Plunging Crop Supplies Send Prices Soaring And Reignite Food Inflation Fears, WASDE Reports
ZeroHedge – The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report was released Thursday afternoon and pointed to declining grain supplies that sent grain futures prices higher and will keep food inflation in focus.
The closely watched supply and demand report slashed estimates for corn yields and stockpiles. World inventories for wheat were reported near a five-year low.
Grain and oilseed futures soared to a near-decade high earlier this year but have been in a holding pattern for the last month, awaiting new reports on the outlook for upcoming U.S. harvests. A megadrought and back-to-back heat waves have plagued the corn belt and the U.S. West for much of the summer.
December corn futures were up more than 2% to $5.7150 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade, soybean futures popped on the report and are now flat at the end of the U.S. cash session, wheat futures rose more than 3%, hitting a fresh eight-year high.
The Bloomberg Grains Index closed up 1% on the report.
Bloomberg outlines the key takeaways from the August WASDE report:
- DROUGHT BITES: U.S. corn and soybean yields fell below analyst expectations and the declines were largely centered in the drought-stricken northern Plains, where severe drought has withered crops.
- RUSSIA: So goes Russia’s harvest, so goes the wheat market. A large cut in the harvest means a lot less global wheat supplies and Russia’s wheat-export throne as the world’s top shipper is in doubt with the current forecast in line with exports out of the E.U.
- WHEAT PEAK: Benchmark Chicago wheat prices hit the highest levels for a most-active contract since 2013. Corn and soybeans each touched multi-week highs but remain below multi-year peaks from earlier in 2021.
- YOUR MOVE, FUNDS: With the USDA seeming to appease bullish traders with aggressive cuts and dry weather continuing to grip the Plains, an influx of speculative buying could bring the rally in grains, nearly a year-old at this point, to new heights.
- FOOD INFLATION: Of course, with grain and soybean prices elevated for months, the higher costs should start to filter through the supply chain, pointing to higher prices for feed, seed, fertilizer, food and other goods.
This report means that adverse weather conditions are another driver of food inflation that shows no signs of stopping. We noted not too long ago, grocery store prices were expected to rise through the fall. Earlier this week, Tyson Foods Inc. said the surge in raw materials costs would force them to raise food prices in the coming weeks.
O (no!) Canada: Fast-moving Proposal Creates Filtering, Blocking and Reporting Rules—And Speech Police to Enforce Them
Electronic Frontier Foundation – Policymakers around the world are contemplating a wide variety of proposals to address “harmful” online expression. Many of these proposals are dangerously misguided and will inevitably result in the censorship of all kinds of lawful and valuable expression. And one of the most dangerous proposals may be adopted in Canada. How bad is it? As Stanford’s Daphne Keller observes, “It’s like a list of the worst ideas around the world.” She’s right.
These ideas include:
- broad “harmful content” categories that explicitly include speech that is legal but potentially upsetting or hurtful
- a hair-trigger 24-hour takedown requirement (far too short for reasonable consideration of context and nuance)
- an effective filtering requirement (the proposal says service providers must take reasonable measures which “may include” filters, but, in practice, compliance will require them)
- penalties of up to 3 percent of the providers’ gross revenues or up to 10 million dollars, whichever is higher
- mandatory reporting of potentially harmful content (and the users who post it) to law enforcement and national security agencies
- website blocking (platforms deemed to have violated some of the proposal’s requirements too often might be blocked completely by Canadian ISPs)
- onerous data-retention obligations
All of this is terrible, but perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the proposal is that it would create a new internet speech czar with broad powers to ensure compliance, and continuously redefine what compliance means.
These powers include the right to enter and inspect any place (other than a home):
“in which they believe on reasonable grounds there is any document, information or any other thing, including computer algorithms and software, relevant to the purpose of verifying compliance and preventing non-compliance . . . and examine the document, information or thing or remove it for examination or reproduction”; to hold hearing in response to public complaints, and, “do any act or thing . . . necessary to ensure compliance.”
But don’t worry—ISPs can avoid having their doors kicked in by coordinating with the speech police, who will give them “advice” on their content moderation practices. Follow that advice and you may be safe. Ignore it and be prepared to forfeit your computers and millions of dollars.
