have come under fire for appearing to enrich sponsors at the expense of other shareholders. While so far in 2021, at least 330 SPACs have raised $104 billion, blowing through last year’s record of more than $80 billion, most of this activity took place in the first quarter with virtually no new SPACs in recent weeks. They typically have two years to find a target.

As the WSJ notes, Ackman made a splash in July when he raised his SPAC and said he was on the hunt for a large private company to take public. Since then, one of the biggest guessing games on Wall Street has been predicting which company might strike a deal with him. He initially told investors a deal could be made public by the end of March, before recently telling The Wall Street Journal that he had been working on one transaction since November, but needed more time.

It isn’t guaranteed Universal and the SPAC will reach a deal. If they do, it could be completed in the next few weeks and isn’t subject to any additional due diligence.

While the deal may still be in doubt, Ackman’s expertise in the sector isn’t: the hedge fund billionaire is a veteran at using blank-check companies to do deals. He previously co-founded Justice Holdings which raised $1.44 billion in a 2011 listing in London. It merged with Burger King Worldwide Inc. in 2012.

When discussing potential targets for his current SPAC last year, Ackman said he wanted “a simple, predictable” cash-flow-generating company. “We’re looking for the super durable great growth business that we can own for the next decade,” he said.

That said, the news appears to have disappointed the market as the stock price of PSTH – Tontine’s publicly traded stolck – tumbled as much as 10% after hours as the unveil of Tontine’s “unicorn” was seen as less than exciting.

Bill Ackman’s massive SPAC is reportedly nearing a transaction to take public Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music business, at a valuation of about $40 billion, the WSJ reported citing sources.

Back in July, Ackman’s special purpose acquisition company, called Pershing Square Tontine Holdings Ltd., raised $4 billion in an initial public offering – a record amount for a SPAC to this day, as Ackman said that his firm was on the hunt for a “mature unicorn”:

“We’re in a unicorn mating dance and we want to marry a very attractive unicorn on the other side that meets our characteristics,” he said in a Bloomberg Television interview at the time. “And we’ve designed ourselves to be a very attractive partner.”

Ackman has now found his target. While it is unclear if Universal is a “mature unicorn”, the company has benefited from a jump in revenue from music streaming on services such as Spotify Technology SA. Universal had about €7.4 billion in revenue last year, accounting for nearly half of Vivendi’s total.

The deal, which was hinted at last month when Vivendi said it was considering selling 10% of Universal’s shares to a U.S. investor without naming one, would have a €33 billion ($40 billion) equity value and a €35 billion enterprise value, which also accounts for net debt. A $40 billion deal for Universal Music would be the largest SPAC transaction on record, exceeding the $35 billion that Singaporean ride-hailing company Grab Holdings was valued at in a similar deal recently. It would have a so-called enterprise value, taking into consideration Universal’s debt, of about $42 billion.

Universal, which is a subsidiary of French media conglomerate Vivendi SE, is the record label behind artists including Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and the Weeknd. Its stable also includes classic acts such as Queen and the Beatles, and last year it bought Bob Dylan’s entire publishing catalog. China’s Tencent owns about 20% of Universal after the Chinese internet conglomerate doubled its stake last year in a deal that valued the business at about €30 billion.

A merger with Ackman’s SPAC would mean that Vivendi current plans to monetize its sub would be scrapped. In February the French media conglomerate planned to spin off the business and list it in the Netherlands later this year, with 60% of Universal’s shares distributed to the French company’s investors. As the WSJ notes, it isn’t clear how the Pershing Square transaction affects that plan, and other details couldn’t be learned.

Going public also could give UMG more financial clout to compete with rivals Warner Music Group Corp. and Sony Music Entertainment. Vivendi had originally planned a 2023 IPO for UMG, but said earlier this year that it was now aiming for the business to go public by the end of 2021.

While SPACs, or empty shells that raise money with the sole purpose of looking for a target to merge with and bring public, exploded in popularity in the second half of 2020 and early 2021 as companies sought alternatives to a traditional IPO, in recent months they hit a brick wall with deal flow slowing to a trickle amid a regulatory crackdown on vehicles that have come under fire for appearing to enrich sponsors at the expense of other shareholders. While so far in 2021, at least 330 SPACs have raised $104 billion, blowing through last year’s record of more than $80 billion, most of this activity took place in the first quarter with virtually no new SPACs in recent weeks. They typically have two years to find a target.

