• RFK Jr: The Wuhan Cover-Up & The Rise Of The Biowarfare-Industrial Complex
  RFK Jr: The Wuhan Cover-Up & The Rise Of The Biowarfare-Industrial Complex

  Authored by Debbie Lerman via The Brownstone Institute,

  The Wuhan Cover-Up and the Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race (Skyhorse Publishing, December 3, 2023) is a crucial book for understanding how the Covid catastrophe happened. 

  

  I would even go so far as to argue that RFK, Jr.’s new book is the most important Covid chronicle to date, although it ends at the beginning of 2020, before most of us were even aware that a “novel coronavirus” was circulating among us. 

  The book explains the CAUSES of the global disaster, which all happened before March 2020. Everything after that are the downstream EFFECTS of what The Wuhan Cover-Up exposes.

  Here’s how RFK, Jr. summarizes those effects:

  Everyone has now seen that pandemics are another way for the military, intelligence, and public health services to expand their budgets and their power. In 2020, public health, defense, and intelligence agencies weaponized a [Covid-19] pandemic, resulting in unprecedented profits to Big Pharma and the dramatic expansion of the security/surveillance state, including a systemic abandonment of constitutional rights—effectively a coup d’état against liberal democracy globally.

  (Kindle edition, p. 385)

  Putting Covid in the Biowarfare Context

  Interestingly, in the publicity blurb on the book and in interviews about it, RFK, Jr. focuses on “the etiology of the gain-of-function research” and everything that led up to a virus being engineered in a US-funded lab in Wuhan by a group of Chinese and Western scientists.

  At the core of this story is RFK, Jr.’s desire to warn readers about the dangers of gain-of-function research, which he shows in the book to be irrefutably a biowarfare – not a public health – endeavor.

  But in the process of constructing the argument and supplying the proof for his dire warning, and for his assertion that this type of research should be stopped immediately and forever, RFK, Jr. provides what I find to be an even more compelling story.

  The story in the Wuhan Cover-Up that interests me is the rise of the biowarfare-industrial-complex – the global behemoth comprising military/intelligence alliances, Big Pharma, Big Tech, academic and medical institutions, and NGOs – that both created the virus known as SARS-CoV-2 and ran the global response to it.

  In this article, I will highlight key parts of The Wuhan Cover-Up that pertain to this storyline – which I believe are downplayed in its publicity materials and are one of the main reasons it has been practically banned from polite society: The book has been so heavily censored that I cannot find a single actual review on Google. Newsweek reported that independent bookstores do not want to carry it. 

  A lot of the censorship has to do with mainstream animosity toward RFK, Jr’s presidential campaign. But the explosive content of the book, as reviewed in this article, is also likely a factor.

  Top-Level Summary of the Rise of the Biowarfare Industrial Complex, as Told by RFK, Jr.

  • The biowarfare industry started to grow after WWII, when Western intelligence agencies imported Japanese and German scientists to help develop weapons against Communist enemies. This was, in fact, the first task of the newly formed CIA.

  • After 9/11, funding for bioweapons research exploded, and so did the power and reach of the military and intelligence agencies in charge of such research. The research, presented to the public as “pandemic preparedness and response (PPR),” encompassed mostly attempts to engineer deadly pathogens and simultaneously to create countermeasures to them, predominantly vaccines. 

  • So much money was pouring into PPR/bioweapons research that the public health agencies and academic institutions involved in government research all became dependent on it – or, perhaps more accurately, addicted to the money and power this type of research bestowed. Multinational public-private partnerships and “non-governmental organizations” (e.g., The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Wellcome Trust) were created to fund and promote the need for such research.

  • In the fall of 2019 an engineered pathogen from one of the bioweapons labs in China found its way into the population. All the military, intelligence, and public health officials from China, the US, UK, and other countries, with their pharma and academic partners, conspired to cover up the lab leak, while simultaneously preparing to unleash their countermeasures on the world.

  How the Nature of Biowarfare Research Has Not Changed

  As RFK, Jr. tells it, the history of today’s biowarfare industry starts after WWII, when German and Japanese scientists were secretly repatriated to assist the intelligence community and military in developing chemical and biological weapons programs. 

  It is no coincidence, he argues, that many sinister features of those earlier programs carried forward to the present. These features include:

  • tight alliances with the pharmaceutical industry and the media; 

  • the complicity of academia and medical schools; 

  • the co-opting of journals; 

  • intense secrecy; 

  • pervasive experimentation on human subjects; 

  • liberal use of the word “volunteers;”

  • open-air testing on large unwilling populations; 

  • ethical elasticity; 

  • the normalization of lies; 

  • the use of microbiology to alter and weaponize bugs; 

  • the use of vaccine development as a mask for bioweapons research; 

  • the corruption of the entire medical establishment 

  (p. 48)

  Even just this list is enough to explain what happened with Covid: Take all these ingredients, add billions of dollars and multinational public-private partnerships involving top research institutions and thousands of scientists, and how could you not get a global disaster? 

  Deep CIA-Biowarfare Ties

  The Wuhan Cover-Up spends a lot of time documenting the correspondence between the rise of the CIA and the emergence of the modern biowarfare program. 

   RFK, Jr. writes:

  …it’s worth reviewing the agency’s seventy-five-year preoccupation with bioweapons, pandemics, and vaccines. Bioweapons development was the CIA’s first love, and has remained its relentless passion. The CIA’s natal obsession with bioweapons pitted the agency against all the idealistic underpinnings of both American democracy and the healing arts of medicine. 

  (p. 46)

  An important related point emphasized in the book is that bioweapons research is not an obscure, niche industry. Rather, according to The Wuhan Cover-Up, it is a top national defense concern, driving the national security agenda:

  Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the military and intelligence apparatus erected the biosecurity agenda as the new spear tip of American foreign policy. These agencies deftly replaced the fear of the Soviet monolith and creeping communism with a fear of infectious disease, which they have successfully stoked to justify vast expansions in power…

  (p. 44)

  Shockingly Broad Participation by Academics and Scientists

  Because the biosecurity agenda – which focuses on biochemical and medical research – is so central to foreign policy and national security, it controls large swaths of research funding. Thus, as RFK, Jr. documents, it has come to encompass many top academic institutions and thousands of doctors and scientists:

  Among the most alarming side effects of the federal preoccupation with bioweapons has been the systematic diversion of vast resources and armies of academic and government scientists away from public health and healing. 

  (p. 46)

  Today, some thirteen thousand death scientists labor on bioweapons technology on behalf of US military, intelligence, and public health agencies in some four hundred government and university bioweapons labs. 

  (p. 83)

  Moral Bankruptcy

  When faced with Covid “conspiracy theories” – such as those put forth in The Wuhan Cover-Up – people often argue that so many doctors and scientists could not possibly have knowingly agreed to civilization-killing ideas like lockdowns and injections of unsafe medical products into billions of people. They must have believed they were actually saving humanity, right?

  Wrong, according to RFK, Jr.:

  History has shown again and again the bioweapons agenda’s awesome power to transform compassionate, brilliant, idealistic doctors into monsters. 

  (p. 47)

  They have, as a class, demonstrated thoroughly warped judgment and a reliable penchant for dishonesty and terrible ideas. 

  (p. 87)

  Bioweapons Research = Vaccine Research

  Another crucial idea bearing on our understanding of the Covid response is that vaccine research is a primary concern for the biowarfare-industrial complex, although it is publicly presented as a public health endeavor.

  The book quotes Professor Frances Boyle, author of the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, with this explanation:

  You can’t use a bioweapon against your enemy without having in your possession an antidote with which to shield your own team from blowback. For this reason, bioweapons and vaccines are always developed in tandem with each other.

  (p. 121)

  Moreover, because vaccine research funding goes to both biodefense and public health agencies, they have become inextricably linked:

  The military and public health agencies work in close coordination to develop vaccines for military applications, sharing information and working side by side in labs. Vaccine research often serves as a cover or rationale for illegal bioweapons development.

  (p. 129)

  From an Obsession of US National Security to a Tool of Globalism

  As RFK, Jr. writes, after 9/11, Islamic terrorism became the focus of US national defense. After the anthrax attacks, the focus of antiterrorist activities coalesced around the need to predict, prevent, and create countermeasures to biological terrorism. 

  This more reliable and terrifying enemy would soon replace the war against Islamic terror—justifying a “forever war” against germs. “Biosecurity,” a.k.a. Pandemic Preparedness and Response (PPR), provided a rationale for US presence in every developing nation.

  (p. 149)

  And, as further explained by RFK, Jr., the focus on bioterrorism, which first served the American imperialist impulse, then became incorporated into the program of globalism:

  The emerging medical/military-industrial complex would soon be citing biosecurity as a pretext for centralized control, coordinated response among nations, a sprawling construction project for new US bioweapons laboratories, the archiving of every germ with weapons potential under the pretext of pandemic protection, the control of the media, the imposition of censorship, the erection of an unprecedented surveillance infrastructure ostensibly needed to “track and trace” infections, universal digital IDs, digital currencies to reduce disease spread, and the ceding of power by national governments to the WHO—in short, globalism. 

  (p. 149)

  China Becomes a Dominant Biowarfare Research Player

  Concurrently, China’s leaders were working on a mission to make China a world leader in science, research, and innovation. According to The Wuhan Cover-Up, the Chinese have been using the West’s march toward globalism to infiltrate “Western academia, businesses, media, cultural groups, and government agencies that speak the language of cooperation, globalism, and public health.” (p. 257)

  As part of their infiltration process, the Chinese lavished funding on Western research institutions and scientific publishing houses. And because biomedical/biowarfare research was so central to Western governments and research institutions, the Chinese were able to eventually dominate that space as well.

  Thus, the book explains, China was able to “co-opt US academic institutions and US public health agencies into performing backdoor bioweapons research for the Chinese military.” (p. 274)

  Why Would the US Do Bioweapons Research in/for China?

  This is, perhaps, the most oft-raised question in response to the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 was an engineered bioweapon from a lab funded by the Chinese military, the US, and other Western governments.

  As RFK, Jr. explains, with the Chinese as major funders of Western institutions, journals and projects related to biomedical research, this strange collaboration was not just unsurprising, but in fact, inevitable:

  The Chinese campaign to co-opt leading scientists and the river of Chinese funding to researchers at US and British medical research universities and to the leading scientific journals had, by then, bought China powerful friends across the Western scientific establishment. 

  (p. 280)

  Furthermore, the interests of China intersect with the interests of major global corporations and NGOs that comprise the biowarfare-industrial-complex – many of which enriched themselves considerably through the Covid response. As RFK, Jr. writes:

  There is a natural intersection of interests between Western business titans and a former communist government [the Chinese Communist Party] that has made itself the global model for seamlessly merging corporate with government power, and promoting business growth by suppressing democracy, labor, and human rights. 

  (p. 572)

  For its part, the US intelligence community has all kinds of reasons – all ultimately geared toward increasing its own power and influence – to engage in sensitive scientific research projects with the Chinese:

  The deliberate transfer of our superior bioweapons knowledge to the Chinese—a potential enemy—makes little sense to citizens who think in terms of conventional rivalries between nations. Espionage was clearly among the complex motivations for the US intelligence community supporting Chinese bioweapons research in China. Knowing what the Chinese are up to is the mission of the US intelligence community. But quietly sharing cutting-edge technologies may also serve institutional self-interest. After all, the intelligence community expands its power by reporting the enemy’s expanding capabilities; more frightening capabilities abroad justify increased budgets and increased power at home. 

  (p. 388)

  Bioweapons expert Dr. Francis Boyle is quoted stating that:

  Opportunities to expand institutional power and corporate profits always seem to trump patriotism and duty within the CIA’s bioweapons teams. Patriotism is a polite fiction among the bioweapons set.

  (p. 383)

  RFK, Jr. adds that the public health agencies, which are heavily involved in, and funded by, biowarfare research, share the CIA’s self-interested non-patriotism:

  NIH and NIAID operate under the same perverse incentives that drive destructive conduct across the whole bioweapons field.

  (p. 383)

  A Convergence of Personal, Political, Financial and Global Interests

  In the final chapters of The Wuhan Cover-Up, RFK, Jr. focuses on several key figures in the biowarfare-industrial-complex, including Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome Trust (now at the WHO), Anthony Fauci of the NIH, and Bill Gates. 

  RFK, Jr. uses these figures to show how the Covid pandemic emerged from the toxic stew of ethically compromised biowarfare research standards; military, intelligence, public health, and academic institutions/organizations dependent on biowarfare funding; the involvement of China and global interests in the booming business of “pandemic preparedness and response;” and, of course, the endless pursuit of political power and personal enrichment.

  Here’s a great summary of how they all came together, through personal and institutional greed and power-mongering, to unleash the Covid catastrophe on the world:

  The evidence suggests that instead of relentlessly protecting public health, Farrar exploited the pandemic to promote the venal financial agendas of his WEF [World Economic Forum] patrons, to transform Western democracies into surveillance states, to expand his personal power and paycheck, and to pander to high-level Chinese officials. Achieving these objectives required Farrar to hide [Covid’s] laboratory origins, a project in which he enlisted a cadre of his medical cartel cronies—those who, thanks to years of funding by Fauci, Farrar, and Gates, now occupy the highest echelons of virology in academia, the regulatory agencies, and pharmaceutical companies. 

  (p. 539)

  If for nothing else, I would recommend adding The Wuhan Cover-Up to your library as an invaluable resource on leading figures, organizations, and power brokers involved in the biowarfare-industrial-complex.

  Conclusions and Comments

  It was especially gratifying to me to read The Wuhan Cover-Up (all 600 pages of it), because it validated my own research, showing that the pandemic response was led by the national security/intelligence arms of government, not public health agencies. 

  In fact, after reading the first few chapters – the ones that go into the history of chemical and biological warfare and the rise of the biowarfare-industrial-complex – I paradoxically felt an enormous sense of relief. 

  Finally, we have a detailed account that shows – beyond what I would consider a reasonable doubt – that the entire Covid catastrophe was caused, and led, by a multinational military-intelligence-academic-pharma-tech-NGO cabal.

  RFK, Jr.’s conclusion is that we should look to a future “in which the bio-elites are held responsible for their actions, people regain their rights, and the Constitution is restored to its intended preeminence.”

  But how do we do that? 

  I am afraid, based on the information in his own book, and the fact that RFK, Jr. himself is being censored and banned so extensively from the public square, that the solution to the problems he exposes is much more difficult and complex than just “holding the bio-elites responsible” which will somehow lead to people regaining their rights.

  What we need to do is to shut down, or extract ourselves from, the global biowarfare-industrial-complex that is able to convince (or coerce?) our governments into declaring states of emergency over supposed pandemic threats, and then curtail civil rights and impose massive surveillance, censorship, and propaganda that would not be permitted in non-emergency situations. Not to mention garnering enormous wealth while forcing the world’s population to accept novel, untested, and potentially lethal medical “countermeasures.”

  The Wuhan Cover-Up does a better job than any other book or article I have read at exposing the trends, forces, and institutions that brought us the Covid catastrophe – with hundreds of pages of notes and references. What’s frightening is that the enormity of the problem is beyond the scope of the book, not just to solve, but even to fully acknowledge.

  Republished from the author’s Substack

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/16/2024 – 23:40

• Hotel Rooms Or Homes?
  Hotel Rooms Or Homes?

  Even with Airbnb posting a net loss of $500 million in its fourth quarter of 2023, the past year was a success story for the short-term rental platform, which increased its annual revenue to roughly $10 billion and net income to $4.8 billion.

  Nevertheless, as Statista’s Florian Zandt details below, the hotel business is still far more important regarding the revenue generated in the travel and tourism sector.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  As the chart above, based on Statista Mobility Market Insights data, shows, hotel accommodation has a larger revenue share in every one of the eight economies projected to generate the most revenue with cruises, package holidays, camping, hotels and vacation rentals.

  Italy had the highest share of vacation rentals, which encompasses vacation homes and short-term rentals, in total market revenue with almost 16 percent. The relationship between Airbnb and the Southern European nation, in particular, is fraught. In November, Italian authorities seized 780 million euros from the online platform due to the suspicion of tax evasion. The case was settled in December with Airbnb agreeing to pay 576 million euros without admitting direct liability.

  The tourism and travel industry in the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan will continue to rely heavily on hotel bookings in 2024 according to Statista analysts, with between 54 and 62 percent of the corresponding total market revenue being provided by this segment. Germany has one of the lowest combined revenue share of hotels and vacation rentals, which can be attributed to the country’s inhabitants’ fondness for package holidays.

  Overall, analysts forecast that revenue in all market segments will amount to $927 billion worldwide in the upcoming year.

  The United States, China and Germany alone are projected to contribute almost half of this revenue.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/16/2024 – 23:20

• How Progressive Policies Are Designed For Civilizational Suicide
  How Progressive Policies Are Designed For Civilizational Suicide

  Authored by John D. O’Connor via American Greatness,

  We all understand, in the timeless words of the poet Robert Burns, that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

  Most Americans are accustomed to assessing the various failed initiatives of our country’s leaders as well-intended actions that turned out badly. The Vietnam, Afghan, and Iraq wars, the 2008 financial meltdown, and the COVID pandemic overreaction, all in hindsight, can be viewed as simply the unfolding of human stupidity in the contingency of time.

  In accordance, it is understandable that many are inclined to believe that our country’s current serious problems are, once again, merely the failed result of well-intentioned policies.

  

  But what if, we ask, seemingly fumbled programs were intended to be the initial throes of civilizational suicide? What if apparent missteps were actually directed at the purposeful destruction of a prosperous, free, safe, and secure society?

  As we examine the policies pushed by the Biden administration progressives regarding climate, national security, crime, and the border, we can rationally conclude that they are being purposely implemented to render our society unsuccessful, not successful, in its traditional aims, causing what could be the ultimate destruction of a thriving, liberal enlightenment society.

  Let us begin with escalating climate mandates, now reaching gas stoves and tires, seeking the total elimination of fossil fuels. Because our mainstream media, more out of reflexive conformity than malevolence, constantly amplify climate alarmism, most Americans believe climate programs are designed in good faith to protect us from planetary disasters. Climate subsidies are aimed, they are led to believe, at increasing prosperity through good “green” jobs in emerging “green” industries, all part of the supposedly improved “Bidenomics” economy, however counterintuitive many think them to be.

  When Biden, immediately upon assuming office, stopped issuing new drilling leases, canceled the Keystone Pipeline, and issued EPA regulations effectively shutting down multiple power plants in the near future, was he, however idealistically, trying to wean our country off of fossil fuels in favor of clean, “renewable” energy? If so, what could be wrong with that?

  If the administration had calculated that lost energy from stifling fossil fuel sources could actually be replaced, these initiatives, even if overly optimistic, could be viewed as well-intended.

  However, within the climate camp, it has been well known that fossil fuels, which power 82% of world energy needs, cannot conceivably be replaced by renewable energy to any substantial degree. So, as these policies take effect over the coming years, our hospitals and medical centers, relying on petroleum-based plastic furniture, fixtures, and equipment, energy-dependent stainless-steel implements, and high-power physical plants, will be hit hard. Health care costs will soar, while treatment will decrease to emerging society levels. Our food costs, already rising dramatically, will skyrocket as petroleum fertilizer, now tripling yields, becomes economically impractical. Housing costs, dependent on fuel-powered equipment and concrete and steel needing massive energy inputs to manufacture, will put homeownership out of reach for all but the rich and reduce housing to cramped, third-world levels. And, of course, transportation will become an expensive luxury for both people and products.

  But isn’t this all meant well? For trusting, uncritical moderates and traditional liberals, yes. For the progressives pulling the strings, no.

  Maurice Strong, the Canadian socialist responsible for steering the United Nations into the bureaucratic sinecures of the climate alarmist IPCC, has stated from the outset that his intention is the diminishment of the wealth of the Western industrialized nations, making them more like less-advantaged societies.

  Although they tout their certainty, climate warriors conceal that for decades, their computerized GCMs (General Circulation Models) have overpredicted global warming by 300%. Well, they respond when confronted by the knowledgeable, the increased heat was swallowed by the oceans, or perhaps tamped down by those pesky aerosols. They know better, but gullible, well-intentioned believers do not.

  Documents from a key IPCC research center in East Anglia, the GRU, reveal the fear of climate activists that the public will learn of the Medieval Warm Period and that its temperatures were warmer than today without any claimed assistance from carbon dioxide. Progressive climatologists, in essence, know they are pushing a canard.

  Progressive border policies need little discussion. When Biden was elected, the country was led to believe that he would aim to control the southern border, but do so in a humane, non-Trump manner, no longer putting children in cages (which in truth and in fact were Obama-inspired).

  Of course, to any rational observer, it is now clear that the massive invasion at our southern border was intended by progressives. The “great replacement” theory is not needed to prove this invasion intentional, obvious to any observer. Three-star New York hotels and thousand-dollar-a-month payments to migrants? Free health care? These are among the positive incentives to illegally migrate, revealing intentionality after the maligned Trump proved that the border was substantially controllable.

  The intended result of mass migration is not just new Democratic voters; the most obvious result. It is, more significantly, a deliberately overwhelming burden on our social welfare system, heretofore supported sufficiently by taxes on a powerful economy. With more unemployment and more burdens on social welfare, the progress of the aspiring poor, primarily minorities, will be crushed. Our society is headed, as intended by progressives, to socialism, which, as Winston Churchill noted, has “as its greatest virtue the equal sharing of misery.”

  Moving to national security, the tinderbox of the Middle East was not caused by Trump’s irrational temperament, which, in hindsight, has proven its deterrent value. Rather, putting Obama’s progressive policies on steroids, Biden both directly sent cash to Iran and also removed oil sanctions, giving the country financial power to fund Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and, of course, Iran’s own depredations on U.S. troops. Biden’s special Iran envoy, the pro-Hamas Rob Malley, and other pro-Iran and pro-Hamas officials influence our Middle East policy to intentionally favor our enemies.

  But what could be the progressive motive for Iran’s hegemony in the Middle East? Clearly, it is to cause the demise of “right-wing” leadership in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, all American allies, so that the region will be controlled by anti-American repressive regimes. Interestingly, progressives revealed their anti-democratic, authoritarian roots by supporting Mullahs who kill members of the LGBT community and subdue women. Again, Iran’s terrorism is not an unfortunate artifact of balanced statesmanship. Rather, it is intended to exterminate a democratic Jewish society and a Saudi regime seeking to modernize itself. In a remarkable exercise in projection, progressives at the same time deem Trump to be a Hitler stand-in.

  Similarly, the cause of increasing crime in our cities is no mystery. Progressives applauded, not decried, the George Floyd mayhem, largely an exercise in looting. Beautiful cities such as San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and Los Angeles, all run by progressives, have become dystopian hellholes.

  So, sincere, well-meaning liberals should, but generally do not, see that they are being led like lemmings to the sea, toward civilizational suicide, by the progressives they have long trusted as being in the liberal leadership, not the socialist vanguard.

  In the nineteenth century, the brilliant French observer of American culture, Count Alexis de Tocqueville, said that democratic despotism would be effectuated, if at all, not by overt state terror but by the infantilization of a trusting population.

  The evidence is now clearly established that moderate liberals should face reality and reject the policies of the progressive vanguard, leading them into civilizational suicide.

  *  *  *

  John D. O’Connor is a former federal prosecutor and the San Francisco attorney who represented W. Mark Felt during his revelation as Deep Throat in 2005. O’Connor is the author of the books, Postgate: How the Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate and Began Today’s Partisan Advocacy Journalism and The Mysteries of Watergate: What Really Happened.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/16/2024 – 23:00

• These Are Expected To Be The World's Largest Consumer Markets In 2030
  These Are Expected To Be The World’s Largest Consumer Markets In 2030

  Consumers are the lifeblood of the global economy, the driving force behind market dynamics, and the ultimate arbiters of demand.

  But where are the biggest congregations of consumers, and are they growing?

  Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu visualizes the 20 largest consumer markets in the world, based on 2030 projections from World Data Lab, an enterprise focused on creating estimates on global consumer spending.

  

  In this dataset, a consumer is classified as someone who spends at least $12 per day. Sources for the data include the World Bank, UN, Eurostat, and OECD databases.

  Ranked: Largest Consumer Markets in 2030

  Ranked first, China is expected to have slightly more than 1 billion consumers by 2030, a 15% increase from 2024. Just across the Himalayas, at second place, India will have 773 million consumers, up from 529 million today, a staggering 46% increase.

  The rise of the global middle class, thanks to expanding economies and wealth, is expected to boom in this region, in turn increasing local spending ability.

  This nearly 2 billion-strong consumer market in India and China could have wide-ranging effects on the global economy. Businesses may shift their focus to cater to these markets, offering more customized products and employing different marketing strategies. This could also require businesses to realign their supply chains and build new distribution networks closer to these markets.

  Rank	Country	Consumer Market (2030 Projections)	% Change (from 2024)
  1	🇨🇳 China	1,062,294,436	+15%
  2	🇮🇳 India	772,929,623	+46%
  3	🇺🇸 U.S.	348,393,863	+4%
  4	🇮🇩 Indonesia	158,448,996	+27%
  5	🇧🇷 Brazil	135,902,978	+9%
  6	🇷🇺 Russia	127,324,784	0%
  7	🇯🇵 Japan	118,264,539	-3%
  8	🇵🇰 Pakistan	99,263,255	+30%
  9	🇲🇽 Mexico	91,698,269	+9%
  10	🇧🇩 Bangladesh	87,183,060	+59%
  11	🇻🇳 Vietnam	80,383,445	+34%
  12	🇩🇪 Germany	80,370,656	0%
  13	🇹🇷 Turkey	79,955,332	+8%
  14	🇬🇧 UK	69,179,607	+3%
  15	🇫🇷 France	67,980,532	+3%
  16	🇪🇬 Egypt	67,710,385	+25%
  17	🇵🇭 Philippines	65,545,279	+35%
  18	🇹🇭 Thailand	58,237,555	+10%
  19	🇮🇹 Italy	55,596,017	-1%
  20	🇮🇷 Iran	55,219,774	+11%

  Following current population rankings, the U.S. (348 million consumers), and Indonesia (158 million consumers) rank third and fourth respectively. Brazil, the sixth-most populated country, will have the fifth-largest consumers class by 2030, close to 136 million people.

  At the same time, not all countries will see a growing consumer base. Russia and Germany are expected to stagnate, while Japan and Italy could even see a decline, a direct representation of plateauing population growth within these countries.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/16/2024 – 22:40

• America's Dysfunctional Overclass
  America’s Dysfunctional Overclass

  Authored by Michael Barone via The Epoch Times,

  What does America’s overclass think of the rest of us? The short answer is “not much.”

  They think ordinary people’s splurging on natural resources is destroying the planet and needs to be cut back forcefully.

  And that the government needs to stamp down on ordinary people enjoying luxuries that, in their view, should be reserved for the top elites.

  

  These are the implications of the results of two surveys of elite people conducted by pollster Scott Rasmussen by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, an organization that supports low tax rates and low government spending. The surveys covered not large swaths of the population but were confined to the top 1 percent of society.

  One survey, the Elite, included only respondents with postgraduate degrees, household incomes above $150,000 and residents in a ZIP code with more than 10,000 people per square mile. Another, Ivy League graduates, included adults who attended Ivy League or other selective private colleges such as Chicago, Duke, Northwestern, or Stanford.

  You probably won’t be surprised that the large majority of this Elite feels economically well off. Nor, if you’ve kept up with recent changes in party identification, will you be much surprised that 73 percent of these elites identify as Democrats and only 14 percent as Republicans.

  What is surprising is the extent to which this American overclass would deprive its fellow citizens of things they have taken for granted. Half of these groups, 47 percent of Elites and 55 percent of Ivies, say the United States provides people with “too much individual freedom.”

  More than three-quarters favor, “to fight climate change, the strict rationing of energy, gas, and meat,” a proposition rejected by 63 percent of the public. Again, “to fight climate change,” between half and two-thirds favor bans on gas stoves (a recent target despite demurrals of Biden bureaucrats and New York state Democrats), gasoline-powered cars (heavily disfavored by Biden Democrats and California rules) and SUVs, “private” air conditioning, and “nonessential air travel.”

  The ascetic economist Thorstein Veblen, in his 1899 book “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” argued that the rich engaged in “conspicuous consumption” activities such as golf, polo, and art collecting, for which ordinary people had neither the time nor the money.

  A century and a quarter later, America has rich people hoping to deprive ordinary people of “conspicuous consumption” activities they can afford and where they clutter up the airports, interstate highways, and high-end malls.

  For generations, Democrats have liked to portray themselves as the tribune of the little man, the defender of policies that enable ordinary people without special advantages, or with many disadvantages, to live comfortably, securely, and in dignity. There may be some condescension in this posture, but also a considerable element of respect.

  This survey shows that today, this 1 percent of the public, which includes virtually all elective and appointive Democrats in Washington and states like California, New York, and New Jersey, tends to see the bulk of its fellow citizens as selfish and destructive, in need not just of discipline but deserving of harsh restrictions on their freedoms.

  This attitude is echoed by the wider group of Democratic voters. A 2023 Pew Research survey shows that while 31 percent of Republicans, even with their party out of power, think America “stands above all other countries in the world,” only 9 percent of Democrats do so.

  It’s an unstable and dangerous situation when a largely one-party elite looks, with fear and loathing, across what Rasmussen describes as a “Grand Canyon gap” between it and its multiparty fellow citizens. It’s reminiscent somehow of the “let them eat cake” French royalists in 1789 or Russian nobles in 1917. An overclass this disconnected and contemptuous risks disruption.

  A better approach comes from an undoubted member of America’s elite, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Speaking to CNBC at Davos last month, Dimon recounted a bus trip to Spokane and Boise and Bozeman: “People are growing. They’re hungry to grow. They’re innovating. It’s everywhere. It’s not just Silicon Valley.”

  Perhaps aware the Mountain West votes Republican, Dimon, who calls himself a centrist Democrat, conceded that former President Donald Trump “wasn’t wrong about some of the critical issues” and was “kind of right” about NATO and immigration and “grew the economy quite well.”

  Of elite Democrats’ contempt for Trump supporters, he had less to say.

  “The Democrats have done a good job with the deplorables, hugging their Bibles and their beer and their guns. I mean, really? Can we stop that stuff and actually grow up and treat other people respectfully and listen to them a little bit?”

  It’s a question other members of our dysfunctional overclass might ask themselves.

  *  *  *

  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, 02/16/2024 – 22:20

• Tennis Courts Slated For Empty Manhattan Lot After Office Tower Plans Postponed
  Tennis Courts Slated For Empty Manhattan Lot After Office Tower Plans Postponed

  Vornado Realty Trust appears to have abandoned plans for an office tower near Madison Square Garden as the commercial real estate downturn worsens. 

  Bloomberg reports the site of the once-planned 61-floor office tower in Manhattan could be “temporarily” converted to tennis courts for the US Open. Vornado’s website said the site has the potential for basketball courts, New York Fashion Week, or even a giant billboard. 

  

  The new office tower was set to replace Hotel Pennsylvania at 401 Seventh Avenue (15 Penn Plaza) in Manhattan, across from Pennsylvania Station and Madison Square Garden. The hotel was demolished in 2023, and Vornado has not built the new office tower due to CRE turmoil. 

  But Vornado put the tower plan on hold along with parts of the massive redevelopment plan to remake Penn Station last year after high interest rates and the shift to working from home triggered a crisis in the commercial real estate market. -Bloomberg 

  A Vornado spokesperson told Bloomberg: “We are currently considering a number of potential interim options for the Hotel Pennsylvania site.” 

  Chief Executive Officer Steven Roth told investors in an earnings call this week that there’s a “total blacklisting of office in the capital markets.” Hence, this is why Vornado can’t find the financing for the new tower. He also warned about “office apocalypse” spreading across Midtown. 

  The construction delay also came as office supply nationwide developed into a sizeable surplus as demand evaporated. This was noted by Morgan Stanley analyst Ronald Kamdem in a note this week titled “Where Is The Highest Supply Risk Across CRE Sectors?”  

  

  What’s unfolding is a slow-motion trainwreck in the CRE space. Financing for new office towers is becoming increasingly difficult to secure, and some properties, such as the one in Manhattan, are being repurposed into tennis courts.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/16/2024 – 22:00

• Elite Colleges Reconsidering SAT Score Requirements
  Elite Colleges Reconsidering SAT Score Requirements

  Authored by Eric Lundrum via American Greatness,

  Several elite universities are considering reversing recent decisions to reduce or even eliminate requirements for application that include standardized test scores such as the SAT exams.

  

  According to Axios, multiple colleges used the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to weaken the importance of SAT and ACT test scores in most student applications. But in recent weeks, several schools have reversed course; Yale is considering repealing its prior policy of making SAT/ACT requirements optional, with Dartmouth already reinstating the requirements earlier this month. MIT reversed a similar policy back in 2022.

  Other schools that have eliminated SAT/ACT requirements include Harvard and Columbia. Harvard, along with Cornell and Princeton, have extended their policy of making the scores optional, while Columbia’s policy remains permanent.

  One of the motivating factors behind the reversal is ongoing research showing a clear correlation between students’ standardized test scores, and their subsequent academic performance and graduation rates in college. Some schools had previously opposed the test requirements for reasons of “diversity,” baselessly accusing the tests of being “racist” and against minority students.

  Dartmouth pointed to a study that had been commissioned by the university’s president, which “confirms that standardized testing — when assessed using the local norms at a student’s high school” is crucial in evaluating an applicant’s potential.

  In a statement, Yale’s undergraduate office said that they “expect to announce a decision on its long-term testing policy in the next few weeks.” In the meantime, students applying for the Fall of 2024 will still fall under the “not optional” category when it comes to standardized tests.

  Brown University is currently awaiting a committee’s recommendations on how to move forward with standardized testing, as well as other practices such as legacy admissions and early decisions. The committee is expected to finish its report in the next few months.

  There are still over 2,000 schools in the country which remain either optional or completely free of standardized test requirements ahead of the 2024-2025 academic year. Meanwhile, the National Education Association (NEA) has demanded that all colleges eliminate testing requirements, with NEA president Becky Pringle declaring in a statement that “All students deserve and have the ability to demonstrate knowledge in many ways that are measurable by those who know them best: Their educators.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/16/2024 – 21:40

• Kremlin Calls Nuclear Space Weapon Story A 'Trick' To Get Biden's Ukraine Aid Passed
  Kremlin Calls Nuclear Space Weapon Story A ‘Trick’ To Get Biden’s Ukraine Aid Passed

  The Kremlin has blasted what it is calling the “malicious fabrication” by the US government of its alleged new ‘space weapon’ which set off a frenzy of media speculation this week.

  Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he believes it was a trick by lawmakers to get Biden’s massive Ukraine and foreign defense aid package passed. “It’s obvious that Washington is trying to force Congress to vote on the aid bill by hook or by crook,” he said.

  

  US officials and media continue to walk back the initial hyped and headline-grabbing claims of a Russian nuclear space weapon.

  According to the latest from Reuters, “The space-based weapon U.S. intelligence believes Russia may be developing is more likely a nuclear-powered device to blind, jam or fry the electronics inside satellites than an explosive nuclear warhead to shoot them down, analysts said.”

  And more, “Analysts tracking Russia’s space programs say the space threat is probably not a nuclear warhead but rather a high-powered device requiring nuclear energy to carry out an array of attacks against satellites.” The report goes on to list:

  These might include signal-jammers, weapons that can blind image sensors, or – a more dire possibility – electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) that could fry all satellites’ electronics within a certain orbital region.”

  During a Thursday press briefing White House national security council spokesman John Kirby belatedly confirmed that reports of a new Russian capability was related to “an anti-satellite capability that Russia is developing,” but that “This is not an active capability that’s been deployed.”

  It all started when Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio set Capitol Hill media correspondents into a frenzy of speculation after on Wednesday he issued an ominous-sounding statement about “information concerning a serious national security threat.”

  Cue trolling and mockery by Russian government accounts…

  ⚡️⚡️ YET ANOTHER THREAT ⚡️⚡️:

  Russia’s nuclear space “weapon”

  With everyone talking about the US government panicking over a new Russian “space weapon”, we suggest to look into what it really could be.

  (Remember the warmongers in the West saying Russia was stealing washing… pic.twitter.com/ILEGjCaH5Y

  — Russian Embassy in South Africa 🇷🇺 (@EmbassyofRussia) February 16, 2024

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

  This sparked a very short-lived media panic, and by Friday it’s already largely been forgotten about. There are even new reports saying Moscow has held out the possibility of cooperation with the West on new satellite technology, but of course this could also be another example of the Kremlin trolling Western media.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/16/2024 – 21:20

• House OKs Bill Prohibiting Any Normalization With Syria
  House OKs Bill Prohibiting Any Normalization With Syria

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  On Wednesday, the House passed a bill that prohibits the US from opening diplomatic relations with the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad and expands harsh sanctions on Syria to prevent other countries from normalizing with Syria.

  The Assad Regime Anti-Normalization Act passed in a vote of 389-32, demonstrating broad bipartisan support for the economic war against Syria. Only 28 Democrats and four Republicans voted against the bill. The legislation now heads to the Senate.

  

  The bill was introduced as a reaction to Arab countries repairing relations with the Assad government and Syria being brought back into the Arab league. Hawks in the US are opposed to Syria’s regional integration and are hoping they can prevent it using sanctions under the Caesar Act.

  The Caesar Act was implemented in 2020 and allows the US to sanction any individual or entity that does business with the Syrian government. The sanctions are specifically designed to prevent Syria from rebuilding, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken has previously said it’s US policy to “oppose the reconstruction of Syria” as long as Assad remains in power.

  The text of the bill declares that it’s US policy “to actively oppose recognition or normalization of relations by other governments with any Government of Syria that is led by Bashar Al-Assad, including by fully implementing the mandatory primary and secondary sanctions in the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act.”

  On top of the economic sanctions on Syria, the US has about 900 troops occupying the eastern portion of the country, where it backs the Kurdish-led SDF and controls oil fields.

  Syria and regional analyst Joshua Landis: “What an odd form of justice for Syrians: block reconstruction and ensure poverty.”

  US Passes Bill to extend Sanctions on Syria until 2032

  “Congress is sending a message that it remains committed to justice for the Syrian people.”

  Chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee Mike McCaul said.

  Mr Ghanem adds “If Caesar is allowed to expire, then it will… pic.twitter.com/ih8toxgWsR

  — Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) February 16, 2024

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

  Recent reports have suggested the US was considering a withdrawal from Syria as its forces have been under attack since October due to US support for the Israeli slaughter in Gaza. But an SDF commander said last week that he received assurances from the US that a withdrawal was not on the table.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/16/2024 – 21:00

• Visualizing Racial Diversity In America's 10 Largest States
  Visualizing Racial Diversity In America’s 10 Largest States

  Over the last decade, America has become increasingly more diverse as demographic patterns shift across the population.

  With over 39 million people, California is not only the most populous state, but one of the most diverse in the country.

  Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu created this graphic to show the racial diversity of the 10 biggest states by population, based on data from the U.S. Census.

  

  How Diverse Are America’s Most Populous States?

  Here is the racial breakdown of the 10 largest U.S. states:

  

  As the table above shows, California has the highest proportion of Asian Americans across the top 10 states, comprising 15% of the population.

  Meanwhile, Georgia’s ethnic makeup includes 32% of Black Americans, the highest across the most populous states. As diversity has risen over the last decade, it has significantly influenced politics at both the state and national level. The state voted Republican for every presidential election from 1996-2016, but flipped blue in 2020.

  With 80% of the population being White Americans, Ohio has the highest share across the biggest states. While diversity has increased since 2010, it has been seen mostly in urban and suburban districts while diversity has stagnated in rural areas.

  Overall, 24% of rural areas in the U.S. are made up of non-White Americans, rising by a median rate of 3.5% across counties since 2010. While this debunks the myth that “rural” is synonymous with “white”, racial diversity across rural areas falls below the national average of 42% of the population being people of color.

  Beyond the top 10 states, ethnic diversity is the highest in Hawaii, Nevada, and Maryland.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/16/2024 – 20:40

• "Biden Reelection Chances Do Not Look Favorable": Political, Economic Indicators "Not Promising", Gallup Finds
  “Biden Reelection Chances Do Not Look Favorable”: Political, Economic Indicators “Not Promising”, Gallup Finds

  By Jeffrey Jones and Megan Brennan of Gallup

  Several key indicators of the 2024 election environment indicate that President Joe Biden faces an uphill climb to win a second term. His job approval rating, Americans’ satisfaction with how things are going in the country and their confidence in the economy are below the levels associated with successful reelection bids in recent elections.

  

  While Democrats hold a slight edge in national party identification and partisan leanings, that advantage is smaller than what it has been in past presidential elections won by Democratic incumbents.

  In less direct measures of the electoral environment, Americans are more inclined to say that they are worse off financially, that it is harder to buy things and that the U.S. is as respected throughout the world as it was before Biden took office.

  Biden’s fate will ultimately be determined by whether Americans’ views on these metrics improve over the course of the year (as they did for Bill Clinton in 1996 and Barack Obama in 2012), stay the same or get worse (as they did for George H.W. Bush in 1992 and Donald Trump in 2020).

  Presidential Job Approval

  Incumbent job approval is arguably the best predictor of reelection success. Presidents with approval ratings of 50% or higher close to Election Day have all been reelected. All but one president with a sub-50% approval rating lost, the exception being George W. Bush. He won reelection with a 48% approval rating in Gallup’s final 2004 preelection poll taken in late October. However, he registered multiple 50% readings earlier in the month and had a 51% approval rating among likely voters in that final survey.

  Among the approval ratings that did not carry incumbents to victory, Trump’s 46% approval rating is the highest and Gerald Ford’s 45% is close behind. The inauspicious ratings descend from there, all the way down to 34% for George H.W. Bush.

  Biden’s 41% job approval rating, the lowest among incumbents in January of an election year, puts him in a precarious spot. It has not been unusual for incumbents to be below the 50% threshold this early on. But Biden’s reelection may depend on his ability to boost his numbers close to that threshold, something Clinton, Obama and Richard Nixon were able to do but Trump and Ford were not. Other presidents, including George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, saw significant declines in approval during their fourth year in office.

  

  Satisfaction With the State of the Nation

  Over the past four decades, incumbent presidents have still been reelected when majorities of Americans are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country, but the cutoff seems to be 30% satisfaction. Less than 30% of U.S. adults were satisfied at the time of the 1992 and 2020 elections when the elder Bush and Trump lost, whereas more than 30% were satisfied in the years incumbents won.

  Biden started 2024 with 20% of Americans satisfied with the country’s direction. Obama and Clinton had similar marks in January of their reelection years but saw satisfaction increase as the year wore on. For Trump, the opposite was the case, as the relatively high 41% satisfaction in January 2020 was soon dashed by the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic downturn, as well as racial strife associated with the George Floyd killing.

  

  Economic Evaluations

  Although the economy is always a key issue in presidential election campaigns, Americans’ confidence in the economy is not always determinative of election outcomes. Gallup has computed its Economic Confidence Index in five presidential election years since 1992 when an incumbent sought reelection. The index summarizes Americans’ assessments of current national economic conditions and their perceptions of whether the economy is getting better or worse. Positive scores indicate economic optimism, and negative scores indicate pessimism, with a minimum theoretical score of -100 and a maximum of +100.

  Among the past five incumbent elections, Americans were decidedly positive about the economy in one — 1996, when Clinton was reelected — and decidedly negative in one — 1992, when George H.W. Bush was defeated. In 2004, 2012 and 2020, index scores were close to the scale’s zero midpoint, indicating neither positive nor negative views of the economy. In two of those elections (2004 and 2012), the incumbent prevailed, but in 2020, Trump lost, likely because the coronavirus pandemic overshadowed the economy as an issue.

  Currently, Americans’ economic confidence is closer to that of 1992 than other incumbent election years. However, the index has been improving in recent months. Biden can hope that economic perceptions follow a similar trajectory to 2012. That year, confidence started more negative than positive but approached a more neutral rating by the election, which Obama won.

  

  Party Identification and Leaning

  Americans’ partisanship strongly aligns with how they will vote and is thus an important indicator of election outcomes. Democrats typically lead Republicans in Americans’ party preferences; therefore, the size of that lead indicates whether Democrats are in a strong or weak position.

  Gallup’s January 2024 poll shows the Democratic Party with a three-point advantage over Republicans: 46% identify as or lean Democratic, and 43% identify as or lean Republican. If this were October, these figures would be concerning for Biden, as it would represent the smallest Democratic advantage in an incumbent election year, including 2004 when Republican George W. Bush won with Democrats holding a five-point edge. In years Democratic incumbents won (1996 and 2012), the Democrats’ party advantage was +10 and +7, respectively.

  A possible silver lining for the Biden campaign is that Democrats’ party advantage has often increased between January and October or November of an election year. This has occurred in all election years featuring an incumbent since 1992.

  

  While Democratic Party identification and leaning have increased in each of the past five election years involving an incumbent, that pattern has not occurred in other recent elections. In non-incumbent years, Democrats increased their advantage in one (2000), saw no change in another (2016) and saw it shrink in one (2008).

  Better Off Than Three Years Ago

  Americans are evenly divided in their assessments of whether they are better off now than they were three years ago, with 48% saying they are and 47% saying they are not.

  Gallup has asked this question in the early stages of previous election campaigns when incumbents were running for reelection. The current share of U.S. adults who say they are better off now is down from 2020’s pre-pandemic reading, but it is similar to the readings in prior election cycles. In 1992, 1996 and 2003, more Americans said they were better off, and two of the three presidents won reelection. In 2012, slightly more said they were not better off, but Obama still won another term.

  

  Americans’ perceptions of whether they are personally better off now than three years ago are largely influenced by their party leanings and, to a lesser extent, their income level. There is currently a wide gulf between Democrats’ (74%) and Republicans’ (22%) assessments of whether they are better off than three years ago, and independents are squarely in the middle of the two groups, at 48%.

  This is the fifth election cycle of the past six that partisans in the same party as the sitting president seeking reelection are significantly more likely than their counterparts to say they are better off. The gaps in partisans’ reports since 1992 have ranged from four points in 1996 when Clinton ran for a second term to 60 points in 2020 when Trump ran. The current 52-point gap is the second highest.

  

  Meanwhile, 53% of those in upper-income households and 50% in middle-income households say they are better off, compared with 41% in lower-income households.

  The “better off than three years ago” question is typically only asked early in election campaigns. Near the end of prior campaigns, Gallup has asked Americans whether they were better off than four years ago. That question has not shown an obvious relationship to election outcomes, exemplified by the high scores in the 2020 election that Trump eventually lost and weaker scores in Reagan’s 1984 landslide.

  Personal Finances

  While the current U.S. inflation rate is far below its 9.1% recent peak in June 2022, it is about twice what it was in November 2020, and many Americans continue to struggle because of high prices. Only 35% of U.S. adults say it is easier to buy things at stores than it was three years ago, while 59% say it is not.

  The share of Americans who currently say shopping is not easier is higher than in 1992, 1996, 2003 and 2020. The question was not asked in other presidential election cycles and is not asked at the end of campaigns.

  The previous reading from January 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic forced widespread shutdowns, showed a slim 52% majority saying it was easier for them to make purchases than three years ago, and 36% said it was not.

  

  Americans’ reports of their own financial situation are also more negative now than in early 2020. Currently, 37% of U.S. adults say they are financially better off than a year ago, 45% say they are worse off, and 16% volunteer that they are the same. These readings are similar to last year’s but sharply different from the last election year, 2020, when 59% reported being better off and 20% worse off.

  

  Looking ahead, a steady 61% majority of Americans think they will be financially better off in a year, but this is lower than the 74% who said the same in 2020.

  Readings on these personal finance measures differ significantly by party identification, with Democrats much more positive than Republicans. Democrats (58%) are more than four times as likely as Republicans (14%) to say buying things is easier than it was three years ago. Similarly, Democrats (57%) are nearly three times as likely as their Republican counterparts (20%) to say their personal financial situation is better now than three years ago. Independents’ views on both are closer to Republicans’, as 33% say shopping is easier and 35% report an improvement in their financial situation.

  There is no significant difference by household income level in views of buying power, as majorities across income groups say it is not easier to shop. However, lower-income (32%) and middle-income households (36%) are less likely than upper-income households (47%) to say their personal financial situation is better than one year ago.

  U.S. International Respect

  When it comes to foreign policy, only about one-quarter of Americans, 27%, think the U.S. is as respected throughout the world as it was three years ago, while 67% say it is not. Just 3% volunteer that it is more respected now. Americans were similarly pessimistic about the United States’ international standing in past election years, with no more than 40% (in 1992 and 2000) believing respect for the U.S. remained intact. The current reading is identical to 2003 and similar to 2012 (30%).

  

  The U.S. has had varying degrees of involvement in world affairs over the past three years, ranging from its military departure from Afghanistan in 2021, its support for Ukraine in the Russia-Ukraine war, and its military support for Israel following the October 2023 Hamas invasion of Israel, which resulted in an Israeli military operation in Gaza. Both the Russia-Ukraine and Hamas-Israeli wars are ongoing, and Americans are sharply divided over the proper U.S. role in each.

  Democrats are split in their view of whether the U.S. is as respected around the world as it was three years ago, with 47% saying it is and 44% saying it is not. At the same time, 7% of Republicans think the U.S. is as respected, and 91% think it is not. Independents fall in between the partisan groups, with 27% saying it is respected and 67% saying it is not.

  Bottom Line

  Biden’s reelection chances do not look very favorable in early 2024. His job approval rating is lower than all recent incumbents at the same point, including those who ultimately lost the election, and key national mood indicators are more in line with those for past losers than winners. Party identification offers Biden some hope but depends on Democrats making gains rather than holding steady in national support, something that has happened at least slightly in each of the past five incumbent elections.

  Biden’s chances may rest on him experiencing a comeback similar to what Obama achieved in 2012 when Biden was serving as vice president. That year, national mood indicators and Obama’s job approval rating significantly improved during the campaign, and the president was elected to a second term. Unlike Obama, though, Biden also faces questions about his age and ability to carry out his duties in a second term. Biden is also starting at a lower point in job approval than Obama did, meaning he has to show a bigger improvement.

  Biden won his first term after national mood indicators worsened throughout the 2020 election year, which led to his defeating Trump, the incumbent.

  Many Americans continue to struggle financially, and Biden has so far been unable to convince voters of the economy’s health or his accomplishments. If he cannot do so by the summer, particularly before the Democratic National Convention, his chances of winning reelection will grow increasingly bleak.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/16/2024 – 20:20

• Maryland Proposes Raising Registration Fee For Pickup Trucks
  Maryland Proposes Raising Registration Fee For Pickup Trucks

  As if the Federal government wasn’t doing enough to try and incentivize buying EVs by subsidizing purchases and shaming people who drive ICE vehicles, Maryland is now considering raising vehicle registration fees for trucks. 

  And what would government legislation absconding with more of your purchasing power be without an altruistic sounding name? This one is called the “Pedestrian Fatality Prevention Act of 2024,” according to CBS affiliate WBOC. 

  In other words, if you don’t support the higher fees, you’re rooting for pedestrians to die. 

  The Maryland Department of Motor Vehicles notes that the registration fee for smaller vehicles, like the Honda Civic, is currently $135, with a proposed reduction to $50 under new legislation. Conversely, the fee for larger vehicles, such as the Ford F-250 pickup truck, now at $187, would rise to $229 if the legislation is enacted.

  

  The report says that vehicles weighing 3,700 pounds or less have a registration fee of $135, while those over 3,700 pounds are charged $187. The proposed changes would introduce a tiered fee structure: $50.50 for vehicles up to 3,500 pounds, $101 for those between 3,500 and 3,700 pounds, $153 for vehicles between 3,700 and 5,000 pounds, and $229.50 for vehicles over 5,000 pounds.

  “Pick-up trucks shouldn’t be penalized because it’s a pick-up truck. It’s a necessary vehicle in a lot of cases,” commented pick-up driver David Kenney. 

  Delegate Robbyn Lewis of Baltimore City, who proposed the bill, argues that the revenue from increased fees would fund transit and pedestrian safety projects, citing the higher risk of injury and death from crashes involving heavier vehicles.

  Kenney, while prioritizing pedestrian safety, questions the effectiveness of raising fees on pickup trucks as a means to reduce fatalities, emphasizing the need for careful driving.

  The bill is currently under review in Maryland’s legislature, with discussions ongoing about its potential to enhance pedestrian safety – though we’re sure the selling point is really the extra revenue it’ll contribute to the state’s top line. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/16/2024 – 20:00

• Study Finds 80% Of Americans Exposed To Fertility-Lowering Chemicals In Cheerios, Quaker Oats
  Study Finds 80% Of Americans Exposed To Fertility-Lowering Chemicals In Cheerios, Quaker Oats

  Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

  According to a recent study, four in five Americans tested positive for an agricultural chemical found in several wheat and oat products, including brands like Cheerios and Quaker Oats.

  

  The peer-reviewed study, published in the JESEE journal on Feb. 15, looked at urine samples from American citizens to determine their exposure to chlormequat chloride—a plant growth chemical. Exposure to the chemical can result in lower fertility and harm developing fetuses even at doses below acceptable levels set by regulators. Researchers detected chlormequat in 80 percent of urine samples collected between 2017 and 2023, with “a significant increase in concentrations for samples from 2023.”

  The chemical was detected in “92 percent of oat-based foods purchased in May 2023, including Quaker Oats and Cheerios,” said the Environmental Working Group (EWG), which conducted the study.

  Out of 25 conventional oat products tested, 23 had “detectable levels” of chlormequat. One in eight organic oat products had the chemical, while two in nine wheat products had low concentrations of chlormequat.

  Researchers collected 96 urine samples, out of which 77 showed the presence of chlormequat. The numbers suggest that the subjects likely underwent “continuous exposure” to the chemical since chlormequat leaves the body about 24 hours after ingestion.

  The frequency of the chemical in samples was observed to rise with time. In 2017, 69 percent of samples had chlormequat, which jumped to 74 percent in 2018-2022 and then to 90 percent in 2023.

  The study suggested that the higher chemical concentration in 2023 samples “may reflect the likely recent introduction of chlormequat into the U.S. food supply due to EPA regulatory action changes involving chlormequat.”

  Such changes include “establishing limits on chlormequat in food in 2018 and raising those limits for oats in 2020,” it said. “These actions permitted import and sale of agricultural products that had been treated with chlormequat, for example, from Canada.”

  At present, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) only allows the use of chlormequat in the United States for ornamental crops, not for food crops. The agency allowed the chemical to be present in imported oats in 2018—raising the allowable limits in 2020.

  Following a 2019 application submitted by chlormequat manufacturer Taminco, the Biden EPA proposed in April last year to allow the use of chlormequat on oats, barley, wheat, and triticale grown in the United States for the first time. EWG said it “opposes the plan.”

  The study suggested that if domestic use of chlormequat were approved, “chlormequat levels would likely continue to increase in oats, wheat, and other grain foods, leading to higher levels of exposure for the U.S. general population.”

  The research was funded by Skyline Foundation. The authors declared no competing interests in the study.

  Threshold Levels

  The study pointed out that urine sample donors were exposed to chlormequat at “levels several orders of magnitude below” the recommended safety thresholds set by the EPA and the European Food Safety Authority. However, “toxicological studies on chlormequat suggest reevaluation of these safety thresholds may be warranted,” it said.

  Researchers pointed to studies showing that mice and pigs exposed to doses lower than these thresholds have displayed “reduced fertility.” One analysis found that exposure to chlormequat at a dose equivalent to a level used for determining the EPA threshold “altered fetal growth as well as metabolism and body composition in neonatal mice.”

  “Additionally, the regulatory thresholds do not consider the adverse effects of mixtures of chemicals that may impact the reproductive system, which have been shown to cause additive or synergistic effects at doses lower than for individual chemical exposures.”

  These factors raise “concerns about the potential health effects associated with current exposure levels, especially for individuals on the higher end of exposure in general populations of Europe and the U.S.”

  Speaking to The New York Post, Olga Naidenko, EWG’s vice president of science investigations, recommended shoppers “buy organic oat products since these oats are grown without the use of toxic pesticides such as chlormequat and glyphosate.”

  ‘Alarm Bells’

  In an interview with Newsweek, Alexis M. Temkin, lead author of the EWG study, said that the prevalence of chlormequat in people’s food and urine “raises alarm bells.”

  He called for further investigation into the matter and said that the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration “should be testing grains for chlormequat as part of annual pesticide monitoring.”

  The EPA “needs to fully consider the potential risks to children’s health from chlormequat exposure and reconsider their recent decisions to allow chlormequat to be present in children’s foods.”

  EPA announced the proposal to use chlormequat in domestic crop agriculture last April. Since then, several organizations like EWG have opposed the move.

  In May 2023, Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) said that it collected over 10,000 signatures calling on the agency to reject the proposal.

  “All this chemical is used for is to make the stems of small grains a little bit stronger, so fewer of them bend or break. A slightly bigger harvest isn’t worth the risk to our health,” it said in comments to the EPA.

  “Research shows that chlormequat chloride disrupts fetal growth and harms the reproductive system. We shouldn’t allow its use on food crops unless and until it’s proven completely safe—especially since we know we can farm without it. “

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/16/2024 – 19:40

• Russian Media Thrilled By Biden's LNG "Gift" To Putin
  Russian Media Thrilled By Biden’s LNG “Gift” To Putin

  This week, President Vladimir Putin praised President Joe Biden as a more experienced and predictable president than Donald Trump, hoping the 81yo president “with a poor memory” wins a second term.

  

  Meanwhile, Trump made remarks during a campaign rally Wednesday night in South Carolina on Putin’s comments: 

  “He’s just said that he would much rather have Joe Biden as president than Trump. Now that’s a compliment. A lot of people said, ‘Oh, gee, that’s too bad.’ No, no, that’s a good thing.”

  Democrats spent years framing Trump as ‘Putin’s puppet,’ but the actions by Biden, essentially handing over the global energy kingdom to Moscow by halting permits for new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects in Texas, is a stark reminder of why Putin prefers the elderly and weak president. 

  Last month, the Wall Street Journal editorial board called Biden’s LNG export license halt “an election-year gift to Russia and Iran.“

  

  And the editorial board is out with another piece titled “Biden’s LNG ‘Gift’ to Vladimir Putin.” 

  

  This latest note by the editorial board points out how Russian media is “thrilled” by Biden’s LNG gas export ban:

  “Now it is not Russia, but the United States that wants to bring the Germans to their knees,” gloated the Russian newspaper Pravda after the Energy Department imposed a moratorium on permits for new LNG export projects last month. Pravda argued that Germany will eventually have to return to buying Russian gas because it will have no other choice, and it may be right.

  They cite another Russian media outlet:

  RedDigest, a Russian-based news source, also predicted Europe will need to buy more Russian gas and be forced to pay a higher price. “The EU may well turn to Moscow for additional supplies. Of course, there will be no talk of any discounts,” a Feb. 3 article sneered. Mr. Biden’s LNG embargo will leave Europe more vulnerable to Mr. Putin’s energy blackmail.

  And another:

  Bloknot, a pro-war Russian media outlet, accused the U.S. of scheming to replace Russian gas and then pulling the rug from under Europeans. “A brilliant scam: how the States fooled Europe with gas,” read a Bloknot headline. RT (formerly Russia Today) gloated that Mr. Biden’s “very timely decision to ban LNG exports” was a “gift to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.”

  In a separate note, WSJ said Biden’s attempt to punish Texas over the border dispute is part of a campaign by wealthy donors – including the Rockefeller family – to pressure the government into shifting away from LNG. 

  Why are America’s elites and an elderly president with a “poor memory” giving Putin the keys to the global energy kingdom under the guise of ‘climate change’? 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/16/2024 – 19:20

• California Counties Could Be Forced To Pay $300 Million To Cover COVID-Era Program
  California Counties Could Be Forced To Pay $300 Million To Cover COVID-Era Program

  Authored by Travis Gillmore via The Epoch Times,

  With the state and some local governments facing significant budget shortfalls this year, finances could become even tighter after the Federal Emergency Management Agency, better known as FEMA, informed California officials that it will deny some pandemic-related reimbursement claims.

  

  At issue is money spent on unoccupied hotel rooms and housing homeless individuals for lengthy stays between June 11, 2021, and May 11, 2023, as part of the state’s Project Roomkey program.

  The governor’s Office of Emergency Services said it is working to reverse the agency’s decision.

  “California is committed to maximizing federal aid to local communities and intends to aggressively advocate for FEMA to rescind the decision to deny Public Assistance to local governments,” Brian Ferguson, deputy director for crisis communications and public affairs for the Office of Emergency Services, told The Epoch Times by email Feb. 14.

  More than $300 million is at stake, according to a Jan. 31 letter sent to FEMA by Nancy Ward, director of the emergency services office.

  “[We] urge FEMA to rescind the decision to deny public assistance funding … as it changes the rules for reimbursement of … expenses after such services were provided and directly conflicts with prior FEMA guidance,” Ms. Ward wrote.

  The change represents a retroactive revision that failed to meet the emergency management agency’s self-declared notification policies that require a 30-day notice to the state, according to the letter.

  Such will result in some counties across California experiencing “financial burdens, budgetary shortfalls,” and a diminished ability to provide essential services, Ms. Ward wrote.

  

  A Project Roomkey participant stands outside her door at The Stanton Inn in Stanton, Calif., on October 8, 2020. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

  Documents attached to the letter detail costs that some counties would incur, including $22 million for Ventura, $32 million for Sonoma, and up to $34 million for San Diego. San Francisco submitted claims for approximately $881 million, with $190 million ineligible based on the federal government’s recent decision.

  Additionally, the state is alleging that FEMA is inconsistently applying its policies for other states. Officials point to the agency’s April 2023 announcement that Vermont would receive nearly $22 million to reimburse costs for hotel lodging and services to homeless populations through July 2022.

  The guidelines presented to California in a letter sent by FEMA in October 2023 represent a reimbursement period of a full year less than is being provided to Vermont, according to the letter.

  Disputing the state’s allegations, the agency claimed all states are held to the same standards—with guidance coming from the Centers for Disease Control, also known as the CDC.

  “Every state, territory and tribal nation was provided with the same guidance and policy updates throughout the pandemic,” a spokesperson for FEMA told The Epoch Times by email Feb. 13.

  “This guidance also included information on transitioning individuals from other programs that could … keep them out of high-risk situations.”

  The agency is reviewing thousands of applications from across the country and is focused on finalizing reimbursement for eligible applicants while maintaining fiscal responsibility, according to the spokesperson.

  “FEMA is committed to working with each impacted jurisdiction on all requests for federal funding to maximize reimbursement for the appropriate life saving measures they implemented to protect their citizens from COVID-19, while also ensuring the appropriate oversight of federal funds,” the representative from the emergency management agency said.

  “Consistent with this intent, FEMA will review the state of California’s recent letter regarding their COVID-19 sheltering operations and provide a response to the state as soon as possible.”

  In the letter informing the state of the agency’s decision to deny claims, Robert J. Fenton, regional administrator for FEMA Region 9—encompassing California—noted the efforts made to reduce COVID transmission by July 1, 2021, as a reason guidance was adjusted at the time.

  The agency is willing to cover costs incurred or stays of up to 20 days, the timeline recommended by the CDC said at the time. However, the bill submitted by California includes longer stays that make the claims ineligible, Mr. Fenton wrote.

  Additionally, stays of any length for homeless individuals qualify for reimbursement only if they tested positive for COVID-19, had been exposed—with documentation from health officials or medical professionals—or were at high-risk, including those over 65 or with specific underlying health conditions.

