Jun 09

Today’s News 9th June 2024

  • The Speech That Military Recruiters Don't Want You To Hear
    The Speech That Military Recruiters Don’t Want You To Hear

    Authored by Casey Carlisle via AntiWar.com,

    Before we get into this, let’s discuss what most would label “a hypothetical.” Tonight, I’m going to break into your home, point a gun at you, and rob you – all the while claiming that I’m not your enemy. Your enemy, I’ll say, is elsewhere, and I don’t mean across the street but in a different country. What will you do? By a show of hands, will you fight back and protect those in your home by evicting me or even by killing me? By a show of hands, who will thank me and travel to said country in search of the enemy, leaving those in your home vulnerable to me? Anyone? Nobody? It sounds absurd, but for reasons that I’ll soon explain, you’ll understand that it’s more real than hypothetical.

    Hello, I’m Casey Carlisle. I’m a West Point graduate, and I spent five years in the Army, including 11 months in Afghanistan. Some of you are thinking about serving your country, and most of you are asking yourselves, “Why am I listening to this guy?” I’m glad that both of these groups are here, and I promise that my remarks will cause both groups to think differently about military service.

    I was a high-school senior on September 11th, 2001, sitting in class and stunned after hearing the principal announce that our country had just been attacked. Why would someone want to do this to the greatest country on Earth? I was also livid, and I wanted revenge. I wanted to kill the people responsible for this atrocity, and my dilemma then was between enlisting in the military to exact revenge now or first spending years at a military academy before helping to rid the world of terrorists. I chose the latter, so I didn’t deploy to Afghanistan until 2009. My time there radically changed my views, which was uncomfortable, but, as with failure, discomfort breeds learning.

    I learned that not only were we not keeping our fellow Americans safe or protecting their liberty, we were further impoverishing one of the poorest countries in the world. I watched in disgust my alleged allies – the Afghan police – rob their neighbors while on patrol and in broad daylight via traffic stops. Imagine getting pulled over, not for speeding, but because the cop hopes to rob you. My enemy – the Taliban – didn’t do such things, which is why I ended up having more respect for them than for my mission or for those who were allegedly helping us accomplish it. “Oh, but they’re horrible in other ways,” you might argue, and I’d agree; however, it’s much harder to kill an idea than it is to kill a person. Killing someone who holds an idea that you find distasteful only helps that person’s loved ones accept that idea. It turns out that killing someone for their ideas is a great way to spread those ideas.

    US Army file image

    Instead of dismissing me as an anti-American lunatic, consider the following. In the year 2000, the Taliban controlled most of Afghanistan, and today, they control all of it. This is just one of the reasons why I feel contempt for those who thank me for my alleged service. Our ‘service’ was worse than worthless, and the people thanking me were forced to pay for it. All of those who died there did so for nothing. And the innocent Afghans who were displaced, injured, or killed during our attempt to bring democracy to a country that didn’t want it were far better off in 2000 than they are now.

    To be clear, the desire to serve one’s country is noble, but we must first define “country.” Serving one’s country is entirely different from serving one’s government. They are not the same. Serving one’s country is serving one’s family, friends, neighbors, and the land that they’ve made home. Serving one’s country is serving one’s community. Serving one’s government, however, is ultimately what everyone does when they enlist or when they take my path as an officer. Who are these people in government that you’ll end up serving? Are they your family, friends, or neighbors? For the most part, they are not, yet, they are ultimately who will decide your fate while in uniform. Whether they’re politicians or bureaucrats, they decide what serving one’s country entails, and, naturally, they’ll subordinate our country’s prosperity to their job security. If given the opportunity, these people will not hesitate to send you to your death if it means scoring a measly political point against their ideological foes. Serving one’s country in this context – reality – means serving these parasites.

    Here’s something else to consider.  When you tell the military recruiter that you want to enlist, what are you implying? You’re telling the recruiter – a government agent – that not only do you want to serve your government but that you’re willing to kill for it. Tell any other recruiter in the real economy of that proclivity, and, at the very least, you won’t be getting that job.  Seems obvious enough, but have you heard of Operation Vigilant Eagle? This operation, headed by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, tracks veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and characterizes them as extremists and potential domestic terrorists. Why?  Because these veterans might be disgruntled or suffering from the psychological effects of war. Yes, you heard that correctly.

    The government that bribed the graduating senior into joining the military now views that same patriot as its enemy. You might protest, thinking that getting put on a list isn’t all that bad, but I’d argue that lists are never created as an end; they’re always a means, and in this case, too, they’re diabolical. Not only were these veterans put on a list for the ‘crime’ of justifiably feeling disillusioned, when a veteran was explicitly critical of the regime, these veterans were labeled “mentally unfit” and forced into psychiatric facilities where they’d receive treatment for whatever illness the regime deemed appropriate, indefinitely. I don’t know if this program continues today, but if the regime were to tell us, “We’re not doing that anymore,” would you believe it?

    I know you weren’t around for 9/11, but I’m sure you recall March of 2020. I bet you were almost as angry then as I was. We all witnessed a very sad truth: the “home of the brave” is devoid of the brave, and the “land of the free” hasn’t been free for quite some time. Most Americans not only take their liberty for granted, they readily reject it. They’re terrified of it, which is why they hate it. What we all witnessed then undermines the tired slogan – the blatant lie – that those who join the military are “fighting for our freedom.” This is no theory; it’s why, to this day, the military is struggling like hell to recruit people like you. They think you’re stupid.

    But you might’ve realized that serving one’s country necessarily implies staying in one’s country. You might be thinking that when one joins the military, he swears to defend the Constitution against all enemies – foreign and domestic; however, the regime would like you to combat only the foreign enemies that it tells you to hate. Who kicked you out of school in 2020? Who cancelled your games, meets, matches, and races? Who prevented you from traveling freely?  Who thought it best that you not embrace your loved ones?  Who masked you? Our own government is our greatest threat, and it has proven to be so scared of those it duped into ‘serving’ that it’ll send you to some other country or to a mental hospital in order to protect itself.

    I’m not telling you what to do. I’m making sure that you’re fully aware of what you’re getting into if you decide to join the military, as I’m sure the recruiter didn’t tell you about Operation Vigilant Eagle. He probably didn’t tell you that 18 veterans kill themselves every day, and he probably didn’t tell you that the military is the final political option. But does it seem like the regime waits until all else fails before getting involved, or is it easier to count the countries that do not have U.S. military personnel stationed in them? Did the recruiter tell you that those who don’t ‘serve’ pay the salaries of those who do? Seems a bit backward – to be forced to pay those who allegedly serve you.

    Most of the millionaires and billionaires in this country got rich by actually serving their fellow man via voluntary exchange, not by living off of their neighbors. I encourage you to consider taking that route – enriching yourself by enriching your community, not by parasitizing it. And no need to fixate on getting rich. If your interactions with your community are voluntary – no matter how lousy the pay – they’re likely honorable, no killing required. In closing, take a deep breath, and look around. Your country is here. We are your country, and when things get bad, we will need you here, not fighting those in a different country who pose no threat to us while leaving us vulnerable to our greatest threat. Thank you for listening.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/08/2024 – 23:20

  • Where Are America's Largest Landfills?
    Where Are America’s Largest Landfills?

    According to the EPA, the U.S. produced 292 million tons of solid waste in 2018. Of that, about 150 million tons headed to the country’s landfills. It would take more than 600 of the largest cargo ships (by dead weight tonnage) to move this much material at once.

    Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu maps out America’s largest landfills, based on their total capacity (measured in millions of tons) for solid waste.

    Data for this graphic is sourced from Statista and is current up to 2023.

    Ranked: America’s Largest Landfills

    Opened in 1993 and located 25 minutes from Las Vegas, Apex Landfill is believed to be one of the world’s largest landfills by both area and volume.

    It spans 1,900 acres, or roughly the size of 1,400 football fields. Given its vast capacity, the landfill is expected to be able to accept waste for over 250 years.

    Here are the top 10 largest landfills in the country.

    In a 2021 PBS interview, a spokesperson for Apex Landfill reported that the facility captured and treated enough landfill gas to power nearly 11,000 homes in Southern Nevada.

    In fact, landfills can create electricity through a process called landfill gas (LFG) recovery. When organic waste decomposes, it produces methane gas which can be captured and purified to create fuel for generators.

    As it happens, methane gas from landfills is the third-largest source of human-related carbon emissions, equivalent to 24 million gas passenger vehicles driven for one year. Its capture and treatment is a significant opportunity to combat emissions.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/08/2024 – 22:45

  • Atlas Shrugs Twice
    Atlas Shrugs Twice

    Authored by Charles Krblich via The Brownstone Institute,

    One fateful day in March 2020, the incompetent men shut down the world with lockdowns. It was the opposite of the premise in Atlas Shrugged.

    Who is John Galt?

    Who cares?

    The incompetent people could stop the motor of the world too.

    Atlas shrugs either by disappearing competence or by an overwhelming mass of incompetence too great even for Atlas’s broad, strong shoulders.

    Competency crises seem to be brewing left and right and are constantly on public display of late. Consider the self-interested testimony of Fani Willis. Jared Bernstein, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, caused an interview to go viral by struggling to explain monetary policy. Several previously 100% effective Covid vaccines have been withdrawn from the market (Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca). Lastly, consider the inspiring image of our own Secretary of Defense triumphantly marching off his plane in the Philippines wearing his Covid mask and face shield. It is not-so-reminiscent of the image of General MacArthur triumphantly marching onshore at Luzon to liberate the Philippines. It is difficult to observe these things and think, These are competent individuals.

    In Ayn Rand’s novel, the competent individuals who build businesses, products, and industries all go on strike and suddenly disappear. The resulting world becomes increasingly bleak. Government takes a larger role. Simple things start to break. Less value is provided and at the same time, everything is more expensive. That sounds much like the world we begin to find ourselves in today.

    Rand witnessed all of this herself. She was born in the city of St. Petersburg in pre-revolutionary Russia, the daughter of a pharmacist. After the revolution, her father’s pharmacy was nationalized and they fled to Crimea which was under White Army control during the ensuing Russian Civil War. Afterward, they returned to St. Petersburg and were forced to live under desperate conditions. Nearly starving, she was granted a visa to visit Chicago. She managed to stay in the US and chose to leave her family behind. She watched as incompetent men destroyed her father’s business, needlessly broke up her family, and repeated this disaster society-wide.

    Meanwhile, we can read and laugh about recent trends like quiet-quitting, which may be a darkly alternative concept of Galt’s Gulch. Regardless of competency, people can disappear and simply collect a paycheck. Rather than compete, the goal becomes optimizing work-life balance and pursuing passions outside of work. If competent people begin to do only the bare minimum, is it any wonder that customer service or quality control always seems to be on the decline everywhere we look?

    The outcome is always the same: incompetence spreads. In many cases, incompetence becomes celebrated. In 2021, Fauci was awarded the Dan David Prize for “speaking truth to power” during the pandemic. Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York was given an international Emmy for his “masterful” pandemic briefings. Today, where do both stand? 

    Governor Cuomo’s Emmy was eventually stripped from him after he was forced to resign in response to sexual harassment allegations against him.  Fauci is admitting to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic that much of the rules for social distancing and masking were simply made up. Lying, in spectacular fashion, is “masterful” and “speaking truth to power” only in clown world. In reality, it is neither. 

    Maybe, in the upcoming election, we will see Kamala Harris decry the Trump vaccine and claim she never took it. You see, it was the convicted felon Trump’s vaccine and the ineffectiveness and severe side effects were known to all. There will, of course, be video of her being injected, just as there is a video of her at the Vice Presidential debate where she states that she wouldn’t take a vaccine Trump told her to. It is only a coincidence that the Pfizer vaccine was approved in early December, just a little more than a month after the election in November 2020. 

    I have long thought that the correct solution to all of this is to not participate, to only focus on what I can immediately control. I imagined that if the Von Trapp family could avoid Nazism and flee across the hills as shown in The Sound of Music, then I would be able to as well. It all seemed so simple. I spent little time contemplating how precarious and close to disaster their situation truly was.

    Ayn Rand, on the other hand, fled with her family to Crimea with the White Army. It failed. They were returned to St. Petersburg, Russia. Her parents perished in the city renamed as Leningrad, Russia in 1941 when the Nazis began their Siege of Leningrad.

    People pay far too much attention to the charade presented on their television screens. Individuality is lost; energy is squandered. The conflicting messages, hypocrisies, and our own inability to do anything about it affect us in ways that are often not conscious. 

    I felt the way he looked. His was one of helplessness, frustration and indignation—but he could do absolutely nothing.

    Ayn Rand, speaking about her father in the wake of the 1917 Communist Revolution

    How many of us felt this way at the announcement of lockdowns? How many resisted? How many still believe? What does any of it mean? 

    Rand’s father, however, did not give in. He refused to work for the Soviet Government, even if it threatened his family’s food security. He helped his daughter escape to America, and he encouraged her to follow her own dreams.

    Atlas may shrug, justice may never be served, all of the structures and institutions around us may fall into disrepair or collapse, and the world may be forcefully locked down, but when we give in to apathy and shrug our shoulders in dejected acceptance and passive participation, we also hand over our own individuality, agency, and freedom.

    It is then that Atlas shrugs, not once, but twice.

    *  *  *

    Republished from the author’s Substack

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/08/2024 – 22:10

  • Copper Breaks Trend Line As Trafigura Questions Spike, Hedge Funds Bet Big
    Copper Breaks Trend Line As Trafigura Questions Spike, Hedge Funds Bet Big

    Tight supplies from copper mines and the looming threat of a worsening global deficit rocketed copper prices from February to June, and the AI trade, which drove momentum from speculative traders, pushed prices even higher. But in recent weeks, prices have tumbled, breaking a critical trend line that has been intact for months. Now, prices are teetering on a knife-edge, with trading desks and hedge funds speculating on what comes next. 

    Let’s begin with comments from the world’s top copper trader – and as Bloomberg’s Jack Farchy puts it, “usually one of the market’s most bullish voices” – who called the price surge unjustified due to real-world supply. 

    “Prices of non-ferrous metals have moved much higher than fundamentals in the physical spot market might indicate or justify, especially for copper,” Trafigura Chief Economist Saad Rahim wrote in a note with first-half results on Thursday. 

    Rahim pointed out that copper’s speculative surge in the first half of the year was primarily linked to “investment flows.” However, he does believe the closure of First Quantum Minerals Ltd.’s mine in Panama will eventually tighten global supplies. 

    He wrote that sliding mine supply “has led to a significant concentrates shortage, resulting in smelters having to cut production and pointing to tighter inventories of refined metal even if demand is lackluster.”

    Copper prices on the London Metal Exchange on Friday fell to $9,652 a ton, down 11.5% from the all-time high of $11,104 in May. Furthermore, prices have breached a multi-month ascending trend line, which is happening as the top consumer of copper, China, has printed dismal economic data. 

    “Specs got in from Feb, fast money chased in March (AI narrative emerged), April we saw consumers really step back (above 9k) and scrap volumes picked up, May was financial FOMO and stop outs and we saw a pickup in producer hedging. Feels to me like the 2023 range steps a good $1500 higher for now, the low of that range will be what we settle next couple of weeks and the higher end will be the stop out top (10k to 11k give or take),” Goldman’s James McGeoch wrote in a note to clients on Friday. 

    McGeoch said, “The numbers I hear most is $14-15k. Think this gets the project running, then you drift back to marginal cost.” 

    Then there are hedge funds Rokos Capital Management and Andurand Capital Management, which bet that prices could rally significantly from current levels.

    Per Bloomberg: 

    Rokos has made a flurry of options purchases in the past several months in a bet that copper could rally to $20,000 or more over the next few years, according to people familiar with the matter. At Andurand, copper was the biggest position by market exposure at the end of April, and the trader has recently predicted that prices could hit $40,000. Those targets are well beyond the forecasts of even the most bullish Wall Street banks.

    Last week, Andurand told clients in a letter that its main commodities funds were up between 13% and 30% in April, primarily because of its bullish copper bets. 

    “We believe that we are at the beginning of the copper bull-market and that the recent move higher in prices is just the start,” Andurand wrote,adding, “Copper faces a decade-long supply deficit driven by the confluence of increasing demand due to the energy transition and persistent underinvestment in mine expansion.”

    In April, David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital said it had made a “medium-sized macro position to benefit from higher copper prices.” 

    “Our thesis now is that copper supply is about to fall short of demand, forcing prices substantially higher,” Greenlight said in a letter to clients, adding, “We think the best way to invest in that thesis is the most direct way — in this case through options on copper futures.”

    Goldman’s McGeoch said, “A supply shock doesn’t get the price from $10,500 to $12,000. It’s what takes us from $15k to $20k.” 

    Also, Jeff Currie, who led commodities research at Goldman for nearly three decades, recently told Bloomberg’s Odd Lots that copper “is the most compelling trade I have ever seen in my 30 plus years of doing this.”

    Despite China’s souring recovery, copper bulls believe the market will tighten as global industrial activity increases, central banks pivot to looser monetary policy, and mining companies struggle to ramp up production. This comes as demand rises due to electric vehicles, renewables, reshoring trends, and AI data centers, as the copper squeeze is likely to reignite again. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/08/2024 – 21:35

  • FDA Rescinds Ban On Juul E-Cigarettes
    FDA Rescinds Ban On Juul E-Cigarettes

    Authored by Marina Zhang via The Epoch Times,

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reversed its two-year ban on Juul’s e-cigarettes on Thursday.

    The decision was made in response to new case law and the FDA’s review of the information Juul provided, the agency wrote in its public statement.

    An FDA spokesperson told The Epoch Times that they could not expand on what case law the FDA is referring to.

    The FDA’s initial ban on Juul e-cigarettes started on June 23, 2022, when the agency issued marketing denial orders (MDOs) to Juul Labs, banning all of the e-cigarette company’s products from the U.S. market.

    The company immediately filed an appeal that placed a temporary stay on the ban. A week later, the FDA placed an administrative stay on the MDOs “after determining that certain scientific issues warranted additional review,” and Juul’s products remained on the market for two years.

    With the new rescission, the FDA said its decision does not mean Juul’s products are now authorized for the U.S. market.

    The rescission changes Juul’s application to pending status, and the FDA will conduct a review to authorize or deny Juul’s products.

    “All e-cigarette products, including those made by Juul, are required by law to have FDA authorization to be legally marketed. The agency’s continued review does not constitute authorization to market, sell, or ship Juul products,” the FDA spokesperson told The Epoch Times.

    The agency stated that its statutes will “significantly limit what the agency can disclose regarding the content of pending applications.”

    In a statement published the same day, Juul welcomed the FDA’s decision.

    “We appreciate the FDA’s decision and now look forward to re-engaging with the agency on a science- and evidence-based process to pursue a marketing authorization for JUUL products,” said the company.

    “We remain confident … and believe that a full review of the science and evidence will demonstrate that our products meet the statutory standard of being appropriate for the protection of public health.”

    Juul’s devices and tobacco- and menthol-flavored e-cigarette pods will remain on the market during the review.

    Juul’s Past Ban and Controversy

    Juul is currently the No. 2 e-cigarette company in the United States.

    The company was launched in 2015 and quickly gained popularity among teenagers and young adults. It then caught the attention of lawmakers and regulators due to concerns that Juul intentionally targeted younger people.

    Beginning in 2017, the popularity of e-cigarettes in the United States increased by 40 percent, driven primarily by Juul.

    At the peak of its popularity in 2019, the company represented the e-cigarette craze, commanding 75 percent of the market share in the United States.

    Beginning in 2019, health agencies issued alerts about teenagers ending up in emergency departments due to respiratory injuries from vaping. States and affected families filed personal injury lawsuits against Juul, alleging inappropriate marketing to youths.

    In 2020, under a federal court order, the FDA began requiring all e-cigarette and vaping companies to submit applications to continue marketing their products.

    In June 2022, the FDA ordered that Juul products be taken off the market due to four unresolved questions in its toxicology data. In its appeal to the FDA, Juul told the agency that these questions could have been clarified through the usual procedures or “a mere phone call.”

    Though the ban only lasted a few days, the amassed litigation and FDA action soon sent the company into a financial crisis, with it narrowly avoiding bankruptcy in 2022 and 2024.

    Juul has since taken steps to reduce underage usage by not featuring anyone younger than 35 in commercials and requiring age verification for purchase from its website.

    Since 2023, Juul’s underage usage has been cut by 95 percent. In December 2023, the company submitted applications to the FDA for next-generation e-cigarette products, but these have not yet been approved.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/08/2024 – 21:00

  • How Homicide Rates Have Changed Since 2012 By US State
    How Homicide Rates Have Changed Since 2012 By US State

    Are the United States getting more dangerous or more safe? The answer partially depends on your metric of choice.

    For example, by examining homicide rates by state from 2012 to 2022, it can be seen that rates have increased almost across the board. That said, they are still lower than rates seen in the 1980s and 1990s.

    This graphic, via Visual Capitalist, from USAFacts examines the age-adjusted homicide rates by state from 2012 to 2022, and how they’ve changed. It uses CDC data available for 46 states, with no data available for New Hampshire, North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming.

    Comparing States by Homicide Rates

    From 2012 to 2022, homicide rates increased in every state with available data except for Connecticut, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. Here are the rates for all 46 available states as well as their 10-year change in percentage:

    State Homicide rate
    (2022, age-adjusted per 100,000)    		 10-Year Change
    (2012–2022)
    Mississippi 20.7 +103%
    Louisiana 19.8 +64%
    Alabama 14.9 +71%
    New Mexico 14.5 +120%
    Missouri 12.8 +75%
    Arkansas 11.8 +39%
    South Carolina 11.8 +44%
    Maryland 11.4 +61%
    Georgia 11.3 +74%
    Tennessee 11.0 +49%
    Illinois 10.9 +68%
    Alaska 10.2 +104%
    North Carolina 9.2 +56%
    Arizona 9.0 +45%
    Pennsylvania 8.9 +53%
    Michigan 8.6 +10%
    Ohio 8.5 +49%
    Indiana 8.4 +53%
    Kentucky 8.3 +48%
    Oklahoma 8.3 +14%
    Nevada 7.8 +73%
    Virginia 7.8 +90%
    Texas 7.6 +49%
    Colorado 7.2 +85%
    Florida 7.2 +11%
    Delaware 7.0 +1%
    South Dakota 6.9 +188%
    West Virginia 6.2 +5%
    Wisconsin 6.0 +71%
    California 5.9 +13%
    Kansas 5.8 +53%
    Montana 5.4 +125%
    Washington 5.4 +64%
    Oregon 5.1 +82%
    New York 4.5 +22%
    Connecticut 4.3 -2.3%
    Minnesota 3.8 +90%
    New Jersey 3.8 -20.8%
    Nebraska 3.7 +6%
    Hawaii 3.0 +100%
    Iowa 2.9 +38%
    Idaho 2.7 +23%
    Maine 2.6 +8%
    Massachusetts 2.5 +25%
    Utah 2.2 +29%
    Rhode Island 2.0 -33.3%

    Note: Age-adjusted data helps to compare health data over time or between groups more fairly by accounting for the age differences in populations.

    Mississippi had the largest increase in homicide rate, more than doubling from 10.2 to 20.7 per 100,000 people. New Mexico (up 7.9 homicides per 100,000 people), Louisiana (up 7.7), Alabama (up 6.2), and Missouri (up 5.5) had the next-biggest increases.

    Murder rates doubled in at least six states over the decade: South Dakota (+188%), Montana (+125%), New Mexico (+120%), Alaska (+104%), Mississippi (+103%), and Hawaii (+100%).

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/08/2024 – 20:25

  • From Bloody Biden Head To Code Pink 'War Criminal' Display, White House Protest Gets Heated
    From Bloody Biden Head To Code Pink ‘War Criminal’ Display, White House Protest Gets Heated

    Update (2000ET): Thousands of demonstrators surrounded the White House on Saturday to protest President Joe Biden’s response to Israel’s military strikes on Gaza.

    Chants of “Free Palestine!”, “Genocide is our red line”, and “Israel bombs, your taxes pay” could be heard from protesters – many of whom were bussed in from over two dozen cities.

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

    Footage posted on X shows protesters getting rowdy as police attempted to make an arrest. As a crowd chants, “Let her go!” officers deployed pepper spray (at 17 seconds).

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

    The woman was not arrested, and the cops were chased away, with one protester saying “get out of here motherfuckers.“

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

    The demonstration featured a coalition of groups, including the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Code Pink, which featured protesters dressed as Biden, Antony Blinken, Netanyahu, and Israel’s Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant.

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

    It was a diverse crowd to say the least…

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

    One pro-Hamas group even featured a Biden mask covered in blood.

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

    Smoke bombs were lit:

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

    And protesters threw bottles at a police officer, breaking into a chant of “Fascist!”

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

    Oh, and there was a giant pride parade a few streets over.

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

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

    *   *   *

    President Biden loves taxpayer-funded walls, except for former President Trump’s southern border wall. The elderly president has a beautiful taxpayer-funded wall around his beach home in exclusive Rehoboth Beach (a destination for rich liberals), where the poors and illegal aliens are not allowed. On the topic of walls this weekend, another taxpayer-funded wall was quietly erected around the White House in recent days.

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

    Biden’s ‘White House Wall’ was erected on Friday ahead of ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), an anti-war group founded three days after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, along with other activist groups, including CODEPINK and the Council on American Islamic Relations, who are all planning to surround the White House for Palestine on Saturday. 

    Photo: Craig Birchfield

    ANSWER posted on X numerous videos that show busses of pro-Palestinian protesters en route to Washington, DC, Saturday morning. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “In preparation for the events this weekend in Washington, DC, that have the potential for large crowds to gather, additional public safety measures have been put in place near the White House complex,” a US Secret Service spokesperson told Reuters. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/08/2024 – 20:02

  • European Elections: Forging Ahead Or A Spanner In The Works
    European Elections: Forging Ahead Or A Spanner In The Works

    By Elwin de Groot, Stefan Koopman, and Maartje Wijffelaars of Rabobank (pdf link)

    Summary

    • The European Parliament elections will serve as a pivotal test of the far right’s influence on the European political landscape.
    • It appears another centrist coalition can be formed, but the far right may still shape the dynamics of parliamentary operations and the allocation of EU top jobs.
    • The European People’s Party will have a key position. This will necessitate trade-offs and, if unattainable, poses the risk of policy stasis on matters where the council is eager to advocate for radical changes.
    • The new parliament will learn there’s a thin line between increasing an economy’s resilience and adopting an unbalanced package of measures.

    The European Parliament elections, scheduled for June 6-9, 2024, are expected to carry significant implications for the future of the European Union. This significance primarily arises from the increasing prominence of right-wing parties across Europe, as evidenced by their recent electoral victories and influence in national politics. This election’s outcome does not necessarily preclude the implementation of ambitious plans to overhaul the EU, but it does highlight the risk of either policy stasis or unbalanced decisions.

    What’s at stake?

    The European Parliament is one of the three key legislative bodies of the European Union (EU), alongside the European Commission and the Council of the European Union.

    While the European Commission advocates for the EU’s overall interests and the council represents the governments of member states, the European Parliament upholds the interests of EU citizens. It plays a crucial role in the EU’s legislative and decision-making processes. Despite being perceived as the least influential among the three, it does possess substantial co-legislative authority, including the power to modify and veto legislative proposals in most policy areas. Furthermore, the Lisbon Treaty enhanced its budgetary responsibilities and reinforced its influence over the selection of the European Commission’s president and commissioners. This could prove to be a crucial factor in the months ahead.

    Polls indicate the possibility that far-right members of the European Parliament (MEPs) could garner even more support than they won in 2019 (see figure 3). The far right is divided into two groups: the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group and the Identity and Democracy (ID) group. The ECR includes Poland’s Law and Justice party, Italy’s Brothers of Italy, the Sweden Democrats, Spain’s Vox, Belgium’s New Flemish Alliance and France’s Reconquest!. The ID features France’s National Rally, Alternative for Germany, Italy’s League, Belgium’s Flemish Interest, and the Dutch Party for Freedom. There are also parties from the right (e.g., Hungary’s Fidesz) that are not affiliated to any of the European Union’s political groups. These sit, alongside parties from the left and center, in the non-inscrit group. Question marks hang in particular over the affiliation of Fidesz, which has a dire record on the rule of law and calls for Ukraine to negotiate peace with Russia. The party has flirted numerous times with the ECR, but for now sits in the new non-inscrits.

    A shift toward the right

    At first glance, the ECR and ID parties appear to share common ground, but a closer look reveals deep divisions that prevent a united front. Generally speaking, the ECR wants to curb EU powers without disbanding it altogether, while they also are pro-Ukraine, pro-Atlanticism, and pro-NATO. Its MEPs present themselves as Euroskeptics, but they are also somewhat integrated into the EU’s political and institutional framework. Conversely, the ID exhibits a more ambivalent stance vis-àvis Russia, opposes enlargement, is anti-Atlanticist, and is a pariah within EU policy circles.

    Even though the Eurobarometer survey shows citizens are fairly positive about the EU, polling data indicates the ECR and ID could secure a substantial number of seats in the forthcoming elections. The latest poll averages place them at 73 and 83 seats, respectively, so a combined 156 out of 720 seats. This would surpass the center-left Socialists & Democrats (S&D), who are projected to secure 145 seats, and land not too far from the 175 seats forecast for the center-right European People’s Party (EPP). The liberal Renew Europe and the Greens/EFA are losing support. It is worth noting that MEPs do not necessarily remain put after the election; frequent transfers of lawmakers between groups tend to keep the parliament in flux.

    The far right has been largely excluded from power across Europe due to tacit agreements among centrist parties, even as its influence does compel the center right to adopt stricter anti-immigration, anti-trade, and anti-environment stances. It appears another centrist coalition between the EPP and the S&D can be formed, contingent on participation of the Liberals and/or the Greens. A right-wing coalition comprising the EPP and the ECR could also be tried, but this would require additional support from other parties. This looks to be very difficult. A right-wing majority composed of the EPP, ECR, and ID looks to be very unlikely, while the Liberals, the Greens, and the Socialists have ruled out working with both far-right parties.

    That said, the right wing’s influence is still poised to shape the dynamics of parliamentary operations and the distribution of high-level roles, potentially complicating the confirmation of the European Commission president and commissioners. The  incumbent president, Ursula von der Leyen of the EPP, who seeks a second term, has already engaged with the ECR, further straining her relationship with the S&D. Furthermore, even without a blocking minority or official agreements with other parties, growing support for the far right grants the far right more sway over various policies, including immigration, defense, and environmental issues, by drawing the EPP to the right, away from its alliance with S&D and Renew. Indeed, the European Commission and some mainstream parties in the European Parliament seem to be acknowledging the changing political landscape and are trying to jump on the bandwagon.

    A pressing need for change

    Apart from the internal landscape, rapidly changing geopolitics is also forcing the EU to change course, or to speed up, in certain areas. As we pondered in one of our strategic think pieces, the changing world order forces the EU to put more emphasis on its quest to become strategically autonomous. To summarize that article, we think that Europe’s quest for strategic autonomy hinges on overcoming three intertwined weaknesses: i) energy/raw materials dependency, ii) industrial decline, and iii) military dependence. Meanwhile, preserving social cohesion is a necessary condition to make things work.

    Over the past months, EU institutions, politicians and technocrats have released multiple publications and proposals in line with our thinking.

    Trump 2.0 sets things in motion

    For example, last month, the commission published a paper discussing the economic impact of defense spending, aiming to spark a debate on the most efficient approach. Additionally, an over 700-page report on “state-induced distortions in China’s economy” was published (and met with immediate criticism from China). This illustrates a broader trend of the EU taking a more assertive stance on global economic matters. This is reflected in, for example, the probes into Chinese electric vehicles and wind turbines, and in investigations in international procurement, for example in medical devices.

    On one side, this indicates that the EU might align more closely with the US, potentially adopting a tougher stance on China, especially if pressured by a possible new Trump administration. Conversely, Europe also seeks to establish its own distinct strategy. Given its reliance on China for key exports, as well as the strategic resources necessary for the energy transition, a complete severance of EU-China ties seems unlikely. This is underscored by the Letta report, outlined below, which emphasizes the need to maintain the EU’s foundational principles in the face of escalating geopolitical dynamics.

    In the event of a future US administration implementing a universal tariff, Europe’s reaction might involve a blend of measured retaliatory tariffs targeting specific American products, coupled with calibrated actions like non-tariff barriers against China. These measures would aim to preserve the overall EU-US relationship, but until Europe achieves a degree of strategic autonomy, it is forced to play a subordinate role.

    Letta and Draghi reports setting the “strategic agenda”?

    Europe is also strategically bracing itself for a “Trump 2.0 world.” This is becoming evident in the upcoming strategic agenda shaped by European Council’s president and leaders of the member states. The agenda, set for adoption in June 2024, is intended to give guidance to the newly elected parliament and commission and addresses key issues like security, energy, and EU expansion.

    In April, former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta added his input to the discussion, advocating for the introduction of a “fifth freedom” to bolster research, innovation, and education. He also stresses the need to develop a single market that has the ability to finance strategic goals and is able to “play big,” but not by undermining its principles of fair competition, cooperation, and solidarity.

    Another significant contribution to the strategic agenda, commissioned by EC President Von der Leyen, comes from former European Central Bank president and former Italian PM Mario Draghi. In a speech, Draghi had already emphasized that the European economy is in for a radical overhaul, which requires self-sufficient energy systems, a unified European defense system, and growth in cutting-edge sectors. Or, in three words: climate, defense, and digitalization.

    Draghi proposes to integrate further to leverage Europe’s scale, to focus on joint public-private investments in key areas such as defense, energy, climate, and supercomputers. This also requires a capital market union. And, broadly echoing our own conclusions, he emphasizes securing essential resources in critical input materials as well as a skilled workforce.

    This again underscores the inevitability of significant costs and tough choices. At this juncture, the opinion of the European electorate becomes pivotal, as it will influence how political parties will address their needs and sentiments.

    Will strategic thinking trump immigration and the cost-of-living concerns?

    How this would gel with the new parliament?

    Assuming the formation of another centrist coalition in parliament, it is probable that it will still lean toward the right. In table 1 on the next page, we highlight selected excerpts from election manifestos and recent policy papers on the previously mentioned topics from the five parties we believe will have a significant influence on the coalition talks.

    The stance of the EPP will be pivotal. They will need to broker compromises between the positions of the S&D (hawkish on climate/environment/social issues, dovish on EU productive capacity) and those of the ECR (dovish on climate/environment/social issues, hawkish on EU productive capacity, immigration, affordability of energy). This necessitates trade-offs. If those are unattainable, there is the risk of policy stasis on matters where the council is eager to advocate for radical changes.

    If we were to venture a guess, the compromises might broadly take the following form:

    • Climate: Commitment to the Green Deal remains unwavering; however, the centrality of climate and environmental objectives as an overarching priority for the European Union may diminish.
    • China: The EU maintains an ambivalent stance on China, but will remain keen on addressing dumping and unfair competition, while reducing dependencies in key sectors, framed by concerns over human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.
    • Defense: The EU sees increased (national) defense budgets, perhaps a pro-EU defense fund outside of the current budget, and enhanced collective procurement of European defense equipment and a push for greater integration of armed forces, albeit through bilateral or multilateral arrangements.
    • Trade: The EU will not pursue new trade/investment deals solely to champion free trade; agreements will be considered when they offer tangible benefits to European interests subject to EU standards on human rights and the environment.
    • Industries: The focus on green and key strategic sectors is expected to continue, likely through encouragements and incentives rather than direct, substantial subsidies.
    • Food: European food security and farmer income will be on par with eco-friendlier production, and the focus will shift from setting high (regulatory) standards to enabling farmers to become more sustainable.

    What are the implications?

    In this last section we briefly discuss the potential impact that the political shifts in Europe may have on three specific areas: namely, F&A, the energy transition, and financial markets.

    Food and agriculture: A change of tone, but no sea change

    In recent years, in line with the Green Deal, discussions have focused on the need to reduce the environmental and climate impact of farming. But due to geopolitical developments and farmer protests reflecting income and business continuity concerns, the commission has changed its tone. Currently, farmers are portrayed as vital for European food self-sufficiency and the sustainable development of rural areas. Greening agriculture is still on the table, but new legislative proposals are subject to more scrutiny on their feasibility, impact on production, and (socioeconomic) impact on rural areas.

    With a more right-conservative parliament, this trend is expected to continue. In this new reality, the new parliament has to deal with several questions. To highlight three:

    • How to continue with legislation on nature/biodiversity and the use of plant protection products? It’s unlikely a new right-conservative parliament will support ambitious (new) proposals on these topics, as the previous proposals have become symbols of (political) polarization.
    • What does the future of the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) look like? Although the new funding period for CAP won’t start until 2028, preparation starts years in advance. CAP is often criticized for being old-fashioned with too little focus on incentivizing more sustainable agricultural practices. Here too, it seems unlikely that a major reform will take place under a new right-conservative parliament.
    • What is the future of animal welfare legislation? The current commission was supposed to present several revisions on animal welfare legislation, but there is only one on the table regarding animal transport. In particular, the European Citizens’ Initiative to “End the Cage Age” requires attention. This is potentially as divisive as legislation on nature/biodiversity and the use of plant protection products due to its large implications (costs, international competitive position, parallel import measures). It’s unlikely that a new right-conservative parliament will be very ambitious on this subject.

    Although a new right-conservative parliament might be less ambitious on reducing the environmental and climate impact of farming, this certainly does not mean European farmers are free from demands. Much of the Green Deal ambitions for agriculture are already laid down in legislation. These include legislation on greenhouse gases, water quality, and biodiversity. Some of this legislation has been in place for decades, but deadlines are nearing and the commission is losing patience with member states not having fulfilled their required efforts and goals.

    For instance, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Denmark are phasing out derogations from the Nitrates Directive as water quality hasn’t sufficiently improved. As a consequence, the dairy sectors in these countries are under particular pressure to reduce nutrient losses, which will probably result in a smaller herd size. Moreover, the Water Framework Directive requires water quality to be good in 2027. This increases the need for farmers to reduce nutrient losses and use less plant protection products. Hence, even though new legislation on the latter has been withdrawn, there still is pressure on agriculture to reduce the use of plant protection products.

    In short, even with a new right-conservative parliament, farmers still face strict regulations to improve their environmental and climate performance.

    Energy transition: Different shades of green

    The exiting European Commission already is signaling a different reading of the EU Green Deal. Or at least, it is shifting its accent to parts that were not so high on the agenda back when it was launched, in a 2019, pre-Covid world. The Green Deal Industrial Plan may be hinting at this evolving prioritization, paving the way for stronger state support, more explicitly recognizing the strategic nature of critical raw materials, and initiating the reform of the electricity market design, to ensure the ability to accommodate massive wind and solar generation sources before 2030.

    It is clear, and natural, given the geopolitical context, that some points in the original plan may become less prominent. The obvious candidates for diluted efforts, depending on the outcome of the elections, may be the biodiversity policies and those related to the agriculture sector, given their social sensitivity. We also struggle to see a very effective and influential implementation of very socially sensitive regulation, such as the EU ETS II. At least not before “palliative” social measures are put in place both in Brussels and in European capitals.

    Meanwhile it is well known that Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions – and the reduction thereof – are becoming less and less definitory in the fate of the global climate, in light of China’s increase and Europe’s decrease. But, it is also crystal clear that the energy transition – or the decarbonization of the energy system – is much more than an environmental effort, as shown by the leading role of China, not known for having a “green agenda” influencing its decision-making. From a more pragmatic and industrial point of view, it has become painfully clear that, if the EU wants to afford some industry and keep or gain some strategic autonomy, it will not be achieved on the shoulders of an energy supply chain relying on European competitors. Not while such providers can afford a much cheaper fossil fuel supply for themselves. An alternative, affordable, and reliable local supply is pivotal for Europe.

    Last but not least, there are political factors on the greener side of the balance, such as the strong positioning of Teresa Ribera as officer-to-be of the Green Deal’s next chapter.

    With all these elements together, it is not risky to venture that the EU Green Deal may show some brownish areas after the elections, but it may very well grow on steroids in the key areas of renewable and reliable energy supply, simplified strategic permitting, decarbonization of industry, and the deployment of local supply chains.

    Financial markets: Europe advances with crises not strategic agendas

    When gauging the impact of European elections and subsequent policy shifts on financial markets, recall that the direction of the European project has historically been shaped by crises instead of grand strategies. That has proved all too clear in the euro era, marked by the global financial crisis and sovereign debt crisis from 2008 to 2012, the refugee crisis of 2015-16, the

    Covid-19 pandemic in 2020-21, and the subsequent significant energy crisis and war in Ukraine.
    The unprecedented issuance of joint European debt, for instance, was a response to external shocks – an unplanned but effective move! While Europe’s strategic vulnerabilities may lead to more of these shocks that help the EU fail forward, they also underscore the possibility that strategic plans are sidelined by emergent issues.

    A significant breakdown of the European project seems unlikely. The majority of political parties now acknowledge the project’s irreversibility and the necessity for a unified stance on shared external interests. Real Euroskepticism has largely retreated to the political margins. The existence of the euro itself, even as it trades below its purchasing power parity, is not something financial markets are now worried about.

    The European Commission and Council have set ambitious goals. In our view, development of a capital markets union could be positive for financial markets, if it were to help unlock new private funding sources, reduce the cost of capital, and enhance competitiveness. This is also on the wish list of most groups in the parliament. Similarly, initiatives to strengthen defense,  stimulate innovation, support key industries, and secure supply chains and strategic resources should find enough support. If this indeed increases Europe’s resilience, then this transition could be positive for euro assets.

    However, when we juxtapose the possible shape of a compromise in the European Parliament with the commission and council’s ambitions, we could envisage two scenarios that may, at some point, adversely impact euro assets:

    • The risk of stasis precipitating the demise of the European project.
    • The risk of the commission or council pushing their agendas and leading to unbalanced results.

    Risk of stasis

    While the effective response to Covid-19 and the energy crisis highlighted the necessity of EU coordination and joint funding, we could expect some difficult moments on topics such as i) new EU funding sources, ii) the permanence of common funding as a feature of the European toolkit, iii) the need for a permanently larger EU budget, and iv) the need for state aid.

    Resistance is likely to come from groups opposed to further integration and the dilution of national competences. Yet even centrist parties like the EPP might object if they perceive this as a threat to prudent budgeting and fiscal sustainability. This could lead to policy stasis and slow down the progress toward Europe’s strategic autonomy. The ambivalent stance on China could also prove a source of stagnation if the EU prioritizes derisking while national governments protect domestic interests. This could obviously weigh on market sentiment at some point.

    Risk of unbalanced results

    The EU should also avoid unintended demand-supply imbalances. The strategic agenda is costly and adds to demand before it can increase supply. As such, it is potentially inflationary in the transition phase. The impact could be attenuated by prudent budgeting, which requires tough choices, and by the right incentives. A key risk here lies in viewing joint financing, effectively a new layer on top of the existing debt structure, as the “solution” to overcome political hurdles. By this we mean that even when we ignore the condition of fiscal prudence, it is also important that policies steer more actively toward “productive” spending and investment measures rather than just pushing demand or unproductive speculation.

    Without such policies, clearly, the other risk is that the same political hurdles force the European Commission and/or Council into compromises that undermine the holistic approach. Sidestepping tough choices or protecting vested interests could lead to an unbalanced package of measures that leads to an unconstrained inflationary impulse. Our analysis suggests the ECB’s role is crucial in a holistic strategy. If there is no consensus, we could end up in a situation where the ECB will simply have to pick up the pieces. This is, obviously, not a market-friendly outcome either.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/08/2024 – 19:50

  • These Are The World's Biggest Mining Nations
    These Are The World’s Biggest Mining Nations

    China was the world’s biggest extractor of domestic materials in 2023, according to the UNEP’s Global Material Flows Database. The country extracted a total of 34.2 billion tonnes of materials, including biomass, fossil fuels, metal ores, and non-metallic minerals. This is more than four times the amount of either of the next two largest extractors: India (8.03 billion tonnes) and the United States (7.98 billion tonnes). India overtook the United States for the first time to become the second largest extractor of these materials in 2023.

    As Statista’s Anna Fleck shows in the chart below, when looking at the domestic extraction of materials per capita, then a very different picture emerges: Australia rises to the top, with 102 tonnes of materials extracted per capita followed by Canada with 67 tonnes per capita, and only then by China at 24 tonnes per capita in 2023.

    Infographic: The World's Biggest Miners | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    In terms of the relative shares of materials extracted per country, China’s mix is predominantly made up of non-metallic materials (70 percent of the total). These include sand, gravel and clay for construction and industrial purposes. Meanwhile, Australia’s biggest industry of the four categories is metal ores, accounting for around 53 percent of the country’s total. This includes iron, aluminum, copper and other non-ferrous metals.

    Worldwide, a total of 104.1 billion tonnes of biomass, fossil fuels, metal ores, and non-metallic minerals were extracted in 2023. This is up from 96.5 billion in 2020. Asia and the Pacific accounted for the largest share with 56.9 billion tonnes of these materials extracted (or around 55 percent of the world total), followed by Latin America and the Caribbean with 11.2 billion tonnes (11 percent), North America with 10.6 billion tonnes (10 percent), Europe with 9.2 billion tonnes (9 percent), Africa with 8.2 billion tonnes (8 percent), West Asia with 5.3 billion tonnes (5 percent) and Eastern Europe and Central Asia with 2.9 billion tonnes (3 percent).

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/08/2024 – 19:15

  • DEI Programs Could Soon Face Supreme Court
    DEI Programs Could Soon Face Supreme Court

    Authored by Eric Lundrum via American Greatness,

    The controversial business practice known as “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) could soon see its legal challenges take it all the way to the Supreme Court.

    According to Axios, the case that could spark Supreme Court action was filed by the same group that successfully saw the practice of affirmative action overturned by the court last year.

    The current case saw an appeals court ultimately rule that a venture capital firm had to shut down its grant program that was exclusively for black women.

    The American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER) filed a lawsuit against Fearless Fund in 2023, arguing that the black-only and women-only grant program was discriminatory. The group initially tried to have the program halted while the case played out in the courts, but a district judge ruled in favor of the company and allowed the program to continue.

    Then, on Monday, a three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit overturned the district judge’s ruling, thus ordering Fearless Fund to cease its grant program. The two judges in the majority were appointed by former President Donald Trump, while the lone dissenter was an Obama appointee.

    The appeals court’s ruling noted that the challenge by AAER “is likely to succeed on the merits” of its claims that the program is a violation of civil rights and anti-discrimination laws. As a result of this ruling, there is now a “circuit split” on the matter, increasing the likelihood that the subsequent challenge by Fearless Fund will ultimately lead to the Supreme Court for a final decision.

    Similar cases against DEI programs have faced more difficult challenges. In March, a lawsuit was filed against Pfizer over its fellowship program that only applied to black, Hispanic, or Native American applicants. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled against the plaintiffs, an advocacy group called Do No Harm, arguing that they lacked standing to sue.

    DEI has long been criticized as not only discriminatory, but a means by which companies may hire people who are unqualified for certain positions, overlooking qualified and competent candidates in favor of diversity picks. Challenges against such programs have increased following the decision last year in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the case which ultimately saw affirmative action declared unconstitutional nationwide.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/08/2024 – 18:40

  • Tokyo Government Dating App Helps Residents Get Laid To Avoid Population Collapse
    Tokyo Government Dating App Helps Residents Get Laid To Avoid Population Collapse

    Officials in Tokyo, Japan are launching a new dating app to help promote marriage and boost the collapsing national birth rate.

    The fee-based app from the Tokyo Metropolitan government will ask people to prove that they are legally single, and sign a letter confirming their willingness to get married. It will also require that people submit a tax certificate slip that proves their annual income, along with roughly 15 other items of personally identifying information – including height, weight, educational background and occupation following a mandatory interview with the app’s operator.

    So – Match.com, only you give all of your data to the government instead of a private company.

    According to the Independent, Tokyo officials allocated US$1.2 million towards the development of dating apps in 2023, and US$1.9 million for fiscal 2024 for the purpose of promoting marriage through said apps.

    “If there are many individuals interested in marriage but unable to find a partner, we want to provide support,” a Tokyo official told The Asahi Shimbun.

    “We hope that this app, with its association with the government, will provide a sense of security and encourage those who have been hesitant to use traditional apps to take the first step in their search for a partner.”

    According to AFP, the app is intended to give a “gentle push” to the nearly “70 per cent of people who want to get married” but weren’t “actively joining events or apps to look for a partner.”

    Falling Birth Rates

    In February, we noted that in 2023 Japan’s birth rate fell 5.1% from a year earlier to 758,631, while the number of marriages slid 5.9% to 489,281, the first time in 90 years the number fell below 500,000. The last time the number was this low the US had just dropped the atom bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki – signaling even greater declines in the population as out-of-wedlock births are rare in Japan.

    The drop comes more than a decade earlier than the government’s National Institute of Population and Social Security Research forecast, which estimated births would decline to below 760,000 in 2035, according to Kyodo news.

    Meanwhile, the number of deaths also hit a record – only in the other direction – rising to 1,590,503, while divorces increased to 187,798, up by 4,695.

    As a result, Japan’s population, including foreign residents, fell by 831,872, with deaths outnumbering births by a record 831,872, double where it was just five years ago.

    The fast pace of decline in the number of newborns has been attributed to late marriages and people staying single. The administration of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has called the period leading up to 2030 “the last chance” to reverse the trend; all Japan has to do is divert the millions of illegal immigrants entering the US every month through the southern border – with the expectation they will all become diligent Democratic voters – and give them a red carpet welcome.

    “The declining birthrate is in a critical situation,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters. “The next six years or so until 2030, when the number of young people will rapidly decline, will be the last chance to reverse the trend.”

    Also, this is a problem:

    And this:

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/08/2024 – 18:05

  • American Airlines Threatened With Travel Ban From NAACP After Passengers Removed For Body Odor
    American Airlines Threatened With Travel Ban From NAACP After Passengers Removed For Body Odor

    Via American Greatness,

    American Airlines is under fire from the NAACP after 8 black men were removed from a flight in May following a complaint about body odor.

    Last month three of those passengers filed a lawsuit against American Airlines, after alleging that airline personnel removed them and the other black male passenger from a flight from California to New York. A flight attendant had complained about body odor, though none of the passengers removed were accused of being the source of that odor.

    A tweet shared by Collin Rugg alleges that the men who filed that discrimination lawsuit don’t even know one another.

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

    After American Airlines offered to book new flights for the men, but when no other flights were available at that late hour, they were all allowed back on the plane.

    In 2017, the NAACP issued a travel advisory for the airline after what it described as “disrespectful, discriminatory or unsafe conditions” when booking or boarding with the airline.

    American Airlines responded by creating a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) panel and the NAACP lifted the ban in 2018.

    However, the growing politicization of DEI programs prompted the airline to disband the panel in 2023.

    NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson released a statement saying, “Without a swift and decisive response, the NAACP will be forced to reinstate an advisory against the airline.”

    American Airlines told The Hill that they take “all claims of discrimination very seriously and want our customers to have a positive experience when they choose to fly with us.”

    Airlines can justifiably remove passengers who are a source of offensive odors in a highly confined space, but it’s also possible for airline service to stink to high heaven.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/08/2024 – 17:30

  • New Texas GOP Platform Calls For Secession Vote, Resistance To Federal Infringements
    New Texas GOP Platform Calls For Secession Vote, Resistance To Federal Infringements

    Reflecting plummeting patience with overstepping federal overlords, the Texas Republican Party has adopted two platform planks that call for legislators to assert state sovereignty, and to schedule a secession referendum in the next general election after November’s. 

    “This historic vote at the 2024 Republican Party of Texas Convention represents a substantial shift towards enhancing state sovereignty and exploring the potential for Texas to operate as an independent nation,” said the Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) in a statement. “It reflects the growing sentiment among Texans for greater autonomy and the protection of our rights against federal overreach.” 

    Backers of the “TEXIT” movement make their stance known at the Texas Republican Convention in San Antonio (via Texas Nationalist Movement)

    Fittingly, that historic vote took place in San Antonio — home of the Alamo, aka “the cradle of Texas liberty.” Though it represented a setback, the 1836 Battle of the Alamo was a key chapter in the fight for independence that culminated in Texas becoming a self-governing republic. 

    The first plank asserts that the US government is infringing on powers reserved to Texas and all other states, and calls for unwarranted federal laws to be thwarted by Texas government. It also affirms the right of Texas to secede: 

    “Pursuant to Article 1, Section 1, of the Texas Constitution, the federal government has impaired our right of local self-government. Therefore, federally mandated legislation that infringes upon the 10th Amendment rights of Texas shall be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified.

    Texas retains the right to secede from the United States, and the Texas Legislature should be called upon to pass a referendum consistent thereto and pass the Texas Sovereignty Act as filed in the 88th Legislative Regular Session as HB 384.”

    The second plank is a pointed directive to put the question of secession to the people of Texas in the next general election: 

    “The Texas Legislature should pass a bill in its next session requiring a referendum in the next General Election for the people of Texas to determine whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation. This referendum should be a legislative priority.”

    From the San Antonio convention, here’s a brief but interesting clip of the Texas Nationalist Movement’s Nate Smith speaking in support of the independence-minded platform planks — and ably fielding a question from a delegate who suggests TNM is guilty of treason. 

    We’d have liked to hear Smith answer his critic’s attempted second question — as to whether Smith had recited the Pledge of Allegiance earlier that day as part of convention rituals. It’s likely the questioner would have next pointed to the pledge’s reference to “one nation…indivisible.”

    In making a case for why patriots shouldn’t pledge allegiance, Brian McGlinchey has argued that, of several objectionable components of the pledge, “‘indivisible’ should give greatest offense to American patriots. The very existence of the United States — created by secession from the British empire — is a testament to political divisibility as a foundational human right…By reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and proclaiming the United States of America ‘indivisible,’ Americans disclaim their human right of self-determination.”

    The Texas Nationalist Movement’s GOP convention success comes on the heels of a state Republican Party controversy over the issue. Despite TNM having amassed more than 139,000 signatures requesting that a secession question be placed on the March 5 primary ballot, the Texas GOP’s leadership refused to include it. TNM appealed to the state supreme court, which refused to hear the controversy.

    The party chair who presided over that decision, Matt Rinaldi, is out. Now, party’s top two officials are both signers of the “Texas First Pledge.” In addition to promising to place the interest of Texans “before any other nation, state, political entity, organization, or individual,” signatories commit to bringing about a secession referendum and, if it is approved by a majority of Texans, to work for an expeditious exit from the union.   

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

    After seceding from Mexico, Texas was an independent country from 1836 to 1845 and, economically, is extraordinarily well-suited for independence today. It’s by far the largest oil producer of any US state, accounting for a whopping 42% of American production, with no other state exceeding even 10%. It has deep-water ports, abundant agriculture, and is a major high-tech hub. 

    There’s fixin’ to be another feather in Texas’s hat. As we examined earlier this week, the booming Lone Star State economy — and rising aggravation over compliance costs and woke regulations — has spurred BlackRock, Citadel Securities and other investors to back a new challenger to the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq: the Texas Stock Exchange.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/08/2024 – 16:55

  • Big Food, Bigger Conspiracy
    Big Food, Bigger Conspiracy

    Via SchiffGold.com,

    Food has gotten big. Literally. A walk through the produce aisle of a 21st-century grocery store would enthrall people of any historical period other than our own. The size of tomatoes and heads of lettuce is unprecedented in the history of humankind. In just a few short generations we have become accustomed to increasingly genetically modified food. This new food is much more tasteless and durable than food of the past. Variations in soil and growing conditions allowed food grown for different reasons to possess unique regional flavors. Food grown near the place it was sold allowed taste to be prized over transportability. While many have described this decrease in food quality as a result of industrialization and the demands of efficiency, it is much more correctly enunciated to be a result of government corruption arising from a socialistic instinct.

    Politicians on both sides of the aisle generally support the idea of America as a free market economy, yet they all fall victim to a basic human fallacy: “What you see is all there is.” Their desire to protect the foundation of America’s high quality of life is clouded by the lobbyists and lucrative PACs right in front of them. Timeless principles of wise governance seem unimportant and distant when a Kansan Sorghum Farmer is shedding real tears onto your office carpet. The farmer’s desire to keep things as they are infests the minds of all politicians who happen to interact with him. Small details, like the fact that he is representing a near-risk-proof corporate farm with an army of middle management, become unimportant. Smaller farms that cannot hire lobbyists will inevitably receive the short end of the stick because they have no way to remind the politicians of their existence. Fallible Politicians with a desire to make things right through government intervention rather than honor liberal principles will inevitably favor corporate farmers above both small farmers and the American populace.

    Governmental inability to hold back from action has damaged the very concept of local cuisine. Small family farms already had difficulty surviving against larger farms with vast economies of scale, and government support of “American Farmers” (corporations large enough to keep perpetual spokespeople on staff) only makes this struggle more difficult. Even from an interventionist standpoint, it would be better for more unstable businesses to receive more assistance, so the free market would be perceived as better than the current situation where the strongest multi-state farms are subsidized most heavily. Local history and growing conditions converged to create a rich and multifaceted food landscape. Unique types of plants and animals were preserved as they found a valued place in the palates of locals. Slight losses of efficiency were offset by regional cuisines which reveled in distinctiveness. However, some areas of America are more conducive to producing farms large enough to seek government aid. Massive farms in America’s breadbasket sympathy-farmed great depression sentiments until they entered a spiral of lobbying and growth that could not be stopped. Through technological superiority, crop homogeneity, and government cheerleading, they were able to lower prices to the point where local farms could not hope to compete.

    The death of local farms would not be nearly so great a problem if the larger farms provided even a semblance of the taste and quality that local farms provided. Food has grown large and tasteless as a direct result of this sympathy-fueled government campaign to protect a certain subgroup of farmers. greater geographic distance from the markets where produce is sold has greatly enhanced the value of firmer variations which can ripen well after being picked. Ripening while still attached to the plant allows more nutrients to enter and increase its flavor profile. Efficiency is also aided by an increase in size because a larger fruit is often easier to pack and has less chance of breaking. While consumers would undoubtedly prefer more flavorful produce, government incentives have exacerbated the prioritization of shelf-life and easy transport. Government-funded GMO research has also accelerated the problem of an abundance of large and tasteless food. The long-term health effects of GMOs are not known, yet because they directly serve the interest of the most well-funded farmers, their use is rarely scrutinized by regulatory agencies.

    Americans could once again be culinarily respected by the rest of the world if those in power developed a spine strong enough to stand up to sob story rent-seeking. Quality of life and local farming could gradually increase as the unjust power structures of the agricultural world begin to shift. Healthier and tastier options could become the norm rather than the expensive exception as they stop being crowded out by tasteless produce designed for anything but human consumption.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/08/2024 – 16:20

  • Slovakia's Fico Blames Assassination Attempt On 'Hateful' Opposition & Its International Backers
    Slovakia’s Fico Blames Assassination Attempt On ‘Hateful’ Opposition & Its International Backers

    This week Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico appeared in a video message while still recovering from the May 15 assassination attempt which saw him shot multiple times at close range in broad daylight. In the video originally published to Facebook, he uttered his first official televised statements since the ordeal which very nearly took his life.

    The video was recorded at his home in Bratislava, which suggests he’s nearly made a full recovery and is quickly returning to political life in the country’s top office. He said he has forgiven his attacker, identified officially by authorities as 71-year-old “Juraj C”, who had been tackled to the ground and immediately taken into custody after the shots rang out.

    But Fico used the opportunity to put the opposition on notice, saying the shooter was an “activist of the Slovak opposition.” In the searing remarks, Fico called the man a “messenger of the evil and political hatred” who was motivated and whipped up by Slovakia’s “unsuccessful and frustrated” opposition. Amazingly, he at one point in the address – released days ago – made some indirect connections to his firm foreign policy stances and the attempt on his life (policies which have resisted Western hegemony as well as the rush to escalate involvement in Ukraine). Watch the remarkable speech below:

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

    In the video he also addressed the Ukraine situation and his ‘controversial’ stance in opposition to NATO escalation head-on: “The situation in the relations between my political representation and partners in the EU and NATO escalated after the Russian attack on Ukraine, where we refused to provide Ukraine with any military aid from state stocks, except for humanitarian aid, and where we continue to fundamentally prefer peace to war.”

    “The reluctance of some large democracies to respect the concept of a sovereign and self-confident Slovak foreign policy became grist to the mill of the Slovak opposition,” he continued. 

    The BBC has noted that “Opposition parties – in particular the liberal Progressive Slovakia, which is neck-and-neck with Mr Fico’s left-populist Smer party ahead of the European Parliament elections – have condemned the shooting and have categorically rejected all links with the attacker.”

    However, in Fico’s talk he made a direct link, saying further:

    The opposition was unable to assess, because no one forced them to do so, where their aggressive and hateful politics had led a section of the society and it was only a matter of time before a tragedy would occur.

    “People could see with their own eyes what horror can happen if someone is not able to democratically compete and respect other opinions,” he said.

    He has also committed to the following: “As the Prime Minister of Slovakia, I will not drag the country into such military adventures and, within the framework of our small Slovak capabilities, I will do everything to ensure that peace has priority over war.”

    “I voted in the hospital because these elections are also important. It is necessary to vote for European deputies who will support peace initiatives, and not the continuation of the war.”

    * * *

    The below prior report by The GrayZone’s Kit Klarenberg explores the foreign policy context & intrigue surrounding the attempted murder of Robert Fico… 

    On May 15, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was almost murdered in broad daylight. While shaking hands with supporters during a public appearance, a gunman shot him twice in the abdomen and once in the shoulder. The attack left him fighting for his life while authorities raced for clues, and many observers at home and abroad puzzled about the would-be assassin’s motives and whether foreign actors were in some way responsible for the attack. And despite the shooter’s instantaneous arrest, those questions still linger weeks later. 

    Fico, a veteran Slovak political figure, was re-elected in September 2023 amid a wave of public resentment over the proxy war in Ukraine, pledging to end arms supplies to Kiev and anti-Russian sanctions. On the campaign trail, Western leaders, journalists and pundits aggressively stoked fears of the “pro-Putin,” “populist” candidate returning to office. Ukraine’s Western-backed “Center for Countering Disinformation” publicly accused him of spreading “infoterror” back in April 2022.

    But many Slovakians see it differently. They say Fico is merely committed to defending Slovakia’s sovereignty, and governing in his nation’s interests, not those of Brussels, Kiev, London, and Washington. For Western politicians, his victory came at a highly inopportune time, with public and political consensus on the proxy war in Ukraine rapidly fraying across Europe.

    Since Fico’s election, media outlets like Germany’s state broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, have branded him a “threat” to the EU and NATO. His declaration that Kiev must cede territory to Russia to end the war was not well-received in Western capitals. In April, the premier seemingly predicted his own shooting, warning that the virulent political climate in Bratislava could result in politicians getting killed.

    Domestically, a number of foreign-funded media assets and NGOs have relentlessly targeted Fico for pursuing neutrality in the conflict. But over two years after Russia’s intervention, local polling indicates just 40% of the population blame Moscow for the proxy war, and 50% consider the US to be a threat to national security. Meanwhile, 69% of Slovakians believe by continuing to arm Ukraine, the West is “provoking Russia and bringing itself closer to the war” and 66% agreed that “the US is dragging [their] country into a war with Russia because it is profiting from it.”

    When Fico was re-elected in September 2023, this journalist speculated that a color revolution could soon be impending in Slovakia. We are now left to ponder whether the Prime Minister’s attempted assassination was a Western-directed plot to remove his troublesome government from office. Even though he is finally on the road to recovery, the threat of an overseas-orchestrated coup remains. A vast US-sponsored opposition political and media infrastructure is causing havoc in Bratislava, and this could easily escalate further.

    Slovakia has since the end of the Cold War stood apart from its neighbors. Folding the country into the EU and NATO and neutralizing its rebellious politics and population has required an enormous investment in time and money by Brussels and Washington, and relentless meddling in the country’s internal affairs by foreign-funded organizations and actors. Fico’s return to power threatened to not only derail that project, but create a regional contagion effect. Disinfecting the country therefore became of the utmost urgency for the West.

    Facebook purge suggests shooter was a no ‘lone wolf’

    Fico’s shooter, 71-year-old Juraj Cintula, is among the Slovaks who do not support Fico’s positions. A discrepant picture of the man has emerged since his arrest. Some acquaintances describe him as “weird and angry,” and “against everything.” Others report he was meek and mild-mannered, a far from obvious candidate to attempt a high-level political assassination. Cintula, an avowed Kiev ultra, claims he acted alone, his actions motivated by a desire to replace Fico’s government with a pro-Ukrainian administration. Slovakian court documents state that Cintula “wants military aid to be provided to Ukraine and considers the current government to be Judas towards the European Union,” and say this perception is why the would-be assassin “decided to act.”

    The mainstream media has made much of Cintula’s background as a dissident poet and writer, in a seeming effort to humanize the would-be killer. By contrast, Aaron Bushnell, who in February self-immolated in protest of Washington’s facilitation of the Gaza genocide, was widely tarred by journalists as a maladjusted, mentally unwell outcast. Unmentioned by any Western outlet is that during the 1980s, Cintula was under surveillance by Czechoslovak security services.

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

    The reason for the Czechs’ interest is unclear, although it may have been due to anti-Communist actions, or foreign contacts. Whether Cintula had seditious confederates within or without Slovakia is a key line of inquiry for police. That all traces of the shooter’s Facebook profile were comprehensively scrubbed from the internet two hours after the shooting, before investigators could access the information, is also source of intense suspicion.

    While it is customary for the social network to purge the profiles of “dangerous individuals” – a fate this journalist has suffered for investigative reporting – following such incidents, in Bratislava Facebook relies on cooperating local individuals and organizations to police content. Apparently, Cintula’s profile was wiped before his identity had been reported in local media. Slovak authorities must now rely on the FBI to secure and provide the deleted information. Whether whatever is turned over will be unexpurgated is an open question.

    Another disturbing feature of mainstream reporting on the shooting is ubiquitous, persistent reference to Slovakia’s unstable politics. According to this narrative, Fico’s anti-Western policies have fueled the chaotic state of affairs, provoking the assassination attempt and making him ultimately responsible for the attempt on his life. In the days following the shooting, the BBC, Financial Times, New York Times and Germany’s esteemed Der Spiegel pinned the blame on Slovakia’s alleged “toxic” political culture. The latter revised its wording after significant public backlash. 

    One could be forgiven for concluding Western journalists take it as self-evident that defying EU/US will provides legitimate grounds for getting shot. Western politicians clearly do. On May 23rd, Georgian prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze revealed that EU commissioner Oliver Varhelyi warned him he could suffer the same fate as Fico, if his government didn’t drop a highly controversial “foreign influence transparency” law, which would compel local NGOs to disclose their sources of income.

    After listing the various ways the EU could retaliate against Georgia in a phone call with Kobakhidze, Varhelyi allegedly stated: “Look what happened to Fico, you should be very careful.”

    Varhelyi has since confirmed that he cited Fico’s fate in private conversations with Kobakhidze, but claimed he was merely concerned with “dissuading the Georgian political leadership” from adopting restrictions on foreign-funded NGOs. Varhelyi insisted in a written statement that he simply “felt the need” to caution the Prime Minister “not to enflame [sic] further the already fragile situation,” arguing that he only mentioned “the latest tragic event in Slovakia… as an example and as a reference to where such high levels of polarisation can lead in a society.”

    Public records show the US government regime change specialists at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have pumped millions into NGOs and media outlets in Slovakia under the aegis of mundane-sounding initiatives such as “strengthening civil society” and “promoting democratic values among youth.” Similar language is used to describe the purpose of Endowment grants in Georgia, financing groups at the forefront of recent violent unrest on the streets of Tbilisi, as The Grayzone has documented. Perhaps unsurprisingly, NED grantees are unanimous in their opposition to Fico. 

    Anyone searching for the source of Slovakia’s “toxic” politics need not look further than these US-backed organizations. Washington has stirred this cauldron for almost three decades, and with all sides of the Slovakian political class blaming one another the rising tide of hatred, it is hoping the pot will finally boil over.

    Regime change blueprint honed in Slovakia

    The NED-organized overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia in 2000 established an insurrectionary blueprint which was subsequently exported in the form of color revolutions. But throughout  the 1990s, Slovakian activists honed the tactics which would eventually be deployed by US regime change operatives across the Soviet sphere. 

    At the time, Bratislava was one of the only post-Communist countries that neither adopted ruinous neoliberal political and economic reforms, nor pursued EU or NATO membership. Slovakia’s then-Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar paid a harsh price for his independent stance. Relentlessly slandered by US and European leaders as a Russian pawn, he quickly became a target for regime change. 

    In 1997, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright publicly described Slovakia as “a black hole in the heart of Europe,” formally marking him for removal. So it was that NED funded the creation of Civic Campaign 98 (OK’98), a coalition of 11 anti-government NGOs.

    Explicitly modeled on an earlier NED-funded effort in Bulgaria, concerned with “creating chaos” after the Socialist Party won the 1990 election, many of the individuals involved had been part of Cold War-era Czechoslovak anti-Communist dissident groups. OK’98 was publicly framed as a non-partisan get-out-the-vote campaign, but its vast resources were explicitly deployed for anti-government purposes. Its activities included rock concerts, short films, and TV infomercials in which Slovak celebrities urged young people to vote.

    Meciar emerged with the most votes in the 1998 election, but the opposition gained enough seats to form a government. The NED assets who powered them to victory went on to give practical training to NED-supported pro-Western agitators like Pora, which ignited Kiev’s 2004 “Orange Revolution.” The insurrectionist youth group successfully overturned the re-election of President Viktor Yanukovych that year, installing the US-backed neoliberal Viktor Yushchenko in his place.

    The return of Robert Fico represented a significant broadside against ongoing US “democratization” of the former Soviet sphere. It opened up the prospect of further anti-NATO candidates and governments gaining office elsewhere in Europe, at the most inconvenient juncture imaginable for Brussels and Washington. 

    Not coincidentally, it was at this time polling for Germany’s upstart Alternative für Deutschland became turbocharged. The Euroskeptic party’s standing has soared in recent months, eliciting mainstream calls to ban it outright. And in North Macedonia just one week prior to Fico’s shooting, the anti-establishment VMRO-DPMNE party returned to power, overturning a NATO-fuelled color revolution that removed the party from office almost a decade earlier. 

    As the anti-Western backlash gained steam, a decision may have been made to draw a bloody red line in Slovakia.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/08/2024 – 15:45

  • Is California Moving Toward Government-Owned Electricity?
    Is California Moving Toward Government-Owned Electricity?

    Authored by John Seiler via The Epoch Times,

    In 1929, almost a century ago, the great economist Ludwig von Mises published “A Critique of Interventionism.”

    It’s written in plain language and is free online. He described how government intervention in the free market is not socialism, but eventually “leads to socialism because government intervention is not only superfluous and useless, but also harmful. … It lowers labor productivity and redirects production along lines of political command, rather than consumer satisfaction.”

    He died in 1973 at the good old age of 92 and was the teacher of Friedrich von Hayek, who won the Nobel economics prize in 1974.

    I bring up Mises because he could have been writing about California’s electricity market, which has been dysfunctional for three decades and well could end up entirely run by the California government.

    That’s actually what was called for in a June 2 editorial in the Los Angeles Times titled, “Californians don’t have to accept skyrocketing electric bills. Here’s how to fight back.”

    The way to fight back?

    “Customers of publicly owned utilities such as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power pay lower electric rates in large part because a profit margin isn’t part of the equation. Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened to take over the troubled PG&E during its last bankruptcy if it didn’t become a more responsible utility. Ultimately, the governor struck an oversight deal. But a public takeover is still worth exploring to protect Californians from unaffordable rates.”

    The internal link for “is still worth exploring” clicks to a 2019 L.A. Times editorial, “We’ve reached a point where public ownership of PG&E shouldn’t just be on the table, it should be actively explored by state and local officials. Newsom has hinted he would open to public takeover of the utility and has raged about its ‘corporate greed,’ but he has also said he wants to see as many bidders for ownership as possible, including from other profit-making entities. Although it’s good for him to consider all approaches and all bidders, public ownership shouldn’t get short shrift in the process.”

    The first obvious hurdle to “public ownership”—socialism—is the Fifth Amendment, which concludes, “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

    Here are the valuations of the state’s two largest private utilities:

    Where is the state of California supposed to get that kind of money? Float a bond? The state treasurer list California’s current state bond indebtedness at $71.7 billion. And they’ve only started issuing the $6.4 billion in new bonds for Proposition 1, which voters passed last March 5. In sum, a state takeover effectively would nearly triple state bond indebtedness.

    California’s Electricity Reform Collapse

    Instead of looking to the supposed price gouging by the private utilities, as the L.A. Times demands, it’s worth remembering the state’s own follies the past three decades during which I’ve written against all the anti-market attempts at restructuring. For those who want to read the details, a good history of the early years is, “The History of Electricity Restructuring in California,” from 2002 by Carl Blumstein, L.S. Friedman, and R.J. Green.

    The attempt at “deregulation” the authors begin with is Assembly Bill 1890, which Gov. Pete Wilson signed in 1996. It’s worth adding something they left out: 1996 was the only year in the past five decades in which Republicans controlled a house of the Legislature, in that case the Assembly under Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Anaheim), later Anaheim’s mayor. Mr. Wilson also was a Republican. So this was a Republican attempt at “privatization,” with cooperation from Senate Democrats.

    AB 1890 set up the California Power Exchange (PX), which “was required to operate an hour-by-hour spot market, in which generators could sell and retailers could buy power. … The new markets began operation for April 1, 1998. This was three months behind the original start date, but it had not proved possible to create the necessary computer systems in time.” It seems every computer system the state sets up has problems. “The PX ran quite smoothly, with low prices.”

    Then disaster struck.

    “Late in the spring of 2000 the California’s new electricity market began to collapse. In May the average PX price was $50/MWh, higher than any previous month. There were also numerous price spikes. … By the end of January, the collapse was complete. Blackouts occurred on eight days during the winter and spring even though demand was far below the summer peak. The Power Exchange suspended operations, and the CAISO [California Independent System Operator), SCE and PG&E were all insolvent.”

    For some reason the study didn’t mention Gov. Gray Davis’s role in this crisis. I remember in October 2000 he actually took a month off to “study” the problem. Then he panicked and signed contracts up to 20 years for natural gas at the height of the market price.

    In June 2002, Withold Henisz of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania described the damage: “Wholesale energy prices shot up tenfold and supply shortages forced repeated rolling blackouts. The crisis forced the state’s biggest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, into bankruptcy and pushed another, Southern California Edison, to the brink. In desperation, California Gov. Gray Davis signed long-term contracts for $48 billion worth of power—prices two to three times today’s [2002] market rate.” But some of the contracts had to be paid for up to 20 years.

    Mr. Davis’ mistakes were part of what led to his recall in 2002 and replacement by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

    Arnold Schwarzenegger’s AB 32 Disaster

    In his first two years in office, 2003-05, Mr. Schwarzenegger governed reasonably, cutting taxes and restraining spending. Then in November 2005, voters rejected his plank of reform initiatives, such as banning using union dues for political campaign initiatives. He then flipped from conservative to liberal as he headed to his November 2006 reelection, which he won.

    His signature legislation was Assembly Bill 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, still in effect. Among its mandates:

    “It is the intent of the Legislature that the State Air Resources Board consult with the Public Utilities Commission in the development of emissions reduction measures, including limits on emissions of greenhouse gases applied to electricity and natural gas providers regulated by the Public Utilities Commission in order to ensure that electricity and natural gas providers are not required to meet duplicative or inconsistent regulatory requirements.

    “It is the intent of the Legislature that the State Air Resources Board design emissions reduction measures to meet the statewide emissions limits for greenhouse gases established pursuant to this division in a manner that minimizes costs and maximizes benefits for California’s economy, improves and modernizes California’s energy infrastructure and maintains electric system reliability, maximizes additional environmental and economic co-benefits for California, and complements the state’s efforts to improve air quality.”

    You can see the duality problem there: The state is supposed to both limit “greenhouses gases” for electricity production while maintaining “electric system reliability.” It’s hard enough for private companies, or for that matter socialist government enterprises, to maintain one government dictate. But two dictates make it doubly difficult, even impossible.

    Renewable Energy and EV Mandates

    Next, throw in renewable mandates, such as this from December 2022: “The California Air Resources Board today approved the final proposed 2022 Scoping Plan, a world-leading roadmap to address climate change that cuts greenhouse gas emissions by 85% and achieves carbon neutrality in 2045. The 2022 Scoping Plan provides a detailed sector-by-sector roadmap to guide the world’s fourth-largest economy away from its current dependance on petroleum and fossil gas to clean and renewable energy resources and zero-emission vehicles.”

    Renewable energy, such as wind and solar, requires expensive new power lines on top of the existing power lines. The zero-emission vehicle mandate is for 100 percent new cars to be zero-emission by 2035.

    And now AI—Artificial Intelligence—is developing rapidly in Silicon Valley, which leads the world in this area, and requires even more electric juice every year.

    Finally, there’s the latest attempt at reforming sky-high electricity rates, which I wrote about last week in, “New California Electricity Scheme Promotes ‘Equity,’ ‘Clean Energy Transition.’” It’s only going to make matters worse.

    It’s been three decades of folly and disaster. No wonder for March 2024 the Energy Information Agency pegged California’s average residential rate at 32.47 cents per kilowatt hour (kwh), the second-highest in the nation. North Dakota’s was the lowest, at 10.44 cents.

    In a future article, I’ll discuss some free-market remedies to restore to California a sensible electricity market and lower prices for consumers.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/08/2024 – 15:10

  • Earth Overshoot Day Is Coming Sooner and Sooner
    Earth Overshoot Day Is Coming Sooner and Sooner

    This year, August 1 will mark Earth Overshoot Day, the day that humanity’s demand for ecological resources exceeds the resources Earth can regenerate within that year.

    Over the decades, the ecological and carbon footprint of humans has gradually increased, all while Earth’s biocapacity, i.e. its ability to regenerate resources has diminished significantly. That has led to Earth Overshoot Day arriving earlier and earlier, moving from as late as December 30 in 1970. In the pandemic year of 2020, it did move back somewhat significantly from July 29 to August 22. But, despite 2023 representing a slight positive shift from 2022’s July 28, the trend was one of stagnation rather than progress.

    Infographic: Earth Overshoot Day Is Coming Sooner and Sooner | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The concept of Earth Overshoot Day was first conceived by Andrew Simms of the UK think tank New Economics Foundation, which partnered with Global Footprint Network in 2006 to launch the first global Earth Overshoot Day campaign. WWF, the world’s largest conservation organization, has participated in Earth Overshoot Day since 2007.

    To find out more about the calculations behind Earth Overshoot Day, please click here.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/08/2024 – 14:35

  • Florida Supreme Court Sides With DeSantis Over Removal Of Soros-Backed Prosecutor
    Florida Supreme Court Sides With DeSantis Over Removal Of Soros-Backed Prosecutor

    Authored by Eric Lundrum via American Greatness,

    On Thursday, the Florida Supreme Court ruled in favor of Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) over his decision to remove a far-left prosecutor from her post.

    As Fox News reports, DeSantis first suspended State Attorney Monique Worrel in August of 2023, accusing her of “dereliction of duty” due to her soft-on-crime policies. Worrel subsequently sued the DeSantis Administration and demanded that she be reinstated, claiming that her firing was an “arbitrary, unsubstantiated exercise of the suspension power.”

    The Florida Supreme Court ruled 6-1 in DeSantis’ favor.

    “We cannot agree with Worrel that the allegations in the Executive Order are impermissibly vague, nor that they address conduct that falls within the lawful exercise of prosecutorial discretion,” the majority’s opinion declared.

    “We have said that a suspension order does not infringe on a state attorney’s lawful exercise of prosecutorial discretion where it alleges that such discretion is, in fact, not being exercised in individual cases but, rather, that generalized policies have resulted in categorical enforcement practices.”

    DeSantis had previously touted his removal of Worrel as a major accomplishment during his ultimately unsuccessful campaign for president.

    “The practices and policies of her office have allowed murderers, other violent offenders, and dangerous drug traffickers to receive extremely reduced sentences and escape the full consequences of their criminal conduct. In some cases, these offenders have evaded incarceration altogether,” the governor said shortly after her firing.

    “State Attorney Worrel’s practices undermine Florida law and endanger the safety, security, and welfare of the communities that Ms. Worrell was elected to serve.”

    When she was first elected in 2020, Worrel’s campaign was supported by Our Vote Our Voice, a left-wing group that had received $1 million from Democracy Now, a far-left group supported by George Soros. Our Vote Our Voice subsequently spent $1.5 million in support of Worrel’s campaign.

    DeSantis had previously fired another prosecutor in the state in August of 2022, when he removed Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren over his refusal to enforce the state’s abortion ban. That removal was also upheld in court at the federal level.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/08/2024 – 14:00

  • IDF Frees 4 Hostages In Biggest Gaza Rescue Op Since War Began
    IDF Frees 4 Hostages In Biggest Gaza Rescue Op Since War Began

    Four hostages have been recovered alive in what’s being widely described as the Israel Defense Forces’ biggest rescue operation in the Gaza Strip since the war began.

    All of them had been initially kidnapped by Hamas from the Nova music festival on October 7 and they are: Noa Argamani, 25, Almong Meir Jan, 21, Andrey Kozlov, 27 and Shlomi Ziv, 40. Authorities have confirmed they are in good medical condition and they underwent evaluations at Tel Aviv’s largest hospital.

    From left; Shlomi Ziv; Andrey Kozlov and Almog Meir Jan and Noa Argamani.

    In total hundreds of soldiers participated in the high-risk operation, but which was spearheaded by the police’s elite Yamam counter-terrorism unit and Shin Bet agents.

    These units raided a pair of Hamas buildings in central Gaza’s Nuseirat where the captives were being held, with the operation done “under fire”. One officer of the counter-terror unit, identified as Chief Inspector Arnon Zamora, was critically wounded in the assault and later died at a hospital.

    At least 50 Palestinians were killed in the major operation, Israeli media reports, however the military hasn’t specified how many were combatants. Some regional reports say that as many as 200 Palestinians, among them many civilians, were killed in related strikes and operations in central Gaza on Saturday.

    IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said that “During the operation, we struck… threats to our forces in the area. These threats were struck from the land, air, and sea… for us to extract our forces [and the hostages].” The freed Israelis had been in captivity for eight months.

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

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/08/2024 – 13:25

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jun 08

Today’s News 8th June 2024

  • The Military-Industrial Complex Is Killing Us All
    The Military-Industrial Complex Is Killing Us All

    Authored by David Vine -Therisa (ISA) Arriola via CounterPunch.org,

    We need to talk about what bombs do in war. Bombs shred flesh. Bombs shatter bones. Bombs dismember. Bombs cause brains, lungs, and other organs to shake so violently they bleed, rupture, and cease functioning. Bombs injure. Bombs kill. Bombs destroy.

    Bombs also make people rich.

    When a bomb explodes, someone profits. And when someone profits, bombs claim more unseen victims. Every dollar spent on a bomb is a dollar not spent saving a life from a preventable death, a dollar not spent curing cancer, a dollar not spent educating children. That’s why, so long ago, retired five-star general and President Dwight D. Eisenhower rightly called spending on bombs and all things military a “theft.”

    The perpetrator of that theft is perhaps the world’s most overlooked destructive force. It looms unnoticed behind so many major problems in the United States and the world today. Eisenhower famously warned Americans about it in his 1961 farewell address, calling it for the first time “the military-industrial complex,” or the MIC.

    Start with the fact that, thanks to the MIC’s ability to hijack the federal budget, total annual military spending is far larger than most people realize: around $1,500,000,000,000 ($1.5 trillion). Contrary to what the MIC scares us into believing, that incomprehensibly large figure is monstrously out of proportion to the few military threats facing the United States. One-and-a-half trillion dollars is about double what Congress spends annually on all non-military purposes combined.

    Calling this massive transfer of wealth a “theft” is no exaggeration, since it’s taken from pressing needs like ending hunger and homelessness, offering free college and pre-K, providing universal health care, and building a green energy infrastructure to save ourselves from climate change. Virtually every major problem touched by federal resources could be ameliorated or solved with fractions of the cash claimed by the MIC. The money is there.

    The bulk of our taxpayer dollars are seized by a relatively small group of corporate war profiteers led by the five biggest companies profiting off the war industry: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon (RTX), Boeing, and General Dynamics. As those companies have profited, the MIC has sowed incomprehensible destruction globally, keeping the United States locked in endless wars that, since 2001, have killed an estimated 4.5 million people, injured tens of millions more, and displaced at least 38 million, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project.

    The MIC’s hidden domination of our lives must end, which means we must dismantle it. That may sound totally unrealistic, even fantastical. It is not. And by the way, we’re talking about dismantling the MIC, not the military itself. (Most members of the military are, in fact, among that the MIC’s victims.)

    While profit has long been part of war, the MIC is a relatively new, post-World War II phenomenon that formed thanks to a series of choices made over time. Like other processes, like other choices, they can be reversed and the MIC can be dismantled.

    The question, of course, is how?

    The Emergence of a Monster

    To face what it would take to dismantle the MIC, it’s first necessary to understand how it was born and what it looks like today. Given its startling size and intricacy, we and a team of colleagues created a series of graphics to help visualize the MIC and the harm it inflicts, which we’re sharing publicly for the first time.

    The MIC was born after World War II from, as Eisenhower explained, the “conjunction of an immense military establishment” — the Pentagon, the armed forces, intelligence agencies, and others — “and a large arms industry.” Those two forces, the military and the industrial, united with Congress to form an unholy “Iron Triangle” or what some scholars believe Eisenhower initially and more accurately called the military-industrial–congressional complex. To this day those three have remained the heart of the MIC, locked in a self-perpetuating cycle of legalized corruption (that also features all too many illegalities).

    The basic system works like this: First, Congress takes exorbitant sums of money from us taxpayers every year and gives it to the Pentagon. Second, the Pentagon, at Congress’s direction, turns huge chunks of that money over to weapons makers and other corporations via all too lucrative contracts, gifting them tens of billions of dollars in profits. Third, those contractors then use a portion of the profits to lobby Congress for yet more Pentagon contracts, which Congress is generally thrilled to provide, perpetuating a seemingly endless cycle.

    But the MIC is more complicated and insidious than that. In what’s effectively a system of legalized bribery, campaign donations regularly help boost Pentagon budgets and ensure the awarding of yet more lucrative contracts, often benefiting a small number of contractors in a congressional district or state. Such contractors make their case with the help of a virtual army of more than 900 Washington-based lobbyists. Many of them are former Pentagon officials, or former members of Congress or congressional staffers, hired through a “revolving door” that takes advantage of their ability to lobby former colleagues. Such contractors also donate to think tanks and university centers willing to support increased Pentagon spending, weapons programs, and a hyper-militarized foreign policy. Ads are another way to push weapons programs on elected officials.

    Such weapons makers also spread their manufacturing among as many Congressional districts as possible, allowing senators and representatives to claim credit for jobs created. MIC jobs, in turn, often create cycles of dependency in low-income communities that have few other economic drivers, effectively buying the support of locals.

    For their part, contractors regularly engage in legalized price gouging, overcharging taxpayers for all manner of weapons and equipment. In other cases, contractor fraud literally steals taxpayer money. The Pentagon is the only government agency that has never passed an audit — meaning it literally can’t keep track of its money and assets — yet it still receives more from Congress than every other government agency combined.

    As a system, the MIC ensures that Pentagon spending and military policy are driven by contractors’ search for ever-higher profits and the reelection desires of members of Congress, not by any assessment of how to best defend the country. The resulting military is unsurprisingly shoddy, especially given the money spent. Americans should pray it never actually has to defend the United States.

    No other industry — not even Big Pharma or Big Oil — can match the power of the MIC in shaping national policy and dominating spending. Military spending is, in fact, now larger (adjusting for inflation) than at the height of the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq, or, in fact, at any time since World War II, despite the absence of a threat remotely justifying such spending. Many now realize that the primary beneficiary of more than 22 years of endless U.S. wars in this century has been the industrial part of the MIC, which has made hundreds of billions of dollars since 2001. “Who Won in Afghanistan? Private Contractors” was the Wall Street Journal‘s all too apt headline in 2021.

    Endless Wars, Endless Death, Endless Destruction

    “Afghanistan” in that headline could have been replaced by Korea, Vietnam, or Iraq, among other seemingly endless U.S. wars since World War II. That the MIC has profited off them is no coincidence. It has helped drive the country into conflicts in countries ranging from Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, to El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, and Grenada, to Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, and so many others.

    Deaths and injuries from such wars have reached the tens of millions. The number of estimated deaths from the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen is eerily similar to that from the wars in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia: 4.5 million.

    The numbers are so large that they can become numbing. The Irish poet Pádraig Ó Tuama helps us remember to focus on:

    one life
    one life
    one life
    one life
    one life

    because each time
    is the first time
    that that life
    has been taken.

    The Environmental Toll

    The MIC’s damage extends to often irreparable environmental harm, involving the poisoning of ecosystems, devastating biodiversity loss, and the U.S. military’s carbon footprint, which is larger than that of any other organization on earth. At war or in daily training, the MIC has literally fueled global heating and climate change through the burning of fuels to run bases, operate vehicles, and produce weaponry.

    The MIC’s human and environmental costs are particularly invisible outside the continental United States. In U.S. territories and other political “grey zones,” investments in military infrastructure and technologies rely in part on the second-class citizenship of Indigenous communities, often dependent on the military for their livelihoods.

    Endless Wars at Home

    As the MIC has fueled wars abroad, so it has fueled militarization domestically. Why, for example, have domestic police forces become so militarized? At least part of the answer: since 1990, Congress has allowed the Pentagon to transfer its “excess” weaponry and equipment (including tanks and drones) to local law enforcement agencies. These transfers conveniently allow the Pentagon and its contractors to ask Congress for replacement purchases, further fueling the MIC.

    Seeking new profits from new markets, contractors have also increasingly hawked their military products directly to SWAT teams and other police forces, border patrol outfits, and prison systems. Politicians and corporations have poured billions of dollars into border militarization and mass incarceration, helping fuel the rise of the lucrative “border-industrial complex” and “prison-industrial complex,” respectively. Domestic militarization has disproportionately harmed Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities.

    An Existential Threat

    Some will defend the military-industrial complex by insisting that we need its jobs; some by claiming it’s keeping Ukrainians alive and protecting the rest of Europe from Vladimir Putin’s Russia; some by warning about China. Each of those arguments is an example of the degree to which the MIC’s power relies on systematically manufacturing fear, threats, and crises that help enrich arms merchants and others in the MIC by driving ever more military spending and war (despite a nearly unbroken record of catastrophic failure when it comes to nearly every U.S. conflict since World War II).

    The argument that current levels of military spending must be maintained for “the jobs” should be laughable. No military should be a jobs program. While the country needs job programs, military spending has proven to be a poor job creator or an engine of economic growth. Research shows it creates far fewer jobs than comparable investments in health care, education, or infrastructure.

    U.S. weaponry has aided Ukrainian self-defense, though the weapons manufacturers are anything but altruists. If they truly cared about Ukrainians, they would have forgone any profits, leaving more money for humanitarian aid to that country. Instead, they’ve used that war, as they have Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and growing tensions in the Pacific, to cynically inflate their profits and stock prices dramatically.

    Discard the fearmongering and it should be clear that the Russian military has demonstrated its weakness, its inability to decisively conquer territory near its own borders, let alone march into Europe. In fact, both the Russian and Chinese militaries pose no conventional military threat to the United States. The Russian military’s annual budget is one-tenth or less than the size of the U.S. one. China’s military budget is one-third to one-half its size. The disparities are far larger if you combine the U.S. military budget with those of its NATO and Asian allies.

    Despite this, members of the MIC are increasingly encouraging direct confrontations with Russia and China, aided by Putin’s war and China’s own provocations. In the “Indo-Pacific” (as the military calls it), the MIC is continuing to cash in as the Pentagon builds up bases and forces surrounding China in Australia, Guam, the Federated States of Micronesia, Japan, the Marshall Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines.

    Such steps and a similar buildup in Europe are only encouraging China and Russia to strengthen their own militaries. (Just imagine how American politicians would respond if China or Russia were to build a single military base anywhere close to this country’s borders.) While all of this is increasingly profitable for the MIC, it is heightening the risk of a military clash that could spiral into a potentially species-ending nuclear war between the United States and China, Russia, or both.

    The Urgency of Dismantling

    The urgency of dismantling the military-industrial complex should be clear. The future of the species and planet depends on it.

    The most obvious way to weaken the MIC would be to starve it of its lifeblood, our tax dollars. Few noticed that, after leaving office, former Trump-era Pentagon chief Christopher Miller called for cutting the Pentagon’s budget in half. Yes, in half.

    Even a 30% cut — as happened all too briefly after the Cold War ended in 1991 — would free hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Imagine how such sums could build safer, healthier, more secure lives in this country, including a just economic transition for any military personnel and contractors losing jobs. And mind you, that military budget would still be significantly larger than China’s, or Russia’s, Iran’s, and North Korea’s combined.

    Of course, even thinking about cutting the Pentagon budget is difficult because the MIC has captured both political parties, virtually guaranteeing ever-rising military spending. Which brings us back to the puzzle of how to dismantle the MIC as a system.

    In short, we’re working on the answers. With the diverse group of experts who helped produce this article’s graphics, we’re exploring, among other ideas, divestment campaigns and lawsuits; banning war profiteering; regulating or nationalizing weapons manufacturers; and converting parts of the military into an unarmed disaster relief, public health, and infrastructure force.

    Though all too many of us will continue to believe that dismantling the MIC is unrealistic, given the threats facing us, it’s time to think as boldly as possible about how to roll back its power, resist the invented notion that war is inevitable, and build the world we want to see. Just as past movements reduced the power of Big Tobacco and the railroad barons, just as some are now taking on Big Pharma, Big Tech, and the prison-industrial complex, so we must take on the MIC to build a world focused on making human lives rich (in every sense) rather than one focused on bombs and other weaponry that brings wealth to a select few who benefit from death.

    This piece first appeared in TomDispatch.

    David Vine, a TomDispatch regular and professor of anthropology at American University, is the author most recently of The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State. He is also the author of Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World, part of the American Empire Project. Theresa (Isa) Arriola is an assistant professor in the department of sociology and anthropology at Concordia University. She chairs Our Common Wealth 670 (OCW 670) on Saipan, a community advocacy group dedicated to research, education, and awareness about military planning in the Mariana Islands. She was born and raised on Saipan and is an Indigenous Chamorro woman. Her research interests center around militarism, indigeneity, sovereignty, and Oceania.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 06/07/2024 – 23:05

  • How Many Data Centers Do Major Big Tech Companies Have?
    How Many Data Centers Do Major Big Tech Companies Have?

    The Big Tech companies are often compared against each other in many ways: how much money they make, market capitalization, and the newest flavor, generative AI capabilities.

    But in their great strides to capture the digital realm, Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao charts how many huge data facilities do they need for all their services, analytics, and storage?

    Sourcing information from Meta, Google, Microsoft, and some third-party estimates for Apple and Amazon, we find out.

    Ranked: Big Tech’s Data Facilities

    Cloud computing giants – Microsoft and Amazon – have data centers in the triple-digits to accommodate their customers’ burgeoning business demands.

    However, there’s no one standard of how big a data center needs to be, so quantity doesn’t automatically translate into greater capacity.

    Note: *Third-party estimates vary depending on the source. AWS is usually listed between 160–220 and Apple from 8–10. **Microsoft lists their count as “300+.”

