Several years ago, a new, if slightly less ambitious, “Big short” trade emerged in US capital markets when several hedge funds – including Carl Icahn’s – took aim at US malls, shorting various CMBS tranches or stocks outright, in anticipation of the continued deterioration of US bricks and mortar retailers in general and the mall experience in particular. This trade paid off handsomely several years ago, at which point it stabilized near lifetime lows. Not longer thereafter, in the immediate aftermath of the post-covid Work From Home shift, a new big short trade emerged, one targeting office space which has been sitting vacant at far higher rater than during the pre-covid world.

And while that particular trade has yet to pay off in the US, there is one place where office bears may strike gold first.

As Caixin notes, for the last few decades, the clusters of office buildings that reach into the sky above major Chinese cities have served as a symbol of the country’s economic rise. But over the last year, however, those same structures have begun to look like more of a drag.

Contrary to the US where office lockdowns kicked in parallel with the covid lockdowns, the Chinese market for office space did well during much of the pandemic. After an initial slump in the first year Covid emerged, the market bounced back big in 2021, underpinned by strong demand from tech and finance companies. Analysts had predicted a strong 2022 as well. Instead, corporate demand for office space collapsed after the first quarter. Even China’s biggest cities, where demand is usually the strongest, were not spared.

“The market performed well in the first quarter, so we thought our forecast that the Beijing office market would be solid in 2022 would become a reality, but nobody expected a sudden downturn in the second quarter,” an insider at a property market research firm told Caixin.

The reason why 2022 was so dismal for commercial real estate in China is due to disruptions from repeated Covid-19 lockdowns coupled with a government crackdown on the tech industry, a major leaser of prime office space. With the end of “zero Covid,” there has been some hope that commercial real estate might lurch back into another rapid recovery, but industry insiders suggest that any rebound is still a way off, and will be complicated by a coming rush of new supply this year.

The slump in office occupancy comes at a bad time for an economy that depends so heavily on real estate, particularly when the residential market remains plagued by an unprecedented debt and liquidity crisis. Real estate contributes an estimated 25% of China’s GDP through direct and indirect channels, according to Wang Tao, chief China economist at UBS Investment Bank. Goldman recently calculated that China’s property market was the world’s single largest asset class.

While office space’s share of that contribution is difficult to pin down, investment in commercial property, which includes both office buildings and shopping centers, accounted for 12% of total real estate investment last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

In 2022, China’s largest cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen all suffered losses in net leased office space — an industry metric of the amount of newly leased space minus the total included in canceled leases.

In Beijing last year, net leased premium office space plunged to 81,300 square meters (875,106 square feet) from about 1 million square meters in 2021, according to data from Savills PLC, a real estate consultancy. All of last year’s gains took place in the first quarter, when net leased office space came in at 95,000 square meters, according to Savills data. That means renters canceled a net 13,700 square meters in office leases in the following three quarters. As more leases got canceled, the vacancy rate for Grade A office space nationwide rose 1.5 percentage points in 2022 to 16%, according to Cushman & Wakefield, another real estate consultancy.

The trend could also be seen in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. In the southern Chinese metropolis of Guangzhou, net leased office space fell by 1,130 square meters in 2022, the first time in 10 years that the amount of office space in canceled leases exceeded the amount rented, according to Cushman & Wakefield data.  The same goes for vacancy rates outside these four major cities. In several province capitals, the vacancy rate has exceeded 30%, according to a Cushman & Wakefield report from last month.

In Beijing, the slowdown in office leases was due to companies cutting costs as their business outlook deteriorated amid Covid lockdown disruptions, said Charles Yan, a managing director at Colliers, a property consultancy.

Meanwhile, suffering a similar fate to their US peers, Chinese tech firms, a major office tenant in big cities, have laid off staff and cut back on office space over the past year as a regulatory crackdown on the industry that began in 2021 has squeezed their profits.

“Almost all of the tech giants canceled office leases last year, and smaller tech firms followed suit,” the market research firm insider told Caixin.