  With the state and federal agency at odds over the interpretation of policy guidelines, several counties are working with a disaster recovery attorney to seek compensation.

  The lawyer representing the counties, Wendy Huff Ellard of the national law firm Baker Donelson headquartered in Houston, Texas, told The Epoch Times the process could be lengthy and might ultimately result in arbitration.

  She said counties are hopeful that FEMA will reverse its decision once its impact on local governments is better understood.

  “The counties were under the impression that these costs would be covered,” Ms. Ellard said. “They’re relying on FEMA to reimburse these funds.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/16/2024 – 19:00

• Israel Spying On US Inquiries Into West Bank Settler Violence – With Goal Of Thwarting Sanctions
  Israel Spying On US Inquiries Into West Bank Settler Violence – With Goal Of Thwarting Sanctions

  Israeli intelligence has been spying on information shared with the US government by the Palestinian Authority about West Bank settler violence against Palestinians — spying with the purpose of thwarting US attempts to hold settlers accountable, according to a report by Israeli news outlet +972 Magazine.  

  Settler violence against West Bank Palestinians, which gets little attention in Western media, takes many forms: murder, arson, assaults, vandalism, distributing threatening leaflets ordering Palestinians to leave their homes, blocking roads with boulders, cutting power lines, shutting down water wells, and setting fire to cherished olive groves that are important to Palestinian livelihoods and culture.  

  

  Following a major 2023 uptick in violence against Palestinians — which started well before the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel but then got even worse — the United States, United Kingdom and France have started imposing sanctions on individual perpetrators. Punishments include the freezing of financial assets, barring travel to the United States, and prohibitions against Americans transacting with the sanctioned settlers. 

  According to Israeli intelligence sources, Israel has been surveilling information and allegations about settler violence that the Palestinian Authority has been forwarding to the Office of U.S. Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority (USSC), which is led by Lieutenant General Michael Fenzel. 

  Israel’s goal isn’t to join in imposing justice on the villains, but rather to help them avoid accountability imposed by the United States, the sources tell +972 Magazine. Said one: 

  “We want to know what the Americans know. The goal is to know what is going to hit us when Fenzel comes and demands answers about these cases. It’s not for going after the settlers and arresting them — that’s why a lot of people here felt uncomfortable doing it.

  …The Americans are demanding accountability from Israel, and the Israelis are finding themselves embarrassed. The fact that we are being asked to look for the materials indicates that Israel has no good answers.

  …We’re working to help refute these allegations, or prevent them from developing into sanctions.”

  On Monday, armed Israeli settlers attacked Huwwara, a town in the West Bank, occupied Palestine, and burned several cars. They also attempted to set fire to at least two houses. pic.twitter.com/xOqambL5xq

  — Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) February 13, 2024

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

  Two weeks ago, the US government sanctioned four settlers for their crimes against Palestinians. They included 29-year-old David Chai Chasdai who was determined to have instigated a February 2023 settler rampage in Huwwara (which was also attacked this week) that inflicted widespread property destruction, to include arson. One man was killed and 98 injured. Another sanctioned individual was among a group that assaulted Palestinian farmers and sympathetic Israel activists with clubs and stones. 

  The USSC has an inventory of hundreds of settler violence incident reports to work through. Those reports come from the Palestinian Authority, but USSC does its own investigations, and the final decision to impose sanctions also reflects other sources.

  ⏺The vehicle that was set on fire by herds of settlers during their attack on the town of Asira Al-Qibliya, south of #Nablus#stopwar
  . pic.twitter.com/B3lewhD5WU

  — SM (@al_melgy75828) February 12, 2024

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  One of +972 Magazine‘s Israeli sources say targets of upcoming sanctions will include senior Israeli civil servants, which will compound the mounting damage to the Zionist state’s reputation. 

  In a Feb. 1 executive order, Biden declared that “the situation in the West Bank — in particular high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction — has reached intolerable levels and constitutes a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, and the broader Middle East region.” 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/16/2024 – 18:40

• Trump Slams 'Election Interference' And 'Tyrannical Abuse Of Power' After $364 Million Verdict; Vows To Appeal
  Trump Slams ‘Election Interference’ And ‘Tyrannical Abuse Of Power’ After $364 Million Verdict; Vows To Appeal

  Update (1840ET): Trump has responded to Judge Engoron’s decision, calling him a “crooked” judge who’s just committed election interference (and much, much more). Read below.

  

  “A Crooked New York State Judge, working with a totally Corrupt Attorney General who ran on the basis of “I will get Trump,” before knowing anything about me or my company, has just fined me $355 Million based on nothing other than having built a GREAT COMPANY. ELECTION INTERFERENCE. WITCH HUNT (more to follow!),” said Trump in a post to Truth Social.

  “The Justice System in New York State, and America as a whole, is under assault by partisan, deluded, biased Judges and Prosecutors. Racist, Corrupt A.G. Tish James has been obsessed with “Getting Trump” for years, and used Crooked New York State Judge Engoron to get an illegal, unAmerican judgment against me, my family, and my tremendous business. I helped New York City during its worst of times, and now, while it is overrun with Violent Biden Migrant Crime, the Radicals are doing all they can to kick me out….”

  And according to the former president, Engoron conspired with New York Attorney General Letitia James.

  “This Election Interference and tyrannical Abuse of Power by a Crooked Judge and Crooked Attorney General cannot be tolerated. My case was already won in the Appellate Division, and more than 80% of the frivolous claims were wiped out. Yet, as I suspected, and in order to hurt me and the Republican Party politically, Crooked and Corrupt Judge Arthur Engoron ignored his loss at the Appellate Division, and came up with an outrageous $355 Million Dollar fine against me. Using a statute that has never been applied like this before, the Corrupt Judge conspired with the Crooked Attorney General, Letitia James, and punished a liquid and beautiful Corporate Empire that started in New York, and has been successful all around the world…..

  “There were no victims, and not one person testified there was any fraud. The actual witnesses established my Net Worth exceeded that reported in my Financial Statements as those Statements never included my most valuable Asset – the TRUMP Brand. The Highly Respected Expert Witness said my Financial Statements were among the best he has ever seen. I paid over $300 Million Dollars in taxes to New York City and State, and they want me gone. They are Crazed Lunatics who are destroying everything in their way. It all starts with Biden’s attacks on his Political Opponent!”

  Trump also said he’d appeal Engoron’s decision.

  “The actual bankers who were involved in the loan transactions testified I was a highly sought-after “whale” of a client with “one of the strongest personal balance sheets” they had ever seen, and I was overqualified for the loans. Those banks earned more than $100 Million Dollars in profits doing business with me and my companies. But to justify his crazed attack on me and my family, this biased, Trump Hating Judge, ignored all this, and even said Michael Cohen told the truth, although Cohen admitted to lying hundreds of times, and lied right in front of the Judge during the trial. This shocking and corrupt Interference in the Free Markets for political gain places every New York business transaction at risk. We must make sure Corrupt Politicians and Judges cannot continue to abuse the power of their office, and violate the public trust. We have already won, and will continue the fight on appeal!“

  A breakdown of the fine via Bloomberg:

  

  *  *  *

  New York Judge Arthur Engoron has ordered former President Donald Trump to pay $364 million for allegedly defrauding banks in order to acquire loans and other benefits – loans which the banks themselves testified they were satisfied with after doing their own due diligence.

  

  Trump is also barred “from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity in New York for a period of three years,” while his sons have been barred from serving as New York executives for two years.

  BREAKING: A judge finds Donald Trump liable in his civil fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, fining him $364 million and prohibiting him from operations in the state for 3 years. pic.twitter.com/Wj8QLpRvy4

  — Alex Salvi (@alexsalvinews) February 16, 2024

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  New York Attorney General Letitia James had sought $370 million from Trump, his company, and its top executives for what she claimed was “repeated and persistent fraud” – which included allegations of falsifying records and financial statements to the tune of as much as $2.2 billion.

  Trump maintains that his financial statements to banks were conservative, and has called the case a “fraud on me.”

  “This is a case that should have never been brought, and I think we should be entitled to damages,” Trump said on Jan. 11.

  Following Friday’s decision, Trump’s attorneys hit back – calling it “manifest injustice” in a statement.

  “This verdict is a manifest injustice – plain and simple”

  Donald Trump’s legal team have issued a statement following the verdict which also bans Trump from running businesses in New York for three yearshttps://t.co/02spXph3ip

  📺 Sky 501 pic.twitter.com/wKX50VCJdy

  — Sky News (@SkyNews) February 16, 2024

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

  The months–long civil trial included testimony from Trump and his oldest children. The former president was combative in his day on the stand, blasting James as a “hack” and calling the judge “extremely hostile.”

  Trump repeatedly complained about Engoron before and throughout the trial, and the judge slapped him with a partial gag order after he started blasting the judge’s law clerk as well. Trump’s complaints led to a flood of death threats against the clerk, as well as Engoron, court officials said, and Trump was fined $15,000 for twice violating the order. -NBC News

  During the trial, Deutsche Bank executive David Williams, who directly worked on at least one of several loans obtained by Trump over several decades, testified that it’s “atypical, but not entirely unusual” for a bank to internally slash a client’s stated asset values by 50% and approve a loan anyway, as they did with Trump, Bloomberg reported in November.

  “It just depends on the circumstances,” said Williams, a managing director at the bank.

  Deutsche Bank, which loaned hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump for properties in Miami, Chicago and Washington, cut his stated net worth in 2011 and 2012 from about $4.2 billion to $2.3 billion, according to internal bank credit memos. The same documents indicated the bank approved the loans anyway because it expected them to generate a profit based on Trump’s history of successful developments and other criteria.

  Trump, who denies wrongdoing and claims the case is politically motivated, is calling to the stand this week four current and former Deutsche Bank employees — including the family’s former private banker Rosemary Vrablic — as part of his defense case, seeking to flip the script on the state’s version of events. -Bloomberg

  The testimony undermined AG James’ premise, that Trump defrauded the German bank. But of course, none of that matters to Engoron – while Trump’s Martyr status just intensified.

  Expect this decision to be reflected in upcoming polls.

  This ruling is what’s criminal. https://t.co/ChopCG3rCP

  — Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) February 16, 2024

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

  NEVER FORGET: The judge who fined Donald Trump $364 million laughed, smiled and smirked for the camera in court.

  This isn’t about “justice” — These people are openly celebrating what they’re doing.

  Disgusting.

  pic.twitter.com/HR6HpVBCHb

  — Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 16, 2024

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  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/16/2024 – 18:38

• The #1 Warning Sign Capital Controls Are Coming Soon & 4 Ways To Beat Them
  The #1 Warning Sign Capital Controls Are Coming Soon & 4 Ways To Beat Them

  Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,

  Weekends and holidays are the perfect time to catch people off guard…

  

  Like a street thug committing a mugging, capital controls blindside most people—otherwise, they wouldn’t be effective.

  The government declares a surprise bank holiday and shuts all the banks—mere hours after they denied they were even thinking about such actions.

  They impose capital controls to stop citizens from taking their money out of the country.

  Cash-sniffing dogs, which make drug-sniffing dogs look friendly, show up at airports and border crossings.

  At this point, your money is like a lobster in a trap. It doesn’t require much imagination to see what comes next.

  Once a desperate government has your money within its reach, it’ll find a way to take as much of it as possible.

  Don’t be surprised if your local currency suffers a massive devaluation, bank deposits are suddenly worth a fraction of what they were just yesterday, or the government imposes an emergency tax.

  Whatever the method or pretext, the outcome is always the same: a wealth transfer from you to the government.

  This familiar story has played out in many countries in recent years. The pattern is clear and should surprise no one the next time it happens.

  It’s all but certain governments in financial trouble will turn to capital controls as a desperate, misguided solution—with devastating consequences for ordinary people.

  Argentina, Lebanon, Venezuela, Iceland, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, China, India, South Korea, and governments in countless other countries have recently imposed capital.

  The lesson from these examples is capital controls can happen anywhere and anytime.

  Although it seems unthinkable to most, there is an excellent chance capital controls are coming to the US—they’ve happened before and could happen again soon.

  Remember, in 1933, through Executive Order 6102, President Roosevelt forced Americans to exchange their gold for US dollars under penalty of 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine (or more than $235,000 in today’s debased confetti).

  Of course, the official government gold exchange rate was unfavorable. It amounted to around a 41% confiscation of purchasing power.

  The US government continued prohibiting private ownership of gold bullion for 42 years until they reluctantly allowed the plebs to own it again in 1975.

  So, there is a clear historical precedent for implementing capital controls in the US, especially during a crisis.

  Today, it’s self-evident the fiat currency system centered on the US dollar is crumbling at an alarming rate.

  It’s been over 50 years since Nixon ushered in the fiat currency system by severing the dollar’s last link to gold in 1971.

  The fiat currency system is long past the end of its shelf-life, like a carton of spoiled milk.

  Even the global elites running the system can see that and openly talk about what they want to come next.

  That’s why there’s all this talk about a “Great Reset,”… and without a doubt, capital controls will be part of it.

  All it would take is a crisis—real or contrived—or some other pretext and the stroke of the president’s pen on a new executive order.

  Expect it to happen.

  Why and How Governments Impose Capital Controls

  Capital controls are government restrictions on how people can use their money—something that should be abhorrent to anyone who believes in property rights and a free society.

  Here’s how capital controls work…

  Governments might allow people to buy foreign currency (or gold) only at an “official” rate that they set, which is always less favorable than the free-market rate. The difference between the fake official rate and the real free-market rate amounts to a wealth transfer to the government.

  Another form of capital controls is steep taxes on international money transfers or purchasing foreign assets.

  Governments could also flat-out prohibit ownership of foreign assets or moving any form of wealth outside the country.

  No matter what flavor they come in, capital controls always help a government trap money within its borders so it’s easier for them to take.

  A propaganda campaign is also necessary to gaslight people into believing such actions are required to protect the average person.

  Expect politicians to make disingenuous claims to make them appear as saviors instead of aggressors.

  The mainstream media will amplify this false narrative and demonize those opposed to capital controls as disloyal citizens or worse.

  What Happens After Capital Controls

  Capital controls are always a prelude to something worse.

  That’s because once governments trap money inside a country, it’s probably only a matter of hours before there is wealth confiscation. Anything they don’t steal immediately, they box in for future thefts.

  That’s why you must act BEFORE they impose capital controls.

  How much time do you have?

  While it’s impossible to know, acting well in advance is advisable. It’s better to be a year early than even a minute late.

  However, there is one common feature I’ve noticed when countries impose capital controls that indicates the situation is imminent. It’s like someone waving a big fat red flag.

  That warning sign is a government official denying that they are considering imposing capital controls.

  Whenever you hear a central banker or politician say something won’t happen, you can almost be sure it will happen. And probably soon.

  Coming from a bureaucrat, the real meaning of “no, of course not” is “it could happen tomorrow.”

  It’s like the old saying: “Believe nothing until it has been officially denied.”

  These deceptions have a purpose: Politicians and central bankers must surprise the public to get the desired results.

  When you hear the official denial, you probably have only a matter of hours before they impose capital controls. Urgent action is required.

  Four Ways To Beat Capital Controls

  The solution is simple.

  Place some of your savings outside your home country so it’s not trapped when the government imposes capital controls. It will be waiting for you safely on the other side.

  Below are four ways you can do that.

  • First, obtain a foreign bank account. Capital controls imposed in your home country are unlikely to affect a bank account in another country.

  • Second, real estate in a foreign country is an excellent way to store significant capital abroad. Your home government won’t be able to seize it without a literal act of war.

  • Third, there’s Bitcoin, which enables anyone to send and receive value worldwide without relying on any third party.

  • Fourth, another solution is physical gold bullion coins held in a non-bank vault in a wealth-friendly foreign jurisdiction.

  However, it’s crucial to emphasize that you should NOT put gold in a bank’s safe deposit box. They will be among the first targets if and when governments decide to declare a bank holiday and confiscate private wealth.

  Holding the physical gold bullion in your own possession or a private non-bank vault in a wealth-friendly jurisdiction like Singapore, Switzerland, or the Cayman Islands is a good idea. (More on this below).

  Conclusion

  The current dollar-based monetary system is on its way out. Even the central bankers running the system can see that.

  They are preparing for what comes next as they attempt to “reset” the system. It’s a virtual certainty they will impose capital controls.

  I suspect it could all go down soon… and it won’t be pretty for most people.

  We are likely on the cusp of a historic financial earthquake…

  One that could alter the direction of the US forever and mark the biggest economic event of our lifetimes.

  Yet few people are aware of what is happening.

  And even fewer know how to prepare.

  That’s exactly why legendary investor Doug Casey and I released an urgent video revealing the best way to store your gold.

  In it, we uncover the best way to protect your savings capital controls and the coming wealth confiscations.

  Capital controls are likely coming, and you won’t want to miss this crucial information. Click here to watch it now.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/16/2024 – 18:20

• US Farmland Value Hits Record High Amid Tighter Credit Conditions 
  US Farmland Value Hits Record High Amid Tighter Credit Conditions 

  According to a new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, farmland values across the Midwest crop belt hit a record high in the fourth quarter despite elevated interest rates. 

  Farmland values in the region encompassing all of Iowa and most of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin increased by 6% compared to the previous year. Although this represents an increase from a 5% rise in the third quarter, the growth rate is notably slower than the 12% and 22% gains seen in the fourth quarters of 2022 and 2021, respectively. 

  An annual increase of 6 percent in the Seventh Federal Reserve District’s agricultural land values in 2023 helped them reach a new peak, though the yearly gain shrank to a single digit. Values for “good” farmland in the District moved up 2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2023 from the third quarter, according to 129 agricultural bankers who responded to the January survey. 

  Only 6 percent of the survey respondents expected farmland values to rise during the January through March period of 2024, with 17 percent expecting them to fall and 77 percent expecting them to be stable

  Farmland values

  

  Annual real change in Seventh District farmland values

  

  Record high farmland values 

  

  “For the third time in a row, there were fewer funds available for lending than in the same quarter of the prior year at survey respondents’ banks in the final quarter of 2023,” Fed economists David Oppedahl and Elizabeth Kepner wrote in the report. 

  The economists cited an Iowa banker who warned of “tough times ahead” for farmers. 

  A recent US Department of Agriculture forecast showed farmers are poised for another year of financial misery, facing the most significant decline in incomes in almost two decades as crop prices slide and US dominance in ag exports wanes.

  

  A number of billionaires have been buying hard assets like farmland over the years (read: here & here & here & here). 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 02/16/2024 – 18:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Gears Of The Refugee Machine
  Gears Of The Refugee Machine

  Authored by Spike Hampson via the Brownstone Institute,

  A solid majority of American citizens now recognize that Biden’s many millions of alleged refugees are anything but the real deal. In all probability, some of these illegal immigrants are members of the “tired and poor” seeking a shortcut into the United States, but also include a number of spies, drug mules, human traffickers, criminals, and convicts. As for legitimate refugees, in all likelihood they represent less than 10% of the total.

  

  The moment Biden took office, he invited the world to come to America — illegally. 

  He dismantled the proven methods used to stem the flow of illegal immigrants and publicly encouraged foreigners to come through the Southern border. As the numbers of illegal immigrants increased, the border patrol were shifted from patrolling the border to sitting behind desks and helping illegal immigrants to gain entry into the country. Most of the border patrol resent having been converted into neutered bureaucrats but had to follow orders or else get drummed out of the corps.

  In short, Americans (indeed, the entire world) now realize that the Biden administration is dedicated to getting as many illegal aliens into the country as possible. This is, of course, aiding and abetting illegal behavior, but rampant corruption in the media, academia, and politics ignores or dismisses it.  

  Captive to leftist agendas, these institutions view citizenship as an antiquated concept that, along with an anachronistic constitution, must be eradicated — no holds barred.

  Since Biden became president, his ushers have guided roughly nine million illegals into the United States. By pretending that they are refugees from war or persecution, it was possible to cloak them in sympathetic attire: ‘No compassionate person would ever reject a poor, mistreated refugee.’

  At the start of Biden’s presidency, the flow of illegal immigrants originated from relatively few countries, most of which were in central America. In those days, a majority were impoverished people seeking a better life — illegal in their entry but not malevolent in their intent. A certain remainder, however, were not good people.

  But over the past three years the border jumpers have started coming from all around the world — so much so that they now represent over 160 different countries. Most of them, by the way, are healthy, single, young men. 

  Since war and persecution are considered to be the causes of refugee flows, one should ask if it is reasonable to believe that three-quarters of all the countries in the world are afflicted by war or oppression. Next, one might ask why it is that women and children and the elderly are less susceptible to becoming refugees than healthy young men.  

  This refugee epidemic is an orchestrated phenomenon, planned and supported by international organizations in cahoots with the United States government. It is not intended to solve a refugee problem. Its purpose is obviously something other than an amelioration of the suffering of displaced people.

  Since this refugee invasion is tearing apart our country, the federal government — especially the Department of Homeland Security — should be publishing detailed statistics regarding daily, weekly, monthly, and cumulative numbers for illegal immigrants admitted into the United States. There should be similar tabulations for deportations, gotaways, etc. Comparable tables should be readily available for age and sex structure. Parallel statistical fact sheets regarding contraband and drug seizures along with relevant data regarding the apprehended smugglers should be made public as well.

  As long as the government was anxious to scare the bejeezus out of everybody regarding Covid-19, it had no trouble publishing data regarding infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. The fact that it is not doing anything similar for the ongoing refugee invasion suggests it is trying to hide something.

  Since there are only about 35 countries in all of the Americas, this infiltration out of Mexico across our Southwest border includes invaders from about 130 additional countries located overseas. Those people fly to the Americas, but not to the United States (which is their destination). We can draw a couple of conclusions: they are not poor and they would have trouble getting into the United States legally. Most anybody who could get into the US on a visitor’s visa and then simply overstay would do that rather than flying to, say, Mexico City and then hoofing it northward.

  Huge chunks of the American populace have been hoodwinked into thinking that anybody who crosses the border illegally is just trying to grab a share of the good life and should be allowed to remain. But, alas, the invasion is an orchestrated phenomenon. We have known for years that various countries and non-governmental organizations have been organizing and assisting the mass movement of people up through Mexico to and across the US border. 

  This was evident even back in the first year or two of the Trump presidency when organized caravans of illegal immigrants were arriving with the specific intent of numerically overwhelming the border patrol.

  We now know that even the United Nations is involved in housing, feeding, and transporting would-be illegal immigrants headed north. It follows that our federal government is the main source of funding for much of this UN effort. The American citizenry remains ignorant about this.

  Border crossings in Central America are tightly regulated for people like you and me, but clustered hoards of illegal immigrants are magically waved through from one country to the next. There are six or seven border crossings to be made before reaching the United States. Do you really think administrations in those countries are unaware of the situation? The unencumbered passage of millions of migrants is only possible if critical palms have been well greased — by Yankee dollars that Americans have paid in taxes.

  For those who are unaware, the frontier zone between Central America’s Panama and South America’s Colombia is called the Darien Gap — a thick, wet jungle of hill country through which no road passes. Until recently, it was rarely penetrated and only by extreme adventurers or suspect characters, but now has three different jungle trails for illegal wannabes headed north. On any given day, thousands of people complete the trek, virtually always in large groups accompanied by several guides.

  This 50-75 miles of jungle trekking has become a conduit for those from the Caribbean and South America who can find no easier pathway to the US. It is also favored by many of those coming from overseas since the country of Ecuador does not require a visa for entry and the circumvention of designated border crossings into Colombia is relatively easy.

  Those with means but from countries whose citizens are severely restrained from traveling to other countries fly to Quito, circumvent the Colombian border stations, hazard the Darien Gap, and use either their feet or buses and trains to reach the US border. And virtually always this is done as part of a large group consisting mostly of strangers.

  Many Americans are unaware of the degree to which illegal migrants are recruited and assisted by international and non-governmental organizations — all of which wish to see the United States Southern border eradicated. The flood of illegal immigrants across the border is clearly an invasion being sponsored by a globalist ideology.  

  This Muckraker.com video documents the nature of all that support and the characteristics of the actual migration.

  What with the assistance of the UN and nongovernmental agencies, the Panamanian end of the Darien Gap now has established encampments offering meals and dry sleeping arrangements for the clusters of migrants who make the passage. More sinister is a separate camp specifically for Chinese passage-makers.

  Evidently, crossing the Darien Gap takes the lives of some who become sick or have an accident, but the attrition is not sufficient to deter the flow. The larger point is that getting into the United States from distant locations involves a support system designed to game the American border controls. Millions of illegal border crossers are part of something bigger and more nefarious than simple, individualistic decisions to sneak into the United States.

  American citizens are being exploited by the globalist elite that view countries as anachronisms. So convinced are they of their own moral superiority that the wishes of America’s ordinary people carry no weight. What we on this side of the border view as a chaotic influx of illegal immigrants is in fact a planned effort, a coordinated attempt to break down the integrity of the United States, the only country in the world still in a position to defeat the globalist agenda.

  It is a difficult battle since much of America’s elite has been seduced into believing that globalism imposed from the top down is the ideal way to achieve the “unification of all humanity” — an idealistic goal that would just happen to put many of those same elite in control of the envisioned New World Order. The ordinary American who disapproves of illegal immigration wants it to stop but many of the national leaders want it to continue (although they hide their true intentions).

  For all its flaws and weaknesses, for all its corruption, the United States remains the final bastion for protection of individual rights. The system being imposed from the top down will inevitably sacrifice the will of the people to the globalist vision — and that will prove to be the essence of tyranny and a wellspring of untold suffering.

  Those interested in this topic might appreciate the more detailed observations of Bret Weinstein in the Dark Horse Podcast. He develops a hypothesis (i.e. a possible explanation of a phenomenon) that there are in fact two different migrations going on, one involving very large numbers of people from a great variety of source areas and evidently motivated by a desire for a better life, but the other being a purely Chinese flow that enjoys greater affluence and therefore less hazardous transit. 

  Bret explores the possibility that this sub-stream is in fact a Trojan migration designed to inject into the United States a sort of fifth column of healthy young males that with the ripeness of time will be well-positioned to undermine America whenever a US-China conflict becomes kinetic. He observes that this stream maintains a separate identity until having completed the journey through the Darien Gap but then presumably becomes integrated into the larger flow before reaching the United States border, thereby masking its distinct character. The meat of Bret Weinstein’s hypothesis is discussed between the 10th and 110th minutes of the podcast.

  A retired academic, Spike Hampson did a PhD in population geography at the University of Hawaii and the affiliated East West Center. For most of his career he was a geography professor at the University of Utah and a ski instructor at Deer Valley.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/15/2024 – 23:40

• US Digital Video Spend Beats TV Ads
  US Digital Video Spend Beats TV Ads

  The market for moving image advertisement formats is developing away from linear television and towards digital video formats such as streaming, apps and social media.

  As Katharina Buchholz reports, according to data from the Statista Market Insights, U.S. spend on digital video ads is estimated to reach almost $85 billion this year – more than the around $59 billion U.S. advertisers are expected to spend on traditional TV advertising.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Spending on digital video ads grew rapidly over the past couple of years, overtaking slightly decreasing TV ad spending in the process.

  TV and video advertising refers to moving image advertising formats that are transmitted via traditional TV channels as well as in all forms of digital video channels. Traditional TV advertising covers all advertising expenditure on pay-for and freely distributed TV providers and networks as well as digitally distributed and terrestrial TV network operators. Digital video advertising, on the other hand, includes advertising formats like web-based videos, app-based videos as well as videos on social media and streaming apps that are seen on computer screens, smartphones, tablets and other internet-connected devices.

  The gap between the two markets will continue to grow. The situation in the U.S. mirrors international developments, aided by the country’s advertising market being the largest in the world by some margin.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/15/2024 – 23:20

• Biden: Candidate Of The Elites
  Biden: Candidate Of The Elites

  Authored by Steve Cortes via RealClear Wire,

  Remember when Democrats advocated for working-class Americans?

  

  My maternal relatives were all Irish Catholic Democrats in decades past. They were deeply conservative in their personal lives and social views, and concurrently deeply committed to the party of John F. Kennedy and Tip O’Neill.

  Those days now seem like an era of antiquity compared to the radical, even Marxist, Democratic Party of the 2020s. The Biden-Harris Democrats push secular humanist ideology while acting fully in concert with the economic ruling class of America, all at the cavalier expense of middle- and lower-income citizens.

  This observation is not merely my opinion, but rather the widespread view of working-class Americans, as revealed by the latest battleground state polling conducted by my labor advocacy organization, the League of American Workers. These surveys of swing states, conducted by North Star Opinion Research, reveal a stark and consistent class divide in America. Those who are already financially successful are thriving under Biden and approve of his job performance, while the masses of wage earners fall behind, endure economic anxiety, and blame Joe Biden and the Democrats.

  For example, the latest poll of 600 likely voters in battleground North Carolina shows Trump with a commanding 7-point lead over the president in a three-man matchup. If you add Robert F. Kennedy’s 16% in the poll, an impressive majority of North Carolina voters favor the populist candidate. The survey’s details and crosstabs make clear that the primary driver is economic anxiety, especially among those of modest means. For instance, overall sentiment for Biden on the economy remains brutal, with only 35% approval and 61% disapproval. But numbers for Biden on the economy are even worse among working class and aspirational constituencies.

  In answering the question, “Does Joe Biden’s economy provide the opportunity for working-class Americans to improve their standard of living?” only 31% of North Carolinians overall said yes. But the voters of Appalachian North Carolina, in the less-affluent western portion of the state, were even more pessimistic with only 23% affirming that Biden provides opportunities for working-class voters.

  Among hard-working Hispanics in the Tar Heel state, only 13% believe Biden provides upward mobility. Hispanics are the most entrepreneurial demographic in America, and overwhelmingly, they reject the crony capitalism of the current Democrat Party which is fully co-opted by big business and unconcerned with Main Street prosperity.

  This pessimism tragically sours citizens on the American Dream as a whole. In our survey, among non-college graduates in North Carolina only 25% believe that the “American Dream is still attainable.”

  On the other side of the economic ledger, the credentialed elites of America grow downright ebullient with their circumstances, the direction of the country, and Biden’s job performance. The Wall Street Journal highlighted this massive chasm in sentiment in a recent Kimberley Strassel column, “The US vs. Them Election.”  

  To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, the rich in America in 2024 are very different from the masses, and not just in bank account size, but also in worldview. Strassel cites polling from the Committee to Unleash Prosperity of citizens with incomes above $150,000 per year and advanced graduate degrees who live in high-density metro areas. A stunning 84% approve of Biden’s job performance in the White House.

  In addition, 74% of those highly credentialed voters said their finances are getting better, compared to only 20% of non-elites. A big part of that ruling class optimism flows from the stock market at all-time highs as Biden’s inflation helps lift asset prices. But regular Americans largely miss the benefits of asset appreciation since they do not enjoy substantial equity and real estate holdings. (The top 10% of households own 93% of all stock holdings in America, including retirement accounts.)

  Aside from economic issues, the credentialed elites also embrace a totally divergent culture and worldview from the masses in America. For example, a whopping 84% of elites with an Ivy League degree have a high opinion of journalists. That approval, not coincidentally, exactly matches elites’ approval of Joe Biden. Simultaneously, overall trust in media plunges to match an all-time low, with only 32% of Americans reporting trust in media per Gallup, which has surveyed trust in the press since the 1970s.

  Looking toward November, this macro divide provides opportunity for patriotic populists, from Trump to down-ballot candidates. The Democrats have lost their way and now surrender to the whims of the elites.

  In contrast, the populist right can highlight the class divide in America and provide workable fixes that will restore broader prosperity. Ending the flow of illegal workers and trade protectionism for American laborers will form pillars of a true America First workers’ agenda. Such an agenda will win elections and, more importantly, win back prosperity and confidence for the forgotten American middle class.

  Steve Cortes is former senior advisor to President Trump, former commentator for Fox News and CNN, and president of the League of American Workers, a populist right pro-laborer advocacy group.  

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/15/2024 – 23:00

• Newsom Sued Over Transgender Policy, Teachers Claim They Are Forced To Lie To Parents
  Newsom Sued Over Transgender Policy, Teachers Claim They Are Forced To Lie To Parents

  Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Teachers are suing California Gov. Gavin Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta in federal court over policies they say force them to conceal the transgender status of young students from parents.

  

  The lawsuit comes after the governor signed several laws in September 2023 that expanded California’s protections for LGBT individuals.

  One law establishes timelines for required so-called cultural competency training for public school teachers and staff. Another law creates an advisory body to determine the needs of LGBT students. A further law requires families to demonstrate willingness to meet the needs of a child in foster care, regardless of the child’s sexual orientation or gender identity. There is also a law requiring elementary and secondary schools to have gender-neutral bathrooms for students.

  “California is proud to have some of the most robust laws in the nation when it comes to protecting and supporting our LGBTQ+ community, and we’re committed to the ongoing work to create safer, more inclusive spaces for all Californians,” Mr. Newsom said at the time.

  “These measures will help protect vulnerable youth, promote acceptance, and create more supportive environments in our schools and communities.”

  At the same time, the governor vetoed legislation that would have compelled judges making custody and visitation orders to consider whether a parent accepts a child’s professed gender identity.

  In the lawsuit, San Diego-area teachers Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, who are devout Christians, filed suit to object to policies they say mandate dishonesty.

  The legal complaint in the case, Mirabelli v. Olson, was originally filed in April 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California against the Escondido Union School District (EUSD), in San Diego County, and officials with the California State Board of Education.

  The lawsuit was prompted by the K–8 school district’s recent policies affecting transgender students.

  The policies require teachers to assist in a student’s transgender “social transition” by accepting a child’s assertion of a transgender or gender-diverse identity and, during school hours, using any pronouns or a gender-specific name requested by the student.

  At the same time, the policies allegedly require teachers to revert to biological pronouns and legal names when speaking with parents, in an effort to conceal information regarding a child’s asserted gender identity.

  The teachers objected on moral and religious grounds to the policies and said they were uncomfortable at the prospect of keeping secrets from parents about their children’s gender identities at school. They asked the district to exempt them from the policies but their requests were denied.

  On Jan. 29, the teachers amended the complaint to add Mr. Newsom and Mr. Bonta, both Democrats, as defendants in the lawsuit.

  “These previously named defendants are all operating under the supervision and control of the governor, who has ultimate responsibility for overseeing the state’s education system,” said Paul Jonna, an attorney from the Rancho Santa Fe-based law firm LiMandri and Jonna. Mr. Jonna is also serving as special counsel for the Thomas More Society, the public interest law firm that filed the lawsuit.

  “The Escondido Union School District has asserted that it is compelled by the state to adopt and enforce parental exclusion policies in which California dictates the deception requiring teachers to lie to parents about their students.

  “That leads to the conclusion that the state, and therefore, the governor is the driving force behind the violation of Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West’s constitutional rights.”

  EUSD requires all elementary and middle school teachers to “unhesitatingly accept a child’s assertion of a transgender or gender diverse identity, and … [to] ‘begin to treat the student immediately’ according to their asserted gender identity,” according to the legal complaint.

  “There is absolutely no room for discussion, polite disagreement, or even questioning whether the child is sincere or acting on a whim,” the complaint continues. “Once a child’s social transitioning has begun, EUSD elementary and middle school teachers must ensure that parents do not find out.”

  “EUSD’s policies state that ‘revealing a student’s transgender status to individuals who do not have a legitimate need for the information, without the student’s consent’ is prohibited, and ‘parents or caretakers’ are, according to EUSD, individuals who ‘do not have a legitimate need for the information,’ irrespective of the age of the student or the specific facts of the situation.”

  The teachers, removed from the classroom by management, have already won several rounds in their legal battle against EUSD policies. The teachers claimed that the school district retaliated against them for filing suit and harassed them.

  Last month, District Judge Roger Benitez ordered the school district “to return plaintiffs Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West back to the classroom.”

  The Epoch Times reached out to Mr. Newsom and Mr. Bonta for comment but didn’t receive a reply as of publication time.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/15/2024 – 22:20

• WSJ Tells Readers: "To Save Money, Maybe You Should Skip Breakfast"
  WSJ Tells Readers: “To Save Money, Maybe You Should Skip Breakfast”

  President Biden’s attempt to sell Americans on ‘Bidenomics’ could be one of the most significant marketing failures by an administration in an election cycle in modern times. 

  According to Bloomberg data, the number of news stories mentioning “Bidenomics” in corporate media erupted in June 2023. This was around the time when the White House launched its propaganda campaign to persuade trick the American people about the alleged successes of the president’s economic policies. 

  As the number of “Bidenomics” news stories soared, polling data via Real Clear Politics shows the president’s job approval rating fell. In other words, the American people quickly called bullshit on this PR campaign. 

  

  In this era of failure, legacy media told consumers inflation is their fault. But ignore the Federal Reserve’s massive easing program during the Covid era and the federal government helicopter dropping trillions of dollars blindly across the economy. 

  

  Remember this Bloomberg opinion piece from 2022 that told readers who made under $300k and suffer from high inflation: “Try lentils instead of meat.” 

  

  And now, the Wall Street Journal told readers: “To Save Money, Maybe You Should Skip Breakfast.” 

  

  As another reminder, lower inflation touted by the White House does not mean lower prices.

  

  And the consumer environment is getting worse – not better ahead of the elections. 

  

  The Atlantic pointing fingers at consumers for inflation, Bloomberg advising readers to eat lentils, and WSJ suggesting skipping breakfast are all indicators of the US economy’s distress, in stark contrast to the White House’s continuous assurances that everything is fine.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/15/2024 – 22:00

• Seattle English Students Told It's "White Supremacy" To Love Reading, Writing
  Seattle English Students Told It’s “White Supremacy” To Love Reading, Writing

  Authored by Jason Rantz via KTTH (emphasis ours),

  Students in a Seattle English class were told that their love of reading and writing is a characteristic of “white supremacy,” in the latest Seattle Public Schools high school controversy. The lesson plan has one local father speaking out, calling it “educational malpractice.”

  

  As part of the Black Lives Matter at School Week, World Literature and Composition students at Lincoln High School were given a handout with definitions of the “9 characteristics of white supremacy,” according to the father of a student. Given the subject matter of the class, the father found it odd this particular lesson was brought up.

  The Seattle high schoolers were told that “Worship of the Written Word” is white supremacy because it is “an erasure of the wide range of ways we communicate with each other.” By this definition, the very subject of World Literature and Composition is racist. It also chides the idea that we hyper-value written communication because it’s a form of “honoring only what is written and even then only what is written to a narrow standard, full of misinformation and lies.” The worksheet does not provide any context for what it actually means.

  “I feel bad for any students who actually internalize stuff like this as it is setting them up for failure,” the father explained to the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH.

  The father asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution against his child by Seattle Public Schools. He said the other pieces of the worksheet were equally disturbing.

  The worksheet labels “objectivity,” “individualism,” and “perfectionism” as white supremacy. If students deny their own racism — or that any of the nine characteristics are legitimately racist — is also white supremacy. Denialism or being overly defensive is a racist example of an “entitlement to name what is an [sic] isn’t racism and that those with power have a right to be shielded from the stresses of antiracist work.”

  The father argues the concepts are “incoherent and cannot stand any sort of reasoned analysis.” And he notes that it’s set up to ensure students accept every concept without ever questioning the claims.

  “How is a 15-year-old kid supposed to object in class when ‘denial and defensiveness’ is itself a characteristic of white supremacy? This is truly educational malpractice.”

  

  White students told to apologize in yet another Seattle high school controversy

  Another aspect of the white supremacy lesson at this Seattle school involved a video titled “Getting Called Out: How to Apologize” by Franchesca Ramsey. It’s reportedly presented in the context of white students expressing what the teacher views as “white supremacy.”

  Read the rest here…

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/15/2024 – 21:40

• Egypt Erects 8-Square-Mile Walled Enclosure In Sinai Desert For Rafah Refugee Spillover 
  Egypt Erects 8-Square-Mile Walled Enclosure In Sinai Desert For Rafah Refugee Spillover 

  In a press briefing earlier this week IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi said, “We know that it is more difficult for us to fight in an environment where there are over a million people and another 10,000 Hamas operatives” – as we highlighted previously.

  There are now some 1.5 million people crammed into the far southern city, which is more than six times its pre-war population, according to UN estimates. Egypt is now fearing the crisis will spill over its border, and is racing to erect a large walled compound to physically keep refugees from Gaza out, amid fears a bigger Israeli ground assault is imminent.

  

  Egyptian officials have said they are constructing an 8-square-mile walled enclosure in the Sinai Desert close to the border, in an anticipation of at least some Gazans getting into Egypt. It appears this a ‘plan B’ of sorts in order to contain the anticipated swarms of refugees coming into the Sinai desert, but without allowing them freedom of access to the rest of Egypt.

  According to the The Wall Street Journal, this would be a massive military guarded camp of sorts, which could see over 100,000 people settle there: 

  For weeks, Egypt has sought to bolster security along the frontier to keep Palestinians out, deploying soldiers and armored vehicles and reinforcing fences. The massive new compound is part of contingency plans if large numbers of Gazans do manage to get in.

  More than 100,000 people could be accommodated in the camp, Egyptian officials said. It is surrounded by concrete walls and far from any Egyptian settlements. Large numbers of tents, as yet unassembled, have been delivered to the site, these people said.

  With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying his army will need to fight Hamas in Rafah, a Palestinian city on the Egyptian border, Egyptian officials think a broad Israeli offensive could happen within weeks.

  But officials say Egyptian border security would still seek to limit refugee numbers coming into the camp to around 50,000 or 60,000 people. 

  Assuming a brutal Israeli military siege of Rafah happens as anticipated, and as Gazans essentially have nowhere else to go, this Egyptian camp has all the makings of what will likely to become the next permanent Palestinian refugee camp – as is the case with similar settlements which have long been in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

  Already large tent cities have popped up after months of Israel’s campaign in Gaza…

  Meanwhile, Hamas and Israel are no closer to a ceasefire, and a new report has emerged Thursday strongly suggesting the Biden administration in reality has no interest in peace, and is staying mum while Israeli decision-making gets more hawkish. According to Axios:

  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Secretary of State Tony Blinken last week that a direct or indirect U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state “would be a prize for those who planned and orchestrated the Oct. 7 massacre,” two Israeli officials told Axios.

  Such recognition by the U.S. would change decades of American policy that advocated for a Palestinian state only as a result of direct negotiations with Israel. The Israeli government is increasingly concerned if that happens, it would put more pressure on Israel to accept a Palestinian state.

  One displaced Gazan has been cited in WSJ as follows: “Some people are already on the Egyptian border, and if the bombing intensifies, they will go directly to Sinai. It’s the worst of decisions.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/15/2024 – 21:20

• The Curse Of Ultra-Pasteurization
  The Curse Of Ultra-Pasteurization

  Authored by Sally Fallon Morell via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  In the summer of 1983, an outbreak of listeriosis occurred in Massachusetts. Forty-nine people became sick and 14 of those—29 percent—died. Listeria is the bad actor among pathogens. Most pathogens make people sick but don’t kill them—listeria, on the other hand, often kills, especially the very young, the elderly, and the immune-compromised.

  

  Listeria most commonly occurs in deli meats, seafood, raw vegetables, soft cheeses, and poultry. But the 1983 outbreak was different. It came from pasteurized milk. Health officials isolated listeria from the raw milk that came into the pasteurizing plant. “At the plant where the milk was processed, inspections revealed no evidence of improper pasteurization.” The officials were perplexed but noted that “L monocytogenes is quite resistant to heat. … The ability of L monocytogenes to exist as an intracellular parasite may have increased likelihood that some organisms survived pasteurization …”

  They came to an interesting conclusion, “These results … raise questions about the ability of pasteurization to eradicate a large inoculum of L. monocytogenes from contaminated raw milk.”

  A year later, a huge outbreak of Salmonella typhimurium occurred in Illinois, with a second wave in 1985. The pathogen was found resistant to most common forms of antibiotics. “Two surveys to determine the number of persons who were actually affected yielded estimates of 168,791 and 197,581 persons, making this the largest outbreak of salmonellosis ever identified in the United States.” At least five people died. The outbreak affected people in six states—Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, and Indiana. Health officials concluded that the milk was contaminated after pasteurization by salmonella, which persisted in the plant despite efforts to eradicate it.

  The Arrival of Factory Farming

  Something else was going on during those years—dairy farms were getting bigger. Consolidation began in the 1930s with pigs and in the 1950s with chickens. In the 1970s, agriculture secretary Earl Butz told farmers to “get big or get out,” and by the mid-1980s, this trend was in full force. “Get big or get out,” also meant, “Get inside.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture was advising dairy farmers to “become more efficient” by keeping their cows in barns and feeding them grain.

  Large amounts of grain are not a natural diet for cows, nor is it natural for cows to live in close quarters with no way of distancing themselves from their fresh manure. To keep the cows alive in such conditions of filth, antibiotics became necessary. It was a recipe for antibiotic resistance and stronger, mutated pathogens.

  With the outbreaks of the mid-1980s, the dairy industry realized that under these new conditions, pasteurization was not working. Unfortunately, their solution to the problem was not to go cleaner, but to go hotter. Enter UHT—ultra-high temperature processing.

  Old-fashioned, “low-temperature” pasteurization takes milk to 150 F—hot enough to destroy most of the enzymes in milk, many of which protect against pathogens, while others attach to vitamins and minerals in order to make them easy to absorb. High-temperature pasteurization (also called flash pasteurization) takes milk to 161 F, hot enough to kill all the enzymes and denature some of the proteins.

  Ultrapasteurization takes milk to 284 F—hotter, much hotter, than the boiling point—by rushing this most fragile, delicate food past superheated stainless steel plates. The process kills bacterial endospores—tough, dormant structures produced by many pathogens, which allows them to “hibernate” and come back to life when conditions are sufficiently favorable (such as the small intestine). The process also kills everything else, including nutrients, enzymes, and proteins.

  UHT milk comes packaged in aseptic, sterile containers—it needs no refrigeration and has a shelf life of six to nine months—a boon to retailers. The process was developed in Europe—I remember seeing stacks of these aseptic containers in supermarkets in France when I lived there in the early 1980s and wondering why anyone would buy milk that didn’t spoil.

  In the early 1990s, the Italian company Parmalat introduced its UHT milk to the United States. American consumers resisted purchasing unrefrigerated milk, so the industry packaged it in traditional containers and sold it from the refrigerator aisle.

  According to Parmalat’s website, “UHT milk is the same as fresh milk but simply uses a different pasteurization process. It contains a lot of nutrients that are good for your body, just like fresh milk.” It adds, “With our special pasteurization process, our milk doesn’t need to be stored in the fridge until opened. This means you can store as many bottles as you want and never run out of milk.”

  A 2019 study from China titled “Processing milk causes the formation of protein oxidation products which impair spatial learning and memory in rats,” indicates that UHT milk is not like fresh milk at all. The researchers subjected milk to four processing techniques: boiling, microwave heating, spray drying, and freeze-drying. (Boiling takes milk to 212 F—ultra-pasteurization is much hotter.)

  All four techniques (even freeze-drying) caused “various degrees of redox state imbalance and oxidative damage in plasma, liver, and brain tissues.” Feeding damaged milk proteins to rats resulted in learning and memory impairment—why would any parent want to give UHT milk to their kids?

  The researchers concluded that “… humans should control milk protein oxidation and improve the processing methods applied to food.”

  Other researchers have noted that “The major protein modifications that occur during UHT treatment are denaturation and aggregation of the protein, and chemical modifications of its amino acids.” Damaged milk proteins are likely to cause allergies. Today, milk allergy is the number one allergy and according to statistics provided by the Asthma and Allergy Network, we can estimate that modern milk causes approximately twenty deaths from anaphylactic shock per year!

  Most milk sold today in supermarkets is UHT milk—even organic milk is UHT. But it is not used in fermented products—check the labels for sour cream or cheese.  These products are made from pasteurized—not UHT milk—most likely because UHT milk is so dead that it will not ferment. That’s another way of saying that UHT milk is indigestible, as fermentation is a form of digestion.

  A recent listeria outbreak causing two deaths and more than twenty hospitalizations initiated a Feb. 5 recall of pasteurized cheese, yogurt, and sour cream—an indication that pasteurization doesn’t ensure safety in fermented dairy foods.

  UHT milk has served as a temporary fix for the dairy industry, but it will ultimately be its undoing. Milk consumption in the United States has declined by half since 1970, and the dairy industry has been unable to reverse the trend. It blames competition from sodas and plant-based “milk,” but won’t admit that UHT processing makes milk unpalatable, allergenic, and indigestible.

  How to Find Good Old-Fashioned, Unprocessed Milk

  The public is wising up to the problems of consuming ultra-processed food, and UHT milk is by any definition an ultra-processed food. This may be why sales of raw milk are booming. The website realmilk.com receives more than 320,000 visits per month, mostly to the Raw Milk Finder page. The site lists 3000 sources of raw milk in the United States and there are many more dairies that choose not to be listed—yet raw milk farmers are reporting that they can’t produce enough to meet the demand. Raw Farm in California provides raw milk products from a herd of 1,200 cows, and they sell it all.

  My prediction: Within 20 years UHT milk will be a thing of the past, recognized as a misuse of technology, a rust belt solution that ruins the goodness of Nature’s perfect food. We have many elegant technologies today—stainless steel, on-site testing, a national cold chain, and moveable electric fencing that makes grazing feasible—which allow us to get clean raw milk safely to every person in America. “Get bigger, go hotter” is not the future. The future is small and medium grass-based farms selling raw milk directly to grateful customers.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/15/2024 – 21:00

• Mr. Bean Was Right – And So Was Toyota
  Mr. Bean Was Right – And So Was Toyota

  Authored by Duggan Flanakin via RealClear Wire,

  When auto (even EV driving) enthusiast Rowan Atkinson – Mr. Bean to his fans – last June wrote in The Guardian that there are “sound environmental reasons” why “keeping your old petrol car may be better than buying an EV,” he was vilified as a eco-traitor.

  

  Atkinson had added, “We’re realizing that a wider range of options need to be explored if we’re going to properly address the very serious environmental problems that our use of the motor car has created.” These include, he said, hydrogen fuel cells and synthetic fuels that would extend the lives of older vehicles long after governments are demanding they be scrapped.

  Atkinson, who has a bachelor’s in electrical and electronic engineering and a master’s in control systems, urged Britons to “look at a bigger picture” to include greenhouse gas emissions during the manufacture of electric vehicles and to evaluate the whole life cycle of motor vehicles.

  Relying on a dash of common sense, Atkinson noted that pushing so heavily so soon for EVs that have major flaws will result in “millions of overweight electric cars with rapidly obsolescing batteries.” Technologic developments with hydrogen and synthetic fuels, which can power existing internal combustion engines, may prove a better long-term solution. For one reason, the owners of the world’s 1.5 billion ICE vehicles could continue enjoying them.

  For sharing his insights, Atkinson was immediately smacked around by snarky reporters and EV “experts.” Simon Evans, deputy editor at Carbon Brief, slammed Atkinson for not adhering to Carbon Brief’s own “evidence” from years back stating that EVs cut “planet-warming emissions” by two-thirds on a life cycle basis and calling EVs “an essential part of tackling the climate emergency.”

  How dare he?

  Michael Coren, writing in the Washington Post, portrayed Atkinson as an iconoclast clinging to his petrol car, lampooned hydrogen and synthetic fuels as expensive and impractical, and compared ICE vehicles to hobby horses. Coren argued that “making every car burn [hydrogen] is not a good idea,” yet implied that forcing every driver to buy an EV is a very good idea.

  Eight months later, though, the detractors who had hoped to make Atkinson an example of a troglodyte were singing a different tune, in the wake of a collapse in the British EV market.

  Mr. Bean was condemned in the House of Lords by the Green Alliance as “partly at fault for ‘damaging’ public perceptions” of EVs and as a dangerous enemy of Britain’s drive to Net Zero. The Guardian, which published Atkinson’s tome, was accused indirectly of failing to adhere to “high editorial standards around the Net Zero transition.”

  [Translation: ONLY glowing reports on EVs are acceptable public speech.]

  It couldn’t have been the exorbitant cost of auto insurance for EVs, their tendency to catch fire and burn for days, or the high cost and long wait times for parts and repairs – or the long waits at charging stations to plug in and wait for enough charge at least to reach the next destination. Nor could it be that people are uncomfortable enriching China as their own auto companies face bankruptcy?  No – it was allowing someone to publicly question the rush to electrification.

  Halfway around the world, Toyota, which “lagged behind” its major competitors in ditching their ICE vehicle fleets for all-EV production lines, “is riding a windfall of hybrid vehicle sales on its way to posting projected net profits of more than $30  billion.” While Ford lost $4.7 billion trying to create an EV market, dropping its net profit to just $4.2 billion, Toyota now appears to be in better financial shape than its American and European competitors.

  Over a year ago, then-Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda had cautioned that the EV transition would “take longer than the media would like us to believe.” Ford, GM, Stellantis, and many other automakers worldwide played nice with the political and financial giants while Toyota’s management stepped away from the rhetoric, looked at the numbers, and chose a commonsense approach to the evolving world auto marketplace.

  The company did sell 15,000 pure EVs in the U.S. in 2023, but they also sold 40,000 plug-in hybrids and more than 600,000 non-rechargeable hybrids out of total U.S. sales of 2,248,477 vehicles, a 6% increase from 2022 levels. Ford fell short of its goal to produce 300,000 EVs a year by 2023 and has revised its earlier forecast of 2 million EVs by 2026. Worse, Ford now expects to lose as much as $5.5 billion on EVs in 2024.

  Over in Europe, Volvo just announced it is withdrawing support for its marquee electric vehicle Polestar and hopes to sell its 48% stake, possibly to a Chinese buyer. Just days earlier, Polestar had cut 450 jobs, about 15% of its workforce.

  Elsewhere in Europe, EV sales are expected to decline in 2024 in Germany, Europe’s largest auto market, and Renault just scrapped plans to spin off its Ampere EVs, blaming a lack of interest from investors and a slowdown in sales.

  EV sales in the United Kingdom also flatlined in 2023, prices for used EVs fell sharply, raising questions about their residual value. Even EV-friendly Switzerland admits it will take at least 20 years to fully electrify its fleet; while EVs and hybrids today comprise about 30% of Swiss new car sales, these vehicles amount to less than 4% of the total national fleet.

  Oil and gas companies are getting the message, too. BP, which once billed itself as “Beyond Petroleum,” has been encouraged by an activist investor to reduce its investments in renewables and recommit to oil and gas. A major reason – oil and gas investments in recent years have boomed while investments in renewables have faltered. Bluebell Capital Partners asserted that BP’s commitment to renewable has left its stock price undervalued by 50% compared to ExxonMobil and Chevron.

  President Biden’s demand that the U.S. comply with his EV mandates was dealt a major blow last month, when auto rental giant Hertz, heretofore the nation’s largest fleet operator of electric vehicles, announced it was selling all 20,000 of its EVs and not buying any more. The company cited high repair costs and weak demand for EV rentals. Karl Bauer of iSeeCars.com, noting that mainstream consumers were already hesitant to buy and EV, said “the larger impact of the Hertz EV fire sale is the perception hit to the technology.”

  The fictional Mr. Bean is known (and revered) for his original and often absurd solutions to problems and his total disregard for others while solving them, and for his pettiness and occasional malevolence. Had the British press mocked Mr. Atkinson for a Bean-like performance, the climate emergency propagandists might have laughed him off successfully.

  But they are not able to laugh without derision.

  The real Mr. Atkinson, like the decision makers at Toyota, is espousing commonsense wisdom such as “don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.” Extending the lifespan of existing vehicles, even with currently high-cost hydrogen or synthetic fuels, is far better for the environment than junking them for electric vehicles that require diesel fuel to power charging stations.

  If, as we are told, EV batteries will soon be smaller, cheaper, and stronger, that day has not yet come. Just as likely, the cost of hydrogen and synthetics will also drop significantly, and those fuels can power existing ICE vehicles. Most of all, if there truly was a “climate emergency,” diplomats would be quicker to end military conflicts and ending the rush by China and India to build more and more coal-fired power plants (needed, of course, to charge EV batteries).

  What Mr. Bean and Toyota are truly saying to the world is that mandates – government deciding what can and cannot go to market – and the huge subsidies that go along with them (which would be unnecessary in a true emergency) are at war with the wisdom of the market, which relies on true public opinion as to what is best for the consumer.

  Duggan Flanakin is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow who writes on a wide variety of public policy issues. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/15/2024 – 20:20

• Insensitive Racial Prejudice? Classic Tomb Raider Games Re-Released With “Trigger Warnings”
  Insensitive Racial Prejudice? Classic Tomb Raider Games Re-Released With “Trigger Warnings”

  Was the world more racist 28 years ago compared to today?  Or, are people today simply more inclined to see “cultural insensitivity” where none exists?  We all know the answer – Diversity and inclusion now infect every aspect of our society and every form of entertainment.  They are no longer a matter of academic discourse, but a matter of political imperative.

  Why?  Because a tiny group of obsessed cultists demands it.  In the west we’re supposed to walk on eggshells whenever minority issues are at play.  In fact, we’re supposed to place minority issues above all else and beg for forgiveness for every imagined trespass, even when it comes to video games.

  If you grew up in the 1990s the notion of “harmful stereotypes” was probably furthest from your mind.  You didn’t care if a movie or video game starred a female or minority character, you only cared if the product was fun, exciting and well made.  This was before the dark days of woke entitlement when race was usually meaningless, jokes were just jokes, words were just words and if you robbed an ancient tomb in a game that didn’t mean you would ever do something similar in real life.

  Leftists have no grasp of this concept.  In the 2020s, words are violence, feelings are reality and playing the wrong game could conceivably get you canceled.   This seems to be the attitude of software developer Crystal Dynamics, the license holder of the beloved Tomb Raider video game franchise.  

  The classic IP launched by Eidos Interactive in 1996 just after the premier of the Sony Playstation became an immediate hit.  The 3D graphics were cutting edge for the time, including cinematics, beautiful environments and an emotional musical score.  However, it was the character of Lara Croft that had gamers hooked:  A sexy female version of Indiana Jones who lusted after adventure and treasure.  

  

  Crystal Dynamics abandoned and erased the old Lara Croft not long after they got their hands on the licensing, making new games featuring a dark and depressing anti-Croft.  She was a short, stumpy, grumpy and decidedly less flirtatious feminist desperate to make amends for her grave robbing past and white privilege.  The company made it clear with their story changes as early as 2013 that the original character was “problematic” to them.

  Though feminists derided Tomb Raider as a fantasy for teenage boys rather than an empowering symbol for girls, the early games had a decidedly large female fanbase with 30% to 40% of players (depending on the poll) being women (a large number for the action/adventure genre).  Both men and women loved the old Tomb Raider, and this led to a call from consumers for a remaster of the first three classic games.

  Fans asked for a remaster for years with almost no feedback from Crystal Dynamics.  People began to suspect that, perhaps, the company hated the old franchise so much due to their politics that they were refusing to acknowledge its existence and even willing to lose money.

  This now appears to have been confirmed.  Crystal Dynamics was purchased by Embracer Group in 2022 and the new owners jumped immediately on the prospect of remastering the old games for a highly anticipated re-release.  While CD is owned by Embracer, they still retained some control over the development rights to Tomb Raider.  

  Most likely, the re-release of the originals was not their idea nor something they agreed with, but they had no choice.  Instead, they decided to sabotage the remastered versions by including “trigger warnings” at the beginning of the games.

  “The games in this collection contain offensive depictions of people and cultures rooted in racial and ethnic prejudices. These stereotypes are deeply harmful, inexcusable, and do not align with our values at Crystal Dynamics.  Rather than removing this content, we have chosen to present it here in its original form, unaltered, in the hopes that we may acknowledge its harmful impact and learn from it.”

  The company does not specify what instances of racial prejudice or stereotypes they’re referring to.  They also don’t explain what harmful impact the old games could have possibly had.  One wonders if they ever played the original games, because their trigger warnings make little sense.  

  The problem with leftists is, the violations of their social justice sensibilities never need to be specific, they can be vague or even imaginary.  When woke gatekeepers decide that a franchise is bad, for any reason, the collective follows without question.           

  As we witnessed with the turbulent release of the Harry Potter themed ‘Hogwarts Legacy,’ leftists are rabidly insistent that all popular media and creators conform to their DEI ideology.  After Harry Potter writer J.K. Rowling spoke out openly against the insanity of the trans movement and men pretending to be women, Hogwarts Legacy was targeted for destruction. 

  The planned boycott failed in hilarious fashion, with Legacy becoming one of the best selling titles in recent gaming history.  Leftists were livid, and for good reason; they had stuck their necks out too far too fast.  Their egomania made them vulnerable and their failure made the public realize that the reach of woke activists was far smaller than many people assumed.  The woke left was a paper tiger, an astroturf movement backed only by corporations but not by a large percentage of the population.

  In the case of Tomb Raider, it feels as if Crystal Dynamics is asking gamers to boycott their own product.  Or, perhaps they’re afraid that the classics (under the oversight of new management) will outsell their newer feminist catalog and make them look foolish.  The woke movement is in many ways nothing more than a war on nostalgia and our love of the past.  They don’t have to have a logical reason to hate a particular pop icon.  It doesn’t matter if the vast majority of people love a thing, if it’s not modernized and DEI dominated then leftists want it gone.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/15/2024 – 20:00

• The Reagan Miracle, 40 Years Later
  The Reagan Miracle, 40 Years Later

  Authored by Newt Gingrich via RealClear Wire,

  Forty years ago, America was at a peak of optimism, technological opportunity, and self-confidence.

  

  In 1980, President Jimmy Carter suffered the worst electoral college defeat for an incumbent president in American history. By 1984, President Ronald Reagan had turned the country around – and the American people knew it.

  We had cut through Carter’s malaise and the politics of limitation and embraced Reagan’s belief in a better future. “You ain’t seen nothing yet” was one of his favorite terms.

  Psychologically, we had shifted from fear of technology and desperate catastrophism to the positive belief that we could invent a better future. It was no accident that on March 23, 1983, President Reagan gave a nationwide speech about a “Strategic Defense Initiative.” The liberal media – which generally hated Reagan – ridiculed his proposal as “Star Wars.” Today, a modernized version of the same system is effectively defending Israel from missile attacks.

  The economy was rapidly recovering from the Carter stagflation, which had peaked at 13 percent inflation and 8 percent unemployment (Reagan dubbed these statistics “the misery index.”)

  Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher faced the same struggle in Great Britain. With commitment and courage which rivaled his friend Thatcher, Reagan endured a deep recession to break the back of inflation in America. He paid a cost in lost Republican congressional seats in 1982. However, the medicine had worked. Gross national product increased 6 percent in one year from the fourth quarter of 1982 to the fourth quarter of 1983. The overall economy was rushing back.

  Americans were sufficiently confident about the future. Reagan’s slogan for 1984 was “Morning in America,” and Americans believed it.

  The optimism carried over into foreign policy. When asked about the long conflict with the Soviet Empire, Reagan commented simply: “Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: we win, they lose.” On every economic, technological, and psychological front, Reagan was crowding the Soviets into collapse. The U.S.S.R. dissolved 11 years after Reagan was sworn in for his first term.

  President Reagan’s achievements were amazing. But we have wandered off the path of optimism and success.  We must relearn what made Reagan successful – and what made America the “shining city on a hill.”

  A new book by Craig Shirley (the leading Reagan historian and biographer) called “The Search For Reagan” is a superb introduction to the complex, determined, cheerful – but deeply realistic – man who turned America around.

  In 1984, I made my own contribution to the potential Reagan was creating when I wrote my first book, “Window of Opportunity: A Blueprint for the Future.”