    According to Statista, AWS still maintains the biggest market share in the cloud computing segment (31%) even as Microsoft Azure edges ever closer (25%).

    In fact, Amazon is aiming to spend $150 billion on more facilities over the next 15 years. Estimates say 26 data centers are currently under construction. All of this, of course, to chase the AI boom.

    Despite dominating our digital lives however, Big Tech aren’t the only players when it comes to data center metrics. For example, Digital Realty, a colocation data center provider, would rank alongside Microsoft with 300+ data facilities.

    If you enjoyed this post, and you’re wondering which Big Tech players have made their forays into AI, check out Ranked: The Most Popular AI Tools. We visualize the most popular AI tools of 2023 along with recent tech adoption cycles and the software products that defined them.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 06/07/2024 – 22:40

  • US Wage-Price Spiral Is Still Persistent
    US Wage-Price Spiral Is Still Persistent

    Authored by Law Ka-chung via The Epoch Times,

    The persistent inflation poses difficulties for both policymakers and researchers. However, this is not anything new, and it has already been well-documented since the era of John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s. I quickly ran a few regression analyses using a full sample of U.S. core CPI inflation (excluding food and energy) data and found various forms of autoregressive (AR) models resulting in quite long statistically significant lags. In one version, the 4th to 12th lag terms were all significant, suggesting inflation persistence could last for almost a year.

    Traditionally, well-established models explained this kind of price stickiness. The typical taxonomy goes along two dimensions: whether there are market imperfections in the labor or goods market and whether markets are clear. The resulting four kinds of models are the worker-misperception model (labor market imperfection), imperfect-information model (goods market imperfection but clear), sticky-wage model (labor market imperfection and not clear), and sticky-price model (goods market imperfection and not clear), respectively.

    Nevertheless, these assumptions are less valid nowadays. In this AI and big data era, market imperfection is much reduced, if not completely eliminated. Markets not clearing is not a common assumption adopted in the popular general equilibrium type of models. While pricing can be adjusted relatively quickly, wages cannot. Under standard labour contracts, wage reduction is uncommon, while the increase is usually done on a yearly basis. Life will be much easier if price stickiness is explained by wage stickiness, as is the case with most modern models.

    Thus, the wage-price spiral hypothesis is essential for linking the two. If established, inflation stickiness can be explained by unemployment stickiness, which is also consistent with the Phillips curve framework. The accompanying chart checks whether the spiral is there.

    U.S. Wage-Price Spiral. (Courtesy of Law Ka-chung)

    The blue line shows the hourly earnings year-over-year (YoY) growth, which is the median for all workers from the third quarter of 2007 and, prior to that, the average for production workers. The red line shows CPI YoY growth for services only. The reason for narrowing down CPI to services only is that this takes up 64 percent of the basket, and this category is seen to be highly resistant.

    From the chart, we observe the following.

    • First, services inflation still stands at a very high level of 5.2 percent.

    • Second, while price growth was much higher than that of wages around 1980 due to uncontrolled inflation expectations, nowadays the two co-move suggesting inflation expectations are probably well anchored.

    • Third, the hourly earnings growth and services inflation have been similar in level since the mid-1990s (that is, for a quarter century). Fourth and most importantly, the uptrends for both since 2010 are clear, suggesting such inflation pressure has been there for a long time.

    As the high base period has passed, the observed inflation in upcoming months will be higher than the recent ones. Earnings inflation easing has been slowing to 4 percent. Based on the third observation just mentioned, services inflation and, hence, the overall level is likely to be maintained at a similar level, that is, 4 percent for some months ahead.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 06/07/2024 – 22:15

  • Visualizing Four Decades Of US Wildfires
    Visualizing Four Decades Of US Wildfires

    A complex interplay of factors are leading to North America’s long wildfire season: increasing summer temperatures, erratic precipitation patterns, changing land use, and ironically, fire suppression practices.

    But what does the data say? Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao visualizes the millions of acres burned by U.S. wildfires from 1983 to May 2024, per statistics from the National Interagency Fire Center.

    2010 and 2015 Saw Record Land Burned by Wildfires

    From glancing at the chart, it’s apparent that U.S. wildfires are burning significantly more acres on average in the 2010s than they did in the 1980s. Interestingly, the World Economic Forum points out that while the number of fires itself has fallen since 2005, the land burned has increased, indicating wildfire intensity has grown.

    Year Million Acres Burned
    1983 1.3
    1984 1.1
    1985 2.9
    1986 2.7
    1987 2.4
    1988 5.0
    1989 1.8
    1990 4.6
    1991 3.0
    1992 2.1
    1993 1.8
    1994 4.1
    1995 1.8
    1996 6.1
    1997 2.9
    1998 1.3
    1999 5.7
    2000 7.4
    2001 3.6
    2002 7.2
    2003 4.0
    2004* 8.1
    2005 8.7
    2006 9.9
    2007 9.3
    2008 5.3
    2009 5.9
    2010 3.4
    2011 8.7
    2012 9.3
    2013 4.3
    2014 3.6
    2015 10.1
    2016 5.5
    2017 10.0
    2018 8.8
    2019 4.7
    2020 10.1
    2021 7.1
    2022 7.6
    2023 2.7
    2024** 1.9

    *Doesn’t include North Carolina data. **As of May 27, 2024.

    In 2015, wildfires burned more than 10 million acres in the country, a first since these records began. Five years later saw a repeat, thanks to four Californian fires that together burned more than 2.3 million acres in the state.

    For comparison, U.S. wildfires burned approximately 2.7 million acres in total in 2023, the lowest amount recorded since 1998. An unusually wet Californian summer helped prevent errant sparks from turning into raging disasters.

    Nevertheless, in August, a devastating fire nearly wiped out the historic town of Lahaina, Maui, killing at least 100 people.

    Finally, U.S. wildfires have burned 1.9 million acres in 2024 so far, currently below the 10-year annual average of 7.2 million acres. However, experts predict a hotter-than-usual summer and autumn, and fire activity is expected to increase as the summer progresses.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 06/07/2024 – 21:50

  • A Substantial Chance Of A Major Financial Collapse & The End Of Offshored Industrialization
    A Substantial Chance Of A Major Financial Collapse & The End Of Offshored Industrialization

    Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World,

    Moving industrialization offshore can look like a good idea at first. But as fossil fuel energy supplies deplete, this strategy works less well. Countries doing the mining and manufacturing may be less interested in trading. Also, the broken supply lines of 2020 and 2021 showed that transferring major industries offshore could lead to empty shelves in stores, plus unhappy customers.

    The United States started moving industry offshore in 1974 (Figure 1) in response to spiking oil prices in 1973-1974 (Figure 2).

    Figure 1. US industrial energy consumption per capita, divided among fossil fuels, biomass, and electricity, based on data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). All energy types, including electricity, are measured their capacity to generate heat. This is the approach used by the EIA, the IEA, and most researchers.

    Industry is based on the use of fossil fuels. Electricity also plays a role, but it is more like the icing on the cake than the basis of industrial production. Industry is polluting in many ways, so it was an “easy sell” to move industry offshore. But now the United States is realizing that it needs to re-industrialize. At the same time, we are being told about the need to transition the entire economy to electricity to prevent climate change.

    In this post, I will try to explain the situation–how fossil fuel prices have spiked many times, including 1973-1974 (oil) and more recently (coal in 2022). I will also discuss the key role fossil fuels play. Because of the key role of fossil fuels, a reduction in per-capita fossil fuel consumption likely leads to a transition to fewer goods and services, on average, per person. A transition to all electricity does not seem to be feasible. Instead, we seem to be headed for increased geopolitical conflict and the possibility of a financial crash seems greater.

    [1] When fossil fuel supplies become constrained, prices tend to spike to high levels, and then fall back again.

    Economists and energy analysts have tended to assume that fossil fuel prices would rise to very high levels, allowing extraction of huge amounts of difficult-to-extract fossil fuels. For example, the International Energy Agency (IEA) in the past has shown forecasts of future oil production assuming that inflation-adjusted oil prices will rise to $300 per barrel.

    Instead of rising to a very high level, fossil fuel prices tend to spike because there is a two-way contest between the price the consumers can afford and the price the sellers need to keep reinvesting in new fields to keep fossil fuel supplies increasing. Prices oscillate back and forth, with neither buyers nor sellers finding themselves very happy with the situation. The current price of the benchmark, Brent oil, is $81.

    [2] Historical data shows spiking oil and coal prices.

    Figure 2. World oil prices, adjusted to the US 2022 price level, based on data of the 2023 Statistical Review of World Energy, prepared by the Energy Institute.

    When world oil prices started to spike in the 1973-1974 period, the US started to move its industrial production offshore (Figure 1). The very low inflation-adjusted prices that prevailed up until 1972 no longer held. Manufacturing costs climbed higher. Consumers wanted smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles, and such cars were already being manufactured both in Europe and in Japan. Importing these cars made sense.

    More recently, coal prices have begun to spike. Coal prices vary by location, but the general patterns are similar for the types of coal shown.

    Figure 3. Coal prices per ton, at a few sample locations, based on data shown in the 2023 Statistical Review of World Energy prepared by the Energy Institute. Prices have not been adjusted for inflation.

    Before China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, coal prices tended to be below $50 per ton (figure 3). At that price, coal was a very inexpensive fuel for making steel and concrete, and for many other industrial uses.

    Figure 4. World coal consumption per capita, based on data of the 2023 Statistical Review of World Energy prepared by the Energy Institute, except for 2023, which is based on an estimate by the IEA.

    After China joined the WTO, China’s coal consumption soared (Figure 4), allowing it to industrialize. Figure 3 shows that the extra demand initially pushed coal prices up a little. By 2022, coal prices had soared. At present, coal prices are part-way back down, perhaps partly because higher interest rates are dampening world demand for coal.

    Natural gas prices also soared in 2022, at the same time as coal prices. Both coal and natural gas are fuels that are burned to produce electricity. When the coal supply is constrained, utilities will try to purchase more electricity produced by burning natural gas. However, it is difficult to store much natural gas for future use. Thus, a shortage of internationally traded coal can simultaneously lead to a shortage of internationally traded natural gas.

    Having oil, coal, and natural gas prices spiking at the same time leads to inflation and to many unhappy citizens.

    [3] The 1997 Kyoto Protocol encouraged the trend toward moving industry to lower-cost countries.

    In Figure 1, I show a dotted line at 1997. At that time, an international treaty stating that the participating countries would limit their own CO2 emissions attracted a lot of attention. An easy way to limit CO2 emissions was by moving industry overseas. Even though the US did not sign the treaty until later, the treaty gave the US a reason to move industry overseas. We can see from Figure 1 that US industrialization, as measured by the energy per capita required to industrialize, began to fall even more rapidly after 1997.

    [4] There were many reasons besides the Kyoto Protocol why Advanced Economies would want to move industry overseas.

    There were many reasons to move industry overseas besides spiking oil prices and concern over CO2 levels. With such a change, customers in the US (and European countries making a similar change) gained access to lower-cost goods and services. With the money the customers could save, they were able to buy more discretionary goods and services, which helped to ramp up local economies.

    Also, industry tends to be polluting. Smog tends to be problem if coal is burned, or if diesel with high sulfur content is burned. Mining tends to produce a lot of toxic waste. Moving this pollution offshore to poorer countries would solve the pollution problem without the high cost of attempting to capture this pollution and properly store it.

    Furthermore, business-owners in the United States could sense the opportunity to grow to be truly international in size if they moved much of their industry overseas.

    [5] All the globalization and moving of industry overseas had a downside: more wage and wealth disparity.

    In a matter of a few years, the economy changed to provide fewer high-paying factory jobs in the United States. Increasingly, those without advanced education found it difficult to provide an adequate living for their families. The high incomes were disproportionately going to highly educated workers and the owners of capital goods (Figure 5).

    Figure 5. U. S. Income Shares of Top 1% and Top 0.1%, Wikipedia exhibit by Piketty and Saez.

    [6] Part of what caused the growing wage and wealth disparities in Figure 5 was the growing industrialization of China (Figure 6).

    China, with its growing industrialization, could outcompete whole industries, such as furniture-making and garment-making, leaving US workers to find lower-paid jobs in the service sector. Similar outcomes unfolded in the EU and Japan, as industrialization started moving to different parts of the world.

    Figure 6. Industrial production in 2015 US$, for the United States, the EU, Japan, and China, based on World Bank Industrial Production (including construction) data. These amounts are not per capita.

    [7] The indirect impact of the Kyoto Protocol was to move CO2 emissions slightly away from the Advanced Nations. Overall, CO2 emissions rose.

    Figure 7. Carbon dioxide emissions from energy utilization, based on data of the 2023 Statistical Review of World Energy, prepared by the Energy Institute. These amounts are not per capita.

    Anyone who expected that the 1997 Kyoto Protocol would reduce world CO2 emissions would have been disappointed.

    [8] The direct use of fossil fuels plays a far more important role in the economy than we have ever been taught.

    Thanks to the direct use of fossil fuels, the world can have paved roads, bridges made of steel, and electricity transmission lines. It can have concrete. It can have pharmaceutical products, herbicides, and insecticides. Many of these benefits come from the chemical properties of fossil fuels. Electricity, by itself, could never provide these products since it has been stripped of the chemical benefits of fossil fuels. Electricity is also difficult to store.

    With the benefit of fossil fuels, the world can also have high-quality steel, with precisely the composition desired by those making it. With only electricity, it is possible to use electric arc furnaces to recycle used steel, but such steel is limited both in quantity and quality. US production of steel amounts to 5% of world supply (primarily using electric arc furnaces), while China’s production (mostly using coal) amounts to 50% of world supply.

    I highly recommend reading the article, Trapped in the Iron Age, by Kris De Decker. He explains that the world uses an enormous amount of steel, but most of it is hidden in places we can’t see. Today, with the US’s limited steel-making capability, the US needs to import most of its steel, including steel pipes from China to drill its oil wells. We cannot see how dependent we have become on other countries for our basic steel needs.

    China and India have both based their recent growth primarily on rising coal consumption. This is what has kept world CO2 emissions high. The US is now exporting coal to these countries.

    [9] Citizens of Advanced Economies are easily confused about the importance of fossil fuel use because they have never been taught about the subject and because their worldview is distorted by the narrow view they see from within their homes and offices.

    Figure 8. Electricity consumption as a percentage of total energy consumption by US sector, based on the data of the US EIA. Amounts are through 2023.

    Figure 8 shows that the sector with the highest share of electricity use is the commercial sector. This includes uses such as stores, offices, and hospitals. The most visible energy use is lighting and operating computers, which gives the perception that electricity is the greatest energy use. But these businesses also need to be heated, and heat is often produced by burning natural gas directly. Businesses also need back-up for their electrical systems. Such back-up is typically provided by diesel-powered generators.

    Residential usage is similar. It is easy to see the use of electricity, but heat is generally needed during winter. This is often provided by natural gas or propane. Natural gas is also often used in hot water heaters, stoves, and clothes dryers. Occasionally, wood is used to heat homes; this would go into the non-electricity portion, as well.

    The thing that most people do not realize is that industrial use and transportation use are extremely large sectors of the economy (Figure 9), and these sectors are very low consumers of electricity (Figure 8). Also, if the US and Europe were to re-industrialize to produce more of our manufactured goods, our industrial sectors would need to be much larger than they are today.

    Figure 9. US Energy Consumption per capita by sector based on data of the US EIA. Amounts are through 2023.

    In recent years, electrical consumption as a percentage of total energy consumption for the industrial sector has averaged about 13% of the total (Figure 9). Industries typically need high heat levels; such heat can usually be achieved at lowest cost by burning fossil fuels directly. Wikipedia claims, “Electric arc steelmaking is only economical where there is plentiful, reliable electricity, with a well-developed electrical grid.” An electric grid, powered only by intermittent electricity from wind turbines and solar panels, would not qualify.

    In Figure 8, electricity consumption as a percentage of total energy consumption for the US transportation sector rounds to 0%, for every year. Even the amount of biomass (ethanol and biodiesel) used by the transportation sector doesn’t have much of an impact, as shown in Figure 10.

    Figure 10. US transportation energy by type through 2023, based on data of the US EIA. Biomass includes ethanol and any biofuels made to substitute for diesel.

    A major issue is that transportation is a broad sector, including trucks, trains, planes, and boats, in addition to private passenger autos. Also, I expect that the only electricity that would be considered in the transportation energy calculation would be electricity purchased from an away-from-home charging facility. Electricity used when charging at home would likely be part of residential electricity consumption.

    [10] The narrative saying that we can transition to an electricity-only economy, powered by intermittent wind and solar electricity, has major holes in it.

    One major issue is that the pricing of wind and solar tends to drive out other electricity providers, particularly nuclear. Intermittent wind and solar are given “priority” when they are available. This leads to very low or negative prices for other electricity providers. Nuclear is particularly affected because it cannot ramp up and down, in response to prices that are far below its cost of production.

    Nuclear is a far more stable source of electricity than either wind or solar, and it is also a low-carbon source. As a result, economies end up worse off, in terms of electricity supply per capita, and in stability of available supply, when wind and solar are added.

    Figure 11. US per capita electricity generation based on data of the US Energy Information Administration. (Amounts are through 2023.)

    Figure 12. Electricity generation per capita for the European Union based on data of the 2023 Statistical Review of World Energy, prepared by the Energy Institute. Amounts are through 2022.

    Another issue is that wind turbines and solar panels are made with fossil fuels and repaired using fossil fuels. Without fossil fuels, we cannot maintain electricity transmission lines and roads. Thus, wind turbines and solar panels are as much a part of the fossil fuel system as hydroelectric electricity and electricity made from coal or natural gas.

    Also, as discussed above, only a small share of the economy is today operated using electricity. The IEA says that 20% of 2023 world energy supply comes from electricity. The amounts I calculated as “Overall” in Figure 8 indicate an electricity share of 18%, which is a bit less than the IEA is indicating for the world. Figure 8 shows an early upward trend in this ratio, but no upward trend since 2012. Fossil fuels are being used today because they have chemical characteristics that are needed or because they provide the energy services required in a less expensive manner than electricity.

    Even in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, wind and waterpower provided only a small portion of the total energy supply. Coal provided the heat energy that both industry and residences needed, inexpensively. Wind and waterpower were not well adapted to providing heat energy when needed.

    Figure 13. Annual energy consumption per head (megajoules) in England and Wales 1561-70 to 1850-9 and in Italy 1861-70. Figure by Wrigley, in Energy and the English Industrial Revolution.

    If we are short of inexpensive-to-extract fossil fuels, relative to today’s large population, we certainly could use some new inexpensive source of stable electricity supply. But this would not solve all our energy problems–we would still need a substantial amount of fossil fuel supplies to grow our food and keep our roads repaired. But if a new type of electricity production could reduce the demand for fossil fuels, it would make a larger quantity of fossil fuels available for other purposes.

    [11] Practically everyone would like a happily-ever-after ending, so it is easy for politicians, educators, and the news media to put together overly optimistic versions of the future.

    The narrative that CO2 is the world’s biggest enemy, so we need to move quickly away from fossil fuels, has received a great deal of publicity recently, but it is problematic from two different points of view:

    (a) The feasibility of moving away from fossil fuels without killing off a very major portion of the world’s population seems to be virtually zero. The world economy is a dissipative structure in physics terms. It needs energy of the right kinds to “dissipate,” just as humans are dissipative structures and need food to dissipate (digest). Humans cannot live on lettuce alone, or practically any other foodstuff by itself. We need a “portfolio” of foods, adapted to our bodies’ needs. The economy is similar. It cannot operate only on electricity, any more than humans can live only on high-priced icing for cakes.

    (b) The narrative about the importance of CO2 emissions with respect to climate change is quite possibly exaggerated. There are many other things that would seem to be at least as likely to cause short-term shifts in temperatures:

    • Lack of global dimming caused by less coal dust and reduced sulfur compounds in the atmosphere; in other words, reducing smog tends to raise temperatures.
    • Small changes in the Earth’s orbit
    • Changes in solar activity
    • Changes related to volcanic eruptions
    • Changes related to shifts in the magnetic north and south poles

    Politicians, educators, and the news media would all like a narrative that can explain the need for moving away from fossil fuels, rather than admit that “our easy to extract fossil fuel supply is running out.” The climate change narrative has been an easy approach to highlight, since clearly the climate is changing. It also provides the view that somehow we will be able to fix the problem if we take it seriously enough.

    [12] Today, we are in a period of conflict among nations, indirectly related to not having access to enough fossil fuels for a world population of 8 billion. There is also a significant chance of financial collapse.

    In my opinion, today’s world is a little like the “Roaring 20s” that came shortly before a major stock market crash in 1929 and the Great Depression of the 1930s. After the Great Depression, the world entered World War II. There is huge wage and wealth disparity; energy supplies per capita are stretched.

    Today, NATO and Russia are fighting a proxy war in Ukraine. Russia is a major fossil fuel producer; it would like to be paid more for the energy products it sells. Russia could perhaps get better prices by selling oil and other energy products to Asian customers instead of its current customer mix. At the same time, the US claims primary leadership (hegemony) in the world but, in fact, it needs to import many goods from overseas. It even needs supply lines from around the world for weapons being sent to Ukraine. The Ukraine conflict is not going well for the US.

    I do not know how this will work out. I am hoping that there will not be a World War III, in the same way that there was a World War II. All countries are terribly dependent on each other, even though there are not enough fossil fuels to go around. Perhaps countries will try to sabotage one another, using modern techniques, such as cyber warfare.

    I think that there is a substantial chance of a major financial collapse in the next few years. The level of debt is very high now. A major recession, with lots of collapsing debt, seems to be a strong possibility.

    [13] A presentation I recently gave to a group of actuaries that touches on several of these issues, plus others.

    My presentation can be found at this link: Beware: The Economy Is Beginning to Shrink

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 06/07/2024 – 21:25

  • South Korea Has Gold Bar Vending Machines…And They're Selling Out
    South Korea Has Gold Bar Vending Machines…And They’re Selling Out

    First, it was Costco selling (and selling out of) gold bars, as we reported last year. Now, you can buy them in vending machines in South Korea.

    One way or another, it looks as though the public wants gold. 

    Bloomberg reported this week that in Seoul’s upscale Gangnam district, a GS Retail Co. convenience store features a vending machine selling gold bars, ranging from less than 1 gram to 37.5 grams, with prices starting at around 88,000 won ($64) and fluctuating daily. Initially launched in 2022, these machines are now in 30 stores nationwide.

    South Koreans are joining the global investing trend, with many investing in fractional shares and physical gold, amid widespread interest in various asset types, from meme stocks to cryptocurrencies, the report noted.

    The one thing we see in common with the United States? People that want to exit from the fiat system. 

    A GS spokesperson told Bloomberg: “Currently we are seeing about 30 million won of sales per month. The gold vending machine draws customers’ attention due to increasing demand for safe haven assets and the spreading trend of micro-investing.”

    Park Sang-hyun, an economist at HI Investment & Securities in Seoul, added that investors have a “fear of missing out when everything rallies, and that partially contributed to the scene.”

    He added: “Feeling uncertainty about the global economy prompts safe haven demand.” 

    In South Korea, the convenience store CU, a competitor of GS, quickly sold out its ultralight gold cards, with the 1-gram options disappearing in just two days due to high demand from people in their 30s.

    As of May 31, CU had sold 95% of its 770 gold items, buoyed by prices falling below market rates, according to a statement from BGF Retail Co. The chain plans to introduce gold bars ranging from 2 to 10 grams, although no specific date has been given.

    Additionally, Kbank, an online bank with over 10 million users, began a service on May 9 allowing the purchase of gold bars from 1.875 grams to 37.5 grams with free delivery, as online banks also respond to rising gold demand.

    “With the price of gold recently topping $2,400 per ounce, investing in gold has become a popular way,” Kbank said in a statement. 

    About Costco, late last year, we wrote: “It’s an incredible commentary on the average American citizen. Americans are literally choosing to transact U.S. dollars for gold.”

    “Just because it’s happening on a website that says ‘Costco’ and the transaction is being consummated by housewives named Florence doesn’t change the fact that enough people thought converting U.S. dollars into hard assets was a high enough priority that these bars sold out,” we wrote.

    “These aren’t shoppers heading over to Kitco — these are people casually picking up some gold when they buy dog food and toilet paper. And if you think that’s crazy now, wait until we hit a period of volatility.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 06/07/2024 – 21:00

  • Is Fast Food Affordable Anymore? A Detailed Look At Menu Prices Over The Years
    Is Fast Food Affordable Anymore? A Detailed Look At Menu Prices Over The Years

    Authored by Josh Koebert via FinanceBuzz,

    Whether it’s for speed, convenience, or price, it’s no secret that Americans love fast food. Convenience aside, fast food has also been considered one of the most budget-friendly options to feed your family outside of cooking at home.

    However, fast foodies claim menu prices have skyrocketed in recent years, prompting backlash online and on social media.

    Have fast food prices really changed so dramatically? And if so, by how much? To find out, our team at FinanceBuzz collected pricing data for a dozen different chain restaurants over the last decade. We then calculated how much prices have risen in that timeframe and compared it to the overall inflation rate in the same period.

    Key findings

    • From 2014 to 2024, average menu prices have risen between 39% and 100% — all increases that outpace inflation during the given time period (31%).
    • McDonald’s menu prices have doubled (100% increase) since 2014 across popular items — the highest of any chain we analyzed.
    • Popeyes follows McDonald’s with an 86% increase, and Taco Bell is third at +81%.
    • Menu prices at Subway and Starbucks have risen by “just” 39% since 2014 — the lowest among chains we studied. These are also the only restaurants where prices have risen by less than 50%.

    How does fast food inflation compare to actual inflation?

    According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cost of goods has risen 31% since 2014. This means that $100 in 2014 dollars is worth $131 in 2024 dollars. Much of this change has happened in the last 5 years — inflation is up 22% since 2019. So how do the average menu price increases at popular fast food chains compare to those rates?

    The restaurants we evaluated raised prices by 60% on average between 2014 and 2024. That means they’ve raised prices at a rate nearly double the national rate of inflation.

    Five different restaurants — McDonald’s, Popeyes, Taco Bell, Chipotle, and Jimmy John’s — raised their prices at more than double the actual inflation rate. McDonald’s raised prices so much that their average menu prices increased more than three times the national rate of inflation.

    Gold-tier prices at the Golden Arches: McDonald’s prices have risen the most

    The worst offender for dramatic price increases is McDonald’s — a chain that recently went viral for all the wrong reasons. An $18 Big Mac® combo garnered so much attention online that the McDonald’s CEO promised affordability on a recent earnings call. According to our data, prices at McDonald’s have doubled since 2014, with an average price increase of 100%.

    That rate is more than triple the actual inflation rate at that same time. One menu item that illustrates just how much things have changed is the McChicken® sandwich. This was a staple of the chain’s $1 menu in 2014, but it now costs $3 at some locations. That’s a massive price increase of nearly 200% in a single decade.

    Other former value menu items, like the McDouble® and a simple order of medium fries, were among the most egregious price increases across the McD’s menu.

    Other notable fast-flation examples

    Looking at the full data, we see that Popeyes, Taco Bell, and Chipotle have the second, third, and fourth-largest average price increases. All three have raised prices by at least 75% in the last 10 years. Subway and Starbucks, on the other hand, kept prices the most stable of the bunch.

    Though McDonald’s was the biggest inflation offender of the chains we looked at, we found some other interesting inflation trends across fast food menus.

    Taco Bell

    Similar to McDonald’s, Taco Bell has long had a reputation for being a cheap place to get a quick bite. But also like McDonald’s, that reputation has started to take a hit among fans due to a decade of outsized price increases.

    Some of Taco Bell’s most iconic menu items show how much costs have risen. A Doritos® Locos Taco has gone from an average price of $1.39 in 2014 to $2.59 in 2024 (+86%), while a Cheesy Gordita Crunch has doubled in price from $2.49 in 2014 to $4.99 today.

    Neither of these price increases is the largest we tracked at Taco Bell. That prize goes to the Beefy 5-Layer Burrito, which went from an average cost of $1.59 in 2014 to a present-day price of $3.69. That’s a 132% increase.

    Chipotle

    While Chipotle’s prices haven’t increased at quite the same rate as Taco Bell’s or McDonald’s, their costs have still risen by 75% on average in the last decade.

    In 2014, hungry customers could get an entree, such as a burrito, bowl, or tacos, for less than $6.75 on average. Those same meals all cost $10.50 or more today. And adding guac costs 64% more now than it did 10 years ago, going from $1.80 to $2.95 on average.

    Starbucks

    Starbucks is one of the best chains we evaluated in terms of keeping costs down. Menu prices have gone up by 39% on average from 2014 to 2024. That is only slightly higher than the actual inflation rate during that time (31%).

    Notably, some beloved Starbucks menu items have kept pace with inflation, such as their Chai Tea Latte (+30%) and their Mocha Frappuccino® (+32%). Even better for Starbucks fans and their wallets, costs for certain items such as a Caffè Latte (+22%) and Caramel Macchiato (+17%) have actually risen slower than inflation, which makes them a better deal now than they were a decade ago.

    Burger King

    One of McDonald’s’ primary competitors is Burger King, but BK has done a much better job of keeping costs down compared to McDonald’s. While prices at the Golden Arches have doubled on average since 2014, the average cost for Burger King menu items has risen by “just” 55% in that same time.

    For a table with full results – click here.

    Hear from our experts

    While our study gave good insight on fast food price inflation, we also had our own questions about what the future holds for affordable meal options. To find out, we asked a panel of experts to weigh in on three questions: 

    • Do you think fast-food menu prices will continue to outpace inflation rates, or is there a potential stopping point?

    • What are some factors that can contribute to the rising costs of what’s typically considered an affordable food option?

    • In addition to a considerable increase in menu prices, would you say there’s been a drop-off in fast-food value deals, coupons, and promotions?

    Shubhranshu Singh, Ph.D.

    Associate Professor of Marketing, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School

    Do you think fast-food menu prices will continue to outpace inflation rates, or is there a potential stopping point?

    Fast food menu prices are expected to outpace inflation in the near term. However, the rate of increase is expected to slow down going forward. It appears that, if food price inflation and wage inflation continue to decrease, we can expect fast food prices to follow the overall inflation rate by the end of year.

    What are some factors that can contribute to the rising costs of what’s typically considered an affordable food option?

    A number of factors have contributed to the rising costs of fast food. First, food prices are outpacing inflation. Wage rate is also rising faster than inflation. In other words, the cost of preparing and serving fast food is rising faster than the inflation rate. Second, due to increasing pressure to spend less, some consumers have also downgraded from full-service restaurants to fast food restaurants, thus increasing the overall demand for fast food. Third, because of the increasing need to take multiple jobs and less time to prepare or enjoy food, consumers’ preferences for fast food have become stickier, that is, they are willing to accept higher prices. To make matters worse for fast food restaurants, consumers are tipping less at low- and no-service restaurants. Fast food restaurants are responding by raising prices.

    In addition to a considerable increase in menu prices, would you say there’s been a drop-off in fast-food value deals, coupons, and promotions?

    Yes, there has been a decrease in the frequency and depth of deals, coupons, and promotions offered by fast food restaurants. My casual observation suggests many fast-food chains such as McDonalds, KFC, and Domino’s Pizza have cut online deals. When deals, coupons, and promotions are offered, they don’t appear to be as attractive as they used to be prior to the pandemic. It appears the low-price items and deals that are currently offered are mostly to mitigate the recent backlash related to skyrocketing fast-food prices and not so much to make fast food more affordable for an average consumer.

    Daniel Roccato, MBA, CPM

    Clinical Professor of Finance, University of San Diego – Knauss School of Business

    Do you think fast-food menu prices will continue to outpace inflation rates, or is there a potential stopping point?

    The worst is behind because consumers have reached a tipping point. Fast-food operators have increased prices faster than the overall rate of inflation and that is especially hard on their core consumers. We won’t see prices drop but we can expect a pause.

    What are some factors that can contribute to the rising costs of what’s typically considered an affordable food option?

    It’s all about labor. Commodity price increases have moderated but labor costs keep climbing. A tight labor market and higher minimum wage laws are a one-two punch for employers.

    Michael Bognanno, Ph.D.

    Chair and Professor of Economics, Temple University

    Do you think fast-food menu prices will continue to outpace inflation rates, or is there a potential stopping point?

    In the words of Yogi Berra – ‘It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.’ Yogi Berra’s wisdom aside, fast-food prices have been driven up by increasing costs for food, labor, and energy. Additionally, the labor costs for low-wage workers, like those employed in fast food, rose the fastest after the pandemic, outpacing inflation. This last trend is abating, and this will help to push the growth in fast-food prices towards the general rate of inflation. The rise in food prices is also slowing.

    What are some factors that can contribute to the rising costs of what’s typically considered an affordable food option?

    The fast-food industry is highly competitive, and prices rise as the result of two forces: higher demand or higher costs. In this case, it is due largely to higher costs. The competition for low-wage workers in the aftermath of the pandemic caused their wages to rise the fastest. This directly affects the cost of running a fast-food restaurant. At the same time, the war in Ukraine and other factors contributed to higher food costs. Energy prices, notably for the cost of electricity, rose more than 10% in 2022 and are still increasing at a rate that exceeds the rate of inflation. On top of these cost factors that have added to the challenges of the fast-food industry, the pandemic stimulus funds held by consumers are largely gone, and credit card delinquencies are rising as high interest rates squeeze the poor. Restaurants catering to low-income consumers are adversely being affected by this as well as higher costs.

    In addition to a considerable increase in menu prices, would you say there’s been a drop-off in fast-food value deals, coupons, and promotions?

    Industry data shows that restaurant deals have been on the rise. Restaurants help their profits by finding ways to appeal to price sensitive consumers without cutting prices for everyone. Coupons and promotions are a way to do this. They sort consumers according to their price sensitivity by providing lower prices only to those consumers who are willing to go to the effort of using a coupon or responding to a promotion. The tougher things get in the industry, the more the industry will fine-tune pricing tactics.

    Easy ways to save on your next fast-food order

    • Maximize your rewards when eating out. Get the best bang for your buck by using a credit card for dining out to help rack up rewards and offset food prices.
    • Set a budget. Cut back on unnecessary purchases and plan ahead with your fast-food expenses in order to keep more money in your pocket.
    • Look into a food delivery side hustle. Read up on this ultimate guide to Uber Eats to see how you can create your own hours and earn some extra cash on the side.

    Methodology

    FinanceBuzz collected prices for 10 menu items from each restaurant. Prices were collected for 2024, 2019, and 2014. Only items that were available to customers in every one of those years were included for each restaurant.

    Restaurant prices were sourced from ItsYummi.com, FastFoodMenuPrices.com, and MenuWithPrice.com. Current menu prices were cross-referenced with the official website of each restaurant when applicable. Historic pricing data was found via the same sources using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

    Inflation rates are based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI Inflation Calculator. Inflation rates were collected in January 2024.

    As a final note, McDonald’s franchisees are given a high level of autonomy in setting menu prices for individual locations, which can make it difficult to accurately source historical data to compare to the present. As such, our team collected additional historical data points related to McDonald’s and applied certain adjustments to the final data to create a reasonable representation of national pricing trends over time for the chain.

    Update: In light of the popularity of this report, McDonald’s published an open letter regarding the data presented above. In response, FinanceBuzz issued this statement on May 31, 2024. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 06/07/2024 – 20:35

  • US Army's Failure-Prone Pier Connected To Gaza Beach Again After Breaking Apart
    US Army’s Failure-Prone Pier Connected To Gaza Beach Again After Breaking Apart

    The US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) has announced its temporary pier for Gaza, which has been out of commission for a couple of weeks after it was broken apart by choppy Mediterranean seas, has been fully reestablished and is operational.

    “At approximately 2:15 pm (local Gaza time) on June 7, US Central Command (CENTCOM) successfully reestablished the temporary pier in Gaza, enabling the continued delivery of much-needed humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza,” CENTCOM said in a statement posted to X. Watch the pier make landing on the beach again: 

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

    “In coming days, CENTCOM will facilitate the movement of vital food and other emergency supplies, in support of the US Agency for International Development,” the statement continued.

    The Washington Post on Thursday revealed that the cost of repairs for the pier after sections of it broke off and washed ashore in southern Israel stands at $22 million.

    Initially the total cost of Biden’s controversial humanitarian pier project stood at $320 million. From the start it has received bad press both in the US and internationally, a trend which has only continued given the project’s persistent problems. The controversy chiefly lies in that Israel is simultaneously blocking easier to use land routes for aid into Gaza.

    But American taxpayers have also questioned the need for the pier, at a time it continues to prove ineffective in the high winds and waves of the eastern Mediterranean.

    Meanwhile, Pentagon has still sought to provide ‘assurances’: 

    The Pentagon said this week that the project’s overall cost has been downgraded, from an initial estimate of $320 million to about $230 million now. Sabrina Singh, a spokeswoman, told reporters Wednesday that the savings were realized through lower-than-expected expenses for contracted vehicles and drivers, and Britain’s contribution of a military vessel to house the U.S. troops involved in the operation.

    This price downgrade is unlikely to be of much comfort to the American taxpayer. Below is a brief review of all the setbacks of late:

    Despite only being operational for a short time, the pier has already faced a number of setbacks. Last week, deliveries had to be stopped for two days after crowds rushed to aid trucks coming off the pier, leading to one Palestinian man being shot dead.

    Following the incident, the US military said it was charting a safer route to deliver aid. US Central Command also said last week that four army vessels had broken free from the pier, with two arriving in Gaza and the other two washing up on the coast.

    According to a UN World Food Programme spokesperson, since the pier was set up, the UN has transported 137 trucks of aid, the equivalent of 900 metric tonnes.

    Via Reuters

    There also remains the obvious dark irony and contradiction of the US supplying the very bombs still being used on Gaza amid a massive military campaign that’s driving the humanitarian crisis, while simultaneously trying to ‘solve’ or alleviate the catastrophe through an ambitious project already plagued by failure.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 06/07/2024 – 20:10

  • Term "Gynecologist" Offensive, According To Scholars
    Term “Gynecologist” Offensive, According To Scholars

    By Matt Lamb of The College Fix

    Midwives should avoid saying “gynecologist” in order to be more “inclusive,” according to a recent academic paper.

    Not because it sounds like “guy,” but because the word comes from the Greek for woman. Instead, say “reproductive health specialist.”

    The same scholars also say men can give birth.

    Other problematic words include “breastfeeding” and “breastmilk.”

    Instead, midwives should say “human milk feeding,” “human milk provision,” and “milk from the feeding parent.”

    The new language guide comes from Sally Pezaro (pictured), a professor and midwife who works at Coventry University in the United Kingdom.

    Twelve other authors, including a “queer doula,” contributed to the paper titled, “Gender inclusive language in midwifery and perinatal services: A guide and argument for justice.”

    It is all about moving away from “sexed language,” meaning accurate words that describe the fact that every single person to ever give birth in the history of the world was a woman. For example, the guide says not to use “women,” but instead “service users,” as if they are clients downloading software onto their computers.

    The authors begin their paper by making a confusing claim.

    They write:

    The notion of childbearing having a necessary or logical belonging within the nuclear two-parent family initiated by heterosexual couples whose gender has a normative relationship with their sex assigned at birth is a recent development in our human history, and one still inconsistently observed around the globe. Indeed, community and extended family are often as, if not more important.

    Pezaro did not respond to an email on Wednesday that asked for clarification on what she meant. The authors cited an entire book as their source.

    The paper contradicts itself in several places.

    For one, the authors believe men can give birth.

    But their “inclusive” language guide says to avoid saying “men/fathers/dads,” and instead say “non-gestational parents.” But if men can give birth, then it is offensive to assume they are the “non-gestational” parent, according to the authors’ logic. It makes sense if you don’t think about it.

    And what about the term “midwife”? (Credit Micaiah Bilger for that joke).

    Much of the paper reads like a typical gender studies essay.

    Here is one section explaining why “sexed language,” (i.e. biologically accurate words) should not be used:

    Gender non-conforming individuals are substituted for the true threat—the patriarchal structures that oppress multiple marginalized groups. This oppression becomes clear as we demonstrate the role of colonialism in the next section. We also foreground decolonial, intersectional feminism, and reproductive justice, which are key to the implementation of professional policy and practice in meeting the ethical imperative for gender-inclusive language in perinatal care.

    Using “inclusive” language is also how midwives can fight “colonialism,” according to the paper, written by British authors, attempting to impose their standards on everyone else.

    “If midwifery is indeed a feminist profession, it, therefore, follows that it should reject any re-affirmation of a European patriarchal sex binary rooted in colonialism, and fight for reproductive justice to the benefit of all who birth, the majority of whom are cisgender women,” the authors write.

    There is a sliver of truth, finally.

    Not only are a “majority” of people who give birth women, but they are all, in fact, women. If this is what midwives are about, parents would be wise to choose a gynecologist/reproductive health specialist instead.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 06/07/2024 – 19:45

  • Biden Claims He Knew Putin As A Young KGB Agent
    Biden Claims He Knew Putin As A Young KGB Agent

    In the mid-1980s Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was an unknown but up-and-coming KGB officer in his early 30s, and a then 42-year old Joe Biden was a US Senator from Delaware. 

    It was still the Cold War, and there was very little contact between Western officials and representatives of the Soviet Union, given this was still the era of an ‘Iron Curtain’ separating Europe. With all of this in mind, watch what now 81-year old President Biden claimed in an ABC interview from France this week:

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

    “I have known him for over 40 years,” Biden asserted in the interview. “He has concerned me for 40 years. He is not a decent man. He is a dictator.”

    Given the obvious impossibility of this bizarre claim, the Kremlin on Friday reacted by saying “It is often difficult to fathom what US President Joe Biden means with his statements,” according to state media.

    Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated in a mocking tone, “sometimes one can only wonder what the US president means, including when he speaks about [knowing Putin for] 40 years.”

    The press pool in Moscow reportedly laughed out loud when Peskov followed by observing that apparently the US President “rolled back time to understand what Putin was doing 40 years ago. One can make very deep analytical conclusions about how Biden could have become acquainted with him [at that time].”

    And on the “dictator” remark, Peskov said that Putin “does not react and will not react” to insults such as what Biden just conveyed, and Peskov further expressed surprise that such “rhetoric and such expressions are employed regarding a head of state.”

    Young Putin as a KGB officer in 1980…

    Source: Wiki Commons

    In reaction to Biden’s confused claim, one commenter, Larry Boorstein, pointed out further that “Vladimir Putin graduated from the Law Department of Leningrad State University in 1975. He joined the KGB that year and was assigned to Eastern Germany in 1985. Biden graduated Syracuse Law in 1968. It’s unlikely their paths crossed 40 years ago.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 06/07/2024 – 19:20

  • Is The Electric Vehicle Panacea Crashing In California And America?
    Is The Electric Vehicle Panacea Crashing In California And America?

    Authored by John Seiler via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A station for charging electric vehicles in Irvine, Calif., on March 25, 2022. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    Commentary

    The idea that the panacea of electric vehicles will end “climate change” may have finally crashed into the wall of reality.

    Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was interviewed on May 26 by host Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.” The full interview is on YouTube. Ms. Brennan is the most informative and objective of interviewers in the mainstream media.

    Although “Mayor Pete,” as he came to be known, was merely the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, population 103,000, in 2020, he won the Iowa caucuses, briefly gaining national attention. He previously worked at McKinsey & Co., which hires really smart people to consult for corporate clients. According to Mr. Buttigieg, his work “consisted of doing mathematical analysis, conducting research, and preparing presentations” on studies for clients. That means he’s one of the smarter people in the Biden administration.

    At 9 minutes and 30 seconds, Ms. Brennan said, “Donald Trump repeatedly talks about President Biden’s decision to force the industry toward making 56 percent of car batteries electric by 2032, 13 percent hybrid.” She then played a video of President Trump at a rally in New Jersey.

    “We’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing a car that nobody wants and nobody’s ever going to buy,” President Trump said.

    Then she continued, “He’s not wrong—”

    “Oh, he’s wrong,” Mr. Buttigieg interrupted.

    Ms. Brennan continued, “—on the purchasing. He’s not. Of the 4 million vehicles purchased, you know, what, 269,000 electric vehicles were sold in the U.S. market.”

    And the electric portion is just 6.7 percent of the total. She didn’t mention the time period, but Cox Automotive ran the numbers, and it’s the first quarter of 2024.

    Mr. Buttigieg responded: “Every single year, more Americans buy EVs than the year prior. There are two things that I think are needed for that to happen even more quickly. One is the price. Which is why the Inflation Reduction Act acted to cut the price of an electric vehicle. The second is making sure we have the charging network we need across America, even though most EV owners will do most of their charging at home. If you live in an apartment building or you’re driving long distances, you need other options in those chargers. So that’s exactly what we’re working on.”

    A Gramscian Childhood

    He then mentioned he grew up “in the industrial Midwest, literally in the shadow of broken-down factories from car companies that did not survive.” He didn’t mention his father was not a laid-off auto worker. Instead, young Pete grew up the privileged son of a left-wing, Marxist professor at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend.

    The late Joseph Buttigieg is described by Wikipedia as the “translator and editor of the three-volume English edition of Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, published from 1992 to 2007 with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.” Your tax dollars at work.

    “He was a founding member and president of the International Gramsci Society, founded to facilitate communication between those who study Italian philosopher and politician Antonio Gramsci, one-time leader of the Communist Party of Italy,” the Wikipedia entry reads.

    Gramsci is considered the father of what’s now called Cultural Marxism. Seeing economic Marxism wasn’t working in the Soviet Union, and wasn’t attractive to the workers in Western Europe and the United States, he posited Marxism first had to conduct a “long march through the institutions” to prepare the people for full-blown Marxism. That’s the theory that gave us diversity, equity, and inclusion; environmental, social, and corporate governance; corporate social responsibility; “wokeness”; and political correctness in general.

    Communist China’s EV Challenge

    “The EV revolution will happen with or without us, and we have to make sure that it’s American-led,” Mr. Buttigieg continued. “Under the Trump administration, they allowed China to build an advantage in the EV industry. But, under President Biden’s leadership, we’re making sure that the EV revolution will be a made-in-America EV revolution.”

    Mr. Buttigieg criticized President Trump for emphasizing gas-powered cars on the campaign trail. Ms. Brennan pointed out: “It’s resonating for him. Because he wouldn’t bring it up so frequently if there wasn’t some anxiety that he’s tapping into.”

    She then switched to a new topic: “The Federal Highway Administration says only seven or eight charging stations have been produced with the $7.5 billion investment that taxpayers made back in 2021. Why isn’t that happening more quickly?”

    Mr. Buttigieg replied: “The president’s goal is to have half a million chargers up by the end of this decade. Now, in order to do a charger, it’s more than just plunking a small device into the ground. There’s utility work, and this is also really a new category of federal investment. But we’ve been working with each of the 50 states. Every one of them is getting formula dollars to do this work.”

    Ms. Brennan insisted, incredulous, “Seven or eight, though?”

    Then—here’s the breaking point for the EV panacea—she started laughing as he repeated: “Again, by 2030, 500,000 chargers. And the very first handful of chargers are now being physically built. That’s the absolute, very, very beginning stages of the construction to come.”

    Ms. Brennan then brought up how long-distance travel isn’t possible without a large network of chargers. Mr. Buttigieg said the private sector already has chargers but the federal program is to “fill in some of the gaps.”

    Pew Research Study of EV Stations

    For perspective, a May 23 Pew Research Center study found: “As of Feb. 27, 2024, there are more than 61,000 publicly accessible electric vehicle charging stations with Level 2 or DC Fast chargers in the U.S. That is a more than twofold increase from roughly 29,000 stations in 2020. For reference, there are an estimated 145,000 gasoline fueling stations in the country.

    “EV charging stations can be found in two-thirds of all U.S. counties, which collectively include 95 [percent] of the country’s population. …

    “As has been the case in the past, California has the most EV charging infrastructure of any state. … Californians with an EV might also have a harder time than residents of many states when it comes to the actual experience of finding and using a charger. Despite having the most charging stations of any state, California’s 43,780 individual public charging ports must provide service for the more than 1.2 million electric vehicles registered to its residents. That works out to one public port for every 29 EVs, a ratio that ranks California 49th across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.”

    So California, the center of EV popularity, isn’t doing well in providing adequate chargers. Here’s Pew’s map of EV charging stations:

    (Pew Research Center/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

    Mr. Buttigieg said charging your car is much like charging your phone. However, with my car, unlike an EV, I can fill up a couple of jerry cans with gasoline and throw them in my trunk or truck bed, extending the vehicle’s range by hundreds of miles. It’s not recommended because that can be dangerous. But it can be done.

    Mr. Buttigieg then brought up how EV prices are dropping and now are close to those of gas-powered cars. Ms. Brennan, who always comes to her interviews well-briefed, then brought up President Biden’s recent 100 percent tariffs on EVs from communist China.

    Mr. Buttigieg responded, “Part of what we see is China pouring huge resources into uncompetitive means, or I should say ‘unfair’ means, of competition; President Biden’s not going to allow that to happen to the American auto industry.”

    Mr. Brennan then mentioned how Colorado Gov. Jared Polis called the tariffs “horrible news for American consumers, a major setback for clean energy,” and he said that “this tax increase will hit every family.”

    The interview then moved on to drunk driving and traffic safety.

    Beginning of the End for 100 Percent EV Mandates

    Mr. Buttigieg immediately was lambasted across social media platforms and in news stories:

    • Newsweek: “Pete Buttigieg Ridiculed for Joe Biden’s $7.5 Billion ‘Massive Failure.’”
    • Real Clear Politics: “CBS’s Brennan To Buttigieg: How Is It Possible That $7.5 Billion Investment Has Only Produced ‘7 Or 8’ EV Charging Stations So Far?”
    • Fox News: “CBS anchor tells Buttigieg that Trump is ‘not wrong’ about Biden administration struggling to implement electric vehicle agenda.”

    I have a good antenna for political trends. After this interview, with Ms. Brennan’s laugh at Mr. Buttigieg’s numbers repeated many times across the internet, it’s going to be hard for the EV-pushers to get their message across.

    Next to crash into the wall of reality: California’s mandate for 100 percent zero-emission vehicle sales by 2035.

    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, 06/07/2024 – 18:55

  • Mistrial? Trump 'Hush Money' Judge Suggests Juror May Have Had Predetermined Guilty Verdict
    Mistrial? Trump ‘Hush Money’ Judge Suggests Juror May Have Had Predetermined Guilty Verdict

    The judge in the Trump ‘hush money’ case, Juan Merchan,  just issued a very strange note to both parties indicating that a comment made on the court’s Facebook page suggests that one of the jurors may have arrived at a ‘guilty’ verdict before the end of the trial, and told a family member.

    “My cousin is a juror and says Trump is getting convicted. Thank you folks for all your hard work!!!” reads the Facebook post highlighted by Merchan.

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

     

     

    As the Conservative Treehouse speculates…

    Why would Judge Merchan want to draw public attention to this?

    Either something bigger is being diluted by this story, or perhaps Merchan is using it as a provocation to get Trump to talk about the jury and violate his gag order ahead of sentencing.

    Or, perhaps Merchan is looking to create a mistrial to exit the case, or do it over again and extend the gag order.   Also, why not include the entire quote from the Facebook Page:

    Not sure what’s going on, but something.  Something….

    .

    .

    Suspicious Cat remains, well, suspicious.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsNeedless to say, ‘mistrial‘ is trending on X right now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 06/07/2024 – 18:28

  • Internet Addiction In Adolescents Can Negatively Affect Brain Function: Study
    Internet Addiction In Adolescents Can Negatively Affect Brain Function: Study

    Authored by Evgenia Filimianova via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    In this photo illustration, a teenager looks at the screen of a mobile phone in London on Jan. 17, 2023. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)

    Internet addiction (IA) in adolescents can affect neural networks in the brain and lead to behavioural and developmental changes, researchers have found.

    A study by University College London (UCL) examined data from 12 studies, conducted in China, Korea, and Indonesia. The papers analysed more than 200 young people, aged 10 to 19, who had been diagnosed with IA.

    UCL researchers found that youngsters with IA can present behavioural changes linked to physical coordination, intellectual ability, and mental health.

    The study defines IA as an inability to resist the urge to use the internet. It has a negative impact on individual’s psychological well-being, as well as their social, academic, and professional lives.

    “In severe circumstances, people may experience severe pain in their bodies or health issues like carpal tunnel syndrome, dry eyes, irregular eating and disrupted sleep,” the study said.

    Researchers looked at IA effects on the neural networks in the brains of adolescents. Participants with IA had their functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) taken while resting and completing a task.

    When they were involved in active thinking, an overall decrease in the functional connectivity in their brain was recorded. When resting, researchers saw a mixture of increased and decreased activity in parts of the youngsters’ brains.

    “Given the influx of technology and media in the lives and education of children and adolescents, an increase in prevalence and focus on internet related behavioural changes is imperative towards future children/adolescent mental health,” the authors of the study wrote in the journal PLOS Mental Health.

    Handling Internet Addiction

    Researchers said that parents who recognise the early signs and onset of IA can better handle their children’s screen time and impulsivity. This can help minimise the risk factors surrounding the addiction.

    “Adolescence is a crucial developmental stage during which people go through significant changes in their biology, cognition and personalities. As a result, the brain is particularly vulnerable to internet addiction-related urges during this time, such as compulsive internet usage, cravings towards usage of the mouse or keyboard and consuming media,” said lead author Max Chang.

    Mr. Chang added that as a result, adolescents can suffer from negative behavioural and developmental changes.

    “For example, they may struggle to maintain relationships and social activities, lie about online activity and experience irregular eating and disrupted sleep,” he said.

    Senior author Irene Lee acknowledged the advantages of the internet, but cautioned about the possible negative effects on people’s day-to-day lives.

    “We would advise that young people enforce sensible time limits for their daily internet usage and ensure that they are aware of the psychological and social implications of spending too much time online,” said Ms. Lee.

    Widespread Issue

    The UK Addiction Treatment Centres (UKAT) found that young people tend to be at a higher risk of falling victim to IA. Among 18–24-year-olds, 78 percent will check their phones whilst dining out, 81 percent will do so at work, and 92 percent will do so while in bed.

    “Compulsive internet use changes the way that the brain functions, making the user feel that getting online is far more pleasurable than any other activity. This pleasure of the internet comes as a direct result of the reward,” said UKAT.

    Users get a jolt of dopamine every time they receive a message or hear the sound of a new notification. This sends the user’s pleasure centres into overdrive and is “difficult to shake,” UKAT explained.

    According to communications regulator Ofcom, 93 percent of people in the UK had home internet access in 2022. The most commonly used sites by teenagers were YouTube (90 percent), Instagram (70 percent), TikTok (66 percent), and Snapchat (58 percent).

    Further studies of the effects of IA on functional connectivity changes in adolescents are necessary to better understand the issue, UCL authors said. They called on future studies to test with larger sample sizes and populations outside Far East Asia.

    PA Media contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 06/07/2024 – 18:05

  • Venture Capitalist David Sacks Goes All In On Trump 
    Venture Capitalist David Sacks Goes All In On Trump 

    A new wave of enthusiasm is emerging for former President Trump among VCs and business leaders across America. While some (or much) of this may be simply reading tea leaves and staying nimble, it’s worth noting that many former Democrat defenders are now on team Trump.

    It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see how disastrous economic policies (Bidenomics), failed foreign policies (Ukraine), a chaotic southern border, lawless cities, and the weaponization of the judicial system against political opponents are all contributing to sliding support for the left. And of course, Silicon Valley’s political elites just want stability and prosperity – not this uncertainty and inflation delivered under Biden. 

    To that end, famed investor David Sacks, who previously gave $33,400 to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and, more recently, backed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Ron DeSantis, joined the growing list of notable money managers who have gone ‘all-in’ by endorsing President Trump. 

    According to Bloomberg, Sacks will host a $300,000-a-head fundraiser for the former president at his home in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood. 

    “I’ve been very critical of Biden’s performance over the last four years, and I would like for him not to win another term,” Sacks said in an interview, adding, “I’ve been looking at all the alternatives and getting to know the alternatives.”

    On Thursday night, Sacks took to X, outlining why he’s supporting Trump in the upcoming presidential elections in November.

    “I am giving my endorsement to our 45th President, Donald J. Trump, to be our 47th president. My reasons rest on four main issues that I think are vital to American prosperity, security, and stability – issues where the Biden administration has veered badly off course and where I believe President Trump can lead us back,” Sacks wrote on X. 

    Here’s the rest of Sacks’ explanation for why he is now backing Trump:

    Why I’m Backing President Trump

    As many press accounts have reported, I’m hosting a fundraising event for President Donald J. Trump at my home in San Francisco this evening.

    Over the last couple of years, I have hosted events for presidential candidates Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as well as several Congressional figures in both major parties. I give to many, but endorse few.

    But today I am giving my endorsement to our 45th President, Donald J. Trump, to be our 47th president. My reasons rest on four main issues that I think are vital to American prosperity, security, and stability – issues where the Biden administration has veered badly off course and where I believe President Trump can lead us back.

    1. The Economy

    President Biden took over an economy that was already recovering strongly from the Covid-induced shock of Q2 2020. Demand had roared back, and employment had recovered. But he chose to keep priming the pump with unnecessary Covid stimulus – almost $2 trillion of it, passed on a straight party-line vote in March of 2021, with trillions more to follow for “infrastructure,” green energy, and “inflation reduction.”

    Biden did this despite early warnings from former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers that it could lead to inflation. When the inflation came, the Biden administration dismissed it as “transitory.” In fact, inflation still remains persistently high even after the fastest interest-rate tightening cycle in memory.

    As a result of Biden’s inflation, average Americans have lost roughly a fifth of their purchasing power over the last few years. Moreover, any American who needs a mortgage, car loan, or credit card debt faces much higher interest costs, which further constrain their purchasing power.

    It’s no different for our federal government, which now must devote over a trillion dollars annually to interest on its $34 trillion debt, a massive sum that’s been growing by a trillion dollars every hundred days. This trajectory is unsustainable, yet Biden’s 2025 budget calls for even higher spending.

    Growth has already slowed from 3.4 percent in the last quarter of 2023 to an anemic 1.3 percent in the first quarter of this year. We can’t afford another four years of Bidenomics.

    2. Foreign Policy / Ukraine War

    President Trump left office with ISIS defeated, the Abraham Accords signed, and no new wars raging on the global stage. Three and a half years later, the world is on fire. President Biden has made several strategic choices that have contributed to this situation.

    In his first year in office, Biden unnecessarily alienated the Saudis before realizing that they are an indispensable partner in the Middle East. He also presided over a chaotic withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan (right policy, abysmal execution).

    But his biggest blunder by far has been in Ukraine. His administration immediately began pushing for Ukraine’s admission to NATO, despite no unanimity among the existing NATO members that such a move was a good idea. When this predictably antagonized the Russians, the Biden administration doubled down at every turn, insisting that “NATO’s door is open, and will remain open” with respect to Ukraine. Biden himself baited Russia when he said he didn’t “accept anybody’s red lines.”

    After the invasion, there was still a chance to stop the war in its early weeks before much loss of life and destruction had occurred. Russian and Ukrainian negotiators had signed a draft agreement in Istanbul that would have seen Russia retreat to its pre-invasion borders in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality. But the Biden administration rejected that deal as well as General Milley’s advice to seek a diplomatic solution in November 2022.

    As the war of attrition grinds on, the Ukrainians face ever-mounting casualties and infrastructure damage. Still, President Biden keeps allowing the conflict to escalate and risk World War III. Every escalation that Biden initially resisted – Abrams tanks, F-16’s, ATACMs, allowing Ukraine to hit targets in Russia – he has eventually acquiesced to. There is just one more escalation to go: NATO troops on the ground fighting Russia directly. And our European allies like Emmanuel Macron are already spoiling for exactly this scenario.

    With Biden, our choices are limited to fighting the proxy war to the last Ukrainian, or fighting Russia ourselves. President Trump has said he wants the dying in Ukraine to stop, and that he will seek to end the war through a negotiated settlement. Ukraine will no longer be able to get the deal we talked them out of in April 2022, but we can still save Ukraine as an independent nation and avert world war.

    3. The Border

    As an immigrant to the United States myself, I certainly believe in America’s history of strengthening its ranks by welcoming talented people from other nations seeking freedom and opportunity. But that promise requires an orderly process of legal immigration that emphasizes skills and the principles of American citizenship. This was the preferred policy under President Trump.

    What Biden ushered in was a de facto open border policy. On his first day in office, he repealed President Trump’s executive orders restricting illegal immigration and stopped construction of a border wall, selling off parts of it for scrap metal. This quickly resulted in a massive spike in illegal border crossings and a chaotic and dangerous situation on our southern border.

    President Biden (along with the hapless Kamala Harris and the malevolent Homeland Security Chief Alejandro Mayorkas) responded to growing concerns by gaslighting the American public, saying there was no problem at the border despite constant videos of masses of people sprinting across it.

    When the situation became too dire to ignore or deny, Biden claimed he didn’t have the executive authority to do anything about it and blamed Republicans for not sending him legislation. But this week, facing abysmal polling numbers on this issue, Biden suddenly discovered he has executive authority after all. The order he signed is a tepid, too little-too late effort to slow the tidal wave of illegal immigration in time for the election. But Biden has shown he is not serious on this issue. If he wins a second term, the open border policy will resume, and tens of millions more illegals will stream across the border.

    4. Lawfare

    A bedrock of the political stability we’ve enjoyed in America over the last 250 years is that we don’t accept attempts to jail political opponents in order to win an election. Yet Biden has pushed for selective and unprecedented prosecutions of his once and future opponent from the moment he assumed office.

    Merrick Garland took a long look at the January 6 situation and didn’t see a path to prosecute Trump, even after a one-sided Congressional committee sent a highly-prejudiced referral to his Justice Department. Press stories then appeared describing Biden’s frustration with Garland’s reticence. The result was Jack Smith at the federal level and Alvin Bragg and Fani Willis at the state level. All have pursued cases based on novel legal theories heretofore unseen and designed to get Trump. In the NY case, Bragg resurrected a dead book-keeping misdemeanor into 34 felonies by claiming it was in the service of a second crime that he never defined and that the judge never insisted the jury unanimously agree on.

    My immigration to this country as a young boy happened because my parents disagreed with the political system of their home country. That government sought to solve its political disagreements by imprisoning its political enemies. What a sad irony that the lawfare we escaped has now reared its ugly head in America of all places.

    President Biden keeps insisting that a return of President Trump to the White House threatens democracy. But his administration is the one that has colluded with tech platforms to censor the Internet, used the intelligence community to cover up his son Hunter’s laptop, and pursued elective prosecutions against his political opponents.

    Conclusion: The A/B Test

    The voters have experienced four years of President Trump and four years of President Biden. In tech, we call this an A/B test. With respect to economic policy, foreign policy, border policy, and legal fairness, Trump performed better. He is the president who deserves a second term.

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

    The common thread among these investor elites in their support of Trump is a desire for peace and stability to return, as they’re fed up with Biden’s chaos – with Sacks’ support for Trump coming days after Sequoia founder Shaun Maguire wrote on X, “I Just Donated $300k To Trump.”

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

    Meanwhile, hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman’s support of Trump appears to have strengthened in recent weeks, agreeing with Sacks for what he suggested was an “important read.”

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

    Also, Elon Musk.

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

    Last month, Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman expressed his support Trump:

    “I share the concern of most Americans that our economic, immigration and foreign policies are taking the country in the wrong direction. For these reasons, I am planning to vote for change and support Donald Trump for President. In addition, I will be supporting Republican Senate candidates and other Republicans up and down the ticket.”

    In short, Silicon Valley investors and Wall Streeters are no longer hiding in their mansions—afraid of commenting on or backing Trump—mainly because the era of canceling is winding down.

    We suspect more notable investors will pledge their support for Trump ahead of the elections as the nation peacefully revolts against the current regime in the White House. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 06/07/2024 – 17:40

  • Roaring Kitty Ends Bizarre Livestream As GameStop Crashes
    Roaring Kitty Ends Bizarre Livestream As GameStop Crashes

    Watch Roaring Kitty Live: 

    *   *   * 

    Update (1259ET):

    To sum up the bizarre broadcast: Roaring Kitty is betting on GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen’s turnaround with options that expire in two weeks.

    … actually agree with Ross Gerber for once.

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

    *   *   * 

    Update (1259ET):

    Roaring Kitty reveals positions.

    Oof.

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

    *   *   * 

    Update (1251ET):

    Here’s a great take.

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

    And that is a very good question. 

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

    *   *   * 

    Update (1241ET):

    Roaring Kitty stated that he is actively managing his accounts and is not working with hedge funds. He clarified that he is not an institutional investor and that all trades are his own.

    Dave chimes in…

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

    Shares are LOD-ing. 

    And this. 

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

    *   *   * 

    Update (1233ET):

    No inspiring GME investment thesis has so far been given minutes into the broadcast. 

    *   *   * 

    Update (1229ET):

    He’s live.

    *   *   * 

    Update (1225ET):

    GME hits the low of the day after Roaring Kitty is 25 minutes late to his own party. 

    *   *   * 

    Update (1215ET):

    Roaring Kitty is 15 minutes late to his own party. 

    The Internet is asking questions…

    LoL…

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

    A lot of interest on Google searches. 

    *   *   * 

    Update (1205ET):

    Still waiting on Roaring Kitty to speak at 1205 ET. There’s nearly half a million people tuning in. 

    LoL…

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

    *   *   * 

    Update (1157ET):

    Roaring Kitty will have some serious explaining regarding his investment thesis in GameStop during the 1200 ET live-streaming event on YouTube. 

    ‘Meme’ stock trader Keith Gill’s (aka Roaring Kitty) latest pump was situated around GME CEO Ryan Cohen announcing another at-market equity offering (impeccable timing) – set to dump tens of millions of shares on Reddit momentum traders. Also, first-quarter earnings were messy, with sharp revenue declines in the first quarter. 

    Again, what’s the thesis here? 

    Meanwhile, GME shares have nearly been halved from the premarket highs following GME’s at-market equity offering announcement and dismal earnings report. 

    Ahead of the live-streaming event, over 200,000 people are tuning in to hear Roaring Kitty speak. 

    *   *   * 

    Redditors and momentum chasers are being led into a burning building by ‘meme’ stock trader Keith Gill’s (aka Roaring Kitty) on the latest pump as GameStop shares erase overnight gains following the announcement of sharp revenue declines in the first quarter and an “at-the-market offering” program to sell more shares.

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

    Let’s begin by describing the source of the latest pump. Roaring Kitty’s YouTube live event, slated for 1200ET, was announced on Thursday afternoon, which sent shares doubling from around $26 in cash session to as high as $66 in after-hours trading.

    In premarket trading, shares were above the $60 handle, then crashed 40% to around $38 following the news that GME filed an at-the-market offering to sell 75 million shares of the company’s Class A common stock. 

    Jefferies is the ‘Sales Agent’ on the deal.

    Earlier, GME reported first-quarter results showing net sales of 881.80 million, down from $1.237 billion year over year. Net sales missed Wall Street’s consensus estimate of $995.30 million. 

    GME also reported an EPS loss of 12 cents, missing the average estimate of 9 cents. According to Reuters, this miss highlights customers’ shift to online video games and collectibles, while the retailer continued to rely on its brick-and-mortar stores. 

    Just weeks ago, during another pump by Gill, GME announced it sold 45 million shares of common stock for about $933.4 million. CEO Ryan Cohen is effectively using Gill’s pumps to dump millions of shares into mom-and-pop retail, chasing momentum. 

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

    At 1200 ET, Gill will have to re-explain his investment thesis in GME, as first-quarter earnings show a sharp decline, and Cohen is dumping endless shares. 

    Meanwhile, reports suggest that ETrade might take action against Gill, and at least one securities regulator is currently investigating him for potential stock manipulation.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 06/07/2024 – 17:16

  • Obese Woman Wins Miss Alabama And People Have Questions
    Obese Woman Wins Miss Alabama And People Have Questions

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via modernity.news,

    An obese woman has won Miss Alabama, with the organizers of the contest insisting that the intention of the beauty pageant was to “foster a positive self-image.”

    Yes, really.

    After Sara Milliken learned that she had won the competition and would go on to represent her state at the national level, she hit back at critics who questioned her weight.

    “Even something that you type over a screen can have a lasting impression on people,” she told WKRG.

    According to a report by the news network, “The purpose of the national American Miss program is to grow confidence and foster a positive self-image.”

    This despite the fact that the level of obesity displayed by Milliken is linked with all manner of horrible diseases like diabetes, heart disease, strokes, and certain cancers.

    Respondents weren’t very impressed with the result.

    “Dang I didn’t realize this was a cattle auction,” wrote one.

    “This 500 pound woman is supposed to be a role model to kids,” added another.

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

    Some expressed gratitude for the fact that at least Milliken is a biological female, unlike the winner of Miss Maryland USA, who is a man.

    “She practiced 365 days? What? Eating?” remarked another.

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

    As we previously highlighted, the winner of this year’s Miss Germany wasn’t even German.

    Any guidelines or rules have been completely obliterated as such contests are completely turned over to woke extremists who use them as a vehicle to amplify the message.

    That message is incredibly harmful for young women, especially when you consider the fact that numerous ‘fat pride’ activists have literally died from being overweight in recent years.

    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
    Fri, 06/07/2024 – 17:15

  • US Domestic Bank Deposits Tumble As Money-Market Fund Assets Near Record-High Again
    US Domestic Bank Deposits Tumble As Money-Market Fund Assets Near Record-High Again

    Money-market inflows continued for the seventh straight week getting close to $6.1 trillion…

    Source: Bloomberg

    As total seasonally-adjusted US bank deposits fell $41.5 BN…

    Source: Bloomberg

    While on a non-seasonally-adjusted basis, total US ban deposits rose $89BN…?

    Source: Bloomberg

    Excluding foreign deposits, domestic deposits soared almost $100BN (NSA) last week – the most since March (large banks +$78BN, small banks +$22BN), while on an SA basis deposits tumbled $36.5BN – most in two months (large banks -$30BN, small banks -$7BN)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    On the other side of the ledger, loan volume barely budged overall with large bank loan volumes rising just below $1BN and small bank loan volumes shrinking just less than $1BN…

    Source: Bloomberg

    US equity market cap surged back to a new record high, dramatically decoupled from bank reserves at The Fed…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Which is more likely to happen – a collapse in the US equity market or sudden surge in bank deposits at The Fed?

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 06/07/2024 – 16:50

  • "They Can't Afford To Lose Their Grip On The Levers Of Power…"
    “They Can’t Afford To Lose Their Grip On The Levers Of Power…”

    Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

    Time To Jettison The Animals

    “The old left had intellectual commitments that were false in interesting and theoretically stimulating ways. The new left demands adherence to lurid absurdities so preposterous that merely entertaining them induces nauseating neurological disorders.”

    – Xenocosmography on “X”

    The most astounding part of America’s “Joe Biden” three-plus-years thrill ride is that the Party of Chaos and Hoaxes was able to pretend until just a few days ago that this political phantasm could run for re-election. Now, regime insiders are forced to confess that they can’t hide it anymore. They spilled the beans as “unnamed sources” this week in a huge Wall Street Journal article. The president is going necrotic in full view of the whole world. His mind is gone. He looks ridiculous when he shuffles in front of the cameras. He utters obvious absurdities and lies. His wife has to lead him around like a dog on a leash. Everyone can see it. He’s got to go. ASAP.

    The embarrassing ineptitude has been on view since the 2020 campaign, yet his handlers managed to flimflam half the country ever since, thanks to a news media captured by intel blob gaslighters and to half the country’s susceptibility to mass formation psychosis — fear driven thought disorder — that gave cover to treasonous actors seeking to save their asses even if they had to wreck the USA doing it. Who were these actors? The Clintons and the coterie around them, steeped in financial crime and sex trafficking; the Obama coterie of anti-white racists and bungling Marxists; the batshit-crazy Woke race-and-gender hustlers working to derange the merit-based social order (and get paid for doing it); the congressional grifters living off Pharma and Pentagon loot; the agency top bureaucrats who became a corrupt praetorian guard for all the above players, now desperate to evade accountability.

    Everything they’ve done since 2020 has been in the service of covering up their crimes, and each hoax has just compounded the damage done to our country. The Covid-19 prank was pulled to enable mail-in ballot fraud so as to assure a permanent government-by-blob, of which the Democratic Party is now a mere tentacle. We don’t know yet whether the mRNA vaccine module of the prank was a deliberate effort to kill a lot of people or a grievous blunder by greedy drug-makers, or some wicked combo — with assistance from the WEF or China.

    They can’t afford to lose their grip on the levers of power in the 2024 election — lose control of the Justice Department, the FBI, and the so-called “national security” apparatus, especially. The open border is just an effort to illegally import and enlist a vast wad of potential new voters to ensure an election victory. More than twenty states have “motor-voter laws” that automatically register anybody with a driver’s license. And these enrollees don’t even have to cast their ballot. Their names can just be “harvested” systematically, attached to voting documents, and bundled to be submitted for them. Millions have entered the country illegally since 2021 at “Joe Biden’s” direct invitation. There’s nothing hidden about this — but all you see is the learned helplessness of actual US citizens unable to stop it.

    And yet, even that prank may not work to keep the Party of Chaos and Hoaxes in power. Designated candidate “Joe Biden” is obviously so far gone that even actual citizen voters under the mass formation spell can’t be counted on anymore. His poll numbers look abysmal. He’s scheduled to debate his opponent, the outlaw Donald Trump, on June 27. If his handlers allow that to actually happen, it will be like the unmasking scene in The Phantom of the Opera: brain-ringing horror, from sea to shining sea! Of course, an insult to the zeitgeist that severe will force the party leaders into some ‘splainin’, and I personally doubt they will be able to ‘splain their way out of it. Did all of you Democrats not notice?

    The putative replacements for him — Newsom, Hillary, Pritzker, Whitmer, Harris — are political creatures at least as loathsome to voters as “JB” has become. And the obvious pitfall for Michelle O is that her husband looks like a wannabe American Caesar seeking a fourth term. What else have they got? Nothin’. Some utterly unknown governor they can primp up in a few months? Fugeddabowdit. They’ll have to run one of the loathsomes, take the “L,” and hope for the best, perhaps make a get out of jail “deal” with dealmaker supreme Mr. Trump.

    Or, they could attempt another mighty prank: kill him. You can imagine they’ll try it, having exhausted all other gambits. If they succeed, and it doesn’t provoke an instant civil war, Mr. Trump’s faction has a pretty deep “bench” of capable figures who can step in and run against the Party of Chaos, Hoaxes, and now Murder. If the assassins botch the job, I wouldn’t want to be them on that dreadful day.

    The bottom-line for now: “Joe Biden” is about to wave bye-bye. They’ve already put the question to him. He’s resisting. The one coherent thought in his failing mind is that he has pardon power as long as he is president. It’s not so much Hunter and that silly-ass gun case in Wilmington, which he’ll surely wriggle out of. It’s more about the brothers Jim and Frank and all the spouses and offspring who received wire transfers of Chinese money, Ukraine money, Russian money, Kazak money, Romanian money. . . .

    If necessary, the party and its blob masters could bite the bullet and run the 25th Amendment on the old fraud, git’er done fast, down-and-dirty, virtually overnight any night now. More likely, they’ll “leak” some document from the blob vaults that incontrovertibly incriminates the president on one of the already well-trodden bribery angles. That is, they’ll pretend to discover that not only is “Joe Biden” hopelessly senile, but, turns out, he’s been crooked all along! What a shock! We never suspected ‘til now! Such a seemingly well-intentioned, kindly, patriotic old man! Stand by. It’s going to be a helluva month.

    *  *  *

    Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page or Substack

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 06/07/2024 – 16:25

  • Payrolls Malarkey & Pussy Meltdown Prompts Market Mayhem
    Payrolls Malarkey & Pussy Meltdown Prompts Market Mayhem

    Just when you thought you had the trend all figured out, “the most ridiculous payrolls report in years” combined with a “roaring kitty“ sparked utter mayhem across all asset classes.

    A week of weaker than expected data was met with a barrel of bullshit from the BLS with payrolls beating but unemployment rising as part time jobs soared )for illegal immigrants) and full time jobs plunged leaving the US Macro Surprise Index back at its lowest since Bidenomics was unleashed (with the unemployment rate at 4% for the first time in 3 years)….

    Source: Bloomberg

    And that sent rate-cut expectations (hawkishly) lower – after a week of dovish exuberance…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Aside from the macro meltdown, “Roaring Kitty” sparked chaos amid a bizarre live stream that prompted a 40%-plus collapse in GameStop’s share price…

    Source: Bloomberg

    All of which left Small Caps down on the day and the res of the majors unchanged…

    Source: Bloomberg

    But on the week, Nasdaq outperformed strongly as Small Caps were slammed…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Nasdaq outperformed the Russell 2000 every day this week for its best relative weekly performance in seven months…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Most Shorted stocks tumbled today, going red on the week…

    Source: Bloomberg

    But MAG7 stocks soared for the 6th week in the last 7 (and the best week in the last 7)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The gap between Nasdaq and the 10Y yield is becoming silly…

    Source: Bloomberg

    But there really was no reason for today’s bond market meltdown a (yield melt-up) as the underlying report was ugly as hell. 2Y Yield ended the week higher (after underperforming today +15bps) but the long-end remained down 10bps on the week (even after an 11bps spike today)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The dollar spike to one-month highs…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Gold was clubbed like a baby seal as the dollar spiked, trading back at one- monthly lows..

    Source: Bloomberg

    Crypto was also ugly with Bitcoin testing $72,000 and then puking down to find support at $69,000…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Even though BTC ETFs have seen 18 straight day s on net inflows…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Oil prices ended lower o the week but bounced back stromgly in the last three days

    Source: Bloomberg

    Finally, someone is going to be very wrong here…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Who is your money on?

    Because Central Bank liquidity sure ain’t supporting it anymore…

    Source: Bloomberg

    This won’t end well.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 06/07/2024 – 16:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jun 07

Today’s News 7th June 2024

  • Russia Says It Continues To Cut Oil Production Under OPEC+ Deal
    Russia Says It Continues To Cut Oil Production Under OPEC+ Deal

    By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

    Russia continued to cut its oil production in May per the OPEC+ agreements, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Thursday, in another attempt to reassure the market that OPEC+ producers are committed to the pact and to stabilizing the oil market.  

    “Our reduction against April continued in accordance with our OPEC+ agreements,” Novak told reporters on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, as quoted by Russian news agency TASS.

    Asked about exact numbers for the May oil production, Novak said that the scale of the output cut would become clear in about a week. 

    When the OPEC+ members announced in early March their intentions to extend the cuts into the second quarter, Russia changed its production/export cut plan and said that it would reduce supply by 471,000 bpd in the second quarter in the form of cuts to oil production and exports.

    In April, Russia pledged to reduce production by 350,000 bpd and exports by 121,000 bpd. In May, the 471,000 bpd reduction would be in the form of a 400,000-bpd cut to production and 71,000 bpd cut to exports, and in June the Russian supply cut would be 471,000 bpd entirely from production reductions.

    Output cuts were to account for most of the extra Russian supply cut this quarter, and they could be the result of reduced refining capacity with maintenance in Q2 and refinery rates estimated to have slumped due to Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian refineries. 

    Last month, Russia said that it had “slightly exceeded” in April its oil output target under the OPEC+ pact and that it would compensate for the overproduction.

    The Russian Energy Ministry said in a statement that the overproduction in April was “due to technical difficulties of cutting production in a large amount.”

    “Russia is fully committed to the OPEC+ agreements, plans to compensate for shortfalls in production plans, and will soon submit to the OPEC Secretariat its plan to offset small variations from voluntary production levels,” the ministry said at the end of May.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 06/07/2024 – 02:00

  • How Bob Iger, DEI, And Wokism Broke Disney's Trust With America
    How Bob Iger, DEI, And Wokism Broke Disney’s Trust With America

    Authored by Richard Truesdell via American Greatness,

    There is something of a subculture on YouTube of armchair analysts and commentators, WDW Pro, Valliant Renegade, and ClownfishTV, to name just three (beyond traditional financial websites like CNBC and Seeking Alpha), who track every cultural, corporate, programming, and financial move of The Walt Disney Company, previously one of America’s most iconic and trusted companies.

    Note: I used the past tense in describing The Walt Disney Company.

    It is no longer one of America’s most trusted brands, and it’s about to lose its iconic status.

    How did this happen?

    On May 7, 2024, in the wake of its successful battle to keep activist investor Nelson Peltz off its Board of Directors back in April (after which Peltz liquidated his Disney holdings, walking away with more than $1 billion), Disney CEO Bob Iger held Disney’s quarterly earnings call, during which its stock tanked almost 10%, losing $20 billion in its market cap. While it has recovered a bit, to $105 a share, it’s well below its 52-week high, $123.72, and off its all-time highest closing price of $201.91 on March 8, 2021. Those investors who abandoned Peltz in his proxy battle for two seats on the Disney Board of Directors can now lick their financial wounds.

    There is speculation in the financial community that if Disney stock again falls below $90 a share, Peltz could mount a third bid for two or more seats on the Disney board or possibly oust Iger. It’s hilarious to watch the New York Times put its spin on the battle, saying Peltz lost his battle with Iger. Actually, Peltz and his Trian Partners investment group walked away with $1 billion. Yes, Peltz lost the battle, but he won the war.

    Despite the current dip, many stock analysts are predicting that Disney stock will rebound. That seems unlikely. Here are the reasons why things are likely to get worse, not better, for The Walt Disney Company for the remainder of 2024 and into 2025.

    Disney is one of America’s wokest companies. It sees itself as being out in front on cultural and social issues, especially where Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are concerned. This has been a huge issue in America’s—especially American parents’—loss of trust in the House of Mouse. You can’t watch this clip from Disney programming Vice President Latoya Raveneau bragging about how she pushed LGBTQ messages anywhere she could into Disney’s programming without parents seeing that agenda. Because of this agenda, Disney parks, Disney feature films, Disney animation, and especially the Disney Channel have lost trust with many parents.

    Disney has lost its decades-long leadership in animation to NBCUniversal’s Dreamworks Animation studio. Its slate of feature films—with their bloated $250,000,000 production budgets requiring a $500,000,000 theatrical run to just break even—has been an unmitigated disaster. Along the way, it has destroyed two of the successful film franchises it acquired during Iger’s first term as CEO: Star Wars and Indiana Jones. And its long-delayed live-action remake of its own 1937 Snow White classic animated film is mired in its own disaster, mostly due to woke comments from its star, Rachel Ziegler. It was moved back a year from a March 2024 release to 2025. But could its theatrical release be scrapped entirely and go directly to the Disney+ streaming service?

    Related to its film franchises, which also include Marvel and Pixar (which just laid off 175 employees), was the company’s $250,000,000 misadventure, Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, a $6,000 two-night Star Wars-themed hotel experience that opened on March 1, 2022, and closed on September 30, 2023. It was forced to take a charge against earnings for this catastrophe. This disaster was documented in a four-hour viral video by YouTuber Jenny Nicholson that has received an incredible seven million views in a little more than two weeks. (That was 10 times the number of views CNN’s coverage of the debacle received.)

    On top of its injection of its left-wing DEI agenda, Disney has more nuts-and-bolts financial issues to contend with.

    They include:

    Theme park attendance is flatlining. What is the measurement matrix? Waiting times at the most popular attractions at its theme parks, Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California, are plummeting. Over the all-important Memorial Day 2024 weekend, waiting times at the most popular attractions at both theme parks were at decade lows (with the exception of during COVID-19). In addition, its newest attraction at Walt Disney World in Florida, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, which replaced Splash Mountain, has been panned by the Disney faithful. This review is typical.

    Then there’s Disney’s forced acquisition of the share of the Hulu streaming service it didn’t own (it shared ownership with Comcast), which has been an utter disaster for the company. (As of today’s date, the parties have yet to come to a final agreement on the value of Hulu.) Disney was forced to buy out Comcast’s share, and it is struggling to integrate Hulu into its Disney+ streaming service. This forced payout is now funding Comcast so that it can bid for sporting rights for entities like its recently concluded agreement with NASCAR and the upcoming agreement with the NBA. Both are in direct competition with one the last of Disney’s crown jewels, ESPN. The sports network is trying to reinvent itself as content distribution moves from cable to streaming. Last July it laid off dozens of employees, including high-profile names like Suzy Kolber, Jeff Van Gundy, Jalen Rose, and Steve Young, in what was a cost-cutting move.

    Disney is no longer American parents’ babysitter. Here’s one parent’s open letter to Disney.

    I say all this as a baby boomer who grew up with Disney in the 1950s and 1960s (that will give you an idea of how old I am). Disney’s current values are no longer those of its namesake founder, Walt Disney. Parents, especially those in the center and on the right, that are trying to raise their kids with the traditional values that made America great in the last century, no longer trust the House of Mouse. And until there is housecleaning, starting at the top of the C-suite, Disney will not be trusted again.

    Putting ideology ahead of entertainment has decimated an American institution. Walt Disney has been spinning in his grave ever since Bob Iger first became CEO back in 2005 during his first term. It continued during the short reign of Bob Chapek from 2020 to 2021, then accelerated at warp speed after Iger returned to the CEO role in 2022, post-COVID. The Walt Disney Company is broken, and until it gets new leadership at the top and refocuses on its core mission, to entertain, it is headed in only one direction: down. And that’s a shame for baby boomers like me who grew up with Walt Disney when our parents could trust the company to deliver wholesome entertainment not tainted by an agenda or ideology.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 06/06/2024 – 23:30

  • False Flag On The Horizon? The Strange Case Of The Destroyed Russian Nuclear Radar
    False Flag On The Horizon? The Strange Case Of The Destroyed Russian Nuclear Radar

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    If we accept the fundamental truth that Ukraine is nothing more than a proxy battleground between Russia and the west, then you might say WWIII has already begun. The powers-that-be have been content to keep the situation contained primarily to Ukraine so far, but a recent event suggests things are about to change. There’s something very strange happening on the nuclear front between NATO and Russia and I believe it might be time to consider the possibility that a false flag threat is in the works.

    In the past two weeks Ukraine has taken credit for at least two separate strikes on peculiar targets – Russian “over the horizon” radar stations using drones with an impressive flight range of at least 1200 miles. Until this point, long range attacks into Russian territory have been exceedingly rare. So, why these specifics radar stations?

    The Voronezh-DM stations were positioned outside the city of Orsk and the region of Krasnodar (Armavir); far away from the front lines in Ukraine. The strikes are being hailed as the furthest Ukraine has attacked into the heart of Russia, but the corporate media has ignored the wider implications of the situation.

    It is likely that the drones used were of US or European origin. NATO has (until the past couple of days) enforced tight restrictions on how their weapons can be used by Ukraine. Long range drones and cruise missiles hitting targets deep in Russia invites major blowback, including the threat of a nuclear response.

    That said, it’s not so much the weapons used that concerns me, it’s the specific targets that Ukraine supposedly chose.

    Russia’s over-the-horizon radar systems have a detection range of at least 6000 miles (the real range is classified) and scan specifically for high altitude ballistic missiles. They are not designed to detect lower flying medium range cruise missiles (ATACMS) and drones. Meaning, the two stations destroyed by Ukrainian weapons are meant to act as an early warning system for nuclear attack.

    The Ukrainians supposedly defied NATO restrictions, not once, but twice, to target radar systems that have nothing to do with them. In fact, the arrays sit in permanently fixed positions and neither array was actually aimed at Ukraine, they were aimed to the North and Southwest of Russia. The Armavir radar was constructed in 2009 to close a gap created by the loss of radars in Ukraine, and was also meant to replace an older Daryal radar in Gabala. Interestingly, Armavir and Orsk “search fans” watches the skies primarily above the Middle East, including Israel, and a large chunk of Europe including Switzerland.

    Instead of attacking vital strategic resources like oil refineries or ammo depots, Russia’s nuclear defenses are being systematically hobbled. Why?

    It’s important to understand that a strike of this kind deep into the center of Russia requires complex planning and logistics. It cannot be achieved without covert intel on the ground as well as aid from satellite surveillance. Ukraine relies completely on NATO satellites and intel; no such strike would ever be possible without NATO involvement. Furthermore, the drones used would need to have the ability to evade early detection systems and remain hidden for thousands of miles. This kind of technology comes mainly from the west.

    In other words, there’s no way that these attacks were accomplished by Ukraine without extensive help and approval from the US or European command. I question the notion that a Ukrainian pilot was even remotely flying the drones. We’re talking about some of the most closely defended radar stations in the whole of Russia.

    Why does any of this matter?

    Let’s consider the ugly realities…

    First, the targeting of Russian nuclear defenses might make the Kremlin believe they are being prepped for a nuclear strike. Why else would their ballistic radar be singled out? This means they will be on high alert for a possible nuclear exchange. Not good.

    Second, the Voronezh-DM stations are used to identify FALSE POSITIVE alerts of nuclear attack. Meaning, if there a weapon is used against Russia that mimics a high altitude ballistic missile, their ability to detect that it’s NOT a nuke has been reduced. They might launch their own warheads in response to a non-nuclear strike (a fake strike or false flag).

    Third, Armavir and other stations could be used to record ballistic missile activity well outside Russian air space (in places like the Middle East). It’s possible these strikes were meant to blind Russia and stop them from detecting missile events that are unrelated to the Ukraine war.

    Fourth, it’s possible that NATO and Ukraine believe dismantling the radar sends a message that if Russia threatens nuclear attack, they might be hit first. All this means is that Russia won’t give a warning, they’ll simply launch.

    Fifth, the attack on Armavir alone meets the conditions the Russian government laid out publicly in 2020 for actions that could trigger a nuclear retaliatory strike. Russia’s early warning network is part of the country’s broader nuclear deterrent posture.

    “The conditions specifying the possibility of nuclear weapons use by the Russian Federation” include any “attack by an adversary against critical governmental or military sites of the Russian Federation, disruption of which would undermine nuclear forces response actions,” according to the Basic Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence the Kremlin published in 2020.

    So far there has been no indication on how Russia will retaliate, but let’s consider the circumstances at the front right now. Ukrainian defenses are thin and they lack the manpower needed to maintain the most rudimentary of strong points. As I noted last month, Ukraine’s front line is about to be overrun, likely this summer, with Russia opening a new offensive push in the north near Kharkiv.

    NATO countries are now say they support Ukraine’s use of long range weapons inside Russia. This means major metropolitan areas of Ukraine will be on the the table for Russia’s own long range strikes, a measure which they have avoided for the most part. Also watch for the potential use of thermobaric bombs (vacuum bombs) by Russia; these are massively destructive weapons that have so far been absent from the battlefield (aside from unverified reports).

    The west is sending Russia the message that they will not allow Ukraine to lose, they will not pursue diplomatic solutions and if Russia begins gaining significant ground, anything goes. Does this include nukes? It’s hard to say.

    My suspicion is that the establishment wants to create a scenario in which Russia is led to overreact to an event, or, the public is led to believe Russia is a legitimate nuclear threat to the west. There is also the outside possibility that Russia is being blocked from monitoring a future ballistic incident in the Middle East.

    The timing of the radar attacks comes only weeks before the planned Ukraine “peace conference” in Switzerland on June 15th. Although major leaders from the US, China, and Europe will not be attending (and Russia isn’t invited), the summit is still a juicy target for a false flag and thus unification of western interests around a larger war with Russia. I’m not saying the conference itself will be attacked, necessarily, but a major attack during the conference could be used to sell the idea of total NATO intervention.

    If the goal is to expand the war then any perceived hostilities aimed at the conference could also be used as an excuse to rally popular support. The fact that so many world leaders including Biden refuse to show up makes it even more dubious.

    I highly doubt the establishment wants to trigger a global nuclear war. They have everything to lose and very little to gain. They just spent the better part of the last century building up one of the most intricate economic and political control grids in the history of humanity. I don’t think they would be happy to see it all vaporized in the blink of an eye. That said, a limited nuclear event might serve their interests well.

    As I write this multiple governments including the French government are calling for European troops to be deployed to Ukraine. Some political leaders want them to go as “advisers” and trainers. This is exactly what the US did right before it deployed extensive military forces to Vietnam. Remember the false flag Gulf of Tonkin incident?

    Something very odd is going on here. I have no doubt that WWIII is the intended outcome of the confrontation between NATO and Russia in Ukraine. The question is, how do they plan to arrange that outcome while convincing the American and European public to join the war effort? They need a serious false flag.

    *  *  *

    If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 06/06/2024 – 22:30

  • Airline Industry Leaves COVID Turbulence Behind
    Airline Industry Leaves COVID Turbulence Behind

    Having left behind most Covid-related turbulences, the global airline industry emerged from the storm in 2023, returning to profitability after three years of deep losses. According to the estimate from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), commercial airlines ended 2023 with a net profit of $27.4 billion, up from a loss of $3.5 billion in 2022 and significantly higher than previously expected. Back in December, IATA had predicted 2023 profits to come in around $23 billion.

    Speaking at the IATA’s 80th Annual General Meeting in Dubai on Monday, IATA’s Director General Willie Walsh hailed the industry’s successful recovery from the pandemic, while also warning that the industry’s profit margins remain “wafer thin.”

    “We deserve to celebrate the hard work that has brought our industry back from the brink, while acknowledging that we remain squeezed between a fiercely competitive environment downstream and the oligopolistic upstream supply chain’s lack of competition,” Walsh said, adding that “onerous regulation” and persistent supply chain problems also stand in the way of sustainable industry-level profits.

    Passenger revenue is expected to reach $744 billion, exceeding the 2019 total by more than 22 percent, driven in part by an increase in in passenger volume and in part by improvements in passenger yields. Additionally, as Statista’s Felix Richter shows in the chart below, net profits are expected to climb to $30.5 billion this year, which is more than previously forecast but still not enough to build financial resilience and invest in a more sustainable future, according to Walsh.

    Infographic: Airline Industry Leaves Covid Turbulences Behind | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    “The airline industry is on the path to sustainable profits, but there is a big gap still to cover. A 5.7 percent return on invested capital is well below the cost of capital, which is over 9 percent. And earning just $6.14 per passenger is an indication of just how thin our profits are – barely enough for a coffee in many parts of the world.”

    Looking ahead, the IATA expects industry revenues to reach a historic high of $996 billion in 2024, as 38.7 million flights are expected for the year, just 0.2 million short of the 2019 supply.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 06/06/2024 – 22:00

  • The Power Grid Expansion, Part 3: Investments
    The Power Grid Expansion, Part 3: Investments

    Authored by Michael Lebowitz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

    We continue with our discussion of investment ideas that could benefit from upgrading and expanding the power grid to accommodate surging demand from AI data centers and EVs.

    This third and final part of this series focuses on alternative energy sources, utility companies, and other companies related to the power grid infrastructure.

    If you haven’t read Parts ONE or TWO we recommend reading them before continuing.

    Alternative/Renewable Energy Sources

    In 2022, the Department of Energy calculated that renewable energy from solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass accounted for a fifth of all electricity generation. By 2028, the IEA thinks the percentage will double to 42%. Solar and wind power are expected to be the primary alternative energy sources.

    Investments in solar, wind, and other alternative energy sources, along with natural gas, coal, and nuclear, will be increasingly vital to power our utility plants. Furthermore, suppose the US and other nations continue to strive for net zero emissions by 2050 and other environmental goals. The demand for existing and new alternative energy sources will surge in that case.   

    Renewable energy has benefits and flaws compared to natural gas. The significant advantage of renewable energy is it produces minimal greenhouse gas emissions, as shown below. Second, and equally important, according to the IEA World Energy Outlook, solar and wind energy are the cheapest renewable energy sources and cost much less than carbon-based ones.

    However, they have considerable flaws that need to be overcome. Consider the following from Green Solutions.

