Dec 26

Today’s News 26th December 2024

  • China Drone Swarms And US Lasers: The Coming Revolutions In Warfare
    China Drone Swarms And US Lasers: The Coming Revolutions In Warfare

    Authored by Anders Corr via The Epoch Times,

    Given the coming technological revolutions in warfare, it is important that the United States and our allies get out in front early, keep the lead, and degrade the adversary’s capabilities.

    China’s “loyal wingman” fighter drones get a lot of attention these days. The wingman is a force multiplier, meant to fly in numbers alongside its crewed jet fighters or to lead a fleet of smaller drones. If deployed in a swarm, the wingmen and smaller drones could quickly overwhelm a fleet of manned fighter jets and air defenses. They are jet-powered but far less expensive than a regular fighter jet to fly, in part because they do not require a trained pilot. Some simulated dogfights between human pilots and artificial intelligence (AI) pilots who learn on the fly have resulted in AI wins as far back as 2020.

    The latest iteration of the Chinese wingman drone—called the Feihong FH-97A—appears to be a vast improvement over the earlier versions unveiled in 2022 and 2023. The FH-97A is reportedly faster than its U.S. counterpart, the XQ-58A Valkyrie. The range of the FH-97A is about 620 miles. The current range is more than enough to reach anywhere in Taiwan, plus sea lanes on the eastern side of the island that would be critical for provisioning Taiwan in case of a war or naval blockade. From Chinese possessions, the FH-97A can range all of South Korea, the East China Sea, parts of Japan and the Philippines, and all of the South China Sea through island hopping on China’s airfields and artificial islands.

    Moreover, the FH-97A could, in the future, be used to attack any part of the United States or Europe, given that it can catapult launch from aircraft carriers and because the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has plans to give it aerial refueling capabilities. The drones will add to the power of the PLA Air Force’s other recent innovations (and thefts from the United States), including stealth fighter jets and stealth bombers. The drones can be used for air- and land-attack missions, electronic warfare, reconnaissance, and bomber escort.

    While the United States has long had better-trained fighter pilots and more advanced planes, giving it air superiority over China, those tables could be turning. Without the need for pilots but rather the utilization of AI programs that have demonstrated superiority, China’s age of high technology and mass industrial production could far outproduce the United States and shift air superiority decisively to the PLA.

    This would have immediate and dire consequences for countries already under military pressure from Beijing, namely Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan, and India.

    One promising defense against Chinese drones is laser-based weapons; for example, the HELIOS system deployed on a U.S. naval destroyer in 2022 and the DragonFire system tested by the United Kingdom in January.

    The DragonFire laser can destroy targets with pinpoint accuracy in its line of sight with shots that would cut through the drone’s mechanics or explode its warheads. Each shot costs less than £10 ($12.61) to fire for 10 seconds, suggesting they could be used to cheaply slice into an enemy system with repeated passes. Compare that to the cost of a missile interceptor at a million dollars or more, which can be a waste of money against some of the cheapest Iranian military drones, for example, that cost at most $2,000 each. The British system is planned for deployment on the country’s naval ships by 2027, with the British army also considering a deployment. Scientists in China are also developing laser weapons, including for use from space.

    Laser weapons could eventually negate the power of intercontinental ballistic missiles and hypersonic missiles and force surface and air combatants underwater, where lasers are ineffective.

    Subsurface combatants could become relatively useless against land targets except perhaps those closest to the coast. In the case of Ukraine, for example, the widespread adoption of laser weapons could create a stalemate for years to come.

    The United States is now the world’s strongest superpower, considered economically and militarily. Many have come before, and none lasted forever. One mistake that results in the loss of the technological lead to China or Russia, for example, could be the end of the United States as we know it. Now is our chance to avoid that disaster.

    *  *  *

    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/25/2024 – 23:00

  • 41% Of College-Aged Voters Consider UnitedHealthcare CEO Killing "Acceptable"; New Poll Finds
    41% Of College-Aged Voters Consider UnitedHealthcare CEO Killing “Acceptable”; New Poll Finds

    Authored by Adam Sabes via Campus Reform,

    41% of college-aged voters consider the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thomas as “acceptable,” according to a new poll…

    Emerson Polling conducted the survey of 1,000 registered voters between Dec. 11-13, according to Axios.

    A whopping 41% of voters aged 18 to 29 years old either consider the killing of Thomas as “acceptable” or “somewhat acceptable.”

    Support for the killing drops significantly in older generations, as 23% of voters aged 30 to 39 support the killing and 13% of those aged 40 to 49.

    Just 8% of voters aged 50 to 59 support the killing.

    One professor at the University of Pennsylvania apologized after praising Luigi Mangione, who allegedly killed Thompson.

    In several posts, University of Pennsylvania Professor Julia Alekseyeva called Mangione “[t]he icon we all need and deserve” and took pride in the fact that he graduated from the same institution.

    In her apology, Alekseyeva wrote:

    “Late last night I posted a TikTok, as well as several stories on my Instagram. These were completely insensitive and inappropriate, and I retract them wholly. I do not condone violence and I am genuinely regretful of any harm the posts have caused.”

    Overall, 68% of voters surveyed consider the actions of Thompson’s killer unacceptable.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/25/2024 – 22:00

  • Could Trump's 2024 Victory Counter A 2026 'Midterm Curse'?
    Could Trump’s 2024 Victory Counter A 2026 ‘Midterm Curse’?

    Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClearPolitics,

    Donald Trump’s popular vote victory has eroded some of the demographic gains Democrats have been working on for years, giving Republicans hope they can break the historic trend of the president’s party losing seats in the first midterm election after winning the White House.

    Two years from now some 14 Democratic House members will be defending districts Trump won, compared to just three Republicans in districts carried by Vice President Kamala Harris.

    It’s a significantly better outlook than the GOP faced after Trump’s 2016 victory, which he eked out on the basis of an Electoral College win in the key swing states. That year, two dozen Republicans were elected in districts Hillary Clinton won, roughly the same number of Democrat-occupied seats that Trump carried. In 2018, Democrats gained seats in the Clinton districts and even carved into some of the districts that Trump won, wresting back control of the majority until 2022, when Republicans re-took control.

    One reason House majorities have grown slimmer in recent years is the increasingly sophisticated redistricting fights waged by both parties. Over the last decade, Democrats and Republicans have engaged in a protracted battle over the redrawing of congressional districts involving millions of dollars in litigation, thousands of hours of closed-door negotiations, and multiple Supreme Court showdowns.  

    Partly because of their efforts, Democrats limited the House majority to five seats this year – 220 to Democrats’ 215. But because of Trump’s popular vote victory, winning back the majority in 2026 will require Democrats to carve a path through Trump territory.

    “In places where the Democrats were really banking on this whole ‘demographics as destiny’ thing to carry them through  the decade, President Trump just detonated that,” said Adam Kincaid, president and executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust.

    Overall, Trump carried nearly the same number of congressional districts across the nation – 231 – that he did in 2016 before the most recent redrawing of the congressional maps took place. In 2016, Kincaid says Trump won many of those districts by a plurality because third-party candidate Evan McMullen, a former CIA officer who ran as an independent, siphoned off votes in nearly two dozen districts. Now, Trump’s two-party vote share is 50.8% – meaning he should have carried only 221 congressional districts if the results were directly proportional to the percentage of the vote he won.

    Kincaid argues the surplus of 10 House districts is a sign of his group’s redistricting success.

    Democrats counter that Republicans’ razor-thin majority demonstrates their own success in taking their fights for more advantageous maps to the courts, especially across the South, where Republicans control many state legislatures and have spent decades drawing the maps in their favor.

    In 2016, voters favored House Republicans over Democrats by only a 1.1% advantage, 49.1% to 48%, but Republicans held a far larger House majority, 241 to 194. This year, House Republicans won 50.5% of the vote to Democrats’ 47.9% but will hold only a five-seat majority next year.

    “The popular vote and seat-count margin in Congress this past election and in 2022 is evidence that the [Democratic] redistricting strategy is working,” Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, told RealClearPolitics. “What you’re seeing is a map that actually reflects where the voters are, and that’s a far cry from where we were a decade ago.”

    Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the liberal-leaning Brennan Center has long argued that GOP-gerrymandered maps have for years given Republicans such an unfair edge that Democrats typically need to win the national aggregate popular vote in congressional races by 2-3% to control the House.

    He and others often point to 2012, when House Democrats won 1.4 million more votes than Republicans, but the GOP held a 33-seat majority.

    That gap has narrowed greatly in the ensuing years.

    “There’s a lot of really good work that happened by candidates in competitive districts, and there are some places where those competitive districts went to Republicans, but that’s the whole point,” Jenkins said. “These districts are now fair and responsive. If it remains that way through the decade, that’s a good thing.”

    With a more even playing field, the Democrats’ chances of taking advantage of the famed “midterm curse” in 2026 will depend in large part on whether Trump’s popularity recedes over the next two years, a variable impossible to predict. While the national politics play out, Democrats and Republicans will continue focusing on what they can control – continuing their redistricting court battles as far as they can take them.

    This cycle, NDRC efforts are likely to result in Democrats gaining two seats in Alabama and Louisiana as a result of lawsuits forcing the state to abide by the Voting Rights Act, to draw maps reflecting the percentage of black voters. Federal judges ordered lawmakers in those states to give African Americans more opportunities to elect House candidates representing their views.

    Meanwhile, the legal battle over the congressional map in Georgia didn’t change the partisan breakdown of the state’s House delegation. In North Carolina, the Republican-controlled state legislature crafted congressional district lines that gave their party a huge advantage, flipping three seats previously held by Democrats. In New York, the Democratic majority in the state legislature, ridiculed for the comically extreme gerrymandered original congressional map, adjusted to a more modest position.

    Here are some of the most recent redistricting disputes, outcomes, and pending developments.

    Louisiana

    This year, the Supreme Court is expected to weigh in on the lower court ruling forcing the Republican-controlled state legislature to approve a second black-majority district.

    After the November election, the state now has two black members of its six-member delegation – Rep. Cleo Fields representing the newly drawn 6th District, and Rep. Troy Carter, who easily won reelection with 60% of the vote.

    New York

    Even though the predicted Republican “red wave” never materialized in 2022, Republicans managed to flip four House seats in New York that year, which helped them secure the majority. But a ruling by the state’s highest court threatened to jeopardize those gains by making it easier for Democrats to net as many as six Republican-held seats.

    Democratic state lawmakers, however, decided not to overreach and to make only modest adjustments to the district lines. The New York legislature’s final map made modest changes, reducing the number of Republicans in freshman GOP Rep. Brandon William’s district while solidifying Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi’s Long Island seat, which the party flipped in a February special election to succeed Rep. George Santos, who was expelled from the chamber.

    Both parties have said they will operate with the new map, a decision that cements New York as a top battleground for House control for years to come.

    North Carolina

    Republicans hold a supermajority in North Carolina’s state legislature and used that power to redraw districts lines in their favor. The state’s congressional map was redrawn three times before the 2022 midterm elections, resulting in a 7-7 partisan split of the House delegation.

    Republicans who had gained more sway over the redistricting process in the 2022 midterm elections, including flipping the state supreme court, weren’t satisfied and redrew the map once again before 2024.

    In the end, Republicans flipped three House seats to Republicans after the Democratic incumbents decided against running for reelection in the GOP-skewed new districts.

    Democratic Rep. Roy Cooper lacks veto power over redistricting legislation, so Democratic Party lawyers filed lawsuits on behalf of black and Hispanic voters alleging the new map “intentionally discriminates” against minority voters.

    The cases are pending before a three-judge panel.

    Alabama

    The U.S. Supreme Court has already weighed in on the latest Alabama-approved map, which created a second congressional district with a substantial black population. Before the court action, the state, which is 27% African American, had only one black-majority district out of seven.

    In the high court’s 5-4 decision upholding the map, conservative justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh agreed with three liberal justices to uphold the lower-court ruling enforcing a key provision of the Voting Rights Act – making it illegal to draw maps aimed at diluting the influence of black voters.

    The ruling, which could impact the similar pending case in Louisiana, resulted in the election of two black House members from Alabama serving together for the first time in history. Shomari Figures will represent the newly drawn 2nd Congressional District, which includes Mobile County and much of the so-called rural “Black Belt” (named for its rich soil, not its people). Figures, a Mobile native who worked in the Biden administration, won by nine percentage points last month. He will join longtime incumbent Rep. Terri Sewell of the state’s sprawling 7th Congressional District centered in her hometown of Selma. She willingly ceded some of the Black Belt to help make the delegation more diverse – and more Democratic.

    The Supreme Court’s ruling blocked the state from implementing its map but was not a final resolution of the case. State officials last fall said they would operate under the high court’s ruling but planned to continue litigating the case. The case is set to go to trial in February.

    Georgia

    Georgia Republicans fought Democratic efforts to add an additional House seat they would likely control. The GOP-drawn map complied with an order issued by U.S. District Judge Steve Jones to establish an additional black majority district.

    The map accommodated that requirement but preserved the Republicans’ 9-5 advantage in the state’s House delegation by shifting the Atlanta-area district held by Rep. Lucy McBath, a black Democrat, farther into Republican territory.

    Jones late in 2023 ruled that the newly drawn map, which preserved the GOP’s 9-5 advantage, “fully complied” with his ruling.

    The judge was abiding by Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voters but doesn’t prevent Republicans from altering Democratic-held districts with white majorities or where no ethnic group is in the majority. Such was the case with McBath’s district, enabling the GOP-controlled legislature to dilute the district with more Republican voters. Despite the changes, McBath won the redrawn 6th District with 75% of the vote.

    That’s not the end of the litigation. A separate federal case in Georgia argues the new map is unconstitutional. That case faces a stay pending an appeals court decision in the Voting Rights Act cases, which a three-judge panel is set to hear in late January.

    Florida

    In September 2023, a state judge ruled against a redrawn district in Northern Florida that Gov. Ron DeSantis had defended.

    The case differs from Alabama’s Voting Rights Act lawsuit decided by the Supreme Court in that it is based on the Fair District provisions in the state constitution. The Republican-drawn map dismantled a seat held by Rep. Al Lawson, a black Democrat, that spanned several black communities across a northern swath of Florida.

    Late last year, however, a state appeals court upheld the map DeSantis argued in favor of, determining that the plaintiffs “failed to present any evidence” that the prior version of the district contained a singular cohesive community that would have a right to protection under Florida law.

    The state supreme court is expected to issue an opinion soon.

    Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ national political correspondent.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/25/2024 – 21:00

  • Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton Sues NCAA Over Allegedly Misleading Transgender Policy
    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton Sues NCAA Over Allegedly Misleading Transgender Policy

    Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) on Dec. 22 for allegedly misleading sportgoers into believing they were watching a competition between players of one gender.

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) meeting in National Harbor, Md., on Feb. 23, 2024. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

    “The NCAA is intentionally and knowingly jeopardizing the safety and wellbeing of women by deceptively changing women’s competitions into co-ed competitions,” Paxton said in a statement on Sunday. “When people watch a women’s volleyball game, for example, they expect to see women playing against other women—not biological males pretending to be something they are not. Radical ‘gender theory’ has no place in college sports.”

    Paxton argued in the lawsuit that the NCAA’s practice of allowing biological men who identify as women to play in women’s sports violates the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, which protects consumers from scams.

    In response to The Epoch Times’ request for comment, an NCAA spokesperson said though the association doesn’t comment on pending litigation, it will “continue to promote Title IX, make unprecedented investments in women’s sports and ensure fair competition in all NCAA championships.”

    “Most consumers know that a ‘woman’ means an adult human female,” Paxton said, a definition that has been commonly understood “throughout human history,” he noted.

    By allowing men to compete in women’s college sports, the NCAA is robbing women of their earned positions and lying to consumers about the competitive nature of the sporting event, he said.

    “When female athletes are forced to compete against men in women’s sports, they are deprived of titles, records, medals, scholarships, and opportunities to win; opportunities to participate in a fair and safe environment; and the ancillary benefits that sports participation provides,” he said in the lawsuit. “Consumers do not purchase goods and services associated with women’s sporting events to watch men steal medals and records from female programs.”

    In March, former college swimmer Riley Gaines and other female college athletes filed a lawsuit against the NCAA for allowing men identifying as women to compete in women’s sports.

    In October, 26 college regents in Georgia called on the NCAA to ban men identifying as transgender athletes from women’s college sports.

    In its “Transgender Student-Athlete Participation Policy,” updated in May 2024, the NCAA said it aligned with the student-athlete Olympic Movement, which allows for “transgender student-athlete participation for each sport to be determined by the policy for the national governing body of that sport.”

    If there’s no national governing body for the sport, NCAA policy guidelines default to the International Olympic Committee’s policy criteria and the 2010 NCAA policy, in addition to a requirement that such athletes “meet the sport standard for documented testosterone levels” before competing.

    On Dec. 20, the Department of Education withdrew its 2023 proposed rule that would have prohibited schools from banning male athletes who identify as women from participating in women’s sports.

    Citing the complexity of the public comments and legal battles, the department said it chose “not to regulate on this issue at this time.”

    Aldgra Fredly and Caden Pearson contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/25/2024 – 20:00

  • Merry Christmas… Here's The Average Credit Card Debt In Every US State
    Merry Christmas… Here’s The Average Credit Card Debt In Every US State

    This map, via Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao, visualizes the average credit card debt held by households in each U.S. state and ranks the states where residents pay off the debt the fastest and slowest.

    Data is sourced from Bankrate (2024) who also used average monthly household income to calculate how long it takes to pay off balances.

    ℹ️ Assumptions made for this analysis: 5% of monthly household income is used for card payments. Also, no new debt is accrued in this time period.

    How Long it Takes to Pay off Credit Card Balances in Each State

    Households in Alaska and Washington D.C. are carrying more than $7,000 in credit card debt, the highest across the country. However, with average annual household incomes of $109,000 and $149,000, residents in both states can pay off their debt in about 14–20 months.

    In fact, glancing through the numbers below reveals a pattern.

    *Assuming no new debt is accrued. **Federal district.

    Richer state households—Connecticut, California, Washington—have higher costs of living and are carrying higher credit card balances. But they also manage to pay them off quickly with their larger incomes.

    On the other hand, households in poorer states have below-average debt but it take closer to two years for them to pay it off.

    This highlights the unequal debt burden across America. While the people living on the coasts have higher costs, they’re compensated by their incomes. However the South’s lower costs are not as evenly compensated.

    And of course, compound interest is not a game played in favor of the borrower. Carrying the debt for longer periods of time accrues additional interest. Bankrate’s analysis points out that when making only minimum payments, it would take more than 17 years to pay it off the national average debt: $6,140.

    In case that seems like a ludicrous amount of time, here’s a good reminder that most credit card interest compounds daily and not monthly.

    Cross reference this map with Credit Card Delinquency Rates by State to see the effects of debt burden.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/25/2024 – 19:00

  • Trump Announces Anti-Drug Ad Blitz, Vows To Designate Mexican Cartels As Terrorists
    Trump Announces Anti-Drug Ad Blitz, Vows To Designate Mexican Cartels As Terrorists

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    President-elect Donald Trump said Sunday he would aim to designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations and will launch an anti-drug advertising campaign inside the United States.

    “I will immediately designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations,” Trump said in Arizona at a Turning Point conference, reiterating a campaign promise to make the declaration.

    President-elect Donald Trump looks on during Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Ariz., on Dec. 22, 2024. Rebecca Noble/Getty Images

    While in office in 2019, Trump had planned to make the designation and ultimately did not make the move after a request from then-Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who said he wanted cooperation with the U.S. government on dealing with drug cartels.

    Trump’s election platform has stated when he returns to the White House, he will direct the Department of Defense to use “special forces, cyber warfare, and other covert and overt actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure, and operations.”

    Trump on Sunday also previewed a new advertising initiative designed to provide information about the effects of drug use.

    “We’re going to advertise how bad drugs are for you,” Trump said in Arizona at a Turning Point conference, referring to the ad campaign. “They ruin your look, they ruin your face, they ruin your skin, they ruin your teeth.”

    While he did not provide more details about the campaign, it appears to be the first time Trump has made reference to the plan.

    In the 1970s and 1980s, anti-drug ad blitzes were launched across the United States, culminating in former first lady Nancy Reagan’s “just say no” campaign that was designed to prevent younger Americans from doing drugs. Public schools also featured the Drug Abuse Resistance Education, also known as D.A.R.E, that sought to provide information on illegal drugs and controlled substances, as well as prevent gang membership and violent behavior.

    Over the past several years, hundreds of thousands of Americans have died of overdoses of the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl, which is easy to do due to its potency—just 2 milligrams can be fatal. The drug, which is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, is often trafficked across the U.S.–Mexico border by drug cartels based in Mexico.

    Trump’s 2024 campaign has heavily leaned into messaging around stopping the fentanyl epidemic as well as illegal immigration into the United States. Since winning the election last month, the president-elect has said he will also start operations for mass deportations and would declare a nationwide emergency over the matter.

    The incoming Trump administration’s border czar, Tom Homan, a former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and other Trump officials have said that they will prioritize targeting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes or are deemed a threat to U.S. national security for deportation.

    They have also pledged to deport anyone residing in the country illegally, although Trump has indicated he would consider allowing illegal immigrants who have been in the United States since childhood to remain under certain conditions.

    The U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimates that 11 million illegal immigrants were living in the United States as of 2022, the latest statistics that are available. While campaigning in the 2024 contest, Trump talked about creating the “largest deportation effort in the history of our country” and called for using the National Guard and domestic police forces in the effort.

    Reuters contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/25/2024 – 18:00

  • Millions Of Companies Must Register w/ Massive U.S. Database By Jan. 1 Due To Last-Minute Court Ruling
    Millions Of Companies Must Register w/ Massive U.S. Database By Jan. 1 Due To Last-Minute Court Ruling

    Authored by Ken Silva via Headline USA,

    Millions of U.S. companies might be busy over the holidays forking over their data to the Treasury Department, thanks to a last-minute ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

    The Treasury Department / PHOTO: AP

    The Fifth Circuit on Monday overturned a lower court’s injunction against a constitutionally dubious law that requires the country’s estimated 32.6 million active companies to submit their private ownership information to a central database ran by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN.

    The ruling means that all companies formed prior to 2024 must file a report with Treasury by next Wednesday, Jan. 1. Companies formed this year are required to file within 90 days of their formation.

    “Enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) has been reinstated along with its impending January 1, 2025 filing deadline,” the financial firm Brown Advisory said in a Tuesday press release. “These reports provide basic legal information about the company itself, the entity’s owners, and the individuals that create or register the entity.”

    Forbes predicated there’s still a long legal battle ahead.

    “Additionally, a potential new administration may take steps to limit the CTA administratively, adding another layer of uncertainty for businesses,” Forbes reported.

    The cost of compliance with the law is estimated to be some $22.7 billion the first year and $5.6 billion per year thereafter.

    The U.S. government and liberal activists have argued for decades that a central beneficial ownership registry is required to curtail money laundering. Critics have pointed out how the central registry would pose privacy risks and impose another layer of regulation on private businesses. Moreover, criminals wouldn’t voluntarily submit their personal information for such a registry.

    There are six plaintiffs suing over the law, including two that don’t do business outside their respective states. Another plaintiff was the Libertarian Party of Mississippi, which is a non-profit political entity, but would have still had to register under the Corporate Transparency Act.

    Roughly 5 million new companies are formed in the U.S. each year.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/25/2024 – 16:00

  • "Sudden Spike" In US Marijuana Substitution For Alcohol Ahead Of Trump-Era
    “Sudden Spike” In US Marijuana Substitution For Alcohol Ahead Of Trump-Era

    The number of Americans turning to marijuana as a substitute for alcohol, cigarettes, and painkillers has surged in recent years, according to a new survey by Bloomberg Intelligence. 

    Amir Islam of Bloomberg Intelligence highlighted a “sudden spike” in the substitution of marijuana for alcohol, with the latest survey showing 44% of respondents making the switch, up from 33% in 2022.

    “This is in contrast to less marijuana substitution for cigarettes (30% vs. 39%) and pain killers (30% vs. 35%). The results may prompt additional interest in cannabis from alcoholic beverage producers,” Islam noted. 

    He further noted that major consumer companies, including Altria, Constellation Brands, British American Tobacco, and Imperial Brands, are expanding into the cannabis industry through joint ventures or acquiring stakes in Canadian cannabis producers, positioning for eventual US expansion when federal laws ease. 

    Looking ahead, President-elect Donald Trump may follow through on the Biden administration’s proposed removal of marijuana from the list of Schedule I controlled substances, reclassifying it as a Schedule III drug, a category that acknowledges the drug has lower misuse potential and is often used for medical benefits. 

    David Culver, the senior vice president of public affairs of the US Cannabis Council lobbying group, told NPR News last month that he’s very optimistic that Trump will approach cannabis in a similar way to Biden. 

    “We didn’t see a lot of activity from President Trump, if any at all, on cannabis reform” in his first term, Culver said, adding, “But I think this time is going to be different.”

    In markets, some of the top marijuana ETFs, including AdvisorShares Pure US Cannabis ETF (MSOS), Amplify Alternative Harvest ETF (MJ), AdvisorShares Pure Cannabis ETF (YOLO), and Amplify US Alternative Harvest ETF (MJUS), have been battered since the marijuana stock bubble unraveled in early 2021. None of these ETFs have yet to bottom. 

    In early September, Trump noted on Truth Social:

    As I have previously stated, I believe it is time to end needless arrests and incarcerations of adults for small amounts of marijuana for personal use. We must also implement smart regulations, while providing access for adults, to safe, tested product. As a Floridian, I will be voting YES on Amendment 3 this November. As President, we will continue to focus on research to unlock the medical uses of marijuana to a Schedule 3 drug, and work with Congress to pass common sense laws, including safe banking for state authorized companies, and supporting states rights to pass marijuana laws, like in Florida, that work so well for their citizens.

    Keep in mind that with individuals like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who will have prominent roles in the incoming administration and have been pro-legalization advocates, a significant shift in national policy may be just ahead in Trump’s second term. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/25/2024 – 15:00

  • 'We Created A Pretend World': Mossad Agents Boast About Mass Pager Attack In Lebanon
    ‘We Created A Pretend World’: Mossad Agents Boast About Mass Pager Attack In Lebanon

    Via The Cradle

    Former Mossad agents revealed new details of Israel’s pager and walkie-talkie terror attacks carried out against members of Hezbollah in interviews with the CBS News program 60 Minutes this week..

    According to a former Israeli intelligence agent known as Michael, Hezbollah bought more than 16,000 of the exploding devices. When Mossad chief David Barnea gave the green light for the attack in September, the pagers and walkie-talkies were detonated on subsequent days.

    Some 42 people were killed, including two children, while about 4,000 were injured. Many lost their hands and eyes or had their stomachs ripped open by the explosions. Michael said the walkie-talkie batteries, which included explosive devices, were made in Israel at a Mossad facility.

    Wounded pager attack victim, via CNN

    Mossad then set up shell companies to infiltrate the supply chain and sell the devices to Hezbollah. The walkie-talkies were designed to go into armored tactical vests used in battle.

    “We create a pretend world. We are a global production company: We write the screenplay, we’re the directors, we’re the producers, we’re the main actors,” Michael said. “And the world is our stage.”

    Another former Mossad agent, Gabriel, told 60 Minutes that the spy agency began developing booby-trapped pagers in 2022. They wanted a device that Hezbollah members would carry with them at all times, not just in battle.

    Gabriel said Mossad had learned that the Lebanese resistance movement was buying pagers from a company in Taiwan called Gold Apollo. Mossad set up shell companies, including one in Hungary, to produce the explosive pagers and market them under a licensing agreement with Gold Apollo.

    The pagers had no intelligence capabilities and could not be used to track Hezbollah members or gather information about them, Gabriel said. They could only be detonated to kill or maim anyone holding them.

    Hezbollah members, both in the military and civilian wings, used pagers instead of cell phones to communicate to avoid being surveilled by Israel. “This is a very stupid device by nature. This is the reason they’re using it. There’s almost no way how to tap it,” Gabriel said. 

    Mossad paid for fake ads on YouTube, promoting them as dustproof, waterproof, and with a long battery life. They also posted fake online testimonials for the pagers.

    “It became the best product in the beeper area in the world,” Gabriel said. “When they are buying from us, they have zero clue that they are buying from the Mossad. We make like the ‘Truman Show,’ everything is controlled by us behind the scenes,” Gabriel claimed.  

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    A Mossad shell company also hired the Gold Apollo saleswoman Hezbollah was already working with. She offered Hezbollah the first batch of pagers as an upgrade, free of charge. By the time of the terror attack in September 2024, around 5,000 Hezbollah members were carrying the pagers. 

    At 3:30 pm on September 17, Mossad detonated the pagers. The walkie-talkies were detonated the following day. “Mayhem ensued as explosions went off. Hospitals filled up with the wounded. Limbs and fingers were torn off. People were left bloodied, blinded, and even with holes in their stomachs,” CBS wrote.

    Following the pager and walkie-talkie terror attacks, the Israeli Air Force unleashed a major bombing campaign in Lebanon. The bombing killed over 500 people on just the first day.

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    On September 27, Israel dropped over 80 2,000-pound bombs (around 907 kilograms) on Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s bunker, assassinating him.

    Over the next two months, Israel and Hezbollah fought a major war that ended in a 60-day ceasefire that took effect on November 27.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/25/2024 – 14:15

  • Owners Of Russian Ship Ursa Major Declare Sinking An "Act Of Terrorism"
    Owners Of Russian Ship Ursa Major Declare Sinking An “Act Of Terrorism”

    The Russian cargo ship that sank on Tuesday in the Mediterranean Sea following a mysterious explosion in its engine room was described as an “act of terrorism,” according to the vessel’s owner.

    Reuters cites the Russian news agency RIA, which reported on Christmas Day that Oboronlogistika, the ship’s owner and a subsidiary of the Russian Defense Ministry’s military construction operations, stated that the cargo ship, named Ursa Major, had been targeted in “a terrorist act.”

    On Monday, Ukraine’s main intelligence directorate reported the cargo vessel was “sent by Russia to retrieve its weapons and equipment from Syria, broke down off the coast of Portugal due to a malfunction in the fuel pipe of its main engine.” 

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    The ship tracking website Marine Traffic shows Ursa Major’s last location was drifting on the high seas near Portugal before sinking on Tuesday. 

    Neither RIA nor Russian authorities have provided additional color about the claimed terrorist attack on the cargo vessel or who they suspect is responsible.

    We asked earlier this week: “The big question for the Ursa Major is whether any US Navy submarines with special forces units lurk beneath.” 

    If the terrorist attack claim is confirmed, the fear is that the battlefield in Eastern Europe is broadening outside the region.

    Nearly three years into the Russia-Ukraine war and marking the second Christmas, Free Press’ Jay Solomon recently asked: “Is World War III Already Here?”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/25/2024 – 13:30

  • These Are The 9 Most MAGA-Friendly Christmas Movies (And Why)
    These Are The 9 Most MAGA-Friendly Christmas Movies (And Why)

    Authored by Ben Sellers via Headline USA,

    Christmas is, above all else, a time for putting aside the petty grievances and differences that separate us from one another and finding meaning in something greater than ourselves.

    Some of the best works of literature and cinema about the season examine this spirit of selflessness, which can seem antithetical to “America First” values when cast in a particular light. But at its core, the spirit of Christmas is quintessentially the same as that which brought millions of people to the polls in November to re-elect Donald Trump. 

    Attempting to catalog all of the thousands of Christmas movies, of course, would be an impossible feat, but below is a list of nine (plus honorable mentions) that resonate particularly well with the MAGA message.

    While the list leaves a lot open to interpretation as to what constitutes a “Christmas” movie or a “MAGA” movie, the one prerequisite was that the themes of both had to be prevalent enough to be immediately recognizable.

    Thus, Rambo: First Blood may have included a scene with Christmas decorations in it, but it did not make the cut—even though it might be considered a MAGA classic—because the movie itself does not directly involve the holiday. And although the BB gun subplot in A Christmas Story may have promoted Second Amendment rights for some, that was not an explicit message so much as it was a sign of the times.

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    We will kick things off with the low-hanging fruit—the only Christmas classic (to date) known to include a cameo from future two-time President Donald Trump himself.

    9. HOME ALONE 2: LOST IN NEW YORK

    Why it counts: Trump

    The sequel to one of the most beloved modern Christmas classics is now one of the most beloved MAGA classics due to Trump’s cameo appearance. Much of the film revolves around the iconic Plaza Hotel, which Trump owned at the time but went on to sell in 1995. (Maybe he found out that the desk clerk also moonlighted as a transvestite.)

    Another memorable scene takes place at the Wollman Rink, a public ice-skating ring with strong ties to the former Manhattan real-estate magnate. And as an added bonus, the movie features an early appearance from MAGA-friendly comedian Rob Schneider as the bellhop.

    Unfortunately, some of its other actors, including Macaulay Culkin and Daniel Stern, have attempted in recent years to use the movie’s renewed relevance as a platform for petty political attacks, and any royalties from it benefit them as well.

    Honorable mention: While stylistically very different and not specifically centered around Trump himself, MAGA fans might also consider watching A Lion in Winter, the star-studded 1968 Oscar-winner about an aging ruler who—like Trump—has three sons and must decide who is best fit to carry on his dynasty.

    8. ROCKY IV

    Why it counts: Peace through strength

    The 1985 box-office smash came at the very peak of the Ronald Reagan era, just two years before the famous Berlin speech that saw Reagan urging Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” and four years before the official fall of the Soviet Union. It was the last of the Rocky films to be directed by Trump-backer Sylvester Stallone (who fittingly described the Republican leader as a “Dickensian” character) until 2006’s Rocky Balboa.

    While the Cold War-jingoism resonated with Republicans during the Reagan era, Stallone’s climactic victory speech also underscores the ideas of mutual respect and healthy dialogue as a means to peace.

    “In here, there were two guys killing each other, but I guess that’s better than 20 million,” Rocky Balboa says after his defeat of Ivan Drago. “I guess what I’m trying to say, is that if I can change, and you can change, everybody can change!”

    He then wishes his son a Merry Christmas, as the fight took place on Christmas Day. Although the holiday does not figure prominently into the plot, it is one of several action movies whose inclusion of Christmas elements has sparked debate.

    However, because the Soviet Union was typically hostile toward religion and did not formally recognize Christmas as a holiday, Balboa’s sacrifice in forgoing the holiday season for the greater good of his country may have been an important reminder that many of those in uniform may not have had the luxury of returning home for the holidays.

    Honorable mention: The aforementioned Rambo: First Blood has holiday decorations, but the ever-controversial Die Hard, set during the Christmas season, is the best known of all the Christmas “action” movies that have audiences divided, featuring rogue cop John McClane (portrayed by Bruce Willis—another rare Hollywood Republican) taking on a network of terrorists in New York City.

    7. THE REF

    Why it counts: Political incorrectness

    Ref star Denis Leary unfortunately made the decision in a 2016 gag appearance with late-night host James Corden to attack Trump by rewriting the words to his 1990s gag song “A**hole” for that year’s campaign against Hillary Clinton. It was a hamfisted attempt at comedy then, and it has aged particularly poorly given Trump’s resonance with the American voting public—many of them the same blue-collar types whom Leary tried to appeal to with his updated Archie Bunker schtick.

    Leary’s 1994 holiday hit The Ref also aged poorly for its other star, Kevin Spacey, but those able to suspend their disbelief can appreciate the fantastic comedic timing that Spacey and co-star Judy Davis have as a bickering couple on the verge of divorce. There may be one or two obligatory Republican “digs” slipped into the script, but those only accentuate the absurdity of an affluent and insufferable New England family that loves to virtue-signal but finds itself utterly out of touch with anything beyond their own selfish needs and desires—until the outside world forces its way into their lives.

    Leary, as a cat-burglar caught in the middle of a hostage situation gone awry, is the perfect foil for the limousine liberals, presaging the “Tea Party” movement that would arrive 10 years later.

    Honorable mention: While the only reference to American politics in 2003’s Love Actually may be the scene with Billy Bob Thornton as a Bill Clinton/George W. Bush hybrid of an uncouth, self-serving American president, the movie’s other plots have become well known for their anachronisms—including toxic, anti-MeToo workplaces, trans/LGBT humor and fat shaming, plus a kid gatehopping past airport security and not getting shot. For those who don’t know the holiday classic by heart, consider pouring everyone a cup of spiked eggnog and turning it into a fun drinking game every time something happens that you could never get away with 20 years later.

    6. THE HUDSUCKER PROXY

    Why it counts: Anti-corporate subversiveness

    Like other selections on the list, the star of this early Coen Brothers movie, Tim Robbins, is an outspoken leftist in real life, which can make it difficult to identify with the character. Yet, it also serves as a reminder than many of the classically liberal values once embraced by the Left have now been embraced and appropriated by MAGA-style populism.

    It involves a corporation (with the great Paul Newman as a member of its board of directors) that selects Robbins’s character as its top executive in hopes of tanking the stock to permit a corporate buyout. But Robbins generates an idea that is both deceptively simple and wildly appealing, leading the  plot to backfire.

    The movie is set over Christmas, with its climax occurring on New Year’s Eve, and has some yuletide thematic elements at the end appearing to echo stories like A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life.

    Honorable mention: Others have pointed out in the past that when the full set of facts is taken into consideration, the true hero of It’s a Wonderful Life is Henry Potter, a stockholder in the Bailey Building and Loan company who is forced to pay the price for its bad business decisions. Like Trump, Potter falls the victim to a socialist plot that uses propaganda and lawfare to slander him into submission. Although the movie ends with George Bailey having prevailed, there are hints that a world where Potter never existed would be far worse than one where Bailey never existed.

    5. EYES WIDE SHUT

    Why it counts: Globalist elites’ excesses/depravity

    Stanley Kubrick’s final movie, based on Austrian author Arthur Schnitzler’s 1926 novella “Dream Story,” changes the events from a Mardi Gras celebration to a Christmas one, adding more to the surreal quality of the cinematography.

    The 1999 Tom Cruise film has secured a unique place in pop culture, even inspiring a recent AI tribute by the Dor Brothers that featured world leaders attending a similar masked ball.

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    Kurbrick also drew much of the film’s aesthetic from accounts of a real-life 1972 black-tie ball hosted by Baroness Marie-Hélène de Rothschild that was heavy on Satanic symbolism.

    Theories about members of the globalist elite engaging in such bizarre behavior, often connected to Satanic undertones and sex-cults, have continued to snowball in recent years, ranging from the secret cover-up of Jeffrey Epstein’s client list to the rumors of the Clinton–Podesta Pizzagate conspiracy, to the accounts of cocaine-fueled orgies involving members of Congress and the annual Davos conference hosted by the World Economic Forum.

    Honorable mention: Rod Serling’s 1964 made-for-TV adaptation of A Christmas Carol, titled Carol for Another Christmas was a star-studded propaganda piece commissioned by the United Nations to persuade Americans that the UN did not have a communist agenda in the aftermath of the JFK assassination. It resurfaced in 2012 after Turner Classic Movies began re-airing it. But hindsight makes the propaganda all the more obvious and blatant, perhaps exposing just how left-wing globalist groups like the UN have used Hollywood to undermine American interests.

    4. BRAZIL

    Why it counts: Deep-state resistance

    Monty Python alum Terry Gilliam directed this 1985 dystopian tale (released just weeks after Rambo IV) about a cog in the system who, shortly before Christmas, discovers a serious mistake caused by a literal bug in the machinery. The discovery sends him into a Kafkaesque spiral of tension-escalating plot twists. While trying to break free from the system, he is himself detained and tortured, with the ending leaving it ambiguous as to whether freedom in this society is truly attainable.

    Honorable mention: The Nativity Story, a 2006 retelling of the birth of Jesus tells the familiar tale with an emphasis on the Magi (not to be confused with MAGA), the three wise men who arrived on Jan. 6—known to Christians as the celebration of the Epiphany. King Herrod of Judea sought help from the visiting Oriental trio in locating the Jewish messiah, whom he feared would supplant him as ruler. Although the king resorted to drastic measures—demanding the slaughter of innocent babies, much like the modern Left’s abortion agenda—the Magi refused to cooperate, making them the original J6 political dissidents.

    3. FRIDAY AFTER NEXT

    Why it counts: Blue-collar empowerment

    The 2002 third installment in the comedic series that coined the term “Bye Felicia” finds friends Craig (portrayed by red-pilled rapper Ice Cube) and Day-Day forced to get jobs as security guards after a thief dressed as Santa steals all their Christmas presents. The movie also features a turn from Terry Crews (another red-pilled actor, best known for his turn as President Camacho in the modern cult classic Idiocracy) as a newly-released inmate who picked up homosexual tendencies while incarcerated.

    Honorable mention: Jim Varney’s redneck hero Ernest P. Worrell returns to his most famous role in 1988’s Ernest Saves Christmas, in which the hero becomes Santa Claus after the original Santa leaves his magic bag in the back of Ernest’s cab in Orlando.

    2. SILENT NIGHT

    Why it counts: Vaccine skepticism

    Made during the peak of the COVID-19 hysteria, this 2021 movie, with an ensemble cast led by Keira Knightley, begins as the typical “home for the holidays” comedy set at a British country estate. However, it later takes a genre-bending turn that is as jarring and drastic as the arrival of the pandemic was in March 2020. It is one of the few on this list that may have spoilers, so viewers who don’t mind dampening the holiday spirit (definitely not one to watch with the kids) should watch it for themselves.

    Honorable mention: The Stephen Spielberg-produced Gremlins, written by future Harry Potter director Chris Columbus, remarkably is considered a kid-friendly movie—or, at least, it was when it first came out in 1984. However, it too blends heartwarming and nostalgic family comedy with significantly darker elements after a specimen of Chinese origin, the mogwai, makes its way to small-town America. A scientist (biology teacher Mr. Hanson) then ignores the rules for containing it, leading to a catastrophic epidemic that seem a lot like the gain-of-function research advocated by ex-COVID czar Anthony Fauci.

    1. A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS

    Why it counts: Winning the culture war

    With the exception of The Nativity Story, none of the films listed connect with the religious component of the Christmas holiday. That has much to do with its commercialization and sanitization by Hollywood and others to make it more inclusive and profitable.

    I, for one, take no issue with the idea of everyone sharing in a seasonal yuletide spirit regardless of belief (this year, Christmas happens to coincide with the start of the relatively minor Jewish holiday of Hannukah), but ultimately there is only one thing that “Christmas is all about,” and nobody articulates that as well as Linus in this 1965 animated classic, which has prevailed over all the efforts by the Left to memory-hole it.

    Honorable mention: Aliens envious of Earth’s culture, travel there to kidnap two children, along with Santa Claus, but later decide that it is unreconcilable with their own culture in 1964’s Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, made for an estimated budget of around $200,000. They attempt to sabotage Santa’s toymaking industry and to replace Santa with one of their own kind, but the plan fails, much as the Left’s so-called Great Replacement strategy via open borders cannot conquer the Western cultures they are seeking to supplant with their reverse-colonization scheme.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/25/2024 – 12:45

  • How The Daniel Penny Trial Divided The Nation
    How The Daniel Penny Trial Divided The Nation

    Authored by Michael Washburn via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The trial of Daniel Penny split many observers into two camps—one passionately for and the other fiercely against the defendant, who restrained Jordan Neely in a chokehold on a New York subway in May 2023 and Neely died.

    Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images

    The first camp brands Penny, who was acquitted of the charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide, a brave hero who was protecting others from Neely. They say Penny is a victim of overreach by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

    The second camp calls Penny a killer with no regard for the value of a poor, ill, homeless man’s life.

    Representative of the view showing disdain for Penny were public comments made by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), whose district includes part of Queens. Before the trial began, she called him a “murderer,” and after the verdict, she criticized him again, saying Penny “does not have remorse about taking another person’s life.”

    Defense lawyers, who unsuccessfully moved for a mistrial, complained to Judge Maxwell Wiley about the “circus-like” atmosphere fostered by loud, angry, sometimes menacing protesters on the street outside the courthouse.

    Protesters had made threats against their client and against jurors if they didn’t vote to convict, defense lawyer Thomas Kenniff told the judge.

    The trial began in late October and ended with Penny’s acquittal on Dec. 9. Despite the acquittal, the case raises questions about the challenge of holding a fair and impartial trial in an age of 24/7 social media saturation.

    David Dorfman, a professor of law at Pace University in New York City, said he believes the “toxic social media environment” and the politicization of the justice system made it difficult to have a fair trial, in a case that the government never should have brought in the first place.

    Divine Pryor, executive director of the Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions, said he doesn’t think the 24/7 coverage of the Penny case or the street protests exerted undue influence on the course of the trial or the outcome.

    “There are always non-evidentiary pressures that emerge during any high-profile trial that come from arenas outside the judicial process, and they are usually shaped and guided by the media,” he said. His organization, a New York-based nonprofit, advocates for criminal justice reform.

    Jordan Neely’s uncle, Christopher Neely (C), joins demonstrators before Daniel Penny arrives for jury deliberations, outside the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse in New York City on Dec. 9, 2024. Alex Kent/Getty Images

    “Unfortunately, I was not surprised by the verdict, and I did not expect a conviction on any of the charges, because he was immediately portrayed as a ‘war hero’ who was, once again, protecting the community,” Pryor said in an email to The Epoch Times.

    “He was able to make bail and obtain legal counsel, and he won the hearts of the public. The fact that he was a middle-class, white male—well, what’s understood needs no explanation,” he said.

    Pryor said he views the Penny case as similar in some ways to the Bernhard Goetz case in the ‘80s. Goetz shot and injured four young black men who he believed were trying to rob him on a subway in December 1984. In that case, public perceptions of crime, and the races of the people involved, may have shaped perceptions even before the case went to trial, Pryor suggested. The jury ultimately convicted Goetz of carrying an unlicensed firearm but acquitted him of attempted murder.

    As a defense lawyer, Kenniff saw it differently. He sees non-evidentiary pressures as a negative influence not just in this trial, but in a politicized justice system more generally.

    “There were certainly efforts to malign our client and poison the jury pool against him. I think Steven Raiser and I were successful in beating back against much of that, but I can’t say it didn’t impact things,” Kenniff said in an email to The Epoch Times.

    Intimidation of jurors from activists and protesters demanding a certain outcome presents a “real risk,” he said.

    “We saw attempts at that in this trial, where witnesses admitted they were afraid to testify favorably towards Mr. Penny out of fear of retribution. However, the jury refused to be swayed by any of that, and for that we’re grateful,” Kenniff stated.

    Harvey Kushner, chair of the criminal justice department at Long Island University, said the social media-driven pressures that moved Penny’s defense lawyers to argue for a mistrial may be all the more severe in years to come.

    “If you look at the Penny case, you can’t compare it to other times, because the media have changed so dramatically,” Kushner said.

    “This was all over the media, people were not only viewing it but interacting with it on Facebook, TikTok, and X. The way they process it is different today.”

    Thomas Kenniff, attorney representing Daniel Penny, prepares to speak to the media after Penny turned himself into the 5th Precinct in New York City on May 12, 2023. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

    A Fateful Ride

    In making its case to the jury, the defense evoked a situation that some or all of the twelve men and women could identify with, having rode the subway themselves and having found themselves in vulnerable situations where no police officers were on hand to respond in the event of an immediate physical threat.

    The incident that defense lawyers Steven Raiser and Thomas Kenniff and lead prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran, debated in a lower Manhattan courtroom began on May 1, 2023, when an uptown F train pulled into the Second Avenue station.

    Before the doors closed, Neely entered the train and immediately began acting in a manner that frightened and alarmed passengers, according to several who took the stand during the trial.

    Neely, who had a record of 42 arrests and an outstanding warrant for his arrest on an assault charge at the time, threw his jacket onto the ground and began shouting that he was hungry, homeless, and did not care whether he went back to prison on Rikers Island.

    That was when Penny, who had been listening to music on his earbuds, asked a stranger to hold the earbuds, and then got up, moved behind Neely, and applied a chokehold he had learned during his time in the U.S. Marines.

    Direct and cross-examination dwelled extensively on the amount of time that Penny restrained Neely and on the physical and physiological factors that caused Neely’s death a short time later.

    Nonetheless, witness after witness reiterated the sheer terror that Neely’s conduct caused them.

    Though called to the stand as government witnesses, these men and women of diverse professional, personal, and ethnic backgrounds gave a version of events that could only buttress the defense position that passengers on the F train had a reasonable and immediate fear for their physical safety.

    Lori Sitro, a research director at an agency in the city, described feeling particularly vulnerable because she had her small boy with her on the train. Under direct examination from a prosecutor, Sitro said that Neely’s threats were explicit, and frightening.

    “He was shouting in people’s faces, ‘I don’t have water, I don’t have food, I don’t have a home, I want to hurt people, I want to go to Rikers, I want to go to prison.’ And he was getting increasingly belligerent,” Sitro recalled.

    Police stand outside the Broadway-Lafayette subway station a week after Jordan Neely died, in New York City on May 10, 2023. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

    From the witness stand, Sitro performed a brief pantomime of lunges that she said Neely made toward passengers on the train. His conduct made her so fearful for the safety of her son, that she moved a stroller in front of him as an impromptu shield.

    Another passenger, a teenaged student named Yvette Rosario, recalled feeling such terror that she thought she would pass out, and burying her face in the chest of a friend who stood next to her.

    Dan Couvreur, the founder of a financial startup, said the incident far surpassed tense, unpleasant things he had witnessed on the subway before. “The anger, the aggressiveness, and that tone set it above these other situations that I’ve seen,” he said.

    Yet another witness, Alethea Gittings, who was on her way to a dentist’s appointment when the trouble started, attributed a highly explicit threat to Neely. “If I remember correctly, he said ‘I don’t give a damn, I’ll kill a [expletive], I’m ready to die,’” she testified.

    Gittings further testified not only to thanking Penny for his actions, but to agreeing, without any pressure on Penny’s part, to speak to police about what had happened.

    The defense made much of the accounts of these men and women, who suddenly found themselves in a tense and terrifying situation and in need of someone to come to their aid.

    Read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/25/2024 – 12:00

  • The Musk-Led Manufacturing Revolution Nobody Is Talking About
    The Musk-Led Manufacturing Revolution Nobody Is Talking About

    When most analysts discuss Tesla, they focus on new vehicles or the electric vehicle company’s advancements in autonomy. Yet, according to Launch i/o CEO Jeff Lutz, one of the most significant—and under-discussed—developments at Tesla is happening not in its design studios or on the road, but in its factories. Lutz, a former executive at Google and Motorola, argues that Tesla’s true innovation isn’t just the electric vehicles or robots it’s building, but how those products are being made. The company’s first-principles approach to manufacturing is a radical departure from the industry norm, focusing not just on cheap labor or existing models, but on rethinking the entire production process.

    Tesla is creating factories that are the product—designing, testing, and perfecting every element just as they do with their cars. This focus on manufacturing efficiency, Lutz believes, will lead to a dramatic reduction in production costs, potentially bringing them closer to zero. And this shift in how products are built—rather than merely assembled—could set a new standard for the entire manufacturing world.

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    FARZAD MESBAHI: It’s no wonder that innovation has been lacking so much it’s because we’ve brute forced essentially manufacturing by leveraging globalization because we had that $2 an hour rate in China or Mexico wherever else like we’re not like well we have to just get really good at building stuff to be competitive I was like nah just let him do it like we’ll get get our margins just let them do it.

    JEFF LUTZ: The most under-discussed thing in the analyst world about Tesla is not the new vehicles coming, nor the growing discussions about autonomy, but rather Tesla’s next product: their new way of manufacturing. It’s a big deal, a huge step in how products are made today, and I don’t think many investment firms have the right research people actually looking into what this impact is and what it’s going to enable. It’s going to enable the variable cost to build products to shrink further and further, approaching zero.

    This is the step function needed for cost reduction to achieve further scale, and I don’t think enough people are talking about it. It’s going to be how the Cybertruck is made, how Optimus will be made. Tesla versions its factories like they version their product. They spend time perfecting it and have design reviews of their factory designs just as they do with their products. They have specs and performance attributes they are trying to meet. This is very different from what happens at other companies at the executive level.

    FARZAD MESBAHI: This is such a profound statement because a lot of the stories that I hear are related to, like, say Tesla capitalizing on making manufacturing the product—really just honing in so much on the factory that it becomes the product, the you know, and where we throw around 2 million cars per year, five million cars per year per factory, tens of millions of bots per year sooner than people think. The usual narrative is crazy, pie-in-the-sky; they can’t do that, look at Ford, look at BYD, they can only do so much.

    But what we’re missing here is that we’ve had decades of just sitting on our asses, leveraging cheaper labor versus going out of our way to really push the boundaries of engineering and manufacturing. And now that we have a company that’s willing to do that because the leader is viewing that as a first principles approach to manufacturing, right? Instead of like, okay, cheap labor is good, but why aren’t we pushing manufacturing and engineering as much as we can to make this as efficient and as productive as possible?

    Of course they’re extremely talented, they’re doing something very unique, but it’s also on the backs of 30-40 years of, I’m going to call it laziness. Like, you’re just taking the easy way out, and I get it, more profits, you’re taking care of shareholders—I get it—but you’re not really pushing the boundaries of manufacturing. I think what this leads to is, if companies and leaders truly take this to heart, we’re going to see an explosion in manufacturing across the board. It’s not just going to be a Tesla thing; I think we’re going to see it all over the place.

    JEFF LUTZ: I’m advising companies on this now, you’re going to see massive localization of manufacturing. People think costs just instantly go up when you do that. They do unmitigated, but if you’re a company like Tesla and you’re thinking about it the way they do, they’re actually focused on localizing and making costs go down. Think of it, how many auto factories are expanding in Germany? Just answer that question.

    Watch the entire exchange here:

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/25/2024 – 11:15

  • Dramatic Video Shows Azerbaijan Airlines Passenger Jet Crash In Kazakhstan
    Dramatic Video Shows Azerbaijan Airlines Passenger Jet Crash In Kazakhstan

    Update (1035ET): 

    “There is no official statement that Azerbaijan Airlines flight J28243 was shot down, or shots fired at it, following a video shared on social media showing traces of shrapnel on the rear fuselage section of the aircraft,” Breaking Aviation News & Videos wrote on X. 

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    Breaking Aviation News & Videos provided a first-hand account of the mid-air incident from one passenger:

    “Passenger Kristina from Vladivostok has told the Mash telegram channel that the plane circled over Aktau for about an hour before falling. During the descent, a dull thud was heard, similar to a collision.”

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    Alleged footage of J28243’s final minutes. 

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    What is this unexplained damage on the Embraer ERJ-190’s vertical stabilizer, horizontal stabilizer, and elevators?

    *   *   *

    An Azerbaijan Airlines commercial jet carrying 62 passengers and five crew members crashed in the Kazakhstani city of Aktau. The Embraer ERJ-190 attempted an emergency landing following initial reports of a “bird strike.” Early reports indicate there are 28 survivors.

    “Flight #J28243 that crashed near Aktau Airport in Kazakhstan is an Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer ERJ-190 with registration 4K-AZ65,” flight tracking website Flightradar24 wrote on X. 

    Flightradar24 said, “J28243 took off from Baku at 03:55 UTC time and was flying to Grozny. The aircraft was exposed to strong GPS jamming which made the aircraft transmit bad ADS-B data. At 04:40 UTC we lost the ADS-B signal. At 06:07 UTC we picked up the ADS-B signal again before it crashed at 06:28 UTC.” 

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    “The aircraft was struggling to maintain altitude for more than 1 hour,” Flightradar24 noted.

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    The flight-tracking website also noted: “The aircraft was exposed to GPS jamming and spoofing near Grozny.”

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    Russian media outlet RIA News said the loss of partial flight controls was due to a “collision with birds,” forcing the pilot to declare an emergency and attempt a landing at Aktau. 

    Dramatic videos of the landing approach and crash were posted on X. 

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    Footage of the survivors.

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    “Stabilizer changes position downwards in the last seconds, reminds me of the cases of the 737max,” one X user said. 

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    Were the flight controls locked up? 

    Perhaps one way to crush altitude with loss of flaps… 

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    Bird strike? Or… 

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    *Developing… 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/25/2024 – 10:35

  • El-Erian: A Baseline Scenario For The Global Economy In 2025
    El-Erian: A Baseline Scenario For The Global Economy In 2025

    Authored by Mohamed El-Erian via Project Syndicate,

    In 2024, global geopolitics and national politics have undergone considerable upheaval, and the world economy has both significant weaknesses, including Europe and China, and notable bright spots, especially the US. In the coming year, the range of possible outcomes will broaden further.

    It is something of a tradition every December to take stock of the year that is ending and consider what might lie ahead. This is true on a personal level: in my family, we tend to do this around the dinner table.

    But it is also true more broadly, with the time of year inviting an examination of the intersection of economics, national politics, and global geopolitics.

    You would be forgiven if, as a starting point, you expected these three areas to be in alignment.

    After all, they are deeply interconnected, which suggests self-reinforcing dynamics.

    But 2024 brought some unusual dispersion in this relationship that actually widened, rather than narrowed, over the course of the year.

    Begin with geopolitics. In 2024, Russia secured a greater advantage in the Ukraine war than the consensus forecasts of a year ago anticipated. Similarly, the human suffering and physical destruction resulting from the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza exceeded most observers’ already-grim expectations, and spread to other countries, such as Lebanon. The apparent impunity of the strong, together with the absence of effective means of preventing dire humanitarian crises, has deepened the sense for many that the global order is fundamentally imbalanced, and lacks any enforceable guardrails.

    As for domestic politics, upheaval has been the order of the day in many countries. Governments have collapsed in both France and Germany – Europe’s largest economies – leaving the European Union without political leadership. And following Donald Trump’s victory in last month’s presidential election, the United States is preparing for a political transition that is likely to bring a significant increase in the political influence of a new “counter-elite.”

    Meanwhile, an “axis of convenience” – comprising China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia – is seeking to challenge the Western-dominated international order. Other recent developments – from the now-impeached South Korean president’s abrupt declaration of martial law (which was quickly reversed) to the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria – have reinforced the impression that we are living at a time of exceptional geopolitical and political volatility.

    The last year also brought some worrisome macroeconomic developments.

    Europe’s malaise has deepened, as countries grapple with low growth and large budget deficits. And China has failed to respond credibly to the clear and present danger of “Japanification,” with unfavorable demographics, a debt overhang, and a prolonged property-market downturn undermining growth, economic efficiency, and consumer confidence.

    And yet, stock markets have remained relatively stable and delivered high returns, including almost 60 record-high closes for the S&P index.

    The US economy’s exceptional performance is a major reason why. Far from weakening, as most economists expected, the US pulled even further ahead. Given the amount of foreign capital the US is attracting, and the scale of its investment in the future drivers of productivity, competitiveness, and growth, it is likely to continue outperforming other major economies in 2025.

    One consequence of this success is that the US Federal Reserve did not deliver the soothing 1.75-2-percentage-point interest-rate cuts that markets were pricing in a year ago.

    This trend, too, is set to continue: at December’s policy meeting, the Fed signaled fewer cuts in 2025, and a higher terminal (long-run) rate.

    But political and geopolitical upheaval – and the limited prospects for significant improvements – does pose a risk to the endurance of US economic exceptionalism. Even if the US continues outperforming its peers, as expected, the range of possible outcomes, in terms of both growth and inflation, has widened. In fact, global economic and policy outcomes as a whole are now subject to a larger possibility set, both because the downside risks have grown and because upside innovations – such as in artificial intelligence, life sciences, food security, health care, and defense – could transform sectors and accelerate productivity gains.

    Absent a major policy reset, my baseline scenario for the US includes a somewhat lower immediate growth rate, even as the economy outperforms its peers, and sticky inflation.

    This will present the Fed with a choice:

    1. accept above-target inflation,

    2. or attempt to bring it down and risk tipping the economy into recession.

    Globally, economic fragmentation will continue, pushing some countries to diversify their reserves further away from the US dollar and explore alternatives to Western payment systems. Yields on US ten-year government bonds – a global benchmark – will edge higher, trading mostly in the 4.75-5% range. As for financial markets, they might find it more challenging to maintain their status as the “good house” in a challenging geo-economic neighborhood.

    This is how things appear now. But, beyond recognizing the wider dispersion of possible economic outcomes in 2025, it will be crucial regularly to test whichever baseline one embraces against actual developments.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/25/2024 – 10:30

  • Too Much Tesla Hype From Wedbush's Daniel Ives? Deutsche Bank Sees Q4 Deliveries Missing
    Too Much Tesla Hype From Wedbush’s Daniel Ives? Deutsche Bank Sees Q4 Deliveries Missing

    Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives recently told clients that Tesla could surpass a $2 trillion market cap by the end of 2025. He raised Tesla’s price target to $515 from $400 while reiterating an “Outperform” rating. 

    Ives called incoming policy shifts under Trump’s second term a “total game changer” as Tesla’s autonomous driving and artificial intelligence businesses are expected to surge in a more friendly operating environment. 

    “We are raising our price target on Tesla to $515 from $400 as we believe the Trump White House the next 4 years will be a “total game changer” for the autonomous and AI story for Tesla and Musk over the coming years. Our bull case is $650 for 2025,” Ives told clients. 

    However, in a separate note, Deutsche Bank’s Edison Yu and Winnie Dong provided clients with the understanding that quarter four “represents the largest delivery quarter for Tesla” and “so far we think it is tracking somewhat below” the 515,000 mark needed to grow volume on the year.

    “Tesla volume could fall slightly below target Tesla would need to deliver at least 515k vehicles in Q4 to grow volume slightly for the full year, and based on quarter-to-date data, it appears to be tracking closer to 500k vs. DBe/Street at 510-511k,” the analysts said. 

    They expect, “The largest source of volume in Q4 should come from China, which appears to be tracking to nearly 210k deliveries, helped by zero % financing incentives, along with a cash discount on the Model Y. N. America should be around 150k and Europe at 84k units,” adding, “In October and November, retail sales in China totaled 40.5k and 73.5k units, and December MTD is >40k units (through the 15th). By model, our tracking suggests 153k units of Model 3, 322k of Model Y, 11k of Model S+X, and ~14k of Cybertruck.” 

    The analysts also provided third-quarter figures showing that the Tesla Model Y, Model 3, and Cybertruck were the best-selling models in the US. Regarding purchasing these vehicles, Experian data shows Teslas have the highest percentage of loans and or cash transactions compared to all other EV sales, with many other brands seeing more leases by consumers. Perhaps that speaks volumes about Elon Musk’s brand in the eyes of the consumer…

    In the third quarter, Tesla reported 462,890 deliveries and 469,796 vehicles produced, slightly missing the FactSet StreetAccount. As for Tesla, hitting the 515,000 mark for the fourth quarter to achieve growth in the full year remains questionable. 

    Entering the new year, Musk’s EV price war with startups and legacy brands is expected to intensify as President-elect Donald Trump plans to eliminate the $7,500 EV tax credit. Musk has applauded Trump’s decision to roll back EV tax credits, which could bankrupt his competitors. 

    New auto loan rates remain at two-decade highs and are expected to stay elevated through 2025, adding continued headwinds to auto sales amid an affordability crisis.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/25/2024 – 09:55

  • Russia Launches Christmas Assault On Ukraine, Targeting Power Grid 
    Russia Launches Christmas Assault On Ukraine, Targeting Power Grid 

    Russia unleashed a massive aerial attack using missiles and drones on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the Christmas Day assault “inhuman.”

    “Today, Putin deliberately chose Christmas to attack. What could be more inhuman? More than 70 missiles, including ballistic missiles, and more than a hundred attack drones,” the Ukrainian president wrote on Telegram.

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    Bloomberg cited Ukraine’s power grid operator, Ukrenergo, as saying the attack left 500,000 customers in the Kharkiv region without heating, while blackouts were triggered in parts of Kyiv and elsewhere. 

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    Zelenskiy said, “Russian evil will not break Ukraine and will not distort Christmas.” Duh… Starlink. 

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    Russia’s Defence Ministry confirmed the Christmas Day aerial strike on Ukraine as a “massive” one and said energy infrastructure near Kyiv’s “military-industrial complex” was targeted. 

    “The aim of the strike was achieved. All facilities have been hit,” the ministry wrote in a statement, as quoted by Reuters. 

    Nearly three years into the war and marking the second Christmas, Free Press’ Jay Solomon recently asked: “Is World War III Already Here?”

    Meanwhile, US President-elect Donald Trump recently described the war in Ukraine as total “carnage,” unprecedented since World War II, and emphasized the urgent need for peace.

    Gen Zers aspiring to become social media influencers or OnlyFans models should realize they could be the ones shipped off if World War III erupts. This generation’s lack of anti-war advocacy might stem from ignorance, as their faces remain glued to their devices.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/25/2024 – 09:20

  • Syrian Christians Protest Presence Of Foreign Jihadists After Christmas Display Burned
    Syrian Christians Protest Presence Of Foreign Jihadists After Christmas Display Burned

    Starting Monday night and into Tuesday, large demonstrations broke out in Christian areas of Damascus and other parts of Syria over the continued presence of foreign jihadists in the country.

    The ruling Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has vowed to protect the sizeable non-Muslim communities of Syria (Christians, Alawites, and Druze) following the overthrow of the secular-leaning President Assad and his Baath government, but deep fears have remained that an Islamic state based on Sharia law will emerge.

    HTS Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is currently trying to appease Western and external backers by saying all the ‘right things’ in public—but Christians in particular are deeply fearful given that since the jihadist takeover of the country there have been several acts of anti-Christian vandalism and attacks.

    Under the prior Assad government, Christians and others had a high degree of religious freedom. Churches would sound bells on special holidays, Christmas lights and decorations would be prominent in December, and special festivals would often take over entire streets and neighborhoods in celebration.

    The pre-war Christian population was commonly estimated to be ten to twelve percent of the population, but since 2011 many have fled. Christians have also been killed or kidnapped over the years by Western and Gulf-backed militants, including priests and two bishops who were Christian leaders in Aleppo.

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    While Jolani is trying to send positive signals to the US government and others over the future of Syria’s Christians, Church leaders and the people are not waiting around.

    On Tuesday night Christian districts in and around Damascus as well parts of Hama countryside erupted in protest after the day prior armed men set fire to a large Christmas display in the Christian town of Suqaylabiyah, in Hama governate.

    Below is a scene from one of the largest Christian areas of central Damascus Tuesday night:

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    “We demand the rights of Christians,” the protesters chanted, many carrying crosses. Other slogans demanded a future role in the country for all Syrians, and that churches and the religious freedom of everyone must be protected.

    A regional source has described the initial Christmas tree burning which outraged Syria’s Christians as follows:

    Video footage that circulated on social media on 23 December showed a large Christmas tree burning in Hama’s Suqaylabiyah – a Christian neighborhood. The tree was set ablaze on Monday by foreign militants under HTS’s command. Some reports said the militants were from Chechnya, while others said they were Uzbeki fighters.

    HTS deployed a military official to the scene of the burning to condemn the incident and vow punishment for those responsible. 

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    “Protests led by Syrian Christians also took place in Sahnaya, Jaramana, Hama, and other areas of the country,” the same outlet reported.

    Church leaders remain on edge given that foreign militants control broad swathes of the countryside and are able to attack non-Muslims with impunity. HTS has also at times conducted acts of “intimidation” – for example by entering church services in Damascus while openly brandishing rifles.

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    Christians are telling HTS that if they are serious about governing, they must immediately kick the foreign jihadists out of the country. The black flags of ISIS have also been spotted in various parts of the country, and are sometimes even sported by HTS members themselves.

    The foreign jihadists entered the country in the first place during the prior 13 years of war, often crossing into Syria from NATO-member Turkey and with the tacit support of the Western and Gulf anti-Assad alliance.

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    For more on the history of Christians in Syria and persecution at the hands of fanatical militant groups during the past decade of war, see Syria Crucified…

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/25/2024 – 08:45

  • Bitcoin Christmas: How To Give Family & Friends Useful Crypto Advice
    Bitcoin Christmas: How To Give Family & Friends Useful Crypto Advice

    Authored by Daniel Ramirez-Escudero via CoinTelegraph.com,

    Retail investors are famously always late to the party, flocking to Bitcoin only when it smashes through glamorous milestones like $100,000. 

    This Christmas, the dinner table will offer more than turkey and pudding. Expect curious relatives to test your crypto savvy and ask how to join the bull market. Are you ready for the spotlight?

    This festive season, your “orange pill” credentials are on trial. Will you dazzle with eloquent arguments on decentralization and monetary sovereignty or crumble like a stale mince pie and just stammer, “Number go up!” under the holiday spotlight? 

    Fear not — here are some tips to steer your family and friends through the crypto conversation.

    Remember: You’re not a crypto guru and can’t predict the future

    One of the first things you must do is make sure they know that any action taken “is their responsibility.” 

    Inexperienced investors might mistake you for a crypto guru, but let’s be honest — that’s probably not the case. Chris Burniske, partner at venture capital firm Placeholder and former blockchain products lead at ARK Invest, put it:

    “No one knows anything for sure about markets. The only people you know for sure are lying, are those who say they ‘know for sure.’”

    When crypto markets roar in a full-blown bull run, everyone feels like the next Warren Buffett. Stay humble — admit you don’t have all the answers. Remind them not to follow your footsteps blindly like a herd of sheep. Caution is key, even in the frenzy.

    Give them context on where we are in the bull market

    As Bitcoin dominates headlines, everyday investors with little experience often succumb to FOMO — the fear of missing out — and rush in without fully understanding the risks. 

    Retail investors are often desperate to get in fast, driven by the overwhelming hype where everybody seems to be becoming rich with crypto.

    Bitcoin Roller Coaster. Source: Bitcoincoaster

    Successful crypto traders counter their human instincts — they buy when crypto attention is low and sell when euphoria sweeps the market. Retail investors, on the other hand, often follow the herd, driven by emotion rather than strategy.

    Burniske said the “painful reality” is that rising cryptocurrency prices inevitably draw attention, which fuels further buying. The feedback loop, which he nicknamed the “attention cycle,” accelerates when prices become extraordinary.

    “The later we are in that attention cycle, the worse the entry.”

    Burniske advises, “Give them context on where we are currently in the cycle.” He believes the market has been in a bull run for two years and may now enter its final stages.

    So, what should you do when their “appetite for crypto exposure remains insatiable,” even if it’s possibly the wrong time to enter?

    Burniske believes they should enter with an equal proportion to Bitcoin, Ether and Solana  with a ratio of 50%/25%/25%. Burniske said that if they get trapped if the market turns into a bear market, at least “they’re holding quality.”

    If they’re tempted to dive into altcoins or memecoins chasing get-rich-quick schemes, Burniske recommends advising them to allocate no more than 10% of their total investment while reminding them that it’s “at their own risk.”

    Timing the crypto exit is the real challenge

    Stepping into the crypto markets is easy. Many retail investors dive in with excitement, quickly seeing gains as the bull market drives prices upward. But remember, what goes up must come down.

    The conditions for the crypto markets have rarely been more favorable, particularly in terms of crypto regulation and institutional adoption.

    United States President-elect Donald Trump made numerous pro-crypto promises during his election campaign. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler looks set to be replaced by the pro-crypto Paul Atkins, and a Solana bagholder is set to become the new US crypto czar.

    Senator Cynthia Lummis has proposed a bill for the US to buy Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset, and institutional adoption continues to soar, with crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) breaking new records. 

    The rise of the Bitcoin ETF market capitalization. Source: CoinGlass

    Given these transformative changes, some believe the historical four-year Bitcoin cycle will be replaced with a supercycle, where assets trend ever upward.

    But don’t bank on it. Burniske warns that this could lead retail investors to miss the opportunity to take profits at the market peak.

    “‘Supercycle’ is without fail a collective delusion.”

    Burniske acknowledges that “ETFs and potential sovereign buying ‘could’ mean we don’t have as brutal a bear in the future for BTC.” However, he cautions, “Anything that goes 100x quickly is prone to at least an 80-90% crash at some point, structurally — too many people sitting on profit.”

    Bitcoin’s price performance peaks and lows from prior cycles. Source: Caleb & Brown

    Burniske said that it’s hard for people to grasp how sharply a cryptocurrency can decline. However, given you’ve probably roundtripped your own bags in at least one previous cycle, you can warn them of the problem. “Since you’ve lived it, you know, and now you can teach them.”

    Nothing is certain except death and taxes

    Armed with the knowledge you’ve given them about what to buy and when to sell, there are still further common mistakes investors can make, according to Burniske.

    When investors sell during a bull market, they may watch the coin continue to soar, as no one can predict when the peak has been reached. Burniske advises teaching new investors to resist FOMO and avoid reinvesting profits in an attempt to chase further gains. This is “generally a horrible idea.”

    This practice is risky because if the market suddenly collapses, investors could owe more taxes on realized gains than the value of the assets left after the crash.

    To avoid falling into this FOMO trap, he recommends placing the gains out of the crypto market for 12–18 months in traditional accounts, which can provide some interest (crypto stablecoins have additional risks). This reserved money will be used to pay tax liabilities. 

    Once taxes are settled, the cycle can begin anew. Burniske recommends “sniffing around again” in crypto markets when sentiment turns to apathy, typically around 12 months after the peak.

    Wall Street cheat sheet: the psychology of a market cycle. Source: ResearchGate

    As an experienced crypto investor, it’s crucial to help guide new investors to avoid repeating the same mistakes in the next bull market. Encourage them to get interested in crypto when the attention cycle is low — or non-existent. If done right, they’ll be well-positioned to educate other newcomers who might jump in during the next wave of hype.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/25/2024 – 08:10

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Dec 25

Today’s News 25th December 2024

  • What If The Baby Jesus Had Been Born Into The American Police State?
    What If The Baby Jesus Had Been Born Into The American Police State?

    Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart.”

    – Howard Thurman, theologian and civil rights activist

    The Christmas story of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one.

    The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable (a barn), where Mary gave birth to a baby boy, Jesus. Warned that the government planned to kill the baby, Jesus’ family fled with him to Egypt until it was safe to return to their native land.

    Yet what if Jesus had been born 2,000 years later?

    What if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, Jesus had been born at this moment in time? What kind of reception would Jesus and his family be given? Would we recognize the Christ child’s humanity, let alone his divinity? Would we treat him any differently than he was treated by the Roman Empire? If his family were forced to flee violence in their native country and sought refuge and asylum within our borders, what sanctuary would we offer them?

    A singular number of churches across the country have asked those very questions in recent years, and their conclusions were depicted with unnerving accuracy by nativity scenes in which Jesus and his family are separated, segregated and caged in individual chain-link pens, topped by barbed wire fencing.

    Those nativity scenes were a pointed attempt to remind the modern world that the narrative about the birth of Jesus is one that speaks on multiple fronts to a world that has allowed the life, teachings and crucifixion of Jesus to be drowned out by partisan politics, secularism, materialism and war, all driven by a manipulative shadow government called the Deep State.

    The modern-day church has largely shied away from applying Jesus’ teachings to modern problems such as war, poverty, immigration, etc., but thankfully there have been individuals throughout history who ask themselves and the world: what would Jesus do?

    What would Jesus – the baby born in Bethlehem who grew into an itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist, who not only died challenging the police state of his day (namely, the Roman Empire) but spent his adult life speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo of his day, and pushing back against the abuses of the Roman Empire – do about the injustices of our  modern age?

    Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked himself what Jesus would have done about the horrors perpetrated by Hitler and his assassins. The answer: Bonhoeffer was executed by Hitler for attempting to undermine the tyranny at the heart of Nazi Germany.

    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn asked himself what Jesus would have done about the soul-destroying gulags and labor camps of the Soviet Union. The answer: Solzhenitsyn found his voice and used it to speak out about government oppression and brutality.

    Martin Luther King Jr. asked himself what Jesus would have done about America’s warmongering. The answer: declaring “my conscience leaves me no other choice,” King risked widespread condemnation as well as his life when he publicly opposed the Vietnam War on moral and economic grounds.

    Even now, despite the popularity of the phrase “What Would Jesus Do?” (WWJD) in Christian circles, there remains a disconnect in the modern church between the teachings of Christ and the suffering of what Jesus in Matthew 25 refers to as the “least of these.”

    Yet this is not a theological gray area: Jesus was unequivocal about his views on many things, not the least of which was charity, compassion, war, tyranny and love.

    After all, Jesus—the revered preacher, teacher, radical and prophet—was born into a police state not unlike the growing menace of the American police state. When he grew up, he had powerful, profound things to say, things that would change how we view people, alter government policies and change the world. “Blessed are the merciful,” “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “Love your enemies” are just a few examples of his most profound and revolutionary teachings.

    When confronted by those in authority, Jesus did not shy away from speaking truth to power. Indeed, his teachings undermined the political and religious establishment of his day. It cost him his life. He was eventually crucified as a warning to others not to challenge the powers-that-be.

    Can you imagine what Jesus’ life would have been like if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, he had been born and raised in the American police state?

    Consider the following if you will.

    Had Jesus been born in the era of the America police state, rather than traveling to Bethlehem for a census, Jesus’ parents would have been mailed a 28-page American Community Survey, a mandatory government questionnaire documenting their habits, household inhabitants, work schedule, how many toilets are in your home, etc. The penalty for not responding to this invasive survey can go as high as $5,000.

    Instead of being born in a manger, Jesus might have been born at home. Rather than wise men and shepherds bringing gifts, however, the baby’s parents might have been forced to ward off visits from state social workers intent on prosecuting them for the home birth. One couple in Washington had all three of their children removed after social services objected to the two youngest being birthed in an unassisted home delivery.

    Had Jesus been born in a hospital, his blood and DNA would have been taken without his parents’ knowledge or consent and entered into a government biobank. While most states require newborn screening, a growing number are holding onto that genetic material long-term for research, analysis and purposes yet to be disclosed.

    Then again, had Jesus’ parents been undocumented immigrants, they and the newborn baby might have been shuffled to a profit-driven, private prison for illegals where they first would have been separated from each other, the children detained in make-shift cages, and the parents eventually turned into cheap, forced laborers for corporations such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Walmart, and Victoria’s Secret. There’s quite a lot of money to be made from imprisoning immigrants, especially when taxpayers are footing the bill.

    From the time he was old enough to attend school, Jesus would have been drilled in lessons of compliance and obedience to government authorities, while learning little about his own rights. Had he been daring enough to speak out against injustice while still in school, he might have found himself tasered or beaten by a school resource officer, or at the very least suspended under a school zero tolerance policy that punishes minor infractions as harshly as more serious offenses.

    Had Jesus disappeared for a few hours let alone days as a 12-year-old, his parents would have been handcuffed, arrested and jailed for parental negligence. Parents across the country have been arrested for far less “offenses” such as allowing their children to walk to the park unaccompanied and play in their front yard alone.

    Rather than disappearing from the history books from his early teenaged years to adulthood, Jesus’ movements and personal data—including his biometrics—would have been documented, tracked, monitored and filed by governmental agencies and corporations such as Google and Microsoft. Incredibly, 95 percent of school districts share their student records with outside companies that are contracted to manage data, which they then use to market products to us.

    From the moment Jesus made contact with an “extremist” such as John the Baptist, he would have been flagged for surveillance because of his association with a prominent activist, peaceful or otherwise. Since 9/11, the FBI has actively carried out surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations on a broad range of activist groups, from animal rights groups to poverty relief, anti-war groups and other such “extremist” organizations.

    Jesus’ anti-government views would certainly have resulted in him being labeled a domestic extremist. Law enforcement agencies are being trained to recognize signs of anti-government extremism during interactions with potential extremists who share a “belief in the approaching collapse of government and the economy.”

    While traveling from community to community, Jesus might have been reported to government officials as “suspicious” under the Department of Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” programs. Many states, including New York, are providing individuals with phone apps that allow them to take photos of suspicious activity and report them to their state Intelligence Center, where they are reviewed and forwarded to law-enforcement agencies.

    Rather than being permitted to live as an itinerant preacher, Jesus might have found himself threatened with arrest for daring to live off the grid or sleeping outside. In fact, the number of cities that have resorted to criminalizing homelessness by enacting bans on camping, sleeping in vehicles, loitering and begging in public has doubled.

    Viewed by the government as a dissident and a potential threat to its power, Jesus might have had government spies planted among his followers to monitor his activities, report on his movements, and entrap him into breaking the law. Such Judases today—called informants—often receive hefty paychecks from the government for their treachery.

    Had Jesus used the internet to spread his radical message of peace and love, he might have found his blog posts infiltrated by government spies attempting to undermine his integrity, discredit him or plant incriminating information online about him. At the very least, he would have had his website hacked and his email monitored.

    Had Jesus attempted to feed large crowds of people, he would have been threatened with arrest for violating various ordinances prohibiting the distribution of food without a permit. Florida officials arrested a 90-year-old man for feeding the homeless on a public beach.

    Had Jesus spoken publicly about his 40 days in the desert and his conversations with the devil, he might have been labeled mentally ill and detained in a psych ward against his will for a mandatory involuntary psychiatric hold with no access to family or friends. One Virginia man was arrested, strip searched, handcuffed to a table, diagnosed as having “mental health issues,” and locked up for five days in a mental health facility against his will apparently because of his slurred speech and unsteady gait.

    Without a doubt, had Jesus attempted to overturn tables in a Jewish temple and rage against the materialism of religious institutions, he would have been charged with a hate crime. More than 45 states and the federal government have hate crime laws on the books.

    Had anyone reported Jesus to the police as being potentially dangerous, he might have found himself confronted—and killed—by police officers for whom any perceived act of non-compliance (a twitch, a question, a frown) can result in them shooting first and asking questions later.

    Rather than having armed guards capture Jesus in a public place, government officials would have ordered that a SWAT team carry out a raid on Jesus and his followers, complete with flash-bang grenades and military equipment. There are upwards of 80,000 such SWAT team raids carried out every year, many on unsuspecting Americans who have no defense against such government invaders, even when such raids are done in error.

    Instead of being detained by Roman guards, Jesus might have been made to “disappear” into a secret government detention center where he would have been interrogated, tortured and subjected to all manner of abuses. Chicago police have “disappeared” more than 7,000 people into a secret, off-the-books interrogation warehouse at Homan Square.

    Charged with treason and labeled a domestic terrorist, Jesus might have been sentenced to a life-term in a private prison where he would have been forced to provide slave labor for corporations or put to death by way of the electric chair or a lethal mixture of drugs.

    Indeed, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, given the nature of government then and now, it is painfully evident that whether Jesus had been born in our modern age or his own, he still would have died at the hands of a police state.

    Thus, as we draw near to Christmas with its celebration of miracles and promise of salvation, we would do well to remember that what happened in that manger on that starry night in Bethlehem is only the beginning of the story. That baby born in a police state grew up to be a man who did not turn away from the evils of his age but rather spoke out against it.

    We must do no less.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/24/2024 – 23:30

  • Christmas Eve Asteroid Alert: 120-Foot Space Rock Racing Toward Earth
    Christmas Eve Asteroid Alert: 120-Foot Space Rock Racing Toward Earth

    Via The Mind Unleashed,

    As Christmas Eve approaches, the sky above promises more than twinkling stars and festive cheer. A massive celestial visitor, known as the “Christmas Eve asteroid,” is hurtling toward Earth at astonishing speeds.

    While its approach is being closely monitored by NASA, the sheer size and velocity of this space rock have sparked fascination and a hint of unease. What makes this event so remarkable?

    Could this asteroid pose a threat, or is it simply a fleeting guest in the cosmic dance of our solar system?

    Asteroid 2024 XN1: Key Facts

    Asteroid 2024 XN1, discovered on December 12, 2024, is set to make a close approach to Earth on Christmas Eve. Measuring between 95 and 230 feet in diameter—comparable to a 10-story building—this celestial object will pass at a distance of approximately 4.48 million miles from our planet, about 18 times the distance between Earth and the Moon.

    Traveling at a velocity of 14,743 miles per hour, 2024 XN1 has been classified by NASA as a near-Earth object (NEO). Despite this classification, experts confirm there is no risk of collision. Astronomer Jess Lee from the Royal Greenwich Observatory notes, “It will be very far away, around 18 times further away from the Earth than the Moon is, and so with this predicted path won’t come close enough to hit the Earth.”

    The significance of monitoring such asteroids is underscored by historical events like the Tunguska explosion in 1908, where a similarly sized object caused extensive damage over Siberia. This event flattened approximately 2,000 square kilometers of forest, highlighting the potential impact of near-Earth objects.

    Potential Impact and Historical Comparisons

    While asteroid 2024 XN1 is on a safe trajectory, understanding the potential impact of such celestial bodies is crucial. An asteroid of this size, measuring between 95 and 230 feet in diameter, could release energy equivalent to 12 million tons of TNT if it were to collide with Earth. This immense force could devastate an area of approximately 700 square miles, underscoring the importance of monitoring near-Earth objects.

    Historical events provide sobering insights into the potential consequences of asteroid impacts. The Tunguska event of 1908, for instance, involved an object estimated to be about 120 feet in diameter—comparable to 2024 XN1. This explosion occurred above the ground and knocked down 80 million trees over a vast area in Siberia.

    More recently, the Chelyabinsk meteor in 2013 demonstrated the destructive potential of smaller asteroids. A 66-foot-wide asteroid exploded in the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russia, releasing energy equivalent to an estimated 150 kilotons of TNT. This event caused significant damage and resulted in numerous injuries, highlighting the need for vigilant monitoring of near-Earth objects.

    How NASA Monitors These Asteroids

    NASA employs a comprehensive approach to detect, track, and assess near-Earth objects (NEOs) like asteroid 2024 XN1, ensuring planetary safety through advanced monitoring systems and collaborative efforts.

    One of NASA’s key tools is the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), a state-of-the-art detection system capable of scanning the entire dark sky every 24 hours for NEOs that could pose a future impact hazard to Earth. Operated by the University of Hawaiʻi’s Institute for Astronomy for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), ATLAS enhances the ability to detect potential threats well in advance.

    In addition to ATLAS, NASA has developed Sentry, a highly automated collision monitoring system that continually scans the most current asteroid catalog for possibilities of future impact with Earth over the next 100 years. Sentry’s next-generation algorithm, Sentry-II, improves the evaluation of NEA impact probabilities, enabling more accurate risk assessments.

    NASA is advancing its monitoring capabilities with the development of the Near-Earth Object Surveyor (NEO Surveyor), a space-based infrared telescope designed to discover and characterize most of the potentially hazardous asteroids larger than 140 meters in diameter. Scheduled for launch in 2027, NEO Surveyor will enhance the detection of asteroids that are difficult to observe with ground-based telescopes, filling a critical gap in humanity’s ability to detect potentially hazardous NEOs.

    Beyond detection, NASA has tested methods to alter the trajectory of potentially hazardous asteroids. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, conducted in 2022, successfully demonstrated the ability to change an asteroid’s motion in space through kinetic impact. This mission marked a significant milestone in planetary defense, showcasing a viable method to protect Earth from future asteroid threats.

    Through these sophisticated systems and missions, NASA continues to enhance its ability to monitor and mitigate potential asteroid threats, ensuring that objects like 2024 XN1 are detected and tracked well before they pose any risk to Earth.

    Why This Matters: A Wake-Up Call

    The close approach of asteroid 2024 XN1 serves as a compelling reminder of Earth’s vulnerability to near-Earth objects (NEOs). While this particular asteroid poses no immediate threat, its flyby underscores the critical importance of vigilant monitoring and preparedness.

    Asteroids of significant size have the potential to cause catastrophic damage upon impact. Historical events, such as the Tunguska event in 1908, demonstrate the devastating effects of asteroid collisions. In that instance, an asteroid explosion flattened approximately 2,000 square kilometers of forest in Siberia. Similarly, the Chelyabinsk meteor in 2013 resulted in widespread damage and injuries. These incidents highlight the necessity of proactive measures to detect and mitigate potential threats.

    NASA has been at the forefront of developing technologies to address the risks posed by NEOs. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, conducted in 2022, successfully demonstrated the ability to alter an asteroid’s trajectory through kinetic impact. This mission marked a significant milestone in planetary defense, showcasing a viable method to protect Earth from future asteroid threats.

    As of December 2024, NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office reports the detection of nearly 28,000 near-Earth asteroids, with new discoveries occurring at a rate of about 3,000 per year. This ongoing surveillance is crucial for early detection and risk assessment, enabling timely implementation of mitigation strategies.

    The flyby of asteroid 2024 XN1 should not be dismissed as a mere astronomical event. Instead, it should galvanize global efforts to enhance our planetary defense capabilities. Investing in advanced detection systems, conducting impact risk assessments, and developing deflection technologies are essential steps to safeguard our planet from potential future threats.

    A Celestial Reminder for Earth’s Safety

    The Christmas Eve asteroid, 2024 XN1, reminds us of the delicate balance Earth maintains within the vast and unpredictable cosmos. While its approach is a harmless spectacle this time, the potential devastation such objects can cause is a stark reminder of our planet’s vulnerabilities. Events like the Tunguska explosion and the Chelyabinsk meteor highlight why vigilant monitoring and investment in planetary defense strategies are non-negotiable for our future.

    As we marvel at the wonders of the universe, it’s crucial to recognize the significance of efforts by NASA and other space agencies in safeguarding humanity. The success of missions like DART demonstrates that we have the tools to prepare for potential threats. However, this requires global cooperation, continued research, and enhanced detection systems.

    Asteroid 2024 XN1 will pass without incident this Christmas Eve, but it leaves us with a valuable lesson: the cosmos is a dynamic, ever-changing arena, and staying prepared is essential. In the words of renowned astronomer Jess Lee, “The universe constantly reminds us of its vastness and unpredictability. It’s up to us to respect and adapt to it.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/24/2024 – 22:45

  • American Families Find Joy In Simple, Traditional Christmas Celebrations
    American Families Find Joy In Simple, Traditional Christmas Celebrations

    Authored by Lawrence Wilson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Every year, it got more intense. The advertisements started earlier and earlier. The lawn decorations became bigger and brighter. And the consumerism—the craving, spending, and debt—got to be too much.

    Family time seemed to be slipping away. It wasn’t what parents wanted for themselves and their children. Something had to change.

    Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock, Courtesy Carla Gonyo, Courtesy Kathleen Birch, Courtesy Sherry Binversie, Courtesy Rebecca Teti

    That version of the Christmas story is familiar to many Americans who have grown weary of the many social and financial obligations attached to the holiday season.

    The sentiment is humorously expressed in a social media meme: “The War on Christmas cannot end until Christmas stops its illegal occupation of November. I am calling on the Claus regime to return to the borders agreed upon in the Black Friday Agreement.”

    Yet the ever-growing demands of the holiday season can exact a toll on financial and emotional well-being.

    More than two in five U.S. adults report feeling stressed during the holidays, according to the American Psychological Association. More than a third say the holidays feel like a competition.

    Some 28 percent of Americans who charged 2023’s holiday gifts on a credit card still owe some of the balance, according to a survey conducted by The Harris Poll for NerdWallet.

    Amid the crush of holiday obligations, we found some families who have found ways to pare the expectations back and create meaningful, joy-filled Christmas celebrations.

    While they were quick to point out that they’re not down on the Christmas season itself, they valued taking control of their calendar, setting financial boundaries, and focusing more on religious traditions.

    Anticipation

    The holiday season has been growing longer since 1939, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt set the date of Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday in November. Thanksgiving had been celebrated on the last Thursday of the month, which fell on Nov. 30 that year.

    Concerned that the shortened shopping season would dampen the country’s recovery from the Great Depression, Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving up a week. Congress made the change permanent in 1941.

    An estimated 3 million people turned out in inclement weather to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in New York City on Nov. 28, 2024. Richard Moore/The Epoch Times

    Thus began Black Friday and what would later be called “Christmas creep,” the gradual lengthening of the holiday season. Christmas advertising and store decorations are now seen routinely in October.

    A common theme among families who have retooled their holiday practices is to delay celebrating Christmas until much closer to the day itself. For many, that involves Advent, the four weeks leading up to Christmas observed by Roman Catholics and many Protestants. The purpose is to cultivate one’s spiritual life in anticipation of the celebration of Jesus’s birth.

    For Rebecca Teti, 56, of Hyattsville, Maryland, Advent is a way of pushing back against the ever-increasing social and financial expectations of the holiday season.

    Raised in a mixed Jewish and evangelical Christian home that celebrated the cultural symbols of the season, Teti converted to Catholicism as an adult. She and her husband, Dennis, reached a turning point after celebrating their oldest child’s first Christmas with the extended family.

    “We went over to the grandparents’ house, and here’s this poor little toddler who’d be perfectly happy playing with a tube of cardboard, and he had to keep opening presents. It was just way too much,” Teti said.

    Teti and her husband began the practice of Advent with their children. Though the kids are now grown, the couple still spends the four weeks before Christmas in prayer and reflection rather than partying and decorating.

    “We don’t do parties, we don’t do lights, we don’t do decorations until much closer to Christmas,” Teti said. “If I do let myself get caught up in preparation, preparation, preparation, it kind of spoils the celebration.”

    Dennis (L) and Rebecca Teti with their children at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington on Jan. 1, 2018. Courtesy of Rebecca Teti

    Delayed gratification is difficult for our culture to accept, according to Tracy Hilts, pastor of Living Hope Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

    “Advent requires an intentionality that does not come naturally to our Western mindset,” Hilts wrote in an article for the Evangelical Covenant Church website.

    Yet the waiting is part of the joy for those with whom we spoke.

    Sherry and Nathaniel Binversie of Fort Wayne, Indiana, heighten the anticipation of Christmas by placing an Advent wreath and candles on their dining room table.

    An Advent wreath commonly contains four candles, lit one by one over the four weeks of the Advent season.

    “We light the candles at every meal,” Sherry Binversie, 32, told The Epoch Times. “We’re marking the time as the light of Christ is coming.”

    The Teti and Binversie families also wait until Epiphany to exchange gifts with their immediate families. That holiday, which falls on Jan. 6, marks the visit of the three wise men, or Magi, bringing gifts to Jesus. It is the day after the traditional 12 Days of Christmas, which symbolize the journey of the Magi.

    “That has worked really well for us because it makes Christmas morning less about gifts and more about the joy of Christ’s coming and being able to be with family,” Teti said.

    Part of the fun for the children was being able to eat whatever they chose from Christmas through New Year’s Day. Ice cream on a Monday? Sure, it’s Christmas!

    Nathaniel and Sherry Binversie of Fort Wayne, Ind., with their children in 2004. Courtesy of Sherry Binversie

    Faith

    The overwhelming majority of Americans, 91 percent, celebrate Christmas. That includes 82 percent of those with no religious affiliation and 74 percent of adherents to other religions. That’s according to Lifeway Research, an evangelical research firm associated with the Southern Baptist Convention.

    While most are aware that Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ, fewer than half attend a church service during the holiday season.

    For the families we spoke with, Christmas becomes more meaningful and enjoyable when they focus on the spiritual meaning. That involves some traditional religious practices. While that typically includes attending a church service on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, most of their religious traditions take place at home and involve the entire family.

    Kathleen and Vincent Birch of Fort Wayne, Indiana, use an Advent calendar to count down the days until Christmas with their oldest child. An Advent calendar features a set of numbered windows or drawers that conceal a treat or other object.

    Read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/24/2024 – 22:00

  • Another American Given Lengthy Prison Sentence By Russian Court For Espionage
    Another American Given Lengthy Prison Sentence By Russian Court For Espionage

    Another American has been slapped with a lengthy prison sentence in Russia. On Tuesday a Moscow court ruled that Gene Spector, a dual national, is guilty of espionage for which he was given a 15-year prison sentence.

    The case stemmed from or at least was added onto a prior 2020 guilty plea involving Spector mediating bribes for a previous aide to former Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, according to TASS.

    Kommersant/Associated Press

    “Independent Russian outlet Media Zona, who had a journalist inside the courtroom, reported that Spector was sentenced to 13 years in a maximum security penal colony on espionage charges,” CNN reports.

    “His previous charge for bribery was added to this term, meaning he was handed down a 15-year sentence, it reported, adding that Spector was also fined 14,116,805 rubles (around $140,500),” the report continues.

    Spector is believed to have already been in jail for years amid the pending court proceedings. Little in the way of specific information on the alleged crimes have been made public, with the court citing national security secrecy. 

    TASS has described that he served as chairman of the board of directors of Medpolymerprom Group, which produces cancer drugs. 