As the WSJ notes, Ackman made a splash in July when he raised his SPAC and said he was on the hunt for a large private company to take public. Since then, one of the biggest guessing games on Wall Street has been predicting which company might strike a deal with him. He initially told investors a deal could be made public by the end of March, before recently telling The Wall Street Journal that he had been working on one transaction since November, but needed more time.

It isn’t guaranteed Universal and the SPAC will reach a deal. If they do, it could be completed in the next few weeks and isn’t subject to any additional due diligence.

While the deal may still be in doubt, Ackman’s expertise in the sector isn’t: the hedge fund billionaire is a veteran at using blank-check companies to do deals. He previously co-founded Justice Holdings which raised $1.44 billion in a 2011 listing in London. It merged with Burger King Worldwide Inc. in 2012.

When discussing potential targets for his current SPAC last year, Ackman said he wanted “a simple, predictable” cash-flow-generating company. “We’re looking for the super durable great growth business that we can own for the next decade,” he said.

That said, the news appears to have disappointed the market as the stock price of PSTH – Tontine’s publicly traded stolck – tumbled as much as 10% after hours as the unveil of Tontine’s “unicorn” was seen as less than exciting.

Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com,

One of the most significant events of the last two decades has been largely memory-holed: the October, 2001 anthrax attacks in the U.S. Beginning just one week after 9/11 and extending for another three weeks, a highly weaponized and sophisticated strain of anthrax had been sent around the country through the U.S. Postal Service addressed to some of the country’s most prominent political and media figures. As Americans were still reeling from the devastation of 9/11, the anthrax killed five Americans and sickened another seventeen.

As part of the extensive reporting I did on the subsequent FBI investigation to find the perpetrator(s), I documented how significant these attacks were in the public consciousness. ABC News, led by investigative reporter Brian Ross, spent a full week claiming that unnamed government sources told them that government tests demonstrated a high likelihood that the anthrax came from Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program. The Washington Post, in November, 2001, also raised “the possibility that [this weaponized strain of anthrax] may have slipped through an informal network of scientists to Iraq.” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) appeared on The David Letterman Show on October 18, 2001, and said: “There is some indication, and I don’t have the conclusions, but some of this anthrax may — and I emphasize may — have come from Iraq.” Three days later, McCain appeared on Meet the Press with Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and said of the anthrax perpetrators: “perhaps this is an international organization and not one within the United States of America,” while Lieberman said the anthrax was so finely weaponized that “there’s either a significant amount of money behind this, or this is state-sponsored, or this is stuff that was stolen from the former Soviet program” (Lieberman added: “Dr. Fauci can tell you more detail on that”).

In many ways, the prospect of a lethal, engineered biological agent randomly showing up in one’s mailbox or contaminating local communities was more terrifying than the extraordinary 9/11 attack itself. All sorts of oddities shrouded the anthrax mailings, including this bizarre admission in 2008 by long-time Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen: “I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official. I was carrying Cipro way before most people had ever heard of it.” At the very least, those anthrax attacks played a vital role in heightening fear levels and a foundational sense of uncertainty that shaped U.S. discourse and politics for years to come. It meant that not just Americans living near key power centers such as Manhattan and Washington were endangered, but all Americans everywhere were: even from their own mailboxes.

The FBI first falsely cast suspicion on a former government scientist, Dr. Steven Hatfill, who had conducted research on mailing deadly anthrax strains. Following the FBI’s accusations, media outlets began dutifully implying that Hatfill was the culprit. A January, 2002, New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof began by declaring: “I think I know who sent out the anthrax last fall,” then, without naming him, proceeded to perfectly describe Hatfill in a way that made him easily identifiable to everyone in that research community. Hatfill sued the U.S. Government, which eventually ended up paying him close to $6 million in damages before officially and explicitly exonerating him and apologizing. His lawsuit against the NYT and Kristof was dismissed since he was never named by the paper, but the columnist also apologized to him six years later.