The potential harms here are vast, and they’ll only grow because so much of the regulation is left open. For example, platforms will likely be forced to rely on automated filters to assess and discover “harmful” content on their platforms, and users caught up in these sweeps could end up on file with the local cops—or with Canada’s national security agencies, thanks to the proposed reporting obligations.
‘Please guys, let me breathe’: Canadian cop accused of ‘excessive force’ in George Floyd-style ‘knee to the neck’ arrest (VIDEO)
RT – A Canadian police watchdog is probing allegations of excessive force during an incident in which a police officer knelt on the neck of a man being arrested despite him being pinned down and repeatedly crying out “I can’t breathe.”
In a statement, the Independent Investigation Unit (IIU) of Manitoba confirmed it is investigating the excessive force allegation in the August 2019 incident – which has drawn comparisons to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020.
It reportedly occurred outside James Richardson International Airport in Winnipeg after Manitoba Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) responded to a call about an intoxicated man who allegedly assaulted a person at the airport and then struck an officer in the face without being provoked.
The man, identified as Nathan Lasuik, is facing several counts of assault in the ongoing trial. Bystander video of the incident was released to the press after it was played in court this week to argue that the RCMP officer used excessive force.
During the nearly five-minute clip, the unidentified RCMP officer is seen holding his knee down on Lasuik’s neck and pressing his face against the ground. The officer does not appear to adjust either his position, or the applied pressure, despite Lasuik’s pleas to be let up.
After Decades, Oil Giant Shell Agrees To Pay $111 Million For Destruction In Nigeria
NaturalBlaze – Following decades of protests and demands over the damage done, Royal Dutch Shell on Wednesday finally agreed to pay $111 million for oil spills that have polluted Nigerian communities for more than a half-century.
“They ran out of tricks and decided to come to terms,” Lucius Nwosa, a lawyer representing a lawyer for the Ejama-Ebubu community in Ogoniland, Rivers State, told Agence-France Presse. “The decision is a vindication of the resoluteness of the community for justice.”
A spokesperson for the oil giant’s Nigerian subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, said that “the order for the payment… to the claimants is for full and final satisfaction of the judgment.”
The case dates back to 1991. A Nigerian court ordered Shell to compensate the Ejama-Ebubu people in 2010, which the company repeatedly appealed, unsuccessfully.
After losing its appeals, Shell initiated arbitration proceedings against the Nigerian government at the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes in February. Bloomberg reports that the company has not said whether it will now withdraw the claim.
Shell plans to pay out the $111 million within the next three weeks. While the settlement was seen by some as a bit of justice, it is a relatively small amount of money for an oil giant whose reported adjusted earnings for 2020 were $4.85 billion. The previous year, before the coronavirus pandemic, the British-Dutch multinational saw a profit of $16.5 billion.
Sec. Mayorkas says border crisis ‘unsustainable’ and ‘we’re going to lose’ in leaked audio
Fox – Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas met privately with Border Patrol agents in Texas and said in leaked audio that the border crisis is “unsustainable” and “we’re going to lose” if “borders are the first line of defense.”
“A couple of days ago I was down in Mexico, and I said look, you know, if, if our borders are the first line of defense, we’re going to lose and this is unsustainable,” Mayorkas said Thursday, according to the audio obtained by Fox News’ Bill Melugin through a Border Patrol source. “We can’t continue like this, our people in the field cant continue and our system isn’t built for it.”
Mayorkas told the agents that the current border situation “cannot continue.” He said the federal government’s system was not designed to handle such an influx of migrants as the U.S. has seen in recent months and he was “very well” aware that the sector recently came close to “breaking.”
“It’s our responsibility to make sure that that never happens again,” he said.
Mayorkas visited the Texas border and announced that agents handled more than 212,000 migrant encounters in July, marking a 13% increase from the previous month. He admitted the issue was “one of the toughest challenges we face.”
“The extent of the challenge should not be understated, but nor should our ability to meet it,” he said.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to Fox News’s request for comment if the border is not currently “breaking” in light of the July increase in migrant encounters.
Criticism of the Biden administration’s border policies has only sharpened due to new COVID-19 variants and what critics see as a lack of attention from Vice President Kamala Harris, who was assigned to take over the migration issue in March.
Some border agents have also seemed exasperated by the administration’s approach to the crisis.
Tyson Employees Walk Off Job To Protest Vaccine Mandate
ZeroHedge – A group of around a dozen Tyson Foods employees in West Tennessee took to the streets of Newbern on Wednesday to protest the company’s new vaccine mandate.
