We Can't Ban Our Way To A Better World

  Who's talking about a better world? Covid-19 was just the appetizer!

Authored by Charles Krblich via The Brownstone Institute,

Il nous faut de l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace!

(We need audacity, more audacity, always audacity!)

Georges Jacques Danton

Just a short time ago, on a Saturday, before a flake of snow glistened in the air on the following Sunday, an imminent weather emergency caused New York Governor Kathy Hochul to “ban travel” and postpone the Steelers-Bills super Wild Card game until the following Monday.

Certainly, severe weather is a legitimate reason to cancel or postpone events, and to stridently warn against travel during white-out conditions in a blizzard, but a travel ban?

Banning isn’t limited to travel during white-out conditions in blizzards though.

It is truly a bipartisan pastime.

Ban gas stoves; Ban gas-powered generators; Ban books; Ban misinformation; Ban fake news; Ban gender affirming care; Ban parents from being notified of gender transitions; Ban abortions; Ban the banning of abortions; Ban gasoline powered cars and trucks; Ban the unvaccinated; Ban the unmasked; Ban DEI; Ban gas boilers; Ban coal; Ban nuclear; Ban high-capacity magazines; Ban guns; Ban incandescent lightbulbs...

Those bans are just to fix all of society’s important problems, but there are presumably less important things that need banning as well. What would really help is banning honors classes to produce equity, banning youth tackle football, and even banning sledding! In Canada!

If we pass just a few more laws that ban the things we don’t like and banish the people who support them, utopia will arrive and thou-shalt-not do anything.

Maybe you agree with some of these bans and maybe you disagree with others. Certainly if you have any political leanings at all, some of these bans will find your enthusiastic support and others your passionate fury. The most difficult position to hold is that none of these things should be banned, and people should largely be free to do as they please. That position infuriates everyone!

Yet it is clear beyond any doubt that bans simply don’t work. I was a child during the “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign. Drugs were banned, and yet always available. Chicago has banned guns for years and yet has incredibly high gun violence. We banned smiles, playgrounds, and normal personal interaction for years in order to ban Covid and we still catch Covid.

Ironically, it is the rebels who pay no attention to the bans that are often celebrated by history. This is true both in real life and in fictional epics familiar to everyone.

In real life, the Russian Samizdat reproduced, often by hand, great works of literature like Doctor Zhivago and The Gulag Archipelago. Much of their work was producing political texts and personal statements – editorials – that often criticized the Soviet Government and offered alternative solutions to the government’s handling of events. The members of the Samizdat faced severe punishment involving torture and death if they were caught, and we celebrate their courage today.

Fictionally, we celebrate the scrappy rebels in the Star Wars franchise, we root for Neo to win back humanity’s freedom from the scourge of the machines in the Matrix franchise, and we feel the passion and duty of Atticus Finch as he does the unthinkable in his society and defends a black man accused of raping a white woman because it’s the right thing to do.

There are so many more examples, but what is important is that in each example there are laws – either written or unwritten – that are being broken in service of true liberalism. In the Samizdat example, there are often steep personal costs paid, but the delusions of the Soviet state eventually faded and the members of the Samizdat became celebrated heroes rather than vicious criminals spreading misinformation.

In each of the stories there is inevitably a society, culture, or villain that is unbearably cruel and filled with hypocrisy and judgment. Whereas the villain wants complete control, abject anarchy, or the banishment of all non-conformers, the heroes always have the strength to follow their own conscience.

Isn’t this the world we live in? Both sides see themselves as the heroes resisting the unbearable cruelty and hypocrisy of the other. To quote Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau:

They don’t believe in science/progress and are very often misogynistic and racist. It’s a very small group of people, but that doesn’t shy away from the fact that they take up some space.

This leads us, as a leader and as a country, to make a choice: Do we tolerate these people?

What are the means and methods for not tolerating someone? Banishment is, of course, one of them, and thus bank accounts were frozen, disabled grandmothers assaulted, and rebel ringleaders jailed. The state does not need Gulags if on one hand they can approve of some riots but use unapproved protests to turn off your ability to bank, transact, work, and live with the flip of a switch.

The last few years have taught us how fast a person can be turned into swine and banished without remorse.

This moral dilemma is highlighted in one of the allegedly “banned” books. “Banned” because it has racist language, yet still freely available in every book store and on Amazon, there is a character who is a strict disciplinarian who often chastises the main character for his recklessness. She is on a mission to ban his audacity and wildness. She desires to “civilize” him.

That is ultimately what banning is trying to bring about: one’s idea of proper civilization.

Yet civilization thrives in the cracks and margins, in the collective behavior of individuals striving to live the lives they desire despite their circumstances. The Samizdat copied the great literature because it was worthwhile, and in our “banned” book, our main character discovers his friend has been betrayed and will be returned to slavery if our character stands by idly.

So Huck Finn, who values his own sense of freedom more than anything, does what we all should do in the face of the “civilizers:” drop our pretenses and say, “All right, then, I’ll go to hell.”

