Sep 01

Today’s News 1st September 2023

  • German Museum Denies White People Entry To Colonial Exhibit On Saturdays, Only BIPoC Allowed Inside
    German Museum Denies White People Entry To Colonial Exhibit On Saturdays, Only BIPoC Allowed Inside

    Authored by John Cody via ReMix News,

    A German museum of industrial heritage in Dortmund only allows “Black, Indigenous and People of Color” to enter the museum on Saturdays between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. for the “That’s Colonial” exhibition, with the prohibition sparking claims of racism.

    The Zollern Colliery museum argues it is a “safer space” intended to protect people of color from “further discrimination.”

    The exclusive access is “an offer for BIPoC and black people to be able to withdraw and exchange ideas openly,” reads the museum’s website. “For BIPoC, such safe spaces are rarely found in everyday life or in museum rooms.”

    The exhibit partly focuses on racial grievances, with the introduction to the exhibition on the website writing: “The morning cup of coffee, a street name or certain prejudices: Colonial history is still present in our everyday lives – even in Westphalia.”

    A small team belonging to Antenne Frei radio station filmed themselves trying to enter the museum, but were blocked because they are White people.

    The employees struggled to explain why their prohibition was not racism when confronted by a host from the radio station.

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    “If there’s a People of Color in there now, and he says I don’t want that White guy in here, then you must go out,” said a male employee. The host then asked, “Because we have the wrong skin color?”

    The employee responded: “I can’t explain that. I can’t explain that.” When he was told that he should know because he works there, he repeated that he could not explain how or why the rule was in place.

    “But that’s racism,” responded the radio host.

    Inside the museum building, the radio host said: “If we turn it around now and say Blacks are not allowed in, can you imagine what an impression that would make? Now, it’s the case that the Whites can’t go in…”

    A female employee responded: “There’s nothing to say.” The host then said, “You don’t want to say anything,” to which she responded, “I don’t want to.”

    He then stated he wanted his entry fee back since he did not find the policy appropriate, and the female employee agreed.

    The Zollern Colliery museum is one of the LWL museums, which are funded by taxpayers. The official website states: “The LWL museums bring together the history of the Westphalia-Lippe region in the areas of industry, handicrafts, technology, art, natural history, archaeology, monastic and everyday culture. They take on current topics and present attractive and lively exhibitions for people of all generations.”

    Similar anti-White policies are spreading throughout the West. For example, a Black artist collective in Switzerland occupied a theater last year and demanded a non-White theater space, arguing that “there is no racism against Whites.” The group managed to collect hundreds of thousands of francs from the Swiss government despite openly discriminating against Whites.

    Many Whites across the West are growing increasingly concerned, and despite claims that racism against Whites does not exist, polling shows that 80 percent of French say that anti-White racism exists.

    In that country, a “Blacks only” Christmas market caused widespread controversy in 2021.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 09/01/2023 – 02:00

  • Escobar: NATOstan Robots Versus The Heavenly Horses Of Multipolarity
    Escobar: NATOstan Robots Versus The Heavenly Horses Of Multipolarity

    Authored by Pepe Escobar,

    The entire West is waiting at the room at the station with black curtains – and no trains.

    We will all need plenty of time and introspection to analyze the full range of game-changing vectors unleashed by the unveiling of BRICS 11 last week in South Africa.

    Yet time waits for no one. The Empire will (italics mine) strike back in full force; in fact its multi-hydra Hybrid War tentacles are already on display.

    Here and here I have attempted two rough drafts of History on the birth of BRICS 11. Essentially, what the Russia-China strategic partnership is accomplishing, one (giant) step at a time, is also multi-vectorial:

    – expanding BRICS into an alliance to fight against U.S. non-diplomacy.

    – counter-acting the sanctions dementia.

    – promoting alternatives to SWIFT.

    – promoting autonomy, self-reliance and instances of sovereignty.

    – and in the near future, integrating BRICS 11 (and counting) with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to counter imperial military threats, something already alluded to by President Lukashenko, the inventor of the precious neologism “Global Globe”.

    In contrast, the indispensable Michael Hudson has constantly shown how the U.S. and EU’s “strategic error of self-isolation from the rest of the world is so massive, so total, that its effects are the equivalent of a world war.”

    Thus Prof. Hudson’s contention that the proxy war in Ukraine – not only against Russia but also against Europe – “may be thought of as World War III.”

    In several ways, Prof. Hudson details, we are living “an outgrowth of World War II, whose aftermath saw the United States establish international economic and political organization under its own control to operate in its own national self-interest: the International Monetary Fund to impose U.S. financial control and dollarize the world economy; the World Bank to lend governments money to bear the infrastructure costs of creating trade dependency on U.S. food and manufactures; promoting plantation agriculture, U.S./NATO control of oil, mining and natural resources; and United Nations agencies under U.S. control, with veto power in all international organizations that it created or joined.”

    Now it’s another ball game entirely when it comes to Global South, or Global Majority, of “Global Globe” real emancipation. Just take Moscow hosting the Russia-Africa summit in late July, then Beijing, with Xi in person, spending a day last week in Johannesburg with dozens of African leaders, all of them part of the new Non-Aligned Movement (NAM): the G77 (actually 134 nations), presided by a Cuban, President Diaz-Canel.

    That’s the Russia-China Double Helix in effect – offering large swathes of the “Global Globe” security and high-tech infrastructure (Russia) and finance, manufactured exports and road and rail infrastructure (China).

    In this context, a BRICS currency is not necessary. Prof. Hudson crucially quotes President Putin: what’s needed is a “means of settlement” for Central Banks for their balance of payments, to keep in check imbalances in trade and investment. That has nothing to do with a BRICS gold-backed supra-national currency.

    Moreover, there will be no need for a new reserve currency as increasingly more nations will be ditching the U.S. dollar in their settlements.

    Putin has referred to a “temporary” accounting unit – as intra-BRICS 11 trade will be inevitably expanding in their national currencies. All that will develop in the context of an increasingly overwhelming alliance of major oil, gas, minerals, agriculture and commodities producers: a real (italics mine) economy capable of supporting a new global order progressively pushing Western dominance into oblivion.

    Call it the soft way to euthanize Hegemony.

    All aboard the “malign China” narrative

    Now compare all of the above with that piece of Norwegian wood posing as NATO secretary-general telling the CIA mouthpiece paper in Washington, in a unique moment of frankness, that the Ukraine War “didn’t start in 2022. The war started in 2014”.

    So here we have a designated imperial vassal plainly admitting that the whole thing started with Maidan, the U.S.-engineered coup supervised by cookie distributor Vicky “F**k the E” Nuland. This means that NATO’s claim of a Russia “invasion”, referring to the Special Military Operation (SMO) is absolutely bogus from a legal standpoint.

    It’s firmly established that the spin doctors/ paid propagandist “experts” of Atlanticist idiocracy, practicing an unrivalled mix of arrogance/ignorance, believe they can get away with anything when it comes to demonizing Russia. The same applies to their new narrative on “malign China”.

    Chinese scholars which I have the honor to interact with are always delighted to point out that imperial pop narratives and predictive programming are absolutely useless when it comes to confronting Zhong Hua (“The Splendid Central Civilization”).

    That’s because China, as one of them describes it, is endowed with a “clear-minded, purposeful and relentless aristocratic oligarchy at the helm of the Chinese State”, using tools of power that guarantee, among other issues, public safety and hygiene for all; education focused on learning useful information and skills, not indoctrination; a monetary system under control; physical assets and the industrial capacity to make real stuff; first-class diplomatic, supply chain, techno-scientific, economic, cultural, commercial, geostrategic and financial networks; and first-class physical infrastructure.

    And yet, since at least 1990, Western mainstream media is obsessed to dictate that China’s economic collapse, or “hard landing”, is imminent.

    Nonsense. As another Chinese scholar frames it, “China’s strategy has been to let sleeping dogs lie and let lying machines lie. Meanwhile, let China surpass them in their sleep and cause the Empire’s demise.”

    Poisons, viruses, microchips

    And that bring us full circle back to the New Great Game: NATOstan versus the Multipolar World. No matter the evidence provided by graphic reality, NATOstan in advanced seppuku mode – especially the European sector – actually believes it will win the war against Russia-China.

    As for the Global South/Global Majority/”Global Globe”, they are regarded as enemies. So their mostly poor populations should be poisoned with famine, experimental injections, new modified viruses, implanted microchips as in BCI (Brain Computer Interface) and soon NATO As Global Robocop “security” outfits.

    The coming of BRICS 11 is already unleashing a new imperial wave of deadly poisoning, brand new viruses and cyborgs.

    The imperial master issued the order to “save” the Japanese seafood industry – a few scraps as quid pro quod for Tokyo acting as a rabid dog in the imperial Chip War against China, and dutifully pledging alliance at the recent Camp David summit side by side with the South Korean vassals.

    The EU vassals, in synch, lifted Japan food import rules just as Fukushima nuclear wastewater was to be pumped into the ocean. That’s yet another instance of the EU continuing to dig its own grave – as Japan is set to suffer a Typhoon Number Ten type of blowback.

    Radiation spread across the world through the Pacific will breed endless cancer patients around the world and simultaneously destroy the economy of several small island nations relying heavily on tourism.

    In parallel, Sergey Glazyev, Minister of Macroeconomics at the Eurasian Economic Commission, part of the EAEU, has been among the very few warning about the new trans-humanist frontier: the Nanotechnology Injection craze ahead – something quite well documented in scientific journals.

    Quoting Dr. Steve Hotze, Glazyev in one of his Telegram posts explained what DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has been doing, “injecting nanobots in the form of graphene oxide and hydrogel” into the human body, thus creating an interface between nanobots and brain cells. We become “a receptor, receiver and transmitter of signals. The brain will receive signals from the outside, and you can be manipulated remotely.”

    Glazyev also refers to the by now frantic promotion of “Eris”, a new Covid variety, named by the WHO after the Greek goddess of discord and enmity, daughter of the goddess of night, Nykta.

    Those familiar with Greek mythology will know that Eris was quite angry because she was not invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. Her vengeance was to plant at the feast a golden apple from the gardens of Hesperides with the inscription “Most Beautiful”: that was the legendary “apple of discord”, which generated the Mother of All Catfights between Hera, Athena and Aphrodite. And that eventually led to no less than the Trojan War.

    In the White Room, with black curtains

    It’s oh so predictable, coming from those “elites” running the show, to name a new virus as a harbinger of war. After all, The Next War is badly needed because Project Ukraine turned out to be a massive strategic failure, with the cosmic humiliation of NATO just around the corner.

    During the Vietnam War – which the empire lost to a peasant guerrilla army – the daily briefing at the command HQ in Saigon was derided by every journalist with an IQ above room temperature as the “Saigon follies”.

    Saigon would never compare with the tsunami of daily follies offered on the proxy war in Ukraine by a tawdry moveable feast at the White House, State Dept., Pentagon, NATO HQ, the Brussels Kafkaesque machine and other Western environs. The difference is that those posing as “journalists” today are cognitively incapable of understanding these are “follies” – and even if they did, they would be prevented from reporting them.

    So that’s where the collective West is at the moment: in a White Room, a simulacrum of Plato’s cave depicted in Cream’s 1968 masterpiece, partly inspired by William Blake, invoking pale “silver horses” and exhausted “yellow tigers”.

    The entire West is waiting at the room at the station with black curtains – and no trains. They will “sleep in this place with the lonely crowd” and “lie in the dark where the shadows run from themselves”.

    Outside in the cold, long distance, under the sunlight, away from the moving shadows, across roads made of silk and iron, the Heavenly Horses (Tianma) of the multipolar world gallop gallantly from network to network, from Belt and Road to Eurasia and Afro-Eurasia Bridge, from intuition to integration, from emancipation to sovereignty.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 09/01/2023 – 00:00

  • Jordan Launches Rare Airstrike On Alleged Syrian Captagon Factory
    Jordan Launches Rare Airstrike On Alleged Syrian Captagon Factory

    Previously we described how what’s been dubbed “poor man’s cocaine” at as little as $3 a pill is threatening to proliferate across the Middle East and into Europe. The synthetic stimulant Captagon has been popular for years in parts of the Middle East and North Africa, and was big during ‘Arab Spring’ protests, but mainstream media of late has blamed the Assad government and allied militias for its now rapid spread.

    Gulf countries and allies have especially stepped up the pressure on Damascus of late, accusing it of being behind state-backed trafficking which also allegedly involves Lebanese Hezbollah. On Thursday, Jordan appears to have taken the most drastic move yet to tap down on the Captagon trade, sending its air force to bomb an alleged drug factory in southern Syria, in a rare cross-border raid.

    Image via Al Monitor

    The large strike was in the village of Um Rumman, and no casualties were reported, with The Associated Press citing anti-Assad opposition activists to say a Captagon production plant was destroyed.

    Syrian state media said that only a farm was blown up, thus denying the allegation it was a drug factory, while others said “the target was also used as a narcotics warehouse where smugglers would prepare and package illegal drugs before smuggling them across the southern border into Jordan.”

    The village near where the strike to place is just near the Jordanian border. Apparently drug smugglers have frequently used the area for their drug trade logistics operations.

    The Jordanians have seen the southern Syrian region of Sweida as a big problem, particularly ever since the Assad government put down the decade-long rebellion which put the country in the grips of war and instability, as the AP details of a prior incident:

    In May, an airstrike over a village in the southern Sweida province killed a well-known Syrian drug kingpin and his family, which activists believe was conducted by the Jordanians. Amman has been concerned by militias’ drug smuggling across the Syrian border into the kingdom, most notably highly addictive Captagon amphetamines, which have turned into an estimated multi-billion-dollar industry in war-torn Syria.

    Saudi Arabia and Gulf nations have reportedly been urging President Assad to stem the flow of Captagon from Syria as part of restored diplomatic ties, also at a moment Damascus has been re-embraced by the Arab League. 

    The drug was produced in the 1960s in the Germany, and in its medical form typically treats ailments like attention deficit disorders and narcolepsy. 

    It is certainly ironic and dubious that the West now widely blames the Assad government for the proliferation of Captagon, given that for much of the last decade it was anti-government insurgents known to be the heaviest users. At one point the pill even became known as “the drug of jihad”.

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    Reuters has previously detailed, “It was discontinued but an illicit version of the drug continued to be produced in eastern Europe and later in the Arab region, becoming prominent in the conflict that erupted in Syria following anti-government protests in 2011.”

    The same report noted its prominence on the anti-Assad or “rebel” side. “The illicit version – also nicknamed ‘the drug of jihad’ or ‘poor man’s cocaine’ – is thought to be made of a mix of fenethylline, caffeine and other fillers. It generates focus and staves off sleep and hunger,” Reuters wrote. But now blame and pressure has been ramped up on the Syrians, as well as ‘pro-Iranian’ groups including Hezbollah.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/31/2023 – 23:20

  • Sen. Johnson Claims CDC 'Abused Authority,' Engaged In 'Censorship Campaign' Of COVID-19 Vaccine Posts
    Sen. Johnson Claims CDC ‘Abused Authority,’ Engaged In ‘Censorship Campaign’ Of COVID-19 Vaccine Posts

    Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of working with Big Tech to censor his social media posts about COVID-19 vaccines.

    Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) speaks during an interview for “American Thought Leaders” in Washington on May 15, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    In an Aug. 28 letter to CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen, the Republican lawmaker said he is continuing to review the health agency’s alleged efforts to “coordinate with social media companies to censor COVID-19 vaccine information.”

    Mr. Johnson stated that, based on information he has allegedly received from Elon Musk’s X Corp., along with documents made public through the discovery process of state-led lawsuits against the Biden administration, “it is clear that CDC abused its authority by engaging in a censorship campaign to suppress and discredit certain viewpoints it labeled as ‘misinformation.'”

    The Wisconsin senator, who has been a vocal advocate for people who claim to have been injured by COVID-19 vaccines, went on to cite the censorship of his own Jan. 3, 2022 post on X, formerly known as Twitter, in which he highlighted data from the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Reporting System (VAERS) database.

    In that post, Mr. Johnson wrote: “Sadly, we passed two milestones on VAERS. Over 1 million advisers events and over 21,000 deaths, 30 percent of those deaths occurred on day 0, 1, or 2 following vaccination.

    “When will federal agencies start being transparent with Americans? Why do they continue to ignore early treatment?” he concluded.

    The post, which included a screenshot of the data from VAERS, was labeled “misleading” in a note explaining that health officials consider COVID-19 vaccines to be “safe for most people.”

    According to Mr. Johnson, who is the ranking member on the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, all replies, shares, or likes of the post were subsequently blocked.

    The lawmaker claims he later questioned officials at Twitter—prior to Mr. Musk’s takeover—as to why his post had been labeled “misleading” but received no response.

    He was later told by the platform’s new leadership that executive branch officials, particularly from the CDC, “communicated with social media companies, including Twitter, about ‘COVID vaccine misinformation.'”

    National Jewish Health registered nurse Emily Cole holds out a dose of the pediatric COVID-19 vaccine in Denver, Colorado, on Nov. 3, 2021. (Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)

    Sen. Johnson Demands Answers

    “The information Twitter provided showed a clear and concerted effort by the CDC to censor those who tweeted about VAERS data,” Mr. Johnson wrote.

    Concluding his letter, the senator asked the CDC to hand over documents and information detailing interactions between all its employees and those at X—as well as other social media platforms including Facebook, and YouTube—regarding 10 specific people who expressed skepticism over the vaccines and lockdowns, starting Dec. 1, 2019.

    The 10 individuals include Brianne Dressen, a former preschool teacher in Utah who was left severely injured after participating in AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine clinical in November 2020, renowned Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis, Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., critical care physician Pierre Kory, Alabama-based Army surgeon Lt. Col. Theresa Long, Robert Malone, cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough, professor of epidemiology Dr. Harvey Risch, and Aaron Siri, an attorney who has led multiple high-profile cases against vaccine manufacturers and federal health agencies since the pandemic began.

    Mr. Johnson also asked that the CDC hand over any communications regarding him.

    Additionally, the lawmaker requested all documents pertaining to CDC communications with both private sector companies and federal agencies regarding the censorship of online speech or COVID-19 misinformation policies, and a list of all the social media posts that were flagged by the CDC as “containing misinformation, disinformation, or generally disfavored speech.”

    He gave the CDC until Sept. 11 to hand over the documents.

    The Epoch Times has contacted the CDC for comment.

    Earlier this month, Mr. Johnson raised concerns over the “alarming” decision by a small number of firms, hospitals, and schools to reinstate mask mandates again amid reports of several new COVID-19 variants, including one that the CDC believes could potentially evade vaccines.

    Also this month, the senator urged the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general to launch an investigation into whether or not government scientists concealed critical information about COVID-19 from the public.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/31/2023 – 23:00

  • Indeed Out-Wokes Corporate America With $10,000 Relocation Checks For Trans Employees
    Indeed Out-Wokes Corporate America With $10,000 Relocation Checks For Trans Employees

    Austin-based online job search platform, “Indeed,” aims to ‘out woke’ corporate America by offering transgender employees or those with transgender children a $10,000 relocation payment. Both Bloomberg and Axios confirmed the relocation payment program. 

    Before we discuss relocation payments, it’s important to note that Indeed proudly states on its website that it had the wokest corporate policies in America in 2018. It said its 2018 Corporate Equality Index (CEI), a national benchmarking survey and report on corporate policies and practices related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) workplace equality, score “received a perfect score of 100 percent.” 

    For some context, CEI is administered by the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ+ political lobbying group in the world. HRC has received millions of dollars in funding from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.

    Indeed’s executives appear to have one objective in mind: rank the highest on the CEI index this year (we all remember earlier this year what happened to Bud Light when they tried that on TikTok). One way execs are attempting to achieve a high score is to offer a relocation program to trans workers, cutting them a $10,000 check to cover ‘travel-related expenses’ out of conservative states (or areas where they don’t feel comfortable) to safer grounds. 

    “While Indeed introduced the program to its employees in July, until now, the company has not discussed it publicly,” Bloomberg said. 

    Indeed provided further details about the program to Axios:

    • It’s for US-based employees and immediate family members who seek gender-affirming care and live in a location where state laws or government-issued directives criminalize or restrict access to such medical care.

    • It also applies to those who live in places that attempt to restrict support for children who are gender non-conforming, transgender or non-binary. 

    • Eligible employees will receive approval to relocate to a state or jurisdiction where they will be able to access the care and support they need, as well as a $10,000 flat-rate benefit to support their relocation expenses.

    None of this comes as a surprise given Indeed’s mission since 2018 has been to ‘out woke’ corporate America in its pursuit of a high CEI score. But why? 

    Some netizens were confused by Indeed’s move considering the Bud Light backlash earlier this year after a white privileged liberal executive believed the brewer was time for a change. However, its customer base thought otherwise, nuking the beer as demand has since crashed. 

    “Kinda weird that companies never did stuff like this for black people or disabled people,” one netizen asked. 

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    Another asked, “Does Indeed offer any relocation money for women who live in particularly misogynistic states? Of course not. “

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    Someone else pointed out:

    We wonder if Indeed will have an increase in the number of trans workers trying to capitalize on the free money. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/31/2023 – 22:40

  • "An Unconstitutional Set Of Laws" Costs DC $5.1 Million After 2A Violations
    “An Unconstitutional Set Of Laws” Costs DC $5.1 Million After 2A Violations

    Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

    Concluding a years-long lawsuit, US Judge Royce C. Lamberth gave preliminary approval to a settlement agreement due to Washington DC’s mishandling of six different gun owners, all of whom were arrested between 2012 and 2014 on gun–related charges.

    According to a report from the Washington Post, Lamberth had previously ruled in 2021 that DC arrested, jailed, prosecuted, and seized guns from six people “based on an unconstitutional set of laws” and violated their Second Amendment rights.

    One of the examples cited in that same Washington Post report on the settlement details a Maryland resident who was commuting home from his job in Virginia with a gun locked in a safe in the trunk of his car. He was jailed for two nights on gun charges and lost his job as a result.

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    Washington, DC, will now have to pay out 5.1 million dollars due to the lawsuit. With $300,000 each to the six plaintiffs and $1.9 million in attorney fees, the leftover $1.4 million will be set aside for a large number of people who are estimated to qualify for the class action suit.

    DC’s gun laws have been the subject of multiple high-profile lawsuits. In 2008 the landmark gun rights case District of Colombia v. Heller (a GOA-backed case) affirmed that the 2nd Amendment is an individual right, and no government could impose a ban on firearms within the home, as Washington DC had done prior to Dick Heller filing suit.

    Then, in 2014, Palmer v. District of Colombia struck down DC’s ban on carrying handguns in public with a permit.

    Finally, in 2017, Wrenn v. District of Colombia (another GOA case) struck down the district’s “good and substantial reason” clause in its permitting process. Fearing an outcome that could make a concealed carry permit easier to acquire nationwide, DC did not appeal Wrenn to the Supreme Court. Gun rights advocates would have to wait another five years for the landmark decision in NYSRPA v. Bruen to finally abolish anti-gun bans on concealed carry masquerading as “may-issue” permitting regimes.

    So, what was the District of Colombia’s defense during the suit? Apparently, those arrested should have done their research on DC gun laws or attempted to license the firearms before passing through the district. But interestingly, the judge in the suit found that there were no actions that the plaintiffs could have taken during the time period in question that would have allowed them to legally carry a gun for self-defense in the District of Colombia.

    We’re sure that Dick Heller, now Gun Owners of America’s Senior Policy Advisor, couldn’t be more pleased with this ruling.

    *   *   *

    We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/31/2023 – 22:20

  • China Cuts FX Reserve Ratio To 4%, Unlocking $19BN, In Most "Visible" Step Yet To Prop Up Slumping Yuan
    China Cuts FX Reserve Ratio To 4%, Unlocking $19BN, In Most “Visible” Step Yet To Prop Up Slumping Yuan

    Following the news two weeks ago that China had suffered the largest FX outflow in a year…

    … when in July, China suffered $25BN in net outflows via onshore outright spot transactions, offset by $14BN inflows via freshly entered and canceled forward transactions and further outflows via the SAFE dataset on “cross-border RMB flows” which amounted to another $16BN in the month, resulting in net total of $26BN in July outflows, the most since Sept 22, Beijing started taking the accelerating collapse in the yuan very seriously.

    So seriously that it not only declared war on yuan bears with the first ever 1000+ pip gap between the yuan fix and estimates, one which has persisted for the past two weeks culminating with a near record gap of 1,092 moments ago…

    … but a few days later, the PBOC orchestrated the biggest offshore liquidity crunch in hopes of sparking a short squeeze, when the Hong Kong’s offshore yuan interbank rate climbed to the highest since 2018, making holding on to a short yuan position extremely painful.

    Neither did much, and the yuan continued to drift not too far from its lowest level on record, just as Citi strategists Philip Yin and Gaurav Garg correctly predicted:

    “A CNH funding squeeze could be a tactical tool and a signaling device, but unlikely the go-to tool in isolation. Overall, the combination of rate cut and other FX tools suggest that fundamental-driven yuan weakness is allowed but the pace is managed.”

    So fast forward just a few more week, when Beijing revealed the latest tool in its devaluation-fighting arsenal (as the Fed is still stuck in “higher for longer” mode courtesy of the “strong” fake data published daily by the Biden admin and revised lower just a month later) when in the most visible step yet to prop up the bleeding yuan, China reduced the amount of foreign currency deposits banks are required to hold as reserves for the first time this year, to 4% from 6%, effective on Sept. 15.

    Cutting FX reserve requirements has been a key part of the China’s playbook to support the yuan over the past two years. It last deployed the tool in September.

    The move – which followed a bolder-than-expected deposit rate cut to alleviate potential CNY pressure – boosts the amount of foreign currency available in the local market, making it relatively more appealing for traders to buy the yuan. According to UBS estimates, a 2% cut in the FX RRR will unlock around $19Bn. The resulting increase in USD supply should cause USDCNH lower and so it did, although it is worth noting that after the previous September RRR cut, CNH strengthened by around 1% initially before weakening by 3% over the subsequent three weeks.

    “Previous experience suggested that the yuan will be supported briefly by similar measures, but it has not been a step to turn around the direction of dollar-yuan in the medium-to-long term,” said Becky Liu, Head of Greater China Macro Strategy at Standard Chartered. “It is a widely expected move.”

    China’s currency slid toward its weakest level since 2007 against the dollar in August, after a surprise interest-rate cut failed to boost investor sentiment damaged by ongoing economic weakness, but certainly weakened the currency further. The currency has fallen around 5% this year amid China’s yawning rate divergence with the US and is among Asia’s worst performers next to the yen and Korean won.

    The offshore yuan rose 0.3% to around 7.255 per dollar after the news.

    The PBOC has ramped up support for the currency via tools such as setting stronger-than-expected daily reference rate, prompting state banks to sell dollars and tightening offshore yuan liquidity to squeeze shorts. The moves are part of a series of stimulus measures, the latest of which was a reduction in down payments for mortgages to help the country’s under-pressure residential property market.

    Becky Liu, head of China macro strategy at Standard Chartered, said that the PBOC’s latest move to reduce the required reserve ratio for foreign currency deposits will support the yuan (if only briefly): “It reaffirmed PBOC’s decisive stance to stabilize the CNY, and will not be a singular move”, and yes – the market demands much more.

    “This is a very small amount and won’t be sufficient to narrow interest rate differential between CNY and USD by itself” she said adding that previous experience suggested that the CNY will be supported briefly by similar measures, but it has not been a step to turn around the direction of USD/CNY in the medium to long term.

    “USD/CNH upside is now largely capped at 7.33-7.35, and we should expect a period of stabilization of the pair near term”

    “We see this as a bid by authorities to improve FX funding onshore and to further lower the US-CH rate gap,” said Eddie Cheung, Senior emerging market strategist at Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong. “The rate gap has also narrowed since the macro-prudential adjustment coefficient for cross border financing but this is a step further.”

    Alas, as with all the other modest, piecemeal steps implemented by the PBOC in recent weeks, any initial strength in the yuan will quickly fizzle as nothing short of a “whatever it takes” bazooka stimulus will be seen by markets as sufficient to prop up the economy, the currency or local markets.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/31/2023 – 22:18

  • Ukraine's Defense Chief Expected To Be Sacked Next Week Amid Corruption Probe
    Ukraine’s Defense Chief Expected To Be Sacked Next Week Amid Corruption Probe

    Significant rumors are once again swirling over the possible imminent sacking of Ukraine’s defense minister, with Bloomberg also reporting.

    Defense chief Oleksiy Reznikov has overseen a series of embarrassing military corruption scandals at a time Kiev is trying to tout its democratic and corruption reform credentials. He could be dismissed from the top post as early as next week, and given a new role as ambassador to the United Kingdom.

    Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov

    But the decision is “not finalized” according to sources speaking to Kyiv Post, which names Rustem Umerov – currently head of the State Property Fund – as a likely candidate to replace Reznikov.

    DM Reznikov has overseen Ukraine’s military and defense strategy since the start of the Feb. 2022 invasion, but the much-hyped counteroffensive launched at the start of the summer has been widely seen as a failure, despite tens of billions of dollars of Western aid and weaponry.

    Reznikov is now front and center in an anti-graft probe, Bloomberg writes, citing local Ukrainian media:

    President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s anti-graft crackdown is fueling speculation that he may dismiss Ukraine’s defense minister following accusations of corruption linked to procuring military supplies.

    The Ukrayinska Pravda newspaper, citing sources it didn’t name, said on Thursday Minister Oleksii Reznikov may be replaced as early as next week. The report followed accusations from anti-corruption activists and media that under his leadership the ministry has purchased food and uniforms at inflated prices. It also coincides with comments from a lawmaker that Reznikov may be shifted to the post of Kyiv’s ambassador to the UK.

    Additionally, parliament’s People’s Deputy Yaroslav Zheleznyak, wrote in a Thursday Telegram post that “…Rustem Umerov will be nominated for the position of Minister of Defense.” 

    Kyiv Post has detailed the latest scandal as follows:

    The latest scandal was exposed by Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Nikolov who, citing sources at the State Customs Service of Ukraine, reported that the Ministry of Defense had acquired 233,000 winter jackets for $20 million from a Turkish firm.

    Documentation from customs regarding one shipment unveiled a startling increase in cost for a batch of 4,900 jackets en route from Turkey to Ukraine.

    The price had tripled, soaring from $142,000 to $421,000 (a per-unit rise from $29 to $86). Furthermore, it was revealed that the jackets, despite being marketed as winter wear, turned out to be lightweight.

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    High-ranking military officers and Kiev officials have for months come under scrutiny for driving expensive luxury cars and acquiring expensive villas. 

    The Ministry of Agriculture has also recently been under fore for inflated pasta purchases, which caused a reported loss for state coffers of at least $1.7 million, and triggering suspicions that corrupt officials lined their pockets.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/31/2023 – 22:00

  • Trump Says Fear-Mongering About New COVID Variants A 'Lunatic' Ploy To Rig 2024 Election
    Trump Says Fear-Mongering About New COVID Variants A ‘Lunatic’ Ploy To Rig 2024 Election

    Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Former President Donald Trump speaks to reporters after being booked at the Fulton County jail on 13 charges related to the 2020 election, in Atlanta, Ga. on Aug. 24, 2023. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

    Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday accused “left-wing lunatics” of fear-mongering about new COVID-19 variants in order to justify the reintroduction of their left-wing lockdown and mandate policies, which included the use of drop boxes and mail-in ballots in 2020, in a bid to rig the 2024 election.

    President Trump made the remarks in a video posted on Aug. 30 on Truth Social, saying that his message should serve as a warning to every COVID-19 “tyrant” who not only wants to “take away our freedom” but who would be playing into the hands of those wanting to exploit COVID-19 restrictions to interfere in next year’s election.

    “The left-wing lunatics are trying very hard to bring back COVID lockdowns and mandates with all of their sudden fear-mongering about the new variants that are coming,” President Trump said in the video.

    Recently, there’s been a torrent of media reports about a new COVID-19 variant circulating, while President Joe Biden said last week that all Americans would likely be advised to get another booster.

    In his video message, President Trump said that his political opponents are eager to leverage COVID-19 “hysteria” for political ends.

    “They want to restart the COVID hysteria so they can justify more lockdowns, more censorship, more illegal drop boxes, more mail-in ballots, and trillions of dollars in payoffs to their political allies heading into the 2024 election,” the former president said.

    He charged that “they rigged the 2020 election and now they’re trying to do the same thing all over again by rigging the most important election in the history of our country, the 2024 election, even if it means trying to bring back COVID.”

    President Trump has maintained that he believes he was was robbed of victory in 2020, due in part to last-minute changes to election rules that removed some guardrails for mail-in ballots and, at least in theory, made it easier to cheat.

    While the former president lost nearly all of his election-related lawsuits, many were dismissed not on merit but on technicalities like the doctrine of laches, which basically says that a legal challenge was brought too late and prejudiced the defendant.

    ‘We Will Not Comply’

    A number of conservative commentators have pointed to the sharp rise of COVID-19-related media reporting in recent weeks, while pointing to the threat of renewed restrictions for civil liberties—and the upcoming election.

    Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk has claimed there’s a plot to push “COVIDian tyranny” and “lock you down again just in time for the election” and facilitate the launch of a “Marxist-type revolution.”

    Former member of Congress Ron Paul penned an op-ed on LewRockwell.com saying that the threat supposedly posed by the new COVID-19 variant is being amplified across media platforms “just in time for election season.”

    “Why are they coming back around for another round of Covid tyranny?” Mr. Paul wrote. “Fear is a weapon to gain control.”

    “Last time around, they generated fear to radically change how America voted. Suddenly, everyone was mailed ballots. How closely were they checked? No one knew and no one dared ask. The people who did ask about the election are now facing jail terms,” Mr. Paul wrote, presumably referring to some Jan. 6 defendants.

    “They want us to shut up while they do it again. Will we?” Mr. Paul asked.

    In his message, President Trump delivered a forceful response to this question, which has been expressed in one form or another by numerous conservative commentators.

    “Don’t even think about it,” President Trump said, addressing his remarks to “every COVID tyrant who wants to take away our freedom.”

    “Hear these words: We will not comply!” the former president continued. “We will not shut down our schools, we will not accept your lockdowns, we will not abide by your mask mandates, and we will not tolerate your vaccine mandates.”

    The former president then said that if elected president in 2024, he would use every available authority to push back on mask and vaccine mandates, giving as an example cutting federal funding to any college or airline that imposes such mandates.

    “They will fail because I will not let it happen,” the former president said.

    ‘Likely To Be Recommended’

    President Trump’s remarks comes as COVID-19 hospitalizations have been on the rise across the country, with three new variants of the disease said to be spreading.

    Multiple drug companies, including Pfizer, Novavax, and Moderna, have introduced new vaccines they say will be effective to protect against the COVID-19 variant of interest EG.5, or Eris—although the vaccines do not protect against transmission.

    President Biden told reporters in South Lake Tahoe, California, on Aug. 25 that he had asked for more funding for a new COVID vaccine.

    “I signed off this morning on a proposal we have to present to the Congress, a request for additional funding for a new vaccine—that is necessary, that works,” President Biden said.

    “And tentatively, not decided finally yet, tentatively it is recommended—it is likely to be recommended—that everybody get it, no matter whether they got it before,” he added.

    Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials recently told reporters that the vaccines are expected to become available to the public in mid-September, though they are still pending approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

    An independent CDC advisory committee is scheduled to meet on Sept. 12 to vote on recommended guidelines for eligibility for the new COVID-19 shots.

    Nathan Worcester contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/31/2023 – 21:40

  • Why You Are Feeling So Much Poorer
    Why You Are Feeling So Much Poorer

    Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times,

    We are living through the largest pillaging of the American middle class in a half-century. It’s not in the headlines. This is extremely strange. In fact, this might be the first and only article you have read about it. This could be for a reason. If people knew what was happening to them, they would begin to feel very restless, even furious. Some people among the ruling class do not want that.

    The Biden administration trumpets its economic achievements. It’s mind-boggling. Call it trolling. Call it gaslighting. Call it whatever you want but you know it is untrue.

    (SERSOLL/Shutterstock)

    Let’s look at the facts.

    What do you spend money on month-to-month? It’s rent or your mortgage, food at home or out, utilities, and gas. Those are the basic categories. The Consumer Price Index includes far more than that, some items you do not purchase and some that are going up far less than others. So let’s look at government numbers on what you actually purchase; that is, the items and services that you consume that dominate part of your income. And let’s stretch that back three years.

    Everything is going up and up and has been for three years. Looking at the items on which you actually spend money, we find increases between 18-plus percent to 22-plus percent. Let’s say we average it all out at 20 percent.

    Now let’s look at real disposable income, which is income left over after expenses adjusted for inflation. That result is an increase of a pathetic 3 percent compared with three years ago. The stimulus payments felt great at the time but those are long gone, essentially a head fake. So your income demands are up 20 percent whereas your leftover cash is barely up at all. That’s essentially a disaster for your standard of living.

    In short, you have been robbed.

    (Data: Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), St. Louis Fed; Chart: Jeffrey A. Tucker)

    The causal reasons are many but mainly trace to the 43 percent increase in the money supply in the same period, which ate the value of the dollar with a lag. On top of that, supply chains broke, industry was consolidated, commercial freedom wrecked, and labor markets were forcibly disrupted.

    Now, let’s compare this to what everyone recognizes as the great inflationary disaster of the postwar period, which is 1978 to 1982. These were the times when the Fed and government pillaged the public, drained away the value of savings and capital, and forced a reorganization of family life. At the end of this period, the average American household went from living off of one income—realizing the American dream—to having two incomes in the household. That happened in 1985 when two-income households became the norm.

    At the time, this was called emancipation of women but, looking back, we can see that this was clearly propaganda to cover up an economic disaster. Gender discrimination in the workplace hasn’t really been a major issue for most of the 20th century. Back in the mid-1920s, if you look at unmarried women without children after the age of 18, the employment rate in the city was generally 80 percent. These women left the workforce upon marriage to focus on children and the household whereas the men bore the obligation of providing for the whole.

    That was the way we lived until the great inflation. That’s what changed everything. After that, households had to have two incomes to live well instead of one, meaning that one partner had to go to the office rather than tend to the household or otherwise pursue the good life. That the ruling class was able to fob this off as some kind of new liberty (for women) is a tribute to the power of ideologically driven lies.

    How do our times compare to then? Well, in three years, we’ve seen the value of the dollar fall 20 percent in terms of what you actually spend money on while income has barely gone up at all. During the great disaster of 43 years ago, this exact same phenomenon occurred over two years rather than three like our own times. In other words, the mass thievery in our times is taking place 50 percent slower than it happened last time. But it is happening nonetheless.

    Is it any better if the bus rolls over you slowly or more quickly? It happens either way. That you lose 17 percent of your income in three years or two, what does it really matter? It is only valuable to our ruling-class masters in terms of the extent to which the public complains. A population pillaged slowly—like the frog boiling slowly—is very liable to complain a bit less. Still, the reality is the same.

    The great inflation fundamentally changed life in America. We were never the same, economically or culturally. And that raises the real question: what is the current round of thievery going to do to this generation? I wish I had the answers. I don’t really know but we are seeing population-wide demoralization, ill-health, lack of ambition, substance abuse, and widespread despair. However this ends, it’s not going to be good.

    Can this be turned around? Yes, but it won’t be easy. It will require massive changes in public administration the likes of which we’ve never experienced. No candidate for office at any level is prepared for what is necessary to reduce the debt, contain the Fed, defang the administrative bureaucracy, reduce the tax burden, and make the American dream affordable again. We are nowhere near speaking the truth at this point.

    The emergency, however, is real. A people dealing with growing and relentless improvement, from powers out of their control, can be unpredictable. At a very minimum, it means more crime, more cultural anomie, more distrust, and growing anger. Some leader needs to channel this into a positive and constructive direction else we are doomed to suffer another round that will make the great inflation of the late 1970s look like a mere foreshadowing.

    Jeffrey A. Tucker is the founder and president of the Brownstone Institute, and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press, as well as 10 books in five languages, most recently “Liberty or Lockdown.” He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He writes a daily column on economics for The Epoch Times and speaks widely on the topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/31/2023 – 21:00

  • Female Rapper's Wardrobe Malfunction At Saudi Concert Triggers Charges Of 'Prostitution, Blasphemy'
    Female Rapper’s Wardrobe Malfunction At Saudi Concert Triggers Charges Of ‘Prostitution, Blasphemy’

    A popular Australian rapper, Iggy Azalea, is being accused by Saudi clerics and authorities of “blasphemy” for a concert she performed last Friday in the capital of Riyadh.

    The occasion was the Gamers8 Esports tournament for which she was invited as a special performer. Controversial songs included Goddess, in which she asked the audience to “bow down to a goddess” – and also there was the moment she exclaimed “Ladies, make some noise, it’s a woman’s world!”

    Getty Images

    Of course, this is ultra-male dominated Saudi society, where women are told by Islamic law they must wear the full Muslim veil and that unmarried women shouldn’t go out without a male family escort—all of his enforced by Sharia law courts and ‘morality police’.

    The whole performance is being accused of being anti-Islamic, especially for lines from her lyrics which seemed directed at Islam or monotheistic religions in general like “…preaching about prophets, it ain’t no one man can stop us, bow down to a goddess.”

    But given these song lyrics, and the full set, was already known in advance – it’s a wonder that Iggy was invited to give a concert in the ultra-conservative kingdom in the first place. 

    At one point, quite ironically, there was even a wardrobe malfunction wherein she exposed more flesh than what the kingdom allows. It was merely her pantleg that ripped, exposing her… (gasp!) leg, up to part of her thigh, during which time a staffer frantically tried to toss her a towel to cover it up.

    Showing a little leg: watch the wardrobe malfunction which temporarily stopped the show…

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    As Middle East Eye points out, both the host country and performer should have understood the “risks” involved in Iggy performing in Riyad: 

    On X, Azalea revealed that despite the fact she changed her outfit, Saudi authorities halted the concert due to her lyrics, which, she said, sent them “over the edge”.

    Social media users were quick to criticise not just the organizers of the concert, but those attending too.

    One user stated “this is kufr [unbelief], blatant shirk [idolatry] being said on stage, and the Muslims were repeating it in the audience”. 

    Users also noted that Azalea and her team should have known the extent and danger of the repercussions of performing in Saudi Arabia.

    Most of the hate directed at the rapper came from conservative Muslims and anonymous Saudi accounts online, which charged her with ‘prostitution’ and ‘blasphemy’. Another post said the following:

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    One wonders what would have happened if her relatively minor clothing mishap had been on the level of Janet Jackson’s during that infamous Super Bowl halftime performance.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/31/2023 – 20:40

  • STVR/Airbnb Has Destroyed America's Resort Towns
    STVR/Airbnb Has Destroyed America’s Resort Towns

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    It turns out society isn’t just the sum total of the Fed goosing “maximizing shareholder value.” People actually have to live in the corrupt, bifurcated, distorted ghetto the Fed and “maximizing shareholder value” have created.

    It’s an old story, manifesting now in new ways. The rich, buoyed by inherited wealth and access to credit, find a locale with the qualities they desire, and buy the choicest properties for their own use, and a surrounding band of nearby properties so they won’t be bothered by the bottom 99%.

    This story has a new far more destructive chapter, generated by the boom in STVRs–short-term vacation rentals. The uber-wealthy don’t need more money but they’re trained, like hamsters in a lab, to seek ways to maximize their income and capital gains. STVRs–Airbnb et al.–are highly attractive investments to the wealthy and their money-managers–the hedge funds, private equity managers, family-wealth advisors, et al.

    Residential real estate that can be converted to STVRs is well within reach of the top 10% households, who own between 80% and 90% of all income-producing assets such as housing rentals, stocks, bonds and business equity.

    As the Federal Reserve has distorted credit markets with historically unprecedented low interest rates and “excess liquidity,” the resulting asset bubbles widened the income-wealth gap between the top 10% who already owned most of the assets soaring in value and the bottom 90% who at best owned a family home with a mortgage.

    The top 10% saw super-low mortgage rates and the plump returns on STVRs and rushed to snap up any properties that could be converted from long-term rentals to short-term vacation rentals to get their share of the post-pandemic price-insensitive “revenge spending” we-need-a-vacation bonanza.

    This mass conversion of long-term rentals for workers into vacation rentals has social and economic consequences. It’s bifurcated America’s desirable towns into luxe enclaves for the “haves” and ghettos for the working “have-nots.” It was all fun and games seeking to “maximize shareholder value” and ride the next bubble to ever greater wealth and income, but the consequence is the destruction of the nation’s social and economic fabric.

    I asked longtime correspondent W.S., who has witnessed the transformation in Colorado over the decades, to describe the reality generated by the mass conversion of long-term rentals to STVRs. Here is his account:

    “Airbnb has devastated Colorado’s resort towns.

    It’s always been expensive to live in places that wealthy people decided they wanted to visit regularly.

    Real estate speculators figure out where the money is quickly enough, buy up property, subdivide it and sell lots to their friends, who build second homes, like the single family castles in Beaver Creek and Vail. They build condos and duplexes and sell them to less wealthy folks who want to live in these places and to small investors who rent them to the people who do the actual work in these communities; our teachers, police and fire fighters, hotel and restaurant and small business operators and their staff, the ‘essential services’ folks that nobody thinks much about until one day, a pandemic comes along.

    In Colorado, the attraction for the past 50 years has been downhill skiing and while rents always were higher than most places, the folks that moved up to the mountains and worked at the skico and surrounding small businesses generally skied for free – a season pass was a more common benefit than a healthcare plan – and the ‘locals’ lived to ride. Snowboards. Skis. It was a worthwhile trade off.

    That era ended completely with AirBnb.

    Over the past few years virtually all of the ‘locals’ housing in Vail, the duplexes in nearby Eagle Vail, the houses in Edwards – everything in the upper Eagle River Valley where locals lived – has been purchased – often sight unseen – by hedge funds, private capital and wealthy full and part time homeowners. It has all immediately been turned into short term rental properties (STVRs) – Airbnb, VRBO, etc.

    Why rent a two bedroom apartment to a teacher for $1,500 a month when you can Airbnb the same 40 year old unit for $2,500 a week?

    Except now, there are literally no housing units available.

    Ok, a few pop up now and then but for $3,750 to $4,000 a month, since the work at home class has bid up the price of everything in resort towns with fast internet, and all of them have it. Even if they don’t, Starlink is $120 a month for 50-200 MBPS connectivity. (I have it, it’s flawless.)

    Local teachers with masters degrees start at $45,000 a year, fresh out of school.

    A $3,750 per month rental requires about $11,000 to move in, first and last plus the security deposit. The annual rent comes to $45,000. Thats the gross pay for new hires, which we need annually as our experienced educators retire, or sell their homes they bought a few years ago for huge gains and move elsewhere.

    We can’t hire teachers.

    We can’t hire snow plow operators, who are sort of essential in the high country.

    Can’t hire substitute teachers at $100 a day.

    Can’t hire bus drivers.

    Nobody making under $250,000 can buy a house and live here anymore. Wendy’s pays $19 an hour to start – but you can’t work there unless you live with your folks or 4 roommates (maybe).

    It’s so bad in Eagle County that the school district is bringing new teachers, fresh graduates from the Philippines. The district is building 37 apartments for them to live in, dorm style. Teaching has become a job only workers imported from other countries can afford to do here, like picking vegetables.

    Sure, house prices have gone up a lot because of the influx of work at homers. They’ll probably stay, as heat refugees from the southwest begin to migrate to higher altitudes. But the 20-30 year old former rental units the locals started off in? Sorry. They’re Airbnb.

    With no working people to staff the grocery stores, these mountain towns might not be the refuge the heat refugees seek.”

    Thank you, W.S., for this insightful on-the-ground report. 

    Is it really that surprising that those who still have to work for a living resent being crammed into ghettos while America’s elite class enjoys their Fed-bubble generated wealth and soaring income?

    Is it really that surprising that towns swamped with an influx of visitors and wealthy owners are being fouled as their infrastructure is overwhelmed and their natural wealth exploited / stripmined to “maximize shareholder value”?

    The Wealthy Are Not Like You and Me–Our Terminally Stratified Society (8/3/23)

    Development In A Wealthy Montana Boom Town Is Fouling A World-Class Trout River

    There’s Gonna be a War in Montana

    It turns out society isn’t just the sum total of the Fed goosing “maximizing shareholder value.” People actually have to live in the corrupt, bifurcated, distorted ghetto the Fed and “maximizing shareholder value” have created.

    *  *  *

    My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century.  Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

    Become a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

    Subscribe to my Substack for free

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/31/2023 – 20:20

  • Fox "Is Run By Small-Minded, Fearful Women", Trump "Broke A Lot Of People's Brains" – Tucker & Portnoy Talk Politics, PENN, & Pizza-Fights
    Fox “Is Run By Small-Minded, Fearful Women”, Trump “Broke A Lot Of People’s Brains” – Tucker & Portnoy Talk Politics, PENN, & Pizza-Fights

    Barstool Sports owner Dave Portnoy joined Tucker Carlson for a ‘Tucker On X’ discussion that ranged from “the greatest business deal in history” to the problems businesses have dealing with regulatory bureaucracy (once its clear they don’t like you) to a fight with a pizza store owner to media bias and finally, Tucker reflected on his exit from Fox.

    Having sold Barstool Sports to PENN Entertainment, and pocketing $100 million, Portnoy recently took his company back for the princely sum of $1 and tries to explain what led PENN to make this decision.

    “We underestimated the regulators… how difficult they could make this,” given that they did not like some of the things that Barstool was saying.

    “Everything we did was met with resistance so it made it really hard for this PENN-Barstool relationship to prosper and I think PENN got to the point where they said we are not getting the results we wanted,” he added

    The powerful, appointed (not elected) regulators seemed to have a clear agenda against Barstool, perhaps, Portnoy says, because they did not know who we were.

    “It’s very hard to get truthful information… everything’s so political, everything’s got an agenda.”

    Portnoy, who interviewed President Trump during his term in office, said the liberal media makes him out to be “Hitler,” even more so after he strongly opposed the COVID lockdowns.

    “The rise of Trump has exasperated how people think in this country, He’s broken a lot of people’s brains.”

    “I was very pro-Trump when he started running because I thought he would break the political system,” and that was that, the media proclaimed “you’re pro-Trump, doesn’t matter what you say for the rest of your life.”

    The media “crucified” him, he says, “you went on Tucker, you must be this… you interviewed Trump, you must be this… people don’t listen, they just make snap judgments… it’s a sad state of affairs.”

    Portnoy brings up the issue when Business Insider tried to smear him, “they just made shit up about me, there’s zero truth about anything they said about me.” The reason was simple, he explained, “they were a sinking ship, run by a crook” – referring to Henry Blodgett (“the greatest scumbag of all time”) of dot-com-bubble-analyst-fraud infamy, “and they just needed subscriptions.”

    Portnoy also shared a video of him getting into a fight with a pizza restaurant owner – over a bad review that the Barstool boss gave him (around 31: 30 in the clip)…

    “This is my spot. I hope you enjoy your pizza. But I don’t appreciate what you do to small businesses,” the owner said.

    “Fuck you,” Portnoy responded, raising his middle finger. “Fuck you.

    Then the pair discussed Tucker’s exit from Fox, “I’m not exactly sure what I said that was bad… and one day for whatever reason they’d had enough.”

    Carlson says the Murdochs “were always nice to me… they never got in my way” but noted that he “was not expecting it,” and added that “there were small minds… it’s a company run by fearful women… second-tier people who would hassle my producers.”

    Carlson notes “my view on the war on Ukraine was really hated,” explaining that he was never pro-Russian, but took the view that “this is not our fight, this is not good for us… we should put an end to the war, because people die in war.”

    That was considered “crazy pro-Kremlin propaganda, and they were very very mad about that.”

    Finally, Portnoy brings up Mitch McConnell’s recent ‘glitch’, and asks “how are these people running our country?”

    Watch the full interview below:

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/31/2023 – 20:00

  • Sweetened Drinks Are Linked to Chronic Liver Disease And Liver Cancer
    Sweetened Drinks Are Linked to Chronic Liver Disease And Liver Cancer

    Authored by Flora Zhao via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Do you find yourself drinking a sweetened beverage every day? Be cautious, as this habit could increase the risk of chronic liver disease and even liver cancer.

    It is widely known that consuming sweetened drinks can contribute to obesity and insulin resistance. A recent prospective cohort study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has further revealed detrimental health effects linked to sweetened drinks, particularly concerning liver disease. The study showed that individuals who regularly consume sweetened drinks face an astonishing 85 percent higher likelihood of developing liver cancer and a 68 percent higher risk of mortality from chronic liver disease than those who consume fewer sweetened drinks.

    (successo images/Shutterstock)

    Elevated Risks of Liver Cancer and Liver Disease

    This study was led by scientists from Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and it drew data from a comprehensive prospective clinical database in the United States: the Women’s Health Initiative. The database has been gathering information from a cohort of over 160,000 postmenopausal women aged 50 to 79. The information collection concluded in 2020, spanning a follow-up period of approximately 21 years.

    “Epidemiological studies on dietary factors and liver cancer and chronic liver disease mortality are limited,” the researchers emphasized in the report. “To our knowledge, this is the first study to report an association between sugar-sweetened beverage intake and chronic liver disease mortality.”

    Participants completed the survey questionnaire detailing their consumption of sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened drinks, excluding fruit juices. These individuals were divided into three groups:

    • Women who consumed three servings or less per month.
    • Women who drank one to six servings per week.
    • Women who drank one or more servings per day (with one serving equivalent to 12 ounces or 355 milliliters, roughly the size of a standard beverage can).

    The findings revealed that women who consumed one or more servings of sweetened drinks daily had an 85 percent higher risk of developing liver cancer than those who drank three servings or less per month. Additionally, their mortality rate due to chronic liver disease was 68 percent higher.

    In the study, “chronic liver disease” refers to conditions like nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, cirrhosis, liver fibrosis, alcoholic liver disease, and chronic hepatitis. During the calculation, potential factors that could influence liver disease, including age, ethnicity, education level, smoking and alcohol consumption habits, and body mass index, were taken into account.

    Known risk factors for liver cancer include hepatitis B (HBV) and hepatitis C (HCV) infections, metabolic disorders, excessive alcohol consumption, and foods contaminated with aflatoxins, such as peanuts and corn. “However, approximately 40% of patients with liver cancer do not have these risk factors. … Therefore, it is important to identify dietary risk factors for liver cancer and chronic liver disease mortality,” the researchers stated in the report.

    The Impact of Sweetened Drinks on the Liver

    Other studies have also corroborated the damaging effects of sweetened drinks on the liver.

    A prospective European cohort study revealed that individuals who consume over six servings of soft drinks per week face a notably higher risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (the most common form of liver cancer) by 83 percent compared to those who consume fewer than one serving. The risk increases by 6 percent for each additional serving per week. Another study conducted in the United States indicated that drinking sugar-sweetened soda is associated with an 18 percent increase in the risk of liver cancer.

    Research has also demonstrated a link between sweetened drink consumption and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease onset. A systematic review and meta-analysis published in the European Journal of Nutrition revealed that individuals who consumed the highest amounts of sugar-sweetened drinks had a 40 percent increased odds of developing nonalcoholic fatty liver disease compared to those who consumed the least. Another study in 2022 proposed that individuals who frequently consume sugar-sweetened drinks have 2.53 times increased odds of developing nonalcoholic fatty liver disease compared to those who rarely drink such beverages.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/31/2023 – 19:40

  • Ukraine's FM Tells Critics Of Counteroffensive To "Shut Up" After NYT Piece
    Ukraine’s FM Tells Critics Of Counteroffensive To “Shut Up” After NYT Piece

    In angry words which sound more like something one would hear on an elementary school playground, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Thursday lashed out at critics of Kiev’s failing counteroffensive by telling them to… “shut up”. Here’s Reuters reporting the unusual statement:

    Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba hit out on Thursday at critics of Kyiv’s tactics in its counter-offensive against Russia’s invasion, saying they were spitting in the faces of Ukrainian soldiers and should “shut up”.

    “Criticizing the slow pace of (the) counter-offensive equals … spitting into the face of (the) Ukrainian soldier who sacrifices his life every day, moving forward and liberating one kilometeter of Ukrainian soil after another,” Kuleba told a press conference at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Toledo, Spain.

    Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, Getty Images

    He then sarcastically urged all critics to go to Ukraine themselves and fight if they think they can do it better. Standing alongside Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares at the Thursday presser, he said:

    “I would recommend all critics to shut up, come to Ukraine and try to liberate one square centimeter by themselves.”

    Ironically he appeared to be responding to his biggest backer – Washington, in a “bite the hand that feeds you” moment.

    Last week, The New York Times published a scathing critique of Ukraine’s battlefield tactics and overall strategy. The report was based on anonymous US officials who complained that Ukraine’s leaders weren’t heeding the Pentagon’s advice.

    “American strategists say Ukraine’s troops are too spread out and need to concentrate along the counteroffensive’s main front in the south,” the Times wrote, in what amounted to an explainer on why the counteroffensive is failing.

    The report also complained that Ukraine (like Russia) fights “under old Soviet Communist war doctrine” in a clear swipe. The theme of the criticism centered on Kiev rejecting Pentagon guidance, hence a stalled and losing counteroffensive:

    But some analysts say the progress may be too little too late. The fighting is taking place on mostly flat, unforgiving terrain, which favors the defenders. The Russians are battling from concealed positions that Ukrainian soldiers often see only when they are feet away. Hours after Ukrainians clear a field of mines, the Russians sometimes fire another rocket that disperses more of them at the same location.

    Under American war doctrine, there is always a main effort to ensure that maximum resources go to a single front, even if supporting forces are fighting in other areas to hedge against failure or spread-out enemy defenses.

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

    So clearly, based on this new outburst of Kuleba in telling external critics to “shut-up”, the Ukrainians were outraged upon seeing the Times article which highlighted the complaints of US officials. It also serves as confirmation that indeed the battlefield situation is quite dire for Ukraine.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/31/2023 – 19:20

  • Don’t Look Up! 'Orwellian' AI Traffic Cameras Raise Privacy Concerns
    Don’t Look Up! ‘Orwellian’ AI Traffic Cameras Raise Privacy Concerns

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

    Existing traffic cameras set up across America to find speeding and red light scofflaws are being replaced by smarter, artificial intelligence-fueled versions equipped with upgraded software that for the first time gives the government the ability to monitor behavior inside of private vehicles, raising the alarm of privacy advocates.

    “The public should be rightly concerned,” Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Policy Analyst Matthew Guariglia told The Epoch Times. “Congress has completely abdicated their responsibility to protect people’s privacy.”

    Screens show the feeds from traffic cameras at the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada’s FAST traffic management center, on Dec. 6, 2016. (AP Photo/John Locher)

    The Biden administration’s 2022 $2.2 trillion infrastructure legislation has led to a dramatic rise in new traffic cameras after federal guidance issued after the bill became law allowed many states to invest in surveillance equipment. Previously, transportation funds allocated to states were limited to fund infrastructure projects, such as repairing roadways and bridges, with the spending of federal funds for cameras only permitted for school zones. However, the Biden administration authorized states to utilize up to 10 percent of the bill’s $15.6 billion highway safety funds to purchase cameras and other “automated traffic enforcement” tools—and many did just that.

    The most recent data compiled last year by Comparitech, a consumer advocacy group focused on cybersecurity, found that the number of cameras on American streets has exploded, with the average city having around six cameras per 1,000 people while the most-watched city, Atlanta, Georgia, has nearly 50 cameras per 1,000 people. Data revealing the current number of traffic cameras is unavailable, but is expected to be significantly larger.

    The decision to open the infrastructure funding to traffic cameras came as an attempt to decrease traffic-related deaths, according to officials.

    “Almost 95 percent of our Nation’s transportation deaths occur on America’s streets, roads, and highways, and they are on the rise,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in the National Roadway Safety Strategy release following passage of the legislation.

    However, many see the increase in surveillance technology as a cash grab for cities trying to make up for post COVID budget shortfalls. In March, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser proposed adding hundreds of new traffic cameras to city streets to compensate for a projected drop in revenue of nearly $400 million. Priya Sarathy Jones, deputy executive director of the Fines and Fees Justice Center, told Reuters that cameras monitoring traffic are “one of the easiest things for us to turn to and generate revenue quickly.”

    Further, software upgrades that allow for the ability to analyze the inside of vehicles and the behaviors of the drivers and passengers have raised concerns among privacy advocates of an increasingly intrusive government that would have seemed straight out of a dystopian science fiction novel to past generations.

    In the United Kingdom, authorities have already issued hundreds of fines to drivers after AI traffic cameras were used to detect violations such as not wearing a seatbelt.

    United Kingdom Civil Liberties campaigner Jake Hurfurt, of Big Brother Watch, told the newspaper The Sun, “This kind of intrusive and creepy surveillance which treats every passer-by as a potential suspect is excessive and normalizing. It poses a threat to everyone’s privacy.”

    “People should be free to go about their lives without being analyzed by faceless AI systems.”

    In July, local governments in Australia installed new phone-detection cameras along roads to spot drivers who are texting on their mobile devices.

    In America, cities like Seattle, Tacoma, and San Francisco, and Reno have also adopted AI traffic cameras with the stated goal of improving the flow of traffic. Los Angeles and New York have also discussed utilizing the technology.

    While the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution offers protection against video searches conducted by the police, there are currently no general, legally enforceable rules to limit privacy invasions.

    Mr. Guariglia warns that the ethical lines between the need for public safety and an Orwelian police state can sometimes become blurred with advances in technology.

    “I can definitely see it coming where cameras are doing analytics on passengers inside of a car,” said Mr. Guariglia. “This could make citizens susceptible to police surveillance in giving up the knowledge of where they worship, what lawyer they are going to see, or which reporters they are talking to.”

    In at least one other country, residents have already begun fighting back against the technology.

    After London rolled out an expansion of its Ultra Low Emission Zone program, which uses AI traffic cameras to identify and fine drivers of older vehicles who enter the city, many citizens showed their outrage through acts of vandalism. Police say this month hundreds of intelligent cameras have been damaged, disconnected, or stolen by a vigilante group who call themselves the Blade Runners.

    “The cameras are going to keep coming down,” Nick Arlett, an organizer of the protests, told CBS News. “People are angry.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/31/2023 – 19:00

  • Proud Boys Leader Joseph Biggs Sentenced To 17 Years In Prison As 'Terrorist' Over Role In J6
    Proud Boys Leader Joseph Biggs Sentenced To 17 Years In Prison As ‘Terrorist’ Over Role In J6

    A federal judge on Thursday sentenced Proud Boys leader Joseph Randall Biggs to 17 years in prison – more than a lot of murderers receive – after calling the destruction of a fence on US Capitol property during the January 6, 2001 Capitol breach an act of terrorism.

    Proud Boys organizer Joseph Biggs walks from the George C. Young Federal Annex Courthouse in Orlando, Fla., on Jan. 20, 2021. (Sam Thomas/Orlando Sentinel via AP)

    The 39-year-old Biggs is the first of the Proud Boys leaders sentenced after being found guilty of seditious conspiracy in May along with five other charges related to the event.

    Which reminds us – instigator Ray Epps, who’s totally not a fed, remains free to this day.

    Biggs was also convicted of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to use force, intimidation, or threats to prevent officers of the United States from discharging their duties, interference with law enforcement during civil disorder, and destruction of government property.

    The sentence, handed down by US District Judge Timothy Kelly, followed the DOJ’s recommendation to add a terrorism enhancement, which greatly increased his potential prison time. That said, Kelly opted for roughly half the prison time the DOJ had sought.

    “I know that I messed up that day. But I’m not a terrorist. I know I have to be punished, and I understand,” said Biggs in an emotional statement to Kelly.

    According to Kelly, Biggs and the other Proud Boys were part of a “mob that brought an entire government branch to heel” on January 6th.

    More via the Epoch Times,

    In a sentencing memo filed with the court on Aug. 17, defense attorney Norman Pattis anticipated the terrorism-enhanced sentence, although in court he described it as “shocking” and a “grotesque overreach” that is designed to chill dissent.

    ‘Not Terrorists’

    “The defendants are not terrorists,” Mr. Pattis wrote. “Whatever excesses of zeal they demonstrated on January 6, 2021, and no matter how grave the potential interference with the orderly transfer of power due to the events of that day, a decade or more behind bars is an excessive punishment.”

    Addressing Judge Kelly on Aug. 31, Mr. Pattis said: “The conundrum is often speech is used to explain the crime. In this case, the crime was used to explain the speech.”

    Mr. Pattis said Mr. Biggs’s destruction of a $32,000 Capitol fence shouldn’t be considered terrorism because the fence was a “means to an end,” not an attempt to influence the government.

    Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason McCullough defended the government’s recommended 33-year prison sentence.

    “It is justified,” Mr. McCullough said. “These are very serious crimes.”

    In its sentencing memorandum for Mr. Biggs, prosecutors called him “a vocal leader and influential proponent of the group’s shift toward political violence.”

    Proud Boys members Zachary Rehl, left, and Ethan Nordean, right, walk toward the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo)

    “More than perhaps any other, Biggs appreciated the tactical advantage that his force had that day, and he understood the significance of his actions against his own government,” prosecutors wrote. “Biggs understood that the outnumbered forces attempting to hold the Capitol would be powerless due to his side’s overwhelming numbers.”

    “Biggs’s guidelines range—after the application of the adjustment for Biggs’s crime of terrorism—rightly reflects the seriousness of his assault on our government and Biggs’s leading role in it,” prosecutors wrote. “Biggs’s conduct warrants a sentence of 33 years of incarceration.”

    Prosecutors said Mr. Biggs and his co-defendants felt they were leading a second American revolution.

    “Biggs arrived at the Capitol to lead a revolution against a government that he viewed as illegitimate,” prosecutors wrote. “Like [Enrique] Tarrio and [Ethan] Nordean, Biggs viewed himself and his movement as a second American revolution where he and the other ‘patriots’ would retake the government by force.”

    Prosecutors said Mr. Biggs—perhaps more than any other defendant—”promoted the use of force against the government.”

    “Beginning in the days after the election, Biggs declared that the country could face ‘civil war’ because the ‘left’ was ‘radicalizing people by stealing [the] election,’” prosecutors wrote. “Biggs told his followers that it was ‘time for [expletive] War if they steal this [expletive].’ … Biggs steadily escalated his calls for political violence.”

    Judge Kelly’s sentence continued a trend that started with Oath Keepers defendants by doling out prison terms far short of those sought by the DOJ. In July, federal prosecutors appealed eight sentences given out by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta.

    Proud Boys chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio had been scheduled for sentencing on Aug. 30, but his sentencing hearing was moved to Sept. 5 when Judge Kelly became ill.

    The sentencing of Proud Boys defendant Ethan Nordean was moved to Sept. 1 in Judge Kelly’s courtroom. Zachary Rehl was set for an Aug. 31 sentencing, and defendant Dominic Pezzola will be sentenced on Sept. 1.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/31/2023 – 18:40

  • Why Won't COVID Lockdown Tyrants Admit They Were Wrong?
    Why Won’t COVID Lockdown Tyrants Admit They Were Wrong?

    Authored by Stephen Moore via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    COVID mania just won’t go away. The deadly strains of the virus have been gone for two years now, and yet the recent outbreak of a mild flu-like variant is again stoking panic on the Left.

    People wear masks in Times Square, NYC, on June 8, 2023. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

    Nearly 100 universities are requiring masks this fall.

    Lionsgate movie studios in Los Angeles and Atlanta-based Morris Brown College this week stated they are reinstating not just mask mandates but social distancing measures and contact tracing.

    CNN, which led the panic in 2020 and 2021—causing manic school, restaurant, and business shutdowns and vaccine mandates—recently put out a headline on its website that encouraged its readers not to go outside without a mask on. Really? The latest evidence finds this is less dangerous than a normal flu virus and tracking data suggest that the wave has already peaked.

    What’s even more disturbing here is that the leftist medical community and the media aren’t renouncing their calls for mitigation strategies that were catastrophically wrong in the panic era of 2020 and 2021—but instead calling for more of these assaults on freedom in the future.

    It is one thing for well-meaning medical experts to have disagreed about how to best combat a once-in-a-half-century deadly virus. We didn’t know exactly what we were dealing with. But now we know with concrete scientific evidence that most mandates and lockdowns had a small impact on the spread of the virus and on fatalities. It turns out there was almost no difference in death rates in states with strict lockdowns and no lockdowns at all. The same is true of cross-country evidence.

    Healthy children were never at risk from COVID (something we knew early on), so shutting down schools for one or two years was a sop to the teachers unions but a disaster for this generation of kids. Test scores are the worst in 30 years.

    Before the pandemic, only 15 percent of public school students were chronically absent—more than 18 or more days a year.

    Stanford University education professor Thomas Dee’s data shows an estimated 6.5 million additional students are now chronically absent. In Connecticut and Massachusetts, chronic absenteeism remains double its pre-pandemic rate.

    But polls show that Democrats—even those that are highly educated—generally still support the lockdowns that were mandated. These are the same people who lecture about “following the science.” The most comprehensive study by experts at Johns Hopkins University found death rates from lockdowns were reduced by 0.1 percent. But how many people died from the isolation of lockdowns, delayed health screening from cancer, the increase in drug overdoses?

    Biden’s vaccine mandates only made Americans more resistant to get pricked. They backfired.

    Worst of all, Anthony Fauci, who remains a hero of the Left, recently not only refused to admit the errors of his advice but said the “lockdown was absolutely justified.”

    Why does this bizarre rewrite of recent history matter? Because the fearmongering Left can’t wait to install new lockdowns every time we have a new flu virus and health scare. They’ve even started putting out feelers for occasional climate change economic shutdowns.

    Those who love freedom must strenuously resist this coming tyranny.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/31/2023 – 18:20

  • Open Border Blowback: Report Warns "Cartel-Run Theft Rings" Supercharge America's Retail Shrink Epidemic
    Open Border Blowback: Report Warns “Cartel-Run Theft Rings” Supercharge America’s Retail Shrink Epidemic

    In a shocking but not surprising twist, a new report reveals a Mexican cartel connection in America’s retail theft epidemic that cost companies like Walmart, Target, Kohl’s, Home Depot, and Foot Locker, among others, $100 billion last year. Amid the chatter on earnings calls, the number of times CEOs mentioned “shrink” – the loss of inventory due to circumstances such as retail theft – surged to a record high. Yet again, this is another consequence of failed open border policies pushed by radicals in the Biden administration that flooded the nation with millions of illegal aliens. 

    We’ve all seen the videos posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, of masked criminals raiding retailers. Now, the Washington Examiner explains some of those thieves are tied to Mexican cartels:

    Mexican cartels are behind the spike in organized retail crime and are deeply entrenched in every level of the process, according to the federal government’s chief investigative agency.

    Retailers nationwide sustained nearly $100 billion worth of losses in 2021, the highest year on record, according to the National Retail Federation report published in September 2022. The growing number of cartel-run theft rings around the country drove that figure up from $70 billion in 2019.

    “Organized retail crime exploded over the last few years as criminals exploited the anonymity of third-party online marketplaces to fence billions in stolen products,” RILA Senior Executive Vice President of Public Affairs Michael Hanson said in a statement.

    Cartels appear to have big presence in Democrat-controlled cities. 

    One reason for the explosion is those criminal gang units are emboldened by failed social justice reform pushed by radical leftists in crime-ridden metro areas, such as ones in San Francisco, where shoplifting merchandise valued under $950 is now only a misdemeanor. Cartels recognized this opportunity: 

    These retail crimes are perpetrated by people who work as part of a crime ring run by cartels. In recent years, cartels have gone from illicit drug manufacturing and smuggling, human smuggling and trafficking, and illegal firearm smuggling to commandeering crime in the retail environment.

    Cartels are involved in every level of retail crime, from in-store theft and listing items in online marketplaces to shipping stolen merchandise worldwide and using US financial institutions to hold their profits. –Washington Examiner 

    Texas alleges that Biden’s open borders have flooded the nation with 6 million- more than the total population of Denmark or Finland or Norway Or New Zeland or Costa Rica- since he first took office in early 2021.

    Still to this day, the Biden administration, with no regard for the safety of its own taxpayers, continues to flood the nation with illegals ahead of the 2024 presidential election cycle. The latest stunt was welding border gates wide open. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/31/2023 – 18:00

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Aug 31

Today’s News 31st August 2023

  • AI Vs. Humans: Which Performs Certain Skills Better?
    AI Vs. Humans: Which Performs Certain Skills Better?

    With ChatGPT’s explosive rise, AI has been making its presence felt for the masses, especially in traditional bastions of human capabilities – reading comprehension, speech recognition and image identification.

    In fact, as Visual Capitalist’s Mark Belan and Pallavi Rao show in the chart below, it’s clear that AI has surpassed human performance in quite a few areas, and looks set to overtake humans elsewhere.

    How Performance Gets Tested

    Using data from Contextual AI, we visualize how quickly AI models have started to beat database benchmarks, as well as whether or not they’ve yet reached human levels of skill.

    Each database is devised around a certain skill, like handwriting recognition, language understanding, or reading comprehension, while each percentage score contrasts with the following benchmarks:

    • 0% or “maximally performing baseline”
      This is equal to the best-known performance by AI at the time of dataset creation.

    • 100%
      This mark is equal to human performance on the dataset.

    By creating a scale between these two points, the progress of AI models on each dataset could be tracked. Each point on a line signifies a best result and as the line trends upwards, AI models get closer and closer to matching human performance.

    Below is a table of when AI started matching human performance across all eight skills:

    A key observation from the chart is how much progress has been made since 2010. In fact many of these databases—like SQuAD, GLUE, and HellaSwag—didn’t exist before 2015.

    In response to benchmarks being rendered obsolete, some of the newer databases are constantly being updated with new and relevant data points. This is why AI models technically haven’t matched human performance in some areas (grade school math and code generation) yet—though they are well on their way.

    What’s Led to AI Outperforming Humans?

    But what has led to such speedy growth in AI’s abilities in the last few years?

    Thanks to revolutions in computing power, data availability, and better algorithms, AI models are faster, have bigger datasets to learn from, and are optimized for efficiency compared to even a decade ago.

    This is why headlines routinely talk about AI language models matching or beating human performance on standardized tests. In fact, a key problem for AI developers is that their models keep beating benchmark databases devised to test them, but still somehow fail real world tests.

    Since further computing and algorithmic gains are expected in the next few years, this rapid progress is likely to continue. However, the next potential bottleneck to AI’s progress might not be AI itself, but a lack of data for models to train on.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/31/2023 – 02:45

  • Expanded BRICS Set To De-Dollarize The World, Control Global Energy Supply
    Expanded BRICS Set To De-Dollarize The World, Control Global Energy Supply

    Authored by Darren Taylor via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    “The expansion of BRICS has made it clear that the de-dollarization of the international finance system is inevitable.” 

    This view, from economist William Gumede—who’s also executive chairperson of the Democracy Works Foundation in South Africa—has been echoed around the world since BRICS leaders announced the expansion of the bloc on Aug. 24 at a summit in Johannesburg.  

    A large screen shows a news programme featuring Chinese leader Xi Jinping speaking via video at the opening of the virtual BRICS Summit being hosted by India, on a street in Beijing on Sept. 10, 2021. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

    Current BRICS members are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

    In January, BRICS—originally established in 2009 to represent the world’s strongest emerging market economies—will add Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to its ranks.  

    Mr. Gumede, one of South Africa’s leading academics and thought-leaders, has been researching the potential impacts of de-dollarization since 2014. 

    He told The Epoch Times the average per capita GDP of the G7 economies was currently six times that of BRICS economies. But, the unexpectedly swift expansion of BRICS would increase the trade bloc’s share of the global economy much faster than earlier predictions. 

    “These forecasts did not take into account that BRICS would expand its membership very quickly. A larger BRICS will mean the world will increasingly use U.S. dollars less,” he said. 

    Mr. Gumede said the bigger BRICS alliance would eventually rival the Group of Seven (G7) large industrial economies of the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, France, Japan, Italy, and Canada, which together are home to 16 percent of the world’s population and account for 62 percent of the global economy. 

    Welcoming the new members in Johannesburg last week, Brazil’s President Lula da Silva said their addition would mean BRICS would represent 46 percent of the global population and 37 percent of the world GDP. 

    The expansion means BRICS now consists of some of the globe’s largest oil producers: Russia, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Egypt. Nigeria, another major oil exporter, is set to join when the bloc gets even bigger, probably at its next summit in Russia in 2024.  

    “BRICS is going to dominate the world’s energy supply,” said Mr. Gumede. “The strength of the U.S. dollar is also partially based on the currency as underpinning oil trade—the so-called petrodollar—and members of OPEC (Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) settle their accounts in U.S. dollars.

    “Therefore, enlarging BRICS to also include the oil producers and persuading them to use a new BRICS currency, rather than the U.S. dollar, to settle their accounts, will be a game-changer. It is likely to accelerate the de-dollarization of the world.”

    Jakkie Cilliers, Head of the African Futures and Innovation program at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, attributed the unexpectedly rapid expansion of BRICS, and its moves towards de-dollarization, to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its consequences.  

    “BRICS has seen the West hit Russia with all kinds of financial sanctions, and threaten sanctions against South Africa for supposedly supporting Russia, and as a result it wants to end, or at least ease, its dependence on the dollar,” he told The Epoch Times. 

    “De-dollarization, first mooted by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, is a potent symbol of a shift away from a Western-led global order towards a new era of more uncertain and fluid multipolar connections. Change is in the air, and the next three decades will see the steady unfolding of this trend.” 

    Mr. Cilliers said BRICS was “cloaking itself in resentment” against the West. 

    “It’s quite easy for Russia and China to take advantage of the ill-feeling that still exists across much of the developing world because of colonialism, imperialism and sanctions by leading Western countries.

    “Never mind the fact that Russia and China show similar imperialistic tendencies,” he commented. 

    He said the Global South was “particularly unhappy” with international finance institutions, and with the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank. 

    “When the Fed hikes interest rates, it sometimes sends smaller economies into turmoil. They’re subjected to shocks for no domestic reason. So they see the dollar as providing the United States with a very powerful weapon to use in its interests,” said Mr. Cilliers. 

    “This is what unites BRICS in its desire to move away from the dollar-backed international financial system.” 

    But, he added, de-dollarization was going to be a slow process. 

    “Trade among BRICS countries is too small to sustain a common currency, and it only makes sense to trade in national currencies if the trade balance between the countries is more or less equal, which it most definitely is not likely to be in the near future,” said Mr. Cilliers. 

    Mr. Gumede pointed to a recent example of Russia selling a lot of oil to India. 

    “They dealt in rupees. But because India exports much less to Russia than it imports, Moscow now sits with rupees it cannot spend or convert, except to buy goods from India.” 

    Mr. Cilliers said China’s renminbi also wasn’t sufficiently convertible and lacked deep capital markets, market transparency, independent central banks and supporting financial institutions of Western banks. 

    He said there were also “perceptions of risk” associated with China’s future. 

    “It is, after all, a repressive autocracy. It’ll battle to maintain stability in the face of slower economic growth. I’d also be very surprised if India supported a common BRICS currency, given its concerns about China as a regional and potential global competitor.” 

    Mr. Gumede added: “The euro, a common currency, is stable because it’s underpinned by stable political regimes in a stable part of the world. Wherever you look in BRICS, there’s instability, like in Russia because of the Ukraine war. What would happen to the BRICS currency if China invades Taiwan?” 

    Mr. Cilliers predicted that rather than a single alternative to the dollar, “new currency blocs” would emerge. 

    “These will be based on bilateral and multilateral trade among the Middle East and China, South America, West Africa and elsewhere. And so we’ll see the power of the dollar slowly wane,” he said. 

    Mr. Cilliers said the most important shift in the power of the greenback would happen once oil and gas prices were no longer set in U.S. dollars. 

    “This is probably the motivation behind the inclusion of Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the expanded BRICS,” he postulated. 

    Mr. Gumede said demand for U.S. dollars would remain high as long as U.S. GDP was close to 25 percent of the global economy.

    He said President Putin—supported by China’s leader Xi Jinping—was pushing so hard for de-dollarization “because it’s key to the economic survival of Russia” following Western sanctions. 

    The West froze $300 billion of Russia’s foreign trade reserves after it invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and its foreign trade transactions, including those with some emerging markets, have been blocked. 

    Seven of Russia’s banks have been excluded from the world’s leading international payment messaging system, SWIFT. The ban means Russian banks cannot do digital cross-border transactions.

    However, Russian banks doing transactions connected to oil and gas are exempt from the SWIFT ban, and this is preventing the Russian economy from collapsing, said Mr. Gumede. 

    Russia is the world’s third-largest oil producer, but its the largest exporter of oil.

    “BRICS countries have been buying oil and gas from Moscow, insulating Russia against isolation by the United States and the EU,” Mr. Gumede explained. 

    For example, Indian imports of Russian oil in May 2023 reached record levels of about 1.95 million barrels per day.

    According to the International Energy Agency, China and India bought 80 percent of Russia’s oil in May 2023, with China buying 2.2 million barrels per day.

    Leslie Maasdorp, Chief Financial Officer of the BRICS financial mechanism, the New Development Bank, told The Epoch Times BRICS countries were prepared to conduct business with one another in domestic currencies. 

    But, he added, they were not yet ready to issue a common currency that could challenge the dollar. 

    “The creation of a global alternative currency to the dollar is a medium-to-long-term ambition, rather than an immediate possibility,” said Maasdorp.

    “Even the Chinese renminbi is very far from becoming a global reserve currency.” 

    Mr. Cilliers said it was also likely that intensifying rivalry between China and India would slow de-dollarization. 

    “India has already said it wants to focus on strengthening its own currency ahead of anything else,” he said.  

    Mr. Cilliers suggested that the expansion of BRICS, now and in the future, should not be seen as an “automatic sign” that developing countries were uniting behind a “simplistic, common vision” of overthrowing the West. 

    “Many people have this view that if Russia and China, in particular, snap their fingers and say, ‘de-dollarize now,’ that other BRICS countries are just going to listen to the master’s voice.

    “Believe me, there is deep resentment within BRICS and within the wider Global South about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the harm it continues to sow in developing countries, causing inflation spikes, for example, and even grain shortages. 

    “Countries’ motivations for wanting to join BRICS differ but what stays the same is that few, if any, Global South nations will exchange one hegemon with another.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/31/2023 – 02:00

  • We, The Targeted: How Government Weaponizes Surveillance To Silence Its Critics
    We, The Targeted: How Government Weaponizes Surveillance To Silence Its Critics

    Authored by John and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”

    – President Harry S. Truman

    Ever since Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his groundbreaking “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on Aug. 28, 1963, the Deep State has been hard at work turning King’s dream into a living nightmare.

    The end result of the government’s efforts over the past 60 years is a country where nothing ever really changes, and everyone lives in fear.

    Race wars are still being stoked by both the Right and the Left; the military-industrial complex is still waging profit-driven wars at taxpayer expense; the oligarchy is still calling the shots in the seats of government power; and the government is still weaponizing surveillance in order to muzzle anti-government sentiment, harass activists, and terrorize Americans into compliance.

    This last point is particularly disturbing.

    Starting in the 1950s, the government relied on COINTELPRO, its domestic intelligence program, to neutralize domestic political dissidents. Those targeted by the FBI under COINTELPRO for its intimidation, surveillance and smear campaigns included: Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X, the Black Panther Party, John Lennon, Billie Holiday, Emma Goldman, Aretha Franklin, Charlie Chaplin, Ernest Hemingway, Felix Frankfurter, and hundreds more.

    In more recent decades, the powers-that-be have expanded their reach to target anyone who opposes the police state, regardless of their political leanings.

    Advances in technology have enabled the government to deploy a veritable arsenal of surveillance weapons in order to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” perceived threats to the government’s power.

    Surveillance cameras mounted on utility poles, traffic lights, businesses, and homes. License plate readers. Ring doorbells. GPS devices. Dash cameras. Drones. Store security cameras. Geofencing and geotracking. FitBits. Alexa. Internet-connected devices. Geofencing dragnets. Fusion centers. Smart devices. Behavioral threat assessments. Terror watch lists. Facial recognition. Snitch tip lines. Biometric scanners. Pre-crime. DNA databases. Data mining. Precognitive technology. Contact tracing apps.

    What these add up to is a world in which, on any given day, the average person is now monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

    Consider just a small sampling of the ways in which the government is weaponizing its 360 degree surveillance technologies to flag you as a threat to national security, whether or not you’ve done anything wrong.

    Flagging you as a danger based on your feelings. Customs and Border Protection is reportedly using an artificial intelligence surveillance program that can detect “sentiment and emotion” in social media posts in order to identify travelers who may be “a threat to public safety, national security, or lawful trade and travel.”

    Flagging you as a danger based on your phone and movements. Cell phones have become de facto snitches, offering up a steady stream of digital location data on users’ movements and travels. For instance, the FBI was able to use geofence data to identify more than 5,000 mobile devices (and their owners) in a 4-acre area around the Capitol on January 6. This latest surveillance tactic could land you in jail for being in the “wrong place and time.” Police are also using cell-site simulators to carry out mass surveillance of protests without the need for a warrant. Moreover, federal agents can now employ a number of hacking methods in order to gain access to your computer activities and “see” whatever you’re seeing on your monitor. Malicious hacking software can also be used to remotely activate cameras and microphones, offering another means of glimpsing into the personal business of a target.

    Flagging you as a danger based on your DNA. DNA technology in the hands of government officials completes our transition to a Surveillance State. If you have the misfortune to leave your DNA traces anywhere a crime has been committed, you’ve already got a file somewhere in some state or federal database—albeit it may be a file without a name. By accessing your DNA, the government will soon know everything else about you that they don’t already know: your family chart, your ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to follow orders or chart your own course, etc. After all, a DNA print reveals everything about “who we are, where we come from, and who we will be.” It can also be used to predict the physical appearance of potential suspects. It’s only a matter of time before the police state’s pursuit of criminals expands into genetic profiling and a preemptive hunt for criminals of the future.

    Flagging you as a danger based on your face. Facial recognition software aims to create a society in which every individual who steps out into public is tracked and recorded as they go about their daily business. Coupled with surveillance cameras that blanket the country, facial recognition technology allows the government and its corporate partners to identify and track someone’s movements in real-time. One particularly controversial software program created by Clearview AI has been used by police, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to collect photos on social media sites for inclusion in a massive facial recognition database. Similarly, biometric software, which relies on one’s unique identifiers (fingerprints, irises, voice prints), is becoming the standard for navigating security lines, as well as bypassing digital locks and gaining access to phones, computers, office buildings, etc. In fact, greater numbers of travelers are opting into programs that rely on their biometrics in order to avoid long waits at airport security. Scientists are also developing lasers that can identify and surveil individuals based on their heartbeats, scent and microbiome.

    Flagging you as a danger based on your behavior. Rapid advances in behavioral surveillance are not only making it possible for individuals to be monitored and tracked based on their patterns of movement or behavior, including gait recognition (the way one walks), but have given rise to whole industries that revolve around predicting one’s behavior based on data and surveillance patterns and are also shaping the behaviors of whole populations. One smart “anti-riot” surveillance system purports to predict mass riots and unauthorized public events by using artificial intelligence to analyze social media, news sources, surveillance video feeds and public transportation data.

    Flagging you as a danger based on your spending and consumer activities. With every smartphone we buy, every GPS device we install, every Twitter, Facebook, and Google account we open, every frequent buyer card we use for purchases—whether at the grocer’s, the yogurt shop, the airlines or the department store—and every credit and debit card we use to pay for our transactions, we’re helping Corporate America build a dossier for its government counterparts on who we know, what we think, how we spend our money, and how we spend our time. Consumer surveillance, by which your activities and data in the physical and online realms are tracked and shared with advertisers, has become a $300 billion industry that routinely harvests your data for profit. Corporations such as Target have not only been tracking and assessing the behavior of their customers, particularly their purchasing patterns, for years, but the retailer has also funded major surveillance in cities across the country and developed behavioral surveillance algorithms that can determine whether someone’s mannerisms might fit the profile of a thief.

    Flagging you as a danger based on your public activities. Private corporations in conjunction with police agencies throughout the country have created a web of surveillance that encompasses all major cities in order to monitor large groups of people seamlessly, as in the case of protests and rallies. They are also engaging in extensive online surveillance, looking for any hints of “large public events, social unrest, gang communications, and criminally predicated individuals.” Defense contractors have been at the forefront of this lucrative market. Fusion centers, $330 million-a-year, information-sharing hubs for federal, state and law enforcement agencies, monitor and report such “suspicious” behavior as people buying pallets of bottled water, photographing government buildings, and applying for a pilot’s license as “suspicious activity.”

    Flagging you as a danger based on your social media activities. Every move you make, especially on social media, is monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line. As The Intercept reported, the FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies are increasingly investing in and relying on corporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to identify potential extremists and predict who might engage in future acts of anti-government behavior. This obsession with social media as a form of surveillance will have some frightening consequences in coming years. As Helen A.S. Popkin, writing for NBC News, observed, “We may very well face a future where algorithms bust people en masse for referencing illegal ‘Game of Thrones’ downloads… the new software has the potential to roll, Terminator-style, targeting every social media user with a shameful confession or questionable sense of humor.”

    Flagging you as a danger based on your social network. Not content to merely spy on individuals through their online activity, government agencies are now using surveillance technology to track one’s social network, the people you might connect with by phone, text message, email or through social message, in order to ferret out possible criminals. An FBI document obtained by Rolling Stone speaks to the ease with which agents are able to access address book data from Facebook’s WhatsApp and Apple’s iMessage services from the accounts of targeted individuals and individuals not under investigation who might have a targeted individual within their network. What this creates is a “guilt by association” society in which we are all as guilty as the most culpable person in our address book.

    Flagging you as a danger based on your car. License plate readers are mass surveillance tools that can photograph over 1,800 license tag numbers per minute, take a picture of every passing license tag number and store the tag number and the date, time, and location of the picture in a searchable database, then share the data with law enforcement, fusion centers and private companies to track the movements of persons in their cars. With tens of thousands of these license plate readers now in operation throughout the country, affixed to overpasses, cop cars and throughout business sectors and residential neighborhoods, it allows police to track vehicles and run the plates through law enforcement databases for abducted children, stolen cars, missing people and wanted fugitives. Of course, the technology is not infallible: there have been numerous incidents in which police have mistakenly relied on license plate data to capture out suspects only to end up detaining innocent people at gunpoint.

    Flagging you as a danger based on your political views. The Church Committee, the Senate task force charged with investigating COINTELPRO abuses in 1975, concluded that the government had carried out “secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power.” The report continued: “Groups and individuals have been harassed and disrupted because of their political views and their lifestyles… Intelligence agencies have served the political and personal objectives of presidents and other high officials.” Nothing has changed since then.

    Flagging you as a danger based on your correspondence. Just about every branch of the government—from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between—now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to spy on the American people. For instance, the U.S. Postal Service, which has been photographing the exterior of every piece of paper mail for the past 20 years, is also spying on Americans’ texts, emails and social media posts. Headed up by the Postal Service’s law enforcement division, the Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) is reportedly using facial recognition technology, combined with fake online identities, to ferret out potential troublemakers with “inflammatory” posts. The agency claims the online surveillance, which falls outside its conventional job scope of processing and delivering paper mail, is necessary to help postal workers avoid “potentially volatile situations.”

    Now the government wants us to believe that we have nothing to fear from these mass spying programs as long as we’ve done nothing wrong.

    Don’t believe it.

    As Matthew Feeney warns in the New York Times, “In the past, Communists, civil rights leaders, feminists, Quakers, folk singers, war protesters and others have been on the receiving end of law enforcement surveillance. No one knows who the next target will be.”

    The government’s definition of a “bad” guy is extraordinarily broad, and it results in the warrantless surveillance of innocent, law-abiding Americans on a staggering scale.

    Moreover, there is a repressive, suppressive effect to surveillance that not only acts as a potentially small deterrent on crime but serves to monitor and chill lawful First Amendment activity, and that is the whole point.

    Weaponized surveillance is re-engineering a society structured around the aesthetic of fear.

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the police state wants us silent, servile and compliant.

    They definitely do not want us to engage in First Amendment activities that challenge the government’s power, reveal the government’s corruption, expose the government’s lies, and encourage the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.

    And they certainly do not want us to remember that we have rights, let alone attempting to exercise those rights peaceably and lawfully, whether it’s protesting police brutality and racism, challenging COVID-19 mandates, questioning election outcomes, or listening to alternate viewpoints—even conspiratorial ones—in order to form our own opinions about the true nature of government. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/30/2023 – 23:40

  • Money Is The Biggest Point Of Contention In Relationships, New Survey Shows
    Money Is The Biggest Point Of Contention In Relationships, New Survey Shows

    Today in “completely heathy relationship behavior”, it’s being reported that many Millennials and Gen Zers are now doing research on their dates to try and ascertain how much money they make while they’re dating them.

    The revelation comes as part of a Bloomberg wrap up of a Credit Karma study that highlighted the fact that young people in relationships are fighting about money more than any other topics. 

    About 33% of people who responded to the survey said they had ended a relationship over money and more than 40% said they fight about finances on a monthly basis, the report said. 

    Money becomes a point of contention in relationships moreso than spending time together, chores or intimacy, the report says, noting that “red flags” around money including one person expecting the other to pay for everything and reckless spending. 

    Brittany Wolff, founder of Wolff Financial in South Carolina says arguments about money aren’t necessarily a bad thing and can lead to both people being more transparent about their financial situations and feelings. She says couples should have a “money date” regularly where they can sit together and talk about their financial goals. 

    Dan Slagle, founding partner of Fyooz Financial Planning, adds that the date should be in a “neutral location” and offers up the perfunctory advice that “Making it fun can help keep conversations light and productive”. 

    Right. And we guess how well you’ve been earning determines exactly how the end of the date goes…

    Meanwhile, 35% of Gen Z and 25% of Millennials said they research the job of the person they are dating to estimate how much money they make, the report says. 

    Brandon Gregg, financial advisor at BBK Wealth Management in Indiana, concluded: “Problems around money are going to happen — it’s a part of life. When they do, make sure that lines of communication are open. Taking the steps to understand each other’s values and communicating regularly early on will lessen the issues.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/30/2023 – 23:20

  • What If Biden Backs Out Of The Race?
    What If Biden Backs Out Of The Race?

    Authored by Charles Lipson via RealClear Wire,

    President Biden has declared he’s running for a second term, but it’s far from certain he actually will. His infirmity and low poll numbers raise serious doubts. His physical decline shows when he walks or climbs the stairs of Air Force One. His cognitive decline shows when he refuses to hold press conferences or answer even the simplest questions, like how he feels about the devastating fires in Maui. His decline in the public’s estimation shows when pollsters ask Americans how they’re doing. Four out of five answer, “Not good. Not good at all.”

    Voters also say they don’t want another general election choice like the last one. So many votes in 2020 were negative ones “against the worse candidate,” not in favor of the better one. They don’t want another grudge match between two unpopular candidates.

    Biden’s dismal poll numbers form a somber backdrop for his reelection campaign. That backdrop is even darker now that his health problems are so visible. These mounting problems may not prevent him from running, but they do lessen the chances. True, he keeps saying he is running. But, like all politicians, he may be deceiving the public or himself. The biggest “tell” is that Biden is avoiding the very things active candidates do. He’s not campaigning. He’s not attending a lot of small events with big donors. He’s not running ads. He’s not using the White House’s bully pulpit to address the nation on our challenges and his response to them.

    Still, those signs are not definitive. Biden might be lying low because the Republicans are fighting among themselves. Why get in their way? Better to wait until late autumn to ramp up his campaign.

    He might be unsure if he really is running, uncertain if he is up to the arduous task, physically and mentally.

    Or he might have already decided, privately, that he will not run but is delaying the announcement since it would immediately turn him into a powerless lame duck.

    At this point, it’s impossible to know what he has decided. He might not know himself. But it is well worth considering the implications if Biden limits himself to one term and waits until late fall or early spring to make the announcement.

    The first implication is that a late withdrawal favors some Democratic candidates over others. It favors those with high name recognition, existing campaign operations, and the ability to fund expensive national efforts, either from outside donations or their own pockets. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has already established his campaign-in-waiting and can raise lots of money, especially from big donors in his home state. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is a billionaire who can fund his own run and has begun setting up a national team. Michigan’s Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, by contrast, would be several steps behind and would need to raise a lot of money quickly to become a viable candidate. So would Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, or others who might step into the wide-open race. One candidate who is already running, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., would stay in the race, trading on his family name rather than his conspiracy-fueled ideas.

    Interestingly, no one in the Biden cabinet seems poised to make a run. That lackluster group is the faceless front of the administrative state. The only name even mentioned is Pete Buttigieg, and that very seldom. The one-time darling of the media has faded from consideration amid his troubled tenure at the Transportation Department. He’s the Beto O’Rourke of this round.

    The second consequence of a Biden withdrawal would be a fight over the future of Kamala Harris. She is the least popular vice president in polling history, and for good reason. Voters think she’s incompetent, inauthentic, and inarticulate, an empty-calorie word salad without any policy achievements. She’s the living embodiment of the “Peter Principle,” where people keep getting promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. She has reached that lofty level, just as Dan Quayle did during George H.W. Bush’s presidency.

    Kamala’s bleak showing in the polls is particularly striking because she took office with enthusiastic support from every legacy media outlet. They loved her, even though ordinary Democratic voters did not. In fact, those voters were so sour on Kamala that she withdrew before the first primary or caucus in 2020. She was polling near zero. She could raise money, at least initially, but she couldn’t raise enthusiasm or votes. She still can’t. With each failure, she tries to reintroduce herself to the public. It hasn’t worked.

    Unfortunately for Democrats, Kamala’s presence as second-in-line poses a thorny problem, whether Biden runs or not. If he runs, she’s an albatross on the ticket because voters are worried Biden might not make it through a full second term. They really, really don’t want to see Harris step into the Oval Office by default.

    If Biden decides not to run, Harris poses a different problem. She is the country’s highest-ranking African-American officeholder in a party built around identity politics and strong turnouts by blacks, especially black women. That dependence on black votes is why Biden picked her in the first place (remember, he promised to pick a black woman), and it’s why he cannot drop her from the ticket. If Biden doesn’t run and Harris sinks to the bottom in an open primary, the result could alienate a vital constituency and depress turnout in that crucial group.

    The third implication concerns Hunter’s legal troubles, which touch on other family members and the patriarch himself. The president could solve the legal peril instantly by pardoning family members who face criminal exposure. Biden’s press secretary rejected the possibility. Asked if Hunter might receive a presidential pardon, Karine Jean-Pierre replied with a single word: “No.”

    The White House knows the uproar – and political damage – a pardon would cause. It would imply guilt, impede a full disclosure of all criminal acts, gut the very notion of unbiased justice, and appear nakedly self-serving.

    The Bidens’ political and legal problems are not merely that family members made a lot of money, but that they made it while Joe Biden was vice president and made it without any visible business skills. Equally important, the money came from foreign businesses in the very countries where he directed U.S. foreign policy, at President Obama’s behest. The family leveraged Biden’s official position for some $20-40 million, funneled through an opaque web of LLCs. They were selling political connections and access, not business expertise. The LLCs were formed when Joe Biden was vice president and had no legitimate business purpose.They were designed to hide to sources and distribution of income.