The employees say they’re risking their jobs to fight against the recent corporate decision to require all employees to take the Covid-19 vaccine, according to KFVS12.
While nobody from the group would speak on camera to news crews – citing their employment agreements, one local business owner spoke on their behalf.
“Nobody wants to be pressured to do anything, especially to their own body, that they don’t want to do,” said Jill Blessing. “For Tyson to actually say, hey, get the shot or you lose your job, and some of these people, I talked to a girl who has worked here 30 years. And that’s a huge thing to put on somebody when that’s their livelihood.”
Around 650 people work at this particular plant.
One woman, Tristin Garland, says two family members work at two different Tyson locations and are at risk of losing their jobs over the vaccine.
“It’s been very stressful for all of us,” said Garland. “I am a nurse and have seen the good and bad due to this vaccine. And trying to decide between your beliefs, when you are so unsure, or keeping your job of 25 years has just been miserable for us.”
Lee Doughten, who is a maintenance worker at the Tyson Plant in Union City, said he’s heard similar protests, and walkouts are being planned there. Doughten said he doesn’t want to get the vaccine and will likely lose his job in November.
“I wish the governor could stop it,” said Doughten. “We were once essential workers, and now we are expendable.” –WREG
Tyson announced last week that all of their 120,000 employees nationwide will need to be vaccinated by Nov. 1 unless they are exempted for medical or religious reasons. Around half of the company’s employees are currently vaccinated, while front-line employees who receive the jab are eligible for a $200 bonus and up to four hours of pay if they are inoculated outside of work.
The protest comes one week after the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union raised objections to to the mandate because the vaccine has not been fully approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The NYPD Had a Secret Fund for Surveillance Tools
Documents reveal that police bought facial-recognition software, vans equipped with x-ray machines, and “stingray” cell site simulators—with no public oversight.
WIRED – NEW YORK CITY police bought a range of surveillance tools—including facial-recognition software, predictive policing software, vans equipped with x-ray machines to detect weapons, and “stingray” cell site simulators—with no public oversight, according to documents released Tuesday.
In all, the documents show that the NYPD spent at least $159 million since 2007 through a little-known “Special Expenses Fund” that did not require approval by the city council or other municipal officials. The documents were made public by two civil rights groups, the Legal Aid Society and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), which say the practice amounted to a “surveillance slush fund.”
Albert Fox Cahn, STOP’s executive director, says police are still blocking other records “needed by the public to understand the way our city is being policed.”
The contracts are heavily redacted, making it difficult to understand how any single tool functions, let alone how they can work together to create a surveillance dragnet over people in New York. The secrecy also inhibits a more complete understanding of the relationship between the NYPD, its vendors, and the public.
In 2018 the NYPD awarded $6.8 million to Idemia Solutions, which furnishes biometric tools including facial recognition. The specifics are redacted, but the company came under fire in 2019 after it was revealed that the NYPD enters children under 18 into facial-recognition databases maintained by the company. The 2018 contract ended in 2020, but it gave the NYPD the option to renew for two years.
In 2014 the NYPD signed a five-year, $800,000 contract with Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest defense contractor, to upgrade and maintain devices throughout the city. The specific devices are redacted in the contract, but Elbit Systems provides a wide range of surveillance tools used by US Customs and Border Patrol on the southern border, including the cameras and sensors that make up the “virtual border wall.”
In 2016 the NYPD entered into a three-year, $750,000 contract with American Science and Engineering, which furnishes mobile x-ray vans. Originally developed to detect improvised explosive devices in war zones, the vans can scan vehicles for weapons from up to 1,500 feet away. Health officials have warned that the devices may be a cancer risk because they can expose passersby to unhealthy amounts of radiation. The NYPD has used the vans since at least 2012, but it has successfully fought attempts to disclose where or how often they’re used, citing national security.
The documents also include contracts with KeyW Corporation, which furnished the NYPD with cell-site simulators, known as “stingrays.” These devices mimic cell phone towers, logging the identifying information of any phone that connects to them, allowing police to track people by their phone.
“Armed with stingrays, law enforcement can—without any assistance or consent from cell phone carriers—pinpoint a person’s location in the home, a place of worship, or a doctor’s office, or conduct mass surveillance on people gathered in an area, whether for a protest, lecture, or a party,” says Daniel Schwarz, privacy and technology strategist at the New York Civil Liberties Union.