In doing so, he follows his gut instincts and makes one of the most important moral decisions of his life. Maybe, if we follow that example, we wouldn’t be so concerned with fixing society by banning things like sledding, and would in turn find the lost joy that lives in untamed audacity and recklessness.

Oh SH*T, Something BIG Is Happening With Trump, The Media Is Scared (Russell Brand Video - 23mn)

  A dose of Russell brand about Trump. 😀

  The fact is that people now understand that if you want to fight the Deep State, like him or not, Trump is the only path available and so they flock towards him creating a landslide! As simple as that.

  But can trump deliver? Hard to tell. Some people are talking of Douglas McGregor and Tucker Carlson joining him to govern. That could make a difference!

 

Toyota Chairman Says Electric Cars Will Never Dominate Global Market

  Isn't it obvious by now? 

  In the end EV are perfect second cars for urban families but unworkable outside large cities. More ominously, they pollute just as much as gas powered cars just differently. 

Toyota's chairman and former CEO, Akio Toyoda, is at it again: providing the public with a dose of reality that electric vehicles will never dominate the global car market.

Toyoda, grandson of the founder of the world's largest car manufacturer, expressed at a business event this month, as reported by The Telegraph, that EVs will never capture 30% of global market share. 

Toyota President Akio Toyoda gestures at a briefing on electric vehicle battery strategies at the company's showroom in Tokyo, on Dec. 14, 2021. (Behrouz Mehri/AFP via Getty Images)

He explained that petrol-burning vehicles and hybrids, along with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, will dominate. 

Toyoda made the point: How can EVs be the future when a billion people on Earth have no electricity? 

Data from Statista shows nearly a billion people in the world are living without electricity.

He noted: "Customers — not regulations or politics — should make that decision." 

Over the years, Toyota has openly demonstrated defiance against governments and NGOs pushing for 100% EVs in just a few decades, if not earlier. 

In October, Toyoda told reporters at an auto show in Japan that EVs aren't the silver bullet against the supposed ills of carbon emissions they're often made out to be.

Toyota has a history of being at the forefront of adopting new technologies. However, its slow EV adoption is because of its mistrust of lithium-ion batteries, and it has positioned itself to be a leader in hybrid vehicles.  

Perhaps Toyoda has been vindicated to some extent as EV demand slumps. 

In recent days, Ford announced plans to slash production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning in April "to achieve the optimal balance of production, sales growth and profitability." 

For those who purchased EVs during the Covid mania, the average price of a used Tesla has collapsed. 

And used Tesla prices are likely to slide more as rental car company Hertz Global Holdings has decided to dump 20,000 EVs onto the already sliding used car market.  

BloombergNEF data shows prices of EVs that were part of rental car fleets have also crashed. 

Toyoda concluded: "Engines will surely remain."

Will Elon Musk respond to Toyoda's comments?

In Early 2020, A Chinese Source Trusted By FBI Said COVID Leaked From Wuhan Lab, Sources Say

  Another conspiracy theory confirmed?

  In fact, it looks more and more that almost every story is true to some degree, except of course when it concern flat earth, space and UFOs, or when they are disinformation planted to misled or to discredit. The rest is unfortunately all true.

Authored by Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag via Public subsatck,

FBI’s entire 25-person Chinese intelligence squad knew of reliable human intelligence that SARS-CoV-2 Covid leaked from a lab...

Over the last several months, Public has reported on a growing body of evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the Covid pandemic escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China. Last year, Public and Racket were the first to report that US government officials had identified that the first patients to become sick with Covid worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

Now, Public has learned from multiple sources that the FBI knew since at least March 2020 that Covid was the result of a lab leak. A Chinese national from Wuhan, working as a confidential human source (CHS) for the FBI, told their handler at the FBI’s Chinese Intelligence Squad. The sources said it was probable that the whole squad of 25 people knew.

“A person working at the Virology Institute lab in Wuhan, China was infected, left the building, and spread the virus outside the lab in Wuhan,” the CHS told the FBI, according to a source.

“It didn’t have anything to do with the wet market or the bat soup story they were going with.”

The sources asked Public to protect their identities and those of their colleagues. The sources say they are speaking up now out of concern over abuses of power within the FBI. They reached out to Public after seeing our story yesterday about how scientists, who Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) had in the past funded, sought to insert a furin cleavage site right where it exists on SARS-CoV-2.

The sources added that the FBI trusted the CHS because the person’s information had been corroborated at least three times previously.

“The CHS was from Wuhan, had been vetted, and the person had provided information on three prior occasions that they were able to corroborate as true and reliable.”

Another source said the FBI had considered the information “good intel.”

...

Two sources said that the CIA may have been conflicted in investigating its origins because it didn’t want to compromise investigations of the Wuhan lab that predated the outbreak of Covid-19.

