Mar 01

Today’s News 1st March 2024

  • Obama's CIA Asked Foreign Intel Agencies To Spy On Trump Campaign
    Obama’s CIA Asked Foreign Intel Agencies To Spy On Trump Campaign

    Authored by Robert Chernin via RealClear Wire,

    The revelation that the U.S. intelligence community, under the Obama administration, sought the assistance of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance to surveil Donald Trump’s associates before the 2016 election is a chilling reminder of the lengths to which the Deep State will go to protect its interests and challenge its adversaries. (The Five Eyes countries are the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.) This bombshell, reported by a team of independent journalists, exposes a dark chapter in American political history, where foreign intelligence services were reportedly mobilized against a presidential candidate.

    The alleged operation against Trump and his associates, which predates the official start of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, is a stark example of political weaponization of intelligence. The involvement of foreign allies in surveilling American citizens under the pretext of national security raises serious questions about the integrity of our democratic processes and the autonomy of our nation’s intelligence operations.

    The narrative that has been pushed for years, that the investigation into Trump’s campaign began with an Australian tip about a boastful Trump aide, now appears to be a cover for a more extensive and coordinated effort to undermine Trump. If reports are accurate, British intelligence began targeting Trump on behalf of American intelligence agencies as early as 2015, long before the official narrative claims.

    The implications of this are profound. It suggests an unprecedented level of collusion between U.S. intelligence agencies and their foreign counterparts to influence the outcome of an American presidential election. The use of foreign intelligence to circumvent American laws and surveillance limitations represents a grave threat to our nation’s sovereignty and the principles of democracy.

    The fact that this operation was reportedly initiated at the behest of high-ranking officials within the Obama administration, including CIA Director John Brennan, only adds to the severity of the situation. Brennan’s alleged identification of Trump associates for surveillance by the Five Eyes alliance, and the directive to “bump” or make contact with them, illustrates a deliberate strategy to entangle the Trump campaign in a web of suspicion and intrigue.

    Moreover, the reported involvement of foreign intelligence in crafting the Russia collusion narrative not only delegitimizes the subsequent investigation but also highlights the willingness of certain elements within the U.S. government to exploit international partnerships for domestic political gain. This revelation demands a thorough and transparent examination to ensure that such abuses of power are brought to light and severely punished to discourage them from being repeated.

    As more details emerge, it is imperative that the American public demand accountability from those who orchestrated and executed this operation. The sanctity of our electoral process and the trust in our intelligence agencies are at stake. We must not allow the politicization of intelligence to go unchecked, nor can we tolerate the involvement of foreign powers in our democratic processes.

    Robert Chernin is chairman of the American Center for Education and Knowledge. He is a longtime entrepreneur, business leader, fundraiser, and political confidant, and has consulted on federal and statewide campaigns at the gubernatorial, congressional, senatorial, and presidential levels.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/29/2024 – 23:45

  • What Caused China's Quant Quake
    What Caused China’s Quant Quake

    While it has gone largely underreported in western media, in the past week China launched a war against both quant funds and High Frequency Traders, claiming they were responsible for the market crash observed at the start of February. But maybe Beijing does have a point, after all long-term readers will recall that one of our first crusades was against none other than US HFT funds, which first we and then others (Michael Lewis) exposed for manipulating markets.

    So what exactly happened, and what caused China’s quant quake?

    As SocGen strategist Puneet Singh explains, China did indeed go through a quant quake but this hiccup was mostly concentrated in the small- and mid-cap space. Indeed, while the CSI 1000 the CSI 2000 were down ~30% and ~34% respectively, the large cap heavy CSI 300 only lost 7.3%. The chart below left below shows that small- and mid-caps exacerbated price movements in Chinese equities.

    Looking at factor correlations (chart above right) clearly underscores the moves in Reversals and Risk factors (which includes vol and size). SocGen’s charts plot 5d moving average rank correlations between daily factor performance. As Singh explains, “stable correlations are inevitably required for quant strategies to work, but changes like what we saw destabilised quant models, and added to the underperformance.”

    Factor performance for reversals and size in the small-mid and large cap spaces underscored the thesis: we saw small caps severely underperform large caps over the beginning of the year, with the reversal factor getting affected as well.

    Just as was observed in the US during the August 2007 quant quake, moves of the magnitude discussed here inevitably result in spikes in volatility. Instead of using a close-to-close estimator, Socgen uses its preferred proprietary high frequency OHLC estimator (chart below left). This clearly shows how sudden the volatility pickup was in the small- and mid-cap space. This volatility spike becomes even more stark when compared to the large cap benchmarks.

    Rising risks also lead to limits being triggered and risk-based unwinding of positions. In a market which is then working on a fear motive rather than profit, liquidity dries up leading to larger jumps in prices even from small trades. This is what the bank’s proxy illiquidity indicator captures (chart right below). Once again, the spike in illiquidity in the small- and mid-cap space, versus the relative calm in the large cap space potentially added to this quant quake.

    As Singh concludes, even as this illiquidity measure remains elevated in the CSI1000, it appears to have ticked up over the last couple of days in the CSI2000, suggesting lingering risks and perhaps more pain to come.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/29/2024 – 23:25

  • "We Can't Wait": Speaker Johnson Demands Action On Border During 'Intense' Meeting
    “We Can’t Wait”: Speaker Johnson Demands Action On Border During ‘Intense’ Meeting

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

    House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has described reports that he was confronted by congressional leaders during an “intense” meeting over government funding and aid to Ukraine at the White House on Feb. 27 as “pretty accurate.”

    Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) makes a statement to the press as he hosts Israeli Speaker of the Knesset Amir Ohana at the U.S. Capitol, on Feb. 6, 2024. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    Speaking to Fox News on Feb. 28, Mr. Johnson was asked by anchor Sean Hannity if there was any truth to the reports. The Republican lawmaker explained that he was definitely at odds with congressional leaders over the crisis at the southern border, among other issues, during the meeting.

    “Well, their reports are pretty accurate. They said that I was on an island by myself, and it was me versus everyone else in the room,” Mr. Johnson said.

    “What the liberal media doesn’t understand Sean, is that if you’re here in Washington and you’re described as a leader that’s on an island by themselves, it probably means you’re standing with the American people,” he continued.

    “And that’s what I did yesterday, I reminded the president, and all involved, that the number one issue in America is that open border. The catastrophe that we have, that President Biden himself designed, that he caused and created and I told him, just as I have many times before, he must address it with executive authority. We can’t wait any longer,” Mr. Johnson added.

    Mr. Johnson was joined by congressional leaders including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) during the Feb. 27 meeting with President Biden and Vice President Harris at the White House, ahead of a looming government shut down.

    Officials also discussed potential funding for Ukraine during the meeting, with the White House having repeatedly urged Congress in recent weeks to pass a $95 billion foreign aid package, which includes $60 billion for Ukraine, $14.1 billion for Israel, and around $9.2 billion for humanitarian assistance in Gaza.

    While the package was approved by the Senate earlier this month, it has been stalled in the House by Republicans who are at odds over its lack of U.S. border security provisions and the additional funding for Ukraine.

    Lawmakers who attended the White House meeting, including Mr. Jeffries, later described it as “intense” while Mr. Schumer told reporters that he and all other attendees, had repeatedly pressed Mr. Johnson on Ukraine aid.

    “The meeting on Ukraine was one of the most intense I’ve ever encountered in my many meetings in the Oval Office,” Mr. Schumer told reporters.

    Ultimately, lawmakers were able to strike a deal in principle and avert a partial government shutdown set to take place at the end of this week, although another continuing resolution to fund the government at current levels will need to be passed under the deal announced on Feb. 28.

    Parts of the government would be funded through March 8 while the remaining would be funded through March 22, according to congressional leaders. A final text is widely expected to be available by the weekend.

    Congress Must ‘Break the Cycle’

    Meanwhile, a deal on extra aid to Ukraine and other nations remains at a stalemate.

    Mr. Johnson told Fox News it is essential that Congress “breaks the cycle” in the way Washington works and “reform budgeting and spending” going forward.

    U.S. border patrol agents process people entering the United States from Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico, on March 29, 2023. (Guillermo Arias/AFP via Getty Images)

    The House Speaker also stressed that Republicans will not give up the fight to ensure President Biden secures America’s borders.

    “The president has the executive authority to fix it right now, I told him at the White House yesterday one-on-one and in the group, I told him ‘Mr President, if you just issue an executive order that reinstates the Remain in Mexico [policy] … the agents, your own border patrol agents, told us it would reduce the flow by 70 percent, almost overnight,’” Mr. Johnson said.

    The House Speaker stressed the border crisis is a key issue for lawmakers, citing a rise in violent crime and murders, including the recent killing of university nursing student Laken Riley, allegedly at the hands of illegal immigrant Jose Antonio Ibarra.

    “There’s no question about it, this is a very dangerous time … America can’t stand for this any longer,” Mr. Johnson said.

    Jackson Richman contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/29/2024 – 23:05

  • Pentagon Chief: If Ukraine Is Defeated, NATO Will Be At War With Russia
    Pentagon Chief: If Ukraine Is Defeated, NATO Will Be At War With Russia

    This is the single most important, dangerous and highly revealing statement from a top defense official in the West in a long time… It also demonstrates the precarious urgency of the moment and the huge stakes going into the November US election. The world truly stands on the precipice of a nuclear nightmare with the following fresh assertion of Biden’s Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who said before Congress on Thursday: 

    “If Ukraine falls, I really believe that NATO will be in a fight with Russia,” Austin stated.

    What’s more is that this came the very day that Russian President Vladimir Putin warned things could easily spiral toward nuclear war in the scenario that NATO sends troops to Ukraine. Watch:

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    According to the fuller context of the Pentagon chief’s statements, he emphasized that more Washington funding is crucial for Ukraine in order to prevent a situation where “one country can redraw its neighbors’ boundaries and illegitimately take over its sovereign territory.”

    “We know that if Putin is successful here, he will not stop. He will continue to take more aggressive actions in the region. And other leaders around the world, other autocrats around the world will look at this and will be encouraged by the fact that this happened and we failed to support a democracy,” he added.

    “If you are a Baltic state, you are really worried about whether you are next. They know Putin. They know what he is capable of. And, frankly, if Ukraine falls, I really believe that NATO will be in a fight with Russia,” Austin said.

    What is even more alarming about this statement is that everyone now knows that Ukraine forces are in retreat at this very moment, especially after the Russian capture of the city of Avdiivka, and surrounding villages.

    Bloomberg on Thursday issued a report predicting total collapse of the Ukrainian front lines by summer, as the headline suggests (Ukraine Sees Risk of Russia Breaking Through Defenses by Summer): “Ukrainian officials are concerned that Russian advances could gain significant momentum by the summer unless their allies can increase the supply of ammunition, according to a person familiar with their analysis,” the report says. According to more from Bloomberg:

    Internal assessments of the situation on the battlefield from Kyiv are growing increasingly bleak as Ukrainian forces struggle to hold off Russian attacks while rationing the number of shells they can fire.

    Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said Thursday that mistakes by frontline commanders had compounded the problems facing Ukraine’s defenses around Avdiivka, which was captured by Russian forces this month. Syrskyi said he’d sent in more troops and ammunition to bolster Ukrainian positions.

    US DoD/Flickr

    So the consensus narrative and belated mainstream media admission is that Ukraine’s military is a mere months away from clear defeat, and the top US defense chief just said NATO will go to war with Russia “if Ukraine falls”.

    The conflict has reached a dire and perilously unpredictable moment indeed, and clearly the already slim chances of jump-starting serious peace negotiations to end the war are slipping away fast. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/29/2024 – 22:45

  • 'DMV' America: The Regime's Fani Willis Problem, And Ours
    ‘DMV’ America: The Regime’s Fani Willis Problem, And Ours

    Via Revolver News,

    The fantastic fall of Fani Willis is one of the great comedies of recent American politics. It’s the flagrant corruption of Hunter Biden, mixed with the stupidity of Jussie Smollett, the courtroom farce of the George Zimmerman trial, and the sky-high political stakes of a U.S. presidential election. It’s the joyous, healthy humor of seeing a wicked, ridiculous person be exposed and get exactly what she deserves.

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    Right now, it still isn’t certain whether Judge Scott McAfee will actually kick Fani Willis off her own case, but even if he doesn’t, the damage has substantially been done. The tenuous prosecution of President Trump in Georgia has already been badly delayed and discredited, increasing its odds of being tossed by a higher court and the odds of the public simply shrugging its shoulders even if this abortion of a case somehow lurches all the way to a felony conviction. Left-wing anti-Trump zealots are practically begging Fani to step aside of her own volition for the good of the anti-Trump cause.

    But they are unlikely to get what they want, for the same reason that this scandal happened in the first place: America’s regime elevated a clown-show affirmative-action incompetent who only cares about herself, told her that she was a big hero simply for existing, and now we are all reaping the consequences.

    But don’t laugh too hard at the left’s Fani Fiasco. Because lurking beneath the Fulton County farce is a dark look at an institutional decay in American life that has only just begun.

    Compare Fani Willis with, say, another prosecutor, an older one who represents America’s past: Robert Mueller.

    Robert Mueller’s investigation was born of deceit and dark political motivations, as befits a reliable government functionary. Yet for all Mueller’s faults, it was also a smooth and, in the end, relatively professional operation. When Mueller learned about the affair and improper text messages between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, he removed them both from the case, months before the story leaked to the press. While there is much to attack about earlier cases in Mueller’s career (for one, he helped to cover up the Saudi role in 9/11), his own personal life appears extremely boring, with a 50-year marriage to a woman he met in high school.

    Despite being the biggest story in the country with a vast whirlwind of rumors around it, Mueller’s own probe had minimal leaks. Despite enormous celebrity status thanks to a Trump-deranged left (remember these?), Mueller did very little to court publicity. His investigation rarely said anything, only briefly stepping forward to debunk a false anti-Trump report by Buzzfeed News. And, of course, when all was said and done, despite enormous hype and tens of millions of dollars spent, despite the entire American ruling class practically begging him to send the Bad Orange Man to prison, Mueller’s final report found no evidence of “Russian collusion” and brought no criminal charges against President Trump.

    Now, take in all of that and go back to the adventures of Flim-Flam Fani.

    Willis’s illicit relationship could have easily remained hidden, or at least inconsequential, if she had been even slightly less stupid. But she just could not help herself. It wasn’t enough to hire her lover. She had to make him special counsel on by far her most high-profile case, which would attract by a million miles the most press attention and the most expensive, diligent lawyers. It wasn’t enough to carry on a tryst with Willis. She had to go on one lavish vacation after another with him.

    Willis’s excuses for her behavior are the sort that require a lobotomy to accept. Her relationship with Willis was entirely appropriate and aboveboard, yet Willis felt compelled to hide it because, well, *mumble mumble*. Was Willis using her highly-paid lover as a conduit to get those vacations? Not at all. By happenstance, Fani just keeps $15,000 (15 large) in cash in her home at all times for just this sort of thing. And by golly, it turns out Wade liked to do the same thing. How handy!

    The Hill:

    The special prosecutor described Willis as an “independent, proud woman” who insisted on paying her own way and used cash for “safety reasons,” not to obscure the transactions. He also said he did not deposit the cash Willis paid him for their trips together.

    “You don’t have a single, solitary deposit slip to corroborate or support any of your allegations that you were paid by Mrs. Willis in cash, do you?” Shafer attorney Craig Gillen pressed.

    “No sir,” Wade replied, adding he would either “spend it or put it in my pocket or put it in the hotel’s safe.”

    “Safety reasons!” It’s the sort of lame lie that belongs alongside “Hunter Biden was a top anti-corruption expert.” Incompetent in a wholly stupid, almost lazy way, she covers her tracks with a tale that isn’t even meant to convince, just to make one sputter at seeing a person possibly get away with the thinnest excuse imaginable. The stupidity of such affirmative action cases so unfathomably defies conventional understanding that it extends beyond the merely ludicrous and would achieve an endearing, childlike quality were it not for the devastating consequences to the country.

    The American regime is groaning both in public and behind closed doors at the trouble Fani Willis has stirred up for them. But just as Fani deserves her ongoing humiliation, so do all of her enablers. They have asked, loudly and proudly, for every part of this.

    After all, Fani Willis is the avatar of DMV (DC, Maryland, and Virginia) America – the combination of racial caste system and kakistocracy that the American regime is determined to erect in what was once the world’s proudest meritocratic society.

    We have extensively chronicled the decay rotting out America as it pays for bad decisions made decades ago. We’ve covered the degradation of America’s power grid, its airports, and even its amusement parks. But just as glaring as any physical decay will be the decay in human capital—the disappearance of talented and morally upright people who are replaced by farcical parasites who bask in how useless and entitled they are.

    Back in the mid-90s, when Willis attended law school, her alma mater at Emory averaged a U.S. News ranking in the mid-20s—in the top quarter but also well outside the Top 14 that has traditionally designated America’s best law schools. And that’s frightful, in fact. We can safely guess that Willis was not an above-average Emory student, or even the median one. All of us know the truth: America has for decades run a pervasive race-based affirmative action racket in which students from preferred races get a huge boost to their college admissions.

    The odds that Willis scored below Emory’s median LSAT—and perhaps well below—are very high. The median black LSAT score is around 142 points, meaning that any score above 160 represents the top three percent of all test-takers. But if Willis was scoring in the top 3 percent, then frankly, she would have been able to punch a ticket to a top law school, like Harvard or Columbia, or, hell, at least Georgetown. Going to Emory, with the massive admissions boost she could count on based on skin color alone, indicates Willis’s LSAT score may have been frightful. There are, no exaggeration, hundreds of thousands of lawyers in America who are smarter and better-qualified to be prosecutors in a major American city.

    But Fani is the one we have.

    And you know what might be the funniest part? Fani is, in many ways, the cream of the crop.

    Say what you will about Fani cavorting with her boyfriend—she does, at least, manage to prosecute some actual criminals. That puts her far ahead of recently-departed St. Louis, Missouri, circuit attorney Kim Gardner. During her six-year run as the top prosecutor in America’s deadliest city, Gardner:

    • Let St. Louis’s murder rate balloon to 87 per 100,000, more than double the rate of Johannesburg and in the top 10 for all of planet Earth.

    • Admitted to paying for her personal apartment using campaign funds.

    • Criminally charged the McCloskeys for brandishing unloaded firearms at a BLM mob, then fundraised off said prosecution in such a glaring manner that a judge kicked her off the case.

    • Falsely accused police of pulling her over for no reason as an intimidation tactic—when, in fact, camera footage showed she was driving without working headlights.

    • Sued her own city under the Ku Klux Klan Act, alleging a vast racist conspiracy against her by the city government and police department.

    • Illegally spent two years secretly pursuing a nursing degree while still serving as a circuit attorney.

    • Repeatedly had to drop criminal charges against alleged murderers because her office just could not stop screwing up.

    In Baltimore, former state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby hoped to use the Freddie Gray case to launch her national fame. Instead, her shoddy, politically motivated prosecution of local police sent the signal that Baltimore was a free-fire zone, and the city soon became one of the most violent in the world. Then, just as things were getting a bit better, Mosby used COVID as an excuse to get even more lenient on crime.

    Mosby herself, meanwhile, became known for firing prosecutors she disliked and then threw in a dose of mortgage fraud for good measure. That should at least be enough to get her disbarred, sparing Marylanders from further Mosby shenanigans, but who knows? Maybe some lefty judge will rule that disbarring criminals is racist!

    Yet even Mosby is a model of public service compared to someone like Dolton, Illinois mayor Tiffany Henyard, who has recently become a minor celebrity for her brazen corruption.

    Tiffany Henyard

    The New York Post:

    Henyard was first elected in 2021 to lead the small town of 20,000 people about 20 miles south of downtown Chicago.

    She has come under scrutiny in recent weeks for a laundry list of antics, including accusations of blowing thousands in public funds on luxury travel and dining, turning local police into both her personal bodyguards and backup dancers for music videos, and hiring DJs for town meetings — all while the village falls $5 million into debt. …

    Dolton Trustee Kiana Belcher said former Dolton Chief of Police Robert Collins admitted the mayor forced him to target people.

    “She’ll have the police follow you and give tickets,” Belcher said. “I went out of town and she had one of the officers … give me tickets … It was a manipulation tactic.”

    When she confronted Collins, Belcher said, the chief didn’t hesitate to blame Henyard.

    “He looked down at me and said, ‘She told me to write them,’” Belcher said.

    Henyard was elected in February 2021, meaning she has now been trashing her city for three whole years. Yet, despite by all accounts being an obvious criminal, she’s still in office and still unindicted. Why would that be?

    Well, because the DA to bring those charges would be Cook County DA Kim Foxx!

    Kim Foxx

    Yes, that Kim Foxx: the one who tried to let Jussie Smollett off the hook, requiring a special prosecutor to swoop in and save the day. When she wasn’t giving favorable treatment to black celebrities, Foxx ordered her minions to avoid cash bail and to only bring felony theft charges against criminals with at least ten prior felony convictions.

    So, why would we expect Kim Foxx to hold a fellow soul sista accountable? For that matter, why would we expect anyone on the left to do it?

    The modern left has almost wholly abandoned traditional religious faith, but it certainly still has its priests and saints. And the narcissistic message, repeated day in and day out, is that black women are America’s sacred beings. Joe Biden ran on a promise to consider black women, and only black women, for his first Supreme Court pick—93% of Americans need not apply. The result was Ketanji Brown Jackson, who can’t say what a woman is but nevertheless thinks the entire planet should hear every inane thought passing through her head.

    As soon as Fani Willis’s own conduct threw the entire lawfare campaign against Donald Trump, years in the making, into doubt, the ethnonarcissist whining came tumbling out immediately: Criticizing a prosecutor for corruptly staffing her loser boyfriend onto a job he wasn’t qualified for was racist!

    It is our job to revere them and to listen to them (just don’t ever touch their hair!).

    We’re not even close to rock bottom, either. Remember, as we speak, Kamala Harris is a heartbeat away from the presidency.

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/29/2024 – 22:25

  • US Deploys "Project Maven" In Middle East As AI Warfare Underway
    US Deploys “Project Maven” In Middle East As AI Warfare Underway

    Remember in 2018 when thousands of Google employees protested its Pentagon contract called “Project Maven” that used article intelligence technology to analyze drone surveillance footage?

    Well, six years after Google did not renew its Pentagon contract for AI work to head off an internal rebellion, that very same technology was used by the US military to identify targets across the Middle East in bombing raids by fighter jets earlier this month, according to Schuyler Moore, chief technology officer for US Central Command, which runs US military operations in the Middle East, who spoke with Bloomberg. 

    “We’ve been using computer vision to identify where there might be threats,” Moore said in an interview. 

    Source: Bloomberg

    She continued: “We’ve certainly had more opportunities to target in the last 60 to 90 days,” adding the US is currently looking for “an awful lot” of rocket launchers in the region. 

    Moore’s comments provide some of the strongest evidence to date that the US military is using AI targeting systems to identify potential strike areas. She noted that even after Google walked away from the project, experimenting has continued with drone or satellite imagery. 

    Based at Central Command, or Centcom headquarters in Tampa, Florida, Moore revealed that US forces in the Middle East have been testing AI targeting systems using a combination of satellites and other data sources and conducted exercises over the past year with the technology. 

    “October 7th, everything changed,” she said, adding, “We immediately shifted into high gear and a much higher operational tempo than we had previously.” She noted the shift from exercises to real-life missions was “a pretty seamless shift” with Project Maven. 

    However, Moore emphasized that Project Maven’s AI capabilities only identify potential targets instead of automatically confirming and killing the target. 

    A separate Bloomberg report noted:

    “A growing number of US military officers predict that AI will transform the way America and its enemies make war, ranking it alongside the radio and machine gun in its potential to revolutionize combat.” 

    Insiders told Bloomberg that Project Maven’s core data-fusion platform is developed by Palantir Technologies, and involves critical contributions from Amazon Web Services, ECS Federal, L3Harris Technologies, Maxar Technologies, Microsoft, and Sierra Nevada.

    According to Colonel Joseph O’Callaghan, the fire support coordinator for the 18th Airborne Corps and its AI targeting efforts leader, Project Maven, “is not Terminator. The machines aren’t making the decisions, they’re not going to arise and take over the world.”

    America’s use of AI in warfare for targeting assistance is no longer theoretical. This could be the beginning innings of Skynet. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/29/2024 – 22:05

  • Watch: Mother Pushes 'They/Them' Pronouns On 15-Month-Old Baby At Gay Pride Event
    Watch: Mother Pushes ‘They/Them’ Pronouns On 15-Month-Old Baby At Gay Pride Event

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

    A video posted by the New Yorker which is going viral on X shows a mother asking people to refer to her 15 month old baby as a ‘they/them’.

    Yes, really.

    The baby is wearing a frilly pink, yellow and blue dress as the mother walks it through the pride parade.

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    “How old is she?” asks another person.

    “They are 15 months old,” the mother responds, adding, “We actually use them/them pronouns until they tell us who they are.”

    The mother then explains how, “We are pulling apart this idea of sex which is related to genitals and gender which is related to how you move in the world, so what you wear, how you share your identity with other people, all of those things are related to gender.

    Respondents on X accused the mother of using her baby as a prop for her own demented political ideology.

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    As we previously highlighted, under new rules introduced by the Biden administration, foster parents will be forced to “affirm” the gender identity of children in their care or risk being refused permission to become foster parents in the first place.

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    Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/29/2024 – 21:45

  • Election Embezzlement: Harris Says Administration To Pay College Students To Register Voters
    Election Embezzlement: Harris Says Administration To Pay College Students To Register Voters

    Like the increasingly brazen thievery in America’s cities, the Democrats’ use of government resources to reinforce their hold on power is becoming more blatant by the day. 

    The latest: On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris announced the federal government will start paying college students to register voters and serve as poll workers. College students and young people in general historically lean heavily Democratic: Biden received 65% of votes cast by 18- to 24-year-olds in the 2020 election, compared to 51% overall. 

    “We have been doing work to promote voter participation for students,” said Harris as she met with activists representing more than 20 voting rights groups. “For example, we have under the Federal Work-Study program now allow students to get paid through Federal Work-Study to register people and to be non-partisan poll workers. As we know, this is important for a number of reasons. One, to engage our young leaders in this process and activate them in terms of their ability to strengthen our communities.”

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    “Curious how they chose college students and not veterans,” said New Hampshire state Rep. Ross Berry. “Almost like this is just a scheme to register Democrats and not actually increase participation of all voters. In most states, the areas they are targeting already have these programs under the National Voter Registration Act, so why the sudden interest in injecting college students? I think we know the answer.”

    Further tipping the self-serving slant of its taxpayer-funded voter-registration machinery, the Biden administration chose the Juneteenth holiday — which commemorates the abolition of slavery — as one of three occasions on which it will have registration blitzes, Axios reports. Biden won the 2020 black vote by a 92% to 8% margin. Another push will come on the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act.

    It doesn’t stop there. Harris said the administration has also ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to send voter registration solicitations to Americans who’ve obtained health insurance via the Affordable Care Act marketplace. According to a 2017 Cal-Berkeley study, “Republicans are fully 12 percentage points less likely to purchase marketplace plans than Democrats.”

    Students promoting voter registration at North Carolina historically black colleges and universities in 2022 (via Common Cause)

    Federal employees, whose 2019 party identification skewed Democratic by a 50% to 26% margin, get free time off to vote — even if they choose to do so during early voting. 

    The announcement that taxpayer funds will be used to pay a Democrat-leaning demographic to find new voters to register comes a week after Biden, defying the Supreme Court, cancelled another $1.2 billion in student debt — in a thinly-veiled scheme to use your money to buy votes.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/29/2024 – 21:25

  • A Global, Digital Coup d'État
    A Global, Digital Coup d’État

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

    There was a time.

    What seemed to be unfolding was a huge intellectual error for the history books.

    A new virus had come along and everyone was freaking out and smashing all normal social functioning.

    The excuse turns out just to be the cover story. Still, it bears examination.

    Even though plenty of outside commentators said the pathogen should be handled in the normal way—with known treatment and calm while those most susceptible stayed cautious until endemicity—some people on the inside fell prey to a great fallacy. They had come to believe computer models over known realities. They thought that you could separate everyone, drive down infections, and then the virus would die out.

    This was never a plausible scenario, as anyone who knew something about the history of pandemics would report. All known experience stood against this cockamamie scheme. The science was very clear and widely available: lockdowns do not work. Physical interventions in general achieve nothing.

    But, hey, they said it was an experiment born of new thinking. They would give it a whirl.

    When it became clear that the lockdowners had gained sway over policy, many of us thought, truly, how long can this really last? A week, maybe two. Then we would be done. But then something strange happened. The money began to flow. And flow. The states thought that was awesome so they kept it up. The money printers got to work. And general chaos broke out: social, cultural, educational, economic, and political.

    It all happened so fast. The months rolled on with no break in the narrative. It became crazy after a time. There were so few critics. We didn’t know it but they were being silenced by a new machinery that had already been constructed for this purpose.

    Among that which was censored was criticism of the inoculation potion that was being rolled out and which would eventually be forced on populations all over the world. They said it was 95 percent effective, but it wasn’t clear what that could mean. No coronavirus had ever been controlled by any vaccination. How could this be true? It wasn’t true. Nor did the shot stop the spread.

    Many people said this at the time. But we couldn’t hear them. Their voices were muffled or silenced. The social media companies had already been taken over by government-connected interests working on behalf of intelligence agencies. We had believed that these tools were designed to increase our connections with others and enable free speech. Now they were being used to broadcast a preset regime narrative.

    Strange industrial shifts took place. Gas cars were deprecated in favor of a new experiment in electric vehicles, thanks to intense consumer demand caused by shortages owing to supply chain breakages. Digital learning platforms got a huge boost because physical classrooms were closed. Online ordering and doorstep delivery became the rage because people were told not to leave their homes and small businesses were forcibly closed.

    The pharma companies were riding high of course, gradually acculturating the population to a subscription model. There were attempts to convert whole countries to a health passport system. New York City tried this, along with actual physical segregation of the entire city, with the vaccinated considered clean while the unvaccinated were not allowed into restaurants, libraries, or theaters. The digital app didn’t work however, so that plan fell apart quickly.

    All of this happened in less than one year. What began as an intellectual error in public health ended up looking like a digital coup d’état.

    Coups of the past featured rebel armies from the hills storming the cities and joined by the military as they invaded the palace and the leader and his family fled in a carriage or helicopter depending on the epoch.

    This was different. It was organized and planned by intelligence agencies within the structure of the global state, a great reset to reject the forms of the past and replace them all with a new dystopia.

    Initially, the people who said this was a great reset were derided as crazed conspiracy theorists. But then it turned out that the head of the World Economic Forum (WEF), Klaus Schwab, had written a book by the very title that you could buy from Amazon. It turns out to be H.G. Wells’s “The Open Conspiracy” updated for the 21st-century technology.

    There turns out to be much more than that. There was an angle to all of this that impacts the mechanisms we use for democratic control of societies. Buried in the flurry of bills shoved through in March 2020 was a liberalization of balloting and voting that would never have been tolerated before. In the name of social distancing, mail-in ballots would become the norm, along with the known irregularities they introduce.

    Implausibly, this too was part of the plan.

    Researching and realizing all of this in real time has been a bit much. It has shattered the old ideological paradigms. The old theories no longer explain the world as it is unfolding. It causes all of us to revisit our priors, at least those with minds adaptable enough to pay attention. For vast swaths of the intellectual class, this is not possible.

    Looking back, we should have known something was up at the outset. There were too many anomalies. Were the people in charge really so stupid as to believe that you can make a virus go away by making everyone stay home? It’s absurd. You cannot control the microbial kingdom this way, and surely everyone with a modicum of intelligence knows this.

    Another clue: there never was an exit plan. What exactly was fourteen days of frozen activity going to achieve? What was the benchmark of success? We were never told. Instead, the elites in media and government simply encouraged fear. And then met that fear with ridiculous protocols like dousing ourselves with sanitizer, masking while walking, and presuming every other person is a disease vector.

    This was psychological warfare. To what end and how ambitious are these hidden plans for us?

    Only four years later, we are grasping the fullness of what was going down.

    For those of us schooled in the persistent incompetence of government to get anything right, much less deploy a plan with anything like precision, elaborate conspiracy theories of plots and schemes always seem implausible. We just don’t believe them.

    This is why it took us so long to see the fullness of what was deployed in March 2020, a scheme that combined a plethora of seemingly disparate governmental/industrial ambitions including:

    1) rollout of subscription/platform model of Pharma distribution,

    2) mass censorship,

    3) election management/rigging,

    4) universal basic income,

    5) industrial subsidies to digital platforms,

    6) mass population surveillance,

    7) cartelization of industry,

    8) shift in income distribution and entrenchment of administrative state power,

    9) crushing of ‘populist’ movements worldwide, and

    10) the centralization of power generally speaking.

    To top it off, all these efforts were global in scope. This whole model truly stretches the bounds of plausibility. And yet all the evidence points to exactly the above. It just goes to show that even if you don’t believe in conspiracies, conspiracies believe in you. It was a digital-age coup d’état unlike anything humanity has ever experienced.

    How long will it take us to process this reality? We seem to be only at the early stages of understanding, much less resisting.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/29/2024 – 21:05

  • Leaked Military Files Show Russia's Nuclear Strike Threshold Lower Than Previously Known
    Leaked Military Files Show Russia’s Nuclear Strike Threshold Lower Than Previously Known

    This week the Financial Times has published contents of a cache of leaked classified Russian documents said to lay out the country’s doctrine and strategy for tactical nuclear weapons use. Included in the documents is info on the Kremlin’s minimum criteria for using tactical nukes.

    The criteria outlined in the secret files range “from an enemy incursion on Russian territory to more specific triggers, such as the destruction of 20% of Russia’s strategic ballistic missile submarines,” according to FT.

    Images: Getty & Wikimedia 

    The question of the possibility of Russia and NATO stumbling toward nuclear war is without doubt heavy on the minds of many this week, especially after French President Emmanuel Macron’s Monday comments wherein he raised sending Western troops to fight Russia in Ukraine and said of the possibility, “nothing should be ruled out.”

    Putin appeared to respond directly in his Thursday state of the nation televised address, spelling out: “Everything that they are coming up with now, with which they threaten the entire world – all this really threatens a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons, and therefore the destruction of civilization – don’t they understand this, or what?“

    “They must ultimately understand that we also have weapons – and they know about it, just as I now said  – we also have weapons that can hit targets on their territory,” he warned.

    As for tactical nuke usage, Russia’s tactical arsenal has more limited range in comparison to strategic weapons, and thus are designed and intended for the possibility of a ‘nearer’ war in Europe or Asia. 

    But worrisomely, the FT review of the documents (which date from 2008-2014) finds that the Kremlin likely has a threshold “lower than Russia has ever publicly admitted, according to experts who reviewed and verified the documents.” Experts cited in the FT say the contents of the leaks likely remain part of Moscow’s current nuclear doctrine.

    The documents show that Russia has recently rehearsed scenarios involving war with China. Per the leaks and the FT report:

    One exercise outlining a hypothetical attack by China notes that Russia, dubbed the “Northern Federation” for the purpose of the war game, could respond with a tactical nuclear strike in order to stop “the South” from advancing with a second wave of invading forces.

    “The order has been given by the commander-in-chief . . . to use nuclear weapons . . . in the event the enemy deploys second-echelon units and the South threatens to attack further in the direction of the main strike,” the document said.

    And for another scenario involving a hypothetical enemy invasion of Russian territory: 

    A separate training presentation for naval officers, unrelated to the China war games, outlines broader criteria for a potential nuclear strike, including an enemy landing on Russian territory, the defeat of units responsible for securing border areas, or an imminent enemy attack using conventional weapons.

    The slides summarise the threshold as a combination of factors where losses suffered by Russian forces “would irrevocably lead to their failure to stop major enemy aggression”, a “critical situation for the state security of Russia”.

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    Another envisioned situation seems to apply more for something like a Ukraine escalation scenario where there’s runaway escalation. According to the FT’s analysis and citations of the documents:

    Other potential conditions include the destruction of 20 per cent of Russia’s strategic ballistic missile submarines, 30 per cent of its nuclear-powered attack submarines, three or more cruisers, three airfields, or a simultaneous hit on main and reserve coastal command centres.

    Russia’s military is also expected to be able to use tactical nuclear weapons for a broad array of goals, including “containing states from using aggression […] or escalating military conflicts”, “stopping aggression”, preventing Russian forces from losing battles or territory, and making Russia’s navy “more effective”.

    The particular above section has language in it which seems to lay out the most minimal threshold, but which perhaps leaves open the most interpretation for Russian leadership. Publicly at least, Kremlin leadership has said nuclear weapons could only be deployed if Russian territory and population face existential threat.

    Putin in his aforementioned Thursday major address seemed to appeal in his nuclear warning given to NATO to this doctrine of “containing states from using aggression” – given that’s precisely what he’s now accusing the West of in Ukraine.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/29/2024 – 20:45

  • Lloyd Austin: Israel Killed "Over 25,000" Women & Children In Gaza
    Lloyd Austin: Israel Killed “Over 25,000” Women & Children In Gaza

    Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

    Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Thursday that Israel has killed over 25,000 Palestinian women and children in Gaza since October 7.

    When asked how many women and children have been killed during a House Armed Services Committee, Austin replied, “It’s over 25,000.” The number is higher than the estimate that’s been put out by Gaza’s Health Ministry.

    Getty Images

    The Gaza ministry said on Thursday that over 30,000 have been killed so far and has consistently said about 70% of the casualties are women and children, which puts the women and child death toll around 21,000.

    Gaza’s Health Ministry does not account for the thousands of civilians who are missing and presumed to be dead under the rubble or for Palestinians who may have been buried instead of being sent to a hospital or morgue.

    The breakdown of communications in the Gaza Strip has also impeded the Health Ministry’s ability to keep a count.

    In October, President Biden accused the Palestinians of lying about the death toll when confronted about civilian casualties. “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed,” Biden said.

    But a few weeks later, Barbara Leaf, assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, acknowledged Gaza’s Health Ministry has always been reliable and said the true death toll is likely higher than what they’re reporting. Israeli media reports have also said that Israeli military officials believe the Health Ministry’s numbers are close to accurate.

    Austin, a former Raytheon board member, also said the US had provided Israel with 21,000 munitions since October 7 to support the massacre, which does not include the American-provided bombs Israel was already armed with, as it receives $3.8 billion in military aid from the US each year.

    Watch the moment Secretary Austin addressed casualties in Gaza…

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    Despite the massive civilian casualty rate and the International Court of Justice ruling that it’s “plausible” Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, the US continues to provide unconditional military support and political cover.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/29/2024 – 20:25

  • "Everything Is Gone": Texas Wildfire Ravages America's Cattle-Mecca
    “Everything Is Gone”: Texas Wildfire Ravages America’s Cattle-Mecca

    A devastating wildfire ravages parts of the Texas Panhandle, home to more than 85% of the state’s cattle herd. This comes when the nation’s cattle herd has collapsed to a seven-decade low, pushing up retail beef prices at the supermarket to record high levels. 

    Texas A&M Forest Service said the wildfire, called Smokehouse Creek fire, has scorched more than 850,000 acres (344,000 hectares) of grasslands as of Wednesday. 

    Source: Bloomberg 

    Reuters spoke with state Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who warned the wildfire has likely killed tens of thousands of livestock and destroyed grain in storage bins. 