    According to some of the details of Spector’s background via The Washington Post:

    The trial was held behind closed doors “due to the secrecy of the case materials,” according to the country’s Interfax news agency. “Only the introductory and resolutive parts of the sentence were announced by the court.”

    Spector was born in what was then the Soviet Union and later moved to the United States, where he obtained citizenship. He moved back to Russia as an adult and became an executive at a medical equipment company.

    The Associated Press has recently listed the growing list of Americans behind bars in Russia, some of who have been set free in prisoner swaps with Washington.

    In August of this year Russia and Washington conducted a historic prisoner swap which led to the freedom of former US Marine Paul Whelan and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Eight detained Russians had been sent from the US back to Russia as a result of the swap. Earlier in the Ukraine war the Biden administration came under political fire for agreeing to release international arms trafficker Viktor Bout for WNBA star Brittney Griner, who was arrested and convicted in a Moscow court on a minor marijuana charge.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/24/2024 – 21:15

  • 24 Things That You Will Desperately Need In A Post-Apocalyptic World
    24 Things That You Will Desperately Need In A Post-Apocalyptic World

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

    What would you do if a great cataclysm brought a sudden end to our society and you were forced to survive on what you currently have on hand?  When I was growing up, very few people thought of such things.  In fact, I never heard the words “prepper” or “prepping” until I became an adult.  But now everything has changed.  

    Millions of Americans are spending enormous amounts of money to prepare for apocalyptic scenarios that they believe are quite likely to play out in our near future.  According to Investopedia, approximately 20 million Americans now consider themselves to be preppers…

    Doomsday prepping has become a bona fide area of investing, with experts putting the average annual growth of the survivalist sector at over 7% until 2030 and some 20 million Americans now identifying as “preppers”—about the size of entire states like New York.

    That is a significant portion of our population.

    And they are spending a ton of money.

    One recent survey discovered that spending on prepping supplies reached about 11 billion dollars during one recent 12 month period…

    The survey found that, collectively, preppers spent around $11 billion within a 12-month period. According to the survey, preppers tend to live in the Western part of the U.S. and spent the most money on basics like food, water and toilet paper.

    As our society comes apart at the seams all around us, more Americans than ever are determined to achieve at least some level of self-sufficiency while they still can.

    People from all across the political spectrum and that come from all walks of life are feverishly preparing for a very bleak future.

    Of course there is not a general consensus about what that very bleak future will look like.

    In this article, I am going to specifically address how to prepare for life in a post-apocalyptic world.  Many preppers are preparing for scenarios that are far less extreme.  The type of scenario that I am talking about in this piece is a situation where all of our major institutions are no longer functioning and society as we have known it has totally broken down.

    What this means is that the items in the list that I am about to share with you will not be needed right now.  But if an apocalyptic event or a series of apocalyptic events suddenly brings our society to an end, you will definitely need them.

    I am imagining a time when there will be no functioning supply chains, and so there will be nothing to buy in the stores.

    And since there will be no functioning supply chains, you will not have access to gasoline or propane.

    So I have not included any items that are dependent on gasoline or propane in my list.

    Also, please keep in mind that this list is not comprehensive and is only intended to represent the bare minimum that you will need.

    There are countless other items that you could add to this list, but for this article I wanted to focus on the basics.

    With all of that being said, the following is a list of 24 things that you will desperately need in a post-apocalyptic world…

    #1 Emergency food to feed your family

    #2 A water filtration system to clean your water

    #3 A ferro rod for starting a fire

    #4 An extensive first aid kit for health emergencies

    #5 An emergency supply of antibiotics

    #6 A multitool that has pliers, a knife, a saw and a screwdriver

    #7 A solar-powered generator

    #8 A solar flashlight

    #9 An emergency shortwave radio so that you can stay informed

    #10 Fishing gear

    #11 Seeds for planting a garden

    #12 A wood stove

    #13 An axe for cutting wood

    #14 A quality shovel

    #15 Paracord

    #16 Duct tape

    #17 A hand-crank can opener

    #18 A very warm winter jacket for every member of your family

    #19 A durable backpack for every member of your family

    #20 A compass

    #21 A good pair of binoculars

    #22 Wool blankets

    #23 A Bible

    #24 A way to protect everything that you have stockpiled from the marauding hordes that will be desperate to take all of it away from you

    In a post-apocalyptic scenario, how long do you think that you would last?

    In any survival situation, there are four big areas that always must be addressed: food, water, power and shelter.

    Of course many would add security to that list.

    In a world that has gone completely mad, there will be many that will be willing to do whatever it takes to stay alive.

    If you live in an area that has a high population density, it may become nearly impossible to survive no matter how much preparation work you have done in advance.  When things hit the fan, you will want to flee to a less densely populated area if at all possible.

    Many people ask me for prepping advice, and so I have tried to cover some of the most essential basics in this article.

    But of course what I have shared here is just the tip of the iceberg.  Properly preparing for what is coming takes a tremendous amount of time, effort and energy, and the clock is ticking…

    Use code THANKYOU10 for 10% off your purchase!

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/24/2024 – 20:30

  • NORAD Santa Tracker Continues To Bring Magical Tradition To Kids Across The World
    NORAD Santa Tracker Continues To Bring Magical Tradition To Kids Across The World

    Authored by Elma Aksalic via The Epoch Times,

    For children across the globe, one of the many joys of the Holiday season is anticipating the arrival of Santa Claus and his journey to deliver gifts waiting under the tree on Christmas morning.

    With over 2 billion homes around the world and only so much time to complete the task, the “North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)” has given children the opportunity to not only track Santa’s progress in real-time but get involved in the action.

    For 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, NORAD “defends the homeland through aerospace warning, aerospace control, and maritime warning for North America.” But on Dec. 24, the organization makes it their mission to track Santa’s location.

    Through NORAD’s “North Warning” radar System across 47 installations, along with satellites and fighter aircraft, the organization makes a point of checking the radar closely for indications of Santa Claus leaving the North Pole.

    Every year, over 100,000 children call into NORAD in Colorado Springs, with volunteer’s standing by on Christmas Eve to answer any Santa or holiday related questions and in a number of different languages.

    Additionally, through its website, NORAD offers Santa’s virtual North Pole Village, as well as a holiday countdown, games, a movie theater, holiday music, and a web store.

    Bob Sommers, a civilian contractor and NORAD volunteer, told The Associated Press he’s often met with overjoyed callers, and makes it a priority to tell children they must go to sleep before Santa arrives.

    “There are screams and giggles and laughter,” Sommers said.

    The tracker also offers fun facts about Santa’s journey, including the speed at which his sleigh is traveling, how many stops he made so far, and the amount of presents left, making the experience interactive for eager children.

    In an interview, Chief Master Sergeant John G. Storms of NORAD and USNORTHCOM Command Senior Enlisted Leader said it is his first year tracking Santa, and he is eager to see the system, used to protect North America every single day, be put into use for joyful reasons.

    “I’m really excited to have an opportunity to participate, and the thing I’m most looking forward to is the interaction with all of the citizens spreading cheer during the holidays.”

    Origins of Santa Tracking

    The tradition began back in 1955, during the Cold War era, after a department store advertisement mistakenly printed the wrong telephone number for children to call Santa Claus.

    A young boy ended up reaching the “Continental Air Defense Command,” which is now NORAD, asking to speak with Saint Nick while reciting his wish list.

    Colonel Harry Shoup, an officer on duty, decided to play into the mistaken phone call and reassured the child he would keep a look out for his whereabouts through their radar system.

    From that moment on, 50 different callers followed a day, and a new tradition was born. Combining a little holiday magic and technology, NORAD continues to bring joy, Christmas spirit, and new excitement for children worldwide to look forward to.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/24/2024 – 19:45

  • Is Trump Looking For A Grand Bargain With China?
    Is Trump Looking For A Grand Bargain With China?

    Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,

    “China and the United States can together solve all of the problems of the world, if you think about it,” President-Elect Donald Trump said on December 16, at a Mar-a-Lago press conference.

    He also called China’s President Xi Jinping “amazing” and confirmed he had invited the Chinese leader to his inauguration.

    Earlier in the month, Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Paris and stated this in connection with efforts to end the war in Eastern Europe: “China can help.”

    The victorious Trump of December was noticeably more friendly to China than the Trump of the long, grueling campaign. During the campaign, the Republican candidate was often in trade-war mode, promising to impose an additional across-the-board tariff of more than 60% on all Chinese goods.

    “Trump wants to keep them all guessing,” Gregory Copley, president of the International Strategic Studies Association, told Gatestone after the Mar-a-Lago press event.

    So which Trump will we see starting at noon on January 20, 2025?

    Only one individual truly knows, and Trump himself is not showing his hand. In any event, trying to reach a grand bargain with China — what he was hinting at — would be exactly the wrong approach at this or any other moment.

    Trump, of course, likes to make deals — famously he is the co-author of Trump: The Art of the Deal — and he could very well be looking to strike one with the Chinese regime. As Michael Schuman, writing in The Atlantic, pointed out, “a ‘grand bargain’ with Beijing has obvious appeal.”

    Solving all the world’s problems, something Trump believes Xi and he can do, would ideally be one of them.

    There are, however, problems confronting the next American president as he looks to strike a deal with Beijing.

    As an initial matter, Trump has already tried to reach an accommodation with China: his Phase One Trade pact of January 2020.

    He calls it “the best trade deal” ever, but it is now widely viewed as a bust. The Chinese, during an election year in America, never honored its terms. It is unlikely that Trump can do better this time with a Xi Jinping who is even far more arrogant than he was four years ago.

    Second, Trump, despite what he says, does not have a good relationship with Xi.

    “What Mr. Trump does not recognize is that the Chinese cultural concept of ‘friendship’ is a transactional relationship,” Charles Burton of the Sinopsis think tank told Gatestone. “Xi will never be his buddy because he sees himself as making his mark in Chinese history by becoming the global hegemonic successor to emperors of China’s self-defined glory days and to whom all must abase themselves in affirmation.”

    As Burton, who once served as a Canadian diplomat in Beijing, notes, “Xi wants to manipulate the U.S. president into becoming aligned with the Chinese Communist Party’s worldview and ambitions and fecklessly abandon U.S. global leadership.”

    Burton has it right. For decades, American presidents believed they could cooperate with Chinese communists, and State Department diplomats thought they could make China a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system. Yet whenever American leaders after the Cold War worked with Beijing on the issues of the day, their diplomacy produced horrible results, something particularly evident during the Global War on Terrorism, the Six-Party Talks to “denuclearize” North Korea, and the war in Ukraine.

    American hopes of cooperation with China were always unrealistic. As Burton suggests, the Chinese regime has from the beginning dreamed of replacing the Westphalian international order of sovereign states with the Chinese imperial-era system in which emperors believed they not only had the Mandate of Heaven to rule tianxia — “All Under Heaven” — but they also were compelled by Heaven to do so.

    Worse, Xi apparently believes that the United States, because of its inspirational impact on the Chinese people, poses an existential threat to his Communist Party rule. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman can argue that China should “let in more Taylor Swifts,” but that is exactly what Xi Jinping, who has been relentlessly attacking foreign culture, does not want to do.

    Third, Trump faces an additional hurdle in his hoped-for dealings with the Chinese leader: Xi probably no longer has the clout in Beijing he once possessed.

    The new American president can make a deal with Xi, but the arrangement may not stick because of discord inside China’s increasingly turbulent ruling group.

    “Trump knows that Xi Jinping has been brought back under control by the Communist Party of China and by his loss of a power base within the People’s Liberation Army,” Copley, also editor-in-chief of Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, pointed out. The issue is whether the Chinese leader still has the power to act. Xi is embattled: There are signs and hints of instability across his regime.

    Moreover, thanks to Xi, only the most hostile answers are considered politically acceptable in Beijing, so it would be hard for him to compromise and, more important, to honor promises. Xi has based his policies during the last decade on the premise that China is ascendant. His signature line, from a speech in December 2020, is “the East is rising and the West is declining.”

    An arrogant Xi Jinping is clearly in no mood to come to terms with Trump — or anyone else for that matter.

    Xi’s hostile conduct is not something he is prepared to bargain away. On the contrary, his actions are the inevitable result of China’s communist political system, which idealizes violence, struggle and domination. This system means there can be no accommodation with the Communist Party.

    The Chinese regime believes the world is its enemy. No enduring understanding, pact, deal or agreement is possible.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/24/2024 – 19:00

  • Church Vs Pub On Christmas Day
    Church Vs Pub On Christmas Day

    Roughly one in five adults in the United States say they plan to go to church on Christmas Day this year.

    Some people, however, intend to worship at a very different altar come December 25; according to a survey by Statista Consumer Insights, six percent of U.S. adults will be heading to the pub.

    As Statista’s Martin Armstrong shows in the following infographic, the battle between church and pub is also won by the more holy side in Germany.

    Infographic: Church vs. Pub on Christmas Day | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    While a lower share of people (12 percent) say they will attend church to celebrate the birth of Christ, only four percent admit to eyeing a trip to the pub.

    Meanwhile in the UK, a solid 11 percent there said they plan to go to the pub, while 16 percent opted for the church.

    Of course, with the survey allowing for multiple responses regarding their plans for the festive period, it is also possible that those choosing to go to their local drinking establishment also plan to go to church – the order of events could prove important, though.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/24/2024 – 18:15

  • The End Of The Age Of Scientism
    The End Of The Age Of Scientism

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

    Communities throughout the United States are debating the pros and cons of fluoridated water.

    It’s a bit of a shock because the issue has been present in the underground of American political life for many decades. Community water fluoridation was an early example of using public services for the purpose of mass medicalization. The science was never there, however, and there is a growing awareness that the critics were always correct.

    If you want fluoride, you can get your own, without mass dosing of the population without consent.

    It’s the strangest thing. This issue has suddenly become a hot topic, even though it has been debated since the 1950s. One could say it is an issue whose time has come.

    And not only this one.

    There is new skepticism in the public mind about a huge range of things, the critics of which were only recently considered crazy cranks. The frenzy over the capacity of government to control the climate is meeting with new resistance. Governments and companies that imposed vaccine mandates are facing serious fines at the hands of court judgments. Legions of regime scientists are under fire for blessing pandemic-era lockdowns despite how much they harmed the population.

    Only two years ago, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., founder of Children’s Health Defense, was written off as a conspiracy theorist. There’s only one problem: His theories not only came true, but his explanations (contained in two books) are enormously compelling, so much so that his following has grown to a real turning point. People ask if he can be confirmed as the new secretary of health and human services. My own sense is that there is no doubt.

    The new head of the National Institutes of Health is Jay Bhattacharya, who dissented from lockdowns since their earliest days, tirelessly writing and speaking against the misuse of science in the name of controlling infectious disease. Once, during the darkest times, he and I spoke on the phone. He said to me with genuine conviction that we had the moral obligation to speak out because so many people were suffering. He had the genuine sense that this craziness had to end, or else society itself would be irreparably damaged.

    Nearly five years later, his outlook has become an emergent orthodoxy. It’s but another symbol of dramatically changed times. We find daily articles in the mainstream press sounding alarms that there is a new populist movement that distrusts all the claims of science. It’s a wild exaggeration, consistent with censorship and the dogma of supposed experts. Good science is characterized by doubts and demands for evidence.

    Conventional historiography divides the past millennium and a half into two great epochs: the age of faith and the age of science. This division was always overwrought. It imagines the culture from 500 A.D. to 1500 A.D. as mostly enraptured with mystical religious dogma and lorded over by popes and priests. Then the Enlightenment dawned, with its focus on evidence and the scientific method, and thus did we experience the dawn of technology and better lives.

    There are some obvious correctives to make to this simple outlook. The “age of faith” was the very one that gave birth to scientific concerns, driven as they were in the Middle Ages by a confidence that the universe as created by God could be discovered and understood with fearless investigation. This was the essence of the scholasticism that emerged in the 12th century, which combined Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and classical wisdom with a drive to find the final truth in God himself.

    Meanwhile, the birth of widespread secularism led to excesses in the name of science, such as terrifying eugenics (the belief that the human population should be bred with attention to quality, as in animal husbandry) and totalitarianism (the belief that the whole of society should be treated as a laboratory for experiments). The No. 1 mystical belief of the age of science was that the methods of the natural sciences can and should pertain to social sciences.

    This key error wrecked so many different fields, from politics and economics to psychology and sociology. The attempt to take methods for studying stable things and use them to study rational and volatile things never worked. To make it plausible required building fallacies into the model. We see this everywhere now. Look up common fallacies to see the very core of the junk science that overwhelms us today.

    I’ve written about many fallacies—not only post hoc ergo propter hoc but also the subject bias. Then you have the absolute junk science of modeling: Assume pigs can fly and that you can prove it.

    Looking back, the most powerful and prescient critique of this outlook was F.A. Hayek’s amazing “Counterrevolution of Science,” a book I revisited in the depths of lockdown to find insight into what had gone wrong.

    This is the 50th anniversary of Hayek’s Nobel Prize speech of 1974. He had received the prize for his work on business cycles. He could have delivered a technical and relatively noncontroversial talk. Instead, he used the occasion to send out a grave warning not only to all economists but also to everyone in academia and the intellectual world. Provocatively, he called his paper “The Pretense of Knowledge.” Consider the following passage:

    “What I mainly wanted to bring out by the topical illustration is that certainly in my field, but I believe also generally in the sciences of man, what looks superficially like the most scientific procedure is often the most unscientific, and, beyond this, that in these fields there are definite limits to what we can expect science to achieve. This means that to entrust to science—or to deliberate control according to scientific principles—more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects.

    “The progress of the natural sciences in modern times has of course so much exceeded all expectations that any suggestion that there may be some limits to it is bound to arouse suspicion. Especially all those will resist such an insight who have hoped that our increasing power of prediction and control, generally regarded as the characteristic result of scientific advance, applied to the processes of society, would soon enable us to mould society entirely to our liking.

    “It is indeed true that, in contrast to the exhilaration which the discoveries of the physical sciences tend to produce, the insights which we gain from the study of society more often have a dampening effect on our aspirations; and it is perhaps not surprising that the more impetuous younger members of our profession are not always prepared to accept this.

    “Yet the confidence in the unlimited power of science is only too often based on a false belief that the scientific method consists in the application of a ready-made technique, or in imitating the form rather than the substance of scientific procedure, as if one needed only to follow some cooking recipes to solve all social problems [my emphasis]. It sometimes almost seems as if the techniques of science were more easily learnt than the thinking that shows us what the problems are and how to approach them.

    “The conflict between what in its present mood the public expects science to achieve in satisfaction of popular hopes and what is really in its power is a serious matter because, even if the true scientists should all recognize the limitations of what they can do in the field of human affairs, so long as the public expects more there will always be some who will pretend, and perhaps honestly believe, that they can do more to meet popular demands than is really in their power.

    “It is often difficult enough for the expert, and certainly in many instances impossible for the layman, to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate claims advanced in the name of science.”

    He concluded his talk as follows:

    “If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible [my emphasis]. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.

    “There is danger in the exuberant feeling of ever growing power which the advance of the physical sciences has engendered and which tempts man to try, ‘dizzy with success,’ to use a characteristic phrase of early communism, to subject not only our natural but also our human environment to the control of a human will.

    “The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society—a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.”

    There we go, words spoken half a century ago never more applicable than in our time. We seem to be learning. We seem to be applying the lesson. The only way to save science from itself is to apply it in proper ways while recognizing the limits of the ability to construct the world according to the imaginings of a handful of intellectuals. It’s tragic that we had to come to the point of nearly destroying the globe to discover this, but here we are. Let the rebuilding begin.

    Keep the real science, but throw out the scientism.

    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/24/2024 – 17:30

  • These Are The Most Desired Christmas Gifts In The US This Year
    These Are The Most Desired Christmas Gifts In The US This Year

    While it may not seem like the most romantic option, the useful gift of money is the most desired Christmas present in the United States this year.

    As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, according to the latest data from Statista’s Consumer Insights, when asked which gifts U.S. adults would personally most like to receive, 45 percent of women and 34 percent of men said cash or bank transfers. For both groups, clothing, textiles or shoes came in second position, followed by vouchers in third. Respondents could choose multiple options in the poll.

    Infographic: The Most Desired Christmas Gifts in The U.S. | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    While there is a fair bit of overlap when looking at a breakdown of the data for men and women, some slight differences do emerge.

    For example, cosmetics, perfume and body care ranked as the fourth most popular option among women (27 percent), while it came in 13th place out of the possible 20 options for men (12 percent).

    Rounding off the top ten for men were board games/toys/dolls (15 percent) as well as event tickets (14 percent) and for women computers/computer accessories (17 percent) followed by board games/toys/dolls (15 percent).

    Out of the polled options, “decoration articles” were among the lowest scoring gifts, only desired by 10 percent of female respondents and 6 percent of men.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/24/2024 – 16:45

  • Wishing For A Christmas Truce In Ukraine
    Wishing For A Christmas Truce In Ukraine

    Authored by Ted Snider via AntiWar.com,

    On December 11, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that, as one of the last things he would do at the end of his term as the European Union’s rotating president, he proposed a Christmas truce between Ukraine and Russia. “At the end of the Hungarian EU presidency, we made new efforts for peace. We proposed a Christmas ceasefire and a large-scale prisoner exchange,” he said. Sadly, he said, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “clearly rejected and ruled out” the idea.

    There is a history of the Christmas truce, and there is a history of civilian and military leaders rejecting it.

    On Christmas morning of 1914, a truce spread across multiple regions along the hundreds of miles western front. The truce broke out spontaneously and was not officially sanctioned. Pope Benedict XV had proposed a Christmas truce, pleading “that the guns may fall silent at least upon the night the angels sang.” But officials on both sides rejected his plea.

    But individual soldiers did not, and an unofficial, spontaneous truce broke out in different ways in different places. In some, British soldiers could see lanterns on small Christmas trees along the German trench and could hear German soldiers singing “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht.” Amazed British soldiers applauded the carol singing and responded with their own chorus of “The First Noel.”

    Via BBC

    In other places along the front, British soldiers heard German soldiers inviting them to cross the no man’s land and “Come over here.” British soldiers answered, “You come half-way. I come half-way.” Sometimes the call included the invitation to bring a bottle and meet half way.

    In yet another account, British soldiers decided to take advantage of the thick fog that blanketed the field that morning to repair their trenches. As the fog suddenly lifted, they saw German soldiers doing the same thing. The two sides were close enough to shout greetings back and forth. Some German soldiers said they wanted a truce for that day, and the British soldiers approached, meeting them in no man’s land where the enemies shook hands and exchanged cigarettes. They spoke, and for one brief moment, the war came to a stop.

    There are remarkable reports in diaries of the effect the Christmas truce had. One British soldier recorded that “There was not an atom of hate on either side.” Another wrote in his diary, “Here we were laughing and chatting to men whom only a few hours before we were trying to kill!” British soldiers report Germans telling them in accented English that “they rather dislike[d]… the whole war in fact. They weren’t aggressive at all.” There are accounts of soldiers helping enemy soldiers collect their dead. There are even accounts of a soccer game breaking out. The Germans won 3-2.

    Officials were not at all pleased by the peaceful actions of their armed forces. Military leaders feared that the camaraderie and conversation would allow the men to get to know each other and undermine their willingness to kill each other. Orders were given on both sides to cease all “fraternization with the enemy.” Officers were ordered to fire on enemy soldiers who approached across no man’s land. Soldiers who violated the order face court martials.

    That would be the first and last Christmas truce in World War I. After that magical Christmas, High Command on both sides prevented it from ever happening again.

    In December 2022, faith leaders’ call for a Christmas truce in the Russia-Ukraine war “in the spirit of the truce that occurred in 1914 during the First World War” was drowned out by the continued sound of artillery.

    And, now three years into the war, Orban has repeated that call. Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó says that Zelensky “forcefully but politely” refused a call from Orban to discuss a Christmas truce. Despite that initial rejection, Hungary is still pushing for the truce. Orban says that Moscow responded positively to the idea of a Christmas truce and prisoner exchange and that, though Kiev has so far rejected the idea, hope still remains. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also claims that “Putin has supported” the effort of Orban and that “Russian President Vladimir Putin backs Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s efforts to achieve a Christmas ceasefire in Ukraine.”

    Asked about the Christmas truce proposal that “Orban seems to floating,” Mike Waltz, Trump’s pick for national security advisor, answered that “if that is some type of ceasefire as a first step, again, we’ll – we’ll take a hard look at what that means.”

    Russia and Ukraine have agreed on nothing during this war. There has even been a cultural battle in Ukraine between Russian and Ukrainian linked Orthodox churches. But, perhaps, the two churches can agree that Jesus’ message was not one of war.

    It is unlikely that the two sides will officially agree to a Christmas truce. It is, perhaps, even unlikely that small, spontaneous truces will pop up along the Donbas front. But, perhaps, in some small pocket of the front, a small number of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers will approach each other half way across the field that separates them and shake hands and exchange Christmas greetings and remind their leaders that the people who are suffering and dying are not just enemy soldiers but, more essentially, humans and brothers who just want to go home and stop this dreadful war.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/24/2024 – 16:00

  • Trump Vows To Expand Death Penalty After Biden Commutes 37 Federal Death Row Sentences
    Trump Vows To Expand Death Penalty After Biden Commutes 37 Federal Death Row Sentences

    Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

    President-elect Donald Trump said on Dec. 24 that he plans to direct the Department of Justice (DOJ) to pursue the death penalty against the worst violent offenders.

    His remarks came a day after outgoing President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 death row prisoners to life in prison, including several mass murderers and child killers.

    Trump first criticized Biden’s decision to grant the commutations—in all cases to murder convicts—writing in a post on Truth Social that relatives and friends of the victims are “further devastated” by the move. The president-elect then declared in a separate post his intention to prioritize justice for victims of violent crime and broaden the use of capital punishment.

    “As soon as I am inaugurated, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters,” Trump wrote in the post.

    “We will be a Nation of Law and Order again!”

    Besides generally signaling a tough-on-crime approach for his administration, Trump’s message suggests he intends to pursue legal reform that would restore the use of the death penalty as a punishment in cases of rape.

    A 1977 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Coker v. Georgia, however, rendered the death penalty for rape unconstitutional in cases where adult victims survived the assault, further narrowed to include surviving child victims by a ruling in Kennedy v. Louisiana in 2008.

    This is not the first time Trump has signaled his intention to expand the use of capital punishment and reverse the moratorium on federal executions imposed by Biden. Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump signaled he would undo the moratorium and make more categories of criminals eligible for capital punishment, including child rapists and drug and human traffickers.

    During Trump’s first term in office, the federal government carried out 13 executions after resuming federal executions in 2020, following a 17-year hiatus. This marked the highest number of federal executions carried out under a single president since the 1950s and reflected Trump’s long-standing pledge to get tough on crime.

    The Biden administration, by contrast, has prioritized a shift away from the death penalty in favor of life sentences without parole for nearly all crimes.

    Biden, in a Monday statement explaining his actions, said his commutation decision was driven by a commitment to ending the federal death penalty, which he believes is inconsistent with a just and effective legal system.

    “These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my Administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder,” Biden said.

    “Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss. But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.

    “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”

    Biden’s decision to commute the sentences of convicted killers sparked outrage among many conservatives, while the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) celebrated the move, pointing out that it aligned with calls from more than 130 civil and human rights organizations, faith leaders, exonerees, victims’ family members, and law enforcement officials urging Biden to act on federal death row cases.

    “President Biden has reaffirmed the power of redemption over retribution and reminds us that state-sanctioned killing does not make us safer,“ Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, said in a statement.

    ”The ACLU has long advocated against the death penalty and shed light on its fundamental flaws: it is error prone, racially biased, and a drain on public resources.”

    Critics of the death penalty, including the ACLU, argue that the punishment does not serve as a significant deterrent to violent crime and that the high costs associated with capital trials and prolonged appeals could be better spent on crime prevention and victim support.

    Supporters of capital punishment argue that it serves as ultimate justice for heinous crimes, provides closure to victims’ families, and that the financial burden of executions is a necessary cost to uphold justice and deter would-be offenders.

    In his Dec. 23 decision, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 out of 40 death row inmates. The three federal inmates who continue to face execution are 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; Dylann Roof, who fatally shot nine people at a church in South Carolina in 2015; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/24/2024 – 15:30

  • The US Minimum Wage By State
    The US Minimum Wage By State

    California voters last month rejected a ballot measure to increase the state’s minimum wage from $16 to $18 an hour.

    The question was posed during the U.S. election on November 5, but the results were only finalized two weeks later due to the narrow margin of the measure’s defeat.

    The result was an unexpected one in a blue state like California, but also fell in line with other election results from this year, like Californians voting to reverse parts of criminal justice reform and deciding not to ban forced prison labor.

    As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, the United States is made up of a patchwork of minimum wage laws with 30 states and D.C. having a rate higher than the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour.

    Infographic: The U.S. Minimum Wage By State | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    This is according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. California’s current rate of $16 ranks towards the top of the country and is only surpassed by the minimum wages of Washington and Washington D.C., while matched by those in New York City and the Portland metro area.

    The federal minimum wage was first introduced under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 which also established overtime and child labor standards for full-time and part-time workers.

    Across the country, five U.S. states have not adopted a minimum wage – Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee.

    Another two, Georgia and Wyoming, have a minimum wage below the $7.25 federal minimum. In all seven of those states, the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour applies in accordance to the Fair Labor Standards Act, even though there are exceptions to its coverage.

    A handful of other states, among them New Jersey, New York and Ohio, also carve out exceptions for smaller employers and there are several more exceptions from minimum wage depending on the state.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/24/2024 – 15:00

  • Operation Choke Point 2.0: How The Feds Are Seeking To 'Debank' Targeted Industries
    Operation Choke Point 2.0: How The Feds Are Seeking To ‘Debank’ Targeted Industries

    Via American Greatness,

    A federal initiative that began during the Obama administration with the goal of debanking certain industries disfavored by federal officials has apparently been resurrected and is taking aim at cryptocurrencies.

    Operation Choke Point was started by the U.S. Dept. of Justice in 2013 as a way to put pressure on banks to sever their ties, without due process, with legal businesses like gun dealers, cannabis dispensaries and payday lenders which the administration found objectionable.

    That initiative was ended by President Trump in 2017 but under the Biden administration, it appears that Operation Choke Point 2.0 has begun with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) sending letters to U.S. banks in 2022, urging them to “pause all crypto-related activity.”

    Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) told Fox Business that the regulatory abuse is real and that President-elect Trump will put an end to this type of regulatory abuse.

    Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen recently described the practice of debanking as “a privatized sanctions regime” on The Joe Rogan Experience, saying, “There’s no rules, there’s no court, there’s no decision process, there’s no appeal. Who do you go to to get your bank account back?”

    And if the tune of Operation Choke Point 2.0 sounds familiar, there are also familiar faces as well.

    Palmetto State News reports that Michael Eakes is the founder of the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) and Self-Help Credit Union, which operates five credit unions in South Carolina and was also an inaugural member of the FDIC’s Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion when it was started in 2006.

    Another member of the advisory committee is Michael Calhoun who is president of the Center for Responsible Lending and a former employee of Self-Help Credit Union.

    According to the Washington Free Beacon:

    “The FDIC’s efforts are part of a larger initiative involving the Department of Justice and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau called Operation Choke Point. The effort seeks to eliminate the ability of businesses that federal regulators deem distasteful, exploitative, or dangerous to obtain financing from major American banks.”

    Former FDIC Chairman William Isaac told The Hill that Operation Choke Point, “is one of the most dangerous programs I have experienced in my 45 years of service as a bank regulator, bank attorney and consultant, and bank board member.”

    A lawsuit filed by Coinbase uncovered letters sent by the FDIC in 2022 and 2023 urging financial institutions to “pause” crypto-related activities has revealed that Operation Choke Point 2.0 is being used to sidestep constitutional limits on the government’s power to exert direct political control over the crypto sector.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/24/2024 – 14:30

  • Top DNC Fundraiser Lindy Li Leaves "Cult" Democratic Party
    Top DNC Fundraiser Lindy Li Leaves “Cult” Democratic Party

    Democrats just can’t stop losing…

    In the latest blow to the party, Lindy Li, a prominent Democratic National Committee (DNC) fundraiser and surrogate for Vice President Kamala Harris, announced her departure from the Democratic Party – labeling it a “cult” after facing a barrage of internal attacks for her recent criticisms of Harris.

    From Party Powerhouse to Outcast

    Li, who raised “tens of millions of dollars” for Democratic candidates and frequently appeared on national television as a Harris campaign advocate, became the target of relentless criticism after voicing concerns about the party’s trajectory and Harris’s political future.

    During an appearance on “Fox & Friends”, Li argued that Harris was “indulging in delusions” of making a political comeback and criticized the Democratic Party for carrying what she called the “stench of loser” following their defeat in November’s elections. The fallout was swift: within four days, Li lost 40,000 social media followers and was met with a wave of hostility from fellow Democrats.

    Speaking on “Piers Morgan Uncensored”, Li described the backlash:

    “People have called me a whore, the ‘C-word.’ They asked for me to be deported,” she said, adding that critics have accused her of being a “communist spy” – a particularly offensive accusation considering her family history, Fox News reports.

    “They’re calling me a spy for the regime that killed my great-grandfather,” she told Morgan. “They’re going headfirst into racism anytime someone dares to disagree with them. I want to be a part of the team that says men are men and women are women and men shouldn’t play in women’s sports.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    A Shifting Allegiance

    Li’s departure represents more than personal frustration—it signals a significant defection from the Democratic fundraising machine. Li, once integral to the party’s financial success, is now exploring her political options.

    Speaking candidly, she said:

    • On the Democratic Party: “They’re shrinking their tent. They’re basically pushing me to bring my tens of millions of dollars that I’ve raised and can continue to raise to a different team that treats me better, that treats me with common decency.”
    • On Party Leadership: “All these so-called Democrats, the party of inclusion, the party of diversity, masks off. And it’s even worse because they pretend to occupy the moral high ground,” she said, adding “They pretend to be so loving and caring and embracing of diversity but all of a sudden, when I dare to utter any criticisms of the goddess Kamala Harris, I get ostracized. Me, after having raised tens of millions of dollars for the party.”

    Li also accused the party of hypocrisy, claiming that questioning its leadership feels like leaving a cult.

    “My donors are pissed…it’s my responsibility to ask what the hell happened with their money…these are legitimate questions, but no, in the cult, you can’t ask questions. And leaving the Democratic Party or even questioning the Democratic Party is like leaving a cult. It’s terrifying. I don’t want to be a part of this craziness anymore. They’re accelerating my rightward shift,” she said.

    Li’s departure comes weeks after she revealed that former President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposed Harris becoming the 2024 presidential nominee.

    Li told NewsNation indubitably that both top Democrats would have rather held a primary than coronate Harris to fill Biden’s sudden vacancy atop the ticket.

    “I know they didn’t,” Li said when asked about Obama and Pelosi.

    “I have a lot of friends in Obama world and, actually, I’m friends with Speaker Pelosi. And I spoke with her before I actually, I actually went on air to encourage President Biden to step aside.”

    Li told NewsNation that many Democrats were hoping for a “lightning round” primary, which never came.

    Recruitment by Trump Allies

    Li revealed that members of Donald Trump’s team have already reached out to her, exploring whether she would consider switching parties.

    “People on Trump’s team have already reached out to me to see if I’d be willing to switch.”

    “I’m not an orphan,” she continued. “People are actively trying to recruit me.”

    Her departure follows a similar move in September, when an ex-Obama fundraiser who raised millions for his campaigns announced they were “divorcing” the Democratic Party and planned to vote for Trump.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/24/2024 – 14:00

  • A Debt Jubilee Of Biblical Proportions Is Coming… Are You Ready?
    A Debt Jubilee Of Biblical Proportions Is Coming… Are You Ready?

    Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,

    Four thousand years ago, the rulers of ancient Babylon discovered a technique to stave off violent revolts.

    In ancient times, people often became hopelessly indebted to their creditors. As debts mounted, social unrest would boil over, threatening the stability of the entire ruling system.

    The rulers of the ancient world understood this dangerous dynamic.

    Their solution was radical yet effective: enact widespread debt cancellation—a debt jubilee.

    Debt jubilees acted as societal pressure release valves when no other options remained.

    The practice spread throughout the ancient world and became codified in various civilizations.

    For instance, the Book of Leviticus formalizes debt jubilees as the conclusion of a 49-year biblical cycle—seven cycles of seven years.

    I believe this ancient practice is poised for a major comeback as government, corporate, and personal debt levels today have reached unsustainable heights.

    The social, political, and investment implications will be profound.

    Debt Jubilees: Redistribution, Not Wealth Creation

    It’s important to note that debt jubilees do not create new wealth—they simply redistribute it.

    Debt jubilees are government decrees that trigger massive wealth transfers, creating big winners and losers.

    President Biden’s plan for student loan forgiveness marks the beginning of modern debt jubilees.

    His student loan forgiveness plan is unprecedented. Unilateral executive action of this scale has never occurred during peacetime. Moreover, Congress, not the president, is supposed to make spending decisions of this magnitude.

    Even Obama’s former chief economic advisor, Jason Furman, criticized Biden’s move, calling it:

    “Pouring roughly half a trillion dollars of gasoline on the inflationary fire that is already burning—reckless.”

    Beyond the inflationary impact—which I’ll address shortly—Biden’s student loan jubilee will set a precedent that will be hard to undo.

    Consider how those who acted prudently feel.

    Many avoided student debt by choosing less expensive career paths, cutting back on spending to pay for college without borrowing, or paying off their student loans entirely.

    These people are probably feeling like suckers now.

    Not only do they receive no relief, but they also face the burden of footing the bill for those whose loans will be forgiven.

    I imagine these people will be angry and probably have considerable car, mortgage, and credit card debt, as many Americans do. So they will want debt relief, too… and I bet they will get it.

    Amid rising prices, consumer debt is skyrocketing. It is at an all-time high of nearly $18 trillion, as seen in the chart below.

    With interest rates rising recently, the cost of servicing this record debt is becoming unbearable for many.

    As Americans hit their financial breaking points, I believe debt forgiveness demands will only grow louder—extending far beyond student loans.

    All it takes is a President’s pen stroke to wipe out hundreds of billions in debt.

    The student loan jubilee will set a powerful precedent.

    I don’t think it will be long before we see a credit card jubilee, a car loan jubilee, or even a mortgage jubilee.

    How will the government pay for all these jubilees?

    Raising taxes enough to cover them seems improbable.

    Issuing more debt to cancel other debts would be contradictory.

    That leaves money printing as the only viable option.

    This is why future debt jubilees will pour “gasoline on the inflationary fire that is already burning.”

    But it’s not just consumer debt that’s unsustainable. The biggest problem is the US government’s federal debt—a much larger issue looming on the horizon.

    The Federal Debt Endgame: A Coming Crisis

    The US federal government has the largest debt in the history of the world—and it’s growing at a rapid, unstoppable pace.

    In short, the US government is fast approaching its financial endgame.

    Here’s why…

    Today, the US federal debt has gone parabolic, amounting to over $36 trillion.

    To put it in perspective, if you earned $1 per second 24/7/365—about $31 million per year—it would take over 1,148,531 years to pay off the US federal debt.

    And that assumes the debt stops growing, which it won’t.

    The growth rate is not even going to slow down. It’s going to increase exponentially.

    The truth is, the debt will keep piling up unless Congress makes some politically impossible decisions to cut spending.

    For example, tens of millions of Baby Boomers—about 22% of the population—will enter retirement in the coming years. Cutting Social Security and Medicare is a sure way to lose an election.

    With the most precarious geopolitical situation since World War 2, defense spending is unlikely to be cut. Instead, defense spending is all but certain to increase.

    Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently said: “Barely staying even with inflation or worse is wholly inadequate. Significant additional resources for defense are necessary and urgent.”

    In short, efforts to reduce expenditures will be meaningless unless it becomes politically acceptable to make chainsaw-like cuts to entitlements, national defense, and welfare while reducing the national debt to lower the interest cost.

    In other words, the US would need a leader who—at a minimum—returns the federal government to a limited Constitutional Republic, closes the 128 military bases abroad, ends entitlements, kills the welfare state, and repays a large portion of the national debt.

    However, that’s a completely unrealistic fantasy. It would be foolish to bet on that happening.

    In short, the US government is trapped. It’s game over.

    They have no choice but to “reset” the system—that’s what governments do when they are trapped.

    How Will the US Reset the System?

    Nobody knows for sure. But I’d bet a debt jubilee of biblical proportions will be a major part of it.

    So then, how will the US government repudiate its impossible federal debt burden?

    My guess is that they won’t be explicit. That would look too much like a default. It would destroy the role of the US as the center of the world’s financial system.

    Given a choice, I don’t think the US government would choose immediate self-destruction. Since power does not relinquish itself voluntarily, we should presume they’ll decide to stealthily implement their federal debt jubilee through inflation.

    Inflation benefits debtors, allowing them to borrow in dollars and repay in dimes.

    And since the US government is the biggest debtor in the history of the world, it stands to gain the most from inflation.

    Inflation: The Ultimate Debt Jubilee

    That’s why I believe the federal debt jubilee will come in the form of a massive wave of inflation.

    The coming debt jubilees could wipe out trillions in liabilities while unleashing previously unimaginable inflation.

    That could trigger the largest wealth transfer in history.

    Remember, debt doesn’t exist within a vacuum. It’s a liability for the borrower and an asset for the lender.

    Those storing wealth in government currencies, bonds, and other paper assets will be the biggest losers.

    Debtors and owners of scarce, unencumbered, hard assets will be the big winners.

    It’s certainly not a just outcome.

    Prudent savers shouldn’t have to pay for the excesses of debtors.

    But notions of what is just or not didn’t stop Biden’s student loan jubilee—and they won’t stop the coming jubilees.

    Prepare Now for the Coming Reset

    Although it will be an unfortunate outcome for many people, there is simply nothing anyone can do now.

    The debt levels have already reached a critical point, and the government may soon see jubilees as a politically expedient option.

    That’s why it’s crucial to recognize the reality of this Big Picture and position yourself accordingly.

    That means owning scarce and valuable assets that are not simultaneously someone else’s liability.

    Crucially, this excludes fiat currency in bank accounts.

    Remember, fiat currency is the unbacked liability of a bankrupt government.

    Further, once you deposit currency into a bank, it is no longer yours. Technically and legally, it is the bank’s property, and what you own instead is an unsecured liability of the bank.

    In an era of jubilees in which debts are wiped clean, you won’t want to be on the other end of unsecured liabilities or IOUs of any kind.

    I believe this “reset” could happen soon—and it won’t be pretty for many.

    Most people have no idea how bad things could get—or how to prepare.

    That’s why I’ve published a detailed guide called The Most Dangerous Economic Crisis in 100 Years: The Top 3 Strategies You Need Right Now. Click here to download the free PDF.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/24/2024 – 13:30

  • Speaker Johnson Shielded Dishonest J6 Committee 'Star Witness' From GOP Subpoena; Report
    Speaker Johnson Shielded Dishonest J6 Committee ‘Star Witness’ From GOP Subpoena; Report

    Authored by Ken Silva via Headline USA,

    Over the last two years, the Republican-controlled House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight found numerous inconsistencies and outright lies in the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, who was the Democrat-controlled January 6th Commission’s “star witness” in the wake of Jan. 6, 2021.

    The Oversight Subcommittee apparently wanted to subpoena Hutchinson about her testimony. But according to a Tuesday report from Breitbart, House Speaker Mike Johnson blocked that from moving forward.

    Breitbart noted that the Oversight Subcommittee’s recent final report on Jan. 6 mentions Hutchinson by name 268 times, but didn’t reference bringing her in for questioning.

    “Johnson (R-LA) personally intervened to block the subcommittee from issuing a subpoena to Hutchinson,” Breitbart reported, citing an unnamed source. “Johnson, in a statement to Breitbart News, called that claim ‘clearly false.’”

    The House Administration Subcommittee’s findings against Hutchinson are related to her June 28, 2022, testimony, when she said that she personally wrote a proposed Tweet on Jan. 6, 2021, for President Donald Trump to send advising rioters to leave the Capitol. The text of that proposed Tweet said, “ANYONE WHO ENTERED THE CAPITOL ILLEGALLY WITHOUT PROPER AUTHORITY SHOULD LEAVE IMMEDIATELY”—with the word ILLEGALLY scratched out.

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    At the time, Hutchinson testified that she wrote the note as dictated by then-Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows and Eric Herschmann, one of the President’s attorneys. However, Herschmann alleged that Hutchinson was lying, and that he was the one who wrote the note.

    The House Administration Subcommittee said in October that it hired a handwriting analyst to review the note and determine who wrote it.

    “After a thorough analysis, their certified handwriting analyst stated in the report that ‘the evidence supports my opinion that the handwriting that appears on the Questioned Document was written in the same hand as the exemplars [Herschmann],’” the House Administration Subcommittee said at the time.

    “This new evidence provided by an independent, Certified Questioned Document Examiner, not only contradicts Ms. Hutchinson’s numerous claims that she penned the note, but also exposes the Select Committee’s willingness to accept all her testimonies without corroboration or further investigation,” Subcommittee on Oversight Chair Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., said in a press release.

    The subcommittee also found that then-January 6th Commission Vice Chair Liz Cheney secretly communicated with Hutchinson, and may have pressured her to fire her attorney.

    Additionally, Hutchinson was caught changing her testimony during the course of the Jan. 6 Committee hearings, as has been widely documented.

    Specifically, Hutchinson testified on June 28, 2022, that Trump tried to control the steering wheel while being driven to the White House following his Jan. 6 speech. Additionally, she claimed that the former president lunged at another agent.

    However, in her previous three transcribed interviews on February 23, 2022, March 7, 2022, and May 17, 2022, she did not mention that interaction, according to a later investigation from Loudermilk’s committee.

    The Oversight Subcommittee has recommended that the FBI investigate Cheney for potential witness-tampering charges.

    Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/24/2024 – 12:40

  • China To Issue Record 3 Trillion Yuan In Special Treasury Bonds To Boost Economy
    China To Issue Record 3 Trillion Yuan In Special Treasury Bonds To Boost Economy

    It may not be the bazooka, but it’s a start.

    Less than a week after we showed the historic collapse in Chinese interest rates, which sent China’s 1Y yield below 1% for the first time since the Global Financial Crisis, in a move that signaled the bond market is convinced Beijing will unleash the mother of all stimulus…

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    … overnight, Reuters reported that Chinese authorities have agreed to issue 3 trillion yuan ($411 billion) worth of special treasury bonds next year, which would be the highest on record, as Beijing ramps up fiscal stimulus to revive its faltering economy.

    The plan for 2025 sovereign debt issuance would be a 200% increase from this year’s 1 trillion yuan and comes as Beijing moves to soften the blow from an expected increase in U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports when Donald Trump takes office in January.

    The proceeds will be targeted at boosting consumption via subsidy programs, equipment upgrades by businesses and funding investments in innovation-driven advanced sectors, among other initiatives.

    Showing just how much capacity China – which has been gripped in a deflationary vortex for the past year – has for new debt, the country’s 10-year and 30-year treasury yields rose 1 basis point (bp) and 2 bps, respectively, after the news but remained near record lows.

    The planned special treasury bond issuance next year would be the largest on record and underscores Beijing’s willingness to go even deeper into debt to counter deflationary forces in the world’s second-largest economy.

    The issuance “exceeded market expectations,” said Tommy Xie, head of Asia Macro research at OCBC Bank. “Furthermore, as the central government is the only entity with meaningful capacity for additional leverage, any bond issuance at the central level is perceived as a positive development, likely providing incremental support for growth.”

    The “new” initiatives consist of a subsidy program for durable goods, allowing consumers to trade in old cars or appliances and buy new ones at a discount, and a separate one that subsidizes large-scale equipment upgrades for businesses.  The “major” programmes refer to projects that implement national strategies such as construction of railways, airports and farmland and build security capacity in key areas, according to official documents.

    China does not generally include ultra-long special bonds in annual budget plans, as it sees the instruments as an extraordinary measure to raise proceeds for specific projects or policy goals as needed. As part of next year’s plan, about 1.3 trillion yuan to be raised through long-term special treasury bonds would fund “two major” and “two new” programs.

    The state planner NDRC said on Dec. 13 Beijing had fully allocated all proceeds from this year’s 1 trillion yuan in ultra-long special treasury bonds, with about 70% of proceeds financing the “two major” projects and the remainder going towards the “two new” schemes.

    Another big portion of the planned proceeds for next year would be for investments in “new productive forces”, Beijing’s shorthand for advanced manufacturing, such as electric vehicles, robotics, semiconductors and green energy. More than 1 trillion yuan would be earmarked for that initiative.

    The rest would go to recapitalize large state banks, said the sources, as top lenders struggle with shrinking margins, faltering profits and rising bad loans.

    The issuance of new special treasury debt next year would equate to 2.4% of 2023 China’s GDP. By comparison, Beijing raised 1.55 trillion yuan via such bonds in 2007, or 5.7% of economic output at that time.

    President Xi Jinping gathered with top officials for the annual Central Economic Work Conference (CEWC) on Dec. 11 and 12 to chart the economic course for 2025. A state media summary of the meeting said it was “necessary to maintain steady economic growth”, raise the fiscal deficit ratio and issue more government debt next year, but did not give specifics.

    Last week Reuters reported that China plans to raise the budget deficit to a record 4% of GDP next year and maintain an economic growth target of bout 5%.

    At the CEWC, Beijing sets targets for economic growth, the budget deficit, debt issuance and other areas in the year ahead. Though usually agreed by top officials, such targets are not officially unveiled until an annual parliament meet in March and could still change before then.

    China’s economy has struggled this year due to a severe property crisis, high local government debt and weak consumer demand. Exports, one of the few bright spots, could soon face U.S. tariffs in excess of 60% if Trump delivers on campaign pledges.

    While the risks to exports mean China will need to rely on domestic sources of growth, consumers are feeling less wealthy due to falling property prices and minimal social welfare. Weak household demand also poses a key risk. Last week, officials said Beijing plans to expand the consumer goods and industrial equipment trade-in programs.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/24/2024 – 12:25

  • Saudi Arabia Becomes Top Buyer Of Russian Fuel Oil
    Saudi Arabia Becomes Top Buyer Of Russian Fuel Oil

    Authored by Alex Kimani via OilPrice.com,

    • Saudi Arabia was the leading buyer of Russian seaborne fuel oil in November.

    • Asian countries have become top buyers of Russia’s fuel oil and VGO ever since the European Union imposed a full embargo on Russian oil products in February 2023.

    • India is no longer the biggest buyer of Russian crude.

    Saudi Arabia was the leading buyer of Russian seaborne fuel oil and vacuum gasoil (VGO) exports in November, LSEG data has revealed. According to Reuters calculations based on LSEG data, Russian fuel oil and VGO exports grew  6% month-on-month in November to about 4.26 million metric tons. Asian countries have become top buyers of Russia’s fuel oil and VGO ever since the European Union imposed a full embargo on Russian oil products in February 2023.

    India is no longer the biggest buyer of Russian crude. According to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), India’s imports of Russian crude fell a massive 55% in November–the lowest figure since June 2022–despite Russia continuing to sell its oil at a discount.

    India has lately been trying to diversify its oil supplies: Last month, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said during a visit to Guyana that his government views the South American country as key to India’s energy security.

    Modi told a special sitting of Parliament that he views Guyana as an important energy source and that he will encourage large Indian businesses to invest in the country.

    Guyana did not immediately grant Modi’s wish, with India’s External Affairs Minister Jaideep Mazumdar saying talks will continue and that such a deal would ensure “greater predictability.”

    Guyanese Natural Resources Minister Vickram Bharrat told reporters that Guyana is willing to supply India with a large amount of crude, if Exxon Mobil, the main operator in Guyana’s offshore oil production, agrees to such an arrangement.

    “We know Exxon has to do some amount of changes to their lifting schedule and logistics because their preference is for the very large vessels that can accommodate two million barrels mainly because of distance and cost,” Bharrat said.

    Meanwhile, CREA estimates that there was a 17% month-on-month increase in the discount on Urals grade crude oil to an average of $6.01 per barrel compared to Brent crude oil. Russia has lost an estimated EUR 14.6 bn in revenues from Urals grade crude exports due to sanctions.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/24/2024 – 12:00

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Dec 24

Today’s News 24th December 2024

  • DEI & The Death Of Effective Military Command
    DEI & The Death Of Effective Military Command

    Authored by Cynical Publius via American Greatness,

    The U.S. military’s growing DEI policies are creating a climate where fear of unfounded accusations erodes leadership and threatens combat readiness – leaving the nation’s future at risk…

    As Pete Hegseth’s nomination for Secretary of Defense moves forward, the matter of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) doctrines and practices in America’s military is a hot-button issue of significant importance. Our media is awash with stories of “woke” generals and admirals, critiques of women in combat, awful tales of command selection board manipulations based on race or gender, and a generalized sense of uneasiness in the senior ranks of the Pentagon over perceived massive changes to take place once Trump and Hegseth are in charge. However, this current DEI attention focuses almost exclusively on what is happening inside the five walls of the Pentagon and tends to ignore DEI’s most pernicious effect: the way it is obliterating command authority in tactical units in the field and warships at sea.

    First, let me tell you how I figured out what is going on. On X (formerly known as Twitter), I have an active account of about 130,000 followers. I know that number is much smaller than that of many other X influencers, but it’s enough to give me some reach. My account focuses primarily on politics and culture, with a heavy emphasis on matters related to the U.S. military. That’s because I’m a retired Army colonel, and my views on military matters seem to resonate with veterans and active duty alike. It is that community of military followers that has fully revealed to me the DEI cancer that is eating away at U.S. military leadership at all levels.

    A few days ago, I read an article from Military.com that truly shocked me. That article stated that in today’s Army, roughly half of the officers who are eligible for battalion command are refusing to even be considered for such command. The article’s author, quoting official Army sources, stated that this was a function of officers being unwilling to take on the extraordinary time demands of being a battalion commander and out of a desire for a more sedate form of service for themselves and their families. The article suggests that a career as a staff officer with retirement at 20 years is more palatable than the constant and powerful peacetime and wartime demands of commanding a battalion of many hundreds or thousands of soldiers, even if that decision prohibits ever reaching high rank.

    I was shocked. As I posted on X:

    “What is going on here? In the Army I grew up in, it was the almost uniform goal of the entire officer corps to become a battalion commander one day. It was the brass ring. It was the validation of all of your training and efforts, and it was the most rewarding job in your career. The only reason to hold tedious staff positions was so you could aspire to one day command a battalion. So now in 2024, officers are happy to wile away the years making PowerPoint slides and making sure the coffee is fresh, and they lack the desire to lead troops? Dear God. The rot in the culture is far worse than I imagined.”

    (As background, in all of the military services, not just the Army, command at the O-5 level is the ultimate leadership experience. In the Army and Marine Corps, it means commanding a battalion as a lieutenant colonel. In the Air Force, it means commanding a squadron as a lieutenant colonel. In the Navy, it means commanding a combat warship at the similar O-5 rank of commander. It truly is the greatest reward for those who wish to lead and command, and it is usually the last time in a successful military career that you are down in the dirt (or the bilge) with the troops that you lead. It’s a special time, once coveted by the best leaders.)

    I retired from active duty in 2007, so I was looking at this issue from my old-timer perspective. But that’s when X, as the “new news media,” did its job—suddenly my X comments and private messages were flooded with active duty and recently retired officers explaining to me that this phenomenon was not due to a desire to not be overworked (as suggested by the Army itself and the Pentagon-friendly author at Military.com) but was instead due to fear of DEI. DEI has made O-5-level command a risky proposition where a male or a white officer lives in fear of an unfounded DEI complaint that would destroy not only his or her military career but the officer’s reputation as well. The risk of such destruction is outweighing the desire to lead. This is a tragic result.

    So let’s say you are a straight, white male Army battalion commander who has a subordinate who happens to be a racial or ethnic minority, or a female, or LGBTQ+. Let’s also say that the subordinate is a poor performer to whom you give a poor efficiency report or is someone engaged in illegal activity that you prosecute under Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Let’s say that such a poor performer or criminal then goes to the Inspector General (IG) and claims what you have done is motivated solely by racial, ethnic, or gender animus, or homophobia. (Or worse, a female soldier falsely claims you sexually assaulted her.) Back in the day, all such a commander needed to do was show the facts surrounding the issue to the IG, and the IG would go away, satisfied. But not today. Today, such claims tend to result in a presumption of guilt against the commander, which must be conclusively disproven.

    As if that is not bad enough, there is a related concept here: so-called “counterproductive leadership.” Basically, counterproductive leadership is the idea that a leader’s actions are so toxic that he or she is not qualified to command. Crazily, “counterproductive leadership” (or “toxic leadership”) can be evidenced merely by such abstract concepts as subordinates refusing to look a leader in the eye or leaders holding poor performers to account for their poor performance. I’m fairly certain that iconic military leaders like George S. Patton and William “Bull” Halsey, Jr. would be considered purveyors of “counterproductive leadership” in today’s military environment, and mythical characters like Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Highway would likely be in the stockade.

    “Counterproductive leadership” then gets linked to something else: “loss of confidence” by a commander’s chain of command. This is the idea that a commander’s superiors relieved him or her from command for unspecified reasons—including “counterproductive leadership.” In the past ten years, an unprecedented number of senior leaders (O-5 and above) have been relieved from command for this very “loss of confidence” reason. (Do a simple Google search and you’ll see what I mean.)

    So let me please break down for you how this is all connected. Despite the fact that many commanders are, in fact, relieved for legitimately horrific reasons, many others are relieved according to the following, specious chain of events:

    1. A unit commander disciplines a minority, female, or LGBTQ+ subordinate who legitimately committed some form of wrongdoing or was a poor performer.

    2. The subordinate then files a race/ethnicity/gender/religion/sexuality discrimination complaint against the unit commander with the IG, claiming the discipline was unwarranted and was actually motivated by racial/ethnic/gender/religious/LGBTQ+ animus.

    3. The unit commander is presumed guilty until proven innocent.

    4. The IG then determines the unit commander is innocent.

    5. Despite the IG’s determination, the unit commander’s higher chain of command determines that “counterproductive leadership” was the cause of the unfounded and disproven IG complaint—a complaint that presumably would never have occurred had the unit commander displayed “productive leadership.”

    6. “Counterproductive leadership” causes the unit commander’s chain of command to determine it has “lost confidence” in the unit commander.

    7. The unit commander is then relieved from command duties by his or her higher chain of command due to such loss of confidence.

    8. Stars and Stripes and Military.com then publicly report the ex-commander’s relief for cause.

    9. The ex-commander then becomes depressed and starts drinking heavily; the ex-commander cannot find a civilian job because his reputation has been publicly destroyed; the ex-commander’s wife and kids leave him; the now-broke ex-commander moves into a seedy one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, where he is later arrested for fentanyl distribution.

    (OK, I made #9 up—but I’m sure you can see how that fear of reputational destruction is valid and real.)

    But that sequence of #1 through #8 that I just told you about? It’s real, without any exaggeration. There are senior folks I know personally who have suffered from this exact phenomenon. However, I’m not just speaking on this subject from personal knowledge (and back to X as the real news purveyor of the modern era), as my X feed has been overwhelmed with expressions of just what I wrote above. I have written some controversial X takes before that have garnered millions of views, but none of those resulted in so many detailed recountings of the exact same tale of woe as my discussion on this command issue did.

    I’ll offer two examples out of many presented by my X followers.

    My first comes from a current DoD member who is uniquely qualified in their duty position to understand the issue of O-5 command selection and the current related problems (and therefore said person requests anonymity):

    “I work in a position where I encounter many of the O-5s and E-9s in that group [for prospective command]. An alarming amount of them seem low-key dreading facing the “weaponized investigation” culture that is currently pervasive. Combine that with the paltry manning (but perception from higher that everything must still get done as if they were 100%), and it is absolutely not surprising to me that the command opt-in is down.”

    Then this from a recently retired Army colonel:

    “100% accurate about jeopardy for commanders. I spent 75% of my last deployment conducting investigations. Did 78 AR 15-6 investigations in 9 months. The biggest problem are the sharp complaints and the “counterproductive leadership complaints.” Those are used for revenge and get out of jail. The “counterproductive leadership” complaints are virtually impossible to counter and even if you do no one escapes unscathed. Finally the religious exemptions for grooming and uniform standards are an EO trap—no matter how ridiculous the claim you have to be crazy to recommend denial because who are you to say it’s not a “sincerely held religious belief?” Deny it and you are prejudiced. Many of the active component majors and lieutenant colonels I worked with said they had zero interest in battalion command or brigade command because they were terrified of the endless investigations. It’s much less of a problem in the National Guard and USAR… until you mobilize. Then it’s the same problem.”

    These are merely two of many such communications I have received. Are you sensing a pattern here?

    Let me break it down one more time, as it was news to me when I finally figured it out, and it is probably news to anybody else who has not been in the U.S. military fairly recently. Here it is. Our senior civilian and military leadership in the Department of Defense have created a DEI climate across all military services where leadership at the key level of O-5 command is impossible. As a result, the best-qualified O-5s are running from command out of a legitimate fear of life-destroying lies that will stain their reputations like a scarlet letter.

    The most disturbing part of all of this, however, is what the DEI cancer does at the tactical unit level to combat readiness. A military unit or warship cannot function as a combat-effective force when its commander lives in the shadow of the fear of unfounded subordinate retribution. It cannot. It is as if there is constant fear of mutiny or a gnawing sense of uneasiness that the unit you command is populated by an unknown number of zampolit. Leadership and discipline fail, unit cohesion crumbles, and the entire system disintegrates as combat effectiveness evaporates. Worst of all, the service members in such a combat-ineffective unit or ship will suffer—and some will die—as a result.

    One more thing: if the best and brightest are running in fear from command, who is taking command? Answer: the “woke,” DEI-compliant officers; and because they are the ones taking command, they will necessarily one day become the officers at the top of the pyramid who make all the key military decisions. Or perhaps they are already there.

    All of this leads to a very simple and devastating conclusion: if U.S. military commanders cannot command effectively, how can the U.S. military ever again win a war?

    Pete Hegseth, please unwind the tyranny and combat ineffectiveness of this DEI cancer at all levels, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff all the way down to the infantry private walking point. Please. Our nation’s future depends upon it.

    ***

    Cynical Publius is the nom de plume of a retired U.S. Army colonel, veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, and reformed denizen of the Pentagon who is now a practicing corporate law attorney. You can follow Cynical Publius on X at @CynicalPublius.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/23/2024 – 23:25

  • How Stanford's Garry Nolan Came To Research UFOs
    How Stanford’s Garry Nolan Came To Research UFOs

    Authored by Ilene Eng via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Garry Nolan, a prominent Stanford professor and inventor in DNA gene therapy, is also researching something out of this world: UFOs.

    He talked to EpochTV’s “Bay Area Innovators” about how he became interested in UFO research and how he became the founder of the Sol Foundation, a premier research center for unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).

    Garry Nolan. The Epoch Times

    Nolan first set foot in the field when he was given the DNA sequence of a six-inch, human-like mummy that was discovered in Chile’s Atacama Desert in 2003. People started calling it an ‘alien mummy.’ In 2012, he started analyzing its DNA and studied it in his spare time. He brought in a larger team of scientists to look at it as well.

    “We basically said, OK, this is human, and here are the mutations that we think might relate to what it looks like. And that was really all we did,” said Nolan. “We published it, and I actually didn’t expect it to be that big of a deal. It went worldwide. I mean, every newspaper. I mean, you think about it in retrospect, what’s a better click bait than ‘Stanford professor sequences alien baby,’ right?”

    He became one of the few scientists out there who was willing to talk about unexplained phenomena and apply science to it.

    Because of that, the government has asked him to help investigate military and diplomatic personnel who were being harmed in unknown ways, some of whom admitted to hearing buzzing in their ears and claimed to have seen UFOs.

    “They started bringing out X-rays and MRIs of the internal scarring that had gone on with some of these individuals. And so I said, OK, well, that’s clear. That’s not imagined, that’s not a hallucination,” he said. “And so I then got involved with three or four years looking at these individuals, and it turned out … the majority of those patients that we had were actually the first of the recognized, or what I would think of as recognized, Havana Syndrome.”

    According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. government personnel stationed in Havana, Cuba, first reported experiencing anomalous health incidents like hearing noise, headaches, dizziness, cognitive dysfunction, and other symptoms, also known as Havana Syndrome. However, when they underwent an MRI scan, there was no significant evidence of brain injury or biological abnormalities. Researchers found that over 80 U.S. government employees stationed abroad experienced these abnormalities.

    “I don’t need to agree that they saw a UFO. I need to just understand that they saw something that they interpreted as a UFO. That doesn’t matter to me. It’s what happened to them and medically is what’s important. And if you have it happening in different people around the country, then you’re entering a realm where it’s reproducible, or at least you’re getting people coming in with reproducible experiences. So it’s kind of starting to become science,” explained Nolan.

    Later, he became friends with a well-known venture capitalist and UFO researcher, Jacques Vallée. Together they looked at the molten metal remains after an alleged UFO sighting in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in December 1977. They tried to replicate the substance and see if there was anything new they could learn. After conducting a spatial analysis with one of his instruments called the multiplex, they found that the molten remains were an uneven mixture of metals.

    “Now I have three other metals from Australia, from nearby, as it turns out, and other places around the world where the same pattern of events occurs,” said Nolan. “Something is seen. It drops off this metal. The metals are different each time. One of them is like aluminum. Another one is almost pure silicon, and pure to the level that you would need a Silicon Valley foundry to make. But it was dropped in the middle of a beach in Ubatuba, [Brazil] pounds and pounds and pounds of it.”

    According to Nolan, since there are many questions surrounding such data, he wants to analyze it and put the information out there for others.

    “The government has already said UFOs are real in some ways. … At least, the data is real,” said Nolan.

    In November, a bipartisan group of lawmakers hosted a congressional hearing on UAP.

    Witnesses testified about the threat to national security posed by potential incursions into U.S. airspace, while accusing the Pentagon of shrouding many UAP documents in secrecy.

    “Don’t wait for Daddy Government to do something. Disclosure can come from the public. Waiting for the government to make up its mind is like waiting for them to, you know, refund your tax check. Don’t sit around waiting for it. Go out and do it yourself,” said Nolan.

    Since the hearing, there have been more reports about drone and UAP sightings across the country, with the most recent reports coming from New Jersey.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/23/2024 – 23:00

  • Leftists Hate Santa Claus And It's Not Only Because He's White
    Leftists Hate Santa Claus And It’s Not Only Because He’s White

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

    It happens every year around December, a predictable flurry of pseudo-psychology articles from low-IQ progressives expounding on the negatives of Christmas. On top of that, there’s been a pipeline of anti-Christmas films coming out of Hollywood the past decade, including some real woke bombs depicting Santa as a corporatist, a racist and a woman hater.

    It’s been going on so long that in the early 2000s conservatives dubbed the annual practice the “War on Christmas”. However, at that time people on the political right assumed the vitriol was aimed at Christianity in general. What many didn’t realize is that the hatred wasn’t only about religious differences.

    Around 70% of atheists identify as Democrats according to surveys, with 15% identifying as Republican and another 15% having no party affiliation. It makes sense that the majority of Christmas critics are on the political left and that their distaste of the holiday season is driven by their anti-Christian views.

    After all, the political left is so obsessed with destroying Christianity that they continue to repeat the false narrative that Christmas is a “pagan holiday” and that all the traditions are stolen and repurposed. This claim is debunked every year and yet every year they keep trying to bring it back.

    The pagan celebration of “Yule” often associated with Christmas by ignorant academics has always been a completely separate tradition with separate practices. As Christianity became the dominant religion in Europe, pagan groups would meld elements of their previous traditions with newly introduced Christian holidays. Every serious study of Yule admits the distinct separation between the pagan celebration and Christmas.

    The Christmas tree is also a purely Christian idea, based on the stories surrounding Saint Boniface. Boniface sought to convert the pagan tribes of Germany in 725 AD and chopped down what was known as “Odin’s Sacred Oak”, a tree used by the pagans as a site for human sacrifice. A small fir tree grew in its place and was dubbed the “Tree of Christ”.

    By extension Santa Claus is often wrongly associated with pagan characters; he is in fact based on the very real Saint Nicholas, a monk who traveled the known world around 280 AD, giving away his wealth and helping children in need. His good deeds became legendary and by the Renaissance he was the most popular saint in Europe. His feast day was celebrated on the day of his death (December 6th), and it was common practice to buy large gifts or get married around this time every year.

    The name “Santa Claus” comes from the Dutch, who first brought the celebration of Nicholas over to the American colonies in the 1700s. They called him “Sinter Klaas”, short for Saint Nicholas. And, if you look at some of the very old fresco paintings of Saint Nicholas you’ll find he looks rather similar to the modern day folk character version of Santa Claus.

    When the claims of pagan co-option failed to yield any results, leftists turned to more woke methods to undermine the Christmas holiday. Going beyond religion, progressives have even sought to take down Santa Claus.

    You would think a guy that goes around giving away his wealth and helping the poor would immediately appeal to socialist leftists who claim to be the guardians of the underclass, but that’s not really the case. They say the biggest problem is that Santa is “white” and that he represents the western world’s habit of making white people the “default”. I would argue that this is a smokescreen for other problems the leftists don’t want to fully admit to, but let’s start with race…

    Black Santa Claus

    The leftist trend in recent years has been to hijack Santa Claus and make him non-white (as they have tried to do with almost every other icon of the west). They pushed hard to make “Black Santa” a thing over the past few years and it’s not working out for them.

    This is not to say that black people can’t dress up as Santa Claus; they can do as they please. However, the idea of taking a centuries old western figure based on a real person and then co-opting their image and pretending like this doesn’t matter – Isn’t this the evil practice of cultural appropriation that leftists accuse white people of doing all the time?

    Let’s be clear, the default of western culture IS white. White people created it and built it and so most of our celebrated figures are going to be white people also. Leftists are never going to successfully sell Black Santa as a cultural norm, just as it would be impossible to steal African folk heroes and turn them white.

    Santa Takes Credit Away From Parents?

    Another common argument I hear against the idea of Santa Claus is that parents are pressured to purchase gifts for their children on Christmas while telling them that those toys are coming from a fantasy figure (and a white fantasy figure, too! Oh, the horror!). Progressives want their children to give THEM credit for the money spend on gifts, not a magical white guy in a red suit.

    Not surprisingly, these people have missed the point of gift giving on Christmas, though it is funny to see leftists essentially arguing in favor of meritocracy and individual recognition.

    I see the idea of Santa Claus as very useful, not only as a way to bring a little wonder into the tradition for children, but also as a way to keep adult egos in check. Giving Santa credit for a gift is a valuable exercise in humility that every parent needs. The gift should not be about you, it’s about the happiness that the gift inspires.

    Gift giving is not a trade for adoration, but that’s exactly how narcissists see it. And since the political left is absolutely infected with narcissism these days it’s not surprising that they hate Santa Claus for taking attention away from them at Christmastime.

    Santa Has A Naughty List, But What If You’re A Moral Relativist?

    Keep in mind that a lot of progressive academics that write criticisms of the holidays don’t have any kids. They are childless cat ladies and beta males with no experience in creating and caring for a family. Their opinions are worthless when it comes to child rearing (and most other things). That said, this doesn’t seem to stop them from giving advice on the trappings of teaching kids the value of morality and the consequences of their actions.

    It might be a fading tradition but for the longest time parents have told children to be on their best behavior around Christmas because if they don’t they could end up on Santa’s naughty list and get coal in their stockings. Leftists argue that this punishment and rewards system should not be a part of Christmas.

    Firstly, people without kids don’t understand that when the youngsters are on a school break for two weeks straight and everyone is stuck together in close quarters in a house in winter there is a need sometimes for extra policing. You use whatever tools are at your disposal because reasoning with children only works half the time. Their brains aren’t fully formed yet (like woke activists), and they tend to act out wildly based on impulse and emotion.

    I really don’t think that lefties are particularly upset by the idea of Santa having a naughty list (I’ve never met a well adjusted parent that went beyond the threat and didn’t have presents for their sons and daughters on Christmas). I think they are upset by the idea of moral compass and discipline. They seem to think that children simply raise themselves and that the parents never need to do anything to mold them into proper adults.

    This is exactly why our society is in a death spiral today; because progressives have convinced so many parents to stop parenting.

    Santa (Like Christ) Represents Individual And Voluntary Charity

    Leftists are socialists (or communists) – It’s the foundation of almost all their beliefs, and the root of socialism is the sacrifice of the individual for the sake of the collective. Meaning, the government in the name of the majority must intervene in the affairs of individuals in order to force them to serve the interests of the group.

    In other words, leftists believe that the environment determines everything and people will not do good for society unless they are extorted into it by the system. In a way they fulfill their own prophecy by making it almost impossible through the legal environment to do good for others unless you have permission from the authorities.

    Over the years I have noticed that one highly destructive side effect of socialism is the exponential decline in personal charity. If the government handles everything, why should the average person take action to help others? Why even care? And if you do still care, it doesn’t matter because the system will punish you for acting on your own accord.

    There’s a reason why socialist and communist regimes are mostly atheist and seek to eliminate Christianity through history; the government must become god and they can’t allow any alternatives to exist. When you see progressive governments ban private charity activities or prosecute people who go out on their own to help the homeless, you might be confused and wonder what the motivation could possibly be?

    It makes perfect sense when you realize that leftists see voluntary charity as competition with their own god (government). In the past they have even tried to misrepresent Jesus as an early socialist figure, when in fact Jesus promoted individual acts of compassion, not deferring to a government authority.

    The underlying impetus for socialism is forced wealth redistribution, but in a world of voluntary charity there is no need for governments to control wealth or property. That is to say, socialists exploit the existence of poverty as an excuse to take control of all personal wealth (and thus control the population). They can’t do that when Christianity, Christmas and symbols like Santa Claus show people there’s a better way.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/23/2024 – 22:35

  • China's GDP Growth Is Now Lagging The Rest Of Asia
    China’s GDP Growth Is Now Lagging The Rest Of Asia

    China’s economy is facing a series of significant challenges, including a property crisis and high youth unemployment.

    After decades of rapid growth, the country is now expected to experience less economic growth than other Asian nations.

    This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, illustrates the projected growth of per-capita GDP for selected Asian nations between 2023 and 2026, based on data compiled by HSBC as of November 2024.

    Chinese Economy Lagging

    India and Southeast Asian nations are projected to achieve an average per-capita GDP growth of 6.5% over the 2023–2026 period.

    Most of these economies are expected to thrive, bolstered by youthful demographics, a rising middle class, strong foreign and domestic private investment flows, and a booming technology sector.

    China, however, is forecasted to experience an average per-capita GDP growth of just 3.9%. To address these economic challenges, China’s top leaders have signaled plans for stronger stimulus measures to help fill gaps in consumer demand.

    Senior Chinese officials have also indicated plans for increased government spending and further interest rate cuts.

    The ruling Communist Party faces a “long, long battle” to reflate the economy, according to Robin Xing, chief China economist at Morgan Stanley, who told Bloomberg Television that 2025 will “be the year of trying.”

    “Maybe by 2026, they will finally find the right dose of policies — a combination of consumption-centric stimulus plus social safety net reform,” Xing added.

    If you enjoyed this graphic, make sure check out The G7 is Looking More and More American, that shows the U.S. alone accounts for more than half of the combined G7 output in PPP-adjusted terms.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/23/2024 – 22:10

  • Chris Wright Is Perfect Pick To Lead Trump's Department Of Energy
    Chris Wright Is Perfect Pick To Lead Trump’s Department Of Energy

    Authored by James Taylor via RealClearPolicy,

    How do you restore a bloated and misdirected U.S. Department of Energy to its originally intended purpose of assuring affordable and reliable American energy? The answer is to appoint a highly knowledgeable and successful energy producer to the position of Energy Secretary. Donald Trump made the perfect pick in Chris Wright.

    A mechanical and electrical engineer by training, Chris Wright is one of the people most responsible for the fracking revolution that freed America from the whims of hostile oil producers like Iran and Venezuela. He is currently the CEO of Liberty Energy, an oil and natural gas servicing company at the forefront of American oil and natural gas production. He also sits on the board of directors of Oklo Inc., an advanced nuclear technology company.

    In other words, Wright possesses impressive knowledge and experience regarding a broad array of energy sources and technologies, and he has a track record of successfully bringing those energy options into the marketplace.

    Perhaps most appealing about Wright is his refusal to give in to pressure tactics from leftist climate and environment activist groups. “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition, either,” said Wright on his LinkedIn page. Countering leftist fearmongering, Wright has visually illustrated that fracking fluid is not dangerous by drinking it in public. 

    What Chris Wright affirmatively stands for is an America that dictates energy policy to the rest of the world rather than being held captive by it. America has more oil, coal, and natural gas resources than any other nation on Earth, but we rarely act like it. Under presidents Obama and Biden, government policy was to restrict American energy production under climate change rationale and then beg nations like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia to export more oil to us. Under Trump and Chris Wright, American energy policy will return to holding our energy destiny in our own hands.

    The beauty of abundant domestic energy production is that if there is a Middle East crisis, or if OPEC decides to tighten its oil production, America is the nation that most benefits from the rising prices, rather than Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. More American energy production means prices are likely to return to Trump-era lows – but any foreign events that put pressure on energy markets will benefit America rather than other nations.

    Under Chris Wright, the U.S. Department of Energy will focus on spurring affordable and reliable American energy, not creating massive and ineffective boondoggles for climate change virtue-signaling. This is in stark contrast to the Department of Energy under the Biden administration and current Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. 

    Granholm is a career politician and a partisan Democrat best known for giving overcaffeinated speeches at the 2012 and 2016 Democratic National Conventions. The Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate in 2021 approved Granholm as Energy Secretary despite Granholm having absolutely no specialized experience or knowledge regarding energy issues. The result was predictable. 

    The Biden-Granholm DOE website lists climate change as a “top priority” of the DOE and boasts about all the DOE programs and DOE money being spent on climate change – instead of assuring affordable and reliable American energy. Yes, the percentage of wind and solar power in the American electricity mix rose from 11 percent in 2020 to 15 percent in 2024. The result of adding such expensive and unreliable energy to our electricity mix is that electricity prices rose a staggering 23 percent under Biden-Granholm, after rising less than 1 percent per year in the decade before Biden-Granholm.

    Biden-Granholm’s effect on gasoline prices is even worse. Gasoline prices averaged just $2.48 under the Trump administration. They are averaging $3.45 under Biden-Granholm, which is 39 percent higher than under Trump.

    Americans gave Donald Trump a mandate to halt runaway energy inflation. Americans want affordable and reliable energy rather than climate change virtue signaling. With a Department of Energy under the vision and leadership of Chris Wright, America will once again return to energy affordability and energy dominance. Wright is the perfect man for the job. 

    James Taylor (JTaylor@heartland.org) is President of The Heartland Institute. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/23/2024 – 21:45

  • Washington D.C. Has The Highest Share Of Single-Mom Households In America
    Washington D.C. Has The Highest Share Of Single-Mom Households In America

    Nearly 17% of all American households with children under the age of 18 are run by a single mom.

    This means there are over 6 million single moms in the U.S., but, as Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao details in the graphic below, that share varies depending on the state, as this map shows.

    Data for this graphic and article is sourced from the Badger Institute published 2024. Their figures are based off the latest American Community Survey findings.

    ℹ️ Figures for D.C. were excluded from the graphic, but are included for reference in the table below.

    Ranked: States With the Highest Share Single Moms

    Poorer states in the South – Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia – have some of the highest rates of single mom households.

    Rank State State Code Share of Single Mom Households
    1 Washington D.C.* DC 29%
    2 Mississippi MS 24%
    3 Louisiana LA 23%
    4 Alabama AL 20%
    5 Georgia GA 20%
    6 South Carolina SC 20%
    7 Arkansas AR 19%
    8 Delaware DE 19%
    9 North Carolina NC 19%
    10 New Mexico NM 19%
    11 Ohio OH 19%
    12 Rhode Island RI 19%
    13 Connecticut CT 18%
    14 Florida FL 18%
    15 Maryland MD 18%
    16 New York NY 18%
    17 Tennessee TN 18%
    18 Illinois IL 17%
    19 Indiana IN 17%
    20 Massachusetts MA 17%
    21 Michigan MI 17%
    22 Missouri MO 17%
    23 Nevada NV 17%
    24 Oklahoma OK 17%
    25 Pennsylvania PA 17%
    26 Texas TX 17%
    27 Arizona AZ 16%
    28 Kentucky KY 16%
    29 Virginia VA 16%
    30 Wisconsin WI 16%
    31 Iowa IA 15%
    32 New Jersey NJ 15%
    33 West Virginia WV 15%
    34 California CA 14%
    35 Kansas KS 14%
    36 Minnesota MN 14%
    37 Nebraska NE 14%
    38 Oregon OR 14%
    39 South Dakota SD 14%
    40 Vermont VT 14%
    41 Alaska AK 13%
    42 Colorado CO 13%
    43 Maine ME 13%
    44 Montana MT 13%
    45 North Dakota ND 13%
    46 Washington WA 13%
    47 New Hampshire NH 12%
    48 Wyoming WY 12%
    49 Hawaii HI 11%
    50 Idaho ID 11%
    51 Utah UT 9%
    N/A National Average USA 17%

    Note: *U.S. federal district. Figures rounded.

    For context, the same region has the highest share of single dad households as well. This indicates that economic pressures of raising children as a single parent are high.

    In fact, per statistics from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, nearly one-third of all single parent households were below the poverty threshold in 2021.

    The share is far higher for single mothers (35%) than for single dads (17%), but both are much higher than the rate for two-parent households (9.5%).

    Zooming out from that bit of analysis, Utah has the lowest share of single mom households in the country. Utah has a large segment of the population that is Mormon, and the religion discourages children outside marriage.

    Finally, Pew Research found that nearly a quarter of all American children below 18 lived in a single parent household, the highest share across the world.

    Check out Mapped: Poverty Rates by State to see the correlations mentioned in this article visualized.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/23/2024 – 21:20

  • The Cure For Vaccine Skepticism
    The Cure For Vaccine Skepticism

    Authored by Martin Kulldorff via RealClearPolitics.com,

    The only way to restore public trust in vaccination – which has taken a big hit since the lies attending the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine – is to put a well-known vaccine skeptic in charge of the vaccine research agenda. The ideal person for this is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been nominated to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

    At the same time, we must put rigorous scientists with a proven track record of evidence-based medicine in charge of determining the type of study designs to use. Two ideal scientists for this are Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Marty Makary, who have been nominated to lead the NIH and FDA, respectively.

    Vaccines are – along with antibiotics, anesthesia, and sanitation – one of the most significant health inventions in history. First conceived in 1774 by Benjamin Jesty, a farmer in Dorsetshire, England, the smallpox vaccine alone has saved millions of lives. Operation Warp Speed, which rapidly developed the COVID vaccines, saved many older Americans. Despite this, we have seen a sharp increase in general vaccine hesitancy. Vaccine scientists and public health officials who did not conduct properly randomized trials made false claims about vaccine efficacy and safety and established vaccine mandates for people who did not need the vaccines, sowing suspicion and damaging public trust in vaccination.

    What went wrong? The purpose of the COVID vaccines was to reduce mortality and hospitalization, but the randomized trials were only designed to demonstrate short-term reduction in COVID symptoms, which is not of great public health importance. Since the placebo groups were promptly vaccinated after the emergency approval, they also failed to provide reliable information about adverse reactions. Despite these flaws, it was falsely claimed that vaccine-induced immunity is superior to natural infection-acquired immunity and that the vaccines would prevent infection and transmission.

    Governments and universities then mandated the vaccines for people with superior natural immunity and for young people with very low mortality risk. These mandates were not only unscientific but with a limited vaccine supply, it was unethical to vaccinate low-mortality-risk people when the vaccines were needed by older high-risk people around the world.

    Since government and pharmaceutical companies lied about the COVID vaccine, are they also lying about other vaccines? Skepticism has now spread to tried-and-true vaccines that are proven to work.

    And there are real, unanswered vaccine safety questions. Seminal work from Denmark has shown that vaccines can have both positive and negative non-specific effects on non-targeted diseases, and that is something that must be explored in greater depth. Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) scientists studying asthma and aluminum-containing vaccines concluded that while their “findings do not constitute strong evidence for questioning the safety of aluminum in vaccines … additional examination of this hypothesis appears warranted.”

    While VSD and other scientists should continue to do observational studies, we should also conduct randomized placebo-controlled vaccine trials, as RFK has advocated. Since we have herd immunity for many diseases, such as measles, trials can be ethically conducted by randomizing the age of vaccination to, for example, one versus three years old, while spreading the trial over a large geographical area so that the unvaccinated are not all living close to each other.

    I am confident that most vaccines will continue to be found safe and effective. While some problems may be found, that is more likely to increase rather than decrease vaccine confidence. For instance, it was found that the measles-mumps-rubella-varicella (MMRV) vaccine causes excess febrile seizures in 12- to 23-month-old children. MMRV is now only given as a second dose to older children, while the younger kids get separate MMR and varicella vaccines, resulting in fewer vaccine-induced seizures that scare parents. Although safety studies were inconclusive, it was also wise to remove mercury from vaccines. Even if we end up with fewer vaccines in the recommended vaccine schedule, that’s not necessarily a terrible thing. Scandinavia has a very healthy population with fewer vaccines in their schedules.

    We won’t restore vaccine confidence by preaching to the choir.

    After the COVID debacle, Kennedy’s stated goal is to return to evidence-based medicine free from conflicts of interest. Letting him do that is the only way that skeptics will trust vaccines again, and those of us who trust vaccines have no reason to be afraid of that.

    Attempts by the public health and pharma establishments to derail the nominations of RFK, Bhattacharya, and Makary are the surest way to further increase vaccine hesitancy in America.

    The choice is stark.

    We cannot let lopsided “pro-vaccine scientists” who clamp their hands over their ears at the mildest questions do any more harm to vaccine confidence. As a pro-vaccine scientist, and in fact, the only person ever being fired by the CDC for being too pro-vaccine, the choice is clear in my mind.

    To restore vaccine confidence to previous levels, we must support the nominations of Kennedy, Bhattacharya, and Makary.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/23/2024 – 20:55

  • These Are America's Top Health Insurance Companies By State
    These Are America’s Top Health Insurance Companies By State

    The U.S. health insurance industry is highly concentrated, with a single insurer having at least a 50% market share in 13 U.S. states.

    This trend has intensified over the last 10 years due to industry consolidation, leaving consumers with limited options for health insurance. Going further, in markets dominated by a few insurers, healthcare costs and spending tend to be higher as insurers are less likely to reimburse hospitals for patient care.

    This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows America’s largest health insurance companies by state, based on data from the American Medical Association.

    The Market Concentration of Health Insurers in 2023

    Below, we show the top health insurance company in each U.S. state, measured by their share of total enrollments in 2023:

    Last year, Blue Cross Blue Shield covered 86% of all enrollments in Alabama, making it the most concentrated health insurance market nationwide.

    Ranking in second is Kentucky, where Elevance Health makes up 67% of the market share. Overall, six of the most concentrated states are located in the South. Going further, the region has higher levels of uninsured rates compared to other regions driven by states opposing the expansion of Medicaid.

    In comparison, the Northwestern states of Washington and Oregon have the least concentrated health insurance markets, each with one company controlling a 21% share.

    Overall, Blue Cross Blue Shield was the top health insurance company in 14 states, followed by Elevance Health in 10 states. While UnitedHealth Group is America’s largest insurer on a national level, it is comparatively less concentrated state-wide, being the top provider in states such as New York and Arizona.

    Shifting Business Models

    Beyond having significant market concentration across states, many health insurance companies are diversifying into other noninsurance healthcare services.

    For instance, Cigna, the top health insurance company in Wyoming, generated roughly 75% of its revenues from noninsurance services in Q3 2023. For Elevance Health, noninsurance business activities made up 25% of revenues, spanning from pharmacy services to primary care.

    In many ways, health insurers are becoming increasingly vertically integrated, which has also been shown to raise prices and reduce competition in healthcare systems.

    To learn more about this topic from a national perspective, check out this graphic on the largest health insurance companies in America.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/23/2024 – 20:30

  • Under Trump, Will Keystone XL Remain A Pipe Dream?
    Under Trump, Will Keystone XL Remain A Pipe Dream?

    Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to issue a day-one executive order to restore federal approvals for the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, similar to his January 2017 directive overturning the Obama administration’s 2015 rejection of the same project.

    Trump’s first-term Keystone restoration was reversed by President Joe Biden in a January 2021 executive order, again halting development of the 1,180-mile pipeline between Alberta, Canada, and Steele City, Nebraska.

    Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images

    While Trump 2.0 could nullify Biden’s directive in a pen stroke on Jan. 20, 2025, he won’t be able to resurrect Keystone XL because the project no longer exists.

    “My understanding is the company has pulled the steel out of the ground and shipped it elsewhere and found alternative routes to get its product to market,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity.

    “That would make it hard for Trump to approve an application that doesn’t exist,” he told The Epoch Times.

    “Like most black-and-white stories, it’s a bit more complicated than that,” senior market analyst Phil Flynn with Chicago-based Price Futures Group told The Epoch Times.

    But a simple straight line between supply and demand illustrates why XL was—and is—needed, he said.

    “Whether or not this pipeline gets built, there will be another pipeline along the same route, just it’s not called ‘Keystone,’” Flynn said.

    Toronto commodity analyst Rory Johnston, founder of CommodityContext.com, said a lot of things had changed since 2021 when “they had all the pipes in place in many places, like on-site, waiting to be installed.”

    “Now it’s a zombie pipeline. What is dead can never die,” he told The Epoch Times.

    TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline facilities, where oilsands crude was to have begun its journey along Keystone XL, in Hardisty, Alberta. The Canadian Press/Jeff McIntosh

    Calgary-based TC Energy’s Keystone XL Pipeline 2008 proposal sought to add a 30-inch diameter line traversing 1,179 miles from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Nebraska, to its existing 3,000-mile Keystone pipeline network.

    The XL pipeline would add 800,000 barrels per day (bpd) to TC Energy’s existing Keystone network, including up to 730,000 bpd of tar sand crude oil from Canada and 100,000 bpd from North Dakota’s Bakken Formation.

    Crossing the border at Morgan, Montana, XL would run 875 miles to Steele City, where it would split, sending oil east to an Illinois refinery and south to Cushing, Oklahoma, a trans-shipment hub with 90 million barrels of storage space and access to its Marketlink common-carrier pipeline, which is linked to Texas refiners.

    The proposed pipeline drew heated opposition from an array of groups, including environmental nonprofits, climate change lobbyists, Native American organizations, land owners, and local governments, particularly in Nebraska.

    Although preliminary approvals were secured by 2014, President Barack Obama in 2015 vetoed XL as unnecessary for the nation’s energy security, locking it in limbo.

    Following his Jan. 20, 2017, inauguration, Trump restored XL’s approvals. Four years to the day later, Biden revoked Trump’s restoration.

    After failing to regain momentum during Trump’s short-lived reprieve and facing at least four years of assured Biden sanctions, TC Energy withdrew its application in June 2021.

    In July 2021, TC Energy filed a $15 million claim against the U.S. government for Biden’s “unfair and inequitable” revocation of its XL permit, claiming the 13-year “regulatory rollercoaster” caused significant financial harm.

    People walk past Indian teepees that are on the National Mall as part of a protest against the Keystone pipeline, in Washington on April 23, 2014. Mark Wilson/Getty Images

    “TC Energy, they did everything right and had spent a whole bunch of money, had it approved, and they pulled the rug from under them,” said Flynn, who also produces The Energy Report.

    In October 2024, TC Energy announced it will “spin off” its pipeline business to a subsidiary, South Bow. Since then, portions of the pipeline have been dug up and sold, easements have lapsed or been transferred, and investors have shied away.

    In November, water company Cadiz bought 180 miles of steel originally purchased for the pipeline to transport water through the Mojave Desert.

    Some speculate Trump’s Dec. 10 pledge to expedite permitting and trim environmental reviews for projects worth at least $1 billion could spur interest in reviving XL.

    South Bow “is noncommittal,” Flynn said, noting he’s curious if Trump’s fast-track pledge could spur Keystone’s exhumation.

    “When you have the power of the presidency behind you, that might entice them,” he said. “I think this could be fast-tracked. If South Bow wants to do this, it could entice them to do it.”

    South Bow isn’t saying much one way or another.

    “South Bow supports efforts to transport more Canadian crude oil to meet U.S. demand,” South Bow spokesperson Solomiya Lyaskovska said in an emailed response to The Epoch Times’ queries. “South Bow’s long-term strategy is to safely and efficiently grow our business.”

    President Donald Trump holds up one of the executive orders he signed to revive the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and another pipeline crossing North Dakota, in the Oval Office at the White House on Jan. 24, 2017. Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images

    Shifting Landscape

    TC Energy’s primary reason for building XL was to boost its capacity to ship Alberta tar sands crude to refineries and shipping terminals for export.

    In May 2023, Trans Mountain Pipeline completed the expansion of its existing 610-mile TransMountain Pipeline between Edmonton and Burnaby, British Columbia, from 300,000 bpd to 890,000 bpd capacity.

    The expanded pipeline gave Canadian exporters the port access they needed, defusing the urgency for XL, but the Gulf is still the prized destination, Flynn said.

    Canadian producers “love access to the Gulf. That’s where all the refineries are and where the ships are already geared to export everywhere in the world,” he said.

    Many say market conditions indicate there’s no need for another cross-border oil pipeline. U.S. production is at an all-time high, and Canada is exporting at record levels. OPEC has at least 5 million bpd of spare capacity.

    Meanwhile, economic forecasters mostly project growth in global oil demand will slow, making investors wary of long-term infrastructure commitments.

    The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects demand for oil will increase between 0.9 percent and 1.3 percent annually the next few years, below pre-2020 annual averages of 1.5 percent growth. In October, it lowered its 2025 world oil demand by 20,000 bpd.

    “Declining demand … is central” to opponents’ arguments, Hartl said.

    “The reality with drilling is it’s always contingent on price points, on profitability,” he said. “The company would have to want it, to commit resources to drill and, right now, there’s little motivation. The market itself doesn’t bear it.”

    Pipes for the Trans Mountain Pipeline project sit in a storage lot outside of Hope, British Columbia, Canada, on June 6, 2021. The Trans Mountain Pipeline System conveys crude and refined oil from Alberta to the coast of British Columbia, Canada. Cole Burston/AFP via Getty Images

    Shrinking Market

    This gradual demand downturn has a subsidiary influence across related industries. According to a 2024 IBISWorld analysis, for instance, the U.S. pipeline construction industry includes 1,870 businesses and 184,000 workers and annually generates $47 billion in revenues. However, those revenues have been declining an average of 7 percent each year since 2019.

    Johnston said such forecasts temper investment, noting that the project still languished, even after Trump approved XL.

    “They had four years, and over those four years, [TC Energy] barely got 10 percent of the pipeline constructed,” he said.

    The “weird inherent tension in trying to drive [energy prices] down but keep it profitable” is unsustainable, Hartl said.

    The growth in oil consumption has declined for about 15 years and will continue to slow, Texas Tech University Department of Economics Professor Michael Noel told The Epoch Times.

    “All of that is true,” he said, buttressing XL opponents’ arguments.

    “So, the argument is we won’t need this infrastructure, so we’re going to put up with higher prices now because we’ll get lower prices later,” Noel said. “That’s great, but that argument historically means that you’re going to end up with higher and higher and higher prices while you keep on waiting for the lower thing to come.”

    The “better idea” is “always build the infrastructure you need when you need it, then you’ll have cheaper prices now, and then at some point when you don’t need it, it gets decommissioned,” he said.

    Even if renewable energies power the grid, “it takes time to build these things,” Noel said. “So the question is, what do you do in the meantime?”

    Read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/23/2024 – 20:05

  • India: It's Worse Than You Think
    India: It’s Worse Than You Think

    Authored by Jayant Bhandari via American Renaissance,

    Most Westerners know nothing about India beyond vague ideas about Hinduism, yoga, gurus, and maybe a dash of Bollywood. To such people, this article will be a rude awakening…

    I grew up in Bhopal in central India. Since as early as I can remember, I worked in my father’s printing press. I studied engineering in the nearby city in Indore and went to Manchester Business School in Britain to do an MBA. I returned to India to set up a subsidiary of a British company, which was a huge success. When I lived in Delhi, I wrote for the mainstream Indian media. I traveled widely in India and around the world.