  In that book, I wrote “there exists for the United States today a window of opportunity…to create a bright and optimistic future for our children and grandchildren.” However, I warned “If..we continue the policies of the last twenty years, that window will close and we will bequeath to them a pessimistic future of economic and social decay.” Over 272 pages, I outlined the kind of visionary future which Reaganism could create.

  Tragically, a large part of the Republican Party had no understanding of Reagan’s optimism, idealism, and passionate belief in a better future. His willingness to work for visionary goals seemed unrealistic to traditional politicians – yet, it was the key to Reagan’s success.

  Shirley’s new book – and my 40-year-old statement of the America that could have been created – are useful guides. I hope you will read them. Just like we did with Carter in 1980, I believe we can leave Joe Biden’s malaise. Four years from now, we can be in a remarkably safer, stronger, more prosperous country. We only need to relearn the habits and policies that work.

  If we come together and determine what we must do now to create a better future, we can return to “morning in America.”

  For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com. Also, subscribe to the Newt’s World podcast.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/15/2024 – 19:40

• Special Counsel Casts Pre-Election Doubt On Biden 'Burisma Bribe' With Dramatic Airport Arrest
  Special Counsel Casts Pre-Election Doubt On Biden ‘Burisma Bribe’ With Dramatic Airport Arrest

  Last June, the leaked contents of a stonewalled FBI document, form FD-1023, alleging that President Joe Biden was paid $5  million by an executive of Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings, where his son Hunter sat on the board, and also received an alleged $5 million.

  

  The form, dated June 30, 2020, was from a “highly credible” confidential human source (CHS) who had detailed multiple meetings and conversations they had with a top Burisma executive over the course of several years, beginning in 2015. The CHS had been working with the FBI as a regular, reliable source of information since 2010, and has been paid approximately $200,000 by the bureau.

  Now, as the 2024 election heats up, that source – Alexander Smirnov, 43, has been arrested and charged with lying about the bribes by special counsel David Weiss, who is investigating Hunter Biden.

  According to the NY Times, “The story Mr. Smirnov told investigators was part of a series of explosive and unsubstantiated claims by Republicans that the Bidens engaged in potentially criminal activity — allegations central to the party’s efforts to impeach the president.”

  Smirnov faces a two-count indictment for making false statements and obstructing the government’s long-running investigation into Hunter Biden. He faces a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.

  Smirnov was arrested in Las Vegas on Wednesday after disembarking from an international flight, and was expected to appear on Thursday before a federal judge.

  According to the indictment, Smirnov lied when he said that Hunter Biden promised to protect Burisma “through his dad, from all kinds of problems,” and was only in contact with Burisma executives in 2017, after Biden left office.

  Smirnov is accused of exaggerating his “routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma” into “bribery allegations” against Joe Biden.

  Which raises the question – if Smirnov told the FBI about the alleged bribery in confidence – and had no expectation of a ‘leaked’ FD-1023 becoming central to Republican investigations, what did he have to gain from lying?

  And why charge him with lying now?

  If this paid, long-term, trusted FBI confidential human source really did lie to his FBI handler when he alleged that Joe and Hunter Biden each had received a $5m bribe from Burisma, then he deserves what he gets.
  But:
  1. Why didn’t Weiss investigate the CHS’ allegations in the…

  — Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) February 15, 2024

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

  Weird how the corrupt DOJ never managed to charge Christopher Steele, who peddled lie after lie after lie about Trump to DOJ. In fact, instead of charging him, they paid him. https://t.co/JPxwOMmXHZ

  — Sean Davis (@seanmdav) February 16, 2024

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

   

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/15/2024 – 19:20

• Climate Agenda Set To Push Food Prices Even Higher, Analysts Say
  Climate Agenda Set To Push Food Prices Even Higher, Analysts Say

  Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  As inflation remains stubbornly high, farmers throughout the Western world are warning that cost increases from the net zero movement will drive food prices still higher, while simultaneously putting many smaller farmers out of business.

  

  January inflation numbers showed that prices increased by 3.1 percent over what they were a year ago, indicating that the fight against inflation, while progressing, has not been won.

  Overall, prices have surged by nearly 18 percent since January 2021 when President Joe Biden took office.

  Americans are struggling in an economy in which, by official statistics, nearly one-fifth of the value of their dollars has evaporated in three years—though many will say the cost of food and other essentials has become more expensive than what the official numbers state.

  The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which tracks food prices, offers an optimistic assessment of the coming year. After having gone up 9.9 percent in 2022, the USDA states, “[food] prices grew more slowly in 2023,” increasing by only 5.8 percent.

  “Food prices are expected to continue to decelerate in 2024,” the USDA projects.

  While some predict that the worst is behind us, analysts of the U.S. farming industry say there is another round of price inflation in the works, which will come from the Biden administration’s “whole of government” effort to reduce global temperatures.

  A recent report by the Buckeye Institute attempts to quantify the cost of Bidenomics to farmers.

  The report, titled “Net-Zero Climate-Control Policies Will Fail the Farm,” projects that farmers will see costs rise by at least 34 percent, which will increase the household grocery bill for an American family of four by more than $1,300 per year.

  “Complying with net-zero emissions policies and corporate ESG reporting requirements will increase prices of farm inputs, the costs of which will ultimately be passed onto consumers at grocery stores and restaurants,” the report states.

  “This is where the left is going, trying to get to net zero,” Rea Hederman, executive director of the Buckeye Institute’s economic research center, told The Epoch Times. And the costs imposed on farmers are in addition to price hikes from inflation, weather, or other factors that typically impact food prices.

  “The fact that the federal government printed too much money, this is on top of that,” Mr. Hederman said, “and it’s a sustained increase, not a temporary fluctuation in food prices, because you’re building higher baseline operating costs that are going to be permanent for farmers going forward.”

  The report analyzed an average U.S. farm, which is about 700 acres in size, producing corn. It then summed the costs of complying with net zero mandates, as well as price increases on fuel, fertilizer, and other supplies from the various net zero initiatives that are either in place or expected to take effect.

  The report projects that the cost base of this farm will escalate from $192,000 to $257,000 as a result. As costs trickle down to consumers, the grocery bill for a family of four would increase from $8,320 to $9,650—a 15 percent increase.

  “It’s important for people to understand that when you’re raising costs to farmers, that is being passed on to consumers of food, and some types of food are going to be impacted more,” Mr. Hederman said. “So for example, beef is going to go up more than oranges because if you’re raising the cost of corn, that’s an input to beef, so beef suffers a double whammy.”

  The average price of ground beef increased from $3.97 per pound in January 2021 to $5.03 per pound in January 2024, according to Federal Reserve statistics.

  Cattle ranchers are struggling not only with higher feed and fuel costs but also drought in many parts of the United States, which has reduced herd size.

  According to EPA estimates, agriculture accounted for 10.6 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2021, with the bulk of those emissions coming from livestock and fertilizer.

  

  Beef a Luxury

  Climate activists often oppose animal farming for this reason, and within that category, beef is the number one target. Of all livestock, beef produces the most greenhouse gas emissions and accounts for about 60 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions from farming, studies suggest.

  Jais Valeur, CEO of Danish Crown, Europe’s top meat processor, told Denmark’s Berlingske newspaper in 2021 that beef will soon become a luxury because of the emissions from producing it.

  “It will be a bit like champagne, namely a luxury product,” Mr. Valeur said. “The beef cattle will be a luxury product that we eat when we need to pamper ourselves.”

  

  Many farmers have argued that, while larger corporate farms may be able to weather the additional pricing pressure, net zero policies will be particularly harmful to smaller farms, which will concentrate food production among an ever smaller number of producers.

  “Everybody needs food to survive, so farms can pass on a great deal of that cost,” Mr. Hederman said. “But our belief is that family farms, smaller farms, a lot of them will sell out or go out of business because they do not have as much access to capital.”

  Farming, with its use of heavy equipment for planting, harvesting, and transportation, is a capital intensive business. It also requires large amounts of working capital to finance the period between planting crops or raising animals, and when produce or livestock can be sold to market.

  This has raised concerns that because of the environmental, social, and governance movement (ESG), which has taken hold among many Wall Street financial institutions, banks will start to penalize farms that fail to comply with ESG criteria, including to reduce emissions.

  On Jan. 29, agriculture officials from 12 U.S. states sent letters to banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, urging them not to impose net zero criteria on farmers.

  The banks are all members of the U.N. Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), which commits members to achieve U.N. net zero goals throughout their loan portfolios.

  While these commitments are confirmed on bank websites, a JPMorgan spokesperson told The Epoch Times that “JPMorgan Chase does not have an agriculture emissions intensity reduction target” and that “we make our own banking, lending, and underwriting decisions and don’t relinquish decision-making to third parties.”

  UN Paris Accords Set the Terms

  In 2016, the Obama administration signed the United States up to the United Nations Paris Climate Accords.

  The agreement commits America to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 50-52 percent by 2030 and to reach economy-wide net zero emissions by 2050.

  In 2017, President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement.

  On President Joe Biden’s first day in office, he recommitted the United States to the Paris Accords.

  According to the Buckeye report, the biggest drivers of the current price hikes are the increased cost of fertilizers, many of which are derivatives of natural gas, and the increased cost of diesel and propane.

  “After recommitting the United States to the net-zero climate-control agenda, the president and Congress revived significant misguided features of the once-failed ‘Green New Deal’ through the Inflation Reduction Act,” the report states.

  This includes using executive orders to restrict oil and natural gas supply, blocking drilling leases on federal lands, canceling pipelines, blocking exports of liquid natural gas, and enacting a Securities Exchange Commission mandate to require audited reports of greenhouse gas emissions, which would apply to farmers.

  “These federal initiatives and requirements will prove expensive and economically destructive here—just as they have been in Europe,” the report states.

  ‘Canary in the Coal Mine’

  Europe leads the United States in enacting net zero provisions, and farmers there have been squeezed by rising costs as a result. Farmer protests have erupted throughout Europe over the past year, most recently breaking out in the UK and France, in response to government efforts to cut the use of synthetic fertilizers and clamp down on agricultural CO2 emissions, with the goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050.

  In the face of popular dissent, government officials in Europe have begun to backpedal on their commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent by 2030, and by 90 percent by 2040.

  The European Commission, which is the executive of the European Union, indicated that it would now consider exempting farmers from many of its climate mandates.

  “You can look at Europe as the canary in the coal mine,” Mr. Hederman said. “We’re seeing what happens when you drive up fertilizer costs, playing out all over Europe right now.

  “European governments are starting to have second thoughts about the draconian nature of the rules they are implementing, because they’re realizing this is not going to be sustainable and because farmers are furious,” he stated.

  

  As farmers struggle, some climate activists see a solution in food alternatives, such as insect-based and fungi-based foods.

  In a 2021 interview with the MIT Technology Review, Microsoft founder Bill Gates discussed developments in laboratory production and scientific modifications to livestock farming. Mr. Gates is an investor in synthetic food manufacturing companies, including Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, and Upside Foods.

  “I don’t think the poorest 80 countries will be eating synthetic meat [but] I do think all rich countries should move to 100 percent synthetic beef,” he said. “You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they’re going to make it taste even better over time.”

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/15/2024 – 19:00

• Biden 'Mis-Remembered' Again: Hur Never Brought Up Beau's Death, The President Did
  Biden ‘Mis-Remembered’ Again: Hur Never Brought Up Beau’s Death, The President Did

  Hours after last week’s release of special counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents — which described the president as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and “diminished faculties” — Team Biden pushed their man in front of reporters in a hopeless bid to demonstrate that his mind is fully intact.  

  It backfired in various ways, most notably when Biden referred to Egyptian President Sissi as the president of Mexico — in a week in which he’d already twice confused the dead male German chancellor Helmut Kohl with the living female Angela Merkel, and confused the late French president François Mitterand with President Emmanuel Macron. 

  Now, sources say a more significant Biden statement during that press conference was also false.

  First, some more background. In addition to not remembering what years he served as vice president, the special counsel report said that, in his interview with investigators, Biden “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.”

  At his press conference, Biden lashed out at Hur for insensitively grilling him about Beau’s death from cancer at age 46: 

  “I know there’s some attention paid to some language in the report about my recollection of events. There’s even a reference that I don’t remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that? Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn’t any of their damn business.”

  “How in the hell dare he raise that.”

  President Biden slams Special Counsel Robert Hur’s claim that he struggled to remember details about his son Beau’s death. pic.twitter.com/2d4sAlRuDC

  — MSNBC (@MSNBC) February 9, 2024

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

  Big Media ran with Biden’s narrative. For example, at The New York Times, an utterly credulous, unquestioning Katie Rogers — sounding every bit like a Biden campaign proxy — devoted an article to Biden’s Beau-centered attack on Hur, describing Biden’s “chin quivering either from anger or sadness.” In what’s positioned as a straight news article, she concluded with this state-media salute: 

  A president who has infused his son’s memory into his presidency wanted to make one thing clear, to both the special counsel’s office and to his critics. “I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away,” Mr. Biden said.

  Rogers and other “journalists” covering the story didn’t even entertain the possibility that Biden — who routinely invokes Beau in various remarks to secure the sympathy of his audience — was the one who brought Beau’s death up during the 5-hour special counsel interview.  

  Now, citing two sources with knowledge of the interview, NBC News reports that it was indeed Biden who raised the topic of his son’s death. They say he did so when investigators asked about his activities at his Virginia rental home between 2016 and 2018, a time during which Biden was working with a ghost writer on a memoir about the loss of Beau, who died in 2015: 

  Biden began trying to recall that period by discussing what else was happening in his life, and it was at that point in the interview that he appeared confused about when Beau died, the sources said. Biden got the date — May 30 — correct, but not the year.   

  

  The NBC News report comes after several days of Biden defenders parroting the questionable attack on Hur. “Why in the hell are you asking that question?” asked Obama Attorney General Eric Holder on MSNBC. “What does that have to do with the retention of classified documents?”

  Team Biden’s exploitation of Beau’s death didn’t end with media spin — they also used it in a Biden-Harris fundraising email. Packaged as if it were sent by Jill Biden, it contains this enormously hypocritical line, purportedly from the First Lady: “I can’t imagine someone would try to use our son’s death to score political points.” 

  All that said, Democrats’ campaign to persuade Americans that Biden is fit for office isn’t working: 62% of registered voters have “major concerns” about whether Biden has the requisite mental and physical strength to serve five more years. 

  It couldn’t help when Biden, lashing out at Hur, went blank as he tried to remember the name of the church that gave Beau the rosary beads that Biden wears daily:  

  

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/15/2024 – 18:25

• Biden Staffer Who Mishandled China, Iran Secrets Retains High-Security Pentagon Job
  Biden Staffer Who Mishandled China, Iran Secrets Retains High-Security Pentagon Job

  Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClear Investigations,

  While Special Counsel Robert K. Hur has raised the issue of mental deterioration in explaining why he declined to prosecute 81-year-old Joe Biden for illegal retention and sharing of classified documents, the president chose another rationale to declare himself not culpable: He shifted the blame to the staffers who boxed up his records as he left the vice president’s office in 2017.

  

  At a press conference hastily assembled after the report’s release, Biden said he assumed his aides had shipped “all” the documents to the National Archives in College Park, Md. “I wish I had paid more attention to how the documents were being moved and where,” he said. “I thought they were being moved to the Archives. I thought all of it was being moved [there].”

  The president’s explanation does not address how and why he shared classified material with a ghostwriter, but it shines a light on the longtime assistant who was in charge of packing his papers, Kathy S. Chung.

  Chung, an old friend of Hunter Biden, began working for Joe Biden in 2012 when he was vice president. She told investigators she oversaw the transfer of the contents of Biden’s file cabinets and desk drawers into 15 boxes when he moved out of the West Wing in January 2017. While other office material did go to the National Archives, Hur rebuked Biden for keeping more than 600 pages of classified information – including military secrets and intelligence sources and methods – in unlocked and unauthorized containers at multiple locations, including a tattered box in the garage of Biden’s Delaware home. The stash included information marked “top secret” involving Iran, China, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. Some of the secrets are compartmented by codewords and can only be stored and read in a secure facility known as a SCIF.

  The Biden documents that Chung herself packed, unpacked, and repacked “are the most highly classified, sensitive and compartmented materials recovered during our investigation,” Hur wrote.

  Yet the prosecutor let Chung as well as Biden off the hook in also declining to press charges against her, explaining that he found plausible her account that she packed and kept the classified papers “by mistake, ”even though she had prior government experience handling and identifying classified information and was told in a Jan. 3, 2017, National Security Council memo to be sure to remove “only unclassified personal records,” and despite providing inconsistent answers to investigators. 

  After the election, Biden appointed Chung to a top Pentagon position serving as assistant to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, where she has access to the nation’s most sensitive military secrets.

  Hur also went to great lengths to protect her identity in his 388-page report. He refers to her only as “Executive Assistant” and her face is deliberately blurred through pixilation in a photo he published of her sitting in front of a file cabinet in her West Wing office, where she stored Biden’s secret papers.

  Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served as President Barack Obama’s Defense Intelligence Agency director and President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, is among those who believe Chung deserves far more public scrutiny. “What is very clear is Chung needs to be further investigated,” Flynn told RealClearInvestigations. “She should have her clearance immediately suspended and probably revoked completely.”

  This is not the first time Chung has been found to have mishandled sensitive government documents. In the late 1990s, when she worked with Hunter Biden at the Commerce Department as an administrator, she and her boss Melissa Moss were cited by a federal judge for failing to turn over documents sought in a Freedom of Information Act case, as RealClearInvestigations first reported. They were accused of withholding and even destroying key documents in a search that the judge ruled “grossly inadequate” and “unlawful.”

  A lawyer for Chung did not respond to requests for comment.

  Chung was interviewed twice by FBI agents: once on Jan. 4, 2023, and again on Sept. 28, 2023. Details of Chung’s key role in one of Washington’s worst violations of laws safeguarding national security secrets are reported here for the first time. Hur’s own report, however, undermines his conclusion that Chung was likely unaware of the voluminous classified material she repeatedly handled.

  The record shows that Chung personally dispersed the sensitive material to at least three locations in the years when Biden was out of office, 2017-2021 – including two temporary office sites before they were “discovered” in 2022 at the Penn Biden Center in D.C. in an unlocked office frequented by visitors. She routinely retrieved files Biden requested – some stamped with the label “EYES ONLY” which she knew to mean the contents inside were classified. And many of the classified folders include markings in her handwriting. She also helped identify material in 2022, when the president’s retention of classified documents became an issue after his Department of Justice raided Donald Trump’s Florida home in search of secret material.

  The path that the highly sensitive national security documents took from the White House is a circuitous one fraught with potential breaches of security.

  ‘Eyes Only’

  In the last days of Biden’s vice presidency, Chung packed up his files from his West Wing suite, the bulk of which were stored in the front office she manned. She said she packed the materials in boxes provided by the General Services Administration in an operation that took “a couple of days” in January 2017. Chung told investigators she “did not believe the files contained classified documents.” She claimed she did not pay close attention to what she was packing, because she was in a hurry. However, she also said she knew at the time that Biden “was going to write a book,” which she helped him research.

  Chung first shipped the 15 boxes to a nearby “transition office” leased by the GSA, where some of the boxes were unpacked and where she met with Biden over the next six months. At the same time, Biden rented a home in McLean, Va., where Hur said some of the classified materials appear to have ended up in Biden’s basement office.

  It’s unclear if Chung had a role in moving any of the boxes to the McLean rental, but after the GSA lease expired in May 2017, she reloaded the boxes in her car and moved them to a private office that she leased in D.C., according to a partial transcript of her closed-door testimony before the House Oversight Committee. “It was near Chinatown,” she told lawmakers during her April 4, 2023, deposition.

  The boxes containing highly classified papers remained at the site for several months. Curiously, Hur mentions this location only in passing, even though it was an important link in the chain of custody. It does not appear that he investigated the security system there. Nor does it appear that Chung was asked what she or Biden did with the files while they were stored there. In a footnote, Hur noted that Biden met with the former prime minister of Ukraine at that temporary office space in May 2017.

  Then in October 2017, Chung relocated the 15 boxes a few blocks away to the newly built Penn Biden Center on the sixth floor of another D.C. office building, where she unpacked Biden’s White House documents – including some marked “top secret” – and placed them into a three-drawer filing cabinet in her outer office adjoining Biden’s office, which was designed to resemble his old West Wing suite. Other documents were left in boxes stacked in an unlocked storage closet, refuting initial White House claims they were stored in a “locked closet.” Remarkably, the entire office suite was never locked up, which meant virtually anybody who got past the security guard in the lobby of the building had access to the classified files stored there.

  “Mr. Biden’s office did not lock,” Hur noted in his report, “and the adjoining outer office where Mr. Biden’s executive assistant maintained his files was always accessible through Mr. Biden’s office.” In a footnote, Hur added that “the Vice President’s office could only be locked from the inside using a panic button.”

  Office security got even more “relaxed” in early 2019, Hur revealed, when visitors to the Penn Biden Center no longer needed a key fob or an escort to access the sixth floor of the building. Biden’s office, filled with secret government documents including high-level memos on China, was left virtually open to the public – including University of Pennsylvania students who took classes at the center and were allowed to work in the office space during the day.

  The center is hosted by the University of Pennsylvania, which has received several million dollars from anonymous Chinese donors since opening the center. In 2020, the center hosted a symposium featuring Chinese communist officials.

  It’s not known if Hunter Biden – who introduced Chung to his father in 2012 and got her the job in his White House office – escorted any of his Chinese business partners to the sixth floor. But Hunter had access to the center. The Chinese nationals, who paid Hunter millions of dollars, have been connected to Chinese military intelligence. One of them, Chi Ping “Patrick” Ho, who was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation and later convicted of bribery, kept an office in the D.C. area.

  Hur said his team was unable to determine exactly who may have had access to the loosely stored intelligence papers and whether they passed through foreign hands: “We cannot account for all visitors to the center.” Why? The security contractor deleted all the visitor logs for the years 2017 through 2021, he explained.

  Chung claimed she doesn’t remember seeing any classified papers or any classified markings on the documents she packed, unpacked, and ultimately repacked – at the request of Biden’s lawyers – in 2022.

  “The executive assistant did not specifically recall any of the folders containing classified documents, although she acknowledged that they could have been files she maintained for Mr. Biden in the West Wing,” Hur wrote in his report.

  Chung was quite familiar with their contents, however. Many of the file folders were marked with her handwriting. Numerous files also contained handwritten notes from Biden advising Chung that he wanted the contents “saved” or “filed,” rather than archived, in case he wanted them later.

  “Mr. Biden occasionally asked his executive assistant to retrieve material for him from the files she maintained,” Hur noted, including classified material.

   For example, on Dec. 12, 2015, then-Vice President Biden wrote a note to Chung in the corner of a classified paper requesting another classified document he wanted saved for his records. Clearly marked “SECRET,” the document was a “call sheet” detailing the purpose of a call between the then-Ukrainian prime minister and Biden, along with Biden’s talking points for the call. Biden instructed Chung to “[g]et copy of this conversation from Sit Rm [the Situation Room] for my Records please.” Chung, in turn, obtained the transcript Biden ordered and filed it along with the classified call sheet inside a folder labeled “VP Personal,” and stored the folder in a credenza behind her desk, according to the special counsel’s report, which includes an appendix inventorying all of the classified materials investigators recovered from Biden’s sprawling collection.

  The Secret Call Sheet

  GOP lawmakers leading an impeachment inquiry of Biden want to get their hands on the call sheet and the transcript of Biden’s conversation with the Ukrainian leader, because the conversation took place around the time Biden pressured him to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating a Ukrainian oligarch who was paying his son Hunter millions of dollars to sit on the board of his energy conglomerate, Burisma Holdings.

  On Monday, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer sent a letter to Garland asking for the materials by Feb. 19 or he would compel their production through a subpoena. “There is concern that President Biden may have retained sensitive documents related to specific countries involving his family’s foreign business dealings,” Comer explained.

   FBI agents asked Chung how she could miss so many classified documents in the files she repeatedly handled. She told them she was trained to identify classified documents by the orange or red coversheets that were “usually always” included with such papers. And the classified documents that were recovered did not have such covers, she said, and were mixed in with unclassified materials, so they did not jump out at her.

   But the classified Ukraine materials were contained in an envelope marked “EYES ONLY,” as were classified CIA materials she handled concerning the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Still, the envelopes were not technically marked classified, she told the investigators; and besides, she never saw the “EYES ONLY” stamps while packing, unpacking, and repacking the envelopes.

   Hur accepted her explanation. “Even if she had seen the envelope,” he wrote, “it is reasonable to believe she did not know the contents were classified and would not have looked inside to check because of the EYES ONLY stamp.” Therefore, he concluded, there was “insufficient evidence” to charge Chung with willful retention of the classified documents in the EYES ONLY envelopes recovered at the Penn Biden Center.

   However, in her congressional testimony Chung indicated that she did know that an EYES ONLY stamp on an envelope meant the contents were classified. After a House Oversight Committee staffer asked her, “Can you describe for me how you might know a document’s classified?” Chung replied: “Things that I’ve come across always had a cover on it. It was either orange or red, or it was in an envelope, and those were usually for EYES ONLY.”

   At the time of her April 4 testimony, congressional investigators did not know what classified materials had been recovered by the FBI. They did not know she had handled the EYES ONLY Ukrainian and Iranian materials.

  Cutting Chung Slack

  When Hur’s team interviewed Chung several months later, they had access to the transcript of her earlier testimony. Apparently, Hur never challenged her to explain the inconsistency between what she was telling his investigators and what she told congressional investigators.

   Chung had another reason to recognize the classified nature of the Iran nuclear files she maintained: She was directly involved in their production and delivery. The documents were part of a CIA briefing Biden had requested for a closed-door White House breakfast meeting with U.S. senators he held in January 2015 to lobby for their support for the Iran nuclear deal. Before the meeting, Chung worked with a military aide to deliver the Iran briefing papers to the vice president, according to emails.

   “Can you pls put note on the docs he [Biden] was asking about to highlight it,” Chung wrote the military aide, who replied, “They just went up [to Biden] and the document said for VP eyes only.”

  FBI investigators were able to confirm with the CIA that the Iran “EYES ONLY” package Chung secured and filed for Biden was the same manilla envelope of materials recovered from the Penn Biden Center. Inside the envelope were the CIA briefing papers clearly marked “TOP SECRET” and “INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENT.” It also contained about 10 pages of handwritten notes Biden took regarding the briefing, all of which were deemed classified.

  Nonetheless, Hur said he found her actions “innocent,” and that she removed the highly classified materials from the White House “unwittingly.” He said the same thing about her retaining classified White House memos about China.

  “In her interview with the Special Counsel’s office,” he concluded, “she credibly stated that she did not know the files she maintained included marked classified documents.”

   Hur even offered “the possibility that the executive assistant and Mr. Biden simply forgot about them.”

  Regarding the unlawful retention of the Iran documents, Hur asked Biden about his 2015 meeting with senators over the Iran nuke deal and his CIA briefing notes during his two-day interview with the president last October. “Mr. Biden had no recollection of the breakfast or the handwritten notes,” the prosecutor reported. Yet in his own 2017 memoir, Biden states that the Iran deal “may be the most momentous” event of the eight years he and Obama were in office. And he specifically boasted of his “effort to convince Congress to sign off on the pact.”

   After leaving office, Biden had a continuing interest in the Iran nuclear deal, including defending it against criticism by President Trump, who threatened to pull out of the pact and did so in 2018. In response, Biden prepared speeches and memos with Penn Biden Center staff advocating for the deal. They also developed talking points on the subject for Biden’s meetings with Israeli leaders at the center. Holding on to the Iran intelligence and notes would have helped Biden formulate such arguments and been useful source material for his memoir.

   As the guardian of his files, Chung helped Biden research the book, “Promise Me, Dad.” It’s not known if Biden or Chung referenced any of the materials from the boxes in the original manuscript of his book, which was published in November 2017 and revealed insider accounts of Biden’s various roles in U.S. foreign policy, including Ukraine. It also mentioned the Iran nuclear deal, but did not go into detail about the negotiations. Biden listed Chung first among people he acknowledged for their contributions: “Thank you for all of this, and more, to Kathy Chung.”

  Chung also worked with Biden’s ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer. In February 2017, about a month after Biden left office, Hur said Biden discussed a classified memo on Afghanistan with Zwonitzer while they met at his McLean, Va., rental home. Zwonitzer taped their conversation, and though he deleted his recordings after learning a special prosecutor had been appointed to investigate Biden’s classified docs scandal, Hur was able to get FBI computer-forensics experts to restore the audio. (Hur declined to prosecute Zwonitzer because he said he couldn’t be sure he was trying to obstruct his investigation.) On the tapes, Biden can be heard saying he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs.” Downstairs from where they met was Biden’s office, where he stored his papers.

   Hur believes Biden was referring to the same marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan that FBI agents found in 2022 in his Delaware garage. (He moved the files he kept in his private office in McLean to Wilmington in 2019.) Biden last week denied sharing any classified intelligence with his ghostwriter, and he asserted he has no idea how the classified papers on Afghanistan military strategy and troops wound up in a box in his garage.

   Also part of Biden’s book team was Biden’s personal lawyer Bob Bauer, who brokered the contract with the publisher Flatiron Books, an imprint of MacMillan Publishers. Bauer happened to be one of the lawyers who tried to ship Biden’s Penn Biden stash of documents to his home in Wilmington and to a law office in Boston just a few months before the Justice Department raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate looking for classified documents.

  In effect, Hur exonerated Chung and Biden over the highly classified documents that were stashed in closets, credenzas, and cabinets at the Penn Biden Center. He concluded that the boxes of secret White House papers simply ended up there “by mistake.”

   “The evidence suggests that the marked classified documents found at the Penn Biden Center were sent and kept there by mistake,” he concluded in his report. “Therefore, we decline any criminal charges related to those documents.”

   The Department of Justice gave former President Trump and his aides no such benefit of the doubt concerning the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump for “willful retention of classified documents,” among other alleged crimes. He also charged two Mar-a-Lago employees with conspiracy to conceal classified records and obstruction of justice.

   Trump is expected to file a motion to dismiss the DOJ’s case against him, arguing “selective prosecution” based on DOJ declining to indict Biden over similar allegations. His lawyers have until Feb. 18 to file such pretrial motions.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/15/2024 – 18:20

• Today In CRE's Collapse: Philadelphia's 1515 Market Put Into Special-Servicing With $59.4 Million Left On Mortgage
  Today In CRE’s Collapse: Philadelphia’s 1515 Market Put Into Special-Servicing With $59.4 Million Left On Mortgage

  Another day, another city, another collapse in the commercial real estate market.

  This week the property in question is a 20 story building located at 1515 Market St. in Philadelphia, which Philadelphia Business Journal notes has “joined a growing list” of distressed office properties in the city. 

  Almost $60 million in debt backed by the building was moved to special servicing in December, the report says. Owner Accesso Partners, based in Florida, has a $59.4 million balance on the building, which it acquired in 2014 for $85 million.

  The loan is set to mature in January 2025, the report notes. It was originated by J.P. Morgan and has since been converted into a commercial mortgage backed security (CMBS) and sold.

  

  It is one of several buildings within just blocks of Philadelphia City Hall, located in dead-center city, that have been transferred to special servicing over the last 9 months. 

  Accesso told PBJ that it had asked for the loan to be transferred to special servicing so it could negotiate an extension. And if you believe that one, we have some real estate in Alaska we’d like to sell you…

  The building houses Temple University’s Center City campus, which has been the building’s flagship tenant since 2001. It extended its lease in 2022 for 5 years, the report notes. It covers more than 130,000 sq. feet and two floors. 

  However, no other tenants have more than 16,000 feet. 

  The building generated about $6.6 million in net operating income when the loan was written in 2014, however that number has now fallen to under $4.4 million in 2022. Like many other places across the U.S. economy, revenue has fallen while interest expense has risen as a result of rate hikes. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/15/2024 – 18:00

• Watch: Fani Willis Testifies Over Romantic Relationship With Nathan Wade
  Watch: Fani Willis Testifies Over Romantic Relationship With Nathan Wade

  Fani Willis has been called to testify over her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade – and boy is she defensive…

  

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

  Watch:

  *  *  *

  $hit has really hit the Fani in Fulton County.

  

  On Thursday, special prosecutor Nathan Wade testified under oath that he charged several lavish vacations with DA Fani Willis to his corporate credit card while working on the Trump case, and was later reimbursed in cash by Fani.

  BREAKING: Nathan Wade testifies that he paid for all the vacations he took with Fani Willis with his business credit card.

  And that she then reimbursed him in CASH.

  This what at a time he was getting paid by Willis’ office for the prosecution of Trump. pic.twitter.com/9DUq3hedOX

  — Greg Price (@greg_price11) February 15, 2024

  The relationship between Wade and Willis is the subject of an evidentiary hearing as part of Willis’ sprawling racketeering case brought against former President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants for their alleged efforts to overturn (or ‘correct’ – depending) the results of the 2020 US election in Georgia.

  Wade also testified that his marriage was “irretrievably broken in 2015,” and that his wife agreed to a divorce – but they held off because their children were still in school. 

  Oh…

  2020. Fani Willis is asked why the people of Fulton County should support her for District Attorney.

  “Because they deserve a DA that won’t have sex with his employees, because they deserve a DA that won’t put money in their own pocket.” pic.twitter.com/uo8wD1wnnR

  — MAZE (@mazemoore) February 15, 2024

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  Fani fudged…

  

  In a confirmation of what we reported last week from Wade’s divorce proceedings, a former “good friend” of Willis’ testified that her romantic relationship with Wade began after they met at the judicial conference in the fall of 2019, directly contradicting assertions made by Willis in court filings about the timing of their relationship. Willis claimed that she and Wade “have been professional associates and friends since 2019,” and that “there was no personal relationship” between her and Wade in Nov. 2021 when she hired Wade and paid him over $600,000 to help her prosecute Trump.

  Appearing before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee via Zoom, Yeartie said Willis and Wade may have begun dating in October or November 2019, shortly after the two met at the conference that year.

  During questioning from Sadow, who is representing Trump in the case, Yeartie testified that Willis told her she was engaged in a romantic relationship with Wade in 2020 and 2021, and said she witnessed “hugging, kissing,” and “just affection” between the two before November 2021, when Wade was hired by Willis. -CBS News

  Fulton County DA’s office lawyer Anna Cross attempted to raise doubts about Yeartie’s credibility, asking her questions about her performance while working for Willis, and whether she was ever disciplined for poor performance. Yeartie admitted that she’d been written up once, referencing a “situation” in which she was told she would be terminated if she didn’t resign.

  OMG.

  The Atlanta DA gave her boyfriend a contract to help her prosecute Trump.

  That prosecution is done and done.https://t.co/xgKdr8fe8N

  — Paul D. Thacker (@thackerpd) February 15, 2024

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  This adds to previous reporting suggesting that Willis paid Wade’s divorce attorney!

  🚨🚨🚨 EXCLUSIVE🚨🚨🚨

  In addition to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis paying her lover Nathan Wade nearly $700,000 of taxpayer funds, Fani also spread the money from the Fulton County coffers to Terrence Ahmed Bradley, who is Nathan Wade’s divorce attorney/tenant.… pic.twitter.com/7I1tKkWedn

  — Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) January 20, 2024

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  According to former federal prosecutor Chuck Rosenberg, “It might be appropriate for Ms. Willis to consider removing herself from this case now.”

  “This is getting ugly and it’s getting messy.”

  Former federal prosecutor Chuck Rosenberg speaks at recess in the Fulton County D.A. misconduct hearing. Rosenberg adds, “It might be appropriate for Ms. Willis to consider removing herself from this case now.” pic.twitter.com/AHOqcxvv4D

  — MSNBC (@MSNBC) February 15, 2024

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

  You can watch a recap of Wade’s testimony below:

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/15/2024 – 17:47

• India's Natural Gas Consumption Set To Triple by 2050
  India’s Natural Gas Consumption Set To Triple by 2050

  By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com,

  India’s industry expansion and rising oil refining to meet higher fuel demand are set to drive a tripling of the country’s natural gas consumption by 2050, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Wednesday.

  

  In 2022, India’s natural gas consumption amounted to 7.0 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), with over 70% of the demand coming from the industrial sector. By 2050, India’s natural gas consumption is set to more than triple to 23.2 Bcf/d, according to EIA’s estimates.  

  Among India’s five consuming sectors, the industrial sector’s share of gas consumption will grow the most, rising to 80% of total consumption, followed by the transportation sector rising to 10%.  

  India’s gas consumption in oil refining is expected to grow significantly to keep up with India’s domestic demand for oil products, the EIA notes. By 2050, gas consumption will surge by more than 250% for the production of basic chemicals and by more than 400% for refining, with the two industries together accounting for about 79% of India’s industrial natural gas demand in 2050.

  India is boosting its refining capacity. The country should add 1.12 million bpd to its current total each year until 2028, a junior oil minister told India’s parliament at the end of 2023.

  Total Indian refining capacity is expected to increase by 22% in five years from the current 254 million metric tons per year, which are equal to around 5.8 million bpd, Rameswar Teli said.

  Per the EIA forecasts, India’s gas demand – buoyed by oil refining and other industrial production – is expected to grow at an annual rate of 4.4% by 2050, more than twice the 2.0% annual growth rate of gas consumption in China, the next-fastest-growing country.

  India’s economy is growing faster than all other major economies, and so is its demand for energy.  

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/15/2024 – 17:40

• Yesterday's Hysteria-Inducing Intelligence On Scary New Russian Space Weapon Quickly Downgraded
  Yesterday’s Hysteria-Inducing Intelligence On Scary New Russian Space Weapon Quickly Downgraded

  Yesterday all of the major news networks paused their coverage of literally everything else to turn their focus through the whole afternoon to the “major, imminent, grave, terrifying security threat” and ‘fire-alarm’ based on apparent US intelligence related to the Russians(!) and reports that they possess new space defense technology, which is possibly even nuke-related.

  Ambiguous reports pointed to a weapon designed to be used to take out satellites. On Thursday the White House has finally revealed more about the nature of the ‘threat’, with National Security Council spokesman John Kirby belatedly confirming it is related to “an anti-satellite capability that Russia is developing,” but that “This is not an active capability that’s been deployed.”

  

  Or in other words, compared to yesterday’s atmosphere of temporary panic and CNN pundits’ hurried breathing, less than 24 hours later it ends up being the big nothingburger which many predicted it would be. This trend of inflated and fear-mongering headlines is very likely to continue right up to the November election, as we’ve noted.

  And just like that, Wednesday’s big ‘threat’ now simply becomes ‘troubling’…

  “And though Russia’s pursuit of this particular capability is troubling there was no immediate threat to anyone’s safety,” Kirby continued.

  “We are not talking about a weapon that can be used to attack human beings or cause physical destruction here on Earth,” Kirby added.

  Initially, Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio set Capitol Hill media correspondents into a frenzy of speculation after he issued an ominous-sounding statement about “information concerning a serious national security threat.”

  Amazing that some people still think the news is real 😂

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 14, 2024

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  Rep. Turner didn’t help matters in saying “there is no need for public alarm”—words typically taken by the public to mean now is precisely the time to worry and that the government is in fact sounding the alarm.

  Kirby mentioned this in his Thursday press briefing, saying the administration was busy reviewing the new intel when Turner “regrettably” released his statement. “We have been very careful and deliberate about what we decide to declassify downgrade and share with the public,” Kirby said.

  Oh, just kidding around like we always do! pic.twitter.com/9b9VAJ4urK

  — Tim Shorrock (@TimothyS) February 15, 2024

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  Perhaps nothing really even too “new” as NATO has already been fearful of such a weapon for years following a 2021 Russian action in space…

  Russia destroys its own satellite in orbital missile test. This happened back in 2021. It cleared scared the crap out of NATO. Russia must’ve really decided to place anti-satellite weapons in space now. pic.twitter.com/sgGOqSRMw1

  — Irish Fella (@kulawesome) February 14, 2024

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  As for Biden and his team, this served as a nice ‘test case’ demonstrating the ease with which they can run something up the flagpole, instantly capturing a day’s news cycle and spotlight, though it is also true many more Americans are now seeing through this tactic.

  Still more creative scare-mongering to come…

  And that’s how we get Russian sharks with freaking laser beams on their heads https://t.co/jiAFgkqZck

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 15, 2024

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

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/15/2024 – 17:20

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• What Everyone Is Missing About The Putin/Carlson Talk
  What Everyone Is Missing About The Putin/Carlson Talk

  Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

  “The Vorlons say, understanding is a three-edged sword: your side, their side, and the truth”

  — John Sheridan, Babylon 5

  The biggest media story of 2024 so far has come and gone. Tucker Carlson interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin last week.

  

  Everyone, even the Davos/UK dominated media, has put forth their opinion on it. I gave out a quick take for my Patrons the morning after just like everyone else. And like everyone else I missed the biggest takeaway from this interview.

  Now, if you go through the commentary what you will mostly see is people, as always, doing what traders call “talking their book.” In other words, as opposed to dealing with the information presented and the motivations of the people involved, most media outlets and commentators put forth their opinion on whether this interview satisfied their needs from it.

  So, for the hardcore geopolitical types and armchair psychoanalysts, we heard a lot of opinions second-guessing Putin’s strategy to open the interview with a nearly thirty minute recitation of Russian/Ukrainian history. Why would he do this, was the common refrain.

  I’ll use my former-bellwether-for-normies, Scott Adams, as an example of this.

  How many of you thought Putin was “all there” in the Tucker interview?

  If he seemed lucid to you, it’s because Biden is your comparison.

  I thought Putin seemed unhinged. The history lesson was not a good sign. https://t.co/VZiEIHRZ2t

  — Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) February 9, 2024

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

  This was the kindest of the ‘bad takes’ I found on this. But I’m having one of Scott’s “One movie, two screens,” moments here. Because Putin looked anything other than “unhinged.” In fact, he looked as calm as I’ve ever seen him, taking a relaxed posture to put Carlson, who was clearly unsure of where he stood at the beginning of the interview, at ease.

  But this is the message that Adams wanted to see, framing Putin in relation to Biden, because he needed something unique to say to justify his even being in the conversation.

  By contrast, Martin Armstrong had a great post curating all of the crazy Neocon takes from the “media” on his blog over the weekend.

  What’s obvious from those is that they understood that Putin’s 30 minute opening monologue would put off a lot of casual watchers who would tune him out at that point. So, their “analysis” focused on steering the conversation to Putin’s ‘false history’ of Russia and Ukraine.

  This way that ‘false history’ would dominate everyone’s opinions the next day, managing the Overton Window of the entire interview, making it all about that. This would be the basis of how they discredit Putin.

  Then to discredit Carlson, people like Hillary Clinton was trotted out to lie about Tucker Carlson, calling him a “useful idiot,” and “puppy dog” and a joke in Russian media, which is an outright lie. Hillary’s harpy laugh made an appearance alongside a sycophant interviewer as they joked about Carlson’s having been fired from every legitimate news agency.

  We were treated to a common sight: Two Beltway insiders laughing inside their echo chamber and only our sick fascination with roadkill makes it even remotely interesting.

  So, the whole exercise is reframed as Puppy Dog Tucker throwing softballs to Liar Putin to distract us away from the sum and substance of their talk.

  I know… in other news water is wet and women want more sex when they’re fertile.

  And I also know that it is fatuous to bring up these panicked attempts to marginalize this event. They started days before Carlson was even rumored to be in Moscow.

  On the one hand we have people intentionally missing the point because they need to have their opinions validated. And on the other we have people intentionally leading those truly curious away from the purpose of the interview: to get an unfiltered look at Putin’s motivations for how he governs Russia.

  Why? Because, as we already also know, the warmongers are in charge in the West and they will not be deterred by some prep school gadfly and a dirty Slavic ruler with pretensions of adequacy.

  So the war show must go on.

  But buried beneath these layers of surreality are these men’s motivations for having this talk. Carlson’s motivation is illuminated quite effectively in his first appearance after his talk with Putin (watch the first 90 seconds).

  His outrage at being denied this interview for three years by NSA/CIA spying on him is what drove him. The worst thing the gatekeepers ever did was fire Tucker Carlson from Fox News; making him independent freed him from the restraints of the corporate media.

  Knowing that Tucker tried for three years to get this interview with Putin, we should assume that Putin would come into the room prepared. So, it makes sense that Putin wanted to give us a history lesson because he assumes, rightly, that most Americans do not have any clue about Russia’s history.

  He didn’t do this to bore us, he did this to inform us and set us at ease. To tell us that he is a man with a perspective that he believes he can justify.

  He’s not a frothing-at-the-mouth cannibal who desires world domination.

  No, Putin’s aim was to elucidate, calmly, the nature of the conflict, laying out the missteps made along the way. And I believe he was effective to those that stayed with him. Because, never once did Putin talk down to his audience.

  How many Americans learned that Putin asked Bill Clinton for Russia to become part of NATO, thus ending NATO’s raison d’etre?

  Or that Bush the Lesser unilaterally abrogated the ABM Treaty?

  Or that the Minsk Agreements were our last hope for a settlement of the differences between the Donbass and Kiev, and that Putin was the one pushing to make them work?

  There are at least a half-dozen other things people learned in this interview, if they had ears to listen, I’m looking at you Scott Adams.

  And given that this conflict is hurtling towards a war that only very select gatekeepers and power-brokers want, that should have been enough to sharpen everyone’s focus to give Putin an honest hearing.

  Now, that said, Putin did present his version of history, of the truth. Shouldn’t we expect that?

  But, as I’ve painstakingly laid out here, much like Putin himself, focusing on that is focusing on the wrong thing. It’s the wrong framework to view this interview given the current stakes of this conflict.

  And this is what everyone missed about this interview. It literally does not matter one whit whose is right and who is wrong here. Putin’s version of history isn’t what’s at stake here.

  It doesn’t matter whether Putin violated international law by crossing the post-USSR border. As Putin pointed out, NATO violated Serbia’s borders by bombing Belgrade for six months in 1999. So, borders only matter when it behooves certain actors?

  It doesn’t matter if Putin is overstating the level of ‘Nazification’ of Ukraine to justify defending the Donbass, whether he jails journalists, cracks down on free speech, or rules Russia with a thinly-veiled form of democracy.

  It doesn’t matter if you believe he pulled off a coup in Crimea in 2014, poisoned Sergei and Yulia Skripal, Alexi Navalny is a freedom-fighter or he helped get Donald Trump elected (and I’m looking at YOU Hillary Clinton!).

  What does matter is that is how Putin views this conflict. And we have to deal with it. Period.

  What also matters is that those who stand behind Putin are even less patient and circumspect than he is.

  In order to avoid that bigger war only the oligarch class wants, we, as people, have to accept some responsibility for it getting to this point. Without that there can be no basis for a negotiated settlement.

  This conflict between the West, and this includes all of Europe, the UK as well as the US, and Russia is one with existential consequences.

  What Putin said, quite clearly, is that this ball is in our court. We can either sit down and have an honest discussion of a negotiated future or we will be at war. If that is what we in the West want, it is what we will get. Putin has put his sons on the line in eastern Ukraine. Are we?

  You can dig in on being right or we can have peace. But, we cannot have both.

  The Victoria Nulands and the Ursula Von Der Leyens of this world represent people who refuse to accept that Russia and/or China are not systems, but rather civilizations. They aren’t the current bogeyman ‘ism du jour, like Communism or authoritarianism, they are a people, a culture, an ethnos. The ‘ism is just the thing they’ve adopted now to help them preserve those things inherently Russian or Chinese.

  Our leaders are this way because they don’t believe in those things for us no less anyone else. And they spend all their time trying to convince us that that is what divides us. But it isn’t. It’s simply their greed, their emptiness.

  Because of this they lack any sense that these civilizations 1) have any right to exist and 2) deserve any empathy. So, logically, none of Russia’s demands are valid.

  Putin put how he feels about history on the table. He’s angry about it. The West keeps saying, “Your version of history is wrong. So you have no right to be angry.”

  Have you ever had an argument with someone important to you and they did this to you? I’ve done it and had it done to me. In my experience the argument doesn’t get resolved. It escalates.

  And it escalates, eventually, even if it goes on for a long time, say, in a marriage, to the point of estrangement if not outright hatred. If you want to repair the relationship in some way then you have to lead with, “Okay, I hear you.”

  Then you have to learn how to mean it.

  That’s where we are today. The Russians are done with our leadership. We use diplomacy as a basis for betrayal, not as the foundation of a future.

  They see us as a failing empire, a failing civilization on the long historical time line, because we have embraced cynicism and allowed the rapacious and the perverse to run our world.

  This is why there is no basis for diplomacy at the head of state level. This is an argument between two people one of whom wants nothing to do with the other (The West) while the other one is insisting that no matter what the other does, they will survive (Russia).

  Rock, meet Hard Place…. choose between chisels or sledgehammers.

  Putin came to the interview with his argument. He laid it out carefully for us, the people of the West, to review. Carlson tried to call him out for not talking to President Biden and open negotiations and Putin rightly set him straight.

  Who can he call up and talk to? Who has the political or even moral authority to negotiate? Is there anyone on our side even willing to negotiate? He made it clear that he’s open to someone calling him up. He continues to hold out hope because, as he said, “Stop supplying weapons, and this war will be over in weeks.”

  And if your knee-jerk response to that is, “Well, Vlad, you can just leave Ukraine…” then you are part of the problem because you are not even trying to listen.

  Because this war is in our hands now. That’s who Putin was speaking to through Tucker Carlson.

  The architects of this war have led us to a perilous moment. Putin doesn’t have to invade Poland or Germany to defeat the West. All he and Russia have to do is survive our collective rage. Our leaders are bankrupting us, as he pointed out, trying to defeat Russia.

  If you want peace, deal with the facts of this war by acknowledging the feelings of the people on the other side of it while truly examining your own.

  Either way, history will not judge any of us kindly.

  *  *  *

  Join my Patreon if you want to know what you’re missing

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 02/15/2024 – 00:05

• Yen's Big Sway On Japanese Shares Fades To A Myth
  Yen’s Big Sway On Japanese Shares Fades To A Myth

  By Hideyuki Sano, Bloomberg markets live reporter and strategist

  The conventional wisdom in the Japanese market that a cheaper yen benefits exporters and boosts share prices has been turned on its head.

  In reality, the yen’s exchange rate is having less and less of a bearing on Japanese stocks. The correlation between the Topix index and the dollar/yen rate since July has been 0.23, a level statisticians would judge as pretty weak. The link between the yen and the Nikkei 225 during the same period is even slightly negative.

  The chart below illustrates the point. Blue dots show where the yen and the Topix were each day since July. When Japan’s currency was at 150 against the dollar, the Topix was lower. In 2022 the Topix hardly reacted to the yen’s exchange rate, stuck mostly between 1,800 and 2,000, as shown by the gray dots.

  The relations between the dollar/yen and the Topix since 2022.

  

  The loss of connection between the yen and share prices is no surprise given how Japanese exporters have changed. Successful companies such as Sony Group Corp. and Hitachi Ltd. have long ditched their old models of exporting goods manufactured in Japan, making their business more global and diversified.

  “Some people say a cheap yen will benefit exporters, but the impact of that is very limited after the hollowing-out of the domestic manufacturing base,” said Seiya Nakajima, visiting professor of international finance at Fukui Prefectural University.

  The only period when the Topix appeared to be correlated to the yen is the first half of 2023, (shown by the orange dots), with the index higher when the currency was cheaper.

  But the connection appears tenuous: during that period Japanese shares had their own drivers, such as Warren Buffett’s investment in trading firms as well as hopes about corporate governance improvements, suggesting any boost from the yen was secondary.

   

  Hitachi’s earnings before interest, taxes and amortization increased by just ¥200 million ($1.3 million) for each one yen depreciation against the dollar. As for Sony, the net impact of yen moves on its earnings is relatively limited.

  For many chip-related companies, the outlook for that sector overseas as well as the global economy has a far-larger impact than the foreign-exchange rate. Against this backdrop, the correlation between the dollar/yen rate and the Topix Electronics Appliance index – the biggest segment of the stock market with a 17% weighting – has decreased since the pandemic.

  This isn’t to say that a cheaper yen has no benefit. It still brings currency translation gains for Japanese companies’ earnings on big overseas sales. Automaker shares continue to have a strong correlation with the yen as they export a lot of vehicles. While that weakened in 2022 when chip shortages hobbled their output, the link between Japanese carmakers and the yen came back last year.

  Still, automakers account for just 9% of the Topix. And the perception that Japan’s economy is export-driven also needs a reality check. Japan’s exports have stagnated so much over the past decade in part due to a production shift abroad and the loss of competitiveness. It’s the only major economy that saw exports decline over the last decade.

  It’s little wonder, then, investors don’t buy Japanese stocks just because the yen is cheap.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/14/2024 – 23:25

• Boeing Plane Deliveries Fall 29% In January Amid Max Jet Crisis 
  Boeing Plane Deliveries Fall 29% In January Amid Max Jet Crisis 

  Boeing’s plane deliveries tumbled 29% in January – compared to the previous month, driven primarily by seasonal trends and fallout from a near-mid-air disaster of a fuselage panel that ripped off one of its 737 Max 9s. 

  Last month, the company handed over 27 aircraft, marking its lowest delivery count since September, in contrast to 67 deliveries in December. As for Max jets, it delivered 25 aircraft, down from 44 in December. 

  

  “New aircraft orders are light in the month, but are typically seasonally light early in any year, while new aircraft order backlog remains very large compared to supply,” Goldman analysts wrote in a note. 

  The analysts, led by Noah Poponak and Anthony Valentini, continued: “Deliveries slowed in January, in part due to seasonality and in part from Boeing slowing down the system to renew the focus on product quality.” 

  They expect the slowdown in January to be temporary as an “acceleration in output” will occur “in the near-term and through the rest of 2024.” 

  Here are Boeing’s gross orders, cancellations, and ASC 606 adjustments for the 737, 777, and 787 planes.

  

  As of Jan. 31, Boeing’s backlog decreased from 5,626 to 5,599 aircraft. It has 6,189 unfilled orders when accounting for adjustments. 

  “Boeing would have adequate backlog coverage to support production rate plans over the near-to-medium term, with ~6X years of 737 backlog coverage even if the ASC 606 movements are not recognized in the backlog by 2026, and ~5X/9X years for the 787 and 777, respectively,” the analysts said. 

  

  Since the Jan. 5 incident involving a door plug on a brand new Alaska Airlines Max 9 jet, Boeing executives have been scrambling to ensure safety in its manufacturing supply chain. The US Federal Aviation Administration briefly grounded the Max 9 jets for inspections and has since capped Boeing’s production of the planes while an audit of the manufacturing process is ongoing. 

  Meanwhile, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun has promised to carefully review manufacturing processes at the company’s factory. The FAA won’t lift the production cap on Max jets until the agency is “satisfied that the quality control issues uncovered during this process are resolved.” 

  Despite the mounting risks for Boeing, the analysts continued with a buy rating on Boeing, with a 12-month price target of $268. 

  

  They also outlined three key risks for Boeing shares: 

  1. the pace of air traffic growth,
  2. supply chain recovery timing, and 
  3. defense program margins in the medium-term

  Given Goldman’s price target, shares are at a deep discount, trading around $204 as of Wednesday morning.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/14/2024 – 23:05

• US Govt Is Hiding Documents That Incriminate Intel Community For Illegal Spying & Election Interference, Say Sources
  US Govt Is Hiding Documents That Incriminate Intel Community For Illegal Spying & Election Interference, Say Sources

  Matt Taibbi explains the multi-part series, cowritten with Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag, about the corrupt origins of the Trump-Russia investigation…

  Subscribe to Racket News here…

  Read Part 1 here “CIA Had Foreign Allies Spy On Trump Team, Triggering Russia Collusion Hoax, Sources Say “…

  Part 2: U.S. Government Is Hiding Documents That Incriminate Intelligence Community For Illegal Spying And Election Interference, Say Sources

  Authored by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag via Public substack,

  Former CIA Director Gina Haspel blocked the release of “binder” with evidence that may identify her role in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax

  

  FBI Director Christopher Wray (left), former CIA Director Gina Haspel (center), and former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats (right), testify at a Senate Intelligence Committee on January 29, 2019. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

  Last December 15th, as Americans decorated trees, lit Menorahs, and prepared to tune out for winter holidays, CNN ran an extraordinary article titled, “The mystery of the missing binder: How a collection of raw Russian intelligence disappeared under Trump.”

  Co-authored by Natasha Bertrand, the gargantuan expose claimed a mysterious “binder” of “highly classified information related to Russian election interference” went “missing” in the chaotic waning days of Donald Trump’s presidency in January 2021, raising concerns that some of America’s most “closely guarded national security secrets… could be exposed.”

  CNN and its intelligence sources meant “exposure” in a bad way.

  Sources have told Public and Racket, however, that the secrets officials worry might be “exposed” are ones that would implicate them in widespread abuses of intelligence authority dating back to the 2015-2016 election season.

  “I would call [the binder] Trump’s insurance policy,” said someone knowledgeable about the case.

  “He was very concerned about having it and taking it with him because it was the road map” of Russiagate.

  Transgressions range from Justice Department surveillance of domestic political targets without probable cause to the improper unmasking of a pre-election conversation between a Trump official and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to WMD-style manipulation of intelligence for public reports on alleged Russian “influence activities.”

  The CNN report claimed intelligence officials were concerned about the disclosure of “sources and methods that informed the U.S. government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election.”

  They should be concerned.

  The story of how a team “hand-picked” by CIA Director John Brennan relied on “cooked intelligence” to craft that January 6th, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment is the subject of tomorrow’s story, the last in this three-part series.

  Corruption, not tradecraft, is what officials are desperate to keep secret.

  The ”missing binder” story has several variants.

  Sources offer differing answers on the question of whether anything of consequence is missing. They give mixed accounts of Trump’s frantic last efforts to declassify Russia-related material.

  But nearly everyone Public and Racket spoke to agreed that the tale obscured a broader and more important story.

  Dating back to the release of the so-called “Nunes memo” in 2018 exposing the corruption of the FISA application process, senior intelligence officials, including Trump’s CIA Director, Gina Haspel, have repeatedly blocked attempts to declassify information about the Trump-Russia investigation.

  They had good reason to obstruct the release of these documents.

  The documents in question are said to contain information about the legal justification for those investigations, or more specifically, the lack of justification, among other things. Should more of that information be made public, it might implicate a long list of officials in serious abuses.

  Questions like these may be answered if the 10-inch thick binder of sensitive documents about the origins of the Russia probe is made public.

  Fear for reputations and careers, not national security, is what has intelligence officials panicked.

  …

  Investigators wanted to declassify their findings before Trump left office, but the CIA “would not cooperate.” Investigators, a source told Public and Racket, “created a binder that blew up the assessment but couldn’t get it out because the CIA controlled it.”

  …

  Subscribers to Public substack can read the astonishing full report here…

  TOMORROW: NEW BOMBSHELL ON CONTENTS OF SECRET JANUARY 2017 “INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY ASSESSMENT” OF RUSSIAN ELECTION INTERFERENCE

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/14/2024 – 22:45

• House Probing Whether Biden Raided Grandkids' Bank Accounts In 'Unusual' Money Transfers
  House Probing Whether Biden Raided Grandkids’ Bank Accounts In ‘Unusual’ Money Transfers

  New evidence in the House GOP’s ongoing efforts to get to the bottom of the Biden family’s tangled web of payments and bank accounts have uncovered new evidence suggesting money transfers to President Joe Biden from his grandchildren, Just the News reports.

  

  “In one of the interviews — that we haven’t I don’t believe disclose the transcript yet — the witness made reference to an account we didn’t know about. We’re researching that account,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer told Just the News, No Noise, adding that the information may eventually lead Congress to subpoena Biden’s personal bank and credit card records.

  “They also said that that account could have possibly been paid with some infusion from the grandchildren.“

  According to Comer, the flow of money from a grandchild to a grandfather would be unusual, if true.

  “Now, I don’t know about you. But I don’t know anyone in the world whose grandchildren have ever deposited money into a savings account for their elderly grandfather,” said Comer. “But now, maybe I’m wrong. But that’s something we’re certainly looking into.”

  Comer wouldn’t go into who the witness was, however another Congressional insider told the outlet that it came from a longtime Hunter Biden business associate. The same source said they expected the transcript of the interview to be released later this week or early next week.

  In recent weeks the Committe has made progress interviewing a laundry list of Biden associates:

  Comer’s committee has completed several closed-door interviews with Hunter Biden associates including energy executive Tony Bobulinski, Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris, and Rosemont Seneca partners Devon Archer and Eric Schwerin. Bobulinski’s and Schwerin’s transcripts have not yet been released.

  Emails on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop indicated Schwerin had access to some information about Joe Biden’s finances when he was vice president, including a tax refund from Delaware that was being routed from father to son.

  Comer said his committee has begun to request access from banks and others to Joe Biden’s personal financial records and that lawmakers were prepared to obtain them by subpoena if necessary. -Just the News

  According to former Biden associate Tony Bobulinksy, “Joe Biden was the brand” Hunter and pals were selling.

  “We certainly have a lot of questions about he achieved how he (Joe Biden) accumulated so much wealth so quickly,” said Comer. “The public explanation behind that doesn’t add up with most people’s calculators. We’re certainly looking into some of these new accounts. We’ve requested some information, that you know is the first step in being able to successfully subpoena bank records. So stay tuned to that.”

  Read the rest of the report here…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/14/2024 – 22:25

• Are The Feds Buying Gun Data On Private Citizens Without A Warrant? 
  Are The Feds Buying Gun Data On Private Citizens Without A Warrant? 

  Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

  The Biden Administration has shown time and time again how they weaponize federal law enforcement agencies against gun owners.

  A recent report by the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security highlighted how several DHS component agencies, including the Secret Service, bought Americans’ phone location data without a court order.

  Several other agencies, including the IRS, FBI, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, also admitted to using data brokers to sidestep American’s Fourth Amendment rights.

  Did you know companies and the government can BUY gun owner information?🤯

  Are you a 20-something? 70+? Female? Democrat? Do you live in NY or TX? What gun range do you go to?

  All of this information AND MORE is available online, and it’s not as expensive as you’d think.😡 pic.twitter.com/T7WCzReV9i

  — Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) February 13, 2024

  Under normal circumstances, a Judge would need to issue a warrant to collect this kind of data, but in this case, private companies act as a middleman between your data and the government by scraping anywhere that personal data is publicly available. Government lawyers have decided that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to Americans’ personal data — if the government buys it from data brokers.

  Using the same quasi-legal methods used to obtain phone location data, federal law enforcement agencies may have already targeted gun owners by purchasing email lists and data sets that contain location, name, and other personal information from data brokers.

  Several sites promote their extensive list of “Shooting Fanatics,” “Concealed carry licensed gun owners,” and even “New York City Gun Owners”! These lists are perfect targets for an administration focused on attacking the individual right to keep and bear arms.

  With these lists, the Biden Administration’s law enforcement agencies could purchase and misuse the personal information of millions of gun owners without a single warrant or court order.

  It is crucial to close the Section 702 FISA loophole that allows Federal agencies to collect this data on American gun ownership without a warrant. By allowing agencies to buy sensitive information rather than following the judicial process, it makes mockery of the constitutional promise of protection against unreasonable search and seizures. 

  That is why Gun Owners of America encourages all members of Congress to sign onto Rep. Davidson’s bills ending this warrantless surveillance. Over 30 House Representatives have already signed a letter urging leadership to close this loophole.

  Gun Owners of America endorses Representative Warren Davidson’s Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act and the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Surveillance Act. Congress must act to protect Americans’ Second and Fourth Amendment rights.