    Relies heavily on weather conditions. When adverse weather conditions occur, renewable energy technologies like solar cells may not be as effective. For example, during periods of rain, PV panels cannot generate electricity, necessitating a shift back to traditional power sources.

    Lower efficiency. Regrettably, renewable technologies generally exhibit lower efficiency compared to traditional energy conversion devices. For example, commercially available solar panels have an efficiency of about 15% to 20%. In contrast, traditional technologies utilizing coal or natural gas can achieve efficiency levels of up to 40% and 60%, respectively.

    High upfront cost. The manufacturing and installation processes for renewable energy devices, such as PV panels, can be relatively expensive. Only for installation, solar panels cost about $17,430 to $23,870 on average.

    Limited geographical region. The availability of high-quality land is limited, leading developers to urgently search for new sites. For example, in Germany, regulatory, environmental, and technical limitations significantly reduce the potentially suitable for onshore wind farms to just 2%.

    Shortages of key raw materials. This includes essential metals like nickel, copper, and rare earth metals, such as neodymium and praseodymium, which are vital for the creation of magnets used in wind turbine generators.

    Renewable Stocks Are Not Following the Narrative

    With time, we believe renewable energy will become much more efficient and hopefully be in a better position to help meet the surging needs of the nation’s utility plants. Investors do not seem as hopeful. 

    The recent narrative pushing investors to power grid-related investments has skipped past renewable stocks. The graph below shows two popular alternative energy ETFs, Invesco’s Solar ETF (TAN) and iShares Global Clean Energy ETF (ICLN). Both ETFs are well off their 2008 highs and recent peaks in late 2020. 

    Alternative energy stocks and diversified ETFs may be excellent investments for longer-term investors as renewable energy will be relied upon heavily. Furthermore, their stocks have not benefited from the power grid expansion narrative.

    Batteries Technology Is Vital To Renewable Energy

    Solar and wind energy are not dependable due to weather conditions. For example, the following quote from OilPrice.com:

    But while solar power has made the U.S. power-generating system greener, it has also made it more volatile, especially in the top solar market, California. 

    There, peak solar power generation coincides with the lowest residential electricity demand during the midday. When power demand begins to surge after 6 p.m., solar output begins to fade.  

    In California, for example, “on sunny spring days when there is not as much demand, electricity prices go negative and solar generation must be ‘curtailed’ or essentially, thrown away,” says the Institute for Energy Research (IER).

    Accordingly, utilities need more efficient batteries to store excess renewable energy for use during peak demand periods and when the weather isn’t conducive for electricity generation. Without more efficient batteries, undependable alternative energy sources cannot be relied upon as much as the environmental goals demand.

    Companies involved in energy storage, especially those at the forefront of producing more efficient batteries, may have significant upside. But, with unproven technology come substantial risks for investors. For instance, many new types of battery technology are in development.

    • Solid-state batteries

    • Lithium-sulfur batteries

    • Cobalt-free lithium-ion batteries

    • Sodium-ion batteries

    • Iron-air batteries

    • Zinc-based batteries

    • Graphene batteries

    Battery Diversification May Be Critical

    Even if you know which type of battery will be the winner, so to speak, you also have the arduous task of figuring out which company will be a primary producer of the battery. Unless you believe you have good insight into battery technology and the key players in the industry, we think a diversified battery ETF may provide the best investment results. Further, the large battery ETFs are also diversified, with investments in lithium and other metal producers. Unfortunately, ETFs in this space are limited.

    Global X Lithium & Battery Tech (LIT) is far and away the largest, with nearly $1.5 billion AUM. While it invests in companies with new battery technology, it also “invests in the full lithium cycle, from mining and refining the metal, through battery production.” Its top three holdings are lithium producers.

    Amplify Lithium and Battery Technology (BATT) is the second largest ETF with a mere $89 million in AUM. Like LIT, they invest in lithium producers like BHP and Albemarle.

    If you want to make investments in individual companies, Tesla (battery technologies), LG Chem, and Samsung SDI are well-positioned in the industry.

    Lithium Miners

    Assuming lithium remains a crucial component in electricity storage batteries, its miners should do well, especially given the recent decline in lithium prices and the related stocks.

    North Carolina-based Albemarle (ALB) is the world’s top lithium producer and the largest producer by market cap. It is the only lithium producer of size based in the US. Like the rest of the alternative energy sector, its stock has traded poorly recently. However, with a forward P/E of 16, there is value if its revenues continue upward at their recent pace.

    We caution you that lithium deposits are being actively explored. Assuming success, the lithium supply may limit the price appreciation of lithium. As an example from The Hill- Researchers make massive lithium discovery in Pennsylvania.

    Utility and Grid Operators

    Utilities will generate more power, thus increasing their revenue. However, they must invest significant capital to modernize, expand, and reduce greenhouse emissions.

    AI data center locations are partially chosen based on their ability to source cheap electricity. Thus, utility companies in the Southeast and Midwest, with access to cheaper natural gas and more reliable alternative energy generation, will be the most cost-effective locations for data centers. The map below shows that Virginia hosts the greatest number of data centers, followed by California and Texas.

    Dominion Energy (D) in Virginia and Entergy (ETR) in Texas are the two utility companies that may be the biggest beneficiaries of the growth of AI data centers. Both stocks have relatively low forward P/E’s of approximately 14 and dividend yields of 4.25% for D and 5.50% for ETR. It will be crucial to follow their margins to see how effectively they offset the expansion costs with rising revenue.

    Constellation Energy (CEG) and NextEra Energy (NEE) are also worth tracking as they invest heavily in renewable energy infrastructure and will benefit from increased demand. We would add Duke (DUK) and Southern Company (SO) to the list of companies to follow.

    Additional Investment Ideas

    We now present an assortment of industries and firms that can benefit.

    Technology and AI Firms

    Companies specializing in AI software for energy efficiency and management will find opportunities in this evolving landscape. Some of the more prominent names in this sector include IBM, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, and GE Vernova.

    Physical Plant Expansion

    Companies that supply utility plants with generators, transformers, circuit breakers, and switchboards, among many other parts, will undoubtedly benefit from power grid expansion.

    GE Vernova, Eaton, Quanta Services, Emerson Electric, and Siemens

    Water/Cooling

    The average data center uses 300,000 gallons of water a day to cool its equipment. That is the equivalent of the water used by 100,000 homes. Therefore, companies that can develop cheap cooling solutions for data centers will be in high demand.

    Vertiv Holdings (VRT) is a leader in this segment. Its shares have risen tenfold since it went public in 2019 and now trades at a P/E of 100. It’s a high-risk, high-reward stock, not for the faint of heart.

    Infrastructure ETFs

    There are many other businesses set to profit from the coming infrastructure boom.

    Those looking for a diversified investment approach in the power grid may want to explore thematic ETFs.

    For example, the First Trust Clean Edge Smart Grid Infrastructure Fund (GRID) holds 103 positions. Beyond diversification and portfolio manager expertise, the fund can buy stocks in foreign markets, which many US investors do not have access to or are uncomfortable with.

    iShares (IFRA) is a similar fund with a different basket of stocks and approach toward investing in the industry.

    The bottom line is we are confident the expansion and modernization of the power grid will be highly profitable for some companies. However, many companies involved, especially smaller companies with limited product offerings, offer massive rewards but substantial risks. Diversification will prove to be essential for investors.   

    Summary

    The more we researched the power grid expansion, the more industries, and companies we exposed that could benefit from it. While this article stops here, we will continue investigating the topic and share any exciting findings in the future. The number of rabbit holes is seemingly endless. We encourage you to explore the topic and share any findings you may uncover with us.

    Like the birth of the internet, some companies like AOL, Yahoo, and Sun Microsystem, which were the supposed internet leaders, fell by the waist side. Other companies, some already large, others virtually unknown, become leaders. The key to investing in this expansion is to remain vigilant for new companies and technologies that can blossom. Do not assume that the companies in charge today will be so tomorrow. Keep your head on a swivel.

    For those unable to invest the time and effort to understand industry trends and identify companies likely to profit, a fund(s) with professionals highly focused on the industry may prove an excellent way to take advantage of the potential infrastructure boom.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 06/06/2024 – 21:30

  • Ukraine Has Requested NATO Military Instructors On Its Soil, Macron Says
    Ukraine Has Requested NATO Military Instructors On Its Soil, Macron Says

    French President Emmanuel Macron used the occasion of D-Day memorial events in France on Thursday to make some big announcements on Ukraine. This after President Biden focused much of his speech on ‘defeating Russia’ – as opposed to remembrance of WWII and those who perished on the beaches of Normandy.

    For the first time Macron said that there’s been a specific request from the Zelensky government to send French troops to Ukrainian soil in order to train forces there, amid a growing manpower shortage and severe lag in adequate training.

    “There is a challenge in capacity. That is why the Ukrainian president and his minister of defence asked all the allies — 48 hours ago in an official letter — saying ‘we need you to train us quicker and that you do this on our soil’,” Macron said in a live interview on French television, translated by AFP.

    Via AP

    While stopping short of committing to sending troops (given there’s been no consensus reached by NATO allies yet), Macron did indicate the French military will equip and train an entire brigade of 4,500 Ukrainian soldiers – but crucially this training is being conducted outside Ukraine.

    Macron also announced readiness to transfer Mirage-2000 fighter jets to Ukraine, and to train their pilots on the aircraft, while not specifying the number of jets to be sent.

    “Tomorrow we will launch a new cooperation and announce the transfer of Mirage 2000-5,” Macron indicated in the interview, referencing the fighter made by French manufacturer Dassault.

    The pilot training program will kick off this summer, and the details will reportedly be hashed out when Macron meets Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Elysee Palace in Paris on Friday.

    “You need normally between five-six months. So by the end of the year there will be pilots. The pilots will be trained in France,” he continued.

    As for sending Western troops directly into Ukraine, Macron cautioned, “We are working with our partners and we will act on the basis of a collective decision.”

    But at this point in the conflict this is a losing proposition and the West knows it, even if officials don’t admit it openly. There’s huge risk and only downside. President Putin and top Kremlin officials have repeatedly vowed they will attack any foreign troops found on Ukraine soil.

    Journalist and national security commentator Andrew Cockburn summed up the situation as follows: “As Russian forces steadily advance in the Kharkiv region, it is becoming ever more clear that the Ukraine war has been a disaster for the U.S. defense machine, and not just because our aid has failed to save Ukraine from retreat and possible defeat. More importantly, the war has pitilessly exposed our defense system’s deep, underlying, faults.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 06/06/2024 – 21:00

  • Markets Have Overreacted To OPEC's Plan To Phase Out Production Cuts
    Markets Have Overreacted To OPEC’s Plan To Phase Out Production Cuts

    By Alex Kimani of OilPrice.com

    OPEC+ agreed on Sunday to extend most of its oil output cuts well into 2025 amid tepid demand growth, rising U.S. production and high interest rates. OPEC+ is currently cutting output by a total of 5.86 million barrels per day (bpd), or about 5.7% of global demand, including 3.66 million bpd of cuts previously set to expire at the end of 2024, and voluntary cuts by eight members of 2.2 million bpd, expiring at the end of June 2024. The announcement led to an oil price selloff, with front-month Brent falling to a four-month low below $77 per barrel (bbl), good for a hefty $8/bbl decline from last week’s high and over $15/bbl lower from April’s YTD high.

    Commodity analysts at Standard Chartered have pointed out that the price undershooting was the consequence of markets being dominated by a combination of extreme macroeconomic pessimism; speculative shorts and over-enthusiastic algorithmic trading that crowded out more fundamentally-based traders. According to data from Bridgeton Research Group via Bloomberg, oil futures markets have now flipped to a net short position in Brent, compared with a net long position at the end of last week.

    StanChart says the oil price rout has been triggered by market expectations for a significant volume of OPEC+ oil returning to the global markets 2024; however, the analysts have argued that this explanation does not hold much water. According to StanChart, assuming market conditions are such that the increases can commence, the increase in Q4 relative to Q2 is likely to clock in at a relatively modest 360 kb/d, with the analysts saying that OPEC+ has room to increase production by 1 million b/d without upsetting market balance. Further, StanChart points out that the phase-out will be conditional depending on the state of global markets at the time with most general asset markets not expecting FOMC to follow all its current forward guidance to the letter regardless of future data and events. However, the reaction by oil markets seems to suggest that the forward guidance given by the eight OPEC+ countries concerned constitutes a determination to produce, regardless of whatever happens.

    StanChart has pointed out a number of other bullish factors that the markets have overlooked:

    •  The 1.65mb/d of voluntary cuts agreed in April 2023 have been extended to the end of 2025.
    • The required production level for all OPEC+ countries across 2025 was reaffirmed. 
    • The agreement was finally reached in the long-running discussion with the UAE, resulting in a 300kb/d increase in the UAE’s required production level, spread out over nine months starting in January 2025.
    • Russia, Iraq and Kazakhstan have agreed to produce a compensation schedule for H1 overproduction by the end of June
    • The discussion of targets in light of third-party consultant assessments of capacity was postponed until late-2025 when it may be a basis for discussion of 2026 required production.
    • The Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) was given authority to request an OPEC+ ministerial meeting at any time or hold additional meetings should it choose to.

    Overall, the analysts say that OPEC+ decisions will ultimately prove positive for oil prices. More importantly, the OPEC+ report has increased transparency with the likelihood of bearish tail-risk events materializing minimized. 

    Meanwhile, StanChart has reported that there has been no change in the dominant dynamics of the European gas market, with inventories building slower than usual and the markets still proving highly sensitive to supply issues. According to Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) data, EU gas inventories stood at 81.75 billion cubic meters (bcm) on 2 June, good for a 1.1 bcm Y/Y increase and 14.9 bcm above the five-year average. Inventory build over the past week was 1.9 bcm, considerably lower than the five-year average for the same period of 2.8 bcm and last year’s 2.4 bcm. The experts also note that the surplus above the five-year average has fallen on 45 of the past 48 days. 

    The natural gas supply-side continues to be plagued with challenges. The latest supply disruption that triggered a rally was a fault in Norway’s Sleipner gas field. StanChart has predicted that whereas the outage is likely to be short-lived (current estimates are that repairs should be over by the coming weekend), prices are likely to remain elevated bolstered by slower-than-average inventory builds. Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF) gas for January 2025 delivery reached a high of EUR 43.30 per megawatt hour (MWh) on 3 June while the front-month contract reached a five-month high of EUR 38.70/MWh on the same day before falling back to settle at EUR 36.014/MWh.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 06/06/2024 – 20:35

  • Modi's BJP Loses Parliament Majority
    Modi’s BJP Loses Parliament Majority

    Despite exit polls and projections suggesting otherwise, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took a considerable hit at the election for the 18th Lok Sabha, India’s lower house voted on by the country’s citizens. Compared to 2019, the BJP lost 63 seats and was 32 seats shy of the 272-seat majority. For the first time since 2014, Modi will have to rely on other parties to secure a BJP-led government. However, if alliance allegiance holds, a coalition led by Modi’s party is bound to stay in power for five more years.

    As Statista’s Florian Zandt shows in the chart below, based on data from the Election Commission of India, Modi’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA) comprised of a variety of conservative and nationalist parties won a combined 293 seats in this year’s election. Its rival, the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), scored 234 seats. INDIA is led by the center-left Indian National Congress, which won 99 seats and whose tally was up 47 seats compared to 2019. Until the official formation of a new government, Modi has resigned as Prime Minister and will reportedly continue as a “caretaker”.

    Infographic: Modi's BJP Loses Parliament Majority | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    As of the time of writing, no official coalition talks have started, even though it is likely that both the BJP and INDIA will try to secure political parties not necessarily completely aligned with their views as kingmakers. Candidates include Janata Dal (United), which won 12 seats and is part of the NDA but has switched allegiance many times in the past, or the Telugu Desam Party, which can be seen as economically liberal and politically nationalist and regionalist and has won 16 seats in the election.

    The election for the 18th Lok Sabha is said to be the largest election ever worldwide. It took place over 44 days and brought out 642 million Indians to the polls, 312 million of which were women, according to Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar cited in The Hindu. Overall, 969 million citizens were registered to vote, creating a turnout of roughly 66 percent.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 06/06/2024 – 20:10

  • A Second-Quarter Recession This Year Looks Increasingly Likely
    A Second-Quarter Recession This Year Looks Increasingly Likely

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    As I watch the evolution of consumer spending, housing starts, new home sales, and GDPNow trends, it appears the economy has peaked. Warning: I tend to be early.

    GDPNow forecast from the Atlanta Fed as of 2024-06-03. Chart by Mish

    The GDPNow forecast has been weakening since a peak of 4.2 percent on May 8, 2024.

    The best number to follow is not the overall forecast but rather Real Final Sales (RFS). The rest is inventory adjustment that nets to zero over time.

    A steep plunge occurred in the base forecast from 3.5 to 2.7 then to 1.8 on May 1 and June 3. Importantly, RFS fell from 2.9 to 2.1 to 1.8 on the same dates.

    Balance of Trade

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

    I made that call on May 30.

    On June 1, I commented Soaring US Trade Deficit Smacks the Atlanta Fed GDPNow Forecast

    On June 3, the GDPNow forecast took another dive.

    The following table that shows both moves.

    GDPnow Contributions

    Advance Economic Indicators, specifically import-export data took the Net Exports contribution to GDP from -0.06 to -0.60 on May 31.

    Also on May 31, Personal Income and Outlays took the contribution for Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) from 2.28 to 1.75.

    It’s not always easy to assign the numbers to specific buckets, but the plunge in net exports is clear.

    ISM Manufacturing New Orders and Backlogs in Steep Contraction

    ISM chart and excerpts below by permission from the Institute for Supply Management® ISM®

    On June 3, I commented ISM Manufacturing New Orders and Backlogs in Steep Contraction

    The Manufacturing ISM was in contraction for 16 months went positive for a month and is contracting again for two months with order backlogs falling for 20 months.

    June 3 Impact to GDPNow

    On June 3, the ISM and construction spending reports clobbered PCE with lesser negative impacts on Residential Investments, Equipment, and Net Exports.

    Assigning percentages here is more difficult, and the Atlanta Fed might not be able to do so either. This is because the variables are entered at the same time and one can influence another.

    However, the decline in Residential Investment from -0.08 to -0.18 is easy to attribute to the construction spending report. The big declines from 1.75 to 1.19 on PCE and 0.42 to 0.25 on equipment are harder to attribute precisely.

    It’s important to note that what matters is not the reports but what GDPNow expected vs the reports. Bad data does not necessarily cause a decline in GDPnow, nor good data a rise.

    Below Stall Speed

    With Real Final Sales at 1.3 percent (lead chart) the economy is at stall speed. But will we stay there?

    Real (inflation-adjusted) Income and spending was negative in April. Real income was negative two of the last 3 months.

    Chart from the BEA, annotations by Mish

    For discussion of the above chart, please see The Fed’s Preferred Inflation Measure, PCE, Shows No Further Progress

    Real (inflation-adjusted) Income and spending was negative in April. Real income was negative two of the last 3 months.

    Personal Income Four Ways

    Real Disposable Personal Income (after taxes) has stalled.

    For discussion, please see Why Consumers Are Angry About the Economy in Five Pictures

    Anger Synopsis

    Consumers are angry, and it’s reflected in the polls. I have been discussing the reasons for angry consumers all year.

    But Biden and most economists still don’t get it. They think the economy is doing well. Tell that to renters looking to buy a home, stuck with rent going up month after month.

    More Soft Economic Data, Q1 GDP Revised Lower, Q4 GDI Significantly Lower

    GDP and GDI data from BEA, chart by Mish

    On May 30, I commented More Soft Economic Data, Q1 GDP Revised Lower, Q4 GDI Significantly Lower

    The economic slowdown continues led by income and consumer spending.

    The same story is repeating in April.

    Revisions a Hallmark of Economic Turns

    May 24: Another Massive Revision, This Time Durable Goods, What’s Going On

    May 23: New Home Sales Sink 4.7 Percent on Top of Huge Negative Revisions

    May 22: Discretionary Spending Tumbles at Target, Shares Drop 10 Percent

    May 22: Existing-Home Sales Decline 1.9 Percent, Sales Mostly Stagnant for 17 Months

    April 15: Elon Musk Fires 10 Percent of Tesla Workforce, Prepares for “Next Phase of Growth”

    Misfiring on All Cylinders

    For the past two years whenever one segment of the economy misfired, another picked up. Some labeled this a rolling recession.

    Every time consumers appeared to throw in the towel, there was another surge in spending.

    Now it appears the economy is misfiring on consumer discretionary spending, new home sales, existing-home sales, durable goods, EVs simultaneously, and income simultaneously.

    Recession Q&A

    Q: Mish aren’t you nearly always early on recession calls?
    A: Guilty as charged.

    Q: Did you call a recession that did not happen at all?
    A: Guilty as charged.

    Is the US in Recession Now? Two Prominent Competing Views

    On May 28, I discussed the question Is the US in Recession Now? Two Prominent Competing Views

    Danielle DiMartino Booth has been beating the drums for weeks that the US is in recession and has been since October. No so fast says Jim Bianco. 

    I also explain how I went wrong on my recession forecasts and why I believe Booth is early in her position that a recession started in October 2023.

    Finally, I discuss when I think recession is likely.

    In the above post I discuss the McKelvey indicator championed by DiMartino Booth. It has a pretty good but not perfect track record in forecasting recessions.

    My follow-up post was on GDPplus, another recession indicator, discussed below. First, please note the big reason the economy avoided a recession in late 2022 and 2023 was amazingly enough a tax cut!

    Tax Cuts Explain Surge in Consumer Spending in 2023

    Tax data from the BEA, chart by Mish

    On January 29, 2024, I commented Tax Cuts, Not Bidenomics Explains Surge in Consumer Spending in 2023

    Also, on January 1, 2023, 38 states had noteworthy tax changes. 37 of the changes put extra money in people’s pockets. The combination murdered the then-pending recession.

    For details of the tax cut please click on the previous link.

    The GDPplus Indicator

    GDPplus is a Philadelphia Fed method that blends, not averages GDP and GDI. The Philadelphia Fed revised the indicator significantly lower on Thursday.

    It’s also a very good predictor of recessions.

    GDPplus from Philadelphia Fed and GDI from the BEA, chart by Mish

    For discussion, please see Philadelphia Fed GDPplus Revised Significantly Lower, But No Recession Yet

    By “yet” I was referring to the idea that a recession started in 2024 Q1.

    Data is now weakening so fast, on so many fronts, that I expect a recession this year. Unlike 2023, there will be no tax cut or minimum wage hikes in 37 states to boost consumer spending now.

    Judging from the recent slide, and assuming it continues, the economy may have peaked in April with a recession starting in May.

    Label it recession by slow-acting poison of Bidenomics with a temporary 2023 reprieve due to tax cuts.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 06/06/2024 – 19:45

  • Wall Street Admits The Biggest Economic Shocker: All Jobs In The Past Year Have Gone To Illegal Aliens
    Wall Street Admits The Biggest Economic Shocker: All Jobs In The Past Year Have Gone To Illegal Aliens

    For much of the past year we had been pounding the table on two very simple facts:  not only has the US labor market been appallingly weak, with most of the jobs “gained” in 2023 and meant to signal how strong the Biden “recovery” has been, about to be revised away (as first the Philly Fed and now Bloomberg both admit), but more shockingly, all the job growth in the past few years has gone to illegal aliens.

    We first pointed this out more than a year ago, and since then we have routinely repeated – again, again, and again – yet even though we made it abundantly clear what was happening…

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

    … going so far as to point out the specific immigration loophole illegals were using to work in the US for up to 5 years…

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

    … and even fact-checking the senile, ballot-harvesting White House occupant on multiple occasions…

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

    … we were shocked that the topic of most if not all US jobs going to illegals was still not “the biggest political talking point” of all.

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

    That’s about to change, however, because with just under 5 months left until the election, and with immigration by far the hottest political topic out there, others are finally starting to connect the dots we laid out more than a year ago.

    The first Wall Street analyst daring to point out that the employment emperor is naked, is Standard Chartered’s global head of macro, Steve Englander who in a note titled simply enough “Immigration leading to labor-market surge” (and available to pro subscribers in the usualk place), writes that according to his estimates “undocumented immigrants account for half of job growth in FY24 so far” (the actual number is far higher but we understand his initial conservatism), and adds that “asylum seekers and humanitarian parolees explain the surge in undocumented immigrants” before concluding that the continued rise in EAD approvals likely will extend strong employment growth in 2024. In other words, “strong employment growth” for American citizens, always was and remains a fabulation, and the only job growth in the US is for illegals, who will work for below minimum wage, which also explains why inflation hasn’t spiked in the past year as millions of illegals were hired.

    Below we excerpt from the Englander note because we hope that more economists, strategists and politicians will read it and grasp what we have been saying for over a year.

    Echoing what we have said for months, Englander writes that immigration, particularly illegal immigration, “is a political flashpoint that has also become an important factor in assessing economic performance. Detailed data from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) suggest that half of non-farm payroll (NFP) growth to date for FY24 (started 1 October 2023) has been from undocumented immigrants who have received an Employment Authorization Document (EAD)” (he defines undocumented immigrants as those who entered the US through non-traditional immigration pathways, such as asylum seekers, parolees, and refugees).

    The ability to track EAD issuance to undocumented workers is an advantage in estimating how much they have contributed to employment growth. NFP counts workers with an EAD just like any other. Using that data, it is easy to estimate that undocumented workers have added 109k jobs per month to NFP out of the average 231k increase so far in FY24.

    Which is staggering since last night we showed that about 100K monthly jobs are purely statistical distortions, and the real pace of job growth in the past year has been around 130K.

    So if 100K jobs per month are fabricated birth/death artifacts (i.e., not real jobs but a statistically goalseeked fudge factor), and another 109K jobs per month are illegal aliens, that leaves just about 11K jobs for everyone else, i.e., law abiding Americans.

    It also means that the labor market in the US has – for the past year – been an absolute catastrophe and harbinger of economic disaster (and is why last night we pointed out “The “Unexpected” Reason Why The Fed Will Rush To Cut Rates As Soon As Possible“).

    But wait, as Englander himself admits, the 109K estimate of illegal aliens “may be an underestimate since undocumented immigrants often have limited access to benefits, so they may be heavily motivated to find employment. The GDP impact might be lower if these workers are less educated and face language barriers in the work force.”

    Here, Englander – who did not do the Birth/Death analysis – writes that if one excludes these illegal immigrant workers, “NFP may be running at c.125k per month” and adds that “such a pace is not recession but is hardly boom time and represents a moderate underlying pace of labor demand. It should make the 231k FY24 pace of headline NFP less worrisome to the FOMC. FOMC participants might be less hawkish if the impact of undocumented immigrants on NFP was well estimated and understood.”

    Of course, if the Std Chartered analyst were to factor for the true collapse in Birth-Death adjustments discussed yesterday by Bloomberg…

    … the real number would be, well, zero!

    While the political reason behind the propaganda misrepresentation of the US jobs market is simple: after all, in an election year it is imperative that the Biden economy be portrayed as glowingly as possible, even if it means lying about everything, the cascading consequences from this fabrication are staggering. As Englander concedes, “this added labor supply also may have shifted trend employment and GDP growth, making it hard to gauge whether a strong NFP or even GDP number reflects supply or demand. If supply is driving upside surprises, the takeaway is more optimism that inflation will slow. If demand, the opposite. Soft economic data should be seen through the lens of added labor supply, while strong data releases are ambiguous.”

    Taking a closer look, such increased labor supply – from illegals – should put downward pressure on wage growth relative to a baseline with less immigration (documented or not). In measures such as average hourly earnings, the disinflationary impact would be two-fold:

    1. lower wages overall from an increase of labour supply relative to labour demand and
    2. a composition effect because the undocumented immigrants often work in low wage industries even with EADs.

    However, this is likely to be a gradual process, so the low wage impact may not be immediately visible. In addition, insofar as these workers’ wages reflect relatively low productivity, the composition effect on wages will be offset by a composition effect on productivity – unit labour cost growth may be unchanged.

    These observations notwithstanding, one can assume that the contribution of undocumented immigrants to employment is unlikely to change any time soon. Indeed, over the last 12 months an average of 280k undocumented immigrants per month have been encountered nationally, most whom can or will be eligible to work legally in coming months. The same methodology suggests that these workers contributed about one-third of FY23 employment growth.

    It gets worse.

    The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that in fiscal 2023 a further 860k individuals crossed the border without contact with US immigration authorities. While these people are not eligible for EADs they may still work off the books or with fake or borrowed documents. As such, their output and spending will show up in GDP, although it is unlikely that much if any of their “labor input” is captured. These, along with others (tourists who overstay visas, students whose visas have expired, etc.) are technically undocumented as well. But since few are eligible for EADs, it is unlikely that they are captured in any BLS survey.

    In any event, Englander estimates that over 800k undocumented immigrants found jobs in FY23, and assumes that 64.2% of EAD recipients (the average for the foreign-born population) are working. However, the employment rate may well be higher since these are likely to be “very motivated” workers, since they are not generally eligible for unemployment insurance and other benefits, so work is a necessity for many.

    Ssing this calculation, and since Nonfarm Payrolls grew 3.1 million in FY23, the 800k would represent more than 25% of NFP growth.

    But what about those record numbers of multiple job-holders we have also discussed.

    Ah yes, to address that Englander next calculates an augmented version of NFP that includes agricultural workers, self- and family-employed workers from the household survey (CPS), and subtracts multiple-job holders. By this measure employment grew 2.7 million (this is largely due to a rise in multiple-job holders, which are subtracted to avoid double counting). So far in FY24, on average over 170k undocumented immigrants have received EAD approvals every month and c.109k have found work based on employment rates. And since NFP has averaged 230k per month, these workers likely accounted for around half of job growth. Again, this number excludes the roughly 100k per month addition coming from birth/death calculation distortions which will soon be revised away as Bloomberg’s chief economist Anna Wong calculated, before concluding that “by the end of the year the printed level of nonfarm-payrolls for 2024 likely will overstate true employment by at least one million.”

    Again, this means that when stripping away the 100K in statistical “jobs” from the 230K monthly payroll number, and then removing the 109K in illegal alien workers, the number of jobs added by ordinary, legal, native-born, Americans in the past year has been – more or less – zero.

    We, for one, can’t wait for Joe Biden to explain how this was remotely possible during his upcoming debate with Trump in three weeks time.

    Much more in the full must-read note – especially to those who will be prepping Donald Trump for his upcoming debate – from Englander available to pro subscribers in the usual place.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 06/06/2024 – 19:25

  • Washington Preparing To Punish Maldives For Banning Israeli Passport Holders
    Washington Preparing To Punish Maldives For Banning Israeli Passport Holders

    US lawmakers are outraged at the Maldives for its recent decision to ban Israeli passport holders from entering the country due to war crimes connected with Israel’s controversial military operations in Gaza.

    The Indian Ocean archipelago state is known for its luxury resorts and high-end travel in scenic, paradise beach locations. The president’s office announced Sunday that the cabinet is moving to update national entry laws in order to bar Israeli passport holders’ entry.

    NurPhoto via Getty Images

    But US Congress members are working punish the Maldives over the controversial move, with Representative Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) drafting legislation that could slash all aid to the Muslim-majority nation.

    Gottheimer, who has long been known as a staunch and outspoken supporter of Israel, is “working with colleagues in both parties on the bill, which will be called the Protecting Allied Travel Here (PATH) Act,” according to Axios.

    The law would condition US aid to the Maldives based on lifting its travel ban. This would in effect be a form of sanctions as it would bar current aid.

    “Taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be sent to a foreign nation that has banned all Israeli citizens from traveling to their country,” Gottheimer said in a statement.

    He added: “Not only is Israel one of our greatest democratic allies, but the Maldives’ unprecedented travel ban is nothing but a blatant act of Jew-hatred. They shouldn’t get a cent of American dollars until they reverse course.”

    But the government of the Maldives has presented its anti-Israel policies as “in solidarity with Palestinians”. Already in December the country imposed a docking ban, disallowing Israeli ships from using its ports.

    Maldives’ President Mohamed Muizzu, via AFP

    The Times of Israel has previously noted that “Nearly 11,000 Israelis visited the country last year, accounting for 0.6 percent of the Maldives’ foreign tourist arrivals.”

    There are 27 other Muslim-majority countries in the world which currently have a ban on Israeli passport holders – many of them located in the Middle East and North Africa.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 06/06/2024 – 19:20

  • Overwhelming Majority Of Small Business Owners Afraid Of Biden's Economy; New Poll Finds
    Overwhelming Majority Of Small Business Owners Afraid Of Biden’s Economy; New Poll Finds

    Authored by Eric Lundrum via American Greatness,

    A new survey reveals that over two-thirds of small business owners are terrified of the state of the economy under Joe Biden’s watch, fearing that current conditions and ongoing downward trends will lead to them having to close their businesses.

    As reported by the Daily Caller, the poll from the Job Creators Network Foundation (JCNF) shows that 67% of small business owners maintain such fears about the economy as it stands today, marking a 10-point increase from sentiments two years ago. In the same poll, participants’ perceptions of economic conditions for their own businesses fell from 70.2 to 68.1. Perception of national conditions fell even more drastically, from 53.2 to 50.4.

    In addition to the ongoing economic woes, small business owners also feel overwhelmingly impacted by the rise of crime. In the same survey, 44% of business owners say that crime has gone up in their area. The respondents who were most likely to say crime has increased in their area are the business owners generating less than $100,000 per year, at 55%. Those who generate over $1 million in revenue were less likely to say crime has increased.

    Inflation also remains a top concern for business owners, with 49% ranking inflation as the top issue in May, compared to 48% in March. Overall inflation remains stubbornly high, coming in at 3.4% in April. The inflation rate has consistently remained above 3% since Joe Biden first took office.

    “Small businesses are more vulnerable to high taxes and costly regulatory environments compared to their large corporate counterparts,” said Elaine Parker, president of the JCNF.

    “That’s why it’s no surprise that 26% of small businesses say they’ve considered relocating to a different state or city to chase more favorable tax rates and escape government red tape. This is an opportunity for free-market minded governors to continue making their states stand out from the crowd by implementing pro-growth policy reforms that will ignite Main Street.”

    Forbes estimates that at least 46% of all employees in the United States, around 61.6 million people in total, are employed by small businesses.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 06/06/2024 – 18:55

  • Ukraine Bans Dual Citizens From Escaping War, US Embassy Warns
    Ukraine Bans Dual Citizens From Escaping War, US Embassy Warns

    The US Embassy in Ukraine this week issued a surreal and somewhat unexpected warning: US-Ukrainian dual citizens may be prevented from leaving Ukraine under the country’s new mobilization law.

    As a result of martial law which took effect after the February 2022 invasion, Ukrainian males ages 18 to 60 are not allowed the leave the country. But until now there were exceptions for dual US-Ukrainian nationals; however, a fresh update in the national law means Americans can now be rounded up by conscription officers and potentially thrown to the front lines.

    “The US Embassy in Kyiv understands that, effective June 1, Ukraine has eliminated a ‘residence abroad’ exception that previously allowed certain Ukrainian males aged 18 to 60 to depart the country. After this change, US-Ukrainian dual citizens, including those who live in the United States, may no longer be able to depart the country,” the US Embassy announced Tuesday.

    Via Kyiv Post

    This is essentially the government of Ukraine also saying that it doesn’t recognize dual citizenship. 

    While outlining the change in policy, coming amid growing desperation of Kiev authorities to tap new manpower, the US State Department is apparently going to stand back and let it happen.

    The Embassy explained in its message that it is “limited in our ability to influence Ukrainian law, including the application of martial law and the mobilization law to Ukrainian citizens.” …So the US is “limited” in its “influence” at a moment American taxpayers are pouring billions into the Zelensky government’s coffers.

    Amazingly, the embassy alert further advises all dual US-Ukrainian nationals still in the country to “shelter in place and obey all local orders.”

    The Embassy added: “If you are not currently in Ukraine, we strongly recommend against all travel to Ukraine by US citizen males aged 18 to 60 who also have Ukrainian citizenship or a claim to Ukrainian citizenship and who do not wish to stay in Ukraine indefinitely. There is an extremely high risk you will not be allowed to depart, even with a US passport.”

    As for the severe manpower crisis among Ukraine armed forces, the Washington Post recently highlighted that combat commanders say newly-mobilized soldiers are arriving at the front lines so poorly-trained and clueless that they can’t even disassemble their weapons,

    One soldier described his basic training as “complete nonsense… everything is learned on the spot [at the front lines].” An officer who’d trained recruits said their rifle training was limited to just 20 rounds per soldier. 

    Videos have long circulated of recruitment officers grabbling young men caught in public for conscription…

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

    At this point it seems the military is simply grabbing any man it can, and soon even Americans (dual citizens) caught walking Ukraine’s streets. Ukraine’s military is fairing so poorly in places like Kharkiv oblast that young men fear that being sent to front line positions is basically a death sentence.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 06/06/2024 – 18:30

  • 334 Michiganders Registered To Vote After Their Deaths, Group Tells Court
    334 Michiganders Registered To Vote After Their Deaths, Group Tells Court

    Authored by Steven Kovac via The Epoch Times,

    “Whether by mistake or fraud,” 334 deceased Michigan registrants are listed on government records as registering to vote after their date of death, according to a recent filing in the federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF).

    Nearly four years ago, the PILF discovered 27,000 names of likely deceased registrants on the state’s Qualified Voter File (QVF).

    The group asked Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, about her plan to remove them.

    In this screenshot from the livestream of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson addresses delegates on Aug. 20, 2020. (DNCC via Getty Images)

    They gave Ms. Benson over one year to act or, at a minimum, make available for public inspection a detailed plan of action for canceling the voter registrations of the dead. She did neither.

    According to the PILF filing, Michigan election officials were “unresponsive to specific, sound data provided by the Foundation” regarding the deceased registrants, many of whom had been on the QVF for decades.

    “Secretary Benson is vigorously opposing efforts to remove tens of thousands of deceased registrants we found on the voter roll,” said PILF President J. Christian Adams in a May 29 press release.

    “Federal law requires state election officials to have a reasonable program to remove the dead. Keeping dead voters on the rolls for two decades isn’t reasonable. This case will have significant implications for whether effective maintenance is required by federal law,”

    Auditor General Confirmed Numbers

    In 2021, the Michigan Auditor General’s office conducted what it called “a death match for active voters in the QVF.”

    The match yielded the names of between “twenty and thirty thousand” deceased registrants on the voter rolls.

    A three-and-a-half-year legal battle ensued, beginning with the PILF filing a two-point complaint in the federal district court alleging that Ms. Benson failed to conduct list maintenance and failed to allow inspection of public records concerning her plan to remove the deceased, and other data.

    On March 1, 2024, the district court entered a summary judgment rejecting both of PILF’s points, which led the foundation to take the case to the federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

    In announcing its victory in the district court, the Michigan Department of State issued a statement on March 2 calling the PILF’s efforts “a thinly veiled attempt to undermine voters’ faith in their voice, their vote, and our democracy.”

    According to the PILF filing, the appeal presents questions of “first impression for this Court and raises issues of national importance regarding the interpretation of the National Voter Registration Act.”

    In law, a first impression is a new legal issue or interpretation that is brought before a court.

    The NVRA of 1993 (known as “Motor Voter”) requires states to “conduct a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove the name of ineligible voters” due to death.

    PILF lawyers contend that the exact meaning of the phrase “reasonable effort” has not been addressed by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals or any court within that court’s jurisdiction since the law’s enactment in 1993.

    The district court concluded that whatever Ms. Benson is doing to clean up and maintain the voter rolls constitutes a reasonable effort and, therefore, found that she complied with the NVRA requirement.

    The PILF asserts that an ineffectual, mistake-ridden, voter list maintenance program that allows between 20,000 and 30,000 dead people to remain on the QVF for decades should not be considered reasonable.

    According to the PILF, merely having a nominal voter roll maintenance program in place is not enough to satisfy the NVRA.

    What matters to the intent of Congress is “whether the Secretary effectively follows the list maintenance statutes and procedures,” the appeal said. “The Secretary seeks to evade scrutiny by relying on something labeled a ‘program’ to remove deceased registrants, no matter how ineffective.”

    Discovery Limited, Depositions Denied

    Also, according to the PILF appeal, the district court erred by granting Ms. Benson’s request for summary judgment without the secretary of state being deposed by the plaintiff.

    Earlier, Ms. Benson convinced a court magistrate that she was too busy to sit for the deposition and obtained a protective court order to block the process.

    The appeal stated that PILF was not only denied the ability to depose Ms. Benson but also could not depose an SOS employee who conducted voter list analysis, and the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), upon which Michigan and about two dozen other states rely for data identifying ineligible voters.

    The district court order required the PILF to first show defects in ERIC’s process of identifying deceased voters before having the opportunity to learn what those processes and procedures were through deposition.

    “These denials of discovery should be reversed so the complete picture and truth about the Secretary’s list maintenance programs can be ascertained,” the appeal brief said.

    Because of the danger of recurring injury, the PILF appeal stated that a permanent prospective injunction to compel Ms. Benson to comply with her responsibilities under the NVRA would be warranted.

    PILF attorneys stressed the importance of timely compliance before another federal election takes place.

    The PILF asked the appeals court to reverse the district court and render judgment that Secretary Benson violated the NVRA’s Public Disclosure Provision, or to remand that claim to the district court for reconsideration.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 06/06/2024 – 18:05

  • La Nina Will Complicate Things For Biden Ahead Of Elections As Hurricanes Threaten Oil Refineries
    La Nina Will Complicate Things For Biden Ahead Of Elections As Hurricanes Threaten Oil Refineries

    The Biden administration must now contend with the La Nina weather phenomenon, which is expected to fuel an active Atlantic hurricane season. These storms could potentially disrupt major US Gulf Coast refineries, driving average gasoline prices at the pump to the politically sensitive $4 a gallon mark ahead of the November presidential elections. 

    News last month of the Department of Energy planning to release a million barrels of gasoline from reserves held in the Northeast ahead of the Fourth of July holiday and summer driving season shows just how concerned Democrats in the White House are about elevated inflation as their election odds falter. 

    According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, La Nina conditions indicate reduced wind shear in the Alantic Basin, which promotes more tropical development in the Caribbean Sea. 

    “The upcoming Atlantic hurricane season is expected to have above-normal activity due to a confluence of factors, including near-record warm ocean temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean, development of La Nina conditions in the Pacific, reduced Atlantic trade winds and less wind shear, all of which tend to favor tropical storm formation,” NOAA wrote in a recent update. 

    Here’s a breakdown of NOAA’s hurricane season forecast: 

    • NOAA predicts an 85% chance of an above-normal 2024 Atlantic hurricane season.

    • There’s a 10% chance of a near-normal season.

    • There’s a 5% chance of a below-normal season.

    • The forecast includes 17 to 25 total named storms (winds of 39 mph or higher).

    • 8 to 13 of these storms are expected to become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher).

    • 4 to 7 of the hurricanes may become major hurricanes (category 3, 4, or 5; winds of 111 mph or higher).

    • Forecasters have 70% confidence in this range

    Given the context that La Nina is set to produce a more active hurricane season, Goldman analysts are now focusing on the potential refinery impacts of these storms and what this could potentially mean for gasoline prices at the pump.

    Goldman’s Callum Bruce’s base case is that gasoline pump prices average around $3.3/gallon through October.

    Bruce estimates pump prices in October could jump to the politically sensitive level of nearly $4 if the hurricane season is super active. If the season is calm, prices drop to $3.2.

    Here’s more from the report:

    This fall’s hurricane season, focused around August-October, but spilling modestly into July and November, may therefore be unusually important for the upcoming US Presidential election.

    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts an above-normal Atlantic hurricane season, issuing a record high forecast for storms, hurricanes, and major hurricanes in its May outlook. The midpoint of its stated forecast ranges for each category is 100-200% of their historical averages (Exhibit 3).

    Hurricanes have the potential to cause significant disruptions to US Gulf Coast refining capacity, where c.50% of US capacity lies. Most hurricanes that hit the refining centers on the Gulf Coast will take out 0.5-2.5 mb/d of refining capacity temporarily. Hurricane disruptions in the top quartile of events will take out more than 1mb/d of capacity for over a month. While these impacts are mostly temporary, large disruptions can leave c.10% of the peak disrupted capacity offline for a more extended period of time (Exhibit 4).

    Wholesale gasoline refining margins have the potential to spike around these events (Exhibit 5), by $5/bbl or more, depending on the exact path of the hurricanes. Gasoline prices tend to be most volatile as – unlike distillate – the US is a net importer, and resupply is much further away.

    The price impact tends to dissipate relatively quickly, however, as refining capacity returns relatively rapidly. In addition, there can be significant negative impacts on demand from the poor weather and flooding. We find that large USGC hurricanes disrupt 100 kb/d of demand on average in the affected months, and closer to 300 kb/d for the largest. Evacuations provide only a modest offsetting boost (<25 kb/d).

    Diesel margins meanwhile benefit more sustainably as demand is only modestly impacted (<50 kb/d) as reconstruction and rescue efforts support consumption (Exhibit 6).

    Nevertheless, retail gasoline prices can remain supported for longer as retailers are slow to lower prices after the initial spike, allowing marketing margins to expand. Despite normalized wholesale gasoline margins within a month, the top quartile of hurricane disruptions saw retail gasoline margins $0.20/gal higher over the following couple of months. The largest hurricanes have the capacity to raise these retail prices by almost $0.50/gal at their peak over this time period (Exhibit 7).

    This may be amplified by a normalisation in current very low speculative positioning in refined products – 10th-20th percentile across refined products. Our prior research has found a c.$5/bbl impact on wholesale refined product margins simply from positioning normalisation, equating to around c.$0.10/gal at the retail level.

    A significant hurricane disruption combined with a normalisation in positioning could therefore lift Oct-24 retail gasoline prices by $0.2-0.5/gal above our baseline forecasts over the full month (Exhibit 8). An extreme disruption would therefore take US retail gasoline prices to $4/gal, potentially leading to a spike in media coverage. However, retail prices would drop to $3.2/gal if crude prices are flat and disruptions are avoided.

    Queue up more SPR gasoline dumps if the active hurricane season takes out a refinery or two, as the administration will do everything in its power to prevent pump prices from hitting $4 before the elections.

    So who wins?

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

    Mother Nature or elderly Biden?

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 06/06/2024 – 17:40

  • School To Use Remote Tracking Wristbands On Children
    School To Use Remote Tracking Wristbands On Children

    Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

    A school in Switzerland has controversially announced it will trial tracking wristbands on children to keep tabs on their location.

    As highlighted by Remix News, Swiss outlet Neue Zürcher Zeitung reports that the Letten after-school care centre in Birmensdorf will require kids to wear the Bluetooth tech at all times during care hours unless parents specifically opt out.

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

    The wristbands will track the wearers, with staff being alerted should a pupil wander outside the sanctioned location without prior authorisation.

    The justification given for the tracking is that the number of children in the facility is always changing and that it is necessary to provide “high quality care.”

    The report also notes that “important individual information about food intolerances” can be stored in the system for the children to make check-in at lunch easier.

    The report notes that the tracking system was developed by the head of the education centre, Joel Giger, as part of a start-up called Companion.

    Theo school administrators stated “Birmensdorf school can gain new insights through the pilot project and at the same time offer the company the opportunity to test the product together with specialists on-site as part of the pilot project.”

    Sounds like the guy is using school kids as Guinea pigs for his big brother surveillance side hustle.

    Swiss cantonal data protection authority spokesman Hans Peter Waltisberg notes that “a permanent localization of pupils does not seem necessary for the care of children.”

    “It should be examined whether a Bluetooth wristband is the appropriate means of localization. For example, the fact that a wristband can also be removed must be taken into account,” he added.

    Similar technology is used to literally keep tabs on parolees or convicts released on the proviso of good behaviour.

    If the educational centre wants to become known as the school that treats children like prisoners it’s going about it the right way.

    *  *  *

    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
    Thu, 06/06/2024 – 17:15

  • "It's Mind-Boggling": Los Angeles Hit With Surge Of Fire Hydrant Thefts
    “It’s Mind-Boggling”: Los Angeles Hit With Surge Of Fire Hydrant Thefts

    Just when you think the Democrats’ socialist utopia state of California can’t possibly sink any higher (sic), it does just that: first it was catalytic converters, now it’s fire hydrants.

    According to CBS News, a California state water company has responded to a growing frenzy of fire hydrant thefts in Los Angeles by installing locked shields to cover the bolts on hydrants to stop thieves.

    Golden State Water Company, which owns and operates the fire hydrants, says thefts now happen daily, especially in South Los Angeles, which is one of the impoverished communities where thefts are extremely high, with two of the most recent believed to have happened last Thursday without neighbors even realizing it.

    “It’s mind-boggling that someone would just come into a neighborhood and just steal a fire hydrant,” neighbor Krystail Cousins said. “You’re now putting a whole neighborhood in danger.”

    And yet that is precisely what Krystail’s predominantly minority neighbors have been engaged in.

    The water company’s Southwest District general manager, Kate Nutting, said as the hydrants are made of iron and brass, she believes they are being sold on the black market for scrap metal.

    “Since the beginning of 2023, we’ve had over 300 hydrants stolen, and it’s been ramping up in 2024 which is why we’ve been taking even more aggressive measures to try to stop it”, Nutting said. “We’re really alarmed about this happening. It is a big public safety issue.”

    The measures the company has taken include welding hydrants to block access to the bolts, Nutting said. But thieves have continued, with methods including ramming hydrants with vehicles or using specialized tools to remove metal parts.

    “In some cases, they are very persistent in getting those parts out,” Nutting said.

    Many of the thefts have occurred in the communities of Florence-Graham, Willowbrook and West Rancho Dominguez, as well as eastern Gardena near the 110 Freeway.

    Sometimes, thieves have unscrewed bolts to remove hydrants. Other times, they’ve used a vehicle to knock the hydrant loose. Those targeting the hydrants have often used a shutoff valve before dislodging them. But on several occasions, they’ve left water gushing.

    The company has been sending out replacements typically the same day they are reported stolen, each one costing about $3,500. It’s not clear what their value is on the black market. The total cost of all the stolen hydrants has amounted to over a $1.2 million loss, the company said.

    Missing hydrants are also a safety risk, as it impedes fire-fighting capabilities and the water company said it can potentially compromise the water system’s ability to deliver safe and reliable drinking water. The L.A. County Fire Department said the thefts pose a threat to public safety.

    “Fire hydrants are crucial in providing a reliable water source for firefighting operations, and their absence can hamper rescue efforts and lead to delays extinguishing fires,” the department said in an email.

    Experts agree that small delays in fighting fires can be pivotal. Venkatesh Kodur, a professor and director of Michigan State University’s Center on Structural Fire Engineering and Diagnostics, said the best opportunity to knock down a blaze, particularly a house fire, is within the first five to 10 minutes, when damage is still minimal.

    Typically after 15 minutes, he said, “the damage and the fire grows almost exponentially … and every second is important.”

    Kodur said if the work of fighting a fire is hindered by a missing hydrant, the flames can spread more easily. And although the thieves may be lured by the payday, Kodur said, the fact is that brass, copper and steel don’t fetch very much money.

    “These are people selling these metals to scrap dealers for peanuts,” Kodur said.

    Yet “peanuts” is precisely what the desperate locals will do anything for at a time when the scourge that is “Bidenomics” has left them beyond broke.

    Golden State Water wants to remind thieves that tampering with fire hydrants is a federal crime; then again gun sales in Chicago are “illegal” which has shockingly failed to stop local minorities from mass exterminating each other at a record pace in recent years.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 06/06/2024 – 16:50

  • What's Next For Battlefield America? Israel's High-Tech Military Tactics Point The Way
    What’s Next For Battlefield America? Israel’s High-Tech Military Tactics Point The Way

    Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “I did not know Israel was capturing or recording my face. [But Israel has] been watching us for years from the sky with their drones. They have been watching us gardening and going to schools and kissing our wives. I feel like I have been watched for so long.”

    – Mosab Abu Toha, Palestinian poet

    If you want a glimpse of the next stage of America’s transformation into a police state, look no further than how Israel – a long-time recipient of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid from the U.S. – uses its high-tech military tactics, surveillance and weaponry to advance its authoritarian agenda.

    Military checkpoints. Wall-to-wall mass surveillance. Predictive policing. Aerial surveillance that tracks your movements wherever you go and whatever you do. AI-powered facial recognition and biometric programs carried out with the knowledge or consent of those targeted by it. Cyber-intelligence. Detention centers. Brutal interrogation tactics. Weaponized drones. Combat robots.

    We’ve already seen many of these military tactics and technologies deployed on American soil and used against the populace, especially along the border regions, a testament to the heavy influence Israel’s military-industrial complex has had on U.S. policing.

    Indeed, Israel has become one of the largest developers and exporters of military weapons and technologies of oppression worldwide.

    Journalist Antony Loewenstein has warned that Pegasus, one of Israel’s most invasive pieces of spyware, which allows any government or military intelligence or police department to spy on someone’s phone and get all the information from that phone, has become a favorite tool of oppressive regimes around the world. The FBI and NYPD have also been recipients of the surveillance technology which promises to turn any “target’s smartphone into an intelligence gold mine.”

    Yet it’s not just military weapons that Israel is exporting. They’re also helping to transform local police agencies into extensions of the military.

    According to The Intercept, thousands of American law enforcement officers frequently travel for training to Israel, “one of the few countries where policing and militarism are even more deeply intertwined than they are here,” as part of an ongoing exchange program that largely flies under the radar of public scrutiny.

    A 2018 investigative report concluded that imported military techniques by way of these exchange programs that allow police to study in Israel have changed American policing for the worse. “Upon their return, U.S. law enforcement delegates implement practices learned from Israel’s use of invasive surveillance, blatant racial profiling, and repressive force against dissent,” the report states. “Rather than promoting security for all, these programs facilitate an exchange of methods in state violence and control that endanger us all.”

    “At the very least,” notes journalist Matthew Petti, “visits to Israel have helped American police justify more snooping on citizens and stricter secrecy. Critics also assert that Israeli training encourages excessive force.”

    Petti documents how the NYPD set up a permanent liaison office in Israel in the wake of 9/11, eventually implementing “one of the first post-9/11 counterterrorism programs that explicitly followed the Israeli model. In 2002, the NYPD tasked a secret ‘Demographics Unit’ with spying on Muslim-American communities. Dedicated ‘mosque crawlers’ infiltrated local Muslim congregations and attempted to bait worshippers with talk of violent revolution.”

    That was merely the start of American police forces being trained in martial law by foreign nations under the guise of national security theater. It has all been downhill from there.

    As Alex Vitale, a sociology professor who has studied the rise of global policing, explains, “The focus of this training is on riot suppression, counterinsurgency, and counterterrorism—all of which are essentially irrelevant or should be irrelevant to the vast majority of police departments. They shouldn’t be suppressing protest, they shouldn’t be engaging in counterinsurgency, and almost none of them face any real threat from terrorism.”

    This ongoing transformation of the American homeland into a techno-battlefield tracks unnervingly with the dystopian cinematic visions of Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report and Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium, both of which are set 30 years from now, in the year 2054.

    In Minority Report, police agencies harvest intelligence from widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, precognitive technology, and neighborhood and family snitch programs in order to capture would-be criminals before they can do any damage.

    While Blomkamp’s Elysium acts as a vehicle to raise concerns about immigration, access to healthcare, worker’s rights, and socioeconomic stratification, what was most striking was its eerie depiction of how the government will employ technologies such as drones, tasers and biometric scanners to track, target and control the populace, especially dissidents.

    With Israel in the driver’s seat and Minority Report and Elysium on the horizon, it’s not so far-fetched to imagine how the American police state will use these emerging technologies to lock down the populace, root out dissidents, and ostensibly establish an “open-air prison” with disconcerting similarities to Israel’s technological occupation of present-day Palestine.

    For those who insist that such things are celluloid fantasies with no connection to the present, we offer the following as a warning of the totalitarian future at our doorsteps.

    Facial Recognition

    Fiction: One of the most jarring scenes in Elysium occurs towards the beginning of the film, when the protagonist Max Da Costa waits to board a bus on his way to work. While standing in line, Max is approached by two large robotic police officers, who quickly scan Max’s biometrics, cross-check his data against government files, and identify him as a former convict in need of close inspection. They demand to search his bag, a request which Max resists, insisting that there is nothing for them to see. The robotic cops respond by manhandling Max, throwing him to the ground, and breaking his arm with a police baton. After determining that Max poses no threat, they leave him on the ground and continue their patrol. Likewise, in Minority Report, police use holographic data screens, city-wide surveillance cameras, dimensional maps and database feeds to monitor the movements of its citizens and preemptively target suspects for interrogation and containment.

    Fact: We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed, corralled and controlled by technologies that answer to government and corporate rulers. This is exactly how Palestinian poet and New Yorker contributor Mosab Abu Toha found himself, within minutes of passing through an Israeli military checkpoint in Gaza with his wife and children in tow, asked to step out line, only to be blindfolded, handcuffed, interrogated, then imprisoned in an Israeli detention center for two days, beaten and further interrogated. Toha was finally released in what Israeli soldiers chalked up to a “mistake,” yet there was no mistaking the AI-powered facial recognition technology that was used to pull him out of line, identify him, and label him (erroneously) as a person of interest.

    Drones

    Fiction: In another Elysium scene, Max is hunted by four drones while attempting to elude the authorities. The drones, equipped with x-ray cameras, biometric readers, scanners and weapons, are able to scan whole neighborhoods, identify individuals from a distance—even through buildings, report their findings back to police handlers, pursue a suspect, and target them with tasers and an array of lethal weapons.

    Fact: Drones, some deceptively small and yet powerful enough to capture the facial expressions of people hundreds of feet below them, have ushered in a new age of surveillance. Not even those indoors, in the privacy of their homes, will be safe from these aerial spies, which can be equipped with technology capable of peering through walls. In addition to their surveillance capabilities, drones can also be equipped with automatic weapons, grenade launchers, tear gas, and tasers.

    Biometric scanners and national IDs

    Fiction: Throughout Elysium, citizens are identified, sorted and dealt with by way of various scanning devices that read their biometrics—irises, DNA, etc.—as well as their national ID numbers, imprinted by a laser into their skin. In this way, citizens are tracked, counted, and classified. Likewise, in Minority Report, tiny sensory-guided spider robots converge on a suspected would-be criminal, scan his biometric data and feed it into a central government database. The end result is that there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide to escape the government’s all-seeing eyes.

    Fact: Given the vast troves of data that various world governments, including Israel and the U.S., is collecting on its citizens and non-citizens alike, we are not far from a future where there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. In fact, between the facial recognition technology being handed out to law enforcement, license plate readers being installed on police cruisers, local police creating DNA databases by extracting DNA from non-criminals, including the victims of crimes, and police collecting more and more biometric data such as iris scans, we are approaching the end of anonymity. It won’t be long before police officers will be able to pull up a full biography on any given person instantaneously, including their family and medical history, bank accounts, and personal peccadilloes. It’s already moving in that direction in more authoritarian regimes.

    Predictive Policing

    Fiction: In Minority Report, John Anderton, Chief of the Department of Pre-Crime, finds himself identified as the next would-be criminal and targeted for preemptive measures by the very technology that he relies on for his predictive policing. Consequently, Anderton finds himself not only attempting to prove his innocence but forced to take drastic measures in order to avoid capture in a surveillance state that uses biometric data and sophisticated computer networks to track its citizens.

    Fact: Precrime, which aims to prevent crimes before they happen, has justified the use of widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, precognitive technology, and snitch programs. As political science professor Anwar Mhajne documents, Israel has used all of these tools in its military engagements with Palestine: deploying AI surveillance and predictive policing systems in Palestinian territories; utilizing facial recognition technology to monitor and regulate the movement of Palestinians; subjecting Palestinians to facial recognition scans at checkpoints, with a color-coded mechanism to dictate who should be allowed to proceed, subjected to further questioning, or detained.

    Making the Leap from Fiction to Reality

    When Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931, he was convinced that there was “still plenty of time” before his dystopian vision became a nightmare reality. It wasn’t long, however, before he realized that his prophecies were coming true far sooner than he had imagined.

    Israel’s military influence on the United States, its advances in technological weaponry, and its rigid demand for compliance are pushing us towards a world in chains.

    Through its oppressive use of surveillance technology, Israel has erected the world’s first open-air prison, and in the process, has made itself a model for the United States.

    What we cannot afford to overlook, however, is the extent to which the American Police State is taking its cues from Israel.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we may not be an occupied territory, but that does not make the electronic concentration camp being erected around us any less of a prison.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 06/06/2024 – 16:25

  • Market Pancakes As Nvidia Gamma Squeeze Fizzles, Attention Turns To Jobs, Global Easing Cycle
    Market Pancakes As Nvidia Gamma Squeeze Fizzles, Attention Turns To Jobs, Global Easing Cycle

    After yesterday’s breathless Nvidia-led meltup, which saw the AI chipmaker surpass both $3 trillion in market cap and Apple’s valuation, today’s session was a boring affair by comparison, which saw the S&P close unchanged after a day in which the index barely moved.

    There were three reasons behind the lack of action.

    First, technicals.  As Goldman’s Brian Garrett notes, ES 5350 is the “magnetized” strike, with $9.5 billion of gamma – a record amount – to trade per 100bps; This means that dealers have to sell 35,000 eminis on a 1% rally, and buy 35,000 eminis on a 1% sell off. Said otherwise, the record dealer gamma is now preventing spoos from moving too far, too fast in either direction from 5350.

    Second, tech momentum died. After yesterday’s remarkable gamma squeeze in NVDA, which saw near calls explode as if the underlying was some penny stock and not a $3 trillion behemoth…

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

    … an early morning “rugging” of NVDA – which saw the stock lose $175 billion in market cap just seconds after the cash close as call holders liquidated positions – crushed momentum and made sure the stunning gamma squeeze would quietly fade away.

    As a result, NVDA was unable to hold on to its brand new position as the world’s 2nd most valuable company, and promptly relinquished that – and the $3 trillion market cap threshold – back to AAPL, if only for the day. Tomorrow is another day when the pre-10:1 stock split bulls will try to make NVDA the world’s biggest stock, ahead of Monday.

    Third, event risk. tomorrow we get a key jobs report, now that payrolls are once again more important than inflation, and as Goldman pointed out earlier today dealers are the longest spot gamma in history, but net short the upside tail. This means that nobody is too crazy to place big directional bets ahead of a print which could see momentum ignited in either direction depending on how the NFP print comes.

    Incidentally, Goldman believes that the set up into the print remains favorable for stocks, with a goldilocks NFP zone in the low 100s as stocks continue to cheer for a palatable slowdown). We think Big Data measures indicate a below-normal pace of job creation during the spring hiring season, and our layoff tracker has rebounded. Street is looking for a headline reading of +185k (GIR +160k, prior +175k

    And while today was boring, with little newsflow besides the latest twit from Roaring Kitty who sent GameStock soaring more than 40% just because he announced he would have a youtube livestream tomorrow at noon…

    … another historic event quietly took place when the ECB became only the second G7 bank to cut rates – after a 5 year hiatus …

    … even as the central bank raised (!) its inflation forecasts…

    … guaranteeing that any pretense of a 2% inflation target is dead and buried, something which wasn’t lost on gold and silver, both of which have soared ever since Canada cut rates first yesterday…

    … nor was it lost on oil which has recovered a big chunk of its latest losses.

    The only asset class which remained completely clueless to the return of central bank easing was – ironically – crypto, with both bitcoin and especially ethereum dumping even though traditionally they have been the best early indicators of shifting liquidity and volatility conditions. Today however, manipulation from the Jane Streets of the world and other HFT momentum igniters overcame any nascent recent bullishness…

    … which will guarantee that the army of bitcoin ETF buyers – who now own 1 million bitcoin among them, leaving less than 20 million available – will just have another cheap entry point.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 06/06/2024 – 16:01

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jun 06

Today’s News 6th June 2024

  • Mass Immigration & Decline In Security Intrinsically-Linked, Say Majority Of French
    Mass Immigration & Decline In Security Intrinsically-Linked, Say Majority Of French

    Authored by Thomas Brooke via ReMix News,

    The vast majority of French citizens, including many on the left, believe the growing feeling of insecurity across the country and mass immigration are intrinsically linked, new polling has revealed.

    According to a poll conducted by CSA for CNews, Europe 1, and JDD, 68 percent of respondents see a correlation between immigration and the rise in delinquency in France.

    The link is widely recognized among right-wing voters, with 94 percent of Republican supporters and 93 percent of those aligned with the National Rally acknowledging such a link. However, a significant minority of those who support pro-immigration left-wing parties also share this concern.

    A total of 43 percent of Socialist Party supporters, 38 percent of La France Insoumise (LFI) voters, and 34 percent of Green supporters share the view that high immigration is destabilizing France’s security.

    The link is also widely accepted by voters of French President Emmanuel Macron’s governing Renaissance party, with 68 percent of his supporters agreeing there is a link.

    Women are more likely than men to agree that immigration is affecting national security, with 70 percent of females agreeing with the statement compared to 67 percent of males.

    Similarly, older people view mass immigration less favorably, with 76 percent of those aged 50 and over acknowledging its negative effect on the country, although a majority in every age bracket concurs with that view.

    Immigration is a leading issue in France ahead of the European elections taking place later this week and a topic right-wing politicians like Marine Le Pen, Jordan Bardella, and Éric Zemmour are campaigning hard on.

    Le Pen and Bardella’s National Rally is expected to dominate the elections and emerge as France’s largest party in the European Parliament, suggesting its hardline approach to mass immigration is resonating with the electorate.

    The party’s successes have led to a tactical shift from previous establishment parties, including the center-right Republicans. When asked recently about the links between mass immigration and national insecurity, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy replied, “Who can seriously say that there aren’t any? This does not naturally mean that a foreigner is a delinquent. But of course, the link is obvious.”

    “The number of foreigners in our prisons and the part they take in delinquency in general are clear. To deny it is nothing more than a new denial of reality,” he added.

    Last August, President Macron said the country needed to “reduce immigration significantly, starting with illegal immigration,” warning the current arrival rate was “not sustainable.”

    This followed remarks by Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin a year prior revealing that half of criminal acts in the largest French cities are committed by foreign nationals.

    Polling conducted in December last year showed French citizens remained disillusioned with the government’s open-door immigration policy, with 80 percent of respondents supporting a ban on immigration and nearly two-thirds backing a referendum on the issue.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 06/06/2024 – 02:00

  • 21 Attorneys General Demand Revisions To Law School Admissions Standards
    21 Attorneys General Demand Revisions To Law School Admissions Standards

    Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. (Courtesy of Jonathan Skrmetti)

    Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and attorneys general from 20 other states have called for significant revisions to the American Bar Association’s (ABA)  Standards and Rules of Procedure for the Approval of Law Schools.

    The attorneys general claim in a letter that ABA standards direct law school administrators to violate both the Constitution and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibit employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.

    Their demand comes in response to the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA), which ended the use of so-called affirmative action in higher education.

    “The rule of law cannot long survive if the organization that accredits legal education requires every American law school to ignore the Constitution and civil rights law,” Mr. Skrmetti said in a press release announcing the action.

    “The American Bar Association has long pursued the high calling of promoting respect for the law and the integrity of the legal profession, and we call on the organization to recommit to those ideals and ensure that its standards for law schools comport with federal law.

    “If the standards continue to insist on treating students and faculty differently based on the color of their skin, they will burden every law school in America with punitive civil rights litigation.”

    The coalition of attorneys general emphasized that the ABA’s current Standard 206 on Diversity and Inclusion is incompatible with the Supreme Court’s ruling.

    They argue that Standard 206, as it stands, not only encourages but mandates law schools to engage in race-based admissions and hiring practices, which the Court has deemed unconstitutional.

    Supreme Court’s Landmark Decision

    The Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions was a watershed moment, declaring that the use of race in the admissions processes of Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

    The Court stated unequivocally that racial classifications, regardless of their intent, must meet the “daunting” strict-scrutiny standard, which race-based affirmative action programs in higher education cannot satisfy.

    The ruling underscored that educational institutions cannot use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities, stressing that any attempt to indirectly achieve race-focused outcomes through ostensibly neutral policies would still warrant strict scrutiny.

    This decision necessitates that all educational policies be genuinely race-neutral, aligning with the principle that eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all forms of it.

    Criticism of ABA Standard 206

    Standard 206 of the ABA Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools requires law schools to demonstrate a commitment to diversity and inclusion by providing opportunities for underrepresented groups, particularly racial and ethnic minorities, and to maintain a student body and faculty diverse in gender, race, and ethnicity.

    The attorneys general argue that this standard compels law schools to consider race in both admissions and employment, directly contradicting the Supreme Court’s directive.

    The letter highlights the problematic nature of Standard 206’s mandate for “concrete action” toward achieving racial diversity, which the attorneys general contend cannot be fulfilled without engaging in unconstitutional race-based practices.

    They say that neither the standard nor its interpretations provide guidance on how to achieve diversity goals without unlawfully using race as a factor, thereby setting law schools up for potential legal challenges.

    Proposed Revisions Insufficient

    The attorneys general also critique the ABA’s proposed revisions to Standard 206, which aim to broaden the diversity criteria to include various identity characteristics.

    They argue that bundling race with other characteristics does not address the fundamental constitutional issues raised by the Supreme Court’s decision.

    The proposed revisions, they assert, still implicitly require law schools to consider race, thus failing to bring the standard into compliance with federal law.

    The letter calls for clarity and alignment with the Constitution, urging the ABA to ensure that complying with binding nondiscrimination laws does not jeopardize a law school’s accreditation.

    The attorneys general stress that the current and revised standards force law schools into a precarious position, balancing between adhering to federal law and meeting the ABA’s accreditation requirements, which could lead to significant legal and operational repercussions.

    The coalition of attorneys general, led by Mr. Skrmetti, argues for the ABA to revise its diversity standards in a manner that fully complies with the Supreme Court’s ruling and federal law.

    They warn that without such revisions, law schools may face punitive civil-rights litigation and risk perpetuating a culture of legal and ethical ambiguity that could undermine the profession and the nation.

    States joining Tennessee in the letter to the ABA were Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.

    The Epoch Times reached out for comment from the ABA.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 23:20

  • ECB Preview And Scenario Analysis: The First Rate Cut Since 2019
    ECB Preview And Scenario Analysis: The First Rate Cut Since 2019

    Hot on the heels of the first G7 central bank rate cut this cycle, when the BOC cut rates by 25bps this morning, tomorrow the ECB is widely expected to follow suit and lower the deposit rate from 4.00% to 3.75% for the first time since September 2019, with markets assigning a 94% chance to this outcome. With a rate cut effectively guaranteed (absent some shock) focus will be on hints over future rate cuts, with markets not fully pricing in another move until December. Changes to staff projections are likely to be minimal. In their preview, Bank of America strategists agree that a 25bps rate cut is coming, and expect “a lot more to come by mid-2025.” That said, guidance for a meeting-by-meeting approach and data dependence probably won’t change. Small forecast revisions higher to 2024/25 are likely, but 2% core inflation in 2026 should stay, providing a soft signal to a September cut, data permitting.

    In rates markets, a cut by the European Central Bank on Thursday is already fully baked into the curve, with forward pricing nearly 25bp. But as ING Economics notes, it’s the outlook beyond June that is still open, despite communication from officials having started to move out the curve. A back-to-back cut in July is deemed unlikely, with markets attaching only a roughly 10% chance to that scenario. A second cut is almost fully priced by October, but it’s a third cut this year that is hanging in the balance. The pricing further out the curve is also influenced by drivers from abroad: weaker US data as well as sliding oil prices have also helped push rates lower in the eurozone. While EUR markets have been leaning towards a three-cut scenario for this year again, the domestic data on negotiated wages and the latest CPI print over the past weeks would argue for a more hawkish line at the upcoming meeting.

    Therefore, there is room for markets to reprice higher – but in the end, they will oscillate around the two or three-cuts scenario for now unless we get more evidence from the data. This will also spill out into the longer end of the curve, but here the factors from abroad should be felt even more with the US jobs data looming large. This will then determine whether we can get above 2.6% more lastingly in the 10Y Bund yield on a hawkish ECB.

    Courtesy of Newsquawk, here are some other key considerations ahead of the ECB’s first rate cut in five years:

    PRIOR MEETING: As expected, the ECB opted to stand pat on rates once again. The policy statement reaffirmed guidance that rates will be kept sufficiently restrictive for sufficiently long. Furthermore, policymakers will continue to follow a data-dependent and meeting-by-meeting approach and will not pre-commit to a particular rate path. That being said, and what was a new inclusion for the statement, it was noted that if the Governing Council was to gain further confidence that inflation is converging to the target in a sustained manner, it would be appropriate to reduce the current level of monetary policy restriction. In the follow-up press conference, when questioned about a potential rate cut in June, Lagarde reiterated that the ECB will have a lot more data by the time of the June meeting. In terms of the unanimity of the announcement, Lagarde stated that “a few” dissenters felt “sufficiently confident” about altering policy at the meeting, however, they ultimately rallied around the consensus. This could potentially be in-fitting with source reporting in the wake of the previous meeting which suggested some policymakers floated the idea of a second cut in July to win over a small group still pushing for an April start.

    RECENT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS: In terms of developments since the prior meeting, inflation in May rose to 2.6% from 2.4% with the super-core measure increasing to 2.9% from 2.7% with some of the increases related to base effects. The ECB’s consumer expectations survey for April saw the 12-month inflation forecast nudge lower to 2.9% from 3.0%. For market gauges, the 5y5y forward has ticked marginally higher from 2.35% to 2.36%. Elsewhere, Q1 Eurozone wages rose to 4.69% from 4.45% with the release followed up by an ECB blog stating that “wage growth reflects multiyear adjustment and wage pressures look set to decelerate in 2024”. From a growth perspective, Q1 GDP came in at 0.3% Q/Q vs. prev. 0.0%, whilst more timely survey data showed the EZ-composite PMI moved further into expansionary territory (52.3 vs. prev. 51.7) thanks to a pick up in the manufacturing sector. The accompanying report noted “considering the PMI numbers in our GDP nowcast, the Eurozone will probably grow at a rate of 0.3% during the second quarter, putting aside the spectre of recession”. Elsewhere, the EZ unemployment rate sits at a historic low of 6.4%.

    RECENT COMMUNICATIONS: Rhetoric since the April meeting has seen President Lagarde remark that the ECB will cut rates soon, barring any major surprises, whilst she is “really confident” that they have inflation under control. Chief Economist Lane noted that keeping rates overly restrictive for too long could push inflation below target in the medium-term which would require corrective action. Furthermore, he notes that the ECB thinks inflation over the coming months will bounce around at the current level and then will see another phase of disinflation bringing them back to the target later next year. Thought-leader Schnabel of Germany remarked that some elements of inflation are proving persistent and would caution against moving too fast on rates. At the hawkish end of the spectrum, Austria’s Holzmann has tried to make the case for pausing the July meeting, whilst Netherland’s Knot has stated that projection round meetings will be the key for interest rate decisions. For the doves, Italy’s Panetta commented that the ECB must weigh risk of monetary policy becoming too tight, adding that timely and small rate cuts would counter weak demand, whilst Greece’s Stournaras is of the view that three rate cuts are more likely this year.

    RATES: Expectations are for the ECB to lower the deposit rate for the first time since September 2019. Analysts are unanimous in their view that the deposit rate will be lowered from 4.0% to 3.75% with markets assigning a roughly 94% chance of such an outcome. With a 25bps cut so widely expected, the fight on the GC between the hawks and doves will be what comes thereafter with the former likely to make the case for pausing on rates in July given potential emerging upside risks to inflation, whilst the latter is set to argue that keeping policy too tight could push inflation below target. As such, any tweaks to the policy statement, hinting at further action will be of note to the market. Accordingly, focus for the release will be on how pricing beyond June evolves with the next rate cut thereafter not fully priced until December (total of 56bps of cuts seen by year-end). However, ING cautions that given the data dependency of the Bank, this debate is unlikely to be resolved in June.

    MACRO PROJECTIONS: For the accompanying macro projections, ING notes that since the prior forecast round in March, oil prices have risen (from roughly USD 75/bbl at the time), which would be pro-inflationary. However, offsetting this, is the more hawkish market curve which sees around 113bps of cuts by the end of 2025 vs. around 150bps in March. Overall, the bank expects “a slight upward revision of growth and inflation for this year but no changes to the profile and the timing of inflation dropping below 2%”. That being said, economists at the Bank note “the risks of inflation remaining sticky and not being entirely under control are increasing”.

    March staff projections

    HICP INFLATION:

    • 2024: 2.3% (exp. 2.4%)
    • 2025: 2.0% (exp. 2.1%)
    • 2026: 1.9% (exp. 2.0%)

    HICP CORE INFLATION (EX-ENERGY & FOOD):

    • 2024: 2.6%
    • 2025: 2.1%
    • 2026: 2.0%

    GDP:

    • 2024: 0.6% (exp. 0.7%)
    • 2025: 1.5% (exp. 1.4%)
    • 2026: 1.6% (exp. 1.4%)

    Finally, courtesy of ING, here is a scenario analysis laying out how to position for the various alternatives:

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 22:52

  • "Biden Knew": Hunter, James Biden Slapped With Criminal Referrals Over "Influence Peddling Schemes"
    “Biden Knew”: Hunter, James Biden Slapped With Criminal Referrals Over “Influence Peddling Schemes”

    House Republicans have referred Hunter and James Biden to the DOJ for criminal prosecution, accusing the pair of making false statements to Congress amidst an ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

    The criminal referrals, which were formalized on Monday, culminate from seven months of investigative work by three House committees. The probe alleges an extensive influence peddling operation involving the president’s family, linking millions of dollars in international business deals to potentially corrupt figures and entities, including those connected to the Chinese Communist Party.

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

    “Our investigation has revealed President Biden knew about, participated in, and benefitted from his family cashing in on the Biden name around the world,” said Rep. James Comer (R-KY), Chairman of the House Oversight Committee. Comer and Rep. Jim Jordan of the House Oversight Committee, as well as Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith, suggested multiple charges including perjury for Hunter Biden.

    “Despite this record of evidence, President Biden continues to lie to the American people about his involvement in these influence peddling schemes. It appears making false statements runs in the Biden family. We’ve caught President Biden’s son and brother making blatant lies to Congress in what appears to be a concerted effort to hide Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s schemes,” reads the referral.

    As Just the News reports further, the chairmen identified three instances in which they believe Hunter Biden lied to the committee.

    • “[F]alsely distanced himself from” one of his companies, Rosemont Seneca Bohai, LLC, and its bank account that received millions for foreign entities and individuals. Despite this, that bank account transferred funds to him from those foreign sources.
    • Making false statements about holding a position at that same company. Documents released after the first son’s testimony show he signed a document identifying himself as corporate secretary of the enterprise.
    • Misrepresented a text conversation with Chinese company executive “Zhao” with whom he invoked his father’s presence in a threatening text message. Biden claimed he mistakenly messaged the wrong person, however messages released by one of the committees show he continued to speak with that same executive days afterward.

    The committee also argue presidential brother James Biden lied in his deposition by:

    • Saying he did not meet with Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski while the group pursued a deal with CEFC China Energy.

    “Lying to Congress is a serious crime with serious consequences,” said Jordan. “Hunter and James Biden did just that. They lied to coverup President Biden’s involvement in their family’s international influence peddling schemes that have generated millions of dollars. These criminal referrals are a reflection of criminal wrongdoing by the Biden family, and the Department of Justice must take steps to hold the Bidens accountable.”

    We’re sure Merrick Garland will get right on it!

     

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 22:30

  • Cognitive Warfare, Mental Manipulation, & Tyranny Of Digital Transformation
    Cognitive Warfare, Mental Manipulation, & Tyranny Of Digital Transformation

    Authored by Jesse Smith via Global Research,

    A centuries-old plan to control humanity on a micro-level is being enforced through the construction of a new bio-digital prison system. Relegated to mere conspiracy theory by legacy media and vehemently denied by accused conspirators, the plan continues unabated with only pockets of resistance — nowhere near enough to bring the house of cards down.

    The plan has been identified by many throughout the decades. It is both simple and complex; subtle yet overt; ancient yet contemporary; and alluring yet appalling. Under the guise of safety, convenience, and inclusion, humanity is being primed to accept complete and total surveillance as a condition of simple existence in a “brave new world.”

    That’s the plan in a nutshell. What follows are the gory details.

    The Era of Cognitive Warfare

    To accelerate the paradigm shift toward total surveillance, cognitive warfare (CW) – a significant upgrade over mere psyops of the past – has been declared on the global population. The purpose of this war is to modify human thought, belief, behavior, and identity. According to a 2021 NATO report, cognitive warfare is defined as (emphasis added throughout):

    “a combined arms approach that integrates the non-kinetic warfare capabilities of cyber, information, psychological and social engineering in order to win without physical fighting. It is a new type of warfare defined as the weaponization of public opinion by external entities. This is carried out for the purpose of influencing and/or destabilizing a nation.”

    A separate NATO report from 2022 adds that cognitive warfare is:

    “…the most advanced form of human mental manipulation, to date, permitting influence over individual or collective behavior, with the goal of obtaining a tactical or strategic advantage. …the human brain becomes the battlefield. The pursued objective is to influence not only what the targets think, but also the way they think and, ultimately, the way they act.”

    The U.S. Naval Institute has also recognized the need for a cognitive warfare strategy, stating:

    “…An individual’s cognition is now a target. Advances in cognitive psychology and information communication technology (ICT) enable actors to target individuals’ situational comprehension and will with precision. In light of these changes, cognitive warfare (CW) has emerged as a new war-fighting concept…

    Cognitive warfare operations will take on many forms and unfold along varying timelines. Some may focus on reinforcing groups’ or individuals’ existing ideals, while others may seek to disrupt cohesion or accepted beliefs. The U.S. approach to CW, however, must uphold U.S. values.”

    Adding that technologies like machine learning and brain-computer interfaces (BCI) boost the efficiency of cognitive warfare, the Geneva Center for Security Policy (GCSP), a frequent NATO collaborator, further opined that:

    “Current and future developments in artificial intelligence (AI), cognitive sciences, neurotechnologies, and other related fields will further increase the risks of mass manipulation and lead to the possibility of the militarization of the mind as the battlefield of the future… The resulting environment is one of “permanent latent struggles” rather than a clearly delineated state of peace and war. This state has been referred to as “new generational warfare”, “unpeace” or conflict in the “noosphere”.

    To summarize what cognitive warfare entails, I offer the following definition:

    the weaponization of public opinion, manipulation and militarization of the human mind, and engineering of individual and collective behavior resulting in permanent new generation warfare, “unpeace,” and conflict in the “noosphere.”

    Wait, what on earth is the noosphere? Unfamiliar to most, the noosphere is a concept advanced largely by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a 20th century Jesuit priest who fused together elements of biblical doctrine, evolution, and mysticism. Teilhard conceived the noosphere as a realm where human minds interacted through increasingly complex social networks. He theorized that the evolving noosphere would eventually reach an “Omega Point,” where the total convergence of collective human consciousness would unify with the “Cosmic Christ.” These teachings were deemed heretical by the Catholic church and Teilhard was publicly denounced. However, his posthumous writings have influenced scores of scientists, futurists, environmentalists, globalists, occultists, new agers, and ironically many Catholics.

    One of Teilhard’s most revealing statements undergirding his philosophy is found in his book Christianity and Evolution, where he wrote: “What I am proposing to do is to narrow that gap between pantheism and Christianity by bringing out what one might call the Christian soul of Pantheism or the pantheist aspect of Christianity.” (p. 56)

    It is Teilhard’s pantheistic views that endear him to the scientific and Big Tech communities. They took up the mantle of advancing the noosphere through technologies like the Internet and social media, hoping humanity would realize Teilhard’s vision. It is this writer’s contention that the supreme goal of CW and the digital revolution is to turn Teilhard’s Omega Point from theory into reality.

    Creating a Collective Human Consciousness

    “The noosphere’s evolution involved the scale of human groups as well as the nature of the information networks that connected humans and technologies of all sorts… With each new information technology, the shared knowledge contained in the collective consciousness of the Noosphere grew, and the rate of its growth accelerated.” [source]

    NATO’s 2021 report indicated that neuroscientific warfare techniques can be used to destabilize “a political leader, a military commander, an entire staff, a population, or an Alliance…” As a result, governments and militaries from many nations are working feverishly to combat the threat mind wars pose to citizens and nations. Their alleged goals are to maintain trust in democratic values and processes while simultaneously implementing greater controls on the flow of information. Paradoxically, they are attempting to maintain (the illusion of) freedom, while authorizing new forms of digitized censorship “for the greater good.”

    What is really taking place is a game of bait and switch where citizens are told that due to the proliferation of misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, identity theft, deep fakes, and cyber-attacks, greater control is needed to police the digital public square. Add in the so-called threat of climate change, financial collapse, war, the energy crisis, future pandemics, and you have what the United Nations (UN) and World Economic Forum (WEF) deem a “polycrisis.” Tools such as artificial intelligence (AI), Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), biometric surveillance, and digital ID, have emerged as the “solutions” to these problems.

    Whether the evolving bio-digital surveillance paradigm is called the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), Great Reset, Agenda 2030, or Humanity 2.0, what’s common is the belief that bigger and better tech can transform society “for good” and combat issues of mistrust, corruption, crime, and planetary destruction. However, realizing this utopian vision requires greater levels of transparency, control, conformity, and collective thought. To successfully manipulate the public into either full acceptance or forced submission of this paradigm, the twin brothers of tyranny – surveillance and censorship – have been invoked.

    Klaus Schwab, former Executive Chairman of the WEF, spoke about this new world where privacy is “severely restricted” in a 2013 interview, mentioning:

    Everything is transparent, whether we like it or not. This is unstoppable. If we behave acceptably, and have nothing to hide, it won’t be a problem. The only question is, who determines what is acceptable.”

    In a 2016 interview with Radio Television Suisse, Schwab elaborated further on transparency, stating, “In the new world, you have to accept total transparency. It will become part of your personality… Everything will be transparent. If you have nothing to hide you have no reason to be afraid.”

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

    It’s easy to highlight statements from Schwab given his notoriety as a globalist boogeyman. Perhaps this is one of the reasons for his recent withdrawal as the WEF’s front man? Regardless, Schwab is just one of many who champion surveillance technologies to complete the transition to the new world order of total transparency. In iHuman, a documentary on AI, data scientist and Stanford Professor Michal Kosinski echoes Schwab’s convictions regarding the current state of privacy, declaring:

    Of course people should have rights to their privacy when it comes to sexual orientation or political views. But I’m also afraid that in our current technological environment this is essentially impossible. People should realize there is no going back, there’s no running away from the algorithms. The sooner we accept the inevitable and inconvenient truth that privacy is gone, the sooner we can start actually thinking about how to make sure our societies are ready for the post-privacy age.” (emphasis added)

    Once an imagined dystopia but now quickly becoming reality, omnipresent bio-digital surveillance creates an inescapable societal panopticon. The “new world” Schwab refers to is being steered by the technocratic elite running all governments, corporations, NGOs, universities, medicine, and media.

    Publicly, the surveillance society is sold as a way to bring order to a chaotic world splintered politically, racially, economically, socially, and ideologically. Privately, it is recognized as an iterative way to forge collective human consciousness as we march toward the transhumanist vision of “Singularity,” or as Teilhard would claim, the “Omega Point.”

    As this push accelerates, companies like Palantir, Amazon, and Clearview AI along with Big Brother government agencies like NSA, DHS, CIA, and the FBI continue to amass enormous amounts of data containing essentially all activity occurring in the digital space.

    Smart technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) bring the all-seeing eye of technocratic overlords into the private spaces of a growing number of residences and businesses. Backdoors in software and cyber-crime offer access to huge amounts of data believed to be private and protected, but often sold to the highest bidder. Microsoft is upping the ante on personal surveillance. With its new AI-assisted Windows Recall feature that takes screenshots of everything you do on your computer, the PC transforms into an open book recalling your entire life. Could a backdoor allow for the AI algorithm to transmit all private data back to Microsoft and its spook agency partners in real time?

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

    As I’ve written previously, Internet of Bodies devices exist to monitor and transmit all personal data to the Internet. This industry is now broadening to include an Internet of Brains, where “human brains connect to the Internet to facilitate direct brain-to-brain communication and enable access to online data networks.” The military-intelligence complex has been conducting experiments on the human brain for a long time. The CIA’s MK-Ultra and the White House’s Brain Initiative are just two examples revealing the government’s longing to hack the brain and create a hivemind society where thoughts and actions can be directly controlled through technology and/or mind-altering substances.

    The company behind both reports connecting bodies and brains to the Internet is the RAND Corporation. RAND’s first president, H. Rowan Gaither, declared his goal to be “a society where technocrats ruled using objective analysis.” Author Alex Abella, who wrote the definitive book on RAND, expounded on their technocratic goals, saying:

    RAND’s ultimate goal was to have technocrats running every aspect of society in pursuit of a one world government that would be administered under “the rule of reason,” a ruthless world where efficiency was king and men were little more than machines, which is why RAND studied the social sciences because they were at a loss to work out how to deal with people and how human beings did not always act in their own predictable self-interests.”

    RAND was an early pioneer of cognitive warfare having invented the Delphi Technique for the U.S. Department of Defense during the Cold War. It was originally used to forecast the impact of technology on warfare. It soon became a tool used to fool citizens into thinking their opinions were being used to shape public policy. However, policy makers had already predetermined the course of action. Officials skillfully used the Delphi Technique to steer the decision-making process, making it seem as if the citizens agreed with them.

    RAND has certainly done its part in forging collective consciousness and building the technocratic new world order. Its website openly boasts that “satellites, systems analysis, computing, the Internet – almost all the defining features of the Information Age were shaped in part at RAND.”

    AI, Biometrics and Digital ID – Tools of Freedom or Tyranny?

    “I’ve often said that digital inclusion is extremely important. I think the 21st century’s infrastructure is mobility, broader than cloud. I don’t think it should matter where you are born, where you come from or who you are. You should be part of our society, and to be part of our society, you actually need to be digitally included.”– Hans Vestberg, Chief Executive Officer of Verizon

    In the papers quoted previously on cognitive warfare, malicious manipulation of digital technology is viewed as a heinous crime that must be stopped at all costs. However, it can be argued that cognitive warfare has been perpetuated against the entire world population through the process of digitization itself.

    The Digital Revolution (aka the Information Age or Third Industrial Revolution) transitioned the world from analog and mechanical devices to the digital technology of today. This Third Industrial Revolution is now giving way to the 4IR, where the ultimate goal is to merge man with machines. This futurist archetype denigrates humanity to mere bits of data – ripe for control and manipulation by the data owners.

    Humans once widely considered God’s crowning achievement – reflecting the very image of the Creator of all things – are now being transitioned through self-directed evolution to forge a new identity by becoming one with technology. Venture into any public space and it’s likely you’ll see most people transfixed by their smartphones, oblivious to real humans nearby. But this revolution, largely mainstreamed by Steve Jobs and Apple, was just the beginning. The complete transition requires the unholy trinity of AI, biometrics, and digital ID, to serve as a temporary global brain until humanity reaches the imagined transcendence where godhood itself is achieved.

    AI is simultaneously being heralded as the greatest human achievement ever and excoriated as the greatest threat to human survival. Filmmaker Tonje Hessen Schei unveiled both perspectives in her documentary iHuman. Two of the most eye-opening statements occur within the film’s first ten minutes.

    We are made of data. Every one of us is made of data – in terms of how we behave, how we talk, how we love, what we do every day. So, computer scientists are developing deep learning algorithms that can learn to identify, classify, and predict patterns within massive amounts of data. We are facing a form of precision surveillance, you could call it algorithmic surveillance, and it means that you cannot go unrecognized. You are always under the watch of algorithms.” – Eleonore Pauwels, United Nations University

    Almost all the AI development on the planet today is done by a handful of big technology companies or by a few large governments. If we look at what AI is mostly being develop for, I would say it’s killing, spying, and brainwashing… We have military AI, we have a whole surveillance apparatus being built using AI by major governments, and we have an advertising industry which is oriented toward recognizing what ads to try to sell to someone.”

    – Ben Goertzel, Chief Computer Scientist, Hanson Robotics

    AI has come a long way since the film’s release in 2020, and Big Tech leaders and investors such as Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Peter Diamandis offer a more positive outlook. Some of the good AI is being used for includes detecting deadly weapons, diagnosing life-threatening health problems, protecting biodiversity, and improving access to nutrients and water. Another “good” outcome according to Musk is that “probably none of us will have a job” and instead will have to rely on “universal high income,” a fantasy unlikely to come true. To top it off, he predicts humans will be relegated to “giving AI meaning” while man’s meaning fades away.

    When asked how humans will navigate our identity as AI continues to expand, Ray Kurzweil, futurist and Google director of engineering, said: “It’s going to be merged with us. We already carry around a lot of digital intelligence today and that’s actually how this will be manifest, merging it with ourselves.” During this same event, Peter Diamandis, XPrize Foundation and Singularity University founder, discussed meshing our minds together into a “hive consciousness,” a concept he refers to as “Meta-Intelligence.”

    Can both outlooks regarding the future of AI be true? One describes killing, brainwashing, and oppressive surveillance while the other forecasts planetary and individual problem solving and a glorious merger of man and machine. Are the positives being oversold to suspend doubts and fears regarding potential negative outcomes? Perhaps an examination of digital ID and biometrics can provide some clarity on which view is most accurate.

    One ID to Rule Them All

    Source: World Economic Forum

    The United Nations Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) play a prominent role in advancing global digital transformation. Each of the 17 SDGs functions as a roadmap to permanently restructuring a portion of society. All 193 UN member nations are in lockstep with the plan.

    SDG 16 – Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions says that “by 2030, [all countries must] provide legal identity for all, including birth registration” delivering the justification for digital IDs. SDG 1 – No Poverty, advocates for “digital IDs linked with bank or mobile money accounts” to “improve the delivery of social protection coverage and serve to better reach eligible beneficiaries.”

    According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), further justification for digital legal IDs include:

    • Identifying the displaced – tracking population movements, facilitating swift access to essential information for each human being.

    • Using digital ID for registration – enabling the capture of disaggregated data by age, gender, disability, and income, offering insights into the diverse impacts of disasters on different groups.

    • Disaster preparedness and emergency management – storing valuable personal information, including residence and medical conditions and aid in identifying vulnerable populations and critical infrastructure.

    • Energy system sustainability and resilience – leveraging digital legal ID data to track energy consumption, inspire behavior change, and enhance sustainability measures can mitigate climate-related disasters.

    • Empowering communities – revolutionizing community participation in the energy sector by providing secure access to energy resources and enabling energy trading within community microgrids.

    On the surface, these reasons for digital ID seem legitimate and even noble. The UN and its government and NGO partners always sell the need for digital ID under the guise of:

    • fostering economic and social inclusion

    • tracking immigrants, migrants, and refugees

    • protecting against identity theft and financial fraud

    • simplifying access to government services

    • lessening exposure of personal information through cyber attacks

    • enhancing convenience

    • promoting information integrity

    • mitigating the climate and energy crises

    • reducing human error in identifying individuals

    • slowing human trafficking

    It’s hard to argue these are not altruistic goals. Nonetheless, digital IDs can also be used to:

    • employ 24/7 surveillance and data collection

    • restrict travel and access to goods and services

    • destroy privacy and online anonymity

    • restrict access to social media and Internet services

    • track compliance with medical dictates

    • control access to banking, public services, public spaces, entertainment venues, medical facilities, workplaces, schools, etc.