    I had first returned to India with the idea of improving it, but after 11 years, I realized that India was a sinking ship, with worsening and increasingly shameless corruption, degraded people, and a society that was falling apart. I had never met an honest bureaucrat or politician. I applied to emigrate to Canada and my application was approved in a record three weeks.

    I now advise East Asian and Western corporations on investing in India. Most of what I tell them sounds to them exaggerated, unrealistic, and unbelievable. After much dance, drama, and a great deal of lost money, they begin to believe what I tell them. However, this learning is never institutionalized because of a refusal to understand India. This is a form of political correctness, a poison eating away the innards of Western values.

    When I was a child growing up in India, I learned that “might makes right.” Power was often abused, with those in control acting as if they had a God-given right to exploit and dominate others. The display of authority could be so extreme that questioning it or expecting those in power to do their duty might lead to retribution. Those in authority seemed to believe that their positions were not for serving others but for personal gain.

    People who showed respect appeared to have meekly accepted a lower, subservient position. Kind people had to hide their compassion, for being nice was seen as a weakness.

    In India, I have rarely seen someone in authority take the initiative to solve a problem he was responsible for. When I was at university, an underaged boy who worked in the kitchen was raped and sodomized by the janitors. I reported the matter, but not only did no one in authority do what was right — something well within their power — the authorities and fellow students threatened me with severe consequences if I pursued the matter further. Devoid of empathy, they also made fun of the boy and me.

    Yes, there is an element of sadism here. There is some degree of pleasure that Indians take in the pain suffered by others. The attitude of the authorities was like that of the high-placed Delhi bureaucrat who told me that his Black Label whiskey tastes so much better because he knows that most Indians can’t afford to drink it.

    This confuses Westerners. If they had power, even if they were corrupt, in a situation where there was nothing to gain or lose — no bribes to receive since both parties were poor, and no risk of offending someone well-connected — they would do the right thing and book the alleged rapist. These Indians would do nothing, not even lift a finger, unless there was a reward: money or sex. Their apathy was bottomless.

    Doing your job may be seen as effeminate by those above you. If you can shirk your responsibilities, you’re considered macho. In that culture, there is rarely any pride or honor in doing what is right. If you call a plumber for repairs, he will see it as beneath him to leave without creating a mess. He may deliberately do a shoddy job, even if doing it well wouldn’t take more time. A complex web of arrogance, egotism, servility, casteism, tribalism, and magical thinking drives this behavior. He shows his contempt for you and gets the better of you by leaving a mess. His customer, as the other side of the same coin, might well look down on and exploit someone who did his job well.

    If you do a bad job, does that mean you do not get called back? That doesn’t matter to people who have no standards to begin with and who do not think ahead. There is little positive feedback to those who want to do better, be fair, or make better products.

    Fairness, justice, trust, empathy, and impartiality are alien to many Indians. They have a hard time telling the difference between right and wrong. They are indifferent even when no cost is associated with being fair. Moreover, if they could do good without any personal cost, they would still prefer not to, because that can be seen as a sign of weakness.

    Indians are indoctrinated to be submissive. The indoctrination is so profound that Indians address those even slightly above them in authority as “sir.” They tend to be servile, sycophantic, and ingratiating. This should not be mistaken for respect, because respect is foreign to Indians. When they call you “sir,” it reflects their view of you only as the stronger figure in the interaction, consistent with their view that might makes right. They will demean you the moment you are in a weaker position.

    You are either higher or lower — therefore, you are either abuser or abused. Equality is impossible. A visitor learns very quickly that saying “please” and “thank you” is seen as a sign of weakness and is reserved for those who wish to demean themselves.

    Indians cannot maintain the institutions established by the British. These institutions have been hollowed out and corrupted, becoming predatory. The constitution and laws hold little value. The only forces driving these institutions are bribes and connections. Whether you approach the highest political leaders or the pettiest bureaucrats, they openly and unashamedly demand bribes.

    Activists burning an effigy of Congress MP Dhiraj Sahu in protest against corruption and recovering of cash on December 10, 2023 in Patna, India. Photo by Santosh Kumar/Hindustan Times Bihar Politics And Governance (Credit Image: © Imago via ZUMA Press)

    Street smarts are highly valued, and criminals who evade justice are celebrated. A relative of mine, brimming with pride, once told me that he would never pay rent for the house he had rented. He had bribed the local authorities to make it impossible for his landlord to throw him out.

    When someone in a society without trust is cheated, he rarely seeks justice against the cheater. Instead, he cheats others. Men abuse women, women abuse children, and children abuse animals. Animals attack whatever they can. Higher-caste Indians abuse those in lower castes, while lower-caste people fight with other lower-caste people to determine who is superior. It is a perpetual cycle of mistrust and arbitrariness.

    People in the West talk about a system of four or five castes that was formalized by the British. This confuses the issue, for this gives an exaggerated sense of structure. In reality, there are 1.4 billion castes in India. All interactions are about sizing you up. You end up either oppressing others or being oppressed. The so-called lower caste people are more caste conscious than the higher caste people.

    Most caste problems in India are described in the news in passive tense. So-and-so was oppressed and abused. Yes, the sufferer is a lower caste person but the oppressor is often of a similarly low caste. When a lower caste person rises in power, he loves showing it off to those from higher castes. What better way to show off power than by abusing others and getting away with it or — if you are a plumber — by leaving a mess? Different people show off power according to what they can get away with.

    Many people lie openly. Everyone knows everyone lies, but everyone lies anyway. Many Indians convince themselves of their lies so that they can no longer differentiate between fact and fiction. Even if you don’t have to or want to, you have to exaggerate and lie, for you know your listener will calibrate to what you say. Conversations are often driven by personal material gain. Every transaction is a zero-sum game — or perhaps a negative-sum game, for sadism may be a part of the equation.

    You may think you will be safe if you work with family members, but they may turn out to be your biggest enemies, for even they will betray you. Honor is not a part of the social code. Indians are atomized people and do not know loyalty. Indians across the board hide gold in their own houses and do not tell even family members about it.

    I have never (I am using the word advisedly) had a contract honored in India. When you bribe, you must do so skillfully. If you have an opposing side in a legal fight, the judge and the police will take bribes from both sides. Your lawyer will collude with the opposing side and with the judge right in front of you to maximize bribes. This might sound unbelievable, but that does not change reality.

    The words for most virtues come from Persian, Turkish, or English, not native Indian languages. But just because the words came into the language does not mean Indians accept those virtues; they were perverted and became a façade for the old ways.

    Everyone builds solid, high fences around his property. Everyone does this the day he buys a property, because his neighbors will encroach on his land if they can. It took me years after I had moved to the West to understand why people don’t build fences.

    When I first traveled to the UK, I was amused to find that animals weren’t fearful of or aggressive toward people. I was surprised that those in power didn’t expect servility or reverence. For years, I felt uneasy, as if I wasn’t fulfilling my part of the transaction unless I paid bribes.

    My grandparents and father were honest in financial matters and held themselves to a high standard of self-respect — an anomaly in India. There are good, sane, moral, rational people in India, but I have more fingers than the total number of such Indians I have known; I can find that many honest Americans in one morning. By Indian standards, our family was decent and well-connected. This shielded me from much depravity and made it possible to ignore the stories that I heard.

    Among ordinary Indians, conversations revolve around backbiting, gossiping about friends, discussing celebrities, exchanging superstitions, and animosity toward other groups. Hindus hate Muslims, Muslims hate Hindus, and Sikhs hate Hindus. These groups fight among themselves, leaving everyone atomized, but their hatred of other groups superficially unites them.

    Demonstrators protest against the sudden “anti-encroachment” drive carried out by the North Delhi Municipal Corporation in Kolkata, India. The NDMC demolished several pavement structures such as shops, shortly after a period of Muslim-Hindu violence. (Credit Image: © Sukhomoy_ Sen/eyepix via ZUMA Press Wire)

    I doubt I understood the concepts of honor and loyalty until I had lived in Britain for a year. During that time, someone told me not to exaggerate when promoting the organization I worked for. For the first time, I began to see that people wanted to speak the truth simply for the sake of truth. I had always known the word “truth,” but for the first time, I began to grasp its essence.

    The foundational principle to understanding India is that it is an amoral, irrational society devoid of values. Any values you try to instill will slip off, like water off a duck’s back.

    I have seen a continual worsening of Indian society. Whatever grace and civility Christian missionaries and European colonizers instilled in Indians has been slowly eroding.

    I distinctly recall my first day outside of India. On a train trip from Heathrow Airport to Manchester, I saw what I initially thought were dull-looking houses and clean, unremarkable waterways and air. The lack of hustle and bustle and the calmness of the train ride left me feeling disoriented and gloomy. I didn’t know how to cope with a situation where there was no constant assault on my senses.

    With time, I realized that for most Indian immigrants, this led to a compulsive need to recreate India in the ghettos they moved into. They sought the familiar smells, noise, and constant hustle and bustle. They recreated never-ending emotionalism, fruitless conflicts, chaos, and intellectual inbreeding.

    When we were granted unhindered access to the school in Manchester and later to the office where I worked, my fellow immigrants and I often wondered if the British were so naïve as to trust us so readily. What was to stop us from stealing everything in sight? Most immigrants never truly grasp the significance of “trust” and “gratitude.” Worse, they discover that complaining often leads to benefits — the only thing they genuinely care about in the multicultural West. Humanistic, civilizational values never touch their hearts.

    Once, a friend and I went for a drive in Manchester. Having had a few drinks, he ran a red light and was pulled over by the police. I was stunned by the respect with which the officer treated him. In India, the police would have humiliated and exploited even the passengers. My friend was taken to the police station, and as I was driven there by an officer, I explained how we would have been treated if this had happened in India.

    At that time, I was living in a high-crime area of Manchester, and the police sometimes followed me when I walked home. I asked the officer why they never stopped or questioned me. He told me they followed me to ensure my safety and had no authority to stop me without legitimate cause. For the first time, I began to understand the British respect for personal space, another value that was also starting to take root in my mind.

    The officer made my friend sit for an hour or two to sober up, and then let him go without booking him. I began to realize that those in power in Britain could apply the law flexibly, considering the spirit behind it; in India, laws were excuses for predation.

    Of course, Britain is no longer what it once was. Over the years, policing has evolved to accommodate the challenges presented by the lowest common denominator introduced by immigrants from the Third World.

    Statistics fail to resonate in the Indian psyche. There is no sense of a grey area; everything is black or white, with no appreciation for nuance. This lack of proportionality leads to indecisiveness and an inability to value things. In the end, unrestrained emotions drive life. I carried a part of this same mindset with me. Realigning my thinking with reason, morality, and Western values was a difficult task.

    I attended one of the best engineering colleges in India and believed myself to be creative, decisive, and well-grounded. However, as I started witnessing social interactions and behavior in Britain, I found I lacked confidence. Even the grocery store owner appeared more confident and decisive. I realized my mind was clouded with confused thinking and conflicting motivations

    Even my privileged upbringing in India had ingrained into me layers upon layers of confused worldviews, and dishonest, scheming behavior. Despite my best intentions, shaking them off and rewiring my thinking took decades. Any erroneous belief I became aware of and tried to change clashed with other deeply ingrained beliefs and mental patterns. It was like trying to replace a broken brick in the castle of my cognitive constructs without destabilizing the entire structure. At times, I had to get drunk just to find a fleeting sense of sanity.

    With time, I noticed that I began to sleep better and felt mentally freer. Even my body started to change, and the mental cloud that had clogged my thoughts began to lift. A reassuring sense that those around me had my back was immensely helpful. The confusing and contradictory thoughts that had caused chronic stress started to fade.

    My grandmother often said two things I once considered backward-looking, but I agree with them today. She believed that some people needed to stay on the edge of starvation because if given more, they would make problems. Despite being one of the most egalitarian people I knew — befriending her chauffeur and tailor — she would remind me that not everyone deserved a seat at the table unless he was fit for it.

    “Human Rights” is a Western concept that is incomprehensible to most Indians. They fail to understand respect for the individual. Speaking to them about “rights” only leads to confusion. They fail to differentiate between “negative” and “positive” rights. For instance, when taught about property rights, they learn to protect their property but fail to recognize the rights of others. Women, when taught that rape is a violation, might begin to see it in every situation and use it as a tool to exploit men. As they are introduced to the concept of rights, they shift from accepting their wretched lives to adopting a resentful, victim mentality.

    You cannot teach people anything good until they have the foundations of morality, rationality, causality, and other Western values. Without these foundations, the fruits of Western civilization serve only to turn people’s often-hidden hedonic tendencies into something more malevolent. Every civilizational fruit — education, Western clothing, prosperity, Western institutions — has been perverted in India.

    The institutions left behind by the British have been hollowed out, becoming purely predatory and sadistic. This occurred because, in post-British India, those in power prize expediency and acquiring wealth as life’s sole purposes. Today’s India lacks even the vague rule of law that existed before the arrival of the Europeans. This is why it will be an improvement when India eventually collapses and the Taliban-like authoritarian system that existed before the British reemerges from the ashes.

    The High Court of Bombay, designed by British engineer Col. James A. Fuller. Credit: benbeiske via Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

    Without Western missionaries at the helm, Christianity has been “nourished” by Indian superstitions and magical thinking and has become voodoo. Grammar has fallen by the wayside, and English has often become pidgin.

    Education and Western clothing have been adopted with a cargo-cult mentality. The focus is on obtaining certificates and wearing suits, as if these outward symbols alone confer status and material benefits. Similarly, education is not viewed as a means to foster intellectual growth or evolve into better human beings. Instead, driven by animalistic desires, expediency, and the unethical pursuit of resources, most Indians scorn the idea of self-improvement.

    Education applied to an irrational mind that processes information through magical thinking becomes burdensome, making such people worse than their uneducated counterparts.

    The Indian mind should have been made moral and rational and imbued with honor, discipline, respect, and integrity, before being formally educated and provided with the fruits of Western civilization. Alas, this would have been, at best, a millennia-long process.

    In economics, there is a concept of the “middle-income trap.” I prefer to call India’s situation the “low-income trap.” Contrary to the beliefs of professional economists, these traps have cultural underpinnings; it is virtually impossible to escape.

    Prosperity has led to neither social peace nor intellectual and spiritual growth. Indians do not understand the concept of comfort. Most rich Indians build garish houses not for comfort but to display wealth and control those weaker than themselves. Worse, the easy prosperity of recent decades, which is essentially a result of Western technological advancements, has derailed the pursuit of rationality and morality. Social media are a platform for exchanging myths, superstitions, and pornography. The IT revolution does not bring enlightenment to the poorest parts of the world!

    Today, India is more entrenched in magical thinking and superstition than in the past. Hedonism is rampant, and families are falling apart.

    When elevated to high positions, most Indians become arrogant and sadistic. This is less from a desire to mask their incompetence and psychological weaknesses and more from a genuine belief that arrogance and sadism define power and class. This also serves as a way to cope with the deep-seated inferiority complex instilled by their culture. Whatever grace and civility had once been imbued in Indians by colonizers has eroded.

    The wealth created by the West hypnotizes Indians. However, they fail to understand the underpinnings of that wealth. They equate the West with Hollywood stereotypes: girls in short skirts, promiscuity, drinking and drugs, flaunting wealth, working in plush offices, and controlling others. This is the true soul, once obscured by Victorian morals and Islamic constraints. It is a return to a pre-colonial, pre-Victorian, hedonistic culture.

    The British were a godsend. Without them, the situation has continued to worsen. India will eventually nullify all the benefits it got from the West and revert to its pre-colonial ways. It will fall apart, and I wouldn’t be surprised if much of its population falls prey to war and famine and declines to the level it was before the arrival of Europeans.

    Most Indians cannot think beyond money, sex, and survival — just what you would expect of a society with an average IQ of 77. Every Western value given to them has been caricatured and corrupted for these ends. Indians have no Ten Commandments. They are so unaware of these values that they remain oblivious even if they are forcefully presented to them. There is nothing you can do about this, except to try to understand what immigration from India and the rest of Third World will do to the West.

    *  *  *

    This article has been adapted from a recent speech given at the Property and Freedom Society conference in Bodrum, Turkey.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/23/2024 – 19:40

  • China Behind Super Highway That Targets US With Mass Migration, Economic Warfare
    China Behind Super Highway That Targets US With Mass Migration, Economic Warfare

    Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    DARIÉN GAP, Panama—The grind of heavy machinery breaks the silence of the Darién jungle, where the Pan-American Highway ends at Yaviza, Panama.

    Construction workers have cleared towering trees to make way for a steel and concrete bridge mighty enough to withstand flooding from the Chucunaque River.

    Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images, Shutterstock

    An onsite worker for the construction company Cusa told The Epoch Times that the construction project will cut four miles into the Darién jungle at a cost of $42 million and includes a second bridge crossing the Tuira River.

    That would leave some 55 miles to finish the Pan-American Highway, also known as Highway 1, through the mountainous rainforest to connect it to Turbo, Colombia.

    If it’s ever completed, the Pan-American Highway will stretch about 18,000 miles from Alaska to Argentina, opening up a land corridor the length of the Americas.

    It has gone unfinished for decades because of American and Panamanian concerns over the environment, crime, and disease—and more recently, mass migration. The dangerous, rugged terrain acts as a natural barrier to travel from South to Central America.

    The bridge and road expansion will end near the town of Bocas de Cupé in the Darién Gap. However, bridging the rivers has been considered one of the major obstacles blocking the completion of the highway.

    The new project has worried some who fear that completing the road into the Darién Gap will be a win for China and a loss for the United States.

    Michael Yon, a former war correspondent, has been covering mass migration through Panama for several years and has used social media to bring attention to the bridge’s construction and its implications.

    China would benefit through an alternate trade route around the Panama Canal, which is essential to global trade. But for the United States, it could open the floodgates to migrants from South America, he told The Epoch Times.

    U.S. leaders have grown increasingly wary of the military implications of Chinese infrastructure projects being built in America’s backyard as part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), particularly around the Panama Canal.

    In 2018, Panama signed on to China’s ambitious BRI project, dubbed a modern Silk Road, after publicly recognizing Taiwan as part of China, much to the surprise and concern of the United States.

    Workers prepare abutments for a bridge spanning the Chucunaque River at Yaviza, Panama, on Feb. 20, 2024. An onsite worker for the construction company Cusa said the project will cut four miles into the Darién jungle at a cost of $42 million and includes a second bridge crossing the Tuira River. Bobby Sanchez for The Epoch Times

    The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to utilize the BRI “to amass power and influence at the expense of the world’s democracies,” U.S. Southern Command Commander Army Gen. Laura Richardson warned in March.

    She and other commanders in recent years have been sounding the alarm about China’s incursion into the Western Hemisphere.

    “[China] seeks to supplant the United States as the world’s leading economic and military power,” Gen. Richardson noted in a written statement to the House Armed Services Committee.

    Closing the Gap

    Last year alone, a record 500,000 migrants traveled through the Darién Gap on their way to the U.S. southern border, documents show.

    Mike Howell, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, believes that China’s economic development in the region threatens U.S. influence and security.

    “If China displaces the U.S. in the Western hemisphere as the dominant economic power, then we lose our leverage,” Mr. Howell, formerly an attorney with the Department of Homeland Security, told The Epoch Times.

    China is encircling the United States with infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean, he said.

    “It’s like a boa constrictor that’s tightening and tightening around the United States,” Mr. Howell said.

    In the 2019 book “China’s Belt and Road and Panama: A Strategic and Prospective Scenario Between the Americas and China,” author Eddie Tapiero touted the rise of China’s BRI in utopian terms.

    Mr. Tapiero, a Panamanian professor and international economist who wrote his book after a BRI meeting in China, called the initiative a catalyst for “global public good,” envisioning a world where “borders no longer exist, nor do countries.”

    Migrants walk by the jungle near Bajo Chiquito village, the first border control of the Darien Province in Panama, on Sept. 22, 2023. Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images

    The book includes a BRI scenario, with a map titled “Globalized Belt and Road” showing Panama and its canal connected to Colombia by rail through the Darién Gap.

    On the Colombian side of the Darién Gap, Chinese companies are working to build highways and ports.

    Roadwork near the Pan-American Highway in Turbo is part of the “Autopistas al Mar 2” highway project.

    The project will connect Colombia’s second-largest city of Medellín to ports in Urabá, including Turbo, where the Pan-American Highway ends.

    China’s state-owned China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC), along with four local companies, won the 2015 bid to build the Autopistas al Mar 2, according to the nonprofit Colombia Reports website.

    The project was delayed until late 2019, when the Chinese-led consortium obtained the necessary loans from the China Development Bank.

    Mr. Tapiero sees Panama, bookended by Colombia and Costa Rica, as a central hub in Latin America for the BRI. He suggested that the United States could “reduce geopolitical uncertainty” if it, too, joins the BRI.

    His globalized BRI map also shows rail routes slicing through the United States to significant markets on America’s east and west coasts.

    Infrastructure “connectivity” through air, land, and sea is a central theme of the book, which is playing out in Panama.

    The bridges into the Darién are part of a contract for the rehabilitation, improvement, and maintenance of the East Pan-American Highway.

    (Top) A ship is guided through the locks in the Panama Canal on Feb. 21, 2024. (Bottom) Traffic crosses the Bridge of The Americas on the Pan-American Highway as an eastbound ship enters the Panama Canal on Feb. 21, 2024. Bobby Sanchez for The Epoch Times

    It was awarded to Intervial Chile S.A. under a public-private partnership with the government of Panama, according to government documents.

    The investment for the project stands at more than $262 million as part of Panama’s Performance Standards Maintenance Program, which aims to promote agricultural, commercial, and tourist development.

    Funding for the project is through the International Finance Corp. (IFC), a part of the World Bank Group. China has ties with both banking establishments. In 2009, China pledged $1.5 billion to the IFC to boost global trade and has more recently intensified collaboration with the IFC on climate-friendly bonds.

    Global Choke Points

    A highway through the Darién Gap stands to diminish the importance of the Panama Canal, which the United States still protects under a neutrality treaty.

    The canal was returned to Panama in 1999 under a treaty brokered in the 1970s with President Jimmy Carter.

    The Darién Gap by land is similar to the Panama Canal by sea as a choke point, which holds military and economic value.

    China’s attempt to minimize or control the canal’s strategic importance to the United States could be significant should a conflict break out over Taiwan in terms of China’s ability to shut down sea lanes, according to Andrés Martínez-Fernández, The Heritage Foundation’s senior policy analyst for Latin America.

    Read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/23/2024 – 19:15

  • Syria's Jolani Vows To Disarm The Pentagon-Backed Kurds
    Syria’s Jolani Vows To Disarm The Pentagon-Backed Kurds

    The career jihadist and leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, met with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan in Damascus on Sunday, in a first since the overthrow of Assad earlier this month.

    Jolani, who now goes by his birth name of Ahmed al-Sharaa, was sporting a suit and tie for the first time as the PR effort to convince the world of his supposed ‘moderation’ continues. One of the more interesting moments from Sunday’s presser came when Jolani put the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on notice.

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    Jolani emphasized that all weapons in Syria will come under state control. He declared that all armed “factions will begin to announce their dissolution and enter the army.” Given that Assad’s former Syrian Arab Army (SAA) is no longer in existence, this means HTS is working on establishing a national military under its command.

    In the remarks alongside the top Turkish diplomat, Jolani directly called out the Kurdish-dominated SDF, which has for years been trained and armed by the Pentagon:

    “We will absolutely not allow there to be weapons in the country outside state control, whether from the revolutionary factions or the factions present in the SDF area,” he added, referring to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

    Turkey views the main component of the US-backed force, which controls swathes of north and northeast Syria, as being linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), its outlawed domestic foe.

    The “SDF area” of control is in reference to the Deir Ezzor and Hasakeh regions (east of the Euphrates) in the country’s northeast, where the country’s oil and gas fields are located. Currently the SDF is battling a Turkish offensive near the northern border area.

    The Turkish FM of course responded favorably to Jolani’s talk of disarming and disbanding the Kurdish factions: “Türkiye’s foreign minister said after meeting Syria’s de facto leader in Damascus on Sunday that there was no room for Kurdish militants in Syria’s future, calling for the YPG militia to disband,” a regional source said.

    It was obvious from the start that Turkish intelligence was a main player backing the HTS blitz across Syria which quickly led to the collapse of the Assad government, and now it’s clear that Jolani will in turn do Turkey’s bidding.

    A main goal of Erdogan’s policy in Syria has remained to squeeze out US forces, so that Turkey can eventually stomp out the Syrian Kurds in the process.

    Jolani’s provocative pledge of disarming the Syrian Kurds while standing next to the Turkish FM sends a clear message of what the agenda is concerning the near future northeast battle theatre. 

    It is also important to note that the Syrian Kurds (YPG/SDF) have long battled the jihadists of al-Nusra Front/HTS and other hardline Islamic factions throughout the war. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/23/2024 – 18:50

  • Health Brief: The Threat From Sugary Drinks, ADHD, And The Cholesterol-Dementia Connection
    Health Brief: The Threat From Sugary Drinks, ADHD, And The Cholesterol-Dementia Connection

    Authored by Bill Thomas via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A new study points out that sugary drinks may be more harmful to your health than candy regarding a very important organ in your body—the heart. Meanwhile, if your cholesterol goes up and down for seemingly no reason, you may be at a higher risk of developing a very serious brain condition. And there’s also a new trend happening in the health industry—it has to do with self-diagnosing a common disorder, and we’ll tell you all about it.

    Sugary drinks pose numerous health risks, and there are many healthier beverage options to replace them. rawpixel.com/Freepik

    Also, that second cup of coffee you’re drinking every morning could be affecting your gut health in unexpected ways, and we’ll take a look at how Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to take aim at the American diet and begin a new era of food reform.

    We’ll break down each of these stories for you one by one, but we begin with some alarming information regarding sugary beverages that could make even die-hard fans of those 32-ounce sodas think twice about drinking them. Here’s what we know.

    Sugary Drinks Like Soda Pose Greater Cardiovascular Risk Than Sweets, New Study Finds

    New research from Sweden indicates that sodas and other sweetened drinks are much worse for your heart than other popular treats, including pastries and baked goods because they significantly increase the risk of heart failure, stroke, and other issues.

    You should also know that another recent study points out that individuals who drink a lot of sweetened beverages are more likely to be diagnosed with what’s called atrial fibrillation, which is a type of irregular heartbeat.

    These findings are in sync with a new Harvard research study, which shows that drinking sweetened beverages every day increases a person’s chances of developing cardiovascular disease by 18 percent—even for those who exercise regularly.

    It’s also important to point out that some people often indulge in too many sugary drinks. They’re not as filling as sweet foods, so consuming too much is easy, leading to a sugar overload.

    At the end of the day, an occasional sweet drink might not be detrimental to your health, but as with most things in life, moderation is key to good health.

    Moving along, we know that blood markers can tell us a lot about our heart health, but one specific measure could give us clues about our risk of developing cognitive decline.

    Unexplained Changes in Cholesterol May Point to a Higher Risk of Dementia

    A new study presented at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting links significant year-to-year changes in cholesterol levels to an increased risk of dementia by a staggering 60 percent.

    The six-year study looked at nearly 10,000 people who were in their 70s, and the results were truly remarkable.

    Researchers believe that wild swings in levels of LDL, which is known as “bad” cholesterol, might destabilize plaque buildup in a person’s arteries, which could lead to reduced blood flow to the brain.

    It turns out this disruption could potentially trigger a cascade of substantial effects that accelerate cognitive decline, which may, in turn, affect an individual’s memory and how fast they think.

    On the other hand, fluctuations in HDL, known as the “good” cholesterol, and triglycerides, which are a type of fat found in your blood, did not correlate to similar cognitive problems.

    However, it’s worth noting that some doctors disagree with these new findings. They argue that cholesterol levels fluctuate all the time, and they say that the measurements taken during the study are not enough to reach strong conclusions about accurate cholesterol levels.

    But there’s a positive side to all of this—the recommendations for people to maintain stable cholesterol levels are fairly straightforward. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) endorses a lifestyle approach that includes eating a balanced diet, exercising regularly, limiting alcohol, and, last but not least, no smoking.

    We continue now with a topic that’s been getting a lot of attention lately regarding a common developmental disorder that even adults are now recognizing in themselves, and here’s more on that story.

    ADHD or Something Else? One in 4 Adults Are Self-Diagnosing

    A new survey by Ohio State University shows that one in four grownups believe they have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.

    This growing self-awareness has led to many people developing an increased focus on the disorder, including both understanding how society views people with ADHD along with effective strategies for managing the condition.

    Here’s where it gets even more interesting: According to the CDC, over 15 million adults in the United States are affected by the disorder, and surprisingly, half of them were actually diagnosed after childhood.

    Additionally, social media has been a valuable tool for raising awareness about ADHD because it allows people to share their experiences online with a variety of others who have the same condition, and it allows people to identify potential symptoms in themselves.

    Over the years, our understanding of ADHD has changed dramatically. Once considered a childhood disorder primarily affecting boys, experts now recognize that symptoms vary widely across race, gender, and age.

    Beyond traditional medical approaches, which include prescriptions like Adderall, researchers are now exploring whether or not a number of lifestyle factors, including diet, contribute to the developing symptoms of and being diagnosed with ADHD.

    You should know that some experts say that managing ADHD isn’t about forcing a brain to work differently. Instead, they believe that controlling the disorder is more about creating environments and strategies that complement how the brain of a person who’s been diagnosed with ADHD normally operates.

    One clinical psychologist who specializes in the treatment of ADHD recommends focusing on six key factors to effectively manage the disorder, including sleep, exercise, nutrition, medication, meditation, and meaningful social interactions. She says that the key to effectively handling life with an ADHD diagnosis is making the treatment personal—what works for one person might not work for another.

    We’ll add a jolt to your Health Brief now, and if you love coffee and drink it every day, your daily brew might be doing more than keeping you alert. Here’s what we’ve learned.

    New Study Illustrates Coffee’s Unique Influence on Your Gut

    A recent international study from both Harvard University and the University of Trento in Italy points out that drinking coffee regularly might affect the balance of bacteria in your digestive system, and scientists are just now beginning to understand what it all means.

    The study analyzed data taken from over 77,000 people living in 25 countries, and the authors found that coffee drinkers consistently exhibited up to eight times more of a certain type of gut microbe than non-coffee drinkers.

    Their research zeroed in on a particular bacterium, and it found that the growth rate of that specific microorganism increased significantly when it was exposed to coffee, both regular and decaf.

    The authors of the study point out that it is still uncertain how this bacterium affects overall health.

    Additionally, the study shows that the presence of this particular microorganism varies dramatically throughout different parts of the world. While the bacterium was found to thrive in people living in certain coffee-loving countries like Luxembourg, Denmark, and Sweden, the microbe was barely traceable in places such as China, Argentina, and India.

    In the end, researchers think they can apply this new information in a very positive way. They say that one day, using this information, they might even be able to improve our diets with precision simply by understanding how specific foods interact with the bacteria inside our digestive system.

    We have just enough time for one more story today, and this one deals with a potential major shake-up regarding our nation’s nutrition policy. It could begin sooner than you think. Here’s what’s going on.

    RFK Jr.’s Food Fight: Can He Change America’s Diet?

    As you may already be aware, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the incoming Trump administration’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, and he is planning to overhaul how the government makes food recommendations to people in the United States.

    A number of nutrition experts say that in the past, U.S. food guidelines were based on faulty studies, and if confirmed, RFK Jr. says he’ll develop a new set of food and dietary guidelines.

    Additionally, if confirmed, RFK Jr. is planning potential reforms that go beyond simply changing what foods we should eat. He also plans to take aim at what he calls widespread issues with regard to how nutrition policies are formed here in the United States.

    RFK Jr. has been vocal about addressing what he describes as the “corporate capture” of federal health agencies, and he promises to remove pervasive conflicts of interest from government panels that deal with food advice and public policy.

    You should know that many people involved with creating recommended guidelines reportedly have financial ties to food companies, and critics say this connection raises serious questions about objectivity, public trust, and the integrity of the guideline process.

    A number of people say the biggest challenge for RFK Jr., if he’s confirmed, might be confronting the massive influence of ultra-processed foods, which currently make up about 60 percent of the average person’s daily caloric intake.

    RFK Jr.’s exact plans are not yet known, but it appears that his approach points to a comprehensive strategy to improve food quality, dietary guidelines, and the health of the U.S. population.

    And now, it looks like our time is just about up for today, so we’ll call it a wrap for this edition of the Epoch Times Health Brief.

    Just a reminder—you can reach out to us anytime via email at audio@epochtimes.com, and you can also leave comments for us on the Epoch Times app, which you can download for free.

    And don’t forget the Health Brief Motto: We’re portable, affordable, and always on-demand.

    And finally, as we do each and every week on this program, we wrap everything up with a very notable quote, and this one is often attributed to Hippocrates, who said: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

    Hippocrates was a Greek physician known as the “father of medicine.”

    For all of us here at the Epoch Times Health Brief, I’m Bill Thomas.

    The Epoch Times Health Brief program was written today by Hristina Byrnes.

    Thank you for making us your one-stop source for a concise, accurate, and unbiased weekly synopsis of the many health stories you should know about.

    Enjoy the rest of your day, and we’ll see you right back here next time for another edition of the Epoch Times Health Brief.

    For now, let’s all continue to watch out for one another and have an absolutely superb day. Bye for now, and happy holidays!

    Meanwhile…

    If you’ve read this far, use code NOSUGAR10 for 10% off…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/23/2024 – 18:25

  • The Corruption And Incompetence Of Chicago's Mayor Knows No Bounds
    The Corruption And Incompetence Of Chicago’s Mayor Knows No Bounds

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson stepped to new lows when his hand-picked board fired Chicago Public Schools (CPS) CEO Pedro Martinez without cause.

    Austin Berg at the Illinois Policy Institute Explains on X.

    Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s hand-picked school board just voted unanimously to fire Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez without cause. Johnson and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) have been pushing for months to oust Martinez following his refusal to back Johnson’s demand for a $300M high-interest loan to pay for a new CTU contract. The CTU is Johnson’s largest campaign funder and former employer.

    Aldeman Silvana Tabares made a very important point in public comment before the board vote. CTU takes in more than $30M a year. But it spends just 17 cents of every dollar on teacher representation. The rest goes toward administration, politics and other leadership priorities. The contract with CPS is what fuels their political machine. The bigger the contract, the more money CTU can give to Johnson and his allies.

    As background to this story, Johnson’s initial cohort of appointed board members resigned unanimously in November when Johnson told them to fire CPS CEO Pedro Martinez. Johnson sought to terminate Martinez because Martinez didn’t support Johnson’s push to take out a high-interest loan to cover CPS’ $300 million shortfall.

    Please note the CTU proposal includes annual raises of 10-12 percent after factoring in cost-of-living adjustments. And the union demands 13,000 new positions despite falling school enrollment.

    The CPS leaders say this would push the district’s deficit to $4 billion by 2029. That nearly half of the entire budget.

    When Johnson demanded his own appointed board go along with this proposal, they all resigned instead. Johnson’s new handpicked board then voted to fire, without cause, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez.

    When fired without cause, CPS leader Martinez can stay on for 6 months. To get around Martinez in the interim, mayor Johnson proposes a deputy CPS leader, a position that does not even exist.

    Q&A With Austin Berg

    A national political reporter visiting Chicago to cover preparations for the Democratic National Convention asked Austin Berg “What do you think people outside Chicago don’t understand about Brandon Johnson’s administration?”

    Berge gave his 3-Part Answer on X.

    1️⃣ The Chicago Teachers Union dictates the mayor’s priorities and allocation of political capital. They are by far the most powerful political actor in city government right now, which means the administration fixates on the demands of a small base of far-left activists. This explains things like the cancellation of ShotSpotter despite community support, the mayor casting the tie-breaking vote on a ceasefire resolution, attacking selective enrollment schools, defending the most radical members of city council despite their horrific behavior, hostility toward ethics reform, and banning schools from hiring cops as security officers. Watch the @illinoispolicy
    documentary “Local 1: The Rise of America’s Most Powerful Teachers Union” for the best account of this.

    2️⃣ Because of No. 1, the administration is staffed by a relatively large number of people with little to no executive experience, including the mayor himself. This explains a wide range of unforced errors: trying to build a migrant tent camp on toxic land, losing the “mansion tax” referendum, announcing an unpopular proposal for a publicly funded Chicago Bears stadium that was immediately dead on arrival in Springfield, ghosting the Sun-Times editorial board after they refused to hold an off the record conversation, and over/underpaying thousands of Chicago government employees due to clerical errors.

    3️⃣ You could elect Mother Teresa or Pericles to be mayor of Chicago and they would still have a difficult time fixing the city’s problems. That’s in large part because we’re the only major city among the top 10 in the U.S. lacking a city charter. This means there are no constitutional checks and balances on authority. No thoughtful delegation of power. And little democracy on issues of citywide importance. This explains why the Council and the Mayor can’t agree on who really has authority over the ShotSpotter deal, why the Chicago Police Department is in compliance with just 6% of the federal consent decree and thus lacks community trust, why City Council is not able to provide a meaningful check on the mayor’s budgeting and forecasting, why Chicago alone holds more pension debt than 44 U.S. states, and why the mayor can sign major deals (Lollapalooza, NASCAR) behind closed doors with no oversight. The best account of this is “The New Chicago Way: Lessons from Other Big Cities” which compares Chicago’s governance structure to other major cities and offers a comprehensive solution set. You can buy the book or listen to our podcast mini-series at http://newchicagoway.com. DM me if you can’t afford a copy and I’ll send you one.

    The State of the City

    Last year the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago asked Berg to give a talk about the state of the city.

    He discussed Chicago history, the city’s problems, solutions, and the main findings in his video “The New Chicago Way.”

    CTU History of Anti-Parent Actions

    Please note the CTU Has a Long History of Anti-Parent Actions.

    The Chicago Teachers Union is the enemy of parents’ rights. It’s efforts to unionize charter schools, push them to the brink of closure and then take them over as typical public schools bears this out.

    Step 1: Unionize. In January 2018 – the same year Acero’s unionized employees merged with CTU – former CTU President Jesse Sharkey explicitly admitted his motivation to “undermine further charter expansion,” using tactics such as unionizing and merging charter schools into CTU.

    Step 2: Undermine. Later that year, CTU employed its go-to tactic in leading Acero’s teachers out on strike, marking the first charter school strike in the nation and cancelling class for the 7,000 students at the 15 schools.

    Step 3: Absorb. After Acero announced schools were closing, current CTU president Stacy Davis Gates claimed she wanted to “save” them by absorbing them into CPS. The school board followed her directive on Dec. 20 and did just that.

    Now those charters will no longer exist.

    The CPS Budget

    The district’s budget is about $10 billion. It’s up nearly 30% increase in five years while serving fewer students.

    By 2029 or 2030, the deficit is projected to be $4 billion per year on a $10 billion budget.

    The city is broke.

    Worst in Class

    Johnson is the most corrupt mayor in the nation. And the CTU is the most corrupt union in the nation.

    It is a one-two punch with unfortunate kids held hostage for the benefit of leaders who belong in jail.

    I can’t help but think Johnson will eventually find jail because history suggests these corrupt politicians eventually get there.

    Meanwhile, the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent kids are destroyed in a worst in the nation public school system.

    When Do Mayor Brandon Johnson and the City of Chicago Finally Implode?

    On November 25, I asked When Do Mayor Brandon Johnson and the City of Chicago Finally Implode?

    Chicago slashed 2,103 public safety job but added 184 administrators. The budget deficit is nearly $1 billion.

    Openly Rooting for Implosion

    I am openly rooting for Chicago and the entire pension system of Illinois to implode.

    That sounds harsh bit it isn’t.

    There will be no reform until crisis hits, and the sooner the better because those currently collecting unwarranted massive pensions are bleeding the pension funds dry.

    The sooner the collapse, the more pension money will be saved for the average Joe.

    Meanwhile, please note that In Chicago There’s Under a 50 Percent Chance Police Show Up If You are Shot

    Good luck in Chicago getting the police to show up if you are shot, stabbed, a victim of domestic violence, or any number of other serious crimes.

    But hey, Chicago hired 179 new community services administrators. How’s that working for you?

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/23/2024 – 18:00

  • 103 Things That Higher Ed Declared Racist In 2024
    103 Things That Higher Ed Declared Racist In 2024

    Via The College Fix,

    Racism is the intentional mistreatment of someone on the basis of their race – at least in the normal world. But in academia, racism is anything producing disparities, according to Professor Ibram Kendi.

    What follows is a long list of people, places, actions, and other things declared racist this year by higher ed, though a few came from K-12.

    If something needs “anti-racist” action or “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” it follows it must be racist, or else it would not need correction.

    (A full list of articles can be found here).

    Academic disciplines:

    • Chemistry
    • Classics
    • Evolutionary biology
    • Engineering
    • Immunology
    • Math
    • STEM in general
    • Twenty different departments at Worcester Polytechnic Institute

    Actions:

    • Accusing a black student of plagiarism
    • Banning DEI
    • Being Asian but romantically interested in white people
    • Course evaluations
    • Criticizing a black female reporter
    • Criticizing plagiarism
    • Marriage/being married
    • Mentioning a black female congresswoman has fake eyelashes
    • Murder
    • Not pronouncing Kamala Harris’ name right
    • Not voting for Kamala Harris
    • Opioid crisis
    • Opposing DEI
    • Opposing oil and gas restrictions to fight climate change
    • Pollution
    • Questioning Kamala Harris’ racial identity
    • Romance
    • “Traditional grading”
    • Voter registration
    • Voting for Trump
    • White people running in shorts
    • White people rapping

    Beliefs:

    • Being pro-life/pointing out high abortion rates for black women
    • Christianity
    • Colorblindness
    • Nostalgia

    Career fields:

    • Counseling
    • Ecological farming
    • Education
    • Dentistry
    • Disaster response
    • Geology
    • Law enforcement
    • Medicine
    • Ocean sciences
    • Nursing
    • Surgical oncology

    Entertainment/culture:

    • Dolly Parton’s free book program
    • Dressing as a Native American at a Kansas City Chiefs game
    • Liking Taylor Swift
    • Michaelangelo’s “Creation of Adam”
    • Paintings of British countryside
    • Porcelain
    • Telling a Japanese professor about a good sushi restaurant

    Food:

    • Fried chicken
    • Milk

    People:

    • Ben Shapiro
    • Conservatives
    • Donald Trump
    • Duke University sports fans
    • Nikki Haley
    • Rapper Tom MacDonald
    • Vivek Ramaswamy
    • White people

    Places:

    • Coeur D’Alene, Idaho
    • Columbia University
    • Greenhouses
    • Israel
    • Lake Merritt, California parking lot
    • Northern Idaho
    • Pennsylvania public universities
    • Sex-segregated bathrooms, locker rooms
    • Swimming pools
    • Thousands of streets that use allegedly offensive terms
    • University of Michigan

    Words:

    • “Anglo-Saxon”
    • “Blacklist’
    • “DEI hire’
    • “Guru’
    • “Illegal alien”
    • “Minorities”
    • “Mob rule”
    • “Peanut gallery”
    • “Pow wow”
    • “Tribal knowledge”
    • “Whitelist”

    …to name but a few.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/23/2024 – 17:20

  • Fixing The Biden Border
    Fixing The Biden Border

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

    Joe Biden, to the degree he was cognizant, has always reflected the Obama-era utopia dream of a borderless world, and thus millions of poor have illegally entered the United States. On numerous occasions, he offered clear warnings of what he would do if he ever had power over immigration policy.

    Do we remember this 2020 Biden boast to let in millions and offer blanket amnesties?

    “But I will send to the desk immediately a bill that requires the access to citizenship for 11 million undocumented folks, number one. Number two, in the first 100 days of my administration, no one, no one will be deported at all. From that point on, the only deportations that will take place are commissions of felonies in the United States of America.”

    In Biden’s world, if no illegal alien is ever to be deported unless a criminal, then there is at last no border.

    Earlier Biden had also bragged, “We could afford to take in a heartbeat another two million. The idea that a country of 330 million people cannot absorb people who are in desperate need and who are justifiably fleeing oppression is absolutely bizarre.”

    After 2020, we found out what Biden really meant was that a few thousand privileged and rich people in Martha’s Vineyard, Malibu, and Rehoboth, Delaware, certainly could not absorb even a few hundred in “desperate need”—but the millions of poor in inner-city Chicago, in the Rio Grande Valley, and the Central Valley of California most certainly could absorb “another two million” illegal aliens.

    Most infamously, in 2019, Biden gave explicit outlines of the very open border that he has now institutionalized: “I would, in fact, make sure that there is, that we immediately surge the border all those people are seeking asylum. They deserve to be heard. That’s who we are. We’re a nation that says if you want to flee, and you’re fleeing oppression, you should come. (emphasis added).”

    Again, Biden assumed that “you should come” applied to downtown New York, South Central LA, or El Paso, but under no circumstances to Kalorama, Kailua, or the empty summer dorm rooms of Stanford or Harvard.

    All this braggadocio was unfortunately more than the usual empty Biden blather. As president, one of the first things he did really was to “surge the border” by overturning through fiat some 90 Trump executive orders. Despite countless lawsuits, left-wing congressional stonewalling, and internal agency obstruction, these earlier directives had effectively stopped illegal immigration by the fall of 2020.

    Upon taking office, Biden, perhaps for the first and only time, made good on his word as he ranted, “There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration.”

    Biden not only did his best to ensure an unfenced border, but after the election, he sold off piles of idle wall materials for pennies on the dollar. Thereby, in childish fashion, he reminded the American people (who will needlessly pay additional millions for a new wall, given Biden’s auction and his hyperinflation since 2020) that he hated Donald Trump more than he liked the American people.

    Why did Biden destroy the border, allowing in 500,000 violent felons and gang members, over 1 million already served with deportation orders, ten million more unvetted—initially at a time of a government COVID quarantine? Why did he appoint the now-impeached prevaricator Alejandro Mayorkas, who repeatedly and disingenuously claimed that “the border is secure,” even as Americans watched thousands of illegal aliens, drug smugglers, and cartel coyotes crossing the border with impunity?

    Was Biden pledged to bend to La Raza pressures?

    Did he owe allegiance to a Hispanic activist elite that demanded that millions of new constituents ignore the border, oblivious to the concern of Hispanic border communities? The latter, unlike their elite DEI megaphones, had to deal firsthand with the resulting massive border crossings that overwhelmed social services, drove down wages, bankrupted their schools, and spiked crime in their communities.

    Or was Biden simply a nihilist who enjoyed the chaos and the furor it evoked among his supposed “semi-fascist” and “ultra-MAGA” foes?

    Was he a hard-left waxen effigy who had no idea that his policies empowered the cartels and their fentanyl pipeline that killed up to 100,000 Americans a year, more than the dead of the Vietnam, Korean, Afghan, and Iraq wars combined?

    Certainly, President Obrador of Mexico loved Biden for greenlighting more than $120 billion in remittances that poured into Mexico and Central America, the vast majority of the money subsidized by the American taxpayers whose generous subsidies to illegal aliens freed up their cash to be sent home.

    Was the culprit Biden’s legendary innate incompetence fueled by his growing senility? In that regard, it might be best to remember what Obama himself in 2020 said about his former Vice President Biden’s un-Midas touch: “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up,” and his admonition about the non-compos-Biden’s desire to run in 2020, “You don’t have to do this, Joe, you really don’t.”

    Whatever his reasons, how does the Trump administration now correct the Biden legacy of an erased border, a new cohort of 12 million illegal aliens atop an existing body of 20 million, half a million dangerous illegal alien felons, 600 neo-Confederate sanctuary city jurisdictions, and the destroyed corpus of federal immigration law?

    One, the administration must change the entire current illegal alien dialectic.

    Massive illegal immigration is not a humanitarian project. It is a deeply immoral one. It undermines the rule of law. It insults legal immigration applicants by punishing their lawfulness and making them follow hundreds of protocols while exempting and thus rewarding the lawbreaking.

    It is a cynical ploy by the governments of Mexico and Central America to provide a Turnerian “safety valve” for their dispossessed to head north rather than to protest at home for reform.

    It is a money-making scheme costing the U.S. $120 billion in remittances alone. The arrival of millions of impoverished migrants to the United States involves virtual indentured servants who are sent northward by their home countries in the expectation they will send hundreds of dollars a month back southward to help their families, who in turn are long neglected by supposedly caring Latin American governments.

    It is a war on the American poor, whose wages are eroded by millions of the undocumented, and whose social services, from health to housing to education, are swamped by non-citizens in dire need of government support.

    It is a long-term effort to import and nurture a new constituency of those in need of more entitlements and bigger government. The aim is to flip more red states to blue, as if Georgia, Arizona, and Texas will follow the demographic metamorphoses of California, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico.

    Two, Trump, within a year, can finish the wall.

    A permanent steel/concrete fence of some 2,000 miles will help staunch the influx. So will an immediate executive order ending catch-and-release and requiring application for refugee status before entering the U.S. legally.

    Three, Trump can stop the flow of $120 billion in subsidized U.S.-based remittances to Mexico and Latin America.

    He can threaten all such cynical recipient nations with tariffs. He can further levy a blanket 20-30 percent tax on all remittances sent to Mexico and Latin America from the United States, regardless of the legal status of the sender. Combined with a wall and new border enforcement, such tariffs and taxes would stop the influx quickly.

    Four, either passage of new legislation to overturn or winning court reinterpretation of the supposed “anchor baby” clause of the 14th Amendment could end the entire imbroglio of women and couples entering the US solely to obtain infant citizen status (as well as free health care), in order to anchor legality for an entire family.

    Trump can merely say, “We need to follow the humane policies of the sophisticated postmodern European nations, none of whom allow unrestricted and automatic anchor-baby provisions.”

    Five, to encourage self-deportation, Trump can seek legislation that would forbid for 20 years any foreign national from receiving a legal visa or green card to enter the United States if, at any time in the past, he had been detained entering the United States illegally.

    Six, Trump can begin carefully calibrating deportation iterations, starting first with those whose deportations win widespread public support.

    The first to go home should be the half million suspected felons and criminals, both those who were arrested here and those who came with criminal records.

    They would be followed by 1.5 million aliens already facing deportation orders but who failed to show up for hearings or ignored their prior deportation orders.

    The third cohort would include all those who have had no work record, are able-bodied and are currently on local, state, or federal assistance of any nature.

    Trump then could issue immediate deportation orders for additional aliens arriving from countries that support terror or are deemed hostile to the United States. That would entail those with known ties to Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, or arriving from Iran, Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, North Korea, Cuba, Russia, Venezuela, and a host of others,

    To separate the Biden influx from earlier illegal entrants, Trump could offer not an amnesty or citizenship but a green card to those who have: 1) resided in the US for five years, 2) have not committed a crime, 3) are not on public assistance, and 4) would pay a fine for their prior illegal entry.

    After those rounds of deportations, the administration might have sent home 10-12 million with full public support. Only then would the public back the one-time issuances of green cards to some of the remaining 20 million pre-Biden illegal aliens, who are working, crime-free, not on public assistance, and have resided over five years in the United States.

    All these measures might halve the number of illegal aliens and stop all future illegal immigration. They would allow Americanized prior illegal aliens to formalize their status with a green card that would not entail amnesty but simply allow those now here legally to work, and in some cases, if they wish, to begin the lengthy legal process of obtaining citizenship.

    The time to act is now.

    In an odd way, Biden’s influx has finally resulted in the American Hispanic community’s abandonment of their former support for open borders. Why?

    The sheer size of the current immigrant wave posed unprecedented costs, social and demographic disruptions, and dangers to the viability of existing social services for citizens.

    Worse in some ways are the asymmetrical burdens that elite open-borders activists have placed on the Hispanic middle and poorer classes, whose communities bear the brunt of massive illegal immigration.

    But most cynically and importantly, half the new arrivals are not from the Latin American world and thus have smaller, if any, expatriate apologists or activists in the United States. It seems to be one thing for the open borders advocate to demand illegal entry for an uncle in Mexico and quite another to extend that same exemption and costly support to someone from Russia, Syria, or mainland China.

    A final note: those who destroyed the border and immigration law with it will be the first to decry the cost and trouble of undoing their damage – on their theory that because it costs much to arrest, detain, and try a criminal suspect, it is, therefore, cheaper and wiser simply to let him continue to commit crimes with impunity.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/23/2024 – 17:00

  • White House Says Pakistan Developing Long-Range Nuke-Capable Missile Which Can Reach US
    White House Says Pakistan Developing Long-Range Nuke-Capable Missile Which Can Reach US

    Last week the United States imposed rare sanctions on Pakistan while condemning its nuclear-armed long-range ballistic-missile program. This despite Islamabad long being an uneasy ally of Washington.

    The fresh sanctions on the missile sector were imposed under an executive order that “targets proliferators of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery,” according to the State Department’s Matthew Miller. The measures specifically punish Pakistan’s National Development Complex and three defense firms.

    In follow up this week, the Biden administration is warning that Pakistan is on the verge of achieving a long-range ballistic missile which is capable of striking the US mainland.

    AFP

    According to a Monday report in The Wall Street Journal:

    Weeks before it leaves office, the Biden administration said that Pakistan is developing a long-range ballistic missile that could eventually provide nuclear-armed Islamabad with a weapon capable of striking the U.S.

    The administration disclosed the intelligence about Pakistan’s secret missile activities and imposed sanctions against a state-owned entity involved in the work after repeated efforts to press its concerns in confidential channels fell short, U.S. officials said. 

    Pakistan’s foreign ministry has rejected Washington’s allegations, blasting them as “unfounded” and “devoid of rationality”. Islamabad has further warned that this threatens the health of the “overall relationship” with the US.

    American officials say that Pakistan’s production of such a long-range ballistic missile is not necessarily imminent, but likely remains years away, or possibly up to a decade.

    Still, Washington has launched a pressure campaign against a country which only twenty years ago was considered a ‘major non-NATO ally’.

    “We’re trying to build this pressure to get ahead of this problem because we don’t want Pakistan to go down this road so far that we are dealing with something that is more imminent,” a Biden admin official was quoted in WSJ as saying.

    Deputy national security adviser Jon Finer said last week “candidly, it is hard for us to see Pakistan’s actions as anything other than an emerging threat to the United States.”

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    The irony in all of this is that ever since Pakistan achieved status as a nuclear-armed power in the 1980s, Washington’s chief concern has been its political and military stability, for which it has handed out billions in foreign aid to Islamabad over the many years.

    But starting in 2018, then President Trump began cutting all military aid to the country. Relations have remained rocky and strained ever since. The Pentagon still says it cooperates with Pakistan’s armed forces on the military level, however.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/23/2024 – 16:40

  • Welcome To The Climax Of 'The Great Pretending'
    Welcome To The Climax Of ‘The Great Pretending’

    Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

    A Christmas Prayer

    “If it’s time for you to go, leave willingly, as you would to accomplish anything that can be done with grace and honor.”

    – Marcus Aurelius

    The longest and coldest night of the year is upon us with its portents of endings, the death of things, of people like ourselves, and also bodies of thought, movements of culture and politics. And for all the cold and darkness, you feel the stirrings of things waiting to be born. Christmas is the lovely distraction for a brief spell, and after that, the difficult labor of the nation commences for-real in the long night of the year.

    This moment in the cold and dark is also the climax of the Great Pretending. You knew it would come to this for “Joe Biden,” that he would be found-out. That in the waning days of his woebegone term in office, the people around him in the White House would betray him with the truth: that he was mentally unfit for the job from even before the get-go, from those drear days in the fall campaign of 2020 when he hid himself at home in Delaware while the FBI covered-up the massive bribery-and-treason story concealed in Hunter’s laptop.

    And that for four years since then those people around “Joe Biden” have pretended to the world that he was doing his job, that he was okay, when he was absolutely not okay, as they well knew.

    It was only one big lie among the thousands of lies put over by the conspiracy between that gang in the White House and the perfidious organs of the news, especially The New York Times. If you want to see how stupendously dishonest the employees of that newspaper are, read this “roundtable” column of several Times pundits attempting to chew over the state of their patron, the Democratic party. Forgive me for quoting myself in the comment I posted there a half hour ago:

    You’re all quite remarkably clueless and dishonest. Your party is in ruins because your policies are intolerable and often insane: censorship, war, gender lunacy, flooding the country with illegal immigrants – no, not “undocumented” in your parlance, as if it was just some clerical error. And you: Democratic Party aligned journalists are even worse than the politicians, because you’re supposed to make an effort to determine the truth, and you deliberately gaslight the public instead. Shame on you and the Democratic Party. It’s that simple.

    It’s hard to know for sure, but it looks an awful lot as though these journalists — in fact, the whole elite intelligentsia across America — are gaslighting themselves, still pretending that they didn’t know what went on, a coup against their own country. Everything they have been saying and publishing is the opposite of reality. And now it is about to all spill out because other people are about to take over the levers of power.

    For instance: can the CDC and other agencies of public health continue to lie about disastrous Covid-19 vaccines, about the deaths and disabilities they have caused in millions of people? Under “Joe Biden,” there was no other way for the likes of Rochelle Walensky and Mandy Cohen except to lie. And get this: women were chosen to front for the CDC because you’re not supposed to believe that “Mommy” would lie to you, especially in matters of life and death. There was no other way because the crime was so great and they were all in it so deep — not just Rochelle and Mandy but the hundreds of high-ranking bureaucrats in CDC, FDA, and NIH who went along with all this.

    Of course, it’s hard to know whether the Covid-19 affair was just a venal and insane project by Anthony Fauci and his colleagues to play “hero” while making a ton of money. . . or whether it was actually a deliberate effort by the Intel Blob to queer the 2020 election by forcing a change in the voting procedure that would allow for wholesale fraud, in the service of cancelling Donald Trump. Possibly, it was a mash-up of both.

    The truth about all this, and a lot more, is going to come out, whether or not Bobby Kennedy, Kash Patel, and other nominees get confirmed in their jobs, because there are many other figures just as capable behind them who would be nominated and eventually confirmed to run these departments. Those New York Times journalists are gaslighting themselves further if they think that blocking a few nominations is going to save their reputations. This populist revolution is bigger than that. It’s about overturning a paradigm of lies.

    We really don’t know if our country is too far gone. The wreckage accomplished under the fakery of “Joe Biden” is prodigious. The financial quandaries alone are enough to sink the Republic in penury, and it will be hard to dodge the truth about that, too, because individual citizens and households know when they are hurting. When they hurt enough, they move to action, visibly, loudly, and you will not miss it.

    This ought to be a sobering Christmas then. This is the pause at the end of things when we might consider how important it is to tell ourselves the truth. Chew on that with the sugarplums of the season while we wait for that something that is busy being born.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/23/2024 – 16:20

  • 'Back To South Africa': Democrats Call For Biden To Deport Elon Musk
    ‘Back To South Africa’: Democrats Call For Biden To Deport Elon Musk

    Authored by Julianna Frieman via Headline USA,

    Democrats on social media called for President Joe Biden to deport Elon Musk one month before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration as the billionaire’s influence over the incoming administration became a point of attack.

    Despite Biden’s apparent senility for the past four years, reaffirmed Thursday by a bombshell Wall Street Journal report, leftist pundits have attempted to drive a wedge between Trump and Musk with warnings of usurpation.

    CNN’s Scott Jennings slammed panelists Sunday for feigning concern over the “unelected” Musk having Trump’s ear, saying, “Unelected people have been running the government for the last four years.”

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    Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have commented on Musk’s close relationship with Trump. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, told Face the Nation on Sunday that “it feels as if Elon Musk is our prime minister,” while Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., sarcastically slammed the SpaceX owner as “President Musk after he helped tank a 1,547 page federal spending bill.

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    Trump dropped a constitutional truth bomb on the idea of a “President Musk” during his speech Sunday at Turning Point USA’s America Fest Conference in Phoenix, Arizona.

    “No, he’s not going to be president, that I can tell you,” Trump told the crowd of the “smart” Department of Government Efficiency head. “And I’m safe, you know why? Because he can’t be—he wasn’t born in this country!”

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    Leftists on X recently jumped on the fact that Musk was born in South Africa by calling for his deportation—completely ignoring the rampant amount of illegal migrant criminals roaming the U.S.

    “He should be deported,” Secular Talk host Kyle Kulinski wrote on the Musk-owned social media site.

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    While Kulinski faced backlash for his call for Musk’s deportation, similar posts appeared on X since Trump’s historic victory.

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    “I don’t remember going to the polls and seeing Elon Musk as being a candidate on anything. So why is he meeting with Congress about the government budget? Please deport this oligarchy back to South Africa. Elon Musk thinks he’s the president, because he bought Trump,” X user @OliviaHoney11 raged Thursday.

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    Another user, @badbadtzlevi143, expressed hate toward legal immigrants like Musk and said, “Let’s DRAIN THE SWAMP and make this non us native GO BACK TO WHERE HE CAME FROM.”

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    “BIDEN, DEPORT ELON MUSK AND MY LIFE IS YOURS!!” X user @leonrealone added Sunday.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/23/2024 – 15:45

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Dec 23

Today’s News 23rd December 2024

  • 7 Chinese Nationals Arrested On Guam For Illegal Entry During Key Missile Test
    7 Chinese Nationals Arrested On Guam For Illegal Entry During Key Missile Test

    Authored by Catherine Yang via The Epoch Times,

    Seven Chinese nationals were arrested recently for illegally entering Guam around the time of a recent U.S. missile interception test on Dec. 10 and 11, according to Guam authorities.

    The Guam Customs and Quarantine Agency said at least four of the seven were found “in the vicinity of a military installation” and that the investigation is ongoing.

    The Chinese nationals had arrived on a boat from Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, according to authorities.

    Guam is home to several U.S. military installations, including the Andersen Air Force Base, where the U.S. military conducted a live ballistic missile interception test using a new radar on Dec. 10.

    A military aircraft dropped a ballistic missile about 930 miles from Guam, and the interceptor tracked and destroyed it mid-flight at 600 kilometers (373 miles) above sea level before it reached the island.

    The first-ever missile interception test on Guam occurred as part of efforts to strengthen defenses in and engage threats aimed at the island or the broader Indo-Pacific region.

    “This is a tremendous group effort and provides a glimpse of how organizations within the Department of Defense have come together to defend our homeland Guam now and in the future,” stated U.S. Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Heath Collins.

    “Collectively, we will use this to build upon and validate joint tracking architecture and integrated air and missile defense capabilities for Guam.”

    Guam, a Micronesia island, is strategically important for the United States in the Indo-Pacific as the Chinese communist regime aggravates military tensions in the area with U.S. allies while strengthening its own influence over island nations.

    Its strategic location also makes it a potential target for U.S. adversaries, according to the Pentagon. Former congressman Mike Gallagher last year sounded the alarm that Guam is “highly vulnerable” to an attack by the Chinese military because of gaps in missile defense.

    U.S. officials and lawmakers have also raised concern about Chinese espionage on U.S. military bases.

    Recently, a Chinese national was arrested for flying a drone over a military base in California during a Space Force launch.

    In October, five Chinese nationals were charged with covering up their visit to Camp Grayling in Michigan, the largest Army National Guard training facility in the United States, during last summer’s annual Northern Strike training event.

    In July, a Chinese student pleaded guilty to espionage misdemeanors for for using a drone to take photos of naval shipyards in Virginia.

    Lawmakers have urged law enforcement to shore up detection of this type of “non-traditional” intelligence collection, such as the Chinese regime utilizing civilians including tourists and foreign exchange students.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/22/2024 – 23:20

  • Cognizant Discrimination Case Highlights Flaws in H-1B Visa System
    Cognizant Discrimination Case Highlights Flaws in H-1B Visa System

    In the evolving landscape of global IT services, the recent class-action lawsuit against Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. stands out as a stark illustration of systemic employment discrimination within major corporations. This case, brought forward by Latreecia Folkes and over 2,000 other plaintiffs, has uncovered deep-rooted biases against non-Indian employees, highlighting troubling practices within the use of the H-1B visa program.

    As Bloomberg notes;

    In October, a jury in a federal class-action lawsuit returned a verdict that found Cognizant intentionally discriminated against more than 2,000 non-Indian employees between 2013 and 2022. The verdict, which echoed a previously undisclosed finding from a 2020 US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation, centered on discrimination claims based on race and national origin. Cognizant, based in Teaneck, New Jersey, was found to have preferred workers from India, most of whom joined the firm’s US workforce of about 32,000 using skilled-worker visas called H-1Bs.

    Cognizant says they’re going to appeal the verdict.

    “Cognizant provides equal employment opportunities for all employees and does not tolerate discrimination in any form,” Spokesman Jeff DeMarrais told Bloomberg, adding that the company had sought fewer new visas over the past several years.

    “Like many consulting firms and other technology companies in the US, Cognizant utilizes the H-1B visa program to fill positions it cannot fill with available US workers,” he continued.

    Early Promises and Professional Setbacks

    Latreecia Folkes began her career at Cognizant with notable success, quickly earning accolades for her contributions to a new project. However, her career trajectory took a sudden downturn when she was asked to train a replacement from India.

    Latreecia Folkes. Photographer: Matt Odom/Bloomberg

    This marked the beginning of a series of professional disappointments characterized by denied opportunities for advancement, a reflection of a broader corporate bias that she attributed to her nationality and race.

    Latreecia Folkes was put on the bench twice during her two years at Cognizant, according to the company’s internal data. She spent less than a month there in late 2016 before finding a position in South Carolina, which required her to fly back and forth from her home in Atlanta. She went on the bench again in March 2017. She said she spent a month trying to get on a new project. After being passed up for multiple positions, she said she was offered one that required her to relocate to Washington, DC. That’s when she filed an internal discrimination complaint, alleging she was being pushed out of the company. -Bloomberg

    Despite Folkes’ competence and early success, she found herself sidelined due to systemic preferences for Indian workers, culminating in her dismissal after filing an internal discrimination complaint.

    “You get on the bench,” she told the outlet. “In that time, they said they would get you a role for you to apply to internally. And I applied like a dog. I applied, I applied, I applied, almost begging.”

    Folkes filed an internal discrimination complaint in 2017. Three days later, she was fired.

    Legal Repercussions and Wider Industry Trends

    The legal scrutiny into Cognizant’s practices intensified when a jury verdict in October, backed by a previously undisclosed 2020 U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) investigation, confirmed intentional discrimination within the company.

    This verdict revealed that Cognizant preferred Indian workers, many of whom were employed under H-1B visas, over their American counterparts. This practice was not isolated to Cognizant; it reflects a widespread industry trend where IT outsourcing companies exploit the H-1B visa system to hire a cheaper, more compliant workforce, often at the expense of U.S. workers’ opportunities and wage conditions.

    Meanwhile, a Bloomberg analysis of Cognizant’s internal data found that from 2013 – 2020:

    •     About two-thirds of the firm’s US-based employees were from India.
    •     American workers were twice as likely to have their employment “terminated” – by resignation or dismissal – as were their counterparts on visas.
    •     For Black and Hispanic or Latino workers, the annual rates of such terminations were about three times higher than for Indian nationals.

    Cognizant’s DeMarris said Bloomberg’s analysis of terminations is flawed because it doesn’t include visa workers who left the company’s US operations “by choosing to return to their home country.” – something which the company’s lawyers raised in pretrial motions.

    The judge in the case, however, ruled that Cognizant had refused to provide information about “what really happened” to such employees – i.e. whether their employment ended or not, and prevented the company from presenting the issue to the jury. DeMarrais wouldn’t say either way, however he did admit that 60% of the company’s US workforce is Asian – including Indian workers.

    According to 2023 data the company submitted to the EEOC, however, 70% of Cognizant’s professional and managerial staff reporting to their Texas HQ identified as Asian.

    The H-1B Visa Controversy

    While the H-1B visa program was designed to allow U.S. employers to hire foreign specialists when qualified Americans are unavailable, it has often been leveraged to fill lower-level, less specialized positions at a lower cost.

    Cognizant, along with other outsourcing giants, has faced criticism for this approach, which appears to prioritize cost reduction over the program’s original intent to supplement the American workforce with specialized skills not otherwise available.

    The US Department of Labor classifies Cognizant as an “H-1B-dependent” employer, which means more than 15% of its workers have the visas. Companies with that designation are required to attest that they’re not taking jobs from US workers – but only if they pay their visa workers less than $60,000 a year, a threshold that hasn’t been increased in two decades. Consequently, none of the outsourcing firms that have been deemed “H-1B-dependent” – Wipro Ltd, Infosys Ltd, Tata, Cognizant and HCL Technologies Ltd – is required to make the attestations. -Bloomberg

    Meanwhile, former Cognizant employees say that the company’s use of Indian workers is nothing more than an attempt to reduce labor costs – an assertion DeMarrais refutes.

    That said, the company has seen recent savings from its immigrant workers – whose median pay fell by 20% since 2000.

    According to DeMarrais, “Cognizant complies with federal laws regarding pay for visa workers,” adding that the company “disagrees that any financial incentive exists to hire visa workers.”

    Former employees, however, say that the company likes H-1B workers because they’ll take inconvenient or less-favorable assignments, and have a hard time jumping between companies because they must persuade new employers to go through the hassle of transferring their visas.

    In response to the lawsuit, Cognizant has maintained that its hiring practices are justified by a shortage of suitable U.S. tech workers, asserting a commitment to equal employment opportunities. However, this stance has been met with skepticism, especially given the statistical evidence presented in court showing a pattern of employment terminations disproportionately affecting American employees.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/22/2024 – 22:45

  • Rich To Abandon Washington State As Governor Pushes For "Wealth Tax"
    Rich To Abandon Washington State As Governor Pushes For “Wealth Tax”

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Washington State’s unofficial state motto has long been “Al-ki” which means either “bye and bye” or “by and by” in Chinook. The former meaning now seems official as Gov. Jay Inslee pushes for a “wealth tax.” Wealthy citizens are already saying bye to the state in anticipation of what one Democratic billionaire recently called a “boneheaded” move.

    The problem is that rich people can move. Unlike fixed assets like a mansion, they can take their wealth and taxes to other states without such laws.

    The post from Senate Democrats supporting Senate Bill 5486 said, “The first $250 million of assessed value is exempted, meaning only the wealthiest people in Washington would pay the tax, including some of the wealthiest individuals in the world.”

    I have previously written against wealth taxes from both constitutional and practical perspectives in the federal system. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) has long been a proponent of wealth taxes and the Biden Administration supported the effort.

    The Wharton Budget Model at the University of Pennsylvania found that Warren’s legislation would raise $2.7 trillion in revenue, but it would also reduce capital by 3.1%, depress average hourly wages by 1.2%, and reduce gross domestic product (GDP) by 1.2% in 2050.

    It is part of an “eat the rich” pitch from liberal politicians and pundits.

    When struggling in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) pledged a wealth tax, declaring that she was coming after “the diamonds, the yachts, and the Rembrandts too.” Then-New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio, another Democratic contender at the time, was barely registering in the polls when he promised that “we will tax the hell out of the wealthy.”

    The federal constitutional problems are not barriers to the states. However, the effort to hammer the wealth has never worked for states or countries. France previously saw a massive exodus after it attempted to clip the most wealthy and had to reverse its policies.

    Putting aside expected legal challenges, Democratic donor Nick Hanauer criticized state Democrats for the push and said he had already spoken to the wealthiest citizens about fleeing the state.

    “Even if it clears the legal, implementation & other challenges, it’s unlikely to raise much [money] given every wealthy person I’ve spoken to in the last few days has said they will leave the state. I believe them. Thoughtful taxes don’t actually drive people away, boneheaded taxes do.”

    That is the problem with eating the rich . . . they have to stay put to be eaten. These wealthy individuals are already willing to pay some of the highest taxes in blue states for income. However, a wealth tax would expose their property to what is likely to become an irresistible target for politicians unwilling to make tough budget choices.

    Of course, Washington could follow California in seeking a retroactive tax. Rather than try to keep the most wealthy citizens, it could seek to make them pay to leave the state like a giant Venus Flytrap.

    We previously discussed the push in California to impose a retroactive tax on the many citizens and companies fleeing that state due to its high taxes and other problems. Warren wants to do the same nationally. So, if businesses are fleeing the country due to these policies, they would have to essentially pay for the freedom in a type of captivity tax.  It is incredibly short-sighted.  They need these businesses and they will not be able to coerce them into staying by trying to make it more expensive to leave.

    The wealth tax campaigns combine fiscal negligence with political opportunism. Rather than imposing budgetary restraints and reducing budgets, Democrats promise to fleece the superrich. This short-term appeal is likely to cost the state dearly as the wealthy leave for less predatorial states.

    You can stay in Washington state and get hit with a wealth tax or you can “bye and bye” and move out of the way. It appears that millionaires are already training with a financial expert in Washington to move out of the way of the wealth tax:

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    Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/22/2024 – 22:10

  • Public Schools Using Multimillion Dollar Fees To Stop Parental FOIA Requests
    Public Schools Using Multimillion Dollar Fees To Stop Parental FOIA Requests

    Are you a parent wanting to know what exactly the local school is teaching your child?  Looking for official documentation of those lessons or the policies that motivated them? Better have millions of dollars in the piggy bank because that’s what these taxpayer funded institutions are demanding parents pay for access to public records through FOIA request.  

    The impetus for the sudden interest from parents in school activities is obvious. Attempts by educators to indoctrinate children with covid propaganda, including lessons on “anti-vaxxers” and even giving children vaccines without parental consent led to a wave of parental participation in how their local schools operate.

    Multiple state supreme courts have blocked parental lawsuits and set a precedent giving schools immunity from litigation, specifically concerning health related policies.  The only other option for citizens with children was to force their way into school board meetings and watch every move of the people involved. 

    FOIA requests have become frequent because schools refused to offer lesson transparency.  In other words, school officials and teachers unions assert that they are not required to tell parents what their children are being taught, so the only way to know is to press the issue through access to public records. 

    But getting a FOIA request fulfilled is becoming a nightmare – Schools continue to believe that they do not answer to the public and are using every loophole at their disposal to stop parents from getting the info they need.  One such loophole is the use of fees related to FOIA.  Legally, the fees are not allowed to surpass the actual costs required for employees to gather the requested information.  However, school officials are ignoring this requirement and hyperinflating the fees in order to dissuade parents from continuing FOIA. 

    One such example is the Rochester Community School District in Michigan, which was recently forced to pay nearly $190,000 to parent Elena Dinverno as settlement for allegedly keeping a ‘dossier’ on her after she criticized their virtual learning policy during the covid padnemic.  District officials reportedly contacted Dinverno’s employer and used the dossier to get her fired. 

    When other parents contacted the schools in the area for information, they were stonewalled.  Elizabeth Clair, mother to a seventh grader studying in the same district, decided to file a Freedom of Information Act request in 2022. She wanted to know what the school was doing to ‘stem future retaliation against parents’. 

    The financial analyst had asked to see six months’ worth of emails that had the word ‘anti-retaliation’ in them.   In September 2022, Clair heard back from FOIA Coordinator Matthew McDaniel who told her that she would have to pay over $33 million for an employee, who was being paid $46 an hour, to review 21,514,288 emails.  The district also asked for a good faith deposit of $16,551,616.28 for the process to begin.  

    Similar fees have also been used by schools to prevent parental access to information on woke propaganda lessons, including Critical Race Theory indoctrination, DEI lessons and classes on gender fluid theory.  The primary organizations blocking parental access are national teachers unions.  They are the driving force behind the fast spread of woke indoctrination in the US school system, with a greenlight from the Department of Education, of course.  

    The underlying hypocrisy is that teachers and school districts claim they are doing nothing wrong, yet, if that was the case they would not feel the need to hide their activities behind litigation, intimidation and a corrupt FOIA fee process.  The bottom line is that parents have every right to know what schools are teaching their kids.  Their taxes pay the salaries of those educators.  Schools are not co-parents. 

    A campaign to break up teachers unions is necessary, along with a complete reformation of the American public school system.  School choice legislation (which teachers unions viciously oppose) could also be used to take down schools that have been overrun by progressives, simply by giving parents easier access to alternatives.  In the new Trump era the public education system faces a reckoning that is well deserved. 

    Until that day, parents may need pull their children out of these institutions and home school.  It’s the only way to be sure their kids aren’t being brainwashed.    

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/22/2024 – 21:35

  • Here's How Americans Heat Their Homes…
    Here’s How Americans Heat Their Homes…

    Americans heat their homes in several ways, if that is natural gas, oil, propane, electricity, wood, and even geothermal energy, among others. 

    Joshua Stevens, the cartographic editor of Maps.com, published a note highlighting the geographical regions across the Lower 48 that heavily rely on furnaces, boilers, fireplaces, or electric heat pumps. He explained that the choice of heating source primarily depends on the region.

    “Immediately, you can notice distinct regions that are dominated by each fuel source,” Stevens said. 

    He noted, “The Northeast and Alaska are reliant on oil, while much of the Southeast heats their homes with electricity,” adding, “The Midwest is a battleground between propane and natural gas, and pockets of wood-reliant regions are more common toward the west coast.” 

    Here’s more from the note:

    A closer look also reveals how geography is a discipline of scales, and patterns change as you zoom in. At the city scale, a dichotomy emerges between rural areas and more densely populated regions. Regardless of the dominant fuel type of their surroundings, highly populated cities frequently exist as enclaves of natural gas customers.

    Pipeline installation is costly and requires housing to exist to be most efficient. This makes it difficult for natural gas to be the primary fuel type in areas with few, distant houses that are already reliant on other fuels. But when housing is dense—such as in cities or suburbs—numerous homes and buildings can be served by a low number of lines. This economic factor drives much of the prevalence of natural gas use in major cities. Such a divide has caught the attention of political scientists, too: Despite many cities’ reliance on natural gas, those who dwell in urban areas—and who tend to vote differently than their rural counterparts—note a preference for alternative fuel sources.

    Efforts to revamp urban fuel use are underway, but they will not come easily, cheaply, or quickly.

    This map highlights the broad use of fossil fuel heating, even as far-left climate activists push to ban the NatGas heating system. The irony is that even if homes do transition to electric heat, someone has to tell the Greta Thunbergs of the world that NatGas power generators supply a majority of the power on certain grids.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/22/2024 – 20:25

  • The Darkest Is Behind Us
    The Darkest Is Behind Us

    By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

    For most of our readers, the days are starting to get longer! The shortest day of the year is behind us! That is unequivocally good news, unless you are a vampire.

    On top of that, there is some hope that the annual shift in Daylight Saving Time (that makes it dark early), will be changed! I think that is good news for many, but it is uncertain to occur.

    Which brings us to the real question, what will D.C. be like in the coming months and what will it do for markets?

    As we advocated for on Friday, I think We Need to Pay Attention to the Budget Debate This Time.

    Stocks (and crypto) rallied strongly from overnight lows as it became apparent that a new path forward was being presented that was likely to pass. I guess that there was “relief” that a shutdown would be averted, but I think what is important (going forward) is how things played out, because that might give us an indication of what can be accomplished in the coming months.

    A simplistic view is:

    1. A very long budget (continuing resolution) was proposed, with very little time to read, let alone debate, the provisions.

    2. Largely through social media, an uproar was created, resulting in a much shorter CR, with far fewer appropriations, being submitted for a vote.

    3. That vote failed and markets sold off overnight.

    4. There was chatter about splitting the CR into 3 things to be voted on separately, but in the end, it looks like only one small CR (in terms of number of pages) was voted on and passed.

    Stocks have not been open since the CR was passed, but Bitcoin has been. Normally I refrain from using Bitcoin as a guide to anything (because it is often illiquid and volatile), but I think it is useful in this case.

    Crypto wasn’t directly affected by the shutdown (it is 24/7, global, etc.), so I think that at least some of the downward price action can be linked to “sudden” concerns about the ability to get pro-crypto policy through (like the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, which I think is crazy, but it could happen given the power and donations of many of the proponents for such a plan). We wrote about that in detail in The Genius of Mariah Carey.

    Now that something has passed, I would have expected crypto to respond more aggressively. It might still do so, but I think that the price movement highlights a couple of concerns about the budget debate that we all need to be thinking about for broader markets.

    • On Twitter, where you can find a lot of detail on “issues” with the original/long CR, it seems that the “algo” isn’t highlighting details on the new/smaller CR. It is easy to find stories about how small the final CR (that got passed) is, but there is very little on the details. And what you can find on the details seems to raise as many questions as answers. Without a doubt, Twitter highlighted issues with the original, in some level of detail, but it now seems to only feed through information about the much smaller document. It seems weird to me, and might be part of why Bitcoin isn’t rallying, because this wasn’t a “clean” win or a strong indication of change in D.C.
    • Every Democrat voted for the plan and it was only Republicans who voted against it. That does seem slightly weird, especially when linked to the point above. If it was a huge “win” and a sign of change, why did the voting turn out like that?

    I think it is great that we got the CR done and averted a government shutdown (though I wasn’t panicked at all by the potential for a short one, which we’ve had before).

    I think that we saw some “changes” in how things will be handled. There was much more use of social media to influence politicians (which I view largely as good, but not without its dangers, as social media tends to be excellent at feeding headlines, but can fail to arouse a lot of attention regarding the details).

    I’m not sure that the success of getting this CR through tells us that the Trump administration will have an easy time getting their entire agenda through, which is largely market friendly, and is a big reason why stocks have done so well!

    Bottom Line

    Be wary on bonds. Nothing from the past few days tells us that there won’t be a lot of spending, just that the direction of the spending will be altered.

    Yes, there is some hope of discipline, but the “swamp” seems well entrenched, so I see consistent upward pressure on bond yields (despite the respite in inflation with Friday’s PCE release).

    Equities, unclear. The seasonals should be supportive, but we have now had multiple 3% moves in a week (the FOMC down day, and the overnight low to high on Friday). That makes for tricky trading, and I think we are unlikely to see broad-based buying until it becomes more clear what policies are likely to be enacted.

    Credit, a touch weaker with equities, but the story for credit remains robust (despite the Fed starting to harp on leverage in their November Minutes). They mentioned leverage by investors, but also in lending, and I assume it will get even more scrutiny in the December minutes and concerns about leverage likely played into their decision to come across as hawkish as they did.

    As painful as it might be, watch Bitcoin as it seems about as close to a “pure” signal as we can get on how much of the Trump/Musk (I had to go there) agenda is going to be achievable!

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/22/2024 – 19:50

  • Trump Threatens To Take Back Panama Canal As He Declares "Golden Age Of America Is Upon Us"
    Trump Threatens To Take Back Panama Canal As He Declares “Golden Age Of America Is Upon Us”

    Donald Trump warned that his new administration could try to regain control of the Panama Canal that the United States “foolishly” ceded to its Central American ally, contending that shippers are charged “ridiculous” fees to pass through the vital transportation channel linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

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    “The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous, especially knowing the extraordinary generosity that has been bestowed to Panama by the US,” Trump wrote. “This complete ‘rip-off’ of our Country will immediately stop.”

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    “The Panama Canal is considered a VITAL National Asset for the United States, due to its critical role to America’s Economy and National Security” Trump wrote adding that “if the principles, both moral and legal, of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, and without question.”

    He ended by warning “the Officials of Panama, please be guided accordingly!“

    Panama’s conservative president José Raúl Mulino, who was elected in May on a pro-business platform, roundly rejected the  notion as an affront to his country’s sovereignty.

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    The president-elect’s comment came during his first major rally since winning the White House on Nov. 5. Addressing supporters at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Arizona, Trump pledged that his “dream team Cabinet” would deliver a booming economy, seal U.S. borders and quickly settle wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.

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    “I can proudly proclaim that the Golden Age of America is upon us,” Trump said. “There’s a spirit that we have now that we didn’t have just a short while ago.”

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    Trump also suggested that the canal was in danger of falling into the wrong hands, saying the canal isn’t China’s to manage. China is its second-biggest customer of the canal after the US.

    In response, Elon Musk, whom liberals now accuse of being Trump’s puppetmaster having seemingly vanquished Putin in this alleged task, responded that “2025 is gonna be so lit“, which it of course will be if Trump pulls a Russia and decides that it is indeed time to annex the Panama canal.

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/22/2024 – 19:35

  • AI Drone Swarms And Autonomous Vessels: Palantir Co-Founder Warns How Warfare Is About To Change Forever
    AI Drone Swarms And Autonomous Vessels: Palantir Co-Founder Warns How Warfare Is About To Change Forever

    Billionaire venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale is urging for a shift in U.S. military strategy, criticizing the costly, failed attempts to rebuild nations like Afghanistan while championing tech-driven solutions.

    Lonsdale, a co-founder of Palantir and investor in Anduril Industries, told podcast host Dave Rubin this week that he envisions a future where autonomous weaponized vessels, AI-powered drones, and microwave-based defense systems replace traditional combat, minimizing risk and maximizing efficiency. Lonsdale argued these innovations can protect American interests without spilling the blood of U.S. troops.

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    DAVE RUBIN: Do you think technology can solve our [national security] problems? Wars are going to look very, very different from now. Even from what they look like right now.

    JOE LONSDALE: This is a big thing. I think we wasted a ton of money in Afghanistan. I think we had stupid adventures. I was very for our technology helping fight and kill thousands of terrorists. I was very for eliminating the bad guys. I was very against putting trillions of dollars into these areas to try to rebuild a broken civilization, which is not our job to do. We should have been building our civilization. I’m very pro-America, but part of being pro-America is fighting these wars without sacrificing American lives and keeping people very scared of us so that we don’t have to fight, and they do what they’re supposed to do. We have a bunch of companies right now that are kind of replacing the way the primes work. And so, for example, in the water, you want to have thousands or tens of thousands of smart and enabled autonomous weaponized vessels of different sorts that coordinate together. That’s what you want. And then, on the land, you know, we sent 31 tanks to Ukraine, and 20 destroyed.

    For the same cost or even less, you could have sent 10,000 tiny little vehicles that are smart, have weapons on the fight, and are coordinated. There are all these new ways you can use mass production with advanced manufacturing and AI, and you don’t put American lives at risk. You turn the bad guys, and for much cheaper, you can do it.

    Then the other one is really cool, just mentioned, we have the enemy also has, like, you see China where they fly hundreds of thousands of drones. It’s crazy. So we have something called Epirus, which is now deployed. It’s like a force field, but it’s a burst of microwave radiation in a cone. We can turn off hundreds of drones per shot from miles away.

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    DAVE RUBIN: That seems like sort of the next version of the Iron Dome or something in some sense.

    JOE LONSDALE: It’s a little bit like Star Trek. But you need these sorts of things to fight back, rather than waste million-dollar missiles to shoot down one of these drones. And there are so many of them. What you need is electronic warfare. So there are all sorts of new things we’re doing that are really cool and taking the best of Silicon Valley, combining with the best, and by the way, who doesn’t want a really great shield? This is a great thing for civilization that it’s easier to build shields now. So there’s things like this we need to be doing. 

    Meanwhile, as RealClearDefense notes, this is approaching Terminator shit…

    AI’s role in maritime warfare brings additional strategic risks. Autonomous systems and decision-making platforms could alter the nature of naval conflicts, making engagements faster and less predictable. This heightens the risk of escalation in already tense regions, such as the South China Sea. Misidentifications or unintended actions by AI systems could spark conflicts, and the absence of international agreements on the use of AI in military applications increases the potential for miscalculations. For example, an AI-powered naval drone could perceive a civilian or non-threatening vessel as hostile, prompting unnecessary or disproportionate responses. Such incidents could trigger a chain reaction in high-tension regions, potentially drawing major powers into conflict.

    On a broader strategic level, AI is altering the balance of power in maritime security. Nations with advanced AI capabilities have a distinct advantage, as they can integrate sophisticated technologies into their maritime operations, creating a technological gap between themselves and less-developed states. This disparity could lead to a concentration of power among a few dominant nations, undermining collective maritime security efforts. Additionally, adversaries with access to AI capabilities, such as autonomous naval vessels or intelligent cyberattack platforms, could challenge the dominance of traditionally superior navies, leveling the playing field in asymmetric conflicts.

    AI also has strategic implications for economic security. Global supply chains rely heavily on the safe and efficient movement of goods across oceans, and disruptions in maritime security could have severe economic repercussions. AI-powered systems that enhance port operations and maritime logistics can mitigate these risks, but their growing reliance on interconnected digital networks introduces vulnerabilities that adversaries could exploit. A targeted cyberattack on a major port or shipping lane could not only disrupt trade but also destabilize regional economies and create ripple effects in the global market.

    The integration of AI into maritime security raises ethical and legal concerns. Accountability for decisions made by AI systems is a critical issue, particularly in incidents involving autonomous vessels or weaponized platforms. Determining responsibility in the event of an error or failure becomes challenging when human oversight is minimal. Moreover, the unequal access to AI technologies could exacerbate disparities in maritime security, leaving smaller nations at a disadvantage compared to technologically advanced powers. These challenges could undermine trust among allies and weaken collaborative efforts to ensure maritime stability.

    Watch the entire interview below (discussion on combat begins at 35:30):

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/22/2024 – 19:15

  • The FBI Deserves Kash Patel
    The FBI Deserves Kash Patel

    Authored by John Kiriakou via ConsortiumNews.com,

    On the surface of things, Kash Patel is the kind of person most of us would want to keep out of government.

    A MAGA true believer, and Donald Trump’s choice to head the F.B.I., he’s the tip of the spear of Trump’s apparent effort to use the courts to go after his perceived enemies in the media and on Capitol Hill. 

    The mainstream Democratic-oriented press is apoplectic about the appointment.  The Christian Science Monitor said it most clearly when it wrote that,

    “Democrats invoke (the notorious late F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover) as they warn about Mr. Patel, suggesting he will target political enemies.  Republicans, though, compare Hoover’s tenure to what they say is a modern ‘deep state” resisting and harassing Mr. Trump.” 

    That’s the bottom line. Democrats compare him to Hoover while Republicans argue that he’s the anti-Hoover.

    I’m here to argue that Kash Patel is exactly what Americans need right now at the F.B.I.  We need somebody with the guts and the political authority to burn the F.B.I. down, at least figuratively.

    First, I’m under no illusions that Kash Patel is a good guy. According to former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, Patel is “salivating” at the opportunity to investigate and, apparently, charge former Rep. Liz Cheney with some sort of crime because of her work on the Jan. 6 Committee. 

    This is not only wrong, it also ignores the fact that Cheney had congressional immunity for her work because she was serving in an official capacity for the committee. Nothing will come of any investigation.  

    The press also has opined that Patel will target police officers who arrested protestors at the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol for investigation.  Again, the police have qualified immunity, and nothing will come of the idea. 

    Police reinforcements guard the Capitol after rioters were pushed out of the building on Jan. 6, 2021. (Tyler Merbler, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)

    He has also called for the prosecution of a wide range of political figures, including President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and outgoing F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray.  Again, they have immunity, and nothing will come of Patel’s rhetoric.

    With that said, my view is that it’s the F.B.I. that’s the “bad guy” here.  Here’s just a sampling of F.B.I. crimes over the years; 

    • The F.B.I. over the years has spied on thousands of Americans simply because they have held progressive political views.  Some of these Americans included music star Elvis Presley (a well-known Republican, actually), crooner Frank Sinatra, comedian Groucho Marx, entertainer and former Republican Congressman Sonny Bono, musician Bob Dylan, “King of Pop” Michael Jackson, and even baseball star Mickey Mantle.  Why?  Nobody knows.  

    • A 1985 congressional report found that the F.B.I. had conducted electronic surveillance against more than 7,000 Americans without any legal authority to do so.

    • COINTELPRO, the F.B.I.’s illegal Counterintelligence Program, targeted groups and individuals that the bureau had deemed to be “subversive,” including such “dangerous radicals” as Martin Luther King, Jr., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and a myriad of anti-Vietnam War groups, black political groups and women’s rights groups.

    Chicago police on Dec. 4, 1969, removing the body of Fred Hampton, national spokesman for the Black Panther Party, from a building on the city’s west side where he was assassinated during a COINTELPRO operation. (Associated Press – Chicago Sun-Times, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

    • In 1964, the F.B.I. wrote an anonymous letter to Martin Luther King, Jr., meant to blackmail him for alleged sexual dalliances and urged him to commit suicide.  

    • In 1965, a white civil rights worker, Viola Liuzzo, was murdered by a member of the Ku Klux Klan, Gary Thomas Rowe.  Rowe also happened to be an F.B.I. informant at the time. So the F.B.I. spread a rumor that Liuzzo was a Communist and heroin addict and that she had abandoned her children to run off with a black man. F.B.I. documents show that J. Edgar Hoover personally briefed this lie to President Lyndon Johnson.  

    • In a 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, F.B.I. agents seeking to serve a warrant on Randy Weaver shot and killed Weaver’s wife, son and dog.  Weaver in turn shot and killed a U.S. Marshal in what a court later deemed to be self-defense. The F.B.I. was forced to pay Weaver a settlement of $3.38 million.  

    After the Ruby Ridge siege, F.B.I. agents escort Randy Weaver down the mountain on Aug. 31, 1992. (Jim Botting, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

    All of this is to say nothing of the F.B.I.’s involvement in the 2016 election with its investigation of Hillary Clinton, in allegedly using electronic surveillance against the 2016 Trump campaign and in infiltrating and disrupting such groups as Occupy Wall Street, racial justice and environmental groups, and pro-Palestine peace groups.

    The bureau also investigated candidate Trump and participated in the Russiagate fiasco in Operation Hurricane Crossfire.

    I’ve had my own negative experience with the F.B.I. In 2009, the bureau secretly opened a criminal case against me in response to my having blown the whistle on the C.I.A.’s torture program. 

    In the end, I was charged with five felonies, including three counts of espionage.  I hadn’t committed espionage, of course, and those charges were dropped, but not until I had declared bankruptcy.  

    To make the case go away, I pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and served 23 months in a federal prison.  I had been facing 45 years.  In the intervening years, three F.B.I. agents have reached out to me to apologize for their role in the case, saying that it was political in nature and that they were ordered to target me. 

    That’s the F.B.I. That’s what it does.

    And that is why we need Kash Patel at the helm of the F.B.I. right now. 

    We need somebody who is willing to tear this organization down to its bare studs.  The F.B.I. is a criminal organization.  It should be dealt with like a criminal organization.  There should be a price to pay for its crimes against the American people.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/22/2024 – 18:40

  • DoorDash By Drone: Google's Wing Subsidiary Now Delivers In Dallas-Fort Worth
    DoorDash By Drone: Google’s Wing Subsidiary Now Delivers In Dallas-Fort Worth

    Just what we need at the peak of drone hysteria – more drones in the skies over the U.S.

    But this latest batch will be courtesy of Google’s parent company Alphabet, whose subsidiary Wing will be “expanding its drone delivery service to DoorDash customers in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex”, according to The Verge.

    Wing’s drones are designed for small parcel delivery, combining vertical takeoff with fixed-wing forward flight for speed and range. Powered by electric batteries, they feature redundant systems like extra propellers for safety.

    And starting last week, DoorDash users in Frisco and Fort Worth can receive drone deliveries from 50 local merchants, with items arriving in as little as 15 minutes, via Wing, the report says.

    The drones fly at speeds up to 65 mph and hover at 150 feet to safely lower orders. Eligible Dallas-Fort Worth addresses can access this option, and locals can check eligibility on Wing’s website.

    The Verge reports that Wing has completed over 400,000 global deliveries since its first U.S. pilot in 2019.

    Previously, it had partnered with DoorDash in Australia and Virginia, the latter focusing on Wendy’s deliveries. In Dallas-Fort Worth, Wing has worked with Walgreens for airdrops, while Walmart runs its own drone program in collaboration with Wing and Zipline.

    Wing launched takeout deliveries in Bonython, Australia, in January 2019. By April 2019, it became the first drone company to earn an FAA Air Operator’s Certificate to operate as an airline in the U.S. In early 2022, it completed over 50,000 deliveries.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/22/2024 – 18:05

  • In Latest Threat To German Democracy, Dangerous Fascist Elon Musk Tweets Six Words About AfD
    In Latest Threat To German Democracy, Dangerous Fascist Elon Musk Tweets Six Words About AfD

    Authored by Eugyppius via eugyppius.com,

    German democracy, which has existed undeterred since 1949 but is somehow always shaken to its foundations whenever anybody sings the wrong song or holds a televised debate with the wrong person, is once again on life support.