Meituan, a giant in online food delivery and restaurant booking, canceled leases on 30,000 square meters of office space last year in Beijing’s Jiuxianqiao area, a business center. In September 2021, the company got hit with a 3.4 billion yuan ($501.2 million) penalty for violating anti-monopoly rules. In the first three quarters of 2022, Meituan reported a 5.6 billion yuan net loss attributable to shareholders, extending its 23.5 billion yuan net loss in 2021.

Last year, the office vacancy rates in Beijing’s Jiuxianqiao and Zhongguancun areas, two neighborhoods teeming with tech firms, rose 12.3% and 9%, respectively, according to Cushman & Wakefield data. These higher vacancies will ultimately push down rent prices. “When the vacancy rate goes up, the rent falls,” said Wei Dong, a policy analyst at Cushman & Wakefield.

This has already happened in Beijing. In the fourth quarter, the average monthly rent for premium office space in the capital fell 1.7% from the previous three-month period.  Some small and midsize companies, especially trading firms, have also canceled office leases because their businesses either slowed or closed in the wake of the Covid-19 lockdowns, said Wu Wei, a commercial property agent. Among his corporate clients, 60% have recently moved to smaller offices, he told Caixin, adding that the value of the deals he helped close last year dropped 40%.

A co-founder of a Shanghai-based cosmetics-maker told Caixin that the company wants to cut back on office space, but is reluctant to cancel any of its leases because of the penalty it would have to pay. The company suspended its business during Shanghai’s lockdown last year, causing its revenue from the April-to-June period to plunge 90% year-on-year. Still, the company has not ruled out the possibility that it will cut back on office space or move to a cheaper location once its lease expires, the co-founder said.

Market insiders and analysts are cautious about predicting a near-term recovery in the commercial property market, even as economic activity resumes following the reversal of China’s strict “zero-Covid” policy. In late December, Cushman & Wakefield surveyed more than 60 office building owners and real estate agents and found that they don’t expect a recovery in rent prices or demand for office space anytime soon.

What’s next?

Some analysts have predicted that although demand will rebound in the second half, it will have fallen behind increases in the supply of office space, keeping the pressure on rent prices. In Beijing, about 740,000 square meters of new office space will hit the market this year, and 3.5 million square meters is set to come available over the next four years, according to Savills. All this new property available to rent looks likely to result in a glut as the average amount of net leased office space has been about 500,000 square meters a year over the last decade.

The situation is worse elsewhere in China. In Shenzhen, about 1.45 million square meters of new office space will become available this year, according to the Savills data.

This tsunami of new supply is partly due to the pandemic-related delays in the construction of office buildings due to be finished last year.

Second-tier cities are also facing over-supply of offices. In Wuhan, the capital of Central China Hubei province, the supply of new office space could reach about 1.4 million square meters this year, even though the vacancy rate of the city’s office buildings has been as high as 35%, according to estimates by China Real Estate Information Corp. (CRIC), a consultancy. Perhaps if Wuhan wasn’t also the source of the covid lab leak, it wouldn’t have to worry about a historic tsunami of office space supply.

And as China ponders how to avert a broader property market crisis, the US – whose office market was hit at least as hard long ago – has already figured out what to do next: it is rapidly converting offices into condos.

In the latest attempt to stimulate its dismal, deteriorating demographics, on Friday the Japanese government decided to update immigration rules in hopes of luring world-class talent, including through slashing the wait for high-earning professionals to obtain permanent residency.

Like many Western nations, Japan currently grants visas to highly skilled professionals under a point-based system, accounting for factors like academic history, work experience and research achievements. Those in this category can obtain permanent residency after up to three years instead of the typical 10. But the update, which the government hopes to implement in April, will shorten the period to one year for researchers and engineers who make at least 20 million yen ($149,000) annually – hardly an egregious amount – and have either a graduate degree or at least 10 years of work experience. The reduced time frame also applies to business managers who make at least 40 million yen and have at least five years of experience.