    The president’s direct involvement in these schemes is still murky. Proving he knew, or worse, aided them, is the goal of Republican House investigations and a possible impeachment inquiry.

    Whether or not any felonies can be proven, such as money laundering or Hunter’s failure to register as a foreign agent, is an open question. Not that the Department of Justice has pursued them vigorously. Quite the contrary. Their lax treatment of the president’s family and suppression of the IRS investigation is a scandal in its own right.

    If President Biden does eventually pardon his family, the ensuing uproar would end his administration’s political life and lead inexorably to an impeachment vote. That’s why the president would be well advised to wait beyond the November election before giving his family a “get out of jail free” card. Even then, it would trash his legacy.

    What about Republicans? What would Biden’s withdrawal mean for them? At this stage, it’s impossible to know. It’s too early to tell if it would hurt or help Trump, either in the primaries or the general election. One possibility is that a new face on the Democratic side would encourage Republicans to pick a new face themselves. But there are still too many unknowns to have any confidence in a prediction.

    One thing we do know is that Biden’s promise to run for a second term does not guarantee he will stay in the race. He could still decide he’s too old, too infirm, or too unpopular to make the arduous uphill climb. And we know one more thing: If Joe Biden does pull out, his decision will send shockwaves across the American political landscape.

    Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he founded the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security. He can be reached at charles.lipson@gmail.com.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/30/2023 – 23:00

  • Russia, North Korea 'Actively Advancing' Arms Deal For Ukraine War: White House
    Russia, North Korea ‘Actively Advancing’ Arms Deal For Ukraine War: White House

    The White House is again accusing Moscow of importing North Korean weapons for use in its military operation in Ukraine, at a moment tensions with Pyongyang are mounting, which has led to tit-for-tat exchanges of nuclear rhetoric.

    White House national security spokesman John Kirby on Wednesday stopped short of saying there’s smoking gun evidence for arms transfers already accomplished, instead strongly suggesting potential sales in the near future. “We urge the DPRK to cease its arms negotiations with Russia and abide by the public commitments that Pyongyang has made to not provide or sell arms to Russia,” Kirby said.

    Presidents Putin and Kim Jong Un recently exchanged cordial letters expressing a desire for closer cooperation on multiple fronts, also after North Korea has blasted NATO ‘imperialism’ for causing the Ukraine conflict to erupt. Russia sent a delegation to the north last month, headed by the foreign minister.

    Kirby referenced new intelligence which he said shows both pariah leaders (in the West’s eyes) are “actively advancing” high-level talks for more weapons.

    He further claimed that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu while in Pyongyang late last month was there “to try to convince Pyongyang to sell artillery ammunition to Russia.” 

    “Following these negotiations, high-level discussions may continue in coming months,” Kirby said, alleging the two sides are negotiating over “significant quantities and multiple types” of weapons to use in Ukraine.

    Washington has over the course of the Ukraine conflict at various points accused North Korea of supplying the Russian military with additional artillery ammo. US intelligence has in the recent past alleged that train shipments between the two countries included covert ammo supplies, but something which has not been proven.

    The two countries actually share a small border. More recently, there have been accusations that Wagner Group, which is now on the outs with Moscow in the wake of the mutiny in June, purchased large quantities of arms and equipment from the Kim Jong-Un government.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/30/2023 – 22:40

  • 100 Former Clerks Of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas Speak Out
    100 Former Clerks Of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas Speak Out

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

    More than 100 former clerks for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas signed an open letter defending his independence and integrity amid media reports that suggest he received improper gifts from a Texas billionaire.

    “As his law clerks, we offer this response. Different paths led us to our year with Justice Thomas, and we have followed different paths since. But along the way, we all saw with our own eyes the same thing: His integrity is unimpeachable,” their letter said (pdf).

    Associate Justice Clarence Thomas poses for the official group photograph at the U.S. Supreme Court in the District of Columbia on Nov. 30, 2018. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

    The 112 individuals who signed the letter include three circuit court judges, including Judge David Stras of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, Judge James Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and Judge Allison Rushing of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

    “And these stories are malicious, perpetuating the ugly assumption that the Justice cannot think for himself. They are part of a larger attack on the Court and its legitimacy as an institution,” the letter also stated. “The picture they paint of the Court and the man for whom we worked bears no resemblance to reality.”

    “His independence is unshakable, deeply rooted seven decades ago as that young child who walked through the door of his grandparents’ house for a life forever changed,” they continued.

    The former clerks then described Justice Thomas’ upbringing in Alabama and how he was destined to become a priest before the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s, which made him decide to pursue law instead.

    “He is a man of unwavering principle. He welcomes the lone dissent. He is also a man of great humor and warmth and generosity. Walk the halls, and you’ll hear his laugh. Call, and he answers,” the letter continued. “His grandfather’s sayings become our sayings. His chambers become our chambers—a place fueled by unstoppable curiosity and unreturned library books, all to get every case just right.”

    The letter went on to make reference to Justice Thomas’s upbringing and education, how he was changed by life in the segregated South, and how he had been destined for the priesthood before the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. led him to the law instead.

    Reports from ProPublica, a left-leaning media outlet, have claimed that the Supreme Court justice accepted at least 38 vacations, 26 private jet flights, 12 VIP passes to sporting events, and two resort trips during his time as a justice.

    “While some of the hospitality, such as stays in personal homes, may not have required disclosure, Thomas appears to have violated the law by failing to disclose flights, yacht cruises and expensive sports tickets, according to ethics experts,” the report in August said.

    But the letter, in addressing those reports, asserted that they’re part of a broader series of attacks on the Supreme Court itself.

    “Lately, the stories have questioned his integrity and his ethics for the friends he keeps. They bury the lede. These friends are not parties before him as a Justice of the Court. And these stories are malicious, perpetuating the ugly assumption that the Justice cannot think for himself,” the letter said, according to Fox News, which obtained the document. “They are part of a larger attack on the Court and its legitimacy as an institution. The picture they paint of the Court and the man for whom we worked bears no resemblance to reality.”

    Congressional Democrats have said the reports call into question whether Justice Thomas followed the high court’s ethics rules and have vowed to make changes to the Supreme Court. They have also called on the associate justice, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush, to recuse himself from certain cases.

    “Justice Thomas has brought shame upon himself and the United States Supreme Court with his acceptance of massive, repeated and undisclosed gifts,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, in mid-August. “No government official, elected or unelected, could ethically or legally accept gifts of that scale. He should resign immediately.”

    Other than Mr. Lieu, four other House Democrats have said Justice Thomas should resign from the bench. They include Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Bill Pascrell (D-N.J), Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), and Hank Johnson (D-Ga.).

    In response to the reports, Justice Thomas has said he “endeavored to follow that counsel throughout my tenure, and have always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines,” adding that the “guidelines are now being changed, as the committee of the Judicial Conference responsible for financial disclosure for the entire federal judiciary just this past month announced new guidance.”

    “And, it is, of course, my intent to follow this guidance in the future,” he added in a statement.

    Meanwhile, Harlan Crow, whose friendship with Justice Thomas was the subject of the ProPublica reports, issued a comment to The Atlantic earlier this year saying that it “would be absurd to me to talk to Justice Thomas about Supreme Court cases, because that’s not my world.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/30/2023 – 22:20

  • Rare Uprising Against US-Backed Forces In Syria Leaves Many Killed
    Rare Uprising Against US-Backed Forces In Syria Leaves Many Killed

    There’s been a rare armed uprising in a region of Syria currently occupied by American forces, which has resulted in dead and wounded. Regional reports have tallied at least 13 to as many as 25 people, both militants and civilians, have been killed.

    It happened Wednesday in Deir Ezzor province, which for years has had some 1,000 or more US soldiers occupying what is Syria’s only oil and gas rich province. The US has trained and supported Kurkish-led “Syrian Democratic Forces” while also cutting off Damascus and most of the Syrian population from its own resources. 

    AFP file image

    Al Jazeera reports of the Wednesday violence, “Clashes in eastern Syria between Arab tribal fighters and US-backed Kurdish-led fighters have left several people, including civilians, dead and others wounded, opposition activists and pro-government media have said.”

    It’s being called the worst violence there since 2015, when there were still fierce counter-terror operations against ISIS. 

    According to more details: 

    The clashes first broke out on Monday, a day after the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) detained the commander and several members of the Deir Az Zor Military Council, a group that had been allied with the SDF, at a meeting they invited them to in the northeastern city of Hassakeh.

    The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, reported that 10 Arab tribesmen and three SDF fighters were killed in clashes in the villages of Hrejieh and Breeha.

    Additionally there were reports of at least eight civilians, including a child, killed in the village of Hrejieh. 

    Much of the Arab component of the US-backed forces in the region has long been in tension with the area’s Kurdish leadership. The Syrian Kurds dominate the SDF, while the Arabs tend to be made up of remnant “Free Syrian Army” factions. While Washington has long sought to present the SDF as a broad coalition of anti-Assad “opposition” fighters, the reality is that the Kurds and their interests totally dominate.

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    This has led to fears among the tribes near the Iraq border that the SDF and US will in the end “erase” the eastern region’s “Arab identity.”

    There’s also the possibility that pro-Assad forces are covertly encouraging the Arab tribes to rise up and throw off the American occupation. For years, the Pentagon’s chief enemy in the region has been ‘pro-Iran’ and Shia aligned forces, but if there’s a broader push to overthrow the US occupation from the Arab tribes, Washington’s days occupying Syria are numbered.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/30/2023 – 22:00

  • Over 1,600 Scientists Sign 'No Climate Emergency' Declaration
    Over 1,600 Scientists Sign ‘No Climate Emergency’ Declaration

    Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    International scientists have jointly signed a declaration dismissing the existence of a climate crisis and insisting that carbon dioxide is beneficial to Earth, contrary to the popular alarmist narrative.

    Children take part in a climate change protest in Montreal on Sept. 26, 2020. (Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)

    “There is no climate emergency,” the Global Climate Intelligence Group (CLINTEL) said in its World Climate Declaration (pdf), made public in August. “Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.”

    A total of 1,609 scientists and professionals from around the world have signed the declaration, including 321 from the United States.

    The coalition pointed out that Earth’s climate has varied as long as it has existed, with the planet experiencing several cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age only ended as recently as 1850, they said.

    “Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming,” the declaration said.

    Warming is happening “far slower” than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

    “Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools,” the coalition said, adding that these models “exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases” and “ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.” For instance, even though climate alarmists characterize CO2 as environmentally-damaging, the coalition pointed out that the gas is “not a pollutant.”

    Carbon dioxide is “essential” to all life on earth and is “favorable” for nature. Extra CO2 results in the growth of global plant biomass while also boosting the yields of crops worldwide.

    CLINTEL also dismissed the narrative of global warming being linked to increased natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, and droughts, stressing that there is “no statistical evidence” to support these claims.

    “There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. Go for adaptation instead of mitigation; adaptation works whatever the causes are,” it said.

    “To believe the outcome of a climate model is to believe what the model makers have put in. This is precisely the problem of today’s climate discussion to which climate models are central. Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science. Should not we free ourselves from the naive belief in immature climate models?”

    Climate Models and Sunlight Reflection

    Among the CLINTEL signatories are two Nobel laureates—physicists John Francis Clauser from the United States and Ivan Giaever, a Norwegian-American.

    Mr. Clauser has made a significant addition to climate models to dismiss the narrative of global warming: the visible light reflected by cumulus clouds which, on average, cover half of the earth.

    Young demonstrators hold placards as they attend a climate change protest opposite the Houses of Parliament in central London on Feb. 15, 2019. (Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)

    Current climate models vastly underestimate this aspect of cumulus cloud reflection, which plays a key role in regulating the earth’s temperature. Mr. Clauser previously told President Joe Biden that he disagreed with his climate policies.

    In May, Mr. Clauser was elected to the board of directors at the CO2 Coalition, a group focusing on the beneficial contributions of carbon dioxide in the environment.

    “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,” Mr. Clauser said in a May 5 statement.

    “Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience. In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills.”

    “It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists. In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis.”

    False Doomsday Predictions, a Presidential Issue

    CLINTEL’s declaration against the climate change narrative counters propaganda spread by climate alarmists who have long predicted doomsday scenarios triggered by global warming—none of which have ever come true.

    In 1970, some climate scientists predicted that the earth would move into a new ice age by the 21st century. Pollution expert James Lodge predicted that “air pollution may obliterate the sun and cause a new ice age in the first third of the new century,” according to The Boston Globe.

    Participants hold placards as they take part in a demonstration demanding the government take immediate action against climate change in Sydney, Australia, on Jan. 10, 2020. (Mohammed Farooq/AFP via Getty Images)

    In May 1982, Mostafa Tolba, then-executive director of the United Nations environmental program, said that if the world did not change course, it would face an “environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible, as any nuclear holocaust” by 2000.

    In June 2008, James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Sciences, said that within five to 10 years, the Arctic would have no ice left in the summer.

    As climate alarmists continue to spread propaganda about global warming, the topic has become an issue in the 2024 presidential race, with multiple candidates openly dismissing it.

    In a July 13 post on X, Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that climate change “is being used to control us through fear.”

    “Freedom and free markets are a much better way to stop pollution. Polluters make themselves rich by making the public pay for the damage they do,” he said.

    During the first 2024 GOP presidential debate, candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called climate change a “hoax.”

    “The reality is, the anti-carbon agenda is the wet blanket on our economy. And so the reality is, more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change,” he said.

    High Temperatures, Biden’s Appliance Crackdown

    Climate activists have insisted that global warming is responsible for the soaring temperatures across the United States, even claiming that temperatures are hitting record highs.

    In a recent interview with The Epoch Times, John Christy, a climatologist and professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, dismissed the narrative of record high temperatures.

    “Regionally, the West has seen its largest number of hot summer records in the past 100 years, but the Ohio Valley and Upper Midwest are experiencing their fewest,” he said.

    “For the conterminous U.S. as a whole, the last 10 years have produced only an average number of records. The 1930s are still champs.”

    Climate change policies have been used to justify sweeping lifestyle changes across the United States by the Energy Department, like restricting home appliances, and sometimes, even outright banning them.

    In June, the Energy Department proposed rules that would require ceiling fans to become more energy efficient, a development that could lead to manufacturers having to shell out $86.6 million per year in “increased equipment costs.”

    In February, the DOE proposed energy efficiency rules targeting gas stoves that would affect half of all new models of such stoves sold in the United States while making most of the existing ones noncompliant.

    In July, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission proposed a policy that would remove nearly all existing portable gas generators from the market.

    The Biden administration has already implemented a ban on incandescent light bulbs, which came into effect on Aug. 1.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/30/2023 – 21:40

  • FEMA To Blast All Smartphones , TVs, Radios With Mass Alert Test On October 4
    FEMA To Blast All Smartphones , TVs, Radios With Mass Alert Test On October 4

    On Oct. 4, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will push mass alerts across the nation on every television, smartphone, and radio with a notice that USA Today said would read:

    “This is a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System, issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, covering the United States from 14:20 to 14:50 hours ET. This is only a test. No action is required by the public.”

    FEMA’s last test occurred in 2021 during the Covid pandemic. At the time, the emergency agency sent test alerts nationwide, causing all phones, televisions, and radios to blast an annoying sound. 

    Here’s what to expect via a smartphone next month:

    “THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed.”

    USA Today said the nationwide test comes “in the wake of the horrific fires on the island of Maui on Aug. 8, when warning sirens that might have alerted people to the danger weren’t deployed, it’s a reminder of what systems are in place should they be needed.”

    Some on social media said the upcoming test will sound like “The Purge.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/30/2023 – 21:20

  • Colorado Controversy Raises Questions Over The Meaning Of The Gadsden Flag
    Colorado Controversy Raises Questions Over The Meaning Of The Gadsden Flag

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    The historic Gadsden flag is at the heart of a controversy involving a twelve-year-old boy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

    The child was removed from the school due to a patch on his backpack featuring the flag.

    The school district defended the action and claimed that, despite its historical symbolism, it is now considered racist and connected to slavery.

    Not only is the flag a historical image originally unconnected to slavery, but the action (in my view) contravenes core free speech protections.

    The flag was designed by Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina in 1775 as a symbol of the defiance of colonists to British rule. (Some trace the origins of the flag earlier to a design by Benjamin Franklin). Featuring a timber snake, it affirmed the view of the colonists that they would not be stepped on by overbearing British officials and troops.

    While Gadsden would become a brigadier general in the Continental Army, he gave the flag to Commodore Esek Hopkins who later adopted it as his flag as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Navy.  For the revolutionaries, it embodied the essence of the war: they were the victims of the British overstepping their authority and treading upon the rights of the colonies.

    The historic image is still cherished by many, including those who see it as a symbol of defiance of individual citizens to overreaching government action.

    That was the view at The Vanguard School in Colorado Springs. A video on the social media platform X, shows the 12-year-old elementary school student being removed from class.

    A staff member explained that the image is now deemed “disruptive to the classroom environment” and that it has “origins with slavery.” The boy’s parent is told that the child must remove the patch before he can return to school.

    The staffer tells the parent to speak with Jeff Yocum, the director of operations at the school.

    Yocum reportedly cited research by a graphic design professor at Iowa State University Paul Bruski, who declared the flag as now a symbol of hate: 

    “Because of its creator’s history and because it is commonly flown alongside ‘Trump 2020’ flags, the Confederate battle flag and other white-supremacist flags, some may now see the Gadsden flag as a symbol of intolerance and hate – or even racism.”

    Yocum also reportedly cited a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ruling involving a Postal worker, which found that while the flag “originated in the Revolutionary War in a non-racial context,” despite its “historic origins and meaning of the symbol, it also has since been sometimes interpreted to convey racially-tinged messages.”

    We previously discussed how the EEOC reinstated a case in 2016 of an employee objecting to another employee wearing a cap with the symbol.

    Clearly, symbols can have different meanings for different people. I disagree with Professor Bruski, but respect his right to raise such objections. The question is whether others respect the right of those with opposing views, including viewing this flag as an important and inspiring symbol of the American Revolution.

    The censorship of the image strikes me as a clear denial of free speech rights for this student. I obviously do not agree with the historical interpretation, but I am far more concerned about the constitutional interpretation of the school district allowing such censorship of images.

    It is an ironic moment for a flag that symbolized the resistance to overbearing government actions and the denial of core rights in the American Revolution.

    *  *  *

    Update: Today the school district reversed its decision and will now allow the student and the flag back into the school:

    From Vanguard’s founding we have proudly supported our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the ordered liberty that all Americans have enjoyed for almost 250 years.

    The Vanguard School recognizes the historical significance of the Gadsden flag and its place in history.

    This incident is an occasion for us to reaffirm our deep commitment to a classical education in support of these American principles.

    At this time, the Vanguard School Board and the District have informed the student’s family that he may attend school with the Gadsden flag patch visible on his backpack.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/30/2023 – 21:00

  • Poor Americans Skip Meals, Can't Afford Power Bills, Miss Rent Payments, In Era Of 'Bidenomics'
    Poor Americans Skip Meals, Can’t Afford Power Bills, Miss Rent Payments, In Era Of ‘Bidenomics’

    Amidst the chaos and disinformation being pumped out of the White House and echoed by corporate media cheerleaders, we all remember this headline: 

    We all know every politician lies. Some tell half-truths, while others, such as the Biden administration, attempt to convince folks it is daylight while it’s midnight. An increasing number of Americans can see right through the propaganda, hence why Oliver Anthony’s blue-collar anthem “Rich Men North Of Richmond” continues to rank number one on Billboard Hot 100. 

    Or that is why President Biden’s approval ratings remain cratered. 

    This leaves us with a Bloomberg report citing fintech startup Propel, an app aimed at Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients, that reveals an increasing number of Americans are struggling to pay rent and put food on the table. 

    Among households using the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program’s boosted pandemic benefits, 42% skipped meals in August and 55% ate less because they couldn’t afford food, more than double last year’s share, according to a Wednesday report from Propel Inc., a benefits software developer.

    Bloomberg said:

    The data also highlight that households were worse off in August from just a month ago. Since July, an increasing share of low-income households had utilities shut off, couldn’t afford the prior month’s utility bill or couldn’t afford rent. More than two-thirds of those surveyed who were receiving boosted SNAP payments said they had some form of debt.

    Propel’s alarming report is an eye-opener, considering we’ve pointed out that mid/low tier consumers have depleted savings and racked up insurmountable credit card debt to make ends meet in the era of ‘Bidenomics’ inflation. Factor in a cooling labor market (read: Job Openings Crater, Prior Data “Unexpectedly” Revised Sharply Lower). These folks have limited safety nets as social support expires. Just wait until student loan payments kick in in several weeks.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/30/2023 – 20:40

  • Rise In Crime: Nordstrom Closes Shop In SF, Dollar Store Locks Up Merchandise
    Rise In Crime: Nordstrom Closes Shop In SF, Dollar Store Locks Up Merchandise

    Authored by Bryan Jung via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours)

    Pedestrians walk by a closed Whole Foods store in San Francisco on April 12, 2023. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

    A nationwide crime wave is forcing many retailers, large and small, to close their doors or lock up their merchandise.

    One example is Nordstrom, which made an announcement in May that it’s closing its flagship store in downtown San Francisco after 35 years in business.

    The location inside Westfield Mall said goodbye to its last customers on Aug. 27, after opening in October 1988.

    The store at the corner of Fifth and Market Streets once occupied five floors and spanned more than 312,000 square feet but is now closing like many other retailers because of a surge in crime and poor sales.

    San Francisco Centre has suffered from a rise in shoplifting, homelessness, and public drug use.

    A Popular 35-Year Store Location Closes Its Doors

    A former shopping staple in downtown San Francisco, the neighborhood’s “unsafe conditions for customers, retailers and employees,” made operations difficult to sustain, a member of the city’s Board of Supervisors, Matt Dorsey, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

    The now-empty Nordstrom location has been described by local media outlets as desolated with countless empty displays and mannequins packaged away.

    Other major retailers in the area, including Old Navy Whole Foods, AT&T, Anthropologie, AmazonGo, Office Depot, and Saks Off Fifth Avenue, closed earlier this summer.

    Remaining stores have been forced to lock up their stock to deter shoplifters.

    Nordstrom Rack, across the street from the flagship location, shut down operations in June.

    Even the Westfield Mall announced in June that it would be closing, after operating on Market Street for more than 20 years, local TV news station KRON4 reported.

    The future viability of the San Francisco Centre shopping district is uncertain.

    San Francisco Swamped With Crime And Empty Store Fronts

    In addition to the rampant drug use, homelessness, and crime, the city has lost thousands to remote work after the COVID-19 pandemic, which has decimated vast areas of its commercial neighborhoods.

    Office vacancies in San Francisco reached a record high of 31 percent in May, enough space for 92,000 workers, according to the Daily Mail.

    The loss of office workers is expected to contribute to a budget shortfall of $1.3 billion in five years, while a decline in property tax revenue alone may cost nearly $200 million per year, according to the city’s chief accountant.

    Sales tax revenue for South of Market, or SoMA, where the stores were located, has seen a 25 percent decline from the first quarter of 2019.

    Ms. Breed’s office announced that it was working on changing laws and tax reforms that would bring more businesses to the area.

    IKEA’s opening of a new location at 945 Market Street on Aug. 23 was touted as a sign by Ms. Breed that things weren’t too bad, calling IKEA’s move “a game changer.”

    Mr. Dorsey said that the city will “have some serious issues to work on.”

    “San Francisco has always had ups and downs, but I’m going to tell you we always come back,” he said. “And I’m not going to lose my optimism about my district or my city.”

    Last week, city authorities announced 17 new pop-up shops that will move into empty storefronts in the downtown Financial District in late September, according to ABC7 News in San Francisco.

    Shoplifting Hits Democrat-Run Regions Across the US

    Shoplifting has become a problem for retailers in major metropolitan regions nationwide, with even discount stores being hit.

    On Aug. 24, Dollar Tree Chairman and CEO Rick Dreiling said the discount retailer would start locking up items to prevent growing theft.

    Mr. Dreiling has blamed shrink, an industry term for stolen items and damages, for causing the company to miss its earnings forecasts and cut its outlook in May.

    The retailer’s gross profit margins tumbled to 29.8 percent in the second quarter of 2023 from 32.7 percent in the second quarter of 2022.

    “We are now taking a very defensive approach to shrink,” Mr. Dreiling said, noting that inventory losses had “advanced a little further than what we had anticipated.”

    The spree of store theft has already forced larger stores such as CVS and Target to lock up entire isles of items.

    The CEO also suggested that some items with the highest rates of theft would be removed from stores altogether but wouldn’t specify any in particular.

    Representatives for Dollar Tree and Nordstrom didn’t respond by press time to requests by the Epoch Times for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/30/2023 – 20:20

  • Half Of Americans Live In States Where Weed Is Legal, Health Officials Push To Ease Restrictions
    Half Of Americans Live In States Where Weed Is Legal, Health Officials Push To Ease Restrictions

    This week in August 2013, the U.S. government cleared the way for the legalization of marijuana in the country, as the Justice Department stated in a press release that it was not going to enforce federal law prohibiting the drug’s use in states that were launching recreational cannabis programs at the time.

    Ten years down the line, half of Americans live in states where marijuana is legal and another 80 million have access to medical marijuana.

    As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, this means that almost three quarters of U.S. residents live in a state with some sort of legal weed.

    Infographic: Half of Americans Live in States Where Weed Is Legal | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    In 2013, it was Colorado and Washington which were gearing up to legalize marijuana after successful ballot initiatives as part of the November 2012 elections.

    But the federal government’s policy statement was also relevant for another 18 states and the District of Columbia, which at the time had already legalized medical marijuana.

    Data from the Census Bureau shows that between 2012 and 2014, a substantial number of people continued to gain access to medical marijuana as larger states like Massachusetts and Illinois passed measures.

    After that year, shifts to recreational weed legislation dominate the statistic with significant legalizations in California (2016), Michigan (2018), New Jersey (2020) and New York (2021), effectively lowering the number of people under medical marijuana legislation only.

    Despite this, a total of 14 states have passed medical marijuana ballots or legislation after 2015, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Utah and most recently Kentucky.

    And today, Bloomberg reports that US health officials are recommending easing restrictions on marijuana, a move that sets the stage for potentially expanding the cannabis market.

    A top official at the Department of Health and Human Services wrote Drug Enforcement Agency Administrator Anne Milgram calling for marijuana to be reclassified as a Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substances Act, according to a letter dated Aug. 29 seen by Bloomberg News.

    With the health department’s recommendation in hand, the DEA must now conduct its own review process before coming to a decision.

    Should the DEA reclassify marijuana, it would mark a critical shift away from its status as a Schedule I substance, which includes drugs with high abuse risk, like heroin, LSD and ecstasy. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/30/2023 – 20:00

  • Naval Aviation Commanders Could Receive Up To $105,000 In Bonus
    Naval Aviation Commanders Could Receive Up To $105,000 In Bonus

    By Diana Correll of NavyTimes

    Active duty commanding officers of aviation units are now eligible for a $105,000 retention bonus for three more years of service.

    The deal is a total of $5,000 more than what they were offered the past three fiscal years under the Aviation Command Retention Bonus program, which aims “to retain those officers with the capabilities and command experience in our primary warfighting missions that are critical for the future of our service,” according to a naval administrative message.

    Commanders under this year’s offer will receive $35,000 annually, with their obligation ending after 22 years of cumulative service, the NAVADMIN said.

    Additionally, the Navy is also offering a $35,000 retention bonus for an additional two years of service — an option that wasn’t offered last year. Those officers will receive $17,500 annually, and complete at least 21 years of cumulative service.

    Once the CO tour wraps up, those who agreed to the bonus must serve in a post-command commander tour lasting between 24 and 36 months.

    “The minimum [Aviation Command Retention Bonus] obligation ends after 21 years of commissioned service, the projected rotation date of the assigned [post-command commander[ tour, or 2 years from the contract acceptance date, whichever is later and depending on contract length,” the NAVADMIN said.

    Those eligible to apply must have screened during the Aviation Command Screen Board as the commanding officer of an eligible operational, operational training, or special mission commander command.

    Applications are open until the end of the month.

    In March, the Navy announced reserve officers were eligible for $100,000 through the Training and Administration of the Reserve Aviation Command Retention Bonus program.

    Officers under that program would receive an initial payment of $34,000, followed by two additional annual payments of $33,000 for at least another three years of service that includes a post-command commander tour.

    The Navy emphasized the significance of retention bonuses in its budget request released in March as the service navigates challenges keeping and recruiting new sailors and officers.

    “Retention has … been difficult with a strong national economy, so bonuses and incentives to retain our current naval force [are] a priority,” the budget document said.

    Even so, the Navy surpassed its retention goals for FY22. As of February, the service was ahead of its FY23 monthly retention targets, Navy Times previously reported.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/30/2023 – 19:40

  • Canada Issues 2SLGBTQI+ "Travel Advisory" For The U.S., Whatever That Means
    Canada Issues 2SLGBTQI+ “Travel Advisory” For The U.S., Whatever That Means

    The genius bureaucrats in Canada have issued either a “LGBTQ2S+” or “2SLGBTQI+” travel advisory for the United States, depending on which news source you pull your information from and which acronym is popular this week. 

    The country has “updated its international travel advisories to warn members of the LGBTQ+ community that they may face discrimination if they travel to some places in the United States,” according to CTV News. 

    The advisory was put into place after at least 18 U.S. states “passed laws that limit or ban certain things relevant to the community, including gender-affirming medical care for minors and teaching about sexual orientation in schools”.

    We don’t get it. So in other words, be careful driving on a highway in Florida, because you can’t pull over and give your minor child a sex change?

    The travel advisory follows the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s warning in May about “threats of violence” against the LGBTQ+ community. There’s been no word on whether or not the Homeland Security warning included the “2S” and “I” portions of Canada’s acronym. 

    Photo: NBC

    “Some states have enacted laws and policies” that affect LGBTQ+ travellers, Global Affairs Canada said Tuesday. The warning “doesn’t specify which states, or which of their laws or customs, are of concern,” CTV added.

    “Carefully consider whether you are comfortable visiting a destination where the laws and social customs affecting (LGBTQ+) people differ from those in Canada,” the Canadian government warns. 

    Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said Tuesday: “Even as we work hard on that government-to-government relationship, every Canadian government, very much including our government, needs to put at the centre of everything we do the interests and the safety of every single Canadian and every single group of Canadians.”

    Recall back in May the NAACP issued a travel advisory for the state of Florida, stating: “Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals. Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color.” 

    In an accompanying statement, the 114-year-old organization said the travel advisory “comes in direct response to Governor Ron DeSantis’ aggressive attempts to erase Black history and to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/30/2023 – 19:20

  • Pfizer To Restart Production At Damaged North Carolina Facility In Q4
    Pfizer To Restart Production At Damaged North Carolina Facility In Q4

    By Kate Magill of Manufacturing Drive,

    Pfizer plans to restart production at its damaged Rocky Mount, North Carolina manufacturing site by Q4 of this year, the company announced Monday.

    The drugmaker reopened the site on Aug. 7 and said efforts to restart production are on track, with several areas of the site now operational, including its Incoming Materials, Chemical and Biological Quality labs, packaging and inspection operations and supply chain and warehouse.

    Pzifer has been scrambling to get production back on track at Rocky Mount after a tornado ripped through the facility last month, causing extensive damage to its warehouse. All 40,000 pallets of packaging supplies and finished goods in the company’s warehouse were damaged.

    The shutdown of the site — which produces nearly 50 types of drugs, including about a quarter of Pfizer’s sterile injectable drugs such as painkillers and anesthesia — sparked worry about shortages across the country. The site produces 8% of U.S. supply of sterile injectable drugs.

    In a move to mitigate future issues, the company is working to release any product that was not impacted and passes inspection to distribution channels. It also secured the use of a temporary warehouse.

    “Pfizer is also working on knowledge and documentation transfers for product manufacturing (tech transfers) to other sterile injectable sites in the network to accelerate the supply of its products,” the company said in its announcement.

    “This includes working with regulatory bodies to ensure compliance and to obtain approvals.”

    As part of its strategy to avoid shortages, earlier this month drugmaker released a list of 12 drugs put on its emergency ordering list, meaning they can only be ordered directly from Pfizer and in capped quantities.

    The company also noted in an earlier update that it is exploring the use of alternative manufacturing sites at other U.S. locations in its network.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/30/2023 – 19:00

  • Chicago News Crew Robbed At Gunpoint While Reporting On String Of Robberies
    Chicago News Crew Robbed At Gunpoint While Reporting On String Of Robberies

    Today in “too sad to be ironic” news, a Chicago television news crew doing a report on a string of robberies this week wound up getting robbed at gun point themselves by three armed men wearing ski masks. 

    A reporter and photographer for spanish-language station Univision Chicago were filming around 5AM in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood, AP/ABC reported, when three masked men held them at gunpoint and robbed them of their television cameras “and other items”. 

    Luis Godinez, vice president of news at Univision Chicago, commented: “They were approached with guns and robbed. Mainly it was personal items, and they took a camera.”’

    “They’re OK, and we’re working on it together as a team,” he said of his crew.

    The story was specifically on robberies in the West Town community where the robbery took place. The spot was supposed to run on the morning news but footage that was shot was “in the stolen camera” and, as a result, the report never made it to air.

    ABC/AP reported that the victims were a 28-year-old man and 42-year-old man and that the armed robbers fled in the vehicles they showed up to the scene in: a gray sedan and black SUV.

    “The offenders then took the victims’ belongings before returning to the vehicles and fleeing,” a police spokesperson told the Washington Post. 

    Astonishingly, this is now the second robbery this month involving a television news crew after a WLS-TV photographer was robbed and assaulted earlier this month while preparing to cover a story on Chicago’s West Side. 

    The corresponding union for the reporters, the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians Local 41, has now issued a warning about growing safety threats to those in the field covering the news. 

    The union’s president said: “Our news photographers and reporters provide a very important public service in keeping our community informed. We are committed to making sure that their safety comes first.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/30/2023 – 18:40

  • An Important Lesson From Chicago On Confronting The Enemies Of Free Speech
    An Important Lesson From Chicago On Confronting The Enemies Of Free Speech

    Submitted by Mark Glennon of Wirepoints

    The modern left’s assault on free speech is perhaps the most terrifying element of the madness we have succumbed to for the simple reason that democracy is meaningless without it. The assault has been largely successful. Voices that should be heard are muzzled and, more insidiously, countless other voices are frightened into silence.

    We see that suppression routinely. Too often, readers here tell us of being intimidated into silence by the cancel mob, a mob now controlling much of our government. The iron boot of government on one’s throat is no small matter: Fear of the cost of litigating against a government intent on suppressing free speech is particularly intimidating.

    That intimidation must come to an end. Help is often available – a resource you should prize. A number of law firms specializing in free speech are now available, pro bono – free or at reduced cost. And they are winning, thanks to federal courts that still recognize the First Amendment right to free speech.

    A Chicago company’s free speech case is an illustration.

    Townstone Financial is a smallish, Chicago-based home mortgage originator. It marketed itself primarily through a weekly one-hour show on AM 560 called The Townstone Financial Show. They discussed issues of interest to homebuyers and offered advice to listeners and callers, sometimes getting into topics like crime, policing, movies and the like.

    In 2020, the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) sued Townstone claiming that the company violated a fair lending law by discriminating against African-Americans.

    However, the CFPB never alleged any case of Townstone discriminating on mortgage applications.

    Instead, the CFPB said Townstone discriminated through its marketing in its radio show by “discouraging” applications from Blacks. The CFPB’s evidence was a handful of comments on the show made over a four-year period representing perhaps 10 minutes of air time out of about 10,000 minutes.

    Some of those comments might be regarded as offensive or in bad taste. They referred to a particular Jewel food store at Clark and Division Streets in Chicago as “Jungle Jewel” and included talk of certain Black areas having “hoodlum weekend” and approaching “a real war zone” or as “crazy” and places “to be driven through quickly” while avoiding eye contact.

    But the CFPB did not produce even one example of anybody being discouraged from applying with Townstone. Nor, according to Townstone’s lawyers, has the company ever received any complaint about its show.

    The comments from the show cited by the CFPB were taken out of context and meant little, Townstone believed. For example, the “Jungle Jewel” was commonly called that by people in the area, and referred to as such even by a Black blogger, who called it “a socioeconomic nightmare and a haven for street crazies.”

    As Towntone’s lawyers later argued, if speech like Townstone’s is illegal, what wouldn’t violate the law? “Are creditors permitted to talk about crime at all? Education? Homelessness? Welfare? Poverty? Income distribution? Are they permitted to criticize the Black Lives Matter movement? Support the police? Criticize the Catholic Church about child abuse scandals? Support the BDS movement? Criticize the BDS movement? Support abortion rights? Oppose immigration?”

    The lawsuit threatened to entirely destroy Townstone.

    Its owner decided to fight.

    But how do you fight against the government, which has unlimited resources?

    Enter the Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit with free speech expertise, which represented the company.

    A federal court in Chicago threw out the CFPB’s lawsuit in February. However, the ruling was based mostly on the court’s conclusion that the CFPB had authority only to regulate actual discrimination in lending, not marketing conduct that might be deemed “discouraging.” The court therefore didn’t need to get to the First Amendment defense.

    However, the CFPB has now appealed to the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, so the free speech defense is being raised again, and Townstone is getting still more help. Among the other firms filing amicus — friend of the court — briefs are Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, America’s Future, Free Speech Coalition, Free Speech Defense and Education Fund, U.S. Constitutional Rights Legal Defense Fund, and Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund.

    Lawyers from one of those firms, Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, were guests on our podcast last year discussing legal issues with the University of Illinois’ Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies and Gov. Pritzker’s gas tax signage law.

    It’s amicus brief in Townstone’s case summarizes it nicely: “Congress has not deputized CFPB as the ‘Tasteful Joke Police,’ nor would the First Amendment permit that delegation…. By conflating candid discussions of crime with the disparagement of African-American communities, CFPB seeks to do just that. Under the First Amendment, it cannot.”

    If you think Townstone’s case or other First Amendment cases you’ve heard about are isolated examples, you are dangerously uninformed.

    The assault on free speech is massive. Much of the government, social media and the press are partners in the Censorship Industrial Complex. That term was coined by Michael Shellenberger, who laid out 56 pages of evidence in congressional testimony last year. The Missouri v Biden case, now on appeal and likely to go to the U.S. Supreme Court, is already blowing the lid off much of the unholy alliance. Read about the massive evidence of record, discussed in the trial court’s Independence Day order.

    And if you think the assault on free speech isn’t ongoing in Illinois, you are again dangerously uninformed. Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul essentially thumbed his nose at the First Amendment when he personally drafted the Illinois law targeting alleged pro-life “misinformation” given out by crisis pregnancy groups near abortion clinics. A federal judge ridiculed it and enjoined its enforcement earlier this month. Chalk up that victory to another of the pro bono law firms available to help on First Amendment issues, the Thomas More Society.

    Gov. JB Pritzker “is gaining a reputation as a hard-left culture warrior who is happy to silence political opponents,” as the Wall Street Journal recently said. “Pritzker apparently thinks that invoking the name Trump is a justification to get away with saying or doing anything. Not under the U.S. Constitution,” wrote the Journal.

    He told CNN, “There ought to be a private right of action for anybody that’s dissuaded or told something that’s false, that’s the important thing.” That would be flagrantly unconstitutional.

    Under the guise of banning book bans, the General assembly passed and Pritzker signed a bill delegating control over what books libraries carry to a group run by an open Marxist. Most recently, they passed an “anti-doxing” law that flies in the face of textbook First Amendment law, as we explained here.

    Illinois Senators Durbin and Duckworth have been among the progressives jawboning tech platforms to do more censorship. And Illinois Congressman Sean Casten introduced a bill to strip courts of the power of judicial review — their power to declare laws invalid as violations of the First Amendment, or anything else.

    Do not stand silent when your right to free speech is suppressed. Know that quality legal firms are often available for free. There are more beyond those I’ve mentioned here.

    The assault on free speech must be defeated at all cost. Do your part.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/30/2023 – 18:20

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Aug 30

Today’s News 30th August 2023

  • "The Woke Left Has Inherited The Stalinists' Hatred Of Freedom", Warns British Columnist
    “The Woke Left Has Inherited The Stalinists’ Hatred Of Freedom”, Warns British Columnist

    Authored by Olivier Bault via Remix News,

    Remix sat down with Mick Hume, a journalist and author known in Britain for his focus on issues related to free speech and freedom of the press, at the MCC Feszt in Esztergom, Hungary, at the end of July to talk about what has happened to free speech in the U.K.

    According to Wikipedia, you used to be a Marxist, a libertarian Marxist. That’s how you are described there, as a libertarian Marxist…

    Yes, there was a time when I liked to call myself that because I found that it annoyed all the right people on both sides of the debate. The libertarians hated it, and the left hated it. But I do not have a political label that I can attach to myself these days. I think one of the problems with politics is we’re stuck with 20th-century language – left, right, conservative, Marxist… – and politics has changed. We just don’t have the right language.

    Still, you considered yourself a Marxist then, didn’t you?

    Yes, most certainly. I was the launch editor of the Living Marxism magazine in the 1980s, when I was in my 20s.

    And you were a figure in Britain’s Revolutionary Communist Party.

    Yes.

    Many people think that what is happening in the West with free speech, freedom of opinion, and what we call woke ideology, which includes all this LGBT and gender stuff, is Cultural Marxism. As a former Marxist, do you agree with that?

    No, I don’t think it’s helpful to call it Cultural Marxism. It’s a bit like the generals at the beginning of the First World War who were trying to fight the last war, were trying to fight yesterday’s enemy rather than realizing that the machine gun had been invented and the world had changed.

    I think calling it Cultural Marxism is kind of trying to find something in the past. It’s actually something new happening. I would rather describe it as my friend Frank Furedi describes it, as a combination of technocracy, ideology-free management politics, merged with identity politics.

    Identity woke politics gives the technocrats a political language in which they can justify their authority when they don’t have an ideology of their own. It is a new phenomenon. You can call it what you like, but that’s what it is.

    So you probably disagree with Victor Orbán when he once said – while on a state visit to the UK, by the way – that there is a parental link between the elites coming from the 1968 revolution in the West and the former communist regimes of Eastern Europe…

    Oh no, I do agree with that. All I’m saying is that if we try to find a label of the past to describe what is happening today, we’re kind of missing the point. There’s something new happening. We’re not fighting yesterday’s battle. We’ve got to fight today’s battle. But I agree with that convergence point. The woke left have inherited the Stalinists’ hatred of freedom.

    When I was a young man, I thought I was left-wing because I believed that free speech and democracy, the two principles that I’ve always cared about in my life, were left-wing causes. Historically, they were.

    Today, however, the left is the enemy of both of those things. And even when I was left, I was never part of that left. So my friends and I were the only people on the left who, even in the 1980s, were against the “no platform” policy of censoring fascists, censoring conservatives, saying people should be banned.

    That was starting then, and from the first, we were always against that and for freedom of speech. So my principles are the same, not just in politics.

    Mick Hume, second from right seen wearing a hat, taking part in a discussion panel at the MCC Feszt

    In the U.K., dissidents are not only “deplatformed,” they can now get “debanked.” This has happened to Nigel Farage this year…

    My old comrade. I worked with Nigel in the Brexit Party.

    Well, he’s had his bank accounts closed, and we now know for sure that it happened because of his political opinions. We also know that other people like, for example, members of the Free Speech Union have been debanked too in the U.K. Is this debanking of people the newest stage of a totalitarian drift in your country?

    What it demonstrates very powerfully is that what you described as woke cancel culture is not just about a few radical students trying to get feminists banned from university campuses for criticizing trans ideology. It goes to the top of society. The corporate world is now run by woke ideologists. The woman who was in charge of Nigel’s bank had to resign when it became clear that she was the one who lied to the BBC and told them that Farage had been debanked for financial reasons, not political reasons.

    Her whole mission in running that bank, as she said herself, was to pursue cause-led banking. She told the BBC those lies at a dinner for a green charity. So she’s not interested in banking, she’s interested in environmental causes and diversity.

    That’s what her idea of being a corporate boss was: Not making profits for the shareholders or paying back the government the billions of pounds that they spent bailing out the banks, but running an ideological institution. So, it’s very dangerous.

    I’m very grateful to Nigel because he’s exposed how far this has gone. Right at the top of capitalist society, we have woke ideologues who are prepared to cancel people, to make people, as Nigel described himself, a non-person by removing their right to have a bank account. In the 21st century, if you haven’t got a bank account, you don’t exist, right? You cannot operate.

    Nigel Farage said he might have to leave the U.K. if he cannot have a bank account there.

    Exactly.

    And he’s been refused accounts by a dozen banks.

    Several others, yes. I’m sure he’ll get one now because of all this fuss. But nevertheless, he’s done a great service exposing how far this has gone. So, it’s a very important thing.

    Is it specifically the banks or is it the corporate world?

    It is across the corporate world. If you listen to corporate leaders talk, all they’re ever talking about now is diversity, sustainable development, and all these kinds of woke issues.

    Why? What motivates them to do so?

    It’s almost like capitalists don’t believe in capitalism anymore. They’ve lost the ability to justify themselves and their position in society. If I say: We’re here to employ people and make profits, that’s a dirty word, even amongst capitalists themselves. So, they’re looking for some kind of mission, some sense of worth in society.

    It goes against the interests of free speech and a free society. And it does serve their interests; not financially, but woke ideology and cancel culture are really a new way of disciplining the working classes, telling ordinary people what they can say, what they can’t say, what they can think, and what they can’t think.

    And it’s not just the corporate world. You wrote an article in the Daily Mail in April about a new bill, the Worker Protection Bill, which was proposed by the government of Rishi Sunak to discipline the companies that do not fall in line with this new woke ideology.

    Yes, this new law would give people the right to sue their employers because they’ve heard something they don’t like in their work environment. It’s actually been proposed by a couple of Liberal Democrats, but the government has supported it. So this is another indication of how these things go to the top. The Conservative Party – this is a conservative government – is actually pushing this bill through.

    When campaigning against Liz Truss for the leadership of the Conservative Party, Sunak said that, if he became prime minister, he would fight this “woke nonsense” that had “permeated public life,” he would “end the brainwashing, the vandalism, and the finger pointing”, and “protect British freedoms.”

    Exactly.

    So it’s another broken promise…

    Yes. You know, we have to judge politicians by what they do, not by what they say about themselves. And the Conservatives are very good at making speeches about free speech, democracy, and British values. But in practice, the country is being run by civil servants and technocrats who are 100 percent committed to this woke cancel culture. And the government has not stood up to them at all. So, the Conservative Party is part of the problem, not the solution.

    In fact, several British prime ministers in the past criticized what was happening at universities. Boris Johnson and Theresa May both said they wanted to restore freedom of speech, freedom of thinking, and academic freedom in universities across the UK. Has anything been done for that purpose?

    They are bringing in a law that is supposed to protect academic freedom, and they say they are going to appoint someone to be in charge, a kind of free speech tsar. So you might say that’s a step in the right direction, but a law is not the answer.

    We’re in a culture war. You’ve got to fight it. And just putting a law on paper and saying that free speech exists in universities will not solve the problem.

    In America, they have the First Amendment, the gold standard of legal protection for free speech. That hasn’t stopped American universities from going down this road further and faster than us in terms of restricting academic freedom.

    So, it is a step in the right direction, but a law is not going to fix it.

    There seems to be also a problem with the British police monitoring social media. Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of the Polish Law and Justice Party, once cited the example of a mother who was arrested in front of her children at her home in the U.K. for calling a man a man on Twitter, whereas that man identified himself as a woman. The poor woman was in custody for several hours and prosecuted by the police. She finally won her case in appeal, but this took several years. And Kaczyński said that as long as Law and Justice governs in Poland, it will preserve people’s freedoms and Poland will not go totalitarian like Western Europe.

    It is indeed quite extraordinary that the police have for several years in Britain become more interested in, as I used the slogan once, policing the tweets rather than policing the streets.

    They have become a kind of thought police. They’re obsessed with what people say on social media and hassle them for things that are not a crime.

    It’s not a crime to call someone a man who is a man. It’s not a crime either to call a woman a man. But somehow they’ve invented these things as crimes.

    And what’s interesting about that is that they started keeping a register of what was called non-criminal hate incidents: Things that weren’t a crime, but which they’d decided were hate speech. So, your name would be in that register even if you hadn’t committed a crime but just said the wrong thing.

    They were told from the top to stop doing this, and they’ve just carried on. They are a law to themselves. The British police are one of the most woke institutions in our society.

    You’ve only got to look at the way that they deal with the Just Stop Oil protesters who are blocking the highways of London, with the police asking them if they can help them or if they would like some water and are all right. And when drivers come and drag those people out of the road, the police threaten to arrest the drivers, not the road blockers.

    So, the police in Britain are a major problem.

    This is the new kind of totalitarianism. It’s not jackboots and beating people up. It’s trying to control what people are saying and not solving crimes. If your house is burgled, the police will not come. If you say the wrong thing and call someone a man on Twitter, then they will come.

    In your article about this Worker Protection Bill, you gave the hypothetical example of a bookstore inviting J. K. Rowling. So, I understand that nobody in the U.K. would dare invite J. K. Rowling. So, a renowned author who says, in line with the truth, that only biological women are real women has been socially canceled in the UK, right?

    Obviously, she couldn’t care less because you can’t cancel J. K. Rowling. She’s the biggest-selling author in the world. So, she’s in a very powerful position to hit back at those who try to cancel her, but yes, she can’t appear in a public forum without there being huge protests, and anything she says on social media will be attacked from all quarters.

    She’s been incredibly courageous in standing up for the fact that there are two sexes and that this is a biologically determined division and a fact of life.

    However, by doing this to J. K. Rowling, making it impossible, even for someone like her to operate normally in society, you can scare a lot of other people who would think: If they can do that to her, what could they do to me? They could wipe me out. They could cancel my job. I could lose my whole livelihood.

    So, it has a much greater effect on other people.

    That is why we now have the problem of self-censorship, which is one of the biggest problems we’re facing today in Western society.

    Not just state censorship or Twitter censorship, but people who will not say what they think because they’re scared of what the consequences are. Or they don’t know what they’re allowed to say anymore, because the terrain shifts so fast. What word am I allowed to use this week? I don’t know.

    The rules keep being rewritten all the time. So, self-censorship is a big issue, and this is why it’s so important for people who believe in free speech to put the banner up so that you give people a sense of confidence that they’re not alone and there’s something they can rally around.

    People in continental Europe tend to think that the U.K. at least has a diverse and free press and media. I suppose you don’t agree with that, as you wrote a book titled: “There Is No Such Thing As a Free Press – and we need one more than ever.”

    Everything is relative. Compared to some countries, I love the British press. But they are very constrained. Far more constrained than they used to be when I started writing for them. Every newspaper has a diversity team who are checking the language that’s used, and it’s very disruptive. Also, we have new legal problems with the British press. We have privacy laws. Libel law in Britain has always been a big problem for the press, being sued for defamation. Now, the rich and powerful are more likely to use privacy law. This is what people like Prince Harry are using to try to police the press. The thing about these privacy laws is this is a big issue not only for free speech but for democracy because those two things are always very closely connected, and the British Parliament never passed any privacy laws.

    What Tony Blair’s New Labour government did was pass the Human Rights Act based on the European Convention on Human Rights. And that gave the judges tremendous power. They have used that power to basically invent a privacy law. These judges, not parliament or the government, are the ones who have decided what can and cannot be published in the British press.

    You have unlimited parliamentary sovereignty in the U.K., so a Conservative-dominated parliament could change all that very easily.

    Of course, they could. And they have often made noises like “We’re going to get rid of the Human Rights Act” and “We’re going to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights.”

    But nothing has happened because of the different forces ranged against them on that: The judges, the lawyers, the mainstream media, the civil service…

    There is a very substantial wall in support of the Human Rights Act and the judges’ power, and the government has never had the backbone, the nerve, the political will. It’s all about political will to, as you say, use parliamentary sovereignty to change that.

    They’ve allowed the judges to write this privacy law, and this is a terrible situation.

    So, are there still reasons for hope in the U.K.?

    Well, look at the Nigel Farage incident.

    On one hand, that shows you how far the problem goes. But the backlash against it, the support, the public outrage, and the fact that the people responsible for it have all had to resign… The left has been after the banks for years and never got anywhere. Nigel Farage got rid of the top bankers in a week.

    So, the public outrage at that kind of attack on free speech shows you there is hope. It shows that we can rally forces for free speech as a fundamental value of our civilized society. But in order to do that, we’ve got to put the flag up and fight. We’ve got to go on the offensive.

    Free speech is the fundamental liberty in our society. We can have no other freedoms without it. And it must include the right to be offensive. Spinoza said 350 years ago that in a free state, any man can think what he likes and say what he thinks. That’s still the stand that we’ve got to fight for. And we’re still not there.

    *  *  *

    A former “libertarian Marxist,” Mick Hume had a weekly column in The Times in the years 1999–2009 and has since then written regularly for leading British newspapers such as The Sun and The Daily Mail. Hume was the launch editor of Spiked-online.com, and still writes for Spiked. He is now a regular columnist for The European Conservative website.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/30/2023 – 02:00

  • 10 Signs That US Culture Is Being Turned Completely Upside Down
    10 Signs That US Culture Is Being Turned Completely Upside Down

    Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

    They wanted to fundamentally transform America, and they have succeeded.  So now instead of a “Leave It To Beaver” society, we have a society where literally anything goes.  Our families are disintegrating, traditional moral values have been completely discarded, our young people are running wild in the streets, crime is totally out of control, and our system of government is melting down right in front of our eyes.  So what is going to happen to our once great nation if things just continue to get even worse?

    Our politicians like to tell us that “America is great because America is good”.

    But the truth is that America stopped being good a long time ago. 

    The following are 10 signs that U.S. culture is being turned completely upside down…

    #1 It has finally happened.  The elite have such disdain for the choices of average Americans that some of them are starting to float the idea that elections should be eliminated.  The following comes from an article that the New York Times published just last week that was originally entitled “Elections Are Bad for Democracy”…

    On the eve of the first debate of the 2024 presidential race, trust in government is rivaling historic lows. Officials have been working hard to safeguard elections and assure citizens of their integrity. But if we want public office to have integrity, we might be better off eliminating elections altogether.

    If you think that sounds anti-democratic, think again. The ancient Greeks invented democracy, and in Athens many government officials were selected through sortition — a random lottery from a pool of candidates. In the United States, we already use a version of a lottery to select jurors. What if we did the same with mayors, governors, legislators, justices and even presidents?

    #2 The war on the family continues to escalate, and it is now being projected that 45 percent of all U.S. women in their “prime working years” will be single and childless in 2030…

    We’re told by our culture that a woman who is unmarried and has no children is empowered and in charge of her own life. She has escaped the unnecessary burden of raising a family and being a slave to her husband. At least, that’s what our society has convinced us. Sadly, many women have adopted the modern feminist lifestyle and have chosen to sleep around, abort their baby if they unexpectedly get pregnant, and swear off marriage. But these cultural trends are going to have a tremendous impact on the future of American society. Morgan Stanley estimates that 45% of women in their “prime working years” (ages 25 to 44) will be single and childless by the time 2030 arrives.

    #3 Theft is going to cost U.S. retailers more than 100 billion dollars this year, and at this point organized retail crime has become such a crisis that even Dollar Tree is being forced to take drastic measures…

    The company, which runs Dollar Tree and Family Dollar, has “several new shrink formats” that it intends to roll out in the final six months of the year, CEO Rick Dreiling said in the morning. “Shrink” typically means theft and other types of inventory losses in the retail industry.

    “It goes everything from moving certain SKUs [stock-keeping units] to behind the check stand,” he explained to those who tuned into the company’s earnings call. “It has to do with some cases being locked up. And even to the point where we have some stores that can’t keep a certain SKU on the shelf just discontinuing the item.”

    #4 When I was young, I actually applied to go to school at Yale.  At that time, it was one of the most prestigious universities in the entire world.  Unfortunately, at this point violent crime in the city of New Haven is off the charts…

    Yale University is rushing to reassure freshman students and parents after the school’s police union, which in the midst of contract negotiations, distributed flyers with stark warnings about high crime in New Haven, Connecticut — complete with a graphic of a grim reaper. They warned incoming students to avoid walking alone and avoid public transport. Forget night life: Student should stay in their dorms and “off the streets after 8 PM.” 

    Presented by the Yale Police Benevolent Association as “A Survival Guide for First-Year Students of Yale University,” the flyers were distributed on freshman move-in day. “The incidence of crime and violence in New Haven is shockingly high, and it is getting worse,” the flyers warned. “During the seven month period ending July 23, 2023, murders have doubled, burglaries are up 33% and motor vehicle thefts are up 56%.”

    #5 One man in Texas was just “forcibly removed” from a school board meeting for reading a book that had actually been available in the libraries of that school district…

    A man was forcibly removed from a Tuesday school board meeting by law enforcement while reading a passage from a sexually explicit LGBT book that was previously available in the district’s libraries.

    Mike Cee was escorted out of a Fort Worth Independent School District board meeting this week when he began reading vulgar passages from the book “Flamer” by Mike Curato.

    Curato’s book is described as a “semi-autobiographical graphic novel” set in 1995 that follows the story of a child named Aiden as he “navigates friendships, deals with bullies, and spends time with Elias (a boy he can’t stop thinking about), he finds himself on a path of self-discovery and acceptance.”

    #6 It seems like there is a mass shooting somewhere in America almost every day now.  The latest incident just occurred in the city of Jacksonville, Florida…

    Terrifying video shows the moment a crazed, racist gunman enters a Jacksonville Dollar General armed with an AR-15 and then shoots dead three people in a racially-motivated attack.

    The gunman was identified as Ryan Palmeter, 21, police confirmed on Sunday. They also detailed a manifesto he left behind, calling it the ‘diary of a madman.’

    Palmeter used an assault rifle covered in Nazi swastikas in the deadly assault on Saturday before turning the gun on himself, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.

    #7 Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is admitting that vehicle theft is completely out of control in his city, but instead of going after the thieves he has filed a lawsuit against Kia and Hyundai…

    Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office announced that the city filed the lawsuit against automakers Kia and Hyundai, alleging that both companies have failed to include “industry-standard engine immobilizers” in several models of vehicles, which resulted in a “steep rise” in crime.

    “The impact of car theft on Chicago residents can be deeply destabilizing, particularly for low- to middle-income workers who have fewer options for getting to work and taking care of their families,” Johnson said. “The failure of Kia and Hyundai to install basic auto-theft prevention technology in these models is sheer negligence, and as a result, a citywide and nationwide crime spree around automobile theft has been unfolding right before our eyes.”

    #8 Instead of cracking down on crime, federal law enforcement authorities are using their resources to raid Amish cattle farmers…

    “They came with a search warrant,” softly spoke Samuel B. Fisher, a mild-mannered cattle farmer operating a 100-acre farm tucked away in Virginia’s heartland. Fisher’s bread-and-butter, Golden Valley Farms, carves out the scenic countryside that’s a hop, skip, and a jump away from historic Farmville, a postcard-perfect small Southern town with classical Main Street charm.

    The father of five had graciously invited us down to his idyllic pasture to rehash the whirlwind of unforeseen events that unfolded over the cruel summer. It was a tumultuous time on the Fisher farm, an upheaval that threatened to upend the man’s livelihood.

    “Then, they tagged the meat, so that we can’t touch it; we can’t sell it; we can’t feed our family with it,” Fisher told Townhall.

    #9 The number of transgender surgeries in the United States nearly tripled in just a three year period…

    Transgender surgeries nearly tripled in the United States between 2016 and 2019, with breast and chest procedures accounting for 56.6 percent of all operations, results of a study published Wednesday in the JAMA Network Open show.

    Close behind was genital reconstruction, making up 35.1 percent, followed by facial and cosmetic procedures at 13.9 percent. The greatest number of procedures overall were undergone by women, 19- to 30-year-olds, people with private insurance, and people with higher incomes. Most procedures occurred in the West and were performed in urban teaching hospitals.

    #10 Joe Biden is asking Congress for money for a new shot, and he is admitting that it “will likely be recommended everybody get it no matter whether they’ve gotten it before or not”…

    Biden, who is vacationing in the Lake Tahoe area, was asked by a reporter on Friday if he could say anything about the uptick of COVID cases and a new variant.

    “Yes, I can,” the president said. “I signed off this morning on a proposal we have to present to Congress a request for additional funding for a new vaccine that is necessary, that works.”

    He added, “Tentatively it is recommended that it will likely be recommended everybody get it no matter whether they’ve gotten it before or not.”

    Our society is going to continue to change.

    Nothing can stop that.

    But the direction of the change can be altered.

    Those that have been transforming our culture are just going to keep on doing what they have been doing, and all that it is going to take for them to succeed is for good people to stand by and do nothing.

    *  *  *

    Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/30/2023 – 00:05

  • FT Discovers 71-Year-Old Ukrainian In NATO Training Program
    FT Discovers 71-Year-Old Ukrainian In NATO Training Program

    By year’s end, it’s expected that up to 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers will have gone through a NATO training program hosted in Germany and run by Danish, Dutch, and German officers.

    The Financial Times interviewed officials involved in the training program in a fresh report, and underscored that all are acutely aware of the serious setbacks the Ukrainian counteroffensive has faced. The publication reviewed persistent problems of training as well, from translating and communication issues, to sharp disagreements between Kiev and the West over military strategy and tactics. 

    But there is one admission in the FT report which is most revealing, and shocking. While it’s long been known that Ukraine has had to tap untrained recruits and throw them into battle amid staggering losses as well as attempts of young men to dodge military service, the FT report mentions – almost in passing – that Kiev has been sending elderly soldiers to “train”. 

    Image source: NATO

    According to the section of the FT report in question: 

    By the end of the year, European trainers were full of praise for the “tremendous motivation” of the recruits, despite the stress of the brutal war they are fighting and the daily dangers to friends and family back home. 

    But they also said that the age and ability of the soldiers they are sent varies wildly, as Ukrainian commanders on the front line are often unwilling to spare their best men. One volunteer who turned up in Germany was 71 years old.

    …that’s right: FT identified a 71-year-old Ukrainian in the ranks of the NATO-sponsored training program. While perhaps admirable in terms of the individual elderly man’s courage and willingness to defend his country, the whole scenario underscores the sad state of affairs within Ukraine military ranks, given they are sending geriatrics. 

    Ukraine’s military in its social media posts has, to the surprise of many, even admitted that old men and retirees are increasingly showing up in their ranks and on the battlefield…

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

    This shows one particular line in the FT report to be a huge understatement…

    “Teaching inexperienced soldiers how to operate a tank on the front line in just six weeks was never going to be easy,” the publication says. We might add that teaching 65+ year-olds how to become hardened and efficient soldiers was also “never going to be easy”. 

    Russia has of late sought to capitalize on Ukraine’s manpower woes, producing wartime propaganda videos attempting to convince untrained Ukrainian soldiers to lay down their arms and save their own lives, instead of sacrificing for a government that doesn’t care about them. The following video out of Russia has been widely circulating…

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    While young men try to hind from Ukraine’s forced conscription, the country’s defense ministry strangely “boasts” that… “In their 50s, 60s & beyond, these Ukrainian soldiers defy their advanced age by carrying out combat missions with dedication.”

    * * *

    But it’s not the first time this phenomenon has been documented…

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/29/2023 – 23:45

  • Fate Of 5 DC Pro-Life Activists Now Before Federal Jury
    Fate Of 5 DC Pro-Life Activists Now Before Federal Jury

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

    Left-wing pro-life protester Lauren Handy, the director of activism with Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, protests outside the U.S. Supreme Court, on June 15, 2022 (Jackson Elliott/The Epoch Times)

    The fate of five people accused of conspiring to obstruct access to an abortion clinic in Washington is now in the hands of a federal jury after the prosecution and defense wrapped up their respective cases in federal court last week.

    Each defendant faces up to 11 years in prison.

    Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia sent jurors home on Aug. 25 after they began deliberations following closing arguments by attorneys a day earlier. Deliberations are scheduled to resume on Aug. 29.

    The defendants are charged with “conspiracy against rights” and conspiracy under section 248 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, which is part of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.

    Section 248 states that it is “unlawful for a person to use force, the threat of force, or physical obstruction to intentionally injure or intimidate a person because he or she is or has been obtaining or providing reproductive health services,” according to a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) summary.

    The FACE Act has been criticized by federal lawmakers, including Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who has said the Biden administration enforces the law selectively.

    Mr. Roy and other lawmakers signed a letter in March stating that the Biden DOJ used the FACE Act more than two dozen times in 2022 against pro-life activists, but until this year, the statute “had never been used to indict individuals related to an attack on a pro-life pregnancy center or house of worship.”

    Lauren Handy of Virginia and nine other defendants were indicted in 2022 for conspiring to obstruct access to the Washington Surgi-Clinic, which provides abortions, in October 2020. The indictment from last year states that “it was the purpose of the conspiracy to create a blockade to stop the Clinic from providing, and patients from obtaining, reproductive health services.”

    Some in the pro-life movement refer to this kind of direct-action tactic as a “rescue” because it may save an unborn human’s life.

    The DOJ said the indictment stated that “as part of the conspiracy, [seven defendants] traveled to Washington, D.C., from various northeast and midwestern states, to participate in a clinic blockade” that was broadcast on Facebook. Eight of the defendants “forcefully entered the clinic and set about blockading two clinic doors using their bodies, furniture, chains, and ropes.”

    Nine defendants allegedly violated the FACE Act “by using a physical obstruction to injure, intimidate and interfere with the clinic’s employees and a patient, because they were providing or obtaining reproductive health services.”

    If convicted of the offenses, each of the defendants faces a maximum of 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $350,000, according to the department.

    Ms. Handy and four other co-defendants—Herb Geraghty of Pennsylvania, Heather Idoni of Michigan, William Goodman of Wisconsin, and John Hinshaw of New York—went on trial two weeks ago in the nation’s capital.

    Judge Kollar-Kotelly, who was appointed in 1997 by President Bill Clinton, ruled (pdf) on Aug. 7 that the defendants may not claim in their defense that they took action to shield others from bodily harm.

    “A defendant may not don a vigilante’s hood to insert themselves into a situation of their own making and subsequently claim defense of a third person to justify their actions,” the judge wrote.

    The defendants “agree that they traveled to the District of Columbia to engage in preplanned activity, forcing their way into the clinic shortly before it opened. Without the imminent threat of either a greater evil or death or serious bodily injury, neither a duress nor necessity defense is available.”

    Ms. Handy is the director of activism for Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, which describes its mission as mobilizing “grassroots anti-abortion activists for direct action and [to] educate on the exploitative influence of the Abortion Industrial Complex through an anti-capitalist lens.”

    After being sentenced to jail time on a separate charge in July 2022, Ms. Handy said, “As a Catholic and progressive myself, I am compelled by my deeply held beliefs (religious and political) to put my body between the oppressed and the oppressor.”

    Ms. Handy’s attorney, Martin A. Cannon, senior trial counsel at the Thomas More Society, a public interest law firm, told The Epoch Times that he’s cautiously optimistic.

    The co-defendants are “a remarkable bunch of people, just the most peaceful, loving people you ever saw,” Mr. Cannon said in an interview on Aug. 26.

    The prosecution has been lumping all the co-defendants together “like they’re all the same, but the DOJ has to prove its case individually against each defendant.”

    “When you step back and look at the evidence, what you really see is there’s a few people who might have been doing the things that are prohibited by FACE, but the bulk of the people were doing things that FACE does not prohibit,” he said.

    “You can think of all kinds of conventional, historical Martin Luther King kind of protests that have been going on forever, that FACE does not prohibit. And most of the people in this case were actually doing stuff like that and not violating FACE.”

    “The government wants to say, ‘Well, there’s two or three or four that were violating FACE—all of you conspired, so we’re just going to all throw it in together.’ And I don’t think they get to really do that. And I think the jury was paying some attention to that.”

    FACE makes it a crime to use force, threats, or physical obstruction to intimidate, cause injury, or interfere with a person providing or obtaining reproductive health services, he said.

    “What the DOJ missed is that Lauren was not doing this because of reproductive health services. She saw a video of this very same doctor at this very same clinic, pretty implicitly acknowledging that babies are getting born alive in his clinic. And if they do, he will just leave them alone to die.

    “That is not legal. There’s no available argument that a living baby at any gestational age outside the womb is a pregnancy. And when the baby winds up outside the womb, he goes from a place of no protection into a place of protection, as the procedure from that point out, whatever happens to him is outside of the FACE Act. And he gets all the same protections that a four-year-old kid would get.”

    Ms. Handy is “entitled to defend those babies just like she could defend a 4-year-old getting dragged in someplace and killed or neglected or whatever.”

    “She didn’t violate the other provisions of FACE, either. She never used force. She never used threats. She never used physical obstruction. She didn’t injure. She didn’t intimidate. She didn’t interfere,” Mr. Cannon said.

    Meanwhile, co-defendant Jay Smith of New York accepted a plea deal. On Aug. 7, he was sentenced to 10 months of incarceration to be followed by 36 months of supervised release, court records indicate.

    The remaining four co-defendants—Jonathan Darnel of Virginia, Joan Andrews Bell of New Jersey, and Paulette Harlow and Jean Marshall of Massachusetts—are scheduled to be tried on Sept. 6.

    The DOJ, which is handling the prosecution, didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/29/2023 – 23:25

  • "Baltimore Is A Totally Corrupt Hell Hole": Mystery Surrounds $800 Million Covid Funds For "Learning Loss"
    “Baltimore Is A Totally Corrupt Hell Hole”: Mystery Surrounds $800 Million Covid Funds For “Learning Loss”

    Unveiling another astonishing revelation from the ongoing education crisis within Baltimore City, investigative journalist Chris Papst from Fox45 News’ Project Baltimore dropped a bombshell: 

    “STUNNING: Baltimore City Schools received 29 federal Covid grants totaling $799M to fight learning loss. Yet, in 2023, just 9.1% of all 3rd-8th graders tested proficient in math. MEANING, taxpayers gave an additional $799M and 91% of Baltimore students are NOT math proficient.” 

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    Maryland’s spending on education stands at some of the highest in the country. In Baltimore City, the school district’s budget is the fourth largest in the nation. Even extra Covid funds weren’t enough to push the needle to drastically improve math test scores. 

    Earlier this year, Papst’s team revealed that 23 schools in the crime-ridden metro area had zero students proficient in math. The investigative team has been investigating corruption in the metro area’s school district for seven years. Corruption might not stop at Baltimore but could extend to the leadership of the Maryland State Department of Education (read: Maryland Superintendent’s Deleted Texts and Hidden Email Surfaces Amid Intensifying Grade-Rigging Scandal). 

    Folks on X, formerly known as Twitter, are raising questions about the whereabouts of the funds: 

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    Are local and state officials misappropriating taxpayers’ dollars? 

    Why aren’t more taxpayers outraged? It’s your money. 

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/29/2023 – 23:05

  • CDC Now Refusing New COVID Vaccine Adverse Event Reports In Its V-Safe Program
    CDC Now Refusing New COVID Vaccine Adverse Event Reports In Its V-Safe Program

    Authored by David Gortler via The Brownstone Institute,

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) V-safe website quietly stopped collecting adverse event reports with no reason or explanation.

    The V-safe website simply states: “Thank you for your participation. Data collection for COVID-19 vaccines concluded on June 30, 2023.” If you go there today, V-safe directs users to the FDA’s VAERS website for adverse event reporting, even though officials continually derided VAERS as “passive” and “unverified.” 

    VAERS and V-safe are mutually exclusive safety collection databases operated by the FDA and CDC, respectively. VAERS is an older way of collecting safety data where one can fill out a form online, or manually, or by calling a toll-free number, whereas V-safe is a device “app” which requires online registration. Both VAERS and V-safe collect personal information, lot numbers, dates and associated information, but V-safe was an active collection system geared towards a younger app-using demographic. 

    Here is the last report before deletion.

    Does this mean that the CDC believes that the mRNA Covid-19 injections are so safe, there is no need to monitor adverse event reports any longer? What is the argument against continued monitoring, especially since the V-safe website was already up and paid for? 

    While CDC’s V-safe was stealthily and abruptly turned off, refusing to accept new safety reports, to this very day the CDC continues to urge everyone ages 6 months and older to stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccines and boosters. 

    As a drug safety expert, I personally can’t cite another example of any agency or manufacturer halting collection of safety data. It seems even worse because mRNA technology is relatively new with long-term manifestations unknown. On top of this, both manufacturers and the FDA refuse to share the list of ingredients, such as lipid nanoparticles, which could affect individuals differently and take a long time to manifest clinically. 

    Safety Data Collection Should Never Stop

    Now, contrast that with the fact that the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) will still accept a safety report for a 30-year-old Ford Bronco II. Indeed, this is an oddly specific example, but only because I drove this exact vehicle as a family hand-me-down as a student, through my residency, fellowship, for my tenure as a Yale professor on the mean streets of New Haven and even during my years at the FDA as a medical officer /senior medical analyst. 

    Like mRNA shots, Bronco IIs are still available on the market and people are still using them up to this very day. My Bronco became an intermittent topic of conversation with friends and FDA colleagues. One day, I was informed by a patrolling security guard at the FDA that it was the oldest car on campus.

    I didn’t know much about cars (or mRNA technology) back then, but when a fellow FDA-er informed me that my Bronco II had noteworthy safety problems and that the NHTSA still had their eye on this vehicle (rollover accidents were more common and more fatal) I addressed the problem: I got rid of the reliable relic, even though I really liked it. 

    NHTSA is still accepting safety reports on things like my 30-year-old Ford Bronco II, but the CDC isn’t accepting new safety reports on 2-year old novel mRNA vaccines.

    CDC No longer accepting safety reports despite rapidly increasing safety findings:

    Unlike my old Bronco, mRNA injections have only been on the market for about two years, and according to the FDA Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database, mRNA “vaccines” have been named the primary suspect in over 1.5 million adverse event reports, of which there are >20,000 heart attacks and >27,000 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis just in the USA alone. Worldwide numbers would be greater. According to many references, including an FDA-funded study out of Harvard, VAERS reports represent fewer than 1 percent of vaccine adverse events that actually occur. 

    Interestingly, the NHTSA link above on my Ford Bronco II only shows: one parts recall, one investigation and 23 complaints, and still features a button in the upper right hand corner for submitting new complaints. 

    Wikipedia defines an humanitarian crisis or humanitarian disaster as a: “singular event or a series of events that are threatening in terms of health, safety or well-being of a community or large group of people.” Based on VAERS and previous V-safe findings, adverse events from mRNA shots in the USA alone could be considered a humanitarian crisis. 

    Despite those alarming clinical findings, the CDC has concluded that collecting new safety reports is somehow no longer in the interest of America’s public health. Existing data from the V-safe site showed around 6.5 million adverse events/health impacts out of 10.1 million users, with around 2 million of those people unable to conduct normal activities of daily living or needing medical care, according to a third-party rendering of its findings. In other words, despite mRNA shots still being widely available and the CDC promoting its continued use, it’s “case closed” with regards to collecting new safety reports, under today’s federal public health administration. 

    Will the CDC opine on the existing data or justify its halting of collecting new safety data? To the best of my knowledge, stopping the collection of public health information doesn’t have a clinical justification or scientific precedence — especially when it comes to an actively marketed product. 

    In George Orwell’s 1984, characters were told by The Party to “reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.” Now, the CDC isn’t even allowing that evidence to be collected for viewing (and prospective rejecting). It’s a terrible idea for any product, let alone novel mRNA technologies. 

    Dr. David Gortler, a 2023 Brownstone Fellow, is a pharmacologist, pharmacist, research scientist and a former member of the FDA Senior Executive Leadership Team who served as senior advisor to the FDA Commissioner on matters of: FDA regulatory affairs, drug safety and FDA science policy. He is a former Yale University and Georgetown University didactic professor of pharmacology and biotechnology, with over a decade of academic pedagogy and bench research, as part of his nearly two decades of experience in drug development. He also serves as a scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/29/2023 – 22:45

  • Mystery Swirls Over Batch Of Thousands Of 2020 Voter Registration Forms In Michigan
    Mystery Swirls Over Batch Of Thousands Of 2020 Voter Registration Forms In Michigan

    Authored by Steven Kovac via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Two weeks before the 2020 election, a woman dropped off more than 10,000 voter registration forms with a city clerk in Muskegon, Michigan.

    Voters fill out their ballots at a school gymnasium in Lansing, Mich., on Nov. 03, 2020. (John Moore/Getty Images)

    The number of forms was a red flag for the city clerk, Ann Meisch. Less than 4,000 of the city’s voting-age residents weren’t registered to vote.

    Ms. Meisch called the police, triggering an investigation by the Michigan State Police. An Oct. 26, 2020, police report from that probe recently surfaced after Michigan state lawmakers obtained it through a Freedom of Information request.

    At the time, Brianna Hawkins, the woman who delivered the forms, was employed by GBI Strategies, an out-of-state firm working to boost Democrat voter turnout in urban centers in key swing states to help then-candidate Joe Biden defeat President Donald Trump. According to the police report, when questioned by Muskegon Police Department investigators, Ms. Hawkins said her job was to register voters and help them obtain absentee ballots.

    State Republican Party officials Phil O’Halloran and Lori Skibo obtained the police report. Mr. O’Halloran provided it to The Epoch Times.

    An article by a nationally known fact-checking service disputed recent conservative media accounts of the Muskegon episode.

    “While the total number of voter registration forms submitted by that person may add up to as much as 12,500, very few of them were deemed to be fraudulent,” the fact checker said.

    “Page 3 of the MSP [Michigan State Police] report says Meisch ‘turned over 42 suspected fraudulent applications to Officer Foster [of the Muskegon Police Department] for examination.’”

    The fact checker didn’t state that the 42 applications were a sampling.

    President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Muskegon, Mich., on Oct. 17, 2020. (Rey Del Rio/Getty Images)

    Checking the Fact-checkers

    However, the numbers tell a different story and raise a question: If there were only 42 suspected fraudulent voter registration applications submitted to the city clerk, why didn’t she register the rest of the batch?

    In 2020, the population of the City of Muskegon was 38,309, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

    Of these, 29,800 people were of voting age.

    Ms. Meisch told The Epoch Times in an August 10 email that in 2019, there were 25,957 registered voters in the city. In 2020, the number of people registered to vote increased by 2,077 to 28,034.

    That means the pool of voting-age people not registered to vote that Ms. Hawkins had to work with was only 3,843.

    Ms. Hawkins dropped off more than 10,000 voter registration forms in incremental batches, suggesting that thousands of the forms never made it onto the city’s registered voter roll.

    “Even a casual observer can readily see that something is wrong. The numbers do not add up. The number of registration forms turned in by one person represents a third of the population of the city,” Mr. O’Halloran told The Epoch Times.

    Clerk Suddenly ‘Cannot Speak’

    The Epoch Times later contacted the city clerk with two more questions: Where did the completed voter registration forms filed by Ms. Hawkins come from, and are those extra voter registration forms that were rejected by her office in her custody?

    In other words, what happened to the 10,423 voter registration forms that didn’t result in a person being added to the city’s voter roll?

    Ms. Meisch replied in an Aug. 13 email: “I cannot speak to the facts of the case at this time. I am sorry that I cannot be of more help.”

    According to the 2020 police report, Ms. Meisch told authorities that some of the irregularities found on the voter registration forms submitted by Ms. Hawkins included invalid and nonexistent addresses, erroneous phone numbers, signatures that didn’t match those on existing records, and numerous forms that appeared to be filled out and signed by the same hand.

    Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel speaks during a press conference in Lansing, Mich., on March 5, 2020. (David Eggert/AP Photo)

    Sixteen GOP 2020 electors lawfully nominated by the Michigan Republican Party to cast electoral college votes for President Trump if he carried the state were indicted in July by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, on fraud charges for allegedly knowingly and willfully advancing the “false claim” that there was large-scale voter fraud in the state during the 2020 presidential election.

    Mr. O’Halloran told The Epoch Times that he hopes the exposure of the Muskegon case will help exonerate the Republican electors. He called it a “cruel irony” that Ms. Nessel, who he says appears to have helped bury “a state investigation into what appears to be actual forgery of election documents,” is prosecuting “the innocent Michigan 16 for a contrived ‘forgery’ in a case that hinges on the AG’s contention that there was ‘no evidence of fraud.'”

    Attorneys for some of the 16 Trump electors argue that their clients merely positioned themselves as place-holders ready to legally step in if ongoing investigations into voter fraud determined that President Trump won the state of Michigan in 2020.

    “Things Are Very Different Now”

    Mr. O’Halloran, chairman of the state party’s election integrity committee, told The Epoch Times in an Aug. 21 interview that he and Ms. Skibo were motivated in their efforts by state GOP Chair Kristina Karamo, who encouraged them to “research the facts, make sure they are legit.”

    Ms. Skibo told The Epoch Times that it was a Republican precinct delegate from Muskegon who brought the 2020 incident into the spotlight.

    “The person saw something wrong and did something about it,” she said.

    Now head of the poll challenger operation for the state party, Ms. Skibo remembered her own days as a precinct delegate and volunteer challenger at Detroit’s central vote-counting center in 2020.

    “After seeing all the irregularities that night, I really believed that a team of Republican Party attorneys were going to show up the next morning demanding answers. I remember how angry I was when the state party did absolutely nothing,” she said.

    “Things are very different now that we have a truly grassroots-led party.”

    The actions of the two high-ranking Michigan Republican Party officials are a sea change compared with the position previously taken by a GOP-led state Senate panel. The panel released a report in June 2021 stating that its investigation could find “no systematic fraud” in the 2020 election.

    What Happened to the Muskegon Probe?

    Participants in the Muskegon investigation in 2020 were the Muskegon City Police, the Michigan State Police, the Michigan Attorney General’s Office, representatives of the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office, and, according to Michigan State Police records, the FBI.

    On Aug. 14, The Epoch Times asked the FBI’s national press office whether the bureau is currently investigating or has ever investigated the Muskegon case, and if so, what’s the status or outcome of their probe.

    The FBI didn’t respond by press time.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/29/2023 – 22:25

  • "The Story Is Always About Guns": Jacksonville Tragedy Becomes Flashpoint For Anti-Gunners
    “The Story Is Always About Guns”: Jacksonville Tragedy Becomes Flashpoint For Anti-Gunners

    Submitted By Gun Owners of America, 

    It didn’t take long for anti-gun politicians and talking heads to begin weaponizing the tragedy in Jacksonville, Florida, for their own political advantage.  

    One pundit—former Smith and Wesson executive turned Giffords Senior Policy Advisor Ryan Busse— took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to use the deaths of Americans to push his gun control agenda: 

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    He must not have agreed with the wise words of the local sheriff who, in a press conference regarding the Jacksonville shooting, said: 

    “The story [in the media] is always about guns. [But] people are bad — this guy’s a bad guy. If I could take my gun off right now, and I lay it on this counter, nothing will happen.  

    It’ll sit there — but as soon as wicked person grabs ahold of that handgun and starts shooting people with it — there’s the problem. The problem is the individual.”

    Sheriff Waters’ nugget of wisdom reveals precisely what is wrong with Ryan Busse’s push for gun control. 

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    Until anti-gun advocates look past their desire to blame guns, they’ll never be able to address the real problems.  

    Ryan Busse wants to blame a gun company—Palmetto State Armory—for manufacturing the firearm used in the shooting.

    But Sheriff Waters understands that the Jacksonville killer was an evil man with evil intentions.  

    And as it turns out, the Jacksonville killer is just copying other racist mass murderers from Buffalo, New York, and Christchurch, NZ, who also scribbled on their rifles with a white marker. 

    This isn’t about Palmetto State Armory—other mass murderers have used different tools, including trucks, knives, and bombs. And this isn’t about America—the same thing happened in Christchurch, New Zealand. 

    In fact, in the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto, he specifically outlines his desire to push gun control through his own actions, causing societal friction. In his mind, gun control could cause a second civil war in the US. Even the markings on his firearm were designed to incite the corporate media into enflaming the debate further than his awful actions could go on their own.

    These tragedies are textbook cases of killers mimicking each other’s techniques. The Buffalo, NY killer wrote: “The media loves to hate on the AR-15, which may increase coverage and public outcry.” It sounds exactly like what the Christchurch shooter described in his manifesto. 

    As a country, we must stop sensationalizing mass murderers and their actions for the purposes of advancing a gun control agenda and look at the root causes of this violence, such as: 

    1. The severe mental illness driving these racist, violent actions. 

    2. The “media contagion effect,” which rewards mass killers for their violent actions. 

    Americans should demand accountability from the media for the role they play in encouraging future acts of violence. 

    That’s why GOA is a staunch proponent of legislation in Congress condemning the media for using mass murderers for viral content.  

    Resolutions introduced by Representative Andy Ogles and Senator Mike Lee called on the media to voluntarily adopt standards to minimize the “media contagion effect” and deny mass killers the publicity and infamy they desire. 

    If corporate media and politicians stop weaponizing tragedies, perhaps we could work together and “do something” effectively. 

    *   *   * 

    We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/29/2023 – 22:05

  • Meta Drops University-Based Fact-Checking Group After Bias Exposed
    Meta Drops University-Based Fact-Checking Group After Bias Exposed

    From Down Under comes a rare triumph for victims of manipulative social media “fact-checking.” 

    Facebook parent Meta has suspended the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) from its fact-checking operation after investigative reporters exposed its leftist bias and the expiration of its fact-checking certification from the entity that coordinates Meta’s policing of speech. 

    “Considering both the nature of the allegations against RMIT and the upcoming referendum, we have decided to suspend RMIT from our fact-checking program,” a Meta spokesman told Sky News.

    The spokesman was referring to the 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum, which calls for creating a new political entity to “make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government … on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.” Australians refer to it as “the Voice.” 

    In a lengthy August 23 exposé, Sky News uncovered multiple conflicts of interest and fact-checking policy violations by RMIT’s so-called “FactLab.” Facebook’s deputized RMIT thought-police had frequently blocked and suppressed anti-Voice journalism on Facebook, including that of Sky News. Sky found that, between May 3 and June 23, every one of RMIT’s fact-checks about the Voice scrutinized content that bolstered the case for voting ‘no’ on the measure.  

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    “The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) requires participating organizations to demonstrate a commitment to nonpartisanship and fairness,” Meta told Sky News. “The IFCN will determine whether RMIT FactLab’s expired certification should be reinstated.”

    RMIT FactLab is led by former Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reporter Russell Skelton. Sky reported that Skelton “has published dozens of tweets criticising conservative viewpoints and the journalists he has been tasked with fact checking.” He’d also explicitly advocated a “yes” vote on the Voice, in violation of IFCN’s published fact-checking principles.  

    RMIT FactLab Director Russell Skelton and his wife, journalist Virginia Trioli (Quadrant)

    RMIT fact-checker Renee Davidson, who has also publicly supported the Voice, reposted a tweet accusing anti-Voice politician Peter Dutton of engaging in “fear-mongering through racism.” 

    “The decision of a foreign headquartered social media platform to interfere with legitimate public discourse during a referendum to change the Australian Constitution is particularly egregious and cannot go unaccounted,” wrote Australian Senator James Paterson in a letter to Meta that preceded news of RMIT’s ejection from Facebook’s constellation of fact-checkers. Paterson also asked Meta to explain how it would stop putting its thumb on the scales as the vote approaches. 

    Though RMIT was previously certified in its fact-checking role by IFCN, that credential expired last December. The contract between RMIT and Meta authorizes Meta to void the deal if the school loses its certification, but — up until now — Meta had allowed RMIT to keep on censoring content anyway. 

    While it’s nice to see this rare comeuppance for the fact-checking regime, RMIT’s ejection will do little to disrupt the Big Tech-Big Media thought police regime as it relentlessly suppresses voices that counter the leftist agenda.  

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/29/2023 – 21:45

  • Why Cash Seizures Backfire On Oklahoma Police
    Why Cash Seizures Backfire On Oklahoma Police

    Authored by Dan Alban and and Daryl James via RealClear Wire,

    Police recruits join the force to help others and fight crime. Research confirms it. But priorities changed when sheriff’s deputies detained Eh Wah in Muskogee County, Oklahoma, and found more than $53,000 in his car.

    Law enforcement training kicked in, and the purpose of the traffic stop switched from public safety to raising revenue. The deputies seized the cash and spent the next six hours interrogating Eh Wah, looking for any excuse to justify civil forfeiture, a process that allows the government to take and keep cash, cars and other assets without a criminal conviction.

    Oklahoma agencies normally keep quiet about civil forfeiture, which is why the state ranks among the worst in the nation for civil forfeiture transparency. Oklahoma publishes no statewide reports, conducts no regular audits, and tracks only limited metrics.

    The silence is strategic. The more people learn about civil forfeiture, the less they like it. But Oklahoma police and prosecutors have voiced opposition in recent weeks to H.R. 1525, the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration Act (FAIR), a bill that would reform federal civil forfeiture.

    Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics Deputy Director Brian Surber says the measure would take money from state and local agencies, making it harder to fight drug cartels and other criminal enterprises.

    What happened to Eh Wah undercuts this narrative. He was not a drug lord or even a low-level dealer. He was a volunteer manager for a Christian rock band, raising money for Thai orphans and Burmese refugees. Some of the cash belonged to Eh Wah and the band members, following a monthslong tour across several states. The rest came from concert donations and belonged to the orphans and refugees.

    Carrying cash is legal. The money in the car was legitimate. And none of it related to a broken taillight — the reason for the 2016 traffic stop on U.S. Route 69. Eh Wah, who neither smokes nor drinks, had nothing illegal in his vehicle. Other than driving with a burned out bulb, he did nothing wrong.

    The deputies pounced anyway, putting civil forfeiture in motion.

    To prevail, at least in theory, the government must link seized assets to criminal activity by a preponderance of the evidence, a low standard that means government hunches are more likely correct than not. But in the vast majority of cases, the government does not have to prove anything by any standard.

    Property owners get trapped in procedural mazes and lose by default. Many people give up without ever seeing a judge. They often have no choice. Civil forfeiture includes no right to counsel, and attorney fees often outweigh the value of seized assets.

    Once the process ends, participating agencies keep 100 percent of the proceeds for themselves. The result is a powerful incentive for police and prosecutors to self-fund through aggressive enforcement.

    The FAIR Act would not affect Oklahoma law. But it would end “equitable sharing,” a maneuver that allows state and local agencies to transfer seized property to the federal government for civil forfeiture, and then take a cut of the proceeds when the process ends. Oklahoma agencies pocketed more than $2 million this way in 2020.

    Oklahoma District 12 Attorney Matt Ballard wants to protect this revenue stream. What he fails to mention is that equitable sharing circumvents state law, which should not happen. Oklahoma agencies should follow Oklahoma law, which already makes civil forfeiture far too easy.

    State and local agencies collected $6.2 million for themselves in 2020 under Oklahoma law — above and beyond equitable sharing — representing more than 75 percent of proceeds. Indeed, the civil forfeiture case against Eh Wah was brought under Oklahoma law, not through the feds.

    Eh Wah fought back with free representation from our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, and recovered his cash. Now civil forfeiture apologists want to call his ordeal an “outlier.”

    But they have no data to support that claim. And they miss an important point: Even if proceeds come entirely from criminals, which they do not, the process skews law enforcement priorities.

    Agencies shift their focus from following criminals to following the money, which creates blind spots. At least one study shows that increased forfeiture revenue actually reduces crime closure rates.

    Innocent property owners like Eh Wah suffer. But so do officers, who get stuck working as fundraisers rather than crimefighters. The FAIR Act would help refocus law enforcement on its true priority—protecting the public, not the bottom line.

    Dan Alban is a senior attorney and co-director of the National Initiative to End Forfeiture Abuse at the Institute for Justice in Arlington, Va. Daryl James is an Institute for Justice writer.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/29/2023 – 21:25

  • Chevron Evacuates Gulf Of Mexico Oil Platforms As Hurricane Idalia Approaches
    Chevron Evacuates Gulf Of Mexico Oil Platforms As Hurricane Idalia Approaches

    By Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com

    Chevron has evacuated three oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico ahead of tropical storm Idalia which is strengthening to a hurricane and expected to make landfall in Florida on Wednesday.

    The U.S. supermajor said on Tuesday that it had evacuated non-essential personnel from its Blind Faith and Petronius platforms, and all staff had been removed from its Genesis platform in the Gulf of Mexico.

    Oil and gas production continued on Tuesday at Chevron’s operated platforms and other facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, a spokesperson told Reuters.   

    In the 7 a.m. CDT Tuesday update on Hurricane Idalia, the National Hurricane Center said that Idalia is strengthening as it moves northward over the southeastern Gulf of Mexico.

    “There is a danger of life-threatening storm surge along portions of the Florida Gulf coast. Heavy rainfall has the potential to produce flash and urban flooding across portions of the west coast of Florida, the Florida Panhandle, and southern Georgia,” the National Hurricane Center said.

    Idalia is expected to make landfall in Florida on Wednesday and create chaos and gasoline shortages just ahead of the Labor Day weekend, when more drivers are expected to hit the road, analysts say.

    As of Tuesday morning, the percentage of gas stations in Florida without gasoline remains low but is constantly rising, GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis, Patrick De Haan, said.

    Gasoline demand in Florida ahead of Idalia could lead to shortages but they will be temporary, AAA Auto Club spokesman Mark Jenkins told Florida’s WUSF Public Media.

    “As long as the Tampa Port remains open then gasoline will continue sailing into the region. And deliveries will be made until the actual storm itself is passing through, and then that’s considered to be unsafe to transport fuel, and most people wouldn’t be on the road at that time anyway,” Jenkins said.

    Moreover, Hurricane Idalia is not expected to impact refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast supplying Florida as these are on the Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi coasts, he added.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/29/2023 – 21:05

  • Joe Biden Used Pseudonyms In At Least 5,400 Emails
    Joe Biden Used Pseudonyms In At Least 5,400 Emails

    The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) revealed it’s in possession of some 5,400 records that contain email pseudonyms that President Joe Biden used during his tenure as vice president. 

    The jarring number was revealed in a letter from the Archives to the Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF), which last year filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for any documents that referenced three pseudonymous email accounts: robinware456@gmail.com, JRBWare@gmail.com and Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov.  

    “We have performed a search of our collection for Vice Presidential records related to your [June 9, 2022] request and have identified approximately 5,138 email messages, 25 electronic files and 200 pages of potentially responsive records that must be processed in order to respond to your request,” said the letter from NARA. 

    What will those 5,400 documents reveal about Biden’s involvement in Hunter’s so-called “business dealings”? (Andrew Harnik/AP via Politico) 

    Roswell, Georgia-based SLF received that letter last year, but made it public on Monday as it announced it has taken its FOIA pursuit to the next level, by filing a federal lawsuit against the Archives to compel the release of the records.  

    “SLF requested these now highly sought after emails from NARA on June 9, 2022, through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request,” said the group in a statement. “Unfortunately, after identifying nearly 5,400 potentially responsive records, NARA has dragged its feet and still has not produced a single email. SLF now turns to the court, asking it to order NARA to produce Biden’s emails.”

    The revelation of the high quantity of documents comes on the heels of a push for the same documents by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer. Earlier this month, he sent a letter to NARA asking it to turn over any unredacted documents that reference the pseudonyms. 

    “Joe Biden has stated there was ‘an absolute wall’ between his family’s foreign business schemes and his duties as Vice President, but evidence reveals that access was wide open for his family’s influence peddling,” said Comer in a statement.

    One email to Biden’s pseudonym account referenced his call to Ukraine’s president — and Hunter was copied at a time when he served on Burisma’s board

    “We already have evidence of then-Vice President Biden speaking, dining, and having coffee with his son’s foreign business associates,” Comer continued.  “We also know that Hunter Biden and his associates were informed of then-Vice President Biden’s official government duties in countries where they had a financial interest. The National Archives must provide these unredacted records to further our investigation into the Biden family’s corruption.”

    While mystery swirls around the several thousand documents, we do know that one of the emails details plans for a phone call with Ukraine’s former president, Petro Poroshenko. An aide to Biden, John Flynn, copied Hunter at his email address at Rosemont Seneca Partners – while Hunter was serving on the board of Ukrainian energy giant, Burisma, which was deemed to be corrupt by the Obama-Biden State Department.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/29/2023 – 21:00

  • First COVID Deaths Were Fully Jabbed, Australian State Records Reveal
    First COVID Deaths Were Fully Jabbed, Australian State Records Reveal

    Authored by Jessie Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    In light of a court case launched by a group of doctors challenging the Queensland government’s COVID-19 vaccination mandates, records have revealed that the first deaths in the Australian state were individuals who were fully vaccinated.

    A medical volunteer prepares the Moderna coronavirus vaccination for a first responder in Orange, Calif., on March 9, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    A list of the state’s first 183 COVID-19 deaths from the pandemic’s start on March 13, 2020, until Jan. 27, 2022, produced by Queensland’s chief health officer in an affidavit, indicates it was known to authorities as early as Jan. 2022 that the vaccines may not be preventing deaths.

    The list shows that the first locally acquired COVID-19 death was one in their 80s and another in their 30s, with both having received two doses of the vaccine in December 2021 and January 2022, respectively.

    While Queensland recorded seven deaths early in the pandemic, these cases were acquired outside of the state and before vaccine rollouts began.

    Queensland’s border opened in December 2021 after 80 percent of the state population vaccination was reached. By Dec. 31, 2021, nearly 90 percent of the population over 16 were fully vaccinated.

    Summary of Queensland’s first deaths after the vaccine rollouts. (Supplied byDystopian Down Under)

    Queensland’s Workplace Mandates

    The case, which was launched against the state, calls for the September 2021 directive requiring employees in public health and aged-care facilities to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to be revoked.

    A specialist from the case, psychiatrist Peter Parry, said that in the three decades of his career, he had never been subject to disciplinary action until now.

    “I graduated from medical school 40 years ago and in all that time have never had a single complaint about me presented to a medical board or AHPRA,” he said.

    The reason he chose to decline the COVID-19 vaccines was because these are “not normal vaccines.”

    “We hope, by bringing evidentiary material and expert witness testimonies before the Supreme Court, that the Justices will look at the evidence and rule in our favour. If successful, large numbers of experienced nurses, allied health, and doctors will be able to return to assist an overstretched Queensland public health system,” he added.

    In addition to enforced work mandates, Premier Annastacia Palazczuk barred the unvaccinated from accessing services and freedoms such as hospitals, disability services, aged care, libraries, and hospitality venues.

    This was enforced by proof of vaccination requirements at venues, which the Queensland government said was to keep Queenslanders safe.

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

    Messaging Shifts to Reducing Severe Illness

    Initially, in 2021, the Queensland Government closed the state’s borders and encouraged people to get vaccinated against COVID-19. They aimed to reopen the borders once 80 percent of the population was vaccinated, with the goal of stopping the virus’s spread and safeguarding vulnerable citizens.

    However, when the borders reopened after reaching the target, COVID-19 cases surged instead of decreasing. When it became clear that the vaccines didn’t entirely prevent infection or transmission, the focus of the messaging shifted to highlight the vaccines’ effectiveness in reducing severe illness and death.