“There was a clear lack of interest in a robust analysis of Chinese military connections to WIV research, connections between Chinese military and civilian research, and connections that could be drawn between US research and WIV activity,” the whistleblower said.

Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe suggested that there could be additional reasons behind the CIA’s lack of disclosure about COVID’s origins. 

...

Fauci may have also tried to influence the FBI.

Conspiracy Theorists Were Right About Climate Lockdowns

   In the 21 Century, a new idea can easily be tested in one place, amended, improved then broadened across the planet as we have seen during the Covid crisis.

Authored by Bobbie Anne Flower Cox via The Brownstone Institute,

Well folks, I really hate to say this, but it’s another win for the conspiracy theorists. They can take off their tinfoil hats and take a deep bow. Yet another one of their outrageous “predictions” is coming true. For anyone keeping score, sadly the score card is rather one-sided. I think the count is something like Conspiracy Theorists = 1,000,000 wins vs. Logic & Normalcy = 0 wins. Boy how I wish we could win some on the “Logic & Normalcy” scale!

So, I acknowledge that I do have a rather dry sense of humor. I throw sarcasm in there a bunch. A couple of my friends tell me they cannot always tell when I’m being serious or if I’m joking. This makes me think that quite a few of you will be wondering, “Is she serious or is she joking with the title to her article?” To that I answer, I will tell you what I know, and then you decide. (You know how I love to promote critical thinking)…

Last week, our unfortunate Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, issued a TRAVEL BAN for an entire county. You read that correctly. No, not a travel advisory, but a full on travel ban! Meaning, New Yorkers in Erie County were forbidden from going anywhere. What’s another name for that? Well, if you live in a rural or very suburban area (which most of New York State is), where driving on a road is the way you get from point A to point B, then I would say a synonym would be “lockdown.”

And what was Dictator Hochul’s, I mean Governor Hochul’s, reason for this lockdown of close to one million New Yorkers that live in Erie County? Wait for it. Ready? It was going to SNOW! For anyone who does not live in New York, or who has never been to Western New York in the winter, that area of our state gets a lot of snow. Often. And yet, the governor thinks (all of a sudden, out of nowhere) everyone living there is so ignorant, they must be confined to their homes until she says it’s safe for them to rejoin the world again. Either that, or she’s just testing you to see how far she can take her totalitarian desires. Or both.

For all the keyboard critics who love to jump in and twist my words, I’ll cut you off at the pass and say that I am not admonishing a governor’s desire to keep people safe in the wake of a storm. That’s not at all what I am saying. If a natural disaster is approaching, people should be warned, emergency services ready to roll, and help made readily available. Encourage people to stock up, stay home, and hunker down? For sure! Forbid people from leaving their homes? NO.

There is a big difference between caring about New Yorkers’ safety, and wanting to control people. Huge.

And in fact, Hochul was banning people from leaving their homes even if it was NOT snowing! Sound unbelievable? It sure does. But remember in my article last week, I cited an ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, who fittingly said, “The truth often evades being recognized due to its utter incredibility.” 

Put another way, when something is so outrageous, it is often cast aside as untrue. Well, here’s what comrade Kathy posted on her Twitter:

She went on to post several other times about the snow and her travel ban. I was actually encouraged to read that most of the comments she received were negative, logical rebuttals to her power grab.

Here are a few…

Ok, so digging a bit into travel bans, you’ll recognize that there have been travel bans based on big storms in the past here in New York. However, those are issued by the local government (i.e. County Executive), after a state of emergency is declared. They are not issued by the Governor, nor are they issued without an emergency declaration.

Does anyone see the correlation here between government overreach, their quest for “centralized” power, and their fear-mongering? It’s the same thing the Governor and her DOH have been doing with their hideous “quarantine camp” regulation that I have been fighting in court for nearly two years now! The name of that case is Borrello v. Hochul, and you can read the details and case history here. Connecting the dots to the analysis at hand, you will note that the quarantine camp regulation tried to take the power from (elected) judges (in keeping with our law) who have the authority to temporarily quarantine sick, dangerous people, and shift that power to unelected, statewide, DOH employees and appointees who have zero accountability to We the People.

Under their quarantine camp reg, the Governor and her DOH would have centralized control over 19 million New Yorkers, to force you to lock down in your home, or they could force you (with the use of police) to go to a quarantine center/ facility/ camp (pick your noun), without any proof you are sick, indefinitely, with no procedure by which you can regain your freedom, and with no declared state of emergency! The fear factor used to try to justify the authoritarian power grab here is the threat of death…If we don’t lock people up who are possibly exposed to a disease, then you might die. Swap out “possibly exposed to a disease” and put in its stead “unclean.” What does that make you think of?

My next question: do you see any similarities here to Hochul’s probably illegal climate lockdown? 

I say “probably illegal” because I couldn’t find the supposed legal authority that she’s relying upon to prohibit people from driving. If you know what she is relying upon, feel free to post it in the Substack comment section below.

Before you draw your own final conclusion about all this, I will add one last thing for you to consider.