    “It’s almost like gasoline when it goes up,” Miller said, adding, “We have now lost over a million acres.

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    Miller said the wildfire rages in the Panhandle area, where 85% of the state’s herd is located. It’s important to note that Texas is the top cattle producer in the nation. He said cattle in feedlots and dairies are safe. 

    “Feed supplies are scarce for surviving cattle because the fire destroyed grazing lands and bins holding crops like wheat and corn,” he said.

    Miller continued: “There’s absolutely zero vegetation. The cattle that do survive, they have absolutely nothing to eat.”

    Readers have been well informed about ‘beeflation’ and why it’s happening: 

    The latest data from the US Department of Agriculture’s biannual cattle inventory report earlier this month showed that the US cattle herd (as of Jan. 1) fell 2% from a year ago to 87.2 million cattle. That’s the smallest herd count since 1951. 

    Source: Bloomberg 

    A shrinking herd has pushed US retail beef prices to a record of $5.35 per pound. And prices could go much higher. 

    In a separate interview with Bloomberg, Miller said: “I know ranchers up there — families that have had these ranchers for more than 100 years — everything is gone.” 

    Meanwhile, elites in the WEF cult have been pushing hard to ban cow farts because they allege it’s contributing to climate change. These folks are adamant about resetting the global food supply chain to one that puts working poor folks on a bug-heavy diet. 

    We, the people, will not eat bugs.

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    Now, more than ever, Americans must break out of the food industrial complex and start their own farms or simply buy from local mom-and-pop farms. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/29/2024 – 20:05

  • Sen. Cotton Asks Pentagon Why Airman Who Self-Immolated Was Allowed To Serve
    Sen. Cotton Asks Pentagon Why Airman Who Self-Immolated Was Allowed To Serve

    Authored by Aaron Pan via The Epoch Times,

    Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has questioned why the Pentagon allowed an active-duty airman, who set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington on Feb. 25, to serve in the U.S. Air Force.

    In a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin dated Feb. 28, Mr. Cotton sought answers from the Department of Defense (DOD) over the incident.

    “You have made it a top priority to address ‘extremism’ amongst our total force, and this act of horrific violence—in support of a terrorist group—raises serious questions about how this individual was allowed to serve on active duty,” Mr. Cotton wrote.

    Aaron Bushnell, 25, a member of the U.S. Air Force, self-immolated in protest against Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip that followed the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas.

    Before setting himself on fire, he said he would “no longer be complicit in genocide” and would therefore “engage in an extreme act of protest,” repeating the phrase “free Palestine.”

    The man passed away as a result of his severe injuries.

    In a press release, Mr. Cotton said Mr. Bushnell’s actions show that he “obviously harbored extreme, anti-American views.”

    Mr. Cotton asked the DOD to provide information if its anti-extremism training program “addresses support for Islamic terrorist groups like Hamas.” He also wanted to know whether the airman showed any “extremist leanings” or “concerning behavior” before the self-immolation incident and if the DOD took any action to deal with such a concern.

    The senator from Arkansas also wanted to know if the Pentagon found any Islamic terrorist support groups within the department and whether any service members were involved in anti-Israeli protests that violated DOD regulations on restricted political activities.

    Mr. Cotton, a member of the Armed Services Committee, asked if the man had access to classified information that undermined U.S. national security. The senator set a March. 7 deadline for the DOD to answer his questions.

    The Epoch Times has reached out to the Pentagon for comment.

    The self-immolation incident comes more than four months into the Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip, which began in response to the Oct. 7 attacks in southern Israel by the Hamas terrorist group. The attack killed 1,200 Israeli civilians and security personnel.

    According to the U.S. Air Force, Mr. Bushnell was a cyber defense operations specialist for the 531st Intelligence Support Squadron at Joint Base San Antonio in Texas. He had been on active duty since May 2020.

    The Air Force sent condolences to Mr. Bushnell’s family after the incident. “When a tragedy like this occurs, every member of the Air Force feels it. We extend our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Senior Airman Bushnell,” Col. Celina Noyes, commander of the 70th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing, said in a statement on Monday.

    The incident happened as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seeks cabinet approval for a military operation in Rafah, in southern Gaza, while a temporary cease-fire deal is being negotiated. Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, however, has drawn criticism, including allegations of genocide against Palestinians.

    Israel has adamantly denied the genocide allegations and says it is carrying out operations in accordance with international law.

    It is not the first self-immolation incident related to anti-Israel protests. Last December, a man also set himself on fire outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta.

    Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said at the time that it was “an act of extreme political protest” and did not believe it was connected to terrorism.

    Polls Show Majority of Americans Support Israel

    Israel is a longtime U.S. ally and receives billions of dollars in military support annually from Washington. Since the start of the war, the Biden administration has been actively engaged in diplomatic efforts to prevent the conflict from escalating into a wider regional war.

    A January poll by Gallup found that nearly 4 in 10 Americans—38 percent—think that Washington provides Israel with the right amount of support, 36 percent say that U.S. support is too much, and 24 percent say it’s too little. Regarding Palestinians, 31 percent of Americans think that they get the right level of support, and 33 percent say it’s too little.

    According to another Gallup poll in November, 50 percent of Americans approved of Israel’s military operation against Hamas, and 45 percent disapproved. A poll by the Harris Poll and HarrisX in October showed that most Americans were in favor of Israel in the war and opposed the Hamas terrorist group. Eighty-four percent of Americans sided with Israel in the war, while 16 percent sided with Hamas.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/29/2024 – 19:45

  • Seismic Shift: Indonesia Floods Market With Cheap Nickel, Sparking Wave Of Unprofitable Mines  
    Seismic Shift: Indonesia Floods Market With Cheap Nickel, Sparking Wave Of Unprofitable Mines  

    The global nickel industry is experiencing a seismic shift as Indonesia emerges as a major low-cost supplier, contributing to a collapse in prices of the metal used in everything from making stainless steel to high-grade batteries. 

    Nickel is trading at just above $17,400 a ton, according to the London Metal Exchange, down from $48,800 a ton in early 2022. 

    Miners are writing down their businesses and closing mines due to a massive drop in income. At least six projects were closed in Australia last year as Indonesia flooded the world with cheap nickel. Bloomberg notes the supply of cheap nickel could mean upwards of at least half the world’s mines could become unprofitable. 

    Christel Bories, the head of Eramet, told the Financial Times that Indonesia has the world’s largest nickel reserves and could soon account for 75% of all high-grade nickel production by the end of the decade. 

    “It has really made a big part of the old traditional players structurally non-competitive for the future,” Bories said, adding, “This is part of the industry will either disappear or be subsidized by governments.” 

    She continued: “The uncompetitive mines elsewhere will close. I’m not sure there will be so many governments deciding to subsidize big production with a lot of money just to compete with Indonesia production.”

    Bories’ gloomy prediction for the oversupplied nickel markets is similar to other mining CEOs, like BHP chief executive Mike Henry, who recently warned that its flagship nickel business in Australia could close in the next few months. He said help from the government “may not be enough” to save the company’s nickel operation in the western part of the country. 

    Two weeks ago, BHP wrote down the entire value of its Western Australian nickel mining operation. The firm reported a shocking 86% year-on-year plunge in net income for the second half of 2023. 

    Bloomberg pointed out that Indonesia’s move to flood the world with cheap nickel will keep markets oversupplied through the decade’s end. 

    “There is a serious structural challenge as a result of Indonesian nickel,” said Duncan Wanblad, chief executive officer of Anglo American Plc. The miner was forced to take a $500 million writedown on its nickel business last week. 

    Wanblad added: “They don’t seem to be letting up anytime soon.”

    The imploding nickel market is great news for electric vehicle companies, who were once battered by skyrocketing battery material costs during Covid. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/29/2024 – 19:25

  • Biden Blasted After Claiming Crime Rate Has Fallen To 50-Year-Low
    Biden Blasted After Claiming Crime Rate Has Fallen To 50-Year-Low

    Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

    Joe Biden was slammed online after claiming that the crime rate in the US has fallen to the lowest point its been in half a century.

    Biden has claimed that during the Trump Administration, “America saw the largest increase in murders ever recorded,” while “Under the Biden-Harris Administration, there has been a significant decrease in crime — including one of the largest yearly declines in homicides ever.”

    Respondents noted that Biden completely ignored a huge spike in violent crime in large, mostly Democrat run, cities.

    Biden made the comments while touting a fact sheet on what he’s done to “fight crime.”

    Others noted that the drop in overall crime can be attributed to a massive reduction in reporting of crime stats and simply making things that were previously criminal no longer crimes.

    Meanwhile, when you glance at the news…

    More…

    *  *  *

    Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/29/2024 – 19:05

  • Federal Judge Blocks New Texas Law To Arrest Illegal Immigrants
    Federal Judge Blocks New Texas Law To Arrest Illegal Immigrants

    By Jack Phillips of Epoch Times,

    A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked a Texas law that grants state police the capacity to arrest people who are suspected of illegally crossing the U.S.–Mexico border.

    The measure, called Senate Bill 4 and signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in December, was slated to go into effect on March 5, but U.S. District Judge David Ezra ruled that it violated the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy clause that grants the federal government sole authority over immigration matters. The judge also rejected Texas’s arguments that it was being invaded under the Constitution’s Article IV.

    In his order, Judge Ezra, a Reagan appointee, said the law would run afoul federal immigration laws and claimed Texas would then be able to “permanently supersede federal directives” and would “amount to nullification of federal law and authority.” According to the judge, that’s a “notion that is antithetical to the Constitution and has been unequivocally rejected by federal courts since the Civil War.”

    As a result, he argued, the federal government would “suffer grave irreparable harm” because other states would be inspired to pass similar measures. “SB 4 threatens the fundamental notion that the United States must regulate immigration with one voice,” he wrote.

    At a Feb. 15 hearing, Judge Ezra expressed skepticism as the state pleaded its case for what is known as Senate Bill 4. He also said he was somewhat sympathetic to the concerns expressed by Mr. Abbott and other state officials about the unprecedented influx of illegal aliens. Judge Ezra then added that he feared the United States could become a confederation of states enforcing their own immigration laws.

    “That is the same thing the Civil War said you can’t do,” he told the attorneys.

    A lawyer for the state of Texas argued in court that due to the deluge of illegal immigrants, enabled by drug cartels and smugglers, it is tantamount to an invasion and that Texas has the right to defend itself under the Constitution.

    But the judge said that while he is “sympathetic” to the state’s concerns, he appeared to be skeptical of the lawyer’s argument. “I haven’t seen, and the state of Texas can’t point me to any type of military invasion in Texas,” Judge Ezra said. “I don’t see evidence that Texas is at war.”

    Mr. Abbott, a Republican, has backed the law, saying that it would compliment his efforts to provide better border security, noting that his state has dealt with a surge of illegal crossings in recent years. Other measures that Mr. Abbott has implemented are a barrier in the Rio Grande, razor wire barriers at certain border crossings, and prohibiting federal agents tasked by the Biden administration with undoing these measures from accessing border areas in Texas.

    Other state Republicans who back the law have said it would not target immigrants already living in the U.S. because of the two-year statute of limitations on the illegal entry charge and would be enforced only along the state’s border with Mexico.

    Civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), as well as other groups in favor of illegal immigration, have said they oppose the measure. A director at the American Gateways group told the Texas Tribune she believes the law is “based on xenophobia and racism,” while not making “our communities safer,” without elaborating.

    Read the rest at The Epoch Times

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/29/2024 – 18:25

  • Hunter Finally Admits Joe Biden Is "The Big Guy"
    Hunter Finally Admits Joe Biden Is “The Big Guy”

    Hunter Biden on Wednesday testified to Congress that his father, Joe, was indeed “the big guy” referenced in an email pertaining to a business deal with a Chinese state-linked energy company that made the Biden family and friends millions of dollars. He denied, however, that Joe Biden ever received a 10% stake as was indicated in the text message.

    “At one point, we asked Hunter about the 10% for the ‘big guy,’” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told Breitbart News following the first son’s six-hour, closed-door deposition.

    “We showed him the email … And he said, ‘Oh, that was after my father left office.’” she told the outlet.

    Hunter then tried to downplay the 10% idea:

    What’s wrong with having a pie-in-the-sky idea? When he [Joe Biden] left office in 2017, it thought he was done. I had no idea was gonna run for president. What’s wrong with just some pie?’ … thinking that he [Joe Biden] could be in the business. –Breitbart

    Greene said that Hunter insisted that “there was no percentage for my father in the business,” and that the 20 speakerphone calls Joe Biden joined was considered normal.

    “He was saying it’s totally normal for your parents to call you,” said Greene. “He just totally kept on saying, ‘Oh, this is normal. This is normal.'”

    Greene also confirmed Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-KY) statement that Hunter testified he joined the board of Burisma Holdings to counter Russian aggression. “He said he was picked to serve on Burisma ‘s board to defend democracy and Burisma was stopping Russian aggression,” Greene said.

    Hunter’s stated purpose for joining Burisma’s board is a new claim that indicates bizarre reasoning never before revealed.

    In 2015, Burisma was under suspicion of money laundering and public corruption. Prosecutor Victor Shokin investigated the case before his termination due to pressure from then-Vice President Joe Biden, who threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid from Ukraine if the Ukrainian government did not fire the prosecutor investigating Burisma.

    Joe Biden later bragged about the firing during a 2018 appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations. –Breitbart

    According to Greene, Republicans need to “get ready” for Democrats to fabricate another Russian disinformation hoax related to Hunter and the 2024 election – and that it would likely fit the media’s existing narrative against both Trump and protecting the Biden family.

    “I have a prediction that they’re gonna move it on to members of Congress like me and others, Jim Jordan, Jamie Comer, any of us that got hot and heavy on this Ukraine Burisma stuff, that they’re somehow going to say that Republicans are Russian sympathizers. They’re gonna call me that anyway, because I won’t fund the Ukraine war. They’re probably going to accuse us of being Russian sympathizers and falling for Russian disinformation and its election meddling. And then Democratic members of Congress here already saying they will not certify Trump’s election if he wins.” -MTG

    “It was there’s a really weird theme in there with the whole Russian thing,” said Greene. 

    In November, the House Oversight Committee revealed that President Biden received $40,000 in Chinese funds which were “laundered” through his brother, James Biden, in a “complicated financial transaction” marked as a ‘loan,’ which took place just weeks after Hunter Biden threatened the Chinese with his father’s wrath in a July 30, 2017 text message to a CEFC China Energy employee.

    The alleged 2017 transfer from first brother James Biden to the future president involves the same business deal in which Joe Biden was called the “big guy” and penciled in for a 10% cut — and would be the first proven instance of the commander-in-chief getting a piece of his family’s foreign income.

    …

    The money ended up in Joe Biden’s bank account on Sept. 3, 2017, via a check labeled “loan repayment” from his younger brother, who partnered with Hunter in the venture. -NY Post

    “Remember when Joe Biden told the American people that his son didn’t make money in China?” asked Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) in a video posted to X. ““Well, not only did he lie about his son Hunter making money in China, but it also turns out that $40,000 in laundered China money landed in Joe Biden’s bank account in the form of a personal check.”

    This of course came on the heels of another “loan” repayment from James to Joe for $200,000.

    The aristocrats!

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/29/2024 – 18:05

  • Gavin Newsom Faces Criticism For Minimum Wage 'Bread' Carveout That Benefited Top Donor
    Gavin Newsom Faces Criticism For Minimum Wage ‘Bread’ Carveout That Benefited Top Donor

    Authored by Eric Lendrum via American Greatness,

    California Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) is facing greater scrutiny after it was discovered that a minimum wage carveout he is pushing for would benefit one of his top campaign donors.

    According to the Washington Free Beacon, the newly-passed law that will go into effect in April will raise the minimum wage at fast-food chains from $16 to $20 an hour. However, the law includes an exception for restaurants that bake and sell bread; one of the chains that would thus be excluded from the new $20 minimum wage would be Panera Bread, which is owned by Democratic megadonor Greg Flynn.

    Flynn had previously donated $100,000 to oppose the recall election against Newsom in 2021, then donated another $64,800 to support the governor’s re-election campaign in 2022. Flynn has even admitted to knowing Newsom so personally that he can text him directly.

    Newsom claimed that the new law, known as the FAST Act, was negotiated after “countless hours of negotiations with dozens of stakeholders over two years.” Flynn denied having anything to do with the exception for Panera, although other sources have claimed that it was indeed Flynn who pressured Newsom into supporting the carveout.

    The exception drew criticism even from figures who wouldn’t necessarily be political enemies of Newsom. Michelle Korsmo, the head of the National Restaurant Association, said that “everyone’s scratching their heads” in reaction to the exception, adding that “you may be celebrating or you may be lamenting the bakery exemption. But remember, all of that comes through relationships.”

    Newsom’s push for the exception even drew criticism from the original author of the FAST Act, Assemblyman Chris Holden (D-Calif.), who said “we don’t know how that came about.”

    Other fast-food chains lashed out at the law itself, regardless of the bizarre exception. A spokesman from McDonald’s said that the new law would cost each of the company’s locations at least $250,000 a year due to the forced pay raise. This reflects the ongoing trend of California passing laws that are increasingly hostile to businesses, thus forcing many companies to relocate to other states to escape such high costs.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/29/2024 – 17:45

  • Putin Warns Of Nuclear War If West Sends Troops To Fight In Ukraine
    Putin Warns Of Nuclear War If West Sends Troops To Fight In Ukraine

    Russian President Vladimir Putin used the occasion of his much anticipated annual state of the nation address to directly warn NATO that sending Western troops to fight in Ukraine could result in nuclear war.

    He explained that allegations from Western officials saying Russia intends to attack Europe are “nonsense”—after on Monday French President Emmanuel Macron really escalated the rhetoric by telling a security forum in Paris that sending Western troops to Ukraine “cannot be ruled out”. 

    Putin’s annual state of the nation address, Reuters

    “Everything that they are coming up with now, with which they threaten the entire world – all this really threatens a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons, and therefore the destruction of civilization – don’t they understand this, or what?” Putin said.

    “They must ultimately understand that we also have weapons – and they know about it, just as I now said  – we also have weapons that can hit targets on their territory,” he warned.

    On the battlefield, the Ukrainians have continued their retreat amid defeat in several villages and towns outside of Avdiivka. As we previously analyzed, it seems the more that evidence of Russia’s ‘winning’ the war becomes obvious, the more desperate the actions and rhetoric out of NATO officials becomes.

    Putin acknowledged that the Russian military is “confidently advancing in a number of operational areas and liberating more and more territories” and currently “firmly holds the initiative” in Ukraine.

    He also warned over Sweden’s recent approved accession into NATO, saying Russia is building up extra forces along its Western border to “neutralize the threats” of ongoing NATO expansion.

    “The West has provoked conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, and other regions around the world while consistently propagating falsehoods. Now they have the audacity to say that Russia harbours intentions of attacking Europe. Can you believe it? We all know that their claims are utterly baseless,” Putin said. 

    Putin suggested that years of Western aggression and foreign meddling and disastrous interventions have only served to unite “numerous” countries and a “multi-ethnic people:

    The so-called West, with its colonial practices and penchant for inciting ethnic conflicts around the world, not only seeks to impede our progress but also envisions a Russia that is a dependent, declining, and dying space where they can do as they please. In fact, they want to replicate in Russia what they have done in numerous other countries, including Ukraine: sowing discord in our home and weakening us from within. But they were wrong, which has become abundantly clear now that they ran up against the firm resolve and determination of our multi-ethnic people.

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

    According to more from the speech via state media on his comments pertaining to ramped-up NATO involvement in Ukraine:

    At the same time, those same nations are “selecting targets to conduct strikes on our territory,” the Russian head of state claimed, adding that there is now talk of “deploying NATO military contingents to Ukraine.”

    Putin reminded would-be aggressors that all previous attempts to conquer Russia have ended in failure, warning that “now the consequences for potential invaders would be far more tragic.” He pointed out that Russia has a massive nuclear arsenal, which is in a state of “complete readiness for guaranteed deployment.”

    The past two months have seen the Kremlin specifically accuse France of sending its mercenaries to northern cities like Kharkiv, in order to conduct cross-border drone and mortar attacks on Russian territory. Russia’s military says it has successfully targeted places where foreign fighters are staying, but Kiev has of course not confirmed this.

    * * *

    More from Putin’s speech: “Russia ready for dialogue”

    “Russia is ready for dialogue with the United States on issues of strategic stability. However, it is important to clarify that in this case we are dealing with a state whose ruling circles are taking openly hostile actions towards us. So, they seriously intend to discuss strategic security issues with us while simultaneously trying to inflict strategic defeat on Russia on the battlefield, as they themselves say…

    …Indeed, just like any other ideology promoting racism, national superiority or exceptionalism, Russophobia is blinding and stupefying. The United States and its satellites have, in fact, dismantled the European security system which has created risks for everyone.

    Clearly, a new equal and indivisible security framework must be created in Eurasia in the foreseeable future. We are ready for a substantive discussion on this subject with all countries and associations that may be interested in it. At the same time, I would like to reiterate (I think this is important for everyone) that no enduring international order is possible without a strong and sovereign Russia.”

    Putin’s response allegations of ‘nukes in space’

    “Here is a good example of their hypocrisy. They have recently made unfounded allegations, in particular, against Russia, regarding plans to deploy nuclear weapons in space. Such fake narratives, and this story is unequivocally false, are designed to involve us in negotiations on their conditions, which will only benefit the United States.

    …At the same time, they have blocked our proposal which has been on the table for over 15 years. I am referring to the agreement on preventing the deployment of weapons in outer space, which we drafted back in 2008. There has been zero reaction to it. It is totally unclear what they are talking about.”

    With the horrifying death toll in Ukraine, it’s past time for the West to push Kiev toward serious peace negotiations, and for a final end to this war, now having entered its third year.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/29/2024 – 17:25

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Feb 29

Today’s News 29th February 2024

  • War Is Bad For You… And The Economy
    War Is Bad For You… And The Economy

    Authored by William Hartung via Counterpunch.org,

    Joe Biden wants you to believe that spending money on weapons is good for the economy.

    That tired old myth – regularly repeated by the political leaders of both parties – could help create an even more militarized economy that could threaten our peace and prosperity for decades to come. Any short-term gains from pumping in more arms spending will be more than offset by the long-term damage caused by crowding out new industries and innovations, while vacuuming up funds needed to address other urgent national priorities.

    The Biden administration’s sales pitch for the purported benefits of military outlays began in earnest last October, when the president gave a rare Oval Office address to promote a $106-billion emergency allocation that included tens of billions of dollars of weaponry for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. MAGA Republicans in Congress had been blocking the funding from going forward and the White House was searching for a new argument to win them over. The president and his advisers settled on an answer that could just as easily have come out of the mouth of Donald Trump: jobs, jobs, jobs. As Joe Biden put it:

    We send Ukraine equipment sitting in our stockpiles. And when we use the money allocated by Congress, we use it to replenish our own stores… equipment that defends America and is made in America: Patriot missiles for air defense batteries made in Arizona; artillery shells manufactured in 12 states across the country — in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas; and so much more.

    It should be noted that two of the four states he singled out (Arizona and Pennsylvania) are swing states crucial to his reelection bid, while the other two are red states with Republican senators he’s been trying to win over to vote for another round of military aid to Ukraine.

    Lest you think that Biden’s economic pitch for such aid was a one-off event, Politico reported that, in the wake of his Oval Office speech, administration officials were distributing talking points to members of Congress touting the economic benefits of such aid. Politico dubbed this approach “Bombenomics.” Lobbyists for the administration even handed out a map purporting to show how much money such assistance to Ukraine would distribute to each of the 50 states. And that, by the way, is a tactic companies like Lockheed Martin routinely use to promote the continued funding of costly, flawed weapons systems like the F-35 fighter jet. Still, it should be troubling to see the White House stooping to the same tactics.

    Yes, it’s important to provide Ukraine with the necessary equipment and munitions to defend itself from Russia’s grim invasion, but the case should be made on the merits, not through exaggerated accounts about the economic impact of doing so. Otherwise, the military-industrial complex will have yet another never-ending claim on our scarce national resources.

    Military Keynesianism and Cold War Fallacies

    The official story about military spending and the economy starts like this: the massive buildup for World War II got America out of the Great Depression, sparked the development of key civilian technologies (from computers to the internet), and created a steady flow of well-paying manufacturing jobs that were part of the backbone of America’s industrial economy.

    There is indeed a grain of truth in each of those assertions, but they all ignore one key fact: the opportunity costs of throwing endless trillions of dollars at the military means far less is invested in other crucial American needs, ranging from housing and education to public health and environmental protection. Yes, military spending did indeed help America recover from the Great Depression but not because it was military spending. It helped because it was spending, period. Any kind of spending at the levels devoted to fighting World War II would have revived the economy. While in that era, such military spending was certainly a necessity, today similar spending is more a question of (corporate) politics and priorities than of economics.

    In these years Pentagon spending has soared and the defense budget continues to head toward an annual trillion-dollar mark, while the prospects of tens of millions of Americans have plummeted. More than 140 million of us now fall into poor or low-income categories, including one out of every six children. More than 44 million of us suffer from hunger in any given year. An estimated 183,000 Americans died of poverty-related causes in 2019, more than from homicide, gun violence, diabetes, or obesity. Meanwhile, ever more Americans are living on the streets or in shelters as homeless people hit a record 650,000 in 2022.

    Perhaps most shockingly, the United States now has the lowest life expectancy of any industrialized country, even as the International Institute for Strategic Studies reports that it now accounts for 40% of the world’s — yes, the whole world’s! — military spending. That’s four times more than its closest rival, China. In fact, it’s more than the next 15 countries combined, many of which are U.S. allies. It’s long past time for a reckoning about what kinds of investments truly make Americans safe and economically secure — a bloated military budget or those aimed at meeting people’s basic needs.

    What will it take to get Washington to invest in addressing non-military needs at the levels routinely lavished on the Pentagon? For that, we would need presidential leadership and a new, more forward-looking Congress. That’s a tough, long-term goal to reach, but well worth pursuing. If a shift in budget priorities were to be implemented in Washington, the resulting spending could, for instance, createanywhere from 9% more jobs for wind and solar energy production to three times as many jobs in education.

    As for the much-touted spinoffs from military research, investing directly in civilian activities rather than relying on a spillover from Pentagon spending would produce significantly more useful technologies far more quickly. In fact, for the past few decades, the civilian sector of the economy has been far nimbler and more innovative than Pentagon-funded initiatives, so — don’t be surprised — military spinoffs have greatly diminished. Instead, the Pentagon is desperately seeking to lure high-tech companies and talent back into its orbit, a gambit which, if successful, is likely to undermine the nation’s ability to create useful products that could push the civilian sector forward. Companies and workers who might otherwise be involved in developing vaccines, producing environmentally friendly technologies, or finding new sources of green energy will instead be put to work building a new generation of deadly weapons.

    Diminishing Returns

    In recent years, the Pentagon budget has approached its highest level since World War II: $886 billion and counting. That’s hundreds of billions more than was spent in the peak year of the Vietnam War or at the height of the Cold War. Nonetheless, the actual number of jobs in weapons manufacturing has plummeted dramatically from three million in the mid-1980s to 1.1 million now. Of course, a million jobs is nothing to sneeze at, but the downward trend in arms-related employment is likely to continue as automation and outsourcing grow. The process of reducing arms industry jobs will be accelerated by a greater reliance on software over hardware in the development of new weapons systems that incorporate artificial intelligence. Given the focus on emerging technologies, assembly line jobs will be reduced, while the number of scientists and engineers involved in weapons-related work will only grow.

    In addition, as the journalist Taylor Barnes has pointed out, the arms industry jobs that do remain are likely to pay significantly less than in the past, as unionization rates at the major contractors continue to fall precipitously, while two-tier union contracts deny incoming workers the kind of pay and benefits their predecessors enjoyed. To cite two examples: in 1971, 69% of Lockheed Martin workers were unionized, while in 2022 that number was 19%; at Northrop Grumman today, a mere 4% of its employees are unionized. The very idea that weapons production provides high-paying manufacturing jobs with good benefits is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

    More and better-paying jobs could be created by directing more spending to domestic needs, but that would require a dramatic change in the politics and composition of Congress.

    The Military Is Not an “Anti-Poverty Program”

    Members of Congress and the Washington elite continue to argue that the U.S. military is this country’s most effective anti-poverty program. While the pay, benefits, training, and educational funding available to members of that military have certainly helped some of them improve their lot, that’s hardly the full picture. The potential downside of military service puts the value of any financial benefits in grim perspective.

    Many veterans of America’s disastrous post-9/11 wars, after all, risked their physical and mental health, not to speak of their lives, during their time in the military. After all, 40% of veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars have reported service-related disabilities. Physical and mental health problems suffered by veterans range from lost limbs to traumatic brain injuries to post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD). They have also been at greater risk of homelessness than the population as a whole. Most tragically, four times as many veterans have committed suicide as the number of military personnel killed by enemy forces in any of the U.S. wars of this century.

    The toll of such disastrous conflicts on veterans is one of many reasons that war should be the exception, not the rule, in U.S. foreign policy.

    And in that context, there can be little doubt that the best way to fight poverty is by doing so directly, not as a side-effect of building an increasingly militarized society. If, to get a leg up in life, people need education and training, it should be provided to civilians and veterans alike.

    Tradeoffs

    Federal efforts to address the problems outlined above have been hamstrung by a combination of overspending on the Pentagon and the unwillingness of Congress to more seriously tax wealthy Americans to address poverty and inequality. (After all, the wealthiest 1% of us are now cumulatively worth more than the 291 million of us in the “bottom” 90%, which represents a massive redistribution of wealth in the last half-century.)

    The tradeoffs are stark. The Pentagon’s annual budget is significantly more than 20 times the $37 billion the government now invests annually in reducing greenhouse gas emissions as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. Meanwhile, spending on weapons production and research alone is more than eight times as high. The Pentagon puts out more each year for one combat aircraft — the overpriced, underperforming F-35 — than the entire budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile, one $13 billion aircraft carrier costs more to produce than the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. Similarly, in 2020, Lockheed Martin alone received $75 billion in federal contracts and that’s more than the budgets of the State Department and the Agency for International Development combined. In other words, the sum total of that company’s annual contracts adds up to the equivalent of the entire U.S. budget for diplomacy.

    Simply shifting funds from the Pentagon to domestic programs wouldn’t, of course, be a magical solution to all of America’s economic problems. Just to achieve such a shift in the first place would, of course, be a major political undertaking and the funds being shifted would have to be spent effectively. Furthermore, even cutting the Pentagon budget in half wouldn’t be enough to take into account all of this country’s unmet needs. That would require a comprehensive package, including not just a change in budget priorities but an increase in federal revenues and a crackdown on waste, fraud, and abuse in the outlay of government loans and grants. It would also require the kind of attention and focus now reserved for planning to fund the military.

    One comprehensive plan for remaking the economy to better serve all Americans is the moral budget of the Poor People’s Campaign, a national movement of low-income people inspired by the 1968 initiative of the same name spearheaded by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., before his assassination that April 4th. Its central issues are promoting racial justice, ending poverty, opposing militarism, and supporting environmental restoration. Its moral budget proposes investing more than $1.2 trillion in domestic needs, drawn from both cuts to Pentagon spending and increases in tax revenues from wealthy individuals and corporations. Achieving such a shift in American priorities is, at best, undoubtedly a long-term undertaking, but it does offer a better path forward than continuing to neglect basic needs to feed the war machine.

    If current trends continue, the military economy will only keep on growing at the expense of so much else we need as a society, exacerbating inequality, stifling innovation, and perpetuating a policy of endless war. We can’t allow the illusion — and it is an illusion! — of military-fueled prosperity to allow us to neglect the needs of tens of millions of people or to hinder our ability to envision the kind of world we want to build for future generations. The next time you hear a politician, a Pentagon bureaucrat, or a corporate functionary tell you about the economic wonders of massive military budgets, don’t buy the hype.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/28/2024 – 23:40

  • Moscow Accuses Zelensky Of Lying After Issuing 'Very Low' Ukraine Troop Death Count
    Moscow Accuses Zelensky Of Lying After Issuing ‘Very Low’ Ukraine Troop Death Count

    Just after the Russia-Ukraine war hit the two-year mark this past weekend, entering a third year and with no end in sight, President Volodymyr Zelensky publicly disclosed Ukraine’s official troop death count for the first time. However it immediately resulted in skepticism among even Western pundits, and charges that he’s ‘lying’.

    “31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died in this war. Not 300,000 or 150,000, or whatever Putin and his lying circle are saying. But each of these losses is a great loss for us,” he said.

    Via TASS

    Both sides have kept their casualty count a closely guarded secret, with each country’s media regularly making claims of an immense death toll only on the other side, given it’s an important part of wartime propaganda to keep the enemy in the dark and not let them perceive they could be ‘winning’.

    Zelensky’s claim that Ukrainian troop deaths are in the low tens of thousands, and not in the hundreds of thousands, elicited fierce pushback from Moscow. It marks a rare moment that either side is actually talking specific figures, and really for most outside observers the whole ‘debate’ is grim. 

    Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in a briefing before his top generals on Tuesday that Ukraine has actually lost 444,000 servicemen since the war’s start. This is an astounding figure which far surpasses any and all prior speculation by pundits. He said according to a translation by NBC:

    “As a result of the decisive and active actions of our military personnel, the combat potential of the Ukrainian armed forces is decreasing. On average, since the beginning of the year, the enemy has been losing more than 800 personnel and 120 units of various weapons, including foreign-made ones, every day,” Shoigu claimed.

    “After the collapse of the counteroffensive, the military command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is trying to use the remaining reserves to stabilize the situation and prevent the collapse of the front,” Shoigu added.

    Pentagon officials have recently issued their own estimation of Moscow’s losses, saying that US intelligence believes that some 315,000 Russian troops have been killed.

    What is clear is that Ukrainian forces are currently in rapid retreat, and lack manpower and enough weaponry to keep up resistance along the front line. Ukraine’s military has admitted retreating from several area villages after its collapse in Avdiiivka earlier this month:

    “The Armed Forces have indeed withdrawn from the village of Lastochkyne, which is located immediately west of Avdiivka. There are difficult terrain conditions there, a cascade of small water reservoirs, and this qualifies as stabilizing the defence line, levelling it out to some extent. The enemy continues to attempt offensive actions towards the settlement of Orlivka, conducting them from three fronts, but they are unsuccessful.”

    Meanwhile, there’s been no official progress related to potential ceasefire talks. Zelensky has continued touring Europe, and is even now in Saudi Arabia, trying to get large arms flowing into Kiev again.

    While Russia’s claims are anything but confirmed and are likely exaggerated (as all governments in a time of war tend to do when it comes to enemy losses), some pundits have found it much more credible that Zelensky’s 31,000 figure:

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

    Zelensky is sticking by Ukraine’s own peace formula, which would require that Russia leave all occupied territory, and even give up claims to Crimea. This of course remains a non-starter for Moscow, which remains at an immense advantage both in manpower, artillery, and advanced arms. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/28/2024 – 23:20

  • From Trucker-Boycotts To Grid-Down – There's Only One Way To Survive A Food Crisis
    From Trucker-Boycotts To Grid-Down – There’s Only One Way To Survive A Food Crisis

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    If there is one reality that Americans need to accept, it’s that every system has a breaking point and there are no exceptions. Human beings are built to adapt and this has given us incredible resilience, but it also means we have a tendency to wait too long to fix the parts of our society that are broken. Instead, we let the problems build and fester until, sadly, the final straw falls and everything comes crashing down.

    Sometimes this collapse is by chance and sometimes it’s by design. In either case the catalyst is the same – The public does not prepare and they don’t take action to correct the people creating the crisis until it’s too late.

    In our modern era of invasive technology, economic weakness, nuclear weapons and biowarfare, this is an unsustainable model. We can no longer ignore threats on instability in the hopes that they will go away or that governments will defuse the danger, nor can we simply pick up the pieces over and over again after each calamity. There may come a time when the mess is so big we won’t be able to clean it up. People must plan ahead, and they must stop tolerating the notion of passive involvement in the mechanisms that influence their lives and future.

    I write often about hypothetical trigger events and breakdown scenarios because a large number of people still need to be educated on how fragile the western world truly is right now. For example, any significant disruption to supply chains and logistics at this time would be devastating for a large number of Americans (or Europeans).

    In the past couple weeks alone there has been a rising tide of political discontent among US truckers; the very people that handle over 70% of all freight in our country. They have threatened to boycott a number of Democrat controlled cities (primarily New York City) over a host of issues and complaints including the legal treatment of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.  This boycott may not play out in the near term (watch for talk of boycotts to escalate in November around election time), but the potential is on the table and it’s an important learning moment.  What would happen if the US freight system actually stopped?

    US supply chains operate on a “just in time” freight schedule – Meaning, all the grocery stores in your area will carry just enough backstock to serve normal business operations for about a week, when the next fleet of trucks arrive.

    The just-in-time structure is the lifeblood of the supply chain, and most American cities would fall into chaos after one week without it. Trains and railway networks handle around 28% of total freight and have struggled through a long state of decline. There is no realistic alternative to trucks.

    FEMA and the National Guard could try to field drivers to fill the void, but consider this: There are currently 3.5 million freight drivers in the US today, and that number is at least 80,000 drivers short of what is needed. Do you think the government or the military is going to be able to come up with enough scabs to undermine a trucker strike against blue cities?  There’s no chance.

    I have to say, I’m not opposed the concept of a trucker boycott; its a peaceful redress of grievances and all peaceful measures should be exhausted first. All they have to do is refuse to take on shipments to places like NYC or Washington DC – Many of them are subcontractors that can pick and choose whatever jobs they want.

    However, we need to keep in mind how terrified the Canadian government was during their trucker protests; so terrified that they labeled the truckers as terrorists and started freezing the bank accounts of anyone supporting them. This action was against their own constitutional laws; that’s how effectively frightening a freight shutdown is to politicians.

    Even so, if the US government responded in the same way as Canada, it still wouldn’t do much to stop a boycott. Tensions are extremely high and it’s only a matter of time before conflict erupts in one form or another.  The political left (and their globalist handlers) have offered no indication whatsoever that they intend to back away from their current destructive path. Something has to give.  Why not a trucker protest or red state protest cutting off blue regions from vital resources?

    Unfortunately, there are still a number of conservatives and independents living in these cities that could be negatively affected by a freight shutdown along with their progressive neighbors. Maybe this strike never comes to fruition and everything will continue on as “normal.” Maybe not. The point is, anything can happen and the way our economy and supply chains currently function is not going to pass muster for much longer.

    The average American has around one week’s worth of food in their pantry at any given time. With FEMA response in place a rationing system would be instituted over the course of several weeks, probably using a digital tracking method much like an EBT card. And make no mistake, there will be strings attached to any government rationing program:

    “Do you have the latest covid booster? No ration card until your shots are up to date. We see that you have registered firearms…you need to turn those in before you can get rations. We see that you’ve made problematic comments in your social media history, you may not be eligible.”

    It takes around 7-10 days of zero food supply for panic to set into a population (when people finally realize things are not going back to normal). It takes two weeks for starvation to take a physical toll and three weeks for people to start dying. Riots and looting are inevitable, but that won’t solve the problem if there’s no food to loot.