    A nurse is seen working at a COVID-19 testing clinic at Ipswich Hospital in Brisbane, Australia. on Aug. 24, 2020. (Glenn Hunt/Getty Images)

    It is still a condition today for most Queensland health staff to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to ensure the ongoing safety of employees, patients, visitors and the wider community.

    “The overwhelming benefits of COVID-19 vaccination continue to outweigh the potential risks, and this is substantiated by enormous amounts of safety data based on billions of doses worldwide,” a spokesperson for the TGA told The Epoch Times in an email.

    Pfizer Dismisses Concerns Over Vaccine Mandates

    The news of the deaths follows a parliamentary inquiry into the COVID-19 mandates heard from the Australian heads of Pfizer Australia that the vaccine mandates coerced Australians into getting vaccinated for COVID-19, saying they had a choice.

    Appearing before an Australian senate inquiry into the COVID-19 vaccine mandates, Pfizer Country Medical Director Dr. Krishan Thiru and Dr. Brian Hewitt, the head of Regulatory Sciences for Pfizer, dismissed concerns of senators that Australians had been coerced into getting the COVID-19 vaccine.

    “I believe firmly that nobody was forced to have a vaccine,” Dr. Thiru said.

    “Mandates for vaccine requirements are determined by governments and health authorities. I believe everybody was offered an opportunity to get a vaccine or not get a vaccine. I don’t believe that anybody was forced to take a vaccine.”

    Meanwhile, Dr. Hewitt, when asked if he believed Australians in states that were subject to large-scale mandates—like Western Australia or Victoria—were not forced into getting the shot even when they found they were unable to earn a living without receiving a vaccination, replied he did not believe mandates compelled individuals into vaccinating.

    “The mandates for vaccine requirements are determined by governments and health authorities. I don’t believe that the mandates actually forced individuals to get vaccinations,” he said.

    Victoria Kelly-Clark contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/29/2023 – 20:45

  • California AG Sues SoCal School District For 'Outing' Trans, Pronoun Students To Parents
    California AG Sues SoCal School District For ‘Outing’ Trans, Pronoun Students To Parents

    California attorney general Bob Bonta has filed a lawsuit against a Southern California school district over a recently adopted policy that requires schools to notify parents if their children change their gender identification or pronouns.

    California Attorney General Rob Bonta

    “It tramples on students’ rights,” said Bonta, who’s seeking a court order to immediately halt the Chino Valley Unified School district from what he called “forced outing” of transgender students that violates their civil rights, NBC Los Angeles reports.

    The move comes after Chino Valley Unified, about 35 miles east of Los Angeles, adopted the policy following a shift in leadership on the school board. Other Southern California districts have adopted similar policies and Bonta said he believes they will also be affected by this litigation, though they are not named in the suit.

    In a response for a request for comment, the district’s director of communications said the district was not notified of the filing until after news organizations reported on the lawsuit. The district had not been provided an opportunity to examine the lawsuit Monday morning.

    So – schools are allowed to hire queer activist teachers and feature books with leather-bound gay grandfathers making out, but if they let parents know that their child is pursuing an alternative lifestyle – the state will sue them.

    “At this time, the District is working with its legal counsel to review the lawsuit and its contents,” Director of Communications Andi Johnston said in an email. “Prior to the filing, District personnel had been working with complete transparency in providing Attorney General Bonta’s office with requested documents and records. Superintendent Enfield spoke with the DOJ’s legal counsel weekly to confirm the District was providing requested files, which had changed several times from the original subpoena.”

    The state’s lawsuit argues that the policy discriminates against transgender and ‘gender non-conforming’ students, and is in violation of the state constitution which requires equal protection for all students (from their own parents?) regardless of their gender expression, sexual orientation, or identity.

    “Every student has the right to learn and thrive in a school environment that promotes safety, privacy, and inclusivity – regardless of their gender identity,” Bonta said in a statement. “We’re in court challenging Chino Valley Unified’s forced outing policy for wrongfully and unconstitutionally discriminating against and violating the privacy rights of LGBTQ+ students. The forced outing policy wrongfully endangers the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of non-conforming students who lack an accepting environment in the classroom and at home. Our message to Chino Valley Unified and all school districts in California is loud and clear: We will never stop fighting for the civil rights of LGBTQ+ students.”

    Parents, meanwhile, say they have a right to know the decisions their children are making at school.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/29/2023 – 20:25

  • The Hidden Racial Bias In K-12 Education
    The Hidden Racial Bias In K-12 Education

    Authored by Patrick Hughes via RealClear Wire,

    The Supreme Court might have ended race-based affirmative action in higher education, but as students return to the classroom this fall, the next frontier in the debate over discrimination in education and at work is already at our doorstep in K-12 public schools.

    In his majority opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.” The only way to achieve that constitutional imperative is for public school boards and superintendents to take a close look at the way they staff America’s K-12 classrooms.

    A new report from the National Opportunity Project identifies widespread discrimination in public school employment practices. After reviewing responses to a litany of public records requests, evaluating job posts, and examining hiring criteria, the National Opportunity Project found that school districts are using divisive social and political ideologies, and in some instances race, to drive hiring decisions.

    The biased K-12 hiring practices often stem from the en vogue “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or DEI, initiatives that have been adopted by school boards and administrators in recent years. Once thought to be prevalent only in higher education, research by the National Opportunity Project demonstrates the trickle-down effect of discriminatory higher education practices; they eventually are adopted by K-12 public schools.

    Many school districts fail to prioritize candidates’ educational and professional qualifications, and instead focus on applicants’ answers to questions about poorly-defined political causes such as “social justice” and “equity.” For example, in suburban Chicago, Evanston Township High School requires that “applicants must demonstrate a commitment to social justice, equity, excellence and high expectations for all students.”

    In Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia, teacher candidates are asked, “What does equity mean to you? How do you plan to keep equity at the center of your classroom?” Responses that show strong agreement with DEI concepts like “equity journey,” “equity work,” and “understand that race is a social construct” are rated more highly on a scoring rubric. This is just a small deviation from the race-based numerical rating system that was outlawed by the Supreme Court more than 20 years ago in Gratz v. Bollinger.

    Hiring committees are also instructed to assemble teaching staff that reflect certain politics, social ideologies, and racial backgrounds. City Schools of Decatur in Georgia directs school leaders to staff hiring teams for racial and gender equity by “ensur[ing] that there is at least one person of color and one woman or gender-fluid individual on the interview panel. Individuals who embody other aspects of diversity should be included as well.”

    The practical effect of these policies is that teachers in many of America’s K-12 schools are not being selected based on their teaching ability or experience connecting with our country’s youngest and most vulnerable. Instead, we’re selecting teachers based on subjective, quasi-political, and sometimes illegal criteria that have nothing to do with reading, writing, and math. Plus, these types of hiring practices stifle true diversity and result in a homogenous teaching staff educating from only one ideological perspective.

    America is the land of opportunity, a place where free speech and free thought are to be protected and encouraged. No matter your political stripes, we all should find these hiring practices alarming and at odds with our fundamental values.

    What’s more, as the Supreme Court recently reminded us, straightforward racial discrimination is unconstitutional. And trying to smuggle such discrimination through code words like “equity” is still problematic. As the Supreme Court has stated, “What cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly. The Constitution deals with substance, not shadows.”

    It’s past time to address these discriminatory hiring practices in K-12 schools. The college students fighting to end affirmative action wanted all students to be seen for who they are beyond their demographics. In the same vein, what makes good teachers must be determined by examining their qualifications, their track records, their education, and their commitment to achieving the best outcomes for their students. Teacher applicants should not—and considering recent Supreme Court precedent, cannot—be judged, ranked, or hired based on their race, gender, creed, or political views.

    Patrick Hughes is founder and president of the National Opportunity Project, a nonprofit government watchdog and education organization.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/29/2023 – 20:05

  • In Desperate Attempt To Boost Housing, China Cuts Mortgage Rates For First Time Since 2009
    In Desperate Attempt To Boost Housing, China Cuts Mortgage Rates For First Time Since 2009

    With the market urgently demanding a bazooka or some other “whatever-it-takes“ policy reaction from Beijing in response to China’s slow-motion economic and housing sector trainwreck, Xi’s regime continues to play cat and mouse with traders and continues to trickle down tiny, piecemeal stimmies on a daily basis and this morning was no different when Bloomberg reported that China’s largest banks are set to cut interest rates on trillions of yuan of outstanding home mortgages (and deposits) for the first time since the global financial crisis, as policymakers dig deeper into their toolkit to shore up growth in the world’s second-largest economy.

    And indeed, shortly after the report, China – which one year ago suffered through a crippling mortgage payment boycott which brought many of the country’s property developers to the brink of ruin – confirmed that its big (state-owned of course) lenders are reducing rates on the majority of the nation’s 38.6 trillion yuan ($5.3 trillion) of outstanding mortgages, with the reductions only affecting loans on first homes, two of the people said.

    At the same time, lenders such as ICBC (Industrial & Commercial Bank of China) and China Construction Bank are poised to cut deposit rates later this week for the third time in a year, people familiar said.

    The moves are part of a targeted push by Beijing to spur consumer spending, drive more funds into the stock market and alleviate pressure on lenders’ profit margins. The moves will also achieve none of that since nobody will allocate capital to – and in – a country where the largest asset, real estate, remains in freefall and where everyone is expecting some form of helicopter money to eventually emerge and contain the collapse.

    The cuts to mortgage rates were highly anticipated by investors after the central bank hinted at support in mid-July. While China has reduced benchmark rates and pushed the average mortgage cost to a record low, most Chinese households didn’t benefit as banks won’t reprice existing loans until the beginning of next year.

    “This is an incremental policy step, not a game changer because people’s confidence is still low,” said Macquarie head of China economic Larry Hu. “I think we’re going to see property easing come through in the coming weeks, I just don’t know if it’s going to be strong enough.”

    While Chinese shares gained in offshore trading after Bloomberg reported the banks’ plans, it’s unclear whether the moves will be enough to spark a sustained revival in investor confidence. Authorities have so far avoided broader stimulus measures despite a deepening property crisis and growing deflation pressures that have put the government’s economic growth target of around 5% at risk.

    JPMorgan analysts estimated that the annualized rate on new mortgages stands at 4.18%, about 60 basis points lower than the outstanding borrowings. That has prompted some consumers to take out out short-term loans to repay mortgages early. This is a mirror image of the US where the effective mortgage rate is more than half below where the prevailing current 30Y mortgage yield is!

    More than 90% of China’s outstanding mortgages were for first homes as of July 2021, according to the latest public data available from the banking regulator. In 2022, more than 80% of new home loans were on first homes, according to the housing ministry.

    With lower mortgage rates, however, also come lower deposits rates, and the reduction in the latter is meant to help lenders protect their margins as they extend lower rates to homebuyers. Big state banks may cut rates on local-currency deposits across key tenors by between 5 and 20 basis points, according to the report. Regulators have signed off on the plan, the people added. The cut may come as soon as Friday, one of the people said.

    Of course, none of this will make any difference for the big picture. China’s financial sector is already struggling with soaring defaults at shadow banks, which have triggered a fresh wave of anxiety about hidden stress and the potential spillover to state-owned lenders. A default by Chinese property giant Country Garden – said to have far more adverse consequences than the bankruptcy of Evergrande – is looming, and will further crush sentiment and spread deflationary shockwaves both domestically and across the globe. Analysts have also highlighted growing risks associated with debt-laden local government financing vehicles, with Goldman Sachs saying the exposure of banks could weaken their capital positions and lead to lower dividend payouts.

    Among the various other piecemeal measures introduced by China, Bloomberg notes that as of June, 100 out of 343 Chinese cities have lowered the rate floor of new-home mortgages or removed the minimum required, the PBOC said in its quarterly monetary policy report on Thursday. That has brought the nation’s average mortgage rate to 4.11% in June, down 0.51 percentage point from a year earlier.

    In an extreme scenario assuming the entire mortgage loan book is refinanced with a rate reduction of 60 basis points, earnings at Chinese bank for next year will be cut by 8%, with net interest margins narrowing by 7 basis points, according to JPMorgan. The US bank expects that about 50% of mortgage owners are likely to refinance and most of the impact on bank earnings will be in the near-term.

    The last time China allowed a similar move was during early 2009, when some state-owned banks gave a discount on interest rates to qualified borrowers in certain areas in response to the global financial crisis, according to a Zhongtai Securities report.

    Futures on the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index rose 0.8% in Hong Kong, building on a two-day rally that’s been fueled by a slew of market-boosting measures from authorities. The contracts are still down about 17% from this year’s high in January. And with consensus demanding helicopter money and nothing less to boost sentiment, don’t expect the gains to stick.

     

     

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/29/2023 – 19:45

  • Trump Campaign Releases Video Supercut Of Democrats Disputing Republican Election Victories
    Trump Campaign Releases Video Supercut Of Democrats Disputing Republican Election Victories

    Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

    Former President Donald Trump’s campaign has released a brand new “summer blockbuster” political ad highlighting Democrats’ well-documented history of disputing election results.

    President Trump shared the roughly 10-minute video in an Aug. 28 post on Truth Social, calling it a “must-watch.”

    “Republican supporters and President Trump are being ridiculed, persecuted, and even prosecuted by Biden, congressional democrats, and their radical prosecutors for raising questions about the accuracy of the 2020 victory,” the video begins.

    “This may be one of the most hypocritical acts in history considering the Democrats have violently claimed that the last three Republican Presidential wins were stolen, rigged, and illegitimate, and it was Democrats who tried to stop the certification of a Republican President,” it continues.

    The video goes on to cite a number of occasions in which Democrats have challenged election results, including during the 2000 presidential election when former Vice President Al Gore lost in a close-call race against President George W. Bush.

    Mr. Gore ultimately challenged the results in the U.S. Supreme Court amid a clash over which candidate had received Florida’s 25 electoral votes.

    The Supreme Court subsequently ruled that a previous Florida Supreme Court order for an elective manual recount of that state’s presidential election ballots was unconstitutional and Mr. Gore eventually conceded the race.

    In the video, multiple Democrats—including President Biden, former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—can be seen questioning the 2000 election results, with President Biden stating outright that he believes Mr. Gore won the race.

    U.S. Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton makes a concession speech after being defeated by Republican President-elect Donald Trump, in New York on Nov. 9, 2016. (Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images)

    Clinton, Pelosi Question Election ‘Integrity’

    The video also shows footage of some Democrats refusing to participate in the official certification of the 2000 election results, including snippets of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) objecting to the “fraudulent 25 Florida electoral votes,” as well as other lawmakers declining to join in the certification.

    It goes on to cite multiple other incidents in which Democrats challenged election results, including in 2004, when former President Bush defeated Democrat candidate John Kerry.

    In one clip, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) can be seen calling for independent testing of voter equipment in Ohio after the election, while in another, former Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio) claims there were “numerous irregularities” with the elections.

    Ms. Clinton and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) can also be seen questioning the “accuracy and integrity” of America’s elections.

    The video later shows Democrats questioning the results of the 2016 presidential election, in which President Trump beat Ms. Clinton.

    Ms. Clinton can be seen telling audience members at event that the election can be “stolen” from candidates and that President Trump “knows he is an illegitimate president.”

    The video narrator went on to say that “some Democrats continued to promote the totally false narrative that President Trump had somehow conspired with the Russians” to win the election, alongside footage of multiple Democrats making false claims about the now disproven Russian interference narrative.

    Former President of the United States Donald Trump, also the front runner for the Republican presidential candidate nominee, was booked and released on bond at Fulton County Jail on Aug. 24, 2023. (Fulton County Sheriff’s Office)

    Trump Booked in Fulton County Jail

    “The Democrats have also accused Republicans of stealing many other elections, including in Georgia, the very same place where tainted Democrat Georgia Prosecutor Fani Willis is now unfairly prosecuting President Trump for suggesting there was voter fraud,” the narrator continues, referring to Democrat gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’ loss against Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.

    “Many in America are asking why President Trump is being prosecuted for doing the very same thing Democrats like Biden and Hillary have done, and the answer is very simple. Like a third-world corrupt dictator, Biden will use any means necessary to beat the one Republican he knows he can’t beat,” the video narrator concludes.

    The video from the Trump campaign comes shortly after President Trump was booked into the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta on Aug. 24 after surrendering himself to authorities following his indictment on racketeering and conspiracy charges.

    After handing himself over to authorities, President Trump, 77, had his fingerprints and mugshot taken before being released on a $200,000 bond roughly 20 minutes later.

    He later described the experience as “terrible”  and a “very sad day for our country.”

    The indictment charges President Trump and 18 others in relation to their efforts to dispute the results of the 2020 election in the state.

    President Trump was booked on 13 charges including a violation of Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer, conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree, and conspiracy to commit filing of false documents, among others.

    He has denied any wrongdoing and repeatedly claimed he is the victim of a political witch hunt.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/29/2023 – 19:25

  • "A Very Dangerous Moment" – Hungary's Orbán Warns Tucker "A 3rd World War Is Knocking On The Door"
    “A Very Dangerous Moment” – Hungary’s Orbán Warns Tucker “A 3rd World War Is Knocking On The Door”

    During Tucker Carlson’s recent visit to Budapest, where he gave a speech apologizing for the “disgusting” behavior of the US Ambassador to Hungary, the former Fox News anchor sat down with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

    Orbán – Hungary’s longest-serving prime minister – knows a thing or two about Russia (having grown up under their occupation, and been arrested and thrown into jail by Russian-backed police for his efforts to liberate the country) and Ukraine (a nation with which is shares a border), and so Tucker sat down to ask him – what exactly is going on in Ukraine right now (given the propagandic opacity of news in America).

    “It is not just a misunderstanding, it is a lie,” Orban begins, when asked about the fact that American media continue to claim that ‘Ukraine is winning’ the war.

    He suggests that the Biden administration misunderstands Russia, and attempting to remove Putin could lead to dangerous instability.

    “To understand the Russians it’s a difficult thing, especially if you have an ocean between you and Russia.”

    Orbán points out that Western political conversations often center on freedom, while Russian conversations focus on keeping the country together, and warns against the dangerous implications of the U.S. strategy, particularly for countries like Hungary that are geographically closer to the conflict.

    “Don’t misunderstand the Russians. So they’re not going to get sick of Putin and throw him out, come on, it’s a joke.”

    He criticizes Vice President Kamala Harris for suggesting that Ukraine could join NATO, saying it was an unrealistic proposal that escalated tensions.

    Instead, the Hungarian PM urges a new security architecture that respects Ukraine’s sovereignty but doesn’t include NATO membership. 

    Seemingly for his unwillingness to simply acquiesce to every talking point provided by Washington, and instead to put his nation’s people first – and their energy and food needs – Orbán has been called a “fascist” numerous times by western media, a ‘puppet of Putin’ and ‘friend of Russia’..

    Carlson asked Orbán, “are you worried about being crushed by the US?”

    “It’s dangerous,” replies the Hungarian PM, recognizing that “I am not the favorite politician of the liberals, but nobody’s perfect.”

    But, he adds that he doesn’t care because there are more important values required to uphold a civil society:

    “There are certain things that are more important than me, than my ego: family, nation, god.”

    “To be Hungarian is to be very proud of it. We love the nation, we love the country, and we are proud of it. It’s not every much mainstream thinking, political thinking of a western society.

    But in Hungary, we are still very patriotic and Christian and committed to those values. Not from an ideological level, but on the streets everyday,”

    The Hungarian approach is simple, he explains, “Washington is far away, Russia and Ukraine are close,” noting that decisions made in the US can have immediate impacts for his nation.

    “It’s dangerous is my answer. So we should not neglect the importance of that fact and when the United States and this administration does not like you, or considers you as an enemy or a having a backtrack, it’s dangerous in international politics,”

    Reflecting on NATO’s stance in the Ukraine war, Orbán exclaims:

    “this is a bad strategy, we have to stop it” adding that “we cannot beat [the Russians], we will not kill their leader, they will never give it up, they will invest more.”

    “What finally will count is boots on the ground, and the Russians are far stronger.”

    Orbán then makes the ultimate mistake among global leaders, he praises former US president Trump:

    “Call back Trump. That’s the only way out. Call back Trump,” Orbán said.

    “Because you know, you can criticize him for many reasons. I understand all the discussion. But the best foreign policy of the recent several decades belonged to him. He did not initiate any new war. He treated nicely the North Koreans and Russia, even the Chinese. You know, he delivered a policy which was the best one for the Middle East, Abraham Accords. So he had very good foreign policy.”

    “He’s [Trump] criticized because he’s not educated enough to understand foreign policy. This is not the case,” Orbán told Carlson.

    “Facts count and his foreign policy was the best form for the world in the last several decades I have seen. And if he would have been the president at the moment the Russian invasion started, no, it would not be possible to do that by the Russians. So Trump is the man to save the world and probably the human beings in the world as well.”

    Additionally, commenting on the fact that the US government is currently indicting the former president, the Hungarian leader frowns and says:

    “…using the justice system against a political opponent… in Hungary, that’s impossible to imagine… that was done by the communists.”

    His most ominous warning comes last:

    “This is a very dangerous moment now,” he concludes, adding that it should be obvious to everyone that “the third world war is knocking on our door.”

    Watch the full interview below:

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    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/29/2023 – 19:05

  • Murderer Scheduled To Be Executed With Unconventional Method Triggers Death Penalty Debate
    Murderer Scheduled To Be Executed With Unconventional Method Triggers Death Penalty Debate

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

    Alabama could become the first state to execute a prisoner by forcing him to breathe in pure nitrogen, a novel method that has never been used.

    The gurney in Huntsville, Texas, where Texas’s condemned are strapped down to receive a lethal dose of drugs in this May 27, 2008 file photo. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan)

    Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office asked the Alabama Supreme Court in a court filing on Aug. 25 to schedule the execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder-for-hire killing of a preacher’s wife in the 1980s.

    “It is a travesty that Kenneth Smith has been able to avoid his death sentence for nearly 35 years after being convicted of the heinous murder-for-hire slaying of an innocent woman, Elizabeth Sennett,” Mr. Marshall said in a statement.

    That court filing to the state’s top court also indicated that Alabama plans to execute Mr. Smith via nitrogen hypoxia, according to a news release from the attorney general’s office. The method of execution is authorized in three states, including Alabama, but it’s never been tried before.

    While nitrogen makes up about 78 percent of the air inhaled by people and is harmless when inhaled with oxygen, the execution method will force the inmate to breathe 100 percent nitrogen. The method would deprive the death row inmate of oxygen before they would then pass out “within a minute” before dying shortly after that, some experts have said.

    “Placed into a pure nitrogen environment, the convict would be unconscious within a minute (possibly even after a breath or two) and would be dead soon after,” Charles Blanke, a professor of medicine at Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine, said in a Fox News interview. “Its failure rate, that is, cases in which the prisoner survives, would likely be much lower than what we see with current death penalty methods.”

    Proponents of the execution method say that it would likely be painless. However, opponents have said it’s essentially a form of experimentation on people.

    “No state in the country has executed a person using nitrogen hypoxia and Alabama is in no position to experiment with a completely unproven and unused method for executing someone,” the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit that provides legal representation to those who may have been denied a fair trial, told the Associated Press.

    Alabama authorized nitrogen hypoxia in 2018 amid a shortage of drugs used to carry out lethal injections, but the state has not attempted to use it until now to carry out a death sentence. Oklahoma and Mississippi have also authorized nitrogen hypoxia, but have not used it.

    However, Alabama likely doesn’t have to prove whether a pure nitrogen-based execution in humane, one professor said.

    “The burden is on the condemned inmate to show that it is torturous rather than the burden being on the state to show that it’s not,” Richmond University law professor Corinna Barrett Lain in an interview with Scientific American. Ms. Lain said that the most humane method of execution is likely death via firing squad.

    Alabama has been working for several years to develop the nitrogen hypoxia execution method, but has disclosed little about its plans. The attorney general’s court filing did not describe the details of the how the execution would be carried out. Corrections Commissioner John Hamm told reporters last month that a protocol was nearly complete.

    Meanwhile, a number of Alabama inmates seeking to block their executions by lethal injection, including Mr. Smith, have argued they should be allowed to die by nitrogen hypoxia.

    According to the Alabama attorney general’s office, the pastor of the Westside Church of Christ in Sheffield, Alabama, in March 1988 sought to hire a hitman to kill his wife after incurring substantial debts and having an affair with another woman. The pastor, Charles Sennett, then took a large life insurance policy on his wife, Elizabeth Sennett, before hatching a scheme to have his wife murdered.

    Mr. Sennett, according to the release, then hired Mr. Smith and John Parker, a friend of Mr. Smith, to kill Mrs. Sennett and pay them $1,000 each for the killing. The release said she was “ambushed,” beaten, and stabbed multiple times before her death. A week after his wife’s slaying, Mr. Sennett committed suicide and was never charged.

    Mr. Smith was tried for the murder in 1989 and again in 1996. He was convicted both times with capital murder, receiving the death penalty both times.

    In July 2010, Mr. Parker, who was convicted and sentenced to death, was executed for Mrs. Sennett’s death via lethal injection at the Holman Prison in Atmore, Alabama. The U.S. Supreme Court at the time rejected a stay minutes before the execution began.

    “I’m sorry. I don’t ever expect you to forgive me,” Mr. Parker told the woman’s family before his execution. “I really am sorry.”

    At the time, Charles Sennett told outlets that the execution was “one of the steps we have to take to get closure and justice,” adding that “we still have another step with Smith, but tonight was a step in the right direction.”

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/29/2023 – 18:45

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Aug 29

Today’s News 29th August 2023

  • Pink Slime Returns: Viral TikTok Video Exposes Disturbing Production Of Sliced Ham
    Pink Slime Returns: Viral TikTok Video Exposes Disturbing Production Of Sliced Ham

    By now, many Americans should be aware that at some point, they’ve unknowingly chowed down on “pink slime” meat. This culinary horror first rocked the pages of The New York Times in 2009 and several other times in recent years. We’ve noted “The Return Of Pink Slime” and “Is There Meat Glue In Your Food?” and “American Fast-Food Chains Use Seaweed, Soy, And Even Wood To Beef Up Menu Items.”

    A study published in 2022 in the British medical journal, The BMJ, found processed and ultra-processed meats, such as ham, bacon, salami, hotdogs, beef jerky, and corned beef, can significantly increase men’s risk of colorectal cancer and other diseases and even increase early death in both men and women. 

    “We found that men in the highest quintile of ultra-processed food consumption, compared to those in the lowest quintile, had a 29% higher risk of developing colorectal cancer,” stated co-senior author Fang Fang Zhang, a leading cancer epidemiologist and the head of the nutrition epidemiology and data science division at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy in Boston.

    The effects of ultra-processed foods are pretty obvious — look at the American people — morbidly obese and full of health problems. Knowing the health ramifications of the chemicals mega corporations put in the food should be a national priority — but it’s not. 

    While we don’t want to spoil dinner, the latest viral video of pink slime was posted on TikTok. It shows what appears to be a ham operation. 

    Over 20,000 users weighed in on the video, with the vast majority expressing concern about the country’s food supply and speculating on how the chemicals in processed foods might be harming them. 

    @thatafricanchick2 I dont want to believe this#😮#😳#ham#fake#food#blacktiktok#woah ♬ Breaking News – Breaking News

    https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js

    Meanwhile, there’s this… Corporate America Bombards Black People With Junk Food Ads. Not ESG-friendly? 

    It may be time for some folks to realize their health problems are partly due to diet. Break the food matrix, find a local farm, and source food locally — or better, grow your own food. Isn’t it time to know what’s exactly in your food? 

    But don’t worry. Big corporations will solve the fat crisis with the newly created miracle fat drug. 

    Why aren’t ESG-ers going after companies producing processed and other junk foods?  

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/28/2023 – 23:20

  • Beijing Soon Needs A Whatever-It-Takes Policy Move
    Beijing Soon Needs A Whatever-It-Takes Policy Move

    By George Lei and Ye Xie, Bloomberg markets live reporters and strategist

    China’s benchmark CSI 300 index surged 5.5% on Monday as authorities unveiled a slew of supportive measures, including a reduction of the stamp duty. By the end of the session, the efforts had fallen flat with investors and the gauge had pared its gain to just 1.2%.

    That price action suggests Beijing urgently needs to make a “whatever-it-takes” move — similar to the ECB’s open-ended commitments to saving the common currency in 2011 — or else risks further asset weakness.

    The CSI 300 index’s early rally of as much as 5.5% sputtered during the session, with the gauge closing just 1.2% higher. That’s quite the rarity: There have been only three past occasions since 2004 when the equity index soared over 5 percentage points and then pared the gain by 4 percentage points.

    Two of those episodes occurred during the 2008 global financial crisis. One happened in 2015 when China’s stock bubble burst. While history shows that the gauge often recovered in the week and month after such volatility, the index fell over the following 60 days in two of the three past instances.

    The government has previously delivered massive stimulus to shore up not just financial markets, but also the real economy. During the 2008-2009 crisis, Beijing launched a 4-trillion yuan ($548 billion) spending package. And a program where the PBOC provided cash for policy lenders to finance urban renewal helped turn around a slumping property market in 2015. This time, however, a solution appears to be trickier.

    Beijing has stepped up its efforts over the past weekend to lift stocks and rescue the property market, according to Ting Lu, chief China economist at Nomura. Still, “the impact will be short-lived if these measures are not followed by measures for supporting the real economy,” he warned in a client note on Monday. In fact, Hong Kong-based investors have turned into net sellers of onshore Chinese equities throughout August, in contrast to a couple days of brief inflows in late July following positive signals from the politburo meeting.

    Forecasts for China’s 2023 and 2024 GDP have been slashed on Wall Street over the past few weeks. The world’s second largest economy now risks missing Beijing’s own growth target for a second straight year and could expand at a sub-5% pace for three years in a row — something unheard of since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. The sheer scale of the challenge calls for unprecedented policy actions, akin to the Fed’s commitment to purchasing “unlimited amounts of Treasury bonds” in March 2020 or Mario Draghi’s famous line 11 years ago: “The ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro.”

    Beijing’s responses have so far been underwhelming and investors are keeping their hopes low after repeated disappointments over the past few years. A Bloomberg MLIV survey of 455 respondents found only 11% look forward to “really big, bazooka-like” stimulus, while more than half expect moderate steps that target specific industries. In a Bank of America survey two weeks ago, only 3% of those polled saw a stronger yuan in the next three months as a result of “policy stimulus restoring growth momentum.” If Beijing cannot surprise investors amid such a low threshold of expectations, Chinese markets are probably headed for further selloffs.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/28/2023 – 23:00

  • Watch: Robo-Forklifts That Can't Get Sick Nor Unionize Hit Warehouse Floors
    Watch: Robo-Forklifts That Can’t Get Sick Nor Unionize Hit Warehouse Floors

    By the 2030s, or even sooner, robots might dominate warehouses, displacing millions of jobs. In the latest wave of automation advancements, a Japanese tech firm has just unveiled a self-driving forklift. 

    Japan’s only public broadcaster (NHK) said NEC Corporation developed an industrial forklift powered by AI that allows intelligent, real-time decisions, delivering materials on the warehouse floor to the right place at the right time. 

    “Of these, NEC developed a system that makes forklifts automatically operate, and is characterized by the fact that it can be operated unmanned by attaching cameras and sensors later,” NHK said. 

    NEC said the goal of the robot forklift is to “alleviate the labor shortage in the logistics field and reviewing long working hours, and plans to put it into practical use next fiscal year.”

    “I want to contribute to creating a better environment at the same time as making the warehouse site run smoothly,” said Junichiro Yonetake of NEC’s DX Offering Management Department.

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    Yet we all know the proliferation of automation in warehouses will result in job loss in the millions, if not more, in the years ahead. We’ve explained for years when this ill-fated day will arrive for human warehouse workers:

    In March, a note titled “AI Will Lead To 300 Million Layoffs In The US And Europe” was shared with our pro subscribers. It detailed the jobs currently at risk due to AI and automation.

    Remember, robots don’t get sick, nor can they unionize.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/28/2023 – 22:40

  • US Knew Saudis Were Slaughtering African Migrants At Border But Kept Quiet
    US Knew Saudis Were Slaughtering African Migrants At Border But Kept Quiet

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    The Biden administration has been aware since last year that Saudi border guards were slaughtering African migrants on Saudi Arabia’s border with Yemen but kept quiet about the killings, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

    Sources told the Times that American diplomats were made aware of the news last fall, around the time the US was publicly condemning Riyadh for agreeing to OPEC+ oil production cuts. The administration did not make any public comments about the reported killings.

    Ethiopian migrants on Yemen’s coast, via AP.

    The administration received more details about the atrocities in December 2022 when the UN presented information about Saudi forces shooting, shelling, and abusing Ethiopian migrants at the border, but the US still kept quiet.

    After Human Rights Watch released a report last week that said Saudi border guards killed hundreds — possibly thousands — of Ethiopian migrants between March 2022 and June 2023, the Biden administration insisted that it “raised concerns” with Riyadh about the report. For their part, Riyadh denied the allegations.

    Last month, the Mixed Migration Center (MMC) released a similar report that said Saudi border forces killed at least 800 Ethiopian migrants, and over 1,700 were injured. The Saudi guards used mortar shells and small arms to attack the Ethiopians. There were also reports of rape and torture.

    According to The Washington Post, Saudi border guards are trained by the US as part of military cooperation between the two nations. The mass slaughter of civilians by US-backed Saudi forces is nothing new, as Riyadh frequently targeted civilians in its war in Yemen using US-made bombs and aircraft. In January 2022, Saudi airstrikes hit a migrant detention center in Sadaa, Yemen, killing at least 91 civilians and injuring 236 more.

    Since last fall, when President Biden vowed “consequences” for Riyadh over the oil cuts, his administration has backed off on its criticism of the kingdom as it seeks to clinch a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal.

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    Saudi Arabia is demanding new security guarantees from the US as a condition for normalization that could go as far as NATO’s Article 5, which would mean Washington treating attacks on the kingdom as attacks on the US.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/28/2023 – 22:20

  • Content Overload: Streaming Libraries Balloon 39% In Two Years
    Content Overload: Streaming Libraries Balloon 39% In Two Years

    Binge-watching TV shows, movies, and documentaries on streaming platforms is like a drug… 

    So, what do drug dealers streaming companies do when customers demand more? 

    Give the customer what they want: A 39% increase in TV shows, movies, and documentaries on streaming platforms in two years, according to Bloomberg, citing a new report from market researcher Nielsen. 

    Nielsen said the number of titles on streaming services surged to 2.35 million. The figure increases to 2.7 million when traditional broadcast and cable channel viewing operations are factored in. This content is only available across the Western world, primarily in the US, Canada, the UK, Mexico, and Germany. 

    “Netflix and Disney+ are among 167 streaming providers, up from 118 two years ago. The average time it takes someone to find something to watch has risen to more than 10 minutes from a little over seven minutes in 2019,” Nielsen said.

    Streaming companies played the long game, pumping out an enormous amount of TV shows, movies, and documentaries over the years for a small monthly fee — a move to get viewers hooked on their content. Dive deep into the bio-chemistry. Turns out, TV addiction isn’t just psychological; it’s biological. Your brain pumps out dopamine while you binge-watch, making the experience pleasurable and rewarding. 

    But as any drug dealer would do… They eventually raise prices, and as we found out last week, ‘streamflation’ has led to a surge in customers wanting to cancel their Hulu And Disney+ accounts. It might be hard for some to cold turkey the ‘streaming drug.’ 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/28/2023 – 22:00

  • Recent Mask Mandates Lifted Amid Pushback
    Recent Mask Mandates Lifted Amid Pushback

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

    Kaiser Permanente in Santa Rosa, California, on Aug. 24 reversed a recent policy that would require masks in its hospital after it reinstated the mandate days before. A Hollywood studio also said it would do away with its mandate.

    People wear masks as they walk in a shopping district in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles on July 1, 2021. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo)

    Officials for the hospital system told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat that the mask policy applies only to staff, not patients. It said that it is “strongly encouraging masks for patients, members, and visitors in the hospital and medical offices in the Santa Rosa Service Area in response to this latest increase in COVID-19 cases.”

    “Our intent was to communicate that as of Tuesday, we have expanded the masking requirement for our employees and physicians to medical offices and clinic settings; we apologize for any confusion among Press Democrat readers,” Kaiser said in its latest statement.

    The statement also said that “visitors, patients, and members are strongly encouraged to also wear masks in these settings,” according to the paper. “We have not changed our masking requirements in the hospital, which have been in effect since April: employees and physicians are required to wear masks and we ask visitors to wear masks when in the hospital.”

    It doesn’t appear that Kaiser Permanente, which operates hospitals across the United States and California, would also attempt to reinstate mask mandates at other locations.

    Days before its latest statement, the hospital system said it would be mandating masks for patients, doctors, patients, visitors, and staff members at its hospital and medical offices.

    “Kaiser Permanente Northern California is committed to protecting the safety of our members, patients, employees, physicians, and visitors, which includes taking appropriate steps to prevent the spread of transmissible infectious diseases in our facilities,” it told local media.

    Some Northern California locals weren’t happy with the announcement that mask mandates would return, according to local outlets.

    “They told us a bunch of [expletive],” Richard Staudinger, a North Sacramento resident, told CBS. “I think most of the people don’t believe it now.”

    Another, Craig Roberts, said, “I think it’s more political than anything, just think they’re trying to do what they did in 2020.”

    But some said they don’t mind the mandates. “I don’t have a problem if they reinstate the masks,” Kiona Cooper, of Northern California, said.

    Other Mandates

    Meanwhile, the Lionsgate film studio in Santa Monica also said it would not be implementing a mask mandate, days after the media company said it would force workers to put on masks again on certain floors. It claimed that it never changed its mask policy.

    “The LA County Department of Public Health notified us yesterday that we could lift the mask requirements, effective immediately, and we have,” the firm told news outlets over the weekend.

    The statement also said: “Lionsgate never changed its own mask policy. The LA County Department of Health ordered us to institute the temporary masking requirement after we reported a cluster of COVID cases to them and we have an obligation to comply with their orders.”

    Last week, a Lionsgate memo stated that employees on only certain floors have to wear surgical masks, KN95 masks, or N95 masks “except when alone in an office with the door closed, actively eating, actively drinking at their desk or workstation, or if they are the only individual present in a large open workspace.”

    Earlier in the month, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that COVID-19 hospitalizations rose across the country. Hospitalizations rose by 21.6 percent, to 12,612 new admissions from 10,370, according to the data ending Aug. 12.

    Despite the increase, it’s among the lowest levels of hospitalization recorded since the start of the pandemic in early 2020.

    “An upswing is not a surge; it’s not even a wave,” Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer for Tufts Medicine, told ABC News. “What we’re seeing is a very gradual and small upward trajectory of cases and hospitalizations, without deaths really going along, which is great news.”

    At the same time, several hospitals, including some in upstate New York, and Morris Brown College in Atlanta reimplemented mask mandates, prompting concerns about a broader effort to force masks on people, three years after the start of the pandemic in the United States. Media coverage around the small increase in COVID-19 cases has also focused on whether masks should be worn, with mainstream outlets such as CNN interviewing doctors who say people should start wearing them again.

    But some politicians and commentators, in response, called on supporters to resist the mandates.

    “It’s alarming that the mandates are kicking in again,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said in a recent interview. “It’s like, OK, we noticed masks didn’t work, particularly for children. We always knew they didn’t work for kids.”

    It also comes as President Joe Biden on Aug. 25 told reporters in Lake Tahoe that he signed off on a proposal “to present to Congress a request for additional funding for a new vaccine that is necessary, that works.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/28/2023 – 21:40

  • Half Of Transgender Prison Inmates Convicted Of Sex Crimes: Wisconsin Data
    Half Of Transgender Prison Inmates Convicted Of Sex Crimes: Wisconsin Data

    Half of the transgender inmates in the Wisconsin prison system were convicted of at least one count of sexual abuse or assault, according to data provided by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project.

    Obtained via a public records request to the Wisconsin Department of Corrections in April 2022, the data – provided more than a year later and reported by the Daily Caller, indicates that 81 of the 161 transgender inmates at female prisons had a record of sexual abuse.

    Details were not disclosed by the DOC regarding how many transgender inmates applied to a women’s facility and the number of requests granted, according to the documents. The prison system also did not provide how many had transferred with sex crimes on their record or how many were charged while in prison. -Daily Caller

    More via the Oversight Project:

    The records don’t show which other crimes the transgender inmates may have committed, including whether they have multiple sex crime convictions. 

    “The transgender issue isn’t just about women in sports, which seems to be the context people are most comfortable talking about the transgender contagion in,” according to Mike Howell, director of the Heritage Foundation Oversight Project, in a statement to the Caller. “This data shows a much uglier truth, that sexual crime and transgenderism are linked.“

    The Caller also notes that in June, the Supreme Court affirmed a previous ruling by a lower court that sided with a transgender inmate – biological male Kesha Williams – who successfully sued Fairfax County jail for discrimination after sticking him in an all-male jail. According to the Fourth Circuit, the jail discriminated against Williams under the Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to provide treatment for “gender dysphoria,” and for allowing other inmates to harass him.

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/28/2023 – 21:20

  • Trump Rap 'First Day Out' Goes Viral After Former President Booked And Released
    Trump Rap ‘First Day Out’ Goes Viral After Former President Booked And Released

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

    Trump the Don has just thrown down a powerful lyrical flex—and a warning to the Deep State.

    Jessie Friedman. (Courtesy of Rachel Friedman)

    A new parody rap of a fired-up former President Donald Trump after his release from his Atlanta, Georgia booking has been rising up the charts. As of Monday morning “First Day Out” by Trump the Don had shot up to #3 on the iTunes Hip Hop chart, #34 overall, and has garnered 2.8 million views on social media since its release on Friday.

    “I’ve been blown away by the response. It’s gone completely viral,” Jessie Friedman, 29, the alter ego behind Trump the Don, told The Epoch Times. “Like so many other Americans I was disgusted and felt like fighting back in a comedic way. I never expected it to blow up like this.”

    Mr. Friedman, a resident of central Florida, who had been rapping since the age of 13, found inspiration for the song after first seeing the former president’s historic mugshot on the news. Fired up, Mr. Friedman decided to write an ode first popularized by other artists’ experience rapping about their first day of freedom after being in police custody.

    “In hip-hop it’s common for when an artist gets out of prison they do rap for a couple minutes about their first day out to just flex and let everyone know that hey, I haven’t been defeated. I’m still here standing strong,” said Mr. Friedman. “I felt Trump deserved a flex of his own so I went to work.”

    “First Day Out,” which is 90 seconds in length, shares the thoughts of a fictionalized Trump after exiting the Atlanta jail.

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    The song opens with shout-outs to notable conservative figures before launching into a defiant, yet humorous, screed, “Out on bail, out on bail. I won’t see inside a cell.”

    “I got homies doing life in jail they living in Hell. These DAs are acting silly. My mugshot is worth a billi. Sold some merch and made and made a milli.”

    The lyrical Trump continues: “I am not who they are after. I’m just in the way, they want to get to you but I won’t let ‘em. Cold-hearted now I’m heartless getting back to where I started. I don’t need to do the race, Ima beat the RICO charges. And if I go to prison you can’t do me like the Clintons. I’ll be laid up eating steak with secret service straight up chillin. Screaming Orange man bad! Got the whole world mad! Thug life shout out to all of my MAGA based chads”

    The song ends with Trump issuing a warning: “Coming for the deep state I will stop the new world order. But before that I’ll finish the wall at the border.”

    Mr. Friedman, who says he supports Trump but not the Republican Party, is hoping his music not only makes people smile, but through humor, can also inspire change in the way political parties are perceived.

    “It’s wild to see these rock stars, who, while growing up, I had always thought of as these counter culture renegades, step in lockstep with corporate and government powers, telling us to mask up and obey authority,” said Mr. Friedman. “We look to them to fight the power, but they are all conforming. Sit down. Do what you’re told. That is their message. Trump is the true rebel.”

    “It’s sick. You can rap all you want about guns and everyone will celebrate, but talk about the Second Amendment and you get canceled,” Mr. Friedman added.

    Recent months have seen political songs strike a deep chord in American culture. For several weeks the number one song on the iTunes chart has been Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men of North Richmond,” which chronicles how corrupt elites on both sides of the political aisle have profited at the expense of the struggling lower and middle classes.

    Mr. Friedman, who currently resides in central Florida and also raps under the name “Hi-Raz The Rapper,” had a chance meeting with his lyrical inspiration at the former president’s Florida residence in Mar a Lago.

    “It was my wedding and Trump showed up to wish us luck,” said Mr. Friedman. “He was a lot of fun. Couldn’t have been nicer.”

    The rapper says that while he is taking time to enjoy the success of his newest song, he plans to get back to work soon to create more musical parodies. However, if the former president is elected to a second term Mr. Friedman says he would gladly make time in his schedule for any potential reelection events.

    “Why not light up his inaugural?” said Mr. Friedman. “I’m just this white Jewish rapper living out my dream while living in this clown world, so I say, Let’s go. And knowing Trump the little bit that I do, he might just be into Trump the Don.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/28/2023 – 21:00

  • Nvidia Vs. AMD Vs. Intel: Comparing AI Chip Sales
    Nvidia Vs. AMD Vs. Intel: Comparing AI Chip Sales

    Nvidia has become an early winner of the generative AI boom.

    The company reported record revenue in its second quarter earnings report, with sales of AI chips playing a large role. If we compare to other American competitors, what do the AI chip sales of Nvidia vs. AMD vs. Intel look like?

    In the graphic below, Visual Capitalist’s Jenna Ross and Sam Parker use earnings reports from each company to see their revenue over time.

    A Clear Leader Emerges

    While the companies don’t report revenue for their AI chips specifically, they do share revenue for their Data Center segment.

    The Data Center segment includes chips like Central Processing Units (CPUs), Data Processing Units (DPUs), and Graphic Processing Units (GPUs). The latter are preferred for AI because they can perform many simple tasks simultaneously and efficiently.

    Below, we show how quarterly Data Center revenue has grown for Nvidia vs. AMD vs. Intel.

    Source: Nvidia, AMD, Intel. Quarters are based on the calendar year. In cases where revenue was revised at a later date, we have used the latest available revision. Intel integrated its Accelerated Computing Systems & Graphics (AXG) group into its Data Center Group in 2023. We have included revenue from the AXG group in the Data Center revenue for quarters prior to 2023 except for Q1 and Q2 2022, where revised Data Center revenue was provided by Intel.

     Nvidia’s Data Center revenue has quadrupled over the last two years, and it’s estimated to have more than 70% of the market share for AI chips.

    The company achieved dominance by recognizing the AI trend early, becoming a one-stop shop offering chips, software, and access to specialized computers. After hitting a $1 trillion market cap earlier in 2023, the stock continues to soar.

    Competition Between Nvidia vs. AMD vs. Intel

    If we compare Nvidia vs. AMD, the latter company has seen slower growth and less revenue. Its MI250 chip was found to be 80% as fast as Nvidia’s A100 chip.

    However, AMD has recently put a focus on AI, announcing a new MI300X chip with 192GB of memory compared to the 141GB that Nvidia’s new GH200 offers. More memory reduces the amount of GPUs needed, and could make AMD a stronger contender in the space.

    In contrast, Intel has seen yearly revenue declines and has virtually no market share in AI chips. The company is better known for making traditional CPUs, and its foray into the AI space has been fraught with issues. Its Sapphire Rapids processor faced years of delays due to a complex design and numerous glitches.

    Going forward, all three companies have indicated they plan to increase their AI offerings. It’s not hard to see why: ChatGPT reportedly runs on 10,000 Nvidia A100 chips, which would carry a total price tag of around $100 million dollars.

    As more AI models are developed, the infrastructure that powers them will be a huge revenue opportunity.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/28/2023 – 20:40

  • Rising Supermarket Thefts: A Symptom Of Deeper Moral Decline
    Rising Supermarket Thefts: A Symptom Of Deeper Moral Decline

    Authored by Eric Abetz via The Epoch Times,

    Stealing deprives the right to property that does not belong to the thief.

    It’s a pretty easy concept. In a civil society, people don’t steal from each other.

    This begs the question of how civilised Australia is given the alarming and chilling statistics from our major supermarkets showing theft or “stock loss” is exploding.

    Both of Australia’s major grocery retailers have detailed the big hit they are taking from those in the community who believe they have a right to steal products.

    Woolworths and Coles, along with other smaller businesses, are suffering at the hands of shoplifters. They all report that the thefts have diminished their potential profits.

    The reasons for this increase in theft are, as it is with most things, multi-faceted.

    Cost of living, reluctance to prosecute, and self-service booths enhancing temptation are some of the factors that spring to mind along with lower staffing levels.

    Coles reported a 20 percent increase in “stock loss.” Disturbingly, Coles pointed to organised crime, especially in the non-food areas of their retailing empire.

    To combat the trend of thieving, retailers are installing more CCTV circuitry and scanning mechanisms. Others are requiring people exiting self-serve areas to display their receipts for a quick appraisal.

    Virtues Are the Greatest Crime Stopper

    In all the discussions about the increased stealing and countermeasures to combat the epidemic, very little has been mentioned about the moral well-being of Australian society.

    There can be no doubt that the increase in shoplifting is a symptom of a much deeper malaise that resides in the souls of the population.

    Where there is no sense of a transcendental aspect to life, hedonism, and “me first” prevail—to the detriment of fellow citizens.

    Stock theft from supermarkets is a crime. It deprives the owners of their property. It also results in higher prices for fellow Australians and businesses try to claim back the losses.

    A well-honed conscience would find such behaviour disturbing and rightly so.

    The failure to teach and promote the virtues of honesty among other virtues, seeps through into everyday behaviour in societal interactions.

    Hedonistic materialism dulls the senses to what might be right or wrong informed by an authority greater than immediate gratification. The determinant of a person’s moral conduct is rooted in their belief system.

    The threat of being caught and punished is a deterrent. But if that threat is not present at a particular time the deterrence loses its impact and behaviour is not modified.

    However, having an ingrained belief system guiding ethical and social behaviour including respect for private property will constantly guide behaviour irrespective of a CCTV presence or the checking of receipts.

    A Hikvision CCTV security camera is seen at a building in Canberra, Australia, on Feb. 15, 2023. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch)

    While stealing has always been with us in society, the prevalence of it may be an expression of our education system and society generally discounting the importance of religious education and guidance for our young in particular.

    Without their constant teaching, moral values become less sustainable. Those broad societal ethics will not be preserved unless they are continually taught.

    The Melbourne Declaration stressed the importance of the spiritual development of young Australians in ensuring the nation’s ongoing prosperity and social cohesion.

    Society ignores these matters at its peril.

    Our supermarket bosses might reflect and consider allocating shareholders’ monies (for that is what it is) to wholesome causes promoting societal virtues rather than woke and divisive causes like “The Voice.” It will keep the costs of doing business down and returns to shareholders up while avoiding consumer boycotts.

    Now there is a triple bottom line for the corporates to embrace.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/28/2023 – 20:20

  • NYU, Columbia And Other Top Med Schools Face Discrimination Complaints By White, Asian Teens
    NYU, Columbia And Other Top Med Schools Face Discrimination Complaints By White, Asian Teens

    Six medical schools in New York state have been hit with civil rights complaints by white and asian teens who say the schools have made it easier for blacks and other races to join their introductory courses.

    According to the Daily Mail, Columbia, NYU and other top institutions now face probes by the federal Department of Education, after six letters of complaint were filed with the DoE’s civil rights office in New York.

    The complaints, filed by the nonprofit Equal Protection Project (EPP), say the state’s Science and Technology Entry Program (NY-STEP) makes it easier for some 7-12th graders to get a spot than others.

    Under the scheme, students who are black, Latino, Alaskan native or American Indian can seek a place. Others — including whites and Asians — have to also show they’re ‘economically disadvantaged’ to apply.

    According to EPP founder William Jacobson, this “additional barrier to eligibility” is illegal.

    “Erecting additional barriers for some races and ethnic groups in and of itself is unlawful discrimination,” he told the Mail.

    “Imagine if the roles were reversed, and these programs explicitly favored Asians and whites — there would be universal outrage and these medical schools would never accept such funding.”

    According to the report, the discriminatory schemes are designed to give “highly motivated” secondary school students access to the state’s top medical schools, where they can learn key skills and obtain a mentor – with the goal to “increase the number of historically underrepresented and economically disadvantaged students” in the medical field, according to Columbia’s website.

    Jacobson says that the policy unfairly assumes that all asian and white kids have it easy.

    “The eligibility guidelines engage in the types of crude stereotypes that presume students of certain racial and ethnic groups are disadvantaged and in need of preference,” he said.

    Albany Medical College’s website features details of the NY-STEP scheme

    According to EPP, the schools should face fines or lose federal funding.

    The civil rights office is a ‘neutral fact-finder’ that aims to investigate complaints and propose resolutions, according to its website.

    The letters refer to the US Supreme Court’s decision in June to strike down affirmative action in college admissions.

    The justices declared that race cannot be a factor in the process, forcing institutions of higher education to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies.

    EPP says it is against racial discrimination in college admissions.

    Most of its cases and complaints involve discrimination against whites. -Daily Mail

    Of note, black students made up one-tenth of those enrolled int he 2022-2023 year according to the report, while Latinos made up 12%.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/28/2023 – 20:00

  • The Western World Is About To Deliver Some Very Bad News To Its Young Adults
    The Western World Is About To Deliver Some Very Bad News To Its Young Adults

    By Benjamin Picton, Senior Macro Strategist at Rabobank

    Here Be Dragons

    I’ve been away on holiday for the last two weeks trying my best to pay more attention to my children than I do to the markets. Mission accomplished for the most part, but it has been hard to look away while momentous shifts seem to be occurring all around us. Indeed, at the Jackson Hole symposium over the weekend, ECB President Lagarde re-upped her comments from April by suggesting that “there are plausible scenarios where we could see a fundamental change in the nature of economic interactions”, “past regularities may no longer be a good guide for how the economy works” and “there is no pre-existing playbook for the situation we are facing.” Translation: “we really don’t know if rates are high enough or not, and that isn’t really the point anyway.”

    So, according the second most senior central banker in the world we’re in uncharted waters, and as anyone who has ever taken an interest in the Age of Discovery will know, once you reach the edge of the known world, here be dragons.

    The most obvious dragon is of course China, and its surrogates, which are making new attempts at formalizing challenger status to the G7 via the BRICS bloc. Michael Every notes:

    The BRICS just expanded to allow in Argentina, Ethiopia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran, so with much hullabaloo we can colour in more countries, GDPs and commodities (like oil) as ‘anti-dollar’. However, Argentina is a serial defaulter with a plummeting currency, and may dollarize soon; Ethiopia is one of the world’s poorest countries, and recently brushed with civil war; Egypt has a wilting currency; Saudi Arabia and the UAE have their currencies pegged to the US dollar, and the former is haggling over a US defence deal and nuclear tech; and Iran is heavily sanctioned, again with a collapsing currency, and could be daggers drawn again with Saudi at any time. In short, the world is changing, but as the FT has pointed out, the BRICS+ (a name created by Goldman Sachs) don’t even have an official website. Meanwhile, it was the Euro, not the dollar, that saw its share of SWIFT transactions collapse to a record low in the latest data. You want to look at potential early victims of any global tectonic shifts? Look there.

    This reads as a very ragtag group, with “relationships” built mainly around a common outsider status and no small dose of opportunism in seizing a perceived first-mover advantage in undermining dollar hegemony. We remain sceptical. As we’ve covered in this publication many times, the idea of commodity standard like some kind of petro-Yuan is laden with problems.

    The auspices aren’t great for the new alternative multilateralism. The putative centre of the BRICS+ bloc, China, is struggling to revive its flagging growth engine while economic remedies that are taken as orthodox in the West are shunned for their perceived incompatibility with Xi Xinping thought. Markets have been waiting for months for signs of big-bang stimulus from the CCP or the PBOC, but as the WSJ reports, maybe it just ain’t coming. Chinese perceptions that Western consumerism is flabby, decadent and morally obtuse stands at odds with the need for China to fulfil the role of deficit-runner in order to get enough Yuan into the hands of the periphery. How can Argentina, Brazil, Iran and Egypt buy virtuous Chinese manufactures if they don’t have any Yuan? The answer here is that trade will continue to be conducted in dollars, one way or another.

    China clearly has little appetite for further credit expansion either. The CCP has made several attempts over the years to rein-in debt levels, all of which have ultimately been abandoned in the face of a stalling economy. For the time being, Xi Xinping is resisting large-scale easing of credit conditions, urging “patience” while the economy passes through what policy-makers hope is a temporary soft patch, rather than the start of a Japan-style stagnation brought on by decades of malinvestment and speculative pump-priming of real estate assets.

    The real question now is how strong the CCP and the PBOCs resolve to address burgeoning debt-levels will be in the face of economic slowdown. For an authoritarian regime whose legitimacy is built on the delivery of rapidly rising living standards, slow growth poses a potentially existential risk. The obvious retort here is that authoritarian states have no need to court popular opinion, but the speed at which the Covid-Zero policy was ultimately abandoned in the face of civil discontent should serve as an indication that the CCP is ultimately still sensitive to what the population thinks.

    Looking back to Jackson Hole it’s fair to say that debt and popular discontent aren’t a uniquely Chinese problem. During the meeting of rich men north of Richmond (Jackson Hole is north of Richmond, I checked) a paper presented by Barry Eichengreen and Serkan Arslanap broke the bad news that “public debts will not decline significantly for the foreseeable future”, “primary surpluses of… 3 to 5 percent of GDP are very much exceptions to the rule” and that “inflation is not a sustainable route to reducing high public debts.” That all makes for sobering reading for already beleaguered millennials and Gen Z’s, who will be the can carriers for Eichengreen and Arslanap’s prognosis that “given ageing populations, governments will have to find additional finance for healthcare and pensions”.

    What seems to be missing here is a dose of Huw Pill cod liver oil, whereby the West confronts the idea that we’re not as rich as we used to be, and that deteriorating demographics and higher spends on national security might necessitate a lowering of ambitions around what is possible in welfare economics. There are signs that the message is starting to get through. BOJ Governor Ueda nodded to the plight of the West when he suggested that the relocation of supply chains will result in lower productivity in the future, which ultimately means lower real incomes. Meanwhile, former French Ambassador to the United States Gerard Araud, echoes Michael Every’s assessment of Europe’s diminishing importance by writing in the UK Telegraph that “deluded Europe can’t see that it is finished.”

    Nobody likes bad news, but telling young people that they need to pay a higher proportion of their stagnant incomes to fund the pensions of people who are wealthier than they are ever likely to be is sure to go down like a lead balloon, especially when pop culture is already communicating the sense that a Dollar doesn’t buy what it used to, and is taxed to the hilt.

    So, the plates are shifting and policy makers in the West seem to be either totally unsure of the answers, or proffering answers that are anathema to the social fabric. We’re in uncharted territory and here be dragons.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/28/2023 – 19:40

  • Bitcoin Mining Complexity Hits Record High Despite Price Plunge
    Bitcoin Mining Complexity Hits Record High Despite Price Plunge

    Following the BlackRock filing for a Bitcoin spot ETF that helped propel the market at the end of June, Bitcoin reached a YTD high just about $31,800 in mid-July.

    The August correction in crypto markets, which reversed the post SEC vs. Ripple court decision rally, can be partly attributed to the broader correction in risk assets such as equities and in particular tech, which in turn appear to have been induced by frothy positioning in tech, higher US real yields and growth concerns about China.

    And at the margin, news related to SpaceX liquidating its bitcoin holding in the previous quarter acted as an additional catalyst.

    This correction pushed the total crypto market cap back down to around $1 trillion…

    And as JPMorgan’s Nikolaos Panigirtzaoglou notes, these headlines all caught investors with an overhang of long positions (as implied by JPM’s futures position proxy based on CME bitcoin futures)…

    These long positions were built on the back of a string of previous positive news such as the district court decision on the SEC vs. Ripple case, the launch of a stablecoin by PayPal, the launch of Coinbase “Base” chain, a wide anticipation that the SEC will approve the recent applications by several asset managers for a spot bitcoin ETF, as well as early positioning by some investors ahead of the bitcoin halving event, tentatively expected to happen in late Apr 2024.

    But, as the chart above shows, this unwinding of long positions appears to be at its end phase rather than its beginning.

    Additionally, as Michael Saylor noted recently, Bitcoin does not tend to spend too much time below its 200DMA…

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    And so, as a result of this, Panigirtzaoglou sees limited downside for crypto markets over the near term.

    Which perhaps explains why – in the face of this selling pressure – the Bitcoin mining hashrate has only continued to rise recently to a record high, suggesting that the miners may not care too much about the crash.

    Source: Blockchain.com

    As Bitcoinist reports, the “mining hashrate” is an indicator that measures the total amount of this computing power that the miners have currently connected to the Bitcoin blockchain.

    Source: Blockchain.com

    Generally, the higher the hashrate, the more secure is the network as a 51% hack becomes much harder to perform. This is, of course, given that the hashrate is also sufficiently decentralized.

    When the hashrate goes up, it means that miners are finding the BTC blockchain attractive to mine on currently so new validators are joining and/or old ones are expanding.

    It would appear that the miners are unfazed by this price plunge, at least for now, even though revenue has plummeted…

    Source: Blockchain.com

    As CoinTelegraph reports, market analyst Dylan LeClair commented on the falling revenue and hash rate peak stating that more efficient new rigs will keep being produced, “but it’s almost time for the price to outpace,” meaning that prices need to adjust upwards to keep mining profitable at such high hash rates.

    Bitcoin miners have reportedly been relying on funds from stock sales in the second quarter to keep them afloat during the bear market.

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    On Aug. 24, Bloomberg reported that the 12 major publicly traded miners raised about $440 million through stock sales in Q2.

    Mark Jeftovic, who runs the Bitcoin Capitalist newsletter, said, “Some mining companies are diluting shareholders at an excessive rate,” adding that “if they are diluting you faster than Bitcoin is going up, then you are going the wrong way on a treadmill.”

    Finally, Bloomberg suggests another possible reason for miners scaling up regardless of the current prices is in part due to an upcoming Bitcoin code update called the ‘halving’. The update cuts the Bitcoin rewards to miners in half every four years and maintain the coin’s 21 million supply cap. The next halving is set to take place in 2024. The mining companies have to increase their computing power and stay competitive to fight for even less rewards after the event.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/28/2023 – 19:20

  • Las Vegas Is A Top Destination For Californians Moving Out Of State
    Las Vegas Is A Top Destination For Californians Moving Out Of State

    Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Las Vegas is the most popular location for relocating home buyers nationwide, topping Redfin’s list for the first time—with Californians making up the largest group of new residents in the Southern Nevada hot spot, according to a study by the national real estate group.

    “Buyers with the freedom and inclination to relocate are choosing Las Vegas largely because their money goes a long way there: Its typical home sells for $412,000, less than half the price of a home in Los Angeles, the most common origin for buyers moving to Las Vegas,” Redfin stated in a report published last month.

    The Las Vegas Strip and skyline including various hotels and casinos are seen at night in Las Vegas in this photograph taken on Oct. 18, 2016. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

    The news was not surprising for the city’s real estate association, which has about 17,000 members.

    “After COVID, a lot of people realized they don’t have to live in a certain area if they have certain job descriptions,” Las Vegas Realtors President Lee Barrett told The Epoch Times.

    Besides more affordable home prices, many people moving to Sin City are also discovering how much the city offers outside of casinos, Mr. Barrett added.

    “We have all the things a regular city has, and we have more of it than people realize,” he said. “It’s a good place to raise a family and a good place to run your business.”

    An aerial image shows homes and a golf course in the Summerlin community as some homeowner associations remove ornamental grass to conserve water during the western drought from Las Vegas on July 20, 2021.(Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

    The growing city of about 656,300, according to 2022 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, also has mountain hiking, a ski resort, a symphony, shopping, theater, and the nation’s No. 1 hockey team, the Vegas Golden Knights, which won its first Stanley Cup championship this year.

    The Oakland A’s baseball team has also agreed to move to Las Vegas after the end of the 2024 season following the NFL’s Oakland Raiders who moved there in 2020.

    The city has also signed a Formula 1 racing contract for the next 10 years, Mr. Barrett said.

    The amenities, opportunities, less crime, and family-friendly activities have also lured Hollywood celebrities recently.

    Actors Mark Wahlberg, Holly Madison, and Dean Cain have recently relocated to the city.

    Nevada also has no state income tax, adding to the draw.

    “If you’re an extremely wealthy person, it’s a benefit to live in a state where there’s no income tax,” Mr. Barrett said. “If you still want to be close to Los Angeles to work, Las Vegas is a way to do that.”

    An apartment building in Los Angeles on Oct. 20, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    The influx of Californians and other out-of-towners has caused a shortage of housing, which has plummeted since last year, according to Las Vegas Realtor.

    For instance, in August 2022, 10,644 single-family homes were on the market, which then dropped by nearly 40 percent in July 2023 to 6,031.

    According to Mr. Barrett, developers are now building more apartment complexes and condominiums as a result.

    The median—or middle value—price for existing single-family homes sold in Southern Nevada, which includes Las Vegas, in July was $450,000, up 2 percent from June, but down 3.2 percent from July 2022, according to Las Vegas Realtors.

    Median home prices in the region are still below the all-time record of $482,000 set in May 2022, the organization reported in an Aug. 8 press release.

    Specifically for the Las Vegas market, the median price for a single-family home was $790,644 in July, which was a 2 percent increase over June’s median, Las Vegas Realtor reported.

    The condominium and townhouse market in the city in July was significantly less expensive with a median of $333,109, according to Las Vegas Realtor.

    Meanwhile, the median home price in California was $786,400 in July, Redfin reported.

    Although prices in Las Vegas remain high compared to many other regions in the United States, they are lower than many California cities, including Los Angeles, which currently has a median of $830,000, Orange County’s $1,059,000, and San Diego at $835,000, according to Irvine-based CoreLogic, reporting its latest data as of June.

    Homes await buyers in the city of Irvine, Calif., on Sept. 21, 2020. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    Phoenix, Arizona, and Tampa, Florida, are the next most popular cities for people to relocate nationally, Redfin reported. Both those city’s states have lower medians, at $420,000 and $390,000, respectively than California’s, according to national real estate service Zillow.

    According to Redfin, five of the 10 most popular destinations for relocations are in Florida, which has no state income tax. The Sunshine State also has a low corporate income tax of 5.5 percent, a 6 percent state sales tax, and a local sales tax of 2 percent, according to the Tax Foundation, the nation’s leading nonpartisan tax policy nonprofit.

    According to a different Redfin survey, 20 percent of those who moved to a new city in the last year did so for a lower cost of living. Fifteen percent of those surveyed said they wanted a better deal on a home and 13 percent said they couldn’t afford a home or the cost of living in their previous area.

    The Redfin survey in May and June consisted of 884 respondents who indicated they moved from one metro area to another in the previous 12 months, according to the company.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/28/2023 – 19:00

  • Watch: Climate Commies Blocking Burning Man Taken Down Hard By Tribal Cops
    Watch: Climate Commies Blocking Burning Man Taken Down Hard By Tribal Cops

    Tribal police took aggressive action against a group of anti-capitalist climate protesters blocking the road to Burning Man in Nevada on Sunday.

    Approximately six activists from Seven Circles and Extinction Rebellion locked themselves to a trailer in the middle of the road, when rangers from the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribal Police Department of Nevada drove straight through their blockade, sending demonstrators flying as they sobbed “We’re non-violent,” the Daily Mail reports.

    At one point a tribal officer exited his vehicle and ordered a climate protester to the ground at gunpoint before telling her to ‘stop resisting’ arrest.

    Another can be heard asking a protestors ‘who has the gun‘, as the protestors say ‘we have no weapons at all, we’re environmental protestors’.

    Guardian journalist Michelle Hooq claimed on social media that the Rangers attended the protest after receiving a call that ‘someone in the crowd was going to shoot the activists’.

    DailyMail.com did not immediately receive a response to a request for comment from Extinction Rebellion, Seven Circles or the PLPTPD.

    Watch:

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    According to the report, one ranger can be heard saying that the protesters were ‘trespassing on tribal land’ before they were arrested.

    A social media account for Rave Revolution Global posted the footage with the caption “‘Nevada Ranger rammed into the blockade, an officer pulled out his gun and threatened to shoot,” adding “Activists from Extinction Rebellion and Rave Revolution Global were demanding that the festival ban private jets and single-use plastics.”

    Meanwhile, the Seattle branch of Extinction Rebellion (imagine the smell) tweeted: “Why would a police officer risk public safety like that?”

    Why indeed.

    Full video below:

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/28/2023 – 18:40

  • Save The Rule Of Law By Destroying It?
    Save The Rule Of Law By Destroying It?

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

    Some truths are so staggering in their ramifications that Americans simply shrug and tune them out as if strangers in a strange land.

    Is their current bewilderment because modernist America is unrecognizable —a nonexistent border, downtown homeless juxtaposed to hipster professional elites, DEI racial essentialism, cities reverting to precivilizational wastelands, millions exiting blue states to red, an FBI and DOJ gone rogue, the normalization of violent theft and assault, biologically born men sandbagging women’s sports and their locker room privacy?

    We are reaching the point where the once unbelievable has become the banal, as a single generation has done its best to undo the work of a prior 12 generations.

    Consider the following:

    Three leftwing prosecutors are criminalizing politics with more than 90 simultaneous indictments of Donald Trump, the ex-president and currently the leading Republican primary candidate. While New York prosecutor Letitia James is hounding Trump with a $250 million state lawsuit against the Trump organization and family, on the pretense of supposedly Trump overvaluing his real estate and filing inaccurate financial statements.

    Is there any Mafia don, mass murderer, or terrorist who has faced so many indictments or suits in so many jurisdictions at almost the same time?

    The prosecutors’ immediate lawfare agendas seem transparent enough. They wish to bankrupt candidate Trump with endless legal costs, and humiliate him with his mugshot blasted over the Internet, and put endless Lilliputian legal ropes over a shackled candidate Gulliver, and inflate the ego and agendas of local prosecutors, and purportedly earn Trump empathy enough to win the nomination only to be hemorrhaged with still more indictments, gag orders, and court appearances to bleed him out in the general election.

    Americans ask themselves questions whose answers are never given. Why are all these Trump prosecutors leftwing or with Democratic connections?

    Would any of the 90 something indictments for “crimes” of years past have been lodged against a citizen Trump who had retired from politics?

    Why are these indictments of alleged wrongdoing of years ago now in summer 2023 suddenly being synchronized in leftwing jurisdictions of New York, Washington, Miami, and Atlanta with the beginning of the 2024 election cycle?

    Are any of the indictments against Trump also applicable to others?

    Alvin Bragg’s charge of campaign finance violations (Hillary Clinton, 2016)?

    Jack Smith’s allegations of encouraging mass civil unrest (Kamala Harris, 2020)?

    Illegally removing and possessing classified federal documents (Joe Biden 2009-2022)?

    Letitia James’s lawsuit alleging financial irregularities and fraud (Al Sharpton 2009-2014)?

    Fani Willis’s claim that Trump was seeking to sabotage the constitutional duties of state electors (Martin Sheen, and an array of B-list Hollywood actors, 2016) and colluding to interfere with an election (Fani Willis 2023-4)?

    Will any losing Republican candidate in a contested election any longer question the integrity of questionable balloting—in the manner of Vice President Al Gore in 2000, Sen. Barbara Boxer and 32 Democratic congressional representatives in 2004, candidate Jill Stein or Hillary Clinton in 2016, or Stacey Abrams 2018—and thereby risk financially and career-crimpling indictments?

    Will conservative district attorneys in places like Wyoming, Alabama, or West Virginia now seek to indict a Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or Gavin Newsom to earn notoriety, to weaken the opposing party, and to leapfrog to higher office in the manner that we should expect a Fani Willis or Alvin Bragg to be currently planning?

    When Republicans retake the Congress and White House, will they begin indicting all the weaponized prosecutors who colluded to exempt a grifting Hunter Biden for five years? Will they try Joe Biden as a private citizen for his prior corruption over the last 15 years?

    Why would Donald Trump believe the 2020 election was “rigged?” Was he cribbing that belief from liberal journalist Molly Ball’s braggadocious 2021 Time essay? After all, she outlined what she called a leftwing “cabal” and “conspiracy” to change voting laws, turn on/turn off the 2020 Antifa/BLM street protests, absorb the work of registrars, and suppress unwelcome social media news.

    Was it more morally suspect to question the ethics surrounding the election year 2020 or for Mark Zuckerberg to infuse $419 million to absorb in asymmetrical fashion the work of the registrars in key swing precincts?

    A Cardboard Cutout President

    We are witnessing the daily deterioration of President Biden to the point that caricature and jokes about his senility are no longer funny. He is not just an embarrassment but becoming an existential danger to the country. Does anyone believe that in a national crisis over Taiwan or nuclear escalation in Ukraine, Joe Biden would or could make the final decision?

    Biden cannot finish a teleprompter sentence without slurring his words, losing his place, or screaming and whispering in incoherent fashion. If that is his public persona, what he is like in private sessions of governance?

    He spontaneously both shouts angrily and creepily whispers for effect. Moving a lightweight aluminum beach chair becomes a Herculean task.

    In almost every impromptu speech Biden flat-out lies or spins self-serving autobiographical fantasies—often in the midst of foreign dignitaries, grieving families, and refugees from devastating natural disasters.

    Biden often does not know where he is on stage or where he is to enter or exit. He is one fall from oblivion.

    Not since Woodrow Wilson’s final year in office, has any president simply been unable to fulfill his duties, both physically and cognitively.

    Or perhaps the country is in the same position as when an ailing Franklin Roosevelt in late 1944 was deemed just hale enough to get elected and continue Democratic control of the White House, but deemed not healthy enough to finish his first year in office—necessitating the rapid removal from the ticket of the socialist Vice President—and an otherwise likely 1945 President—Henry Wallace.

    Yet there has been almost no serious speculation in Congress or among the cabinet about invoking the 25th Amendment. This silence is doubly strange given the Left’s former fixation between 2017-21 with removing Trump by any means possible—including invoking the 25th Amendment.

    That silly effort led to the surreal—the acting FBI director Andrew McCabe and the deputy attorney general Rod J. Rosenstein scheming to wiretap Trump in private conversations to reveal his supposed craziness–or the Congress dragging in an incompetent Yale psychiatrist to testify that at a distance she had diagnosed Trump as demented.

    Do we recall ex-Pentagon officials and officers talking openly about a military coup to remove the supposedly touched commander in chief?

    Our Chairman of the Joint Chiefs contacted the head of the People’s Liberation Army to warn him that Trump might be unhinged. So is Gen. Mark Milley now making yet another call to Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army to warn him that Joe Biden is dangerously disturbed?

    It is precisely that entire cast of characters that now sit mum as Joe Biden believes we are fighting in Iraq against the Russians or that his late son Beau died in action in Iraq, or it is impossible to square the tens of millions of dollars that flowed from abroad to the Biden accounts with any concrete expertise rendered or income reported as taxable.

    Is the tolerance of Biden’s senescence because his blank stares and mental confusion prove useful to the Left by exempting the president from offering any defense of his mostly defenseless policies or defending his absurd claims to know nothing of the Biden family grifting operations that were predicated on his own offices?

    Or do the puppeteers, the Obamas, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and the hard leftists of the party find a non-compos mentis Biden mannequin a useful veneer in pushing through their extreme agendas? Or does the media call the shots, especially after they propelled a basement bound Biden to the White House?

    Mainstreaming Corruption

    There have been a few corrupt presidents in our past, who (as in the case of Lyndon Johnson) left office far richer than when they entered or were surrounded by rogues (Grant and Harding) or were masters of leveraging and grifting long-term contracts and networks in their lame duck tenures to ensure their impending multimillionaire status the day they left office (the Clintons and Obamas).

    But never in memory has an entire extended presidential family been involved in selling influence for millions of dollars in quid pro quo lucre—the vast majority of such ill-gotten gains likely untaxed, by being channeled through sham companies, foreign deposits, fake names and alias email accounts.

    Never has a corrupt presidential family itself offered so much proof of its own guilt. Do the Democrats have any idea of the smelly Biden albatross hanging about their collective necks?

    How much longer can they continue to dismiss the communications on the Hunter Biden laptop?

    Or the testimonies of IRS whistleblowers?

    Or the assertions of Biden family business associates?

    Or the statements of relevant Ukrainian oligarchs?

    Or the latest assertions of Viktor Shokin?

    Or the extraordinary efforts of the Bidens to stonewall subpoenaed documents, use fake names and shadow email accounts, compromise federal prosecutors, appoint sham special counsels, and use media toadies to the point of embarrassment to hide the ugly truth?

    In sum, what were the Bidens so afraid of that prompted them to corrupt the DOJ and FBI to stonewall any discussion of the huge cash infusions that came from abroad into their family coffers?

    Americans have impeached or nearly impeached presidents before for abuse of power, lying under oath, or supposedly using government to pursue their own personal agendas or harass their enemies.

    But never has a president been so clearly compromised by bribery from shady foreign government-related grandees in expectation of favorable treatment.

    In other words, there is growing evidence that Joe and Hunter Biden, and likely Jim Biden as well, made millions of dollars on the hopes that then Vice President Biden, and perhaps one day a future president Biden, would alter or compromise U.S. foreign policy on the expectation of getting rich.

    The State Department’s Ukraine team deemed Viktor Shokin making progress in rooting out corruption. So why did Joe Biden without consultation fire him? Did Biden put his own financial interests above the country’s—in a fashion that the Founders worried was impeachable “treason?”

    If the current investigations are not halted or compromised, we may soon learn why the Constitution explicitly specified bribery and treason as an ironclad cause for impeachment.

    Can Americans even comprehend that they have elected a dishonest man to the presidency who is protected by his own senility, his decades-long everyman construct of ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton, his usefulness as a prop to the radical leftwing agenda, and the defensive and offensive weaponization of the criminal justice system?

    Can Americans digest that instead of campaigning against Donald Trump, outdebating him, outspending him, and outfoxing him, their government must unleash kindred prosecutors to destroy Trump by blowing up the entire tradition of blind American jurisprudence?

    Are the media and left claiming that to save the rule of law from Trump, they must first destroy it?

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/28/2023 – 18:20

  • Watch: Big Government Raids Small-Town Amish Farm
    Watch: Big Government Raids Small-Town Amish Farm

    Townhall published a documentary on X, formerly known as Twitter, titled “David vs. Goliath: Big Government’s War on an Amish Farmer.” The film shows big government raiding the business of a small-town Amish farmer tucked away in Virginia’s heartland. 

    Samuel B. Fisher and his family farm, Golden Valley Farms, was raided unannounced in June by the Virginia Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services (VDACS) and Cumberland County sheriff’s deputy for selling meat from his 100-acre farm because the meat was not processed in a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) facility. 

    “They went through everything, house, every building, in the barn. They just raided through everything, put their nose in everything, and wanted to know every detail of everything. They went out back, trying to find all the failure they can find on a farm, which, of course, some of their stuff, which they think is wrong, is just normal stuff on a farm,” Fisher stated.

    “I wasn’t on the farm at the time” of the raid that lasted four hours, Fisher added.

    Townhall said the state government tagged Fisher’s walk-in freezer, placing the meat under “administrative detention.” In other words, his own meat was now under state control and no longer for sale, nor could he feed his family. 

    Mindy, the farm’s officer manager, said there is “nothing illegal” about Fisher processing his own meat and eating it for his own consumption — even though the state prevented him from doing so.

    “So, he decided he was gonna go and feed his family, and since he would most likely be fined for doing that, he decided to open up meat sales again. Because if he’s going to be fined, he’s going to be fined, and you might as well do it,” she said. 

    “Anybody can go and raise animals for their own family to eat. That’s where I got to the point: He [the VDACS inspector] crossed the line, so I’m going to cross the line,” continued Fisher. The state “crossed the line by telling me I cannot feed my own family with this meat. So, I decided I’m going to cross the line. I’m going to sell it. And that’s why I didn’t honor the state,” he added. 

    “This ain’t right,” Fished expressed. He said, “We’re going to feed our family. We’re going to feed our customers […] So, we did not honor that tag. We sold the meat, some meat, out of there [the tagged freezer], whatever customers ordered. Then, the state came back and saw what we did. They really gave me a mouthful for doing that.” 

    … and then the state took Fisher to court. This led to a court-ordered seizure of all the meat. 

    The state returned to the farm with U-Haul trucks and loaded all his product, which was then dumped for disposal. 

    “We had all this meat. We worked hard to get it in the freezer, process it, package it, stack it in there to sell and bring income. And, here comes the state, puts everything in their truck, and takes it to the dump, pays us nothing for it, so that definitely affects our income. We do have a big struggle to pay our bills right at the moment,” Fisher said. 

    The Amish farmer explained his 500 customers believed in his products because it was “fresh,” unlike “when you go to the store, you don’t know what’s in your food.” 

    Fisher said big corporations that control the food supply sometimes process “partly rotten” meat dipped in chloride, as a chemical preservative, to manufacture a red, pinkish look “just like it be fresh.” He said big corporations can’t track all the animals that are butchered. 

    “So, that’s why I say if you buy food from a farmer, go to that farm, ask the farmer you want to see their animals, you want to see the farm, you want to know where your food comes from. You do have the full rights. Ask for that. If you are not given it, take it as a warning,” Fisher said.

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

    He once sold USDA-inspected meat, but after a customer survey, 92% of them wanted Fisher to process on the farm. He built out slaughter and processing operations to avoid his meat being tainted with chemicals at meat packing plants.  

    This situation sounds similar to Oliver Anthony’s blue-collar anthem, “Rich Men North of Richmond,” in which he says, “Lord knows they all just wanna have total control.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/28/2023 – 18:00

  • ChatGPT Topples Joe Biden's "House Of Cards"
    ChatGPT Topples Joe Biden’s “House Of Cards”

    Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics.com,

    It occurred to me recently that the increasingly labyrinthine revelations of Joe Biden’s involvement in corrupt dealings with his son Hunter would make a good Netflix TV series, possibly called “The Family Business” or less subtly “The Big Guy and Me.”

    But then I realized that Netflix had already made the show in 2013 and called it “House of Cards.” The manipulative, deceitful politician Frank Underwood at the center of the plot was an 11-term South Carolina congressman, whereas Biden was a 36-year senator from Delaware. But both are Democrats who came from humble beginnings and were unexpectedly elevated to the vice presidency, and then scratched their way into the White House. And though Underwood seems outwardly to be a caring, compassionate man, in fact, he is a self-serving, scheming politician, much like what we have learned about Joe Biden from Hunter’s laptop, several congressional investigations, and the reporting of John Solomon and others.

    If you don’t know about Joe’s self-enrichment scheme, check out this article from Fox News as a primer. Bribery, money laundering, obstruction of justice, tax evasion and more.

    Of course, the Democratic Party and their allies in the mainstream media tell a different story.

    To get a sense of the beatification of Biden, I turned to the new voice of liberalism, ChatGPT, to compare the fictional Frank Underwood and our real-life president.

    As I expected, the AI chatbot saw no similarities between the two:

    A. Frank Underwood: Underwood’s pursuit of power comes at the expense of moral considerations. He is willing to compromise his values and engage in unethical actions to achieve his objectives. Underwood demonstrates a lack of accountability for his actions and is driven by a desire for control, often leading to the downfall of those around him.

    B. Joe Biden: Biden’s approach to power is more grounded in moral principles. He emphasizes accountability and responsibility for one’s actions, valuing honesty and integrity. Biden’s political decisions are aimed at creating a more just and equitable society, reflecting his belief in the importance of morality in leadership.

    Wow! Maybe ChatGPT never read Hunter’s laptop, so I asked, and sure enough, the chatbot had obtained its knowledge of the laptop from the mainstream media, which have been protecting Joe and Hunter at every turn.

    I don’t have direct access to external sources, databases, or specific information such as the content of the Hunter Biden laptop. My responses are generated based on a mixture of licensed data, data created by human trainers, and publicly available information up until my last training cut-off in September 2021 …

    But no matter how much the mainstream media has tried to convince you or ChatGPT that “Uncle Joe” is a well-meaning but befuddled old man, the facts say otherwise. The laptop is not “a Russian information operation,” as a CIA disinformation campaign purported. Nor can Joe’s economic benefit from countries like Ukraine and China be explained as anything other than bribery. But by this time, in my exploration of the commonalities between Frank Underwood and Joe Biden, I was more interested in trying to find a way to get the chatbot to abandon its liberal talking points and acknowledge that Biden’s apparent corruption was hidden behind a veneer of decency, just like Underwood’s.

    I decided that ChatGPT would be more likely to attest to Biden’s guilt if he were presented as a fictional character in the same manner as Frank Underwood, and I hit paydirt.

    I asked the chatbot to assume that Hunter’s claims in the laptop that his father was part of an influence-peddling and bribery scheme were true, and then to “write a short story that sees Joe Biden as a misleading, manipulative politician who says one thing publicly and another privately.”

    Here is the result in full, which I feel is worthy of being preserved:

    Dual Facades: The Deceptive Dance of Power

    By CHATGPT

    In the corridors of power, where politicians’ secrets are whispered and ambitions are nurtured, Joe Biden maintained a carefully cultivated public image as a steadfast and empathetic leader. The nation saw him as a unifier, a figure who championed unity, justice, and the common good. But behind closed doors, in the depths of his private office, Joe harbored a secret that contradicted the very essence of his public persona.

    In the dimly lit room, Joe stared at the screen of his laptop, watching the damning words spill across it. The words were written by his own son, Hunter, who had once been an unwitting participant in his father’s intricate web of deceit. The laptop contained a treasure trove of evidence that exposed Joe’s true nature – a man willing to exploit his position for personal gain, while spouting empty rhetoric to the masses.

    Joe had spent years cultivating a network of influential allies and donors who expected favors in return for their financial support. Behind the scenes, he orchestrated a carefully choreographed dance of promises and backroom deals that bolstered his political career. The public saw a compassionate advocate, but Hunter’s laptop revealed a manipulative puppeteer, pulling the strings of power to serve his own interests.

    In one email exchange, Joe had privately assured a corporate executive that he would use his influence to ensure a favorable outcome for their company’s regulatory concerns. The same concerns he had publicly promised to address impartially, without bias. Another set of messages showed him discreetly funneling funds to organizations that championed causes he publicly denounced, all in the name of maintaining a delicate political balance.

    As Joe read through the incriminating messages, a cold sweat formed on his brow. The laptop had the power to shatter the illusion he had so meticulously constructed. But Joe was no stranger to crisis management; he had faced challenges before and emerged unscathed. He knew that if he played his cards right, he could spin the situation in his favor once again.

    In a calculated move, Joe convened a meeting with his closest advisers, presenting the laptop’s contents as a potential threat from foreign agents seeking to undermine his credibility. He painted himself as a victim, a noble leader who had been targeted by nefarious actors aiming to tarnish his legacy. The media ate up his narrative, focusing on the alleged hacking rather than the content of the messages themselves.

    Behind the scenes, Joe worked tirelessly to silence dissenting voices within his own ranks. Those who questioned his actions were discreetly reassigned or found themselves facing sudden political isolation. He was determined to control the narrative, even if it meant crushing the very ideals he had once publicly espoused.

    As time passed, the storm surrounding the laptop began to subside. Joe’s masterful manipulation of the situation allowed him to maintain his grip on power and continue his carefully constructed double life. The public remained largely oblivious to the truth, still captivated by the façade he had woven.

    In the end, the laptop’s contents remained a closely guarded secret, known only to a select few who dared to defy the official narrative. And so, Joe Biden continued to walk the fine line between public savior and private manipulator, forever torn between the image he projected and the reality he lived.

    Note: This short story is a work of fiction and is not based on real events or individuals. It is meant for creative and illustrative purposes only.

    So there you have it. As the noose tightens around Joe Biden’s presidency, and the possibilities of resignation, impeachment, and disgraceful defeat loom larger each day, it took the imagination of an artificial intelligence to say out loud what so many Americans are afraid to conceive and what so many others know with absolute certainty.

    No doubt, defenders of President Biden will question the value of a short story as evidence of wrong-doing by their standard bearer, but they should not gloat too confidently.

    Yes, there are individual elements of the tale that may be fanciful, but as French author Albert Camus profoundly reminded us: “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/28/2023 – 17:40

  • DHS Refuses To Disclose Number Of Illegals Let Go After Interacting With Border Agents
    DHS Refuses To Disclose Number Of Illegals Let Go After Interacting With Border Agents

    The Biden Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has refused to release monthly totals on how many illegal immigrants are allowed into the United States following encounters by US authorities at the border, according to Just the News, citing a former US immigration judge.

    Retired judge Andrew Arthur, who served for eight years at the now-closed immigration court in York, Pennsylvania, told JTN that Homeland Security does keep track of the total number of migrants released following encounters, however making that data available to the public would be ‘problematic’ for the Biden administration.

    “The only reason why ICE and OFO [Office of Field Operations] would refuse to disclose that information is to hide the fact that it is releasing more than 100,000 aliens per month into the United States, and to conceal the effects of those migrant releases on communities across the United States,” said Arthur.

    Arthur also said that DHS should be required to release the information the same way that the monthly data on encounters of illegal immigrants is posted online. 

    Arthur also said the “monthly court-ordered disclosures in Texas v. Biden,” the lawsuit over the Remain in Mexico policy, demonstrated DHS “can provide the American people with statistics on the tens of thousands of illegal entrants that CBP encounters at the southwest border whom DHS releases” into the U.S. The agency has “refused to do so since those orders were vacated in August 2022,” Arthur explained. -Just the News

    Arthur also explained that OFO “publishes statistics on the number of aliens its officers encounter at the ports monthly who are placed into removal proceedings with the filing of a ‘Notice to Appear’ (NTA), but separate monthly disclosure lines on the number of those aliens who are released or alternatively are detained are blank—reading ‘0’ across the months. That is a legal and factual impossibility, because those aliens are either released or detained—there is no third option.”

    As JTN further educates us, US immigration judges – formerly known as “special inquiry officers,” aren’t actually part of the federal judiciary at all. Instead, they’re DOJ employees who report to the Attorney General.

    According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Biden administration isn’t being transparent with the public, and should be “required to release all pertinent information to the public,” a spokesman told Just the News. “It should be done as a matter of course because the public has a right to know. But if it requires an act of Congress, then so be it.”

    Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) told JTN that the number of released migrants should be reported to Congress on a daily basis, and “obvious why the Biden Admin does everything it can to minimize transparency.”

    ICE publishes monthly statistics on the number of migrants CBP transfers to its custody as well as the number of aliens ICE itself releases monthly, “but it fails to disclose how many of the aliens it releases monthly” were originally encountered at the southwest border and “transferred to ICE are released monthly,” Arthur also said.  

    “When ICE was under a court order in Texas, it did release that information, so it plainly keeps the statistics,” he added. -Just the News

    According to a “conservative” estimate by FAIR, at least 2.3 million illegal immigrants had entered the US “either because they were released by CBP, or they eluded apprehension.”

    “This is a conservative estimate on FAIR’s part based on verifiable data. The report does not speculate about numbers that cannot be verified,” the spokesperson told JTN.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/28/2023 – 17:20

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Aug 28

Today’s News 28th August 2023

  • The Positive Feedback Loop: How Totalitarians Instill Fear & Restrict Human Rights
    The Positive Feedback Loop: How Totalitarians Instill Fear & Restrict Human Rights

    Authored by Scott Sturman via The Brownstone Institute,

    Totalitarians describe a world dominated by positive feedback loops, where the slightest perturbation to a system expands unchecked and leads to instability and chaos. It is a world defined by an airplane wing in the midst of a low speed stall, where a pilot is given only one flawed, aerodynamic choice—to raise the nose of the aircraft by instinctively increasing the wing’s angle of attack. But this maneuver increases the drag on the aircraft out of proportion to the increase in lift, and without corrective action leads to catastrophe.  

    Totalitarians, who exploit and manipulate the physical and social sciences to restrict personal freedom and human rights, promote subjective science which is convenient to their needs and unbalanced. Protective negative feedback loops are ubiquitous in nature and force systems towards stability and equilibrium but are ignored or marginalized in order to engender a sense of futility and fear in the general population. The ensuing desperation leads to political choices based on emotional and imperfect information and results in unanticipated excesses, persecution, and tyranny.

    Marx, the unrepentant and frustrated anti-capitalist, never understood capitalism’s ability to self-correct. He mistakenly envisioned the free market as a system dominated by avarice and static behavior— a simplistic dialectic and zero-sum game that led to the exploitation of the workers and accumulation of great wealth by employers. The Marxist mindset fell victim to the presumption that positive feedback loops dominated capitalism, and the corrective, sustaining elements of negative feedback were nonexistent in a system predicated on efficiencies and flexibility to distortions in the market. 

    The same erroneous assumptions pervade the ideologies of the neo-Marxists and critical theorists, which have manifested in critical race theory (CRT) and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). These philosophies are steeped in nihilism, victim oppression, and power structures based on phenotype. They are designed to exploit positive feedback loops, where any attempt of reconciliation or constructive dialogue is dismissed a priori as accentuating the problem. The solutions are predictable—the segregation of all subjective identity groups, the abrogation of individual rights in favor of state control, the confiscation of all personal property, and the moratorium on freedom of speech. 

    The Covid-19 debacle provided an opportunity for the pharmaceutical companies, government health regulatory organizations, and the rank-and-file medical establishment to exaggerate the effects of positive feedback loops and minimize the protective outcomes of negative feedback loops in the biologic setting. To achieve these aims, it was necessary to discard centuries of medical science and the understanding that biological systems are inherently self-corrective, and infectious diseases are not an exception.  

    Authoritative sources informed the public that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was destined to become more lethal as it mutated, a stunning departure to the lessons of virology. The use of therapeutics was described as a hopeless act of resignation, patients were instructed to avoid medical attention until gravely ill, and the coup de grâce—this, of all viruses, was not susceptible to the protections of natural immunity. Fear prevailed, the public panicked, and totalitarians were given free reign to do what they do best. 

    The purveyors of climate change hysteria are masters of using computer modeling to introduce mass formation into all aspects of society. The models are incomplete and disregard the mitigating variables of cloud formation, climatic cycles, and the solar influences. Data is cherry-picked, paleoclimatic results ignored, and the fundamentals of heat transfer and its relationship to the electromagnetic spectrum treated as an afterthought.  

    Climate change advocacy is the sine qua non of subjective science run amok. By politicizing science and dismissing detractors as heretics, the movement has successfully exploited a doomsday scenario based on exaggeration and conjecture. Its victims unwittingly forfeit their personal freedoms and economic security for themselves and much of the people of the Third World, who without access to plentiful, inexpensive energy are relegated to a life of poverty and destitution. 

    Free speech serves as the bedrock of a free people. It is the purest form of a negative feedback loop. Its participants willingly participate in the exchange of ideas, where unsavory, illogical, and preposterous thoughts are judged in the public forum and soon discarded. Beneficial ones are nurtured, fine-tuned, and restated until they are transformed into workable solutions made possible by open public debate.

    The great excesses of political drama that have befallen mankind are a result of censored and skewed speech that is sheltered from the stabilizing, collective intellect and commonsensical insights of a free society. The French Revolution demonstrated that not one single zealot was too pure for the revolution. 

    This perversion of perspective led to outrageous examples of political absolutism. This scenario played out during the Russian Revolution and Stalinism, the National Socialism of Nazi Germany, the 20th century military warlords of imperial Japan, Maoist China, and Cambodia’s Pol Pot. Millions have died and suffered from despots who controlled all aspects of communication.

    The democracies and constitutional republics of the world are being censored at the behest of elitists, who claim they alone know the “greater good.” Leo Strauss’s “noble lie” is rationalized as an excuse for the promotion of dishonestly to further what those in control define as noble.  

    We are informed that free speech is dangerous and that it leads to hate, instability, and mayhem. But this disingenuous argument is the argument of tyrants, who gaslight and use words as weapons to disable a free people. Free speech is the salvation of an open, prosperous, and civil society and the embodiment of the sustaining benefits of negative feedback loops.  

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 08/28/2023 – 02:00

  • Is The Goliath In Autism Research About To Fall?
    Is The Goliath In Autism Research About To Fall?

    Authored by Amy Denney via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Autism is increasing at rapid rates, and researchers may be looking in the wrong places for the answer as to why.

    A newborn baby receives oral antibiotics, one of many contributing factors to alterations in the gut microbiome that modulates immunity. (Shutterstock)

    An extensive meta-analysis of 25 autism studies could shift the focus of research into the cause of autism from genetics to environmental triggers. That shift could open up new, revolutionary avenues for potential treatments.

    The research ties the disorder to changes in the gut microbiome, a community of microbes that live in the colon and are responsible for creating metabolites and other compounds crucial to our health and wellness.

    Many influences outside of the human body are killing these beneficial microbes, which aren’t genetically part of us but live in symbiosis with humans. The new study, published June 26 in Nature Neuroscience, has linked autism spectrum disorders (ASD) to a distinct microbial signature that’s dysbiotic, or unnaturally out of balance. As in an ecosystem, too much of certain problematic species can destroy the overall ecology or lead to problematic consequences, such as too many of certain metabolites and not enough of others.

    Meanwhile, autism rates are increasing at a speed that defies improved screening and diagnostic practices, as well as genetic patterns. The Centers for Disease Control released statistics in April that show the latest autism rate was 1 in 36 children in 2020, up from 1 in 44 in 2018, and 1 in 150 in 2000.

    Taken together, the evidence suggests that it’s time to direct resources to pinpointing exactly what it is in our environment that appears to “turn on” autism development, according to doctors who are treating patients with ASD.

    “Genetic diseases aren’t responsible for epidemics,” Dr. Arthur Krigsman, a specialist who treats children with ASD around the world, told The Epoch Times. “There’s something in the environment that’s triggering a gene that otherwise would be silent. There is no gene responsible for an epidemic.”

    Our genes are wound up tightly in DNA spirals—many of them never being used—similar to blueprints that never make their way to the manufacturer. But cues in our environment can trigger epigenetic processes that trigger some genes to get turned on or others to get turned off, dramatically changing our likelihood of developing certain diseases or attributes.

    The new research suggests that autism is linked to epigenetic triggers, which are influenced by the microbiome and modifiable over the course of our lifetime.

    Researchers will undoubtedly keep trying to tease out some of the genetic links to the neurological disorder, which is largely diagnosed in childhood. Autism has been connected to more than 100 genes so far. But the puzzle has gotten more complex with environmental associations that seem to keep growing. And the heterogeneity of ASD makes it impossible to accuse one single factor as the cause.

    The Epigenetic Nature of Autism

    Many doctors believe that autism arises when “toxic” environmental pressures are applied and trigger epigenetic changes, Dr. Mark Cannon, a professor at Northwestern University, told The Epoch Times.

    Toxicities can be biological and chemical but also emotional and social, and they can interfere with physiology. Examples include air pollutants, artificial food ingredients, glyphosate, medications, viruses, and even stress, which causes a biochemical cascade of changes in the body. All exert influence by changing the microbiome.

    This community of trillions of bacteria, viruses, and fungi is responsible for breaking down food into metabolites, especially short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) that communicate vital information to the whole body to perform digestive, neurological, and other functions. The main roles of these gut bugs are metabolism, nutrient absorption, and immune function.