In December, a month before Hochul issued this Erie County travel ban, the (Democrat) County Executive, Mark Poloncarz, set up an online portal so residents could check and see if they would be deemed “essential workers” and thus exempt from any futuristic travel bans. Oh, and he coordinated with their “partners” in the federal government to come up with the list!

Sound familiar, folks?!

Remember Governor Cuomo’s C19 lockdown (“Just 2 weeks to flatten the curve”), which lasted for months, and all the “essential workers” that he exempted? Here’s an article about Erie’s coincidentally-just-in-time-for-a-travel-ban portal, “Erie County’s new online portal will identify essential workers exempt from travel bans.”

So… after taking in all that, is it 1,000,000 to 1… or is it 1,000,001 to 0?

Journalist Who Attacked Top Tennis Player For Refusing COVID Vaccine Dies Suddenly

  Remember the Covid crisis of 2020? 4 years ago already. Soon to be followed by the vaccine circus. Excess mortality is still with us in almost all Western countries and still almost no accusation against the vaccines. Talk about the power of money!

  Never mind, eventually the truth will come out. (There is no guaranty that this particular death is related to the vaccine. But statistically the effect is clear and unmistakable. There can be no doubt left!) 

Events have been so frenetic over the past few years that it may be difficult for some to remember, but at the height of the covid panic there was a massive media campaign to destroy the image of any celebrity that publicly refused to take the vaccine.  They could be TV or film celebrities, famous scientists, politicians or even sports figures; it didn't matter.  Anyone with a “platform” and an audience was expected to toe the line on the government covid narrative, or suffer the consequences.

One could argue that the mandates and vaccines were more a loyalty test than an effort to save lives:  Those who complied were considered devout collectivists or at least people who could be controllable, and those who refused to comply immediately stood out as a potential threat.  This is how a world-class tennis player from Serbia, Novak Djokovic, was treated when it was revealed that he was not vaccinated when he entered the Australian Open in early 2022. 

Djokovic was subsequently removed from the tournament and had his travel visa revoked.  Keep in mind the player had a clean bill of health at the time, but his example of defiance of the jab was considered unacceptable by Australian authorities.  What would follow was an endless attack on his character and intelligence on social media, which a number of corporate journalists joined in on.

One of the lead instigators of this attempt at cancellation was Mike Dickson, a prominent British sports journalist working for the Daily Mail.  Dickson is noted as being relentless in his criticism of Djokovic, calling the player "arrogant and deplorable" for refusing to submit. 

This week, Mike Dickson is reported to have collapsed and “died suddenly” at the age of 59 while covering the Australian Open.  The cause of death has been kept confidential.

Despite Dickson's attempts to paint Novak Djokovic as a global villain, the player had only kind words for the journalist upon news of his passing, offering his condolences.  Contrary to all the accusations, very often it's the covid cultists that act like villains while the people they criticize display character and honor.    

Australia proved to be an exceptionally submissive country when it came to the mandates, and some may blame the lack of complete info available that debunked frantic mainstream claims.  However, even in 2022, there was considerable evidence contrary to government assertions on covid and the vaccines.  

For example, it was well known that the vaccines do not necessarily prevent transmission or infection of the virus, as was originally argued when they were distributed.  And the proof is in the fact that there are endless breakthrough cases (people who are vaccinated but who still get infected).  The FDA doesn't even require evidence that a vaccine can prevent transmission or infection for the product to be approved.

It is was also a fact that covid infections and fatalities from the original strain dropped dramatically well before the vaccines were widely distributed.  

Then there was the Infection Fatality rate, which dozens of studies show to be around 0.23% regardless of how many vaccinated or unvaccinated people there are in a particular region, and the vast majority of deaths were among people with multiple preexisting conditions.  Why take an experimental vaccine for a virus with a 99.8% survival rate, especially if you are a top athlete?

All of this information and more was available to journalists from 2021 onward, but they ignored it in favor of creating artificial panic.

The chaos of covid hysteria has faded and cooler heads have prevailed, but the event still offers a lesson on the fragility of civil liberties and how vulnerable they are to mob mentality and mass fear. 

Those that championed the destruction of the lives and careers of the unvaccinated are discovering that nothing guarantees longevity, and taking other people's freedoms is not the path to safety.

China Stocks Crash Through 'Snowball Derivatives' Trigger Levels Overnight

  China is currently experiencing a bubble bursting exactly like Japan in the 1990s. 

  The difference? China is not Japan. The economy is 10 times bigger and so is the real estate bubble. We may soon get a huge deflationary wave made in China if the government does nothing. Or an inflationary wave if they inflate the bubble further. It will be a very difficult call for China. Let's hope they do not decide to do "something else" and invade China. That too would solve the problem!

Who could have seen this coming?

Last week we exposed the ugly reality sitting just below the headlines of the Chinese stock market - the massive liquidation threat from so-called 'snowball derivatives'.