    Some people will argue that they only need to not be where the shortages are, but there’s no way to predict this. In the case of conservative trucker boycotts, the targeted areas are obvious, but that is only one scenario. There are a host of events that could cause a crippled supply chain in both rural and urban areas, including a mass immigration crisis or a nationwide grid down scenario.

    The only viable solutions is to secure a long term food storage plan, and don’t forget the protein because western governments have become increasingly hostile against animal agriculture these days. (Get your affordable freeze dried beef supply HERE with promo code “market15”)

    Food storage for each family for at least a year is essential. It doesn’t have to start there; even one month of food will give you an edge over most of the population and will ensure you don’t have to go begging to FEMA. But eventually a year’s supply or more is necessary (along with community organization for mutual security). This will give you time to establish a more permanent and sustainable food plan after the worst has happened.

    You can see the storm that a logistical breakdown would cause. In 30 days or less a city like New York could be brought to its knees even with government intervention. On a national scale, regardless of the cause, the result would be about the same. Ultimately there are two kinds of people in the wake of these kinds of events – The people that planned ahead, and everyone else. It’s my hope that through education and encouragement we can convince enough of the populace to prepare so that this large percentage of Americans acts as a redundancy against catastrophe (leftists won’t listen, but maybe the rest of the public will).

    In other words, the goal is to give the public a natural immunity against supply chain collapse, so that when the crisis does strike the effects will be greatly diminished.

    *  *  *

    Food security is one of the most important preparations Americans can make as threats continue to rise. Stock up on Texas-raised long-term storage Ribeye, NY Strip, Tenderloin, and more with Prepper All-Naturals.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/28/2024 – 23:00

  • "Who Could Be Next": Top Canadian Pension Fund Sells Manhattan Office Tower For $1, Sparking Firesale Panic
    “Who Could Be Next”: Top Canadian Pension Fund Sells Manhattan Office Tower For $1, Sparking Firesale Panic

    New York during the inflationary surge of the late 70s and early 80s was a mythical place where one could purchase a Park avenue penthouse for $1 (while assuming the copious debt, of course). Now, thanks to the brutal bear hug of the highest interest rates in 40 years and the ongoing CRE crisis, those legendary days have made a comeback to the Big Apple, if only in the realm of commercial real estate for now.

    According to Bloomberg, Canadian pension funds – which until recently had been among the world’s most prolific buyers of real estate, starting a revolution that inspired retirement plans around the globe to emulate them because, in the immortal words of Ben Bernanke, Canadian real estate prices never go down…

    … are finally realizing that gravity does exist . And so, the largest one among them is taking steps to limit its exposure to the most-beleaguered commercial property type — office buildings.

    Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has recently done three deals at deeply discounted prices, selling its interests in a pair of Vancouver towers, and a business park in Southern California, but it was its Manhattan office tower redevelopment project that shocked the industry: the Canadian asset manager sold its stake for just $1. The worry now is that such firesales will set an example for other major investors seeking a way out of the turmoil too, forcing a wholesale crash in the Manhattan real estate market which until now had managed to avoid real price discovery.

    Indeed, as Goldman wrote earlier this week, while office vacancy rates are expected to keep rising well into the next decade..

    … the average price of many nonviable offices has fallen only 11% to $307/sqft since 2019 (left side of Exhibit 6). The bank goes on to note that in the hardest-hit cities, as many as 14-16% of offices may no longer be viable, and their average transaction prices have already declined by 15-35%. However, because of lack of liquidity in this market, these recent transaction prices have not yet started to reflect the current values of many existing offices. Goldman ominously concludes that “alternative valuation methods, like those that are based on repeat-sales and appraisal values, suggest that actual office values may be far lower than the average transaction price.” Well, a $1 dollar price would certainly confirm that actual office values are far, far lower (more in the full Goldman note available to professional subscribers).

    And going back to the historic firesale, at the end of last year the Canadian fund sold its 29% stake in Manhattan’s 360 Park Avenue South for $1 to one of its partners, Boston Properties, which also agreed to assume CPPIB’s share of the project’s debt. The investors, along with Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte., bought the 20-story building in 2021 with plans to redevelop it into a modern workspace.

    360 Park Avenue South

    “It’s the opposite of a vote of confidence for office,” said John Kim, an analyst tracking real estate companies for BMO Capital Markets. “My question is, who could be next?”

    As office building anxiety has swept the financial world, as the persistence of both remote work and higher borrowing costs undercuts the economic fundamentals that made the properties good investments in the first place, a wave of banks from New York to Tokyo recently conceded that loans they made against offices may never be fully repaid, sending their share prices plunging and prompting fears of a broader credit crunch.

    But the real test will be what price office buildings actually trade for – especially once the hundreds of billions of loan backing the properties mature….

    …. and until now there have been precious few examples since interest rates started rising. That’s why industry-watchers see such shocking liquidations like CPPIB’s as a very ominous sign for the market.

    The Manhattan firesale isn’t the pension fund’s first sale: last month, CPPIB sold its 45% stake in Santa Monica Business Park, which the fund also owned with Boston Properties, for $38 million. That’s a discount of almost 75% to what CPPIB paid for its share of the property in 2018. The deal came just after the landlords signed a lease with social media company Snap that required they spend additional capital to improve the campus, Boston Properties Chief Executive Officer Owen Thomas said on a conference call.

    Peter Ballon, CPPIB’s global head of real estate, declined to comment on the recent deals, but said the fund has continued to invest in office buildings, including a recently completed, 37-story tower in Vancouver.

    “Selling is an integral part of our investment process,” Ballon said in an emailed statement. “We exit when the asset has maximized its value and we are able to redeploy proceeds into higher and better returns in other assets, sectors and markets, including office buildings.”

    As Bloomberg notes, the pension fund isn’t actively backing away from offices, but it’s not looking to increase its office holdings either. And where a property requires additional investment, CPPIB might simply look to sell so it can put that cash somewhere it can get higher returns instead, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing a private matter.

    CPPIB’s C$590.8 billion ($436.9 billion) fund is one of the world’s largest pools of capital, and its C$41.4 billion portfolio of real estate — stretching from Stockholm to Bengaluru — includes almost every property type, from warehouses, to life sciences complexes, to apartment blocks.

    While that scale would mitigate any potential losses from individual transactions, it also means even a small shift in CPPIB’s office appetite has the power to cause ripple effects in the market.

    While the 360 Park liquidation may be shocking, it’s just the first of many: with hybrid work schedules set to depress demand for office space in the long term, and higher interest rates increasing the cost of the constant upgrades needed to attract and keep tenants, even the best office buildings may not be able to compete with investment opportunities elsewhere.

    “To get even better returns in your office investment you’re going to have to modernize, you’re going to have to put a lot more money into that office,” said Matt Hershey, a partner at real estate capital advisory firm Hodes Weill & Associates. “Sometimes it’s better to just take your losses and reinvest in something that’s going to perform much better.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/28/2024 – 22:40

  • The Beltway Judge Hearing Trump Cases & Her Anti-Trump, Anti-Kavanaugh Husband
    The Beltway Judge Hearing Trump Cases & Her Anti-Trump, Anti-Kavanaugh Husband

    Authored by Julie Kelly via RealClearInvestigations,

    Washington glitterati assembled at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in October to celebrate federal employees making a difference in government. Hosted by CNN anchor Kate Bolduan, the black-tie affair featured in-person appearances by top Biden White House officials including Chief of Staff Jeffrey Zients, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack.

    Judge Florence Pan, who now has key Trump issues such as presidential immunity before her in court … U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia/Wikimedia

    Midway through the evening’s festivities, Max Stier, president of the group sponsoring the event – the Partnership for Public Service, a $24 million nonprofit based in Washington that recruits individuals to work in the civil service – took the stage to thank his high-profile guests.

    “Great leaders are the heart and soul of effective organizations,” Stier said, “which is why I am so thankful to see so many of our government’s amazing leaders here tonight.”

    Stier also acknowledged one federal employee, his wife, Judge Florence Y. Pan, who sits on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Pan would soon need no introduction. Earlier this month she made headlines  by asking Donald Trump’s lawyers whether the presidential immunity he sought in connection with alleged Jan. 6 crimes was absolute.

    “Could a president order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival?” Pan asked Trump lawyer John Sauer. “That’s an official act – an order to SEAL Team Six?” she clarified.

    … while her husband, Democrat insider Max Stier, continues campaigning against Trump after  emerging as a key accuser of his former Yale classmate and present Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Business Wire

    Although the back and forth between Pan and Sauer was inconclusive as to the question about a president’s criminal liability, many mainstream outlets misconstrued the exchange while lionizing Pan for posing a question that they then used to advance their description of Trump as a lawless menace. The exchange, which Pan prompted when she posed the pre-arranged hypothetical at beginning of the hearing, has raised new questions about the impartiality of judges hearing politically charged cases.

    For months progressives have been insisting that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should recuse himself from any case that involves Trump because of his wife Ginni Thomas’ political involvement and participation in the events of Jan. 6. Those same interests have yet to express similar worries about Pan’s objectivity, despite her husband’s longtime political activism and current opposition to another Trump presidency.

    Power couples are the lifeblood of Washington so it’s not unusual for political activists, judges, and White House bigwigs to rub elbows at fancy soirees like the October gala at the Kennedy Center. But Max Stier’s longtime ties to the Democratic Party, his access to key Biden administration officials, and his suggestion that Trump represents a threat to democracy at the same time his wife is handling sensitive matters related to the Department of Justice’s prosecution of the former president should raise questions about her impartiality.

    A member of Bill Clinton’s legal team during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Stier, 57, has been a Democratic Party fixture for nearly three decades. Since 2001, he has run the Partnership for Public Service, which is funded by some of the most generous benefactors of progressive causes including the Gates Foundation, Democracy Fund, and the Ford Foundation. In 2020, the Partnership launched an effort tied to the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) movement, pledging to demand what it considers greater diversity in government agencies and institutions.

    In a letter to mark the group’s 20-year anniversary, Stier lamented the country’s democratic “crisis” caused by “a violent insurrection against Congress and growing suspicions about the results of a legitimate election.”

    Liberal media and Democrats see big conflicts of interest in conservative Justice Clarence Thomas and his activist wife, Ginni. They seem less concerned about Judge Florence Pan and her Democrat activist husband, Max Stier. MSNBC/YouTube

    Recently, Stier has joined the growing chorus of Beltway voices warning that a second Trump presidency would pose a unique “threat” to the country’s future. Stier and others are particularly concerned with Trump’s promise to convert tens of thousands of federal bureaucrats into political appointees, meaning they could be fired without cause by the president. Such a plan, according to Stier, undermines the Constitution and the law.

    “You wind up with a workforce that is not only going to deliver poor service, but also that is going to be a tool for retribution and actions that are contrary to our democratic system,” Stier said in a December 2023 Politico interview. “If you are selecting people on the basis of their political persuasion or their loyalty as opposed to their expertise and their commitment to the public good, you’re going to wind up with less good service and more risk for the American people.”

    “I don’t think we have a deep state today,” he said. But “the proposals that are on the table would create a deep state, rather than the effective state that we all should be pursuing.”

    Stier is doing more than just discussing the issue in media interviews; he is working directly with Biden officials to prevent Trump from following through on his pledge if he wins in November. Stier has called Trump’s plans to reform so-called “Schedule F” employees “an assault on our civil service, the core to our system of government and democratic institutions.”

    When Republicans threatened to shut down the government last year over disagreements with Democrats on federal spending levels, Stier warned it would sideline what unions estimate as 4 million government employees. “[It] is the equivalent of burning down your own house,” he said of a potential shutdown.

    Stier recalled bad things about Kavanaugh, above, decades after their Yale days together in the 1980s. AP

    But Stier is perhaps best known for his involvement in attempting to thwart Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Stier and Kavanaugh attended Yale University together in the mid-1980s. In September 2019, while reporting on a sexual abuse accusation made by another Yale student, Deborah Ramirez, the New York Times disclosed Stier’s account of an incident he allegedly witnessed during their freshman year.

    Two Times reporters, in their first-person-plural “analysis” favoring Kavanaugh’s accusers, wrote:

    The New York Times reporting quoted below led to the book above including Stier’s allegations. Amazon.com

    A classmate, Max Stier, saw Mr. Kavanaugh with his pants down at a different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student. Mr. Stier, who runs a nonprofit organization in Washington, notified senators and the F.B.I. about this account, but the F.B.I. did not investigate and Mr. Stier has declined to discuss it publicly. We corroborated the story with two officials who have communicated with Mr. Stier; the female student declined to be interviewed and friends say she does not recall the episode.

    Stier’s still unproven allegations are included in a new documentary, “Justice,” about the Kavanaugh scandal. The film, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, centers on Ramirez and features a recording of Stier’s never-before-heard 2018 call to the FBI tip line detailing what he claimed to have seen and heard. 

    Washington Post entertainment reporter Jada Yuan wrote in January 2023:

    Deborah Ramirez, Kavanaugh accuser: In a 2023 documentary, Stier, also a Yalie, adds support to her questioned account of sexual lewdness. Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence

    In the previously unheard recording, Stier says classmates told him not just that Kavanaugh stuck his penis in Ramirez’s face, but that afterward, Kavanaugh went to the bathroom to make himself erect before allegedly returning to assault her again, hoping to amuse an audience of mutual friends, In the film, Ramirez says she’d suppressed the memory so deeply she couldn’t recall this second incident. … Stier’s message to the FBI also cites another incident involving a different woman, which he says he witnessed “firsthand”: A severely inebriated Kavanaugh, his dorm mate, pulling his pants down at a different party while a group of soccer players forced a drunk female freshman to hold his penis.

    Stier did not appear as an interview subject in the film. Some speculated that Stier’s involvement in the Kavanaugh matter was retaliation against former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for allowing his wife’s earlier nomination as district judge to expire with the end of the Obama administration.

    Jack Smith, special counsel: Trump and Jan. 6 issues arising from his work have come before Judge Pan, and she has sided with the government. AP

    Judge Pan, 57, a Taiwanese-American, has longstanding ties to the Democratic Party. A graduate of Stanford Law School, Pan worked for President Clinton’s departments of Justice and Treasury before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia in 1999. In 2009, President Barack Obama nominated her to serve as an associate judge on the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. As his tenure drew to a close, Obama then nominated her unsuccessfully to serve as a United States district judge for the District of Columbia.

    After Trump left office in 2021, Pan became one of President Biden’s first judicial nominees, tapped again to serve as a U.S. district judge in Washington. Less than a year later, Biden promoted her to the D.C. appellate court; in both instances, Pan replaced Ketanji Brown Jackson as she made her way to the Supreme Court. She is the first Asian American to serve on both benches.

    “This is a perfect example of how the Deep State defends its interest,” Russell Vought, president of the Center for Renewing America, one of the organizations pushing for the Schedule F reforms told RealClearInvestigations.

    “In and out of government, multiple branches of government, relying on personal networks, even marriages, to defeat President Trump and thereby protect a permanent, unaccountable bureaucracy.”

    During her brief tenure on the appellate court, Pan has found herself on an unusually high number of politically charged cases.

    A panel of three judges initially hears appeals before the full court selected out of 11 sitting judges. Pan has been seated on two such panels regarding cases involving Jan. 6 and Donald Trump. In both cases she provided the key vote in a split, 2-1 decision, that sided with the government. In Fischer v. USA, Pan acknowledged that the government was making a “novel” use of a post-Enron statute that addressed tampering with documents to increase the legal jeopardy of individuals who disrupted the Electoral College Count on Jan. 6.

    “To be sure, outside of the January 6 cases brought in this jurisdiction, there is no precedent for using 1512(c)(2) to prosecute the type of conduct at issue in this case.”

    Nonetheless, Pan applied a “broad reading of the statute” to allow application of the law.

    Pan reached the same conclusion in Robertson v. USA on the same matter in another 2-1 decision. Her opinion in the Fischer case is now before the Supreme Court; legal observers predict the court might reverse her opinion, essentially overturning how the DOJ has interpreted the statute’s language to charge more than 300 Jan. 6 protesters with the felony count. (This would put Judge Kavanaugh in the unique position of voting against a decision written by the spouse of one of his accusers.)

    Unusual GOP Dissent on Court

    Pan also upheld another controversial lower court ruling that favored the DOJ and worked against Trump, one that recently resulted in a harsh rebuke from some of her colleagues on the circuit court.

    U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell, another Obama appointee, in 2023 authorized an application from Special Counsel Jack Smith to obtain a search warrant for Trump’s Twitter data in his Jan. 6 case against the former President. Not only did Howell force the company to produce the records, which included direct messages and draft posts, she signed a nondisclosure order to prevent Twitter – now X and owned by liberal bête noire Elon Musk – from notifying its customer, Trump, about the warrant for 180 days.

    X appealed Howell’s nondisclosure order; Judge Pan backed Howell’s decision and ruled against the company’s appeal, citing the need to “safeguard the security and integrity of the investigation” and “avoid tipping off the former President about the warrant’s existence.”

    But Pan’s conclusions were wrong, four Republican-appointed judges on the D.C. circuit court wrote this month in what legal observers described as an unusual 12-page statement related to the appeal.

    Judge Neomi Rao, Trump appointee: She and three other colleagues on the DC circuit court dissented from Pan. AP

    “The Special Counsel’s approach obscured and bypassed any assertion of executive privilege and dodged the careful balance Congress struck in the Presidential Records Act,” Judges Neomi Rao, Justin Walker, Gregory Katsas, and Karen Henderson wrote in an order filed Jan. 16.

    “The district court and this court permitted this arrangement without any consideration of the consequential executive privilege issues raised by this unprecedented search. We should not have endorsed this gambit. Rather than follow established precedent, for the first time in American history, a court allowed access to presidential communications before any scrutiny of executive privilege.”

    But it was Pan’s exchange with Trump’s defense attorney during oral arguments related to Trump’s claims of presidential immunity against criminal prosecution that caught the media’s attention. Trump is seeking to dismiss Smith’s Jan. 6 indictment on immunity grounds; Judge Tanya S. Chutkan issued a landmark ruling in December denying Trump’s motion and concluded that presidents are subject to criminal prosecution.

    Roughly one minute into the Jan. 9 discussion, Pan interrupted Trump lawyer Sauer with her hypothetical question. The exchange went as follows:

    D. John Sauer, Trump lawyer: Impeachment conviction before criminal prosecution. AP

    Pan: Could a president order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival? That’s an official act, an order to SEAL Team Six?

    John Sauer: He would have to be and would speedily be impeached and convicted before the criminal prosecution.

    Pan: But if he weren’t … there would be no criminal prosecution, no criminal liability for that?

    Sauer: Chief Justice’s opinion in Marbury against Madison … and the Impeachment Judgment Clause all clearly presuppose what the Founders were concerned about …

    Pan: I asked you a yes or no question. Could a president who ordered SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival who was not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution?

    Sauer: If he were impeached and convicted first.

    Pan: So your answer is … no.

    Sauer: It is a qualified yes.

    Despite Sauer’s answer, figures in major media nonetheless reported that Sauer claimed a president could not be prosecuted for ordering the assassination of a political rival. (It was unclear whether Pan suggested the order or the act itself was illegal.) Legal analysts, cable news hosts, and columnists praised Pan regardless of the plausibility of such a scenario.

    Former federal prosecutor Harry Litman told MSNBC host Chris Hayes that “after Judge Pan asked that hypo about SEAL Team Six, Sauer … was a dead man walking. He will lose. He should lose.”

    Writing for the Atlantic, former federal prosecutor and Trump antagonist George Conway described Pan’s hypothetical as a way of setting a “trap” for Team Trump. He further suggested Pan could host “Meet the Press” if she decided to pursue a different career outside the judiciary.

    Conway continued to praise Pan in a CNN interview, calling her SEAL Team Six line of inquiry an “intellectual tour de force.”

    Democrats also seized on Sauer’s response. Rep. Adam Schiff, currently running for the U.S. Senate in California, denounced Trump and his legal team, insisting “there is no immunity for murder.”

    Rep. Adam Schiff seized on the Trump lawyer’s response to Judge Pan,  insisting “there is no excuse for murder.” AP

    A reporter asked Trump about the exchange during an appearance on Jan. 11. “Do you agree with your lawyers, what they said on Tuesday, that you should not be prosecuted if you ordered SEAL Team Six to kill a political opponent?” Trump replied that presidents “have to have immunity,” otherwise every president would be prosecuted by that leader’s successor of the opposite political party.

    Some pundits took Pan’s hypothetical a step further. MSNBC contributor Elie Mystal misrepresented Sauer’s answer, then proposed that Joe Biden could “launch a preemptive strike on a rebel stronghold at Mar-a-Lago” under Trump’s way of thinking.

    Paul Rozenzweig of the anti-Trump conservative site The Bulwark wrote that Trump’s reasoning meant Biden could assassinate Trump without any consequences.

    The controversy presumably will continue to swirl until Pan’s panel issues its ruling. It could be weeks until the opinion is filed. Until then, Trump’s March 4 trial date is on hold and looks less likely by the day, which is why Jack Smith asked the court to fast-track the announcement to expedite the process as it inevitably heads toward the Supreme Court. Considering the political composition of the three-judge panel – two judges appointed by Democratic presidents – most observers expect the appellate court to uphold Chutkan’s ruling.

    Meanwhile, Pan’s hypothetical scenario of a presidentially ordered hit likely will figure prominently in any opinion.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/28/2024 – 22:20

  • Joy Reid Posts Crazed Rant About Alabama IVF Case – Suggests The State Wants Slaves
    Joy Reid Posts Crazed Rant About Alabama IVF Case – Suggests The State Wants Slaves

    Alabama’s Supreme Court has recently ruled on the designation of fertilized embryos held by vitro clinics in the state, giving the embryos legal status as living children. 

    The decision was made in response to lawsuits brought by three couples who were clients of one such clinic, where apparent negligence led to the destruction of embryos which the parents paid to have frozen in preparation for a future pregnancy.

    One of the couples asserted that the destruction of their fertilized embryos should include charges of wrongful death of a minor, and the Alabama Supreme Court agreed.  Alabama issued a ban on the majority of abortions in 2019 and the US Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade has solidified the standing that states have the right to decide the legality of abortion outside of federal interference.  Keep in mind, the Alabama case was not brought by the state, it was brought by private citizens in a dispute with an IVF clinic, but the decision has sweeping implications.    

    The root legal argument made by abortion advocates is that the Constitution protects life, liberty and property, but it does not specify exactly what the definition of “life” is or when legal personhood begins.  The Alabama decision is terrifying to abortion activists because this is one of the first instances since the Dobbs case in which fertilized embryos are being defined as living human beings.  Such a trend would give constitutional rights to unborn children.

    Conservatives in Alabama including Senator Tommy Tuberville have applauded the court ruling, but leftists are in an uproar.  The fear is palpable in the rantings of MSNBC host Joy Reid, who makes some classic anti-child’s rights arguments along with some new and bizarre assertions about slavery in response to Senator Tuberville’s suggestion that Alabama needs more children.

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

    Three primary points need to be addressed here:

    1)  Reid applies the old population control argument in a disturbing tangent – “If conservatives are going to stand against illegal immigration, then they must also support abortion.”  

    In other words, she thinks that opposing illegal immigration is the same as opposing higher population in the US and therefore, if conservatives oppose higher population, they should be pro-abortion.  But, this is not the conservative position. 

    First and foremost, pro-life advocates are against what they see as the murder of children.  It’s a moral argument, not an economic debate related to population rates.  The moral argument, not surprisingly, completely escapes Joy Reid’s radar.

    Second, her position is actually backwards.  If Democrats are going to promote and support mass illegal immigration into the US because they think America needs more workers, then why not simply stop abortions and increase the population organically instead?  Why continue subsidizing and incentivizing illegals when children can be born here legally?  Wouldn’t it be preferable to raise a population with American principles and values rather than inviting in millions of unvetted foreigners who immediately take welfare, eat up housing and cause more crime?

    2)  Reid then pursues an unhinged hypothesis, suggesting that Republicans in Alabama might want more children (in place of illegal immigrants) because those children will be “destitute” and easier to “enslave.”  She then compares the notion once again to “The Handmaids Tale,” a poorly written book for mentally deficient readers often cited by the political left as if it’s as valid as Orwell’s 1984.

    Is Reid suggesting that illegal immigrants are used as “slaves” in the US?  And does she think this is preferable to making abortion illegal?  This seems to be her argument. If she actually believes that illegals are being used as slaves, then she should make a stand against open borders and illegal immigration.

    It’s hard to find any example in history of slaves being paid for their work while also receiving government subsidies and welfare as incentives to stay and continue being slaves.  That doesn’t sound so “slavery-ish,” as Reid so eloquently describes it.   

    3)  Finally, Reid insinuates that the Alabama decision might be a ploy to increase the population of white people in the state (and leftists always treat more white people as a bad thing).  But according to her previous argument any children born under the new rules would be destitute and thus used as slaves.  Does this go for the white kids also?  Or, is it only victimization if the children are not white?

    Some people might say that Joy Reid is an irrelevant person and there’s no need to counter her blatherings with any seriousness.  However, her claims represent the thinking of a majority of activists within the woke movement.  It’s important to show how disjointed and irrational this thinking is whenever it arises, otherwise it will continue to spread like a cancer across the country.          

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/28/2024 – 22:00

  • Illinois Judge Removes Trump From Primary Ballot
    Illinois Judge Removes Trump From Primary Ballot

    By Catherine Yang of Epoch Times

    Ahead of a Supreme Court ruling on whether former President Donald Trump can be disqualified as a candidate by individual states under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, an Illinois judge ruled President Trump ineligible for the ballot.

    Cook County Circuit Court Judge Tracie Porter, following other jurisdictions, stayed her order to remove the former president pending an appeal which he has, and which the Supreme Court has said it will hear. The ruling came a week after the judge heard arguments regarding Illinois statutes.

    “This Order is stayed until March 1, 2024 in anticipation of an appeal to the Illinois Appellate Court, First District, or the Illinois Supreme Court. This Order is further stayed if the United States Supreme Court in Anderson v. Griswold enters a decision inconsistent with this Order,” the ruling reads.

    Cook County Circuit Court Judge Tracie Porter

    On Feb. 8, the day the Supreme Court heard arguments regarding Colorado’s disqualification of President Trump, mail-in ballots were sent out in Illinois with President Trump’s name on them. This puts the state in a position to potentially have to not count votes cast for him.

    If the order is not stayed and reversed, the state elections board will be tasked with removing “Donald J. Trump from the ballot for the General Primary Election on March 19, 2024, or cause any votes cast for him to be suppressed, according to the procedures within their administrative authority.”

    Much of the judge’s opinion and order dealt with state law and whether the state elections board had the jurisdiction to rule on this matter.

    The judge found that Illinois law allowed petitioners to bring this kind of a challenge and that President Trump was “disqualified by engaging in insurrection,” noting that this finding was echoed by the hearing officer of the state election board and the Colorado Supreme Court.

    “This Court shares the Colorado Supreme Court’s sentiments that did not reach its conclusions lightly. This Court also realizes the magnitude of this decision and it (sic) impact on the upcoming primary Illinois elections,” the order reads.

    Both of those jurisdictions based the “insurrection” conclusion on records that plaintiffs presented drawn largely from the controversial Jan. 6 Select Committee report.

    Judge Porter determined that Section 3 was self-executing, applied to presidents, and could be applied by individual states even in the event of a national election.

    These legal issues are all currently before the Supreme Court, which on Feb. 8 questioned attorneys representing President Trump and six petitioners from Colorado on the ramifications of states applying Section 3 at length and spent little time discussing whether an insurrection occurred.

    Petitioners

    The challenge was brought by five Illinois voters, represented by the activist group “Free Speech for People.”

    Earlier, the bipartisan Illinois State Board of Elections unanimously voted to keep President Trump on the ballot after determining that the board did not have the authority to analyze constitutional issues. The board unanimously voted to keep President Joe Biden on the ballot for similar reasons, in response to two separate challenges brought against the sitting president.

    The challenge to President Trump’s eligibility was then appealed in circuit court, and the parties have indicated that whatever the ruling, it would be appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court.

    Free Speech for People Legal Director Ron Fein declared it a “historic victory.”

    Continue reading at Epoch Times

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/28/2024 – 21:59

  • US GDP "Grew" $334 Billion In Q4…. That Growth Cost $834 Billion In Debt
    US GDP “Grew” $334 Billion In Q4…. That Growth Cost $834 Billion In Debt

    Moments ago, two things happened: Biden’s Bureau of Economic Analysis released the first revision of Q4 2023 GDP, a number which is completely irrelevant as it looks at the state of the US economy more than 2 months ago as the calendar is now just weeks away from the start of Q2 2024… and bitcoin soared above $60,000, now less than $10k away from a record high. While it may not be immediately obvious, the two events are linked. Let us explain.

    First, according to the Biden admin, in Q4 GDP rose 3.2%, a modest drop from the 3.3% reported in the first estimate one month ago, and below the 3.3% consensus estimate.

    While we already know this, the BEA reported that the increase in the fourth quarter primarily reflected increases in consumer spending, exports, and state and local government spending. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

    • The increase in consumer spending reflected increases in both services and goods. Within services, the leading contributors were health care, food services and accommodations, and other services (led by international travel). Within goods, the leading contributors to the increase were other nondurable goods (led by pharmaceutical products) as well as recreational goods and vehicles.
    • The increase in exports reflected increases in both goods (led by petroleum) and services (led by financial services).
    • The increase in state and local government spending reflected increases in both investment (led by structures) and consumption expenditures (led by compensation of employees).

    Comparing the first estimate with the second, we find several notable items, the first being that Personal Consumption actually rose more than expected, growing a 3.0% QoQ annualized (vs 2.8% in the first estimate), and contributing 2.0% to the bottom line GDP of 3.21%, up from 1.91% in the original estimate. Another increase was seen in fixed investment which contributed 0.43% to the bottom line, up from the 0.31% originally estimated; finally government also saw its contribution boosted, rising to 0.73%, or about a quarter, of the final GDP. These improvement were offset by a notable drop in the change in private inventories which declined from an addition of 0.07% to a subtraction of -0.27%.

    Ok, none of this matters: the numbers will be revised again next month but by then all markets will care about will be not so much Q1 GDP but rather Q2 and onward. So very stale.

    But what does that have to do with the bitcoin spike?

    Well, a closer look at the data revealed something stunning: a quick look at the increase in nominal GDP, which rose from $27.61 trillion in Q3 to $27.94 trillion in Q4, shows that the US economy increased some $334.5 billion in absolute nominal dollar terms.

    But where did this growth come from? Why debt of course, and a lot of it. For the answer how much debt, we go to the US Treasury’s Debt to the penny website, where we find that debt on Sept 30, 2023 was $33,167,334,044,723.16 and debt on Dec 31, 2023 was $34,001,493,655,565.48.

    In other words, it cost $834.2 billion in debt during Q3 to grow the US economy by $334.5 billion, or exactly $2.5 in debt for every $1 in GDP “growth.”

    Source: BEA and US Treasury

    Which also brings us back full circle and explains why bitcoin is now trading at $60,000, the highest price since late 2021 and why it will not only surpass its all time high in just a few days, but why it will rise much, much higher, because the US is now well past the point of no return.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/28/2024 – 21:45

  • Supreme Court Seems Divided Over ATF Bump Stock Regulation
    Supreme Court Seems Divided Over ATF Bump Stock Regulation

    Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times,

    The Supreme Court seemed divided during oral argument on Feb. 28 over whether it would uphold the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) regulation prohibiting ownership of bump stocks.

    That regulation came after the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas where a gunman used bump stock-equipped firearms. It reversed years of ATF interpretations allowing non-mechanical bump stocks, or those without a spring.

    In doing so, ATF reinterpreted a post-Prohibition law that banned the use of machine guns. Unlike other gun rights cases, the attorneys in this case—Garland v. Cargill—didn’t talk much about the Second Amendment. Rather, they sought to convince the justices that the phrases “automatically” and “single function of the trigger” within federal law either did or didn’t apply to bump stocks.

    Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote an opinion from 2022 upholding gun rights, peppered the Biden administration with questions focused on teasing out the differences in operating a firearm with or without a bump stock.

    Much of the debate focused on whether bump stocks allowed a single trigger pull to initiate a process by which bullets were rapidly released.

    Jonathan Mitchell, the New Civil Liberties Alliance attorney arguing for Michael Cargill, repeatedly emphasized that bump stocks only allowed one bullet per trigger pull. He also argued that firing with bump stocks didn’t meet the statutory language of “single function of the trigger” due to grammatical reasons and the fact that bump stock users had to apply pressure to maintain accelerated fire.

    Principal Deputy Solicitor General Brian Fletcher and Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson suggested instead that bump stocks allowed users to initiate a process with the bump stock after a single pull of the trigger.

    “Once the shooter presses forward to fire the first shot, the bump stock uses the gun’s recoil energy to create a continuous back-and-forth cycle that fires hundreds of shots per minute,” Mr. Fletcher said.

    Justice Amy Coney Barrett told Mr. Fletcher that she was “entirely sympathetic to your argument,” stating that “this is functioning like a machinegun would.” She questioned, however, why Congress didn’t pass legislation to cover bump stocks “more clearly.”

    The case arose from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which ruled in favor of Mr. Cargill while noting that the legal rule of lenity required they rule against the government when the meaning of a statute was unclear.

    NCLA President Mark Chenoweth told The Epoch Times he thought the Court would rule in favor of Mr. Cargill given its textualist composition.

    “We have a majority of justices who are textualists, and they‘ll look at the text, and they’ll look at the way that the gun functions, and I think that they will decide that the bump stock is on the outside of the machinegun ban.”

    The National Firearms Act

    Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh raised concerns about how ATF’s 2018 regulation would apply to people who later owned bump stocks. But most of the questioning focused on how bump stocks operate, the wording of the National Firearms Act, and Congress’ intent in passing the law in 1934.

    Story continues below advertisement

    The three liberal justices seemed skeptical of Mr. Mitchell’s arguments—particularly Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown-Jackson, who suggested he was asserting an irrelevant distinction for the federal law involved.

    Both questioned whether the overall thrust of the 1934 law was intended to prevent use of devices like bump stocks.

    “As far as I can tell, the sort of common usage of the word ‘function’ is not its operational design. It’s not the mechanics of the thing. It is what it achieves, what it’s being used for,” Justice Jackson told Mr. Mitchell.

    She added that “weapons with bump stocks have triggers that function in the same way. They—through a single, right, pull of the trigger or touch of the trigger, you achieve the same result of automatic fire.”

    Mr. Mitchell countered that “a single discharge of the trigger produces only one shot. It doesn’t produce a round of automatic fire. The only way you get to repeated shots with a bump stock equipped rifle is for the shooter himself to continually undertake manual action by thrusting the forestock of the rifle forward with his non-shooting hand.”

    Part of the confusion surrounding the statute involves ATF’s contention that “single function of the trigger” under federal law included a “single pull of the trigger.” Both Justice Neil Gorsuch and Mr. Mitchell cast doubt on that interpretation, noting that “function” was a transitive verb.

    “People don’t function things,” Justice Gorsuch said. “They may pull things, they may throw things, but they don’t function things.”

    Justice Kagan suggested that Mr. Mitchell’s interpretation lacked common sense.

    “I view myself as a good textualist,” she said. “I think that that’s the way we should think about statutes. It’s by reading them.”

    “But, you know, textualism is not inconsistent with common sense,” she added. “Like, at some point, you have to apply a little bit of common sense to the way you read a statute and understand that what this statute comprehends is a weapon that fires a multitude of shots with a single human action.”

    “Whether it’s a continuous pressure on a … conventional machinegun, holding the trigger, or a continuous pressure on one of these devices on the barrel … I can’t understand how anybody could think that those two things should be treated differently.”

    Justice Alito asked Mr. Mitchell whether his case was one where “the literal language of the statute had to control even though it’s pretty hard to think that Congress actually meant that to apply in certain situations.”

    Potential Congressional Action

    Justice Gorsuch indicated he thought Congressional action would have been preferable to an ATF rule interpreting prior legislation. He also asked about former Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) criticizing the use of regulation to ban bump stocks.

    Justice Kavanaugh noted that bump stocks didn’t exist around the time of the 1934 law’s passage. He went on to ask Mr. Fletcher: “What’s your explanation, maybe common-sense explanation or some other explanation, for why, when this does become an issue, the Bush Administration, the Obama Administration, Senator Feinstein, all say no?”

    Outside of the Court, Mr. Cargill told The Epoch Times he thought Congress had authority over the issue but didn’t think it should pass a law regulating bump stocks.

    The Epoch Times asked both he and Mr. Mark Chenoweth whether bump stocks were protected by the Second Amendment. “I don’t know,” Mr. Cargill said.

    Mr. Chenoweth similarly said he didn’t know about the Second Amendment question and would have to look at how history did or didn’t support bump stocks’ protection under the Constitution.

    “We look at this as an abuse of administrative power case, not as a Second Amendment case,” he said. “If Congress had passed this law, we wouldn’t be challenging it.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/28/2024 – 21:40

  • Goldman Says Office Tower Prices Must Plunge 50% For Housing Conversion To Make Sense
    Goldman Says Office Tower Prices Must Plunge 50% For Housing Conversion To Make Sense

    As office tower vacancies continue to rise nationwide, many of these buildings are becoming economically nonviable workspaces, raising the question of what can be done with millions of square feet of underutilized space. Simultaneously, the US housing market faces a severe shortage, leaving investors and lawmakers to ponder whether underutilized office space can be transformed into multifamily buildings. 

    Goldman analyst Jan Hatzius uses a discounted cash flow model to show that the current acquisition costs of office towers are still too high for conversion to multifamily buildings, indicating that offices will likely remain underutilized in the medium term. 

    Hatzius pointed out that the viable point where office tower conversions would make financial sense would be a further price decline of 50%. 

    About 4% of the nation’s office buildings could be slated for conversion projects into housing, with the share expected to jump as the office vacancy rate is forecasted to reach 18% in 2033 from about 14% this year. 

    Many of these nonviable towers are still overvalued and not cheap enough for conversion because of financing costs. Even with San Francisco’s office industry in a meltdown and prices having already tumbled 35% since 2019, these levels are still too high. 

    Goldman’s definition of a nonviable office tower is that it must be located in a suburban area or central business district and built before 1990 but has not been renovated since 2000. Each tower must have a vacancy rate above 30%. 

    Based on Goldman’s model, Hatzius’ team suggests “that converting a nonviable office that is priced at the average current level will result in a $164 loss” per square foot, adding, “This means that current office prices would need to fall by that much, to around $154 per [square foot] or by 50%, for the cost to be fully covered by the stream of discounted future revenues.”

    With that in mind, a structural downshift in office demand has occurred in recent years because of the widespread adoption of hybrid work, among other factors, including an exodus of cities by companies whose employees no longer feel safe in imploding progressive-controlled metro areas.

    The CRE crisis is far from over (read prior GS report on “heightened CRE risks“). And remember the dominoes began falling last month. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/28/2024 – 21:20

  • India's Oil Supply From Russia Threatened by New US Sanctions
    India’s Oil Supply From Russia Threatened by New US Sanctions

    By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

    Indian refiners are concerned that the latest U.S. sanctions against Russia could further impact their ability to import cheap Russian crude as freight rates are set to rise and dent refining margins, industry sources in India have told Reuters.

    The U.S. levied new sanctions against Russia last week, on the second anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and in response to the death of opposition politician and anticorruption activist Alexey Navalny.

