Only The 2nd Amendment Keeps Americans From Getting The Iron Boot

unherd |  Perhaps it’s my age, or perhaps it’s just blind prejudice, but when I wake to the news that the Austrian government has interned an entire third of its national population as a danger to public health, a chill runs down my spine.

I look at the news photos of armed, masked, black-clad police stopping people in the streets to ask for their digital papers, and I read stories of others arrested for leaving their own house more than the permitted once a day, and I hear Austrian politicians intoning that those who refuse to accede to the injection are to be shunned and scapegoated until they acquiesce.

Then I watch interviews with “ordinary people”, and they say that the “unvaxxed” had it coming. Some of them say that they should all be jailed, these enemies of the people. At best, the “anti-vaxxers” are paranoid and misinformed. At worst they are malicious, and should be punished.

Then I look across the border at Germany. I see that in Germany, politicians are also considering interning the “vaccine hesitant”, and are also discussing enforcing vaccination upon every citizen. By the end of the winter, says Germany’s refreshingly honest health minister, Germans will be “vaccinated, cured or dead”. There is apparently no fourth option.

They have been busy in Germany. Recently they put up fences in the streets in Hamburg, to separate the Bad Unvaxxed from the Good Vaxxed at the Christmas markets. Outdoors. Perhaps they will also provide the Good people with rocks to throw across those fences. The mood certainly seems ripe. A cartoon recently published in the mainstream, high-circulation newspaper Frankfürter Allgemeine Zeitung featured a man sitting on his sofa playing a first-person shooter game in which the targets were unvaccinated people. The caption described it as “a big hit under the Christmas tree.”

Not that Germans or Austrians have any monopoly on the current march towards authoritarianism in the name of public health. It is entirely globalised. The opinion recently expressed by Pulitzer Prize-winning American art critic Jerry Saltz to his half a million Twitter followers was typical of a new form of class hatred that is somehow acceptable in the age of cancellations and hyper-sensitivity. “My latest Covid thought is ‘Let her rip:’”, he wrote. “Meaning, we who are lucky enough to be triple & double vaxed are pretty protected. Let the rest die. I know they pose a danger to us all. But we are more than 97% protected from them. If they want to die, I say let them die. Freedom.”

Across Europe and the wider world, the picture is the same. Internment. Mandatory medication. Segregation of whole sections of society. Mass sackings. A drumbeat media consensus. The systematic censoring of dissent. The deliberate creation of a climate of fear and suspicion. The deepening demonisation of the “unvaxxed”. Something terrible is rising around us, and we are only just waking up to it.

 

Omicron Bussin Through mRNA Goo Like Hotcakes...,

 

der tagespiegel |  A group of seven Germans between the ages of 25 and 39 were infected with the Omicron variant of the coronavirus in South Africa, even though all of them have already received their booster vaccination. This is what Wolfgang Preiser, a member of the research consortium that discovered the variant, told Tagesspiegel.

“We're seeing a lot of breakthrough infections right now. What we did not know is that even a booster vaccination with Biontech / Pfizer does not prevent this, "Preiser explained to the Tagesspiegel. These infections are the first breakthrough infections reported with the Omicron variant in people who have already received their booster vaccinations.

[Also read: "Live on in your illusion" -  w wants hen's best friend Corona with globules defeat (T +)]

“Of course you shouldn't misunderstand that vaccination doesn't help. On the contrary: It only shows that even the best possible vaccination is obviously not enough to prevent infection - which we already suspected, "said Preiser.

According to a study published by Preiser and his colleagues on the case on Thursday, the tour group was infected as early as late November or early December.

All seven had received at least two of their three vaccinations with an mRNA vaccine. Six of them received the booster vaccine from Biontech, one from Moderna. Six people are under 30 years old and one person is 39 years old.

These vaccines were given to people in this order:

• People 1 to 5: Biontech, Biontech, Biontech
• Person 6: Biontech, Biontech, Moderna
• Person 7: Astrazeneca, Biontech, Biontech

The booster vaccinations were given to the subjects between five and ten months after the second vaccinations. The booster vaccinations were at least a month, but a maximum of two months ago, according to the study. Those affected were among those vaccinated very early in Germany.

According to the study, none of the seven infected people had relevant previous illnesses and none had previously tested positive. Four of them did medical internships in various local hospitals, the other three were on vacation. When they arrived in South Africa in the first half of November, they all tested negative.