Specifically, we warned that for those looking for the tipping point, pay especially close attention to the CSI 1000 Index dropping below the 5,300 level, where a wave of knock-ins triggers could accelerate exponentially.

According to Guotai Junan Futures, there are about 30 billion yuan ($4.2 billion) of snowball derivatives products tied to the CSI 1000 Index are near levels that trigger losses at maturity, according to Guotai Junan Futures Co, as the stock rout in #China's stock market pushes the derivatives to near knock-in levels. 

Another 60 billion yuan of the derivatives are 5%-10% away from their knock-in thresholds!

Finally, as Sino Market points out, most Snowball derivatives were opened from Feb to April 2023.

Since the downside knock-in put barriers are set to 75% or 80% of the spot price, dealers estimate that most of those are set at 5,180 points on the CSI 1000 index. 

Additionally, we highlighted Beijing's series of desperation moves to support the flailing stock market, from The National Team (plunge-protectors) stepping in to the idiocy of short-selling bans (that have always worked so well in the past).

Sure enough, after the short-selling ban, we saw - as we always do - heavy selling pressure (long-selling) hit overnight since such trading prohibitions impede investors from determining accurate prices of assets and reduce market liquidity.

Research has consistently shown that banning short selling during stretches of particularly volatile equity market activity intensifies the volatility.

But, again, as Chinese stocks began freefalling, Bloomberg reports a sudden and sizable bidder emerged. Turnover on a handful of ETFs tracking the CSI 300 Index and the SSE 50 Index jump in afternoon trading, a sign that state-led buying continues.

But The National Team could not hold back the waterfall of liquidations from the snowball derivatives that smashed through trigger levels in both the CSI 500 and CSI 1000...

In other words, we are this close to a Chinese market crash... and with it the collapse of yet another wealth source for the 'average jao'... and the potential threat that the CCP fears most - revolution.

Everything that Chinese authorities have tried has failed to convince money managers that the worst is behind us.

“China is a waiting game and we continue to be waiting,” said Mark Matthews, head of Asia research at Bank Julius Baer & Co., which is mostly avoiding Chinese equities.

How much longer can Beijing wait?

While no one really knows what Xi and his pals are thinking, some are wondering if the knock-in liquidation cascade will be the trigger that crashes the market and finally wakes up Chinese officials, forcing it to trigger the stimulus bazooka?

Digital Kill Switches: How Tyrannical Governments Stifle Political Dissent

  What fundamentally has changed in the 21C is that governments and globalist entities such as the WEF can test ideas in different countries to understand what works without raising concerns, what is unacceptable and how the roadblocks can be lifted. 

  The caveat is that these techniques work one at a time. In case of a major crisis, the incompetence and bureaucracy would probably create a mess out of any strategy. Well, we'll know soon enough.

Authored by John and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“No president from either party should have the sole power to shut down or take control of the internet or any other of our communication channels during an emergency.”

 - Senator Rand Paul

What’s to stop the U.S. government from throwing the kill switch and shutting down phone and internet communications in a time of so-called crisis?

After all, it’s happening all over the world.

Communications kill switches have become tyrannical tools of domination and oppression to stifle political dissent, shut down resistance, forestall election losses, reinforce military coups, and keep the populace isolated, disconnected and in the dark, literally and figuratively.

As the Guardian reports, “From Ukraine to Myanmar, government-run internet outages are picking up pace around the world. In 2021, there were 182 shutdowns in 34 countries... Countries across Africa and Asia have turned to shutdowns in a bid to control behaviour, while India, largely in the conflict-ridden region of Jammu and Kashmir, plunged into digital darkness more times than any other last year… Civil unrest in Ethiopia and Kazakhstan has triggered internet shutdowns as governments try to prevent political mobilisation and stop news about military suppression from emerging.”

In an internet-connected age, killing the internet is tantamount to bringing everything—communications, commerce, travel, the power grid—to a standstill.

Tyrants and would-be tyrants rely on this “cloak of darkness” to advance their agendas.

In Myanmar, for example, the internet shutdown came on the day a newly elected government was to have been sworn in. That’s when the military staged a digital coup and seized power. Under cover of a communications blackout that cut off the populace from the outside world and each other, the junta “carried out nightly raids, smashing down doors to drag out high-profile politicians, activists and celebrities.”

These government-imposed communications shutdowns serve to not only isolate, terrorize and control the populace, but also underscore the citizenry’s lack of freedom in the face of the government’s limitless power.

Yet as University of California Irvine law professor David Kaye explains, these kill switches are no longer exclusive to despotic regimes. They have “migrated into a toolbox for governments that actually do have the rule of law.”

This is what digital authoritarianism looks like in a technological age.

Digital authoritarianism, as the Center for Strategic and International Studies cautions, involves the use of information technology to surveil, repress, and manipulate the populace, endangering human rights and civil liberties, and co-opting and corrupting the foundational principles of democratic and open societies, “including freedom of movement, the right to speak freely and express political dissent, and the right to personal privacy, online and off.”