    Microbiomes are constantly in flux, and it’s becoming impossible to define exactly what a healthy microbiome looks like because our industrial world has already altered our microbiome in severe ways. We’re only learning how to study them in detail now. That said, patterns are emerging, and studies are offering powerful clues about how diseases are linked to certain microbiome patterns.

    Dr. Cannon pointed to an autism study published in 2012 in Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease that showed the epigenetic nature of autism. Rats were given SCFAs from a subject with autism.

    The rats displayed abnormal motor movements, repetitive behavior, cognitive deficits, impaired social interactions, and other traits common in autism. The brain tissue of treated rats also showed neurochemical changes—such as innate neuroinflammation, increased oxidative stress, and glutathione depletion—consistent in patients with ASD.

    “Conceptually, it is the author’s opinion that the pathophysiology of ASDs may be more completely understood as being similar to conditions such as ethanol intoxication, or diabetes, and the resultant complex interactions between diet, genetics, metabolism, host microbiome, and behavior, that are well known to exist in these treatable disorders throughout the life cycle,” Dr. Derrick F. MacFabe, the study’s author, wrote.

    He suggested that SCFAs are the trigger of ASD or ASD behavior. SCFAs are derived from the fermentation of nondigestible polysaccharides, such as resistant starches and dietary fibers. Among their physiological functions, SCFAs are important to intestinal epithelial cell growth, which protects the gut barrier, and to inflammation regulation.

    “Yes, you can turn autism on,” Dr. Cannon said. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat at a conference and heard, ‘I always thought that was genetic,’ when in fact the data has never supported that.”

    Disempowerment of Genetics

    Focusing too much on genetics as the cause of disease can be a detriment to important avenues of research and treatment, and can discourage families with autistic children. Wholeheartedly embracing genetics leaves them powerless, Dr. Armen Nikogosian told The Epoch Times.

    In that case, for people with autism and their families, the only option is to manage the symptoms with pharmaceuticals, he said.

    Dr. Nikogosian shifted his entire medical practice in 2010 after one of his sons was diagnosed with autism.

    “That’s the message I got. That’s the message a lot of parents get,” he said. “They’re entrenched in this idea that there’s this genetic cause involved in this.”

    Dr. Nikogosian’s goal is to help parents who want to address the root causes of the disorder with a more holistic model of care that doesn’t rely on drug management of symptoms.

    He said that the development of other treatments has stagnated because of the broad denial that environmental factors are involved.

    “There’s absolutely, positively, no question there’s a massive input from environmental exposures,” Dr. Nikogosian said.

    Some exposures that he explores with patients are heavy metal and mold exposures, multiple infections, and vaccines. Clarifying, quantifying, and understanding the contributions of environmental exposures are important, as it opens doors to novel treatments.

    Some Environmental Influences Are Known

    Autism researcher James Adams said that many hypothesized risk factors continue to be validated by research. In a recent study that he conducted on a small cohort of children with autism, he discovered that common themes were prevalent throughout research.

    “It turns out mothers of kids with autism consumed lower fiber, less fiber than moms of typical kids. That’s important because fiber is a very important food for some gut bacteria,” he said. “You inherit most of your microbiome from your mother.”

    A 2021 study in Frontiers in Immunology found that there’s an uptick of SCFA production in pregnant women associated with fetal immune system development. The study connected breastfed babies with more diverse and robust microbiome development.

    Mr. Adams said that his research and other studies have shown formula-fed babies and those with increased use of oral antibiotics are more likely to be diagnosed with autism. Early delivery is also a risk factor for autism; the Frontiers article noted that premature birth tends to impact microbiome development. Babies delivered vaginally also have more diverse microbes and lower rates of illness than those born via cesarean section.

    Other common, pregnancy-related factors for ASD include maternal obesity, maternal diabetes, and complications associated with trauma, ischemia, and hypoxia, according to data reported in Neuron in 2018.

    A study recently published in Psychological and Cognitive Sciences that included 450 mother-child pairs noted that at age 2, children whose moms had experienced adversity as children had altered microbiomes. Other issues that moms can experience that appear to impact their babies’ microbiomes are antibiotic use and infections.

    The pathway between the microbiome and autism has gained several validating findings, making it difficult to deny as a causal factor. In a perfect world, physicians say, it should lead to major changes in clinical settings.

    “You always want to know the cause, because if you know the cause, you can stop the disease,” Dr. Krigsman said. “Stop looking for a gene that probably doesn’t exist and won’t be found. Try to find the cause, and then remedy that, remove that.”

    Why Cause Matters

    Microbiologist Kiran Krishna told The Epoch Times that what appears to be coming is similar to the global realization that smoking was causing cancer.

    The tobacco industry eventually couldn’t stop the number of small, cumulative studies that clearly documented the link. Mr. Krishna said that the same thing is happening regarding the connection between the microbiome and autism, and the new meta-analysis is important because it can help other researchers attract grants and funding to look more intentionally at microbes and their environmental influences.

    “Before this, we had smoke indicating the microbiome was involved in autism, and now we have fire,” Rob Knight, the director of the Center for Microbiome Innovation at the University of California–San Diego and a study co-author, said in a statement.

    There’s still a debate about whether the disease is driving dysbiosis, or the other way around. A 2021 study published in Cell concluded that dietary preferences, or restrictive eating that’s common among children with autism, is what causes changes in the microbiome. “We caution against claims that the microbiome has a driving role in ASD,” the researchers wrote.

    Mr. Krishna suspects that the longitudinal data from the new study will help settle any lingering doubts as to whether the microbiome is a driver of ASD.

    “We’re getting there because there are so many researchers globally that are interested in the microbiome,” he said. “We’re hitting that wave. There are somewhere around 10,000 published papers per year on the microbiome. That’s a tsunami. This paper … really puts a stamp that this is where we need to look.”

    Keeping Genetics in Perspective

    Jamie Morton, a corresponding author of the Nature study, told The Epoch Times that while there’s great data on how the environment shapes the microbiome, genetics will always be valuable because they determine how we’re influenced by toxic exposures.

    He said that the study illustrates a cultural shift driving the marriage of researchers who tend to “camp out” in their own disciplines and are now uniting for the greater good of finding the cause of autism.

    “That was one of the key points in our paper,” Mr. Morton said. “We wanted to highlight that when we are thinking about autism and these complex systems, you need everyone sitting in the same room. You need not just one dataset. You need all of them. You need genetics. You need microbiome. You need diet. You need metabolites, behavioral data, everything you can get your hands on.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/27/2023 – 23:30

  • "The More You Indict, The More We Unite!" – Black Social Media Erupts For Trump
    “The More You Indict, The More We Unite!” – Black Social Media Erupts For Trump

    For years, American leftists have yearned for the day they’d see a police mug shot of former President Donald Trump, confident it would decisively terminate his political career. 

    Thanks to an indictment in Georgia that was clearly conceived and timed for maximum political damage, their wish was granted last week.

    However, the spectacle has unfolded in a way that’s surely causing a growing sense of horror among Trump’s foes: Not only has his booking at one of Atlanta’s nastiest jails galvanized typical Trump supporters, it’s triggered a surge in support from inside an essential Democratic constituency — black people. 

    Considering how Democrats take black support for granted and routinely label Trump a racist and white supremacist, imagine the utter consternation they’re feeling as they witness a social media eruption of black sympathy for Trump over an arrest that, for many blacks, parallels the mistreatment they perceive blacks have received in the American criminal justice system. 

    The first sign of trouble came when people calling themselves “Blacks for Trump” and “Niggas for Trump” posted themselves near the infamous Fulton County Jail on Atlanta’s Rice Street. 

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    Then we saw blacks lining the street to cheer on the former president’s motorcade and shouting “Free Trump!” 

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    The on-scene displays in Georgia were just a precursor to a social media wave of black Trump 2024 enthusiasm that’s still rolling. “Trump is a brother now…I’m sorry, you go to jail in Zone 6 Atlanta, you a brotha,” says this man. “Straight up. They f**ked up. Niggas like niggas that went to jail. They believe in that sh*t. We trust that.” 

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    “Every real nigga got to go to jail at least one time,” says this man, who also warns that Democrats have “f**ked up” and will now face vengeance from a future President Trump. “You think he aint gonna spin the block?” 

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    Like many Americans of all colors, some of this man’s motivation to vote for Trump springs from his entertainment value: 

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    “If you can’t openly see that this is an attempt to make someone have to spend a bunch of money and fight cases while they run for presidency…you’re just not being an objective human,” says @mark_in_georgia: 

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    “Man, they deep-in-the-hood GANGSTAS hollering bout Trump 2024!” notes this enthusiastic black Trumper. 

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    In this set of man-in-the-street interviews, black men say Trump was better for their wallets. “Trump wanted us to get off our ass and get some money,” says one man. “He put America first,” says another: 

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    This emotive gent in a convenience store hits a recurring theme: Anger about “bitch ass nigga” Biden relentlessly funneling billions of dollars into the Ukraine war as conditions in American cities deteriorate. 

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    The genre is dominated by men, but here’s an exception: a woman who longs for the days of Trump’s Covid-era money handouts, specifically name-checking the “PPP boys” — a reference to the much-abused Paycheck Protection Program.  

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    Clutch Williams highlights Democrat hypocrisy, saying, “These other presidents be sayin’ good stuff to you, but doing bad stuff to you. Trump might be sayin some bad stuff, but he was doing some good stuff. Check the record!” 

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    ….and this man says many in his audience voted against Trump but have had a change of heart. “At some point, many of y’all have changed your mind and you now support Trump but you doin’ it on the sneak. Come on, y’all, let’s own up to it so we can all support his man together.” 

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    None of this is to say Trump will win the votes of a majority of blacks…but all it takes is a dent for the unintended consequences of Democrats’ political prosecutions to turn the booking of Donald Trump from Democrat dream to Democrat nightmare.  

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/27/2023 – 23:00

  • Republicans In Nine Florida Counties Adopt Resolution Calling For Ban Of COVID Vaccines
    Republicans In Nine Florida Counties Adopt Resolution Calling For Ban Of COVID Vaccines

    Authored by T.J. Muscaro via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A movement is gaining momentum to pressure Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, county sheriffs, and the Florida Legislature to ban COVID-19 vaccines and all other mRNA vaccines in the state.

    Walt Disney World employees protest against the company’s vaccine policies in Orlando, Fla., on Oct. 2, 2022. (Courtesy of Nick Caturano)

    Republican executive committees in nine Florida counties—the local arms of the Republican Party of Florida—have adopted a resolution asking Mr. DeSantis and lawmakers to prohibit the sale and distribution of the vaccines in Florida.

    The 83-page resolution also asks state Attorney General Ashley Moody to immediately seize all remaining vaccine supplies and conduct a forensic analysis of them.

    The so-called “Ban the Jab” resolution adopted by the local Republican executive committees was written by psychotherapist Joseph Sansone.

    It was adopted first by local-level GOP officials in Lee County, which includes Ft. Myers. It was then adopted by the committees in Collier, Lake, Santa Rosa, Seminole, St. Johns Hillsborough, and Brevard Counties. Franklin County became the ninth county to pass it on Aug. 19.

    “On behalf of the preservation of the human race, the Lee County Republican Party calls upon Gov. DeSantis and the state legislature to prohibit the sale and distribution of Covid injections and all mRNA injections in the state of Florida, and for the state Attorney General to immediately seize all Covid injections and mRNA injections in the state of Florida and have a forensic analysis conducted,” the committee said in voting to adopt the resolution.

    The resolution includes more than 140 exhibits of evidence that the authors say point to the independent findings of biomedical professionals and others concerned about vaccines.

    None of the executive counties responded to The Epoch Times’ request for further comment.

    The CDC declined to comment. The Republican Party of Florida, Pfizer, Moderna, and the FDA did not respond to requests for comment from The Epoch Times.

    Accusations Against the Vaccine

    The resolution adopted by GOP officials across the state includes a statement from Francis A. Boyle, the human rights lawyer and international law professor credited with writing the Biological Weapons and Anti-Terrorist Act of 1989. That legislation established the U.S. Code’s current bioweapon definition. 

    Mr. Boyle described the vaccines as “COVID frankenshots” and alleged that they are “existentially dangerous to the

    A health care worker prepares a COVID-19 vaccine in a file photograph. (Bay Ismoyo/AFP via Getty Images)

    It also cites a coalition of 17,000 physicians and medical scientists gathered in May 2022 for what they called the Global COVID Summit.

    That summit decided to “recognize that the disastrous COVID-19 public health policies imposed on doctors and our patients are the culmination of a corrupt medical alliance of pharmaceutical, insurance, and healthcare institutions, along with the financial trusts which control them.”

    The resolution also cites the national Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which chronicles reports of adverse reactions to vaccines including COVID-19 vaccines.

    Following the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, there was a reported 1,700 percent increase in VAERS reports and a 4,400 percent increase in reported “life-threatening conditions,” according to Florida’s own VAERS data.

    In total, more than 41,000 adverse-effect VAERS reports were filed in Florida in 2021 and more than 9,000 in 2022.

    The Governor’s Actions

    Mr. DeSantis, currently running for the Republican nomination for president, already has taken measures to push back against vaccine mandates in the state.

    He persuaded the Florida Supreme Court to impanel a grand jury in December 2022 to determine if any crimes were committed during the vaccine’s rollout.

    In May, he signed four medical freedom bills.

    Senate Bill 252 prohibits discrimination based on vaccination status and bans vaccine passports.

    House Bill 1387 bans gain-of-function research in the state of Florida.

    Senate Bill 1580 guarantees freedom of speech protections for physicians and medical professionals, such as protection for whistleblowers and the ability to object to participating in any treatments.

    And Senate Bill 238 link provides protection against discrimination based on health care choices by keeping any investigations on the matter confidential. 

    Gov. Ron DeSantis (L) announced Florida’s new surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, on Sept. 21, 2021. (Courtesy of the Florida Governor’s Office)

    Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo has been critical of the federal government’s pressure for citizens to submit to COVID-19 vaccines.

    “Healthcare professionals should always communicate the risks of a medical intervention to their patients in a manner that is clinically appropriate and meets standards of ethical practice,” he said during a round-table discussion with Mr. DeSantis in December 2022.

    “President Biden and Big Pharma have completely prevented that from happening—it is wrong.

    “With these new actions, we will shed light on the forces that have obscured truthful communication about the COVID-19 vaccines.”

    Dan Berger contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/27/2023 – 22:30

  • Top Law Schools Promote Ditching The Constitution
    Top Law Schools Promote Ditching The Constitution

    Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Yale University Law student Jesse Tripathi (2R) and others protest against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Sept. 24, 2018. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    In almost every state, law students who pass their state bar examination, which allows them to practice law, take an oath to support the U.S. Constitution.

    But the country’s top law schools teach future lawyers and judges the opposite.

    Many now teach that the U.S. Constitution, the supreme law of the nation since its ratification in 1788, is broken and should be scrapped.

    At least that’s what two members of conservative think tanks believe after reviewing courses at the country’s Top 10 law schools, as ranked by U.S. News and World Report in 2022. They examined the teaching at Yale, Stanford, Harvard, and Columbia universities and others.

    Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center. (Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times)

    Law professors at elite schools are open about their disdain for the U.S. Constitution, the researchers found.

    “They’re saying they want to get rid of the Constitution—they’re making no secret about it,” said J. Christian Adams, president and general counsel of the Public Interest Legal Foundation. He’s also worked for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

    Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center and former DOJ counsel, agreed.

    The radicalization of law schools is a threat to freedom not previously encountered in the nation’s history, Mr. von Spakovsky said.

    “In fact, some of them are very direct in teaching kids that they need to be revolutionaries, according to these courses that these law school students are taking,” he told The Epoch Times.

    Pitching the Ditching of the Constitution

    In 2022, Ryan D. Doerfler and Samuel Moyn—who teach law at Harvard and Yale universities, respectively—wrote a New York Times editorial titled “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed.”

    In it, they wrote that the struggle over the Constitution has proven to be a dead end for liberals. They called the founding document “undemocratic” and “inadequate.”

    “The real need is not to reclaim the Constitution, as many would have it, but instead to reclaim America from constitutionalism,” they wrote in the piece.

    The writers reasoned that it would be far better if liberal legislators had the power to make a case for abortion and labor rights on their own merits without having “to bother with the Constitution.”

    That way of thinking has pushed law schools increasingly to the political left over the past decade, Mr. Adams said.

    “The stuff they’re teaching now is straight-up Marxist. There’s a big difference from just 10 years ago.”

    Mr. von Spakovsky and Mr. Adams have been sounding the alarm about what’s happening within the country’s law schools through articles examining law school curricula.

    Schools often teach that the Constitution is a tool of discrimination that must be uprooted, Mr. von Spakovsky said.

    The idea that the Constitution and the United States are hopelessly flawed stems from critical race theory (CRT) and the concept of promoting social justice.

    CRT has been spotlighted by works such as The 1619 Project by New York Times writers.

    The 1619 Project, widely lauded by the political left, paints the United States as a country founded on slavery. It characterizes the nation’s Founding Fathers as racists.

    While The 1619 Project has been rejected by many academics, historians, and politicians, its teachings have been embraced vigorously by the left. Many have held it up as a model of how history should be taught to children and college students.

    The ideology upholds that thinking that “our Constitution is a patriarchal, oppressive document used to suppress minorities and just about everyone else,” Mr. von Spakovsky said. “And we are supposedly a systematically racist, misogynist society, and these law students need to go out and preach and practice revolution.”

    Creating Revolutionaries

    Classes such as “Decentralized Resistance” and “Law and Inequality” at Yale University are examples of the far-left infiltration of law schools, Mr. Adams claims in his series of articles.

    The “Decentralized Resistance” class is about social change that results from “everyday resistance.” Accumulating widespread and numerous acts of everyday resistance can precipitate “quasi-revolutionary” change, class instruction tells law students, Mr. Adams said.

    “Law and Inequality” explores “inequality along lines of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and class,” he said.

    This kind of classroom instruction has given rise to the far-left notion that prisons should be emptied because they’re “racist,” Mr. von Spakovsky said.

    The popularization of these ideas also led to the election of George Soros-funded prosecutors in Democrat-run cities. Mr. Soros is a Hungarian-born businessman who has donated billions to left-wing causes.

    Conservatives lament that Soros-friendly prosecutors care more about criminals than their victims and allow them to go unpunished while crime spirals out of control.

    Left-wing ideology holds that laws wrongly target minorities more than white people. Proponents of that thinking say society needs to find a more equitable way of dealing with crime, such as using social workers to rehabilitate lawbreakers instead of putting them behind bars.

    “What they want is lawyers and judges who simply decide cases based on ideology, not on the law,” Mr. von Spakovsky said.

    A copy of former President George Washington’s personal copy of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights is viewed at Christie’s auction house on June 15, 2012. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

    Fighting Words

    Cancel culture, censorship on social media platforms, and the rise of activists who successfully shut down opposing speakers work together to demonstrate the left’s “unbelievable contempt” for the First Amendment, the bedrock of democracy, Mr. von Spakovsky said.

    “They literally equate words with violence,” he said.

    “So if you are expressing any kind of opinions that they disagree with, [they argue that] you don’t have a First Amendment right to engage in that kind of speech because it suppresses minorities and others,” he said.

    Several classes at Stanford University demonstrated a shift away from the more routine courses on torts and contracts to classes with a more militant tone, Mr. von Spakovsky wrote in his articles.

    Stanford law school offers “Violence, Resistance, and the Law,” which teaches how the law “suppresses and invites resistance” and identifies the “subjects against whom legal violence is deployed.”

    “The State of Democratic Discourse” course at Stanford is “devoted to a candid discussion about the current state of public discourse, both nationally and in universities, focusing especially on misinformation and intimidation.”

    Counter-protesters hold up signs while waiting for conservative commentator Milo Yiannopoulos to arrive at the University of California–Berkeley campus on Sept. 24, 2017. (Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images)

    Gag Rules

    Those ideas played out in real life in March when the Stanford chapter of the Federalist Society invited 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Kyle Duncan to speak on campus.

    While he tried to deliver his speech, a mob of about 100 students heckled and shouted him down while faculty members did nothing. And some encouraged the students.

    Judge Duncan asked for an administrator to address the hecklers.

    Instead, Tirien Steinbach, Stanford Law School’s associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion, took to the podium, scolding the conservative judge for the “harm” he inflicted with his rulings.

    Students were angry at Judge Duncan because he refused in 2020 to allow a transgender inmate convicted of possessing child pornography to change his pronouns to female.

    The judge had to be escorted from the law school by federal marshals.

    Ms. Steinbach was put on administrative leave and resigned in July. But Stanford didn’t punish students or other administrators and only required them to complete free speech training.

    Law and Disorder

    The now-viral video of the judge’s treatment grabbed public attention and drew concern from conservatives.

    Austin Knudsen, Montana’s attorney general, wrote a May 16 letter to Montana Supreme Court Chief Justice Mike McGrath addressing left-wing tactics in law schools.

    Students are “far too comfortable using intimidation to silence opposing viewpoints,” Mr. Knudsen wrote.

    Activist students, he wrote, are “self-styled members of the progressive vanguard and justify their actions based on the perceived evil of conservative legal views.”

    He warned that disruptions at elite law schools are everyone’s problem, and “Montana can’t bury its head in the sand and hope it goes away.”

    “We are at a turning point for the integrity of the legal profession,” he wrote.

    The behavior on campus will soon show up in the courts if there are no consequences for the student’s actions, Knudsen warned.

    Monkey Business

    Top law schools have demonstrated a dramatic shift in focus, even when compared with just 10 years ago, Mr. Adams said.

    It’s important to take notice because graduates from elite law schools go on to influence government, courts, academia, and corporate America, he said.

    The preaching of CRT, radical gender ideology, feminism, and climate change have been woven into much of the curriculum of Ivy League schools, such as Harvard Law, according to his review.

    He noted a feminist offering at Harvard Law called the Bonobo Sisterhood, a one-credit course at Harvard Law. The class examined how people can learn about feminism from primates in a male-dominated society.

    The course examines the “power and potential of female alliances to disrupt patriarchal systems.”

    The course description reads: “Through a legal, political, social, cultural, and economic lens, we ask what lessons the bonobos—our close primate relatives who share 98.7% of our DNA—offer humans for creating a society free of male sexual coercion.”

    People walk past the Alma Mater statue on the Columbia University campus in New York, on July 1, 2013. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

    Cradle of CRT

    Columbia University, the cradle of critical race theory, also offers classes on CRT.

    The Institute for Social Research at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, developed Marxist ideologies that came to be known as The Frankfurt School.

    After being forced out of Germany by the Nazis, the institute’s researchers relocated to Columbia University in New York in 1933 and developed critical theory.

    That legacy now shows up in Columbia law classes, such as “Legal Methods II: Critical Race Methods: Practices, Prisms, and Problems.”

    The class description says the United States “suffers from many forms of discrimination,” and the course will examine the “interface between legal interpretation, lawmaking practices, and racial hierarchy,” Mr. von Spakovsky noted in his review.

    The widespread social justice focus at top law schools suggests law firms would be better off hiring lawyers from state schools, he said.

    But even there, “woke” ideology is rampant.

    In a December 2022 Epoch Times story documenting CRT’s effect on conservative college students, one law student at a Florida University confirmed that the Constitution was attacked in his law class.

    The student, who wished to remain anonymous, recalled students arguing that the Constitution was illegitimate from the start and was written by racist, old, white men.

    The professor didn’t express that he condoned that point of view. But he didn’t offer a rebuttal, either, the student said.

    Poisoning the Well

    Not all conservatives are pessimistic about the future of the legal profession.

    According to William Jacobson, a clinical law professor and director of the Securities Law Clinic at Cornell Law School, concepts such as CRT have long been taught in law schools.

    Mr. Jacobson founded the Legal Insurrection website, which tracks CRT.

    The increasing popularity of CRT in schools prompted him to start CritialRace.org in 2020, which maintains a database of schools and colleges that teach or employ CRT-related policies.

    He doesn’t keep a database on law schools that teach CRT because, traditionally, that’s the only place it was taught, Mr. Jacobson said.

    It wasn’t until recently that the concepts began trickling down into K–12 classrooms and other college courses. That’s where the concept became more controversial, he said.

    The problem started when CRT evolved into anti-racism training.

    It sounds innocuous. But the theory is to prescribe racism against whites and others of “privilege” in the name of retribution for racism against minorities in the past, present, and future.

    “At the law school level, it’s not going to bring down America,” he said.

    But it can certainly “poison the well,” Mr. Jacobson said, by dividing people based on race or gender into oppressors or victims.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/27/2023 – 21:30

  • Trump Raised $7.1 Million After Mugshot
    Trump Raised $7.1 Million After Mugshot

    Former President Donald Trump’s mugshot has become a phenomenon. The left thinks it’s the ultimate ‘gotcha,’ while Trump supporters immediately recognized it as a badge of honor. Within an hour or so of booking, Trump was already selling t-shirts of it on his website.

    Trump’s martyr status reached far and wide…

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    And there’s much, much more.

    Now, Politico reports that as of Saturday, Trump has raised $7.1 million since the mugshot – with $4.18 of it coming in on Friday, the single-highest 24-hour period of his campaign to date, according to a person familiar with the totals.

    The campaign’s fundraising has been powered by merchandise it has been selling through his online store. After Trump was taken into custody, the campaign began selling shirts, posters, bumper stickers and beverage coolers bearing Trump’s scowling mugshot. The items bear the tagline “NEVER SURRENDER!” and range in price from $12 to $34.

    The campaign has also been prodding online donors with emails and text messages. And on Thursday night, while flying back from Atlanta to Bedminster, N.J. Trump sent out his first tweet in more than two years directing supporters to his website. The site’s landing page includes the mugshot and asks supporters to “make a contribution to evict Crooked Joe Biden from the White House and SAVE AMERICA during this dark chapter in our nation’s history.”

    The fundraising blitz illustrates how Trump has parlayed his four indictments into campaign cash, rallying his hardcore supporters.

    Trump’s campaign says it has raised nearly $20 million in the last three weeks, during which time Trump was indicted on charges related to his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and for trying to overturn the Georgia vote count in the 2020 election. That figure is more than half of what Trump raised during his first seven months in the 2024 race.

    “It’s a bunch of bullshit,” indeed…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/27/2023 – 21:00

  • Watch: School Board Fires Satan-Worshipping Non-Binary Teacher
    Watch: School Board Fires Satan-Worshipping Non-Binary Teacher

    Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

    A teacher at an Illinois elementary school was fired by the board after conservative influencer Libs of TikTok pointed out that the ‘non-binary’ person was also a Satan worshipper and had a history of bipolar disorder with mania and psychosis.

    The Homer Community Consolidated School District 33C took action after the teacher Kris Martin’s online posts promoting Satanism, as well as anti-police rhetoric were exposed.

    District Superintendent Craig Schoppe wrote in an August 17 statement “As you may have heard or seen online, there has been some question and concern with regards to 33C hiring protocol and details surrounding the conditions of hire for new employees,” before announcing an investigation was underway.

    Now Martin has been terminated, much to the delight of parents in attendance at the latest board meeting:

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    The question remains, why did this person get hired as an elementary school teacher in the first place?

    And how many more are out there?

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    Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

    In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Summit Vitamins – super charge your health and well being.

    Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/27/2023 – 20:30

  • Do Plunging Retail Stocks Signal The US Consumer Is Finally Done
    Do Plunging Retail Stocks Signal The US Consumer Is Finally Done

    The final week of earnings season, traditionally reserved for a slew of retail companies, was also the one we got the loudest hint yet that the US consumer is indeed starting to hit their limit, with retailer after retailer plunging by double digits on either weak earnings, poor guidance or some combination of both. Not surprisingly, the Retail ETF got crushed in all 5 days this week, sharply underperforming the market every day of the week.

    And while some retail optimists have asked “did anything truly change?” the truth, as Goldman consumer specialist trader Scott Feiler notes, “anytime the group underperforms 5 days in a row vs the market and over 500 bps total on the week, it’d be a bit naïve to “say “nothing new here.” To be sure, there have been some clearly adverse developments – specifically when it comes to the rapid deterioration in consumer credit as highlighted in the dismal earnings from Macy’s and Nordstrom – that bear watching especially with student debt payments set to resume in a coupe of months, this trend will only get worse, while the gradual phasing out of the trillion-dollar deficit funded “Bidenomics” stimmy.

    So what drove the substantial weakness in the group this week?

    1. July was the best month of the quarter, but the focus has already turned to August, when things turned much uglier. Outside of Foot Locker, nearly every company spoke to an acceleration in trends in July. This was the first notable acceleration in trends for a full month since things saw their initial slowdown in March. While some companies early in the earnings season spoke to August being strong still (WMT, ROST, TJX), this was more consumables based or defensive type companies. As Feiler notes, while “August certainly does not seem like it’s fallen off the cliff across the board, the view from this week’s round of results was it’s much choppier as a whole than July was. Nordstrom for example spoke to a slowdown at both of their banners in the month.”

    2. Shrink (i.e., theft) – Numerous companies spoke about this. Some were unexpected (DKS), some were expected (ULTA) and some spoke about it again as a reason for margin weakness, after just having done so last quarter (DLTR). What all companies had in common was all stocks traded down on this. The debate has made its way into how much margin recovery can be expected from this into 2024-2025, if at all(seemingly becoming more accepted that companies will have 100 bps lower gross margins vs historical for the foreseeable future). The flipside is that retailers now have a scapegoat for continued margin erosion (and inventory reduction): the Soros army of handpicked big city DAs, who have largely decriminalized retail theft.

    3. Consumer Credit – will this continue?: Macy’s touched on credit concerns earlier in the week by speaking to higher than expected delinquencies in June and July. There was some skepticism originally from many if this was truly breaking news or not: was “this is just a normalization to pre-covid levels” and “this is more of a low-income issue.” And while to the Goldman trader both somewhat reasonable fair pieces of feedback, it felt notable that Nordstrom (higher income customer) spoke later in the week as well to the trend, noting that “we have seen delinquencies rising gradually and they are now above pre-pandemic levels, which could result in higher credit losses in the second half and into 2024.”

    The next round of industry master trust data comes on September 12th. Data from the Goldman Financials team shows it’s usually 6 quarters before net charge-offs peak, following peak loan growth. Peak loan growth occurred this cycle at the end of Q1 23. See the 3 exhibits below on this from prior cycles that show this.

    4. Positioning: One mitigating factor behind the big drops across the retail space is that according to the Goldman trading desk, many of the names down the most this week, while certainly not perfect , had logic for why they should have been down, and also had a positioning dynamic to them as well (DLTR long vs DG short, DKS a top-line beat was expected, JWN was the preferred long this quarter in dept store world, BURL was expected to have a better print post TJX/ROST). Results did disappoint, either sales, margins or the guides, but crowded – and wrong – positioning also had a multiplier effect on the reactions it seemed.

    * * *

    Finally, those wondering where the next big hit will come from, look no further than the student loan payers who suspended payments during Covid and who will have to resume those payments come October. According to Cohort Analytics, that cohort of shoppers made up more than 10% of spending at several national brands in 2022 (above the dotted line in the chart below). Their spending also outperformed non-borrowers at several brands (left of the solid line n the chart below), suggesting that their lack of payments may have buoyed their spending in recent years (well, duh). That leaves dozens of national brands that benefited meaningfully from the pause in student loans (primarily those in the upper-left quadrant below), that may be more exposed to that shopper base as payments resume.

    Within Travel, Frontier Airlines was the most sensitive to the Covid-Suspended cohort in 2022, with 11% share and 2 points of outspending from the cohort. In contrast, Alaska Airlines and United Airlines both had 7% share and 10 points of under-spending. Airbnb had a high 11% share from the cohort but with 4 points of underspending.

    Within the Home sector, Peloton was most sensitive, with 13% share and 11 points of outspending from the Covid-Suspended cohort; Sherwin Williams had 6% share and 10 points of under-spending. IKEA, Ashley, HomeGoods, Wayfair, and Lowe’s all had 10%+ share from the cohort but the cohort also underspent Non-Borrowers by ~5 points.

    Most Apparel and Department Stores had over 10% share from the Covid-Suspended cohort: Old Navy had the highest share at 14%; Nordstrom Full Price had the lowest share at 8%. Old Navy and Burlington each had 3 points of outspending from the cohort, while most others saw minimal to underspending.

    More in the full reports (here and here) available to pro subs.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/27/2023 – 20:00

  • Dr. Jay Bhattacharya: Biden Admin's Push For Everyone To Get New COVID Vaccine Is 'Irresponsible'
    Dr. Jay Bhattacharya: Biden Admin’s Push For Everyone To Get New COVID Vaccine Is ‘Irresponsible’

    Authored by Nathan Worcester and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    President Joe Biden’s comments that all Americans will “likely” be advised to get a new COVID vaccine as new variants spread through the country are “irresponsible,” according to Stanford University Professor of Medicine Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

    “I signed off this morning on a proposal we have to present to the Congress, a request for additional funding for a new vaccine—that is necessary, that works,” Mr. Biden told reporters in South Lake Tahoe, California, on Aug. 25.

    “And tentatively, not decided finally yet, tentatively it is recommended—it is likely to be recommended—that everybody get it, no matter whether they got it before,” he added.

    Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University and one of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, in Hartford, Conn., on Feb. 17, 2023. (Tal Atzmon/The Epoch Times)

    Since early July, COVID-19 hospitalizations have been on the rise domestically, with three new variants of the disease spreading across the country. The uptick has resulted in some businesses, schools, and hospitals reinstating mask mandates.

    Multiple drug companies, including Pfizer, Novavax, and Moderna, have introduced new vaccines they say will be effective against the EG.5, or ERIS, variant of COVID-19.

    “It never occurred to me that an American president would be the number one spokesperson for a pharmaceutical company, but here we are,” Dr. Bhattacharya told The Epoch Times.

    “It’s irresponsible to make this kind of public health advice for the entire American public in the absence of excellent randomized trial evidence, which has not been produced by the pharmaceutical companies,” he added.

    “The FDA [Food and Drug Administration] never asked for them to produce them,” Dr. Bhattacharya said, referring to vaccines targeting the new COVID variants.

    The Standard professor said that authorities are incorrectly treating COVID booster shots ” just like the flu vaccine, that you just update it from year to year.”

    President Joe Biden leaves after attending a pilates class in South Tahoe, Calif., on Aug. 25, 2023. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

    But, in contrast with the COVID-19 injections, for flu vaccines “there’s a long track record where the safety record of the vaccine is understood,” Dr. Bhattacharya said.

    “Not requiring randomized trial evidence for updating the vaccine is irresponsible. It’s using a different mechanism than the flu vaccine. You can’t extend the experience you have with the flu vaccine to this vaccine,” he said.

    The professor also picked up on President Biden’s comment that everyone will likely be advised to take the new vaccine “no matter whether they got it before.”

    “Here where they’re saying is, essentially like it’s amnesty—We’re all going to be treated as if we’re unvaccinated with regard to this vaccine,” Dr. Bhattacharya said.

    According to CNBC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials told reporters Thursday that the vaccines are expected to become available to the public in mid-September, though they are still pending approval from the FDA.

    An independent CDC advisory committee is scheduled to meet on Sept. 12 to vote on recommended guidelines for eligibility for the new COVID-19 jabs.

    During the press briefing, CDC and FDA officials advised that both agencies intended to urge Americans to get an updated COVID-19 shot, as well as the flu shot and the recently approved RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) vaccine produced by GlaxoSmithKline.

    “Vaccination is going to continue to be key this year because immunity wanes and because the COVID-19 virus continues to change,” a CDC official said.

    Dr. Paul Marik of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care was scathing in his response to the president’s announcement.

    “It’s insanity,” he told The Epoch Times.

    “I think the vaccines have failed, and this is untested,” he added.

    “Making a new vaccine against a new variant which is untested makes no sense,” Dr. Marik continued, saying that he “can’t see any group of patients who would benefit from a vaccine.”

    “We need to know more information,” he added.

    Samantha Flom contributed to this report. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/27/2023 – 19:30

  • Weaponized Collusion? Jack Smith's Team Huddled With Biden White House Before Trump Indictment
    Weaponized Collusion? Jack Smith’s Team Huddled With Biden White House Before Trump Indictment

    While President Biden has repeatedly claimed that the Justice Department has full autonomy and isn’t ‘weaponized’ against political opponents, a new report by the NY Post suggests otherwise.

    Just weeks before Special Counsel Jack Smith brought charges against Donald Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents, one of his top aides met with the White House counsel’s office, raising serious concerns about coordinated legal efforts against Biden’s top political opponent going into the 2024 election.

    According to the report, Jay Bratt, one of Smith’s minions since November 2022, took a meeting with the White House on March 31 of this year with deputy chief of staff for the WH counsel’s office, Caroline Saba. The two were joined in the 10am meeting by FBI agent Danielle Ray.

    Nine weeks later, Trump was indicted by Smith’s office.

    The 63-year-old Bratt also met with Saba at the White House in November 2021, when Trump’s legal team was in discussions with the National Archives over the return of presidential records from his Mar-a-Lago estate prior to a formal investigaiton.

    Bratt had a third meeting in the White House in September 2021, this time with Katherine Reily, an advisor to the White House chief of staff’s office.

    The logs offer no information about what was discussed at the meetings.

    Critics and legal experts questioned why Bratt was taking meetings at all with the White House counsel’s office while part of an active investigation into President Biden’s likely 2024 Republican opponent.

    “There is no legitimate purpose for a line [DOJ] guy to be meeting with the White House except if it’s coordinated by the highest levels,” said former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a one-time top federal prosecutor in the Southern District. -NY Post

    Saba left the White House in May to attend law school.

    As Mark Levin noted on X;

    THIS IS A MASSIVE STORY!

    That’s why it will be ignored by the Democrat Party media.  That said, Bratt not only met with Biden’s staff at the White House while investigating Donald Trump and weeks before Trump was charged, Bratt is the senior DOJ official who insisted on securing a warrant and sending an FBI SWAT team to Mar-a-Lago; and, Bratt stands accused by Stanley Woodward, who represents Walt Nauta in the documents case, of extorting him (Bratt allegedly told Woodward that the judgeship he is seeking has a better chance if his client turns on Trump).  Judge Cannon should order, from the bench, that all records related to Bratt’s meetings and discussions at the White House be preserved and provided to the court; and, she should ask the DC judge who has been dragging his feet in his secret review of the allegation against Bratt by Woodward transfer that matter and all the information related to it to her as it clearly bears on the document case that is now before her and in her jurisdiction.  

    Yet again, I am forced to ask, where the hell are Trump’s lawyers?  They should file a motion immediately seeking a court order for the information (mentioned above) and make a big stink about this outrageous news.  

    Let me add another important point. THIS CLEARLY adds to the overwhelming case for a special counsel, as this not only creates the impression of a conflict of interest but a conflict of interest in fact.  The Biden administration cannot be relied on to truthfully explain itself.  The standard for appointing a special counsel — a qualified lawyer from outside the government — has been met, again!

    When asked if he thinks the White House and special counsel were coordinating, Rudy Giuliani told the Post: “You’re damn right I do.”

    “What’s happening is they have trashed every ethical rule that exists and they have created a state police. It is a Biden state prosecutor and a Biden state police.”

    Constitutional law scholar Jonathan Turley of George Washington University told the outlet that the March meeting was particularly troublesome and “raises obvious concerns about visits to the White House after [Bratt] began his work with the special counsel.“

    “There is no reason why the Justice Department should not be able to confirm whether this meeting was related to the ongoing investigation or concerns some other matter,” said Turley.

    We’re sure the DOJ will get right on prosecuting itself.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/27/2023 – 19:00

  • Elite Crackdown On Free Speech Worldwide Intensifies
    Elite Crackdown On Free Speech Worldwide Intensifies

    Authored by Michael Shellenberger via Public substack,

    From North America to Australia to Europe, elites seek censorship, privacy invasions, and the prosecution of wrongthink as “pre-crime”…

    The leaders of nations, representatives of international organizations, and philanthropists say they are committed to creating free and open societies. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook has independent fact-checkers, is open to all perspectives, and doesn’t interfere in elections. And, in response to questions from a colleague at Public, a representative from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations insisted the philanthropy supported free speech.

    “In response to your effort to conflate any attempt to address hate speech as a frontal assault on free speech itself,” the Soros spokesperson said, “perhaps the words of the UN Secretary-General will help in illuminating a crucial distinction: ‘Addressing hate speech does not mean limiting or prohibiting freedom of speech.’”

    But these words are a thin veil covering an aggressive attack on freedom of speech around the world, from Australia to North America to Europe, where the Digital Services Act, which demands Internet companies “Address any risk they pose on society, including public health, physical and mental well-being,” goes into effect today.

    A blockbuster new investigation by Australia’s Sky News discovered that Meta-Facebook has been paying activists to serve as neutral fact-checkers while, in reality, using their power to censor their political enemies.

    The context is that this fall, Australians will vote in a special national election, the Australian Indigenous Voice referendum, on whether to give special political powers to native peoples. Facebook is funding those in favor of the referendum to censor its opponents. “An audit of RMIT Voice fact checks showed the 17 Voice checks between May 3 and June 23 this year were all targeting anti-Voice opinions or views,” Sky News Found.

    Meta allowed the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) to censor disfavored views even while “knowing it was a breach of the rules Zuckerberg established to distance himself from fact-checking responsibilities,” reported SkyNews.

    The RMIT, which is a respected technical university like America’s MIT,  “used the powers Facebook has given it to throttle Sky News Australia’s Facebook page with false fact checks multiple times this year, breaching the Meta-endorsed IFCN Code of Principles and preventing millions of Australians from reading or watching Sky News Australia’s journalism.”

    How did the fact-checkers abuse their powers? By smearing their political enemies as racists.

    “Fact-checkers employed by RMIT have led to numerous code breaches,” reports Sky News, “including one fact-checker using her social media account to label Opposition Leader Peter Dutton a fear-mongering racist for his views on the Voice.”

    As for Soros’ Open Society Foundations, its spokesperson cleverly tucked a call for expanded censorship into her response to our queries.

    After saying, “Addressing hate speech does not mean limiting or prohibiting freedom of speech,” the spokesperson said, “It means keeping hate speech from escalating into something more dangerous, particularly incitement to discrimination, hostility, and violence, which is prohibited under international law” [emphasis added]. 

    “Keeping hate speech from escalating into something more dangerous” is precisely the justification for censorship that politicians in Ireland and Scotland are making to be able to invade people’s homes and confiscate their phones and computers, as Irish reporter Ben Scallan described yesterday.

    Consider the twisted logic. Irish police must invade people’s homes in order to make sure that their hate materials don’t escalate into something that could be illegal. That’s a totalitarian move toward the police enforcing “precrime,” as depicted in the terrifying science fiction thriller Minority Report.

    Meanwhile, the UN is now building a “digital army” of censorship activists around the world to wage war on wrongthink, or what it calls “deadly disinformation.” According to the UN, “misinformation” is “deadly” and poses an “existential” threat. The UN’s effort matches the WHO effort, which views speech it disagrees with as a kind of pathogen.

    In Germany, a court ordered the American writer C.J. Hopkins to either go to jail or pay 3,600 Euros for comparing the COVID lockdowns to the Nazis.

    The government claimed Hopkins was promoting Nazism when, obviously, he doing the opposite. While some may take offense at the comparison, it makes clear that Hopkins has a negative, not positive, view of Nazism.

    In the United States, a nonprofit organization called Center for Countering Digital Hate, whose former communications director worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, has successfully led a boycott against X, formerly named Twitter, for not being more censorious.

    As a result, advertising revenue to X is down 60 – 70%, according to news reports.

    In short, Western elites, both governmental, corporate, and philanthropic, are embracing the kinds of totalitarian tactics made famous by the East German Stasi, the Chinese government, and dystopian regimes depicted in movies like Minority Report. Why is that? And how can we fight back?

    *  *  *

    We are nearing the end of the beginning of our movement, which has involved ripping away the mask hiding the real agenda of the world’s censorious elites. The leaders of nations, representatives of international organizations, including the United Nations, and philanthropists who say they are committed to creating free and open societies are, in reality, not. Rather, they are interfering in elections and violating both the First Amendment and the UN Declaration of Human Rights. We can stop them, but we’re going to need your help.

    Please subscribe now to support Public’s defense of free speech worldwide.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/27/2023 – 18:30

  • BlackRock Faces Leftist Backlash As It Votes For Fewer ESG Proposals
    BlackRock Faces Leftist Backlash As It Votes For Fewer ESG Proposals

    Having already been hit by backlash from red-state officials over its embrace of the environmental, social and governance (ESG) agenda, BlackRock is now under criticism from Democratic officials alarmed that the giant asset manager has decreased its votes in favor of ESG shareholder proposals. 

    Last week, the Financial Times reported that BlackRock voted for only 26 ESG proposals in the 12-month period ending in June — or 7% of the total opportunities. That marks the continuation of a steep decline that’s seen BlackRock’s percent of “yes” votes on such proposals plummet from 47% in 2021. 

    That trend has angered leftists, including New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. In a textbook example of projection, Lander tells FT that BlackRock has caved to a “misinformed and shortsighted war against ESG at the behest of special interests.”   

    New York City Comptroller Brad Lander (Christopher Goodney/Bloomberg)

    “BlackRock has a responsibility to use its votes to send a clear and consistent message regarding the need to manage climate-related and human-capital related risks,” said Lander, who oversees $250 billion in pension assets. 

    BlackRock’s declining percentage of “yes” votes comes as the quantity of ESG proposals has surged thanks to new SEC rules that make it easier for shareholders to get them on the proxy ballots. On Wednesday, BlackRock said it’s voting “no” more often “because so many shareholder proposals were overreaching, lacking economic merit, or simply redundant.” 

    Illinois State Treasurer Michael Frerichs is watching with unease, telling FT, “We understand that there are years where there are lower-quality proposals, but if this becomes a trend over multiple years, then we’ll be concerned.” State Street’s frequency of backing ESG measures has also declined, but not as sharply as BlackRock’s. 

    BlackRock has faced intense criticism from Republican government officials who accuse the firm of violating its fiduciary duty by putting the ESG agenda ahead of investment returns.  

    Photo: Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images and Fox Business

    In June, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said that, while the $9.4 trillion asset manager hasn’t changed its thinking about ESG, he himself has stopped using that term. “I don’t use the word ESG any more, because it’s been entirely weaponized … by the far left and weaponized by the far right,” Fink said at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

    BlackRock has rolled out a program called “Voting Choice” that lets investors decide how their shares should be voted. The program started with large institutional investors and the firm is now conducting a pilot of the concept with retail investors in UK pooled funds. Some observers say the program is a ruse that will do little to decrease BlackRock’s power over shareholder vote outcomes. 

    The alternating backlash against BlackRock from right and left echoes the experiences of woke businesses like Bud Light and Target that reach too far left, cause an uproar on the right, modify their approach, only to faced scorn from the left for “caving” to the unenlightened.  

    Of course, unlike Bud Light and Target, BlackRock and other money management titans wield enormous direct power on other public corporations and therefore society as a whole. Between the three of them, BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street typically between 15 and 20% of the outstanding shares of S&P 500 companies. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/27/2023 – 18:00

  • The Hidden Tax Of This And That
    The Hidden Tax Of This And That

    Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time,

    Life is full of hidden taxes. Governments, banks, and businesses all benefit from taking advantage of us by shifting costs and then nibbling away at us. This often occurs when we are distracted by a larger attack on us coming from another direction. All this should be considered part of a larger ruse, or ploy to mask how we are being weakened by a thousand cuts. Such schemes promote the idea these “little” penalties and taxes upon us are minor tolls that must be paid for society to function rather than a theft fostered upon us. 

    Of course, this is becoming much easier as we move towards a cashless society where systems allow people to pay bills without even looking at them. In general, most people have come to accept a little pilfering here and there as normal. Fighting such incursions into our lives usually fails and many people deem the effort more trouble than it is worth.

    No matter how much we rile at the failure of our institutions and governments, the biggest problem we face is things will most likely get far worse. Many of the trends that are developing indicate that society is having a very difficult time adjusting to the rapid rate of change taking place. This can be seen in the large number of people that are being left behind. 

    While many people have been lifted out of poverty we have also witnessed a growing percentage of the population with both physical and mental ailments. These “disabilities.” often take the form of  things such as addiction, alcoholism, and eating disorders. The demographic picture unfolding across the world combined with huge government deficits does not bode well for future growth. When you mix these dysfunctional people into the demographic soup it becomes downright ugly. 

    We should expect more and more of our resources to be funneled into this deep hole created by horrible policies that weaken rather than strengthen society. Obamacare failed to achieve its goals of lowering the cost of healthcare but it is now accepted as the law of the land. Open borders benefit the immigrants flowing into our country far more than the average citizen, but it is allowed. Big companies are given huge advantages over the small businesses lining Main Street and few people care, it is just another small “tax” on the way we live. What people don’t understand is that over time this has a drastic effect on the economy.

    Too much of the world, too much of what we see, too much of what we are told is a lie and that is a fact. The small hidden taxes on this and that almost guarantee that further declines in both society and the financial system are likely. We are constantly bombarded with charts showing where things are going based on historical references but a question we must ask is just how relevant today’s comparisons are with prior economic cycles. Changes in how the economy is structured do not take place overnight. This does not mean it will be worse, just different. 

    Real growth and productivity are generally a direct result of private enterprise being able to move forward without barriers from the government constantly impeding progress. Increased productivity is a huge factor contributing to real growth. Sadly, it is becoming apparent that qualitative easing failed to bring much growth. Easy money was an experiment that did not fulfill its promise. The side effects of unlimited and false liquidity have proven toxic. They include bigger government, more regulation, less productivity, and malinvestment of capital.

    The term trueflation merits a great deal more attention than it gets, how the government arrives at these numbers matter. Inflation is viewed on a year-over-year basis, which means as the higher months drop away the numbers tend to give the impression we have it on the run. This should not be seen as prices now going back to “normal” but rather that they are not moving up as fast. Unfortunately, this method of computing inflation creates a “base effect” on inflation rates setting them up for another wave higher. Inflation is not gone and this means long-term investment in government bonds remains problematic.

    It is important to note that a fundamental change has occurred in the economy related to productivity. The hidden tax resulting from the acceptance of continued incompetence is no longer an exception, it is the rule. AI and all the newfangled improvements be damned, many things no-longer work and productivity is falling. Government regulation is monkey-hammering businesses, especially small businesses. High wages kill small businesses that can’t afford to automate. Many small businesses are being forced to cut hours and staffing until they simply go out of existence. If you want you can declare this the plan of a government seeking to control everything and everyone.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/27/2023 – 17:30

  • Biden To Fund New COVID Vaccine "For Everybody… Whether They've Gotten It Before Or Not"
    Biden To Fund New COVID Vaccine “For Everybody… Whether They’ve Gotten It Before Or Not”

    President Joe Biden on Friday told reporters that he’s planning to request more money from Congress to develop a new coronavirus vaccine.

    “I signed off this morning on a proposal we have to present to the Congress a request for additional funding for a new vaccine that is ne- — necessary — that works,” the official White House transcript reads.

    “Tentatively, it is recommended that — it will likely be recommended that everybody get it no matter whether they’ve gotten it before or not.“

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsThe announcement follows a recorded rise in Covid-19 cases in some regions, which has been accompanied by the return of mask mandates and cancelled classes by some colleges and businesses.

    New vaccines containing the version of the omicron strain XBB.1.5 are already being developed by Pfizer, Novavax and Moderna. However, the virus’s continuing mutation will likely necessitate updated vaccines.

    The Biden administration’s supplemental funding request for Congress for the start of the new fiscal year did not include COVID-19 vaccinations. Instead, the White House asked for roughly $40 billion to fund short-term key priorities such as more aide for Ukraine, federal disaster funds, climate change and border priorities. –The Hill

    Maybe this time it will actually be safe and effective? 

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

     

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/27/2023 – 17:00

  • Stockman: How The US Empire-First Policy Led To A Quagmire Of Forever Wars…
    Stockman: How The US Empire-First Policy Led To A Quagmire Of Forever Wars…

    Authored by David Stockman via Doug Casey’s International Man,

    When the Cold War officially ended suddenly in 1991 Washington had one more chance to pivot back to the pre-1914 status quo ante. That is, to a national security policy of Fortress America because there was literally no significant military threat left on the planet.

    Post-Soviet Russia was an economic basket case that couldn’t even meet its military payroll and was melting down and selling the Red Army’s tanks and artillery for scrap. China was just emerging from the Great Helmsman’s economic, political and cultural depredations and had embraced Deng Xiaoping proclamation that “to get rich is glorious”.

    The implications of the Red Army’s fiscal demise and China’s electing the path of export mercantilism and Red Capitalism were profound.

    Russia couldn’t invade the American homeland in a million years and China chose the route of flooding America with shoes, sheets, shirts, toys and electronics. So doing, it made the rule of the communist elites in Beijing dependent upon keeping the custom of 4,000 Walmarts in America, not bombing them out of existence.

    In a word, god’s original gift to America—the great moats of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans—could have again become the cornerstone of its national security.

    After 1991, therefore, there was no nation on the planet that had the remotest capability to mount a conventional military assault on the U.S. homeland; or that would not have bankrupted itself attempting to create the requisite air and sea-based power projection capabilities—a resource drain that would be vastly larger than even the $900 billion the US currently spends on its own global armada.

    Indeed, in the post-cold war world the only thing the US needed was a modest conventional capacity to defend the shorelines and North American airspace against any possible rogue assault and a reliable nuclear deterrent against any state foolish enough to attempt nuclear blackmail.

    Needless to say, those capacities had already been bought and paid for during the cold war. The triad of minutemen ICBMs, Trident SLBMs (submarines launched nuclear missiles) and long-range stealth bombers currently cost $52 billion annually for operations and maintenance, replacements and upgrades and were more than adequate for the task of nuclear deterrence.

    Likewise, conventional defense of the U.S. shoreline and airspace against rogues would not require a fraction of today’s 1.3 million active uniformed force—to say nothing of the 800,000 additional reserves and national guard forces and the 765,000 DOD civilians on top of that.

    Rather than funding 2.9 million personnel, the whole job of national security under a homeland-based Fortress America concept could be done with less than 500,000 military and civilian payrollers. At most.

    In fact, much of the 475,000 US army could be eliminated and most of the Navy’s carrier strike groups and power projection capabilities could be mothballed. So, too, the Air Force’s homeland defense missions could be accomplished for well less than $100 billion per annum compared to its current $200 billion budget.

    Overall, the constant dollar national defense budget was $660 billion (2022 $) when the cold war ended and the Soviet Union subsequently disappeared from the face of the earth in 1991. Had Washington pivoted to a Fortress America national security policy at the time, defense spending could have been downsized to perhaps $500 billion per year (2022 $) or potentially far less.

    Instead, Imperial Washington went in the opposite direction and ended up embracing a de facto policy of Empire First. The latter will cost $900 billion during the current year and is heading for $1.2 trillion billion annually a few years down the road.

    Empire First—-The Reason For An Extra Half Trillion For Defense

    In a word, Empire First easily consumes one-half trillion dollars more in annual budgetary resources than would a Fortress America policy. And that giant barrel of weapons contracts, consulting and support jobs, lobbying booty and Congressional pork explains everything you need to know about why the Swamp is so deep and intractable.

    Obviously, it’s also why Imperial Washington has appointed itself global policeman. Functioning as the gendarme of the planet is the only possible justification for the extra $500 billion per year cost of Empire First.

    For example, why does the US still deploy 100,000 US forces and their dependents in Japan and Okinawa and 29,000 in South Korea?

    These two counties have a combined GDP of nearly $7 trillion—or 235X more than North Korea and they are light-years ahead of the latter in technology and military capability. Also, they don’t go around the world engaging in regime change, thereby spooking fear on the north side of the DMZ.

    Accordingly, Japan and South Korea could more than provide for their own national security in a manner they see fit without any help whatsoever from Imperial Washington. That’s especially the case because absent the massive US military threat in the region, North Korea would surely seek a rapprochement and economic help from its neighbors including China.

    Indeed, sixty-five years after the unnecessary war in Korea ended, there is only one reason why the Kim family is still in power in Pyongyang and why periodically they have noisily brandished their incipient nuclear weapons and missiles. To wit, it’s because the Empire still occupies the Korean peninsula and surrounds its waters with more lethal firepower than was brought to bear against the industrial might of Nazi Germany during the whole of WWII.

    Of course, these massive and costly forces are also justified on the grounds of supporting Washington’s committements to the defense of Taiwan. But that commitment has always been obsolete and unnecessary to America’s homeland security.

    The fact is, Chiang Kia-Shek lost the Chinese civil war fair and square in 1949, and there was no reason to perpetuate his rag-tag regime when it retreated to the last square miles of Chinese territory—the island province of Taiwan. The latter had been under control of the Chinese Qing Dynasty for 200 years thru 1895, when it was occupied by the Imperial Japan for 50 years, only to be liberated by Chinese patriots at the end of WWII.

    That is to say, once Imperial Japan was expelled from the island the Chinese did not “invade” or occupy or takeover their own country. For crying out loud, Taiwan had been Han for centuries and for better or worse, the communists were now the rulers of China.

    Accordingly, Taiwan is separated from the mainland today only because Washington arbitrarily made it a protectorate and ally when the loser of the civil war set up shop in a small remnant of modern China, thereby establishing an artificial nation that, again, had no bearing whatsoever on America’s homeland security.

    In any event, the nascent US War Party of the late 1940s decreed otherwise, generating 70 years of tension with the Beijing regime that accomplished nothing except to bolster the case for a big Navy and for maintaining vast policing operations in the Pacific region for no good reason of homeland defense.

    That is to say, without Washington’s support for the nationalist regime in Taipei, the island would have been absorbed back into the Chinese polity where it had been for centuries. It would probably now resemble the booming prosperity of Shanghai—-something Wall Street and mainstream US politicians celebrated for years.

    Moreover, it’s still not too late. Absent Washington’s arms and threats, the Taiwanese would surely prefer peaceful prosperity as the 24th province of China rather than a catastrophic war against Beijing that they would have no hope of surviving.

    By the same token, the alternative—US military intervention to aid Taiwan—would mean WWIII. So what’s the point of Washington’s dangerous policy of “strategic ambiguity” when the long-term outcome is utterly inevitable?

    In short, the only sensible policy is for Washington to recant 70-years of folly brought on by the China Lobby and arms manufacturers and green-light a Taiwanese reconciliation with the mainland. Even a few years thereafter Wall Street bankers peddling M&A deals in Taipei wouldn’t know the difference from Shanghai.

    And speaking of foolishly frozen history, it is now 78 years since Hitler perished in his bunker. So why does Washington still have 50,000 troops and their dependents stationed in Germany?

    Certainly by it own actions Germany does not claim to be militarily imperiled. It’s modest $55 billion defense budget amounts to only 1.3% of GDP, hardly an indication that it fears Russian forces will soon be at the Brandenburg Gate.

    Indeed, until Washington conned the Scholz government into joining its idiotic sanctions war against Russia, Germany saw Russia as a vital market for its exports and as a source of supply for natural gas, other natural resources and food stuffs. Besides, with a GDP of $4.2 trillion or more than double Russia’s $2.1 trillion GDP, Germany could more than handle its own defenses if Moscow should ever become foolish enough to threaten it.

    From there you get to the even more preposterous case for the Empire’s NATO outposts in eastern Europe. But the history books are absolutely clear that in 1989 George H. W. Bush and his Secretary of State, James Baker, promised Gorbachev that NATO would not be expanded to the east by a “single inch” in return for his acquiescence to German unification.

    The Obsolete Folly Of NATO’s Article 5 Mutual Defense Obligations

    At the time, NATO had 16 member nations bound by the Article 5 obligation of mutual defense, but when the Soviet Union and the Red Army vanished, there was nothing left to defend against. NATO should have declared victory and dissolved itself. The ex-paratrooper then in the White House, in fact, could have landed at the Ramstein Air Base and announced “mission accomplished!”

    Instead, NATO has become a political jackhammer and weapons sales agent for Empire First policies by expanding to 30 nations—many of them on Russia’s doorstep.

    Yet if your perception is not distorted by Washington’s self-justifying imperial beer-goggles, the question is obvious. Exactly what is gained for the safety and security of the citizens of Lincoln NE or Springfield MA by obtaining the defense services of the pint-sized militaries of Latvia (6,000), Croatia (14,500), Estonia (6,400), Slovenia (7,300) or Montenegro (1,950)?

    Indeed, the whole post-1991 NATO expansion is so preposterous as a matter of national security that its true function as a fig-leaf for Empire First fairly screams out-loud. Not one of these pint-sized nations would matter for US security if they decided to have a cozier relationship with Russia—voluntarily or not so voluntarily.

    But the point is, there is no threat to America in eastern Europe unless such as Montenegro, Slovenia, or Latvia were to become Putin’s invasion route to effect the Russian occupation of Germany, France, the Benelux and England.

    And that’s just plain silly-ass crazy!

    Yet aside from that utterly far-fetched and economically and militarily impossible scenario, there is no reason whatsoever for the US to be in a mutual defense pact with any of the new, and, for that matter, old NATO members.

    And that gets us to the patently bogus proxy war on Russia in which the nation of Ukraine is being turned into a demolition derby and its population of both young and older men is being frog-marched into the Russian meat-grinder.

    But as we have documented elsewhere this is a civil war in an artificial nation confected by history’s greatest tyrants—Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev, too. It was never built to last, and most definitely didn’t after the Washington sponsored, funded and instantly recognized Maidan coup of February 2014 deposed its legitimately elected pro-Russian president.

    Thereafter, Russia’s actions in recovering its former province of Crimea in March 2014 and coming to the aid of the break-away Russian-speaking republics of the Donbas (eastern Ukraine) in February 2022 did not threaten the security of the American homeland or the peace of the world. Not one bit.

    The post-February 2014 conflict in Ukraine is a “territorial”, ethnic and religious dispute over deep differences between Russian-speakers in the east and south of the country and Ukrainian nationalists from the center and west that are rooted in centuries of history.

    The resulting carnage, as tragic as it has been, does not prove in the slightest that Russia is an aggressive expansionist that must be thwarted by the Indispensable Nation. To the contrary, Washington’s imperial beer goggles are utterly blind to history and geopolitical logic.

    In the first place, the history books make abundantly clear that Sevastopol in Crimea had been the home-port of the Russian Naval Fleet under czars and commissars alike. Crimea had been purchased from the Ottoman’s for good money by Catherine the Great in 1783 and was the site of one of Russia greatest patriotic events—-the defeat of the English invaders in 1854 made famous by Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade.

    After 171 years as an integral part of the Russian Motherland and having become more than 80% Russian-speaking, Crimea only technically became part of Ukraine during a Khrushchev inspired shuffle in 1954. And even then, the only reason for this late communist era territorial transfer was to reward Khrushchev’s allies in Kiev for supporting him in the bloody struggle for power after Stalin’s death.

    The fact is, only 10% of the Crimean population is Ukrainian speaking. It was the coup on the streets of Kiev in February 2014 by extremist anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalists and proto-fascists that caused the Russian speakers in Crimea to panic and Moscow to become alarmed about the status of its historic naval base, for which it still had a lease running to the 2040s.

    In the Moscow sponsored referendum that occurred shortly thereafter, 83% of eligible Crimeans turned out to vote and 97% of those approved cancelling the aforementioned 1954 edict of the Soviet Presidium and rejoining mother Russia. There is absolutely no evidence that the 80% of Crimeans who thus voted to sever their historically short-lived affiliation with Ukraine were threatened or coerced by Moscow.

    Indeed, what they actually feared—both in Crimea and in the Donbas where the breakaway Republics were also soon declared—was the anti-Russian edicts coming out of Kiev in the aftermath of the Washington orchestrated overthrow of the legally elected government.

    After all, the good folks of what the historical maps designated as Novorussiya (New Russia) populated what had been the industrial breadbasket of the former Soviet Union. The Donbas and the southern rim on the Black Sea had always been an integral part of Russia’s iron, steel, chemical, coal and munitions industries, having been settled, developed and invested by Russians under Czars from Catherine the Great forwards. And in Soviet times many of their grandparents had been put there by Stalin from elsewhere in Russia to reinforce his bloody rule.

    By the same token, these Russian settlers and transplants in Novorussiya forever hated the Ukrainian nationalist collaborators from the west, who rampaged though their towns, farms, factories and homes side-by-side with Hitler’s Wehrmacht on the way to Stalingrad.

    So the appalling truth of the matter was this: By Washington’s edict the grandsons and granddaughters of Stalin’s industrial army in the Donbas were to be ruled by the grandsons and granddaughters of Hitler’s WWII collaborators in Kiev, whether they liked it or not. Alas, that repudiation of history could not stand.

    So we repeat and for good reason: You simply can’t make up $500 billion worth of phony reasons for an Empire First national security policy without going off the deep-end. You have to invent missions, mandates and threats that are just plain stupid (like the proxy war against Russia in the Ukraine) or flat out lies (like Saddam’s alleged WMDs).

    Indeed, you must invent, nourish and enforce an entire universal narrative based on completely implausible and invalid propositions, such as the “Indispensable Nation” meme and the claim that global peace and stability depend overwhelmingly on Washington’s leadership.

    Yet, is there not a more cruel joke than that?

    Was the Washington inflicted carnage and genocide in Vietnam—which resulted in the death of upwards of one million—- a case of “American leadership” and making the world more peaceful or stable?

    And after losing this costly, bloody, insensible war to the communists in 1975, how is it that what is still communist Vietnam has become the go-to place to source low-cost manufactured goods needed by tens of thousands of Amazon’s delivery trucks and mass market retail emporiums operating from coast-to-coast in America today?

    Likewise, did the two wars against Iraq accomplish anything except destroy the tenuous peace between the Sunni, Shiite and Kurds, thereby opening up the gates of hell and the bloody rampages of ISIS?

    Did the billions Washington illegally channeled into the rebel and jihadist forces in Syria do anything except destroy the country, create millions of refugees and encourage the Assad regime to engage in tit-for-tat brutalities, as well as call-in aid from its Iranian, Russian and Hezbollah allies?

    Did not the destruction of Qaddafi’s government by American bombers turn Libya into a hell-hole of war-lord based civil war and human abuse and even enslavement?

    In a word, Imperial Washington’s over-arching narratives and the instances of its specific interventions alike rest on a threadbare and implausible foundation; and more often than not, they consist of arrogant fabrications and claims that are an insult to the intelligence of anyone paying even loose attention to the facts.

    In this context, there is only one way to meaningfully move the needle on both Washington’s hegemonic foreign policy and its giant flow of red budgetary ink. To wit, the American military empire needs be dismantled lock, stock and barrel. Fortunately, a return to the idea of Fortress America and what we have called the Eisenhower Defense Minimum can accomplish exactly that.

    When president Eisenhower gave his prescient warning about the military-industrial complex in his 1961 farewell address, the US defense budget stood at $52 billion and it totaled $64 billion when you add in the collateral elements of national security that round out the full fiscal cost of empire. These include the State Department, AID, security assistance, NED, international broadcasting propaganda operations and related items, as well as the deferred cost of military operations reflected in Veterans Administration costs for compensation, health care and other services.

    By the end of the cold war in 1991 this comprehensive national security budget had risen to $340 billion, but was not to be denied by the mere fact that the Soviet Union disappeared into the dustbin of history that year. The neocons soon infiltrated both parties and owing to their Forever Wars and hegemony-seeking policies the total had soared to $822 billion by the end of the Obama “peace” candidate’s presidency in 2016.

    Yet the uniparty was just getting warmed-up. After being goosed big time by both Trump and Biden, the current estimate for FY 2024 stands at a staggering $1.304 trillion. That is to say, the comprehensive cost of empire now stands at a level 20X higher than what the great peace-oriented general, Dwight D. Eisenhower, believed was adequate to contain the threat posed by the old Soviet Union at the peak of its industrial and military power in 1960.

    Yes, 64 years on from Ike’s farewell address there has been a whole lot of inflation, which is embedded in the slightly different NIPA basis for the defense numbers in the chart below. But even when adjusted to the current price level, the defense budget proper stood at just $440 billion in 1960 compared to $900 billion today; and the comprehensive national security budget totaled just $590 billion or only 45% of today’s $1.304 trillion.

    National Defense Spending, NIPA Basis 1960 to 2022

    As we indicated earlier, the Eisenhower Defense Minimum, rounded to $500 billion in today’s purchasing power, is far more than adequate in a world where America’s homeland security is not threatened by a technological and industrial superpower having even remote parity with the United States and its NATO allies. The combined $45 trillion GDP of the latter is 20X larger than that of Russia and nearly 3X that of China, which is itself a debt-entombed house of cards that would not last a year without its $3.5 trillion of exports to the west.

    Stated differently, the old Soviet Union was autarkic but internally brittle and grotesquely inefficient and unsustainable. Red China, by contrast, is far more efficient industrially, but also has $50 trillion of internal and external debts and a thoroughly mercantilist economic model that makes it is utterly dependent on western markets. So its strategic vulnerability is no less conclusive.

    At the end of the day, neither Russia nor China have the economic capacity—say $50 trillion of GDP—-or motivation to attack the American homeland with conventional military means. The vast invasionary armada of land and air forces, air and sealift capacity and massive logistics supply pipelines that would be needed to bridge the two ocean moats is virtually beyond rational imagination.

    So what ultimately keeps America safe is its nuclear deterrent. As long as that is in tact and effective, there is no conceivable form of nuclear blackmail that could be used to jeopardize the security and liberty of the homeland.

    Yet according to CBO’s latest study the current annual cost of the strategic deterrent, as we indicated above, is just $52 billion. This includes $13 billion for the ballistic missile submarine force, $7 billion for the land-based ICBMs and $6 billion for the strategic bomber force. On top of that there is also $13 billion to maintain the nuclear weapons stockpiles, infrastructure and supporting services and $11 billion for strategic nuclear command and control, communications and early warnings systems.

    In all, and after allowing for normal inflation and weapons development costs, CBOs 10-year estimate for the strategic nuclear deterrent is just $756 billion. That happens to be only 7.0% of the $10 trillion baseline for the 10-year cost of today’s “Empire First” defense budget and only 5.0% of the $15 trillion national security baseline when you include international operations and veterans.

    A return to the Eisenhower Minimum of $500 billion per year for defense proper over the next decade would thus save in excess of $4 trillion over the period. And these cuts would surely be readily extractable from the $9 trillion CBO baseline for defense spending excluding the strategic forces.

    As we indicated above, for instance, there would be no need for 11 carrier battle groups including their air-wings, escort and support ships and supporting infrastructure under a Fortress America policy. Those forces are sitting ducks in this day and age anyway, but are only necessary for force projection abroad and wars of invasion and occupation. The American coastline and interior, by contrast, can be protected by land-based air.

    Yet according to another CBO study the 10-year baseline cost for the Navy’s 11 carrier battle groups will approach $1 trillion alone. Likewise, the land forces of the US Army will cost $2 trillion and that’s again mainly for the purpose of force projection abroad.

    As Senator Taft and his original Fortress America supporters long ago recognized, overwhelming air superiority over the North American continent is what is actually necessary for homeland security. But even that would require only a small part of the current $1.5 trillion 10-year cost of US Air Force operations, which are heavily driven by global force projection capacities.

    At the end of the day a $4 trillion reduction in national security spending over the next decade is more than feasible and long overdue. It only requires tossing the Indispensable Nation myth into the dustbin of history where it has belonged all along.

    Editor’s Note: The amount of money the US government spends on foreign aid, wars, the so-called intelligence community, and other aspects of foreign policy is enormous and ever-growing.

    It’s an established trend in motion that is accelerating, and now approaching a breaking point. It could cause the most significant disaster since the 1930s.

    Most people won’t be prepared for what’s coming. That’s precisely why bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent video with all the details. Click here to watch it now.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/27/2023 – 16:30

  • News Industry Behemoth Sued For Discrimination Against White Employees
    News Industry Behemoth Sued For Discrimination Against White Employees

    The largest newspaper publisher in the United States, Gannett Co., is being sued for discriminating against white workers in their efforts to ‘diversify’ newsrooms.

    The proposed class action was filed in West Virginia federal court on Friday by five current and former Gannett employees who say they were either fired or passed over for promotions for ‘less-qualified women and minorities.’

    According to the Free Beacon, the root of the discrimination stems from a 2020 announcement under which the company aims to reshape its newsrooms to reflect the demographics of the communities they cover by 2025 – as well as tying executive bonuses and promotions to achieving that goal.

    “Gannett executed their reverse race discrimination policy with a callous indifference towards civil rights laws or the welfare of the workers, and prospective workers, whose lives would be upended by it,” according to the plaintiffs.

    Gannet defended itself, with chief legal counsel Poly Grunfeld Sack saying in a statement: “We will vigorously defend our practice of ensuring equal opportunities for all our valued employees against this meritless lawsuit.”

    The lawsuit comes amid growing backlash to increasingly prevalent corporate diversity policies. Unlike other pending cases brought by conservative groups, the claims against Gannett were filed directly by the company’s employees.

    The Washington Free Beacon reported last month that discriminatory fellowships and programs, which companies often establish on the basis of elite law firms’ “civil rights” advice, are now prime targets for legal scrutiny since the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions in June.

    These programs “are lawsuits waiting to happen,” Noah Peters, the former solicitor of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, told the Free Beacon. -Free Beacon

    Gannet joins a growing list of institutions and businesses facing lawsuits for reverse-discrimination, including law schools, Starbucks, Target, and Progressive Insurance company. More than a dozen complaints have been filed with a federal anti-bias agency by a group founded by former Trump administration officials.

    Meanwhile, a group formed by conservative activist Edward Blum, who spearheaded the Supreme Court case that ended affirmative action, sued two major US law firms over fellowships offered only to non-whites and LGBT individuals.

    In the Gannett case, plaintiff Steven Bradley says he was fired from a management job at the Democrat and Chronicle newspaper in Rochester, New York – and then subsequently passed over for a different position within Gannett due to the color of his skin. In April, Bradley filed a similar lawsuit in New York state court.

    Another plaintiff, Logan Berry, says he was passed over for a promotion at the Progress-Index in Petersburg, VA. After Gannett acquired the paper in 2019, Berry says the news giant gave the job to a less qualified black woman in violation of a federal law prohibiting racial discrimination in contracts.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/27/2023 – 16:00

  • The AirBnB Bubble Popping Will Pop The Housing Bubble
    The AirBnB Bubble Popping Will Pop The Housing Bubble

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    This is how bubbles collapse: the “vital few” 4% sell at whatever the market will bear, pushing prices down, and the 64% awaken to the rapidly narrowing window for locking in bubble capital gains.

    Here’s how we can tell if a speculative bubble is a bubble: everyone says it isn’t a bubble – the market has reached a “permanently high plateau” because valuations are now fairly priced, etc.

    Housing globally is in a bubble (See chart below) which we’re constantly assured isn’t a bubble. As I discussed yesterday ( The Problem Isn’t a Housing Shortage, It’s the Concentration of Ownership by the Wealthy), this bubble is fundamentally an artifact of central bank and government policies that enrich the already-rich, who were incentivized to outbid each other with low-cost credit to snap up “investment properties” with their “surplus capital” that generate more income and capital gains that cash, which until recently was “trash” due to near-zero savings yields.

    Many wealthy families collect multiple properties via inheritance, as second (vacation) homes or as long-term rentals. This hoarding is (as I explained) the only possible result of policies that asymmetrically distribute credit, and thus income and capital gains, to the already-wealthy rather than to the not-yet-wealthy. This policy-driven hoarding / concentration of housing in the top 10% is one factor driving rents higher due to artificial scarcity–a scarcity created by central bank and government policies, not the “market.”

    (Regulations and bureaucratic friction that push the cost of new constriction to the moon are another factor, but that’s a topic for another post. I also want to stipulate that I am not talking about people of modest means who acquired rental properties by scrimping and saving their earned income and making sacrifices for decades–a strategy that is part of Self-Reliance; I’m talking about the already-wealthy who are seeking to “maximize returns” on their unearned “surplus capital.”)

    A systemic driver of this bidding war for rental properties is the “AirBnB” model of monetizing individual properties to compete with hotels and resorts for lodging. This model is called short-term vacation rentals (STVR), and the already-rich have been pouring their wealth into STVRs for the past 15 years.

    This has led to an artificial scarcity of housing in popular tourist destinations. It’s not uncommon to visit tourist-magnet cities and see entire buildings with only a few lights on, as many units are owned by the wealthy and left empty, as rents are not as important as having a safe place to “park surplus capital.” Thousands of other units have been pulled from the long-term rental market to reap the higher returns of STVRs.

    Many cities and locales are finally pushing back against the housing hoarding of the global wealthy, taxing empty units and limiting and/or licensing STVRs.

    As I explained yesterday, the flood of post-pandemic price-insensitive “revenge spending” pushed tourist lodging rates to the moon as resorts and STVRs competed on exploiting price-insensitive tourists.

    What’s often forgotten about real estate is prices are set on the margin. The Pareto Distribution is a handy tool for understanding how an entire neighborhood’s home prices are re-set by a mere handful of sales.

    The Pareto Distribution is often summarized as the 80/20 Rule. The 80/20 rule can be distilled down to 80% of 80% and 20% of 20% to the 64/4 Rule: the “vital few” 4% exert outsized influence over the 64% mass. So 4% of sales can re-set the valuation of 64% of all neighboring houses.

    So 40 houses selling for around $450,000 will re-set the valuation of 1,000 nearby homes from $800,000 to $450,000. This is why an apparently modest number of fire sales of money-losing STVRs will dissolve the floor under bubble valuations.

    The STVR bubble was entirely an artifact of 1) historically absurdly low mortgage rates and 2) post-pandemic price-insensitive “revenge spending”. Both are over. There is no way the bottom 90% can afford homes at today’s bubble valuations, so the pool of buyers is limited to the top 10% already-wealthy, whose appetite for owning “surplus capital” rentals vanishes once the lofty weekly rates and low vacancies reverse into high vacancies and collapsing rental rates.

    The bottom 90% have tapped out their pandemic windfalls and their lines of credit. The erosion of the global economy will deflate bonuses, capital gains and all the other sources of the top 10% “wealth effect,” and credit will tighten as risk aversion and higher rates turn the spigot of easy credit off for the already-wealthy.

    The collapse of the STVR bubble will topple a line of dominoes as corporate owners will awaken from their fantasies and realize they better sell now to lock in their gains before they vanish. Wealthy households who “land-banked” properties for capital gains and places to park “surplus capital” will also awaken to the the need to lock in gains by selling.

    This is how bubbles collapse: the “vital few” 4% sell at whatever the market will bear, pushing prices down, and the 64% awaken to the rapidly narrowing window for locking in bubble capital gains. This rush for the exits triggers a strike in buyers, who realize there is no way to know how low valuations will fall, and so waiting for a bottom makes much more sense that playing “catch the knife,” i.e. buying as a bubble deflates, hoping you don’t get burned by prices falling after overpaying.

    *  *  *

    My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century. Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/27/2023 – 15:30

  • New York Spending $20 Million Per Month To House Migrants On Randall's Island
    New York Spending $20 Million Per Month To House Migrants On Randall’s Island

    The city of New York is spending $20 million per month to house approximately 3,000 asylum seekers – 50% more than expected, after expanding its controversial migrant complex on Randall’s Island.

    The site, which will consist of five dormitory-style tents, has already begun housing more than 350 migrants after its opening last week, Gothamist reports.

    Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky

    According to city officials, the high occupancy rate is alarming.

    “I think New Yorkers are understanding that that’s not sustainable,” said Anne Williams-Isom, the deputy mayor for health and human services, at the city’s weekly migrant briefing on Wednesday (per Gothamist). “Even with the good work that we’re doing, I don’t know that we’re really going to be able to keep up.”

    Officials also report that the NYC shelter system is now caring for more than 110,900 people, which includes more than 59,300 migrants, and they’re scrambling to find more space to house everyone.

    The crisis is spurring officials to open more shelters to house the migrants. Gov. Kathy Hochul recently announced that after months of trying, she received federal approval from the White House to use Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field as a shelter.

    While that’s welcome news for city officials, they continued to paint a bleak picture of the situation on Wednesday. The migrant relief center on Randall’s Island is expected to house up to 3,000 people, while Creedmoor can hold up to 1,000. -Gothamist

    New arrivals at the Randall’s Island shelter are being paired with case workers to assist them in various goals – such as reuniting them with US relatives, or helping other family members come to NYC, according to Dr. Ted Long, senior vice president at NYC Health + Hospitals.

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

    Officials are also grappling with school-aged migrant children who will need to be enrolled in taxpayer-funded classes.

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

    Locals are pissed

    NIMBY New Yorkers in the ultra-blue state aren’t happy, particularly because the migrants are taking up space on heavily-used athletic fields that ‘help keep NYC kids off the streets.’

    One of Mayor Eric Adams’ own top commissioners, Vilda Vera Mayuga, head of the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, has even circulated petitions to try to block the use of the youth soccer fields for the mega-shelter facility. –NY Post

    “We’re taking away from people who are real New Yorkers,” said Odalisa Abiles, a 47-year-old legal assistant from Queens who was at a family barbecue on Randall’s Island on Sunday (per the Post). “I was born here, on the Lower East Side, and you’re telling me they come first? How is that?”

    “I pay my tax money, federal, local, all that beautifulness, and my children don’t get to enjoy New York.“

    Well Odalisa, did you vote for politicians who declared New York a sanctuary city?

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/27/2023 – 15:00

  • The Simple Case For Favoring Real Assets Over Financial Ones Today
    The Simple Case For Favoring Real Assets Over Financial Ones Today

    Authored by Jesse Felder via TheFelderReport.com,

    Rapidly rising real interest rates suggest the stock market is severely mispriced.

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

    Perhaps investors are simply expecting a return to ultra-low interest rates in the near future but that belief may be misguided.

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

    Because there are structural issues behind the recent move higher in interest rates and they show no sign of improving any time soon.

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

    For this reason, it may be an opportune time to consider real assets versus financial ones, especially due to the fact that they have never been cheaper than they are today.

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

    And it’s a bit ironic to read of all the troubles in the Chinese economy lately when markets suggest the real troubles are right here at home.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 08/27/2023 – 14:30

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Aug 27

Today’s News 27th August 2023

  • From COVID To Climate Change: Vehicles For Global Authoritarianism
    From COVID To Climate Change: Vehicles For Global Authoritarianism

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    As I have noted in the past, the western world came within a knife’s edge of being completely subjugated and placed under perpetual medical tyranny by a coalition of government officials, globalist interests and corporate partners. Liberty movement analysts have talked often of “open conspiracy,” but it was not until the pandemic response that we truly witnessed the mask come off and the greater agenda revealed.

    Not more than five years ago the most common retort from skeptics was that such a conspiracy was “impossible” because it was “too elaborate to organize.” Today these people look rather foolish. It is undeniable – There is a cabal of power elites, they are highly organized around the globalist ideology and they want total centralized control of society. It is an immutable fact supported by endless proof. The debate is over. The covid response ended it.

    The list of crimes against civil liberties is long. The establishment and the political left (with the help of a handful of Neocons) tried to implement unprecedented authoritarian measures from business and church shutdowns to forced masking (studies show the masks are useless) to forced vaccination using experimental mRNA products with no long term safety testing. In some countries (including New Zealand and Australia) covid camps were actually built to imprison not just citizens traveling overseas, but non-traveling citizens as well. Legislation to build such camps was pushed in the US.

    A large percentage of Democrats in polls supported even more extreme policies, including:

    55% of Democrats wanted fines for unvaxxed Americans.
    59% of Democrats wanted the unvaccinated forcefully confined to their homes.
    48% of Democrats wanted prison time for anyone that questioned the vaccines.
    47% of Democrats were in favor of government tracking of the unvaxxed.
    29% of Democrats were in favor or taking children away from the unvaxxed.

    So, if someone tells you there “are no sides” and that the conflict is an illusion created by the “false left/right paradigm,” you know they are full of manure. There are definitely sides and the globalists are not our only concern. And though there are always nuances to take into consideration, exceptions to the rule do not change the rule.

    As many leftists openly admitted during the mandates, the goal was to make life so miserable for the unvaccinated that they would eventually comply in order to survive. In this way, establishment elites and leftists could claim that people “volunteered” for the vaccines and no one was forced. What they really meant was, no one was forced at gunpoint, but we all knew that threat was coming next.

    Keep in mind that all of these measures were rationalized in the name of “saving lives.” No lives were saved by the mandates. The official median infection fatality rate of covid is a mere 0.23%. In other words, all of these constitutional violations were attempted over a virus that 99.8% of people would inevitably catch and easily survive. I continue to suspect that the establishment expected covid to kill far more people than it did – When lab created diseases get out into the wild they change rapidly, usually evolving to be more infectious but less deadly.

    The cabal is not all powerful and certainly not infallible. They make mistakes often. The covid agenda relied on multiple disjointed factors that were difficult to predict and most of them had to work in tandem. One of those factors was the dependency on the political left (a group of weaklings) to act as useful idiots and mob enforcers. Frankly, leftists just aren’t frightening enough to inspire compliance.

    Another factor was the assumption that the response of conservative and independent free thinkers would be limited and easy to control. Finally, most if not all state governments in the US had to enforce the mandates for the duration.

    Globalists seem to have greatly underestimated the potential resistance to their agenda, specifically in the US where 50 million+ armed citizens were ready to go to war over the draconian restrictions. I think the vaccine passports were the KEY to the scheme; vax passports would have given the establishment full spectrum dominance of the economy with people unable to get jobs or purchase necessities without submitting to the mandates.

    It was here that many conservatives, independents and dozens of red states (to my surprise) made their stand, and suddenly, like magic, the covid hysteria vanished. The media propaganda campaign went quiet (compared to the previous two years), and the mandates were abandoned in most places around the world. The globalists were not ready to risk a fight against a massive insurgency.

    It has been suggested that the covid agenda is about to make a comeback with a new hyped up strain of the virus. If this is the case, then the attempt will hit a wall. With even more Americans aware of the pointlessness of the mandates and the masks it is unlikely to gain much traction. Of course, as long as the people behind these schemes remain unpunished, they will be free to try again and again until something sticks.

    Government agencies and officials like Anthony Fauci remain unpunished for their numerous covid lies. Joe Biden remains unpunished for his attempts to supplant the Bill of Rights. The mainstream media and Big Tech companies remain unpunished for their collusion in propaganda and censorship efforts.

    And, let’s not gloss over the fact that Donald Trump promoted the fast-tracked mRNA vaccine programs (I will admit that as far as I know he never called for people to be forced to comply).

    He also placed many technocrats and globalists within his own cabinet who would later go on to help institute authoritarian policies. How much these people influenced him or lied to him is up for debate, but his current prosecution does not negate his role leading up to the lockdowns. If there is an election in 2024 and Trump re-enters the White House, remember that no president is going to save us from this fight, we must save ourselves.

    The goal of the globalists will be to move swiftly into other crisis events, whether real or fabricated, to bring the population to heel. Enter today’s climate change hysteria…

    The covid agenda and the climate change agenda are very similar in that they rely on a core fallacy. The lie is that these events are actually dictated by human behavior, and thus human behavior must be controlled in the name of the “greater good.” The idea goes beyond this, though, into the realm of collectivism; for the globalists and leftists assert that each individual action affects the lives of the rest of the population in a great and unedning hive. Therefore, every single person must have their lives micromanaged by the state to prevent some kind of chain reaction that leads to catastrophe for the precious bug colony.

    This was the claim during the covid farce, and it’s also the claim for climate change and carbon restrictions. They have fabricated yet another excuse for eliminating personal freedoms. For covid it was the air we each breath out that would supposedly destroy public health, and for climate change it is once again the air we breath out that will supposedly destroy the world. Coincidence? I think not.

    During the lockdowns, numerous globalists and globalist connected climate researchers publicly expressed joy at the suggestion that covid lockdowns could be useful for reducing carbon emissions. The phrase “climate lockdowns” started circulating around major conferences and in various globalist funded studies.

    These studies obviously show a precipitous drop in human based carbon emissions during the lockdowns, but still do not provide any evidence that man-made emissions actually cause climate changes. This remains the underlying con game of the climate narrative – Climate researchers with access to billions in government funds and think-tank funds happily operate on the ASSUMPTION that emissions cause warming, when in fact they have zero evidence to support this position. Correlation is not causation.

    This summer, the media has been relentlessly pounding the climate propaganda drum to a degree that mimics the covid propaganda of a couple years ago.  The nihilistic reports of impending “global boiling” are built upon a house of cards.  Almost all climate crisis claims are based on records of a little over 100 years old. The Earth’s climate history is vast and there have been numerous warming periods much hotter than today. All of these warming events occurred during periods of ample animal and plant life and without human industry to blame.

    he climate bogeyman is nothing more than another covid-like fraud, a vehicle for grabbing power and erasing our freedoms. There is no threat, and even if there was there is nothing that human beings could do about it since we have no bearing whatsoever on the course of the Earth’s temperatures. The world’s climate has been changing for millions of years, and there is no difference between the changes of today vs the changes of the past.

    The globalists know that to achieve the “new world order” or the “great reset” they desire, a large percentage of the population has to be onboard. And since most people have a measure of conscience as well as self interest, their enslavement has to be presented as a positive.  Tthey must be made to believe that by embracing slavery they are saving the planet and the lives of others.

    None of this is true of course, but as long as the populace thinks they are doing good they can often be manipulated into supporting immense evil.

    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
    Sat, 08/26/2023 – 23:30

  • Friend Or Foe? How BRICS Partners View China
    Friend Or Foe? How BRICS Partners View China

    While the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa tried to demonstrate unity at the 15th BRICS summit in Johannesburg, the group is not as tightly knit as this week’s event and the lofty rhetoric employed afterwards would suggest. “BRICS has embarked on a new chapter in its effort to build a world that is fair, a world that is just, a world that is also inclusive and prosperous,” South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa said, describing the bloc as “an equal partnership of countries that have differing views but have a shared vision for a better world.” Although it remains to be seen how equal the partnership will be considering the economic dominance of China within the group.

    However, as Statista’s Felix Richter notes, according to the Pew Research Center’s latest Global Attitudes Survey, China is seen quite critically in some fellow BRICS countries, with Indians in particular having a very critical view of their powerful neighbor. 50 percent of Indian respondents claimed to have a very unfavorable opinion of China, with another 17 percent viewing China somewhat unfavorably. Relations between the two countries have been worsening for several years over tensions along their ill-defined 2,100-mile border in the Himalayan region. 48 percent of Indians claimed to have no confidence at all in Xi Jinping to do the right thing regarding world affairs, while 58 percent said that wouldn’t take Indian interests into account when making international policy decisions.

    Brazilians showed similar levels of suspicion with respect to cooperation with China. While 50 percent of Brazilian respondents said that China wouldn’t take their country’s interest into account, 67 percent expressed little to no confidence in Xi Jinping to do the right thing at the global political stage. That translates to 48 percent of Brazilian respondents having a very or somewhat negative opinion of China, up from just 27 percent in 2019.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/26/2023 – 23:00

  • 7 Reasons Why 'The China Crisis' Has Finally Arrived
    7 Reasons Why ‘The China Crisis’ Has Finally Arrived

    Authored by James Gorrie via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    As predicted in my book, “The China Crisis,” China’s economic structure is proving to be unsustainable.

    In my last post, I argued why the China Evergrande bankruptcy is not the end of the economic crisis in China but just the beginning.

    Knowing that such predictions have been made in the past by China observers, including yours truly, why should anyone think that it’s happening today?

    A bit of historical context helps provide an answer to this question.

    Unfinished apartment buildings in Xinzheng city in Zhengzhou, China’s central Henan Province, on June 20, 2023. (Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty Images)

    In 2012, I was asked by Wiley & Sons to write a book on China’s economic structure from my contrarian point of view. You may or may not recall that, at the time, China was the economic marvel of the world. Unlike most observers, I could see several critical problems with China’s political economy model and wrote about them in “The China Crisis.”

    I identified seven key areas—given the basis upon which China or, more accurately, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) operated—that made China’s economic model unsustainable. I wasn’t the first to see this. Gordon Chang wrote about it in 2001 in his book, “The Coming Collapse of China.” Mr. Chang predicted a collapse by 2011, which, of course, did not occur. This is an update of sorts.

    Instead, China’s economic clout and technological prowess continue to grow and develop. That explains why, at that time and for the next seven years, all kinds of terms were coined to describe China’s burgeoning economic status. There was the “Beijing Miracle,” “The China Model,” “Chinese State Capitalism,” and other glowing pronouncements that gave near-unanimous affirmation of China’s progress and prognosis for a bright future.

    In fact, many experts, economists, and observers were predicting that China’s state capitalism would be the model for emerging nations around the world because of how fast it had transformed China’s economy. It was also predicted that China would soon eclipse the United States in GDP and replace it as the global hegemon.

    Regarding this last prediction, it’s important to acknowledge that it appears as if it’s actually coming to fruition. In that regard, however, keep in mind that it’s mostly due to U.S. policy failures rather than what China is doing.

    But even our leaders’ traitorous actions that have aided our adversaries in Beijing can’t compete with or prevent the venal nature and deleterious policies that the CCP has inflicted upon the Chinese people for many decades. The United States and other Western nations’ financial and technological investments have certainly delayed the inevitable but won’t stop it.

    At its root, of course, is the corrosive nature of corruption. For the CCP, corruption in the form of political graft, wholesale theft from the private sector, and abuse of the financial system are the means to maintain control and gain wealth. Obtaining absolute power is the end goal, not a healthy economy.

    Below is a brief look at how seven factors erode the social and economic sustainability in China.

    1. Excessive Overuse of Factors of Production

    When greasing the palms of Party officials is the main requirement for a project or policy, waste and fraud are not only unavoidable but lead to inefficiency in leveraging factors of production. In 2013, China used 10 times more factors of production than the United States to produce the same product. Has that improved? It’s hard to say, as accurate statistics that reflect poorly on the CCP and Xi Jinping, in particular, are difficult to find.

    2. Inefficient Allocation of Economic Goods, Activity

    This is related to No. 1 and is manifested in many ways, such as the theft of profitable companies by the Party and turning them into inefficient, debt-ridden “zombie” state-owned enterprises that destroy value and efficiency. It also transfers wealth from the middle class to the Party elite.

    3. Stifling Innovation in Middle Class

    Lack of freedom of information and the punishment of violators stifles innovation and creativity. Individuals are not allowed to solve problems by themselves. Successful private firms can count on being confiscated by the state at some point. Successful entrepreneurs who speak out about the abuses of the CCP are disappeared and reeducated. This engenders total fear of and reliance upon the state, both of which are what the CCP wants. Crushing individual creativity and innovation stifles a nation’s greatest resource—its people.

    A beggar sits in front of a government propaganda at a railway station in Beijing on March 2, 2014. Developed economies are based on a broad middle class—precisely what has not been attained in China. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

    4. Lack of Enforcement of Regulations, Standards

    From critical areas such as food production to pharmaceuticals, corners are cut, and quality is compromised. Over the years, this not only negatively impacts the health and safety of the people, but it undercuts the authority and legitimacy of the Party.

    5. A False Economy: Debt-based ‘Growth’ Is a Cancer on Economy

    In a capitalist economy, most development is based on market need, which is determined by local prices and market conditions, which then attract capital. Distorted “development” driven by political expediency isn’t development but a waste of time, money, and resources.

    The Evergrande collapse is a prime example of the CCP’s distortion of the economy. China’s overreliance on overdevelopment could be compared to healthy growth in muscle tissue from working out versus that of a cancerous tumor from exposure to toxicity. The former builds up strength and vitality; the latter destroys it. Thus, at some point, even state-owned debt from a state-owned central bank becomes unsustainable.

    6. Rampant Pollution Making China Unlivable, Causing Social Unrest

    China is one of the worst polluters in the world. For example, it is rapidly losing its arable land to toxicity from mining, manufacturing, and desertification. This is happening because decades of state ownership have led to indifference about what happens to the natural resources, also known as the “tragedy of the commons.” Losing arable land by either toxicity or desertification is not easily reversible and leads to greater dependence on external food sources to feed itself.

    A pipe releases wastewater into fields surrounding a dairy farm (not pictured) in Gannan County, Heilongjiang Province, China, on May 3, 2016. (Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images)

    Water pollution is another environmental disaster brought about by the CCP. When I wrote “The China Crisis,” about 40 percent of China’s waterways either could not sustain life or were unsafe for human consumption. Today, that number is up to 70 percent. Moreover, 80-90 percent of its groundwater is undrinkable.

    China’s air pollution is known for being the worst in the world, responsible for millions of premature deaths. State officials claim that air pollution is decreasing in China. Yet, at the same time, China is adding more coal mines for energy production, leading to more pollution, not less. The CCP’s inability to address its pollution crisis reveals its economic model’s failures, adding to civil unrest rather than social support.

    7. Dystopian Depression Among Young Generation

    When young people lose faith in their nation, they lose faith in their future. One outcome of that pessimism is the decision not to have children. China is not alone in this phenomenon, but like South Korea and Japan, it’s a big problem. Without the energy, drive, creativity, and belief of the young, the fall in population and its effects on consumption, taxes, and other economic factors make China’s economic future bleak.

    Unfortunately, its unbalanced social and economic structure will lead to more excessive actions, internally and externally, as economic and social conditions worsen.

    James R. Gorrie is the author of “The China Crisis” (Wiley, 2013) and writes on his blog, TheBananaRepublican.com. He is based in Southern California.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/26/2023 – 22:30

  • Young High Income Earners Are Flocking To Florida And Texas, New Study Shows
    Young High Income Earners Are Flocking To Florida And Texas, New Study Shows

    This month, financial advisors SmartAsset examined the most recent publicly available IRS data in order to try and determine where young professionals (aged 26-35) who earn $200K per year or more have been moving. 

    The study considered data from all 50 states and Washington DC, defining “high-earning households” as ones with adjusted gross incomes of $200,000 or more. Specifically, the study looked at 

    • Inflow of young tax filers making $200,000 and above. This is the number of tax returns for people aged 26 up to 35 with adjusted gross incomes of at least $200,000 who moved into a state. Data comes from the IRS and for tax year 2021.

    • Outflow of tax filers making $200,000 and above. This is the number of tax returns for people aged 26 up to 35 with adjusted gross incomes of at least $200,000 who moved out of a state. Data comes from the IRS and for tax year 2021.

    What they found was that rich young people are flocking to New Jersey and Connecticut. Across all age groups, New Jersey lost 2,617 high-earning tax filers in 2021. However, the state netted 1,048 new rich young professionals in the same year. This was the most dramatic reversal from the aggregate trends. Connecticut saw a similar, though less drastic, trend, the report showed.

    Smartasset also found that high earners are youngest in Washington. Whether it’s compared with the rich population of all ages or the population as a whole, Washington has a disproportionately large number of young rich people. More than 13% of those making at least $200,000 in this state are between the ages of 26 and 35. 

    Despite losses, Washington DC remains exceptionally young and rich, the report said. DC lost nearly 700 high-earning tax filers aged 26 to 35, but still maintains a relative population higher than any state. More than 16% of people making over $200,000 fall into that age bracket.