    Christian Lindner, head of the market-liberal Free Democrats, did much to trigger the present catastrophe on December 1st, when he said that the Free Republic should “dare more Milei and more Musk”. Because there is little distinction between praising Milei and Musk and demanding the return of National Socialism, there ensued a brief period of establishment hyperventilation.

    Less than a week later, CDU chief and probable future German Chancellor Friedrich Merz did his part to denounce Lindner’s political wrongthink in a statement to Deutschlandfunk:

    So neither the Argentinian President nor, how shall I put it, the American entrepreneur Elon Musk – let’s put it plainly – are role models for German politics in my view. I don’t see where we can find similarities in German politics. What Christian Lindner meant will probably remain his secret.

    The next day, Merz repeated the same denunciations, only more harshly, explaining to one of our extremely adult and far-sighted pantsuit talkshow hosts that “To be honest, I was completely appalled that Christian Lindner made that comparison.” Milei, Merz said, is “really trampling on the people there”.

    Yesterday, all of this came to the notice of the (honestly rather tiresome) influencer Naomi Seibt, who posted a video statement to X rehearsing all of this old news to her largely American audience.

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    Elon Musk then brought down the hammer on the German democratic order, retweeting Seibt’s video and remarking that “Only the AfD can save Germany”.

    Today a lot of very important and influential people got out of bed and took to their keyboards to denounce Musk’s election interference. His statement might be illegal, at any rate it is very likely fascist and certainly it is beyond the pale for an American to voice an opinion about German politics. Germans absolutely never, ever, utter the slightest word about American politics and certainly would never advance negative opinions about the American President in the middle of an election campaign. Our Foreign Office would never try to fact-check an American presidential debate! Our journalists would never depict President Donald Trump dressed as a Ku Klux Klan member or offering the Hitler salute or decapitating the Statue of Liberty! That’s just not done!

    Like a great stream of green diarrhoea, the outrage is pouring forth. Matthias Gebauer, who writes for Der Spiegel, observes that “Elon Musk… is openly promoting the AfD” and concludes that “Putin is not the only one who loves this party”. Erik Marquardt, head of the Green faction in the European Parliament, says that “The EU Commission and EU member states should no longer stand by and watch as billionaires misuse media and algorithms to influence elections and strengthen and normalise Right-wing extremists”. This “is an attack on democracy”, and “has nothing to do with freedom of expression”. Dennis Radtke, CDU representative in the European Parliament, concludes that “Musk… is declaring war on democracy” and that “the man is a menace”. We are also under siege via “interference from Putin”; “the erosion of our democracy is being fuelled from both within and without”. Julian Röpcke, who writes for BILD, believes that “This is interference in the German election campaign by a tech billionaire who uses algorithms to decide what gets heard”. If Germany does not “respond with penalties, there will be no help for our eroding democracy”.

    Jonas Koch, at Die Zeit, complains that “the richest man in the world is now campaigning for Right-wing populists in Germany”.

    Tech billionaire Elon Musk has spoken out in favour of the Alternative for Germany party in the German Parliamentary election campaign. “Only the AfD can save Germany,” he wrote on his online service X.

    You can almost see Mr. Koch before you, clasping his pearls. He notes that the Government is doing its best to weather this unprecedented assault on the German republic. He quotes longsuffering Government spokesperson Christian Hoffmann saying that “It’s not the first time that Elon Musk has commented on German politics”. Olaf Scholz, he notes, “has been concerned about… X since Musk assumed control of it”, but he has inexplicably not yet decided to delete Government X accounts.

    Nor is this Musk’s only sin against all that is right, free and good:

    Musk is not only increasingly involved in politics in the U.S., where he is advising U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and is to head a commission to reduce Government spending. He is also exerting influence in the U.K. He recently announced a donation of up to $100 million to the Right-wing populists around Brexit pioneer Nigel Farage.

    As early as the summer, Musk had praised the AfD after the European elections. The party was labelled as Right-wing extremist, “but the political positions of the AfD that I have read about do not sound extremist”, he wrote on X.

    Der Spiegel agrees that this is “Not the first time that this super-rich man has interfered in German politics”.

    Musk “repeatedly takes potshots at Germany”, he has “insulted” such national saints as “the former Chancellor Angela Merkel”, he has “criticised Chancellor Olaf Scholz”, and most ominously of all he has “even responded to tweets from the far-Right Thuringian AfD leader Björn Höcke”.

    He responded to Höcke! Imagine that! It is just the height of political depravity, all that responding.

    Now the billionaire and confidant of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has tweeted again…

    Tweeted again! The absolute madman! Will he never stop?

    …and made a barely concealed election recommendation for the AfD. “Only the AfD can save Germany,” Musk claimed in a tweet. …

    Under Trump, Musk is set to become co-head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency. The goal of the institution: to reduce bureaucracy, eliminate regulations and cut spending. This could result in Musk weakening or even abolishing those rules that personally limit him.

    That’s right, Musk wants to make American Government more efficient so that he can suspend elections and establish himself as American dictator. It takes truly perceptive journalists, like whoever wrote this unsigned Spiegel screed, to see through his clever lies.

    Musk constantly uses X for political influence. He not only interferes in German politics from there, but also tries to exert pressure on U.S. Congressmen. … Since Wednesday, he has fired off various tweets to fuel the U.S. budget dispute. He also recently received representatives of the British far-Right [sic] party Reform U.K. at Trump’s private residence Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

    He is like a little antidemocratic Hitler, is Elon Musk, just tweeting whatever he wants, receiving guests, influencing… things.

    But the gold medal for most outrageous reaction must go to Florian Harms, Editor-in-Chief of t-online. Harms writes for a slightly downmarket publication and so he has to enact more indignation than everybody else.

    “This sentence is an outrage,” Harms declares.

    There’s always a lot going on on the big-shot platform X. Since Ober-Big-Shot Elon Musk bought the social media company and reprogrammed its algorithms to inject poison, most posts there have devolved into unfounded claims, wild insults or outrageous nonsense. You can safely ignore it.

    Unfortunately, what the “Grökraz” himself posts on X cannot be ignored. This Friday, our “greatest Croesus of all time” felt compelled to intervene in the German federal election campaign with a one-liner: “Only the AfD can save Germany.” … That’s his prerogative; after all, anyone can now post nonsense on his platform.

    Harms is clearly highly opposed to platforms where anyone can just post anything. People should only be allowed to post things of which Harms approves. Particularly someone like Musk should not be allowed to just post whatever he wants, because Musk is “a global entrepreneur” and therefore “bears special responsibility”:

    His words carry weight because they influence international politics, stock markets and social moods. More than 208 million people follow Musk on X; he has configured the digital machines so that his posts are displayed more often than others. This gives his radical views a disproportionate amount of attention, which is how he makes politics – without democratic legitimisation.

    Vast swathes of the German corporate sector denounce the AfD all the time without the slightest “democratic legitimisation”, and as far as I know Harms has never complained about that even once. If Musk were attacking AfD, of course, Harms would be totally thrilled with it.

    The so-called Alternative for Germany is a crazy party… [A] growing number of its officials are Right-wing radicals and enemies of democracy. This is well known and can be read in in the various reports by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

    German political discourse is so insane, I always feel slightly ashamed translating this stuff for you. It feels like dishing out embarrassing family secrets.

    Only someone who is either clueless or maliciously intent on spreading misinformation would think that this party alone could contribute something constructive for the good of Germany.

    Unfortunately, based on everything we’ve heard from Elon Musk in recent months, we have to assume the latter. This man wants to undermine constitutional and democratic institutions, abolish the welfare state and create a Darwinian world in which the law of the jungle applies. It’s bad enough that he is now gaining so much influence in the USA. This must not happen in Germany. …

    Democratic politicians should… refute Musk’s claim. And… they should take a particularly critical look at future investments by Musk’s companies in this country. Consumers also bear a responsibility: Anyone who is still considering buying a Tesla must accept the accusation of supporting a destroyer of democracy. [emphasis mine]

    This is all so boundlessly ridiculous, it’s like the entire country is suffering from borderline personality disorder.

    If any of these people sincerely believe that Musk’s tweet will have any influence on the German elections in February, they are clinically insane. The only thing here that might influence something is the unceasing hysteria of German establishment discourse, which seems intent on alienating powerful figures at the centre of empire, all for the indecent and passing thrill of a cheap moral orgasm. Any political order that is truly threatened by a six-word remark from anybody – even should it come from the wealthiest, most antidemocratic, fascistic and powerful man in the world – is not a political order worth having.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/22/2024 – 17:44

  • Disney Abandons Transgender Storyline In New Pixar Show
    Disney Abandons Transgender Storyline In New Pixar Show

    Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

    Disney has decided to abandon plans to have a transgender storyline in its upcoming animated series Win or Lose.

    The show, which centres around characters on a co-ed middle school softball team, was originally scheduled to feature a transgender character.

    However, The Hollywood Reporter notes that while the character will remain in the show, all references to its transgender identity have been removed.

    A Disney spokesperson told the outlet “When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline.”

    The report notes that the decision was made several months ago, but the company has not provided any further details.

    The decision comes following backlash directed at several recent Disney productions that have pushed similar themes and flopped.

    *  *  *

    Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/22/2024 – 17:30

  • Waymo Robotaxi Still Has Some Kinks To Work Out
    Waymo Robotaxi Still Has Some Kinks To Work Out

    Even though Waymo’s robotaxis have surpassed the 25-million-mile mark on public roadways, AI trainers have yet to prepare these vehicles for every possible scenario. The latest incident highlights how humans—in certain situations—remain superior.

    X user Liam McCormick snapped a photo of a Waymo Jaguar I-PACE SUV that ignored traffic cones and work area signs and ended up stuck knee-deep in wet cement.  

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    “There were ones, but spaced far enough apart that the Waymo was able to drive between them.  New concrete poured in sections, the final section was fresh,” McCormick “aid. 

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    Smart AI robotaxi can’t outsmart wet cement. Is LiDAR to blame?

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/22/2024 – 16:55

  • The Dominoes Are Falling Fast Over The Biden Mental-Health Cover-Up
    The Dominoes Are Falling Fast Over The Biden Mental-Health Cover-Up

    Authored by Matt Margolis via PJMedia.com,

    There truly aren’t enough words to describe just how big of a scandal the White House cover-up of Joe Biden’s mental decline really is.

    As I’ve said before, the liberal media doesn’t feel that it has to protect Joe Biden anymore, and there have been a torrent of stories exposing how Biden’s mental decline was handled for four years. The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and even the New York Times have all hit the story.

    The fallout from this could be extensive for the Democratic Party.

    Democratic donor and operative Lindy Li hasn’t held back in her critiques of the party. For weeks, she’s been relentless, taking aim at Kamala Harris for squandering a billion dollars, criticizing her selection of Tim Walz, and calling out her embrace of radical positions. Li has even provided intriguing insider details about how Joe Biden was ultimately ousted, and what Pelosi and Obama really think of Kamala. Now, she’s dishing on Joe Biden’s mental decline.

    “Let’s just be very honest what’s happening here,” Li said during a recent interview on Fox News.

    “The president has not been cognitively fit to assume the duties of the Oval Office for a number of years now. And it breaks my heart because I know President Biden and I love the man, but he is in no shape or form able to carry out the duties that the Commander in Chief requires, and it’s just devastating.”

    Li continued, “And we saw that confirmed by the Wall Street Journal expose yesterday and also many exposes in the New York Times, in the Washington Post, over and over again, how his inner circle is actively covering for him and stepping up to the plate because he simply cannot.”

    As we previously reported, the Wall Street Journal revealed in a lengthy exposé how White House aides were aware of Biden’s diminished mental state and actively covered it up pretty much from day one of his presidency.

    Li herself isn’t blameless either. She told of a fundraiser for Biden on May 1 in Washington, D.C.: “I remember one of my family members, after interacting with President Biden, they said, oh, we’re … effed.” 

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    Former Clinton operative Al Mottur has also expressed regret over aiding a cover-up. 

    “I’m disappointed in the Wall Street Journal story only in the sense that there are people now leaking on the record who may have been the same people telling us everything was fine,” he said.

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    The dominoes really are falling quickly. We have the media rushing in with stories they should have reported years ago, and now operatives are piling on. This scandal is likely to have long-term devastating consequences if this keeps up.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/22/2024 – 16:20

  • "Prank TikToker" Busted After Filming Himself Spraying Walmart Produce With Poison
    “Prank TikToker” Busted After Filming Himself Spraying Walmart Produce With Poison

    The legacy of prank YouTubers and TikTokers has been an endless plunge into degeneracy for western society; a mindless clamor for online clout, clicks and social media followers that don’t necessarily translate to dollars or success.  The new currency of the digital era is attention and narcissistic affirmation.  The new motto:  “I am viral, therefore I exist”.  

    This has created a culture of clout at any cost and a complete abandonment of basic morality or shame.  The more these content “creators” and “influencers” get away with it, the more they inspire others to mimic their behavior.  At least in the case of 27-year-old Charles Smith, a TikToker going by the name Wolfie Kahletti, the attention he gains will be brief and the time he spends in prison will hopefully be long.

    Smith faces multiple charges after he allegedly filmed himself spraying poisonous bug killer on produce at an Arizona Walmart Supercenter and then posted the video online.  Mesa police said they arrested Smith on Saturday in connection with an incident that happened on Thursday at the Walmart at Stapley Drive and Baseline Road. 

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    According to police, Smith entered the store with plans to film social media pranks, and he grabbed a can of Hot Shot Ultra Bed Bug and Flea Killer without paying for the item.

    Video uploaded to social media, but later deleted, showed Smith spraying the pesticide on various produce items available for purchase, including vegetables, fruit and rotisserie chickens, police said.

    A Walmart spokesperson said workers removed the impacted products and cleaned and sanitized the affected area of the store.

    The cult of social media pranksters has been met mostly with disdain, but the allure of watching people do stupid things on camera cannot be denied.  Much like witnessing a train wreck, it’s hard for some viewers to look away.  Numerous online pranksters have been arrested in the past few years, all of them end up violating the property and privacy of others, or actually threatening innocent lives.

    In some cases, the clout chasers mess with the wrong victims and end up injured or dead.  Last year, prank YouTuber Tanner Cook tried to intimidate a delivery driver at a food court in Dulles Town Center in Virginia for a video, only to be shot when the man pulled a concealed pistol.

    Cook survived the encounter and the driver, Alan Colie, was later acquitted on charges of aggravated malicious wounding in the shooting after pleading not guilty on the grounds of self defense.  No one today cares who Tanner Cook is, they only remember him as the YoutTuber who “F’d around and found out”. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/22/2024 – 15:45

  • Berberine: One Of The Most Powerful Tools We Have To Regulate Insulin
    Berberine: One Of The Most Powerful Tools We Have To Regulate Insulin

    Authored by Robert W Malone via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    While at the Brownstone Institute retreat near Hartford, Connecticut last year, I heard Dr. Paul Marik speak on repurposed drugs. Of course, this has been one of my passions since the Ebola outbreak of 2014, with the realization that a safe and effective vaccine could not be developed fast enough for any newly emergent highly infectious disease or infectious bio-threat event.

    As Berberine is derived from plants, it is considered a nutraceutical. svf74/Shutterstock

    Unfortunately, there is no interest in using repurposed drugs by our government or pharma for other disease indications such as cancer. This is despite the fact that computerized modeling, which is very sophisticated, suggests that there are many drugs for which the already licensed drug’s safety profile is well known, that would work well for varying types of cancers. Again, no profit motive, no interest. No research dollars or support. A dead end.

    Likewise, in the United States, “nutraceuticals” are largely unregulated, as they exist in the same category as dietary supplements and food additives by the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration]. There is no way for a pharma company to make huge amounts of profits from repurposed drugs unless they can figure out a way to patent the product (formulations, co-administration with other agents, etc.). Even then, it can be very difficult and carries a lot of financial risk—in getting it through the patenting process (which is more difficult).

    One of the key examples used during Marik’s lecture at the Brownstone retreat was the compound berberine.

    As berberine is derived from plants, it is considered a nutraceutical. As a consequence, there are few randomized clinical trials and little pharma or government interest in the drug. Probably because there is no profit motive at play here. Hence, most of us have never heard of it.

    One of Marik’s main points was that berberine appears to be one of the most powerful tools we have to regulate insulin and yet because there is no profit in promoting this product, there is almost no publicity or significant research into its clinical benefits.

    Traditional medicines use many plants that are true miracles provided to us by nature. Berberine is found in many plants throughout the world and has been used as an essential medicine globally for more than 3000 years. Traditionally, its uses have varied greatly and include treating infections and sores, and as an antimicrobial for various kinds of gastrointestinal inflammation.

    Enzymes are proteins that function as biological catalysts in the body and act by accelerating chemical reactions. Berberine works by binding to a variety of individual enzymes and altering their efficiency.

    What are the Health Benefits of Berberine?

    (Note—there is no question that more research into this compound is needed. But there is overwhelming evidence that this drug has many health benefits and should not be overlooked when assessing the use of dietary nutraceutical supplements.)

    Atherosclerosis

    “Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease of the arteries, and is the underlying cause of about 50% of all deaths in westernized society”

    “Berberine is an extract of Chinese traditional herbs that is known for its antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory effects in the digestive system. Its underlying anti-CVD (cardiovascular disease) mechanisms are currently attracting interest, and its pharmacological actions, such as antioxidation, regulation of neurotransmitters and enzymes, and cholesterol-lowering effects, have been substantiated. Recent studying found that berberine could inhibit both the proliferation and apoptosis of VSMCs (vascular smooth muscle cells) induced by mechanical stretch stress simultaneously, which suggests that berberine might be an excellent drug to treat atherosclerosis.” Frontiers in Pharmacology, 2021

    Blood Pressure

    Berberine has been shown to help control blood pressure.

    Blood Sugar Control (Insulin Regulation)

    Berberine has been shown to significantly lower glucose levels in diabetic patients.

    One study shows that berberine plus probiotics had the greatest effect on blood sugar levels, although berberine alone also was clinically significant in reducing blood glucose levels, whereas placebo and probiotics-alone control treatments were ineffective in these studies. It was noted that berberine induced more gastrointestinal side effects relative to the control groups.

    Cholesterol

    “Men randomized to berberine had larger reductions in total cholesterol (-0.39 mmol/L, 95% confidence interval (CI) -0.70 to -0.08) and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (-0.07 mmol/L, 95% CI -0.13 to -0.01) after 12 weeks. Considering changes after 8 and 12 weeks together, berberine lowered total cholesterol and possibly low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-c), and possibly increased testosterone.” Nutrients, 2021.

    Taking berberine supplements regularly appears to lower total cholesterol, “bad” cholesterol, and triglycerides in people with high cholesterol. As it is not a statin and works through other pathways than statin drugs, it may be beneficial for people who wish to lower cholesterol but do not wish to take statins or are resistant to statins.

    (The issue of statins is complex and not as clear-cut as many think. But this essay is not the place for that discussion. I promise though—at some point in time, we will get to that analysis).

    Heart Disease

    People with heart disease often have fatigue and irregular heartbeats. Studies show that taking berberine supplement combined with standard heart disease treatments reduces these symptoms. Berberine reduced the risk of death from heart disease without apparent side effects.

    “One hundred fifty-six patients with CHF and >90 ventricular premature complexes (VPCs) and/or nonsustained ventricular tachycardia (VT) on 24-hour Holter monitoring were randomly divided into 2 groups. All patients were given conventional therapy for CHF, consisting of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, digoxin, diuretics, and nitrates. Patients in the treatment group (n = 79) were also given berberine 1.2 to 2.0 g/day. The remaining 77 patients were given placebo.” …

    “After treatment with berberine, there was a significantly greater increase in LVEF, exercise capacity, improvement of the dyspnea-fatigue index, and a decrease of frequency and complexity of VPCs compared with the control group. There was a significant decrease in mortality in the berberine-treated patients during long-term follow-up … p <0.02).” AM J Cardiology, 2003 Note—this study was conducted in 2003, and yet only crickets have been heard from the American Heart Association concerning the benefits of berberine.

    Check out Dr. Malone here…

    And snag some Berberine here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/22/2024 – 15:10

  • Biden Considers Commuting Sentences Of 40 Men On Federal Death Row
    Biden Considers Commuting Sentences Of 40 Men On Federal Death Row

    Multiple outlets are reporting that President Joe Biden plans to use his clemency powers before leaving office next month, with speculation among opponents of capital punishment that he will act on his pledge to end the federal death penalty.

    Biden is considering commuting the sentences of the 40 men on federal death row, potentially thwarting any efforts by President-elect Trump to resume executions, an exclusive by the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

    Religious and civil-rights groups, bolstered by Pope Francis’s recent prayers for commutation, have urged Biden to act. Commutations would replace death sentences with life without parole.

    Biden, a Catholic, recently spoke with Pope Francis and plans to meet him next month. A decision, possibly by Christmas, may involve either a blanket commutation or retaining death sentences for the most severe cases.

    The Wall Street Journal wrote that Attorney General Merrick Garland has recommended President Biden commute most federal death sentences, with potential exceptions for cases like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (Boston Marathon bombing), Robert Bowers (Tree of Life synagogue shooting), and Dylann Roof (Charleston church shooting).

    Those eligible for commutation include individuals convicted of heinous crimes such as child killings, kidnapping-for-ransom murders, and a podiatrist who killed a patient to obstruct justice.

    Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell commented: “It would mean that progressive politics is more important to the president than the lives taken by these murderers.”

    “It would mean that society’s most forceful condemnation of white supremacy and antisemitism must give way to legal mumbo jumbo,” he added, doing his best to stay upright at whatever podium he was speaking from. 

    Four inmates remain on military death row at Fort Leavenworth, but it’s unclear if any potential commutation would include them or affect cases like Luigi Mangione’s pending federal death sentence.

    While Biden campaigned on abolishing the federal death penalty and halted executions during his term, little progress has been made on his promise, with Democratic bills to end capital punishment lacking White House support.

    Yasmin Cader, a deputy legal director at the ACLU, concluded: “We are absolutely engaging in pulling all the levers that we can. It would cement a very powerful moral legacy and fulfill a campaign promise.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/22/2024 – 14:35

  • "We Have A Serious, Serious Problem On A Global Scale" – Martin Armstrong Warns Neocons "Scared To Death Of Trump"
    “We Have A Serious, Serious Problem On A Global Scale” – Martin Armstrong Warns Neocons “Scared To Death Of Trump”

    Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

    Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong is back with a new round of predictions, and they are not going to make life easy for President Elect Trump. 

    Armstrong says, “Our computer has been projecting that we are going into a depression in some areas and a recession in other areas.”

    ”  A depression most likely in Europe and a recession in the United States up until 2028. . . . At my November conference, everybody was celebrating after Trump won.  I stood up and told my clients, ‘I’m sorry, Trump is not going to have a blissful administration, and he’s not going to prevent the economic decline.’  (Please remember, Armstrong predicted Donald Trump would win in a landslide many months before the November 2024 Election.)

    Armstrong goes on to say, “We have a serious, serious problem on a global scale…”

    “The sovereign debt crisis is really going to start percolating in 2025.  It’s probably going to reach a major crisis by 2026 and 2027.  Why?  They have dictated all these banks and pension funds . . . 70%, generally, must be invested in government bonds. . . . They say it’s ‘safe,’ but it’s the worst debt possible. . . . 

    So, if the government goes into a sovereign default, what happens?  You wipe out the banking system and the pensions.”

    Does Armstrong think the governments around the world are going to go into a sovereign default?  Armstrong says,

    “Oh yeah.  How does a government default?  We are in this Ponzi Scheme.  They have to keep selling new debt to pay off the old debt. . . . When you can’t sell the new debt, that’s when the default happens because you can’t pay off the old debt.”

    What should the average guy do now?  Does Armstrong think people should get to the bank and get cash?  Armstrong says,

    “Yes, cash, physical paper money.  We just had two hurricanes here in Florida.  This idea of Bitcoin and CBDCs are very nice, but what’s the reality?  The internet was down for 10 days.  A credit card did not work.  You wanted something, it was cash only.  It was the same in Canada when they froze all the accounts of the truckers.  They could not even buy food.  Unless you had cash, you were dead in the water.  This is why I am saying to have cash in this point in time.” 

    Armstrong still likes physical gold, too.

    Armstrong says the digital currencies that are getting a lot of attention lately are only a control mechanism.  Armstrong contends digital money will stop bank runs.  Armstrong still thinks the world will be at war by April or May of 2025.  Armstrong says watch Turkey with its huge conventional army.  Armstrong says Jordan and Lebanon may also be taken over, and like Syria, Turkey will be orchestrating this move.  Armstrong says the Middle East is setting up for a major conflict starting in 2025, and there will be destruction.  Armstrong also predicts Europe will be on the losing end of the next world war.

    In closing, Armstrong says:

    “They can’t stop Trump from taking office, but they can delay him with martial law.  Martial law has been enacted 60 times in the United States. . . . The neocons are scared to death of Trump and really want to trap him in war before he takes office.”

    There is much more in the 56-minute interview.

    Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with Martin Armstrong where he gives his analysis on a major debt crisis coming in 2025 with the defaults and destruction that come with it on 12.21.24.

    *  *  *

    To donate to USAWatchdog.com click here.

    To see the trailer of “The Forecaster” that features Martin Armstrong, click here.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/22/2024 – 14:00

  • Is 'Dronegate' A Chinese Psyop?
    Is ‘Dronegate’ A Chinese Psyop?

    Mysterious drone sightings continue over US cities and military bases, with their origins remaining unknown (at least to the public), even as the federal government insists there is no national security threat. 

    We have offered readers multiple theories, from a drone psyop to push through H.R.8610 (Counter-UAS Authority Security, Safety, and Reauthorization Act of 2024) and nuclear drone “sniffers.” Some lawmakers even pushed the wild idea of an Iranian “mothership” drone carrier off the East Coast. 

    At the beginning of last week, former US Navy Lt. and F/A-18F pilot Ryan Graves appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast, dismissing claims that drone sightings in the New Jersey-New York skies were “sniffers” searching for radioactive devices.

    Then President-elect Donald Trump told reporters, ” The government knows what is happening. Look, our military knows where they took off from, and for some reason, they don’t want to comment. And I think they would be better off commenting on what it is. Our military knows, and our president knows, and for some reason, they want to keep people in suspense.” 

    Shortly thereafter, we coined the term “Dronegate” to describe the ongoing situation.

    Let’s not forget to end the week, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul beefed up the number of New York National Guard members patrolling NYC subway stations, marking the largest military presence in the city’s subway system since the aftermath of 9/11. We asked the question if this was in response to a terror threat, such as mounting risks of pre-trained terrorists, now possibly active in cells nationwide. 

    With many different theories floating around, entrepreneur David Friedberg of the All-In podcast explained this could actually be a psyop by China to crush America’s rising drone economy. 

    Here’s the theory (courtesy of All-In): 

    “Right now, the US has a significant regulatory burden on drone utilization in a commercial setting.”

    “Meanwhile, you’ve got countries like China rocketing ahead. The drone delivery business in China is already $30B per year.”

    “And they’re also launching a pretty significant fleet of what we would call eVTOLs or flying cars.”

    “The expectation is that by 2030, there will be 100K flying cars moving people around in China. And these are huge efficiency gains.”

    “And in the US, the reason that these things haven’t taken off, and the reason we don’t have a large drone industry, which is clearly emerging and is going to be a huge economic driver for China and others around the world, is simply the regulatory restrictions.”

    “If you were going to try and mess with the US’s ability to move forward with the drone economy, you would probably try and wreak some havoc, stoke some fear, and get people to say, ‘Hey, this doesn’t seem cool. What’s going on? I don’t like that there’s all these drones in the sky. I’m freaking out.'”

    “And try and get the regulators to come in and say, ‘Hey, we’re banning drones.'”

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    Let’s not forget that the Chinese were active with drones over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia last year, as well as their spy balloon that traversed the Lower 48 in 2023. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 12/22/2024 – 13:25

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Dec 22

Today’s News 22nd December 2024

  • US Fighter Jet Shot Down Over Red Sea In Disastrous 'Friendly Fire' Incident
    US Fighter Jet Shot Down Over Red Sea In Disastrous ‘Friendly Fire’ Incident

    In the early morning hours of Sunday (local), two US Navy pilots were shot down over the Red Sea in an apparent friendly fire incident. This comes after more than a year of war against Yemeni Houthi rebels, who have targeted international transit in regional waters.

    The incident is highly unusual given that US and Western allied coalition ships have come under repeat drone and missile from from the Houthis, but have thus far suffered no disclosed losses. The Western coalition has reported no damage or casualties from this long-running battle, and yet it appears the first shootdown of an American fighter jet in the conflict has come by way of US aircraft carrier fire.

    Illustrative: US Navy Image

    The two pilots ejected after their F/A-18 fighter was hit and have been safely rescued in Red Sea waters, with one of the pilots suffering injuries.

    The Associated Press and ABC News are reporting the following details after official CENTCOM confirmation:

    Two U.S. Navy pilots ejected safely over the Red Sea after their F/A-18 fighter aircraft was mistakenly shot down early Sunday in what military officials are calling “an apparent case of friendly fire.”

    One of the pilots has minor injuries, according to a news release from U.S. Central Command.

    The guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg, which is part of the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, mistakenly fired on and hit the aircraft, that was flying off the USS Harry S. Truman, according to the news release.

    CENTCOM says it is investigating the incident. Again, it is clearly bizarre given the aircraft had just taken off from the same carrier strike group of which the USS Gettysburg is part.

    “The F/A-18 shot down had just flown off the deck of the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier,” Central Command indicated. 

    The US military was conducting an assault against militants in Yemen at the time of the incident. AP details further, “The U.S. military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the time, though the U.S. military’s Central Command did not elaborate on what their mission was and did not immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press.”

    There appears to have been some ‘fog of war’ confusion given that just prior to the friendly fire shootdown the Houthis had launched drones and a cruise missile at the US battle group. The F-18 may have been mistakenly identified by the Gettysburg warship as an inbound Houthi UAV.

    USS Gettysburg, via US Navy

    “However, Central Command said that warships and aircraft earlier shot down multiple Houthi drones and an anti-ship cruise missile launched by the rebels. Incoming hostile fire from the Houthis has given sailors just seconds to make decisions in the past,” the AP notes.

    Needless to say this is highly embarrassing for the Pentagon, and will be celebrated as a major ‘win’ by the Iran-backed Houthis. The Houthis have clearly been able to put the US warships on the defensive, given the confusion of the battle zone and trigger-happy premature response evident in this fresh incident.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/21/2024 – 23:30

  • Post-Cold-War Geopolitics Worse For Global South
    Post-Cold-War Geopolitics Worse For Global South

    Authored by Jomo Kwame Sundaram via via Substack,

    The new geopolitics after the first Cold War undermines peace, sustainability, and human development. Hegemonic priorities continue to threaten humanity’s well-being and prospects for progress.

    End of first Cold War

    The end of the first Cold War has been interpreted in various ways, most commonly as a US triumph. Francis Fukuyama famously proclaimed the ‘end of history’ with the victory of capitalism and liberal democracy.

    With the collapse of the Soviet Union and allied regimes, the US seemed unchallenged and unchallengeable in the new ‘unipolar’ world. The influential US journal Foreign Affairs termed ensuing US foreign policy ‘sovereigntist’.

    But the new order also triggered fresh discontent. Caricaturing cultural differences, Samuel Huntington blamed a ‘clash of civilisations’. His contrived cultural categories serve a new ‘divide-and-rule’ strategy.

    Today’s geopolitics often associates geographic and cultural differences with supposed ideological, systemic and other political divides. Such purported fault lines have also fed ‘identity politics’.

    The new Cold War is hot and bloody in parts of the world, sometimes spreading quickly. As bellicosity is increasingly normalised, hostilities have grown dangerously.

    Economic liberalisation, including globalisation, has been unevenly reversed since the turn of the century. Meanwhile, financialization has undermined the real economy, especially industry.

    The G20 finance ministers, representing the world’s twenty largest economies, including several from the Global South, began meeting after the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

    The G20 began meeting at the heads of government level following the 2008 global financial crisis, which was seen as a G7 failure. However, the G20’s relevance has declined again as the North reasserted G7 centrality with the new Cold War.

    NATO rules

    The ostensible raison d’être of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has gone with the end of the first Cold War and the Soviet Union.

    The faces of Western powers have also changed. For example, the G5 grew to become the G7 in 1976. US infatuation with the post-Soviet Russia of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin even brought it into the G8 for some years!

    Following the illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the sovereigntist Wolfowitz doctrine of 2007 redefined its foreign policy priorities to strengthen NATO and start a new Cold War. NATO mobilisation of Europe – behind the US against Russia – now supports Israel targeting China, Iran and others.

    Violating the UN Charter, the 2022 Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine united and strengthened NATO and Europe behind the US. Despite earlier tensions across the north Atlantic, Europe rallied behind Biden against Russia despite its high costs.

    International law has also not stopped NATO expansion east to the Russian border. The US unilaterally defines new international norms, often ignoring others, even allies. But Trump’s re-election has raised ‘centrist’ European apprehensions.

    Developing countries were often forced to take sides in the first Cold War, ostensibly waged on political and ideological grounds. With mixed economies now ubiquitous, the new Cold War is certainly not over capitalism.

    Instead, rivalrous capitalist variants shape the new geoeconomics as state variations underlie geopolitics. Authoritarianism, communist parties and other liberal dirty words are often invoked for effect.

    New Europe

    Despite her controversial track record during her first term as the European Commission (EC) president, Ursula von der Leyen is now more powerful and belligerent in her second term.

    She quickly replaced Joseph Borrell, her previous EC Vice President and High Representative in charge of international relations. Borrell described Europe as a garden that the Global South, the surrounding jungle, wants to invade.

    For Borrell, Europe cannot wait for the jungle to invade. Instead, it must pre-emptively attack the jungle to contain the threat. Since the first Cold War, NATO has made more, mainly illegal military interventions, increasingly outside Europe!

    The US, UK, German, French and Australian navies are now in the South China Sea despite the 1973 ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations) commitment to a ZOPFAN (zone of peace, freedom and neutrality) and no request from any government in the region.

    Cold War nostalgia

    The first Cold War also saw bloody wars involving alleged ‘proxies’ in southwestern Africa, Central America, and elsewhere. Yet, despite often severe Cold War hostilities, there were also rare instances of cooperation.

    In 1979, the Soviet Union challenged the US to eradicate smallpox within a decade. US President Jimmy Carter accepted the challenge. In less than ten years, smallpox was eradicated worldwide, underscoring the benefits of cooperation.

    Official development assistance (ODA) currently amounts to around 0.3% of rich countries’ national incomes. This is less than half the 0.7% promised by wealthy nations at the UN in 1970.

    The end of the first Cold War led to ODA cuts. Levels now are below those after Thatcher and Reagan were in power in the 1980s. Trump’s views and famed ‘transactional approach’ to international relations are expected to cut aid further.

    The economic case against the second Cold War is clear. Instead of devoting more to sustainable development, scarce resources go to military spending and related ‘strategic’ priorities.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/21/2024 – 23:20

  • Aide To California Politician Arrested, Accused Of Conspiring With Chinese Spy To Infiltrate US Politics
    Aide To California Politician Arrested, Accused Of Conspiring With Chinese Spy To Infiltrate US Politics

    Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The FBI on Dec. 19 arrested a close associate of a local California politician, accusing him of scheming together with a recently sentenced Chinese spy to amplify China’s influence in the U.S. political circle.

    The Department of Justice (DOJ) in Washington on Aug. 12, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

    Sun Yaoning, also known as Mike Sun, was the campaign manager and close personal confidante to a Southern California city council member that the Chinese authorities supported, according to a newly unsealed complaint.

    The 64-year-old has worked closely with Chen Jun, or John Chen, who a New York judge sentenced to 20 months in November for bribing the IRS against Falun Gong, a faith group that the Chinese regime has spent 25 years trying to suppress in China and globally, the document shows.

    In conversations with Chinese officials following the politician’s election in November 2022, Chen referred to Sun and the California politician as part of a “basic team dedicated for us,” according to the filing.

    “Mr. Sun has been my helping hand in the Chinese community since 1997,” Chen was quoted as telling one Chinese official in January 2023.

    The politician, whose name authorities redacted from the complaint, was one of the local U.S. politicians Chen assessed Beijing could influence on issues such as Taiwan, according to the prosecutors.

    Sun and the council member co-run a media outlet called U.S. News Center, the complaint noted. In a report Sun allegedly drafted with Chen, they described the politician as a “new political star.”

    Campaign finance records suggest that in 2022, Sun was the campaign treasurer for Eileen Wang, a councilwoman for the Los Angeles-area city of Arcadia. The two also held leadership positions in the American Southwest Chamber of Commerce, a nonprofit headquartered in Los Angeles. Wang founded the nonprofit in 2018, according to Chinese language reports. A Chinese consulate official said at its founding ceremony that he hoped Wang could lead the group to promote U.S.–China communications and cross-strait reunification—a reference to Beijing’s ambition to annex democratically-ruled Taiwan.

    Wang didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.

    Sun had previously served in the Chinese military, the FBI agent said in the complaint. Public records show that he is the vice director of the American Chinese Culture Association, one of several U.S.-based pro-Beijing groups where he holds titles. Sun is also the CEO of a U.S.-based media group called N&N Media Group, and has for years organized large-scale events to promote Beijing’s narratives and celebrate key Party anniversaries, according to Chinese media reports.

    U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Martin Estrada said Sun’s alleged conduct was “deeply concerning.”

    “We cannot permit hostile foreign powers to meddle in the governance of our country,” he said.

    Akil Davis, assistant director for the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, said the case highlights the breadth of the Chinese regime’s “relentless intelligence and malign influence activities targeting the United States.” He said that the FBI will “continue to use all the tools at its disposal” to identify the Chinese intelligence operations, disrupt Chinese information laundering networks, and “bring to justice those who seek to engage in criminal conspiracies to undermine the integrity of our elected officials.”

    Sun appeared at a downtown Los Angeles courthouse for a hearing on Friday. He faces up to 15 years in prison for the charges.

    Sun’s attorney declined to answer questions from The Epoch Times upon walking out of the courtroom.

    The Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles on June 1, 2023. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

    A ‘Basic Team Dedicated for Us’

    The pro-Beijing California politician Sun helped to reelect maintains a close relationship with Chen, conversations cited in the court suggest.

    On Nov. 9, 2022, the election day in California, the individual contacted Chen, writing: “Old Sun is contacting you. Please call him back. He is with me.”

    “Got it, congratulations,” Chen replied from China, adding that they would talk in person in six days.

    The two had held two phone calls for around half an hour and one hour each during the weeks following. In January 2023, the politician wrote a thank you letter to Chen, thanking him for attending her Chinese New Year event.

    “You are doing a good job, I hope you can continue the good work, make Chinese people proud,” Chen said in reply.

    Chen also tasked Sun to brief Chinese officials regarding the politician’s election outcome in late November 2022, saying “the related department is paying a lot of attention to it,” according to the court filing.

    A biography Sun allegedly wrote describing the politician stated she was born in the late 1970s in China’s Chengdu City, capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan.

    Three Chinese officials reacted positively to her election victory when separately alerted by Chen, sending a salute emoji, smiley faces, and thumbs up in response.

    Days after that, on Dec. 8, 2022, they formed the “U.S.-China Friendship Promotion Association,” with Sun as the vice president and the politician, who they described as a “Chinese elected official,” as a member, the filing shows.

    A Chinese official who heads a municipal government office in Tianjin, a northeastern Chinese megacity and Chen’s hometown, congratulated Chen for the work.

    “This is the basic team dedicated for us,” Chen wrote, to which the official wrote: “Understood, can’t wait.”

    ‘Struggles’ Against the Regime’s Targets

    In pre-trial detention, Chen, a U.S. citizen, reportedly told his cellmate that he was a Chinese spy working for the 610 Office, the Chinese extralegal agency established expressly to persecute Falun Gong, according to the complaint. The document said Chen described the agency as “a ‘spy agency’ that was 100 times better than the FBI.” Chen seemed astonished that he was caught, the FBI agent said, professing disbelief that the 610 Office “didn’t do a better job watching him.” He also allegedly said the 610 Office paid him $250,000 to move to the United States decades ago and has since paid him $52,000 per month.

    A major topic among Sun and Chen’s conversations cited in the court file was about how to promote Beijing’s agenda in the United States and then report their work to their handlers in China.

    Ahead of a planned trip to China in January 2023, Chen hurried Sun to write a report about the politician’s election win, saying he would present it to the “United Front,” the overseas Chinese influence network.

    Chen allegedly instructed Sun to highlight the “current strategy” with Falun Gong, their “past experience with struggles” against the regime’s targets, and of “you and me cultivating and assisting [the politician]’s success.”

    In a draft that Sun shared with Chen on Feb. 1, 2023, Sun took credit for leading U.S. dignitaries and cultural workers to China “on many occasions” to further promote U.S.–China ties, prosecutors alleged. Sun, according to the court filing, further cast himself as one who “persist[s] in resisting any hostile forces that undermine the friendship of U.S.-China relations, and Chinese secessionist forces.”

    Sun wrote “most proudly of all” of how he orchestrated a team to “win the election for city council member candidate,” the court document stated.

    Prosecutors alleged Chen asked Sun to add context about their “past struggle fighting Taiwanese independence forces” and Falun Gong in a California city. They also allegedly discussed how to protest a Congress member’s proposed visit to Taiwan.

    The two in February 2023 took issue with the presence of Taiwan flags and Falun Gong practitioners in major U.S. parades, according to the complaint. To counter it, they allegedly proposed to Chinese officials a project: they would mobilize the “Los Angeles organization’s professional core team” to organize a float with a 100-person drum band. The budget was $80,000, the complaint said.

    On April 4, 2023, weeks before Chen’s arrest over the IRS bribery scheme against Falun Gong, Chen asked Sun whether Falun Gong practitioners “have locations” in a California city and activities there, according to the file.

    “Can you create some obstacles for them? If you can eliminate one or several locations, or create some obstacles, there will be rewards.”

    He allegedly asked Sun about three weeks later to arrange a meeting with the Chinese consul general in Los Angeles, telling him “there is a major project to report.”

    “National level,” Chen added, sharing an article titled “How the U.S. Neighbors of Falungong See Them” that disparages the belief.

    “Actual operation is strictly classified,” he said, according to the court document. “You will get credit for it.”

    It’s unclear whether Chen was referring to the IRS bribery plot. According to the complaint, Chen intended to report to Chinese authorities by May 20. That would be six days after his meeting with a purported IRS official in order to open a probe against Shen Yun Performing Arts, a New York classical Chinese dance and music company founded by Falun Gong practitioners that showcases “China before communism,” as well as segments showing the abuses happening to the faith group in China. Authorities said the complaint he submitted was facially deficient; Chen had promised the IRS official to pay $50,000 in total for the IRS to open the case.

    Sun and the city council member later joined on a China trip and returned together in September 2023 from Shanghai to Los Angeles, the FBI agent said. According to the complaint, Chen took part in the trip planning, which initially involved six Chinese cities and a meeting with a Chinese leader likely part of the Chinese intelligence apparatus.

    Lin Jian, a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, denied knowledge of the matter when asked about Sun’s arrest during a regular press conference on Dec. 20. He said that Beijing “never meddles in other countries’ internal affairs.”

    Alice Sun, a local Falun Gong group coordinator, commended the Justice Department for its diligence in countering the Chinese regime’s transnational repression against Falun Gong.

    “We are aware that the CCP is intensifying its efforts to target Falun Gong through its spies in the U.S., as well as through YouTubers and even U.S. media outlets. Our government must take stronger measures to curb the CCP’s reach and influence,” she told The Epoch Times.

    The Epoch Times recently reported on a 2022 secret meeting where Chinese communist leader Xi Jinping tasked officials to attack Falun Gong via disinformation on social media and media outlets, as well as by subverting legal systems in democratic societies.

    Leaked notes from several recent Chinese officials’ meetings indicate they have been following through, including by providing materials to social media influencers to frame Falun Gong—and Shen Yun—in a negative light. The last of the meetings took place after the election.

    U.S. authorities’ actions, Sun said, “send a powerful message to the CCP’s agents operating within the United States.” She urged elected officials in the United States to “take a firm stand and publicly condemn the CCP’s efforts to infiltrate and undermine our society.”

    Linda Jiang contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/21/2024 – 22:45

  • Elderberry: The Immunity Defender That Helps You Fight Cold And Flu
    Elderberry: The Immunity Defender That Helps You Fight Cold And Flu

    Authored by Sina McCullough via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Elderberry has been revered for centuries as a go-to remedy for respiratory infections, fever, and inflammation—both acute and chronic.

    The herb was detected in the charred remains of ancient settlements, leading some researchers to speculate that elder trees may have intentionally been cultivated thousands of years ago.

    Elderberry has been used in traditional medicine for centuries. Illustration by Fei Meng

    In traditional medicine, elderberry is used to treat diabetes, dry skin, diarrhea, headaches, constipation, conjunctivitis, rheumatism, and other ailments. Hippocrates, the “father of medicine,” called elderberry his “medicine chest” because of its wide range of healing properties.

    Ancient Egyptians used elderberry to treat burns and improve complexion. Native Americans used it to treat fever and cough, among other things. Elderberry was even featured in “The Family Physitian” (1696) as a remedy for scurvy, and it was a favorite plant among young boys for making popguns.

    Elderberry gained modern recognition during the 1995 Panama flu epidemic, where it was reportedly used to combat the illness. A clinical trial conducted during the epidemic reported that nearly 90 percent of patients treated with elderberry extract fully recovered within two to three days, compared to six days or more for the placebo group.

    Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock

    Fun Facts

    • Native Americans used elderberry for a variety of purposes, including making flutes, which is why the elder tree is sometimes called the “tree of music.”
    • The elder tree is often considered sacred in folklore, believed to protect homes from evil spirits.
    • Elderberries are used in jam, jelly, ice cream, wine, yogurt, pies, and herbal tea.
    • Elderflower cordial and elderberry wine were popular in medieval Europe and remain well-loved beverages today.
    • Some speculate that J.K. Rowling’s “Elder Wand” in the “Harry Potter” series may have been inspired by the sacred and mystical associations of the elder tree in folklore.

    Special Talents

    Elderberry belongs to the Sambucus genus, which includes 20 species, but the most popular and extensively studied for immune support is black elderberry (Sambucus nigra), native to Europe, northern Africa, the Americas, and western Asia.

    Due to its diverse blend of nutrients, elderberry can help combat acute illnesses like the common cold and possibly chronic diseases.

    Its medicinal properties are largely attributed to its anthocyanins, the compounds responsible for elderberry’s deep purple color. These antioxidants shield against inflammation and oxidative damage—two factors that can weaken the immune system.

    In many countries, anthocyanins are prescribed as medicine because of their potential to protect against chronic conditions such as atherosclerosis.

    Elderberries also contain vitamins A, B-complex, C, and E, essential minerals like zinc and magnesium, and antioxidants such as flavonols, carotenoids, phytosterols, and polyphenols, earning elderberry a reputation as a “superfruit.”

    1. Fights Colds and Flu

    Research suggests that elderberry may help reduce the duration and severity of flu symptoms across several strains of influenza. Elderberry reduced the flu’s duration by an average of four days in a clinical trial. When taken within 48 hours of symptom onset, elderberry significantly alleviated fever, headache, nasal congestion, and mucous discharge associated with the flu, according to a 2020 review. Symptoms in most adults improved by an average of 50 percent within two to four days. This effect may be due to elderberry’s ability to block viral proteins, preventing viruses from infecting cells.

    Elderberry also reduced cold symptoms in air travelers, according to a 2016 study.

    2. Slows Cognitive Decline

    A 2024 randomized controlled trial reported that patients with mild cognitive impairment who took elderberry for six months trended toward faster visuospatial problem-solving performance than controls. Several markers of inflammation were also reduced, which is significant because chronic inflammation is associated with cognitive decline. Elderberry juice shows promise in slowing Alzheimer’s-related cognitive decline, the researchers concluded.

    Similarly, a 2023 cell culture study highlighted elderberry’s potential neuroprotective effects by demonstrating its ability to prevent oxidative stress-induced death of neuron-like cells, a major predictor of age-related cognitive decline. The findings suggest elderberry may address oxidative damage in neurological conditions, such as cognitive decline.

    3. Combats Chronic Disease

    Emerging research, primarily in animal and cell culture studies, suggests elderberry’s potential in managing inflammatory and chronic conditions, although more studies are needed to confirm these effects in humans. Some of the most encouraging research is detailed below.

    Heart Disease

    In a placebo-controlled study, 34 healthy people consumed elderberry juice for two weeks. On average, participant cholesterol dropped from 199 to 190 milligrams per deciliter compared to the control group. The decrease was not statistically significant but did show a trend, leading the researchers to conclude that a higher dose may lead to a significant decrease. A second study reported that elderberry extract reduced aortic cholesterol levels in a widely used mouse model of atherosclerosis, indicating decreased progression of the condition.

    A 2024 cell culture study found that elderberry inhibited foam cell formation, a critical step in atherosclerosis and heart disease, without triggering liver fat production. This suggests elderberry may help prevent heart disease by targeting the early stages of arterial plaque development, though further research is needed to confirm these effects in humans.

    Diabetes

    Elderberry has a history of being used as a traditional remedy for diabetes. In a 2016 study, four weeks of elderberry extract supplementation decreased insulin resistance and fasting blood sugar in Type 2 diabetic rats. Another study found that 16 weeks of black elderberry supplementation reduced insulin resistance, triglycerides, and inflammation in obese mice.

    Huntington’s Disease

    Scientists are exploring the potential of elderberry as a therapy for Huntington’s disease. In a 2021 study, compared with controls, rats with an experimental model of Huntington’s disease demonstrated significant improvement in motor function and muscle coordination after treatment with elderberry.

    Depression

    Elderberry was also reported to be a natural antidepressant in a mouse model, according to a 2014 study. The researchers concluded that elderberry extracts “were safe and showed remarkable antidepressant activity.”

    Cancer

    Black elderberry is rich in bioactive compounds, including antioxidants, that may contribute to cancer prevention and support cancer treatment. One notable compound, kaempferol—a flavonoid present in black elderberries—triggered the death of pancreatic cancer cells in both tumor-bearing mice and cell cultures, according to a 2021 study. Additionally, anthocyanins from elderberries caused melanoma cells to halt their proliferation and die in a 2017 cell culture study.

    Read the rest here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/21/2024 – 22:10

  • Syria's Central Bank Gold Miraculously Still In The Vault, Reuters Claims
    Syria’s Central Bank Gold Miraculously Still In The Vault, Reuters Claims

    In an astonishing turn of events, amid the recent turmoil and shifts in power that have engulfed Syria over the past 3 weeks, one key component of the country’s wealth which has remained unscathed in the fog of war, at least according to Reuters reporter Timour Azhari, is the Syrian central bank’s gold reserves in Damascus – all 25.8 tonnes of gold worth over US $2.2 billion at current market prices.  

    According to the Reuters report, while the bank’s FX balances have fallen to just “US$ 200 million in cash”, the “vault of Syria’s central bank holds nearly 26 tons of gold, the same amount it had at the start of its bloody civil war in 2011.”

    This is despite the fall of Damascus, the escape of former leader Bashar al-Assad to Moscow, and the rise of Ahmed al-Sharaa, leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), as commander-in-chief of the new administration, with Mohammed al-Bashir as leader of a caretaker government.

    Reuters news agency, part of Thomson Reuters group (which is majority controlled by The Woodbridge Company Limited, a holding company of the Canadian Thomson family) first admits that…

    “Reuters could not access the central bank vaults.”

    So none of the 600 photo journalists employed by Reuters could get even one photo of some gold bars in the Damascus vault. What a pity.

    Reuters then also admits that “media representatives for Syria’s new ruling administration and for the Central Bank of Syria did not respond to Reuters requests.” This left Reuters to talk to the proverbial “four people familiar with the situation”.

    One of these four unidentified sources told Reuters that “The vault is bomb-proof and requires three keys, each held by a different person, and a combination code to be opened”.

    Two other sources told Reuters that “the vault was inspected by members of Syria’s new administration last week, days after the rebels took control of the Syrian capital Damascus.”

    One week ago on December 10, Reuters’ Timour Azhari also reported that looters had entered Syria’s central bank in recent days and “stolen some money from the central bank building but that the main vault had remained untouched”,

    Strangely however, that Reuters report from last week didn’t mention any gold, and was only based on comments from the “head of the Damascus Chambers of Commerce” who was relaying information from the “authorities”. A more direct source was not available because neither the Syrian central bank governor, Issam Hazima, nor his deputy, Maysaa Sabreen, has responded to Reuters requests for comment.

    Other recent coverage from Damascus did however report that “National Bank of Syria is looted by US backed rebels with dollars, euros and gold stolen.”

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    Back to the Reuters, which continues that “the sources familiar with the situation” said that “the gold was never liquidated in order to keep sufficient collateral for the Syrian pounds circulating in the market.”

    This is all the more surprising however, since the very same Reuters news agency was reporting 12 years ago that…

    “Syria is trying to sell gold reserves to raise revenue as Western and Arab sanctions targeting its central bank and oil exports begin to bite, diplomats and traders said.”

    In that article from April 2012, titled “Syria selling gold reserves as sanctions bite: sources” Reuters stated that:

    “Syria is selling its gold at rock bottom prices,” said a Western diplomatic source, declining to say where it was being sold.

    A second diplomatic source confirmed the information, adding that Damascus was looking to offload everything it could to raise cash, including currency reserves.

    Two gold traders in the United Arab Emirates said the Syrian government had been offering gold at a discount, with one saying it was making offers at about 15 percent below the market price.

    The trader said Damascus was selling small volumes of around 20-30 kilos which were easier to offload, with offers being made through private accounts set up with free email providers.

    Notably, the World Gold Council says that the last time Syria’s central bank reported gold reserves levels to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was in 2011, when it reported total gold holdings of 25.8 tonnes, just before the Syrian central bank’s rumored gold sales of 2012. So how could the Syrian central bank still have 25.8 tonnes of gold given the gold sales in 2012 when it was “selling its gold at rock bottom prices” in “volumes of around 20-30 kilos”?

    But according to Reuters, the Syrian central bank gold reserves are the luckiest gold reserves in the world. They have miraculously defied the odds and survived 12 years of sanctions as FX reserves dwindled, survived multiple attempts to sell the gold being all over the Middle East, survived 3 weeks of recent fighting and chaos, the flight of Assad to Moscow, the arrival of a previously designated terrorist organization (HTS) into power, and an assault by looters into the central bank building last week. It must be because the vault is “bomb proof” and “needs 3 keys to open it”.

    The claim by Reuters now that the Syrian central bank still holds 25.8 tonnes of gold is not credible, even based on its own reporting from 2012. This therefore undermines the entire Reuters story about the gold still being in the Syrian central bank vault.

    Maybe Reuters Fact Check, which claims to “address online misinformation with coverage that maintains accuracy, integrity and impartiality”, should check its own stories before publishing them.

    But why would Reuters report such a story, that’s merely based on four unidentified people that are “familiar with the situation”?

    Could it be because Reuters has received over $ 1.5 billion dollars in US Government contracts for its newswire, network intelligence, and data services over the last 17 years, from the Department of Defense, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Justice, the Department of State, and many other US Gov departments?

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/21/2024 – 21:35

  • Escobar: Putin's Q&A And Thee Forever Wars Riddle
    Escobar: Putin’s Q&A And Thee Forever Wars Riddle

    Authored by Pepe Escobar,

    He spoke for four and a half hours, virtually non-stop, reviewing the results of 2024, mastering all the facts.

    His Direct Line received over 2 million questions, from Russia and around the world. And he had to crown the performance with a flourish, in an “I did it, my way” vein:

    “I believe that not only did I simply save [Russia], we moved away from the edge of the abyss.”

    The record would confirm it, compared to the appalling state of the Russia he inherited when first elected president in March 2000.

    President Putin’s end of the year Q&A contains enough substance to be unpacked for weeks, if not months. Let’s focus here on our current geopolitical crossroads: the Forever Wars in West Asia and Ukraine, two vectors of the standard imperial drive, now united in an Omni-War.

    Putin stated that, “we have come to Syria in order to prevent a terrorists’ enclave (…) In general, our goal has been achieved.”

    Whether Syria remains “terrorist free” remains to be seen: the new, “inclusive”, rebranded as woke Emir of Damascus, al-Jolani, a Saudi national, is a certified Salafi-jihadi still with a $10 million American bounty on his head. The “enclave” now encompasses most of former Syrian sovereign territory, otherwise illegally occupied by jihadi gangs and Zionist lebensraum practitioners.

    It’s important to remember that Russia first intervened in Syria in 2015 not so much to keep access to the warm waters of the Eastern Mediterranean: but mostly to protect holy Christian Orthodox sites in Damascus. Christianity was born in Damascus (remember St. Paul) – not in Jerusalem. When Putin went to Damascus, he was on an Orthodox Christian pilgrimage: coming from the Third Rome (Moscow) to pay his respects to the precursor of the first Rome, the cradle of Christianity.

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    It all started with Timber Sycamore

    On the larger Levantine geopolitical picture, Putin is correct. The CIA invented Operation Timber Sycamore way back in 2012 to train and weaponize “moderate rebels” to overthrow Assad – spending over $1 billion a year: the most extensive CIA covert op since the jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

    The UK, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan were Sycamore partners. Over the final years, the Pentagon jumped in to “prepare” Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the “soft” ISIS splinter group.

    Ultimately it was nearly 14 years of toxic US sanctions and relentless siege warfare that led to the final act, complete with Ukrainian drone instructors, mountains of Qatari cash and the Turk-assembled crypto-al Qaeda infantry (no more than 350 fighters, according to Putin himself).

    Now it’s a matter of adapting. Putin said that, “we have established relations with all those that control the situation on the ground (…) Most countries expect the Russian bases to remain (…) Our interests should coincide, a question that requires painstaking examination.”

    He also reminded everyone that politics is the art of compromise – and Russia’s strategic priority is to keep the bases in Tartus and Hmeimim.

    Putin brushed aside the notion that Russia has been weakened by Assad’s downfall in Syria, quoting Mark Twain: “Rumors about my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

    Instead, he practically proposed that the Russian bases could provide humanitarian aid: one can imagine the population of a deeply polarized, fragmented Syria arguing with the Salafi-jihadis to get their share. Were that to happen, Russia would be in direct aid competition with the collective West.

    The EU, via its new, deranged Estonian ultra-Russophobic foreign policy chief, has already ordered that there will be no sanctions relief if the Russian bases stay.

    Erdogan thinking like it’s 1919

    Turkiye is the ultimate thorny issue. Erdogan is relentlessly promoting the notion that “Turkiye is greater than Turkiye itself” – which some have interpreted as Ankara being ready to annex large swathes of Syria.

    And potentially more. A “Greater Turkiye” would historically have included Thessaloniki, Cyprus, Aleppo and even Mosul.

    Putin for his part was supremely diplomatic, focusing on Turkiye “trying to safeguard its safety on its southern frontiers, and to create conditions for the return of refugees back home from its territory to Syrian land. And those territories are now under more or less control of actually Turkiye.”

    He also acknowledged that Turkiye has had “problems with the Kurdish Workers Party for decades. I hope there will not be an aggravation”.

    Well, there will (italics mine) be aggravation.

    Turkish diplomatic sources are relentlessly spinning that everything that happened in Syria was decided by the “Astana process” troika of Russia, Iran and Turkiye. Moscow keeping its embassy in Damascus and – for the moment – the bases in Tartus and Hmeimim might point to a deal.

    Add to it Erdogan gleefully stating on the record that

    Putin and himself are the most experienced politicians on the planet.

    As it stands, all that may be classified as fog of war.

    Immediately after Assad’s fall, the Israelis started bombing every warehouse holding heavy military equipment across Syria, including classified weapons. It’s unclear who provided the exact locations.

    The Americans, predictably, were furious. No wonder: the lame duck White House and the Deep State were betting on transferring all that weaponry to Kiev.

    The exact tone of the secret deals struck between the Astana process troika and between two of them with Israel will remain predictably murky – and the way Putin talked about them suggests that the Long Game is just starting.

    Russia may not have been weakened by the loss of Syria, but quite uncomfortable questions remain. The sacredness of Syria’s national sovereignty has taken a hit. Same goes for the fight against terrorism.

    On the other hand, Putin increased the tone on Tel Aviv – an extremely touchy dossier in Russia. He named Israel as “the main beneficiary” in Syria; directly condemned Israeli invasion and annexation of sovereign Syrian territory; and confessed he does not know what “ultimate goals” Israel is pursuing in Gaza, but “this is only worthy of condemnation”.

    ‘Let’s have a 21st century tech duel’

    Putin all but admitted that Russia should have moved against Kiev earlier – and that the Russian Army was not fully prepared for the start of the SMO in February 2022. What’s implied is that over 10 years ago, a simple Russian police operation might have taken care of Maidan; Yanukovych could have been transported to Crimea; the coup would have fizzled; and there would have been no war.

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    Putin is adamant that Russia is always ready to negotiate with Kiev. The key takeaways: no preconditions; talks grounded in the 2022 Istanbul deal (aborted by the Americans) and the “current conditions on the battlefield”; Russia will talk to Zelensky only if he holds elections and gains legitimacy; and Russia will only sign peace deals with the legitimate leader of Ukraine.

    A lot to unpack here. In sum: Istanbul for all practical purposes does not apply anymore – considering the ever-changing “conditions on the battlefield.” Zelensky will not hold elections – so he will remain illegitimate. So who to talk to? Moreover, signing peace deals with a “legitimate” Ukrainian leader means nothing because the Ultimate Decider is always the “non-agreement capable” (copyright Lavrov) Hegemon.

    All that implies that the SMO may keep rumblin’ on for quite a while.

    The whole Forever Wars riddle directly links with BRICS, because this is a Hegemon war against BRICS (especially top three “existential threats” Russia, China and Iran), inscribed in the Big Picture of the Eurasia v. NATOstan war.

    Putin was adamant that “BRICS is not a tool for countering the West. Out work is not aimed against anyone (…) We adopt all decisions by consensus (…) this is a group based on common interests. And there is one common interest: development.”

    BRICS, added Putin, is driven to generate “more economic growth and transforming the structure of the economy in order for it to be in step with the global development agenda”, positioning BRICS “at the forefront of this progressive movement”. Expect the usual lot accusing Putin of being a Davos/Great Reset shill.

    Arguably the prime cliffhanger of the Q&A was Putin proposing to test the hypersonic Oreshnik against NATO’s Aegis Ashore: “Let’s have a 21st century tech duel”. NATOstan brings all their top defense systems to Kiev and let’s see if they can stop Oreshnik. Could be London instead of Kiev. Or for that matter, NATO’s HQ outside Brussels.

    Will that happen? Of course not. Already utterly humiliated in the black soil of Novorossiya, collective West cowards will flee from being totally humiliated all over again in front of the whole planet.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/21/2024 – 21:00

  • In Latest Threat To German Democracy, Dangerous Fascist Elon Musk Tweets Six Words About AfD
    In Latest Threat To German Democracy, Dangerous Fascist Elon Musk Tweets Six Words About AfD

    Authored by Eugyppius via eugyppius.com,

    German democracy, which has existed undeterred since 1949 but is somehow always shaken to its foundations whenever anybody sings the wrong song or holds a televised debate with the wrong person, is once again on life support.

    Christian Lindner, head of the market-liberal Free Democrats, did much to trigger the present catastrophe on December 1st, when he said that the Free Republic should “dare more Milei and more Musk”. Because there is little distinction between praising Milei and Musk and demanding the return of National Socialism, there ensued a brief period of establishment hyperventilation.

    Less than a week later, CDU chief and probable future German Chancellor Friedrich Merz did his part to denounce Lindner’s political wrongthink in a statement to Deutschlandfunk:

    So neither the Argentinian President nor, how shall I put it, the American entrepreneur Elon Musk – let’s put it plainly – are role models for German politics in my view. I don’t see where we can find similarities in German politics. What Christian Lindner meant will probably remain his secret.

    The next day, Merz repeated the same denunciations, only more harshly, explaining to one of our extremely adult and far-sighted pantsuit talkshow hosts that “To be honest, I was completely appalled that Christian Lindner made that comparison.” Milei, Merz said, is “really trampling on the people there”.

    Yesterday, all of this came to the notice of the (honestly rather tiresome) influencer Naomi Seibt, who posted a video statement to X rehearsing all of this old news to her largely American audience.

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    Elon Musk then brought down the hammer on the German democratic order, retweeting Seibt’s video and remarking that “Only the AfD can save Germany”.

    Today a lot of very important and influential people got out of bed and took to their keyboards to denounce Musk’s election interference. His statement might be illegal, at any rate it is very likely fascist and certainly it is beyond the pale for an American to voice an opinion about German politics. Germans absolutely never, ever, utter the slightest word about American politics and certainly would never advance negative opinions about the American President in the middle of an election campaign. Our Foreign Office would never try to fact-check an American presidential debate! Our journalists would never depict President Donald Trump dressed as a Ku Klux Klan member or offering the Hitler salute or decapitating the Statue of Liberty! That’s just not done!

    Like a great stream of green diarrhoea, the outrage is pouring forth. Matthias Gebauer, who writes for Der Spiegel, observes that “Elon Musk… is openly promoting the AfD” and concludes that “Putin is not the only one who loves this party”. Erik Marquardt, head of the Green faction in the European Parliament, says that “The EU Commission and EU member states should no longer stand by and watch as billionaires misuse media and algorithms to influence elections and strengthen and normalise Right-wing extremists”. This “is an attack on democracy”, and “has nothing to do with freedom of expression”. Dennis Radtke, CDU representative in the European Parliament, concludes that “Musk… is declaring war on democracy” and that “the man is a menace”. We are also under siege via “interference from Putin”; “the erosion of our democracy is being fuelled from both within and without”. Julian Röpcke, who writes for BILD, believes that “This is interference in the German election campaign by a tech billionaire who uses algorithms to decide what gets heard”. If Germany does not “respond with penalties, there will be no help for our eroding democracy”.

    Jonas Koch, at Die Zeit, complains that “the richest man in the world is now campaigning for Right-wing populists in Germany”.

    Tech billionaire Elon Musk has spoken out in favour of the Alternative for Germany party in the German Parliamentary election campaign. “Only the AfD can save Germany,” he wrote on his online service X.

    You can almost see Mr. Koch before you, clasping his pearls. He notes that the Government is doing its best to weather this unprecedented assault on the German republic. He quotes longsuffering Government spokesperson Christian Hoffmann saying that “It’s not the first time that Elon Musk has commented on German politics”. Olaf Scholz, he notes, “has been concerned about… X since Musk assumed control of it”, but he has inexplicably not yet decided to delete Government X accounts.

    Nor is this Musk’s only sin against all that is right, free and good:

    Musk is not only increasingly involved in politics in the U.S., where he is advising U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and is to head a commission to reduce Government spending. He is also exerting influence in the U.K. He recently announced a donation of up to $100 million to the Right-wing populists around Brexit pioneer Nigel Farage.

    As early as the summer, Musk had praised the AfD after the European elections. The party was labelled as Right-wing extremist, “but the political positions of the AfD that I have read about do not sound extremist”, he wrote on X.

    Der Spiegel agrees that this is “Not the first time that this super-rich man has interfered in German politics”.

    Musk “repeatedly takes potshots at Germany”, he has “insulted” such national saints as “the former Chancellor Angela Merkel”, he has “criticised Chancellor Olaf Scholz”, and most ominously of all he has “even responded to tweets from the far-Right Thuringian AfD leader Björn Höcke”.

    He responded to Höcke! Imagine that! It is just the height of political depravity, all that responding.

    Now the billionaire and confidant of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has tweeted again…

    Tweeted again! The absolute madman! Will he never stop?

    …and made a barely concealed election recommendation for the AfD. “Only the AfD can save Germany,” Musk claimed in a tweet. …

    Under Trump, Musk is set to become co-head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency. The goal of the institution: to reduce bureaucracy, eliminate regulations and cut spending. This could result in Musk weakening or even abolishing those rules that personally limit him.

    That’s right, Musk wants to make American Government more efficient so that he can suspend elections and establish himself as American dictator. It takes truly perceptive journalists, like whoever wrote this unsigned Spiegel screed, to see through his clever lies.

    Musk constantly uses X for political influence. He not only interferes in German politics from there, but also tries to exert pressure on U.S. Congressmen. … Since Wednesday, he has fired off various tweets to fuel the U.S. budget dispute. He also recently received representatives of the British far-Right [sic] party Reform U.K. at Trump’s private residence Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

    He is like a little antidemocratic Hitler, is Elon Musk, just tweeting whatever he wants, receiving guests, influencing… things.

    But the gold medal for most outrageous reaction must go to Florian Harms, Editor-in-Chief of t-online. Harms writes for a slightly downmarket publication and so he has to enact more indignation than everybody else.

    “This sentence is an outrage,” Harms declares.

    There’s always a lot going on on the big-shot platform X. Since Ober-Big-Shot Elon Musk bought the social media company and reprogrammed its algorithms to inject poison, most posts there have devolved into unfounded claims, wild insults or outrageous nonsense. You can safely ignore it.

    Unfortunately, what the “Grökraz” himself posts on X cannot be ignored. This Friday, our “greatest Croesus of all time” felt compelled to intervene in the German federal election campaign with a one-liner: “Only the AfD can save Germany.” … That’s his prerogative; after all, anyone can now post nonsense on his platform.

    Harms is clearly highly opposed to platforms where anyone can just post anything. People should only be allowed to post things of which Harms approves. Particularly someone like Musk should not be allowed to just post whatever he wants, because Musk is “a global entrepreneur” and therefore “bears special responsibility”:

    His words carry weight because they influence international politics, stock markets and social moods. More than 208 million people follow Musk on X; he has configured the digital machines so that his posts are displayed more often than others. This gives his radical views a disproportionate amount of attention, which is how he makes politics – without democratic legitimisation.

    Vast swathes of the German corporate sector denounce the AfD all the time without the slightest “democratic legitimisation”, and as far as I know Harms has never complained about that even once. If Musk were attacking AfD, of course, Harms would be totally thrilled with it.

    The so-called Alternative for Germany is a crazy party… [A] growing number of its officials are Right-wing radicals and enemies of democracy. This is well known and can be read in in the various reports by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

    German political discourse is so insane, I always feel slightly ashamed translating this stuff for you. It feels like dishing out embarrassing family secrets.

    Only someone who is either clueless or maliciously intent on spreading misinformation would think that this party alone could contribute something constructive for the good of Germany.

    Unfortunately, based on everything we’ve heard from Elon Musk in recent months, we have to assume the latter. This man wants to undermine constitutional and democratic institutions, abolish the welfare state and create a Darwinian world in which the law of the jungle applies. It’s bad enough that he is now gaining so much influence in the USA. This must not happen in Germany. …

    Democratic politicians should… refute Musk’s claim. And… they should take a particularly critical look at future investments by Musk’s companies in this country. Consumers also bear a responsibility: Anyone who is still considering buying a Tesla must accept the accusation of supporting a destroyer of democracy. [emphasis mine]

    This is all so boundlessly ridiculous, it’s like the entire country is suffering from borderline personality disorder.

    If any of these people sincerely believe that Musk’s tweet will have any influence on the German elections in February, they are clinically insane. The only thing here that might influence something is the unceasing hysteria of German establishment discourse, which seems intent on alienating powerful figures at the centre of empire, all for the indecent and passing thrill of a cheap moral orgasm. Any political order that is truly threatened by a six-word remark from anybody – even should it come from the wealthiest, most antidemocratic, fascistic and powerful man in the world – is not a political order worth having.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/21/2024 – 20:44

  • Winners And Losers From Last Night's Government Funding Package
    Winners And Losers From Last Night’s Government Funding Package

    After a week of predictable drama, President Joe Biden signed a government funding bill on Saturday, averting yet another government shutdown because of our government’s terminal addiction to spending money we don’t have.

    As we noted earlier, the package limps the government along to March 14, when this is Trump’s problem, and includes $100 billion in disaster aid and a one-year farm bill. It notably did not include a debt limit extension demanded by Trump.

    After passing through the house on the third try, the funding bill passed overnight in the Senate on Saturday by a vote of 85-11, while the House vote was 366-34.

    Here are the winners and losers:

    Elon Musk – whose viral posts on X helped spread the word that the original 1500+ page bill was total bullshit that was packed with pork.

    The billionaire businessman and close Trump ally came out against Johnson’s initial spending plan — which was bipartisan and bicameral — prompting a flood of Republicans to follow suit. The proposal never made it to the floor for a vote amid the widespread opposition.

    When Johnson’s grip on the gavel appeared to be losing its strength, some GOP lawmakers floated Musk as a potential Speaker — a longshot prospect but one that underscored their admiration for the SpaceX and Tesla CEO, and discontent with Johnson’s leadership. A House Speaker is not required to actually be a member of the House. -The Hill

    Rand Paul agrees…

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    Federal employees – Who aren’t getting coal this year from Uncle Sam. Of note, Congress hasn’t seen a shutdown in about six years. During the last one, thousands of federal workers were furloughed or had some type of disruption in pay.

    Farmers – who received $10 billion in economic assistance after some Republicans threatened to spike the stopgap without the aid. The bill also extends the 2018 farm bill by one year.

    Disaster aid – of which there’s roughly $100 billion. A large portion of this, $30 billion, will go towards FEMA’s disaster relief fund, which almost ran out of money during hurricane season.

    Washington DC – Which will receive control over RFK Stadium. Oh boy.

    Losers:

    Donald Trump – who now gets to deal with another round of this bullshit in March.

    Speaker Mike Johnson – who let this become Trump’s problem by refusing to stand his ground, or split the package into separate bills.

    Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) – whose insistence that any attempt to raise the borrowing limit be paired with spending cuts was ‘rewarded’ by a bitchslap from Trump, who took to Truth Social to call for a primary challenger to take on Roy.

    Americans – Who live in a country where spending is so out of control that the government keeps bumping up against its own debt limit like clockwork.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/21/2024 – 20:25

  • ​​​​​​​"Deportation Now!": Germans Outraged After Deadly Christmas Market Attack
    ​​​​​​​”Deportation Now!”: Germans Outraged After Deadly Christmas Market Attack

    Update (2000ET):

    Germans took to the streets on Saturday night in Magdeburg to protest a deadly Christmas Market attack carried out by a 50-year-old immigrant from Saudi Arabia. The car-ramming attack on Friday night claimed five lives and left 200 people injured.

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    “Huge protests in Germany, calling for mass deportations following the terrorist attack at a Christmas market,” one X user said. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “It begins,” said another… 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    And more. 

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    Have the German people finally had enough of disastrous open-border policies? 

    *    *    * 

    It’s a twist that is incredibly convenient for the current failing progressive government in Germany as they face a severe political backlash for their open-border immigration policies and a rising tide of populism.  The primary suspect in the Christmas Market terror attacks in Magdeburg, a doctor and refugee from Saudi Arabia, is allegedly also a supporter of the right-wing AfD party, Tommy Robinson, Elon Musk and Alex Jones according to authorities. 

    50-year-old Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy from the Saudi Arabian city of Hofuf, moved to Germany in 2006 and lives in Bernburg. He has been recognized as a refugee since 2016.  Taleb is a critic of Islamist governments and a pro-asylum activist for people seeking to escape oppressive Sharia law.  Reports claim the Saudi Government may have tried to extradite him multiple times, which Germany refused.  

    German authorities cite posts by the suspect on X showing support for the AfD and popular anti-mass immigration figures.   

    In June, he retweeted AfD party leader Alice Weidel: ‘The left are crazy. We need the AfD to protect the police from them.’

    He also retweeted AfD activist Naomi Seibt with the following quote: ‘Tyranny is based on the docility of cowards. I choose to be brave.’ 

    Posts cited as “pro-Tommy Robinson and pro-Elon Musk” are better represented as anti-censorship and an observation on the speech restrictions enforced by the German government.

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    At the same time, Taleb argued that Germany wasn’t doing enough to support asylum seekers from Saudi Arabia and that they were engaged in “crimes” against refugees:

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    Another tweet from 2006 after Taleb arrived in Germany suggests hostile intent against his new home:

    He was arrested following the market crash which took place at 7:04pm in the city of Magdeburg, according to unidentified government officials in the state of Saxony-Anhalt who spoke to the dpa news agency.

    It goes without saying, but the ideological standards are completely contradictory, bordering on the suspicious.  

    Why would an Arab refugee who wants to secure asylum for people trying to escape oppressive regimes in countries like Saudi Arabia also support a party like the AfD which is seeking to shut German borders and end the flood of migrants from Muslim countries?  

    And, if he is truly anti-Muslim, why would he drive a car through a Christmas Market where he is most likely to kill native Germans and non-Muslims?  Trying to determine a motive is a mind boggling prospect.

    Reports suggest that Taleb was critical of the German government’s antagonism towards anti-Islam activists, but this still does not explain his alleged actions.  His recent social media resume reads like a schizophrenic cartoon character; but the media descriptions of him are a perfect amalgam of all the political positions that the progressive German establishment would like to demonize. 

    Currently, the German government is debating a move to ban the AfD from participating in upcoming elections.  The AfD is currently the second most popular party in Germany and leftists are fearful that the movement could defeat them and disrupt their mass immigration agenda.  Leftist governments across Europe and the UK have been engaging in a subversive campaign to thwart democratic elections and prevent the public from voting for right wing candidates. 

    It would not be surprising to see more attacks like the Christmas Market in Germany, blamed on populist and right wing supporters.  After all, it makes perfect sense that conservatives who are winning would suddenly engage in a terror campaign that might ruin their political chances for years to come and hand victory over to the progressive establishment.       

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/21/2024 – 20:00

  • FDA Updates Recall On Blood Pressure Medication Due To Possible Carcinogen
    FDA Updates Recall On Blood Pressure Medication Due To Possible Carcinogen

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A third blood pressure medication was recalled across the United States in the past several weeks, according to a notice updated on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) website on Dec. 16.

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in White Oak, Md., on June 5, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

    The notice said that New Jersey-based Aurobindo Pharma USA Inc. is recalling Nebivolol tablets in 2.5 milligram doses in 30-count bottles, which are only available by prescription. Nebivolol, a type of beta blocker, is used to treat high blood pressure.

    The reason for the recall is because of the “presence of nitrosamine drug substance related impurity,” adding that discovered N-nitroso nebivolol levels are above the “acceptable intake limit,” it said. N-nitroso nebivolol is a nitrosamine and is considered mutagenic.

    It was first initiated by Aurobindo earlier this month. The FDA classified the recall as Class II on Dec. 16, which occurs when there is a low chance of injury or death, and a possibility of “adverse events” that may have irreversible effects. They are issued if the product can cause medically reversible or temporary health problems—or if there is a small chance of serious health consequences.

    The lot numbers being recalled are: NB0224001A and NB0224001B. It has an expiration date of April 2027 and a National Drug Code, or NDC, of 59651-137-30, according to the FDA.

    Nitrosamines are compounds that can increase the risk of cancer in individuals if exposed to them above levels established by the FDA, or for long periods of time, the agency says on its website.

    “A person taking a drug that contains nitrosamines at-or-below the acceptable daily intake limits every day for 70 years is not expected to have an increased risk of cancer,” the FDA adds.

    People who are taking medications with possible “nitrosamine impurities should not stop taking their medications” and should instead speak with a health care professional.

    Nitrosamines can be found in small levels in the environment and foods, including “meat, vegetables, and dairy products,” the FDA says.

    Some scientists have issued warnings about what they described as widespread nitrosamine contamination in pharmaceutical drugs, noting they are classified as class 1 known mutagenic impurities under the International Council for Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Pharmaceuticals for Human Use, a worldwide health body.

    In 2023, a Journal of Pharmaceutical Analysis-published research paper found that the presence of the compounds “has raised global safety concerns due to their significant genotoxic and mutagenic effects” and that such “impurities, even in trace amounts, are highly toxic and mutagenic, capable of damaging DNA, and subsequently increase the risk of cancer incidence.”

    Other Recent Recalls

    In the past two months, two other drugs used to treat high blood pressure were recalled across the United States, according to FDA recall notices.

    New York-based Evaric Pharmaceuticals Inc. in November recalled about 200,600 bottles of its Lisinopril tablets in 10-milligram doses after a “pharmacist discovered a metal fragment embedded in a lisinopril 10 mg tablet.” The recall impacts Lisinopril tablets in 10-milligram strength in 90-count bottles.

    Weeks before that, Maryland-based Lupin Pharmaceuticals recalled another blood pressure medication, Ramipril, in October because the “active pharmaceutical ingredient was sourced from an unapproved vendor,” the FDA said.

    The recall impacts Ramipril capsules in 2.5-milligram strength in 90-count, 100-count, and 500-count bottles, the notice said. The drug, an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor used to treat high blood pressure, is only available via a prescription.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/21/2024 – 19:50

  • It's The Denominator, Stupid!
    It’s The Denominator, Stupid!

    Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

    Wrapping your head around Bitcoin’s inexorable rise.

    In every issue of The Bitcoin Capitalist there is a section called “This Month’s FUD”, where I look at the “Death of Bitcoin” narratives that emerged over the last few weeks and mercilessly debunked them. It’s not hard, because most, if not all Bitcoin FUD vectors are belaboured retreads of three or four themes – all of which have already been litigated. It’s rare to see anything new.

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    After the 2022 crypto-winter, Bitcoin has been rising steadily for two years. But for a few months recently, the “FUD” vectors had died down to a whimper. If it wasn’t for Peter Schiff and his incessant twitter meltdowns over Bitcoin, there would have been no FUD at all for awhile.

    Then, November 5th hits.

    Even though Trump had endorsed Bitcoin earlier in the year – giving a landmark keynote at Bitcoin2024 in Nashville, the FUD was relatively lacklustre and muted until the election put Bitcoin straight into the middle of the new zeitgeist.

    Many have likened the stunning election upset (in the sense that it was such an incontrovertible blowout), to a “shift in timelines”, as if our entire reality quantum-jumped into a parallel universe.

    Now the former incumbents are scrambling and in full blown panic. The old zeitgeist and it’s total domination by the far-left neo-Marxists is crumbling in real time. And while Bitcoin is decidedly apolitical beyond the antiquated “left-vs-right” paradigm, the fact is that Bitcoin continues to win, and Trump backed Bitcoin.

    (The real battle, as I have long said, is between the forces of centralization – control freaks, basically – and decentralization but because leftism and socialism requires authoritarianism, if not full blown dictatorships, the Venn diagrams for leftism / centralization largely overlap).

    So now the FUD-o-meter is on 11, all the time: Trump winning again, $100K Bitcoin and Microstrategy eating the stock market is triggering for many – it’s just all so crazy.

    (And while quantum computing may sound like a novel, new Bitcoin killer, it isn’t, and I recently wrote why quantum computing can’t kill Bitcoin)

    Why would this magic internet money become the basis of national strategic reserves? And why should Microstrategy be able to simply issue debt to buy up more of this stuff and be rewarded by the markets for doing so?

    Because, it’s the denominator, stupid.

    If you can’t wrap your brain around Bitcoin, it’s because you’re probably hardwired to look at finance and economic through the lens of everything is an asset (numerator) measured in some “fixed” currency, like a USD – the denominator.

    REAL ESTATE

    ———–

    $$$$$$$$$$$

    or maybe

    MSFT / GOOG / NVDA / META

    ————————–

    $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

    or anything else you want over the $$$$$$$.  But your problem, is you think it’s also

    Bitcoin

    ——-

    $$$$$$$

    That denominator? Those $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$?

    That’s supposed to be fixed. In order to provide a semblance of rationality to the numerator / denominator equation, at least when it comes to measuring value – the denominator isn’t supposed to be moving or if it is, it has to at least be constrained by some kind of economic trade-off.  In the old-timey days, on a gold standard, there was a 2% natural inflation rate that was mostly limited by the ability to discover new gold deposits and actually mine the stuff.

    It was a pretty good system and the world moved to it under its own incentives, not by the decree of a committee of experts.

    By 1900, approximately fifty countries were on a gold standard. including all industrialized nations. The interesting fact is that the modern gold standard was not planned at an international conference, nor was it invented by some genius. It came by itself, naturally and based on experience. The United Kingdom went on a gold standard against the intention of its government. Only much later did laws turn an operative gold standard into an officially sanctioned gold standard.

    – Ferdinand Lips, Gold Wars.

    The last vestiges of the gold standard were dispensed with in 1971, with the Nixon Shock – and since then, the dollar standard, the denominator for the global monetary system, has been on a slow roll into hyperinflation:

    Everybody has seen this chart. It makes your eyes glaze over. Nobody cares even though this is showing you the disintegration of the denominator we use to measure every economic transaction on earth.

    Should be a big deal.

    The only time it seems to matter, is during a hyperinflation, when you can see it clearly in the X-axis of a chart being viewed in logarithmic mode:

    I’ll give you one guess which monetary challenger is flashing the signal today…

    But people are looking at the linear chart, and calling Bitcoin a bubble because they still think that Bitcoin is the numerator in an equation denominated by fiat dollars (a.k.a “cuck bucks”).

    I can guarantee you this: none of the billionaires who are allocating to Bitcoin think like that. Nobody building gigantic mining farms is thinking like that. Nor are the nation states and sovereign states who are about to launch strategic Bitcoin reserves. And Michael Saylor certainly isn’t thinking like that.

    All you have to do is press the “log” button on the chart and it all becomes clear…

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    So while we’re all stuck (for the moment) in this clown car economy where the numerators are denominated by infinite quantities of fiat literally backed by nothing, and the solution to everything is to print more of it…

    Anybody who truly understands Bitcoin (everybody with the laser eyes), looks at it like this:

    …and is opting out of the clown ride by moving their wealth – as much as they can into THE NEW DENOMINATOR.

    And the new denominator, is Bitcoin.

    It’s still pretty early.

    When you realize that the current monetary base is scaffolded together on about $80 trillion USD in M2 money supply (all currencies) and about $300 trillion in bonds (debt, denominated in a rapidly devaluing currency, which is backed by …nothing) and compare it to Bitcoin’s $2 trillion market cap, you realize how early we are in this story.

    In technological adoption curves, Bitcoin is still somewhere around 1998 to 2002 internet, we haven’t even hit 10% penetration yet, which is that famed “tipping point” for when a new innovation (in this case, decentralized, digital non-state money) takes hold and goes into rapid proliferation.

    While Bitcoin uptake is estimated to be somewhere around 4%-5% of the global population, my guess is with the events of 2024, we just have, or are in the process of “crossing the chasm” – another aspect of the technology adoption curve where it blows through the final wave of doubt, fear, skepticism and mal-investment before permanently breaking through to becoming the new paradigm.

    This happens all the time – just not very often with the monetary base layer – but it does happen there too.

    It’s happening now.

    *  *  *

     The Bitcoin Capitalist Letter, my premium newsletter that covers Bitcoin, crypto stocks and the digital asset space. You can catch a trial deal here »

    Sign up for the Bombthrower mailing list and get a free copy of the Crypto Capitalist Manifesto here »

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/21/2024 – 19:15

  • Death By A Thousand Talents: University Pays $700,000 To Settle With NASA Over Lead Researcher's Undisclosed China Ties
    Death By A Thousand Talents: University Pays $700,000 To Settle With NASA Over Lead Researcher’s Undisclosed China Ties

    Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The University of Delaware on Dec. 16 settled with NASA after allegedly failing to disclose a professor’s ties to and support from the Chinese regime.

    In 2020, NASA awarded the university a grant to establish a research center focused on the use of satellites to collect weather, climate, and ocean data, to better understand how sea-level rise affects U.S. coastlines.

    According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware, the university certified that no funds from the NASA grant would be “used to participate, collaborate, or coordinate with the People’s Republic of China.” However, the university allegedly failed to disclose that the center’s lead researcher, Xiao-Hai Yan, had significant ties to Chinese institutions and funding while the grant was active.

    The settlement revealed that between June 2020 and August 2023, Yan was simultaneously a faculty member at Xiamen University, one of the 75 institutions directly controlled by China’s Ministry of Education. During this period, Yan also applied for and received funding from the National Science Foundation of China and China’s State Oceanic Administration.

    Additionally, Yan was a participant in China’s Thousand Talents Program, an initiative offering lucrative financial benefits and research advantages to recruit scientists from abroad to bolster China’s economic and military development. The program has raised national security and academic integrity concerns in the United States and has prompted scores of federal investigations and prosecutions over recent years.

    The university agreed to pay $715,580 to the U.S. government to resolve the allegations but did not admit to any wrongdoing.

    The university said it is “proud of its strong record of compliance” in overseeing sponsored research and remains committed to “promoting and safeguarding the responsible pursuit of scientific research.”

    “The university relies, in part, on the candor and complete disclosures of individuals involved in the grant process,” a spokesperson said in a statement to The Epoch Times. “As noted in the release, this settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing by the university, but rather a strategic decision to avoid costly and distracting litigation.”

    The settlement was a coordinated effort between the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware and NASA’s Office of Inspector General, the space agency’s internal watchdog.

    “Federal law requires universities, institutions, and researchers to make disclosures, including certain foreign affiliations, when applying for grants so that the granting agencies can assess whether to fund their research and development,” David Weiss, U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware, said in a statement.

    The FBI has detailed how the Chinese government uses expert recruitment programs, such as the Thousand Talents Program, to attract individuals working or studying abroad who have access to high-priority research or proprietary technologies. The FBI estimates that China operates more than 200 similar initiatives, with some funded unwittingly by U.S. taxpayers.

    A 2019 Senate subcommittee report also highlighted numerous instances of misconduct by Thousand Talents participants. These include downloading sensitive research files before leaving for China, falsifying information on U.S. grant applications, and failing to disclose funding received from Beijing.

    One of the most high-profile cases in recent years involved Xiang Haitao, a former researcher at Monsanto. The Thousand Talents participant was arrested in November 2019 after returning to the United States from China, where he had worked on using a proprietary U.S. technology to boost farm output. In 2022, Xiang was sentenced to 29 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and a $150,000 fine for conspiring to commit economic espionage.

    Another widely reported case was that of Charles Lieber, former chair of Harvard University’s chemistry department. Lieber was arrested on campus in 2020 and charged with lying to federal investigators about his involvement in the Thousand Talents Program and his undisclosed ties to the Wuhan University of Technology. In April 2023, he was sentenced to two days in jail with two years of supervised release and received a $50,000 fine.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/21/2024 – 18:40

  • US Scraps $10M Bounty On AQ-linked Jolani After One Visit From State Dept Officials
    US Scraps $10M Bounty On AQ-linked Jolani After One Visit From State Dept Officials

    On Friday we featured a tongue-in-cheek headline, but which is sadly all too literal and true: Syrian Leader With $10M Bounty On His Head Meets With Delegation From Country That Put The $10M Bounty On His Head.

    US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf led the delegation along with Daniel Rubenstein, who is expected to stay in Damascus as America’s top diplomat there, as they met with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani in Damascus.

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    “The meeting took place and was positive, and positive results will emerge from it,” AFP cited a representative from HTS as saying.

    The meeting focused on a ‘vision’ for the new Syria and officials discussed sanctions, the thorny issue of the $10 million reward, and locating missing US citizens in Syria.

    It was only within a mere hours of the meeting that the US side decided to remove the $10 million bounty for the killing or capture of Jolani, who merely years ago was a full-fledged commander in ISIS, and subsequently a founder of al-Qaeda in Syria.

    …he likes kittens, long walks on the beach, and spooning his 10 wives at night. Also, he cried during The Notebook…

    “The US has scrapped a $10m (£7.9m) reward for the arrest of Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, following meetings between senior diplomats and representatives from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS),” BBC wrote just on the heels of the talks.

    This is the same man who fought for al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), a group which targeted and killed American troops.

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    Nonetheless, the US delegation described that they are seeing signs of ‘moderate’ policies from the Al-Qaeda linked leader:

    “We’ve been hearing this for some time, some very pragmatic and moderate statements on various issues, from women’s rights to protection of, you know, equal rights for all communities, etc,” Leaf told reporters. “Again, it was a good first meeting. We will judge by deeds, not just by words. Deeds are the critical thing.”

    We have to ask: Would this fly in a US court of law?… 

    …”your honor, I swear even though I recently had an ISIS phase and later I was founder of al-Qaeda in Syria, I have reformed myself and I am ‘moderate’!…”

    “am definitely so over my al-Qaeda phase your honor… promise.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/21/2024 – 18:05

  • How The Left Will Defend Its Censorship Regime Against Trump
    How The Left Will Defend Its Censorship Regime Against Trump

    Authored by Bradley Smith via RealClearPolitics,

    The reelection of President Donald Trump could serve as a historic turning point for free speech in America. President Trump has said he will investigate censorship practices by the federal government, end the rampant disrespect for First Amendment rights on our college campuses, and take on Big Tech’s Orwellian policing of speech on the Internet. If successful, these efforts would make the First Amendment stronger than ever before.

    Yet President Trump’s opponents will not simply stand by and watch as he dismantles their carefully crafted censorship machine. Controlling who gets to speak and what can be said is essential to the left’s dominance over our institutions. They will not give up such an important source of their power without a fight.

    To ensure the success of Trump’s free speech agenda, the right must anticipate and prepare for the left’s inevitable attacks. Fortunately, their methods are not hard to predict. In fact, Democrats tipped their hand during the campaign.

    Back when the party’s out-of-touch leadership thought Kamala Harris would propel them to victory, they set about making plans to silence opposition to their agenda once in office. At the Democratic National Convention, Sen. Chuck Schumer promised sweeping changes to elections, voting, and campaign finance if Democrats won control of Congress and the White House. All of these efforts would slant the political playing field further in the left’s favor.

    Among the bills was legislation that would strip Americans of their privacy when supporting nonprofit groups that speak out on hot button issues like abortion, crime, the border, or extreme gender politics. The importance of this provision should not be underestimated.

    The left calls it “transparency” when they publicly expose a private citizen’s personal information, including their name and home address, but Americans know it better as doxxing. They also know the purpose is not good government, but power politics. Exposing donors allows the left to build enemies’ lists and harass anyone who backs the “wrong” cause.

    Harris, who co-sponsored the DISCLOSE Act in the Senate, has her own long record of attacking conservative donors and journalists. As California Attorney General, her demand that nonprofits expose their confidential donor lists to her office led to lawsuits and a rebuke from the U.S. Supreme Court. The First Amendment protects the right to give privately, as the justices reminded her.

    Now that the election is over, Democrats’ designs for regulating speech and exposing conservative donors may form the heart of their resistance strategy to splinter the Trump coalition. We have seen this movie before.

    After the fight over Obamacare sparked a massive conservative movement known as the Tea Party, the left painted targets on the backs of the organizations and donors at its heart. IRS bureaucrats began grilling conservative groups about their activities and intentionally slow-walked their applications for nonprofit status. The massive targeting campaign succeeded in suppressing grassroots conservative activism in the run-up to the 2012 elections, where Democrats made gains.

    Yet Democrats do not even need to control the White House to target conservative donors. Threats can arise from inside federal agencies like the IRS, or from state legislation or regulatory actions, or even from unscrupulous media aided by leaks and hacking of confidential donor data. President Trump himself saw his tax returns illegally leaked in a politically-motivated scheme.

    Organizations that are successful in promoting conservative policies have also seen coordinated campaigns to bully their donors into ending their support. These harassment campaigns are one of the tactics that allowed the left to seize control of corporate America. Today, many companies pay a heavy price for any public association with the right.

    America First organizations and citizens are more than familiar with this kind of discrimination. This time, however, they must not merely persist through it but fight back and defeat it. If not, the left’s control over our institutions will soon reemerge, strong as ever, despite our best efforts.

    The solution is simple: Ensure every American can freely, safely, and privately support the organizations that represent their values and beliefs. We must end the ability of bureaucrats and political operatives to spy on donors and nonprofits.

    If the Trump coalition can do this and protect its own, it can achieve its bold free speech agenda – and more.