For those who insist that it can’t happen here, it can and it has.

In 2005, cell service was disabled in four major New York tunnels, reportedly to avert potential bomb detonations via cell phone.

In 2009, those attending President Obama’s inauguration had their cell signals blocked—again, same rationale.

And in 2011, San Francisco commuters had their cell phone signals shut down, this time, to thwart any possible protests over a police shooting of a homeless man.

With shutdowns becoming harder to detect, who’s to say it’s not still happening?

Although an internet kill switch is broadly understood to be a complete internet shutdown, it can also include a broad range of restrictions such as content blocking, throttling, filtering, complete shutdowns, and cable cutting.

As Global Risk Intel explains:

“Content blocking is a relatively moderate method that blocks access to a list of selected websites or applications. When users access these sites and apps, they receive notifications that the server could not be found or that access was denied by the network administrator. A more subtle method is throttling. Authorities decrease the bandwidth to slow down the speed at which specific websites can be accessed. A slow internet connection discourages users to connect to certain websites and does not arouse immediate suspicion. Users may assume that connection service is slow but may not conclude that this circumstance was authorized by the government. Filtering is another tool to censor targeted content and erases specific messages and terms that the government does not approve of.”

How often do most people, experiencing server errors and slow internet speeds, chalk it up to poor service? Who would suspect the government of being behind server errors and slow internet speeds?

Then again, this is the same government that has subjected us to all manner of encroachments on our freedoms (lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, contact tracing programs, heightened surveillance, censorship, overcriminalization, shadow banning, etc.) in order to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, preserve the integrity of elections, and combat disinformation.

These tactics have become the tools of domination and oppression in an internet-dependent age.

It really doesn’t matter what the justifications are for such lockdowns. No matter the rationale, the end result is the same: an expansion of government power in direct proportion to the government’s oppression of the citizenry.

According to Global Risk Intel, there are many motives behind such restrictions:

“For instance, the kill switch serves to censor content and constrain the spread of news. This particularly concerns news reports that cover police brutality, human rights abuses, or educational information. Governments may also utilize the kill switch to prevent government-critical protestors from communicating through message applications like WhatsApp, Facebook, or Twitter and organizing mass demonstrations. Therefore, internet restrictions can provide a way of regulating the flow of information and hindering dissent. Governments reason that internet limitations help stop the spread of fake news and strengthen national security and public safety in times of unrest.”

In this age of manufactured crises, emergency powers and technofascism, the government already has the know-how, the technology and the authority.

Now all it needs is the “right” crisis to flip the kill switch.

This particular kill switch can be traced back to the Communications Act of 1934. Signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Act empowers the president to suspend wireless radio and phone services “if he deems it necessary in the interest of national security or defense” during a time of “war or a threat of war, or a state of public peril or disaster or other national emergency, or in order to preserve the neutrality of the United States.”

In the event of a national crisis, the president has a veritable arsenal of emergency powers that override the Constitution and can be activated at a moment’s notice. These range from imposing martial law and suspending habeas corpus to shutting down all forms of communications, restricting travel and implementing a communications kill switch.

That national emergency can take any form, can be manipulated for any purpose and can be used to justify any end goal—all on the say so of the president.

The seeds of this ongoing madness were sown several decades ago when George W. Bush stealthily issued two presidential directives that granted the president the power to unilaterally declare a national emergency, which is loosely defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.“

Comprising the country’s Continuity of Government (COG) plan, these directives (National Security Presidential Directive 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20), which do not need congressional approval, provide a skeletal outline of the actions the president will take in the event of a “national emergency.”

Just what sort of actions the president will take once he declares a national emergency can barely be discerned from the barebones directives. However, one thing is clear: in the event of a perceived national emergency, the COG directives give unchecked executive, legislative and judicial power to the president.

The country would then be subjected to martial law by default, and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would be suspended.

The internet kill switch is just one piece of the government’s blueprint for locking down the nation and instituting martial law.

There may be many more secret powers that presidents may institute in times of so-called crisis without oversight from Congress, the courts, or the public. These powers do not expire at the end of a president’s term. They remain on the books, just waiting to be used or abused by the next political demagogue.

Given the government’s penchant for weaponizing one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers and justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security, it’s only a matter of time before this particular emergency power to shut down the internet is activated.

Then again, an all-out communications blackout is just a more extreme version of the technocensorship that we’ve already been experiencing at the hands of the government and its corporate allies.

Packaged as an effort to control the spread of speculative or false information in the name of national security, restricting access to social media has become a popular means of internet censorship.

In fact, these tactics are at the heart of several critical cases before the U.S. Supreme Court over who gets to control, regulate or remove what content is shared on the internet: the individual, corporate censors or the police state.

Nothing good can come from techno-censorship.