 

Omicron: The Atlantic Tirelessly Speculating And Making Shit Up

theatlantic |  Here’s the upshot: Each fully vaccinated person might still be at minimal risk of getting seriously ill or dying from COVID this winter, but the vestiges of normalcy around them could start to buckle or even break. In the worst-case scenario, highly vaccinated areas could also see “the kind of overwhelmed hospital systems that we saw back in 2020 with the early phase in Boston and New York City,” Samuel Scarpino, a network scientist at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute, told me. If only a small percentage of Omicron infections lead to hospitalization, the variant is still spreading with such ferocity that millions of people could need a bed.

Such a scenario would be especially dangerous if those millions of people all needed a bed at the same time. Omicron is so transmissible that cases could peak across the country more or less in tandem, Schiffer and Scarpino both said, which would make it harder for the U.S. to shuffle personnel and ventilators to particularly hard-hit regions. ICU capacities in some states are already stretched thin and health-care workers are resigning en masse, so the harms could be even worse. “If we don’t get serious, if we don’t get the masks on, if we don’t get testing up, we’re going to be back into lockdown again because people will be dying in the hallways of hospitals,” Scarpino said. The prospect of such a surge in hospitalizations is “keeping me up nights, to be honest,” Schiffer told me.

This all would be mitigated if Omicron turns out to cause significantly milder disease than Delta—still a possibility, but far from confirmed—and if the vaccines’ protection against severe disease holds strong. But even in that sunnier version of the future, cases are almost certain to increase in highly vaccinated areas and undervaccinated ones alike, and bring with them a host of disruptions to daily life. Schiffer suggested that in areas with sufficient political will—mostly highly vaccinated ones—high case rates could spur local leaders to institute new shutdowns. In any event, fully vaccinated people are still required to isolate for at least 10 days after a positive test, and anyone they’ve been in contact with might have to stay home from school or work. A positive test in a classroom could send dozens of kids into quarantine, and keep their parents out of work to care for them. Jon Zelner, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan, told me that massive disruptions caused by surging Omicron cases this winter could force Americans to reconsider these sorts of procedures.

Read: The new pandemic division tearing Europe apart

Whatever the effects on vaccinated Americans, the Omicron fallout is going to be much more severe for everyone else. In places with low vaccine coverage and strong anti-shutdown politics, inconvenience could be replaced by mass death and even greater grief. And the devastation will almost certainly be greater, on average, in rural communities, poor communities, and communities of color. “It’s unvaccinated people who are going to be at the worst risk for the worst outcomes. And it’s also going to be the folks who don’t have the ability or the luxury to quarantine or just kind of hide out when it looks like the numbers are getting too high,” Zelner said. People working multiple jobs might not have time to get a booster or sick days to use while recovering from side effects. People who live in areas that are underserved by hospital systems will have more trouble finding a bed and receive worse care if they do get sick.

None of these futures are yet written in stone. The scope of the coming hardship will depend on how capable Omicron is of causing severe disease and death. And though Omicron seems likely to overtake Delta, “cases are still low enough with Omicron that we can have a big effect if [we] act early,” Scarpino said—though “acting early was last week.” A month ago, one could still pretend that burden fell on those who lived in some other place, far away from vaccinated people in vaccinated communities. Now that delusion looks shakier than ever.

 

Juicey WTF?!?!?!

 

When the Jussie Smollett incident hit the headlines in early 2019, anyone with a modicum of critical thinking skills could see it was an obvious hoax.

Yet, leftist networks, politicians and celebrities breathlessly amplified Jussie's claim, fueling racial division throughout the country instead of taking the 'wait-and-see' approach that much of the black community took at the time:

Now let's look at who didn't remain silent - and still promoted Jussie's lie.

Then there's this guy...

And this guy...

Katie Perry tweeted at the time: "Standing with and sending love to @JussieSmollett today... this is a racist hate crime and is disgusting and shameful to our country."

Cher tweeted a cryptic boomer message that only level-6 cat ladies can decipher: 

And yet, none of these race-baiting celebrities and politicians who used their massive platforms to promote Jussie's lie have deleted their tweets, or owned up to being an idiot. 

This Plandemic Will Be Over When We Tell You (Uselessly Eating Muggles) It's Over

apnews |  How will the world decide when the pandemic is over?

There’s no clear-cut definition for when a pandemic starts and ends, and how much of a threat a global outbreak is posing can vary by country.