    Bradley Smith is chairman of the Institute for Free Speech, a former chairman of the FEC, and a professor of law at Capital University.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/21/2024 – 17:30

  • US, UK Sanction Georgia's 'Kremlin Friendly' Government
    US, UK Sanction Georgia’s ‘Kremlin Friendly’ Government

    Starting weeks ago Washington had threatened the Republic of Georgia with “consequences” amid accusations of rigged elections, after the ‘Russia friendly’ Georgian Dream Party swept parliamentary elections.

    And this month, 53-year old Mikheil Kavelashvili of Georgian Dream party was named president after 224 out of 225 members of Georgia’s electoral college voted him in (which the main opposition groups boycotted). Large pro-EU protests have all the while a mainstay in the capital of Tbilisi. The United States and European Union are loudly backing the protesters also amid the usual claims of ‘Russian interference’ in favor of governing authorities.

    AFP/Getty Images

    More unrest and large protests are expected given Kavelashvili’s inauguration is set for December 29. Police have been deploying riot control methods against larger and larger crowds all this month.

    Western media describes Kavelashvili as “far right” abd as a critic of the West, as well as ‘conspiratorial’ given he has in the recent past claimed that Western interests are seeking to drive Georgia into conflict with Russia.

    Late this past week the US and UK have begun to make good on their promises of consequences for the new government, citing an ongoing crackdown of the pro-EU protests. Senior officials in the Georgian government are being targeted by sanctions unveiled by the US and UK on Thursday. 

    “The United States strongly condemns the Georgian authorities’ ongoing, brutal and unjustified violence against Georgian citizens, including peaceful protesters, media members, human rights activists and opposition figures,” US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller announced.

    The US Treasury described that top Georgian officials will have any assets or property held in the United States blocked, and most financial transactions involving these assets will be barred. 

    As for the UK, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy has claimed that there is “shocking violence” against protesters, despite little evidence beyond what’s typical for such street demonstrations and clashes with riot police.

    Things seem quite peaceful actually, with little in the way of a police crackdown, which has just been sporadic in past weeks…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Lammy called out the Georgian government and Dream Party for an ongoing “an egregious attack on democracy, and the Georgian people’s right to exercise their fundamental freedoms.”

    “Our action today shows that the UK stands with the people of Georgia and will consider all options to ensure those responsible are held to account,” he said, announcing the UK sanctions which were coordinated with Washington.

    The dividing lines for Georgia’s current crisis, which has seen the Dream Party solidify complete control of the government – but with unrest in the streets – is much like Ukraine’s political divide in 2014. But let’s hope the situation doesn’t turn to open conflict involving the US or Russia (akin to the disastrous war in Ukraine), which is something officials in Tbilisi have long been worried about.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/21/2024 – 16:55

  • Massachusetts Is The Most Expensive State To Raise A Kid In, Mississippi Cheapest
    Massachusetts Is The Most Expensive State To Raise A Kid In, Mississippi Cheapest

    Although costs vary from family to family, two working parents spend an average of around $23,000 per year raising one child in the United States.

    This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, illustrates the cost of raising a child by state, based on data compiled by SmartAsset as of February 2024.

    Methodology

    SmartAsset used the MIT Living Wage Calculator to compare the living costs of a household with two working adults and one child to those of a childless household with two working adults. Costs include expenses for food, housing, childcare, healthcare, transportation, and other necessities.

    Massachusetts Tops the List

    Massachusetts has the highest annual costs for raising a child, at $35,841 per year. Mississippi has the lowest annual costs, at $16,151 per year.

    Rank State Annual cost of raising a child
    1 Massachusetts $35,841
    2 Hawaii $35,049
    3 Connecticut $32,803
    4 Colorado $30,425
    5 New York $30,247
    6 California $29,468
    7 New Hampshire $27,849
    8 Washington $27,806
    9 Rhode Island $27,630
    10 Minnesota $27,406
    11 Vermont $27,170
    12 Nevada $26,914
    13 New Jersey $26,870
    14 Alaska $26,860
    15 Oregon $26,334
    16 Delaware $25,867
    17 Maine $24,917
    18 Maryland $24,830
    19 Pennsylvania $24,820
    20 Wisconsin $24,064
    21 Virginia $24,043
    22 Arizona $24,026
    23 Illinois $23,821
    24 Michigan $23,075
    25 Ohio $22,926
    26 Nebraska $22,773
    27 Iowa $22,714
    28 North Dakota $21,645
    29 Indiana $21,584
    30 North Carolina $21,510
    31 Florida $21,384
    32 Idaho $21,214
    33 Utah $20,955
    34 Montana $20,839
    35 Texas $20,724
    36 Wyoming $20,579
    37 Georgia $20,480
    38 South Carolina $20,293
    39 New Mexico $20,060
    40 Missouri $19,995
    41 West Virginia $19,558
    42 Oklahoma $19,535
    43 Tennessee $19,525
    44 Kansas $19,494
    45 South Dakota $19,008
    46 Alabama $18,653
    47 Kentucky $18,588
    48 Louisiana $17,918
    49 Arkansas $17,424
    50 Mississippi $16,151

    Regardless of the state, childcare is the highest expense, followed by additional housing and food costs.

    Housing costs include expenses for shelter (e.g., mortgage payments, property taxes, rent, and insurance), utilities (gas, electricity, fuel, cellphone, and water), and household furnishings and equipment. Childcare costs include education expenses, daycare tuition, babysitting, other childcare costs, and tuition for private schools.

    These expenses do not account for the cost of a college education, which can add significantly to the overall financial burden.

    If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out this graphic, which ranks the income a family needs to live comfortably in every U.S. state.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/21/2024 – 15:45

  • Santa Claus Rally Or Did The Fed Steal Christmas?
    Santa Claus Rally Or Did The Fed Steal Christmas?

    Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

    Powell & A Government Shutdown Hits Stocks

    Last week, we noted the ongoing market churn that could last into this week’s Fed meeting. To wit:

    “That certainly seemed the case this past week, with the market trading being fairly sloppy. Attempts to push the market higher were repeatedly met with sellers, and we saw a rotation from over-owned to under-owned assets. Notably, that selling pressure arrived as expected, and while such could persist until early next week, we should be getting close to the end of the distribution and rebalancing process. The good news is that the recent consolidation paves the way for ‘Santa Claus to visit Broad and Wall.”

    That process continued as expected this past week but became violent on Wednesday following the Federal Reserve meeting. While the Fed cut rates as expected, the market shock came from the lift in its outlook for interest rates in 2025 by a half percentage point. The market is assuming that the Fed is giving up on the idea that inflation will return to the 2% target next year, an idea that they had confidence in as recently as September. That more hawkish outlook undermined the view that elevated valuations were justified by easier monetary conditions, which now seems to be reversing. We suspect that this view is rather short-sighted, and given the economic dynamics both abroad and in the U.S., slower economic growth will lead to a “dovish” pivot by the Fed in the first half of 2025.

    The markets also struggled with concerns about a Government shutdown. As we discussed in October 2023, shutdowns are NOT a threat to the market in the long term. To wit:

    “What is critical to understand about Government shutdowns is that mandatory spending (social security, welfare, interest on the debt) continues as needed. Shutdowns are primarily about discretionary spending. Such is why it mainly involves Government employment and the shuttering of national parks and monuments. According to Goldman Sachs, the shutdown would have only impacted about 2% of Federal spending overall. Notice that the vast majority of Government spending is directly a function of the social welfare system and interest on the debt.”

    Please note that during a Government shutdown, all MANDATORY spending continues. In other words, the government WILL NOT default on its debt, and social security payments will continue, despite rhetoric to the contrary.

    Furthermore, market reactions to government shutdowns have become increasingly muted. The reason is that the markets have learned that funding typically arrives at the 11th hour via a ‘continuing resolution’ to provide temporary funding through the next political event, such as midterm elections, inauguration, etc. While these short-term spending bills eventually translate into longer-term spending bills, the real problem is that continuing resolutions (CRs) increase spending by 8% annually. Such is why debt has exploded since Congress stopped passing budgets in 2009 under President Obama and opted for CRs. The debt surge is the direct result of automatically compounding 8% annual spending increases plus additional spending.

    However, as shown, government shutdowns, if they occur, can temporarily impact markets, but the event tends to be mild and short-lived.

    Nonetheless, the market has triggered a short-term MACD sell signal, which warned investors that some “event” could exert downward pressure on stocks. As noted, the Fed and “Government Shutdown” drama sufficiently triggered sellers as portfolio rebalancing and distributions concluded. With relative strength oversold on Friday, the setup for a reflexive rally into year-end has become a much higher-probability event. However, the ongoing sell signal is deep enough to limit whatever reflexive rally does arrive. Such is particularly true as money flows have deteriorated over the last few weeks.

    While we still expect a rally into year-end, as we will discuss, there is a not-so-insignificant possibility of further turmoil. We suggest continuing to manage risk, and with significant gains already booked for this year, there is little need to stretch for further returns at this juncture.

    Will Santa Claus Visit Broad And Wall?

    Will “Santa still visit Broad and Wall?” That is the question on everyone’s mind. As we will discuss, there are certainly reasons to be concerned, but let’s start with the market statistics and reasons behind the fabled year-end rally.

    The actual Wall Street saying is, “If Santa Claus should fail to call, bears may come to Broad & Wall.” The Santa Claus Rally, also known as the December effect, is a term for more frequent than average stock market gains as the year winds down. However, as is always the case with data, average returns sometimes differ from reality.

    Stock Trader’s Almanac explored why end-of-year trading has a directional tendency. The Santa Claus indicator is pretty simple. It looks at market performance over a seven-day trading period – the last five trading days of the current trading year and the first two trading days of the New Year. The stats are compelling.

    “The stock market has risen 1.48% on average during the 7 trading days in question since both 1950 and 1969. Over the 7 trading days in question, stock prices have historically risen 76% of the time, which is far more than the average performance over a 7-day period.“

    The end of the year tends to be strong for a couple of reasons. First, professional managers tend to “window dress” portfolios for year-end reporting purposes. Secondly, given that many professional funds make year-end distributions, there tends to be a need to rebalance portfolios. The following graph in orange shows aggregate cumulative returns by day count for the December months we analyzed. In the graph, we plotted returns alongside daily aggregated average returns by day. Unsurprisingly, the recent sloppy trading and correction this past week all coincide with the historical norms of December.

    Visually, one notices the “sweet spot” in the two graphs between the 10th and 14th trading days. The 14th trading day, in most cases, falls within a few days of Christmas.

    However, there is always a risk.

    Did The Fed Steal Christmas?

    While there is a decently high probability that stock prices will climb heading into year-end, there is a not-so-insignificant 24% chance they won’t. With the substantial November advance and new highs into early December, the question is whether anyone is “left to buy?” As noted, not every December has a “Santa Claus Rally.” 2018, as shown, is a good reminder that once in a while, investors receive a lump of coal in their stockings. At that time, the Federal Reserve was on a rate hiking campaign and insisted that it was “nowhere near the neutral rate” on monetary policy. Furthermore, since the market had declined steeply since early September, sentiment and investor positioning were very negative.

    Interestingly, December 2024 has some of the same backdrops as September 2018.

    First, the S&P 500 rallied strongly this year, approaching our year-end target of 6000. That rally has led to a sharp increase in bullish sentiment between retail and professional investors. As shown, U.S. equity allocations are at record highs among professional investors.

    Furthermore, like in 2018, when retail equity allocations and valuations were elevated, investor allocations are at the highest on record, coinciding with the second-highest valuation levels.

    There is also an abundance of optimism about future stock prices, just like in 2018.

    What is important to remember about 2018 is that investor optimism was fine until the Fed said it “was nowhere near the neutral rate.” Of course, following a 20% decline and two months later, the Fed was magically at that neutral rate.

    Today, investor exuberance is tied to a further accommodative easing in 2025. However, like in 2018, the Fed suggested it isn’t near its “neutral rate,” as shown in its latest projections. While the “long-run” projections are still for economic growth of 1.8% (down from 2.0% and 1.9% previously) and inflation of 2%, the short-term outlooks for 2025 were adjusted modestly higher. That uptick disappointed investors even though the end goals remain the same, which will require Fed funds to adjust lower. (Side note: The Fed’s projections are almost always too optimistic, which suggests the recent bout of hawkishness will give way to a dovish reversal next year.)

    The adjustment to the Fed’s view was minimal from an investing perspective. However, the market reacted violently because the combination of exuberance and overbought factors created the perfect environment for a reversal.

    Technically Speaking

    First, while the market rallied into year-end on many optimistic assumptions, breadth has been deteriorating noticeably. From the NYSE Advance-Decline line to the percentage of stocks trading above their respective 50 and 200-DMA, overall participation has declined rapidly. While such does not mean a market crash is imminent, such previous deterioration has eventually coincided with short-term corrections and consolidations. Unsurprisingly, that is exactly what happened as the collision of the Fed and a looming shutdown gave sellers the push they needed.

    Secondly, the market was, and is, technically extended on many levels after the past two years of excess returns. The monthly market analysis shows the S&P 500 is significantly overbought on a relative strength basis, deviated from the long-term mean, and pushing well into the top of its bullish trend from the 2009 lows. While we discussed the same factors in the middle of 2021, it took several months before the market gave way and corrected the excesses in 2022. Given the market’s current momentum, we suspect the bullish run will likely last into the first half of next year but could be sooner if earnings expectations decline.

    What is crucial to understand is that these technical extremes are just the “kindling” for a correction. To “ignite” the correction, some event must provide the catalyst. In this case, it was the more hawkish pivot by the Fed and the threat of a shutdown. As is always the case, the event that causes a sharp unwinding of the market, like we saw on Wednesday, is always unexpected. The “surprise factor” causes the sudden shift in market expectations for earnings growth and outlooks. The risk going forward is “if” the Fed is correct in its outlook, the more optimistic outlook for earnings expectations will need to be reassessed. If that is the case, the market will decline to reduce valuations for a new reality.

    Given that current valuations are at the second-highest level on record, such an event would seem more likely. Notably, short-term valuations are solely a function of sentiment. Investors are paying well above the earnings growth that is occurring. Historically, earnings have disappointed those expectations.

    Does any of this mean that “Santa Won’t Visit Broad And Wall?” Of course not. However, I would not completely dismiss the risk of “getting a lump of coal” this year.

    Given the uncertainty, both into year-end and 2025, how should we approach it?

    Calculating The Madness

    Let me repeat something that seems apropos:

    Sir Isaac Newton once said:

    “I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of the people..” 

    As we head into year-end, we will navigate the risk of overly extended and bullish markets against the seasonally strong end-of-year period. 

    We believe that capital preservation and risk management lead to better outcomes over the long term. However, managing risk can be frustrating in the short run as the “Fear Of Missing Out” overrides common sense and logic. 

    If you disagree, that is okay.

    When the opportunity presents itself and the “madness has subsided,” these are the questions we will ask ourselves before we add exposure to portfolios:

    1. What is the expected return from current valuation levels?  (___%)
    2. If I am wrong, what is my potential downside, given my current risk exposure?  (___%)
    3. What actions should I take now if #2 exceeds #1?  (#2 – #1 = ___%)

    How you answer those questions is entirely up to you.

    What you do with the answers is also up to you.

    We are all trying to answer the question, “How much of the ‘narrative’ already got priced into the market?”

    By looking at the data, it would be easy to assume the answer is “much.”

    While bullishness prevails, this is a great time to set aside the narratives and return our focus to the basic portfolio management rules.

    How We Are Trading It

    Since we have our “stockings hung by the chimney with care,” we can stuff them with a few essential investment guidelines to follow as we approach year-end.

    • Investing is not a competition. There are no prizes for winning but severe penalties for losing.
    • Emotions have no place in investing. You are generally better off doing the opposite of what you “feel” you should be doing.
    • The ONLY investments you can “buy and hold” provide an income stream with a return of principal function.
    • Market valuations (except at extremes) are very poor market timing devices.
    • Fundamentals and Economics drive long-term investment decisions – “Greed and Fear” drive short-term trading. Knowing what type of investor you are determines the basis of your strategy.
    • “Market timing” is impossible– managing risk exposure is logical and possible.
    • Investment is about discipline and patience. Lacking either one can be destructive to your investment goals.
    • There is no value in daily media commentary– turn off the television and save yourself the mental capital.
    • Investing is no different from gambling—both are “guesses” about future outcomes based on probabilities. The winner is the one who knows when to “fold” and when to go “all in.”
    • No investment strategy works all the time. The trick is knowing the difference between a bad investment strategy and one temporarily out of favor.

    While anxiously anticipating the arrival of the “Santa Claus Rally,” we must also remember the lesson of 2018.

    Nothing is guaranteed.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/21/2024 – 15:10

  • Ukrainian Drones Pummel Russian City Over 600 Miles From Front Line
    Ukrainian Drones Pummel Russian City Over 600 Miles From Front Line

    Ukraine’s drone and missile attacks deep inside Russia have already been a near daily occurrence, but now these projectiles are reaching further and further into Russia, often utilize Western-supplied weapon systems.

    “Ukraine brought the war into the heart of Russia Saturday morning with drone attacks that local authorities said damaged residential buildings in the city of Kazan in the Tatarstan region, over 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from the front line,” The Associated Press reports Saturday.

    Aftermath of suicide drone attack by Ukraine in the Russian city of Kazan, via ABC.

    The regional governor said that eight drones attacked the city, with anti-air defenses only able to shoot down one. The others hit residential buildings and an industrial facility. 

    No casualties were indicated by emergency services, but the attacks halted flights at Kazan’s airport, and all public gatherings were canceled due to the threat of more possible inbound drones.

    The last several days have seen deadly attacks on Rostov and Kursk regions. The several waves of assaults involved US-provided ATACMS, UK-provided Storm Shadow missiles, as well as a HIMARS attack which occurred Friday.

    The Russian Defense Ministry said: “These actions by the Kiev regime supported by Western handlers won’t be left unanswered.”

    Dramatic video shows one drone smashing into the upper floors of high-rise building. The footage was verified by the AP:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    President Putin has previously warned that “decision-making centers” in Kiev could be hit, but it appears that has yet to happen on any large-scale, even nearly three years into the war.

    There’s also the looming threat that Moscow could launch more Oreshnik hypersonic missiles armed with conventional warheads, which could do major damage. Clearly these ‘options’ have been largely held back thus far.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/21/2024 – 14:35

  • Dem Rep. Crockett: Hispanic Voters Have "Slave Mentality" And "Can Barely Vote"
    Dem Rep. Crockett: Hispanic Voters Have “Slave Mentality” And “Can Barely Vote”

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    One of the most consistent elements of the identity politics practiced by the left is its selectivity. Whether in politics or higher education, the outrage that comes from allegedly racist or insensitive comments is confined to targets on the right.

    A case in point is the deafening silence after a diatribe by Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, during which she accused Hispanic voters of having a “slave mentality” and said that they “can barely vote.”

    There was no vaporous segment on The View or condemnations on the floor from members.

    Crockett has been celebrated in left-wing publications such as Vanity Fair for schooling her colleagues, which she describes as “old as sh*t.”

    She offered Vanity Fair her “distilled summary of what happens within the Latino community.” Not surprisingly, it is identity politics with a race edge:

    “I’ve not run into that with the Asian community. I’ve not run into that with the African community. I’ve not run into that with the Caribbean community. I’ve only run into it with Hispanics. When they think of ‘illegals,’ they think of, you know, maybe people that came out of the cartels and that kind of, like, the criminal-type book or whatever. It’s insane.”

    “It almost reminds me of what people would talk about when they would talk about kind of like ‘slave mentality’ and the hate that some slaves would have for themselves. It’s almost like a slave mentality that they have. It is wild to me when I hear how anti-immigrant they are as immigrants, many of them. I’m talking about people that literally just got here and can barely vote that are having this kind of attitude.”

    The attack on Hispanic voters as including people who “literally just got here and can barely vote” did not even generate objections from many Democratic Hispanic groups. Imagine if Trump or a conservative commentator made this comment.

    Ironically, just before the election, I wrote how recent immigrants seemed to have a particularly strong connection to our defining and collective values. That does not appear a view shared by the congresswoman.

    Crockett was, if anything, inclusive in her attacks based on gender and race. She also attacked black men and women for voting for Trump. She just dismissed black men as hating women: “I’m going to chalk up to misogyny.”

    What is unimaginable is that any woman or person of color could vote on the merits against the Democrats.

    Notably, after her loss, Hillary Clinton offered the same attacks on women as voting against her only because they are weak and self-loathing.

    She claimed that Kamala, who notoriously avoided interviews and could not think of “a thing she would do differently” from Biden, “ran a flawless campaign.” The problem is again self-hating women and minorities, adding, “I don’t trust White women. I said, I’m just telling you, and I think you need to have conversations with your sisters, because they are the group that failed Hillary Clinton.”

    The claim that Hispanics “can barely vote” would not be tolerated from someone on the right. It is reminiscent of the controversy involving Democratic lawyer and former Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias over what some called inherently racist comments about Georgia voters. Elias argued that Georgia voters could not be expected to be able to read their driver’s licenses correctly — a statement that seemed to refer to minority voters who would be disproportionately impacted by such a requirement.

    What is striking about the Vanity Fair article is that Democrats continued to rely on identity politics despite every indication that it was not working. Now, after losing both houses and the White House, they are doubling down on identity politics.

    Outgoing Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Jaime Harrison used his farewell address to warn Democrats not to abandon identity politics as the touchstone of future campaigns.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 12/21/2024 – 14:00

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Dec 21

Today’s News 21st December 2024

  • Escobar: Anarchy In The Levant – Your Future Dream Is A Chaos Scheme
    Escobar: Anarchy In The Levant – Your Future Dream Is A Chaos Scheme

    Authored by Pepe Escobar,

    Tehran and Moscow harbor no illusions – and are preparing accordingly. The war on BRICS is just getting started.

    Syria as we knew it is being eviscerated in real time – in geographic, cultural, economic and military terms – by an appalling confluence of mercenary Rent-a-Jihadi mobs and psychopathological genocidals praying at the altar of Eretz Israel.

    All of that is fully supported by rabid NATOstan hyenas – masters of narrative control – and fully intertwined with the eradication of Palestine.

    Across the avowedly dejected Global Majority, there’s a feeling that the momentarily exhausted Axis of Resistance will need to go turbo-Sisyphus to rearrange, resupply and recalibrate the defense of Palestine.

    Predictably, there’s not a peep across the NATOstan sphere about Tel Aviv’s feral, indiscriminate bombing and snatching of sovereign Syrian territory. That represents a glaring illustration of the “rules-based international order” in action.

    Collective West Think Tankland is in rapture. Chatham House preaches a Syrian rebuilding in this “watershed moment” led by the U.S., EU, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye, capable of “forging a consensus around Syria” that “could serve as the foundation for a new regional order.”

    The rabidly anti-BRICS Center for a New American Security (CNAS) demands “expelling Russia’s military presence” from Syria and “to close the country as an avenue for Iran’s power projection.”

    The Axis of Resistance is being mourned across the spectrum. Not so fast. The deeper meaning of the “ceasefire” between Israel and Hezbollah is that the psycho-pathologicals, for all practical purposes, were defeated, even if they wreaked horrendous havoc on southern Lebanon and Beirut’s suburbs.

    Changing the narrative – and the focus – to the Greater Idlibistan offensive allowed an avowedly massive tactical victory not only for Eretz Israel goons but for the assembled NATOstan/Turkiye combo. Yet the real nitty-gritty starts now, even as the partition of Syria is already in effect.

    The Rent-a-Jihadi mob, in theory under the control of the aspiring Caliph of Al-Sham, the Saudi al-Jolani, real name Ahmad Ibrahim al-Sha’a, sooner or later may turn against the Eretz Israel project, considering they entertain cozy relations with Hamas in Gaza.

    At least for the moment, everything is swell for the Oded Yinon and/or Bernard Lewis plan to subdue West Asia via time-tested Divide and Rule. This harks back not only to Sykes-Picot in 1917, but even earlier, to 1906, when British PM Henry Campbell-Bannerman asserted that,

    “There are people [Arabs] who control spacious territories teeming with manifest and hidden resources. They dominate the intersections of world routes. Their lands were the cradles of human civilizations and religions.”

    So if these “people” united, they would then “take the fate of the world into its hands and would separate Europe from the rest of the world.”

    Ergo, the necessity of “a foreign body” [later constituted as Israel] to be “planted in the heart of this nation to prevent the convergence of its wings in such a way that it could exhaust its powers in never-ending wars. It could also serve as a springboard for the West to gain its coveted objects.”

    Pirates of the Levant

    The Eretz Israel hallucination does not exactly mingle with Sultan Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman dream, even though they coincide in the broader urge to redraw the map of the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia.

    As for the Exceptionalists, they can barely believe their luck. In a swoop, they just gobbled up the key strategic node of a now buried idea: Arabism, or anti-imperialism in the Levant.

    Ever since Barack Obama, in the early 2010s, declared war on Syria under orders from Tel Aviv, the Empire of Chaos had thrown everything and the kitchen sink at Damascus for at least 13 years: the longest and most expensive regime change campaign in U.S. history, complete with toxic, forced-starvation sanctions – until suddenly the big prize fell on their lap.

    The prize involves – in theory – smashing an ally of three top BRICS, Russia, Iran and China, with the added bonus of turning it into a geoeconomic black hole while doctoring the narrative to sell “the end of the dictator” to the Global Majority as the precondition for the rise of a new Dubai.

    We still don’t know how rump Syria will look like – and even for how long it will be governed by a bunch of neoliberal Salafi-jihadis with trimmed beards and cheap new off-the-rack suits.

    The fact is the Hegemon is already controlling at least a third of Syrian territory for at least a decade – and will continue to steal Syrian oil and wheat with absolute impunity: Pirates of the Levant in full regalia.

    Playing the role of sidekick, the UK’s MI6 will continue to excel in providing P.R. ops, across-the-board lobbying and gun-running opportunities for the gullible motley crew of mercenary Salafi-jihadis.

    When it comes to Tel Aviv, they are destroying Eretz Israel’s largest remaining Arab military opposition; stealing/annexing land non-stop; and dreaming of total domination, aerial and naval, in case Russia loses its bases in Tartus and Hmeimim (that’s a major “if”). Not to mention they somewhat indirectly control the new Caliph, who has meekly asked them to please, don’t conquer too much Syrian land.

    The partition will proceed along three other major vectors.

    1. Hegemon-controlled land and military bases – which might be used to attack Iraq. Forget about a fake sovereign Syria recovering their oil fields.

    2. Turkiye-annexed land which will inevitably lead to the full absorption of Aleppo (already proclaimed by the Sultan on the record).

    3. Damascus run by an ISIS offshoot directly manipulated by Turkish intel.

    All of the above might lead, already in the first quarter of 2025, to a sort of Salafi-Jihadi Zionization arrangement with just one objective: to ease sanctions from the U.S. and the EU.

    As for al-Jolani, real name Ahmad Ibrahim al-Sha’a, for all his woke rebranding, he was Al-Zarkawi’s lieutenant and Emir of Nineveh during the al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI, later reconverted as ISIS) rampage in Mesopotamia. There’s no way Baghdad will have political relations with a Salafi-jihadi who’s on Iraq’s most wanted list.

    An additional headache is the EU’s conditions for normalizing Syria, as spelled out by the unelected batshit crazy Estonian responsible for its foreign policy (and representing nearly 500 million European citizens): Brussels will only lift sanctions if there are no Russian bases and “Russian influence” left in the Caliphate of al-Sham.

    Meanwhile, the Empire of Chaos will continue its plunder – in conjunction with Israel. The Syrian oil stolen by the Americans is sold by the Kurds to Israel in Erbil with a huge discount. After all, this oil is “free” – as in stolen. At least 40% of Israel’s oil comes from the Erbil racket.

    And it gets worse.

    Israel has annexed the Al-Wahda dam in the basin of the Yarmouk river, close to the city of Al-Qusayr in the Dara’a governorate, and near the Jordanian border. This dam provides at least 30% of Syria’s water and 40% of Jordan’s water.

    Everything is so predictable: what the NATOstan/Israel combo really wants is an amputated, disaggregated, vulnerable Syria.

    Empire of Chaos goes Full Anarchy

    Yet the whole toxic equation is far from over. Aspiring Caliph Jolani may be tempted to allow Russia to keep its bases – and to transport their weapons systems out of the country intact. He is in close contact with Moscow, and HTS is de facto protecting Russian assets.

    In parallel, Hezbollah signaled it is willing to “cooperate” with HTS, which by the way is also protecting the Iranian embassy in Damascus. ​​

    There is no evidence whatsoever that the Greater Idlibistan invasion was a Trojan Horse agreed on the negotiating table by the – dead – “Astana process” even before the fateful Doha meeting on Saturday, January 7.

    What is certain is that the analysis in Moscow and Beijing privileges the Long Big Picture. The Chinese for now are extremely circumspect on the record about the whole Syrian drama, apart from declaring themselves “ready to play a constructive role”. Beijing and Moscow see Syria as a temporary setback on BRICS inflicted by an Empire on Desperation Row, along with its equally desperate Eretz Israel ally and a Sultan biting more than he can chew.

    The lame duck Biden combo is absolutely clueless on the emergence of a – possible – Israeli-Turkish hegemonic vector in a key node of West Asia. The only thing that matters for Straussian neo-cons and their Tel Aviv psycho-apocalyptic buddies, when it comes to the disintegration of Syria, is the window of opportunity ahead for Israel to attack Iran.

    The Times of Israel is in rapture: while previously the “IAF would not fly directly over Damascus when carrying out strikes on Iran-linked targets in the capital, it now can.”

    The key to unlock the whole riddle may lie, once again, with Jolani. Everything in West Asia is always in perpetual flux. Only a few days after the fall of Damascus, Sultan Erdogan as well as NATO have refused to help Jolani against the Israeli onslaught in Syria.

    Talk about the aspiring Caliphate’s “sovereignty”.

    So where Jolani could turn to in a quest for possible allies? And who can he rely on to impose some order in totally disaggregated Syria – including air power to fight ISIS pockets across the desert?

    Enter Tehran and Moscow. Ergo, the back channels on overdrive. They would not bat an eye when it comes to “cooperating” with the infant Caliphate – as long as their national interests are not threatened.

    The Empire of Chaos will remain unmatched in terms of narrative control, P.R. stunts, monopolizing social media spheres and non-stop psy war. All hybrid fronts. But that’s about it.

    The Empire was miserably defeated in both Afghanistan and Iraq. And continues to be humiliated by the Houthis in the Red Sea. Washington has less than zero advantage over Russia on the military sphere – except on electronic warfare (EW), at least on the West Asian theatre, and ISR (Russia is catching up), which instantly translates into inflicting more and more terror.

    As for Iran, it’s far from weaker now than before the fall of Damascus. That’s imperial narrative spin, inbuilt in the self-pleasing Exceptionalist mechanism. Ayatollah Khamenei, a fine strategist, does not waste his words. Tehran will eventually develop an alternative supply chain to Hezbollah and the West Bank.

    Besides, follow the money. The Iranian Foreign Ministry has already noted that “the new Syrian government will take on all of Syria’s financial obligations to Iran.” That’s a lot of money – that Jolani does not have.

    Michael Hudson is adamant: “Anarchy is what the U.S. plan is.” This being West Asia, where backstabbing is an art, there will be blowback. Tehran and Moscow harbor no illusions – and are preparing accordingly. The war on BRICS is just getting started.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/20/2024 – 23:25

  • Diddy, Deadpool, & The Donald: 2024 In Google Searches
    Diddy, Deadpool, & The Donald: 2024 In Google Searches

    2024 will be another year not forgotten any time soon. A look at the biggest trending Google searches can serve as a reminder for just some of the events and situations that have shaped our world over the last 12 months.

    The following chart, via Statista’s Anna Fleck, looks at the most-googled terms between January 1 and November 23.

    Infographic: 2024 in Google Searches | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    At the top of the trending news-related searches was the U.S. election.

    With 3.7 billion people having had the opportunity to go to the polls worldwide this year, 2024 has been dubbed a ‘super year’ for elections. In November, the victory of Republican nominee Donald Trump against the Democratic Party’s pick Kamala Harris will have major implications both domestically and abroad, in terms of trade and foreign policy. Other elections this year included BJP leader and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi winning a third term in office, despite losing a parliamentary majority, and the Labour Party’s Keir Starmer ousting the Conservative Party after 14 years in power.

    The second fastest growing news search term was “excessive heat”.

    As of November, 2024 was on track to be the warmest year on record. It was a year when more than 1,300 people died during the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia due to heat.

    In the world of music, Sean “Diddy” Combs was the most searched-for artist among the English-speaking world this year.

    Combs has been at the center of sexual assault, rape and sex trafficking lawsuits. The next most searched-for artists were Usher, Linkin Park, Sabrina Carpenter and Justin Timberlake.

    In terms of movies this year, the ones to garner the most search attention included Inside Out 2, an animated Pixar and Disney movie about different emotions personified as well as the Marvel superhero movie Deadpool & Wolverine and Saltburn, a thriller and social commentary on wealth.

    This year, Google also revealed the top earworms around the world. The eclectic mix of “Beautiful Things” by Benson Boone, “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born” by Creepy Nuts and “Die With a Smile” by Lady Gaga were the three tunes that were looked up most frequently using the “hum to search” function.

    Finally, the most prolific people searched for this year included both Trump and Harris together with Princess Kate, who was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year and after treatment is now reported to be cancer free.

    Sadly, not all of the world’s well-known and popular people made it to the end of 2024. The most high-profile passing, at least in terms of Google Search queries, was that of One Direction singer Liam Payne.

    According to Google Trends’ methodology, the round up of searches in 2024 excludes data from China, Iran and North Korea.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/20/2024 – 23:00

  • Trump Could Tariff NATO Allies That Do Not Pay Up
    Trump Could Tariff NATO Allies That Do Not Pay Up

    Authored by Anders Corr via The Epoch Times,

    Russia launched almost 300 drones and missiles in a coordinated attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure on Dec. 13. The attack is an apparent attempt to further terrorize Ukrainians into surrender by destroying their heat and light in the middle of winter.

    The war has dragged on for almost three years now, and Ukrainians are getting tired. Their army is depleted of personnel and weapons. Gallup’s latest surveys indicate that 52 percent of Ukrainians want to end the war, even if that means giving away land to Russia. Only 38 percent now want to keep fighting until victory, down from 73 percent in 2022.

    President-elect Donald Trump is trying to both minimize the risk of escalation and shift more of the war’s burden to European allies that have not paid their fair share of defense expenditures for decades. Such a shift is eminently possible as the United States has so far committed about half of Europe’s $255 billion in aid to Ukraine. After the U.S. election, many European leaders have already doubled their commitments. But they must go much further to fully deter Russia.

    The U.S. national debt is growing at an unsustainable rate, and without new revenues, Washington can no longer afford to be the world’s policeman. Given this unfortunate reality, Trump has led calls for a cease-fire that would likely entail a risk: appeasing Russia with Ukrainian land, which would potentially incentivize Moscow and the regime in China to escalate aggression down the road. If Moscow wins in Ukraine, Beijing could try the same in Taiwan sooner, and the axis of evil wars, including those of Iran and arguably North Korea, might have no end in sight.

    There is a solution: force Europeans to increase their defense spending, including military aid to Ukraine, to at least 3 percent of GDP. Trump is heading in that direction.

    At a meeting in Paris on Dec. 7, Trump said he wants to see Ukraine emerge as a strong and well-armed country. He wants European soldiers, rather than Americans, to be present in Ukraine after a cease-fire as peacekeepers and to bear most of the expense of the continued deterrence of Russia. This will free the United States to better deter China’s communist regime.

    Trump wants Europe to help pressure China, including with tariffs, to, in turn, pressure Russia to come to the bargaining table. China has a more powerful economy and conventional military compared to Russia. After North Korea sent troops to fight Ukraine, some, like JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, said that World War III had already started. Others say Russia wants to expand to at least the boundaries of the old Soviet Union. After conquering Ukraine, the Russian army could try to take the Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—all of which are now NATO members. Moscow has already stepped up its espionage in these regions and beyond, from Mexico to the Arctic. Some of it targets the United States.

    NATO chief Mark Rutte warned on Dec. 12 that the West is “not ready” for an increasing Russian threat over the next five years, which includes a long-term goal of conflict with the West.

    “It is time to shift to a wartime mindset, and turbocharge our defense production and defense spending,” he said.

    Rutte had praised Trump’s first term for getting NATO countries to increase their defense expenditures.

    Now, Trump is doing it again.

    He has reiterated his intention to withdraw the United States from NATO if other countries do not reach defense spending of at least 2 percent of their GDP.

    He could reasonably increase that demand to 3 percent and add another penalty: tariffs for those that fall below the agreed level.

    These tariffs could focus on luxuries and replaceables so as not to disrupt more important U.S. supply lines.

    European leaders are beginning to take action and will likely fund any U.S. shortfall to keep the Russian army further away from European capitals. Rutte has called for an increase in the defense spending goal among NATO members. Many NATO countries—namely Italy, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Croatia, and Canada—pay less than 2 percent of GDP, while several countries, including the United States, Poland, and the Baltics, spend more than 3 percent.

    The United States spent 41 percent of GDP on defense at the height of World War II and 10 percent during the Cold War. It was a lot of money, but our freedom was worth the expense. For those countries looking to get a free ride, Trump should apply his signature tariffs. He has threatened Canada with tariffs and could do so as a penalty for its low defense spending. That strategy could also be extended to other NATO countries that shirk their commitments.

    Our strong U.S. economy is in part because people around the world see the United States as not only victorious against our most dangerous enemies but also as a nation with a free-market democratic system as something that they trust, want to emulate, and in which they want to invest. After World War II, that impressive soft power made countries agree to choose New York and Washington as the headquarters of the world’s most important international institutions. But costly wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan have made most Americans rethink our role as the only “world’s policeman” who makes the world safe for democracy. At the very least, we also want our allies to shoulder their fair share.

    *  *  *

    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/20/2024 – 22:35

  • Rocking Around The Plastic Tree
    Rocking Around The Plastic Tree

    For some families, the search for the right Christmas tree is an annual event.

    However, as Statista’s Felix Richter reports, for large shares of Americans and Brits though, this search may have ended a long time ago – the perfect tree already sitting safely in the attic or garage, ready for its glorious but fleeting return to the living room.

    As new survey data from Statista Consumer Insights shows, it’s a different story in Germany.

    Infographic: Rocking Around the Plastic Tree | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    There, at the home of the Christmas tree tradition, the practice is still very much alive – 42 percent of adults said they would be putting up a real tree this year, compared to 26 percent in the U.S. and just 20 percent in the United Kingdom.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/20/2024 – 22:10

  • Never Underestimate The Power Of Unfinished Business
    Never Underestimate The Power Of Unfinished Business

    Authored by Robert Malone via The Brownstone Institute,

    The Fathomless Bottom of the Deep State

    The Senior Executive Service (SES) class of federal employees was created under President Carter through the passage of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. The SES was established to “…ensure that the executive management of the Government of the United States is responsive to the needs, policies, and goals of the Nation and otherwise is of the highest quality.”

    Another Carter-created component of the State, as is the Department of Education. The SES employees were supposed to ensure top performances in all the various agencies. That was the theory, but the reality is something entirely different, as is so often the case with these initiatives such as the “Department of Homeland Security.”

    Members of the SES serve in the key positions just below the top Presidential appointees. SES employees are the major link between these appointees and the rest of the Federal workforce. They operate and oversee nearly every government activity in approximately 75 Federal agencies. They are referred to as members by the Office of Personnel Management and are considered above “employee” designation. They are members of the SES, and don’t you forget that! Today’s SES runs the country.

    The SES even has its own flag (which has been largely removed from the government web pages since I last wrote about the SES in June of 2022). and their own non-profit agency called the Senior Executive Association (SEA), whose stated goal is to protect the rights of SES members – which lists both lobbying Congress and instituting legal action to protect SES member status. This non-profit acts like a union.

    SES members operate and oversee nearly every government activity in approximately 75 Federal agencies and serve in key positions just below the top Presidential appointees. Thus positioned, the SES bosses enforce political orthodoxy and fidelity to the deep state. They can act in this manner because their employment is virtually guaranteed. An SES employee’s job is so secure that an Agency Head cannot terminate an SES employee unless the Commissioner issues a certificate stating that the termination is in the public interest. Even then, the termination is subject to litigation.

    Barack Obama believed that the SES program should be expanded and, through a 2015 executive order, “Strengthening the Senior Executive Service,” sought to expand and “facilitate career executive continuity between administrations.” But more than that, his executive order implemented:

    “a comprehensive, integrated, and strategic focus on diversity and inclusion as a key component of the recruitment, hiring, retention, and development of their SES cadre.”

    Yep – the federal government has been using DEI-based hiring and promotions for the SES instead of merit, well…ever since Obama’s presidency.

    By May 31, 2016, agencies with 20 or more SES positions were tasked with developing a plan “to increase the number of SES members who are rotating to improve talent development, mission delivery, and collaboration.” 

    Obama’s other objective, other than securing more DEI employees, was to secure more loyal troops for the administration of his chosen successor, Hillary Clinton. Luckily, she then lost to Donald Trump. However, the increased number of SES employees, strengthening their stranglehold on government power and over the presidency, remained. 

    As it turns out, the Justice Department includes those elite, highly paid bosses from the Senior Executive Service. So does the Department of Homeland Security, from which the SES also deploys personnel into the Secret Service. As does just about every agency in the US government. As of 2018, there were almost 8,000 SES employees.

    The other important point about the SES is that the president has no role in choosing them; he can’t reassign them or fire them. The SES comprises the non-transparent group of managers and elites who run the country from within. They are the employees who quietly block, slow-walk, and defer presidential orders. What President Trump and Kash Patel might call the “deep state.” 

    In effect, our democracy has been turned upside down while being captured by bureaucratic and corporate interests that endorse authoritarian policies – hence, we are now living under a system of “inverted totalitarianism.” The United States has been co-opted into a managed democracy, thanks to Carter and Obama. 

    President Trump was stymied in his efforts to reform the government due to the SES cadre, and then he finally hit upon a solution.

    That is an executive order known as “Schedule F,” which he signed in October 2020, just prior to leaving office. Biden canceled the Schedule F executive order on the first day of his presidency. 

    This new employee classification system would have included federal workers in “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character,” which are “not normally subject to change as the result of a presidential transition.”

    The “Schedule F” executive order would have allowed agencies to reclassify policy jobs under a new employment schedule and had proposed to give senior managers greater flexibility in hiring candidates and firing employees. Hence, the SES employees would have functionally become “at-will” employees. At-will employment means that an employer can dismiss an employee for any reason, without having to establish “just cause” for termination, as long as the reason is not illegal. At-will employment is the law of the land in all states except Montana.

    President Trump stated that this executive order would be reinstated on day one. 

    But Not so Fast!

    On January 22, 2021, shortly after taking office, President Biden repealed the Schedule F executive order. This action prevented Schedule F from being implemented, as it had not yet taken effect when Trump left office.

    In September 2023, the Biden administration, through the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), began working on new regulations to make it difficult to reintroduce Schedule F policies.

    On April 4, 2024, OPM issued a final rule aimed at stopping potential future attempts to implement Schedule F or something similar. This rule ensured that the new civil service job protections couldn’t be removed by reimplementing Schedule F.

    However, all of these political machinations may come to naught.

    Remember the Chevron Deference?

    The Chevron deference was a key principle in U.S. administrative law for nearly 40 years, established by the Supreme Court in 1984 in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. It directed courts to defer to a federal agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute that the agency administers.

    This doctrine significantly empowered federal agencies by giving them considerable leeway in interpreting and implementing ambiguous statutory provisions. It essentially allowed the administrative state to create laws without Congressional oversight.

    However, in June 2024, the US Supreme Court overturned the Chevron doctrine in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The Court ruled that the Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, and courts may not defer to an agency’s interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous. 

    The end of Chevron Deference represents a major shift in administrative law, reducing the power of federal agencies and increasing judicial scrutiny of agency actions. One of the implications of the Chevron deference is the reduced power for federal agencies in interpreting laws. 

    How Does This Affect Schedule F?

    The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) may need to provide more robust justifications for its new policies regarding Schedule F, as it can no longer rely on the Chevron deference to support its interpretations of federal employment laws.

    The truth is that as soon as President Trump implements Schedule F, the Senior Executives Association may challenge it in court, and the OPM will use its new rules to fight it tooth and nail.

    Due to the Chevron deference, this legal fight may be aborted or short-circuited. Time will tell.

    On the Legislative Side

    In 2023, the House adopted an amendment to the annual defense authorization bill for 2023 that would prevent future administrations from reviving Schedule F or similar measures. However, during the reconciliation process between the House and Senate versions of the bill, the Schedule F ban was omitted from the final compromise version. The final version of the 2023 NDAA that was signed into law did not include the language banning future attempts at creating Schedule F, but Congress may pull those clauses out of the Democrat party’s bag of tricks at any time.

    The easiest way out of this quandary in the long term is for Congress to amend the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 to clarify the role of the SES employee and other employees within the federal government. This would be a permanent solution instead of a temporary bandaid.

    Republished from the author’s Substack

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/20/2024 – 21:45

  • Trump-Era Official Blasts Canada Over Fentanyl Super Labs & Transnational Crime Gangs 
    Trump-Era Official Blasts Canada Over Fentanyl Super Labs & Transnational Crime Gangs 

    President-elect Donald Trump’s threat to impose a sweeping 25% tariff on all goods and services from Canada, aimed at pressuring the neighbors to the north to curb cross-border fentanyl and human smuggling, has thrown Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government into a state of turmoil. 

    Trade between Canada and the US is the largest of any two nations, with cross-border trade totaling $926 billion in 2023—roughly $2.5 billion daily. This dark tariff reality for Trudeau of not responding adequately to Trump’s border security demand risks pushing Canada into an economic crisis. 

    In response, the Canadian government unveiled a new border security plan on Wednseday, costing about a billion dollars to strengthen border security with the US. 

    “President Trump is securing the border and he hasn’t even taken office yet,” Trump’s transition team wrote in a news release, adding, “Facing an uproar among his own citizens … embattled Prime Minister Justin Trudeau just announced a billion-dollar plan for major border security improvements and increased border patrols.” 

    The new border proposal outlines the deployment of drones, helicopters, and other advanced technologies along the 5,525-mile northern border.

    Despite Wednesday’s announcement, calls for Trudeau’s resignation continue to mount, while his approval ratings implode. The longer far-left Trudeau remains in power, the more his popularity will erode, with citizens frustrated by his years of incompetence.  

    David Asher, who previously led a Trump-era task force on fentanyl, commented on the border proposal. He appeared on CBC News Network earlier this week to share his insights.

    Asher told the CBC News host that the new border proposal “looks rather unimpressive” and is a “drop in the bucket compared to what we actually need.” 

    Asher then segued the conversation, stating that his “concerns go well beyond the border,” highlighting the expansion of fentanyl superlab production across Canada—much of which is destined for the US.

    “US law enforcement has a lot of sources telling us – that not only the Mexican cartels are setting up operations in Canada – but also Chinese organized crime – and even Iranian organized crime…” 

    He stated that all three organizations were tied into a massive bust in Vancouver of drugs and chemicals equal to more than 95 million pills. 

    Asher said whoever was running that superlab in Vancouver had their eyes on the US market. 

    “This has gotten to a point, with superlabs and super laundering networks and lack of super cooperation with the US, that these issues have irritated President Trump and others,” Asher concluded. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The question now is, will Canada’s new border proposal be enough to satisfy Trump?

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/20/2024 – 21:20

  • Parents' Rights Group Reveals Dept Of Ed Spent $1 Billion On DEI Since 2021
    Parents’ Rights Group Reveals Dept Of Ed Spent $1 Billion On DEI Since 2021

    Authored by Elad Vaida via Campus Reform,

    A parental rights group published a report showing that the Department of Education has spent enormous sums to promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

    Parents Defending Education works to “reclaim our schools from activists imposing harmful agendas.”

    It published its report on Dec. 12 demonstrating that, since 2021, the Department of Education has spent $1,002,522,304.81 to promote DEI at “universities, school districts, and nonprofits.”

    That sum includes $489,883,797.81 for “DEI Hiring,” $343,337,286 for “DEI Programming,” and $169,301,221 for “Based Mental health/Social Emotional Learning.” 

    Some of the report’s “key findings” include a $1,261,718 to the University of Iowa to “train 40 elementary teachers to ‘enact equity-centered education’ in partner K-12 districts.’”

    The report also highlights a $4 million grant to the Regents of the University of California, U.C. San Diego for a program to “directly engage high school youth from low-income, racial minoritized groups.”

    The federal government routinely pours great sums into promoting DEI in higher education. 

    In October, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) revealed it would hand out more than $7 million to six different universities to “grow initiatives in engineering-related disciplines and fields for learners who have historically been underrepresented and underserved in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.”

    NASA’s senior advisor for engagement and equity Shahra Lambert said the grants would help pave “the way for greater diversity in engineering and STEM.”

    The National Institutes of Health also granted more than $19 million to The City University of New York to found a new “Center for Minority Health, Equity and Social Justice.”

    Campus Reform reached out to Parents Defending Education for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/20/2024 – 20:55

  • Check Your WiFi Router Brand… US Mulls Ban On Chinese-Made TP-Link
    Check Your WiFi Router Brand… US Mulls Ban On Chinese-Made TP-Link

    Chinese TP-Link routers, the best-selling ones on Jeff Bezos’ Amazon, have been intensely scrutinized by US investigators due to links to multiple Chinese cyberattacks. This has prompted US officials to consider a potential ban on these routers, citing national security concerns. 

    Sources familiar with investigations at the Commerce, Defense, and Justice departments told the Wall Street Journal that a nationwide ban on TP-Link routers could come as soon as next year. 

    WSJ noted that the Shenzhen-based router manufacturer accounts for an alarming 65% of the US router market in homes and small businesses, adding, “It is also the top choice on Amazon.com, and powers internet communications for the Defense Department and other federal government agencies.”

    Sources told WSJ that some TP-Link routers shipped to the US have security flaws, and the company has resisted cooperating with security researchers to address the identified issues. 

    In October, Microsoft published a report that revealed a Chinese hacking group had access to thousands of compromised TP-Link routers. 

    “CovertNetwork-1658 specifically refers to a collection of egress IPs that may be used by one or more Chinese threat actors and is wholly comprised of compromised devices. Microsoft assesses that a threat actor located in China established and maintains this network. The threat actor exploits a vulnerability in the routers to gain remote code execution capability,” the report explained.

    When Microsoft published the report, TP-Link was already under scrutiny. In August, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party called for an investigation into TP-Link routers. 

    In the letter to Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, the lawmakers wrote, “TP-Link’s unusual degree of vulnerabilities and required compliance with PRC law are in and of themselves disconcerting. When combined with the PRC government’s common use of SOHO [small office/home office] routers like TP-Link to perpetrate extensive cyberattacks in the United States, it becomes significantly alarming.” 

    WSJ reported that Biden-Harris officials are exploring potential action against TP-Link in response to recent cyberattacks connected with China. The likely action could come during Trump’s second term. 

    The potential ban on TP-Link routers could mark the largest removal of Chinese tech from the US market since the Trump admin removed Huawei tech from America’s infrastructure.

    It might be a good time to check what type of router or mesh network you have before Trump takes office next month.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/20/2024 – 20:30

  • 'Hawk Tuah' Influencer Breaks Silence After Memecoin Rig-Pull Allegations
    ‘Hawk Tuah’ Influencer Breaks Silence After Memecoin Rig-Pull Allegations

    Authored by Turner Wright via CoinTelegraph.com,

    Hailey Welch, the influencer behind the viral ‘Hawk Tuah’ TikTok video, has released a statement after a memecoin bearing her handle pumped and dumped quickly after its December launch.

    In a Dec. 20 X post, Welch said she was “fully cooperating” with lawyers who represented investors in the Hawk Tuah (HAWK) token.

    The crypto users filed a lawsuit against the project’s creators and partners – Welch herself was not named as a defendant in the suit – alleging they engaged in the promotion and sale of an unregistered securities offering.

    A statement posted to X on Dec. 20. Source: Hailey Welch

    On Dec. 4, the HAWK token launched, rising to a market capitalization of roughly $500 million before quickly dropping by 90%, prompting many users to speculate there had been a rug pull.

    Welch called on anyone affected to contact lawyers, adding she took the situation “extremely seriously.”  

    From TikTok stardom to memecoin promoter?

    Welch, who rose to internet fame after a June clip of her describing a sexual act went viral on TikTok, has parlayed the incident into her Hawk Tuah nickname and brand.

    Her likeness was used on the HAWK token, and she promoted the memecoin on social media.

    According to blockchain data, one wallet sniped HAWK tokens shortly after the project launched, purchasing roughly 18% of the memecoin supply and then selling it for more than $1 million in profit.

    Many of the memecoin’s investors, however, reported massive losses after the price pumped and dumped.

    It’s unclear whether Welch or the project’s founders could face criminal or regulatory lawsuits in the United States as a result of the memecoin launch.

    Under Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler, the regulator has treated the majority of tokens as securities under its purview. However, the SEC is set to change hands to Republican control beginning in January.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/20/2024 – 20:05

  • Eggflation: Dozen-Pack At Supermarket Hit Record Highs As Bird Flu Ravages Farms
    Eggflation: Dozen-Pack At Supermarket Hit Record Highs As Bird Flu Ravages Farms

    New retail price data shows supermarket prices of a dozen eggs have soared to record highs. The surge comes amid an ever-expanding bird flu outbreak that has led to the culling of millions of birds, denting the size of the nation’s egg-laying hen population. 

    Bloomberg cited Expana data showing that a dozen eggs in the Midwest cost about $5.67 this week, exceeding the record high of $5.46 set in December 2022. 

    Source: Bloomberg

    Expana’s managing editor for eggs in the Americas, Karyn Rispoli, explained that a “potent combination of avian flu-related production losses and heightened retail demand throughout the holiday baking season” catapulted prices to record highs. 

    She said 17 million egg-laying hens and younger birds known as pullets had been culled since mid-October amid a surge in bird flu cases, adding that was one of the worst stretches in the current bird-flu outbreak since the virus first emerged in the nation’s flock in February 2022. 

    “The virus also jumped to other species including dairy cattle, while a person was hospitalized with a severe case of H5N1 bird flu in Louisiana this week,” Bloomberg noted. 

    Wholesale egg prices via the Urner Barry Egg Index are nearing record highs (again) …. 

    Last month, we noted. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    And pointed out in the November CPI print: “A quarter of the November rise in prices for final demand goods is attributable to a 54.6-percent jump in the index for chicken eggs.” 

    This comes as global food inflation has entered a dangerous phase of re-acceleration.

    The best way cash-strapped households can hedge over the elevated food inflation storm is to produce their own food. Whether it’s setting up a chicken coop, planting a garden, installing honeybee hives, or creating pastures for a few cows, now is the time to hedge against rising prices. It’s not just about prices – it’s also about health and security. Become ungovernable by taking back the food supply chain from the corrupt food industrial complex that heavily influences federal policy-making.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/20/2024 – 19:40

  • Yes, Abolish Daylight Saving Time
    Yes, Abolish Daylight Saving Time

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

    For all our lives, we’ve been subjected to forced seasonal time change. Spring forward, fall back. That’s how we learn from childhood how to remember this.

    We are also told the reason early on. We are extending daylight hours. But only a moment’s thought reveals this to be untrue. The light you gain from a one-hour change is borrowed from later in the day.

    Government cannot magically make the day longer.

    It’s like the old joke, supposedly from an “old Indian” who points out that you cannot make a blanket longer by cutting off one end and sewing it on the other.

    I’ve never met anyone who approves of this massive disruption in our sense of time. Some people prefer Standard Time, while others prefer Daylight Saving Time, depending on their area within a given zone. But regardless, it seems as if everyone agrees that we should stick to one version of time and not change it so brutally in the middle of a year.

    To be sure, all this became mechanically easier once time became digital. We don’t have to have friends, family, neighbors, and the TV yelling at us to turn back the clock or bump it forward. But it seems as if there are always a few clocks around that do not automatically change, such as the kitchen clock with the battery or the oven clock. Then we have to figure out how the stupid thing works and fuss with it, twice per year.

    Every study shows that this disruption is terrible for health, as it disrupts sleep patterns and contributes to mental fatigue and even depression. It is associated with increased hospital admissions and even car crashes. This should not shock us. Our bodies are regulated by patterns of the sun, more so than we know.

    Then there are the missed appointments.

    If everyone hates it so much, why does it persist? It keeps happening simply because it keeps happening. No one knows how to get rid of it. While there is widespread public hatred of the practice, there is no real lobbying force to do anything about it.

    Forced seasonal time disruptions are the paradigmatic case of a system that just keeps going on because no one really knows how to stop it, even though no one really likes it.

    Fortunately, President-elect Donald Trump has an uncanny sense of the public mood. He is the first political figure in my lifetime who has openly blasted Daylight Saving Time and sworn to end it on the federal level. If states want to keep it, fine. My prediction is that it will go away completely. That’s a good thing.

    Oddly, I find myself thrilled by this! It thoroughly confuses children, dogs, and adults, too. The whole crazy business began during World War I as a way to conserve energy and cause the daylight to arrive earlier in the day for purposes of munitions manufacturing. Others say there were some agricultural reasons, too.

    The reason that this all began had plenty to do with a fashionable scientism of the time. Elites had come to enjoy toying with all things under the general belief that mechanized schemes could override nature itself. This affected so much along with the rise of indoor lighting, flight, steel bridges, internal combustion, telegraphic communications, the telephone, and recorded sound. It seemed as if there was nothing that could not be engineered to perfection, even the rotations of the sun.

    Remember that a few decades earlier, there was already a huge controversy over time in the United States. When the railroads came along and gained political power, they pushed hard for unified schedules in zones so that people would not arrive at an earlier time at their destination than when they left.

    It was common before about 1885 that every town kept its own version of local time. How was that determined? Very simply: When the sun is overhead, that is noon. Surrounding areas generally deferred to the time on the city and town clocks. This also fits with the sundial. There were no time zones, but rather just normal time. Everyone knew what it was.

    Once the railroads came along, they lobbied mayors to adopt a more unified system. As a result, many acquiesced, much to the annoyance of many people who simply could not understand how it was that an industrial power could presume the right to define time in its own profitability interests.

    For some years, clocks in the United States commonly displayed the actual time (or local time) plus what they called railroad time.

    The railroads eventually prevailed. The United States was divided into four time zones, regardless of local time. For the first time in the history of the planet, the sundial no longer made any sense. What we called time was completely severed from any measurement of time drawn from natural patterns. We came to be managed by industry rather than reality.

    If you think about the sheer intellectual arrogance of that, it is rather shocking. I like to think that I would have been among the resistors to this ridiculous trick from 150 years ago.

    If you are curious about this, you can look up your actual time in your area right now. You can go to mysolartime.com and see exactly what time it really is right now, no matter what your smartphone says. From where I am typing right now, the actual time is nine minutes later than the clock says.

    I urge you to do this, and think about what this means. If you are really feeling rebellious, you can start adhering to your local time just for the fun of it.

    Up with local time and down with railroad time!

    In any case, there is something wonderful about how everyone seems to be rethinking everything in our times. It seems like we are getting rid of the fluoride in the water after more than half a century of awful medicalization via public water supplies.

    The effort to get rid of Daylight Saving Time is very similar, taking on an annoyance that should have ended long ago, finally through an authoritative voice who can do something about it.

    Yay! I’m thrilled. But if it were up to me, I would go further and directly target the time zones themselves. They are the real source of the problem and the reason why some people favor Daylight Saving Time and others favor Standard Time, depending on which side of the zone you live.

    The truth is that neither is correct. They are both fake versions of actual time. The actual time from the ancient world until relatively recently is a simple matter of the sun. When it is directly overhead, it is the noon hour or high noon. That’s it and nothing more. The rest follows from that.

    Again, we have tools now that can tell you with great precision what time it actually is.

    How to schedule meetings across long distances? The easy way is to use Coordinated Universal Time. It would take a day or two to get used to, but life would become so much easier. Just one time for the world for scheduling all things, and then we have local time, which is the time standard by which we live in the course of our lives. It’s what we should have done to begin with.

    Nonetheless, scrapping time changes is an obvious beginning. The 150-year history of government/industry intervention in time is the classic case of bad policy imposed to fix previous bad policy. It was never a good idea to replace real time with constructed/imposed time. Repealing Daylight Saving is a good start.

    Maybe if all goes well, we won’t be springing forward after all. How merciful that would be!

    *  *  *

    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/20/2024 – 19:15

  • Stoking Fears Of Rape By Coyotes, Texas To Use Mexican Billboards To Scare Migrants Off
    Stoking Fears Of Rape By Coyotes, Texas To Use Mexican Billboards To Scare Migrants Off

    Texas has launched a billboard campaign in four Central American countries that uses pointed language — some of it brutally frank — to scare away would-be illegal immigrants from trying to make the dangerous journey into the United States. 

    “[The billboards] give potential illegal immigrants thinking of leaving their home country — and those already on the way — a realistic picture of what will happen to them on their journey or if they illegally cross into Texas,” Gov. Greg Abbott said at a Thursday press conference. “These billboards tell the horror stories of human trafficking. They implore those people in Central America to consider the violent, horrific realities of what will happen to the women and children they bring with them.”

    “Your wife and daughter will pay for the trip with their bodies. Coyotes lie. Don’t put your family at risk.”

    Budgeted for approximately $100,000, the campaign has already placed 40 billboards in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico, along with some along the Mexican frontier. Consistent with Mexico’s role as a conduit that funnels immigrants from all over the world, many of the billboards use languages other than Spanish, including Arabic, Russian and Chinese.   

    With harsh messaging reminiscent of what some countries mandate for cigarette packaging, some of the 14 billboards unveiled on Thursday are viscerally brunt. They stoke fears not only imprisonment or kidnapping, but of wives and daughters being impregnated by rapists. Here’s a sampling:

    • “How much did you pay to have your daughter raped? Many girls are raped by the coyotes you hire.”

    • “Your wife and daughter will pay for the trip with their bodies. Coyotes lie. Don’t put your family at risk.”

    • “This fourteen-year-old girl was raped by more than 20 men on her way to the border. Protect your family. Change their fate.”

    • “Danger Ahead. If you cross into Texas illegally, you will regret it forever.”

    • “If you thought the journey to the border was harsh, just wait until you see what life in jail is like.”

    “This fourteen-year-old girl was raped by more than 20 men on her way to the border. Protect your family. Change their fate.”

    “There is a largely unspoken sexual assault crisis impacting women and children migrating to the Texas border,” said Rose Luna, CEO of the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault. “There have been several rape trees and lots of women who have been found beaten and raped in front of our house and left to die.”

    Rape trees are said to be places where coyotes sexually assault migrants, and then adorn the branches with the underwear of their victims. Thursday’s press conference was held next to what was described as a burned-down rape tree at Wall Ranch in Eagle Pass. Some knowledgeable people have expressed skepticism that the rape tree phenomenon is real, including South Texas sheriffs and the US Border Patrol — which is not to say migrants aren’t at high risk of sexual assault. 

    “How much did you pay to have your daughter raped? Many girls are raped by the coyotes you hire.”

    Abbott has set out to distinguish himself as an aggressive defender of the Texas border. He’s made headlines by shipping illegal immigrants to northern, Democratic cities. Earlier this year, Abbott announced the construction of a military base along the Rio Grand at the border city of Eagle Pass.  Forward Operating Base. Spanning 80-acres, “Forward Operating Base Eagle” will eventually house upwards of 1,800 Texas National Guard soldiers supporting Operation Lone Star — Texas’ border enforcement crackdown campaign — and will be expandable to house 2,300.  

    Texas National Guard soldiers stand in the backdrop of a February press conference announcing the construction of Forward Operating Base Eagle (KXAN News)

    Abbott’s groundbreaking Texas billboard campaign comes as Donald Trump is poised to return to the presidency, bringing with him a promised border and illegal-immigrant campaign even more aggressive than he pursued in his first term — to include mass deportations and an end to birthright citizenship.  

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/20/2024 – 18:50

  • Interpreting Putin's Remarks On Syria, Israel, And Turkiye
    Interpreting Putin’s Remarks On Syria, Israel, And Turkiye

    Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

    Putin commented on Syria’s regime change during his annual Q&A session on Thursday. According to him, Russia’s military intervention succeeded in its goal of preventing the creation of an Afghan-like terrorist enclave. The groups that just seized power there, including terrorist-designated and -affiliated ones, have apparently changed their views over the years. That’s why the West wants to establish relations with them. The regime change therefore can’t be seen as a defeat for Russia.

    Putin then defended his armed forces’ conduct during recent events by claiming that Russia no longer had any ground troops in Syria. Moreover, the estimated 30,000 Syrian and “pro-Iranian units” that were defending Aleppo surrendered the city to just 350 militants, after which they gave up the rest of the country to them too with few exceptions. He also revealed that Russia evacuated 4,000 Iranian fighters to Tehran while other allied units fled to Lebanon (a reference to Hezbollah) and Iraq without a fight.

    As for the future of Russian influence in Syria, Putin claimed that “The overwhelming majority of [the groups that control the situation there] tell us that they would be interested in our military bases remaining”. He then proposed that they could be used to deliver humanitarian aid. The main beneficiary of the latest events is Israel, in his opinion, since they’ve practically demilitarized Syria and expanded their occupation zone in the country. He condemned those moves and hoped that they’d leave someday.

    Putin also took the opportunity to condemn Israel’s illegal settlements in Palestine as well as its ongoing military operation in Gaza. These are all consistent Russian positions and nothing new. Observers might have been surprised though that he didn’t also condemn Turkiye. Instead, he explained that “Turkey is doing everything to ensure its security on its southern borders as the situation in Syria develops”, which he said is aimed at returning refugees and “push[ing] back Kurdish formations on the border.”

    In connection with that second imperative, Putin expressed hope that there won’t be an aggravation of the situation like some have reported that Turkiye is planning. He also said that “we need to solve the Kurdish problem. Within the framework of Syria under President Assad, this had to be solved, now we need to solve it with the authorities that control the territory of Syria, and Turkey needs to somehow ensure its security. We understand all this.” This basically amounts to giving Turkiye a free pass in Syria.

    Putin’s apparent double standard towards the similar issues of Turkish and Israeli military involvement in post-Assad Syria can be explained by Russia’s complex interdependence with the former. They’re closely tied together through nuclear energy cooperation, air defense systems (S-400s), natural gas, trade, and Istanbul’s prior role in mediating between Moscow and Kiev. By contrast, although Israel hasn’t armed Ukraine nor sanctioned Russia, there’s much less trade and no military-technical cooperation.

    There are also optics to consider as well. Although Syria is still politically divided and Turkiye does indeed back the UN-designated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorist group, there’s no denying that many Syrians support Ankara as do many other Muslims in the region. The same can’t be said for Israel, which is universally reviled in Syria, except among some of the Druze that welcomed the self-professed Jewish State’s forces, and fiercely hated by most Muslims in the region.

    It’s therefore better for Russia’s soft power interests to criticize Israel for occupying part of Syria while remaining silent about Turkiye doing the same thing. Likewise, considering the domestic and regional mood, it also makes sense for Putin to remind everyone about the pro-Iranian units’ cowardice in giving up cities without a fight and then fleeing abroad. After all, “Russia Dodged A Bullet By Wisely Choosing Not To Ally With The Now-Defeated Resistance Axis”, so it has no reason to sugarcoat what they did.

    Altogether, Putin’s remarks on Syria, Israel, and Turkiye show that Russia eschews responsibility for what just happened in Syria, condemns Israel for its ongoing invasion there, and downplays Turkiye’s own. This is a coldly realist and ultra-pragmatic approach to the latest developments that fully aligns with Russia’s national interests as Putin sincerely understands them to be. It also contradicts the expectations that many members of the diverse non-Mainstream Media community had of him condemning Turkiye.

    As can be seen, Putin doesn’t really care that Turkiye is a NATO member nor that it patronizes terrorist-designated HTS since he’s always insisted that the most important factor in their contemporary ties is the excellent working relationship that he has with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Russian leader sang his praises in October 2022 while speaking at the Valdai Club’s annual meeting when he was asked about whether his views on him had changed over the past two years. Here’s what he said:

    “He is a competent and strong leader who is guided above all, and possibly exclusively, by the interests of Turkiye, its people and its economy…President Erdogan never lets anyone get a free ride or acts in the interests of third countries…But there is a desire on both sides to reach agreements, and we usually do it. In this sense, President Erdogan is a consistent and reliable partner. This is probably his most important trait, that he is a reliable partner.”

    Putin wasn’t playing “5D chess to psyche out Turkiye” like some members of the diverse non-Maisntream Media community imagined at the time but was candidly sharing his views about Erdogan. Those who took his words seriously therefore knew better than to expect him to condemn Turkiye for its actions in Syria. Putin’s responsibility is to ensure Russia’s national interests, not conform to his online supporters’ fantasies about him spewing this or that talking point, which requires maximum flexibility.

    “Non-Russian Pro-Russians” and even some Russians might be disappointed with his position towards recent events in Syria, but they should at least understand the reasons behind it. Russia couldn’t stop what just happened, which was the result of the Syrian Arab Army’s and pro-Iranian units’ cowardice in the face of the foreign-backed terrorist-driven blitz, and it won’t go to war with Turkiye over this either. By adapting to this new reality, Putin now has the best possible chance of advancing Russian interests.

    It doesn’t mean that he’ll succeed, but there’s no guarantee of failure as would have been the case had he criticized Turkiye after being unable to stop it and unwilling to go to war with it afterwards. Even if things don’t work out like he envisages, Russia’s mutually beneficial bilateral ties with Turkiye won’t be jeopardized, nor will his country’s soft power be damaged since it’s not opposed to the outcome that the domestic and regional majority support. Putin’s pragmatic hedging therefore preserves Russian interests.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/20/2024 – 18:25

  • CNN Reveals "Troubling" Poll: American Trust In Vaccines Is Plummeting
    CNN Reveals “Troubling” Poll: American Trust In Vaccines Is Plummeting

    American trust in medical institutions and vaccine technology has been plunging the past several years, and though the media treats this as a “troubling” and dangerous development for our society the shift might represent a positive change.  The activities of Big Pharma have gone largely unchecked and unchallenged for many decades.  The FDA has a revolving door policy, allowing pharmaceutical executives to exit their companies and work at the agency with impunity, then leave again and return to their former jobs.  It’s not hard to understand how this creates a serious conflict of interest at the FDA.

    This problem of corruption was never more clear than it was during the covid pandemic.  Since that event, the US population has been losing faith in the ability of the government to scrutinize pharmaceutical products and protect people from potentially disastrous experimental medications and vaccines.  When the love affair between government and Big Pharma was put on blatant display, the American people rightly began to question everything.

    Recently, CNN unveiled a poll which proves that US faith in vaccines is in steep decline.  

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The reality is that the vaccines were largely unnecessary.  Infections and fatalities were dropping rapidly well before the first vaccines were introduced to the public, likely because of natural immunity.  Later spikes only prove that the vaccines had minimal effect on the spread of the virus.  

    At the height of the pandemic frenzy, the average Infection Fatality Rate of the Covid virus was a tiny 0.23%.  Meaning, 99.8% of the public was under no threat from the illness.  Furthermore those that did become dangerously sick were often elderly people with preexisting conditions.   

    This fact was reinforced by data showing that the vast majority of deaths from covid were among people with at least one comorbidity.  If a person died after years of diabetes or cardiovascular disease, but they also had covid, the default of the medical establishment was to list the death as covid related.  That is to say, deaths from covid and deaths from preexisting conditions were mixed together without regard for how this might affect public statistics.

    It should also be noted that the IFR of covid did not change from pre-vaccination conditions to post-vaccination conditions.  The death rate was the same regardless of vaccination status, though CDC, WHO and Big Pharma analysis often failed to use unvaccinated people as a control group.  This was likely done deliberately to hide the bigger picture from the public.

    Instead, the establishment would use stats like CFR (Case Fatality Rate) or “Mortality Odds”, which discount asymptomatic cases and greatly overestimate the true rate of death.  Few establishment media outlets ever mentioned the real Infection Fatality Rate through the entirety of the pandemic.  

    The goal was to pump up the covid death count as high as possible in order to frighten the public into accepting experimental mRNA vaccinations that were rushed into production under FDA emergency approval.  The average vaccine is tested for many years (sometimes a decade or more) in order to meet safety standards.  Covid vaccines were slapped together and shipped out in less than 12 months.  The action was hailed as a “medical miracle”, but the truth is that it was a massive gamble at best, and a draconian con at worst.

    Governments around the world exploited pandemic fears and used unprecedented leverage to force the public into taking the jab.  Keep in mind that the Biden Administration almost gained the power to penalize companies employing workers without proof of vaccination (vaccine passports).  That is to say, the government under Biden tried to erase constitutional protections and take people’s jobs away unless they submitted to regular vaccines. It was an epic authoritarian sprint.   

    They were only thwarted because of the Supreme Court and the courage of conservative red states defying the agenda. The covid event has created a culture of distrust when it comes to vaccine science.  Now, the public wants independent investigations and assurances on vaccines to prove safety rather than simply taking the FDA and Big Pharma at their word.  It’s not so much a movement against vaccines – It’s a movement to demand transparency, something which Americans should have had to begin with.              

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/20/2024 – 18:00

  • Florida Officials Say Federal Government Has "Stonewalled" State Investigation Into Would-Be Trump Assassin
    Florida Officials Say Federal Government Has “Stonewalled” State Investigation Into Would-Be Trump Assassin

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

    Florida’s governor and attorney general on Dec. 18 accused the federal government of blocking a state investigation into Ryan Wesley Routh, the man accused of attempting to assassinate then-former President Donald Trump at his Florida golf course.

    Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody alleged that the Department of Justice informed the state that it had to suspend its investigation into Routh, citing a federal law about prosecuting crimes against significant public figures.

    “It was made known that they intended to shut down our investigation and invoke federal jurisdiction in doing so,” Moody said Dec. 18 at a press conference.

    “We didn’t believe it should be interpreted in the way that they suggested.”

    At the same time, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote that the federal government has “stonewalled Florida’s investigation of the Trump assassination attempt at every turn” and that he supports Moody’s attempts to move forward in their case against Routh.

    “The tide will turn on January 20th and we fully expect that the federal roadblocks will be removed,” he wrote on social media, referring to the date that Trump will take office.

    “The would-be assassin needs to face the full force of justice and the people deserve the truth about the defendant’s history, motivations and plan.”

    The Department of Justice did not respond to an Epoch Times request for comment on Dec. 19.

    At the same time, Moody’s office obtained a warrant for Routh’s arrest in mid-September, hours after he was allegedly discovered lying in wait for Trump armed with a rifle in Palm Beach County, Florida. After reportedly being shot at by a Secret Service agent, he fled and was arrested on Interstate 95 in Martin County.

    After his arrest, a car crash occurred that injured a 6-year-old girl traveling with her family, Moody said during a press conference. The crash occurred in connection with the pursuit of Routh along the interstate, according to officials.

    “As a result of that [accident], we felt compelled to seek justice on her behalf and her family that will never be the same as they cope with her injuries,” she said at a press briefing on Dec. 18.

    Moody said the crash occurred after officials shut down traffic on I-95 as they tried to apprehend the suspect. A spokesperson for Moody said prosecutors will file the new charge when Routh is in state custody.

    The multi-vehicle crash happened about 30 minutes after Routh’s arrest on I-95, according to the state’s investigation, but Moody alleged it was a result of his actions as he was attempting to evade capture. The girl suffered serious injuries, Moody’s office stated.

    According to an arrest warrant affidavit for Routh, the accident occurred while authorities were apprehending him, about three or four miles south of where they stopped his vehicle.

    Northbound traffic along the major interstate was halted because of the risk of the traffic stop and because it was not clear whether any weapons or explosives were inside Routh’s car, according to the affidavit. Southbound traffic was also halted as officials attempted to investigate his vehicle.

    On Sept. 15, the Secret Service stated that one of its agents allegedly discovered Routh with his gun barrel sticking through Trump’s course perimeter fence as the then-former president was playing a round of golf. The agent opened fire on Routh, prompting him to flee in his vehicle before sheriff’s officials and other law enforcement arrested him along I-95 later that day.

    Federal prosecutors said that Routh, whose residence is listed in Hawaii, allegedly waited for the president for about 12 hours and that cellphone data revealed he was in the area around Trump’s golf course and Mar-a-Lago for a month before the alleged assassination attempt.

    Later, prosecutors said they discovered Routh had written a note that was left with an acquaintance. The note admitted he wanted to assassinate Trump because of the decision by the first Trump administration to withdraw the United States from the Iran nuclear deal that was signed by the Obama administration. Social media accounts associated with Routh also showed he was an avid supporter of Ukraine during the Russia–Ukraine conflict and had attempted to recruit people to fight.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/20/2024 – 17:40

  • US Reveals It Has More Than Twice As Many Troops In Syria Than Previously Disclosed
    US Reveals It Has More Than Twice As Many Troops In Syria Than Previously Disclosed

    Only now after the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad does Washington come clean about the actual number of American troops it has in Syria.

    On Thursday, the Pentagon revealed it has roughly 2,000 troops occupying northeast Syria, home to the country’s vital supply of oil and gas, which is over twice the number it has been officially disclosing for years.

    The US has occupied Syria’s oil and gas regions for years.

    US military spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said this has been the figure for a “while”—apparently long before the dramatic events of this month. Ryder claimed the he had just “learned” the true troop number.

    “As you know, we have been briefing you regularly that there are approximately 900 US troops deployed to Syria. In light of the situation in Syria and the significant interest, we recently learned that those numbers were higher, and so asked to look into it. I learned today that in fact there are approximately 2,000 US troops in Syria,” he said.

    He then tried to pass off the discrepancy as merely a distinction between the 900 long term deployments and those forces rotating in on a more temporary basis.

    Map source: @MeesEnergy

    “As I understand it and as it was explained to me, these additional forces are considered temporary rotational forces that deploy to meet shifting mission requirements, whereas the core 900 deployers are on longer-term deployments,” Ryder said.

    The Pentagon and CENTCOM have also recently been reviving talk of the ‘counter-ISIS’ mission as justification for keeping the US occupation ongoing. This even as NATO member Turkey has been seeking to drive out the Kurdish-led SDF from northern Syria, which the US backs.

    The Biden administration has also this week said it is in direct contact with designated terror organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which holds Damascus and major cities. 

    Obviously this is some absurd gaslighting of the American public by the Pentagon. The question remains: why reveal it now?

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    The US is likely to use its possession of the oil and gas fields in Deir Ezzor, which was previously vital to meeting the Syrian population’s domestic consumption needs, as leverage to get HTS leadership to fall in line with Washington’s agenda for the region.

    The US had long occupied the energy fields in the first place in order to tighten the economic blockade noose around Assad’s neck, but ultimately it is the common people who suffer most.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/20/2024 – 17:20

  • Judge Rejects Federal Government Request, Allows Derek Chauvin To Examine George Floyd's Heart
    Judge Rejects Federal Government Request, Allows Derek Chauvin To Examine George Floyd’s Heart

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

    A federal judge has turned down the federal government’s bid to stop Derek Chauvin from examining George Floyd’s heart tissue.

    “The Court is not persuaded by the Government’s arguments, which provide no compelling reason that the Court should change its previous determination,” U.S. District Judge Paul A. Magnuson said in a two-page order filed on Dec. 19.

    The order granting Chauvin’s motion to examine Floyd’s heart tissue will stand, he said.

    Magnuson on Dec. 16 ruled that Chauvin can test substances preserved from Floyd’s autopsy, including his blood and heart tissue. Chauvin is attempting to prove the theory that Floyd’s death was not related to the restraint that Chauvin applied to Floyd in Minnesota in May 2020.

    Chauvin, a police officer in Minneapolis at the time, was later charged and convicted of murdering Floyd.

    The present development involves Chauvin’s argument that his former attorney did not adequately represent him.

    An expert named Dr. William Schaetzel had contacted the attorney and offered his opinion that Floyd’s death stemmed from factors other than the restraint, but the attorney did not pass along the opinion, according to Chauvin.

    Schaetzel said the death was caused by a heart attack. Chauvin said the testing could support the opinion.

    “Given the significant nature of the criminal case that Mr. Chauvin was convicted of, and given that the discovery that Mr. Chauvin seeks could support Dr. Schaetzel’s opinion of how Mr. Floyd died, the Court finds that there is good cause to allow Mr. Chauvin to take the discovery that he seeks,” Magnuson said in his Dec. 16 order.

    The U.S. Department of Justice then filed a motion asking the judge to reconsider. Government lawyers said that Chauvin could not show ineffective counsel, in part because another expert had already offered a similar opinion during Chauvin’s trial.

    The lawyers also said that if the judge turned down the Justice Department’s motion, he should enter an amended order granting discovery to the government as well as to Chauvin.

    “The government specifically requests access to expert disclosures for any expert Defendant intends to call at a hearing (including each expert’s qualifications and a full explanation of any opinions and the bases therefore), as well as all lab reports and test results generated by any lab to which Defendant submits requests,” they wrote.

    Magnuson denied that request, although he said he expects the government will be able to access the test results.

    “The Court expects the parties to cooperate in the discovery process, allowing the Government reasonable access to any lab reports, test results, and expert disclosures,” he said. “The Court will not issue a separate order to that end.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/20/2024 – 17:00

  • Et Tu Jagmeet? Trudeau Game Over Looms As Key Ally Vows To Topple Him
    Et Tu Jagmeet? Trudeau Game Over Looms As Key Ally Vows To Topple Him

    In what could be the final act of a political drama swirling around Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jagmeet Singh has thundered in with a no-confidence motion that could topple the government, Reuters reports.

    “We will put forward a clear motion of non-confidence in the next sitting of the House of Commons,” said Singh.

    The motion, set to unfold as the House of Commons returns from winter recess on January 27, has sent shockwaves through Ottawa’s political corridors already rattled by internal Liberal strife and a high-profile cabinet resignation.

    Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre wants to ‘urgently’ reconvene parliament so that lawmakers can hold a no-confidence vote ahead of schedule.

    The undercurrents of discontent have been bubbling for months, but the situation came to a head when Chrystia Freeland, Trudeau’s stalwart Finance Minister, abruptly vacated her post amid a cloud of controversy. Sources close to the matter cite irreconcilable differences over policy directions and leadership style, with Freeland’s departure exposing cracks in the Liberal foundation.

    [W]hen Trudeau informed Freeland five days later that she would soon be out as finance minister, she was deeply upset. Mark Carney, the former Bank of Canada governor and a darling of global markets, was taking over, Trudeau told her. But he had another important job in mind for her: a cabinet role managing Canada’s suddenly fraught relations with the US and President-elect Donald Trump. It did not, however, come with running a government department.

    …

    Freeland was having none of it. To her, this was a major demotion — one delivered over a Zoom call, no less. She spent the weekend agonizing over how to respond, according to people familiar with the course of events — stewing with the same frustration she had experienced in the summer, when reports emerged that Trudeau was courting Carney as her possible replacement. –Bloomberg

    Meanwhile, Trudeau reshuffled his cabinet on Friday, days after Freeland’s departure. Ontario MP David McGuinty was named Canada’s minister of public safety, while Nathaniel Erskine-Smith has been named the new housing minister.

    Amid this backdrop, Singh’s declaration couldn’t be more dramatically timed to twist the knife. In a scathing open letter, he lambasted Trudeau’s leadership, painting the Liberal government as too entangled in internal conflicts and corporate interests to effectively govern. Sing’s letter sets the stage for a potential early election if the no-confidence vote gathers steam across opposition benches​.

    As Singh points out, the cost of living and housing crises are hitting Canadians hard, and with Trump-era tariffs looming, economic pressures could intensify, making the political stakes even higher.

    Political pundits suggest voter fatigue with the Liberals is palpable. A slew of recent polls underscores a grim forecast for Trudeau’s party, which could face a drubbing at the polls if an election were called today. The political landscape in Canada is crackling with anticipation of a shake-up as the NDP appears to pivot away from its previous support of the minority government, a move that could redraw the lines of allegiance within the House of Commons​.

    As January 27 looms, all eyes will be on Ottawa.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/20/2024 – 16:40

  • "He Has Good Days & Bad Days": WSJ Exposes Concerted Effort To Conceal Biden's Mental Decline
    “He Has Good Days & Bad Days”: WSJ Exposes Concerted Effort To Conceal Biden’s Mental Decline

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    In an explosive exposé, the Wall Street Journal has revealed how the mental decline of President Joe Biden was pronounced from the start of his term. However, cabinet members and other Democrats lied to the public about his declining levels of acuity and engagement. That effort succeeded largely with the help of an alliance with the media, which showed little interest in whether the President was actually running the government.

    After President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, the solid wall of media and staff shielding his declining mental state collapsed. Even after Special Counsel Robert Hur declined criminal charges against Biden due to his diminished state, Democratic pundits and the press covered for him, claiming that he was sharp and effective. With the debate, the public was able to see what many in the media and the White House had been hiding for years.

    After interviewing roughly 50 insiders, the Journal found evidence of a knowing effort to hide Biden’s mental state. For many, Biden’s refusal to leave his home for much of the 2020 campaign was evidence of the insecurity of staff about his ability to engage with reporters. It only got worse during the term as staff virtually tackled anyone trying to ask him a question. Biden was routinely shuffled off stage after reading briefly from a teleprompter.

    Behind the scenes, cabinet members reportedly stopped asking for meetings with Biden after staff conveyed that such requests were not welcomed. He held far fewer cabinet meetings and was often considered “down” for any discussions. That included a period during the calamity of the Afghan withdrawal.

    One official is quoted as admitting on one occasion in 2021 that Biden “has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day so we’re going to address this tomorrow.” That was just after he was elected.

    Yet, Biden was kept within the protective cocoon of media that did not press the issue and was infamous for ignoring scandals while asking Biden about his choice of ice cream on a given day.

    Now, some media outlets are re-positioning on the issue as they prepare to resume hard questioning and investigations in the new Trump Administration . . . after a four-year hiatus.

    Suddenly, everyone is shocked to learn that Biden was mentally diminished and blaming nameless staff for misleading them.

    One exception this week was Chris Cillizza, who served as CNN’s editor-at-large before leaving the network in 2022.

    On YouTube, Cillizza stated, “As a reporter, I have a confession to make” and admitted “I should have pushed harder earlier for more information about Joe Biden’s mental and physical well-being and any signs of decline.”

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    Now, everyone likes a redemptive sinner and I give Cillizza credit for admitting his own failure to pursue the story despite many critics objecting for years over the lack of such inquiries.

    However, Cillizza only confessed to failing to pursue the story due to a fear of being accused of “age shaming” Biden. The suggestion is that identity politics chilled journalism, not the overwhelming media support for the President and countervailing opposition to Trump.

    The “age shaming” excuse is difficult to square with the failure to pursue an array of other scandals during the term from influence peddling to policy debacles.

    Nevertheless, Cillizza was remarkably frank that he was only able to push on the story after leaving CNN:

    “I didn’t really push on it, if I’m being honest. Now, once I left CNN and once it became a little bit more clear to me about Biden’s age, I think I did write pretty regularly and talk pretty regularly about how I wasn’t sure that this guy was up to it. And then obviously, after the June 27 debate, everybody, including me, was writing and talking about it.”

    Putting Cillizza’s statement aside, there is a notable effort by some in the media to retroactively resume journalism after years of docile coverage on issues such as Biden’s incapacity.

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    The belated interest in the story reflects not only the limits of modern journalism but the limits of the 25th Amendment. From the outset, there was concern over Biden’s acuity and stamina within the White House. It was hidden from the public. His cabinet members like DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, and others quashed claims of any diminishment with first-hand testimonials about how sharp and impressive the President was in meetings. Vice President Kamala Harris echoed those claims.

    The Vice President and the cabinet are essential to the removal process under the 25th Amendment. Section 4 allows the removal of a president. One option is what I have called the “mutiny option.” It requires a vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to declare that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” and notify Congress that the vice president intends to take over. If Vice President Kamala Harris could get eight Cabinet officers to go along with a letter to Congress, her status as the “Acting President” would likely be short-lived. Joe Biden would only have to declare to Congress that “no inability exists.” Biden would then resume his powers. That would then trigger a congressional fight.

    In reality, the Biden term shows how they can often be part of the cover-up.

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    The 25th Amendment also does not define incapacity and having “good days and bad days” is unlikely to suffice. As I previously discussed, the issue of “disability” of a president was briefly raised in the Constitutional Convention in 1787.  It was a delegate from Biden’s home state of Delaware who asked how they would respond to a disability, “and who is to be the judge of it?” John Dickinson’s question was left unanswered in the final version of the Constitution.

    What followed were persistent controversies over succession. This issue came to a head after President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered a stroke. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Congress finally addressed the issue in the 25th Amendment. The amendment addresses the orderly succession of power as well as temporary disabilities when presidents must undergo medical treatment or surgeries.

    This process is even more unlikely to occur when the media has formed a protective line around a president.

    The problem was never “age shaming,” it was a shameless effort to shield this president from tough questions and public exposure.

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    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 12/20/2024 – 16:20

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Dec 20

Today’s News 20th December 2024

  • Would A Trump-Putin Agreement Bring Peace To Ukraine Or Just Set The Stage For More War?
    Would A Trump-Putin Agreement Bring Peace To Ukraine Or Just Set The Stage For More War?

    Authored by Jim Jatras via The Ron Paul Institute

    “I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.” – Winston Churchill, 1942

    Many Americans, even a lot who never much cared for Donald Trump, voted for him in part because they believed – or at least hoped – that he would be, relatively speaking, a peace candidate compared to the hideous Biden-Harris record. To his credit, Trump’s first term was the only US presidency since Jimmy Carter’s not to get us embroiled in a new conflict, though he failed to extricate us from Afghanistan or Syria.

    Such hopes need to be balanced against other aspects of Trump’s earlier tenure in office. Notably, on Ukraine, he oversaw provision of lethal aid to Kiev that had been denied by Barack Obama. Put another way, it was under Trump that Ukraine built up a NATO army in all but name, setting the stage for the February 2022 escalation of the conflict that had been brewing since the 2014 coup midwifed by Victoria Nuland.

    Trump has said he would end the Ukraine conflict in 24 hours, indeed, even before he takes office. While never unveiling anything resembling an actual plan, he has indicated that his “art of the deal” trademark bluster and threats would be applied to both Ukraine (terminate all aid if Kiev refuses to negotiate!) and Russia (vastly increase aid to Ukraine if Moscow refuses to negotiate!). The supposedly “transactional” President-elect is seemingly unflustered by little details like how, if both Russia and Ukraine balk at talks, he could simultaneously increase and cut off US assistance. Five-dimensional chess indeed!

    While the thought of Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence is balm for every peace-loving soul, the rest of Trump’s announced second-term team is anything but reassuring: Marco Rubio as Secretary of State and Michael Waltz as National Security Adviser, with supporting roles at the NSC by Sebastian Gorka and special envoy for Ukraine-Russia Keith Kellogg, all of whom have a record of the standard bellicose chest-thumping with respect to evil, evil Russia and our cuddly “democratic” “ally” Ukraine.

    As Trump prepares to take office next month, one thing should always be kept in mind: like Winston Churchill with respect to the British Empire, Donald Trump has not returned to the Oval Office in order to preside over the liquidation of the Global American Empire (the GAE). Rather, all indications are that he seeks to disengage the US from the Ukraine conflict in a way that avoids total, humiliating defeat for NATO (and, probably, that organization’s long-overdue dissolution) in order to “pivot” to the Middle East and a looming war with Iran following a return to his “maximum pressure” policy. The encore will be the Really, Really Big Showdown with China. Hence Trump’s call for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine.

    What of the other side? Russian President Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and other top Kremlin and Duma figures have made it clear that Moscow has had enough with “non-agreement capable” Washington after repeated Western deceptions: on NATO expansion (“not one inch eastward”), the status of Kosovo (UN Security Council Resolution 1244 providing for its autonomy within Serbia, trashed by the US-sponsored unilateral declaration of independence in 2008), the February 2014 power-sharing agreement in Ukraine between then-President Viktor Yanukovich and his opposition (a dead letter before even one night had passed), the February 2015 Minsk 2 agreement on the status of the Donbass that was unanimously endorsed by the UN Security Council (but later admitted by Angela Merkel and other western leaders to have been a ruse to allow time to build up Kiev’s forces for a Blitzkrieg), and the failed April 2022 Ukraine-Russia agreement initialed at Istanbul (torpedoed by Boris Johnson with US backing).

    Accordingly, the Russians have made it clear that they will accept no temporary truces, no ceasefires, no more promises made to be broken like piecrusts, no pauses as cynical tricks to get the Russians to forgo their current and growing military advantage. (Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president and the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, even suggested recently that new regions could soon be added to Russia. Putin recently re-floated the concept of Novorossiya, “New Russia,” a region of Imperial Russia that included Odessa.) No, they insist, there must be either a genuine, definitive, binding settlement that ensures a lasting peace based on mutual security, or Russian forces will press on until their objectives – notably “demilitarization and denazification” of Ukraine – are achieved militarily. Such an outcome would mean at least replacement of the current regime in Kiev and, more likely, the end of Ukraine’s statehood.

    For the West, this would constitute a total debacle of Afghanistan-like proportions effectively signaling the end of US hegemony in Europe, the GAE’s crown jewel. What can Trump offer the Russians to avoid that?

    Moscow’s latest peace proposal was voiced by Putin in June 2024, in which he specified that he’s willing to negotiate at any time but will not halt military operations until Kiev withdraws its forces from the four oblasts that, in addition to Crimea, Moscow claims to be part of Russia: Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson, Notably, this would include the cities of Zaporozhye and Kherson, under Kiev’s control as of this writing. (In fact, contrary to propaganda from the usual suspects, Putin has never rejected talks, unlike Ukrainian former-president-but-still-playing-the-role Vladimir Zelensky, who in October 2022 issued a decree forbidding talks with Russia as long as Putin is in office.)

    Putin’s June proposal was dismissed out of hand by Kiev and its western backers. Given Moscow’s rejection of a ceasefire at the conflict’s line of control, things are at a seeming impasse.

    But are they?

    With the rapid and accelerating advance of Russian forces, the physical distinction between the military line of confrontation (a freeze line rejected by Moscow) and the constitutional limits of the four oblasts (evacuation of which Moscow demands) becomes less every day. That is, the territorial question – which Russia has never stated to be paramount in its goals for launching its “Special Military Operation” (SMO) in the first place – becomes less of an issue.

    Rather, the real question for the Trump Administration becomes a political one of how much wiggle room there is in the Russians’ stated determination not to rely on more promises of the sort that have been repeatedly broken in the past. Put another way: if Trump-Lucy wants to avoid utter defeat in the European theater of the worldwide confrontation between the GAE and BRICS-Eurasia, so he can get on to mixing it up with Iran and China, can he dupe Putin-Charlie Brown into taking another run at the football?

    I think he at least has a good shot at it. Keep in mind that, despite the ubiquitous narrative, Putin is neither a dictator nor a hardliner toward the West. Regarding the former, he’s a balancer in a system that still retains many (too damn many, in my opinion) western liberals dying to see the day they can again send their snotty kids back to elite western universities and their fat wives and svelte mistresses shopping at Harrods, while saluting a rainbow flag raised over Lenin’s Mausoleum. As to the latter, as lately demonstrated by his restrained response to ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles launched into pre-1991 Russia by NATO personnel from Ukrainian territory, Putin has shown a dogged determination to come to an understanding with his Western “partners” long after it became clear to everyone (except him, evidently) that they have no intention of ever getting along with him or Russia but are hell-bent on destroying both. (“Hello, Volodya? It’s me, Bashar. I’m out front of Resurrection Gate, near Zhukov’s statue …)

    Far from the “shock and awe” demonstrated by the United States in Serbia, Iraq, Libya, etc., or Netanyahu’s in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, Putin’s light military footprint in Ukraine – the limited size of the incursion force, declining to destroy the Dnepr bridges, limited (but now increasing) attacks on infrastructure, the pullback of Russian forces from Kiev as a good will gesture before the 2022 Istanbul talks, not eliminating Kiev regime leaders who’d kill him if they could – all point to a strategy based on accepting a reasonable deal if one might be presented, not on settling things by force of arms, 1945-style. (It’s largely forgotten now that at the outset of the conflict foreign embassies decamped from Kiev and moved to Lvov in the far west, and consideration was even given for the Zelensky regime to abandon Ukraine entirely and establish a government in exile, in the expectation that Russia would quickly overrun the whole country – then face an Afghan-type insurgency that would bleed Russia white, leading to regime-change in Moscow.) Unexpectedly, the Russians didn’t behave as the West had anticipated. Instead, it’s clear their approach was “pedagogical” from the start: show the West they mean business so they’ll come to the table. It is also suggested that a deal, not a military resolution, would be preferable to Putin’s BRICS partners, whose opinion he can’t afford to ignore.