As Glenn Greenwald writes for The Intercept:

"The glaring fallacy that always lies at the heart of pro-censorship sentiments is the gullible, delusional belief that censorship powers will be deployed only to suppress views one dislikes, but never one’s own views… Facebook is not some benevolent, kind, compassionate parent or a subversive, radical actor who is going to police our discourse in order to protect the weak and marginalized or serve as a noble check on mischief by the powerful. They are almost always going to do exactly the opposite: protect the powerful from those who seek to undermine elite institutions and reject their orthodoxies. Tech giants, like all corporations, are required by law to have one overriding objective: maximizing shareholder value. They are always going to use their power to appease those they perceive wield the greatest political and economic power."

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, these censors are laying the groundwork to preempt any “dangerous” ideas that might challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.

Whatever powers you allow the government and its corporate operatives to claim now, whatever the reason might be, will at some point in the future be abused and used against you by tyrants of your own making.

By the time you add AI technologies, social credit systems, and wall-to-wall surveillance into the mix, you don’t even have to be a critic of the government to get snared in the web of digital censorship.

Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.

EU President Calls For Globalist Control Over All Information

  You didn't think that pesky things like "freedom" (of information for now, but the rest will follow soon enough) would last much longer right? 

  Either we get their skin or they gets ours but the status quo is finished!

Via: Modernity:

President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen addressed elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos Tuesday, calling for overarching globalist control over the flow of all information in the digital age.

“The top concern for the next two years is not conflict, or climate, it is disinformation and misinformation,” von der Leyen proclaimed, adding “The boundary between online and offline is getting thinner and thinner, and this is even more important in the era of generative AI.”

Addressing the elite as “Excellencies,” and personally naming “dear” Klaus Schwabb in her introduction, von der Leyen further called for the development of “a new global framework for AI risks,” and a vow to “drive global collaboration” to prevent the spread of ‘misinformation’ (information they don’t want you to know about).

"It's All Over": Powell's WSJ Mouthpiece And JPMorgan Confirm Imminent End Of QT

 

  When do people realize they painted themselves into a corner? 

  In a square room, it should be before you start but with money it is not so easy. It always looks like there will be a way to get out of the trap. A new miraculous source of "money" which will solve temporarily the problem. And if you look at the recent past, that is indeed the lesson you can draw... unless you look deeper and the picture changes drastically. In the long term, every single currency has gone to zero. No exception. This is why King Croesus of Lydia is no more and you do not have Roman denarius in your pocket. 

  "So what happens in the end?" you may ask. Well, we're about to find out!

On December 13 the financial world was stunned when, just two weeks after Jerome Powell had said he it was "premature" to speculate on rate cuts, the Federal Reserve did a shocking U-turn and pivoted dovishly, ending the Fed's hiking cycle with inflation still running at double the Fed's target of 2%, and said that it had in fact discussed the start of rate cuts, contrary to what Powell said just two weeks earlier.

Or rather, we should say "the financial world that had not read Zero Hedge was stunned" because just one week ahead of the Fed's December FOMC meeting, we correctly predicted the Fed's pivot due to one simple reason: as we laid out in "The Canary Just Died: Sudden Spike In SOFR Hints At Mounting Reserve Shortage, Early Restart Of QE", the Fed no longer had a choice and was forced to pursue a dovish pivot because the liquidity in the all-important systemic and interbank plumbing had hit dangerously low levels, resulting in the highest SOFR print on record, and the biggest spike since the last time there was a repo market crisis in March 2020.

As we said at the time, "the spike caught almost everyone by surprise, even such Fed-watching luminaries as BofA's Marc Cabana because it was with "no new UST settlements, lower repo volumes, and lower sponsored bi-lateral volumes."  And yet, the spike was clearly there and ominously it was consistent "with the slow theme of less cash & more collateral in the system" - i.e., growing reserve scarcity -  and "may have been exacerbated by elevated dealer inventories, bi-lateral borrowing need, and limited excess cash to backstop repo."

And the punchline: "If funding pressure persists, it risks Fed re-assessment of ample banking system reserves & potential early end to QT", and depending on how bad the funding shortage gets, an early restart of QE.

One week later, the Fed capitulated on tight monetary policy and ushered in the era of rate cuts, just as we said it would. But more importantly, one month later it was Dallas Fed president (and former head of the NY Fed's plunge protection team) Lorie Logan who said the quiet part out loud when she confirmed our "canary in the coalmine" note, namely that the Fed's QT is effectively over due to the sudden, unexpected slide in systemic liquidity, primarily due to the rapid drain in the reverse repo facility which now has just $600 million left and is set to be fully drained some time in March...

... and that by extension, another round of QE may be on deck.

Of course, it's one thing for a regional Fed president to opine on such things, it's something entirely different for Powell's preferred media leak conduit to confirm it, and yet this morning that's precisely what happened when Nick Timiraos, aka Nikileaks, aka Powell's favorite media mouthpiece confirmed that QT's days are now numbered writing that "Fed officials are to start deliberations on slowing, though not ending, that so-called quantitative tightening as soon as their policy meeting this month. It could have important implications for financial markets."