“It’s somewhat a subjective judgment because it’s not just about the number of cases. It’s about severity and it’s about impact,” says Dr. Michael Ryan, the World Health Organization’s emergencies chief.

In January 2020, WHO designated the virus a global health crisis “of international concern.” A couple months later in March, the United Nations health agency described the outbreak as a “pandemic,” reflecting the fact that the virus had spread to nearly every continent and numerous other health officials were saying it could be described as such.

The pandemic may be widely considered over when WHO decides the virus is no longer an emergency of international concern, a designation its expert committee has been reassessing every three months. But when the most acute phases of the crisis ease within countries could vary.

Unvaxxed Uselessly-Eating Muggles Should Be Stripped Of Healthcare Insurance

off-guardian  |  Illinois Representative Jonathan Carroll wants to push through a change to the state’s insurance law that would mean health insurers no longer have to cover unvaccinated people who get Covid, forcing people to pay their medical bills out of pocket.

The Democrat lawmaker told the Chicago Sun-Times:

I think it’s time that we say ‘You choose not to get vaccinated, then you’re also going to assume the risk that if you do catch COVID, and you get sick, the responsibility is on you,’”

The potential corruption and abuse of such a rule should be obvious to anyone familiar with just how mendacious insurance companies can be.

In all likelihood insurance companies will simply demand a negative Covid test before paying anything, and if you test positive, no matter what you were treated for, you will be called a “covid case” and forced to pay out of pocket.

The bill could, essentially, wipe all health insurance off the books for unvaccinated people.

The vaccinated should take no comfort from this, because their vaccinated status is entirely temporary, and subject to rules that could change on a whim.

Any “double jabbed” who misses a booster, or got a brand of vaccine that was subsequently unapproved or discontinued, or wasn’t updated for the latest variant, could suddenly find themselves one of the “unvaccinated” underclass.

Of course, once it applies to vaccination status it can apply to other things. You travelled to the wrong place, or you didn’t wear a mask, you “associated with known anti-vaxxers”.

And, even more concerning, is the potentially slippery slope this starts us down. Unvaccinated don’t get health insurance. Neither do smokers who get lung cancer. Or overweight people who get diabetes. And so on and so on.

The potential good news is that putting this law on the books would require a lot of legal workarounds, including violating or changing the Affordable Care Act, which outlaws removing insurance coverage from someone based on a new medical diagnosis or test result.

Post Pandemic Stress Disorder

off-guardian  |   Doctors are warning that hundreds of thousands of people in the UK could be at increased risk of heart disease or cardiac events.

Speaking to the Evening Standard, psychological therapist Mark Rayner and vascular surgeon Tahir Hussein said that the UK could see “300,000 new patients with heart issues” in the near future.

What’s to blame? Well, that would be “Post Pandemic Stress Disorder”. A new condition “yet to be recognised”, even though “many experts believe it should be”.

It’s a totally real thing. They didn’t just completely make it up. Don’t be cynical.

You see, all the “pandemic” related anxiety and stress has taken such a toll on the public that doctors are predicting a 5% increase in heart disease, nationwide, and not just in the elderly or infirm.

According to Dr Hussein, he is already seeing…

a big increase in thrombotic-related vascular conditions in my practice. Far younger patients are being admitted and requiring surgical and medical intervention than prior to the pandemic.

Now, some of you demented anti-vaxxers out there might be asking crazy questions like “could this increase in blood clots and heart disease be linked to injecting millions of people with an untested vaccine?”

But that’s absurd. And I told you to stop being cynical.

Yes, fine, in the interests of fairness, we should mention it was recently reported that the Astra Zeneca jab can cause blood clots.

It turns out all the people saying that back in March weren’t just conspiracy theorists spreading misinformation after all. They were totally right. But the clots are only rare, so don’t worry. And they sort of know what causes it now, so future batches might be fine.

And yes, also in the interests of fairness, it’s true that both the Pfizer and Moderna shots can cause heart issues too. Both, according to the CDC, can cause pericarditis and myocarditis, the complications of which include heart attacks, heart failure and strokes.

The UK government has even produced special guidelines for dealing with myocardits, “following Covid19 vaccination”.

But, just like the blood clots, this is very rare. Obviously not so rare you don’t need a special guiding document on how to deal with it, but still very very rare.

…the point is, yes, all the major Covid vaccines are known to have cardiac-related side effects, and yes, some doctors are now predicting a major spike in heart-related health problems, but these are totally unrelated.