    Among the 500 targets of the new sanctions, the U.S. Treasury and State are targeting Russia’s tanker operator Sovcomflot and more than a dozen crude oil tankers linked to the Russian state firm.

    Refiners in India are now concerned that the new sanctions would make it more difficult to have oil shipped from Russia on non-sanctioned vessels, which would raise shipping costs and eat into the refining margins, according to Reuters’ sources.

    India will still buy crude from Russia but only if it is sold below the G7 price cap of $60 per barrel and is shipped on non-sanctioned vessels, an Indian government source told Reuters.

    Even before the latest U.S. sanctions, Refining margins for India’s biggest state-owned refiners had dropped amid more difficult access to Russian crude and soaring freight rates due to the Red Sea disruption to shipments, analysts and traders told Bloomberg last week.

    For most of 2023, Indian refiners enjoyed high refining margins and profits as they imported cheap Russian crude at $20 a barrel and more below international benchmarks.   

    The decline in refining margins is due to higher costs for Indian refiners because of higher competition for Russian supply in Asia, increased freight costs, and tougher U.S. sanctions enforcement, which has limited India’s access to very low-priced crudes from Russia.

    The tougher enforcement of the G7 sanctions and related payment issues have been holding up Indian purchases of some cargoes of Russian crude oil, with tankers previously headed to India turning back eastwards, tanker-tracking data monitored by Bloomberg showed early this year.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/28/2024 – 21:00

  • "I'm Ringing The Alarm Bell, Because Flood Of Illegals Is Crushing The Country!"
    “I’m Ringing The Alarm Bell, Because Flood Of Illegals Is Crushing The Country!”

    Ahead of President Biden’s visit to the southern border on Thursday, with former President Trump planning to visit simultaneously to slam the radicals in the White House for sparking the worst migrant invasion this nation has ever seen, a new graphic released by Bloomberg shows the locations of where illegals have ended up after being bussed through the nation via a shadowy network of taxpayer-funded non-governmental organizations. 

    The latest figure from the US Customs and Border Protection shows a whopping 7.3 million illegals have flooded this nation under Biden’s first term. 

    Source: CBP

    It was already evident that illegals were being transported by bus to major Democratic cities such as New York City, Detroit, Los Angeles, Denver, and other urban centers. Now, according to Bloomberg data based on immigration court records, the cities listed above are, in fact, where these folks are being shipped: 

    Much of the angst around the impact of newly arrived migrants to the US has focused on the biggest cities in New York, Illinois and Colorado, and immigration court records suggest that those states are indeed among the most affected by the surge. The data also signal that Texas and Florida, which have long complained about the costs of absorbing newcomers, are still among the top destinations of migrants.

    Source: Bloomberg

    More from Bloomberg:

    The number of migrants listing an address in Illinois for their immigration court cases jumped nine-fold in 2023 compared with just two years earlier; the increase was 7-fold in Colorado and five times in New York—bigger than the increases seen in Texas and Florida. The data also suggest that New York state saw the highest number of migrant arrivals in 2023 on a per capita basis: 1 per 100 residents of the state. New Jersey and Florida were next at 0.9. Texas and Colorado had 0.8, and Illinois ranked eighth at 0.6.

    Source: Bloomberg

    The invasion is happening at such a grand scale that Elon Musk posted on X Tuesday night: “I am ringing the alarm bell, because the flood of illegals is crushing the country!” 

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    There has already been a flurry of headlines about migrants sparking crime waves nationwide (read: “I Hope Public Is Waking Up”: Border Invasion Sparks Migrant Crime Crisis In Major Cities). 

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    The latest shitshow is a migrant who murdered a 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley on the University of Georgia campus last week. Left-leaning corporate media has been hush-hush about this as well as the Biden administration. 

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    The most concerning part is that a tidal wave of violent crime will only accelerate from here. 

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    A new Gallup poll shows Americans are becoming increasingly angered by Biden’s migrant crisis. About 28% of respondents said immigration is the top issue in the US. This is up from 20% the month before. 

    The border crisis is an epic disaster for Democrats ahead of the November elections. 

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    Just how bad? Well, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Monday night at a community meeting that the city’s sanctuary laws need to be reversed to deport the illegals. This is a significant shift after the progressive mayor first welcomed unvetted illegals with welcoming arms. 

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    Meanwhile, Democrats are quickly losing the black vote to Republicans because the Biden administration is prioritizing illegals over their own citizens. 

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    Also, riddle us this: Why are Biden elites gunning for World War III in Ukraine with Russia while flooding the US with millions of unvetted illegals?

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    This is a recipe for a national security disaster. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/28/2024 – 20:44

  • "Americans Are Being Lied To About Ukraine" – Tucker Carlson Reflects On Putin, Zelensky, Navalny & Nuclear War
    “Americans Are Being Lied To About Ukraine” – Tucker Carlson Reflects On Putin, Zelensky, Navalny & Nuclear War

    The international attacks on Tucker Carlson, especially from within US mainstream media and NATO-connected circles, have only increased following his hugely controversial eight day visit to Russia earlier this month where he interviewed President Vladimir Putin. Russian state media has even this week claimed authorities uncovered an “assassination plot” – rumored to have been backed by Kiev.

    This week the former FOX prime time host was interviewed about his trip and the whole Putin interview experience in three-hour podcast hosted by Lex Fridman. Tucker Carlson revealed more about what motivated him to do the televised Putin segment, and further discussed his personal take on the Russia-Ukraine war and where it could go from here, now having entered its third year. Interestingly, Carlson’s main critique of the war focused not on Putin or the Kremlin’s actions in Ukraine, which of course are not under his control or influence, but on the impact to America.

    Carlson explained that the West’s escalation of the conflict long ago into a full-blown proxy war has not only resulted in more needless Ukrainian deaths, but it has been devastating for the United States. “I reject the whole premise of the war in Ukraine from the American perspective,” Carlson told Fridman. “There’s a war going on that is wrecking the US economy in a way and at a scale that people do not understand.” He also generally characterized the response of the US political class to the conflict, along with the American public which has uncritically followed, as naive.

    Carlson emphasized that what would be a cautiously realist approach was utterly abandoned by Washington from the start, as has been typical of the past decades of US interventionism abroad. “It doesn’t even matter what I want to happen… that’s a distortion of what is happening,” Carlson explained, and pointed to Russia having 100 million more people and more defense industry might “than all of NATO combined.”

    He described that a big part of the rationale behind the Putin interview was to bring “more information” to the West so that “people could make their own decisions about whether” escalation of weapons to Kiev and jingoistic rhetoric from Western capitals is a good idea.

    Ultimately, he said, Americans are being lied to:

    “Just to be clear, I have no plans to move to Russia. I think I would probably be arrested if I moved to Russia. Ed Snowden, who is the most famous openness, transparency, advocate in the world, I would say along with Assange, doesn’t want to live in Russia. He’s had problems with the Putin government. He’s attacked Putin. They don’t like it. I get it. I get it. I’m just saying, what are the lessons for us?

    The main lesson is we are being lied to in a way that’s bewildering and very upsetting. I was mad about it all eight days I was there because I feel like I’m better informed than most people because it’s my job to be informed. I’m skeptical of everything and yet I was completely hoodwinked by it.”

    Topics highlighted throughout the long-ranging conversion included Carlson’s personal take on being one-on-one with a seemingly “nervous” Putin, the question of ending the war in Ukraine, the role of the CIA and Western intelligence services, the prospect that the crisis could spiral into nuclear confrontation with the West, the Alexei Navalny saga, as well as a foray into the Israel-Palestine conflict near the end. Watch the full Carlson-Fridman interview below…

    The following are some key excerpts of Tucker Carlson’s words from the interview, selected by ZeroHedge [emphasis ours]…

    * * *

    Carlson On Putin. “I want to know who this guy is.”

    I thought he seemed nervous, and I was very surprised by that. And I thought he seemed like someone who’d overthought it a little bit, who had a plan, and I don’t think that’s the right way to go into any interview. My strong sense, having done a lot of them for a long time, is that it’s better to know what you think, to say as much as you can honestly, so you don’t get confused by your own lies, and just to be yourself. And I thought that he went into it like an over-prepared student, and I kept thinking, “Why is he nervous?” But I guess because he thought a lot of people were going to see it…

    I mean, I asked him as I usually do the most obvious dumbest question ever, which is, “Why’d you do this?” And he had said in a speech that I think is worth reading. I don’t speak Russian, so I haven’t heard it in the original, but he had said at the moment of the beginning of the war, he had given this address to Russians, in which he explained to the fullest extent we have seen so far why he was doing this. And he said in that speech, “I fear that NATO the West, the United States, the Biden administration will preemptively attack us.” And I thought, “Well, that’s interesting.” I can’t evaluate whether that’s a fear rooted in reality or one rooted in paranoia. But I thought, “Well, that’s an answer right there.”

    And so I alluded to that in my question and rather than answering it, he went off on this long from my perspective, kind of tiresome, sort of greatest hits of Russian history. And the implication I thought was, “Well, Ukraine is ours, or Eastern Ukraine is ours already.”…

    I want to know who this guy is. I think a western audience, a global audience, has a right to know more about the guy, and so just let him talk. Because I don’t feel like my reputation’s on the line. People have already drawn conclusions about me, I suppose to the extent they have. I’m not interested really in those conclusions anyway, so just let him talk. And so I calmed down and just let him talk. And in retrospect, I thought that was really, really interesting. Whether you agree with it or not, or whether you think it’s relevant to the war in Ukraine or not, that was his answer. And so it’s inherently significant.

    American falsehoods & the Ukraine war

    I mean, I guess I reject the whole premise of the war in Ukraine from the American perspective, which is a tiny group of dumb people in Washington has decided to do this for reasons they won’t really explain. And you don’t have a role in it at all as an American citizen, as the person who’s paying for it, whose children might be drafted to fight it. To shut up and obey, I just reject that completely. I think, I guess I’m a child of a different era. I’m a child of participatory democracy to some extent, where your opinion as a citizen is not irrelevant. And I guess the level of lying about it was starting to drive me crazy.

    The idea that Ukraine would inevitably win this war. Now victory was never, as it never is, defined precisely. Nothing’s ever defined precisely, which is always to tell that there’s deception at the heart of the claim. But Ukraine’s on the verge of winning. Well, I don’t know. I mean, I’m hardly a tactician or military expert. For the fifth time, I’m not an expert on Russia or Ukraine. I just looked at Wikipedia. Russia has a hundred million more people than Ukraine, a hundred million.

    It has much deeper industrial capacity, war material capacity than all of NATO combined. For example, Russia is turning out artillery shells, which are significant in a ground war at a ratio of seven to one compared to all NATO countries combined. That’s all of Europe. Russia is producing seven times the artillery shells as all of Europe combined. What? That’s an amazing fact, and it turns out to be a really significant fact. In fact, the significant fact. But if you ask your average person in this country, even a fairly well-informed person of good faith who’s just trying to understand what’s going on, who’s going to win this war? Well, Ukraine’s going to win. They’re on the right side.

    …And I raised that question in my previous job, and I was denounced as of course a traitor or something. But okay, great, I’m a traitor. What’s the answer? What’s the answer? [Vic]Toria Nuland, who I know, not dumb, hasn’t helped the US in any way, an architect of the Iraq war, architect of this disaster, one of the people who destroyed the US dollar. Okay, fine, but you’re not stupid. So you’re trying to get a war by acting that way, what’s the other explanation? By the way, NATO didn’t want Ukraine because it didn’t meet the criteria for admission. So why would you say that? Because you want a war, that’s why. And that war has enriched a lot of people to the tune of billions. So I don’t care if I sound like some kind of left-wing conspiracy nut, because I’m neither left-wing nor a conspiracy nut. Tell me how I’m wrong.

    On feeling sorry for Zelensky

    If I’m a Russian or a Ukrainian, let’s just be sovereign countries now. We’re not run by the U.S. State Department. We’re just our own countries. I believe in sovereignty, okay? So that’s my view. I also want to say one thing about Zelensky. I attacked him before because I was so offended by his cavalier talk about nuclear exchange because it would kill my family. So I’m really offended by that. Anyone who talks that way I’m offended by. But I do feel for Zelensky. I do. He didn’t run for president to have this happen.

    I think Zelensky’s been completely misused by the State Department, by Toria Nuland, by our Secretary of State, by the policymakers in the U.S. who’ve used Ukraine as a vessel for their ambitions, their geopolitical ambitions, but also the many American businesses who’ve used Ukraine as a way to fleece the American taxpayer, and then by just independent ghouls like Boris Johnson who are hoping to get rich from interviews on it. The whole thing, Zelensky is at the center of this. He’s not driving history. NATO and the United States is driving history. Putin is driving history. There’s this guy, Zelensky. So I do feel for him, and I think he’s in a perilous place.

    The prospect of nuclear war

    Well it’s been what, 80 years? Not even 80 years, 79. And so we haven’t had a world war in 79 years. But one nuclear exchange would of course kill more people than all wars in human history combined.

    I am counting. Because I think it obviously, it’s completely demonic and everyone pretends like it’s great. Nuclear weapons are evil.

    The use of them is evil, and the technology itself is evil. And in my opinion, I mean, it’s like if you can’t, that’s just so obvious. And what I’m saying is I’m not against all technology. I took a shower this morning. It was powered by an electric pump, heated by a water heater. I loved it. I sat in an electric sauna. I’m not against all technology, obviously, but the mindless worship of technology?

    The possibility of Russia-Ukraine Peace: Putin “wants a settlement”

    He [Putin] wants a settlement, he wants a settlement. He doesn’t want to fight with them rhetorically and he just wants to get this done. He made a bunch of offers at the peace deal. We wouldn’t even know this happened if the Israelis hadn’t told us. I’m so grateful that they did that, that Johnson was dispatched by the State Department to stop it. I mean, I think Boris Johnson is a husk of a man. But imagine if you were Boris Johnson and you spend your whole life with Ukraine flag, “I’m for Ukraine,” and then all those kids died because of what you did, and the lines haven’t really moved. It hasn’t been a victory for Ukraine. It’s not going to be a victory for Ukraine. It’s like, how do you feel about yourself if you did that? I mean, I’ve done a lot of shitty things in my life, I feel bad about them, but I’ve never extended a war for no reason. That’s a pretty grave sin in my opinion.

    Well, the U.S. government’s not allowing negotiations. So that for me is the most upsetting part. It’s like in the end, what Russia does, I’m not implicated in that. What Ukraine does, I’m not implicated in that. I’m not Russian or Ukrainian. I’m an American who grew up really believing in my country. I’m supporting my country through my tax dollars. It’s like I really care about what the U.S. government does because they’re doing it in my name, and I care a lot because I’m American. We are the impediment to peace, which is another way of saying we are responsible for all these innocent people getting dragooned out of public parks in Kiev and sent to go die. What? That is not good. I’m ashamed of it.

    On the Alexey Navalny saga

    Well, it’s awful. I mean, imagine dying in prison. I’ve thought about it a lot. I’ve known a lot of people in prison a lot, including some very good friends of mine. So I felt instantly sad about it. From a geopolitical perspective, I don’t know any more than that. And I laugh at and sort of resent, but mostly find amusing the claims by American politicians, who really are the dumbest politicians in the world actually, “This happened and here’s what it means.” And it’s like, “Actually as a factual matter, we don’t know what happened. We don’t know what happened.” We have no freaking idea what happened. We can say, and I did say, and I will say again, I don’t think you should put opposition figures in prison. I really don’t. I don’t, period. It happens a lot around the world, happens in this country, as you know, and I’m against all of it.

    But do we know how we died? The short answer? No, we don’t. Now, if I had to guess, I would say killing Navalny during the Munich Security Conference in the middle of a debate over $60 billion in Ukraine funding, maybe the Russians are dumb. I didn’t get that vibe at all. I don’t see it. But maybe they killed him. I mean, they certainly put him in prison, which I’m against. But here’s what I do know is that we don’t know. And so when Chuck Schumer stands up and… Joe Biden reads some card in front of him with lines about Navalny, it’s like, I’m allowed to laugh at that because it’s absurd. You don’t know.

    An interesting CIA anecdote

    I was like, live in foreign countries, see history happen. I’m for that. I applied to the Operations Directorate. They turned me down on the basis of drug use actually. True. But anyway, whatever. I was unsuited for it so I’m glad they turned me down. But the point is I didn’t see CIA as a threat, partly because I was bathing in propaganda about CIA and I didn’t really understand what it was and didn’t want to know. But second, because my impression at the time was it was outwardly focused. It was focused on our enemies. I don’t have a problem with that as much. The fact that CIA is playing in domestic politics and actually has for a long time, was involved in the Kennedy assassination, that’s not speculation. That’s a fact. And I confirmed that from someone who had read their documents that are still not public, it’s shocking.

    You can’t have that. And the reason I’m so mad is I really believe in the idea of representative government. Acknowledging its imperfections, but I should have some say, I live here, I’m a citizen. I pay all your freaking taxes. So the fact that they would be tampering with American democracy is so outrageous to me. And I don’t know why Morning Joe is not outraged. This parade of dummies, highly credentialed dummies they have on Morning Joe every day. That doesn’t bother them at all. How could that not bother you? Why is only Glenn Greenwald mad about it? I mean, it’s confirmed. It’s not like a fever dream. It’s real. They played in the last election domestically, and I guess it shows how dumb I am because they’ve been doing that for many years. I mean, the guy who took out Mosaddegh lived on my street. One of the Roosevelt’s, CIA officer.

    Carlson on the Israel-Palestine conflict

     I mean, it’s not a topic that I get into a lot because I’m a non-expert and because I’m not… Unlike every other American, I’m not emotionally invested in other countries just in general. I mean, I admire them or not, and I love visiting them. I love Jerusalem, probably my favorite city in the world, but I don’t have an emotional attachment to it. So maybe I’ve got more clarity. I don’t know, maybe less. Here’s my view. I believe in sovereignty as mentioned, and I think each country has to make decisions based on its own interest, but also with reference to its own capabilities and its own long-term interest.

    And it’s very unwise for… I’m not a huge fan of treaties. Some are fine, too many bad. But I think US aid, military aid to Israel and the implied security guarantees, some explicit, but many implied, security guarantees of the United States to Israel probably haven’t helped Israel that much long-term. It’s a rich country with a highly capable population. Like every other country, it’s probably best if it makes its decisions based on what it can do by itself. So I would definitely be concerned if I lived in Israel because I think fair or unfair-

    But now it’s not possible. If you had a coalition of countries against Israel, I know Israel has nuclear weapons and has a capable military and all that and the backing of the United States, but it’s a small country, I think I’d be very worried. So there’s that. I don’t see any advantage to the United States. I mean, I think it’s important for each country to make its own decisions.

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    This week there’s been a curious story to emerge in Russian state media sources involving a bizarre ‘assassination plot’ linked to Kiev, which allegedly was supposed to target Carlson while he was in Russia. Interestingly, the allegations have been picked up in major Indian media outlets, among some other international outlets, though it warrants a high degree of skepticism…

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/28/2024 – 20:40

  • Leftists Argue That Hijacking Planes Is A Legitimate Form Of Protest
    Leftists Argue That Hijacking Planes Is A Legitimate Form Of Protest

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

    Some leftists have now moved on to hysterically claim that hijacking planes is a legitimate form of protest.

    No, this isn’t the Babylon Bee.

    The controversy started when Mohammed El-Kurd, a pro-Palestine writer based in Jerusalem, posted on X.

    “You can’t protest peacefully. You can’t boycott. You can’t hunger strike. You can’t hijack planes. You can’t block traffic. You can’t throw Molotovs. You can’t self-immolate. You can’t heckle politicians. You can’t march. You can’t riot. You can’t dissent. You just can’t be.”

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    El-Kurd immediately got ‘community noted’ as it was explained to him that hijacking planes and throwing fire bombs is a from of terrorism, not protest.

    However, despite being utterly roasted and potentially opening himself up to legal ramifications, El-Kurd didn’t delete the tweet.

    His insistence that hijacking planes should be treated as a reasonable form of protest was the echoed by another leftist who describes himself as a “19 y/o white western Maoist”.

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    “Reminder that plane hijackings used to be perfectly normal and were mostly non-violent. 9/11 was an outlier and the first of its kind,” posted a user called Rosedark.

    Community notes stepped in again to remind him that, “Even before 9/11 plane hijackings were very violent and resulted in hundreds of fatalities. More than 400 fatalities were connected to plane hijackings just in the 1980s and 1990s.”

    What’s the world coming to when you can’t even…hijack a plane?

    Both users were on the receiving end of some very forthright and in some cases hilarious responses.

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    Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/28/2024 – 20:20

  • Army National Guard Hit With "Aviation Safety Stand Down" After Two Crashes
    Army National Guard Hit With “Aviation Safety Stand Down” After Two Crashes

    The director of the Army National Guard ordered an “aviation safety stand down” of all helicopter units until a safety review is completed following two deadly crashes involving rotary wing aircraft. 

    The decision for the grounding came after two crashes of AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopters, one near Salt Lake City during a training exercise on Feb. 12, killing the two pilots aboard, and the other during a Feb. 23 training exercise in Mississippi, with both pilots surviving. 

    The stand-down to “review safety policies and procedures” went into effect on Monday, the National Guard said. 

     “We are a combat force with helicopters training or on mission worldwide every day,” said Lt. Gen. Jon A. Jensen, director of the Army National Guard. 

    Jensen continued: “Safety is always at the top of our minds. We will stand down to ensure all of our crews are prepared as well as possible for whatever they’re asked to do.”

    The causes of both crashes have not been publicly released, but the Army’s Combat Readiness Center is investigating the incidents. 

    One of the deadliest training incidents in the service’s history occurred about one year ago when two Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters collided near Fort Campbell, Kentucky. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/28/2024 – 20:00

  • Mitch McConnell – Longest Serving Senate Leader In US History – To Step Down From Position In November
    Mitch McConnell – Longest Serving Senate Leader In US History – To Step Down From Position In November

    Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who turned 82 last week and has suffered multiple public ‘glitches,’ will step down from his Senate leadership position in November after maintaining power for almost two decades as the longest-serving Senate leader in US history.

    McConnell was set to announce his decision on Wednesday in the well of the Senate, AP reports.

    “One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter,” he said in prepared remarks seen by the outlet. “So I stand before you today … to say that this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate.”

    While he’ll no longer be leader, McConnell will serve out his Senate term, which ends in January 2027, “albeit from a different seat in the chamber.”

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    “As I have been thinking about when I would deliver some news to the Senate, I always imagined a moment when I had total clarity and peace about the sunset of my work,” the prepared remarks continue. “A moment when I am certain I have helped preserve the ideals I so strongly believe. It arrived today.”

    It also arrived, as noted above, after two major health scares and his party shifting towards anti-war populism ushered in by President Trump.

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    His tenure was not without its critics, especially from the more restive corners of his party, often aligned with Trump’s confrontational style. Yet, McConnell’s grip on his caucus seldom wavered, a testament to his deep understanding of the political undercurrents that shape legislative priorities.

    The two have been estranged since December 2020, when McConnell refused to abide Trump’s lie that the election of Democrat Joe Biden as president was the product of fraud.

    But while McConnell’s critics within the GOP conference had grown louder, their numbers had not grown appreciably larger, a marker of McConnell’s strategic and tactical skill and his ability to understand the needs of his fellow Republican senators.

    McConnell gave no specific reason for the timing of his decision, which he has been contemplating for months, but he cited the recent death of his wife’s youngest sister as a moment that prompted introspection. “The end of my contributions are closer than I’d prefer,” McConnell said. –AP

    The impending leadership vacuum raises questions about the direction of the Republican Party. His successor will inherit a party at a crossroads, caught between its traditional conservative roots and the populist wave that has reshaped its identity in recent years.

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/28/2024 – 19:55

  • Biden Admin Tax Policy Proposals Hurt US Competitiveness
    Biden Admin Tax Policy Proposals Hurt US Competitiveness

    Authored by Michael Wilkerson via The Epoch Times,

    Usually when someone starts to talk about taxes, the eyelids grow heavy and the attention wanes, so I’ll keep this short. The Biden administration’s tax policy proposals are a disaster for U.S. competitiveness, for families, and the employers who hire them.

    While the Biden administration’s tax proposals have often been vague, with details missing, a few key elements are consistent. They rely on increased tax rates on businesses and individuals, and assume that both can be further burdened without damaging the economy. This is a falsehood.

    The Biden administration’s tax proposals have been unrealistic and completely disconnected from the massive growth in expenditure reflected in the administration’s various initiatives, such as the $1.7 trillion Build Back Better plan. The administration claimed that the Build Back Better program would be “fully paid for by the tax proposals,” which was clearly untrue even at first glance. Detailed analysis from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School indicated that the tax proposals would fall short of the administration’s spending plan by nearly $500 billion.

    More relevant for individuals is what Build Back Better means for personal income tax. According to analysis from the Tax Foundation, the nation’s leading independent tax policy nonprofit, under the Build Back Better framework, the “average top tax rate on personal income would reach 57.4 percent, giving the U.S. the highest rate in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). All 50 states plus the District of Columbia would have top tax rates on personal income exceeding 50 percent.” Under the administration’s plan, the top statutory income tax rate on personal income would be higher than Japan, France, Denmark, Sweden, and each and every one of the 36 OECD nations. State taxes would fall on top of this.

    For example, a top earning tax resident of New York or California would face a marginal tax rate of 66.2 percent and 64.7 percent, respectively.

    For places like Texas or Florida without state income taxes, the top rate would nonetheless be 51.4 percent.

    What will happen to incentives when somewhere between half and two-thirds of income is paid over to the government to pursue policies and programs that most Americans do not support? The effect is predictable. As envisioned, the administration’s proposed tax policies would hinder U.S. competitiveness and reduce incentives to work, save, invest, and innovate.

    More recent budget proposals have fared no better. For example, the Biden administration’s 2024 budget proposals would, according to analysis from the Tax Foundation, add up to “$4.8 trillion in new taxes targeted at businesses and high-income individuals.” The budget was projected to reduce long-term GDP and wages by 1.3 percent and 1.0 percent, respectively, while costing 335,000 jobs.

    The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 was intended to counterbalance China and strengthen the U.S. semiconductor manufacturing sector. The objective was to encourage capital investment in American companies, but requires firms that receive funding under the program share “excess profits,” without clearly defining what that means, with the federal government. This uncertainty is an arbitrary and undefined hidden tax that, rather than strengthening competition and encouraging innovation, will have the opposite effect. It will scare away private sources of funding which will not want to risk invested capital only to see the value created expropriated by the government.

    A sound tax policy has been a mainstay of conservative politics in the United States for generations. Especially since the Reagan administration, the Republican Party has made moderate tax rates a core policy focus. Before the Reagan administration, the maximum federal income tax rate ranged between 60–70 percent throughout most of the postwar era, and as high as 90 percent during the FDR years. President Reagan launched a new era focused on lower taxes as a stimulant for innovation, investment, and growth. The model worked.

    Until the Biden administration, the tax policies and top rates of post-Reagan presidencies of both parties maintained some reasonableness. While Democrats tended toward higher rates and the Republicans somewhat lower, neither sought to move the maximum rate much above 40 percent. And, before President Biden, neither seriously considered imposing an annual wealth tax, a coercive tool used by only a handful of nations around the world. Wealth taxes have been pursued by socialist and communist regimes which sought extreme measures to level wealth inequities in society, but they backfire through widespread manipulations including asset hiding and expatriation. The United States already has an inheritance tax, which is a one-time equivalent tax on estates payable at time of death, and a dozen or so states have similar estate taxes. These are exploitative and punitive against people who are land or asset rich, but cash poor, like many of our farming families in rural America.

    There is a direct link between taxation and inequality. The current U.S. tax code benefits the wealthy, whose primary source of income is capital gains, at the expense of the working and middle classes, whose primary source of gain is ordinary income from their hard work. Fundamentally, if taxes on capital (e.g., dividends, interest, carried interest in private equity) are lower than taxes on labor, inequality will continue to rise. This will, over time, lead to increased social unrest, instability and reduced competitiveness.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/28/2024 – 19:40

  • Japan's Demographic Implosion: Live Births Crash To Record Low, 12 Years Ahead Of Forecast
    Japan’s Demographic Implosion: Live Births Crash To Record Low, 12 Years Ahead Of Forecast

    When it comes to monetary and fiscal policy, Japan is doomed. Unfortunately it is also doomed demographically.

    Extending what has long been the most dismal trend in Japan’s civilizational history, government data showed that the number of babies born in Japan fell for an eighth straight year to a fresh record low in 2023, underscoring the daunting task the country faces in trying to stem depopulation.

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

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

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

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

    Asked about the latest data, Japan’s top government spokesperson said the government will take “unprecedented steps” to cope with the declining birthrate, such as expanding childcare and promoting wage hikes for younger workers.

    None of those measures have led to any perceptive improvement in Japan’s demographic bust in the past.

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

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

    A fall in the number of marriages is clearly followed by a drop in births, said Kanako Amano, a senior researcher at the NLI Research Institute. In order to increase the number of marriages, the government must conduct labor reforms, such as increasing wages in rural areas and eliminating the gender gap, Amano said.

    The government is planning on submitting related legislation, including a bill on boosting child allowances to combat the declining birthrate, to the current session of parliament.

    The number of births has been on a downward trend after hitting a peak in 1973 at around 2.09 million babies. It fell below 1 million in 2016.

    The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare is set to release possibly in June population data excluding foreign residents. The revised figure for 2022 showed births falling to 770,747, down about 30,000 from the preliminary figure. If a similar trend continues in 2023, the number of births excluding foreign residents is likely to total around 730,000.

    Mindful of the potential social and economic impact, and the strains on public finances, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has called the trend the “gravest crisis our country faces”, and unveiled a range of steps to support child-bearing households late last year.

    Japan’s population will likely decline by about 30% to 87 million by 2070, with four out of every 10 people aged 65 or older, according to estimates by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/28/2024 – 19:20

  • Leaked Gaza Ceasefire Proposal Is US 'Psychological Warfare', Hamas Says
    Leaked Gaza Ceasefire Proposal Is US ‘Psychological Warfare’, Hamas Says

    Via The Cradle

    Hamas official Ahmad Abdul Hadi stated Tuesday that a leaked proposal for a ceasefire deal in Gaza is part of a “psychological warfare” campaign being carried out by the US.

    Details of the alleged proposal were leaked to Reuters on Monday, the same day US President Joe Biden said he hoped a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas could be reached by March 4 (next Monday). 

    Israeli forces in Gaza, via IDF

    “My national security adviser tells me that they’re close. They’re close. They’re not done yet. My hope is by next Monday we’ll have a ceasefire,” Biden claimed during an appearance on a late-night US talk show.

    But Abdul Hadi, the Hamas representative in Lebanon, stated that Hamas is not satisfied with the proposal and will not compromise on any of its demands, particularly “on a ceasefire and reaching an honorable, serious deal.”

    Hamas is seeking a permanent end to the war and the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Israel is seeking the release of the 136 captives held by Hamas in Gaza and a temporary ceasefire that would allow it to resume the war after a pause.

    “We are open to any ideas posed by mediators but are also keen on preserving our key demands,” Abdul Hadi told Al-Mayadeen, adding that Israel is “seeking to hold Hamas accountable for any later failures in talks, planning to use this as an excuse to pave the way for the invasion of Rafah.”

    He said the leaks were not part of the Paris negotiations but a US and Israeli attempt to give the public an illusion that Hamas had approved of them. He reiterated that “everything being shared is not serious, but a ploy to maneuver and press on the Resistance.”

    The proposal leaked to Reuters outlined plans for a 40-day truce during which Hamas would free around 40 captives – including female soldiers, those under 19 or over 50 years old, and the sick – in return for about 400 Palestinians held captive in Israel.

    Israel would withdraw its troops from populated areas of Gaza. Displaced Gaza residents, excluding men of fighting age, would be permitted to return to their homes. Israel would be required to allow additional humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the strip are on the verge of starvation. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) also responded to the leaked Paris proposal.

    “The leaks are an attempt to pressure the Palestinians and incite them against the resistance … They are pushing for a ceasefire before Ramadan in anticipation of what might happen in Al-Quds … The enemy believes that it can deceive the resistance with different methods in order to achieve a victory it has failed to achieve on the ground,” PIJ Political Bureau member Ihsan Ataya told Al-Mayadeen.

    In Gaza, residents speaking to Reuters expressed mixed feelings about possible outcomes. “We don’t want a pause, we want a permanent ceasefire, we want an end to the killing,” said Mustafa Basel, a father of five from Gaza City, now displaced in Rafah.

    “Unfortunately, people’s conditions are so grim that some may accept a pause, even [just] during Ramadan,” he said. “They want a permanent end to the war, but the dire conditions make them want a pause even for a month or 40 days in the hope it becomes permanent.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/28/2024 – 19:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Feb 28

Today’s News 28th February 2024

  • Combatting Slavery In China
    Combatting Slavery In China

    Authored by Callista Gingrich via RealClear Wire,

    A report published on February 14 revealed that the Chinese Communist Party is continuing to target and enslave Uyghurs through an expansion of forced labor in China. Published by The Jamestown Foundation and authored by Beijing-banned academic Adrian Zenz, the report concluded, “Xinjiang currently operates the world’s largest system of state-imposed forced labor.”

    The atrocities that the Chinese Communist Party perpetrates against members of ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang have come to light in recent years, including mass imprisonment of more than 1 million civilians, forced sterilization, separation of children from their families, torture, abuse, restrictions on religious freedom, and forced labor.

    While most of China is composed of the Han ethnic group, more than half of the population of the northwestern region of Xinjiang consists of ethnic minorities (predominately Muslim Uyghurs) – who the Party has long sought to control.

    In 2021, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo determined that the Chinese Communist Party was committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang – a determination that Secretary of State Antony Blinken upheld. 

    Though the horrific methods the Party wields to subjugate these minority groups vary, the objective remains the same.

    “It’s a strategy of control and assimilation,” Zenz told The New Yorker. “And it’s designed to eliminate Uyghur culture.”

    Forced labor systems in Xinjiang – punishable by detention for non-compliance – are a key part of removing resistance and opposition to the CCP’s absolute authority and power. In his report, Zenz pointed to two dominant systems used to target Uyghurs and other ethnic groups in Xinjiang.

    In one system, detainees in China’s infamous re-education camps received coercive skills training before receiving coercive work placement. Detainees who were viewed as less problematic received a sentence of forced labor, while others, such as prominent business and intellectual figures, were sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

    Though it appears this system is no longer active, Zenz noted that the Chinese Communist Party is instead expanding its “Poverty Alleviation Through Labor Transfer” program. Zenz described this policy as “a non-internment state-imposed forced labor mobilization system.”

    A Chinese academic research report, the Nankai Report, described the re-education camps as a “drastic short-term measure” and the labor transfers as a long-term “method to reform, meld and assimilate” Uyghurs.

    But the bottom line is clear. “Xinjiang’s recent policy changes have rendered forced labor less visible and more challenging to conceptualize,” Zenz wrote. “Uyghur forced labor is becoming both more prevalent and more insidious.”

    The United States must take notice of these findings that disguise coerced labor as voluntary.

    In 2021, Congress passed into law the bipartisan Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The law prohibits goods made by the Chinese Communist Party’s forced labor programs from entering the U.S. market. However, numerous products tied to slave labor continue to evade legal protections and arrive in American households.

    Chairman of the House Select Committee on the CCP Rep. Mike Gallagher and Ranking Member Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi wrote a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas that outlined some of the key challenges to effectively enforcing this consequential law.

    First, the members wrote, “Companies transfer forced laborers from [Xinjiang] to other regions in the People’s Republic of China, complicating [U.S. Department of Homeland Security] enforcement of the presumptive ban on forced labor products from [Xinjiang].” Additionally, “A second factor undermining enforcement of the [law] is Beijing’s increased transshipment of forced labor products to the United States through third countries.”

    Last week, to further augment and strengthen U.S. efforts in the fight against human rights abuses in Xinjiang, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the bipartisan and bicameral Uyghur Policy Act. This legislation, led by Rep. Young Kim, will authorize the State Department to appoint a Special Coordinator for Uyghur issues, direct the U.S. Agency for Global Media to distribute information on Uyghur genocide, and authorize support for Uyghur human rights activists.

    As the Chinese Communist Party continues to target Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in China, the United States must strengthen the enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and resolve to pass the Uyghur Policy Act into law.

    For more commentary from Ambassador Callista L. Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/27/2024 – 23:40

  • Trump Scores 6th Straight Primary Win With Triumph Over Haley In Michigan
    Trump Scores 6th Straight Primary Win With Triumph Over Haley In Michigan

    By Nathan Worcester of Epoch Times

    Former President Donald J. Trump has soundly defeated former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in Michigan’s Feb. 27 Republican presidential primary, notching his sixth-straight primary victory as he marches towards the GOP nomination.

    The Associated Press called the race for Trump right after the last polls closed at 9 p.m. ET.

    The result is another blow to Ms. Haley, coming days after a double-digit defeat in her home state of South Carolina. Despite this, she has vowed to stay on through Super Tuesday on March 5, when numerous delegate-heavy states will hold their primaries.

    Ms. Haley campaigned in Michigan on Sunday and Monday and was in Colorado on Feb. 27, part of a multi-day tour ahead of Super Tuesday.

    The former United Nations ambassador faces very challenging delegate math as Super Tuesday approaches, suggesting her time in the race is finite.

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    While 16 Michigan delegates to the Republican National Convention were allocated based on the primary results, the majority—39—of the state’s 55 delegates will be awarded as a result of caucusing on March 2.

    The main event will be in Grand Rapids, where former Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) will oversee a convention at which party insiders will vote on how to divvy up the remaining delegates.

    Yet, while Mr. Hoekstra has the backing of President Trump and the Republican National Committee (RNC), his accession to leader of the Michigan GOP has not been universally recognized by Republicans in the state.

    Many in the party maintain that Kristina Karamo was improperly removed from her role as state GOP chairwoman. She’s staging her own convention in Detroit.

    An ongoing lawsuit against Ms. Karamo could end the standoff before March 2. On election day itself, the judge in the case ruled that her ouster from the leadership role was legal.

    Meanwhile, President Biden handily won the Democratic presidential primary in the state, garnering 78.6 percent of the vote.

    But a campaign from Israel-Gaza ceasefire activists to get Democrats to select “uncommitted” from the ballot in that primary got some results. Sixteen percent of votes were for the “uncommitted” option, signaling dissension in Democratic ranks over the Middle Eastern conflict.

    While Israel-Gaza is an electoral sore point for everywhere, it’s particularly sensitive in Michigan, which has large Arab Christian and Arab Muslim communities.

    Former Rep. Justin Amash (L-Mich.), an Arab Christian and former Republican who has recently emerged as a critic of President Biden after supporting President Trump’s first impeachment while in office, recently mourned the death of his second cousin George as a result of an Israeli airstrike on the Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza.

    Michiganders Back Trump

    President Trump’s supporters in the state include Joe Bancroft, who was leaving a polling place at a library in Delta Charter Township when he spoke with The Epoch Times.

    “He’s not a perfect person. Okay. And he is a strong person. And he’s rough around the edges. But here’s the thing. Who do you want to lead this country?” he said.

    His wife, by contrast, voted for President Biden.

    “Hell no,” she said when asked if she had voted for President Trump.

    At an early voting site in Southgate, Michigan, downriver from Detroit, the Sikorskis—Douglas and his wife Sandy—formed a united front for President Trump.