In 2017 the NYCLU sued the NYPD for more information on its use of stingray devices after protestors alleged that police interfered with their phones during a protest in honor of Eric Garner, who was killed by an NYPD officer in 2014. With thousands of people in such a small area, the devices would form a dragnet of bystanders who aren’t suspected of any crime, simply engaging in a First Amendment–protected activity. Schwarz says the city, at a minimum, should obtain warrants before using the stingrays.
NSA Warns Employers about Security Threats to Teleworkers Who Use Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and NFC Technology
Threat Post – Agency warns attackers targeting teleworkers to steal corporate data.
The U.S. National Security Agency is offering advice to security teams looking for wireless best practices to protect corporate networks and personal devices. The recommendations, while pedestrian in scope, do offer system administrators a solid cheat sheet to share with their work-from-home crowd and mobile workforces.
For starters the NSA, in a public service announcement posted on Thursday (PDF), urged security teams to be mindful of the wireless threats employees face when using Wi-Fi networks. It also lumps Bluetooth technology and Near Field Communications (NFC) into its list of worrisome protocols.
By now, café-based workers have likely mastered both public bathroom and Wi-Fi hotspot hygiene. But, for anyone who hasn’t the NSA advises: “Data sent over public Wi-Fi—especially open public Wi-Fi that does not require a password to access— is vulnerable to theft or manipulation.”
Advice also includes warnings of fake access points that can vacuum up user credentials and skim other personal data retrieved on the “evil twin” access points.
NSA Warns of Bluetooth
More interestingly, the agency cites Bluetooth as a convenient protocol for private use, but when used in public settings it can be a nasty security liability. The NSA advises turning off Bluetooth in public, lest a user be open to a range of attacks such as BlueBorne or BlueBugging – both used to access and exfiltrate corporate data on targeted devices.
Just last May, security researcher Fabian Braunlein with Positive Security identified Apple’s Send My Bluetooth exploit which allowed data to be exfiltrated from a device to an attacker-controlled Apple iCloud server.
Worrisome NFC
The NSA also touched on Near Field Communications (NFC), a handy tool for contactless payments. It said data transfer between devices using NFC can be a cybersecurity minefield of pitfalls. With just a tap data, is moved across a radio network from one device to another.
Andy Norton a cyber-risk officer with Armis told Threatpost security teams are lagging behind when it comes to securing NFC communications.
“Radio connected devices represents a huge risk blind spot for organizations,” Norton said. “These are very much the soft underbelly of information security controls –– the majority of energy, focus, and money from a cyber resilience perspective is spent on preventing attacks coming through the internet connected attack surface. Very little is being done to access the risk from near field radio connections.”
He added on just about every job his team finds a “rogue antenna device and shadow IT activity from antenna-enabled IoT devices.”
In its security bulletin, the NSA suggests:
- Disable NFC feature when not needed (if possible).
- Do not bring devices near other unknown electronic devices. (This can trigger automatic communication.)
- Do not use NFC to communicate passwords or sensitive data.
“Users should consider additional security measures, including limiting/disabling device location features, using strong device passwords, and only using trusted device accessories, such as original charging cords,” said the NSA.
Watch: French Police Patrol Cafés Asking To See Citizens’ Vaccine Papers
Summit News – Video has emerged out of Paris, France, showing police patrolling cafes and bars demanding to see people’s credentials and making sure they are not breaking the law by enjoying themselves while unvaccinated.
Reuters reporter Antony Paone shared the video noting “The first checks of Police started as a preventive measure at Paris in cafes and restaurants where the Pass Sanitaire is mandatory as of today. Fines of 135 euros and verbal warnings from next week, up to 9,000 euros in the event of a repeat offense.”
Other footage also emerged of private security, train staff and business owners checking the passes which confirm vaccination, a negative test, or (for the time being) recent recovery from the virus on people’s phones:
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jIqPzA2G1E
‘Proof of vaccination please.’
This is what a hi-tech dictatorship looks like in 2021.
>> Related: France’s virus pass now required in restaurants, trains
Big Tech call center workers face pressure to accept home surveillance
Workers at one of the world’s largest call center companies said additional monitoring would violate the privacy of their families in their homes.
NBC – Colombia-based call center workers who provide outsourced customer service to some of the nation’s largest companies are being pressured to sign a contract that lets their employer install cameras in their homes to monitor work performance, an NBC News investigation has found.