A full seven years after the attack, the FBI once again claimed that it had found the perpetrator: this time, it was the microbiologist Bruce Ivins, a long-time “biodefense” researcher at the U.S. Army’s infectious disease research lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Yet before he could be indicted, Ivins died, apparently by suicide, to avoid prosecution. As a result, the FBI was never required to prove its case in court. The agency insisted, however, that there was no doubt that Ivins was the anthrax killer, citing genetic analysis of the anthrax strain that they said conclusively matched the anthrax found in Ivins’ U.S. Army lab, along with circumstantial evidence pointing to him.

But virtually every mainstream institution other than the FBI harbored doubts. The New York Times quoted Ivins’ co-workers as calling into question the FBI’s claims (“The investigators looked around, they decided they had to find somebody”), and the paper also cited “vocal skepticism from key members of Congress.” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), one of the targets of the anthrax letters, said explicitly he did not believe Ivins could have carried out the attacks alone. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) and then-Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), a physicist, said the same to me in interviews. The nation’s three largest newspapers — The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal — all editorially called for independent investigations on the grounds that the FBI’s evidence was inconclusive if not outright unconvincing. One of the country’s most prestigious science journals, Nature, published an editorial under the headline “Case Not Closed,” arguing, about the FBI’s key claims, that “the jury is still out on those questions.”

When an independent investigation was finally conducted in 2011 into the FBI’s scientific claims against Ivins, much of that doubt converted into full-blown skepticism. As The New York Times put it — in a 2011 article headlined “Expert Panel Is Critical of F.B.I. Work in Investigating Anthrax Letters” —  the review “concludes that the bureau overstated the strength of genetic analysis linking the mailed anthrax to a supply kept by Bruce E. Ivins.” A Washington Post article — headlined: “Anthrax report casts doubt on scientific evidence in FBI case against Bruce Ivins” — announced that “the report reignited a debate that has simmered among some scientists and others who have questioned the strength of the FBI’s evidence against Ivins.”

An in-depth joint investigation by ProPublica, PBS and McClatchy — published under the headline “New Evidence Adds Doubt to FBI’s Case Against Anthrax Suspect” — concluded that “newly available documents and the accounts of Ivins’ former colleagues shed fresh light on the evidence and, while they don’t exonerate Ivins, are at odds with some of the science and circumstantial evidence that the government said would have convicted him of capital crimes.” It added: “even some of the government’s science consultants wonder whether the real killer is still at large.” The report itself, issued by the National Research Council, concluded that while the components of the anthrax in Ivins’ lab were “consistent” with the weaponized anthrax that had been sent, “the scientific link between the letter material and flask number RMR-1029 [found in Ivins’ lab] is not as conclusive as stated in the DOJ Investigative Summary.”

In short, these were serious and widespread mainstream doubts about the FBI’s case against Ivins, and those have never been resolved. U.S. institutions seemingly agreed to simply move on without ever addressing lingering scientific and other evidentiary questions regarding whether Ivins was really involved in the anthrax attacks and, if so, how it was possible that he could have carried out this sophisticated attack within a top-secret U.S. Army lab acting alone. So whitewashed is this history that doubts about whether the FBI found the real perpetrator are now mocked by smug Smart People as a fringe conspiracy theory rather than what they had been: the consensus of mainstream institutions.

But what we do know for certain from this anthrax investigation is quite serious. And because it is quite relevant to the current debates over the origins of COVID-19, it is well-worth reviewing. A trove of emails from Dr. Anthony Fauci — who was the government’s top infectious disease specialist during the AIDS pandemic, the anthrax attacks, and the COVID pandemic — was published on Monday by BuzzFeed after they were produced pursuant to a FOIA request. Among other things, they reveal that in February and March of last year — at the time that Fauci and others were dismissing any real possibility that the coronavirus inadvertently escaped from a lab, to the point that the Silicon Valley monopolies Facebook and Google banned any discussion of that theory — Fauci and his associates and colleagues were privately discussing the possibility that the virus had escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, possibly as part of a U.S.-funded joint program with the scientists at that lab.