    “The RNC should be devoting all the funds to President Trump,” Mr. Sikorski told The Epoch Times on Feb. 25, the last day of early voting.

    When asked if that priority could hinder important spending on other Republican races, the couple clarified that they felt the RNC could be trusted to use its resources more intelligently under new leadership—”Now that Ronna Romney [McDaniel]’s out,” Ms. Sikorski said.

    Ms. Romney McDaniel announced her resignation as RNC chairwoman on Feb. 26, saying she would leave after Super Tuesday.

    President Trump has endorsed Michael Whatley, chair of the North Carolina Republican Party, as Ms. Romney McDaniel’s replacement. He hopes to replace RNC co-chair Drew McKissick, who is also resigning, with his daughter-in-law Lara Trump.

    Continue reading at the Epoch Times

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/27/2024 – 23:28

  • Women CEOs Outnumber Johns
    Women CEOs Outnumber Johns

    In 2015, an article in the New York Times highlighted the distinct absence of women at the helm of major U.S. companies, using a methodology that was, to say the least, out of the ordinary: at the time, there were fewer women CEOs of major companies in the country than men with the first name John.

    In fact, there were four times as many men with the first names John, Robert, William and James as there were women.

    Good news? Not anymore.

    As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, according to the U.S. financial group Bloomberg, which analyzed the CEOs of the S&P 500 companies, women outnumbered all male first names for the first time in 2017, but were tied with CEOs named James two years on. It was only last year, when ten new women joined the ranks of S&P 500 CEOs, that they widened the gap.

    Infographic: Women CEOs Outnumber Johns | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    A small victory, then, for the place of women among top executives, but one that needs to be put into perspective, since there are still only 41 women in this position.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/27/2024 – 23:20

  • Majority Of Americans Now Back Trump-Style Border Wall: Poll
    Majority Of Americans Now Back Trump-Style Border Wall: Poll

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

    Illegal immigration has become a key concern of voters this election year, with a new poll showing that, for the first time in the survey’s history, a majority of Americans support building a wall along the U.S.–Mexico border.

    President Donald Trump inspects border wall prototypes in San Diego on Mar. 13, 2018. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

    With record numbers of illegal immigrants pouring into the country, public concern about the border crisis is higher during President Joe Biden’s term than under the prior two administrations, according to a Monmouth University poll released on Feb. 26.

    More than six in 10 Americans think illegal immigration is a “very serious” problem, a sharp increase from 2015 and 2019, when prior Monmouth polls found that 43 percent and 49 percent, respectively, held that view.

    When adding people who think illegal immigration is a somewhat serious problem (23 percent), the percentage of Americans who are concerned about the border crisis stands at 84 percent.

    “Illegal immigration has taken center stage as a defining issue this presidential election year,” Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said in a statement.

    It’s estimated that more than 10 million illegal immigrants have crossed the border since President Biden took office.

    Support Soars for Border Wall

    Concern about illegal immigration is so high, in fact, that for the first time since Monmouth began asking Americans for their views on the matter in 2015, a majority (58 percent) of the public supports building a border wall.

    Before the current poll, the highest percentage of Americans who supported a border wall was 48 percent (in 2015); the lowest was 35 percent (in 2017).

    Another notable finding is that a strong majority (61 percent) of Americans say that immigrants seeking asylum at the border should be made to wait in Mexico while their claims are processed.

    The border wall was former President Donald Trump’s signature project, and Republicans have credited his “Remain in Mexico” policy—a centerpiece of border enforcement during his tenure but canceled by President Biden—with reducing the influx of illegal immigrants into the country.

    Roughly 450 miles of the larger border wall were built when President Trump was in office, a project that President Biden criticized. An internal Department of Homeland Security memo found that physical barriers are the most cost-effective tool to deter illegal border-crossing activity.

    President Biden has taken a dim view of his predecessor’s vision for a grand barrier, pledging while still a presidential candidate in 2020 that there wouldn’t be “another foot of wall constructed” in his administration.

    On the day he took office, President Biden issued a proclamation that rescinded the national emergency declaration that President Trump had relied on to divert some $10 billion from Pentagon coffers to border wall construction.

    The Biden administration later quietly auctioned off millions of dollars of border wall materials, for which it faced sharp criticism from Republicans.

    President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the reported death of Alexei Navalny from the Roosevelt Room of the White House, on Feb. 16, 2024. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

    Although concern about illegal immigration has risen the most among Republicans (91 percent said it’s very serious), all voter groups have grown more worried about the border crisis, the Monmouth poll showed.

    In a potential blow to President Biden’s chances at reelection, 58 percent of independents said illegal immigration is a very serious problem, up from a little more than 40 percent who said the same thing in 2015 and 2019.

    State-Level Border Wall Efforts

    Shortly after taking office, President Biden signed an executive order scrapping federal construction of the border wall.

    In a proclamation on Jan. 20, 2021, he called the wall a “waste of money that diverts attention from genuine threats to our homeland security.”

    Following President Biden’s decision to scrap the wall, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, announced he would seek funding for his state to build its own border barrier, which came as the influx of illegal immigrants into Texas swelled to near-record proportions.

    In December 2021, Texas officially started building its own state-funded border wall. At the time, Mr. Abbott alleged that President Biden “refuses to enforce laws passed by Congress to secure the border and enforce immigration laws” and so “Texas is stepping up to do the federal government’s job.”

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (C) speaks at a press conference at the state capitol in Austin, Texas, on June 16, 2021. (Mei Zhong/The Epoch Times)

    Recently, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem ordered the state’s National Guard troops to help Texas with border wall construction.

    “The border in a warzone, so we’re sending soldiers,” Ms. Noem, a Republican, said in a Feb. 20 statement.

    South Dakota was the first state to deploy National Guard troops in response to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s call 2 1/2 years ago for help securing the border.

    In October 2023, the Biden administration waived 26 federal laws in south Texas to allow for the construction of another 20 miles of border wall.

    At the time, President Biden explained that the reason for resuming border wall construction was that the money had already been appropriated and attempts to redirect the funds to other projects failed.

    “There’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated for. I can’t stop that,” President Biden said at the time.

    Asked by reporters whether he thought the border wall was effective, he replied, “No.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/27/2024 – 23:00

  • These Are The Median Down-Payments For A House In Each US State
    These Are The Median Down-Payments For A House In Each US State

    Since housing costs vary across U.S. states, so too does the income required to buy a house, and the down payment associated with the purchase.

    But how much does the median value change per state?

    Creator Julie Peasley, via Visual Capitalist, maps the median down payment on a single-family home by U.S. state, using data from Realtor.com, accessed through Bankrate, a publisher and rate comparison service focused on the banking industry.

    Importantly, a “single-family home” is legally defined as a “structure used as a single-dwelling unit,” which includes:

    • No common walls
    • Built on its own parcel of land
    • Private entrance/exit
    • One set of utilities
    • Single kitchen

    This means actual house square footage will vary within and across the states, affecting the median prices and down payments in this data.

    The Data: Median Down Payments by State

    The top three priciest places for down payments are tied for number one: Washington D.C., Florida, and Hawaii, at a whopping $98,670.

    Rank U.S. State Median Down Payment Average Down
    Payment Percentage
    1 Florida $98,670 17.0%
    2 Hawaii $98,670 17.0%
    3 Washington, D.C. $98,670 20.9%
    4 Washington $86,752 28.6%
    5 California $84,244 18.4%
    6 Massachusetts $79,206 18.9%
    7 Colorado $75,304 18.5%
    8 Montana $72,833 21.0%
    9 New Jersey $71,547 18.0%
    10 New Hampshire $71,500 20.0%
    11 Idaho $64,985 20.2%
    12 Oregon $55,015 17.3%
    13 New York $50,843 17.0%
    14 Vermont $48,534 17.5%
    15 Connecticut $47,342 18.6%
    16 Rhode Island $45,285 16.6%
    17 Utah $43,488 16.4%
    18 Delaware $40,412 17.0%
    19 Minnesota $38,500 16.1%
    20 South Dakota $37,630 16.8%
    21 Georgia $35,572 15.9%
    22 Arizona $34,072 15.4%
    23 Nevada $33,306 15.0%
    24 Wyoming $32,389 16.0%
    25 North Carolina $31,867 14.5%
    26 Virginia $29,704 13.5%
    27 Nebraska $29,617 15.4%
    28 Wisconsin $28,333 15.0%
    29 Illinois $27,348 14.3%
    30 Iowa $26,461 15.5%
    31 Tennessee $25,969 14.6%
    32 Maryland $25,723 11.9%
    33 Pennsylvania $25,402 13.8%
    34 North Dakota $24,543 15.0%
    35 South Carolina $24,357 15.1%
    36 Michigan $23,153 14.2%
    37 Alaska $21,354 12.2%
    38 Texas $18,780 12.2%
    39 Kansas $18,325 13.1%
    40 Missouri $17,832 12.9%
    41 New Mexico $17,576 12.6%
    42 Kentucky $17,548 13.4%
    43 Maine $17,548 16.0%
    44 Indiana $17,477 12.6%
    45 Ohio $15,044 12.3%
    46 Oklahoma $13,177 12.3%
    47 Arkansas $11,996 11.8%
    48 Alabama $8,788 10.7%
    49 West Virginia $6,611 9.2%
    50 Louisiana $6,470 9.2%
    51 Mississippi $5,814 9.3%
    N/A National $31,500 15.0%

    Note: Current as of Q3, 2023.

    Ranked 4th and 5th are Washington State and California, requiring median down payments in the mid-$80,000s.

    Unsurprisingly the median down payment patterns follow how expensive housing is in that particular state, which in itself is a reflection of jobs, income, population, amenities, and the desirability of the location. By looking at the median, it also cuts out the “high end” that would skew the average (mean) payment higher.

    At the bottom of the list, Alabama, West Virginia, Louisiana, and Mississippi all average less than $10,000 in median down payments.

    However looking at the percentage of the total value put down as a down payment in those states (10%) indicates homebuyers there tend to have longer repayment plans. This is in contrast to the median down payment in Washington, which is close to one-third of the total house value.

    Work From Home and U.S. Real Estate

    The U.S. housing market has seen quite an upheaval in the last few years. Between December 2019 and November 2021, house prices rose nearly 24%, the fastest rate on record. Research found that areas that were more exposed to remote work experienced higher price growth.

    Following the trend of skyrocketing house prices, the national average for down payments has also more than doubled from $13,250 in Q1 2020 to $31,500 in Q3, 2023, per earlier linked Bankrate data.

    Rents have also climbed significantly, pricing many young adults out of moving out of their parents homes, which in turn has fueled luxury spending with more disposable income.

    On the other hand, the commercial real estate market has struggled with falling demand and higher interest rates, putting downward pressure on prices in the sector.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/27/2024 – 22:40

  • Will New Gavin Newsom Recall Effort Backfire Again?
    Will New Gavin Newsom Recall Effort Backfire Again?

    Authored by Susan Crabtree viaRealClear Wire,

    Conservative activists in California hope the seventh time is a charm when it comes to recalling Gavin Newsom. The governor, they say, is focused on serving as a top surrogate for President Biden and raising a national profile for his own presidential run while neglecting the state’s deep budget deficit, rising crime rate, persistent homelessness, and sky-high cost-of-living – factors driving an exodus of people and businesses to other states.

    But their latest effort to oust Newsom after so many failed attempts isn’t stoking the same fears among Democrats as in the past, and even some Republicans are worried the partisan effort will blow up in their faces. It has the potential, some GOP operatives caution, to overshadow waning support for progressive policies in San Francisco and elsewhere while galvanizing Democrats and big donors behind the term-limited but politically ambitious governor.

    Democrats argue that the latest recall effort is an obvious attempt to blunt presumed Newsom’s White House aspirations by showing that there’s a backlash against him resurfacing at home. But far from a big cloud hanging over his head, top California Democratic strategists are casting it as little more than an annoyance.

    “I don’t think it even merits a cloud – maybe a little bit of fog or haze,” Steve Maviglio told RealClearPolitics Monday. Maviglio served as the press secretary for former California Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat who, in 2003, became the state’s second top executive to be recalled.

    Republicans are so outnumbered by Democrats in California that one of their only political weapons is a recall petition. “They can either howl at the moon, or they can file a recall petition – those are their two choices,” said Garry South, a longtime Democratic strategist who managed Davis’ successful campaigns in 1998 and 2002.

    Some Republican political players across the state are also disheartened by the tired feel of the repeated long-shot effort. “I would much rather focus on the legislative and [federal and local] races where we could win, but they seem to want flashy politicking, not the hard work of retail politics,” one conservative activist told RCP.

    The California Republican Party provided $125,000 for the 2021 recall effort but sidestepped questions on Monday about whether it would support it this year.

    “We are eight days out from our March 5 primary and several weeks into pre-election voting,” California GOP Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson said in a statement. “While Gavin Newsom has been an absolute disaster for our state – from accruing a record $73 billion budget deficit to hosting the nation’s largest homeless population to flatlining the quality of our schools and allowing criminals to thrive – the CAGOP’s attention is on turning out the vote in the primary election and supporting our endorsed candidates who can fix our broken state.”

    Newsom wasted no time connecting the recall to Trump, confidently predicting it would go down in flames.

    “Trump Republicans are launching another wasteful recall campaign to distract us from the existential fight for democracy and reproductive freedom,” he tweeted Monday. “We will defeat them.”

    Newsom triumphed over a 2021 recall that made it on the ballot and was organized by the same conservative activists. The first-term governor overwhelmingly defeated the effort to oust him after a jittery summer in which polls predicted the race as a dead heat. After Newsom was fortified by nearly $75 million in unlimited campaign donations from his committees and allies, he sailed to victory over Republican talk-radio host Larry Elder.

    The deep blue state’s Democratic voters showed up for Newsom in droves, with 61.9% voting to keep Newsom and only 38.1% voting to remove him. It was essentially the same margin he won by in his first campaign for governor against businessman John Cox in 2018. After the failed recall, Newsom’s support dipped only slightly. He came back in 2022 to win a second term by 59.2% to 40.8% against state Senator Brian Dahle.

    Newsom beat back the 2021 recall so strongly it only strengthened his reelection and bolstered his political ambitions, South argued. President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris stumped with Newsom in the final days before the election. Former President Barack Obama cut a television ad, deeming the election a “matter of life and death” – the difference between “protecting kids from COVID or putting them at risk, helping Californians recover or taking them backward.”

    Newsom hadn’t benefited from that level of Democratic star power since former President Bill Clinton flew in for a last-minute rally when polls showed his 2003 race for San Francisco mayor against a Green Party candidate much tighter than expected.

    During his 2021 recall victory remarks, Newsom twice said he was “humbled” by the experience. But he also viewed the landslide as a validation of his strict COVID policies and efforts to lean into the country’s culture wars and hinted at his long-held White House ambitions.

    “We are enjoying an overwhelming ‘no’ vote tonight here in the state of California,” Newsom told a crowd of cheering supporters gathered in Sacramento to view the recall returns. “But ‘no’ was not the only thing that was expressed tonight. I want to focus on what we said ‘yes’ to as a state. We said ‘yes’ to science, ‘yes’ to vaccines, we said ‘yes’ to ending the pandemic.”

    “We said ‘yes’ to diversity, we said ‘yes’ to inclusion, we said ‘yes’ to pluralism,” he declared. “We said ‘yes’ to those things that we hold dear as Californians, and I would argue, as Americans.”

    Recall organizers, led by Rescue California, acknowledge that Newsom was emboldened by beating the recall, but insist that it should have motivated him to focus his attention  on fixing California’s problems instead of skewering red states and serving as a star surrogate for Biden. Half the state’s voters seem to agree.

    Last fall, when Newsom was amplifying his national profile, his standing among California voters hit an all-time low, with 49% disapproving of his job as governor, a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies/Los Angeles Times poll found. His approval rating in the late October poll fell to 44%, an 11-point slide from February when 55% of voters approved his performance.

    “He’s using California taxpayer money to fly around the country and the world to support a national political agenda for president when he’s not even qualified, at this point, to run the state of California as the deficit numbers approach $100 billion,” Ann Dunsmore, Rescue California’s campaign director, told RCP.

    Dunsmore also points out that Newsom will have little choice but to raise taxes to reduce the deficit because the state Constitution prohibits the government from declaring bankruptcy without voter approval. Right now, Newsom is backing a proposition calling for $6 billion in new spending to curb homelessness after the state has spent more than $20 billion on the issue during his time in office while the problem grew worse.

    In early January, Newsom and Democrats who run the state legislature also ushered in new health insurance payments for all illegal immigrants. Newsom this week continued taking the fight to conservative states, unveiling a six-figure ad campaign and online petition effort in several Republican-controlled states that he said are trying to ban out-of-state travel for abortions and related medications. Newsom paid for the ads with a national political action committee he launched last year with $10 million from leftover state campaign funds.

    Crime and cost of living are driving more and more businesses from the state, Dunsmore said, “and now Newsom’s coming out with an abortion ad?”

    “Right now, people are trying to make ends meet, and it’s getting worse, not better,” she said. “Our tax base is gone. Just how out of touch is he?”

    Recall petitions can be launched easily in California, but they face formidable hurdles. This one would require signatures equal to 12% of the turnout in the last election – roughly 1.31 million verified signatures.

    Dunsmore won’t say how much Rescue California, which successfully led the effort to recall Davis in 2003, plans to spend on the effort. The 2021 recall required 1.5 million signatures, which it exceeded by 126,000. It cost organizers roughly $8 million, a fraction of the $78 million Newsom amassed to fight it.

    This year, however, Dunsmore says they don’t plan to use costly paid signature-gatherers posted outside shopping centers. Instead, she said her organization and its partners already have the infrastructure in place – supporters’ physical addresses and emails – from the last effort.

    Garry South, however, cautions that the 2021 recall only went forward after an unprecedented four-month extension for signature-gathering. A judge appointed by GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger approved the rare extension to compensate for COVID lockdowns when signature-gathering was far more difficult.

    “That’s never happened before in a recall election in California,” South said, adding that there’s “no way” recall organizers will amass the required signatures with an all-volunteer effort.

    The 2003 recall effort against Gov. Gray Davis got a boost when wealthy GOP Rep. Darrell Issa poured $2 million of his own money into signature-gathering efforts because he was aiming to become governor. But Schwarzenegger, a blockbuster Hollywood actor, stepped into the race and won it, thwarting Issa’s political ambitions.

    Even Davis’ low poll numbers didn’t stop him from winning election in 2002. On Election Day in 2002, South recalls that Davis’ approval rating was only 22%, and he still won with 47.4% of the vote to the GOP candidate Bill Simon’s 42.4%.

    “Newsom beat the recall with nearly 62% of the vote and then was reelected to a second term with 59%,” South said. “Those are not the metrics of someone who is going to be recalled.”

    Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ national political correspondent.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/27/2024 – 22:20

  • Yen Doesn't Buy The BOJ Narrative Just Yet, But It Will
    Yen Doesn’t Buy The BOJ Narrative Just Yet, But It Will

    By Ven Ram, Bloomberg markets live reporter and strategist

    There seems to be growing conviction that Japan will exit negative rates in possibly just a couple of months, though the currency markets are underpricing that prospect.

    Earlier Tuesday, data for January inflation showed not only faster-than-forecast headline numbers but also a core-core reading above 3% for a 13th straight month. The prints may convince the Bank of Japan that the sustainable inflation that it has long sought is here. Little wonder that overnight indexed swaps, which were assigning some 60% chance of a 10-basis point move from the BOJ in April, now reckon the probability is more like 80%.

    The yen, though, hasn’t come to the party at all. Since the start of the year, the currency has slumped more than 6% against the dollar. That decline isn’t what is indicated by fundamentals, with the yen’s weakness looking completely out of sync with what ought to have happened.

    A major part of what has happened with the yen is actually a dollar story. Fed fund futures, which were pricing a little more than three interest-rate cuts from the US central bank by June, are now wondering if policymakers will even deliver a single reduction by then. That has pushed up nominal and inflation-adjusted rates, sending the dollar far higher than reckoned.
     
    There is also seasonality at play. The yen has weakened in four of the past five first quarters, except when the pandemic first struck the markets in 2020 and spurred investors to scramble for havens.
     
    The Japanese currency is exceptionally undervalued at current levels, with its real-effective exchange rate near the cheapest it has ever been in history. Once the BOJ exits negative rates, expectations are that it will raise rates further and buoy the yen, although Japan won’t see any tightening anywhere on the scale that we have seen in in the other major economies as colleague Mark Cranfield notes.
     
    The tide will turn decisively in favor of the yen whenever it becomes abundantly clear that inflation in the US is slowing to a crawl — allowing the Fed to cut rates as outlined in its December dot plot.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/27/2024 – 22:00

  • The General Election Begins: Gingrich
    The General Election Begins: Gingrich

    Authored by Newt Gingrich via RealClear Wire,

    The New York Times called President Donald Trump’s victory in South Carolina on Saturday a “crushing home state loss” for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

    For once, the New York Times was right. A 59.8 percent to 39.5 percent popular vote victory (and a 47 to three delegate count) is crushing.

    In the first five primary contests, President Trump has won 110 delegates and Haley has won 20. Importantly, these were her best states. If she can’t beat Trump in Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina, she can’t beat him anywhere.

    The Koch fundraising system apparently reached the same conclusion and announced Sunday it was no longer going to fund the Haley campaign.

    The best thing Haley could do is gracefully drop out and endorse Trump as preferable to Biden. The longer she stays in the race, the more she will alienate most Republicans.

    Any notion that she is staying in so the party could turn to her if something happened to President Trump is delusional. In Nevada, Haley lost by 63.2 percent to 30.7 percent to “None of these candidates” (a term Nevada permits). If anything happened to President Trump, there is no possibility the delegates would turn to Haley. They would back virtually anyone against the anti-Trump candidate.

    Every day she stays in the race makes Trump’s supporters more hostile toward her. Haley is also an impossible choice for the No Labels ticket because she has alienated so many Republicans.

    So, the time has come to focus on the general election.

    Gallup’s recent polls set the stage for a Joe Biden defeat comparable to the repudiation of President Jimmy Carter in 1980 (when Ronald Reagan won the largest electoral majority against an incumbent president in American history).

    Consider the hole the Biden presidency is in according to Gallup.

    Only 38 percent approve of the job President Biden is doing, and 59 percent disapprove. Only 40 percent approve of his effort to help Ukraine, while 53 percent disapprove. The Biden administration’s economic program (so-called Bidenomics) is at 36 percent approval. Sixty-one percent disapprove of it. On foreign affairs in general, Biden is at 33 percent approval and 62 percent disapproval. On his handling of the Middle East – and especially the Israeli-Palestinian war – 30 percent approve to 62 percent disapprove. Finally, on immigration, only 28 percent approve of his performance and 67 percent disapprove (and this was before Venezuelan illegal immigrant Jose Antonio Ibarra was charged with killing nursing student Laken Riley at the University of Georgia).

    When your basic support on performance runs from 28 percent to 40 percent – and your disapproval runs from 53 percent to 67 percent – you are a candidate in deep trouble. It is going to take a lot more than good advertising for Biden to get re-elected.

    The collapse in support for President Biden’s policies is reflected in other national polling data. According to the Real Clear Politics average, President Trump leads 46.7 percent to 44.8 percent. If there are five candidates splitting the vote, President Trump leads with 41.5 percent while President Biden drops to 36.8 percent.

    Key swing states reflect the same advantage for President Trump.

    • Michigan is Trump 46.7 percent to Biden 42.1 percent (Trump up by 4.6 percent).
    • Georgia is Trump 48.5 percent to Biden 41.7 percent (a 6.8 Trump advantage leaving no margin for manipulation by Fani Willis’ friends).
    • Nevada is Trump 48.7 percent to Biden 40.3 percent (Trump by 8.4 percent).
    • Arizona is Trump 47 percent to Biden 42.3 percent (Trump by 4.7).

    Every indicator points to the opportunity for President Trump to win by a margin big enough to help elect a Republican Senate and expand the Republican majority in the House.

    Of course, if Biden collapses (as President Carter or Sen. George McGovern did) 2024 could turn into a rout of historic proportions.

    The next stage will be for President Trump to campaign in all 50 states – and in every major city. There is a real opportunity to offer a vision of a dramatically better future for all Americans.

    Just as candidate Reagan had a handful of themes in 1980, President Trump can focus on safety, prosperity, affordability, and American patriotism to build a huge majority.

    Americans want to be safe at home and abroad. Biden is failing on both fronts.

    Americans want an economy that is prosperous and affordable. Biden is failing on both fronts.

    Most Americans want a restored and reinvigorated American patriotism. Biden’s attitudes and policies reflect opposite values.

    The left knows it is in deep trouble and may not be able to defeat President Trump. That is why the liberal elites are destroying the rule of law and replacing it with a level of judicial corruption unlike anything we have ever seen in America.

    However, the effort to destroy Trump through judicial warfare is becoming grotesque, unreasonable, and indefensible. It may end up helping Trump and hurting Biden.

    If every citizen votes, this will be an historic moment in America – and could renew our civilization for a generation. If not, America could have a hard road ahead.

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

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/27/2024 – 21:40

  • We're Gonna Need Another Pandemic!!
    We’re Gonna Need Another Pandemic!!

    Zoom Video Communications, the company that rose to fame during the early days of the pandemic, ended fiscal 2024 on a strong note, reporting results for its fourth fiscal quarter ended January 31 that beat analyst expectations on the top and bottom line. Adjusted earnings per share were up 16 percent year-over-year while total revenue and enterprise revenue increased 3 and 5 percent, respectively. That’s still a far cry from the growth figures Zoom posted during the pandemic, when the company saw its revenue grow manifold in a matter of months. The end of working-from-home requirements and subsequent return to offices as well as stiff competition from Microsoft Teams, Cisco’s Webex and Salesforce’s Slack have brought the former pandemic high-flyer back to earth.

    However, as Statista’s Felx Richter details below, Zoom isn’t the only pandemic winner struggling to maintain its momentum in the post-pandemic world. Other companies that soared under the special circumstances created by Covid-19 have also come crashing down over the past two years, as normal life gradually returned. Home fitness company Peloton and DIY marketplace Etsy, which profited from a large volume of mask sales on its platform during the pandemic, are two such examples, along with vaccine maker Moderna and DocuSign, a company that allows companies to manage agreements electronically.

    Infographic: Pandemic Winners Struggle in the Post-Pandemic World | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    As the chart above shows, all of these companies saw their stock price surge during the Covid crisis, but all of them have fallen more than 75 percent from their peak pandemic valuation.

    $1,000 invested in Moderna shares on March 11, 2020, the day the WHO declared the Covid-19 outbreak a pandemic, would have appreciated to more than $20,000 by August 2021 and would still be worth almost $4,000 today.

    Investors who bought shares of DocuSign, Zoom or Peloton at the onset of the pandemic and held on to them until now are suffering from a severe pandemic hangover, though, as the shares of these companies are now worth (significantly) less than they were in March 2020.

    “We’re gonna need bigger pandemic!!”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/27/2024 – 21:20

  • OPEC+ Could Extend Oil Output Cuts Through Year End
    OPEC+ Could Extend Oil Output Cuts Through Year End

    By Julianne Geiger of OilPrice.com

    OPEC+’s voluntary production cuts that were set to expire at the end of the first quarter could be extended through the end of the year, three OPEC+ sources told Reuters on Tuesday.

    Crude oil prices jumped with the news from three anonymous OPEC+ sources who spoke to Reuters, indicating that OPEC+ was considering an extension of its voluntary production cuts into the second quarter to lend further support to the market. What’s more, the sources suggested that the group could keep the voluntary cuts in place through the end of this year.

    In fact, one of the OPEC+ sources said that the cut extension into the second quarter was “likely”.

    Neither OPEC nor Saudi Arabia’s Energy Ministry responded to Reuters’ request for comments.

    Oil prices were trading up more than 1% on the news in afternoon trading. But the oil industry was largely already betting on OPEC+ extending its oil production cuts beyond the first quarter and into the next, a Bloomberg survey showed last Friday. The anonymous survey predicted. According to industry watchers, OPEC+ would be forced to keep the oil off the market, with supply continuing to exceed demand. “OPEC+ have no choice but to extend the current cuts in order to avoid a meltdown,” Tamas Varga, analyst at PVM Oil Associates Ltd, said last week.

    OPEC+ members collectively decided to voluntarily cut 2.2 million bpd from the group’s production this quarter, although much of that was production cuts that were already in effect, including Saudi Arabia’s 1 million bpd voluntary cut. Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, has always left the door open to extending the cuts, saying as far back as December that the production cuts could extend beyond March should the market require it.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/27/2024 – 21:18

  • Argentina Oil Provinces Rebel Against Milei's Austerity Plan
    Argentina Oil Provinces Rebel Against Milei’s Austerity Plan

    By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

    Argentina’s oil-producing provinces have threatened to cut off oil supply to the rest of the country if the government of Javier Milei goes through with plans to withhold billions in federal tax revenues.

    “Not a drop of oil will come out on Wednesday if they don’t respect the provinces once and for all and take their foot off our back,” the governor of the southern Chubut province, Ignacio Torres, told a local TV channel, as quoted by AFP.

    The central government wants to withhold the equivalent of some $15.3 million from Chubut as a way of collecting on unpaid debt from that and 10 other provinces, as explained by Economy Minister Luis Caputo.

    In response to the threat, the Argentinian president took to X to slam the governor of Chubut and his peers for being “fiscal degenerates”. The spat prompted a local analyst to issue a warning that the president might have bitten off a larger piece than he could chew.

    “There is a rebellion in the provinces, and a mistaken assessment by Milei about the level of conflict,” Artemio Lopez told AFP. He went on to explain that it was one thing for the president to lock horns with an unpopular parliament but provincial governors were a different sort of opponent.

    “Most of them got a higher percentage of the vote than he did in the last election,” the analyst said.

     Patagonia, in the southern part of Argentina, is the home of most of the country’s oil production, present and future. The Vaca Muerta shale play—the second largest in the world—is in the northern part of that region but state-owned YPF recently announced a shale oil and gas discovery in Chubut, which is about 1,000 miles south of the Vaca Muerta formation.

    At the moment, the Vaca Muerta accounts for about two-thirds of Argentina’s oil production. Investments in the play last year were expected to top $10.7 billion, which was an 18% increase from 2022.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/27/2024 – 21:00

  • Mapping All Of 2024's Global Elections
    Mapping All Of 2024’s Global Elections

    With almost half of the world’s population residing in countries holding executive or legislative elections in 2024, it’s set to be the busiest election year ever recorded.

    This visualization, via Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte, uses collated 2024 global elections data from our 2024 Global Forecast Series as well as from Time, while country populations are taken from Worldometer as of January 2024.

    Countries Holding 2024 Elections Around the World

    Many people are already aware of the U.S. presidential and legislative elections set to be held on November 5th, especially due to American influence on the global political stage and media coverage.

    But two governments affecting larger populations, India and the European Union, are also slated to have elections in 2024.

    Below, we sort the countries expected to hold elections in 2024 by population (countries with no set election date yet have been marked “N/A”):

    Country Election Date Type Population
    🇮🇳 India N/A Legislative 1,428,627,663
    🇪🇺 European Union 6/6/2024 Legislative 448,387,872
    🇺🇸 United States 11/5/2024 Executive & Legislative 339,996,563
    🇮🇩 Indonesia 2/14/2024 Executive & Legislative 277,534,122
    🇵🇰 Pakistan 2/8/2024 Legislative 240,485,658
    🇧🇩 Bangladesh 1/7/2024 Legislative 172,954,319
    🇷🇺 Russia 3/15/2024 Executive 144,444,359
    🇲🇽 Mexico 6/2/2024 Executive & Legislative 128,455,567
    🇮🇷 Iran 3/1/2024 Legislative 89,172,767
    🇬🇧 UK N/A Legislative 67,736,802
    🇿🇦 South Africa 5/29/2024 Legislative 60,414,495
    🇰🇷 South Korea 4/10/2024 Legislative 51,784,059
    🇩🇿 Algeria N/A Executive 45,606,480
    🇺🇦 Ukraine 3/31/2024 Executive 36,744,634
    🇺🇿 Uzbekistan N/A Legislative 35,163,944
    🇬🇭 Ghana 12/7/2024 Executive & Legislative 34,121,985
    🇲🇿 Mozambique 10/9/2024 Executive & Legislative 33,897,354
    🇲🇬 Madagascar N/A Legislative 30,325,732
    🇻🇪 Venezuela N/A Executive 28,838,499
    🇰🇵 North Korea N/A Legislative 26,160,821
    🇹🇼 Taiwan 1/13/2024 Executive & Legislative 23,923,276
    🇲🇱 Mali N/A Executive 23,293,698
    🇸🇾 Syria N/A Legislative 23,227,014
    🇱🇰 Sri Lanka N/A Executive & Legislative 21,893,579
    🇷🇴 Romania N/A Executive & Legislative 19,892,812
    🇹🇩 Chad N/A Executive 18,278,568
    🇸🇳 Senegal 12/15/2024 Executive 17,763,163
    🇰🇭 Cambodia 2/25/2024 Legislative 16,944,826
    🇷🇼 Rwanda 7/15/2024 Executive & Legislative 14,094,683
    🇹🇳 Tunisia N/A Executive 12,458,223
    🇧🇪 Belgium 6/9/2024 Legislative 11,686,140
    🇯🇴 Jordan N/A Legislative 11,337,052
    🇩🇴 Dominican Republic 5/19/2024 Executive & Legislative 11,332,972
    🇸🇸 South Sudan N/A Executive & Legislative 11,088,796
    🇨🇿 Czechia N/A Legislative 10,495,295
    🇦🇿 Azerbaijan 2/7/2024 Executive 10,412,651
    🇵🇹 Portugal 3/10/2024 Legislative 10,247,605
    🇧🇾 Belarus 2/25/2024 Legislative 9,498,238
    🇹🇬 Togo 4/20/2024 Legislative 9,053,799
    🇦🇹 Austria N/A Legislative 8,958,960
    🇸🇻 El Salvador 2/4/2024 Executive & Legislative 6,364,943
    🇸🇰 Slovakia 3/23/2024 Executive 5,795,199
    🇫🇮 Finland 1/28/2024 Executive 5,545,475
    🇲🇷 Mauritania 6/22/2024 Executive 4,862,989
    🇵🇦 Panama 5/5/2024 Executive & Legislative 4,468,087
    🇭🇷 Croatia 9/22/2024 Executive & Legislative 4,008,617
    🇬🇪 Georgia 10/26/2024 Executive & Legislative 3,728,282
    🇲🇳 Mongolia 6/28/2024 Legislative 3,447,157
    🇲🇩 Moldova N/A Executive 3,435,931
    🇺🇾 Uruguay 10/27/2024 Executive & Legislative 3,423,108
    🇱🇹 Lithuania 5/12/2024 Executive & Legislative 2,718,352
    🇧🇼 Botswana N/A Legislative 2,675,352
    🇳🇦 Namibia N/A Executive & Legislative 2,604,172
    🇬🇼 Guinea Bissau N/A Executive 2,150,842
    🇲🇰 North Macedonia 5/8/2024 Executive & Legislative 2,085,679
    🇲🇺 Mauritius 11/30/2024 Legislative 1300557
    🇰🇲 Comoros 1/14/2024 Executive 852,075
    🇧🇹 Bhutan 1/9/2024 Legislative 787,424
    🇸🇧 Solomon Islands 4/17/2024 Legislative 740,424
    🇲🇻 Maldives 3/17/2024 Legislative 521,021
    🇮🇸 Iceland 6/1/2024 Executive 375,318
    🇰🇮 Kiribati N/A Executive & Legislative 133,515
    🇸🇲 San Marino N/A Legislative 33,642
    🇵🇼 Palau 11/12/2024 Executive & Legislative 18,058
    🇹🇻 Tuvalu 1/26/2024 Legislative 11,396

    A few notable elections have already occurred. Taiwan held general elections on January 13th, with the more anti-China Democratic Progressive Party retaining the presidency but losing its majority in the legislature.

    Pakistan also held elections on February 8th, with former Prime Minster Imran Khan’s party and affiliates winning a plurality of seats but losing power to a military-backed coalition.

    Pakistan’s election results were cast into doubt by foreign observers and media, with Khan having been arrested and sentenced to prison on corruption charges. It is far from the only country holding controversial and potentially undemocratic elections in 2024.

    Bangladesh’s landslide January 7th elections were boycotted by the opposition and voters, and Russia’s March 15th elections had three anti-war presidential candidates barred from competing, including Alexei Navalny before his controversial death in February.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/27/2024 – 20:40

  • Yes, There Is A Path For A Third Party Candidate To Win The White House… But It Is Narrow
    Yes, There Is A Path For A Third Party Candidate To Win The White House… But It Is Narrow

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    One of the most interesting dynamics in this election is the impact of third party candidates from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Cornel West to a yet-to-be-named candidate with the No Labels ticket.

    Both Democratic and Republican operatives have been actively dismissing the ability of any third party candidate to win, including claims that the No Labels group has waited too long to get on ballots. I do not believe that is true.

    There is a path for a third party alternative to both Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

    However, that path is rather narrow and rocky.

    Sources with No Labels have pushed back on the media narratives by noting that Ross Perot did not enter the race until February of 1992. The group insists that it can make the ballot in all 50 states, but would likely seek a ballot spot in 32 states. The group noted that signature requirements are lower for candidates if they seek to run as individuals as opposed to seeking the addition of a party.

    That is correct, though the signature requirements can still be daunting. Yet, No Labels did meet the requirement in Maryland recently for party recognition. What is clear is that the path is narrowing with the passage of time. No Labels currently has no candidate.

    The requirements for states vary significantly. In California, they will need 219,000 signatures while, in Maine, they only need roughly 5,000 signatures. Joining an existing party like the Libertarian Party or Green Party allows a candidate to use an existing platform and infrastructure. Kennedy is rumored to be considering a run with the libertarians.

    Even with third party candidates on the ballot, it is notoriously difficult for such a candidate to break through our duopoly of power given the hold of the two main parties on the process.

    However, it is also important to note that an outright electoral victory is not necessarily the only option for these candidates. Polls  show that sixty-seven percent of voters want someone other than Biden or Trump.

    Yet, in the primaries, neither Democrats nor Republicans are opting to make a change. Both Biden and Trump appear to be on an easy glide path to their respective nominations.

    Much can change this year from convictions of Trump to a withdrawal by Biden. There could be a seismic event that leaves a “dark horse” candidate as the front runner.

    The more intriguing path would be through the Congress. With the country bitterly divided between these candidates, there is a chance that neither candidate might receive the needed 270 electoral votes in the Electoral College. If there is a “contingent election,” the Twelfth Amendment kicks in with the House of Representatives selecting a president and the Senate selecting a vice president. In the House, the members vote as state delegations.

    The divided Congress could make all of this . . . well . . . challenging. It is also not clear how the political dynamics will look for these politicians. In the mix, a third party candidate could emerge as a compromise candidate if the division leaves neither Biden or Trump with enough support.

    We have only used the Twelfth Amendment a couple of times. However elections like 1825 and 1837 show that such conflicts can present unexpected alliances.

    For example, Andrew Jackson secured a plurality of both popular and electoral votes. However, he needed 131 electoral votes out of the 261 votes of the college. He only had 99 votes after the election. John Quincy Adams had 84. The third candidate, William Crawford had 41. While Henry Clay had 37 votes, the first three went to the first round balloting. Clay eventually threw his support behind Adams who later made him Secretary of State.