Six workers based in Colombia for Teleperformance, one of the world’s largest call center companies, which counts Apple, Amazon and Uber among its clients, said that they are concerned about the new contract, first issued in March. The contract allows monitoring by AI-powered cameras in workers’ homes, voice analytics and storage of data collected from the worker’s family members, including minors. Teleperformance employs more than 380,000 workers globally, including 39,000 workers in Colombia.
“The contract allows constant monitoring of what we are doing, but also our family,” said a Bogota-based worker on the Apple account who was not authorized to speak to the news media. “I think it’s really bad. We don’t work in an office. I work in my bedroom. I don’t want to have a camera in my bedroom.”
The worker said that she signed the contract, a copy of which NBC News has reviewed, because she feared losing her job. She said that she was told by her supervisor that she would be moved off the Apple account if she refused to sign the document. She said the additional surveillance technology has not yet been installed.
The concerns of the workers, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, highlight a pandemic-related trend that has alarmed privacy and labor experts: As many workers have shifted to performing their duties at home, some companies are pushing for increasing levels of digital monitoring of their staff in an effort to recreate the oversight of the office at home.
The issue is not isolated to Teleperformance’s workers in Colombia. The company states on its website that it offers similar monitoring through its TP Cloud Campus product, the software it uses to enable staff to work remotely in more than 19 markets. An official Teleperformance promotional video for TP Cloud Campus from January 2021 describes how it uses “AI to monitor clean desk policy and fraud” among its remote workers by analyzing camera feeds. And in its latest earnings statement, released in June, Teleperformance said it has shifted 240,000 of its approximately 380,000 employees to working from home thanks to the TP Cloud Campus product.
At the end of 2020, workers at Teleperformance in Albania, including those working on the Apple U.K. account, complained to the country’s Information and Data Protection Commissioner about the company’s proposal to introduce video monitoring in their homes. The commissioner later ruled that Teleperformance could not use webcams to monitor Albanian workers in their homes.
“Surveillance at home has really been normalized in the context of the pandemic,” said Veena Dubal, a labor law professor at the University of California, Hastings. “Companies see a lot of benefit in putting in software to do all kinds of monitoring they would have otherwise expected their human managers to do, but the reality is that it’s much more intrusive than surveillance conducted by a boss.”
Study Outlines The Damage to Democracy and Human Rights Under Lockdowns
AIER – In February of 2021, the former British judge Lord Sumption wrote an article proclaiming that liberal democracy might be the greatest fatality of the Covid-19 pandemic. He correctly noted the disturbing use of government power that was unleashed onto every aspect of society in a manner never before seen. If such powers are not correctly repackaged and locked away, liberal democracies worldwide would be in a much darker place and the grand experiment of a free and open society would fall victim to a demise of its own design. His sentiments are echoed by the latest addition of a comprehensive study published by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg which describes itself as follows,
“Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) produces the largest global dataset on democracy with almost 30 million data points for 202 countries from 1789 to 2020. Involving over 3,500 scholars and other country experts, V-Dem measures hundreds of different attributes of democracy. V-Dem enables new ways to study the nature, causes, and consequences of democracy embracing its multiple meanings.”
Their 2021 report notes that over the past ten years liberal democracy has been on the decline and autocracy has been on the rise. This is exemplified by populist and nationalist movements in countries such as India, Brazil, Poland, Turkey, and the United States. The number of liberal democracies has declined from 41 to 32 over the course of the past decade and electoral autocracies have become the most common regime type. Authoritarian countries like China and Russia not only solidified their power but expanded, such as with the recent crackdowns in Hong Kong and the annexation of Crimea.
The most shocking findings of the report were the extent of the abuse of power that transpired under the guise of fighting Covid-19. In Western liberal democracies, the restrictions were quite severe with prohibitions on travel, discriminatory behavior, executive overreach, attacks against free expression, and a lack of time limits on emergency powers being common themes. However, what has transpired in more autocratic regimes under lockdowns would make even the most tyrannical American governors blush. Ultimately, the report concludes that liberal democracy during the lockdowns took a hit, but the damage can be minimized if restrictions are lifted and emergency powers are reformed. Lockdowns, as devastating as they were, are only one factor in the chronic decline of our liberal democratic system. However, such a decline opens the door to even worse possibilities.
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