Last week, BBC reported that “in recent weeks the controversial claim that the pandemic might have leaked from a Chinese laboratory — once dismissed by many as a fringe conspiracy theory — has been gaining traction.” President Biden ordered an investigation into this lab-leak possibility. And with Democrats now open to this possibility, “Facebook reversed course Thursday and said that it would no longer remove posts that claim the virus is man-made,” reported The Washington Post. Nobody can rationally claim to know the origins of COVID, and that is exactly why — as I explained in an interview on the Rising program this morning — it should be so disturbing that Silicon Valley monopolies and the WHO/Fauci-led scientific community spent a full year pretending to have certainty about that “debunked” theory that they plainly did not possess, to the point where discussions of it were prohibited on social media.

What we know — but have largely forgotten — from the anthrax case is now vital to recall. What made the anthrax attacks of 2001 particularly frightening was how sophisticated and deadly the strain was. It was not naturally occurring anthrax. Scientists quickly identified it as the notorious Ames strain, which researchers at the U.S. Army lab in Fort Detrick had essentially invented. As PBS’ Frontline program put it in 2011: “in October 2001, Northern Arizona University microbiologist Dr. Paul Keim identified that the anthrax used in the attack letters was the Ames strain, a development he described as ‘chilling’ because that particular strain was developed in U.S. government laboratories.” As Dr. Keim recalled in that Frontline interview about his 2001 analysis of the anthrax strain:

We were surprised it was the Ames strain. And it was chilling at the same time, because the Ames strain is a laboratory strain that had been developed by the U.S. Army as a vaccine-challenge strain. We knew that it was highly virulent. In fact, that’s why the Army used it, because it represented a more potent challenge to vaccines that were being developed by the U.S. Army. It wasn’t just some random type of anthrax that you find in nature; it was a laboratory strain, and that was very significant to us, because that was the first hint that this might really be a bioterrorism event.

Why was the U.S. government creating exotic and extraordinarily deadly infectious bacterial strains and viruses that, even in small quantities, could kill large numbers of people? The official position of the U.S. Government is that it does not engage in offensive bioweapons research: meaning research designed to create weaponized viruses as weapons of war. The U.S. has signed treaties barring such research. But in the wake of the anthrax attacks — especially once the FBI’s own theory was that the anthrax was sent by a U.S. Army scientist from his stash at Fort Detrick — U.S. officials were forced to acknowledge that they do engage in defensive bioweapons research: meaning research designed to allow the development of vaccines and other defenses in the event that another country unleashes a biological attack.

But ultimately, that distinction barely matters. For both offensive and defensive bioweapons research, scientists must create, cultivate, manipulate and store non-natural viruses or infectious bacteria in their labs, whether to study them for weaponization or for vaccines. A fascinating-in-retrospect New Yorker article from March, 2002, featured the suspicions of molecular biologist Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, who had “strongly implied that the F.B.I. was moving much more slowly in its anthrax investigation than it had any reason to.” Like The New York Times, the magazine (without naming him) detailed her speculation that Dr. Hatfill was the perpetrator (though her theory about his motive — that he wanted to scare people about anthrax in order to increase funding for research — was virtually identical to the FBI’s ultimate accusations about Dr. Ivins’ motives).

But the key point that is particularly relevant now is what all of this said about the kind of very dangerous research the U.S. Government, along with other large governments, conducts in bioweapons research labs. Namely, they manufacture and store extremely lethal biological agents that, if they escape from the lab either deliberately or inadvertently, can jeopardize the human species. As the article put it:

The United States officially forswore biological-weapons development in 1969, and signed the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, along with many other nations. But Rosenberg believes that the American bioweapons program, which won’t allow itself to be monitored, may not be in strict compliance with the convention. If the perpetrator of the anthrax attacks is who she thinks it is, that would put the American program in a bad light, and it would prove that she was right to demand that the program be monitored.

If the government is saying that the perpetrator was probably an American, it’s hard to imagine how it couldn’t have been an American who worked in a government-supported bioweapons lab. Think back to the panicky month of October [2001]: would knowing that have made you less nervous, or more?

Having extensively reported on the FBI’s investigation into the anthrax case and ultimate claim to have solved it, I continue to share all the doubts that were so widely expressed at the time about whether any of that was true. But what we know for certain is that the U.S. government and other governments do conduct research which requires the manufacture of deadly viruses and infectious bacterial strains. Dr. Fauci has acknowledged that the U.S. government indirectly funded research by the Wuhan Institute of Virology into coronaviruses, though he denies that this was for so-called “gain of function” research, whereby naturally occurring viruses are manipulated to make them more transmissible and/or more harmful to humans.