These professionals will be able to bring two foreign domestic workers into Japan instead of the current one. Their spouses will be able to work full time in a wider variety of fields.

According to the Nikkei, there were 3,275 people designated as highly skilled professionals in the January-June half. Just 783 of them were new arrivals.

Additionally, the planned update will also allow elite university graduates from around the world to stay in Japan for two years to look for work. Currently, they have 90 days. The scheme will apply to those who, within the last five years, graduated from a university in at least two of three top-100 rankings created by British and Chinese entities. They will be able to bring their families along as well.

Japan’s move to attract foreigners comes as countries around the world compete for skilled talent able to spur innovation. The U.K. launched in 2022 the two-year High Potential Individual visa, which is awarded to graduates of top-ranked universities. Singapore’s Tech.Pass, launched in 2021, allows technology workers who have been making at least 20,000 Singapore dollars ($15,000) a month to work or start a business in the country.

Still, “factors beyond immigration qualifications, like having lower wages compared with the U.S. and Europe, pose a bigger challenge for Japan,” said lawyer Koji Yamawaki, an expert on Japan’s immigration system. Average pay in the information and telecommunications industry in Japan came to just $40,000 in 2022, according to Tokyo-based human resources company Human Resocia. This amounts to around half of the U.S. average and 70% or so of the German average.

Japan came in 25th out of 35 countries in terms of attractiveness to highly educated workers in a 2019 ranking by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It was rated particularly low in “quality of opportunities” and “family environment.”

There is another problem with Japan’s approach: the majority of applicants for the skilled-professional visa are already in Japan on a different work or student visa. But far more challenging for the Kishida government is that in addition to attracting new talent, Japan will need to find ways to help foreigners in the country advance their careers. And with Japan’s notorious anti-foreign worker/Gai-jin culture, this effort will prove next to impossible.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A higher than expected number of heart inflammation cases have occurred in people who received Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine, researchers reported in a new study.

Sixty-one cases of myocarditis, pericarditis, or both following a Novavax vaccination were reported in the World Health Organization’s vaccine safety database through Aug. 23, 2022, Spanish researchers found.

Using pre-pandemic rates of heart inflammation in the population, the researchers calculated that the number of post-vaccination cases was higher than expected.

Reporting odds ratio values of higher than one indicate a higher-than-expected rate. For myocarditis following Novavax vaccination, the ratio was 5.2. For pericarditis, it was 24.75. For myopericarditis, or both conditions at once, it was 14.4.

Heart inflammation is a known side effect of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, which utilize messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, but little data has been collected on the condition following Novavax vaccination, which does not contain mRNA.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, when it authorized Novavax’s shot during the summer of 2022, noted in fact sheets that clinical trials indicate there are increased risks of myocarditis and pericarditis after receipt of the Novavax vaccine. In the trial data submitted to the regulator, five cases of one or both conditions were reported in the vaccinated and zero were reported in placebo recipients. U.S. authorities have since cleared a Novavax booster, and recently reached a deal to obtain up to 1.5 million additional doses on top of the original tranche.

The European Medicines Agency initially did not warn about inflammation after Novavax vaccination but later added a warning to its product information.

Most cases of myocarditis, pericarditis, or myopericarditis after Novavax vaccination in the real world—50—have been reported in Australia, according to the new study. Two have been reported in the United States and nine have been reported in Europe. Most have been among those aged 18 to 44.

While the exact mechanism for induction of myocarditis has yet to be confirmed, the study’s authors pointed out that all of the Pfizer, Moderna, and Novavax vaccines use nanoparticles to deliver a spike protein into the body.

Read more here…

Hundreds of migrants have arrived in small boats along the Florida Keys over the last month in what local authorities have described as a ‘crisis.’ Food shortages and soaring inflation, inducing economic turmoil, have sparked a wave of migration from Cuba and other countries in the Caribbean. 