    The frustration this approach has caused in the Russian military and in large sectors of the public is well known. That said, as observed by Moscow-based John Helmer, Putin may deem that his high levels of public support allow him to accept a settlement that falls short of, or at least redefines, his SMO goals as originally stated. It’s an open question whether that support could be sustained when (inevitably, in my opinion) the West contemptuously disregards its obligations under whatever is agreed-to.   

    Some say Putin has finally learned his lesson about the West. Others say not, that he would jump at any remotely reasonable transaction proffered by Trump & Co., Inc. We will soon see.

    Looking at the longstanding pattern of Putin’s Kremlin and the smoke signals from Washington, mediated by the good offices of Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the contours of a kind of Minsk 3 or Istanbul-double-plus-good “deal” are already discernable:

    1. A ceasefire in early 2025: Ukrainian forces would evacuate whatever shrinking part, if any, of the four oblasts they might still hold, plus of Russia’s Kursk region if any Ukrainians are still there. A Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) would be established. (Some ad hoc arrangement might have to be reached on the cities of Zaporozhye and Kherson, if the Russians hadn’t taken them yet. Perhaps they would remain under Ukrainian administration inside the DMZ, “claimed by Russia.”)

    2. Moscow would continue to regard the areas it holds as sovereign Russian territory. The rest of the world would still deem them Ukrainian under temporary Russian occupation, similar to how the US regarded the Baltic Republics of the USSR. Both sides would tolerate a rough balance between Zaporozhye and Kherson cities (claimed by Russia but under Ukrainian administration) and the rest of the oblasts and Crimea (claimed by Ukraine but under Russian administration).

    3. As Trump has suggested, supposedly non-NATO European Union peacekeepers would be deployed on the Ukrainian side of the DMZ (with Moscow’s agreement, contrary to astute observers’ insistence that the Russians would never allow it), subject to strict limits on numbers, weaponry, etc. These limits, of course, would not be honored (see Lucy and Charlie Brown, above).

    4. NATO membership for Ukraine world be deferred indefinitely. This is an obvious Lucy lie that Moscow would pretend means permanent neutrality. In fact, rump Ukraine would be treated as a NATO state in all but name but not receive formal membership.

    5. Security guarantees: the US, NATO, Russia would sign an updated version of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum (possibly in the form of a treaty, which the original Budapest Memorandum wasn’t) enshrined in a Security Council Resolution, guaranteeing Ukraine’s territorial integrity (taking into account “provisional arrangements”), its neutral status, and a bar of foreign troops on Ukraine’s territory (except those permitted in this agreement); parallel provisions would be put into the Ukrainian constitution. It goes without saying that these Lucy assurances would not be honored by the West any more than were past formal commitments on Kosovo, the Donbass, and other topics.

    6. Demilitarization “guarantees”: Strict limits would be placed on the size and composition of Ukraine’s military and placement of foreign forces and weapons on its territory. More Lucy lies.

    7. Denazification “guarantees”: Parties and movements with specified “extremist” ideologies would be legally banned. More Lucy lies. Elections would be held in rump Ukraine. All sides would pretend the resulting regime is democratic, legitimate, and “moderate.” Banderist neo-Nazi groups, formally illegal, would retain their guns and wield a permanent veto over any Kiev regime.

    8. Kiev would commit to protections for the Russian language and Russian culture, the canonical Orthodox Church, etc. More Lucy lies.

    9. The West would promise a phased lifting of sanctions and the return of frozen/confiscated Russian assets. “You can trust me this time, Charlie Brown!” Consider how long it took Russia to be removed from 1974 Jackson-Vanik sanctions only to then be immediately slapped with new Magnitsky Act sanctions.

    The bottom line is that Moscow would pretend to have substantially if not entirely achieved its SMO goals, giving up its immediate military lead in exchange for false promises: déjà vu all over again. Pretenses aside, it would accept a “quarter of a loaf” truce that preserves NATO to fight another day and sustains an anti-Russia Ukrainian rump state as a de facto NATO platform, as opposed to a clear military victory – which at the very least would have to include annexation of Odessa and Kharkov, and probably Kiev, plus either liquidation of the Ukrainian state entirely or, at worst, creation of a minimal rump Ukraine that’s effectively a Russian satellite and a member of the Union State with Russia and Belarus.

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    The latter outcome would shatter NATO and probably NATO’s concubine, the European Union. That’s precisely what the Washington Swamp can’t afford, Trump or no Trump. Thus, even if Trump were entirely sincere in promises to Moscow made on behalf of the United States (a very big “if” in my opinion), his ability to deliver on them would be at best highly questionable in light of an Executive Branch packed with neocons (what’s new?) and the implacable bipartisan hostility toward Russia in Congress. Then, even if, by some unbelievable miracle, Trump were able to ensure US and NATO performance on their commitments for the balance of his tenure, there would be no binding effect once he left office.

    Granted, the above is just one possible scenario but one I submit is all too conceivable based on past performance of those concerned. If things go this way, not only does the GAE get a new lease on life and NATO live to fight another day, it would usher in heightened danger of war in the Middle East and the Western Pacific and, in due course, set the stage for renewed and possibly uncontrollable conflict in Europe in the not-too-distant future. Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov recently warned that his country needs to be ready to fight a war with NATO within the next decade, and he’s almost certainly right – especially if he and his boss allow that organization to slip out of its well-deserved fade into oblivion, almost ensuring that war will come a lot sooner than in ten years.

    In laying out this possible near-term scenario, I would dearly love to be proven wrong by events. However, I have vanishingly small hope that the foregoing could resonate with any reader with agency on the American side. Perhaps chances are slightly better on the Russian side. As for the Ukrainians and the Europeans – what they think doesn’t matter to anyone, not even to themselves. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/19/2024 – 23:25

  • It Never Ends: MTA Hiking Fares Yet Again, Despite Being Days From New Congestion Tolls
    It Never Ends: MTA Hiking Fares Yet Again, Despite Being Days From New Congestion Tolls

    Everybody’s favorite financial black hole in New York City – the MTA – is said to plan another fare hike just days before it institutes its congestion toll, according to a new report from the New York Post.

    Spurring the hikes, the MTA approved a $1.27 billion order for 435 new subway cars, including 80 open-gangway models, and outlined plans to raise subway and bus fares to $3 per ride. Chairman Janno Lieber noted the fare increase, expected by late 2025, requires formal board approval next year.

    Lieber said this week: “This is a good deal. We are way cheaper than other major world cities.” 

    Well, there you have it…

    But the Post writes that critics slammed the fare hikes and new $9 Manhattan congestion toll starting Jan. 5, pointing to high spending. The MTA’s plan includes 4% fare increases in 2025 and 2027, potentially raising fares to $3.14, with congestion tolls rising to $15 over time.

    City Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli fired back: “Chicago Transit bought 400 cars for $632 million pre-pandemic.”

    He added: “So given the MTA’s incompetence factor, multiplied by their waste, abuse and mismanagement, paying only double a few years later seems par for the course. Congestion pricing was supposed to solve all these capital shortfalls, but apparently now it won’t.”

    City Council Member Robert Holden added: “The Miserable Transit Authority strikes again, raiding the pockets of hardworking New Yorkers with their congestion tax scam and endless fare and toll hikes.” 

    He continued: “Instead of rooting out waste and abuse within their bloated system, they keep the grift alive at our expense. This is pathetic, unacceptable, and New Yorkers deserve better.”

    Insiders doubt fare hikes and new tolls will affect upcoming elections for Gov. Hochul or others. Democratic strategist Jake Dilemani said commuters will feel the pinch, but political fallout is unlikely, according to the Post. 

    The $1.27 billion plan includes 355 R211 subway cars and 80 open-gangway models debuting in 2027 to replace older trains on several lines. Some G-line riders will see open-gangway cars by early 2025.

    MTA officials praised the R211 trains for reliability, wider doors, better signage, video cameras, and smoother service, calling it a key step in modernizing the subway.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/19/2024 – 23:00

  • A Very Different Transition
    A Very Different Transition

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

    The transition from Barack Obama to Donald Trump in 2016 went like every other presidential transition in modern history. The old administration had extended meetings with the new, and old agency heads and their staff trained the new ones. It was managed by Chris Christie and then-Vice President-elect Mike Pence.

    It was funded by the General Services Administration and the incoming team received emergency drills, confidential documents, security briefings, and training sessions on emergency protocols. The FBI was brought on board to vet all new hires.

    That’s because the incoming administration believed that the system worked. It had won and therefore would be in charge. That’s how it is supposed to work in the United States.

    The idea of this process is to ensure continuity in government from one administration to the other.

    In normal times, all of this would be a good idea. The Founders set up a structural system of government with minimal functions, stable law, checks and balances, and established elections for president every four years to ensure that the chief executive served with the people’s consent. Most functions of government were handled by the states, in any case.

    There was never supposed to be a need for a fundamental regime change. We merely changed administrators and members of Congress. The rest was supposed to take care of itself, which is why it would seem to make sense that the old administration trains the new one, and a permanent staff of experts and civil service employees helps the new kids learn the ropes from those with experience.

    And yet here we are. The Trump administration’s mandate from voters is not just for a change in personnel. The mandate is in fact for fundamental regime change within the framework of democracy. The administrative state, which is nowhere found in the Constitution, has over time developed far more power than elected leaders.

    That absolutely must change, as voters made clear in November 2024. It was yet another case, just like in 2016, of the candidate winning whom nearly the whole of mainstream media believed would not win, and of the whole of what anyone would call the establishment disfavoring the result. The victory was so overwhelming as to amount to a primal scream against government as usual.

    In this case, it makes no sense for the machinery that the incoming administration wants to overthrow to be in charge of the transition.

    Remember that this is not Team Trump’s first rodeo. Last time, it went along with all the protocols, funding, systems, and sessions. The White House staff members went through day after day of lectures from government experts on how Washington works. They sat through intelligence briefings. They were schooled in protocols for the management of nuclear war, biological warfare, natural disasters, and pandemics.

    They put up with all the PowerPoint presentations, exhortations, manuals, lists, and introductions to people who really run the government. They assumed that once the president was sworn in, he would in fact be the president and those whom he appointed would be in charge.

    Almost immediately, however, it became clear that the permanent government was waging some kind of an information war against the elected one. The media worked closely with deeply embedded staff in intelligence and agencies to put out the word that Trump was illegitimately elected due to supposed Russian interference. This began immediately with a bang and put those in the new administration in a tight spot, forever defending themselves against absurd charges that they all knew to be untrue.

    When that finally ended, new forms of trolling began, each more severe than the last. The Trump administration always had a loose hold on power due to all of this, but it was finally and fatally upended with the onset of respiratory pandemic. The proposed solution to this, according to all the experts deeply embedded in government, was to wreck the whole of the Trump economy while waiting for a shot to inoculate the public.

    Along with that came record unemployment, new permissions and mandates for mail-in ballots, school and business closures, and wild uses of power that the new Trump administration never authorized. The bureaucracies were ruling the country on their own and following the edicts of interests and powers behind the World Health Organization (WHO). Most of the Trump administration’s last year in office was spent trying to claw back power from the WHO.

    Finally, in July of 2020, the Trump administration announced that it was pulling itself out of the WHO completely. But that made no difference at all. YouTube had already announced in April that it would delete any content that contradicted the WHO, and it continued to enforce that policy for years. So far as I know, it still does.

    After leaving office in January 2021, the Trump team went to work trying to figure out what the heck had happened in the first term to cause everything to go so wrong, or, more specifically, what enabled the administration’s authority to be so thoroughly subverted from within.

    It concluded that the real problem began with the transition itself. That was when the permanent bureaucracy first asserted its power over the incoming administration. That’s when the deep state got its hooks in.

    This time, the team has a very different plan. It is being managed by trusted members of Trump’s inner circle. They have not allowed the General Services Administration to manage any aspect of the transition. They have done this by refusing to accept any money from any government source. Instead, the transition has been entirely privately funded, with methods deployed to make sure that the funding sources are not tainted by deep state contacts. The explicit purpose has been to avoid subversion.

    It’s been the same with FBI vetting. The incoming Trump administration simply does not trust the process and for good reason. It was the FBI that had spied on the campaign and even raided Trump’s own home. Furthermore, it worked with other agencies to deploy myriad forms of lawfare for years.

    This transition is without precedent. The permanent staff of government itself only became the U.S. norm starting in 1883, and it has grown every decade since. At some point in the past, the elected leaders became more like decorations than real rulers of government. The Trump administration cannot achieve its objectives with this status quo.

    This is the reason for this very different transition. It is a good sign and symbol of what might be coming. We might in fact experience a much-needed change of regime in Washington through exactly the system and process that the Founding Fathers set up. The second term of Trump seems determined to avoid repeating the obvious errors of the last time around.

    *  *  *

    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/19/2024 – 22:35

  • Three Dozen Luxury Condos In South Florida Are Sinking, New Study Finds
    Three Dozen Luxury Condos In South Florida Are Sinking, New Study Finds

    They don’t call it the swamp for nothing…

    Now a study recently published in Earth and Space Science confirms that about “three dozen” luxury high rise buildings in South Florida are “sinking”, according to a new report from Fox News.

    The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Miami, Florida Atlantic University, University of Houston, University of Hanover, GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, and Caltech.

    It found that 35 luxury condos and hotels in Florida’s Sunny Isles Beach, Surfside, Miami Beach, and Bal Harbour have experienced subsidence in recent years.

    The study analyzed Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar data and found affected high-rises sank 2-8 centimeters from 2016 to 2023. The University of Miami noted such settlement is common during and after construction. Most impacted buildings were constructed after 2014.

    “We found that subsidence in most high-rises slows down over time, but in some cases, it continues at a steady rate. This suggests that subsidence could persist for an extended period,” the study says. 

    The Fox News report says that study authors attributed the sinking to sand grains settling more densely in limestone layers, possibly influenced by construction vibrations, groundwater flow, tidal movements, or stormwater injection.

    “The discovery of the extent of subsidence hotspots along the South Florida coastline was unexpected. The study underscores the need for ongoing monitoring and a deeper understanding of the long-term implications for these structures,” one study author commented.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/19/2024 – 22:10

  • After Hunter, How About Pardoning The Gun Owners Biden Criminalized?
    After Hunter, How About Pardoning The Gun Owners Biden Criminalized?

    Authored by Bronson Winslow via American Greatness,

    President Joe Biden oversaw the most anti-Second Amendment administration in the history of the United States – effectively creating a police state that left every American open to prosecution. But when his son Hunter Biden ran into legal trouble and was convicted of three firearm felonies, Biden seemingly forgot about his own beliefs and granted clemency for all of Hunter’s crimes spanning the last ten years. To make matters worse, Biden continually assured the American people that he would not intervene.

    Now, millions of gun owners remain in legal jeopardy under Biden’s policies, while Hunter walks free with his criminal record wiped clean. This blatant double standard is a slap in the face to the American people and a betrayal of whatever trust they may have still had in his leadership.

    Unsurprisingly, Biden attempted to rationalize his decision by pointing fingers at the prosecution, saying it was “unfair and selective.” Regardless of his reasons, every American now facing legal prosecution due to unconstitutional firearm policies deserves the same treatment as Hunter.

    Biden’s willingness to lie to the American people about his intentions highlights the ever-hypocritical left but also begs the question: If Biden is so eager to break his promises, why not break away from his leftist handlers and help American gun owners?

    After all, Biden did not focus heavily on gun control as a U.S. senator and only became a radical gun-grabber after running for president in 2020. Biden’s only course of action is to apply a blanket pardon to all gun owners who have suffered under his administration’s abuse of power.

    A History of Anti-Second Amendment Policies

    The Biden-Harris administration has pursued the most aggressively anti-Second Amendment agenda in U.S. history. While they stopped short of outright gun confiscation, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

    Biden’s weaponization of federal agencies, particularly the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), led to a series of sweeping regulatory actions that turned millions of lawful gun owners into felons overnight.

    Biden also advanced and implemented numerous policies that violated the Second Amendment by restricting every American’s right to bear arms. His administration sought “assault weapon” bans, red flag laws, magazine capacity limits, and universal background checks—all while limiting the places where law-abiding citizens may exercise their unlimited right to carry firearms.

    These measures have not only undermined the Second Amendment but also emboldened federal agencies to act with impunity. In March, the consequences of this overreach turned deadly when Brian Malinowski was fatally shot during a botched ATF raid.

    The ATF justified the raid by accusing Malinowski of illegally selling firearms at gun shows—a claim rooted in a controversial 2023 rule approved by the agency without congressional oversight. This rule redefined what qualifies as a “gun dealer,” allowing the ATF to target law-abiding citizens under a broader, unchecked mandate.

    Malinowski, who was never proven guilty of the alleged crimes, was denied his day in court and lost his life over accusations far less severe than those against Hunter Biden.

    Last-Minute Redemption

    Biden will never outlive the detrimental policies his administration has implemented and will always be remembered as a hypocrite for pardoning his own son, but he could salvage some of his reputation if he applied his reasoning to all gun owners in America.

    A blanket pardon for law-abiding gun owners—those now labeled as felons under ATF’s arbitrary and unconstitutional mandates—would be a step toward restoring trust and fairness.

    If Biden is willing to protect his son, he should have no qualms about protecting ordinary Americans from his own unjust laws and regulations.

    By breaking from the radical left’s playbook, Biden has an opportunity to show that clemency applies to all—not just to his family. The millions of gun owners affected by these policies deserve more than an apology.

    They deserve action.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/19/2024 – 21:45

  • Republicans Should Use Article 5 To Protect Our Institutions
    Republicans Should Use Article 5 To Protect Our Institutions

    Authored by Ryan Silverstein via RealClearPolitics,

    In November, President Trump and Republicans won a broad mandate to govern. Consequently, Democrats are now seeking refuge in traditions and institutions they once sought to destroy – the Senate filibuster and courts of law. President Trump and Republicans should seize this opportunity to use Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution to protect these institutions for generations to come.

    Article 5 provides a two-step process for amending our Constitution. First, an amendment must be proposed. Under Article 5, there are two ways for proposing an amendment to the Constitution: (1) an amendment passes by two-thirds of each chamber of Congress, or (2) two-thirds of state legislatures call for a constitutional convention and two-thirds of the delegates support an amendment. Once an amendment is proposed, three-fourths of states must ratify it for it to become law. Since there are fifty states, that means to change our constitution, 38 states must ratify an amendment.

    In the 2024 election, President Trump carried 31 states. Moreover, Republicans control the state legislatures in 26 states, including some states Trump lost, like New Hampshire. Moreover, they flipped one chamber of state legislatures in Minnesota, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. They also made inroads in deep blue states like Maine and ended the Democratic supermajority in Vermont. From the top of the ticket to the bottom of the ballot, the country shifted right. President-elect Trump and Republicans should seize this opportunity to push for constitutional amendments that protect key norms and institutions from future attacks.

    First, Republicans should support an amendment constitutionalizing the Senate filibuster for all legislation, excluding spending bills from the House. The filibuster – a Senate procedural mechanism that requires 60 votes for legislation to be passed – plays a key role in requiring bipartisan cooperation in the Senate. It has been used by both parties to prevent radical legislation from becoming law.

    While Democrats recently found support for the filibuster, there is a movement on the left calling to abolish it. For example, in 2022, Democrats tried to kill the filibuster. This effort only failed because independent Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema voted against the filibuster-killing plan. In August, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer expressed a desire to change the filibuster again so Democrats could have an easier time passing legislation. Democrats clearly only value the filibuster when they’re in the minority – but have no issue destroying it when they control the Senate. Adding the filibuster to the Constitution would preserve bipartisan cooperation and debate in the Senate, ensuring it remains the “greatest deliberative body in the world.”

    Second, Republicans should back an amendment that sets the size of the Supreme Court at nine justices. Currently, the Constitution does not set the size of the Supreme Court. Democrats have spent years undermining the Court’s integrity to justify expanding it. Other Democrats like President Joe Biden claim the historically low public approval of the Supreme Court shows there is a need to reform our highest court. Yet, the Supreme Court still has higher approval ratings than Congress and President Biden. Moreover, the Supreme Court still has higher public confidence than Congress or the presidency.

    The court’s size has not been changed since 1869 when Congress set the size at nine. The court’s size remaining at nine has played a key part in allowing the court to maintain the public’s support and its independence. When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to expand the court in 1937, he failed because the public viewed his attempt at expanding the Court as an attack on a sacrosanct institution. There is a long institutional and democratic tradition of nine justices, which has allowed our highest court to remain isolated from the political fray. Alexander Hamilton famously defended an independent judiciary insulated from politics in Federalist Paper No. 78, where he argued liberty would be extinguished if the judicial power were co-opted by the executive or legislative branches. Hamilton’s fear may become reality as Democrats may push for more justices when they retain power – especially if President Trump gets to appoint more justices.

    Adding more seats would destroy the public’s trust in any decision rendered by changing the public’s perception of justices to politicians in robes instead of neutral arbiters of law. Enshrining the number of Supreme Court justices in the Constitution would preserve the high court’s independence from political pressures and ensure the public’s trust in our independent judiciary isn’t destroyed.

    President Trump and Republicans should utilize their momentum and get Congress to propose an amendment or pressure state legislatures to call a convention of states. Doing so will preserve core American institutions for years to come.

    Ryan Silverstein is a J.D. candidate at Villanova University and a fellow with Villanova’s McCullen Center for Law, Religion and Public Policy. His work has previously appeared in the New York Daily News, Post & Courier, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/19/2024 – 20:55

  • Virginia Will Be Home To The World's First Nuclear Fusion Power Plant
    Virginia Will Be Home To The World’s First Nuclear Fusion Power Plant

    Nuclear adoption continues accelerating, and now Virginia sure thinks it has found the way to “clean energy, billions in investment, and a solution to surging power demand”. The state is going to host the world’s first fusion power plant, according to the Virginia Mercury.

    Gov. Glenn Youngkin said this week: “Commonwealth Fusion Systems plans on building the world’s first grid scale commercial fusion power plant in the world, full stop, and it’s going to be right here in the commonwealth of Virginia.”

    Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), founded in 2018 in Cambridge, Mass., plans to build a fusion power plant in Chesterfield County’s James River Industrial Park. The facility, set to produce 400 megawatts of electricity to power 150,000 homes, could be operational by the early 2030s.

    Fusion power, replicating the sun’s energy production, offers a cleaner alternative to traditional fission. The 25-acre project highlights Virginia’s role in advancing energy solutions amid surging demand from energy-intensive data centers supporting big tech.

    A JLARC report projects Virginia’s data center energy demand could triple to 30,000 megawatts by 2040 if infrastructure supports it. To meet rising needs, Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power are exploring modular nuclear reactors, wind, solar, and natural gas, the Virginia Mercury reported.

    Fusion power offers a clean alternative, avoiding emissions tied to climate change. It combines hydrogen isotopes under extreme heat and pressure, using magnets to generate electricity via steam turbines, with helium as the only byproduct.

    Dominion Energy Virginia President Edward H. Baine said: “Our customers’ growing needs for reliable, carbon-free power benefits from as diverse a menu of power generation options as possible, and in that spirit, we are delighted to assist CFS in their efforts.” 

    The report says that CFS chose Chesterfield after a global search and will lease the site from Dominion Energy. Virginia secured the project with $2 million in state and county funding, a tax exemption for equipment, and federal DOE support. Gov. Youngkin estimates it will bring “billions” in development and “hundreds” of jobs.

    CFS is building its SPARC demo plant in Massachusetts to pave the way for ARC technology in Chesterfield. Unlike laser-based fusion by California’s Lawrence Livermore Lab, CFS uses a tokamak, a donut-shaped device, to confine and fuse molecules.

    Alex Creely, CFS director of tokamak operations, concluded: “One of the big advantages of fusion is that it doesn’t produce any long lived waste material, and there’s no risk of some kind of meltdown even. It’s a very safe energy source — something that you can live right next to and feel very comfortable with.”

    Recall earlier this week we wrote that nuclear startup Oklo joined the long list of names signing deals with data centers for power heading into the next decade. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/19/2024 – 20:30

  • Pandemic Coverup Intensifies: Scripps Institute's Kristian Andersen Cannot Tell The Truth
    Pandemic Coverup Intensifies: Scripps Institute’s Kristian Andersen Cannot Tell The Truth

    Authored by former lead Senate investigator Paul D. Thacker via The Disinformation Chronicle,

    The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released their final report earlier this month, concluding that the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Tony Fauci funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where a lab accident likely started the initial outbreak.

    Multiple U.S. agencies aided by virologist sought to cover-up this evidence, the Select Subcommittee charged, and several people broke the law by misleading congressional staff including Peter Daszak of EcoHealth, who funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab; NIH employee David Morens who served as Tony Fauci’s advisor; and former New York Governor Cuomo who lied about nursing home fatalities in his state.

    The Select Subcommittee’s report will likely serve as roadmap for incoming Trump officials seeking to clean up federal research. However, Scripps researcher Kristian Andersen sought to invert the report’s findings, posting a series of false allegations about the report’s conclusions on Bluesky a social media app popular with Democrats fleeing X. Andersen was previously caught misleading Congress by myself and Ryan Grim at The Intercept, and his latest actions pile on the evidence that the Scripps scientist cannot tell the truth and lacks even a mob lawyer’s fleeting interest in candor.

    Follow the Documents

    Andersen, a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, emerged as a controversial researcher early in the pandemic, and has been one of the most outspoken cheerleaders for the theory that pandemic started with a natural spillover from an animal to humans outside of a lab. But emails released a year after the pandemic’s beginning showed that Andersen initially thought the virus had been genetically engineered. However, after a phone call with Fauci and another major virology funder, Jeremy Farrar, then with the Wellcome Trust, Andersen reversed course.

    Along with other virologists funded by Fauci and Farrar, Andersen then published a March 2020 Nature Medicine paper called “Proximal Origins” which concluded a Wuhan lab accident was not “plausible.” The Nature Medicine paper thus diverted any blame from Fauci for possibly starting the pandemic, as he was funding that same lab in Wuhan. Emails later showed that Fauci and Farrar helped guide the Nature Medicine piece to publication, a fact which Andersen continues to deny.

    Emails and other private messages released in the summer of 2023 by Congress also indicated that Andersen’s co-authors on the Nature Medicine paper may have put politics before science.

    “[G]iven the shit show that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possibly distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content with ascribing it to [a] natural process,” Andersen’s colleague, Dr. Andrew Rambaut, wrote to a group of virologists over Slack in February 2020.

    “Yup, I totally agree that that’s a very reasonable conclusion. Although I hate when politics is injected into science – but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstances,” Andersen replied.

    Andersen did not return a request to explain his false statements, nor provide an explanation for who paid his lawyer when he appeared before the Committee.

    Follow My Lies on BlueSky

    Continuing his political campaign to deny a possible lab accident, Andersen posted excerpts of the House final report on Bluesky. In particular, Andersen posted a screenshot of a memo found on page 20 of the Select Subcommittee report. “This memo proves that Dr. Fauci can’t possibly have orchestrated a cover-up,” Andersen wrote. Andersen then repeated the dishonest claim that the memo is proof that Fauci had no involvement in directing the Nature Medicine paper, despite emails to the contrary.

    In a later Bluesky post, Andersen charges that these emails are “a conspiracy theory, to be clear.” But Andersen’s Bluesky posts omit one small detail about this memo found on page 20—the report’s next page, page 21.

    On the following page of the report, investigators note that Andersen testified that Fauci had suggested that he write a peer-reviewed paper (this is the Nature Medicine, Proximal Origins paper) on the possibility of a lab accident at Wuhan. Page 21 also reveals that Andersen emailed to Nature that Fauci and others “prompted” the paper:

    When Dr. Andersen presented a draft of Proximal Origin to Nature, he stated it was “prompted” by Dr. Fauci and later stated the goal of Proximal Origin was to “disprove the lab leak theory.”

    Here’s the report’s page 21 that Andersen failed to post on Bluesky.

    And here’s the email Andersen wrote to Nature Medicine, where he explained that the Nature Medicine Proximal Origins paper was “prompted by Jeremy Farrar, Tony Fauci, and Francis Collins.”

    To be clear, nothing is stopping Andersen from lying to his followers on Bluesky. He can continue posting truncated portions of the report to falsely assert Fauci had no involvement in his Nature Medicine paper. Lying liars lie.

    But Andersen also got caught lying to Congress, and that’s where he can run into legal peril. Unlike lying on Bluesky, lying liars can be prosecuted when they lie to Congress.

    Will DOJ Prosecute Lying Liars?

    To mediate the Select Subcommittee’s demand for answers and to protect him during a deposition and public hearing, Andersen hired criminal defense lawyer, John P. Rowley, a former federal prosecutor who defended Trump before the Department of Justice.

    In testimony Andersen submitted for a July 2023 House hearing, he sought to dismiss the emails showing that NIH officials Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins helped to orchestrate his Nature Medicine Proximal Origins paper.

    But after Nature Medicine accepted the paper in March 2020, Andersen sent Fauci and Collins the paper’s draft and a draft of the press release. Andersen then thanked them for “advice and leadership” on the matter. “Please let me know if you have any comments, suggestions, or questions about the paper or the press release,” Andersen wrote the two NIH officials who funded his research.

    “Nice job on the paper,” Fauci replied.

    But in his July 2023 testimony, Andersen alleged that Fauci had not provided “advice and leadership” on the paper. Instead, Andersend proclaimed some monumental difference between asking someone to comment or offer suggestions about a paper instead of on a paper.

    “Note, that I say ‘about the paper’, not e.g., ‘on the paper,’” Andersen testified.

    Andersen sought to clarify later in his testimony, “Sending a copy of a paper that has been accepted and is in ‘proof’ (i.e., at a stage where only changes directly requested by the journal can be introduced) is simply a professional courtesy.”

    Emails impeach this portion of Andersen’s testimony, as Fauci was provided multiple drafts of the paper. A month before Andersen emailed Fauci and Collins the “proof” of the paper in March 2020, Jeremy Farrar forwarded Fauci a “rough first draft” from Andersen’s co-author Edward “Eddie” Holmes.

    “Please treat in confidence—a very rough first draft from Eddie and team—they will send on the edited, cleaner version later,” Farrar emailed Fauci and Collins. The following day, Farrar emailed Fauci and Collins, “Tony and Francis, The revised draft from Eddie, copied here.”

    Much of the structure and footnotes are the same of this “rough first draft” and some phrases appear verbatim in the article Nature Medicine later published. Here are a few passages for comparison.

    If this is not enough, one more bit to chew on. Andersen stated in his July 2023 testimony that Fauci had received the final “proof” of the article as “simply a professional courtesy.” But we know this is not true. Some months after Andersen’s congressional testimony Fauci testified that he had been sent multiple drafts.

    Here’s Fauci discussing Andersen’s Nature Medicine paper starting on day 2, page 71 of his sworn deposition:

    Q As the minority said, we’ve talked to all the U.S.-based authors or those who are acknowledged on that paper, so I won’t go through all of the science in it, except for I want — you were sent drafts periodically?

    A Right.

    Q A couple. I think it was less than 10, more than 5, drafts —

    A Right.

    Fauci’s January 2024 deposition impeaches Andersen’s July 2023 statement before Congress.

    But it doesn’t end there. After Andersen was caught lying in his July 2023 congressional testimony, The Intercept published an expose a few days after, noting Andersen had also lied to Congress about his NIH funding from Fauci.

    During the 2023 hearing, The Intercept discovered, Andersen sought to distract Members of Congress about a serious conflict of interest. While writing the Nature Medicine paper, whose conclusions diverted any blame from Fauci for funding research in the Wuhan lab, Andersen was awaiting Fauci’s approval for a major grant.

    Here’s The Intercept:

    Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research, who testified at the hearing along with Bob Garry of Tulane University, preempted the charge in his opening statement, telling the committee he had no live fundraising requests before Fauci’s agency at the time of the call. “There is no connection between the grant and the conclusions we reached about the origins of the pandemic. We applied for this grant in June 2019, and it was scored and reviewed by independent experts in November 2019,” Andersen testified. “Based on the actual timeline of this grant, it is not possible that the merit-based federal grant awarding process was influenced by a call in February, 2020.”

    But Andersen’s testimony was false, The Intercept reported. While Andersen’s grant had been reviewed, it was still waiting for Fauci’s final approval and signature.

    The grant wasn’t finalized until May 21, 2020. In other words, it was on Fauci’s desk at the time of the conference call. Andersen’s lab announced the funding in a press release in August 2020, nine months after he claimed it was already finalized. The press release describes it as a “new $8.9 million grant.”

    In case you’re still not certain if Andersen is a liar, The Intercept posted a screenshot of Andersen’s grant, showing that Fauci had given final approval on May 21, 2020.

    Congress is far from finished with addressing all the problems that happened during the pandemic. Just last week, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs (HSGAC) sent letters to a dozen federal agencies, demanding they preserve documents pertaining to Covid’s origins.

    More to come…

    Subscribe to The Disinformation Chronicle here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/19/2024 – 20:05

  • Blinken Admits Past 20 Years Of US Regime Change Efforts Abroad Basically A Failure
    Blinken Admits Past 20 Years Of US Regime Change Efforts Abroad Basically A Failure

    Now with just weeks to go before the Trump administration takes over the White House, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has issued some interesting and surprising admissions. He told an audience of the Council on Foreign Relations on Wednesday that Biden’s policy on Iran hasn’t been more muscular because Washington’s regime change efforts in the region over the past two decades have basically been failures. 

    It’s rare for a top official who is still in office to so bluntly describe that regime change efforts have been doomed. Blinken had been asked specifically of the US supporting Iranian opposition groups to overthrow the government in Tehran.

    Via AFP

    “I think if we look at the last 20 years, our experiments in regime change have not exactly been resounding successes,” he responded. “So, I think we have to have an appropriate degree of humility in focusing in that way on a problem.”

    He also said at one point, “There’s no doubt this has not been a good year for Iran, and we’re seeing that play out every single day.” 

    He laid out that Iranian leaders now have to make “fundamental” choices:

    “One choice it could make and should make is to focus on itself and focus on trying to build a better, more successful country that delivers for its people … and to stop getting involved in these adventures or misadventures throughout the region.”

    Foreign media seized on the comments, particularly state media in Russia and China. For example, Russia’s RT ran a headline which somewhat stretched Blinken’s words to say “US admits attempts at regime-change in Iran.”

    “US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has publicly admitted that over the past two decades Washington has conducted experiments seeking regime change in Iran,” the RT report said. “Efforts to topple the Islamic Republic’s leadership, however, have failed, he admitted.”

    And China’s Xinhua had this headline: “Blinken admits failure of decades-long U.S. effort seeking regime change in Iran.”

    The Chinese state media report also reads a lot into Blinken’s words, claiming that he “publicly admitted Wednesday that his country’s efforts spanning the last 20 years to seek regime change in Iran did not yield much success.”

    While it’s clear that countries from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya to Syria were all targeted for regime change in the last twenty years, it’s uncertain whether Washington ever made a decision to focus efforts on overthrowing the leadership of the Islamic Republic. Certainly, however, there have been efforts to weaken and degrade the country, including Trump’s 2020 assassination by drone strike of IRGC Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani.

    Blinken also had some interesting words on Iran’s nuclear program, saying that it is “not inevitable” that Iran will purse and achieve a bomb. “This is something that may be more a question now because they’ve lost different tools. They’ve lost different lines of defense,” he said.

    “Sure, you’re going to see more thinking about that, but the costs and consequences for them for pursuing that route, I think, would be severe,” he added.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/19/2024 – 19:40

  • A Year Of Chaos: Does A Shocking Magazine Cover Reveal What The Global Elite Have Planned For 2025
    A Year Of Chaos: Does A Shocking Magazine Cover Reveal What The Global Elite Have Planned For 2025

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

    Are we heading into a year that will be characterized by great turmoil?  Every year, a magazine known as “the Economist” publishes an issue that is dedicated to what is coming in the year ahead.  In the past, many of these issues have turned out to be eerily accurate.  For example, the cover of last year’s issue featured images of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin with very large missiles standing next to each of them.  Of course this ended up being one of the biggest news stories of 2024.  Ukraine started firing long-range missiles provided by NATO deep into Russian territory, and the Russians responded with long-range missiles of their own.  Unfortunately, it appears that the cover for this year’s issue could be previewing some very alarming events that are coming in 2025.

    The Economist has been one of the most important mouthpieces for the western elite for decades.  It has offices all over the globe, but it is based in the city of London…

    Based in London, the newspaper is owned by the Economist Group, with its core editorial offices in the United States, as well as across major cities in continental Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

    The ownership list of the magazine includes prominent families such as Rothschild, Cadbury, Agnelli, Schroder and Layton…

    Aside from the Agnelli family, smaller shareholders in the company include Cadbury, Rothschild (21%), Schroder, Layton and other family interests as well as a number of staff and former staff shareholders.

    Ordinary people don’t read the magazine much.

    It is truly a magazine by the elite and for the elite, and so it provides a tremendous amount of insight into what the elite are thinking.  Below, you can see what the cover for their 2025 preview issue looks like…

    The first thing that stands out is how dark and ominous this cover is.

    Are they expecting 2025 to be a dark and ominous year?

    A black and white image of Donald Trump outlined in red is right in the center of the cover.

    Obviously they expect him to be the center of attention.

    Interestingly, a raised red fist that is outlined in red can be seen near the bottom of the cover.  Needless to say, a raised fist is often used as a symbol of “resistance” to Trump.

    There are several other world leaders on the cover as well.  Just like in 2024, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin are featured, and this year Chinese President Xi Jinping also appears.

    It is already clear that the conflict in Ukraine will continue to be a major theme in 2025.  Are the elite expecting war with China to break out too?

    Right next to Trump, you can see a very tall white missile, and right beneath Trump there is something that looks like a mushroom cloud.

    In addition, there are a couple of other symbols on the cover that are related to nuclear war.

    This sort of imagery should deeply alarm all of us.

    Are they trying to warn us that we are getting dangerously close to nuclear war?

    Or could it be possible that they are suggesting that nuclear weapons could actually be used in combat at some point in 2025?

    2024 was certainly a year of war, and I fully expect things to go to an entirely new level in 2025.

    But let us hope that nuclear weapons are not used any time soon.

    Switching gears, directly next to the very tall white missile is an image of a syringe that is more than half-filled with red liquid.

    That can’t be related to the previous pandemic, because the previous pandemic has been behind us for quite some time.

    So what are they trying to communicate with this image?

    Are they suggesting that the world could soon be facing another major pestilence?

    Red is a color that is often associated with death.

    So the fact that the liquid inside the syringe is red is more than just a little bit creepy.

    As I have detailed in previous articles, at this moment global health authorities are dealing with an outbreak of a mystery illness that is being referred to as “Disease X” in Africa, a new strain of the monkeypox that has started to pop up all over the world, an eruption of the Marburg virus in Rwanda, and a bird flu crisis that never seems to end and that has now jumped into humans.

    I am convinced that pestilence will be a major theme in 2025, and apparently the Economist does too.

    On the cover of the magazine, we also see a dollar sign appear twice, and there are numerous arrows that are pointing both up and down.

    Are they anticipating that there will be economic and financial turmoil during the year ahead?

    Of course economic problems have already begun in the U.S., in Europe, and in China.  The global economy is rapidly heading in the wrong direction, and many are warning that 2025 is going to be a very hard year.

    That is really bad news for those that are on the bottom levels of the economic food chain.  Here in the United States, demand at food banks is already at all-time record highs.  So what will things look like if a full-blown global economic crisis suddenly erupts in 2025?

    There are other images on this cover that also seem rather odd.  There is an image of Saturn, there is an image of an all-seeing eye, and there is an image of an hourglass.

    An hourglass is often used to depict the fact that time is running out.

    And I certainly agree with that.

    The truth is that we have been living on borrowed time for quite a while.

    The elite love to create order out of chaos, and based on this magazine cover they certainly seem to believe that 2025 will be a year of chaos.

    Perhaps the elite hope that the chaos that is approaching will represent an opportunity for them to regain some of the control that they have lost in recent years.

    I think that they are starting to understand that the system that they have worked so carefully to construct is beginning to crumble, and now they are desperate to regain the upper hand any way that they can.

    *  *  *

    Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/19/2024 – 19:15

  • NOPE: Trump-Backed Funding Bill Fails House Vote As 38 Republicans Say 'No'
    NOPE: Trump-Backed Funding Bill Fails House Vote As 38 Republicans Say ‘No’

    Update (1752ET): The first vote to kick the can down the road until 2027 has failed the House, by a vote of 174-235-1, with 38 Republicans voting ‘no’.

    The bill required 2/3 of the vote under a fast-track method, yet didn’t even clear a simple majority.

    Polymarket odds of a shutdown have spiked to 76% as of this writing

    *  *  *

    Update (1752ET): In what comes as a surprise to nobody, Democrats want their pork – and have said “Hell no” to the massively reduced spending package that Mike Johnson rolled out after conferring with the Trump team.

    “The Musk-Johnson proposal is not serious. It’s laughable. Extreme MAGA Republicans are driving us to a government shutdown,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters as he walked into a closed-door caucus meeting Thursday afternoon.

    In short, it’s doomed.

    “I’m not simply a no. I’m a hell no,” Jeffries then said at the closed-door meeting, Politico reports, citing three people familiar with the meeting.

    More via Politico:

    Other Democratic lawmakers also expressed doubts about the legislation, which Republican leaders were teeing up for a vote Thursday evening. It would suspend the debt ceiling through early 2027, fund the government through March, and include billions in disaster relief funds, a top Democratic priority.

    The vote on the bill is scheduled to come up via a process called suspension, which means it needs to meet a two-thirds vote threshold to pass. If Democrats are roundly against it, it will fail on the floor — leaving Congress without an obvious solution to avoid a shutdown.

    “This was done on short notice,” said Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, who said he was opposed. “We reached an agreement on a bipartisan basis between the respective leadership and the membership of both parties, only to have an interruption take place and then a veto occurs after the agreement has been rendered and reached.”

    President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk worked to spike the original deal on Wednesday, sending the House careening down an alternate path with a deadline looming.

    “Elon Musk is not my constituent. My constituents are hard-working people who work very hard every day for every dime they have, and I’m sure as hell not bailing out on them in the final week,” said Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D-N.H.), chair of the centrist New Democrat Coalition.

    Top Democrats weren’t involved in the drafting of the legislation, and the unveiling caught senior lawmakers by surprise.

    “All I know is it was just reported by the press. We have not been involved in anything that they have done,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Appropriations Committee Democrat.

    Republicans argue the burden is now on Democrats to justify any opposition to a continuing resolution — “CR” for short — that averts a government shutdown and also prevents the U.S. from defaulting on its more than $36 trillion in debt next year.

    *  *  *

    Update (1350ET): Republican lawmakers have reportedly struck a new spending deal to keep the lights on in Washington until at least Jan. 30, 2027, according to Politico, citing two GOP lawmakers meeting in Speaker Mike Johnson’s office Thursday afternoon.

    “There is an agreement,” said Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-OK). “The plan is to put a bill on the floor that we think is a reasonable step forward.”

    The new package is just 116 pages, down from 1,547 in the original draft.

    Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), who was also in Johnson’s office, didn’t say whether congressional Democrats or the White House had agreed to it, however Bloomberg reports that it has Trump’s blessing.

    Late Wednesday afternoon, President-elect Trump demanded Johnson abandon the previous revision he’d worked out with Democratic congressional leaders.

    Meanwhile, Trump is now gunning for… Chip Roy?

    *  *  *

    ‘With Friday’s government shutdown looming – and odds spiking after everyone figured out that the 1,547-page Continuing Resolution (CR) was full of Orwellian bullshit and other malarkey, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has gone to Donald Trumps team with hat in hand.

    The new plan will be a federal funding stopgap plan that includes disaster aid, pushing off the debt limit fight for two years, and a one-year farm bill extension, Politico reports, citing Republicans familiar with the discussions.

    No word on how close this comes to a “clean” bill, or how much of the aforementioned bullshit is gone – such as funding the Global Engagement Center, shielding the Jan. 6 committee from subpoenas, and funding new biolabs, but we guess we’ll find out.

    Also unknown is whether Democrats will support the plan.

    But Trump had made an 11th hour public demand that any stopgap bill should deal with the debt limit. Trump’s team is pushing for at least a commitment to lift the debt limit before Jan. 20.

    The level of disaster aid and whether it’s completely paid for is still unclear. The package would also likely include some additional economic aid for farmers, amid threats from rural Republicans to oppose any stopgap that doesn’t include the funding. -Politico

    In a closed door meeting on Thursday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) told Democratic lawmakers: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate,” citing JFK.

    Polymarkets odds of a government shutdown went from 15% yesterday to 49% this morning.

    According to Punchbowl News, here’s what happened, and what’s next;

    At some point today, House Republicans and Democrats will likely have separate party meetings to chart their path forward. Democrats have announced their meeting for 9 a.m. We’ll talk more about them below.

    But make no mistake — this is Johnson and Trump’s mess to solve. And we’re inching toward a shutdown as government funding runs out at midnight Friday.

    Johnson was mostly MIA Wednesday, holed up in his Capitol office for hours without showing his face. Even the House GOP leadership team felt like they were being kept in the dark about what was happening.

    Late in the evening, Johnson met with Vance, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) and Rules Committee Chair Michael Burgess (R-Texas). Jordan and Roy are conservative hardliners. Diaz-Balart is a senior appropriator.

    As Scalise left around 10 p.m., he told reporters “We’re not there yet” when asked whether the debt-limit boost would be part of any new government-funding plan. “A lot of things have come up,” Scalise added.

    A somewhat obvious play may be a funding bill with a two-year debt-limit extension. Why? Because Trump supports increasing the debt limit now. Given how volatile Trump was during his first term, there’s no guarantee he’ll do this again. (For what it’s worth, Biden administration officials estimate the debt limit won’t be reached until sometime next summer. GOP leaders were planning to handle it in a reconciliation bill).

    Trump is giving Johnson cover for the time being. It’s limited, however. Because Trump, once again, has put his party in a bind. There are probably dozens of Republicans who have never voted for raising the debt ceiling. Now Trump is forcing them to do so.

    Check back for updates.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/19/2024 – 19:01

  • More ATACMS, Storm Shadow Missiles Launched At Russia As Putin Threatens 'Missile Duel' With US
    More ATACMS, Storm Shadow Missiles Launched At Russia As Putin Threatens ‘Missile Duel’ With US

    The Kremlin on Thursday revealed that the day prior Ukraine’s military launched six US-made long-range ATACMs missiles and four British-made Storm Shadow missiles against Russian territory.

    The projectiles targeted the southern Rostov region, with Russia’s military saying its anti-air defense systems were able to intercept all four ATACMS missiles and three of the four Storm Shadows.

    Launch of an ATACMS, via Sky News

    The statement further vowed a harsh response to the attacks, given this is at least third of fourth major wave of long-range attacks. Western missiles have been used perhaps half a dozen times or more against Russian territory at this point, only a month after Washington initially gave Kiev permission.

    The ATACMS and Storm Shadow assault on Wednesday was accompanied by other conventional weapons as well. In the overall attack some targets, including an oil refinery, were struck:

    Ukraine struck Russian territory with at least 13 missiles and 84 drones, triggering a fire at an oil refinery in the southern Rostov region that burned for hours, Russian officials said on Thursday.

    As Russia advances at the fastest pace since the start of the war in 2022, Ukraine has repeatedly tried to strike Russia’s oil infrastructure – which funds a significant chunk of the Russian war economy.

    “The actions of the Kyiv regime, supported by its Western curators, will not go unanswered,” the Russian defense ministry said in follow-up.

    This retaliation could involve more hypersonic ballistic missile attacks on Ukraine, a threat which has been sounded more frequently of late, specifically more debilitating attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid headed into the cold winter months.

    On Thursday, during President Putin’s year-end Q&A session with journalists, Putin warned that more Oreshnik missiles could be used, emphasizing that there is no defense against them.

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    “There is no chance of shooting down these Oreshnik missiles. Well, if those Western experts you mentioned think they can be shot down, we propose they – and those in the West and the United States who pay them for their analysis – conduct some kind of technological experiment, a high-tech duel of the 21st century,” Putin explained to the press.

    “Let them name some object, let’s say, in Kyiv, concentrate all their air defence and missile defence forces there, and we will hit it with Oreshnik and see what happens. We are ready for such an experiment. Is the other side ready?” he posed.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/19/2024 – 18:50

  • At Least 100,000 Detention Beds Needed For Mass Deportation Plan; Trump's Border Czar Says
    At Least 100,000 Detention Beds Needed For Mass Deportation Plan; Trump’s Border Czar Says

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

    Incoming border czar Tom Homan estimates that at least 100,000 beds for illegal immigrants in detention will be needed for the Trump administration to carry out its deportation plans.

    President-elect Donald Trump has promised mass deportations, and he tapped Homan, the former acting head of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to lead the operation.

    ICE is currently holding about 38,700 illegal immigrants, according to agency data. An additional nearly 185,000 are being monitored by cellphone or ankle bracelet at a cost of $232,800 per day, ICE data show.

    Homan told CNN on Dec. 18 that the operation will involve building new detention facilities and that officials will be seeking to hire more ICE agents.

    “It all depends on the funding I get from the Hill,” Homan said, referring to lawmakers in Congress.

    Both congressional chambers will be controlled by Republicans come January 2025. Republicans currently control the House of Representatives, but not the Senate.

    Homan also said that he will request assistance from the military.

    “They’re not going to be out arresting people, but they can be a force multiplier in doing things we need to do that doesn’t require a badge and a gun,” he said.

    The first wave of arrests, at least, will target illegal immigrants with a criminal history and those deemed national security threats. But when officials in so-called sanctuary cities decline to allow ICE to take custody of criminals from jails and courts, ICE agents will go into neighborhoods to track them down. That will result in collateral arrests, Homan said this week.

    Homan said on CNN that “immigration officers aren’t going to be told to walk away from somebody here illegally.” He also said that illegal immigrants whose children were born in the United States and thus have citizenship, will not be shielded from enforcement operations.

    “They put themselves in this position. We didn’t,” he said.

    He said that the children can go live with the other parent or a relative.

    Some lawmakers and groups have praised Trump’s mass deportation plans.

    “Deportations are a critical step in delivering on that promise, restoring the rule of law, and protecting American communities across the country,” the Federation for American Immigration Reform said in a recent article.

    Others say that deportations will cause harm.

    “Trump’s plans for mass deportation will tear families apart, raid homes, and harm our communities,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) wrote on Wednesday on the social media platform X.

    “We need to resist his hateful agenda and fight back to protect our immigrant neighbors because immigrants make our communities stronger.”

    The first Trump administration carried out about 1.2 million deportations over four years. During President Joe Biden’s first two years in office, deportations plunged to about 65,000 a year, though they jumped to 253,488 in fiscal year 2024, which ended in September.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/19/2024 – 18:25

  • Does California's Bird Flu Emergency Portend The Next Trump-Era Outbreak?
    Does California’s Bird Flu Emergency Portend The Next Trump-Era Outbreak?

    This week California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) declared a state of emergency over avian influenza, aka Bird Flu.

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a news conference in Los Angeles on Sept. 25, 2024. Eric Thayer/AP Photo

    And while Newsom says the order was simply a precaution after one person in Louisiana was hospitalized with the first severe illness caused by the bird flu in the United States, one has to wonder – WTF…

    “This proclamation is a targeted action to ensure government agencies have the resources and flexibility they need to respond quickly to this outbreak,” Newsom said in a Wednesday statement.

    According to the governor’s office, Bird flu has been found in dairy cows in Southern California – therefore, the emergency is needed to “contain and mitigate the spread of the virus” despite the fact that there have been no reported cases of person-to-person transmission in the state.

    What makes this extra-interesting is a tidbit at the end of the new documentary, Thank You Dr. Fauci – notably an infamous op-ed penned by Fauci and his former ‘boss’, NIH head Dr. Francis Collins, in which they suggested that their dangerous research was a “risk worth taking.”

    Click into the tweets to read the rest of the thread…

    Which brings us back to California – where the new emergency declaration will empower state and local agencies with additional funding and flexibility in dealing with the virus, that nobody in the state has caught… yet.

    As the Epoch Times notes further, While not linked to human bird flu cases, a raw milk dairy based in California issued a voluntary recall several weeks ago after avian influenza was found in a lot.

    All of the illnesses in the United States, except for the Louisiana case, have been mild, and the vast majority have been among farmworkers exposed to sick poultry or dairy cows. This year, more than 60 bird flu infections have been reported, with more than half of them in California, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

    In the Louisiana case, the infected person is older than 65, has underlying medical problems, and has also been in contact with sick and dead birds in a backyard flock, according to the CDC.

    Last month, Canadian officials reported that a teen in British Columbia was hospitalized with a severe case of bird flu. CDC officials did not answer a question about whether the new U.S. case and the case in Canada had any similarities or differences, directing reporters to ask Louisiana officials.

    Health officials say bird flu is still mainly an animal health issue and that the risk to the general public remains low. There has been no documented spread of the virus from person to person in the United States or elsewhere.

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/19/2024 – 18:00

  • The Establishment's "Principles" Are Fake
    The Establishment’s “Principles” Are Fake

    Authored by Connor O’Keefe via The Mises Institute,

    In the years leading up to the 2024 presidential election, the Democrats and establishment Republicans who wanted to see Joe Biden, and later Kamala Harris, remain in office went all in on one overarching narrative above all: that Donald Trump represented an existential threat to American democracy.

    Biden’s team and their allies in politics and media repeated this claim day after day, essentially trying to convince millions of Americans that elections would literally stop happening in this country if Trump won.

    Taking a step back, Trump was framed as the domestic enemy in a broader international fight that saw “autocratic” leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and others facing down a coalition of “democratic” governments.

    Democracy versus autocracy was meant to be the defining dynamic of the day. Meaning everything from the war in Ukraine to the fight over climate change was framed as one big battle where the “good guys” were defined purely by their commitment to the democratic process.

    And, in that global fight, no effort was more important—we were told—than keeping Trump out of the White House.

    But then he won.

    Despite the establishment’s efforts, a majority of American voters were not swayed by the “democracy-versus-autocracy” narrative. Or, at least, they demonstrated that they preferred the candidate who promised to close the border, wind down the war in Ukraine, cut down the extremely bloated federal bureaucracy, investigate the weaponization of the DOJ in recent years, and roll back federal climate policies while celebrating and vowing to continue the appointment of conservative judges and justices—among other campaign promises.

    Now, President Biden – and, really, all the people around him who are actually running things – are in their so-called lame-duck period. And what are they doing as they wait to hand power over to the next administration? They’re doing whatever they can to make it harder for Trump’s team to implement the very policies voters just sent them to the White House to carry out.

    Last week, we learned that the Biden administration is moving unassembled border wall material away from the southern border and selling it at an auction. Groups allied with the president are also calling on him to close immigration and customs enforcement detention facilities before leaving office to hamper Trump’s plans to deport illegal immigrants.

    After losing the election last month, the Biden administration escalated the war in Ukraine by helping Ukrainian forces shoot long-range American missiles further into Russia. Now, the president’s team is rushing to send another $725 million to Ukraine before Trump is sworn in on January 20.

    Earlier this year, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued a ruling that makes it much harder for Trump’s team to overhaul the federal workforce. While Trump could still carry out this campaign promise, he now cannot do so through executive order. He is required to propose a new rule, which will likely bring years of legal battles.

    Biden pardoned his son Hunter after he was facing prison sentences for federal felony gun and tax convictions. Now, the president is reportedly considering “preemptive pardons” for numerous allies that his team expects to be investigated by Trump’s DOJ.

    Members of the president’s cabinet are rushing to spend as much money as possible in the various departments they oversee, EPA officials are hurrying to implement as many new environmental and climate policies as they can, and the president and Senate Democrats are racing to fill as many federal judicial positions as they’re able to before losing the White House and Senate.

    Depending on where you stand on Trump’s agenda, you could see these efforts as heroic or disgraceful. But because the president and political establishment are ramming through policies that a majority of Americans just voted against, it’s impossible to seriously label these actions as anything other than explicitly undemocratic.

    As someone who does not believe democracy is an ethical system or the best way to organize society, this alone does not bother me. But the hypocrisy is still important to call out.

    Because, with their actions, the political class has again revealed that they do not actually care about democracy. They only use the fact that much of the public does care about democracy to try and serve their own ends.

    The same goes for human rights abuses and crackdowns on dissent carried out by foreign governments that Washington wants to overthrow. When true, these are totally legitimate criticisms to level at these state leaders. But our government officials have demonstrated a complete willingness to ignore, support, and even partake in the same abuses when it’s useful to them. So, again, they are only using the fact that decent people care about these issues to serve their own agenda.

    It is important to have principles. But it’s also important to recognize when people who do not share your principles are using your commitment to those principles to manipulate you. The political establishment in recent weeks has shown, yet again, that they do this. It’s time we stop falling for it.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/19/2024 – 17:40

  • TruGO: Liberal Canadian Lawmakers Revolt, Demand Regime Change In Ottawa
    TruGO: Liberal Canadian Lawmakers Revolt, Demand Regime Change In Ottawa

    Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is facing a mounting political crisis within his own Liberal Party, with an increasing number of party members voicing their desire for his resignation ahead of the scheduled 2025 election. This internal discontent has gained momentum after the shock resignation of Chrystia Freeland, Trudeau’s finance minister and a key ally.

    Jenica Atwin, a Liberal parliamentary secretary from New Brunswick, openly stated that Trudeau should step down, and says she won’t run for reelection if Trudeau remains in leadership. Atwin’s call was echoed by Chad Collins, a Liberal MP from Ontario, who revealed that around 50 Liberal MPs are part of a faction pushing for Trudeau’s resignation. This represents about one-third of the Liberal representatives in the House of Commons.

    “I don’t know who’s giving him advice. I can guess. It’s not good advice,” Collins said. “But the buck stops with him with the decisions he makes, and we’re now seeing the fallout that’s come with what many would consider a very poor decision.”

    Monday’s resignation of Chrystia Freeland, Trudeau’s powerful finance minister and his longtime deputy, was a massive shock that has irreparably damaged the prime minister, Collins said in an interview.

    Freeland said she quit after being told she would be moved to a different role in the cabinet. Trudeau delivered that news on Friday, she said — just three days before she was due for a major speech that would update the country on its fiscal and economic situation. -Bloomberg

    “In terms of who the successor is, I don’t know at this point whether or not we could do much worse,” Collins continued.

    Meanwhile, Trudeau has canceled his customary year-end media appearances, only making limited public comments at Liberal Party events. And at a recent press conference, Justice Minister Arif Virani avoided direct questions about Trudeau’s leadership, instead focusing on his role and expressing confidence in the prime minister.

    “Decisions will be taken by the parties that are involved,” said Virani, trying to bring the discussion back to an announcement about wrongful convictions. “I have absolute confidence in the prime minister in terms of what he has asked me to do. That is serve as a minister of justice who defends people’s rights.”

    According to polling data, Canada’s Conservative Party, under the leadership of Pierre Poilievre, is likely to secure a majority in the next general election. Wayne Long, another Liberal MP from New Brunswick, stressed the urgency of the situation in an open letter, suggesting that the party must act to prevent a historic electoral defeat.

    Collins warned that continued support for Trudeau might lead to a significant exodus of experienced politicians from the party, potentially leaving it with a “skeleton crew” of seasoned representatives.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/19/2024 – 17:20

  • The Twelve Days Of Schadenfreude
    The Twelve Days Of Schadenfreude

    Authored by Daniel Oliver via American Greatness,

    Democrats are stumbling all over each other to blame Biden for staying in the presidential race too long. Ha!

    Axios reported that “Vice President Harris’ loss raised a feeling among Democrats that Biden’s refusal to leave the race until July cost the party dearly—even as they got caught up in a global anti-incumbency wave.”

    Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-IL) blamed Biden: “I think there’s a widespread sense that he took too long to get out and that it made it very difficult for Vice President Harris to run the most impactful campaign.”

    Sen. “Hindsight” Chris Murphy (D-CT) said, “Well . . . in hindsight, knowing that he ultimately made the decision to stand down, yes, of course, it would have been better for President Biden to have made that decision earlier. I think there’s no question about it.”

    Yup. No question at all. 

    Now.

    But what about then?

    On the first day of Schadenfreude, all Democrats agreed . . . with Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) who said: “I want him to run . . . I see no reason for him not to run . . . . We all age differently. They said the same thing about . . . Ronald Reagan. How many people said Ronald Reagan was too old? Do you remember in his debate with Walter Mondale, the classic line?”

    On the second day of Schadenfreude, all Democrats agreed . . . with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) who said: “Everything I read is they’re trying to get him to cut back his hours because he’s got too much energy.”

    On the third day of Schadenfreude, all Democrats agreed . . . with Kamala Harris who said that in the days following the October 7 attack by Hamas she had spent countless hours with Biden and other officials and that he was “on top of it all.”

    On the fourth day of Schadenfreude, all Democrats agreed . . . with Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) who said that “[Biden is] sharper than anyone I’ve spoken to.”

    On the fifth day of Schadenfreude, all Democrats agreed . . . with Gov. J. B. Pritzker (D-IL) who said: “I’ve been with the president of the United States many times. He is on the ball. The man knows more than most of us have forgotten.”

    On the sixth day of Schadenfreude, all Democrats agreed . . . with Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas who said: “The most difficult part about a meeting with President Biden is preparing for it because he is sharp, intensely probing, and detail-oriented, and focused.”

    On the seventh day of Schadenfreude, all Democrats agreed . . . with Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) who said: “So Joe Biden has vision, he has knowledge, he has strategic thinking. This is a very sharp president in terms of his public presentation. If he makes a slip of the tongue here or there, what’s the deal?” And then, “Anyone who would think that they’re at some advantage because of his age thinks that at their peril, because he’s very sharp.”

    On the eighth day of Schadenfreude, all Democrats agreed . . . with Mitch Landrieu (Biden campaign co-chair) who said: “When you go in to brief the president, you better have your big boy pants on. And this kind of sense that he’s not ready for this job, it’s just a bucket of BS that’s so deep, your boots will get stuck.”

    On the ninth day of Schadenfreude, all Democrats agreed . . . with Chuck Todd (NBC Host) who said: “There’s an easy way to basically make this report [of Biden’s memory issues] pointless. The easiest way to get rid of this storyline is to get him out there.”

    On the tenth day of Schadenfreude, all Democrats agreed . . . with Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) who said: “I’ve spent time with both of those guys privately. Spent time with Biden and Trump privately. I’ve spent time with every House Speaker over the past thirty years. And Joe Biden, I’m not just—it’s just not close. If you want to talk about international affairs, if you want to talk about how to get bipartisan legislation, Joe Biden is light-years ahead of all of them.”

    On the eleventh day of Schadenfreude, all Democrats agreed . . . with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) who said: “[Biden is] incredibly strong, forceful and decisive.”

    On the twelfth day of Schadenfreude, all Democrats agreed . . . with Kamala Harris who, when asked by Axios whether she could “fully assure” voters that there is nothing to be concerned about Biden’s “hour-by-hour performance,” quickly responded, “Of course.”

    Things are so bad for the Democrats now they may not even celebrate Kwanza this year.

    For the rest of us, however, we can give thanks to an Almighty and Provident God, and say, remembering Ronald Reagan, that America’s best days are yet to come.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/19/2024 – 17:00

  • Putin Says 'Ready' To Meet Or Talk To Trump At Any Time
    Putin Says ‘Ready’ To Meet Or Talk To Trump At Any Time

    Russian President Vladimir Putin in fresh Thursday remarks has emphasized that he is ready for a direct conversation with US President-elect Donald Trump at any time and agrees to meet with him when the US side is ready.

    “I am ready for this [conversation], of course, at any time. And I will also be ready for a meeting, if he wants it,” Putin said at Russia’s annual year-end Q&A press conference with the president. He gave this response to an American journalist when asked about a potential future meeting with Trump.

    “First of all, I don’t know when we will meet with him. Because he doesn’t say anything about it. I haven’t talked to him at all for more than four years,” Putin followed with, acknowledging the unpredictability of the US side’s intentions.

    Via Associated Press

    The Kremlin has still taken a pessimistic view on the possibility of achieving peace in Ukraine anytime soon, given especially that Western long-range missiles are being used against Russian territory.

    According to more of the latest context via TASS:

    Earlier, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Moscow is ready for contacts with Washington to resolve the Ukrainian crisis, but has not yet received any serious proposals from Trump’s team. According to the diplomat, the Russian Foreign Ministry has recently regularly received many questions about whether Russia is ready to contact Trump and his team.

    Trump’s pick for national security advisor, Mike Waltz, explained to CBS News at the start of this week, “What does success look like in line with our interests? How do we end the war? Who’s at the table? How do we drive, you know, all sides to the table, and what’s the framework for an agreement? Those are things that we’re thinking through with his fantastic team that he’s (Trump) assembling.”

    He also said that the current Biden administration policy of escalation with no end in sight is a recipe for disaster which could turn the conflict into another “forever war”. He said that a “blank check… just isn’t a strategy.”

    And yet it could be President Zelensky himself who stands in the way:

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected the prospect of freezing the conflict started by Moscow to facilitate negotiations to end hostilities, telling French daily Le Parisien that Donald Trump “knows about my desire not to rush things at the expense of Ukraine.”

    Below is the key section of this latest Zelensky interview: 

    Zelensky told Le Parisien resolving the war was “not easy” and that Trump wanted a peace deal “quickly” but the Ukrainian leader said the Trump team did not yet have access to all the information from diplomatic and intelligence channels.

    Zelensky said regardless of what world leaders want, “we are not just going to give in and give up our independence.”

    “The danger would be to say—we freeze the war and we will come to an agreement with the Russians,” he added, noting that Putin “has killed many Ukrainians.”

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    Freezing the front lines is a central component of what has thus far been reported as ‘Trump’s peace plan’. Moscow hasn’t appeared too keen on it either, and it has less incentive to agree to this, given by all metrics it is winning on the ground in the Donbas.

    Still, Trump has pushed forward with his promise to find a swift close to the war which has been raging for about three years. He’s vowing to push the warring sides to the negotiating table from his very first day in office.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/19/2024 – 16:40

  • Fani Flushed: Court Rules Fulton DA Disqualified From Trump 'Election Interference' Case
    Fani Flushed: Court Rules Fulton DA Disqualified From Trump ‘Election Interference’ Case

    Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been disqualified from prosecuting President-elect Trump in his election interference case by a Georgia court of appeals.

    While the court didn’t throw out Trump’s indictment, Willis and the assistant DAs working in her office were found to have “no authority to proceed” with the case.

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    The new ruling means that Georgia’s Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council will need to find another prosecutor to take over the case and decide whether to continue pursuing it – though if Willis decides to appeal to the state Supreme Court, that could be delayed.

    Needless to say, CNN is crestfallen.

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    Developing…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 12/19/2024 – 16:37

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Dec 19

Today’s News 19th December 2024

  • Dr. Jay Bhattacharya Will Rebuild Trust In Public Health
    Dr. Jay Bhattacharya Will Rebuild Trust In Public Health

    Authored by Wilk Wilkinson via RealClearPolicy,

    Just weeks before President-elect Trump announced that Dr. Jay Bhattacharya would be his nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Bhattacharya and I were together at Stanford University for a bold, first-of-its-kind symposium on public health decision making during the COVID-19 crisis. 

    NIH (Wikimedia commons)

    The idea behind the symposium was to shatter the public health echo chamber and bring diverse perspectives together in respectful dialogue. Dr. Bhattacharya and I are close friends, but our backgrounds are quite different. He is firmly at home at Stanford, having gone there as an undergraduate, and then going on to get a medical degree and a Ph.D. there before joining the faculty as a Professor of Health Policy. I, on the other hand, am a blue-collar Midwesterner who enlisted the in U.S. Navy after high school. I carry no titles of academic distinction and was likely the only participant at the symposium without a medical degree or PhD.

    Yet, I was invited by Stanford to moderate the symposium’s opening panel with seven leading public health authorities from top institutions across the world. What brought me into this unusual position was my expanding work to rebuild truth and trust in public health—a collaboration that began with former NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins and the Braver Angels organization, which is nation’s largest movement working to bridge the partisan divide.

    My work with the Truth & Trust Project began in early 2022 when Dr. Collins was the outgoing Director of NIH. He approached Braver Angels – of which I am an active member, ambassador and volunteer – with a unique request: he wanted to better understand his own “blind spots” and find ways to rebuild public trust in the U.S. health system after America’s bitter experience with it throughout the COVID-19 crisis. Braver Angels saw an opportunity to pair Dr. Collins with someone outside the the typical public health echo chamber, but who cares deeply about the subject. That unlikely someone was me.

    Dr. Collins and I began having regular conversations, including public ones on my podcast, DerateTheHate. Our work together was eye-opening for both of us. Dr. Collins brought deep expertise and years of leadership in public health, while I offered a fresh perspective, shaped by my experiences in blue-collar Middle America. Through our collaboration, Dr. Collins and I kept returning to the critical question of how to rebuild trust in institutions that have grown disconnected from the people they serve.

    Since our collaboration in this project began, I have had the opportunity to interview, engage, and develop personal relationships with many leading public health officials from across the nation, including Dr. Bhattacharya. The public health experts I have engaged do not always see eye-to-eye with each other on public health policy—in fact they often deeply disagree—but all are deeply troubled by the sharp declines in public health trust, and all have perspectives worth hearing. If we do not broaden our aperture and listen to dissenting voices from across America about where we went wrong in the last pandemic, we will not be prepared to manage the next one. It could arrive without warning at any time.

    The Stanford conference felt like the start of something significant. The symposium brought together leading public health experts with different viewpoints on the pandemic response and it demonstrated how intellectual pluralism and dialogue only sharpen our thinking. The conference reinforced the idea that meaningful change can only come when we move beyond echo chambers and engage with those who see the world differently. 

    What lessons did the COVID-19 crisis teach us?

    COVID-19 exposed glaring weaknesses in our public health response, which in my view were largely driven by an overreliance on centralized decision-making. Federal agencies issued sweeping directives that often ignored the diverse needs and realities of local communities. Schools were closed, businesses were shuttered, and lives were upended by policies that felt disconnected and, at times, arbitrary.

    We failed to recognize that local health departments, educators, and community leaders understand local needs, culture, geography and resources better than anyone at the federal level. We failed to empower them in the public health decision making process. By sidelining them in favor of centralized mandates, we not only eroded trust but also missed opportunities for effective and responsive solutions that could be supported and promoted by trusted local leaders.

    Had public health institutions prioritized the concept of localized decision making – the principle of subsidiarity– trust might not have been so deeply eroded. Rather than a faceless bureaucracy issuing mandates, imagine a system where local doctors, school principals, and community leaders were the primary messengers of public health guidance. These are the people families trust, the voices they are more likely to listen to and follow.

    The concept of subsidiarity is much more than a political or philosophical principle—it’s a deeply human and American idea that centers relationships, empowerment, and shared responsibility. Subsidiarity recognizes that the best solutions often come from those closest to the problem, and the principle fundamentally respects the knowledge, context, and capacity for self-governance of the American people.

    What Can We Expect from Dr. Bhattacharya’s Leadership of NIH?

    As I look to the future of public health under Dr. Bhattacharya, I am hopeful about what we can achieve. Dr. Bhattacharya demonstrated great professional courage and clarity during and after the pandemic, and he is a forceful advocate for a more localized and balanced response to the pandemic crisis. In The Great Barrington Declaration, which he co-authored, Dr. Bhattacharya underscored the importance of protecting the most vulnerable while minimizing societal disruptions like children’s learning loss, which the nation feels acutely as a result of pandemic school closures. Dr. Bhattacharya has argued that the federal government must focus on better equipping local health systems with tools and data rather than imposing rigid, top-down mandates. His vision is a public health system that is responsive, equitable, and grounded in trust – I could imagine no one better positioned to lead the NIH than him.

    As President Trump’s nominee, Dr. Bhattacharya will bring the principle of subsidiarity to life on a national scale. His advocacy for empowering local communities to manage public health challenges will not only lead to a better pandemic response next time; it will repair the trust we lost in our handling of the last one. In our highly polarized environment, the principle of decentralized decision making is more vital than ever because trust is built from the ground up—through relationships, transparency, and mutual respect. 

    Subsidiarity is about more than governance; it is about relationships, empowerment, and shared responsibility, too. Whether in public health, education, or any other area of American life, the principle reminds us that the solutions we seek are often closer to us than we realize. I know Dr. Bhattacharya well. I am confident that he will not only help us restore trust in public health as director of NIH but will demonstrate how the principle of subsidiarity can be help America rebuild trust in other areas of our democracy where it is deficient today. 

    Wilk Wilkinson is a devoted husband, a loving father, a steadfast Christian conservative, and the insightful host of the “Derate The Hate” podcast.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/18/2024 – 23:20

  • Smarter, Faster, & Focused
    Smarter, Faster, & Focused

    Authored by JP Errico via RealClearHealth,

    In March of 2016, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiated a program to see whether it was possible to literally enhance cognitive function, i.e., become inherently smarter, through technological intervention.  The quest for greater intelligence may sound like the stuff of ancient mythology or dystopian science fiction, complete with tragic moral teachings about hubris.  This tale, however, is less Greek tragedy and more Gene Roddenberry!

    DARPA’s mission was launched after a decade or so of provocative case reports and small uncontrolled studies that revealed improved mental capacities among various neuromodulation patients.  These seemingly enhanced abilities included memory, verbal facility, spatial relations, and combined accuracy and speed on specialized learning tests.

    The TNT, or Targeted Neuroplasticity Training program was established to test a series of different technologies to see if any could accelerate learning by enhancing the brain’s curious ability to continuously evolve based on experiences.  Neuroplasticity is a fancy term that simply means changing neural connections to improve performance, and it encompasses learning, recall, and applying acquired knowledge.

    After a series of tests conducted by multiple research groups across a dozen different technologies, one stood head and shoulders above the rest.  Before telling you what it is, however, I need to explain a little about how human brains form and how they evolve through life.

    The human brain starts forming just a few weeks after conception when the embryo is made up of only a few layers of cells. At this stage, a structure called the yolk sac exists inside the placenta, adjacent to the embryo. At a well-choreographed moment in the development, a group of cells, called macrophage progenitors, migrate en masse, from the yolk sac and invade the embryo. These cells settle into areas where major organs like the brain, heart, and liver will form, and they begin creating special immune cells called tissue resident macrophages (TRMs).

    The TRMs that settle in the neural tube (the future site of the brain) are called microglia. These cells stay inside the developing brain region, behind a protective layer called the blood-brain barrier, that they construct. Within that space, they help build the brain by guiding the growth, placement, and connections of neurons and all the other supporting tissue and structures. Rather critically, neurons need to communicate with each other across the brain, and microglia ensure this network gets set up correctly.

    More specifically, microglia initially encourage the brain to form as many connections as possible. But as the brain grows, their role shifts as they begin to refine and organize these connections, removing ones that aren’t useful. This process, called synaptic pruning, is guided by sensory inputs and other circumstances and helps the brain become more efficient and specialized based on individual experiences. It’s like trimming excess branches from a tree to help it grow stronger.

    Some brain regions stop developing after a certain point, but others—like the hippocampus, which helps with memory and learning—continue to grow and change throughout life. (An interesting observation that demonstrates this is how London cab drivers, who have to learn the entirety of the Gordian knot that is the city’s roadways in order to be licensed, have substantially larger hippocampi than “normal”.)

    Microglia are essential for brain development, but because they’re also immune cells, they can be affected by inflammation. When inflammation distracts microglia from their tasks, brain development can be disrupted, potentially leading to conditions like autism or schizophrenia. Even mild inflammation can impact brain development and can impact memory and learning functions in adults.

    It stands to reason, therefore, that any intervention that prevents microglia from being diverted by inflammation or helps inflamed microglia return quickly and effectively to their constructive state can enhance learning. DARPA’s TNT program identified exactly that, and it’s called brain development or more specifically, non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation (nVNS).

    VNS using implanted devices, was already a proven medical treatment to treat drug-resistant epilepsy, refractory depression, and had even been found effective in treating obesity.  In fact, many of the provocative reports mentioned above had come from VNS patients.  Surgical implantation of a medical device to try to make soldiers smarter, however, sounded too much like The Terminator for even the military.  What they wanted was a hand-held device that was marketed as a wellness product.  Fortunately, such a device was being developed, to treat stress and enhance sleep quality, and thus, broader real-world studies began.

    Just a few months ago, the latest results on the benefits of this technology were reported in Nature’s Scientific Reports.  In this study, the therapy was tested at the Defense Language Institute – where high-performing military personnel learn new languages prior to deployments.  This study found that using the nVNS for just 2 minutes, twice per day, reduced mental fatigue by >30%, enhanced focus by >40%, and improved actual recall by >50%.  The military version of the product is called TAC STIM, but the same therapy is also available to the general public as a device called Truvaga.

    As amazing as all of this may seem (and it is), it pales in comparison to the final parts of this story, which are ones in which I am proud to be playing an active role.

    Remember when I mentioned that inflammation can distract microglia, impacting neurodevelopment, and how that can lead to autism or schizophrenia?  Well, this same nVNS therapy is now being tested to see if it can be used during pregnancy and in early childhood to help prevent the neurodevelopmental harm that inflammation can cause, and alter the skyrocketing rates of autism and the epidemic of mental health challenges.

    As remarkable as it may seem, at the other end of the developmental spectrum, nVNS is also being studied to see if it can modify neurodevelopment, not simply to protect against damage and disability, or temporarily enhance learning, but to optimize brain development permanently, e.g., deliver enhanced IQ!  Given the importance of intelligence in the modern world, the degree to which every measure of success depends on intelligence, and the fact that medical and sociological research continues to reveal the damaging impact of economically and socially disadvantaged environments on childhood cognitive growth, nVNS may provide an immediate leveling of the cognitive playing field for the next generation of American children.  That is a future worth imagining!

    And until you opt for an implant… boost neuroplasticity and reduce brain inflammation with IQ Biologix’s Peak Focus and Brain Rescue. We’ve been on it for months…

    Shameless plug? Yes. But give it a try with a 30-day satisfaction guarantee.

    JP Errico is a highly accomplished scientist with a diverse range of expertise as an executive, entrepreneur, and inventor. He is an expert on the Autonomic Nervous System. He is the Founder of ElectroCore, where he pioneered a non-invasive Vagus Nerve stimulator. JP has been credited as an inventor on over 250 issued US patents. He went to MIT for undergrad and holds graduate degrees in both law and mechanical/materials engineering from Duke University.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/18/2024 – 22:55

  • California's Regulations Causing Truck Shortages, Rising Costs, Industry Says
    California’s Regulations Causing Truck Shortages, Rising Costs, Industry Says

    Authored by Kimberly Hayek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    California’s zero emission regulations are causing truck shortages and rising costs, according to the trucking and heavy-duty vehicle industry.

    State officials plan to end traditional combustion truck sales by 2036.

    A tow truck removes destroyed cars from an Amazon Fulfillment Center in Edwardsville, IL on Dec. 11, 2021, after it was hit by a tornado. Tim Vizer/AFP via Getty Images

    California’s Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) regulation requires manufacturing companies to gradually increase the percentage of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) they sell on the market—such as electric or hydrogen—and reduce the number of gas and diesel trucks.

    Anthony Bento, chief legal officer for the California New Car Dealers Association, said dealers in the state have seen dramatic decreases in available trucks for the 2024 model year as a result of the new rules.

    “These rules are decreasing product availability, and when there’s less product available, there’s increasing costs,” Bento told The Epoch Times. “The on-the-ground reality is that California consumers and businesses are going to be paying more, because there’s not an adequate supply of new product available that meets customers’ demands.”

    California’s goals include reducing tailpipe emissions and requiring the progress and adoption of advanced clean trucks. By the end of the 2024 model year, 5 to 9 percent of sales in California must be ZEVs.

    The ACT regulation was adopted by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in 2020 and approved by the state Office of Administrative Law in March 2021.

    Industry representatives say the rules are forcing businesses to drive out of state to purchase trucks and parts that are non-compliant, leave the state of California, or close up shop altogether. They also say truck business owners are delaying upgrading their fleet so as to not deal with the requirements.

    Mark Baatz, owner of Tow Industries in Los Angeles, which supplies trucks to emergency roadside services, told host Siyamak Khorrami on EpochTV’s “California Insider” in an interview published on Dec. 15, that the towing industry doesn’t yet have any available ZEV options.

    “In our industry, regardless of cost, there isn’t an electric truck that works for us at this time,” he said. “That next technology hasn’t arrived for us yet.”

    As a result, the number of diesel trucks available has been reduced dramatically, he said. Last year, his company sold around 600 trucks, and next year, only around 30 to 50 trucks are expected to be available. He said this will heavily impact the emergency towing industry.

    Meanwhile, CARB representatives have said the state’s ACT regulations may not be the problem, citing a nationwide downturn in the market, supply chain issues carrying over from previous years, and manufacturers not being sufficiently prepared to comply with other emissions regulations.

    “Inconsistencies in communication have led dealers and fleets to believe that the ACT regulation’s requirements are leading to the product shortages in the medium- and heavy-duty space which, upon discussions with all affected parties, is not backed by the data available,” Steven Cliff, executive officer for CARB, wrote in a memo on Sept. 25.

    “Additionally, some vehicle upfitters producing specialty vehicles, including tow trucks, have reached maximum production capacity thresholds nationwide and cannot increase production levels, which affects the manufacturers’ ability to accept new orders.”

    Cliff also said California zero-emission trucks have increased in price by an average of $86,512 since 2021–22, while such European trucks have decreased in price by an average of $12,641 during that same time period.

    “There appear to be no clear reasons for this disparity between regions,” he wrote.

    On Dec. 6, the board published a “Myth vs. Fact” fact sheet to address concerns raised about the ACT rules, stating for example, “The ACT regulation does not have any provisions prohibiting or restricting the types of diesel-powered vehicles that can be registered or operated in California.”

    CARB did not reply to The Epoch Times’ request for comment by publication time.

    A separate major regulation facing the California trucking industry is the Heavy-Duty Low NOx rule, which went into effect in 2021 and requires a 90 percent reduction in certain emissions for new heavy-duty vehicles compared to traditional diesel engines by 2031.

    ZEV Compliant Trucks

    At a CARB board meeting on Oct. 24, Bento said data suggests that the magnitude of declines in available trucks are significant—over 80 percent for Class 8 heavy-duty trucks weighing more than 33,000 pounds—and the scale of these declines is unique to California. Therefore, he said they cannot be attributed to national or economic factors.

    If the supply of new combustion trucks does not increase, businesses that rely on these vehicles will be left with a couple of choices, Bento said.

    “Continue to operate their older, more polluting vehicles for longer or purchase vehicles from out of state that do not comply with CARB requirements,” he said. “Both options undermine our state’s environmental goals and will harm air quality.”

    Brian Banks, owner of Action Towing and Road Service in the San Francisco Bay Area, said that while he supports clean energy and wants his children to live in a world with clean air, he also wants to support his 200 workers and their families.

    “Unfortunately at this point, there is no application that will work in our industry. I ask the board to please reconsider the regulations and continue to make amendments to allow us to run our businesses until there is a solution,” he said.

    Other commenters suggested emergency tow trucks be exempt from the ACT regulation or postpone the regulation altogether until the technology catches up.

    Ashley Porter, sales manager for Oakland-based Tec Equipment, said she has seen many of their large truck customers leave California or pass the costs of updating their fleet onto customers.

    She said it has been heart-wrenching to walk her clients through the ACT and other regulations and noted that certain businesses don’t have the resources to meet the requirements.

    “The impact of these regulations as it is written today will impact the California economy negatively for years to come,” Porter said.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/18/2024 – 22:30

  • FTC Bans Hidden 'Junk' Fees For Hotels, Concerts, Sports… But Spares Other Industries
    FTC Bans Hidden ‘Junk’ Fees For Hotels, Concerts, Sports… But Spares Other Industries

    The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Tuesday unveiled a new set of rules outlawing the practice of hiding so-called “junk fees” from consumers until the end of the purchase process. However, the long-awaited rules have a relatively narrow scope: They only encompass live event tickets, hotels and vacation rentals — sparing airlines, auto dealers and many other prominent generators of consumer grievances.  

    “Consumers searching for hotels or vacation rentals or seats at a show or sporting event will no longer be surprised by a pile of ‘resort,’ ‘convenience,’ or ‘service’ fees inflating the advertised price,” said the FTC in a statement accompanying the publishing of a 313-page explanation of the rules and the process used to draft them. The FTC claims the rule will save consumers upwards of 53 million hours annually in “wasted time spent searching for the total price,” putting a price tag of $11 billion on the time savings. Advocates for the rule also hope that clearer all-in pricing will also nudge prices downward.  

    Sellers of event tickets and lodging will have to prominently display the total cost early in the sales process (Photo: Andrea Piacquadio) 

    Rather than banning “junk fees,” the rule demands that they be disclosed earlier, and requires businesses to display the total price more prominently than than most other pricing information. “This means that the most prominent price in an ad needs to be the all-in total price,” said the FTC. Sellers must “clearly and conspicuously disclose the true total price inclusive of all mandatory fees whenever they offer, display, or advertise any price of live-event tickets or short-term lodging.” 

    The rule is far narrower than what the unconstitutional FTC first had in mind: A 2023 proposal would have sweepingly applied the rules across the entire US economy. Meanwhile, other attempts by the Biden administration to limit fees have hit legal headwinds. For example, a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau-declared $8 cap on credit card late fees has been blocked by a federal judge in Fort Worth. 

    The new rule is slated to take effect in April — if the Trump administration doesn’t kill it first (Photo: Andrea Piacquadio) 

    “I urge enforcers to continue cracking down on these unlawful fees and encourage state and federal policymakers to build on this success with legislation that bans unfair and deceptive junk fees across the economy,” said lame-duck FTC chair Lina Khan. 

    The FTC adopted the rule in a 4-1 vote. The sole dissenter was Republican Andrew Ferguson, Trump’s pick to chair the commission in his upcoming administration. In a dissenting statement, Ferguson said his “no” vote wasn’t a statement on the merits of the rule. “I dissent only on the ground that the time for rulemaking by the Biden-Harris FTC is over,” he said in a statement. “It is particularly inappropriate for the Biden-Harris FTC to adopt a major new rule that it will never enforce,” given the rule won’t take effect until April.

    Under Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” is promising to hack away at the sprawling thicket of federal regulations, it’s unclear if the new rules will be shredded by the new administration and its accompanying Republican-controlled House and Senate. Given the popular appeal, that seems doubtful.  

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/18/2024 – 22:05

  • Resident Of China Sentenced For Stealing Trade Secrets From Tesla
    Resident Of China Sentenced For Stealing Trade Secrets From Tesla

    Authored by Catherine Yang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Klaus Pflugbeil, a Canadian man currently residing in China, was sentenced on Dec. 16 to 24 months in prison for selling trade secrets stolen from an American company.

    The Department of Justice (DOJ) in Washington on Aug. 12, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

    Pflugbeil was charged in March and pleaded guilty in a New York federal court in June.

    He and co-conspirator Yilong Shao, who remains at large, had worked for a Canadian manufacturer that sold precision equipment to battery companies. That company was acquired in 2019 by a leading U.S.-based manufacturer of battery-powered electric vehicles and battery energy systems, which Pflugbeil and Shao stole from.

    The American company has been identified as Tesla. Pflugbeil had worked at Canadian manufacturer Hibar System Ltd. in Canada and China from 1995 to 2009, and Hibar was later purchased by Tesla.

    According to communications between Pflugbeil and Shao referenced in court documents, Pflugbeil detailed the original documents and drawings of proprietary technology he had stolen from Tesla. In or around July 2020, Pflugbeil joined Shao’s company, which made and sold the same equipment that their original employer made and sold.

    “The defendant built a business in China to sell sensitive technology that belongs to a U.S. company,“ said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York. ”His actions were bold—he even advertised that he was selling the victim’s products—because he thought, incorrectly, that he was outside the reach of U.S. prosecutors.”

    Pflugbeil had advertised these products on YouTube, through LinkedIn, and via Google, where the ads were shown tens of thousands of times per week. In direct advertising messages, Pflugbeil falsely stated his products did not infringe on patents, copyrights, or other intellectual property. According to the Justice Department (DOJ), Pflugbeil made more than $1.3 million on the stolen trade secrets.

    DOJ officials said the case implicated national security, referencing the Chinese communist regime’s practice of pricing out competitors in strategically important industries.

    The department stated that this had the potential to aid “Chinese automakers to swamp the U.S. and global market.” That market dominance also “presents a potential national security risk.”

    In September, the Biden administration had proposed a ban on Chinese vehicle software and hardware based on national security concerns, noting that all new cars are “connected” vehicles, which possess the capability to capture and transmit great amounts of sensitive data.

    “In stealing trade secrets from an American electric vehicle manufacturer to use in his own China-based company, Pflugbeil’s actions stood to benefit the PRC in a critical industry with national security implications,” stated Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew G. Olsen.

    “The Justice Department will mobilize every available resource to prevent our adversaries from advancing their global ambitions at the expense of U.S. national security.”

    Pflugbeil’s arrest occurred after undercover agents made contact with Shao in September 2023 at a trade show and were later connected with Pflugbeil via email. Pflugbeil had emailed the agents a 66-page document with technical details containing the stolen trade secrets.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/18/2024 – 21:40

  • Kratos Conducts First Test Of Mysterious Stealth Drone 
    Kratos Conducts First Test Of Mysterious Stealth Drone 

    Aviation Week revealed that US-based Kratos Defense successfully tested its Thanatos stealth Uncrewed Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) prototype within the last few months.

    Steve Fendley, president of Kratos’ Unmanned Systems Division, told the aviation news website that the company’s Thanatos stealth UCAV was successfully tested in recent months. However, he declined to provide specifics about the test or its location.

    “Kratos unveiled the Thanatos design in November 2023 when company CEO Eric Demarco said in an earnings report that the company hoped to have a contract within a year. The design shows what appears to be a single-engine UCAV with two inlets and a single exhaust,” Aviation Week said, adding, “The aircraft does not have a vertical tail and horizontal stabilizers, showing the company’s stealth approach.” 

    On Dec. 7, during an interview at the Reagan National Defense Forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, Fendley said: “The air vehicle for Thanatos is now effectively proven. We’re not trying to figure out does the airplane fly, we’re now trying to figure out does the integrated system tick the mission box.”

    Kratos has indicated that it seeks a contract with an undisclosed customer for Thanatos. While the company has not confirmed its client, the USAF has been a potential customer because of its Collaborative Combat Aircraft program.

    As ‘dronegate‘ continues to escalate for the federal government amid mysterious drone sightings across New Jersey and New York, the latest test flights of super secretive UCAV by Kratos imply that ‘Tic Tac’-shaped unidentified flying objects reported by fighter pilots over the years may not be aliens, but instead top-secret stealth drones. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/18/2024 – 21:15

  • NASA Delays Return Of Stranded Astronauts Until March
    NASA Delays Return Of Stranded Astronauts Until March

    Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Two astronauts who have been stranded in space for months won’t be able to return to earth until March, NASA said on Dec. 17 as it announced the latest in a string of delays sparked by problems with their Boeing-designed Starliner spacecraft.

    Boeing Crew Flight Test Astronauts Butch Wilmore (L) and Suni Williams pose for a portrait inside the vestibule between the forward port on the International Space Station’s Harmony module and Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on June 13, 2024. NASA via AP

    NASA said it needed more time to complete the processing of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, which is scheduled to arrive at the space agency’s processing facility in Florida in early January.

    Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were initially expected to return within a week after traveling to the International Space Station (ISS) on NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test mission in June.

    Their mission was later extended after NASA decided to return the spacecraft empty in September after the pilots identified helium leaks and issues with the Starliner’s reaction control thrusters on June 6.

    NASA initially planned to launch the Crew-10 mission in February 2025, with Wilmore and Williams returning home by the end of that month alongside two other astronauts who arrived at the ISS on Sept. 29 aboard the SpaceX Dragon capsule.

    The pair now face another delay, as NASA announced on Tuesday that Crew-10 will not launch until March 2025. By the time they return next year, they will have spent more than nine months in space.

    “Fabrication, assembly, testing, and final integration of a new spacecraft is a painstaking endeavor that requires great attention to detail,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said in a statement. “We appreciate the hard work by the SpaceX team to expand the Dragon fleet in support of our missions and the flexibility of the station program and expedition crews as we work together to complete the new capsule’s readiness for flight.”

    NASA stated that it had considered using another SpaceX spacecraft but ultimately decided to wait until the Dragon spacecraft was ready and launch the Crew-10 mission in late March.

    On Sept. 30, NASA launched the SpaceX Crew-9 Dragon capsule carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov to join the Expedition 72 crew at the ISS to do research, technology demonstrations, and maintenance activities. Another two seats on the capsule were saved for Wilmore and Williams.

    NASA stated Tuesday that Crew-9 will return to Earth only after Crew-10 arrives at the orbital laboratory for a handover period.

    According to the space agency, Crew-9 will “share any lessons learned with the newly arrived crew and support a better transition for ongoing science and maintenance at the complex” during the handover period. NASA did not specify the duration of the handover process.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/18/2024 – 20:50

  • Deputy Mayor In Washington Has Car Stolen While In The Middle Of City Council Meeting
    Deputy Mayor In Washington Has Car Stolen While In The Middle Of City Council Meeting

    How bad has crime gotten in the U.S.?

    Here’s one for you. In Auburn, Washington, last week a group of kids stole the city’s deputy mayor’s car while she was in the middle of a City Council Meeting, where they were voting her into a new role. 

    On Tuesday, the City Council elected Cheryl Rakes as deputy mayor. Meanwhile, police reported four kids stealing her Kia Soul outside city hall, according to Fox 13 Seattle.

    “She went into the meeting at 5:30 p.m. Monday and came out an hour later and the car was gone,” 770 KTTH reported. 

    “I went out to my car about 6:30 to grab a couple of things and noticed my car was gone,” Rakes said on 770 this week. “No, I don’t feel like I was targeted. I think it was because it was the Kia.”

    The suspects fled, abandoning the car at Madison at River’s Edge Apartments, a site of a 2022 double shooting. The vehicle’s ignition was damaged, and items were stolen, police said.

    Rakes commented: “I’m incredibly grateful to the Auburn Police Department and its officers for their work in recovering the vehicle quickly and safely.”

    The Fox report says that investigators used Flock license-reading cameras to track the stolen car from Kent back to Auburn. Police have no suspect images and believe four children were involved, but no arrests have been made.

    Just another day in Joe Biden’s America…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/18/2024 – 20:25

  • Nancy Pelosi Profited As Luxury Napa Resort Won COVID-19 Bailout
    Nancy Pelosi Profited As Luxury Napa Resort Won COVID-19 Bailout

    Authored by Leighton Woodhouse via RealClearInvestigations,

    The Auberge du Soleil, a five-star hillside hotel and spa with a panoramic view overlooking the vineyards of Napa Valley, appears to be first-rate in all ways but one. While the glamorous resort, an hour’s drive from San Francisco, fills rooms that routinely go for $2,000 a night with A-list celebrities and tech titans, financial records suggest it did not provide much of a return to at least two of its investors – Rep. Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul. That changed when it received millions in congressionally authorized COVID-19 relief in 2020 and 2021.

    The Auberge du Soleil investment, held for decades by Paul Pelosi, has rarely turned a significant profit, according to Nancy’s financial disclosure forms. In some years, he has recorded a loss or a profit of between $50,000 to $100,000. But the year of the bailout money stands apart. In 2021, Pelosi’s ethics forms show that her family’s income from the resort surged to a range of $1 million to $5 million. 