We do not know for sure if the COVID-19 virus escaped from the Wuhan lab, another lab, or jumped from animals to humans. But what we do know for certain — from the anthrax investigation — is that governments most definitely conduct the sort of research that could produce novel coronaviruses. Dr. Rosenberg, the subject of the 2002 New Yorker article, was suggesting that the F.B.I. was purposely impeding its own investigation because they knew that the anthrax actually came from the U.S. government’s own lab and wanted to prevent exposure of the real bio-research that is done there. We should again ponder why the pervasive mainstream doubts about the F.B.I.’s case against Ivins have been memory-holed. We should also reflect on what we learned about government research into highly lethal viruses and bacterial strains from that still-strange episode.

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With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu engaged in desperate 11th hour scrambling to try and pick off enough lawmakers on the right-wing to deny a power-sharing government under an unlikely coalition formed by Yamina leader Naftali Bennett, Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid and Ra’am (United Arab List) chairman Mansour Abbas – Iran has taken a moment to mock Israel’s longest serving prime minister as he’s on his way out.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in a Thursday tweet said farewell to Netanyahu and his “disgraceful” political journey which has taken he and his allies “into the dustbin of history”. He wrote provocatively that “Netanyahu has joined the disgraceful journey of his anti-Iran co-conspirators—Bolton, Trump and Pompeo—into the dustbin of history.”

He continued in the social media message: “Iran continues to stand tall. This destiny has been repeated over several millennia for all those wishing Iranians harm. Time to change course.” The “changing course” could be a reference to positive momentum in Vienna as Tehran looks to be on the verge of striking a restored nuclear deal with world powers, which Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have sought to thwart at all costs.

Indeed during Trump and Netanyahu’s tenures and close intelligence coordination, Iran very nearly saw itself in a full-blown war with the US and its allies, especially following the Trump-approved assassination of IRGC Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani on January 3rd, 2020.

Zarif and Netanyahu throughout the years of the Trump administration often engaged in bellicose indirect verbal attacks via statements, also as it became clear Israel was behind a string of assassinations, including the Islamic Republic’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in November 2020.

Netanyahu has joined the disgraceful journey of his anti-Iran co-conspirators—Bolton, Trump and Pompeo—into the dustbin of history.

Iran continues to stand tall.

This destiny has been repeated over several millennia for all those wishing Iranians harm.

Time to change course.

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) June 3, 2021

On Thursday Netanyahu again accused his one-time close ally Naftali Bennet of being a traitor and “selling out” – saying that “All right-wing Knesset members must oppose this dangerous left-wing government.” He also called the newly proposed government the “fraud of the century” which will endanger citizens’ lives. 

The new so-called “change coalition” is moving fast seeking Knesset approval, with The Hill noting that “Picking off right-wing coalition members is likely the only way to undermine the group before the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, holds a confidence vote in the coming days to confirm the coalition’s status as the ruling government.”

If confirmed then Netanyahu would finally be out and is expected to become the opposition head, but is further expected to face criminal charges while no longer enjoying the immunity afforded by the PM’s office. Bennet would serve the first two years and prime minister, with Lapid serving the latter two of the four-year term.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via PJMedia.com,

During America’s first-ever national lockdown, thousands of unelected bureaucrats, as well as federal and state governments, assumed enormous powers not usually accorded to them.

They picked and chose which businesses could stay open without much rationale. They sent the infected into nursing homes occupied by the weak and vulnerable.

Their rules for prosecuting those who violated social distancing, sheltering in place, mask wearing or violent protesting often hinged on political grounds. Their spending measures on “infrastructure” and “health care” were excuses to lard up redistributive entitlements.

Conservatives moaned that left-wing agendas were at work beneath the pretenses of saving us from the pandemic. And the giddy left bragged that it was true.

After the 2008 financial meltdown, Barack Obama spoke of “fundamentally transforming” the country.

Now he’s back, weighing in on the panic-driven, multitrillion-dollar spending that has pushed America’s debt to nearly $30 trillion.