    • create a social credit system that ranks individuals based on government compliance

    • limit access to vital needs such as water, food, and energy

    • compromise a person’s identity through security breaches

    According to Comparitech, 50 countries already have fully digitized identification schemes, overlooking the dangers highlighted. The rest of the world is also hastily moving forward to create digital public infrastructure (DPI), where digital ID takes center stage. A few recent headlines attest to this urgency.

    Despite all the glowing promises from the UN, digital IDs threaten to give governments the ability to control a person’s life down to minute details. Brett Solomon, a digital human rights advocate and executive director of Access Now, agrees, mentioning that digital ID “poses one of the gravest risks to human rights of any technology…” He further adds that “we are rushing headlong into a future where new technologies will converge to make the risk much more severe.”

    Papers No Longer Needed – Just Your Face

    “If corporations and governments start harvesting our biometric data en masse, they can get to know us far better than we know ourselves, and they can then not just predict our feelings but also manipulate our feelings and sell us anything they want — be it a product or a politician. Biometric monitoring would make Cambridge Analytica’s data hacking tactics look like something from the Stone Age.” – Yuval Noah Harari

    One of the converging technologies increasing the threat from digital IDs is biometric identification. This rapidly growing field includes identifying humans through facial recognition, iris and retina scans, fingerprints, voice recognition, gestures, bodily implants, DNA matching, and gait (how humans walk and move).

    Even more frightening is the proposed use to detect:

    Facial recognition stands out as the most pervasive and perhaps most problematic biometric tactic. It is being used by law enforcement and border control, in medical facilities, retail stores, stadiums, airports, and government buildings. It’s utilized by banks and financial services, healthcare, and governments to verify identity. It is also a fundamental building block for the creation of smart cities.

    Each use case may provide benefits such as convenience and security but also poses risks that could exacerbate tyrannical control of the population. With technologies poised to detect emotion and mental state, a Minority Report-style precrime detection regime could be installed. But what happens to those who have been misidentified? What about those penalized for minor infractions like jaywalking or criticizing the government as exemplified in China’s social credit system?

    Digital ID and biometric technologies have been introduced as a technocratic panacea offering greater inclusivity, convenience, and safety. In reality, they reduce human identity to a sequence of cloud-stored data while enabling total surveillance of travel, economic activity, and health status with the potential to obliterate privacy and anonymity.

    I’m sure they exist, but I’ve never met anyone desiring a digital ID, especially after the autocratic fiasco of vaccine passports during the COVID era. According to a report by Iain Davis and Whitney Webb, this resistance is not imaginary, as they indicated “the rollout of CBDCs and the prerequisite digital ID has so far been a disaster for the regime. Regardless of the culture, people in India, China and elsewhere have shown a distinct lack of enthusiasm for embracing their planned digital future. In fact, they are actively resisting in many instances.”

    Australia is one country that faced staunch opposition to its digital ID plans. Though its digital ID system legislation was recently passed by Parliament, it did not go without resistance. In fact, concessions were made to those expressing concerns about privacy, biometric testing, and mandatory usage within the legislation. A recent Sky News video describes the extent of the resistance, echoing many of the concerns we have already presented.

    The cognitive warfare-op has been deliberately engineered to make ­people think there is a bottom-up demand for digital surveillance tools. Conversely, the demand is coming solely from the top through the United Nations, World Economic Forum, World Bank, G20, World Trade Organization, Rockefeller Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Central Banks, Council on Foreign Relations, Better Identity Coalition, Apple, Google, Visa and Mastercard, ID2020, Digital Impact Alliance, Sovrin Foundation, Thales, Idemia, governments worldwide, and a host of private companies too numerous to mention.

    Digital ID can conceivably allow surveillance of everything one does and says online. With the overemphasis on mis- and disinformation, digital IDs can strengthen Big Tech and government’s ability to control speech. By censoring, deplatforming, and restricting access, ideas and speech deemed “hateful” or contrary to accepted narratives can be suppressed, erased, or prevented from ever appearing.

    One of the ways to dismiss concerns is by reassuring citizens that digital IDs will not become mandatory and that other forms of ID will still be accepted. However, these assurances seem unlikely to last given the billions of dollars being spent on digital ID efforts from governments and corporations worldwide. The switcheroo will probably occur sooner or later.

    A Freer, Decentralized or More Tightly Controlled World?

    “Government is the biggest threat to digital data anywhere around the world… What is national security? All a government needs to do to violate a person’s right to privacy is write a letter and cite national security.” – Solomon Okedara, Digital Rights Lawyers Initiative

    We have been constantly told that the digital genie unleashed can’t be put back in the bottle. Scientists, tech wizards, and bureaucrats are seizing opportunities to craft the future and stake their claim to the billions of dollars up for grabs in research, development, and deployment.

    There’s no doubt that some good may come from their efforts. As history has shown, whether technology is used for good or evil depends on the intent of those who possess and control it. The tools of digital transformation may benefit society, alleviating some of the frustrating, time-wasting processes we regularly engage in. But the potential for social, financial, and even mental control must not be disregarded. Freedom, liberty, and justice depend on eternal vigilance.

    Is it mere coincidence that bio-digital surveillance tech such as AI, digital ID, biometrics, CBDC, IoT, Smart Meters, and 5G all working together can achieve the societal vision described in The Technocracy Study Course of 1945? Is it also by chance that many of the UN SDGs mirror many elements outlined in this publication?

    Technocracy expert Patrick Wood doesn’t believe so, noting that:

    …technocrats demand that every single person in society be forced to participate in their system. Outliers were not to be allowed then, nor are they to be allowed today. Want proof? Look for the motto “Ensuring that no one is left behind” throughout the United Nations’ literature on sustainable development. Another word for “ensure” is “guarantee.” Globalists’ guarantees take the form of “mandates.” – Patrick Wood, The Evil Twins of Technocracy and Transhumanism (p. 68), Kindle Edition

    Going further, Wood adds that:

    According to The Technocracy Study Course, the anticipated and promised “end products” would be:

    1. A high physical standard of living

    2. A high standard of public health

    3. A minimum of unnecessary labor

    4. A minimum of wastage of non-replaceable resources

    5. An educational system to train the entire younger generation indiscriminately as regards all considerations other than inherent ability – a Continental system of human conditioning. (Ed. Note: human conditioning is not education but rather propaganda-style indoctrination.)

    Not surprisingly, these outcomes overlap perfectly with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted at the 2030 Agenda conference in September 2015:

    • Goal #1 – No poverty

    • Goal #3 – Good health and well-being (the banner on Goal #3 states: “Vaccinate your family to protect them and improve public health”)

    • Goal #8 – Decent work and economic growth

    • Goal #12 – Responsible Consumption and Production

    • Goal #4 – Quality education

    Wood also exposes the supreme value of data to technocratic systems, disclosing that:

    To technocrats, there is no such thing as too much surveillance. When they attain one level of monitoring, their next step is to increase the level of magnification and collect even more data. Their addiction to data is unquenchable and unstoppable!” (p. 126)

    The bio-digital surveillance system of today certainly fits everything Wood highlights. It is akin to a modern-day techno Tower of Babel.

    Whether or not it’s desired, mankind is being pushed toward life in a digital world bereft of privacy, individuality, and agency. The apostles of AI, transhumanism, and bio-digital surveillance are coercing the populace into their collective consciousness paradigm. Using cognitive warfare techniques to implant their vision of transcendence – the Omega Point where man and machine join to become a new godlike creature – we have all been enlisted to join them on their journey. If the path to this imagined utopia begins with warfare, surveillance, and tyranny, it’s fair to question whether the feigned concept should even be pursued. If history is a good indicator, it is likely to end in massive failure and widespread human suffering.

    All the World’s a Stage – for Warfare

    At an event hosted by the Modern War Institute at West Point in 2018, neuroscientist Dr. James Giordano told cadets that:

    … the brain is and will be the 21st century battle scape in many ways, end of story… You will encounter some form of neurocognitive science that has been weaponized not only in your military career but in your personal and professional lives… The more I know about what makes you tick, the more my interactions can be geared with you to make you tick the way I want you to.”

    As early as 1928, propaganda pioneer Edward Bernays understood how mind control could keep the public in line, proclaiming:

    The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

    Bernays may not have envisioned this form of manipulation and control could be miniaturized and replicated for all in a handheld device. There are ghosts in the machines we stare at while we work, inform, and entertain ourselves. These ghosts are directing a covert war against us, deliberately spreading mis-and disinformation to confound, persuade, and control our thoughts and actions. The U.S. Army has made this plain. We would do well to at least understand the nature of the offensive directed against us.

    As the cognitive war rages against each of us, compelling us to accept this paradigm or get left behind, tough decisions must be made, and tough questions must be asked.

    Will we buy into the scheme that equates humanity with mere machinery? Or will we realize that we’ve been awesomely and wonderfully made by a divine Creator?

    Will we participate in our own denigration, meekly complying with the selling of our data, invasion of our privacy, robbing of our wealth, and destruction of our freedom? Or will we resist the militarization of our minds by defying the technocratic tyrants?

    Will we say no to absolute transparency? Or will we keep our heads in the sand as privacy ebbs away into the ocean of bio-digital surveillance?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 22:05

  • Wall Street Admits The Biggest Economic Shocker: All Jobs In The Past Year Have Gone To Illegal Aliens
    Wall Street Admits The Biggest Economic Shocker: All Jobs In The Past Year Have Gone To Illegal Aliens

    For much of the past year we had been pounding the table on two very simple facts:  not only has the US labor market been appallingly weak, with most of the jobs “gained” in 2023 and meant to signal how strong the Biden “recovery” has been, about to be revised away (as first the Philly Fed and now Bloomberg both admit), but more shockingly, all the job growth in the past few years has gone to illegal aliens.

    We first pointed this out more than a year ago, and since then we have routinely repeated – again, again, and again – yet even though we made it abundantly clear what was happening…

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

    … going so far as to point out the specific immigration loophole illegals were using to work in the US for up to 5 years…

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

    … and even fact-checking the senile, ballot-harvesting White House occupant on multiple occasions…

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

    … we were shocked that the topic of most if not all US jobs going to illegals was still not “the biggest political talking point” of all.

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

    That’s about to change, however, because with just under 5 months left until the election, and with immigration by far the hottest political topic out there, others are finally starting to connect the dots we laid out more than a year ago.

    The first Wall Street analyst daring to point out that the employment emperor is naked, is Standard Chartered’s global head of macro, Steve Englander who in a note titled simply enough “Immigration leading to labor-market surge” (and available to pro subscribers in the usualk place), writes that according to his estimates “undocumented immigrants account for half of job growth in FY24 so far” (the actual number is far higher but we understand his initial conservatism), and adds that “asylum seekers and humanitarian parolees explain the surge in undocumented immigrants” before concluding that the continued rise in EAD approvals likely will extend strong employment growth in 2024. In other words, “strong employment growth” for American citizens, always was and remains a fabulation, and the only job growth in the US is for illegals, who will work for below minimum wage, which also explains why inflation hasn’t spiked in the past year as millions of illegals were hired.

    Below we excerpt from the Englander note because we hope that more economists, strategists and politicians will read it and grasp what we have been saying for over a year.

    Echoing what we have said for months, Englander writes that immigration, particularly illegal immigration, “is a political flashpoint that has also become an important factor in assessing economic performance. Detailed data from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) suggest that half of non-farm payroll (NFP) growth to date for FY24 (started 1 October 2023) has been from undocumented immigrants who have received an Employment Authorization Document (EAD)” (he defines undocumented immigrants as those who entered the US through non-traditional immigration pathways, such as asylum seekers, parolees, and refugees).

    The ability to track EAD issuance to undocumented workers is an advantage in estimating how much they have contributed to employment growth. NFP counts workers with an EAD just like any other. Using that data, it is easy to estimate that undocumented workers have added 109k jobs per month to NFP out of the average 231k increase so far in FY24.

    Which is staggering since last night we showed that about 100K monthly jobs are purely statistical distortions, and the real pace of job growth in the past year has been around 130K.

    So if 100K jobs per month are fabricated birth/death artifacts (i.e., not real jobs but a statistically goalseeked fudge factor), and another 109K jobs per month are illegal aliens, that leaves just about 11K jobs for everyone else, i.e., law abiding Americans.

    It also means that the labor market in the US has – for the past year – been an absolute catastrophe and harbinger of economic disaster (and is why last night we pointed out “The “Unexpected” Reason Why The Fed Will Rush To Cut Rates As Soon As Possible“).

    But wait, as Englander himself admits, the 109K estimate of illegal aliens “may be an underestimate since undocumented immigrants often have limited access to benefits, so they may be heavily motivated to find employment. The GDP impact might be lower if these workers are less educated and face language barriers in the work force.”

    Here, Englander – who did not do the Birth/Death analysis – writes that if one excludes these illegal immigrant workers, “NFP may be running at c.125k per month” and adds that “such a pace is not recession but is hardly boom time and represents a moderate underlying pace of labor demand. It should make the 231k FY24 pace of headline NFP less worrisome to the FOMC. FOMC participants might be less hawkish if the impact of undocumented immigrants on NFP was well estimated and understood.”

    Of course, if the Std Chartered analyst were to factor for the true collapse in Birth-Death adjustments discussed yesterday by Bloomberg…

    … the real number would be, well, zero!

    While the political reason behind the propaganda misrepresentation of the US jobs market is simple: after all, in an election year it is imperative that the Biden economy be portrayed as glowingly as possible, even if it means lying about everything, the cascading consequences from this fabrication are staggering. As Englander concedes, “this added labor supply also may have shifted trend employment and GDP growth, making it hard to gauge whether a strong NFP or even GDP number reflects supply or demand. If supply is driving upside surprises, the takeaway is more optimism that inflation will slow. If demand, the opposite. Soft economic data should be seen through the lens of added labor supply, while strong data releases are ambiguous.”

    Taking a closer look, such increased labor supply – from illegals – should put downward pressure on wage growth relative to a baseline with less immigration (documented or not). In measures such as average hourly earnings, the disinflationary impact would be two-fold:

    1. lower wages overall from an increase of labour supply relative to labour demand and
    2. a composition effect because the undocumented immigrants often work in low wage industries even with EADs.

    However, this is likely to be a gradual process, so the low wage impact may not be immediately visible. In addition, insofar as these workers’ wages reflect relatively low productivity, the composition effect on wages will be offset by a composition effect on productivity – unit labour cost growth may be unchanged.

    These observations notwithstanding, one can assume that the contribution of undocumented immigrants to employment is unlikely to change any time soon. Indeed, over the last 12 months an average of 280k undocumented immigrants per month have been encountered nationally, most whom can or will be eligible to work legally in coming months. The same methodology suggests that these workers contributed about one-third of FY23 employment growth.

    It gets worse.

    The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that in fiscal 2023 a further 860k individuals crossed the border without contact with US immigration authorities. While these people are not eligible for EADs they may still work off the books or with fake or borrowed documents. As such, their output and spending will show up in GDP, although it is unlikely that much if any of their “labor input” is captured. These, along with others (tourists who overstay visas, students whose visas have expired, etc.) are technically undocumented as well. But since few are eligible for EADs, it is unlikely that they are captured in any BLS survey.

    In any event, Englander estimates that over 800k undocumented immigrants found jobs in FY23, and assumes that 64.2% of EAD recipients (the average for the foreign-born population) are working. However, the employment rate may well be higher since these are likely to be “very motivated” workers, since they are not generally eligible for unemployment insurance and other benefits, so work is a necessity for many.

    Ssing this calculation, and since Nonfarm Payrolls grew 3.1 million in FY23, the 800k would represent more than 25% of NFP growth.

    But what about those record numbers of multiple job-holders we have also discussed.

    Ah yes, to address that Englander next calculates an augmented version of NFP that includes agricultural workers, self- and family-employed workers from the household survey (CPS), and subtracts multiple-job holders. By this measure employment grew 2.7 million (this is largely due to a rise in multiple-job holders, which are subtracted to avoid double counting). So far in FY24, on average over 170k undocumented immigrants have received EAD approvals every month and c.109k have found work based on employment rates. And since NFP has averaged 230k per month, these workers likely accounted for around half of job growth. Again, this number excludes the roughly 100k per month addition coming from birth/death calculation distortions which will soon be revised away as Bloomberg’s chief economist Anna Wong calculated, before concluding that “by the end of the year the printed level of nonfarm-payrolls for 2024 likely will overstate true employment by at least one million.”

    Again, this means that when stripping away the 100K in statistical “jobs” from the 230K monthly payroll number, and then removing the 109K in illegal alien workers, the number of jobs added by ordinary, legal, native-born, Americans in the past year has been – more or less – zero.

    We, for one, can’t wait for Joe Biden to explain how this was remotely possible during his upcoming debate with Trump in three weeks time.

    Much more in the full must-read note – especially to those who will be prepping Donald Trump for his upcoming debate – from Englander available to pro subscribers in the usual place.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 21:40

  • Renters And Owners Live In Separate Economies
    Renters And Owners Live In Separate Economies

    Commentary by Peter St Onge via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    (Rashevskyi Viacheslav/Shutterstock)

    It turns out renters and homeowners are living in two entirely different economies, at least according to a new study by the Federal Reserve—which, ironically enough, made it happen.

    In short, renters are in dire straits financially, while homeowners are “continuing to reap the rewards” of cheap pandemic money that left renters with nothing but inflation.

    This is “complicating” the Fed’s crystal ball as homeowners continue to splurge on everything from travel to eating out, “propping up prices with their discretionary spending power.”

    Of course, the Fed’s money printers are what are propping up prices. But the robust homeowner spending means they’re not seeing the distress.

    The Rich Get Richer, the Poor Get Inflation

    I mentioned in a recent article how the Fed money printer works by injecting new money into asset markets, which leaves the rich richer and the poor coping with inflation.

    That process goes on turbo when they crank up the money printers, which they did during the pandemic to the tune of $7 trillion fresh dollars—one in three.

    Hence the media’s favorite economic theme these days: why Americans can’t see the glory of Bidenomics. After all, if you’re a journalist at The New York Times, or an economics professor at Harvard, everybody at your dinner parties owns a home. They own stocks. They’re doing great, regaling one another with explanations of their investing acumen.

    Alas, the 90 percent aren’t at those dinner parties to regale. They can only speak in ballot boxes.

    Heaven at the Top, Hell at the Bottom

    In raw numbers, the Fed report finds that nearly one in five renters fell behind on their rent in the past year, while rents have soared by 20 percent since the pandemic—coming to nearly $400 for the average renter.

    Renters are more likely to not be able to pay the electric, water, or gas bill in the past month, and they report much higher rates of financial anxiety.

    This all might rankle when CNN lectures them about how amazing the economy is.

    It’s a whole other world for homeowners, who overwhelmingly refinanced during the pandemic at average rates around 3 percent, taking hundreds of thousands out of their Fed-pumped homes.

    They plowed a good chunk of that money into stocks, which also soared thanks to the Fed’s near-zero interest rates—the so-called everything bubble. Courtesy of the Fed.

    That means homeowners actually saved money compared with pre-pandemic. They had a larger mortgage, sure, but at 3 percent, the Fed actually lowered their monthly nut.

    When the smoke cleared, the money-printing orgy was a bonanza for the wealthy. And it was a cruel joke on everybody else, above all on the young stuck watching that ship sail further and further away, giving up on starting a family, instead returning to Mom’s basement to complain about capitalism.

    Conclusion

    The rule of thumb in Washington is that the rhetoric is for the middle and working class—voters—yet the policies are for the wealthy. Because the wealthy donate.

    This means that government policies are bedazzled in sweet nothings about the less fortunate or, these days, the under-represented. But when the music stops, somehow the poor don’t get a thing; it is the wealthy who got the goodies.

    The solution’s easy: Get the government out of the economy. End the Fed, drain the swamp.

    Of course, they’ll fight that with everything they’ve got.

    Originally published on the author’s Substack, reposted from the Brownstone Institute
    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 21:15

  • Gunman Captured After Attack, Lengthy Shootout At US Embassy In Beirut
    Gunman Captured After Attack, Lengthy Shootout At US Embassy In Beirut

    The American Embassy in the Lebanese capital of Beirut has come under attack Wednesday, and a gunman has been shot by Lebanese security forces after the armed man fired at the embassy. At least one embassy security guard was injured.

    The badly wounded suspect was taken into custody following the shootout with soldiers, the military and embassy officials confirmed. Amid still emerging details, it appears to have been an Islamic terror attack, given the assailant had a vest with the words “Islamic State” written in Arabic.

    Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) near the US Embassy, via AP

    “The Lebanese military in a statement said that soldiers shot an assailant, who they only described as a Syrian national,” Associated Press reports. The gunman is currently in a hospital and in policy custody.

    According to more details: 

    No motive was immediately clear. However, Lebanese media have published photos that appear to show a bloodied attacker wearing a black vest with the words “Islamic State” written in Arabic and the English initials “I” and “S.”

    The attack and shootout with security was significant, given eyewitnesses said it lasted nearly half an hour, and involved the man firing an assault rifle toward the embassy from a parking lot across from the diplomatic compound’s entrance.

    An embassy spokesperson said of the wounded Lebanese security guard, “With respect to his privacy we cannot say more, but we wish him a full recovery.” The embassy also confirmed that all embassy personnel were “safe”.

    Unverified image of the attacker captured on cell phone of local eyewitness:

    According to an additional statement by the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF):

    “The US Embassy in Lebanon in the Awkar area was exposed to gunfire by a person holding Syrian nationality. Army members deployed in the area responded to the sources of fire, wounding the shooter. He was arrested and transferred to a hospital for treatment. Follow-up is underway to determine the circumstances of the incident,” the army said.

    Harrowing video footage showed the moment the gunman exchange fire with Lebanese soldiers positioned above:

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

    Some commentators have underscored that the US will likely use this terror incident to beef up its military presence inside Lebanon.

    Interestingly, even throughout over a decade of the war in Syria, there were no similar terror attacks and shootouts like this specifically targeting the sprawling US Embassy complex in Beirut.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 20:50

  • US Targets Journalists Who Criticize Administration's Foreign Policy
    US Targets Journalists Who Criticize Administration’s Foreign Policy

    Authored by Dennis Kucinich

    Scott Ritter was pulled off a NY-to-Istanbul flight on Monday by US officials and his passport confiscated in a startling new development in the government’s open drive to censor and silence critics of the Administration’s foreign policies at a time when the United States is supplying billions of dollars in arms to foment wider war in Russia, accelerate the attacks on Gazans and set the stage for war with China over Taiwan.

    A Marine veteran and true American patriot, Mr. Ritter is also a noted former Chief UN weapons inspector, author and journalist.  He was enroute to Russia to attend an international conference in St. Petersburg.  

    Mr. Ritter first came to my attention when he testified at a Capitol hearing I sponsored to inquire into the Bush Administration’s plans to attack Iraq. Ritter warned in August of 2002 that a case had not been made for attacking Iraq.  

    Scott Ritter, Getty Images

    Had Congress listened to Mr. Ritter, the US would have been spared the loss of thousands of our soldiers and the waste of trillions of tax dollars. Over one million Iraqis died as a result of the US attack on their country. America’s financial and moral debt will never be able to be repaid, but would not exist if we had simply looked at the evidence he presented.

    Mr. Ritter’s  passport was confiscated yesterday by U.S. authorities without explanation.

    There are several Constitutional issues at stake here:

    1. The taking of his passport was  an illegal seizure, prohibited by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Mr. Ritter asked for, but did not receive a receipt, for the seized passport.  
    2. The seizure represents a punitive attempt to censor his views, a violation of his First Amendment right to free speech and freedom of the press.
    3. His Fifth Amendment rights to due process were violated. Someone in the State Department made an administrative decision to prevent his travel and to take away his passport.  Since there was no stated reason for the seizure, there was no open court hearing, no evidence to justify the confiscation of Mr. Ritter’s passport was presented publicly.  The whole process has a Kafka-like Trial feeling, where Mr. Ritter cannot find out what he is accused of. 

    The State Department was aware of Mr. Ritter’s travel three weeks before his planned departure, giving rise to the likelihood that the interception was designed to humiliate Mr. Ritter, in addition to the blatant disregard of his Constitutional rights.

    Mr. Ritter has been critical of U.S. foreign policy, and has repeatedly stated his objections to widening war clearly and cogently in his podcasts. While the State Department has jurisdiction over travel, it has no ability to cancel the rights accorded all Americans under the U.S. Constitution, including freedom of movement.

    There needs to be an inquiry into the State Department’s actions here. Many serious questions arise, all of Constitutional import:

    Was Mr. Ritter’s passport seized based on secret evidence, and authorized under President Bush’s Executive Order 13224, which established a national emergency, (now 23 years old!) and reauthorized last year by President Biden?

    Was the passport seized under the Patriot Act? The public has a right to know the reasons why.

    Were the expanded powers given the government in the recent reauthorization of Section 702 of the Patriot Act in play here?  

    Has Scott Ritter been under federal surveillance because of the exercise of his First Amendment rights?

    Was Ritter intercepted because of his attempt to build a bridge of peace toward Russia?

    This is not only about Scott Ritter.  

    Any American, journalist or not, who challenges the state in the current climate may find themselves subject to arbitrary procedures and even politically-inspired prosecution. That is the real state of emergency.  

    Chris Hedges, a man of impeccable journalist credentials, was canceled after he and I engaged in a discussion criticizing US foreign policy, on his show The Real News. 

    Julian Assange’s arrest and imprisonment at the instance of the US government gave fair warning to every journalist of the price which may be paid for exposing official acts of the murder of innocent civilians in Iraq.

    When the Constitutional rights of any of us are under attack, the Constitutional rights of all of us are under attack.  Who else will have their travel restricted because the government does not like what one is saying? Who else will be surveilled? Who else will be prosecuted? Who else will have their Constitutional rights denied?

    Of equal concern was the simultaneous publication by the Washington Post which casts as disinformation the work of journalists, including several Americans, who have challenged the State Department’s narrative with regard to Russia and Iran. 

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

    It would seem the Washington Post has taken seriously the sardonic dictum of A.J. Leibling: “Freedom of the Press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” The corporatization of the First Amendment, and the concentration of media into fewer and fewer hands, are major reasons why America is under constant threat of war and why our Constitutional freedoms are in trouble.   

    Independent authors and journalists are struggling to provide a response which protects our freedom of speech. They also have access to the same Constitutional protection of Freedom of the Press as the Washington Post, the New York Times and other large corporate publishers. 

    Governments’ fear of being challenged is as old as the case of John Peter Zenger, who 1734 printed the New York Weekly Journal. Zenger’s persistent prodding of the Crown’s provincial governor resulted in him being charged with libel. He won the case, establishing truth as a defense.

    Today the well understood truth is as deeply offensive to liars as freedom is offensive to tyrants. “Our liberty,” wrote Thomas Jefferson ten years after The Declaration of Independence, “depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

    Today’s independent American journalists are fighting for their freedom, and ours! 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 20:25

  • "Buy Everything": S&P Hits All Time High As Nvidia Passes $3 Trillion
    “Buy Everything”: S&P Hits All Time High As Nvidia Passes $3 Trillion

    Remember when “developed world” central banks pretended their inflation target was 2%? Well, that lie died a miserable death today – and will do so again for good measure tomorrow – after the BOC cut rates for the first time in 4 years, and less than a year after its last rate hike, from 5.0% to 4.75% even as Canada’s inflation remains a very sticky 2.7%.

    And just to underscore the death of the 2% inflation target, tomorrow the ECB will also cut rates for the first time since March 2016 (and 8 months after the last rate hike), even though core Eurozone CPI remains 3%.

    Of course, despite all the posturing, the Fed won’t be far behind especially once it becomes clear that the myth of strong US job growth was just a mirage (as explained yesterday), and either in July or September, the Fed will join the party despite core US inflation stuck at a blistering 2.8%.

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

    It was this long overdue realization that the G7 central banks have officially raised their inflation target by about 1% that helped pushed bond yields to fresh two month lows, and down more some 35bps in just the past week, down for a 5th straight day…

    … as financial conditions have eased dramatically (see chart of Goldman Financial Conditions Index below), undoing any jawboned tightening the Fed tried to inject into the market in recent months: indeed, the latest rate pricing shows a sharp dovish shift in the Fed cut narrative for Sept, rising to 80% vs 45% just one week ago. As Goldman’s trader notes, CTAs will become a focus if yields keep moving lower…

    And with the tidal wave of easing about to be unleashed by all central banks, it is no surprise that the S&P just hit a new all time high of 5,350, up a whopping 30% from the October lows.

    Superficially, there was some intraday variation, with some sectors red (hilariously, energy, which is supposed to power this new AI renaissance continues to get dumped)…

    … yet looking below the surface, those hoping that one day… soon… perhaps… the market will broaden out will be disappointed: while the S&P is up 13% YTD, the “Mag 7″” is up 30%, while the S&P493 is up just 6.5%.

    And when we talk about the Magnificent 7, we mean really just Magnificent  1: Nvidia is now up a ridiculous145% in just the past 5 months…

    … and moments ago NVDA’s market cap rose above $3 trillion, up more than $140 billion today alone, having risen more than $100 billion on 4 of the past 9 trading days…

    … but also briefly topped Apple’s $3.005 trillion, and this pace of insane meltup – which will require every tech company buying AI chips for the next several decades to justify the valuation – will make NVDA the world’s biggest company some time tomorrow!

    And as we boldly go into yet another absolutely massive asset bubble, one where three companies alone have a market cap of $9 trillion, it is not surprising that cryptos – those assets that sniff out fiat destruction ahead of most – are surging, with bitcoin also on the verge of another record high and trading above $71,000 with ethereum also finally breaking out higher…

    … but gold is also starting to move after the recent profit taking, and is up a solid $27 today and fast approaching it own all-time highs.

    In fact, the only commodity that is not exploding higher is oil, which instead if getting crushed to boost Biden’s approval rating; indeed, oil will not be allowed to spike until the election… after which all hell will finally break loose.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 20:03

  • Visualizing The Training Costs Of AI Models Over Time
    Visualizing The Training Costs Of AI Models Over Time

    Training advanced AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini Ultra requires millions of dollars, with costs escalating rapidly.

    As computational demands increase, the expenses for the computing power necessary to train them are soaring. In response, AI companies are rethinking how they train generative AI systems. In many cases, these include strategies to reduce computational costs given current growth trajectories.

    As Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld shows in the following graphic, based on analysis from Stanford University’s 2024 Artificial Intelligence Index Report, the training costs for advanced AI models has surged.

    How Training Cost is Determined

    The AI Index collaborated with research firm Epoch AI to estimate AI model training costs, which were based on cloud compute rental prices. Key factors that were analyzed include the model’s training duration, the hardware’s utilization rate, and the value of the training hardware.

    While many have speculated that training AI models has become increasingly costly, there is a lack of comprehensive data supporting these claims. The AI Index is one of the rare sources for these estimates.

    Ballooning Training Costs

    Below, we show the training cost of major AI models, adjusted for inflation, since 2017:

    Last year, OpenAI’s GPT-4 cost an estimated $78.4 million to train, a steep rise from Google’s PaLM (540B) model, which cost $12.4 million just a year earlier.

    For perspective, the training cost for Transformer, an early AI model developed in 2017, was $930. This model plays a foundational role in shaping the architecture of many large language models used today.

    Google’s AI model, Gemini Ultra, costs even more, at a staggering $191 million. As of early 2024, the model outperforms GPT-4 on several metrics, most notably across the Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU) benchmark. This benchmark serves as a crucial yardstick for gauging the capabilities of large language models. For instance, its known for evaluating knowledge and problem solving proficiency across 57 subject areas.

    Training Future AI Models

    Given these challenges, AI companies are finding new solutions for training language models to combat rising costs.

    These include a number of approaches, such as creating smaller models that are designed to perform specific tasks. Other companies are experimenting with creating their own, synthetic data to feed into AI systems. However, a clear breakthrough is yet to be seen.

    Today, AI models using synthetic data have shown to produce nonsense when asked with certain prompts, triggering what is referred to as “model collapse”.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 20:00

  • RNC Making Backup Plans For Presidential Nomination If Trump Sentenced To Prison
    RNC Making Backup Plans For Presidential Nomination If Trump Sentenced To Prison

    Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    With former President Donald Trump facing the possibility of being sentenced to prison just days before the Republican National Convention, GOP officials are formulating backup plans in case the former president isn’t able to receive the Republican party’s presidential nomination in person.

    “We’ll be thinking about it, and we’re working on that right now,” RNC Chair Michael Whatley told Newsmax in an interview on June 4, when asked whether the Republican Party is preparing for the possibility that the former president can’t attend the convention because he’s behind bars.

    The convention, which will take place in Milwaukee on July 15-18, is expected to draw thousands, but President Trump might not be one of them, given his recent felony conviction and the possibility that, on July 11, Justice Juan Merchan could sentence him to prison.

    President Trump was recently found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide non-disclosure payments, supposedly to prevent bad press and sway the 2016 election in his favor. He maintains his innocence and says he’s the victim of a vindictive political prosecution meant to derail his 2024 comeback bid.

    Justice Merchan could sentence President Trump for up to four years on each business records falsification count, with a maximum of 20 years.

    The former president said in a June 2 interview on Fox News that he could handle being jailed or imprisoned while calling the people involved in his conviction as “sick” and “evil.”

    Trump Nominee No Matter What

    The former president and his attorneys have vowed to appeal the conviction, with President Trump even calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to step in before the sentencing date and overturn the guilty verdict.

    While a former Manhattan district attorney predicted that President Trump would receive no prison time regardless of any appeals process, GOP officials say they’ll be ready to handle whatever scenario presents itself at the convention.

    “We expect that Donald Trump is going to be in Milwaukee, and he’s going to be able to accept that nomination,” Mr. Whatley said. “And if not, we will make whatever contingency planning we need to make for it.”

    While Mr. Whatley didn’t provide specifics about the contingency plans, he said the RNC will “certainly” have a plan in place to make sure President Trump receives the nomination no matter what.

    “We want to have a show that is going to roll out Donald Trump and his vision for America, which is going to set up this election cycle,” Mr. Whatley said while expressing confidence that President Trump will become America’s 47th president when the Election Day dust settles in November.

    In response to Mr. Whatley preparing for the possibility of Donald Trump virtually addressing the Republican National Convention, DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd released the following statement:

    “Even before Donald Trump became a convicted felon, his inner circle was already staffed by a roster of convicts and fraudsters brought on board for their loyalty to Trump and his MAGA agenda over the rule of law. Now Trump’s hand-picked RNC chair is openly floating Trump calling into the convention from a jail cell because the Republican Party has become completely beholden to a criminal who is willing to undermine our justice system and our democracy to pursue his agenda of revenge and retribution.”

    Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat who brought the case against President Trump, has not indicated whether he will ask for a prison sentence.

    President Trump’s lead attorney, Todd Blanche, said after the guilty verdict was handed down that it’s unlikely President Trump would be sentenced to prison given his age and that he is a first-time offender. Trump attorney Will Scharf told ABC News on June 2 that the former president will “speedily appeal this unjust verdict.” “I think this case is replete with reversible error,“ he told the outlet. ”We plan to vigorously defend President Trump’s rights in the appellate courts all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.”

    ‘Breaking Point’

    President Trump was asked in the June 2 interview on Fox News for his thoughts about a possible punishment, which could include time behind bars.

    “I’m OK with it,” the former president replied. “I saw one of my lawyers the other day on television saying, ‘Oh no, you don’t want to do that to the president.’ I said: You don’t beg for anything.”

    Former U.S. President Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower on May 30, 2024 in New York City. (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

    At the same time, the former president said he thought the American people would be outraged at such a harsh punishment for him.

    “I’m not sure the public would stand for it,” President Trump said. “I think it would be tough for the public to take, you know, at a certain point, there’s a breaking point.”

    Asked what Trump supporters should do if the former president were imprisoned, RNC co-chair Lara Trump told CNN they would make their voices heard at the ballot box.

    “Well, they’re gonna do what they’ve done from the beginning, which is remain calm and protest at the ballot box on November 5,“ she told the outlet. ”There’s nothing to do other than make your voices heard loud and clear and speak out against this.”

    While Democrats have taken to referring to President Trump as a “convicted felon” in their political messaging, a recent confidential memo to RNC leadership indicated that the conviction has had no negative impact on President Trump’s popularity among voters in the seven battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

    In fact, an average of polls by RealClear Polling as of June 4 indicates that President Trump leads President Biden by 3.2 points in all seven swing states.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 19:35

  • Putin: We Could Supply Long-Range Missiles To Enemies Of West In Retaliation
    Putin: We Could Supply Long-Range Missiles To Enemies Of West In Retaliation

    Update(1932ET): Russian President Putin addressed the annual economic forum in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, where he took the opportunity to put the US and NATO on notice concerning Kiev being given the greenlight to use Western weapons to attack Russian territory (detailed below). 

    He suggested that he’s mulling the option of providing adversaries of the West with Russian long-range missiles. Below is what he said: 

    “That would mark their direct involvement in the war against the Russian Federation, and we reserve the right to act the same way,” Mr Putin told a three-hour meeting with the senior editors of international news agencies.

    Because using such Western weapons involves military personnel of those countries controlling the missiles and selecting targets, Mr Putin claimed Moscow could take “asymmetrical” steps elsewhere in the world.

    “If they consider it possible to deliver such weapons to the combat zone to launch strikes on our territory and create problems for us, why don’t we have the right to supply weapons of the same type to some regions of the world where they can be used to launch strikes on sensitive facilities of the countries that do it to Russia?” he said.

    He then followed ominously with, “We will think about it.” But it remains that clearly Russia needs to keep intact its arsenal and advanced weapon supplies as much as possible, considering it could be in for a years-long conflict in Ukraine and with its Western backers. The proxy fight is set to go on for the foreseeable future, and could easily escalate into direct war with NATO at this dangerous point. There was also this interesting moment during a Q&A with journalists…

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

    * * *

    Ukraine is already attacking Russian territory with US-supplied long-range weapons, a fresh NY Times investigation has acknowledged. It comes a mere days after the Biden administration greenlighted Ukraine’s request to fire American weapons onto Russian soil.

    “Yehor Chernev, the deputy chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament’s committee on national security, defense and intelligence, said on Tuesday that Ukrainian forces had destroyed Russian missile launchers with a strike in the Belgorod region, about 20 miles into Russia,” NY Times wrote, describing it as a ‘first’.

    The Ukraine official said that the army used a US-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS. The revelation came the same day that a UK Telegraph report detailed NATO logistics plans for US troop ‘land corridors’ in the event of a European ground war with Russia.

    Various social media videos and images appeared to show burning and destroyed S-300 and S-400 systems inside Russian territory…

    Examining some of the new to emerge images, Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, described to the Times, “Given the range, type of target, munition availability and change in the Biden administration’s policy, I think it is probable this strike was conducted with HIMARS.”

    Additionally the report highlighted other evidence pointing to US munitions used in the attack:

    On Saturday, Evgeny Poddubny, a war correspondent for Russian state television, shared photographs of what were presented as fragments of American guided rockets found in Russian territory. It was not possible to independently verify when or where the fragments were found.

    Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk also hinted that the strike was conducted with American weapons. 

    Vereshchuk shared a picture (above) of a burning S-300 system on Telegram – but soon after deleted – with the caption, “It’s burning well. This is a Russian S-300. On Russian territory. The first days after permission to use Western weapons on the enemy’s territory.”

    Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov warned earlier this week, “I would like to caution American officials against miscalculations which may have fatal consequences. For some unknown reason, they underestimate the seriousness of the rebuff they may receive.”

    Russian media has meanwhile on Wednesday announced the destruction of more foreign weapons stores inside Ukraine with the below statement:

    The Russian Ministry of Defense has reported that its forces have successfully hit weapon and equipment storage sites used by the Foreign Legion fighting alongside Ukraine.

    “Using operational-tactical aviation, unmanned aerial vehicles, missile troops, and artillery, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation destroyed the weapon and military equipment depots of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Hortitsa operational-strategic group and the ‘Foreign Legion’ fighters,“ the ministry clarified.

    Several videos of destroyed Russian anti-air systems:

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

    Thus far the Pentagon has not officially commented, neither confirming nor denying, on whether Ukraine has used US long-range weapons inside Russia yet. But the situation is clearly escalating, and quite rapidly, by the day at this point.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 19:32

  • US Warns Netanyahu Against Major Offensive In Southern Lebanon
    US Warns Netanyahu Against Major Offensive In Southern Lebanon

    The United States is warning Israel against “escalation” in Lebanon following fresh Wednesday remarks of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu which threatened a major offensive due to ratcheting Hezbollah attacks. “We are prepared for a very intense operation in the north. One way or another, we will restore security to the north,” Netanyahu said on a visit to the region.

    “We don’t want to see that escalation of the conflict which would just lead to further loss of life from both Israelis and the Lebanese people and would greatly harm Israel’s overall security and stability in the region,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller responded in a daily briefing.

    Associated Press: Israeli forces have been striking targets inside Lebanon as they increasingly exchange fire with Hezbollah.

    The Biden State Dept. spox urged caution while appearing to downplay the latest bellicose words out of Tel Aviv. “The statements from the Israeli government saying that they are ready for military operation, if necessary, (are) different than saying that they have made a decision to conduct a military operation,” Miller continued.

    “We are still in a place where we believe they prefer a diplomatic solution,” he said while adding that the US fully understands the “untenable situation for Israel” on its northern border.

    “There are tens of thousands of Israeli citizens who cannot return to their homes in the north of Israel because it’s not safe to do so because of the … constant Hezbollah shelling and drone attacks in the area,” Miller emphasized.

    Not only have fires ripped across large swathes of the Galilee region this week as a result of wildfires sparked by Hezbollah drone and rocket attacks, but the Shia paramilitary group backed by Iran has been scoring more and more direct hits on IDF bases and settlements in northern Israel.

    On Wednesday an explosive-laden drone was sent against the town of Hurfeish, located several kilometers from the Lebanon border, which wounded at least eleven Israelis, with one in critical condition. Sirens reportedly failed to sound as the drone as inbound, and the IDF says it is investigating.

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

    Times of Israel details, “According to initial military assessments, the two drones impacted within a few minutes of each other, with the second seemingly targeting rescue crews who arrived to treat those wounded by the first. Hezbollah has employed such a tactic several times amid the war.”

    Hezbollah took responsibility for the attack in a statement, saying it was retaliation for a Tuesday Israeli attack Naqoura which took out a Hezbollah member.

    The group’s leader, Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, has been warning that the world will witness Israeli tanks “burn” if they try to enter Lebanese territory…

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

    During the 2006 war Hezbollah shocked IDF commanders by its performance on the battlefield and effective guerilla tactics, and there has since been a general consensus that the group (which receives assistance from the IRGC) is more formidable than previously thought.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 19:10

  • Limited Hangouts: Tidal Waves Don’t Discriminate
    Limited Hangouts: Tidal Waves Don’t Discriminate

    Authored by Lori Weintz via the Brownstone Institute,

    From a Russell Brand video posted May 28, 2024:

    Quote from former CDC Director Robert Redfield: “[The Covid vaccines] really aren’t that critical for those that are under 50 or younger, but those vaccines saved a lot of lives…To be honest, some people got significant side effects from the vaccine. I have a number of people that are quite ill and they never had Covid, but they are ill from the vaccine, and we just have to acknowledge that.

    Russell Brand’s response: “How long can you maintain the sort of slow drag that it was all worth it?… I have a question, why are there so many excess deaths all around the world?…Attempting to continue to claim that the pandemic was a success, that it was well handled, that the medications were effective, that there hasn’t been an extraordinary swindle practiced on the people of the world – seems more and more difficult to do with a straight face.”

    Limited Hangouts:

    To present a “limited hangout” is to put part of the information out there, in order to divert from other facts or activities you don’t want someone to notice. It is a sleight of hand, a way of getting ahead of damning truths that are too big to keep covered up, like the 1,637,441 Vaccine Adverse Event Reports (VAERS) connected to the Covid-19 injections in the US (It’s estimated that VAERS is largely underreported and represents only around 1% of actual adverse events.)

    We apparently have reached a moment of communal introspection with regard to Covid-19 and our pandemic response, leading to increasing limited hangouts. The New York Times in a May 4, 2024 article informs us that some people have been injured by the Covid vaccines and implies, rightly so, that we should help them. The Brookings Institution report of 2024 commends us for saving thousands of lives by “slowing the spread” of Covid through changing our behaviors (aka social distancing and masking) until we could get the Safe and Effective™ vaccines. Everyone from former FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock to former CNN reporter Chris Cuomo now acknowledges that maybe some things could have been handled better. But they all assure us, “We did the best we could with the information we had at the time.”

    An insightful individual who writes under the pseudonym of A Midwestern Doctor accurately describes the New York Times vaccine injury article as a piece, “sculpted to redeem the medical system’s reputation while admitting the absolute minimal amount of guilt necessary to accomplish that objective.”

    Widening the Overton Window

    It’s good to see the Overton window concerning the pandemic response opening up a bit in the mainstream media and government agencies. But it’s important to be very clear that their concessions are largely a limited hangout, designed to deflect from their own failures. In addition, these limited hangouts are an attempt to distract from the continuing goal of controlling everyone through repeated use of “emergencies” that require us to give up our freedom in order to be “safe.” Or at least to be “good citizens,” which was a powerful guilt-inducing motivator during the pandemic to gain compliance from people who weren’t actually afraid of the virus.

    Why Can’t We Just Move on?

    With the expansion of acceptable dialogue, some admissions that mistakes were made, and the Covid pandemic seeming to be fully in our rearview mirror some ask exasperatedly, “Why do you want to keep talking about the pandemic anyway? Why can’t you just move on?”

    I’ll tell you why. There are many powerful people and organizations who are weaponizing “pandemic preparedness” for ulterior motives having nothing to do with health. In fact, the perpetrators of pandemic harms have doubled down, even as they engage in limited hangouts. It appears they believe, probably correctly, that if they say something enough times such as, “The vaccines saved a lot of lives,” people will believe it.

    The Push for Digital ID’s

    Buried in the Times article that finally acknowledges the possibility of some vaccine injuries is the idea that we need a national medical database in order to better track, and therefore compensate for such injuries. This would be a database where all citizens’ medical records are tracked electronically and managed by the federal government. Not only would this complete the government takeover of our medical system that has been underway for years, but it would also be the end of personal privacy. The phrase “national medical database” is a euphemism for “vaccine passports” – required medical proof in order to participate in the public square.

    FDA Still Wants Money for Hazardous Gain-of-Function Research

    Another reason why we can’t just forget about the pandemic is because of people like Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Robert Califf. In a May 8, 2024 US Senate Appropriations Committee Hearing, Califf requested a total of $3.69 billion for the FDA budget, including an additional $168 million partly to pay for “countermeasures” to prevent a “wider outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza.” Califf states, “If we institute the countermeasures now, and reduce the spread of the virus…we’re much less likely to see a mutation that jumps to humans – for which we’re ill-prepared.”

    Califf, among others, is attempting to generate fear of H5N1 avian flu that has been circulating for decades in various animal populations, and likely won’t become easily transmissible to humans unless someone in a lab tinkers with it. Let’s not forget that the nature of viruses, even lab-made ones, is to be either highly transmissible, or highly virulent, but not both. A virus can’t survive long and infect many others if it kills its host. With the medical advances we have today, we know how to treat the symptoms of illness, even in those infected with a new virus. However, the policy response to a pathogen can be horrific, as seen throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Yet Robert Califf wants even more money for the FDA, partly so they can develop virus countermeasures, which is an Intelligence Community term having to do with biological warfare. In other words, Califf acknowledges that lab-made viruses are being studied around the world, and the viruses created in these labs require antidotal vaccines. Making a pathogen more transmissible, or more virulent, through experimentation is called gain-of-function research, and it is a controversial practice. Not all research in biological laboratories involves gain-of-function, and perhaps some of the research has public health benefits, but there is often lax oversight and poor adherence to containment protocols.

    Lab Leaks Have Led to Multiple Disease Outbreaks in the Past Century

    Epidemiologist Donald A. Henderson, credited with the eradication of smallpox through a targeted vaccination campaign, coauthored a paper in 2014 expressing concerns about gain-of-function research on the H5N1 virus:

    Scientists recently have announced that they genetically modified H5N1 in the laboratory and that this mutated strain spread through the air between ferrets that were physically separated from each other. This is ominous news. Since ferret influenza virus infection closely mirrors human infection and is similarly transmissible, these scientists appear to have created a bird flu strain with characteristics that indicate it would be readily transmissible by air between humans. In fact, the lead scientist on one of the experiments explicitly stated this.

    The question is this: Should we purposefully engineer avian flu strains to become highly transmissible in humans? In our view, no. We believe the benefits of this work do not outweigh the risks. Here’s why. There are no guarantees that such a deadly strain of avian flu would not escape accidentally from the laboratory. (emphasis added)

    There is substantive evidence that various diseases in the past century including the 1976 swine flu outbreak, the surge of Lyme disease in the US, and the Covid-19 pandemic can be traced to lab experiments that escaped and infected the general population.

    The best thing the Appropriations Committee can do for the health of the US and all citizens of the world is put a moratorium on gain-of-function research. While they’re at it, the Senate should consider restructuring that needs to happen at the FDA, and throughout the entire National Institutes of Health (NIH). They could start by removing Califf from his position, as his investments in pharmaceutical companies and stints working for them have surely compromised his ability to properly regulate the products from which he profits. In addition, the Senate should outlaw the current corrupt system in which over half of the NIH’s operating budget is provided by pharmaceutical companies the NIH is charged with regulating.

    Bill Gates and the World Health Organization

    Another reason we cannot just “move past” the Covid-19 pandemic is because in addition to people like compromised Director Robert Califf, we have Bill Gates, the largest donor to the World Health Organization (WHO) just behind the United States and Germany. Gates, with his outsized influence on the WHO, has the stated goal to deliver a vaccine in 100 days against the next virus. He’s heavily invested in mRNA vaccines and has found the returns on investments in vaccines to be highly profitable.

    Gates, who has engaged consistently in pandemic wargame simulations for over two decades, espouses a preparedness plan that involves year-round pandemic teams in every community around the world. These teams would immediately enforce contact tracing and quarantine upon the appearance of any communicable disease until the vaccine can be deployed. In a 2022 TED talk, Gates even provided a visual of his dream, coming soon to a city near you:

    The WHO is pushing for a worldwide Pandemic Treaty, and changes to the International Health Regulations. These changes, if approved by member countries, will allow the WHO unprecedented influence on community responses to epidemic and pandemic threats, as identified by the Director General. The current Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is not a medical doctor, is known to be weak on human rights, and has an uncomfortably close relationship with the Chinese Communist Party.  Tedros is among the many unelected persons, including government bureaucrats and public health officials, who wreaked havoc during the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Pandemic Preparedness as a Weapon:

    The reason why we must still attempt to unpack the facts is because so many are willing to use “pandemic preparedness” as a weapon, and so few have acknowledged the absolute failure of our Covid-19 pandemic response. For example, the previously referenced Brookings Paper from March 2024, titled “The Impact of Vaccines and Behavior on US Cumulative Deaths from Covid-19,” attempts to lend validity to the unscientific human disaster of “social distancing.”

    Social distancing was found to have zero impact on the spread of disease. Former FDA Director Scott Gottlieb even stated that the 6-foot distancing rule was “arbitrary,” and Dr. Anthony Fauci said the 6-foot rule “sort of just appeared.” Those admissions bring small comfort to schools, care centers, hospitals, churches, businesses, performing arts, and other organizations, and individuals whose day-to-day lives were harmed, sometimes permanently, by the 6-foot rule.

    Johns Hopkins: Lockdowns Have Had Little to No Effect on Covid-19 Mortality

    A 2022 analysis conducted by professors at Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics considered 18,950 studies on the effectiveness of lockdowns, paring down to 24 that met the screening procedures for their meta-analysis. For purposes of the analysis, lockdown was defined as “at least one compulsory, non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI)…that directly restrict(s) people’s possibilities, such as policies that limit internal movement, close schools and businesses, and ban international travel.” The 24 qualified studies were divided into three groups: lockdown stringency index studies, shelter-in-place-order (SIPO) studies, and specific NPI studies, and determined that “Lockdowns have had little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality.” The authors summarized:

    While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.

    New Zealand: a Lesson in Lockdown Failure

    One need only look at the data from New Zealand in the following chart to know that social distancing and locking down entire populations does not prevent the spread of respiratory viruses.

    Because it’s an island, New Zealand was able to keep out visitors and lock down residents. The lockdowns harmed the country in every way, but only delayed the arrival of Covid. In the above chart, the orange line shows mask compliance at almost 90% in September 2021. The black line shows daily new cases. Note the exponential rise of cases in February 2022, despite coerced/forced Covid-19 vaccination.

    As pointed out by former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General Ramesh Thakur, 99.3% of Covid deaths in New Zealand occurred after 60% of the population was fully vaccinated. In Australia, another hard lockdown country, that figure was 93%. In other words, harsh lockdowns can delay the spread of a respiratory virus, but not prevent it. Meanwhile, the lockdowns cause economic mayhem, and social and emotional devastation, and inflict permanent disadvantages on the upcoming generation. Lockdowns are a violation of fundamental human rights and should never be tolerated again as a viable means of containing viral spread, not even if a perfect vaccine antidote can be manufactured in less than 100 days.

    The above, and similar charts for other states and countries, was created by Ian Miller from official publicly available data. It’s mystifying that anyone can actually look at these charts and claim, “Yes, but Covid-19 would have been so much worse if we hadn’t masked, locked down, and taken the vaccine.” How can there be worse results than exponential growth in cases; increased illness, hospitalizations, and deaths in the vaccinated; increased Covid deaths after vaccination, and a marked rise in excess deaths – especially among the young?

    Brookings Advocates for More of the Same in the “Next Pandemic”

    Yet the Brookings paper joins emotionally abusive governments in praising people for engaging in anti-human social distancing because it was effective in “slowing the spread of a dangerous infectious respiratory disease for a long time.” Brookings does acknowledge that these “behavior changes” came at a “tremendous economic, social, and human cost.” The solution, according to Brookings? More of the same, but with more targeted interventions:

    To avoid similar pain from mitigation in the next pandemic, we argue that we need to make investments now not only in vaccine development, but also in data infrastructure so that we can precisely target behavior-oriented mitigation efforts to minimize their economic and social impacts of the next pandemic.

    Brookings advocates for both vaccine development and a centralized “data infrastructure,” so “we can precisely target behavior-oriented mitigation efforts” in the next pandemic. Refer back to Bill Gates’ paradise of swooping in by helicopter with medical SWAT teams ready to take you and yours down in order to save the world. 

    One might consider the times a mask was worn below the chin, a trip was taken to get away from onerous Covid regulations, a fake vaccine card was obtained to facilitate normal life, or a dinner party exceeded the numbers allowed by government decree.  Then project what it might be like as the recipient of targeted “behavior-oriented mitigation efforts” in a world where those behaviors are digitally tracked and “corrected” in real time.

    Bill Gates compares people to computers that need new software, and viruses to something that can be prevented from spreading by dousing them with interventions, like putting out a fire. Both analogies are untethered from real science and tone-deaf to the complexities of the human body, normally functioning societies, and our interdependence with a microbial planet. 

    Believing the Evidence of Your Own Eyes

    The Brookings paper does a lot of talking and citing of selective data but ignores the common sense facts before our eyes. We all observed that social distancing and masking did not prevent the spread of Covid. The data and our own experiences consistently showed that Covid-19 largely was not a serious disease except for the elderly and the medically frail – something that was already known in February 2020. We all noticed that most vaccinated people contracted Covid-19. We also have observed that many multiple-vaccinated people appear to be repeatedly ill with cold and flu symptoms, while many have developed autoimmune illnesses, neurological issues, infertility problems, cancers, and heart issues within the past three years.

    Those with the Megaphone Still Claim the Pandemic Response was a Success

    Yet still the official Covid narrative persists, as does the fear-mongering. On May 16, 2024, the New York Times ran an opinion piece from John M. Barry, a scholar at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, titled “As Bird Flu Looms, the Lessons of Past Pandemics Take on New Urgency.” In his article, Barry claims that the public health measures taken to slow the spread of Covid are effective, but:

    [E]ven the most extreme interventions cannot eliminate a pathogen that escapes initial containment if, like influenza or the virus that causes Covid-19, it is both airborne and transmitted by people showing no symptoms. Yet such interventions can achieve two important goals.

    The first is preventing hospitals from being overrun. Achieving this outcome could require a cycle of imposing, lifting and reimposing public health measures to slow the spread of the virus. But the public should accept that because the goal is understandable, narrow and well defined.

    The second objective is to slow transmission to buy time for identifying, manufacturing and distributing therapeutics and vaccines and for clinicians to learn how to manage care with the resources at hand.

    The number of inaccuracies in just these three paragraphs from Barry’s opinion piece is astounding, qualifying more as outright propaganda than as a limited hangout.

    We hear the word a lot, but a refresher from Britannica on Propaganda is in order:

    Propaganda is the more or less systematic effort to manipulate other people’s beliefs, attitudes, or actions…Propagandists…deliberately select facts, arguments, and displays of symbols and present them in ways they think will have the most effect…To maximize effect, they may omit or distort pertinent facts or simply lie, and they may try to divert the attention of the reactors (the people they are trying to sway) from everything but their own propaganda. Comparatively deliberate selectivity and manipulation also distinguish propaganda from education.  (emphasis added)                                                                       

    Propagandists such as Barry draw on their credentials, and use their writing and reasoning skills, to “distort pertinent facts or simply lie” to prop up the official Covid narrative, in this case. Gratefully there are resources for balanced discussion.  There are credible individuals discussing legitimate studies and data that refute the false statements in Barry’s opinion piece. Unfortunately, many people do not know where to find their work, or simply don’t want to know.

    Power, Control, Money: The Great Motivators

    It would indeed be wonderful to say that the Covid-19 pandemic is behind us. Been there, done that. But unfortunately, there is an entire industry comprised of billionaires, corporate, NGO, military, intelligence, and government interests that is driving the idea of scary pandemics, and preparing radical interventions to deal with them. What could possibly be their motive? Nothing new under the sun. It’s always power, money, and a desire for control driving any human experiment that leads to cruel oppression, misery, and death. We saw it writ large through the campaigns of Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, and Mao. We saw it with Mussolini, Pol Pot, and Pinochet.

    The desire for power at the expense of others is as old as the history of mankind, but for the first time, the campaign is being orchestrated on a global scale. What was revealed during the Covid pandemic was not new ways to handle frightening pandemic-causing pathogens. What was actually revealed was a global trial run of how to bring entire populations into subjugation through fear and medical tyranny under the false assurance of Safety.

    The experiment wasn’t completely successful, largely because the Emergency Use Authorized (EUA) vaccines failed to prevent disease or transmission. It’s not hard to develop a product at “Warp Speed” when all safety regulations and accountability are removed from product development, approval, and distribution. The mRNA platform was not ready for human use, and still isn’t, but the EUA Covid injections were administered to billions of people under cover of a “global emergency.” The debacle of increasingly noticeable vaccine injuries is the direct result.

    Plans to Extend the mRNA Platform to all Vaccines:

    Nonetheless, there are plans to convert traditional vaccines to the flawed mRNA platform, as well as to develop new profitable mRNA injections to treat pandemic-potential viruses in the future. Health and Human Services is currently in discussions with Pfizer and Moderna to produce mRNA flu vaccines to treat H5N1, which announcement led to a surge in biotech companies’ stocks this week, according to the Financial Times.

    An academic who went through WWII in Nazi Germany was interviewed afterward and explained how the horrors of that time gradually grew upon them, over several years, almost without them noticing. He said:

    What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security…

    One had no time to think. There was so much going on…I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to…we were decent people – and kept so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated…that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us.” (p. 166-168, They Thought They Were Free, By Milton Mayer)

    Government Intent to Silence Dissent:

    It’s very important to those in charge that we not think and not notice. This is why we hear so much today about the dangers of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, and how much the government wants to protect us from such harmful speech. In fact Homeland Security is so worried they published a Terrorism Threat Bulletin calling people who say things that might undermine public trust in government institutions “domestic threat actors.”

    This bulletin was accompanied by government censorship efforts that led to removed posts and accounts throughout all social media platforms, as well as character defamation, loss of employment, and other forms of persecution – all as a consequence of exercising freedom of speech. It also led to a Disinformation Governance Board created by the Biden Administration, that was “paused” after three weeks of comparison to the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984, and following concerns raised about the head of the Board.

    The government’s concerns about correct information do not extend to itself, or its mouthpieces, of which the New York Times is one. Despite the limited hangout acknowledging some “rare but serious” Covid-19 vaccine injuries, the Times is quick to claim there’s no way to know for sure if these people really were injured by the injections. The Times states:

    The government’s understaffed compensation fund has paid so little because it officially recognizes few side effects for Covid vaccines. And vaccine supporters, including federal officials, worry that even a whisper of possible side effects feeds into misinformation spread by a vitriolic anti-vaccine movement.

    Ah, yes. Those nasty anti-vaxxers. The ones that Homeland Security calls domestic terrorists, along with parents who speak out at school board meetings, and people who have concerns about election integrity. Homeland Security says people who question, “sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.” So don’t ask questions and just do as you’re told. Whatever happened to the widespread consensus of the truth in Pres. Ronald Reagan’s quip, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help?’”

    Multi-billionaire Bill Gates in his grandfatherly sweater and glasses said in the previously referenced TED talk that it’s, “Kind of weird” how the anti-vaxxers respond to him. He claims his Gavi foundation has saved tens of millions of lives through vaccines. Gates states, “It’s somewhat ironic to have someone turn around and say no, we’re using vaccines to kill people or to make money or…some strange things like, that I somehow want to track, you know, the location of individuals because I’m so deeply desirous to know where everybody is. Uh, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with that information.” Cue the helicopters.

    I understand people who want to believe that we did the best we could with the information that we had, and that our efforts to stop a virus made a difference. It’s comforting to believe that those in charge have our best interests at heart. It’s easier and less frightening to believe wise scientists, doctors, and government officials know just what we need to be “safe.” 

    It’s generally thought that we enlightened modern people could never be susceptible to a mass formation like that of Nazi Germany, or Mao’s Cultural Revolution; we would recognize what was going on and we wouldn’t fall for it. There seems to be a general belief that the freedoms guaranteed in the US Constitution are inviolable, and therefore we do not need to fight to retain them.

    A limited hangout may open the Overton window a bit, but it’s being made very clear to anyone who is paying attention that the powers that be are loathe to give up the control they tasted during Covid-19, and next time they intend to completely squash dissent.

    Combatting the Tidal Wave of Corporate and Government Control:

    From attorney Jeff Childer’s Substack on US Memorial Day May 27, 2024, we gain some insight into the call to action for our times:

    Lincoln’s [Gettysburg Address] could just as well have been written for us the living in the equally extraordinary year 2024, Anno Domini. In particular, the second half of President Lincoln’s short speech seems aimed right at us, reminding us that the honored dead made their ultimate sacrifices for a reason.

    Our heroic dead expect that we, the living, will keep fighting to the last man and woman. In Lincoln’s own words:

    It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

    Ours is not a war fought with cannons and musket balls. Our generation’s war is a mental, emotional, and cultural war, a war waged in secret and in lies, a war with needles and mysterious snake oil payloads, a mendacious war waged against truth, thoughts and feelings.

    Keep fighting! Fight for the dead. Fight for the living. Fight for those not yet born. Fight and never stop fighting, until we have achieved a new birth of freedom in America.

    Tidal waves don’t discriminate between those who believe in them, and those who don’t. A wave of censorship and government controls is building, fueled by fears about another pandemic, or climate change, or whatever “emergency” can be exploited to justify government power grabs. The only thing that will stop the censorship and control from washing over everyone is enlightened people who refuse to be swept up, and who work together to push back.

    Republished from the author’s Substack

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 18:45

  • Disney Tops Long List Of Woke Failures With Upcoming Release Of Gay Star Wars Show
    Disney Tops Long List Of Woke Failures With Upcoming Release Of Gay Star Wars Show

    A key element of understanding the smooth-brained antics of the woke left is that they are incapable of doing anything “creative” without sexualizing it and politicizing it.  Their collective identity revolves around who they lust after, how to virtue signal to the herd and who is supposedly the most oppressed.  Remove these things from their daily lives and there’s not much left to look at.  They could disappear tomorrow along with all of their media products and the world wouldn’t miss them in the slightest.  

    When a company chooses to pander to this small margin of the population there’s very little profit to be made.  A few years ago ESG lending was the big motivator for corporations to promote far-left ideology – With every progressive product, progressive commercial and progressive employment policy those businesses added to their overall ESG score.

    Cheap debt from global conglomerates like Blackrock created the fuel that made the woke movement possible.  However, with the advent of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes ESG loans were no longer viable and venture capital dried up.

    In other words, woke companies used to be able to distribute propaganda despite ample consumer opposition.  They could pump out all the DEI they wanted, alienate the majority of their customer base and not worry.  Now, those days are over.

    Case in point – The numerous failures of Disney.

    Once a media juggernaut that could not be stopped, the company is currently on the ropes after an endless list of woke bombs.  Their journey to self destruction really started with their attempt to subvert Star Wars; perhaps the most popular franchise in film history.  The addition of feminist politics, forced diversity and an obvious hatred of the original characters drove away their audience until there was nothing left.  In terms of box office receipts, after ten years Disney still has yet to make back the $4 billion they paid George Lucas to get the rights.

    Almost every film and streaming show they have launched in relation to “a galaxy far far away” has met with increasing public disdain.  The decay even spread into Disney’s theme park projects.  They would certainly prefer people forget all about their embarrassing “Galactic Star Cruiser” hotel, a Star Wars LARP experience that cost around $6000 or more for a family for only two days.  

    Under the guidance of Kathleen Kennedy and woke Lucasfilm the hotel refused to use themes from the original movies.  The project imploded within a year after it was thoroughly ridiculed by fans.

    Apparently not deterred by the abject humiliation, Kathleen Kennedy barreled forward with several more increasingly political iterations of the science fiction classic.  This effort tied into Disney’s overall wokification culture, determined to saturate western entertainment with DEI.  Kennedy dismissed all criticism until the creators of South Park dissected her in hilarious fashion.  The anti-woke movement was now officially mainstream and Disney made it all possible.

    Today, there is almost zero chance of a woke movie or TV series success story.  For every ‘Barbie’ there are a hundred bombs like Furiosa or The Marvels.  Of course, film and streaming series productions are usually initiated at least a couple years in advance of release.  So, even with the sweeping sea change in public awareness of woke propaganda, media companies like Disney are still stuck with the garbage projects they already sunk money into back in 2022-2023.  

    This is why we now have ‘The Acolyte’ to look forward to – Another woke Star Wars travesty featuring lesbian representation, a perfect diversity pie chart, and director Leslye Headland, the former personal assistant to Harvey Weinstein.  Headland noted that this version of Star Wars will break from the good vs. evil roots of the franchise and will instead explore morally relative characters.  Truly, a crowd pleaser…

    The Acolyte, to be released this week, is expected to plunge in viewership after the first episode much like every other Star Wars show featured on Disney+.  The corporation and the establishment media are already in damage control mode declaring that the fans are the problem, instead of the show and its content.  It is likely that The Acolyte signals the end of any fantasy that Disney Star Wars will ever win an audience. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 18:20

  • X Urges Supreme Court for Review After Jack Smith Obtained Trump Files
    X Urges Supreme Court for Review After Jack Smith Obtained Trump Files

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

    X CEO Elon Musk during the UK Artificial Intelligence Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, in central England, on Nov. 1, 2023. (Leon Neal/AFP via Getty Images)

    Elon Musk’s X Corp. has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider stepping in against a process that lets officials obtain information from social media companies and bars the companies from informing people whose information is handed over.

    The process wrongly enables officials to “access and review potentially privileged materials without any opportunity for the user to assert privileges—including constitutional privileges,” lawyers for X said in a filing to the nation’s top court.

    Unsealed documents in 2023 showed that X provided data and records from former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account to special counsel Jack Smith after Mr. Smith obtained a search warrant.

    X was blocked from informing President Trump by a nondisclosure order that Mr. Smith also obtained.

    The order said disclosing the warrant would result in “destruction of or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses, and serious jeopardy to the investigation,” and let President Trump “flee from prosecution.”

    X challenged the order, arguing it violated its First Amendment rights and noting that President Trump might have reason to claim executive privilege, or presidential privilege. The company wanted to alert the former president so he could assert the privilege, but U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled against it, claiming during a hearing that the only reason X was issuing the challenge was “because the CEO wants to cozy up with the former president.”

    A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the ruling from Judge Howell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.

    “The government proffered two compelling interests that supported nondisclosure of the search warrant: preserving the integrity and maintaining the secrecy of its ongoing criminal investigation of the events surrounding January 6, 2021,” U.S. Circuit Judge Florence Pan wrote. She was joined by Circuit Judges Cornelia Pillard and Michelle Childs. Judge Pillard was appointed by President Obama; Judges Pan and Childs were appointed by President Joe Biden.

    The full court denied a rehearing en banc, although four judges said “we should not have endorsed this gambit,” referring to the combination of a warrant and nondisclosure order. “Rather than follow established precedent, for the first time in American history, a court allowed access to presidential communications before any scrutiny of executive privilege,” Circuit Judge Neomi Rao wrote in a dissent. The appointee of President Trump was joined by Circuit Judges Gregory Katsas and Justin Walker, other President Trump appointees; and Judge Karen Henderson, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush.

    The Supreme Court should take up the case because the majority’s opinion conflicts with Supreme Court precedent and rulings from other circuits, lawyers for X said in the new petition.

    “This court has long held that holders of executive privilege must have notice and an opportunity to assert privilege before confidentiality of the potentially privileged documents is breached. The decision below departs from that precedent. Because former President Trump was not informed of the warrant before his records were produced, he could not timely assert executive privilege,” they wrote.

    Several circuit courts have issued contrasting decisions, which creates a split that needs resolved, X lawyers said. That included a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit that cleared a protocol for a warrant that involved giving people with attorney-client privilege “the first opportunity to identify potentially privileged materials” and did not let investigators access the materials until the parties or the court approved.

    Another circuit split exists in regard to the nondisclosure order, the lawyers said.

    In Freedman v. Maryland, the Supreme Court ruled that “any restraint prior to judicial review can be imposed only briefly in order to preserve the status quo.” While two circuit courts have found the ruling does not apply to nondisclosure orders, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has found that some nondisclosure orders must adhere to the ruling.

    The conflict “warrants this court’s review,” X lawyers said.

    The appeals court panel also ruled that the government can draw nondisclosure orders on warrants anytime a warrant would result in the production of any information that has not been publicly available, even when the public is aware “of the broader investigation” and grant jury subpoenas.

    “If the ruling remains in place, the government almost always can obtain a nondisclosure order for a new warrant—no matter how public the investigation—because the warrant itself will always be new and ‘different’ information,” X lawyers argued.

    The case implicates not only executive privilege but other types of privilege, including that between a doctor and patient, the lawyers said.

    “In cases involving executive privilege, which typically arise in the D.C. Circuit, the government can now circumvent the [Presidential Records Act] and deny privilege-holders their opportunity to assert privilege by seeking communications from, and gagging, third parties. And in the tens of thousands of other cases where the government obtains nondisclosure orders, the government can invade other privileges—including attorney-client, journalist-source, and doctor-patient—without notice,” they said. “Meanwhile, the First Amendment rights of service providers like Twitter to notify users in time for them to assert privileges can be irreparably injured.”

    The Department of Justice, which employs Mr. Smith, did not respond to a request for comment. Its response to the filing is due by July 3.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 17:55

  • WHO Confirms Bird Flu Death In Mexico As 'Trust The Science' Experts Want To Test America's 40 Million Cows
    WHO Confirms Bird Flu Death In Mexico As ‘Trust The Science’ Experts Want To Test America’s 40 Million Cows

    The World Health Organization confirmed the first human death linked to avian influenza in Mexico, involving a 59-year-old with no prior history of handling poultry or other animals. This comes as bird flu has been spreading across North America and other regions of the world, infecting various types of animals and humans. 

    “On 23 May 2024, the Mexico International Health Regulations (IHR) National Focal Point (NFP) reported to PAHO/WHO a confirmed fatal case of human infection with avian influenza A(H5N2) virus detected in a resident of the State of Mexico who was hospitalized in Mexico City.

    “This is the first laboratory-confirmed human case of infection with an influenza A(H5N2) virus reported globally and the first avian H5 virus infection in a person reported in Mexico. Although the source of exposure to the virus in this case is currently unknown, A(H5N2) viruses have been reported in poultry in Mexico. According to the IHR (2005), a human infection caused by a novel influenza A virus subtype is an event that has the potential for high public health impact and must be notified to the WHO. Based on available information, WHO assesses the current risk to the general population posed by this virus as low.” -WHO 

    The WHO’s statement continued: 

    “… confirmed case of human infection with avian influenza A(H5N2) virus detected in a 59-year-old resident of the State of Mexico who was hospitalized in Mexico City and had no history of exposure to poultry or other animals. The case had multiple underlying medical conditions. The case’s relatives reported that the case had already been bedridden for three weeks, for other reasons, prior to the onset of acute symptoms.” 

    Earlier Wednesday, Dutch virologist Dr. Marion Koopmans wrote on X, “The expanding list of wild mammals affected by the (global) epizootic of highly pathogenic avian influenza. This data is for the US. Adding mice to the list (the blue circle in New Mexico).” 

    Koopmans also published a USDA map showing bird flu detections in an ever-expanding list of mammals. 

    STAT News recently spoke with Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier, a leading expert on the bird flu, who provided some insight into the outbreak:

    “You have massive outbreaks in wild birds. It spreads over into poultry quite easily. But in humans we see lower numbers, and that to me suggests that the zoonotic risk has decreased.” 

    Meanwhile, Nita Madhav, a former US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researcher who is now senior director of epidemiology and modeling at Ginkgo Biosecurity, warned Scientific American, “The more it spreads within mammals, that gives it more chances to mutate. As it mutates, as it changes, there is a greater chance it can infect humans. If it gains the ability to spread efficiently from person to person, then it would be hard to stop.” 

    About a week ago, news broke the Biden Administration was nearing a deal to bankroll Moderna’s vaccine against bird flu. 

    Remember Deborah Birx, a physician who served as former President Trump’s Covid response coordinator? Well, she said earlier today about weekly testing of the nation’s cattle herd population. 

    “We should be testing every cow weekly,” Birx said, adding, “We could be pool testing every dairy worker.”

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

    Jordan Schachtel notes… 

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

    The WHO’s chief scientist, Jeremy Farrar, has recently said the bird flu amongst cows “is very concerning.” 

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

    In recent notes, we penned “The Escalating Threat Of Avian Influenza H5N1 And The Ethical Quandary Of Gain-of-Function Research” and “Former CDC Director Sounds Alarm Over Bird Flu Experiments.”

    The question arises: if human-to-human cases surge and it’s clear that the WHO’s focus for this pandemic is cows, what actions will the government be forced to take regarding these animals? However, don’t worry—if cows are culled to save the planet from bird flu, Bill Gates will be ready to offer cricket burgers and fake meat New York strips.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 17:30

  • "A Blatant Lie": The Biden Campaign Falsely Accuses Fox's John Roberts Of Lying About The Insulin Caps
    “A Blatant Lie”: The Biden Campaign Falsely Accuses Fox’s John Roberts Of Lying About The Insulin Caps

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Winston Churchill once said that “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

    It often seems like the Biden White House and campaign has embraced that warning as an operating principle.

    The most recent target was the veteran Fox news anchor John Roberts, who was accused of airing “a blatant lie” in questioning Biden’s claim that he was the first president to push through a cap of $35 on insulin treatments. Roberts was entirely correct, but the campaign has still not removed the false attack on his integrity and accuracy.

    In the interests of full disclosure, I am a legal analyst for Fox News and I have known Roberts for decades. There is no one who I hold in higher regard for his integrity or his intellect than John Roberts. We have known and worked with each other at different networks through the years. Roberts is an old-school journalist with impeccable credentials.

    Yesterday, the Biden campaign launched the attack on Roberts for his questioning of the claim of President Joe Biden that he solely secured the insulin cap. Roberts remarked that he had a recollection that it was former President Donald Trump who pushed the cap.

    “I seem to remember that back in May of 2020, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid said that President Trump had signed an executive order to cap the price of insulin for Medicare recipients at 35 bucks. Now, maybe I’m misremembering that, but I think it kind of already happened.”

    The Biden campaign then called it “a blatant lie” in a posting on X that has reached over a million people.

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

    Contrary to the Biden campaign’s claims, Roberts’s recollection was entirely correct. Under the Trump Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced in May 2020 that the Part D Senior Savings Model participating plans would cap insulin copays to $35 per month’s supply, and over 1,750 Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D plans applied to offer lower insulin costs.

    Trump praised the new policy, which was widely covered by the press.

    There was a Rose Garden event where Trump was praised for his actions:

    Trump later, in July 2020, signed four executive orders aimed at lowering the cost of insulin. That included Executive Order 13937, which required Federally Qualified Health Centers to pass 340B discounts on to patients. Notably, Biden later reversed Executive Order 13937 before those cost-saving measures could take effect.

    This is obviously not the first false statement from the President. However, it is notable that his campaign spread obvious disinformation that was picked up by over a million people but then declined to take down the false claim. The campaign is now in a worse position. To take down the posting is to acknowledge not just that it has lied about Roberts, but that the President lied in taking sole credit for this cap.

    This is the same administration supporting the banning, blacklisting, and throttling of those responsible for disinformation. I would not support such censorship of the campaign. This and other columns refuting the false account is sufficient to combat a “blatant lie” by the Biden campaign. Whether it is his uncle being eaten by cannibals or insulin caps, free speech can correct false claims without government regulation. However, President Biden and his administration continue to push for censorship of others accused for false or misleading statements.

    The fact that John Roberts was right is hardly surprising. However, there remains a “blatant lie” on the Biden campaign’s social media that must still be corrected.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 17:15

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jun 05

Today’s News 5th June 2024

  • Does Poland Fear That Ukraine Might One Day Make Irredentist Claims Against It?
    Does Poland Fear That Ukraine Might One Day Make Irredentist Claims Against It?

    Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

    The argument can be made that the national security pretexts upon which President Duda vetoed the Sejm’s bill to make Silesian a regional language concern the threat of Ukrainians exploiting this proposed precedent to revive their country’s post-World War I claims to parts of modern-day Poland.

    It was explained last month how “The Sejm’s Approval Of Silesian As A Regional Language Should Prompt Deep Reflection From Poles”, but then President Andrzej Duda from the previous conservative-nationalist government vetoed the new liberal-globalist coalition’s bill at the end of May. His official website explained the reasons here, which mostly concern the widely held scientific view that Silesian is just a dialect of Polish, not its own language like Kashubian which was granted regional status in 2005.

    None of the media that reported on this thought much of the national security arguments that he shared against making Silesian a regional language.

    Duda worried that representatives of other ethnolect groups could be emboldened by the precedent set by granting Silesian this status and warned that these processes could be exploited from abroad to divide Poland. He then concluded by declaring that “cultivating the native language serves to protect the preservation of national identity.”

    Although Duda implied that Russia could meddle in Poland through these means when he wrote that these threats could be “related to the war being waged on the eastern border”, the case can more compellingly be made that Ukraine poses a much greater danger to his country. The southeastern part of modern-day Poland used to be part of the “Ruthenian Voivodeship” during the Commonwealth era and comprised a significant number of folks who’d nowadays be called Ukrainians.

    It was on this former administrative and enduring demographic basis that the short-lived “West Ukrainian People’s Republic” claimed some of these same lands and even those a bit further westward along the Carpathian Mountains.

    The “Ukrainian People’s Republic” also claimed other more northerly parts of modern-day Poland’s eastern border on the same pretext that they were mostly populated by people that Kiev considered to be more Ukrainian than Polish.

    During the Second Polish Republic, efforts were made to (largely unsuccessfully) Polonize the Ukrainians (some of whom later terrorized and genocided Poles), and then many were exchanged with the USSR for Poles living in Soviet Ukraine after World War II changed the borders. Other exchanges with Soviet Belarus and Lithuania, as well as the expulsion of Germans, led to the “Polish People’s Republic” becoming the first ethno-religiously homogenous Polish state since Mieszko I’s founding of Poland in 966.

    This new demographic state of affairs remained in place up until 2022, after which a few million Ukrainians flooded into Poland, a sizeable number of whom still remain there. Although they’re scattered throughout the country, responsible members of the state like Duda – whose party admittedly facilitated this process for the purpose of turning Ukraine into its “junior partner” – fear that they might resettle in their formerly claimed border regions and one day agitate for “union” with Ukraine.

    Unlike Silesian, their language is universally recognized as distinct from Polish, so the stage would be set for Ukrainians to exploit linguistic pretexts per the proposed Silesian precedent to get the state to extend them a degree of cultural autonomy as the first step towards political autonomy sometime in the future.  Two of Kiev’s official positions over the past year show that Poland can’t rule out the scenario of its neighbor weaponizing this process against it.

    Zelensky’s senior advisor Podolyak declared last August that “[Poland] will remain [our closest partner and friend] until the end of the war. After it’s over, of course, we will have a competitive relationship, of course, we will compete for various markets, consumers, and so on. And, of course, we will clearly adopt pro-Ukrainian positions, protect these interests, fiercely defend them.” The prediction of post-conflict competition between these two doesn’t bode well for Poland’s territorial integrity as was explained.

    Several months later in January, Zelensky signed a decree “aimed at preserving the ethnic identity of Ukrainians in Russia”, specifically within the parts of his neighbor’s modern-day borders that were previously claimed by the “Ukrainian People’s Republic”. A similar decree could be signed with regards to Poland if their predicted post-conflict competition worsens, in which case Poland’s territorial integrity would definitely be threatened via the fifth column of Ukraine’s potentially border-dwelling nationals.

    Poland couldn’t rely on the US or the German-led EU for support in that event since both have interests in turning Ukraine into their joint bastion of influence on the continent after the conflict finally ends. They’d sell Poland out in a second to advance what their decisionmakers consider to be their national interests. Ukrainian losses in the east and south to Russia could therefore be compensated by gains in the West at Poland’s expense, though not right away of course, but sometime in the future.

    Polish politicians like returning Prime Minister Tusk and his ruling liberal-globalist coalition would eagerly go along with this since they’ve already comprehensively subordinated their country to Germany, which has its own interests in Ukraine. Their ideology also predisposes them to thinking that it wouldn’t make a meaningful difference if they lost those lands since the partial open borders regime with EU-aspirant Ukraine by that point would render the consequences for many people moot for the most part.

    It’s only those more responsible members of the state like Duda, whose party facilitated the large-scale migration of Ukrainians into Poland as was earlier written, who care enough about Poland to deny Ukraine the legal pretext for advancing its possibly revived claims per the proposed Silesian precedent. It’s these sensitive national security reasons upon which he vetoed the bill to make Silesian a regional language, which have everything to do with latent Hybrid War threats posed by Ukraine, not Russia.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 06/05/2024 – 02:00

  • Lest We Forget The Tiananmen Square Massacre On This Day In 1989
    Lest We Forget The Tiananmen Square Massacre On This Day In 1989

    On the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, human rights supporters continued to speak up about the democratic uprising that was brutally suppressed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on June 4, 1989.

    The incident led to a massive death toll among unarmed students, and for decades, the CCP has systematically censored all information related to the massacre.

    “People commemorate the ‘June 4 Incident’ because it symbolizes universal values such as democracy, freedom, human rights, and peaceful protest. It stands as a bloody testament to the courage and resistance of the Chinese people,” said Du Wen, the former executive director of the Legal Advisory Office of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Government, now in exile in Europe.

    He told the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times that his generation remains nostalgic about the June 4 incident even though it is nearly impossible to find any trace of it inside China, where any discussion of it is taboo.

    As Mary Hong reports, that large-scale democratic movement provided the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with an excellent opportunity to peacefully transition from autocracy to democracy. At that time, the young students did not make any demands regarding the CCP’s power itself. Their demands were solely for freedom of the press and speech, expressing dissatisfaction only with the corruption among the CCP elite. The interest of young students in national affairs was largely due to the enlightened thinking and reformist spirit of two successive CCP General Secretaries, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang.

    However, CCP elders, represented by Chen Yun, believed that the students’ calls for freedom and democracy challenged the very foundation of CCP rule. Consequently, the hardliner Deng Xiaoping ordered the violent suppression of the democratic movement. While this temporarily stabilized the regime, the opportunities that the democratic movement presented to both the CCP and China were lost.

    The wound of history is still bleeding. China continues to pay a heavy price for the massacre. The issues that the students demanded the CCP address at that time did not disappear, instead, they have accumulated over history. The massacre made the CCP’s perceived legitimacy even more fragile in the eyes of the people. Many say that the CCP lost its legitimacy because of the “June 4th” massacre. I have always disagreed with this view. The CCP regime forcibly seized power from the Republic of China with the blatant military intervention of the Soviet Union. Claiming legitimacy for something taken by force is itself absurd and laughable. Moreover, the Chinese people never had the opportunity to question the legitimacy and effectiveness of the CCP’s governance. Objectively speaking, since 1949, the Chinese people have tacitly accepted a new regime imposed on them, thus the existence of the CCP regime at most holds a semblance of reasonableness. However, in the minds of the Chinese people, this reasonableness was significantly damaged by the “June 4th” massacre.

    What is reasonable is real, and what is real is reasonable.

    It can be asserted that if there were to be another political upheaval, the CCP would find itself in a difficult position, unable to save itself.

    At that time, the Chinese people would not be as compliant as they were in 1989 and might very well seize the opportunity to overturn the CCP’s rule.

    When we observe the massacre 35 years ago within the context of the global landscape, it becomes clear that Deng Xiaoping’s drastic measures to maintain the CCP’s rule and power were met with tacit acceptance by then-U.S. President Bush.

    Although the CCP briefly faced diplomatic isolation, Deng Xiaoping’s resoluteness prevailed over the weak and short-sighted West.

    We must also clarify that the 75 years of suffering endured by the Chinese people under the CCP’s iron rule were not the choice of the Chinese people but were imposed on them by former U.S. President Harry Truman and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

    This imposition began with former U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt’s betrayal and sellout of wartime ally the Republic of China at the Yalta Conference, which allowed Stalin to occupy Northeast China.

    President Truman’s China policy further aided the CCP in sweeping across the entire Chinese mainland, plunging the Chinese people into the horrors and ravages of communism.

    Today, we remember June 4th. Although we commemorate it every year, we must clearly recognize the harsh reality: its impact on changing China’s existing autocratic system is extremely minimal, resonating only with a small, determined minority of Chinese democracy campaigners. The struggle between the Chinese people and the CCP is akin to a battle between humans and beasts, a war between people and demons, with almost no chance of success or victory. Despite this, we continue to pursue the day when the Chinese people can free themselves from the CCP’s brutal autocratic rule with perseverance.

    Under Xi Jinping’s leadership for the past 12 years, China’s national conditions have been regressing at an unprecedented speed and scale. The achievements of forty years of economic reform have been completely eroded. Politically, the country is experiencing a “Cultural Revolution 2.0,” reminiscent of Mao Zedong’s era. Social morals have decayed, and the collapse of Chinese society and the sudden fall of the CCP’s autocratic regime seem imminent. This represents a political opportunity for significant change in China.

    Coincidentally, the world is also beginning to regress and retreat. The United States, once a post-war beacon of democracy, freedom, and civilization respected and admired worldwide, has morally collapsed. Justice in the world is severely lacking, and the world is rapidly plunging into an abyss. This outcome is a result of the global trend, driven by the development and evolution of the world socialist and communist movements, spurred by malevolent forces, beyond human ability to reverse.

    Where is the world headed? There is a sense that God has already issued a warning. If humanity does not awaken and change its course, the angry God may once again unleash a great flood to prevent human depravity.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/04/2024 – 23:40

  • These Are The 10 Deadliest Animals For Humans
    These Are The 10 Deadliest Animals For Humans

    While running into wild animals in a forest can seem like the worst situation for humans, there are plenty of other animals that are far deadlier than large predators.

    Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao ranks the top 10 deadliest animals by the number of people killed per year.

    Data for this visualization and article is sourced from BBC Science Focus.

    Spreaders of Diseases are Deadliest for Humans

    Mosquitoes, of course, are the reigning champions on the toll they take on humans. Every year they kill more than 700,000 people through a multitude of deadly diseases—dengue, yellow fever, and malaria.

    By some estimates, mosquitoes are responsible for the deaths of half of all the humans that have ever lived.

    Meanwhile, humans are (almost) their own worst enemies. Every year, nearly 400,000 homicides take place, making humans the second-deadliest animal for other human beings. And this doesn’t account for all the human-caused accidents that result in fatalities.

    At fourth place, dogs may be our best friends, but as a carrier of the deadly rabies virus, they end up fourth on the list of top 10 deadliest animals.

    Rounding out the top five are assassin bugs, which spread the parasite that causes Chagas disease, a condition that can go untreated for years and can result in serious complications that make it life-threatening.

    Large mammals, including lions, hippos, and elephants round out the top 10. Interestingly, bears kill around one person a year on average and wouldn’t be anywhere close to making this list of the deadliest animals.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/04/2024 – 23:15

  • Student Debt Cancellation Is Extremely Unfair – Here Are 10 Reasons Why…
    Student Debt Cancellation Is Extremely Unfair – Here Are 10 Reasons Why…

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    A recent Tweet by Elizabeth Warren and a short rebuttal to her inspired this post. Let’s take a look at the Tweet and my 10 reasons.

    Deeply Unfair

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

    10 Reasons Why Student Debt Cancellation is Unfair

    1. It is unfair to those who sacrificed to pay off their student loans and it’s unfair to those who foot the bill.

    2. It is an upward transfer of wealth. The plumber pays for someone  else’s college education.

    3. It encourages going to college when there might be better choices such as learning a trade. And It creates incentive to take on new student loans.

    4. It is blatant election year bribe to college students and college graduates.

    5. It creates creates a moral hazard for college administrators to sell useless degrees creating another overhang of new student debt.

    6. It creates a moral hazard for students who might feel that their debt should be forgiven in the future

    7. It subsidizes poor decision-making such as majoring in useless degrees including gender studies, anthropology, archeology, art history, music, culinary arts, fashion design, philosophy, etc.

    8. The president has no power to forgive student loans. Doing so creates another precedent for presidential rule by decree. This is too big a financial decision not to involve Congress. The current student loan program was authorized by Congress and contains no such authority to the president.

    9. Biden is openly flouting the Supreme court, another dangerous precedent.

    10. Free money is highly inflationary.

    Laughable Explanations to Difficult Question

    Everything this president does is inflationary. Yet, Biden and economists refuse to admit this.

    January 11, 2024: Is Inflation Down? That’s What President Biden Says

    February 20, 2024: The CBO Revised the Cost of Biden’s Energy Policies Up by $466 Billion

    April 12, 2024: How the Inflation Reduction Act Failed to Reduced Electricity Costs in Pictures

    May 11, 2024: What’s the Inflation Rate Under Biden vs 7 Previous Presidents?

    Any Questions?

    Addendum

    I left out a key point.

    As a Senator Biden sponsored a law that made it so student debt could not be discharged  in bankruptcy.

    Then he was buying donations from the big banks who run their credit card operations out of Delaware.

    Now he is buying votes.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/04/2024 – 22:50

  • Seasonal US Gun Demand Slides To Pre-COVID Lows 
    Seasonal US Gun Demand Slides To Pre-COVID Lows 

    Bloomberg data shows that the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) checks are at their lowest level for this time of year since pre-Covid. This data suggests that the gun-buying bubble, which peaked during the Covid and BLM riots, continues to deflate until the next round of Marxist groups spark riots in America.

    US unadjusted criminal background checks dropped 10% to 2.13 million in May. This is the lowest level in eight months, and compared with the same month a year earlier, down 17% from 2.55 million.

    On a seasonal basis, this is the lowest May level since May 2019 and well below the 5-year average. 

    NICS data is a proxy for gun sales because there is no national database tracking firearm purchases. 

    That said, gun and ammo stocks, such as Sturm Ruger & Co. Inc. and Smith, Wesson Brands Inc., and Ammo Inc., have positively correlated with rising NICS and falling NICS. 

    What will spark the next panic buying? 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/04/2024 – 22:25

  • Toxic Biosolids Threaten U.S. Farmland And Livestock
    Toxic Biosolids Threaten U.S. Farmland And Livestock

    Authored by Kurt Cobb via oilprice.com,

    Many years ago a civil engineer explained to me the wisdom of taking solid biological residues from sewage treatment plants—dubbed biosolids—and using them on farm fields and garden plots. After all, nature intended for human wastes to return to the soil to replenish it in the same way animal manure has long been used to fertilize farm fields.

    “What about all the industrial chemicals that end up in wastewater,” I asked. He replied that these weren’t significant enough to be concerned. I was skeptical.

    Fast forward to last week when the U.S. Congress took up a proposal to allocate $500 million to compensate farmers whose livelihoods have been undermined by applying biosolids—what most of us call sewage sludge—to their cropland. It turns out that those biosolids have poisoned both land and livestock across the United States. The ostensible concern is so-called “forever chemicals,” ones used to make such products as Teflon, firefighting foam, stain-resistant upholstery and water-resistant sports gear. These chemicals are linked to “cancer, liver damage, decreased fertility, and increased risk of asthma and thyroid disease.” They are dangerous to human and animal health even at very low levels. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this year proposed limiting certain of these chemicals to less than 10 parts per trillion in drinking water. In two cases, the proposed limit is 4 parts per trillion.

    A recent study of 2,500 human subjects showed that nearly all of them have PFAS chemicals—the formal name for this group of chemicals which number in the thousands—in their blood. Some 1,593 water systems in the United States are known so far to be contaminated. These chemicals ought to have the description “everywhere chemicals” added to their name.

    But believe it or not, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to contamination of biosolids. A 2022 report on chemicals found by EPA’s examination of biosolids around the country lists 726 chemicals. These include chemicals used in pesticides, drugs, cosmetics, and flame retardants as well as dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (widely used in electric transformers and highly carcinogenic).

    For many years the EPA has assured farmers that biosolids are safe. The agency is still promoting them as a way to improve the fertility of the soil. (Inquisitive readers might like to know that organic agriculture regulations prohibit the use of biosolids or sewage sludge of any kind.)

    The biosolids issue demonstrates clearly why the so-called circular economy is an impossibility in a modern industrial society. The chemicals produced by the modern economy are too many—over 150,000 by a recent count—and too easily dispersed to be segregated from the waste stream.

    That’s just the way the chemical industry likes it. It would be exceedingly expensive to prevent all leakage of toxic chemicals into the environment—and downright counterproductive in the case of pesticides and herbicides which must be broadly dispersed to be effective. And, it would be considerably more expensive to find substitutes that are nontoxic and biodegradable. No one in the chemical industry is going to do either of these things if they don’t have to.

    Ask yourself how many times the chemical industry and their mouthpieces in universities have told us not worry about chemicals in the environment. The concentrations are too small to hurt us, they say. Then, ask yourself whether you want to sit down to a meal of grains grown using biosolids and meat and milk products from animals dining on those same grains. Yum!

    By Kurt Cobb via Resource Insights

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/04/2024 – 22:00

  • "This Is Horrifying": Baltimore County Releases Illegal Alien Sex Offender, Defying DHS' Detainer Request
    “This Is Horrifying”: Baltimore County Releases Illegal Alien Sex Offender, Defying DHS’ Detainer Request

    Local media outlet Fox 45 News revealed a convicted sex offender and illegal alien was released by Baltimore County officials, blatantly ignoring the federal government’s request to keep the criminal in jail. This stunning act of defiance in the progressive-controlled Baltimore metro area raises serious questions about their commitment to public safety, upholding law and order, and adherence to the federal government.