  *   *   *

  We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/14/2024 – 22:05

• Japan Enters Recession With Nikkei About To Hit All Time High
  Japan Enters Recession With Nikkei About To Hit All Time High

  It’s not like anyone actually believes it any more, but if anyone needed the most clear and concise proof that there is no, zero, zilch connection between the economy and stock market, look no further than Japan where the Nikkei has more than doubled from the covid lows and is about to breach its all time bubble highs set in in the last days of 1989… and moments ago Japan entered a recession. In fact, From its generational low set a decade ago, the Nikkei has almost quadrupled even as Japan’s economy has slumped into recession three times!

  

  So anyway, confirming that only central banks matter in a world where the economy clearly does not, moments ago Tokyo reported that Japan’s economy “unexpectedly” contracted for a second quarter at the end of 2023, slipping into recession and significantly clouding the Bank of Japan’s path toward ending its negative interest rate policy (as it was supposedly preparing to do, even if it really had no intention at all of hiking).

  Japan’s GDP shrank at an annualized pace of 0.4% in the final three months of last year, following a revised 3.3% contraction in the previous quarter, as both households and businesses cut spending. Economists had expected the economy to expand by 1.1%.

  

  According to Bloomberg, the data also confirmed that Japan’s economy slipped to fourth-largest in the world in dollar terms last year. Germany – which is also in recession but has at least learned how to manipulate its data and is pretending to not be in contraction at this moment – is now has the world’s third-largest economy.

  Hilariously, the striking miss – and slide into contraction – will “complicate” the BOJ’s case to conduct the first rate hike in Japan since 2007, a step most economists surveyed last month predicted the bank will take by April, but it clearly won’t be doing any time now. Pretending like it still has control, the BOJ’s policy board has recently ramped up discussions surrounding an exit from the subzero rate policy and sought to assure markets that a rate hike wouldn’t signal a sharp shift in policy.

  What is laughable is not that the BOJ won’t be hiking – it never planned on doing that anyway since tightening would immediately blow up its entire bond market – but that despite NIRP, endless QE and purchases of equity ETFs, Japan has still gone through three recessions in the past decade. Of course, recessions don’t matter for the market; what does are central banks, and since the BOJ has injected trillions over the same decade, well… that’s why stocks are where they are now.

  Thursday’s data underscored the case for keeping policy loose by reflecting Japan’s reliance on external demand. Net exports contributed 0.2% to growth. Exports jumped in December, led by automobiles to the US and chip manufacturing gear to China. Inbound tourism, classified as service exports, also saw continued growth, with the number of visitors setting a record for the month in December.

  At the same time, domestic consumption has been crushed, and the figures showed that domestic activity remains anemic, with inflation crimping spending as private consumption subtracted 0.2 percentage point, and as households contend with rising costs of living tightened their budgets.  Making things worse, household spending fell 2.5% in December versus a year earlier, a 10th straight month of declines, as wage gains lagged inflation.

  This is why the BOJ is completely trapped, as unless it does hike rates, and thus pushes the economy into an even deeper contraction and sparks a bond market crisis to boot, the yen continue to plummet and runaway inflation will turn into hyperinflation.

  In fact, the only thing Japan has going for it is that the population is too old and diapered to start a revolution at the cartoonish and incompetent government and central bank which will do nothing as hyperinflation slowly takes hold.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/14/2024 – 21:45

• Let The Illegals 'Serve'?
  Let The Illegals ‘Serve’?

  Authored by Casey Carlisle via RealClearMarkets.com,

  A couple of the podcasters I listen to have recently quoted Thomas Sowell, who says that there are no solutions—only tradeoffs.  Since catastrophic 2020, it’s clear that Sowell’s words have already been forgotten, and because this is an economics article, I’ll call out those—regardless of political affiliation—who’ve forgotten Sowell’s wise words. 

  With the immigration issue raging, some have suggested that illegal immigrants should be able to gain citizenship via ‘service’ in the military. 

  

  I’ll argue why that’s a good idea – and a bad one.

  Speaking of a solution (which doesn’t exist), I’d very much like to see an end to the U.S. regime’s pointless and proxy wars, but again, I’m discussing tradeoffs, not solutions. 

  Last year, I argued that low rates of military enlistment are actually a good thing, but again, hoping for the solution that is an imploding Department of Defense requires dreaming, not tradeoffs. 

  It is those low rates of military enlistment that have spurred some to advocate filling the gap with illegal immigrants. 

  And why not? 

  The regime won’t simply stop waging war due to a lack of interest from those it parasitizes.

  “But, but, but,” conservatives seem to groan, “dying in pointless wars is an honor reserved for my children, not illegals.” 

  So very odd.  And depressing. 

  We happily pay others to do the “dirty” jobs we’d rather not do, so why do the right of center yearn to work such a lousy job? 

  Also, each illegal ‘serving’ in the military frees one citizen to help defend the border, about which, in my opinion, conservatives are justifiably enraged.  I’ve also seen Olympus Has Fallen, but are conservatives aware that it’s not a documentary?  Even if illegals taking over the military were an actual concern, the tradeoff would be to make the military weaker and, therefore, less of a threat to its own citizens.  Afterall, the current president keeps reminding us that one needs an F-16, not an M-16, to fight the regime, so a smaller military might prevent a sitting president from saying something so ludicrous, insulting, and obnoxious. 

  If the regime doesn’t meet its enlistment goals, will it simply call it quits and bring the troops home? 

  The question answers itself, and I’d think those on the right would prefer illegals in the military over legal conscription.

  For those on the political left who’ve been calling for ‘service’ as a path to citizenship, why would illegals put their lives on the line for citizenship when they’re already treated better than citizens? 

  Yes, leftists have also forgotten tradeoffs, and maybe they never learned of them in the first place.  One works a job for a paycheck; exertion, one hopes, is commensurate with compensation. 

  However, if one were offered a salary for no slog—ask any parasite—the job will go unworked. 

  That is precisely what liberals seem to be suggesting. 

  “Citizenship?” illegals seem to ask, “we’re doing just fine being illegal.” 

  This proposal, emanating almost entirely from those who are left of center, not only ignores tradeoffs but incentives as well.  Where’s the incentive for citizenship when illegal immigrants can get a driver’s license and, in some cities, are about to be granted suffrage?  It also seems that those on the left aren’t at all curious as to why rates of military enlistment have plummeted, despite the regime’s problem being seen as a possibility back in 2020. 

  This proposal is a tradeoff that trades something for nothing.

  The lack of regard for tradeoffs seems to contribute to the deteriorating political climate.  When half of the country wants to force their solutions on the other half, is it any wonder why politics is so ugly? 

  If there’s only one solution, most will be unhappy, but that’s exactly what politics does and is why I loathe it. 

  Politics eviscerates tradeoffs and, therefore, voluntary exchange.  No, a new president with a different set of solutions won’t save us; he’ll merely shift the misery to another tribe, which is why if there were fewer and fewer aspects of our lives that the regime controls, tradeoffs would help relegate policy solutions to where they belong—the realm of fiction.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/14/2024 – 21:25

• Russia's Man In Washington? Putin Says He Prefers Biden Over Trump
  Russia’s Man In Washington? Putin Says He Prefers Biden Over Trump

  Headed into election season, it is perhaps only natural and entirely to be expected that the mainstream media will hyperventilate over every side remark that Vladimir Putin makes on what’s shaping up to be a Trump vs. Biden match in November. Russian ‘interference’ is no doubt always looming darkly on the horizon, we are told.

  The Russian leader’s Wednesday response to a question asked in a state media interview has triggered an avalanche of headlines Wednesday night. When asked to choose his preference for the next US president, Putin answered Joe Biden, and explained this is due to the 81-year old Democratic incumbent being a “more experienced, predictable, an old-school politician.” Is this Putin doing some hilarious trolling after years of the Russian interference narrative pushed by the Dems?…

  

  The esteemed, weighty, and acclaimed Financial Times is among the many outlets that seem confused: “Vladimir Putin has said Joe Biden would be a better US president for Russia than Donald Trump and dismissed concerns over his counterpart’s age and acuity for the role,” FT writes.

  “Putin’s comments late on Wednesday marked his first foray into this year’s presidential election as tensions between Democrats and Republicans rise over the White House’s efforts to send more military aid to Ukraine,” the publication continues. Putin also dismissed any concern over Biden’s age and mental acumen, but acknowledged the political rhetoric in the US is “getting more and more vicious” on this.

  Putin went on in the interview to state that Russia is ready and willing to “work with any US leader who wins the trust of the American people.”

  Putin in his response appeared to take opportunity to possibly make a passing joke about President Biden’s ability to fulfill the office…

  Putin says he’d rather have Biden as President than Trump. “He’s more experienced, he’s predictable, he’s an old-school politician.”

  He doubts Biden’s age makes him “incapable.” When they met Biden was “nothing of the sort.” “Who of us hasn’t banged their head on something?” pic.twitter.com/xGSHntvmdC

  — max seddon (@maxseddon) February 14, 2024

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

  Putin noted that back when he met Biden in Switzerland in 2021, it was the case that even at that time people “talked about him being incapacitated, but I saw nothing of the kind.”

  He added: “Yes, he was peeking at his papers, to be honest, I was peeking at mine, not a big deal.”

  We have to ask: does this make Biden “Putin’s man in Washington”? After all, the world was just now told told straight from the proverbial horse’s mouth that Biden is the ‘better’ American president for Russian interests.

  And yet we won’t hold our breath for the CNN articles on “why Putin would want Biden to win in 2024”… 

  Imagine if Putin had said the opposite. Would have been the grounds for another bullshit impeachment. pic.twitter.com/FVQvYBx7Mt

  — Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) February 15, 2024

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

  But assuming Putin’s response voicing his preference for another Biden presidency wasn’t either trolling or playing some 4-dimensional chess, the emphasis on Biden being more “predictable” is an interesting one. After all, Trump and his supporters have often said that it’s Trump’s very unpredictability which makes world leaders and US rivals fear him. 

  THIS IS WHY PUTIN LOVES BIDEN!!! pic.twitter.com/3bRvHswgAT

  — il Donaldo Trumpo (@PapiTrumpo) February 14, 2024

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

  This fresh commentary from Putin also becomes interesting to think about in recalling President Barack Obama’s infamous hot mic moment with outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in 2021. Obama had personally assured Medvedev he will have “more flexibility” to deal with difficult US-Russia issues after the US presidential election.

  Maybe this what Putin had in mind in calling Biden and the Democrats more ‘predictable’…

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/14/2024 – 21:05

• Cases Of Debilitating POTS Condition Rise After COVID-19, But New Research Points To Possible Treatment
  Cases Of Debilitating POTS Condition Rise After COVID-19, But New Research Points To Possible Treatment

  Authored by George Citroner via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  For the estimated 1 to 3 million Americans living with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), standing up can trigger a racing heartbeat, lightheadedness, and fainting that’s relieved only by sitting or lying down.

  But a new clinical trial offers a glimmer of hope for those desperate for relief. Researchers may have uncovered a novel, nonpharmaceutical way to manage this debilitating syndrome on the rise nationwide.

  

  Pandemic and Vaccines Contribute to Uptick in POTS

  POTS cases notably rose following the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine rollout, both of which are known to impact heart health. Some evidence suggests that 2 percent to 14 percent of COVID-19 survivors are later diagnosed with POTS.

  A December 2022 study in Nature Cardiovascular Research found links between COVID-19, mRNA vaccines, and POTS. It revealed COVID-19 patients are five times more likely to develop POTS down the road than those who got POTS after vaccination.

  “Our results identify a possible association between COVID-19 vaccination and incidence of POTS,” the authors wrote. “Notwithstanding the probable low incidence of POTS after COVID-19 vaccination, particularly when compared to SARS-Cov-2 post-infection odds.”

  A March 2023 review of studies also suggested a “significant percentage” of COVID-19 patients developed POTS within six to eight months of infection, though the exact mechanisms connecting the two remain unclear.

  Nerve Stimulation Benefits POTS Patients

  Led by Dr. Stavros Stavrakis of the University of Oklahoma (OU) College of Medicine, a new clinical trial published in JACC: Clinical Electrophysiology explored whether stimulating the vagus nerve—a key part of the parasympathetic nervous system—could relieve POTS symptoms.

  The vagus nerve starts in the brain, passes through the heart and lungs, and ends in the intestines. This nerve controls functions such as digestion, breathing, and heart rate. Targeting it could address a major POTS symptom: rapid heartbeat upon standing.

  For the trial, 26 participants were randomly assigned to receive either electrical stimulation of the auricular branch of the vagus nerve via an ear clip device or a placebo treatment for one hour daily over two months. Using double-blind methods, neither researchers nor participants knew who received the actual stimulation.

  Those treated with vagus nerve stimulation had a significant 15-beat-per-minute reduction in rapid heartbeat after standing compared to the control group.

  The benefits also included a decrease in adrenaline surge and systemic inflammation, both of which are associated with the condition, Dr. Stavrakis told The Epoch Times.

  The treatment also decreased adrenaline surges and inflammation associated with POTS, according to Dr. Stavrakis. There was evidence it reduced autoantibodies linked to POTS, “at least for some patients,” he noted.

  “I would say these results are promising, and we need more studies, obviously, but they are exciting results and we have a mechanistic explanation why it worked, which makes it more valuable,” Dr. Stavrakis said.

  Wireless Device May Provide At-Home POTS Relief

  Currently, POTS is treated with drugs like midodrine, ivabradine, fludrocortisone, and modafinil. Modafinil is prescribed to treat excessive sleepiness caused by narcolepsy but is sometimes used to treat brain fog associated with POTS. The only nonpharmaceutical therapies for the condition are lifestyle changes such as exercising more and increased fluid and salt intake.

  Dr. Stavrakis, a 15-year veteran of POTS research, said he envisions a future where patients seamlessly integrate vagus nerve stimulation into their routine using wireless earbud-like devices. This would deliver treatment without compromising quality of life.

  Dr. Stavrakis added he was working on securing approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the device, but the process may exceed one year. The device is functional, and gathering more data will expedite its release, he noted.

  Vagus Nerve Stimulation Shows Potential Beyond POTS

  Dr. Stavrakis previously studied the use of vagus nerve stimulation to treat atrial fibrillation (irregular heartbeat). He found it reduced atrial fibrillation by 85 percent compared to untreated patients. His next steps are larger trials for both POTS and atrial fibrillation to better understand the treatment’s efficacy, ideal patients, and long-term benefits.

  Additionally, a review of clinical trials shows promise for vagus nerve stimulation in treating treatment-resistant depression. A stimulator implanted on the neck’s left vagus nerve is already approved for epilepsy. It sends mild electric pulses to calm irregular brain activity that causes seizures.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/14/2024 – 20:45

• Supreme Court Orders Special Counsel To Respond To Trump Immunity Appeal
  Supreme Court Orders Special Counsel To Respond To Trump Immunity Appeal

  US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has ordered the Department of Justice to respond to former President Trump’s claim that he has presidential immunity in his ongoing Jan. 6 election case in Washington D.C.

  

  The move comes after the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit rejected Trump’s attempt to overturn Judge Tanya Chutkan’s refusal to dismiss the case based on Trump’s immunity claim – and less than a week after the Supreme Court heard Trump’s appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court, which ruled that he was disqualified from appearing on the state’s ballot.

  Roberts gave Special Counsel Jack Smith until Feb. 20 to respond, pointing to a broader urgency for the Court to address relatively untested legal issues that could have a significant impact on the 2024 presidential election.

  “[A] panel of the D.C. Circuit has, in an extraordinarily fast manner, issued a decision on President Trump’s claim of immunity and ordered the mandate returned to the district court to proceed with President Trump’s criminal trial in four business days, unless this Court intervenes (as it should),” reads Trump’s Feb. 12 filing, requesting that the appellate court’s decision be stayed.

  Jack Smith, meanwhile, has asked the Supreme Court to skip appellate proceedings and fast-track the case, claiming that “only” the Supreme Court could “definitively resolve” the immunity claims, The Epoch Times reports.

  President Trump is asking for the Supreme Court to halt the appellate decision because it incorrectly ruled that presidential immunity didn’t apply to Mr. Smith’s prosecution of him.

  His attorney, D. John Sauer, had argued in January that the Constitution required presidents first face impeachment and trial by Congress before they could be criminally prosecuted within Article III courts. A three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit unanimously rejected his arguments, stating that” ‘[c]oncerns of public policy, especially as illuminated by our history and the structure of our government’ compel the rejection of his claim of immunity in this case.”

  The judges also ruled that “any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution.”

  The issue of presidential immunity is a relatively untested area of law – however in 1982, the Supreme Court held in Nixon vs. Fitzgerald that the president has “absolute immunity” from civil liability which extends to the “outer perimeter” of his official duties.

  The appellate court, however, held that Trump exceeded these bounds.

  “Former President Trump’s claimed immunity would have us extend the framework for Presidential civil immunity to criminal cases and decide for the first time that a former President is categorically immune from federal criminal prosecution for any act conceivably within the outer perimeter of his executive responsibility,” reads the lower court’s opinion.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/14/2024 – 20:25

• US Treasury Official Destroys 'Crypto Funds Terrorists' Narrative
  US Treasury Official Destroys ‘Crypto Funds Terrorists’ Narrative

  Remember this panic-stricken tirade from Senator Liz Warren on the dangers of unregulated, decentralized crypto funding terrorists…

  “…we need new laws to crack down on crypto’s use in enabling terrorist groups, rogue nations, drug lords, ransomware gangs, and fraudsters to launder billions in stolen funds, evade sanctions, fund illegal weapons programs, and profit from devastating cyberattacks,

  …oh, and centralized financial system entity CEO Jamie Dimon does not like the decentralized asset…

  “If I were the government I’d close it down,” he exclaimed in a congressional hearing.

  “The actual use cases are sex trafficking, tax avoidance, money laundering, terrorism financing. It’s not just people buying and selling bitcoin,” he told CNBC’s Joe Kernen later.

  …oh, and SEC Chair Gary Gensler covering his slimy ass after being forced by public interest – and the law – to ‘allow’ spot bitcoin ETFs…

  Bitcoin is “a speculative, volatile asset that’s also used for illicit activity including ransomware, money laundering, sanction evasion, and terrorist financing.” 

  Well, surprise, surprise, they are all full of shit.

  As many of you may remember, we showed why this was a false narrative in words and pictures for those with learning disabilities in Washington:

  shut up https://t.co/7ytElXwXR5 pic.twitter.com/AiTKkB6aKJ

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 22, 2024

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

  But, just in case you didn’t believe us, today, no lesser member of the great and good than U.S. Department of Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI) Brian Nelson told the truth about the de minimus relative scale of crypto-financed terror during a House Financial Services Committee hearing. (full transcript here)

  Specifically, Nelson testified on Wednesday that terrorist group Hamas has received very little support in digital assets – countering earlier reports that it got tens of millions in crypto.

  As a reminder, CoinDesk reports that just after Hamas’ terrorist attacks in Israel last year, crypto was quickly blamed for helping fund such brutal killing.

  While the Wall Street Journal in October had tied tens of millions of dollars in crypto payments to Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and others, citing a blog post by analytics firm Elliptic that was later edited, the account represented a misunderstanding of what assets actually fell into the hands of terrorists.

  The Journal had largely revised the initial reporting after blockchain analytical firms Elliptic and Chainalysis offered data to refute it.

  “…we do not expect the number is very high particularly…” Nelson replied to Congressman Tom Emmer (MN-06)’s question on just how much crypto actually got into the hands of Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad?

  “To be clear, Hamas is using crypto in relatively small amounts compared to what’s been widely reported,” Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) prompted Nelson at the Wednesday hearing.

  “That’s our assessment,” Nelson answered, additionally clarifying that those groups have their eyes on other methods of support, adding that:

  “… we also assess that terrorists frankly prefer to use traditional products and services.”

  But, ironically, having admitted all that fearmongering about terrorists using crypto to finance their efforts to blow up the world was false (or a giant exaggeration at best), Nelson then proceeded to ask for more funding to watch out for terrorist funding via crypto, and had said in his earlier, prepared remarks that the government is “focused on disrupting these groups’ ability to leverage digital assets.”

  Hey we were right. Turns out making a huge gigantic stink about this and not letting it go for month can work. Also – shame on you WSJ you nasty regime shills https://t.co/njRnTyFxlI

  — nic 🌠 carter (@nic__carter) February 14, 2024

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

  We won’t be holding our breath for Lizzy’s apology…

  

  But, from this day forth, whenever this bullshit narrative is unfurled by those with ulterior motives (control, power, career), please refer them to Brian Nelson.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/14/2024 – 19:45

• Over 100 Chinese Websites Pose As Local News Outlets In 30 Countries: Report
  Over 100 Chinese Websites Pose As Local News Outlets In 30 Countries: Report

  Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  At least 123 Chinese websites are disguised as local news outlets in 30 countries to disseminate pro-Beijing disinformation, according to a recent report from Citizen Lab, a digital watchdog at Canada’s University of Toronto.

  “The campaign is an example of a sprawling influence operation serving both financial and political interests, and in alignment with Beijing’s political agenda,” Alberto Fittarelli, senior researcher at Citizen Lab, wrote in his Feb. 7 report.

  

  He called the campaign “Paperwall,” which he defined as “a large, and fast growing, network of anonymous websites posing as local news outlets.” The United States, South Korea, Japan, Russia, the UK, France, Brazil, Turkey, and Italy were among the 30 countries allegedly targeted by the campaign.

  To disguise themselves as legitimate local news outlets, Paperwall websites often used local references as part of their names, such as Eiffel Post and Provence Daily for two French-language websites. Other website names included British FT targeting the UK, Sendai Shimbum and Fujiyama Times for Japan, Daegu Journal and Busan Online for South Korea, and Roma Journal and Napoli Money for Italy.

  The lone website targeting the U.S. audience was UpdateNews.Info, a domain name registered in July 2019 and the first Paperwall website to be registered, according to the report.

  Citizen Lab researchers said the campaign’s effect has been “negligible so far,” given the “minimal traffic” toward the websites and the lack of social media amplification or visible mainstream media coverage.

  However, the report warned that the campaign shouldn’t be considered harmless—it can “eventually pay enormous dividends once one of those fragments is eventually picked up and legitimized by mainstream press or political figures.”

  Content

  Paperwall websites also “regularly republish content, verbatim, from legitimate online sources in the target country” to make their sites appear legitimate, according to the report. For example, the report includes a screengrab of the Eiffel Post website republishing an article from the French daily newspaper Le Parisien.

  These websites also featured verbatim reposts of content from China’s state-run media, such as China Global Television Network, the global arm of state broadcaster China Central Television, according to the report.

  A significant portion of these websites’ content originated from Times Newswire, according to Mr. Fittarelli.

  “We found evidence that Times Newswire regularly seeds pro-Beijing political content, including ad hominem attacks, by concealing it within large amounts of seemingly benign commercial content,” the report reads.

  Times Newswire and another newswire service called World Newswire were found to be at the center of a China-linked influence operation called “HaiEnergy,” reported in 2023 by cybersecurity firm Mandiant. Using newswire services and paid-for influences, HaiEnergy distributed its content to subdomains of legitimate U.S.-based news outlets as “press releases,” effectively promoting pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda via U.S. media outlets.

  “Similarly to what was stated by Mandiant for the HaiEnergy campaign, we cannot currently attribute Times Newswire to the same operators as PAPERWALL,” the report states.

  However, according to the report, Citizen Lab looked into the hosting IP addresses of Times Newswire and Paperwall domains, and they led back to Tencent, a Chinese tech company based in China’s southern city of Shenzhen.

  The report identified Hong Kong virologist Yan Limeng as an example of a victim who has faced targeted attacks originating from Paperwall websites.

  “The attacks on her by PAPERWALL were unsubstantiated, aimed at her personal and professional reputation, and completely anonymous,” the report states.

  Paperwall websites also promoted conspiracy theories, such as allegations that the United States conducted biological experiments on locals in Southeast Asian countries, according to the report.

  PR Firm

  The campaign was attributed to Shenzhen Haimaiyunxiang Media Co. Ltd., also known as Haimai, a public relations and marketing firm based in Shenzhen, China, according to the report. This attribution was based on the report’s analysis of digital infrastructure links between the company and Paperwall sites.

  “This is therefore an incriminating finding, proving that both PAPERWALL domains had been set up by the same operators as the Haimai assets,” the report states.

  Haimai advertises on its website the sale of promotional placement services in multiple countries and languages, according to the report.

  “The role and prominence of private firms in creating and managing influence operations is hardly news,” the report states, adding that “China—previously exposed for having resorted to this proxy category in large influence operations, including the cited HaiEnergy—is now increasingly benefiting from this operating model, which maintains a thin veil of plausible deniability, while ensuring a broad dissemination of the political messaging.

  “It is safe to assume that PAPERWALL will not be the last example of a partnership between private sector and government in the context of Chinese influence operations.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/14/2024 – 19:25

• 1 Dead, 22 Injured After Shots Fired At Chiefs Super Bowl Parade
  1 Dead, 22 Injured After Shots Fired At Chiefs Super Bowl Parade

  Update (1920ET): 

  Kansas City Fire Department Chief Ross Grundyson states the number of people with gunshot wounds has risen to 22. He said one person had died, and eight others had life-threatening injuries.

  Grundyson said his team is still working on a “total number of victims.” 

  The Kansas City Chiefs organization released a statement about the shooting: 

  Statement from the Kansas City Chiefs pic.twitter.com/erKsrF3SX8

  — Kansas City Chiefs (@Chiefs) February 14, 2024

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

  Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas told reporters:

  “Today was tragic for everyone who was part of it,” Lucas said. “I had the chance to talk to my wife just a moment ago, who said ‘we became part of a statistic of too many Americans — those who have experienced or been part of or connected to a mass shooting.’ That is something that I hope we all recognize is highly problematic for all of us.”

  Grundyson noted: “Right now, we do not have a motive, but we are asking those who may potentially have any kind of information, a witness, or a video to contact police.” 

  

  Earlier, police said two gunmen were arrested.

  *    *    * 

  Update (1630ET):

  The Kansas City Fire Department announced that one individual has died and nine others have been injured in a shooting in Kansas City, Missouri, during the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade. 

  *ONE PERSON IS DEAD AFTER SHOOTING IN KANSAS CITY: ABC

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 14, 2024

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  Officials told ABC News that three victims are in critical condition, five are in serious condition, and one has non-life-threatening injuries. 

  The shooting took place near Union Station as Chiefs fans were leaving the parade. 

  “About 1 million paradegoers and 600 law enforcement officials were expected at Wednesday’s celebration,” ABC noted. 

  An earlier report stated police detained two gunmen. 

  NEW: Man tackled and arrested following the shooting outside of Union Station at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade.

  At the moment, reports say that one person has died and about 10 others were injured.

  One of the bystanders in the video could be heard saying: “We tackled… pic.twitter.com/AMUh4Sjbw9

  — Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 14, 2024

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  *    *    * 

  Chaos erupted at the Kansas City Chiefs Superbowl parade on the streets of Kansas City, Missouri, on Wednesday afternoon after reports of a shooting. 

  “Shots have been fired around Union Station. Please leave the area,” Kansas City Police posted to X.

  “We need people to exit the area as quickly and safely as possible and avoid the parking garage in order to facilitate treatment of shooting victims,” police said, adding, “Many of you have footage of many officers securing union station, they are working to provide for the safety of everyone inside union station and expedite care of those injured.”

  Shots have been fired around Union Station. Please leave the area.

  — kcpolice (@kcpolice) February 14, 2024

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

  Daily Mail states, “Two gunmen have been detained after shots rang out at the Kansas City Chiefs Superbowl parade, sending thousands fleeing as the celebration descended into chaos.” 

  Other reports state that “several people were struck by gunfire.” 

  Based on information from Breaking911 on X, this is the current situation: 

  BREAKING: ‘Multiple Victims’ in Super Bowl Parade Shooting in Kansas City

  • Police respond to shooting at Kansas City Chiefs’ victory rally at Union Station.

  • Kansas City Fire Department confirms shooting, labels situation as “fluid.”

  • Shots fired west of Union Station;… pic.twitter.com/1VZ6tbrE6u

  — Breaking911 (@Breaking911) February 14, 2024

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  Videos posted on X show fans scrambling for safety. 

  John O’Connor of Kansas City gives his account of active shooting, he said he heard 15-20 shots left of the stage. Situation highly tense on ground.#KansasCity #KansasCityChiefs #Kansas #SuperBowl2024pic.twitter.com/l616La1ouU

  — Target Reporter (@Target_Reporter) February 14, 2024

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

  Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl Parade Shooting
  – Clip from James Palmer of NFL Network
  – Hosting parade and told to take cover under the stagepic.twitter.com/A2jfwDcYz9

  — Brendan (@BrendanMcInnis) February 14, 2024

  is this who we are kansas city??? y’all can’t go an hour without a shooting?? pic.twitter.com/gNP4mzEprV

  — 𐚁 (was @BEYONCÉ) (@notblazedpx) February 14, 2024

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

  NEW: 1 person has died, and at least 9 people are injured after shooting near Chiefs parade in Kansas City
  pic.twitter.com/hSnkGUuVun

  — Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) February 14, 2024

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

  BREAKING: Shooting Incident Leaves at Least Three Wounded Post-Chiefs Celebration

  A shooting incident at a Chiefs rally near Union Station sparked immediate chaos and panic among attendees.

  The event, which unfolded as the crowd began to disperse, saw law enforcement and… pic.twitter.com/Wb2xfwv1r0

  — UngaTheGreat (@UngaTheGreat) February 14, 2024

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  *Developing… 

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

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/14/2024 – 19:17

• Pakistan's Khan Decries "Daylight Robbery" As Rivals Form Coalition Govt, Nominate Shehbaz Sharif
  Pakistan’s Khan Decries “Daylight Robbery” As Rivals Form Coalition Govt, Nominate Shehbaz Sharif

  Pakistan’s army-backed Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) have announced an agreement to form a coalition government, despite the currently jailed ex-PM Imran Khan’s party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PIT) emerging as clearly the single most popular ‘winner’ from the Feb.8 elections. No party singularly won an outright majority of seats in parliament, however.

  Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s PPP confirmed that it would help Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League elect a prime minister. Meetings to form an alliance began Tuesday night, and by Wednesday morning it was widely being reported that former PM Shehbaz Sharif, the younger brother of Nawaz, has been nominated.

  

  Crucially, these are the very two parties who were in the coalition that ousted then PM Imran Khan from power in 2022, after which he was slapped with literally over 100 charges of corruption. Khan’s supporters have said we are witnessing a process whereby the military and its political allies are ‘stealing’ an election, after Khan’s PIT was already barred from the election, with its candidates forced to run as independents.

  The election results saw independents backed by Khan’s PIT take 93 out of 266 directly-elected seats. The PML-N won 75 seats with the PPP taking 54 seats.

  “The parties present here are almost two-thirds of the house that has been elected,” PML-N’s Shehbaz Sharif told reporters in the press conference which announced the new coalition. 

  Interestingly, Sharif gave a nod to Khan and his significant base of supporters, saying the coalition will be willing to talk to him. “Forget and forgive; forgive and forget – come, let’s join hands for the betterment of the country,” he said. “Sacrifice self-interests set the issue of egos aside.”

  However, Khan from prison has blasted “stolen votes” and condemned the “misadventure” of his enemies forming a coalition against him once again.

  “Such daylight robbery will not only be a disrespect to the citizens but will also push the country’s economy further into a downward spiral,” the former Pakistan leader said on social media.

  Imran Khan’s PTI alleges mandate ‘stolen in the dark of night’ after Shehbaz’s PM nomination#ImranKhan #Pakistan #PakistanElections2024 pic.twitter.com/f40ghVKeBT

  — News18 (@CNNnews18) February 14, 2024

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

  Pakistani law allows up to 21 days after an election for the new parliament to convene, upon which time a new prime minister is elected and sworn in.

  Sharif was viewed going into the election as the clear front-runner. He’s seen as the “military’s man” in Islamabad, while Khan’s legacy has sought to be erased by those same elite powers.

  As we detailed previously, the hotly contested election has been marred by political violence and acts of terrorism of the past several days, which has even included bombings at polling stations and attacks on political offices. 48 hours of violence going into Thursday’s voting saw over 35 people killed and scores wounded.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/14/2024 – 19:05

• Medicine Now Diagnoses The Non-White 'Oppressed' With An Oppressive Case Of 'Weathering'
  Medicine Now Diagnoses The Non-White ‘Oppressed’ With An Oppressive Case Of ‘Weathering’

  Authored by John Murawski via RealClear Wire,

  In 1986, an upstart public health researcher named Arline Geronimus challenged the conventional wisdom that condemned the alarming rise of inner-city teen pregnancies. While activist minister Jesse Jackson and health care leaders were decrying the crisis of “babies having babies” as a ghetto pathology, Geronimus contended that teenage pregnancy was a rational response to urban poverty where low-income black people have fewer healthy years before the onset of heart problems, diabetes, and other chronic conditions.

  

  Although Geronimus’ claims gained little traction at the time, the concept she pioneered – “weathering” – eventually became a foundation for the social justice ideology that is now upending medicine and social policy. She has stated in interviews and in her writings that the term “weathering” was intended to evoke the idea of erosion and resilience.

  A white professor at the University of Michigan whom The New York Times hailed last year as an “icon,” Geronimus has combined race theory with data and statistics to argue that the chronic stress of living in an oppressive, white-majority society causes damage at the cellular level and leads to obesity and other health conditions, resulting in shorter life expectancies for African Americans. In more than 130 published studies, she has expanded the weathering hypothesis from an explanation of poverty harming one’s health into a dystopian sociological worldview that identifies middle-class assimilation and professional striving within the “American Creed” of hard work as the silent killers of people of color.

  “Living life according to the dominant social norms of personal responsibility and virtue is not universally health promoting,” Geronimus wrote in a Harvard Public Health essay last year. “On the contrary: if you’re Black, working hard and playing by the rules can be part of what kills you.”

  The subject of hundreds of peer-reviewed studies and thousands of citations, the weathering hypothesis is now widely taught in public health schools and accepted as perhaps the most plausible scientific explanation of how American society grinds down black and brown bodies. And the weathering paradox – that “relatively young people can be biologically old” – is now influencing policy decisions at all levels of governance.

  Geronimus’ hypothesis was the foundation of many of the policy decisions of the White House COVID-19 health equity task force. In New Hampshire, the governor’s COVID-19 Equity Response Team issued a report and recommendations in 2020, citing weathering (and “racial battle fatigue”) as documented and established realities of American life. Weathering was recently extended beyond American people of color and accepted as evidence in federal courts to win early release of non-white detainees, some as young as their 30s, who were deemed to be prematurely aged and therefore at higher risk for COVID complications.

  Some critics are beginning to push back against what they see as the heavy-handed, COVID-era politicization of healthcare. Ian Kingsbury, research director at Do No Harm, a nonprofit that seeks to keep identity politics out of medicine, said the uncritical acceptance of the weathering hypothesis as factual science has created an aura of invincibility.

  “Unfortunately, judges and other policymakers look to academic journals to be authoritative and trustworthy voices on what is evidence and what is science,” said Kingsbury. “And so you sneak this stuff in there and, unfortunately, as far as a lot of people are concerned, you’ve created knowledge.”

  More broadly, Boston University public health dean Sandro Galea warned in a new book, “Within Reason: A Liberal Public Health for an Illiberal Time,” that his profession has veered into overcorrection and revolutionary excess. Galea doesn’t name names in his book, but he rebukes public health advocates for favoring political narratives over empirical data, denying the reality of social progress, and fixating on a utopian quest “to create a world free of risk.”

  Geronimus did not respond to emails requesting an interview for this article.

  The rise and reach of Geronimus’ weathering hypothesis – a once obscure and idiosyncratic idea that is becoming conventional wisdom in medicine – provides a window into how activist rhetoric and social justice ideology pioneered by feminist, queer, and critical race theorists are recasting healthcare as a Machiavellian power struggle between the privileged and the oppressed.

  The public health field has long focused on “social determinants of health,” such as one’s environment and socioeconomic status, as contributors to health outcomes. The weathering hypothesis takes political empowerment to the next level, by medicalizing social relations and politicizing medicine. Weathering prefigured the recent flood of medical research that centers race in public policy and supplies the rationale for such moves as 265 public authorities declaring racism as a public health crisis; health officials jettisoning colorblindness and prioritizing people of color for COVID vaccinations and heart treatment; and medical schools training future doctors in social justice activism.

  In her 2023 book, “Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society,” Geronimus sweeps across time and space, omnisciently diagnosing celebrities and public figures with weathering. She claims it explains why Martin Luther King Jr. had the damaged heart of a 60-year-old when he was assassinated at age 39 and why Fannie Lou Hamer died of breast cancer and complications of hypertension at age 59. She asserts that the trauma of being black in America is one reason why tennis greats Serena Williams had life-threatening blood clots at age 36, and why Arthur Ashe had a heart attack at age 36.

  “Success comes at a spectacularly high health cost for those who have to fight the hardest to achieve it in the context of a society that doesn’t value them,” Geronimus stated in her book. “Structural violence is insidious, pervasive, and fateful. It is the fundamental cause of weathering, and it is entirely ignored in the age-washing narrative.”

  It is amply documented that African Americans of all social classes have worse health outcomes, earlier onset of chronic diseases, and average life expectancies reported as five to six years less than whites. Weathering science, as Geronimus calls it, measures various biomarkers of what is presumed to be psychosocial stress – such as cortisol levels, telomere lengths, cytokine storms, and allostatic loads – to make the case that on average black adults are as much as 10 years older biologically than white people of a comparable chronological age.

  But the data is complicated, requires interpretation, and doesn’t always add up. For example, in a 2021 study, a gerontology scholar at the University of Southern California assessed 13 measures of epigenetic aging. It found that some of the measures indicate accelerated aging among African Americans, while others indicate slower aging for African Americans. Epigenetics refers to the way genes function or malfunction under environmental stress and cultural conditions; most of these “epigenetic clocks” associate accelerated aging with obesity and lifetime smoking. This research, noting “the lack of expected effects of race and ethnicity,” suggests that there is no gold standard for measuring premature aging, and that weathering research is highly sensitive to the variables and measures that researchers select.

  Nevertheless, Geronimus compares the African American experience of living and working among white people to the fight-or-flight adrenaline rush of a prehistoric human fleeing a cheetah – except, she says, that a 21st-century black person in a majority white society is trapped in that high-stress mode all day, every day, without reprieve, resulting in a flood of stress hormones that dysregulate the body.

  Fluent in the language of social justice activism, Geronimus describes American society as a relentless onslaught of “microaggressions,” “othering,” “existential insults,” “daily indignities,” “voice erasure,” “identity threat” and other forms of “cultural oppression” that lead to early death. In response to those ever-present dangers in “the privileged space known as whiteness,” black people are constantly forced to adopt “high effort coping strategies” that Geronimus describes as “identity management” and “identity safety.” In a 2015 study titled “Black Lives Matter,” Geronimus and her co-authors estimated that racism and weathering caused 2.7 million “excess black deaths” in the United States between 1970 and 2004, a death toll of genocidal proportions.

  This one-dimensional way of analyzing social relations has the effect of privileging the stress of those presumed to be oppressed, said Stanley Goldfarb, a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school and founder and chairman of the Do No Harm nonprofit.

  “The problem with the theory is that these hormones and these stress responses don’t know what skin color you have,” Goldfarb said. “The point is: What’s unique about their stress? The point isn’t that stress is bad. The point is you decided that your stress is unique and different from everybody else’s stress.”

  Still, weathering is an attractive explanation to researchers because the link between psychosocial stress and physical wear and tear is consistent with lower life expectancy for African Americans and lower-income people.

  Moreover, the hypothesis is “very intuitive” to economists because of its similarity to modeling health depreciation, and to social scientists who seek explanations of differential outcomes, said economist Robert Kaestner, a University of Chicago public policy professor who co-authored a weathering study with Geronimus in 2009.

  However, weathering studies do not actually measure stress or racism, but only correlate biological metrics back to the weathering hypothesis. The scientific conundrum is that the same biological evidence that supports weathering could also be “consistent with a lot of other things,” Kaestner said in a phone interview. “It’s always a measurement problem.”

  “Weathering is a hypothesis, still in search of definitive evidence,” Kaestner said. “I’ve never seen one [study] – including my own – where it’s a definitive study that this really is a smoking gun that racism or prolonged psychosocial stress causes adverse health outcomes.”

  Stress and racism are assumed as the causes of overeating, smoking and other unhealthy habits, in large part because the public health field and medical research steer clear of explanations that are genetic, biological, behavioral or cultural – which would violate the rule that prohibits blaming the victim.

  “That the chronic cascade of stress hormones in the bloodstream may also physiologically propel us toward eating ‘comfort’ foods high in fats and sugars, or to turn to alcohol or other drugs for relief, only makes this problem all the worse,” Geronimus writes in her book.

  This leaves only one permissible option: structural oppression. A reader of these studies will be struck by the absence of alternative explanations.

  “They’re writing a story about weathering. I’m going to leave it at that,” Kaestner said. “It’s a widely held view that this is in fact what’s happening. There’s tons of these correlation studies that really don’t get anywhere near documenting a causal relationship, but if you write enough of them, it becomes conventional wisdom in the public health community.”

  Still, the hypothesis can exert hypnotic powers on acolytes. Last year, during a burst of media fascination in Geronimus’s book, Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported that Geronimus “presents a staggering accumulation of evidence to show how daily discrimination grinds people down and all too often leads to debilitating illness and early death.”

  Less than three weeks later, the Guardian ran another article about weathering, in which Geronimus convinced a black reporter that there’s no escape from the weathering trap without restructuring modern societies.

  “By the end of our conversation I feel trapped – hyperaware of all the ways my social identity as a member of a black minority exposes me to stressors,” the Guardian writer ruminated. “Am I trapped?”

  “I think there are things you can do that will make a difference, but you are stuck being weathered,” Geronimus responded. “And it really will take other kinds of structural changes for weathering not to happen.”

  Geronimus asserts that the totalizing nature of white society renders conventional prescriptions for good health – diet and exercise – as naive and possibly dangerous.

  “Exercise can be beneficial, but a Black person considering taking a run will be unlikely to forget that Ahmaud Arbery was shot to death while jogging because he was Black,” she writes in reference to a 2020 fatal policing incident in Georgia. “And how can a Black person relax into restorative sleep knowing Breonna Taylor was shot to death by police [in Louisville, Kentucky in 2020] as she slept in her own apartment?”

  Geronimus offers one possibility of a safe space for black people in a 2020 study, co-authored by one of her former students. The paper claims that black students who enroll or attend a historically black college or university are shielded from racism and therefore 35% less likely to develop obesity, diabetes or related cardiovascular symptoms than black kids who attend a “predominantly white institution.”

  The conclusions are extrapolated from a sample of 727 black participants in a national health survey. The health benefits, she reported, are even more pronounced for black people who grow up in racially segregated neighborhoods – a finding that flies in the face of decades of research that links racial segregation to racial disparities across a wide swath of measures, from education to net worth.

  The influence of the weathering hypothesis – especially the claim that racism has profound effects on biology and epigenetics – can even be seen in research that ostensibly challenges Geronimus’ hypothesis.

  In 2021, Harvard University sociologist Ellis Monk published a study concluding that black-on-black in-group prejudice – known as “colorism” – can have a pernicious effect on the physical health of African Americans for common conditions and ailments, such as hypertension, diabetes, stroke, heart trouble, vision loss, hearing loss, cancer and kidney problems.

  One could interpret colorism as undermining the racial power theories of the weathering hypothesis, but Monk interprets colorism as a form of white supremacy.

  “One way that white supremacy proceeds, or racial domination proceeds, is by recruiting members of the stigmatized category as agents in the system,” Monk explained in a 2018 colloquium at Harvard, an interpretation repeated in his research. “That’s the way the system works.”

  Geronimus’ more recent research concludes that people of color are not the only victims of weathering. She has expanded the hypothesis to include working-class Appalachian whites who experience poverty and social stigma, and to Ashkenazi Jews who were persecuted in Europe or stigmatized by antisemitism in this country. She cites her father as an example, describing how he donned his psychological armor every day to go to work among gentiles at his bench job in a bacteriology laboratory, and died in his 60s of an inflammatory disease that affected multiple organs, including the lungs and heart.

  The continued expansion of the weathering hypothesis is gaining traction. Geronimus writes that in 2020 she was asked by immigration attorney Kari Hong to submit expert testimony on weathering in support of early release petitions for immigrant asylum seekers who were being held in detention. Hong argued to federal judges that these foreign-born detainees were “biologically older than their chronological age” and should be released “just as senior citizen detainees.”

  According to the New York Times, Hong won early release for “all seven detainees,” based on Geronimus’ weathering testimony. Those cases are sealed under federal court rules, and Hong did not respond to emails, but according to limited public information, most were Hispanic or African. And some were in their 30s and had no symptoms or diagnosis. Although weathering is still most commonly used in connection with African Americans, its expansion to other groups is both true to Geronimus’ original concept and a reflection of her growing influence.

  A hypothesis first developed to correct what she saw as moral judgment and victim-blaming of the black underclass developed into an expansive theory of the United States as a soul-crushing, body-destroying totalitarian hellscape she has ominously called “the surround.”

  In a 2015 paper she and her co-authors described the “the surround” as a clandestine program of cultural brainwashing that operates by means of “phantasms” that implant a virtual social reality into the brains of unsuspecting victims through the imposition of culture and power.

  The paper, does, however, suggest that health equity for the oppressed is attainable through a total immersion in social activism: “Counter narratives, oppositional gaze development (or critical consciousness raising), and protest.”

  Ultimately, the subject of weathering is linked to a whole range of progressive moral concerns – from the gender binary to climate change. And the solutions that Geronimus proposes in her book include a return to “collectivism” – in the form of extended, multigenerational, cross-household, women-centered kinship networks.

  “Contrary to popular opinion and accepted wisdom,” she writes, “healthy aging is a measure not of how well we take care of ourselves but rather of how well society treats and takes care of us.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/14/2024 – 18:45

• Berkshire Cuts Stake In Apple And Paramount, Dumps DR Horton, Adds To Energy Giants Chevron And OXY
  Berkshire Cuts Stake In Apple And Paramount, Dumps DR Horton, Adds To Energy Giants Chevron And OXY

  In what was a rather uneventful quarter for Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, the massive hedge fund made only a few modest changes to its portfolio in Q4 2023, which as of Dec 31, 2023 was valued as $347.4 billion (at least the long book, short positions don’t have to be disclosed).

  Among the notable changes, Berkshire sold out of its entire stake in homebuilder DR Horton (valued at $641MM in Q3), Markel ($234MM), StoneCo ($114MM) and Globe Life ($90MM).

  The fund also reduced its holdings in its top position Apple, by 10 million shares, cutting the total stake from 915.6MM to 905.6MM shares, although since the value of the underlying shares actually rose from $157 billion to $174 billion, the reduction was probably due to size limitations.

  Berkshire also trimmed its holdings of Paramount Global by 30 million shares, or 32.4%, from 93.7 million to 63.3 million shares (which sent the stock down 6% after hours), and slashed its stake in HP Inc by 77.7% (or 80 million shares), from 102.5 million to 22.9 million shares.

  Finally, while Berkshire did not reveal any new positions, it added to its holdings in energy giants Chevron – an increase of 14.4% to 126 million shares – and Occidental, which rose by 8.7% to 243.7 million shares. The fund also added 30.6 million shares to its existing small stake in Sirius XM, bringing it to a total of 40.2 million shares, or $220 million as of Dec 31.

  The full Q4 breakdown is shown below.

  

  Source: SEC 13F.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/14/2024 – 18:25

• The Establishment Still Doesn't Get Trump
  The Establishment Still Doesn’t Get Trump

  Authored by Sean Trende via RealClear Wire,

  A few weeks ago, a “Morning Joe” panel concluded that if Donald Trump were to become the Republican nominee (spoiler alert: he will), Republicans will lose in the fall. This is by no means a unique sentiment – former House Speaker Paul Ryan expressing this idea here, journalist Bernard Goldberg wondering if Trump is trying to lose here, and so forth.

  

  As I read these analyses, I wonder if I’ve somehow been transported back to 2016, when such takes were de rigueur. Here in 2024, we know that Donald Trump won in 2016 and came close to winning in 2020. He carried Republican senators across the finish line in both years, and the GOP gained House seats in 2020, much to the surprise of most election analysts. And, at a comparable time in the campaign cycle when he trailed Hillary Clinton by 4.5 points in the RCP Average and Joe Biden by 5.6 points, Trump actually leads Biden by 1.9 points in national polling.

  My goal here isn’t to rehash the arguments over whether Trump can win – I think that’s plain enough. Nor is it to make a case Trump should win; anyone who has followed me on Twitter over the past decade knows my opinion on that. Rather, it’s to talk about the continued blindness of the old power structure of the GOP regarding Trump’s allure.

  The bottom line is that Trump’s appeal isn’t geared toward white college educated voters, which leaves us unable to see its foundations. For decades, as Michael Barone has pointed out, the GOP was defined in large part as the party that “the system” benefited, while the Democrats were a collection of outsiders. That began to shift in 1992, when Bill Clinton began a full-frontal assault on Republican hegemony among the “winners.” Over time, the appeal of Democratic nominees increasingly tilted toward that message, and away from the older “outcasts” approach.

  So for decades, college-educated whites have been in a situation where both parties were largely focusing their messages on them. Yes, Democrats had more of a populist approach, and yes, Republicans would always have candidates with a bit of a patrician air, but overall the focus was on winning the suburbs.

  It is a bit jarring, then, to have a Republican nominee like Trump suddenly tailor his appeal toward people who think the system doesn’t benefit them. It’s an interesting strategic shift to disengage in large part from the fight over college-educated whites. It also has its pluses and minuses. One of the major pluses, and this is overlooked by college-educated Republicans who believe that the party’s message should still be geared toward them, is that Trump succeeded where the old GOP failed: by winning Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and then very nearly winning them a second time in 2020. Iowa and Ohio were where GOP dreams once went to die; now they are solidly red states.

  This gets to the final point that I think the old GOP establishment hasn’t fully digested: The revolt of the party’s former base isn’t without a rational basis. During Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the excuse for not fully enacting a conservative agenda was that Republicans never controlled the House. Fair enough. Then, in 2000, the GOP won the “trifecta” for the first time since the 1950s. That ended after a few months when a Republican senator from Vermont – whom the GOP had supported in his 2000 reelection bid – switched parties. Republicans won the trifecta again in 2002, and expanded those majorities in 2004.

  Yet at the end of the Bush years, what did Republicans have to show for it? Expiring tax cuts, the GOP’s reputation on foreign policy in tatters, No Child Left Behind, TARP, and an expansion of Medicare to cover prescription drugs. This wasn’t really what conservatives had been promised.

  There was also the revolt against comprehensive immigration reform, which was repeated in 2013. The old GOP’s response? To go all-in for Jeb Bush, whose main bona fides were his commitment to immigration reform and ability to modulate his Spanish accent depending on the audience.

  I personally favor immigration reform and think TARP is one reason I light my house with electricity and not candles today. But the point of politics is that you must appeal to a broader polity which may not always desire the “best” policies. It was beyond obvious by 2015 that the GOP polity’s desires were very different from the establishment’s desires, which sometimes seemed geared toward winning over the votes of three people in think-tank cubicles (two of whom were voting for Libertarian Gary Johnson anyway).

  Whatever else you might say about Donald J. Trump (and there is much to say), his appeal is fundamentally different than previous Republican candidates. But it is not narrower.

  All of this is to say that of course Donald Trump can win again. More importantly, if the GOP establishment/remaining NeverTrump portion of the GOP wants to have a say in Republican politics in the future, they really need to work on figuring out why.

  Sean Trende is senior elections analyst for RealClearPolitics. He is a co-author of the 2014 Almanac of American Politics and author of The Lost Majority. He can be reached at strende@realclearpolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter @SeanTrende.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/14/2024 – 18:05

• What AI CapEx Boom? World's Biggest Network Provider Slashes Jobs As Tech-Spend Sinks
  What AI CapEx Boom? World’s Biggest Network Provider Slashes Jobs As Tech-Spend Sinks

  If NVDA et al. are all going to the moon on CapEx (yes we know its GPU/CPU spend) then why is the world’s largest manufacturer of computer networking equipment slashing jobs after a slowdown in corporate tech spending wiped out its sales growth.

  Presumably all those GPUs/CPUs need to be ‘networked’ to each other and the world?

  We asked ChatGPT, just to be sure…

  The expansion of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and the increasing demand for GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) have significant implications for networking companies like Cisco, primarily through indirect relationships that stem from the broader ecosystem of data centers, cloud computing, and internet infrastructure.

  Here’s how these connections unfold:

  • Increased Data Center Needs: AI and GPU-intensive tasks require substantial computational power, which is often provided by data centers. As companies and institutions deploy more AI models, the demand for data center capacity increases. Networking equipment, such as switches, routers, and security appliances provided by companies like Cisco, is critical for the operation, reliability, and efficiency of these data centers.

  • Enhanced Network Requirements: AI applications, especially those relying on real-time data analysis and decision-making (like autonomous vehicles or IoT devices), necessitate robust, low-latency networks to function effectively. The growth in AI applications can drive demand for advanced networking technologies, including those supporting higher speeds and lower latency. Cisco, being a leading provider of networking equipment, stands to benefit from this trend as organizations upgrade their networks to support AI applications.

  • Cloud Computing Expansion: Many AI models are trained and deployed in the cloud due to the vast computational resources required. This has led to an expansion of cloud infrastructure, where Cisco’s networking solutions play a crucial role in connecting and securing cloud environments. As cloud providers expand their infrastructure to accommodate AI workloads, they need to invest in networking gear, benefiting manufacturers like Cisco.

  • Edge Computing Growth: AI applications often require processing at the edge of the network to reduce latency. This necessitates a distributed network architecture, where data is processed closer to where it is generated rather than being sent back to a central data center or the cloud. Cisco and similar companies offer solutions for edge computing, including networking equipment that can handle the demands of AI-driven applications at the edge.

  • Security Concerns: With the expansion of AI and increased connectivity, security becomes even more critical. AI systems themselves can be targets for cyberattacks, and they also increase the complexity of IT environments. Networking companies like Cisco, which also provide cybersecurity solutions, are crucial in securing the data and the pathways it travels across.

  In summary, while Cisco and similar networking companies are not directly involved in the production of AI models or GPUs, the expansion of AI and the demand for GPUs are tied to increased requirements for networking infrastructure. This, in turn, can drive business for companies like Cisco that provide the necessary networking hardware, software, and services to support these growing technologies.

  So, back to CSCO results…

  Having already lowered the bar at the last earnings, the giant tech company has said that it’s been hit by a temporary “pause” in orders from customers who are busy installing equipment they’ve already acquired.

  In Cisco’s fiscal second quarter, which ended Jan. 27, revenue fell 6% to $12.8 billion. That was the company’s first contraction in three years. Profit was 87 cents a share, minus some items. Analysts had estimated revenue of $12.7 billion and earnings of 92 cents a share.

  

  Analysts expect demand for Cisco’s products to remain under pressure, as clients in the telecom industry restrict spending as do cloud companies that are prioritizing clearing their excess inventory of networking gear.

  This led the tech giant to cut its fiscal third quarter sales to $12.1-$12.3 billion (down from the $13.1 billion consensus), and slash profit expectations to 86c/share from 92c/share. For the full year, revenue expectations were cut to $51.5 – $52.5 billion (from $53.8 – $55 billion consensus).

  But the CEO was very confident…

  “We delivered a solid second quarter with strong operating leverage and capital returns,” said Chuck Robbins, chair and CEO of Cisco.

  “We continue to align our investments to future growth opportunities. Our innovation sits at the center of an increasingly connected ecosystem and will play a critical role as our customers adopt AI and secure their organizations.”

  Investors have been waiting to see how much Cisco will benefit from surging spending on artificial intelligence computer systems.

  Earlier this month, it announced it’s working with chipmaker Nvidia Corp. to help corporate clients more easily deploy AI.

  

  But, if that’s such a great opportunity, why is the company cutting 5% of its global workforce?

  Apparently, the restructuring is to focus on high-growth areas, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters earlier this month.

  However, judging by the market’s reaction, the forecast adds to concern that businesses are reining in tech spending.

  CSCO’s shares are down 6% after hours – back at their lowest since November’s earnings plunge…

  

  Maybe we are just too old and dumb to realize that chatbots don’t need to be networked?

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 02/14/2024 – 17:45

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• Land Of Spooks And Shills And Sheeple
  Land Of Spooks And Shills And Sheeple

  Submitted by Donald Jeffries via “I Protest”,

  Trust is a rare commodity in today’s world. Maybe it always has been. I remember trusting some older males who were relatives or neighbors, as a child. Then later as an adult, I’d hear from my sister and others about how these fine upstanding men had propositioned them, or touched them inappropriately.

  

  Moral trust is one thing. We all fail to some degree on this count, because we are all sinners. My head will probably always be turned by a good-looking female. It’s just instinctive. I remember a great comedy skit with Richard Pryor, where he was sitting in a crowd with his wife/girlfriend, who was glaring at him, upset over him checking out other women. Then his head turns again, and he tells her, “Can’t you see how strong that shit is? I know you’re gonna be mad, but I still can’t stop it!” While it bothers me when I attend a wedding where the divorced bride’s children from her first marriage are ringbearers or flower girls (mumbling to myself, “I can’t stop thinking she said ‘I do’ to someone else just five years ago’), I understand human weakness. Judge not lest ye be judged.

  It’s political trust that’s on my mind. If you listen to me Saturdays at 12 noon on “America Unplugged” with Billy Ray Valentine and Tony Arterburn, you may have heard our discussion this past Saturday on Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin. It was obvious by the comments in the chat, and later on YouTube, that most people disagreed with me. I was arguing that, whatever Carlson’s real motivations, I usually agree with what he’s saying over 90 percent of the time. Yes, I’m aware that his father was the head of Voice of America, and that he once tried to get into the CIA. That he scoffed at 9//1 “truthers” and other “conspiracy theorists.” Maybe his bow tie was too tight. Is he just playing the role of mainstream “skeptic?”

  I’m not accustomed to being the least skeptical person in the room about anything. I was a born skeptic. A doubter of all official narratives. But if the alt media is just going to attribute all good reporting, and sensible commentary to a hidden agenda, then what is the point of even addressing any issue? Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Rand Paul, RFK, Jr., all compromised. And oddly, they draw the attention (and ire) of many of us trying to provide an alternative to our state controlled media, far more often than the Joy Reids, Sunny Hostins, and Joe Scarboroughs do. Tucker Carlson’s father ran the Voice of America. A pretty, young female intern was found dead in Scarborough’s congressional office in 2001. Isn’t that a bit more incriminating?

  Then there is the guy Carlson was interviewing- Vladimir Putin. I don’t have to trust him to agree with his purported comments (and this is assuming they’re being translated accurately) about wanting peace with America. If he really did ban all GMO products, and put out an arrest warrant for any Rothschilds strolling into Russia, isn’t that something we’d all agree with? Maybe he has an agenda, too, but why do we focus so much more on him than say, Angela Merkel or David Cameron? Carlson was blasted from all sides for how he conducted the interview. What was he supposed to ask him? He put Putin on the record. At the very least, we got to see the Russian leader’s impressive knowledge of history. Compare that to our putrid politicians.

  In my book Hidden History, I delved into the background of the 1960s counterculture movement. Timothy Leary, the LSD guru who urged the impressionable hippies not to trust anyone over thirty (when he was older than thirty himself), was later outed as working for the CIA. So was Gloria Steinem, the face of “women’s lib” in the sixties and seventies. Her magazine MS was financed by the CIA. Murdered Black Panther Fred Hampton had a bodyguard who was an undercover government operative. So did Malcolm X. The guy cradling Martin Luther King’s head in his hands on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel was an undercover CIA asset. I gave lots of other examples of how undercover plants worked inside the Black Panthers and the Ku Klux Klan.

  More than a century ago, Lenin said that the best way to fight the opposition is to lead it. This has obviously been the case in America since at least the 1960s. I haven’t found any evidence, for instance, that the government infiltrated Huey Long’s Share our Wealth movement, or the America First Committee. But in my upcoming book The American Memory Hole, I’ll document the shocking extent to which American capitalism supported and financed the Bolshevik Revolution. There were plenty of spies during the War for Independence and the War Between the States. Things have never been exactly the way they seem.

  But if we become too jaded, and don’t trust anyone or anything, then reform becomes impossible. Things can never get better, unless maybe lightning strikes you in a laboratory at midnight, and you develop invulnerable super powers. Then you could adjust the world to your liking. Assuming you have noble intentions, like Superman. Working together is often difficult. Distrust can permeate small businesses and youth sports leagues. People are suspicious of their spouses. They wonder about the motives of the heirs to whatever they have to leave to others. I’ve watched enough Investigation Discovery programs to know that the world is full of husbands, wives, and children who will murder their closest loved ones for a modest inheritance.

  I have been told by several people that I can’t be sincere or legitimate, or else I wouldn’t be alive. Think about that; the only way for some people to believe you’re not co-opted is to become part of the Deep State Body Count. Once during an interview, someone in the comments noted that I was wearing a checked shirt, and there was a soccer ball paperweight in the background behind me. This, evidently, demonstrated that I was a high-ranking freemason. Miles Mathis, who has achieved some renown online for his “everything is fake” mantra, once wrote that both Dave McGowan (who was still alive at the time) and I were fake. He called us “ghosts.” Limited hangouts. Controlled opposition. When I emailed him and told him to check out my many video interviews, it didn’t phase him. By the way, he “doesn’t do interviews.”

  If I wanted to be cynical, I could name countless high-profile figures in alternative media that I am suspicious about. My spidey sense goes off whenever some character, who has no more charisma or knowledge (and often less) than the rest of us doing anti-establishment podcasts and writing anti-establishment blogs do, attracts a million followers on YouTube. You know who they are. They aren’t entertaining, and provide nothing different than untold numbers of us do. But I don’t just condemn then all with a blanket generalization. Maybe some of them are more interesting than I give them credit for. I’ve never been noted for liking things that become popular. Chicken wings. Gourmet cupcakes. Michael Jackson. “Friends.” “Casablanca.” The mullet. The Rock. The list is endless. I know my tastes are usually different from the masses.

  But in our world of often justified hyper paranoia, there should be room for redemption. Why, for instance, do Christians accept that a really bad man named Saul could be converted to St. Paul on the road to Damascus? Is it impossible to imagine that Tucker Carlson could really have been influenced by those he spoke to the past few years, and now honestly believes the government killed JFK, and that Building 7 is significant? Was it only Saul who could be redeemed? Pat Buchanan underwent a similar transformation in the early nineties, when he saw how our trade policies had devastated blue-collar workers in New Hampshire. But no one suspects that he was insincere, or compromised. Is it because Carlson has become much bigger? On the surface, they both seem to have identically transitioned from conservative to populist.

  It’s odd that I distrust all institutions, all authority, and yet can still perhaps naively trust individuals. You’d think my affinity for the world’s foremost cynic, Ambrose Bierce, would prevent that. I’ve been burned many times because of this. Women I adored. Men I admired. I did stop lending money to people a very long time ago. That lesson was pretty clear. Like millions of others, I was suckered into voting for Trump in 2016. So I took a chance on the remote possibility that he was sincere to at least some degree. Would it have been better to have voted for Hillary Clinton, the Queen of Corruption? What difference does it make, if they’re not even counting the votes?