“There’s a teachable moment about maybe this whole deficit hawk thing of the federal government,” Obama said in a recent interview with Ezra Klein of The New York Times.

“Just being nervous about our debt 30 years from now, while millions of people are suffering — maybe that’s not a smart way to think about our economics.”

He apparently means that borrowing tons of money in a pandemic and not worrying too much about paying it back is a new, better approach to economics.

Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom boasted about leveraging California’s statewide quarantine.

“There is opportunity for reimagining a progressive era as it pertains to capitalism,” Newsom said. “So yes, absolutely, we see this as an opportunity to reshape the way we do business and how we govern.”

Hillary Clinton said something similar early in the pandemic:

“… This would be a terrible crisis to waste as the old saying goes. We’ve learned a lot about what our absolute frailties are in our country when it comes to health justice and economic justice …”

The “old saying” she cited was actually a recycled quote from Rahm Emanuel, who was Obama’s chief of staff. His exact quote was: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

Later, Emanuel clarified that crises allow radical changes that had never been considered or were considered impossible. Without catastrophe, no one in his right mind would vote for far-left agendas.

Manipulating COVID-19 is not just a left-wing effort. The Davos crowd responsible for the World Economic Forum has talked of using the global crisis to push “the Great Reset.” These self-appointed guardians wish to create global rules governing the world’s economy, energy, transportation, education, climate, wealth distribution and media. In other words, a few elites will seek to override local laws.

What do all these efforts have in common?

One, they are all top-down agendas. Polls show that average Americans are worried about massive borrowing. They fear the government gaining new powers under the pretext of a pandemic.

Two, our elites are anti-democratic. They talk of forcing change down the throats of citizens through edicts, executive orders, court decisions or bureaucratic directives. Obama, Newsom, Clinton and the Great Resetters don’t want to put up their agendas for discussion before the people and their elected representatives.

Three, behind fancy slogans about not wasting crises, teachable moments and resets is the panic-porn reality that these initiatives are not popular in normal times because they defy common sense. If Americans tried Obama’s economics with their family budgets, they would go broke or go to jail after piling up unpaid debts. Only elites, with their private security guards and the money and influence to remain safe, talk of defunding the police. Few of the woke elites who fly their carbon-spewing jets into Davos ever fly economy class.

Four, our rich revolutionaries have no record of policy success. Massive borrowing, increasing government powers, restrictions on personal freedoms, higher taxes and more regulations don’t appeal to most Americans. Brexit and pushbacks against the European Union suggest that the same is true abroad.

Many members of the left-wing elite became wealthy by monetizing their political careers through lucrative insider networking. A cynic might conclude they didn’t go full reset until they first got filthy rich — allowing them not to live like, think like or listen to the rest of us.

Think wage wars are only taking place among minimum wage workers, who (until September at least) are getting paid more from Uncle Sam to stay home and do nothing? Think again.

Amid numerous anecdotes of sticky wages at the high-end of the jobs spectrum, one stands out: as Bloomberg reports today, in September 2020, the Palo Alto-based Cooley law firm announced it was handing out $2,500 to $7,500 in one-time payments to associates. The bonuses came as the firm –  along with many others in the legal industry – realized it was both flush with cash and facing worker burnout during the pandemic.

And as frequently happens amid the top-paid jobs where competition for talent is furious, Cooley’s move was quickly matched by others, including Davis Polk & Wardwell and Willkie Farr & Gallagher. Meanwhile, even though most attorneys at larger firms expect to receive one annual bonus, one payout was becoming two and now potentially three in a single year.

The result: bonuses soared to as much as $140,000 last year for a senior associate, and they’ve kept coming in 2021, with a potential windfall of $164,000 on top of salary by year end. Alongside the added cash, firms promised more time off and extended work-from-home arrangements, all part of an effort to retain and attract talent for what are often grueling 100-hour work weeks.

With every firm rushing to match everyone else’s bonuses, an arms race has broken within in the industry, which has long had a tepid, coordinated, lockstep approach to salaries.

Lawyers for the largest U.S. firms traditionally earn based on the “Cravath scale,” a historical practice of following the wages set each year by Cravath Swaine & Moore.