    Fox 45 spoke with the US Department of Homeland Security about 25-year-old Raul Calderon-Interiano, who was convicted of a fourth-degree sex offense and second-degree assault in April by a Baltimore County judge.

    The illegal alien was sentenced to six years in prison, but the judge suspended all of his prison time. 

    Despite federal immigration officials filing a “detainer” for the officials in the county to keep the illegal alien in custody, the Baltimore County Detention Center released him anyway after his prison sentence was suspended. 

    US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told Fox 45 News in a statement, “Calderon-Interiano will remain in ICE custody pending his removal from the United States.” 

    A separate Fox 45 investigation found that Baltimore County officials regularly ignore detainer requests from the federal government to keep illegal aliens in custody.

    ICE data shows the county ignored about 70% of detainers in 2023.

    Del. Nino Mangione, R-Baltimore County, responded to the Fox 45 report, saying, “This is a horrifying, disgusting and outrageous story about how flawed our immigration system is.” 

    Mangione continued: 

    “This is yet another example of a question being asked too often, why in the hell is a person like this in our county and how did they get into our country to begin with?  And the irresponsible action of the Office of Refugee Resettlement is mind blowing to me.

    “What we need at ICE is an Office of Immediate and Permanent Deportation to remove these people from our country permanently. 

    “We have a liberal Democrat crisis that has been created by those who have no respect for the rule of law, border security, human decency, or the safety and security of American citizens.  Yet, the Democrats sit on their hands, make excuses, and do nothing year after year.

    This is their fault and their fault alone!” 

    There is absolutely no logical reason for the progressive county to let this illegal alien. Not one.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/04/2024 – 21:35

  • OPEC+ Switches Strategy To Defend Market Share
    OPEC+ Switches Strategy To Defend Market Share

    By John Kemp, senior energy analyst

    Oil futures prices have fallen to the lowest level for four months and calendar spreads have slumped after OPEC⁺ ministers signalled their intention to start increasing production from the fourth quarter of 2024.

    Front-month Brent futures closed at $78 per barrel on June 3, the first day of trading following the OPEC⁺  ministerial meeting held on June 2, up just $2 per barrel compared with the same time last year.

    Brent’s six-month spread slumped to a backwardation of $1.50 per barrel (56th percentile for all months since 2000) from an average of $2.85 (78th percentile) in May and $4.86 (95th percentile) in April.

    Inter-month spreads for the remainder of 2024 and through 2025 have all softened as traders anticipate increasing OPEC⁺ production will eliminate any threat of shortages or a fall in inventories.

    Following a hybrid meeting held in Riyadh and online, OPEC⁺ announced voluntary output cuts amounting to 2.2 million barrels per day (b/d) would be extended until the end of September 2024. But the cuts will then be gradually phased out on a monthly basis over the final quarter of 2024 and the first three quarters of 2025.

    The planned production increases are subject to the caveat it can be “paused or reversed subject to market conditions”, ministers said. But it is nonetheless an enormous increment – equivalent to roughly 18 months of normal growth in global oil consumption.

    Inevitably, prices have fallen.

    STRATEGY SHIFT

    The scheduled production increases mark a change of strategy by OPEC⁺, led by Saudi Arabia, which had previously focused on depleting excess inventories and driving prices towards $100 per barrel.

    Instead, the group has switched its focus to stabilising, or even regaining, some of the market share it has lost in the last two years to rival producers in the United States, Canada, Brazil and Guyana.

    Repeated official and voluntary production cuts by Saudi Arabia and other OPEC⁺ members have failed to lift prices (though they probably averted a more severe decline).

    Instead they have thrown a lifeline to higher-cost producers in the western hemisphere, encouraging them to maintain and even increase output.

    Dwindling OPEC⁺ market share has simply become too painful and contentious to sustain; it brings uncomfortable reminders about Saudi Arabia’s role as a swing producer in the early 1980s.

    The scheduled increases are intended to signal there is a limit to how far Saudi Arabia and its closest allies will cut production on their own to support prices and they do not accept cuts are permanent.

    To stabilize and recapture market share, OPEC⁺ needs slower growth in rivals’ output and faster growth in consumption. Both imply lower prices to enforce a slowdown in drilling, stimulate fuel use, and make room for more OPEC⁺ crude.

    Extra production also implies inventories will be higher than previously anticipated, explaining the sudden slump in spreads.

    The Brent spread for the fourth quarter of 2024, when the first production increases are scheduled, slid to 89 cents per barrel on June 3 from $1.58 on May 28 and as much as $2.51 at one point in April.

    The spread for the whole period between September 2024 and September 2025 slid to $3 on June 3 from $5 on May 28 and more than $8 in early April.

    ROOM FOR MORE OIL

    For OPEC⁺ to pump more, others must pump less, other things equal, and that requires lower prices to force a production slowdown, especially in the price-sensitive and short-cycle U.S. shale sector.

    Pre-announcing increases in OPEC⁺ production is intended to forestall further increases in output by the U.S. shale sector, partly through signalling and partly through lower prices themselves.

    By deferring the first production increases until October, and making them conditional on future market conditions, OPEC⁺ ministers have given themselves some flexibility.

    Scheduled production increases can be deferred again if oil consumption growth fails to accelerate, inventories remain comfortable and prices stay under pressure.

    But OPEC⁺ has signalled an important shift in the direction of policy. Having repeatedly thrown the shale sector a lifeline in 2023, OPEC⁺ is preparing to squeeze it again in 2025.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/04/2024 – 21:10

  • Delaware Hides Embezzlement Plot For Over A Year
    Delaware Hides Embezzlement Plot For Over A Year

    Authored by Adam Andrzejewski via RealClearWire,

    Topline: A Delaware employee stole $181,000 from the state’s Department of Labor early last year, but the public didn’t find out until this April. The truth was only revealed after the WHYY News public radio station contacted the Delaware Department of Labor following a tip.

    Key facts: Unemployment insurance administrator Michael Brittingham allegedly stole the money from the Delaware Unemployment Compensation Fund, according to WHYY.

    The State of Delaware hired Brittingham in February 2019. That summer, he was sentenced to two years in prison for stealing almost $43,000 from his homeowner’s association by writing checks to a company he owned, NEWAGE Management LLC, the news outlet reported.

    Instead of being fired by the state, Brittingham had his jail time turned into probation and even earned multiple job promotions while still serving his sentence. The state Department of Labor bizarrely blamed it on the fact that employees are expected to “self-report” criminal convictions in a statement to WHYY News.

    Brittingham’s salary doubled from $35,000 to $70,000 in that time span, according to records at OpenTheBooks.com.

    Brittingham then allegedly pulled the same check-writing scheme on a much larger scale. In January 2023, he instructed his staff to issue two tax refunds to NEWAGE Management LLC: one for $86,827 and another for $94,357

    He was caught by his colleagues once they realized the business’s address matched the one listed on Brittingham’s 2019 arrest warrant.

    Brittingham took his own life in April 2023 shortly after an investigation was opened.

    Background: The theft is just one part of larger issues with Delaware’s Department of Labor. Its $390 million unemployment fund was deemed to be “unauditable” in a state report issued this year.

    Independent auditors took the “unprecedented” step of issuing a “disclaimer of opinion” on the unemployment insurance fund, meaning its accounting practices are so poor that they could not determine whether its financial statements are accurate.

    But the auditors’ report did not mention the theft. Even now, the state refuses to tell WHYY News whether the investigation has been closed.

    Critical quote: “I’m not sure how or why they tried to keep it quiet other than they don’t want to bring attention to the fact that everything is really screwed up,” Laura Henderson, a tax collection manager at the state’s Unemployment Insurance Office, told WHYY News.

    “We would love for there to be transparency. For us to just put it out in the open like, ‘Hey, we’re drowning and let’s come up with a plan here.’”

     The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/04/2024 – 21:10

  • In National IQ Test, Biden Does 'We Gotta Secure The Border!' Routine
    In National IQ Test, Biden Does ‘We Gotta Secure The Border!’ Routine

    Update (1443ET): President Ron Burgundy read what is perhaps the most audacious attempt to trick Americans into believing the exact opposite of reality – namely, that he didn’t cause the border crisis, Republicans are the reason it isn’t fixed, and he’s here to save the day.

    A national IQ test, if you will.

    And he’s off! To some kind of a start…

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

    Oh…

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

    Former President Trump responded to this attempted sleight of hand, saying that “The truth is that Crooked Joe Biden’s Executive Order won’t stop the invasion…it will actually make the invasion worse.”

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

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

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

    *  *  *

    After shredding Donald Trump’s ‘xenophobic’ Executive Orders on border security his first day in office more than three years ago, resulting in what some estimate to be upwards of 20 million illegal migrants pouring into the United States (which Trump plans to deport), President Joe Biden is quietly signing an executive order on Tuesday aimed at slowing migrant crossings.

    Joe BidenPhotographer: Hannah Beier/Bloomberg

    As we noted on Friday, the EO would slash asylum claims by roughly two-thirds of where they stand today – and would cap the number of daily encounters at an average of 2,500 crossings per day (or 912k per year), however Biden would allow mass asylum claims to resume once border encounters fall to around 1,500 per day.

    US Border Patrol recorded approximately 4,300 daily encounters in April – which of course doesn’t include ‘gotaways’ – those who enter the US without notice.

    The move comes three months after the White House said Biden was no longer considering using executive action to secure the border.

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

    According to Bloomberg, lawmakers and others have been invited to a Tuesday afternoon event at the White House.

    The order is Biden’s most aggressive move yet to address the crisis on the US-Mexico border, which has seen record levels of migrants and taxed communities across the country struggling to deal with the influx of new arrivals. A bipartisan Senate plan that would have given Biden similar powers was blocked by Republicans at Trump’s behest earlier this year, denying the president a political win and prompting him to act unilaterally.

    Tuesday’s order is politically risky. It will invite criticism from Biden’s left flank, which has blasted moves to ramp up deportations as an inhumane approach to the crisis. That has the potential to stymie his efforts to shore up an electoral coalition already riven by divisions over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war and overarching concerns over his age and fitness to serve a second term. -Bloomberg

    The Biden administration’s move underscores how the administration has been compelled to act just months before the 2024 US election – as it’s become a centerpiece issue for Republicans on the campaign trail. Donald Trump has been constantly hammering Biden over the border as polls continue to show that voters think the border and immigration are critical issues.

    The Executive Order is also timed to reflect an effort to deter a seasonal increase in crossings that typically occurs each summer and early fall (right before the election), and comes as Mexico welcomes a new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who was elected on Sunday. She doesn’t take office until Oct. 1, and it’s unknown what actions she will take on the border situation.

    In recent weeks the Biden administration has taken other steps to tighten immigration rules. Last month, they proposed a rule that would allow the US to expedite the expulsion of certain undocumented migrants trying to claim asylum.

    According to the report, Biden will use Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act – which Trump invoked – which are anticipated to invite legal challenges.

    House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News Sunday that the move is “too little too late,” adding “The only reason he’s doing that is because the polls say that it’s the biggest issue in America.”

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

     

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/04/2024 – 20:43

  • The Ghost of COVID Past Looms Over Gen Z Voters
    The Ghost of COVID Past Looms Over Gen Z Voters

    Authored by Sam Raus via RealClearPolitics,

    More than 40 million Gen Z voters will be eligible to vote this November. For context, that’s more eligible voters than the population of California. And while often characterized as extremely progressive, college kids could shock Boomers with their presidential ballots. This fall, the iPhone generation might ultimately seek accountability for the leaders responsible for school closures, social distancing, and vaccine mandates.

    As mainstream media zeroes in on Trump’s conviction in the New York hush money case, figures like Anthony Fauci, Andrew Cuomo, Phil Murphy and Gavin Newsom are largely let off the hook. Pandemic memories have taken a back seat to hot-button issues including abortion, the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, the Ukraine-Russia war, immigration, Trump’s and Biden’s personal struggles, and economics. But the social and academic fallout of “Zoom University” lingers in young voters’ minds as they see graduations canceled and cities littered by protestors yet again.

    Reckoning with the COVID era offers an opportunity for leadership in 2024. While the Dobbs decision overshadowed pandemic policies in the 2022 midterms, this fall, elected officials should highlight the fallout of quarantine regulations, emphasizing the lasting impact of prolonged social isolation, financially irresponsible aid packages, and more.

    Over the past year, Congress revisited the stain left on America by the pandemic. Once deemed a conspiracy theory, information on the potential Wuhan lab origins of the coronavirus was declassified last year after President Biden signed Sen. Josh Hawley’s unanimously passed COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023. This past week, legislation introduced by Sen. Eric Schmitt, Rep. Troy Balderson, and Rep. Kevin Hern aims to review the misallocation of COVID relief money by the Department of Treasury in response to inflation concerns. A bipartisan bill by Sen. Gary Peters seeks to create a permanent “Government Spending Oversight Committee” to replace the temporary “Pandemic Response Accountability Committee.”

    While news headlines and social media overlook the by-products of COVID-19, legislators from both parties seem engaged in discussions over the fiscal mismanagement and various socioeconomic consequences of closing life as we knew it. Although foreign relations and culture wars are expected to dominate voters’ attention, Americans remember what happened only yesterday, particularly those who saw formative years ripped away by pandemic politics. Legislators up for reelection in November would be wise to pick up on this and call for accountability for COVID-19 failures and transparency going forward.

    Biden likely will frame his administration as a “return to normal,” given that he took office as vaccines began to roll out for the elderly and lockdown restrictions eased across the country. Nevertheless, the White House strikes no distance from Democratic governors such as Gov. Newsom and Gov. Murphy who endorsed school closures and vaccine mandates. As the president already struggles with youth voters due to his careful alignment with Israel and vaccine skeptic progressives flocking to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Biden campaign may want to pass on tapping Newsom or Murphy as surrogates this cycle.

    Conversely, Gen Z voters may prove more sympathetic than expected to outspoken lockdown critics like Gov. Greg Abbott and Gov. Ron DeSantis. Despite sharing firm disagreements on cultural issues, most notably abortion and LGBT issues, droves of young people – myself included – fled the Northeast and California for an in-person college experience in the South. If Republicans want to make amends with the next generation of American voters, they should start by emphasizing depolarized topics such as quality education, social opportunities, and mental health.

    Whether they’re running for president or lower office, candidates in 2024 should adopt stronger rhetoric condemning the fiscal and public health fecklessness of four years ago. Legislation is needed to ensure transparency in scientific research, the defense of civil liberties, and the preservation of economic prosperity. Furthermore, future Congress and White House cabinet members have a social responsibility to better question authority, rushed conclusions, and media narratives. A shadow of the pandemic lurks over this election. The ultimate victors will be those who leverage it.

    Don’t underestimate the fury of a graduate scorned.

    Sam Raus is a Young Voices Contributor studying public relations and political science at the University of Miami. His commentary has appeared in RealClearDefense, The Daily Caller, The National Interest, and RealClearWorld, Follow him on Twitter: @SamRaus1

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/04/2024 – 20:20

  • Report Details US Troop 'Land Corridors' In Event Of European Ground War With Russia
    Report Details US Troop ‘Land Corridors’ In Event Of European Ground War With Russia

    NATO has a plan in place for rapid deployment of its forces in the scenario of a future Russian attack on Europe. It includes the development of “land corridors” which can be used to rush some 300,000 troops — mostly American soldiers — to front line positions in order to defend against a Russian invasion.

    High-ranking British military sources described to the Telegraph that the plan entails troops landing at key European ports whereupon they would move east along pre-planned routes to counter potential Russian attacks.

    Lt. Gen. Alexander Sollfrank, chief of NATO’s Joint Support and Enabling Command (JSEC), described to the UK publication, “Huge logistics bases, as we know them from Afghanistan and Iraq, are no longer possible because they will be attacked and destroyed very early on in a conflict situation.”

    Port of Rotterdam file image, identified as a key arrival point for US troops in event of major war in Europe.

    The logistics and troop transport corridors would originate in places like Greece, Italy, Turkey, The Netherlands, Norway – and the port of Rotterdam, a key northern European hub, is specifically named. Lines like the Germany-Poland railway are also mentioned in the report – all of which would theoretically allow rapid deployment of US forces to any NATO territory being threatened (based on Article 5 common defense).

    Separate alarmist reports in UK media have been warning that the West should prepare for war with Russia at some point in the next two decades, connected with ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

    For example, a prior March report in The Telegraph claimed that President Putin has a “paranoid obsession” with stoking conflict and provoking Western allies.

    “Now that Russian President Vladimir Putin has secured his historic fifth term in office, it is patently clear that he will devote his next six-year spell at the Kremlin to pursuing his paranoid obsession of confronting the West,” that prior stated.

    As for the Telegraph’s latest Tuesday revelation of the NATO land corridors — with the somewhat loud and sensationalist headline of “Nato land corridors could rush US troops to front line in event of European war” — the reality is that big picture contingency plans like this have been on US and NATO planners’ shelves since the Cold War.

    But without doubt they are getting dusted off amid the continued escalation of the Ukraine proxy war…

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

    According to some of the further planning details laid out by The Telegraph and its military sources:

    If Nato forces entering from the Netherlands are hit by Russian bombardment, or northern European ports destroyed, the alliance is set to shift focus to ports in Italy, Greece and Turkey. From Italian ports, US troops could be carried via land through Slovenia, Croatia to Hungary, which shares a border with Ukraine.

    Similar plans exist to transport forces from Turkish and Greek ports through Bulgaria and Romania to reach the alliance’s eastern flank. Plans are also being drawn up to transport troops via ports in the Balkans, as well as through Norway, Sweden and Finland.

    Lt Gen Sollfrank was further quoted as saying, “Ukraine suffers very much from these Russian long-range missile attacks on the logistic systems” – underscoring the importance of troop movements which would be out of reach of Russian systems.

    The report includes visuals tracking ‘land corridors’ for Western troops en route to confront Russian forces in a future scenario…

    Source: The Telegraph

    In the wake of the Telegraph report some pundits are saying this means WW3 is “starting now”… and while indeed at this point the world could already be witnessing the beginning phases (especially when historians look back), there’s yet some escalatory steps remaining before missiles start flying over Europe. Hopefully saner minds prevail, even if at the last minute (though we don’t have a lot of faith in this).

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/04/2024 – 19:56

  • The Apartment Construction Boom Ends, Major Economic Impact Ahead
    The Apartment Construction Boom Ends, Major Economic Impact Ahead

    By Mish Shedlock of Mishtalk

    Interest rates are too high for many projects to start. Some started projects are in trouble. Let’s discuss the ramifications.

    The Wall Street Journal reports Developers Sit on Empty Lots After Historic Apartment Boom

    During the biggest apartment construction boom in decades, a growing number of developers can’t make the numbers work to get started on their project, or can’t get the money to complete them. Higher interest rates, tighter lending conditions and flattening rents in parts of the country have left property companies from California to Florida waiting for financing that might not come soon.

    The amount of time the average apartment project spends between construction authorization and when construction begins has risen to nearly 500 days, a 45% increase from 2019, according to property data firm Yardi Matrix.

    “We certainly are seeing a decline in construction,” said Robert Dietz, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders. “Deals and financing have dried up.”

    Some decline was inevitable. About half a million new apartments opened in 2023, the most in 40 years. Based on what is already under construction, analysts expect a similar number to be completed in 2024.

    But banks have other issues that keep them from lending as much to apartment builders this year. Many regional banks are souring on the commercial real-estate loans already on their books. 

    “Their current portfolios are getting marked down and they don’t have that much to lend,” said David Frosh, chief executive of Fidelity Bancorp Funding, a California real-estate lender.

    That means developers need to raise more cash from investors to build. But many investors are more cautious today, as rent growth flattens and new projects look less profitable at today’s higher interest rates and construction costs. 

    “The numbers don’t add up,” Frosh said.

    Housing Starts vs Completions Looks Ominous for the Economy

    On May 16, 2024, I commented Housing Starts vs Completions Looks Ominous for the Economy

    Housing completions have surpassed housing starts. History suggests bad things follow. But what’s happening this time?

    Starts Minus Completions

    Whether it’s all completions or just multi-family that matters the most, it doesn’t look very good either way.

    Economic Ramifications

    • Slowdown in construction employment.
    • Slowdown in loans.
    • Writeoffs on struggling projects. The WSJ mentioned several. There will be many.
    • Apartment construction loans will add to the misery of regional banks suffering on commercial real estate loans.
    • Huge slowdown in durable goods needs coming up: Appliances, furniture, light fixtures, etc.

    This is happening as a major slowdown in EVs is also underway.

    ISM Manufacturing New Orders and Backlogs in Steep Contraction

    Yesterday, I noted ISM Manufacturing New Orders and Backlogs in Steep Contraction

    The Manufacturing ISM was in contraction for 16 months went positive for a month and is contracting again for two months with order backlogs falling for 20 months.

    Order backlogs have plunged. New orders are sinking. This will impact employment. The economy is now struggling on multiple fronts simultaneously.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/04/2024 – 19:30

  • Dershowitz: Trump Could Fast-Track His Appeal To Supreme Court
    Dershowitz: Trump Could Fast-Track His Appeal To Supreme Court

    Retired Harvard Law Professor and Jeffrey Epstein’s former attorney Alan Dershowitz thinks that former President Trump has a path to expedite his conviction to the US Supreme Court before the November presidential election.

    Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in order to conceal ‘hush money’ payments to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election.

    In a Friday interview with Megyn Kelly, Dershowitz suggested that Trump’s legal team should immediately push to get their appeal heard before the New York Court of Appeals, asking them to bypass the Appellate Division – which, Dershowitz suggested, are elected and more likely to work against Trump.

    “The Appellate Division or Manhattan judges that are elected and they don’t want to have to face their families and say you were the judge who allowed Trump to become the next President of the United States. They don’t want to be Dershowitz’ed,” he said, referring to the fact that he defended Trump during his first impeachment trial in the Senate.

    “They don’t want to be treated in New York, the way I have been treated in Martha’s Vineyard and Harvard and New York because I defended Donald Trump, so they should skip the Appellate Division.”

    And so, to avoid the politicized Appellate Division, Trump’s attorneys should ask the Court of Appeals for an expedited appeal while preparing to argue in front of the US Supreme Court that the Manhattan case was rushed to try and get a verdict before the election. 

    Dershowitz further suggested that the Supreme Court has an obligation to review the case before the election so that the American public has resolution.

    As Tom Ozimek of the Epoch Times notes further, Dershowitz has in the past accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of unfairly building the case against the former president by using a novel legal theory to elevate misdemeanor business falsification charges into a felony by alleging that the records fraud was carried out to conceal an underlying crime. In the Trump case, the underlying crime that was alleged was seeking to interfere in the 2016 election by using non-disclosure agreements to prevent unfavorable media coverage about an alleged affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels that the former president has denied.

    Mr. Dershowitz said that Trump attorneys should consider supporting their petition to the New York Court of Appeals by highlighting two issues, with the first relating to the fact that the state’s highest court recently reversed Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction because the trial judge prejudicially allowed testimony on allegations unrelated to the case.

    The retired law professor alleged that Judge Juan Merchan “improperly” allowed irrelevant salacious details of President Trump’s alleged tryst with Ms. Daniels to be admitted into the record, while also raising the so-called “missing witness” issue.

    The second point that Mr. Dershowitz said would bolster a petition for an expedited review to the New York Court of Appeals is that the judge allegedly didn’t instruct the jury properly on why prosecutors didn’t call former Trump Organization CFO Alan Weisselberg to testify in the case. The judge was open to having Mr. Weisselberg testify but the prosecution didn’t call him, framing him as an unreliable witness due to earlier perjury charges in an unrelated case, while the defense also didn’t call him, citing the fact that prosecutors had undermined his credibility.

    Mr. Dershowitz argued that failure to call Mr. Weisselberg left a hole in proving the case because it was expected that his testimony would have undermined some of the claims from another witness, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who testified against the former president.

    “Number two, I think would be the failure to give an instruction on the missing witness,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “The way the judge and the prosecution handled Allen Weisselberg really denied the defendant the right to a presumption that the only reason he wasn’t called was because he would not have corroborated the very important testimony, lying testimony of Michael Cohen.”

    Mr. Dershowitz said those two issues are what Trump attorneys should highlight in their request for an expedited appeal.

    “This is a winnable appeal,” he insisted.

    The Epoch Times was unable to reach Trump counsel for comment on Mr. Dershowitz’s remarks.

    The guilty verdict made President Trump the first former president in U.S. history to be convicted of a crime.

    Other Legal Experts Weigh In

    Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, told The Epoch Times that he shares frustration expressed by critics of the verdict, including the House speaker, at what he described as an obvious “miscarriage of justice.”

    Mr. von Spakovsky said that the prospect of the Supreme Court getting before the appeals process plays out in New York state courts is not realistic.

    “There are certainly issues that give the Supreme Court jurisdiction over the state court conviction, given the fundamental violation of Donald Trump’s substantive due process rights under the U.S. Constitution in the way the trial judge and prosecution mishandled the case,” he said. “But I don’t believe the Supreme Court will take the case until the state appeals process is exhausted.”

    Jonathan Emord, a constitutional law and litigation expert, told The Epoch Times that he believes that the trial violated President Trump’s due process rights and was “riddled with bias” but that he, too, sees little hope for Supreme Court intervention until the New York Court of Appeals has weighed in.

    “The fact of the matter is that a trial violated President Trump’s due process rights and was riddled with bias, evidentiary rulings that deprive him of a full and fair opportunity to present his case,” he said.

    “On the merits, there really is no foundation for a legal basis for decision because it’s a novel theory of law that’s been applied,” Mr. Emord said of the way the case was brought by Mr. Bragg.

    Asked why Mr. Johnson suggested that the Supreme Court should step in at an earlier-than-normal stage of the appeals process, Mr. Emord suggested it’s because of “exceptional circumstances.”

    “He’s arguing that there are exceptional circumstances that would warrant the Supreme Court to intervene and while there certainly are exceptional circumstances, I suspect that the Supreme Court would not intervene in the first instance, but would allow an appellate court in New York to issue a determination,” he said.

    Short of a successful appeal, President Trump could now be facing such penalties as jail time, probation, or fines.

    Sentencing in the case has been set for July 11, just four days before the Republican National Convention where President Trump will be formally designated as the Republican presidential nominee.

    While there are no laws barring President Trump from running for the White House as a convicted felon, an overturned verdict before Election Day would likely boost his chances of victory.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/04/2024 – 19:05

  • This Guy Encapsulates How Everyone Feels When Fauci Complains About Being Harassed
    This Guy Encapsulates How Everyone Feels When Fauci Complains About Being Harassed

    Authored by Steve Watson via modernity.news,

    Anthony Fauci got the verbal smacking of his life in Congress Monday from several GOP representatives on the COVID Select Subcommittee, but there was one guy who out did them all with some epic trolling while sitting directly behind him.

    Brandon Fellows encapsulated how everyone else reacted when Fauci began complaining about the harassment he has received by letters, email and texts for his role and actions during the pandemic.

    Fauci claimed he has received “credible death threats” and that they increase every time someone claims he is responsible for the death of people all over the world.

    He also claimed that it requires him to have “protective services.”

    While Fauci complained, Fellows pulled ‘boo boo’ faces behind him.

    Watch:

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

    Fellows sat for some time behind Fauci before he was asked to leave the hearing, prompting Fellows to tell Fauci that he belongs in prison.

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

    Fellows subsequently posted about the incident on Facebook:

    It turns out that Fellows was convicted earlier this year to three years in prison for entering the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and was on supervised release.

    This made leftists freak out even more.

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

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

    Fellows responded.

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

    Fauci himself addressed Fellows’ presence at the hearing during a softball fawning interview with CNN host Kaitlin Collins. Fauci exclaimed “What’s somebody like that doing at a hearing about COVID?”

    He also complained about the “vitriol” directed his way during the hearing, particularly from Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene, which we highlighted earlier.

    During the hearing, Fauci was also subjected to a six minute berating by former White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson.

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

    The verbal lectures didn’t deter Fauci from declaring that the unvaccinated are “responsible” for an “additional 200,000 to 300,000 deaths” from COVID in the U.S.

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

    Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/04/2024 – 18:40

  • Queens Couple Finds $100,000 In Safe At Bottom Of Corona Park Lake While 'Magnet Fishing'
    Queens Couple Finds $100,000 In Safe At Bottom Of Corona Park Lake While ‘Magnet Fishing’

    A couple “fishing” with a magnet at a lake in Corona Park made the ultimate catch this weekend, pulling up a metal safe with approximately $100,000 in it from the bottom of the water, according to a new report from NY1. 

    NY1 reported that “‘Magnet Fishing’ enthusiasts lower high-powered magnets into bodies of water, and hoist them out to see what sticks.” In this case, something stuck. 

    James Kane and Barbie Agostini, both from Queens, did just that on Friday of last week and felt something heavy on the end of their line after a while. When they pulled the line up, they discovered an old safe. 

    “It was two stacks of freaking hundreds. Big stacks,” Kane said. He added the bills were “soaking wet, pretty much destroyed”. 

    Sadly, however, the money looked to have been ruined by the water, the New York Post added. 

    Kane, a seasoned magnet fisherman, remarked that he and Agostini have encountered numerous safes in the past, typically finding them empty except for some plastic bags that once contained money. 

    Kane admitted he cursed out loud in surprise. Agostini didn’t believe him at first.

    “He showed me and once I saw the actual dollars and the security ribbons I lost it,” Agostini said.

    “I guess the finders keepers rule worked for us,” Kane said. He noted that the couple called the police but there was no way to identify who owned the safe, which they guessed was probably stolen. 

    The couple started magnet fishing during the pandemic. “We were borded during covid lockdown and I’ve always had this itch to become a treasure hunter … so we discovered something called magnet fishing,” Kane concluded. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/04/2024 – 18:15

  • Biden, Trump Test Executive Privilege With Claims
    Biden, Trump Test Executive Privilege With Claims

    Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The 2024 election cycle has resurfaced longstanding debates over presidential power and how much independence the executive enjoys from other branches of government.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images, Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    Executive privilege, which refers to presidents’ withholding communications from other branches, has come under scrutiny with issues surrounding both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. The idea behind executive privilege is that presidents should have freedom to speak with advisers without fear of retaliation over the content of their comments.

    George Washington University law professor W. Burlette Carter told The Epoch Times via email: “Executive privilege is designed to allow presidents the broadest freedom to speak and act in the presidency in pursuit of the public good.”

    President Trump has asserted executive privilege before and after leaving office. Two of his associates—former White House advisors Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon—were sentenced to jail for refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas while citing executive privilege.

    President Trump has tried asserting privilege over several areas, including correspondence related to Jan. 6, in order to challenge subpoenas of his former aides for a grand jury probe into Jan. 6, over his financial records, and over boxes of documents he transferred from Mar-a-Lago to the National Archives.

    President Joe Biden, meanwhile, has asserted executive privilege over the audio recordings of his two-day interview with special counsel Robert Hur, who was investigating his handling of classified documents.

    The executive privilege claims from both have raised questions about when its assertion is legally valid, as well as how much other branches can demand of the executive.

    What Is Executive Privilege?

    Executive privilege isn’t explicitly granted in the Constitution but derives from the document’s general concept of separation of powers.

    Executive privilege is thought to have been asserted since the beginning of the Republic. The nation’s first president, George Washington, refused to cooperate with Congress’s request for information on his negotiations in the Jay Treaty with Great Britain.

    The concept of executive privilege was more firmly outlined in two Supreme Court cases involving former President Richard Nixon. Those cases—United States v. Nixon in 1974 and Nixon v. General Services Administration in 1977—collectively established that Congress could require storage of presidential records, and that the president’s interests in privilege must be balanced against those of the entities seeking the records.

    Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) questions Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel Christopher Schroeder as he testifies about executive privilege doctrine at the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 18, 2022. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    In United States v. Nixon, the Supreme Court underscored the legal importance of executive privilege by stating that it “is fundamental to the operation of Government, and inextricably rooted in the separation of powers under the Constitution.”

    Since George Washington, multiple administrations have cited executive privilege over sensitive materials.

    Most recently, Attorney General Merrick Garland cited U.S. v. Nixon in a May 15 letter requesting that President Biden assert privilege over the audio of his interview with Mr. Hur rather than complying with subpoenas from two House committees.

    The same decision clarified, however, that generalized interests in confidentiality weren’t enough for presidents to assert executive privilege over evidence needed for “the fair administration of criminal justice.”

    Court decisions involving President Nixon have clarified that the privilege is limited and that presidents themselves aren’t the final arbiters of how far it extends. Rather, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said in Nixon v. Sirica, the judicial branch has ultimate say over its applicability.

    What Does Executive Privilege Protect?

    The controversies surrounding investigations into both President Biden and President Trump have illustrated the somewhat messy debate over what executive privilege actually protects.

    It’s a long-debated question that hinges on the nature of the executive’s activities and the interests other branches have in its communications.

    These interests can vary but Congress may want to obtain information in order to better craft legislation. The judiciary, meanwhile, could be seeking that information for prosecutions.

    According to Ms. Carter, former presidents were able to assert executive privilege only “in cases alleging personal liability of the President for criminal or civil behavior.”

    She said that could occur “only so long as the action claimed to be privileged was in the course of performing presidential duties.”

    “Now if the president walks outside the White House and shoots someone after having a conversation about that plan, that is a different matter. No privilege during or after the presidency,” Ms. Carter said.

    Former special counsel Robert K. Hur testifies in front of a video of President Joe Biden at the U.S. Capitol on March 12, 2024. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

    The distinction between official and unofficial acts of presidents reached the Supreme Court this year but with a different aspect of executive power—that of presidential immunity. In April, the Supreme Court heard oral argument over President Trump’s claim that he enjoyed immunity from prosecution for the official acts that the Department of Justice (DOJ) had indicted him for in Washington.

    The court will issue its decision in June and experts speculate that the justices will issue a refined definition of presidential immunity to cover official acts while directing the district court to parse out which of President Trump’s acts fell under that classification.

    Trump’s Privileges and Immunities

    It’s unclear how the ruling will eventually parse President Trump’s activities on and leading up to Jan. 6, 2021.

    Regardless, in distinguishing between official and non-official acts, the court could prompt consideration about how both executive privilege and presidential immunity apply to certain aspects of the DOJ’s indictment.

    Pacific Legal Foundation Vice President Jim Burling said President Trump will likely face an “uphill battle” if he tries to assert executive privilege over communications in his Washington case.

    “He is going to have to prove whatever he did on January 6—he was acting as president rather than a former candidate or a losing candidate,” he told The Epoch Times.

    In his Washington trial, President Trump’s defense attorneys might claim that he was relying on the advice of his aides or attorneys in making some of his decisions. One of his attorneys, John Lauro, has already made this argument on television, saying that President Trump thought he was following the advice of his attorney.

    Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told The Epoch Times that if President Trump raises that type of defense, he might be forced to waive executive privilege, which extends to White House aides.

    Mr. Rahmani said the special counsel’s office may also try to force President Trump to waive attorney-client privilege. Both forms of privilege, he suggested, could hinder the prosecution’s ability to make its case.

    “For the prosecution to prove that Trump conspired to defraud the United States … they really need to get inside his head and prove that he knew … that he lost the election and that he intended to overturn the results anyway,” Mr. Rahmani said.

    Former President Donald Trump leaves after addressing members of the media following the verdict in his trial in New York City on May 31, 2024. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

    Weighing Executive and Legislative Interests

    “Once the privilege is asserted, the court weighs the interests of the various groups involved,” Ms. Carter said.

    “Remember, just because the DOJ says there was a crime does not prove there was a crime. And congressional investigations can be quite political. In both situations, the privilege holder’s rights and the purpose of the privilege must be considered.”

    In issuing a subpoena for President Biden’s audio files and other documents, House Republicans told the attorney general in February that the materials served Congress’ interest in oversight of the DOJ, its ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Biden, and potential legislation reforming special counsel investigations.

    The White House responded on May 16 by telling House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) they lacked a legitimate need for audio recordings as the administration had already given Republicans documents relevant to Mr. Hur’s investigation—including transcripts of his interviews with President Biden and his ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer.

    “The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal—to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes,” White House Counsel to the President Edward N. Siskel wrote the committee chairs in a letter.

    Mr. Garland also raised concerns in his May 15 letter that granting the Committees’ requests for the audio recordings would chill cooperation in future high-profile investigations such as Mr. Hur’s.

    Supreme Court Weighs In

    Democrats controlled the House from 2019 through 2022, which gave them leadership over committees that could issue subpoenas for President Trump—which they did for his tax returns and other financial information, as well as records related to the Capitol breach on Jan. 6, 2021.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/04/2024 – 17:50

  • China's Chang'e-6 Blasts Off From Moon's Far Side With Rock Samples 
    China’s Chang’e-6 Blasts Off From Moon’s Far Side With Rock Samples 

    China’s Chang’e-6 spacecraft has collected 2 kilograms (or about 4.4 pounds) of lunar rocks and soil from the moon’s far side. The spacecraft lifted off on Tuesday and has begun its journey back to Earth. This marks the first time any spacecraft has accomplished this lunar soil extraction from the moon’s far side as China aims for a crewed mission to the lunar surface by 2030.

    State-run media outlet Xinhua News Agency reports Chang’e-6 blasted off from the lunar surface on Tuesday morning and is expected to connect with an orbiter before returning rock samples to Earth. 

    If the spacecraft does not burn up on the descent into Earth’s atmosphere, this would be the first time any space agency has collected samples from the moon’s far side. The spacecraft is expected to return to Earth on June 25. 

    Xinhua described the mission as “an unprecedented feat in human lunar exploration history.” 

    The spacecraft touched down on the lunar surface on Sunday. By Monday, a drill and robotic arm had been deployed to extract rock and soil samples. 

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

    By Tuesday morning, the spacecraft blasted off from the lunar surface. 

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

    The lunar samples collected by Chang’e-6 from the moon’s far side hold huge scientific value. They could potentially provide scientists worldwide with insights into the origins of our solar system. 
     

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/04/2024 – 17:25

  • Israel Says Fires Under Control After Nearly 2,500 Acres Scorched By Hezbollah Attacks
    Israel Says Fires Under Control After Nearly 2,500 Acres Scorched By Hezbollah Attacks

    Via The Cradle

    Fires continued to blaze across Israel’s north on Tuesday as a result of Hezbollah rockets and drones fired at the Galilee and Golan Heights over the past few days. Israeli firefighting services said on Tuesday morning that most of the large fires were under control but that teams were still battling the flames. 

    The Israeli fire department said its firefighters were “working hard to protect communities and property,” adding that there was no threat to lives or infrastructure at the current time. 

    Fires burning near Kiryat Shmona on Monday, via AFP

    Over 30 firefighting teams were deployed to extinguish the flames. As a result of the fires, major roads in the Galilee remain shuttered. 

    The fire service also said nearly 990 acres of land were burned near Amiad. Israel’s Ziv Medical Center said early Tuesday in the northern city of Safad said it treated six reserve soldiers and five settlers for injuries and smoke inhalation. 

    The fires burned across Mount Adir, Kfar Giladi, Kiryat Shmona, and other areas. The fire service said it was still working to contain flames in Keren Naftali, which had broken out the day before. 

    The city of Katzrin, known as the Israeli capital of the occupied Golan Heights, was also subjected to intense flames.

    New satellite imagery from the European Commission’s Sentinel-2 satellite showed a massive swathe of scorched land just south of Katzrin. Hezbollah had targeted the Katzrin area with a rocket barrage on Sunday. 

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

    On Monday, fires that initially broke out as a result of Hezbollah attacks over the weekend spread rapidly across the Israeli north. Hezbollah launched several more attacks on Monday and Tuesday.

    Footage from Monday evening showed several areas in the north engulfed in flames and firefighters struggling to contain their spread. 

    Middle East Eye meanwhile writes:

    The far-right Israel Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, which is also a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet, said on Monday that Israel should set up a security zone that extends into southern Lebanon.

    Writing on social media site X, Smotrich said that “the new strategy being spearheaded by the war cabinet is going up in flames for hours and blowing up in our faces. A year ago, the defense minister said that we will send Lebanon back to the Stone Age. Mr. Prime Minister, Mr. Defense Minister, Mr. Chief of Staff: That time has come“.

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

    Over 2,470 acres (over 10 square kilometers) of land have been scorched as a result of Hezbollah’s recent attacks, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority said on 3 June. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/04/2024 – 17:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jun 04

Today’s News 4th June 2024

  • Italy Pipes Up Against NATO Escalation As Court Ruling Could Cut Off Russian Gas Sooner Than Expected
    Italy Pipes Up Against NATO Escalation As Court Ruling Could Cut Off Russian Gas Sooner Than Expected

    Authored by Conor Gallagher via Naked Capitalism,

    A Russian construction worker speaks on a mobile phone during a ceremony marking the start of Nord Stream pipeline construction in Portovaya Bay (AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky, File)

    An opaque legal ruling could, in a roundabout way, soon halt all pipeline deliveries of Russian gas to Austria – and therefore Italy. Coupled with the ongoing disruptions in the Red Sea, the economic consequences for Europe’s second-largest industrial location could be dire.

    In late May, an undisclosed European court handed down a ruling that in a roundabout way could force Austria’s main gas company OMV (Österreichische Mineralölverwaltung or Austrian Mineral Oil Administration) to stop paying for Russian gas.

    Some background:

    This all goes back to the West’s “freezing” of hundreds of billions of Russian foreign assets in 2022. In light of that move, Putin introduced the “gas for roubles” program so that payments and clearing on its gas exports would be under the control of the Russian Central Bank and therefore unable to be frozen or stolen by the West.

    Many European countries/companies refused to comply and loudly complained that Putin was cutting off the gas.

    Meanwhile, some countries and companies in central Europe were “allowed” by the EU to continue importing Russian gas due to difficulties in updating their legacy energy infrastructure or some other reason. So companies like Austria’s OMV agreed to pay in roubles and continue to import the Russian gas and often send it on to the countries that threw a fit over the gas for roubles program.

    Now, here we are two years later, and it looks like OMV is going to be forced to stiff Gazprom on payments and redirect that money to European energy companies who refused to pay in roubles.  What little details of the case that are known are this from Upstream:

    …European companies led by Germany’s Uniper and RWE filed arbitration claims in Sweden, Switzerland and Luxembourg against the Russian company’s European trading subsidiary, Gazprom Export, seeking multibillion-dollar compensation payouts.

    OMV said on Wednesday that its remaining supplies from Gazprom may be under threat due to “a foreign court ruling” obtained by “a major European company” relating to the 2022 halt in supplies.

    Neither the court nor the company was identified.

    However, OMV said the court ruling contains an injunction ordering Gazprom’s remaining European customers to divert their payments for received Russian gas to the accounts of the “major European company”, as enforcement of the compensation is deemed impossible in Russia.

    OMV said that, if enforced, the ruling will require its OMV Gas Marketing & Trading subsidiary “to make payments under its gas supply contract with… Gazprom Export” to “the European energy company instead of sending them to Gazprom Export”.

    “However, it is currently not known to OMV whether and when such an enforcement might occur,” it added.

     Naturally, since Gazprom would not be receiving money for its natural gas, it would no longer deliver it to Austria. Despite the obviousness of that response, all the headlines read like this:

    OMV of course says that it would still be able to supply customers with volumes from non-Russian sources through its “extensive diversification efforts in recent years,” but at what cost? At least one prediction has European natural gas prices jumping 18 percent, and that’s on top of the significant rises over the past two years. There’s a reason that Austria kept importing from Russia and is now the EU country that relies the most on Russian gas. As always, it’s cheap and reliable.

    For comparison, OMV just signed long-term deals with BP and US-based company Cheniere Energy to import a combined nearly 2 million tons of LNG per year through a terminal in The Netherlands. The deals don’t begin until 2026 and 2029, respectively, and the contractual price will be pegged to market prices, which is the obvious disadvantage compared to set prices in long term contracts with Russia.

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

    Sure, the increased energy prices will hit the poorest Europeans hardest and reduce their quality of life, but hey, it’s good for US LNG companies.

    The fact is, this is bad news for Austria, and maybe more importantly from an EU-wide perspective, for the bloc’s second largest industrial center: Italy. Both countries have been trying to prepare for a halt to Russian gas supplies at the start of the next year when the current gas transit agreement between Russia and Ukraine expires. Officials in Kiev have repeatedly made it clear that will be the end of Russian gas flowing through Ukraine.

    That the cutoff date might now come sooner than expected just adds insult to injury. As OMV talks up its diversification efforts, it only has to look to Italy to see how difficult that process can be. With the ongoing tensions in the Red Sea and the Middle East causing disruptions in LNG deliveries Rome is in a major bind despite long pretending otherwise.

    Italy has Algeria to the south, which was going to increase gas and oil exports. Italy had the LNG facilities and was going to be part of “the continent’s new economic growth engine.”

    But that plan to transform the country into a gas hub for Europe, already on shaky ground, started to go up in flames in the Red Sea months ago. Italian PM Giorgia Meloni’s predecessor, the unelected former Goldman Sachs man Mario Draghi, was one of the biggest proponents of the EU’s doomed Russia policy and pushed the energy hub idea, which was seamlessly picked up by Meloni.

    It was never all that well thought out in the first place.

    In 2021, Russian imports accounted for 23 percent of Italian fuel consumption with gas depended on more heavily (about 40 percent of imports), but it was said Italy was well-positioned to manage the loss of Russian fuels due its proximity to North Africa. Italy quickly began looking south across the Mediterranean as part of the EU-wide turn to Africa in search of energy replacements for Russian oil and gas. Algeria was going to increase the flow of gas through an existing pipeline, and the countries plan to build another pipeline.

    Here were Italy’s calculations from a March 2022 piece from Hellenic Shipping News:

    Italy consumed 29 billion cubic metres (bcm) of Russian gas last year, representing about 40% of its imports. It is gradually replacing around 10.5 bcm of that by increased imports from other countries starting from this winter, according to Eni.

    Most of the extra gas will come from Algeria, which said on Sept. 21 it would increase total deliveries to Italy by nearly 20% to 25.2 bcm this year. This means it will become Italy’s top supplier, provide roughly 35% of imports; Russia’s share has meanwhile dropped to very low levels, Descalzi said this week.

    The rest of the shortfall was to be made up of LNG shipments from Angola, Egypt, Mozambique, Qatar, and of course the United States.

    Rome was using billions of euros coming from the EU’s green fund, the REPowerEU plan, and the Covid recovery fund to completely wean itself off Russian gas and turn the country into a hub, mainly with LNG storage facilities. The government rushed through a 5 billion cubic meter capacity (bcm) LNG terminal project in Tuscany with the Draghi government appointing a special commissioner with near-absolute powers that allowed the project to proceed despite court challenges.

    In December, Italy’s gas grid operator Snam completed a $400 million deal for another floating 5 bcm LNG storage and regasification facility that will be based on Italy’s northeastern coast, which will bring the country’s total to 28 bcm.  In September of 2022, Reuters declared that the “energy crisis sires new European order: a strong Italy and ailing Germany.”

    The Italian government patted itself on the back and said it was the “best in Europe” on energy security.

    While gas made up about 51 percent of Italy’s total electricity generation in 2022 (the highest level in Europe), more than 95 percent of it was imported from overseas, and the problem was the math was overly optimistic going forward.

    The Transmed system connecting Algeria and Italy wasn’t even operating at full capacity in 2022 when Italy began to believe it was going to be able to ramp up deliveries. There were major Algerian production issues, including infrastructure problems and the need to divert gas to meet increasing domestic demand for electricity.

    Marco Giuli, a researcher at the Brussels School of Governance in Belgium, told Natural Gas Intelligence at the time that “the additional 9 Bcm from Algeria by 2023 is unrealistic, especially considering that Algerian supplies to Italy increased by 80% between 2020 and 2021, Giuli said.

    Here we are in 2024 and Algeria’s gas exports to the EU have actually declined:

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

    So with LNG problems due to the Red Sea disruptions and less than hoped for from Algeria,  what did Italy do in response? It started getting more gas from Russia via Austria:

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

    Now, it looks like Russian supplies could be cut off even sooner than expected, and with Israel announcing its destruction of Gaza will continue until the end of the year, that means the Red Sea will remain a no-go zone. So Italy, Austria and others will be stuck with limited LNG options, which means prices will likely be ridiculously high due to scarce supply. Meanwhile, Italian factory activity continues to contract as it has been doing for the majority of the time for the past two years.

    The vise tightening in Italy could be playing a role in Italian politicians piping up about the insanity of US/NATO escalation against Russia. Consider the following signs that Italy wants to get off the escalator in recent weeks:

    • In early May Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto slapped down French President’s Emmanuel Macron’s flirtation with the idea of sending Western troops to Ukraine.
    • Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani declared that Italy is not at war with Russia and will not send troops.
    • Deputy Prime Minister of Italy and Minister of Infrastructure and Transport Matteo Salvini said that NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg should recant his statements about using Western weapons to attack inside Russia’s pre-2014 borders, or he should resign. The full comment: “Never attack Russia,” says Salvini, who adds: “If they want to go and fight in Ukraine, let Stoltenberg, Emmanuel Macron and all the bombers who want war go there. Ukraine or using our weapons to kill in Russia is madness. Either this gentleman who speaks on my behalf, since he speaks on behalf of NATO, either apologizes or resigns. Because the Italian people did not give you any mandate to go and shoot in Russia”.

    Unfortunately for the Italian people and especially the working class who have to bear the brunt of the pain from the economic war against Russia, the pushback against further escalation is too little, too late.

    The Italian public has consistently shown some of the lowest support levels in Europe for Project Ukraine, and those numbers have been consistently falling as research shows that half of Italians are struggling to make ends meet.

    Productive sectors of the economy have never been on board, and some political figures on the right like Salvini’s League and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia have periodically spoken out against escalation, but any attempts at a rational cost-benefit analysis or even maintaining some sort of cultural dialogue with Russians is met with hysteria from the liberal centrists in Italy (the real left has been mostly stamped out).

    It’s a major shift for Italy, which long enjoyed close ties with Russia. The two countries remained strong business partners until recent years. For example, Italy shared manufacturing know-how, such as on civil aircraft and helicopter projects, as well as the modernization of rail transportation, and Russia had the energy. Many mid-sized Italian businesses, especially in areas like agricultural manufacturing, were also eager to get into the emerging Russia market. They’re now doing what they can to stay there. Italian exports to Türkiye, for example, have jumped 87 percent over the last two years with much of that increase likely attributable to the effort to bypass sanctions.

    But now the gas is soon to be completely cut off and the US is cracking down on countries like Türkiye and their role in sanctions evasion.

    The whole Project Ukraine has always been a lose-lose proposition for Italy. Go against it and fall victim to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s “tools,” which would have likely included yanking the nearly $200 billion in Covid recovery funds going to Rome along with other financial difficulties orchestrated from Brussels. Despite a big part of her appeal being her earlier pro-sovereignty positions, Meloni pledged fealty to the EU, NATO, and the US after her 2022 election. That decision, too, now has Italy in a massive bind. And despite Meloni rolling over, von der Leyen’s “centrist” pro-Project Ukraine coalition partners in Brussels are now threatening to block the latter from a second term running the EU Commission if she tries to bring Meloni’s party into the center-right European People’s Party in the EU Parliament.

    And that pretty much sums up Italy’s past thirty years of involvement in the European project.

    For three decades Italy has been one of the most eager adopters of EU-prescribed neoliberal reforms. Leaders in Rome complain but say there’s no choice.

    For decades public assets have been sold off. American private equity is currently feasting on the country with CIA-connected KKR nearing completion of its acquisition of Telecom Italia’s fixed line network. More are to come as the sell-off must go on, the leaders in Rome complain but obey.

    Most Italians’ standard of living keeps falling, but that only proves more market-friendly reforms are needed, Brussels says. Italian leaders complain but oblige. One can only wonder why.

    Dipartimento delle Finanze

    And now what was left of Italian manufacturing is being killed so that US energy companies can make a killing delivering LNG, but Russia bad, they say.

    And no doubt, despite these recent protestations over further escalation with Russia, when the US demands its European vassals wade ever deeper into the Ukrainian morass, the government in Rome will moan and wail as they order working class Italians to the front lines.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 06/04/2024 – 02:00

  • Malinen: Start To Prepare For The Unthinkable
    Malinen: Start To Prepare For The Unthinkable

    Authored by Tuomas Malinen via GnSEconomics.com,

    DEPRCON WARNING

    Nuclear Threat (Free)

    These are the lines none of us would have ever wanted to write, but we have to. The current situation in and around the war in Ukraine has opened a path, which could lead to a nuclear confrontation.

    Ukraine has struck another early-warning (over-the-horizon) radar, this time in Orenburg region, near Orsk, some 1500 km from Ukraine. This radar did not even look at the direction of Ukraine, which makes the strike an act of madness, or something sinister.

    These strikes to the Russian early-warning system can serve only two aims:

    1. Ukrainian leadership is desperately trying to fully commit NATO to the war in Ukraine, or

    2. Strikes are a preparation for nuclear strikes to Russia by the U.S.

    Needless to say that the latter is extremely speculative. However, it is one of the two motives that can be established for the strikes. Alas, we have to acknowledge its existence. We have gone through the former in our previous warning.

    What is more is that, according to Kremlin, the U.S., the U.K. and France would have deployed ground-based intermediate and short-range missile system to Ukraine. These systems were previously banned by the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty from which President Trump withdraw the U.S. in February 2019, citing Russian non-compliance and missiles developed by China.

    These missile systems can be used to strike deep into Russia. The risk is that, if Ukraine would continue to target the early-warning system of Russia, at some point Kremlin would simply be forced to act, because it would seriously undermine their nuclear deterrence.

    Nuclear deterrence operates on three dimensions: time, distance and altitude, in addition to the actual arsenal of nuclear weapons. Time and distance are crucial for the response (retaliation, effectively) and altitude where missiles fly, is crucial for anti-missile and other defense systems to operate. Over-the-horizon radars are crucial for all three dimensions, as early warnings give authorities time, distance and altitude to react and enact defensive measures. If they are taken out, or their ability to detect an approaching intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) seriously hindered, modern nuclear deterrence simply fails. This is the reason, why Kremlin would be forced to react if the early-warning system of Russia would become compromised by a foreign party (Ukraine/NATO). This applies also to the U.S. and all other nuclear powers. Everybody would eventually be forced to react under such a threat.

    There are naturally other options than just a nuclear strike for Kremlin, but they all would need to be major, which would enflame the conflict further. If Kremlin would choose to enact a nuclear strike, it would probably use a tactical nuke, which is smaller than a strategical nuke (e.g., an ICBM), and hit a military target, like an airbase.

    This is why we (with an extremely heavy heart) issue a warning of a possible nuclear strike in Europe. This warning is effective for the time being.

    We don’t present any estimated likelihood for it, at this point at least, as it would be macabre. However we note that, while the likelihood is probably not very high at the moment, if strikes to Russian early-warning system continue, it will grow rapidly.

    While still unlikely, we urge you to start to prepare for the unthinkable.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/03/2024 – 23:25

  • Where Smoking Is Still Popular
    Where Smoking Is Still Popular

    Although the proportion of people smoking cigarettes is gradually declining globally, in some countries the habit is still highly prevalent.

    As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, according to data from a Statista Consumer Insights survey, conducted between January and December 2023, roughly 36 percent of urban Indian respondents said that they smoke cigarettes at least occasionally.

    In China, the share is even higher, with 42 percent saying the same.

    Infographic: Where Smoking Is Still Popular | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Tomorrow, May 31 is World No Tobacco Day.

    This year’s theme is “Protecting children from tobacco industry interference”, aiming to encourage governments around the world to shield young people from tobacco marketing tactics in the hope of reducing future cases of addiction.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/03/2024 – 23:00

  • Fentanyl Mixed With Potent Animal Sedative Is All The Rage
    Fentanyl Mixed With Potent Animal Sedative Is All The Rage

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

    Various forms of fentanyl. (Courtesy of the University of Houston)

    Public health authorities are warning of a new fentanyl drug concoction laced with a veterinary sedative more potent than previous cocktails.

    According to a libertarian drug policy analyst, the emergence of this new drug continues an acrimonious relationship between illicit substances and law enforcement’s attempt to control them that began in the first chapter of the War on Drugs: Prohibition.

    Both cities of Chicago and Philadelphia have issued health alerts warning of the drug medetomidine being mixed with fentanyl after an increase in overdoses.

    According to the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH), medetomidine is more potent than xylazine, also a veterinary sedative that has made it into street narcotics labeled the “zombie drug.”

    “Multiple associated drug samples from the West Side of Chicago tested positive for elevated levels of medetomidine,” the CDPH said. “Medetomidine has not previously been detected in Chicago, although it has recently been detected in Philadelphia. In Chicago, medetomidine has been detected in combination with fentanyl, heroin, xylazine, alprazolam and nitazenes.”

    Medetomidine is similar to Precedex in humans and can cause respiratory depression, the CDPH said, adding that its effects can’t be reversed by Naloxone, a medication that restores breathing after an overdose.

    According to a May press release from The Center for Forensic Science Research & Education, among the effects of medetomidine are muscle relaxation, sedation, and hallucinations, which can lead to severe adverse reactions.

    The Department of Public Health for the City of Philadelphia reported in its alert that the drug has appeared in Maryland, Ohio, Florida, and Canada.

    It has been identified in drug samples in Philadelphia from April to May, the alert said.

    ‘Iron Law on Prohibition’

    Dr. Josh Bloom, director of chemical and pharmaceutical science at the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), wrote in a May 2024 article on medetomidine that “attempts to rein in illicit fentanyl or control the chemicals used to synthesize it resulted in even more dangerous drugs” that have prompted the appearance of drugs like xylazine and medetomidine. 

    “Another day another more dangerous street drug in an unwinnable war,” Dr. Bloom said.

    Dr. Jeffrey Singer, a health policy analyst with the libertarian Cato Institute, told The Epoch Times that the emergence of this new drug is unfortunate, but not unexpected.

    “This is what we call in the drug policy field the ‘Iron Law of Prohibition,’” Dr. Singer said, further explaining that this is a theory proposing that when law enforcement cracks down on illicit substances, their potency and danger only increases.

    As an example, Dr. Singer points to the prohibition era from 1920 to 1933 when people turned to harder concentrations of alcoholic beverages when they could no longer legally obtain beer and wine.

    Another more modern example, he said, is people bringing liquor into stadiums where beer and wine aren’t allowed because the smaller volumes are easier to smuggle.

    “Prohibition incentivizes whatever is being prohibited,” Dr. Singer said.

    When drug enforcement agencies cracked down on prescription opioids during the Obama administration, heroin then became cheaper and easier to obtain, he said.

    Later, fentanyl was used because it increased the potency of heroin and made it easier to smuggle in smaller sizes, he said.

    “What really set things off was the pandemic because the border closures and supply chain issues made it difficult to get opium,” he said.

    It was also hard to get the supplies used to make opium into heroin, so the cartels began to deal only in fentanyl, which can be synthesized and reproduced in a lab, he said.

    “There wasn’t a problem getting the supplies for this because you can make it in a lab and you don’t have to grow anything,” he said. “When the pandemic was over, the cartels just stuck with fentanyl because it’s easier.”

    Never Enough

    But it’s never enough, he said, so the cartels started adding xylazine to increase the potency of fentanyl, and now the more potent medetomidine.

    “After that, there will be something else,” he said. “There’s always something else.”

    There’s already a new class of synthetic opioids, he said, called nitazenes, which is considered 40 times more potent than fentanyl.

    “It’s a game of cat and mouse, and it’s going to go on and on until lawmakers realize they can’t win the War on Drugs,” he said.

    Federally Legalized; State Regulated

    According to Dr. Singer, prohibited drugs should be federally legalized like alcohol, with it left up to the states to decide if they want to criminalize them.

    If drugs are legalized, age, public use, and driving while under the influence restrictions could be imposed.

    “Essentially, we should follow the model we used when we ended alcohol prohibition,” he said. “When I buy an alcohol product in the liquor store, I never worry that it might be tainted with some other drug, like fentanyl, or that it might be of greater percentage alcohol than it states on the label.”

    He added that government obstacles should be removed from groups seeking to provide harm-reduction strategies to drug users.

    “Harm reduction strategies will be needed whether or not prohibition is ended,” he said.

    ‘Transnational Organizations’

    Dr. Singer added that he prefers to no longer call those trafficking drugs “cartels.”

    Instead, he refers to them as “transnational organizations.”

    “Our drug war has made them so powerful and so wealthy that though some of their leaders may be headquartered in some places like Mexico, these cartels have begun partnering with cartels in other countries,” he said.

    Plan Columbia, the 1999 U.S. foreign aid initiative to combat Colombian drug cartels in Columbia, only moved the cocaine trade to Central America and Mexico, he said.

    “In fact, cocaine has never been more abundant and cheap than it is now, so all they’ve done is move it from one place to the other, and it’s not stopping,” he said.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/03/2024 – 22:35

  • How US College Students Feel About Their Finances
    How US College Students Feel About Their Finances

    Student debt in the U.S. has ballooned to over $1.7 trillion, burdening millions of Americans with financial stress. Rising tuition costs and stagnating wages are considered to be the major drivers of this issue.

    To gain insight into how this is affecting students, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu visualized the results of WalletHub’s Student Money Survey.

    This survey was conducted in 2024 with a nationally representative sample of 210 students. Results were normalized by gender and income.

    Data and Key Findings

    Student wealth surveys can provide unique insights into the financial preparedness of younger Americans.

    Starting with post-grad fears, it appears that the majority of students are afraid of either not finding a job, or paying off their debt.

    Some of these worries could subside in the future, as the federal government appears committed to cancelling federal student debt.

    The latest news came on May 22, 2024, when the Education Department announced it would cancel $7.7 billion for borrowers who received Public Service Loan Forgiveness, which includes professions like teachers and nurses.

    Regardless, 77% of students surveyed believed that their tuition was a good investment.

    Not Learning Enough

    Another highlight from this study was that nearly half (49%) of students feel that their school does not do enough to teach them about personal finance.

    When survey respondents were asked to choose which topic they wished they had learned more about, the most common answer was “How to do my taxes”.

    If you enjoy posts like these, check out Mapped: Personal Finance Requirements by State, which visualizes where high school students are required to take a personal finance course.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/03/2024 – 22:10

  • "I Was Offered Assisted Dying Over Cancer Treatment": Broken Canadian Healthcare System Is Killing Patients
    “I Was Offered Assisted Dying Over Cancer Treatment”: Broken Canadian Healthcare System Is Killing Patients

    Authored by Ian Birrell via UnHerd,

    Allison Ducluzeau with her doctor after receiving treatment.

    Two years ago, over the Thanksgiving holiday, Allison Ducluzeau started to feel pain in her stomach. At first, she assumed she had eaten too much turkey, but the pain persisted. A couple of weeks later, she saw her family doctor who requested CT scans, although none were sorted. Soon after, as the agony worsened, her partner insisted she went to the emergency unit at their local hospital on Vancouver Island. Finally, doctors confirmed the couple’s worst fears: she was almost certainly suffering from advanced abdominal cancer.

    Allison, then 56, later learned that she had stage 4 peritoneal carcinomatosis, an aggressive condition. By the time she saw a specialist early last year, he warned that she might only live a few months longer: chemotherapy tended to be ineffective for her cancer, buying a bit more time at best, and she was inoperable. Instead, she was told to go home, sort out her papers, and decide if she wanted medical assistance in dying.

    Unsurprisingly, Allison was devastated. “I could barely breathe — I went in there hoping to come out with a treatment plan but was just told to get my will in order.” That night was the worst of her life as she broke the shattering news to her son and daughter at her home in Victoria. “I told them I might only live for another two months,” she recalled. “If I’d not had my children, I might have accepted MAID [medical assistance in dying] — but when I saw the effect on them, having just been through the deaths of my own parents, it made me dig really deep.”

    So, determined to find help, she researched her condition, spoke to doctors as far away as Taiwan, flew to California for scans and eventually travelled to Baltimore for treatment. She had discovered that patients could be given debulking surgery to reduce their cancer, followed by targeted use of heated chemotherapy — yet back in Canada, she could not get even an initial telephone chat with a surgeon who performed such operations for two months. Aided by her tight circle of friends and relatives, she raised almost half the $200,000 cost for the operation by crowdfunding. By the time she managed to see an oncologist in her home province of British Columbia, she was already on the road to recovery.

    Today, Allison is in remission. She lifts weights daily, and goes running and cycling. She recently married her partner on a beach in Hawaii in front of her children. But she remains infuriated that Canadian doctors offered to kill rather than treat her. “The way it was presented was shocking,” she told me. “I was disgusted to be offered MAID twice. Once I was even on the phone, when I was on my own having just come back from Baltimore. It left me sobbing.”

    As the debate over assisted dying heats up in Britain, with Keir Starmer promising a free vote on the matter if he wins the general election, and with politicians in Jersey approving plans for its use only last week, we should take notice of Allison’s case. For she does not share the ethical or religious concerns held by many opponents of euthanasia. Nor does she oppose Canada’s 2016 MAID reform; she agreed with her father five years later that it was an “appropriate” option for his intensifying pain after many years of prostate cancer.

    But she has deep worries about assisted dying being offered by doctors in a health system that is floundering — especially with inadequate and overwhelmed oncology services when cancer patients comprise almost two-thirds of the soaring numbers of citizens opting for MAID. “We do not have a good standard of care here, especially for cancer — and that is why it is so dangerous to have MAID, especially when it can be used to take a bit of pressure off physicians and the government.” She knows of three other cancer patients whose families fear they died needlessly — including the person whose home she bought after downsizing to pay her medical bills in the US.

    Allison’s very existence challenges those who argue that Britain — with its flailing health and social care systems, shamefully long waiting lists and historically poor cancer survival rates — should rush headlong into legalisation of assisted death. So, what would she tell those advocating for the reform? “I would tell Britain to only accept assisted dying when the health service is fixed — otherwise it is a very dangerous step to take. We deserve decent and timely care rather than offers of faster death.”

    “I would tell Britain to only accept assisted dying when the health service is fixed.”

    Like her, I have no qualms over the ethics of assisted dying as an atheist — but huge concerns over its realities. This is based on my reporting on the issue from the pioneering nations of Belgium and the Netherlands, with evidence of the implications for vulnerable groups, especially those already suffering medical discrimination and societal marginalisation. One study last year, for instance, revealed eight Dutch people were subjected to euthanasia simply because they felt unable to live with their learning disability or autism, along with 16 other closely related cases. Disturbingly, many included being lonely as a central cause of their unbearable suffering.

    Yet until talking to Alisson, I had not considered the implications of injecting this irreversible reform into a struggling healthcare system. In British Columbia, faced with growing waiting lists and corrosive healthcare bureaucracy, there have been reports of a number of cancer patients forced to resort to MAID. Samia Saikali, for instance, a 67-year-old grandmother in Victoria, chose to end her life that way after waiting more than 10 weeks to see a specialist. “The word cruel comes to mind,” said her daughter Danielle, pointing out that, with aggressive cancer, this delay can be the difference between having a shot at life or certain death. “Cruel to be given such a terrible diagnosis and then told to just wait and sit and wait.”

    Yet studies indicate that Canada’s cancer care and survival rates are better than the UK, where waiting lists rose every year over the past decade. The NHS target for starting treatment after diagnosis is 62 days, showing how complacency is built into the British health system. But even this dismal target is missed for more than one-third of patients, despite there being evidence that each month of delay reduces the survival chances by about 10%. One study earlier this year into why British survival rates have fallen behind countries such as Canada found the average wait in Scotland for chemotherapy was 65 days — and 81 days for radiotherapy in Wales.

    Concerns have been highlighted by Canadian bioethics professor Jaro Kotalik, co-editor of the first full analysis of his country’s reform, who warned British MPs last year that MAID seems to be more and more “a way to compensate for lack of resources and reduce healthcare costs”. He added that palliative care “appears to be a casualty of MAID” with reduced access, leaving some patients to feel that assisted dying was their only option since “their suffering has been inadequately addressed or because they perceive that their families or social supports would carry an excessive burden”.

    “MAID has become a way to compensate for lack of resources and reduce healthcare costs.”

    Kotalik maintains that there had been far too little investigation or oversight of MAID since its introduction. “There is no real governance of this national programme, which relies for the purpose of collecting information about applicants and deaths entirely on self-reporting by providers,” he said. “I’m concerned about the possibility of people choosing MAID without the full or correct diagnosis, especially in cancer when oncologists are not involved. Options for a cancer patient should not be assessed just by a general practitioner or nurse practitioner so I worry patients are not fully informed about alternative options with different treatments and more comfortable outcomes.”

    Such warnings become even more pertinent in light of the surging MAID toll on Vancouver Island, a haven for wealthy retirees with its beautiful beaches, forests and mountains. Euthanasia campaigners often reject claims that reform leads to a “slippery slope”, although numbers keep rising and icriteria have been expanded in nations that led the way. In the Netherlands — which in 2002 pioneered assisted dying for patients — it accounts now for one in 20 fatalities, with 58 couples dying together last year and the rules extended to include terminally ill children.

    Canada has also seen MAID cases soar each year — and once again, protections have been eroded. In 2021, the central rule that natural death had to be “reasonably foreseeable” was removed. Latest figures disclosed that 13,102 people ended their lives under the scheme in 2022, a rise of 30% over the previous year despite postponement until 2027 of the controversial expansion to people with chronic mental illness. The country is catching up fast on Holland’s rate with 4.1% of deaths aided by doctors. Its annual MAID report also revealed that more than one-third of those choosing to die felt themselves a burden on family, friends or caregivers. Inevitably, there have been significant controversies with reports of pressurised fatalities involving disabled, elderly and impoverished citizens.

    Meanwhile, the rate of MAID cases under Vancouver Island’s health authority is more than twice as high as the rest of Canada; indeed, it may well be the world’s highest since it accounts for almost one in 10 deaths. I heard various explanations for this, ranging from the struggling state of the region’s cancer services through to a history of legal, social and medical activism in support of euthanasia.

    Prominent practitioners include Stefanie Green, founding president of the Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers, who has assisted more than 400 deaths. She spent two decades as a family doctor focusing on maternity and new-born care before turning to assisted dying. “I’d always been interested in the intersection between medicine and ethics,” she told me. “The more I looked into it, the more I was drawn to it. The skill set was almost identical. It required a knowledgeable person to take people through a natural event. I would be with them during a very intimate event. It would take time to build up the trust. It is intense, it is intimate, there are the family dynamics.”

    When I asked if medically induced death was really “a natural event”, she insisted that “the death is imminent” before adding that she found the work deeply moving. “Patients are grateful, families are grateful, and I am facilitating their final wishes. I am certain in all the cases they are 100% eligible, both legally and medically. The work is done properly. It is not for me to decide on their situation. It is their personal autonomy.”

    Green is both passionate and proud of her work: intriguingly, she faces far more protests over the single day a week she spends performing infant circumcisions from campaigners who argue it is an infringement of the child’s rights. She agrees, however, that patients such as Allison have every right to feel disappointed. “She should feel aggrieved that the Canadian health system is not working efficiently and failed her. I will also demand better resources with more doctors and nurses. The government has failed — but that is not reason to cancel the MAID programme. It needs to be delivered carefully and cautiously.” Likewise, she agrees society often fails people with disabilities. “We must act to remedy this — but this shouldn’t mean we cancel desired, needed, legal medical services.”

    Green stresses that MAID requires people to make their own request to terminate their lives. “It cannot be triggered by anyone else. It cannot be coerced — subtly or explicitly. It must be consistent with their own values; they must demonstrate capacity. It is far, far more common to see people coerced out of their request for MAID than to have someone show up who has been coerced into making this choice — which we then note and find them ineligible.”

    This debate is a moral minefield, with emotive and valid arguments on both sides. There is, however, a global drift towards legalisation of assisted dying, from Ecuador to Germany. In Britain, as lawmakers across the Channel prepare to debate assisted dying, YouGov polling suggests similar legislation would be backed by 44% of voters, although 31% remain unsure — and surveys have suggested twice as many people with disabilities would be concerned by a change in the law as support it, despite claims from campaigners to the contrary.

    Christopher Lyon, a social scientist at the University of York, believes Britain should be very cautious in following Canada’s lead after witnessing his father’s assisted death in a drab Victoria hospital room in the summer of 2021. He was left highly disturbed by the experience, believing his father failed to meet the correct criteria for being moved rapidly to the category of “reasonably foreseeable” death, as well as being depressed and possibly drunk when giving consent. “It was absolutely horrific,” he said. “Britain would be wrong to go down this path. You see some people making the same arguments as in Canada about personal autonomy, control and the right to make decisions to end your life. It is perhaps a choice for people in very rare cases with extreme and unmanageable suffering at the very end of life, which is not what we see in Canada. But there is no doubt the evidence points towards a slippery slope with widening access — although it is really more of a cliff face. Ultimately, I doubt any assisted death system can be made safe.”

    Lyon told me he was neutral on this issue before seeing his 77-year-old father die. “It is horribly hard to see your father in distress being killed by a doctor with no attempt to help. It is almost indescribable. It came across as so cruel — but also so avoidable.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/03/2024 – 21:45

  • High-Flying Commodity Sectors Set to Keep Climbing
    High-Flying Commodity Sectors Set to Keep Climbing

    By Farah Elbahrawy, Bloomberg markets live reporter and strategist

    Outperforming mining and energy stocks are set for further gains as a constructive backdrop for commodity prices and demand is set to support earnings.

    Basic resources and energy shares have outpaced the benchmark over the past three months, despite May’s drop in crude prices. Strategists are turning increasingly positive, with shareholder payouts and a wide discount to the market supporting the case for the sector.

    JPMorgan’s Mislav Matejka said miners’ earnings-per-share will be supported by gains in industrial commodity prices by the second half of the year. He also likes the energy sector “which offers strong cash flow generation, attractive dividend yield, and is a geopolitical hedge.”

    Profits are set to recover after stalling for two years, with analysts expecting the European energy and materials sectors to gain in 2025, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence.

    Morgan Stanley analysts led by Martijn Rats retain an attractive industry view as the structural outlook for energy companies over the coming years “continues to be in good shape.” They expect oil prices will trend higher this summer as seasonal demand strength creates a deficit in crude balances.

    The case for energy stocks is also underpinned by their massive shareholder payouts. Companies like Shell and BP doubled down on making buybacks a priority this earnings season. European companies are expected to return over €600 billion ($652 billion) to shareholders this year, a decade-high, and energy firms are set to be one of the biggest contributors. Investors are also monitoring a wave of mergers and acquisitions in the sector.

    Another team of Morgan Stanley analysts including Alain Gabriel is also positive on metals and mining stocks in Europe, saying miners trade at a steep discount to the market relative to history. “A stable demand environment and continued focus on supply stress continues to underpin a solid commodity price environment,” they said.

    Societe Generale strategists including Manish Kabra said equities rather than metals are now a more attractive way to play the boom in commodity prices. “The current rise in metal prices suggests an inflection in EPS momentum ahead for the mining sector,” he said, adding his team prefers miners to energy stocks.

    China’s recovery is another driver investors are closely monitoring, with mixed signals emerging in recent days. Official data showed the country’s factory activity unexpectedly contracted in May, a warning sign from the area of the economy that Beijing is most reliant on to drive growth. A different poll showed manufacturing activity expanded.

    One of the key risks for commodity shares “is the lack of momentum in industrial activity in China and the property sector,” Liberum strategist Susana Cruz said. “That, added to a slowdown in the US economy reduces the upside for the sector,” though improving momentum in Europe could support demand in the second half of the year.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/03/2024 – 21:04

  • Louisiana Bill Authorizing Physical Castration For Sex Offenders Heads To Governor’s Desk
    Louisiana Bill Authorizing Physical Castration For Sex Offenders Heads To Governor’s Desk

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

    Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry (C) speaks during a press conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on Jan. 22, 2020. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    A proposed bill that would enforce surgical castration as opposed to chemical castration for those convicted of rape has advanced in the Louisiana legislature.

    The bill is now headed to Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s desk to be signed or vetoed.

    Senate Bill 371, sponsored by state Sen. Regina Barrow, a Democrat, would sentence those 17 and older who have been convicted of the rape of a victim under the age of 13 to be physically castrated.

    It passed in the state House 74–24 and in the Senate 29–9.

    “Proposed law further provides that the procedure is contingent upon a determination by a court-appointed medical expert that the defendant is an appropriate candidate for surgery, which determination must be made within 60 days of imposition of sentence,” the bill reads. “Proposed law further provides that when the offender is sentenced to a period of incarceration or confinement, the procedure must be performed no later than one week prior to the release of the offender.”

    The Department of Public Safety and Corrections would oversee the procedure; however, it “will not be performed if not medically appropriate.”

    “Proposed law further provides that if an offender fails to appear or refuses to undergo the procedure, the offender may be charged with failure to comply with the court order and sentenced to imprisonment for between three and five years, without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence,” the bill states.

    Expands on Previous Castration Law

    According to state law, voluntary castration for people convicted rape date back to 2008, when the legislature passed legislation that sentenced a sex offender “to be treated with medroxyprogesterone acetate, or MPA.”

    “However, in lieu of treatment with medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA), the court may order the defendant to undergo physical castration provided the defendant file a written motion with the court stating that he intelligently and knowingly, gives his voluntary consent to physical castration as an alternative to the treatment,” the act states.

    The new legislation proposed by Sen. Barrow expands on the previous act by authorizing a judge to order a physical castration to those convicted of a sex offense in which the victim was 13 or under, according to the bill.

    In April, 54-year-old Glenn Sullivan pleaded guilty to four counts of second-degree rape of a 14-year-old that resulted in her pregnancy, according to a press release from Louisiana District Attorney Scott Perrilloux.

    As a part of his sentence, Mr. Sullivan will be physically castrated, in addition to serving 50 years in prison.

    “The case stems from a July 2022 Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office investigation,” the press release said. “A young woman told detectives that Sullivan had raped her multiple times when she was just 14-years-old. As a result, the juvenile became pregnant, and a DNA test that was ordered during the course of the criminal investigation proved Sullivan had impregnated her.”

    The press release stated that Mr. Sullivan had also allegedly groomed her and threatened her family to prevent her from speaking out.

    “So many of these types of cases go unreported because of fear,” Mr. Perrilloux said. “The strength it must have taken for this young woman to tell the truth in the face of threats and adversity is truly incredible.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/03/2024 – 20:55

  • Cycling Has Shifted To A Higher Gear Since COVID
    Cycling Has Shifted To A Higher Gear Since COVID

    Commemorated on June 3 each year, World Bicycle Day is celebrated to promote the benefits of cycling and recognize its importance as a simple, affordable and environmentally friendly mode of transportation.

    The United Nations declared this observance in April 2018 to highlight the bicycle’s role in fostering sustainable development, health and well-being, encouraging governments and societies to embrace cycling as a means to reduce pollution and enhance the quality of life in urban and rural areas alike.

    In the United States, a firmly car-centric society, the bicycle plays a relatively minor role compared to large parts of Europe, where people are much more likely to rely on their bikes for everyday transportation. During the Covid-19 pandemic, however, which forced gyms to shutter and public transportation to suspend operations, millions of Americans re-discovered bicycles as a safe, socially-distanced form of physical exercise and transportation. The bike boom hit retailers unprepared, causing new bicycles to become a scarce commodity, exacerbated by the fact that global bicycle supply was also constrained due to Covid-19.

    As Statista’s Felix Richter shows in the chart below, according to inflation-adjusted figures published by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Americans spent $5.3 billion on bicycles and accessories in 2020, up from an average of $4.7 billion between 2015 and 2019.

    Infographic: Cycling Has Shifted to a Higher Gear During Covid-19 | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The trend continued in 2021, when consumer spending on bicycles and accessories grew past $6 billion, surpassing the pre-pandemic average by almost 30 percent. Looking at the past two years, consumer spending on bicycle gear has plateaued at that level, fueling hopes that the industry could remain in a higher gear compared to pre-Covid days.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/03/2024 – 20:30

  • Software Update "Glitch" Blamed For NYSE Market Break That Sparked Berkshire Wipe Out, Trading Halt Cascade
    Software Update “Glitch” Blamed For NYSE Market Break That Sparked Berkshire Wipe Out, Trading Halt Cascade

    Update (8:00pm ET): In a flashback to the early 2010s when markets broke on a daily basis, we are back to blaming “glitches” for broken markets and flash crashes.

    Hours after a new generation of traders experienced a partial market flash crash that wiped out the entire market cap of Berkshire Hathaway and halted trading on about 40 other stocks after their circuit breakers were triggered, Bloomberg reports that the culprit was a “glitch” during a software update early on Monday.

    The disruption, the third such episode to hit otherwise peaceful US markets in the past week, was resolved after roughly 45 minutes when the Consolidated Tape Association, whose systems are operated by a NYSE subsidiary, reverted to a backup data center running a different software version. NYSE said it will cancel the bad trades in Berkshire Hathaway and is reviewing the erroneous halts to determine whether to cancel any of those.

    The forced pauses, which began shortly before 9:45 a.m. in New York, came as CTA was rolling out a change in the software that governs which opening prices display on the Securities Information Processor, the feed that consolidates bid and ask quotes made on various exchanges.

    As noted earlier, about a dozen trades in Berkshire Class A shares went off at $185.10 around 9:50 am ET before trading was halted. The stock closed Friday at $627,400. NYSE said any trade between 9:50 and 9:51 at or below $603,718.30 will be canceled. NuScale Power had a similar glitch, with trades that printed at about 99% below the prior price.

    The sudden disruption did not affect Nasdsaq-listed shares and had minimal impact on the broader market, though it came as trading infrastructure adapts to one-day settlements from two, known as T+1. A glitch Thursday left the S&P 500 Index without live pricing for more than an hour. Two days earlier, an exchange had problems interfacing with the data dissemination feed.

    “A little weird, but almost undoubtedly coincidental,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers LLC, of the NYSE issue after last week’s S&P 500 Index glitch. “We’ve gotten used to huge amounts of uptimes without exchange incidents, so when a couple of glitches in a row occur it is notable.”

    “I would assume that those bad trades will be broken,” Jonathan Corpina, NYSE floor trader and senior managing partner at Meridian Equity Partners, told Bloomberg. “I’m more curious how did this happen? I understand what happened, but I want to understand how?”

    The limit up-limit down trading bands typically govern when stocks are paused for volatility. The SIP is a single data feed where regulatory bodies process and consolidate bid and ask quotes and trades from all US exchanges. Equities trading in the US is executed on more than a dozen exchanges, with all of the bid and ask orders consolidated on data feeds that are distributed worldwide. NYSE, which is owned and operated by Intercontinental Exchange Inc., operates multiple exchanges including NYSE Arca and NYSE American.

    The firm consolidates order data from various exchanges at the Consolidated Tape Association. Together, those constitute Tapes A and B. Nasdaq Inc., owner of the Nasdaq exchanges, operates a separate consolidated feed known as Tape C. Volumes on American exchanges are calculated by adding the three tapes.

    As Bloomberg notes, the disruptions are reminiscent of a confusing episode in January 2023, when a staffer at the New York Stock Exchange’s backup data center in Chicago left a backup system running in an error that led to wild price swings for hundreds of stocks when the market opened.

    “Whether a coincidence or not, it is certainly causing a pile of confusion on the street for the second session out of the last three,” Dave Lutz, head of ETFs at JonesTrading, said in a message.

    * * *

    Update (12:02pm ET): After a cascade of circuit breakers pushed various NYSE stocks and instantly halted trading, the Exchange said in an email that the technical issue with industrywide price bands published by the CTA SIP has been resolved and all systems are currently operational.

    • All impacted stocks have reopened
    • Price band issue has been resolved
    • Issue triggered trading halts in a number of NYSE listed stocks

    As we noted earlier, the technical error at the New York Stock Exchange resulted in numerous erroneous trading volatility halts, including for Berkshire, Chipotle and Abbott :abs, and odd trades in at least two stocks early in the cash session Monday. Bloomberg adds that the forced pauses, which began shortly before 9:45 a.m. in New York, were resolved not long after 11 a.m. and the stocks resumed normal trading, according to statements from NYSE. The firm said a technical issue with the “industry-wide” price bands published by the Consolidated Tape Association Securities Information Processor led to the halts.

    As we also noted earlier, trades Berkshire Hathaway/A shares appeared to go off at mistaken prices. About a dozen trades showed shares changed hands at $185.10 around 9:50 a.m., a discount of 99.97% to Friday’s closing price of $627,400. NuScale Power had a similar glitch, with trades that printed at about 99% below the prior price.

    “It’s very confusing that it’s happening in just a few shares,” said Jonathan Corpina, senior managing partner at Meridian Equity Partners, who typically works on the floor of the NYSE. “I would assume that those bad trades will be broken.”

    A representative for NYSE declined to comment on the matter beyond the exchange’s market status update page. Intercontinental Exchange Inc. is the owner of the New York Stock Exchange.

    The limit up-limit down trading bands typically govern when stocks are paused for volatility. The SIP is a single data feed where regulatory bodies process and consolidate bid and ask quotes and trades from all US exchanges. The sudden disruptions Monday come just days after a glitch left the S&P 500 Index without live pricing for an hour, and as the market adapts to quicker settlement times for US stock trades.

    “A little weird, but almost undoubtedly coincidental,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers LLC, of the NYSE issue after last week’s S&P 500 Index glitch. “We’ve gotten used to huge amounts of uptimes without exchange incidents, so when a couple of glitches in a row occur it is notable.”

    Chipotle was down 1.2% at 9:44 a.m. New York time when it was halted. Abbott gained as much as 1.9% on Monday. Halts are normally triggered by a series of factors, most commonly for rapid and large changes in price and volume. Chipotle resumed trading at 10:21 a.m. in New York and was down about 2.5%.

    * * *

    Something snapped just after 9:40 am, when as the market was still reeling from the latest idiotic move in meme stonks, we just saw one of the world’s largest companies – Berkshire Hathaway – wipe out just about 100% of its value and crash to basically zero…

    … amid a cascading wave of trading halts sparked by a break at the NYSE:

    • *MULTIPLE NYSE STOCKS SHOWING VOLATILITY TRADING HALTS

    … which the exchange quickly admitted it was at fault for.

    • *NYSE EQUITIES INVESTIGATING REPORTED TECHNICAL ISSUE

    The full list of halts can be found on the NYSE site and includes the following names:

    Among other notable names that crashed and were halted on a Limit Up, Limit Down Circuit breaker were Chiptole, BMO, NuScale.

    And while we wait to learn what exactly caused today’s “market break” which may have just afforded us a glimpse of true market values, we can only reminds readers of the immortal words of the Big Lebowski:

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/03/2024 – 20:20

  • Magnesium Deficiency Linked To Metabolic Syndrome – Here's How To Boost Intake
    Magnesium Deficiency Linked To Metabolic Syndrome – Here’s How To Boost Intake

    Authored by Zena le Roux via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    (Sergey Neanderthalec/Shutterstock)

    In our pursuit of optimal health, an often-overlooked mineral has quietly emerged as a potential game-changer: magnesium.

    More than half of the American population—with some estimates suggesting a staggering 75 percent—are failing to meet the recommended dietary intake of this vital nutrient, possibly hurting their metabolic health.

    The Myriad Roles of Magnesium in the Body

    Magnesium is essential for optimal bodily function, acting as a cofactor in numerous enzymatic reactions. It regulates cardiovascular physiology, stress responses, inflammation, and hypertension and enhances glycemic control when combined with vitamin D, making it crucial for metabolic health. Magnesium deficiency is prevalent among obese individuals.

    Common symptoms of magnesium depletion include muscle cramps, headaches, eye twitches, insomnia, fatigue, irritability, and a sensation of a “lump” in the throat, Dr. Nathali Morrow-van Eck, a functional-integrative general medical practitioner in Pretoria, South Africa, told The Epoch Times. These symptoms stem from magnesium’s role in supporting the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) brain system, essential for relaxation and stress reduction.

    Magnesium also activates the COMT gene, a protein-coding gene that helps with anxiety management and hormone metabolite detoxification (the body’s process of eliminating byproducts).

    With magnesium involved in over 300 bodily functions, deficiency signs often manifest subtly, initially affecting energy production processes, Katrina Farrell, a registered nutritional therapist, told The Epoch Times.

    The Magnesium–Metabolic Syndrome Connection

    A 2024 study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism examined the link between magnesium depletion and metabolic syndrome. The analysis of 15,565 participants revealed that the likelihood of developing metabolic syndrome increased by almost one-third for every incremental rise in the magnesium depletion score.

    This correlation persisted across diverse populations, regardless of behavioral or sociodemographic factors, suggesting that addressing magnesium deficiency could be a preventive measure against metabolic syndrome, whether through dietary modifications or supplementation.

    Magnesium plays a crucial role in various aspects of digestive health. It helps with producing digestive enzymes, nutrient absorption, and peristalsis, the wave-like motion that propels food through the digestive tract. Insufficient magnesium can lead to constipation and bloating.

    Continuously low magnesium levels affect insulin function, rendering it less effective and impeding metabolism. As a result, magnesium deficiency can contribute to weight-management challenges, Type 2 diabetes, and prediabetes, according to Ms. Farrell.

    Experimental magnesium deficiency in rats has been linked to inflammation, hypertriglyceridemia (high levels of triglycerides in the blood), and changes in lipoprotein metabolism, according to a scientific review published in Magnesium Research. Magnesium’s impact on intracellular calcium homeostasis may be a unifying factor connecting stress and inflammation and may be behind their potential contribution to metabolic syndrome.

    Magnesium is vital for insulin and glucose metabolism because it facilitates insulin receptor function, acting as a cofactor for enzymes involved in glucose breakdown and oxidation and regulating insulin secretion. Low magnesium levels can lead to insulin resistance and impaired glucose uptake by cells, thereby disrupting overall metabolism and increasing the risk of metabolic disorders like Type 2 diabetes.

    Why Are We Not Getting Enough Magnesium?

    Magnesium depletion has become increasingly prevalent, attributed to various factors in modern lifestyles, Ms. Farrell said.

    Contemporary farming methods have led to declining magnesium levels in our food supply. Additionally, processed foods, ubiquitous in today’s diets, often lack sufficient magnesium content. Alcohol and certain medications, such as proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), usually prescribed for chronic acid reflux, can deplete magnesium reserves.

    Excessive caffeine consumption can also deplete magnesium levels.

    Stress is another major culprit behind magnesium depletion, Ms. Farrell added. During periods of stress, the body releases magnesium as part of the stress response. Consequently, whether acute or chronic, stress can rapidly deplete magnesium levels.

    Research published in The Clinical Biochemist Reviews suggests that serum magnesium levels fluctuate with different types of exercise. Levels tend to increase after brief, maximal exercise but decrease following endurance exercise.

    How to Increase Magnesium Intake

    Diet is crucial for obtaining sufficient magnesium, Ms. Farrell said.

    Grain refining and food processing diminish magnesium content, leading to up to an 85 percent reduction. Boiling magnesium-rich foods also results in significant magnesium loss. Opting for raw, whole foods provides a natural and potent source of the mineral.

    Ms. Farrell advocates a “food-first” approach, emphasizing nuts, seeds, and leafy greens in daily meals to boost magnesium intake. She also recommends Epsom salt baths, magnesium body lotions for relaxation and rejuvenation, and exploring magnesium supplements tailored to people’s needs.

    Dr. Morrow-van Eck recommends both oral and transdermal magnesium products. A person’s absorption of dietary magnesium from the gut can range from 24 percent to 76 percent. The absorption rate primarily depends on the individual’s magnesium status rather than their intake. When the body’s magnesium level is lower, a higher percentage of dietary magnesium is absorbed.

    For oral supplementation, she prioritizes optimal doses of the most bioavailable forms, such as magnesium threonate, glycinate, and citrate. For targeted relief, she suggests applying transdermal magnesium chloride and massaging it into areas of concern for optimal absorption.

    The Limitations in Assessing Magnesium Levels

    Optimal health outcomes often result from a balanced and varied diet that provides a spectrum of essential vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients, Ms. Farrell said. She noted that the effects of nutrients are often enhanced or modulated by the presence of other nutrients rather than their operating independently.

    An example is the relationship between vitamin D and magnesium. While vitamin D relies on magnesium for transportation and activation, magnesium plays a pivotal role in various bodily functions, including gut health, immune function, and skin health. Low magnesium levels can hinder vitamin D’s effectiveness even if one has sufficient vitamin D levels.

    Regarding magnesium assessment, Ms. Farrell advises against relying solely on blood tests, as magnesium is primarily stored in organs and bones, not in the bloodstream. Blood tests, therefore, do not provide a complete picture. She suggests that considering symptoms, habitual alcohol consumption, or high levels of stress might better indicate whether more magnesium is needed.

    Possible Side Effects

    While magnesium from dietary sources poses no significant risks, excessive magnesium intake through dietary supplements may lead to adverse effects such as diarrhea, nausea, and abdominal cramping, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Diarrhea is commonly associated with magnesium chloride, gluconate, carbonate, and oxide. People with impaired renal function or kidney failure are particularly susceptible to magnesium toxicity, which typically occurs when serum concentrations surpass 31.35 to 47.02 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL), or 1.74 to 2.61 millimoles per liter (mmol/L). Also, several medications can influence magnesium levels or interact with magnesium supplements.

    To optimize efficacy and minimize interactions, separate the intake of magnesium supplements and oral bisphosphonates by at least two hours. This precaution is essential as magnesium supplements can impede the absorption of bisphosphonates like alendronate (Fosamax), commonly prescribed for osteoporosis treatment.

    To avoid potential interaction, take specific antibiotics either two hours before or four to six hours after consuming magnesium-containing supplements. This timing is critical because magnesium can form insoluble complexes with certain antibiotics.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/03/2024 – 20:05

  • E-Trade May Ban 'Roaring Kitty' From Platform For Market Manipulation
    E-Trade May Ban ‘Roaring Kitty’ From Platform For Market Manipulation

    ETrade has had enough of the stock shenanigans of meme stock guru Keith Gill, also known as Roaring Kitty, who just happens to be a client of the online brokerage now owned by Morgan Stanley. Gill’s non-stop promotion of GameStop on social media, coupled with giant trades, raised concerns about potential stock manipulation. This could force E*Trade to dump the retail trader, according to Wall Street Journal sources.

    The scale of Gill’s online influence, with millions of followers across various social media platforms, and his active promotion of the struggling video game retailer, has sparked concern among executives at the Morgan Stanley-owned trading platform. The firm is uncomfortable with Gill’s presence on the trading platform, as it could attract unwanted attention, given his significant reach. 

    That power created concerns he can pump up a stock for his own benefit. Their debate includes whether his actions amounted to manipulation and whether or not the firm is willing to risk drawing the attention of his meme army by removing him, according to people familiar with their internal discussions. -WSJ 

    With the SEC unable to decide how to approach the bizarre pump (and dump), and whether to classify Gill’s unique social media style as market manipulation, brokerages are now taking action into their own hands.

    The sources confirmed what became public knowledge late on Sunday, namely that Gill bought a “large volume of GameStop options on E*Trade” before the first pump in May. 

    Morgan Stanley employees, knowing that Gill is a customer, looked at his E*Trade account, according to people familiar with the matter. That sort of monitoring of clients is routine.

    The employees saw he had purchased call options before the tweet, the people said. A call option gives a trader the right to buy the stock by a certain date at a stated price. At least some of those options expired that week, one of the people said. That meant Gill’s trades likely generated profits thanks to the stock move his tweet generated.

    Gill’s trading continued, likely loading up with equity and short-term options ahead of Sunday’s posting of his E*Trade account. He showed GME stock valued at $115.7 million, $65.7 million in GME short-term options, and $29 million in cash.

    The post alone on Reddit triggered a stock frenzy in GME on Monday but quickly faded late into the session.

    The people said the debate about Gill as a client at Morgan Stanley began three weeks ago, around the time of the first GME pump. They said no decision has been made yet. 