    If a third party candidate were to secure electoral votes, he or she could make that first balloting. If the Congress were to deadlock, a third party compromise candidate could become more attractive given the rejection of the majority for the two leading candidates.

    Is that likely? No. However, to quote Maya Angelou,  “ain’t nothing to it, but to do it.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/27/2024 – 20:20

  • Playing With Fire: Zelensky Questions Trump's Patriotism In CNN Interview
    Playing With Fire: Zelensky Questions Trump’s Patriotism In CNN Interview

    Ukraine’s President Zelensky has grown increasingly bold in his criticisms of former US President Donald Trump – a risky move given he’s clearly the Republican frontrunner for president going into November. Kiev may soon have to deal with a Trump White House and ‘play nicer’ in the near future as it tries to survive the Russian onslaught.  “If Trump doesn’t know who he will support, Ukraine or Russia, he will have problems with his society. Supporting Russia means being against the Americans,” Zelensky boldly said in a new interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.

    Throughout the remarks the Ukrainian leader cast Trump as ‘weak’ on Russia, explaining that Trump doesn’t understand that Putin will “will never stop.” The implication is that Putin is waging an expansionist war threatening the rest of Europe and that a potential future Trump presidency might just sit on the sidelines.

    Getty Images

    “I think Donald Trump doesn’t know Putin,” Zelensky said in the Sunday interview, which is now widely circulating. “I know he met him … but he never fought with Putin. [The] American Army never fought with the army of Russia. Never … I have a better understanding.”

    “I don’t think he understands that Putin will never stop,” Zelensky asserted while referencing Trump directly, which comes after fierce criticisms by Trump on the campaign trail which have highlighted the failure of NATO countries in Europe to spend enough on defense.

    Zelensky’s words also tap into the longtime Democratic ‘Russiagate’ narrative that Trump has somehow been influenced by Putin. Zelensky was again asked about the former US president’s recent biting criticism of NATO wherein the Republican frontrunner said that he’d be OK with Russia doing “whatever the hell they wanted” if NATO countries refuse to meet defense spending targets.

    That’s when Zelensky issued his sharpest criticism of Trump to date, explaining that it’s unclear whether Trump stands with Americans or with Moscow. The words ultimately questioned Trump’s patriotism and loyalty to America. Again, this is what Zelensky said… and it seems to call into question Trump’s ‘loyalties’:

    “If Trump doesn’t know who he will support, Ukraine or Russia, he will have problems with his society. Supporting Russia means being against the Americans.”

    As for Putin, he recently was asked in an interview who he would like to see become president of the United States. He shocked the West by answering “Biden” as he is more “predictable”. Putin called the Democrat incumbent a “more experienced, predictable, an old-school politician.”

    Zelensky in the fresh CNN interview was asked about his preference. This is how he responded:

    Zelensky would not answer whether he wanted to see Trump reelected to the country’s highest office, telling Collins that “the decision who will be the president is a decision of your society.”

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

    At a moment Biden’s proposed $60+ billion in Ukraine defense aid is still being held up by the Republican House, Zelensky’s increased attacks are only likely to harden GOP resistance to sending tens of billions more in taxpayer dollars to Kiev.

    In some ways, his criticisms also give Trump license to heap criticisms back on Zelensky. There’s a likelihood we are about to see Trump say some things not favorable to Zelensky on the campaign trail. At the same time, Democrats will continue running with their Trump as ‘friend of Putin’ narrative, even though Trump himself in prior years did much to arm and militarize Ukraine in the lead-up to the Russian invasion. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/27/2024 – 20:00

  • The Lasting Damage Of Bidenomics
    The Lasting Damage Of Bidenomics

    Authored by K.S. Bruce via American Greatness,

    Recently, Democratic Party-cheerleading economist Paul Krugman declared, “Inflation is over. We won.” This is like a robber shooting you and then declaring, “The coma I put you in is over! We won!”

    The truth is that the wild inflation, high interest rates, bank failures, and other economic harms of the last three years were all entirely avoidable and all entirely caused by President Biden and the Democrats’ arrogant and unwise policies.

    This is not “Monday morning quarterbacking.” Some of us were saying this well before the fact. My May 7, 2021 column (“Joe Biden, Economy Killer”) accurately forecast the inflation, rising interest rates, and rising government debt service long before the Biden administration even acknowledged the risks were real.

    The U.S. economy did not need another giant stimulus plan when Biden and the Democrats took control in 2021. The U.S. gross domestic product, knocked down by the COVID shutdown in the first half of 2020, had jumped up by a record 33% in the third quarter of 2020 and by another 4% in the fourth quarter, all before Biden took office. The S&P stock market had risen 16.3% in 2020. Employers were waiting for workers to come back to work, and another stimulus package had been passed with bipartisan support in the last quarter of 2020. Happily, the inflation rate was only 1.4% as 2020 ended, with a one-year Treasury rate of just 0.10% and a 10-year Treasury rate of just 0.95%

    The outlook for 2021 was also favorable. As the Wall Street Journal reported on Jan. 28, 2021, “The International Monetary Fund expects the U.S. economy to grow 5.1% this year, while economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal projected 4.3% growth … U.S. employers are poised to add more than five million jobs this year, according to economists surveyed by the Journal. That would make 2021 the best year for employment gains in records dating back to 1939.”

    As Biden entered the White House in January 2021, a wiser new president would have allowed this recovery to continue without meddling. But what political fun is that? How can you be the “new FDR” unless you present matters as worse than they are, so that you can create giant new programs and be the savior? How can you transfer trillions of taxpayer money to build a Democratic Party political base?

    Instead, Biden took office and quickly proceeded to do everything exactly wrong. He used the Reconciliation Act to jam through a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill (the “American Rescue Act”) without one Republican vote. This was an economic mistake, a knife in the heart of the regular political order, and made a lie of the bipartisan respect that he had campaigned upon.

    When former Democratic Treasury Secretary Larry Summers warned Biden that his rescue bill was inflationary and six times the amount needed, Biden’s biographer Franklin Foer reports that “Biden called Summers and unloaded on him. His younger aides, many of whom had worked for Summers in the Obama administration, pumped their fists when they learned about the president’s fiery rebuttal. Biden had put their old mentor in his place.”

    Even as Biden overstimulated demand, he moved to restrain supply. He temporarily slowed up oil and gas production with a series of jawboning and regulatory attacks against the Keystone Pipeline, fracking, and traditional energy companies. He increased incentives for workers to stay home, thereby exacerbating labor shortages and supply-chain bottlenecks. He berated governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis, who sought speedy re-openings of their states. He praised teacher union leaders as they kept schools closed. His fecklessness with the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan may well have emboldened Vladimir Putin to launch a ground invasion of Ukraine, leading to a host of other energy and supply chain shocks.

    The foreseeable result of excessive demand stimulus, plus constrained supply, is inflation, which has been a terrible burden to the average American. In total, prices are up about 17% since Biden took office, and real wages are down about 2%. It takes the average American roughly $11,000 per year more just to maintain the same lifestyle now as pre-2021. Credit card debt has soared in the last two years to over $1 trillion as consumers struggle to keep up.

    The Federal Reserve was slow to react to Biden’s errors. They then raised interest rates at a nosebleed pace in 2022 and 2023 to catch up, and to fight the Biden-fueled inflation that reached a height of 9.1% per month in the summer of 2022. The fact that the Fed had to raise rates once inflation began, however, was totally to be expected, and fully predicted in my May 2021 piece.

    Rising interest rates mathematically translate into declining values for long-term, fixed-rate bonds, whose existing rates look relatively less attractive as other rates rise. As the Fed was forced to whip up rates to cure the Biden inflation, the U.S. long-term bond market suffered its worst annual losses since the Napoleonic Wars in 1803, a decline of 53% for 30-year U.S. Treasury bonds between March 2020 and October 2023.

    The stock markets fell over 19% in 2022 as well. Workers’ pension plans were battered. Silicon Valley Bank (whose balance sheet was heavily invested in the now plummeting “risk-free” U.S. long-term government bonds) experienced a depositor run, which in turn triggered a bank panic that forced the government to intervene to save the bank sector. This Biden-induced panic has left banks weaker and more regulated, which is likely to result in years of reduced bank lending to Main Street borrowers. Bank loans are also increasingly hard to get for local real estate developers, who are themselves wounded by the impact of higher interest rates on their mortgages and on the relative value of their fixed rent incomes. More generally, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco has recently estimated that every 100-basis point rise in real interest rates reduces total U.S. economic growth by 5% over the following 12 years.

    The Biden administration now desperately seeks to avoid blame for U.S. inflation by pointing to the inflation in Europe, much like a fifth grader’s “everybody is doing it” defense. But the European Central Bank itself has made clear this defense is specious.

    As the ECB Bulletin explained, U.S. inflation has been chiefly driven by excess demand and government over-stimulus, while Europe’s problems are chiefly due to supply shocks. Consumer demand in the U.S. had already recovered to pre-COVID levels by early 2021 when Biden (foolishly) applied an extreme amount of extra stimulus. In contrast, Europe had weaker demand but was hit hard by higher prices on Russian-supplied energy and natural gas, an increase which also increased electricity and food prices. The U.S. did not share in this inflationary supply shock because our country never depended upon Russian gas and was already energy self-sufficient before Biden took office. Additionally, inflation began in the U.S. several months earlier than in Europe, and this U.S. inflation, plus the rise in the U.S. dollar relative to the Euro, meant that the U.S. goods were themselves fueling higher prices for Europeans in their own currency.

    Now, it is 2024. After years of Biden-induced economic hardship, the Federal Reserve rate rises are having their dampening effect, inflation is back down, and asset values can stop falling. The stock market is up in recent months, but even now, this rise is despite Biden, not because of him.

    The best-performing sectors of the stock market are often those that Biden and the Dems have tried to cripple, and the worst performers are often those industries he tried to support. The fossil fuel stocks like Exxon were up over 50% in 2021 and 2022 as the stock market fell. The social media and tech companies that Biden browbeats are the largest part of the Magnificent Seven. Drug companies that charge very high prices, such as the makers of weight loss drug Ozempic, are way up. Meanwhile, Blackrock, which promoted ESG investing, is under siege, and the billions and billions of taxpayer money handed to the electric vehicle industry may prove to be largely wasted in the face of slowing consumer demand. Even green energy projects may have perversely suffered under Biden as, the Wall Street Journal reports, “Clean-energy stocks have fallen out of favor, with the pressure created by rising interest rates outweighing supportive government policies.”

    Finally, even if current monthly economic numbers are acceptable, the cumulative harm and price increases that have already occurred under Biden are unlikely to reverse and so will live on like a giant weight around America’s collective neck. Even if Treasury interest rates drift back down by a percentage or two over coming quarters, they will still be at a level that is roughly 300 basis points higher than they were pre-Biden, or than they needed to be. These interest rates, now raised, appear likely to stay at this elevated level for years to come.

    Biden’s economic legacy – the “Biden Burden” – will be that he made Americans poorer than they should have been, and needlessly moved America to a world of higher interest rates on a larger government deficit.

    The Congressional Budget Office last week revised its government deficit estimates upward, expecting $48.3 trillion of government debt by 2034. Interest expense on the federal debt this year has already jumped up to $870 billion, which is larger than the defense budget. Additionally, Biden’s higher interest rates will continue to increase debt service costs as old government debt rolls off and is replaced at higher costs. The risk is stark: a 3% higher interest rate on even the existing $33 trillion level of federal debt equates to $1 trillion of extra federal interest expense each and every year, on top of the already giant existing debt service number.

    There is no painless way to pay down this deficit or cover this extra annual government interest cost. The need for billions and billions of extra tax money or budget cuts will fuel fierce political fights, populist divisions, and national anger for years to come. All this public unrest will also be the legacy of the bad Democratic economic policies since 2021. Professor Krugman, when it comes to Bidenomics, “We lost.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/27/2024 – 19:40

  • US Army Plans To Cut 24,000 Jobs Due To "Over-Structured" Woes
    US Army Plans To Cut 24,000 Jobs Due To “Over-Structured” Woes

    The US Army faces the most challenging recruiting environment in decades, if not ever, as America’s Generation Z doesn’t want to fight foreign wars driven by neocon warmongering politicians in Washington, the military-industrial complex, NATO, and mega-corporations.

    For several years, the Army has been coming to terms with a recruiting crisis of historic proportions. We have documented these unprecedented challenges as the war cycle, in financial cycle expert Charles Nenner’s view, continues to ‘break out’: 

    Given the soaring threat of World War III, the Army is about to undergo a major restructuring, according to a document obtained by Fox News. 

    The service calls for reducing its force by about 24,000, or about 5%. These cuts will only affect posts that have remained empty and not actual soldiers.

    “The Army is not asking current soldiers to leave. As the Army builds back end strength over the next few years, most installations will likely see an increase in the number of soldiers actually stationed there,” the Army said.

    The jobs on the cutting block are primarily counterinsurgency positions that ballooned during America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over two decades. These jobs are no longer in high demand as World War III risks accelerate in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Also, there is a conflict risk with China in the Pacific and around Taiwan. 

    Fox noted cavalry squadrons, Stryker brigade combat teams, infantry brigade combat teams, and security force assistance brigades, amounting to about 10,000 jobs, will also be axed. 

    The document described the service as “significantly over-structured” as a push for a much leaner and meaner force.

    Here’s from from Fox:

    The service is currently structured to have up to 494,000 soldiers, but the total number of active duty soldiers is about 445,000. The new plan has Army leaders looking to recruit enough troops through Fiscal Year 2029 to reach a goal of 470,000 active-duty soldiers.

    Despite the cuts, the service plans to add another 7,500 troops for air defense and counter-drone units. 

    There’s also a shift from close combat and counterinsurgency structure to large-scale or multidomain combat operations due to World War III risks. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/27/2024 – 19:20

  • Microwave Energy Could Fix The Biggest Problem Facing EVs
    Microwave Energy Could Fix The Biggest Problem Facing EVs

    By Alex Kimani of Oilprice.com

    Last month, large swathes of the United States grappled with sub-zero wind chills whereby freezing air from the Arctic set record-low temperatures leaving scores of people dead, created record-breaking energy demand and knocked out electricity to tens of thousands in the north-west. The frigid weather had another unintended consequence: it exposed just how vulnerable electric vehicles are to low temperatures with many EV drivers being left stranded after their vehicles prematurely run out of juice.

    According to the American Automobile Association (AAA), an EV can lose as much as 12% of its range when temperatures drop to 20 degrees, and as much as 41% if you turn on the cabin heater. In other words, for every 100 miles of combined urban/highway driving at 20°F temperatures, the range of an EV drops to 59 miles. Range loss due to low temperatures varies according to the EV model, with a BMW 13s averaging 20.4% reduction in range at 21 F in combined HVAC on/off scenarios; Tesla Model S 75D loses 11.3% while a Volkswagen 3-golf sees a 6.9% deterioration. EV batteries work less efficiently in cold conditions while charging times can double or even triple for older EVs. 

    Luckily, a handy solution could be around the corner: Researchers from the University of Birmingham are working on an energy storage system that combines microwave energy and a chemical heat pump to produce heating or cooling on demand. 

    Dubbed e-Thermal bank, the system is designed as a secondary energy source for EVs that can harness electricity to drive a high-density (1600Wh/Kg) thermochemical-based system. The thermal bank is  ‘charged’ at the EV charging station by using microwave energy to dissociate a solid-vapor working pair.

    During discharging, the process is reversed by feeding the vapor into a reactor to generate heat, while the opposite phase uses an evaporator to generate cooling simultaneously. In effect, this charging process stores microwave energy inside the car, in the e-Thermal bank.

    “We aimed to offload these thermal management tasks to a microwave driven process. Microwave is a fast heating method, because microwaves penetrate uniformly through materials and so deliver energy evenly into the body of the material,” Professor Yongliang Li, who is chair in Thermal Energy Engineering in Birmingham’s School of Chemical Engineering, said, as reported by Coolingpost.com. 

    The energy cost can be minimized by coupling with a smart meter to charge the system when energy is cheap, and the stored energy can then be used at any time. We predict that by replacing conventional HVAC and possibly a small portion of the battery pack, e-Thermal banks would provide efficient cabin temperature control and a range extension of up to 70%, at a lower cost than increasing battery capacity,” Li added. 

    University of Birmingham Enterprise has already filed a patent application for the e-Thermal bank system and is seeking commercial partners for licensing collaboration or co-development.

    Boosting EV Battery Capacity

    University of Birmingham’s e-Thermal bank sounds like a simple yet effective way to boost EV driving range. Scientists everywhere have been working round on technologies aimed at boosting the energy capacity of EV batteries. 

    Professor Soojin Park, PhD candidate Minjun Je, and Dr. Hye Bin Son from the Department of Chemistry at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) has developed a high-energy-density Li-ion battery using micro silicon particles and gel polymer electrolytes that increases battery energy density by 40%.

    Using silicon as a battery material presents several challenges. First off, silicon increases in volume more than three times during charging then contracts back to its original size while discharging, negatively impacting battery efficiency. 

    Employing nano-sized silicon (10-9m) addresses the issue; unfortunately, the production process is not only highly complex but also astronomically expensive, rendering it impractical for commercial batteries. The POSTECH research team has succeeded in developing an economical yet stable silicon-based battery system by utilizing gel polymer electrolytes. Unlike conventional liquid electrolytes, gel electrolytes exist in a solid or gel state in an elastic polymer structure that exhibits better stability than their liquid electrolytes. 

    The scientists employed an electron beam to form covalent linkages between gel electrolytes and micro-silicon particles. These covalent linkages disperse internal stress caused by volume expansion, alleviating the changes in micro silicon volume and enhancing structural stability.

    The outcome was remarkable: the new battery exhibits stable performance even with micro silicon particles (5μm), a hundred times bigger than those used in traditional nano-silicon anodes. The best part: the new battery has an energy density 40% higher than conventional li-ion batteries. Further, the straightforward manufacturing process makes its commercialization easier.

    Here in the U.S., the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory has developed a lithium-air battery that uses a solid electrolyte that could potentially boost the battery’s energy density by as much as four times above Li-ion batteries.

    “For over a decade, scientists at Argonne and elsewhere have been working overtime to develop a lithium battery that makes use of the oxygen in air. The lithium-air battery has the highest projected energy density of any battery technology being considered for the next generation of batteries beyond lithium-ion,”  Larry Curtiss, an Argonne Distinguished Fellow, said last year in a press statement.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/27/2024 – 19:00

  • "A Bold New Chapter": Macy's To Close 150 Stores, Focus On Luxury Consumer With Bloomingdale's
    “A Bold New Chapter”: Macy’s To Close 150 Stores, Focus On Luxury Consumer With Bloomingdale’s

    Macy’s announced on Tuesday that it is entering “A Bold New Chapter,” this time focusing on a more luxurious store design as part of its turnaround strategy, which involves shifting its target market from lower-income to wealthier consumers.

    “Our portfolio of iconic and globally recognized nameplates, healthy balance sheet and fortified operations position us to execute A Bold New Chapter. This strategy is designed to create a more modern Macy’s, Inc. that is expected to generate meaningful value for our shareholders in the years ahead,” Tony Spring, chief executive officer of Macy’s, wrote in the earnings report. 

    The pivot first includes the big-box retailer closing 150 underperforming stores over the next three years. It expects to close at least 50 of these stores by the end of this year. By 2026, Macy’s footprint will shrink to about 350 stores, slightly more than half its number before Covid. 

    Second, the turnaround strategy focuses on higher-end brands and will include 15 new Bloomingdale’s and 30 Bluemercury stores by 2026. 

    Bloomberg noted, “The announcement, accompanied by fourth-quarter results, follows a $5.8 billion buyout offer from Arkhouse Management Co. and Brigade Capital Management in December. Macy’s rejected the offer, but last week, Arkhouse nominated nine directors to Macy’s board as the activist investor persists in its efforts.” 

    The turnaround plan to chase wealthier shoppers comes as Spring, who had a four-decade career at Bloomingdale’s before shifting over as the head of the parent company, warned: “The shopper is still under pressure.”

    David Swartz, a retail analyst at Morningstar, noted that there is far less competition for Macy’s in the luxury department space and expects a “great future.” 

    The pivot comes as shares have crashed 71% since peaking at $69 a share in mid-2015. 

    In summary, Macy’s is giving up on the working poor as the Biden administration says the middle class is doing better than ever. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/27/2024 – 18:40

  • Trump Asks Judge To Block Testimony From Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels
    Trump Asks Judge To Block Testimony From Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels

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

    Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald J. Trump speaks at a rally in Laconia, N.H., on Jan. 22, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    Former President Donald Trump has asked the judge in his so-called “hush money” case to issue pretrial rulings that would block certain evidence and witness testimony that the former president says his opponents want to exploit to undermine his 2024 presidential campaign.

    The case centers on allegations that President Trump falsified business records to hide $130,000 in payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels (whose real name is Stephanie Clifford) in exchange for keeping quiet about her allegations about an affair.

    President Trump has repeatedly denied any affair or wrongdoing, while calling the case a politically-motivated ploy to hurt his chances of winning the race for the White House.

    With trial scheduled to start on March 25, President Trump is now ramping up his rhetoric, accusing prosecutors in a 47-page motion filed on Monday of planning to put forward “improper arguments” and “inadmissible evidence” in order to bolster their “listless ‘zombie’ case” and interfere in the upcoming presidential election.

    At the top of the list of what President Trump wants New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan to block is any new testimony from his former personal attorney Michael Cohen, who has admitted to lying to Congress.

    Other demands include blocking testimony from Ms. Clifford, former Trump doorman Dino Sajudin, and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, as well as other requests related to evidentiary and procedural matters.

    More Details

    President Trump’s motion challenges the credibility of the witnesses, including calling Mr. Cohen a “liar” and suggesting Ms. Clifford would offer “false” testimony.

    “The People should be precluded from suborning additional perjury by Michael Cohen,” President Trump’ attorney, Todd Blanche, wrote in the filing. He said Mr. Cohen lied to lawmakers in 2017 and, more recently, perjured himself while testifying at President Trump civil fraud trial in October.

    The judge in President Trump’s civil fraud trial said that Mr. Cohen’s testimony was “significantly compromised” by his misleading statements to Congress and by some “seeming contradictions” in what he said at trial.

    Still, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, who fined President Trump $355 million for supposedly inflating the value of his properties to get better loan terms, said he found Mr. Cohen’s testimony “credible.”

    Mr. Blanche wrote in the filing that prosecutors have an obligation to ensure that testimony presented to judges and juries is truthful. He argued that it was a “troubling” violation of prosecutors’ ethical and constitutional obligations for them to push for testimony from Mr. Cohen, whom he called a “serial liar.”

    President Trump’s attorney also asked the judge to issue a pretrial ruling that would render as inadmissible testimony from Ms. Clifford.

    “The People should be precluded from offering testimony from or regarding Stephanie Clifford, who has made clear through public statements that she intends to offer false, salacious, and unduly prejudicial testimony relating to President Trump,” Mr. Blanche wrote in the filing.

    Ms. Clifford wrote a tell-all memoir that included salacious details of her alleged tryst with the former president at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, California, in 2006.

    She then promoted the book in a series of media interviews and talk show appearances, in which she claimed she was pressured to sign a non-disclosure agreement in return for $130,000 in hush money payments.

    Ms. Clifford has also expressed enthusiasm to take the stand against President Trump.

    Another of President Trump’s requests for a pretrial rulings is precluding prosecutors from characterizing the alleged hush money payments to Ms. Clifford as an attempt on his part to “improperly influence” the 2016 election.

    “Essentially the People are arguing that efforts by a candidate to prevent adverse publicity about himself during a campaign equals an attempt to defraud,” President Trump’s attorney wrote in the filing.

    “This argument has no basis in law and is an extraordinary perversion of our election system and the First Amendment,” he added.

    President Trump’s motion also seeks to prevent prosecutors from introducing the so-called Access Hollywood recording, which “contains inflammatory and unduly prejudicial evidence that has no place at this trial about document and accounting practices,” as well as nearly 100 statements attributed to the former president that prosecutors have identified as potential exhibits but that “are largely irrelevant, stale, and cumulative.”

    The motion comes on the heels of a Monday request by prosecutors  to impose a gag order on the former president, preventing him from making certain public statements about the case.

    What’s the Case About?

    Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted President Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in order to conceal $130,000 in payments to Ms. Clifford in exchange for keeping quiet about her allegations of an affair.

    Mr. Cohen said he made $130,000 in a number of separate payments to Ms. Clifford via a shell company that was then reimbursed by President Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, and recorded as legal expenses.

    In 2018, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance law in connection with the payments. In his plea deal, Mr. Cohen claimed he made the payments at President Trump’s direction and that he was reimbursed by President Trump’s company, even though he earlier claimed he paid the money out of his own pocket.

    Under New York state law, falsifying business records by itself is a misdemeanor. But if the records fraud was used to cover up or commit another crime, the charge could be elevated to a felony.

    Mr. Bragg has charged President Trump with a felony falsifying records charge, which would require prosecutors to prove that it was done to hide the commission of a second crime.

    A number of legal experts have challenged the validity of Mr. Bragg’s move to elevate the misdemeanor into a felony.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/27/2024 – 18:20

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Feb 27

Today’s News 27th February 2024

  • "A Power Grab": Doctors Say WHO Wants To Dictate US Health Policy
    “A Power Grab”: Doctors Say WHO Wants To Dictate US Health Policy

    Authored by Austin Alonzo via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The World Health Organization is aiming to weaponize public health to advance centralized control over medicine and expand that power to anything else that it can define as a public health crisis.

    Epoch Times’ senior editor Jan Jekielek (R) speaks on stage with Dr. Robert Malone (C) and Dr. Brooke Miller (C) in National Harbor, Md. on Feb. 24, 2024. (Janice The Epoch Times)

    During a Conservative Political Action Conference panel hosted by Jan Jekielek, a senior editor of The Epoch Times, physicians Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Brooke Miller explained what they see as a plan to expand the centralization of medicine.

    “This appears to be a power grab,” Dr. Malone, who hosts the EpochTV show “Fallout,” said during the event at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in Fort Washington, Maryland, on Feb. 24.

    While the WHO and its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, deny it, Dr. Malone said the WHO, an agency of the United Nations, is proposing an international treaty that would allow the WHO to establish treatment norms and define a public health crisis “for anything they wish.”

    He said this power could be used to tell the United States what to do about matters such as energy, carbon dioxide emissions, firearms, and abortion.

    “Everything falls under public health as an issue, and then they will have the authority to mandate what nation-states shall do in response to those public health emergencies,” Dr. Malone said.

    States that object, he said, would be subject to potential sanctions or other actions if they don’t follow the WHO’s directives. Dr. Malone argued that this is an unconstitutional action because the federal government isn’t granted public health authority under the U.S. Constitution.

    “This goes all the way down to the level of the WHO being able to stipulate what medical products or procedures you receive, what vaccines you take, what medicines you’re allowed to take,” he said.

    “This is centralized medicine on a global scale.”

    Both Dr. Malone and Dr. Miller lamented the shift away from patient-driven medicine toward what they called checklist medicine.

    During the COVID-19 pandemic, both physicians saw how the medical world rejected the research of novel ideas and treatments for the disease and instead followed the orders of the top public health authorities.

    Dr. Miller said when he was investigating treatments for COVID-19 and presented them to fellow doctors, they “didn’t want to hear about it.”

    “They only wanted to follow what the central planners told them to do,” he said.

    Even without a WHO treaty, Dr. Malone said, the medical profession is now becoming more centralized, and thinking outside the box is being punished.

    “In many states, many nations, there are now laws being enacted that physicians that speak about their opinions, their observations, which differ from the approved narrative, they’re subjected to jail time and major fines up to $200,000,” he said. “This is coming through in Canada and already is enacted in France.”

    This shift, Dr. Malone said, completely ignores the Hippocratic Oath that a doctor should swear to, which compels them always to do what’s best for the individual patient.

    The medical industry wants doctors to work off of a checklist and follow a set of prescribed orders, he said. Furthermore, Dr. Malone said, the breakdown of individualized care is part of a broader objective: artificial intelligence-driven medicine.

    “That’s where they want to go. … standardized medicine where you’re all a number, and you are processed through the system, given a diagnosis,” he said. “Checklist-driven medicine … is what’s being taught in medical schools right now, together with ‘wokeism,’ this is what’s being pushed all the way through the system.”

    Regular people need to get involved with their government to prevent the further centralization of medicine in the country, according to both doctors. Dr. Miller said citizens must not be afraid to stand up to the powerful.

    “We must demand that our government not sign this treaty. And I would say go even further, we must leave the WHO and defund the WHO,” he said.

    Dr. Malone said people need to get involved with their state governments, alert them of what’s happening, and urge them to resist. He also recommended forming a commission to review what’s happening within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Finally, he said, people need to seek out doctors who aren’t part of the corporate medical world.

    While many doctors may not want to be involved with corporate health care, the increasing complexity of paperwork forced by the Affordable Care Act and other regulations and the allure of money make it harder to avoid.

    “They work for the corporation, they don’t work for the patient,” Dr. Miller said.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/26/2024 – 23:40

  • Iran Has Enough Near-Weapons Grade Uranium For Almost 3 Nuclear Weapons: IAEA
    Iran Has Enough Near-Weapons Grade Uranium For Almost 3 Nuclear Weapons: IAEA

    At a moment the Middle East region stands at the precipice of spiraling toward a major regional war in relation to Gaza conflict spillover, the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has issued a fresh warning of ‘concern’ over Iran’s nuclear program.

    IAEA head Rafael Grossi said Monday that “public statements made in Iran regarding its technical capabilities to produce nuclear weapons” have only served to increase “concerns about the correctness and completeness of Iran’s safeguards declarations.”

    Via EPA

    Grossi urged Tehran to “cooperate fully and unambiguously with the UN nuclear watchdog” after in recent years it has deactivated its nuclear program surveillance devices as well as barred inspectors while arguing that the US unilaterally collapsed the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal.

    But the perhaps most significant revelation from the IAEA contained in a new detailed report it issued is that Iran’s estimated stockpile of enriched uranium is currently at 27 times the limits imposed by the 2015 JCPOA (which again is no longer functioning as an active agreement).

    The AFP reports further of the findings: 

    According to a confidential International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report seen by AFP, Iran’s total enriched uranium stockpile was estimated at 5,525.5 kilogrammes as of February 10, up by 1,038.7 kilogrammes from the last quarterly report in November.

    Without doubt, Tel Aviv will be paying close attention, given also Israel is increasingly coming into a fuller proxy war with Iran in the region, and given the daily exchanges of fire with Tehran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the weekly Israeli attacks on Damascus and Syrian territory.

    But there’s an important caveat to the fresh reporting. While Iran’s enriched uranium is at this significantly higher level compared to 2015, the IAEA says the last several months have actually seen a reduction of its overall stockpile: 

    Iran reduced its stockpile of near weapons-grade nuclear material over the past 3½ months, the United Nations’ atomic watchdog said Monday, a surprise step likely to be welcomed by Western countries who have been alarmed by Iran’s buildup of highly enriched nuclear fuel.

    Iran still has enough near-weapons grade material to fuel almost three nuclear weapons, underlining its status as a threshold nuclear-weapon state. However, by diluting some of its 60% enriched uranium in recent weeks to lower-grade material, its stockpile fell for the first time since it started producing the 60% nuclear fuel in 2021.

    This could be Iran’s way of signaling that it wishes to avoid escalating tensions with Israel, also at a time the Shia Houthis continue blocking Red Sea commercial transit, especially to Israeli and US ships.

    The Wall Street Journal concludes that “The reduction in 60% enriched uranium will offer some respite to the U.S. and its European partners who have grown increasingly concerned about the expansion of Iran’s nuclear program.”

    The Islamic Republic’s leadership, particularly the Ayatollah, has officially denied and rejected that its seeking a nuclear bomb, issuing fatwas saying it is ‘unIslamic’. However the past years have seen a dramatic ramping up of uranium enrichment which definitely points to keeping the potential achievement of a nuclear weapon as an ‘option’. 

    Meanwhile, in new alarming statements Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said Israel’s air force lacks the necessary resources to completely stop Iran’s nuclear program even if the military devoted everything to it.

    Olmert said in an interview with The National that “We can destroy their headquarters, important projects, railways, roads, and airports .. Israel can do a lot to damage Iran’s infrastructure, but Israel has no means to be able to destroy the nuclear program of Iran.” Of course, this would involve an all-out attack by Israel on Iran, but as yet there is no evidence that Tehran is currently seeking to attack Israeli directly. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/26/2024 – 23:20

  • Study Finds Hearing And Balance Disorders Among COVID-19 Vaccinated
    Study Finds Hearing And Balance Disorders Among COVID-19 Vaccinated

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

    More cases of hearing and balance disorders have been observed after people received COVID-19 vaccines, according to a recent study, which asked vaccinated people to remain alert to such complications.

    A child receives a dose of the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the Fairfax County Government Center in Annandale, Va., on Nov. 4, 2021. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    The Australian peer-reviewed study, published in the Vaccine journal on Feb. 22, aimed to determine whether there was an increase in “audiovestibular events” following COVID-19 vaccination in south-eastern Australia. Audiovestibular refers to conditions related to hearing and balance disorders.

    “Healthcare providers and vaccinees should be alert to potential audiovestibular complaints after COVID-19 vaccination,” the authors said.

    Increase in Incidences of Vertigo, Tinnitus

    Researchers found a rise in vertigo and tinnitus cases after vaccination. Tinnitus is a condition that makes an individual hear sounds like humming, ringing, or rushing, in the absence of external stimuli. Vertigo makes people feel like they’re spinning, and can result in dizziness.

    “Our study found an increased relative incidence of vertigo in the 42 days following mRNA vaccines, and an increased relative incidence of tinnitus in the 42 days following both Vaxzevria adenovirus vector and mRNA vaccines,” researchers wrote.

    “We are the first to confirm this increased relative incidence of tinnitus and vertigo post COVID-19 vaccines,“ they stated. They speculated that the audiovestibular events may be an ”immune mediated injury” triggered by the COVID-19 vaccines.

    No Rise in Cases of Hearing Loss

    In the same study, the researchers reported that there was “no increased relative incidence in hearing loss” in the 42 days following any COVID-19 vaccine.

    They noted that the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) data and studies conducted on the Finnish and Danish health care registry have found “found no association between sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) and COVID-19 vaccination.”

    As such, the authors concluded that their analysis “supports the opinion that there is no increased incidence of hearing loss following COVID-19 vaccines.”

    The authors pointed out a limitation—that their study could not account for any concurrent COVID-19 infections, which other studies have suggested could be associated with audiovestibular events.

    “COVID-19 infection is an important potential confounder of the association between COVID-19 vaccination and audiovestibular events,” they wrote.

    Figures

    Researchers collected vaccine-related data from two databases in Australia, selecting 45,350 records via SAEFVIC, and 4.94 million records via POLAR, for the time period from January 2021 to March 2023.

    SAEFVIC is the central spontaneous reporting service for adverse events following vaccinations in the Australian state of Victoria. The POLAR platform collects and processes general practice data on behalf of Primary Health Networks in Australia. Multiple researchers in the study declared receiving funding from the Department of Health, Victoria. SAEFVIC is funded by the department.

    Out of the 45,350 SAEFVIC records, researchers identified 415 cases of vertigo, 226 incidences of tinnitus, and 76 hearing losses. From the POLAR platform, 13,924 reports of vertigo, 4,000 incidences of tinnitus, and 3,214 hearing losses were identified.

    Researchers recorded the impact of two types of vaccines—AstraZeneca’s adenovirus vector vaccine and mRNA-based vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.

    The researchers found an increase in vertigo incidence following mRNA vaccines, and an increase in tinnitus incidence following both AstraZeneca and mRNA vaccines.

    The reporting rate for audiovestibular events was found to be higher for AstraZeneca shots compared to the mRNA vaccines. In addition, more audiovestibular events were identified after the first dose of AstraZeneca than its second dose, while no such difference was observed for the mRNA vaccines.

    Sudden Deafness

    SSNHL, commonly known as sudden deafness, refers to an unexplained, rapid loss of hearing either at once or over a few days, caused by damage to the inner ear or the nerve from the ear to the brain. The condition usually affects only a single ear.

    Researchers noted that some studies did find an association between Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine and SSNHL, but that the population or the effect size in those studies “was very small.”

    One such study was published in February 2022—a cohort study of over 2.6 million patients in Israel. Of the 2,602,557 patients who received the first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, 91 cases of SSNHL were reported. Of the 2,441,719 people who received the second dose, 79 SSNHL cases were identified.

    While the “effect size is very small,” the researchers of that study said their findings suggest the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine “might be associated with increased risk of SSNHL.”

    Tinnitus Takes Toll on Quality of Life

    Back in 2021, Gregory Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group in Rochester, Minnesota, developed tinnitus after receiving his second shot of the COVID-19 vaccine. While he experienced ringing in both ears, the situation was worse in the left ear.

    “It was like someone suddenly blew a dog whistle in my ear … It has been pretty much unrelenting,” he said in an interview with MedPage Today in March 2022. The outlet did not specify which vaccine he received, however it noted that, “Given his personal situation, [Mr. Poland] will look to protein subunit vaccines that are in development but not yet authorized by the [Food and Drug Administration], such as those from Novavax, Medicago, and Sanofi.”

    At the time, Mr. Poland said there could be tens of thousands of people affected in the United States and potentially millions globally.

    “What has been heartbreaking about this, as a seasoned physician, are the emails I get from people that, this has affected their life so badly, they have told me they are going to take their own life,” he told the outlet.

    The World Health Organization said in 2022 (pdf) that, up to February 2021, it received 367 reports of tinnitus following COVID-19 vaccination, including 56 that were grouped with hearing losses. The majority (293 cases, or 80 percent) received the Pfizer vaccine. More than 70 percent of the total tinnitus cases were among females. Over a third of the reports were from healthcare professionals.

    From the 367 cases, 97 incidents (26 percent) were recorded as serious. This included 59 cases classified as “other medically important condition,” 33 as “disabling/incapacitating,” and eight reports as “caused/prolonged hospitalization.” Two incidences were reported as “life-threatening.”

    The organization also separately reported 164 cases of hearing loss, of which 104 cases (63 percent) were found among females.

    In an interview with The Epoch Times, Mary, who declined to disclose her last name, said that she started experiencing tinnitus an hour after the first Pfizer shot in 2021. When she contacted the pharmacy where she was vaccinated, Mary was told that tinnitus wasn’t a side effect.

    Even after taking steroid therapy as recommended by a physician, her condition didn’t improve. “I complained about it so much in the beginning … especially in the first couple of weeks,” she said. ‘I cried. I broke down.”

    Despite facing difficulties, Mary could not openly discuss her concerns with her family, friends, or health providers. “I felt comfortable saying that I had tinnitus, but I was afraid to tell people that it started an hour after the vaccine … I didn’t want people to think that I’m an anti-vaxxer,” she stated.

    “But it’s my own experience, and the fact that I was afraid to say that is really sad.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/26/2024 – 23:00

  • Israel Attacks Lebanon's Bekaa Valley For First Time Of War, 100km From Border
    Israel Attacks Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley For First Time Of War, 100km From Border

    Israel on Monday unleashed a wave of airstrikes on a location in eastern Lebanon which had yet to be targeted in the war. Several attacks were conducted on the outskirts of Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley. This area hasn’t been struck by Israeli fire since the 2006 war.