According to Bloomberg, first-year associates joining a major firm in 2021 will be paid $190,000 in salary, an amount that hasn’t changed since 2018, according to Biglaw Investor, which tracks compensation. An associate entering her or his eighth year with a major firm should expect to be paid $340,000.

While the industry has not nearly suffered as much from the labor shortage that has hammered much of corporate America (there are more than enough lawyers out there), the bonus windfall has been due largely to the feverish rush of corporate work that hit in the latter half of 2020, most notably a rash of restructuring filings, as well as new efforts to raise capital and the blank-check merger frenzy, the same drivers behind a frenzy of hiring for entry level bankers.

To be sure, the US legal industry, which reported 2.3% unemployment in March, is far from the only one boosting pay and offering better working conditions to hold onto or attract workers. Wall Street firms including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are also facing strong demand for investment bankers and offering junior workers more money, vacations and even forced Saturdays off. And while there are plenty of senior-level lawyers, the same is not true at the entry level: as a result, holding onto young lawyers is critical as the market for associates heats up, especially for those practicing corporate law.

“We’re not seeing firms ask us for one or two associates. Some are coming to us saying we need 10,” said Summer Eberhard, West Coast-based managing director in the associate practice group at legal recruiter Major Lindsey & Africa.

Paradoxically, the boom in legal services (and bonuses) comes after law firms had prepared for the worst last summer, in the wake of the coronavirus. Many firms cut salaries for lawyers and staff, while some furloughed their employees to get through what they thought would be a massive economic downturn.

Instead, 2020 turned into a windfall year for the industry’s top 100 law firms by revenue, which brought in almost $111 billion in revenue, up 6.6% from 2019 and the biggest increase since 2018, according to data from the American Lawyer. Here are the details, courtesy of Bloomberg:

• The highest-grossing law firm, Kirkland & Ellis brought in $4.8 billion in revenue last year, while the runner up, Latham & Watkins LLP, brought in $4.3 billion.
• Across the industry, the average equity partner — a senior lawyer who shares in the firm’s profits — took home $2.23 million, an increase of 13% from the prior year.
• Top performing associates at big U.S. law firms can earn potential payouts in excess of $500,000, based on seniority.

What is unique about this cycle is that the ripple effects are unusually being felt beyond just New York City and Silicon Valley, as smaller firms and international firms now also find themselves in a battle to keep pace with Big Law’s richest to keep their younger talent. Remote work options have complicated local salaries.

“The bonuses are more impacting the industry beyond the walls of what it typically has,” Eberhard said. “This has broken that barrier.” At the same time, Big Law firms are paying in top of the market in regions where it would have previously been completely unheard of, like Atlanta, Milwaukee, and Seattle, she said.

And, as observed across the rest of the economy, the spending spree by big firms “has forced the hands of a lot of smaller markets to increase their compensation because in order to compete with talent, they have to compete with the big firms’ compensation because the firms are so much more willing to have people sit in other markets,” Eberhard said.

Bloomberg then notes that this bonus bonanza has also made its way to international markets: U.S.-based firms including Milbank, Paul Hastings and others extended bonuses to their London associates. Some of the elite U.K.-based firms in the so-called “Magic Circle” have followed suit — handing out one-time payments amounting to 5% of salary.

A newly qualified lawyer at one of London’s top firms can earn as much as 100,000 pounds ($142,000) a year. That mark is still well below what some U.S. firms pay in London. Houston-based Vinson & Elkins LLP, for example, offers their junior lawyers in London 147,500 pounds a year.

Canada’s top firms, known colloquially as the “Seven Sisters,” as well as other national and international firms have instituted a pair of bonuses for their associates, each equaling 10% of their base salary as well as signing bonuses, said Dal Bhathal, legal recruiter and managing partner of the Canada-based Counsel Network. “Associates are very busy, and these bonuses help compensate them for the additional work that they’re doing coupled with trying to do it in a pandemic,” she said.

Then there are the signing bonuses.

Many top U.S. law firms are also handing out “exorbitant” signing bonuses, ranging from $20,000 up to $100,000 for corporate practice attorneys, Eberhard said. Business Insider reported that mergers and acquisitions associates at Kirkland & Ellis are getting signing bonuses as high as $250,000.