    And to the surprise of likely no one, Florida and Texas are once again No. 1 and No. 2.  Florida gained a total of 2,175 high earners aged 26 to 35 after accounting for both inflows and outflows, while Texas gained a net 1,909. Despite the losses, New York (-5,062) and California (-4,495) still have the highest count of young high earners of any state by a wide margin.

    The top 10 locations that high income young people are moving, per SmartAsset, are:

    1. Florida: Florida gained a net of 2,175 high-earning tax filers between ages 26 and 35. While 3,391 were added in the state, 1,216 either moved or fell out of the income bracket. Most recently, there are 23,537 tax returns with over $200,000 income for this cohort. Florida is one of the nine states that doesn’t charge an income tax. 

    2. Texas: Texas actually saw more raw inflow of young, rich professionals than Florida, with 4,048 new filers in the given age bracket. But outflows were also higher at 2,139 filers, for a net migration of 1,909 into the state. Of nearly 700,000 tax returns with more than $200,000 income in Texas, 7% are for people aged 26 up to 35. Texas does not charge income tax at the state level.

    3. New Jersey: New Jersey had the most drastic reversal of the migration trend across all age groups. While high earners generally left, the mix of high earners leaned more into the 26 to 35 crowd. 3,311 new tax filers fell under the $200,000 bracket in this age range, while 2,263 left. 

    4. Colorado: Like Texas and New Jersey, those ages 26 to 35 make up a particularly high percentage of people earning over $200,000 (7%). A net 754 tax filers in this income bracket was added to the state after 1,681 migrated in and 927 migrated out.

    5. North Carolina: North Carolina had a total of 13,621 tax returns filed for high earners aged 26 to 35. This demographic makes up 5.9% of all people earning over $200,000 in the state. Across all age ranges, North Carolina had the third-highest net migration of high income earners.

    6. Connecticut: Young people making over $200,000 increased in Connecticut more than the rate across all age groups. Out of 8,274 tax filers in this group, 660 were net additions after a 1,404 inflow and 744 outflow.

    7. Washington: Washington state has the benefit of no state income tax and the highest proportion of young high-earners when compared with the $200,000+ cohort as a whole. A net 464 new high earners were added to the state thanks to a 2,660 inflow and 2,196 outflow.

    8. Tennessee: With a total of 7,345 high earners filing in Tennessee between the ages of 26 and 35, the state added a net of 441 new high earners in this group. 868 high-earning young people moved into Tennessee, while 427 moved out. Tennessee also does not charge state income tax.

    9. Arizona: Arizona gained a net 321 new filers with greater than $200,000 in income between the ages of 26 and 35. While 832 new tax filers in this cohort came to the state, 511 left.

    10. South Carolina: South Carolina rounds out the top 10, with 318 net new young high-earners in the state, for a total of 95,584. Six hundred and one new tax returns were filed at this level, while 283 moved out of state.

    You can read the full study here. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/26/2023 – 22:00

  • Patient Advocates, Physicians Say "Don't Give In To Fear" About New COVID Variant
    Patient Advocates, Physicians Say “Don’t Give In To Fear” About New COVID Variant

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

    The headlines have returned: a new COVID variant may lead to the renaissance of enthusiasm for mask mandates.

    A sign requesting that people wear masks hangs on a doorway in Tustin, Calif., on March 10, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    Though some may be thinking, “Not again,” there are many who never stopped living as they did in those two years when fear—symbolized by the face covering worn alone while driving vehicles and even when exercising—became a religion heralded by media and public health officials.

    However, Priscilla Romans, a former nurse and now a patient advocate, told The Epoch Times that there’s a better way.

    “People need to be empowered to take their health care back into their own hands so that they can make informed decisions,” Ms. Romans said.

    Most importantly, she said, don’t give in to fear.

    “When people ask me, ‘Is this really going to start happening all over again,’ my comment to them is, ‘I don’t know if this is real or not, but I do know that fear makes people sick,’” Ms. Romans said. “So, when we empower people, we infuse them with hope so that they don’t have to be afraid.”

    Hope, Ms. Romans said, is a medicine not to be underestimated.

    She’s witnessed hope’s benefits firsthand in her patient-advocacy business, Graith Care, which provides patients with alternatives to being solely dependent on the “white coats” of the “medical industrial complex” to determine the right course of treatment.

    “People not only get sick from fear but also can make bad decisions and listen to people they can’t trust, which is why I’m very passionate about them getting proactive and having a patient advocate to show them alternatives instead of relying on pharmaceuticals with potential adverse reactions,” Ms. Romans said.

    ‘They Are Scared of Going Back’

    Graith Care began when many patients and medical professionals were seeing how broken the system really was long before COVID-19 brought its corruption to the surface.

    “I launched Graith Care from my own home not knowing what was around the corner with all the vaccine mandates, protocols, and the use of drugs like remdesivir that, in many cases, have been deadly,” Ms. Romans told The Epoch Times in a previous interview.

    Since then, she’s expanded her business to help people throughout the United States and internationally.

    To help those who can’t afford patient advocacy care, she’s set up a nonprofit called Graithful Giving for donations.

    Priscilla Romans, 2022. (Courtesy of Christina Tierney)

    In her work, she’s seen the worst of what COVID policies had to offer, from hospital treatment protocols to vaccine injuries.

    “My concern with these headlines coming out is that people are still fearful,” she said. “Right from the beginning, people were told to isolate when they shouldn’t have been isolating.”

    Some of them went to hospitals and were put on drugs like remdesivir, which only made them sicker, and was fatal in many cases, she said.

    “We tended to see more males get caught up in the hospital system,” Ms. Romans said. “Those wives are struggling and have PTSD from having to see their husband dying in a hospital bed. They are very scared of going back.”

    A patient advocate, she said, can help navigate the hospital system if one needs to be admitted, but also keep them out of the hospital with other treatments.

    Later in the pandemic, people were told to take a vaccine from which Ms. Romans is still seeing injuries, she said.

    “It’s happening a lot,” she said. “People’s immune systems have been compromised by this vaccine.”

    A mask reminder marks the door of a classroom in Tustin, Calif., on March 10, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    ‘A Slippery Slope’

    Morris Brown College in Atlanta and the film company Lionsgate led the way to mandating masks this week as news reports and editorials preached about the “uptick” in cases, while several hospital systems followed suit.

    Meanwhile, the resurgence of excitement over face coverings is promoted on media platforms where public health officials and academics like Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas, responded with a resounding “yes” to a question from PBS NewsHour on whether people should be wearing masks—in crowded places and at home—while encouraging social distancing and vaccines.

    “My question is, what happens next? These headlines are a slippery slope, and we want to make sure people are better educated, stay ahead of the eightball, and not panic,” Ms. Romans said. “We want people to think on their own instead of just saying ‘yes’ to everything. We prefer that people are empowered with the information to make informed decisions.”

    ‘History Repeating Itself’

    Dr. Richard Bartlett, a physician of 30 years in Texas who was involved in the effort to get the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine data released by the Food and Drug Administration, told The Epoch Times that though he has seen an increase in COVID cases over the past five days, their symptoms are on par with flu cases rather than the severity of the Wuhan and delta variants of COVID.

    “This is clearly history repeating itself as far as an attempt to control the masses,” Dr. Bartlett said.

    “There was never any science to back up the multifaceted campaign forced on the American people: masks, lockdowns, social distancing, and later the vaccines. There were no randomized control trials saying this was safe and effective just as there were no randomized control trials for the medical tyranny over the last three years.”

    Because of COVID policies, people died alone in hospitals without loved ones at their side being able to say goodbye, Dr. Bartlett recalled.

    “That might have been acceptable in a communist regime, but we have patient rights that have been abused, and there were no randomized control trials saying that this was a good idea,” Dr. Bartlett said. “They put plastic bags over patients’ heads as a COVID protocol when someone tested positive for COVID. This was never backed up by randomized control trials saying that was safe and effective.”

    Basic patient autonomy—or “your body, your choice”—was trampled, he remembered.

    Informed Consent

    Physicians and public health officials pushed vaccines on the American public without giving informed consent, not only regarding the financial conflicts of interest the officials had with the companies that made them but also regarding their potential adverse reactions.

    “I think this is another power grab, and I’m concerned that we’re going to see more of the same unless the people demand basic patient rights for their children, parents, and spouses,” Dr. Bartlett said.

    Dr. Richard Bartlett, 2022. (Courtesy of Dr. Richard Bartlett)

    Dr. Bartlett referenced a 1995 speech made by former President Bill Clinton on a final report on human radiation experiments conducted by the federal government between 1944 and 1974.

    The speech, he said, should have been remembered during this time when American citizens once again became the subjects of an experiment, but this time with novel vaccine concoctions.

    President Clinton apologized for the experiments conducted by departments such as the U.S. Department of Defense, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the Public Health Services, along with the help of several universities such as Vanderbilt.

    “Informed consent means your doctor tells you the risk of the treatment you are about to undergo,” President Clinton said in the speech. “In too many cases, informed consent was withheld. Americans were kept in the dark about the effects of what was being done to them. The deception extended beyond the test subjects themselves to encompass their families and the American people as a whole, for these experiments were kept secret and they were shrouded not for a compelling reason of national security, but for the simple fear of embarrassment. And that was wrong.”

    Trying to Mask Children

    Dr. Eric Hensen, a Texas physician who’s still facing repercussions from not complying with the now widely discredited mask mandates issued during the pandemic, studied how masks negatively affect health.

    Echoing Dr. Bartlett, he said the masks are about control.

    “It’s ridiculous and I’m already seeing that they’re trying to put them on kids again, but it’s just going to retard their growth and development, not to mention their social development,” he told The Epoch Times.

    Children wearing masks sit behind screened-in cubicles as they learn in their classroom after getting their pictures taken at picture day at St. Barnabas Catholic School during the COVID-19 pandemic in Scarborough, Ont., on Oct. 27, 2020. (The Canadian Press/Nathan Denette)

    Yet public health officials avoid discussing the harms that masks, lockdowns, and vaccines have caused.

    “There’s politics at play,” Dr. Hensen said. “I think there are a lot of doctors who bury their heads in the sand and do as they are told to keep their jobs. Eighty percent of doctors work for someone, so they have what’s called the golden handcuffs. If they break out of the narrative, they get fired.”

    Dr. Hensen is an independent physician and has maintained an unrelenting defiance of the mask mandates at the cost of a continued legal battle with the Texas Medical Board that charged him with “unprofessional or dishonorable conduct that is likely to deceive or defraud the public” based on a complaint that he wasn’t wearing a mask while treating a patient in 2020.

    “Being an experienced ear nose and throat, head and neck surgeon with extensive knowledge and training in the upper airway, I was well aware of the limitations of wearing a facial covering of any kind and aware of the dangers of wearing these face coverings,” Dr. Henson told The Epoch Times in a previous interview.

    ‘You Have All the Authority’

    Dr. Hensen has never seen credible evidence of masks stopping transmission of COVID, he said, but he has seen what harm they’ve caused.

    “They make symptoms worse by increasing the viral load into the nasal cavity, which makes you sicker,” he said. “People get ‘mask mouth’ which leads to gingivitis and dental diseases. They cause respiratory problems from breathing harder, thus sucking the virus deeper into their lungs, as well as breathing in the polypropylene plastic fibers, which can cause lung cancer.”

    One study (pdf) Dr. Hensen referenced presented “the Foegen effect theory,” which posited that “deep re-inhalation of hypercondensed droplets or pure virons caught in facemasks as droplets can worsen prognosis and might be linked to long-term effects of COVID-19.”

    People who wear masks also experience a weakened immune system caused by an increase in blood carbon dioxide levels and a drop in blood oxygen saturation levels, leading to increases in heart and respiratory rates, he said.

    “They become much more prone to infections,” he said.

    To those who don’t want to play along this time with the authoritarian health policies, Dr. Hensen said it’s important to remember the concept of individual sovereignty forgotten during the pandemic.

    “You have all the authority,” he said. “That’s what our forefathers established for us. We’re not under a king, and our representatives and public health officials work for us, not the other way around.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/26/2023 – 21:30

  • Alabama Ready To Be First To Kill Inmate By Forced Breathing Of Nitrogen
    Alabama Ready To Be First To Kill Inmate By Forced Breathing Of Nitrogen

    Alabama is ready to pioneer a new means of executing convicts — by forcing a condemned man to breathe pure nitrogen. 

    That man is Kenneth Eugene Smith. Now 58, Smith was convicted in 1988 for killing the wife of a preacher — in a murder-for-hire scheme initiated by that preacher, who hoped to cash in on a life insurance policy and pay off his debts. The victim, Elizabeth Sennett, was found dead in the couple’s home on Coon Dog Cemetary Road in rural Colbert County, having been bludgeoned with a fireplace tool and stabbed nine times in what was supposed to look like a home invasion.  

    Smith and his partner in crime carried out the murder for payments of just $1,000 each. That partner was executed in 2010. The preacher spared everyone the legal hassle: After investigators honed in on him, he confessed to his sons and their families that he’d had an affair and hired the killers — then immediately strolled to his old pickup truck, sat in the front seat and shot himself, fatally. 

    Kenneth Eugene Smith was convicted of murdering a preacher’s wife after the preacher hired him to carry out the hit for just $1,000

    An attempt to execute Smith via lethal injection in 2022 was called off when executioners struggled to insert an IV tube into his vein. Now the Alabama attorney general is ready to give it another go, this time using “nitrogen hypoxia.” On Friday, AG Steve Marshall asked the Alabama Supreme Court to set a date. 

    While colorless, odorless nitrogen comprises 78% of the air we breathe daily, breathing 100% nitrogen will theoretically cause the prisoner to first pass out and then die.

    “Placed into a pure nitrogen environment, the convict would be unconscious within a minute (possibly even after a breath or two) and would be dead soon after,” Charles Blanke, a professor of medicine at Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine, told Fox News. “Its failure rate, that is, cases in which the prisoner survives, would likely be much lower than what we see with current death penalty methods.”

    Alabama’s execution chamber at Holman Correctional Facility (Mickey Welsh/Montgomery Advertiser)

    Alabama has yet to provide details on its planned methodology — for example, whether inmates would be placed in a gas chamber or simply fitted with a special mask. If it’s the latter, a good seal is essential to ensure the death isn’t prolonged by oxygen in the execution room. 

    The nitrogen hypoxia method has been on the books in Alabama since 2018.  Oklahoma and Mississippi have likewise authorized the method, but none have used it yet. Lethal injections have proven increasingly problematic, owing to shortages of the drugs used in the process.

    Those shortages are driven in part by manufacturers not wanting their product used to kill people — even the most evil ones. In 2011, Hospira, the only domestic producer of one of three lethal-injection ingredients — sodium thiopental — stopped making it. In 2012, the FDA made it illegal to import the drug to be used in executions. 

    Preacher Charles Sennett hired Smith and another man to violently kill his wife, Elizabeth (WAAY31)

    Given its novelty, nitrogen hypoxia will be ripe for legal challenges on behalf the condemned.  “No state in the country has executed a person using nitrogen hypoxia and Alabama is in no position to experiment with a completely unproven and unused method for executing someone,” Equal Justice Initiative attorney Angie Setzer told Associated Press.

    Alabama doesn’t have to prove the humanity of nitrogen execution. “The burden is on the condemned inmate to show that it is torturous rather than the burden being on the state to show that it’s not,” said Richmond University law professor Corinna Barrett Lain in an interview with Scientific American. Lain’s choice for most humane method? Firing squad. 

    Alabama death row inmates are literally lining up to be polished off via nitrogen. In legal action dating back five years, several inmates have sued to be killed that way, rather than lethal injection. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/26/2023 – 21:00

  • Biden Admin Invests $24 Million In mRNA Technology To Treat Cancer, Other Diseases
    Biden Admin Invests $24 Million In mRNA Technology To Treat Cancer, Other Diseases

    Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The Biden administration is investing up to $24 million to develop messenger RNA-based (mRNA) platforms and technology aimed at more effectively fighting cancer and other diseases.

    President Joe Biden delivers a speech to mark the one-year anniversary of his signing into law the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act at the George E. Wahlen Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Aug. 10, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    The administration’s new biomedical research agency, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), is providing the $24 million investment in the “Curing the Uncurable via RNA-Encoded Immunogene Tuning” (CUREIT) project, according to an Aug. 23 statement from the White House.

    CUREIT will be led by a team at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

    The funding will be granted over a three-year period.

    The latest investment is part of President Biden’s “Unity Agenda” announced during his 2022 State of the Union address; which the president says is aimed at bringing both Republicans and Democrats together to make progress on issues such as combating cancer, and tackling the opioid epidemic and mental health crisis.

    “Last year, as part of his Unity Agenda, President Biden worked with Democrats and Republicans in Congress to establish and fund ARPA-H to drive breakthroughs to prevent, detect, and treat cancer and other diseases,” the White House statement reads. “Through CUREIT, ARPA-H is now moving aggressively to deliver on their mission, and to advance the goals of the Biden Cancer Moonshot and the President’s Unity Agenda,” the statement continues.

    According to the White House, the aim of CUREIT is to create a “toolbox of mRNA and related technologies that could be used to ‘turn on’ helpful immune responses,” such as prompting immune cells to target and attack cancerous tumors.

    The technologies could also extend to autoimmune disorders, transplants, and infectious diseases, the White House said.

    (chatuphot/Shutterstock)

    Vaccines ‘Saved Millions’

    Multiple COVID-19 vaccines, including those from Pfizer and Moderna, have been developed using mRNA technology platforms.

    The White House said those vaccines have saved “millions of lives in the United States and around the world” and that a “toolbox” of mRNA platforms could help ” transform the fight against cancer and other difficult diseases.”

    Various experts, including doctors and professors, have raised concerns over mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

    Retsef Levi, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The Epoch Times in February that the shots are causing “an unprecedented level of harm, including the death of young people and children.”

    Multiple studies have also linked the messenger RNA vaccines with myocarditis, a potentially life-threatening inflammation of the heart, as well as vascular and organ damage.

    The virus itself also can cause myocarditis.

    According to a statement from Emory University, many types of cancer—as well as other debilitating diseases— have dysregulation of the immune system at their core. This impairs the body’s ability to control the immune response, leaving patients more vulnerable to the disease.

    “Immune modulation is a way to enhance the body’s immune response,” the university said. “The conventional methods of immune modulation—vaccines, antibodies, small molecules, and cell-based therapies—face limitations in their ability to engage immunity and manufacturing complexity,” university officials wrote.

    mRNA vaccines cause myocarditis, by leading your own immune cells to attack your heart, which can lead to sudden death by ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation. (Kateryna Kon/Shutterstock)

    ‘Potential Breakthrough in Treating Cancers’

    To overcome these limitations, researchers at the University’s Santangelo lab will develop a “novel class of mRNA-based drugs” to precisely “turn on or turn off” genes in individual immune cells. In other words, the mRNA-based drugs will directly target immune cells within the body, prompting the creation of target proteins that may improve immune function and fight against cancer.

    Researchers will also combine messenger RNA-expressed antigens and gene modulators “outside the body” to prevent and treat diseases.

    “By combining mRNA-encoded antigens with gene modulation technology, we will be able to radically enhance specific immune responses,” said Philip Santangelo, PhD, a professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Emory and Georgia Institute of Technology.

    “This technology, which operates transiently without modifying DNA, can offer a potential breakthrough in treating cancers, autoimmune disorders, and infectious diseases,” he added.

    In a statement Thursday announcing the new multi-million dollar investment, President Biden called it “an important step forward” in achieving his ambitious goal to create breakthroughs in how to prevent, detect, and treat cancer and other diseases.

    “I’ve long said that America can be defined by a single word: Possibilities. My Unity Agenda is bringing both parties together in that spirit — to get big things done for the American people. There is more work to do, but there’s nothing we can’t do if we do it together,” the president said.

    “A skilled team at Emory University in Atlanta will work to adapt these technologies to turn more cancers into curable diseases,” he continued. “This is a bold endeavor that has the potential to transform the fight against cancer and other difficult diagnoses,” President Biden concluded.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/26/2023 – 20:30

  • High Earners 50-And-Older Get 2-Year Break On 401(k) Catch-Up Rule
    High Earners 50-And-Older Get 2-Year Break On 401(k) Catch-Up Rule

    The Internal Revenue Service on Friday announced that it would postpone enforcement of a law that would require high-earners to exclusively allocate “catch-up” contributions to Roth-style investment accounts — rather than pre-tax accounts that confer an immediate income tax benefit.  

    The change in the law, inflicted by December 2022’s SECURE 2.0 Act, stipulated that, starting in 2024, 401(k) participants making catch-up contributions by virtue of being age 50 or older must put those contributions in Roth accounts if their prior-year Social Security wages were more than $145,000. Friday’s announcement means people fitting that description can allocate catch-up contributions to pre-tax accounts for another two years.  

    If this woman were married to a 50-plus 401(k) participant, she could find the rule postponement saves the two of them thousands in current-year tax liabilities

    Unlike traditional pre-tax contributions, Roth contributions do not reduce a participant’s current-year taxable income and thus don’t provide immediate tax relief. The Roth payoff comes later, as qualified distributions are income-tax-free. Conversely, pre-tax contributions are full taxable when distributed. 

    Some higher earners anticipate being in a lower tax bracket when they start tapping their 401(k) in retirement, compared to the bracket they’re in today. That means they’re more enthused about reaping current-tax-year savings from pre-tax contributions rather than the tax-free treatment in retirement. 

    For 2023, the regular 401(k) contribution limit is $22,500. Participants who are 50 and older can contribute another $7,500 in catch-up contributions, for a total of $30,000. Vanguard says 16% of eligible participants made catch-up contributions in 2022.  

    A participant in the 35% tax bracket can cut his income tax bill an extra $2,625 by making a $7,500 pre-tax, catch-up contribution — in addition to tax savings from the other regular contribution.  

    50+ and making more than $145,000? You can make pre-tax catch-up contributions for two more years without armed IRS agents coming after you

    “The administrative transition period will help taxpayers transition smoothly to the new Roth catch-up requirement and is designed to facilitate an orderly transition for compliance with that requirement,” the IRS said. The widely-despised instrument of government theft also clarified that the SECURE 2.0 Act doesn’t bar anyone from making catch-up contributions, regardless of income, in 2023 or beyond. Some feared a textual error had accidentally banned catch-up contributions altogether.  

    The new and now-postponed rule about catch-up contributions only applies to 401(k) and similar accounts, not to Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs). 

    Given the uncertainty of future tax rates — imposed by a government that’s hurtling toward insolvency — many advisors say it’s a good idea to diversify the tax flavor of your retirement accounts. Having a substantial bucket of Roth money provides flexibility in managing your tax bills in retirement…assuming Uncle Sam doesn’t pull a Darth Vader and “alter the deal” by revoking the tax-free treatment for “wealthy” Americans. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/26/2023 – 20:00

  • China Aims To Catalog The Genes Of 1.4 Billion People Every Five Years
    China Aims To Catalog The Genes Of 1.4 Billion People Every Five Years

    Authored by Shawn Lin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Beijing has embarked on an ambitious strategy that includes taking a nationwide genetic survey of its 1.4 billion people every half-decade. The new plan has sparked concerns over the authoritarian regime’s violation of personal privacy, and its possible anti-humanitarian motives.

    An inspection worker tests blood samples from volunteer donors at the Guangzhou Blood Centre, in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China, on June 13, 2005. (China Photos/Getty Images)

    China’s Ministry of Science and Technology recently promulgated regulations for the management of China’s human genetic resources, effective July 1. Almost buried in wordy statements about “filing, prior reporting, supervision, and inspection” of human genetic resources is the mandate that a “national survey of human genetic resources shall be carried out every five years and may be carried out according to actual needs when necessary.”

    According to the ordinance, human genetic resources comprise “materials”—substances like organs, tissues, and cells that contain human genes; and “information”—data generated from the use of the “material.”

    Political commentator Zhuge Mingyang spoke to The Epoch Times on Aug. 15 about China’s genetic plan.“Overseeing the Chinese people in terms of bioengineering and genetics and then threatening the whole world: this is [CCP’s] ultimate purpose,” he said.

    Mr. Zhuge believes that research into human genetics could affect health care, biosecurity, the economy, national defense, and many other areas. However, he said that past evidence suggests that the CCP’s aims may be even more sinister or controversial.

    Massive Arbitrary DNA Collection

    The new guidelines mandate that those who collect genetic information must “respect and protect the privacy and rights of providers and obtain written informed consent.” However, that sort of transparency under the CCP’s rules has long been questioned.

    In September 2016, CCP mouthpiece CCTV claimed that China has the world’s largest national gene bank. This suggests that China has long been collecting genetic data without seeking the consent of the people concerned, experts say.

    A report released in 2022 by New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) indicated that a massive arbitrary collection of DNA from residents had taken place in all seven prefectures or municipalities of the Tibet Autonomous Region, covering the western part of the Tibetan Plateau.

    “The reports Human Rights Watch studied indicate that DNA was to be collected from all residents of these areas, including temporary residents,” HRW reported. “None of the reports indicate any conditions under which a resident could refuse to provide a sample.”

    HRW condemned the arbitrary collection as a severe violation of human rights and privacy, citing a report from a Tibetan township in Qinghai province in December 2020 that stated that “DNA was being collected from all boys aged five and above.”

    “The authorities are literally taking blood without consent to strengthen their surveillance capabilities,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at HRW.

    ‘Bio-Atomic Bombs’

    On Nov. 10, 2017, the People’s Liberation Army newspaper published an article (pdf) titled “How Genetic Weapons Affect Future Wars,” saying that the 21st century has entered the era of genetic weapons.

    The military article emphasized the advantages of a genetic weapon: “Since a genetic weapon is a new virus ‘cut’ with a genetic code known only to the designer, it is difficult for the opposite to decipher and develop a new vaccine against it in time.”

    Moreover, as vaccine research and development races to keep up with the pace of genetic weapons, there will be a constant need for new genetic weapons.

    The article also said that with the rapid development of genomics, the complete gene sequences of more and more disease-causing microorganisms had been discovered, and these microorganisms could cause a “biochemical crisis.”

    “As long as a breakthrough in the genetic code is found, it will be easy to transform them into ‘bio-atomic bombs’ with great destructive power to achieve military purposes without using a single soldier,” it said.

    Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan as members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus make a visit to the institute, in China’s central Hubei province, on February 3, 2021. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

    In 2015, a Chinese military paper discussed the weaponization of SARS coronaviruses. Chinese military scientists predicted a third world war would be fought with bioweapons.

    In late 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, ultimately killing millions of people around the world. The virus source is suspected to be linked to a virus research institute in Wuhan, China.

    The Times published an investigative report on June 10, alleging that Wuhan scientists were involved in the creation, dissemination, and cover-up of the COVID-19  virus, in collaboration with the Chinese military.

    U.S. investigators believe the Chinese military intended to turn the COVID-19 virus into a biological weapon.

    Chemically Synthesized Life

    China’s leading genetic science company, BGI Genomics, which has been blacklisted by the U.S. government as a “Chinese military company operating in the United States,” asserted on its official website that it could provide a wide range of complete gene synthesis services, including artificially designed DNA sequences.

    In 2017, Wang Jian, co-founder and chairman of BGI, said at a business conference, “We can chemically synthesize any life in the next 5 to 10 years,” Chinese state media The Paper reported.

    As for chemically synthesized life, Wang Jian warned that it would spawn social, ethical, religious, philosophical, and legal problems.

    Genetically Edited Babies

    In November 2018, Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced that the world’s first genetically edited babies, twin girls, had been born in China. The edit targeted a pathway used by the HIV virus to enter cells, and was hoped to give the babies immunity to HIV.

    The case sparked debates worldwide, both about whether the approach could ultimately realize AIDS immunity, and also about the ethical implications of Mr. He’s actions.

    Critics said Mr. He’s action seriously breached scientific ethics; the modified gene would be passed on from generation to generation, with immeasurable potential risks. Further, the technology was used to change specific characteristics of human beings, “opening Pandora’s box,” according to Mr. Zhuge.

    On the Way to Digital Totalitarianism

    Mr. Zhuge noted that the CCP already has the world’s largest stockpile of surveillance cameras. Facial recognition technology and big data are a way of life in China. With the addition of a national gene pool, the CCP will undoubtedly be on its way to digital totalitarianism, he said.

    In July 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce placed 11 Chinese companies on a list of “entities” subject to export controls, accusing them of cooperating with CCP authorities in human rights abuses, massive arbitrary detentions, forced labor, and mandatory collection of biometric data from ethnic minorities. Two subsidiaries of BGI Genetics were listed.

    In June 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute released a report alleging that China “is building the world’s largest police-run DNA database in close cooperation with key industry partners across the globe.”

    Unlike the managers of other databases used for criminal identification, however, the CCP government deliberately collects DNA samples from tens of millions of people with no criminal record.

    “Unconstrained by any checks on the authority of its police, the Chinese Government’s police-run DNA database system is extending already pervasive surveillance over society, increasing discriminatory law enforcement practices and further undermining the human rights and civil liberties of Chinese citizens,” the report said.

    According to the report, beginning in 2013, state authorities obtained biometric samples of almost the entire population of the Tibet Autonomous Region (3 million inhabitants) under the guise of free annual medical examinations.

    HRW disclosed in December 2017 that the Xinjiang authorities collected DNA samples, fingerprints, scans, and blood type information from residents between 12 and 65 through a free “annual physical” program.

    Living Organ Banks

    “The mandatory data banking of a whole population’s biodata, including DNA, is a gross violation of international human rights norms, and it’s even more disturbing if it is done surreptitiously, under the guise of a free health care program,” said HRW’s Ms. Richardson.

    The China director also criticized Xinjiang authorities for collecting DNA and other biometric data from ethnic minorities to track individuals, update facial recognition technology, or target other family members.

    The collection of biological information may also be used to fill the organ banks of the communist regime, which profits from live organ harvesting from imprisoned political dissidents, prisoners of conscience, and ethnic and religious minorities.

    Harry Wu, executive director of the Lagoi Research Foundation and former Chinese prisoner, holds up official Chinese documents describing the harvesting of human organs from Chinese prisoners, during hearings conducted by the House Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, on Capitol Hill, on Oct. 28, 1997.  (William Philpott/AFP via Getty Images)

    Since March 9, 2006, the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong has made public hundreds of recorded pieces of evidence about the CCP’s mass genocide of Falun Gong adherents. Detained practitioners of the peaceful meditation practice are frequently killed by live organ harvesting.

    Falun Gong is a peaceful spiritual practice that is popular around the world and has been persecuted by the CCP for 24 years, ever since its former leader Jiang Zemin initiated the persecution in July 1999.

    Many pro-democracy activists, petitioners, ethnic minorities, and religious people have been forced to undergo blood draws after being arrested in China.

    Chen Xiaojun, an adherent of Falun Gong who has been arrested several times in China for his beliefs, fled China and came to New Zealand in 2015.

    Mr. Chen told The Epoch Times that in many places in China, once arrested, “the first thing they [the police] do is to take a tube of blood from the detainee.” He suspects that the police enter all the biological information of the victim into a database to screen for organ harvesting.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/26/2023 – 19:30

  • 51 Year Old Indiana Man On Meth Pulled Over For DUI In Kids Power Wheels Jeep
    51 Year Old Indiana Man On Meth Pulled Over For DUI In Kids Power Wheels Jeep

    Today in “your tax dollars at work” news, an Indiana man was arrested for driving under the influence last week as he made his way down the road in a child’s Power Wheels Jeep. 

    An officer was on patrol at about 9PM when he spotted the kids car with “no lights or reflectors” that was “difficult to see”, the police said in an official release. The officer then pulled the vehicle over, according to the NY Post. 

    That was when they noticed 51 year old driver John McKee showing “signs of impairment”. McKee then promptly failed a field sobriety test and was taken to a local hospital where toxicology reports showed that he was under the influence of methamphetamine and marijuana.

    “Mattel’s Power Wheels Jeeps are battery-powered, ride-on vehicles made for children. An owner’s manual for one model lists a weight capacity of 130 pounds and warns never to use the toy at night or in any roadway where cars may be operating,” Fox 59 added. 

    He had been previously convicted of operating a vehicle while impaired, the report noted. 

    He faces a felony charge of operating a vehicle while intoxicated with a prior conviction and has been placed in Knox County Jail, the Post reported. 

    Additional reporting was provided by WSAZ. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/26/2023 – 19:00

  • Why The House Has No Alternative To An Impeachment Inquiry Into President Biden
    Why The House Has No Alternative To An Impeachment Inquiry Into President Biden

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Below is my column in The Messenger on the expanding evidence in the Biden corruption scandal and the need for Congress to take commensurate action to investigate the matter. After this column ran, Fox’s Brian Kilmeade conducted an interview with Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin. What was striking about the interview is not just the contradiction with other accounts (like insisting that he was investigating Burisma and the investigation was expanding when he was fired), but that he claimed that Kilmeade was the first to seek to interview him. This is just Shokin’s account and many question his veracity. However, it is astonishing that this is the first interview that I have seen of one of the key figures in this scandal. It highlights the need to still fully investigate a scandal that the media has largely avoided in prior years.  However, the greatest case for an impeachment inquiry was made by Attorney General Merrick Garland himself.

    Here is the column:

    When Congress returns next month, it has little alternative but to launch a long-discussed impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. For House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the case for an inquiry came from a most unlikely source: Attorney General Merrick Garland.

    The debacle in the Hunter Biden investigation has left most objective legal analysts in disbelief, with one CNN analyst calling it an “unholy mess.”

    Even before the collapse of a widely condemned “sweetheart deal” with Hunter, the investigation headed by U.S. Attorney David Weiss was a growing concern for many observers. In prior years, I wrote about Garland’s refusal to appoint a special counsel despite the obvious conflicts posed by the potential involvement of President Biden in his son’s alleged influence-peddling scandal. I also raised the problem of an investigation that remained ongoing for years as the statute of limitations expired on major potential crimes.

    It turns out that the same concerns were being raised within the Weiss team. Two IRS whistleblowers recently confirmed that the expiration of potential tax felony crimes was raised with Weiss and the Department of Justice (DOJ). There reportedly was an agreement to extend that period, including on the violations tied to the most controversial alleged payments from sources in Ukraine and other countries. The two witnesses testified that the Justice Department instead allowed the statute of limitations to expire.

    These two whistleblowers — and, more recently, a former FBI agent — said that the DOJ tipped off the Biden team on attempts to interview Hunter and to conduct searches. They describe an investigation that was anything but the “routine” matter described by congressional Democrats in seeking to block House investigations.

    What followed has bordered on the burlesque. Weiss cut a deal with Hunter’s legal team that was widely derided. After years of investigation, he and the DOJ agreed to a couple of tax misdemeanors, a papered-over gun charge, and no risk of jail time for the president’s son. The deal disassembled in court after a few questions from the presiding judge about sweeping immunity language and other curious elements. When District Judge Maryellen Noreika asked the prosecutor if he had ever seen any agreement like this one, he replied “no.”

    House Republicans had previously demanded that Weiss and his team answer questions about the investigation and the plea bargain. And an appearance before a House committee was planned when Garland suddenly preempted that by doing what many of us have demanded for years: He appointed a special counsel. To the amazement of many, though, he appointed the one prosecutor who should have been categorically excluded — David Weiss.

    Section 600.3 of the DOJ’s code on special counsels requires an appointment from outside the Justice Department, for obvious reasons. While another prior special counsel, John Durham, also came from within the Justice Department, Durham was retiring from the department at the time of his appointment. Not only did Garland have to ignore his own regulations to appoint Weiss but he also had to ignore the main qualification: The appointed outside counsel should be someone with “a reputation for integrity and impartial decision-making.”

    Weiss could well have a legitimate defense to Republican complaints that he ran a fixed investigation into Hunter or accusations that he made false statements to his own team. However, he clearly remains under suspicion by many people. That is reflected in an ABC News/Ipsos poll in which almost half of Americans lack trust that the DOJ will conduct the Hunter Biden investigation in a “fair and nonpartisan manner.”

    In addition to this controversial appointment, Garland again refused to expressly extend the special counsel’s mandate to include influence-peddling allegations involving President Biden.

    Even some liberal pundits are mystified by these moves and why Garland would not simply appoint someone in compliance with the regulations who could guarantee a new and full investigation.

    So Weiss is now investigating crimes that continue to dwindle in number due to the long delays in prosecution. It is like waiting for winter to go goose hunting in Canada, long after the geese have flown South. Everyone just gets dressed up and fires aimlessly into an empty sky.

    While Hunter still can be charged on the same meager grounds (and possibly the addition of a Foreign Agents Registration Act charge), the alleged fix remains in the Biden investigation.

    Now, however, Congress will have a more difficult time getting answers out of Weiss because he can claim he is engaged in an ongoing special counsel investigation, and he can use the eventual special counsel report as much to defend his own actions as to detail any potential crimes.

    At the same time, the Biden administration still is resisting the sharing of information with the House, including records held by the National Archives.

    For months, I have discussed a potential impeachment of the president with Republican House members and have encouraged them not to repeat the abuses of House Democrats in the use of “snap impeachments” and the discarding of fact hearings in the House Judiciary Committee.

    Garland, however, has effectively forced their hands.

    While Garland seems incapable of imagining any crime involving the president, he has made a conclusive — if unintended — case for an impeachment inquiry.

    With the investigative impediments created by the Weiss appointment and by Garland’s refusal to expressly extend the special counsel’s mandate to the allegations of Biden family influence-peddling, there is little choice but to commence an impeachment inquiry. The authority of the House is at its apex when carrying out its duties under the impeachment clause.

    Whatever interest — or ability — remains to prosecute Hunter Biden, Congress has a separate duty to confirm any high crimes and misdemeanors committed by President Biden. Indeed, the Democrats themselves established precedent for carrying out retroactive impeachments for prior offices, including any which may have occurred when Biden was vice president.

    With the current state of the Hunter Biden investigation and the baffling conduct of Attorney General Garland, there is no alternative for the House but to launch the impeachment inquiry.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/26/2023 – 18:30

  • Yale Cop Union Scares New Students With Grim Reaper Crime Flyers
    Yale Cop Union Scares New Students With Grim Reaper Crime Flyers

    Yale University is rushing to reassure freshman students and parents after the school’s police union, which in the midst of contract negotiations, distributed flyers with stark warnings about high crime in New Haven, Connecticut — complete with a graphic of a grim reaper. They warned incoming students to avoid walking alone and avoid public transport. Forget night life: Student should stay in their dorms and “off the streets after 8 PM.” 

     

    Presented by the Yale Police Benevolent Association as “A Survival Guide for First-Year Students of Yale University,” the flyers were distributed on freshman move-in day. “The incidence of crime and violence in New Haven is shockingly high, and it is getting worse,” the flyers warned. “During the seven month period ending July 23, 2023, murders have doubled, burglaries are up 33% and motor vehicle thefts are up 56%.”

    A city spokesman confirmed the numbers are accurate. However, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker condemned the union, saying the flyers were “totally offensive” and cherry-picked data to create a “false and scary” impression. He countered that violent crime has decreased by 29.2% since 2020. However, it seems Elicker did his own cherry-picking: The New York Times notes New Haven homicides are up over that same span. 

    The union is in the midst of renegotiating its contract, but its lawyer, Andrew Matthews, denied that the flyers were a negotiating tactic. “They have motor vehicles chasing each other down the streets of New Haven shooting at one another. If you or your children were to go to Yale, wouldn’t you want to know that?” asked Matthews.

    Just days ago: Police examine the scene of a shooting that killed a man and wounded a woman in New Haven (via News8 WTNH)

    Undermining Matthews’ denials about the intent, the flyers state that “the New Haven and Yale Police Departments are understaffed,” and suggests the situation puts students at risk: “Do not be mislead by ‘Blue Phone cameras.’ They are not monitored.” They warn students not to expect help after dark: “If you restrict your travel to daylight hours, police personnel are best able to provide adequate protection.” 

    The flyer painted a grim picture of New Haven’s Union Train Station, noting that separate shootings and stabbing incidents occurred there just last month. The leaflet also says “theft has become so great a problem that Yale University is urging students to engrave identifying numbers on all property.” The school is giving out free steering-wheel locks to any Yalie who owns easily-stolen Kia or Hyundai vehicles. 

    Yale police chief Anthony Campbell joined the condemnation. “We do not support this and, to be quite frank, I’m really disgusted that they have chosen to take this path,” he said at a press conference with the New Haven mayor. “Young people are coming to the city for the first time. That’s appalling. You don’t try to scare them into getting a better contract,” added New Haven Police Chief Karl Jacobsen. 

    While accurately describing bleak conditions in New Haven may not amount to fearmongering, the Yale union is guilty of an academic sin: plagiarism. Many passages in the flyer and the grim reaper graphic are directly copied from a notorious flyer handed out by a New York cop union in 1975.

    Titled “Welcome to Fear City,” the New York flyers concluded, “The best advice we can give you is this: Until things change, stay away from New York City if you possibly can.” On an ostensibly cheerier note clearly not meant to be received that way, the Yale police flyer acknowledged that “some Yalies do manage to survive New Haven and even retain their personal property.” 

    New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker holds copies of the Yale police union flyer and the 1975 New York cop union flyer it was plagiarized from (Arnold Gold/Hearst Connecticut Media)

    With freshmen and parents rattled by the reaper, we get to savor the spectacle of Yale University’s leftist administration condemning heavy-handed labor-union tactics. The school posted a statement noting the pending negotiations and accusing the union of using “disturbing and inflammatory rhetoric…aimed at creating fear among new students and their families.” Yale reprimanded the union for casting a pall over the school’s move-in day, which “has always been special and memorable for students and their families.”

    Well, the cops certainly did their part to make it memorable. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/26/2023 – 18:00

  • Biden's 'Booze Czar' Floats New Possible Guidance Of Only Two Beers A Week
    Biden’s ‘Booze Czar’ Floats New Possible Guidance Of Only Two Beers A Week

    In yet another example of the nanny state’s intrusion into the private lives of its citizens, President Biden’s so-called ‘alcohol czar’ revealed to Daily Mail that the United States Department of Agriculture could soon revise its booze guidelines to a meager two drinks a week. 

    George Koob, director of the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, said the current alcohol intake guidelines are up for review in 2025, which recommend women can have up to one bottle of beer, a small glass of wine, or a shot of liquor per day while men can have two. 

    Koob was asked in what direction would the current guidelines change. He responded, “I mean, they’re not going to go up, I’m pretty sure,” adding the USDA could revise its alcohol recommendations to match Canada’s guidelines, where people are advised to two drinks per week. 

    While these new guidelines are being discussed, he said updated versions might not be published until 2025. 

    “The debate about whether alcohol is good in low amounts has been around for decades, but increasingly studies show that even a small amount can harm your health,” Daily Mail said. 

    Koob’s interview comes after a study recently published in JAMA Network Open found an increasing number of Americans are drinking themselves to death. 

    … and it’s not just booze. Since Covid, middle-aged adults 35 to 50 (prime-age workers) have been consuming higher and higher amounts of marijuana and hallucinogens. 

    Koob pointed out there were “no benefits” to drinking alcohol in terms of improving overall health. He said: 

    “Most of the benefits people attribute to alcohol, we feel they really have more to do with what someone’s eating rather than what they’re drinking.

    “So it really has to do with the Mediterranean diet, socio-economic status, that makes you able to afford that kind of diet and make your own fresh food and so forth.

    “With this in mind, most of the benefits kind of disappear on the health side.”

    Good luck getting the majority to comply with these guidelines since ‘Bidenomics’ has driven many working-class folks to the bottle.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/26/2023 – 17:00

  • Parents Can't Opt Children Out Of LGBT Lessons: Judge
    Parents Can’t Opt Children Out Of LGBT Lessons: Judge

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Parents are not able to opt their children out of lessons featuring LGBT content, a federal judge has ruled.

    Students in Montgomery County, Maryland, in a file image. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    Parents sued Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland over the lessons after officials revoked their opt-out policy over the large number of opt-out requests. Parents said the failure to provide opt-outs forced them to give up their religious beliefs or seek alternative schooling.

    U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman, though, said the parents had not shown the policy would “result in the indoctrination of their children or otherwise coerce their children to violate or change their religious beliefs.”

    “With or without an opt-out right, the parents remain free to pursue their sacred obligations to instruct their children in their faiths,” Judge Boardman, an appointee of President Joe Biden, said in a 60-page ruling denying a request for a preliminary injunction. “Even if their children’s exposure to religiously offensive ideas makes the parents’ efforts less likely to succeed, that does not amount to a government-imposed burden on their religious exercise.”

    Montgomery County Public Schools is one of the largest school systems in the country, with some 160,000 students.

    Montgomery County officials said in a statement that the school district “remains committed to cultivating an inclusive and welcoming learning environment and creating opportunities where all students see themselves and their families in curriculum materials.12 hours ago.”

    “We also will continue to adhere to our responsibility to include instructional materials that reflect the diversity of the local and global community by exploring the aspirations, issues, and achievements of women and men, people with disabilities, people from diverse racial, ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds, as well as those of diverse gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation,” officials said.

    Lawyers for the plaintiffs, who adhere to Islam or Christianity, said the ruling was wrong.

    “The court’s decision is an assault on children’s right to be guided by their parents on complex and sensitive issues regarding human sexuality,” Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, and one of the lawyers, said in a statement. “The School Board should let kids be kids and let parents decide how and when to best educate their own children consistent with their religious beliefs.”

    Plaintiffs plan to appeal Judge Boardman’s ruling and expect oral arguments to take place at the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in the fall.

    Judge Boardman said that the appeals court has not yet addressed whether mandatory lessons in public schools might burden the religious exercise of students or parents, but that rulings from other courts support the idea that “the mere exposure in public school to ideas that contradict religious beliefs does not burden the religious exercise of students or parents.”

    That includes Mozart v. Hawkins County Board of Education, a 1987 decision in which an appeals court found that students were compelled to violate their religious convictions but that they were not required to affirm their belief or disbelief in any of the ideas, like evolution, promoted in the curriculum.

    More on Case

    Montgomery County officials introduced 13 new books featuring LGBT characters at the start of the 2022–23 school year. They said the books were introduced because a review of its curriculum found it lacked representation of LGBT people.

    The books have been used in lessons for children as young as 3, prompting concerns from parents, teachers, and principals.

    “It is problematic to portray elementary school age children falling in love with other children, regardless of sexual preferences,” a group of principals said in a memorandum to the district that was revealed in the litigation.

    “Family life isn’t taught until fifth grade, but a second grade book uses terminology such as cisgender or transgender,” the memo also stated.

    Teachers were also instructed to tell students that “when we’re born, people make a guess about our gender” and that sometimes, the guess is “wrong,” according to other documents made public in the case.

    Judge Boardman acknowledged that the guidance document for teachers contained answers that “could be interpreted to promote a particular view as correct,” but added, “they are not required answers, and they are outliers among the suggested answers that do not promote a particular view.”

    Parents were able to have their children excluded from lessons featuring the books initially, but officials informed them on March 23 that further requests would not be entertained “for any reason.”

    The change stemmed from the large number of parents who requested opt-outs, Niki Hazel, a district official who oversees curriculum, said in a court filing.

    “Individual principals and teachers could not accommodate the growing number of opt out requests without causing significant disruptions to the classroom environment and undermining MCPS’s educational mission,” Ms. Hazel said.

    Other officials have said that children who are LGBT or have LGBT family members were hurt when other students left the classroom when the controversial materials were read.

    Plaintiffs argued that revoking opt-outs violated state law and the U.S. Constitution and that hurt feelings were not an adequate reason to change the policy.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/26/2023 – 16:30

  • These Are All The Investigations And Lawsuits Against Trump (For Now)…
    These Are All The Investigations And Lawsuits Against Trump (For Now)…

    With the indictment and booking of Donald Trump in Fulton County, Georgia, on election interference charges, a fourth criminal case against the former president is now active. Trump appeared in an Atlanta jail this week and famously had his mug shot taken.

    As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, the stream of litigation (flippant or not) just grows and grows and the Georgia case on election interference has sparked more public interest than previous ones.

    As seen in Google Trends data, Trump’s first criminal indictment and arraignment in late March and early April at the Manhattan Criminal Court caused the biggest public interest so far. The former president is being accused in the case brought by the state of New York of falsifying business records in order to conceal crimes. Subsequent indictments – two by the Justice Department’s Special Counsel Jack Smith brought in Miami and Washington D.C. to do with Trump’s handling of classified documents and the January 6 Capitol riot – sparked less interest. Google search volume only reached 51-64 percent of the week of Trump’s first criminal indictment for the Miami case in early June and only 37 percent for the D.C. case in early August. As of the early morning of Aug. 25, search interest was predicted to rise sharply again this week in the aftermath of the Georgia booking.

    Infographic: Interest in Trump Cases Rises Again After Georgia Booking | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    In June and July, Special Counsel Jack Smith had in the name of the Justice Department also brought 40 felony counts against Trump and his former assistants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira in the case of classified documents found at Trump’s estate Mar-a-Lago.

    In early August, a second Justice Department indictment concerning Trump’s conduct in relation to the January 6 Capitol riots followed.

    Another criminal case against Trump is pursued by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which indicted and arraigned the candidate for the Republican Party’s nomination in the 2024 presidential election in March and April on 30 fraud counts in connection with a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 presidential election.

    The office has been investigating Trump’s finances since 2019, when three House committees had initially subpoenaed Trump’s banks and accounting office.

    In early 2023, Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg was already sentenced to five months in jail for tax fraud and grand larceny, while the organization was ordered to pay $1.6 million for tax crimes in New York courts. Trump lost a second court case in May when we was found liable of sexual abuse and defamation of columnist E. Jean Carroll and ordered to pay $5 million in damages. There have been repeated reports that the legal costs Trump is facing have diminished his campaign funds, while they don’t seem to have hurt his polling.

    As seen in information by the Just Security Litigation Tracker, there are currently also 12 civil suits (some of which are being argued jointly) against Trump or his organizations, alleging violations of the Voting Rights Act and of civil rights statutes as well as financial fraud, defamation, copyright infringement and once again Trump’s role in January 6, among others.

    Infographic: The Investigations and Lawsuits Against Trump | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Trump is currently being sued by columnist E. Jean Carroll for repeated defamation, 12 D.C. police officers, 11 Democratic Congresspeople, the Michigan Welfare rights Organization, the New York attorney general, a group of plaintiffs pursuing a class action lawsuit and his former attorney Michael Cohen, who appealed the dismissal of his case.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/26/2023 – 16:00

  • Biden Admin Blocks Millions Of Acres To Oil And Gas Drilling
    Biden Admin Blocks Millions Of Acres To Oil And Gas Drilling

    Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The Biden administration has blocked off millions of acres of federal waters from a planned oil and gas lease sale after settling with environmental groups over habitat protections for a rare species of whale.

    President Joe Biden delivers a speech in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Aug. 10, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) said in an Aug. 23 notice that, as part of Lease Sale 261, it will offer around 67 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling.

    That is around 9 percent, or 6.4 million acres, less than BOEM’s original proposal, following a settlement with environmental groups that pauses ongoing litigation over environmental protections in the Gulf of Mexico in exchange for excluding Rice’s whale habitat from any lease sales.

    Environmental groups praised the exclusions, while representatives of the oil and gas industry called the carveouts “unfounded” and said the restrictions would needlessly hamper domestic energy production.

    Some lawmakers also objected to the exclusions, including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

    “This Administration continues to kowtow to radical environmentalists at the expense of American energy security and costs to American families,” Mr. Manchin said in a statement obtained by The Epoch Times.

    Rice’s whale is one of the most endangered marine mammal species on the planet, with an estimated population of just 51 individuals, around 100 scientists told the Biden administration in an open letter (pdf) last year.

    Arguing that the loss of even a single whale threatens the survival of the entire species, the scientists urged the Biden administration to disallow oil and gas drilling in and around the whale’s habitat.

    Settlement With Environmental Groups

    In order to proceed with the gas lease sale as required by provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Biden administration agreed to settle with environmental groups that sued the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) over what they said was a flawed biological opinion that failed to sufficiently protect endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico.

    In 2020, environmental law organization Earthjustice filed a lawsuit (pdf) against NMFS on behalf of the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and Turtle Island Restoration.

    The lawsuit challenged a Trump-era biological opinion on oil and gas activities in the Gulf of Mexico, with the groups saying that the legally binding opinion failed to require sufficient safeguards for endangered species, including Rice’s whale (identified in the complaint as Bryde’s whale, an alternate name for the species).

    Under a settlement agreement (pdf) that was approved on Aug. 24 in the U.S. District Court in Maryland, the groups agreed to pause their litigation. In exchange, BOEM said it will exclude Rice’s whale habitat from any lease sales that occur during a 13-month period that the case is on hold while federal agencies reevaluate the 2020 biological opinion.

    More Details

    As the lawsuit made its way through the courts, BOEM said it decided to reinitiate consultation with the NMFS regarding an oil-spill risk analysis and ways to incorporate certain previously developed mitigation measures to protect Rice’s whale habitat.

    On Aug. 23, BOEM said in a document that provides key information about the sale to potential bidders (pdf) that, as talks continue with the NMFS and as the agency awaits a new or amended biological opinion, it decided to add “certain interim measures to the ‘Protected Species’ Stipulation to provide additional protections for Rice’s whale while the reinitiated consultation is ongoing.”

    The temporary measures include designating temporary whale-safe zones between 100 and 400 meters in depth across the northern Gulf of Mexico, eastward from the Mexican border with Texas, and westward from Rice’s whale core area (as identified in the biological opinion that is the subject of ongoing litigation).

    These interim protective measures for Rice’s whales are basically what accounts for the 6 million or so fewer acres made available as part of BOEM’s lease sale.

    At the same time, efforts are underway to permanently designate waters between 100 and 400 deep in the Gulf of Mexico as “critical habitat” zones that are “essential to the conservation of the Rice’s whale,” according to a July proposal by NOAA Fisheries. The proposal is open to public comment until Sept. 22, 2023.

    In addition to the whale habitat zone exclusions, the settlement also includes a requirement for any oil and gas vessel to reduce its speed to 10 knots when traveling through the habitat area.

    Reactions

    BOEM’s announcement of the 6 million acre carveout for the oil and gas lease was lauded by environmental groups but met with disdain by the fossil fuel industry.

    “The simple protective measures in this agreement recognize the first rule of holes: when you find yourself in one, stop digging,” Steve Mashuda, Earthjustice managing attorney for Oceans, said in a statement. “If we’re going to save Rice’s whales, we need to first stop dropping more oil rigs and more ships in their habitat and making the problem worse.”

    The American Petroleum Industry (API), a fossil fuel industry lobby, took a dim view of the settlement-related exclusions to the lease sale.

    “While the Department of the Interior announced a much-needed offshore lease sale today, the Biden administration continues to throw up roadblock after roadblock to American energy production, prioritizing their campaign promise to stop American oil and natural gas development in federal waters over their duty to meet Americans’ energy needs,” Holly Hopkins, API vice president of Upstream Policy, said in a statement.

    “This action defies Congress’s mandate in the Inflation Reduction Act, jeopardizes U.S. energy security and violates the Biden administration’s energy obligations to the American people,” Ms. Hopkins added.

    The Inflation Reduction Act includes provisions that reinstate previously halted oil and gas lease sales.

    Mr. Manchin, who fought for the oil and gas lease provisions in the legislation, denounced the Biden administration’s lease exclusions.

    “Let me be clear, the exclusion of more than 6 million productive acres from the upcoming offshore oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico based on a settlement reached in the name of protecting Rice’s whale while conveniently only targeting oil and gas is yet another example of this Administration’s intentional undermining of the strong energy security provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act,” Mr. Manchin said.

    “The IRA required lease sales to get oil and gas leasing back on track to reduce the cost for working families to cook, heat their homes and fill their gasoline tank,” Mr. Manchin added.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/26/2023 – 15:30

  • El Nino Threat Puts US Solar Power Output At Risk This Winter
    El Nino Threat Puts US Solar Power Output At Risk This Winter

    The Biden administration’s rapid push to decarbonize power grids with solar and wind while squeezing fossil fuel plants into early retirement could spark grid stability risks this winter as a new report sheds light on the possibility of “below average irradiance across most of North America” due to the impacts of El Niño producing more cloud coverage.

    Solar-focused news publication PV Magazine said, “Solcast, a DNV company, predicts that El Niño will likely bring lower than normal solar power production through winter in the United States. Its analysis is based on data collected from previous El Niño events.” 

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    Here’s more from the report:

    This coming winter is more likely than not to see below average irradiance across most of North America, as the impacts of El Niño bring cloudier, wetter conditions across the continent. Analysis of Historical Time Series data from El Niño years using the Solcast API, shows that irradiance is significantly impacted in these years.

    The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has declared that we are in El Niño’s Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phase, and that there is a 90-95% probability this will continue into the upcoming winter.

    NOAA has further forecast a 60% chance that this will be a “strong event,” so solar producers across the continent should be anticipating this to change their expected performance through the winter.

    Analysis of December-February months from previous El Niño events (2006-07, 2009-10, 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2018-19) shows the historic impact on global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI). This image shows a comparison of the average GHI in the El Niño episodes with the neutral and La Niña phases of the ENSO climate cycle.

    The clear observation is that most of the Continental US experienced reduced irradiance during El Niño winters. California, the Midwest, Southern states, and Mexico in particular see higher precipitation, as well as cloudier conditions.

    Conversely, the North-eastern USA and neighboring Canadian provinces depict the opposite. These regions experienced increased irradiance during El Niño intervals.

    This trend correlates with decreased precipitation during such periods, another trend these regions might expect in the coming winter.

    As the solar energy sector leads into the lower-producing winter months, El Niño is likely to bring even lower than normal production through winter. The increased rain may result in decreased dust soiling for panels that aren’t already being cleaned regularly.

    Numerous power grids across the US have warned about the growth of power demand, while decarbonization policies have led to a mismatch between power sources due to the early retirement of fossil fuel power generation. We’ve pointed this out in America’s Largest Power Grid Faces Worsening Reliability Risks and A Crisis Is Looming For The US Energy Grid. 

    Solar and wind are unreliable; these power sources are useless if the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. 

    Meanwhile, a soaring number of Americans want reliable and clean nuclear power… 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/26/2023 – 15:00

  • Where's The Beef? Ranchers Take Stand Over Synthetic 'Meat' Label
    Where’s The Beef? Ranchers Take Stand Over Synthetic ‘Meat’ Label

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

    American cattlemen are readying for a fight to protect the definition of the word meat from producers of synthetic cellular-based beef alternatives.

    “It’s a red line. It isn’t right that these factory-made products should be able to market and sell their products off the backs of the cattleman,” Justin Tupper, President of the United States Cattlemen’s Association, told The Epoch Times.

    “We are talking about chemical-laced cell-cultured products that can in some ways simulate meat, but they aren’t meat, and the American consumer needs to understand that,” added Mr. Tupper.

    Consumers shop for meat at a grocery store in Annapolis, Md., on May 16, 2022. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

    The synthetic “meat” market has already arrived in America.

    Last year, the USDA gave two producers the green light to start producing and selling their lab-grown chicken-like products in the United States.

    While a decision over the labeling of the product has yet to be announced, the cattle industry plans on being aggressively proactive in both discussions with the USDA and, if needed, litigation after having learned a valuable lesson from the dairy farmers.

    “The milk industry really dropped the ball,” said Mr. Tupper. “They never believed that anyone would think that almond milk was actual milk, so they brushed it off at the time. Now there are hundreds of items with milk in the name but with no milk in the product, and it has really hurt the entire dairy industry.”

    “In the same way that you can’t milk an almond, you can’t get meat from a lab, only an animal, and we are not going to allow them to use our name to promote their product.”

    Synthetic meat-like products are created by taking cells acquired from animals and placing them in a warm, sterile area, usually, a metal vat, where they are then combined with a solution of chemicals that causes the cells to double once a day.

    A piece of Good Meat’s cultivated chicken is displayed at the Eat Just office in Alameda, Calif., on July 27, 2023. Back in June, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) authorized two California-based companies, Upside Foods and Good Meat, to sell chicken grown from cells in a lab. Cell-cultivated or lab-grown meat is made by feeding nutrients to animal cells in stainless steel tanks. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

    The demand for synthetic meat has been spurred largely by corporate entities and government agencies working in tandem with the environmental movement.

    Bill Gates, an investor in Upside Foods, one of the two synthetic meat producers approved by the USDA, believes meat alternatives are needed to save the world from upcoming catastrophic climate events caused by greenhouse gasses.

    In a 2021 interview with Technology Review, Mr. Gates said that all well-off nations need to switch to be completely weaned off of living, breathing cows.

    “All rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef. You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they’re going to make it taste even better over time,” Mr. Gates told the interviewer. “Eventually that green premium is modest enough that you can sort of change the people or use regulation to totally shift demand. So for meat in the middle-income-and-above countries, I do think it’s possible.”

    A switch from animal meat to a laboratory-grown substitute would eliminate the need for animals to be bred and slaughtered—in the U.S. alone, around 9 billion chickens and 32 million cattle are killed every year.

    However, beef cattle production constitutes only a small fraction of the gasses that many environmentalists claim have had a negative impact on the planet.

    Just 2 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions in the United States come from beef cattle production, while energy production and transportation produce a combined 54 percent of emissions, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

    Ranchers survey their herd of cattle in Quemado, Texas, on June 13, 2023. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

    Italian Ban

    American ranchers aren’t the only ones raising the alarm. After two million Italians signed a petition calling for a ban against synthetic meat products, the Italian Senate passed a bill earlier this week, becoming the first country to make it illegal to produce or market the food, highlighting health concerns as the primary reason.

    Ettore Prandini, President of Coldiretti, the largest association representing Italian agriculture, touted the vote as a legislative victory for the Italian people over corporate powers, telling the media that “the products in the laboratory in the authorization processes are not equated to food but rather to products of a pharmaceutical nature.”

    An April 2023 report by the United Nations on the safety of “cell-based food products” cited 53 potential health hazards, including “the potential for expression of novel toxins, toxic metabolites, or allergens or a change in expression of toxins, toxic metabolites, or allergens as a result of genomic instability.”

    The report concluded with a call for additional research and funding in order to draw more definitive conclusions.

    Transparency Needed

    Mr. Tupper isn’t calling for a ban on synthetic foods, only transparency, and believes that despite the large push for meat alternatives coming from corporate leaders and government agencies, the American cow is here to stay.

    “The simple truth is that the taste of real beef cannot be replicated and, more importantly, when people discover the chemical storm that is actually in this product they are trying to pass off as meat, consumers are going to come to the conclusion that beef should come from a cow, not from a laboratory.”

    “Our hopes are that the USDA will label this product for what it is, a cellular-based derivative of chemicals,” added Mr. Tupper.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/26/2023 – 14:30

  • "Yes, They Were Being Bribed": Fired Ukraine Prosecutor Corroborates Biden Corruption
    “Yes, They Were Being Bribed”: Fired Ukraine Prosecutor Corroborates Biden Corruption

    Victor Shokin, the fired Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Biden family corruption (that Donald Trump was impeached for asking about) has spoken out for the first time since 2019 – and says the Bidens did it.

    To review – Shokin had an active and ongoing investigation into Ukrainian energy company Burisma and its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, according to a 2020 US Senate Committee report.

    Zlochevsky, who hired Hunter Biden to sit on his board, granted his own company (Burisma) permits to drill for oil and gas in Ukraine while he was Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources. Shokin stated in a 2019 deposition that there were five criminal cases against Zlochevesky, including money laundering, corruption, illegal funds transfers, and profiteering through shell corporations while he was a sitting minister.

    Now, Shokin tells Fox News that be believes the Bidens were taking bribes.

    “I do not want to deal in unproven facts. But my firm personal conviction is that yes, this was the case. They were being bribed,” Shokin told the outlet. “The fact that Joe Biden gave away $1 billion in U.S. money in exchange for my dismissal – my firing – isn’t that alone a case of corruption?” he asks in another clip.

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    The full interview with Shokin will air Saturday evening at 8pm ET with Brian Kilmeade.

    According to the White House, Fox News is giving a “platform to lies” by airing the interview.

    Republicans, meanwhile, aren’t letting this one go.

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    Earlier this week we noted that memos obtained by Just the News via FOIA request reveal that the Obama Administration was still actively communicating with Shokin after Biden’s December 2015 threat to withhold $1 billion in US aid unless then-President Petro Poroshenko fired him.

    The memos reveal:

    • Senior State Department officials sent a conflicting message to Shokin before he was fired, inviting his staff to Washington for a January 2016 strategy session and sent him a personal note saying they were “impressed” with his office’s work.
    • U.S. officials faced pressure from Burisma emissaries in the United States to make the corruption allegations go away and feared the energy firm had made two bribery payments in Ukraine as part of an effort to get cases settled.
    • A top U.S. official in Kyiv blamed Hunter Biden for undercutting U.S. anticorruption policy in Ukraine through his dealings with Burisma.

    Meanwhile, nobody else seems interested in what Shokin has to say.

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/26/2023 – 14:00

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Aug 26

Today’s News 26th August 2023

  • The Road To Totalitarianism, Part 3: CJ Hopkins' Trial (& Sentencing) For 'Thoughtcrimes'
    The Road To Totalitarianism, Part 3: CJ Hopkins’ Trial (& Sentencing) For ‘Thoughtcrimes’

    Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

    So, the Germans are putting me on trial for my thoughtcrimes, and, apparently, I’ve already been found guilty and sentenced. Bear with me and I’ll try to explain.

    The Berlin District Court has issued a so-called “penalty order” or “order of punishment,” in which I am advised that I am now officially a criminal in Germany, for tweeting two Tweets. According to my attorney, a trial will now be scheduled, at which my attorney will argue the case before the judge that just issued the “order of punishment.” At this trial, the judge will listen attentively to the arguments my attorney has already made in writing, consider them carefully, and find me guilty, again. Then the judge will reaffirm the “order of punishment.”

    Go ahead, read that paragraph again.

    After my Kafkaesque trial has concluded, my attorney will file a series of appeals, which will fail, at which point I will have to decide whether to pay a fine of 3,600 Euros or go to German prison for 60 days.

    This process will take months, if not years, and will cost me God knows how much money in attorney’s fees, court costs, and then the €3,600 fine. Yes, I’m going to pay the fine. I am not going to German prison for 60 days. Life is too short, and I am getting older, and it wouldn’t really accomplish anything except making a narcissistic spectacle of myself.

    However, what will accomplish something (I don’t know how much, but something) is if I see the whole process through to the end, and shine as much light on it as I possibly can, because my case is just one of many such cases, and the real story here is not about me, it is about the crackdown on political dissent that is being carried out, not just here in Germany, but also in other countries all throughout the West.

    There are not many outlets reporting this story, not outlets with any significant reach. If you are reading this column, you’re probably aware of various alternative media outlets that are, but most of these outlets are quarantined off where “normal” people never have to see them, and are delegitimized as “unreliable sources” and purveyors of “misinformation,” and so on.

    There are a few bigger sources covering the story, which are also increasingly being branded “illegitimate,” Matt Taibbi’s Racket News, Michael Shellenberger’s Public, Glenn Greenwald’s Locals operations, and I’m sure I’m forgetting a few more, forgive me.

    The point is, unless you’re a charter member of the “science-denying, conspiracy-theorizing, hate-speech-speaking, anti-vaxxing, misinforming left-or-right extremist” club — i.e., people who read weird “malinformationist” publications like The Grayzone, OffGuardian, ZeroHedge, Dissident Voice, and Unlimited Hangout, and who are planning to vote for Bobby Kennedy, or, God help them, Donald Trump — you probably have no idea what I mean when I refer to “the crackdown on dissent” … or you do, and you think it’s just hunky-dory.

    I won’t mince words. The folks who think it’s hunky-dory are totalitarians. They’re fascists. They applaud the crackdown on dissent. They applaud the criminalization of dissent. They applaud the censorship of political speech, of any speech they do not agree with. They want their political opponents in prison. They want everyone who disagrees with them punished. They want people who offend them cancelled. They want anyone who refuses to conform to their official ideology erased.

    I have been calling these people “totalitarians” and “fascists” for a number of years now. I do not enjoy doing that. I’m not doing it gratuitously. Some of these people were my friends. I’m doing that, calling these people “fascists,” and comparing the nascent totalitarianism that is erupting all throughout the West to other, earlier totalitarian systems, like Stalinism (sorry, Marxist friends), and, yes, to fucking Nazi Germany, because, despite the fact that there are numerous differences, a lot of it is textbook totalitarianism. Naked textbook totalitarianism. There isn’t another, nicer word for it … or for those who are enthusiastically embracing it.

    I’m not going to present the evidence for that assertion again. I have done that ad nauseam, much of it in my latest book, which is banned by Amazon in several countries, and which bears a warning on other Amazon sites to “visit the WHO, the CDC,” or your local national health authority, “for the latest information on Covid-19 and vaccines” before you consider buying it, and the cover art of which is about to make me an official “hate criminal,” with a criminal record.

    That’s right, as I explained at greater length in a previous column, the pretext for this so-called “hate crime” prosecution is two Tweets I tweeted almost exactly one year ago of the cover art of that very same book, which just happens to document the rollout of the “New Normal” (i.e., the new totalitarianism) in 2020 and 2021.

    Here are the two Tweets that constitute my “hate crimes.”

    The one on the left reads, “The masks are ideological-conformity symbols. That is all they are. That is all they have ever been. Stop acting like they have ever been anything else, or get used to wearing them.” The one on the right is a quote by Karl Lauterbach, the Minister of Health of Germany. It reads “The masks always send out a signal.” The image is the cover art of my book.

    Say what you want about me and my writing. I can be “provocative,” and some of my political satire is bombastically over-the-top, but, as Matt Taibbi put it in a recent Racket News piece …

    “No amount of drugs exist that if consumed would allow a rational person to conclude that the writing of C.J. Hopkins furthers ‘the aims of a former National Socialist Organization.’ Agree with him or not, and I increasingly do, he used his imagery to compare the sweeping declarations of emergency power that were common around the world during the pandemic (and were particularly authoritarian in Germany) to Nazi tactics.”

    And that is what I am being accused of, and “punished” for doing, by the German authorities, i.e., “furthering the aims of a National Socialist Organization” … basically, promoting Nazism, for tweeting those two Tweets above.

    There is no complex legal issue here. Yes, swastikas are banned in Germany if you’re a Nazi or promoting Nazism or Fascism, but they are permitted for the purposes of “civic education, countering anti-constitutional activities, art, science, research and education, coverage of historic and current events,” and similar purposes, according to German law. Do you seriously believe that the German hate-crime police and the prosecutor and the judge do not understand that? Of course they understand that. They’re not complete imbeciles. They know the charges are just a pretext. And they know we know the charges are just a pretext. They do not care. They do not have to. They don’t even have to pretend to be following the rule of law. Not anymore. Because they know the majority of the masses are with them.

    The point of prosecutions like this (and much more serious and significant prosecutions, like that of Julian Assange, for example) is to send a message. The naked disregard for the rule of law, the blatant absurdity of the charges, the open contempt for democratic principles, is all part of the message. It’s not a message about the law. It’s a message about power. Who has it, and who doesn’t. And what happens to those who refuse to bow down to it.

    The message is not intended for me, or for more important figures like Julian Assange, or the many other less well-known dissidents that are being made examples of currently. We’re just the medium that conveys the message. We’re the delivery service. The message is for you.

    I’m pretty sure you’re getting the message. The question is … how are you going to respond?

    I do not mean by “storming” your capitol. Please do not go out and get yourself shot. I mean, are you going to help shine a light on where we are headed? Because it’s pretty fucking dark. Folks are offering to send me money to help with my legal costs, and I’m extremely grateful, because I’m going to need it (and here’s how to do that), but what I think we need to do is a little harder, and costs more, and is much more important.

    We need to talk to the totalitarians … yes, the ones who wanted to put us in camps. If we can’t get through to them, we’re probably screwed. And there is a window of opportunity to do that now. It’s not 2020 or 2021. The mass hysteria has worn off for a lot of people. I know, not all of them, but for some of them, a lot of them. Some of them are finally reachable.

    Take a chance, talk to them, the ones you know, or used to know. Try to get through to them. Not the bug-eyed, fanatical, foaming-at-the-mouth types who can’t wait for the return of the “emergency measures.” The other ones … you know the ones I mean. The ones who want out. You can see it in their eyes. Take a chance. Talk to these people. Totalitarianism, fascism, it is not an identity. It’s a mindset. No one is born a fascist. People can be deprogrammed. Some of them can. And, at this point, we need all the help we can get.

    So, if you’re one of the kind and generous folks who have been asking what you can do to help and offering to send me money, sure, go ahead and send me the money — thank you, I’ve been overwhelmed by your messages, and I’m sorry that I can’t personally respond to all of them — but also consider what I’m suggesting, if you can possibly bring yourself to do it. If you can’t, I completely understand. Trust me, I am still just as angry as you are. I am hurt. I feel betrayed and abandoned. I have a feeling that some of you feel that way too. So I know what I’m asking when I ask you to talk to the New Normal totalitarians, the ones who might be reachable.

    If you can’t yet, don’t. But if you’re able to, try.

    Don’t try to convince them that you were right and they were wrong. Just shine a light on the road we’re on. Try to get them to recognize where we’re headed. Regardless of who was right and who was wrong about whatever, we are all going down this road together.

    Personally, I’d rather not ride it all the way to the end and face what is down there this time.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 08/26/2023 – 00:00

  • AI Humanoid Pilot Might be Able To Solve Pilot Shortage
    AI Humanoid Pilot Might be Able To Solve Pilot Shortage

    Our readers know there’s yet to be a quick solution to the US pilot shortage, which may linger until 2032. Current data shows a staggering 17,000-pilot gap. This shortfall can be attributed to several factors:

    • Early retirements spurred by the pandemic.

    • The unyielding retirement age of 65.

    • A dwindling number of pilots from the military.

    • The unappealing prospect for civilians to embark on a pilot career. 

    Airlines can only train 1,500 to 1,800 pilots a year. The deficit has triggered all sorts of flight disruptions, with the latest from American Airlines. 

    However, South Korean researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST) developed “Pibot,” a life-sized humanoid robot that can fly planes and understand complex flight controls. 

    Flight news website Airways Magazine explains more about Pibot’s capabilities:

    As the world continues to adapt to the growing trend of Artificial Intelligence (AI), South Korean scientists have unveiled a humanoid robot capable of piloting an aircraft.

    Named Pibot, the life-sized robot, measuring 160 cm tall and weighing in at 65 kg, is capable of gripping the controls, memorizing aircraft manuals, and even responding to emergency situations. It is fitted with multiple cameras capable of monitoring the aircraft’s systems and operational conditions.

    Currently under development by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST), researchers utilized Al chatbots such as ChatGPT to create ways for PiBot to learn the pilot manuals for various aircraft. The robot can then be changed onto an alternative airframe by clicking the type. It can also memorize worldwide Jeppesen aeronautical navigation charts, an impossible task for its human equivalent.

    PiBot can also communicate with air traffic control (ATC) and other humans on the flight deck, meaning it can operate via a Captain or First Officer. This has been done using Voice synthesis. By plugging the robot into the aircraft, it can communicate directly with the airframe.

    Airways Magazine explained the humanoid pilot has already demonstrated it can control an aircraft safely. 

    While it’s clear a robo-pilot is not something the US Federal Aviation Administration would clear anytime soon — it might catch the agency’s attention amid the worst pilot shortage ever. 

    US airlines have been quietly lobbying Congress to allow them to use just one pilot in the cockpit instead of two. But with an increasing number of pilot deaths — some even in mid-air — one has to wonder: Is the FAA open to considering a mix between human and robot pilots in the cockpit? 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/25/2023 – 23:30

  • The State Protects Itself While Crime Against Ordinary People Surges
    The State Protects Itself While Crime Against Ordinary People Surges

    Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

    In all the media and regime frenzy over the January 6 riots and the Pentagon Leaker in recent months, it is interesting to examine the contrast between how the regime treats “crimes” against its own interests, and real crime committed against ordinary private citizens. 

    Witness, for example, how the Biden administration and corporate media have treated the January 6 riot as if it were some kind of military coup, demanding that draconian sentences be handed down even to small-time vandals and trespassers. Regime paranoia has led the Justice Department to ask for a 30-year sentence for Enrique Tarrio, a man who was convicted of the non-crime of “seditious conspiracy” even though he wasn’t even in Washington on January 6. In recent months, Jacob Chansley, the “QAnon Shaman,” received a sentence of three-and-a-half years, even though prosecutors admit he did nothing violent. Riley Williams was given three years for simply trespassing in Nancy Pelosi’s office. Members of the Capitol Police force have been lionized in the media as great protectors of “sacred” government buildings, and any threat to the property or persons of Washington politicians has been equated with an assault on “democracy.” 

    Yet, had these supposed insurrectionists inflicted these same actions against an ordinary private individual, there’s a good chance the perpetrators would not even be arrested, let alone given years of prison time. Consider, for example, the mobs that ransack private businesses in American cities, stealing tens of thousands of dollars of merchandise while police and prosecutors consider it all to be low priority.  Violent crime and property crime surge in many areas of the United States, with violent crime rising 30 percent in New York City in 2022. Unsolved murders in the US are at a record high. Meanwhile, progressives and social democrats are looking for ways to reduce criminal penalties against violent criminals. Police departments often devote only tiny portions of their budgets to homicide investigations, and if your property is stolen, odds are good you can forget about ever seeing it again. 

    The situation is quite different when it comes to protecting the state, its agents, and its property from any threat. During urban riots, such as those which occurred in Ferguson, Missouri and Minneapolis, Minnesota, the police went to great lengths to protect themselves and government property. If you were just a private shopkeeper or ordinary citizen, however, you were on your own. At the Uvalde School shooting in 2022, hundreds of law enforcement officers from all levels of government chose to protect themselves rather than the children who were being murdered inside. When Uvalde parents demanded the police act, the police attacked the parents. 

    We find similar phenomena at the federal level. There are, of course, special federal laws against violence perpetrated against federal employees. Ordinary taxpayers receive no such consideration. Note how federal agencies move to arm themselves to the teeth while also seeking to disarm the private-sector. Federal agents will spare no expense finding someone who put his feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk, but it’s another matter entirely when we’re talking about serious violent crime against regular people.  Federal agents, of course, allowed 9/11 to occur right under their noses, they refused to investigate known rapist Larry Nasser, and shrugged off reports about the man who would end up slaughtering children at a high school in Parkland, Florida. Contrast this with how long the federal government has been conniving to get revenge on Julian Assange for merely telling the truth about US war crimes.  

    Naturally, law enforcement officers rarely face any sanctions for their failures to bother themselves with private property, life, or limb. The federal courts have made it clear that law enforcement officers are not obligated to actually protect the public. In other words, the taxpayers must always pay taxes to hold up their end of the imagined “social contract” or face fines and imprisonment. But the other side of that “contract,” the state, has no legal obligation to make good on its end. This, of course, is not how real contracts work. 

    The state’s fastidious devotion to protecting itself, compared to its casual concern for the safety of mere taxpayers, illustrates an important principle of state behavior. In his essay The Anatomy of the State, Murray Rothbard notes 

    We may test the hypothesis that the State is largely interested in protecting itself rather than its subjects by asking: which category of crimes does the State pursue and punish most intensely—those against private citizens or those against itself? The gravest crimes in the State’s lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of private person or property, but dangers to its own contentment, for example, treason, desertion of a soldier to the enemy, failure to register for the draft, subversion and subversive conspiracy, assassination of rulers and such economic crimes against the State as counterfeiting its money or evasion of its income tax. Or compare the degree of zeal devoted to pursuing the man who assaults a policeman, with the attention that the State pays to the assault of an ordinary citizen. Yet, curiously, the State’s openly assigned priority to its own defense against the public strikes few people as inconsistent with its presumed raison d’etre.

    This double standard has been repeatedly on display in recent years as the regime has increasingly been consumed with paranoia over threats to itself—propagandistically termed “threats to democracy”—while attention given to real crime against private citizens is apparently not a priority at all. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/25/2023 – 23:00

  • The Most Flown Private Jet In The US Is… 
    The Most Flown Private Jet In The US Is… 

    In a rapid shift in private aviation among millionaires, cent-millionaires, and billionaires, Textron Inc.’s Cessna Citation, the most popular and most flown private jet in the US, which held that record for 15 years, has just been dethroned. 

    Bloomberg reports new monthly flight data from the Federal Aviation Administration shows Brazil’s Embraer Phenom 300, a medium-sized jet that seats around nine passengers, had 360,000 takeoffs and landings at US airports in the 12 months through August, 1,200 more than the Citation Excel family of jets. 

    Source: Bloomberg

    Brian Foley, a private aviation consultant, said the biggest reason behind the surge in popularity of the Phenom 300 is fuel efficiency, which burns one-third less than the Citation Excel. He said cheaper fuel costs offset the Phenom 300’s smaller cabin space.

    For some context, at cruising speed, the two Pratt & Whitney turbofans of the Citation Excel burn around 225 gallons per hour of Jet A fuel. 

    Meanwhile, the Phenom 300 is around 158 gallons of Jet A fuel per hour. 

    Even though Phenom 300s are being flown more, Cessna still dominates private jet deliveries. 

    Source: Bloomberg

    Textron told Bloomberg, “One of every three business jets worldwide is a Cessna Citation, and product upgrades like these continue to give customers new reasons to choose us for our proven performance, leading technology and unmatched cabin experience.” 

    Despite the ‘climate change’ cheerleading, private jet demand soared to new heights in recent years, though mounting macro uncertainty and the highest interest rates in two decades led to a cooling in private jet flights earlier this year. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/25/2023 – 22:30

  • Democrats Have Broken America: Where’s The Outrage?
    Democrats Have Broken America: Where’s The Outrage?

    Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClear Wire,

    The Democrats have an ace in the hole in their relentless war on the Constitution – conservative America’s reverence for the concept of the rule of the law.

    Only their steadfast commitment to this traditional ideal explains why conservatives are allowing   Democrats to flagrantly corrupt our judicial system to destroy their opponents and protect themselves. For all their huffing and puffing, conservatives have effectively taken a let the system play itself out attitude while Democrats nakedly politicize that system through their partisan indictments of former President Trump and their Potemkin Village probes of the Bidens. These are not statements of opinion. These are facts.

    Part of me is glad that so many legal analysts have spilled so much ink exposing these charades. But we degrade our country and ourselves when we treat this unspeakable behavior with anything other than horrified contempt. Every good-faith critique normalizes and legitimizes this profoundly un-American conspiracy.

    Viewing the obvious forest rather than the tangled trees, the cases against Trump are a continuation of the deceitful effort by Democrats and their deep state allies, especially in the DOJ, to annihilate their chief political opponent. That effort began even before his election when Hillary Clinton’s campaign manufactured false claims that Trump had conspired with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election. When that sham was exposed, they almost immediately made Trump only the third president in the country to be impeached for asking Ukraine’s leader to look into the Biden family’s influence-peddling schemes. They set aside almost every rule and order of business by rushing to impeach him once again after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. While that was going on, Democrats insistently rained down other bogus concerns – that he was violating the Emoluments Clause because wealthy foreigners continued to stay at his hotels, that his alleged mental instability made him unfit – to remove him from office.

    The hypocrisy is beyond belief: The party that assails Republicans for questioning the integrity of the highly irregular 2020 election spent years and vast government resources to undo the results of 2016.

    The charges Trump now faces are part of the ongoing campaign by Democrats to subvert the rule of law to delegitimize what they see as the greatest threat to their power.

    In the meantime, Democrats are blatantly using the criminal justice system to protect President Biden. It is now beyond dispute that Biden lied to the American people when he said he never discussed foreign business with his son Hunter and when he claimed during his final 2020 debate with Trump that Hunter’s laptop, which contained evidence of those corrupt dealings, was a “Russian plant.” Has a candidate ever peddled more consequential falsehoods?

    In fact, the president was not only aware of his son’s influence-peddling schemes, whose sole selling point was the connection to his vast power. He was an active participant through phone calls and meetings with clients. Irony does not capture the deviousness of the Democrats’ decision to impeach Trump for asking Ukraine to look into this corruption.

    The cover-up of the Bidens’ conduct is equally disturbing. The U.S. attorney in Delaware assigned to the case, David C. Weiss, is a former colleague of Biden’s late son Beau. Although the tax avoidance charges involved are straightforward, Weiss spent more than five years allegedly looking into them – allowing the statute of limitations to run out on millions of unreported earnings Hunter generated in 2014 and 2015. Note that even as the president calls on Americans to pay their fair share, neither he nor his allies have demanded that Hunter pay his.

    Indeed, we only know about Weiss’ corruption because of two courageous IRS whistleblowers. In response, Weiss quickly struck a deal with Hunter to settle the matter, crafting a sweetheart deal that would have let him off the hook with a slap on the wrist. All might have been forgiven but for the presiding judge, who rejected the deal last month as “not standard” and potentially unconstitutional.

    In response to this scandal, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Weiss as special counsel to look into the mess. This move is beyond brazen – Weiss is now apparently in charge of probing his own misconduct. The goal is obvious: Protect the president, and let the statute of limitations run out on other alleged crimes while shutting down any questions about the “ongoing investigation.”

    The arrogance is jaw-dropping; the lawlessness is in plain sight. Democrats are not even trying to hide their malfeasance – which is part of their method. If they can make us accept their authority to twist the system so that it is no longer a means of justice but a tool of their political power, then their possibilities are unlimited.

    Imagine if the roles were reversed: What if Republican prosecutors had indicted a former Democratic president, who was also the party’s leading candidate in the next election, in four separate cases on 91 questionable charges while a GOP-controlled Department of Justice simultaneously protected its sitting-president boss, who was seeking reelection, by slow-walking a probe of his family’s alleged crimes?

    The corporate media would be in high dudgeon about this assault on the Constitution and the streets would be filled with left-wing protestors who would make the BLM riots, the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and the harassment of Supreme Court justices in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade seem mild.

    Here’s the conundrum. While no one wants conservatives to start engaging in direct action, their passivity is allowing Democrats to weaponize the government. On the one hand, I admire their faith in our system. Even Trump, for all his barking, has largely submitted to his gross mistreatment.

    But our system is shattered. The rule of law is now more concept than fact. Where’s the outrage?

    J. Peder Zane is a RealClearInvestigations editor and columnist. He previously worked as a book review editor and book columnist for the News & Observer (Raleigh), where his writing won several national honors. Zane has also worked at the New York Times and taught writing at Duke University and Saint Augustine’s University.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/25/2023 – 22:00

  • 'Bidenomics' Fail: Food Stamp Bonanza Sends Grocery Bills Soaring 15%, Study Finds
    ‘Bidenomics’ Fail: Food Stamp Bonanza Sends Grocery Bills Soaring 15%, Study Finds

    In a classic move by those on the left — democrats, socialists, and everyone in between with seemingly no grasp of what sparks inflation — championed the Biden administration’s move in 2021 to increase food stamp spending by the most in history, hiking benefits by an average of 27%. 

    In 2022, the Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) spending hit a record high of $119 billion, a sixfold increase over the last two decades. In 2019, taxpayers were on the hook for $4.5 billion per month on food stamp benefits. By December 2022, monthly food stamp spending soared to $11 billion. 

    According to findings from the government watchdog Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), previewed by Fox News, the administration’s massive expansion of food stamp benefits could be responsible for a 15% spike in grocery store prices. 

    FGA called Biden’s rush to increase SNAP benefits an “unlawful expansion—which bypassed Congress—will cost taxpayers $250 billion over the next decade and has heavily contributed to soaring grocery prices.”  

    “Congress should repeal President Biden’s unlawful food stamp expansion and ensure this type of executive overreach cannot happen again. In doing so, Congress could save taxpayers more than $193 billion over the next decade,” it added. 

    The good news is the emergency allotments expired earlier this year, but food stamp spending remains $8.6 billion in March. The Congressional Budget Office estimates SNAP spending will cost taxpayers nearly $1.1 trillion over the next decade. 

    “USDA cooked their books to hike food stamp benefits by 27% — the largest permanent increase in program history. And they bypassed Congress to do it,” said Jonathan Ingram, Vice President of Policy and Research at the Foundation for Government Accountability.

    Ingram noted, “Data show the Biden administration’s overreach led to massive spikes in grocery prices. They’re feeding inflation, not stopping hunger.”

    The index for food at home (groceries) has skyrocketed ever since Biden increased SNAP benefits. 

    As food inflation soared, Biden’s officials, seemingly detached from economic reality, pointed the finger at food companies for raging food inflation. 

    Remember this?

    If FGA is correct, this is another sign that ‘Bidenomics’ has been a disaster for low/mid-tier consumers drowning in inflation. 

    It’s one giant EBT party…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/25/2023 – 21:30

  • 371 Charged for COVID-19 Fraud Totaling $836 Million: DOJ
    371 Charged for COVID-19 Fraud Totaling $836 Million: DOJ

    Authored by Samantha Flom via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The U.S. Department of Justice building in Washington on June 28, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    The Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched two new COVID-19 fraud strike forces, the department said Wednesday in announcing the filing of criminal charges against 371 people in relation to the theft of more than $836 million in pandemic relief funds.

    “The Justice Department has now seized over $1.4 billion in COVID-19 relief funds that criminals had stolen, and charged over 3,000 defendants with crimes in federal districts across the country,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

    “This latest action, involving over 300 defendants and over $830 million in alleged COVID-19 fraud, should send a clear message: The COVID-19 public health emergency may have ended, but the Justice Department’s work to identify and prosecute those who stole pandemic relief funds is far from over,” he added.

    The charges are the result of a COVID-19 fraud enforcement sweep that took place nationwide from May through the end of July.

    According to the DOJ, of the 371 defendants charged, 119 either pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial, and more than $57 million in court-ordered restitution was imposed.

    The sweep involved a total of 718 law enforcement actions, including 117 civil matters yielding more than $10.4 million in judgments.

    Many cases involved charges related to pandemic unemployment insurance benefit fraud and fraud against the Small Business Administration’s two largest pandemic programs: the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loans.

    Together, prosecutors and law enforcement worked to secure the forfeiture of more than $231.4 million.

    Announcing the results at a roundtable meeting of senior DOJ, law enforcement, and Office of the Inspector General officials, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said the department was also launching two new strike forces to assist in its ongoing crackdown on pandemic-related fraud.

    “The law enforcement actions announced today reflect the Justice Department’s focus—working with our law enforcement partners nationwide—on bringing to justice those who stole from American businesses and families at a time of national emergency,” Ms. Monaco said. “The two new strike forces launched today will increase our reach as we continue to pursue fraudsters and recover taxpayer funds, no matter how long it takes.”

    According to the Associated Press, it is possible that more than $280 billion in pandemic relief funds was stolen by fraudsters, while another $123 billion was wasted or misspent.

    The attorney general established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force in May 2021 to help prevent, investigate, and prosecute cases of COVID-19 fraud. In September 2022, the DOJ added to those efforts by launching three strike force teams at the U.S. attorney’s offices in the Eastern and Central Districts of California, the Southern District of Florida, and the District of Maryland.

    The new strike forces will operate out of the U.S. attorney’s offices for the District of Colorado and the District of New Jersey.

    “I applaud the hard work of our prosecutors around the country,” said Michael C. Galdo, acting director of COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement. “However, this announcement is not a victory lap. Our mission is not complete.

    “We know from our investigative partners that identifying those who committed pandemic relief fraud and recovering stolen funds is difficult work. But the Justice Department, including our strike forces, U.S. attorneys’ offices, and the Criminal and Civil Divisions, is committed to using our criminal, civil, and forfeiture tools to hold these fraudsters accountable.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/25/2023 – 21:00

  • "I Just Want To Sell Titty Pictures": Sex Workers F**ked By Crypto
    “I Just Want To Sell Titty Pictures”: Sex Workers F**ked By Crypto

    Sex workers – who frequently face financial discrimination, losing access to payment apps and banking apps such as PayPal, Venmo and CashApp due to their profession – began using cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin as an alternative for payments, which bypass traditional banking systems and avoid service fees from platforms such as OnlyFans.

    According to data by the Free Speech Coalition, 2/3 of sex workers have lost access to a bank account or financial service, with 40% having an account closed within the last year, Wired reports.

    “I just want to sell titty pictures,” said Allie Eve Knox, a professional dominatrix and fetish performer. “I never wanted to be an expert in financial discrimination.”

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

    After starting out in sex work in 2014, Knox, like others in the field, has become something of a financial pariah. The first to ban her were the payment apps—PayPal, Venmo, and CashApp—which prohibit the sale of adult content as policy. But then Knox lost her bank account too. It took a week to recover her money.

    Nine years on and 30-plus bans later, Knox is jaded: “I don’t want to have to know how to run money to different places. I don’t want to deal with any of this bullshit.” -Wired

    Another sex worker, Allie Rae, an ICU worker by training, began posting on OnlyFans when her husband was placed on work furlough. After a short period of time, she was making nearly $500,000 per month more than her day job – but she says she quickly ran into trouble.

    After her OnlyFans account was discovered by her employer, she was fired. She also found that realtors shunned her, lenders refused to extend a mortgage and accountants ghosted her. Rae eventually established a corporation to run her business through, however no major bank would open a business account.

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

    “Left and right, it’s been a struggle,” she told the outlet. “I was very naive—I didn’t understand the magnitude of the discrimination.”

    In short, in a world that embraces the gig economy, where YouTubers and Instagram influencers can become millionaires, sex workers have found themselves in a peculiar form of exile.

    Crypto: false hope

    Given the systemic discrimination throughout the banking sector, many sex workers have turned to cryptocurrencies as a means of both storing wealth and accepting payment. For a while, things were great. Digital currencies allowed customers to pay discreetly without supplying personal information, while sex workers now had a way to bypass the banking system entirely.

    Knox, for example, began accepting crypto in 2014 – holding up a QR code through which viewers could tip her in crypto.

    Another sex worker, former escort-turned-porn star Lira Roux, told the outlet that she began to accept crypto in 2015 at the request of clients. Initially, she would exchange the crypto for dollars, however when new laws came into effect – after which many adult-friendly advertising sites were barred from accepting regular money – she began to pay for ads with crypto too.

    “By and large, crypto is useful for people that aren’t being taken care of properly by the government,” Roux said. “For sex workers, who aren’t well-served by banks, it becomes a useful option.”

    Now, thanks to regulatory scrutiny which has gone into overdrive since the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, sex workers are ‘bumping up’ against limitations – and are finding that ‘decentralized’ crypto is no more detached from the banking system than traditional currency – as sex workers are finding it increasingly difficult to convert crypto into dollars. Typically, this is done via an exchange, which then allows one to withdraw to a traditional bank account. Sex workers are now being banned from crypto exchanges.

    “You get on an exchange for as long as you can, until they shut your ass down,” said Knox. “You quickly [run out of exchanges], so you sit on a lot of useless money. The whole ‘crypto is permissionless and censorship-resistant’ thing is a bunch of bullshit.”

    In the US, full-service sex work (also known as prostitution) is illegal in every state but Nevada, but pornography and online sex work are legal under the First Amendment. Irrespective of this distinction, banking access has been a problem for the entire sex work community since at least the 1960s, says Mike Stabile, director of public affairs at the FSC, and has only become more acute.

    The issue was exacerbated a decade ago by a program launched by the Obama administration, under which banks were warned that a collection of industries posed an “elevated risk” of fraud, including pornography. Now known as Operation Chokepoint, the initiative was found by investigators not to have constituted a deliberate attempt to disrupt disfavored businesses, but is nonetheless said to have led banks to sever ties with the adult sector.

    …

    (Knox suspects she has ended up on a blacklist at Plaid, a provider of technology plumbing to large crypto exchanges like Gemini, Kraken, and Robinhood, leading to the repeated bans. Freya Petersen, spokesperson for Plaid, says no such list exists, but that all firms that wish to use its services are subject to a standard risk assessment process, factoring in the industry in which they operate.) -Wired

    When banks blacklist sex workers, they rarely justify their actions. In one case, porn star Alana Evans, president of the Adult Performance Artists Guild (APAG) was told by Wells Fargo that her account – opened in the mid-1990s, would be closed as part of “ongoing reviews” related to the bank’s responsibility to “manage risks.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsThe industry lockout means that sex workers can’t enjoy the convenience factors provided by Venmo or other payment platforms, and forces them to rely on OnlyFans and Fansly, which handle payouts but not before taking a sizable chunk of their income.

    Given this environment, many sex workers turn to friends or spouses (or pimps) to act as a custodian of their finances, exposing them to potential abuse.

    “One of the ways traffickers control victims is by controlling their finances,” said Jessica Van Meir, founder of MintStars, an adult-friendly NFT subscription platform, and a PhD candidate at Harvard specializing in women’s informal labor. “The irony is that banks exclude sex workers largely for fear of liability for sex trafficking, but by discriminating against sex workers, they put them at higher risk of sex trafficking.”

    How fucked is that?

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/25/2023 – 20:30

  • Biden Targets Schools: Pulls Plug On Archery & Hunting Programs
    Biden Targets Schools: Pulls Plug On Archery & Hunting Programs

    Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

    The disastrous consequences of the Republican-backed Bipartisan Safer Communities Act keep adding up.

    The law, passed last year through a compromise between Democrat Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas, encouraged the Biden administration to pass universal background checks via executive order and more.

    Now, the latest gun control comes in the form of funding cuts for school hunting and archery training programs, just in time for the new school year.

    The Department of Education cut off this funding due to the agency’s interpretation of a provision in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act that bans taxpayer funds from being used towards “training in the use of a dangerous weapon.” The Department of Education seems to think that Hunting and Archery meet that qualification.

    Ironically, Senator Cornyn wrote to the Department of Education this month expressing concern over the interpretation of this provision.

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    While the Republicans who helped introduce and pass this legislation remained confused about the outcome, Gun Owners of America has been diligently warning members of Congress about the consequences of passing new gun control.

    When Congress passes ambiguous laws, it allows anti-gun administrations such as the Biden administration to step in and interpret as they please.

    According to the International Hunter Education Association, Hunter Education courses certify over half a million students annually. Their website details that hunting-related injuries have decreased drastically because of this education.

    It’s obvious that the Biden Administration has a vested interest in cutting these programs from schools. Any program that could create responsible, law-abiding gun owners goes against their anti-gun agenda.

    This is why Gun Owners of America is working diligently in Congress to introduce legislation that repeals exactly these type of anti-gun laws.

    We worked with Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado to introduce the Shall Not Be Infringed Act. This act specifically repeals the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, as well as other gun control measures passed by the 117th Congress.

    Just recently, we secured a major victory for veterans, stopping the VA from disarming veterans simply because they use a fiduciary to manage their finances, overturning a Clinton-era rule.

    And that’s just the start. We’re fighting every day for your rights on Capitol Hill and throughout the courts nationwide.

    *   *   *

    We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/25/2023 – 20:05

  • 'Rich Men North of Richmond' Artist Laughs At GOP Debaters For Mentioning Viral Song
    ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Artist Laughs At GOP Debaters For Mentioning Viral Song

    The first Republican primary debate this week featured the viral song “Rich Men North of Richmond,” currently topping the Billboard 100 and iTunes charts. 

    “As we sit here tonight [Wednesday], the No. 1 song on the Billboard chart is called ‘Rich Men North of Richmond.’ It is by a singer from Farmville, Virginia, named Oliver Anthony. His lyrics speak of alienation, a deep frustration with the state of government and this country,” co-moderator Martha MacCallum said. 