    One of the biggest red flags around the first pump was GME’s ability to slam the market with an offering of 45 million shares, allowing the company to raise $933 million, and sparking speculation that Gill was working alongside the company.

    Meanwhile, sentiment around Gill is shifting: far from the “authentic” retail daytrading beacon that he became in early 2021 when his foray into the historic Gamestop short squeeze sparked the meme stock frenzy, his latest AUM which is clearly in the hundreds of millions “appearing more like manipulation without a solid thesis”, has prompted speculation that far from working for himself, Gill may be in cahoots with one or more hedge funds…

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

    … while established voices such as Clifford Asness slammed the “internet scammer” whose “coming back to pump and dump again is insane. It’s a cult. It’s an angry clueless cult (are there other kinds) angry about nonexistent scams and following ridiculous cult leaders.“

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

    But what may be the most damning twist in this latest episode of meme stonk mania is that the other OG of the daytrading movement, Dave Portnoy himself, asked if he is a big mark for Roaring Kitty.

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

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/03/2024 – 19:40

  • Trump Makes Big Promise On Gaza War To UFC Superstar Khabib
    Trump Makes Big Promise On Gaza War To UFC Superstar Khabib

    Via Middle East Eye

    Former US president Donald Trump appears to have made his biggest and boldest campaign promise yet. During a Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event in Newark, New Jersey on Saturday, the 2024 presidential hopeful vowed that he would stop Israel’s devastating war in Gaza when confronted by former mixed-martial artist and UFC legend Khabib Nurmagomedov.

    Following Islam Makhachev submission victory over Dustin Poirier for the Lightweight Championship, Nurmagomedov, who serves as a coach for Makhachev, was heard telling Trump: “I know you will stop the war in Palestine.”

    Trump, who routinely touts his support of Israel but has also been critical of the war on Gaza, responded by saying: “We will stop it. I will stop the war.”

    The clip was shared widely on X, formerly known as Twitter, and has since made rounds on other social media platforms to much praise. “Love seeing Khabib tell Trump to stop the genocide,” said former UFC fighter and anti-war activist Jake Shields.

    “Overall I like Trump much more than Biden but his unequivocal support for Israel is a deal-breaker for me. Almost all of his funding comes from ultra zionist so he’s unlikely to switch directions but still good hes hearing it.”

    “Bro just accomplished more than all of our Arab leaders in this war,” another user said. “This is what you call using your voice and name to call for change,” another added. 

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

    Others, however, were quick to point out that Trump’s statements and actions whilst in office did not inspire much confidence. “Trump won’t do it. He literally gave the Golan Heights to Israel. Moved the embassy to Jerusalem. He will sell the US out for Israel. Always,” one user wrote on X. 

    “He just said two weeks ago that Israel should be allowed to finish the job,” posted another. “He says one thing and then the complete opposite the next day. This is how everyone is able to project what they want to hear onto him.”

    Israel’s war on Gaza, now nearing its ninth month, has turned much of the enclave, which is home to more than two million Palestinians, into an uninhabitable hellscape. Whole neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been devastated by air strikes and scorched by tank fire. 

    Nearly the entire population is reported to have fled their homes, and those who remained in northern Gaza are on the verge of famine. More than 36,000 people have been reported killed, the great majority of them women and children, according to Gaza Health Ministry figures. Thousands more are missing or presumed to be dead under the rubble.

    ‘Most pro-Israel president’

    Trump’s comments come amid increasing frustration among staffers within the Biden administration and US voters at the president’s handling of the war, with a growing number of staff resignations and reports of internal dissent. 

    However, while experts say the surge of “uncommitted” voters in the Democratic primaries is sending Biden a message that his administration’s policy on Gaza will cost him ahead of the presidential election in November, Trump’s ability to court voters on Palestine is limited.

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

    Trump has repeatedly labelled himself the most pro-Israel president in US history, noting his decision to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and his backing of Israel’s claim to sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights – something “nobody even asked for”.

    In an interview with Real America’s Voice, Trump previously said: “Any Jewish person that votes for Biden does not love Israel and, frankly, should be spoken to.” He added that he does not understand “how a Jewish person can vote for Biden or a Democrat because they are on the side 100 percent of the Palestinians”.

    Earlier this month, he reportedly told donors during a closed door meeting that he would pursue a zero-tolerance policy US college campus protesters, adding he would deport those who weren’t US citizens. 

    “If you get me elected, and you should really be doing this. If you get me reelected, we’re going to set that movement back 25 or 30 years,” he reportedly said. Earlier on Saturday, Trump, who was recently found guilty on 34 felony charges in his “hush money trial,” was welcomed with deafening roars of adulation when he made his way into the Prudential Center alongside UFC CEO Dana White.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/03/2024 – 19:15

  • The India Stock Story Is More Than Just What Happens This Week
    The India Stock Story Is More Than Just What Happens This Week

    By Ven Ram, Bloomberg markets live reporter and strategist

    Stock markets in India have run away with the idea of voters giving the green light for further economic reform, but gains may moderate toward the end of the day.

    The Sensex has run up 3% after exit polls showed a decisive majority for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party. The scale of the rally suggests that traders have priced in a landslide victory, but given the inconsistent nature of exit polls, some traders may be inclined to take money off the table ahead of the actual election results due on Tuesday. With the markets having priced in the best outcome, there is little room for upside surprise from here.


     
    Elections results aside, valuations — while not overexuberant — sound a note of caution. The Sensex offers a prospective earnings yield of about 4.75%, lower than an average of 5.33% that has prevailed historically. The Nifty offers 4.85%, compared with a mean of 5.52%.

    However, beyond the here and now, stocks in India are bound to fare well. Before today’s effervescent rally, the market cap of the nation’s shares was some $4.7 trillion, a number that is commensurate with the size of its economy.

    Data last week showed that gross domestic product rose 7.8% in the three months through March, compared with a forecast of 7% — a margin of beat that is isn’t common in mature economies and ones that are as big as India’s. Indeed, given the frantic pace of growth, S&P Global forecasts that the domestic economy will grow from $3.5 trillion in 2022 to $7.3 trillion by 2030 to emerge as the world’s third largest.

    The S&P has, meanwhile, affirmed the nation’s foreign- and local-currency debt rating to positive, opening the path toward a higher rating over the next couple of years. That, together with expected interest rate cuts from the central bank, will bring down companies’ cost of capital, boosting margins.

    The rupee has rallied on the back of exit polls, but the Reserve Bank is likely to absorb excess inflows to build its reserves — meaning I don’t expect unmitigated gains. The currency’s stability, however, augurs well for foreign investors repatriating money, adding another reason to be bullish on the nation’s stocks over the longer term.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/03/2024 – 18:50

  • Massive Australian Truck Convoy Protests Live Sheep Export Ban
    Massive Australian Truck Convoy Protests Live Sheep Export Ban

    Authored by Monica O’Shea via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A truck drives on a road in Albany, Western Australia, on April 19, 2024. (Susan Mortimer/The Epoch Times)

    A huge truck convoy has descended on Western Australian (WA) roads to protest the Labor government’s ban on live sheep exports.

    More than 1,350 trucks registered to participate in the rally in Perth to send a message to the government about the proposed ban.

    Large trucks with signs “keep the sheep” and “stand with our farmers” were seen on Perth highways on May 31, while onlookers displayed a banner with the words “we love farmers.”

    This comes after the Labor Party introduced legislation to parliament on May 30 that will stop live sheep from being exported from Australia by sea from May 1, 2028.

    The Export Control Amendment (Ending Live Sheep Exports by Sea) Bill 2024 (pdf) amends the Export Control Act 2020 and will delegate sheep to the “permanently prohibited exports” list.

    Shadow Assistant Trade Minister Rick Wilson joined WA Livestock and Rural Transporters Association vice president Ben Sutherland at the convoy.

    “This grass roots movement is gaining momentum and getting overwhelming support in the city as well as the regions,” Mr. Wilson said.

    Mr. Wilson seconded an urgent motion in the House of Representatives seeking a parliamentary inquiry into the decision on May 30.

    “It’s an absolute disgrace, no consultation from the minister or any of the members of the Labor Party with Western Australian farmers,” he said in a video.

    “They’ve made this unilateral announcement, and [it] is now in the parliament in the process of becoming law.”

    WA Livestock and Rural Transporters Association vice president Ben Sutherland, a co-organiser of the rally, and Liberal MP Rick Wilson MP. (Supplied)

    Petition Now Has 33,500 Signatures

    A Keep the Sheep petition against the ban has received 33,500 signatures online at the time of publication.

    “Our campaign is bigger than just politics, it’s about people’s lives and livelihoods,” the group said. “The sheep industry has been the backbone of rural towns for over a hundred years and will soon disappear.”

    The Australian Livestock Exporters’ Council (ALEC) CEO Mark  Harvey-Sutton also rode in the cab of a truck as part of the rally in Perth.

    Mr. Harvey-Sutton said he was pleased to stand together with farmers uniting to have the “disastrous policy” reversed.

    “We know that people across WA support farmers and truckies. We know that West Australians agree that the government destroying livelihoods during a cost of living crisis is unfair,” he said.

    “We won’t stop fighting this ban and it will be an election issue for the Government in Western Australia and beyond.”

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

    National Farmers Federation president David Jochinke said the prime minister, agriculture minister, and all parliamentarians need to take a “good look” and what unfolded in Perth.

    “This is a grassroots farmer demonstration of historic proportions,” he said.

    Mr. Jochinke said the convoy in Perth shows the governments have underestimated rural communities and their support for farmers, and voter intelligence.

    “I think people in WA and across Australia will start to wake up to the grubby political deal that’s been done here,” he said.

    “To those convoying today: farmers across Australia are with you. Your willingness to stand up and defend our sector is bloody legendary, and this is just the start.”

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

    Explanation for the Live Sheep Ban

    Agriculture Minister Murray Watt said the Australian sheep industry now has the time, support, and certainty it needs to plan effectively for the future

    “We have put $107 million on the table to ensure those affected by the phase out are well-positioned and ready when the trade ends in May 2028,” he said.

    “This is a policy that invests in the future of the Australian sheep industry.”

    Mr. Watt added the government had promised the phase out would not take place in this term of Parliament, and setting an end date of May 1, 2028, fulfils that commitment.

    “While live sheep export numbers have plummeted in the last 20 years, now contributing just 0.1 percent of all national agricultural exports, sheep meat exports are going through the roof.”

    “Australia is now the largest exporter of sheep meat to the world, with nearly $4.5 billion in chilled and frozen sheep meat exported in 2022-23 alone.”

    Mr. Watt was under pressure to investigate the live sheep ban further on May 30, with the Nationals and Liberal Party attempting to bring about an inquiry in the lower house of Parliament.

    Following this, Minister Watt said “of course there will need to be” a Senate inquiry into the legislation on May 30.

    In response, Nationals Leader David Littleproud said Minister Watt had promised a Senate inquiry just “hours” after an inquiry into the same crucial issue was voted down in the House of Representatives.

    Mr. Littleproud said a future Coalition government will “reinstate the live sheep export trade.”

    WA National MLA Mia Davies also took part in the convoy, explaining she was heading to town to let everyone know Albanese needs to do the right thing by WA and “keep the sheep.”

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

    In a post to X on May 31, Mr. Watt said Aussie meat exports have soared in just one year of our Australia-UK Free Trade Agreement.

    Mr. Watt shared an image showing beef exports are up 429 percent to $51.8 million and sheep meat exports have risen 19 percent to $100.1 million.

    “It’s delivering for Aussie farmers, workers, and consumers,” he said.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/03/2024 – 18:25

  • Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano Erupts In Area That Was Dormant Since 1974
    Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano Erupts In Area That Was Dormant Since 1974

    Kilauea, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, is erupting again, and this time in an area that has been inactive for half a century. Alert levels have been raised across Hawaii Volcanoes National Park as there are concerns the eruption could flare up again despite only lasting six hours on Monday. 

    The US Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said the eruption was about 1 mile south of the Kilauea caldera inside Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. The last time this area experienced an eruption was in December 1974. 

    “Glow is visible in webcam imagery, indicating that lava is currently erupting from fissures,” the US Geological Survey said. 

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

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

    HVO raised the Volcano Alert Level for ground-based hazards from a “watch” to a “warning.” The aviation color code in the surrounding area has been elevated from “orange” to “red.”

    Fox News Weather spoke with scientists who say there’s no telling how long the current eruption will last. 

    Before the eruption, USGS reported earthquake swarms on Sunday as magma moved beneath the surface. 

    In 2023, Kilauea erupted in January, June and September. An eruption in 2018 destroyed 700 homes. 

    “From 1983 to 2018, all of the activity came from two vents,” said Michael Poland, a geophysicist with the USGS, who spoke with The New York Times. 

    Poland continued, “Since 2018, it has gone away from a period of steady eruptions. Now it has discrete, usually shortish eruptions happening in several different places. Now we’re getting eruptions happening in places we haven’t seen in 50 years.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/03/2024 – 18:00

  • Rubio's Coastal Grill Closing 48 Locations In California Due To "Rising Costs Of Business In The State"
    Rubio’s Coastal Grill Closing 48 Locations In California Due To “Rising Costs Of Business In The State”

    Rubio’s Coastal Grill, best known for its fish tacos, is shuttering 48 locations in California due to the “rising cots of business in the state”, according to a new report from ABC 10. 

    The business, based in Southern California, announced the closures in a statement this weekend that read: “Making the decision to close a store is never an easy one.”

    It continued: “Rubio’s Coastal Grill…after a thorough review of its operations and the current business climate, has decided to close 48 underperforming locations in California as of May 31, while keeping 86 stores in California, Arizona and Nevada open.”

    Jot Condie, president and CEO of the California Restaurant Association, warned that these closures could just be the beginning for the state: “Daily headlines have chronicled job losses, reduced working hours, restaurant closures and higher prices for California’s inflation-weary consumers as a direct result of this minimum wage hike.”

    He continued:  “Feedback from our members suggests this has become a breaking point for many small restaurant businesses.”

    ABC reported that Condie believes more closures will follow if the state follows through on plans for an $18 minimum wage, which will be on the ballot for voters to decide on this November. 

    Rubio’s closed 48 locations, including 11 in Northern California, 24 in Los Angeles, and 13 in San Diego.

    The El Dorado Hills Town Center branch reportedly missed several rent payments, leading to a dispute with the landlord. The center issued a three-day eviction ultimatum to Rubio’s, which closed the site the day after receiving the notice, according to town center spokeswoman Dawn Bricker.

    Bricker noted the business essentially fled overnight. Rubio’s confirmed the closure but did not comment on potential legal actions by the town center.

    The company was founded in 1983 in San Diago and is headquartered in Carlsbad, California. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/03/2024 – 17:40

  • Israel Pounds Aleppo In Fresh Attack, Iranian IRGC Casualties Confirmed
    Israel Pounds Aleppo In Fresh Attack, Iranian IRGC Casualties Confirmed

    Israel launched major airstrikes on the northern Syrian city of Aleppo in the overnight hours, which killed an Iranian military adviser, and possibly more Iranian militia members, as well as civilians.

    “At approximately 12:20 AM at dawn on Monday, the Israeli enemy launched an aerial attack with missiles from a direction of southeast Aleppo, targeting a number of points in the vicinity of Aleppo city, and the army air defenses intercepted the aggression’s missiles and shot down some of them,” Syrian state SANA said.

    Via AFP

    “The aggression led to the martyrdom a number of civilians, and some material losses to the property,” the report added.

    Hours after the initial overnight and early morning reports of the attack, Iranian state media confirmed the death of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officer.

    “During last night’s attack by the Zionist regime on Aleppo, Saeed Abyar, one of the IRGC advisers in Syria, was martyred,” confirmed Iran’s Tasnim news agency.

    But there are unverified reports that many more were killed. The opposition-linked, anti-Assad war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that 16 members of pro-Iran groups were killed in the attack. The main strike location was reportedly at a copper smelting plant and weapons warehouse in the Aleppo countryside. 

    SOHR has documented forty-four Israel attacks on Syria in 2024. This includes:

    “32 airstrikes and 12 rocket attacks by ground forces, during which Israel targeted several positions in Syria, destroying nearly 92 targets, including buildings, weapons and ammunitions warehouses, headquarters, centres and vehicles. These strikes killed 164 combatants and injured 69 others…”

    Days ago, Israel bombed the coastal Syrian city of Baniyas, killing a girl along with ten other civilians, local reports said. 

    Below: unverified footage of the aftermath of the overnight strikes…

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

    In the initial days and weeks after Oct.7, Syria had lobbed several rockets toward the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, which left no casualties. Much of the Syrian populace has meanwhile become frustrated and expressed growing anger that the Russian military, which has long had a significant presence inside Syria (especially since 2015), has not done more to try and intercept inbound Israeli jets. But Israel often mounts its attacks from over Lebanese airspace.

    “Moscow strongly condemns these aggressive actions, which come in gross violation of Syria’s sovereignty and basic rules of international law,” Russia’s foreign ministry announced Monday. “Such use of force, which in the current tense regional situation can lead to extremely dangerous consequences and trigger a large-scale armed escalation, are unacceptable.”

    Tensions are soaring especially in the wake of Israel’s April 1st brazen attack on Iran’s embassy in Damascus, which left a high ranking IRGC General and several other Iranian officers dead. Additionally, in southern Lebanon Hezbollah has been upping its attacks on Israel in recent days and weeks. Hezbollah is closely allied with Damascus and Tehran.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/03/2024 – 17:20

  • Lacking Finesse, Lacking Mindfulness
    Lacking Finesse, Lacking Mindfulness

    Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

    While I can count on one hand the number of captivating in-person conversations I’ve had over the last few months (years?), today I lucked out and was gifted a few minutes to catch up on life with someone I genuinely find interesting and feel heard by.

    We ruminated about what was new in our lives and traded ideological cliff notes. At one point, we broached the subject of the beauty of simplicity in life.

    Readers of my free, near daily blog and listeners of my podcast know that for years, I’ve been partially ascribing the decay of Western civilization, led by the political left, to our belief that overanalyzing and overthinking the excruciating minutiae of “problems”—whether they be day-to-day issues, political, social or otherwise— can be effective.

    Instead, I’ve argued, our obsession of identifying “intellectual solutions” has thrown the engine of evolution into reverse. Like the Titanic, we don’t just come to a dead stop and start regressing as a society in a way that’s so obvious that it’s easy to recognize. Rather, progress slowly erodes, then civilization reaches an evolutionary standstill, and only then do we start to slowly regress—tearing down the principles, values, and educational foundations of society little by little.

    In 2024, we are a nation of people whose evolutionary biology stands at stark odds with the world of abundance that surrounds us. What would Cro-Magnon man think of problems like choosing between a Diet Coke and Coke Zero at a car dealership vending machine while trying to determine whether to buy a Chevy Suburban or a Cadillac Escalade? Or which filter to use when taking your 21st selfie of your dog for the day — and then whether you should post it on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram or all three?

    These are slightly different than the nuanced issues we had to worry about thousands of years ago and, therefore, evolved equipped to deal with.

    It is this widening gap between our age-old hardwiring and modern-day societal expectations, led by sociological and cultural cornerstones like Jerry Springer, Brazilian butt-lifts and The Golden Bachelor, that has caused us to lose sight of what living in a calm state or having a satisfied mind means.

    For Cro-Magnon man, calm was food that night, a warm fire and not dying. End of list.

    Today, calm is something we desperately tell ourselves we feel when we reach a certain number of social media followers, despite never snapping out of the anxious and panicked state we are in. Calm comes in 1.7 second increments, when a dopamine hit from a bite of a Cheesy Gordita Crunch™ and a sip of a Mountain Dew Baja Blast™ futilely attempts to register in any way on our biologically hijacked rewards system, only to have the same success of that of an infant who has yet to take their first steps trying to scale Everest.

    And our modern day inability to find calm and satisfaction is what drives people (myself included) to moments of feeling like they aren’t good enough, aren’t doing enough, aren’t getting what they are entitled to and aren’t being recognized or making a difference.

    As a result, many people constantly living in a panicked state spend their days looking for the thing they think is going to “fix” them and bring them a feeling of content, despite the harsh reality that real equanimity can only come from within. Rather than being introspective, and courageously looking deeply into oneself, people push themselves toward career goals, relationship goals, material things and the like. They keep up with the Joneses. They develop addictions. They buy sh*t on Amazon.

    Thoughts of “fixing” become fixations, and fixations become patterns—patterns which many people continue stuck in for the rest of their lives, regardless of whether they achieve the things they set out for in the first place.

    Similarly, many people fall into the trap of trying to “solve” not just their own problems, but all of the world’s problems. Others become determined to figure out the meaning of life as a whole, striving to comprehend the entire compendium of all human knowledge with very real-sounding aspirations of fixing the world — which are ironically just layered over compensating for their own unprocessed insecurities.

    And why not? It’s something we’re told as a kid: you can change the world.

    🔥 40% OFF FOR LIFE: Using this coupon entitles you to 40% off an annual subscription to Fringe Finance for as long as you wish to remain a subscriber.

    I’m not saying that an individual effort can’t alter the course of history, but I am saying it has given people a false sense of their ability to control the world around them.

    I quote the legendary George Carlin, talking about “saving the planet”:

    We’re so self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails. And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet.

    Save the planet? We don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. I’m tired of this sh*t. I’m tired of f*cking Earth Day. I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths.

    Besides, environmentalists don’t give a sh*t about the planet. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.

    The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference?

    The planet isn’t going anywhere. We are! We’re going away. Pack your sh*t, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam.

    The planet will be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas. The planet will be here for a long, long, long time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed.

    And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children.

    Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?”

    Plastic, asshole.

    The key point is: we aren’t in control, no matter how much we would like to be.

    And when people fail to recognize that surrendering control is truly the path towards peace of mind, they substitute it with various stages of pseudo-intellectual faux-academic white noise in the form of focusing on an obscure topic, subdividing it into the smallest possible parts where it retains properties of the idea, then analyzing it further into sub-subatomic particles of human thought.

    In other words, they overthink sh*t. They spend 470 pound-feet of brain torque for a problem that could be solved by a distracted 11 year old playing Xbox in the next room, riffing off the top of his head and carelessly yelling out ideas like his mom just called him for dinner and he’s yelling back “one more minute!”

    People who can’t surrender control redline that engine and arrive at their own “solutions” that not only fail to adhere to the guardrails of logic but often times wind up as a vortex of reason and the polar opposite of common sense.

    How else would a smart and highly evolved civilization arrive at “solutions” like segregated college campuses to fight racism, taking on more debt to pay off our national debt, taxing unrealized gains, setting up injection sites to end drug use and letting criminals out on cashless bond while defunding the police to make us safer?

    These social non sequiturs are the result of what our idea of an “intellectual” is now.

    In days past, thought leaders had simple solutions to even the most complex problems that have been irrefutably time-tested, like when Einstein figured out that e=mc². No one challenged that solution as being too simple because it’s just 5 characters long and no one has “fixed” it further because it just works.

    Even philosophy had an elegant simplicity about it, which is why many people now looking to find a state of calm wind up going back and reading Buddhist texts, stoicism, or transcendentalists. Philosophers like Marcus Aurelius, Thích Nhất Hạnh, Emerson and Thoreau are proof you could think deeply and arrive at simple, powerful, yet humble and understated observations.

    “Life is available only in the present moment.” – Thích Nhất Hạnh

    But today, accolades are distributed not based on the merits of ideas regardless of how much anthropological jargon is used, but based on the ideas that are the most complicated and esoteric sounding, regardless of how effective and reasonable they are.

    In fact, for all the lotus tattoos and yoga retreats, it appears to me that mindfulness and simplicity is often cast aside by many modern day “intellectuals” who incorrectly believe there are no simple or easy solutions to complex problems and that people who think otherwise are simply unenlightened, undereducated bumpkins.

    During the course of our conversation today, my friend also asked me about religion. It took me a second to try and put into words why I have a belief in a power greater than myself — but eventually, the answer arrived: it creates a circuitous loop of logic in my mind that offers me permission to myself to not worry about things that are out of my control. From there, that allows me to live in a simpler, more mindful, and calm manner than I otherwise would.

    A week or two ago, I wrote an article examining the flawed logic, general uselessness, and cowardice of today’s activists, regardless of cause.

    When I watch a couple of teenagers deface a 200-year-old priceless work of art, when I see groups like “Queers for Hamas,” or when I see protesters having visible issues controlling their rage as they scream wildly into the open air about whatever their particular grievances are, I don’t see people that are calm and satisfied. I see people who are genuinely scared and suffering in their lives, only to have turned to the school of over-intellectualization and panic for an “answer” that will very likely make whatever their issue is worse instead of better.

    “Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping. and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.” — Thomas Sowell

    For these people, the school of appreciating every day just because we’re alive and breathing simply doesn’t exist. They are held prisoner and tortured by an insatiable, unexplainable dissatisfaction that they can’t put their finger on. For them, there is no stopping and giving thanks — there is only an irrational, synthetically engineered baseline feeling of whatever oppression is trendy that week that feeds off of their insecurities and anxieties like a malnourished tapeworm.

    Which brings us to the present day political sphere, where Donald Trump leads Joe Biden in polls heading into the summer before the election.

    The problem now for many “intellectuals” on the left side of the political aisle is they have over-analyzed themselves into a collective cult of both sociological regression and decadence that is so obvious that many people who would otherwise be in the center of the aisle can’t help but notice. Then, they’ve congratulated themselves for it, given each other awards and convinced themselves they’re geniuses.

    For example, Paul Krugman actually thinks this is funny:

    I wouldn’t worry about the “dibs” on that one Paul. I’m not exactly sure it’s going to be first in line to be ripped off and used royalty free without attribution by a world famous comedian, if you know what I’m saying.

    I’ll level with the left. The Democratic Party is right about some things when it comes to Donald Trump: he can be an asshole, he’s said some chauvinistic sh*t over the years, he’s a cutthroat businessman, he’s a narcissist, and he lies.

    But herein lies the failure of finesse by the left. They don’t have the simplicity of mind to recognize that their targeted ends of keeping Trump out of office do not justify the far more egregious means that they employ.

    Now, many parts of the nation that simply saw an asshole, narcissist and liar a couple of years ago are now seeing an asshole, narcissist and liar who was all but framed for being a traitor, impeached twice for frivolous reasons, has been dragged through the mud by the media every single day that he’s been in the political sphere, and who now is facing 34 felony charges for a private contract that was entered into 10 years ago over an immaterial amount of money — at the same time crime across the country has been all but legalized by liberal district attorneys.

    New York DA Alvin Bragg has spent his career decriminalizing crimes but, in Trump’s case, has elevated a misdemeanor past the statute of limitations to 34 felony counts. Georgia DA Fani Willis has accused Trump of corruption while handing out taxpayer cash and high-prestige job titles to her boyfriend. The recent Trump trial was justified by our current president last week by saying that “nobody is above the law”, but the body of corruption and criminality contained on Hunter Biden’s laptop alone makes it clear that actually, there are some people who are very much above the law.

    It’s a page right out of the aforementioned overanalytical fixation pattern book.

    And while I’ve always thought the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome” was idiotic, the left isn’t doing themselves any favors. The hyperbolic term alludes to a level of cognitive distortion where all bearings and calibration of what is right and wrong fall by the wayside of an obsession to “fix” the problem of Donald Trump.

    Taking a criminal charge that would otherwise not have even been prosecuted and turning it into an legal circus act that could see the leading candidate for president theoretically serve prison time not only shows an unhealthy pattern of obsession with “fixing” the problem the left erroneously believes they have the solution to, it shows a complete and total lack of finesse and the mindfulness that could work well to revive the Democratic Party and its base.

    Like him or not, Donald Trump brings with him a host of simple policy solutions that aren’t overthought, at a point where we don’t have the luxury of any more time for intellectual masturbation or unnecessary complexity: close the border to stop illegal immigration! Put more police on the street and remove lenient DAs to tackle petty crime! Drill f*cking holes in the ground to bring oil prices down!

    The left wants to argue the fact that Trump is a caveman, with caveman ideologies. But the truth is they have “overthought” us so far off the path of reason, that the solutions our nation requires are really are that simple.

    So easy a caveman could do it.

    So I ask: If a person arguing that Donald Trump is unhinged is correct, but that person is five times more unhinged than Trump is, which of the two are going to look like they’re making the most sense when you step back, squint your eyes, and look for clarity in the political Magic Eye puzzle?

    QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here. This post represents my opinions only. In addition, please understand I am an idiot and often get things wrong and lose money. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning. Contributor posts and aggregated posts have been hand selected by me, have not been fact checked and are the opinions of their authors. They are either submitted to QTR by their author, reprinted under a Creative Commons license with my best effort to uphold what the license asks, or with the permission of the author. This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities, just my opinions. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. These positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I did my best to be honest about my disclosures but can’t guarantee I am right; I write these posts after a couple beers sometimes. I edit after my posts are published because I’m impatient and lazy, so if you see a typo, check back in a half hour. Also, I just straight up get sh*t wrong a lot. I mention it twice because it’s that important.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/03/2024 – 17:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jun 03

Today’s News 3rd June 2024

  • Macron Gathering European Coalition To Send Military Trainers To Ukraine
    Macron Gathering European Coalition To Send Military Trainers To Ukraine

    French President Emmanuel Macron is busy working behind the scenes on a controversial new initiative to assemble an army of troops from NATO countries to be sent to Ukraine.

    For now, the plan is to send the Western soldiers in the capacity of trainers and military advisers for Ukraine’s armed forces, with the training likely to take place in the West of the war-ravaged country, or at least far from the front lines.

    Via Reuters

    “Paris has been working for a while now with the Ukrainians on this,” a person familiar with France’s initiative told The Financial Times. But the plan hasn’t been launched formally by NATO leadership.

    “The strong view is that it makes sense, technically… But it won’t be a Nato initiative,” the source explained. This as a number of NATO countries have voiced reluctance or even outright disapproval, fearing unnecessary confrontation with Russia and runaway escalation that would put Western troops directly in harm’s way.

    According to more details of Macron’s plan via FT:

    President Emmanuel Macron is expected to unveil France’s plan to send army trainers next Thursday when he hosts Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Normandy along with other leaders, including US President Joe Biden, on the 80th anniversary of the D-Day, according to people familiar with the matter.

    Macron’s proposal would entail French soldiers training Ukrainian personnel for tasks including demining operations or repairing and maintaining military equipment. It could end up involving dozens or hundreds of troops. 

    Already, the hawkish anti-Moscow Baltic states of Estonia and Lithuania appear to have signed onto Macron’s plan. As of a month ago, Estonia said it was “seriously” discussing sending troops to Ukraine.

    The French government has since said it is working with Kiev to try and understand their exact needs in terms of training and advisory operations.

    German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz was among the first who tried to caution against a ‘boots on the ground’ scenario starting back in February. “What was agreed among ourselves and with each other from the very beginning also applies to the future, namely that there will be no ground troops, no soldiers on Ukrainian soil sent there by European countries or NATO states,” he had said.

    Meanwhile, some NATO states are busy abandoning all pretense…

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

    Interestingly, Russian state media is pointing to recent words of Kiev officials to claim that French troops area already en route to Ukraine. According to RT:

    The first group of French military instructors are on their way to Ukraine, senior Ukrainian MP Aleksey Goncharenko said on Friday. This comes just days after Ukraine’s top commander, Aleksandr Syrsky, announced that he had completed paperwork facilitating the presence of French personnel in the country.

    “My sources informed me that the first group of French instructors is already on its way to Ukraine,” Goncharenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday evening.

    Russia has warned it will target NATO personnel and equipment found in Ukraine, and so all of this brings with it the real risk of triggering the NATO Article 5 common defense treaty, which some hawkish Western leaders would argue requires going to war with Russia.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/03/2024 – 02:45

  • Ruling Party 'Obliterated' In South Africa Election
    Ruling Party ‘Obliterated’ In South Africa Election

    Authored by Darren Taylor via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    People hang out in the street in the Alexandra township on May 31, 2024 in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

    “South Africa’s a new country today, but I’m really afraid of that. We don’t know what that looks like,” Pieter Fourie, a middle-aged, middle-class man walking his shaggy Alsatian through autumn leaves on a street in Melville, Johannesburg, said.

    His younger companion, Sally Kruger, sighed.

    “For many years we prayed to get rid of the ANC [African National Congress]. We watched as it destroyed our beautiful country,” she said, gesturing toward a gaping pothole filled with muddy water.

    “But now that the ANC’s fallen so badly, so fast, in such a shocking way, I’m finding it hard to find a reason to celebrate.”

    Ms. Kruger’s voice trailed off, almost drowned out by screeches from a flock of African ibises.

    “I mean, look at what’s rising to replace it!” she exclaimed. “Something even worse. We were in trouble under the ANC. Now we’re in even bigger trouble.”

    The couple’s insightful musings reflect the concerns of many citizens in Africa’s largest economy, and its most developed democracy, as the implications of the May 29 election filter through the suburbs, townships, and villages of this “Rainbow Nation” of 62 million.

    The ANC, in power since Nelson Mandela led it to a sweeping victory in South Africa’s first multiracial, multiparty poll in 1994 to end white minority apartheid rule, has captured less than 40 percent of the vote, with almost all ballots counted.

    The stunning result is reverberating around the world and was predicted by only one survey in the runup to the election.

    Most polls had support for the ANC at about 45 to 48 percent.

    That outcome would’ve still pushed it into a coalition government, but one that would’ve enabled it to continue exerting dominance in terms of policy direction with support from a few small parties over which it could wield its authority.

    Now, if it’s to hold on to a semblance of power, the ANC will have to form a coalition with a larger opposition party, or parties, which it won’t be able to push around.

    By law, the new government must be announced within 14 days, so it doesn’t have much time to negotiate its way back into the Union Buildings.

    The ANC’s potential partners could not be more different.

    Voters wait in line at night outside the city hall voting station in Durban on May 29, 2024. South Africans vote on May 29, 2024, in what may be the most consequential election in decades. (Zinyange AuntonyY/AFP via Getty Images)

    On the one side is the centrist Democratic Alliance (DA), which has won 22 percent of the vote and up until now has been the official opposition.

    The DA is led by a middle-aged white man, John Steenhuisen, who’s often accused by the ANC of wanting to preserve “white privilege.”

    The DA is pro-business and pro-West, and wants to end affirmative action and replace it with “merit-based” employment, privatize state-owned companies, and weaken the “untrammeled” power of ANC-affiliated labor unions.

    These policies are “poisonous,” to the ANC, the party’s secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula, said in an interview with The Epoch Times shortly before the election.

    On the other side of the chasm are two radical leftist parties led by charismatic, allegedly corrupt black men who once vowed to “die for the ANC”: Umkhonto we Sizwe (MKP), whose figurehead is former President Jacob Zuma, 82, and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), whose “commander-in-chief” is Julius Malema, 43.

    Together, the MKP, with 15 percent, and the EFF, with a little less than 10 percent, have won almost a quarter of votes cast.

    If they form a coalition, they could replace the DA as the official opposition.

    The MKP and EFF are “natural bedfellows,” according to professor Dirk Kotze, governance expert at the University of South Africa in Pretoria.

    People walk in front of the National Ballot results board showing live voting results at the IEC National Results Center on May 30, 2024 in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

    Both are “proudly Marxist” and, like the ANC, are fervent supporters of regimes in China, Russia, Iran, and Zimbabwe.

    Both accuse the ANC of “selling out” to white capitalists.

    Both advocate seizing white-owned land, including farms, and “nationalizing” mines and banks.

    MKP and EFF say all forms of private wealth must be “equally redistributed” among South Africa’s estimated 27 million poor people, mostly black.

    Both want to cut trade ties with Western countries in favor of closer cooperation with a “Multipolar World Order” led by Beijing.

    Both have made statements vilifying white citizens; Mr. Malema has twice been found guilty of racist hate speech against white people.

    Should the ANC choose to partner with one, or both, of these extremist parties to form a coalition government, financial experts say it’ll trigger taxpayer and investor flight and herald the collapse of South Africa’s economy, which is built on gold, platinum, an advanced banking system, and agriculture.

    “There’s a faction inside the ANC that remains pro-Zuma and actually admires Malema and agrees with EFF and MKP policies,” Melanie Verwoerd, an independent political analyst and former ANC member of parliament, said.

    Electoral Commission of South Africa officials empty a ballot box during the vote counting process at Addington Primary School voting station during South Africa’s general election in Durban on May 29, 2024. (Rajesh Jantilal/AFP via Getty Images)

    “Then there’s a more moderate part of the ANC, under [current President] Cyril Ramaphosa, that realize the terrible implications of signing up with either MKP or EFF,” she told The Epoch Times. “This part will prefer to go into coalition with the DA, but they probably don’t have the upper hand at the moment because the ANC under Ramaphosa has performed so poorly in the election.”

    Mr. Steenhuisen told The Epoch Times the DA “remains willing to listen to the reasonable people still left” in the ANC.

    “We’ll do what’s best for all South Africans,” he said. “We must keep the country out of the hands of the extremists. We must believe them when they tell us exactly what they’ll do with power. They’ll sow racial hatred. They’ll steal private property. They’ll launch a pogrom against white people and legal and illegal African migrants. They’ll sell the country to the Chinese and Russians. They’ll sink more millions into poverty by antagonizing Western investors and trade partners. They’ll make the ANC’s corruption look like small change.”

    ANC’s implosion

    Mr. Kotze told The Epoch Times the ANC has been a “victim of its own folly and blindness.”

    “It’s still a political force in South Africa, but no longer a force to be reckoned with,” he said. “This election has obliterated it.”

    Mr. Kotze added that voters had “lambasted” the ANC for 20 years of “consistent failures” on almost all fronts, including governance, the economy, and law enforcement.

    “Things started well under Mandela, and things were quite good for a while under [President Thabo] Mbeki,“ he said. ”But when Mbeki started losing control of the ANC around the mid-2000s, to people who just wanted to steal and had no idea how to govern, that’s when South Africa’s downward trajectory began.”

    In the months leading up to the May 29 vote, political think-tanks, analysts, and experts branded it the most significant in 30 years.

    The ANC was badly wounded, they said, broken by a criminal class within its ranks that had stolen billions of rands, its corruption and mismanagement bankrupting state-owned enterprises to such a degree that ports and railways no longer work, electricity outages plunging South Africa into darkness and economic paralysis on a daily basis.

    An Electoral Commission of South Africa official holds up a marked ballot during the vote-counting process at the Norwood school polling station in Durban on May 29, 2024, during South Africa’s general election. (Gianluigi Guercia/AFP via Getty Images)

    “Entire towns have been wiped off the face of the earth by the maladministration of ANC municipalities,” Prince Mashele, of South Africa’s Centre for Politics and Research, said.

    Failure to curb violent crime, including a murder rate that now stands at 84 per day, also dealt it a “death blow,” he said.

    Mr. Kotze said the ANC’s black economic empowerment and “cadre deployment” policies have made people close to the ruling party extremely rich but failed to pull millions out of extreme poverty, reflected in the world’s highest “real” unemployment rate, 41 percent.

    Going into the election, though, Mr. Ramaphosa would only acknowledge that his party had made “a few mistakes,” never explaining exactly what those mistakes were, and never apologizing.

    “That was a huge miscalculation on his part,” Mr. Mashele said.

    As the election approached, the ANC remained confident, in public at least, that voters would elect it back into government by a “large majority,” in Mr. Ramaphosa’s words.

    “South Africans know we are the only ones who can improve their lives,” the president said at a rally in Soweto.

    Mr. Kotze said the ANC’s “arrogance harmed it immensely” in the election.

    Even when the scale of the destruction suffered by the party became clear on May 31, senior ANC official Gwede Mantashe, one of Mr. Ramaphosa’s closest aides, told journalists: “Leave predictions and polls aside. Votes are still flowing in. I’m optimistic we’ll easily reach more than 50 percent.”

    Women cast their votes at a polling station in Auckland Park on May 29, 2024, in Johannesburg. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

    Amid the melee of the results hub of South Africa’s Independent Electoral Commission near Johannesburg, analyst Wayne Sussman told The Epoch Times: “When counting began at pace on Thursday, I confidently projected the ANC would end on 45 percent. To have the ANC now at around 40 percent, with almost all results declared, tells you the tale of the damage suffered by Africa’s oldest former liberation movement. This is a party that got 70 percent of the national vote in 2004! Its implosion has been amazing. A historic new era of coalition governance has begun, and it’s probably going to be extremely volatile and chaotic.”

    That volatility and chaos has already begun: News that the ANC will have to form a coalition government, and the uncertainty this will bring, has caused prices of shares in major South African companies and the value of the rand to plummet.

    A week ago, the rand was trading at 18 to the United States dollar; now it’s at almost 19.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 06/03/2024 – 02:00

  • Girls Are Getting Their Periods Earlier, And They’re More Irregular Than Past Generations
    Girls Are Getting Their Periods Earlier, And They’re More Irregular Than Past Generations

    Authored by Megan Redshaw, J.D. via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    (Aleksandra Suzi/Shutterstock)

    Young girls are starting their first periods earlier than they have in previous decades—a shift associated with adverse health outcomes later in life.

    A new study published on May 29 in JAMA Network Open revealed that the median age at menarche has remained relatively stable at around 12 years, and the proportion of girls starting menstruation before age 11 has significantly increased over time.

    Menarche, or the first menstrual period, marks the beginning of the monthly hormonal cycle and reproductive lifespan. Additionally, it signifies the end of female puberty.

    Researchers with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Apple Women’s Health Study examined data from more than 71,000 U.S. women born between 1950 and 2005, encompassing various ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds. They aimed to determine the age at which these women experienced their first menstrual cycle and how long it took for their cycle to become regular.

    The study found that nearly 16 percent of women born between 2000 and 2005 started their menstrual cycles between ages 9 and 11, compared to almost 9 percent of those born between 1950 and 1969. Additionally, researchers observed an increase in the number of women experiencing irregular menstrual cycles for three years or more after menarche.

    When stratifying trends by race and ethnicity, participants who were Asian, Hispanic, non-Hispanic black, or of other or multiple races or ethnicities were consistently more likely to experience early menarche than non-Hispanic white participants.

    An exploratory analysis of a subset of 9,865 participants estimated that 46 percent of the trend could be attributed to body mass index—a measure of a person’s body fat based on height and weight. The authors noted that obesity is a risk factor for early-onset puberty and that childhood obesity is on the rise in the United States, which could explain the trend toward earlier menarche. However, it’s unknown to what extent changes in early BMI affect the trend. The underlying cause of the remaining 54 percent experiencing early menarche remains unclear.

    Menstrual Cycle Considered Vital Sign of Health

    The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) considers the menstrual cycle to be a vital sign of overall health, and irregularities can indicate underlying health issues, such as hormonal imbalances, thyroid disorders, or other medical conditions. The menstrual cycle also involves the immune system as uterine immune cells undergo substantial changes and facilitate the thickening and thinning of the uterine lining.

    According to ACOG, girls typically have their first period between 12 and 13 years of age, but it takes a few years for menstrual cycles to become regular. Until then, adolescents may experience irregular periods as their bodies adjust to new hormonal patterns.

    Early Periods May Cause Health Problems

    A growing body of evidence, including the current study, links early menarche and a longer time to regularity with an increased risk of health conditions, such as cardiovascular diseases, cancers, diabetes, asthma, multiple sclerosis, metabolic conditions, and all-cause mortality.

    A 2021 study published in the Annals of Epidemiology found that earlier menarche in girls and a longer time to reach menstrual regularity were associated with an increased risk of all-cause and cause-specific mortality. Girls who started their first period at age 11 or younger were at an increased risk of death from diabetes, breast cancer, and other cancers compared to those who had their first period at 13 years.

    A 2021 study in Cancer Research found that early exposure to sex hormones associated with early-onset menstruation is associated with an increased risk of seven cancers in middle-aged women.

    A 2020 systematic review and meta-analysis of 28 studies in PLOS Medicine found that girls who experience earlier menarche have an increased risk of Type 2 diabetes and impaired glucose tolerance in adulthood.

    In a meta-analysis of eight prospective studies involving 4,553 subjects with endometrial cancer, researchers found that an earlier age of menarche is associated with an increased risk of endometrial cancer. Likewise, a previous study by the same authors found a “statistically significant inverse association” between ovarian cancer and later menarcheal age.

    Evidence also suggests early menarche may enhance multiple sclerosis disease activity in children. In a Canadian prospective study, researchers found a 36 percent decrease in the probability of having a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis for each year menarche was delayed, although a delayed-onset menstrual cycle accompanies its adverse health problems.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/02/2024 – 23:20

  • US Secret Service Reacts To Trump’s Criminal Conviction
    US Secret Service Reacts To Trump’s Criminal Conviction

    The US Secret Service on Friday said that Donald Trump’s conviction in his ‘hush money’ trial will have “no bearing” on whether the agency will protect him.

    Surrounded by campaign staff and members of the U.S. Secret Service, former U.S. President Donald Trump (C) waves to supporters as he visits the Iowa Pork Producers Tent at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa, on Aug. 12, 2023. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    According to the agency, “today’s outcome has no bearing on the manner in which the United States Secret Service carries out its protective mission,” adding that “our security measures will proceed unchanged,” the Epoch Times‘ Jack Phillips reports.

    Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records in connection with a 2016 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. He will face sentencing on July 11, during which Judge Juan Merchan could toss the former president in jail. Prosecutors have not indicated whether they will push for this, while Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg (who downgraded 60% of felonies in his district to misdemeanors, while elevating a an obscure, rarely prosecuted crime to a felony in Trump’s case).

    As the Epoch Times notes, several weeks ago, the Secret Service issued a similar statement to The Epoch Times regarding how it would handle the former president’s security if he were jailed, coming after Judge Merchan warned him that he would be prepared to send him to jail over comments that he said violated his earlier gag order.

    On May 8, the agency responded to questions about how the Secret Service would respond if President Trump were jailed, saying that “under federal law, the United States Secret Service must provide protection for current government leaders, former Presidents and First Ladies, visiting heads of state and other individuals designated by the President of the United States.”

    That comment also didn’t go into specifics about how it would handle security. At the time, the spokesperson did not respond to a question about whether a Secret Service agent could be stationed in a cell with the former president.

    “For all settings around the world, we study locations and develop comprehensive and layered protective models that incorporate state-of-the-art technology, protective intelligence, and advanced security tactics to safeguard our protectees,” the spokesperson said. “Beyond that, we do not comment on specific protective operations.”

    The lead attorney for President Trump, Todd Blanche, told CNN that he thinks the former president should not face prison time, in part due to his age. President Trump, 77, also has no prior convictions, he noted.

    “There’s a system in place where you rely on precedent, and somebody like President Trump should never, never face a jail sentence based on this conduct,” Mr. Blanche said.

    “And it would just kind of confirm what we’ve been saying all along,” he continued. “And a lot of people say that we’re wrong and that we’re missing key pieces. But if other 77-year-old, first-time offenders would never be sent to prison for this conduct.”

    Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg downgraded 60 percent of his felony cases to misdemeanors in 2023.

    The charge he was convicted of, falsifying business records, carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison. Others convicted of that crime often receive shorter sentences, fines, or probation, but the judge in the case said during jury selection that President Trump faces a potential jail sentence.

    After the conviction was handed down on Thursday evening, Judge Merchan set the sentencing date for July 11, or four days before the start of the Republican National Convention. President Trump is the presumptive GOP nominee for president.

    Incarceration would not prevent President Trump from campaigning or taking office if he were to win during the November election. He also will not be jailed ahead of his sentencing.

    After two days of deliberation, a jury of New Yorkers found President Trump guilty of all 34 criminal counts he faced for falsifying documents to cover up payments to Stormy Daniels in the final days of his successful 2016 campaign. The former president pleaded not guilty, denied allegations from Ms. Daniels about an affair, and said the payments were standard legal expenses.

    Falsifying business documents is normally a misdemeanor in New York, but prosecutors in District Attorney Bragg’s office elevated the case to a felony on the grounds that President Trump was concealing an illegal campaign contribution.

    He still faces three other criminal prosecutions, but the New York verdict could be the only one handed down before Americans vote, as the other cases have been tied up in legal wrangling. President Trump has pleaded not guilty in all four cases, which he says are politically motivated.

    “If this can happen to me, it can happen to anyone,” he posted on social media, describing the New York trial as “rigged.”

    National opinion polls show President Trump locked in a tight race with President Joe Biden, and one in four Republican respondents in an April Reuters-Ipsos poll said they would not vote for him if he were convicted of a felony by a jury.

    Allen Zhong and Reuters contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/02/2024 – 22:45

  • China Ramps Up Warning On Bond-Buying Frenzy With PBOC Selling in Focus
    China Ramps Up Warning On Bond-Buying Frenzy With PBOC Selling in Focus

    By John Liu and Zheng Wu, Bloomberg Markets Live reporters and strategists

    Three things we learned last week:

    1. China’s central bank gave its strongest warning yet against overheating in the government bond market. A paper backed by the People’s Bank of China said the monetary authority is ready to sell bonds if needed and suggested a reasonable range for the 10-year yield should be 2.5% to 3%.

    PBOC’s repeated warnings against what it deems as excessively low yields have largely been shrugged off by investors. Unconvinced by China’s economic recovery and housing rescue plans, bond bulls have been betting the central bank will have to do more, such as lowering interest rates and even turning to the controversial step of quantitative easing.

    Investors may have to take it more seriously this time. The PBOC has every reason to be concerned over falling interest rates. While cheaper borrowing costs have benefits, a yawning yield gap with the US is adding pressure on the yuan and fueling bearish sentiment toward Chinese assets — raising the risk of capital outflows.

    The central bank may want to root out expectations of aggressive monetary easing. Such speculations have led to an influx of money into the bond market, draining bank deposits and funds available for the real economy. It may perhaps be sending a subtle message to the Ministry of Finance that the the heavy-lifting of growth should come from the fiscal side.

    2. China’s factory activity unexpectedly contracted with the official manufacturing purchasing manager index falling to 49.5. While more focus was given to the sudden weakness, the non-manufacturing gauge also flashed a warning with a slower-than-expected expansion. Together, they put in doubt the ability of China to reach the growth target of around 5% this year.

    China’s recovery this year has largely been driven by export-oriented firms as domestic consumption is weighed down by the real estate slump. That pillar of strength is at risk of losing its mojo as trade tensions rise along with more protectionist measures against Chinese products. Persistent demand weakness may also be starting to erode production strength, according to Citi analysts.

    While stock market reaction was muted right after the PMI data release, key equity gauges ended Friday in the red while the yuan also slipped against the dollar. The weakness in eco data tends to draw mixed reaction among investors, with some seeing it as a positive signal for more policy support while others regard it as just another reason to sell Chinese assets.

    3. Last week started with renewed excitement over property support as top-tier cities joined the easing bandwagon, but the upbeat mood didn’t last long. A Bloomberg Intelligence index tracking China’s developer stocks slid around 6% in the five days through Friday, taking its loss since a May 17 high to roughly 19%.

    Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou lowered requirements for home downpayments and cut the minimum rates charged for mortgages, following through on the central government’s aid for the embattled property sector. The fact that property shares fell despite the easing measures from China’s biggest cities shows the bar to satisfy frustrated investors is getting higher and higher.

    The mood is more cautious among fixed-income managers, who pay closer attention to the developers’ credit risks. They say the sector is not out of the woods yet, with their refinancing options limited ahead of near-term maturity walls. As the chorus grows for even more policy support, it’s unclear how and when the property crisis can be solved. The country has the equivalent of 60 million unsold apartments, which will take more than four years to sell without government aid, according to Bloomberg Economics.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/02/2024 – 22:37

  • 5 Ways Fed Medicine Is Worse Than The Disease
    5 Ways Fed Medicine Is Worse Than The Disease

    Via SchiffGold.com,

    Central bank monetary tactics have proven to be a toxic remedy, amplifying rather than curing economic ailments. Like a surgeon whose operation only worsens the patient’s condition, central banks administer policies that do more harm than good. Here are five ways central banks leave a legacy of financial turmoil.

    The following article was originally published by the Mises Institute. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Peter Schiff or SchiffGold.

    Central banks’ monetary policies are the most perverse government intervention. Their consequences are dire, last for a very long time, and people don’t perceive them as problems or don’t comprehend the damage they are doing. Monetary policy (monetary expansion and artificially low interest rates) has five main consequences that harm overall living standards.

    1. Price Inflation

    This is the most obvious consequence, and yet, it is very misunderstood by voters. If the money that is effectively circulating in the economy (i.e., M1 and M2, or for a better perspective, the true money supply) increases, price inflation tends to increase. The expansion of the money supply destroys consumer purchasing power and makes people poorer over time.

    2. Bigger Government

    Government spending and indebtedness are intensified due to expansionary monetary policies (since central banks buy government bonds). More resources are allocated to pay for politicians’ and bureaucrats’ luxurious lives and for government programs that, at their best, are more expensive compared to a free market solution. Governments don’t have an incentive to allocate the resources efficiently (since they can just raise taxes, go deeper into debt, or print money), so anything that it does ends up being more expensive than it would have been without monetary intervention.

    3. Financial Assets Become Overpriced

    Monetary policy is behind the major financial crisis and its precedent asset bubbles.

    The stock market is overpriced because artificially low interest rates raise the present value of corporations’ future earnings, making their stocks go higher without having sound fundamental indicators. Artificially low rates also incentivize people to go into debt to buy stocks, which raises their prices. Plus, some central banks (like the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank) have stocks on their balance sheets, which also appreciates their prices due to the artificial demand.

    Real estate prices are inflated as well. Houses and buildings are what Rothbard would call “higher order” goods due to their very long capital structure. He notes,

    The supply of funds for investment apparently increases, and the interest rate is lowered. Businessmen, in short, are misled by the bank inflation into believing that the supply of saved funds is greater than it really is. Now, when saved funds increase, businessmen invest in “longer processes of production,” i.e., the capital structure is lengthened, especially in the “higher orders” most remote from the consumer.

    Overpriced real estate assets also turn houses, apartments, and commercial properties into an asset class (something to invest in and, in theory, protect oneself from the very inflation that caused the real estate prices to go up in the first place) rather than what they would be if it wasn’t for the government’s meddling: houses and apartments for living, and commercial properties for economic activities, either by renting or buying.

    4. Economic Inequality

    This one is linked to our previous argument. Thanks to loose monetary policy, financial assets appreciate without being backed by proper fundamentals. Richer people (the ones who have the most financial assets) get even richer not because their investments are improving companies’ productivity (providing more or better goods and services), but because their assets are being inflated by monetary policy.

    The financial market turns out to be less accessible for the average Jane and Joe due to the following:

    • Stocks are more expensive and risky and therefore less attractive for one who can’t afford to lose a lot of money.

    • The bond market is also less attractive since their prices go higher due to the artificial demand from the new money supply; hence, its rates go lower. This makes the bonds attractive for people who want to buy them as a speculation on their price (if rates go even lower, their prices go up and the investor makes a profit). Alas, since bonds are expensive, average people can’t afford the risk.

    • Financial markets become more complex since there are a lot more tricky instruments (like derivatives) to deal with market volatility (which would be lower if not for government poking) or to increase returns (not without higher risks). And the use of such instruments by asset managers makes their expenses and fees go higher, which also increases their required minimal investments (excluding the less-fortunate people from the game). Side note: government regulations for financial markets, like the ones of agencies like the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (yes, this is a private corporation, but it is a monopoly imposed by the government) and the Securities and Exchange Commission, also increase required minimal investments.

    So, the average Jane and Joe have fewer tools to get richer. And this keeps getting worse as long as central banks keep up with their dovish monetary policy.

    Housing also becomes less affordable, and average people must sacrifice a lot more (and for a much longer time) to save for buying a home. What would be a simple task turns into a long and tiresome effort. This diminished the number of first-time homebuyers, and young people had to delay it. But now, even people in their thirties are living with their parents or other relatives. And homelessness is increasing in major cities like Los Angeles and Lisbon (both foreigners and Portuguese people).

    5. Higher Time Preference Equals Less Economic Growth and More Indebtedness

    Artificially low interest rates destroy the incentive for savings. In many cases, even if price inflation is low, the return on savings does not compensate for the time that people didn’t use the money. The overall time preference gets higher. People are not willing to wait to spend their money. If there is no return, they might as well party right away.

    Indebtedness also increases for consumption instead of being used for investments that would increase productivity and economic growth. This also makes prices go higher than they would be because higher productivity tends to lower prices, and this process is, best-case scenario, delayed by lower savings. In other words, governments don’t let deflation (which would make prices go lower over time) happen.

    Price inflation itself also creates an incentive to spend right away (since the purchasing power gets lower every year), and artificially low interest rates make the money market (which would be an easy tool people could resort to for parking their savings) not attractive. And, since overall time preference is higher, most people don’t settle for just preserving their purchasing power (which sometimes can be achieved with gold). They want a fast and high return, a dangerous combination. So, they go to the stock market, which is overpriced thanks to a loose monetary policy, which was covered earlier.

    Conclusion

    Government interventions through central banks are the most destructive and yet the least understood by most people. It is a bad enough problem to deal with on its own, and even harder to do so when people fail to perceive its damage. Central banks are the source of most evils in the economy.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/02/2024 – 21:00

  • Nvidia CEO Nvidia's Jensen Huang Reveals New AI Chip Slated For 2026
    Nvidia CEO Nvidia’s Jensen Huang Reveals New AI Chip Slated For 2026

    At the 2024 Taipei International Information Technology Show, better known as Computex, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang highlighted the endless possibilities surrounding artificial intelligence. He unveiled plans for new AI accelerator chips, signaling the company’s shift from graphics cards to AI chips. 

    In March, Nvidia unveiled the $70,000 Blackwell B200 GPU chip, the “world’s most powerful AI chip.” On Sunday, Huang told the audience about the Rubin AI chip slated for 2026. He said the new chip would use HBM4, the next iteration of the essential high-bandwidth memory. 

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

    Huang stressed that companies that fail to embrace AI will be left behind. He said companies can only manage the “computation inflation” of ever-expanding data needs through AI chips. 

    Combining two processors on a personal computer is already standard practice for increasing computational power, but try this at a data center…

    “We add a GPU, a $500 GPU, to a $1,000 PC, and the performance increases tremendously,” he said, adding, “We do this in a data center. A billion-dollar data center, we add $500 million worth of GPUs, and all of a sudden, it becomes an AI factory.”

    “The more you buy, the more you save. This is the CEO’s math. It is not accurate, but it is correct!” the executive told the audience. 

    Huang’s new chip unveiling comes ahead of Monday’s cash session in New York. The company’s shares are inching closer to the $3 trillion valuation mark.

    TechRadar’s John Loeffler had a running blog during Computex, commenting on Huang’s speech. One big takeaway from Loeffler is Nvidia’s transformation from a graphics card company to an AI chip company. 

    They [Nvidia] are no longer a graphics company, as Jensen reportedly told employees several months back, and every Nvidia keynote and live stream I’ve watched in the last year and a half really just reinforces that fact.

    Nvidia is absolutely, 100% going to become an AI chip company, and whatever gaming appendage sticks around for a few years will become less and less of a focus for the company.

    There’s nothing particularly wrong with that, to be honest. Nvidia is printing money hand over fist selling AI hardware to OpenAI, Google, and all the rest, so from a business perspective, it makes perfect sense. It’d be the height of madness not to position yourself at the center of an industry that’s giving you 10x better returns than what you were doing before.

    Its AI revenue, even if AMD and Intel eventually produce AI data center hardware that offers genuine competition to whatever Nvidia is producing down the road, is still going to dwarf whatever money its GeForce products bring in. GeForce might continue for some time, especially on mobile devices where RTX chips can be a way to interface with Nvidia’s broader AI ecosystem, but I think in the end, the consumer graphics market is going to come down the AMD and Intel. I just don’t see Nvidia’s heart being in the consumer graphics game any longer.

    Loeffler continued:

    If it helps Nvidia sleep better at night to call what its making now GPUs, they’re the ones with the $2 trillion valuation, they can do as they like. But there’s a part of me, the life-long PC gamer part of me, that feels like Nvidia has decided that the PC gamers that initially propelled the company to success two decades ago don’t really matter anymore.

    Huang didn’t offer many specifics on the new chip that will begin shipping in 2026. However, during an earnings call earlier this year, the exec said the chip giant will design new platforms annually, down from every two years. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/02/2024 – 20:25

  • Trump Campaign Raises Staggering $200 Million Since Thursday Conviction
    Trump Campaign Raises Staggering $200 Million Since Thursday Conviction

    If Democrats needed further confirmation that prosecuting Donald Trump on an obscure misdemeanor elevated to a felony just for him… (while the same DA reduced 60% of felonies to misdemeanors last year), the Trump campaign has raised over $200 million since Thursday’s verdict in the former president’s New York ‘hush money’ trial.

    Of that, $70 million was from small donors, and 30% of the total were first-time donors to a political campaign, Eric Trump told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.

    “I mean, these are Americans who are p*ssed off, said the younger Trump. “They’re coming out of the woodwork and they want to support a guy that they just believe is getting bamboozled by a system.

    “We saw it with Impeachment one, we saw it with Impeachment two, we see it where they weaponize every liberal DA and AG across the country with one intent: To take him down, to slander him, to ruin his reputation, to try and divide his family, to try and bankrupt him, to throw him in jail, to do whatever the hell they can do,” he added.

    “America sees through it. They know exactly what’s going on.”

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

    As the Post Millennial notes further;

    The $200 million was raised in a matter of just three days, which far surpasses any amount raised by President Biden’s campaign in a similar time frame. Within 24 hours of President Trump’s guilty verdict, the Trump campaign received $53 million in donations. The Biden campaign raised a total of $51 million for all of April.

    According to a Friday statement by Trump campaign officials Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, “Biden and his Democrat allies have turned our legal system into a political tool, and Americans from every corner of the country have had enough,” adding “This momentum is just getting started and together, as President Trump stated perfectly, Americans will render the real verdict on November 5.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/02/2024 – 19:15

  • Good Thing Markets Don't Close At 2:30 pm
    Good Thing Markets Don’t Close At 2:30 pm

    By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

    Good Thing Markets Don’t Close at 2:30 pm

    Sometimes weeks shortened by holidays are painful to follow. It somehow seems difficult to get a good sense of flows and momentum. In addition, last week had a dearth of economic data, at least until Friday. Let’s be honest, when we are looking at Treasury auction results for direction, we are in a market devoid of much else going on.

    The market did seem to digest the news that a former president and presumptive nominee was found guilty of felonies. At some point, markets are likely to focus on the election. The one thing I’m reasonably sure about regarding the election is that as the campaigning begins in earnest, it will not be great for Treasuries. Neither candidate/party seems particularly interested in doing anything about the ballooning national debt and that will weigh on markets yet again.

    Other factors such as “okay” inflation data will also impact Treasuries. We crawled back into our 4.3% to 4.5% range, but largely on a simply atrocious Chicago PMI report. While we can all agree that neither Chicago, nor Manufacturing are as important to the nation as they once were, it is at least mildly disturbing that we surpassed the 2001 trough (though we are marginally higher than the 2008/2009 and COVID troughs).

    Which brings me to the chart of the day.

    The Nasdaq 100 dropped about 300 points on the week or about 1.5%. Not horrible, but late into the day on Tuesday and late into the day on Friday (which also happened to be month-end), the Nasdaq 100 gained about 470 points (about 2.5%). Now, maybe the “hockey stick” save into the close on Tuesday is explicable, but we saw those gains fade as the week progressed. However, Friday’s action seemed bizarre at best. Presumably, it was due to some sort of month-end rebalancing, but it was hardly something that a continued rally seems likely to be based on.

    That is in addition to some of the moves (up and down) highlighted in yellow, that seem almost random. Sure, some can be tied to a specific headline, but many just seem to be reactions to flows.

    I’m increasingly worried about a lack of “true” liquidity in the markets. Sure, algos create a perception of liquidity (one that can be used in reasonable size), but those pockets of liquidity seem to disperse more and more frequently.

    Without a doubt, in a quiet tape, the relentless buying from share repurchases has helped, but that didn’t seem to work last week.

    One thing that caught me somewhat by surprise was that going back to March 1st, the S&P 500 is up 2.4%. No, I’m not surprised that despite all the hype and relentless “all-time high” headlines, stocks are barely up over the last 3 months. What surprised me (a little) was that the utilities sector was by far the best performing sector in the S&P 500 (up a whopping 16.4% over that period).

    We have stretched the AI Deputization theme to its limit. Yes, data centers are being built. More and more computing power is also being built. They will need energy to run, but I suspect that will take time and the markets are “compressing” time. We’ve pulled forward lots and lots of expected cashflows and benefits from AI. NVDA remains strong and is up over 30% since March 1st, but even the AI leadership doesn’t seem broad and has relied on utilities. That all seems “stretched” to me.

    We continue to see large stocks react 10% (or far more) to earnings, which I interpret to be a function of options and a lack of true liquidity.

    Maybe we will grind higher again, but markets seem stretched, leadership is flagging, and we should get some interesting data this week. I care far less about the inflation data and far more about the data pointing to economic activity and the consumer.

    The May jobs data should be really interesting. From a “seasonal” perspective, it should pick up summer hiring in the Northeast. I continue to wonder if our “seasonal” adjustments no longer match the reality of a country where the demographic mix and manufacturing/service hubs have changed over time (away from the Northeast). Maybe the corollary of Chicago doesn’t matter, but is this why we’ve been overstating jobs due to seasonality, which is no longer accurate?

    Bottom Line

    I expect “American Exceptionalism” to be sorely tested this coming week with the onslaught of data (jobs in particular).

    I’m increasingly nervous that we are about to undergo another round of selling pressure in Treasuries. Foreign bond yields are getting more attractive, the deficit is concerning, and China (amongst others) needs to raise money to fund stimulus. However, I think the economic data will outweigh that and keep us drifting back towards 4.3% on 10s.

    Equities got the “stick save” on Friday, but I think that will fade and every attempt to rally on lower yields that are a result of weaker data will fade. I just don’t see a third “save” coming and it won’t matter that markets don’t close at 2:30 pm, because there won’t be the late day rally!

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/02/2024 – 18:40

  • German Policeman Dies After Intervening In Stabbing At Anti-Islam Rally
    German Policeman Dies After Intervening In Stabbing At Anti-Islam Rally

    Update (2000ET): A 29-year-old German police officer who was repeatedly stabbed during an attack at an anti-Islam rally in the city of Mannheim has died of his wounds after having been “stabbed several times in the area of the head.”

    The policeman was previously identified as Rouven L. by German media and was being kept alive by a heart-lung machine

    The officer, identified as Rouven L in German media, underwent emergency surgery following the attack and was placed in an artificial coma, only to die of his injuries on Sunday, the Daily Mail reports.

    German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that he was “deeply saddened” by the officer’s death.

    “His commitment to the safety of all of us deserves the highest recognition,” Scholz posted on X.

    *  *  *

    A shocking video has exploded across social media showing a man stabbing anti-Islam activist and politician, 59-year-old Michael Stürzenberger, during a campaign event in Mannheim.

    As Remix News’ John Cody reports, the bloody and chaotic video shows the man running amok among campaign staff, who are wearing blue jackets, while the man stabs any victim in his sight.

    The campaign workers scramble to stop the man, who also stabbed a police officer in the neck.

    Embedding the video has been blocked on X (click image for link):

    News reports indicate that the suspect has already been shot and killed by police, although the suspect’s death has not been confirmed by all news outlets. In one frame of the video, the man can clearly be seen plunging his knife into the neck of a police officer.

    Police say the victim was campaigning and providing “educational information” in the lead-up to the attack in the city square.

    Stürzenberger is an anti-Islamic political activist who is a member of the Citizens’ Movement Pax Europa, who earlier served in the Munich Christian Socialist Union (CSU) and as the chairman of the Freedom party, a small party which is now dissolved. He publishes an anti-Islamic blog.

    He is well known for producing a citizens’ petition against the construction of a mosque in Munich. He was convicted for “insulting an officer” and “denigration of religious teachings.”

    He has also been under surveillance in the past, with the Bavarian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) listing Stürzenberger in its report related to “Islamophobia relevant to the Protection of the Constitution.”

    The stabbing incident comes just one week before EU parliament elections.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/02/2024 – 18:30

  • A "Restaurant Apocalypse" Is Starting To Sweep Across America, And That Is Really Bad News For The U.S. Economy
    A “Restaurant Apocalypse” Is Starting To Sweep Across America, And That Is Really Bad News For The U.S. Economy

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

    You can get a really good idea how the U.S. economy is doing by watching restaurants in your area.  When the economy is booming, restaurant parking lots are full and chains are feverishly establishing new locations.  But when the economy is struggling, restaurants get a lot less traffic and poor performing locations get shut down.  Sadly, in 2024 it appears that a “restaurant apocalypse” has started to sweep across America.  Most people have very little discretionary income to spend as a result of our cost of living crisis, and that is particularly true for our young adults.  Americans under the age of 40 love to eat out, but these days most of them are experiencing financial stress, and this is having an enormous impact on the restaurant industry.

    In 2023, visits to sit-down restaurants dropped by about five percent compared to 2022…

    Americans are eating out less as inflation weakens the dollars in their pocket, which is leading to some harsh consequences for restaurants across the country.

    Visits to sit-down restaurants were down nearly five percent in 2023 from the year prior, according to location analytics firm Placer.ai.

    So this is a trend that has stretched on for over a year.

    People just aren’t eating out as much as they once did.

    As a result, we are seeing a wave of closures all over the country.  Even in the Big Apple, large numbers of restaurants are being shut down…

    Even big metropolitan areas in the US known for their great dining spots are struggling to maintain an environment where it’s profitable to run a restaurant.

    Eater NY reported that over 40 bars and restaurants closed in New York City from December 2023 to January 2024, with some of the owners saying business simply never picked up after the COVID lockdowns in 2020.

    When times get tough, difficult decisions need to be made.

    After closing 46 restaurants last year, Applebee’s has decided to close another 35 locations this year…

    Applebee’s is to close another 35 further locations this year, after shutting 46 in 2023.

    The restaurant chain has shut at least three locations so far this year and has plans to close even more, president Tony Moralejo said in an earnings call on Wednesday.

    Closing restaurants was ‘an incredibly difficult decision’ and a ‘last resort’ for the company, Moralejo said.

    And I am very saddened by what has happened to Boston Market.

    At one time they had almost 1,000 locations all over the United States, but now the entire chain is about to go belly up…

    In the case of Boston Market, a chain that once had nearly 1,000 locations nationwide, the company’s death has been slow, but the pace of its demise has picked up over the past few months.

    Now, with its store count continuing to dip, the chain seems to have reached the end even if it won’t confirm that given that there no longer appears to be anyone around to make that decision.

    Boston Market owner Jignesh “Jay” Pandya was recently denied Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the second time and has been barred from filing again for six months. That leaves his company, which faces massive financial obligations, unable to gain court protection from its creditors.

    Our ongoing inflation crisis is the primary reason why this is happening.

    Consumers simply have a lot less discretionary income now.

    Meanwhile, restaurants are facing much higher costs…

    Jessica Dunker, the president and CEO of the Iowa Restaurant Association, said the reason restaurants are shuttering is because the cost of goods is up 30 percent and they are having to shell out higher wages to keep staff on.

    Unfortunately, things aren’t going to get any better any time soon.

    For example, the cost of orange juice is expected to go up dramatically because of a very bad harvest in Brazil…

    Breakfast lovers are in for another jolt as orange juice prices surge to near-record levels. A new report released on Friday indicates that Brazil, the leading global exporter of OJ, is facing its worst harvest in over three decades. This alarming development compounds existing issues in Florida’s citrus groves, which have been plagued by disease and are experiencing collapsing production levels to the lowest in decades.

    Fundecitrus wrote in a note that Brazil will produce 232.4 million boxes—each weighing about 90 pounds—for the growing season this year. That’s a 24% collapse from a year earlier and the lowest production levels in 36 years.

    We have reached a point where the vast majority of Americans just can’t afford to eat out on a regular basis.

    Needless to say, that is really bad news for fast food chains like McDonald’s.

    At one time, serving middle class families was their core business.

    But now most middle class families just can’t afford to eat at McDonald’s very often.

    In a desperate attempt to lure them back, McDonald’s will soon introduce a five dollar meal deal…

    McDonald’s is looking to launch a $5 meal in the US in a move to bring back price-sensitive customers.

    The meal includes four items, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg and Restaurant Business. Customers would choose between two of the chain’s signature burgers — a McChicken or a McDouble — and get four-piece McNuggets, fries, and a drink. The $5 promotion would last for a month, Bloomberg reported.

    So they are going to bring back affordable food for one month.

    That’s just great.

    Unless they make the five dollar meal deal permanent, I don’t expect that it will make much of a difference.

    Consumers are really hurting right now.  In fact, consumer sentiment just fell to the lowest level in six months…

    Consumer sentiment plunged to the lowest level in six months as price increases reaccelerated, according to the latest University of Michigan survey of consumers, released Friday.

    Additionally, consumers are bracing for even higher price increases in the year ahead compared to readings from prior months, the survey found.

    The gauge, which is closely tracked by the Biden administration, plunged 13% from April’s 77.2% reading, to 67.4%. That’s the biggest one-month drop since mid-2021. Economists polled by FactSet were expecting consumer expectations to fall to just 76.9%.

    As I have discussed previously, the American people are deeply pessimistic about the economy at this stage.

    And they have good reason to be pessimistic, because even though our politicians in Washington are engaging in an unprecedented spending spree in a desperate attempt to keep the economy propped up, the truth is that the wheels are starting to come off and tremendous chaos is ahead.

    Ed Dowd agrees that big trouble is coming during the months ahead.  He just told Greg Hunter that he expects the U.S. economy “to take a nosedive sometime in the next 12 months”…

    What happens to the Biden economy? Dowd says, “The economy is going to take a nosedive sometime in the next 12 months. The real economy is not doing well. . . . The only thing that has been holding up the GDP growth is government spending. We are spending $1 trillion every 100 days. That’s adding $1 trillion to the deficit. The only job creation is government jobs, and they don’t actually add to the economy. . . . Reports are coming out now that the low-income consumer is getting absolutely hammered. McDonald’s talked about it in their most recent earnings call. . . . So, low-income and the middle-class are getting squeezed while the rich continue to plug along.”

    I agree.

    Of course we don’t have to wait for the economy to come apart at the seams, because that is already happening.

    At one time, the entire world marveled at the greatness of the mighty U.S. economy, but our leaders have completely wrecked it.

    There is no way that we are going to be able to avoid disaster, and so I would encourage you to prepare for very hard times while you still can.

    *  *  *

    Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/02/2024 – 17:30

  • Making Over $141K, Minneapolis Mayor Thanks Biden For Student Loan Forgiveness
    Making Over $141K, Minneapolis Mayor Thanks Biden For Student Loan Forgiveness

    If you weren’t already infuriated by Joe Biden’s exploitation of the federal student loan program as a means of buying votes and redistributing wealth, this should do the trick. 

    On Wednesday, Minneapolis Mayor Melvin Carter — who earns makes takes $140,814 a year before benefits — rushed to Twitter to thank President Biden for erasing his remaining student debt, sharing a screen shot showing his outstanding balance had turned to zero. 

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

    The latest drip in the fiscal Chinese water torture that’s being inflicted on responsible, productive Americans came earlier that day, with Biden announcing he was cancelling another $7.7 billion of debt. With that, the total such debt wiped away by his administration has reached $167 billion.  

    After emphasizing that the average beneficiary of Biden’s self-serving abuse of taxpayers has had $35,000 in debt forgiven, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre fielded a challenging question from, of all sources, NBC News. Correspondent Peter Alexander asked, “Why don’t those individuals who didn’t receive $35,000 in debt cancellation deserve a $35,000 check from other Americans for what other means they would want to use it?” 

    Jean-Pierre’s struggle to rationalize the debt-forgiveness fiesta resulted in a comical, leftist word-salad: 

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

    Most notably, Jean-Pierre said, “We’re talking about folks who are in debt who are literally being crushed.” We doubt that characterization applies to Mayor Carter, who’s pulling in $141K by himself in a two-income household — not counting a city-taxpayer-furnished car, cell phone, pension and deferred compensation. 

    If he was being “literally” crushed, it’s safe to say it’s because he and his OB/GYN nurse wife made a series of poor financial decisions. Either way, he doesn’t deserve to have his net worth elevated by distributing the cost to other members of society — including future ones. And neither does anyone else. 

    In early April, Biden announced a five-pronged proposal for even more student debt forgiveness. A UPenn-Wharton analysis pegged the cost at $84 billion, and noted that the proposal would “relieve some longer-term student debt for about 750,000 households making over $312,000 in average household income.” 

    We’re guessing Team Biden might have mixed feelings about Mayor Melvin’s tin-eared, highly-public thank you. It’s not playing well in Peoria… 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/02/2024 – 16:55

  • The Ideological Battle Behind The US Debt Crisis
    The Ideological Battle Behind The US Debt Crisis

    Via SchiffGold.com,

    The U.S. national debt is at 34.7 trillion dollars. If you laid that many dollar bills end-to-end, it would wrap around the Earth 134,599 times. That’s enough to travel to the sun and back 17 times. Suffice it to say, we’re in a pickle.

    America is slowly approaching the precipice of debt default. This is no minor dilemma. A default could cause approximately 8 million jobs to be lost. In other words, the bill would come due.

    For many politicians, the debt crisis is not a pressing concern. At least not enough to take measures to fix it. The Biden administration passed a 1.2 trillion-dollar infrastructure bill in 2021, adding 256 billion dollars to the budget deficit over the next ten years. Biden has also forgiven 167 billion dollars in student loans during his tenure, which was financed through increased government spending. Despite already being one of the most indebted countries in the world, politicians continue to dig the U.S. into an even deeper hole. The problem is not simply a monetary one.

    There is an ideological battle underlying our descent into debt.

    The ideas that have caused America’s current debt crisis were birthed during the Great Depression. In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a series of spending measures that were intended to stimulate economic activity in what was called the “New Deal.” FDR spent over 950 billion (inflation-adjusted) dollars on the program while being touted as an economic “savior.” The deal was promoted as what released America from the bonds of the recession. In reality, it made the problem worse.

    A study conducted by two UCLA economists found that the New Deal actually extended the Great Depression by seven years. By artificially increasing wages while unemployment remained rampant and below projected recovery rates, FDR’s program harmed economic health. Simply pumping money into the economy wasn’t the fix-all solution it was advertised to be.

    This is no surprise. Simply increasing the amount of money in the economy does not increase the total amount of goods and services. It only increases the demand for a stationary supply, which necessarily results in a price increase. Instead of stimulating true economic development, unrestricted government funding has led to an inflationary trap. And yet we keep spending, suppressing the symptoms while worsening the underlying problem.

    Another flaw of increasing government spending is its inefficiency relative to private markets. Look no further than the Pentagon’s $640 toilet seat. Government officials don’t have the proper incentives to spend money wisely. Instead, their wasteful spending is bankrolled by tax dollars, debt, and increases in the money supply. Between 2020 and 2022, the money supply alone increased by over 40%. Consequently, inflation burgeoned to 7% and 6.5% in 2021 and 2022 respectively.

    Government spending is a slippery slope. Once a private entity becomes dependent on a public sector paycheck, it will keep coming back for more. In return, politicians get more control over the lives of their constituents. The decision to increase taxes, the money supply, or the national debt to fund more spending is rooted in an ideology of increased government intervention.

    The thinkers who originated Western political philosophy believed that government was meant to protect life, liberty, and property, and nothing more. The modern American regime has drastically overstepped these bounds and instead spends trillions of dollars on niche issues while citizens pay the price in the form of inflation, higher taxes, and debt.

    At the heart of the issue is the belief that politicians can spend your money better than you can. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. Political leaders only have to cater to the current populus to stay in power, and thus have a heavy tendency to overspend in the present and let future generations pick up the pieces. But the bill is coming due. Experts estimate the U.S. has approximately 20 years to change its spending policies or it will have to default on its debt. We are descending into an economic crisis of our political leaders’ design. While excessive spending appears beneficial in the present, the American people always pay the price.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/02/2024 – 16:20

  • Netanyahu Accepts Johnson's Invitation – First Foreign Leader To Address Congress A 4th Time
    Netanyahu Accepts Johnson’s Invitation – First Foreign Leader To Address Congress A 4th Time

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accepted an invitation to address both houses of Congress, after House Speaker Mike Johnson issued a formal invitation on Friday, with the backing of fellow Democrat leaders. 

    Netanyahu boasted that he will be the first foreign leader in history to make four such appearances there. “I am moved by the privilege of representing Israel before both houses of Congress, and of presenting, to the representatives of the American people and the entire world, the truth about our righteous war against those who seek our destruction,” an acceptance statement by the Israeli prime minister’s office said.

    Back in 2011: Politico

    The invitation leader had also been signed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. They said “we join the State of Israel in your struggle against terror, especially as Hamas continues to hold American and Israeli citizens captive and its leaders jeopardize regional stability.”

    “For this reason, on behalf of the bipartisan leadership of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate, we would like to invite you to address a Joint Meeting of Congress.”

    However, some House and Senate Progressives are expected to boycott Netanyahu’s address, including Senator Bernie Sanders.

    Sanders issued a statement saying “It is a very sad day for our country that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been invited – by leaders from both parties – to address a joint meeting of the United States Congress.”

    “Netanyahu is a war criminal. I certainly will not attend,” Sanders added. Indeed it is also the first time that a leader who has an arrest warrant out by the Hague-based ICC has addressed Congress and the American people.

    All of this is happening at a deeply strained moment for US-Israel relations. Israel’s military has plunged deep into Rafah, violating prior red lines issued by Biden. Also, Netanyahu appears to have slammed the door on Biden’s publicly backing the current ceasefire deal on the table.

    Other Progressive Congressional members say they will ask hard questions during his visit:

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

    The Israeli PM has vowed that the military operation in Gaza won’t stop until Hamas no longer has military or governing capacity. He has said he won’t withdraw troops until the group is eliminated.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/02/2024 – 15:45

  • Maher: If Trump Goes To Jail There Will Be A Racial Civil War
    Maher: If Trump Goes To Jail There Will Be A Racial Civil War

    Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

    HBO ‘Real Time’ host Bill Maher has predicted that if Donald Trump is sentenced to any prison time, there will be a civil war that will quickly evolve into a race war because of MAGA supporters.

    “Here’s the key question: Is he going to go to jail? Would this judge dare do that?” Maher said, adding “And should he? I heard some people say if his name wasn’t Donald Trump he would definitely get jail time.”

    “MAGA nation will go nuts. I don’t know if that’s a reason to or not to do something, but they will,” Maher continued during the discussion with former Obama chief strategist David Axelrod.

    Maher went on to suggest that “because the judge’s name was Juan,” putting Trump in jail would lead to racial political violence.

    “Everything becomes racial in this country. That’s partly because of our horrible, despicable racial past, partly because some of that racism lives on in the present and some of it because the far left makes everything racial. But that’s what it’s going to be.” Maher further posited.

    “A civil war in this country, I’m sorry to say, becomes a race war. That’s the sad truth about this country,” the host continued, adding “And if they put him in jail, I mean, the first thing his supporters are going to say is, ‘Oh, that’s what it is.’ A Black district attorney. You know, all these people who are the district attorneys, they’re black. The judge was not White. This is what it is.”

    Watch:

    As we highlighted earlier this week, former US Attorney for the District of Utah Brett L. Tolman is adament that Judge Merchan will give Trump jail time.

    “This judge has considerable power now, on July 11th he has the power to take Trump forthwith, he can take him, put him in custody right then and he can do it for whatever period of time,” said Tolman, warning that despite there being a range of sentencing, “the rules are out the window, who knows what this judge will do.”

    “I predict he will give him some jail time, I think he will fine him, he’ll give him a stern lecture and then he’ll promptly plan his retirement and a book deal,” concluded Tolman.

    *  *  *

    Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/02/2024 – 15:10

  • "Nothing To Do With World Events": Two Unarmed Minuteman III ICBMs Slated For Launch Next Week
    “Nothing To Do With World Events”: Two Unarmed Minuteman III ICBMs Slated For Launch Next Week

    The US Air Force Global Strike Command is preparing to conduct two separate tests of unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles from north Vandenberg Space Force Base in California next week. 

    “Consistent with previous test launches, this routine, unarmed ICBM test launch will validate and verify the effectiveness, readiness and accuracy of the weapon system,” Vandenberg Space Force Base wrote in a statement. 

    Here are the tests:

    • The first test is scheduled for June 4 from 12:01 a.m. to June 4, 2024, 6:01 a.m., Pacific Time from north Vandenberg.

    • The second test is scheduled for June 6 from 12:01 a.m. to June 6, 6:01 a.m., Pacific Time from north Vandenberg.

    Test re-entry vehicles are expected to travel approximately 4,200 miles southwest of California to the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. 

    “A previous test launch slated for February 2024 had to be postponed due to some needed repairs at Reagan Test Site,” said Col. Chris Cruise, 377th Test and Evaluation Group commander.

    Cruise continued, “This summer’s test launch was already scheduled so it made sense to do them both while all the necessary personnel were in place. The launches were scheduled well in advance and have nothing to do with world events.”

    Late last year, America’s 450 ICBM silos across five states began a major $96 billion overhaul – part of a nuclear modernization effort. The military as a whole is being modernized as war rages on in Eastern Europe and is set to possibly expand with the Biden administration ‘green-lighting‘ Ukraine to strike inside Russia with US weapons. The conflict between Israel and Hamas is another concern, as well as instability in the South China Sea. 

    The rise of a multi-polar world signifies that the war cycle is accelerating.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/02/2024 – 14:35

  • Boeing Enters 'New Territory' With Federal Probe, Possible Criminal Charges
    Boeing Enters ‘New Territory’ With Federal Probe, Possible Criminal Charges

    Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    When a door panel ripped off an Alaskan Airlines flight after takeoff on Jan. 5, Boeing’s fortunes changed overnight.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images)

    Had the company gone just two more days without an incident, it would have satisfied a settlement to avoid criminal prosecution by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

    Instead, the accident triggered investigations by federal agencies and congressional hearings. The incident also renewed public scrutiny of Boeing and the 737 MAX 8 crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed everyone on board and led to criminal charges for the company.

    Boeing has since seen a significant financial fallout, reporting a $355 million loss and a near-50 percent drop in deliveries in the first quarter alone. The company also faces plummeting stock values and canceled orders from multiple airlines since the Jan. 5 incident.

    The DOJ ended months of speculation on May 14 with a court filing alleging that Boeing violated its 2021 deferred prosecution agreement. The company failed to “design, implement, and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of the U.S. fraud laws.”

    The DOJ will meet with the crash victims’ families on May 31 before announcing its intentions with Boeing’s case by July 7.

    According to career pilots, aviation safety experts, and attorneys who spoke with The Epoch Times, how Boeing violated the agreement and the possible consequences are complicated.

    To stay competitive, Boeing needed to design a new plane that could fly to destinations such as Hawaii with less fuel. The company’s competitor, Airbus, was edging out the market with new, more fuel-efficient jets.

    Instead of designing a brand new plane, which would have required extensive pilot training from the airlines that buy them, raising the jet’s price, Boeing opted to release an upgraded version of its 737 jet, the 737 MAX. It has larger, more powerful engines that are installed farther forward on the plane’s wings, which causes the nose to push up higher during takeoff.

    Boeing compensated with a new flight control software called Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which automatically lowers the nose to avoid midair stalling. Federal regulators said Boeing didn’t tell the airlines or the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) the extent of the software, how it controls the plane in the background, and how to disable it.

    Planes also use angle of attack vanes, or indicators, to tell the computer whether the jet is ascending or descending at the right pitch angle. Before the 737 MAX, these indicators were wired to two sensors in case one malfunctioned during flight—because of damage from a bird strike, for instance. On the original 737 MAXs, the angle of attack indicators were wired to a single sensor, causing the flight control software to assume that the plane was in critical danger if either indicator malfunctioned.

    American Airlines pilot captain Pete Gamble (L) and first officer John Konstanzer conduct a pre-flight check in the cockpit of a Boeing 737 Max jet in Grapevine, Texas, on Dec. 2, 2020. (LM Otero/AP Photo)

    During the 2018 and 2019 fatal flights, the MCAS system kept pitching the nose downward with faulty angle-of-attack data, likely from a damaged angle of attack vane. Because Boeing didn’t properly disclose the software nuances and how to disable it to the airlines, the pilots took more than 10 seconds to respond. Federal guidelines expect pilots to respond to such as situation in four seconds to avoid a catastrophe.

    Boeing also didn’t overhaul the flight control software until after the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash, which was five months after the 2018 Lion Air crash. The FAA responded by grounding all 737 MAX jets for nearly two years to ensure compliance with regulations.

    “The MCAS accidents were pure, 100 percent money accidents,” said Shawn Pruchnicki, aviation safety expert and assistant professor at Ohio State University’s Center for Aviation Studies.

    “They killed 346 people over money and nothing else.”

    Disclosing the flight control software would have forced airlines to order new training for their pilots before using the 737 MAX, thus raising the sales price.

    The DOJ, the FAA, and the House Transportation Committee initiated separate investigations into the crashes. All implicated the MAX’s flight control software and Boeing’s decision to withhold this information from regulators, airlines, and pilots, which meant that pilots didn’t respond in time in both fatal 737 MAX 8 crashes.

    Boeing didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    How Was Boeing Charged?

    The DOJ charged Boeing on Jan. 7, 2021, with conspiracy to defraud the United States, particularly the FAA’s Aircraft Evaluation Group.

    The U.S. government stated that Boeing deliberately withheld details of its flight control software from the FAA and airlines. Boeing maintained that two of its 737 MAX Flight technical pilots were responsible for deceiving federal regulators about the MCAS flight control software.

    The government then brokered a deferred prosecution agreement with Boeing, a form of criminal settlement in which charges can be dismissed if the defendant fulfills certain obligations within a stated timeframe.

    Boeing had to accept responsibility for the acts that led to criminal charges and pay a total of $2.5 billion, which included a $243.6 million penalty and a $500 million fund to compensate the families of the 2018 and 2019 737 MAX crash victims.

    However, Boeing also had to stay in compliance for three years from the day the agreement was signed, Jan. 7, 2021.

    During this period, the company had to avoid committing any federal felonies, could not deny responsibility for the charges, and was required to implement a “compliance and ethics program designed, implemented, and enforced to prevent and detect violations of the U.S. fraud laws throughout its operations.”

    Boeing was two days from the end of its probationary period when the Alaskan Airlines panel blew out.

    An unpainted Boeing 737 MAX aircraft is parked at Renton Municipal Airport near the Boeing Renton facility in Renton, Wash., on July 1, 2019. (Lindsey Wasson/Reuters)

    Alleged Violation

    The DOJ’s May 14 letter states that Boeing failed to “design, implement, and enforce” the compliance and ethics program required under the terms of the settlement. However, the agency did not explicitly say whether the Alaskan Airlines incident or any others from 2024 were linked to Boeing’s lack of a compliance and ethics program.

    Robert Clifford, lead attorney for the families of the 2018 and 2019 crash victims, told The Epoch Times that the DOJ hasn’t informed him or the families of the acts or incidents that led to Boeing’s breach of the agreement.

    “We hope to learn details of the investigation and government plans going forward,” he said.

    “Obviously, the events of 2024, such as Alaska Air, have caused greater focus on Boeing’s compliance and the scrutiny of the government, but we await word on the exact details that led to the finding of [the] breach.”

    The DOJ also wrote in the letter that it reserves the right to find Boeing in violation of other terms of the agreement until July 7, when it will announce how the agency intends to proceed with the case.

    Possible Criminal Charges

    The DOJ could pursue multiple pathways if it criminally prosecutes Boeing.

    Neama Rahmani is a former federal prosecutor who once worked for the aerospace company. He told The Epoch Times that the DOJ could issue a “massive fine,” require an independent monitor to “ensure that Boeing is complying with its obligations under the agreement,” or prosecute individuals in the company, such as CEO Dave Calhoun.

    Mr. Rahmani explained that going after individuals at the company requires a higher bar of proof. He said prosecutors could use a text message between high-level executives admitting to fraud, for example.

    Read more here..

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/02/2024 – 14:00

  • OPEC+ Agrees To Extend Collective Output Cuts Until End Of 2025
    OPEC+ Agrees To Extend Collective Output Cuts Until End Of 2025

    As we previewed last month, OPEC+ agreed to extend its oil production cuts well into 2025, while also setting a timeline for gradually winding down some of those curbs later this year.

    As reported by Bloomberg, the agreement reached in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Sunday exceeds market expectations in some ways, extending so-called “voluntary” cuts from key members including Saudi Arabia and Russia well into next year. However, it also begins rolling back those supply reductions in October, earlier than some OPEC-watchers had assumed.

    The OPEC+ agreement prolongs roughly 2 million barrels a day of cuts, which have played a key role in supporting crude prices above $80 a barrel this year but were set to expire at the end of June. The curbs will continue in full in the third quarter then be gradually phased out over the following 12 months, according to a statement from the Saudi Energy Ministry.

    This is how Energy Intel’s Amina Bakr summarizes the latest OPEC+ deal:

    1. The group will extend its collective cuts (a mix of voluntary and group cuts) which amount to around 3.6 million bpd until the end of 2025.

    2. The 8 states which offered the 2.2 million bpd voluntary cuts will extend those till q3 2024. After that they will start being back production gradually from October 2024 till September 2025, subject to market conditions.

    Highlights from the agreement: the UAE received an upward adjustment to 300k to its baseline which is now 3.5 million bpd

    Another highlight is that the baseline revisions have now been pushed back to 2026, and that’s because some countries like Russia are under embargo and the independent companies are not able to have access to data to support the assessment process.

    Do not underestimate the level of cohesion that is required to reach this complex policy which will be in place for the next year and a half.

    And this is what the phase out of the voluntary cuts will look like:

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

    Prior to the meeting, traders and analysts had widely expected OPEC+ to prolong its supply reductions in order to offset soaring output from its rivals, with some predicting they would be maintained until the end of 2024. Under the new agreement, the eight nations participating in these additional curbs will have added about 750,000 barrels a day to the market by January.

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

    Crude prices had slumped in the past month as Middle East tensions faded and amid a fragile economic outlook in China and doubts about the pace of interest-rate reductions in major industrialized economies. Brent futures settled at $81.62 a barrel on May 31, a drop of 7.1% for the month.

    Those “voluntary” cuts by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies were in addition to an earlier group-wide agreement capping crude output at about 39 million barrels a day, which ran until the end of this year. The alliance said in a statement that it also agreed to prolong that accord to the end of 2025.

    “It removes a significant chunk of oil from our balances both this year and next,” said Amrita Sen, director of research and co-founder of Energy Aspects Ltd. The deal “keeps OPEC+ in charge of the market.”

    Sunday’s deal suggests OPEC+ leader Saudi Arabia, which hosted the meeting in its capital after initial plans for a gathering in Vienna were canceled, is attempting to strike a balance between supporting crude markets and easing the production restraints against which some members have chafed repeatedly.

    Lower oil prices this year have improved the economic outlook by offering some relief to central banks grappling with persistent inflation. Yet they also threaten revenue for producers like Saudi Arabia, which needs prices close to $100 a barrel to fund the ambitious spending plans of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the International Monetary Fund estimates.

    In parallel to the OPEC+ meeting on Sunday, the Saudi government completed a $12 billion sale of shares in state oil giant Aramco, raising funds to help pay for a massive economic transformation plan.

    As Bloomberg notes, the agreement temporarily resolves “a potentially fraught debate on some nations’ oil capacity. The alliance had commissioned an external review of its members capabilities with the intention of resetting baseline production levels used to measure cuts in 2025.”