“Firms are being much more willing to pay what they need to pay in order to get really quality associates in the door,” Eberhard said.

But wait there’s even more, because after signing bonuses come the retention bonuses.

Once they have the lawyers, some firms have turned to retention bonuses to entice associates to stay — splitting payments so that workers get one in the spring and another in the fall, or even in 2022. “It’s just about keeping associates at the firm,” said Joshua Holt, a former Goodwin Procter associate and founder of Biglaw Investor. “I think it has a huge impact on retention,” Holt said.

And it’s not just money being used to keep workers happy. DLA Piper, a global law firm with offices in more than 40 countries, offered its lawyers a “one-week thank you,” allowing them to choose between one week’s extra pay or a further week of holiday.

“Throughout the pandemic our people have been exceptional,” said Simon Levine, DLA Piper’s global co-CEO. “The extra week’s pay or holiday is just one small way of us saying thank you to them for everything they have achieved in such a challenging year.”

Finally, let’s not forget vacations.

Hard-working associates need some period of recovery because that’s where performance improvement happens, said Mitch Zuklie, chairman and chief executive officer of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe, an international law firm founded in San Francisco. In order to avoid burnout, Orrick implemented recently implemented its “Unplug Time” policy, which gives its attorneys and staff 40 hours of additional vacation per year. So far, Zuklie said 15% of associates have used the program.

“It is a big problem when very talented people are saying I won’t do this for all the tea in China,” said Zuklie. “You have to listen and think about it and take that seriously.”

Other Big Law firms have begun experimenting with solutions to help their associates outside of just pure cash. Dentons and Baker McKenzie have both experimented with no meetings days, while Davis Polk is offering its associates luxury gifts as a reward for their work.

“It’s about sustaining top performance,” Zuklie said. “I think if we don’t get that right Big Law could really face an existential crisis and we could lose the talent that we’re working so hard to identify and attract, to train and to advance.”

One attorney who left a position doing securities work for a big law firm last year and went to a smaller firm was able to do that while matching compensation — not including bonus — while working more manageable hours doing more varied work.

The associate resigned after billing 13- and 14-hour days, multiple days in a row. “At that point I just did not care about the prestige anymore. I was having such bad days and nights where I just felt like I wasn’t being treated as a human,” said the associate, who asked not to be named to preserve relationships.

“We all know what we signed up for, but you can’t work 7 days a week, nonstop.”

By OilPrice.com

Electric cars giant Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) said it expects to soon begin buying more than $1 billion a year of Australian lithium, nickel and other critical minerals for its batteries and engines. Chairman Robyn Denholm said the country has taken important steps towards cleaning its image of polluting commodities exporter and it is poised to become a globally significant supplier of climate change solutions.

“Australia has the minerals to power the renewable energy age throughout the world in the coming years,” Denholm, an Australian, said in a speech during a Minerals Council of Australia event.

“We expect our spend on Australian minerals to increase to more than $1 billion per annum for the next few years,” she said.

Denholm’s remarks come as Australia’s minerals sector released its first progress report on climate action, which shows the industry has cut emissions and is on track to reach a 30% annual reduction.

The document highlights 12 case studies on how the industry is taking practical climate action, including the rollout of renewables, carbon capture and storage development and investment in autonomous vehicles from major players such as BHP, Rio Tinto, Newcrest, Newmont, and Anglo American.

Tesla already sources three-quarters of the lithium it uses from Australia and over a third of its nickel, Denham said, without specifying a dollar figure.

$310 billion market by 2030

Tesla chairman also noted that the country has the advantage of having resources in all three critical battery metals as well as other components at the heart of the clean energy transition.

“To put it a simpler way: electric vehicles account for less than 1% of vehicles globally at the moment. To reach net zero emissions, that needs to be much closer to 100% within 30 years. So that’s at least a 100-fold increase ahead, just for vehicles,” she said.

Denholm said that shift would, by 2030, generate a global lithium-ion battery market of A$400 billion ($310bn).

“That’s eight times the revenue generated by Australia’s coal exports in 2020,” she said.

Government figures forecast exports of spodumene to hit A$1 billion ($773m) this year while its nickel exports are expected to be valued at A$4 billion ($3bn).