A Strictly Limited Parasitic Elite?

charleshughsmith |   The possibility that the United States could fragment is no longer a marginalized topic. Maps displaying various post-U.S. regional configurations accompany essays exploring how and why a break-up of the U.S. would be a solution to regional and ideological polarization, for example, Max Borders' recent article, Dear America: It's Time to Break Up.

But two forces larger than political polarization may fragment nation-states across the globe, including the U.S.: inequality and scarcity. Inequality and corruption go hand in hand, of course, as the wealthiest few influence the state to protect their monopolies and backstop their speculative gains.

Inequality also goes hand in hand with the collapse of nation-states, as this seminal paper explains: Human and nature dynamics (HANDY): Modeling inequality and use of resources in the collapse or sustainability of societies.

The parasitic elite can accumulate the majority of income, wealth, political power and resources in eras of expanding abundance, as what's left is enough to support an expanding populace that consumes more per capita every year, i.e. broad-based prosperity.

But once abundance transitions to scarcity, the economy and society can no longer sustain the dead weight of its outsized parasitic elite. The parasitic elite believes its bloated share of resources, wealth and power is not only sustainable but can be expanded without consequence, and so it deploys all its formidable power to keep the status quo unchanged even as scarcity lowers the living standards of the bottom 90% and hollows out the economy.

In effect, the modern central state, regardless of ideological label, optimizes inequality and growth. Once growth falters while inequality continues increasing, the only possible outcome is fragmentation and/or collapse.

Put another way: the status quo is no longer the solution to inequality and scarcity, it is the problem. Private-sector and political elites are incapable of recognizing they are now the problem, and so the rapid unraveling of the status quo will come as a great shock to their magical-thinking confidence in their power.

The elite's delusional "solution" is a seamless, painless transition to a new era of abundance via "green energy." Unfortunately, this vision is 100% magical thinking, as all these projections ignore the physical realities of building out a global energy system that generates energy on the same scale as existing hydrocarbon energy sources. Read these three reports for reality-based assessments:

The "New Energy Economy": An Exercise in Magical Thinking (manhattan-institute.org)

The Delusion of Infinite Economic Growth: Even "sustainable" technologies such as electric vehicles and wind turbines face unbreachable physical limits and exact grave environmental costs. (scientificamerican.com)

Assessment of the Extra Capacity Required of Alternative Energy Electrical Power Systems to Completely Replace Fossil Fuels (PDF, Simon P. Michaux, Geological Survey of Finland) Read the 3-page abstract.

As explained in the first paper, inequality generates collapse and so does a decline in resources, i.e. scarcity. Put the two together and the only possible outcome is collapse of all centralized nation-states that optimize inequality and endless expansion of consumption.

The issue isn't ideological labels or principles, it's whether the state solves problems or covers them up with fake fixes that accelerate collapse.

Nations which want to not just survive but emerge stronger have one path: a revolutionary transformation from "waste is growth" to degrowth, from an economy and state dominated by a parasitic elite to a strictly limited parasitic elite and from abject dependence on fragile supply chains originating in other nations to decentralized, localized independence for essentials.

Have We Finally Reached Peak Davos Yet?

strategic-culture  |  Were you following the news this last week? Vaccine mandates are everywhere: one country, after another, is doubling-down, to try to force, or legally compel, full population vaccination. The mandates are coming because of the massive uptick in Covid – most of all in the places where the experimental mRNA gene therapies were deployed en masse. And (no coincidence), this ‘marker’ has come just as U.S. Covid deaths in 2021 have surpassed those of 2020. This has happened, despite the fact that last year, no Americans were vaccinated (and this year 59% are vaccinated). Clearly no panacea, this mRNA ‘surge’.

Of course, the Pharma-Establishment know that the vaccines are no panacea. There are ‘higher interests’ at play here. It is driven rather by fear that the window for implementing its series of ‘transitions’ in the U.S. and Europe is closing. Biden still struggles to move his ‘Go-Big’ social spending plan and green agenda transition through Congress by the midterm election in a year’s time. And the inflation spike may well sink Biden’s Build Back Better agenda (BBB) altogether.

Time is short. The midterm elections are but 12 months away, after which the legislative window shuts. The Green ‘transition’ is stuck too (by concerns that moving too fast to renewables is putting power grids at risk and elevating heating costs unduly), and the Pharma establishment will be aware that a new B.1.1.529 variant has made a big jump in evolution with 32 mutations to its spike protein. This makes it “clearly very different” from previous variants, which may drive further waves of infection evading ‘vaccine defences’.