Florida officials have erected a small tent city in the Upper Florida Keys near mile marker 88.5 in the Village of Islamorada, according to the Miami Herald.

About a week ago, the tent city was set up on eight vacant, privately owned lots.

There are more than a dozen trailers, a large air-conditioned tent, portable bathrooms, and laundry facilities.

A Miami Herald/FLKeysnews reporter arrived at the tent city on Thursday. The reporter found a parking lot of Florida Highway Patrol vehicles and troopers walking around the camp. 

Miami Herald said the ‘base camp’ was built to house law enforcement officers assigned to the Keys amid the increase in migrant landings. The Islamorada village government told the local paper in a statement that the tent city was built after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order to deal with the migrants. 

The Islamorada village government emphasized in the statement the tent city was a “base camp” and “NOT a migrant holding area.” 

“This Base Camp is for storage of vehicles and a housing/ laundry facility for the National Guard and The FHP Officers sent here after the State of Emergency was declared, due to the influx of Migrant Landings in the Keys,” the statement reads.

According to Shannon Weiner, Monroe County’s director of Emergency Management, the purpose of the base camp was to get law enforcement out of the Key hotels that are usually in high demand from tourists. 

“The base camp belongs to the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

 “Due to a lack of hotel availability in Monroe County it is being stood up to house state employees in Monroe assigned to the migrant response,” Weiner said.

DeSantis issued his executive order early last month after a “mass migration crisis” hit the Keys. There was one instance where over 500 migrants were found in three days after multiple landings. 

Along with troopers, the Biden administration has shifted federal agents and Coast Guard assets to the Keys to deal with the rise in migrant landings. 

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via caityjohnstone.medium.com,

US war planes have shot down three unidentified objects in North American airspace over the last three days, which is entirely without precedent.

On Sunday an octagon-shaped object was reportedly shot down over Lake Huron near the Canadian border after first being detected some 1,300 miles away over Montana on Saturday night. On Saturday a cylindrical object was reportedly shot down over Canada’s Yukon territory by an American F-22, and on Friday an object “about the size of a small car” was reportedly shot down after being detected over Alaska.

Unlike the Chinese balloon that was shot down earlier this month which the US claims was an instrument of espionage, as of this writing there’s still no solid consensus as to what these last three objects were or where they came from. While all three were found at high altitude like the balloon, the Pentagon is refusing to classify them as such, with the head of US Northern Command General Glen VanHerck going as far as to say it hadn’t yet been determined how these objects are even staying aloft.

“I’m not going to categorize them as balloons. We’re calling them objects for a reason,” VanHerck told the press on Sunday. “I’m not able to categorize how they stay aloft. It could be a gaseous type of balloon inside a structure or it could be some type of a propulsion system. But clearly, they’re — they’re able to stay aloft.”

VanHerck also made headlines for saying he couldn’t rule out extraterrestrial origin for the objects.

Local maritime authorities in East China’s Shandong Province announced on Sunday that they had spotted an unidentified flying object in waters near the coastal city of Rizhao in the province and were preparing to shoot it down, reminding fishermen to be safe via messages. pic.twitter.com/aQbUntwy4m

— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) February 12, 2023

To further confuse things, China has detected a UFO of its own that it was preparing to shoot down according to a report on Sunday. Last month Russia reported that it had shot down a UFO as well. A report on Saturday said the air force of Uruguay is investigating strange lights over the sky in the western part of the country.

But of course it could still be balloons. Moon of Alabama made a pretty good argument the other day that the object shot down over Alaska was likely a failed US weather balloon. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says he was told by the White House that all of these mystery objects are believed by US officials to have been Chinese spy balloons, though the White House swiftly disputed this claim, saying it’s too early to categorize them as such.