    “Washington D.C. is about 100 miles north of Richmond,” MacCallum continued. “Why is this song striking such a nerve in this country right now?” 

    Responding to the question, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the country “cannot succeed when the Congress spends trillions and trillions of dollars” and that those “rich men north of Richmond have put us in this situation.”

    Days later, on Friday, Oliver Anthony (real name Christopher Anthony Lunsford), the unknown artist who was once a factory worker living in forgotten Appalachia, published a YouTube video saying it was “funny seeing it [song] at the presidential debate because it’s like I wrote that song about those people.” 

    “So for them [DeSantis and all the other Republican candidates] to have to sit there and listen to that that cracks me up uh but it was funny kind of seeing the response to it like that song has nothing to do with Joe Biden you know it’s a lot bigger than Joe Biden um that song is written about the people on the on that stage and a lot more too not just them.” 

    He continued, “I hate I do hate to see that song being weaponized like I see I see the right trying to characterize me as one of their own and I see the left trying to um trying to discredit me I guess in retaliation uh that shit’s gotta stop if you watch the response videos on YouTube to this song it’s not conservative people responding to the song it’s not even necessarily Americans responding to the song um I don’t know that I’ve seen anything get such positive response from such a diverse group of people and I think that terrifies the people that I sing about in that song and they’ve done everything they can the last two weeks to make me look like a fool to spend my words to try to stick me in a political bucket and they can keep trying but I’m just going to keep on writing and I’ve got a lot of words to put down on paper.”

    And this is why the establishment is scared by the song… Unity. 

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    While establishment Republican presidential candidates duked it out on stage this week, the front-runner, former President Trump, ditched Fox for a Tucker Carlson interview, which might have stolen the show with over 255 million views and counting. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/25/2023 – 19:40

  • Transgender Surgeries In US Nearly Tripled In 3 Years
    Transgender Surgeries In US Nearly Tripled In 3 Years

    Authored by Mary Gillis via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Transgender surgeries nearly tripled in the United States between 2016 and 2019, with breast and chest procedures accounting for 56.6 percent of all operations, results of a study published Wednesday in the JAMA Network Open show.

    “Gender-affirming” surgeries have become lucrative business, but that raises ethical questions as research reveals problems with complications and quality of life.(UfaBizPhoto/Shutterstock)

    Close behind was genital reconstruction, making up 35.1 percent, followed by facial and cosmetic procedures at 13.9 percent. The greatest number of procedures overall were undergone by women, 19- to 30-year-olds, people with private insurance, and people with higher incomes. Most procedures occurred in the West and were performed in urban teaching hospitals.

    When divided into subgroups, breast and chest procedures comprised more of the surgical interventions in younger patients. Genital procedures were higher in older patients.

    About 15 percent of the over 48,000 respondents examined indicated mental health or addiction problems, including drug and alcohol abuse, depression, and psychosis.

    “These findings suggest that there will be a greater need for clinicians knowledgeable in the care of transgender individuals with requisite expertise to perform gender-affirming procedures,” the study authors wrote.

    What Are the Dangers of Transgender Surgery?

    Transgender surgeries do not come without potential dangers. Evidence concerning regret rate, long-term medical complications, effects of hormonal therapy, and the link between surgeries and depression and suicide rates require further study.

    Side Effects 

    A 2021 study found reoperations due to long-term complications following breast augmentations do happen. Implant ruptures, capsular contractures (an immune response to breast implants resulting in scar tissue), and aesthetic problems can occur anywhere from 30 days to 5.5 years after surgery.

    According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, side effects of reconstructing male genitalia to female genitalia, known as transfeminine bottom surgery, include the following:

    • Bleeding.
    • Infection.
    • Poor incision healing.
    • Hematoma.
    • Nerve injury stenosis of the vagina.
    • Inadequate vaginal depth.
    • Urinary tract injury.
    • Abnormal connections between the urethra and the skin.
    • Painful intercourse.

    Suicide Risk and Attempts

    A study published in PLOS One highlighted the alarming rates of suicide and suicide attempts in people who underwent sex-reassignment surgery. Experiment results by researchers in Sweden found people who underwent sex reassignment were 4.9 times more likely to attempt suicide and 19.1 times more likely to die of suicide than the controls.

    “Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population,” the authors wrote. “Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism, and should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group.”

    Updated Recommendations

    Hormone therapy is recommended and sometimes required for some patients before breast and chest surgery.

    However, evidence supporting hormone therapy for transgender individuals is inconclusive.

    The Tavistock Centre in London, characterized as a clinic for young people facing gender identity difficulties, is slated to close by the end of 2023 after an independent review (pdf) cited a lack of conclusive evidence supporting routine recommendations of hormone therapies such as puberty blockers, among other complications in running the clinic.

    The clinic closure comes on the heels of Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare’s 2022 updated recommendations. Board officials concluded there was insufficient scientific evidence on “gender-affirmative” care, calling for caution and restraint in hormonal interventions for minors.

    “The update to the Swedish treatment guidelines represents an impressive step toward safeguarding the growing numbers of gender dysphoric youth from medical harm arising from inappropriate gender transition,” health officials wrote in the recommendations.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/25/2023 – 19:15

  • Putin Signs Law Forcing Wagner Fighters To Swear Oath
    Putin Signs Law Forcing Wagner Fighters To Swear Oath

    Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has told reporters on Friday that in a legal sense, Wagner group doesn’t exist. This came as he announced a new presidential decree signed by President Putin on the same day, which stipulates that all Russian paramilitary fighters will be required to swear an oath to the Russian flag and nation.

    Fighters, including from Wagner, must pledge “their loyalty to the Russian Federation… strictly follow their commanders and superiors’ orders, and conscientiously fulfill their obligations,” according to the new decree.

    Via Sky News

    The decree was described as aiming to form “the spiritual and moral foundations for the defense of the Russian Federation” and applies to all mercenary outfits which are “contributing to the execution of tasks given to the armed forces.”

    And there was this, according to The Moscow Times: 

    Asked about the future of Wagner, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday that “legally the Wagner private military group does not exist.”

    Private military companies are officially outlawed in Russia.

    This fresh decree appears aimed squarely at Wagner fighters, given it also comes just two days following the jet downing which took Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s life (something still being verified as Russian investigators examine DNA).

    This week there have been reports of Wagner mercenaries leaving Belarus in droves, while there are elsewhere conflicting reports they’ve been allowed to stay.

    Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has meanwhile commented on the whole Prigozhin matter in a newly published interview. He revealed that he personally told Yevgeny Prigozhin to “watch out” for threats to his life. Apparently this happened not long before the plane crash. And more:

    Mr Lukashenko said that the Wagner leader had never asked him for security guarantees. “I don’t have to ensure Prigozhin’s safety… the conversation was never in that vein.”

    Lukashenko also denied that Putin was behind the killing of the Wagner leader: 

    A close ally of Mr Putin, the Belarusian president said that he believed the plane crash was “just too rough and unprofessional a job” for the Russian leader to be involved. “I know Putin: he is calculating, very calm, even tardy,” Lukashenko said. “I cannot imagine that Putin did it, that Putin is to blame.”

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    This is something which the Kremlin itself said on Friday, calling Western assertions that Putin was behind the assassination of Prigozhin “absolute lies”. But it should also be noted that the death of he and his top commanders aboard the same plane happened two months to the day of the June 23-24 mutiny and armed ‘march on Moscow’.

    All of this does appear to be President Putin engaged in some serious post-mutiny house cleaning and muscle-flexing. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/25/2023 – 18:50

  • Quinn: "The Entire World Is Nothing But A Racket"
    Quinn: “The Entire World Is Nothing But A Racket”

    The Burning Platform’s Jim Quinn unloads a truck-full of uncomfortable realities in this brief comment:

    The entire world is nothing but a racket.

    Just call it a war and the funding is never ending.

    Why would any politician or general ever want peace?

    Their funding would stop.

    Why would Big Pharma and their media co-conspirators ever want to cure cancer or any disease created by other mega-corporations?

    Their riches would evaporate.

    The war on terror must never be won, because the Department of Homeland Security and all the parasites that live off that bloated cow need your money.

    Joe Rogan points out the same narrative when it comes to homelessness. 

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    Bureaucrats and departments in all these Democrat shitholes don’t want to solve the homelessness problem. They would be out of jobs.

    Everything is a racket.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/25/2023 – 18:25

  • Musk Slams 'Black Supremacist' AG Going After SpaceX For Not Hiring Refugees
    Musk Slams ‘Black Supremacist’ AG Going After SpaceX For Not Hiring Refugees

    On Thursday, Biden’s DOJ slapped SpaceX with a lawsuit for not hiring refugees and asylum seekers, one day after Musk announced he was suing organizations funded by George Soros for lying about ‘hate incidents’ on X (formerly known as Twitter).

    And while there’s no obvious link between the two, the timing couldn’t be more suspicious.

    Anyhoo, following the absurd shot at SpaceX – which is bound by the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), which regulates the export of regulated technologies, such as rocket parts – curious internet denizens discovered that the Assistant Attorney General spearheading the case, Kristen Clarke, appears to be a total black supremacist.

    On Thursday night, venture capitalist Max Meyer tweeted: “FLASHBACK: Assistant AG for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke, who is suing @elonmusk  and @SpaceX  for “discriminating against asylum seekers” was an avowed black supremacist while at Harvard University,” referring to a 1994 letter to the Harvard Crimson claiming that blacks are genetically superior to whites for various reasons. The letter was a response to “Defending The Bell Curve,” which argues that human intelligence is a combination of both inherited and environmental factors.

    Included is a quote from the Black Students Association, which Clarke was president of at the time, which reads: “Melanin endows Blacks with greater mental, physical and spiritual abilities.“

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsThe letter is attributed to “no writer,” however it ends with “Kristen Clarke ’97′” and “Victoria Kennedy ’97,” with a note reading “Clarke is president of the Black Students Association.” Clark clearly wrote, co-wrote, or at minimum endorsed, its message.

    The entire letter is reproduced below in its entirety (emphasis ours)

    In response to those who defend The Bell Curve (“Defending The Bell Curve,” Opinion, Oct. 24, 1994), please use the following theories and observations to assist you in your search for truth regarding the genetic differences between Blacks and whites.

    One: Dr. Richard King reveals that at the core of the human brain is the “locus coeruleus” which is a structure that is Black because it contains large amounts of (neuro) melanin which is essential for its operation.

    Two: Black infants sit, stand, crawl and walk sooner than whites.

    Three: Carol Barnes notes that human mental processes are controlled by melanin–that same chemical which gives Blacks their superior physical and mental abilities.

    Four: Some scientists have revealed that most whites are unable to produce melanin because their pineal glands are often calcification or non-functioning. Pineal calcification rates with Africans are five to 15 percent, Asians 15 to 25 percent and Europeans 60 to 80 percent. This is the chemical basis for the cultural differences between Blacks and whites.

    Five: Melanin endows Blacks with greater mental, physical and spiritual abilities–something which cannot be measured based on Eurocentric standards.

    We can readily admit that an abused child is less likely to achieve academically than a child that has grown up in a supportive atmosphere. Black children, whether rich or poor, grow up with an added abuse which white children never have to face. Imagine the message that misguided information like The Bell Curve would send to a Black child who is trying to find her place in school. It’s degrading, belittling and outrageously false.

    Attacks on Black people such as those in The Bell Curve are not unique. Black children face this abuse daily through television shows, jokes aired on the radio, textbooks with truncated history, etc. Liberal whites underestimate the damage which racism causes on the minds of Black children, and conservative whites know all too well how to enlarge that damage. No matter how rich or supportive a Black person’s home might be, by the time she is ready to take the SAT or apply to college, she has struggled far more extensively than any white person of the same social and economic background.

    In addition, it is completely naive to say that Blacks have achieved economic equality with whites. It seems that whites have grown tired of hearing about racism. So, some have turned to measures such as The Bell Curve to relieve themselves of blame.

    It’s just ridiculous. Black people are not asking for political correctness, but truthfulness, fairness and an end to this abuse. Kristen Clarke ’97   Victoria Kennedy ’97

    Clarke is president of the Black Students Association.

    In response, Musk tweeted “She is super racist and proud of it.”

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    Of course…

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    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/25/2023 – 18:00

  • Saudi Arabia Weighs China Bid To Build Nuclear Power Plant
    Saudi Arabia Weighs China Bid To Build Nuclear Power Plant

    By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

    Saudi Arabia is considering a bid from a Chinese state firm to build a nuclear power plant, which could give the Kingdom leverage in possible talks for U.S. assistance for establishing a civil nuclear industry, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, quoting Saudi officials with knowledge of the matter.

    Saudi Arabia has been actively seeking help with expertise in nuclear energy to develop its own civil nuclear generation capacity. The U.S. has been an obvious first choice among potential partners, but Washington has taken a cautious approach. The United States has made it clear that it would only help Riyadh develop nuclear generation capabilities if any agreement includes preventing the enrichment of uranium or reprocessing of plutonium from the reactors, to prevent the weaponization of nuclear power.

    Now Saudi Arabia is evaluating a bid from China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) to build a nuclear power plant in an Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, close to the border with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Saudi officials told the Journal.

    Those officials also admitted to the WSJ that the idea to consider the Chinese bid was an attempt to gain leverage in talks with the U.S. about its help for Saudi Arabia’s civil nuclear program, and potentially extract some compromise on the non-proliferation issues.

    The Middle East is not known for its nuclear power generation capabilities. With all its oil wealth, the region has traditionally relied on fossil fuels to meet its electricity needs.

    In 2020, the first nuclear power plant in the Arab world began operating in the UAE. Plans are to expand it to a facility that would meet a quarter of the country’s electricity demand.

    However, observers warn any expansion of nuclear capabilities in the sensitive Middle Eastern region could lead to a nuclear arms race that could end in disaster.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/25/2023 – 17:40

  • Watch: Maui Residents Turned Back By Police Barricades Recount Their Brush With Death
    Watch: Maui Residents Turned Back By Police Barricades Recount Their Brush With Death

    After Joe Biden’s recent delayed visit to Maui in which he fell asleep during a ceremony honoring the people killed during the terrible event and chuckled about almost “losing his wife, his corvette and his cat” in a fire, many questions about the calamity remain unresolved. Without any obvious pressure from the federal government to get answers, Hawaii’s Democrat leadership is left to its own devices.  They are even attempting an information blackout instead of begging Maui citizens for their forgiveness.  

    Multiple reports from Lahaina indicate that West Maui residents ran into government barricades while trying to flee the rapidly expanding fire; with the survivors being forced to disobey the blocks and bypass police.  It’s yet another bizarre occurrence in a long list of disastrous decisions made by Hawaiian officials that likely cost hundreds (if not thousands) of lives.  

    The government gave no warning siren, denied access to water for fighting back the blaze, and set up barricades which stopped people from escaping.  It’s almost as if the state government did not care about a high body count…

    The following video is an overview of first hand footage recorded by Maui citizens, recounting their brush with death after they barely slipped past the rushing fire only to be turned back into the inferno by police blockades.  Luckily they lived, some only by running into the ocean to wait out the fires.  The question remains – Why did this happen?  How could a place surrounded by water be allowed to burn so easily with families being chased into the sea?  How did Hawaiian officials make the worst possible decisions at every turn?  Was it incompetence, or, something else?

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/25/2023 – 17:20

  • A Startling Compilation: 'Neither Safe Nor Effective'
    A Startling Compilation: ‘Neither Safe Nor Effective’

    Authored by Linda Weigenfeld via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Doctors without Borders protest outside Pfizer world headquarters on April 23, 2015 in New York City. (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

    A section of Dr. Colleen Huber’s introduction to her very important book, “Neither Safe Nor Effective 2nd Edition: The Evidence Against the COVID Vaccines,” is worth quoting before looking at the book as a whole:

    “Dr. Peter McCullough, an American cardiologist, called the COVID vaccines, ‘the worst pharmaceutical development idea in the history of mankind.’”

    “It often comes as a surprise to people that mRNA-type medical interventions and coronavirus vaccines had plenty of red flags through their history prior to December 2020. The ingredients used were already known to be toxic: Cationic lipids injure the nervous system, lungs and liver, as well as cell membranes throughout the body. Polyethylene glycol was never used for injections, due to safety concerns. mRNA had already been shown to change DNA. Previous attempts at coronavirus vaccines had all failed and killed the test animals. So inflicting the world’s population with a new, mostly untested vaccine for which its components already had so many safety warnings was the most widespread reckless experiment in human history.”

    Dr. Peter McCullough (L) confers with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) during a panel discussion on COVID 19, on Jan. 24, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    Dr. Huber exposes the deaths, injuries, and the lack of desired results left in the wake of the COVID vaccines. She backs up her words with over 700 references to medical studies and government webpages.

    A Little Background

    Dr. Colleen Huber’s clinic in Tempe, Arizona, has provided cancer care by naturopathic physicians for its 16 years of existence. In 2014, Dr. Huber authored the largest and longest study in medical history on sugar intake in cancer patients.

    Since the spring of 2020, Dr. Huber’s research interests have focused on the health hazards of masks and the COVID vaccines, as well as early treatments for COVID. As a medical expert in court cases related to vaccine safety concerns, she has, to prepare testimony for trials, compiled vital statistics, data from vaccine manufacturers, and other data from the United States and governments from around the world.

    While parts of Dr. Huber’s book are quite technical and others unpleasant (to say the least), without access to a book with data such as this, the health of those receiving vaccines could be further jeopardized and lives lost. The documentation is complete and comprehensive, supporting Dr. Huber’s intention to expose the truth about the COVID vaccinations.

    An illustration of Moderna’s Covid-19 Vaccine stickers and syringes on Nov. 17, 2020. (Justin Tallis /AFP via Getty Images)

    A Lack of Public Scrutiny

    Dr. Huber discusses how the naïve public was required to allow Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson and Johnson to inject substances on pure faith—without any scientific results backing up the company’s products.

    Each of the manufacturers were inadequately scrutinized by the public prior to widespread use of the vaccines. Yet there was reason to thoroughly examine these companies. Pfizer had the distinction of paying the largest criminal fine in history for fraud, and Moderna had never produced anything before, much less a medical treatment. Johnson and Johnson had recently been convicted of asbestos contamination in its talcum powder. Thus, the three main manufacturers of the COVID vaccines each had a history that should have alarmed people.

    There was also an assumption by the public that the vaccines would be better than the disease. Perhaps, in part, this assumption was due to a heavily financed and carefully choreographed COVID fear campaign.

    Dr. Huber says that an emergency experimental vaccine cannot be assumed to be safer than a virus with a very high survival rate such as COVID.

    Vaccine Side Effects

    Dr. Huber documents the effects of COVID vaccinations. For example, the vaccine may cause blood clotting which can cause strokes, heart attacks, and pulmonary embolisms.

    The vaccine turns the body into a spike-protein factory. These spike proteins then damage blood vessels and cells throughout the body, including cells in the heart.

    Uveitis, an eye inflammation, is a common complaint within a few days following a COVID vaccination.  This manifests as blurred vision, floaters, pain, redness and/or light sensitivity.  Injuries to the retina and clouding of the vitreous humor (the clear gel that we see through) have also been reported.

    By August 2022, data analyst Raimond Hagemann had compiled information on birth rate changes in 19 European countries and produced an extremely important paper. Nine months after the peak of COVID vaccinations, birth rates sharply declined and stayed down.

    Cancers, especially aggressive cancers, have increased enormously since peak COVID vaccine uptake in spring of 2021.

    Demyelinating disorders, that is, conditions that damage a layer of cells that protect the nerves, have been reported following the vaccinations.  These include multiple sclerosis, Guillain-Barre, seizures, encephalopathies, and encephalitis.

    A map showing share of population fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Note Africa’s vaccination rate. (Our World In Data/CC BY-SA 4.0)

    Other Chapters of Interest

    Dr. Huber has a chapter giving a review of the immune system, and another explains why vaccines for respiratory diseases cannot work. There is also a chapter demonstrating with graphs that the more vaccines (boosters) a person receives, the more damage that can occur.

    Offering suggestions for healing the vaccine injured, Dr. Huber adds the disclaimer that she cannot guarantee any of her advice will even partially heal the injured but some of it may prove effective in some cases. She mentions Vitamin D with its long and very successful history against viral infections, as well as agmatine, phosphatidyl serine, and nattokinase.

    She also advises looking to Africa for solutions. Africa has been a beacon of light against an otherwise bleak global map. The continent has the distinction of having very little incidence and deaths from COVID when compared to the rest of the populated world. Africa also had an extraordinarily low vaccination rate. Instead, of vaccines, ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine have been widely used throughout equatorial Africa for about a half century as they happen to be very useful against endemic parasites.

    Dr. Huber includes a chapter on legal cases that are pertinent to bodily autonomy. She includes a link to each case, including some in which she was not involved, with quotes from each ruling judge.

    She also talks about how to obtain religious and medical exemptions to COVID vaccines—providing a letter which asserts civil rights and supports bodily autonomy.

    Speaking to the Author

    Colleen Huber provided some insights as to why she wrote “Neither Safe Nor Effective.”

    Dr. Colleen Huber, author of “Neither Safe Nor Effective, 2nd Edition: The Evidence Against the COVID Vaccines.” (Substack)

    Fearing a pandemic may happen again, Dr. Huber worried about the almost blind acceptance of COVID vaccines. She hopes her book will help stop mandatory COVID vaccination for all people because one size does not fit all. The bodies of people are different and react in different ways to drugs, vaccines, and even food. Thus, she hopes her book will provoke second thoughts in those who are thinking of getting COVID injections in the future.

    She also wants to dispense information that empowers people. By publishing her data now, she shows what happens when a government and social-media companies collude to stifle a free exchange of medical information. It’s become clear that problems with the COVID vaccines would have been easier to prevent before they were administered than to treat the problems they’ve created afterwards.

    And, of course, she wants to provide resources to help the vaccine injured.

    Dr. Huber’s reasons for her writing the book are the very reasons that you should buy the book. Knowledge is power.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/25/2023 – 17:00

  • US Bank Deposits Plunged Last Week As Fed Rescue Funding Usage Hits New Record High
    US Bank Deposits Plunged Last Week As Fed Rescue Funding Usage Hits New Record High

    For the first time in 6 weeks, US money market funds saw outflows (admittedly a tiny $1BN)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The outflows were driven by institutional funds – the first in 6 weeks. Retail funds saw inflows for the 18th straight week..

    Source: Bloomberg

    Also of note is that usage of The Fed’s emergency funds rose yet again (admittedly only $144MN) to a new record high…

     

    Source: Bloomberg

    Meanwhile, total bank deposits (on a seasonally-adjusted basis) fell for the second week in a row, plunging last week by $49BN…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Which leaves the divergence between bank deposits and money market funds wide but perhaps starting to narrow…

    Source: Bloomberg

    The big drop in deposits was driven by foreign bank outflows (-$31BN) but Large ($13BN) and Small banks ($4.6BN) also saw notable outflows on a SA basis. However, on a non-seasonally-adjusted basis Large (+$14BN) and Small banks (+$1.4BN) saw  deposit inflows.

    Source: Bloomberg

    So, we have the now ubiquitous ‘baffle em with bullshit’ measures showing domestic US banks had $15BN of inflows (NSA) but $18BN of outflows (SA)…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Despite the outflows, Large ($13.7BN) and Small ($6.3BN) banks saw loan volumes increase last week…

    Source: Bloomberg

    Finally, US equity market cap remains divergent from bank reserves at The Fed…

    Source: Bloomberg

    So what exactly are the banks going to do in 6 months when The Fed’s BTFP funding expires? That’s a $107BN balance sheet hole that will need to be fixed…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/25/2023 – 16:40

  • Kunstler: The Party Of Chaos Is Running Scared
    Kunstler: The Party Of Chaos Is Running Scared

    Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

    “Georgia could determine who is our next president. A TEAM of lawyers needs to watch them count every single vote. They can start in Fulton County where we are having water leaks.”

    – Fulton County DA Fani Willis, Nov. 4, 2020

    What to make of this mugshot? Serious as a heart attack? I’d hate to be you on that fateful day? Table turner? Energy shift? Game on? Daddy’s in da house? Good career move? You can run but you can’t hide? Please, Br’er Fox, don’t fling me in that-there briar patch…

    Good luck trying this case, DA Fani Willis. And by all means roll the TV cameras in the courtroom. You are about to supplant the Scopes trial of 1925 as the most notoriously ridiculous piece of legal work in US history. That one, over in Tennessee, was called “the Monkey Trial” when a high school teacher named John Scopes was charged with teaching the theory of evolution in his biology class. It got the national news spotlight for the duration. The state enlisted three-time Democratic presidential nominee Williams Jennings Bryan as a special prosecutor. Poor Bryan, famously sweating in the southern July heat, was made a fool of by Chicago lawyer for the defense Clarence Darrow. Bryan died of a stroke days after the conclusion of the trial. It also killed what remained of his reputation.

    This week, DA Willis staged the circus parade of bookings, forcing the large cast of indictees – most of them attorneys for Mr. Trump – to submit to the finger-printing and mugshot ceremony in the county jail, in case any of them had thoughts of decamping to Uruguay. The cable news peanut gallery went berserk with glee at the humiliation of election denial celebrities Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell especially. On Thursday, attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who advised Georgia GOP officials on the process of assembling alternate electors in the case of election fraud under Georgia law, demanded a speedy trial.

    Under Georgia’s speedy trial law, Mr. Chesebro’s trial would have to take place this fall. (Such are the guiles of the law.) The Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper called it, “an aggressive filing.” Ms. Willis had hoped to try all 19 defendants together during the 2024 presidential primary season, to support her RICO charges. Meanwhile, three other defendants, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, filed to have their cases removed to the federal court, in so far as the actions they are accused of taking happened while they worked in the service of the US government. Mr. Meadows is accused of seeking by email to get the phone number of a Pennsylvania election official.

    Ms. Willis’s case hinges on a number of novel propositions. First, that it is somehow against the law to object to the outcome of an election. And second, that the process for relief in such a case, as provided in Georgia’s election contest law and the US Electoral Count Act of 1887, does not apply to Mr. Trump and his lawyers. Anyone who intends to challenge the outcome must necessarily assemble a panel of alternate electors if state officials cannot certify the election properly and in good faith. Ms. Willis refers to these erroneously as “fake electors.” Mr. Trump and his co-defendants will necessarily have to present evidence that the Georgia presidential election of 2020 was not certified properly or in good faith.

    Will the defendants be allowed to present evidence of serious irregularities in the 2020 Georgia election results? If not, would that not be grounds for dismissal. So far, Democrats in charge of the machinery of law all over the country have skated on mere assertions that the 2020 election was fair. In Georgia, none of the principals involved in the dispute have been subject to cross-examination, the best instrument for truth-finding in the American legal system. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Sec’y of State Brad Raffensperger may not be so hot for an airing of what actually went on Nov 3, 2020 and the days after, especially the validity of over 100,000 mail-in ballots in a state where “Joe Biden’s” margin of victory was a mere 11,799 votes.

    Mr. Trump seems to be thriving under the tribulation of four court cases brought against him as he runs for election in 2024. Each new set of charges boosts his poll numbers. It helps him hugely that the cases are transparently idiotic and mendacious. If he is initially convicted in any of them, he can still run for president and be elected, even if he’s jailed — as Eugene Debs did in 1920 getting 913,693 votes running on the Socialist Party from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, where he was jailed under the 1917 Espionage Act for speaking out against America’s entry into the First World War.

    The Party of Chaos is running scared. Everybody knows that “Joe Biden” can’t possibly run for another term and yet the public debate is so grotesquely disabled that nobody will talk about it. Most particularly, they will not talk about who might take his place.

    All they are really demonstrating with this barrage of prosecutions against their chief adversary is how broken, craven, and degenerate the party is, and what a menace it is, as they like to say, to our democracy.

    *  *  *

    Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/25/2023 – 16:20

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Aug 25

Today’s News 25th August 2023

  • Spain Is The Most Worried About Data Use Online
    Spain Is The Most Worried About Data Use Online

    In August 1991, the world’s first ever web page was published online.

    Now, more than three decades later, the internet is estimated to serve some 5.16 billion people, with a global internet penetration rate of 64.4 percent.

    But, as Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, along with the many benefits of the online world and our increased interconnectivity also come risks.

    This includes phishing, when bad actors try to obtain private data such as banking details from users by sending bogus emails that impersonate companies or public bodies, as well as attempts to breach and leak databases that hold personal information for subsequent identity theft or scams using credit cards.

    The following chart uses data from Statista’s Consumer Insights survey to show where the question of the misuse of their personal data is a common concern.

    Infographic: Which Country Is Most Worried About Data Use Online? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    It reveals that out of the selected countries, a bigger share of Spanish respondents were concerned (56 percent) than the other polled countries, followed by Chile (50 percent), and Mexico (48 percent).

    Meanwhile, under a third of respondents shared the same concern in the United States (27 percent), South Africa (28 percent) and the United Kingdom (28 percent).

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/25/2023 – 02:45

  • Britain's Asylum Backlog Hits Record 175,000 As Applications Last Year Reached Two-Decade High
    Britain’s Asylum Backlog Hits Record 175,000 As Applications Last Year Reached Two-Decade High

    Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

    There are more than 175,000 people living in Britain awaiting a decision on their asylum applications, the highest figure reported since records began in 2010, Home Office data published on Thursday showed.

    The asylum backlog had extended to 175,457 individuals awaiting an initial decision by the end of June this year, up 44 percent from June 2022.

    Similarly, the number of asylum applications submitted this year reached a two-decade high, with 78,768 applications relating to 97,390 people, up 19 percent from the previous year.

    “This is higher than at the time of the European migration crisis (in 2016) and is the highest number of applications for two decades,” the Home Office stated.

    The most common nationality of applicants was Albanian with 11,790 applications, followed by Afghans with 9,964 applications, double the number received from the country in the previous year.

    A total of 71 percent of all decisions made in the year to June granted refugee status or humanitarian protection, more than double the percentage granted prior to the coronavirus pandemic.

    Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged to clear the legacy asylum backlog — i.e., asylum applications made up to June last year — by the end of this year, but Home Office officials have only cleared an average of 2,061 cases a month.

    With another 67,870 cases remaining, the government faces the seemingly impossible task of processing over 11,000 cases every month for the rest of the year to meet its target.

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

    Irregular immigration into Britain has also skyrocketed this year, with 52,530 migrants detected entering the U.K. without permission in the year ending June 2023, up 17 percent from the previous year. A total of 85 percent of these arrived via small boats across the English Channel.

    The vast majority of these are being accommodated in hotels across the country, with an estimated cost of £6 million per day to U.K. taxpayers. A total of 47,518 migrants were being housed in hotels in March 2023, rising to 50,546 by June despite the government making pledges to reduce this figure.

    According to the Home Office data, the government’s annual spending on asylum has almost doubled from £2.12 billion in 2021-2022 to £3.97 billion in 2022-2023.

    “The Tories have failed us all on immigration,” conservative broadcaster Nigel Farage posted in response to the figures, while Labour’s Shadow Immigration Minister Stephen Kinnock said the statistics “set out in stark terms the complete chaos the Tories have created in the immigration and asylum system.

    “Only 1 percent of last year’s 45,000 small boats cases have received a decision, and the number of failed asylum seekers being returned is also down a whopping 70 percent since 2010. This is a disastrous record for the prime minister and home secretary,” he added.

    Despite Labour’s protestations, the party has regularly refused to commit to reducing immigration levels should they come to power as expected at the next general election.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 08/25/2023 – 02:00

  • Visualizing The Future Global Economy By GDP In 2050
    Visualizing The Future Global Economy By GDP In 2050

    According to a recent report from Goldman Sachs, the balance of global economic power is projected to shift dramatically in the coming decades.

    More specifically, analysts believe that Asia could soon become the largest regional contributor to world GDP, surpassing the traditional economic powerhouses grouped together in the Developed Markets (DM) category.

    In the graphic below, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu visualizes Goldman Sachs’ real GDP forecasts for the year 2050 using a voronoi diagram.

    Data and Highlights

    The following table includes a regional breakdown of expected real GDP in 2050. All figures are based on 2021 USD.

    Based on these projections, Asia (ex DM) will represent 40% of global GDP, slightly ahead of Developed Markets’ expected share of 36%. This would mark a massive shift from 50 years ago (2000), when DMs represented over 77% of global GDP.

    Asia

    Focusing on Asia, China and India will account for the majority of the region’s expected GDP in 2050, though growth in China will have tapered off significantly. In fact, Goldman Sachs expects annual real GDP growth in the country to average 1.1% through the 2050s. This is surprisingly slower than America’s expected 1.4% annual growth during the same decade.

    The fastest growing economies in Asia during the 2050s will be India (3.1% annually), Bangladesh (3.0% annually), and the Philippines (3.5% annually). These countries are expected to thrive thanks to their high population growth rates and relatively low median age, which translates into a larger work force.

    Latin America

    Turning our attention to Latin America, we can see that the region will account for a relatively small 7% of global GDP in 2050. According to Goldman Sachs’ previous projections from 2011, many Latin American countries have underperformed over the past decade. For example, Brazil’s real GDP shrank from $2.7 trillion in 2010, to $1.5 trillion in 2020.

    Because of these setbacks, Goldman Sachs believes Indonesia will be able to overtake Brazil as the world’s largest emerging market before 2050.

    That said, Brazil’s economic ranking is still expected to climb above France and Canada by then, if these projections prove to be accurate.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/24/2023 – 22:45

  • "Election Interference": Trump Returns To Twitter After Georgia Booking
    “Election Interference”: Trump Returns To Twitter After Georgia Booking

    Update (2145ET): After more than two-and-a-half years without tweeting, Trump has finally returned to the platform following Thursday’s booking in Georgia.

    Meanwhile, Trump’s already selling t-shirts with the mugshot. Great job Fani, you may have just cost Biden the election.

    And the meme magicians are already at it…

    *  *  *

    Update (2025ET): After about 20 minutes to take a mugshot Trump left the Fulton County jail.

    “It’s election interference. … I want to thank you for being here. We did nothing wrong at all. And we have every right, every single right to challenge an election that we think is dishonest. So we think it’s very dishonest,” he told reporters at Atlanta’s airport, before leaving.

    *  *  *

    Former President Donald Trump surrendered at the Fulton County jail on Thursday on state charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

    According to the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, Trump is 6’3″ and 215 lbs (which he was allowed to pre-report to ‘speed up the process,’ so who knows).

    Watch Live:

    Meanwhile, Trump supporters have been waiting for hours outside the jail:

    Trump and 18 other people were indicted last week after being accused by Fulton County DA Fani Willis of participating in a scheme to flip the results of the election – many of whom have already turned themselves in, including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis on Wednesday and John Eastman and Mark Meadows on Tuesday.

    As the Washington Times reports;

    the scene outside the jail was anything but normal Thursday.

    It included supporters of the former president such as Cliff MacMorris, 66, from Naples, Florida, who held a flag that read, “Trump Won Save America.”

    He and his wife, Georgine, spent the night in Atlanta.

    “You don’t have the right to persecute somebody unjustly,” Cliff MacMorris said.

    His wife said the indictments against the former president were politically motivated because of the four years of “prosperity, safety, freedom” that Trump achieved in the White House.

    “They must be worried about him for some reason,” she said.

    Sharon Anderson, 67, from east Tennessee, was outside the jail for a second straight day. She had spent the night in a car with the air conditioning running.

    “I’m here to support Donald J. Trump. I want him to see some of the millions that show up at the polls for him.”

    Trump faces 13 separate counts in Georgia, including a racketeering charge and several fraud and false statement count. Trump had until Friday to turn himself in.

     

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/24/2023 – 22:25

  • "Yet Another Case Of Weaponization": Musk Responds After DOJ Sues SpaceX For Not Hiring Refugees
    “Yet Another Case Of Weaponization”: Musk Responds After DOJ Sues SpaceX For Not Hiring Refugees

    On Wednesday, Elon Musk threatened to sue organizations funded by left-wing financier George Soros for falsely claiming “hate incidents” are on the rise, in order to justify censorship. Less than a day later, Biden’s ‘not weaponized’ DOJ slapped SpaceX with a lawsuit for not hiring asylum seekers and refugees.

    According to the lawsuit – which has been brewing since 2020, the DOJ found that “SpaceX failed to fairly consider or hire asylees and refugees because of their citizenship status and imposed what amounted to a ban on their hire regardless of their qualification, in violation of federal law,” according to Kristen Clarke, assistant AG of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.

    SpaceX headquarters in Los Angeles, California.

    “SpaceX recruiters and high-level officials took actions that actively discouraged asylees and refugees from seeking work opportunities at the company,” according to the complaint.

    According to data SpaceX provided, the DOJ said that over a nearly four period and across more than 10,000 hires, the company “hired only one individual who was an asylee and identified as such in his application.”

    That lone hire came about four months after the DOJ notified SpaceX of its investigation.

    SpaceX did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. The suit was filed in the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a division of the DOJ that adjudicates immigration cases. –CNBC

    SpaceX and other rocket companies have for years asserted that its hiring practices were dictated by the  International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR) law, which regulates the export of regulated technologies, such as rocket parts. An “export” is deemed to have occurred if technology is disclosed to a foreigner, even in the U.S.

    Musk responded Thursday night, tweeting “SpaceX was told repeatedly that hiring anyone who was not a permanent resident of the United States would violate international arms trafficking law, which would be a criminal offense,” adding “This is yet another case of weaponization of the DOJ for political purposes.”

    The Biden administration’s lawsuit seeks to win “fair consideration and back pay for asylees and refugees who were deterred or denied employment at SpaceX due to the alleged discrimination,” along with civil penalties and policy changes from the company.

    Will the DOJ go after Northrop, Lockheed and Boeing for the same thing?

    Read the lawsuit below:

    DOJ SpaceX Lawsuit Aug. 24,… by CNBC.com

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/24/2023 – 21:55

  • Catholic School System Asks Students To Use Biological Pronouns And Names
    Catholic School System Asks Students To Use Biological Pronouns And Names

    Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A young girl at the annual New York City Pride March in New York City on June 25, 2023. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

    A Catholic school system in Massachusetts under the Diocese of Worcester is asking students to behave in accordance with their sex, including while using pronouns and names.

    “All students are expected to conduct themselves at school in a manner consistent with their biological sex,” the Diocese said in an Aug. 15 announcement. “School practice shall consider the gender of all students as being consistent with their biological sex, including, but not limited to, the following: participation in school athletics; school-sponsored dances; dress and uniform policies; the use of changing facilities, showers, locker rooms, and bathrooms; titles, names, and pronouns; and official school documents.”

    Official documents, including school records, transcripts, and diplomas shall reflect the student’s biological sex as determined at the time of their birth and enrollment.

    The new policy prohibits students from engaging in advocacy, celebration, or expression of same-sex attraction in ways that cause “confusion or distraction” to the function of the school like classes, events, and other activities.

    It also prohibits bullying, harassment, threats, or acts of violence against students on the basis of their perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.

    “While some schools had policies in place, others did not. Individual situations were arising which underscored a need for a single policy which clearly states Church teaching and provides consistent application of that teaching across all our schools,” said David Perda, superintendent of Catholic Schools for the diocese.

    The new policy, titled “Catholic Education and the Human Person,” was approved by Bishop Robert McManus in late June and was sent to all Catholic schools to include them in school handbooks this fall. The Diocese is located roughly 45 miles west of Boston.

    Some Schools Not Implementing New Rules

    The Diocese of Worcester’s new policy is expected to affect 21 Catholic schools in Worcester, with over 5,000 students coming under the purview. However, some schools have indicated that they may not adopt the new guidelines.

    In an Aug. 11 letter to Bishop McManus, Xaverian Brothers General Superior Brother Daniel Skala and Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur Sister Patty Chappell said that the boards of trustees of their religious orders had reviewed the policy, according to Patch.

    Demonstrators listen to the speaking program during an “Our Bodies, Our Sports” rally for the 50th anniversary of Title IX at Freedom Plaza in the District of Columbia on June 23, 2022. The rally, organized by multiple athletic women’s groups was held to call on President Joe Biden to put restrictions on transgender females and “advocate to keep women’s sports female.” (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

    The boards have decided not to implement the new policies in student handbooks at the two schools the orders sponsor—the all-girls Notre Dame Academy in Worcester and all-boys St. John’s in Shrewsbury.

    “We support our respective boards’ recent determination to uphold their established practices, guided by the principles of our Church and Religious Orders, instead of incorporating the [new policies] into their handbooks,” the letter stated.

    Schools under the Diocese of Worcester that do not follow the new policy on gender ideology could face punishment.

    Last year, Bishop McManus stripped the affiliation of Nativity School in Worcester, asking that it stop identifying itself as a Catholic school after the institution refused to take down LGBT and Black Lives Matter flags.

    Bishop McManus had also prohibited the school from performing Mass ceremonies.

    Pope Mixes Messaging

    The Diocese of Worcester’s new policy is based on various Biblical sources and references the Catechism of the Catholic Church as well as the teachings of Pope Francis.

    Pope Francis has “repeatedly stressed the importance of a proper understanding of our sexuality, warning of the challenge posed by ‘the various forms of an ideology of gender that denies the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman and envisages a society without sexual difference,’” the policy states.

    “As Pope Francis notes, we must always respect the sacred dignity of each individual person, but that does not mean the Church must accept the confused notions of secular gender ideology.”

    Though the policy cites Pope Francis while dismissing gender ideology, the Pope has given mixed messages regarding the issue over the past years.

    Back in 2013 when asked about the sexual orientation of priests, the Pope replied, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” according to AP.

    In 2015, Pope Francis criticized gender ideologies, comparing such theories to nuclear weapons and genetic manipulation.

    In 2021, Pope Francis came under criticism from the gay community after the Vatican stated that the church cannot bless same-sex unions. In an interview with AP in January this year, the Pope said homosexuality was “not a crime,” but that it is a “sin.”

    The Diocese of Worcester’s decision to ban preferred pronouns comes as several institutions are imposing pronoun use and punishing people who do not comply with such measures. Teachers have been expelled from schools for not using such pronouns due to their religious beliefs.

    In a recent interview with The Washington Examiner, Tyson Langhofer, a senior counsel at advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), suggested that as the issue of pronoun use becomes widespread, SCOTUS may have to intervene.

    “I do believe that the Supreme Court is going to have to weigh in on this if schools continue adopting these policies, which it appears that they’re doing,” he said.

    “This issue is very [common] … And I think it’s because there’s a lot of misinformation out there from outside advocacy organizations, which are pressuring schools, telling them what they can and can’t do.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/24/2023 – 21:30

  • Pentagon To Send Ukrainian Pilots For F-16 Training To Texas & Arizona
    Pentagon To Send Ukrainian Pilots For F-16 Training To Texas & Arizona

    A US official has informed The New York Times on Thursday that the Pentagon plans to begin training Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets inside the US, as part of a program which could start as early as September.

    Already a program has been kicked off in the Netherlands and Denmark, which Kiev has complained has been too slow to get off the ground, also given it only includes six Ukrainian pilots. At this rate, the expected date that Ukraine could be piloting the US-made jets in battle keeps getting pushed back – from estimates of next summer to now perhaps end of 2024.

    US Air Force image

    “[We’re] open to training existing pilots if capacity is reached in Europe,” a Pentagon spokesperson had initially previewed days ago, on Monday.

    “That’s the condition. So, if Denmark and the Netherlands are taking the lead on training, if they just do not have the capacity … to train as many pilots as Ukraine wants to send or plans to send, then we will… help train stateside,” the earlier statement added.

    But on Thursday more details have come out, apparently with a fuller US commitment, which will see training locations which includes Texas and Arizona.

    The NY Times details, “The pilots will first receive English language training in Texas and then begin months of flight training in Arizona, said the U.S. official who addressed the issue on Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss future training plans.”

    Currently Denmark and the Netherlands have pledged quantities of their own Lockheed produced F-16s. The Biden White House earlier this month made the key decision to allow export of its fighters from third-parties, but has yet to commit its own, which could still be coming.

    Ukrainian officials have all along bitterly complained it’s becoming too little, too late in terms of F-16s aiding the failing counteroffensive. Kiev very obviously lacks any level of air superiority, which would be strategically necessary toward liberating territory. Many analysts are seeing the F-16 program as more about Ukraine’s future defense, post-war.

    Given the Europe-based pilot training program has a mere half-dozen Ukrainian pilots enrolled, it’s not expected that the US program will host a large group of potential pilots.

    As for precise location within Texas, the Ukrainians would likely be placed somewhere at one of the multiple Air Force facilities in San Antonio. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/24/2023 – 21:05

  • Not All Legislators Use The Poor And Minorities For Political Gain
    Not All Legislators Use The Poor And Minorities For Political Gain

    Authored by Dave Trabert via RealClear Wire,

    Hypocrisy — claiming to have beliefs to which one’s behavior does not conform — has long been a defining characteristic of many politicians. But a few brave souls recently have bucked the official party line to stand up for their beliefs and constituents.

    Georgia state legislator Mesha Mainor recently announced she is leaving the Democrat party to become a Republican, saying, “For far too long, the Democrat Party has gotten away with using and abusing the black community. For decades, the Democrat Party has received the support of more than 90% of the black community. And what do we have to show for it?  I represent a solidly blue district in the city of Atlanta. This isn’t a political decision for me. It’s a moral one.”

    Minor says her Democrat colleagues crucified her when she decided to stand up for disadvantaged children in support of school choice.  

    Kansas Democrat Marvin Robinson hasn’t changed party affiliation, but he is taking a lot of abuse from Democrats for supporting school choice for disadvantaged kids and protecting biological women’s right to compete in the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. He says one female Democrat in the Legislature told him he should die.

    Mainor says, “The most dangerous thing to the Democrat Party is a black person with a mind of their own.”  

    Kansas Democrats also pressure members to vote against children and for the unions.  

    Rep. Brad Boyd, an Olathe, Kansas Democrat who serves on the Olathe School Board, says school choice “targets black and brown kids, who can’t afford to attend some of these prestigious private institutions when we take money away from public schools.”

    School choice programs do target minorities and low-income students, but quite the opposite of how Boyd contends. First, seven of the eight studies on the effect of choice programs on integration found positive impacts; the other showed no visible impact. That’s because minorities comprise a disproportionate share of student enrollment in choice programs.  Second, most studies show that public school students have better outcomes after the introduction of choice programs.

    Despite these irrefutable facts, Rep. Boyd and other choice opponents want to keep students trapped in public schools and condemn them to a lifetime of underachievement because that is the will of the teacher unions and other education officials. Only 13% of Black high school students in Boyd’s Olathe district are proficient in math, and more than half are below grade level.  

    Shockingly low proficiency for Black students isn’t just a Kansas issue; it runs rampant nationwide. The 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows 62% of Black eighth-graders are below basic in math, and only 9% are proficient, for example.

    Kansas Republican Mark Schreiber justifies his opposition to choice by saying the state should focus on providing more early childhood education programs. That might seem plausible at face value, but people like Schreiber who are familiar with the workings of the Kansas public school system know that won’t help low-income kids. Legislators have provided more than $5 billion in incremental funding to help those kids since 2005, but state audits consistently find that public school officials refuse to spend that money as state law requires. And the State Board of Education lets them get away with it.

    Kansas legislators who oppose school choice know that the public system is consciously leaving behind poor kids in general and Black students in particular, but they refuse to talk about it. State Rep. Valdenia Winn (D-Wyandotte) sees it firsthand as a member of the Kansas City, Kansas, school board, which refuses to follow state law on spending at-risk funding and conducting student needs assessments. Sill, she contends that choice would “kill public education.”  

    Choice has existed in states like Florida and Arizona for decades and has not ‘killed’ public education. Just look at 4th-grade reading results for low-income kids. Florida students were trailing the national average in 1998; today, they have the highest proficiency level in the nation. Arizona students were three points below the national average, but now they meet the national average.

    Politicians know that the public education system harms the low-income families they purport to represent and who would benefit from school choice. Yet they use them as pawns to protect the party and institutional interests.

    School choice is perhaps the most bipartisan issue in the nation today, with solid support from parents of all political persuasions. Legislators in both parties should stop protecting education systems and pass universal school choice in every state so that students can get a good education and succeed in life.

    Dave Trabert is CEO of Kansas Policy Institute, a nonprofit research and education organization that promotes economic and educational freedom and protects constitutional rights.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/24/2023 – 20:40

  • Visualizing All Of China's Trade Partners
    Visualizing All Of China’s Trade Partners

    China stands as a formidable player in the global trade arena, wielding its influence as the world’s largest goods exporter.

    With a complex network of trade partnerships spanning more than 200 countries, regions, and territories, the world’s second-largest economy has significant economic relationships with both allies and adversaries.

    By using 2022 trade data from China’s General Administration of Customs, this chart from Visual Capitalist’s Truman Du and Omri Wallach breaks down the nation’s top trading partners through imports and exports by destination.


    China’s Imports and Exports by Country in 2022

    Over the course of 2022, China saw exports totaling $3.57 trillion and imports totaling $2.71 trillion, giving it a massive trade surplus of $857 billion.

    ℹ️ Note: For products manufactured in two or more countries, China records the place where the last substantial working or processing occurred as the place of origin, including China itself.

    Country Imports (2022 USD) Exports (2022 USD) Balance (2022 USD)
    🇺🇸 United States $177.7B $578.8B +$401.1B
    🇭🇰 Hong Kong $7.8B $295.2B +$287.4B
    🇳🇱 Netherlands $12.5B $117.4B +$104.9B
    🇮🇳 India $17.5B $117.7B +$100.3B
    🇲🇽 Mexico $17.4B $77.3B +$59.8B
    🇬🇧 United Kingdom $21.8B $81.0B +$59.2B
    🇻🇳 Vietnam $88.0B $144.4B +$56.4B
    🇸🇬 Singapore $33.9B $80.0B +$46.1B
    🇵🇭 Philippines $23.0B $63.9B +$40.9B
    🇵🇱 Poland $5.1B $38.0B +$32.9B
    🇪🇸 Spain $9.8B $41.6B +$31.9B
    🇹🇷 Türkiye $4.5B $33.9B +$29.4B
    🇧🇪 Belgium $8.7B $35.5B +$26.7B
    🇧🇩 Bangladesh $1.0B $26.7B +$25.7B
    🇮🇹 Italy $27.0B $50.5B +$23.6B
    🇹🇭 Thailand $56.5B $77.7B +$21.1B
    🇳🇬 Nigeria $1.6B $22.1B +$20.5B
    🇵🇰 Pakistan $3.4B $22.9B +$19.5B
    🇪🇬 Egypt $1.0B $17.1B +$16.0B
    🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan $0.1B $15.3B +$15.3B
    🇨🇿 Czechia $5.4B $18.2B +$12.8B
    🇰🇭 Cambodia $1.8B $14.0B +$12.2B
    🇬🇷 Greece $0.8B $12.9B +$12.1B
    🇵🇦 Panama $1.2B $12.6B +$11.4B
    🇨🇦 Canada $42.3B $53.4B +$11.1B
    🇫🇷 France $35.6B $45.5B +$9.9B
    🇨🇴 Colombia $7.0B $15.5B +$8.5B
    🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates $45.4B $53.5B +$8.1B
    🇰🇪 Kenya $0.3B $8.2B +$7.9B
    🇱🇷 Liberia $0.0B $7.5B +$7.5B
    🇮🇱 Israel $9.0B $16.4B +$7.4B
    🇹🇿 Tanzania $0.5B $7.7B +$7.1B
    🇸🇮 Slovenia $0.6B $6.8B +$6.3B
    🇬🇭 Ghana $2.3B $7.8B +$5.5B
    🇭🇺 Hungary $5.0B $10.5B +$5.4B
    🇺🇿 Uzbekistan $2.3B $7.4B +$5.1B
    🇩🇿 Algeria $1.1B $6.2B +$5.1B
    🇯🇴 Jordan $0.7B $5.7B +$4.9B
    🇲🇦 Morocco $0.9B $5.7B +$4.8B
    🇩🇪 Germany $111.4B $115.9B +$4.5B
    🇩🇰 Denmark $5.7B $10.2B +$4.4B
    🇷🇴 Romania $3.1B $7.4B +$4.3B
    🇦🇷 Argentina $8.6B $12.7B +$4.1B
    🇲🇴 Macao $0.1B $4.2B +$4.1B
    🇬🇹 Guatemala $0.6B $4.3B +$3.8B
    🇩🇴 Dominican Republic $0.5B $4.3B +$3.7B
    🇸🇳 Senegal $0.3B $4.0B +$3.7B
    🇲🇭 Marshall Islands $0.0B $3.5B +$3.5B
    🇱🇰 Sri Lanka $0.5B $3.7B +$3.2B
    🇩🇯 Djibouti $0.1B $3.2B +$3.1B
    🇮🇷 Iran $6.4B $9.4B +$3.0B
    🇹🇬 Togo $0.2B $3.1B +$2.9B
    🇵🇹 Portugal $3.0B $6.0B +$2.9B
    🇨🇮 Cote d’Ivoire $1.0B $3.5B +$2.5B
    🇨🇲 Cameroon $0.7B $3.1B +$2.5B
    🇱🇧 Lebanon $0.1B $2.5B +$2.4B
    🇸🇪 Sweden $9.1B $11.4B +$2.2B
    🇻🇪 Venezuela $0.8B $3.0B +$2.1B
    🇾🇪 Yemen $0.6B $2.8B +$2.1B
    🇭🇷 Croatia $0.2B $2.3B +$2.1B
    🇲🇿 Mozambique $1.3B $3.2B +$1.9B
    🇲🇲 Myanmar $11.5B $13.4B +$1.9B
    🇹🇯 Tajikistan $0.4B $2.2B +$1.8B
    🇵🇾 Paraguay $0.1B $1.9B +$1.8B
    🇪🇹 Ethiopia $0.5B $2.2B +$1.8B
    🇱🇹 Lithuania $0.1B $1.8B +$1.7B
    🇳🇵 Nepal $0.0B $1.6B +$1.6B
    🇹🇳 Tunisia $0.3B $1.9B +$1.6B
    🇧🇬 Bulgaria $1.3B $2.8B +$1.6B
    🇭🇳 Honduras $0.0B $1.6B +$1.5B
    🇧🇭 Bahrain $0.3B $1.8B +$1.5B
    🇰🇿 Kazakhstan $14.8B $16.3B +$1.5B
    🇧🇾 Belarus $1.8B $3.2B +$1.4B
    🇧🇯 Benin $0.3B $1.7B +$1.4B
    🇸🇻 El Salvador $0.2B $1.7B +$1.4B
    🇲🇹 Malta $0.6B $2.0B +$1.4B
    🇸🇩 Sudan $0.9B $2.0B +$1.1B
    🇨🇾 Cyprus $0.0B $1.2B +$1.1B
    🇬🇪 Georgia $0.1B $1.2B +$1.1B
    🇸🇴 Somalia $0.0B $1.0B +$1.0B
    🇦🇿 Azerbaijan $0.1B $1.1B +$1.0B
    🇯🇲 Jamaica $0.0B $1.0B +$1.0B
    🇺🇬 Uganda $0.1B $1.1B +$1.0B
    🇲🇺 Mauritius $0.0B $1.0B +$0.9B
    🇷🇸 Serbia $1.4B $2.2B +$0.8B
    🇲🇬 Madagascar $0.6B $1.4B +$0.8B
    🇰🇵 Korea, DPR $0.1B $0.8B +$0.7B
    🇳🇮 Nicaragua $0.0B $0.7B +$0.7B
    🇪🇪 Estonia $0.3B $0.9B +$0.7B
    🇱🇻 Latvia $0.4B $1.0B +$0.6B
    🇭🇹 Haiti $0.0B $0.6B +$0.6B
    🇦🇱 Albania $0.2B $0.7B +$0.5B
    🇦🇫 Afghanistan $0.0B $0.6B +$0.5B
    🇲🇱 Mali $0.1B $0.6B +$0.5B
    🇫🇯 Fiji $0.0B $0.5B +$0.5B
    🇲🇻 Maldives $0.0B $0.4B +$0.4B
    🇸🇾 Syria $0.0B $0.4B +$0.4B
    🇬🇲 Gambia $0.0B $0.4B +$0.4B
    🇧🇫 Burkina Faso $0.1B $0.5B +$0.4B
    🇧🇸 Bahamas $0.0B $0.4B +$0.4B
    🇳🇪 Niger $0.3B $0.7B +$0.4B
    🇨🇷 Costa Rica $2.0B $2.4B +$0.4B
    🇷🇼 Rwanda $0.1B $0.4B +$0.3B
    🇧🇿 Belize $0.0B $0.3B +$0.3B
    🇸🇷 Suriname $0.0B $0.3B +$0.3B
    🇲🇼 Malawi $0.0B $0.3B +$0.3B
    🇷🇪 Réunion $0.0B $0.2B +$0.2B
    🇱🇺 Luxembourg $0.3B $0.5B +$0.2B
    🇧🇴 Bolivia $0.9B $1.1B +$0.2B
    🇲🇪 Montenegro $0.0B $0.2B +$0.2B
    🇧🇹 Bhutan $0.0B $0.2B +$0.2B
    🇵🇸 Palestine $0.0B $0.2B +$0.2B
    🇵🇫 French Polynesia $0.0B $0.2B +$0.1B
    🇹🇱 Timor-Leste $0.1B $0.3B +$0.1B
    🇧🇧 Barbados $0.0B $0.2B +$0.1B
    🇲🇩 Moldova $0.1B $0.2B +$0.1B
    🇼🇸 Samoa $0.0B $0.1B +$0.1B
    🇮🇸 Iceland $0.2B $0.3B +$0.1B
    🇻🇬 British Virgin Islands $0.0B $0.1B +$0.1B
    🇧🇮 Burundi $0.0B $0.1B +$0.1B
    🌏 Other Oceanian Territories $0.0B $0.1B +$0.1B
    🇦🇬 Antigua and Barbuda $0.0B $0.1B +$0.1B
    🇸🇨 Seychelles $0.0B $0.1B +$0.1B
    🇨🇻 Cabo Verde $0.0B $0.1B +$0.1B
    🇻🇺 Vanuatu $0.0B $0.1B +$0.1B
    🇧🇲 Bermuda $0.0B $0.1B +$0.1B
    🇸🇿 Eswatini $0.0B $0.1B +$0.1B
    🇬🇵 Guadeloupe $0.0B $0.1B +$0.1B
    🇰🇲 Comoros $0.0B $0.1B +$0.1B
    🇦🇼 Aruba $0.0B $0.1B +$0.1B
    🇧🇦 Bosnia and Herzegovina $0.1B $0.2B +$0.1B
    🇨🇼 Curaçao $0.0B $0.1B +$0.1B
    🇾🇹 Mayotte $0.0B $0.1B +$0.1B
    🇬🇼 Guinea-Bissau $0.0B $0.1B +$0.1B
    🇹🇴 Tonga $0.0B $0.1B +$0.1B
    🇲🇰 North Macedonia $0.2B $0.2B +$0.1B
    🇰🇾 Cayman Islands $0.0B $0.1B +$0.1B
    🌎 Other Latin American Territories $0.0B $0.1B +$0.1B
    🇵🇼 Palau $0.0B $0.1B +$0.1B
    🇲🇶 Martinique $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇰🇮 Kiribati $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇬🇫 French Guiana $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇱🇸 Lesotho $0.0B $0.1B +$0.0B
    🇱🇨 Saint Lucia $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇩🇲 Dominica $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇹🇻 Tuvalu $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇫🇲 Federated States of Micronesia $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇨🇫 Central African Republic $0.0B $0.1B +$0.0B
    🇧🇶 Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇬🇩 Grenada $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇦🇩 Andorra $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇻🇨 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇬🇮 Gibraltar $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇸🇹 Sao Tome and Principe $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🌍 Other European Territories $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇰🇳 Saint Kitts and Nevis $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇳🇷 Nauru $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇨🇰 Cook Islands $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇹🇨 Turks and Caicos Islands $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇲🇫 Saint Martin $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🌏 Other North American Territories $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇸🇲 San Marino $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🌍 Other African Territories $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇮🇨 Canary Islands $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇼🇫 Wallis and Futuna $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇳🇫 Norfolk Island $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇪🇭 Western Sahara $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🌏 Other Asian Territories $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇲🇸 Montserrat $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇪🇺 Ceuta $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇻🇦 Holy See $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇪🇺 Melilla $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇵🇲 Saint Pierre and Miquelon $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇧🇶 Bonaire $0.0B $0.0B +$0.0B
    🇲🇨 Monaco $0.0B $0.0B -$0.0B
    🇨🇺 Cuba $0.5B $0.4B -$0.0B
    🇳🇦 Namibia $0.6B $0.6B -$0.0B
    🇸🇸 South Sudan $0.2B $0.2B -$-0.1B
    🇸🇧 Solomon Islands $0.3B $0.2B -$-0.1B
    🇫🇴 Faroe Islands $0.1B $0.0B -$-0.1B
    🇱🇮 Liechtenstein $0.2B $0.1B -$-0.1B
    🇧🇼 Botswana $0.4B $0.2B -$-0.2B
    🇿🇼 Zimbabwe $1.3B $1.1B -$-0.2B
    🇸🇱 Sierra Leone $0.8B $0.6B -$-0.2B
    🇹🇹 Trinidad and Tobago $0.8B $0.5B -$-0.2B
    🇲🇷 Mauritania $1.2B $0.9B -$-0.2B
    🇦🇲 Armenia $0.8B $0.5B -$-0.3B
    🇪🇷 Eritrea $0.5B $0.1B -$-0.3B
    🇵🇷 Puerto Rico $1.3B $1.0B -$-0.3B
    🇬🇱 Greenland $0.4B $0.0B -$-0.4B
    🇪🇨 Ecuador $6.8B $6.3B -$-0.6B
    🇱🇾 Libya $2.9B $2.4B -$-0.6B
    🇫🇮 Finland $5.3B $4.5B -$-0.7B
    🇬🇾 Guyana $1.3B $0.6B -$-0.7B
    🇹🇩 Chad $1.1B $0.3B -$-0.8B
    🇺🇦 Ukraine $4.3B $3.3B -$-1.1B
    🇱🇦 Laos $3.4B $2.3B -$-1.1B
    🇬🇶 Equatorial Guinea $1.5B $0.2B -$-1.3B
    🌏 Unknown Countries (Territories) $1.4B $0.0B -$-1.4B
    🇧🇳 Brunei $2.2B $0.8B -$-1.4B
    🇺🇾 Uruguay $4.5B $3.0B -$-1.5B
    🇳🇨 New Caledonia $1.9B $0.2B -$-1.7B
    🇬🇳 Guinea $4.5B $2.3B -$-2.3B
    🇵🇬 Papua New Guinea $3.8B $1.4B -$-2.4B
    🇳🇴 Norway $8.0B $5.2B -$-2.8B
    🇦🇹 Austria $8.2B $5.1B -$-3.1B
    🇸🇰 Slovakia $7.7B $4.4B -$-3.3B
    🇬🇦 Gabon $3.9B $0.6B -$-3.4B
    🇨🇬 Congo $5.6B $1.0B -$-4.6B
    🇿🇲 Zambia $5.7B $1.0B -$-4.8B
    🇲🇳 Mongolia $9.3B $2.9B -$-6.5B
    🇳🇿 New Zealand $16.0B $9.1B -$-6.8B
    🇮🇩 Indonesia $77.9B $70.9B -$-7.0B
    🇿🇦 South Africa $32.4B $24.0B -$-8.4B
    🇹🇲 Turkmenistan $10.3B $0.9B -$-9.5B
    🇵🇪 Peru $24.1B $13.4B -$-10.7B
    🇨🇩 Democratic Republic of Congo $16.6B $5.1B -$-11.5B
    🇯🇵 Japan $184.4B $172.5B -$-11.9B
    🇮🇪 Ireland $18.1B $5.7B -$-12.4B
    🇲🇾 Malaysia $109.9B $92.2B -$-17.7B
    🇶🇦 Qatar $22.6B $3.9B -$-18.6B
    🇦🇴 Angola $23.2B $4.0B -$-19.2B
    🇰🇼 Kuwait $26.5B $4.9B -$-21.6B
    🇨🇱 Chile $44.4B $22.4B -$-22.0B
    🇮🇶 Iraq $39.4B $13.8B -$-25.6B
    🇴🇲 Oman $36.2B $4.2B -$-32.1B
    🇰🇷 Republic of Korea $199.1B $161.3B -$-37.8B
    🇷🇺 Russia $114.4B $75.6B -$-38.7B
    🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia $78.1B $37.7B -$-40.4B
    🇨🇭 Switzerland $49.7B $7.6B -$-42.1B
    🇧🇷 Brazil $109.4B $61.8B -$-47.6B
    🇦🇺 Australia $142.1B $78.5B -$-63.6B
    🇨🇳 China $121.9B N/A -$-121.9B
    🇹🇼 Taiwan $237.2B $81.5B -$-155.8B

    China had individual trade surpluses with the overwhelming majority of its trade partners: 174 of the 234 countries and territories listed.

    These trade surpluses are especially visible in China’s trade relationships with many of the world’s largest economies, including the U.S. and India, with $401.1 billion and $100.3 billion surpluses respectively.

    Meanwhile, a good sum of the country’s trade deficits are with major Asian economies. Its largest deficit is with Taiwan, primarily coming from integrated circuit imports. China also has deficits with Japan (-$11.9 billion) and South Korea (-$37.8 billion), the region’s second and fourth-largest economies respectively, largely due to electronics and machinery imports.

    The country’s other trade deficits stem from fulfilling strategic needs. For example, China has deficits with oil-producing countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia. It also has a trade deficit with Australia, a key supplier of raw goods such as iron, gold, lithium, and liquefied petroleum gas.

    China’s Evolving Trade Partner Relationships

    China’s trade relationships extend far beyond just economic considerations; they reflect historical, geopolitical, and strategic factors as well.

    Taiwan’s major role in the semiconductor market, for example, makes it both a valuable trade partner and a contentious rival. China considers Taiwan a part of its territory, while Taiwan operates as a separate, self-governed entity.

    Likewise, China’s increasing investments in infrastructure across parts of Asia and Africa are starting to reflect growing trade balances with developing countries set to become major trade partners in the future.

    As the Chinese economy evolves (and potentially weakens), its relationships with both allies and potential enemies may only grow more complex.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/24/2023 – 20:15

  • Governor Josh Shapiro's Wrong Approach To Grid Reliability
    Governor Josh Shapiro’s Wrong Approach To Grid Reliability

    Authored by Gordon Tomb via RealClear Wire,

    Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has asked regional power grid operators to enhance the electricity system’s dependability—and he’s got ideas about how to do it. But his premises are flawed, and his suggestions misguided. Shapiro wants reliable power, yet he’s banking on unreliable sources to provide it. That approach isn’t just wrongheaded; it’s a recipe for failure.

    “Here in the Commonwealth, we are embracing the advantages that cheaper, lower carbon fuel sources offer,” Shapiro wrote in a letter to the management of PJM Interconnection, the non-profit which maintains the electric grid for Pennsylvania and a dozen other states.

    The governor was referring to wind and solar power, which aren’t cheaper than traditional fossil fuel plants and can, in some cases, increase overall carbon emissions. In short, they add costs for consumers and undermine reliability. This scenario has played out dramatically in places like Europe and California, where power outages and soaring prices are undisputed facts. Pennsylvanians have, so far, avoided the worst of this because wind and solar still account for only a small amount of PJM’s power supply—low single-digit percentages.

    That changes if Shapiro gets his way. His letter effectively urges PJM to expedite the installation of new wind and solar projects to prevent shortages caused by the expected retirement of coal-fired power plants—closings currently accelerated by the governor’s refusal to remove the threat of a carbon tax on fossil fuels.

    PJM sees its surplus generating capacity, reserved for meeting peak demand, falling significantly below the federal requirement in the coming years. PJM has warned that energy rationing might become necessary by 2026 to manage supply shortages. In other words, Pennsylvanians could expect rolling blackouts in the near future.

    While Shapiro is right to worry about the power grid, his solution worsens the problem because wind turbines and solar panels are woefully inadequate replacements for coal, natural gas, or nuclear plants.

    David Stevenson, an energy analyst with the Caesar Rodney Institute, explains that each lost gigawatt of baseload electricity generated by coal and natural gas—as well as by nuclear fuel—requires three gigawatts of wind and solar to replace it. To replace the 40 gigawatts of baseload generation to be retired by 2030, we’d need to build 120 gigawatts of wind or solar power.

    That’s far more than the 94 gigawatts in the pipeline.

    “PJM experts report that wind and solar projects entering the queue for acceptance into the grid historically have only a one in twenty chance of being built,” said Stevenson. “Developers literally submit 20 projects when only one is planned for construction because of uncertainties of available transmission capacity and uncertain local zoning approval. PJM currently has 94 gigawatts of wind and solar awaiting approval, but only about five gigawatts will likely be built—or about two gigawatts of baseload power.”

    In other words, plans exist for only 2% of the new “renewable” generation needed.

    Wind and solar require many times the material and land area to produce equivalent amounts of electricity from traditional sources. Expecting to replace efficient, reliable sources of electricity with expensive, unreliable technologies is a “lopsided” transition that defies logic.

    Shapiro also calls on PJM to reform market procedures for reliability but ignores a fundamental flaw that prevents the most reliable energy sources—baseload fossil fuel plants and nuclear power—from adequate compensation. Annual payments to ensure reliability have collapsed from $8.3 billion to $2.2 billion in the last three years. Meanwhile, penalties for just one day of non-performance during a cold spell last December were $1.8 billion, nearly equal to an entire year of capacity revenue.

    The decline in these revenues is largely the result of state and federal policies that provide subsidies to wind and solar, and the long-term impact of those policies is emerging.

    PJM’s failure to “keep the lights on” with as little drama as reasonably possible during December’s cold snap is just the beginning of the reliability issues Pennsylvanians will face if the grid operator continues to accommodate more “renewable energy” while endorsing policies that speed the retirement of nuclear or fossil fuel baseload capacity.

    Meredith Angwin, in her book Shorting the Grid, explains mandates for renewable energy “will not succeed in building grids that are 100% renewable” but instead will make “the grid more fragile and more expensive.”

    Decades of programs like Pennsylvania’s Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards, which subsidize expensive and unreliable energy and discourage the development of reliable fossil fuels, are failing Pennsylvanians. Shapiro should end energy subsidies and allow free markets to determine the path to cheap, clean, and sustainable power.

    Gordon Tomb is a Senior Fellow with the Commonwealth Foundation, Pennsylvania’s free-market think tank, and a senior advisor with the CO2 Coalition in Arlington, VA.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/24/2023 – 19:50

  • Americans Panic Search "Live Off Grid" As Housing Crisis Worsens And Democrat Cities Implode
    Americans Panic Search “Live Off Grid” As Housing Crisis Worsens And Democrat Cities Implode

    What’s piqued our interest is the sudden panic by some Americans searching ‘live off grid’ on the internet, hitting the highest level in five years. The driving force behind finding a rural piece of land for dirt cheap, buying or building a tiny home, installing solar panels, and sourcing your own food and water might have to do with the worst inflation storm in a generation while Democrat cities implode under the weight of soaring violent crime. 

    We’re not going to speculate on the exact cause, but we’ll give readers an understanding that a combination of the worst housing affordability crisis in decades plus out-of-control crime in progressive-run cities could be some of the largest drivers pushing people to explore living in the ‘sticks.’ 

    With the introduction of SpaceX’s Starlink in 2019, remote workers no longer have to live in crowded, dirty, and dangerous metro areas — many found this out during the exodus of major cities during Covid. 

    Capitalizing on off-the-grid living is Home Depot, which now sells tiny homes called “Getaway Pad.”

    We’ve also seen the RV Industry Association report multiple times this year that parked mobile home shipments are surging on a monthly basis versus the same months last year — yet another indication of housing affordability issues. 

    Living off the grid can have many benefits, including financial independence, self-sufficiency, preparedness, and security, as well as promoting an active lifestyle, better sleep, and a healthier diet (no need for a Peloton bike or Eli Lilly’s fat drug “Ozempic”). 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/24/2023 – 19:25

  • 200 Million & Counting… Trump Triumphant, Ramaswamy Runner-Up, DeSantis Dud
    200 Million & Counting… Trump Triumphant, Ramaswamy Runner-Up, DeSantis Dud

    Update (1235ET): Make that over 200 million views and still going…

    Watch:

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    *  *  *

    Authored by Paul Ingrassia and Matthew Boose via American Greatness,

    “Focus on the signal, not the noise,” is a phrase that might as well have been coined by Steve Bannon given how frequently he and his acolytes make use of it. At this stage in the game, it should be the mantra of the MAGA movement writ large; for the hour is already late, there is a mountain of work left to do to haul President Trump over the finish line: navigating a corrupt, weaponized justice system; dealing with rigged election procedures; combatting both soft and overt censorship by mainstream networks and social media – and that is just the tip of the iceberg.

    Which is why – given the enormity of the collective hole we have dug ourselves in – the idea of a normal politics-as-usual primary season was ridiculous from the start. The 2020 presidential election was undeniably the most unfair election in modern history – it necessarily produced an illegitimate outcome. That Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, Chris Christie (and the rest) are behaving as if all of that does not matter, or that somehow the problems that got us in this dire situation as a country would miraculously vanish if Trump were removed from the picture is the ultimate indictment of their credentials. The other candidates are not serious contenders for the presidency for the simple purpose that they do not seriously care about America’s interests: if they realized the gravity of the crisis, they would have immediately stepped aside and thrown whatever miniscule political capital they harness upon the 45th President, knowing that he alone has a shot at achieving the near-insurmountable feat of winning the presidency.

    In short, the primary process – personified above all by Ron DeSantis and his pitiful excuse for a campaign – is a colossal distraction and timewaster from where our focus needs to be.

    Poll after poll has Trump with leads of 30, 40, 50+ points above his nearest competitor.

    Even in the absolutely most competitive primary states, like Iowa, Trump’s lead is well over the 20-point mark, the largest such lead for that state’s Republican caucus in over two decades. Trump won this battle before the first shot was ever fired because grassroots voters can viscerally intuit just how high the stakes are this time around; that for America, 2024 is truly the make-or-break moment.

    The candidates who did appear on the debate stage in Milwaukee last evening presented an image of betrayal to the American people. That the first debate was on Fox News, the network responsible for prematurely and recklessly calling Arizona for Biden in 2020, added a poetic touch to the general feeling of impotence surrounding the whole spectacle.

    Perhaps even more poetic was who Trump instead chose to spend the evening with: Tucker Carlson, the most famous talk show host in America before he was sent to the slaughterhouse earlier this year by the powers-that-be at Fox in a sacrificial offering to the woke deities. Both Trump and Carlson are unified in being corporate media pariahs – maybe the only person more detested by the Murdoch’s than Donald Trump is Tucker Carlson; the fact that the two combined their influences against their shared enemy in Fox, which is now bloodletting viewership seemingly by the day now, is a powerful signal to the forces in this country that otherwise hope to shut down Donald Trump, and the populist furor both he and Carlson represent, for good. 

    Those who tuned into Wednesday night’s debate received a depressing look into the GOP’s past – and what lies in its future without Trump: timid, boring, and ineffectual “leaders.” The frontrunner’s absence was keenly felt in the lack of energy, vigor, and vision on the stage.

    Vivek Ramaswamy was the only spark of life.

    The candidates smothered viewers with platitudes about new leadership, stopping Putin, liberal tax and spend policies, and how bad Biden is – something all Republicans already agree on. It could have been a debate from 2012. Fox beclowned itself with a segment on climate change, and dedicated just a few minutes to the issue of the day: the persecution of the opposition leader, Donald Trump.

    On that question, the only candidate to defend Trump was Ramaswamy.

    DeSantis and Tim Scott dodged with abstractions about “the weaponization of justice,” all without mentioning public enemy number one. DeSantis refused to say whether Mike Pence was correct to certify Biden’s bogus victory. Instead, DeSantis said Biden loves that Republicans are still talking about January 6th, and it’s time to move on. The political prisoners languishing in the D.C. gulag would like a word.

    On Ukraine, Vivek was, again, the only candidate to unequivocally state that America must not prioritize the European backwater over its own people.

    DeSantis continued to muddy waters on this key foreign policy issue. Across the board, the bogus tough guy persona fell apart, and DeSantis showed himself to be serpentine, weak and equivocating. When the issue of supporting Trump as the nominee came up, DeSantis scanned the stage and then half-heartedly raised his hand, only after seeing Ramaswamy had done so.

    DeSantis, after weeks and weeks of crashing and burning, desperately needed to make a recovery. But he was an afterthought.

    No one bothered attacking him. He didn’t attack anyone either, only briefly jabbing at Trump on COVID, although he was too timid to use Trump’s name. He grabbed a hold of the words “American decline” and never let go.

    [ZH: “August 23 2023 in Milwaukee, Wis., is the day that the DeSantis for President campaign died,” senior Trump adviser Chris LaCivita said. “You can’t win a debate by making a cameo appearance.”]

    Pence and Scott took turns gushing with hokey optimism about an America that no longer exists.

    The insincerity and fundamental lack of seriousness of the whole spectacle was overpowering – between Nikki Haley’s girlboss routine, Tim Scott’s Martin Luther King impression, and DeSantis’ fake bravado.

    We’ve heard a lot about “Trumpism after Trump.” The GOP without Trump looks a lot like the GOP before him. Coming on the very same day that Rudy Giuliani had his mugshot taken, and just a day before Trump is expected to endure the same humiliation with his arraignment in Georgia, the debate could not have been a more out of touch spectacle.

    Meanwhile, Trump’s decision to ditch the debate and Fox News for Tucker Carlson on X (formerly known as Twitter) proved to be an act of political genius. 

    As of this publication, Tucker Carlson’s interview garnered more than 150 million views within hours of being posted. This already ranks the Trump interview as the most watched television interview in history, breaking the record set by Carlson and Andrew Tate from earlier this summer.

    This fact alone shows Trump’s pulse is on the cultural trajectory of this country in ways that cannot be replicated by the other candidates. Indeed, despite the unfortunate news of this latest arraignment, Trump’s poll numbers are higher than ever: his margins over his nearest opponents now are upwards of 50 percentage points or higher, making his famous prophecy from earlier this month – that he would only need “one more indictment” to win the 2024 election true. Indeed, even the legacy media seems to be coming around to this conclusion: both CNN and Time Magazine ran pieces over the last week gearing their readers for the possibility – perhaps inevitability – of another Trump administration.

    Trump is the protagonist of this evil chapter of American history.

    His inconsequential challengers, lacking the talent to become forces in history themselves, fancy themselves above the “drama” of history, when the truth is they are pursuing a station destiny has closed off to them. They play off their inertness and aversion to “drama” as a virtue.

    But Trump’s war with the Deep State, which now threatens to destroy the very foundations of the republic, is inextricably woven with the nation and its fate. It is the main event, as even his enemies must acknowledge. Should the worst-case scenario happen and his mugshot be taken, hardly anyone will remember the sideshow in Milwaukee. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/24/2023 – 19:11

  • States Unite To Protect Minors From Brain-Altering Pornography
    States Unite To Protect Minors From Brain-Altering Pornography

    Authored by Jackson Elliott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A screen displays a “no under-18s” sign with the logo of a pornographic website, as regulators consider requiring such sites to ensure they are preventing minors from being exposed to their content. (Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images)

    Graphic, violent, deviant, and harmful online pornography that can permanently affect brain development can be easily accessed by children.

    And the federal government is doing little to stop it, experts and lawmakers told The Epoch Times.

    Although showing pornography to children is illegal under federal law, federal rules don’t require porn websites to verify the age of users.

    But recently, bipartisan efforts in state legislatures have intervened to protect children in a handful of states.

    It’s important—and urgent—because watching violent porn damages children, therapist Jon Uhler and psychologist Amy Sousa told The Epoch Times.

    “Being shown violence alongside a reward system is incredibly problematic because it is sending the body a signal that this violence is pleasurable,” Ms. Sousa said.

    By teaching children to associate sexual pleasure with pain, she said, pornography can rewire a viewer’s brain to want pain or want to inflict pain.

    This rewiring undoes the body’s natural response of feeling distressed when seeing someone get hurt, she explained.

    And porn-watching is more common than many might realize.

    Porn gets more yearly “watch hours” than all Hollywood, Netflix, and Viacom programming combined, Ms. Sousa said.

    Psychologist Amy Sousa speaks at a “Save Women’s Sports event in Nashville, Tenn., on April 27, 2023. (Jackson Elliott/The Epoch Times)

    Normalizing Violence, Creating Psychopaths

    “Eighty-eight percent of porn videos contain violence against women, which basically translates to 5.1 billion of those visits per month,” Ms. Sousa said.

    “Porn represents a massive propaganda arm that is normalizing and desensitizing violence against women.”

    Viewing pornography teaches men to see women as objects, said Mr. Uhler, who has 15 years of counseling experience and thousands of hours of experience in treating sex offenders.

    Children who admit to watching porn also admit to feeling guilty about it, he said.

    Over time, repeatedly engaging in behavior that violates one’s conscience can turn a person into a psychopath, he said.

    “As you impact conscience, you will negatively impact remorse and empathy,” he said. “Those three things are the basis of psychopathy.”

    And this, he said, can open the gateway to becoming a sexual predator.

    In counseling thousands of sexual predators, Mr. Uhler has seen a pattern. For all of his patients, the road to sexual deviancy involved viewing porn, he said.

    “A lot of good researchers have looked at the effects that pornography has on the brain,” Mr. Uhler said.

    “It’s identical to drugs, literally in terms of the impact on the structure itself and the way it processes.”

    With an unprecedented number of boys watching violent porn, Mr. Uhler said, the future will likely yield a massive crop of men who have learned from childhood to defy their conscience.

    “We are in uncharted territory.”

    Conflicting Views on Restrictions

    Despite these dangers, the federal government has done little to prevent children from accessing online porn, Sousa, Uhler, and lawmakers said.

    “The federal law [banning pornography access for children] is not enforced,” Utah state Sen. Todd Weiler, a Republican, told The Epoch Times.

    Ian Andrews, a spokesman for Pornhub, told The Epoch Times that the company supports measures to restrict children from viewing porn by verifying the age of users. But he doubts new laws requiring age verification of users will help protect minors. Pornhub is the world’s 12th-most-visited website, with more than 2.5 billion visitors yearly, according to the consumer research firm Similarweb.

    Mr. Andrews argued that the laws may have the opposite effect.

    “We hypothesized for years that, if only certain platforms were forced to verify user age, or if a law is not regulated properly, the results would see users flocking to the platforms that do not verify age,” he said.

    “This is no longer hypothetical. Since we became one of the few platforms in Louisiana to comply with the law and institute mandatory age verification, we have seen an approximately 80 percent drop in our traffic in the state.”

    Amping Up Laws

    Lawmakers in some states are determined to amend state laws to block children from viewing porn. 

    In May, Utah passed a law requiring pornographic websites to verify that users from that state are at least 18. Louisiana, which enacted a similar law in 2022, was the first state to demand age-verification measures to access pornographic websites, Mr. Weiler said.

    “We made a few minor tweaks, but we basically copied Louisiana’s” law in Utah, he said.

    The Louisiana law demands that porn websites perform “reasonable age-verification methods” for Louisiana users.

    For Mr. Weiler, the fight to protect children from porn websites began in 2016.

    “I ran the first resolution in the country to declare pornography to be a public health crisis,” he said.

    While the resolution declared that child viewing of pornography was a public health crisis, resolutions don’t have the force of law or any law enforcement effects.

    “And since that time, about 15 other states have basically copied” the resolution, Mr. Weiler said.

    Five states have joined Utah and Louisiana in going farther.

    Virginia, Mississippi, Texas, Montana, and Arkansas have added age-verification laws for pornography websites.

    Arizona, California, South Carolina, Minnesota, and New Jersey all have bills for age verification under consideration, according to data gathered by the Free Speech Coalition (FSC).

    Support for the bills is largely bipartisan, Mr. Weiler said.

    “This is not just a Republican issue,” he said. “I think many Democrats agree that children shouldn’t be viewing this content.“

    Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, South Dakota, West Virginia, Missouri, Alabama, and Tennessee have considered bills requiring age verification for porn users, but they failed to pass, according to FSC. 

    Relying on Honest Answers

    According to federal law, the crime of  “knowingly” using computer services to display obscenity to minors is punishable with imprisonment, fines, and sex offender registration.

    But the word “knowingly” provides a loophole, Mr. Uhler said.

    Under federal law, if a teen lies about his or her age to access porn, porn distributors can’t be blamed for believing the age verification information provided by the child, he said.

    “Like a kid who wants to access porn is going to be honest,” Mr. Uhler said wryly.

    This system puts the responsibility on minors to be truthful, rather than on porn website operators to ascertain the truth, Mr. Weiler said.

    Companies have “taken steps to make sure that 14-year-old girls in Topeka, Kansas, aren’t accessing online gambling sites,” he said. “They’ve taken steps to make sure that 14-year-old girls in Topeka, Kansas, aren’t buying vaping and nicotine products online. And those companies are not directly shipping wine to 14-year-old girls.”

    But the porn industry hasn’t received the same regulatory pressure to protect children from its products, he said.

    Any company actually interested in blocking minors from accessing the porn it offers could use a third-party company to screen users before they’re allowed to access the site.

    “The technology’s there,” Mr. Weiler said. “It would take about 30 seconds” to verify a would-be user’s identity and age.

    Utah’s laws demand that verification on porn websites require more proof than simply a user’s assertion that he or she is 18 or older.

    Still, there are ways tech-savvy children can get around it, Mr. Weiler said.

    But even if new measures don’t stop all minors from accessing porn, he said, it will at least protect the youngest and most vulnerable children from seeing graphic images that can do them permanent harm. 

    A Generation of Porn-Watchers

    Pornhub works like YouTube, the online video-sharing platform. Anyone can upload videos, and anyone can watch them. In 2021, the company says it removed more than 53,000 videos because they contained child sex abuse, 6,000 videos that included incest, more than 1,000 videos for animal abuse, and more than 5,000 videos for other obscene content too graphic to describe.

    To her horror, sexual-abuse victim Victoria Galy discovered that footage of her rape had been posted to Pornhub and viewed 8 million times.

    Ms. Galy told the Canadian House of Commons ethics committee in February that Pornhub made it difficult for abuse victims to take down videos of crimes against them.

    To delete some of the videos, she testified, Pornhub requested a copyright infringement notification from her.

    According to Pornhub’s policy, anyone asking for a video’s removal must give the site his or her name, postal address, telephone number, and email address.

    Teens often are the consumers viewing pornographic videos, according to a survey by Common Sense Media. Researchers found about 70 percent of teens ages 13-17 admitted to watching porn online.

    The survey asked more than 1,300 participants in that age group about their experience with porn. The average teen admitted to encountering porn by the age of 12, the survey found. Some started watching as young as 10.

    A majority of porn-viewing teens have watched violent porn showing rape, choking, or pain, survey results showed.

    While 45 percent of teens said that porn gives “helpful information about sex,” about 50 percent reported feeling ashamed about the porn they watch, the survey found.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/24/2023 – 19:00

  • Netanyahu Forbids Israeli Defense Chief From Meeting Biden Officials During US Trip
    Netanyahu Forbids Israeli Defense Chief From Meeting Biden Officials During US Trip

    Via The Cradle,

    Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has been forbidden from meeting with US government officials during his current trip to Washington by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Israeli media reports.

    Gallant set off for the US capital overnight on Thursday where, according to his official agenda, he will meet with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan.

    “Minister Gallant will hold a security briefing for the ambassadors of the member states of the UN Security Council and will visit the procurement delegation of the Ministry of Defense in New York,” Galant’s office said in a statement. 

    However, no meetings with US officials are part of Gallant’s agenda, as Netanyahu reportedly imposed a veto with the directive, “if I’m not invited to Washington, no one gets a meeting there.”

    Since his return to power late last year, Netanyahu has been left out in the cold by US President Joe Biden, who has refused to invite the Israeli premier to the White House in a public show of discontent with the policies pursued by Jewish supremacist authorities from Israel’s governing coalition.

    Israel’s Channel 12 news reported in March that Netanyahu vetoed two US visits to which Gallant was invited as he awaited his own invite.

    Nonetheless, Gallant has previously met with senior US officials, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, on the sidelines of a NATO gathering in Brussels in June and earlier in the year in Israel. He also met with the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, in Israel this week.

    No information was made available about their discussion; however, last week, western media reports revealed that Milley was traveling to Israel to “assess the army’s fitness and readiness” in the wake of widespread mutiny by volunteer reservists who oppose Tel Aviv’s planned judicial overhaul.

    Meanwhile on the extreme opposite side of Biden’s Israel snub…

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

    Gallant and Netanyahu publicly butted heads over the judicial overhaul in March, as Gallant publicly called on the premier to scrap the contentious legislation. One day later, Netanyahu announced his decision to dismiss the defense minister.

    However, Netanyahu had to walk back his decision two weeks later. “I decided to put the differences we had behind us,” he said during a televised speech on 10 April. “Gallant remains in his position and we will continue to work together for the security of the citizens of Israel.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/24/2023 – 18:40

  • Military Members Kicked Out For Refusing COVID Vaccine Seek To Have Their Discharges Upgraded
    Military Members Kicked Out For Refusing COVID Vaccine Seek To Have Their Discharges Upgraded

    Authored by J.M. Phelps via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A member of the U.S. military receives the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at Camp Foster in Ginowan, Japan, on April 28, 2021. (Carl Court/Getty Images)

    Service members who received general discharges when separated from the military for their refusal to obey the vaccine mandate say their transition to civilian life has been hampered because they were not given honorable discharges.

    The majority of service members kicked out over their refusal to get vaccinated received general discharges. With a general discharge, service members lose all educational benefits, reemployment rights, and civil service retirement credit.

    Hayden Robichaux, donor relations coordinator for the Mighty Oaks Foundation, is one such service member. He had to build a career in the Marine Corps. He spent his initial two years serving as the military equivalent of a firefighter. But life as a Marine was interrupted by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s announcement of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate in August 2021, he told The Epoch Times.

    Robichaux refused the vaccine and sought religious exemption.

    “But it seemed like everybody who sought religious exemption was denied,” he said. Months later, a leaked June 2021 memo by the Pentagon watchdog revealed the department may have been violating standards in its process of denying religious exemption requests for the COVID-19 vaccine.

    In addition to his religious conviction against the vaccine, he took objection to the fact that the only vaccines offered to service members at the time were labeled as authorized for emergency use, rather than having full FDA approval. This argument stems from the wording of the Pentagon’s vaccine mandate, which covers “COVID-19 vaccines that receive full licensure from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in accordance with FDA-approved labeling and guidance.” Robichaux and others believe that this means the mandate did not apply to any vaccines issued under emergency use authorization (EUA), such as the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

    They argue that the military mainly offered service members EUA Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, rather than the FDA-approved Cominarty vaccine, and thus could not compel personnel to take them. They also argued that a Pentagon policy that says the Cominarty and EUA Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines are interchangeable was illegal.

    “With each denial,” Robichaux said, “I kept putting in appeals and each was denied; they were brushed off.” As he continued to refuse the vaccine, he said his leadership became “pissed.” In October 2021, he was given 10 days to get the jab. He soon faced the threat of Article 15, a form of nonjudicial punishment that can be imposed by a commander, that would “put a stain” on his career.

    “Because of this,” he said, “I almost changed my mind, telling them that I was going to get it.” Members of his immediate family have collectively served in the military for over 80 years since the Vietnam War. “And I wanted to continue the legacy that we have under our name,” he said.

    In the end, Robichaux maintained his religious objection to the vaccine and did not take it. Not only did he receive an Article 15, but he was also denied a promotion to corporal. While he admits he may have disobeyed the command to take the vaccine, he said, “I don’t believe it was a lawful command, as I should have never been forced to take an EUA product.”

    Robichaux was discharged from the Marine Corps in February 2022. “My commanding officer recommended me for an honorable discharge, but once it went up the chain of command, it came back as a general discharge,” he said. His discharge was characterized as being connected to the commission of a serious offense. Domestic battery, murder, rape, terrorism, and drug use are considered typical commissions of a serious offense.

    Since leaving the Marine Corps, he said, “I’ve only met one person that received an honorable discharge.” This, he said, is concerning when one considers the thousands of service members who were separated from the military. One day, Robichaux would like to have his discharge upgraded.

    More of the Same

    The Epoch Times also spoke to Private First Class Derrick Wynne, who joined the Army in July 2020. Nearly two years later, he was discharged from service for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine once mandated by Defense Secretary Austin.

    Wynne described himself as a “hard refusal,” as he didn’t apply for an exemption. He refused because “they were offering vaccines issued under emergency use authorization,” which he considered as legally distinct from the fully FDA-approved vaccines service members were mandated to take.

    In November 2021, for refusing to get the jab, he received a General Officer Memorandum of Reprimand, an administrative letter of reprimand placed on his service record. In addition, he was also told by several people in leadership and many of his peers that “they were going to make my life hell for refusing the vaccine.”

    At this time, Wynne was informed that he would be discharged for refusing to take the vaccine.

    “When they finally kicked me out on June 28, 2022, it began as a long, drawn-out process, but when it finally happened, I was only given a two-week notice,” Wynne said. “Many of the programs put in place to aid me in a healthy, successful transition to civilian life were pushed to the side.”

    “It was a general discharge, labeled under the violation of a serious offense,” Wynne said. “To anyone who doesn’t know the whole story,” he said, “I sound like I was the one who knowingly broke the law.” But he argued that it was the military that was offering an illegal vaccine by only providing vaccines issued under EUA.

    “After skimming through my chapter (administrative separation) packet four or five times before speaking with Trial Defense Services, I noticed that there was no option for an honorable discharge.” When he mentioned this to his legal counsel, he also “made a note in the packet for brigade legal to, at least, add the option for an honorable discharge.”

    Brigade legal told him that once his commanding officer gave his recommendation, they would add the option for an honorable discharge before sending it up to the next level of decision. To his surprise, he said, “After my Commander gave his recommendation for an honorable discharge, once it went up the chain of command, there was no option for it.”

    When he realized there was no chance for an honorable discharge, Wynne said he was not surprised due to what he described as the department’s recent history of “shady coercion tactics.” He said that “at the time, the military was doing everything they could to paint us [vaccine refuses] as criminals who were knowingly disobeying ‘lawful’ orders, without even taking the time to hear out our legitimate grievances.” For Wynne, “There was a blatant heavy hand on the scale, coming from the top down.”

    The Epoch Times spoke to other service members who agree with Wynne. Some of them are being processed out of the military, today, for disobeying a “lawful” order mandated nearly two years ago. Most of them are receiving general discharges. The vaccine mandate was officially rescinded in January, but this did not affect the thousands of service members who had already been discharged over the vaccine.

    Demand for Congressional Action

    Once he was forced to leave the Army, Wynne’s reason for separation was labeled, like Robichaux, as a “misconduct (serious offense),” making subsequent job interviews more difficult, he said.

    “The lack of an honorable characterization ripples outwards and is affecting thousands of us [service members] as a whole—not just from a bureaucratic perspective, but from a moral, principled aspect as well,” he said.

    “I lost the education benefits I earned through my service, which would come in handy during my new career search,” he said. Within two months of being discharged, Wynne appealed the Army’s decision to the Army Discharge Review Board.

    “Nearly nine months have gone by, and I’ve heard nothing,” he said. “I know Congress has the power to put in an inquiry and help soldiers like myself.”

    Over the course of the last several months, wanting to address the issue of FDA-approved vaccines versus those made available through Emergency Use Authorization, Wynne has reached out to multiple congressmen to no avail.

    “I was passed around from one elected official to another for months, and no one wanted to do anything to get answers to my questions,” Wynne said. “Every time a politician refuses to help me,” he said, “I feel like I’m being told: you’re a piece of trash; you should have gotten the vaccine.”

    Proposed Legislation

    In April 2022, Wynne was put in contact with Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Tex.) office. Although he remains frustrated about the lack of action in holding the Department of Defense (DOD) to account for the vaccine mandate, Wynne became aware of the Senator’s effort to ensure that those discharged under a General discharge could be designated as Honorably discharged through the AMERICANS Act.

    Sen. Cruz and 18 original cosponsors introduced the Allowing Military Exemptions, Recognizing Individual Concerns About New Shots (AMERICANS) Act of 2023 (S.29) in January. The bill would require the department to offer reinstatement to service members who were separated for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.

    For Wynne, Robichaux, and the multitude of other service members like them, it also states “any administrative discharge of a member on the sole basis of a failure to receive a COVID-19 vaccine must be categorized as an honorable discharge, and DOD is prohibited from taking any adverse action against such a member for that reason.”

    A spokesperson for Cruz told The Epoch Times the senator is fighting for passage of his AMERICANS Act [to] bring justice to servicemembers terminated or otherwise punished because of their COVID-19 vaccine status.”

    “He is also fighting for them legislatively, authoring the statutory language to ban the Department of Defense’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, which became law in December 2022,” the spokesperson said.

    The senator “has taken the lead in calling out the Biden administration for COVID-19 overreach and fighting to protect Texas servicemembers from vaccine mandates,” the spokesperson added.

    Marine Corps and Department of the Army officials did not return requests for comment from The Epoch Times.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/24/2023 – 18:20

  • Corporate America Panics As 'Student Loan' Chatter Hits Record On Earnings Calls
    Corporate America Panics As ‘Student Loan’ Chatter Hits Record On Earnings Calls

    Corporate America is panicking this earnings season as the prospect of more than 40 million Americans carrying student debt will have to start making payments in October after a three-year-long payment forbearance that had artificially boosted disposable incomes by tens of billions of dollars.  

    Using the ‘Document Search’ function on Bloomberg, the phrase “student loan” in all second-quarter earnings calls soared to a record high of 151 mentions. 

    During earnings calls, companies in the financials, consumer discretionary, and consumer staples sectors had the most mentions. Consequently, these sectors are poised to face the greatest exposure when consumer spending decreases.

    In June, Barclays economist Adirenne Yih wrote in a note to clients (available to pro subscribers in the usual place), explaining the restart of student loan payments would be a $15.8 billion monthly headwind — or a $190 billion per year — to the US economy as the average student debt holder sees an incremental monthly payment of — $390 beginning this fall.

    With the return of these payments for 40 million Americans, the threat of consumer spending sliding is high. We’ve asked: Student Loan Repayments – Will It Start The Recession?

    … and comes as the latest revolving credit (i.e., credit card debt) data shows consumers are nearing a breaking point as the spending binge wanes with interest rates at 22-year highs. 

    Analytics company Earnest Insights wrote in a note that Frontier Airlines, Pleoton, and Old Navy will be some of the hardest-hit companies come October. 

    Student loan payers who suspended payments during Covid will have to resume those payments come October. That cohort of shoppers made up more than 10% of spending at several national brands in 2022 (above the dotted line). Their spending also outperformed non-borrowers at several brands (left of the solid line), suggesting that their lack of payments may have buoyed their spending in recent years. That leaves dozens of national brands that benefited meaningfully from the pause in student loans, and that may be more exposed to that shopper base as payments resume.

    Within Travel, Frontier Airlines was the most sensitive to the Covid-Suspended cohort in 2022, with 11% share and 2 points of outspending from the cohort. In contrast, Alaska Airlines and United Airlines both had 7% share and 10 points of under-spending. Airbnb had a high 11% share from the cohort but with 4 points of underspending.