If that wasn't enough, Nikileaks also confirms our suspicion about the driver behind said QT runoff: the financial plumbing is starting to clog up:

But whereas the Fed expects to cut short-term interest rates this year because inflation has fallen, its rationale for tapering bond runoff is different: to prevent disruption to an obscure yet critical corner of the financial markets.

Five years ago, balance-sheet runoff sparked upheaval in those markets, forcing a messy U-turn. Officials are determined not to do that again.

Several officials at the Fed’s policy meeting last month suggested beginning formal conversations soon, so as to communicate their plans to the public well before any changes take effect, according to minutes of the meeting. Officials have indicated that changes aren’t imminent and that they are focusing on slowing—not ending—the program.

As we first explained almost two months ago, the reason for the Fed's panic is that the central bank wants to avoid the same repo market cataclysm that market both the liquidity drain in Sept 2019 and the violent eruption in basis trades that sparked bond market contagion in March 2020; here is Timiraos confirming as much:

... in September 2019, a sharp, unexpected spike in a key overnight lending rate suggested reserves had windled to the point they were either too scarce or difficult to redistribute across the financial system. The Fed began buying Treasury bills to add reserves back to the system and avoid further instability.

In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic created a huge dash for dollars. To prevent markets from seizing up, the Fed resumed buying huge quantities of securities. It stopped buying in March 2022 and three months later set the process into reverse, once again shrinking the portfolio.

... which brings us to today, when the Fed did the math and realized that doing $60BN in QT per month once the reverse repo is fully drained will crash the market:

Policymakers have several reasons to consider slowing runoff. First, the Fed is shrinking its Treasury holdings by $60 billion a month—twice as fast it did five years ago. Continuing to run at this rate raises the risk that the Fed drains reserves so quickly that money-market rates jump as banks struggle to redistribute a dwindling supply of reserves.

Slowing the pace of the runoff later this year might allow the Fed to continue the program for longer than otherwise by “reducing the likelihood that we’d have to stop prematurely,” Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan said in a recent speech.

And by "stop prematurely" she of course means suffering a market crash in an election year, one which would drag the economy into a recession in days. And we all know by now (thanks to former NY president Bill Dudley) that is unacceptable, especially when the alternative is a Trump presidency.

Timiraos also confirms that we were right in cautioning that it's all about the accelerating rate of decline in the reverse repo facility (see "How Treasury Averted A Bond Market "Earthquake" In The Last Second: What Everyone Missed In The TBAC's Remarkable Refunding Presentation"):

there are signs that the cash surplus in money markets is rapidly diminishing. The Fed allows money-market firms and others to park extra cash that would otherwise end up in reserves in an overnight reverse repurchase facility. The facility has shrunk by around $1 trillion since late August to around $680 billion. Logan endorsed slowing runoff once that facility is nearly drained of cash because, after that, forecasting demand for bank reserves will be more uncertain.

This "faster-than-expected decline" in the overnight reverse repurchase facility’s balances is spurring the Fed’s movement toward contingency planning around how to slow runoff:

“It has been a surprise to everyone that overnight reverse repurchase balances have fallen this quickly and that reserves have actually increased over this period,” said Brian Sack, who managed the Fed's Plunge Protection Team at the New York Fed from 2009 to 2012.

Actually Brian, you and others may have been surprised, but it certainly wasn't "everyone": we've been warning this would happen since the start of the year, and most recently one week before the Fed's pivot.

There is another reason why the December SOFR spike freaked out the Fed: whereas previously the central bank was wrong repeatedly in estimating what level of reserves would be seen as "ample" by the market, this time around, officials told TImiraos they are going to rely more on market signals in identifying the right level of reserves.

“Last time, we had lots of estimates of where we thought that terminal level of reserves was, and our estimates were too low,” Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker said in an October interview. “At the end of the day, the market will dictate where we are.”

Indeed it will, and that's precisely why our premium subscribers were fully aware that the "canary in the liquidity coalmine" died at the start of December, and the Fed's dovish pivot, the end of QT, and the coming QE are now logically following just as we said they would.

And just in case Timiraos' conveying Powell's message that QT is effectively done wasn't enough, here is JPM's head of fixed income strategy with a note overnight admitting the same

This is how JPM sees the wind down of QT: "We now expect that the FOMC will have the outline of a timeline at the January meeting, communicated mid-February minutes to that meeting. We expect that this plan will be formally agreed to at the mid-March meeting and will be implemented beginning in April" at which point the monthly cap on the runoff of Treasury securities to be reduced to $30bn/mo, from $60bn/mo (full note available to professional subscribers in the usual place).

Bottom line: after several years of tightening, 2024 is when the liquidity floodgate reopen and not only does the Fed start to cut rates aggressively, but with QT tapering, we fully expect the next QE to be launched in the near future, sending the dollar into its next, and possibly final, reserve currency death spiral as printer goes BRRRR.