For myself, I remain comfortable not knowing what the hell is going on with any of this right now. I’ve written periodically about how there’s an abundance of reasons to be intensely skeptical of the new UFO narrative that entered the mainstream in 2017 under highly suspicious circumstances, but I’m also uninterested in pretending I know everything about this weird universe we’ve all tumbled into. I remain open to all possibilities, from mundane balloons, to a sudden increase in interest in aerial objects that have long been common, to US government psyop, to lightbulb-headed visitors from the great unknown.

So I don’t really know what these UFOs are. But I do know what they will be used for.

China is flying high level ISR aircraft over our country.

SANCTIONS IMMEDIATELY!

This is a national security emergency and it comes after we had a total FAA blackout (effecting Canada as well) and power went down in DC last week. This looks like cyber warfare.

— Anna Paulina Luna (@VoteAPL) February 12, 2023

It is a very safe bet that whatever the US government determines these objects to be, the response to that determination will feature increased militarism and the advancement of pre-existing Pentagon agendas. We’re already seeing Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna using the UFO incidents to argue for sanctions on China and to accuse Beijing of “cyber warfare”, and Republicans are already claiming that the threat of Chinese spy balloons means there can be no cuts to military spending.

In an article titled “Chinese spy balloon has GOP saying no cuts to defense,” The Hill’s Alexander Bolton quotes numerous congressional Republicans arguing that military cuts should be taken off the table in their negotiation over a debt ceiling, and that ideally the spending should be increased.

“The entire civilized world should recognize that communist China is probably the greatest threat we’ve ever faced, more severe than Soviet Russia was because of its economic integration into the West,” says perpetually war-horny senator Tom Cotton. “We should take every step we can to try to reduce our dependency on China [and] try to build stronger military deterrence against them.”

“I do not think that we should be talking about cutting the defense budget at all right now. If anything, substantial defense increases,” Cotton adds.

lmao ofc. literally any excuse to protect the military industrial complex oh whoops a trillion dollars a year isn’t enough to shoot down balloons sorry guys no healthcare money pic.twitter.com/hPhbvksEZR

— Mac (@GoodPoliticGuy) February 12, 2023

For the imperial swamp the answer is always more militarism; it doesn’t matter what the question is. Whether they decide these UFOs are a foreign threat or something unknown or something else entirely, the solution funneled through the US empire’s groupthink apparatus will entail more military spending and more weapons of war.

And again I remain open to all possibilities, but I do find it very interesting that we’re seeing completely unprecedented aerial kinetic warfare in North American skies which is certain to lead to more US military expansionism at the exact same time the US prepares its “great power competition” against China and the governments aligned with it.

As we’ve discussed previously, the empire has been going to extraordinary lengths to make sure the public plays along with a long-term campaign to secure US unipolar planetary hegemony. However this UFO narrative ends up playing out, we may be certain that it will be used to facilitate this agenda.

_____________________

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One month ago, credit-card provider Discover Financial Services, issuer of the eponymous credit card, stunned markets when it unveiled in its latest forecast that it expects its 2023 charge off rate to more than double from the 2022 average, hitting a multi-year high and hinting that the US consumer was about to hit a brick wall

Last week, Discover decided to cement that not only would its charge off rate soar but it was about to lose millions of customers after it told Reuters that it would effectively oversee (i.e., spy on) its clients by allowing its network to track purchases at gun retailers come April, making it the first among its peers to publicly give a date for moving ahead with the initiative, which is aimed at helping authorities probe gun-related crimes.

Discover’s announcement came after the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which decides on the classification of merchant categories used by payment cards, approved in September the launch of a dedicated code for gun retailers.

Proponents of the move, almost exclusively Democratic politicians and gun control activists, say it will allow financial institutions to better assist authorities in investigating crimes involving gun violence in the United States. While the codes will not show specific items purchased, some Republican politicians have spoken out against the move, arguing it could violate the privacy of U.S. citizens lawfully buying guns.

Discover said it will include the new code in its next policy and product update to merchants and payment partners in April.

“We remain focused on continuing to protect and support lawful purchases on our network while protecting the privacy of cardholders,” Discover said in its statement to Reuters.