  I’ve experienced this kind of widespread distrust in the JFK assassination research community. The fractionalization is worse than ever. The few who are trusted are the typical milquetoast, neocon types I have admonished for years. The same huge egos and difficult personalities we see in JFK research dominate other conspiratorial realms, like 9/11 truth. We see them everywhere in the alt media, lording their number of followers and subscribers over lesser mortals like the quarterback and the prom queen do in high school hierarchies. I’ve remarked before on how most of them are harder to communicate with than some genuine show business celebrities. For the record, my publicist was able to get ahold of Tucker Carlson’s producer.

  JFK researchers spend an inordinate amount of time trying to discredit conspiracy friendly witnesses. They literally ignore the laughable witnesses whose fanciful and inconsistent testimony was used by the authorities to buttress the official nonsense. Recently, some of them have launched an assault on the late Fletcher Prouty, the individual Oliver Stone based his “Mr. X” character (played by Donald Sutherland) on in JFK. They resent Alex Jones or Tucker Carlson stating publicly that there was a conspiracy, because they despise them personally and hate their politics. They don’t have the same vitriol for the Stephen Colberts and Jimmy Kimmels, who scoff at all “conspiracy theories.” Well, except for “Russiagate.”

  But in the alt media, as in society at large, Donald Trump is often the dividing line. Are you fer or agin his overblown personality? Because I belong to the smallest minority group in the world- the Trump Agnostics- I am inevitably caught in the crossfire. I came up with the Trumpenstein Project to explain both my perspective and what I believe was a genuine political psyop of epic proportions. But I still get called a “Trumpster” or a victim of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Trump exemplifies the problem with the alt media, because most of those who are “awake” to any appreciable degree, were or perhaps still are ardent Trump supporters.

  Whenever I watch a video or read something I find compelling, I often try to contact the person who was in the video or doing the writing. These are people unknown to the public, and frequently unknown to most in the alt media. They never respond to me. I don’t see them being interviewed elsewhere, so maybe they’re like Miles Mathis, above doing interviews. At least with the likes of me. And, of course, I wonder why these people aren’t shadow banned like me. They’re being allowed to grow a big following. But I don’t reflexively jump to the conclusion that this means they’re all being sponsored by intelligence agencies. Hired to control the “conspiracy” discourse, as Obama’s aide Cass Sustein proposed.

  I take people at face value, until proven otherwise. Roger Stone, for example, wrote the Foreword to my most successful book, Hidden History. I cringe at some of the things he says now. But he loved the book, and wrote a glowing Foreword. Whenever he’s mentioned me (which is very, very infrequently), he says complimentary things. Vivek Ramaswamy, suspected by many in the alt media of being the Republicans’ version of Barack Obama, was seen with my book Hidden History on the shelf behind him, while he interviewed Alex Jones. So he may be a disinfo agent, but I didn’t send him my book. What is he doing reading such subversive material? I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t like him just because of that.

  Maybe Tucker Carlson is good friends with Don Lemon and Hunter Biden. But he certainly raked them over the coals on his Fox News show. Donald Trump was friends with the Clintons. As Terry Reed (another guy I’d love to interview- amazed he’s still alive- but can’t find contact info) revealed in his book Compromised, seemingly sworn enemies Bill Clinton and Oliver North worked for the same team in Arkansas, when all those drugs were being funneled through Mena Airport. George W. Bush seems to be as fond of Michelle Obama as he was of gay prostitute/fake reporter Jeff Gannon, who visited the White House hundreds of times, including overnight stays. An alleged Mossad operative produced JFK and other Oliver Stone films.

  Perhaps no one is above board. Are we all hiding something? I’ve probably revealed too much of myself here on Substack. But I’m an open book. There aren’t any terrible skeletons in my closet. But I’ve had some relatives who worked for the CIA. I live in the same county where their Langley headquarters are. And the Agency’s library was one of the first to order my book Hidden History. So does that make me suspect? As I’ve said, the address of my childhood home was 3333. Hmm. Combined with the checked shirt, and soccer ball paperweight, we might have something there. One of my father’s hot cousins did marry Rutherford B. Hayes III. Maybe Miles Mathis will read this and conclude that I am a Jew, like seemingly everyone else.

  I will form an alliance with anyone, if they profess to be working towards something good. I’ll be able to determine pretty quickly if they have a nefarious agenda. I was able to ferret out that conspiracy whereby young, half clothed women friend or follow old guys like me. I never even took them up on their offer to send me pictures. Rob Reiner, for example, is a typically “Woke” leftist. But he’s doing good work on the JFK assassination. If he ever lowered himself to my level, I’d be happy to work with him on that common cause. Julian Assange believes the 9/11 fairy tale. But that doesn’t detract from the great work Wikileaks did, or make him any less of a political prisoner. Rosie O’Donnell is even more “Woke” than Reiner, but she was publicly telling the truth about 9/11, and got essentially “cancelled” because of it.

  There are tiers to the alternative media. You can choose to believe or not believe that I am in the legitimate tier, where honest voices struggle to get a larger platform. The one where shadow bans are common. I would be shocked if anyone I associate with regularly in the alt media wasn’t in the legitimate tier, too. Tucker Carlson would be in the top tier of this world, alongside Alex Jones and now Elon Musk. All suspect because of their backgrounds, or in Jones’s case due to his refusal to focus attention on the power that Zionism wields in this country, and stubborn support of Trumpenstein. Harrison Smith told me, however, that Jones never pressures him about what he can and can’t say, and indeed Smith is a very ardent anti-Zionist.

  I believe that the information is what’s important, not the personality. I don’t care where truth comes from; if it awakens people to the corruption, tyranny, and injustice all around us, then it’s a good thing. Let’s say hypothetically that someone I usually find to be odious, Bill Maher, held up one of my books on television and said, “This is a great book! Read it!” Would I reject that kind of endorsement, because I’ve found Maher to be so offensive so much of the time? Now, of course, Maher is about as likely to do that as Joe Biden is to come out tomorrow and declare that he’s being controlled by the Illuminati. Or that Hillary Clinton will be struck with a sudden pang of guilt and demand to be put in public stocks and pilloried.

  Just as the JFK assassination research community will ultimately never threaten that particular official lie because of its continuous dysfunction, the conspiracy analysis media in general, the alt media, will never overtake the state controlled mainstream media because of all the infighting, distrust, and accusations. We have to be able to talk with the Tucker Carlsons and Elon Musks, along with the Flat Earthers and Holocaust skeptics. I can respect all views, unless they advocate murder or extreme violence. The common goal should be for us to make the sleeping Americans realize that there is a vast conspiracy afoot to deny us all our civil liberties, and cover up the multitude of official crimes committed by the conspirators.

  Tucker Carlson responded to all the vitriol directed at him by stating, “I’m not defending Russia. I’m defending my own country. A weak central government in [Russia] with the world’s largest nuclear stockpile is insane. You’re a freaking nutcase. If you desire that, and we are run by nutcases, the president and that poisonous moron to Victoria Nuland.” Sounds reasonable to me. Just about every other mainstream journalist in America 2.0 despises free speech, hates anything virtuous or traditional, and is overtly anti-White. They cheer on political prosecutions and denial of true process. They shill for every discredited government narrative from JFK to the 2020 election. They demonize dissent. Carlson doesn’t do any of that. What is he being paid to promote? That the government killed JFK? That January 6 was a false flag?

  I will continue to believe in some things. It certainly seems hopeless, but we have to live our lives as if there is hope. Frank Capra left his impact on me. I still think the Kennedys were heroic figures. We need heroes. Crusaders for liberty and justice. If a politician speaks up for peace, even if they may be betrothed to Israel like all the others, I support them. How could I not? I always support peace. If we micro analyze potential motives, we will probably always find something to question. If you stay committed to the truth, then eventually the disinfo agents will sort themselves out. No one is perfect. I’ve yet to find anyone that I agree with about everything. Well, maybe Huey Long. Just because QAnon was an obvious psyop, that doesn’t mean that there couldn’t someday possibly be some real white hats.

  To say that the alt media eats its own is a massive understatement. Too many seem almost to instantly reject anyone who agrees with them. Kind of like Groucho Marx refusing to join any group that would have him for a member. I’m flattered when someone agrees with me, so I simply don’t get this line of thinking. If what they’re saying sounds too good to be true, it probably is, to paraphrase the old chestnut. As I’ve said, I have my own suspicions about many big names in the alt media, but I’d be happy to appear on any of their shows. I’d be courteous and respectful, and I wouldn’t alter my comments. My views are going to be the same, whether I’m ranting on “I Protest,” or being interviewed by Rachel Maddow. Again, it’s the information, stupid.

  If accepting people at face value (until proven otherwise) loses me supporters, so be it. I obviously know the names of the high profile swamp creatures, and accept their lifetimes of crime and corruption at face value. If Barack Obama suddenly started singing the praises of Huey Long, I would recognize a psyop. And would understand instantly that there was an obvious nefarious agenda behind it. Tucker Carlson hasn’t demonstrated that he’s a swamp creature, with a record of crimes and perhaps a Body Count behind him. I focus on the obvious villains, both in politics and the kept press. But like JFK noted in his timeless American University “peace” speech, I recognize that people with views I abhor can still love their children.

  Mark Lane was my mentor. I patterned my own civil libertarianism after his. He was a Jew. And he later became not only the counsel for the “anti-Semitic” Liberty Lobby, but best friends with the man who headed it, Willis Carto. So does that mean Lane wasn’t a real Jew? Or that Carto wasn’t a legitimate historical revisionist and critic of Israel? Because they were such strange bedfellows, were they both government operatives? I’ve heard from many who suspect Lane was working for the government. Wasn’t he Jim Jones’ attorney? How did he escape the Kool-Aid? Most people are impressed that I was with his Citizens Committee of Inquiry as a teenager, but some snort that I must be a government agent, too.

  Ultimately, it all comes down to good versus evil. God versus Satan. I don’t know how many of those supporting a Satanic agenda are actually Satanists. But some are. They flash those unnatural hand signals like someone is ordering them to. But some Satanists probably don’t walk the walk any more than many Christians. That’s why I keep talking about Frank Capra’s film Meet John Doe. People realizing their neighbor is a pretty good person. People coming together for the most basic common purpose; to be good neighbors and try to follow the Golden Rule. I still think national John Doe Clubs could work. But I still have a lot of naive idealism alongside the populism.

  It’s good to be skeptical. No one is more skeptical than I am. But we shouldn’t turn away a potential comrade (not to sound like a commie), exclusively because of his background, or what he once said or did. Or because he doesn’t focus on Israel. Or because he doesn’t talk about all the conspiracies we do. Just as in the general business world, or on ridiculous “reality” shows like Big Brother, we can form alliances that are favorable in some sense. To push truths like Oswald being a patsy, or 9/11 being an inside job, or COVID being a giant psyop. To support free speech. The way they do in Congress when they want to push through some awful legislation. I don’t normally quote Rodney King, but can’t we all just get along, people?

  Subscribe to “I Protest” by Donald Jeffries

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/13/2024 – 23:40

• Where Tuning Into The Radio Is More (& Less) Popular
  Where Tuning Into The Radio Is More (& Less) Popular

  To mark World Radio Day, Anna Fleck created the following chart looks at data from Statista’s Consumer Insights macro survey on where radio lovers reside.

  Of the selected countries, it was most common in Austria and Germany for people to say they listened to the radio for at least for 11 hours per week, at around 17 and 16 percent, respectively.

  This is considerably more than countries such as Mexico and South Korea, where less than five percent of respondents considered themselves to be heavy listeners.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  World Radio Day 2024 is observed on February 13.

  This year’s motto is “Radio: A century informing, entertaining and educating.”

  

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/13/2024 – 23:20

• Higher Education Reform, Civic Thought, And Liberal Education
  Higher Education Reform, Civic Thought, And Liberal Education

  Authored by Peter Berkowitz via RealClear Wire,

  For decades, American colleges and universities have desperately needed reform. The urgency of the moment may create openings to mitigate the damage and restore the basic elements of liberal education.

  

  Over the last few months, turmoil on campus has provoked outrage among wealthy donors, members of Congress, parents of college and college-bound students, and no small number of ordinary citizens. The sympathy exhibited by students and faculty for Hamas’ barbaric Oct. 7 attacks on Israelis, mostly civilians, along with the vacillating and mealy-mouthed response of many elite university administrators to students’ championing jihadist genocide threw into sharp relief how badly higher education has lost its way.

  Notwithstanding the recent intensification of interest, clear and constant signs of decay have been apparent since the 1990s. The decline can be traced back beyond the politicization of teaching and scholarship stemming from the upheavals of the 1960s to at least the mid-century subordination of the university curriculum and scholarly research to the imperatives of progressive politics.

  The tenuring of the 1960s generation in the late 1980s and the population of the faculty ranks with their students and their students’ students over the last 40 years, however, has accelerated the deterioration.

  Our colleges and universities have been policing speech. They have been curtailing due process, particularly concerning allegations of sexual misconduct. They have been relaxing to the point of eliminating core curriculum requirements. And they have been packing course offerings, particularly in the humanities, with classes aimed at indoctrinating students in leftist articles of faith: The one and only prism for viewing moral and political life is the distinction between oppressor and oppressed, chief among oppressors on the global scene is the United States, and chief among oppressors within the United States are white people.

  Responsible higher education reform must consider the depth and breadth of the dysfunction. And the remedies must accord with the governing aim of liberal education, which is to cultivate citizens who understand the principles that undergird, and who can contribute to the maintenance of, free and democratic political institutions.

  Now may be just the time for concerted action. It is already being led by the one campus minority that campus authorities permit faculty and students to revile.

  “Conservatives have an extraordinary opportunity to reform higher education,” husband-and-wife team Benjamin Storey and Jenna Silber Storey write in “Follow the Left’s Example to Reform Higher Ed,” which appeared recently in the Wall Street Journal. “Universities face a perfect storm of falling enrollments, souring public opinion and political scrutiny. They need friends. Prudent administrators should be eager to work with those whose opinions they might previously have ignored.”

  Senior fellows at the American Enterprise Institute and research fellows at the University of Texas’ Civitas Institute, the Storeys urge conservatives to take a page from the left’s playbook and “think academically.” Professors on the left, the Storeys observe, “create new disciplines” such as women’s studies to address topics “overlooked by existing modes of inquiry.” These new disciplines give rise to new “ways of thinking” which, in turn, give birth to and are eventually supported by academic associations, professional journals, dedicated funders, and freshly minted students.

  Those on the right, advise the Storeys, should follow suit: “To make enduring change in the academy, conservatives must identify important areas that aren’t getting attention and create programs to study them.”

  The Storeys offer encouraging news on that front. Conservative reform has commenced, mainly in the neglected area of civic education. With Arizona State University’s School of Economic Thought and Leadership (SCETL) – launched by the Arizona legislature in 2016 and, until recently, led by founding director Paul Carrese – as a model, public-university initiatives in Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Utah, North Carolina, and Ohio are well underway.

  The Storeys call the model informing these programs “Civic Thought.” It encompasses the wide range of issues with which responsible citizens must grapple – “everything from war to education.” Establishing such programs requires partnerships among “trustees, donors and policymakers.” They must cooperate to identify and hire scholars with learning in the humanities and social sciences and with the administrative skills to design curricula, recruit faculty, and create and maintain communities devoted to learning and scholarship.

  The ambitious, multi-arena reform contemplated by the Storeys – I take part in a small way as a member of the Academic Advisory Board at the University of Florida’s Hamilton Center – has great potential. By re-grounding higher education in the principles of individual freedom, reasoned inquiry, and self-government, civic thought programs can put our colleges and universities in the service of – rather than in opposition to – the public interest.

  At the same time, salutary higher education reform must dodge several temptations and pitfalls. The Storeys rightly advise conservatives to learn from the left’s success in working within the academy. However, conservative reformers must also recognize and repudiate the left’s abuses of academic institutions, which have fueled the progressive takeover of university curriculum and administration and degraded higher education.

  First, conservatives should reject the left’s conceit – common in women’s studies, African American studies, and many of the other fashionable “studies” – that neglected topics require the creation of new methods of inquiry and new modes of thinking. Down that path lie pretentious jargon, obfuscatory discourse, and the erection of barriers to criticism and accountability. Nothing more is necessary for the flourishing of civic thought than the conscientious application of the traditional forms of inquiry in the humanities, the best of contemporary social science, and the experimentation and rigor of the natural sciences to the challenges of freedom and democracy.

  Second, conservatives should reject the left’s penchant for affirmative action. Notwithstanding that they are often a small and despised minority on campus, conservatives should not seek to make or receive appointments based on political beliefs or party attachments. To inquire into the voting preferences of candidates for faculty positions is antithetical to the university’s mission. Faculty hiring must concentrate on scholarly accomplishment, classroom excellence, and curricular need. As it happens, programs in civic thought will attract a disproportionate number of conservatives to their faculty. That’s because these days conservatives are disproportionately drawn to the topics at the heart of civic thought and essential to the formation of well-educated citizens: political philosophy; political economy; jurisprudence; foreign affairs and national security; religion; and constitutional, diplomatic, and military history.

  Third, conservatives should reject the left’s conviction that higher education’s aim is to prepare students to change the world. Understanding the world comes first, particularly for teachers and students. University programs in civic thought should not seek to mold conservative political activists to counter the progressive political activists that many African American studies, women’s studies, and the like endeavor to produce. Rather, programs in civic thought should strive to form more thoughtful citizens, whether of the left, center, or right.

  Fourth, conservatives should reject the left’s compartmentalization of the curriculum. While short-term advantage may be derived from emulating the left’s leveraging of academic proclivities and protocols to create new disciplines, civic thought should not seek status as a separate field of study like literature, political science, physics, much less like women’s studies, African American studies, and the like. Instead, civic thought should bring to bear on the myriad challenges of citizenship in a free society – including the status of minorities, the role of women, and changing sexual mores – the wisdom that is gleaned from, and the toleration and humility that are developed by, study of history, languages, literature, the principles of politics and economics, and the leading opinions about ethics and faith. Such intellectual exploration begins close to home with one’s nation, broadens into a study of one’s civilization, and eventually encompasses other peoples, nations, and civilizations. Civic thought must be grounded in liberal education.

  Fifth, conservatives should reject the left’s politicization of teaching and learning. Conservatives should not conceive of civic thought programs as conservative, at least in the narrow partisan sense of furthering a right-wing political agenda. Civic thought programs should be conservative in the larger sense – devoted to preserving the treasures of Western civilization and other civilizations and transmitting them to the next generation. Such preservation and transmission, it must be emphasized, can only be accomplished by those who have learned to weigh the evidence, seek out and grasp the truth in contending opinions, and craft persuasive arguments. Conservatives should emphasize that civic thought programs are the best means in the present circumstances for restoring a traditional liberal education, one which serves the public interest by forming young men and women capable of exercising their rights effectively and preserving and improving free and democratic institutions.

  The extent of the disrepair of U.S. colleges and universities and the urgency of the moment necessitate the recovery of the traditional principles of liberal education to guide the long, arduous work of higher education reform.

  Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. From 2019 to 2021, he served as director of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department. His writings are posted at PeterBerkowitz.com and he can be followed on Twitter @BerkowitzPeter.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/13/2024 – 23:00

• The Nuts And Bolts Of Replacing Candidate Biden, Before Or After The Convention
  The Nuts And Bolts Of Replacing Candidate Biden, Before Or After The Convention

  Following a week in which special counsel Robert Hur soberly reported that President Biden is a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and “diminished faculties” — a man who couldn’t remember when his term as vice president began or ended, or even “within several years” when his son Beau died — scrutiny of Biden’s fitness for office has reached a fever pitch across major media, with some earnestly examining off-ramps for Biden’s shaky re-election bid. 

  The special counsel report was bad enough by itself, but Biden himself poured gasoline on the fire last week:

  • He twice mistakenly referred to the dead male German chancellor Helmut Kohl when he was describing a discussion with living female Angela Merkel

  • He cited a conversation he had with François Mitterand — the French president who died 27 years ago — when that conversation was actually with President Emmanuel Macron

  • At a press conference meant to bolster confidence in his mental health, Biden referred to Egyptian President Sissi as the president of Mexico

  WATCH: Joe Biden says he recently met with “Mitterand from Germany.”

  Mitterand was the FRENCH President between 1981 and 1995.

  He also died in 1996. pic.twitter.com/W0YPBDp69n

  — Raheem. (@RaheemKassam) February 5, 2024

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

  The week also brought a damning NBC News poll, which found 62% of registered voters have “major concerns” about whether Biden has the requisite mental and physical strength for a second term. Only 34% had major concerns about Trump’s capacity, though he’s just four years younger than the 81-year-old Biden.  

  On Monday, Politico examined avenues by which the Democratic Party might navigate toward a different candidate. First, note that the expiration of most ballot-filing deadlines means it’s too late for a heavyweight to enter the Democratic primary, and the obscure Rep. Dean Phillips challenge campaign — which has emphasized Biden’s weakness as a candidate — hasn’t gained any traction. 

  Politico‘s Charlie Mahtesian and Steven Shepard also think it’s unlikely we’ll see a floor revolt by Biden delegates at the Democratic Convention. Rather, they focus on a scenario in which Biden sees the primary process all the way through, and then — under mounting public, media and political pressure — announces he will not seek re-election after all and is releasing his delegates to vote for someone else at the national convention, which will be held in Chicago Aug. 19 to 22. Biden might well endorse a candidate, but his delegates wouldn’t be obliged to vote for his pick.

  Helmut Kohl, Mitterand, now Sisi as “the President of Mexico”.

  Biden has now thoroughly left the building.pic.twitter.com/Hv5BYoUUpA

  — Julian Sayarer (@JulianSayarer) February 9, 2024

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

  California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s been running an odd non-campaign of his own — to include debating then-GOP hopeful Ron DeSantis — would be among the top contenders, along with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. It could all make for great entertainment, writes Politico: 

  The Democrats’ convention, typically a staid affair, would be filled with drama. While Democrats stripped their so-called “superdelegates” of most of their power after 2016, those current and former party leaders and elected officials would get a vote on a potential second ballot at the convention.

  That would give them significant sway in picking a nominee in a floor fight, but perhaps at the expense of reopening the 2016-era controversy about the role played by party elites in stifling Bernie Sanders’ chances at the nomination

  One thing Politico didn’t note is that the convention is already likely to feature high drama, in the form of protests by Democrats and others infuriated by the Biden administration’s blank-check backing of Israel’s unbridled destruction of Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel. A floor-fight for the nomination could mean there’s chaos both inside and outside Chicago’s United Center.  

  🚨#BREAKING: Pro-Palestine Protesters are Clashing with Metro DC Police Outside Democratic National Committee Headquarters
  ⁰📌#Washington | #DC⁰
  Currently Hundreds of pro-Palestine protesters have gathered outside the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in Washington,… pic.twitter.com/sNEzM2wRIC

  — R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) November 16, 2023

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

  While a Biden pre-convention withdrawal would make for quite a spectacle, things would really get wild if Biden were to be nominated at the convention only to subsequently die, resign or be disabled. In that scenario, party rules direct the party chair to “confer with the Democratic leadership of the … Congress and the Democratic Governors Association” and then report to the approximately 450-member Democratic National Committee, which would then choose a new nominee.  

  The chaos wouldn’t be confined to the Democratic Party: States would be forced to scramble to produce new ballots. Ballots for overseas military service members are shipped just a couple weeks after the late-August Democratic convention, and in-person voting kicks off on Sept. 20 in Minnesota and South Dakota.     

  None of this is to say that Biden won’t keep mumbling, shuffling, blank-staring and gaffing his way all the way to the Nov 5 general election finish line. However, after last week, fewer people are willing to wager that Biden will be the Democratic nominee:

  

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/13/2024 – 22:40

• The One Border Question Dems Can’t Answer
  The One Border Question Dems Can’t Answer

  Authored by Frank Miele via RealClear Wire,

  Conservative Republicans have managed to defeat the fake border security bill wrapped in a political ploy inside of a Ukraine bailout bill. Of course, no Republican should have ever imagined that giving open-border Democrats everything they asked for was a smart strategic position, but that’s what they very nearly did.

  

  Republicans had already passed a real border security bill within a few months of taking control of the House of Representatives following the 2022 midterm elections. HR-2 actually secured the border – by demanding that the Biden administration finish the border wall, ending Biden’s power to process aliens who don’t enter at ports of entry, and shutting off the federal spigot that funds NGOs who aid and abet illegal aliens (“inadmissible non-U.S. citizens”) by providing lodging and other resources.

  Moreover, HR-2 shut down the ability of the Biden administration to grant asylum to the millions of migrants who don’t meet the legal criteria for asylum. But those are just a few of the vital components of HR-2, which is indeed a border security bill.

  If Democrats really wanted border security, they would have passed HR-2 in the Senate last year. But even if they didn’t want to give Republicans a win with HR-2, Democrats still could have incorporated the language of HR-2 in their grand compromise to prove that they really meant it when they said they wanted to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States.

  Instead, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell teamed up with his buddy Chuck Schumer to use their fake border security bill as a fig leaf to cover up their real goal – freeing billions of dollars to go to Ukraine and Israel.

  McConnell sent his sacrificial lamb, Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, into the lions’ den of lean and hungry Democrats as his chief negotiator to craft a “compromise” border bill, but he was apparently instructed not to involve House Speaker Mike Johnson or any other border hawks in his negotiations. Moreover, the contents of the bill were kept secret until three days before Schumer intended to bring it to a vote in the Senate.

  By that time, it was obvious what the game was. Democrats and their media allies created a narrative that Trump had ordered Republicans to vote against the bill in order to give him a political issue in November. This is just the latest instance where Democrats have gotten the cart before the horse. Trump does not give anyone orders; he just listens to the people and provides them a voice. It is the people who spoke out against this fake border bill, and any Republicans foolish enough to vote against the people are at risk of following former Speaker Kevin McCarthy out the door.

  The people’s voice was mocked throughout the process. When details of the border bill were leaked to the media, Lankford characterized them as Internet rumors and dismissed them. “Wait for the text of the bill to be released,” he repeatedly said.

  But when the text was released, it was just as the people had feared. Most importantly, the centerpiece of the bill was a provision that ordered the president to shut down the border if illegal entries exceeded 5,000 a day on average for seven days. Our masters in the media tell us that doesn’t mean up to 5,000 illegal entries per day would be allowed, but let’s be realistic.

  First of all, the U.S.-Mexican border is not controlled by the Border Patrol; it is controlled by the Mexican cartels. If the human traffickers need to keep border crossings under 5,000 a day in order to keep doing business, then they will do just that.

  But there is one question that completely destroys the Democrat and globalist Republican talking point that the “5,000 a day” number is somehow being misunderstood by Harvard Law School graduates like Sens. Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton.

  Here’s how NBC described the provision:

  “DHS could close the border if Border Patrol encountered 4,000 or more migrants on average over seven days. The border would have to be shut down if those encounters reached a seven-day average of 5,000 or if they exceeded 8,500 in a single day.”

  Now, here’s the question that Democrats have no answer to: If the border can be shut down when more than 5,000 illegal immigrants cross per day, then why can’t it be shut down immediately, right now?

  The answer is obvious – because Joe Biden and the Democrats don’t want to shut down the border. Instead, they have sanctioned the invasion of our country by millions of non-citizens. With this bill, they attempted to codify that invasion and they thought they could get Republicans to just look the other way. Maybe a few years ago, that would have worked. But this is the new Republican Party, tired of playing Charlie Brown and being humiliated time and again by Democratic Party Lucys.

  If you need more evidence that the Senate bill is the opposite of what Sen. Lankford claims, get this:

  According to NBC, “The border couldn’t be shut down … for more than 270 days in the first year. And the bill would give the president the power to suspend a border closure ‘on an emergency basis for up to 45 days if it is in the national interest.’”

  Under what possible justification would these supposed proponents of border security allow the border to remain open to invaders for the other 95 days a year? Under the typical scenario of 10,000 border crossers per day under Biden, that would allow nearly 1 million illegal crossings per year. Add that to 4,000 crossers a day allowed for 270 days per year under Lankford’s bill, and you are authorizing at least 2 million migrants to enter the country and stay indefinitely, and that’s just between ports of entry. Remember, the bill doesn’t account for the people who show up at airports and border crossings and demand asylum.

  Perhaps the craziest admission that the border bill is a con job is that Orwellian provision that Biden could open the border on an emergency basis “if it is in the national interest.”

  It is never in the national interest to replace the border with a sign proclaiming, “Welcome Stranger. Mi Casa Es Su Casa.” But apparently, it is in the interests of the Democratic Party. Think about that, and stop blaming Republicans for refusing to be duped one more time.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/13/2024 – 22:20

• CIA Had Foreign Allies Spy On Trump Team, Triggering Russia Collusion Hoax, Sources Say
  CIA Had Foreign Allies Spy On Trump Team, Triggering Russia Collusion Hoax, Sources Say

  Authored by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag via Public substack,

  Last year, John Durham, a special prosecutor for the Department of Justice (DOJ), concluded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) should never have opened its investigation of alleged collusion by then-presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and Russia in late July of 2016.

  

  Now, multiple credible sources tell Public and Racket that the United States Intelligence Community (IC), including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), illegally mobilized foreign intelligence agencies to target Trump advisors long before the summer of 2016.

  The new information fills many gaps in our understanding of the Russia collusion hoax and is supported by testimony already in the public record.

  Until now, the official story has been that the FBI’s investigation began after Australian intelligence officials told US officials that a Trump aide had boasted to an Australian diplomat that Russia had damning material about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

  In truth, the US IC asked the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance to surveil Trump’s associates and share the intelligence they acquired with US agencies, say sources close to a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HSPCI) investigation. The Five Eyes nations are the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

  After Public and Racket had been told that President Barack Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, had identified 26 Trump associates for the Five Eyes to target, a source confirmed that the IC had “identified [them] as people to ‘bump,’ or make contact with or manipulate. They were targets of our own IC and law enforcement — targets for collection and misinformation.”

  Unknown details about the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign and raw intelligence related to the IC’s surveillance of the Trump campaign are in a 10-inch binder that Trump ordered to be declassified at the very end of his term, sources told Public and Racket.

  If the top-secret documents exist proving these charges, they are potentially proof that multiple US intelligence officials broke laws against spying and election interference.

  …

  “They were making contacts and bumping Trump people going back to March 2016,” a source close to the investigation said. “They were sending people around the UK, Australia, Italy — the Mossad in Italy. The MI6 was working at an intelligence school they had set up.”

  The IC, a source said, considered the 26 Trump campaign people identified to “bump” or “reverse target,” or manipulate through confidential human sources (CHSs), to be easy marks because of their relative inexperience.

  Doing so was illegal, both because US law prohibits such intelligence gathering unless authorized by a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant and because the weaponization of the IC for political purposes constitutes election interference.

  …

  Subscribers to Public substack can read the astonishing full report here…

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/13/2024 – 22:00

• Over 70% Of Service Members Say They Felt 'Coerced' Into Taking COVID-19 Vaccine: Survey
  Over 70% Of Service Members Say They Felt ‘Coerced’ Into Taking COVID-19 Vaccine: Survey

  Over 70% of individuals serving in the US military who responded to an Epoch Times survey said they felt “coerced” into taking the COVID-19 vaccine and/or booster after the Pentagon issued a 2021 mandate to do so.

  

  The survey, conducted last fall, spanned all branches of the military and included both enlisted and officer ranks. The average length of service was around 16 years.

  Out of the 229 participants, 169 were active duty service members. Eighty-seven percent, or 199, were unvaccinated against COVID-19. Of the 30 who were vaccinated, only two said they had wanted to do it.

  Twenty out of 30 individuals who acknowledged taking a COVID-19 vaccine claim they were injured by it. Ninety-three percent of the participants said they know someone they believe has been injured by one. –Epoch Times

  One 20-year Army combat veteran told the outlet that he opposed the mandate.

  “I’m not a lab rat and neither are the people I work with,” he said, adding “While holding out [from taking the vaccines], I was forced to wear a mask and was often singled out for being unvaccinated.”

  After bringing his concerns to his command, “I was simply told: ‘I don’t make the rules.’”

  He added that if he hadn’t gotten vaccinated, he would have been prohibited from coming home to see his family at a time when his wife was at risk of a serious medical concern that might require his presence at a moment’s notice.

  “You can see I had no choice but to take the shot,” he said. “At the same time I would be prevented from being with my wife, my orders to deploy were also being threatened.”

  More via the Epoch Times;

  Like Officer Johnson, a majority of survey participants said they were “coerced” into receiving a vaccine and/or boosters. Nearly 95 percent of those who objected to the mandate said they faced reprisals, including verbal threats of punitive legal action, loss of promotion, and exclusion from career-enhancing schools.

  Officer Johnson reluctantly took the first round of vaccine at a local pharmacy chain store.

  After the mandate was rescinded in January 2023, Officer Johnson still faced roadblocks to his career advancement.

  “With a general officer memorandum of reprimand in my record for initially refusing the vaccine, I was not promoted to a higher rank,” he said.

  “Even though I have since taken the vaccine, I’m losing monthly income and hundreds of thousands of dollars over my lifetime in retirement pay for not being able to promote.”

  Almost half of the participants in the survey said they were also “financially harmed by noncompliance” with the mandate.

  Officer Johnson said he knows others in a similar predicament, including some who were forced to retire or separate from the Army long before finishing their career. Nearly 90 percent of the survey’s participants said they know someone who was separated or forced to leave military service because of the mandate.

  “Like many of them, I’ve been shot at and deployed [to a combat zone] by an organization that turned on me, and that has caused quite a bit of emotional and psychological trauma,” he said. “Having spent my adult life in service to my country, my experience has been absolutely destructive to my morale and physical well-being.”
  Calls for Accountability

  Master Sgt. Asher Grove (a pseudonym) has served in the Air Force for nearly 20 years. While investigating the COVID-19 vaccines, he said, he identified potential adverse risks that were never made known to service members.

  According to the survey, only 3 percent were informed by qualified medical personnel of known risks associated with the vaccines, including damage to reproductive health for females and increased risk of heart disease.

  With past immunizations, he was given “a fact sheet,” he said. With a pre-existing health concern and guidance from God, he adamantly opposed receiving any COVID-19 vaccine.

  After both his religious accommodation and medical exemption requests were denied, he was “slapped with a letter of reprimand.”

  “This was the only real coercion I faced, that I’d get continue to get in trouble for taking objection to the vaccine,” he said.
  Ultimately, it was an appeals court in Ohio that upheld an injunction to protect members of the Air Force from being punished for refusing the vaccines that prevented any further negative impact on his career. Sadly, he said, many other service members were forced to retire or separate prior to the injunction.

  “DOD leaders should be held accountable in the manner [the mandate] was enforced,” he said. All 229 participants of the survey agreed with that proposition.

  “Trust in leadership suffered greatly when people were forced to do something they should have never been forced to do.

  “Having witnessed so many people oppose the vaccine for religious concern and more, I was able to witness the greatest battle I’ve seen in my life.

  “It wasn’t a battle fought on a foreign field, but it was a battle against good and evil in our own country.”

  For him, the rescission of the vaccine mandate in January 2023 was “a step in the right direction, but more needs to be done so this never happens again.”

  The DOD, Department of the Army, and Department of the Air Force didn’t respond by press time to requests by The Epoch Times for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/13/2024 – 22:00

• Waste Of The Day: Despite Targeted Funding, California Prisons Didn’t Fix Disciplinary Process
  Waste Of The Day: Despite Targeted Funding, California Prisons Didn’t Fix Disciplinary Process

  Authored by Adam Andrzejewski via RealClear Wire,

  Topline: California’s prison system received $34 million to institute reforms related to staff misconduct allegations. Although new rules were put forward, the process never changed because prison staffers continued to operate under the old rules.

  

  Key facts: Inmates can file reports with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) if they believe they have been mistreated. If the mistreatment stems from a prison employee, the issue is addressed by a team from another prison to avoid bias.

  

  In 2021, the state inspector general found that prison staffers were the ones determining if a misconduct allegation against themselves or their colleagues was worth flagging for investigation, presenting an obvious conflict of interest.

  The department requested $34 million from the state in its 2022 budget to “restructure its staff misconduct allegation screening.” The rule changes were made on paper, but prison staffers kept following the old system anyway, leading the state inspector general to criticize the $34 million in “wasted resources” in a Jan. 29 report.

  As a result, 595 allegations of misconduct against prison staff were classified as “routine grievances” and investigated by the same prisons where the misconduct may have occurred.

  The process “resulted in a wasteful duplication of efforts and misallocation of resources” because investigative work had already begun on some of the 595 cases before they were reclassified, according to the IG.

  The drawn-out process also caused the statute of limitations to expire on 127 cases, 22 of which could have caused a prison employee to be fired had the case been investigated.

  Background: While it’s impossible to quantify the dollar cost of the misallocated resources on top of the wasted $34 million, CDCR’s budget doesn’t have excess funds to spare. The department spent almost $2.5 billion just to pay outside vendors in 2022, according to OpentheBooks.com.

  The 2023-24 budget allocates $14.5 billion for the department, more than any other state prison system.

  Supporting quote: “This reassignment complied with regulations and was shared with the Office of the Inspector General in advance,” CDCR Secretary Jeffrey Macomber wrote in his response to the IG report. “Of note, the reassigned grievances amounted to less than one-third of one percent of all grievances reviewed by the Department in calendar year 2023.”

  Critical quote: “The department’s attempt to downplay the impact of its decision by pointing out that it only affected a small percentage of grievances ignores the impact its decision had on the incarcerated people whose allegations of staff misconduct were not reviewed in compliance with the department’s current regulations,” the IG wrote in the report.

  Summary: $34 million is a lot of money just to rewrite the rules of a bureaucratic process, especially if the process is never actually changed.

  The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/13/2024 – 21:40

• Hezbollah Chief Threatens More Displacement Of Northern Israel Residents As France Delivers Peace Plan
  Hezbollah Chief Threatens More Displacement Of Northern Israel Residents As France Delivers Peace Plan

  France has issued a written proposal to Lebanon which seeks to de-escalate the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon’s south, which stands on the precipice of becoming a broader and deadlier war.

  The French plan calls for Hezbollah to remove its fighters a full 10km from the border, after which the governments of Lebanon and Israel would enter negotiations on expanding a buffer zone “in a gradual way”. The document calls for these talks to begin 10 days after Hezbollah’s draw back from the border.

  

  The ultimate goal, according to the proposal, would be to achieve ceasefire based on an de-escalation zone which expands 30km from the border up to the Litani River, based on the similar 2006 peace plan which settled the war then.

  The document emphasizes that this conflict “risks spiraling out of control” while urging the implementation of “a potential ceasefire, when the conditions are right” and calls for delineating deconflicted land between the two sides.

  However, just hours after the French plan was reported in international press, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah gave a televised speech Tuesday and warned that Hezbollah will not stop its attacks on Israeli troops until the assault on Gaza is ended.

  He additionally threatened the further displacement of residents of Northern Israel, according to Reuters. This has been a key issue for Israeli leadership, given dozens of communities had to be evacuated since last October, and some 80,000 Israeli citizens have been forced out of their homes due to the Hezbollah rocket and mortar barrages.

  Nasrallah in the speech appeared to indirectly complain about French and Western delegations coming to Beirut while talking peace plans:

  Nasrallah complained about the international delegations that came to Lebanon in recent weeks in an attempt to calm the situation, saying that they were only concerned with protecting Israel and refused to address Hezbollah’s demands.

  “The front in southern Lebanon is a front of support, assistance, solidarity, and participation in weakening the Israeli enemy until it reaches the point where it is convinced that it must stop its aggression,” the Hezbollah leader, who is seen as close to Iran, vowed. “This front will only stop when the aggression against Gaza stops within an agreement with the Palestinian resistance.”

  Included in the speech was hint at massive escalation against northern Israel…

  ⚡️Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah: The israeli Minister of Security must realize that if we war is launched against us, there will be two million displaced settlers from the north, not just the hundred thousand currently evacuated.

  — War Monitor (@WarMonitors) February 13, 2024

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

  “Lebanon is in a strong and proactive position,”  Nasrallah insisted. However, Lebanese authorities will see it differently, and are worried on a daily basis that the conflict will spread to engulf the entire country, as happened in 2006. Israel is also in a tough spot – given the rising pressure to do something definitive about the emptied northern communities – while Israeli citizens remain internally displaced.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/13/2024 – 21:20

• The 'No-Coiner' Texts Arrive: A Bull Market Beckons
  The ‘No-Coiner’ Texts Arrive: A Bull Market Beckons

  Authored by Santiago Varela via Bitcoin Magazine,

  The subtle shift in social media conversations. The mentions in the mainstream media: “Bitcoin will now be available for Wall Street investors!”. All the text messages arriving with questions about bitcoin from your no-coiner friends. Bitcoiners know that this is the signal. The bull market is officially here before the 2024 halving. This is a letter and a brief guide with nice tools for all those people who have been asking questions about bitcoin in the last couple days.

  “Bitcoin… Should I buy it?”

  “What is the best way to buy some?”

  “When should I buy it?”

  “How much do I buy?”

  “What strategy do I use to accumulate?”

  “Do I keep it? How long?”

  Gradually and then suddenly. That weird magic internet money you spend your free time researching is all anyone wants to talk about now. Your coworker, usually oblivious to anything outside his immediate domain, starts peppering you with questions about exchanges and wallets. Your high school and college friends text you asking for advice.

  

  The no-coiner texts are more than just a social phenomenon. They’re a barometer of market sentiment, a bellwether signaling the rise of a new wave of interest. When the questions shift from “What is Bitcoin?” to “How do I buy it?” you know something fundamental has shifted.

  This isn’t just FOMO (fear of missing out). It’s recognition. People are starting to see what we’ve seen all along: a monetary revolution unfolding before our eyes. The limitations of the old system, the fragility of fiat currencies, are becoming painfully obvious. And Bitcoin, that beacon of sound money and individual sovereignty, shines ever brighter in the growing darkness.

  The questions, of course, are varied. “Should I buy now?” asks the cautious one, still scarred by past price swings. “What exchange should I use?” queries the practical one, seeking a secure path to entry. And the adventurous one, eyes gleaming with gold rush fever, wants to know about leverage and trading strategies.

  There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, of course. Each journey into Bitcoin is unique, shaped by individual circumstances and risk tolerance. But for those drawn to the flight to quality, let’s go step by step.

  “SHOULD I BUY BITCOIN?”

  This is not investment advice. Before investing any money, I would suggest that you invest time doing your own research about how to use the Bitcoin network appropriately. That said, the world’s largest asset manager is very bullish on Bitcoin. According to a BlackRock paper from 2022, they believe that an 84.9% bitcoin allocation is the optimal strategy.

  Additionally, Fidelity published a paper titled Introduction to Digital Assets For Institutional Investors and they mention Bitcoin 73 times. After that, they published a paper titled Bitcoin First: Why investors need to consider Bitcoin separately from other digital assets.

  Again, that doesn’t mean you should trust them with your eyes closed. I encourage everyone to do their own research. This is simply a little bit of context about what giants in the asset management industry are saying lately. There are open source tools that can help you make your own conclusions. Any person can access and understand how to use these tools for their personal wealth management. In fact, you can play with the models and adjust anything if you know some programming in Python. Finally, the Bitcoin network has so many unique characteristics that make it like no other asset we’ve seen before. Bitcoin rocks!

  “WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO BUY SOME?”

  It depends on individual needs, priorities and trade offs. On one side, you need to choose the level of responsibility that you’re comfortable with. On another side, you need to decide on the level of ownership that you want to have over your wealth.

  For example, there will be individuals that prefer to give up absolute ownership because they’d rather have a third-party as the custodian of the bitcoin. Long time bitcoiners value absolute ownership and therefore they prefer to be the custodians of their own bitcoins even if that implies more responsibility for them. Holding your own keys is the only way to really own any bitcoin. That’s why they say: “Not your keys, not your bitcoin”. If you really want to be your own bank, you can’t delegate the responsibility of holding your keys to anyone else.

  There is no doubt that not everyone prefers the big responsibility of holding their bitcoin. The same thing happened with other assets like gold. Not everyone feels comfortable storing gold in their homes and they send their gold to third-party custodians that have big gold vaults. In cyberspace there are also technicalities that will make some individuals feel unable to keep up with the big responsibility of holding value without the help of a third-party.

  Ask yourself the following questions: Do you value absolute ownerships? Do you value privacy? Are you comfortable with the responsibility of holding your keys safely? How much trust do you have in a third-party to custody your wealth? Are you an individual or institutional investor? If you are an institutional investor, are there regulations preventing you from owning real bitcoin? The following diagram from River can help you decide which is the best way for you to buy and hold bitcoin.

  

  In conclusion, there are three different alternatives depending on individual needs. First, owning real bitcoin with a hardware wallet that you own the keys to. Second, buying paper bitcoin and having a third-party do the custody for you. Third, buying a Bitcoin ETF and having your broker keep it for you. After all, you can use a mix of different strategies either to diversify your exposure or invest from different platforms.

  “WHEN SHOULD I BUY IT?”

  Approximately every four years there is an event called the Halving. A halving implies that the amount of bitcoins put into circulation is cut into half. This is known as the Block Reward or Block Subsidy. In 2023, the Block Reward was equivalent to 6.25 Bitcoin coins. The Block Reward refers to the number of coins issued every 10 minutes. This means that 900 bitcoins were created each day.

  In 2010, the Block Reward was 50 coins. During a Halving, the Block Reward is halved, marking significant epochs in the life of the Bitcoin network. We are currently in the 4th epoch (Epoch IV), which began in 2020 and will end in 2024.

  Therefore, with the Halving in 2024, the monetary issuance will decrease to 3.125 coins every 10 minutes. This halving is expected to occur around April and in other words, a halving causes an anticipated decrease in the growth rate of the monetary base. The halving and the Epoch are crucial considerations for those interested in investing in Bitcoin. In the following graph you can visualize this:

  

  *Graph created by the author with data from a Nasdaq library in R Studio. The data is from December 2010 to December 2023.

  The following charts contain Bitcoin price data for each epoch separately (from Epoch I to Epoch IV, respectively). What’s intriguing about these four charts is that they help us visualize a clear pattern that repeats in each epoch. These charts can be valuable to anyone interested in investing in Bitcoin, as they assist us in visualizing a very distinct cycle that repeats every four years.

  

  *Graph created by the author with data from a Nasdaq library in R Studio. .

  It is important to mention that we do not know if the four year cycle will continue forever. In the last few years there have been new conversations that suggest that the four year cycle will not always be like that. A popular argument is that the halving will be priced in with anticipation for future epochs when people become more aware of this phenomenon.

  There are currently 19.7 billion bitcoins in circulation out of the 21 million that there will ever exist. This means that 93% of the total bitcoins already exist and there is less than 7% of them to be mined. However, the last bitcoins will be mined around the year 2140 and miners will live off of transaction fees after that.

  

  *Source: https://medium.com/swlh/the-mathematics-of-bitcoin-89e7ab59edc

  “HOW MUCH DO I BUY?”

  Once you have decided to buy bitcoin, the next step is to ask yourself how much you want to invest. Remember the advice from that Blackrock publication? You don’t have to be that aggressive and invest 84% of your portfolio in bitcoins. You can begin little by little. In this section, I will use a wonderful open-source tool created by Raphael Zagury (Chief Investment Officer of Swan Bitcoin) and I would suggest everyone to play with the models in the platform by yourself. You can find this dashboard at https://nakamotoportfolio.com/.

  In the Nakamoto Portfolio website, you can personalize a portfolio to meet your needs or you can check out default portfolios templates that are already there for you to analyze. Let’s check out a very simple and traditional portfolio:

  

  This portfolio has 60% of its wealth invested in the S&P 500 Index (SPY), 20% in a regular gold trust (GLD), and the other 20% in a Vanguard Bond Market ETF (BND). The time frame used to analyze this portfolio is between January 2018 and January 2024. The green line shows us the actual results that this portfolio would`ve had during that time span. The results tell us that this portfolio would have had an annual return of 8.73%. The total return for the six year period is 65%. The daily volatility of this portfolio is 0.67% and the annualized volatility is 12.85%.

  Now let’s focus on the three lines below the green line that represents the original portfolio. These lines give us the results of the original portfolio if they would have had 1%, 5% and 10% of the portfolio in Bitcoin for those six years. Just by having 1% in Bitcoin, the total returns of the portfolio would go from 65% to 71%. The annualized volatility would only increase to 12.91%. A position of 5% in Bitcoin would increase the returns all the way to 94% with the volatility at 13.55%. Finally, a position of 10% in Bitcoin would take the returns all the way to 123% and the volatility would only increase to 15.12%. This exercise illustrates perfectly why exposure to Bitcoin (even minimum exposure) is ideal for any portfolio.

  Ray Dalio, the famous investor from Bridgewater Associates, created a portfolio designed to perform well across different economic conditions. This investment strategy is known as the All Weather Portfolio. This portfolio template is available on the Nakamoto Portfolio website to analyze the results of Bitcoin exposure. The following image demonstrates the benefits of adding Bitcoin to a portfolio like this one.

  

  Another interesting portfolio to check out is the Diversified Bond Portfolio. This is a conservative investment strategy for risk-averse individuals. This portfolio includes a mix of Treasury with High Yield ETFs. According to Mr. Zagury, “a Bitcoin allocation is the perfect implementation of a bond portfolio. Even at small amounts, it has the potential to increase risk-adjusted returns.” The following image contains a brief summary of the impact that Bitcoin exposure can have on the Diversified Bond Portfolio. I suggest for everyone to try out the Nakamoto Portfolio by themselves to play with different numbers, portfolios, strategies, etc. There are YouTube tutorials and Twitter Threads to help anyone that is interested in using this wonderful tool.

  

  “WHAT STRATEGY DO I USE TO ACCUMULATE?”

  Once you have decided that you want to buy some bitcoin and you have decided on the amount of exposure that you want, the next step is to decide how you want to approach this accumulation phase. What strategy do you want to buy bitcoin? On one hand, you can buy it all at once. On the other hand, you can buy little by little.

  There are two main strategies for bitcoin accumulation: Lump-sum Investing and Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA). A lump-sum strategy implies investing all available funds at once. The DCA strategy allocates funds over regular intervals. For example, someone that decides to buy $100 worth of bitcoin each week (no matter the price) is following a DCA strategy. This is a popular strategy among bitcoiners that want to stack sats consistently. Each strategy has its own pros and cons. However, the best strategy depends on the particular needs and preferences of each individual.

  The Nakamoto Portfolio website also has a tool where anyone can run the numbers and compare which strategy works better for their particular situation. Check out the BTC Cost Averaging Simulator. According to Swan´s Nakamoto Portfolio, “lump-sum investing has historically outperformed DCA strategies. This is primarily due to Bitcoin’s explosive upward price movements. But DCA can lead to significant outperformance during bear markets. For instance, investors who bought at all-time highs but employed DCA afterward were able to break even significantly quicker. While DCA has potential drawbacks, such as reduced returns in consistently rising markets, it remains a popular method for managing risk and promoting disciplined investing.” After all, most people use a mix of both of these strategies and that might be the best way to go.

  “DO I KEEP TT? FOR HOW LONG?”

  Again, that comes down to individual needs, priorities, information, etc. However, this asset should be considered a long-term investment strategy. That means holding your bitcoin for a very long time, regardless of price fluctuations. Many Bitcoin enthusiasts believe that bitcoin will eventually become a global reserve currency, and therefore, they are willing to hold it through the ups and downs of the market. There is a popular saying amongst bitcoiners that changes “hold” into “HODL” (Hold On For Dear Life!). Take a look at awesome bitcoin comics that might also give you some advice…

  

  Other investors prefer trading their bitcoin on a frequent basis. This strategy involves buying bitcoin during the dips and selling during the highs. It sounds too cool but in reality this decentralized market is very difficult to predict. Very rarely do traders get to outsmart the market. Time in the market is more important than timing the market.

  I encourage readers to take the next step, whether it’s researching Bitcoin on their own, starting a Bitcoin investment plan, or joining the Bitcoin community. Start your Bitcoin journey today! Dive into the resources, explore the Nakamoto Portfolio, and don’t hesitate to ask questions. Bitcoin awaits those who dare to step into the future. As Bitcoin continues its ascent, how will the world adapt to this new paradigm of sound money and individual sovereignty? Only time will tell, but one thing is certain: the future is orange.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/13/2024 – 21:00

• Problem Of Rafah Is 'Over A Million Civilians & 10,000 Hamas Operatives'; IDF Says
  Problem Of Rafah Is ‘Over A Million Civilians & 10,000 Hamas Operatives’; IDF Says

  China has continued showing its disapproval of Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip, which has also been consistent with Russian denunciations, and of course Iran’s position too.

  China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson on Tuesday issued a scathing condemnation of the Israeli assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, and urged Tel Aviv to immediately halt all operations. It comes a day after an elite Israeli counterterror team was able to free two Israeli hostages during high-risk operations there.

  

  “China is closely watching the developments in Rafah,” a foreign ministry spokesperson stated. “We oppose and condemn acts against civilians and international law. We call on Israel to stop military operations as soon as possible, do everything possible to avoid casualties among innocent civilians, and prevent a more devastating humanitarian disaster in Rafah.”

  Regional reports say that Monday alone saw over 40 airstrikes on Rafah, which reportedly killed more than a hundred people. There are common estimates that over one million refugees have surged into the city bordering Egypt during the last months of intense fighting elsewhere in the Strip.

  A Hamas statement had described the “The Nazi occupation army’s attack on the city of Rafah tonight … which [has] claimed the lives of more than a hundred martyrs so far, is considered a continuation of the genocidal war and the attempts at forced displacement it is waging against our Palestinian people.”

  A bigger full ground invasion is still expected, with humanitarian groups also warning of a looming humanitarian catastrophe, already as the Palestinian death toll since Oct.7 is close to 30,000 – according to Gaza health ministry figures.

  Israel, following recent days of pressure from Washington and other allies, has sought to assure that it will seek to evacuate those civilians willing to leave Rafah before the full assault begins. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi in a Tuesday press briefing said, “We know that it is more difficult for us to fight in an environment where there are over a million people and another 10,000 Hamas operatives.”

  “In previous parts of the war, we sought to isolate the population. We have the capabilities to do it. We did it in Gaza City. We did it in Khan Younis. We did it in the central camps [of Gaza],” Halevi said.

  Meanwhile an interesting new gaffe out of President Biden…

  Biden refers to “our military operation in Rafah.” He corrects himself to say “the major military operation in Rafah”, but this is yet another occasion where his flubs reveal the truth. Every Israeli massacre in Gaza is a joint Genocide Joe production. pic.twitter.com/PI2hPS95m8

  — Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) February 12, 2024

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  “I am saying here that the residents of Rafah will be allowed to evacuate the area. It is not right for the citizens, for the residents, for the families, to be in the area of ​​fighting. When will it happen? How will it happen? We will decide when the time comes,” he added.

  But some have accused Israeli officials of simply floating false hopes and rhetoric in order to calm Western allies, particularly the US. In Europe there’s a move to prevent more arms from reaching Israel amid accusations of mass human rights violations, also as the Netherlands has been forced by a court to temporarily halt transfers of F-35 parts.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/13/2024 – 20:40

• US CBDC & The Western Sanctions Against Russia
  US CBDC & The Western Sanctions Against Russia

  Authored by ‘Sundance’ via The Last Refuge,

  I made the notation during the Tucker Carlson interview that Russian President Vladimir Putin knows everything below in this article about Russian Sanctions and the formation around a dollar-based U.S. CBDC. Unfortunately, Tucker Carlson does not know the specifics of how it is being constructed.

  As I continue deep meetings and very granular discussions about the lessons within the EU that can be applied to the USA, it is worth revisiting this previously password protected post.

  I went to the EU, because deep inside all of my research on Russia, things did not make sense.  I was very prepared and organized to expect everything sketchy, and what I found surprised me.  Putting boots on the ground, I now have a completely clear and different view.

  

  Let me start by saying everything we have read about the Western sanctions against Russia is false.  What sanctions might exist do not have any impact, and Eastern Europe has no intention to anger Putin.  When Brussels threatens to kick Hungary out of the EU/NATO, I can almost hear Viktor Orban saying, “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”  Hungary doesn’t even use or rely on the €uro for domestic financial transactions; they still retain their own national currency, the Hungarian forint or HUF.

  First things first with the Western financial sanctions- specifically the SWIFT exchange.  It is true you cannot use VISA, Mastercard or any mainstream Western financial tools to conduct business in Russia; however, the number of workarounds for this issue are numerous.  One of those tools is the use of a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin; and within that reality, you find something very ominous about the USA motive.

  Crypto users are likely familiar with stories like Binance and the US regulatory control therein.  Factually, outside the USA Binance is being used to purchase and trade crypto without issue, but inside the USA it is regulated.  That brings me to the MEXC crypto exchange, a Mexican version, again available globally but not allowed in the USA.  The same applies to Metamask, used all over Europe but not permitted in the USA.  Start to ask yourself, why all these crypto exchanges are available to the rest of the world but not the USA, and you start to suspect the Russian sanctions, just like the Patriot Act, are something else entirely.

  Then there’s app wallets.  You might be familiar with Apple Pay as a process to handle transactions from your iPhone.  Apple Pay is linked to your bank account.  Well, the “wallet feature” exists on other apps also, like Telegram; however, you can find the wallet feature, but if you try to use it from a USA cell phone… “This feature is not allowed in your region.”  Why are digital wallets available for the rest of the world but blocked by the U.S. government?

  

  This brings me to several crypto conversations in the EU at various cafes with people who have a deep understanding. 

  The commonly accepted bottom line, the Western sanctions, organized by the Biden administration and US Treasury, were not intended to put financial walls around Russia; they were designed to put control walls around the USA. 

  Russia was the useful justification.

  Here’s how it really looks from the outside looking at the USA.  The same way the Patriot Act was not designed to stop terrorism but rather to create a domestic surveillance system. So too were the “Russian Sanctions” not designed to sanction Russia, but rather to create the financial control system that will lead to a USA digital currency.

  Now, does the exploding debt and seeming govt ambivalence take on a new perspective?  It should, because that unspoken motive explains everything.  This is not accidental folks.

  Again, the western sanctions against Russia are not having an impact against Russia; they are having a quiet impact in the USA that no one is permitted to talk about.

  LOGISTICS

  Despite popular opinion to the contrary, it is entirely possible to travel all over Europe without being tracked.  If you pick an entry point into the EU (Schengen Area), once inside, you can travel without any national checkpoints or passport checks.  It is also entirely possible to fly all over the EU without ever giving a passport number when you book the flight.  The trick is to know which airline.  You are a name on a passenger manifest, nothing more.

  Bottom line, travel around the EU is less controlled, tracked and monitored, than travel inside the USA. 

  

  Yes, let me emphasize; freedom of travel is greater in the EU than it is in the USA.  This was completely unexpected.

  GROUND REPORT

  You might ask how I know the Russian sanctions are ineffective – here’s an example. 

  After doing advanced research, I went to three separate banks as a random and innocuous customer.  I put my reason in the kiosk at each bank, got my ticket number and sat down to listen to the conversations. When my ticket number came up on the digital board, I just ignored it and sat for hours listening to conversations.  No one ever noticed or questioned me – not once.

  At every one of the banks, the majority of the customers, at the “new account” desk, were foreign nationals asking about setting up business accounts to trade with Russia. In every bank the conversations were friendly and helpful, with the bank staff telling the customers exactly how to set up their account to accomplish the transactions.  No one was saying no; instead they were explaining how to do it in very helpful detail.

  Within Russia, there are now 3rd party brokers with international accounts, an entirely new industry, which creates a layer of transactional capability for the outside company to sell goods into Russia.  A Samsung TV travels from South Korea to the destination in the RU with the financial transaction between manufacturer and retailer now passing through the new ‘broker’ intermediary. Essentially, that process is what was happening in the banks for small to medium sized companies.

  Back to the crypto and digital wallet angle.  In addition to financial/transactional brokers for durable goods into Russia, there is now an entire industry of selling telephone id’s with EU phone numbers to process the transactions that are blocked by the USA sanction regime.

  Meaning, a person could buy a phone and register a phone number from within the EU, and then go back to the USA and access all the blocked/restricted financial processes [Binance (non-US), Metamask, MexC, Telegram digital wallet etc].  This would permit them to do untracked financial transactions into and out of Russia from the USA without the USG knowing about them (sanction workaround).

  [DISCLAIMER: in the interest of my own legal risk, I did not do this; I’m just explaining.]

  I am not smarter than the U.S. intelligence community, so what does this mean?

  This means the U.S. government knows exactly why the Russian economy is thriving, the Ruble is stronger against the dollar, and there is nothing -not one thing- visible or different on the ground in Russia that an ordinary Russian citizen would notice.  In fact, the Russian economy is doing fine, better than before the Ukraine conflict initiated, albeit with new financial industries created by the sanctions.

  

  If the US government knows this, then why the sanctions?

  Asked and answered. 

  The Western sanctions created a financial wall around the USA, not to keep Russia out, but to keep us in. 

  The Western sanction regime, the financial mechanisms they created and authorized, creates the control gate that leads to a U.S. digital currency.

  

  In essence, the Ukraine war response justified a system that creates a digital dollar.

  I will have more, but for now just think about this aspect.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/13/2024 – 20:20

• "Rapes, Robberies, & Shootout" At Darién Gap As Biden's Border Crisis Spreads Chaos
  “Rapes, Robberies, & Shootout” At Darién Gap As Biden’s Border Crisis Spreads Chaos

  As migrants from Central America surge north in hopes of reaching the US southern border, there’s a dangerous stretch of border between North and South America that legacy media outlets refuse to cover horror stories. 

  Let’s begin with data from an independent, non-profit newsroom, The New Humanitarian that shows a record number of migrants crossed the treacherous jungle corridor connecting Colombia and Panamá – known as the Darién Gap – in 2023. These figures also show that Darién Gap migrant crossings have exponentially surged under President Biden’s first term. 

  

  “2023 has broken all records. It has been a huge, terrible maelstrom,” Elías Cornejo, who runs Fe y Alegría, an NGO promoting education and social advancement for migrants in Panamá, told The New Humanitarian. 

  Cornejo continued: “And we expect a new increase [in 2024].”

  

  Meanwhile, NGO Médecins Sans Frontières, also known as Doctors Without Borders, recently reported a sevenfold increase in sexual attacks across the Darién Gap. 

  Given all the chaos, Real America’s Voice correspondent Ben Bergquam and his team are reporting from the Darién Gap this past weekend. They encountered cartel thieves and robbers terrorizing migrants.  

  “There you go, Democrats. This is your open borders right there,” said Bergquam, referring to the chaos unfolding in the jungle, including rapes, robberies, and shootouts. 

  Bergquam and his team, accompanied by armed guards, tracked and intercepted cartel thieves. They came across countless migrants who warned about cartel members leaving a trail of destruction, including raping and robbing. 

  The reporters then found themselves in a firefight as armed guards assaulted the thieves, leaving one of them dead while two others were arrested. The men were preying on migrants, armed with pistols and condoms. 

  “It’s never-ending … You can say all you want Biden administration that the borders aren’t open. But this video tells the truth,” Bergquam said. 

  In an X post, Bergquam wrote: 

  *This is all by design by the open borders globalists/Democrats who have realized they can cash in on the “refugee game” through the Office of Refugee Resettlement – training illegals who don’t qualify for asylum how to say the right words to get in, aka “immigration fraud.” This is not a natural migration. This is a coordinated for profit invasion organized by international NGOs (Catholic Charities, etc) at the expense of American citizens and every country the invasion passes through.

  Darien Gap, Panama Recap Part 3: RAPES, ROBBERIES AND SHOOTOUT IN THE JUNGLE!