    The French Riviera-themed resort may not be most people’s idea of a struggling business in need of a government bailout, yet the Auberge du Soleil – which shuttered briefly at the outset of the pandemic before swiftly rebounding – received about $9 million from a series of special taxpayer-funded emergency relief programs.

    The previously unreported windfall is among several COVID bailouts that flowed to Pelosi-backed restaurants, hotels, and properties, including several Courtyard Marriott hotels.

    A RealClearInvestigations analysis found that Pelosi’s profits spiked from a variety of holdings that won significant government rescue funds – which amounted to $28 million, a total more than previously known. For their family’s stake in the Auberge du Soleil, the Pelosis received more income in 2021, when bailout funds channeled to the resort, than any other time over the last 10 years.

    Pelosi is hardly alone among lawmakers whose businesses reaped awards from pandemic-era financial programs designed for small businesses. Rep. Greg Pence, the brother of the former vice president, received $79,441. Rep. Dean Phillips, who briefly campaigned in the Democratic presidential primary, is an investor in a small event production company, Geniecast, that received two forgivable loans that totaled $373,185. Other members with investments in car dealerships and restaurant companies also received scrutiny over COVID rescue funds.

    Yet Pelosi’s personal stake in the unprecedented taxpayer gusher has never been fully explored. Pelosi, during her previous stint as leader of the House of Representatives, shepherded all federal COVID stimulus measures, which totaled about $5.5 trillion – one of the largest domestic spending efforts in U.S. history outside of wartime. “These Republicans seem to have an endless tolerance for other people’s sadness,” said Pelosi at a press conference in December 2020, admonishing her opposition for delays in passing additional pandemic spending programs. The programs were touted as disaster measures designed to save the economy and help needy businesses and families.

    The exact amount of Pelosi’s profits from the Auberge Du Soleil is unclear. The hotel is a privately held company, and the lawmakers file ethics reports that show a range of income and assets rather than a precise amount. Her office did not respond to a request for comment.

    The former House Speaker has gained notoriety over her husband’s well-timed stock trades. Her husband, Paul Pelosi, 84, is an investor who has long dabbled in real estate. Fortune magazine, among other outlets, has reported on his unusually high gains from trading call options for technology-related stocks.

    The Pelosi household earned over 65% on trades last year, according to an analysis from Unusual Whales, one of several sites that track congressional trading activity. That record outshines even the most successful hedge fund managers. 

    Pelosi’s wealth has surged over her time in office. Disclosures show her net worth went from approximately $18 million in 1991 to nearly $250 million last year. “The Speaker has no prior knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transaction,” Pelosi’s spokesperson has told outlets in the past over questions about the trades. Her office did not respond to RCI’s request for comment.

    The COVID-related relief lavished on the Pelosi family’s private investment holdings has gone largely unnoticed. 

    Early in the pandemic, there were scattered reports about lawmakers from both parties who stood to gain financially from the initial Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). The small business rescue fund, reporters at Roll Call noted in July 2020, awarded forgivable loans to Piatti, an Italian chain, and a firm tied to the El Dorado, a small hotel in Sonoma County, both owned in part by Pelosi. The Pelosi-linked PPP loans disclosed by the media totaled around $2.4 million.

    That figure scratches the surface. Newly discovered government disclosures show that Pelosi’s private holdings, such as the Auberge du Soleil resort, received upwards of $28 million in pandemic-related taxpayer funds, including the PPP, the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan, and a special grant program for restaurants.

    Much of the additional funding came from the second and third wave of pandemic stimulus legislation, passed in December 2020 and March 2021, that authorized an additional $2 trillion in cash and forgivable loans for needy individuals, businesses, and local governments. The additional rounds of spending effectively doubled the initial $2.1 trillion of CARES Act funds that began in March 2020. The new legislation authorized a second wave of PPP loans, along with billions of dollars in grants to theaters, restaurants, and travel companies impacted by the crisis.

    After the initial outcry over lawmakers reaping financial awards from the bailout programs they had authorized, Congress tightened the eligibility standards. These rules included a prohibition on PPP loans extended to companies in which lawmakers or their spouses owned a “controlling interest,” which the Small Business Administration has defined as an ownership stake of at least 20%.

    It is not clear if Pelosi violated any of the ethics rules. None of her family’s holdings in businesses that received PPP loans is mentioned in her ethics disclosures – suggesting the family’s stakes fell below the reporting threshold.

    Nevertheless, the Pelosis profited handsomely from the bailout funds she advocated for as speaker of the House. The Restaurant Revitalization Fund, one of the additional programs launched by the new round of pandemic spending, provided $5 million to the Auberge du Soleil in June 2021. The funds were not restricted by congressional ownership of the underlying business entities. The resort also won a second PPP loan that totaled about $2 million in 2021. The first PPP loan, awarded the previous year, provided $2.9 million – helping the Pelosis earn millions on an investment that has rarely turned a significant profit, according to Nancy’s ethics disclosures. 

    This was also the case for the Piatti Restaurant Company, the California-based pizza and Italian restaurant chain owned in part by Pelosi, which ended up receiving about $15 million in a mix of PPP and RRF grants and forgiven loans. The Pelosi household, in turn, received up to $1 million in partnership income distributions from their investment in the restaurant in 2021, the year that the company received the bulk of the government assistance.

    The investment return that year from Piatti was also the highest in over a decade for the Pelosis. In previous years, they typically earned less than $50,000 from their stake in the pizza chain.

    The taxpayer assistance to the Pelosi-backed resorts and restaurants may have come at the expense of other struggling businesses. In total, the Auberge du Soleil and Piatti won over $14.2 million in Restaurant Revitalization Fund grants, money that was shepherded through Congress by Pelosi and authorized by President Biden’s signature American Rescue Plan legislation. Most applicants were not as fortunate. Less than a third of the eateries, pubs and diners that sought funding from the program were approved, and the fund was quickly depleted after it opened.

    The billions of dollars in COVID money was cast as a targeted measure to save the economy. More recent analysis has found the rushed programs were poorly designed and were a significant factor in the high levels of inflation experienced over the last four years.

    Estimates of how much government money was misspent widely vary. The Associated Press reported that fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion from the assorted pandemic relief programs. A Senate report noted that wasted and abused pandemic funding ended up in the form of “Lamborghinis, luxury vacations, extravagant jewelry, and even an alpaca farm.”

    “The sheer amount of taxpayer losses due to pandemic relief fraud and abuse,” noted Craig Eyermann, a fellow at the Independent Institute, was on the “order of hundreds of billions of dollars.”

    There is no indication that the Pelosis did anything illegal. But Eyermann and other ethics experts argue the funds posed conflict of interest issues. He’s not surprised that wealthy lawmakers tapped COVID-related largesse. “To even pursue it,” he added, “they put themselves ahead of those who truly needed it.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/18/2024 – 20:00

  • George Soros Funneled $50 Million Into Shadowy Iran-Sympathizing Nonprofit
    George Soros Funneled $50 Million Into Shadowy Iran-Sympathizing Nonprofit

    Among the many nonprofits funded by far-left billionaire George Soros and his even more radical son, Alex, are progressive super PACs, as well as, according to reporting by The New York Post, tens of millions of dollars funneled into a network of groups sympathetic to Iran whose members held top positions within the Biden-Harris administration. 

    NYPost reviewed records from Soros’ Open Society Foundations, revealing that the progressive billionaire has funneled $46.7 million since 2016 into the International Crisis Group, a far-left think tank allegedly connected to an Iranian plot to influence US lawmakers and policies. 

    Robert Malley, the former US special envoy to Iran, has been under FBI investigation for allegedly transferring classified information onto his personal email, where it could’ve slipped into the hands of a foreign actor. Malley was ICG’s president until he joined the Biden team in 2021. 

    Gabriel Noronha of the Polaris National Security think tank told NYPost: “Soros has continually funded organizations that act as apologists for the Iranian regime – downplaying their severe human rights abuses while working to advance Iranian propaganda.” 

    In 1994, Soros funded ICG’s formation and served as its trustee for years before handing the baton to Alex in 2018. 

    Jay Solomon penned a note in Semafor in 2023 about three of Malley’s aides who were part of the Iran Experts Initiative, a mysterious network of Iranian-American elites established by Iran’s Foreign Ministry in 2014. NYPost noted IEI members were able to rise in the ranks of Washington’s foreign policy circles while advocating easing sanctions on Tehran. 

    “If you were a regime running a game plan of how to subvert the United States’ political system from within, this would be it to a tee,” Noronha said.

    Meanwhile, radicals within the Biden-Harris administration are leaving the Middle East in flames as Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House next month, where he is expected to reimpose “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran. 

    Noronha pointed out, “I don’t know what either Soros’s vision is regarding Iran … But the things they routinely fund are things that weaken America, both internally and externally.”

    The Soros family must understand that the American people have given Trump a mandate to usher in the ‘America First’ era. The days of funding non-profits to undermine America are over.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/18/2024 – 19:35

  • Al-Qaeda Linked Julani Meets With British Diplomats, Discusses Removal From Terror List
    Al-Qaeda Linked Julani Meets With British Diplomats, Discusses Removal From Terror List

    Authored by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute, 

    The leader of the al-Qaeda-linked Syria rebel group that removed President Bashar al-Assad from power met with British officials to request the removal of sanctions and the terror designation on his group. 

    Abu Mohammed al-Julani met with Stephen Hickey, director of the Middle East department at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), and Ann Snow, the UK’s envoy to Syria in Damascus on Monday. 

    According to statements given to Middle East Eye, officials from Julani’s Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) said the talks discussed the “latest developments” in Syria. The UK’s Foreign Ministry stated the British officials discussed London’s role in Damascus’ transition of power from Assad. 

    Julani also gave an interview with the British outlet, The Times, to press for sanctions relief. “Countries must now lift this designation. Syria is very important geostrategically. They should lift all restrictions, which were imposed on the flogger and the victim — the flogger is gone now. This issue is not up for negotiation,” he said. 

    Julani, who fought for Al-Qaeda in Iraq against American soldiers, added that HTS’s designation as a foreign terror organization is inappropriate. HTS has been labeled a terror organization by Washington and London since 2017, when Julani created the group.

    At the time, both governments recognized that HTS was merely a rebranding of al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, al-Nusra.  Following Julani’s triumph, the White House and 10 Downing Street are now considering removing HTS and Julani from the terror lists. 

    In recent years, Julani has attempted to soften his image by sitting down with Western journalists for interviews, often appearing in a suit and with a trimmed beard in an attempt to obscure his jihadist ideology. 

    A lot of interesting “diplomacy” happening in Damascus these days…

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    Julani’s meetings with the British government and media come on the heels of London using the Terrorism Act 2000 to target and frame supporters of Palestinian rights as aiding Hamas. London said last week that engagement with HTS would not violate the law.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/18/2024 – 19:10

  • Tanker Ships Are Now Being Fitted With Sails To Cut Carbon Footprints
    Tanker Ships Are Now Being Fitted With Sails To Cut Carbon Footprints

    Ever seen a massive tanker ship…with wind sails? You might soon.

    That’s because the Sohar Max, a 400,000-deadweight-ton vessel, was just retrofitted with five 35-meter rotor sails at China’s COSCO Zhoushan shipyard, according to Bloomberg. The purpose is to reduce fuel use by 6% and cut annual carbon emissions by 3,000 tons. 

    Bloomberg reported that the shipping industry already faces regulatory pressure to reduce emissions. Rotor sails remain uncommon, and the adoption of wind technologies hinges on cost savings. Their appeal may grow as shippers transition from oil to pricier, cleaner marine fuels, the report says.

    Nick Contopoulos, chief production and partnerships officer at Anemoi Marine Technologies, said: “There’s definitely an uptick in the adoption of wind propulsion and not just rotor sails, but other technologies too.”

    California, for example, just expanded its emissions regulations at its port, DNV wrote last month. Starting January 1, 2025, California will expand its emissions regulations for vessels at ports.

    Initially introduced in 2007 for container, passenger, and refrigerated-cargo ships, the rules now include Ro-Ro and tanker vessels. Ships must control emissions of NOx, PM 2.5, and reactive organic gases by connecting to onshore power, using approved exhaust capture systems, paying into a remediation fund, or adopting alternative fuels.

    Tanker vessels face phased compliance, starting with the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in 2025 and all California terminals by 2027.

    Most other emissions standards are “primarily governed by the International Maritime Organization (IMO)” and “require ships operating in designated Emission Control Areas (ECAs) to meet stricter sulfur fuel limits and engine emission standards”. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/18/2024 – 18:45

  • Mystery Drones Have Stalked US For Years
    Mystery Drones Have Stalked US For Years

    Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times,

    A sudden spike in unidentified drone sightings in the northeastern United States is unnerving residents and lawmakers alike. Similar incidents have occurred for years, however, with little apparent action from the government.

    Drone sighting reports in California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Virginia over the past month have raised questions about the possibility that drones are being used to surveil or attack U.S. infrastructure.

    The sightings follow several high-profile incidents in recent months, including at U.S. military facilities throughout the country and in the UK and Germany.

    The White House has downplayed the incidents and denied that there is any evidence of a sustained threat to public safety.

    “We have not identified anything anomalous or any national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the Northeast,” White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Dec. 16.

    Kirby did acknowledge that drones had penetrated restricted airspace, however, including that of the Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, and Picatinny Arsenal military research facility in New Jersey.

    Although such sightings are currently receiving a lot of media attention, there have been several high-profile drone incidents in the past half-decade for which the federal government has yet to formally account.

    Five years ago, for example, groups of large drones began appearing off the coast of California. They stalked and surveilled several Navy and Coast Guard ships, including the technologically advanced guided-missile destroyer USS Zumwalt.

    The incident caused alarm throughout the military and incurred a joint investigation by elements of the U.S. Navy, Coast Guard, and FBI. Members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the commander of the Pacific Fleet were kept apprised of the situation.

    No administration nor the Department of Defense has publicly stated what the drones were seeking to accomplish or who was operating them.

    Two investigative reports published by The War Zone in 2021 and 2022, however, revealed that ship logs from one of the Navy vessels involved had identified the source of the drones as the MV Bass Strait, a Hong Kong-flagged bulk carrier.

    In 2020, a new swarm of large drones began appearing in the skies over rural Colorado and Nebraska, where some of the nation’s Minuteman III nuclear missiles are stored.

    Local officials eventually said no laws were being broken and that drone pilots were not required to file flight plans unless in controlled airspace, such as near an airport.

    Similarly, the FBI, the Federal Aviation Administration, and local authorities never publicly identified who was operating the drones and suggested most of the sightings were attributable to hobby drones and people misidentifying planets and stars as aircraft.

    Likewise, Kirby told reporters that many of the 5,000 reports of drone sightings over the past week were attributable to hobbyists, commercial drones, and people misidentifying stars as aircraft.

    Similar incidents have continued, apparently unabated.

    This year alone, drones have approached and entered the restricted airspace over U.S. military installations throughout the country and overseas.

    Drones were tracked around three separate military bases in the UK last month, including Royal Air Force Lakenheath, which serves as the U.S. Air Forces in Europe’s only fighter wing of the fifth-generation F-35 aircraft.

    Shortly thereafter, federal agents arrested a Chinese national for flying an unregistered drone over Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and taking photos of the SpaceX rocket pads on a day on which the contractor launched a sensitive national reconnaissance payload.

    Kirby attempted to assuage fears of a potential unidentified drone threat, saying that there were more than a million lawfully registered drones in the United States, with thousands of hobbyists and law enforcement offices using the technology.

    Still, the lack of a federal response to the growing number of drone-related incidents in recent years has left both lawmakers and the public in a state of uncertainty about what is to be done.

    Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testified earlier this week that the federal government simply doesn’t have enough legal authority to engage drones that are not within restricted airspace and instead said that local law enforcement should take the lead “under federal supervision.”

    In a post on social media platform X, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul urged Congress to “pass a law that will give us the power to deal directly with the drones.”

    On Dec. 16, Hochul also announced that the federal government will send the state “a state-of-the-art drone detection system” after a drone incursion forced the closure of a local airport.

    “I am grateful for the support, but we need more,” she said on X.

    The drone incursions of recent years have repeatedly come within striking distance of commercial airports and even within close range of the president’s aircraft. Federal officials have not identified the drone operators in most of those cases but maintain that there is no immediate or foreign-backed threat.

    President-elect Donald Trump suggested this week that the Biden administration had intelligence on the source of the drones but was not revealing it to the public.

    Kirby rejected the idea.

    “There’s absolutely no effort to be anything other than as up-front as we can be,” Kirby said.

    “If we had information, intelligence or otherwise, that told us that there was a national security threat posed by this drone activity, I would say that.”

    Kirby said the administration has engaged personnel from the departments of Defense and Homeland Security to help identify and respond to the northeastern U.S. drone sightings.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/18/2024 – 18:20

  • Philly Tow Company Owner Sentenced For $8.2 Million Catalytic Converter Theft Ring
    Philly Tow Company Owner Sentenced For $8.2 Million Catalytic Converter Theft Ring

    A family at the center of a catalytic converter theft ring has been sentenced for “operating a multi-million-dollar catalytic converter theft ring throughout the Philadelphia region”, according to authorities and a new report from Patch.

    A Philadelphia towing company owner was exposed as the ringleader of a catalytic converter theft ring, busted in June 2023 after a yearlong investigation, according to Bucks County prosecutors.

    Six family members, including some from Montgomery County, were sentenced Monday. Authorities revealed TDI Towing was “likely involved in the buying and reselling of over 25,000 likely stolen catalytic converters,” according to NBC. 

    The Patch report says that “TDI employees were paid an average of $300 per catalytic converter, for a total of nearly $8.2 million during the three years.”

     A joint investigation by Bucks County detectives and over 30 local, state, and federal agencies uncovered the ring. Michael Williams, owner of TDI Towing in Philadelphia, along with his wife, three sons-in-law, and her sister, were sentenced Monday. In June, five pleaded guilty, while one entered a no-contest plea.

    Michael Williams received 2.5 to 5 years in state prison and probation, while his accomplices, including Bruce, Schwartz, Hopkins, and Lisa Davalos, were sentenced to county jail terms ranging from 90 days to 23 months, and Deborah Davalos received two years of probation.

    “I think we got to see on the videos who [Williams] was when he didn’t know he was being recorded,” said Prosecutor Edward Furman. “Our position was that he was preying on people that were in the throes of addiction. He knew that they were looking for cheap, easy money and he was their source of it.”

    Coley Reynolds, Williams’s defense attorney, commented to NBC: “Michael was a person who was raised a certain way, wanted to take care of his friends, wanted to take care of his community. I’m not saying that led to these offenses, but certainly we thought it should have been more of a consideration to the court.”

    Williams will have to pay more than $100,000 in restitution.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/18/2024 – 17:55

  • Michelob Ultra Surpasses Bud Light As Top Draft Beer, Data Shows
    Michelob Ultra Surpasses Bud Light As Top Draft Beer, Data Shows

    Authored by Rudy Blalock via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Bud Light, once the reigning champion of American draft beers, continues to experience a decline in its market position.

    According to a statement from Anheuser-Busch InBev, Bud Light has been surpassed by Michelob Ultra, also owned by the company, as the top draft beer in the United States. Anheuser-Busch also owns Corona, Budweiser, and Stella Artois, among other popular beer brands.

    Six packs of Michelob Ultra and Bud Light are displayed at a grocery store in San Anselmo, Calif., on Dec. 16, 2024. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

    “We’re proud to have the top two beers on draft in the U.S. in Michelob Ultra and Bud Light, and by our data, Bud Light is more than 30% bigger than the next closest competitor,” the spokesperson told NTD News in an emailed statement, citing public Circana data.

    They said beyond just draft beers, Michelob Ultra is leading the industry as the number one overall fastest-growing beer in the United States and also the second overall beer brand in the country, behind Bud Light in that category.

    This shift in rankings followed a difficult year for Bud Light, which faced a widespread boycott.

    In July, Bud Light fell to third place in overall sales at grocery and convenience stores during the critical period between Memorial Day and July 4th. Michelob Ultra claimed the second spot, while Modelo Especial, manufactured by rival Constellation Brands, secured the top position.

    The boycott, which began in response to Bud Light’s partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, has had far-reaching impacts for Anheuser-Busch InBev.

    In May, the company reported its first-quarter earnings results for 2024, which showed a 9.1 percent decrease in revenues in the United States, primarily attributed to a drop in Bud Light volume. During the same period, Anheuser-Busch reported global revenues increased by 2.6 percent, largely due to strong sales of Corona beer outside of Mexico. Overall revenue rose to $14.5 billion, surpassing Wall Street’s forecast of $14.3 billion, according to analysts polled by FactSet.

    At the time, Anheuser-Busch CEO Michel Doukeris said he was optimistic about the company’s performance.

    “The strength of the beer category, our diversified global footprint and the continued momentum of our megabrands delivered another quarter of broad-based top-and bottom-line growth,” Doukeris said.

    “We are encouraged by our results to start the year, and the consistent execution by our teams and partners reinforces our confidence in delivering on our 2024 growth ambitions.”

    In an effort to rebuild its image, Anheuser-Busch has undertaken several strategic partnerships.

    The company became the “official beer partner” of the UFC, a mixed martial arts league, and secured sponsorship deals with the U.S. Olympic team for its Michelob Ultra brand. Additionally, Corona Cero, AB InBev’s zero-alcohol beer, will be the global beer sponsor of the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

    From NTD News

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/18/2024 – 17:30

  • High Altitude Unmanned Balloon Passes Near DC, New Jersey
    High Altitude Unmanned Balloon Passes Near DC, New Jersey

    A high-altitude unmanned balloon once operated by Loon, formerly an Alphabet subsidiary and now registered to Raven Aerostar as “N254TH,” traveled just north of the Baltimore-Washington, DC, airspace at 64,500 feet, moving east at 34 mph towards New Jersey. 

    Data from FlightAware indicates that N254TH launched from Dangel Airport in South Dakota on Monday and has since traversed the eastern half of the US, now making its way into Delaware and soon New Jersey

    Zooming in…

    Balloon website Stratocat provided more details about the balloon under Loon’s prior ownership: 

    Project Loon was an initiative to establish a network of high altitude unmanned balloons to provide Internet connectivity in underserved parts of the world or during disaster recovery efforts. The project started in 2011 and became public in 2013 as part of Google’s research and development of new technologies carried out through X Development LLC.

    Loon, formerly an Alphabet subsidiary, was shuttered in 2021—the project aimed to provide high-speed internet to remote parts of the world. However, Elon Musk’s Starlink has largely taken over that role with its low Earth orbit satellites. 

    Meanwhile, on X…

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    In addition to drones, residents of New Jersey will now have a giant balloon to speculate about.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/18/2024 – 17:05

  • Russia Airlifting Air Defense Systems From Syria To Libya
    Russia Airlifting Air Defense Systems From Syria To Libya

    Recent satellite imaging has shown that for the past several days Russia is rapidly packing up heavy equipment at its Khmeimim airbase in Latakia and evacuating it in the wake of the collapse of the Assad government on December 8. This is happening even as Moscow is in contact with new governing HTS rulers in Damascus concerning the future fate of the bases, which also includes the strategic naval base at Tartous.

    Concerning the packed up equipment, including anti-air missile systems, the only question is what’s the next destination? Western officials are now saying Libya. Moscow is putting pressure on Libyan warlord and rival to the Tripoli government, Khalifa Haftar, to secure a larger Russian military presence at a port in Benghazi.

    Maxar satellite image of the Russian naval base at Tartous, via Reuters.

    CNN has cited two unnamed US officials who say intelligence has observed the transfer of naval and other assets from Syria to Libya. Flight tracking has also confirmed the same.

    “Flight data show at least three Russian military cargo planes have flown from Belarus to Libya since Dec 8, the day the Russian-allied Assad regime in Syria was toppled by Islamist-led rebels,” The Telegraph writes. More have reportedly followed this week.

    The report continues, “Experts believe that Russia is moving defense materials stockpiled in Belarus, its closest ally, to Libya, where it is rapidly increasing its military presence in response to the rebel seizure of Damascus.”

    The Wall Street Journal in a fresh Wednesday report also observers:

    Russian cargo planes have flown air-defense equipment, including radars for S-400 and S-300 interceptor systems, from Syria to bases in eastern Libya controlled by Moscow-backed Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar, the officials said.

    Russia has also flown troops, military aircraft and weaponry out of Syria in a significant drawdown of its presence there. For years, Moscow has operated important naval bases and air bases in exchange for the support it provided to prop up Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator who fled to Moscow last week. 

    Libya’s Haftar, interestingly enough, maintains positive relations with both Moscow and Washington, but is generally seen as more in alignment with Russia. He has long requested that his part of eastern Libya under his control come under the protection of Russian air defenses.

    Given events in Syria, he may actually get his wish. The WSJ notes, “But Haftar will likely face pressure from the West to not allow Russia to expand its presence in Libya. The U.S., including during a visit by CIA director William Burns last year, has repeatedly warned Haftar to expel Russian forces—to no avail.”

    Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar of the Libyan National Army (right), via Russian Defense Ministry

    Since the 2011 overthrow of the Gaddafi government via US-NATO military intervention, Libya has remained in a state of chaos with three and at times four competing governments and swathes of the country controlled by warlords and Islamist factions. But the mainstream media has by and large moved on, unconcerned with the chaos left in the wake of the Obama-Hillary Iraq-style regime change operation.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/18/2024 – 16:45

  • Trump's Attorneys Allege Juror Misconduct In New York Case
    Trump’s Attorneys Allege Juror Misconduct In New York Case

    Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times,

    President-Elect Donald Trump’s attorneys have alleged evidence of “grave juror misconduct” in his falsified business records case that has been playing out in New York.

    A heavily redacted letter from Dec. 3 and published by the court on Dec. 17 showed Trump’s attorneys stating that the misconduct “violated President Trump’s rights under the federal Constitution and New York law.”

    The specific allegations are unclear, and recently released correspondence showed Trump’s attorneys disagreeing with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office over how much information to release.

    The correspondence was published by the court after the judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, issued an order and letter rejecting multiple arguments the president-elect had made about immunity.

    In a Dec. 16 letter, Merchan said that the court made additional redactions following redactions made by the different parties. He noted, however, that the allegations were unsworn and that unless a claim of juror misconduct was properly filed under New York law, “this Court cannot allow the public filing of unsworn, and admittedly contested statements.”

    “To do so,” Merchan said, “would threaten the safety of the jurors. … Should a properly filed claim be submitted, these redactions will be revisited.”

    He also indicated a hearing was needed to evaluate the claims but said that the defense opposed having a hearing. “Allegations of juror misconduct should be thoroughly investigated,” Merchan said. “However, this Court is prohibited from deciding such claims on the basis of mere hearsay and conjecture.”

    Trump’s attorneys argued in their Dec. 3 letter that their client couldn’t pursue appropriate remedies until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had ruled on Trump’s request to remove the case to federal court.

    In a letter to Merchan on Dec. 5, Bragg’s office requested that the Dec. 3 letter and related correspondence be kept under seal.

    His office seemed to suggest that Trump’s attorneys had misrepresented the alleged misconduct.

    “[T]he excerpts of the communications that counsel did share included a communication from [redacted] in which [redacted] plainly stated that counsel’s recitation of the purported juror misconduct—the same misconduct chronicled in the Dec. 3 letter—‘contains inaccuracies and does not contain additional information that I never shared,’” the letter stated.

    It added that “[a]ccording to counsel’s own recitation of events, [redacted] rejected several attempts to get [redacted] to endorse the factual allegations that serve as the basis of the Dec. 3 letter.”

    The letter went on to accuse Trump of failing to provide an adequate record.

    “Had defendant provided the sworn allegations required to make a proper motion … a hearing at which [redacted] allegations could be fully explored in a public forum might indeed be warranted,” it read.

    “What he seeks instead is to inject his unsworn, untested, and at least partially inaccurate allegations into the public domain while simultaneously opposing any endeavor to properly evaluate them.”

    A series of successive letters from the defense and prosecution followed with Trump’s attorneys accusing Bragg’s office of trying to keep important information secret. While his attorneys favored certain redactions, they indicated they thought the prosecution’s requests went too far and said that the public had a right of access to criminal proceedings.

    “These rights of public access to criminal proceedings serve important interests in advancing the fair administration of justice, promoting public confidence in the judiciary, permitting public scrutiny of matters of great public interest, and defending the fundamental rights of the accused,” his attorneys said in a Dec. 9 letter to Merchan.

    Merchan’s Dec. 16 letter stated that the court “must balance the competing interests of the public’s right to transparency of these proceedings against the very real need to protect the privacy and safety of the jurors.”

    Bragg’s office also accused Trump on Dec. 9 of trying to undermine public confidence in the verdict. In May, a jury found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts. Trump has denied wrongdoing.

    In a post to TruthSocial on Dec. 17, Trump criticized Merchan’s decisions on the immunity arguments. Merchan had “completely disrespected the United States Supreme Court, and its Historic Decision on Immunity,” he said.

    The president-elect said the case itself is illegitimate, and the opinion written by Merchan “goes against our Constitution, and, if allowed to stand, would be the end of the Presidency as we know it.”

    Merchan said that Trump waited too long or failed to preserve objections to evidence and that information related to both preserved and unpreserved arguments did not receive protection under the doctrine of presidential immunity.

    The controversy came as the Supreme Court declined on Dec. 16 a podcaster’s request to lift gag orders Trump faced in New York. Podcaster Joseph Nieman argued that his rights as a member of the media were violated by the orders.

    On TruthSocial, Trump said that “Merchan has so little respect for the Constitution that he is keeping in place an illegal gag order on me.”

    Earlier this year, the New York Supreme Court’s First Appellate Division upheld a gag order on Trump while stating that Merchan “properly determined that petitioner’s public statements posed a significant threat to the integrity of the testimony of witnesses and potential witnesses in this case as well.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/18/2024 – 16:20

  • Russia Detains Suspect In Assassination Of Chemical Weapons Top Military Chief
    Russia Detains Suspect In Assassination Of Chemical Weapons Top Military Chief

    Russia on Wednesday has detained a suspect in the killing of a senior Russian general and his assistant in Moscow, which happened when a scooter bomb detonated outside the general’s apartment on Tuesday.

    Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, who headed Russia’s radiological, biological and chemical protection forces, is the highest ranking Russian official to have been assassinated since the Ukraine war began. A man from Uzbekistan has been arrested and is being questioned, the Russia’s Investigative Committee has announced.

    via Bloomberg

    Authorities further allege the 29-year-old Uzbek suspect was acting at the direction of Ukrainian intelligence, the SBU. Russian sources further say the man was offered $100,000 cash and the chance of resettlement in Europe.

    “The detainee received a homemade explosive device and placed it on an electric scooter which he parked at the entrance to the residential building where Igor Kirillov lived,” the Russian Investigative Committee said.

    The statement described that the assassin had rented a car and parked it nearby, so that a fitted surveillance camera would monitor and record the bombing for Ukrainian intelligence handlers. The bomb was then detonated remotely when Gen. Kirillov and his assistant exited the residential building.

    The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has been openly boasting to being behind the killing and Ukrainian sources have acknowledged this to American media.

    “Kirillov was a war criminal and an entirely legitimate target, as he issued orders to use prohibited chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops,” an SBU source told ABC. “Such an inglorious end awaits all those who kill Ukrainians. Retribution for war crimes is inevitable.”

    “By order of Kirillov, more than 4,800 cases of the enemy’s use of chemical munitions have been recorded since the beginning of the full-scale war,” the SBU added, but only cited that grenades equipped with substances like CS and other riot control type irritants have been used.

    Scene of the blast, via TASS

    Below is the full statement from Russian authorities:

    “The terrorist confessed to being recruited by Ukrainian intelligence. He was sent to Moscow on their orders, where he received a powerful improvised explosive device and placed it on an electric scooter, which he parked near the entrance to Kirillov’s residence. To monitor the address, he rented a car-sharing vehicle and installed a Wi-Fi video camera, which broadcasted live to organizers in Dnepr (formerly Dnepropetrovsk),” the FSB explained.

    After receiving a video feed showing the officers leaving the building, the explosive device was remotely detonated.

    “The Ukrainian intelligence services promised the Uzbek citizen $100,000 and a trip to a European Union country for the assassination of the Russian defense official,” the press office added.

    Moscow is vowing that Ukraine will pay dearly, with Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman and former president Dmitry Medvedev having warning on Tuesday, “Attempts to intimidate our nation, stop the Russian offensive or sow fear are doomed. Certain punishment awaits Banderite Nazis, including the top military and political leaders of a crumbling country.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 12/18/2024 – 15:45

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Dec 18

Today’s News 18th December 2024

  • The Indian Model Of Financial Multipolarity Is The Most Relevant For The Global South
    The Indian Model Of Financial Multipolarity Is The Most Relevant For The Global South

    Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

    Few can afford to be massively tariffed by the US, let alone sanctioned, and most aren’t willing to burn their bridges with the US for ideological reasons at the expense of their immediate economic interests…

    Indian External Affairs Minister Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar clarified earlier this month that “India has never been for de-dollarization. Right now there is no proposal to have a BRICS currency. BRICS do discuss financial transactions, [but] the United States is our largest trade partner and we have no interest in weakening the dollar at all.” This was in response to Trump threatening to impose 100% tariffs on any country that de-dollarizes.

    Here are three background briefings for those who haven’t followed this:

    * 6 September 2024: “BRICS Membership Or Lack Thereof Isn’t Actually That Big Of A Deal”

    * 1 November 2024: “Did The Latest BRICS Summit Achieve Anything Of Tangible Significance At All?”

    * 2 December 2024: “Trump’s Threats Against BRICS Are Based On False Premises”

    As the first explained, “BRICS can be compared to a Zoom conference: members actively participate in talks on financial multipolarity, partners observe their discussions in real time, and everyone else with an interest in them hears about the outcome afterwards.” The second one confirmed the veracity of this assessment after the last BRICS Summit had no tangible outcome other than a joint statement. And finally, the last reaffirms the preceding two’s insight, which corrects false perceptions about BRICS.

    India is on pace to become the world’s third largest economy by 2030, which requires continued flows of American investment and maintaining access to its enormous market. At the same time, however, it also wants to internationalize the rupee. That last-mentioned policy isn’t de-dollarization per se, but pragmatic and a form of hedging, so Trump shouldn’t be too perturbed. He’s also expected to have the most Indophilic administration in history that’ll be reluctant to sanction India anyhow.

    The Indian way represents the model for other Global South countries to follow. Few can afford to be massively tariffed by the US, let alone sanctioned, and most aren’t willing to burn their bridges with the US for ideological reasons at the expense of their immediate economic interests. Furthermore, those that take this chance are making themselves dependent on someone else, namely China. Therefore, this policy comes at the expense of sovereignty, though it’s ironically supposed to strengthen such.

    The middle ground between remaining trapped in the dollar system and experiencing its wrath after trying to liberate oneself is to gradually increase the use of one’s national currencies. In parallel with this, having access to alternative non-Western platforms like Chinese ones and whatever BRICS may or may not unveil can help, but they mustn’t become replacements. The goal is to diversify currencies and platforms, not replace one dependency with another, and it’ll take time implement.

    Barring a black swan that completely revolutionizes the global financial system, the dollar will likely remain the world’s reserve currency, and Trump will take drastic action against China if it dares to unveil the so-called “petroyuan”. Those suppliers and clients who also decide to use it will face his fury as well. The “petroyuan” might therefore only remain a euphemism for China’s potential use of this currency in some of its bilateral energy deals while probably falling fall short of expectations in the medium-term.

    The long term is too far out to forecast, but if the US keeps de-dollarization trends in check under Trump and institutionalizes the means that he’s expected to employ, then that’ll naturally have an adverse effect on internationalizing the yuan. At most, it might begin to be used more in bilateral trade deals too, but the US’ grand strategic goal is for the dollar to remain the currency of choice in energy deals. Internationalizing the ruble like Russia has done with its energy deals isn’t a threat to the dollar at all.

    The only reason it even happened was because the US prohibited the use of dollars by others when purchasing Russian energy products, but curtailing and eventually even lifting these sanctions (as well as the associated one banning Russia’s use of SWIFT) could likely reverse this trend to a large degree. After all, it’s much more convenient for everyone to go back to the old order of business, though the US’ weaponization of the financial system since 2022 left an impression that’ll lead to continued hedging.

    As “politically incorrect” as it may sound, China already complies with some of these same Western sanctions against Russia despite still officially criticizing them as hegemonic. This is proven by the Chinese-based BRICS New Development Bank and the SCO Bank suspending projects in Russia and not allowing the transfer of Russia’s dues respectively as proven here and here. RT also drew attention to Russia’s payment problems with China in early September, which were analyzed at length here.

    It might therefore be unwise for any country to make itself dependent on China by promulgating radical de-dollarization policies since there’s no guarantee that the People’s Republic will have its back. The fact of the matter is that China’s complex interdependencies with the West are too deep, and this places major limits on its financial policymaking capabilities, thus explaining why it hasn’t fully supported Russia. This observation could lead to self-imposed restraints among aspiring de-dollarizing states.

    No responsible country like India would feel comfortable fully returning to the former system so the increased use of national currencies and utilization of alternative platforms will persist into the future. So long as these trends remain manageable, and Trump is expected to do his utmost to this end, then no radical changes are expected anytime soon. Everything will continue moving more or less in the same direction, but at a gradual pace, and that’s best for the West and the Global South at this point in time.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/17/2024 – 23:25

  • BDNF May Be A Key Compound For Healthy Brain Aging, Neuroplasticity
    BDNF May Be A Key Compound For Healthy Brain Aging, Neuroplasticity

    Authored by Theresa Sam Houghton via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Cognitive health depends on impulses that constantly pass between the 100 million brain cells (neurons) in your brain. One particular protein, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), is instrumental in maintaining the connections that make the symphony of brain communication possible.

    Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock

    BDNF is just one player among many, but its role is essential for lifelong cognitive health. Optimizing BDNF with diet and lifestyle changes could help support brain volume, function, and adaptation, especially as you age.

    Fertilizer for Brain Health

    BDNF is a neurotrophin, a type of protein called a growth factor that supports the survival of the neurons in your brain’s communication network. As the most abundant neurotrophin in the brain, BDNF is found in high concentrations in the hippocampus, amygdala, cerebellum, and cerebral cortex. These areas are responsible for memory, emotions, spatial recognition, language processing, and movement.

    For your brain to work properly, the functions of each region must remain separate from each other. According to J. Carson Smith, professor of kinesiology at the University of Maryland at College Park, the distinctions between regions start to break down as you age, causing interference that can distract you when you’re trying to pay attention to or remember something.

    “As we lose function in our brains, all of our brain regions tend to become activated all at once because we’re trying to compensate for this loss of neural function that we have as we get older,” Smith told The Epoch Times in an interview. 

    BDNF is key in maintaining this neural function, and its role begins during development as it helps brain cells mature and survive. The protein continues to be active in brain cell growth, maturation, and maintenance throughout life. BDNF is also essential for plasticity, the adaptive process that allows your brain to form fresh connections in response to new information and challenges.

    However, Smith said that, rather than helping the brain create new connections, BDNF’s primary function may be related more to maintaining structures called dendrites, projections at the ends of neurons that enable information to pass between cells in your brain’s network.

    “BDNF is like a fertilizer,” he said. “So it’s going to help stimulate connectivity and make sure that dendritic branching is intact instead of deteriorating and falling away and losing connections in the brain.”

    Effects of BDNF Decline

    BDNF levels decrease with age, leaving less “fertilizer” to support brain cells and the connections between them. Research suggests a correlation between lower BDNF levels and age-related changes in the brain, including lower cognitive test scores, a reduction in hippocampal volume, and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). In this condition, difficulties with memory, judgment, and decision-making are more significantly pronounced but don’t reach the level of dementia or Alzheimer’s. Other changes like decreased neurogenesis and the beta-amyloid buildup seen in Alzheimer’s disease may also be related to BDNF decline.

    However, the picture is more complex, and there may not be clear associations between BDNF levels and cognitive decline. A 2023 study published in Biomolecules showed that BDNF levels are higher in people with Alzheimer’s than those with MCI but cited other research showing that Alzheimer’s and MCI patients have lower BDNF levels than healthy people.

    According to the study’s authors, “It has been suggested that BDNF levels vary with disease severity, with higher levels associated with MCI and early stages of AD and lower levels reported in patients with severe AD symptoms.” While the reasons for this are unknown, researchers hypothesize that the body may produce more BDNF in the early stages of cognitive decline in an attempt to repair brain cells or protect against disease progression.

    How BDNF is measured can influence study results. Smith told The Epoch Times that measuring BDNF in human brains can be difficult and invasive, so researchers often rely on levels of circulating BDNF. These levels may not accurately reflect the amount of BDNF in the brain because the protein is also present in other tissues like muscle.

    Factors That Affect BDNF

    Despite these complexities, patterns across studies point to modifiable factors that may promote or interfere with BDNF. According to Gina Nick, a leading naturopathic physician and formulator of glutathione-based health products, including Best Daily Ever Pixie Sticks, inflammation is one of the most important.

    She told The Epoch Times in an interview that exposure to potential toxins in food and the environment can cause inflammation to increase with age. These exposures create unstable molecules called reactive oxygen species (ROS). As a type of free radical, ROS stabilize themselves by taking electrons from molecules in healthy tissues, which sets off chain reactions that produce more free radicals.

    The resulting tissue damage, known as oxidative stress, appears to promote inflammation throughout the body, including in the brain. As oxidative stress increases, Nick said, BDNF levels go down. The effects may be more pronounced in the brains of older people due to a decrease in the body’s ability to repair damage to cells and DNA.

    The Diet-BDNF Connection

    Inflammation may be driven by dietary factors like salt, fat, and additives in ultra-processed foods. Nick said that such foods can deplete glutathione, the body’s most abundant protective antioxidant, and start a cycle that promotes chronic neuroinflammation.

    “Glutathione, when it’s manufactured in the body, it’s naturally occurring in the body, it eats up a lot of other antioxidants when it’s making it,” she told The Epoch Times. “And when you’re exposed to a bunch of toxins in the environment, that triggers neuroinflammation—it reduces the amount of glutathione in your brain.”

    She said it’s important to replace the stores of antioxidants you need to make glutathione so your body can continue to protect brain cells from damage.

    Research suggests that other antioxidants may also increase or maintain BDNF levels. In a 2021 study published in Nutritional Neuroscience, researchers found that foods and supplements containing plant-based nutrients called polyphenols were associated with increased BDNF. There may also be a potential connection between higher BDNF levels and anti-inflammatory compounds like flavonoids and the omega-3 fatty acid DHA.

    Exercise for Cognitive Health

    Staying active may provide additional benefits for BDNF and overall brain health. According to a 2023 review, BDNF appears to be one of the major factors responsible for the cognitive benefits observed in many exercise trials. The researchers concluded that exercise, particularly aerobic activity commonly known as cardio, is associated with better cognition in cases of MCI and dementia.

    The review linked several effects of exercise to better cognitive outcomes, including the release of lactate and proteins from muscle and the stimulation of osteocalcin. This protein promotes bone growth and helps muscles adapt to exercise. These molecules promote the production of BDNF and appear to be the factor that connects these processes to improvements in mood, cognition, learning, and memory.

    As with diet, the process is complex. Factors like intensity and duration may influence the extent to which exercise affects BDNF and brain health, and long-term exercise may decrease blood levels of BDNF without causing changes in cognitive function or memory.

    Support BDNF for Healthy Brain Aging

    Following diet and lifestyle patterns consistently shown to promote cognitive well-being may support BDNF production and help keep the symphony of interactions in the brain playing in harmony.

    The popular Mediterranean diet, for example, focuses on whole and minimally processed plant foods, lean proteins, and unsaturated fats. This combination increases antioxidant intake while reducing or eliminating pro-inflammatory factors like saturated fats and refined carbohydrates, which may increase the risk of oxidative stress.

    Nick recommends incorporating foods that contain glutathione or promote its production, including cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, fruits like peaches, cherries, and strawberries, and unprocessed grass-fed red meat. She’s also a fan of walnuts for their omega-3 content.

    “A handful of walnuts a day will provide you with sufficient omega 3 fatty acids for helping to maintain BDNF levels,” she told The Epoch Times.

    As for exercise, research shows that single sessions and consistent habits may boost BDNF levels. To build a habit for healthy brain function, Smith recommends that people do whatever type of exercise is most accessible and enjoyable for them.

    Even simple activities like climbing stairs or gardening can improve BDNF, so be on the lookout for opportunities to skip the elevator or take a quick walk after dinner. If weather or safety is an issue, try free online resources like indoor walking videos or follow-along bodyweight workouts.

    Making these changes with help from family and friends may provide additional cognitive support.

    As Nick said, “There are always things that you can do to impact BDNF.”

    Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

    That said…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/17/2024 – 22:35

  • Watch: China Shows Off Mach 7 Hypersonic Drone, Launched From Near-Space Balloon
    Watch: China Shows Off Mach 7 Hypersonic Drone, Launched From Near-Space Balloon

    China has released a military propaganda video boasting its hypersonic weapon capabilities as the military arms race between global superpowers kicks into high gear and the world splits into a dangerous multi-polar state, prompting some global observers to ask the daunting question: “Is World War III already here?“

    According to the Shanghai Morning Post, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) released a new video this week showcasing how China continues pushing the boundaries of hypersonic technology.

    The full video, released by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), showcases the trials of the MD series and the drone developers behind the aircraft. The team from the Institute of Mechanics (IMECH) at CAS, known as the “Qian Xuesen Young Scientist Task Force,” were the same specialists who achieved the first horizontal landing of a hypersonic drone in 2020.

    …

    The MD-22 – the latest known model in the series – was first unveiled at the 2022 Zhuhai air show. The aircraft boasts a maximum range of 8,000km (4,971 miles) and can carry payloads of up to 600kg (1,323 pounds), delivering substantial strategic capabilities.

    A video of the test shows the unmanned Chinese MD series drone launched from a high-altitude balloon, reaching speeds of as much as Mach 7 before landing safely. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    “From a tactical perspective, the MD-19 could serve as a stepping stone to operational hypersonic platforms. Its current role as a technology demonstrator likely focuses on testing high-speed flight dynamics, thermal management, and recovery procedures,” news website BulgarianMilitary wrote in a note. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The new website continued, “China is making it clear it has no intention of falling behind in the race for hypersonic supremacy. The MD-19 is further proof that the country isn’t just testing technologies but integrating innovations with real-world battlefield potential.” 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Meanwhile, hypersonic missiles, kamikaze drones, and stealth fighters have become cornerstones for militaries around the world as the modern battlefields in Eastern Europe and the Middle East show no limited signs of peace in the near term.

    The Free Press’ Jay Solomon recently asked: “Is World War III Already Here?”  

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/17/2024 – 22:10

  • The US Is Left Out In The Cold As China And Russia Develop Arctic
    The US Is Left Out In The Cold As China And Russia Develop Arctic

    Authored by Conor Gallagher via Naked Capitalism,

    The RAND Corporation, one of the more influential US think tanks that help craft US foreign policy, is out with a new paper arguing that it’s time the US use a divide and rule strategy with Beijing and Moscow in the Arctic. Years of sanctions, threats, and general belligerence from Washington helped organize the wedding of China and Russia’s complementary economies, and that’s increasingly evident in the Arctic where the two are cooperating on development, trade routes, and oil and gas projects. Here’s RAND now sounding the alarm:

    What might be done to limit China-Russia cooperation in this geopolitically important region? RAND researchers consider this question in a new paper, concluding that Western policies focusing on the differences between Beijing and Moscow may be effective. To put such a strategy into action, the United States and its northern NATO allies could develop separate approaches for dealing with China and Russia when it comes to Arctic affairs.

    The authors (Dr. Abbie Tingstad ,a visiting professor of Arctic research at the Center for Arctic Study and Policy, U.S. Coast Guard Academy; Stephanie Pezard, an associate research department director, Defense and Political Sciences, and a senior political scientist at RAND; and Yuliya Shokh, a U.S. Air Force intelligence analyst and technical analyst at RAND.) also note the following:

    …there may be no need to drive a wedge between Russia and China in the region. That’s because one may already exist: The two countries have very different Arctic interests, influence, and postures—not to mention a difficult history together.

    My first thought was that these people are crazy — or are paid to be so. You could maybe convince yourself it would be feasible if the US wasn’t doing its best to bring Moscow and Beijing together with all its sanctioning, bombing, and arming as it’s unlikely that Communist differences from decades ago are going to be a bigger factor than the immediate threat posed by an unhinged and violent US.

    Yet in the aftermath of the Syria shock, maybe it’s not a bad time to doublecheck RAND’s details of the Russia-China relationship. Not only is the Moscow-Beijing “no limits” partnership one of the biggest geopolitical developments of recent years, but it is also one that the US continues to help bring about. And it looks set to continue to do so whether following a path set forth by RAND or one of even more doubling down as laid out in a December special report from the Council on Foreign Relations.

    Let’s look at what RAND highlights as signs of present and potential friction between Russia and China over the Arctic and Russia’s Far East.

    Is the relationship headed toward benign neglect or even divorce because China increasingly sees Russia as a destabilizing influence that counters its Arctic aspirations? A potential breakdown in Sino-Russian relations has been foretold by the still low or nonexistent numbers of Chinese vessels transiting the [Northern Sea Route], Beijing’s apparent growing apathy to Russia’s Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline proposal, and the 2020 arrest of Russian lecturer Valery Mitko on spying charges.

    Let’s look at each one of these points:

    Despite the holdup on Power of Siberia 2, Russian pipeline gas exports to China are at new records. As of December 1, Gazprom increased supplies to the equivalent of 38 billion cubic meters per year. That’s roughly nine percent of China’s consumption this year.

    Mitko, a researcher of the Arctic region and one of Russia’s leading hydroacoustics experts, was accused of revealing sensitive data during a 2018 academic trip to China. He denied the charges but was under house arrest from 2020 until his death in 2022. The issue never posed any serious threat to expanding ties between the two countries, although it’s feasible that continued future similar cases could cause headaches.

    How about the lack of Chinese vessels on the Northern Sea Route (NSR)?

    While the authors are correct that traffic remains low on the shortest route between the western part of Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific region, that doesn’t mean it will remain that way, and they also omit recent milestones. Here’s one from late 2023 courtesy of Maritime Executive:

    In another demonstration of the efforts to expand shipping along Russia’s Northern Sea Route, the Chinese-owned containership Newnew Polar Bear (15,950 dwt) became the first to reach the Russian port in Kaliningrad after a six-week passage. The governor of the Kaliningrad region Anton Alikhanov hailed the achievement on his Telegram account.

    The vessel was acquired earlier this year by a new Chinese shipping company, Hainan Yangpu Newnew Shipping Co., and ushered in the route sailing from St. Petersburg at the beginning of July. She started the return trip from China in late August, reaching Kaliningrad on Tuesday and spending three days on dock. The ship registered in Hong Kong is 554 feet long with a capacity of 1,600 TEU.

    She is part of the effort to expand trade between China and Russia and grow traffic along the Northern Sea Route. President Vladimir Putin has ordered the authorities overseeing the route to boost annual shipments to 80 million metric tons in 2024.

    “Transport companies plan to make this logistics product permanent. It turns out cheaper and faster than through the Suez Canal,” writes Alikhanov touting the party line on his Telegram account.

    Additionally in June Russian state nuclear agency Rosatom signed an agreement with Chinese line Hainan Yangpu New Shipping to potentially operate a year-round route. The deal also involves collaboration in the design and construction of new ice-class container ships. In a historic first, two Chinese container ships crossed paths on the route on September 11. It might not be the last time — although much work remains to be done building up infrastructure along the NSR. Yet the US is providing both Moscow and Beijing with incentives to pursue just that with its isolation efforts. While the NSR might not become a primary route for China, it does provide another option, and it also shortens shipping times with Europe by up to 50 percent compared to the Suez route, and Russia will rake in profits from transit fees.

    The RAND authors continue:

    Russia has been wary of the presence of non-Arctic countries in this region, especially regarding military activity. Despite the declaration of a limitless friendship with China, Russia has not provided Beijing with opportunities to conduct overt military operations directly in and around the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federation (AZRF). Compared with the growing frequency and scale of U.S. cooperation with Norway on Arctic military training and exercises, sailing a few destroyers well below the Arctic Circle pales in comparison.

    I’m unsure how much a contest over military exercises tells us. Nonetheless, what’s indisputable is that China’s footprint continues to grow even if it’s not to the level of US training and exercises in Norway.

    In October, for example, China’s Coast Guard entered Arctic Ocean waters for the first time as part of a joint patrol with Russia. Four vessels from the Russian Border Guard and Chinese Coast Guard were spotted by the US in the Bering Sea – the northernmost location it said it had ever observed the Chinese ships. And in July US and Canadian forces intercepted Russian and Chinese bombers flying together near Alaska for the first time.

    Part of the reason for such moves is to send a message to Washington whose military activities in the South and East China Seas and arming of Taiwan are not well-received in Beijing.

    Energy and the Far East

    Here’s RAND on the proposed Power of Siberia 2 pipeline:

    Similarly, China has not written a blank check for Russia to develop its Siberian energy reserves. To the contrary, Moscow has been unable to convince Beijing, as of the time of this publication, to fund the larger capacity Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, despite numerous meetings between these countries’ leadership. There are several potential reasons for this lack of funding: One is that China is waiting for an even better deal on energy resources; another is that Beijing could be wary of being overly dependent on Russia for energy…

    Power of Siberia 2 (PS2) is a proposed pipeline that would have the capacity to carry 50 billion cubic meters per year from Russia to China, but the two sides are struggling to come to an agreement on price.

    PS2 is often overblown in the Western media. While Russia has both economic and geopolitical reasons for wanting to get a deal done, it doesn’t want to give the gas away.

    And China currently has other options, including pipeline gas from Central Asia and LNG suppliers such as Qatar. Its demands are currently met by existing contracts and might not need the gas from PS2 prior to the mid-2030s. It could be attractive, however, due to US efforts to control China’s rise and its energy supply and Beijing’s reluctance to rely too heavily on LNG from the likes of Australia and the US.

    Less mentioned is that Russia also has options. It continues to increase LNG exports — largely to China — and has a goal to triple overall exports by 2030. China would play a huge real in achieving that goal, but that would make PS2 unlikely. Either way the gas is getting to China, and Russia is doing just fine with its energy exports:

    The problem for the US is that further tightening sanctions on Russia makes Moscow more dependent on China, which benefits Beijing.

    Any attempt to isolate China (say by cutting LNG from Australia and Middle East or pipelines from Central Asia) makes China more dependent on Russia.

    Even without PS2 China is already getting 38 bcm through the original Power of Siberia. Starting in 2027, gas will also go to China via the Far Eastern route, which is set to have a capacity of some 10 Bcm/year. That’s 48 bcm per year is already a massive amount. A useful map from S&P Global:

    With the heavy focus on PS2, RAND (and others) also miss all the other developments in Russia’s Far East. Let’s take a quick look.

    Over the past ten years, Russia has laid more than 2,000 kilometers of railway tracks and renovated more than 5,000 kilometers on the Trans-Siberian Railway and the Baikal-Amur Mainline.

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    By the end of this year, the carrying capacity of these networks is expected to reach 180 million tonnes — an increase of 36 million since 2021. More than 3,100 kilometers of tracks are planned for the next eight years, as well, which will help Moscow meet international demand for resources from its East.

    China and Russia are also working together to increase the capacity of resources heading to the former. In 2022, they opened the lone vehicle bridge crossing the Amur River, which forms more than 1,600 of their roughly 4,000 border kilometers. Later that year they opened the Tongjiang Bridge, currently the only railway bridge connecting the two countries. It shortens the journey between China’s Heilongjiang region and Moscow by more than 800 kilometers over previous routes, saving 10 hours of transit time. This helped rail transport between the two countries jump to 161 million tonnes in 2023, a 36 percent increase from 2022. Over the first five months of this year, it grew another 20 percent.

    A second railway bridge over the Amur is coming soon and will provide Russia’s resource-rich Sakha Republic with direct access to China. The new route will be 2,000 kilometers shorter than the current one which involves the use of sea ports. Beijing is investing in this railway construction in the Sakha Republic as part of a new international corridor in the Russian Far East: the Mohe-Magadan railway line.

    RAND wraps up its rundown of China-Russia trouble in paradise with hypotheticals that, while possible, start to sound a little desperate:

    The Arctic relationship between Russia and China could be damaged by a hypothetical diplomatic clash – for instance, if China were to precipitate a major safety or environmental incident in the vicinity of the Russian Arctic or somehow publicly embarrass Moscow by undermining the perception that Russia exerts full control over its Arctic region. More broadly, some serious indications that China might represent a direct and immediate military threat to Russia in the Arctic could lead to a backlash from Moscow.

    How is the US supposed to exploit these points of contention? RAND argues the following:

    Western policies that focus on differences between Russia and China may ultimately be more successful in shaping the Arctic’s future than those that emphasize their similarities or their relationship itself as the primary driver of regional outcomes….

    Chinese growing interest in Arctic resources does not necessarily translate to a stronger dependence on Russia alone…China’s relationship with the United States is a big influence on this scenario’s probability; six of the seven other Arctic countries (except Russia) are allies, militarily and otherwise, of the United States. This scenario would assume a reversal of these countries’ existing preference to watch closely—and deny more often than not—China’s efforts to invest in such sectors as real estate and critical technologies. This scenario also offers a reminder that although the Sino-Russian relationship is important, the mere existence of their relationship is not the only determinant to how China can potentially extend its influence in the region…

    One key policy decision by the United States and its northern NATO allies could be to develop separate strategies for dealing with Moscow and Beijing when it comes to Arctic affairs.

    What does that look like? Conveniently, more of the same, which means the US doesn’t have to do much of anything other than stay the course and wait:

    The Western Arctic countries yield strong potential to realize their interests and diminish the power of the Sino-Russian relationship by developing policies that (1) recognize Russia as an aggressive, risk-taking, but ultimately legitimate Arctic state and (2) recognize that China has no innate influence in the Arctic and pursues a vested interest in maintaining good economic and scientific relationships with all Arctic nations. There may be no need to drive a wedge between Russia and China in the Arctic because it already exists through their differences as Arctic actors and difficult history together.

    RAND, to its credit, does admit is that much of the Russian-Chinese cooperation is mutually beneficial:

    …the Sino-Russian relationship is driven by Russia’s need for funding and technology to develop its Arctic region, especially because its pool of investors waned with the invasion of Ukraine and sanctions, and by China’s desire to gain a foothold in the region and tap into Russia’s hydrocarbon resources and access to the NSR for Arctic navigation.

    Furthermore:

    Russia and China have forged a cooperative relationship that has (at least to some measure) helped Russia to further develop its northern economy and afforded China tangible opportunities to establish itself as a recognized stakeholder in the region. The most prominent example is the investment of Chinese companies in two liquid natural gas (LNG) projects in the Yamalo- Nenets Autonomous Okrug in northern Siberia and the Power of Siberia 1 pipeline.27 Overall, China has invested billions of dollars in energy and mining projects in Russia’s Arctic, although the bulk of its investment in Russia (and across the Arctic writ large) is in Yamal LNG, which is a massive undertaking.28 In addition, the Chinese transportation company COSCO SHIPPING Lines Co., Ltd., has been exploring the use of the NSR running along Russia’s Arctic coastline as an option for future global logistics.

    RAND does not, however, consider one the driving forces behind the increased cooperation: the current policy of the US and its vassals. And when you add that factor to the mix, it shows why a Moscow-Beijing split is unlikely. Even if the US and its Arctic allies try to develop separate policies for Beijing and Moscow, the latter two would still have the incentive to work together. Indeed, what makes the NSR more attractive isn’t just how short a route it is between Europe and Asia; it’s that its 5,600 kilometers are controlled by just one country (Russia), which means it faces less potential chokepoints than others.

    A big part of that is because of how the West bailed on Russian Arctic projects.

    Much of Russia’s plans for the extraction and delivery of its Arctic resources previously involved the West, but that, of course, is no longer the case. European shipping companies mostly cut ties with Russian operators in 2022. As part of the economic war against Russia, Western partners abandoned Northern Sea energy projects. At first, traffic fell off a cliff, but it has since rebounded and now looks set to grow exponentially into the future with both Beijing and Moscow being the biggest winners. According to Silk Road Briefing, “a central hub for building large-capacity offshore structures to produce liquefied natural gas (LNG) on a very large scale is underway based in Murmansk. Russia is active in boosting the production of sea-borne super-cooled gas as its pipeline gas exports to Europe, once a key source of revenue for Moscow, have plummeted amid the Western sanctions imposed over the conflict in Ukraine. Those resources are now being directed East, where consumer demand is far greater.”

    And yet the RAND authors propose the US keep up the very policies that are driving Moscow and Beijing together in a bid to drive a wedge between them.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/17/2024 – 21:45

  • Former F-18 Pilot Tells Joe Rogan Drones Aren't WMD 'Sniffers' As Dronegate Intensifies
    Former F-18 Pilot Tells Joe Rogan Drones Aren’t WMD ‘Sniffers’ As Dronegate Intensifies

    Former US Navy Lt. and F/A-18F pilot Ryan Graves appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast to start the week, dismissing rumors that drone sightings in the New Jersey-New York skies were “sniffers” searching for radioactive devices. Still, he described the situation as “dangerous and scary” as the mystery surrounding drone sightings fuels suspense among the public. 

    Graves told Rogan he spoke with high-level individuals who work on teams surrounding weapons of mass destruction. He asked them: “What’s the sense here?” 

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    Graves summarized his conversations with those government officials, stating that WMDs “are not the case—that there is no loose nuke or WMD that these objects, whatever they are, are pursuing right now.”

    “I have a high confidence level that this is not a response to a massive imminent WMD threat on the Eastern Seaboard,” the former pilot said, adding, “Although this is a dangerous and scary situation right now – from at least that particular angle – that’s not the indications I’m receiving.” 

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    On Monday, we coined the situation “dronegate” after President-elect Donald Trump told reporters from his Mar-a-Lago Club in South Florida… 

    “The gov’t knows what is happening … look … our military knows where they took off from … and for some reason, they don’t want to comment. And I think they would better off commenting on what it is … our military knows and our president knows … and for some reason they want to keep people in suspense,” Trump told reporters. 

    Trump said, “I can’t imagine it was the enemy because if it was the enemy, we would blast it. Something strange is going on and for some reason they don’t want to tell the people.” 

    “I decided to cancel my trip to Bedminster (Trump National Golf Club Bedminster),” he said. 

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    Certainly, the plot is thickening by the day as drongate becomes a major headache for the federal government, leaving the American people in a state of panic just before Christmas. 

    On Saturday, we explained one theory of how the purported drone sightings could be psyop to manipulate lawmakers into passing the new H.R.8610 (Counter-UAS Authority Security, Safety, and Reauthorization Act of 2024), which will include appropriations and enhanced government counter-drone powers. 

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    Oddly, Trump canceled his trip this weekend to his beloved Bedminster golf course, a decision that, in itself, suggests the possibility of an ongoing national security threat. Remember, Trump reads national security briefings… 

    One question we have is what motivated – actually – who motivated Graves to go on Rogan’s podcast? 

    Recall the former pilot said he has a number of government contacts after his work of testifying in a 2023 House hearing about Unidentified Aerial Phenomenons. 

    Does he have contacts at US Special Operations Command, the FBI, or other agencies that oversee WMD threats?

    The lack of disclosure by the feds is quickly damaging public trust. It’s time for the feds to come clean about what’s really happening… 

    If we had to speculate – it’s entirely possible this could be a manufactured crisis/psyop designed to advance H.R. 8610…

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    This is dronegate.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/17/2024 – 21:20

  • How The West Rebranded Al-Qaeda's Jolani
    How The West Rebranded Al-Qaeda’s Jolani

    Authored by Alan Macleod via ConsortiumNews.com,

    Corporate media is heralding the fall of Bashar al-Assad and the emergence of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani as the new leader of Syria, despite his deep ties to both Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

    “How Syria’s ‘diversity-friendly’ jihadists plan on building a state,” runs the headline from an article in Britain’s Daily Telegraph that suggests that Jolani will construct a new Syria, respectful of minority rights. The same newspaper also labeled him a “moderate Jihadist.” The Washington Post described him as a pragmatic and charismatic leader, while CNN portrayed him as a “blazer-wearing revolutionary.”

    Meanwhile, an in-depth portrait from Rolling Stone describes him as a “ruthlessly pragmatic, astute politician who has renounced ‘global jihad’” and intends to “unite Syria.” His “strategic acumen is apparent,” writes Rolling Stone, between paragraphs praising Jolani for leading a successful movement against a dictator.

    CNN even scored an exclusive, sit-down interview with Jolani, even as his movement was storming Damascus. When asked by host Jomana Karadsheh about his past actions, he responded by saying, “I believe that everyone in life goes through phases and experiences … As you grow, you learn, and you continue to learn until the very last day of your life,” as if he were discussing embarrassing teenage mistakes, not establishing and leading the Al-Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda’s franchise in Syria.

    This is a far cry from the first time CNN covered Jolani. In 2013, the network labeled him one of “the world’s 10 most dangerous terrorists,” known for abducting, torturing and slaughtering racial and religious minorities.

    Still on the U.S. terrorist list today, the F.B.I. is offering a $10 million reward for information about his whereabouts. Washington and other Western governments consider Jolani’s new organization, Hay?at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), as one and the same as Al-Qaeda/Al-Nusra.

    This poses a serious public relations dilemma for Western nations, who supported the HTS-led overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad. And thus, Politico and others report there is a “huge scramble” in Washington to remove HTS and Jolani from the terrorist list as quickly as possible.

    The Making of a Radical

    Jolani has sought to distance himself from his past and present himself as a moderating force that can attempt to unite an intensely divided Syria. While he has, in recent years, displayed a willingness to compromise with other forces and factions, it is far from clear whether the tens of thousands of soldiers he commands — units made up primarily of former fighters from al-Qaeda/al-Nusra and ISIS — will be in a charitable mood once they cement their power.

    “Syria is being purified,” he told a crowd in Damascus on Dec. 8. “This victory is born from the people who have languished in prison, and the fighters broke their chains,” he added.

    Jolani — whose real name is Ahmed Hussein al-Shar’a — was born in 1982 in Saudi Arabia to parents who fled the Golan Heights area of Syria after the 1967 Israeli invasion. In 2003, he went to Iraq to fight against American forces. After three years of war, he was captured by the U.S. military and spent over five years in prison, including a stint at the notorious Abu Ghraib torture center.

    Mugshot of al-Julani in 2006, after his capture by U.S. forces in Iraq. (DoD, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

    While in Iraq, Jolani fought with ISIS and was even a deputy to its founder. Immediately upon release in 2011, ISIS sent him to Syria with a rumored $1 billion to found the Syrian wing of al-Qaeda and participate in the armed protest movement against Assad that arose out of the Arab Spring.

    Realizing the extremely poor reputation al-Qaeda had in the region and across the world, Jolani attempted to rebrand his forces, officially shuttering the al-Nusra Front in January 2017 and, on the same day, founding HTS. He claimed that HTS preaches a very different ideology and that it will respect Syrian diversity. Not everyone is convinced of this, least of all the British government, who immediately proscribed HTS, describing it as merely an alias of Al-Qaeda.

    “Al-Qaeda/ISIS man didn’t ‘reinvent himself.’ He had the whole propaganda and intelligence apparatus of the ‘West,’ including the BBC, doing it for him,” remarked co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah.

    New Government Likes Israel, Hates Hezbollah

    The name “al-Jolani” translates to “From the Golan Heights.” And yet, the leader appears distinctly unconcerned with the Israeli invasion of his homeland. The IDF has taken much of southern Syria, including the strategic Mount Hermon, overlooking Damascus. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated that this is part of a permanent operation. “The Golan Heights…will forever be an inseparable part of the State of Israel,” he proclaimed.

    Jolani has already said that he has no intention of confronting Israel. “Syria is not ready for war and does not intend to go into another war. The source of concern was the Iranian militias, and Hezbollah, and the danger has passed,” he said — a strange thing to say while Israel is carrying out the largest Air Force operation in its history, pounding military targets all over Syria. Other HTS spokespersons have also categorically refused to comment on Israel’s attack on the country, even when pressed by incredulous Western journalists.

    Jolani’s comments, singling out two Shia forces rather than Israel as enemies of the state, will have many concerned that this could signal a return to the process of Shia slaughter ISIS waged over much of Syria and Iraq. In 2016, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 383-0 to classify this process as a genocide.

    Fortunately, the new government will likely be a coalition of disparate and moderating forces. However, these groups seem to share a common thread: they all appear to be pro-Israel. A commander of the secular Free Syrian Army, for example, recently gave an interview to The Times of Israel, where he looked forward to a new era of “friendship” and “harmony” with its neighbor to the south. “We will go for full peace with Israel… Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, we have never made any critical comments against Israel, unlike Hezbollah, who stated they aim to liberate Jerusalem and the Golan Heights,” he said.

    The commander added that “Israel will plant a rose in the Syrian garden” and asked for the country’s financial support in forming a new government.

    Israeli soldiers from the Shaldag Unit on the Syrian side of Mount Hermon earlier this month. (IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

    Other anti-Assad forces have gone even further, with one individual stating that Israel

    “Isn’t hostile to those who are not hostile toward it. We don’t hate you, we love you very much…we were quite happy when you attacked Hezbollah, really happy, and we’re glad that you won.”

    Statements like these might surprise a casual observer. But the reality is that Israel has been funding, training and arming much of the Syrian opposition since its inception. This includes Al-Qaeda, whose wounded fighters are treated by Israel.

    And while radical Islamist forces appeared to be enemies with everyone, the one group they fastidiously avoided any confrontation with was Israel. Indeed, in 2016, ISIS fighters accidentally fired upon an Israeli position in the Golan Heights, thinking they were Syrian government forces, then quickly issued an apology for doing so.

    From the Golan Heights, the year-long Israeli campaign against Hezbollah and Syrian Army positions also seriously weakened both forces, aiding the opposition in their victory.

    Al-Qaeda & US — Complicated Relationship

    While both journalists and politicians in the U.S. are scrambling to change their opinions on Jolani and HTS, the reality is that, for much of its existence, Washington has enjoyed a very close relationship with al-Qaeda.

    Mujahideen in Kunar, Afghanistan, Jan. 1, 1987. (erwinlux, Flickr, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

    The organization was born in Afghanistan in the 1980s, thanks in no small part to the C.I.A. Between 1979 and 1992, the C.I.A. spent billions of dollars funding, arming, and training Afghan Mujahideen militiamen (like Osama bin Laden) in an attempt to bleed the Soviet occupation dry. It was from the ranks of the Mujahideen that bin Laden built his organization.

    During the 1990s, bin Laden’s relationship with the U.S. soured, and it eventually became a principal target for al-Qaeda, culminating in the infamous Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.

    The Bush administration would use these attacks as a pretext to invade both Afghanistan and Iraq, claiming that America could never be safe if al-Qaeda were not thoroughly destroyed. Bin Laden became perhaps the most notorious individual in the world, and American society was turned upside down in a self-described effort to rout Islamic extremism.

    And yet, by the 2010s, even as the U.S. was ostensibly at war with al-Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was secretly working with it in Syria on a plan to overthrow Assad. The C.I.A. spent around $1 billion per year training and arming a wide network of rebel groups to this end. As Jake Sullivan, now the U.S. national security adviser, told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a leaked 2012 email, “AQ [al-Qaeda] is on our side in Syria.”

    Jake Sullivan, second from left, as deputy chief of staff to the secretary of state, with his boss Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama, November 2012. (White House, Pete Souza)

    Thus, while many casual observers may be shocked to see the media and political class embrace the leader of al-Qaeda in Syria as a modern, progressive champion, the reality is that the U.S. relationship with the group is merely reverting to a position it has previously held. Consequently, it appears that the War on Terror will come to an end with the “terrorists” being redesignated as “moderate rebels” and “freedom fighters.”

    Who Gets to Define ‘Terrorist?’

    Of course, many have argued that the U.S. Terrorist List is entirely arbitrary to begin with and is merely a barometer of who is in Washington’s good books at any given time. In 2020, the Trump administration removed Sudan from its state sponsors of terror list in exchange for the country normalizing relations with Israel, proving how transactional the list was.

    A few months later, it removed the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (a Uyghur militia currently active in Syria) from its list because of its hardening attitude towards China, seeing ETIM as a useful pawn to play against Beijing.

    Washington also continues to keep Cuba on its terror list despite there being no evidence of the island supporting terror groups.

    And the U.S. refused to remove Nelson Mandela from its list of the world’s most notorious terrorists until 2008 — 14 years after he became President of South Africa. In comparison, Jolani’s redesignation might take fewer than 14 days.

    A giant rebranding operation is taking place. Both corporate media and the U.S. government have attempted to transform the founder and head of an al-Qaeda affiliate organization into a woke, progressive actor. It remains to be seen how exactly Jolani will govern and whether he can maintain support from a wide range of Syrian groups. Given what we have seen so far, however, he can be confident of enjoying strong support from the Western press.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/17/2024 – 20:55

  • The Danger Of White Knight Pardons: Biden Could Fundamentally Change Presidential Power
    The Danger Of White Knight Pardons: Biden Could Fundamentally Change Presidential Power

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Below is my column in the New York Post on the news reports that President Joe Biden is seriously considering preemptive pardons for political allies. In granting what I have called “White Knight pardons,” Biden would achieve more of a political than legal purpose. Democrats are worried about the collapsing narrative that President-elect Donald Trump will destroy democracy,  end future elections, and conduct sweeping arrests of everyone from journalists to homosexuals. That narrative, of course, ignores that we have a constitutional system of overlapping protections that has blocked such abuses for over two centuries. Ironically, preemptive pardons would do precisely what Biden suggests that he is deterring: create a dangerous immunity for presidents and their allies in committing criminal abuses.

    Here is the column:

    There are growing indications that President Joe Biden is about to fundamentally change the use of presidential pardons by granting “prospective” or “preemptive” pardons to political allies.

    Despite repeated denials of President-elect Donald Trump that he is seeking retaliation against opponents and his statements that he wants “success [to be] my revenge,” Democratic politicians and pundits have called for up to thousands of such pardons.

    While there is little threat of any viable prosecution of figures like the members of the January 6th Committee, the use of “White Knight pardons” offers obvious political benefits. After many liberals predicted the imminent collapse of democracy and that opponents would be rounded up in mass by the Trump Administration, they are now contemplating the nightmare that democracy might survive and that there will be no mass arrests.

    The next best thing to a convenient collapse of democracy is a claim that Biden’s series of preemptive pardons averted it. It is enough to preserve the narrative in the face of a stable constitutional system . Indeed, Biden’s pardon list has replaced the usual Inauguration Ball lists as the “must-have” item this year. Pardon envy is sweeping over the Beltway as politicians and pundits push to be included on the list of presumptive Trump enemies.

    The political stunt will come at a cost. Preemptive pardons could become the norm as presidents pardon whole categories of allies and even themselves to foreclose federal prosecutions. It can quickly become the norm in what I recently wrote about as our “age of rage.”

    It will give presidents cover to wipe away any threat of prosecution for friends, donors, and associates. This can include self-pardons issued as implied condemnations of their political opponents. It could easily become the final act of every president to pardon himself and all of the members of his Administration. We would then have an effective immunity rule for outgoing parties in American politics.

    Ironically, there is even less need for such preemptive pardons after the Supreme Court recognized that presidents are immune for many decisions made during their presidencies. Likewise, members have robust constitutional protections for their work under Article I, as do journalists and pundits under the Constitution’s First Amendment.

    We have gone over two centuries without such blanket immunity. In my book The Indispensable Right, I discuss our periods of violent political strife and widespread arrests. Thomas Jefferson referred to John Adams’s Federalist government as “the reign of the witches.” Yet, even presidents in those poisonous times did not do what Joe Biden is now contemplating.

    Moreover, presidential pardons have a checkered history, including presidents pardoning family members or political donors. Bill Clinton did both. Not surprisingly, Clinton last week attempted to add his own wife’s name to the sought-after Biden pardon list. He added, however, “I don’t think I should be giving public advice on the pardon power…It’s a very personal thing.”

    That is precisely the point. The power was not created to be used for “very personal things,” like pardoning your half-brother and a fugitive Democratic donor on your last day in office.

    Yet, despite that history, no president has seen fit to go as far as where Biden appears to be heading.

    We have a constitutional system that allows for overlapping protections of individuals from abusive prosecutions and convictions. It does not always work as fast as we would want, but it has sustained the oldest and most stable constitutional system in history.

    These figures would prefer to fundamentally change the use of the pardon power to maintain an apocalyptic narrative that was clearly rejected by the public in this election. If you cannot prove the existence of the widely touted Trump enemies list, a Biden pardon list is the next best thing.

    After years of lying to the American people about the influence-peddling scandal and promising not to consider a pardon for his son, Biden would end his legacy with the ultimate dishonesty: converting pardons into virtual party favors.

    In doing so, he has ironically lowered the standard and expectations for his successors. Joe Biden has become the president that Richard Nixon only imagined. He would establish with utter clarity that this power is not presidential, but personal and political . . . and many in the Beltway are waiting to give him a standing ovation.

    *  *  *

    Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/17/2024 – 20:05

  • Russia Says Ukraine Allies Are 'Accomplices' In Moscow Assassination Of A Top General
    Russia Says Ukraine Allies Are ‘Accomplices’ In Moscow Assassination Of A Top General

    Update(1405): Russia has blasted the West for staying quiet after Ukraine openly boasted of assassinating a top Russian general earlier in the day, identified as Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, who was killed when a scooter bomb detonated remotely upon his leaving his apartment in the early morning hours:

    Russia on Tuesday criticised Ukraine’s allies over what it called insufficient reactions to the assassination in Moscow of the Russian army’s chemical weapons chief, an attack claimed by Kyiv.

    Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the West in a Telegram post of “approval for war crimes by fighters of the Kyiv regime” and said “all those who welcome terrorist attacks or deliberately hush them up are accomplices“.

    This also brings up questions of past reports exposing a CIA program to train and assist Ukraine’s special forces and intelligence in sabotage and cross-border targeting…

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    American media consumers might have a short memory span, but the Russians sure don’t. The Kremlin is now calling Ukraine’s NATO backers ‘accomplices’ in a clear escalation of rhetoric.

    President Putin had just this week warned that the West is going ‘beyond’ Russia’s red line in its support to Ukraine, and said things are escalating at a dangerous pace. As for this latest ‘scooter bomb’ assassination, the Kremlin is likely to immediately suspect that CIA and Western intelligence services may have assisted.

    The bomb which was detonated remotely had a large blast radius (see video below) and was clearly a very sophisticated device, given the smallness of what was a literal children’s scooter apparently used in the plot.

    * * *

    In another scary escalation which will lead to unpredictable consequences, a top military general and head of the Russian military’s chemical weapons forces was killed in Moscow in a targeted blast which Ukraine quickly owned up to. Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov has been confirmed killed in an assassination bombing, and is the most senior Russian official killed since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022.

    According to emerging details confirmed in state TASS news agency, citing Russia’s emergency services, a bomb was hidden in an electric scooter parked outside Gen. Kirillov’s apartment. As he and his assistant walked by, the explosive was remotely detonated. The assistant was also immediately killed. Footage showed a large blast outside the residential building.

    Chief of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Troops Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, via TASS.

    The 54-year old oversaw Russia’s radiation, chemical and biological protection troops – and Kiev and Western sources have accused him of ordering deployment of chemical weapons in the conflict.

    An official Kremlin statement reads: “On the morning of December 17, an explosive device planted in a scooter went off near a residential building entrance on Ryazansky Avenue in Moscow, the investigation showed. Chief of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Troops Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov and his aide were killed in the explosion.”

    The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) is openly boasting to being behind the killing and Ukrainian sources have acknowledged this to American media.

    “Kirillov was a war criminal and an entirely legitimate target, as he issued orders to use prohibited chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops,” an SBU source told ABC. “Such an inglorious end awaits all those who kill Ukrainians. Retribution for war crimes is inevitable.”

    “By order of Kirillov, more than 4,800 cases of the enemy’s use of chemical munitions have been recorded since the beginning of the full-scale war,” the SBU added, but only cited that grenades equipped with substances like CS and other riot control type irritants have been used.

    Video of the bombing has also been released by the SBU. Clearly the hit was carefully planned an choreographed as the attack seems to have been filmed with a ground view from a nearby vehicle.

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    “The footage shows Gen. Kirillov and his aide exiting a building, with the infamous scooter standing nearby,” an unnamed Ukrainian source has described. “The moment they enter the blast zone of the explosive device, the scooter is blown into the air, delivering a ‘verdict’ to the war criminal.”

    Moscow is vowing that Ukraine will pay dearly, with Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman and former president Dmitry Medvedev warning in a fresh statement in the aftermath of Kirillov’s death, “Attempts to intimidate our nation, stop the Russian offensive or sow fear are doomed. Certain punishment awaits Banderite Nazis, including the top military and political leaders of a crumbling country.”

    Medvedev characterized the assassination it as done in desperation given that Kiev forces are steadily being beaten back on the Donbas. Indeed such cross-border acts have only gotten more brazen of late.

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    Medvedev continued: “This terrorist attack demonstrates the agony of the Banderite regime, which is struggling to justify its shaky existence in the eyes of its Western patrons and prolong the deadly hostilities while delivering cowardly attacks on civilians in cities and towns.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/17/2024 – 19:55

  • Watch: Syrian 'Moderate Rebel' Removes ISIS Patch At Prompting Of American Journalist
    Watch: Syrian ‘Moderate Rebel’ Removes ISIS Patch At Prompting Of American Journalist

    Video footage has recently emerged taken by journalist James Longman advising ‘rebels’ in Syria that the ISIS logo on their uniforms will be misunderstood by Western audiences. Longman, who is ABC News’ Chief International Correspondent, demonstrates a trend of American journalists going to war zones to essentially coach combatants on how to better present themselves to the outside world. Mainstream media has for many years pushed the myth of “moderate rebels” in Syria seeking to topple Assad, which they finally did this month.

    One of the militants, who might be a member of the US-designated terror group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham or possibly another hardline Islamist faction, attempts to claim to the US journalist that the emblem does not represent ISIS. Still, the man wearing the ISIS patch seems to take the hint and dutifully removes it for the camera. They swear to ABC’s Longman that they are not Daesh (or ISIS), even while openly sporting its symbols.

    Having examined the disturbing video, Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada – who speaks Arabic – has issued the following reaction: “I’ve seen this video circulating today, along with the claim that James Longman told the fighter to remove the ISIS patch. He does not do that in this video clip. But it’s not much of a ‘confrontation’ either. And however Longman intended it, the fighters appear to interpret his comments as friendly advice on how to present themselves and in fact remove the patch. Understandable that this is reminding people of how Western media colluded in the rebranding of the Azov Battallion in Ukraine that they had been accurately describing as hardcore Nazis just months earlier.” Watch:

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    And below is a version of the video with English translation captions added:

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    Meanwhile, for a trip down memory lane in another raging conflict zone, a highly revealing and deeply ironic June 2023 NY Times story…

    Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/17/2024 – 19:40

  • New Study Illustrates Coffee's Unique Influence On Your Gut
    New Study Illustrates Coffee’s Unique Influence On Your Gut

    Authored by George Citroner via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Coffee drinkers consistently harbor up to eight times more of a specific gut bacterium than nondrinkers, according to recent research.

    Photo Smoothies/Shutterstock

    The international study, which tracked the drinking habits of nearly 77,200 people across 25 countries, found that coffee consumption leaves a distinct microbial signature. Researchers can identify coffee drinkers with 95 percent accuracy by examining their gut bacteria alone.

    How Your Brew Affects Gut Microbiome

    A 2021 study established that coffee had the strongest correlation with microbiome composition among over 150 studied foods, notably affecting levels of Lawsonibacter asaccharolyticus in approximately 1,000 people.

    The latest study by researchers from the CIBIO Department at the University of Trento in Italy and Harvard University, published in Nature Microbiology in November, aimed to deepen understanding of how coffee affects gut health.

    To achieve this, researchers analyzed diet and medical data from nearly 23,000 people in the United States and UK, along with publicly available data from almost 54,200 people worldwide. They compared stool samples from coffee drinkers and nondrinkers to identify differences in their gut bacteria composition.

    The study found a strong association between coffee consumption and the levels of L. ​asaccharolyticus, with coffee drinkers exhibiting about five to eight times higher levels of this bacterium than nondrinkers.​

    This trend was globally consistent, revealing that in coffee-consuming regions such as Luxembourg, Denmark, and Sweden, L. asaccharolyticus is prevalent. Contrastingly, it is nearly absent in countries like China, Argentina, and India.

    The findings offer insights into how individual foods interact with our microbiomes and their potential effects on health.

    The research team demonstrated that individual microbiome profiles could predict coffee consumption with 95 percent accuracy. A lab experiment confirmed that its growth rate increases when L. asaccharolyticus is grown in an in vitro environment with coffee. Further observations indicated that people who drank a lot of coffee exhibited a greater abundance of this bacterium.

    Despite these findings, the role of L. asaccharolyticus in human health remains uncertain. Its presence in the gut microbiome correlates with increased levels of hippurate, a marker of metabolic and gut health produced by gut microbes that metabolize plant compounds called polyphenols found in coffee.

    “We do not have conclusive evidence regarding Lawsonibacter asaccharolyticus as a beneficial or detrimental bacterium,” Nicola Segata, professor of genetics and head of the Computational Metagenomics Laboratory at CIBIO, told The Epoch Times. He noted that the research team is conducting specific additional experiments to better address this question.

    Future of Microbiome Testing

    The research team aims to expand their inquiry into the effects of other foods on gut microbiota, although they recognize the challenges of accurately quantifying food intake.

    These findings suggest a potential for using individual foods to increase the abundance or prevalence of specific gut microbes that are supposed to have beneficial effects, according to Segata. “To achieve this, we need to expand this work to many other foods and other microbes, and this is exactly what we are also working on right now,” he said.

    The researchers envision a future where microbiome testing can enable personalized dietary recommendations tailored to the presence of specific bacteria associated with certain foods. This approach has the potential to help people optimize their diets for better health by considering the intricate relationships between our food intake and microbiome composition.

    “When looking at a food like coffee that is easy to collect information for, and that it is consumed either very frequently or never, then these links are popping out as very strong and very clear,” Segata said.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/17/2024 – 19:15

  • World's Smallest Violin Plays As "Depressed" Biden Bureaucrats Can't Find New Jobs
    World’s Smallest Violin Plays As “Depressed” Biden Bureaucrats Can’t Find New Jobs

    Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

    This is a corker.

    Politico is reporting that Biden Administration bureaucrats are depressed because they can’t find new jobs, and members of Biden’s “national security team” are “frantically” scrambling to find new careers before Trump dismantles the deep state.

    “Our side is just battling depression while we update our resumes,” one White House official stated, while another staffer declared that “Everyone is willing to take a demotion because there aren’t enough jobs.”

    Boo hoo. Cry harder.

    While the higher ups are all abandoning ship for Defence contractors, think tanks and consulting firms, the lower level dogsbody bureaucrats are whinging that they face taking “unglamorous jobs” with pay cuts.

    “There’s a lot of good career people here who went through the first Trump administration and are saying, ‘Can I really go through that again?’” said one Biden appointee at the State Department.

    Oh my God, the hardship of having someone you don’t agree with running things.

    “It’s going to be very saturated and crowded and so beggars can’t be choosers, I guess,” said another Biden State Department appointee, adding “The crazy thing is none of these jobs we’re desperate to get are particularly glamorous, unless you want to go lobby for some autocratic foreign governments.”

    The world’s tiniest violin is playing for them.

    Politico notes that “Wherever they land, a wave of Democratic national security and foreign policy staffers will continue the tradition of patiently treading water for four years until, just maybe, a Democrat can win the presidency again in 2028.”

    Yeah. Maybe learn to tread water a lot longer.

    Or perhaps learn to code.

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    Welcome to the real world, losers.

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    Get to the back of the line.

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    Trump is going to provide a lot of opportunities for you.

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    Maybe just don’t mention your last job on your resumé.

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    *  *  *

    Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/17/2024 – 18:25

  • Trump Team Begins Back-Channel Talks With Mexico, El Salvador On Deportation Plans
    Trump Team Begins Back-Channel Talks With Mexico, El Salvador On Deportation Plans

    President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team has begun reaching out through back channels to the governments of Mexico and El Salvador to prepare for his mass deportation plan, according to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter. The conversations, which involve Trump advisers and informal intermediaries, are part of an effort to lay the groundwork for returning millions of undocumented immigrants as soon as Trump takes office.

    While Trump has addressed migration broadly with Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, his team has held more detailed discussions through intermediaries, including businesspeople, to ensure deportation plans can proceed swiftly, the people said on condition of anonymity.

    “We’re already talking,” said Tom Homan, Trump’s designated “border czar,” during a November visit to Texas alongside Governor Greg Abbott. “We’re already planning. We’re going to put a plan in place and secure this nation at the highest levels ever seen.“

    The Challenge of Deportations

    Trump’s deportation push—aiming to target millions of undocumented immigrants, including over 1 million with final orders of removal—relies heavily on the cooperation of other countries. While Mexico and El Salvador have longstanding repatriation processes, Trump’s advisers acknowledge that reaching agreements with other governments, such as Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and China, will be far more challenging.

    “Unless they can strike a deal with the governments of Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua on deportations, it seems likely they will look for alternate destinations,” said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. “That’s a really hard ask. If the Trump administration arrives just with a stick and no carrot, it’s going to be a tough negotiation.”

    Trump addressed this difficulty Monday when asked about countries like Venezuela resisting deportation flights.

    “They’ll take them back,” Trump said. “They’re all taking them back, yeah. And if they don’t, they’ll be met very harshly economically.”

    Trump advisers involved in the outreach include incoming National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, according to sources. Homan, while focused on domestic enforcement, has supported these efforts to build deportation infrastructure ahead of Trump’s January 20 inauguration.

    Negotiations after Trump takes office are expected to be led by Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, and Christopher Landau, Trump’s former ambassador to Mexico who has been tapped as Rubio’s deputy.

    The conversations with Mexico have included preparations for deporting Mexican nationals, but the Mexican government has been clear it won’t accept deportees from other countries. “Mexico’s Sheinbaum has said the nation is ready to welcome back its own citizens,” said a senior Mexican official, “but it won’t accept those from other countries.”

    El Salvador presents a different dynamic. Trump’s family maintains a close relationship with President Nayib Bukele, whose administration has remained friendly with Trump allies. Donald Trump Jr. attended Bukele’s second inauguration in June, and Trump’s ambassador nominee for Mexico, Ronald Johnson, has kept in close contact with Bukele since serving as U.S. ambassador to El Salvador.

    Focus on Immediate Enforcement

    Trump’s deportation strategy will begin with targeting individuals already facing deportation orders. “The priority will be those with no legal basis to stay,” said a person familiar with the plans, pointing to undocumented immigrants who have either committed crimes or exhausted their appeals and asylum processes.

    U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has not responded to requests for updated figures, but Migration Policy Institute data shows that Mexico has received more than 1.7 million deportees over the past decade—more than the next nine countries combined.

    Homan and Trump’s advisers argue that aggressive early action will set the tone for enforcement. “The American people re-elected President Trump because they trust him to lead our country and restore peace through strength around the world,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s transition spokeswoman, said in a statement. “When he returns to the White House, he will take the necessary action to do just that.”

    While Trump’s relationships with Mexico and El Salvador remain relatively stable, cooperation from other nations remains uncertain. Trump’s transition team recognizes that countries like Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, which are often the origin points for migrants, have fraught diplomatic relations with the U.S. These nations rarely accept deportation flights, posing a major obstacle to Trump’s mass deportation plan.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/17/2024 – 18:00

  • Congress Unveils Short-Term Funding Bill To Avoid End-Of-Year Government Shutdown
    Congress Unveils Short-Term Funding Bill To Avoid End-Of-Year Government Shutdown

    Update (1900ET): House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Dec. 17 unveiled a bipartisan bill that would keep the government funded until March 14, punting the issue of permanent funding to the incoming 119th Congress in the early days of President-elect Donald Trump’s second term.

    This bill is known as a continuing resolution, or CR.

    As Joseph Lord reports for The Epoch Times, aside from extending the deadline to mid-March, the proposed CR—coming in at 1,547 pages—includes disaster relief in the aftermath of hurricanes in the South, environmental provisions, the Second Chance Reauthorization Act, veterans’ measures, foreign affairs-related legislation, and the Hotel Fees Transparency Act.

    The CR also includes restrictions on investments in China and a one-year extension of the farm bill that consists of various initiatives, including food nutrition programs in schools, crop insurance, and disaster assistance. It usually gets extended for five years.

    While the bill usually gets bipartisan support, a point of contention surrounding it is the GOP’s desire to strengthen requirements for recipients of food stamps, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Democrats oppose making changes.

    The CR includes a measure to transfer control of Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium to the District of Columbia from the federal government as the site could be the new home of the NFL’s Washington Commanders.

    The legislation overwhelmingly passed the House in February but has been stuck in the Senate amid objections from Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).

    Despite a House rule requiring 72 hours for lawmakers to read legislation, it’s expected that the CR could see a vote on the floor as early as Wednesday, defusing the threat of a government shutdown that would otherwise begin on Friday, Dec. 20.

    Congress was supposed to enact 12 full-year appropriations bills by Sept. 30, which would fund the federal government for Fiscal Year 2025. However, as has happened every year since 1997, Congress failed to pass them in time and, therefore, enacted a continuing resolution (CR).

    The current version will temporarily keep the government funded at prorated levels set for Fiscal Year 2024. The last CR was signed into law on Sept. 26 and authorized funding until Dec. 20.

    With that deadline now fast approaching, Congress will need to move quickly to avoid a shutdown.

    For some Republicans, the added content in the CR makes it look more like the long-despised end-of-year “omnibus” spending bill, which has historically wrapped all government funding into one large, single package.

    “The CR is looking more and more like an omnibus in the sense that we don’t know what’s in it,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told reporters on Dec. 16. “They need to saddle up and ride and get this thing put together and keep it to the bare minimum, in my opinion.”

    Kennedy indicated he would be a “no” vote on the legislation.

    Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who veers toward the right flank of the House GOP conference, was also critical.

    “Another CR will be dropped on our desks compliments of the DC Sewer Uniparty. This is not what America voted for,” Burchett said in a post on X prior to the release of the CR.

    Ultimately, its fate will come down to how Democrats cast their ballot: historically, CR bills have won substantially more support from Democrats than Republicans.

    However, Democratic leaders—including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)—will likely take time to review the legislation before making a commitment either way.

    Due to the long congressional recess in the final weeks leading up to the 2024 election—including all of October—it was considered unlikely that Congress would have time to pass the 12 required appropriations bills prior to the Dec. 20 deadline.

    Many Republicans in Congress told The Epoch Times in September that they wanted to delay the question of appropriations to the 119th Congress—expecting that Republicans would control Congress and the White House, and that this would enable passage of more fiscally conservative spending bills.

    Those electoral aims have been fulfilled; Republicans will hold a three-seat majority in both the Senate and House of Representatives in the 119th Congress, along with control of the executive branch through the incoming Trump administration.

    Restarting the whole appropriations process will not require exhaustive committee work, as was done before September when House Republicans attempted to pass several of the 12 appropriations bills.

    It remains to be seen how the Trump administration will influence the passage of permanent spending bills in March, which—if highly partisan—will likely not receive enough Democratic votes to overcome a filibuster in the Senate.

    The Trump administration has proposed using the budget reconciliation process, a limited method of overcoming the filibuster, to enact other policy priorities. This mechanism can be used to pass legislation related to taxing, spending, and the debt.

    Additionally, its chartering of the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) initiative, led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, could influence the composition of the bills.

    *  *  *

    With less than four days to avoid a government shutdown, House Speaker Mike Johnson, (R-LA), and congressional leaders are working to finalize a bipartisan short-term funding bill, though delays and mounting frustrations within the House Republican caucus are complicating the effort.

    Johnson, who initially expected to release the text of the bill over the weekend, then on Monday, said Tuesday that it would be unveiled by the end of the day.

    “We’re almost there,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday following a press conference. “We do expect text today.”