Translation: a new wave of restrictions, more lockdowns, and – eventually – trillions of dollars in new stimmie cheques may be in prospect. And what of inflation then, we might ask.

It’s a race for the U.S. and Europe, where the pandemic is back in full force across Europe, to push through their re-set agendas, before variants seize up matters with hospitals crowded with the vaccinated and non-vaccinated; with riots in the streets, and mask mandates at Christmas markets (that’s if they open at all). A big reversal was foreshadowed by this week’s news: vaccine mandates and lockdowns, even in highly vaccinated areas, are returning. And people don’t like it.

The window for the Re-Set may be fast closing. One observer, noting all the frenetic Élite activity, has asked ‘have we finally reached peak Davos?’. Is the turn to authoritarianism in Europe a sign of desperation as fears grow that the various ‘transitions’ planned under the ‘re-set’ umbrella (financial, climate, vaccine and managerial expert technocracy) may never be implemented?

Cut short rather, as spending plans are hobbled by accelerating inflation; as the climate transition fails to find traction amongst poorer states (and at home, too); as technocracy is increasingly discredited by adverse pandemic outcomes; and Modern Monetary Theory hits a wall, because – well, inflation again.

Are you paying attention yet? The great ‘transition’ is conceived as a hugely expensive shift towards renewables, and to a new digitalised, roboticised corporatism. It requires Big (inflationary) funding to be voted through, and a huge parallel (inflationary) expenditure on social support to be approved by Congress as well. The social provision is required to mollify all those who subsequently will find themselves without jobs, because of the climate ‘transition’ and the shift to a digitalised corporate sphere. But – unexpectedly for some ‘experts’ – inflation has struck – the highest statistics in 30 years.

There are powerful oligarchic interests behind the Re-Set. They do not want to see it go down, nor see the West eclipsed by its ‘competitors’. So it seems that rather than back off, they will go full throttle and try to impose compliance on their electorates: tolerate no dissidence.

Uselessly Eating Muggles Are Using Up All Of Our Personal Fossil Fuels...,

 surplusenergyeconomics  | TIMING THE MOMENT OF FRACTURE

When and how can we know that a change of direction is fundamental and lasting, rather than a temporary departure from established trends?

That, in essence, is the call we need to make now. Far from being “transitory”, current conditions – including rising inflation, surging energy prices and the over-stressing of supply-chains – are indicators of a structural change.

Ultimately, what we’re witnessing is a forced restoration of equilibrium between a faltering real economy of goods and services and a drastically over-extended financial economy of money and credit.

This is where confidence in continuity crumbles, where the delusions of ‘growth in perpetuity’ succumb to the hard reality of resource constraint, and where ‘shocks that are no surprises’ shake the financial system.

If you want just two indicators to watch, one of these is the volumetric (rather than the financial) direction of the economy, and the other is the behaviour of the prices of essentials within the broader inflationary situation.        

The economics of stress

In the science of materials, it’s observable that fractures happen quickly, even if the stresses that cause them have accumulated over a protracted period. We can spend hours, days, weeks or even years gradually increasing the tension applied to an iron bar, but the ensuing snap in that bar will happen almost instantaneously.

Economics isn’t a science, but there’s a direct analogy here. Anyone who understands the economy as an energy system will be well aware of a relentless, long-standing build-up of stresses.

They’ll be equally aware that this cannot continue indefinitely.

Two things matter now.

First, when will these cumulative pressures bring about the moment of fracture?

Second, what should we expect to see when this snapping-point is reached?

The answers to the second question are pretty clear.

Where We Are Right Now...,

• World uses American dollars as World Reserve Currency. 
• America guarantees oceanic shipping lanes.
• Americans ugly american, world gets tired of this shit.
• China siphons Americans' industrial capacity.
• China builds belt and roads infrastructure to carry goods
• China builds demand from the global west and the global south.
• Russia guarantees best energy prices to Europe. 
• China and Russia have energy and stuff that others want.
• America says ‘Let’s you and he fight.’ 
• Others say ‘Let’s you and me denominate transactions in our own currency.’
• America reallocates resources for hemispheric rather than global dominance
• Albion and Oz are wing men to this anglospheric empire in collapse
  

 This is where we are right now. 