  Law & Border only on Real America’s Voice News @RealAmVoice. Sponsored by https://t.co/hZR7SAvMa6 promo code: RAV

  *Stay tuned! Later this month we will be back with footage you won’t see anywhere… pic.twitter.com/PnXJfNdsX3

  — Ben Bergquam – Real America’s Voice (RAV-TV) News (@BenBergquam) February 11, 2024

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  Those who survive the two-week trek through the jungles end up on the southern US border in weeks, if not months later.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/13/2024 – 20:00

• Diversity Training Increases Prejudice An "Activates Bigotry" Among Participants, New Study Says
  Diversity Training Increases Prejudice An “Activates Bigotry” Among Participants, New Study Says

  Authored by Lee Harding via The Epoch Times,

  Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training is divisive and counter-productive and can even serve to increase prejudice among participants, a new study by a Canadian professor says.

  

  David Haskell released his study for the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy on Feb. 12. The social scientist and associate professor at Wilfrid Laurier University says DEI training does more harm than good and calls his findings a “reality check.”

  “A growing number of high-profile cases suggest that diversity workshops and their supporting materials regularly promote questionable claims—particularly about the overarching, malicious character of the majority population. Similarly, hostility toward those who challenge DEI claims is part of the pattern,” Mr. Haskell wrote.

  “The national and international research shows there is often a disconnect between the evidence and the claims of DEI advocates.”

  In an extreme example, Richard Bilkszto, a 60-year-old Toronto District School Board principal who had challenged DEI claims, took his own life on July 13, 2023. His lawyer, Lisa Bildy, suggested that harassment he received following DEI training in 2021 directly contributed to his death. A Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) ruling confirmed that he had been the subject of “workplace harassment and bullying.”

  Claims that Canada and other Western countries are “systemically racist” are not borne out by a statistical analysis of “differences in outcomes,” Mr. Haskell’s paper states. It cites foundation colleague Matthew Lau, who wrote: “The data on disparities in income, educational attainment, occupational outcomes, and public school test scores show that, on average, Asians are doing better than the white population.”

  The paper also argues that the purported positive results of DEI training are as questionable as its premise and that a focus on “implicit bias, white privilege, and micro-aggressions” do not foster harmony.

  “To ‘prove’ the effectiveness of DEI instruction, proponents often point to surveys conducted before and after workshops that show, following training, participants are much more likely to articulate answers that align with the pro-DEI ideas,” Mr. Haskell wrote.

  “This type of methodology has drawn criticism and has proven to be unreliable.”

  In an annual review of psychology published in 2022, U.S. research psychologists Patricia Devine and Tory Ash criticized DEI proponents’ “proxy measures for success that are far removed from the types of consequential outcomes that reflect the purported goals of such trainings.”

  The authors concluded, “Implementation of DT [diversity training] has clearly outpaced the available evidence that such programs are effective in achieving their goals.”

  Positive Results Negligible

  Numerous systemic reviews and meta-analyses reviewed by Mr. Haskell similarly found that positive results from DEI training are “undetectable or negligible.”

  In their annual review of psychology published in 2009, then-Harvard professor Elizabeth Paluck and then-Yale professor Donald Green examined 985 studies and found, “Due to weaknesses in the internal and external validity of existing research, the literature does not reveal whether, when, and why interventions reduce prejudice in the world.”

  A subsequent meta-analysis by Ms. Paluck, Mr. Green, and two other researchers, published in 2021, reviewed 418 experiments reported in over 300 manuscripts from 2007 to 2019 and found support for DEI as dubious as before. “Although these studies report optimistic conclusions, we identify troubling indications of publication bias that may exaggerate effects,” the co-authors wrote.

  Mr. Haskell said the harms of DEI are more clear than its benefits.

  “DEI instruction has been shown to increase prejudice and activate bigotry among participants by bringing existing stereotypes to the top of their minds or by implanting new biases they had not previously held,” he wrote.

  In 2018, Harvard sociologist Frank Dobbin and colleague Alexandra Kalev published “Why Doesn’t Diversity Training Work? The Challenge for Industry and Academia” in the journal Anthropology Now.

  “Hundreds of studies dating back to the 1930s suggest that anti-bias training doesn’t reduce bias, alter behaviour or change the workplace,” the authors wrote. “Field and laboratory studies find that asking people to suppress stereotypes tends to reinforce them–making them more cognitively accessible to people.”

  As far back as 1994, Neil Macrae at UK-based University of Aberdeen and fellow researchers wrote in a paper for a social psychology journal that the strategy of repressing stereotypic thoughts can have a “rebound effect.”

  “When people attempt to suppress unwanted thoughts, these thoughts are likely to subsequently reappear with even greater insistence than if they had never been suppressed,” they wrote.

  ‘Isolation and Demoralization’

  Mr. Haskell said DEI training can create a sense of “isolation and demoralization” in people belonging to the “dominant culture” because they are depicted as “fundamentally depraved (racist, sexist, sadistic, etc.)” while other groups are depicted “as important and worthwhile.”

  In a 2020 study, Musa al-Gharbi, a sociologist and assistant professor at New York-based Stony Brook University, found that this “clear double-standard” leads many from the dominant group to “walk away from the training believing that themselves, their culture, their perspectives and interest are not valued at the institution.”

  “The training also leads many to believe that they have to ‘walk on eggshells’ when engaging with members of minority populations,” he wrote. “As a result, members of the dominant group become less likely to try to build relationships or collaborate with people from minority populations.”

  Erin Cooley, an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at New York-based Colgate University, found in a 2019 paper that among social liberals, learning about white privilege “reduces sympathy, increases blame, and decreases external attributions for White people struggling with poverty.”

  In an interview with The Epoch Times, Mr. Haskell explained the logic behind this outcome.

  “They were even more hostile toward poor whites, because those people must be categorically lazy … [or] dysfunctional because they have privilege. Why are they not successful?” he said.

  “Of course, white privilege completely ignores the thousands of other variables that go into every person, white or black or indigenous. There are so many things that can cause social and economic distress.”

  Mr. Haskell said those of Asian descent often succeed in the West due to their high rates of two-parent families and emphasis on hard work, higher education, and personal responsibility. Yet, because this success challenges DEI doctrines of white dominance, Asians get reclassified as whites.

  “School boards in the United States, under the influence of DEI ideology and training, they began to deny the existence of Asians and simply call them white. They put them all into one category,” he said.

  “White was the catch-all term for oppressor. And so the better you do, the more oppressive you are.”

  Asians Reclassified

  In a 2023 submission to the U.S. Supreme Court, students of Asian descent were shown to need entrance exam scores 450 points higher than black people to have the same chance of admission at Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The combined highest score of math and verbal skills was 1,600, so Asians needed to be nearly perfect.

  In the summer of 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the racial quotas as unconstitutional and in violation of federal civil rights law. Mr. Haskell argues in his paper that Canada is different.

  “Canada has no such legislation; in fact, our Charter of Rights and Freedoms and our human rights laws allow for discrimination against the majority population. This constitutional allowance has now resulted in employment postings that, in the name of DEI, explicitly promote reverse or ‘recycled racism.’”

  In the interview, Haskell said the riots following the death of George Floyd “opened the spigot larger than ever before on DEI spending.” He hopes his analysis will empower business, government, post-secondary institutions, and public schools to reverse course.

  Haskell said DEI trainers are well-paid to do what they do and may sincerely believe they are doing good work despite the findings he outlines. However, he believes proponents at the highest level use DEI instruction “to destroy the existing society.”

  “They just want to be able to place blame in the absence of evidence, and that’s what they’re doing,” Haskell said.

  “We have a real history in the West of snake oil being passed off as scholarship. And this is just another example of that in a long, long line of con games.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/13/2024 – 19:40

• House Impeaches Mayorkas In Historic Vote
  House Impeaches Mayorkas In Historic Vote

  Exactly a week after a failed attempt, the House has impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, under whose tenure more than 10 million illegal immigrants have entered the US – doubling the existing population of migrants.

  

  With a vote of 214-213, Mayorkas is the first cabinet official to be impeached since the 1870s.

  🚨 BREAKING: Disgraced Biden DHS Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas has officially been impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives over his “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and “breach of public trust.” pic.twitter.com/63mUmdXwPj

  — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 14, 2024

  Last week’s effort to impeach Mayorkas failed by one vote because three Republicans voted with all the Democrats against the move. The vote was made possible only by the return of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), who missed last week’s vote while undergoing treatment for blood cancer, according to The Hill.

  Mayorkas was accused of demonstrating a “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law,” and “breaching the public trust,” which Democrats suggested was nothing more than disagreements over policy or performance failings, but not impeachable crimes.

  “Secretary Mayorkas is a danger to every American,” said Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) on X. “I’m voting to impeach him.”

  Secretary Mayorkas is a danger to every American.

  I’m voting to impeach him. pic.twitter.com/8T3VR5wK8Q

  — Rep. Dan Bishop (@RepDanBishop) February 13, 2024

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  The GOP leaders moved to hold the vote before their majority potentially shrinks even further, with a closely watched special election Tuesday in New York to replace expelled Republican Rep. George Santos. The race is considered a tossup.

  Republicans continued the impeachment effort after rejecting an effort in the Senate to craft a bipartisan border deal to address many of the same issues House conservatives are raising. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) called the Senate’s deal—which paired aid for Ukraine with changes to border policy—dead on arrival, eventually leading most Republicans in the House and Senate to criticize the bill as insufficient. On Tuesday morning, the Senate passed a $95.3 billion package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan that excluded border-policy changes. –WSJ

  Meanwhile, what’s this?

  HUGE: @JudicialWatch just found the documents showing Mayorkas PERSONALLY rejected Secret Service protection for @RobertKennedyJr. This is simply despicable. That it took a federal FOIA lawsuit to force out this information speaks volumes. https://t.co/c2BbLGhz7Q https://t.co/qcDJ34G6hW

  — Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) February 13, 2024

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  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/13/2024 – 19:27

• Israel Blocks Flour Bibi Promised Biden Would Enter Gaza, Latest In Growing Rift
  Israel Blocks Flour Bibi Promised Biden Would Enter Gaza, Latest In Growing Rift

  There are more problems than meets the eye between the Biden White House and the Israeli government, at a moment Biden continues losing his progressive base over what they see as his ‘blank check’ support to Israel, while civilian bodies pile up in Gaza.

  A fresh Tuesday Axios report begins as follows: “Israeli ultranationalist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is blocking a U.S.-funded flour shipment to Gaza because its recipient is the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), two Israeli and U.S. officials told Axios.”

  

  There are emerging reports of deep “frustration” in the White House in its dealings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He reportedly made a personal commitment to Biden in a phone call to allow in US humanitarian aid to the Strip unhindered, and in particular this flour shipment.

  But Israel has accused external aid organizations, especially the UNRWA – which is the prime body distributing aid – of colluding with Hamas terrorists.

  Ironically enough, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has already “thanked” the Israeli government for giving the greenlight for the flour shipment, setting up the US for political embarrassment at a sensitive moment Biden is looking to ease the concerns of his domestic voting base over his Israel policy.

  According to more from Axios, “Smotrich blocked the transfer of the flour after he was notified that it was destined for UNRWA, the primary aid group in Gaza. He ordered the Israeli customs service not to release the shipment as long as UNRWA is the recipient.”

  At this point the flour is being held up by Israeli customs, upon direct orders from Smotrich’s office. Smotrich explained, “There is a consensus inside the Israeli cabinet of the need to prevent the aid from reaching Hamas and I will use my authority to make sure this is the case.”

  The Biden administration has actually already backed the Israeli accusations against the UNRWA, having temporarily cut off aid to the UN organization, but this is yet another instance of the White House talking out of both sides of its mouth, evidenced especially in the following Monday exchange in a press briefing…

  AP’s Matt Lee: What leverage is US using?

  State Dept spox Matt Miller: “The words of the President…matter”

  Lee: “Over the top?’ That’s leverage?”

  (2 days after Biden called Israel’s behavior “over the top,” it attacked the last refuge for 1.5 million Palestinians—killing 90+) pic.twitter.com/pEOKbQlCsb

  — Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) February 12, 2024

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  President Biden has been attempting to simultaneously support America’s closest ally in the Middle East against Hamas while condemning the massive civilian casualties (which Palestinian sources say are in the multiple tens of thousands of dead). He’s seeking House approval for billions more in defense aid to Israel over the next year.

  Last week Biden called Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip “over the top” – but has refused to attach conditions on the weaponry deployed in Gaza. The US has also of late sanctioned select Israeli settlers, a move which Israel has condemned. The US is under pressure internationally, being accused especially by European officials of aiding and abetting war crimes and mass civilian deaths.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/13/2024 – 19:20

• AMZN Shares Slide As Bezos Continues To Sell – Total Now $4BN
  AMZN Shares Slide As Bezos Continues To Sell – Total Now $4BN

  Amazon’s billionaire founder Jeff Bezos has sold another $2bn worth of the company’s stock, bringing the total value of shares he has offloaded in the past week to $4bn, according to regulatory filings.

  

  An Amazon filing on Tuesday showed that Bezos, who stepped down as the Seattle-based company’s chief executive in 2021 but remains executive chair, sold 12mn shares for about $2bn between Friday and Monday. 

  AMZN shares are down 4% from their highs at yesterday’s open…

  

  As we detailed last week, though the market was raging higher to end the week, following excellent earnings reports from the likes of Amazon and Meta, there was at least one person that isn’t going to be a buyer: Jeff Bezos.

  The Amazon founder disclosed on Friday 2nd Feb that he plans to sell up to 50 million shares over the next 12 months, according to Bloomberg. The haul will put him close to being the richest person in the world, the report says. 

  The stock’s surge following its earnings on Thursday already is catapulting Bezos’ wealth higher. It’s up almost $13 billion on Friday, bringing him within $5.7 billion of the top spot held by Elon Musk, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Bezos has not held the position of the wealthiest individual according to this index since 2021, the report added. 

  

  Bloomberg notes that the distance in net worth between Bezos and Musk is closing as Amazon and Tesla exhibit divergent trajectories. Amazon’s stock has surged amidst a tech rally that propelled US stock indices to record levels, while Tesla has faced challenges from regulatory investigations, price cuts, falling margins and increasing competition. 

  The 60 year old Bezos will offload 50 million Amazon shares by January 31, 2025, per a recent regulatory filing. These shares would amount to approximately $8.6 billion at current market prices.

  Amazon’s latest 10-K detailed the impending share sales by Bezos and other directors and high-ranking officers.

  Should Bezos execute this sale, it would be his initial divestment of Amazon shares since 2021. Notably, he acquired a single share in May, marking his first purchase since 2002, though the reason remains undisclosed.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/13/2024 – 18:44

• ZeroHedge Debate: The Fate Of The US Dollar
  ZeroHedge Debate: The Fate Of The US Dollar

  ZeroHedge presents the latest debate in our series aimed at bringing long-form discussions on controversial topics back into the ideologically-siloed and echo-chambered media landscape.

  We hope you enjoy this in-depth discussion on the various aspects of what many consider the most important question in all of finance – so much so that Vladimir Putin and Elon Musk have both asked it in just the past few days: what is the fate of the (weaponized) US dollar, and will it remain the world’s reserve currency?

  Our panelists include such media luminaries as Jim Rickards and Bob Murphy on one side, and Michael Every and Brent Johnson on the other, with Adam Taggart moderating.

  We hope our readers find this debate educational and informative, and as always we urge our premium subscribers to submit questions to the panelists.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/13/2024 – 18:24

• Study Finds Handwriting Increases Brain Connectivity
  Study Finds Handwriting Increases Brain Connectivity

  Authored by George Citroner via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  In our digital age, laptops and smartphones have become appendages for students and professionals alike. But new research suggests we may want to take a break from all that typing.

  

  A recent study from Norway found that the old-school art of handwriting engages parts of the brain that tapping on a keyboard does not. The intricate movements involved in handwriting activate more regions of the brain associated with learning than typing does.

  Handwriting vs. Typing

  A new study published in Frontiers in Psychology and led by Audrey van der Meer, a neuroscience researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, examined the differences between handwriting and typing. Ms. Van der Meer and her team analyzed the neural networks involved in both activities to uncover their respective impacts on brain connectivity.

  “We show that when writing by hand, brain connectivity patterns are far more elaborate than when typewriting on a keyboard,” she said in a press statement. “Such widespread brain connectivity is known to be crucial for memory formation and for encoding new information and, therefore, is beneficial for learning.”

  The researchers used high-density electroencephalograms (EEGs) to collect data from 36 university students. Participants were prompted to either write or type words displayed on a screen by pressing keys with one finger.

  Results showed connectivity between different brain areas increased substantially when writing by hand. In contrast, typing did not produce a comparable boost in connectivity.

  “Our main finding is that writing by hand is excellent brain stimulation for people of all ages,” Ms. Van der Meer told The Epoch Times. Writing on a touchscreen with a digital pen yielded more neural network activity versus typing on a keyboard, she added. “The more connections in the brain during a task, the more the brain is used to its full potential.”

  Why Handwriting Remains Essential

  The meticulous letter formation and precise movements of handwriting substantially boost the brain’s connectivity patterns involved in learning, according to Ms. Van der Meer. This implies that the benefits observed with digital pens may also apply to traditional pens and paper. In contrast, the repetitive key-tapping of typing was less mentally stimulating.

  She pointed out this likely explains why children taught to read and write on tablets often struggle to differentiate between mirror-image letters. The researchers recommend that young children receive at least some handwriting instruction. “Forming letters by hand is a complex fine motor skill that challenges the young brain.”

  Children first taught via tablets also tend to have poorer spelling and letter recognition, likely because they lack the motor experience of handwriting each letter, Ms. Van der Meer said.

  However, the researchers don’t advise abandoning tech. They suggest a balanced approach, using handwriting for lecture notes to optimize learning while leveraging keyboards for extensive writing tasks. The findings underscore adapting teaching methods to take advantage of both traditional and digital writing tools.

  Study Limitations

  The research doesn’t paint a full picture, said Dr. Juliann Paolicchi, a pediatric neurologist with Northwell Health’s Lenox Hill Hospital and Staten Island University Hospital, who wasn’t associated with the study.

  The researchers used high-frequency EEGs to record brain activity. This EEG method has poor spatial resolution, limiting its ability to pinpoint specific brain region functions. “For spatial brain function, a far more sophisticated analysis is found with PET imaging, which provides a direct picture of brain regions involved in a function,” Dr. Paolicchi said.

  Second, the typing group used just one finger. Dr. Paolicchi emphasized touch typing properly with both hands is far different from “hunt and peck” typing with one or two fingers. “When taking notes in a classroom, which is the model that the researchers were trying to recreate, touch typing is far more common with students than one-digit hunt and peck,” she noted.

  Cursive Writing Returning to Schools

  Cursive writing is making a comeback in many U.S. states after being dropped over a decade ago.

  When the Common Core State Standards were introduced in 2010, they explicitly referenced learning keyboard skills in grades 3 through 5. The standards require fourth graders to type a full page in one sitting. As a result, cursive was largely abandoned in most school districts.

  However, this trend is now reversing, according to data from MyCursive.com, which tracks cursive writing requirements nationwide. Currently, 21 states mandate some form of handwriting education. Most recently, California passed a law in October 2023 making cursive handwriting mandatory from first through sixth grade.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 02/13/2024 – 18:20

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• A Small Arizona Town Prepares To Fight State Over Illegal Immigration
  A Small Arizona Town Prepares To Fight State Over Illegal Immigration

  Authored by Allan Stein via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  As a small rural town in Arizona, Springerville has what it needs in terms of material amenities for its residents. There’s a general store, a small regional hospital, a supermarket, retail shops, hotels and restaurants, and parks for recreational vehicles during the tourist season.

  

  The town’s closest neighbor is Eagar (population 4,800). The nearest city is Show Low (population 11,732), about 50 miles southwest across vast golden hills and open range.

  “The one thing I pride myself on with this little community is we band together,” Springerville’s Mayor Shelly Reidhead told The Epoch Times. “We love each other, and we take care of each other.

  “I hope that holds when it hits the fan.”

  Although Springerville sits 300 miles from the U.S.–Mexico border, the illegal immigration crisis almost landed on its doorstep last year.

  This year, Ms. Reidhead fears another showdown with her state officials if the border crisis grows much worse.

  “I’ve been dreading 2024 because I know what we’re in for [with the presidential election]. It’s not going to be a pretty year.”

  In May 2023, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs and her staff pushed the idea of busing illegal aliens to Springerville and housing them in the 189,000-square-foot dome stadium, the Round Valley Ensphere.

  

  When residents found out, they were furious and prepared to take action.

  Some wanted to block the buses carrying the illegal immigrants at the town line with chain barriers—and come armed if necessary, according to residents who didn’t want their names used.

  It was a tense situation, they said. Fortunately, the confrontation never came about after the town told the governor’s office to get lost.

  The stadium looks like a giant flying saucer landed in the middle of horse and cattle country. It’s a massive wooden-dome stadium that can seat 5,500 spectators in bleachers away from the elements.

  Due to its sheer size, the futuristic-looking enclosure has multiple uses. Years ago, it provided temporary shelter for displaced wildfire victims.

  The Arizona governor eyed it up to temporarily place illegal immigrants.

  But, the town moved against it.

  On July 19, 2023, Springerville’s town council passed a binding resolution, signed by the mayor, that said “no” to the town footing the bill for immigrants—illegal or legal.

  

  “The town is a small municipality with limited buildings, space, and material resources to accept, house, maintain, or support migrants,” the two-page resolution reads.

  But, legally, it could take more than a binding resolution to prevent the state from dropping off busloads of illegal aliens and creating problems for the town, Ms. Reidhead said.

  Located in Apache County, Springerville ranks among the state’s poorest communities, with 1,730 residents and a median income of $46,311 in 2022.

  Almost 12 percent live below the poverty line.

  “You’re in cowboy country here,” said Ms. Reidhead, who takes a hard line over illegal immigration and protecting her community’s traditional way of life.

  The Epoch Times has reached out to Ms. Hobbs’s office, which has yet to respond.

  Ms. Reidhead and other town officials have been keeping a close eye on the southern border since President Joe Biden took office.

  “What [the Biden administration] wants is a broken, chaotic country,” Ms. Reidhead said. “They’re doing a good job.”

  “We can’t even feed the people in the United States now. How are we going to feed another 8 million people?”

  According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data, border agents apprehended more than 2.4 million illegal aliens at the southern border during the fiscal year spanning October 2022 through September 2023. Another 189,402 were encountered along the northern U.S. border.

  CBP has already reported nearly 989,000 illegal immigrants during the first quarter of fiscal 2024.

  

  Officials say that illegal border crossings have begun to shift away from the embattled 1,254-mile southern border in Texas and to Arizona and California as the Lone State state battles with the Biden administration over border security in Texas.

  Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott has so far prevailed in his state’s efforts to increase border security, but he’s being sued by the Biden administration over several measures, including concertina wire, river buoys, and new state legislation.

  In Arizona

  In December 2023, CBP temporarily closed Arizona’s Lukeville shared port of entry with Mexico due to a surge in illegal crossings.

  Later that month, Ms. Hobbs ordered the deployment of Arizona’s National Guard to assist Border Patrol agents in Lukeville with processing foreign nationals who entered the country illegally.

  The governor has deflected criticism over her handling of the border crisis in Arizona onto the federal government.

  “Yet again, the federal government is refusing to do its job to secure our border and keep our communities safe,” Ms. Hobbs said in a Dec. 15 statement announcing the deployment of National Guardsmen.

  “With this executive order, I am taking action where the federal government won’t. But we can’t stand alone; Arizona needs resources and manpower to reopen the Lukeville crossing, manage the flow of migrants, and maintain a secure, orderly, and humane border,” she said.

  “Despite continued requests for assistance, the Biden administration has refused to deliver desperately needed resources to Arizona’s border.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/12/2024 – 23:55

• John Fetterman Is Not The Progressive Politician Everyone Thought He Was
  John Fetterman Is Not The Progressive Politician Everyone Thought He Was

  Authored by Beth Brelje via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Financial backing from progressive Democrats helped John Fetterman flip a long-held Republican U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania in 2022.

  

  During his first two years as a senator, Mr. Fetterman has often surprised progressives and conservatives alike with his outspoken positions that have challenged party dogma.

  Mr. Fetterman has voted against his party five times. He was the only Democrat to vote no on the confirmation of Monica Bertagnolli to direct the National Institutes of Health.

  He was one of four Democrats who voted no to increase the debt ceiling.

  And he agreed with Republicans on a resolution to disapprove of a rule written by the Department of Commerce relating to President Joe Biden’s June 2022 emergency and authorization for temporary extensions of time and duty-free importation of solar cells and modules from southeast Asia.

  The guy on the Senate floor in the Carhartt hoodie is still very much a Democrat: pro-abortion, pro-recreational marijuana, pro-criminal justice reform, and a strong supporter of unions.

  At the U.S. Capitol, Mr. Fetterman told The Epoch Times that he has not changed positions, but things are happening that highlight them—most notably, his support for Israel and acknowledging the problem of illegal crossings at the southern border.

  “Sometimes people may have the wrong impressions, whether from the commercials and all that stuff,“ Mr. Fetterman said. ”I’ve always really had those kinds of positions, so it’s not like a shock. So, nothing’s changed, perhaps maybe the perception.”

  He also said he’s never been a progressive. He described himself as a regular Democrat who has made the case that Democrats come with a variety of views.

  G. Terry Madonna, senior fellow in residence for political affairs at Millersville University, has watched Mr. Fetterman’s political career from the beginning and said it is not uncommon for politicians to change their views.

  “He’s not a typical liberal Democrat, which most of us thought he was during the course of his campaign, and the fact of the matter is, he’s evolving,” Mr. Madonna told The Epoch Times.

  But he’s not turning into a conservative. “I’ve not seen any evidence, except for those two issues, that he’s moved away from the liberal mantra, but there have been growing questions about him because of these two big issues that he’s come out with [views] very different from liberal Democrats,” Mr. Madonna said.

  

  Mayor of Braddock

  Mr. Fetterman has often been undaunted by public opinion and sometimes the rules.

  He was the first Pennsylvania mayor to perform a same sex marriage in 2013, despite that a state law prohibited it.

  One January night in 2013, Mr. Fetterman, then the mayor of Braddock, thought he heard gunshots. He ran outside, got in his truck, and chased, confronted, and detained a black man with a shotgun that he had in his truck. The man had no weapon. He was out jogging.

  “I believe I did the right thing, but I may have broken the law in the course of it, and I’m certainly not above the law,” Mr. Fetterman told a WTAE TV reporter at the time. Nothing came of the incident legally, but it does come up at election time.

  Earning $150 a month, Mr. Fetterman worked as the part-time mayor for the impoverished borough from 2006 to 2019. It was his only job for those 13 years. Once a thriving steel town with 20,000 people, Braddock had dwindled to 2,300 by the time Mr. Fetterman became mayor. In 2021, only 1,700 residents remained, including Mr. Fetterman, his wife, Gisele, and their three children.

  

  Then, like now, Mr. Fetterman’s style and blunt comments attracted media coverage and opportunities.

  The small-town mayor was invited to speak in Colorado at the Aspen Institute Cultural Diplomacy Forum in 2009. He also spoke at the Aspen Ideas Festival in 2010, had a feature written about him in The New York Times, and gave a Ted Talk in 2013 about how he was revitalizing Braddock with community gardens, teaching youth work skills, creating housing for kids aging out of foster care, and building playgrounds on abandoned lots.

  On the Issues

  Many issues in Washington are boiled down to black-and-white positions, but immigration is a gray area for Mr. Fetterman, he said, as he acknowledges the complexity of the issue.

  During his failed 2015 campaign for Senate, he ran an advertisement highlighting his wife, who is from Brazil. She entered the United States illegally at age 9 with her mother.

  “I was asked: ‘Your wife’s family broke the law. What do you think of that?’ And I said: ‘Well, I’m so grateful that they did. Because if they didn’t have the courage to take that step, I wouldn’t have the three beautiful children that I have today,’” Mr. Fetterman said in the advertisement. “We as a society take a step backwards if we do anything but embrace the people that are here, and create effective laws and pass the citizenship for people coming into our country.”

  Read more here…

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/12/2024 – 23:00

• Fani Willis Disqualification Is "Possible," Judge Says
  Fani Willis Disqualification Is “Possible,” Judge Says

  By Catherine Yang of The Epoch Times

  Fulton County Superior Judge Scott McAfee confirmed on Feb. 12 that the hearing about misconduct claims against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade “must occur” on Feb. 15 and could lead to disqualification.

  

  Ms. Willis is presiding over the high-profile racketeering case that names former President Donald Trump and 14 others.

  “I think it’s clear that disqualification can occur if evidence is produced presenting a conflict or the appearance of one, and the filings submitted on this issue so far have presented a conflict of interest that can’t be resolved as a matter of law,” Judge McAfee said.

  Ms. Willis will be called as the first witness, the judge said after hearing some of the prosecutors’ arguments. “I don’t see how quash can be imposed here,” he said, referring to the district attorney’s effort to dismiss the subpoenas.

  On Feb. 12, the judge held a hearing regarding the district attorney’s motions to quash the nine subpoenas issued on Ms. Willis herself and her staffers, ahead of this week’s anticipated hearing where the district attorney will have to respond to allegations of an “improper” relationship.

  On Jan. 8, defendant Michael Roman filed a lengthy motion that alleged Ms. Willis was in a personal relationship with Mr. Wade, an attorney with a private law firm whom she had contracted to take a lead position in the racketeering case. He alleged that Mr. Wade took Ms. Willis on “lavish” vacations including a cruise, and that she financially benefited from the situation.

  He also made several other allegations including that Mr. Wade wasn’t qualified for the position and that Ms. Willis used funds improperly, which the judge indicated would not be the focus of the Jan. 15 evidentiary hearing. After the huge claims were made, several codefendants filed their own motions to disqualify Ms. Willis based on “prejudicial” actions.

  “Specifically looking at defendant Roman’s motion, it alleged a personal relationship that resulted in a financial benefit to the district attorney that is no longer a matter of speculation,” the judge said. “The state has admitted a relationship existed, and so what remains to be proven is the existence and extent of any financial benefit, again if there even was one.”

  Judge McAfee said the claims of prejudice were based on public statements—a speech Ms. Willis gave at an Atlanta church where she invoked God and said her critics were playing the “race card”—and did not warrant a hearing meant to produce evidence for the record. Other issues such as Mr. Wade’s resume also did not warrant an evidentiary hearing, the judge said.

  The district attorney had filed a motion arguing that no evidentiary hearing was necessary because no conflict of interest had occurred, but the judge rejected the argument.

  “Because I think it’s possible that the facts alleged by the defendant could result in disqualification, I think an evidentiary hearing must occur to establish a record on those core allegations,” Judge McAfee said.

  He said the hearing will focus on “whether a relationship existed, whether that relationship was romantic or not in nature, when it formed, and whether it continues.”

  “I think that’s only relevant because it’s in relation to the question of the extent of any personal benefit conveyed as a result of the relationship,” Judge McAfee said.

  Mr. Roman’s attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, alleged that the relationship began as early as 2019 and the couple cohabited at one point, and claimed in a court filing that she could produce witnesses to testify to these allegations.

  Mr. Wade had submitted a sworn affidavit stating that he had met Ms. Willis in 2019 but a “personal relationship” began only in 2022, and that Ms. Willis split expenses with him so there was no financial benefit.

  Anna Cross, another one of the prosecutors contracted by the district attorney for the case, said during the Feb. 12 hearing that none of the subpoenaed witnesses have anything to say that contradicts Mr. Wade’s affidavit.

  Continue reading here.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/12/2024 – 22:05

• House GOP Seeks Biden-Hur Dementia Transcripts, Recordings
  House GOP Seeks Biden-Hur Dementia Transcripts, Recordings

  Three House committees have asked the DOJ to turn over transcripts and recordings of President Joe Biden’s interviews with special counsel Robert Hur, following an explosive report that concluded Biden is too cognitively impaired to be charged with a crime.

  

  The request, sent by the three GOP leaders to Attorney General Merrick Garland, echoes many Republican concerns that Biden is receiving more favorable treatment than Donald Trump for the same crime.

  “The Committee on the Judiciary requires these documents for its ongoing oversight of the Department’s commitment to impartial justice and its handling of the investigation and prosecution of President Biden’s presumptive opponent, Donald J. Trump, in the November 2024 presidential election,” wrote the chairs of the three committees – House Oversight and Accountability Chair James Comer (R-KY), House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH), and House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-MO), who are demanding the information no later than February 19.

  

  “Although Mr. Hur reasoned that President Biden’s presentation ‘as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory’ who “did not remember when he was vice president’ or ‘when his son Beau died’ posed challenges to proving the President’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the report concluded that the Department’s principles of prosecution weighed against prosecution because the Department has not prosecuted ‘a former president or vice president for mishandling classified documents from his own administration,” the letter continues.

  “The one ‘exception’ to the Department’s principles of prosecution, as Mr. Hur noted, ‘is former President Trump.’ This speaks volumes about the Department’s commitment to evenhanded justice.”

  Other GOP lawmakers have said more of the same.

  

  “Among the most disturbing parts of this report is the Special Counsel’s justification for not recommending charges: namely that the President’s memory had such ‘significant limitations’ that he could not convince a jury that the President held a ‘mental state of willfulness’ that a serious felony requires,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) and conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) in a letter sent last week in response to the report.

  “A man too incapable of being held accountable for mishandling classified information is certainly unfit for the Oval Office.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/12/2024 – 21:30

• "Vladimir Putin Will Not Lose This War": Sen. Ron Johnson And Elon Musk Discuss Facing Reality In Ukraine
  “Vladimir Putin Will Not Lose This War”: Sen. Ron Johnson And Elon Musk Discuss Facing Reality In Ukraine

  Update (2100ET): During today’s Twitter Spaces, Elon Musk and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) discussed their opposition to the ongoing war in Ukraine.

  

  “We all have to understand that Vladimir Putin will not lose this war… Losing to Vladimir Putin is existential to Vladimir Putin. Russia has four times the population and a much larger industrial base,” said Johnson, adding “Russia can produce 4.5 million artillery shells per year. We’re not even up to 1 million per year. The average age of a Ukrainian soldier right now is 43 years old.”

  “If you’re worried about the people of Ukraine, you have to understand that probably 100,000 of their soldiers have been killed,” Johnson continued, adding “The only way this war ends is in a settlement, and every day that the war goes on, more Ukrainians and more Russian conscripts die, more civilians die, and more of Ukraine gets destroyed. Again, sending $60 billion as added fuel to the flames of a bloody stalemate makes no sense.”

  Musk echoed Johnson’s sentiment, saying “As you said, there’s no way Putin is going to lose. If he backs off, he will be assassinated. And for those who want regime change in Russia, they should think about who is the person that could take out Putin?”

  

  He also defended his record – saying “My companies have probably done more to undermine Russia than anyone. Space X has taken away two-thirds of the Russian launch business. Starlink has overwhelmingly helped Ukraine.”

  Listen:

  🚨BREAKING: Elon Musk and Senator Ron Johnson discuss their opposition to escalating the ongoing bloody stalemate in the War in Ukraine.

  Instead, advocating for peace negotiations to bring an end to the loss of lives and the destruction of Ukraine.@elonmusk: “My companies have… pic.twitter.com/89O09FkYGM

  — KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) February 13, 2024

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

  *  *  *

  On Monday, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) shared a memo sent to his Republican colleagues in Congress which outlines an “impeachment time bomb” hidden in the text of the Senate’s Ukraine funding bill in case Trump wins the November election.

  

  According to the memo;

  President Trump has said, in regard to the war in Ukraine, “We got to get that war settled and I’ll get it settled.” He has stated that he would resolve the war in 24 hours.

  The bill includes $1.6 billion for foreign military financing in Ukraine, and $13.7 billion for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. These funds expire on September 30, 2025 — nearly a year into the possible second term of President Trump. These are the exact same accounts President Trump was impeached for pausing in December 2019.

  …

  If President Trump were to withdraw from or pause financial support for the war in Ukraine in order to bring the conflict to a peaceful conclusion, “over the objections of career experts,” it would amount to the same fake violation of budget law from the first impeachment, under markedly similar facts and circumstances.”

  According to Vance, Democrats “would seize on the opportunity to impeach him once again.” 

  I just sent the below memo to every one of my Republican colleagues in Congress.

  Buried in the bill’s text is an impeachment time bomb for the next Trump presidency if he tries to stop funding the war in Ukraine.

  We must vote against this disastrous bill. pic.twitter.com/uKqet9s0xd

  — J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) February 12, 2024

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js“This is insane,” replied Elon Musk – who then arranged for a ‘spaces’ discussion on X which will include Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT), Vance, along with Vivek Ramaswamy and David Sacks, at 6PM E.T.

  You can listen in by clicking into the post below:

  What’s up with this spending bill? https://t.co/nlaY8JQlTx

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 12, 2024

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

   

  ZeroPointNow
  Mon, 02/12/2024 – 21:01

• Houston Church Shooter Identified As Transgender With A Long Criminal History
  Houston Church Shooter Identified As Transgender With A Long Criminal History

  Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

  A shooter who was killed by off-duty police officers after opening fire at a Houston megachurch while seemingly using a 7-year-old child as a human shield has been identified as a woman named Genesse Moreno, who police said also identified as a man named Jeffrey Escalante.

  

  Police said a woman in her early 30s entered Lakewood Church on Feb. 11 wearing a trench coat and backpack, armed with a long rifle, and began firing.

  Before managing to kill anyone, the shooter was taken down by two off-duty officers, one a Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission agent and the other a Houston police officer, according to Houston Police Chief Troy Finner.

  “I want to commend those officers. She had a long gun, and it could’ve been a lot worse, but they stepped up and they did their job,” Chief Finner said during a media briefing on the afternoon of Feb. 11.

  

  Emergency vehicles line the feeder road outside Lakewood Church during a reported active shooter event in Houston on Feb. 11, 2024. (Kirk Sides/Houston Chronicle via AP)

  An affidavit seeking a search warrant for a home in Conroe, Texas, about 40 miles north of Houston, identifies the shooter as 36-year-old Genesse Ivonne Moreno, according to the Associated Press. The warrant was released by the Montgomery County district attorney’s office.

  Records cited by the Houston Chronicle and other media outlets, and which are circulating online, show that the shooter also identified as Jeffrey Escalante, who had a long criminal history, including assault, drug, and weapons charges.

  “A lengthy criminal history. A woman who thinks she is a man,” Don Hooper, a writer at the Houston Conservative Forum, wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that featured a series of the shooter’s mugshots over the years.

  “My information is biological female per the medical examiner,” he wrote in an earlier post. “They were looking at the body when brought in.”

  Chris Hassig, commander of the Houston Police Department homicide division, said during a media briefing on Feb. 12 that investigators have identified the shooter as a 36-year-old Hispanic female named Genesse Moreno.

  “There are some discrepancies [regarding the individual’s gender],” he said. “We do have reports she used multiple aliases, including Jeffrey Escalante. So she utilized both male and female names.”

  However, Mr. Hassig said the investigation indicates that “she has been identified this entire time as female.”

  He noted that the gun used by the shooter had a sticker with the word “Palestine” on it.

  Child as Human Shield?

  At the Feb. 12 briefing, Mr. Hassig said two people were injured in the incident, including the child who accompanied the shooter.

  The other person injured was a 57-year-old man, who was shot in the hip or leg.

  Mr. Hassig said the 7-year-old child who accompanied Ms. Moreno was struck in the head in the exchange of gunfire and remains in critical condition.

  He said Ms. Moreno pulled up to the church in a vehicle with the child inside and then entered the building with the little boy and, after entering, “she immediately starts firing inside of the hallway.”

  The two officers returned fire.

  “Multiple shots are exchanged by all three,” Mr. Hassig said. “She eventually falls to the ground; the 7-year-old child falls to the ground as well from gunfire. One gunshot wound to the head.”

  A Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office spokesperson was cited by the Houston Chronicle as saying on Feb. 12 that the 7-year-old was not expected to survive.

  While it’s unclear who shot the child, Chief Finner blamed the shooter.

  “That female, that suspect put that baby in danger,” he said during the Feb. 11 briefing.

  “I’m going to put that blame on her.”

  Lakewood Church, which seats roughly 16,000 people, is led by pastor Joel Osteen.

  

  Pastor Joel Osteen speaks to the media after a shooting at Lakewood Church in Houston on Feb. 11, 2024, in a still from video footage. (KTRK-TV ABC13 via AP)

  In a statement posted on X, Mr. Osteen praised law enforcement for acting swiftly to neutralize the threat and said that he was “devastated” by the shooting.

  “In the face of such darkness, we must hold onto our faith and remember evil will not prevail,” he said.

  Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a statement calling the shooting a “heinous act” and praising law enforcement for acting “quickly to respond to this tragedy.”

  “Our hearts are with those impacted by today’s tragic shooting and the entire Lakewood Church community in Houston,” Mr. Abbott wrote.

  A motive for the attack remains unclear.

  Ms. Moreno’s posts on social media show a history of leftist politics, according to independent journalist Andy Ngo.

  Alan Guity, a member of Lakewood Church since 1998, said he heard gunshots while resting inside the church’s sanctuary as his mother was working as an usher.

  He told the Associated Press that he ran to his mother and that they both lay flat on the floor as the gunfire continued.

  Mr. Guity told the outlet that he and his mother prayed and stayed on the floor for about five minutes until they were told it was safe to leave the building. He said that as he exited the building, he could see people crying and looking for loved ones.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/12/2024 – 20:55

• Invasion Spreads To Unfenced US Northern Border Amid "Record-Breaking Surge" Of Illegal Entries Detected
  Invasion Spreads To Unfenced US Northern Border Amid “Record-Breaking Surge” Of Illegal Entries Detected

  As the Biden administration and “shadowy network of secretive nonprofits” facilitate the greatest migration invasion this nation has ever seen on the southern border, new concerns are mounting that illegals are finding alternative routes into the country via the unfenced northern border with Canada. 

  New US Customs and Border Protection data shows more than 12,000 migrants were apprehended on the northern border last year, more than double the number from the year before of 3,578. 

  The New York Post first reported that most illegal crossings (about 70%) have occurred along the 295-mile Swanton Sector, including upstate New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont. 

  Earlier this month, Robert Garcia, the chief patrol agent for the northern border sector, posted on X:

  Since October 1, 2023, Swanton Sector Border Patrol Agents have apprehended more than 3,100 subjects from 55 countries (more than Fiscal Years 2022, 21, 20 & 19 combined). Photo: An early morning apprehension of 4 adult males from Bangladesh on February 1, near Mooers, New York.

  Since October 1, 2023, Swanton Sector Border Patrol Agents have apprehended more than 3,100 subjects from 55 countries (more than Fiscal Years 2022, 21, 20 & 19 combined). Photo: An early morning apprehension of 4 adult males from Bangladesh on February 1, near Mooers, New York. pic.twitter.com/nAf5KG467R

  — Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia (@USBPChiefSWB) February 2, 2024

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  Garcia then warned: 

  “The record-breaking surge of illegal entries from Canada continues in Swanton Sector.” 

  The record-breaking surge of illegal entries from Canada continues in Swanton Sector. A citizen’s report in Champlain, NY, led to the arrest of 10 Bangladesh citizens. Agents rely on the vigilance of our community.
  If you see something, say something! Call 1-800-689-3362. pic.twitter.com/eSTMV8HwOu

  — Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia (@USBPChiefSWB) February 8, 2024

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  Experts told NYPost, “Migrants who make it to Mexico and can afford a $350 one-way plane ticket from Mexico City or Cancun to Montreal or Toronto are making their way south to cross the northern US border — where they are less likely to be turned away than those who cross the southern border.” 

  On the northern border, migrants take advantage of border crossings without walls or fences. They’re simply just walking right into the US. 

  

  New York State Assemblyman Billy Jones, who represents Clinton County, recently warned: “The northern border has pretty much been ignored.” 

  The tick-up in migrant encounters on the northern border first came to our attention nearly one year ago. We penned this note last May: “Northern US Border Encounters With Illegals More Than Double In 7 Months.”

  And just days ago, a migrant smuggling ring in New Jersey was uncovered that bussed “dozens if not hundreds” of migrants into the US through the unfenced border between Quebec and Vermont. 

  

  Earlier this month, New York Republican leaders in the state Legislature urged Gov. Kathy Hochul to deploy the state’s National Guard on its northern border. 

  “More than 8 million border encounters have occurred since President Biden took office. In 2023, over 2.5 million migrants entered the country through the southern border. In December alone, 302,034 encounters were reported by US Customs and Border Protection. On New York’s Northern Border, 91,640 illegal crossings were reported in the past year.

  “Immigration reform is a matter that must be dealt with on the Federal level. However, we hope you agree that the states’ sovereign right to protect its citizens and its communities must be valued above the actions of federal authorities. For this reason, we urge you to deploy the National Guard immediately to assist the State of Texas and New York Canadian border in efforts to stop the flow of migrants coming into our country illegally,” the letter stated, signed by state Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt and Assembly Minority Leader William Barclay.

  The colossal mess the Biden administration has created by willfully ignoring the border invasion and refusing any executive action is only worsening as the crisis is now spreading to the northern border. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/12/2024 – 20:20

• Best And Worst Metro Areas For First-Time Buyers In 2024
  Best And Worst Metro Areas For First-Time Buyers In 2024

  Submitted by Sam Bourgi of CreditNews

  

  The past few years have been one of the worst periods for first-time homebuyers in America’s history.

  Record home prices, chronically low inventory, 22-year-high mortgage rates, and bidding wars with cash- and equity-flush buyers have locked many younger buyers out of the housing market.

  According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), first-time homebuyers made up just 32% of all transactions last year—the fourth lowest share seen in more than 40 years.

  While would-be homeowners bide their time, Creditnews Research looked at America’s 50 largest metro areas to uncover housing markets that are still attractive for first-time buyers.

  Our ranking shows how easy it is for residents in each metro area to buy a starter home—defined as homes with a sale value in the 5th to 35th percentile range purchased with a mortgage.

  Primary factors in our scoring model include mortgage affordability, market access, and bargaining power. We also looked at macro indicators, such as employment growth and livability.

  Combined, the weighted scoring model provides a holistic snapshot of America’s largest metro areas that offer first-time buyers the best bang for their buck.

  Some of the results may surprise you.

  Best metro areas for first-time buyers

  Based on Creditnews Research’s scoring model, the top metro areas for first-time buyers are:

  1. Pittsburgh: America’s steel town is an excellent place for first-time homebuyers because it offers the best affordability for a starter home. No other metro area in our ranking offers a lower mortgage payment relative to income. Pittsburgh also ranks second in terms of listing price cuts—giving buyers strong bargaining power when house hunting. Pittsburgh’s labor market isn’t exactly booming (it ranks 31st for employment growth), but its job growth is still positive. In this remote work age, the Pittsburgh metro area, made up of five counties, can be an attractive place to live, even for families who aren’t employed in local manufacturing.
  2. Austin-Round Rock: Austin has experienced a population explosion in recent years, making homes at the higher end of the spectrum hard to afford for first-time buyers. But those shopping for starter homes can still find a decent value. The Austin metro area, which includes five counties, ranks first for market access—with its home listings staying on the market the longest. Austin is also a top-10 city for employment growth and is one of the most livable cities in America when it comes to amenities, culture, and healthcare. The trade-off is mortgage affordability (29th). Families in Austin have a much higher income than the national average, but starter homes are priced at $331,565—bringing the average mortgage payment to a hefty $2,259 a month.
  3. San Antonio-New Braunfels: Roughly 80 miles from the state capital, the San Antonio-New Braunfels metro area is the third most affordable place for first-time homebuyers. And, San Antonio ranks second in market access, suggesting much lower competition among buyers than the national average. It’s also a top-10 area for employment and livability but doesn’t rank as highly as Austin in either category. It does, however, boast much better mortgage affordability and bargaining power than Austin, ranking 6th and 4th among other metro areas, respectively.
  4. Birmingham-Hoover: Alabama’s largest metro area, consisting of seven counties, has seen its population steadily decline over the decades, but still offers first-time buyers a little bit of everything: mortgage affordability (6th), bargaining power (4th), and employment growth (5th). Over the past year, employment in the area has increased by 3%, making it one of the fastest-growing labor markets in the country.
  5. Jacksonville: Wrapping up our top 5 ranking is metro Jacksonville, which includes four counties and is the 4th largest metropolitan area in Florida. Jacksonville makes the list thanks to its strong market access (4th) and good livability (12th). What makes Jacksonville a major standout on this list is its labor market. After registering a whopping 3.8% increase over the past year it ranks first in employment growth. The only caveats to Jacksonville are mortgage affordability (28th) and bargaining power (32nd), which rank middle of the pack. Still, starter home prices are highly affordable compared to other major metro areas.

  Pittsburgh: Steel town becomes boom town?

  While Pittsburgh doesn’t get as much spotlight as Austin and other Sun Belt cities, the steel town punches above its weight in giving the best bang for the buck for first-time homebuyers.

  What makes Pittsburgh such an attractive place for first-time buyers is the affordability of its starter homes, which typically go for $107,912—the lowest among other metro areas in our ranking.

  Even at the current mortgage rates, a mortgage for such a home, including fees and insurance, would come to around $850 a month.

  That translates to just 14% of the median monthly household income in Pittsburgh, meaning many middle-class households can easily afford two starter homes.

  Pittsburgh is also one of the few metropolitan areas where the average household can afford a median-priced home.

  As such, the Pittsburgh metro ranks #1 in our mortgage affordability ranking.

  Perhaps more surprising is the fact that Pittsburgh’s unemployment rate is well below the national average. Its cost of living is also lower than the U.S. average.

  Even investors have recognized the real estate potential in the steel town.

  In 2021, nearly 25% of homes sold in the city were to investors or corporations—up from 15.5% in 2010, according to the local nonprofit Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group.

  Unlike other investor-infested housing markets, however, Pittsburgh continues to offer the best value among the top 50 metro areas.

  Worst metro areas for first-time buyers

  Not surprisingly, California dominates the bottom of the rankings because of its lack of mortgage affordability, relatively weak market access, and diminished bargaining power.

  The bottom five metro areas in our ranking are:

  • 46. Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario: Riverside’s close proximity to Los Angeles has made it an attractive destination for Californians. Despite being a growing city with lots of amenities, the third largest metro area in California, which includes Riverside and San Bernardino counties, ranks 48th for livability due to its high cost of living. Mortgage affordability for a starter home is also among the worst (44th), mainly because of elevated housing costs. Riverside residents also lack bargaining power—the metro ranks 39th in that category.
  • 47. Denver-Aurora-Lakewood: The mile-high city ranks dead last for bargaining power—meaning residents there shouldn’t expect price reductions when shopping for a starter home in this six-county metro area. Mortgage affordability is also among the lowest (38th), mostly because of elevated housing costs. Denver ranks 48th for jobs, becoming one of only a small handful of major cities to register negative employment growth.
  • 48. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim: With an average starter home price of $645,196, Los Angeles, the most populous metropolitan area in the country, is one of the worst cities for first-time homebuyers. Elevated housing costs have pushed down mortgage affordability—the city ranks 49th in this category. Los Angeles also ranks poorly for livability (46th) due to a high cost of living, crime, and poor access to healthcare.
  • 49. San Diego-Carlsbad: For first-time buyers, the San Diego metro, which encompasses all of San Diego county, is very similar to Los Angeles. The city has an average home price of $651,891 and poor mortgage affordability (48th). San Diego has a much higher livability score (26th) but ranks worse than Los Angeles for market access and bargaining power. There just aren’t a lot of housing options for first-time buyers, and the prospects aren’t looking up in the near term.
  • 50. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara: At the very bottom of our ranking is San Jose, which is an hour’s drive south of San Francisco. What makes San Jose so prohibitive is its lack of mortgage affordability (50th), with starter home prices coming in at a whopping $965,068—even higher than Los Angeles. That’s more than six times higher than the annual median household income in that area. A lack of market access (35th) and poor employment growth (38th) round out the reasons first-time buyers might want to (or have to) steer clear.

  Where each metropolitan area ranks

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/12/2024 – 19:55

• CRE Crash Unfolding: "Yes That's Not A Typo – It Literally Sold For $9 Per SQFT" 
  CRE Crash Unfolding: “Yes That’s Not A Typo – It Literally Sold For $9 Per SQFT” 

  In a commentary, Neil Callanan of Bloomberg highlighted, “The commercial real estate crash unfolding in the US is a natural consequence of quantitative easing.” 

  Callanan continued: ” … which intentionally pushed investors out of safer assets like bonds and into alternatives like private equity, malls, and warehouses.” 

  

  The journalist penned the note titled “The CRE Crash Is Part of the Price of Global Quantitative Easing” following the latest CRE rumblings with loan losses, reserve build, and dividend cuts announced by New York Community Bancorp, a regional bank with high exposure to multifamily and CRE lending across NYC. Also, sizable credit losses and/or write-downs of US CRE sparked chaos for lenders in Japan, Germany, and Canada as the dominoes began to fall. 

  Furthermore, Callanan referenced a National Bureau of Economic Research report revealing that 45% of all office loans are underwater. This report also cautioned that upwards of 300 regional banks could face solvency runs due to CRE turmoil at the end of the third quarter. 

  In a report last week, research firm Green Street estimated that appraised property values could sustain another 10% to reach fair valuations, which is bad news for lenders, particularly smaller ones with weak balance sheets. 

  X user Triple Net Investor posted the latest CRE catastrophe: “A 262k sq ft building in Ohio has just sold for $2.4 million, or $9 per sq ft.” 

  X user said, “Yes, that’s not a typo – it literally sold for $9 per sq ft.” 

  “The commercial real estate ‘correction’ has gone from concerning to an outright apocalypse, primarily impacting office properties in most cities across the US,” the user explained. 

  A 262k sq ft building in Ohio has just sold for $2.4 million, or $9 per sq ft

  Yes that’s not a typo – it literally sold for $9 per sq ft

  It was the former site of FedEx Custom Critical in Green, Ohio

  The commercial real estate ‘correction’ has gone from concerning to an… pic.twitter.com/8yJMTg09Nc

  — Triple Net Investor (@TripleNetInvest) February 9, 2024

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  Barry Sternlicht, chairman and CEO of Starwood Capital, warned last summer that the CRE storm is entering “Category 5 hurricane” strength. He recently gave his take on the situation:

  “The office market has an existential crisis right now… it’s a $3 trillion dollar asset class that’s probably worth $1.8 trillion [now].” 

  Barry Sternlicht just gave a VERY thoughtful interview about the growing troubles in commercial real estate:

  Here’s what he had to say:

  “We have a problem in real estate. In every sector of real estate, not just office, because of the 500 basis point increase in rates that was… pic.twitter.com/OZdrpxxBtq

  — Triple Net Investor (@TripleNetInvest) February 1, 2024

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  So, what’s ahead for the office market? 

  Well, more turmoil: Analysts led by Morgan Stanley’s Ronald Kamdem warned the most significant headwinds for Class A and Class B/C is years of supply, well above pre-Covid levels. 

  

  Class A office has about 18 years of supply, compared with the 2015-19 average of 13 years. 

  

  “The supply risk picture at the national level remains concerning and implies vacancy rates will likely remain under pressure,” Kamdem wrote. 

  And what happens if these buildings can’t find tenants and office owners can’t find financing?

  Well, as Vishwanath Tirupattur, global head of Quantitative Research at Morgan Stanley, warned in a note days ago: The CRE crisis will be with us for a long time. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/12/2024 – 19:30

• Democrats Strongly Support Mail-In Voting While Republicans Oppose, Poll Shows
  Democrats Strongly Support Mail-In Voting While Republicans Oppose, Poll Shows

  Authored by Aaron Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  

  A solid majority of Americans support the use of voter ID and paper ballot backups as measures to ensure election integrity, yet they remain divided along party lines over the issue of voting by mail, according to a survey.

  The Pew Research Center poll, released on Feb. 7, found that 84 percent of Democrats believe voting by mail should be available to all voters, while 28 percent of Republicans favor this requirement. On a national average, 57 percent of respondents support this proposal.

  Democrats strongly favor automatic voter registration for all eligible citizens and election-day voter registration, with 79 percent and 76 percent support, respectively. In comparison, nearly four in ten Republicans support these measures.

  In 2021, another Pew Research survey found that “Democrats are more likely to strongly favor proposals aimed at making it easier to vote; Republicans are more likely to strongly support requiring voters to show photo ID.”

  Measures With Strong Bipartisan Support

  The survey also found that most U.S. voters support paper ballot backups (82 percent), voter ID requirement (81 percent), early in-person voting (76 percent), making Election Day a national holiday (72 percent), and granting voting rights to convicted felons after completing their sentences (69 percent).

  Voter ID requirements and paper ballot backups have the highest support among Republicans. The other three proposals receive higher support among Democrats.

  Although a solid majority of Americans support voter ID, with 81 percent in favor, there is partisan division over the policy. Nearly all Republicans (95 percent) favor the measure, while 69 percent of Democrats support voter ID.

  Americans are also divided over the policy of removing inactive records from voter registration lists: 60 percent of Republicans favor this policy, compared with 27 percent of Democrats.

  Among racial and ethnic groups, black voters are more strongly supportive of early in-person voting (85 percent) and of granting voting rights to convicted felons after they finish their sentences (79 percent) than other groups are.

  Shift in Public Opinion

  The survey found that voters have changed their views in recent years, particularly regarding voting by mail; 57 percent of American adults now support voting by mail, compared with 70 percent four years ago. Among Republicans, only 28 percent support the policy, down from 49 percent in 2020, while Democrats’ views on this have remained unchanged since 2020.

  For the photo ID requirement, Republican support remains unchanged at 95 percent, whereas Democrat support has increased to 69 percent, up from 61 percent last year.

  Support among Americans for making election day a national holiday has increased from 65 percent in 2018 to 72 percent at present. In contrast, support for election-day voter registration has declined over recent years, dropping from 64 percent in 2018 to 57 percent today.

  Election Integrity Concerns

  Newly released documents show that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) knew it was unethical to censor concerns about the security of mail-in voting prior to the 2020 election, but it proceeded to do so anyway.

  On Jan. 22, America First Legal (AFL) revealed a collection of documents alleging that CISA was aware that mail-in ballots were less secure than voting in person before the 2020 election.

  “CISA interfered in the 2020 presidential election. CISA knew that in-person voting did not increase the spread of COVID[-19]. CISA knew mail-in voting was less secure. CISA nevertheless supported policy changes to encourage unprecedented widespread mail-in voting,” AFL said in a statement.

  “Common sense dictates that ballots submitted via mail are inherently less secure than verified, in-person voting by a citizen who shows identification before casting his or her ballot,” Gene Hamilton, AFL’s vice president and general counsel, said in a press release. “The American people were lied to, and there must be accountability. ”

  CISA admitted that mail-in voting held more severe risks than in-person elections, but it collaborated with technology companies to restrict what it deemed misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation surrounding the 2020 election. However, the recently disclosed records reveal how CISA did this.

  Austin Alonzo and Savannah Hulsey Pointer contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/12/2024 – 19:05

• Court Orders Netherlands To Halt F-35 Parts For Israel As EU Says "Too Many People" Are Dying
  Court Orders Netherlands To Halt F-35 Parts For Israel As EU Says “Too Many People” Are Dying

  Israel’s worst nightmare is beginning to unfold. It has worked for years and decades to prevent a global boycott movement from ever gaining traction amid persistent accusations it violates Palestinians’ human rights, but amid the current war and soaring civilian death toll in Gaza, there are signs the pro-boycott movement is gaining steam.

  The government of the Netherlands has been ordered to block of all exports of F-35 fighter jet parts by a Dutch appeals court, on fears that the transfer would contribute to human rights violations. 

  

  “It is undeniable that there is a clear risk the exported F-35 parts are used in serious violations of international humanitarian law,” the court said according to Reuters.

  Israel has been bombing the Gaza Strip continuously since Oct.7 as part of the military operation to root out Hamas. But the war has resulted in an immense civilian death toll. Gaza health officials say the death toll has surpassed 28,000 as a result of the ground and air assault. 

  Defense leaders not happy, however, the government’s Trade Minister Geoffrey van Leeuwen admitted that “The delivery of US F-35 parts to Israel in our view is not unjustified.” He said F-35s were for Israel’s protection from the many regional threats it faces, “for example from Iran, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon.”

  According to the court, “the state had to comply with the order within seven days and dismissed a request by government lawyers to suspend the order pending an appeal to the Supreme Court.”

  There’s reportedly a possible workaround in progress which would involve sending the jet parts to Israel based on the government providing guarantees that the parts wouldn’t go toward F-35s operating over Gaza.

  Interestingly, the court order threatens to disrupt a crucial US-supply chain pipeline of defense wares to Israel: 

  The appeals court also said it was likely the F-35s were being used in attacks on Gaza, leading to unacceptable civilian casualties. It dismissed the Dutch state’s argument that it did not have to do a new check on the permit for the exports.

  The Netherlands houses one of several regional warehouses of US-owned F-35 parts, from which the parts are distributed to countries that request them, including Israel in at least one shipment since Oct. 7.

  The government said it would try to convince partners it would remain a reliable member of the F-35 program and other forms of international and European defense cooperation.

  Meanwhile, humanitarian pressure continues to mount on Israel, also at a moment the International Court of Justice is weighing South Africa’s ‘genocide’ case against Israel.

  European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell is the latest to urge Israel’s backers to halt all military supplies to the Jewish State. He lamented Monday that “too many people” are being killed in Gaza. But his remarks more highlighted the hypocrisy of the West as it condemns the death toll from Israel’s actions but still keeps pumping in the arms…

  Update: EU’s Borrell on US+Israel:
  “If you believe too many people are being killed, maybe you should provide less arms”
  “Everybody goes to Tel Aviv begging”
  “Netanyahu doesn’t listen to anyone. They’re going to evacuate. Where? To the moon?”
  “Stop saying please & do something!” pic.twitter.com/g8uiprUia2

  — Rosie Birchard (@RosieBirchard) February 12, 2024

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  Referencing Joe Biden’s remark last week that Israel’s military action was “over the top,” Borrell said, “Well, if you believe that too many people are being killed, maybe you should provide less arms in order to prevent so many people having been killed.”

  “How many times have you heard the most prominent leaders and foreign ministers around the world saying too many people are being killed?” Borrell questioned. “If the international community believes that this is a slaughter, that too many people are being killed, maybe we have to think about the provision of arms.”

  Meanwhile, this testy exchange also played out Monday afternoon…

  AP’s Matt Lee: What leverage is US using?

  State Dept spox Matt Miller: “The words of the President…matter”

  Lee: “Over the top?’ That’s leverage?”

  (2 days after Biden called Israel’s behavior “over the top,” it attacked the last refuge for 1.5 million Palestinians—killing 90+) pic.twitter.com/pEOKbQlCsb

  — Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) February 12, 2024

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  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/12/2024 – 18:45

• Victor Davis Hanson: The Absurd Border Con
  Victor Davis Hanson: The Absurd Border Con

  Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via The Epoch Times,

  In 2021, President Joe Biden opened wide an inherited, secure southern border that had finally stopped mass illegal immigration.

  

  When he overturned former President Donald Trump’s efforts, a planned flood of over 8 million illegal immigrants entered the United States.

  Almost all arrived without background checks, health screening, or vaccination certificates—but with massive needs for free housing, education, healthcare, and food entitlements and subsidies.

  For four years, President Trump battled the courts, his Democratic opposition, and the open-border establishments within his own party to ensure legal-only immigration. Somehow, he rebuilt some of the old porous border fence. He had begun to build his long-promised new wall to the Gulf of Mexico. He had ended Obama-era catch-and-release.