    The proposed legislation would keep the government funded through March 14 while addressing specific priorities, including disaster relief and $10 billion in assistance to farmers. Johnson emphasized that he intends to honor the House’s 72-hour rule, which requires time for lawmakers to review the bill before a vote. However, this would push the process close to the Friday midnight deadline for avoiding a shutdown.

    Johnson said he remains focused on securing broad Republican support for the measure – which we’re sure will contain more pork than a barbecue pit.

    Senate Leaders Echo Urgency

    In the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, (D-NY), struck a cautiously optimistic tone but stressed the need to finalize the agreement quickly.

    “There continues to be good progress, but appropriators are still working on finalizing an agreement,” Schumer said Tuesday on the Senate floor. “Obviously, we’re getting closer to the December 20 deadline, so time is of the essence for Republicans to reach an agreement with us that we can act on quickly.”

    Both chambers of Congress are facing pressure to wrap up funding negotiations before they adjourn for the Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year holidays.

    Frustration Grows Among House Conservatives

    While negotiations continue, conservative House Republicans are growing increasingly critical of Johnson’s handling of the bill and its timeline.

    “This is not the way to do things,” Rep. Chip Roy, (R-TX), said in a post on X.

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    Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., delivered a scathing critique, calling the emerging legislation “a total dumpster fire” and expressing deep disappointment in Johnson’s leadership.

    “I think it’s garbage,” Burlison told reporters. “This is why I ran for Congress, to try to stop this. And sadly, this is happening again… I’m disappointed. I think that he can do better. He can communicate better. The fact that we haven’t seen the language today and we’re supposed to vote on it this week is unacceptable.”

    When asked if the situation makes him hesitant to support Johnson in the upcoming January 3rd vote for House speaker, Burlison deflected, saying, “That I won’t say.”

    Johnson, however, brushed aside concerns about his leadership.

    “I’m not worried about the speaker vote,” Johnson told reporters. “We’re governing. Everybody knows we have difficult circumstances. We’re doing the very best we can under those circumstances.“

    Leadership Focused on Farmers, Disaster Relief

    House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, (R-LA), offered support for Johnson’s efforts, underscoring the bill’s priorities while projecting optimism about the path forward.

    “We plan to pass a bill to get the government funded,” Scalise said, “and ensure that we take care of disasters and our farmers here in America.”

    Looking ahead, Scalise emphasized the urgency of finishing the week’s work while expressing hopes for a smoother 2024.

    “We have a lot to do the rest of this week, but we all look forward to getting back home to our families and enjoying a great Christmas as we get ready for what will be a very busy and productive New Year,” Scalise said, standing alongside Johnson.

    Stay tuned for updates…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/17/2024 – 17:50

  • US Conducts New Strikes In Syria & Yemen, Still With No Congressional Authorization
    US Conducts New Strikes In Syria & Yemen, Still With No Congressional Authorization

    Congress has not authorized war, and yet the United States on Monday bombed two countries: Yemen and Syria. US Central Command (CENTCOM) earlier confirmed an airstrike on a military facility of the Houthis in northern Yemen.

    A Houthi defense ministry building in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa was reportedly among those targets which came under attack by US warplanes. “On Dec. 16 Yemen time, US Central Command (CENTCOM) forces conducted a precision airstrike against a key command and control facility operated by Iran-backed Houthis within Houthi-controlled territory in Sana’a, Yemen,” CENTCOM said in a fresh statement.

    Via Reuters

    Separately, CENTCOM said Monday that American forces bombed ISIS camps in Syria, killing at least 12 Islamic State fighters. 

    The Pentagon said further that the strikes “were conducted as part of the ongoing mission to disrupt, degrade, and defeat ISIS, preventing the terrorist group from conducting external operations and to ensure that ISIS does not seek opportunities to reconstitute in central Syria.”

    So now it appears the Pentagon is in a renewed fight against both the ‘Iran axis’ in Yemen and hardline Sunni terrorists in the heart of Syria. 

    Interestingly the Syria strikes were in areas previously understood as the Russian military’s area of responsibility, as well as the now defunct Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. 

    The US designated terror organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in its prior iteration was as an al-Qaeda offshoot, was once an open ally of ISIS, and is now in control of Damascus and major Syrian cities. 

    Turkey and Israel have also been involved in bombing Syria, but Israel has focused its literally hundreds of strikes on degrading and destroying leftover Syrian Army missiles, planes, equipment, and bunkers.

    At this moment, the Pentagon also has at least 900 troops occupying the northeast Syrian oil and gas fields, but the Syrian Kurds it supports have increasingly been clashing with Turkish-aligned forces, and directly with the Turkish army, which is still mustering forces along the northern Syrian border. 

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    AntiWar.com’s Dave DeCamp approached Biden administration officials to ask about the pesky question of Congressional authorization to bomb foreign militants in no less than two conflict theatres. 

    The response was as follows: “Biden and Harris told me the US wasn’t at war but today they bombed Syria and Yemen,” DeCamp wrote on X.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/17/2024 – 17:40

  • An Open Letter To Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
    An Open Letter To Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

    Authored by Richard Truesdell and Keith Lehmann via American Greatness,

    Dear Mr. Kennedy,

    Of the many issues you will tackle as Secretary of Health and Human Services, we implore you to work with FCC Commissioner Brenden Carr and immediately put an end to pharmaceutical companies advertising prescription drugs on television. This should be one of your earliest moves in the Trump administration. Why is this so timely?

    The sheer amount of dollars being spent on TV advertising by “Big Pharma” should raise suspicion among those who care about accuracy in media and information being consumed by the public.

    It is an old trick for an industry to buy off the news media for favorable coverage.

    Historic Precedent to Ban Unhealthy Ads on Television

    When evidence of the dangers of smoking cigarettes began to emerge in the 1950s, news organizations were reluctant to expose “Big Tobacco” because it was responsible for an abundance of media ad revenue. The same synergistic relationship exists today with “Big Pharma” and television news.

    Similarly, as Big Tobacco began buying off the TV news more than 70 years ago, Big Pharma is doing that today.

    The incessant drumbeat of COVID boosters, RSV injections, and flu shot ads is run alongside news reporters covering up vaccine side effects, including increased cases of myocarditis, anaphylaxis, psychosis, and/or early death.

    Nowhere is this more evident than with Novo Nordisk A/S’s type 2 diabetes drug Ozempic. While this drug may offer benefits to the millions of Americans who suffer from type 2 diabetes (some surveys place the number of Americans afflicted with type 2 diabetes at nearly 10%, with more than 30% considered pre-diabetic), at what cost? If your insurance doesn’t cover Ozempic, your monthly cost will be nearly $1,000. And you will be “hooked” for life.

    Concurrently, what about the shameless promotion of Ozempic as an aid for weight loss? Can you watch a program on the nightly news on one of the alphabet networks or cable news without seeing ads for Ozempic touting its benefits to lose weight?

    And what about the genre of late-night so-called comics like vax-shill Stephen Colbert? The late-night TV category is dying, with Colbert (CBS), Jimmy Fallon (NBC), and Jimmy Kimmel (ABC) suffering historic low ratings. If not propped up by “Big Pharma” ad dollars, will a ban on ads for prescription drugs be the final nail in their coffins? Let’s hope so, as all three ceased being funny years ago.

    The Long-term Cost of the Chemicals in Our Food Chain

    We know you are already on the record as having intentions of outlawing Big Pharma ads for prescription drugs on television. Today, among high-income countries, only the U.S. and New Zealand allow for such advertising. Almost all other countries are fully knowledgeable of the conflict between ad dollars and news reporting.

    The longer this obvious conflict persists, the more the public will be misled and lied to about the real dangers of prescription drugs and the intentions of Big Pharma to buy off the news media to hide these dangers. A ban on this type of advertising will go a long way toward keeping the news media honest—or perhaps putting the worst of them out of the misinformation business altogether.

    Among the many items on your agenda, once you take office, this is probably the easiest of them. Our broadcast news outlets operate under a license from the FCC and are obligated to serve the public interest at all times. Taking money from Big Pharma to cover up or lie about the potential damage the public will suffer through the use of their products cannot be tolerated any longer.

    We both applaud your passion to Make America Healthy Again. Count us in.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/17/2024 – 17:20

  • "This Is A Bloodsport For Them" – Lara Logan Exposes "The Age Of Information Warfare"
    “This Is A Bloodsport For Them” – Lara Logan Exposes “The Age Of Information Warfare”

    Lara Logan is a South African-born journalist and war correspondent known for her extensive work in conflict zones. She gained significant recognition while working for CBS News, particularly for her coverage of the Iraq War and the Arab Spring.

    Logan’s career includes notable moments such as her 2002 Peabody Award for her report on the abduction of Daniel Pearl.

    However, her career has also been marked by controversy, including a high-profile assault in Egypt in 2011, and later, scrutiny over her reporting methods and political views as she started to shed light on the ‘not mainstream’ narratives that are the hidden realities of our time.

    She, better than most, can attest to the powers of the Deep State and the weaponization of establishment-based entities in the age of information warfare.

    “We are once again watching the lights of freedom going out all over the world. And it is up to us to determine if they will be lit again, ever.”

    Watch Logan’s impassioned speech below:

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    Full Transcript (emphasis ours)…

    “We live in the age of information warfare, where propaganda is not simply a weapon, it is the entire field of battle. This is a war for our minds that is aided by advanced technology, and we have never been here, not in all of human history.”

    “It is a moment when we as journalists should stand together, united, and regardless of politics, we should fight for the truth and we should fight for freedom. Yet, not very long ago, we allowed one of our own, Tucker Carlson, to be branded as a traitor simply for doing his job. In fact, there were many so-called journalists who were leading the charge against Tucker, accusing him of treason for the simple fact of interviewing the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin.”

    “And to my knowledge, there was not a single legacy media institution that spoke up. This was more than a politically motivated attack on one man. It was a betrayal of the most sacred principles of a free press. And my media colleagues know this to be true, no matter what they say. My fear is that they either no longer care or that they lack the moral courage to be honest, including with themselves.”

    “I have worked at the highest levels of the media as a full-time correspondent for 60 Minutes, chief foreign correspondent for CBS News, chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News. That was my home for 16 years. And as a journalist, I have sat down with world leaders, mass murderers, and terrorists. And I have held people on both sides of the aisle accountable. I have seen suffering and I have faced evil and I have walked through the fires of hell on distant battlefields.”

    “I faced my own death at the hands of a mob of some 200 men in Egypt when I was gang raped and sodomized and beaten almost to death while on assignment for 60 minutes. And yet for almost a decade I have been targeted and falsely branded and accused of many things. that I did not do. They have attacked my work, my character, my sanity, and my marriage. And I am not alone. We are many.”

    “And we will not give up, and we will not give in. To those who wish to sense of the idea of free speech in America and all over the world, media companies. Institutions and journalism schools have failed all of us.”

    “And for too long we have allowed nonprofit organizations to masquerade as nonpartisan media watchdogs, when in fact they are little more than highly paid political propagandists and assassins whose entire reason for being is to crush anyone who stands in their way and along with them the long held and cherished ideas of free speech, free thinking, and free minds.”

    “This is a blood sport for them. their political allies and their puppet masters. They know how to kill a journalist without murdering them. We call it cancel culture. In truth, it is a death sentence. And they get away with it because they have information dominance. Some are strong enough to survive, but only a few, like Glenn Greenwald, Tucker Carlson, Matt Taibbi.”

    “Only a few like them are able to reach greater heights and thrive. These nonprofits that I’m talking about are part of a vast censorship network that includes government agencies. They use deception to mask their actions with lofty goals like preventing the spread of misinformation, disinformation, hate speech. They use phrases like protecting democracy and make no mistake, words matter.”

    “The media is collaborating with government agencies and operatives to censor and shape the information battlefield, to justify certain actions. For example, when the President of the United States threatens the unvaccinated, saying, our patience is wearing thin, and accuses them of putting communities at risk, his words are designed to justify hatred, censorship, and intimidation.”

    “And when the Vice President compares January 6th to 9-11 and Pearl Harbor, it is a predicate to silence the opposition and justify the weaponization. of the justice system. We are already witnessing another shaping operation to influence the outcome of the 2024 election. This time with the false claim that if one side wins, it will be the end of democracy.”

    “This lie contrived to ensure a particular outcome and to sabotage free speech yet again. Overseas taxpayer funds from hardworking Americans are being doled out by contractors under the Office of Transition Initiatives at USAID, or the State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.”

    “These contractors, many of them ideological zealots, who are not even US government officials, often make over a quarter million dollars a year, and are outside the reach, Senator, of yourself and committees like this. They hand out taxpayer dollars to programs that are shaped by highly partisan NGOs, who hide behind terms like interreligious dialogue, when in fact they are funding Muslim schools that train Islamic terrorists, like they did in Malaysia.”

    “Another example is Humanist International. Through them, the State Department is funding atheism grants that actively cultivate an atheist advocacy network in Nepal. This is not just to attack religion and manipulate foreign politics. It is an attack on free speech, faith, and God. While propaganda and censorship are not new, technology means unprecedented power and reach in the hands of a few.”

    “Companies like Facebook, Instagram, and Google, as you have heard many times today, have been allowed to amass monopoly power. And as a result, they not only reach billions of people across the world, every second of the day, they have absolute control over what we see and what we hear. Imagine those tools in the hands of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler.”

    “When the Founding Fathers put freedom of speech first, it was not by chance, it was by design. The rights that followed were in part created. to protect the First Amendment. Without it, they knew that freedom itself would perish. I am reminded today of the words spoken by the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Gray, in 1914, at the beginning of the First World War.”

    “He said, the lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime. We are once again watching the lights of freedom. They’re going out here and all over the world. And it is up to us to determine if they will be lit again, ever.“

    h/t Camus

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/17/2024 – 17:00

  • All Three Pillars Holding Up The Economy Have Cracked
    All Three Pillars Holding Up The Economy Have Cracked

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    All three pillars propping up workforce spending are cracking. Plan accordingly.

    Karl Marx and Henry Ford both understood the key pillar of an industrial economy: the workforce has to earn enough to buy the output of the economy. If the workforce doesn’t earn enough to have surplus earnings to spend on the enormous output of an industrial economy, then the producers cannot sell their goods / services at a profit, except to the few at the top as luxury goods–and that’s not an industrial economy, it’s a feudal economy of very limited scope.

    Marx recognized that capitalism is a self-liquidating system as capital has the power to squeeze wages even as the output of an industrial economy steadily increases due to automation, technology, etc.

    Henry Ford understood that if his own workforce couldn’t afford to buy the cars rolling off the assembly line, then his ambition to sell a car to every household was an unreachable chimera. (There were other factors, of course; the work was so brutal and mind-numbing that Ford had to pay more just to keep workers from quitting.)

    If we say the three pillars holding up the economy, the conventional list is: 1) consumer spending (i.e. aggregate demand); 2) productivity and 3) corporate profits. These are not actually pillars, they are outcomes of the core pillar, wage earners making enough to buy the economy’s output.

    As the statistics often cited here show, the purchasing power of wages has been declining for almost 50 years, since the mid-1970s. This means the workforce’s surplus earnings have bought less and less of the economy’s output.

    There are three ways to fill the widening gap that’s opened between what the workforce has to spend as surplus earnings and the vast output of the economy:

    1. Government distributed money. The government distributes “free money” to the workforce via subsidies, tax cuts and credits, or direct cash disbursements.

    2. Cheap abundant credit. The cost of credit is lowered to near-zero and credit is made available to virtually the entire workforce so workers can borrow money to buy goods and services they cannot afford to buy from surplus earnings. If auto loans are 1.9%, the interest is a trivial sum annually.

    3. Asset bubbles. Boost the value of assets via monetary policies to generate unearned “wealth” that can be spent (by either borrowing against the newfound wealth or by selling assets). This expansion of “free money” also generates the “wealth effect,” the feel-good high of feeling richer, which increases the confidence and desire to spend more money.

    There are intrinsic, unbreachable limits to each of these solutions.

    1. The government either “prints” or borrows the money it distributes to the workforce. Over time, low interest rates are unsustainable, despite claims to the contrary, and the interest paid on the state’s vast borrowing consumes so much of the state’s revenues that it starts limiting how much the government can spend. Once state spending stagnates or declines, this pillar breaks and the economy crumbles into recession / depression.

    In other words, depending on the government to fill the gap between wages and the economy’s output is a self-liquidating system.

    2. The expansion of credit leads to defaults and bankruptcies. Relying on the ceaseless expansion of credit based on the declining purchasing power of wages is also a self-liquidating system, as the number of marginal borrowers steadily increases, as does the volume of marginal loans issued by lenders. Marginal borrowers default, triggering losses that push lenders into bankruptcy. This is a self-reinforcing cycle, as the economy rolls over into recession as credit contracts. More workers lose their jobs and default, more loans become uncollectible, and so on.

    3. Asset bubbles concentrate the newfound wealth in the top 10%, exacerbating wealth-income inequality and pushing those left behind to gamble in an increasingly speculative financial sector as the only available means of getting ahead. Speculation is also a self-liquidating system as risky bets eventually go bad and the losses trigger a self-reinforcing feedback of selling assets to raise cash which then pushes valuations lower, triggering more selling, and so on.

    All three of these pillars propping up the economy are self-liquidating systems, and they’re all buckling. Federal borrowing is pushing up against the limits posed by the interest payments on soaring debt. Credit costs are rising and cannot return to near-zero due to inflationary forces. All asset bubbles eventually pop, and the higher they ascend, the more devastating the collapse.

    Wages’ share of the economy have been in structural decline since 1975:

    Federal debt: and no, we can’t “grow our way out of debt” by inflating asset bubbles and subsidizing consumer spending with federal debt:

    Total debt, public and private: the acme of a self-liquidating system:

    The pillars of consumer credit and federal borrowing are reaching intrinsic breaking points, and so everything is now depending on the asset bubbles in housing and stocks to keep inflating phantom wealth at rates high enough to support more borrowing and spending.

    The problem is all asset bubbles pop, despite claims that “this is a new era.” That was widely held in March 2000, too, just before the dot-com bubble burst and the Nasdaq fell 80%.

    All three pillars propping up workforce spending are cracking. Plan accordingly.

    *  *  *

    Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/17/2024 – 16:40

  • NY Hits Luigi Mangione With Terror-Related Charges In UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooting Death
    NY Hits Luigi Mangione With Terror-Related Charges In UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooting Death

    The 26-year-old Ivy League graduate from Hunt Valley, Maryland, who is charged with murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel earlier this month, was formally indicted in New York on Tuesday afternoon.

    Luigi Mangione was indicted on one count of first-degree murder, two counts of second-degree murder, seven counts of criminal possession of a weapon, and one count of possessing a forged driver’s license, according to Bloomberg.

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    The case was elevated to first-degree murder because Thompson was killed “in furtherance of an act of terrorism,” NY prosecutors wrote in the indictment. 

    We suspect the first-degree murder charge in furtherance of terrorism stems from Luigi’s alleged manifesto, which stated, “Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world…”

    Essentially, “furtherance of terrorism” refers to the use of violence or threats of violence to achieve political or social goals.

    “We allege that Luigi Mangione carried out the brazen, targeted and fatal shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Midtown Manhattan. This type of premeditated, targeted gun violence cannot and will not be tolerated, and my office has been working day in and day out to bring the defendant to justice,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg wrote in a statement. 

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    Bragg said, “I want to extend my heartfelt prayers to Mr. Thompson’s loved ones as they continue to grieve. This ongoing investigation is the product of an incredible partnership at all levels with the NYPD, and I want to thank Commissioner Tisch and the prosecutors and detectives who worked collaboratively to apprehend Mr. Mangione.” 

    During a news conference, Bragg blamed ghost guns for many of NYC’s troubles. Let’s not forget that far-left Democrats in the metro area have transformed the city into a mecca for illegal aliens. But, of course, don’t blame criminals and illegal alien gangs … blame ghost guns. 

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    Last week, Manhattan attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo was hired by Mangione to defend him on the murder charges. 

    NY Prosecutors have been working on extraditing Mangione from Pennsylvania to Manhattan to face charges formally. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/17/2024 – 16:20

  • Russia's Crude Oil Shipments Slump By 11% In Two Months
    Russia’s Crude Oil Shipments Slump By 11% In Two Months

    By Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com

    Russian crude oil exports by sea have dropped by 11% from a recent high in October, due to maintenance at the Baltic port of Primorsk, pressure for Russia to align with its OPEC+ quota, and increased sanctions pressure.

    In the four weeks to December 15, Russia’s seaborne crude exports averaged 3.06 million barrels per day (bpd), tanker-tracking data monitored by Bloomberg showed on Tuesday.

    That’s 11% lower compared to a recent peak of a four-week average volume of 3.46 million bpd in early October, according to the data reported by Bloomberg’s Julian Lee.

    In the most recent week to December 15, observed Russian crude oil exports from Primorsk have slumped as the port saw a halt of four days in departures, according to data from port agents seen by Bloomberg. The partial halt to the loading program suggests that there has been either maintenance work on the loading terminal or the pipeline that serves it, according to Bloomberg.

    Apart from physical disruption to loadings, Russian crude oil exports have fallen as Moscow has been under increased pressure to fall in line with its OPEC+ quota as part of the group that looks to support oil prices.

    Moreover, the UK and the EU have ramped up sanctions on the so-called shadow fleet used by Russia to ship its crude oil and petroleum products.

    At the end of November, the UK sanctioned as many as 30 tankers identified as belonging to Russia’s shadow fleet that circumvents the Western oil sanctions, in its single largest sanctions package aimed at Russia’s dark fleet and at stifling Putin’s oil revenues.

    The EU on Monday adopted the 15th package of sanctions against Russia, which targets 52 new vessels from Russia’s shadow fleet, increasing the total number of such listings to 79. These non-EU vessels are subject to a port access ban and a ban on provision of services.

    Moreover, the Biden administration is said to be mulling over additional sanctions against Russia’s oil industry ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 12/17/2024 – 15:45

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Dec 17

Today’s News 17th December 2024

  • Give Me Liberty, Not Pronouns
    Give Me Liberty, Not Pronouns

    Authored by Kenin Spivak via RealClearPolitics,

    It’s time to defrock the word police.

    The election, polls, and anecdotal evidence confirm that Americans want to end the obnoxious recitation of pronouns – “Latinx,” “birthing persons,” and other entries in the radical left lexicon – except in eulogies for progressive virtue signaling.

    In a March Gallup poll of more than 12 million adults, 4.4% identified as bisexual, 0.9% as transgender, and 0.1% as pansexual. In exit polls this year of more than 110,000 voters conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, just 1% identified as “nonbinary,” a subset of the Gallup categories. Some of these individuals, most often nonbinaries, dominate use of non-standard pronouns such as “they,” “zir” and “hir.”

    If 100% of bisexuals, transgenders, and pansexuals used non-standard pronouns (they do not) and all are offended if the remaining 94.6% of us do not publicly proclaim our pronouns in our signature cards and profiles (also untrue), then the pronoun kerfuffle risks offending 5.4% of Americans. From 10 to 20 times more Americans are offended by this babble. According to a Pew study published in June, nearly 56% of registered voters are uncomfortable with someone using the pronouns “they” or “them,” rather than “he” or “she.” Most of the 53% of Americans who consider religion to be “very important” in their lives likely agree.

    Even in Canada, where polls show greater support for gender fluidity, a survey of 3,016 adults from the Angus-Reid Institute found that 66% opposed (36% strongly) and just 22% supported (6% strongly) that “everyone should put their pronouns in their social media profiles/emails.” Media savvy squad member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez deleted her pronouns from her X profile.

    The core question is not whether those who choose non-standard pronouns, other than “they,” should be dissuaded from doing so, but whether we must all subjugate ourselves to pronoun activists by beclowning our signature cards and profiles to confirm that we are adhering to at least 2,000 years of gender identification, and whether we must adopt idiosyncratic pronouns when describing others.

    At the least, no one should use the pronoun “they.” The use of “they” to describe an individual is grammatically incorrect in nearly all circumstances. It is narcissistic and pompous. When discussing multiple people and also using “they” as a pronoun for one or more of them, the result is indecipherable. (Try to understand the sentence I just wrote if the word “them” could mean both more than one individual, and one or more specific individuals.)

    More than a few times I have had the following conversation with a professional whose firm uses pronouns in its signature cards. Me: Does anyone in the firm use pronouns other than him or her? Partner: “No” (or, rarely, “a few”). Me: Why then do you do this, since it must be off-putting to many more people than the number who like it? Partner: Some variation of, “We only care about the feelings of the few.”

    This goes even further when people are penalized for refusing to participate in this farce. Being LGBTQ may be protected by law or common decency, but the Constitution unambiguously protects free speech and the exercise of religion. It does not protect an individual’s right to force others to refer to him or her as a “they.” At least 10 states have passed legislation to ensure that teachers, staff, and students aren’t required to use students’ pronouns or names if they don’t align with the student’s sex at birth.

    Nothing, of course, is more absurd that the misogynistic “birthing person,” or that a nominee for the Supreme Court can’t define “woman.”

    U.S. passport applicants now may select any gender, or an “X” gender, as may residents of 16 states on birth certificates, and at least 25 states and the District of Columbia on drivers’ licenses and other identification, defeating the purpose of identification.

    French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish assign gender to most nouns. Hence, Americans from South America refer to themselves as “Latino,” “Latina,” or just “Hispanic.” The same misogynistic pathology that causes progressives to insist there are more than two immutable sexes, erase women, and put biological males in girls’ sports, drives them to the despised slur “Latinx.”

    A 2021 poll of 800 registered voters of Latin American descent for Bendixen and Amandi International, a Democratic firm, found that only 2% described themselves as Latinx, and 40% found the term offensive. A Pew survey in September found that only 4% of Hispanics use it, 51% have never heard of it, and 75% of those who have, oppose it. In October, a study conducted by professors from Georgetown and Harvard found that the use of Latinx by Democrats was increasing Hispanic support for Donald Trump and other Republicans.

    The progressive lexicon is based on tenuous connections (“grandfathered” is racist), wordy (“people experiencing homelessness” for “homeless”), kooky (“assigned female at birth” for “girl”) and offends vast number of Americans, including women and members of minority groups whom the progressives claim to be supporting.

    According to Future Forward, Kamala Harris’ lead PAC, variants of Trump’s campaign advertisement about her support for taxpayer-funded sex reassignment surgery for transgenders with the tagline “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” shifted the race 2.7% in Trump’s favor.

    Trump’s success among most demographic groups, and exit and post-election polling (see here, here, here, and here) tell us that Americans don’t want to be told by the radical left what to think or how to speak about social issues. It is time to put pronouns, Latinx, and other progressive terminology in the waste basket.

    Kenin M. Spivak is founder and chairman of SMI Group LLC, an international consulting firm and investment bank. He is the author of fiction and non-fiction books and a frequent speaker and contributor to media, including The American Mind, National Review, the National Association of Scholars, television, radio, and podcasts.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/16/2024 – 23:25

  • Russia, Germany, Turkey Condemn Israeli Land Grab In Syria
    Russia, Germany, Turkey Condemn Israeli Land Grab In Syria

    “Strengthening the Golan is strengthening the State of Israel, and it is especially important at this time. We will continue to hold onto it, cause it to blossom and settle in it,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday, confirming reports that Israel will expand its settler population there.

    Netanyahu has now declare the Golan to belong to Israel ‘forever’ in the wake of the fall of the Assad, and Israel is expected to double the amount of settlers living there. “Multiple Middle Eastern nations and Israel’s ally Germany on Monday denounced Israel’s decision to double the Israeli settler population in the illegally occupied Syrian territory,” Al Jazeera writes.

    Via AFP

    At this point Israeli tanks are positioned a mere couple dozen miles from the capital of Damascus, and Israel has established a forward base on the Syrian side of Mt. Hermon.

    Russia has been among those countries strongly warning Israel not to expand its hold on Syrian territory. The Golan was first taken by Israel in 1967 and it was annexed in 1981.

    Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov on Monday issued the following strong words telling Israel to stop exploiting the situation:

    “I would like to warn certain ‘hotheads’ in West Jerusalem against being intoxicated by opportunities,” Ryabkov said, stressing that “the annexation of the Golan Heights, which many are talking about now, is absolutely unacceptable.” 

    Turkey too has said something similar. “This decision is a new stage in Israel’s goal of expanding its borders through occupation. This step by Israel is a source of grave concern, taken together with Israel’s entry into the area of separation, in violation of the 1974 disengagement agreement, its advance into adjacent areas and airstrikes in Syria,” its foreign ministry said.

    Al Jazeera further notes the following countries’ statements:

    • Qatar rebuked the scheme as a “new episode in a series of Israeli aggressions on Syrian territories”.
    • Jordan called it a “blatant violation of international law”.
    • Turkiye denounced the move as a bid by Israel to “expand its borders”.
    • Saudi Arabia slammed “continued sabotage of Syria’s chances of restoring its security and stability”.
    • Egypt condemned the plans as “a flagrant violation of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

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    Despite many acknowledging that Turkish intelligence was behind the rapid Hayat Tahrir al-Sham takeover of the country, Israel has by and large been a big ‘winner’ on a geostrategic level from Assad’s ousting. 

    But it’s ironic and hypocritical that Turkey would do any condemning of annexing Syrian land here… given Turkey has long occupied northern Syria, and its troops have now moved into the environs of Aleppo while supporting its proxies there.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/16/2024 – 23:00

  • Astaxanthin – The Ultimate Anti-Inflammatory And Anti-Aging Nutrient
    Astaxanthin – The Ultimate Anti-Inflammatory And Anti-Aging Nutrient

    Authored by Derek Henry, Holistic Health Coach for Healing the Body,

    At the root of every disease process is inflammation, a first defence process used by the body in order to try and heal itself. The problem is that when your body is in that state chronically it creates an overactive immune system, which brings crippling pain with it. This compromises your ability to do anything, which includes living a normal and productive life. So what do you do if you want to heal inflammation naturally? You consider astaxanthin.

    robynmac/iStock

    Astaxanthin 101

    Astaxanthin (asta-zan-thin) is a deep red coloured phytonutrient synthesized by microalgae called Haematococcus, and is also known as the “King of Carotenoids”. It’s grown in fresh water using sophisticated techniques that encourage the algae to grow its own powerful medicines protecting it from oxidation, UV radiation and other environmental stressors.

    Astaxanthin is actually what gives salmon their reddish colour and allows them to perform heroic feats like swimming upstream against the current and leaping up waterfalls.

    When it is harvested from the algae and concentrated into a tiny liquid capsule it becomes the most powerful antioxidant known in the natural world, with research showing that it is 550 times the antioxidant power of vitamin E! These antioxidants slow down the ageing process and protect us from free radicals that can cause DNA damage, nerve cell damage, and accelerated ageing of our internal organs.

    Astaxanthin for Inflammation

    Inflammation is a first response defence and healing mechanism that becomes active before our immune system does. It is an extremely complex system and in general causes redness, swelling, heat, and pain. These effects occur due to a wide spectrum of inflammation mediators that are released after a detected injury or attack. Some of the mediators are known as prostaglandins, tumor necrosis factors, interleukins, and nitric oxide.

    Some of the strongest pharmaceutical anti-inflammatories limit the production of prostaglandins and therefore ease swelling and pain. However, these drugs can cause side effects as it is very unnatural and unbalanced for the body to deal with extreme suppression of one single mediator, without affecting the balance of the others.

    Alternatively, naturally occurring anti-inflammatory foods will ease inflammation by gently inhibiting several mediators, including prostaglandins, to calm the system as a whole.

    Even though astaxanthin is not as powerful as leading pharmaceutical anti-inflamamtories, it is found to be one of the strongest ones in nature. Several double blind, placebo controlled animal and clinical trials shows that astaxanthin naturally inhibits many of the known inflammation mediators, which eases inflammation and pain without the side effects.

    Authors Note: I personally used astaxanthin in a period where I dealt with debilitating inflammation, and had no desire to use pharmaceutical drugs. I can accurately state that it extinguished 80-90% of my systemic inflammation.

    Other Benefits of Astaxanthin

    The best part of astaxanthin is that the healing benefits don’t stop at pain management due to inflammation. However, since it is such a strong anti-inflammatory it also deals effectively with a number of other health issues, including:

    • Reduces joint pain
    • Reduces the risk of cancer and proliferation of breast cancer tumour cells
    • Protects brain from dementia and other brain related disorders
    • Reduces damage to your DNA by up to 40%
    • Reduces blood sugar levels in diabetics
    • Improves fertility
    • Promotes cardiovascular health
    • Reduces or eliminates carpal tunnel syndrome
    • Boosts immune system
    • Protects against infections
    • Prevents asthma by normalizing histamine levels
    • Protects body from highly oxidative foods
    • Increases endurance, muscle recovery, and workout performance
    • Protects kidneys from damage due to high blood sugar
    • Protects eyes and reduces cataracts
    • Prevents UV damage to eyes and skin (works as an internal sunscreen)

    Since astaxanthin is fat soluble (unlike most antioxidants) it gets carried by fat molecules directly to your muscles, tissues, and organs where it is needed most, like your brain, breast tissue, prostate tissue, skeletal muscles, and retina. This way it prevents oxidation right at the site of stress or potential oxidation.

    Read the rest here…

    Check out Derek Henry here.

    And snag some Astaxanthin here:

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/16/2024 – 22:45

  • 2 Men Arrested After Drone Operates 'Dangerously Close' To Boston's Airport, Police Say
    2 Men Arrested After Drone Operates ‘Dangerously Close’ To Boston’s Airport, Police Say

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Two people were arrested on Saturday evening near Boston’s Logan Airport for what was described as a “hazardous drone operation,” police said, coming amid widespread reports of drones flying over the New Jersey region.

    A Spirit airlines flight takes off from Boston’s Logan Airport on Jan. 9, 2023. Brian Snyder/Reuters

    At around 10 p.m. Saturday, Boston police officers arrested 42-year-old Robert Duffy and 32-year-old Jeremy Folcik, both of Massachusetts, according to a news release issued Sunday.

    “The arrests were made on Long Island, part of the Boston Harbor Islands, following a hazardous drone operation near Logan Airport’s airspace,” police said. “Both suspects face charges of trespassing, with additional fines or charges potentially forthcoming.”

    It’s not clear if the Logan Airport incident was related to drone sightings in recent weeks near New Jersey and New York City.

    A Boston officer detected a drone “operating dangerously close to Logan International Airport” before finding the location of the unmanned aerial vehicle, police said. Police officials then coordinated with state police, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and other federal agencies.

    Members of the local Boston Police unit found three people in the Long Island Health Campus, which has been decommissioned.

    “Upon attempting to make contact, the suspects fled on foot. Two of the three individuals were apprehended and identified as Duffy and Folcik. During the investigation, a drone was discovered inside a backpack carried by Duffy,” the news release said.

    The other individual was not located or named in the news release. Officials said he is suspected to have fled in a “small vessel,” according to the news release.

    Dozens of mysterious nighttime flights started last month over New Jersey, raising concerns among residents and officials. Part of the worry stems from the flying objects initially being spotted near the Picatinny Arsenal, a U.S. military research and manufacturing facility, and over Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, located in the state.

    Drones are legal in New Jersey for recreational and commercial use and are subject to local and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations and flight restrictions. Operators must be certified by the FAA.

    On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he is urging the federal government to deploy better drone-tracking technology to identify them.

    “I’m pushing for answers amid these drone sightings. I’m calling for [Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas] to deploy special drone-detection tech across NY and NJ,” Schumer wrote on social platform X. “And I’m working to pass a bill in the Senate to give local law enforcement more tools for drone detection.”

    The New York Democrat is calling on the Department of Homeland Security to immediately deploy special technology that identifies and tracks drones back to their landing spots, according to his office.

    “There’s a lot of us who are pretty frustrated right now,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told Fox News Sunday. “The answer ‘We don’t know’ is not a good enough answer.”

    New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Sunday said federal officials were sending a drone detection system to the state.

    “This system will support state and federal law enforcement in their investigations,” Hochul said in a statement. The governor did not immediately provide additional details, including where the system will be deployed.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/16/2024 – 22:35

  • West Ready To Court Terror Leader Jolani If Russian Military Pushed Out Of Syria
    West Ready To Court Terror Leader Jolani If Russian Military Pushed Out Of Syria

    We reported earlier that Russia is in contact with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Damascus over the future fate of the two Russian military bases on Syria’s coast. The Tartous Naval Base remains Russia’s only Mediterranean military port. And alongside Khmeimim Air Base, these are the only two major Russian military outposts outside of the former Soviet Union.

    As expected, the West is pressuring the jihadist group under Abu Mohammed al-Jolani to ensure Russia’s military is booted from the country. What’s more is that European countries are using the question of Syria’s continued economic isolation as leverage.

    The newly installed Syrian leader Al-Julani

    And the West is also dangling the terror designation in front of HTS. “Some European nations are considering making the expulsion of Russia’s military from Syria a precondition for lifting restrictions against the Islamist group now in control of most of the country, according to people familiar with the matter,” The Straits Times reports.

    The report comes as the Biden White House is also mulling the matter of whether to drop its formal terror designation against HTS, which began years ago as Al-Nusra Front, or Syrian al-Qaeda. 

    The West seems to be saying that if HTS merely does what it wants, all can be ‘forgiven’. Per the same report:

    A debate is also underway about whether to make the delivery of longer-term aid to the war-ravaged nation conditional on Moscow vacating its two Syrian bases, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive material. The talks are ongoing and a joint final decision has yet to be taken, they said. 

    The conferring between countries is a sign of broader international support for the position taken by Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp, who said it would be “too early” to lift European Union sanctions against Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, or HTS, which ousted former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a little over a week ago. 

    “We really would like to condition that on an inclusive political transition,” Veldkamp also said. The West has been urging HTS to respect ethnic and religious minorities, given that it has been known to massacre and persecute Alawites, Christians, Druze, Shia, or anyone who is not an extremist Sunni.

    The Dutch foreign minister emphasized, “I think it’s also important to look at conditionality regarding the Russian military bases in Syria.” He’s emphatic that “We want the Russians out.”

    The West is turning a blind eye to the ground reality that Syria will go from quasi-secular state under Baath rule to rapid hardline Islamization…

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    Thus it appears the West is lining up to court the terrorists in Damascus… or as we described earlier this is all about putting lipstick on a pig – at the end of which Jolani and HTS will be sold to the European and Americans as a “moderate”. And for Europe, this arrangement will also help deal a blow to Russia related to the Ukraine war.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/16/2024 – 22:10

  • The U.S. Must Fortify Itself Against Future Mineral Export Bans
    The U.S. Must Fortify Itself Against Future Mineral Export Bans

    Authored by Gregory Wischer, Morgan Bazilian & Jahara Matisek via RealClearDefense,

    Last week, China imposed export bans on antimony, gallium, and germanium—all of which are listed on China’s dual-use export control list. Other minerals on the list and, thus, at risk of future bans include aluminum, magnesium, and zinc, among others. Beyond their economic importance, many of these minerals have military applications. For example, tungsten superalloys are used in military turbines and armor-piercing munitions, while bismuth is used in ammunition and alloys for defense.

    With many minerals, the U.S. government can increase domestic mining, processing, and recycling to help mitigate future supply cutoffs from China. Of course, building and expanding domestic capacity will take time, significant capital, and appropriate government policies, but it can be done.

    However, for some minerals—such as bismuth and tungsten—the United States simply lacks the mineral reserves, scrap, and substitutes to fill supply gaps from a Chinese export ban. For instance, China supplied over 60 percent of America’s bismuth consumption from 2019 to 2022, and the United States has not produced bismuth since 1997. The U.S. National Defense Stockpile also has no inventory of bismuth.

    For such minerals, the U.S. government—in addition to seeking to boost domestic production—should both increase inventories in the National Defense Stockpile and sign right-of-first refusal (ROFR) offtake agreements with existing overseas mineral producers. Such steps will help buttress the United States against future export bans.

    With stockpiling, the U.S. government should acquire minerals from domestic producers when possible but prioritize acquiring supply wherever it is available including from China. For instance, with both bismuth and tungsten, China is far and away the world’s largest producer: it produces 80 percent of the world’s bismuth and 81 percent of its tungsten.

    The second policy is signing ROFR offtake agreements with existing overseas mineral producers for their uncontracted production. In ROFR agreements, the U.S. government would have the first right—but not the obligation—to purchase a certain volume of mineral production before it is offered to other buyers.

    To secure ROFR offtake agreements, the U.S. government could invest in overseas mineral projects or expansions. Already, the U.S. government has invested (through an intermediary) in two overseas mineral projects: a nickel-cobalt mine in Brazil and a rare earth processing project in South Africa.

    While ROFR offtake agreements are common with prospective mineral producers, the timeline for commissioning new production is lengthy and often jeopardized by technical (e.g., ramp-up issues) and jurisdictional (e.g., regulations) risks. Moreover, ROFR offtake agreements for future mineral production cannot supply minerals if China imposes export bans with immediate effect. Having ROFR offtake agreements for existing production could immediately help fill supply gaps caused by adversarial export bans.

    The U.S. government should prioritize signing ROFR offtake agreements with firms operating in allied and partner countries, such as Australia, Canada, Japan, and South Korea. The U.S. government should also prioritize inking agreements in countries least likely to face disruptions from a possible U.S.-China conflict in the western Pacific.

    For example, Australia and Austria produce about the same volume of tungsten, yet because shipping across the Atlantic Ocean would be more secure than shipping across the Pacific Ocean in a U.S.-China conflict, the U.S. government should first prioritize agreements for tungsten with Austria over Australia. In other cases, avoiding the western Pacific is not possible. For instance, Japan and South Korea are highly exposed to a U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan, but they are the only major bismuth producers that are U.S. allies.

    Demonstrating tungsten’s importance for the U.S. military, U.S. tungsten imports spiked during World War I, World War II, and the Korean War, and U.S. imports would likely spike again in a potential conflict against China. The U.S. government would be well-served in pre-emptively securing these imports and similarly important war minerals through ROFR offtake agreements.

    Controlling the overseas supply of these military minerals can have direct combat implications, too. The Tungsten Institute writes, “Before World War II was started, Germany had bought up virtually the entire world supply of off-grade tungsten ore.” This tungsten proved critical in Germany’s nearly successful North Africa campaign: German tanks used armor-piercing munitions with tungsten carbide cores with dangerous effects against British tanks.

    China’s recent mineral export ban is yet another wake-up call for the U.S. government to reduce America’s reliance on China for critical minerals. For many minerals, the United States can indeed rely on domestic resources to offset future mineral cutoffs from China, but for other minerals, it cannot—it must depend on foreign actors. In such cases, the U.S. government should preemptively stockpile and sign ROFR offtake agreements with overseas mineral producers. These proactive steps will help fortify the United States against future mineral export bans.

    Gregory Wischer is a fellow at the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines.

    Morgan Bazilian is the director of the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines.

    Lt Col Jahara “Franky” Matisek is a military professor in the National Security Affairs department at the U.S. Naval War College and fellow at the Payne Institute for Public Policy. The views expressed in this article are his own.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/16/2024 – 21:45

  • Two Homeland Security Agents Sold Drugs Previously Seized As Evidence For Up To $300,000
    Two Homeland Security Agents Sold Drugs Previously Seized As Evidence For Up To $300,000

    It’s another one of those “do as I say, not as a do” examples that continue to emerge during President Biden’s administration…

    This time, it was two Homeland Security agents in Utah, who allegedly sold seized drugs through an informant, earning up to $300,000 per to court documents and according to Yahoo Finance.

    According to an FBI affidavit, the agents sold “bath salts” to the informant weekly from spring to December, with each ounce sold for $5,000 and resold at a higher price.

    The informant, recruited by federal agents while in prison, was initially tasked with legitimate controlled buys. However, the affidavit claims the agents also pressured him into illegal drug sales.

    Yahoo reported that Homeland Security Agent David Cole was arrested in Salt Lake City on Friday and charged in federal court with conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance. During a Monday hearing, a judge ordered him detained. If convicted, Cole faces a potential prison sentence of 10 years or more.

    Court documents also implicate a second agent, identified as “Person A,” in selling drugs to the informant, though it’s unclear if charges will follow. Cole’s attorney, Alexander Ramos, declined to comment on the allegations, citing ongoing case review.

    Ramos commented: “Dave has many years of service to his community as an outstanding agent with HSI and holds a great reputation among the federal law enforcement community.”

    Searches of the agents’ homes, vehicles, phones, and workspaces uncovered over $67,000 in cash, suspected bath salts, and other evidence, according to the affidavit.

    FBI Special Agent Tristan Hall commented: “Based on an average of one or two drug buys per week, involving 25 grams of bath salts and the amount of $5,000 each buy, it is estimated that Cole and Person A have profited approximately $150,000 to $300,000 in illegal proceeds.”

    The investigation began after the informant’s attorney reported that two Homeland Security agents had coerced him into illegal activities, the report says. 

    The informant, cooperating with the FBI for money and personal safety, alleged the agents sold him drugs seized as evidence, meeting in public locations like Panera Bread and Shake Shack. Details were confirmed through surveillance, and while the agents’ credentials were suspended, they remain employed.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/16/2024 – 21:20

  • Trump Says Assad's Ouster In Syria Was An 'Unfriendly Takeover' By Turkey
    Trump Says Assad’s Ouster In Syria Was An ‘Unfriendly Takeover’ By Turkey

    In a wide-ranging question and answer session from the press, President-elect Donald Trump speculated over what was behind the collapse of Syria and the fall of President Bashar al-Assad.

    He said the jihadist rebel victory in Syria was really an ‘unfriendly takeover’ by Turkey. The explanation he gave at first generated headlines which made it appear he was condemning and lashing out at Turkish action; however, the full comments were a bit more sympathetic and deferential to Erdogan and to Turkey.

    Getty Images

    In the comments he hailed Turkey’s regional role as a major power and his personal ties with President Erdogan.

    “Turkey is a major force, by the way, and Erdogan is somebody I got along with great but he has a major military force. And he has not been worn out with war,” Trump told reporters at the briefing held at Mar-a-Lago estate. “He’s built a very strong, powerful army” – he said in reference to Erdogan.

    “[Erdogan] is a very smart guy and very tough, but Turkey did an unfriendly takeover without a lot of lives being lost. I can say that Assad was a butcher here what he did to children.”

    Trump also explained that “Turkey is the one behind it” and stressed “They wanted it for 1000s of years, and he got it, and those people that went in are controlled by Turkey, and that’s okay. It’s another way to but no, I don’t think that.”

    He said that while “nobody knows” the future of post-Assad Syria, he still thinks “Turkey is going to hold the key to” the nation. “Actually, I don’t think you’ve heard that from anybody else, but I’ve been pretty good at predicting,” Trump followed with, but without saying whether he will eventually pull US forces out of Syria.

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    The presence of US forces in Deir Ezzor and Hasakeh regions has frequently outraged Turkey, especially given US troops are training and arming Syrian Kurdish YGP forces (which form the core of the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF). But Ankara views this group as but an extension of the outlawed PKK.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/16/2024 – 20:30

  • Unidentified Drones In America's Skies? Smells Like A False Flag…
    Unidentified Drones In America’s Skies? Smells Like A False Flag…

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    The term “False Flag” gets thrown around rather haphazardly these days and it’s important to recognize that a real false flag requires a particular end result – The public blaming the wrong culprit for an event that someone else (usually our own government) perpetrated. When it comes to the increasing fervor over major drone activity across the US, I have very little doubt that what we are witnessing is a false flag scenario.

    First, let’s outline what has happened so far: Drone sightings have exploded across the country involving a wide variety of devices – but the incidents that concern me the most are those involving the SUV-sized UAVs in places like New Jersey. The sightings have been happening for months. US government agencies including the FBI, DHS and national security officials claim they have no idea who is behind this activity, even though drones have been seen operating over highly protected areas like US military bases.

    There’s a lot of information to be gleaned here if you know what you’re looking for. I have written extensively about drones and drone warfare in my survival newsletter over the years, primarily on new developments in the technology and ways for civilians to defeat that technology. However, I have also written on how civilians can use drones for their own self defense.

    I know enough about tracking technology to say with relative certainly that officials are lying about the drones over New Jersey, and probably about most of the covert drone activity in other parts of the country. They know who is controlling these drones, and it’s most likely our own government.  What we are witnessing is some form of false flag in progress.

    First and foremost, drones can indeed be tracked rather easily depending on where they fly. Remote signals going back to the operator can be tracked with the right equipment. The stronger the remote signal the easier it is to find the operator. In New Jersey, for example, US Air Force Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst partnered with AeroDefense, a local business specializing in tracking technology and drone detection, to produce a system to track drones across the installation as well as pinpoint perpetrators who fly them. They started this program back in 2020.

    Drone company DJI, which controls around 90% of the consumer drone market, has their own proprietary drone tracking technology that can be purchased by governments and various agencies. There’s likely dozens more companies out there right now producing similar products to the DJI tracking tech.

    Under new FAA regulations instituted this year, all drones operating in US air space (except very small drones) are required to carry a Remote ID module which broadcasts operator information and location. Most drones now have Remote ID integrated into their software and removing it can be a pain. For example, DJI drones are basically no longer used by Ukrainian forces because the built-in Remote ID gives away their positions. They now build most of their drones from scratch.

    There are ways around drone tracking (to a point). Remote ID spoofing devices can be built and programmed for as little as $20. These broadcasting modules can create the illusion of dozens of drones in the sky with false operator data included.  Anyone trying to use Remote ID tracking to find you will have no idea which drones are real and which are fake.

    Drone signal repeaters (which function much like ham radio repeaters) are not uncommon and are used in Ukraine by both sides to help confuse tracking attempts. Signal repeaters and antennas are easy to hide, and pinpointing an exact location is difficult. In Ukraine, trackers would simply find a general area where the antenna or operator might be and then hit it with artillery. If they only hit a repeater, then the operator is out about $200 and that’s it.

    The Russians use drones connected to long spools of fiber optic cable which allows them to send the devices into areas protecting by jamming.  The direct connection also keeps the operators from being tracked.

    Then there are drones with AI software which bypass a lot of tracking tools. If the drone is controlling itself then there’s no operator signal to trace. The drone might be broadcasting a video signal but that’s not going to give up the location of the people who deployed the drone.

    Most of these techniques would never be used by common civilians or even small terror groups (AI flight software in particular would only be used by governments). On top of that, access to large drones or car-sized drones is very rare for civilians and requires extensive permits. The cost of such devices is prohibitive (tens-of-thousands or hundreds-of-thousands of dollars depending on the drone).

    My point is, there is no way civilian operators or small terror groups are behind the majority of these events. The level of sophistication involved here requires military or government agency oversight. Beyond that, there aren’t enough  countermeasures in the world to prevent tracking over sensitive government locations.  The US military and DHS have extensive means to track down drones (especially large drones) flying in close proximity to bases and protected sites.

    Triangulation would not be hard given the drone operators would have to fly through the middle of multiple detection equipped facilities. And, even if the drones are AI operated, large drones are not very fast or nimble. They could be followed without much trouble by helicopters or other drones.

    Lack of public knowledge on this issue is being exploited by government officials and the media. I have seen multiple agency representatives claim that there’s “not enough restrictions in place” to keep the threat of domestic drones in check. I have also seen government reps claim these drones are being operated by a foreign enemy like Iran.  Recently, at least two men were arrested for flying a small drone too close to an airport in Long Island – Federal agencies and the media have tried to link these men to the covert drone sighting across the country when it’s likely they have nothing to do with the situation.

    Misinformation like this suggests an attempt to pin the drone activity on civilian sources, or, a foreign adversary working with civilian sources. 

    In other words, they are preparing the ground for one of two outcomes:

    1. More aggressive restrictions on civilian drones, or,

    2. a drone attack that is blamed on a foreign government.

    The size of the drones is what worries me most. If the goal of a foreign government was to monitor sensitive sites and collect information, they wouldn’t use car-sized drones. Large drones would be too easy to trace.  They would use small mid-range drones outfitted with thermal that fit in a backpack.

    But, our own government could fly fleets of large drones over cites and military bases with impunity.  If our government wanted to, say, blow up a sacrificial military facility, damage a nuclear power plant or hit a civilian center, car-sized drones would be very useful because they are designed to carry considerable weight.  Drones like those sighted over New Jersey could carry 500-1000 pounds of ordnance (maybe more). A swarm of these drones could cause total havoc in a heavily populated area.

    I worry about this outcome because the Biden Administration and the globalist establishment have been very active in the past several months trying to create as many ignition points for world war as they possibly can before Donald Trump takes office in January. A false flag at this time makes perfect sense.

    My second theory is based on the strange comments by defense officials linking the activity to lack of restrictions on the civilian drone market.  As noted, there is NO WAY civilians are flying car-sized drones in US airspace over protected sites without being followed.  The drones are too expensive, too big to move around without people noticing and that kind of operation requires insider knowledge of DoD and DHS tracking methods.

    Some have speculated that there may be an agenda to get legislation (like a new Patriot Act) passed in the near future. 

    I believe this may be a ploy to get traction on legislation restricting or banning civilian ownership of drones. Some people might be skeptical about that idea, but consider for a moment how useful drones are to a potential populist rebellion…

    For over a century, governments and national armies have had a monopoly on aerial surveillance and the ability to engage enemies from the sky.  With the invention of drones many patriots and survivalists have viewed the technology as the biggest threat to future attempts at rebellion against the establishment. The devices are cheap to produce, can operate in forests and urban environments and even small drones can carry enough explosives to maim or possibly kill with precision.

    In the past, smaller forces using asymmetric tactics could still gain the upper hand against governments, even when fighting an advanced military with air superiority.  Drones are now treated as the end game for insurgencies.  But the truth is quite the opposite; drones are the end game for standard armies and a huge advantage for asymmetric rebellions.  Drones are the biggest game changer in warfare for civilians since the invention of the repeating rifle.

    We have seen the face of combat change dramatically in the war in Ukraine as drones become increasingly vital for both sides. Medium-sized drones have disrupted typical maneuver warfare tactics using high explosives to disable armored columns. Small drones allow operators to monitor the battlefield from the sky for miles and make discreet troop movements impossible.

    Drones can be easily used by civilians for the same purposes. For the first time ever, patriots have access to the air for surveillance and defense. I would not be surprised to see governments fabricate reasons why the technology “needs to be banned” – They will try to sell the American people on the idea that drones are a danger to public safety, even if that requires bankrolling a terror attack to frighten people into compliance.

    In either case – A trigger for WWIII or a test case for banning the civilian drone market, the establishment gains an advantage.  As far as I can tell, no one else benefits from these drone incidents.  All signs point to a false flag.  If this reality is exposed widely enough, I expect that the government will finally admit that they were behind the drone flights, but only as an effort to “protect the public” from an insidious threat that they could not tell us about beforehand.

    *  *  *

    If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/16/2024 – 20:05

  • "Deeply Conflicted" Judge Rules Trump Doesn't Have Immunity In New York 'Hush Money' Case
    “Deeply Conflicted” Judge Rules Trump Doesn’t Have Immunity In New York ‘Hush Money’ Case

    President-elect Donald Trump does not have immunity in the so-called “hush money” case in New York, Judge Juan Merchan ruled in a decision on Dec. 16.

    The conduct described by the 34 felony counts of which Trump was convicted earlier this year is related “entirely to unofficial conduct entitled to no immunity protections,” Merchan wrote.

    As Joseph Lord reports for The Epoch Times, the decision, coming in the wake of Trump’s sweeping victory in the 2024 presidential election, is tied to a U.S. Supreme Court decision earlier this year that reaffirmed the longstanding precedent that official presidential conduct enjoys “presumptive immunity” from criminal prosecution.

    The Supreme Court’s decision forced Merchan to determine whether the charges were presumptively immune under the law.

    Trump’s attorneys contended that New York prosecutors introduced evidence during his seven-week trial that was protected by the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity doctrine.

    Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) urged the judge to reject Trump’s arguments, arguing that no evidence placed before the jury was protected, and even if it was, it paled in comparison to “other overwhelming evidence of defendant’s guilt.”

    Merchan agreed, finding that none of the challenged evidence was protected.

    Even if immunity did extend to the evidence in question, Merchan wrote he “would still find that the People’s use of these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the Executive Branch, a conclusion amply supported by non-motive-related evidence.”

    The Hill reports that Trump has separately argued that his White House victory compels the dismissal of the jury’s verdict and the case in its entirety.

    Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) has pushed back, instead laying out alternatives like freezing the proceedings during Trump’s term.

    The judge has yet to rule on that matter.

    “Today’s decision by deeply conflicted, acting Justice Merchan in the Manhattan DA Witch Hunt is a direct violation of the Supreme Court’s decision on immunity, and other longstanding jurisprudence,” Steven Cheung, Trump’s spokesperson and incoming White House communications director, said in a statement.

    In a separate letter, Merchan revealed that Trump also sent a Dec. 3 letter alleging juror misconduct. The judge provided sparse details but indicated the issue would be made public with redactions.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/16/2024 – 19:43

  • The Life-Affirming Vitality Of Raw Milk
    The Life-Affirming Vitality Of Raw Milk

    Authored by Matthew Gasda via RealClearBooks,

    I’ve been drinking raw milk for almost 15 years, ever since I made a sudden switch from veganism while visiting my sister in Europe. At the time, she was living in Germany and getting raw milk from a local farmer. I remember mocking her, interrogating her, feigning disgust—performing disgust—which I thought was justified by science and ethics. Then, in an instant, it hit me: I was the one being disgusting (rejecting local, traditional, healthy food while scouring German supermarkets for synthetic vegan snacks imported from around the globe).

    When I got back to New York City, where I lived then and still live now, I found a raw milk co-op, which I still use today. The driver, who I won’t name because it’s illegal to sell raw milk in New York, has become my friend. The milk comes from the Amish. Over these 15 years, I’ve only been to the doctor once, for a routine physical. I’ve had no major health problems or depression. My friends say I look young; I feel young. I play sports every weekend. I play fast for my age. I feel better, much stronger, than when I was much younger, and vegan.

    Thus, the animus behind the Amish vote turning out for Trump, linked to events like the federal raid on Amos Miller’s farm and the confiscation of his raw dairy, didn’t surprise me. The Amish are representative figures for a particular kind of social and subject position. Their traditional practices and resistance to modernization make them perfect symbols for a broader cultural revolt against technocratic authority.

    While not a national headline, the Fed’s raid on Miller went viral on X, and for me, it exemplified how progressive health culture—once about choice and care—has become indistinguishable from federal overreach. The message sent by the state health officials and NGO activists is clear: no one should drink milk or slaughter animals on their own or seek non-pharmacologically mediated health. We should drink oat milk, pea protein smoothies, and eat fake meat. Pharmaceuticals should be the first and last line against illness.

    For some, the meme-ification of raw milk (and related products like beef tallow) is just a sideshow to what is increasingly, clearly, a small “r” anti-bureaucrat populist political revolt. However, I think the raw milk meme, the signifier, encapsulates something very deep about that revolution: Americans want the level of healthiness the Amish have, and are increasingly willing, like the Amish, to push back against health norms dictated by bureaucrats, Big Agra, and Big Pharma.

    “Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier,” the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu wisely asserts. Case in point: fake milks, which have long symbolized “progress”  and liberal orthodoxy, environmental sensitivity, and supposed better health and living. Progressive food hygiene reflects a broader cultivation of neuroticism—a puritanical morbidity that’s ultimately about self-denial. It’s not just that Amish foods, rooted in centuries of tradition, are safe. It’s that they taste good—rich, fatty, nutritious. Foods like raw milk, pastured eggs, and raw meat excite the senses, nourish the body, and make modern life, with its endless laptop work, socializing, and algorithmic dating, feel worthwhile.

    Drinking raw milk is part of a larger desire to reconnect to the body, to natural reality, to traditions, to the earth. Raw milk symbolizes nature, locality, and the uncommodified. It stands against a scientistic (not scientific) mindset that insists on interventions like pasteurization—treating food in a way that might make it marginally safer but also destroys part of its essence, its taste. Pasteurization is a metaphor for the progressive mentality: a relentless pursuit of safety at all costs, even if it makes life blander and less vital.

    Raw milk, tallow, and the broader “MAHA” movement reject this safetyism. They defy the smug, know-it-all attitudes of the Axios, Ezra Klein class, who can’t fathom why anyone would choose non-optimized, non-expert-approved practices. For years, I’ve had friends (who are often demonstrably, obviously, very physically unwell) tell me I’m endangering myself by drinking raw milk. They’ve called it disgusting, weird, even subversive. These same types were shocked when I didn’t wear a mask or get a vaccine, and they’re just as shocked that I didn’t vote for Kamala.

    This ahistorical obsession with safety and control—what’s “normal”—isn’t just conditioned by corporate food interests; it’s embedded in a complex web of power relations that shape our very understanding of health and risk. The modern food safety regime—which has been internalized by cable-news watching, unthinking ‘libs’ as normal—demands not just compliance, but cultish devotion to the status quo systems (like the food and medical systems)—a devotion which entails a denial of our sensory experience and a rejection of accumulated wisdom. It’s a form of what Bourdieu calls “symbolic violence,” whereby what for thousands of years was considered a normal act (drinking unprocessed milk), becomes redefined by a dominant, in this case, technocratic culture as dangerous or regressive.

    Our technocratic, medicalized, scientistic life-system insists we feel “right” rather than feel alive, and that symbols matter more than the signals of the body itself. Drinking raw milk, therefore, has a kind of sacramental quality, just in the sense that it shocks those who practice the rituals of liberal hygiene and right-living; it inverts hygiene practices and is actually about making food holy again.

    We’re asked to sacrifice tradition for regulation, vitality for standardization, embodied wisdom for bureaucratic protocols. We’re trading the full-bodied experience of life—with all its subtle flavors, risks, and rewards—for a thin gruel of safetyism and industrial efficiency. Raw milk memes, and the Amish voting turnout, and MAHA isn’t just about dairy or tallow or seed oils; it’s about refusing a certain kind of bargain where useful unofficial forms of knowledge and experience are discarded and mocked.

    Progressivism, both as a politics and a lifestyle, has the high burden of proving that the future is always better than the past; I think many are finding that there’s no reason to accept that burden. Sometimes the past, backed by thousands of years of fine-tuning, is just better than the future.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/16/2024 – 19:15

  • Assad Breaks Silence From Moscow, Denies 'Planned' Syria Departure
    Assad Breaks Silence From Moscow, Denies ‘Planned’ Syria Departure

    Syria’s toppled leader Bashar al-Assad has made a statement for the first time since fleeing Syria after jihadist groups led by US-designated terror organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) took over the country and the army peeled away without a fight.

    The statement was posted Monday to the Syrian Presidency’s Telegram account; however, it can’t be independently verified that he personally made the statement. Assad is with his family in Moscow, where they have received asylum from the Russian government.

    The posted letter describes that Syria’s collapse was the result of terrorism and that his leaving was not planned. He said he was evacuated to Russia from the Khmeimim airbase on the Syrian coast. This happened the evening of December 8, and the letter further describes that the base was coming under drone attacks and the security situation deteriorating. He suggested he wanted to stay and fight.

    Via Associated Press

    “My departure from Syria was neither planned nor did it occur during the final hours of the battles, as some have claimed. On the contrary, I remained in Damascus, carrying out my duties until the early hours of Sunday 8th December 2024,” the statement said.

    “With no viable means of leaving the base, Moscow requested that the base’s command arrange an immediate evacuation to Russia on the evening of Sunday 8th December. This took place a day after the fall of Damascus, following the collapse of the final military positions and the resulting paralysis of all remaining state institutions,” the statement continued.

    “At no point during these events did I consider stepping down or seeking refuge, nor was such a proposal made by any individual or party. The only course of action was to continue fighting against the terrorist onslaught,” it added.

    But the statement does say that as state institutions collapsed that his position as president of the country quickly became “void of purpose” as by then Syria was overrun by “terrorists”.

    “When the state falls into the hands of terrorism and the ability to make a meaningful contribution is lost, any position becomes void of purpose, rendering its occupation meaningless,” Assad added.

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    Assad’s precise whereabouts or the timeline of events of his exit had been unknown for days even after he was in Moscow. It appears many of this top officials, including his brother Maher, had fled either across the Iraq border or to Dubai. For example, Assad’s top media advisor Bouthaina Shaaban was spotted in Dubai’s airport.

    Western media sources are currently alleging that in recent years Assad had $250 million in cash flown from Syria to Russia. The media is presenting this as him having looted the country’s central bank, but the airlifts took place a number of years ago:

    The Financial Times (FT) said that it had uncovered records showing that Assad’s regime flew two tonnes of banknotes into Moscow between 2018 and 2019 to be deposited at Russian banks. Newsweek has contacted the Russian foreign ministry for comment.

    The FT says that Syria’s central bank airlifted $250 million in cash to Russia at a time when Assad was indebted to Moscow and the Middle Eastern country was desperately short of foreign currency.

    Likely this was also done to bypass Western sanctions, and given Russia has long been a hub of Assad family finances. 

    Meanwhile, Reuters reported last week that “The vaults in Syria’s central bank were left unscathed by looters in the turmoil that briefly engulfed the capital Damascus after the overthrow of president Bashar al-Assad, a senior business leader and three other sources told Reuters.” According to more breaking developments:

    • SYRIA RETAINS NEARLY 26 TONS OF GOLD RESERVES INSIDE CENTRAL BANK VAULT – SOURCES
    • SYRIA’S CENTRAL BANK HAS ROUGHLY $200 MLN IN U.S. DOLLAR RESERVES IN VAULTS – SOURCES
    • SYRIA’S GOLD RESERVES WORTH $2.2 BLN AT CURRENT MARKET PRICES – REUTERS CALCULATIONS

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    Bassel Hamawi, head of the Damascus Chambers of Commerce, said that “The most important point is that the amounts in the central bank are still as they were, there is no infringement on the central bank and the money in the central bank has been handed over to the new government” – despite other smaller cash stores at the bank having been stolen.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/16/2024 – 18:50

  • Autonomous AI Poses Existential Threat – And It's Almost Here: Former Google CEO
    Autonomous AI Poses Existential Threat – And It’s Almost Here: Former Google CEO

    Authored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) is coming—and that it could pose an existential threat to humanity.

    Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights Subcommittee on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 21, 2011. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

    “We’re soon going to be able to have computers running on their own, deciding what they want to do,” Schmidt, who has long raised alarm about both the dangers and the benefits AI poses to humanity, said during a Dec. 15 appearance on ABC’s “This Week.”

    “That’s a dangerous point: When the system can self improve, we need to seriously think about unplugging it,” Schmidt said.

    Schmidt is far from the first tech leader to raise these concerns.

    The rise of consumer AI products like ChatGPT has been unprecedented in the past two years, with major improvements to the language-based model. Other AI models have become increasingly adept at creating visual art, photographs, and full-length videos that are nearly indistinguishable from reality in many cases.

    For some, the technology calls to mind the “Terminator” series, which centers on a dystopian future where AI takes over the planet, leading to apocalyptic results.

    For all the fears that ChatGPT and similar platforms have raised, consumer AI services available today still fall into a category experts would consider “dumb AI.” These AI are trained on a massive set of data, but lack consciousness, sentience, or the ability to behave autonomously.

    Schmidt and other experts are not particularly worried about these systems.

    Rather, they’re concerned about more advanced AI, known in the tech world as “artificial general intelligence” (AGI), describing far more complex AI systems that could have sentience and, by extension, could develop conscious motives independent from and potentially dangerous to human interests.

    Schmidt said no such systems exist today yet, and we’re rapidly moving toward a new, in-between type of AI: one lacking the sentience that would define an AGI, and still able to act autonomously in fields like research and weaponry.

    “I’ve done this for 50 years. I’ve never seen innovation at this scale,” Schmidt said of the rapid developments in AI complexity.

    Schmidt said that more developed AI would have many benefits to humanity—and could have just as many “bad things like weapons and cyber attacks.”

    The Challenge

    The challenge, Schmidt said, is multifaceted.

    At a core level, he repeated a common sentiment among tech leaders: if autonomous AGI-like systems are inevitable, it will require massive cooperation among both corporate interests and governments internationally to avoid potentially devastating consequences.

    That’s easier said than done. AI provides U.S. competitors like China, Russia, and Iran with a potential leg-up over the United States that would be difficult to achieve otherwise.

    Within the tech industry as well, there’s currently massive competition among major corporations—Google, Microsoft, and others—to outcompete rivals, a situation that raises inherent risks of improper security protocols for dealing with a rogue AI, Schmidt said.

    “The competition is so fierce, there’s a concern that one of the companies will decide to omit the [safety] steps and then somehow release something that really does some harm,” Schmidt said. Such harms would only become evident after the fact, he said.

    The challenge is greater on the international stage, where adversarial nations are likely to see the new technology as revolutionary for their efforts to challenge U.S. global hegemony and expand their own influence.

    “The Chinese are clever, and they understand the power of a new kind of intelligence for their industrial might, their military might, and their surveillance system,” Schmidt said.

    That’s a bit of a catch-22 for U.S. leaders in the field, who find themselves forced to balance existential concerns for humanity with the potential for the United States to fall behind its adversaries, which could be catastrophic to global stability.

    In the worst case, such systems could be used to engineer crippling biological and nuclear weapons, particularly by terror groups like ISIS.

    For this reason, Schmidt said, it’s absolutely crucial that the United States continue to innovate in the field, and ultimately maintain technological dominance over China and other adversarial states and groups.

    Industry Leaders Demand Regulation

    Regulation of the field remains insufficient, Schmidt said. But he expects that governments’ focus on enhancing safeguards around the tech will accelerate dramatically in the coming years.

    Asked by anchor George Stephanopoulos if governments were doing enough to regulate it, Schmidt replied, “Not yet, but they will, because they’ll have to.”

    Despite some initial interest in the field—hearings, legislative proposals, and other initiatives—emerging during the current 118th Congress, this session seems to be on track to end without any major legislation related to AI.

    President-elect Donald Trump, for his part, has warned of the vast risks posed by AI, saying during an appearance on Logan Paul’s “Impaulsive” podcast that it’s “really powerful stuff.”

    He also spoke of the need to maintain competitiveness with adversaries.

    “It brings with it difficulty, but we have to be at the forefront,” Trump said. “It’s going to happen, and if it’s going to happen, we have to take the lead over China. China’s the primary threat.”

    Schmidt’s takes on both the benefits and the challenges of the technology aligns with other industry reactions.

    In June 2024, OpenAI and Google employees signed a letter warning of “serious risks” posed by AI, and calling for greater government oversight of the field.

    Elon Musk has put forward similar warnings, saying that Google is seeking to create a “digital God” through its DeepMind AI program.

    In August, these concerns intensified after it was discovered that an AI took autonomous action to avoid being shut down—raising fears that humanity is already losing control over its creation as governments remain inactive.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/16/2024 – 18:25

  • South Korean President Skips Summons Amid Political Crisis, Faces Arrest Risk
    South Korean President Skips Summons Amid Political Crisis, Faces Arrest Risk

    South Korea’s Constitutional Court began reviewing President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment on Saturday, following a National Assembly vote that led to it. Yoon was scheduled for questioning on Sunday as part of a prosecutors’ office investigation, but he has not responded. Meanwhile, the leader of his party, who had supported the impeachment, has resigned.

    NBC News reports the prosecutors’ office asked Yoon to appear for questioning on Sunday as part of an investigation over his failed attempt to declare emergency martial law earlier this month. Prosecutors will issue another summons for the president. 

    On Saturday, the National Assembly voted to impeach Yoon, with 204 lawmakers in the 300-member house in favor of the motion and 85 against. Eight votes were declared invalid, while three lawmakers abstained from voting.

    Source: Bloomberg 

    The vote comes a little more than a week after Yoon survived an impeachment vote, capping multi-week political turmoil in the country that borders North Korea. This follows Yoon’s declaration of the briefest martial law in South Korean history on December 3, lasting only a few hours, after accusing the opposition party of engaging in ‘anti-state activities.’

    Recall, Yoon said: “I will not give up. I will do my best for our country.” And this could be why he failed to appear for questioning on Sunday.

    “If Yoon continues to defy requests for questioning in the two inquiries, investigators could ask a court to issue a warrant for his arrest,” NBC noted. 

    Under South Korea’s Constitution, Yoon’s impeachment has allowed Prime Minister Han Duck-soo to become interim leader.

    Political instability in South Korea led to the resignation of Han Dong Hoon, the leader of Yoon’s People Power Party, on Monday morning. 

    Han said he does “not regret supporting the impeachment” because the president’s use of martial law was wrong. 

    “Defending illegal martial law is a betrayal of the country, the people, the conservative spirit, and the achievements of our party that achieved industrialization and democratization,” Han emphasized. 

    Given that the Constitutional Court will now decide whether to reinstate or remove Yoon, Goldman’s Goohoon Kwon and Andrew Tilton provided clients with the possible transition scenarios. That process could take up to six months.

    Here’s what comes next: 

    Newsquawk’s latest headlines on the ongoing political turmoil: 

    • South Korean MPs have successfully voted to impeach President Yoon in their second attempt, amid backlash following his brief move to impose martial law, according to BBC. Yoon was suspended from official duties at 19:24 local time on Saturday while PM Han is to continue as acting president, according to Yonhap.

    • South Korea’s acting president Han vowed to leave no vacuum in state affairs, build a solid security posture, and ensure the cabinet works hard to maintain trust with the US, Japan, and other partners. He also pledged efforts to operate financial and forex markets smoothly, according to Yonhap. Acting President Han said the country will maintain preparedness to prevent North Korea from stirring up provocations, secure national interests ahead of the new US administration, and prioritise national security above all else, according to News1 and Yonhap.

    • South Korea’s opposition leader Lee Jae-myung said the party has decided not to proceed with the impeachment of acting , according to Reuters.

    • Bank of Korea stated it is necessary to respond more actively to the economic impact compared with past impeachment periods, given heightened challenges in external conditions. It also said it will use all available policy instruments, in conjunction with the government, to respond to and avert escalation of volatility in financial and forex markets, according to Reuters.

    • South Korea’s Finance Minister said the government will continue to swiftly deploy market-stabilising measures as needed, seek more support measures for vulnerable sectors, and actively communicate with parliament to keep the economy stable. The minister also confirmed that the bi-annual economic policy plan will be announced before the end of the year, according to Reuters.

    • South Korea’s financial regulator said it will expand market-stabilising funds if needed to boost liquidity in bond and short-term money markets and expects financial markets to stabilise as recent political events are temporary shocks, according to Reuters.

    Also, the Goldman analysts warned of another scenario that could unfold: “… muddling through in a political gridlock.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/16/2024 – 18:00

  • Key Figures From "Thank You Dr. Fauci" Lead The Quest For COVID-19 Accountability
    Key Figures From “Thank You Dr. Fauci” Lead The Quest For COVID-19 Accountability

    The documentary Thank You Dr. Fauci has emerged as a prescient roadmap for understanding the COVID-19 pandemic, its origins, and the political and scientific decisions that shaped the world’s response. If you haven’t already, please watch and share this groundbreaking work.

    With recent talk of a preemptive pardon for Fauci, the film – and those featured in it, is set to take center stage in what we hope begins a phase of accountability.

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    Directed by progressive filmmaker Jenner Furst, Thank You Dr. Fauci brings together an extraordinary cast of whistleblowers, investigators, and scientists who were early voices in questioning the narratives surrounding the pandemic. As the Trump administration prepares to take office, with figures like Senator Rand Paul leading investigations into COVID-19 origins, the documentary stands as a bold call for transparency, justice, and reform.

    The film carefully curates a mix of insiders, investigators, and progressive activists who have shaped the COVID-19 discourse. Their inclusion not only provides a thorough examination of the pandemic but also underscores the film’s broader message about systemic failures and the need for reform.

    Dr. Richard Ebright: The Voice Against Risky Research

    Ebright, a molecular biologist and professor at Rutgers University, plays a crucial role in Thank You Dr. Fauci as one of the most prominent critics of gain-of-function research and its potential role in the COVID-19 pandemic.

    For years, Ebright has been a leading voice in the scientific community warning of the dangers posed by experiments that enhance the transmissibility or pathogenicity of viruses. His expertise and willingness to challenge public health orthodoxy make him a pivotal figure in the film’s narrative of accountability and reform.

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    Dr. Jay Bhattacharya: From Lockdown Critic to Key Voice in the Trump Administration

    Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford University professor of medicine and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, emerges in Thank You Dr. Fauci as one of the most prominent critics of lockdowns and restrictive COVID-19 policies. Known for advocating “focused protection” instead of broad lockdowns, Bhattacharya has consistently argued that public health measures disproportionately harmed the poor, children, and vulnerable populations while failing to adequately address the spread of the virus. His inclusion in the film underscores the growing debate over the societal and economic costs of pandemic policies.

    Bhattacharya has been appointed by President-elect Donald Trump as the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This role places him at the helm of one of the most powerful health agencies in the world, giving him the opportunity to reshape how the government approaches public health and pandemic preparedness.

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    Dr. Bryce Nickels and Dr. Justin Kinney: Scientists Leading the Push for Biosafety Reform

    Dr. Bryce Nickels, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, and Dr. Justin Kinney, a quantitative biologist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, feature prominently in Thank You Dr. Fauci as advocates for greater accountability and reform in scientific research. Both scientists have been vocal critics of gain-of-function research, arguing that the lack of oversight and transparency in this field contributed to the conditions that may have led to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The pair are working to have bullshit Fauci-commissioned scientific papers retracted.

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    Dr. Marty Makary – early Fauci Skeptic picked by Trump to lead the FDA

    Kenny Holston/The New York Times

    In Thank You, Dr. Fauci, Makary notes how he became a Fauci skeptic “during the Ebola epidemic,” after Fauci “transferred a nurse in Dallas with Ebola to the NIH clinical center in Washington DC, and then Dr. Fauci puts on an astronaut suit and walks in with a photographer for a photo opportunity.”

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    “The media parroted whatever Fauci and the CDC fed them, just as they did when government leaders told them there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, parroting whatever the government told them without asking any questions,” Makary told the House Select Subcommittee on the Covid Pandemic on May 11, 2023.

    Makary has been picked by President-elect Donald Trump as the next commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Should he be confirmed, he will report to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – should Kennedy also be confirmed as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

    David Asher – former State Department Investigator

    David Asher, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and bioweapons expert, led the U.S. State Department’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19 during the Trump administration. His inquiry focused on the possibility that the virus originated from a laboratory incident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China.

    Asher’s investigation examined the WIV’s research activities, including gain-of-function experiments that enhance a virus’s transmissibility or virulence. He raised concerns about the safety protocols at the WIV and the potential for an accidental release of the virus. Asher also highlighted the Chinese government’s lack of transparency and cooperation in investigating the pandemic’s origins.

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    Andrew Huff – at the center of EcoHealth

    Dr. Andrew Huff is a whistleblower who worked for EcoHealth Alliance who we’ve covered multiple times over the past few years. According to Huff, a former VP at EcoHealth – his former employer helped the Wuhan lab put together the “best existing methods to engineer bat coronaviruses to attack other species” for many years.

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    “China knew from day one that this was a genetically engineered agent. The US government is to blame for the transfer of dangerous biotechnology to the Chinese,” Huff wrote in his book, The Truth About Wuhan.”

    Charles Rixey and Lt. Col. Joseph Murphy: The Whistleblowers

    The film gives significant attention to Charles Rixey of the DRASTIC research group and Lt. Col. Joseph Murphy, both of whom uncovered critical evidence supporting the lab-leak hypothesis. Their work reveals how government agencies and scientific organizations may have suppressed key information about the pandemic’s origins. The inclusion of leaked documents, coupled with their firsthand accounts, adds weight to the film’s argument that a full reckoning of the pandemic’s roots is overdue.

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    Adam Andrzejewski: RIP

    A crusader for government transparency, Andrzejewski – founder of OpenTheBooks.com filed several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests which revealed Fauci’s exorbitant $450,000 per year salary and several other damning details related to the pandemic. Andrzejewski passed away unexpectedly in August at the age of 55 right before he was set to testify against Fauci.

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    Dr. Robert Redfield: A Key Figure in the COVID-19 Accountability Movement

    Dr. Robert Redfield, the former Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), emerges as a critical voice in Thank You Dr. Fauci – noting how he was shut out of Fauci’s conclave of pandemic advisors despite his position.

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    The Trump Administration and a New Era of Accountability

    As Thank You, Dr. Fauci gains traction, the Trump administration’s return to power positions figures like Senator Rand Paul to lead investigations into COVID-19’s origins and alleged coverups. Paul, a vocal critic of Fauci, has promised to subpoena records and hold hearings into gain-of-function research and the suppression of the lab-leak theory.

    The documentary becomes particularly relevant in this context, as many of the individuals featured are expected to play active roles in shaping these inquiries. The film’s message aligns with the incoming administration’s focus on challenging the so-called “Deep State” and holding public health officials accountable.

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/16/2024 – 17:40

  • Santa, Please Bring Me A War For Christmas
    Santa, Please Bring Me A War For Christmas

    Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

    “Understand this deeply – you nearly lost your country and your freedom to a deranged, totalitarian-leaning enemy of our nation’s soul and destiny. Take this personally.”

    – Mel K

    So, you expected “Joe Biden” to serve up a neat little Christmas-time World War Three, lobbing ATACMS into Russia and all, but instead, surprise surprise, you got The War of the Worlds: mysterious drones hovering on-high over the endless muffler shops, manicure parlors, mafia palazzos, and mosques of New Jersey.

    But there seems to be more to this than, say, the stunt that Orson Welles pulled in 1938, scaring a few rubes over the radio.

    This ain’t no foolin’ around.

    It’s been going on for weeks.

    And not just in New Jersey. But around New York City, up the Hudson River Valley above Stewart Airport, over in Massachusetts, down in Pennsylvania, and out in Ohio in the vicinity of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton Ohio.

    Howls of “WTF” echo all over the cable news channels. The US government — that is, the twilighting “Joe Biden” admin — plays dumb.

    Alejandro Mayorkas, our unimpeachably frank Homeland Security chief told ABC-News on Sunday “that there’s no question that drones are being sighted.” I’m sure that told you a lot. He went on to explain that the FAA changed its rules last year allowing drones to fly at night. Are we to suppose that avid US drone-owners waited until the very last month of this year to start flying their pet aircraft after dark? Pentagon spox John Kirby, added helpfully at a news conference that federal investigators had been “unable to corroborate reports of any unauthorized drones above New Jersey.”

    (Translation: DARPA and other Pentagon ops are too busy figuring out new ways to surveil and kill you to bother with these drone swarms.)

    Theories abound and multiply.

    One is that these are US Govt drones seeking signals of radioactivity emanating from a nuclear bomb supposedly purloined out of Ukraine’s old Soviet arsenal — and possibly stashed in a shipping container or some-such other hidey-hole along our east coast. It’s a good story. It’s rumored that some-60 Uke nukes from that era have gone missing in the decades since. Of course, the theoretical owner of such a device would have to be pretty dumb to not stash his nuke in a lead-shielded casket to prevent detection. In the meantime, what else can be said or done? Standing by on that mushroom cloud. . . .

    Blogger / Author and former White House stenographer (2002 – 2018) Mike McCormick had a neat theory: that shipping interests were testing drone deliveries of imported goods from offshore in an attempt to work-around the longshoreman’s union contract negotiations currently underway.

    The union has been fighting against automation that would eliminate the good-paying jobs of 85,000 dock-workers.

    Any takers on that one?

    Of course, it’s difficult to swallow the govt’s statements that, basically, they dunno nuffins ‘bout no drones. There are enough of them flying over enough varied terrain that surely the USAF could find a way to shoot one down over a cow pasture in, say, Orange County, New York. I’m frankly a little surprised that some enterprising civilian marksman hasn’t popped off a few 7mm Remington mag loads into the hovering lights. At least they haven’t said it’s Santa Claus testing a new high-tech delivery system that would put his old-timey sleigh-and-reindeer out of business.

    The theory I lean toward is the notion that “Joe Biden” (meaning the DC blob) is desperately seeking some way to obstruct or fend-off the January 20th inauguration of Mr. Trump. Because, well, to put it bluntly, a whole lot of blobistas are worried about going to jail when the likes of Kash Patel, John Ratcliffe, Tulsi-G, and Pam Bondi get their mitts on the levers of power and start opening up the files. They’ve got thirty-five days to. . . to do something! (Somebody, please do something!!!)

    There was a lot of chatter all year long about a coming space alien emergency. I know, sounds preposterous, and even more so when you consider that the military arm of the blob would be so dumb as to try to pass off drones as alien spacecrafts — like something out of a 1950s horror movie when the “special effects” had to be done with puppets and balsa-wood models flying on wires. Maybe it’s actually come to that in this super dumbed-down age. (Are you aware that the main diminishing return of our magical computer tech is that it’s made our society an order-of-magnitude dumber across the board? Well, it has.)

    The situation remains fluid, with ongoing investigations and public discourse about the implications and origins of these drone activities.

    The FBI is on-the-case (so never fear!) along with Mr. Mayorkas and his outfit, and maybe even the US military.

    Chill.

    They got this — as Hollywood loves to say. Go shopping. Have a goshdarn eggnog. Shut up.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/16/2024 – 17:40

  • West Pushing Russia Beyond 'Red Line' While Building Up Troops In Europe: Putin
    West Pushing Russia Beyond ‘Red Line’ While Building Up Troops In Europe: Putin

    The month of December has already witnessed several waves of US-supplied long-range ATACMS target inside Russian territory. Many have been intercepted, but others have struck Russian bases.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday addressed a meeting of his defense ministry wherein he warned that the Western allies are pushing Russia beyond a red line. He stressed that this means Moscow is pushed into a situation in which it must retaliate.

    He began the comments by accusing the US of seeking “to weaken our country and inflict a strategic defeat”  by continuing “to pump a de facto illegitimate ruling regime in Kiev with weapons and money, sending mercenaries and military advisers, thereby encouraging further escalation of the conflict.”

    Putin continued, according an English translation in state media, “They push us to the red line… we begin to respond, and then they frighten their population.” He said that Washington authorities in this way use “simple tactics” to keep the American population in fear, allowing escalation of threats to continue.

    According to another translation by Reuters:

    The Russian president said: “They [Western leaders] are simply scaring their own population that we are going to attack someone there using the pretext of the mythical Russian threat.

    “The tactic is very simple: they push us to ‘a red line’, from which we can not retreat, we start to respond and then they immediately scare their population – in the old days it was with the Soviet threat and now it’s with the Russian threat.”

    He not only warned that Russia and other independent nations are facing West-sponsored “hybrid wars” – but that NATO is increasing its force posture in Europe near Russia’s borders.

    “The number of American service members in Europe has already exceeded 100,000 troops,“ he said, also noting that Washington’s presence in the Asia-Pacific region has increased too.

    Putin in the comments further hinted that though Moscow currently abides by the INF Treaty, even after Washington pulled out, all self-imposed restrictions could immediately be lifted should the US begin deploying its medium and short-range missile systems in violation of the now defunct treaty.

    “If the United States begins to deploy such systems, then all our voluntary restrictions will be lifted,” he warned. “The relocation and deployment of these missile systems in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region is already being practiced.”

    President-Elect Donald Trump on Monday said that he could immediately reverse the Biden admin’s policy of allowing Kiev to hit Russia with US missiles. He has vowed to rapidly de-escalate and negotiate toward peace.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/16/2024 – 17:20

  • Biden Lied About Everything: Philly Fed Finds All Jobs "Created" In Q2 Were Fake
    Biden Lied About Everything: Philly Fed Finds All Jobs “Created” In Q2 Were Fake

    Back in August, many were surprised by the accuracy of our forecast, when we predicted that in its annual revision, the Biden Bureau of Labor Statistics would revise jobs for the April 2023-March 2024 period by “up to 1 million”, something which we said would mean that all job report “beats” recorded in the past year will have been misses and the US labor market is in far worse shape than the admin would admit.

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    The final results, as everyone knows by now, was a shocking 818K revision lower, just as the Philadelphia Fed had predicted 6 months prior, in March, when it calculated correctly that the Biden Department of Goalseeking Propaganda had overstated payrolls by “at least 800,000.”

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    The answer ended up 818,000 for the 12 month period ended March 31 (or about 68,000 per month) and the implied sharp deterioration to the job market was the main scapegoat used by the Fed to launch its easing cycle with a jumbo 50bps rate cut (now that “suddenly” the economic golden age pushed by the Biden propaganda regime, and trillions in debt, had just collapsed).

    We mention all of this up because on Friday, the Philly Fed served up its latest shocker: not only did the Biden admin lie again, but the collapse in the labor market that had been covered up for much of the past year and was only exposed with the annual benchmark revision, extended into the second quarter.

    “Estimates by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia indicate that the employment changes from March through June 2024 were significantly different” – read lower – “in 27 states compared with preliminary state estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Current Employment Statistics (CES)”, the Philly Fed said on December 12.

    “According to the early benchmark (EB) estimates conducted by the Phily Fed, employment was lower in 25 states, higher in two states, and lesser changes in the remaining 23 states and the District of Columbia.”

    Translation: 23 states unchanged, 1 revised higher…  and 25 lower. The breakdown is shown below.

    Maybe someone can calculate what the odds of that distribution occurring naturally are, but here is our guess: virtually nil. Which is why would make such a loud stink every month after the Biden BLS revised jobs data lower month after month after month. The whole point was to make the labor market appear stronger than it was, then to gradually revised it all away. And now the Philadelphia Fed confirms – again – that we were right all along.

    And so, after it first revised the 12 months ending March 31 by 818K, the downgrads extended into the second quarter of 2024, when the Philadelphia Fed early benchmark estimates showed that instead of the 1.1% gain shown initially by the BLS, payroll jobs in the 50 states and the District of Columbia were actually down 0.1%!

    By state, the regional Fed bank estimates that largest revision of employment for the nine-month period ended in June will come from California, where it sees a downward revision of 172,700 jobs. Payrolls in Texas may be revised down by 112,100. An extended forecast by the BLS to the third quarter show further declines as well.

    And while we don’t yet know the specifics of the revisions – those will be revealed on Feb 7, 2025 when the final numbers are published – at the national level, we do know that all the jobs reportedly “created” in the second quarter, were actually fake, there were no net jobs created at all, and in fact, the US lost jobs in Q2!

    Translation: in his latest attempt to create an impression of economic growth, Biden lied about everything, again.

    Source: Philly Fed

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/16/2024 – 17:00

  • VDH: Are The Years Of Madness Ending?
    VDH: Are The Years Of Madness Ending?

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

    Never in U.S. history has a president-elect been welcomed as the real president before his January 20 inauguration.

    And never has the incumbent president so willingly surrendered his last two months in office and all but abdicated—to the relief of his nation and the rest of the world.

    One reason so many are welcoming Trump’s return is the universally desperate hope that his election spelled an end to a collective madness at home and its ripples abroad during the last four years. And why not?

    Nations overseas had never quite witnessed anything like the lethal August 2021 American flight from Afghanistan.

    That utter humiliation and impotence of the U.S. military likely signaled to Russia there would be no consequences if it invaded Ukraine—and it did; to Iran that it could now unleash Hamas and Hezbollah on Israel—and it did; and to China that it could daily threaten Taiwan and send a spy balloon across the United States with impunity—and it did.

    The result was the current global chaos perhaps not seen since the late 1930s when a confused United States was similarly a bystander to the rise of bellicose regimes and wars. The Biden administration shrugged that the Red Sea, the Black Sea, the South China Sea, the Straits of Hormuz, and the Eastern Mediterranean Sea all became dangerous to the U.S. Navy and unsafe to world shipping.

    A disparate group of nuclear and near-nuclear powers—Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran—are either at war with Western allies or threatening war with them. Their confidence was predicated on the assumption that the U.S. after 2020 was engaged in a Maoist-like cultural revolution that warred on its own security, energy, military, universities, and social unity—and would continue with a second Biden term.

    The Biden-era cultural revolution has done great damage to the United States. The U.S. border was systematically and deliberately destroyed to allow some 10-12 million illegal entrants to pour into the U.S. without legality or background checks. Never has an outgoing administration spitefully sold taxpayer-purchased border wall material for pennies on the dollar—rather than see it used for the purposes for which it was purchased.

    Never had the U.S. experienced such an immigrant surge. And never had more than 50 million, and over 15 percent of the resident American population been foreign-born.

    Why did Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas erase the border? What madness and hate drove them to dismantle federal immigration law? Was it sheer nihilism? Or a desperate but calculated effort to alter American demography for political purposes?

    For four years, the public, elected officials, and pundits have all warned that Joe Biden was dangerously cognitively challenged and indeed completely unfit to fulfill the duties of the presidency.

    A long-suffering nation winced as Biden slurred his words, spoke in unintelligible sound bites, stood frozen and mute, screamed at and libeled half the country, tripped, fell, wandered aimlessly, became bewildered, and more or less proved a global embarrassment. All knew Biden was not able to run the country; yet none knew exactly who was actually in charge of America in his stead. The Obamas? Leftists like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, the Squad, Jill Biden, and the Biden staff?

    Our allies worried that the usually resilient American president was now all but demented. Our enemies enjoyed these leaderless years of opportunity. And the left serially misled the public that the decrepit Biden, whom they feared in private was senile, was “dynamic,” “energic,” and “fit as a fiddle.”

    Never has a president so deserved to be removed by the 25th Amendment or through impeachment and conviction. And never has even his inner circle finally but silently agreed as they left office, the very enablers who had done their political best to mask his dementia for four long years.

    Never has the justice system, from local to state to national jurisdictions, so systematically and coordinately, sought to bankrupt, render inert, and jail an ex-president and current presidential candidate.

    Rarely have the FBI, the CIA, the IRS, the Department of Justice, and the Pentagon become weaponized and so flagrantly and with impunity broken the law, abandoned their mission statements, and served political agendas rather than the American people. Not since the J. Edgar Hoover era has the FBI hierarchy serially lied under oath, stonewalled Congress, forged a court affidavit, or partnered with the media to suppress the news. Has the FBI ever raided an ex-president’s home, spied on parents at school board meetings, monitored Catholics, or tried to terrify and harass pro-life activists?

    Never has a presidential family so brazenly profited by selling its influence to foreign interests. Never has it used the powers of the FBI and DOJ to cover up its crimes and to ensure the family filial bagman would be for years exempted by the DOJ and later pardoned by the president himself, the father of the family miscreant and privy to the family syndicate’s illegal activities.

    Seldom has a president and his administration sought to fuel a veritable cultural revolution to change the fabric of the nation by institutionalizing a third, transexual gender, violating civil rights law, and systematically admitting, hiring, and promoting Americans on the basis of their race and gender.

    Never since the Civil War era had local and state insurrectionist governments established 600 nullification zones, in which they vowed to break federal law and consider it null and void within their jurisdictions. Never have rioters looted, burned, killed, assaulted, and occupied large swaths of cities for over 120 days, and largely with impunity.

    Never had the U.S. Treasury borrowed so much money so quickly and owed $37 in national debt—and been so intent on borrowing continuously nearly $2 trillion a year in annual deficits.

    Never has a political party sought to systematically violate long-standing traditions, customs, and often the law itself to destroy a political opponent: hiring a foreign national to spread smears among the media and bureaucracies, impeaching a president twice, trying an ex-president in the Senate, seeking to remove a presidential candidate from 16 state ballots, using five different judicial jurisdictions to try an ex-president, and serially so defaming a candidate and ex-president as a dictator, fascist, and Nazi to create a climate that encouraged two near-miss assassination attempts on him.

    In sum, for the last four years, the world has watched aghast as the United States lost its collective mind and became a radical Jacobin revolutionary society.

    So why is there not a sense of almost ecstatic relief, not just among conservatives but even among Democrats, that the years of darkness and madness are ending?

    The global public believes that the United States will again become lawful, have a secure border, return as a beacon of free-market economics, protect its allies, deter its enemies, win over its neutrals, return to the rule of law, restore the professionalism and prestige of its government agencies, check predatory nations abroad with a new deterrent military, and prepare to lead the world in energy production, exploration of space, and scientific and technology development.

    Summed up, the welcomed counterrevolution is one of restoration—to dream again that nothing is impossible, and the dreary age of stasis, envy, cynicism, and nihilism is ending, replaced again by a world without limits. No one knows quite what is ahead, but all know that it is at least better already than the current nightmare.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/16/2024 – 16:20

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