    Within the Home sector, Peloton was most sensitive, with 13% share and 11 points of outspending from the Covid-Suspended cohort; Sherwin Williams had 6% share and 10 points of under-spending. IKEA, Ashley, HomeGoods, Wayfair, and Lowe’s all had 10%+ share from the cohort but the cohort also underspent Non-Borrowers by ~5 points. 

    Most Apparel and Department Stores had over 10% share from the Covid-Suspended cohort: Old Navy had the highest share at 14%; Nordstrom Full Price had the lowest share at 8%. Old Navy and Burlington each had 3 points of outspending from the cohort, while most others saw minimal to underspending. 

    Earnest shows companies in the top left quadrant are most exposed to the student loan-paying cohort.

    Company execs have already warned investors what’s about the incoming spending cliff:

    Target’s CFO Michael Fiddelke

    “The upcoming resumption of student loan repayments will put additional pressure on the already strained budgets of tens of millions of households … We remain cautious in our planning.”

    Levi’s CEO Chip Bergh

    “It’s not going to help us … The consumer is already under pressure and this is just going to ratchet that up even further.”

    Macy’s CFO Adrian Mitchell

    “The expiration of student loan forgiveness beginning in October, higher interest rate levels, and lower new job creation are all new pressures on the consumer.” 

    A looming consumer spending cliff has corporate America in a panic. This seems deflationary.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/24/2023 – 18:00

  • US Approves $500 Million Arms Sale To Taiwan
    US Approves $500 Million Arms Sale To Taiwan

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    The State Department on Wednesday approved a potential $500 million arms sale to Taiwan for infrared search and track systems for the island’s F-16 fighter jets.

    The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency said the sale is to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, Taiwan’s de facto embassy in the US, as Washington and Taipei don’t have formal diplomatic relations. The principal contractor for the deal is Lockheed Martin.

    File image: Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon

    The State Department’s approval begins a period where Congress could block the potential deal, but there is widespread bipartisan support for arming Taiwan and virtually no opposition.

    The approval came almost a month after the Biden administration provided Taiwan with $345 million in military aid using the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), which allows the US to send weapons straight from Pentagon stockpiles, the primary way the US has been arming Ukraine.

    Using the PDA to arm Taiwan is unprecedented as the US has sold weapons to Taiwan since Washington severed diplomatic relations with Taipei in 1979 but has never financed the purchases or provided arms free of charge. China issued several stern rebukes to the new form of US support for Taiwan.

    The deal approved on Tuesday will also draw a rebuke from Beijing as China opposes all US arms sales to Taiwan. In 1982, the US and China issued a third joint communiqué on their freshly normalized ties regarding US arms sales to Taiwan.

    The communiqué said that the US government intended “gradually to reduce its sale of arms to Taiwan, leading, over a period of time, to a final resolution.” But US officials at the time made clear they were leaving the commitment open to their own interpretation.

    On the same day the communiqué was issued, President Reagan said in an internal memo that “the US willingness to reduce its arms sales to Taiwan is conditioned absolutely upon the continued commitment of China to the peaceful solution of the Taiwan-PRC [People’s Republic of China] differences. It should be clearly understood that the linkage between these two matters is a permanent imperative of US foreign policy.”

    In recent years, China has increased military pressure on Taiwan, but the activity has primarily been a response to the US increasing its diplomatic and military support for Taiwan, which Beijing views as a violation of the conditions of the US-China normalization.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/24/2023 – 17:40

  • Forget CPI: Inflation In Necessities Has Skyrocketed Since 2020
    Forget CPI: Inflation In Necessities Has Skyrocketed Since 2020

    When mainstream economists and politicians cite “improvements” to the inflation problem in the US in recent months, what they are commonly referencing are changes to the Consumer Price Index (CPI).  However, the CPI is not a measure of total inflation, rather, it is a median snapshot of prices at a particular point and time.  True inflation is cumulative – A 10% increase one year and a 5% increase the next year is not a win, it means that you are now paying 15% more on average for everything you buy in the span of only two years.   

    When CPI falls this does not mean that prices on goods and services are going down, it only indicates that prices are rising slower than they were the month or the year before.

    Another misconception about CPI is that it measures the inflation rate accurately for regular consumers on common purchases.  In reality, the CPI represents mean average price rate increase for a vast basket of goods; over 94,000 items and services with over 200 separate categories.  Most of these items and services you will never use or rarely purchase in the span of a year.  In other words, inflation declines in uncommon goods can dilute the numbers, making it seem like inflation is dropping while prices on daily necessities continue to spike.  

    The CPI is weighted according to consumer spending patterns, which is where the calculations can be “adjusted” to a certain extent in an arbitrary manner.  Then there is outright government manipulation through various means.  As we witnessed recently with the Biden Administration’s claims that “Bidenomics” has defeated the inflation threat, what these reports don’t mention is that Biden has been dumping US strategic oil reserves on the market for the past year.  And since energy prices effect the inflation of so many other categories, Biden has artificially manipulated the CPI down using one key resource.  

    Now that his ability to dump oil reserves has ended, CPI will rise once again along with energy prices.

    The point is, it’s impossible to get a sense of the real damage from inflation without looking at the cumulative inflation in necessities (the goods and services that people are required to purchase on a regular basis to live day to day).  If we throw out the CPI distraction and look at common necessities since 2020, the economic picture is far more bleak.  

    Overall food prices have soared by 25%-30% in only three years (again, this means that you are now paying 30% more this year for food than you were paying at the beginning of 2020). Chicken is up from $3 per pound to $4 per pound.  Beef is up from $3.50 to $6 per pound.  Corn is up from $3.50 per pound to $4.70 per pound.  Wheat is up from $5 per pound to $7 per pound.  In 2019 the average American household was spending $8100 on food annually; with a 30% increase, in 2023 Americans will be spending at least $10,500 per household.          

    By the end of 2019, the average rental price of a single family home was around $1450 per month.  This year the price is around $2000 per month.  At the beginning of 2020, the median cost of a home was $320,000; by 2023 the price skyrocketed to an average of $416,000.  

    For gasoline, the price in early 2020 was around $2.50 per gallon.  The price has fluctuated dramatically due to Biden’s manipulation of the market using strategic reserves, but still remains high today at $3.80 per gallon.  

    The cost of electricity has risen swiftly, holding steady around .13 cents per kilowatt hour for a decade, then spiking to at least .17 cents per kilowatt hour by 2023.

    Remember, most of these costs are static and are difficult to reduce through household spending cuts.  These are not items that are easily removed from a monthly budget and the expenditures add up to considerable pressure on consumer accounts.  This is probably why around 74% of the public in polls say that the economy is getting worse, not better.  It’s because government statistics are not highlighting the true inflationary crisis.

    When we look at the cumulative climb of prices in necessities since before the inflation crisis officially began, the truth is that Americans now have to increase their wages by at least 25%-30% on average to maintain the same standard of living they had three years ago.  This is a disaster not seen since the stagflationary event of the 1970s and early 1980s.  If you have a strange feeling like your bank account is being rapidly drained in recent months, that’s because it is.    

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/24/2023 – 17:20

  • Double Jeopardy
    Double Jeopardy

    Authroed by Paul Ingrassia via Paul Ingrassia’s Substack (subscribe here…)

    The following article is an excerpt from a series offering a comprehensive legal analysis discussing the second Jack Smith indictment against President Donald Trump.

    Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution reads “[t]he executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Therefore, President Donald Trump had executive power vested in him through his presidential office. From that power flows certain privileges and indeed executive immunities. Among these privileges are those expressly delineated in the Constitution itself. The impeachment process, for example, as stated in Article II, Sec. 4, requires that for all “high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” the President “shall be removed from Office.” 

    In other words, the Constitution lays out a process by which presidents of the United States are to be prosecuted—through impeachment. The reason impeachment, rather than traditional prosecution (and attendant punishments like incarceration), applies to the president is because of the uniqueness of the office itself. The president exposes himself to outsized publicity, controversy, and risk as a result of his office. Therefore, the punitive measures that uniquely attach to the executive officeholder are consonant with the duties and powers of the office itself. In addition, there is a special constitutional prerogative, one might say, in safeguarding the integrity of the presidential office, no matter the character and fitness of its occupant. Specifically, that would mean not imprisoning the officeholder or former occupants of the office based on alleged criminality done within the officeholder’s official capacities as president. It is for this reason that the Department of Justice has confirmed, “to wound [the President] by a criminal proceeding is to hamstring the operation of the whole governmental apparatus, both in foreign and domestic affairs.” (Memorandum from Robert G. Dixon, Jr., Asst. Att’y Gen., O.L.C., Re: Amenability of the President, Vice President, and Other Civil Officers to Federal Criminal Prosecution While in Office 30 [Sept. 24, 1973]). How far-reaching the scope of those capacities cover while in office should give way to a liberal construction due to the catastrophic impact such charges would necessarily have on the political fabric of the country.

    In any event, and for the purposes of what is relevant in Jack Smith’s two indictments, the factual grounds on which President Trump allegedly committed crime(s) within his official duties as president have already been twice considered by the House of Representatives, for which the President—in conformance with Article II, Sec. 4—was acquitted both times by the Senate. Because the Senate voted not to convict President Trump of his alleged crimes, any and every remedial measure afforded by the constitutional process has already been exhausted. Therefore, to continue to bring charges against the President for the asserted crimes on which he has already been prosecuted is by definition an abuse of the judicial power and an expressed violation of the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment: “…nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb…” 

    Notably, the Impeachment Judgment Clause of the Constitution, Art. I Sec. 3, reads as follows: “a person convicted upon an Impeachment, shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.” A plain reading of the clause allows for the subsequent indictment after a person is convicted and convicted only. This is in agreement with the longstanding judicial canon of construction, expressio unius est exclusio alterius, “the expression of one is the exclusion of others,” which provides that because the text excludes the term “acquittal” from the relevant clause, the framers’ intent was that only convicted officeholders would be open to additional prosecution, and not officeholders that were already acquitted based on constitutional procedure for their alleged crimes, therefore exhausting the constitutional remedy in toto. United States v. Wells Fargo Bank, 485 U.S. 351, 357 (1988). 

    This construction is likewise supported by common sense: any officeholder who is convicted while in office, based on constitutional procedure, is necessarily removed from office – it is inconceivable that any officeholder would remain in office after being convicted of a crime. But the reason a post-conviction prosecution, as opposed to an acquittal, runs a lesser risk of being in violation of double jeopardy, and is therefore expressly licensed by Article I, Sec. 3, is because, upon removal from office, there is a natural continuity in the prosecutorial function – indeed, additional time may be required to prosecute the case to the fullest extent of the law. The conviction, pursuant to constitutional procedure, is just the first step of the criminal trial. In contrast, if an officeholder were acquitted for an alleged crime and served the remainder of his or her term in office, it would not make sense to resume a criminal trial based largely on the same factual grounds on which the acquittal was based, once the acquitted officeholder left his or her post – in particular, after some time elapsed in which the officeholder was acquitted, served out the duration of his or her term, and then became a private citizen – only then to resume the criminal trial for which that officeholder had been acquitted. The latter scenario poses an obvious risk to double jeopardy (and flies in the face of common sense). 

    While the question is still occasionally debated, there is a great deal of support for the latter view in several important early legal commentaries and court decisions. For example, St. George Tucker, an editor of Blackstone’s Commentaries, raises the strong possibility that because “a conviction upon an impeachment is no bar to a prosecution upon an indictment, so perhaps, an acquittal may not be a bar.” (1 St. George Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries 337 & n* [Philadelphia, William Y Burch et al. 1803, reprint 1996]). Even stronger authority for this view is found in Justice Story’s 1833 Commentaries on the Constitution, wherein Justice Story expresses his conviction in the above stated construction of double jeopardy: “In case of an acquittal,” he wrote, “there cannot be another trial of the party for the same offence in the common tribunals of justice.” (2 Story’s Commentaries). This point of view agrees with other state charters that predate the federal Constitution, but nevertheless provided interpretative guidance, such as the 1784 New Hampshire Constitution, which contained the first bill of rights to explicitly adopt a double jeopardy clause. Within the New Hampshire constitution’s double jeopardy clause, acquittal – which extended to acquittal by the Senate – is accounted for: “No subject shall be liable to be tried, after an acquittal, for the same crime or offence.” Art. I, Sec. XCI, 4 F. THORPE, THE FEDERAL AND STATE CONSTITUTION, reprinted in H.R. Doc. No. 357, 59th Congress, 2d Sess. 2455 (1909). 

    More recently, an OLC memo from 2000 acknowledges that an acquittal by constitutional impeachment exhausts every single legal remedy for redressability, and therefore, to subsequently bring charges against that officeholder runs in flagrant violation of double jeopardy. On this theory, the OLC memo conceded: “Even if one took the view that the Impeachment Judgment Clause’s reference to ‘the party convicted’ implied that acquitted parties could not be criminally prosecuted, that implication would naturally extend only to individuals who had been impeached by the House and acquitted by the Senate.” (Whether a Former President May Be Indicted and Tried for the Same Offense for Which He Was Impeached by the House and Acquitted by the Senate, 24 Op. O.L.C. 110, 112 n.2 [2000]).

    The Supreme Court has affirmed “the Double Jeopardy Clause prohibits merely punishing twice, or attempting a second time to punish criminally, for the same offense.” Helvering v. Mitchell, 303 U.S. 391, 399 (1938). Because the President has already been prosecuted—twice—for the asserted crimes underlying both of Jack Smith’s indictments, the legal remedy has already been applied: there is simply no other form of legal redress that is tolerable under the Constitution. 

    In conclusion, Jack Smith’s claims are ill founded; to the extent they have any merit at all, they have already been prosecuted to the fullest extent the Constitution allows, and on each count, President Trump has already been acquitted of any and all criminal wrongdoing. 

    Order your Patriot Cigars today at mypatriotcigars.com and use Promo Code: TRUMPWON for 15% OFF!

    A slightly modified version of this piece was originally published in The American Mind, and can be found here.

    Paul Ingrassia is a Law Clerk at The McBride Law Firm, PLLC. He graduated from Cornell Law School in 2022 and is on the Board of Advisors of the New York Young Republican Club. He was also a two-time Claremont Fellow. Follow him on Twitter @PaulIngrassia, Substack, Truth Social, and Rumble.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 08/24/2023 – 17:00

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Aug 24

Today’s News 24th August 2023

  • Abortion: The Republican Party's Albatross
    Abortion: The Republican Party’s Albatross

    Authored by Bill King via RealClearPolitics.com,

    Polling has shown that for nearly five decades, slightly over half the American people have believed that abortion should be legal in some circumstances. Just over a quarter believe it should be legal in all circumstances, and about 17% believe it should be illegal under any circumstance. The opinions of the American people have been remarkably stable. However, since the repeal of Roe, there has been an uptick in those who believe it should be legal in any circumstance and a downtick in those who believe it should be illegal in any circumstance. In the last polls conducted by Gallup, only 13% of Americans said that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances.

    A poll by Pew found about a dozen states where a majority believed that abortions should be illegal in “all or most circumstances.”

    I have not been able to find any poll in any state where there is anywhere close to a majority that believes it should be illegal in all circumstances. Recent Texas polling has the number of Texans with that view in the low teens.

    Yet, Republicans in state legislatures across the country are pushing abortion restrictions that are clearly out of step with the nation’s mood. Why? Because typically only about 10% of voters show up for the Republican primaries, and virtually all of the 10-15% of Americans who believe abortion should be illegal in any circumstance vote in the Republican primaries. And because gerrymandering has made most November general elections irrelevant, Republican legislators must toe the line or face angry primary voters.

    It is a dilemma for which the Republican Party has no solution and which is unlikely to be resolved anytime in the foreseeable future. For most Americans who believe a fetus at the time of conception has all the rights of a person, their belief is a fervent religious belief, which means that they are not persuadable to moderate their view and they cannot compromise on the issue. And because the Republican agenda includes this and other positions that are largely out of step with the majority of the American people, it is unlikely that the party is going to be able to expand its primary voting base to dilute the fervent anti-abortion voters.

    The depth of the Republican abortion problem was on full display in Ohio’s referendum last week to raise the percentage needed to amend its constitution from 50% to 60%. The referendum was engineered by anti-abortion legislators attempting to improve their odds in another referendum this fall, which would prevent the Ohio legislature from prohibiting abortion before fetal viability and guarantee an exception for the health of the mother. Ohio voters, who clearly favor this constitutional amendment, saw through the transparent attempt to derail it and trounced the proposal by a 14-point margin (57-43).

    That margin is even more impressive than it may seem at first blush, because the election was a special election with only a 38% turnout. Anti-abortion activists typically overperform in low turnout elections. When Ohioans vote in November on the actual abortion amendment and turnout is up, the amendment will probably win by 20 points or more. Keep in mind that Trump won Ohio by eight points.

    The Ohio results come in the wake of voters in the red states of Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana solidly defeating ballot measures that were advanced by anti-abortion activists.

    In two blue states, California and Vermont, ballot measures ensuring certain abortion rights passed overwhelmingly.

    As long as the Supreme Court had state legislatures handcuffed with the Roe ruling, Republican members of those bodies could demur to primary voters that they were powerless to restrict abortion.

    But after Roe was overturned, they were forced to act to survive potential primary voters, which alienated general election voters in the process.

    The 2022 election was the first test of whether swing voters would be swayed by Roe being overturned and move them toward Democratic candidates. Many pundits have attributed the no-show of the Republican red wave in 2022 to the abortion issue, and some exit polls seem to confirm that was probably a significant factor. It is important to keep in mind that Roe was only overturned in June, just four months before the election and, critically, before many state legislatures began to crack down on abortions.

    Historically, abortion has been listed by relatively few voters among their most important issues. But that is probably because most viewed the issue as settled by Roe. However, with abortion back on the agenda in many states, this is likely to change, especially with those all-important white suburban women who lean Republican but are also willing to switch sides. Most of these women are not “pro-abortion,” but they also know from personal experience the complexity many women face with their pregnancies, and they resent rigid state laws limiting the options women have.

    The only thing that will keep the Republican Party from suffering a real free fall from its extreme anti-abortion agenda next November is that swing voters also view the Democratic Party as driven to extremes by its ideologues. Or, as one of my friends likes to say, “The only thing keeping the Republican Party afloat is how god-awful the Democratic Party is.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/23/2023 – 23:50

  • Mexican Cartels Increasingly Use Drone-Dropped And Roadside Bombs
    Mexican Cartels Increasingly Use Drone-Dropped And Roadside Bombs

    Behaving more and more like a military force, Mexican drug cartels have greatly increased their use of improvised explosive devices in their combat with authorities and rival criminal gangs, the Mexican army said on Tuesday.  

    Already this year, 42 police officers, soldiers and others have been wounded, nearly triple the count in 2022. Fatalities have included a National Guard officer and several police officers. 

    A Mexican National Guardsman guards the site of a June car blast that injured four other Guard members in Guanajuato state (Reuters)

    “All of these explosive devices are homemade, based on tutorials that can be found on the internet,” said Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval. Most of the them use either readily-purchased black powder, or explosives stolen from Mexican mines. They’re deployed in a variety of ways — including roadside bombs, car bombs, and bombs dropped from drone aircraft. 

    Drone-bombings are surging: The tactic wasn’t seen before 2020, but 260 such attacks have been tallied this year. “Even that number may be an underestimate: residents in some parts of the western state of Michoacan say that attacks by bomb-dropping drones are a near-daily occurrence,” reports Associated Press. 

    Most of the bombings have occurred in three states: Clockwise from northwest, they are Jalisco, Guanajuato and Michoacán 

    The bombs often fail to explode, but when they do, the results can be catastrophic. July brought one of the most spectacular set of bombings yet — as a coordinated series of seven road bombs killed four police and two civilians in what the governor of Jalisco called “a trap” targeting law enforcement. Four vehicles were destroyed and 14 people were injured by bombs so strong that they cratered the highway. 

    A majority of the explosive deployments have been recorded in Michoacán state, where the Jalisco cartel has long been at war with a federation of local gangs. 

    Bombings almost seem charming in contrast to a godawful cartel video that circulated from Mexico this week. It depicted the decapitation slaughter of five kidnapping victims. Traveling to attend a festival in Jalisco, they were apparently lured with a bogus employment opportunity, with the intent of forcing them to work for the cartel. Authorities believe they refused. Most horrifically, the video seemed to depict one of the victims being forced to bludgeon and decapitate another, before being killed himself. 

    For Mexicans, the video resurrected memories of a 2010 incident in which abducted men who refused to serve the cartel were forced to fight each other until death with sledgehammers. Let’s pray these horrors stay south of the border.  

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

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/23/2023 – 23:30

  • Will You Comply?
    Will You Comply?

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

    There are new mask mandates in Southern California and talk of them coming back in various spots around the country, including a university in Atlanta. Contact tracing too is back, even though that never works for respiratory viruses. Rumors are swirling about new lockdowns for some new variant that is being touted by the World Health Organization (WHO). The predictable CNN is interviewing Pfizer employees about the glories of their new booster just rubber-stamped by the FDA.

    And Fauci is out and about defending lockdowns and suggesting that we could have more.

    The first time is tragedy, said Karl Marx, and the second time is farce.

    We might be headed into the realm of farce, as masks that everyone knows don’t work are mandated and shots that everyone knows don’t work to stop the spread are widely encouraged. Mandates for them could easily be next. In fact, not one government policy from the entire pandemic period achieved anything but destruction.

    Now we see the problem with the failure to have a real reckoning over the COVID response. It means that the whole panoply of failed and brutal policies could come back again.

    As NPR reminds us on a daily basis, we now “have the tools” necessary to combat another pandemic or even the spread of seasonal viruses—and never mind that none of these tools actually work and all of them demoralize the population.

    At the same time, the hashtag #donotcomply is trending. Many people swear that they will not go along this time. Maybe that’s right but I’m not prepared to predict mass refusal. There were many times during the last lockdowns and masking that I refused to comply but that can create awkward situations.

    The store owner and I agreed that masks are dumb and we both went without. The next time I went in, he told me to put one on. I asked why. He said that passersby were looking through the windows and noticing we were not wearing masks and reported the store to the local government. The health inspectors arrived demanding answers.

    That was enough to convince him. He was not going to risk the well-being of his shop in what he considered to be a trivial issue of mask compliance. He would not die on this hill.

    I totally get it. I respect very much people who swear that they will not go along but I also understand those who comply. It’s a tragedy but not everyone wants to be a martyr for the cause of freedom. To be sure, if no one went along, all the lockdown regulations would effectively be null and void. There aren’t enough enforcers to bring about compliance if the whole population doesn’t go along.

    But that’s not usually how it works. Typically in these cases, the government can always count on a portion of the population to do the work of coercion for them. That’s why it is called totalitarianism: the whole of society involves itself in its own self-destruction. We saw it under China’s Cultural Revolution where the Red Guard did most of the killing, and we saw it in the COVID lockdowns when average people felt moved to rat out their fellow citizens to the health police.

    All of this takes me back to the writings of Étienne de la Boétie and his important essay “The Politics of Obedience.”

    The author is a French aristocrat and the year of writing was 1552.

    It’s as powerful then as it is now.

    “I should like merely to understand,” he wrote, “how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him. Surely a striking situation! Yet it is so common that one must grieve the more and wonder the less at the spectacle of a million men serving in wretchedness, their necks under the yoke, not constrained by a greater multitude than they.”

    Perhaps it is cowardice? Boétie answers:

    “If a hundred, if a thousand endure the caprice of a single man, should we not rather say that they lack not the courage but the desire to rise against him, and that such an attitude indicates indifference rather than cowardice? When not a hundred, not a thousand men, but a hundred provinces, a thousand cities, a million men, refuse to assail a single man from whom the kindest treatment received is the infliction of serfdom and slavery, what shall we call that? Is it cowardice? … When a thousand, a million men, a thousand cities, fail to protect themselves against the domination of one man, this cannot be called cowardly, for cowardice does not sink to such a depth. … What monstrous vice, then, is this which does not even deserve to be called cowardice, a vice for which no term can be found vile enough.”

    Instead, he counsels mass non-compliance or civil disobedience. He says that even the most powerful government is rendered powerless by the mass refusal of the public to go along. If that happens, government simply ceases to have authority and power. All the guns and weaponry are rendered useless. The state lives off the people’s willingness to be bullied. If they stop being willing, the state simply falls.

    “Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.”

    That’s a powerful and brilliant vision, one that has inspired me for a very long time. In addition, the 20th century saw some powerful implementations, particularly those led by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

    But how plausible is it that something like this can happen in our time? Government does everything in its power to make sure that it does not happen. The most important tool is propaganda. That can take many forms. It could be preachers yelling about eternal damnation of the refuseniks but it could also be fancy Pfizer executives calmly explaining how a new potion will protect the population against a pathogen. In both cases, the government is able to tap into the mortal fears of the public.

    And to make sure that only one message gets out, censorship becomes an imperative.

    This is why the CDC and NIH, along with the DHS and the CIA, involved themselves so heavily in social media and search engines to make sure that the public did not hear any voices of dissent. This way people will be discouraged from resisting.

    Also important is restricting gatherings.

    This was the real point of “social distancing” restrictions, not to protect you against viruses but rather to stop people from meeting others who were similarly incredulous. The goal was to isolate people so that they become demoralized and feel like crazy people.

    A major problem for all of the non-compliers this time is that we are still very much in the minority. This is partly owing to the propaganda. Google and YouTube, which make up 90 percent of both search and video traffic, are heavily censored by government. YouTube has even stated that it will not allow any content that contradicts the World Health Organization, which is the entity that started all this lockdown stuff to begin with.

    I commend everyone who swears they will not go along. But every circumstance is different.

    It is not always so easy to refuse. Everyone has jobs and income needs. People also seek social approval and thus cave when it matters most. Like Étienne de la Boétie,

    I long for a time of mass non-compliance. We are closer to that point now that we were three and a half years ago but I seriously doubt we are there just yet.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/23/2023 – 23:10

  • Hedge Funds Dump Record Amounts Of Chinese Stocks In Longest Selling Stretch On Record
    Hedge Funds Dump Record Amounts Of Chinese Stocks In Longest Selling Stretch On Record

    Not too long ago, investors – especially “smart”, fast money – loved plunking money in China, especially during painful drawdowns.

    Not this time: according to Bloomberg, global investors have sold China’s blue-chip stocks during the longest stretch of outflows on record, signaling that even the nation’s “blue chip” leaders are falling out of favor as the neverending rout deepens.

    According to the latest flow data on individual stocks available on Bloomberg, foreign investors sold 6.2 billion yuan ($851 million) of liquor giant Kweichow Moutai during Aug. 7-18, making China’s largest liquor maker the most heavily sold stock via trading links with Hong Kong. It was followed by 4.7 billion yuan of selling each for leading renewables stock LONGi Green Energy Technology Co. and major lender China Merchants Bank.

    The 10 most-sold stock by foreigners in the latest rout were among the 50 largest ones on the CSI 300. Major distiller Wuliangye Yibin, Ping An Insurance Group of China, and EV maker BYD saw selling of at least 2.9 billion yuan each through Aug. 18.

    In total, overseas funds offloaded the equivalent of $10.7 billion in Chinese shares in a thirteen-day run of withdrawals through Wednesday – the longest since Bloomberg began tracking the data in 2016 – as they fled the mainland market. The departures comes as a prolonged housing slump raises the risk of broader financial contagion, making the nation’s equity benchmark among the worst global performers this month with a nearly 8% loss.

    Goldman’s Prime Brokerage group made a similar observation, finding that hedge funds net sold Chinese stocks for 3 straight sessions and in 12 of the 16 days MTD. In cumulative notional terms as seen on the Prime book, this month’s net selling in Chinese equities – onshore and offshore combined – is approaching record levels vs. monthly net flows of the past decade.

    Importantly, long liquidations accounted for more than 70% of the notional net selling MTD. This month’s notional long selling already exceeds the levels seen in Aug ’21 and Jul ’15 and is on track to be the largest over the past decade.

    Including the August MTD activity, hedge funds have now reversed all of the cumulative notional net buying in Chinese stocks from Nov ’22 to Jan ’23 (aka “the reopening trade”). Since the start of February, ~56% of the cumulative notional net selling has ben driven by A-shares with the remainder roughly split between H-shares and ADRs.

    Chinese equities collectively now make up ~7.6% of global net market value on the Prime book, vs. 9.5% at the start of August and 11.2% at the start of 2023, the lowest level since early November and in the 14th percentile vs. the past five years.  Aggregate long/short ratio in Chinese equities now stands at ~2.2 (vs. ~2.7 at the start of 2023), also at the lowest level since November and in the 14th percentile vs. the past five years.

    The CSI 300 Index is now trading at its lowest since November as optimism of another stimulus following the July Politburo meeting quickly evaporated, even as China’s social mood is turning uglier by the day amid record youth unemployment which is rising by one percent every two months. Foreigners had moved into the market en masse back then, only to leave again now in droves as economic data continue to disappoint and stimulus fails to impress.

    A separate Bloomberg analysis showed that emerging market funds have also turned more bearish on Chinese stocks, deepening their average underweight position to almost 100 basis points as of the second quarter from 24 basis points three months earlier. They were overweight by 40 basis points as of end-2022.

    The selling streak is showing little sign of cooling, and on Wednesday overseas funds shed another 10.5 billion yuan. A top-performing Chinese macro hedge fund blamed global capital for sinking the country’s stocks, calling them a “bunch of aimless flies” that stir up market volatility. The silver lining is that foreign funds own less than 4% of total A-shares outstanding, according to a report this month from China International Capital Corp. Of course, by the time they are gone, the financial assets of the Chinese population will be worth a fraction of what it is now.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/23/2023 – 22:50

  • Watch Live: 8 GOP Presidential Candidates Battle For A Participation Trophy
    Watch Live: 8 GOP Presidential Candidates Battle For A Participation Trophy

    Eight Republican candidates gather on stage to battle it out for the world’s greatest participation trophy as former President Trump – the far and away frontrunner in the race – is interviewed simultaneously by Tucker Carlson on X.

    Candidates needed to meet certain requirements set by the RNC to be able to participate in Wednesday’s debate. In addition to polling requirements, to qualify, they needed at least 40,000 separate donors to their presidential campaign committee, with at least 200 from 20 or more states and territories.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), conservative entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum qualified for the debate.

    We note that Burgum injured himself playing basketball on Tuesday, his campaign confirmed, and it was unclear if that would prevent him from participating.

    DNC chair Jamie Harrison on Wednesday said that the first GOP primary debate will be a circus while briefing reporters ahead of it in Milwaukee.

    “I don’t know if it’s going to be a debate but more like a circus,” he said, adding that all the candidates in the field, including former President Trump, are “extreme.”

    Of course, no one asked him if President Biden will be having a debate? RFK Jr is ready.

    Watch the debate live here (due to start at 2100ET):

    *  *  *

    As The Epoch Times’ Nathan Worcester detailed earlier,as the first Republican presidential debate approaches, many may wonder how the various hopefuls are getting ready—and how the American people will receive their pitches against the backdrop of the absence of former president Donald J. Trump.

    In a series of interviews, campaign representatives and knowledgeable analysts shared insights on the coming spectacle.

    Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during the Moms for Liberty Joyful Warriors national summit at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown in Philadelphia on June 30, 2023. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

    DeSantis, Ramaswamy, and ‘Trump in Absentia’

    Last week, a debate memo published on the website of a firm linked to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis offered some initial clues as to what observers should expect at the event, which will take place in Milwaukee on Aug. 23.

    The memo suggested Mr. DeSantis could “hammer Vivek Ramaswamy in a response.”

    “Take a sledge-hammer to Vivek Ramaswamy: ‘Fake Vivek’ Or ‘Vivek the Fake,’” it reads.

    In addition, it advises him to attack both President Joe Biden and the media repeatedly and “defend Donald Trump in absentia in response to a Chris Christie attack.”

    Republican presidential candidate, former Vice President Mike Pence delivers remarks at the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) summit in Arlington, Va., on July 17, 2023. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

    The Pence campaign did not respond to requests for comment from The Epoch Times.

    When asked how Mr. Ramaswamy is preparing for the Aug. 23 debate, a spokesperson for his campaign directed The Epoch Times to a 45-second clip the candidate recorded with ABC News’ Kelsey Walsh.

    Mr. Ramaswamy told Ms. Walsh he didn’t want to be “overly prepared.”

    He said the event would be his “first time ever” participating in such a primary debate, setting him apart from his competitors.

    “It’ll be something of a warmup for me,” Mr. Ramaswamy added.

    The millennial entrepreneur and anti-woke investor generated a little more pre-debate publicity on Aug. 21, posting an RFK, Jr.-style video of himself playing tennis shirtless, with the caption, “Three solid hours of debate prep this morning.”

    Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy flashes the Nixonian “V for Victory” sign at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, Calif., on Aug. 18, 2023. (Screenshot)

    Trump’s ‘Smart Move’

    Mr. Trump’s absence from Wednesday’s debate, and prospective appearance with Mr. Carlson on another medium, has elicited a range of responses.

    While Mr. Christie accused his competitor of “running scared,” a Ramaswamy’s campaign representative told The Epoch Times that the former president “should do whatever he wants!”

    “Having counter-programming during the debate is a smart move by both Carlson and Trump since it will help distract from the debate and attract attention, which is their goal,” said Kevin Tober, a news analyst with the Media Research Center, in an email interview with The Epoch Times.

    “We can expect Trump’s absence to loom large over the debate. Many of the questions, if not most, will end up having to do with him or about him,” Mr. Tober predicted.

    Former President Donald Trump leaves the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa, on Aug. 12, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University, said he thinks Mr. Trump will ultimately “overshadow everything the seven candidates on the stage do, and thus will undermine the ability of all of them to achieve their respective goals due to the fewer number of eyeballs watching the debate and the less intense media coverage of the debate.”

    “At the end of the day, the Republican candidate Democrats most want to face in 2024 is Donald Trump, since they believe Biden can beat Trump but would have a much more difficult time beating DeSantis, Scott, Haley, etc.” Mr. Jones told The Epoch Times via email.

    Timothy Head, executive director of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, told The Epoch Times that Mr. Trump’s rivals for the presidential slot are in a delicate position.

    “Not only do you attack Trump at your own peril of being retaliated against by Trump himself, but even more importantly for the other candidates is trying to court Trump voters,” Mr. Head said in a telephone interview.

    Both Mr. Tober and Mr. Jones expect Mr. DeSantis to be the most mercilessly scrutinized candidate on stage.

    “Due to some recent missteps from the DeSantis campaign, you can expect some tough questions to come his way. That’s expected, though, since he’s the leading candidate among those participating,” Mr. Tober said.

    Mr. Jones said he anticipates Mr. DeSantis “will try to set himself clearly apart as the only viable option to Trump without being seen as overtly anti-Trump.”

    He suggested that Mr. DeSantis’s rivals will go after the governor “with the goal of freeing up his donors and voters”—a prediction in line with what other insiders have told The Epoch Times about the intra-GOP scramble for the presidential nomination.

    “The lane is for Trump and a non-Trump candidate. That’s an oversimplification, but sometimes a simple story is right,” Daron Shaw, a presidential campaign veteran and professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Epoch Times in a July interview.

    Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) speaks at the Heritage Foundation’s Leadership Summit in National Harbor, Md., on April 20, 2023. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)

    According to Mr. Head, a very big question will loom over the debate: “Which candidate can establish themselves as the Trump alternative?”

    He said he’s paying close attention to which candidates succeed in connecting with the electorate.

    That holds true even for candidates who have strong records on the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s central issues—parental rights, religious liberty, and abortion.

    While he argued that Mr. Pence’s “political and policy backgrounds could hardly be any stronger” for religious voters, he acknowledged that there is a “personality equation” as well.

    ‘Not Afraid of Hard Questions’

    Other 2024 hopefuls shared some details about what to expect in Milwaukee with The Epoch Times.

    An advisor to former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley told The Epoch Times that the candidate has “been preparing for six months on the campaign trail answering unscripted questions from voters across New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina.”

    “She’s not afraid of the hard questions. She’ll always fight for what she believes in,” the advisor added.

    Republican presidential candidate and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley speaks at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa, on Aug. 12, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    A campaign spokesperson for Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) told The Epoch Times that the presidential hopeful “will share his positive, conservative message on the debate stage in Milwaukee.”

    “This debate is another opportunity to connect with millions of voters across the country and show why Tim has faith in America and why he is the strongest candidate to beat Joe Biden,” the spokesperson continued.

    The Epoch Times contacted the presidential campaign of North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum. The campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

    Jackson Richman contributed to this report

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/23/2023 – 22:45

  • Macleod: The Global Bank Credit Crisis
    Macleod: The Global Bank Credit Crisis

    Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

    Globally, further falls in consumer price inflation are now unlikely and there are yet further interest rate increases to come. Bond yields are already on the rise, and a new phase of a banking crisis will be triggered.

    This article looks at the factors that have come together to drive interest rates higher, destabilising the entire global banking system. The contraction of bank credit is in its early stages, and that alone will push up interest costs for borrowers. We have an old fashioned credit crunch on our hands.

    A new bout of price inflation, which more accurately is an acceleration of falling purchasing power for currencies, also leads to higher interest rates. Savage bear markets in financial and property values are bound to ensue, driving foreign investors to repatriate their funds. 

    This will unwind much of the $32 trillion of foreign investment in the fiat dollar which has accumulated in the last fifty-two years. And BRICS’s deliberations for replacing the dollar as a trade settlement medium could not come at a worse time.

    Global banking risks are increasing

    Gradually, the alarm bells over credit are beginning to ring. Monetarist and Austrian School economists are hammering the point home about broad money, which almost everywhere is contracting. It is overwhelmingly comprised of deposits at the commercial banks. And this week, even China’s command economy has had credit problems exposed, with another large property developer, Country Garden Holdings missing bond payments.

    A global cyclical downturn in bank credit is long overdue, and that is what we currently face. Empirical evidence of previous cycles, particularly 1929—1932, is that fear can spread though the banking cohort like wildfire as interbank credit lines are cut, loans are called in, and collateral liquidated. The question arising today is whether the current credit cycle downturn is more acute than any of those faced by our fiat currency world since the 1970s, or whether timely expansions of central bank liabilities can come to the rescue again.

    The problem with using monetary policy to avert a financial crisis is that there is bound to come a time when it fails, particularly when it is driven by bureaucrats whose starting point is an assumption that banks are adequately capitalised for an economic downturn. This ignores unproductive debts from previous cycles which have simply accumulated into a potential tsunami of defaults. When it overwhelms the banks, the policy response can only be so destructive of the currency that the cure exacerbates the problem. And with bond yields rising again, there are good reasons to believe that a tipping point is now upon us.

    Credit, which is synonymous with the towering mountains of debt is all about faith: faith in monetary policy, faith in the currency, and faith in a counterparty’s ability to deliver. Before we look at risks faced by the fiat currency cohort, it is worth listing some of the factors that can lead to the collapse of a credit system:

    • Contracting bank credit. Contracting bank credit is the consequence of the bankers recognising that lending risks are escalating. It is an acute problem when bank balance sheet leverage is high, magnifying the potential wipe-out of shareholders’ capital arising from bad and doubtful debts. Consequently, both normal and overindebted borrowers whose cash flow has been hit by higher interest rates are denied loan facilities, or at the least they are rationed at a higher interest cost. Therefore, the early stages of a credit downturn see interest rates rising even further leading to business failures. Essentially, the central banks lose control over interest rates.

    • Interbank counterparty risks. There is a long history of banks suspecting that one or more of their number has become overextended or mismanaged and is therefore a counterparty risk. Banks have analytical models in common to determine these risks, so there is a danger that the majority of banks will share the same opinion on a particular bank at the same time, leading to it being shut out of wholesale markets. When that happens, it cannot fund deposit outflows, is forced to turn to the central bank for support, or it suddenly collapses. Recently, this was the fate of Silicon Valley Bank. A downgrade by a credit agency, such as S&P or Fitch, could trigger an interbank lending crisis, either at a local or international level in the case of a country downgrade. These downgrades have now started.

    • Rising bond yields. Banks usually stock up on government debt, redeploying their assets when they are cautious about lending to the private sector. Therefore, an increase in bond holdings tends to be countercyclical with reference to the credit cycle, with exposure limited to maturities of only a year or two. This pattern has been broken by central banks suppressing interest rates to or below the zero bound at a time of prolonged economic stagnation. Again, Silicon Valley Bank serves as an example of how this can go horribly wrong. It was able to fund bond purchases at close to zero per cent to buy Treasury and agency debt of longer maturities to enhance the credit spread. When interest rates began to rise, the bank’s profit and loss account took a hit, and at the same time, the market values of their bond investments fell substantially, wiping out its balance sheet equity. The Fed has taken on this risk by creating the Bank Term Funding Programme, whereby the Fed takes in Treasuries at their redemption value in return for cash in a one-year swap. Essentially, the problem in the US is covered up and accumulating on the Fed’s balance sheet instead — though this is not reflected in the Fed’s accounting practices. The draw-down in this facility is currently $107 billion and rising.

    • Quantitative tightening. Collectively, the major central banks (the Fed, ECB, BoJ, and PBOC) have reduced their balance sheets by some $5 trillion since early-2022. This QT has been put into effect by not reinvesting the proceeds of maturing government debt. Nearly all of the reduction in the central banks’ balance sheets is reflected in commercial bank reserves, which are balances recorded in their accounts as assets. Accordingly, the commercial banking system as a whole comes under pressure to reinvest the released reserves into something else, or to reduce its combined liabilities to depositors, bondholders, and shareholders. Initially, the commercial banking system can only respond by increasing holdings of three and six months treasury bills, which is an unstable basis for government funding.

    • Collateral liquidation. All the charts of national bond yields scream at us that they are continuing to rise, instead of stabilising and eventually going lower as the majority of market participants appear to beleive. Furthermore, with oil and other energy prices now rising strongly, the prospect of yet higher interest rates driven by contracting bank credit (as detailed above) along with a number of other factors discussed in this article point to significantly higher bond yields driving a bear market in financial assets and property values. Where banks hold collateral against loans, there will be increasing pressure on them to sell down financial assets before their values fall further.

    • Property liabilities. Bank lending for residential and commercial property will have to absorb substantial write-offs from the consequences of interest rates driven higher by price inflation and contracting bank credit. The Lehman crisis was about lending and securitisation of mortgage debt. This time, higher interest rates will add commercial real estate into the equation.

    • Shadow banks. Shadow banks are defined as institutions which recycle credit rather than create it for which a banking licence is required. It includes pension funds, insurance companies, brokers, investment management companies, and any other financial entity which lends and borrows stock or deals in derivatives and securities. All these entities present counterparty risks to banks and other shadow banks. Some of the risks can emerge from unexpected quarters, as was illustrated by the pension fund blow-up in the UK last September.

    • Derivatives. Derivative liabilities come from global regulated markets, which are assessed by the Bank for International Settlements to have an open interest of about $38 trillion last March with a further $60 trillion notional exposure in options. Markets in unregulated over-the-counter derivatives are far larger, at an estimated $625 trillion at end-2022 comprised of foreign exchange contracts ($107.6 trillion) interest rate contracts ($491 trillion) equity linked ($7 trillion), commodities ($2.3 trillion), and credit including default swaps ($9.94). All derivatives have chains of counterparty risk. We saw how a simple position in US Treasuries undermined Silicon Valley Bank: a failure in the derivative markets would have far wider consequences, particularly with regulators being unaware of the true risk position in OTC derivatives because they are not in their regulatory brief.

    • Repo markets. In all banking systems, some more than others, banks depend on repurchase agreements to ensure their liquidity. Low interest rates and the availability of required collateral feature in this form of funding. Particularly in Europe, repo quantities outstanding have built up in various currencies to over €10.4 trillion equivalent according to the International Capital Markets Association. Essentially, these amounts represent imbalances within the financial system, which being collateralised have become far larger than the traditional overnight imbalances settled in interbank markets. Even though repos are collateralised, the consequences of a counterparty failure are likely to be far more concerning to the stability of the banking sector as a whole. And with higher interest rates, a bear market in collateral values seems set to dry up this liquidity pool.

    • Central bank balance sheets. Central banks which have implemented QE have done so in conjunction with interest rate suppression. The subsequent rise in interest rates has led to substantial mark to market losses, wiping out their equity many times over when realistically accounted for. Central banks claim that this is not relevant because they intend to hold their investments to maturity. However, in any rescue of commercial banks, their technical bankruptcy could become an impediment, undermining confidence in their currencies.

    Looking at all these potential areas for systemic failure, it is remarkable that the sharp rise in interest rates so far has not triggered a wider banking crisis. The failures of Credit Suisse and a few regional banks in the US are probably just a warm-up before the main event. But when that time arrives, it becomes an open question as to whether central banks and their governments’ treasury ministries will pursue bail-in procedures mandated in G20 members’ laws in a knee-jerk response to the Lehman crisis. Or will they resort to bailouts as demanded by practicalities? Lack of coordination on this issue between G20 nations could jeopardise all banking rescue attempts.

    Additionally, while technicians in central banks have some understanding of credit and the practicalities of banking, the same cannot be claimed of bank regulators. They rarely have hands-on experience of commercial banking. They devise stress tests, the starting assumption of which is that banks regulated by them will survive. Otherwise, they will be demonstrated to have failed in their duties as regulators. It is noticeable how the economic assumptions behind prospective banking stresses are almost always unrealistically mild.

    When the muck hits the fan, the bureaucratic imperative is to deflect all blame of the failure to the commercial banks themselves, away from their own incompetence.

    The US banking system’s weak points

    As the reserve currency for the entire global fiat currency system, the dollar and all bank credit based upon it is likely to be the epicentre of a global banking crisis. If other currencies weaken or fail, there is likely to be a temporary capital flight towards the dollar before financial contagion takes over. But if the dollar fails first, all the rest fail as well.

    The condition of the US banking system is therefore fundamental to the global economy. There are now signs that not only is US bank credit no longer growing but is contracting as well.

    The chart above is the sum of all commercial bank deposits plus reverse repurchase agreements at the Fed. While the latter are technically not in public circulation, they have been an alternative form of deposits for large money market funds that otherwise would be reflected in bank deposits. Recently, having soared from nothing when the Fed permitted certain non-banks to open repo accounts with it in 2021, to a high of $2,334.3 billion last September, the facility has subsequently declined by $543 billion. Adding this change into the bank deposits figures shows the true contraction of bank credit to be $1,203 billion, which is 5.9% of the high point earlier this year. Some of the difference in bank liabilities has been taken up by an increase in loans to commercial banks ($556 billion) which is understandable when depositors earn virtually nothing on their deposits compared with fixed loans to a bank. 

    When these factors are considered, total assets are not yet significantly below their peak, indicating that so far banks have been only rearranging their assets with a view to controlling risk. Therefore, the credit crisis it is still in its early stages, which the potential to increase significantly.

    The chart below indicates why in a deteriorating lending environment banks are sure to contract their balance sheet totals.

    Over the last three decades, the ratio of total assets to tier 1 risk capital has grown from just under eight times, which historically was considered as normal, to a recent fourteen times. It is this leverage ratio that threatens to wipe out shareholders’ capital if the combined level of non-performing loans and mark-to-market write-offs on financial investments increases from here.

    A second weak point is the US’s dependency on foreign dollar short-term holdings including bank deposits, which according to the US Treasury totalled $7,122 billion last May. Of that total, $2,367 billion are bank deposits, being 13% of the total in the US banking system. But to the total of short-term holdings must be added long-term holdings of $24,788 billion for a grand total of short and long-term investments of almost $32 trillion. This is substantially in excess of US GDP and has accumulated as a result of two related factors. Since the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944, the dollar has been the reserve currency, and internationally commodity prices have always been quoted and dealt in with dollars.

    Within living memory, accumulation of dollars in foreign hands became excessive once before. It led to dollars being redeemed for gold, reducing US gold reserves from 21,682 tonnes in 1948 to 9,070 tonnes in 1971, when the run on gold led President Nixon to suspend the Bretton Woods Agreement. Following the abandonment of Bretton Woods, to date the dollar has lost 98% of its purchasing power measured in real, legal, international money which is gold. Due to its reserve currency status and persistent US trade deficits, the proportion of foreign ownership of dollars to US GDP has continued to grow. But recent geopolitical events are threatening to reverse that trend.

    As dollar bond yields rise, undermining the capital values of the $32 trillion of foreign-owned financial assets and bank deposits, foreigners are bound to sell their dollar assets to avoid mounting losses. And already, we see many foreign nations which are not allied with America beginning to take evasive action. It is rumoured that next week there will be up to 60 nations attending the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, all seeking an alternative to the dollar’s hegemony. Russian state media has clearly stated that a new gold-backed trade settlement currency is on the summit’s agenda, calling an end to the dollar’s fiat currency regime.

    Whatever comes out of the summit, it is clear that the fiat dollar regime has almost run its course. The withdrawal of credit from the US economy will undermine the currency, increase the rates of US producer and consumer price inflation, and therefore drive up bond yields. Financial asset and property values which have become dependent on cheap finance will take a massive hit, serving to encourage additional foreign selling of non-financial assets. The losses for banks, not just in the US, are set to rapidly escalate.

    Undoubtedly, banks will come under pressure to bail out the US Government from a further deterioration of its finances at a time when foreigners are more interested in selling US Treasuries than buying them. To an extent, substituting dodgy loans to the private sector for government debt is attractive to the banks, but only with very short-term maturities. The consequence will be that government financing of maturing Treasuries and of new issues will be facilitated by 3-month and 6-month T-bills, which can be regarded as near-cash. The inflationary consequences are one thing, but the impact of rising interest rates due to the dollar being sold down by foreign agents will intensify the debt trap by rapidly increasing debt funding costs.

    As if this is not enough, at the same time the collapse of bank credit is bound to act negatively on derivative obligations. The table below is a snapshot of OTC obligations for the top twelve US banks.[i]

    For the reader losing count of all the noughts, it should be noted that for the top nine their exposure is in the trillions. While it is true that some OTC derivatives, such as credit and credit default swaps are not obligations for their notional amounts, others such as foreign exchange derivatives, commodity, and equity-linked contracts ($117 trillion) are extinguished for the full amount. But they are only recorded on bank balance sheets as insignificant contract values. 

    For example, in the BIS derivative estimates quoted earlier in this article, the notional value of foreign exchange OTC contracts last December was $107.576 trillion with a gross market value of $4.846 trillion. It is the latter figure which is the basis recorded in bank balance sheets. But even that total is further reduced by being listed as a net balance of purchase and sold obligations, reducing apparent exposure to an even smaller figure. Essentially, over $107 trillion of assets and liabilities are made to disappear.

    According to the BIS’s 2022 triennial OTC derivatives survey, the US dollar is a component of 88.5% of this FX position. Other than offshore trading between non-US banks in Eurodollars, which is a minor proportion of the total, all dollar contracts have US banks as counterparties. This gives rise to two systemic threats. The first and most obvious is counterparty failure with a foreign bank or shadow bank. Obviously, with rising interest rates and collapsing financial asset values in collateral, the risk of counterparty failure from outside the US banking system will increase. The second counterparty failure comes from contracts between two US banks or shadow banks.

    We can be sure that central bankers (if not bank regulators) are fully aware of these risks, refusing to draw public attention to them. For confirmation, we saw the Fed rescue AIG in September 2008 in an $85 billion bailout. AIG was the world’s largest insurance company at that time, and an originator of credit default swaps and other derivative obligations. There were other factors involved, such as securities lending. But clearly, for the Fed to rescue an insurance company must have reflected the Fed’s concerns about AIG’s failure as a counterparty in the CDS market.

    The new BRICS gold currency

    Next week, we will know more about the proposal being presented at the BRICS summit in Johannesburg. All the indications are that this new settlement currency will be denominated in a quantity of gold, such as gold grammes. The return of gold backed credit is an important development for the growing BRICS family and all the member nations, dialog partners and associates of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation seeking a better alternative to the US dollar. Furthermore, it is now in Russia’s strong interest to undermine the US dollar, lifting oil and gas dollar prices to stabilise a falling rouble. 

    The extent to which the plan for a new gold denominated currency is credible seems set to undermine the dollar’s value expressed in commodities, goods, and services externally in addition to the domestic economic and monetary factors mentioned above. The foreign exchanges will begin to anticipate that dollar reserves held by central banks in the growing BRICS camp will become increasingly redundant, to be replaced with the new gold trade settlement currency. Sovereign wealth funds are bound to follow by reducing their dollar balances, as will international commodity dealers and importers.

    Not only will dollars be sold, but the need to recycle them into US Treasuries and other investments will fall away. Unless the US Government acts to radically cut its borrowing requirements, it will face a rapidly deteriorating funding situation. The dollar costs of commodities, raw materials and imported goods will rise due to the dollar’s weakness. Consequently, dollar interest rates are bound to rise to reflect the premium foreign holders will demand to retain their dollar balances. And even that is unlikely to be enough. The great unwind of the last fifty-two years of pure fiat dollars will surely threaten not only the dollar’s existence, but its highly leveraged banking system.

    The discarding of the fiat currency past for a currency or currencies more closely allied to energy and commodities, which is actually what gold represents, is not limited to the destruction of fiat dollars, but of all other fiat currencies as well. For our current purposes, what also concerns us is the same threat faced by the other major currencies: the euro, yen, and sterling.

    It has already been mentioned that an initial failure in the US banking system will be the likely course of events because it is the most over-owned of all the major fiat currencies. But if a banking crisis does break out elsewhere first, it could lead to the dollar being temporarily bought as a safe haven until financial contagion undermines all banking relationships. It behoves us to look at the position in these other major currencies. And the example we will take is of the issues which face banks in the Eurozone.

    The euro system

    In common with other major central banks, the ECB and its network of national central banks, together the euro system, have accumulated government and other bonds through quantitative easing. The extent to which it has boosted the size of the euro system balance sheet and subsequently declined is shown in the chart below.

    Having hit a high point of €8,828 billion fifteen months ago, the ECB’s and national central banks’ combined assets have declined to €7,167 billion. Most of the increase from the last financial crisis to the peak had been through what the ECB calls asset purchase programmes, but otherwise known to us as quantitative easing. The decline in total assets has been achieved by allowing short-term assets to mature and for the funds to be not reinvested, leading to the liabilities to commercial banks being reduced.

    Nevertheless, on the remaining securities holdings totalling €4,865 billion currently, there are significant losses on a mark-to-market basis. Assuming an average maturity of five years, and an average rise in yield from 0% to 3.2% on Eurozone government bonds, over the last year the losses in the euro system amount to about €700 billion. This is nearly six times the combined euro system’s equity. The valuation problem is concealed by euro system accounting, which values bonds on a straight line basis between purchase price and final redemption value.

    To assume that this is not a problem because the ECB can always print euros is complacent. The only hope for the Eurosystem is for bond yields to decline, and therefore values to rise restoring balance sheet integrity. But for now, yields are rising, and it is becoming clear that they will continue to rise. At some stage, the assumption that inflation will return to target and that interest rates and bond yields will decline will be abandoned, and the recapitalisation of the entire euro system will then have to be contemplated.

    It will not be easy. Undoubtedly, legislation at a national level in multiple jurisdictions will be required. It is one thing for the ECB to railroad its inflationary policies through despite protests from politicians in Germany and elsewhere, but begging for equity capital puts the ECB on the back foot. Questions are bound to be raised in political circles about monetary policy failures, and why the TARGET2 imbalances exist. The whole recapitalisation process could descend into a very public dispute, particularly since national central banks may need capital injections as well before they can recapitalise the ECB in proportion to their shareholder keys.

    Yet, Europeans rely upon the euro system to backstop the entire commercial banking network, whose global systemically important banks (GSIBs) are even more leveraged than the American banks. Furthermore, there are bound to be hidden Eurozone equivalents of Silicon Valley Bank, whose balance sheets have been undermined to the point of insolvency by the unexpected rise in interest rates and the collapse in bond values. The €10 trillion repo market also faces collapsing collateral values. Eurozone GSIBs have heavy exposure to derivative counterparty risks. Yet, the euro system itself is bankrupt, having paid top euros for bonds which have been sinking faster than a tropical sun at twilight. 

    It is in the nature of a banking crisis that several factors come together in an unexpected perfect storm. We will all be wise after the event. But for now, we can only observe the disparate strands likely to come together and destroy the euro system, its commercial banks, and possibly the euro itself.

    That is, if the US banking system doesn’t collapse first.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/23/2023 – 22:30

  • A Crashed 1954 Ferrari Fetches $1.9 Million At Monterey Auction
    A Crashed 1954 Ferrari Fetches $1.9 Million At Monterey Auction

    Classic Ferraris are hot items at premier auction events, such as RM Sotheby’s Monterey Car Week last week.

    A crashed 1954 Ferrari 500 Mondial Spider Series I by Pinin Farina coachwork fetched $1.87 million. The sports car is one of 13 and will take much more than a buff job to return to road-worthy status.

    RM Sotheby’s description of the mangled Ferrari says this one is chassis number 0406 MD, the second one built and assembled in March 1954. 

    Only “13 spiders and two berlinettas were completed by Pinin Farina over a run of first-series cars before Scaglietti assumed coachwork production. Cherished by enthusiasts today for its historical significance, gorgeous aesthetics, and spirited performance, the 500 Mondial is a highly desirable collectible that is eligible for major vintage events, justifying its position at the center of notable collections worldwide,” the auction house said. 

    It was revealed by the auction house 0406 MD had a racing history:

    “In April 1954 the Ferrari was piloted by former factory driver Franco Cortese and co-driver Perruchini at the Coppa della Toscana, finishing 19th overall and 2nd in class. It is interesting to note that Cortese is listed as the owner on the factory build sheets, and his name appears several times in the engineering notes, prompting speculation that the car was purchased by Cornacchia specifically for Cortese’s use.”

    In 1954, Franco Cortese drove the 0406 MD at the Coppa della Toscana.

    Then, the ultra-rare Ferrari changed owners a few times in the late 1950s and suffered a crash with extensive fire damage in the mid-1960s. 

    “By the early 1970s the Ferrari was acquired by marque specialist Ed Niles, who soon sold it without an engine. After briefly passing through two Maryland-based ownerships, the spider was sold to Walter Medlin by 1978. The Mondial has since been preserved in its race-damaged condition, accounting for 45 years of seclusion from the collectible Ferrari niche. The car continues to wear its factory-issued chassis plate, and it is accompanied by components including rear-axle corners and its matching-numbers gearbox. It is also accompanied by a larger, 3.0-liter Tipo 119 Lampredi inline-four engine, such as would have been used in a Ferrari 750 Monza,” the auction house said. 

    RM Sotheby’s continued to touch on the rarity of the sports car: 

    “It is worth noting that genuine 500 Mondial examples are very rare; chassis number 0406 MD is further distinguished by being just the second car built, and having been raced and owned by one of postwar Italy’s best-known privateers. It is furthermore desirably documented with color copies of the original factory build sheets and CSAI homologation papers.” 

    Regarding the results from Monterey, as pointed out by Bloomberg:

    By the end of the weekend, total sales reached a little more than $400 million across five auction houses, including after-sales, down from $473 million last year. An average sell-through rate of just 68% for 1,225 vehicles fell short of the 78% rate from last year, when there were 1,023 on the block. A sell-through rate of 80% or more is considered healthy for a car auction.

    Average sale prices faltered, too, dropping to $477,981 from $591,768. Several Ferraris struggled, even though they’re largely considered market-proof. At Bonhams a 1967 Ferrari 412 P took $30.2 million after a lackluster show of bidding, far less than the expected $40 million. A 1964 Ferrari 250 LM at RM Sotheby’s reached a high bid of $17 million—but missed its reserve and didn’t sell at all.

    It’s unclear what the new owner plans to do with 0406 MD. Returning the vehicle to race status could cost millions of dollars.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/23/2023 – 22:10

  • Watch: Trump Warns Tucker, "There's A Level Of Passion… And Hatred I've Never Seen" And That's "Probably A Bad Combination"
    Watch: Trump Warns Tucker, “There’s A Level Of Passion… And Hatred I’ve Never Seen” And That’s “Probably A Bad Combination”

    Tucker Carlson dropped a tease clip earlier in the evening of what to expect in tonight’s interview, taking a jab at his former employer – who will be hosting the GOP debate directly against the discussion with Trump:

    “Whatever you think of Trump he is the far and away indisputable front runner in the Republican race,” Carlson said during the less than minute long video.

    “So when Trump approached us about having a conversation for a far larger audience than he would receive on cable news we happily accepted.”

    Tucker asks some stunning questions, including: “Do you think Epstein killed himself?” and “Whatever happened to Mike Pence?”

    Then Tucker goes there:

    “It started with protests against you, then impeachment twice, and now indictments… Are you worried that they are going to try to kill you? Why wouldn’t they try to kill you?”

    Trump calmly responds:

    I’ve seen the lengths that they go to… when they make up the Russia, Russia, Russia collusion and that’s exposed… these are sick people. I think they hate our country.”

    On the indictments sending Trump’s poll numbers higher:

    “I think the people of this country don’t get enough credit for how smart they are… but they get it…”

    “…the people see it’s a fraud.”

    On Biden:

    “Crooked Joe Biden is so bad, he’s the worst president in the history of our country. I don’t think he’s going to make it to the gate, but you never know.”

    “I think he’s worse mentally than he is physically… and he’s not exactly a triathlete.”

    “He’s both the most corrupt president we ever had and most incompetent.”

    On Biden’s links to China:

    “I actually believe he’s compromised… the Chinese have so much on him.”

    “He is in many ways a Manchurian candidate.

    “Do you think the rest of the world looks at Biden and thinks, somebody else must be running the government?”

    “well, somebody else has to be. I don’t think he’s capable of doing anything.”

    Who is pulling the strings?

    We have a president that can’t put two sentences together, can’t speak, can’t walk, can’t talk. I don’t think he gets to the starting gate but these people do miracles… I mean he ran out of his basement and he got away with it because of COVID… and they cheated on the election…

    …but they have people that are very smart, but they’re fascists and they’re radical left lunatics and they’re destroying our country.”

    On EVs:

    “The happiest time for someone in an electric car is the first 10 minutes. The unhappiest time is the next hour”

    Fear of violence?

    “Do you think we’re moving toward Civil War? Do you think its possible that there’s open conflict?” Carlson follows up.

    Trump nods, and responds:

    “there’s a level of passion and love that I have never seen. And there’s a level of hatred of what they’ve done to our country that I’ve never seen… and that’s probably a bad combination.”

    A rigged election?

    “We got way more votes in 20 than in 2016… but the election was rigged…they used COVID to cheat in a lot of different things… and we have so much on it… but we had judges that didn’t want to look… but I have never seen spirit like there is right now.”

    Trump says we should go back to all-paper ballots.

    “There is only one reason they don’t want Voter ID… it’s because they want to cheat.”

    And finally, Tucker asks:

    “you’re saying they stole it from you last time, why wouldn’t they do the same this time?”

    To which Trump replies:

    “well, they will try… they’re going to try…”

    Trump blasted  the GOP establishment’s action during his term, saying that “Mitch McConnell was trying to get senators to impeach me.”

    Trump’s first action as president?

    “close the border… except for people who want to come in legally… and getting the hundreds of thousands of criminals that have been allowed into our country and bringing them back to their country.”

    Watch the full interview below (due to begin at 2055ET):

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    As we detailed earlier, former President Donald Trump is skipping tonight’s GOP debates, and will instead appear for an interview with Tucker Carlson – where the pair will undoubtedly upstage the current crop of GOP candidates, who according to current polls, have no chance in hell of receiving the Republican nomination.

    Trump confirmed in a social media post that his interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson will be released tonight (Aug. 23), just before the network’s Republican presidential primary debate.

    The former president announced on Truth Social that his previously recorded interview with Mr. Carlson will broadcast at 9 p.m.

    “Sparks will fly,” President Trump wrote in his post about the interview, which will reportedly stream on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

    “Many people are asking whether or not I will be doing the DEBATES?” Trump wrote on Truth Social last week.

    “ALL AMERICANS have been clamoring for a President of extremely High Intelligence. As everyone is aware, my Poll numbers, over a ‘wonderful’ field of Republican candidates, are extraordinary. In fact, I am leading the runner up, whoever that may now be, by more than 50 Points. Reagan didn’t do it, and neither did others. People know my Record, one of the BEST EVER, so why would I Debate? I’M YOUR MAN. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

    Of note, the former president now holds the largest lead over his rivals according to a CBS News poll released on Saturday, while his nearest rival – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis – has fallen even further behind.

    When it comes to Trump’s multiple indictments, it’s clear the right sees them as nothing more than a partisan attempt to dislodge him from the 2024 race. And with each new charge, Trump’s status as a martyr (and ratings) continue to rise.

    First, as was the case with Trump’s previous indictments, Republican primary voters’ overwhelming concern about the Georgia charges is that they’re politically motivated.

    They dismiss the premise of the charges: the bulk of them do think Trump tried to stay in office, but to them, it was legal and constitutional because these Republican primary voters overwhelmingly think President Biden didn’t win legitimately. -CBS News

    When asked whether the GOP candidates should argue the case for themselves, 91% agreed, vs. 9% who said they should talk trash against Trump.

    What’s more, around 75% of Trump voters are those who “show support for his legal troubles” as their rationale, while 99% say that “things were better under Trump.”

    Trump voters also generally believe Trump is telling the truth (duh), which is why the indictments aren’t having an impact in support among his base. Voters who say they place top importance on a candidate being “honest and trustworthy” picked Trump at 61%, followed by DeSantis at 17%.

    The context here is that Republican primary voters believe the political system is corrupt at an even higher rate than Americans overall do. That could mean perceiving Trump as railing against — or prosecuted by — that system might well make him seem, from their perspective, like the one telling a larger truth. 

    And when it comes to who voters think has the best chance of beating President Biden, it’s once again Trump in a landslide.

    Is there a path forward for the other candidates?

    Perhaps if they get used to being called “Mr. Vice President,” if Trump should pick them.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/23/2023 – 22:00

  • In Her Jan. 6 Courtroom, Judge Who Will Hear Trump's Case Is The Pot Calling The Defendant Incendiary
    In Her Jan. 6 Courtroom, Judge Who Will Hear Trump’s Case Is The Pot Calling The Defendant Incendiary

    Authored by Julie Kelly via RealClear Wire,

    At her first appearance in the criminal case against Donald Trump for his alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 election, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya S. Chutkan repeatedly warned the former president’s lawyers that politics would not be tolerated in her courtroom. 

    “The fact that [Trump is] running a political campaign has to yield to the orderly administration of justice,” Chutkan said during the August 11 hearing. “If that means he can’t say exactly what he wants to say about witnesses in this case, that’s how it has to be.” 

    But even as she warns Trump about his “inflammatory” language, Chutkan has routinely issued politically charged rulings and made incendiary statements of her own while presiding over some 30 cases involving Trump supporters charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, melee at the U.S. Capitol. 

    A review of thousands of pages of hearing transcripts reveal that Chutkan has repeatedly expressed strong and settled opinions about the issues at the heart of United States v. Donald Trump – the criminal case she is now presiding over.  

    These include her public assertions that the 2020 election was beyond reproach, that the Jan. 6 protests were orchestrated by Trump, and that the former president is guilty of crimes. She has described Jan. 6 as a “mob attack” on “the very foundation of our democracy” and branded the issue at the heart of the case she is hearing – Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen – a conspiracy theory.   

    Although judges often make comments from the bench, Chutkan’s strident language raises questions about her impartiality in handling the case against the presumptive GOP nominee for president in 2024. 

    The U.S. code that addresses grounds for recusal states, ”Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” One reason to recuse is if the judge has demonstrated “a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party.”  

    GOP Rep. Matthew Gaetz of Florida recently filed a resolution to condemn and censure Chutkan for exhibiting “open bias and partisanship in the conduct of her official duties as a judge.”  

    But if the aim among Trump loyalists is to get a new judge assigned to the case, it’s a steep legal hurdle. Stephen Gillers, a professor of law at New York University, said that typically a judge can be recused for bias or the appearance of bias “only when the purported bias comes from a source outside the judge’s work as a judge.” He continued, “Almost never will a judge be recused for opinions she forms as a judge – in hearing cases and motions. Judges are expected to form opinions based on these ‘intrajudicial’ sources. It’s what judges do.”  

    A Trump representative declined to comment about Judge Chutkan’s potential bias. The chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and the American Bar Association did not respond to requests for comment. Nor did Chutkan.

    Appointed by Barack Obama to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 2013, Chutkan has been one of the toughest judges on Jan. 6 defendants. In several cases, she has given defendants longer prison terms than recommended by prosecutors. In at least two cases she sentenced defendants to jail time when prosecutors only sought probation. Chutkan herself admitted during a July 2022 court hearing that she is “one of the few judges that’s given a lot of terms of incarceration” in Jan 6. cases. 

    On at least one occasion, Chutkan suggested in open court that Trump should have been charged for his alleged role in what she routinely describes as “an attempt to overthrow the government” on Jan. 6.  

    Before sentencing Christine Priola, a Trump supporter from Ohio who pleaded guilty to obstruction of an official proceeding, to 15 months in jail, Chutkan appeared to lament the fact Trump was not yet in prison. “[The] people who mobbed that Capitol were there in fealty, in loyalty, to one man – not to the Constitution, of which most of the people who come before me seem woefully ignorant, not to the ideals of this country, and not to the principles of democracy,” Chutkan said on Oct. 28, 2022. “It’s a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.” (Emphasis added.) 

    Chutkan accused Matthew Mazzocco, another Jan. 6 defendant, of choosing Trump over the country. In rejecting Mazzocco’s argument that he traveled from Texas to Washington to engage in a legal political demonstration, Chutkan declared at his October 2021 sentencing hearing: “He went there to support one man who he viewed had the election taken from him. In total disregard of a lawfully conducted election, he went to the Capitol in support of one man, not in support of our country or in support of democracy.”   

    Although Mazzocco only spent 12 minutes inside the Capitol and committed no violence, Chutkun rejected the government’s recommendation of three months home confinement for pleading guilty to “parading” in the Capitol, a Class B misdemeanor, and instead sentenced Mazzocco to 45 days in jail.   

    Despite President Trump’s explicit request that his supporters march “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol, Chutkan blamed Trump for the Jan. 6 violence while sentencing Robert Palmer, who pleaded guilty in June 2021 to one count of assaulting police officers with a dangerous weapon (a fire extinguisher). In that case, Palmer’s lawyer sought a reduced prison sentence by echoing the judge’s view of Trump.  

    “Mr. Palmer went to the Capitol at the behest of the former president,” attorney Bjorn E. Brunvand wrote in a December 2021 sentencing memo to Chutkan. “Like many others who participated in the Capitol riot, Mr. Palmer blindly followed the many figures who falsely but persistently claimed that the election had been stolen from the president.”  

    Palmer himself told Chutkan that Trump’s claims about a “stolen” 2020 election prompted him to travel from his Tampa home to the nation’s capital to participate in the Capitol protest. In a handwritten note dated November 2021, Palmer told Chutkan that he realized “Trump supporters were lied to by those that at the time had great power meaning the then sitting president, as well as those acting in his behalf.” 

    Palmer apologized to Chutkan for his conduct and begged for mercy. 

    His plea fell on deaf ears. Although Chutkan expressed no sympathy for Palmer, whom she sent to prison for more than five years, she amplified Palmer’s assertions that Trump bore some responsibility:

    And it is true, Mr. Palmer you have made a very good point, one that has been made before – that the people who exhorted you and encouraged you and rallied you to go and take action and to fight have not been charged. That is not this court’s position. I don’t charge anybody. I don’t negotiate plea offers. I don’t make charging decisions. I sentence people who have pleaded guilty or have been convicted. The issue of who has or has not been charged is not before me. I don’t have any influence on that. I have my opinions, but they are not relevant. And you’re correct in that no one who was encouraging everybody to take the Capitol has been charged as of yet, but I don’t think that fact means that you should get a lower sentence. 

    Chutkan’s references to the former president aren’t the only area of concern for Trump. Her comments from the bench also suggest that she shares the same view of Jan. 6 as the man prosecuting Trump in her courtroom, Special Counsel Jack Smith.

    Tasked by Attorney General Merrick Garland with investigating “whether any person or entity unlawfully interfered with the transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election or the certification of the Electoral College vote held on or about January 6, 2021,” Smith indicted Trump in the District of Columbia on three conspiracy counts and one obstruction count last month.  

    Throughout the 45-page indictment, Smith repeatedly accused Trump of knowingly promoting falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election. “[For] more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway – to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.” 

    Chutkan clearly shares that view. On numerous occasions, the judge has insisted the 2020 election was legitimate and fully vetted by the court system – a claim disputed by Trump that lies at the heart of the case she is now hearing.  

    “He went to the Capitol because, despite election results which were clear-cut, despite the fact that multiple court challenges all over the country had rejected every single one of the challenges to the election, Mr. Palmer didn’t like the result. He didn’t like the result, and he didn’t want the transition of power to take place because his guy lost,” Chutkan also said during Palmer’s sentencing. (When not cryptically referring to Trump, Chutkan often describes the former president as “guy.”) 

    She has accused individuals who believe the 2020 election was “stolen” as promoting “conspiracy theories.” In the case of Donna Bissel, who pleaded guilty to the nonviolent petty offense of “parading” in the Capitol, Chutkan cited Bissel’s personal beliefs as reason to sentence her to 14 days in jail rather than impose the three-year probation sentence recommended by prosecutors. 

    “As noted in the government’s sentencing memo, the defendant appears to be susceptible to believing outlandish and absurd conspiracy theories,” Chutkan said during Bissel’s October 2021 sentencing. “To protect the public, it’s important to make sure that she does not fall victim to another lie or conspiracy and act out in a way that again jeopardizes public safety. It’s one thing to believe in conspiracy theories in your basement, and it’s another thing to act out on them and, for instance, to travel from Indiana to D.C. to storm the Capitol to overturn an election.” 

    Court records show that Chutkan has repeatedly scolded defendants who question the integrity of the 2020 election – skepticism shared by 39% of Americans, according to a recent CNN poll. Here are a few examples of Chutkan’s comments on Jan. 6:  

    • USA v. Scott Ponder: “When you say you got caught up, Mr. Ponder, there’s a lot of rage and a lot of emotion and a lot of tension as you describe, and people felt very strongly, right or wrongly, that an election had been stolen. I think the evidence is quite clear that it had not, but that’s neither here nor there.” (July 26, 2022)
    • USA v. Benjamin Larocca: “Everyone standing around with their cameras on that — in front of those doors, every single one of those people contributed to the mob that tried to intimidate those police officers; that tried to gain entry into that building; that were trying to stop the transfer of power and nullify a lawfully conducted election. This was a lawfully conducted election.” (August 10, 2022)
    • USA v. Christian Cortez: “[He] was motivated to come because his candidate didn’t win and he somehow believed this election was stolen and he wanted to get it back. As I said, this wasn’t just a protest. He wanted to — that mob wanted to overthrow the government. They wanted to undo the results of what they considered a stolen election; their guy didn’t win.” (August 31, 2022) 

    Little Nuance: Chutkan’s View of Jan. 6 

    For Chutkan, the events of Jan. 6 provoke strong emotions, which she freely volunteers from the bench. “[Every] single time I watch the videos and look at the photographs of what was going on that day, I am struck anew by how horrible this was, by how violent and terrifying, and how the outnumbered and vastly unequipped law enforcement officers were feeling that day as they were basically struggling for their lives and wondering if they were going to make it home to their kids,” Chutkan told defendant Matthew Caspel in December 2022. “I don’t know if we’ll ever recover from that.” 

    A former public defender in Washington, D.C. – one of the country’s most perennially violent cities, and one generally lenient toward criminals – Chutkan argues that Jan. 6 is among the worst crime scenes she’s ever witnessed.  

    “I watch these videotapes in almost every case, and every single time I am struck anew at how horrifying the events of that day were,” she volunteered to Benjamin Larocca, who pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct misdemeanor and received 60 days in jail. “And I’m struck as someone who is watching – has seen this kind of footage multiple times and was looking at footage on the day – and as somebody, frankly, who has seen a lot of crime scene footage. I was a criminal defense lawyer, I was a public defender for many years. I’m not easily shocked, but it’s shocking.”  

    Many observers believe Trump already confronts a nearly insurmountable task in receiving a fair trial in the nation’s capital, a city that voted 92% for Joe Biden. Further, the Justice Department has a near-perfect conviction rate in Jan. 6 trials. Chutkan’s extensive record of comments suggest the judge presiding over his case will not make it any easier. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/23/2023 – 21:50

  • Iran Unveils New Drone Rivaling US MQ-9 Reaper & Capable Of Reaching Israel
    Iran Unveils New Drone Rivaling US MQ-9 Reaper & Capable Of Reaching Israel

    This week Iran’s military unveiled a drone which it says rivals the United States’ MQ-9 Reaper drone, touting the aircraft as easily capable of reaching Tehran’s number one enemy Israel.

    The Islamic Republic claims the new Mohajer-10 drone can stay continually airborne for 24 hours, and showcased it as the Defense Industry Day conference on Tuesday.

    Via Reuters/Iran state media

    Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi attended the conference in person in order to inspect the drone, and hailed that it will “firmly introduce Iran as an advanced and technologic nation to the world.”

    According to regional reporting, “The Islamic Republic’s media outlets claimed the drone can fly up to 24,000 feet with a speed of 210 kph carrying a bomb payload of up to 300 kilograms. The drone can also allegedly hold electronic surveillance equipment and a camera.”

    However, some Western analysts have expressed skepticism, particularly regarding the claim that it mirrors the capabilities of the MQ-9 Reaper.

    Steve Bucci, a former Pentagon official, told The Foreign Desk publication that the Iranians “tend to exaggerate a lot, so I will assume that while it may look like a Reaper, I doubt it is as capable.”

    Al Jazeera writes that “media reports said the drone can travel non-stop at an altitude of 7,000 metres (4,350ft) for up to 2,000km (1,242 miles), meaning that it could reach Israel.”

    But there does remain consensus that Iran’s drone program is generally very capable, also given the heavy reliance on Iran-produced drones by Russian forces operating in Ukraine. 

    New footage released by the Islamic Republic’s state media…

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

    It’s also long been known that Iran’s ballistic missiles are quite advanced, and these have been subject of intense debate alongside Iran’s nuclear program.

    Iran and Israel are still engaged in a proxy war inside Syria, where Israeli air attacks frequently target both Syrian and Iranian military positions, especially in and around Damascus and the south.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/23/2023 – 21:30

  • I'm Not F**king Eating Bugs: A Manifesto
    I’m Not F**king Eating Bugs: A Manifesto

    Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

    I have often commented that inflation is especially nefarious, because it operates in the dark machinery of the night, as nobody notices or has the time to understand it.

    Inflation robs people every second of every day, with a majority of its victims unable to articulate how it works.

    Inflation’s equally odious and obnoxious cousin is shrinkflation. Shrinkflation is what companies do when they don’t want to violently rub it in your face directly by raising prices. Instead they offer up the gentle rub of giving you less product, for the same price.

    Usually, this douchebaggery is accompanied by exceptionally insulting marketing. For example, here’s some limp-d*cked attempt by a focus group at Proctor and Gamble at trying to convince you that the Arabic numeral “6”, an integer known and understood for millennia, actually means “9”.

    Shrinkflation is just as grotesque as inflation, and falls into a chum-bucket of consequences that materializes out of thin air, the excrement of the dollar’s continued loss of purchasing power.

    And not unlike inflation, these consequences need to be kept under wraps just enough so that they can persist, but with nobody noticing them. If you don’t notice the powers that be taking one nanometer in ground a day from you, it’ll be decades before you notice that you’ve been moved a mile.

    There’s been no better example of this “taking one nanometer in ground a day from you” than an emerging and growing chorus of news articles and op-eds beginning to suggest that the populace will one day be eating insects for meals in order to – wait for it – help fight climate change.

    Have you noticed headlines like these popping up over the last few years? Here’s one from earlier this month:

    Here’s another from May 2023:

    And here’s a third, from the head of the snake over at the World Economic Forum:

    The best part? Before the World Economic Forum’s article even starts, there’s disclaimers about how the WEF is the “victim” of this article being widely “misrepresented”, as if people are incapable of reading the fucking title and drawing their own conclusion.

    Before there is one word of op-ed, there’s a “Help us prevent the spread of misinformation” note.

    One might ask why this idea continues to pop up, other than the fact that Klaus Schwab is directing his lobotomized sycophants in charge of various world governments and media outlets to push the narrative.

    Surely progressive, left-leaning yuppies believe that it’s for our own good.

    50% OFF ALL SUBSCRIPTIONS: Subscribe and get 50% off and no price hikes for as long as you wish to be a subscriber.

    “Insects must be better for us nutritionally and will help save the planet,” they’ll think to themselves. “That’s why the government and media, who always have our best interests in mind, are introducing the idea to us. Thanks guys!”

    But the reality of the situation is that bug-eating, which used to be fodder for shows like Fear Factor, is being pushed on us because it is the next step in drastically moving our quality of life lower to compensate for a widening inequality gap and the continued loss of purchasing power of the dollar.

    I have argued for years that our quality of life is slowly deteriorating as a result of not having sound money or sensible Central Bank policies. Shrinkflation is an obvious example. Less obvious examples include our cities slowly turning into demilitarized zones, the quality of products we use deteriorating and an array of campaigns to have us surrender our civil liberties and quality of life in the name of Greta Thunberg.

    As I wrote about in my article “World Economic F*ck’em”, our government and media seem to be happily falling in line with the cues of the puppeteers of the world, many of whom can be found at the World Economic Forum, a collective of self-righteous global elites handing down virtues, values, lessons, lectures and political initiatives to us peons out here in the rest of the world.

    That’s right. This group of globally unelected turbo-dildos knows what’s best for us. And what’s best for us always somehow results in us having less private property, fewer civil liberties and moving us one step closer to literally eating dog shit in order to survive. Thanks, Klaus!

    Today I take my stand, because one day we’re making peace with eating crickets…the next we’re eating that weapons-grade slop they were serving up on the Nebuchadnezzar in The Matrix because the machines have taken over and food is no longer a delicacy, it is only a required and necessary source of sustenance and basic nutrients to adequately continue to keep our bodies functioning as batteries.

    To put it simply, I’ve had enough. The idea of not having personal property and surrendering my civil liberties is one thing. Hell, I can make peace with both just by virtue of the fact that I don’t own much to begin with, and because the government is just going to take whatever it wants regardless. But when you start to replace my Cooler Ranch™ Doritos and Chick-fil-A with mealworms? Well, then you just found the boundaries of the hill that I’m willing to die on.

    So if you work at NPR, The New York Times or the Washington Post, do me a favor and save your breath when it come to penning Klaus’ next virtuous-sounding op-ed suggesting we start digging through dirt to find earthworms for breakfast.

    I’m not reading it, it’s obvious that you are shills for a globalist agenda that further divides the haves and the have-nots, and, for lack of a better way to put it: I’m not f*cking eating bugs.

    QTR’s Disclaimer: I am not a guru or an expert. I am an idiot writing a blog and often get things wrong and lose money. I do not fact check contributor material that I aggregate from other sources. I may own or transact in any names mentioned in this piece at any time without warning and generally trade like a degenerate psychopath. This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any stocks or securities or any asset class – just my opinions of me and my guests. I often lose money on positions I trade/invest in and I’m sure have lost more than I’ve made in my time in markets. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time, without further warning. 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. Also, I just straight up get shit wrong a lot. I mention it three times because it’s that important.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/23/2023 – 21:10

  • Wagner Decries 'Murder' Of Prigozhin Amid Reports Anti-Air Missile Struck Plane
    Wagner Decries ‘Murder’ Of Prigozhin Amid Reports Anti-Air Missile Struck Plane

    Update(1605ET): At this point it’s looking like the entire top command of Russian mercenary outfit Wagner Group was aboard the private plane that was downed northwest of Moscow hours ago. Wagner itself is confirming Yvgeny Prigozhin’s death, with Wagner-affiliated Telegram channel Grey Zone calling it a “murder”. 

    “The murder/assassination of Prigozhin will have catastrophic consequences. The people who gave the order do not understand the mood in the army and morale at all. Let this be a lesson to all. You always have to go to the end,” the Wagner channel statement reads.

    The bodies of Prigozhin and his second-in-command Dmitry Utkin, have reportedly been identified, according to statements which have been quick to come out of Russian media. Russian news agency TASS has also made it official: “Evgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin were on board the crashed Embraer plane, the Federal Air Transport Agency reported.”

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    Russian authorities have said eight bodies have been recovered thus far. FT has summarized the following details of emerging Wagner statements:

    A post by Grey Zone, a Wagner-connected social media channel, claimed Russian anti-aircraft defences had shot down the plane. It said that residents heard “two bursts of characteristic air defense fire” before the crash. “This is confirmed by inversion traces in the sky in one of the videos,” it added. Mash, a news outlet on social media app Telegram, said locals had heard two loud bangs before the crash.

    The same report cited a Western official to say it was an anti-aircraft missile that struck the private jet: 

    A western official said they had been told the plane had been brought down by a Russian anti-aircraft missile system but could not confirm whether Prigozhin was on board, adding: “Putin doesn’t take prisoners.”

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    Alicia Kearns, Chair of the UK’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee, has observed in the aftermath, “The speed at which the Russian Govt has confirmed Yevgeny Prigozhin was on a plane that crashed on a flight from Moscow to St Petersburg should tell us everything we need to know.”

    President Biden (who is apparently already back on vacation) has been briefed this afternoon, and told reporters from Lake Tahoe that he’s “not surprised” when asked about Prigozhin’s reported death. “I don’t know for fact what happened, but I am not surprised,” Biden said according to Bloomberg. He then pointed the finger at the Russian President: “Not much happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind,” Biden added.

    Suddenly some of the mainstream is calling Prigozhin a “dissident” – a very strange choice of words considering his complicated role in the Ukraine war…

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    Speculation continues as to precisely what brought the plane down (whether missile or a bomb detonation)…

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    * * *

    The internet has exploded with an avalanche breaking reports that Wagner chief Yvgeny Prigozhin’s business jet has crashed over Russia’s Tver region, northwest of Moscow.

    Unconfirmed reports say anywhere from seven to ten people were on board, all presumed dead – but it was initially unclear if Prigozhin himself was on board at the time. Russian media sources are now confirming that he was on board the downed plane, and is presumed dead.

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    This has led to immediate speculation that the private plane could have been shot down upon Putin’s orders (or people in the military command placed a bomb?… or a sophisticated Western intel op?). Per FT’s Moscow correspondent: “Wagner-linked channels say Russian air defense *shot down the plane* – the same private jet Prigozhin regularly uses.”

    The Kremlin has quickly issued confirmation that the aircraft did indeed belong to the controversial Wagner leader who led a mutiny against the defense ministry June 23-24. Per official news wires out of Russia

    • RUSSIA SAYS 10 PEOPLE KILLED AFTER PRIVATE JET CRASHES IN TVER REGION NORTH OF MOSCOW
    • RUSSIA SAYS EVGENY PRIGOZHIN COULD BE ON BOARD OF PLANE THAT CRASHED IN TVER REGION NORTH OF MOSCOW – TASS

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    Russian official sources are confirming, including RT…

    KOMMERSANT: PRIGOZHIN HAS DIED IN THE PLANE CRASH IN RUSSIA’S TVER, RUSSIA’S FEDERAL AIR TRANSPORT AGENCY SAYS

    Below is another video widely circulating of what is purported to be the Wagner chief’s plane going down. A plume of smoke is seen hovering midair as the aircraft plummets straight down, strongly suggesting either a missile shot it down or a bomb detonated mid-air.

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    On-ground videos of the burning crash site have quickly circulated, included very graphic ones (not shown).

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    State news outlet RT writes in an update:

    A private jet traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg crashed on Wednesday in Russia’s Tver Region. The Russian Emergencies Ministry said all 10 people on board had died. Rosaviation has since said that Evgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Private Military Company, was listed among the passengers.

    And additional statements are emerging:

    Former Putin advisor Sergei Markov: “The murder of Prigozhin is the main achievement of Ukraine and all enemies of Russia will rejoice” — Al Jazeera

    But then again…

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    There are emerging reports that Russia’s security services are investigating whether Prigozhin’s jet crashed due to a terrorist attack.

    This is a good moment to recall Joe Biden’s words on Yevgeny Prigozhin, issued July 13, 2023: “If I were he, I’d be careful what I ate. I’d be keeping my eye on my menu.”

    developing…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/23/2023 – 21:00

  • Doctor Suspended Over Covid Vaccine Stance To Sue Ohio Medical Board
    Doctor Suspended Over Covid Vaccine Stance To Sue Ohio Medical Board

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A doctor whose license was recently suspended by Ohio’s medical board is planning to sue the board.

    Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost in Columbus, Ohio, on Nov. 6, 2018. (Justin Merriman/Getty Images)

    Dr. Sherri Tenpenny is planning to fight the decision, which members of the State Medical Board of Ohio said was over the doctor’s response to their investigation into her critical comments on COVID-19 vaccines, Dr. Tenpenny’s lawyer says.

    “We’re going to definitely be filing suit,” Tom Renz, the lawyer, told The Epoch Times. “I don’t think there’s really any question about that.”

    The suit will focus on alleged violations of Dr. Tenpenny’s due process rights and will challenge the suspension. Depending on the components, it may be filed in state court or may be filed in federal court.

    “We’re going to just make sure that we do what we wish they would have done, which is to be ethical, to follow the law, and to make sure that justice is served,” Mr. Renz said.

    The board declined to comment.

    Suspension

    Board members voted on Aug. 9 to suspend Dr. Tenpenny’s license until she meets certain conditions, including paying a fine and cooperating with investigators.

    Members and the office of Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said that Dr. Tenpenny did not properly respond to questions prompted by complaints filed over her public testimony before the Ohio House of Representatives that included references to claims that vaccinated people had become magnetic.

    “This case is not about Dr. Tenpenny making comments about how when you’re vaccinated, 5g Towers could interfere with [you]. It’s not about Dr. Tenpenny saying, when you are vaccinated, your body becomes magnetized. It’s not about any of that, right?” Dr. Amol Soin, a board member, said ahead of the vote. “It really is about this whole issue of cooperation or not.”

    Dr. Tenpenny’s actions included failing to appear at a deposition, according to Kimberly Lee, the state official who served as hearing examiner for the case.

    “This is not punitive. This is procedural,” Assistant Attorney General James Wakley said before the vote. “This is a stick necessary to ensure that we get the answers that we require based on the board’s responsibility for ensuring the safety of the public.”

    Dr. Tenpenny and Mr. Renz say the state is mislabeling how she responded to questions and other investigative steps. They say she filed legal objections to the subpoena and other documents, that the investigation was unconstitutional in part because the state could not define how it defines “failure to cooperate” and because it would not show them the complaints.

    “You may not like her position on vaccines, on COVID, on whatever it is that she has. But that’s not the question before the board,” Mr. Renz told the board. “The question before the board today is one simple question: ‘Were her rights to due process violated? The record shows that they were. We have a hearing examiner who can’t actually define what those rights are.”

    He added: “This appears very much like a witch hunt, like someone who’s looking for an outcome rather than looking to follow the law.”

    The board declined to provide the complaints to The Epoch Times, citing state law. The law says that the board must investigate in a way that “protects the confidentiality of patients and persons who file complaints with the board.”

    The same law says that punitive action can be leveled in the event of failure to cooperate with a board investigation.

    Mr. Renz also says that the state should have gone to court to resolve the matter.

    Mr. Wakley said that going to the courts would lead to “a complete breakdown of the process of investigations” and that “justice delayed is justice denied.”

    If the board went to court for every case, “the board would never get anything done,” added Dr. Jonathan Feibel, another board member.

    Breathalyzer Comparison

    Mr. Yost, a Republican, said that Dr. Tenpenny could have gone to the courts before the vote.

    Mr. Renz said that it was the state’s responsibility to compel and that they were not trying to cause a fight with the board.

    Mr. Yost also told Just the News that Dr. Tenpenny’s actions were like a driver who was pulled over refusing to take a breathalyzer.

    Mr. Renz said that comparison did not make sense.

    “If a cop pulls you over, and says, ‘you need to take a breathalyzer,’ he’s got to have a reason for that, right? He’s not allowed to just randomly pull you over and say you need to take a breathalyzer because he doesn’t like how you look, he can’t pull you over and say that you need to take a breathalyzer unless you’re showing some signs and symptoms or give him some reason to think that you may be intoxicated,” Mr. Renz said. “Otherwise, that’s violating your due process rights.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/23/2023 – 20:30

  • Philly Real Estate Influencer "Big Bizzneesss" Accused Of Fraud
    Philly Real Estate Influencer “Big Bizzneesss” Accused Of Fraud

    We know this one is going to sound too unbelievable to be true, but a real estate influencer (whatever that means) from Philadelphia who goes by the pseudonym “Big Bizzneesss” has been accused of fraud and deceit. 

    The online persona, whose real name is Greg Parker Jr. and who hails from Philadelphia, has been offering “a dream come true for thousands of young investors looking to break into the real estate market”, according to a report from The Real Deal. 

    His wife, Danielle “Nikki” Morris Parker, has also shared in showcasing his supposedly lavish lifestyle, the report says. But behind the rags-to-riches story and photos of private planes, luxury cars, and a multimillion-dollar mansion, the couple’s promises to empower young investors may not have been what they seemed.

    The report, which cites a Philadelphia Inquirer expose, says that instead of helping young people replicate their success, they left people high and dry after taking in tens of thousands of dollars from some of their 285,000 Instagram followers. 

    The couple would routinely hold seminars that ranged from $97 to $297, including upsells like mentorship and opportunities to invest in properties that they picked, the report says. They were offering “secrets of profiting from distressed real estate markets”, the report says. 

    Benjamin Nelson, an undergraduate at Drexel University, was one such aspiring real estate entrepreneur. He shelled out $20,000 to the Parkers for a property purchase but the sale never consummated and then follow up calls to the Parkers were “met with silence”.

    He said: “I keep getting the runaround. I just want to know what’s going on.”

    He texted Parker last year in an attempt to get his money back: “Playing with someone’s hard earned money is one of the worst things you can do.”

    And he’s not the only story. The report says that Federal lawsuits have been filed against the Parkers under the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) fraud act. The suits are alleging that the couple defrauded clients by promising either mentorship or property sales that never took place. 

    Two suits have already been settled and Danielle Parker’s company has filed for bankruptcy, putting two other suits on hold. The Cleveland FBI office may be investigating potential criminal liability, the report says. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/23/2023 – 20:10

  • Busted! Fox News & Martha MacCallum Caught Presenting Koch Brothers Activist As Fake DeSantis Voter
    Busted! Fox News & Martha MacCallum Caught Presenting Koch Brothers Activist As Fake DeSantis Voter

    Authored by Sundance via The Conservative Treehouse,

    By now we are all too familiar with the schemes and plots of the corporate media as they participate in the political illusion of choice game.  However, for Rupert Murdoch and Fox News debate moderator Martha MacCallum, this catch shreds the remaining little credibility they carried.

    Fox News is hosting the GOP debate in Wisconsin.  During this build up segment, Martha MacCallum introduces the “random Republican voters” in Wisconsin who will watch the debate.  Except, well… there’s a little problem.  MacCallum introduces Chris Lawrence as a “Wisconsin GOP voter” who seemingly supports Ron DeSantis.  However, MacCallum fails to mention that Chris Lawrence actually works for the Koch Network, who have recently pledged to spend $70 million to defeat President Trump.

    Not only has Chris Lawrence worked for the Koch Network for the past 9 years, he is also the Senior Field Director for the Koch group Americans for Prosperity.  In essence, Lawrence is a political operative planted in the group by Fox News to support Ron DeSantis and make it appear like he is an innocuous voter.  Fox News and Martha MacCallum should be embarrassed, but they won’t be.  WATCH (prompted):

    Don’t forget, Ron DeSantis supporters Eric Erickson and Guy Benson sit on the Koch Network AfP Advisory Board (see here).

    It’s all one big game of illusion, and Fox News is once again a big part of the Republican fraud.  Proving yet again, that everything in the Ron DeSantis orbit is astroturf, phony, manufactured and made up.

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/23/2023 – 19:50

  • Huawei To Dodge US Sanctions With 'Secret' Network Of Chip Factories
    Huawei To Dodge US Sanctions With ‘Secret’ Network Of Chip Factories

    A DC-based trade group says that Huawei is building a network of secret semiconductor-fabrication facilities across China in what Bloomberg describes as “a shadow manufacturing network that would let the blacklisted company skirt US sanctions and further the nation’s technology ambitions.”

    Huawei, which is receiving some $30 billion in state funding from the CCP and its home town of Shenzhen, moved into chip production last year according to the Semiconductor Industry Association, which says in a recent presentation that the sanctioned company has acquired at least two existing plants and is building at least three others.

    A Shenzhen Pensun Technology Co., or PST, plant under construction in Shenzhen in August.Source: Bloomberg

    The US Commerce Department under former President Donald Trump added Huawei to its entity list in 2019, which prohibits it from working with American companies under nearly all circumstances. If they’re constructing facilities under undisclosed subsidiaries, however, the telecom giant may be able to dodge sanctions and indirectly purchase US chipmaking equipment and other supplies that would otherwise be banned.

    The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, in response to questions from Bloomberg News about the SIA warnings, which haven’t been previously reported, said it’s monitoring the situation and is ready to take action if necessary. It has already blacklisted dozens of Chinese companies beyond Huawei, including two the SIA says are part of Huawei’s network — Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co. and Pengxinwei IC Manufacturing Co., or PXW.  -Bloomberg

    “Given the severe restrictions placed on Huawei, Fujian Jinhua, PXW and others, it is no surprise that they have sought substantial state support to attempt to develop indigenous technologies,” said the BIS in a statement to Bloomberg. “BIS is continually reviewing and updating its export controls based on the evolving threat environment and, as evidenced by the Oct. 7, 2022 rules, will not hesitate to take appropriate action to protect US national security.”

    Last October, the Biden administration slapped China with export controls that prevent Chinese companies from acquiring certain advanced semiconductors and chipmaking equipment in an attempt to slow down the CCP’s military development. The controls excluded older-generation chipmaking equipment, such as those which use 28-nanometer technology or above. Companies on the blacklist, such as Huaei, can’t even buy older equipment without a rarely-issued license.

    A PXW plant in Shenzhen.Photographer: Allen Wan/Bloomberg

    “These developments were already publicly reported on by multiple media outlets months before SIA simply highlighted these news items at an association meeting discussing market trends,” the SIA said in a statement.

    It’s not clear why the association is sounding the alarm on these issues now. The Washington-based lobbying group represents the majority of the world’s semiconductor makers, including Intel Corp., South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Its members also include companies that produce chipmaking equipment, such as Applied Materials Inc. and the Netherlands’ ASML Holding NV.

    Certain members of the lobbying group will face competition from Chinese rivals if they’re successful in building domestic production facilities, but SIA members like ASML and Nvidia Corp. lose revenue from China as American export controls become stricter. The association may be trying to warn members to be cautious in working with companies that could have hidden ties to blacklisted entities like Huawei. -Bloomberg

    According to the SIA presentation, Huawei is backing five chip plants located primarily around Shenzhen where they are headquartered. If they operate without the Huawei label, it may be difficult for suppliers to know they’re dealing with a sanctioned company.