Curiously, a Discover spokesperson said following the publication of the story that other payment network companies had already decided to implement the new code in April, and that Discover was following their lead. While the Discover spokesperson declined to name those peers, it means that any legal purchase of guns now triggers a whole array of red lights and ringing bells across the government which has taken its crusade against legal gun ownership and purchases to unprecedented levels in recent years, even as gun-related crime in such democrat-controlled cities as Chicago and Baltimore hits record highs every year.

Representatives for Discover’s major peers — Visa, Mastercard Inc and American Express — declined to comment to Reuters on what their schedules for introducing the new code are. Last fall, the companies said they would work to implement the code while respecting privacy rights. And if the Discovery comment is accurate, it would appear that the code has already been implemented without any public announcement to that effect.

A representative for Geneva-based ISO said the new code, dubbed “5723 – Gun and ammunition shops” – will be available for financial institutions to use by the end of February.

“The decision to use the new merchant category code is eventually left up to the users in the industry,” the ISO representative said; naturally all woke industry users will be quick to implement such a code in hopes of piling up virtue signaling brownie points.

Discover handled 2% of the $9.56 trillion purchased on U.S. credit and debit cards in 2022, according to industry researcher Nilson Report. Industry leader Visa had a 61% share, Mastercard 26% and American Express 11%.

Authored by Matt Taibbi via Racket News,

“Freedom cannot exist without order.” — Canadian Justice Paul Rouleau

The Honorable Justice Paul Rouleau’s “Report of the Public Inquiry into the 2022 Public Order Emergency,” an analysis of Justin Trudeau’s decision to institute Canada’s Emergencies Act and seize funds during last year’s trucker protests, blasted across Canadian media this weekend, reduced to a handful of headlines. As has become the norm in Western media, language was nearly identical:

• Trudeau’s ‘Freedom Convoy’ shutdown was justified, inquiry rules – Politico

• Canada’s use of emergency powers during ‘Freedom Convoy’ met threshold, commissioner says – Reuters

• Federal government met the threshold to invoke Emergencies Act: Rouleau – CBC

Rouleau’s report is clearly written by a man with mixed feelings. On one hand, he agreed “the Government did not have a realistic prospect of productively engaging” with those who “believed COVID-19 vaccines were part of a vast global conspiracy to depopulate the planet.” At the same time, Rouleau refused to confine “misinformation and disinformation” to protesters:

Protest organizers’ mistrust of government officials was reinforced by unfair generalizations from some public officials that suggested all protesters were extremists… Where there was misinformation and disinformation about the protests, it was prone to amplification in news media… The fact that protesters could be at once both the victims and perpetrators of misinformation simply shows how pernicious misinformation is in modern society.

In the report you also find significant criticism of Canda’s Covid-19 policies and heavy-handed emergency measures like allowing Canada’s Border Services Agency (CBSA) to keep foreigners out. Rouleau even said he came to his main conclusion, that Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Order was legal, “with reluctance.”

But such musings have no propaganda benefit, and Rouleau’s report was reduced to a single thought, that Trudeau’s Emergencies Order “Met the Threshhold.” This was almost exactly like the American press reaction to the 2019 report by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, which tore into FBI malfeasance for hundreds of pages but gave the press the headline it wanted: “Justice Watchdog Finds Russia Probe Was Justified, Not Biased Against Trump.”

Toronto Star columnist Susan Delacourt expounded on the theme, in a piece called, “‘Freedom’ has been a weaponized word. The Emergencies Act report finally tells us what it means.”

The article, which rails against the “warped idea of freedom… populism, and misinformation being sprayed all over social media,” reads like all the tsk-tsking editorials in the West you’ve read since Trump, which used every crisis to hype the idea that freedom = danger. It wasn’t long ago that a person couldn’t go outside without having the word “freedom” jammed in his or her ear, whether it was Mel Gibson yelling it over his hair extensions in Braveheart or Republican congressman Bob Ney engaging in a Pattonesque invasion of the House cafeteria so he could rename your potato-based side dish “Freedom Fries.”