  Would-be refugees had to apply for asylum in their home country. President Trump leveraged Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to police his own border and stop cynically transiting millions of illegal aliens into the United States.

  There was general Democratic Party opposition to all of Trump’s measures, both through Congress and via the courts.

  For the last three years of Biden’s mass influx, the left has applauded open borders. That is, until late last year, when overwhelmed southern border state governors began busing and flying illegal immigrants en masse to northern sanctuary-city jurisdictions.

  For years, these sanctuary zones had preened their liberality about open borders. They smeared as “racists” and “xenophobes” any who insisted on legal-only immigration.

  But now they were subject to the real-life ramifications of their own destructive ideologies.

  Major blue-state cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., became outraged that they were inundated with tens of thousands of immigrants, all without legality, veritable identification, or background checks.

  Some proved violent. Others crowded out scarce resources essential to millions of inner-city poor.

  The liberal architects of illegal immigration are usually rich and powerful enough to be insulated from the consequences of their utopian policies.

  But not so their poor or minority constituents. They deal first-hand with spiking crime, appropriation of their parks and civic centers, and restricted access to now overwhelmed social services.

  So the once open-border Democrat Party and President Biden are in a quandary. They now fear mass defections of core Latino and black voters in an election year.

  But how can they square the circle of insisting on open borders with the need to appear to their own voters as determined to close them?

  We saw the absurd answer this week. Shameless Democrats tried to enlist naive and foolish Republicans to bail them out with a “comprehensive immigration bill.”

  It was really designed to keep the border open while spending billions of dollars to facilitate more rapid and orderly transits—and more substantial welfare support for millions of illegals here and still to come.

  Now Democrats claim that anyone who did not sign on to codify and regulate illegal immigration was responsible for their own deliberate open border policies in the first place!

  To add insult to injury, they next sought to piggyback their toxic immigration bill onto massive aid for Israel and Ukraine. It was a transparent effort to blame any Republicans for harming Israel and aiding Putin, should they not sign on to a more efficient open border.

  The real agenda of the bill’s supporters is absolutely no return to Trump’s legal-only immigration and a secure border.

  That simple solution requires no new legislation and almost no new spending. But it does imply acknowledgment that the hated President Trump had solved the problem executively – and that admission is apparently taboo.

  Finally, public outrage from the left and conservative anger at foolish and naive Republican enablers stopped the bill.

  Still, it remains somewhat unclear why President Biden and his Homeland Security chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, destroyed what President Trump had achieved. Why would they ensure such misery for both American hosts and millions of illegal immigrants?

  Did they want new long-term constituents, given that their neo-socialist agendas cannot win over a majority of current Americans?

  Is importing millions of the poorest and most in need on the planet a way to ensure a still larger Great Society of entitlements and, with it, higher taxes on the “filthy rich”?

  Do they assume that America’s increasingly non-Election-Day balloting ensures far less authentication and rejection of mail-in ballots, and thus it will be relatively easy for non-citizens to vote?

  Many, left and right, make no effort to hide their desire for cheap imported labor—even though the current labor participation rate is only 62 percent of the potential American workforce.

  Finally, one might expect this artifice from the left that is wedded to open borders.

  But why some establishment Republicans aided and abetted these disingenuous efforts is yet another reminder why the doctrinaire Republican Party had to be reinvented by President Trump.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/12/2024 – 18:20

• Satanic Temple Claims Abortion Is Part Of Their Religion In Effort To Block Abortion Bans
  Satanic Temple Claims Abortion Is Part Of Their Religion In Effort To Block Abortion Bans

  Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  

  A satanic group is continuing attempts to overturn abortion bans in pro-life states by filing lawsuits claiming abortion is part of their religion.

  The Satanic Temple (TST), a nonprofit based in Salem, Massachusetts, has filed lawsuits in Missouri, Indiana, Texas, and Idaho that so far have been unsuccessful.

  That hasn’t stopped the headline-grabbing organization from plaintiff-shopping for new religious freedom lawsuits to stop abortion bans, according to its website.

  The group doesn’t shy away from controversy. It made news recently for staging a satanic holiday display featuring a silver goat head atop blood-red robes during Christmas at the Iowa Capitol. The Baphomet statue shared space with a Christmas display until it was decapitated.

  Michael Cassidy, a former U.S. Navy fighter pilot who ran for office in Mississippi, took credit for tearing it down. The Christian conservative raised $120,000 as of early February for legal fees after being charged with criminal mischief. Recently, prosecutors announced they are charging him with a felony hate crime.

  TST created an abortion ritual that it claims will exempt women from their states’ laws. The ritual, along with TST’s new abortion clinic in New Mexico, was featured in November’s Cosmopolitan magazine.

  Proponents of abortion feel a woman should have control over her body, and abortion should be a choice. Pro-life groups contend that life starts at conception and that the developing child has the right to life.

  TST named their clinic Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic, mocking the U.S. Supreme Court justice who wrote the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade.

  The abortion ritual involves the recitation of two of the group’s tenets and reinforces the idea of bodily autonomy.

  “The Satanic Abortion Ritual is a destruction ritual that serves as a protective rite,” the website states. “Its purpose is to cast off notions of guilt, shame, and mental discomfort that a patient may be experiencing due to choosing to have a legal and medically safe abortion.”

  

  The group’s website states that it relies on several legal arguments: that denying members access to abortion infringes on their religious right to participate in a satanic abortion ritual; that forcing someone to carry an unwanted child amounts to seizing a woman’s uterus without compensation; and that forced pregnancy is akin to servitude, in violation of the 13th Amendment, which abolishes slavery.

  In the case of Indiana, the group argues that the abortion restrictions criminalize abortions resulting from protected sex and create a class of people who are discriminated against because they are denied an abortion.

  Recent judicial rulings, such as the case of a Christian business owner denying services to LGBT people on religious grounds, appear to be part of the group’s legal strategy to flip the script on abortion bans. Except in this case, their religion involves providing the service of ritualized abortion.

  Critics say the legal strategies are shaky.

  Jonathan Hullihan is a Texas attorney for Citizens Defending Freedom, a watchdog group focused on liberties guaranteed by the Constitution. He told The Epoch Times that the High Court’s decision in Dobbs held that the Constitution did not confer a right to an abortion, leaving it to states to regulate.

  TST has brought claims under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) or state versions, he said.

  “This is an attempt to recognize a federal constitutional right to abortion in direct conflict with the Dobbs holding,” Mr. Hullihan said.

  

  “While courts generally don’t question the sincerity of religious beliefs, the claim that religious beliefs require members to seek an abortion is unlikely to prevail in court,” he said. When contacted for comment, Lucien Greaves, TST co-founder and spokesperson, told The Epoch Times that critics don’t have a monopoly on freedom of religion.

  ProLove Ministries founder and CEO Abby Johnson questioned the idea of religion without a deity.

  “I think it’s interesting they’re trying to get a religious exemption when they say over and over and over again that satanism isn’t a religion and they’re non-theistic,” she told the Epoch Times.

  “So, I’m like, ‘Tell me again how you are trying to get a religious exemption?’” she said.

  ‘Out of Touch’

  Opponents of abortion argue that religious freedom doesn’t mean anything goes.

  “The Supreme Court has made it pretty clear that you’re not allowed to claim a religious exemption to get away with doing whatever you want to,” said Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League.

  TST’s rhetoric about choice ignores the facts about abortion, Mr. Scheidler said. Some 60 percent of women who get an abortion felt “high levels of pressure” to do so, according to a 2023 study in the National Library of Medicine.

  “They are really out of touch,” Mr. Scheidler told The Epoch Times. “I mean, most Americans find a story like this kind of horrifying, people making light of abortion.”

  A 2021 government study found more than 90 percent of biologists believe life begins at conception.

  Mr. Scheidler suspects part of the group’s goal is to play the provocateur.

  “They get some sort of adolescent thrill out of the imagined conniption fits that they drive religious people into with their antics,” Mr. Scheidler said. “In fact, we sort of roll our eyes and carry on with the real business.”

  Epoch Times reporters Sam Dorman, Samantha Flom, and Jackson Elliott contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/12/2024 – 17:40

• Trump Asks Supreme Court To Intervene In Immunity Appeal
  Trump Asks Supreme Court To Intervene In Immunity Appeal

  Former President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Monday to step in and weigh in on his claim of presidential immunity after the DC Circuit Court of Appeals sided with special counsel Jack Smith – ruling that Trump is not immune from prosecution. The lower court held off on issuing the mandate until Monday in order to allow Trump’s legal team time to approach the Supreme Court.

  

  Trump is specifically asking the Supreme Court to pause the lower court’s ruling until he can formally appeal, which will further delay his trial in front of District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan.

  BREAKING: Trump asks Supreme Court to halt an appeals court ruling denying his bid to dismiss his election interference case based on presidential immunity. pic.twitter.com/sccmQSQEcb

  — Katelynn Richardson (@katesrichardson) February 12, 2024

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

  The trial was originally scheduled for March 4, however Chutkan vacated the date in early February amid Trump’s immunity defense, and noted that the court would “set a new schedule if and when the mandate is returned.” Chutkan’s decision also denied Trump’s bid to toss the case in December based on the immunity claim.

  Smith sought to keep the trial on schedule in December by asking the Supreme Court to take up the question before the appeals court had a chance to consider it, but the justices rejected his request.

  “President Trump’s claim that Presidents have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for their official acts presents a novel, complex, and momentous question that warrants careful consideration on appeal,” the application states. “The panel opinion below, like the district court, concludes that Presidential immunity from prosecution for official acts does not exist at all. This is a stunning breach of precedent and historical norms.” –Daily Caller

  In January, Trump’s legal team presented oral arguments to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, which Trump attended. The Judge, Biden appointee Florence Pan, questioned whether presidential immunity extended to such examples as a president ordering SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival without facing criminal charges.

  “For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant. But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution,” the panel wrote in its Feb. 6 ruling. “Former President Trump lacked any lawful discretionary authority to defy federal criminal law and he is answerable in court for his conduct.”

  In short, to be continued…

  ZeroPointNow
  Mon, 02/12/2024 – 17:20

• Institutions Double Down On AI In trading — JPMorgan Survey
  Institutions Double Down On AI In trading — JPMorgan Survey

  Authored by Helen Partz via Cointelegraph.com,

  

  Institutional investors have been increasingly betting on the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the future of trading, according to a new survey by the multinational investment bank JPMorgan.

  In the most recent edition of JPMorgan’s “e-Trading Edit: Insights from the Inside” survey, 61% of the 4,010 institutional traders surveyed across 65 countries anticipated AI and machine learning (ML) to emerge as the most impactful technologies for trading within the next three years.

  According to the survey’s rankings, AI and ML are followed by application programming interface (API) integration, with 13% of respondents choosing it as one of the most important technologies shaping the future of trading.

  Blockchain or distributed ledger technology and quantum computing both account for 7% based on the respondent’s preferences. Mobile trading applications and natural language processing secured 6% of respondents.

  

  AI and machine learning have been steadily gaining ground in JPMorgan’s reports in recent years, with the tech accounting for just 25% in ranked importance two years ago.

  On the other hand, institutions have been growing increasingly skeptical about the role of other technologies in trading, including mobile trading applications and blockchain, according to JPMorgan’s survey. Since 2022, blockchain and mobile trading applications have lost 18% and 23% of investor choices as promising technologies for trading, respectively.

  AI has been reshaping the future of finance over the past few years by offering various features, including trade predictions or identifying real-time threats to market sentiment. According to a 2022 report by Nvidia, investors have been integrating AI and ML, with 30% of respondents reportedly managing to reduce their annual revenue by more than 10%.

  While doubling down on the AI role in trading, JPMorgan-surveyed institutions have become less willing to get into cryptocurrency trading.

  According to the survey results, 78% of institutional traders have no plans to trade cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin

  or digital coins within the next five years. The percentage of investors not planning to trade crypto has increased since last year, as 72% of respondents indicated unwillingness to trade such assets in 2023.

  

  At the same time, the percentage of respondents that have started trading crypto or trade it already has slightly increased from 8% in 2023 to 9% in 2024.

  JPMorgan has been controversial in terms of its approach to crypto over the past few years. CEO Jamie Dimon continued to slam cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin even after the company was named an authorized participant in one of the fastest-growing spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds by BlackRock.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/12/2024 – 17:00

• Mapping Global GDP Growth Forecasts By Country In 2024
  Mapping Global GDP Growth Forecasts By Country In 2024

  Resilient GDP growth and falling inflation are spurring a brighter outlook for 2024, although cautions remain across global economies.

  While investors are hopeful that U.S. rate cuts could happen as early as May, the Fed has signaled that it won’t “declare victory” too soon. As countries around the world maneuver a complex landscape, they are faced with a scope of risks that include inflationary spikes, rising debt loads, and dwindling consumer savings.

  The grpah below, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows global GDP growth projections in 2024, based on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) October 2023 Outlook and January 2024 update.

  

  Global GDP Growth Outlook 2024

  In 2024, real GDP growth is forecast to increase 3.1%, a slight rise from October’s outlook.

  While positive growth is projected across all regions, it varies widely due to many factors spanning from the effects of higher borrowing costs to low consumer sentiment. Here are forecasts across 191 countries worldwide:

  Country	2024 Real GDP % Change (Projected)	2023 Real GDP % Change (Estimate)
  🇦🇱 Albania	3.3%	3.6%
  🇩🇿 Algeria	3.1%	3.8%
  🇦🇩 Andorra	1.5%	2.1%
  🇦🇴 Angola	3.3%	1.3%
  🇦🇬 Antigua and Barbuda	5.4%	5.6%
  🇦🇷 Argentina	2.8%	-2.5%
  🇦🇲 Armenia	5.0%	7.0%
  🇦🇼 Aruba	1.2%	2.3%
  🇦🇺 Australia	1.2%	1.8%
  🇦🇹 Austria	0.8%	0.1%
  🇦🇿 Azerbaijan	2.5%	2.5%
  🇧🇸 The Bahamas	1.8%	2.7%
  🇧🇭 Bahrain	3.6%	6.0%
  🇧🇩 Bangladesh	6.0%	4.5%
  🇧🇧 Barbados	3.9%	1.6%
  🇧🇾 Belarus	1.3%	1.0%
  🇧🇪 Belgium	0.9%	4.0%
  🇧🇿 Belize	3.0%	5.5%
  🇧🇯 Benin	6.3%	5.3%
  🇧🇹 Bhutan	3.0%	1.8%
  🇧🇴 Bolivia	1.8%	2.0%
  🇧🇦 Bosnia and Herzegovina	3.0%	3.8%
  🇧🇼 Botswana	4.1%	3.1%
  🇧🇷 Brazil*	1.7%	-0.8%
  🇧🇳 Brunei Darussalam	3.5%	1.7%
  🇧🇬 Bulgaria	3.2%	4.4%
  🇧🇫 Burkina Faso	6.4%	3.3%
  🇧🇮 Burundi	6.0%	4.4%
  🇨🇻 Cabo Verde	4.5%	5.6%
  🇰🇭 Cambodia	6.1%	4.0%
  🇨🇲 Cameroon	4.2%	1.3%
  🇨🇦 Canada*	1.4%	1.0%
  🇨🇫 Central African Republic	2.5%	4.0%
  🇹🇩 Chad	3.7%	-0.5%
  🇨🇱 Chile	1.6%	5.0%
  🇨🇳 China*	4.6%	1.4%
  🇨🇴 Colombia	2.0%	3.0%
  🇰🇲 Comoros	3.5%	4.4%
  🇨🇩 Democratic Republic of the Congo	4.7%	2.7%
  🇨🇬 Republic of Congo	4.4%	6.2%
  🇨🇷 Costa Rica	3.2%	2.2%
  🇨🇮 Côte d’Ivoire	6.6%	0.2%
  🇭🇷 Croatia	2.6%	6.7%
  🇨🇾 Cyprus	2.7%	1.7%
  🇨🇿 Czech Republic	2.3%	5.0%
  🇩🇰 Denmark	1.4%	4.6%
  🇩🇯 Djibouti	6.0%	3.0%
  🇩🇲 Dominica	4.6%	1.4%
  🇩🇴 Dominican Republic	5.2%	4.2%
  🇪🇨 Ecuador	1.8%	2.2%
  🇪🇬 Egypt	3.6%	-6.2%
  🇸🇻 El Salvador	1.9%	-2.3%
  🇬🇶 Equatorial Guinea	-5.5%	3.1%
  🇪🇪 Estonia	2.4%	6.1%
  🇸🇿 Eswatini	3.3%	7.5%
  🇪🇹 Ethiopia	6.2%	-0.1%
  🇫🇯 Fiji	3.9%	1.0%
  🇫🇮 Finland	1.0%	2.8%
  🇫🇷 France*	1.0%	6.2%
  🇬🇦 Gabon	2.6%	-0.5%
  🇬🇲 The Gambia	6.2%	1.2%
  🇬🇪 Georgia	4.8%	2.5%
  🇩🇪 Germany*	0.5%	3.9%
  🇬🇭 Ghana	2.7%	3.4%
  🇬🇷 Greece	2.0%	5.9%
  🇬🇩 Grenada	3.8%	4.5%
  🇬🇹 Guatemala	3.5%	38.4%
  🇬🇳 Guinea	5.6%	-1.5%
  🇬🇼 Guinea-Bissau	5.0%	2.9%
  🇬🇾 Guyana	26.6%	4.4%
  🇭🇹 Haiti	1.4%	-0.3%
  🇭🇳 Honduras	3.2%	3.3%
  🇭🇰 Hong Kong SAR	2.9%	6.3%
  🇭🇺 Hungary	3.1%	5.0%
  🇮🇸 Iceland	1.7%	-2.7%
  🇮🇳 India*	6.5%	2.0%
  🇮🇩 Indonesia	5.0%	3.0%
  🇮🇷 Iran	2.5%	3.1%
  🇮🇶 Iraq	2.9%	0.7%
  🇮🇪 Ireland	3.3%	2.0%
  🇮🇱 Israel	3.0%	2.0%
  🇮🇹 Italy*	0.7%	2.6%
  🇯🇲 Jamaica	1.8%	4.6%
  🇯🇵 Japan*	0.9%	5.0%
  🇯🇴 Jordan	2.7%	2.6%
  🇰🇿 Kazakhstan	4.2%	1.4%
  🇰🇪 Kenya	5.3%	3.8%
  🇰🇮 Kiribati	2.4%	-0.6%
  🇰🇷 Korea	2.2%	3.4%
  🇽🇰 Kosovo	4.0%	4.0%
  🇰🇼 Kuwait	3.6%	0.5%
  🇰🇬 Kyrgyz Republic	4.3%	2.1%
  🇱🇦 Lao P.D.R.	4.0%	4.6%
  🇱🇻 Latvia	2.6%	12.5%
  🇱🇸 Lesotho	2.3%	-0.2%
  🇱🇷 Liberia	5.3%	-0.4%
  🇱🇾 Libya	7.5%	74.4%
  🇱🇹 Lithuania	2.7%	4.0%
  🇱🇺 Luxembourg	1.5%	1.7%
  🇲🇴 Macao SAR	27.2%	4.0%
  🇲🇬 Madagascar	4.8%	8.1%
  🇲🇼 Malawi	3.3%	4.5%
  🇲🇾 Malaysia	4.3%	3.8%
  🇲🇻 Maldives	5.0%	3.0%
  🇲🇱 Mali	4.8%	4.5%
  🇲🇹 Malta	3.3%	5.1%
  🇲🇭 Marshall Islands	3.0%	3.2%
  🇲🇷 Mauritania	5.3%	2.6%
  🇲🇺 Mauritius	3.8%	2.0%
  🇲🇽 Mexico*	2.7%	5.5%
  🇫🇲 Micronesia	3.1%	4.5%
  🇲🇩 Moldova	4.3%	2.4%
  🇲🇳 Mongolia	4.5%	7.0%
  🇲🇪 Montenegro	3.7%	2.6%
  🇲🇦 Morocco	3.6%	2.8%
  🇲🇿 Mozambique	5.0%	0.5%
  🇲🇲 Myanmar	2.6%	0.8%
  🇳🇦 Namibia	2.7%	0.6%
  🇳🇷 Nauru	1.3%	1.1%
  🇳🇵 Nepal	5.0%	3.0%
  🇳🇱 Netherlands	1.2%	4.1%
  🇳🇿 New Zealand	1.0%	2.9%
  🇳🇮 Nicaragua	3.3%	2.5%
  🇳🇪 Niger	11.1%	2.3%
  🇳🇬 Nigeria*	3.0%	1.2%
  🇲🇰 North Macedonia	3.2%	-0.5%
  🇳🇴 Norway	1.5%	0.8%
  🇴🇲 Oman	2.7%	6.0%
  🇵🇰 Pakistan	2.5%	3.0%
  🇵🇼 Palau	12.4%	4.5%
  🇵🇦 Panama	4.0%	1.1%
  🇵🇬 Papua New Guinea	5.0%	5.3%
  🇵🇾 Paraguay	3.8%	0.6%
  🇵🇪 Peru	2.7%	2.3%
  🇵🇭 Philippines	5.9%	-0.7%
  🇵🇱 Poland	2.3%	2.4%
  🇵🇹 Portugal	1.5%	4.0%
  🇵🇷 Puerto Rico	-0.2%	2.2%
  🇶🇦 Qatar	2.2%	2.2%
  🇷🇴 Romania	3.8%	6.2%
  🇷🇺 Russia*	2.6%	0.5%
  🇷🇼 Rwanda	7.0%	8.0%
  🇼🇸 Samoa	3.6%	2.2%
  🇸🇲 San Marino	1.3%	0.8%
  🇸🇹 São Tomé and Príncipe	2.4%	4.1%
  🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia*	2.7%	2.0%
  🇸🇳 Senegal	8.8%	4.2%
  🇷🇸 Serbia	3.0%	2.7%
  🇸🇨 Seychelles	3.9%	1.0%
  🇸🇱 Sierra Leone	4.7%	1.3%
  🇸🇬 Singapore	2.1%	2.0%
  🇸🇰 Slovak Republic	2.5%	2.5%
  🇸🇮 Slovenia	2.2%	2.8%
  🇸🇧 Solomon Islands	2.4%	0.9%
  🇸🇴 Somalia	3.7%	3.5%
  🇿🇦 South Africa*	1.0%	2.5%
  🇸🇸 South Sudan	4.2%	4.9%
  🇪🇸 Spain*	1.5%	3.2%
  🇰🇳 St. Kitts and Nevis	3.8%	6.2%
  🇱🇨 St. Lucia	2.3%	-18.3%
  🇻🇨 St. Vincent and the Grenadines	5.0%	2.1%
  🇸🇩 Sudan	0.3%	-0.7%
  🇸🇷 Suriname	3.0%	0.9%
  🇸🇪 Sweden	0.6%	4.0%
  🇨🇭 Switzerland	1.8%	0.8%
  🇹🇼 Taiwan	3.0%	6.5%
  🇹🇯 Tajikistan	5.0%	5.2%
  🇹🇿 Tanzania	6.1%	2.7%
  🇹🇭 Thailand	3.2%	4.3%
  🇹🇱 Timor-Leste	3.1%	5.6%
  🇹🇬 Togo	5.3%	1.5%
  🇹🇴 Tonga	2.5%	5.4%
  🇹🇹 Trinidad and Tobago	2.2%	2.6%
  🇹🇳 Tunisia	1.9%	2.5%
  🇹🇷 Türkiye	3.0%	1.3%
  🇹🇲 Turkmenistan	2.1%	2.5%
  🇹🇻 Tuvalu	3.5%	3.9%
  🇺🇬 Uganda	5.7%	4.6%
  🇺🇦 Ukraine	3.2%	2.0%
  🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates	4.0%	3.4%
  🇬🇧 United Kingdom*	0.6%	0.5%
  🇺🇸 U.S.*	2.1%	2.1%
  🇺🇾 Uruguay	3.3%	1.0%
  🇺🇿 Uzbekistan	5.5%	5.5%
  🇻🇺 Vanuatu	2.6%	1.5%
  🇻🇪 Venezuela	4.5%	4.0%
  🇻🇳 Vietnam	5.8%	4.7%
  🇵🇸 West Bank and Gaza	2.7%	3.0%
  🇾🇪 Yemen	2.0%	-0.5%
  🇿🇲 Zambia	4.3%	3.6%
  🇿🇼 Zimbabwe	3.6%	4.1%

  *Reflect updated figures from the January 2024 IMF Update

  In the United States, GDP growth is projected to remain moderately strong, supported by rising real wages boosting consumption across the economy.

  Yet compared to last year, growth is set to slow amid a softening labor market. In 2024, Citigroup announced it was laying off 20,000 employees after a disappointing year. Meanwhile, tech firms such as Google, Amazon, and Salesforce are reducing headcounts. Along with this, package delivery giant UPS announced 12,000 job cuts.

  In China, property market woes are dragging on economic growth. Declining real estate values have impacted incomes, assets, and the public mood. Due to these headwinds, consumption growth is forecast to drop over the year.

  Over in Latin America, Chile and Brazil were among the first emerging countries to hike interest rates in 2021—and they were some of the first to cut them last year. Thanks to improving domestic demand amid dissipating price spikes, the IMF upgraded the outlooks for Brazil and Mexico in 2024.

  The lowest growth across all regions is forecast to be seen in Europe, at 0.9%. In late 2023, Signa, a multi-billion European property firm collapsed following the sharpest rise in interest rates in the European Union’s 25-year history. Also dimming the outlook is low consumer sentiment and the impact of high energy prices.

  What are the Key Risks?

  While no one holds a crystal ball, there are certain risks outlined by the IMF that could negatively impact global GDP growth:

  • Sharply Rising Commodity Prices: If geopolitical tensions escalate in the Israel-Hamas war, it could spillover into the broader region leading to spikes in energy prices. Over a third of global oil exports are based out of the region, in addition to 14% of global gas exports. Adding to this, 11% of international trade passes through the Red Sea, which has seen continued attacks between Iran-backed Houthi rebels and strikes from the U.S. and its allies.

  • Stubborn Inflation: A return of supply disruptions paired with an overheated labor market could add inflationary pressures, potentially leading to higher interest rates. In turn, stock markets could respond adversely and financial stability could deteriorate.

  • China’s Economy Slows: A property market rout could hurt domestic growth and consumer confidence, leading to declining consumption across the country. Accounting for nearly 19% of global GDP (PPP) in 2023, a slowing Chinese economy could impact countries that rely on trade with China.

  While these risks remain present, the economy could witness positive surprises as well. Should inflation fall faster than expected, it would likely lead to monetary easing and a boost to global economic growth. Overall, the global economy defied expectations in 2023, and it may do the same in 2024.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/12/2024 – 16:40

• Why Are Solar Panels 44% Cheaper In China Than The US?
  Why Are Solar Panels 44% Cheaper In China Than The US?

  Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

  The US wants to break into the solar panel business. Doing so, if its possible at all, means costs of the solar panels and electricity will surge…

  

  China’s Grip on Solar

  The Wall Street Journal asks Can the U.S. Break China’s Grip on Solar?

  That’s a free link worth reading. The short answer is everything in China is cheaper from materials to electricity to labor.

  The process is worth a closer look, however, and the US trails significantly in every stage.

  Polysilicon

  The primary building block for some 97% of the world’s solar panels is high-purity silicon, or polysilicon. Making that silicon is the first big step in the solar manufacturing process. It is the most energy- and capital-intensive piece because of the high temperatures and expensive equipment used in refining.

  Until around 2005, polysilicon manufacturing was dominated by companies from the U.S., Europe and Japan. With China’s huge expansion and investment into solar, that has flipped. In 2023, roughly 91% of the polysilicon for solar panels was produced in China.

  Recently, the U.S. has effectively banned the use of most Chinese polysilicon in imported solar panels because much of it is made in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang, where the U.S. has accused Chinese authorities of committing human-rights abuses including forced labor, allegations that Beijing denies.

  Today, U.S. buyers are increasingly relying on solar panels that use polysilicon made outside of China. Those supplies are tight, and keep prices for the U.S. market higher than for other markets.

  Ingots and wafers

  In the next part of the process, the solar-grade silicon is melted in furnaces then cooled into big rod-shaped crystals called ingots. The ingots are sawed into thin slices called wafers.

  China makes more than 97% of the world’s solar ingots and wafers. The U.S. makes none.

  Ingot manufacturing is very energy-intensive due to the high temperatures used.

  China has built many factories in areas with cheap power from coal or hydroelectric plants. The bulk of China’s solar manufacturing is in provinces where electricity costs are nearly 30% below the global industrial average.

  Sand and other materials

  High-quality quartz sand is used to produce special containers, called crucibles, for melting the silicon.

  Most of the world’s sand used in ingot production comes from the Appalachian mountains in North Carolina. But almost all of it is shipped straight to China, which makes the bulk of the world’s crucibles.

  Would-be crucible makers in the U.S. could have trouble getting sand. And would-be ingot and wafer makers in the U.S. will probably be buying the crucibles from China, bumping up costs.

  Cell manufacturing

  This is the stage at which the silicon becomes a device that can convert sunlight into electricity. There are many different ways of making solar cells, but in most, wafers are treated with chemicals and etched with circuits.

  China controls around 80% of the solar-cell market, largely because of cost advantages, and because it controls other steps of the supply chain, which lets it build ecosystems of suppliers. Many Chinese cell manufacturers also produce wafers or panels.

  The U.S. currently has no solar-cell manufacturers, with the last few pulling out of the country or going bankrupt within the past few years. Many companies have said they are planning to build solar-cell factories following the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. More announcements are expected since it doesn’t require as much initial investment as silicon or wafer manufacturing.

  Solar Panels

  Solar-panel manufacturing is effectively an assembly process. Companies take cells and line them between sheets of glass or another material, connect them with wires, laminate the whole thing and place it in a frame. Then wires and other electronics are added to connect the panels to each other and the larger electrical system.

  This is the easiest and least capital-intensive piece of the solar supply chain, and the part that is most widely dispersed around the world. China accounted for 83% of the world’s solar-panel production and the U.S. less than 2% in 2023.

  In Europe

  Reuters reports With Solar industry in Crisis, Europe in a Bind Over Chinese Imports

  Europe’s green energy transition is stuck between a rock and a hard place. A flood of cheap Chinese solar panel imports is driving record solar energy installations. But those same imports are crushing Europe’s few local solar manufacturers.

  Europe just had a bumper year for green energy. European Union countries installed record levels of solar capacity, 40% more than in 2022. The vast majority of those panels and parts came from China – in some cases, 95%, International Energy Agency data show.

  German Economy Minister Robert Habeck wrote to the European Commission in November, expressing concern that the EU executive was about to slap trade restrictions on Chinese solar imports, a letter seen by Reuters showed.

  Habeck warned restricting Chinese imports could kill off Europe’s rapid expansion of green energy and make 90% of the PV market more expensive. It risked bankruptcies among EU companies that assemble and install solar panels using imported parts, he said.

  “You can’t reduce dependency on China in the short term or you don’t build the projects,” Miguel Stilwell d’Andrade, CEO of Portuguese utility EDP, told Reuters.
  He noted that solar panel prices have climbed in the United States, which has duties on Chinese imports. “It is having an inflationary impact … the price of panels is more than double that of Europe,” he said.

  Rather than being happy about cheap panels that help a green transition, the EU nannycrats are up in arms. So are President Biden and Donald Trump.

  60 Percent Tariffs

  The Inflation Reduction Act aims to bring some of the above processes back to the US. But it will not level the playing field on labor costs or electricity costs. Nor does the US have the plants.

  The US can easily catch up on technical know how, but it is going to lose out on every other step without huge additional tariffs.

  Both Biden and Trump are willing to do so. Trump proposes 60 percent tariffs on China. To date, Biden took Tariffs trump imposed and increased most of them.

  If the US puts 60 percent tariffs on China, the final costs will rise at least 60 percent and we will need much more electricity as well. So electricity costs will jump too.

  There are big inflationary pressures on many fronts.

  Minimum Wages Hikes at California Fast Food Restaurants

  On September 28, I noted Minimum Wage for Fast Food Workers Jumps 30% to $20 Per Hour in California

  More inflation is coming your way. California again leads the way.The bill will force many small restaurants out of business or they will pony up too. If McDonalds pays $20, why take $15.50 elsewhere? The $4.50 hike from $15.50 to $20 is a massive 30 percent jump.More inflation is coming your way. California again leads the way.

  Student Debt Cancellation

  President Biden is bragging the Supreme Court didn’t stop him from handing out still more inflationary free money.

  

  “The Supreme Court Didn’t Stop Me” said Biden on more student debt cancellation.

  The True Costs of Net Zero Are Becoming Impossible to Hide

  On February 6, I noted The True Costs of Net Zero Are Becoming Impossible to Hide

  Bloomberg reports a 48% Surge in Costs Wrecks Biden’s Much-Lauded Wind-Power Plans.

  Even with massive subsidies, these projects are not economical.

  Big Explosion of Government and Social Assistance Jobs

  President Biden is bragging about job growth in 2023. But he doesn’t say where those jobs are.

  

  Data from the BLS, chart and calculations by Mish.

  As a direct result of migration Denver Health at “Critical Point” as 8,000 Migrants Make 20,000 Emergency Visits

  Denver Health CEO Donna Lynne warned Denver Health is at a critical, critical point. Eight-thousand migrants from Central America accounted for approximately 20,000 visits in 2023.

  Denver Health asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide funds for immigrants’ medical costs. The state and federal governments aren’t reimbursing the hospital, which spent $136 million for patients who didn’t pay.

  For more discussion, please see Big Explosion of Government and Social Assistance Jobs in 2023 to Help Migrants

  For now, we have disinflation, a slower increase in prices, not falling prices.

  I wonder how long that can last given the huge number of inflationary pressures that are still on deck.

  Fed Chairman Tells 60 Minutes US Fiscal Path is Unsustainable

  Also note that Jerome Powell told 60 Minutes the US Fiscal Path is Unsustainable

  Fed Chair Jerome Powell tells 60 Minutes that it’s “urgent” the US address its “Unsustainable Fiscal Path”

  I list 15 key takeaways from the interview.

  In light of unsustainable fiscal policy, the end of global wage arbitrage, the end of just in time manufacturing, and huge tariffs, I do not see the happy soft landing that nearly everyone including the Feds now sees.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/12/2024 – 16:20

• 0DTE Punters Pump And Dump Momentum Stocks As "Parabolic" Tech Hits An Airpocket
  0DTE Punters Pump And Dump Momentum Stocks As “Parabolic” Tech Hits An Airpocket

  For a few hours there it seemed like the “market” was about to blast off in a carbon-copy replica of the dot com bubble.

  With futures opening flat after Asia was closed for trading and with most traders sitting on the sideline ahead of tomorrow’s CPI print, it didn’t take long for the algos and the 0DTE crew to take control of market flows and promptly lift the Mag Seven (or rather the Mag AI since most of the 7 participants did not take part in today’s meltup and instead it was just the AI names) to new all time highs with the liftathon however fizzling the moment Europe closed. And then in the early afternoon, the party suddenly ended with a whimper, when two two consecutive dumps in 0DTE sparked an initial retracement of all gains and subsequently pushed it to session lows and – gasp – down on the day…

  

  … which also triggered the biggest sell program of the day, as seen in the TICK puke just after 2pm.

  

  The mini vortex first pushed such parabolic tech bubble names as ARM (which is so clearly and grotesqsuely manipulated by SoftBank again, one has to an en even greater moron than the SEC not to notice it), NVDA and SMCI to new all time highs, before an air pocket emerged, sending both names in the red for the day before the dip buyers made another appearance.

  

  The continued meltup in the AIvantgarde names was enough to briefly push NVDA market cap above that of AMZN, and is now breathing down GOOGL’s neck.

  

  In the end, however, the attempt to force another all time high failed, and even though spoos earlier hit a new all time high of 5,066 they closed down 0.1%,  with the Nasdaq also sliding to close 0.4% lower…

  

  … which however did nothing to reverse the brutal squeeze that has sent the most shorted names soaring in the past week.

  

  And speaking of ARM Holdings, its its latest 29% meltup has now brought the 3 days surge to 93%.

  • *ARM SOARS 29% TO BRING THREE-DAY JUMP TO MORE THAN 93%

  

  For those confused, the move is nothing more than another gamma squeeze orchestrated by SoftBank, the same trader who famously sparked the market-wide Gamma squeeze of the Nasdaq in the summer of 2020.

  Softbank is certainly not known for forced gamma squeezes https://t.co/zFyRKkAoZ6

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 8, 2024

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

  To be sure, if the market is about to crack, and Goldman warned over the weekend that that may indeed be the case as there are quite a few disconnects below the surface..

  

  … we may have a long way to drop as the coming 30% drop in Momemtum would claim quite a few “AI” names.

  

  Yet even a 30% drop, which Goldman specifically warned may be coming…

  

  … would do little to dent the unprecedented outperformance of the Mag 7 vs pretty much everything else.

  

  The rest of the market – and the rest of the day – was rather boring, with rates virtually unchanged, as the 10Y closed at 4.17%, flat on the day…

  

  … and FX was even more boring with the BBDXY also flat. The only notable outlier was crypto, with bitcoin surging above $50,000 for the first time since Dec 2021 and even Ether finally preparing to break out…

  

  … as all those aggressively shorting every pop higher in the cryptocurrency via futures get REKT.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 02/12/2024 – 16:17

• Boston Couple Sign Up To House Illegal Immigrants, Get Four Delivered Within An Hour
  Boston Couple Sign Up To House Illegal Immigrants, Get Four Delivered Within An Hour

  Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

  A couple in Boston signed up to a government scheme to house illegal immigrants in their own home and were delivered an entire family of four within an hour, according to a CBS News report.

  

  “When Colin and Jessica Stokes called the state to sign up to be a host family, it took less than an hour for the displaced migrants to be dropped off at their door,” the report notes, adding “The family of four, who didn’t want to go on camera, had made been sleeping at Logan Airport“

  The couple, Colin and Jessica Stokes, said that “they knew they had the means and wanted to step up,” and that “It has been wonderful.”

  “I was like I have to get sheets on the beds. How many people are coming? Where are they from? What ages. We really knew nothing,” Mrs Stokes told reporters, with her husband adding “The need is so clearly overwhelming.”

  A couple said they were willing to provide shelter for illegal immigrants sleeping in Boston Logan airport. Within an hour the government sent a family of 4 to live in their house. @elonmusk was right when he said “They will come for your homes.” Report: https://t.co/m11isvHRGo pic.twitter.com/yGLdcYVOyp

  — m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) February 12, 2024

  X owner Elon Musk, who has vocally charged that the Biden Administration is encouraging and aiding mass illegal immigration, previously warned that soon people would be giving up their homes to house immigrants as there is no where else for them to go.

  Musk was right.

  As we previously highlighted, illegal immigrants are being found sleeping in airports all over the country as states such as Texas are bussing them further north once they have crossed the border and been processed.

  Meanwhile, Department Of Homeland Security head Alejandro Mayorkas has again refused to take responsibility for what is happening on the Southern border, declaring that “Congress is the only one who can fix it.”

  *  *  *

  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
  Mon, 02/12/2024 – 15:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• The Coming 2024 Leftist Election Grift
  The Coming 2024 Leftist Election Grift

  Authored by Daniel Street via American Greatness,

  The 2024 U.S. presidential election will likely pit former President Donald J. Trump against current President Joseph Biden in an epic rematch of the 2020 election.  As most Americans know, in 2020, the Democrats and their allies on the far left reached deep into their bag of dirty tricks to put Biden in the White House.  They will undoubtedly pull out all of the stops yet again in 2024.  This time, however, far more people are watching and are aware of the grifts being run in our elections by the left. 

  With so many election integrity groups and concerned citizens watching this time around, what will the Democrats do to tilt the results in their favor? 

  They have quite a few arrows in their quiver, but virtually every trick relies on one thing: dirty voter rolls.

  

  Voter rolls filled with unqualified voters—for instance, voters without a valid address or with an insufficient or incorrect address—are ready-made for fraud.  A mailed ballot may go out to that person, but if the address is wrong or incorrect, the ballot will not reach the voter.  These “floating ballots” are often gathered and cast as votes illegitimately.  These practices, along with many others, are widely practiced around the country.

  Election integrity groups all over America are fighting to clean voter rolls, state-by-state and town-by-town.  Progress has been made.  For instance, election integrity groups worked hard to clean up Wisconsin’s voter rolls after the 2020 election.  Using fractal technology to tie voter rolls to addresses in state property tax databases, phantom voters are being removed from voter rolls throughout the country, making mail in ballot shenanigans more difficult.  In Michigan, an election integrity group puts qualified voter file data at your fingertips, allowing ineligible voter registrations to be readily identified.  These are just a smattering of the efforts going on across the country to clean up voter rolls, but hopefully the point is made: A lot of people are doing good work to try to clean up the voter rolls all over the country.

  What is the problem, then?  How will the Democrats and far-left non-governmental organizations (NGOs) tip the scales back in their favor? 

  Part of the answer is the National Voter Registration Act(NVRA). This Act is commonly known as the Motor Voter Law, because it mandates states to allow people to register to vote when obtaining a driver’s license.  While this law actually requires states to remove the names of ineligible voters and to maintain “accurate” lists of registered voters and is used by election integrity groups to challenge inaccurate voter rolls, other provisions are problematic.

  The NVRA provision presenting the problem in this context is  52 U.S.C. §20507(c)(2)(A). 

  This provision creates what is known as the “quiet period” in the 90 days leading up to a federal election and prohibits states from “systematically” removing “names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters” during that 90-day window.  As the court observed in Arcia v. Fla. Sec’y of State, 772 F. 3d 1335 (11th Cir. 2014), the NRVA allows three forms of removals in the 90 days before an election: (1) removals at the request of the registrant; (2) removals for criminal conviction or mental incapacity; and (3) removals upon the death of the registrant.  In that case, the court prohibited the Florida secretary of state from systematically removing illegally registered people who were not American citizens in the 90-day “quiet period.”

  How will the left seek to take advantage of this 90-day “quiet period” where voters may not be systematically removed from the rolls? 

  What happened in Muskegon County, Michigan, in 2020 is illustrative. In October 2020, thousands of voter registration applications were filed in Muskegon County, Michigan.  The city clerk was immediately suspicious, as many of the applications were in the same handwriting and contained incomplete or invalid addresses.  The city clerk reported the matter to local police.  An investigation confirmed many of the registrations were fraudulent and that the company gathering and submitting the registrations worked with Democratic political organizations, including working with the Biden campaign in multiple States in 2020.

  The police interview with the contractor’s “compliance officer” was obtained by an independent researcher and released in November 2023.  In it, the employee outlines the problems with “false registrations” that were happening “everywhere,” not just in Muskegon.  Listen to this person’s interview for more on the type of organization this is and how it operates.

  Under a provision of the Federal Voting Rights Act, 52 U.S.C. §10307(c), a person who knowingly or willfully gives false information as to his “name, address, or period of residence” to register to vote or “who conspires with another individual” for the purpose of encouraging false registration may be imprisoned for 5 years.  Despite this, no one was prosecuted for the thousands of false voter registrations submitted in Muskegon, Michigan.  In fact, instead of expanding the investigation to other jurisdictions in Michigan as well as into other states, the investigation was shut down, according to news reports.  That does not inspire much confidence in the people in charge of maintaining the integrity of our elections, does it?

  In the 90-day “quiet period” established by the NVRA, local election officials are effectively the only screening system in place to block unlawful voter registrations.  While challenging an individual registration remains possible in the 90-day “quiet period,” challenging thousands of registrations submitted on a particular day or series of days will undoubtedly be a prohibited “systematic” challenge.  Do you think these officials in many of the Democrat bastions in big cities would refuse to accept these bogus registrations?  Do you think what happened in Muskegon, Michigan, was an aberration? In jurisdiction after jurisdiction and city after city, piles of fraudulent registration applications will probably be readily accepted.  After all, why not?

  The bottom line is that the entire Democrat and far-left get-out-the-vote apparatus will be in overdrive in the 90 days before the 2024 presidential election, submitting as many voter registrations as possible (valid or not) in order to harvest as many ballots as conceivably possible. 

  This will be one of the primary battlegrounds that will determine the outcome of the 2024 election.  Is the RNC ready for it? 

  If “what’s past is prologue,” the answer is probably not. Election integrity groups are doing what they can, but they will need your help. 

  If Americans hope to maintain legitimate elections, 2024 is the time for “all hands on deck.”

  *  *  *

  Daniel R. Street is an attorney with over 25 years of litigation experience.  He is the author of the Fake News Exposed about Trump book series.  Links to his books, substack, social media and more may be found at his website danielrstreet.com.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 23:20

• Nor'easter Aims For Northeast Early Next Week
  Nor’easter Aims For Northeast Early Next Week

  Unseasonably warm temperatures in the Northeast are ending to start the week as a snowstorm approaches. We have been following a “pattern change” since mid-last week, warning days ago of the increasing possibility of a snowstorm impacting the Mid-Alantic and Northeast regions. 

  AccuWeather meteorologists say Ohio Valley, Mid-Atlantic, central Appalachians, and southern New England will see rain or a mixture of rain, wet snow, and sleet to start Monday. By night, portions of the central Appalachians, the upper mid-Atlantic, and New England will transition to all snow, and some areas could receive significant accumulation. 

  

  “The way the cold air will invade the storm it appears the best bet for a heavy snowfall will be from northern Pennsylvania to southeastern upstate New York, and southern and central New England, especially from northeastern Pennsylvania on to the east from Monday night to Tuesday evening,” AccuWeather Chief On-Air Meteorologist Bernie Rayno said. 

  

  Richmond, Virginia, Washington, DC and Baltimore are forecasted to receive mostly rain. Philadelphia might receive a coating, with higher odds of a few inches in northern and western suburbs. On Monday night, New York City, Manhattan could receive upwards of 2 inches. As for Boston and Hartford, Connecticut, these areas could expect meaningful snowfall. 

  More from Accuweather on the snow forecast: 

  The Poconos in northeastern Pennsylvania and the Endless Mountains along Pennsylvania’s northern tier are likely to pick up 6-10 inches of snow, while the lower elevation cities along the Susquehanna River, like Harrisburg and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, may struggle to pick up 3 inches of slush. Other spots with the best chance for 6-10 inches of snow and locally higher amounts include the Catskills of eastern New York and much of Massachusetts, including the hills west of Boston.

  “For much of the central Appalachians to central and southern New England, accumulations will be highly dependent on elevation, where hilly areas and the mountains will pick up much more snow than the valleys or immediate coastal places,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Adam Douty said.

  

  Here’s what other meteorologists on X are saying about the upcoming storm:

  much stronger…. NYC and juuuuust north gets heavy snow on this run pic.twitter.com/97TgPgcbFI

  — NsfwWx ❄️ (@NsfwWx) February 11, 2024

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

  National Weather Service forecasts updating for Nor’easter storm event 💣❄️

  Boston 10.4″ 📈
  NYC 1.5″

  Maximum location would receive: 14.1″ pic.twitter.com/LKot5jxu10

  — Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) February 11, 2024

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

  The impact map for tomorrow night through Tuesday has been updated! Premium Consulting Members, the impact map in the Premium Dashboard is zoomable down to your street! #nywx #njwx #pawx #ctwx pic.twitter.com/t0IBso6a0k

  — NY NJ PA Weather (@nynjpaweather) February 11, 2024

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

  Could it be… a Bulls-eye in the Wyoming Valley???
  No. Probably not.#PAwx #wxtwitter #NEPA #wxX pic.twitter.com/5AawkzRd1K

  — Mark Margavage (@MeteoMark) February 11, 2024

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

  Meanwhile, Punxsutawney Phil – the famous groundhog weather oracle – might have been wrong in his early spring forecast. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 22:45

• When "Good For You" Is Too Good
  When “Good For You” Is Too Good

  Authored by Todd Hayen via Off-Guardian.org,

  The ultimate “good for you” is to be dead. At least that is what it would be if some outside authority, or entity, was watching our human behaviour and assessing what looks to be the “best” for us – meaning that if we are dead, nothing bad can happen to us. I would assume that if we fed all of the information a typical human life creates into a supercomputer, and then asked it “What is the best state of being for a human being” it would spit out, “that it never be born, and if alive, it would be safest, (best, good,) for it to be dead.”

  The next notch down from this perfection would be to live in a bubble, literally.

  Apparently, there are some people who have no immune systems who have to do this (remember the Seinfeld episode, “The Bubble Boy”?)

  

  The next notch down is to be a recluse, to live on some little patch of land, in a little house, and venture out only into your local neighbourhood to buy fish sticks, Twinkies, and RC Cola.

  You would never fly in a plane, and never drive as well.

  The next notch down is the spot that most people seem to wish they occupied.

  This place in the sun is actually sunless. Or at least as sunless as you can make it. Here we find gobs of sunscreen, dark glasses on cloudy days, heavy coats in the fall, and umbrellas in summer. We find ourselves avoiding nearly everything that can be avoided, except the things, of course, that actually do harm us, like McDonalds’ “Big Macs” and a nice can of Diet Coke. Here we avoid travel to dicey countries (which includes nearly all of them), if we travel at all. We avoid being in the same room with someone who is coughing or sneezing or looking the least bit odd, and we essentially avoid taking any risks whatsoever. Nearly everything is dangerous, and it is best to avoid anything unknown, dubious in nature, or not recommended by the guys and gals in white coats with the antique medical device hanging around their neck.

  A person at this level of existence is alive but certainly not living.

  Why are people into this?

  Well, once again, we can thank Mr. Agenda.

  Before I was “awakened” I used to muse at this phenomenon and wonder how it could have happened naturally and organically. I thought about all the men clambering on board boats and planes to go to Europe to fight in the trenches in 1917, as well as in 1941. I thought of the scads of pioneers setting out on the perilous journey across the American continent during the decades after the Civil War. I thought of the untold numbers who left the comfort of their homes (which at the time probably wasn’t all that comfortable) to hazard the jungles of Central America to work on the malaria-infested Panama Canal, and the same untold numbers of brave men and women who set out on various journeys in dark and dangerous parts of the world to pursue fame and fortune, or to lend their humanitarian hand in helping others less fortunate.

  Where are all of these people today? Sure, there are a few left, but nowhere as many as there used to be. Now most people are terrified to step out of their house, and if they are told by Big Brother to avoid coming close to other humans, or to wear a piece of paper or cloth over their quivering face, they do so frantically and obediently.

  Did this decline in chutzpah happen as a natural consequence of social evolution?

  No. I don’t think so.

  Now I believe it is part of the plan—the agenda.

  Ol’ Dr. Paranoia’s mind at work again. Maybe so, but I suspect there are a lot of you out there in the same psych ward as me.

  Not only have we been dumbed down, but our natural sense of “joie de vivre” has been all but entirely sucked out of our collective soul. I see this particularly in men, which needless to say have been a major focus of the agenda. But, of course, it is found in all of us, men and women alike.

  We have become a nation (or nations) of wimps. When a Covid particle allegedly enters a room, we jump up on the nearest chair and shriek, much like the proverbial fragile women of the Victorian age presumably did when they saw a mouse (if they did this, it was probably all an act to help men feel more manly). Only difference is that you can see a mouse, but you must be told the Covid particle is in the air. And guess who told us? Yep, Mr. Agenda. We are wimps. Enough said. And the agenda wishes us to be wimps because fear is the devil’s greatest and most effective weapon.

  Along with fear, there is the carrot—a reward for behaviour, or even an enticement to comply by convincing us whatever we are expected to comply with is good for us. And not only us, but for everyone! So, the vaccine is good for us because it keeps us from getting a deadly disease (or so we are told). Wearing masks is good for us, and keeping a “social distance” is good for us. All these things keep us safe, wearing latex gloves, sloshing poison disinfectant on our hands, and staying at home out of the swarm of Covid nasties flying about on the street. We must do what we can to live safe lives, safe from all the horrible things that nature wants to throw at us. Always remember, the agenda tells us, nature is our enemy.

  And this is only part of it. We are now protected from everything because just about everything wants to take a chunk out of us. Not only that, but it isn’t even good for us to own things, because owning things is a pain, and makes our life difficult. It is much easier to just rent stuff. It is also good for us to be lazy and avoid doing anything at all. Why not play virtual games rather than travel, why not have that conference that took us to Las Vegas every year in our bedroom on Zoom? Why not have therapy virtually, or even visit our doctor through the computer or phone?

  Why not get a salary paid by the government for doing nothing? How about getting an advanced academic degree without having to go to any classes? What about winning a gold medal in women’s swimming when you are a man and can beat all those little ladies’ times in your sleep? Sure, it is best for us not to drive too much or have to go out of town to meet friends or go to that cool restaurant that’s 20 miles away. It’s safer and better for us to work at home too. In fact, why not just stay at home and do everything there, and have every meal there, even if we want a nice evening without having to stay at home, which used to be a nice visit to a beautiful restaurant, with maybe some nice live music. Nope. Now it’s Uber Eats. That’s good too. It’s all good for us, safe, convenient, takes no effort or skill, and fun. We’re happy, right?

  Anyone know where you can buy a nice, cheap, plastic bubble?

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 22:10

• Beware Of The Philanthropaths!
  Beware Of The Philanthropaths!

  Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

  I think this made up word in the meme below perfectly captures the tyrannical billionaire psychopaths who seem to have gained control of the world using their billions, while portraying themselves as the saviors of humanity.

  Whenever I see the term Foundation related to one of these psychopaths, I know that Foundation is nothing more than a front to achieve their evil agenda.

  And if ever their was a poster boy for philanthropaths across the world, it would be Mister depopulation/vaccine pusher/farmer Bill Gates and his Gates Foundation.

  

  Gates, Soros, Bloomberg and the Clintons represent the evil forces in this world, using their wealth, power, and control of the regime media to push their agenda of chaos, death, destruction, and depopulation. They all use their “Charitable” Foundations as a means to their evil ends, while being portrayed by the media they have bought off, as generous philanthropists improving the lives of the poor and downtrodden.

  It is all a ruse, easily revealed to anyone willing to dig just below the surface of these Potemkin foundations.

  Bill Gates has openly articulated his belief the world needs billions less people.

  Everything he does, supports, and funds, actively promotes achieving his psychotic death wish for those he considers useless eaters. Gates funded Event 201 in October 2019, laying out the master plan for the Covid plandemic, while at the same time funding the vaccines for a disease that supposedly didn’t exist yet.

  This psychopath was front and center in pushing billions across the globe to be injected with this untested toxic DNA altering concoction.

  

  It is now unequivocally provable these vaccines killed millions immediately, millions more slowly and methodically, and stopped millions more from ever being born by drastically altering the fertility of young people who had ZERO risk from covid, but were forced to be injected by the authorities and their bought off lackeys. This psycho has also funded the introduction of GMO mosquitos into the wild. Suddenly, cases of malaria have risen. This mental defective has funded fake chemically produced meat, while buying up farmland across the country, with no intention of farming. He funds new vaccines, using Africans as his guinea pigs. He funds geo-engineering (aka chemtrails) to block the sun, because his high school degree makes him not only a vaccine expert, but a climate expert too.

  

  Psycho Soros made his billions manipulating financial markets through insider information, so now he fancies himself as puppet master of politicians, the media, and NGOs across the globe. He is single-handedly responsible for the ongoing destruction of America and most of the western world. It has taken billions of dollars to transport the millions of invaders placed at our southern border. Soros is the psychopath funding this invasion under the cover of his foundation and the hundreds of “charitable” organizations he funds to make sure the invaders have the means to successfully enter our country and western Europe.

  His sole purpose is to destroy American and western culture, create chaos, maximize societal strife, and destroy every vestige of community, normalcy, and peaceful coexistence. Soros is behind the selection of the DAs in every urban enclave in America, who refuse to enforce the law, encourage crime, and purposefully destroy the cities they were entrusted to protect. Soros wants rampant crime, illegal immigrants overwhelming cities, uncontrolled drug use, mass homelessness, rigged elections through mail-in ballot fraud, and the downfall of America. All done through “legal” means, and cheered on by the regime media he funds.

  I could go on with examples about Bloomberg and the Clintons, but it gets repetitive, as these philanthropaths all have the same general purpose. They use their massive wealth, power, and control to gain more wealth, power and control, while inflicting their psychopathic beliefs upon an unsuspecting populace just trying to live their lives.

  Most people are not psychopaths. Only this micro-fraction of truly evil people with massive levels of wealth are the true enemy of us all. They are relatively easy to expose.

  

  If the plebs ever gained the courage to stand up to these psychopaths and made examples of a few, the tide might be able to be turned. I’m not optimistic, but it just takes one.

  *  *  *

  To support Jim’s site, donate via Stripe here.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 21:00

• NYC 'Super Speeders' Amass Hundreds Of Speeding Tickets
  NYC ‘Super Speeders’ Amass Hundreds Of Speeding Tickets

  “Super speeders” in New York – or people who have racked up over 100 infractions for going 10 miles per hour or more above the speed limit – are on the rise. In New York City, of all places. Is nothing sacred anymore?

  In a report published last week by Bloomberg, it was revealed that these repeat offenders are racking up tickets at a greater share than they ever have. In fact, according to the report, the city was equipped with 1,300 automated traffic enforcement cameras spread throughout its boroughs in 2020. This amounted for just 4 drivers reaching the ‘super speeder’ threshold. 

  But by 2023, as the number of these cameras nearly doubled, the count of drivers meeting this criterion surged to 186, with one individual alone amassing 373 tickets. In the previous year, the number of speed camera tickets accumulated by fewer than 200 drivers was equivalent to the total received by the lowest-ranked 25,000 drivers.

  Amid a national rise in traffic fatalities, which has been exacerbated by the pandemic, speeding remains a key factor in roughly a third of all US roadway deaths. In response, cities are increasingly turning to automated enforcement, like speed cameras, a measure supported by health organizations for its potential to lessen accidents and save lives.

  However, the effectiveness of such strategies is not absolute.

  

  New York City’s extensive speed camera program, initiated a decade ago under the Vision Zero initiative by Mayor Bill de Blasio, now includes around 2,500 cameras, operating 24/7 since August 2022, Bloomberg writes.

  Since this expansion, there’s been a 33% drop in tickets per hour issued, indicating a general reduction in speeding as most drivers reduce their speed after receiving one or two tickets. Yet, a significant rise in repeat offenses among a small group of persistent violators highlights the complexity of addressing traffic safety solely through enforcement. These “super speeders” now represent a majority of speeding violations, with outstanding fines averaging over $11,000 each.

  New York is advancing traffic law enforcement with proposals to hike fines and lower speed limits, though their future is uncertain.

  A previous initiative targeting dangerous drivers was discontinued due to its ineffectiveness. An audit also found that illegal or missing license plates led to a $100 million revenue loss from unenforceable camera tickets. Despite challenges, New York’s method of connecting tickets to plates and its extensive camera network could inspire other cities.

  Transportation researcher Marcel Moran commented to Bloomberg: “So I think that New York has succeeded in one of its objectives. But the other piece is, ‘What do we do about the extremes?’ That’s when the penalty design really becomes suspect.”

  He continued: “There’s no lawbreaking more normalized than speeding. There is a norm in the US of driving 10 miles over the speed limit, which results in the enforcement component: You cannot be written up for speeding unless you’re going over 10. So that enforcement norm becomes a behavioral norm.”

  Read Bloomberg’s full report here. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 20:30

• The "Unassailable" Theory Faces A Potential Unanimous Rejection
  The “Unassailable” Theory Faces A Potential Unanimous Rejection

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  This week, the argument before the Supreme Court in Trump v. Anderson captivated the nation as the justices considered the disqualification of former President Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot. For some of us, the argument brought back vivid memories of covering Bush v. Gore almost 25 years ago. While one justice (Clarence Thomas) remains on the Court, the last major intervention of the Court into a close presidential election is a matter of distant history.

  

  As someone who covered both cases, much is regrettably familiar: the deep division in the country and rage of many advocates. However, unlike in 2000, the Court itself appears virtually unanimous in this case. The biggest difference is not the Court but the coverage.

  The Trump case exposed the erosion of legal coverage in the media. For millions of Americans, the cold reception of all of the justices to the novel theory under the 14th Amendment came as a surprise. Networks and newspapers have been featuring experts who assured the public that this theory was well-based and disqualification well-established. The only barrier, they insisted, was the blind partisanship of the six conservative justices on the Court.

  Twenty-four years ago, I was covering the Bush v. Gore case for CBS. I had just left NBC as an analyst when the election controversy exploded. While there were the usual partisans and some outlets slanted the merits, the legal analysis was overall balanced and informative.

  This is not a case of the Court changing. We have changed as legal analysts.

  The Court itself is deeply divided on some issues.

  However, the justices gave a fair hearing to both sides. That is not the case with the coverage.

  Looking back at the coverage, most legacy media called upon the same legal experts who have previously endorsed virtually every claim made against Trump.

  They predictably declared Trump as clearly disqualified despite the fact that this theory has never been embraced by the federal courts.

  Figures like federal court Judge J. Michael Luttig who called these arguments against disqualification as “revealing, fatuous, and politically and constitutionally cynical.” 

  Others insisted that the argument that the provision might not apply to presidents was “absurd.” That was the argument pushed by Justice Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson.

  Many of the media turned to Professor Laurence Tribe despite a long record of constitutional claims rejected by the Court, in some cases unanimously.

  Tribe assured the public that the theory was “unassailable” and also insisted that the theory (later voiced by Jackson) is “an absurd interpretation.”

  It is important that such views are heard in the coverage.

  The problem is that the media has, once again, pushed this novel (and in my view unfounded) theory to the point that many assumed that it was indeed unassailable.

  What was most troubling is the repeated attacks on the Court by legal experts who suggested that the only thing keeping Trump on the ballot was the bias of conservative justices.  Rep. Jamie Raskin (D. Md.) declared “This is their opportunity to behave like real Supreme Court justices.”

  It appears that both Justices Kagan and Jackson did not behave like “real Supreme Court justices” in oral argument by objecting to core aspects of this theory.

  We will have to wait for the final opinion but most of us are predicting a reversal of Colorado and the possibility of a unanimous or near unanimous decision.

  The question is whether such a result will change how media outlets frame these disputes in the future.

  After weeks of portraying the opposition as only resting with the right of the Court, the coverage had a weird disjointed feel as some of the same commentators reported that the justices appeared uniformly unconvinced by this “unassailable” theory.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 20:00

• Gaslight Supreme: Mayorkas Says "We Don't Bear Responsibility" For Border Crisis
  Gaslight Supreme: Mayorkas Says “We Don’t Bear Responsibility” For Border Crisis

  The Biden administration can’t stop lying to the American public.

  

  On Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had the audacity to claim that the Biden administration doesn’t bear responsibility for the border crisis, despite, among other things:

  • Terminating the National Emergency at the Southwest border
  • Revoking a Trump-era Executive Order that was designed to ensure there was meaningful enforcement of U.S. immigration laws.
  • Issuing an executive order protecting DACA recipients
  • Unveiling the U.S. Citizenship Act, which would provide amnesty to millions of illegal aliens in the U.S., demonstrating intent to reward illegal border crossers with a path to citizenship.
  • Announcing a 100-day moratorium on deportations and immigration enforcement, effectively providing amnesty to criminal and other removable aliens

  (It’s a really long list…)

  And since Biden was sworn in as president in January 2021, there have been at least 7 million encounters near the southern border, while the government deals with a backlog of more than 3 million asylum cases in US courts.

  Appearing on NBC‘s “Meet the Press,” Mayorkas claimed: “It certainly is a crisis. And, well, we don’t bear responsibility for a broken system, and we’re doing a tremendous amount within the system. But fundamentally, Congress is the only one who can fix it.”

  And of course, zero pushback from the ‘journalist’ sitting across from him.