• Covid is a crisis allowing leverage
• China reduces industrial output to match markets south and west. 
• China tells America to ‘keep your dollars.
• Russia taps spigot to suggest that the EU stop using dollars to denominate energy purchases.
• America keeps the oceans, but trade on them drops.
• America blames non-English speakers for getting booted, demands compliance from Americas.
• Nicaragua and Venezuela have reason to be nervous, Mexico and others as well.

Extra factors:

•  Global warming is here and worse than popularized.
• Billionaires think "uselessly eating muggles are using up our" personal fossil fuels.

How Bad Will Our Situation Get?

alt-market |  For many years now there has been a contingent of alternative economists working diligently within the liberty movement to combat disinformation being spread by the mainstream media regarding America’s true economic condition. Our efforts have focused primarily on the continued devaluation of the dollar and the forced dependence on globalism that has outsourced and eliminated most U.S. manufacturing and production of raw materials.

The problems of devaluation and stagflation have been present since 1916 when the Federal Reserve was officially formed and given power, but the true impetus for a currency collapse and the destruction of American buying power began in 2007-2008 when the Financial Crisis was used as an excuse to allow the Fed to create trillions upon trillions in stimulus dollars for well over a decade.

The mainstream media’s claim has always been that the Fed “saved” the U.S. from imminent collapse and that the central bankers are “heroes.” After all, stock markets have mostly skyrocketed since quantitative easing (QE) was introduced during the credit crash, and stock markets are a measure of economic health, right?

The devil’s bargain

Reality isn’t a mainstream media story. The U.S. economy isn’t the stock market.

All the Federal Reserve really accomplished was to forge a devil’s bargain: Trading one manageable deflationary crisis for at least one (possibly more) highly unmanageable inflationary crises down the road. Central banks kicked the can on the collapse, making it far worse in the process.

The U.S. economy in particular is extremely vulnerable now. Money created from thin air by the Fed was used to support failing banks and corporations, not just here in America but also banks and companies around the world.

Because the dollar has been the world reserve currency for the better part of the past century, the Fed has been able to print cash with wild abandon and mostly avoid inflationary consequences. This was especially true in the decade after the derivatives crunch of 2008.

Why? The dollar’s global reserve status means dollars are likely to be held overseas in foreign banks and corporate coffers to be used in global trade. However, there is no such thing as a party that goes on forever. Eventually the punch runs out and the lights shut off. If the dollar is devalued too much, whether by endless printing of new money or by relentless inflationary pressures at home, all those overseas dollars will come flooding back into the U.S. The result is an inflationary avalanche, a massive injection of liquidity exactly when it will cause the most trouble.

We are now close to this point of no return.

It's A Big Club And You Ain't In It!

bloomberg |  To show how exclusive you are, there’s nothing like turning away a billionaire.

Two members of the three comma club were among those nominated to join R360, a new, invitation-only investment and networking group for people with net worth of $100 million or more. Neither billionaire made it past the membership committee, according to Charles Garcia, one of the group’s managing partners.

“I took some grief for that,” said the 60-year-old entrepreneur, a consummate networker who founded Sterling Financial Investment Group in the late 1990s and chaired South Florida chapters of wealth network Tiger 21 for many years. “One person seemed to want to leverage the group to benefit their own business activities, and the other didn’t want to integrate his family.”

Neither of those are in line with the values considered core to the group. Members with those values — which include honor, entrepreneurial grit and generosity of spirit — are invited to go on a three-year “journey” to gain mastery across six kinds of capital: financial, intellectual, spiritual, human, emotional and social. A three-year family membership costs $180,000.

There are countless formal and informal networks for wealthy individuals and families, and R360 aims to find a place among them. Tiger 21, perhaps the most widely known group, has nearly 1,000 members paying dues of $30,000 a year. 

For the ultra-wealthy, these groups provide a sort of confidential, supercharged coaching network on everything from figuring out one’s purpose in life to learning more about philanthropy to understanding the blockchain.

“When people get wealth of $100 million or more, their issues are far greater than for people who are wealthy but not at that level,” said Michael Cole, 61, one of R360’s managing partners and the former chief executive officer of Cresset Asset Management. “They’ve achieved success, and are looking more at how can I make an impact on things that matter to me — for myself, for my family, for society.”

Then there are philanthropic networks, such as the invite-only Synergos Global Philanthropy Circle, founded by Peggy Dulany and her late father, David Rockefeller, with more than 100 member families around the world. Like R360, GPC describes membership as a journey — a year-long cycle of “inspiring, engaging and connecting philanthropists and social investors to create a better world.” Dues are $25,000 a year.