This was back when freedom was one of the four words President George W. Bush knew, and every newly funded think tank or research center felt compelled to stick the word somewhere in the title: “The Freedom Center for Freedom Studies.” We loved the hell out of rights and freedoms when America had a superpower adversary infamous for depriving them, and nearly as much when we could highlight Islamic fundamentalism’s hatred of the “decadent” freedom-loving West during the War on Terror. “They hate us for our freedoms” sounded a lot better than “They hate us because we support Israel and steal oil.”

Most of all, freedom was a joyous propaganda theme back when upper-class America still had an interest in getting the struggling small-town voter to identify with massive corporations eager to throw off the yoke of the EPA and the SEC. Ronald Reagan was the first politician to master selling the same economic “liberty” to poor workers and the giant manufacturers who’d soon abandon them. Freedom wasn’t a dangerous concept, in other words, so long as the very wealthy still felt a deficit of it.

By 2016, however, the WEF types who’d grown used to skiing at Davos unmolested and cheering on from Manhattan penthouses those thrilling electoral face-offs between one Yale Bonesman and another suddenly had to deal with — political unrest? Occupy Wall Street was one thing. That could have been over with one blast of the hose. But Trump? Brexit? Catalan independence? These were the types of problems you read about in places like Albania or Myanmar. It couldn’t be countenanced in London or New York, not for a moment. Nobody wanted elections with real stakes, yet suddenly the vote was not only consquential again, but “often existentially so,” as American Enterprise Institute fellow Dalibor Rohac sighed.

So a new P.R. campaign was born, selling a generation of upper-class kids on the idea of freedom as a stalking-horse for race hatred, ignorance, piles, and every other bad thing a person of means can imagine…

Subscribers to Racket News can read the rest here…

Stefano Domenicali began his role as CEO of Formula One in 2021, following four years as president of Lamborghini. Over the last two years, he has repeatedly said that full electrification of F1 cars won’t happen and that ‘hybrid is our future.’ 

On Sunday, Domenicali spoke with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore and reiterated that F1 cars “will never switch to electric,” according to Bloomberg. 

He called out the wave of politicians setting impossible ‘green’ energy transition targets and for having an ideological approach to an electrified future, which has become “an indisputable dogma.” 

“It’s possible to reach zero emissions without changing engines or throwing away existing cars,” Domenicali continued. He added F1 is developing a zero-emission fuel that “could be used by planes and vessels.” 

Top Gear questioned the F1 boss a few years back about when the motorsport group goes full electric. His response was the same as today, “We won’t, we need to stay hybrid.” 

“So, hybrid is our future, the 2025 power-unit will be hybrid and use 100 percent sustainable fuels, but we need to reduce the costs of the power-unit and platform so it is affordable and less complex. This opens up huge potential for the OEMs to use it in other applications on the road car side,” he said at the time. 

And hybrid it is: Motorsport Tickets Blog explained 2023 F1 engines are 1,000 horsepower 1.6-liter turbo hybrid engines. The engines will stay the same until new regulations arrive in 2026. 

High-performance race cars on the track will keep their combustion engines despite governments worldwide sealing deals to push automakers to reach zero-emission targets by the mid-2030s. If F1 ditched the petrol engine for 100% electric, the races would never be the same because there’s a ‘wow factor’ for fans as the race cars scream down the track at 15,000 RPMs. 

Get rid of the petrol engine, and there will be an exodus of fans. And Domenicali knows this. 

Authored by Dave Huber via TheCollegeFix.com,

“Cultural appropriation is a massive problem throughout the country”

The Kansas City Chiefs beat the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl 57 last Sunday (and don’t get me started on that game-ending “holding” call), but for the usual suspects it became an opportunity lecture about the marginalized and oppressed.

In Grace “Gray” Reed’s case, “they” (plural pronouns) used the Syracuse University student paper The Daily Orange to highlight the (alleged) problem of continued cultural appropriation of Native American symbols.