    Several major exporters were seeking to have their levels upgraded, possibly posing a risk to the group’s efforts to stabilize world markets. The deadline for completion of that process has now been pushed back by a year to November 2026. However, the UAE was given a 300,000 barrel-a-day boost to its production target for next year, making it the clear winner from Sunday’s negotiations.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/02/2024 – 13:25

  • The Deepfake Privilege? The Justice Department Makes Startling Claim To Withhold the Biden-Hur Audiotape
    The Deepfake Privilege? The Justice Department Makes Startling Claim To Withhold the Biden-Hur Audiotape

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    We have been discussing the dubious constitutional basis for President Joe Biden withholding the audio tapes of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur. I have previously written that the claim of privilege makes little sense when the transcript of the interview has already been released. It seems curious that Biden is claiming to be the president “who cannot be heard” in withholding the audio version.

    It just got wackier as the Justice Department seeks to create a new type of “Deepfake privilege” that would effectively blow away all existing limits on the use of the privilege when it comes to audio or visual records of a president.

    Multiple committees are investigating Biden for possible impeachment and conducting oversight on the handling of the investigation into his retention and mishandling of classified material over decades. Classified documents were found in various locations where Biden lived or worked, including his garage. The mishandling of classified material is uncontestable. Broken boxes, unprotected areas and lack of tracking are all obvious from the photos.

    Biden made the situation even worse with a disastrous press conference in which he attacked Hur and misrepresented his findings.

    Hur’s ultimate conclusion that Biden’s diminished cognitive abilities would undermine any prosecution left many dumbfounded. After all, the man who is too feeble to prosecute is not only running a superpower with a massive nuclear arsenal but running for reelection to add four more years in office.

    From impeachment to oversight to the 25th Amendment (allowing the removal of a president for incapacities), there are ample reasons for Congress to demand information and evidence from the government on these questions. Congress is also interested in looking at repeated omissions for “inaudible” statements. Under this sweeping theory that Biden can legitimately withhold these recordings under executive privilege, any president could withhold any evidence of incapacity or criminality.

    As previously explained, the claim that the audiotape but not the transcript remains privileged is hard to square with precedent or logic. However, now the Justice Department appears to be pivoting with a new claim with a late Friday filing.  The filing obtained by Politico states that the audiotape must be withheld due to the risk that it could be altered by artificial intelligence and passed off as authentic in a deepfake release: “The passage of time and advancements in audio, artificial intelligence, and ‘deep fake’ technologies only amplify concerns about malicious manipulation of audio files.”

    Consider the implications of that argument for a second. It would mean that any visual or audio recording of the President could be withheld due to the danger of digital or other manipulation. It would eviscerate any existing limits on privilege assertions.

    It is also absurd since you could create such fake recordings using the transcript and Biden’s voice from countless interviews through AI programs. The Justice Department acknowledges that obvious logical disconnect by noting that the release would make any fake version more credible.

    “To be sure, other raw material to create a deepfake of President Biden’s voice is already available, but release of the audio recording presents unique risks: if it were public knowledge that the audio recording has been released, it becomes easier for malicious actors to pass off an altered file as the true recording,.”

    The filing is logically and legally absurd. It is also dangerous.

    For a president who is already carefully insulated from questions and controlled in public appearances, the argument would allow staff to completely control any public or, more importantly, congressional review of his actual speech and discourse.

    In seeking to prevent “malicious actors” from altering reality, the government is claiming the right to frame reality as an inherent constitutional prerogative.

    The argument ignores that, if an audiotape is released, it is harder to pass off a fake as genuine. As it stands, actors can claim tapes as leaked or derived from other sources. In the absence of an official tape, such arguments can be difficult to refute.

    The fact that this spurious argument is being made by Merrick Garland’s Justice Department is another disappointing sign that he has abandoned his pledge to remain apolitical in office. This litigation is clearly designed for one overriding purpose: to delay any release until after the election when it cannot harm the President.

    It is the legal version of a deepfake — misrepresenting the law to mislead citizens into believing that they are better off with less information on the credibility and competence of their president.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 06/02/2024 – 12:50

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jun 02

Today’s News 2nd June 2024

  • 1 In 9 Children In The US Diagnosed With ADHD, COVID-19 A Potential Factor
    1 In 9 Children In The US Diagnosed With ADHD, COVID-19 A Potential Factor

    Authored by Amie Dahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    (Devonyu/iStock)

    Childhood attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is becoming increasingly common, with a new study revealing that one in nine American kids have been diagnosed with the condition—equating to 7.1 million children.

    Many more children in the U.S. have been diagnosed with ADHD recently. In 2022, there were 1 million more cases compared to 2016, potentially fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on children’s mental health and virtual schooling putting symptoms on display.

    Pandemic Stressors May Have Fueled Rise in ADHD

    The research article, published in the Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, provided insight into how the COVID-19 pandemic potentially influenced ADHD diagnoses. The higher prevalence could reflect “a generally increasing awareness of and pursuit of care for ADHD and/or a reflection of poor mental health among children during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the researchers wrote.

    Previous studies have shown that the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on the mental and social well-being of young people, who experienced stressors such as illness and death in the family and community, changes in parents’ work habits, disruptions in school life, decreased social interaction, and increased fear and uncertainty. A 2022 study found that these pandemic-related stressors “can increase symptoms of inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity.”

    The COVID-19 pandemic likely helped encourage an increase in diagnoses, as previously unobserved ADHD symptoms were front and center in households when children attended school virtually, according to the new study.

    Conversely, during the pandemic, schools faced greater challenges in providing support for those students, “may have led more parents to seek diagnoses to ensure access to support for their child,” the research team wrote.

    What It Takes for a Child to Be Diagnosed

    ADHD is one of the most common developmental conditions affecting children in the U.S. In the three-year span before the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly one in 10 children had received a diagnosis. To be diagnosed with the condition, a child must exhibit at least six symptoms of either inattention or hyperactivity-impulsivity for at least six months.

    The symptoms must be severe enough to be “maladaptive and inconsistent with developmental level” or negatively impact social, academic, and occupational activities, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

    Common symptoms of inattention include difficulty maintaining attention during tasks or play, not following instructions, often losing items required for an activity or task (like a pencil for homework), or being forgetful in daily activities.

    Examples of hyperactivity include fidgeting with hands or feet, leaving one’s seat in the classroom or situations where they’re expected to remain seated, or having difficulty playing quietly. Examples of impulsivity include difficulty waiting for their turn or often interrupting others.

    ADHD Gender Gap Narrows

    In the U.S., more boys than girls have typically been diagnosed with ADHD, but new data shows that the gap between the two sexes is narrowing. Before 2022, the boy-to-girl diagnosis ratio was 2:1, while in 2022, it dropped slightly to 1.8:1, according to the study.

    Among children aged 3 to 17 with ADHD, 41.9 percent had mild cases, 45.3 percent moderate, and 12.8 percent severe. Certain factors were linked to more severe ADHD: being aged 6-11 (vs. adolescents), living in households with lower education or income levels, and having a co-occurring mental/behavioral/developmental disorder.

    More white American children are diagnosed with ADHD than minority children, though the research team noted that “with increased awareness, such gaps in diagnoses have been narrowing or closing.”

    Children with public health insurance had the highest prevalence levels, as did children whose caregivers’ highest level of education was high school.

    ADHD in children was most common in the Northeast, Midwest, and South, compared to children living in the West.

    The report notes that the prevalence of ADHD in children is higher in the United States than in other countries. The reason “may be the result of variation in availability of clinicians trained to diagnose and manage ADHD, state and local policies, and regional differences in demographic characteristics,” the research team wrote. Future research could determine the differences between clinical guidelines and practices across countries.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/01/2024 – 23:20

  • These Are The World's Largest Armies In 2024
    These Are The World’s Largest Armies In 2024

    Despite being considered the biggest military force in the world, the United States doesn’t have the largest army in terms of personnel.

    This graphic below, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, shows the top 10 countries by military personnel as of May 2024, including active and reserve personnel, as well as paramilitary forces. It is based on estimates from GlobalFirepower.com.

    Vietnam, India, and South Korea Have the Biggest Armies

    China has the largest standing army, with over 2 million active personnel. With increasing defense spending over the last decades, the country also ranks third in the number of tanks and second in the number of aircraft carriers in service.

    When reserve personnel are included, however, the Chinese military falls behind those of Vietnam, India, South Korea, and Russia.

    Vietnam’s forces include 600,000 active personnel and over 5 million in reserve. This is because Vietnam, along with countries like South Korea and Israel, has a standing policy of conscription for young adults.

    Interestingly, the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine resulted in a massive increase in Ukrainian personnel numbers. Active personnel rose from around 170,000 in 2016 to over 900,000.

    Despite not having the largest army, the U.S. accounts for almost 40% of global military expenditures, with its 2022 spending totaling $877 billion.

    China ranked second in absolute terms, accounting for another 13% of world military expenditure at $292 billion.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/01/2024 – 22:45

  • Our Chemical Facilities Are Vulnerable To Attack
    Our Chemical Facilities Are Vulnerable To Attack

    Authored by Chris Jahn via RealClear Wire,

    If our nation suffers another terrorist attack, it will be hard to argue that the signs weren’t there for us to see. The federal government has expressed growing concern that AI will empower attacks on our water, transportation, and financial systems. The Department of Homeland Security has warned that bad actors are using the technology to develop weapons of mass destruction. We know foreign nationals are illegally crossing our southern border in droves. And the death of Iran’s president could foment international conflict that deepens concerns about attacks in the U.S.

    Congress should be taking every measure to secure our nation’s critical infrastructure. Yet when it comes to chemical production facilities, they have left the door wide open.

    Last summer, legislators allowed a federal security program protecting chemical plants to expire. I hope it doesn’t take an attack on these facilities to show the vital role they play in producing our energy, food, drinking water, computer chips, medicines, cars—you name it. That’s what makes them such an attractive target for terrorists—and that’s why we should do everything in our power to protect them.

    After the September 11th attacks, Congress directed the Department of Homeland Security to create the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards program (CFATS) to address potential terrorist threats to chemical facilities. This helped DHS identify facilities that might be at risk of a potential attack and set national standards for addressing physical and cyber threats. CFATS also provided companies with access to valuable expertise from DHS and important tools to help prevent bad actors from gaining access. It successfully flagged at least 10 individuals with potential ties to terrorism.

    But last July, the Senate blocked the program, allowing it to lapse for the first time in 15 years. More than 80,000 individuals in the chemical industry have not been vetted against the FBI’s terrorist screening database.

    Losing CFATS is like the Transportation Security Administration losing its ability to secure air travel. To be sure, airports and airlines do their own screening. But a federal agency cross-referencing passengers with central databases makes it much more likely that a terrorist trying to evade detection will be stopped before boarding a plane.

    The chemical industry hasn’t been shy about opposing excessive federal regulations, but this is one program that has proven effective. In fact, a recent survey of American Chemistry Council members found that 96 percent support restoring the program, and 85 percent are concerned that failure to do so will compromise security. And this strong support for the program extends beyond industry. Law enforcement organizations, emergency responders, and labor unions have also called on Congress to restore CFATS.

    Our member companies are fully committed to securing their facilities, but the chemical industry should not have to go it alone. Weakening our chemical sector’s security only helps our adversaries. The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved bipartisan legislation last year to keep CFATS active and keep our chemical facilities safe. The Senate must act before it’s too late.

    Chris Jahn is President and CEO of the American Chemistry Council.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/01/2024 – 22:10

  • Alex Soros Gives Dems Propaganda Blueprint For "Convicted Felon" Trump Amid Party Infighting
    Alex Soros Gives Dems Propaganda Blueprint For “Convicted Felon” Trump Amid Party Infighting

    With Democrats high-fiving over the ‘historic’ conviction of their chief political rival, a fight has broken out amongst party leaders over how to gloat over this obvious political lawfare which was allegedly coordinated with the Biden administration, and rife with conflicts of interest.

    Even CNN senior legal analyst, Elie Honig, admitted that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg (who reduced 60% of felonies to misdemeanors in 2023, yet elevated Trump’s misdemeanors to a felony), wrote in NY Mag: “Here, prosecutors got their man, for now at least – but they also contorted the law in an unprecedented manner in their quest to snare their prey.“

    “The charges against Trump are obscure, and nearly entirely unprecedented. In fact, no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever. Even putting aside the specifics of election law, the Manhattan DA itself almost never brings any case in which falsification of business records is the only charge.” -Elie Honig

    Now the Democrats are split on how to gloat over this communist show trial – with party establishment figures preaching caution and restraint, and the other side which sees Trump’s guilt as a political gift that should be used as a cudgel.

    Mini-Me Soros Pipes Up

    Arguing in favor of gloating is one Alex Soros, son of George Soros, who visited the Biden White House 14 times since October 2021 according to visitor logs. Young Alex said the quiet part out loud on Friday, suggesting in his infinite wisdom that Democrats should turn take every opportunity to call Trump ‘convicted felon,’ (of course, turning him into an even bigger martyr).

    “Democrats should refer to Trump as a convicted felon at every opportunity. Repetition is the key to a successful message and we want people to wrestle with the notion of hiring a convicted felon for the most important job in the country!”

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

    Young Alex was ‘ratio’d’ into oblivion on X (far more comments than ‘likes,’ indicating disagreement). That said, he also has the firepower of his father’s network of organizations to promote whatever he sees fit.

    “As much as I would love to get money out of politics, as long as the other side is doing it, we will have to do it, too,” the millennial said in a WSJ interview last summer. 

    And who could blame amped-up, constitution-shredding Democrats for wanting to capitalize on this headline-sweeping, historic event of their own making?

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

    According to Bloomberg data, headlines featuring ‘Bidenomics’ collapsed last year after the Biden administration realized pushing it was a terrible idea. Meanwhile, ‘convicted felon’ has just erupted.

    While Soros, the complex web of OSF groups, the Biden administration, and radical Democrats cheer this weekend, not just because it’s the first day of Pride Month but because of Trump’s conviction, the political assault on the former president was likely overplayed.

    Going deeper into Elie Honig’s analysis via @KanekoaTheGreat:

    CNN Senior Legal Analyst Describes How The Trump Conviction Was A Political Hit Job

    1. “The judge donated money… in plain violation of a rule prohibiting New York judges from making political donations—to a pro-Biden, anti-Trump political operation.”

    2. Alvin Bragg boasted on the campaign trail in an overwhelmingly Democrat county, “It is a fact that I have sued Trump over 100 times.”

    3. “Most importantly, the DA’s charges against Trump push the outer boundaries of the law and due process.“

    4. “The charges against Trump are obscure, and nearly entirely unprecedented. In fact, no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever.”

    5. The DA inflated misdemeanors past the statute of limitations and “electroshocked them back to life” by alleging the falsification of business records was committed ‘with intent to commit another crime.’

    6. “Inexcusably, the DA refused to specify what those unlawful means actually were — and the judge declined to force them to pony up — until right before closing arguments. So much for the constitutional obligation to provide notice to the defendant of the accusations against him in advance of trial.”

    7. “In these key respects, the charges against Trump aren’t just unusual. They’re bespoke, seemingly crafted individually for the former president and nobody else.“

    8. “The Manhattan DA’s employees reportedly have called this the “Zombie Case” because of various legal infirmities, including its bizarre charging mechanism. But it’s better characterized as the Frankenstein Case, cobbled together with ill-fitting parts into an ugly, awkward, but more-or-less functioning contraption that just might ultimately turn on its creator.”

    Definitely one of those ‘you know it’s bad when’ moments…

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

    Here’s what folks on X said in response to Alex’s ratioed post:

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

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

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

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

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

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/01/2024 – 21:35

  • Elevated Risk Of Epilepsy, Appendicitis In Children After COVID-19 Vaccination: Study
    Elevated Risk Of Epilepsy, Appendicitis In Children After COVID-19 Vaccination: Study

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

    Children who received the AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines faced an elevated risk of epilepsy and appendicitis, according to a new study.

    A boy receives the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in Newcastle upon Tyne, England on Sept. 22, 2021. (Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)

    Pfizer recipients were also more likely to suffer from demyelinating disease or heart inflammation, researchers found.

    Dr. Julia Hippisley-Cox, a professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Primary Health Care Sciences, and colleagues obtained data from a national database on COVID-19 vaccination, mortality, hospital admissions, and COVID-19 infections. They wanted to look at the link between COVID-19 vaccines from AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Moderna with 12 outcomes, including the heart inflammation condition called myocarditis.

    The population of nearly 5.2 million included 1.8 million children aged 5 to 11 and 3.3 million children aged 12 to 17.

    The data examined were through Aug. 7, 2022.

    In the primary analysis, researchers found 12- to 17-year-olds who received Pfizer’s vaccine were at increased risk of myocarditis, with an additional three cases per million versus the expected rate after a first dose, and an additional five cases per million after a second dose, and hospitalization with epilepsy, with an additional 12 cases per million after a second dose. Females in the age group also faced an increased risk of demyelinating disease after receiving a second dose of the vaccine.

    Researchers also identified a “substantially increased risk of hospitalization with epilepsy” among females after receipt of a first dose of AstraZeneca’s shot, with 813 more hospitalizations with epilepsy than expected per million doses, and an elevated risk of appendicitis after a second dose of the vaccine, with 512 excess events per million doses.

    While no excess events were found among Moderna recipients, the study lacked the power to detect statistically significant issues, due to few children in the UK receiving Moderna’s vaccine. Further, no elevated risks of the 12 issues were found among 5- to 11-year-olds.

    A secondary analysis, involving matching some of the vaccine recipients to unvaccinated children, confirmed an increased risk among 12- to 17-year-olds of hospitalization with epilepsy following Pfizer vaccination, and elevated risks of severe allergic shock and appendicitis in the age group following Pfizer vaccination. No increased risks of any outcome were identified among minor Moderna or AstraZeneca recipients. But among a group of 18- to 24-year-olds studied, elevated risks of a number of conditions were found, including myocarditis, immune or idiopathic thrombocytopenia, epilepsy, and acute pancreatitis.

    The study was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research School for Primary Care Research. Multiple authors declared conflicts of interest, including funding from Moderna and AstraZeneca. Limitations included reliance on hospital admission codes and death certificates.

    Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca did not respond to requests for comment.

    The paper was published by Nature Communications.

    The authors said that their findings “support a favorable safety profile of COVID-19 vaccination using mRNA vaccines in children and young people aged 5-17 years.” The Pfizer and Moderna shots utilize messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology.

    Dr. Hippisley-Cox, the study’s corresponding author, did not return a request for comment seeking data on the position. The authors cited in part how they found unvaccinated children faced increased risks of some of the outcomes, including multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children.

    Udi Qimron, a professor at Tel Aviv University’s Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology, said that the authors wrongly downplayed the risks associated with the vaccines.

    “It’s not surprising to learn that some of the study’s authors have financial ties to Moderna and AstraZeneca and/or have served on various UK and Scottish Government COVID-19 advisory groups. One author was even a member of AstraZeneca’s Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Taskforce and the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. The conflict of interest in this case is significant,” Mr. Qimrom, who was not involved in the paper, told The Epoch Times via email.

    “It is concerning that respected scientific platforms are being used to cover up mistakes and wrongdoing, particularly the coercion and immense societal pressure to vaccinate young children. This should never have been done,” he added. “It is disheartening to see scientific journals collaborating with such practices, which undermines public trust in scientific research, especially when it involves the health and safety of children.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/01/2024 – 21:00

  • Biden Just Lost The Crypto Vote
    Biden Just Lost The Crypto Vote

    After the recent shocking ETH ETF approval, many hoped that Biden was changing his tune of relentless antagonism toward the crypto industry – TheBlock even went so far as to report that the “Biden campaign ramps up crypto industry outreach in surprising tone shift” – and would not veto the bill overturning the SEC’s SAB 121 which makes it more difficult for entities like banks to custody crypto.

    Well, that didn’t happen.

    Late on Friday, Biden vetoed the bill  that would strike down Securities and Exchange Commission guidance that the crypto industry, the banks and Congress all say has stymied its ability to work with banks. The guidance, known as staff accounting bulletin No. 121, has also drawn pushback from banks since it was published in 2022. Lenders have said it effectively restricts them from scaling up services to hold digital assets on behalf of customers by making it too costly.

    The resolution – which in May passed the House with a vote of 228–182, and then the Senate by a vote of 60-38 as 11 Democrats joined all republicans to smack down Liz Warren fluffer Gary Gensler – would have invalidated the SEC bulletin. Lawmakers backing the resolution, which passed the House in a 228-182 vote, said the guidance limits options for Americans who want to stow digital assets at traditional banks.

    “My administration will not support measures that jeopardize the well-being of consumers and investors,” Biden said in a veto message released Friday evening. “Appropriate guardrails that protect consumers and investors are necessary to harness the potential benefits and opportunities of crypto-asset innovation.”

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

    In his statement, Biden added that he was “eager to work with the Congress to ensure a comprehensive and balanced regulatory framework for digital assets” even though both the House and the Senate told him that the bill he just vetoed offered precisely that.

    While the White House earlier this month said it opposed legislation that passed the House establishing a regulatory framework for digital assets – arguing it lacked sufficient consumer and investor protections – it stopped short of a full veto threat, indicating the president was open to negotiations on legislation governing the issue. It turned out all the senile president was “open” to was being manipulated by the anti-crypto militant wing of the Democratic party led by Senator Karen.

    So, much to the chagrin of the entire industry, Biden – who is far too gone to have any idea where he is, let alone with a cryptocurrency is – ended up following the advice of a handful of millitant, anti-crypto socialist luddites led by Elizabeth Warren, a move that will cost him what little support he had left within the crypto space, which has found an ally in candidate Trump (at least until the election that is).

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

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

    Some speculated that the admin’s double U-turn on crypto was prompted by the rigged ruling in the Trump hush money payments case, which allowed Biden to once again show his true anti-crypto colors…

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

    …  a decision which will now force the Democrats to come up with even more fake and illegal alien ballots to offset the flood of anti-Biden votes from the crypto industry. Even staunch never-Trumper Anthony Scaramucci said that the “very bad” veto decision will “cost him more than he realizes.”

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

    As for Trump, hie recent efforts to court the crypto voters by both hosting an event for his NFT holders and promising to commute the sentence of Silk Road Ross Ulbricht seem to be working despite Trump’s mixed record on crypto.

    But there’s no question about Biden’s record with crypto now. With this veto, Biden has explicitly aligned himself with the losing duo of Gary Gensler and Pocahonatos, and indicated he will continue to have the SEC’s back in their crusade against crypto.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/01/2024 – 20:25

  • "Democracy Is On The Ballot": California Democrats Seek To Prevent Voters From Approving New Taxes
    “Democracy Is On The Ballot”: California Democrats Seek To Prevent Voters From Approving New Taxes

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    “Democracy is on the ballot.”

    That mantra of President Joe Biden and other Democrats has suggested that “this may be our last election” if the Republicans win in 2024. A few of us have noted that the Democrats seem more keen on claiming the mantle of the defenders of democracy than actually practicing it. Democrats have sought to disqualify Donald Trump and dozens of Republicans from ballots; block third party candidates, censor and blacklist of those with opposing views; and weaponize the legal system against their opponents.

    Most recently, in California, democracy is truly on the ballot and the Democrats are on the wrong side.

    California has always prided itself on the ability of citizens to vote on changes in the law directly through referenda and ballot measures. That is precisely what citizens are attempting to do with a measure that would require voter approval of any tax increase, including a two-thirds vote for some local taxes. It is called the Taxpayer Protection Act and it is a duly qualified statewide ballot measure slated for the November 2024 ballot.

    The state Democrats are apoplectic over the prospect of citizen control over revenue and taxes.  What was a quaint element of democratic empowerment is now challenging a core vehicle of Democratic power. So Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democratic leaders have taken the issue to the state Supreme Court to demand that citizens be denied the right to decide the issue.

    In oral arguments, the attorney supporting the challenge explained to the justices that citizens are simply not equipped to deal with the complexities of taxation and should not be allowed to render such a decision.

    In a prior decision, Associate Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar wrote that:

    “Whether the context involves taxation or not, all of these cases underscore how courts preserve and liberally construe the public’s statewide and local initiative power. Indeed, we resolve doubts about the scope of the initiative power in its favor whenever possible and we narrowly construe provisions that would burden or limit the exercise of that power.”

    Half of the Court seemed to be inclined to deny the public the right to decide the question.

    The Court, however, may wait until after the election to render a decision on the limits of democracy in California.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/01/2024 – 19:50

  • Trump's 'Coal Country' Could Supply Nation With 40% Of Lithium Demand 
    Trump’s ‘Coal Country’ Could Supply Nation With 40% Of Lithium Demand 

    America’s transition to a decarbonized economy demands massive base metals and rare Earth minerals. Currently, China dominates the rare Earth mineral market. However, initiatives are already underway by the US federal government to sever reliance on the Chicoms and boost domestic mining and refining abilities. 

    One unlikely area where 40% of the nation’s lithium supply could be sourced from is ‘Trump’s coal country,’ otherwise known as good ole’ Appalachia. 

    According to Justin Mackey, a research scientist at the National Energy Technology Laboratory and PhD student at the University of Pittsburgh, wastewater from oil/gas rigs across the Marcellus Shale formation could supply the nation with 40% of its lithium needs. 

    “This is lithium concentrations that already exist at the surface in some capacity in Pennsylvania, and we found that there was sufficient lithium in the waters to supply somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of the current US national demand,” Mackey told CBS News. 

    Mackey said there are lithium mining operations in the US. But he told local media outlet Pittwire, “This is different. This is a waste stream, and we’re looking at a beneficial use of that waste.” 

    He said finding lithium in water recycled in hydraulic fracking wasn’t difficult, adding, “If you can extract value out of materials, and specifically lithium from this, then you reduce the cost of remediating and handling this waste.” 

    The researcher said future wastewater extractions of lithium from oil/gas rigs in neighboring states, such as West Virginia, Western Maryland, and Ohio, could spark an “economic boom for the region.”

    Trump country has been economically decimated over the last several decades amid de-industrial trends. Death and despair, along with big pharma, helped ignite an opioid and pill epidemic that has killed tens of thousands, if not more. 

    Could Trump’s coal country be primed for revitalization trends and capitalize off decarbonizing trends? If so, then the land across the region could become increasingly more valuable over the coming decade.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/01/2024 – 19:15

  • Strong Indian Purchases Push Asia's Crude Imports To One-Year High
    Strong Indian Purchases Push Asia’s Crude Imports To One-Year High

    Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

    Record-high crude imports in India have pushed Asia’s oil arrivals in May to the highest level in a year, per data compiled by LSEG Oil Research and cited by Reuters columnist Clyde Russell.

    Asia, the key crude oil importing region and a gauge of oil demand trends, is set to welcome in May 27.81 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil volumes, nearly 1 million bpd higher than the April imports, per the LSEG Oil Research data.   

    Most of the 920,000-bpd growth in Asia’s estimated crude oil imports this month has been thanks to a 710,000-bpd surge in volumes shipped to India, which is back to importing increased volumes of cheaper Russian crude oil.

    India is estimated to see its crude imports jump to a record-high of 5.26 million bpd in May, up by 710,000 bpd from 4.55 million bpd of crude imported in April, according to the data compiled by LSEG Oil Research.

    While India is leading Asia’s crude imports higher, China is again showing signs of weaker import demand. The world’s top crude oil importer is expected to haul in 10.72 million bpd of crude in May, down from the 10.93 million bpd imports in April and the lowest per-day volumes since January, Reuters’ Russell notes.

    The stronger Indian economy compared to China and the renewed appetite from Indian refiners for Russian crude – after hesitation earlier this year when stricter U.S. sanctions on Russia’s oil trade were enforced – have been pushing Indian fuel demand and crude imports higher in recent weeks.

    For example, India is estimated to have boosted its imports of Russian crude to a nine-month high in April, per data Reuters has obtained from industry and shipping sources.

    Moreover, India’s crude oil demand has been growing this year despite consistently higher prices, suggesting that it is more resilient to price rises than some expected. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/01/2024 – 18:40

  • Global Cocoa Shortage Much Worse Than Previously Forecasted As Prices Surge
    Global Cocoa Shortage Much Worse Than Previously Forecasted As Prices Surge

    The International Cocoa Organization has admitted that the global cocoa shortage will be significantly larger than previously forecasted. Cocoa prices in New York have rebounded in recent weeks, inching above the $9,330 per ton mark to close the week. 

    First reported by Bloomberg, ICCO forecasted demand will exceed production by 439,000 tons, driven mainly by higher cocoa grinding in consuming countries. This is the second estimate for the current October-September year and is much larger than the February forecast for a deficit of 374,000 tons. 

    “Currently available data reveal that cocoa grinding activities have so far been unrelenting in importing countries despite the record cocoa price rallies,” the ICCO, adding, “As the 2023-24 season progresses, it is certain the season will end in a higher deficit than previously expected.”

    After the ‘great cocoa’ run-up in New York in the first 3.5 months of the year, through the first half of April, from $4,000 a ton to over $12,000 (a record high), prices crashed into May, down 44%. But in the last nine trading sessions, prices have surged to $9,330, or about 39%. 

    The ICCO has increased its estimate for global cocoa grindings to 4.86 million tons, up from the initial forecast of 4.78 million tons, and increased its production projection by 12,000 tons to 4.46 million tons.

    The revised forecast has likely captured the attention of Andurand Capital Management’s Pierre Andurand, who has been bullish on cocoa prices this year. 

    Earlier this month, Andurand joined Bloomberg’s Odd Lots hosts Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal to discuss the cocoa trade. 

    Weisenthal asked the hedge fund manager: 

    So what did your analyst see? Or how was your analyst able to see something in the supply and demand situation that he felt, and you felt, was not being identified by the analysts who cover this closely?

    Andurand responded:

    I think it’s mainly an understanding of how much prices have to move to balance the market. You know, sometimes people can trade that market for like 20 years. They’ve been used to a range of prices and they believe, okay, the top of the range is the high price for example.

    But they don’t really ask themselves what makes that price, right?. And sometimes taking a step back can help. I mean what makes the price is mainly the fact that in the past you would have the supply response if prices were going up. But if now you don’t get the supply response, or the supply response takes four or five years, then you need to have a demand response.

    And a lot of people look at prices in nominal terms. So you hear people saying ‘Oh, we are at all time high prices in cocoa, but that’s because they look at prices in nominal terms. [The] previous high in 1977 was $5,500 something dollars a ton of 1977 dollars, which is equivalent to $28,000 a ton of today’s dollars.

    So we are still very far from previous highs. And so you have to look at a bit more history and understand in the past how prices reacted to a shortage, how long it took to recover the product shortage to actually solve itself. And what’s different today.

    So there’s a ratio that we look at that most people look at, it’s actually the inventory to grindings ratio. So it’s a measure of inventory to demand, what we call grinding is basically industrial companies that take the cocoa beans and they want to make chocolate with it. So it’s a process and some of them make the end product chocolate directly. Some of them sell back the product to other chocolate makers.

    And so basically a typical grinder would take cocoa beans and make cocoa butter and powder with it. And the prices of both those elements also went up even more than cocoa beans, which means that actually we probably had some destocking everywhere in the chain.

    So it looks like demand, when we look at the chocolate makers, the end demand for chocolate didn’t go down at all, it looks to be flat on the year. Grindings look to be down three, three and half percent this year, despite the fact that the end demand is the same in volume, which means that they’ve been destocking cocoa beans actually.

    And so we had destocking everywhere — at the end chocolate level, at the cocoa beans, at the cocoa butter and cocoa powder level. So we had this destocking everywhere on the chain and now we have the largest deficit ever on top of two previous years of deficit. And it looks like next year we will have a deficit.

    So we’re in a situation where we might actually run out of inventories completely. I mean this year we think we will end up with an inventory to grinding ratio — so inventory at the end of the season — of 21%. For the last 10 years we’ve been between 35% and 40% roughly. At the previous peak in 1977 we were at 19% and that’s what drove us to $28,000 a ton, of todays’s dollars.

    If we have another deficit next year, then we might go down to 13%. So I don’t think it’s actually possible. That’s when you really have real shortage of cocoa beans, you can’t get it and that’s when the price can really explode. And so understanding that you have to slow down demand and we know that demand can’t really be slowed.

    So that’s when you can have an explosion [in price]. And remember that these commodity futures, you need to have, they’re actually physically settled. So if somebody wants to take delivery, they have to converge with the price of the physical. If you have no physical, somebody wants to take delivery, the price can go anywhere.

    So it’s a dangerous commodity too short, right? If you have no physical against it. And actually sometimes we read news that the funds have been pushing cocoa prices. It’s actually completely untrue because the funds have been selling since February. They actually went from a length of 175,000 lots, so that’s 1.75 million tons of cocoa lengths, I think it was around like September last year in average, or a bit earlier, to 28,000 lots to 280,000 tons at the moment.

    So they sold more than 80% of their length actually. And the people who’ve been buying the futures from the funds, it’s producers because they’re producing a lot less than they expected.

    So what has been happening in the cocoa market is that you had a reduction of what we call the open interest, where both the longs would use their length and the shorts would use their shorts. And then we get into a market where you have less liquidity because you have less exposure, you have less longs and less shorts, and then the volatility increases.

    So in the past when people were comfortable being, let’s say, having a 100 lots position now because it moves more than 10 times more than in the past, we’re going to have like a 10 lots position, right? So the market became more — due to the fact that we had a massive move and we have a massive deficit, so everybody’s reducing their positions and because of the increased volatility, we have less activity. And that’s what makes the point more volatile as well.

    Andurand reaffirmed his $20,000 price target for later this year or next year… 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/01/2024 – 18:05

  • What A China-Taiwan Conflict Could Mean For Semiconductors, Gold
    What A China-Taiwan Conflict Could Mean For Semiconductors, Gold

    Via SchiffGold.com,

    American-made weapons will soon be bound for Taiwan, American lawmakers are telling Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, sending shockwaves of uncertainty through electronics and metals markets this week.

    In a pointed “celebration” of Lai’s recent inauguration, Chinese military aircraft and warships have been conducting large-scale drills around the island. China considers Taiwan a strayed member of its territory and hasn’t ruled out the use of force to assert its claim.

    “China will surely be reunified,” Chinese President Xi Jinping said in his New Year’s address. “Compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose and share in the glory of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

    Michael McCaul, U.S. House Foreign Affairs Chairman, told Fox that the recent Chinese demonstrations are the most “provocative” yet. If China attacked Taiwan, McCaul predicted during his visit to the region, “it would make Iran shooting into Israel look like child’s play.”

    “I think right now, we will probably lose,” he said.

    One likely victim of such a conflict would be Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, which holds about 70% of the world market share. Total industry value is expected to set a record this year at $630 billion—but that could change if China invades Taiwan and, as McCaul warns, “the island doesn’t have the capacity to defend itself” or its industry.

    “Everybody that has phones, cars—we have advanced weapons systems—everything’s dependent on semiconductors and this island, over time, because we’ve offshored [manufacturing],” McCaul told Fox News Digital. “And the shutdown of what’s happening [in Taiwan], semiconductors, would really shut down the world.”

    Changes in the market for semiconductors mean changes in the market for many base metals, including silicon, germanium, and gallium, all of which are critical components for semiconductor manufacturing. Gold is also a key component of the production process because of its anti-tarnishing properties.

    With a semiconductor shortage could come other electronics shortages, squeezing markets for everything from refrigerators to cell phones to electric vehicles. There’s precedent for such a shakeup, which occurred during the semiconductor shortage of the COVID-19 pandemic—and back then, the economic pandemonium didn’t stop short at consumer electronics.

    “The recent semiconductor shortage isn’t some far-off issue—it affects everyday citizens around the globe,” the Council on Foreign Regulations reported last year. “Supply-chain challenges can yield price hikes for consumers and lost jobs for manufacturers. Companies laid off thousands of workers [during the COVID shortage] because the United States lacked chips.”

    Such a drop in semiconductor production might initially appear to signal a decrease in demand for component metals, like gold. That seems to be the market’s immediate intuition, as shown by mildly ebbing gold prices following the Chinese drills—but a major complicating factor is quickly becoming apparent. China, already one of the world’s largest gold consumers, is busy buying up the precious metal at record rates. The country’s aggressions toward Taiwan will likely continue to drive precious metal prices upward, signaling a second precious metals boom when coupled with the rising market uncertainty and inflation that inevitably follow conflict.

    “China is unquestionably driving the price of gold,” Ross Norman, chief executive of MetalsDaily.com, told the New York Times. “The flow of gold to China has gone from solid to an absolute torrent.”

    Some experts suggest the move to amass precious metal stores could signal preparation for larger Chinese military involvement in Taiwan and increasing avoidance of ties with the U.S. dollar, which may be sanctioned in response to Chinese aggression. In short: China is betting on gold, not the dollar.

    “There is absolutely no question that the timing and the sustained nature of [China’s gold] purchases are all part of a lesson that [the Chinese] have drawn from the Ukraine war,” Jonathan Eyal, associate director of the UK’s Royal United Services Institute, told the Telegraph. “The relentless purchases and the sheer quantity are clear signs that this is a political project which is prioritized by the leadership in Beijing because of what they see is a looming confrontation with the United States.”

    “If [China] get[s] much closer to bullying Taiwan and countries start to move their investments out of China, [the gold reserves] will give them a bit of padding to be able to ride through some of the difficulties,” added Sir Iain Duncan Smith, co-chair of the UK Interparliamentary Alliance on China.

    Meanwhile, the President has signed an aid package with $8 billion earmarked for Taiwan and the surrounding region, a move that aggravated US-China relations and will encourage economically painful sanctions on both sides. Such spending could also pull the trigger on domestic inflation, resulting in the continued weakening of the U.S. dollar even as the Chinese economy is strengthened by its gold reserves.

    This type of monetary policy is why some economists, including Danial Lacalle of the IE Business School in Madrid, are sounding alarm bells at governmental inflation employed as a “policy, not a coincidence.” In this environment, Lacalle warns, it’s a bad idea to bet on inflated currency when choosing investments.

    “Staying in cash is dangerous; accumulating government bonds is reckless; but rejecting gold is denying the reality of money,” Lacalle said.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/01/2024 – 17:30

  • Pro-Palestinian Protesters To "Surround The White House" Next Weekend Over Rafah Strike
    Pro-Palestinian Protesters To “Surround The White House” Next Weekend Over Rafah Strike

    In the wake of a deadly Israeli strike at a tent camp in Rafah last week which produced horrific viral footage of charred corpses, days after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to immediately halt military operations, and miles beyond Biden’s ‘red line‘ (using US bombs, no less), pro-Palestine, anti-war activists are taking to the White House one week from today.

    Photo: Craig Birchfield

    ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), an anti-war group founded three days after the September 11, 2001 attacks, has launched an event to “Get on a bus to DC” and “Surround the White House for Palestine.”

    “June 8 marks 8 months of US-Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people, and marks the 54th anniversary of the occupation of Gaza. A month ago, Biden said that the invasion of Rafah was a red line. But now, the invasion of Rafah has continued for weeks, has expanded to the entire Gaza Strip, Biden’s red line is nowhere to be seen,” ANSWER wrote on its website. 

    The group continued, “Biden can’t draw the line, but we can. On June 8, we will come together from across the country and surround the White House.” 

    “On June 8th, tens of thousands will show Biden that the people are his red line — we refuse to allow him to continue the genocide against the people of Gaza! Instead of a red line, Biden gave a green light to Netanyahu’s invasion of Rafah by agreeing to send more U.S. bombs and missiles. While the government that speaks in our name arms the genocidal Israeli regime to the teeth, the people want freedom for Palestine,” said Brian Becker, National Director of ANSWER.

    Meanwhile, progressive outlet People’s Dispatch notes that a diverse range of ‘anti-imperialist groups’ are supporting the mass demonstration.

    These include the Palestinian Youth Movement, National Students for Justice in Palestine, U.S. Palestinian Community Network, the People’s Forum, Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, Palestinian Feminist Collective, the ANSWER Coalition, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Arab Resource and Organizing Center, International Jewish Anti Zionist Network, Writers Against the War on Gaza, Healthcare Workers for Palestine, and Palestine Popular University.

    “How many more homes have to be destroyed, how many children need to be killed, until this government takes definitive action to stop Israel’s war crimes. We are tired of hearing that Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are ‘concerned about the civilian death toll’. If they were really concerned about what Israel was doing, they would suspend all aid and tell Israel to accept one of the many ceasefire deals that is on the table. This genocide needs to end, and Biden has the power to do it,” said Celine Quissiny of the Palestinian Youth Movement.

    The event was teased during closing statements from the People’s Conference for Palestine, where Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) slammed Biden as an “enabler,” threatening that “we aren’t going to forget in November, are we?“

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

    The issue continues to stoke the political divide in America – with mainstream Republicans and Democrats drooling over the thought of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu giving a speech at the US Capitol (at the invitation of Speaker Mike Johnson, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries), while progressive Democrats and anti-interventionist libertarians overlap on this horseshoe issue.

    And here’s why…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/01/2024 – 16:55

  • US Drivers Overwhelmingly Prefer Gasoline Cars To EVs
    US Drivers Overwhelmingly Prefer Gasoline Cars To EVs

    Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

    Americans continue to be fans of gasoline-powered vehicles and prefer them to electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrids, a new study by KPMG has shown.

    Assuming all costs and features are the same, just 21% of consumers prefer an EV, the inaugural KPMG American Perspectives Survey found.

    The survey assessed the views of 1,100 adults nationwide to understand their outlook on their personal financial situation and the U.S. economy and their attitudes to energy and automobiles, among other issues.  

    Asked which type of vehicle they want to purchase, assuming costs and features are equal, 38% said standard gas-powered vehicle, 34% picked hybrid, and only 21% an EV. Standard gasoline vehicles are the top preference in the Midwest and Northeast, with 40% and 37% of people preferring them to other types of cars, respectively.

    In addition, consumer expectations for EV charging times during road trips showed a major gap between U.S. consumers and the perception of auto industry executives about consumer preferences, the KPMG survey found.

    A total of 60% of consumers want charging in 20 minutes or less compared to 41% which is what auto executives believe.

    The survey found that fewer consumers are likely to pay for self-driving features and entertainment, compared to safety, Wi-Fi, and a charging locator.  

    Many U.S. consumers resist buying electric vehicles because of politics—Republican voters are likely to have negative opinions about EVs and wouldn’t buy such a car even when they can afford it.

    Most conservative respondents in a Morning Consult poll for The Wall Street Journal view electric cars unfavorably, with 41% saying their opinion is ‘very unfavorable’ and another 20% ‘somewhat unfavorable.’

    Just 31% of people who identified themselves as conservative said they had a favorable view of EVs. This compares with 66% of respondents who identified themselves as liberals and have a favorable opinion of electric cars.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/01/2024 – 16:20

  • Watch: Hezbollah Shoots Down Large Israeli Drone In Expanded Fighting
    Watch: Hezbollah Shoots Down Large Israeli Drone In Expanded Fighting

    Friday saw intensifying fighting on the Israel-Lebanon border as Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets in an expanded assault on northern Israel, some of which were sent to areas never hit before since the conflict started last year.

    On Saturday morning the Lebanese paramilitary group which is allied with Iran issued a statement saying it launched “an air assault using explosive drones against… the Yiftah barracks, targeting the positions of enemy officers and soldiers.”

    Hezbollah described this fresh operation as retaliation for an Israeli drone attack which wounded two Hezbollah members the day prior. Israel’s military had previously announced “two Hezbollah terrorists operating in the region of Majdal Selm were struck by an aircraft” on Friday.

    But later in the day Saturday Hezbollah claimed a big win, having “shot down a Hermes 900 drone which was attacking our people and villages.”

    We are now witnessing a drone war phase of sorts playing out. The large drone downing appears to be confirmed through widely circulating footage on Saturday:

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

    “The enemy (Israel) intensified its attacks last night,” Lebanon’s National News Agency reported of heavy overnight fighting. This included “a series of drone strikes… which resulted in deaths, injuries and extensive damage” along the border. 

    This isn’t the first time Hezbollah has claimed a Hermes drone downing. It reportedly happened in early April as well, and there have been claims of several others downed throughout more than six months of conflict.

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

    According to Israeli media, “The Hermes 900 is Elbit’s largest drone and has been sold to the Israeli Air Force, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and according to foreign reports, Azerbaijan.”

    “The UAV is a relatively large and expensive drone capable of staying in the air for approximately 30 straight hours,” the report noted. Each Hermes drone is worth around eight to ten million dollars and made in Israel.

    Meanwhile significant damage has been revealed at the 769th Brigade headquarters of the Israeli army in the Kiryat Shmona barracks…

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

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/01/2024 – 15:45

  • Bubble Symmetry: Could The NASDAQ Drop 60% And Round-Trip To 2,500?
    Bubble Symmetry: Could The NASDAQ Drop 60% And Round-Trip To 2,500?

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    The prospect of a 60% or 80% decline in the NASDAQ index is only horrifying if we stay invested in the index all the way down.

    Speculative bubbles are interesting because they’re never bubbles in real time; they’re only recognized as bubbles after they’ve popped, as we sort through the wreckage of the aftermath. Speculative bubbles are equally interesting for their uncanny display of bubble symmetry and scale invariance, two traits of manias.

    In bubble symmetry, the decline phase is the mirror-image of the manic boost phase, in both time and amplitude. For example, the NASDAQ’s dot-com bubble rose from around 1,100 in early 1997 to a peak above 5,000 in early March 2000, a rise of about 3,900 over three years.

    The bubble-pop phase lasted about three years and covered a decline / round-trip back to around 1,100: a decline of about 77%. The first chart below shows the remarkable symmetry of the bubble’s ascent and collapse.

    Scale invariance refers to the similarity of a 600 point bubble that arises in six months to a 6,000 point bubble that arises over 6 years: if we add a zero to the number of months (time) and the number of points (amplitude), the bubbles retain the same characteristics. Put another way, a speculative mania that lasts a week shares the same characteristics of a speculative mania that lasts a month and one that lasts a year.

    Pulling back to look at the NASDAQ index from 1990 to the present, what’s striking is the modest scale of the dot-com bubble of 1997-2002. What looked like an almost unimaginably lofty peak in 2000 (5,048) now looks like a pipsqueak bubble compared to the current heights (17,032).

    Also noteworthy is the time it took to reclaim the heights of the dot-com bubble. Almost 17 years passed before the index definitively topped its 2000 high of 5,048. But if we measure the purchasing power of $5,000 in 2000 and adjust for officially measured inflation from 2000 to 2018, the index had to top $7,360 to match the 2000 peak, a number it did not reach until early 2018–18 years after the peak.

    Given that the index crashed back to 6,879 in March of 2020, it can be argued that the index didn’t definitively surpass the 2000 high until 2020, fully 20 years after the dot-com peak. That is a soberingly lengthy passage of time to recover the full value of cash invested at the very top of the bubble.

    Now let’s project bubble symmetry on the current NASDAQ bubble. This is a FRED (St. Louis Federal Reserve) chart which doesn’t use nominal price but sets the value of the index on 2/5/1971 at 100. The basics of time duration and amplitude are essentially identical with the nominal price chart.

    If the index follows the symmetry of the 2000 bubble, then we can anticipate a 60% decline by 2028 to the 2020 lows around 6,800. The full retracement of the bubble would occur by about 2032-33 with a decline to the base of the bubble, around 2,500–an 85% drop from the 2024 peak.

    I’ve laid out a classic A-B-C-D pattern with a proposed narrative that tracks 1) systemic inflation and 2) the decay to zero of the Federal Reserve and Treasury’s ability to “save” the stock market with financial alchemy. I’ve made the case for sustained, systemic inflation here many times, and also made the case for diminishing returns on pumping newly issued currency into the financial system to artificially boost equities.

    The prospect of a 60% or 80% decline in the NASDAQ index is only horrifying if we stay invested in the index all the way down. Those with no stake in the index will be mere observers. Since 93% of all stock ownership is concentrated in the top 10% households in the U.S., and the bottom 90% have relatively little invested directly or indirectly via pension funds and retirement funds, the full weight of this decline–which history suggests is inevitable–will fall on whomever believes such a decline is impossible and a turnaround is, well, just around the corner.

    Those of us who lived through the 2000 bubbles experienced a trial run of all the emotions and market actions to come: the euphoria of easy, ever grander profits, the anxiety of the first decline, and then the swings from relief to fear as sharp recovery spikes wiped out those betting on a further decline before dropping to new lows.

    If inflation is now systemic, then we can anticipate the hope-anxiety cycle will follow the “inflation is tamed / inflation is roaring back untamed” narrative. So the current peak of the happy narrative priced to perfection collapses when inflation doesn’t vanish, then recovers sharply when inflation temporarily recedes, and the the next leg down occurs when the next wave of inflation soars to new debilitating heights.

    There are of course counter-arguments: stocks rise in inflationary eras, etc. There were counter-arguments in 2000 as well; many saw the first decline as a “buy the dip” opportunity, after $80 dot-com stocks fell to $40. That they would subsequently fall to $4 or $2 was not anticipated by the herd. That is of course the way bubbles pop: in fits and starts, always offering hope that the dreadful destruction of “wealth” will reverse.

    We don’t control macro-dynamics or markets’ response to these dynamics. We can only choose to be observers or participants, that is, choose our exposure to risk.

    *  *  *

    Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com. Subscribe to my Substack for free

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/01/2024 – 15:10

  • General Dynamics' New 155-Millimeter Shell Factory Opens As War Cycle Kicks Into Higher Gear
    General Dynamics’ New 155-Millimeter Shell Factory Opens As War Cycle Kicks Into Higher Gear

    General Dynamics’ new 155-millimeter artillery shell factory in Mesquite, Texas, is set to produce 30,000 shells per month, according to a New York Times report. This will provide crucial support to the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the first and second lines and bring the US Army closer to its 100,000 shell target goal by 2025. However, this goal remains far behind Russia’s current 155mm shell production capacity of 250,000 rounds per month.

    On Wednesday, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters the new Mesquite shell factory “will significantly increase our country’s ability to manufacture parts that are used to produce artillery ammunition.”

    Kirby said construction at the Mesquite factory began last year with funds allotted by the $95 billion security supplemental passed by Congress last month “to stand up new production lines as part of a national effort to significantly increase the number of artillery shells that we produce every month.”

    At full capacity, the factory will produce 30,000 155mm shells a month. The latest data from NATO’s secretary-general showed that Ukraine fires between 4,000 and 7,000 shells per day. The West is currently depleting 155mm stockpiles, along with other crucial weapons. 

    Shell factories in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, currently produce about 36,000 155mm shells per month. Once the Mesquite plant reaches its full capacity of 30,000 shells per month, the US Army will be closer to achieving its goal of 100,000 shells per month by 2025. 

    The Biden administration’s disastrous foreign policies have resulted in a chaotic world. From Eastern Europe to the Middle East, these conflicts, some of which are broadening, have resulted in the US dangerously depleting weapon and ammunition stockpiles.

    To correct this, the US and other Western nations have been ramping up defense spending as the war cycle kicks into a higher gear. This has sparked a bull market in defense stocks, as there is no end in sight to conflicts resolving this year. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/01/2024 – 14:35

  • Why Consumers Are Angry About The Economy In Five Pictures
    Why Consumers Are Angry About The Economy In Five Pictures

    Authored by Miked Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    Today the BEA released April data on inflation-adjusted income and spending. Let’s discuss the charts.

    Data from the BEA and BLS, chart by Mish

    Personal Income and Wages Key Points

    • DPI stands for Disposable Person Income. Disposable means after taxes.
    • Real means inflation adjusted.
    • Income includes wages, dividends, rent and all sources of income.

    Workers who don’t receive dividends or rental income view the world as shown by the red lines. Those who have no assets are renters.

    Index of Hourly Wages and Multiple Jobholders

    One reason Disposable Personal Income is up: People need to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet.

    This is also reflected in the blue line in the lead chart.

    Personal Income Four Ways

    Personal Current Transfer Receipts

    The above chart introduces Personal Current Transfer Receipts (PCTR). PCTR is income for which no goods were produced and no work performed.

    PCTR includes Medicare, Medicaid, disability payments, food stamps, rent assistance, and Social Security.

    PCTR is included in Disposable Income in all of the above charts.

    The green line in the above chart shows Real DPI minus PCTR. Please compare the green line to the red line.

    PCTR as a Percentage of Real Personal Income

    Hoot of the Day

    One of the reasons people are angry is the inflation-causing free money ran out. People increasingly have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet.

    CPI Up 0.3 Percent With Rent Still Rising Steeply

    Rent rose another 0.4 percent in April. Food and beverages were flat with food at home declining but food away from home rising.

    CPI data from the BLS, chart by Mish

    Key CPI Points

    • Rent is up at least 0.4 percent for 32 consecutive months.
    • The CPI weighs rent much higher than PCE. That’s why the CPI is up 3.6 percent from a year ago and PCE only 2.7 percent.
    • All of the preceding income charts would look much worse if adjusted by the CPI rather than the PCE price index.

    Please read those points again. The first three income charts are worse than they look if adjusted by the CPI.

    For discussion and additional CPI charts, please see CPI Up 0.3 Percent With Rent Still Rising Steeply

    Rent of primary residence, the cost that best equates to the rent people pay, jumped another 0.4 percent in April. Rent of primary residence has gone up at least 0.4 percent for 32 consecutive months! 

    Home Prices Hit New Record High, Don’t Worry, It’s Not Inflation

    The Case-Shiller national home price index hit a new high in February. Economists don’t count this as inflation.

    This is a bonus image.

    Case-Shiller national and 10-city indexes via St. Louis Fed, OER, CPI, and Rent from the BLS

    On May 2, I sarcastically commented Home Prices Hit New Record High, Don’t Worry, It’s Not Inflation

    That chart is one month stale now. We hit another new record in March.

    The Fed’s Preferred Inflation Measure, PCE, Shows No Further Progress

    More weakening: Real (inflation-adjusted) Income and spending was negative in April. The PCE price index remained flat at 0.3 percent for the month and 2.7 percent for the year.

    Chart from the BEA, annotations by Mish

    Earlier today I noted The Fed’s Preferred Inflation Measure, PCE, Shows No Further Progress

    This post contains four charts related to personal income and outlays discussed above.

    Anger Synopsis

    Consumers are angry, and it’s reflected in the polls. I have been discussing the reasons for angry consumers all year.

    But Biden and most economists still don’t get it. They think the economy is doing well. Tell that to renters looking to buy a home, stuck with rent going up month after month.

    People Who Rent Will Decide the 2024 Presidential Election

    On April 20, I wrote People Who Rent Will Decide the 2024 Presidential Election

    Who Are the Renters?

    The answer is younger voters and blacks.

    The Apartment List 2023 Millennial Homeownership Report shows Millennial homeownership seriously lags other generations.

    Generation Z homeownership is dramatically lower still.

    And according to the National Association of Realtors, the homeownership rate among Black Americans is 44 percent whereas for White Americans it’s 72.7 percent.

    That’s the largest Black-White homeownership rate gap in a decade.

    Will the Conviction of Trump Matter?

    I doubt it. People will vote with their pocketbook.

    For discussion of the political side, please see Trump Found Guilty – a Travesty of Justice for America

    If you are not interested in politics, please ignore that link and focus on the rest of this post.

    Returning to the economy, inflation will finally come down when rent abates but there will be a price. The price is recession.

    I expect a recession this year. It will not surprise me at all if a recession started in 2024 Q2, perhaps April.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/01/2024 – 14:00

  • Netanyahu Quickly Slams Door On Biden's Major Gaza Ceasefire Plan: "Non-Starter"
    Netanyahu Quickly Slams Door On Biden’s Major Gaza Ceasefire Plan: “Non-Starter”

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the door shut on President Biden’s new appeal urging both Israel and Hamas to accept the new ceasefire plan set before both sides. As we detailed earlier, Biden’s Friday afternoon speech was mostly about pressuring Israel to end the war. The message was clear at a moment the Democratic president faces dissent and pushback from his base headed into a tight November election: “I urge Israel to stand behind this deal, despite whatever pressure comes,” he emphasized.

    But coming a mere hours later, Netanyahu has made it clear there will be no permanent ceasefire in Gaza until Hamas is completely eradicated. He went so far as to say the current deal being pushed hard by the White House is a “non-starter”.

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

    “Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: The destruction of Hamas military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel,” Netanyahu said.

    “Israel will continue to insist these conditions are met before a permanent ceasefire is put in place. The notion that Israel will agree to a permanent ceasefire before these conditions are fulfilled is a non-starter,” he added.

    Remarking on the significance, Times of Israel observed that “His comments, in a rare statement published on the Sabbath and only in English, came after United States President Joe Biden announced Friday that Israel had proposed a three-phase deal for a ceasefire in Gaza in exchange for Hamas releasing hostages, told the terror group to accept it and urged the Israeli government to stand behind it.”

    Much of Biden’s speech had appeared geared toward convincing Netanyahu and the Israeli public to not drift into the more hardline positions of hawkish officials like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. Biden had even claimed Hamas is no longer capable of carrying out an Oct.7-style terror attack again.

    He had said in the major televised address: “I know there are those in Israel who will not agree with this plan and will call for the war to continue indefinitely. Some are even in the government coalition. They’ve made it clear they want to occupy Gaza, they want to keep fighting for years, the hostages are not a priority for them.”

    Well… this grand White House ‘pressure’ initiative didn’t even last a full 24-hours…

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

    This has also been a message of the ongoing anti-Netanyahu protests in Tel Aviv led by the hostage victims’ families. But Netanyahu’s office had made it clear right away that Israel’s military policy would not be dictated from Washington (despite the billions in annual US defense aid given). Israel media has detailed: 

    A US official later said the Israeli proposal was a highly detailed three-to-four-page document. It was apparently approved by the war cabinet — compromising Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and minister Benny Gantz — but presumably not yet presented to the wider security cabinet, of which far-fight ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich are members, and on whose support Netanyahu depends for his coalition’s majority.

    Immediately after the speech,  Netanyahu — whom Biden avoided naming — released an initial statement saying that “The Israeli government is united in the desire to return our hostages as soon as possible and is working to achieve this goal.”

    Netanyahu’s “non-starter” comment is a slap in the face to the White House, which has made largely empty threats about reigning in Israeli policy in Gaza. 

    Biden now finds himself between a rock and a hard place in an election year and his Gaza policies are deeply unpopular among many Democrats. The intractable conflict and his handling of it has threatened to sink his chances going up against Trump as both campaigns kick into high gear. Israel’s military has in the last days expanded its Rafah ground operations, and has now moved into most parts of the southern city.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 06/01/2024 – 13:25

  • Three Quarters Of US Voters Say Country Is "Out Of Control" Under Biden; New Poll Finds
    Three Quarters Of US Voters Say Country Is “Out Of Control” Under Biden; New Poll Finds

    Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

    A whopping three quarters of voters say the US is “out of control” and on the “wrong track” under the Biden administration, according to a poll.

    A Hart Research/Public Opinion Strategies/NBC News survey reveals that 73 percent of voters overall hold the opinion, making it the highest on record under any president since the tracking began.

    The last time the number was this high, it was under George W. Bush in 2008, with 70 percent. The Obama administration had 65 percent expressing the same opinion.

    The poll also found, like most others, that Trump is leading Biden in six of the seven swing states, including Wisconsin, where some other polls have recorded Biden having a narrow lead.

    The survey also discovered that non-white voters are turning away from Democrats, and to the Republican Party. In the past four years, non-white voters have shifted approximately 40 points in favour of the GOP.

    Republican pollster Bill McInturff highlighted that 41 percent of registered voters now identify as Republicans, and 40 percent as Democrats. By comparison, in 2016, Democrats had a seven point advantage.

    As we highlighted yesterday, Democratic operatives have claimed the Party is in full blown “freak out” mode over Biden’s decline.

    A majority of Democrat voters still want Biden replaced with another candidate just months before the election.

    On Wednesday, Biden failed to fill a high school gymnasium in Philadelphia, with the school kids themselves filling up the empty space. 

    *  *  *

    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
    Sat, 06/01/2024 – 12:50

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jun 01

Today’s News 1st June 2024

  • Get Up, Stand Up, Don't Give Up The Fight: Know Your Rights Or You Will Lose Them
    Get Up, Stand Up, Don't Give Up The Fight: Know Your Rights Or You Will Lose Them

    Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

    – Thomas Jefferson

    If America’s schools are to impart principles of freedom and democracy to future generations, they must start by respecting the constitutional rights of their students.

    Take the case of Lucas Hudson.

    With all the negative press being written about today’s young people, it’s refreshing to meet a young person who not only knows his rights but is prepared to stand up for them. 

    Lucas is a smart kid, a valedictorian of his graduating class at the Collegiate Academy at Armwood High School in Hillsborough County, Fla.

    So, when school officials gave Lucas an ultimatum: either remove most of his speech’s religious references from his graduation speech—in which he thanked the people who helped shape his character, reflected on how quickly time goes by, and urged people to use whatever time they have to love others and serve the God who loves us—or he would not be speaking at all, Lucas refused to forfeit his rights.

    That’s when Lucas’s father turned to The Rutherford Institute for help.

    In coming to Lucas’ defense, attorneys for The Rutherford Institute warned school officials that their attempts to browbeat Lucas into watering down his graduation speech could expose the school to a First Amendment lawsuit.

    Thankfully for Lucas, the school backed down, and he was able to deliver his speech as written.

    It doesn’t always work out so well, unfortunately.

    Over the course of The Rutherford Institute’s 42-year history, we have defended countless young people who found themselves censored, silenced and denied their basic First Amendment rights, especially when they chose to exercise their rights to free speech and religious freedom.

    In case after case, we encounter an appalling level of ignorance on the part of public school officials who mistakenly believe that the law requires anything religious be banned from public schools.

    Here’s where government officials get it wrong: while the government may not establish or compel a particular religion, it also may not silence and suppress religious speech merely because others might take offense.

    People are free to ignore, disagree with, or counter the religious speech of others, but the government cannot censor private religious speech.

    Unfortunately, you can only defend your rights when you know them, and the American people—and those who represent them—are utterly ignorant about their freedoms, history, and how the government is supposed to operate.

    As Morris Berman points out in his book Dark Ages America, “70 percent of American adults cannot name their senators or congressmen; more than half don’t know the actual number of senators, and nearly a quarter cannot name a single right guaranteed by the First Amendment. Sixty-three percent cannot name the three branches of government. Other studies reveal that uninformed or undecided voters often vote for the candidate whose name and packaging (e.g., logo) are the most powerful; color is apparently a major factor in their decision.”

    More than government corruption and ineptitude, police brutality, terrorism, gun violence, drugs, illegal immigration or any other so-called “danger” that threatens our nation, civic illiteracy may be what finally pushes us over the edge.

    As Thomas Jefferson warned, no nation can be both ignorant and free.

    Unfortunately, the American people have existed in a technology-laden, entertainment-fueled, perpetual state of cluelessness for so long that civic illiteracy has become the new normal for the citizenry.

    In fact, most immigrants who aspire to become citizens know more about national civics than native-born Americans. Surveys indicate that half of native-born Americans couldn’t correctly answer 70% of the civics questions on the U.S. Citizenship test.

    Not even the government bureaucrats who are supposed to represent us know much about civics, American history and geography, or the Constitution although they take an oath to uphold, support and defend the Constitution against “enemies foreign and domestic.”

    For instance, a couple attempting to get a marriage license was recently forced to prove to a government official that New Mexico is, in fact, one of the 50 states and not a foreign country.

    You can’t make this stuff up.

    Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. The government’s purpose is to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.

    It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.”

    Those who founded this country knew quite well that every citizen must remain vigilant or freedom would be lost. As Thomas Paine recognized, “It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”

    You have no rights unless you exercise them.

    Still, you can’t exercise your rights unless you know what those rights are.

    “If Americans do not understand the Constitution and the institutions and processes through which we are governed, we cannot rationally evaluate important legislation and the efforts of our elected officials, nor can we preserve the national unity necessary to meaningfully confront the multiple problems we face today,” warns the Brennan Center in its Civic Literacy Report Card. “Rather, every act of government will be measured only by its individual value or cost, without concern for its larger impact. More and more we will ‘want what we want, and [will be] convinced that the system that is stopping us is wrong, flawed, broken or outmoded.’”

    Education precedes action.

    As the Brennan Center concludes “America, unlike most of the world’s nations, is not a country defined by blood or belief. America is an idea, or a set of ideas, about freedom and opportunity. It is these ideas that bind us together as Americans and have kept us free, strong, and prosperous. But these ideas do not perpetuate themselves. They must be taught and learned anew with each generation.”

    There is a movement underway to require that all public-school students pass the civics portion of the U.S. naturalization test—100 basic facts about U.S. history and civics—before receiving their high-school diploma, and that’s a start.

    Lucas Hudson would have passed such a test with flying colors.

    On graduation day, Lucas stepped up to the podium and delivered his uncensored valedictorian speech as written, without any interference by school censors.

    As Lucas’s father relayed to The Rutherford Institute:

    “In the end, Lucas got to give his entire speech the way he wanted to give it, and everybody was paying attention.  Nobody got hurt.  Nothing bad happened.  It was just a young man using the First Amendment rights to speak his mind regarding his personal beliefs. [Lucas] never thought a few sentences in a speech would create such a controversy in his world, but this speech turned into a defining moment for him.  He will never be the same after this experience, but this permanent change is a good thing.  When it mattered, Lucas stood up for himself, and when those he stood up against tried to push him down, [The Rutherford Institute] came to his aide and backed him up to make it a fair fight. I am comforted to know you are defending the rights of the people.  These fights matter.  Every time you defend the rights of one person, you defend the rights of every person.  You helped my son fight for his rights against the school, and, in doing so, Hillsborough County Public Schools will think twice before infringing on the rights of future students. Your defense of Lucas became an inspiration for the students in his school and sparked a healthy and meaningful debate among the teachers, students, and parents about the value of the First Amendment and the need for limits on government control over our personal beliefs.  You are fighting for good and doing important work.  Don’t ever stop. Thank you, Rutherford Institute, for being there for my son when he needed you most.”

    America needs more freedom fighters like Lucas Hudson and The Rutherford Institute.

    It’s up to us.

    We have the power to make and break the government.

    We the American people—the citizenry—are the arbiters and ultimate guardians of America’s welfare, defense, liberty, laws and prosperity.

    We must act—and act responsibly.

    A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to make the sacrifices necessary to stay involved.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it’s our job to keep freedom alive using every nonviolent means available to us.

    As Martin Luther King Jr. recognized in a speech delivered on December 5, 1955, just four days after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to relinquish her seat on a Montgomery city bus: “Democracy transformed from thin paper to thick action is the greatest form of government on earth.”

    Know your rights. Exercise your rights. Defend your rights. If not, you will lose them.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/31/2024 – 23:10

  • These Are The 10 Most Stolen Vehicles In America
    These Are The 10 Most Stolen Vehicles In America

    Since the onset of the pandemic, the U.S. has experienced a surge in vehicle theft rates. In 2023, more than one million vehicles were reported stolen.

    In this infographic, Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti lists the most stolen vehicles in the U.S. last year, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau.

    Kia and Hyundai Top the List

    In 2023, the Hyundai Elantra, Hyundai Sonata, and Kia Optima topped the list of the most stolen cars in the U.S., breaking the years-long trend of full-size pickups topping the list. Security vulnerabilities in Asian models and social media trends highlighting how to steal these vehicles are some factors for the change.

    Besides Hyundai and Kia models, the list includes full-size pickups and other mid-size cars, such as the Chevrolet Silverado 1500, Honda Accord, Honda Civic, and Ford F-150.

    California accounted for the highest number of vehicle thefts nationwide in 2023, with 208,668 vehicles reported stolen. The District of Columbia had the highest theft rate nationwide, with 1,149.71 thefts per 100,000 people, over three times the national theft rate.

    According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, more than 85% of passenger vehicles reported stolen were subsequently recovered, with 34% recovered within a day.

    If you enjoyed this post, check out Mapped: The Most Dangerous Cities in America. This visualization reveals the most dangerous urban areas in the U.S. in terms of how many violent crimes occur for every 1,000 residents.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/31/2024 – 22:35

  • Numbers Behind The Narrative: What Climate Science Actually Says
    Numbers Behind The Narrative: What Climate Science Actually Says

    Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times,

    Most people by now are familiar with the narrative that our planet faces a dire crisis due to rising temperatures.

    In January 2023, former Vice President Al Gore provided a graphic depiction during a World Economic Forum summit, informing attendees that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are “now trapping as much extra heat as would be released by 600,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs exploding every single day on the Earth.

    “That’s what’s boiling the oceans, creating these atmospheric rivers, and the rain bombs, and sucking the moisture out of the land, and creating the droughts, and melting the ice, and raising the sea level, and causing these waves of climate refugees,” he stated.

    United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres echoed these remarks at the U.N. Environment Assembly in February of this year, warning: “Our planet is on the brink.

    “Ecosystems are collapsing,” he stated. “Our climate is imploding, and humanity is to blame.”

    Despite ubiquitous reports that there is an overwhelming consensus among scientists in support of this narrative, many scientists, like John Clauser, a 2022 Nobel Prize recipient in physics, see it differently.

    Mr. Clauser stated in 2023 that “the popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people.

    “Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience,” Mr. Clauser stated. “In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis.”

    How can there be such a vast discrepancy on such an extensively researched topic?

    Having studied the production of climate data for decades, physicist Steven Koonin said he has “watched a growing chasm between what the politicians, the media, and the NGOs were saying, and what the science actually said.”

    “Nobody has an incentive to portray scientific truth and facts,” he told The Epoch Times.

    Mr. Koonin was the undersecretary for science in the U.S. Department of Energy, under President Barack Obama. He is a former physics professor at Caltech and is currently on faculty at New York University.

    He also has expertise in the development of analytical models.

    In 2021, Mr. Koonin published a best-selling book titled “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn’t and Why It Matters.” The book analyzes where climate data comes from and how it makes its way from dense, thousand-page scientific reports into headline news for public consumption.

    The United Nations’ IPCC

    One of the most often cited sources of climate information is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a collection of scientists and government appointees that, according to its website, is dedicated to “assessing the science on climate change.”

    The United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization established the IPCC in 1988.

    The IPCC is both a scientific and a political body. It doesn’t conduct its own research but rather assembles teams of hundreds of scientists in working groups that collect reports from scientific journals regarding climate change, its effects, and what should be done about it.

    About every seven years, an IPCC Working Group called Working Group I synthesizes the latest reports into Assessment Reports (ARs), often several thousand pages thick, which are then reviewed and edited by government appointees from the 195 member nations.

    In 2023, the IPCC released its Sixth Assessment Report (AR6).

    The information on which the ARs is based often has a bias from the start, critics say, because research grants typically fund studies that support the prevailing narrative on climate change, and because scientific journals often avoid publishing studies that suggest climate change is not dire.

    “Any literature that supports alarmism is promoted and any that does not is rejected,” William Happer, professor emeritus in physics at Princeton University, told The Epoch Times.

    According to Mr. Happer, the source of much of today’s climate data comes from “centers whose generous funding would cease if climate hysteria were to abate.”

    In addition, according to Richard Lindzen, emeritus professor of meteorology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who served as one of the scientists on Working Group I in the past, “the IPCC itself is only studying anthropogenic [man-made] climate change.

    “It doesn’t do anything regarding natural climate change,” Mr. Lindzen said, “and that’s a severe technical shortcoming because you can’t do things like attribution unless you know what natural variability is.”

    Despite that, “when you read the [Assessment] Reports, focusing mostly on the science, they’re actually pretty good,” Mr. Koonin said.

    The data presented in the ARs is a relatively sober analysis. However, it provides little support for the narrative of climate catastrophe—at least as far as what has been observed to date.

    Trends in Extreme Weather Events

    Chapter 12 of the AR6 details the IPCC’s assessment of the impact of extreme weather events. The tables provided in this chapter show that extreme weather events that have “already emerged” are limited.

    The report states a “high confidence” of temperature increases in average air and ocean temperatures and incidences of extreme heat in tropical and mid-latitudes.

    It also indicates high confidence in a decrease in arctic sea ice.

    However, it states “low confidence” for any increase in floods, rainstorms, landslides, drought, “fire weather,” cyclones, hurricanes, tornadoes, sand and dust storms, hail, sea level rise, coastal flooding, and erosion.

    It also indicates low confidence regarding a decrease in snow, glaciers, ice sheets, or lake, river, and sea ice, beyond the Arctic region.

    The IPCC’s assessment that such extreme weather events don’t appear to be escalating is supported by the findings of other scientific organizations.

    A 30-year analysis of “tornado trends” by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that “the number of strong and violent tornadoes hasn’t varied much since 1970.

    “While the peak in tornado frequency in the early to middle 1970s included the 1974 Super Outbreak, the year with the most tornadoes during that span was 1973!” the NOAA report states.

    It attributed an increase in tornadoes reported in the 1990s to the newly implemented Doppler weather radars, the development of spotter networks, population shifts, the proliferation of cell phone cameras, and “the growing ‘hobby’ of tornado chasing.”

    Likewise, a 2022 report in Nature, found a “declining tropical cyclone frequency under global warming.

    “On average, the global annual number of TCs [tropical cyclones] has decreased by 13 percent in the 20th century compared with the pre-industrial baseline 1850–1900.” the report stated.

    In addition, the Drought Severity Index published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) showed no material increase in droughts in the United States between 1895 and 2020.

    From Data to Narratives

    How do such mundane assessments of the impact of climate change evolve into the narrative that “our climate is imploding” and “oceans are boiling”?

    In two ways: first, the public statements from the IPCC and the U.N. often diverge from what their own ARs actually say; and second, the predictions of a dire future are based on models rather than observations.

    Alongside each new AR, the IPCC also writes condensed Summaries for Policymakers (SPMs) to “inform policymakers what scientists know about climate change.”

    The SPMs distill the voluminous ARs down to a short list of bullet points.

    In addition, the IPCC produces Headline Statements and Press Releases to “provide a concise narrative” on climate change.

    “[The AR] gets boiled down to the Summary for Policymakers, and while it’s drafted by scientists—a small number of them—the governments have to approve the SPM line by line,” Mr Koonin said.

    “And so you already have the potential for, let’s say, non-scientific factors entering.”

    “The SPM itself is 20–30 pages, and the media have to cover that,” he said. “And they typically will cherry pick the most extreme parts of it, so that’s how we get the distortions, and then that is exacerbated by the politicians, seeing opportunity in distortion, and the NGOs,”

    Despite observing no increase in the tornadoes, cyclones, droughts, wildfires, or floods that have been attributed to climate change, the IPCC’s 2023 Headline Statement warns: “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all [very high confidence].”

    “This problem [climate alarmism] is especially severe in the summaries for policymakers, which are mostly written by government bureaucrats,” Mr. Happer said.

    “Some of the scientific reviews in the voluminous background material are sound and dispassionate,” he said. “But it is not easy for honest scientists to buck the pressures for alarmism from the political leadership.”

    Rise of Computer Models

    Much of the basis for climate catastrophism comes not from observation but from computer models.

    A study of climate models between 1970 and 2020 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) found that “observed changes in temperature and precipitation have generally been consistent with the changes projected by earlier models.

    “The accurate projections of future climate and hindcasting of past climate makes us confident that models can reliably project changes in the climate,” the USDA report states.

    However, taking a closer look at the climate modeling industry raises questions about how reliable those projections are.

    The IPCC draws up its predictions based on averaged results from dozens of models, which Mr. Koonin says “disagree wildly with one another.”

    In his book, Mr. Koonin notes that the average surface temperatures generated by the models in IPCC reports vary among themselves by around 3 degrees Celsius or three times the amount of warming observed throughout the 20th century.

    The ARs “downplay this embarrassment” by focusing not on the actual temperature predictions, where models diverge, but rather on the predicted change in temperatures, where models are more likely to coincide.

    And then there is the process of “tuning” the models.

    The models typically divide the Earth up into “grid cells,” each a few tens of square miles.

    These grid cells are “tuned” in a process of hard-wiring the results from the cells to manually account for more random elements like cloud formations, storms, or humidity, which the models can’t predict but are material to temperature changes.

    “There are hundreds of such parameters because the climate system is complicated and has many different dimensions,” Mr. Koonin said.

    “And so, as people tune the parameters differently, they get different results.”

    Tuning also helps the models show results closer to observed data, but this highlights another shortcoming of the models—while purporting to predict the future, they often fail to reproduce historical temperatures.

    They also struggle to separate human influence from natural phenomena, all of which elevates the uncertainty of modeled predictions regarding human behavior.

    “If you’re trying—as a politician or NGO or company—to promote a narrative, you don’t want to talk about the uncertainties,” Mr. Koonin said.

    “You just want to say it’s going to be five degrees warmer and the world is going to hell.”

    Living In Denial

    Those who question the narrative of climate catastrophism are often attacked as climate “deniers.”

    “Anyone who willfully denies the impact of climate change is condemning the American people to a very dangerous future,” President Joe Biden stated in November 2023.

    “The impacts we’re seeing are only going to get worse, more frequent, more ferocious, and more costly.”

    Absent the hyperbole, however, what do the numbers indicate about our future?

    “Modest warming since the 1900s; 1.3 degrees [Celsius] at the global level,” Mr. Koonin said.

    “Despite that, by whatever measure you want to use—lifespan, nutrition, GDP, death rates from extreme events—it’s all going in a positive direction.”

    “Sea level rise is continuing at just about a foot a century,” he said. “But the actual and projected economic impacts of warming are in the noise … even the IPCC says it’s small compared to many other things that determine human wellbeing.”

    A 2022 report by the Heritage Foundation, modeling the costs and benefits to the United States of complying with the Paris Agreement and meeting the Biden administration’s goal of reducing GHG emissions to 52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, predicts these policies would reduce global temperatures by 0.5 degrees at the end of this century.

    “Even with theoretical efficiency, we find the costs of the policy to be staggering,” the report states.

    “The economy would, in aggregate, lose $7.7 trillion of gross domestic product (GDP) through 2040, which is $87,000 per family of four.”

    If the developing world is deprived of the use of fossil fuels, the impact there could be even more severe.

    “The billions of people who don’t have energy, who don’t have modern conveniences, they will be condemned to perpetual poverty,” Mr. Lindzen said.

    “CO2 has played an important role in increasing agricultural productivity, so we’ll see everyone paying more for food and more people starving.”

    “You are already seeing tragic consequences even in the United States, where a whole generation of kids has been told that they have no future,” he said.

    “They’re not having children themselves, because what’s the point of having children in a world that’s going to self-destruct?”

    The Epoch Times contacted the IPCC for comment but didn’t receive a response.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/31/2024 – 22:10

  • Russia, Ukraine Swap 150 POWs In First Exchange In Months
    Russia, Ukraine Swap 150 POWs In First Exchange In Months

    Zelensky and his Western backers, especially the US and UK, have long claimed that it’s ‘impossible’ to sit down with Russia at the negotiating table. Zelensky even just six months into the war had vowed not to re-enter negotiations with Moscow until Putin is no longer in power.

    But as if inadvertently illustrating that negotiations are actually very possible and within reach, Ukraine has announced a successful major prisoner swap, which is a first in nearly four months.

    Via Associated Press

    The Friday swap involved each side sending back 75 POWs. A representative for the Ukrainian side, Vitalii Matviienko, said that “Ukraine is always ready” in response to the question of why these swaps had stalled in the last months. But ultimately each side has blamed the other for lack of more rapid progress.

    Like with prior swaps, it was reportedly accomplished with the mediation of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). 150 total from both sides were freed in the rare successful deal.

    According to an Associated Press description of the returned Ukrainians:

    The Ukrainian POWs, including four civilians, were returned on several buses that drove into the northern Sumy region. As they disembarked, they shouted joyfully and called their families to tell them they were home. Some knelt and kissed the ground, while many wrapped themselves in yellow-blue flags.

    They hugged one another, breaking into tears. Many appeared emaciated and poorly dressed.

    Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for Treatment of POWs has said that Friday’s swap brings to the total number of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians freed since the war began to 3,210.

    “Throughout all of this time, we have not stopped working for a single day to bring everyone home from Russian captivity,” Ukraine’s President Zelensky stated in the aftermath.  

    His office further described “These are privates, sergeants and officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” and posted images of the newly freed Ukrainians on state social media channels.

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

    But about one-third of the former prisoners weren’t in good shape, as international media reports documented that many were injured and disabled, or else seriously ill. However, many also looked fit and well-groomed despite their lengthy captivity.

    The Russian side has also confirmed in a Kremlin statement: “On May 31, 2024, as a result of the negotiation process, 75 Russian servicemen, who were in mortal danger in captivity, were returned from the territory controlled by the Kiev regime. In return, 75 prisoners of war of the Ukrainian armed forces were handed over.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/31/2024 – 21:45

  • France Foils Planned Attack On Paris Olympics; Israel's Mossad Warns Of Terrorism Ahead Of Games 
    France Foils Planned Attack On Paris Olympics; Israel's Mossad Warns Of Terrorism Ahead Of Games 

    Radical progressive leaders across the Western world, along with leftist non-governmental organizations, are continuing to facilitate an unprecedented migrant invasion into Europe and the US. This poses a significant national security risk as terror threats surge into summer.

    Jumping across the Alantic to Europe, the French interior minister told AP News that security officers foiled an attack ahead of soccer events during the Paris Olympics.

    Gerald Darmanin said in a statement that the members of the General Directorate of Internal Security arrested an 18-year-old man from Chechnya on May 22 on suspicion of being behind a plan to attack soccer events that will be held in the city of Saint-Etienne, southwest of Lyon. -AP

    The report continued:

    The man was preparing an attack targeting the Geoffroy-Guichard stadium in the city of Saint-Etienne that will host several soccer matches during the Summer Games. The planned attack was to target spectators and police forces, the statement said. The suspect wanted to attack the Olympic events “to die and become a martyr,” the statement also said. -AP 

    Besides the person from Chechnya, Israel’s Mossad was quoted by The Jerusalem Post as also saying there are rising threats of terrorism ahead of the soccer events in France. 

    Iran is increasing its support of terror in Europe through proxy criminal groups in the 60-day lead-up to the Paris Olympics, the Mossad revealed on Thursday.

    It highlighted in particular the activities of two criminal groups — FOXTROT and RUMBA — alleging that they were “directly responsible for a violent activity and the promotion of terrorism in Sweden and throughout Europe” and that they receive funds and direction directly from Iran.

    Israel’s spy agency charged that Iran was behind the grenade attack against Israel’s Embassy in Belgium this past weekend and the gunshots near the embassy in Sweden on May 17. –JPost

    In recent days… 

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

    Let’s not forget in the US, the terror group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine has been linked to fueling chaos across colleges and universities. Through public records analysis, we have found links with PFLP to one sanctioned Iranian bank. 

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

    Remember the warning from the UAE Foreign Minister in 2017…

    The West is beyond compromised. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/31/2024 – 20:55

  • NRA Hails Supreme Court Ruling On Free Speech Violation By NY Officials
    NRA Hails Supreme Court Ruling On Free Speech Violation By NY Officials

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

    The stage for the National Rifle Association Presidential Forum in Harrisburg, Pa., on Feb. 9, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    The National Rifle Association (NRA) is celebrating a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling that New York State officials violated its First Amendment rights.

    On Thursday, the High Court ruled in National Rifle Association v. Maria T. Vullo that Ms. Vullo and New York State officials used their regulatory authority to coerce insurance companies, banks, and other financial institutions into cutting ties with the Second Amendment advocacy group based on the NRA’s political mission.

    Ms. Vullo was the Superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) when the NRA claims the coercion took place. The DFS is the New York state regulatory agency overseeing banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions.

    According to the court’s opinion, state officials are free to express their views. They are not free to punish those who do not share their views.

    “A government official can share her views freely and criticize particular beliefs, and she can do so forcefully in the hopes of persuading others to follow her lead,” Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the majority opinion on May 30.

    “In doing so, she can rely on the merits and force of her ideas, the strength of her convictions, and her ability to inspire others. What she cannot do, however, is use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression,” she added.

    NRA officials said in a press release that the decision will have far-reaching implications for the First Amendment.

    “This victory is a win for the NRA in the fight to protect freedom,” recently-elected NRA President Bob Barr wrote. “Regulators are now on notice: this is a win for not only the NRA but every organization who might otherwise suffer from an abuse of government power.”

    An NRA lawyer agreed in an email to The Epoch Times.

    “This is a landmark victory for the NRA and all who care about our First Amendment freedom,” William A. Brewer III, who represented the NRA, wrote. “The opinion confirms that New York government officials abused the power of their office to silence a political enemy.”

    Attorneys for Ms. Vullo did not respond by press time to an email seeking comment.

    In court filings, the NRA claimed, Ms. Vullo used public statements, guidance memoranda, “back channel threats,” consent decrees, and multi-million dollar fines to force businesses to drop the NRA as a customer.

    According to the NRA’s petition, in October 2017, DFS, under Ms. Vullo and then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s direction began an investigation into the Carry Guard.

    Carry Guard was an insurance plan promoted by the NRA for people who carried firearms for self-protection. The plan covered certain costs if the policyholder was involved in a legal self-defense shooting.

    The DFS investigation focused on insurance broker Lockton Companies, LLC, which administered the program, underwriter Chubb Limited, and the insurance marketplace Lloyd’s of London.

    A couple of months after the Feb. 14, 2018, shooting at Marjorie Stoneman-Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and while the DFS investigation was still underway, Ms. Vullo sent two memoranda titled “Guidance on Risk Management Relating to the NRA and Similar Gun Promotion Organizations.”

    The April 19, 2018, memos were sent to “New York State Chartered or Licensed Financial Institutions” and “All Insurers Doing Business in the State of New York.”

    Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court pose for their official photo at the Supreme Court in Washington on Oct. 7, 2022. (Front L–R) Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Samuel Alito and Justice Elena Kagan. (Back L–R) Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

    Ms. Vullo wrote, “There is a fair amount of precedent in the business world where firms have implemented measures in areas such as the environment, caring for the sick, and civil rights in fulfilling their corporate social responsibility.”

    She warned of “the social backlash against the National Rifle Association, and similar organizations that promote guns that lead to senseless violence . . .”

    Lawyer Slams State Tactics

    Ms. Vullo pointed out that the companies are in the business of managing risk, “including their own reputational risks. . .”

    Waukesha, Wisconsin-based lawyer and Second Amendment social media influencer Tom Grieve compared New York’s tactics to those used by organized crime in an email to The Epoch Times. He wrote that New York’s case was flawed from the start.

    “I don’t know what is worse: that this issue had to go to the Supreme Court or that this is far from the first or last 2nd Amendment-related case that appears obvious at the outset of this term,” his email reads.

    Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and host of the Four Boxes Diner Second Amendment YouTube channel says it’s instructive that the justices considered guidance documents, press releases, and other statements issued by the state and not just direct threats as evidence of coercion.

    “The Court’s 9-0 decision, written by liberal Justice Sotomayor, sends a powerful signal that government officials cannot use threats and inducements based on their regulatory authority to attempt to throttle speech they don’t like,” Mr. Smith wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.

    Sam Dorman contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/31/2024 – 20:30

  • "A Full-Scale War Isn't A Foregone Conclusion", Warns Russian Think Tank Head
    "A Full-Scale War Isn't A Foregone Conclusion", Warns Russian Think Tank Head

    Ahead of the “Russia and China: Cooperation in a New Era” conference in Moscow on Thursday, Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) Director General Ivan Timofeev told Russian state-owned news agency Tass about the increasing likelihood of a full-scale war between Russia and the West. 

    “A full-scale war is not is not a foregone conclusion, but unfortunately, its likelihood is growing,” Timofeev said in an interview with Tass. He said, “One option is that there will be a great rise in confrontation between us. At the root of this is the Ukraine issue, as the West continues to provide large-scale military assistance to Kyiv.”

    At a separate meeting on Thursday, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg told foreign ministers about the need to allow Ukraine to use Western weapons to penetrate deep inside Russia.

    Timofeev warned about the rising possibility of a direct conflict with NATO:

    “A number of officials, particularly in France and the United Kingdom, have said that individual military units from NATO countries may be deployed to Ukraine. If they take part in military operations against Russian forces, they will become a legitimate target for our army.

    “Let’s hope this possible escalation involves conventional arms and not nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, NATO is spending ten times as much as Russia – if not more – on defense. It’s certainly a dangerous scenario.”

    The RIAC director general continued: 

    “The NATO leadership has made statements that no troops will be sent to Ukraine, and a number of EU politicians have said that this is counterproductive. That means they aren’t united on the issue.”

    Timofeev added:

    “As for Russia, we must take every possible scenario into account. We have the capacity to deter these threats.

    “However, such a scenario will cause irreparable damage to everyone.” 

    He concluded that the West will likely continue assisting Ukraine through weapons and equipment supplies, indicating these “dividing lines between” Russia and the West “may be there for decades.” 

    Daniel Blake, Asia and emerging market equity strategist at Morgan Stanley wrote in a note to clients in April that the shift towards a multipolar world has been underway for the last five years. With that comes a war cycle, and, as we’ve penned before, a splurge in defense spending is bullish for defense companies. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/31/2024 – 20:05

  • Reuters Claims Trump Supporters Want 'Riots And Violent Retribution' Following Trump Verdict
    Reuters Claims Trump Supporters Want 'Riots And Violent Retribution' Following Trump Verdict

    Authored by Steve Watson via modernity.news,

    Reuters has published an article claiming that Trump supporters have called for “riots and violent retribution” after the GOP nominee was convicted in the New York Trial Thursday.

    Here’s a screenshot of the article (in case they change it):

    Reuters says that it has conducted a “review of comments on three Trump-aligned websites: the former president’s own Truth Social platform, Patriots.Win and the Gateway Pundit.”

    The piece continues, “Some called for attacks on jurors, the execution of the judge, Justice Juan Merchan, or outright civil war and armed insurrection.”

    The article then quoted one comment that stated “Someone in NY with nothing to lose needs to take care of Merchan,” referring to the judge, and adding “Hopefully he gets met with illegals with a machete.” 

    The piece quotes another comment on Gateway Pundit, that states “Time to start capping some leftys. This cannot be fixed by voting.”

    The article quotes several more comments calling for violence, but admits that some have since been removed.

    Reuters also charges that since the 2020 election Trump “loyalists have responded with a campaign of threats and intimidation targeting judges and court officials.”

    The article also quotes Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has recently published a book on “far right terrorism.”

    Ware charges that Trump has an “ironclad ability to mobilize more extreme supporters to action, both at the ballot box and through violence.”

    “Until and unless he accepts the process, the extremist reaction to his legal troubles will be militant,” Ware added.

    This all comes after Joe Biden labelled violent BLM protests “peaceful” and contrasted them to January 6th protesters “storming” the capitol.

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

    Wow.

    They really are going all out on in their attack on Trump and his supporters.

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

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

    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
    Fri, 05/31/2024 – 19:40

  • White House Lied To Congress About Israel-Gaza, Per Official Resigning In Protest
    White House Lied To Congress About Israel-Gaza, Per Official Resigning In Protest

    A State Department official has resigned in protest, saying the Biden White House lied to Congress on a critical report so American weapons could keep flowing to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) for its war in Gaza.    

    That official is Stacy Gilbert, a 20-year State Department employee who was a civil military advisor in the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. In February, a national security memo directive tasked the State and Defense departments with writing a report assessing whether Israel was complying with the Geneva Conventions, and whether Israel was thwarting the flow of humanitarian assistance. Working with other experts, Gilbert was tasked with answering the latter question. 

    Palestinians at a crowded food station in the southern city of Rafah (Fatima Shbair/AP via New York Times)

    That question had enormous implications: The Foreign Assistance Act prohibits aid to countries that thwart the flow of US humanitarian aid. Gilbert says she and other experts formed a clear consensus that Israel had blocked aid “in many ways,” and that they began crafting a report with that conclusion. 

    However, with the report still in rough draft form, Gilbert said senior officials shut her and other subject matter experts out of the project, and proceeded to rewrite the report over the ensuing days before it was due to be filed with Congress. 

    Gilbert told PBS: 

    “When the report came out on May 10, and I read the conclusion…that Israel was not blocking humanitarian assistance, I decided I would resign, because that was absolutely not the opinion of subject matter experts in the State Department, USAID, the humanitarian community, organizations that are working in Gaza.” 

    The estimated Palestinian death toll in Gaza has crossed 36,000. In the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel, Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant announced a “complete siege” of the 25-mile long strip. “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” he said. “We are fighting human animals and are acting accordingly.”  Earlier this month, the UN World Food Programme said that northern Gaza is in the midst of a “full-blown famine.” 

    Despite receiving tens of billions of dollars in weapons and money for its war, Israel has ignored Washington’s pleas for mercy and thwarted the flow of aid through overland crossings — to the extent that President Biden ordered the construction of a pier off the Gaza coast to do an end-run around the IDF –spending $320 million and critically injuring a service member in the process. Upon completion, the pier promptly fell apart in rough weather and it’s being removed for repair and the price tag gets bigger. 

    Israeli citizens have done their own part to thwart the flow of aid: 

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

    In a statement explaining her resignation, Gilbert wrote:

    “There is abundant evidence showing Israel is responsible for blocking aid. To deny this is absurd and shameful…Some members of the US government…made a conscious choice to deny the facts on the ground in Gaza in order to continue military support for Israel’s disastrous conduct in this war…

    Another State Department official who’d already resigned in protest of the Biden administration’s management of the Israel-Gaza war used Gilbert’s resignation as an opportunity to renew his own condemnation. “On the day when the White House announced that the latest atrocity in Rafah did not cross its red line, this resignation demonstrates that the Biden Administration will do anything to avoid the truth,” wrote Josh Paul, formerly of the State Department’s Bureau of Political affairs. 

    On March 9, Biden warned Israel against a major attack on the southernmost Gaza city of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians had fled for safety — explicitly calling it a “red line.” On Sunday, an Israeli strike in Rafah killed at least 45 people, including 12 women and 8 children. Many of the victims were incinerated in tents. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was a “tragic mistake.” The White House said the strike didn’t cross a red line and wouldn’t effect US policy.   

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

    Gilbert says her motivation for resigning extends beyond the restriction of humanitarian aid:  

    “Israel’s killing of at least 36,000 Palestinians, deliberate destruction of the majority of buildings, and attacks on every major medical facility, schools, and stores, lives and livelihoods, can’t be ignored…I cannot continue working for a government that denies and enables Israel’s deliberate carnage in Gaza.” 

    Meanwhile, as the resignations keep piling up, US bombs keep dropping on Palestinian militants and innocents alike… 

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

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/31/2024 – 19:15

  • Research Suggests Unusual Form Of Cell Death Causes Severe COVID-19 Lung Damage
    Research Suggests Unusual Form Of Cell Death Causes Severe COVID-19 Lung Damage

    Authored by Megan Redshaw, J.D. via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Illustration of the cell apoptosis mechanism. Ferroptosis differs from apoptosis. (best in world/Shutterstock)

    SARS-CoV-2 infection may cause severe pulmonary conditions such as pneumonia, inflammation, and acute respiratory distress syndrome, but until now, researchers have not understood the driving force behind lung damage caused by COVID-19.

    In a recently published paper in Nature Communications, researchers at Columbia University discovered that a relatively new form of iron-dependent cell death called ferroptosis is the underlying mechanism causing extreme and potentially fatal pulmonary conditions in COVID-19 patients.

    “This finding adds crucial insight to our understanding of how COVID-19 affects the body that will significantly improve our ability to fight life-threatening cases of the disease,” Brent Stockwell, chair of the department of biological sciences at Columbia and co-lead author of the study, said in a news release.

    What Is Ferroptosis?

    Human cells have powerful mechanisms for maintaining survival, but when those mechanisms become impaired, lipid peroxides—generated through normal metabolic activities—can accumulate to toxic levels, damage cell membranes, and kill cells through ferroptosis.