These independent groups are in addition to those those formed by private banks and high-end wealth-management firms, which pour resources into building networks designed to connect, educate, entertain — and retain — their ultra-wealthy clients and their children.

They can also be flourishing businesses themselves. Tiger 21 was founded in 1999 by entrepreneur Michael Sonnenfeldt, who sold roughly a 50% stake to private equity firm Education Growth Partners in 2019 for an undisclosed sum.

R360 is set up as a limited partnership, with 48 founding partners contributing $350,000 each, which equates to about a 60% ownership. The group wants to add about 50 members a year until reaching 500 in the U.S. and 500 abroad. Garcia stresses that R360 will never be sold, and that “the idea is to have this around 100, 200 years from now.”

Does Walgreen's Theft Of Employee Wages Vastly Exceed Its Losses To Shoplifting?

popular |  In the United States, only certain types of theft are newsworthy. 

For example, on June 14, 2021, a reporter for KGO-TV in San Francisco tweeted a cellphone video of a man in Walgreens filling a garbage bag with stolen items and riding his bicycle out of the store. According to San Francisco's crime database, the value of the merchandise stolen in the incident was between $200 and $950. 

This just happened at the @Walgreens on Gough & Fell Streets in San Francisco. #NoConsequences @chesaboudin pic.twitter.com/uSbnTQQk4J

— Lyanne Melendez (@LyanneMelendez) June 14, 2021

According to an analysis by FAIR, a media watchdog, this single incident generated 309 stories between June 14 and July 12. A search by Popular Information reveals that, since July 12, there have been dozens of additional stories mentioning the incident. The theft has been covered in a slew of major publications including the New York Times, USA Today and CNN.

In most coverage, the video is presented as proof that there are no consequences for shoplifting in San Francisco. But the man in the video, Jean Lugo-Romero, was arrested about a week later and faces 15 charges, including "grand theft, second-degree burglary and shoplifting." He was recently transferred to county jail where he is being held without bond. 

Just a few months earlier, in November 2020, Walgreens paid a $4.5 million settlement to resolve a class-action lawsuit alleging that it stole wages from thousands of its employees in California between 2010 and 2017. The lawsuit alleged that Walgreens "rounded down employees' hours on their timecards, required employees to pass through security checks before and after their shift without compensating them for time worked, and failed to pay premium wages to employees who were denied legally required meal breaks." 

Walgreens' settlement includes attorney's fees and other penalties, but $2,830,000 went to Walgreens employees to compensate them for the wages that the company had stolen. And, because it is a settlement, that amount represents a small fraction of the total liability. According to the order approving the settlement, it represents "approximately 22% of the potential damages."

So this is a story of a corporation that stole millions of dollars from its own employees. How much news coverage did it generate? There was a single 221-word story in Bloomberg Law, an industry publication. And that's it. There has been no coverage in the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, or the dozens of other publications that covered the story of a man stealing a few hundred dollars of merchandise.

 

What Kind Of Crimes Capture "Our" Attention?

darrellowens  |  I don’t really know if there’s a crime wave regardless of the perception that there is one. I don’t trust police statistics besides homicide, home invasion and auto burglaries. I don’t know many people who would make a police report about assault or theft. I worked at a Walgreens with an extensive theft problem and know first hand only extreme cases were reported to the police. In San Francisco, there’s seven fewer homicides, two hundred more burglaries and fifty more motor thefts than last year. Is that a crime wave? I suppose. The entire country has seen increased crime since the pandemic. The only thing that sticks out about San Francisco is the appalling high drug overdoses last year in which no other Bay Area county came close.

Couldn’t help but notice that the vast majority of mob burglaries happened outside of San Francisco, though. I notice that only crimes in San Francisco require public responses from district attorney Chesa Boudin. Alameda County district attorney Nancy O’Malley is never made to answer for the very clear crime wave in Oakland right now. O’Malley virtually never appears in any publication about the endless homicides, the endless dispensary attacks, or even the freeway shootings that have killed two in the last couple months including a mother and a baby, on top of 80 freeway shootings last year in Alameda County. Nothing about district attorney Diana Becton who bears apparently no responsibility for the numerous homicides in Pittsburg and Antioch, or the burglaries in Walnut Creek. Jeff Rosen, Santa Clara County DA, home of the Lululemon and this recent shoe store mob burglary? Never heard of him.