“Cultural appropriation is a massive problem throughout the country,” Reed writes in “their” op-ed. “Dressing in traditional clothes that do not belong to one’s own culture or using another culture’s imagery without consent sends the message that culture and identity is not worth respecting.”

Taking advantage of stereotypes about other cultures has the potential to further harmful agendas against those in the community. This can lead to a rise in unwarranted hate against certain groups of people solely because of the culture they celebrate. For the Indigenous community, it causes erasure as it ignores the cultural meanings, rituals and values of the diverse tribes. As a society, we’ve allowed racist and outdated depictions to be perpetuated even while Indigenous people have asked that we respect their demands.

Note, however, how Reed vacillates between “Indigenous community/people” and “Indigenous activists” (emphasis added). Because it’s only the latter that really cares about this stuff.

I know folks like Reed scoff at the notion that monikers like “Chiefs,” “Braves” (Atlanta, baseball) and “Blackhawks” (Chicago, hockey) — all highlighted in Reed’s article — are supposed to represent positive attributes associated with sports — courage, determination, hard work, fighting spirit, competitiveness, etc. — but for your average Native American (and American in general), they actually do.

A budding journalist might, just might, be interested in what most Native Americans actually think. In a rare moment of venturing out of its big-city progressive bubble, the Washington Post showed over six years ago that nine out of ten Native Americans were not offended by arguably the most controversial name in the sports realm — “Redskins,” formerly of Washington DC’s NFL team (now “Commanders”).

Unfortunately, contemporary journalists, journalists-to-be and student activists eschew objectivity in favor of activism and narratives. Like low pay being responsible for teachers leaving the profession (not student misbehavior) … and how an allegedly “racist” school song must be changed because student activist groups and student government say so. Etc.

Beware, always, the face value.

By Mish Shedlock of MishTalk

A consortium of California university professors and the Climate Community project say that more EVs alone will not solve the climate crisis. They are coming after your car.

Please consider Achieving Zero Emissions with More Mobility and Less Mining.

A crucial aspect of electrified transportation is new demand for metals, and specifically the most nonreplaceable metal for EV batteries—lithium. If today’s demand for EVs is projected to 2050, the lithium requirements of the US EV market alone would require triple the amount of lithium currently produced for the entire global market. This boom in demand would be met by the expansion of mining. 

Large-scale mining entails social and environmental harm, in many cases irreversibly damaging landscapes without the consent of affected communities. 

If today’s conditions are projected to 2050, US EV demand for lithium alone would require triple the amount of lithium produced today for the global market 

This report finds that the United States can achieve zero-emissions transportation while limiting the amount of lithium mining necessary by reducing the car dependence of the transportation system, decreasing the size of EV batteries, and maximizing lithium recycling. 

Increasing mass and active transit as well as keeping passenger vehicles smaller makes for safer communities. Reducing the size of passenger vehicles also can make the roads far safer because smaller cars have fewer and less severe crashes. Making bus routes, metros, and electric bikes faster, safer, and more convenient will disproportionately support low-income and non-white community members—who are more likely to live near high traffic areas and bear the environmental health burdens of relatively poorer air quality compared to higher-income and white counterparts. 

The Climate and Community Project’s 2022 report, “A Green New Deal for Transportation,” outlined just such a vision for a green, environmentally just mobility network, with specific recommendations for public policy and programs to transform the US transportation sector.

Ultimately, climate, transit, and Indigenous justice can be aligned. 

We Want to Reduce the Size of Your House Too

Our findings show that reducing dependence on private vehicles, densifying low-density suburbs while allowing more people to live in existing high-density urban spaces, and improving EV efficiency and reducing battery sizes are the most effective pathways to reducing future lithium demand. 

Maximal Justice

Don’t kid yourself.  This vision is precisely what President Biden, the socialists, and the Marxists want. If you want the same thing, then vote for Democrats in 2024.