    Ferroptosis was first identified in 2012 by Mr. Stockwell and differs from apoptosis—the most common form of cell death that occurs with aging and in some disease processes. Ferroptosis is an unusual type of cell death linked to altered iron metabolism, glutathione depletion, glutathione peroxidase 4 inactivation, and increased oxidative stress.

    Since proposing the concept, Mr. Stockwell’s lab has demonstrated that ferroptosis can occur in healthy contexts as part of the body’s normal processes. For example, cell death can remove cells infected with SARS-CoV-2, inhibiting the replication and spread of the virus or counteract diseases like cancer, which involves rapid cell growth.

    On the other hand, ferroptosis can be destructive, attacking healthy cells in patients with neurodegenerative diseases or causing severe manifestations of COVID-19 and possibly even long COVID.

    The ability to stop ferroptosis could pave the way for treatments that improve COVID-19 outcomes, the paper’s findings suggest.

    The Study

    Researchers obtained lung tissue samples from the autopsies of patients who died of respiratory failure caused by severe COVID-19, including those with and without acute lung injury (ALI). Samples were also collected from patients who had mild COVID-19 and recovered.

    Control samples were obtained from pre-pandemic healthy patients who showed no signs of SARS-CoV-2 infection or lung damage. Samples from autopsies with ALI and without a history of SARS-CoV-2 infection were also analyzed. Additionally, serum ferritin records were obtained, as serum ferritin is elevated in critically ill COVID-19 patients, correlates with disease severity, and supplies the iron that drives ferroptosis. Ferritin is a protein found inside cells that stores iron and allows the body to use it when needed.

    The researchers analyzed cell death markers on COVID-19 lung tissue samples obtained from the autopsies and found “distinct molecular features of ferroptosis” in severe lung pathologies. Moreover, samples revealed elevated ferroptosis markers, including iron dysregulation, lipid peroxidation, elevated lysophospholipids, and depletion in polyunsaturated fatty acyl tails (PL-PUFAs).

    PUFAs, or polyunsaturated fatty acids, while essential for cell membranes and immune regulation, are highly unstable and inflammatory. Due to their sensitivity to oxygen, PUFAs can be oxidized by free radicals and broken down into toxic derivatives.

    In a secondary analysis, Syrian hamsters were intentionally inoculated with the same strain of SARS-CoV-2 found in patient samples. Researchers analyzed lung samples and found that ferroptosis occurred at an early stage of lung disease and accompanied disease progression.

    To confirm their findings were caused by ferroptosis, the researchers measured cell death markers associated with other forms of cell death. They did not detect an increase in these markers in any lung samples, indicating that ferroptosis was the major cell death mechanism detected in fatal COVID-19 lung samples.

    “Altogether, these data suggest a strong correlation between ferroptosis and COVID-19 lung pathology, and ferroptosis inhibition may serve as adjuvant therapy to reduce lung injury,” the authors wrote.

    A May 2023 paper published in Frontiers supports the paper’s findings. In their review, researchers found that dysregulated cell death from ferroptosis can lead to uncontrolled cellular damage beyond the lungs and plays a role in the multi-organ complications observed in COVID-19 patients with severe disease.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/31/2024 – 18:50

  • Kim Jong Un Oversees Massive Missile Launch 'Preemptive Attack' Drills
    Kim Jong Un Oversees Massive Missile Launch 'Preemptive Attack' Drills

    A day after sending hundreds of feces and garbage-filled balloons into South Korea over the militarized border, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw a new military exercises showcasing the north’s ability to mount “preemptive attacks”. 

    North Korean media released several photos as well as footage of choreographed launches of at least eighteen short-range ballistic missiles from the Sunan area on Friday.

    The projectiles reportedly fell into the Sea of Japan after going a distance of over 200 miles. 

    State media said this “salvo of a firepower sub-unit was carried out by operating the integrated fire-control system,” which was described as “a part of the national combined nuclear weapons management system.“

    This appears an ongoing response by Pyongyang to the US-South Korea drills that began on May 27, involving over 90 aircraft, among them the advanced F35A stealth fighters.

    Watch the impressive footage released by North Korean state media…

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

    According to an AP description:

    The North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported that the rocket firing drills were meant to demonstrate North Korea’s resolve not to hesitate in launching a preemptive strike on South Korea if threatened. It cited Kim as saying that the drills “will serve as an occasion in clearly showing what consequences our rivals will face if they provoke us.”

    Photos showed Kim watching from a distance as at least 18 projectiles were launched.

    The government of South Korea called on the north to North Korea must stop the “absurd, irrational provocations directed at us” or face unspecified “unbearable” consequences.

    Starting almost a year ago, the US military began parking a nuclear-armed submarine, the USS Kentucky, at a South Korean port, which has outraged Pyongyang.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/31/2024 – 18:25

  • Trump Verdict Seen As 'Pivotal Moment' For Undecided Voters
    Trump Verdict Seen As 'Pivotal Moment' For Undecided Voters

    Authored by Janice Hisle via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times, Getty Images)

    The outcome of former President Donald Trump’s New York records-falsification trial is most likely to influence undecided voters—a sliver of the electorate that could exert an outsized impact on the Nov. 5 presidential election.

    “This is a pivotal moment in the 2024 race,” American political history professor Jeff Bloodworth told The Epoch Times as jurors began deliberations on May 29.

    Mr. Bloodworth, who teaches at Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania, said suburban college-educated voters probably would allow the trial’s outcome to influence their votes.

    The former president was convicted of 34 business-records falsification charges; an appeal is almost certain, legal experts said.

    Polls have shown that a conviction was poised to sway some voters away from President Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Trump campaign pollsters predict the effect on votes will be minimal.

    However, it appears that the verdict is having a big immediate effect on fundraising. Several online commenters said they made donations to the former president, but many visitors overwhelmed the website, causing it to crash temporarily and having to be restored several times.

    Yet a small percentage of voters could make the difference between winning and losing the 2024 election. Polling consistently has shown a razor-thin margin separating the two major candidates: President Trump and the incumbent Democrat President Joe Biden.

    Many voters are unwilling to change their declared allegiance to President Trump, President Biden, or a third-party candidate, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Still, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released on May 22, about one-fifth of voters say they are open to reconsidering.

    Many of those people are “double-haters,” Mr. Bloodworth’s term for voters who dislike both President Trump and President Biden. These voters care deeply about the outcome of the New York case, and they’re very likely to turn out and cast their ballots, he said.

    He predicted that a guilty verdict against President Trump would drive those people “back into the Biden camp, like they were in 2020.” That election “was decided on the margins,” Mr. Bloodworth said, resulting in President Trump’s ouster. Now in the thick of his third run at the presidency, President Trump still says he believes he was the rightful winner—a claim that mainstream media and many Democrats reject.

    In a statement accompanying the Quinnipiac poll, polling analyst Tim Malloy characterized Kennedy voters as “particularly swayable,” with 52 percent reporting they were likely to change their minds. President Trump’s supporters were  “less-inclined to bail on their candidate,” Mr. Malloy said, with only 8 percent somewhat likely to defect. Almost double that number said they could drop their support of President Biden.

    A crowd gathers at Trump Tower after a guilty verdict against former President Donald Trump in his New York City trial on May 30, 2024. (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

    The Quinnipiac poll found that 70 percent of voters were following the New York trial closely, with 46 percent of respondents believing President Trump “did something illegal.”

    About 6 percent of President Trump’s supporters say a conviction would make them less likely to vote for him—a number that “could tip the balance” in a very tight race, Mr. Malloy said.

    Seven States May Matter Most

    But the Trump campaign’s pollsters, Tony Fabrizio and Travis Tunis, reported that several weekly surveys found the New York trial would have a “negligible” effect on voters in seven swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

    Their research found that large percentages of Democrats and President Biden’s voters were following reports about the New York trial.

    But voter segments that the Trump campaign is targeting—independents, undecideds, and “persuadables”—were “much less likely” to stay abreast of the trial, “with almost none following it ’very’ closely,” the pollsters said in a May 29 memo that the Trump campaign released.

    “Voters in our key target states have already made up their minds on this trial. Most voters, especially our supporters, believe the case is politically motivated and a conviction would be [the] result of a biased show trial. Biden’s voters will believe President Trump is guilty no matter what,“ the memo said. ”And those in the middle are largely unconcerned, and their votes aren’t going to hinge on the results of the trial.”

    Recent nationwide polling, including Quinnipiac’s, has shown the two candidates in a statistical dead heat. President Trump, however, has pulled ahead of President Biden in battleground states and has been chipping away at the incumbent’s lead in some states considered to be Democrat strongholds.

    Several surveys show minority voters, such as blacks and Hispanics, drifting away from President Biden, whom they blame for inflated prices of groceries, fuel, and other necessities.

    The Trump camp’s pollsters said the seven states they are focused on are most likely to decide the election, “not the national data the media would like us to focus on.”

    They predicted national polls, “especially those conducted by the media,” will probably “show exaggerated shifts.”

    Erica Deaver (L), 60, attends a rally with former President Donald Trump in the South Bronx in New York City on May 23, 2024. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

    Polls Could Be Flawed

    Pollster Rich Baris doubts that polls can accurately gauge how voters will respond to the New York verdict.

    When pollsters ask such a “bias-tainted question,” the results are skewed, Mr. Baris told The Epoch Times. That’s because “voters know the ‘right’ answer they are expected to give, even though they would never vote for Biden, regardless.”

    Pollsters produced inaccurate results in 2020 when they found that President Trump’s impeachments would adversely affect his vote totals, Mr. Baris said.

    “He ended up setting the record for the most votes ever received by an incumbent president,” Mr. Baris said.

    A guilty verdict in any of President Trump’s legal cases may have little effect on voting behavior, Mr. Baris said. A conviction “is already baked into the cake, meaning voters expect it and believe it’s politically motivated,” Mr. Baris said.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/31/2024 – 18:00

  • Houthis Report 16 Dead In Biggest Joint US-UK Airstrikes Since Gaza War Began
    Houthis Report 16 Dead In Biggest Joint US-UK Airstrikes Since Gaza War Began

    Early on Friday Yemen’s Houthis announced what appears to be the biggest mass casualty attack by the Western coalition since Red Sea hostilities began in the wake of Oct.7.

    The joint British-U.S. airstrikes happened Thursday, and killed at least 16 people and wounded 35 others, according to Houthis statement. “We confirm this brutal aggression against Yemen as punishment for its position in support of Gaza, in support of Israel to continue its crimes of genocide against the wounded, besieged and steadfast Gaza Strip,” Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam said.

    Illustrative: US military file image

    The strikes primarily focused on the port city of Hodeida, and the Houthis say that all killed there were civilians. According to a Yemeni account:

    But the Houthis focused Friday morning on a strike they said struck a building housing Hodeida Radio and civilian homes in the port city on the Red Sea. Their Al Masirah satellite news channel aired images of one bloodied man being carried down stairs and others in the hospital, receiving aid. It said all the dead and nearly all the wounded from the strikes came from there.

    The graphic footage of the attack aftermath can be viewed here.

    While not acknowledging the death toll offered by the Houthis, the Pentagon confirmed that US F/A-18 fighter jets were involved in the operation over Yemen, having taken off from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier in the Red Sea. 

    Officials said additional warships also participated, which included attacks on “underground facilities, missile launchers, command and control sites, a Houthi vessel and other facilities.”

    The UK Defense Ministry also revealed its involvement, with a statement saying Royal Air Force Typhoon FGR4s conducted strikes on Hodeida and locations south in Ghulayfiqah.

    UK’s military said it targeted “buildings identified as housing drone ground control facilities and providing storage for very long-range drones, as well as surface-to-air weapons.”

    “The strikes were taken in self-defense in the face of an ongoing threat that the Houthis pose,” British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced. “There’s an ongoing threat that the Houthis pose.”

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

    But instead of deterring the Houthis, the Shia rebel groups immediately announced a retaliatory operation against the US nuclear-powered carrier from which the US fighters were deployed, as we reported earlier.

    However, the Pentagon denied that the carrier was attacked. Politico’s Lara Seligman quoted an unnamed Department of Defense official who told her the Houthi’s claim about a missile attack on the USS Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea is “false information — there was no hit on the Ike or any attacks in its vicinity.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/31/2024 – 17:35

  • Dennis Quaid Praises Donald Trump: 'I Think I’m Gonna Vote For Him'
    Dennis Quaid Praises Donald Trump: 'I Think I’m Gonna Vote For Him'

    Authored by Audrey Enjoli via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    U.S. actor Dennis Quaid poses during a photocall for the film ‘The Substance’ at the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 20, 2024. (Christophe Simon/AFP via Getty Images)

    Actor Dennis Quaid, who stars in the forthcoming biopic “Reagan,” out Aug. 30, has expressed his admiration of former President Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

    “I think I’m gonna vote for him,” the 70-year-old said during a recent appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored on May 28, adding that a vote for the presumptive GOP nominee “just makes sense.”

    Mr. Quaid explained that he wasn’t initially planning on voting for President Trump. However, he said the politician’s “hush money” trial in Manhattan, which commenced on April 15 and is currently being deliberated on by jurors, ultimately swayed his decision in favor of the business magnate.

    President Trump was indicted in April of last year on 34 counts of allegedly falsifying New York business records. The case, which marks the first-ever criminal trial of a former president in United States history, is just one of a handful of legal battles that President Trump is embroiled in. In total, the 77-year-old faces 88 charges across four criminal cases, all of which he has pleaded not guilty to.

    “I see a weaponization of our justice system and, uh, a challenge to our constitution,” Mr. Quaid shared. “Trump is the most investigated person, probably in the history of the world, and they haven’t been able to really get him on anything.”

    “What is the crime?” he inquired. “I still can’t figure it out.”

    When asked by the British broadcaster if he likes President Trump on a personal level, “The Right Stuff” star admitted that there were moments during the politician’s previous presidential campaigns that he wasn’t especially fond of.

    “In the last campaign, and in 16 and, you know, and in 20, uh, I found myself going, ‘Oh please don’t do that; please don’t say that.’ You know, it’s like these things have come out of his mouth,” he explained.

    However, Mr. Quaid said he liked “everything” the businessman did throughout his presidency.

    “What he did with [North] Korea with [Kim Jong Un]; the way he defeated ISIS in three weeks. You know, people don’t even remember it happened so, so fast,” he shared. “He stood up for us overseas and … the way he responded to China. He stands up to people, and that’s what makes him a leader.”

    Mr. Quaid continued: “I tell you one true thing about him is that I really feel that he is working for the American people. That’s what he’s all about. And I do believe that to be true and sincere.”

    ‘We All Live in the Same Country’

    Elsewhere in the 45-minute-long conversation, Mr. Quaid gave his thoughts on President Biden, telling Mr. Morgan that he didn’t feel like the president was in control of his administration.

    “I don’t feel he’s at the helm; I don’t feel he’s there,” the actor candidly shared. “I feel that he says things to get votes not that he truly believes in them. And now I’m really going to get some blowback, but that’s the way I feel.”

    Although Mr. Quaid conveyed his praise for President Trump’s achievements, “The Day After Tomorrow” star said he wished Americans weren’t so divided by politics.

    “I hope … we can all learn to have a conversation about, you know, where we are as Americans,” he said. “We all live in the same country, and it doesn’t have to be the end of the world whoever is elected.”

    U.S. actor Dennis Quaid poses during a photocall for the film ‘The Substance’ at the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 20, 2024. (Loic Venance/AFP via Getty Images)

    Mr. Morgan agreed, sharing an anecdote about some of the disagreements he and his friends would have while drinking at a local pub when he was younger.

    “We would all have huge arguments after a few pints but the idea we‘d fall out with each other over it never crossed our minds. We would just argue about what was in the news, you know, and then we’d have a few more pints and we go home and we’d shake each other or give each other a hug,” the 59-year-old television personality explained.

    “That ability to respect someone’s opinion—even when you don’t agree with them—just seems to have disappeared from this generation. It’s like you either agree with me or I have to, not just ostracize you, I have to destroy you, you must be canceled.”

    Earlier in the conversation, Mr. Quaid offered his thoughts on the political polarization across the country, sharing his belief that people aren’t as informed about pressing issues as they were 30 to 40 years ago.

    “Our own point of view, our own beliefs, are getting coughed back at us,” he said, referencing the types of information commonly shared by mainstream media and via social media platforms.

    “We really need to … learn to work together and disagree but have a civil conversation about it [because] 30, 40 years ago, we had liberal Republicans, we had conservative Democrats, and there was much more across the aisle,” Mr. Quaid said.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/31/2024 – 17:10

  • Fed F**kery Turns $98BN (NSA) Large Bank Deposit Outflow Into $2BN Inflow
    Fed F**kery Turns $98BN (NSA) Large Bank Deposit Outflow Into $2BN Inflow

    After a small inflow last week, total US bank deposits dropped a modest $4.7BN last week on a seasonally-adjusted basis…

    Source: Bloomberg

    But, on a non-seasonally-adjusted basis, US total bank deposits tumbled almost $110BN…

    Source: Bloomberg

    This decline happened as money market funds saw modest inflows, pushing back near record highs…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Exclduing foreign deposits, US domestic deposits fell $2.2BN on a seasonally-adjusted basis (large bank +$2.1BN, small bank -$4.3BN), while on a non-seasonally-adjusted basis, domestic deposits puked $121BN (large banks -$98BN, small banks -$23BN)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    On the other side of the ledger, Small banks saw loan volumes shrink by $10.6BN while Large banks saw loan volumes grow by $8.6BN…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Finally, US equity market cap remains dramatically decoupled from its historical tight relationship with US bank reserves at The Fed…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Either way, that won’t end well.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/31/2024 – 16:40

  • Gloat While You Still Can: "This Is The 'All-In-Lost' Moment"
    Gloat While You Still Can: "This Is The 'All-In-Lost' Moment"

    Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

    “The hour is much later than you think…on multiple fronts: Financial, political, medical and geopolitical.”

    – Edward Dowd

    In the pre-gloat hours before the verdict in Judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom, Lawfare caporegime Andrew Weissmann (“Mueller’s Pitbull”) confessed Valley Girl style from his MSNBC clubhouse perch, “. . . I mean, I am, like, now I have a man-crush on him, he is such a great judge!” Bromance on, looks like! If the two happen to frequent the same athletic club in downtown Manhattan, Judge Merchan better be careful in the post-workout shower when he  bends over to pick up the soap. The Pitbull cometh!

    Credit: Joshua Lisec on “X”

    Of course, the Alvin Bragg victory in the artfully constructed “Stormy Daniels Payoff Case” decided late Thursday calls to question how come the Mueller Special Counsel Probe into 2016 election interference (actually run by Mr. Weissmann, due to Mr. Mueller’s declining cognitive ability) failed to spot the same web of evidence  – hard as they toiled, and they had a good two years and millions of taxpayer dollars to git’er done?

    My guess: too many white lawyers on the Mueller staff. Everybody knows now from watching the latest crop of television commercials that white people are unusually stupid and helpless and cannot cope with common problems without assistance from helpful people of color (POCs). So, God bless Alvin Bragg for finally fixing what Bob Mueller’s fifteen bloodhounds led by a pitbull somehow botched.

    The former president is now convicted on thirty-four counts of book-keeping errors in furtherance of an alleged 2016 federal election violation that the Federal Election Commission declined to charge — that is, paying a porn star to sign a non-disclosure agreement about a sexual liaison — because it is not a crime under federal election law, and about which the head of the FEC, James E. “Trey” Trainor III, was barred by Judge Merchan from testifying on during the course of the trial for reasons yet unknown.

    Of course, that is but one of a great many points of law that will merit appeal in what everybody — even some white people (people of non-color, PONCs) — knows was a case so crookedly contrived that it is fated to get tossed in the higher courts, and probably with harsh remonstrance to the degenerate officers of the court who brought it and adjudicated it. But you will have to wait on that because the mills of the law grind slowly.

    Now, in the radiance of the full Woke gloat, we await Judge Merchan’s sentence, to be announced a mere few days before the Republican Convention in Milwaukee in early July. Jail time at Rikers? Home confinement (with ankle bracelet)? Severe travel restrictions? Reporting to a parole officer? Drug tests? Hey, No one is above the law! It is hard to imagine that the judge will demur from inflicting maximum humiliation on this wanton repeat violator (thirty-four times!) of book-keeping errors. It would tend to interfere with the presidential candidate’s campaign schedule, but so what? Where does it say in the Constitution that an election must be fair?

    Or Judge Merchan could suspend all that pending appeal and just allow Mr. Trump to go about his election business free on bail. But why would he? After all the trouble he went to. And all the glory he’s reaping for it. “Joe Biden’s” party has Mr. Trump exactly where they want him, they think: pinned down like a moth in a shadow-box, inert and pathetic. (But, in reality, more like King Kong, chained in the rank basement below the stage of a Broadway theater before busting loose in midtown and upending subway cars so as to devour the little humans tumbling out like so many tic-tacs.)

    Expect Mr. Trump’s lawyers to file writs to the SCOTUS requesting expedited attention to the denial of due process issues and the election interference question. The situation is comparable to the year 2000 presidential race, where the SCOTUS stepped in on probable cause that the lower court (in Florida that time) had violated the Equal Protection clause of the constitution.

    In the meantime, through the luminescent fog of gloat, perhaps you did not notice that “Joe Biden” took a giant step yesterday toward commencing World War Three. The move was framed as the US gives Ukraine permission to use American missiles to strike deep within Russia. That was a bit disingenuous, you see, because Ukraine’s military lacks the know-how to actually launch the missiles, so American military “advisors” will have to be on hand to do it, meaning US military personnel will commit an act of aggression upon Russia.

    Voila! That world war you’ve all been clamoring for. . .? The perfect climax to “Joe Biden’s” catastrophic, fraudulently-acquired term in office. I scent the acrid, burnt-flesh odor of miscalculation here, as of a bunch of American cities get turned into radioactive bonfires that will blot out that sublime luminosity of gloat.

    Apparently, the “Joe Biden” team has never seen a Clint Eastwood movie — too lowbrow, I’m sure — and they don’t grok the role of the underdog in the American psyche. They have succeeded in making Donald Trump the greatest underdog in US history under the direst circumstances the nation may have ever faced — worse than Valley Forge, Bull Run, or the Ardennes Forest. Sinister forces are driving the country straight into a communo-fascist despotism alien to our nation’s very soul, demonic forces bent on depriving Americans of their rights, their property, and their liberty.

    This is the “all-in-lost” moment in that movie. This is where the hero comes back from the edge of eternal darkness, raging like Kali the Destroyer to smite the cowards arrayed against him, against the country’s honor, against the people. You asked for it. Now you’re going to get it.

    *  *  *

    Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page or Substack

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/31/2024 – 16:20

  • Rate-Cut Hopes Resurrected As 'Hard' Data Slides: Stocks, Gold, Oil, & Crypto Dumped
    Rate-Cut Hopes Resurrected As 'Hard' Data Slides: Stocks, Gold, Oil, & Crypto Dumped

    A weird week of weak ‘hard data, strong ‘soft’ data (macro), weak micro (ugly hints for software and consumer from earnings), and dovish-and-hawkish FedSpeak…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Which prompted a resurgence in rate-cut hopes….

    Source: Bloomberg

    But today’s Chicago PMI puke dominates any in-line PCE print and dragged stocks lower on the week, led by weakness in Nasdaq as Small Caps were the leat ugly horse in the glue factory. The typical late Friday meltup painted some lipstick on the week’s pig…

    For the CTA followers: The S&P tested below its short-term threshold at 5203 and found support (the Medium-term threshold for CTA sellers is consoderiably lower at 5002)…

    On the month, all the majors were green with Nasdaq leading and The Dow lagging…

    Energy and Utes outperformed while Tech stocks saw a notable 3% on the week…

    Source: Bloomberg

    MAG7 stocks ended the week lower overall…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Treasury yields were mixed on the week with 2Y and 5Y ending lower and the longer-end lagging…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Treasury yields were lower across the whole curve for the month with the belly outperforming…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The dollar managed gains on the week, having bounced off the week’s unch line today…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Gold ended lower on the week thanks to a post-PCE puke today…

    Source: Bloomberg

    For the 13th straight day, Bitcoin ETFs saw net inflows…

    Source: Bloomberg

    But the bitcoin price fell on the week, thanks to a big puke today, finding some support at $6,000…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Crude prices slipped lower again today, back into the red on the week…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Finally, one can’t help but feel that Gold’s recent resurgence – while real yields languish continue to drive lower…

    Source: Bloomberg

    … is the precious metal market anticipating more of the lawfare we saw yesterday as the Biden admin will “do whatever it takes” to not allow Trump to compete…

    …as the ass-clownery continue.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/31/2024 – 16:00

  • Time To Pay Satan: Canadian Asset Manager Blocks Cash Distributions On Private Credit Funds
    Time To Pay Satan: Canadian Asset Manager Blocks Cash Distributions On Private Credit Funds

    Just one day after JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said private credit could spark turmoil if when the opaque sector of financial markets weakens, warning that “there could be hell to pay,” and adding that he has “seen a couple of these deals that were rated by a rating agency and, I have to confess, it shocked me what they got rated. So, it reminds me a little bit of mortgages”, Satan has just sent his first invoice to the banking industry.

    After scaring his fellow bankers, perhaps in hopes of sparking another mini bank run and getting the FDIC to gift him with yet another bank, it turns out that perhaps Jamie Dimon was correct that “not all the people doing [private credit] are good,” and earlier today Bloomberg brought us the first notable example of a “bad” doer when it reported that Canadian investment manager Ninepoint Partners is “temporarily” suspending cash distributions in three of its private credit funds, making it the latest, and certainly largest, lender to put a squeeze on investors to cope with a private credit liquidity crunch.

    Unitholders of funds with about C$2 billion ($1.5 billion) of assets won’t be able to receive cash payouts, the Toronto-based Ninepoint confirmed to Bloomberg News, adding that the firm will revisit its decision in the third quarter although with the credit crunch only likely to deteriorate dramatically by then, the only question is how many more funds will Ninepoint be gating.

    “After reviewing our various liquidity options, Ninepoint Partners and our subadvisors have determined that the best path forward to preserve liquidity and balance the long-term goals of these three affected funds is to redirect future distribution into additional units rather than cash distributions starting July 1,” a spokesperson for the firm said in an emailed statement.

    Ninepoint is the latest lender in the $1.7 trillion private credit industry to take urgent measures to preserve cash and pre-empt a flood of redemption requests, by effectively freezing their money. And with consumer credit deteriorating sharply in recent months amid record credit card debt coupled with a record surge in installment loans (most of which can’t even be tracked by credit raters), executives at large banks have been sounding the alarm for weeks, with some worrying that private credit markets may be getting too inflated.

    “We’re all aware of the risks,” Bill Winters, CEO of Standard Chartered Plc, said at an event last month. “Like always, good things go too far and then correct. And the job of us as banks and the job of you as supervisors is to make sure we don’t get carried out when the tide goes away.”

    Of course, it is some banks’ job to make sure you do get carried away, because when you fail, those same banks – like JPMorgan for example – will end up absorbing all your deposits while the taxpayers, thanks to the FDIC, will be stuck with all the private credit that “went too far.”

    The private credit market – a corner of finance dominated by non-bank lenders who originate loans to private businesses – has grown rapidly in recent years, as it is far less regulated and banks are hoping they can offload all exposure before the next crash while pocketing the upside. Although returns on these assets have increasingly outpaced the S&P 500 since the early 2000s, risks in the industry are not well known, the IMF noted in April. Of course, for those who have been around for longer than a few years, will recall that hedge funds issuing 2nd and 3rd liens was also all the rage… right before the financial system collapsed  in 2008.

    So is Ninepoint the proverbial dead canary in the coalmine?

    The Canadian private lender, which oversees about C$7 billion, is among those firms offering “flexible terms” to some borrowers, but with higher risks. It is those risks that have now prompted the firm to freeze cash distributions.  Other firms, such as Oaktree Capital Management, have had to cut management fees on private credit funds, following increases in problem loans and disappointing earnings, Bloomberg reported.

    The largest of Ninepoint’s three funds is Ninepoint-TEC, which reported C$1.2 billion on assets at the end of 2023. It makes asset-backed loans to companies that “may have difficulty obtaining financing from other sources” — and certain borrowers have the option of using a PIK, or pay-in-kind, structure rather than cash interest payments. In other words, it is literally a loan shark that will lend you money – at a much higher rate than otherwise – when nobody else will. So yes, shockingly, things will collapse since the creditors didn’t get funds for a reason.

    The Ninepoint Alternative Income Fund, which is around C$600 million, has the bulk of its loans to middle-market companies in the US and Canada. It normally targets payouts to investors of 10% to 12% of the average net asset value in a calendar year, according to documents on Ninepoint’s website.

    To avoid panic from escalating further, the firm said it is not winding down these funds, according to its statement. “Investors will continue to have access to the ongoing benefits of being invested in private credit as we remain focused on ensuring the sustained performance and stability of our current portfolio.”  

    Private credit is not alone in gating investors: some real estate funds, including the $10 billion Starwood Real Estate Income Trust, have also taken steps to limit the ability of investors to pull cash out.  

    While we find the recent hype over “private credit” extremely overblown, having lived through the 2nd/3rd/4th lien bubble during the peak of the housing bubble, for those readers who are unfamiliar, we will republish an article we wrote back in March using Morgan Stanley data discussing “What’s Behind The Recent Explosion In Private Credit.”

    The evolution of private credit is reshaping the landscape of leveraged finance. Investors of all stripes and around the globe are taking notice. The rapid expansion of the private credit market in the last few years has come against a much different backdrop in public credit markets – a contraction in high yield (HY) bonds and lackluster growth in broadly syndicated loans (BSL). What the emergence of private credit means for public credit markets is a topic of active debate.

    While private credit is an umbrella term encompassing a wide variety of strategies, direct lending is the relevant strategy for an apples-to-apples comparison with the public markets in leveraged finance. In this context, we define private credit as debt extended to corporate borrowers on a bilateral basis or involving a small number of lenders, typically non-banks. Lenders originate and negotiate terms directly with borrowers without the syndication process that is the norm in public markets for both bonds and loans. Typically, private credit loans are not publicly rated, not traded in secondary markets, have stronger lender protections and offer a spread premium to public markets.

    Lenders in the private markets range from funds deploying direct lending strategies to investment vehicles such as business development companies (BDCs) and collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) as well as insurers and pension funds, among others. According to PitchBook data, the assets under management (AUM) of global direct lending funds alone have quintupled, surpassing US$550 billion by 2023, up from US$95 billion ten years ago; the total private universe AUM is now $1.5 trillion.

    Continue reading here and also the full Morgan Stanley primer on private credit, available to pro subscribers.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/31/2024 – 15:40

  • 'Time For This War To End': Biden's Gaza Speech Aimed At Israeli Hardliners
    'Time For This War To End': Biden's Gaza Speech Aimed At Israeli Hardliners

    President Joe Biden’s Friday afternoon speech was all about pressuring Israel to end the war. He unveiled and endorsed the terms of an Israeli-led proposal that features a three-part roadmap which would result in release of all the hostages and a cessation of hostilities.

    “After intensive diplomacy carried out by my team, my many conversations with leaders of Israel, Qatar and Egypt, and other Middle Eastern countries, Israel has offered a comprehensive new proposal. It’s a road map to an enduring cease-fire and the release of all hostages,” Biden said. 

    “This is truly a decisive moment. Israel has made their proposal. Hamas says it wants a cease-fire. This deal is an opportunity to prove whether they really mean it. Hamas needs to take the deal,” he added, but cautioned Hamas had yet to accept it. Below is an outline of the three phases:

    • phase 1: six-week ceasefire, withdrawal of military, hostages-prisoners swap
    • phase 2: return all hostages
    • phase 3: major reconstruction plan of Gaza

    He pleaded with Israeli leadership and the public to get fully behind the deal, saying “The people of Israel should know, they can make this offer without any further risk to their own security because they’ve devastated Hamas… for the past eight months.” He’s essentially urging Tel Aviv to declare victory and end major operations.

    But that’s when he said something which is sure to prove divisive, especially among Israeli hardliners at a moment Hamas has yet to be eradicated:

    “At this point, Hamas no longer is capable of carrying out another Oct. 7, which is one of Israel’s main objective of this war and quite frankly a righteous one,” the president said.

    His appeal was for the avoidance of indefinite war, coming at a moment his Gaza policies are deeply unpopular among many Democrats. The intractable conflict and his handling of it has threatened to sink his chances going up against Trump as both campaigns kick into high gear.

    “I know there are those in Israel who will not agree with this plan and will call for the war to continue indefinitely. Some are even in the government coalition. They’ve made it clear they want to occupy Gaza, they want to keep fighting for years, the hostages are not a priority for them,” he said, mounting an usually strong attack against the most hawkish elements represented by officials like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.

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

    “I urge Israel to stand behind this deal, despite whatever pressure comes,” he emphasized.

    But it is the IDF military withdrawal part that Israel has been most resistant to. Hamas has long demanded it, but Prime Minister Netanyahu has remained committed to his vow not to leave the Gaza Strip until Hamas and Islamic Jihad are completely eradicated.

    Meanwhile at the close of the Friday afternoon speech…

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

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/31/2024 – 15:20

Digest powered by RSS Digest

May 31

Today’s News 31st May 2024

  • Putin Expects NATO, And Possibly Poland In Particular, To Escalate The Proxy War In Ukraine
    Putin Expects NATO, And Possibly Poland In Particular, To Escalate The Proxy War In Ukraine

    Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

    President Putin shared a lot of insight about the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine during the press conference that he held during his latest trip to Uzbekistan. The first point of relevance that he made is that Zelensky is no longer regarded by Russia as Ukraine’s legitimate leader after his term expired. According to President Putin’s “tentative estimate” of this legal question, Rada Speaker Stefanchuk should now be seen as Zelensky’s legal successor.

    The Russian leader also speculated that the only reason why the incumbent remains in power is for him to carry out scandalous moves like possibly lowing the draft age to 23 and even 18 years. In his words, “I believe that after this and other unpopular decisions are made, those who are acting today as representatives of executive government would be replaced with people who would not be responsible for the unpopular decisions made. These representatives will be simply replaced in a snap.”

    Moving along, in response to a question about NATO chief Stoltenberg’s suggestion for members to let Ukraine use their arms to hit targets inside of Russia like the US just tacitly approved of Kiev doing, he reminded everyone that long-range precision strikes require space reconnaissance data. Since Ukraine lacks these capabilities, such strikes can only be carried out with NATO support, including through instructors inside Ukraine masquerading as mercenaries for plausible deniability purposes.

    President Putin advised the West to think twice about this and then addressed Russia’s fresh push into Ukraine’s Kharkov Region, which he confirmed was in response to the shelling of Belgorod and aimed at carving out a “security area” exactly as he earlier warned he’d order if those attacks didn’t stop. On the topic of Belgorod, he lamented that the Western media doesn’t report on Ukraine’s strikes there, and hinted that his envisaged “security area” could expand to stop longer-range attacks if need be.

    He was later asked about Ukraine inviting French “instructors”, to which he responded by saying that his forces regularly “hear English, French, or Polish on the radio” when listening in their opponents, thus confirming that their mercenaries have long been deployed there. Of those three, President Putin believes that the Polish ones are the least likely to leave, which is an allusion to Russian officials’ prior claims that it plans to annex Western Ukraine or at least incorporate it into a sphere of influence.

    As for how he sees everything ending, he reaffirmed his commitment to peace talks and reminded everyone that it’s Ukraine that unilaterally froze this process, not Russia. Mid-June’s upcoming “peace talks” in Switzerland are only designed to “create a semblance of global support” for the West’s unilateral demands of Russia aimed at inflicting a strategic defeat upon it. Suffice to say, President Putin promised that this won’t succeed, and he concluded by saying that it’ll only be more painful for Ukraine.

    Reflecting on his remarks, the Russian leader signaled that he’s sincerely interested in peace but is also preparing for an escalation in the conflict since NATO’s latest moves suggest that it’s still disinterested in compromising. The US is using Zelensky as its figurehead for implementing unpopular decisions aimed at indefinitely perpetuating this doomed conflict, after which it’ll likely replace him with someone else once public opinion demands it.

    Even in that scenario, however, it’s unclear whether another Ukrainian regime change would precede the recommencement of genuine peace talks that ensure Russia’s national security interests. President Putin’s words about Poland came amidst it expressing support for using Western arms to strike targets inside of Russia, countenancing shooting down missiles over Western Ukraine, and repeating its position that a conventional intervention in that neighboring country can’t be ruled out.

    From the looks of it, Poland is indeed preparing to conventionally intervene in Ukraine if Russia achieves a military breakthrough, which could spike the risks of World War III by miscalculation due to the US’ dangerous game of nuclear chicken that it’s playing as explained here. In sum, the NATO-Russian security dilemma is spiraling out of control, and Russia might use tactical nukes in self-defense to stop any large-scale NATO invasion force that threateningly crosses the Dnieper towards its newly unified regions.

    Therein lies the importance of President Putin hinting that his country might expand its “security zone” to defend against Ukraine’s use of long-range precise strike systems against targets within its pre-2014 territory. He wants NATO to know the territorial extent to which Russian forces might go in the event that the front lines collapse, which is essentially dependent on them and their decision to allow it to use such Western arms with the bloc’s space reconnaissance support.

    The message being sent is that Russia has no interest in going beyond those geographical limits that NATO itself is responsible for setting through its abovementioned decision, which is meant to prevent the bloc from overreacting if their opponents achieve a military breakthrough. A Polish- and/or French-led conventional intervention would already be dangerous enough, but that invasion force’s potential crossing of the Dnieper could trigger a tactical nuclear response from Russia in self-defense.

    The latest military-strategic dynamics suggest that a conventional NATO intervention is seriously being considered, even if it’s only a partial one that remains west of the Dnieper. The signals coming from NATO as a whole and Poland in particular show that they want an escalation in order to continue fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian, but President Putin just countersignaled that his country is prepared for all eventualities.

    It’s therefore up to the West whether or not everything spirals into World War III.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 05/31/2024 – 02:00

  • The 3 Layers Of The Technocratic State
    The 3 Layers Of The Technocratic State

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

    There are three layers to the U.S. state that lord it over the American people and the world: deep, middle, and shallow. It’s a typology of how technocracy works in practice. Let’s talk about how it works and how the layers interact.

    Donald Trump popularized the term deep state, and it is a good one. There is a large and serious literature on the topic. It refers mostly to the long-operating and largely out-of-public eye intelligence agencies and their cut-outs in the private sector. It is inclusive of security agencies, which means CIA but also some portions of the FBI, NSC, NSA, CISA, DHS, top brass at the Pentagon, and more besides.

    They are the most powerful force in American politics and have been for many decades. Anyone who calls them out is called a “conspiracy theorist” simply because there is a lack of documentation for these claims that everyone knows are true. They are “classified,” Washington’s magic term for anything they want to hide from you.

    Lately, there has been an opening up on this topic, thanks very much to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Trump, journalist Mike Benz, and many others who have worked so hard over the years to expose the cabal. This new attention is mostly due to a series of audacious plots that unfolded since 2016: the bogus claim of Russia interference in the election, as manufactured by the deep state, the surreptitious weaponization of the justice system still ongoing, as well as the pandemic policies that had deep-state fingerprints all over them.

    The middle state is the administrative bureaucracy, the civil service, as they are called. Invented by the Pendleton Act of 1883 and growing through wars and crises, and deeply entrenched in the 21st century, it is more than 2 million strong and consists of more than 400 agencies, some innocuous and some deeply threatening. Elected politicians only pretend to control the middle state but the reality is the opposite. They are the people with permanent positions, institutional knowledge, and the focus to preserve the status quo no matter who shows up in town for the party.

    Very often, newly elected politicians come to town naively hoping to make some difference. They quickly encounter an awesome and impenetrable force all around them, staffers moving from office to office, random people from agencies about which they have never heard, and attending briefings designed to introduce the newbie to the ways of Washington but which are really designed to intimidate them into compliance. Most newly elected leaders arrive with no real understanding of this system.

    This is what Trump faced when he was elected. He believed that the president was supposed to be in charge, like a CEO or an owner of a company. That’s the only world he knew, one in which he was at the top of the heap and his word was a marching order. He figured that this day would arrive after the inauguration. It did not. He simply couldn’t get over it and never was willing to simply play the marionette as others had done, in exchange for plaudits and payoffs.

    Once Trump figured it all out, he assigned his trusted staff to do something about it. He issued a series of executive orders to get the middle state under control. In May of 2018, he took his first steps to gain some modicum of control over this deep state. He issued three executive orders (E.O. 13837, E.O. 13836, and E.O.13839) that would have diminished their access to labor-union protection when being pressed on the terms of their employment. Those three orders were litigated by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and sixteen other federal labor unions.

    All three were struck down with a decision by a D.C. District Court. The presiding judge was Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was later rewarded for her decision with a nomination to the Supreme Court, which was affirmed by the U.S. Senate. The prevailing and openly stated reason for her nomination was said to be mostly demographic: she would be the first black woman on the Court. The deeper reason was more likely traceable to her role in thwarting actions by Trump which had begun the process of upending the administrative state. Jackson’s judgment was later reversed but Trump’s actions were embroiled in a juridical tangle that rendered them moot.

    Later came a wonderful executive order that would have reclassified a range of middle-state employees as “Schedule F” and thus subject to control by the elected president. That order caused Washington to fly into wild panic. Joe Biden reversed the order on his first day in office. They have had four years now to pass restrictions to prohibit that from happening again.

    As recently as last week, Biden’s Office of Personnel Management finalized rules to make it difficult for Trump to strip civil servants in policy making roles of their permanent positions. Yes, the plot against a possible second Trump term is fully engaged already.

    The third layer is the shallow state. It consists of legacy media outlets such as CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC, in addition to social media companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, as well as common internet tools like Google and Wikipedia. It includes military contractors and tax-supported academia as well.

    These are all captured institutions, with revolving doors with the deep and middle states. The reporters at these large media outfits have close relationships with the top bureaucrats at the agencies they cover, which is why the agencies themselves are rarely investigated closely.

    When lockdowns came, Facebook and all the mainline social media companies instantly signed up to be both propagandists and censors. When they worried about the impact on their business models, middle and deep state bureaucrats hounded them to step it up and serve their masters. They mostly complied. We know all this by virtue of tens of thousands of pages of correspondence that is now moving through the courts, possibly resulting in judgments that would bring back the First Amendment.

    The shallow state also includes a major swath of the banking and financial sector that depends fundamentally on the benevolence of the middle-state Federal Reserve to provide an uninterrupted stream of liquidity to fuel its operations. In some sense, the entire system mapped out here depends on this funding source, without which the lockdowns, wars, welfare state, and enormous corporate subsidies (to pharma, agriculture, and the Green New Deal) could not and would not exist.

    What is and isn’t included in the shallow state is obviously debatable on many levels. What about an institution that massively benefitted from lockdowns, such as Amazon, but didn’t actively lobby for the policy? How does the fact that its founder and major investor also owns the Washington Post which did push for lockdowns affect the judgment? And what about online learning companies that got rich solely due to school closures? Are they also shallow state? There are good discussions to have here.

    The relationship between the three layers is perfectly illustrated in the way pharmaceutical companies work. They do the bidding of the deep state with biodefense work that is classified, making both pathogens and antidotes. They work with the middle state, with board members and managers of companies going back and forth with the NIH and FDA, sharing royalties on new patented consumer products. The companies then dominate advertising on all the main media venues, which means that the media covers up for them at every turn and echoes deep and middle state priorities.

    If you are seeking to set up and manage a 21st-century technocratic regime, the ideal mechanism of compulsion and coercion is centered in the shallow state, because it is private, consumer-facing, and trusted more than any other layers of the state. Every form of coercion can be “market washed” as if these are purely private actions taking place. The strategic objective of any really good plan for hegemony, then, is to push the agenda from the deep state, through the middle state, and land in the shallow state for distribution to the public.

    This is because the shallow state is the most effective tool for bringing about results. You want the large corporations and big finance to be the ones to move against political enemies, and you want the major media rather than the agencies to distribute the propaganda. You want the doctors to sell the drugs and the search engines to generate the message. Whatever trust remains is centered on these shallow-state institutions and therefore they are the ones you want to capture to do your bidding.

    Yes, it all sounds very corrupt. It is. And it has absolutely nothing to do with this document called the Constitution, which is supposed to be the real law of the law. For the three-layer state, this document simply doesn’t matter. A quiet coup has taken place over the decades that has entrenched this wild system in contradiction to everything the Founding Fathers desired.

    All three are right now plotting to resist a possible victory by Donald Trump in November. The notion that he would win in 2016 seemed outlandish. But the prospect of returning after a four-year hiatus to gain the presidency again is nearly miraculous. In any case, it is something no one imagined possible a few years ago.

    Indeed it is easily one of the biggest political comebacks in history, and amounts to the closest thing we’ll likely ever see to a genuine revolution in modern times. What comes of it, we’ll have to find out but this much is clear: the whole of the three-layered state has done everything to stop it. Right now, the whole system is in complete freak-out mode, in full display of the whole world.

    There is plenty of reason to doubt aspects of the Trump agenda. I’ve personally authored what is by now a large literature against features of the ideology that drives it.

    But there is no getting around the real issue today. We are nearing a perfect battle between the people, who are supposed to rule or at least have some line of influence over the regime, and this three-layer cartel of overlords that is actually in charge.

    No one who aspires to freedom and dignity can possibly defend this status quo, so it makes sense to look forward to its overthrow, if it is at all possible.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 23:45

  • PCE Preview: A 3 Year Low?
    PCE Preview: A 3 Year Low?

    Two weeks after the latest CPI print came in fractionally below estimates and sent yields to their May lows, tomorrow at 8:30am, we will get the Fed’s preferred inflation metric, the April core PCE inflation numbers.

    EXPECTATIONS: headline PCE prices are seen rising +0.3% M/M in April (prev. +0.3%), with the annual rate expected to be unchanged at 2.7%. The core measure is seen rising +0.3% M/M (prev. +0.3%), while the core rate of annual PCE is seen unchanged at 2.8% Y/Y, although even a modest dip in the annual print would lead to the lowest annual increase in three years, since April 2021.

    CPI AND PPI: As noted above, and as Newsquawk writes in is PCE preview, headline CPI data was cooler than expected in April, while the core CPI metric saw the smallest increase since December; and while the PPI data for the month surprised to the upside in the month, analysts noted that the internals — components that feed into the PCE data – were more constructive (insurance sectors, health and medical components, air transportation). As a reminder, PCE gives far lesser weight to Housing/Shelter, as well as transportation (recall that transportation insurance is soaring right now and is the biggest drive of CPI inflation), which is why overall core inflation viewed through the lens of PCE is far lower.

    Ahead of the data, Goldman Sachs said using CPI, PPI and import prices, “we estimate that core PCE increased 0.26% M/M, a pace well below the 0.36% average of the prior three months, but probably not sufficient for a July cut if maintained in May and June.” That said Goldman estimates that the market-based core PCE index—which has been referred to by Fed Chair Powell in recent remarks—rose just 0.18%, a pace GS says would be quite consistent with a July cut if maintained.

    FED: After a hawkish set of FOMC meeting minutes, and some cautious chatter from Fed officials, as well as constructive incoming data (decent PMI data for the month saw Fed cut pricing diminish sharply); money markets are pricing no easing at the Fed’s June 12th meeting, and only a 10% chance of a cut in July. The first fully discounted rate cut is seen in December, although markets are assigning a c. 80% probability of a cut in November. Goldman recently pushed its first rate cut forecast from July to September.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 23:04

  • The Rise In America's Billion-Dollar Extreme Weather Disasters
    The Rise In America’s Billion-Dollar Extreme Weather Disasters

    Since 1980, there have been 383 extreme weather or climate disasters where the damages reached at least $1 billion. In total, these disasters have cost more than $2.7 trillion.

    Created in partnership with the National Public Utilities Council, this chart, via Visual Capitalist’s Jenna Ross, shows how these disasters have been increasing with each passing decade.

    A Growing Concern

    The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tracks each disaster and estimates the cost based on factors like physical damages and time losses such as business interruption. They adjust all costs by the Consumer Price Index to account for inflation.

    Both the number and cost of extreme weather disasters has grown over time. In fact, not even halfway through the 2020s the number of disasters is over 70% of those seen during the entire 2010s. 

    Severe storms have been the most common, accounting for half of all billion-dollar disasters since 1980. In terms of costs, tropical cyclones have caused the lion’s share—more than 50% of the total. Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall in 2005, remains the most expensive single event with $199 billion in inflation-adjusted costs.

    Electricity and Extreme Weather Disasters

    With severe storms and other disasters rising, the electricity people rely on is significantly impacted. For instance, droughts have been associated with a decline in hydropower, which is an important source of U.S. renewable electricity generation. 

    Disasters can also lead to significant costs for utility companies. Hawaii Electric faces $5 billion in potential damages claims for the 2023 wildfire, which is nearly eight times its insurance coverage. Lawsuits accuse the company of negligence in maintaining its infrastructure, such as failing to strengthen power poles to withstand high winds. 

    Given that the utilities industry is facing the highest risk from extreme weather and climate disasters, some companies have begun to prepare for such events. This means taking steps like burying power lines, increasing insurance coverage, and upgrading infrastructure. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 23:00

  • Minimum Wage Folly
    Minimum Wage Folly

    Authored by John Stossel via The Epoch Times,

    California now leads the nation in imposing dumb wage laws…

    The state just raised the hourly minimum wage for fast-food workers to $20.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom said: “We saw the inequities. … We had a responsibility to do more.”

    Unions pushed for the higher minimum, and in Democrat-run states, unions usually get what they want.

    CNN announced, “Half a million California fast food workers will now earn $20 per hour!”

    Gullible leftists at the Center for American Progress claim, “A higher minimum wage would boost millions of families out of poverty and further stimulate the economy.”

    Yippee! It’s a happy cycle! Win-win.

    But wait, if it’s a win-win, why just make the minimum $20? Why not $30? Or $100?

    Because the government requiring higher wages is not a win-win.

    Interfering with market prices always creates nasty unintended consequences.

    Frédéric Bastiat, in his work “That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen,” points out that there are always seen and unseen consequences when government force impacts economic decisions. “Almost always,” he wrote, “the immediate consequence is favorable, the ultimate consequences are fatal.”

    In this case, the immediate consequence is that existing workers get a raise. Great. That’s the seen. That’s what the media, unions, and Center for American Progress see. But the unseen effect is bigger, and worse:

    No. 1: Thousands of Californians have already lost jobs because some restaurants closed. Others lost income because their employer cut worker hours. The chain El Pollo Loco cut employees’ hours by 10 percent.

    Pizza Hut announced that it will lay off more than 1,000 delivery drivers. One, Michael Ojeda, understandably asked, “What’s the point of a raise if you don’t have a job?”

    No. 2: Workers who still have jobs will lose them because now their employers have more incentive to automate. Chipotle just created a robot that makes burrito bowls. Even CNN acknowledged, “Some restaurants are replacing [fast food workers] with kiosks.”

    Story continues below advertisement

    No. 3: Prices go up.

    The day Mr. Newsom signed the bill, he was asked, “Can Californians expect the prices of their McDonald’s and Starbucks to go up?”

    Mr. Newsom deceitfully replied: “I’ve heard that rhetoric before. And it didn’t happen!”

    Nonsense. It did happen. It always happens when government forces wage increases. In this case, Starbucks prices have increased as much as 15 percent. Customers will pay about $200 per year more for their coffee. A chicken burrito at Chipotle will cost up to 8 percent more.

    No. 4: Perhaps the worst unseen harm from minimum wage laws is that young and unskilled people won’t even be hired. They won’t gain valuable experience from a first job at a fast-food restaurant.

    In 2014, when Seattle politicians raised the minimum wage to $15, I asked some teenagers what a higher minimum wage could do for them.

    “Minimum wage actually hurts my chances of getting employed,” said one, Rigel Noble-Koza. “If I cost more, why would a company take a risk on hiring me? They’ll hire the worker with more experience instead.”

    Another, Dillon Hodes, talked about his friend who had fast-food work but got her hours cut because “she was young and inexperienced.”

    Of course, these students were unusual. They were finalists in a Stossel in the Classroom contest. They aren’t economically ignorant. They knew to look for the unseen.

    If only politicians were that smart.

    Government price fixing such as minimum wage laws hurt the young and the poor, the very people these laws are supposed to help.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 22:30

  • Biden Allows Ukraine To Use US Weapons To Attack Inside Russia In Highly Dangerous Escalation
    Biden Allows Ukraine To Use US Weapons To Attack Inside Russia In Highly Dangerous Escalation

    Given the last days of momentum and growing pressure coming from some NATO countries, this was perhaps inevitable: the United States has now greenlighted Ukraine’s use of American-supplied weapons against Russian territory in a huge escalation which takes the world a big step closer to WW3 and nuclear-armed confrontation.

    Politico is reporting Thursday afternoon, “The Biden administration has quietly given Ukraine permission to strike inside Russia — solely near the area of Kharkiv — using U.S.-provided weapons, two U.S. officials and two other people familiar with the move said Thursday, a major reversal that will help Ukraine to better defend its second-largest city.”

    American soldiers in front of a HIMARS light multiple rocket launcher, Zuma Press

    An anonymous US official was cited a saying, “The president recently directed his team to ensure that Ukraine is able to use U.S. weapons for counter-fire purposes in Kharkiv so Ukraine can hit back at Russian forces hitting them or preparing to hit them.”

    The same official stipulated that the policy of not allowing long-range strikes inside Russia “has not changed.” However, this is surely going to be a distinction without substance or meaning from Russia’s point of view, as it makes attacking Russia’s sovereign territory with US weaponry ‘allowable’ for the first time. According to more details of what are expected to be the immediate implications: 

    In effect, Ukraine can now use American-provided weapons, such as rockets and rocket launchers, to shoot down launched Russian missiles heading toward Kharkiv, at troops massing just over the Russian border near the city, or Russian bombers launching bombs toward Ukrainian territory. But the official said Ukraine cannot use those weapons to hit civilian infrastructure or launch long-range missiles, such as the Army Tactical Missile System, to hit military targets deep inside Russia.

    It’s a stunning shift the administration initially said would escalate the war by more directly involving the U.S. in the fight. But worsening conditions for Ukraine on the battlefield –– namely Russia’s advances and improved position in Kharkiv –– led the president to change his mind.

    Ukraine has been complaining that all restrictions need to be taken off if it is to defend against Russia’s recent major offensive in Kharkiv, which was launched from across the border. For example, Russian artillery is able to fire from rear positions within the Belgorod region near the border. It meanwhile remains part of Moscow’s stated aim to push the border deeper into Ukraine to create a ‘buffer zone’ – making it harder for pro-Kiev forces to shell Russian towns and villages.

    Politico’s fresh reporting is consistent with something Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday. While visiting Moldova – itself feeling the pressure of the war right next door – Blinken laid out that the US does not “encourage or enable” Ukrainian attacks inside Russia – but he then moved the goalpost by stressing the US would “adapt and adjust” this position based on developing battlefield needs.

    A reporter followed up by asking if he meant the White House will now support Ukrainian attacks inside Russia. Blinken responded with: “Adapt and adjust means exactly that.”

    On a covert level this was likely already happening all along…

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

    Russian President Vladimir Putin warned earlier this week there will be “major consequences” if NATO countries support long-range strikes on Russian territory. While it’s long been clear that US, UK, French, and other West-supplied weaponry has been used against Crimea, this has yet to be the case when it comes to Russia proper. Or at least any such attack has not been made public yet.

    This significant shift underscores the desperation of Western allies as Ukrainian forces have been getting rolled back in the Kharkiv region. It seems Washington, London, Paris, and Brussels simply cannot stomach a Ukrainian loss – but this desperation is leading to deepened and highly dangerous Western deepening involvement in the conflict. 

    Meanwhile…

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

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

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 22:00

  • As King's Health Deteriorates, Who Will MbS Appoint As Crown Prince?
    As King’s Health Deteriorates, Who Will MbS Appoint As Crown Prince?

    Via Middle East Eye

    Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is close to becoming king as the health of his elderly father, King Salman, deteriorates; he was recently treated for a lung infection. While Mohammed bin Salman’s succession to the throne may seem inevitable and straightforward, he will face two challenging decisions: appointing a crown prince and designating a deputy crown prince.

    When appointing a future crown prince, he theoretically needs to consult Saudi Arabia’s 1992 basic law of governance, which stipulates that rulers are drawn from the male descendants of Ibn Saud, with the “most upright among them” selected for the role. 

    Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, via AFP

    But a 2017 amendment by King Salman notes that after the sons of Ibn Saud, there should be “no king and crown prince belonging to the same branch of the founder king’s descendants.”

    In practice, as king, Mohammed bin Salman would have enough power to ignore the amendment and appoint one of his brothers as crown prince – but this would not be without consequences. He would appear even more ruthless in excluding other branches of the House of Saud. 

    Such a move would further alienate the large pool of cousins belonging to important branches, such as al-Fahd and al-Sultan, neither of which has been humiliated like al-Nayef and al-Abdullah. So far, despite rumors about who Mohammed bin Salman may select as crown prince, the decision has been kept secret.  

    It is also uncertain as to whether the future monarch would follow the path of King Abdullah, who created the role of deputy crown prince in 2014 (before dying the following year), fearing a power vacuum if he and his crown prince both died within a short period of time. But the post of deputy crown prince has been vacant since 2017, the year Mohammed bin Salman ascended to the role of crown prince.

    Establishing power

    King Salman never appointed a deputy crown prince, for two reasons. First, the young age of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was in his early thirties in 2017, made it unlikely that he would die any time soon and require a deputy to step in.

    Second, and more importantly, King Salman would have struggled to find a suitable deputy crown prince, as he and his son antagonized several branches of al-Saud lineage, namely Nayef and Abdullah.

    Former Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef received the most humiliating blow when he was sidelined after decades of holding highly sensitive and important positions in the interior ministry and intelligence services. He was put under house arrest and has since disappeared from public life.

    King Abdullah’s son Mutaib, the former chief of the Saudi Arabian National Guard, was equally humiliated when he was sacked from his military role; he has also disappeared from public life following allegations of corruption.

    King Salman and his son have not endeared themselves to these two branches of the royal family and their descendants. The king could still have chosen a deputy crown prince from the other remaining important branches, but he didn’t.

    Perhaps King Salman wanted his own son to have time to establish his power base without the patronage of older senior princes, most of whom had held senior positions in government as ministers or military commanders. 

    Royal prerogatives

    Over the last seven years, Mohammed bin Salman has been a solo crown prince. He effectively became the state, amassing tremendous power over every aspect of government and life in Saudi Arabia, from the military to entertainment.

    Mohammed bin Salman has been an absolute ruler, listening only to his close friends, foreign advisers, consultants and coterie. His domestic and foreign policies reflect his own desires, rather than consultation with a large group of senior and more experienced princes. A deputy crown prince would have been a nuisance, to say the least.

    In addition, the majority of eligible candidates for the positions of crown and deputy crown prince are still haunted by the memory of the Riyadh Ritz Carlton, which doubled as a detention center after Mohammed bin Salman launched a wide-ranging “anti-corruption” crackdown against powerful officials in 2017. He later released them after they paid billions of dollars to the state.

    As future king, Mohammed bin Salman will face the challenge of appointing an eligible crown prince and a deputy, both of whom must not challenge him or appear stronger than he is due to experience, age or aura. He will have to choose less powerful and more docile princes, so that they do not undermine his authority and single-mindedness.

    No doubt, Saudi society will be irrelevant to the process, as these decisions are strictly royal prerogatives. The future of the leadership is beyond a disenfranchised society that lacks pressure groups or civil organizations. Religious scholars, merchants and tribal groups will have no say in the matter; they will simply be summoned to the palace to pledge allegiance to whomever Mohammed bin Salman chooses.

    This is how a repressive absolute monarchy works. It does not consult – let alone share power – with its own royals, not to mention elites and notables.    

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 21:30

  • Russian Firms Adopt Stablecoins In Cross-Border Transactions With Chinese
    Russian Firms Adopt Stablecoins In Cross-Border Transactions With Chinese

    The stablecoin sector is gaining momentum after a new Bloomberg report revealed that Russian commodities firms have adopted fiat-pegged digital currencies to execute cross-border transactions with Chinese counterparts. 

    Russian commodities firms, trading anything from base metals to timber, have started using Tether Holdings Ltd.’s stablecoin to settle cross-border transactions with Chinese customers and suppliers. These settlements are being routed through Hong Kong. 

    The appeal of stablecoins comes as the US Treasury Department has unleashed endless rounds of sanctions on Chinese and Russian companies for various reasons, ranging from a trade war between Washington and Beijing to a hot war in Eastern Europe. 

    The increased utilization of stablecoins comes more than two years after Russia invaded Ukraine and highlights how Moscow has adapted to a changing economic environment where seven Russian banks were banned from the SWIFT messaging system. 

    The lasting effect of Western sanctions on Russia’s economy only makes stablecoins more useful, including for cross-border transactions. It also helps mitigate the risk of frozen overseas bank accounts—something the Russians found out after they invaded Ukraine. Even unsanctioned Russian companies have found stablecoins a safer alternative to the traditional Western banking system. 

    “With stablecoins, the transfer may take just 5-15 seconds and cost a few cents, making such transactions pretty efficient when the sender already has an asset base in stablecoins,” said Ivan Kozlov, co-founder of Resolve Labs. 

    Kozlov continued, “In countries that are facing dollar liquidity issues and capital controls, cross-border settlements through cryptocurrencies and, specifically, dollar-linked stablecoins, are a relatively common practice, and not only in commodities.” 

    The growing adoption of stablecoins in Russia’s global trade reveals that Western sanctions have failed to implode the Russian economy. There’s even been news of the Russian Central Bank experimenting with crypto payments for international transactions. 

    About a year ago, Rosbank, one of Russia’s major banks, launched a facility that enabled importers to settle transactions using crypto. Since then, additional banks have started offering similar services. 

    The stablecoin trend doesn’t end with Russia. Venezuela’s state-run oil company, PDVSA, has slowly moved oil sales to USDT after the US recently imposed sanctions on the country. 

    Even as these developments show cryptocurrencies have use cases, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Neel Kashkari, stated in April, “[Bitcoin has] no actual utility in the economy, other than being a nice toy that some people enjoy owning and trading.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 21:00

  • Boston On The Brink As Millennial Mayor Pushes Decriminalization
    Boston On The Brink As Millennial Mayor Pushes Decriminalization

    Boston’s 39-year-old Mayor, Michelle Wu, wants to follow in the footsteps of San Francisco, Philadelphia, Seattle, Denver, New York, and other liberal strongholds – where property crimes, including grand larceny and motor vehicle theft, have seen a sharp increase in recent years.

    Boston’s progressive Mayor Michelle Wu wants to decriminalize certain offenses

    As the Daily Mail reports, Wu wants to make crimes including shoplifting and disorderly conduct off-limits to prosecution. She also wants to include certain categories of breaking and entering, wanton and malicious property destruction, larceny under $250, and trespassing as non-prosecutable crimes. She did toss in drug possession – which is fine as long as crimes like disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace are enforced.

    Those who commit such wanton crimes would receive little more than a slap on the wrist.

    The offenses are all on a ‘do-not-prosecute’ list that was created by former Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins.

    Rollins, who later joined the Biden administration but resigned amid ethical violations, had advocated for the non-prosecution of more ‘low-level’ offenses. 

    During her 2021 campaign, Wu was asked by left-wing nonprofit Progressive Massachusetts whether she supports Rollins’ list, to which she responded “Yes.” When asked if she supported closing the Boston Police gang database, she also said yes. She also supports firing any Boston PD employees involved in the January 6th protest in Washington DC.

    Via the Daily Mail

    The Police gang database notably played a critical role in the federal bust of 40 individuals allegedly connected to a violent street gang which had operated for years out of a Boston housing project.

    Wu, the city’s first female and Asian American Mayor, has promised to reallocate police funds to other city priorities, and believes in ‘demilitarizing’ law enforcement by eliminating the use of tear gas, rubber bullets and police dogs. Further, Wu wants police records on use-of-force to be made public, which critics say could endanger officers’ safety.

    So, embolden criminals and de-fang cops. Right.

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

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

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 20:54

  • The Improvement Of Russian-Taliban Ties Opens Up New Opportunities For India
    The Improvement Of Russian-Taliban Ties Opens Up New Opportunities For India

    Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

    Russia is poised to strategically partner with the Taliban upon the impending removal of its domestic terrorist designation, which will in turn revolutionize bilateral relations with Afghanistan. Readers can learn more about each complementary aspect of this policy here and here. The present piece presupposes at least passing knowledge of what Russia aims to achieve and why, particularly the interconnected security and economic drivers behind these latest developments.

    In brief, Russia envisages building up the Taliban’s capabilities so that they then more adequately contain and hopefully defeat those ISIS-K terrorists that have established themselves in Afghanistan. Once the security situation is stabilized, transnational connective infrastructure projects from Russia to South Asia via Afghanistan can then finally begin to take shape. These include a gas pipeline, an overland oil export route facilitated by a planned Afghan hub, and a railway, the latter two of which can go hand-in-hand.

    These ambitious goals are expected to accelerate multipolarity processes upon their completion through the fulfillment of Russia’s related Ummah Pivot and Greater Eurasian Partnership concepts, the last two pieces of which are Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. Comprehensively expanding strategic ties with Afghanistan will in turn enable the symmetrical expansion of those with Pakistan if Islamabad has the political will, which remains to be seen though considering the expansion of US influence there.

    The way in which Russian-Pakistani relations evolve might also inadvertently stoke suspicions in India if they move too fast, some of whose experts and policymakers fear that Russia is increasingly beginning to fall under Chinese influence, which readers can learn more about here and here. The tangible consequences of exacerbating this perception could abruptly disrupt multipolarity processes if they empower India’s pro-US faction in the event that newly troubled ties with the US improve.

    The most effective way to preemptively counteract this scenario is for Russia to pioneer an Afghan development quartet between those two, India, Iran, and Uzbekistan aimed at fully incorporating that war-torn country into the North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC). This would build upon November 2022’s Russian-Indian-Iranian Troika on Afghanistan in the new conditions of Moscow recognizing the Taliban as that country’s official leaders and Russia turning Uzbekistan into a regional logistics hub.

    President Putin’s recent offer to help Uzbekistan reach more markets for growing its economy could take the form of incorporating it into this proposed quartet for optimizing all parties’ multilateral cooperation along the NSTC. While it appears inevitable that Afghanistan will one day facilitate Russian-Pakistani trade, even if it still takes some time for Islamabad to patch up its problems with Kabul and clinch associated pacts with Moscow, this could reassure India that its influence won’t be lost in that event.

    India worries that a Russian-brokered improvement in Taliban-Pakistani ties incentivized by the earlier mentioned connectivity projects could lead to a surge of regional Chinese influence upon the northern expansion of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) into Central Asia via Afghanistan. The only way to calm these concerns is for India to beat China to the chase by having the NSTC become the bedrock of Afghanistan’s reconstruction and future economic development before CPEC does.

    Considering the way in which Afghan society is organized, those trade opportunities that are opened up by the NSTC could lead to the informal creation of local patronage networks that would help India maintain its influence there amidst the possible surge of CPEC-driven Sino-Pak influence in the future. Getting ahead of the curve by cultivating loyal elites through sustainable economic means would go a long way towards assuaging India’s fears that the latest Russian-led processes are to China’s advantage.

    The enormous rupee stockpile that Russia accumulated in India over the past two years largely as a result of their unprecedented energy cooperation brought about by generous oil discounts, which spiked bilateral trade to a record $65 billion last year, could also be relied upon in pursuit of this end. These rupees could be invested in coordination with India into pioneering an Uzbek-Afghan-Iranian trade corridor that could incorporate the planned oil hub in Herat for further ramping up Russian-Indian trade.

    Streamlining this branch of the NSTC could unlock innumerably profitable opportunities for all stakeholders, especially Russia and India, not to mention accelerating the pace at which the suggested Afghan patronage networks could be created for preemptively counteracting Sino-Pak influence there. Through these means, India would be less likely to perceive the improvement of Russian-Afghan and eventually -Pakistani ties as benefiting their Chinese rival, thus discrediting that country’s pro-US faction.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 20:30

  • Israel Intercepts Cruise Missile Launched From Iraq
    Israel Intercepts Cruise Missile Launched From Iraq

    Israeli media is reporting on a dangerous escalation after the military announced it shot down an inbound projectile which came “from the east” – which is a phrase typically used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to describe attacks from Iraq.

    Time of Israel is describing “cruise missiles” fired from Iraq and shot down over northern Israel on Thursday. The inbound projectiles were initially thought to be drones. Other Israeli outlets pointed to a single cruise missile inbound over Israel and possibly accompanied by drones, however.

    There were no injuries, nor were there any claims of responsibility, but Israeli officials are eyeing the Iran-backed Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which is a coalition in Iraq associated with the country’s Popular Mobilization Forces.

    However, there was a statement about drones being sent. “Following the interceptions, the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq claimed to have launched drones towards Eilat,” Israel National News (Arutz Sheva) reported.

    “Earlier today, following sirens regarding a hostile aircraft infiltration in the Golan Heights area, the IDF intercepted a cruise missile that approached Israel from the east,” the IDF said.

    The IDF continued, “Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in the Eilat area, an IAF fighter jet, together with the IDF Aerial Defense Array, successfully intercepted two hostile aircraft that approached Israeli territory from the east, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said.”

    While Iran’s Shia paramilitary forces have been relatively quiet of late, especially compared to the opening months of the Gaza war when they sent drones and mortars regularly against US bases in the region, this could be a response to some of the recent Israeli attacks on Syria and southern Lebanon.

    Wednesday saw an Israeli airstrike hit deep inside Syria, in Baniyas city, though it’s unclear what the precise target was. Syrian government sources said a girl was killed and ten civilians wounded in the attack.

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

    Israeli sources have long claimed the IDF airstrikes in Syria are geared toward disrupting Iranian operations there, but Damascus says it is a brazen violation of Syria’s sovereignty.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 20:00

  • Toddler's 'Modern Art' Paintings Sell For Thousands
    Toddler’s ‘Modern Art’ Paintings Sell For Thousands

    Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

    Paintings by a 2-year-old boy from Germany are selling for up to $7000, with buyers comparing them to Picasso.

    The Times reports that Laurent Schwarz’s portraits of elephants, horses and dinosaurs “would not look out of place in modern art galleries in Munich or Berlin.”

    The boy’s mother uploaded some photos of the paintings to social media, and soon enough ‘collectors’ were bidding thousands of Euros for them at Munich’s biggest art fair, ART MUC.

    The report also notes that “A New York gallery has contacted the family offering to put Laurent’s work on display.”

    His mother states “They’re abstracts and what’s unusual is how he integrates discernible figures into them, which people often mention to us and which makes them so popular,”

    Yeah ok. Good lad, but they do just kinda look more like random paint slapping by a toddler:

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

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

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

    Do the people buying these paintings know that they are purchasing the dawbings of a child who cannot talk yet?

    This story is entirely plausible because much of so called ‘modern art’ frankly looks like it has been made by toddlers.

    As far as paintings by kindergarteners go, Laurent Schwarz’s are quite good. They’re nice and colourful and the boy’s parents say they are putting all the money made from them into a savings account for him.

    Fair enough.

    But there are fully grown ‘artists’ out there purposefully trying to paint and make ‘art’ like toddlers in an effort to cash in on this trend.

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

    Their  ‘work’ is even being slapped up in public and revered in a weird ritual of pretence that it isn’t completely fuck ugly.

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

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

    Such ‘works’ are only being revered by sections of society and bought for thousands because of the atrocities against art by adults that have been placed on a pedestal as somehow ‘deep and meaningful’ when in reality they have no meaning, sometimes literally:

    If you don’t engage in the charade, prepare to be cast out as ‘unsophisticated’:

    In many cases this stuff is just paint smeared on a canvas, or in some cases it is literally trash thrown on the floor.

    In some cases it’s trash thrown on the floor in an effort to ruin actual proper art:

    *  *  *

    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
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 19:30

  • Israel's Gantz Moves To Dissolve Knesset, Hold New Elections, In Anti-Netanyahu Drive
    Israel’s Gantz Moves To Dissolve Knesset, Hold New Elections, In Anti-Netanyahu Drive

    Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz is mounting a new challenge against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the coalition government, on Thursday announcing his centrist party is proposing holding a parliamentary vote on dissolving the Knesset.

    “The head of the National Union Party, Pnina Tamano-Shata, has put forward a bill to dissolve the 25th Knesset. This follows the request of party leader Minister Benny Gantz to move forward in broad agreement to an election before October, a year since the massacre,” the fresh statement from Gantz’s party said.

    Image: Flash90

    Gantz had already previously verbalized a plan to hold new elections by October, and two weeks ago he demanded in a provocative ultimatum that Netanyahu has until June 8 to present a clear strategic plan for the Gaza war.

    Below is the outline that Gantz previously articulated while lambasting the lack of a clear plan from Netanyahu:

    ”Bring our hostages home, topple the Hamas regime, strip the Gaza Strip, and ensure Israeli security control. Alongside maintaining Israeli security control, establish an American-European-Arab-Palestinian administration to civilly manage the Strip and lay the foundation for a future alternative to Hamas and Abbas, return the residents of the north to their homes by September 1, and rehabilitate the Western Negev, promote normalization with Saudi Arabia as part of an overall move that will create an alliance with the free world and the Arab world against Iran and adopt a service plan that will lead to all Israelis serving the state and contributing to the supreme national effort.”

    Gantz had continued in that prior statement: “The people of Israel are watching you. You must choose between Zionism and cynicism, between unity and division, between responsibility and neglect – and between victory and disaster.”

    Huge anti-Netanyahu protests have continued in Tel Aviv and in front of government buildings and even Netanyahu’s residence, and have been led by hostage victims’ families. They are outraged there’s been lack of clarity or prioritization of getting the rest of the hostages home, also as truce negotiations with Hamas have all but collapsed.

    It is anything but clear if Gantz has the votes to dissolve Knesset, but Netanyahu’s Likud party quickly shot back on Thursday with a terse statement: “The dissolution of the unity government is a reward for [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar, a capitulation to international pressure and a fatal blow to efforts to free our hostages.”

    But Gantz Tamano-Shata party reasoned that “The 7th of October is a disaster that requires us to go back in order to receive the public’s trust, to establish a broad and stable unity government that can lead us safely in the face of the enormous challenges in security, the economy and, above all, in Israeli society. Submitting the bill now will allow us to bring it up in the current session.”

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

    To review, Gantz joined Netanyahu’s government soon on the heels of the Oct.7 terror attack last year. “Gantz’s centrist bloc split up in March and his party does not on its own control enough seats in parliament to bring down the ruling coalition,” Reuters notes.

    Critics of Netanyahu say he will use his role as a wartime leader to hold onto power as long as possible. As it stands, and assuming no opposition-led intervention succeeds, there is no election scheduled before the final quarter of 2026.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 19:00

  • Lawsuit Seeks End To 'Lawless' Noncitizen Voting In Pennsylvania
    Lawsuit Seeks End To ‘Lawless’ Noncitizen Voting In Pennsylvania

    Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The conservative advocacy group America First Legal (AFL) filed a complaint with the Pennsylvania Department of State, seeking to end a directive that allows noncitizens to vote in state and federal elections.

    Illegal aliens from Cuba line up in Marathon, Fla., to board a bus to be driven to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection station on Jan. 5, 2023. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

    The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 requires that an individual applying to vote must mention a current and valid driver’s license and the last four digits of their Social Security number on the voter application form.

    HAVA mandates that local election officials confirm the numbers are valid and current by using available databases.

    “However, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania maintains a voter registration system that blatantly violates this federal law,” the May 21 complaint alleges.

    HAVA prohibits a state from accepting or processing a voter application registration that does not fulfill its identity proof provisions.

    In 2018, the Secretary of the Commonwealth issued a “HAVA Matching Directive” which states that a voter registration application “may not be rejected” solely based on the fact that an applicant’s driver’s license and Social Security number do not match any database.

    Under the directive, the Secretary of the Commonwealth asked “all 67 county boards of election to ignore HAVA’s verification mandate and to register any applicant” to vote even if the individual does not fulfill identification requirements.

    “This lawless directive does not just violate federal law; it creates a regime where an untold number of ineligible voters, including non-citizens, can register to vote in all state and federal elections in the Commonwealth,” the lawsuit said.

    In the HAVA directive, the Pennsylvania Department of State cited a previous case to argue that HAVA’s data comparison process was intended only for storing and managing the official list of registered voters. HAVA was not supposed to be used as “a restriction on voter eligibility,” it stated.

    The department asked counties to ensure their procedures “comply with state and federal law” while implementing the HAVA directive.

    This meant that if there are “no independent grounds” to reject a voter application other than a non-match of identification, the application cannot be rejected and should be “processed like all other applications.”

    AFL asked to repeal the HAVA Matching Directive and replace it with a regulation in compliance with HAVA.

    Gene Hamilton, America First Legal executive director, pointed out that Americans across the nation have “legitimate concerns” about the security of elections.

    And yet, he said, Pennsylvania adopted and maintained a voter registration process that “clearly and unambiguously violates basic federal law intended to provide a minimum baseline of security.”

    He called on the Secretary of State to abandon the “unlawful practice” and comply with the federal rules to ensure fraud doesn’t occur.

    The Pennsylvania State Department responded in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times: “All voters in Pennsylvania must be United States citizens in order to register to vote, and no directive or guidance from the Department says otherwise. Residents seeking to register to vote must prove their citizenship.”

    Noncitizen Voting Issue

    According to the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), foreign nationals registering to vote in U.S. election races is not uncommon.

    PILF data show that Pima County, Arizona, canceled 186 voter registrations due to citizenship issues between 2021 and 2023, with seven having voting histories.

    Similarly, 222 voter registrations in Maricopa County, Arizona, were canceled between 2015 and 2023 for similar issues, with nine people having a history of casting votes.

    “The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (Motor Voter) provides the most common pathway for foreign nationals to get registered to vote. The 24 states plus D.C. which automate Motor Voter, not giving the immigrant the chance to decline registration, exacerbate the problem,” PILF said.

    On May 8, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) introduced the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, or S.4292, which seeks to ensure that only American citizens take part in federal elections.

    The Act requires proof of citizenship during voter registration, outlining acceptable documentation to prove citizenship. States are required to set up alternative verification processes for citizens who do not have standard documents.

    The legislation also mandates that states purge noncitizens from their voter rolls. Penalties would be instituted for knowingly registering noncitizens as voters.

    Sen. Lee pointed out that illegal immigrants and other noncitizens are being improperly registered as voters, allowing them to cast votes in federal elections.

    This “foreign election interference” must be stopped, especially since trust in the voting process is now more important than ever, he said.

    “Voting is both a sacred right and responsibility of American citizenship, and allowing the people of other nations access to our elections is a grave blow to our security and self-governance.”

    Multiple left-leaning groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, American Humanist Association, Democracy Matters, National Action Network, and Stand Up America oppose the SAVE Act.

    In a May 16 letter to Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) and Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), members of the Committee on House Administration, the organizations called the SAVE Act a “dangerous departure” from ensuring that all Americans have the freedom to vote.

    Requiring documentation of American citizenship is aimed at “fear-mongering and divisive rhetoric,” they claimed.

    Voters in every state are already required to verify their citizenship status when registering to vote, they said. As such, the SAVE Act is “unnecessary and dangerous.” The purpose of the Act was to make voting “more difficult, particularly for voters of color.”

    A congressional hearing on noncitizen voting was held on May 16. Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.) said there was no proof of noncitizens voting in elections and that there should be a focus on “MAGA Republicans howling about this nonissue.”

    Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) pointed out that 100 noncitizens were recently identified in voter rolls in Ohio. He called for strict policies to ensure that only Americans vote in elections considering that 7 million illegal immigrants have entered the United States under the Biden administration.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 18:30

  • Iran's Khamenei Receives Assad, Hails Syria's Resistance To Regime Change Efforts
    Iran’s Khamenei Receives Assad, Hails Syria’s Resistance To Regime Change Efforts

    Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is in Tehran on Thursday for a rare state as part of a condolence message in the wake of the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash earlier this month.

    Assad met with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as well as the Islamic Republic’s acting President Mohammad Mokhber. Assad expressed condolences also for the death of Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and other officials who went down in the May 19th crash in a mountainous region near Azerbaijan.

    The trip also comes amid the backdrop of the Gaza war, as well as daily exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbolllah, also amid recent Israeli attacks on Syria. Ayatollah Khamenei hailed Syria as central to the ‘resistance’. He told the Syrian president “Syria’s special position in the region is distinguished because of this identity, and this important feature must be preserved.”

    Image source: Khamenei.ir

    “This identity has always contributed to the national unity of Syria,” he added, describing that Damascus’ resistance to Western hegemony was initially forged by Assad’s father, the late Hafez. Khamenei said, “everyone should see the special privilege of the Syrian government, that is, resistance, in front of their eyes.”

    According to more from state media, Iran’s Supreme Leader spoke on the last decade of Western-Gulf-Israeli efforts to overthrow the Syrian government: 

    Ayatollah Khamenei said the Westerners and their acolytes in the region tried to overthrow Syria’s political system and remove it from the regional equations through the war they waged against the country, but they did not succeed. 

    “Now they want to use other methods, including promises that they never fulfill, in order to take Syria out of the regional equations,” he added.

    Among these current methods includes sanctions that aim to starve and choke Syria and its population, as well as the ongoing US occupation of northeast Syria, where the country’s vital supplies of oil and gas are located. Officials in Baghdad, Tehran, Damascus, and Moscow have long charged Washington with plundering Syria’s natural resources.

    Though not religiously aligned (Iran is a Shia religious state while Syria has a largely Baathist secular identity), Damascus and Tehran have since 2011 forged deeper ties. That’s when Western and Gulf states began pouring massive supplies of weaponry and money into jihadist rebel forces in a large-scale covert campaign to topple Assad.

    Out of the West-backed insurgency came ISIS, Syrian al-Qaeda, and an array of Sunni terrorist groups. Israel also covertly supported this Sunni terror insurgency aimed at rolling back ‘Iranian influence’ and the so-called ‘Shia axis’.

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

    In response, Iran deepened its military presence throughout Syria at the invitation of the Assad government. In 2015, Russia also intervened as an ally of the Syrian government, and at its request. This is part of the ‘resistance’ that Iran’s leaders speak of, which also includes Lebanese Hezbollah.

    Without Syria, Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah pushing back against Western/Gulf regime change efforts, there’s a big likelihood that an al-Qaeda aligned entity would be in control of Damascus today. It might be an uncomfortable truth for many, but it is a historical fact nonetheless. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 18:00

  • Our Revolutionary Times: VDH
    Our Revolutionary Times: VDH

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

    Sometimes unexpected but dramatic events tear off the thin veneer of respectability and convention. What follows is the exposure and repudiation of long-existing but previously covered-up pathologies.

    Events like the destruction of the southern border over the last three years, the October 7 massacre and ensuing Gaza war, the campus protests, the COVID-19 epidemic and lockdown, and the systematic efforts to weaponize our bureaucracies and courts have all led to radical reappraisals of American culture and civilization.

    Since the 1960s, universities have always been hotbeds of left-wing protests, sometimes violently so.

    But the post-October 7 campus eruptions marked a watershed difference.

    Masked left-wing protestors were unashamedly and virulently anti-Semitic. Students on elite campuses especially showed contempt for both middle-class police officers tasked with preventing their violence and vandalism and the maintenance workers who had to clean up their garbage.

    Mobs took over buildings, assaulted Jewish students, called for the destruction of Israel, and defaced American monuments and commentaries.

    When pressed by journalists to explain their protests, most students knew nothing of the politics or geography of Palestine, for which they were protesting.

    The public concluded that the more elite the campus, the more ignorant, arrogant, and hateful the students seemed.

    The Biden administration destroyed the southern border. Ten million illegal aliens swarmed into the U.S. without audit. Almost daily, news accounts detail violent acts committed by illegal aliens or their surreal demands for more free lodging and support.

    Simultaneously, thousands of Middle Eastern students, invited by universities on student visas, block traffic, occupy bridges, disrupt graduations, and generally show contempt for the laws of their American hosts.

    The net result is that Americans are reappraising their entire attitude toward immigration. Expect the border to be closed soon and immigration to become mostly meritocratic, smaller, and legal, with zero tolerance for immigrants and resident visitors who break the laws of their hosts.

    Americans are also reappraising their attitudes toward time-honored bureaucracies, the courts, and government agencies.

    The public still cannot digest the truth that the once respected FBI partnered with social media to suppress news stories, to surveil parents at school board meetings, and to conduct performance art swat raids on the homes of supposed political opponents.

    After the attempts of the Department of Justice to go easy on the miscreant Hunter Biden but to hound ex-president Donald Trump for supposedly removing files illegally in the same fashion as current President Biden, the public lost confidence not just in Attorney General Merrick Garland but in American jurisprudence itself.

    The shenanigans of prosecutors like Fani Willis, Letitia James, and Alvin Bragg, along with overtly biased judges like Juan Merchant and Arthur Engoron, only reinforced the reality that the American legal system has descended into third-world-like tit-for-tat vendettas.

    The same politicization has nearly discredited the Pentagon. Its investigations of “white” rage and white supremacy found no such organized cabals in the ranks. But these unicorn hunts likely helped cause a 45,000-recruitment shortfall among precisely the demographic that died at twice their numbers in the general population in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Add in the humiliating flight from Kabul, the abandonment of $50 billion in weapons to the Taliban terrorists, the recent embarrassment of the failed Gaza pier, and the litany of political invective from retired generals and admirals. The result is that the armed forces have an enormous task to restore public faith. They will have to return to meritocracy and emphasize battle efficacy, enforce the uniform code of military justice, and start either winning wars or avoiding those that cannot be won.

    Finally, we are witnessing a radical inversion in our two political parties.

    The old populist Democratic Party that championed lunch-bucket workers has turned into a shrill union of the very rich and subsidized poor. Its support of open borders, illegal immigration, the war on fossil fuels, transgenderism, critical legal and race theories, and the woke agenda are causing the party to lose support.

    The Republican Party is likewise rebranding itself from a once-stereotyped brand of aristocratic and corporate grandees to one anchored in the middle class.

    Even more radically, the new populist Republicans are beginning to appeal to voters on shared class and cultural concerns rather than on racial and tribal interests.

    The results of all these revolutions will shake up the U.S. for decades to come.

    Soon we may see a Georgia Tech or Purdue degree as far better proof of an educated and civic-minded citizen than a Harvard or Stanford brand.

    We will likely jettison the failed salad bowl approach to immigration and return to the melting pot as immigration becomes exclusively legal, meritocratic, and manageable.

    To avoid further loss of public confidence, institutions like the FBI, the CIA, the Pentagon, and the DOJ will have to re-earn rather than just assume the public’s confidence.

    And we may soon accept the reality that Democrats reflect the values of Silicon Valley plutocrats, university presidents, and blue-city mayors, while Republicans become the home of an ecumenical black, Hispanic, Asian, and white middle class.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 17:40

  • New Louisiana Law Makes It Illegal To Approach A Police Officer Engaged In Executing Their Duties
    New Louisiana Law Makes It Illegal To Approach A Police Officer Engaged In Executing Their Duties

    A new law in Louisiana makes it illegal to approach a police officer within 25 feet in certain situations, ostensibly the state’s way of keeping officers executing their duties free from swarms of woke camera-wielding liberals offering up their scholarly legal takes in the midst of official business. 

    Critics argue that the new law, criminalizing approaching a police officer within 25 feet under certain conditions could restrict the public’s ability to film police, a key method for ensuring accountability.

    The law, which takes effect on August 1, imposes penalties of up to $500 and/or 60 days in jail for those convicted of knowingly or intentionally nearing an officer after being told to stop. Although the law does not explicitly mention filming, opponents contend it could interfere with observational rights and potentially violate First Amendment freedoms.

    Those advocating for the law say it would “create a buffer-zone to help ensure the safety of officers and that bystanders would still be close enough to film police interactions,” according to AP.

    AP notes that cellphone videos by bystanders, notably in cases like George Floyd’s 2020 death, have been pivotal in highlighting police misconduct and prompting discussions on police transparency.

    Similar legislative efforts to restrict filming distances have been seen, such as a 2022 Arizona law that tried to ban filming police within 8 feet upon request, which was blocked by a federal judge as unconstitutional after challenges from media groups and the ACLU. This ruling underscored the established right to film police in action.

    The author of the measure, State Rep. Bryan Fontenot, said: “At 25 feet, that person can’t spit in my face when I’m making an arrest. The chances of him hitting me in the back of the head with a beer bottle at 25 feet — it sure is a lot more difficult than if he’s sitting right here.”

    Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, has spoken out against the law: “Each of us has a constitutional right to freely observe public servants as they function in public and within the course and scope of their official duties.”

    He added: “Observations of law enforcement, whether by witnesses to an incident with officers, individuals interacting with officers, or members of the press, are invaluable in promoting transparency.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 17:20

  • Assembly Passes Measure Allowing Illegal Immigrant Students To Work At California Colleges And Universities
    Assembly Passes Measure Allowing Illegal Immigrant Students To Work At California Colleges And Universities

    Authored by Sophie Li via The Epoch Times,

    A bill that would allow students who are illegal immigrants to work at California colleges and universities passed the state Assembly on May 22.

    Currently, students must obtain a work permit to hold jobs on campus. That would change under Assembly Bill 2586, introduced by Assemblyman David Alvarez of San Diego.

    “America has always promised that if you work hard, you will have the opportunity to succeed,” the lawmaker said May 24 in a statement.

    “Creating these pathways to secure employment is essential.”

    The bill passed on a vote of 59-4.

    Under the bill, schools cannot disqualify a student from employment for failing to provide proof of a federal work authorization unless it is required specifically for a position by federal law or as a condition of a grant funding the position.

    If the bill were to become law, the University of California (UC), California State University (CSU), and California Community College (CCC) systems would not enforce the federal ban on hiring illegal immigrants.

    The legislation is based on the premise that California’s public colleges and universities should be exempt from the 1986 federal Immigration Reform and Control Act, which prevents employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.

    When Congress passed the act, it “did not curtail states’ historic power to determine the employment qualifications of state employees. As a result, [the act’s] prohibition on hiring undocumented persons does not bind state government entities,” UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy wrote in a 2022 memorandum it published.

    If passed, the three systems will begin implementing the change by Jan. 6, 2025.

    An analysis of the bill cited the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey from 2023 estimating that California has the most illegal immigrant college students in the nation, with around 83,000 across its higher education systems.

    “These students have fulfilled their obligation and are ready to be our future teachers, scientists, doctors, and public servants,” Mr. Alvarez, the assembly member, said.

    While the UC did not take a stance on the bill, President Michael Drake issued a statement in January declaring it not feasible for several reasons.

    According to Mr. Drake, employees might face criminal or civil prosecution for knowingly engaging in practices prohibited by federal law, and the UC could incur civil fines, criminal penalties, or be barred from federal contracting for violating the immigration reform act. It could also lose billions of dollars in federal contracts and grants contingent on compliance.

    “We have concluded that the proposed legal pathway is not viable at this time, and in fact carries significant risk for the institution and for those we serve,” the president said.

    The bill is currently awaiting assignment to a committee in the state Senate.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 17:00

  • Watch: Trump Responds After NY Guilty Verdict
    Watch: Trump Responds After NY Guilty Verdict

    Update (1710ET): Former President Donald Trump has been found guilty on all 34 counts in his New York ‘hush money’ trial. The outcome makes him the first former president to become a convicted felon.

    Trump reportedly stared ahead motionless as the verdict was read.

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

    The trial centered on allegations that Trump falsified business records in order to conceal a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 US election. Prosecutors under Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg argued that Trump oversaw a scheme to influence the 2016 election by using Trump Organization records to conceal the payments.

    “Everything Mr. Trump and his cohorts did in this case is cloaked in lies,” said prosecutor Joshua Steinglass. “The evidence is literally overwhelming.”

    Trump Responds

    “This is a rigged, disgraceful trial,” Trump said in response, adding “The real verdict will be on November 5.”

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

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

    Judge Juan Merchan will now decide Trump’s sentence on July 11 – days before Republicans are set to select him as the 2024 nominee. The crime has a maximum sentence of four years in prison. That said, Merchan could also opt for home confinement, probation, supervised release, fines or community service.

    Biden Campaign Responds

    “In New York today, we saw that no one is above the law,” reads a statement.

    “Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain. But today’s verdict does not change the fact that American people face a simple reality. There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president.”

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

    Trump is certain to appeal the verdict, which could take months or even years – however Democrats now have their ‘Felon Trump’ talking point which they think will help Joe Biden come November. 

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

    As ‘Techno Fog’ of The Reactionary notes, 

    The target might have been Trump, but the real goal was to influence the 2024 election, no matter the shaky facts and dubious legal theories of the case. Democracy must be saved even through unlawful and unethical means. The enemies of society must be hunted, the obstacles to progress must be destroyed.

    As the years-long Trump investigation and prosecution continued, and as New Yorkers continue to deal with rampant crime and theft and felony assaults – which they often don’t even report due to “the revolving-door criminal injustice system” – Trump was pursued with rare intensity. The bodega shopkeepers, facing a shoplifting and armed robbery epidemic which empties their shelves and puts their lives at risk, are besides themselves. As are normal citizens whose safety is at risk daily. If only their interests were political. If only the perpetrator were the Republican presidential frontrunner and not a career criminal then perhaps they would see justice.

    In trial, venue matters. It’s strategic, it’s the selection of a favorable judge and jury. Monsanto is sued in San Fransisco and the jury pours them out for $289 million. Cook County (Illinois) is notorious for high jury verdicts. So too is Philadelphia and Lansing, Michigan. Corporate defendants tremble in fear at being sued in working class cities along the Gulf coast. Texas brings suit against the Biden Administration in the Southern District of Texas – Galveston Division because the one federal district judge there (a Trump appointee) will not hesitate to stop unlawful acts or policies. Hawaii brought suit in Honolulu against the Trump Administration and obtained a temporary restraining order against Trump’s travel ban from an Obama-appointed judge. He was reversed by the Supreme Court, but that process took over a year.

    And as ‘End Wokeness’ notes, there’s no turning back from the new precedent which has just been set by Democrats.

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

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

    Meanwhile, WinRed, the Republican donation platform, is currently overwhelmed.

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

    The 77-year-old Trump still faces criminal trials in Washington and Georgia over alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as well as one in Florida pertaining to his handling of classified national security documents taken from the White House.

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

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

    *  *  *

    The jury empaneled in the NY v. Trump case said it has reached a verdict.

    The 12-person jury – which has requested 30 minutes to fill out the paperwork  – will soon enter the courtroom and announce what it has decided. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged former President Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, and Trump pleaded not guilty to all counts.

    Judge Juan Merchan will invite the jury in to read its verdict.

    Prior to receiving the jury’s note around 4:20 p.m., Merchan had indicated he would excuse the jury for the day at 4:30 as a growing number expected a mistrial due to a hung jury however the presence of a verdict means that we will shortly know if the jury has found Trump “guilty” or “not guilty.”

    Prosecutors needed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump falsified business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, a pornographic performer, in the lead-up to the 2016 election to silence her about an alleged affair with Trump in 2006.

    Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney, was the prosecution’s “star witness.”He testified that he personally made the $130,000 payment to Daniels using a home equity line of credit in an effort to conceal the payment from his wife.

    Cohen said he did this because Trump told him to “handle it” and prevent a negative story from coming out ahead of the election.But Trump’s defense attorneys maintained that the president never directed Cohen to do so.

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

     

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/30/2024 – 16:47

Digest powered by RSS Digest