It’s only Boudin, apparently, who’s expected to give public comment to media about crime. Why? It’s not as if he runs SFPD. He doesn’t make staffing decisions, he doesn’t decide who gets arrested and where beat patrols go. He’s a prosecutor. Because he pointed out that punitive behavior isn’t always warranted in every situation, now he’s become target #1 for all social ills in San Francisco with a recall initiative, despite no real evidence that he’s more lenient on prosecutions than his Bay Area counterparts, or that the crime wave is unique to San Francisco.

What really gets to me though is that there is a clear crime wave happening. Oakland’s at its 127th homicide as of typing this. When I started this substack 2 days ago it was at its 126th. Where’s the faces of the victims? Where’s the twitter videos? Who even are these homicide victims? With exception to the murdered KRON guard Kevin Nishita or baby Jasper Wu, we hardly even know them.

Prior to the pandemic, homicides in Oakland were at all time lows, but now the homicide levels for a second year in a row is reaching 1990s levels of death. But since these are mainly confined to East Oakland and West Oakland, and the victims are mostly Black and Brown, nobody really cares. After all, it’s where murder is expected to happen and to the people it's expected to happen to. When crime happens where it’s not supposed to happen like in suburban Walnut Creek or downtown San Francisco, suddenly it gets hyper media focus.

Louis Vuitton and Nordstrom have become incessantly repeated names as if they’re people, not 15 year old Shamara Young, 34 year old Danny McNary Jr, 41 year old Kanawa Long, 22 year old Devani Aleman Sanchez, 24 year old Suiti Mesui, 33 year old Lindsey Logue, 52 year old Dirk Tillotson, 30 year old Willie Lennon III and the list goes on. What about the numerous unidentified people who were gunned down and had their lives taken from them? The media doesn’t care because they died in the zipcodes where society has deemed it acceptable and not news worthy.

There were three instances of shootings in Oakland the weekend of the Louis Vuitton burglary. Two people—two human beings—died. Shot to death by a gun, bled out on the street with their minds in panic. One a 17 year old boy who spent over 6,000 days being born, raised, having life struggles and successes, having family, going to school — all erased in just a few seconds. No follow up stories by newspapers, no check-ins on the family from journalists. No social media outrage. Nothing.

Just another sex and age description in the homicide weekly wrap up. Public dollars goes not to the therapy for the families who lost their relatives or have been terrorized by crackling bullets, not just in Oakland or Antioch but in Bayview-Hunter’s Point or the troubled areas in downtown San Francisco, but instead to free parking and street closures for suburban Black Friday shoppers.

Are Social Media Influencers Organizing These Flash Mobs...?

MSN  |  A Chicago bus driver landed in the hospital after he was beaten on the streets Saturday night, resulting in a 15-year-old boy being arrested. 

The bus driver, 49, was inspecting his bus at about 9 p.m. after he heard a loud sound. He was reportedly pushed and punched by both a male and female, police said. An unidentified 15-year-old boy was charged with a felony count of aggravated battery of a transit employee and disorderly conduct in connection. 

Footage allegedly showing the incident has spread on social media. A large group of youths is seen surrounding the bus driver and hitting and kicking him as onlookers cheer and record the incident. 

CHICAGO WOMEN PUNCHED, SHOVED IN STRING OF ROBBERIES OVER 25-MINUTE PERIOD, POLICE SAID

Chicago police, however, did not confirm to Fox News that the video circulating shows the attack on the 49-year-old bus driver. Police directed Fox News to the "initial narrative" that only two suspects were involved and added that police "do not have any additional information."

Violence plagued the Loop in Chicago on Saturday night. A 15-year-old was shot in the arm, dozens of young people flooded the area, fights broke out, police made 21 arrests of youths, a police officer suffered a broken arm, another officer was injured, and a convenience store owner was punched in the face. 

Second Ward Alderman Brian Hopkins said police have evidence that the large groups formed due to social media influencers who organized a flash mob.

Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot said "swift action" will be taken and that parents need to take responsibility for their kids.

"We are going to take significant, swift action to quell any issues," Lightfoot said of the incident. "[Saturday night] there were a large number of children that were down at Millennium Park. We followed the protocols that we put in place from the summer of 2020. When it was time for them to leave the park, we made sure they left the park without incident." 

"These kids have to take responsibility, but I’m going to say the parents have to take responsibility," she said. "Do you know where your kid is? Are you making sure that you’re talking to your children about how they should act in a large crowd?"  Fist tap Dale