  “Do you bear responsibility for what is happening at the border?”

  MAYORKAS: “We don’t bear responsibility” pic.twitter.com/rCdwOIAIAX

  — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 11, 2024

  So the narrative is: Biden inherited a broken border from Trump.

  How much gaslighting can a country take before even Democrats call bullshit?

  Mayorkas’ comments come after a failed effort by House Republicans to impeach him – in part because Rep. Al Green (D-TX) was wheeled into Congress from the hospital to vote following abdominal surgery.

  “Sometimes when you’re counting votes and people show up when they’re not expected to be in the building, it changes the equation,” said Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) afterward, the NY Post reports.

  According to Mayorkas, “They’re baseless allegations,” adding “That’s why I really am not distracted by them and focused on the work of the Department of Homeland Security.”

  House Republicans have accused Mayorkas of “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” while presiding over the border crisis and “breach of public trust” for allegedly lying to Congress by saying the border is “secure” and that DHS has “operational control” of it.

  In addition to the impeachment effort against Mayorkas falling by the wayside, a sweeping bipartisan border security reform package in the Senate collapsed last week.

  The deal had been negotiated for some four months and was widely seen as a means of unlocking Republican support for a broader supplemental featuring aid to Ukraine, Israel and Indo-Pacific allies. -NY Post

  “The system has not been fixed for 30 years. A bipartisan group of senators [has] now presented us with the tools and resources we need … and yet Congress killed it before even reading it,” said Mayorkas, following a failed Senate spending plan which would allocate a scant amount to the border, while providing Ukraine and Israel with roughly $80 billion in aid.

  And yet, Biden could simply issue executive orders like Trump in order to close the border.

   

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  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 19:35

• Gold Wars: The US Versus Europe During The Demise Of Bretton Woods
  Gold Wars: The US Versus Europe During The Demise Of Bretton Woods

  By Jan Nieuwenhuijs of Gainvesville Coins

  The story on the emergence of the US dollar hegemony.

  * * *

  After the collapse of Bretton Woods in 1971 several European central banks tried setting up a new gold pool to stabilize the price and move to a quasi gold standard. The US wanted to phase out gold from the system and enforce a dollar standard on the world.

  What frightened the US was that Europe held the most gold and alluded to raising the gold price periodically to create liquidity, giving them the dominant means of creating reserves. Through its military presence in Germany, protecting it from the Soviet Union, the US was able to pressure the Germans not to cooperate with the gold pool. Without Germany the other European countries couldn’t materialize the pool and gold lost its anchor role in the monetary system. In the meantime, the US made a secret deal with Saudi Arabia to recycle oil dollars into US government bonds.

  The United States didn’t manage to phase out gold from the system altogether, but it did succeed in establishing a global dollar standard which yielded them unprecedented power.

  

  For the sake of simplicity “Europe” will generally refer to Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, most of which also cooperated during the classic gold standard in the 19th century.

  The Beginning of the End

  At a conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in July 1944, no less than 730 delegates from 44 nations forged a new international monetary system. With the currency wars of the 1930s in fresh memory an agreement of fixed exchange rates and free trade was reached. Because the United States had the strongest hand at the negotiation table, only the dollar was convertible into gold at $35 per troy ounce, making it “as good as gold” and stimulating its use as a reserve currency. Other currencies were pegged to the dollar (or gold). Gold was thus the ultimate anchor of “Bretton Woods,” granted by the Federal Reserve that was obligated to convert (buy and sell) dollars into bullion for foreign central banks.

  

  While pound sterling was still held by central banks the world over from the previous arrangement, Bretton Woods incentivized central banks to hold dollars and gold as reserves. An advantage of the dollar, relative to gold, was that it accrued interest; a disadvantage was that it could devalue against gold (or be seized). In practice, the system created demand for dollars as a trade, intervention, and reserve currency.

  The evolution of the composition of global international reserves (#gold and foreign exchange) since 1950. pic.twitter.com/ZYbHZh6dIi

  — Jan Nieuwenhuijs (@JanGold_) January 24, 2024

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  The “rules of the game” were enshrined in the Articles of Agreement of the newly erected International Monetary Fund (IMF) that was to administer the system and support countries with temporary balance of payments deficits through lending reserves. In consultation with the IMF countries could devalue (revalue) their currency in case of chronic balance of payments deficits (surpluses) to restore equilibrium. The system was stable as long as its members implemented similar domestic monetary policies (countries with relatively loose policies had to devalue), which didn’t happen.

  In the late 1950s the United States’ balance of payments deteriorated, resulting in a buildup of dollar balances held abroad, and, as central banks could convert dollars into gold, a decline of the US’s monetary gold stock. At first an increase in the supply of dollars abroad was welcomed because it inflated international liquidity beyond the growth of gold supply. Though, in 1960 the United States’ external dollar liabilities exceeded its monetary gold holdings, which prompted global concern. A run on the dollar could coerce a devaluation or default of the US.

  

  

  In November 1961, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Alfred Hayes, presented a plan at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Bazel, Switzerland, to collectively defend the price of gold at $35 dollars an ounce in the free market (Bordo et al 2017). European central banks assented to form a Gold Pool with the US—buying and selling gold in the London Bullion Market to keep the free market price close to the official price—and protect the international monetary system from disintegrating. France accepted to join on the condition the US would restore its balance of payments deficit (Avaro 2022).

  

  Although the new club started as a secretive syndicate, it didn’t take long before the Pool’s operations were leaked to the press to amplify its impact. On March 8, 1962, the Pool was first covered by Le Courrier de Genève (Bordo et al 2017, Naef 2022). Creating public awareness likely worked in its maiden years of existence when the Pool was a net buyer of gold. But as the US started printing more money to finance the war in Vietnam throughout the 1960s, downward pressure on the dollar mounted. The Pool was challenged in its bluff selling gold.

  In February 1965, the President of France, Charles de Gaulle, gave a speech in which he conveyed his criticism of Bretton Woods and America’s “exorbitant privilege”: to the extent countries were willing to hold dollars in reserve, the US could print dollars out of thin air to pay for imports and make investments abroad. In reality, Bretton Woods was designed for the world to accumulate dollars. Additionally, the inflationary policies of the US in the late 1960s were exported abroad through its balance of payments deficit and fixed exchange rates, pushing foreign central banks to buy dollars with their printing presses (Dibooglu 1999, Bordo et al 2017).

  According to De Gaulle, international settlement should be done in gold and the use of reserve currencies had to be limited. De Gaulle and his economic advisors foresaw a dollar crisis advancing. To protect itself from devaluation France ramped up dollar conversions into gold at the Fed, in part to supply the Pool.

  

  Shortly after, Belgium and France expressed their doubts about the viability of the Pool at BIS meetings (Bordo et al 2017). European central banks didn’t want to defend the dollar-gold peg indefinitely for what was essentially a problem of the United States. France dropped out in June 1967 when the Pool’s resources needed to be increased (Avaro 2020).

  In November 1967, Great Britain was forced to devalue pound sterling. If sterling could fail, so could the dollar, the market reckoned. Slowly but surely things started spiraling out of control and the Pool was confronted with significant losses. “The gold markets were faced with numerous bouts of speculative buying in late 1967 and early 1968,” the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas remarks in its 1968 annual statement. From March 8 through 14, 1968, the Pool sold nearly 1,000 tonnes of gold. “US air force planes rushed more and more Fort Knox gold to London, and so much piled up in the Bank of England’s weighing room that the floor collapsed,” writes Timothy Green in The New World of Gold.

  Belgium and Italy also became anxious to opt out as their gold reserves contracted (Green 1973 135). It became senseless to sell gold into a black hole. The next day, on March 15, 1968, the London Bullion Market was closed for two weeks at the behest of the US. Quickly the central bankers of the Pool flew to Washington for a conference.

  A prominent person at that time was Jelle Zijlstra, President of the Dutch central bank and Chairman of the BIS from 1967 until 1981. Zijlstra writes the Europeans had a different interpretation than the US from the agreements reached in Washington (Zijlstra 1978 191):

  The Washington conference of March 1968, … gave rise to many difficulties afterwards, because almost from the outset the decisions taken there were interpreted in two very different ways. Some countries were of the opinion that the only decision taken in Washington was to abolish the gold pool, to stop gold sales by central banks in the free market in order to keep the free market gold price close to the official price. The Americans took the position that it had also been decided that the central banks would never again buy gold on the free market, or in other words, that a first step had been taken towards the removal of gold from the international monetary system, the so-called demonetization of gold.

  Clearly, the communique from the conference doesn’t state that central banks would never again buy gold from the free market. In any case, the Pool was disbanded and the free market price of gold allowed to float.

  

  In favor of the Americans, the IMF’s Articles of Agreement (Article IV Section 2) stipulated that no central bank would buy or sell gold at a price other than the official price. And so, as a consequence from the Pool’s moratorium, a two-tier gold market was born. Private entities could trade gold at the free market price and central banks could transact at the official price.

  This setup subsided the role of gold in the international monetary system, as it severed the link between gold production and other sources of gold and monetary reserves. Gold also became increasingly illiquid, because no central bank wanted to sell at $35 an ounce knowing gold was worth much more. Gresham’s Law assured the use of the dollar as intervention and trade currency by its presumed overvaluation with respect to gold (Mundell 1971 13). The world began creeping towards a dollar standard (Bordo 1993 4).

  Europe got cornered. By then they held the largest gold reserves, and it would have been a pity, to say the least, to render it useless.

  

  Zijlstra’s solutions to resuscitate Bretton Woods were simple. The official gold prices in all currencies should have been raised to increase global liquidity and make sure the dollar would stay convertible into gold (Zijlstra 1978 190). He adds, “it was curious that in the post-war world, where everything was at least three to four times more expensive than in the 1930s, the gold price had remained unchanged” (Zijlstra 1992 222). In addition to the first measure the official gold price of the dollar should have been raised even more, thus devaluing the dollar against all other currencies to restore the United States its balance of payments. “However, the Americans opposed both solutions tooth and nail. … After all, this would put the dollar in second place to gold, and the Americans’ ideal was and is for the dollar to play a central role on the economic stage” (Zijlstra 1978 191, 1992 222).

  The Heat is On

  European central banks continued converting dollars at the Federal Reserve, whilst the Americans tried to block such requests.

  

  As shown in chart 6, Germany held less of its total reserves in gold than its European peers. Having American troops on its soil, protecting Germany from the Soviets, came at a cost: not being allowed to convert dollars at the Fed. Germany held large gold reserves, but this was mainly obtained via trading partners in Europe (Bundesbank 2018 99).

  Germany’s commitment not to convert dollars was sealed in a letter to the Fed, dated March 30, 1967, by Karl Blessing, President of the German central bank (Bundesbank). Blessing also concurred to invest $500 million dollars in US government bonds, financing both America’s balance of payments and fiscal deficit.

  

  Shortly before Blessing died he gave an interview published in Der Spiegel:

  BLESSING: … the threat was always in the background. Former US High Commissioner McCloy once visited the German government and said: “Look, we’ve now had a Senate decision; there is soon a majority that we will withdraw our boys. We have to do something.” So, he called me at home on a Sunday afternoon at half past three and said: “I have to fly back tonight, can’t we see each other?” And I said to him: “My dear McCloy, your situation is clear, this is a balance of payments problem for you, nothing more. You have seen that we are sensible and do not convert our dollars into gold. I am even willing to give you that in writing for a certain time.” Unfortunately, the letter that I wrote back then is still valid today.

  I should have been more rigorous with regard to the US. The dollars that we were accumulating should simply have been rigorously converted into gold.

  Other European countries were better off. In one of his books Zijlstra describes how he was pressured by the Americans but stood his ground. From Zijlstra (1978 191):

  That the mood was becoming more threatening became apparent to me when on July 7, 1971, the US Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Paul Volcker, and my American colleague, Dewey Daane, came to visit me in Amsterdam [the Netherlands]. They urged me to cancel the exchange of $250 million into gold. We had already exchanged nearly $600 million worth of dollars into gold … since the beginning of 1971. The fact that such a heavy delegation came to Amsterdam to ask me to refrain from conversion was the clearest proof to me that the storm was really about to break. I explained that I could not comply with their request. We held dollars only up to an amount that we considered working stock. Everything above that we wished to exchange for gold …. Volcker then said to me, “You are rocking the boat.” My response was: “if that boat rocks too violently as a result of converting $250 million, that boat has already sunk.”

  

  All along the intent of the Americans was to phase out gold from the international monetary system; for the rest of the world to import their dollars and hold as reserves so the US could live beyond its means and secure the dollar hegemony. Illustrative of this scheme is an action memorandum from Henry Kissinger, the US President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs, to President Richard Nixon dated June 25, 1969. “We can try to finance our deficits,” Kissinger wrote, to “borrow implicitly by inducing other countries to build their dollar holdings. At the extreme, this would mean getting (or forcing) the world to go onto a ‘dollar standard’.” In international economics holding foreign exchange as reserves is a loan to the issuer of that money because technically that issuer still has to settle a trade imbalance with something real.

  Primarily “the [dollar-gold] convertibility link,” was blocking the United States’ agenda, as noted by a Volcker Group Paper from 1969. The paper continues:

  Perhaps one of the most important long-term problems facing the US is how to move out of this commitment in a graceful manner without causing undue disturbance to the monetary system and with a fair measure of international approbation, at some time in the future. It is not yet clear whether this can be done, and a breaking of the link may have to come in the context of some crisis and a threatened run on the dollar.

  A run on the dollar, from the viewpoint of the US, arrived early August 1971 when both the British and French called on the Fed to redeem more dollars (Bordo et al 2017). Finally, on August 15 President Nixon announced to temporarily suspend dollar convertibility, although this has never been reactivated. The “Nixon Shock” de facto terminated Bretton Woods and one can imagine countries holding dollars were not amused. Kindly note, in chart 2, how external dollar liabilities of the US exploded from then on.

  

  At the same time, European countries, trading a great deal with one another, were integrating through the European Economic Community (EEC) and introduced their own framework for managing exchange rates (aimed to progress toward a monetary union) called “the snake.” A unified Europe showed the world its strength and leadership. Kissinger said to Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, William Simon, at one point: “I basically have only one view right now which is to do as much as we can to prevent a united European position without showing our hand. … I don’t think a unified European monetary system is in our interest.”

  Because the dollar had become grossly overvalued relative to several other currencies, a group of ten developed countries (G10) met in Washington in December 1971 to negotiate exchange rate realignment. In what became known as the Smithsonian Agreement the dollar was devalued by 10.7% versus a basket of currencies (De Vries 1976 555). The official (“fictional”) gold price was raised to $38 as exchange rates were formally still expressed in parities vis-à-vis the official gold price.

  Over a year later pressure on the dollar broke its peg again. In March 1973 the G10 accorded that 6 EEC currencies would jointly float against the dollar, effectively discontinuing what was left over from Bretton Woods. IMF members were free to choose any form of exchange arrangement, “except pegging their currency to gold.”

  Among IMF members there was a desire to reform the monetary system, for which a novel reserve asset was developed: the Special Drawing Rights (SDR). In general, both the US and Europe supported the introduction of the SDR in 1969, albeit for different reasons. The Europeans wished the SDR could substitute the dollar (Zijlstra 1992 222), while the US concocted “the nations of the world come to accept Special Drawing Rights in lieu of gold.” All the while Bretton Woods crumbled, the SDR was used as a decoy by the United States.

  

  A European Gold Pool

  The US received intelligence that the Europeans were preparing to mobilize their gold by transacting bullion among themselves at the free market price. Then Secretary of the Treasury, George Shultz, wrote to President Nixon:

  Some—but not all European officials— … see the proposed move as enhancing the probability that gold will work its way back into the center of the international monetary system and facilitate a French-European vision of a new monetary system.

  We should actively support … amending existing agreements so that monetary authorities may sell gold into private markets at the market prices but may not buy gold from any source except at the established official price. It would be hoped that this procedure would permit a gradual phase-out in the official monetary use of gold.

  Although the exact date from the above memo isn’t known, it’s likely from October 1973. At BIS headquarters, in November 1973, Zijlstra suggested rescinding the Washington agreement of March 1968. Chairman of the Fed, Arthur Burns, proposed to allow selling (not buying) by central banks in the private market (De Vries 1985 609). Burns’ offer was accepted and from that day central banks could sell gold, just as envisioned by Schultz.

  Apparently, it was irrelevant where policy makers met (in Bazel or elsewhere), as long as they had a majority vote in the IMF a decision could be made. Although the US had broken the rules of the Articles of Agreement by ceasing to convert dollars in 1971, the Europeans were cautious to do the same.

  Of course, the Europeans wanted more than being able to sell gold. In a Wikileaks cable from 1973 it reads the Minister of Finance of the Netherlands, Willem Duisenberg, told an American ambassador that all currencies should be convertible “or money has no meaning.” In other cables (here and here) from early 1974 it reads that France wanted to regulate (stabilize) the free market price of gold and the EEC oriented to use their gold for international settlement. The former being a prerequisite for the latter (Zijlstra 1981 10). If the EEC joint float would be pegged to gold it would result in “a new gold-based currency bloc.” Within the EEC the Germans weren’t enthusiastic about these ideas, because, as we shall see, they were still being played by the US.

  Zijlstra made his views public on March 13, 1974, in a speech in Zurich, Switzerland (Zijlstra 1974):

  Central banks holding gold should be free … to … buy and sell gold in the free market – perhaps regulating the price a little through a new-style gold pool – or … use it in settlements between one another. In this latter context one might think in particular of regional groupings like the EEC.

  One month after, the Ministers of Finance of the EEC held a conference in Zeist, the Netherlands, that conceptually produced the same as Zijlstra’s views in Zurich (EEC 1975 19).

  1. Monetary authorities should be permitted to buy and to sell gold among themselves at a market related price and to buy and sell on the free market (hold gold in the center of the monetary system).
  2. Monetary authorities periodically fix a minimum and a maximum price beyond which they would not respectively sell or buy on the market (stabilizing the gold price).
  3. Creating a buffer stock to be managed by an agent who would be charged by the monetary authorities to sell or buy on the market such as to ensure orderly conditions on the free market for gold (a new gold pool).

  

  The Americans countered the EEC from the inside. First, on June 3, 1975, Burns wrote to a colleague (Alan Greenspan) that he has “a secret understanding in writing with the Bundesbank—concurred in by [Minister of Finance] Mr. Schmidt—that Germany will not buy gold, either from the market or from another government, at a price above the official price,” which pretty much blocked the Zeist initiative. Without Germany the EEC wasn’t able to form a gold pool, stabilize the price and use gold for international settlement.

  Burns’ secretive understanding can be traced to a letter dated November 14, 1973, by then Bundesbank President, Karl Klasen, to the Fed pledging adherence, with Schmidt’s consent, to Article IV Section 2 about not trading gold at a price other than the official par value.

  Second, ample leverage equipped the US to go the extra mile. Advisors of US President Ford wrote on June 4, 1975, on the role of gold in the international monetary system: “We must first swing Germany, thus isolating France.” On June 6 President Ford felt comfortable to tell Minister Schmidt:

  We … do feel strongly that some safeguards are necessary to ensure that a tendency does not develop to place gold back in the center of the system. We must ensure that there is no opportunity for governments to begin active trading in gold among themselves with the purpose of creating a gold bloc or reinstating reliance on gold as the principal international monetary medium.

  Most definitely the Germans obeyed and threw a wrench in the Zeist initiative, as it was strangely never realized.

  By not converting dollars into gold when the Fed’s gold window was still open, Germany dug itself into a hole. Next to being dependent on US troops, Germany’s gold to total reserves ratio was so much lower than in surrounding countries that any revaluation of monetary metal relative to dollars would have been sorely embarrassing (chart 6).

  Aside from the US the least developed countries (LDCs) of the world also opposed the activation of official gold holdings, for the simple reason they owned fairly little.

  The IMF began selling 750 tonnes of gold from its own stock to use for concessional loans to LDCs in 1976 (De Vries 1985 662). At the announcement of the sale the gold price in the free market declined. Ironically, the Swiss central bank (SNB) considered buying some of the gold at auction “to demonstrate its attachment to gold and participate in efforts to stabilize the gold price,” SNB reminisces in its centenary. Four years later in 1979, when the gold price skyrocketed, SNB “considered selling gold on the market, in a coordinated action with other central banks, with the aim of stabilizing the price.”

  By 1978 the IMF’s Articles of Agreement had been amended and central banks could buy and sell gold in the private market (De Vries 1985 656). The idea to put monetary gold to use hadn’t died in Europe and so in 1979 the idea to intervene floated again. This time also for gold not to make a mockery out of their fiat currencies and calm monetary unrest.

  Before me, attempts of forming a European gold pool in 1979 have been covered by precious metals analyst Ronan Manly (here and here). Manly was able to get his hands on documents from the Bank of England (BOE) in which a new gold pool was discussed. What stands out from Manly’s publications, in relation to our present analysis, is that France didn’t want to participate because Germany resisted and the pool never saw the light of day.

  The following quotes are from multiple BOE documents regarding meetings at the BIS in 1979. Paul Jeanty was a dealer in the London Bullion Market, all the others government officials. In brackets it’s clarified who is representing which country:

  Paul Jeanty told me [McMahon, UK] that Zijlstra had told him personally a couple of weeks ago that he would now be in favor of a central bank operation to stabilize the price within a moving band. Leutwiler [Switzerland] and Clappier [France] have said this to him in the past and he believes … that de Stryker [Belgium] and Baffi [Italy] would go along with such a plan. All recognize, however, that Emminger [Germany] has no disposition to support.

  Fritz [Switzerland] had told Jeanty, what Jeanty already knew, that Zijlstra would be interested; however, apparently Clappier indicated that he was against. This was a reversal of view which Leutwiler attributed to pressure from the Élysée [France] which was itself influenced by the Germans. … Emminger continued to be strongly against.

  Leutwiler and Zijlstra then said that although they did not think a very large group was necessary to undertake the operation it probably had to be bigger than two: specifically, they really needed either the French or the Germans.

  The core of Europe tried to form a gold pool, but Germany was jamming the project again! Very likely the Germans were still on a leash of the United States.

  The US Oil Deal with Saudi Arabia

  Suppressing the role of gold was one part in the bigger picture of the US to install the dollar hegemony. In part two “risk free” dollar assets were required to become the prime international reserves.

  The oil crisis in the early 1970s was a blessing and a curse for the US. It caused expenses to go up, but a higher price of oil also created more demand for dollars abroad. Now those dollars needed to be invested in US governments bonds (Treasuries).

  In July 1974, Secretary of the Treasury, William Simon, visited the Middle-East to dust off a proposal by Saudi Arabian Oil Minister, Yamani, from 1970. Simon’s endeavor was for the Saudis to recycle dollars in bonds.

  Eventually the deal encompassed Saudi Arabia to supply oil to the United States and invest the proceeds in Treasury securities. In return, the US would provide military aid and hand the kingdom an “add-on” in the form of a special treatment in Treasury auctions. On request of Saudi King Faisal the deal would remain “strictly secret.”

  

  The add-on allowed the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) non-competitive bidding outside of the normal auctions held by the New York Fed and avoid disrupting the market caused by large security purchases on their part. “The sine-qua-non for the Saudis in this arrangement is confidential and we have assured them that we will do everything in our power to comply with their desires,” Undersecretary of the Treasury for Monetary Affairs, Jack Benett, writes in a memo to Kissinger in 1975.

  For starters $2.5 billion was expected to be invested by SAMA, but shortly after the Treasury inadvertently raised $800 million more than it intended to borrow at auction. Dollars were recycled alright.

  

  

  Conclusion

  It wasn’t all smooth sailing for the dollar in the 1970s, but the US managed to secure its currency as the sun in the international monetary cosmos. In his memoirs, Zijlstra looks back on how it happened (1992 211):

  Gold disappeared as the anchor of monetary stability. An attempt to replace it with a newly created substitute (the IMF’s [SDR] …) virtually failed. The fixed parities, apart from our own EEC system, have disappeared. … The road from dollar supremacy, through endless vicissitudes, to a new dollar hegemony was paved with many conferences, with faithful, shrewd, and sometimes misleading stories, with idealistic visions of the future and impressive professorial speeches. (For every notion, no matter how extreme, there is always a professor of economics available.) The political reality was that Americans supported or fought any change, depending on whether they saw the dollar’s position strengthened or threatened.

  According to Zijlstra and De Gaulle, final settlement in cross-border trade should be done in gold and the use of reserve currencies restricted (Zijlstra 1972). What frightened the US was that Europe held the most gold and alluded to raising the gold price periodically to create liquidity, giving them “the dominant means of creating reserves.” A few days after the Zeist conference an advisor of Kissinger explained it to him well:

  Mr. Enders: It’s against our interest to have gold in the system because for it to remain there it would result in it being evaluated periodically. Although we have still some substantial gold holdings … a larger part of the official gold in the world is concentrated in Western Europe. This gives them the dominant position in world reserves and the dominant means of creating reserves. We’ve been trying to get away from that into a system in which we can control—

  Secretary Kissinger: But that’s a balance of payments problem.

  Mr. Enders: Yes, but it’s a question of who has the most leverage internationally. If they have the reserve-creating instrument, by having the largest amount of gold and the ability to change its price periodically, they have a position relative to ours of considerable power.

  Remarkably, everything that held back the envisioned monetary system of Zijlstra and friends in the 1970s has been resolved. Since Germany repatriated gold from New York several years ago we may assume it has released itself from bondage. Gold is globally more evenly distributed (chart 5), there is a gold leasing market for those that are looking for a yield, and the gold market is liquid. The fact the Dutch central bank recently signaled that it has prepared for a new gold standard makes perfect sense from a historical perspective.

  

  Experience from Bretton Woods and the need to periodically increase the gold price suggests that Europe would target the price in the free market in order to stabilize it. The remaining questions are, (i) what could trigger Europe to stabilize the gold price in the future, and (ii) at what price level?

  For a full list of sources, see here

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 19:10

• The Next ZeroHedge Live Debate: The Fate Of The US Dollar
  The Next ZeroHedge Live Debate: The Fate Of The US Dollar

  It’s perhaps the most important question in all of finance, so much so that Vladimir Putin and Elon Musk have both asked it in just the past few days: what is the fate of the US dollar, and will it remain the world’s reserve currency?

  To be sure, the US Dollar is – and has been for the past century – the most important means of exchange, involved in 88% of all global transactions. That’s according to the latest Bank for International Settlements survey But how long can this hegemony last?

  

  As the IMF cautioned recently, 2020 was the first year in over two decades that foreign central bank dollar allotment dipped below 60%, a figure which has inched lower since: Meanwhile, foreign holdings of US Treasury bonds have steadily declined since 2012, a testament to the declining faith of the rest of the world in the reserve currency.

  

  Still, the greenback remains the most ubiquitous currency and reserve asset of choice around the globe. To determine whether dollar-dominance will persist indefinitely, or a historic transition looms ZeroHedge has assembled a panel of top macroeconomic experts for our next debate: The Fate of the U.S. Dollar.

  

  The two-on-two debate features the following financial luminaries:

  • Jim Rickards: the NYT-best selling author who predicted the 2008 Great Recession and successfully brokered the $3.6 billion takeover of Long-Term Capital Management. 

  • Michael Every: regular ZeroHedge readers are intimately familiar with the research of Rabobank’s head of Global Strategy. Michael brilliantly weaves geopolitical and economic trends into actionable market insights, which have made his daily note a must read for every finance professional. 

  • Bob Murphy: senior fellow at the Mises Institute, Bob is among the upper echelon of Austrian Economists with his work quoted by Argentinian President Javier Millei.

  • Brent Johnson: famous for the “Dollar Milkshake Theory,” Brent runs Santiago Capital where he manages over $175 million in assets. 

  • Adam Taggart: from Peak Prosperity to Wealthion to his new channel Thoughtful Money, Adam is a veteran of the contrarian financial space and will be moderating this epic debate. 

  The live, in-person debate will take place on Tuesday, February 13 at 7pm ET, and will air concurrently on this website and on X.

  We also have an extremely limited number of seats set aside for readers who wish to watch the debate in person and engage the participants over dinner (if interested please email Debates@zerohedge.com for details and price).

  As usual, we will also dedicate a portion of the debate to responding directly to questions submitted by our premium subscribers.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 18:55

• "Stupid No Longer": Trump Says No More Foreign Aid Without Guarantees, Warned NATO Countries Who Refuse To Pay Fair Share
  “Stupid No Longer”: Trump Says No More Foreign Aid Without Guarantees, Warned NATO Countries Who Refuse To Pay Fair Share

  While the Biden administration reels from its own Justice Department concluding that the president is too senile to be prosecuted for mishandling classified documents, the left is lashing out over recent comments made by former President Donald Trump about NATO and US foreign aid.

  

  “NATO was busted until I came along. I said, everybody’s going to pay,” said Trump during a Saturday campaign rally in South Carolina. “They said, ‘Well, if we don’t pay, are you still going to protect us?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ They couldn’t believe the answer.”

  “One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay, and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’ I said, ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Let’s say that happened. No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.’ You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.”

  Trump said that due to his pressure to convince NATO members to pay their agreed upon share in the alliance, “hundreds of billions of dollars” came into the organization, “and that’s why they have money today, because of what I did,” Trump continued.

  During his 2016 campaign, President Trump had warned that under his leadership, the United States would be able to abandon its NATO commitments to nations that don’t commit two percent of their GDP to military spending as mentioned in the alliance’s guidelines.

  According to a 2023 NATO report, only seven of the 31 allies met the 2 percent GDP spending target on defense in 2022. Even this was an improvement over 2014, when only three allies fulfilled the minimum requirement. –Epoch Times

  Distract!

  White House spox Andrew Bates called Trump’s comments “unhinged,” telling Reuters: “Encouraging invasions of our closest allies by murderous regimes is appalling and unhinged – and it endangers American national security, global stability and our economy at home.”

  EU Commissioner Thierry Breton told France’s LCI television that Trump’s comments were “nothing new under the sun,” adding “He maybe has issues with his memory, it was actually a female president, not of a country, but of the European Union,” referring to  European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen and a conversation she had with Trump in 2020.

  (Not exactly calling the President of Egypt the President of Mexico while trying to think of the President of Israel ‘issues with his memory,’ eh Theirry?)

  “Stupid no longer”

  Over the weekend Trump also called on US Congress to stop gifting US aid to foreign nation without “strings” attached.

  “From this point forward, are you listening U.S. Senate(?), no money in the form of foreign aid should be given to any country unless it is done as a loan, not just a giveaway,” he wrote in a Saturday post on Truth Social.

  “It can be loaned on extraordinarily good terms, like no interest and an unlimited life, but a loan nevertheless.

  “The deal should be (Contingent!) that the U.S. is helping you as a nation, but if the country we are helping ever turns against us, or strikes it rich sometime in the future, the loan will be paid off and the money returned to the United States.“

  As the Epoch Times notes further;

  The suggestion comes as the GOP front-runner and leader of the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement campaigns for the 2024 presidency with a foreign policy record that caused somewhat of a stir on the international stage.

  As the 45th president of the United States, President Trump pushed many contrarian views on the world stage, questioning why the United States has been expected to fund more than its fair share in multilateral efforts. He said at the time that he believed many of the international platforms were no longer serving the U.S. interests he wanted to prioritize, such as providing benefit to U.S. producers and manufacturing over those of other countries.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 18:45

• State AGs Pressure CBS To Not Run Temu's 2024 Super Bowl Ad
  State AGs Pressure CBS To Not Run Temu’s 2024 Super Bowl Ad

  Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times,

  A group of six state attorneys general are asking CBS and its parent company, Paramount Global, not to run Super Bowl ads from Temu, a rapidly growing Chinese online shopping platform they claim is selling products of forced labor.

  

  This will be the second time Temu has spent millions of dollars for an ad spot at a high-profile football event. Its first Super Bowl commercial last year featured the tagline, “Shop like a billionaire,” highlighting a business model of swaying customers with ultra-discounted merchandise predominantly sourced from China.

  In a Feb. 10 letter to CBS and Paramount Global, the attorneys general said they have reason to believe that Temu is selling products made with forced labor.

  “Congressional investigators believe Temu is illegally selling products made by forced labor in an area of China in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is committing genocide,” they wrote in the letter, first reported by Daily Wire.

  “CBS should not elevate a company profiting from forced labor and genocide during America’s biggest game.”

  The letter is led by Attorney General Austin Knudsen of Montana. He was joined by Attorneys General Tim Griffin of Arkansas, Raúl Labrador of Idaho, Brenna Bird of Iowa, Lynn Fitch of Mississippi, and Alan Wilson of South Carolina.

  “The United States House Select Committee on the CCP has revealed disturbing information about Temu’s failure to comply with American laws prohibiting use of forced labor by Uyghurs,” they added, referring to the Select Committee’s interim report published last June.

  In that report, the Select Committee details the preliminary findings of a bipartisan investigation into Temu and its Chinese rival, Shein. According to the Committee, Temu has no system to ensure compliance with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2021 to ban any goods produced in Xinjiang—where the CCP’s human rights abuses against the Uyghurs took place—or by entities associated with CCP authorities in Xinjiang from entering the United States.

  The report also suggested that Shein and Temu were exploiting the United States’ de minimis rule to evade customs enforcement—wherein nearly all their products are valued under $800 and can enter the country uninspected and free from duties that most American clothing brands pay.

  “Temu is doing next to nothing to keep its supply chains free from slave labor,” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), Select Committee’s chairman, said at that time.

  “Temu and Shein are building empires around the de minimis loophole in our import rules—dodging import taxes and evading scrutiny on the millions of goods they sell to Americans.”

  Several big apparel retailers with a manufacturing presence in China, including Adidas and Nike, have been under congressional investigation by the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party since last May.

  While Adidas, Nike, and Shein are able to regularly audit their manufacturers and publish data on how often cotton and other raw materials that can be traced to forced labor are found in their products, Temu has yet to make such data public.

  In Saturday’s letter, the attorneys general also took issue with Temu’s parent company, Pinduoduo, or PDD, accusing the Chinese online retailer of being linked to the CCP.

  “Given the virtual guarantee that Temu is selling products made with forced labor in China and its links to the CCP, CBS should not broadcast Temu’s commercials during the Super Bowl. Americans deserve better,” the attorneys general conclude.

  The same concern was echoed in an earlier letter to CBS and Paramount Global by a group of 11 Republican members of Congress. Allowing Temu’s commercial to air “would be a touchdown for the Chinese Communist Party against the home team,” they argued.

  CBS and Paramount Global declined to comment on the petitions.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 18:20

• SecDef Austin Hospitalized… Again
  SecDef Austin Hospitalized… Again

  Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has been readmitted to hospital, the Pentagon said on Sunday afternoon.

  Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder gave an update on the defense leader’s condition, saying that the hospital admission had occurred early Sunday afternoon.

  “Today, at approximately 2:20 pm, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III was transported by his security detail to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to be seen for symptoms suggesting an emergent bladder issue,” he said.

  As The Epoch Times’ Melanie Sun reports, following criticism over an earlier hospitalization that was kept a secret from the public and even the White House, the press secretary said that the deputy secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had been notified of this admission.

  

  The White House and Congress have also been notified, he added.

  Secretary Austin then revealed that he had received a prostate cancer diagnosis in January after experiencing complications with a urinary tract infection following surgery.

  The update also said that as of Sunday evening, the secretary “is retaining the functions and duties of his office.”

  “The Deputy Secretary is prepared to assume the functions and duties of the Secretary of Defense, if required,” the statement from Mr. Ryder said.

  “Secretary Austin traveled to the hospital with the unclassified and classified communications systems necessary to perform his duties.

  “We will provide an update on Secretary Austin’s condition as soon as possible.”

  It comes just under two weeks after Austin’s Jan. 29 return to the Pentagon after a weeks-long hospitalization in early January.

  He was hospitalized on Jan. 1 for an infection stemming from a Dec. 22 surgery for prostate cancer. The New Year’s emergency placed Austin in the intensive care unit (ICU) for days and forced Austin to carry out his duties from home for nearly two weeks after being released from Walter Reed.

  …so, to summarise: the commander-in-chief is “an elderly man with a poor memory” and his SecDef is in hospital… again…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 17:55

• One Nation, Two Anthems?
  One Nation, Two Anthems?

  Via The Washington Examiner,

  The NFL will continue trying to disunite America by featuring two separate “anthems” to begin the Super Bowl. Our country has only one national anthem, which speaks for all its citizens. To suggest otherwise is anathema.

  

  As also happened last year, fans will be asked to stand at attention not just for “The Star-Spangled Banner” but also for “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” long known colloquially as the “black national anthem.”

  It’s a lovely song, a paean to liberty, and a worthy expression of black people’s historical struggle to overcome unspeakable mistreatment.

  Its final sentiments, despite the “gloomy past,” are admirably patriotic: “May we forever stand/ True to our God/ True to our native land.”

  This being so, it is important to explain why it is a bad idea that it be sung alongside the national anthem.

  The affront lies not in the message within the song but in the message sent by when and how the song is to be presented. By pairing it with the national anthem and expecting attendees to stand at attention, the NFL signals that “The Star-Spangled Banner” does not speak for everyone. Rather than respecting a single unifying anthem, the league presents two, one for white people and one for black people, as if the latter were not included in the meaning and grandeur of the first.

  This is part of the political Left’s radical racial agenda of national division. Identity politics define people by racial or sexual group membership while immutably characterizing each group and each person within it as either victim or victimizer. Rather than one history in which modern sensibilities demand that black people receive equal recognition, separatism posits that there must be a separate month for black history. Rather than one course of mathematics, the “woke” educrats push a separate black mathematics. The separate black anthem is a musical endorsement of the forces and agenda that are driving deep fissures into our culture and threatening our society.

  Even institutions such as the Smithsonian tell us that black people are oppressed by supposed attributes of “whiteness” that include individualism and “self-reliance,” the “nuclear family,” the “scientific method” using “objective, rational linear thinking,” and the “Protestant work ethic” emphasizing (Lord forbid!) that “hard work is the key to success.” To suggest this is to insult black people by asserting that they uniquely lack these qualities.

  But the work ethic, self-reliance, rational thinking, and the rest are not congenitally foreign to people who have dark complexions.

  When scores of NFL players several years ago refused to stand for the national anthem, their message was based on the misguided notion that the United States corporately was responsible for what was claimed to be a nationwide epidemic of police abusing black people. No data support those calumnies about police, nor did right reason support the condemnation of America as a whole as a racist nation.

  The logic of those distorted assessments produced the idea that the national anthem itself is disreputable, or at least is exclusive of black people. This notion is horribly wrong. Frederick Douglass, a great black advocate of emancipation, loved to play “The Star-Spangled Banner” on his violin for his grandchildren, and he argued that the Constitution of the land the song honored was rightly interpreted as a document promising freedom to black and white alike.

  The national anthem began being played ritually at sports contests at the end of World War I, and its playing became a universal practice for the NFL as World War II ended. It defies reason to think the song that, for generations, was understood to represent all Americans suddenly, about three years ago, became only for white people.

  “To sing the ‘black national anthem’ suggests that black people are separatist and want to have their own nation,” said Timothy Askew, an English professor at historically black Clark Atlanta University, in a 2010 interview.

  “This means that everything Martin Luther King Jr. believed about being one nation gets thrown out the window.”

  Askew, who did copious research into the origins of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” added, “I think it is important that African Americans nationally understand that we should be moving towards racial cohesiveness,” but the idea of a “black national anthem” does the opposite.

  Askew is right. The NFL is wrong.

  It’s fine to play a lovely song at some point during the festivities. There’s everything wrong, though, with using it to balkanize a civic ceremony of national unity and pride.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 17:30

• Which Teams Have Played The Most Super Bowl Games?
  Which Teams Have Played The Most Super Bowl Games?

  The Kansas City Chiefs will play the San Francisco 49ers in the LVIII Super Bowl in Las Vegas, Nevada today.

  The game is a rematch from four years ago, when the same two teams faced off in Miami Gardens, Fla. That year, the Chiefs took home the trophy, as they did in 2023 and back in 1970s.

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, both teams are among the top competitors in the championship, with the Kansas City Chiefs having competed six times – also in 2021 and 1967 – and the San Francisco 49ers even eight times between 1982 and 2024.

  Six Super Bowl appearances give the Chiefs more Super Bowl clout than the Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants.

  Three wins put them on the same level as the Washington Commanders or the Oakland/Las Vegas Raiders, with both teams needing just as many tries to take home three trophies.

  At eight appearances, the San Francisco 49ers competed as many times as the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Dallas Cowboys and the Denver Broncos and can look back on a quite a good track record in terms of wins.

  There are still four teams – the Cleveland Browns, the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Detroit Lions and the Houston Texans – which have never played the Super Bowl, and 12 which have never won the game.

  Jacksonville and Houston only joined the competition in 1995 and 2002, respectively.

  There is one more team, the New England Patriots, which have racked up the most Super Bowl appearances, according to statistics published by ESPN.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Yet, the Patriots are among the teams with below average wins-to-participation ratios, with only six wins out of 11 Super Bowls played.

  The most unlucky teams among the Super Bowl participants are the Minnesota Vikings and the Buffalo Bills.

  They each played in the Super Bowl four times but failed to win any of those competitions.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 15:45

• Hillary Admits Biden's Age Is "Legitimate Issue" As Trump Urges Mandatory Cognitive Tests For All Candidates
  Hillary Admits Biden’s Age Is “Legitimate Issue” As Trump Urges Mandatory Cognitive Tests For All Candidates

  …well, well, well, how the turn tables…

  Something just changed. Instead of an overwhelming avalanche of gaslit headlines and bullshit punditry projecting mental un-fitness on the opposition (as we have seen from every Democratic operative and mainstream media lackey over the past five years), it’s different this time – since special counsel Hur’s (independent) report official raised questions about President Biden’s mental acuity, describing him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

  Peter Doocy is a hero: “If the special counsel says President Biden’s got significant limitations on his memory, then who is helping him run the country?”

  White House Press Sec. Karine Jean-Pierre: “The president of the United States runs the country.”

  pic.twitter.com/Kun4iUUEY6

  — Kambree (@KamVTV) February 9, 2024

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

  Finding anyone willing to actually defend Biden against these accusations – in any other way but proclaiming that ‘well Trump appointed Hur’ – has been nigh on impossible (even on Sunday’s political talk-shows which seemed designed to do just this week in and week out for years).

  

  Instead, the opposite – some actual reflection by Democrats that maybe, just maybe, all the glitches, stumbles, stammers, gaffes, shaking hands with no-one, angry outbursts, mis-remembering, and talking-to-dead-people – are a thing after all.

  Here’s top Clinton Advisor Paul Begala practically admitting defeat live on CNN:

  “…This is terrible for Democrats. And anybody with a functioning brain knows that… This is going to be a really rough, ugly, unpleasant campaign.”

  PANIC: Top Clinton Advisor Paul Begala ADMITS Defeat LIVE on CNN after Joe Biden proves to the world he’s senile hours after federal prosecutors declare him UNFIT for office:

  “I slept like a baby last night. I woke up every two hours and wet the bed. This is terrible for… pic.twitter.com/oBYrYkYssq

  — Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 9, 2024

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

  And here’s the horse’s mouth herself, no lesser mortal than Hillary Clinton, admitting to MSNBC’s Alex Wagner in an interview aired Saturday, that Biden’s age is an issue…

  “I talk to people in the White House all the time, and you know, they know it’s an issue, but as I like to say, look, it’s a legitimate issue,” Clinton told

  Of course, she added that it is a “legitimate issue” for former President Donald Trump (who is three and a half years younger than Biden).

  But it gets better, as former Obama advisor David Axelrod declared Friday that Joe Biden’s angry reaction to Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report suggesting his memory has faded only served to “reinforce a meme that’s out there,” adding that Biden’s cognitive acuity “is a problem.”

  “The central meme that is hurting the president is this issue of age. It’s a big barrier,” he further urged, also noting “you can’t unring the bell.”

  Former Obama advisor David Axelrod says Biden’s mental acuity “is a problem,” and his behaviour only serves to “reinforce the meme that’s out there,” that he’s not fit to run, adding “you can’t unring the bell.” Report here: https://t.co/ey3my6ba0U pic.twitter.com/PcjRCSL0fE

  — m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) February 10, 2024

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

  Axelrod’s comments should not be a total surprise, however, as he has been questioning Biden’s running for re-election since November…

  Only @JoeBiden can make this decision. If he continues to run, he will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it’s in HIS best interest or the country’s?

  — David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) November 5, 2023

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

  Furthermore, The Daily Mail reports that sources indicate Democrats are considering a ‘nuclear option’ of ditching Biden before or at the Party convention in August in favour of either California Governor Gavin Newsom or Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

  The report cites a “former senior Democrat White House official” who has previously worked with Biden.

  “I think it is now panic time. Biden should not be our standard bearer,” the source is quoted as saying. 

  Of course, the Trump campaign has been questioning Biden’s fitness for office for months, and the former president suggested during a speech at a rally in South Carolina, that “anybody running for President should have tests, and I pass them every time,” adding “I don’t think Nikki would pass the test.”

  

  Trump further stated that “regardless of age,” all candidates for major offices, including Vice President also should be mentally tested.

  “They say it’s not Constitutional, I’d be willing to wave it,” Trump urged, before going on to describe Haley as “the candidate of globalists and warmongers who want to spend trillions and trillions of dollars on endless wars.”

  Trump went on to tell the crowd of thousands that if you asked Joe Biden what MAGA stands for “he would not be able to tell you,” because his “brain is not working too well.”

  

  Finally, returning to the left side of the aisle, even James Carville is raising doubts about Biden’s ability (on CNN no less)…

  The fact that Biden isn’t doing the Super Bowl interview and probably won’t debate, says James Carville, “that’s a sign your staff doesn’t have much confidence in you.”

  And while it’s “never too late” to change candidates, Carville warns “the later it gets the more confusing the process gets.”

  Oh, and in case you wondered what Biden is doing on Super Bowl Sunday, he is blaming ‘big corporate greed’ for shrinkflation and the rising cost of snacking…

  While you were Super Bowl shopping, did you notice smaller-than-usual products where the price stays the same?

  Folks are calling it Shrinkflation and it means companies are giving you less for every dollar you spend.

  I’m calling on the big consumer brands to put a stop to it. pic.twitter.com/wL1NsEh78F

  — President Biden (@POTUS) February 11, 2024

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

  Read the fucking room, you clueless twat “well-meaning old man with a poor memory.”

  And Biden’s odds have tumbled in the last few days…

  

  Tick, tock, Mr.President.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 14:35

• A Retrospective Of All-Time Highs
  A Retrospective Of All-Time Highs

  By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

  If you were hoping for a review of Cheech & Chong movies, you will be sorely disappointed. With the S&P 500 breaching 5,000 and setting all-time highs, it seemed like a good time to do a retrospective of all-time highs. At least those that I remember, so we only have to go back to the 1980s.

  One Thing That I am Certain of Regarding All-Time Highs

  We will all get sick of hearing about “all-time” highs. Yes, if the S&P 500 goes up a measly 1 point on Monday, we will have a “new” all-time high. Every dip that gets bought will create “new” all-time highs. We will probably all get sick of being told about “intraday” versus “closing” all-time highs. 5,100 on the S&P 500 will be cause for “wild celebration” in the media, despite it “only” being 1.5% away (which could easily happen in a day at its current pace).

  All that “all-time” high chatter (and cheerleading) will be a distraction from our real jobs – figuring out where the market is headed next. Which is why I think that a “retrospective” would be interesting and potentially useful.

  All Sorts of Things Happen Around All-Time Highs

  Let’s start with a quick “synopsis” of what has happened since 1980. I probably should have used a log chart or something to dampen recent moves relative to prior moves. However, since I went down this path, I didn’t feel like going back and think that it is quite effective in illustrating some points.

  

  There are a few things that stick out to me:

  • We tend to get long periods of relatively steady uptrends. I guess that is common sense since we started in 1980 at 115 and are now at 5,027.
  • It is easier to put labels on the “bad” moments rather than the “good” moments. Again, in part, this is because going up is much more common.
  • It was easier, at least for me, to put labels on more recent moves rather than historical moves, as my recollection is better and I was much more directly involved.
  • On one hand, even adjusting for scale over time, some things that seemed “critical” at the time were mere blips in the grand scheme of things. On the other hand, what seemed like nice long-term trends often had periods of volatility in both directions. The “tech bubble” bursting had several tremendous reversals.
  • While some of the labels might be accurate overall, they don’t do justice to the complexities of each event. During what is commonly referred to as the “tech bubble” bursting, the world had to deal with the tragic attacks on 9/11 and the aftermath.

  Let’s examine a few of these in more detail to see what we can learn.

  The Crash of 1987

  Portfolio “hedging,” where managers tried to dynamically manage their portfolio rather than buying options, allegedly contributed to what (at the time) was called “Black Monday.”

  

  In a matter of days, the stock market gave up about 18 months of gains. While I’ve drawn a trendline from September 1986 to October 1987, there were some meaningful pullbacks. In hindsight, was that first 5% “dip” a warning sign or a precursor of what was to come? Or was it just noise like previous dips? While we bounced on efforts to “solve” the issue (with massive liquidity, though long before QE was a household term), I didn’t realize that we dropped more than 10% from there as we headed into November and early December. A further 10% decline would be memorable in most situations, but that brief sell-off was so large that everything else was forgotten (at least by me).

  The Greenspan Put

  While the “Greenspan Put” started in 1987, it seemed like a reasonable response to a set of circumstances that had exposed flaws in market structure. 1998 seemed different to me. Yes, Russia was teetering on default. Yes, Long-Term Capital (the “smartest people in the room”) was apparently threatening to bring down Wall Street. This included massive bets, unheard of at the time, on esoteric instruments that were moving several standard deviations and wreaking havoc with collateral management. But were they really “systemic?” Did the Fed really need to intervene as aggressively as it did not just on monetary policy, but also by “encouraging” (and I use that term very loosely) the banks to cooperate in previously unheard-of ways? This one was near and dear to my heart as I was directly involved. One lesson that I learned from this, which only became apparent as the GFC unfolded, is that if you are a CEO of an entity and asked by the Fed to help, you sure as heck better help! (See Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers).

  

  The Greenspan Put, maybe because it was “unnecessary” or certainly not as necessary as it was in 1987, helped stocks recover their losses very quickly and we moved to new highs!

  The “Tech Bubble”

  First, what was commonly referred to as a “tech bubble” at the time, merely looks like a moderate misalignment of capital in retrospect. While some companies never grew into their valuations and never returned, several of today’s market leaders look “dirt cheap” now even at levels that were then considered “bubbles.” The data has pointed to a resilient consumer. I’ve been skeptical of how strong the consumer will be going forward. My impression, albeit subjective, is that discounts were very prevalent during this holiday season (pulling future demand forward) and inflation continued to skew spending higher (as we still have to spend more to get the same amount of stuff). While that might have been a sufficient argument a few weeks ago, we need to dig deeper. Some of the high yield issuers (I was more involved with them) wound up defaulting but came roaring back over time. I still have “fond” memories of AOL being acquired and a lot of specific CDS related questions about dilution not having to get resolved. But I digress.

  

  You can see 9/11 in the chart. What I don’t highlight, which I think is a problem when we discuss the period, was the failing of WorldCom and Enron. Two “allegedly” investment grade companies went “poof” relatively quickly. How could analysts do their jobs when the data was misleading or outright fraudulent? I strongly believe that the concern those two bankruptcies caused for credit markets played a great role in not just the depth of the problem, but also why it took well over 5 years to recover!

  It will forever be known as a “tech bubble” but I think that is a misnomer and too simplistic.

  What you can see from the chart is that it was a “great” period for traders, if you caught some of the moves correctly, or it was one of the few times that “buy the dip” failed, repeatedly.

  Yes, the “bubble burst” but there were multiple moves higher of 10% or more, and remember, this is the S&P 500, not the Nasdaq, which had even “crazier” moves.

  The 2007 “All-Time” High

  Of all the all-time highs, this is the one that I’m most bitter about, and it seems bizarre in almost every respect.

  

  I jammed a lot into this chart. I feel obligated to highlight my “frustration” with Michael Lewis’s book “The Big Short.” It makes it sound like only a select few saw housing start to crack. From my seat, many people saw it, but the timing was incredibly difficult, and you were certainly “fighting the Fed.”

  We “finally” got back to the “tech bubble” highs in the summer of 2007. It was helped by housing, but also incredibly tight credit spreads, as products like CPDOs seemed “miraculous” in that you could take BBB credits, leverage them in a vehicle, and get a AAA rating (flawed). This was coupled with everything that went on in the mortgage-backed market (where issues with the original tranching models were multiplied when tranches were re-tranched into CDO squared).

  But it was the “Bernanke Put” that strikes me as the most odd. The all-time highs in stocks were set after some serious problems had been exposed. But the measures Bernanke took (from monetary policy to the media) helped us reach new highs. Then, while we tried to bounce every time the Fed (or D.C.) intervened, we continued to slide. We didn’t bottom until March of 2009, a full 6 months after Lehman defaulted. I still think that the Lehman Moment is the greatest misnomer in financial markets as stocks rallied that week and there were far more problems (many greater than this). But maybe a “scapegoat” helps everyone feel better?

  But, to this day, I still do not understand how the Bernanke Put, which came shortly after all-time highs were breached, could overcome all of the obvious problems.

  Having said that, I did learn the hard way that you don’t need to understand something to trade it, which came in very handy, most recently during COVID.

  More “at the highs” Thoughts

  Almost all are surrounded by frantic volatility, especially after they fail.

  It is almost disturbing (actually I find it quite disturbing) how many highs seem dependent on monetary policy, which may explain why the uptrends and downswings both seem more manic.

  Brexit, which caused markets to trade limit down after the surprise vote, was “solved” by the time markets opened for business with central banks providing “globally coordinated” support. Ditto for the 2023 “banking crisis.” This was the first time that I was asked to participate in a “crisis” special – which was an obvious buy signal. 😊

  We’ve all lived through the past few years, so no reason to expound on them anymore, other than that they too seem to fit the patterns of the past.

  Bottom Line

  Could this be just the start of breaking through to higher and higher highs?

  • If AI is passing on cost/benefit analysis already, then it is certainly a real possibility!
  • As supply chains shift and we redevelop a strong “working class” in America, where jobs are more secure and higher paying, then it is certainly a real possibility.
  • If the Fed cuts and forces “savers” back into equities on anything like the scale that occurred during ZIRP, then it is a real possibility.

  On the other hand, if all we have done is chase monetary policy to levels that aren’t currently sustainable through innovation, jobs, and real economic growth, then the decline is likely to be rapid and leave a lot of people scratching their heads and wondering how it was possible to sell off so quickly (even though historically, that is the “norm”).

  I guess that if I was writing to Ann Landers, this is where I’d sign the report “torn and confused.”

  I remain resolute on higher yields and tighter credit spreads, but I am truly struggling with what to do with stocks here, except to add to commodity related holdings and wait to see how commercial real estate does.

  Good luck, enjoy the Super Bowl, and take the over on the number of times Taylor Swift is mentioned!

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 14:00

• Alcohol Sales Halted After Drunk Chaos Erupts At WM Phoenix Open
  Alcohol Sales Halted After Drunk Chaos Erupts At WM Phoenix Open

  The Waste Management Open in Phoenix is well-known for being one of the biggest parties in the golf world. However, even this event has limits, as fans quickly found out on Saturday afternoon when tournament organizers suspended alcohol sales. 

  “On Saturday at the WM Phoenix Open, I observed more chaos in the last eight hours than I have cumulatively in the last decade of my life,” golf reporter Claire Rogers wrote. 

  Rogers continued: “I saw men bleeding from the face, people napping on muddy hills and adults knocking each other over because they couldn’t walk straight.” 

  Videos on social media platform X captured the rowdiness of the crowd: 

  🚨#WATCH: CHAOS IN PHOENIX 🍺💀
  (via wrush08 / Reddit) pic.twitter.com/M4QJDNwQK1

  — NUCLR GOLF (@NUCLRGOLF) February 10, 2024

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  I would say he did not stick the landing pic.twitter.com/Y8bI8Eu9IK

  — Paige Spiranac (@PaigeSpiranac) February 10, 2024

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  Man & Earth become one at the Waste Management @ForePlayPod pic.twitter.com/bBzsPe6gBL

  — Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) February 11, 2024

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  After Saturday, has the Waste Management Open officially gone too far with the drunkenness? Is it time for organizers to rein it in? pic.twitter.com/EqLGVlyFPZ

  — Joe Kinsey (@JoeKinseyexp) February 11, 2024

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  Besides cutting off alcohol to fans, event organizers also closed “entrance gates,” which they blamed on “larger than usual crowds.” 

  Due to larger than usual crowds, the WM Phoenix Open entrance gates are temporarily closed and shuttle service to the event is on hold. Shuttle service back to parking lots will remain running. Regularly check our channels for updates. pic.twitter.com/NAi1nYuuCu

  — WM Phoenix Open (@WMPhoenixOpen) February 10, 2024

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  The crowds chanted: “We Want Beer!” 

  🚨🍺🚫 #DRY IN THE DESERT: ‘WE WANT BEER’ chants have broken out! — The fans in Phoenix are getting restless after officials put a stop to alcohol. (Via IG / eric_gliebe) pic.twitter.com/11Y0fOlbUu

  — NUCLR GOLF (@NUCLRGOLF) February 10, 2024

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  Sounds epic. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 13:25

• CDC Is Now Retaliating Against Its Own Scientists For 'Wrong' Mask Research
  CDC Is Now Retaliating Against Its Own Scientists For ‘Wrong’ Mask Research

  Authored by Paul D. Thacker via The Disinformation Chronicle (subscribe here),

  In a congressional hearing last November on restoring trust in science, CDC Director Mandy Cohen kept evading questions on whether she would bring back mask mandates for toddlers.

  

  “We have a lot of different tools to protect our children,” Dr. Cohen said during her cagey response.

  Six days later, a BMJ journal published a study that found “mask recommendations for children are not supported by scientific evidence.”

  

  Director Cohen’s scientific bumbling continued last week as her agency began fighting with CDC’s own researchers over another contentious declaration: N95 respirators work better than surgical masks. In recent years, mask advocates have shifted goalposts and demanded N95 respirators, which they claim perform better than surgical masks at stopping the COVID virus.

  Not true say CDC’s own scientists, according to CDC documents I uncovered.

  During a presentation last summer, a CDC expert stated there was no difference between N95 respirators and masks in stopping viruses. These findings have been supported by CDC scientists in a study CDC published on the agency’s website last November—just a few weeks before Director Cohen testified before Congress.

  To shut down this controversy, CDC wrote a blog last week warning researchers that to suggest that facemasks and respirators are the same “is not scientifically correct.” 

  Soon after the pandemic started, the CDC began promoting masks to stop the spread of COVID. And it did so despite CDC publishing a May 2020 policy study in their own journal “Emerging Infectious Diseases” that did not find a “substantial effect” for masks in stopping the transmission of respiratory viruses.

  

  Does this sound like a problem? Not really.

  The CDC then began a policy pivot. On their website and on social media, the CDC started plugging N95 respirators as superior to simple surgical masks.

  

  However, on their webpage promoting the superiority of N95 respirators, the CDC did add one critical disclaimer: there’s not a whole lot of evidence that N95 respirators do in fact work better than masks at stopping viruses. In one example, CDC noted that a 2019 study in JAMA compared respirators to masks and found “no significant difference.”  

  Oops. See the JAMA conclusions, below.

  

  Over the last year, CDC’s researchers have supported scientific findings that N95s perform the same as masks in stopping viruses. At a meeting last summer in Atlanta, a CDC health analyst presented the findings from a CDC meta-analysis on the effectiveness of surgical masks compared to N95 respirators.

  Guess what CDC findings suggested: no difference. Here’s the health analyst’s testimony below:

  Subscribers to The Disinformation Chronicle can read the rest here…

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 12:50

• Egypt Warns Israel: Rafah Invasion Could Negate '79 Peace Treaty
  Egypt Warns Israel: Rafah Invasion Could Negate ’79 Peace Treaty

  With Israel on the verge of invading Gaza’s southernmost city, Egypt is warning that such a move could trigger a suspension of the treaty that has maintained peace between the two countries since 1979, the Wall Street Journal reports. 

  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday directed the Israeli Defense Forces to plan the evacuation of the city of Rafah, which lies on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt and reportedly holds more than a million refugees already forced from their homes elsewhere in the 25-mile-long strip. 

  Therefore, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the IDF and the security establishment to submit to the Cabinet a combined plan for evacuating the population and destroying the battalions.

  — Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) February 9, 2024

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  One particularly sensitive slice of real estate is the so-called Philadelphi Route or Philadelphi Corridor, which stretches nine miles along the Gaza-Egypt border. Diplomatic accords establish limits on the number of troops that either Israel or Egypt can position in several delineated zones along and near the border, and certainly don’t authorize large numbers of Israeli troops and armored vehicles. 

  In late December, Netanyahu said the Philadelphi Route “has to be in our hands” if Gaza is to be effectively and permanently demilitarized. In January, an Egyptian official said, “It must be strictly emphasized that any Israeli move in this direction will lead to a serious threat to Egyptian-Israeli relations.” 

  

  While an Egyptian diplomatic delegation visited Tel Aviv on Friday to discuss the situation in Gaza, Mexican Egyptian President Sisi has rejected several phone calls from Netanyahu over recent weeks, sources tell the Journal. 

  The threat that large numbers of Palestinian refugees could soon be pouring across the border raises many deep concerns for Egypt. Perhaps more than the challenge of managing a humanitarian crisis, if displaced Palestinians launch attacks on the IDF from Egypt, that could trigger Israeli retaliatory strikes across the border. If Israel doesn’t allow the Palestinians to return, tensions between Israel and Egypt would be sharply increased for years to come.  

  With the threat of a looming ground invasion by the Israeli occupation is in Rafah, the situation has become dire.

  The lives of more than 1 million displaced Palestinians are at imminent risk of being taken. pic.twitter.com/pBTWhh35vh

  — TIMES OF GAZA (@Timesofgaza) February 11, 2024

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  Nor does Egypt want to be seen as facilitating an ethnic cleansing of Gaza by Israel — an option that was presented by Israel’s intelligence ministry in the wake of the Oct 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel, and embraced by various Israeli officials. 

  Since the war began, Egypt has been reinforcing its border with Gaza, building a concrete, barbed-wire-topped wall that extends six meters into the ground below it, while also boosting surveillance capabilities, and moving tanks and armored vehicles into the vicinity. The Israel-Hamas war is proving costly for Egypt in other ways, as Suez Canal traffic has plummeted some 30%.  

  Egypt’s warning comes alongside expressions of concern by a variety of countries both inside and outside of the region:

  • “Military operations right now would be a disaster for those people, and it’s not something that we would support,” said US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

  • “Invading Rafah… which is the last refuge for hundreds of thousands of civilians whom the brutal Israeli aggression displaced will have [grave] consequences,” said the Saudi foreign ministry.

  • “Deeply concerned about the prospect of a military offensive in Rafah – over half of Gaza’s population are sheltering in the area,” tweeted UK foreign secretary David Cameron.  

  • “The people of Gaza cannot disappear into thin air…[it is a] “humanitarian catastrophe in the making,” said German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. 

  • A Rafah invasion would create an “unspeakable humanitarian catastrophe,” said EU Foreign Minister Joseph Borrell. 

  • Israel’s plan “threatens to cause the loss of more innocent life and exacerbate the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip,” said the United Arab Emirates foreign ministry.

  However, if past is prologue, watch for the Israeli government to disregard the protests of its partners and benefactors — protests that may be offered primarily for domestic consumption.  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 02/11/2024 – 12:15