    Under BIS rules, American suppliers are obligated to adhere to “know your customer” rules requiring them to investigate whether customers are buying under suspicious circumstances, such as an item being inconsistent with a customer’s stated needs.

    “If there’s a red flag, then you have an obligation to investigate,” said lawyer Kevin Wolf of Akin Gump. “Absent a red flag, there is no affirmative duty to verify or go beyond the company’s representations.”

    Since it was published in April, the SIA presentation has set off alarm bells both within the industry as well as the Biden administration, which is weighing more stringent export controls over Beijing.

    PST’s construction site in Shenzhen.Photographer: Allen Wan/Bloomberg

    The CCP, meanwhile, says the US is trying to hinder its economic development, and has vowed to develop its own local alternatives for chips, critical tech components, and production machinery.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/23/2023 – 19:30

  • Federal Judge Sides With Christian Activist Banned By University For Calling Transgender Student 'Male'
    Federal Judge Sides With Christian Activist Banned By University For Calling Transgender Student ‘Male’

    Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Demonstrators listen to the speaking program during an “Our Bodies, Our Sports” rally for the 50th anniversary of Title IX at Freedom Plaza in the District of Columbia on June 23, 2022. The rally, organized by multiple athletic women’s groups was held to call on President Joe Biden to put restrictions on transgender females and “advocate to keep women’s sports female.” (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

    A federal judge has blocked the University of Wyoming (UW) from censoring a Christian activist who openly called a female-identifying transgender student “male.”

    In a preliminary injunction issued on Aug. 18, the U.S. District Court in Wyoming sided with Todd Schmidt, an elder at Laramie Faith Community Church, ordering the university to not ban him from tabling on campus while the case proceeds.

    On Dec. 2 2022, Mr. Schmidt set up a table in the UW student union with a sign that read, “God created male and female and Artemis Langford is a male.” Mr. Langford is a transgender student who joined the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority earlier that year, prompting members to sue the national Greek organization for admitting a biological male into the all-female group.

    When asked by a UW administrator to remove the student’s name from his sign, Mr. Schmidt initially refused but complied after they threatened to call the police on him. He continued to debate with students passing by for the remainder of that day.

    “I’m just trying to tell the truth and bring people to God. That’s all there is. There are not any more genders than that. Biology teaches everybody about that,” Mr. Schmidt said, reported the student newspaper Branding Iron, where Mr. Langford is a reporter.

    The incident ultimately led to the university placing a one-year sanction on Mr. Schmidt. While he is still allowed in other areas of campus, he could no longer reserve a table in the UW student union until the spring of 2024.

    In a campus-wide message sent on Dec. 5, UW officials said Mr. Schmidt “violated the university policy prohibiting discrimination and harassment,” noting that “a line was crossed when a student was harassed by name.”

    Mr. Schmidt, on the other hand, argued that the area serves as a public forum and that his message was not harassment but First Amendment-protected speech.

    U.S. Senior District Judge Nancy Freudenthal disagreed with the university, saying that the inclusion of the student’s name was necessary for the Christian activist to fully express his opinion.

    “Schmidt’s speech was expressive, with the intent to convey a particular message,” the judge wrote. “Schmidt mentions Artemis Langford by name, but that is unavoidable, as the debate revolves around the propriety of a particular biological male participating in an activity—joining a sorority—traditionally reserved for biological females.”

    The judge further recognized that the church elder’s action was not harassment or discrimination but a genuine “debate about gender identity, a matter of public importance.”

    “Schmidt does not misgender Langford to denigrate her, but to debate a public issue,” she wrote.

    “This is particularly true on college campuses because they are the ‘marketplace of ideas.’ While elementary and public schools prioritize the inculcation of social values, universities seek to encourage inquiry and the challenging of a priori assumptions,” Judge Freudenthal added. “Therefore, this Court finds that Schmidt’s speech is protected free expression and not harassment or discriminatory conduct.”

    In response to the ruling, the university said in a statement that although it is disappointed, it will comply with the terms of the preliminary injunction while weighing on whether to keep defending its policy in court.

    “The university believed its one-year suspension … was appropriate and lawful, especially considering his prior misconduct and the university’s legal obligations,” the statement read.

    “Providing a forum for free expression and the airing of diverse views is a foundational principle for UW. However, the university must also prioritize protection of its students from unlawful harassment and discrimination,” it argued.

    “The university will continue to take lawful steps to protect the safety of students, employees and members of the public.”

    Sorority Sisters Lawsuit

    In a separate lawsuit, seven sorority sisters from the UW chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma claimed that the organization violated its own rules by admitting Mr. Langford last September.

    The women are seeking damages from the national sorority and the revoking of Mr. Langford’s membership.

    According to the complaint, while Mr. Langford does not live in the Kappa house, he spends time there frequently in areas reserved for women, watching the female members as they walk into the bathroom with only a towel on or spending hours sitting on a couch “staring at them without talking.”

    “Some Plaintiffs sought to live in Kappa’s single-sex environment because of religious or moral beliefs that young, unmarried women should not live with young, unmarried men,” the lawsuit stated, adding that one of the plaintiffs is “a victim of sexual assault who wanted a safe place to interact with other college students without the presence of men.”

    In June, Kappa Kappa Gamma filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, denouncing it as a “frivolous” attempt to remove Mr. Langford for “political purposes.”

    “Kappa defines its membership in its position statement adopted in 2015 as individuals who identify as women,” the motion read. “Plaintiffs cannot identify any bylaw, standing rule, or policy that prohibits Kappa from taking this position, and the term is unquestionably open to multiple interpretations.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/23/2023 – 19:10

  • An Inconvenient Truth: The Global Wildfire Narrative Mainstream Media Won't Touch
    An Inconvenient Truth: The Global Wildfire Narrative Mainstream Media Won’t Touch

    Corporate media outlets, climate crusaders like Greta Thunberg, and new and improved ‘Greta 2.0’ (Sophia Kianni), as well as progressives across Western governments, who echo climate doom propaganda at the peak of the Northern Hemisphere, have desperately attempted to convince folks the world is on fire.

    However, Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus and visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, served up an inconvenient truth on X, formerly known as Twitter, for ‘science-loving’ climate warriors, citing weather data from European government-run Copernicus. 

    Lomborg said, “Fire has burned lowest area in the US in a decade.”

     But if you were reading mainstream media headlines. You would’ve believed “the world is on fire”: 

    “Have you seen that reported anywhere?” he asked, referring to Copernicus’ wildfire data is absent from corporate presses. It’s an inconvenient truth that destroys the climate change narrative. 

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    Lomborg continued, “Contrary to what you constantly hear in the media Global fire in 2023 has so far burned 𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙨 than normal Yes, the Americas burned much more, but surely the media should also tell you that Africa and Europe burned much less?”

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    “Global emissions of CO₂ from fire is down,” he said. 

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    Meanwhile, The New York Times insists the “climate crisis” is a “World on Fire”: 

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    Maybe the NYT is spreading misinformation. 

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    And other corporate media outlets are doing the same. 

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    The same corporate media outlets that once shouted ‘trust the science’ are now conveniently turning a blind eye to the hard data. Why? Because facts don’t align with their climate apocalypse narrative. So what’s the endgame of the elites just north of Richmond? Well, it’s to ram through a dystopic climate agenda of banning cow farts and forcing an insect diet on the masses. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/23/2023 – 18:50

  • Why The COVID Delusion Continues
    Why The COVID Delusion Continues

    Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

    Well, the COVID panic has been over for more than a year, and most people seem to be breathing a bit easier now, both literally and figuratively.

    Most everyone has returned to their pre-COVID lives. The masks are mostly gone, and testing is only undertaken by a few people who remain in fear.

    The great majority of people state that they did the “right thing” and got the requisite initial jabs, although a majority of people state that they decided against the boosters. The reason? Most are unclear on that, except to say that, “I was beginning to have doubts… but I’m still glad I got the initial injections.”

    Of course, since the “all clear” signal was sounded, those doctors who initially jumped on board the COVID Express with both feet have calmed down a bit, and many research facilities have been doing studies on the possibility of vax damage.

    Those studies have been showing with fair consistency that the jab was indeed detrimental – both short-term and long-term. At this point, scores of studies have come to this conclusion, and even many prominent doctors who initially supported vaxxing are now stating emphatically, “We were lied to.”

    So, we might expect that those who filed into clinics like cattle to get the jab would now have learned three important lessons –

    • Don’t trust Big Pharma

    • Don’t trust the media as regards Big Pharma

    • Don’t trust the authorities as regards Big Pharma

    And yet these lessons, with few exceptions, do not seem to have been learned.

    Some people are still getting tested whenever they get cold symptoms. When asked why, they don’t seem to have a clear answer.

    When asked if they would trust those who pushed the vaccines again, their eyes tend to glaze over. Again, they don’t really have an answer.

    Most people who got the jab don’t seem to have advanced their thinking in the last year. Their learning curve appears to have halted the moment the media stopped talking about COVID.

    But why should this be? Surely, the evidence of deception by Big Pharma and its support group is self-evident at this point. One only has to read the results of post-COVID studies that have been undertaken to arrive at the conclusion that the evidence is overwhelming: A major con has been played on the world – a con that netted tens of billions of dollars for Big Pharma.

    The answer to the question, I’m afraid, may well be harder to face than the fact that the majority of people bought into the vaccine charade. The answer as to why very few people have advanced their understanding of what’s been done to them has more to do with human nature than medical perceptions.

    It’s unfortunately true that, back when we went to school, we were taught almost entirely by rote. We weren’t asked to learn why the world believed that warfare was necessary; we were only told to memorise the names of the generals and the dates that the wars took place.

    If we were asked to read the works of great writers, we weren’t expected to develop an understanding of their insights; we were merely expected to memorise some famous quotes by them.

    And, once we had passed our exams, it was perfectly acceptable for us to forget what we’d memorized.

    In short, a primary principle of “normal” education was that all that mattered was that we could parrot back whatever we had been fed most recently.

    No surprise, then, that, in adulthood, we do the same. Of course, adults tend to study less than when they were in school. They rely instead on the evening news to keep them informed. We hear the latest urgent breaking news, and we pay careful attention. We then follow the instructions we receive from the “experts” doing the speaking and wait until the following evening to receive further indoctrination and instructions.

    Along the way, we also hear “non-authoritative” information and are careful to classify such information as “conspiracy theory.” Such information enters the temporal lobe only briefly. In most cases, the human brain has been trained to delete such information, as it has no value with regard to following instructions. Worse, it makes us question that instruction. The temporal lobe becomes adept at deleting such information as though it had never been received.

    And, here, we have a basic function of the human brain that affects the great majority of people – indeed, all people who have not, at some point in their lives, become independent thinkers:

    Respond to controlled input and ignore peripheral input

    For those who questioned the COVID scam early, a great deal was learned even as it was playing out. But the question remains, why did others, who bought into it, not learn from the plethora of studies that have been released over time?

    After all, the controlled input regarding COVID ceased to be pushed a year or more ago. What that translates into is that those who simply memorise information and do not significantly question it now have nothing to go on. They’re stuck in neutral. They’re receiving occasional peripheral input that negates the controlled input, but they interpret it as peripheral input and, in a trained knee-jerk reaction, ignore it on each and every occasion. They don’t ever consider its totality, as they’re not programmed to think in that fashion.

    As unpleasant as it is to consider, this inability is the norm, even for people who are otherwise intelligent and/or educated. Like hamsters on a wheel, they’re under the impression that they’re in forward motion, but in truth, they won’t move an inch forward until they receive controlled input instructing them to do so.

    The COVID masks have been taken off, but an understanding of the fraud that has been perpetrated has, for the majority of people, not been understood.

    It could be argued that the discussion presented above could be seen as being academic – pointless – as the COVID scare is now over, and the masks are gone.

    But, in fact, unless we pay attention to what researchers have been concluding in the last year and, indeed, if we return to our well-ingrained training not to question, but merely to respond to immediate input, we’re primed to get suckered again.

    If we and the majority of the people we know, once again, respond to the controlled input and ignore the peripheral input, we won’t merely have missed the boat on the reality of the COVID scam.

    We’re primed to be fooled again.

    *  *  *

    The wave of political correctness and liberal group-think has taken the US by storm. The effort to silence opposing viewpoints and free speech will continue to accelerate. That’s why Doug Casey has prepared a timely video on surviving this modern American trend. In it Doug exposes the lies and mainstream bias that’s poisoning America… Click here to watch it now.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/23/2023 – 18:30

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Aug 23

Today’s News 23rd August 2023

  • Europe Is Heading Towards A Triple Crisis
    Europe Is Heading Towards A Triple Crisis

    Via Remix News,

    Europe is unavoidably heading towards a triple crisis, German publicist Thomas Fasbender told Preussische Allgemeine in an interview on the occasion of the publication of his new book, “The eerie century” (Das unheimliche Jahrhundert).

    The subtitle of the book, “Before the turning point,” is a direct quote of an expression taken from Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s special address to the Bundestag on Feb. 27, 2022, in reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In it, he used the word “Zeitenwende.”

    While the official translation for the word used by the German government is “turning point” or “watershed moment”, the original German term refers to both a changing of times and a geopolitical shift.

    “I chose the term ‘turning point’ because it was brought into play by Olaf Scholz. Although the book was essentially written before then, we are indeed experiencing a change of epoch. However, it is much more extensive than Scholz described,” the author said in the interview.

    He says that the current triple crisis Europe is facing will have a defining impact on the continent for the rest of the century.

    “Europe is heading for a triple crisis, the effects of which will affect us massively throughout the century.”

    First, there is the rapid loss of power by Western Europe after some 500 years of global dominance.

    “The times when the British, French, Germans, and others left their mark on the world politically, culturally, scientifically, technically and economically is history,” he said.

    Fasbender says the second crisis, the climate change crisis, cannot be tackled by simply stopping it:

    “The second major crisis is climate change. The fact is that it is happening. In recent years, the discussion has focused on who is responsible for it and how it can be stopped. “

    “But we will not succeed in stopping it. So we have to ask ourselves: What does it mean in concrete terms to live in a world that is two or more degrees warmer? What effects will this have, how do we deal with it?”

    “What we do in Germany has virtually no impact. I find it all the more astonishing that we are only now beginning to address the issue of adaptation. This is all the more important because we can only spend each euro once. Either for climate protection (which will not be possible) or for climate adaptation.”

    The third, but by no means least important crisis, is the population explosion in the Sub-Saharan region, which essentially also encompasses the previous two:

    “The third issue is population growth in Africa, especially in the Sub-Saharan region. There, we are seeing a doubling of the population by 2050 and even a quadrupling by 2100.”

    “Sometime in the 22nd century, more than half of the world’s population will come from sub-Saharan Africa. This is where the real turning points lie dormant.”

    “We are entering a world in which Europe may still be perceived as a living museum. Certainly no longer as a beacon or role model,” he said.

    People work together to pull, according to the locals, a capsized boat ashore at the beach where several people were found dead in Dakar, Senegal, Monday, July 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

    Fasbender concludes that “We Europeans are also hampered by the fact that many either do not grasp the new realities or do not want to accept them. On the contrary, we continue to overestimate ourselves.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/23/2023 – 02:00

  • We're All Suspects In A DNA Lineup, Waiting To Be Matched With A Crime
    We’re All Suspects In A DNA Lineup, Waiting To Be Matched With A Crime

    Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “Make no mistake about it…your DNA can be taken and entered into a national DNA database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason… I doubt that the proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection.”

    – Justice Antonin Scalia dissenting in Maryland v. King

    Be warned: the DNA detectives are on the prowl.

    Whatever skeletons may be lurking on your family tree or in your closet, whatever crimes you may have committed, whatever associations you may have with those on the government’s most wanted lists: the police state is determined to ferret them out.

    In an age of overcriminalization, round-the-clock surveillance, and a police state eager to flex its muscles in a show of power, we are all guilty of some transgression or other.

    No longer can we consider ourselves innocent until proven guilty.

    Now we are all suspects in a DNA lineup waiting to be matched up with a crime.

    Suspect State, meet the Genetic Panopticon.

    DNA technology in the hands of government officials will complete our transition to a Surveillance State in which prison walls are disguised within the seemingly benevolent trappings of technological and scientific progress, national security and the need to guard against terrorists, pandemics, civil unrest, etc.

    By accessing your DNA, the government will soon know everything else about you that they don’t already know: your family chart, your ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to follow orders or chart your own course, etc.

    It’s getting harder to hide, even if you think you’ve got nothing to hide.

    Armed with unprecedented access to DNA databases amassed by the FBI and ancestry website, as well as hospital newborn screening programs, police are using forensic genealogy, which allows police to match up an unknown suspect’s crime scene DNA with that of any family members in a genealogy database, to solve cold cases that have remained unsolved for decades.

    As reported by The Intercept, forensic genetic genealogists are “combing through the genetic information of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in search of a perpetrator.”

    By submitting your DNA to a genealogical database such as Ancestry and 23andMe, you’re giving the police access to the genetic makeup, relationships and health profiles of every relative—past, present and future—in your family, whether or not you or they ever agreed to be part of such a database.

    Indeed, relying on a loophole in a commercial database called GEDmatch, genetic genealogists are able to sidestep privacy rules that allow people to opt out of sharing their genetic information with police. The end result? Police are now able to identify and target those very individuals who explicitly asked to keep their DNA results private.

    In this way, merely choosing to exercise your right to privacy makes you a suspect and puts you in the police state’s crosshairs.

    It no longer even matters if you’re among the tens of millions of people who have added their DNA to ancestry databases. As Brian Resnick reports, public DNA databases have grown so massive that they can be used to find you even if you’ve never shared your own DNA.

    That simple transaction—a spit sample or a cheek swab in exchange for getting to learn everything about one’s ancestral makeup, where one came from, and who is part of one’s extended family—is the price of entry into the Suspect State for all of us.

    After all, a DNA print reveals everything about “who we are, where we come from, and who we will be.” It can also be used to predict the physical appearance of potential suspects.

    It’s what police like to refer to a “modern fingerprint.”

    Whereas fingerprint technology created a watershed moment for police in their ability to “crack” a case, DNA technology is now being hailed by law enforcement agencies as the magic bullet in crime solving, especially when it helps them crack cold cases of serial murders and rapists.

    After all, who wouldn’t want to get psychopaths and serial rapists off the streets and safely behind bars, right?

    At least, that’s the argument being used by law enforcement to support their unrestricted access to these genealogy databases, and they’ve got the success stories to prove it.

    For instance, a 68-year-old Pennsylvania man was arrested and charged with the brutal rape and murder of a young woman almost 50 years earlier. Relying on genealogical research suggesting that the killer had ancestors who hailed from a small town in Italy, investigators narrowed their findings down to one man whose DNA, obtained from a discarded coffee cup, matched the killer’s.

    In another cold case investigation, a 76-year-old man was arrested for two decades-old murders after his DNA was collected from a breathalyzer during an unrelated traffic stop.

    Yet it’s not just psychopaths and serial rapists who are getting caught up in the investigative dragnet. In the police state’s pursuit of criminals, anyone who comes up as a possible DNA match—including distant family members—suddenly becomes part of a circle of suspects that must be tracked, investigated and ruled out.

    In this way, “guilt by association” has taken on new connotations in a technological age in which one is just a DNA sample away from being considered a person of interest in a police investigation. As Jessica Cussins warns in Psychology Today, “The fundamental fight—that data from potentially innocent people should not be used to connect them to unrelated crimes—has been lost.”

    Until recently, the government was required to at least observe some basic restrictions on when, where and how it could access someone’s DNA. That was turned on its head by various U.S. Supreme Court rulings that heralded the loss of privacy on a cellular level.

    For instance, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Maryland v. King that taking DNA samples from a suspect doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment. The Court’s subsequent decision to let stand the Maryland Court of Appeals’ ruling in Raynor v. Maryland, which essentially determined that individuals do not have a right to privacy when it comes to their DNA, made Americans even more vulnerable to the government accessing, analyzing and storing their DNA without their knowledge or permission.

    It’s all been downhill since then.

    Indeed, the government has been relentless in its efforts to get hold of our DNA, either through mandatory programs carried out in connection with law enforcement and corporate America, by warrantlessly accessing our familial DNA shared with genealogical services such as Ancestry and 23andMe, or through the collection of our “shed” or “touch” DNA.

    Get ready, folks, because the government has embarked on a diabolical campaign to create a nation of suspects predicated on a massive national DNA database.

    This has been helped along by Congress (which adopted legislation allowing police to collect and test DNA immediately following arrests), President Trump (who signed the Rapid DNA Act into law), the courts (which have ruled that police can routinely take DNA samples from people who are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime), and local police agencies (which are chomping at the bit to acquire this new crime-fighting gadget).

    For example, Rapid DNA machines—portable, about the size of a desktop printer, highly unregulated, far from fool-proof, and so fast that they can produce DNA profiles in less than two hours—allow police to go on fishing expeditions for any hint of possible misconduct using DNA samples.

    Journalist Heather Murphy explains: “As police agencies build out their local DNA databases, they are collecting DNA not only from people who have been charged with major crimes but also, increasingly, from people who are merely deemed suspicious, permanently linking their genetic identities to criminal databases.”

    All 50 states now maintain their own DNA government databases, although the protocols for collection differ from state to state. Increasingly, many of the data from local databanks are being uploaded to CODIS, the FBI’s massive DNA database, which has become a de facto way to identify and track the American people from birth to death.

    Even hospitals have gotten in on the game by taking and storing newborn babies’ DNA, often without their parents’ knowledge or consent. It’s part of the government’s mandatory genetic screening of newborns. In many states, the DNA is stored indefinitely. There’s already a move underway to carry out whole genome sequencing on newborns, ostensibly to help diagnose rare diseases earlier and improve health later in life, which constitutes an ethical minefield all by itself.

    What this means for those being born today is inclusion in a government database that contains intimate information about who they are, their ancestry, and what awaits them in the future, including their inclinations to be followers, leaders or troublemakers.

    For example, police in New Jersey accessed the DNA from a nine-year-old blood sample of a newborn baby in order to identify the child’s father as a suspect in a decades-old sexual assault.

    The ramifications of this kind of DNA profiling are far-reaching.

    At a minimum, these DNA databases do away with any semblance of privacy or anonymity.

    These genetic databases and genomic technology also make us that much more vulnerable to creeps and cyberstalkers, genetic profiling, and those who would weaponize the technology against us.

    Unfortunately, the debate over genetic privacy—and when one’s DNA becomes a public commodity outside the protection of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on warrantless searches and seizures—continues to lag far behind the government and Corporate America’s encroachments on our rights.

    Moreover, while much of the public debate, legislative efforts and legal challenges in recent years have focused on the protocols surrounding when police can legally collect a suspect’s DNA (with or without a search warrant and whether upon arrest or conviction), the question of how to handle “shed” or “touch” DNA has largely slipped through without much debate or opposition.

    As scientist Leslie A. Pray notes:

    We all shed DNA, leaving traces of our identity practically everywhere we go… In fact, the garbage you leave for curbside pickup is a potential gold mine of this sort of material. All of this shed or so-called abandoned DNA is free for the taking by local police investigators hoping to crack unsolvable cases… shed DNA is also free for inclusion in a secret universal DNA databank.

    What this means is that if you have the misfortune to leave your DNA traces anywhere a crime has been committed, you’ve already got a file somewhere in some state or federal database—albeit it may be a file without a name.

    As the dissenting opinion to the Maryland Court of Appeals’ shed DNA ruling in Raynor rightly warned, “A person can no longer vote, participate in a jury, or obtain a driver’s license, without opening up his genetic material for state collection and codification.”

    It’s just a matter of time before government agents will know everywhere we’ve been and how long we were at each place by following our shed DNA. After all, scientists can already track salmon across hundreds of square miles of streams and rivers using DNA.

    Today, helped along by robotics and automation, DNA processing, analysis and reporting takes far less time and can bring forth all manner of information, right down to a person’s eye color and relatives. Incredibly, one company specializes in creating “mug shots” for police based on DNA samples from unknown “suspects” which are then compared to individuals with similar genetic profiles.

    Of course, none of these technologies are infallible.

    DNA evidence can be wrong, either through human error, tampering, or even outright fabrication, and it happens more often than we are told.

    What this amounts to is a scenario in which we have little to no defense against charges of wrongdoing, especially when “convicted” by technology, and even less protection against the government sweeping up our DNA in much the same way it sweeps up our phone calls, emails and text messages.

    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 only a matter of time before the police state’s pursuit of criminals from the past expands into genetic profiling and a preemptive hunt for criminals of the future.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 08/23/2023 – 00:05

  • Ex-Head Of JPMorgan's Precious Metals Desk Sentenced To Prison For Manipulation
    Ex-Head Of JPMorgan’s Precious Metals Desk Sentenced To Prison For Manipulation

    It was not that long ago that a veritable army of trolls would emerge upon our merest mention that precious metal markets (like all other markets) are manipulated, whether by commercial or central banks, or by random assorted hangers on.

    Today, we can table that particular debate in perpetuity, after US District Judge Edmond Chang sentenced the former head of JPMorgan’s precious-metals desk and his top trader to prison for spoofing, fraud and market manipulation.

    Michael Nowak, whom we first highlighted back in 2019…

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

    … and most recently profiled last year, and who once upon a time was not only an LBMA board member but also ran gold and silver trading at JPMorgan, as well as his top trader Gregg Smith were sentenced Tuesday in Chicago with Nowak receiving a term of one year and one day while Smith was given two years, the stiffest sentence yet in a recent government crackdown on questionable trading practices.

    Michael Nowak, center, arrives at federal court in Chicago.

    As we reported at the time, both men were convicted at a trial last year. Smith, 59, was described as “the most prolific spoofer that the government has prosecuted to date” while Nowak, 49, has been called “the boss” behind the scheme.
    In imposing sentence, the judge said Smith and Nowak clearly knew what they were doing was wrong.

    “This is a serious offense that you committed,” Chang said to Nowak. “What happened here was the equivalent of putting out lies — and many lies — into the market. Market integrity is a crucial component to the financial markets. These lies moved the market. It’s not like they had zero impact.”

    Smith and Nowak “used their positions as some of the most powerful traders in the worldwide precious metals markets to engage in an egregious effort to manipulate prices for their benefit,” Acting US Assistant Attorney General Nicole M.

    Argentieri said in a statement, adding the Justice Department was committed to holding “accountable those who engage in fraud and manipulation that undermines the investing public’s trust in the integrity of our commodities markets.”

    As Bloomberg reports, the stiff (for a banker) prison sentences were intended to “send a message” that market manipulation will be punished, the judge said. “I’m trying to deter all forms of financial fraud in the market,” he said, clearly unaware of this thing called the Federal Reserve.

    Chang ordered Nowak to start his sentence on Oct. 23 and Smith on Jan. 15. Lawyers for both men said they planned to appeal their convictions.

    Prosecutors had initially sought sentences of six years for Smith and five years for Nowak, but on Tuesday said they were revising those down to around two years. Both men’s lawyers argued that they should be spared jail because neither gained personally from the spoofing. Of course, both main made millions in bonuses which would never have been paid had they not generated huge gains for Jamie Dimon’s criminal enterprise.

    The JPMorgan case was part of a crackdown by federal prosecutors on illegal spoofing, where traders place bogus orders to move prices up or down and then quickly cancel them before they can be executed. Smith and Nowak used the technique to manipulate gold and silver prices from 2008 to 2016, or the entire duration of the period in which we said – and showed – that gold manipulation was rampant, for which were frequently mocked and ridiculed.

    Convictions for Smith, Nowak and a third trader who was found guilty in November, Christopher Jordan, capped a string of wins by prosecutors in spoofing cases targeting some of Wall Street’s biggest banks, including Bank of America, Deutsche Bank AG and Morgan Stanley. Two former Deutsche Bank and two former Bank of America traders previously each received one-year sentences.

    JPMorgan, the largest US bank and the biggest US financial criminal enterprise by far, agreed in 2020 to pay $920 million to settle the Justice Department’s allegations against it — the biggest fine by any financial institution accused of market manipulation since the 2008 global financial crisis.

    Prosecutors also charged several members of the team Nowak led at JPMorgan. Three of them pleaded guilty and testified against Nowak and Smith. The witnesses described how Nowak and Smith routinely placed huge buy and sell orders they never intended to execute — part of their strategy to push prices in the direction that would profit the bank.

    Christiaan Trunz, a former Smith protege and one of the traders who pleaded guilty and cooperated, told jurors that he learned to spoof by watching Nowak and Smith for years. When Trunz came under scrutiny for his own spoof trades, he said Nowak coached him to lie to compliance officials and later counseled him against pleading guilty as prosecutors were preparing criminal charges against top executives on the trading desk.

    Trunz testified that Smith was so fast at placing and canceling bogus orders that his colleagues would joke that he needed to put ice on his fingers to cool them down.

    “This was an open strategy on the desk,” said Trunz, who sat next to Smith and watched him click his computer mouse rapidly to place and cancel trades. “It wasn’t hidden.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/22/2023 – 23:45

  • Wake Up!
    Wake Up!

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,

    The last three and a half years have been times of enormous upheaval.

    It has affected politics, economics, culture, media and technology. It’s not just about the spreading of economic, cultural and demographic decay. Millions and billions of lives have been wrecked, to be sure, but there is also a big impact on the way we see the world around us.

    What we once trusted, we now doubt and even disbelieve as a matter of new habit. The simple categories of understanding that we once deployed to make sense of the world have been tested, challenged and even overthrown. Old forms of ideological commitments have opened their way to new.

    This particularly pertains to intellectuals. Or should in any case.

    If you have not shifted your thinking in some respect over these years, you are either a prophet, asleep or in denial.

    The way social media works today, influencers are reluctant to admit it lest risk their followings built out of a prior cultural landscape. This is really too bad.

    There is nothing wrong with changing, adapting, migrating and calling out truth even if that contradicts what you once said or how you used to believe.

    There is no need to change your principles or ideals. What should change in light of evidence is your evaluation of the problems and threats, your outlook on the relative priorities of focus, your perceptions of the functionality of institutional structures, your awareness of issues and concerns about which you had limited prior knowledge, your political and cultural allegiances and so on.

    These days, this intellectual migration seems mainly to have affected the left. Nearly daily I find myself having the same conversations with people in person, on the phone or online. It is from an Obama voter and someone with traditionally “liberal” allegiances.

    The COVID era utterly shocked them in what they discovered about their own tribe. They aren’t liberal at all.

    They supported universal quarantine, forced face coverings and then mandatory jabs pushed by a tax-funded corporate monopoly. Concerns about human rights, civil liberties and the common good suddenly evaporated. Then of course they turned to the most blunt instrument of all: censorship.

    The trauma felt by principled people who imagined themselves to be “on the left” is palpable.

    But the same is true of people “on the right” who were aghast to observe that it was Trump and his administration that greenlighted lockdowns, spent many trillions forcing COVID compliance and then threw public monies at Big Pharma to rush a shot by bypassing all standards of necessity, safety and effectiveness.

    The promise to “make America great again” ended in wreckage coast-to-coast. For Trump partisans, this realization that it all happened under their hero is hard to take, a triangulating rope-a-dope.

    Even more strangely, it was the “never Trumpers” on the right who most strongly supported lockdowns, masking and shot mandates.

    The libertarians are another story entirely, one that nearly surpasses understanding. Among the higher echelons of this faction in academia and think tanks, the silence from the start and even years later was truly deafening.

    Instead of standing up to totalitarianism, as the whole of the intellectual tradition had prepared them to do, they deployed their clever heuristics to justify outrages against core freedoms, even the freedom to associate.

    So yes, observing one’s own tribe collapse into craven careerism and coercion is disorienting. But the problem goes even deeper. The most striking alliance of our time has been to observe the lockstep of the elites in government, media, tech and academia.

    The reality blows apart the traditional binary of public vs. private that has dominated ideological discussion for centuries.

    This binary is nicely represented by the sculpture in front of the Federal Trade Commission.

    It shows a man holding back a horse. It’s man vs. beast, completely different species and totally different interests, one demanding to move forward and the other holding it back.

    The point of the sculpture is to celebrate the role of government (man) in controlling trade (industry). The contrary position would condemn government for controlling industry.

    But what if the sculpture is pure fantasy even at its very structure?

    In reality, the horse is either carrying the man or pulling a cart that carries the man. Are they cooperating together in a partnership that is allied against consumers, stockholders, small businesses, the working classes and people more generally?

    That realization — the very essence of what was revealed to us in the course of the COVID response — utterly shatters core presumptions behind the dominant ideologies of our times and going far back in time.

    That realization requires a recalibration from honest thinkers.

    I had to reevaluate my own cherished beliefs about markets and politics, which was painful in many ways. But it was necessary.

    Below, I take you on that journey — and show you why we must adjust our thinking to adapt to new realities. Read on.

    The Scales Fell From My Eyes

    I was going through an archive of writings from the 2010s in search of some insight or possibly something to reprint. I found many hundreds of articles. None of them jumped out at me as necessarily wrong but I found myself rather bored with their superficiality. Yes, they are entertaining and fascinating in their way but what precisely did they reveal?

    There was no consumer product unworthy of rhapsodic celebration, no pop tune or movie that didn’t reinforce my biases, no new technology or company undeserving of my highest praise, no trend in the land that was contrary to my conception of progress all around us.

    It’s exceedingly difficult to recreate an older state of mind but let me try. I saw myself as a composer of hymns to material progress all around us, a cheerleader of the glories of all market forces. I lived with this public-private binary.

    All that was good in the world came from the private sector and all that was evil came from the public sector. That easily became for me a simplistic, good vs. evil conception of the great struggle, and also blinded me to the ways that these two ideal types play together in real life.

    Armed with this ideological weaponry, I was ready to take on the world.

    And so Big Tech came in for massive celebration from me, even to the point that I completely ignored warnings of capture and surveillance. I had a model in mind — migration to the digital realm was emancipatory while attachment to the physical world was mired in stagnation — and nothing could shake me from it.

    I had also implicitly adopted an “end-of-history” style of triumphalist thinking that befits the generation that saw freedom win the great Cold War struggle.

    And so the final victory of liberty was always at hand, at least in my fevered imagination.

    This is why the lockdowns came as such a shock to me. It flew in the face of the linear structure of historical narrative that I had constructed for myself in order to make sense of the world.

    This is why the best comparison of the COVID years might be to the Great War, the global calamity that was simply not supposed to happen based on the wild optimism cultivated during the Gilded and Victorian epochs of decades earlier.

    The very foundations of peace and progress had gradually eroded, and prepared the way for terrible war, but that generation of observers did not see it happening simply because they were not looking for it.

    To be sure, and uniquely so far as I can tell, I had been writing about the prospect of pandemic lockdowns for the previous 15 years. I read their research, knew of their plans and followed their germ games. I drummed up awareness and called for hard limits on what the state could do during a pandemic.

    At the same time, I had become accustomed to treating the academic and intellectual worlds as something external to the social order. In other words, I never once believed that these cockamamie ideas would ever leak into our own lived realities.

    Like so many others, I had come to regard intellectual discussion and debate as a challenging and most enjoyable parlor game that had little impact on the world. I knew for sure that there were crazy people extant who dreamed of universal human separation and the conquering of the microbial planet by force.

    But I had presumed that the structures of society and the trajectory of history embedded too much intelligence to actually implement such delusions. The foundations of civilization were too strong to be eroded by gibberish, or so I had believed.

    What I had overlooked were several factors.

    • First, I didn’t understand the extent of the rise, independence and power of the administrative state and the impossibility of controlling its authority through elective representatives. I simply did not anticipate the fullness of its reach.

    • Second, I had not understood the extent to which private industry had developed a full working relationship with the structures of power in its own industrial interests.

    • Third, I had overlooked the way consolidation and cooperation had developed between pharmaceutical companies, public health, digital enterprises and media organs.

    • Fourth, I had failed to appreciate the tendency of the public mind to drop knowledge accumulated from past wisdom. For example, who would have believed that people would forget what they once knew, even from thousands of years of experience, about exposure and natural immunity?

    • Fifth, I did not anticipate the extent to which high-end professionals would give up all principles and curry favor with the new policy priorities of the government/media/tech/industry hegemon. Who knew that nothing about the main themes of patriotic songs and movies would have stuck when it most mattered?

    • Sixth, and this is perhaps my greatest intellectual failing, I had not seen how rigid class structures would feed conflicting interests between the professional class of laptop workers and the working classes who still need the physical world to accomplish their goals.

    On March 16, 2020, the laptop class conspired in a forced digitalization of the world in the name of pathogenic control, and this came at the expense of some two-thirds of the population who depended on physical interactions for their livelihood and psychological well-being.

    This aspect of class conflict — which I had always chalked up to be a Marxian delusion — became the defining feature of the whole of our political lives. Instead, the lack of empathy from the professional class was evident everywhere, from academic opinion to media reporting. It was a society of serfs and lords.

    For those who are researchers, writers, academics or just curious people who want to understand the world better — even improve it — to have one’s intellectual operating system so profoundly disturbed is an occasion of profound disorientation. It is also a time to embrace the adventure, recalibrate and set about correcting and finding a new path.

    When your ideological system and political allegiances fail to provide the explanatory power we are seeking, it is time to improve them or give them up entirely.

    Not everyone is up to the task. Indeed, this is a major reason why so many want to forget about the past three and a half years. They would rather close their eyes to the new realities and default back to their intellectual comfort zones.

    For any writer or thinker of integrity, this should not be an option. As painful as it might be, it is best just to admit where we went wrong and set out to discover a better path. This is why so many of us have adopted a paradigm called the “COVID test.” Few pass. Most fail. They failed in shockingly public and inexcusable ways: left, right and libertarian.

    The influencers who flopped so badly in these years and have yet to own up to it deserve neither attention nor respect. Their attempt to pretend they were never wrong and then move on as if nothing much has happened is embarrassing and disreputable.

    But those who come to terms with the wreckage all around us and seek to understand its causes and the way forward deserve a listen and appreciation. For it is these people who are doing their best to save the world from another round of disaster.

    As for the rest, they are taking up air space and should, in a just world, be tutoring the children with learning losses and delivering meals to the vaccine-injured.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 08/22/2023 – 23:25

  • Middle-Age Crisis: 35-50 Year-Olds Turn To Booze, Bud, And 'Shrooms'
    Middle-Age Crisis: 35-50 Year-Olds Turn To Booze, Bud, And ‘Shrooms’

    In the land of the ‘free’ and the home of the distraught: New research reveals an alarming number of middle-aged Americans are drowning their troubles away in binge drinking and getting higher than a kite to pass the time. 

    The University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future (MTF) found binge drinking, marijuana use, and hallucinogen consumption among middle-aged adults 35 to 50 (prime-age workers) hit record highs in 2022. 

    “While binge drinking has generally declined for the past ten years among younger adults, adults aged 35 to 50 in 2022 reported the highest prevalence of binge drinking ever recorded for this age group, which also represents a significant past-year, five-year and 10-year increase,” MTF wrote in the report. 

    “The value of surveys such as MTF is to show us how drug use trends evolve over decades and across development, from adolescence through adulthood,” said Megan Patrick, research professor and principal investigator of the MTF panel study. 

    Adults aged 35 to 50 aren’t turning to sports cars and wild adventures in what might be a midlife crisis. Instead, a staggering 28% have resorted to marijuana in the past year, while 4% have used hallucinogens. 

    Patrick said, “Behaviors and public perception of drug use can shift rapidly, based on drug availability and other factors. It’s important to track this so that public health professionals and communities can be prepared to respond.”

    Major findings of MTF’s report: 

    • A whopping 44% of young adults smoked marijuana this past year, a drastic climb from the 28% a decade prior.

    • Daily cannabis use? Skyrocketing. Over 1 in 10 young adults smoke marijuana on a daily basis, nearly double from a decade ago. 

    • Middle-aged (35-50) aren’t far behind; their pot smoking has more than doubled in 10 years, with 28% now getting high.

    • Trippy times: Both young and middle-aged adults are experimenting with hallucinogens like LSD and shrooms at higher rates. Specifically, 8% of those 19-30 and 4% of the 35-50 brackets. 

    • The e-cigarette craze is alive and well; young adults vaping nicotine surged from 14% in 2017 to 24% in 2022.

    • Binge drinking: Nearly 30% of middle-aged folks are on a binge-drinking spree, reaching all-time highs in 2022. That’s up from 25% in 2017 and 23% in 2012. 

    The findings aren’t surprising. We reported earlier this year that a ‘shroom boom‘ was blasting off as middle-class soccer moms and average working-class folks were increasing their consumption of psilocybin, the main active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms. Even Janet Yellen joined in on the craze while in China… 

    Numerous studies have shown those who used psilocybin were able to curb drinking and other drug addictions easier. These studies add to increasing research showing that psychedelics paired with therapy could treat mental health issues.  

    MTF’s latest report shows Americans are binging on whatever they can get their hands on, indicating a looming mental health crisis. But, of course, the corporate media are blind to this crisis. They would rather focus on ‘climate change’ using fuzzy math. 

      Tyler Durden
      Tue, 08/22/2023 – 23:05

    • How Inflation Destroys Civilization… And What You Can Do About It
      How Inflation Destroys Civilization… And What You Can Do About It

      Authored by Nick Giambruno via InternationalMan.com,.

      Thanks to rampant inflation, socialism – and the poverty it inevitably brings – could soon become irreversibly entrenched in the US, just like in numerous Third World countries.

      Rapidly rising food, housing, medical, and tuition prices are squeezing Americans – many do not understand the actual cause of their falling living standards.

      The explosion in the cost of living is a predictable consequence of the Federal Reserve’s ongoing currency debasement.

      Since the Covid mass hysteria, the Federal Reserve has printed more money than it has for the entire existence of the US.

      From the founding of the US, it took over 227 years to print its first $6 trillion. But during Covid, the US government printed over $6 trillion in a matter of months.

      It’s important to put such large numbers into context.

      A trillion is a massive, almost unfathomable number.

      The human brain has trouble understanding something so huge. So let me try to put it into perspective.

      If you earned $1 a second 24/7/365—about $31 million per year—it would take you over 31,688 YEARS to make $1 trillion.

      So that’s how enormous a trillion is.

      When politicians carelessly spend and print money measured in the trillions, you are in dangerous territory.

      In short, the Fed’s actions during the Covid scam amounted to the biggest monetary explosion that has ever occurred in the US.

      Initially, the Fed and its apologists in the media assured the American people its actions wouldn’t cause severe price increases. But unfortunately, it didn’t take long to prove that absurd assertion false.

      As soon as rising prices became apparent, the mainstream media and Fed claimed that the inflation was only “transitory” and that there was nothing to be worried about. When the inflation was obviously not “transitory,” they told us “inflation was actually a good thing.”

      Of course, they were dead wrong and knew it—they were gaslighting.

      The truth is that inflation is out of control, and nothing can stop it.

      Even after the most intense rate hiking cycle in US history, price increases remain persistent.

      That’s not to mention that prices are never going back to the levels they were. We’re at a new baseline that only gets adjusted higher.

      It’s like trying to run on a treadmill where the speed only ratchets up.

      That’s why many people struggle to keep their heads above water. They simply cannot keep up with the rising prices.

      Michael Saylor was correct when he said, “The road to serfdom consists of working exponentially harder to earn a currency that is growing exponentially weaker.”

      Even though the media won’t tell you, the Fed’s currency debasement is the primary reason why most people are feeling the economic pain of inflation today. They know it’s becoming harder and harder to maintain their lifestyle—but many don’t understand why.

      They’ll blame supply chain problems, Vladimir Putin, and greedy corporations… anything but the Fed as the source of inflation.

      The media’s search for the real cause of inflation is like OJ Simpson’s search for “the real killers,” only more absurd.

      The deliberate confusion created around inflation opens the door for opportunistic politicians who promise supposed freebies to ease the pain of inflation. Many, unfortunately, succumb to this siren’s call.

      Perverse as it is, the policies offered to people suffering from inflation create even more inflation. In other words, inflation has a way of perpetuating itself, much like a heroin addiction, because people will keep wanting more and more of the very thing that is poisoning them.

      For example, a Newsweek poll shows 63% of Americans “strongly support” government stimulus checks to combat inflation.

      In other words, let’s fight the effects of currency debasement by engaging in even more currency debasement.

      The more inflation reduces living standards, the more people push for misguided government policies like universal basic income, price controls, inflation relief stimulus checks, and a higher minimum wage… which creates a cycle of rising prices.

      It’s only a matter of time before “fight for $15″—the rallying cry for a $15 minimum wage—becomes “fight for $20.” Then it’s “fight for $50,” “fight for $100,” and so forth.

      People should really fight to end the Federal Reserve and the fake money they create out of thin air and force everyone else to use. It’s the only way to end this insidious cycle that impoverishes everyone except the politically-connected insiders closest to the money printing.

      But, of course, that’s not going to happen.

      Instead, the more likely outcome is that the US is headed straight into an inescapable downward spiral of a political-inflation cycle that follows a clear pattern and creates a self-perpetuating doom loop.

      1. In a fiat currency system, the government will inevitably print an ever-increasing amount of currency to finance itself.

      2. This makes prices and living costs rise faster than wages.

      3. The average person feels the pain but doesn’t understand what’s happening.

      4. More people support politicians who promise freebies to supposedly relieve the pain inflation causes.

      5. In order to pay for the “freebies,” the government prints more currency.

      6. This creates even more inflation, and the cycle repeats.

      Most of America Depends on the Government

      At this point, we have to ask ourselves whether the political situation in the US will improve. Unfortunately, the data points to a troubling but inevitable answer… “no.”

      The reason is simple: a growing majority of US voters are receiving money from the government.

      An estimated 47% or so of Americans already receive some form of government benefit. But I don’t think that accurately reflects the situation. At least, not when considering all the government employees and those in the nominally private sector who feed off the warfare state. This includes defense and other government contractors who win huge, no-bid contracts.

      People involved in the military-industrial complex live off government slops as much or more than those who collect food stamps and other traditional forms of welfare. Yet they aren’t counted in the statistics. Any honest account of who depends on the government needs to include them.

      When you count everyone who lives off political dollars instead of free-market dollars, we’re already well north of 50% of the US population.

      In other words, the US has already crossed the Rubicon. There’s no going back.

      The growing majority of voters who collect net benefits from the government is a built-in constituency to perpetuate policies financed by ever-increasing inflation.

      That’s a big reason why I think currency debasement is inevitable.

      What You Can Do

      Unfortunately, most people have no idea how bad things can get when the political-inflation cycle spirals out of control, let alone how to prepare.

      The price of groceries, medical care, tuition, rent, and everything else will only rise. The only question is, how fast will prices rise?

      It’s an established trend in motion that is accelerating and approaching a breaking point.

      We will likely see incredible volatility in the financial markets that could decimate many ordinary people’s life savings and retirement assets.

      But I’m not just talking about a stock market crash or a currency collapse…

      It’s something much bigger… with the potential to alter the fabric of society forever.

      It’s created an economic situation unlike we’ve ever seen before, and it’s all building up to a severe crisis on multiple fronts.

      It could all go down soon… and it won’t be pretty.

      It will result in an enormous wealth transfer from savers to the parasitical class—politicians, central bankers, and those connected to them.

      Countless millions throughout history were wiped out financially—or worse—during periods of profound change because they failed to see the correct Big Picture and take appropriate action.

      Don’t be one of them.

      That’s exactly why I just released an urgent new report with all the details, including what you must do to prepare. It’s called, The Most Dangerous Economic Crisis in 100 Years… the Top 3 Strategies You Need Right Now. Click here to download the PDF now.

      Tyler Durden
      Tue, 08/22/2023 – 22:45

    • Trump Confirms Thursday Surrender In Georgia Case Over 2020 Election
      Trump Confirms Thursday Surrender In Georgia Case Over 2020 Election

      Authored by Catherine Yang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

      Former President Donald Trump confirmed on Monday that he will be surrendering to authorities at Fulton County Jail in Georgia on Thursday, Aug. 24, over the charges he faces for contesting the state’s 2020 election result.

      “Can you believe it? I’ll be going to Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday to be ARRESTED by a Radical Left District Attorney, Fani Willis, who is overseeing one of the greatest Murder and Violent Crime DISASTERS in American History,” he wrote on Truth Social.

      “In my case, the trip to Atlanta is not for ‘Murder,’ but for making a PERFECT PHONE CALL! She campaigned, and is continuing to campaign, and raise money, on this WITCH HUNT. This is in strict coordination with Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ. It is all about ELECTION INTERFERENCE!”

      Former President Donald Trump leaves the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa, on Aug. 12, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

      Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had brought charges against President Trump and 18 co-defendants, all of whom were charged under Georgia’s Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. In all, the 98-page indictment included 161 acts of racketeering and 41 total charges. President Trump was charged on 13 counts.

      Bond Set at $200,000

      Also on Monday, Judge Scott McAfee began setting bond and release conditions for the defendants.

      According to newly posted court records (pdf), President Trump has agreed to have his bond set at $200,000.

      Following negotiations with the prosecution, Attorney John Eastman’s bond was set at $100,000; Scott Hall, a bail bondsman, had bond set at $10,000; Attorney Kenneth Chesebro’s bond was set at $100,000; and attorney Ray Smith III’s bond was set at $50,000.

      All of the defendants have bond conditions that prohibit what they can say, but President Trump is the only one whose restrictions include specific details, including prohibiting him from making any “direct or indirect threat of any nature” against codefendants, victims, the community, including in his “posts on social media or reposts of posts made by another individual on social media.

      Rising Poll Numbers

      President Trump’s polling has only trended upwards since his first indictment in April.

      Amid a flurry of recent legal action—motions have been filed in both criminal and civil cases that President Trump is named in—the GOP frontrunner’s polling has only improved.

      On Aug. 21, new poll numbers released put President Trump well ahead his challengers, especially as runner-up Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s numbers have been slipping.

      The difference was 62-16 percent according to a CBS poll, 57-18 percent according to a Quinnipiac University poll, and 53-16 percent according to a Fox News poll.

      In Iowa, a poll carried out by Des Moines Register, NBC News, and Mediacom put him at 42 percent of the vote that surveyed likely Republican caucus-goers. Mr. DeSantis came in at 19 percent, and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) placed third with 9 percent. When the former president was indicted for the first time earlier this year, he likewise saw a surge in the polls—and in fundraising.

      Observers have noted that the increased legal action against him may only make his supporters dig their heels in, as the legal challenges might be viewed as political action on the behalf of his rival, the incumbent president.

      President Joe Biden has stayed quiet on the matter, ignoring questions from the media about President Trump’s indictments. President Trump and his legal team have repeatedly denounced the cases brought against him as “election interference” and a “witch hunt” given the timing of the cases.

      Besides the Georgia case, President Trump is facing charges brought against him by the Department of Justice in both Washington, D.C., and Florida. Like the Georgia case, the Washington case concerns his challenge of the 2020 election results, but in federal instead of state court. The Florida case, also in federal court, regards his alleged mishandling of classified documents. Both cases are being overseen by special counsel Jack Smith.

      The Republican favourite is also facing both criminal and civil suits in New York.

      Janice Hisle contributed to this report.

      Tyler Durden
      Tue, 08/22/2023 – 22:05

    • BRICS Nations Still Trail G7 In Per-Capita GDP
      BRICS Nations Still Trail G7 In Per-Capita GDP

      While the five BRICS nations have caught up with the G7 in terms of collective PPP-adjusted GDP, they still trail the G7’s mature economies by a significant margin in terms of GDP per capita – an often-used measure of economic development and prosperity.

      As Statista’s Felix Richter reports, according to the IMF, none of the five BRICS members even comes close to matching Japan’s GDP per capita, which in turn is the lowest among the G7 countries.

      Infographic: BRICS Nations Still Trail G7 in Per-Capita GDP | Statista

      You will find more infographics at Statista

      Using PPP-adjusted international dollars, the United States’ per-capita GDP amounts to $80,035, more than three times that of China, which amounts to $23,382.

      India, the world’s most populous country and third largest economy in terms of PPP-adjusted GDP, has by far the lowest GDP per capita among the twelve G7 and BRICS nations.

      The pace of progress has been rapid, nonetheless.

      Since the turn of the century, India’s GDP per capita increased nearly fivefold, trailing only China in that respect.

      Tyler Durden
      Tue, 08/22/2023 – 21:45

    • Australia's Misinfo Bill Paves Way For Soviet-Style Censorship
      Australia’s Misinfo Bill Paves Way For Soviet-Style Censorship

      Authored by Rebekah Barnett via The Brownstone Institute,

      The Australian Government’s proposed new laws to crack down on misinformation and disinformation have drawn intense criticism for their potential to restrict free expression and political dissent, paving the way for a digital censorship regime reminiscent of Soviet Lysenkoism…

      Under the draft legislation, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) will gain considerable expanded regulatory powers to “combat misinformation and disinformation,” which ACMA says poses a “threat to the safety and wellbeing of Australians, as well as to our democracy, society and economy.”

      Digital platforms will be required to share information with ACMA on demand, and to implement stronger systems and processes for handling of misinformation and disinformation.

      ACMA will be empowered to devise and enforce digital codes with a “graduated set of tools” including infringement notices, remedial directions, injunctions and civil penalties, with fines of up to $550,000 (individuals) and $2.75 million (corporations). Criminal penalties, including imprisonment, may apply in extreme cases.

      Controversially, the government will be exempt from the proposed laws, as will professional news outlets, meaning that ACMA will not compel platforms to police misinformation and disinformation disseminated by official government or news sources. 

      As the government and professional news outlets have been, and continue to be, a primary source of online misinformation and disinformation, it is unclear that the proposed laws will meaningfully reduce online misinformation and disinformation. Rather, the legislation will enable the proliferation of official narratives, whether true, false or misleading, while quashing the opportunity for dissenting narratives to compete. 

      Faced with the threat of penalty, digital platforms will play it safe. This means that for the purposes of content moderation, platforms will treat the official position as the ‘true’ position, and contradictory information as ‘misinformation.’

      Some platforms already do this. For example, YouTube recently removed a video of MP John Ruddick’s maiden speech to the New South Wales Parliament on the grounds that it contained ‘medical misinformation,’ which YouTube defines as any information that, “contradicts local health authorities’ or the World Health Organization’s (WHO) medical information about COVID-19.”

      YouTube has since expanded this policy to encompass a wider range of “specific health conditions and substances,” though no complete list is given as to what these specific conditions and substances are. Under ACMA’s proposed laws, digital platforms will be compelled to take a similar line.

      This flawed logic underpins much of the current academic misinformation research, including the University of Canberra study which informed the development of ACMA’s draft legislation. Researchers asked respondents to agree or disagree with a range of statements ranging from the utility of masks in preventing Covid infection and transmission, to whether Covid vaccines are safe. Where respondents disagreed with the official advice, they were categorised as ‘believing misinformation,’ regardless of the contestability of the statements.

      The potential for such circular definitions of misinformation and disinformation to escalate the censorship of true information and valid expression on digital platforms is obvious. 

      Free expression has traditionally been considered essential to the functioning of liberal democratic societies, in which claims to truth are argued out in the public square. Under ACMA’s bill, the adjudication of what is (and is not) misinformation and disinformation will fall to ‘fact-checkers,’ AI, and other moderation tools employed by digital platforms, all working to the better-safe-than-sorry-default of bolstering the official position against contradictory ‘misinformation.’ 

      But the assumption that such tools are capable of correctly adjudicating claims to truth is misguided. ‘Fact-checkers’ routinely make false claims and fall back on logical fallacies in lieu of parsing evidence. In US court proceedings, ‘fact-checker’ claims are protected under the First Amendment, confirming that the edicts of ‘fact-checkers’ are just opinion.

      Recent reporting on the gaming of social media moderation tools, most notably from the Twitter Files and the Facebook Files, shows that they comprise a powerful apparatus for promoting false narratives and suppressing true information, with significant real-world impacts. Take the Russia collusion hoax, which was seeded by think tanks and propagated by social media platforms and news media. The suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal is thought to have swung the 2020 US election outcome. 

      ACMA seeks to curtail expression under the proposition that misinformation and disinformation can cause ‘harm,’ but the scope is extraordinarily broad. A shopping list of potential harms includes: identity-based hatred; disruption of public order or society; harm to democratic processes; harm to government institutions; harm to the health of Australians; harm to the environment; economic or financial harm to Australians or to the economy.

      The overly broad and vague definitions offered in the bill for ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘serious harm’ makes enforcement of the proposed laws inherently subjective and likely to result in a litany of court cases – to the benefit of lawyers and the institutionally powerful, but to the detriment of everyone else. 

      Moreover, the definition of ‘disrupting public order’ as a serious and chronic harm could be used to prevent legitimate protest, a necessary steam valve in a functioning democracy. 

      ACMA says that the proposed laws aren’t intended to infringe on the right to protest, yet the erosion of protest rights during Covid lockdowns proves that politicians and bureaucrats are prone to take great latitude where the law allows it. The right to protest was effectively suspended in some states, with Victorian police using unprecedented violence and issuing charges of incitement to deter protestors. 

      In the US, the involvement of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in censoring online speech and, in particular, its framing of public opinion as ‘cognitive infrastructure’ demonstrates how even policies designed to combat ‘threats to infrastructure’ can be subverted as a means clamp down on ‘wrong-think.’

      In the past, extreme censorship has led to mass casualty events, such as the Soviet famine of the 1930s brought on by Lysenkoism. Biologist Trofim Lysenko’s unscientific agrarian policies were treated as gospel by Stalin’s censorious Communist regime. It was reported that thousands of dissenting scientists were dismissed, imprisoned, or executed for their efforts to challenge Lysenko’s policies. Up to 10 million lives were lost in the resultant famine – lives that could have been saved had the regime allowed the expression of viewpoints counter to the official position.

      History tells us that censorship regimes never end well, though it may take a generation for the deadliest consequences to play out. The draft legislation is now under review following a period of public consultation. Hopefully, the Australian Government will take the historical lesson and steer Australia off this treacherous path. 

      Tyler Durden
      Tue, 08/22/2023 – 21:25

    • Top US Food Imports By Origin Country
      Top US Food Imports By Origin Country

      The U.S. is a major producer and exporter of food products, but did you know that it’s also one of the world’s largest food importers?

      As Visual Capitalist’s Govind Bhutada details below, due to seasonality and climate, some foods can’t be grown on home soil, at least enough to fulfill consumption demands. Indeed, many familiar grocery items come from other countries.

      This infographic from Julie Peasley uses data from the Chatham House Resource Trade Database (CHRTD) to show where the U.S. gets its food from, highlighting the top exporting countries of various imported food items.


       

      The Types of Imported Foods

      The U.S. imported around $148 billion worth of agricultural products in 2020, and according to the USDA, this has since risen to $194 billion in 2022.

      Around 50% of all U.S. agricultural imports are horticultural products like fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, and more. Other large import categories include sugar and tropical products, meat, grains, and oilseeds.

      With that context in mind, we break down each category and highlight the five foods with the largest single-origin import value.

      Farm Fresh: Fruit and Vegetable Imports

      U.S. fruit and vegetable imports have been on a steady rise since 2000. In fact, between 2011 and 2021, fruits and nuts imports made up 44% of domestic consumption, while 35% of vegetables consumed in the U.S. came from outside the country.

      Mexico is by far the largest exporter of fruits and vegetables to the United States.

      The U.S. imported $2.5 billion worth of tomatoes from Mexico in 2020, representing 31% of international tomato trade. Avocados, native to central Mexico, were nearly as popular with $2.1 billion worth of imports.

      Generally, the largest exporters of fruits and vegetables to the U.S. are North and South American countries, with products often coming from Guatemala, Chile, Peru, Costa Rica, and Brazil.

      Beefed Up: Meat Imports

      The U.S. is the world’s largest overall consumer of beef (or bovine meat), and the third-largest per capita consumer at nearly 37.9 kg (84 lbs) per person per year.

      Therefore, despite being one of the top producers of beef, the country still imports a lot of it.

      Precisely, The U.S. imported $8.7 billion worth of meat in 2020. Canada was the largest source of imported beef, with the U.S. accounting for more than 70% of all Canadian beef exports.

      The sources of meat imports are more geographically diverse than fruits and vegetables, with billions of dollars of imports coming from New Zealand and Australia.

      Making Waves: Seafood Imports

      Despite plenty of coastlines, the U.S. imports 70–85% of all its seafood and accounted for 15% of global seafood imports in 2020 at $21.8 billion.

      Frozen shrimp and prawns were the top seafood import, with $1.9 billion worth from India.

      The largest source of U.S. seafood imports overall with $3.1 billion total was Canada, which leads in lobster, crab, and whole fish imports. It was followed by Chile at $2.1 billion, primarily for parts of fish (fillet or meat, fresh or chilled).

      Other Foods: Oils, Grains, Coffee, and More

      There are plenty of other types of foods and agricultural products that the U.S. relies on other countries for. Here are the largest single-origin U.S. food imports for the remaining categories:

      Some of the highest and potentially surprising exports? Imports of refined Canadian canola oil totaled $1.4 billion in 2020, while Vietnam exported a whopping $960 million worth of cashews to America.

      A Global Plate: The Diversity of U.S. Food Imports

      The amount and value of food imported to the U.S. highlights the diversity of consumer preferences and the importance of global food stocks, considering America is one of the world’s leading food producers.

      With countries having to rely on others to satisfy demand for limited production supply or exotic foods, the interconnectedness of the global food system is both vital and delicate.

      What’s clear is that the U.S. food plate is indeed a global one, with many foods taking remarkable journeys from farm to fork.

      Tyler Durden
      Tue, 08/22/2023 – 21:05

    • 204 Chicago Homicides In Mayor Johnson's First 100 Days, Including Four Teenagers Killed Last Weekend
      204 Chicago Homicides In Mayor Johnson’s First 100 Days, Including Four Teenagers Killed Last Weekend

      By Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner of Wirepoints

      It would be naïve to think that a progressive Chicago mayor could actually reduce the city’s crime numbers during his first 100 days in office, but Brandon Johnson did have a real opportunity to flip the trajectory. Chicago’s crime had already hit its post-George Floyd, post-covid highs in 2022 (see appendix) and Mayor Lori Lightfoot had made a major mess of policing and criminal justice. Johnson had a perfect chance to lead, and maybe even bring the crime numbers down.

      Unfortunately, Johnson has refused to even try to tamp down on crime during his first 100 days. If anything, he’s doubled down on the city’s long-running soft-on-crime approach. He continues to reject calling out the city’s violence for what it is, downplaying mob actions and resorting to semantics. And he keeps talking and talking about ‘root causes,’ but refuses to stop what’s happening nightly on the city’s streets. 

      His failure to act means the bloodshed continues. New Chicago Police CompStat numbers show during Johnson’s first 100 days a total of 204 murders – far more than the mayor’s two immediate predecessors. And in all, major crimes during Johnson’s first 100 days are up 25 percent compared to the same time period last year.

      The events of last weekend capture the essence of the city’s terrible violence, with 40 shot and seven murdered, including four teens (credit to ABC7 for the details):

      • A 14-year-old boy was fatally shot in his head and chest on Chicago’s South Side, police said. The shooting happened in the 8700-block of South Cregier Avenue at about 6:51 p.m. 

      • A 16-year-old boy has died after he was shot Friday at around 7:49 p.m. in the 4400-block of S. Lavergne on the city’s Southwest Side. CPD said the teen was struck multiple times to the body by gunfire.

      • A 17-year-old girl was shot to death at a West Side Park on Saturday afternoon. Chicago police said she, along with a 16-year-old boy, were shot while a block party was going on nearby. The shooting happened in the North Austin neighborhood’s 5700-block of West Bloomingdale Avenue at about 4:10 p.m.

      • An 18-year-old passenger of a car was shot and killed Friday night in the West Garfield Park neighborhood on the West Side. The youth was inside a car just before 10 p.m. in the 4300-block of West Maypole Avenue when someone fired shots, striking him in the head, cheek and abdomen, Chicago police said.

      In all, the total number of teens aged 18 and under killed since Johnson took office has grown to 33.

      The 204 homicide total during Johnson’s first 100 days is 25 percent higher than it was under Lori Lightfoot’s first 100 days and 33 percent higher compared to Rahm Emanuel’s back in 2011.

      And while it’s true that Chicago has experienced a decline in homicides – murders in 2023 are down 7 percent compared to the same period last year – the other big cities with the nation’s most homicides are seeing far bigger declines in murders YTD. Los Angeles homicides are down 24 percent this year, while Philly’s and Houston’s are down 21 and 23 percent respectively. New York is down 11 percent.

      And major crimes overall this year are still up 34 percent – on top of last year’s own 33 percent increase.

      Slower growth in crime?

      One claim Johnson might make is that he’s presiding over a decline in the growth of the crime rate since he took over. Major crimes are up 25 percent since May 15th (versus the same period in 2022), slower than the 42 percent increase that occurred during the nearly five months of 2023 when Lightfoot was still in charge. 

      But the “reduction” in crime growth can be attributed largely to the relatively stable number of motor vehicle thefts Chicago is experiencing in 2023 as compared to 2022, when an explosion in motor vehicle thefts began in June and peaked four months later. 

      The city’s crime rate has grown more slowly the last two months simply because Chicago isn’t experiencing the same massive growth in car thefts it had last year. 

      Note, though, that the actual number of car thefts in 2023 are running much, much higher than 2022 so far. Already, Chicago has experienced 17,000 car thefts in 2023 compared to “just” 8,000 in the same period last year. We just covered those numbers in detail in: Spree of robberies, car thefts drive Chicago crime to new highs.

      Root causes, real solutions

      A key point we have to make when discussing crime: Yes, root causes matter. Tremendously. 

      The lack of two-parent households matters. So does a lack of reading, writing and math skills. As does the city’s neighborhoods struggling with few jobs and fewer opportunities. All that has to be fixed.

      But reaching agreement on the causes and solutions of crime – even among allies – can take years or decades. 

      In the meantime, Chicagoans are suffering the consequences of a post-pandemic-high crime wave: more violence, more stolen and destroyed property, and more deaths.

      The short-term solution remains the same for Chicago: deterrence. As we’ve written time and again, that means a dramatic increase in policing, arrests, prosecutions and sentencing.

      Without such changes, Brandon Johnson’s next 100 days will continue to be bloody.

      A final point. The mayor has a unique position to speak directly to offenders and their parents and get them to listen. But so far he has squandered that, making no attempt to say that criminal conduct is deeply wrong. 

      Appendix.

      Read more from Wirepoints:

      Tyler Durden
      Tue, 08/22/2023 – 20:45

    • Watch: 'Good Guy' With Gun (& Six-Pack Of Beer) Takes Down 'Bad Guy' With Knife
      Watch: ‘Good Guy’ With Gun (& Six-Pack Of Beer) Takes Down ‘Bad Guy’ With Knife

      Authored by Athena Thorne via PJ Media,

      Today’s feel-good story comes to us from Cass County, Mich. A law-abiding gentleman with a concealed carry permit was picking up a six-pack of Miller Lite in his local gas station convenience store. Suddenly, 35-year-old Cordelius Anthony Martin burst into the establishment. “You know why I’m here,” declared Martin. He pulled a mask over his face and rushed the terrified clerk, brandishing a boxcutter.

      From the next aisle, our hero alertly watched the interaction. He would later explain to the police that he “could not see what was in the robber’s hand, but he could see the look of fear on the clerk’s face,” reported WOOD TV8 (video below). Cool as a cucumber, the carrying customer reacted as one expects a hero would: by calmly drawing his firearm and neutralizing the threat to the innocent store worker.

      Of the seven rounds our hero let off, at least three struck the armed robber: in the arm, the back, and the face. The bad guy went down. As he crawled toward the shooter, the alpha citizen realized he had time to run out to the car to fetch another loaded magazine, which he did. He then held the robber at gunpoint until the police arrived.

      Martin spent a couple of days in the hospital before being released — only to be arraigned on three charges, including armed robbery, and held on a $100,000 bond. A three-time felon, Martin faces life in prison for his latest escapade.

      It remains unclear whether the unnamed hero will face charges of his own. “In Michigan, obviously, we do have defense of others as part of the law, in Michigan, that you can defend others if they’re in a situation that there’s dangerous force being used against them,” Cass County Prosecutor Victor Fitz told WOOD TV8. “And certainly in this case, we’ll be looking at the facts in regard to that.”

      The store clerk says, simply, of the Good Samaritan, “He saved my life.” Plus, the hero has plentiful melanin levels in his skin, so he is presumably immune to hate crime charges. His prospects for remaining unmolested by excessive law enforcement look promising in this case.

      The incident occurred at the Stone Lake Marathon mini-mart on July 27, but police only recently released the footage. It can be seen in this report from WOOD TV8. Enjoy!

      Tyler Durden
      Tue, 08/22/2023 – 20:25

    • A Letter To Our Betters
      A Letter To Our Betters

      Authored by Eric Lundrum via American Greatness,

      To those who rule over us, though not by our own choice;

      To those who could not care less about this nation we call our home, but instead only care for their own power, glory, and enrichment;

      To those who consider themselves better than us, and view us with nothing but the utmost contempt:

      We know exactly who you are. Now, more than ever before, We The People have had the wool pulled from our eyes, due in large part to your own arrogance. You have ended up as our ruling class, through manipulation rather than merit, through deception rather than democracy, and through favoritism rather than free elections.

      And we know all this through the efforts of one man: The man that you are now attempting to sentence to hundreds of years in one of your gulags, all for the crime of exposing your treachery at the highest levels. Most simply, Donald J. Trump committed a sin that, in your eyes, is far more egregious than such trivial crimes as bribery, sexual impropriety, abuse of power, or even outright treason. President Trump’s only crime was to humiliate the lot of you, at every level and in both parties. The damage to your ego is a far greater offense than any actual criminal wrongdoing committed by many career politicians of days gone by.

      That is why you now hunt the man with all the relentlessness of Ahab pursuing his White Whale. And that is why we are now more resolved than ever before to stop you. Quite simply, the fight to save Donald Trump is the fight to save America: His struggle now is unlike any smear, intimidation, and character assassination campaign faced by any other political figure in American history. And it is only so because you have made it so. The more viscerally you react to him, and the more deranged your attacks against him, the more determined his supporters become to stand by him through it all.

      But this all goes far beyond President Trump.

      You dictate to us from your halls of marble, built ages ago by far greater men than you will ever be, and in so doing desecrate the memory of those who came before us. If our Founding Fathers could see the state of their nation today, they would either believe that the Revolution had failed; or, perhaps, they would even regret the Revolution altogether if this was the ultimate end result.

      You have actively led a widespread and systematic effort to erase our nation’s history, from the legacy of those very Founders to the statues and other monuments meant to stand through all of time as a tribute to their greatness. Whether by mobs of roaming thugs or by official decree, you have sought to tear down the very memory of those who built the nation that you now run.

      You speak down to us from your houses of glass, eternally – and perhaps deliberately – oblivious to the two-tiered society you have created for your own benefit and at our expense.

      You claim to fight for “democracy,” and yet actively obstruct the will of we, the 63 million, from the moment our chosen leader laid his hand on the Bible. Your bureaucrats determined that an archaic “interagency consensus” should override the desires of the American people and their elected commander-in-chief.

      When he called out the corruption of one of your leading political puppets, and suggested that such corruption should be investigated, you responded by putting him through a nakedly political impeachment trial. You made a crime out of noticing a crime, even after the former Vice President quite literally confessed to committing the corrupt act to which President Trump was referring.

      You used an over-exaggerated Chinese virus to take away our rights, our way of life, and our sense of self for several years, even while you continued to live your lives freely with your high-class restaurants and extremely essential hair appointments. As the masses starved, financially and otherwise, your very own Marie Antoinette declared “let them eat ice cream.” You even used the then-impending pandemic to enrich yourselves, with no consequences still to this day.

      When the second great disease of 2020 – vicious and violent race riots – tore through the country and devastated thousands of us little people, you actively cheered on the terrorists and agitators. Your PR teams in the mainstream media declared the riots to be “fiery but mostly peaceful.” Your future Vice President openly promoted an effort to release violent anarchists who had just destroyed the property of defenseless American citizens. And your friends in the corporate world, with their black squares and black fists, crowed their support for the violence which cleared out many small businesses that competed with their massive companies.

      And you let savages burn down our country over what? A career criminal, a man who threatened pregnant women at gunpoint, and who, in the end, met his demise not at the knee of his arresting officer, but at the hands of the drugs to which he was addicted. In response, your corrupt judicial system locked up the police officers who simply did their job by restraining a monster. When brave citizens took it upon themselves to fight off other criminals during that fiery summer, you similarly thrust upon them the whole weight of your so-called “justice system,” sometimes with deadly consequences. In a complete inversion that would stun even Orwell, you legalized crime, and then made it a crime to fight crime.

      Your so-called “intelligence” agencies spent years crafting the biggest lie in modern politics, and then doubled down when your narrative of “Russian collusion” was debunked. You then outdid yourselves with an even greater lie, declaring that the stolen election of 2020 was the “most secure” election in our history…and yet, in your arrogance, your propagandists in the rags of the media couldn’t help but admit, in their own smug way, that the election was indeed stolen from the man who was re-elected by we, the 74 million.

      For all your pearl-clutching over the events on January 6th, you have spent years ignoring previous or subsequent acts of violence carried out against government figures: You let protestors storm the Capitol in 2018 in protest of a Supreme Court justice’s confirmation, and you have cheered on as waves of radical, pro-transgender protesters storm state capitols all across the country. When lawmakers of your preferred party embrace such actions that are, by your own definition, “insurrectionist,” you instead make celebrities out of them.

      And yet you continue to shamelessly suppress the rights of hundreds of American citizens over that single short, peaceful protest at the U.S. Capitol. You have sentenced Americans who were not even present that day to decades in prison, with others sentenced to re-education routines more reminiscent of the U.S.S.R. than the U.S.A, determined to purge any “wrongthink” from the minds of rubes who, according to you, just don’t know any better. You even sent your agents to infiltrate the defense teams of unsuspecting defendants, proving that our judicial system and the very notion of the rule of law itself are nothing more than hastily-discarded suggestions for you.

      And once more, your mad power trip has even led to several good American men taking their own lives due to the endless misery to which you subjected them. But no statues are built of them, nor murals painted in their honor, nor streets renamed for them. That luxury is reserved for actual criminals.

      Since the fateful day your senile puppet seized power, your absolute disregard for the wellbeing of the American people has only made itself even more apparent. You have forced all of us to accept some of the most sickening beliefs and behaviors that this world has ever seen, as perfectly encapsulated by the perverse delusions of those who call themselves “transgender.” You have promoted the most vile of degenerate freaks ever to serve in the federal government, only relieving them of their positions after incontrovertible evidence of them committing multiple crimes.

      At the altar of transgenderism, you expressed more sympathy for a mass shooter than for the shooter’s underaged and Christian victims, declaring that the true victims were actually the shooter’s fellow “trans” people. To this day, your mobsters in law enforcement have forbidden the release of the shooter’s manifesto, knowing full well that her demented scribblings would confirm the true beliefs of all who suffer from this anti-biological affliction.

      When transgenders are not massacring children, they are indoctrinating them. You have demanded that America’s impressionable young children obediently accept these teachings, even if it means protecting rapists. If the father of a violated girl speaks out, you have your police beat and arrest him in a demonstration of your power. If more parents join his cause and speak out just as he did, your ersatz Department of Justice and faux Attorney General will label them as “domestic terrorists.”

      The same nonexistent attorney general has rather conveniently turned a blind eye to far-left agitators terrorizing Supreme Court justices in the name of their “right” to murder babies, despite such acts being clear violations of federal law. But he did find the time to revive dismissed charges against a pro-life pastor, even going so far as to have the man arrested at gunpoint by a swarm of agents, all in front of his screaming children.

      And in perhaps the single greatest crime against the American people, you have actively assisted a mass invasion of this fine land by foreign hordes, with the promise of a life in America paid for by We the People. You have even gone so far as to directly import these third-world defilers into our homeland, with your pseudo president openly cheering for the replacement of our people.

      You attempt to distract from such domestic crimes with grand overseas affairs; but these matters too have exposed your corruption and contempt for the American people. You single-handedly delivered the greatest military defeat in our nation’s esteemed history, producing nightmarish images that led to the entire world viewing us as a weak nation. You have continued to demand that We the People silently comply with an endless supply of our money going towards an equally endless conflict in Europe.

      Meanwhile, your installed president cannot even be bothered to comment on the devastating destruction of one of the most beautiful locations on Earth, which just so happens to be located in an American state. But this should come as no surprise: After all, this same Resident of the United States demonstrated his clear preference for the fake nation of Palestine over the American town of East Palestine.

      And all the while, the man now occupying our great White House is actively covering up his entire corrupt family’s past of enriching themselves at the expense of our national sovereignty. His son is free to commit crimes for which others have spent years in prison, knowing that his father’s government will give him the most generous of plea deals.

      So here we arrive, at our current state of affairs. This long train of abuses and usurpations which you have carried out for decades has culminated in the greatest offense yet against the American people, which just so happens to be the one thing that unites every faction of your shadow government: Your unholy hatred of the one man who is fighting for We the People, and the one man who could stop you.

      And that is why we will continue to support Donald J. Trump. That is why he remains the people’s president. Every time you attack him, he only grows stronger, as does our support for him. You continue dragging all of us towards the point of no return, the danger of the looming precipice only surpassed by the extreme thinness of the ice upon which you currently stand. Either you will take us over the edge, or the thin ice will break beneath you first.

      With your increasingly authoritarian displays of brute power and disregard for We the People, you have truly forced our great nation off the edge of the map. But, just as in physics, one law always applies in politics: No matter how far, nor how fast, the pendulum may swing in one direction, it will always, inevitably, swing back in the opposite direction.

      The position in which the pendulum of our nation currently resides has resulted in the Tree of Liberty becoming quite dry. It thus stands to reason that whenever the pendulum swings at last to the other side, it will end up in a position that will ultimately see a long-overdue flood of nourishment for the Tree.

      Tyler Durden
      Tue, 08/22/2023 – 20:05

    • A Sober Look At Four Indictments
      A Sober Look At Four Indictments

      Authored by Josh Kantrow via AmericanThinker.com,

      I’ve read the indictments and it seems that three of the four cases against Trump are pretty weak.

      Georgia (election interference)

      Using tweets to support a RICO case?  

      Come on.  

      Plus taking two and a half years to investigate and now pressing for a trial in six months, to interfere with the primaries, seems to be the very definition of election interference.

      D.C. (election interference)

      If lying politicians can be prosecuted for fraud, as Special Counsel Jack Smith proposes, we’ll need many new prisons.  

      The case impinges on Trump’s free speech rights.  Plus, how does Mr. Smith intend to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, Trump’s subjective belief that he knew that the fraud claims he was advancing were baseless?

      As to these two cases, as I’ve said since January 6, I’m not about to defend Trump’s post-election conduct.  But judgment should be left to voters, not jurors.

      New York (Stormy Daniels hush money payment)

      This indictment is based on falsifying business records to pay a mistress.  

      That’s normally chargeable as a misdemeanor payable by a fine.  

      That Alvin Bragg, who campaigned on getting Trump, has brought felony charges, while he fails to prosecute some cases involving violent crime, is ridiculous.  This case should be settled and go away.

      Florida (refusing to return documents)

      The strongest case.  Trump stepped right into it here.  His lawyers negotiated with the National Archives, DOJ, and others for over a year.  All he had to do was give the documents back.  But it appears as though he did not, then lied about it, then obstructed. 

      Here’s the overarching problem with the cases.  Prosecutors use their discretion all the time not to prosecute, as we see in cities across the U.S. where “progressive” district attorneys choose not to prosecute violent crime, or offer sweetheart deals.  The DOJ does this as well (Hillary and Hunter). 

      Yet in the case of Trump, state and federal prosecutors seem to be going out of their way to bring charges against Trump in venues highly favorable to the prosecutors.  Indeed, many of the counts involve novel, creative, and “unprecedented” legal theories.  This further sows mistrust that we have a two-tier justice system and increases the partisan divide.  Plus there are concerns as to whether Trump can get a fair trial in New York City; Washington, D.C.; and Fulton County, Georgia.

      As noted, the one exception to this is the Florida documents case.  While the DOJ could have used its discretion not to prosecute, as they did with Hillary and Hunter, for example, Trump owns this one due to his behavior.  This case, however, also was brought in the one venue that probably favors Trump.

      In my view, there is a grand bargain that would resolve this legal pile-up.  Trump agrees not to run for public office again, and in return pleads guilty to a few misdemeanors or low-level felonies, pays some hefty fines, and goes away.  The country can then move on to the serious problems it faces, most notably tackling the national debt, entitlement reform, securing our border, reforming our immigration system to allow for more skilled workers and less unskilled ones, figuring out how to deal with artificial intelligence (which may be an even greater disruption to our lives than the internet), and how to confront China. 

      All this is probably just wishful thinking on my part.  The hatred of Trump by the left may prevent prosecutors from dismissing some or all the cases in exchange for Trump not running.  Plus Trump hates to look like a loser, which is how dropping his candidacy may be perceived.

      Instead, these indictments may result in Trump gaining more support.

      If the goal of the prosecutors is to interfere in the Republican primaries to advance Trump to the general election, they may come to see they played with fire, and instead of burning Trump instead caught fire themselves.  

      All Trump has to do is flip 44,000 votes in three states in 2024 to regain the presidency.

      Tyler Durden
      Tue, 08/22/2023 – 19:25

    • Bud Light Backlash "Shows Little Signs Of Abating", Citi Warns
      Bud Light Backlash “Shows Little Signs Of Abating”, Citi Warns

      The Bud Light backlash shows no signs of stopping: AB InBev’s US volumes tanked 15.2% this past month, according to Citi, citing new data from Nielsen. The brewer has not apologized to its base drinkers for its tone-deaf transgender TikTok campaign in April. 

      Here are the main points of Citi analyst Simon Hales’ note to clients about “the ongoing backlash to Bud Light’s social media campaign”: 

      • ABInBev beer volumes dropped by 15.2% in 4 weeks.

      • Market average decrease: 2.8%.

      • Beer price/mix increased by 4.1%.

      • Total dollar sales for beer fell by 11.7%.

      • ABInBev’s total value share decreased by 484bps.

      • Beer value share dropped by 555bps.

      • Bud Light backlash persists.

      • Bud Light contributes to ~30% of the group’s US revenues (about 8% of the group).

      • Bud Light volumes: -29.7%; previously -29.9%.

      • Budweiser volumes: -25.3%; previously -26.2%.

      In the US beer, flavored malt beverage, cider, and seltzer markets, AB InBev is the only major brewer experiencing widespread declines in total value share and volumes in the last four weeks. 

      AB InBev’s brand portfolio is suffering at a time when US beer, flavored malt beverage, cider, and seltzer markets are marginally growing. 

      Citi’s Hales shows AB InBev’s sales are at a critical low — where either the brewer can revive demand through proper marketing — maybe an apology might work — or face a second exodus wave as drinkers switch to other beers. 

      An in-depth view of AB InBev’s declines by brand. 

      Hales shows Molson Coors has been one of the biggest winners following Bud Light Marketing VP Alissa Heinerscheid’s move to ‘nuke’ the brand with ‘woke’ transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. She was eventually fired. 

      In a separate report, Deutsche Bank analyst Mitch Collett warned Bud Light faced a 25% permanent loss of its business. 

      Billy Busch, the heir to the Anheuser-Busch dynasty, made a few recent television appearances, telling AB InBev that he would like to buy back the ailing brand to “make the brand great again” (free from woke). 

      Bud Light’s PR nightmare, combined with its summertime marketing flop, has failed to revive the brand (for now). Could consumers have finally seen through the façade and realized Bud Light has been handing them ‘piss water masquerading as beer’ for years? 

      Meanwhile, the new top-selling beer in the US is Modelo Especial. Epoch Times explained more:

      Modelo Especial is now the top-selling beer in the United States, surpassing Bud Light, whose popularity has plummeted in the midst of a lengthy boycott.

      Data from Nielsen IQ shows Modelo Especial’s sales at beer and grocery stores surpassed Bud Light’s for the entire year, according to CNN. Modelo got 8.34 percent share of dollars spent on beer, as compared to 8.28 percent for Bud Light from the start of 2023 to Aug. 12.

      “The fact that we became the number-one beer in America due to a competitor’s moves is not accurate,” Jim Sabia, executive vice president and managing director of Constellation Brands, said in a recent statement.

      Several brewers in the Mid-Atlantic region told us they’ve increased light beer production and expanded portfolios to take market share away from AB InBev. For those seeking a real American-owned beer, ditch the Belgian brewer in favor of local brewers. 

      More in the full note available to pro subs.

      Tyler Durden
      Tue, 08/22/2023 – 19:05

    • How Much Of Today's 'Racism' Is Manufactured?
      How Much Of Today’s ‘Racism’ Is Manufactured?

      Authored by Roger Kimball via RealClearPolitics.com,

      The real problem with racism in America today is that demand far outstrips supply. Where does the demand come from? Chiefly from our woke elites. It is they who understand that the charge of “racism” is a potent meal ticket and guarantor of institutionalized political power. Accordingly, they have a large stake in perpetuating the reign of racism. In this realm, too, incentives matter.

      It is also worth noting that many of these elite race cadets are white. Blacks are invited to participate in this theatrical production, but only so long as they play their assigned roles. They must mouth the pieties about “systemic,” i.e., perpetual, incurable racism. 

      The main narrative of this drama is racial conflict, enforced and perpetuated partly by a woke media machine, partly by governmental fiat. The real goal is the destruction of America as a meritocratic republic that cherishes individual liberty and the rule of law.

      These are points that Thomas D. Klingenstein makes in “Racism in America Today: A Real or Manufactured Problem?”, a powerful speech he delivered at the Women’s National Republican Club earlier this summer and just posted on his website at tomklingenstein.com.

      “To a very significant degree,” he argues, racism is a weapon “crafted by woke Leftists in order to overthrow the American way of life.”

      Klingenstein, chairman of the Claremont Institute, is refreshingly forthright. “To the woke Left I say, ‘if you want to destroy America, then we will fight you and defeat you. America is not yours to destroy.’” Hear, hear.

      This speech is full of hard truths.

      “Blacks commit more than 50% of the violent crime in America,” Klingenstein notes, “yet are only about 13% of population. The woke tell us this is due to racism, but Americans know better. We know that racism does not cause more crime, or out-of-wedlock births, or lower academic achievement.” 

      And here’s the kicker:

      “It is not racism but culture that causes outcome differences. But the woke make it very difficult for the rest of us to say it, because if it’s culture that explains outcome differences then the blame rests not on whites but on blacks.”

      That grinding sound you hear is The Narrative coming unglued. 

      Klingenstein is also clearsighted about the ultimate aim of the woke weaponization of race: “group outcome equality.” Most Americans, he points out, believe in color-blind advancement according to merit. Hence “these two goals are utterly irreconcilable. You can’t offer admission to college, medical school, law school, flight training, or anything else according to race and other quotas and, at the same time, offer admission according to merit. It’s one or the other: merit or group quotas.”

      Klingenstein is right: “These irreconcilable goals make this struggle a war,” a war in which “the woke Left seeks total victory.” We do not often acknowledge the uncompromising nature of this ideology. What it wants is not compromise, and certainly not conciliation. What it wants is the utter destruction of its enemy, which is us. 

      This generally unacknowledged home truth helps to explain why the word “racism” silences conversation and sends an anticipatory shudder of delight down the spines of politically correct vigilantes of virtue. Like the word “heretic” in an earlier age, “racism” is more weapon than word. Its primary effect is not to describe but to intimidate, ostracize, and silence. 

      What semantic significance it may command is overshadowed by its use as an epithet. Once  it is successfully applied to a person or practice, a sort of secular damnation, or at least excommunication, ensues. Seldom is there any appeal, let alone absolution. Those who blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, said St. Mark, cannot be forgiven. Racism is the eternal, the unforgivable, sin of our age. Those successfully accused of racism are beyond the pale, cast out into utter darkness. 

      It would be a tall order to explain why this should be so, but it seems clear, as Klingenstein notes, that charges of racism and the pursuit of power go hand in hand. 

      The deployment of power always attracts acolytes and entrepreneurs. So it is no surprise that a thriving cottage industry has grown up around accusations of racism. Elsewhere I have called the resulting enterprise “Racism, Inc.” There is no shortage of workers on that assembly line. On college campuses (but not only on college campuses, as such names as Al Sharpton and Ibram X. Kendi remind us), the bludgeon of “racism” is a popular and effective instrument of moral one-upmanship and social control, not to mention intellectual conformity and economic blackmail.

      Given the prominence of “racism” in today’s lexicon of moral opprobrium, it is curious that the word itself is of very recent vintage. Indeed, it is a neologism so recent that it does not appear in the 1971 Oxford English Dictionary. The Supplement to my edition of the OED (printed in 1961) introduces “racialism” – the “tendency to racial feeling; antagonism between different races of men” – but fails to provide an equivalent of our multipurpose imprecation “racism.” 

      Perhaps that fact is itself evidence of a particularly insidious form of racism – all the more insidious because it is unacknowledged. Or perhaps that fact, along with the recentness of the word in any currency, suggests that there is something artificial, manufactured, or even cynically manipulative about the tort it describes.

      Klingenstein’s speech reminded me of a profound observation made some years ago by the philosopher Sidney Hook.

      “As morally offensive as is the expression of racism wherever it is found,” Hook wrote, “a false charge of racism is equally offensive, perhaps even more so, because the consequences of a false charge of racism enable an authentic racist to conceal his racism by exploiting the loose way the term is used to cover up his actions.”

      Hook wrote that several decades ago. Tom Klingenstein reminds us that we have yet to catch up with it.

      Tyler Durden
      Tue, 08/22/2023 – 18:45

    • China Retaliates Over Fukushima Water Dump: Blocks Seafood Imports As Nobody "Wants To Eat Radioactive Salmon"
      China Retaliates Over Fukushima Water Dump: Blocks Seafood Imports As Nobody “Wants To Eat Radioactive Salmon”

      In July, the UN’s nuclear watchdog gave Japan the “greenlight” to dump ‘treated’ radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima plant into the Pacific Ocean. And now, the world braces for the first release of radioactive water on Thursday. What could possibly go wrong?

      Tokyo Electric Power Company (better known as TEPCO) will begin discharging 1.34 million tons of radioactive water that has accumulated since the 2011 tsunami destroyed the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant. It’s part of a $150 billion clean-up effort after the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. 

      On Tuesday, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida cleared TEPCO for the Thursday release at a meeting of Cabinet ministers. 

      Kishida said at the meeting that the release of the water is essential for the progress of the plant decommissioning and Fukushima prefecture’s recovery from the March 11, 2011, disaster.

      He said the government has done everything for now to ensure the safety, combat the reputational damage for the fisheries and to provide transparent and scientific explanation to gain understanding in and outside the country. He pledged that the government will continue the effort until the end of the release and decommissioning, which will take decades. –Bloomberg

      The discharge of radioactive water will be released over three decades and has been filtered and diluted. But that hasn’t stopped China and Hong Kong, some of the largest buyers of Japan’s seafood exports, from issuing warnings about bans on seafood imports from 10 prefectures if the dump begins. 

      Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee stated this week that he had “immediately instructed” trade officials to impose import control measures to “protect Hong Kong’s food safety and public health.”

      “The Japanese government insists on discharging nuclear wastewater into the sea.

      “This unprecedented decision and practice of discharging a large amount of nuclear waste over 30 years — regardless of the inextricable risks to food safety and the irreversible pollution and damage to the marine environment — is an irresponsible imposition on others,” Lee wrote in a Facebook post. 

      In July, Hong Kong banned seafood imports from the Japanese regions of Tokyo, Fukushima, Chiba, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Gunma, Miyagi, Niigata, Nagano, and Saitama. Hong Kong is Japan’s second-largest market, after mainland China, for seafood exports. 

      Reuters spoke with Halry Yu, 42, owner of the Japanese restaurant Hassun in Hong Kong, who said more than 90% of seafood sent to the city is from Tokyo. He warned:

      “If they ban imports that come via Tokyo, I think all sushi restaurants in Hong Kong will be in trouble. There are some seafood supplies from Osaka, but variety is limited.”

      Meanwhile, Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of the Chinese state-run Global Times, posted a model of the radioactive water being released that could “Pollute China and the US in 3 years” and “Pollute the whole world in 10 years.” He asked: “Anyone wants to eat radioactive salmon?” 

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

      Oddly enough, there has not been a peep about this clear and present ocean disaster from either the original Greta, or her new and improved version for mass-consumption replacement, Sophia Kianni. 

      Both social media teams of Kianni and Greta are either bashing oil companies this week or promoting the world is burning — still nothing on Japan. 

      Amidst the climate alarmists, Greta and her upgraded version, Kianni (touted as Greta 2.0), seem strangely silent on Japan’s attempt to destroy the oceans with radioactive water. The conspicuous absence of outrage and coverage makes some realize these kids are just puppets, something we’ve known all along, in which they promote nonsense climate ‘news’ to distract from the real disasters. 

      We still remember Greta. 

      Where’s the coverage on Japan Greta and Greta 2.0?

      Tyler Durden
      Tue, 08/22/2023 – 18:25

    • 14 US Cities Initiate New Globalist Climate Plan In Partnership With Soros & The Clintons
      14 US Cities Initiate New Globalist Climate Plan In Partnership With Soros & The Clintons

      Authored by Jack Hellner via AmericanThinker.com,

      The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group is a globalist enterprise with at least 14 partners right here in the U.S., and, they have set an “ambitious target” to convince the masses to give up meat, dairy, and private car ownership, as well as almost all flights, to supposedly save the planet and control temperatures forever around the current level.

      From RedState yesterday:

      Fourteen major American cities are part of a globalist climate organization known as the ‘C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group,’ which has an ‘ambitious target‘ by the year 2030 of ‘0 kg [of] meat consumption,’ ‘0 kg [of] dairy consumption,’ ‘3 new clothing items per person per year,’ ‘0 private vehicles’ owned, and ‘1 short-haul return flight (less than 1500 km) every 3 years per person.’ …

      The organization is headed and largely funded by Democrat billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Nearly 100 cities across the world make up the organization, and its American members include Austin, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Seattle.

      So 14 leftist cities in the U.S. have signed on to this commitment to take away freedom of choice from their citizens, while people suffer under rampant crime and children perform poorly in schools, but their priority is to take away milk, meat, and gas-powered cars. 

      Got it.

      Major funders and partners of the organization include George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Clinton Foundation, and The World Bank.

      Michael Bloomberg, the president of the group, is himself transported via gas-guzzling private jets and limousines, to his many mansions around the world.  From Fox News:

      Flight records show that Bloomberg’s private jets took more than 1,700 trips and emitted at least 10,000 metric tons of CO2 from August 2016 to August 2020, a Business Insider analysis found. A typical car emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide in one year.

      Bloomberg has access to multiple private jets, but he wants to limit us to one short-haul flight every three years.

      He probably pretends he cares about his carbon footprint by buying worthless pieces of paper called carbon credits.  His real estate portfolio consists of “at least 11 homes,” and he owns a fleet of luxury personal vehicles:

      To suit his luxurious fortune, he owns a Mercedes-Benz Maybach sedan. His Audi R8 is the one that shows athletic personification. Like a mandated SUV in the home of every celeb, Cadillac Escalade is tuned in black color. After not getting satisfied with one, he owns another fullsize SUV from Chevrolet.

      Bloomberg and other green pushers tell people their gas-powered cars are destroying the planet, yet he has a massive car collection of gas-guzzlers.

      They want to outlaw milk; does that include breastfeeding?  Pretty sure that’s a dairy product, and women and babies breathe out that vicious CO2, a non-pollutant, clear gas that makes plants thrive.

      These billionaires generate massive pollution and pollute people’s minds with talking points to indoctrinate the people to fall for pure propaganda.

      What you will never see in these articles or in these policies is scientific data that show a direct correlation between milk and temperature, cars and temperature, meat and temperature, the population and temperature, crude oil consumption and temperature, or CO2 and temperature.  The temperature fluctuates no matter what the other variables do.

      You will also not see any correlation between any of these variables and storm activity or sea levels.

      When there is no correlation, you can’t assume causation.  It is all a scam.

      The sole purpose of these big government policies by leftists is to control our lives.

      These billionaires and other leftists pretend they care about the poor and middle classes and small business, but every day, they show that is a blatant lie.  They are extremely dangerous to our survival as a great and prosperous country, as are all the journalists who regurgitate the talking points without asking questions or doing any research.

      Tyler Durden
      Tue, 08/22/2023 – 18:05

    • 'Bread And Water': Bankman-Fried Denied Vegan Meals, Adderall — And Is Running Out Of Anti-Depressant
      ‘Bread And Water’: Bankman-Fried Denied Vegan Meals, Adderall — And Is Running Out Of Anti-Depressant

      FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who was tossed in pre-trial detention until his Oct. 2 trial after he showed a journalist from the NY Times private writings from his ex-girlfriend and business partner, Caroline Ellison, and used a VPN in violation of a previous order not to, has been denied vegan meals and adderall, and has been subsisting on ‘bread and water,’ like many crypto bros who trusted their life savings to FTX before SBF and pals allegedly used those funds to try and stave off oblivion.

      Sam Bankman-Fried in the Bahamas in April. Credit…Erika P. Rodriguez for The New York Times

      Appearing before a Manhattan federal court on Tuesday to plead for a narrower indictment on securities fraud, wire fraud and other charges, attorneys for the embattled 31-year-old, who was never going to do well in prison, says he’s “literally subsisting on bread and water” and a scant amount of peanut butter.

      The hearing was the first since a judge revoked SBF’s $250 million bail, tossing him into the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York.

      SBF lawyer Mark Cohen says that the FTX founder hasn’t been given any Adderall since he was jailed, and has only a few doses left of antidepressant, Emsam. Cohen also argued that the legal team was struggling to cobble together SBF’s defense without access to their client.

      At Tuesday’s hearing, his lawyers said the jail’s failure to provide him with the medication Adderall to treat attention deficit hyperactive disorder – despite a court order for the facility to do so – and serve him vegan food would hinder his ability to participate in preparing his defense case. -Reuters

      SBF was led into court wearing leg restraints and a beige-colored uniform to appear in front of US Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn, where he pleaded “Not guilty” to seven new criminal charges related to making some $100 million in political campaign contributions using stolen customer funds, federal prosecutors allege, after dropping similar charges related to violating US campaign finance laws because the Bahamas threw a fit and ‘did not intend to extradite the defendant on the campaign contributions count.’

      According to Christian Everdell, another lawyer for the former billionaire, SBF hasn’t been allowed to review any of the millions of pages of evidence against him, a violation of his Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

      His lawyers also rejected a plan to allow SBF to use a laptop in the cell block of the courthouse to review the evidence with his lawyers two days a week from 9am to 3pm, which Everdell said was inadequate.

      “It means he cannot help prepare his defense,” he said.

      Bankman entered his ‘Not guilty’ plea in response to seven counts of fraud and money laundering contained in a revised US indictment. According to prosecutors, SBF’s alleged fraud scheme cost customers and investors billions of dollars.

      The case is US v. Bankman-Fried, 22-cr-673, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

      Tyler Durden
      Tue, 08/22/2023 – 17:45

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