    The Bekaa Valley has long been considered a Hezbollah stronghold and Israel choosing to attack it signals a definite expanse and escalation of the ongoing conflict far beyond the south Lebanon border region, given it lies a full 100km from said border. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed in a statement that it struck “Hezbollah terror targets deep inside Lebanon.”

    Via Al Jazeera

    Targets hit reportedly included a convoy of trucks and sites connected to Hezbollah’s areal defense systems. At least two people were killed in the attacks, Reuters reports. The two had been working in a food warehouse run by Hezbollah.

    Earlier in the day an Israeli drone was downed by Hezbollah over Lebanon. Israel’s military said the fresh Bekaa operation was in response to the earlier launch of a surface-to-air missile by the Iran-backed paramilitary group.

    Social media videos reportedly from one of the strike locations in Bekaa Valley shows a damaged and burned truck and SUV amid an expanse of rubble strewn across a roadway. 

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

    Hezbollah has unleashed large waves of missiles on northern Israel throughout the day, with one missile having fallen near a synagogue close to Nazareth.

    Specifically Hezbollah sources said that in response to Israel’s Bekaa attack its militants fired at least 60 rockets at an Israeli army headquarters in Golan Heights.

    Hezbollah politician Hassan Fadlallah announced of the Israeli strikes reaching far into Lebanese territory, even near the Syrian border that “Its aggression on Baalbek or any other areas will not remain without response.”

    Israeli bystanders filmed the following dramatic video as rockets rained down…

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

    On Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned that even if a deal with Hamas is achieved in the Gaza Strip, this doesn’t mean fighting with Hezbollah will stop:

    “If a temporary pause is reached in Gaza, we will increase the fire in the north separately, and will continue until the full withdrawal of Hezbollah [from the border] and the return of Israeli citizens to their homes,” he said.

    Israeli Golan base targeted by massive missile barrage, sending personnel scrambling for bomb shelters…

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

    As of last week (Feb.18), Israel had begun to strike deeper into Lebanon, expanding its strikes far beyond the border region in the south. Large airstrikes rocked a town near Sidon, which lies 60km from the border.

    The Lebanese government fears the war might at any moment encompass the whole country, as it did in 2006 when Beirut International airport was bombed. Israel has demanded that the government reign in Hezbollah, but it reality it doesn’t have the power or military capability to do so, as the Lebanese Army is ill-equipped. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/26/2024 – 22:40

  • CCP Arrests More Than 1,000 Tibetans After Protests Against Dam Construction Project
    CCP Arrests More Than 1,000 Tibetans After Protests Against Dam Construction Project

    Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The State Department is expressing concerns about recent mass arrests of Tibetans in China, after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a sweeping crackdown against the ethnic group over their peaceful protests against the construction of a hydropower dam.

    More than 1,000 Tibetans, including monks, were arrested in China on Friday, according to rights group International Tibet Network. The crackdown took place at Derge, a town in Dege County in Kardze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in southwestern China’s Sichuan Province.

    According to the rights groups, the dam construction project will forcibly displace residents of two villages and submerge six monasteries.

    “The current status of those arrested is currently unknown,” it stated, before adding that those arrested were held at different locations throughout Dege County.

    “Deeply concerned by reports of the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China] mass arrests of Tibetans protesting construction of a dam that threatens displacement of villages & destruction of monasteries,” said Uzra Zeya, undersecretary of state for civilian security, democracy, and human rights, in an X post on Feb. 25.

    “[China] must respect human rights & freedom of expression and include Tibetans in the development & implementation of water and land management policies,” Ms. Zeya added. “These centuries-old monasteries are home to hundreds of Tibetan Buddhist monks & contain irreplaceable cultural relics.

    “[The United States] stands with Tibetans in preserving their unique cultural, religious, and linguistic identity.”

    The protests began on Feb. 14, International Tibet Network said, when at least 300 Tibetans protested at Dege County Hall. Arrests began on Feb. 22, when Chinese authorities arrested over 100 protesting Tibetan locals and Tibetan monks, the group added.

    Chinese police officers reportedly used water cannons, pepper spray, and tasers to subdue protesters on Feb. 22, according to Radio Free Asia. Some of the arrested protesters were later admitted to a local hospital for medical treatment, the outlet added.

    “Outrageous what’s happening in Tibet right now … colonizers stealing everything we have and yet Tibetans continuing to resist by the thousands,” Tenzin Yangzom, advocacy officer at the Tibetan Association of Boston who also works for International Tibet Network, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Feb. 24.

    Benedict Rogers, human rights activist and deputy chair of the UK Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, took to X to call China’s repression of Tibetans “appalling and outrageous.”

    “Let us not forget Tibet. Let’s #FreeTibet,” Mr. Rogers added.

    Tibet

    The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) invaded Tibet in 1949 and forced upon Tibetans a 17-point agreement to legitimize the CCP’s rule. Despite rosy promises of Tibetan autonomy on paper, China’s communist regime has turned the region into a surveillance state and installed labor camps.

    The Dalai Lama, the region’s spiritual leader, went into exile in India in 1959 after the Chinese regime brutally crushed an uprising, killing tens of thousands of Tibetans. Later in the same year, the spiritual leader established a Tibetan exile administration, officially known as the Central Tibetan Administration.

    Sikyong Penpa Tsering, president of the Central Tibetan Administration, issued a statement on Feb. 24, saying that “the crackdown on non-violent protests in Derge is beyond condemnation.”

    “The Chinese authorities’ disregard for the rights of Tibetans is unacceptable by any measure. The punitive acts demonstrate China’s prioritization of its ideology and interests over human rights,” Mr. Tseringa added.

    “We call on the Chinese government to release all those detained and to respect the rights and aspirations of the Tibetan people. The world needs to hear the Tibetans’ voices and confront the truth of Chinese misrule in Tibet.”

    The construction of the dam, a 2,240-megawatt power station located in the upper regions of the Yangtze River, will result in the resettlement of about 2,000 locals, according to Tibetan rights group International Campaign for Tibet (ICT). One of the six monasteries affected, the Wonto Monastery, has murals dating back to the 13th century, it added.

    Earlier this month, House lawmakers passed the Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Conflict Act (H.R.533) after a 392–28 vote. The bipartisan, bicameral legislation (S.138) has not been voted on in the Senate.

    The legislation aims to “jump-start negotiations” between CCP officials and the Dalai Lama or his representatives, as the two sides have not had formal dialogue since 2010, according to a press release.

    ICT Tibet President Tencho Gyatso issued a statement welcoming the passage of the House bill earlier this month.

    “Today’s vote shows that U.S. support for Tibet is only growing stronger even after 65 years of China’s control and occupation,” Mr. Gyatso said. China has been playing a waiting game, hoping that the international community would eventually abandon Tibet. Clearly that is not the case.

    “The Chinese government should take the hint and restart the dialogue process with Tibetan leaders. We thank Congressman McGovern and Chairman McCaul and all the representatives who helped pass the Resolve Tibet Act today.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/26/2024 – 22:20

  • Oil Spreads Soar As Physical Market Screams Tightness While Hedge Fund Press Shorts
    Oil Spreads Soar As Physical Market Screams Tightness While Hedge Fund Press Shorts

    Something odd is taking place in the oil market. While on one hand “data” dissembled by Biden’s Dept of Energy and specifically its statistical arm, the Energy Information Administration, has done everything it could to indicate there is a glut of oil, which is understandable – there is nothing Biden’s handlers fear more than an inflationary surge in oil and gasoline prices ahead of the November elections and will do everything in their power to mandate a dataset that has the most adverse impact on oil prices, the physical market is sending just the opposite signal, with spreads showing screaming physical tightness.

    Consider the Brent prompt spread which after tumbling to a multi-year low in late December, has exploded higher to a backwardation around 90 cents…

    … entrenching its strongest position since late October, while several other timespreads also the firmest since last September. The comparable WTI April-May spread was trading around 50 cents after hitting 75 cents last week.

    Commenting on the surge in time-spreads, Citi strategist Max Leyton – who is far less bearish than oil permabear Ed Morse who recently left the bank – says they strengthened on the “perfect storm” of Atlantic Basin supply issues, and notes that supply issues include “ongoing Red Sea vessel diversions, US freeze-offs hitting oil output, worker protests disrupting Libyan supply, UK oil terminal logistics limiting North Sea Forties supply, and buying up of crude cargoes at the Nigerian Dangote refinery.”

    “Most of these issues could ease,” and the second quarter “still looks like a surplus quarter for total oil balances, meaning current strength could pause.” Of course, the current strength could very well accelerate if there is even one small geopolitical hiccup in the middle east where nobody expects any surprises, and where all eyes remain on how much more of its bitch Iran can make Biden, before even the US president is forced to retaliate even if it means 4mm barrels taken off the daily market.

    The dramatic spikes in prompt timespreads across the crude complex was the Goldman chart of the week just a few days ago, and shows just how dramatically and rapidly the market has tigthened up as a result of sudden scarcity of physical which, however, has barely received any mention in daily discussions about the energy market.

    Below we share some more charts from Goldman looking at the most recent indicators in physical markets, starting with supply where Goldman is seeing distinct “firmness”…

    … while on the demand side of the equation, recent unseasonaly warm weather has lowered global oil demand by some 300kb/d.

    As a result of the tightness in supply, Goldman calculates that total OECD inventories are now about 21mb lower than the company’s end of February balance forecast of 2,765 mb, with estimates pointing to further tightness.

    Yet despite this continued decline in supply and inventories, oil prices remain rangebound and seem unable to breakout solidly about the low 80s. Why is that? In a word: financialization, aka “paper oil”, because while the physical oil market is screaming higher, financial players (managed money) continue to aggressively sell and short the sector as shown in the chart below.

    This desperate attempt by financial players to keep their underwater positions from getting stopped out and sparking a cascade of margin calls has also translated into a ravenous shorting of energy stocks which as we pointed out a week ago, are the most shorted sector in Goldman’s prime brokerage.

    This, in turn, has translated into some of the marquee energy names such as Exxon seeing the highest short interest on record…

    … even though the lifeblood of refiners such as the 3-2-1 Crack Spread is now surging higher.

    Which begs the question: how much tighter will physical oil have to get before it finally breaks the financial oil shorts?

    The full Goldman note is available to pro subscribers in the usual place.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/26/2024 – 22:00

  • The Administrative State Is Destroying Our Country
    The Administrative State Is Destroying Our Country

    Authored by Bobbie Anne Flower Cox via The Brownstone Institute,

    It is clear to me that we are increasingly being governed by an “Administrative State” instead of by our chosen representatives. Indeed, we are more and more becoming a “Regulation Nation” which is a true threat to our Constitutional Republic.

    What do I mean by that? 

    I mean that we are being governed by regulations and rules issued by administrative agencies, instead of being governed by laws duly passed by our elected officials. 

    Why does that matter?

    Because agencies are run by unelected, government bureaucrats who are beholden to nobody but the person who appointed them. They don’t care what the voters think or want or don’t want. They don’t need to care. They don’t need your vote to stay in power. They only have to appease the politician(s) who appointed them. If they just follow the yellow brick road, they will land on the other side of the rainbow.

    Shockingly, some legislators are okay with this, because it allows them to escape any sort of responsibility or blame for an unpopular (or illegal) rule that is implemented by the bureaucrats sitting in the agencies (you know, the ones with no accountability to us voters). But, legislators should not only care, they should actively work to stop the Administrative State, because not only do many of these “regulations” usurp a legislator’s law-making power, but they are wholly unconstitutional!

    You will remember from grade school Social Studies class that our government is comprised of three, co-equal branches: the Legislative branch (senators and assemblymembers who make our laws), the Executive branch (governors and the president who are supposed to enforce our laws), and the Judicial branch (judges and courts which adjudicate our laws). Each branch has its own powers and authorities, as bestowed upon them by our Constitution. Any power that is not delineated in our Constitution is reserved for the people. Remember my long-uttered phrase that, the Constitution was written to keep the government in check, not to keep we the people in check!

    There is no fourth branch of government. There is no branch called the Administrative State. There is no authority in the Constitution to have agencies that make rules/regulations that employ the force of law. And yet, we see at the federal level as well as at the state level, Executive branches that are chock full of bloated, power-hungry agencies that have given themselves an astonishing amount of never-authorized-by-the-people power. In many cases, those powers are unconstitutional, meaning the agency did not have the authority to make the rule or do the thing they are doing (or trying to do).

    Let me give you a few real-life scenarios so it’s easier to digest.

    For starters, my quarantine camp lawsuit is a perfect example. For those not familiar with this case, what happened there is that the NYS Department of Health (DOH) issued an “Isolation & Quarantine Procedures” regulation. The head of the DOH is a commissioner who is appointed by the Governor. Everyone that works for the DOH is unelected. They do not need to listen to voters wants and needs. Quite presumably, if the Commissioner or any of the government workers below him don’t do the bidding of their “boss,” then their days at the DOH would surely be limited. 

    So, what happened in my quarantine case is that the DOH created a wholly unconstitutional regulation (Rule 2.13) that allowed them to pick and choose which New Yorkers they could lock up or lock down.  That could have been forced isolation in your home, or they could have removed you from your home and put you into a quarantine facility of their choosing. For however long they wanted. With no notice. With no right to an attorney until after you were locked up. With no procedure for you to regain your freedom once you were incarcerated. 

    There was no age restriction, so they could have taken you, your child, your grandchild… And they didn’t even have to prove that you were sick, or that you had even been exposed to a communicable disease! Guilty until proven innocent.

    The DOH gave themselves this phenomenal power. If that is unclear what I mean there, I will explain. The DOH wanted this unbridled power to be able to control 19 million New Yorkers with the stroke of a pen, but the NYS Legislature wouldn’t give it to them in the form of failed Assembly bill A416 (because the legislators knew it would be political suicide). So, the DOH simply made Rule 2.13 and gave themselves the power they wanted, anyway. No legislative consent given. No voter input had. Zilch. A clear breach of Separation of Powers. A clear affront on our Constitution. A perfect example of the “Regulation Nation” as run by an Administrative State.

    This was the most unconstitutional regulation I had ever read in my 25 years of practicing law. It was an attack on the very basis of our freedom, and a dangerous chipping away at the bedrock of our free society…a government by the people, and for the people. Without question, I knew I had to stop it.

    So, I sued Hochul and her DOH on behalf of a group of NYS legislators (Senator George Borrello, Assemblyman Chris Tague, Congressman Mike Lawler) together with a citizens’ group called Uniting NYS. Our argument was clear: the DOH does not possess the power to make a law, and this was surely a law, despite the fact that they called it a regulation or rule. It conflicted with the Constitution. It conflicted with NYS law. As Assemblyman Tague said at a press conference we held when we first filed our lawsuit in 2022:

    This policy’s aim to forcibly isolate law-abiding citizens is reminiscent of actions taken by some of the ugliest tyrannical regimes history has ever known. It has no place standing as law here in New York, let alone anywhere in the United States. Policies as dangerous as this should be debated and scrutinized in a public setting by elected representatives, not quietly slinked through regulatory approvals.

    In July 2022, the Judge ruled in our favor and struck down this stunning display of tyranny. You can read that decision here. Of course Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James appealled the court’s decision so they could try to get back that heinous power. In November of 2023, the appellate court dismissed our case for lack of standing (a true dodging of the merits of a lawsuit if I ever saw one). So, now I am appealing that calamitous decision to the Court of Appeals (our State’s highest court).

    I have done numerous interviews about my quarantine lawsuit and this “Regulation Nation” phenomenon, and you can access some of those on my website, www.CoxLawyers.com. One such interview was with Steve Gruber on America’s Voice Live, and can be accessed HERE.

    *  *  *

    Republished from the author’s Substack

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/26/2024 – 21:40

  • Bulk Of Republicans Locked In On Support For Trump
    Bulk Of Republicans Locked In On Support For Trump

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

    Former President Donald Trump speaks at Treasure Island Resort & Casino after Nevada caucus results in Las Vegas, Nev., on Feb. 8, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    News Analysis

    CHARLESTON, S.C.—Republican voters delivered a decisive result for President Donald Trump in the South Carolina presidential primary. The former president demonstrated his command over Republican voters in the fourth and final early primary, defeating the state’s former governor Nikki Haley by 20 percentage points on Feb. 24.

    “The people spoke for Trump,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) told The Epoch Times, virtually waving a white flag over the Haley campaign, of which he had been a notable proponent.

    Ms. Haley has vowed to continue her run for the White House at least through Super Tuesday, March 5, when 15 states will conduct presidential primaries.

    Yet the overwhelming support for President Trump in South Carolina, which builds on the momentum generated in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, validates Mr. Norman’s assessment.

    Neither legal battles, nor age, nor mean tweets, nor the outcome of previous elections will keep the party from nominating its favorite son.

    Republicans want Donald Trump, and nobody but Donald Trump, and many appear immune to any argument to the contrary.

    Age and Vitality

    Ms. Haley has begun to criticize the former president, albeit gingerly. One line of attack was a veiled reference to his age and the insinuation that he represents an older generation.

    Ms. Haley tied President Trump to incumbent President Joe Biden, whose age and mental acuity have become a concern to many voters. Ms. Haley frequently repeated polling numbers suggesting that 70 percent of Americans do not want either man in office, and said that electing either one would be voting for “more of the same.”

    Referring to herself as a fresher, more vigorous alternative, Ms. Haley often used the phrase “new generational leader.”

    The idea sticks with many Haley supporters, who picture her as a fresher, more vigorous candidate.

    “I don’t want either old man in the White House,” Haley supporter Diane Derusha, 75, of Mt. Pleasant told The Epoch Times.

    Republican presidential candidate and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks during a campaign event at Clemson University in Clemson, S.C., on Feb. 20, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    However, the argument failed to persuade President Trump’s core voters in the Palmetto state, most of whom believe he is actually more fit for the job as leader of the free world than Ms. Haley.

    Among Republican voters in South Carolina, 69 percent said Trump has the physical and mental health to be president, according to exit polling reported by CBS. Just 62 percent of them said the same of Ms. Haley.

    Electability

    Ms. Haley’s most direct attack on President Trump centered on his ability to win a general election. “Donald Trump can’t win,” she said in stump speeches. “He lost in 2018. He lost in 2020. He lost in 2022, and he continues to lose.”

    Referring to polling data on hypothetical matchups between President Trump vs. President Biden and herself vs. President Biden, Ms. Haley told reporters in Columbia on Feb. 2, “Trump doesn’t defeat Joe Biden … I defeat Biden.”

    Indeed, a number of polls show that Ms. Haley would fare better in the general election than would President Trump. The latest, conducted by Marquette University, shows Ms. Haley with a 16 percent lead over President Biden. Other polls show a lead of about 3 percent.

    Polls involving President Trump have shown him winning by about 2 percentage points. Others indicate that he would lose to President Biden.

    2024 Presidential candidates Donald J. Trump and Nikki Haley supporters after a Haley event in North Augusta, S.C., on Feb. 21, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    Haley supporters are well-attuned to that polling and are convinced Ms. Haley is the more electable candidate.

    “If you look at the big picture, do we want to win?” Melanie Sabelhaus, co-chair of Women for Nikki, said on Feb. 23. “Wake up America! We want to win. The polls are saying … she can beat Joe Biden.”

    Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has also seen the same opportunity, noting that the GOP results from South Carolina show this is a “three-way race,” thanks to those who won’t vote for President Trump or President Biden.

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    Part of Ms. Haley’s favorable polling against President Biden could be that she draws strong support among moderates, independents, and even some Democrats. In the New Hampshire primary, 70 percent of voters choosing Mrs. Haley were independents.

    In South Carolina, 53 percent of Haley voters were independents, and 70 percent described themselves as moderates.

    “I’ve already voted for Nikki,” Kurt Kehelbeck, 64, of Charleston, told The Epoch Times, having cast his ballot during the early voting period.

    But to win the Republican primary, a candidate must have the support of Republican voters. And most of that support has gone to President Trump.

    As for electability in the general election, most Republican voters still believe President Trump would fare better than Ms. Haley.

    Of Republican primary voters, 83 percent said President Trump was either “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to defeat President Biden in a general election. For Ms. Haley, just 59 percent said the same.

    Normalcy

    Ms. Haley has positioned her candidacy as a return to “normalcy” after what she described as disorder and unpredictability surrounding President Trump, who pitches his presidency around efforts to “drain the swamp.”

    “Chaos follows him,” she told rally goers in Columbia on Feb. 1.

    “He’s gotten more unstable and unhinged,” Ms. Haley said of President Trump in a speech at Clemson University on Feb. 20.

    After the New Hampshire primary, Ms. Haley added a line to her stump speech about President Trump’s reaction to her 40 percent share of the vote.

    “Donald Trump had a temper tantrum on stage. He was completely unhinged. All he did was talk about revenge … and my dress,” she told supporters in Myrtle Beach on Feb. 22.

    But two days earlier, when Laura Ingraham asked what revenge meant to him during a Fox News town hall, President Trump was given a chance to respond to the media coverage about his alleged plans for vengeance.

    “I don’t care about the ‘revenge’ thing. I know they use the word ‘revenge,’ ‘Will there be revenge?’” he said. “My revenge will be success.”

    Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald J. Trump’s rally in Manchester, N.H., on Jan. 20, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    Ms. Haley’s supporters are apt to use words like “disrespectful” or “arrogant” to describe President Trump. They appear to see Ms. Haley as calmer and more level-headed.

    “The most important thing she can do is bring a divided country together. She can reach across the aisle and begin to heal what’s broken,” Mark Wilson, 65, of Mt. Pleasant told The Epoch Times.

    Many of President Trump’s supporters, on the other hand, seem more likely to believe that America is in the midst of an internal conflict that needs to be won rather than healed.

    Of those who voted for President Trump in this primary, 90 percent said the most important characteristic they look for in a candidate is someone who “fights for people like me.”

    “If we don’t take this country back, we’re going to be like Afghanistan or Iraq or Iran or some third world country,” Douglas Benton of Myrtle Beach told The Epoch Times. If things didn’t change, he said, “It’s going to get ugly.”

    Lawsuits

    As President Trump’s legal problems have mounted over the past year, Ms. Haley has leveraged them as an argument against his presidential candidacy.

    “He spent $50 million of his campaign funds to pay for legal fees. Are you kidding me?” she told reporters in Columbia on Feb. 1. “How’s he going to campaign against Joe Biden when he has no money?” she asked, adding that his court cases will continue throughout the year.

    To many Trump supporters, the former president’s legal woes have no bearing on his ability to get elected or to govern. Many view the cases against him as abuses of prosecutorial power intended to scare away voters and keep him out of office. As such, his candidacy is cast as a quest for justice.

    Michael Large, 62, of Moncks Corner told The Epoch Times he wanted to “show my support for a man that I believe is being politically persecuted and deserves another chance. That’s really why I want him in office.”

    People attend Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald J. Trump’s rally in Manchester, N.H., on Jan. 20, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    Exit polls showed that 67 percent of Trump supporters believed his legal problems don’t matter, and 61 percent said he would be fit to hold office even if convicted of a crime.

    Perhaps the most telling finding of the exit pollsters is that Republican voters were largely unpersuadable in the days before this primary.

    Most Republican voters had made their choice long before heading to a polling site. More than two-thirds of Trump voters had locked in their choice more than a month before the election.

    If the mindset of Republican voters generally mirrors that of South Carolinians, the grail quest for a dozen Republican candidates whose last name is not “Trump” and a significant number of Republican and independent voters in the GOP presidential race appears to be futile.

    Voters are saying, there simply is no Republican alternative to Donald Trump.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/26/2024 – 21:20

  • A Host Of Notable COVID-19 Vaccine Adverse Events, Backed By Evidence
    A Host Of Notable COVID-19 Vaccine Adverse Events, Backed By Evidence

    Authored by Marina Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    Since the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, a significant number of vaccinated people have reported various adverse reactions.

    Some adverse events are widely acknowledged, like blood clots and myocarditis. Others are less publicly discussed but are still present in the research literature.

    The Epoch Times reviewed the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the United Kingdom’s Yellow Card Reporting system, South Africa’s VAERS database, and numerous peer-reviewed studies, selecting the top reported adverse events with literature support. Their severity determines the order of the events.

    It is worth noting that VAERS is a passive reporting system that relies on people to send in reports of their experiences. It may not determine causality but “is especially useful for detecting unusual or unexpected patterns” that might indicate a possible vaccine safety signal, according to the official website.

    Some of the adverse events have been previously reported by The Epoch Times. These are supplied with links to past articles with more information.

    What Causes COVID-19 Vaccine Adverse Reactions?

    Clinicians treating persistent vaccine adverse reactions believe that the leading cause of such injuries is the COVID-19 spike protein.

    Spike proteins exist on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that invades cells and causes disease. The COVID-19 mRNA vaccines also induce the body to make spike proteins. The cells that are exposed to the mRNA produce spike proteins and then display these proteins on their surfaces. The immune system then attacks these spike proteins, thereby forming an immunity against them. The cells may also be destroyed.

    Other types of COVID-19 vaccines use similar tactics.

    The COVID-19 mRNA vaccines induce the body to make spike proteins, which then stimulate the body’s immune system to generate immunity. (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    However, the spike protein is highly inflammatory and toxic, and clinicians have observed that although people generate antibodies after vaccination, some start suffering from a wide variety of unexplainable symptoms.

    Clinicians have put forward six pathways through which the spike protein can cause damage:

    1. Immune dysregulation
    2. Blood clotting and vascular damage
    3. Mitochondrial dysfunction
    4. Mast cell activation syndrome
    5. Autoimmune reactions
    6. Tissue damage through spike persistence

    The lipid nanoparticles in the mRNA vaccines may also contribute to reported adverse events. Studies show that lipid nanoparticles activate inflammatory chemicals and affect immune activity.

    COVID-19 Vaccine General Adverse Events

    The most common COVID-19 vaccine adverse events are those that affect the body generally.

    • Chest pain may be a sign of myocarditis, but it can also be due to inflamed rib joints, lung inflammation, or neuropathy in the chest—all of which will be explained later in the article.
    • Fatigue after vaccination is mostly transient. However, some people may experience persistent and debilitating fatigue, where even taking showers or doing a basic chore leaves them exhausted for the remainder of the day. Around 8 percent to 80 percent of vaccinated individuals report fatigue as a side effect, with most cases being mild. However, for some people, fatigue may never seem to get better. A study that followed 498 vaccinated physicians and dentists showed that around 6 percent reported long-term fatigue post-vaccination. One possible reason for the fatigue is mitochondrial dysfunction. Mitochondria are the body’s cellular powerhouse, present in most cells and responsible for producing energy for the body.
    • Fever and chills may manifest due to the body’s immune system fighting off the vaccine and are usually transient.
    • Swelling and pain at the injection site is usually transient. Pain can also happen throughout the body.
    • Armpit pain may indicate that the body’s immunity is fighting off infections. The armpit area houses a cluster of lymph nodes that contain immune cells. These lymph nodes can become swollen after infection and vaccinations, leading to pain in the underarm area.

    Nervous System Disorders

    Nervous system disorders are some of the most common adverse events reported. In the Pfizer trials, these disorders were the third most common, coming after general and muscle-related adverse events, while they were the second most common in the Moderna trials.

    Animal and model studies have shown that spike proteins can cross the blood-brain barrier. A 2023 preprint study found spike proteins in the brain tissues of deceased COVID-19 patients. The histological brain examinations of the late German pathologist Dr. Arne Burkhardt showed that spike proteins damage blood vessels in the brain.

    Spike proteins share structural similarities with proteins present in the human nervous system, and when our bodies attack the spike protein, collateral damage to the nerves may also occur. mRNA vaccines also contain a prion region and have been shown to accelerate the formation of misfolded proteins, which are potentially linked to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

    Guillain-Barré Syndrome

    The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recognizes Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) as a safety signal of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine. A study published in Scientific Reports found that COVID-19 vaccine recipients have a 42 percent increased incidence of developing GBS.

    GBS is an autoimmune disease. COVID-19 spike proteins share similarities with over 28 human proteins, including glial tissues and brain growth factors. Therefore, if the body attacks the spike protein, some of the antibodies formed may also attack the brain and the nervous system, potentially leading to neurological disorders.

    Dementia

    While COVID-19 vaccination has not been directly linked to dementia, it has been linked with cognitive deficits, memory loss, and delirium, all of which are symptoms of dementia.

    A study funded by the National Institute on Aging reported delirium the day after vaccination in older people in a nursing home, but it was resolved within two weeks.

    The Italian NEURO-COVAX population-based study evaluating over 19,000 people found that almost 2 percent reported cognitive fog after vaccination.

    Seizures

    In October 2022, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) researchers detected seizures as a safety signal for children aged 5 and under who received the mRNA vaccines. A Japanese study that followed 332 people with epilepsy observed seizure worsening following vaccination in 5.7 percent of those who received their first and second COVID-19 vaccines.

     

    Data from the Global Vaccine Data Network (GVDN) showed that the first and second doses of the Moderna vaccine were associated with an increased risk of febrile seizures, convulsions in children caused by a fever. The first dose of the Moderna vaccine and fourth dose of the Pfizer vaccine were associated with an increased risk of generalized seizures.

    Additionally, the first dose of the Moderna vaccine was also associated with acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, a type of autoimmune condition that may present as seizure attacks.

    Gait Disturbance

    One review linked four cases of gait disturbance to the COVID-19 vaccine. Another paper published in Cureus reported four neurological case studies, with one patient developing gait disturbance from Guillain-Barré syndrome and one from meningitis-retention syndrome.

    Researchers at the University of Florida followed several Parkinson’s disease patients who experienced worsening Parkinsonian symptoms after vaccination, with gait disturbance being the most common.

    Bell’s Palsy

    Bell’s palsy manifests as facial muscle weakness or paralysis and has been recognized as a COVID-19 vaccine safety signal by researchers at the FDA. An FDA preprint found that older people who received the Pfizer booster had a higher rate of developing Bell’s palsy.

    Data from the GVDN similarly found that the first doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines were associated with an increased risk of Bell’s palsy.

    Tremors

    Tremors may be a sign of brain and neural damage, causing impairment in motor control.

    A case study published by clinicians at the Cleveland Clinic reported a man who developed tremors in all four limbs 12 days after he took the second dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Additionally, the Italian NEURO-COVAX study found that 1.5 percent of vaccinated individuals reported tremors, and the same amount reported muscle spasms.

    Sensory Changes

    Sensory changes such as pins and needles, temperature intolerance, pain, and lack of sensation are all indicators of neuropathy. The Epoch Times has reported on neuropathy that occurs after vaccination.

    Neuropathy is when sensory neurons in the periphery are damaged. If the neuron is meant to detect heat, then the damage may cause a burning sensation or reduced ability to detect temperature. Damage to the neurons meant to detect touch may result in a pins-and-needles feeling, diminished sensation, or even a feeling of electric shock.

    Headaches and Dizziness

    Though many people have temporary headaches or dizziness after vaccination, some may also experience persistent and painful migraines that affect daily living. These headaches may be the result of neuroinflammation induced by the spike protein.

    Fainting, or a temporary loss of consciousness, can occur due to decreased blood flow to the brain.

    Cardiac Disorders

    Spike proteins have been shown to damage the endothelium lining of the heart, causing inflammation and fusing the heart muscle cells, as demonstrated by research conducted at the Mayo Clinic. Both processes can harm the heart muscles’ functioning, leading to various conditions.

    A German study published in the British Journal of Pharmacology showed that heart cells exposed to the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines produce spike protein and exhibit different abnormalities.

    Cardiac Arrest

    There has only been a few studies linking cardiac arrest with COVID-19 vaccination. Analysis of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) adverse events database showed that the COVID-19 vaccines were associated with an increased risk of cardiac arrest in those older than 75 years of age.

    Only one peer-reviewed study has linked cardiac arrest with the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine, in which a 59-year-old male with no significant past medical history received a third dose of the mRNA shot and experienced cardiac arrest within seven hours.

    Cardiomyopathy

    Cardiomyopathy is a condition affecting the heart muscle. The heart cavities may become enlarged, with the muscles becoming thicker or stiffer, causing a weakened heart and even leading to heart failure or cardiac arrest.

    A 2022 global review on stress cardiomyopathy cases reported post-vaccination found that, on average, most symptoms occurred around three days after vaccination. The authors concluded that the problem is rare but can be life-threatening. Medical journals documented several cases of cardiomyopathy, including one healthy 63-year-old woman with no cardiovascular risk factors who was admitted to the emergency room one day after her first dose of the Moderna vaccine.

    Heart Attack

    Spike protein damages blood vessels and is also prone to forming blood clots, which can block coronary arteries, leading to heart attacks. The WHO’s adverse events database showed that the COVID-19 vaccines are associated with an elevated risk of heart attacks in those older than 75.

    Several case studies have reported heart attacks within 24 hours of vaccination, including one Japanese case study and one Harvard University study.

    Myocarditis and Pericarditis

    Reports of myocarditis as a safety signal have been extensively reported in The Epoch Times’ premium reports. Recently, FDA researchers have also detected myocarditis as a safety signal for the latest COVID-19 monovalent vaccines.

    It can occur as a result of spike protein damaging the heart muscles. A paper published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that the Moderna vaccine was associated with a higher rate of myocarditis than the Pfizer vaccine for young men.

    Like myocarditis, pericarditis is also a type of heart inflammation, but the outside heart lining is affected rather than the heart muscles. Pericarditis can lead to pericardial effusion, which occurs when fluid builds up around the heart. The Epoch Times has reported on a professional mountain biker who was diagnosed with pericarditis after vaccination and was hospitalized.

    Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS)

    Cases of POTS have increased in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. POTS is a condition that causes rapid heart rate when a person changes positions from lying down to standing up, indicating dysfunction between the nervous and cardiovascular systems.

    Dr. Tae Chung, director of the Johns Hopkins POTS program, noticed some unusual cases among medical students or physicians who were vaccinated but not infected with COVID-19. Later, a large cohort study identified a possible link between the COVID-19 vaccine and the disease.

    In July 2023, The Epoch Times spoke to two women in their 20s who were diagnosed with POTS after COVID-19 vaccination.

    Arrhythmia

    Arrhythmias occur when there is an electrical malfunctioning of the heart, with heartbeats becoming too rapid, slow, or irregular.

    A study published in Vaccine: X found an increased risk for arrhythmias without myocarditis within 14 days of a second dose of mRNA vaccine in adults. The Moderna vaccine presented a greater risk than the Pfizer. A systematic review concluded that “the incidence rate … of cardiac arrhythmia post-COVID-19 vaccination is rare and ranges between 1 and 76 per 10,000.” Another 2023 review said the problem is “not uncommon.”

    Atrial fibrillation, the most common type of arrhythmia, has also been reported in the literature.

    Hypertension

    As the vaccination campaign continues, evidence of possible blood pressure alteration has accumulated. The mechanism is unknown; it may be linked to the reduction of angiotensin-converting enzyme-2 (ACE-2) receptors in the body, as spike proteins bind to ACE-2 receptors to enter cells.

    A meta-analysis study published in the Journal of Cardiovascular Development and Disease examining data on 357,387 vaccinated individuals found that around 3.2 percent reported an increase in blood pressure in post-vaccination reports filed 15 minutes to days after vaccination.

    Heart Palpitations

    Heart palpitation is a sign of underlying heart disease, though it is typically transient and non-severe.

    Blood Disorders

    A major side effect reported following vaccination is blood clots. Spike proteins are particularly prone to clotting. While most blood clots require the presence of thrombin and platelets, spike proteins can form clots even in the absence of these proteins.

    Early in the vaccine rollout, the now discontinued J&J vaccine was shown to cause blood clotting despite low platelets in the blood. The mRNA vaccines have similar problems.

    Spike proteins also change the structure of the proteins inside the clot, resulting in amyloid-like blood clots that are much larger and harder to break down. Multiple studies have shown that spike proteins directly bind to clotting factors in the blood, promoting both large and microclot formations.

    Depending on where the blood clots form, patients may develop various pathologies related to the clotting.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/26/2024 – 21:00

  • Ukraine's Top Spy Chief Says Navalny Died From Blood Clot, Rejects 'Murder' Narrative
    Ukraine’s Top Spy Chief Says Navalny Died From Blood Clot, Rejects ‘Murder’ Narrative

    In a very unexpected plot twist, Ukraine appears to be in agreement with the Kremlin on Alexei Navalny’s death inside a far northern Russian prison which occurred on Feb. 16 and was listed by Russian authorities as officially due to “natural causes”. The dominant Western narrative has thus far been that Putin had him “murdered”. 

    Yet now Kiev sources are saying that the anti-Putin activist supported by the West died of a blood clot. Surprisingly, this explanation is being advanced among Ukraine media sources after none other than Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR), bluntly stated it to a group of journalists on Sunday. “I may disappoint you, but as far as we know, he indeed died as a result of a blood clot. And this has been more or less confirmed,” Budanov stated.

    “This wasn’t sourced from the internet, but, unfortunately, natural [causes],” he added in the remarks which were also caught on video. The spy chief’s words were also picked up in The Daily Mail, though predictably US mainstream outlets have been slow to acknowledge the assessment.

    Further, the NATO-friendly pundit Anton Gerashchenko, who also served as former Ukrainian Advisor to Internal Affairs Minister, has said the following:

    Vladimir Osechkin, founder of Gulagu. Net, says that, according to his sources, Navalny was killed (finished off with a blow to the chest) after being tortured with frost.

    Head of Ukrainian military intelligence Kyrylo Budanov said that according to his sources, “it was a blood clot.”

    Over the weekend Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, said her son’s body was finally released to the family. She has said Russian officials are seeking to pressure the family into doing a ‘secret funeral’ so as not to attract public demonstrations. “We do not know if the authorities will interfere to carry it out as the family wants and as Alexey deserves,” she said previously.

    Navalny’s wife has laid ultimate blame on Putin for his death, while President Biden too and other Western leaders have said “Putin is responsible.”

    “What has happened to Navalny is yet more proof of Putin’s brutality,” Biden had said immediately after Navalny’s death was announced by Russian prison services. Some European leaders quickly branded Putin’s government a “rogue regime” as a result, urging that Moscow “must be held accountable”. The whole situation seems akin to the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, where there was a rush to blame Moscow, but allegation which were later quieted and walked back.

    Meanwhile, Russia hawks in the US are urging the administration to go beyond last Friday’s large round of new anti-Moscow sanctions…

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    Another stunning development and further plot twist has emerged via Bloomberg reporting on Monday. Navalny was supposedly very close to being released amid secret talks involving the US and Germany:

    Alexey Navalny had been close to release in a prisoner exchange with the US and Germany shortly before his death in an Arctic prison, a top aide to the Russian opposition leader said.

    “Navalny was supposed to be freed in the coming days,” Maria Pevchikh said in a video statement posted Monday. Russian President Vladimir Putin was offered an assassin imprisoned in Germany in exchange for Navalny and two US citizens, she said.

    Moscow has long been seeking to gain the freedom of Vadim Krasikov, who is currently serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 assassination of a former Chechen rebel in a Berlin park. Krasikov is widely believed to be part of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB. Washington had reportedly previously rebuffed any prisoner swap deal involving Krasikov (related to talks in the context of the Brittney Griner and Viktor Bout swap).

    Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, ex-Marine Paul Whelan, and schoolteacher Marc Fogel are all still in Russian custody. Two Americans were supposed to be part of this alleged impending Navalny swap. According to more from Bloomberg, citing a Navalny family spokesperson: 

    Pevchikh didn’t name the two Americans involved in the deal. “Putin was clearly told that the only way to get Krasikov is to exchange him for Navalny,” said Pevchikh. Instead, he decided to “get rid of the bargaining chip” and “offer someone else when the time comes.”

    Meanwhile, news of Navalny’s funeral arrangements will likely emerge in the coming days. His family has hinted at their desire to see it happen in Moscow, which could spark anti-Kremlin protests.

    As for the aforementioned blood clot narrative offered by Ukraine’s military intelligence chief and possible context helping to explain why such a top level Kiev official would essentially “side” with the Kremlin on this, what’s missed in the West is the fact that Navalny had always been a fairly hardline nationalist. From a Ukrainian perspective, he wasn’t necessarily seen as an “ally” per se, even though he was anti-Putin. For more crucial context, see the below brief segment discussing Navalny’s checkered past…

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/26/2024 – 20:55

  • "Heightened Risks": Goldman Points To Leading CRE Indicator That Shows Pain Train Not Over
    “Heightened Risks”: Goldman Points To Leading CRE Indicator That Shows Pain Train Not Over

    Commercial real estate is the third-largest asset class, trailing only behind fixed income and equities. Despite the “Magnificent Seven” driving broad equity indexes to new highs, CRE markets are experiencing a worsening downturn, particularly in the office sector. A series of notable CRE loan defaults and regional bank failures underscores this mess. 

    Goldman’s senior equity research analyst Susan Maklari penned a note for clients on Monday titled “Non-Residential Construction: January Data Indicates Soft Start to the Year” (avail. to pro subs in the usual place). 

    Maklari cited data from the Dodge Momentum Index, a 12-month leading indicator of construction spending for nonresidential buildings. She found that the index rose 0.1% in January to 184.1 from 183.9 in December but was down 8% from 199.3 a year ago. 

    “We will continue to monitor readings in the coming months given heightened risks surrounding commercial sub-sectors,” she said. 

    Meanwhile, the Architecture Billings Index is in contraction territory. Here’s more from the analyst

    The Architecture Billings Index (ABI) decreased to 46.2 from 46.5 in December. The commercial/industrial component fell to 47.0, from 47.2 in December, while the pace of institutional decline improved to 48.5 from 47.9 last month. Despite weaker backlogs, we believe the macro backdrop will support activity in certain verticals this year. We note the ABI is a leading indicator of spending for non-residential construction activity, with an average lead time of 9-12 months. 

    Our guess is that a continued gloomy outlook for CRE construction spending and waning demand for construction products and services will persist this year because of tight financial conditions. 

    And let’s not forget Morgan Stanley’s latest note explaining that the “greatest headwind” facing the office segment of the CRE market is “years of supply.” 

    It remains to be seen if upside momentum in the Dodge Momentum Index returns this year as fears of inflation re-accelerating has repriced rates market from 7 to 3 cuts this year. The first expected rate cut has been pushed from March to July. 

    It’s safe to say the CRE downturn will continue throughout the year.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/26/2024 – 20:40

  • The Only Rx For Drug Shortages Is Competition
    The Only Rx For Drug Shortages Is Competition

    Authored by Thomas McArdle via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Price controls lead to shortages. This axiom is as dependable and scientifically absolute as the law of gravity. And it is the case even when the controls are elaborately disguised.

    A staff member sorts through drugs while filling a prescription at the Clay-Battelle Community Health Center’s pharmacy in Blacksville, W. Va., on March 21, 2017. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

    So, when the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reacts to the shortages suffered in the aftermath of the COVID-19 lockdowns of vital hospital drugs, including those used in chemotherapy like Methotrexate and fludarabine, by launching a probe of distribution companies, it’s like the Federal Aviation Administration searching for ways of blaming the ground for getting in the way of the jetliner that crashed.

    To FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan, the solution of shortages is a government investigation that “scrutinizes the practices of opaque drug middlemen.” Presumably, the distribution firms under scrutiny will be Cardinal Health, Cencora, and McKesson, while the collective hospital purchasing firms in the federal viewfinder are likely HealthTrust, Premier, and Vizient.

    Demand for these life-saving drugs has been on the increase; no one disputes that. In a market with minimum state interference, such demand would be taken advantage of either by existing producers increasing capacity or by new firms entering the fray to deliver what the buyers are ready and willing to purchase. But when you deny manufacturers the ability to make profits in taking advantage of demand, you make delivery of new supply difficult if not impossible.

    Treating health care as a right is a deceptive description of what is actually the removal of the profit motive from the production and delivery of things and services of value. When you do that in any field, you exit the reality of human nature. What, after all, is more valuable than medicines and treatments that maintain your health? And the scientists, physicians, and businesspeople who have the expertise, or even genius, to invent, mass produce, and deliver medical care to patients must expect to be compensated based on market value—which, in bad news for the envious, ends up being many, many multiples of the minimum wage—otherwise they will devote their abilities elsewhere.

    In other words, like anything else for sale, health care must be opened to customer scrutiny. When it comes to generic drugs, sadly, owing to the laws on the books, it’s like walking down the aisle at the supermarket and finding all the boxes of cereal or jars of jam identical, except for the price differences. No labels, no brand names, and the brand’s accompanying reputations based on past experience buying them. The healthcare consume—be it a patient, a pharmacist or a hospital—can only make a blind, ignorant-by-design comparison.

    The Hatch-Waxman Act of 1984 vastly expanded the production and accessibility of generic medicines by shrinking regulatory delays in the approval of generic versions of patented drugs. Prices of generics plummeted and their use skyrocketed. The main driver was lots of competition among generics.

    But sometimes various factors can reduce that competition for certain of the products; narrow profit margins, for instance, can lead to a manufacturer getting out, and—human nature being what it is—the companies remaining finding little reason not to raise their prices, sometimes with the power of a near-monopoly. New suppliers, in the meantime, face massive regulatory hurdles; the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has a backlog of thousands of applications from generic manufacturers awaiting approval, and the wait time is years. The FDA jealously and outdatedly guards its approval power even though there is no evidence that the drug supply in the United States today is any less safe than that of other developed countries. Approval in those countries should be trusted here when it comes to often vitally needed imported generics, a move that would make more drugs available, lower their prices, and improve the health of Americans.

    When in 2022 a labor shortage at Teva Pharmaceuticals caused delay in production of the  generic Adderall, a treatment for attention-deficit hyperactivity, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s harsh production quotas imposed on rival manufacturers prevented them from coming to the rescue and making up for loss of supply.

    Brookings Institution Center on Health Policy senior fellow Marta Wonsinska notes, “The price pressure on manufacturers is tremendous and certain types of drugs, especially generic sterile injectables, are particularly vulnerable.” This artificial environment in which buyers are forced to choose based only on price, not weighing it alongside quality, is not a true market.

    The Obama administration reacted to less serious prescription drug shortages by issuing a directive on Halloween of 2011 that, among other things, ordered the FDA to work with the Department of Justice on any findings of shortages being used for stockpiling and price increases. As with the FTC today, government is always seeking a villain and refusing to gaze into the mirror.

    The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) was long ago complaining of a “gray market” taking advantage of shortages, “with the potential for price gouging” by secondary wholesalers, causing “serious concerns for patient safety.” It was also long ago recommended that PhRMA set out to forestall more government regulation by advocating an industry‐​wide policy, by brand-name and generic manufacturers alike, to require purchase only from the manufacturers themselves and sales made only directly to pharmacies and hospitals, thus eliminating the effect on prices of a gray market distribution chain. Pharmacies and hospitals would require documents recording a drug’s distribution route. The industry’s motivation for embracing this idea is the higher revenues for manufacturers that would result, and the increased safety of the drug supply chain.

    Returning to the matter of human nature, setting a high price for medicines when the situation allows is not always as crass and greedy as it may sound. About 90 percent of proposed medicines that go through testing ultimately fail to be offered to health providers and patients because they are found to be unsafe or not to affect a cure or a proper treatment. Thus, the cost between invention and sale to the public comes in on average at billions of dollars for each drug. That means that these evil, greedy pharmaceutical companies recoup their astronomical investments from the one in ten medicines that do make it to shelves.

    When you turn these firms into villains, declare their profits to be obscene, shake them down and force them to cut their revenues, all you are doing is making them again and again not devote the money needed to bring new cures to patients. And this remains the truth in spite of the fact of their being bad actors—gougers, con artists, and the like—to be found in the field of medicine, as they are to be found in any and every other walk of life.

    As the Manhattan Institute’s Tim Rice warns, “With too many barriers to recouping their investments, pharma companies will stop taking risks, and innovation will suffer.”

    Having government treat health care as a right renders that care a scarce commodity. The way for the maximum number of patients to receive the highest quality of care,  including highly expensive, innovative drugs, is to accept the real world of profit and price as necessary mechanisms of distribution in a free society, and keep the heavy, self-serving hand of government out as much as possible.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/26/2024 – 20:20

  • "California-Proof": Cybertruck's 'Armor Glass' Thwarts Break-In By Criminals
    “California-Proof”: Cybertruck’s ‘Armor Glass’ Thwarts Break-In By Criminals

    Tesla’s armored pickup truck, with shatter-resistant windows and ultra-hard stainless steel exoskeleton, appears to be thief-proof and now “California-tested” after a new video shows an unsuccessful break-in by a group of thieves. 

    “Cybertruck is California-proof. Armored glass beats criminals trying their best to break in – even when jumping on the roof,” X user Arash Malek said in a post. 

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    Tesla’s chief Elon Musk has said the Cybertruck’s “Amor Class,” a combination of ultra-strong glass and a polymer-layered composite, is designed to absorb and redirect impact force and is durable enough to survive Class 4 hail. 

    One X user said: “Apocalyptic Vehicles now required in Cali… Now all we gotta do is figure out how to electrify the stainless steel skin as a shocking deterrent.” 

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    Given that Democrats in the imploding progressive state fail to enforce ‘common sense’ law and order, the Cybertruck might be the best apocalypse vehicle with security and design to survive the crime crisis. 

    How about electrifying the stainless steel skin? 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/26/2024 – 20:00

  • Biden's Key Policy Changes That Transformed America's Borders
    Biden’s Key Policy Changes That Transformed America’s Borders

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

    President Joe Biden took office with a commitment to overturn the previous administration’s immigration policies, calling them “cruel and reckless.” He emphasized that his plan would establish a “fair, orderly, and humane” immigration system while implementing smarter measures to secure the border.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images, Shutterstock)

    But his administration is now grappling with a historic crisis.

    Republicans blame President Biden for eliminating and reversing policies put in place by the Trump administration.

    Many people, including those in the liberal media, have also pointed fingers at the Biden administration for the crisis that has now spread to large cities around the country.

    Polling suggests that American voters trust former President Donald Trump—the Republican frontrunner in November’s election—more than President Biden on immigration and border-security issues. According to the Pew Research Center, 80 percent of Americans, including 73 percent of Democrats, think the U.S. government has done a bad job of handling the illegal immigrant influx.

    The illegal immigrant surge has escalated significantly throughout President Biden’s presidency, shattering record after record. The past six months of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data show it’s getting worse.

    As taxpayer expenses pile up, communities nationwide are feeling the strain. And there seems to be no end in sight.

    So how did we get here?

    2019: The Campaign Trail

    President Biden’s pledges to potential illegal immigrants began early in his campaign.

    During a Democratic primary debate on June 27, 2019, candidate Biden raised his hand when the host asked if his government health care plan would provide coverage for illegal immigrants.

    He raised his hand again when the host said, “Raise your hand if you think it should be a civil offense rather than a crime to cross the border without documentation.”

    The host then specifically asked Mr. Biden if someone who is here illegally should be deported if that is his or her only offense.

    (L–R) Democratic presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Sen. Kamala Harris participate in a Democratic primary debate in Miami on June 27, 2019. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

    “That person should not be the focus of deportation,” Mr. Biden responded.

    A couple of months later, during another debate on Sept. 12, 2019, Mr. Biden said: “I would, in fact, make sure that there is, that we immediately surge to the border all those people who are seeking asylum. They deserve to be heard. That’s who we are. We’re a nation that says, ‘If you want to flee, and you’re fleeing oppression, you should come.’”

    January 2021: Biden Ends National Emergency

    To fulfill his campaign promises, President Biden has implemented more than 500 actions on immigration in the first three years of his presidency, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

    To better understand the reasons behind the surge at the southern border, critics say, it’s important to review the actions the president took on his first day in office.

    On Jan. 20, 2021, President Biden ended President Trump’s national emergency declaration on the border, which called for the construction of a border wall.

    President Biden halted the construction, calling it “a waste of money.” He also declared that no more taxpayer dollars would be diverted to wall-construction projects, despite already-allocated congressional funds for the project.

    He also reversed a ban on travelers from terror-prone countries. The ban, imposed during the Trump administration, barred people from entering the United States from certain terror hotspots that didn’t provide robust security background checks on prospective travelers. President Biden stated that these bans were inconsistent with American values.

    A few months later, The Epoch Times reported that Border Patrol agents had apprehended two Yemeni men who were on the FBI’s terrorism watch list and the no-fly list.

    Also on his first day in office, President Biden suspended deportations of illegal aliens for 100 days. The policy applied to almost everyone who entered the country illegally before November 2020. A week later, however, a federal judge in Texas blocked the policy.

    With another executive order issued on his first day in office, the president strengthened the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for children who were brought into the country illegally.

    On day one, the administration also stopped adding illegal immigrants to the “Remain in Mexico” program. The Trump administration implemented the program, which required asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico until their U.S. immigration court date, at end of 2019. The program has been touted by border-security advocates as the most effective for stemming illegal immigration because it ended “catch-and-release,” the practice in which illegal immigrants are released into the interior of the United States with a court date potentially many years down the road.

    Illegal immigrants from Haiti walk from Mexico through a gap in the border wall into the United States in Yuma, Ariz., on Dec. 10, 2021. Many are trying to get into the United States before the Remain in Mexico program restarts. The policy requires asylum seekers to stay in Mexico during their U.S. immigration court process. (John Moore/Getty Images)

    Biden Introduces Immigration Reform Plan

    On his first day in office, President Biden introduced the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, which he referred to as a “comprehensive immigration reform plan.” The bill included an array of changes to existing law that would have made it quicker and easier for those who enter the country legally to gain citizenship and, in a sweeping amnesty, would have provided a pathway to citizenship for millions of people who had entered the country illegally.

    The bill offered little to decrease the flow of illegal immigrants into the country apart from requiring the Department of State to “advance reforms in Central America” to address the reasons people are migrating to the United States and to create refugee-processing centers in the region.

    President Biden has said Republicans in Congress blocked the bill. But Democrats, who controlled both the House and the Senate in 2021, made no apparent effort to advance the bill, and it died in committee in both chambers, never receiving a hearing.

    The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, slammed President Biden’s U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, calling it “the most radical piece of immigration legislation” and saying that it seeks to reward illegal aliens at the expense of Americans.

    In a report, the organization criticized the bill for prioritizing “illegal aliens, smugglers, cartels, and gangs” over border security.

    February 2021: New Asylum Policy

    Thirteen days later, President Biden signed three more orders, including loosening the criteria for asylum. He announced the restoration of asylum processing at the border and the creation of a task force to reunify any remaining families that were separated during the previous administration.

    The new orders on Feb. 2 also included reversing the Trump administration’s public charge rule and developing a strategy to address “irregular migration across the southern border.”

    The public charge rule required family sponsors to repay the government if noncitizen relatives received public benefits.

    Republicans have blamed the Biden administration for encouraging illegal immigration by signaling a lax border policy through these executive orders.

    Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials announced new interim guidelines on Feb. 18 for handling the arrest, detainment, and deportation of illegal immigrants.

    DHS said the three priority criteria—national security, border security, and public safety—outlined in the interim guidelines are effective immediately for all Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) actions.

    President Joe Biden speaks after signing several executive orders directing immigration policy changes as Vice President Kamala Harris looks on, in the Oval Office on Feb. 2, 2021. (Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images)

    Any ICE agent who encounters an illegal immigrant who falls outside of the three categories must get preapproval from his field office before taking any action, a DHS official said, and he must consider the following criteria: the nature and recency of a non-citizen’s convictions, the type and length of sentences imposed, whether the enforcement action is otherwise an appropriate use of ICE’s limited resources, and other relevant factors, including mitigating factors.

    The mitigating factors, the official said, include consideration as to whether “someone might be suffering from serious physical or mental illness.”

    “We want [ICE agents] to think about ties to the community, whether the individual has family here in the United States, U.S. citizen family members, and other considerations,” he said.

    March 2021: Biden’s First Political Test

    President Biden promised to develop a more humane and efficient immigration system, but this promise met with a significant test less than two months into his term with a rapid influx of unaccompanied children crossing the border illegally.

    In March 2020, the Trump administration began using the COVID-19 emergency measure Title 42 to allow U.S. authorities to quickly expel illegal immigrants.

    When President Biden took office, he announced that children would not be subject to the Title 42 health order. A significant uptick in unaccompanied minors was observed soon after that announcement.

    Some Democrats and policy experts at the time blamed President Trump for the uptick.

    Ruth Wasem, a professor of public policy at the University of Texas at Austin, argued that the spikes were attributable to a migration backlog caused by President Trump’s rigid immigration policies.

    “Trump basically shut down our immigration system and ended the laws on the books,” Ms. Wasem told PolitiFact in March 2021. “So there’s going to be a pent-up number of people that were waiting to come, or that were en route.”

    Yet, after images of unaccompanied minors in overcrowded shelters appeared in the media, President Biden found himself under fire from all sides.

    “The situation we are currently facing at the southwest border is a difficult one,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a lengthy statement in March 2021. “We are tackling it. We are keeping our borders secure, enforcing our laws, and staying true to our values and principles.”

    A Border Patrol agent leads illegal immigrants through farmland after they were captured by agents near the U.S.–Mexico border barrier in Yuma, Ariz., on May 21, 2022. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

    February 2021 saw 9,400 unaccompanied minors, mostly from Central America, being apprehended, almost doubling the numbers from the prior months. By March 2021, the reported number had almost reached 19,000. The Epoch Times reported at the time that the average cost to care for one child in a temporary emergency facility had increased to $775 per day.

    The influx of unaccompanied children has persisted in the following years, creating substantial logistical and humanitarian challenges for the administration. Since President Biden took office, the Department of Health and Human Services has received more than 370,500 unaccompanied minors, according to the agency. The department has been sheltering these children until they’re placed with a sponsor in the United States.

    A New York Times report last year revealed that the agency had lost contact with one-third of illegal immigrant children since they began living with their U.S. sponsors. Some of them have ended up working dangerous factory jobs in the United States, according to the report.

    Some critics argue that President Biden’s policies have also worsened human and drug trafficking. According to a study from the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, 60 percent of unaccompanied children are caught by cartels and exploited for child pornography or drug trafficking.

    By the end of March, the Biden administration had moved away from sending family units back across the border using Title 42.

    The Epoch Times reported at the time that the vast majority (upward of 85 percent) of family units apprehended by Border Patrol after crossing the border illegally were quickly released into the United States.

    President Biden tapped Vice President Kamala Harris as “border czar.” Her role was to lead the effort to stem the flow of illegal immigration by addressing the “root causes” of migration from Central America and Mexico.

    April 2021: ICE Deportations Plunge

    The number of deportations conducted by ICE in April 2021 reached a historic low despite a surge in illegal crossings.

    ICE carried out 2,962 deportations in April, excluding Title 42 expulsions, showcasing the limitations imposed on the agency by the Biden administration. During March, more than 172,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended along the southern border.

    June 2021: Migrant Deaths Surge

    With the rise in illegal immigration, the number of deaths also increased. In June, 109 bodies were recovered by Border Patrol, up from 61 in May. The majority of deaths over the summer months were due to dehydration and hyperthermia.

    During President Biden’s first two years in office, deaths of illegal immigrants hit a record high. CBP recorded a total of 880 illegal immigrant deaths in fiscal year 2022, the highest number of deaths since data became available in 1998. The second-highest number on record was fiscal year 2021, with 566 deaths.

    Border Patrol agents and local Imperial County law enforcement retrieve the body of a deceased illegal immigrant recovered by a California Highway Patrol helicopter from the Jacumba Mountains in Imperial County, Calif., on Oct. 6, 2022. (Allison Dinner/AFP via Getty Images)

    Fall 2021: False Information and Loss of Trust

    President Biden’s border policies began to strain Border Patrol agents, leading to a significant drop in morale. Some even contemplated quitting their jobs or retiring earlier than planned.

    The frustration among border agents escalated in September 2021 after the Biden administration falsely accused several officers on horseback in Del Rio, Texas, of “whipping” Haitian immigrants.

    DHS Secretary Mayorkas had evidence that the claim was false, but he didn’t attempt to correct the record during a press briefing at the White House. He called the images depicting the alleged abuse “horrifying” and tied them to “systemic racism.”

    President Biden also blamed the horse-patrol agents, calling the incident “outrageous.”

    “There will be consequences,” he told reporters. “It’s an embarrassment. But beyond embarrassment, it’s dangerous; it’s wrong.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/26/2024 – 19:40

  • "It's An Airbnbust": Home In Palm Springs Falls Quicker Than Meme Stock
    “It’s An Airbnbust”: Home In Palm Springs Falls Quicker Than Meme Stock

    DFW housing and macro analyst Amy Nixon has raised concerns about the potential for an ‘Airbnbust’ to increase inventory in the housing market. Although this scenario has yet to materialize, it remains to be seen whether owners of heavily leveraged Airbnb properties can withstand a prolonged downturn in the short-term rental market.

    On X, Nixon pointed out that Zillow housing data shows a home in Palm Springs, California, that sold for $1.3 million in May 2023 and was recently listed for $625k. She called this the latest example of an “Airbnbust.” 

    “Just because it hasn’t happened at scale, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening,” Nixon said. 

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    Nixon followed up the post with this chart! 

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    One X user commented on Nixon’s post: “It’s a town of 45k. Like talking about the housing market of Saginaw.” 

    She responded: “These are exactly the kinds of towns that got bid up in speculative frenzies during the pandemic.” 

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    “The first thing that jumps out is Short Sale on the listing. This was so common for years after 2008 but had not seen it for a long time,” another X user said. 

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    Over the last 12 months, vacation rental owners and real estate agents have described what they say is a downturn in the short-term rental market. Some on X have used the hashtag “Airbnbust.” 

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    Sabrina Must,37, who owns a one-bathroom Airbnb property in Encinitas, California, about 25 miles north of San Diego, complained to WSJ in an interview that her listing only fetches $275 per night. During Covid, she had the property listed for $1,000 per night. 

    “I’ve felt a massive drop,” adding, “I am so beyond stressed by it.” 

    According to data from AllTheRooms, the number of Airbnb rentals in the US jumped from 200,000 seven years ago to nearly 1 million in 2023. 

    As for all those millennials and GenZers who used stupid amounts of leverage to buy Airbnb properties, it’s widely understood some of them have the weakest balance sheets to weather a prolonged downturn in the short-term rental market, which might force them to panic sell. 

    Let’s not forget we have penned two notes about the coming Airbnb bust in “Why AirBnB Owners Are About To Be Forced Property Sellers” and “AirBnB Bubble Bursts: Investor Home Purchases Crash 45% In Biggest Drop Since 2008.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/26/2024 – 19:20

  • War + Inflation = Gold
    War + Inflation = Gold

    Authored by Egon von Greyerz via VonGreyerz.Gold,

    All the fundamentals are now in place for the above equation to be true: 

    • Wars will sadly not go away but instead escalate since there is ZERO desire for peace from the US neocons or the weak Europeans. 

    • Inflation and interest rates will increase rapidly, driven by deficits and exponential growth of debt.

    • Wars and inflation will lead to a major shift into GOLD by Central Banks, the BRICS  as well as for wealth preservation purposes.

    “Poverty is the parent of revolution, crime and war” is what Aristotle stated 2,300 years ago. I added “war” since this is often the consequence of poverty and bankruptcy for a nation in a desperate attempt to borrow more money and blame the war for the economic woes.

    As the US is now totally losing its hegemony, we can on a daily basis follow the desperate actions that a failing super power takes. 

    As every empire and nation that fails, the US has followed the same pattern whether we talk about the Roman, Mongol, Ottoman, Qing or British Empires. 

    Initial economic success as well as military might lead to illusions of grandeur and infallibility. 

    Riches, often stolen from other nations, turn to deficits and debts, collapsing currencies and decadence. That leads to money printing followed by the collapse of the currency. At that stage wars are often started which generally have disastrous consequences. 

    The RISK OF A COLLAPSE OF THE global geopolitical and economic SYSTEM is crystal clear BUT the outcome is extremely murky.

    So let us look at what is clear on the geopolitical side:

    • The US is not led by a visible leader but by an invisible and unaccountable group of neocons who only want war. And in Europe there is not a statesman to be found. Instead, weak European leaders follow the headless US.
    • The US Neocons want to crush Russia by any means, even if it leads to nuclear war. Thus the US has implemented sanctions against Russia and forced Europe to take their full part by also sending weapons, money and military expertise to Ukraine. The cost of these measures is destroying the European economy and making the US even more bankrupt than it is, by running a deficit approaching $2 trillion with total US debt at soon $100 trillion. Remember it was $1.7 trillion in 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window.  See graph further down. 
    • If the US war against Russia (carried out in Ukraine) escalates, Russia will have many friends on their side like China, North Korea and Iran. The US and NATO do not have the capacity to win a war on the ground so any war involving the West will be in the Air and very likely nuclear. 
    • The US also wants to crush the Muslim/Arab world. Iran is currently the principal enemy. But the US is also supporting Israel against Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen. The Muslim world has no capacity for a major war against the West but they have a much more effective method of paralysing the West which is terrorism on a major scale.  Most Western countries have well armed Muslim cells, most probably also with dirty nuclear weapons. So surprise attacks on strategic buildings or major shopping centres  in the US, UK  and rest of Europe are probable. That would totally paralyse the countries involved.
    • A cyber war is also very likely. Whether Russian and Chinese missiles can take out major communication satellite systems, as recently published, remains, to be seen. But they have well developed skills for cyber attacks anywhere. 
    • The US has no desire for peace. They and other NATO countries are not sending a single peacemaker to Russia but only weapons and money. 
    • The majority reaction to the recent Tucker Carlson 2 hour interview is typical for the propaganda led hatred for Putin. Most people in the West have been told by MSM to hate Putin and blame him for all evil acts and thus not listen to the interview. I am by no means saying that Putin is an angel because he definitely isn’t. But nor is any other leader of course. Nevertheless Sun Tzu, the Chinese General, strategist and philosopher told us 2,500 years ago: KNOW YOUR ENEMY.  

    • So how can anyone in the West understand Russia or Putin when they are not prepared to listen to him calmly presenting the Russian side for 120 minutes? 
    • Tucker Carlson – Biden interview. Some US politicians wanted to ban Tucker Carlson from coming back to the US after the interview. Instead I would suggest that Tucker would be given a 2 hour interview with Biden. Just like with Putin, there should be no advisors present, no crib sheets and no teleprompters. 
    • Let the world thereafter compare the quality of the argument of the two leaders, their clarity and if they are both Compos Mentis. After all, these are the minimum requirements for a leader of a major power and someone who personally can press the nuclear button. 

    I  have above covered the global geopolitical situation which is “crystal clear” from a risk point of view. 

    I have since the Ukraine war started been very clear that Ukraine can never beat Russia. After a lot of initial enthusiasm for the underdog and a lot of fake news that Ukraine was winning, the world now realises that this war is a human catastrophe with both sides reporting big losses for the enemy and minimal for themselves. Total deaths are probably well above 500,000 but we will never know. 

    The tragedy is of course that the leaders sit in their safe offices and send 100s of thousands of men to their slaughter with no resolution in sight. 

    How this war will play out in detail, we will of course only know afterwards. But in the end it will be seen as another futile war with no winners and one or several million losers, just like most wars that megalomanic leaders start. 

    THE RISK OF A COLLAPSE OF THE WESTERN ECONOMY IS CRYSTAL CLEAR

    So let us now look at the global economic picture. 

    The risk of your wealth declining by 70-90% in the next 5-7 years is today probably greater than any time in history. 

    The US market is driven by a handful of tech stocks which are massively overvalued. 

    On any measure, US stocks are greatly overvalued and as the US debt disaster starts to dominate the discussion, markets will quickly realise that the US is bankrupt.

    TOTAL US DEBT IS NOW GROWING EXPONENTIALLY  

    US debt has almost quadrupled this century. 

    As I have set out in several articles, the interest cycle bottomed in 2020 and we will now see a long term trend up for 20-30 years.  

    US Federal debt has doubled every 8 years on average since 1980. With the state of the US finances, the debt is likely to now grow super exponentially. Thus it is likely that $100 trillion Federal debt will be reached before 2036 as a mere doubling every 8 years would result in. 

    So with $100 trillion or more of Federal debt within the next 10-12 years, the US economy will default, especially if interest rates reach 10% or more. Remember they were around 20% in the late 1970s and early 80s. 

    Obviously, at that point, or more likely well before it, the US dollar will have collapsed and gold will be the only real money that central banks and ordinary investors will be willing to hold. 

    Yes, there will probably be a few rounds of other forms of fake money in between like CBDC’s issued by central banks, in the next few years. But they will fail as CBDC’s will just be another Fiat currency backed by debt and no assets. 

    So there we have it. Aristotle’s prediction is coming to pass. The US debt and deficit is the Poverty for the country as a whole and will rapidly spread to the people as the financial system implodes. Revolution or internal conflicts will follow both in the US and Europe. The truckers’ action in the US and in many European countries is the start of a form of Revolution.  But it will get much worse. There will be conflict between various political fractions whether it is Trump supporters against the system or neo-Nazis against immigrants or just ordinary people against the wealthy. Extreme income and wealth inequalities, like we are currently seeing in the West,  normally lead to conflicts or revolutions. 

    And anyone living in the WEST knows that Crime (as Aristotle said) is rampant and the prisons in most countries are full.

    Anyone who doesn’t see that we are at the end of a major era, with massive calamities next, will soon have a rude awakening. 

    So overvalued stock markets will crash as will bond markets with interest rates surging. 

    SO WHAT ABOUT CASH IN A BANK– will that save investors?

    Your cash in a bank belongs to the bank: And that is where most people keep their cash. 

    What people don’t realise is that your cash in the bank isn’t your money. 

    No, all you have is a claim on the bank as an unsecured creditor. 

    And as soon as the bank receives your electronic money, it lends it out up to 10X!

    The consequence of that is if one borrower out of the ten can’t repay his loan, you have lost all your money. 

    This process is now happening slowly but just as debt is accelerating exponentially, so will defaults. I explain the process in this article. 

    First Gradually and then Suddenly – The Everything Collapse

    Banca Rotta or Bankrupt: This expression comes from the Italian financial system in Florence in the 1600s when banking was conducted on a bench or desk. If the banker couldn’t honour his obligations, his bench was broken. And that is where the word Bankrupt (Banca Rotta in Italian) derives from. 

    So there we have it, a broken or rotten banking system is what the world is looking at now. 

    We had the first signs just under one year ago when four US banks had to be saved, starting with Silicon Valley Bank. Shortly thereafter Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second largest bank, had to be saved by the Swiss National Bank and government and then UBS were made an offer by the Swiss government that they weren’t allowed to refuse and bought Credit Suisse. 

    What we saw during the Ides of March last year (March 15 when Caesar was murdered), was the first warning signal for the world that the banking system is broken.

    The pressure on the banking system continues. The number of companies that failed to meet required repayments increased by 83% in 2023. 

    US corporate debt has increased by 18% since 2000 and is now at $13.7 trillion.

    Further deterioration is expected for 2024 due to higher rates. 40% of debt Rated B- or below is risking to be downgraded in 2024. 

    The market is hoping for lower rates in 2024 but as I have stated many times, inflation and continued deficits will put pressure on the debt markets.

    Commercial property is a real timebomb with vacancy rates approaching 15% and rents under pressure. Office sales prices are also falling rapidly by between 20% and 66% (in San Francisco).

    The commercial property market is likely to lead to major write-offs for the banks and eventually either rescue actions (=money printing) or defaults – Banca Rotta!

    But let’s face it, the exponential growth of total US debt is unsustainable. 

    Please read my article on how exponential moves explode towards the end. So whether US debt goes to $200 trillion, $500t or quadrillions will be determined in particular by the collapse of the derivative market. 

    I have in many articles explained that the outstanding derivatives are likely to be a lot higher than the BIS figure of just under $700 trillion like in this article: $2 quadrillion debt precariously resting on $2 trillion gold.

    There are sources quoting up to $7 quadrillion derivatives but since I cannot prove it, I cannot make that claim myself. But since there are so many “bets” outside the banking sector and in the shadow banking sector, most of them uncollateralised, we will never know the true size until the system implodes. But whatever the sum is “only” $700 trillion or as much as $7 quadrillion, it is at least 8X global GDP which is enough to break the world financial system and collapse the world economy. 

    This is not a fantasy. It is a nightmare. Because when counterparties fail the gross outstanding derivates cannot be netted and the gross amount outstanding is due. 

    Initially governments will assist banks in turning the derivatives into on balance sheet debt but as the sheer weight of the debt becomes unmanageable and hyperinflation ravages, that’s when the system will fail. 

    Yes, central banks will issue CBDS (Central Bank Digital Currencies)  and try to hide the debt but CBDS is just another form of fake money and will suffer the same fate as paper money. 

    Besides the risk of the financial system, governments and central banks around the world, have throughout history destroyed our money without fail. 

    Only since the early 1700s over 500 currencies worldwide have become extinct, the majority through hyperinflation. 

    Just take the dollar which has lost 98% of its purchasing power since 1971 and 86% since 2000. 

    GOLD

    As I declared in a recent article – Catch the Goldwagon or lose your Fortune.

     

    If stocks crash there might be some short-lived gold sales but 

    GOLD IS ON THE CUSP OF A MAJOR MOVE AS:

    • Wars will continue to ravage the world.

    • Inflation will rise strongly due to ever increasing debts and deficits.

    • The world flees from stocks, bonds, and the US dollar. 

    • The BRICS countries continue to buy ever bigger amounts of gold.

    • Central Banks buy major amounts of gold as currency reserves instead of US dollars.

    • Investors rush into gold at any price to preserve their wealth. 

    SO PLEASE DO NOT MISS THE GOLD WAGON BECAUSE IT WILL BE YOUR LAST CHANCE TO PRESERVE YOUR WEALTH

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/26/2024 – 19:00

  • Putin Responds To NATO Chief's Vow That "Ukraine Will Join NATO" On War's Anniversary
    Putin Responds To NATO Chief’s Vow That “Ukraine Will Join NATO” On War’s Anniversary

    In weekend remarks made on the occasion of the Russia-Ukraine war hitting the two-year mark, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg issued some ultra-provocative predictions regarding Kiev’s future with the Western military alliance. 

    “Ukraine will join NATO. It is not a question of if, but of when,” he said in a video message released Saturday, Feb. 24, which marked an exact two years since Russian forces poured across the Ukrainian border.

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    “As we prepare you for that day, NATO will continue to stand with Ukraine. For your security, and for ours,” Stoltenberg added. This ‘vow’ of future NATO membership comes at a moment where even Ukraine’s staunchest external supporters acknowledge its forces are in retreat.

    Stoltenberg acknowledged this “extremely serious” state of battlefield affairs and asserted “there are no indications” President Vladimir Putin is preparing for peace.

    Still he praised and sought to spin reports of the latest major losses as Kiev forces are in retreat (especially from Avdiivka), instead emphasizing recent ‘positive’ naval actions and developments in the Black Sea, such as the sinking of a Russian landing ship this month.

    “You have recaptured half of the territory seized by Russia. Pushed Russia back from large parts of the Black Sea. And inflicted heavy losses on the Russian forces,” the NATO chief said. 

    Referencing billions of dollars of Western defense aid poured into Kiev so far, including “artillery ammunition, air defence, and combat boats … F-16 equipment and spare parts, drones, and demining equipment” – he pledged that “more support is on the way.”

    In a response the following day, President Putin warned that European countries will “automatically be pulled into a war with Russia” if Ukraine is allowed to enter NATO.

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    Putin said the following in televised remarks translated by The Daily Mail:

    If Ukraine joins NATO and attempts to bring Crimea back by military, it means the European countries will automatically pulled into a war conflict with Russia.?

    NATO and Russia potentials are incomparable. We understand it. But we also understand that Russia is one of the leading nuclear states. And by some modern components, it even outperforms many.

    That’s when the Russian leader stressed that in such a scenario “There will be no winners” as “you will be pulled into this conflict against your will. You wont even have time to blink your eye when you execute Article 5. I don’t want it.”

    Last week Stoltenberg had also for the first time issued a greenlight on behalf of NATO for Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory, or to choose targets “outside Ukraine” – as he put it.

    “Ukraine has the right to self-defense,” he had told Radio Free Europe on Tuesday. “And that includes also striking legitimate military targets, Russian military targets, outside Ukraine. That is international law and, of course, Ukraine has the right to do so, to protect itself.”

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    While Ukraine has already long been doing this, and is positively boasting about it – including attacks on oil and energy infrastructure and even civilian centers such as Belgorod city – NATO has never issued such blunt statements openly encouraging these attacks. If anything Western leaders have until now officially urged restraint on attacks deep into Russia (publicly anyway). Thus it seems the war is entering a new, darker phase wherein dirtier tactics are authorized and even encouraged by the West.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/26/2024 – 18:40

  • Nigeria Blocks Access To Coinbase, Binance, & Kraken As Naira Falls To Record Lows
    Nigeria Blocks Access To Coinbase, Binance, & Kraken As Naira Falls To Record Lows

    Authored by Nik Hoffman via BitcoinMagazine.com,

    Nigeria has taken drastic measures in to attempt to stabilize its plummeting national currency, the naira, by blocking access to major cryptocurrency exchanges, reported the Financial Times.

    This move comes as the Nigerian government attempts to crack down on currency speculation amid record lows for the naira.

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    The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) issued orders to telecoms companies late on Wednesday to restrict consumer access to websites of major cryptocurrency platforms like Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken. As a result, consumers experienced only intermittent access to these sites on Thursday.

    Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser Information and Strategy to the President of Nigeria, took to X to say a local report of the government blocking access to the exchanges was correct.

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    Cryptocurrency exchanges have played a big role in establishing unofficial market prices for the naira, with platforms like Binance often serving as benchmarks for local foreign currency exchange rates. The government’s move to block access to these platforms is an effort to regain control over the currency valuation of the naira.

    “Binance, facing regulatory showdown in many countries, and causing disruptions in the currency market, should not be allowed to dictate the value of the naira, not on its crypto exchange platform,” Onanuga further stated.

     “Crypto should be banned in our country or else this bleeding of our currency will continue unabated.”

    Nigeria’s adoption of rash methods to defend its currency, including shutting down price-setting websites and declaring certain cryptocurrency entities illegal, highlights the challenges the country faces in managing its economic stability. 

    Nigeria’s national currency has lost over 70% of its value since their central bank lifted its dollar peg in June.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/26/2024 – 18:20

  • Houthis Have Knocked Out Several Undersea Internet Cables: Report
    Houthis Have Knocked Out Several Undersea Internet Cables: Report

    There are new reports saying Yemen’s Houthis have knocked out several underwater telecommunications cables linking Europe and Asia, however, some of the accounts of the extent of damage remain conflicting.

    Multiple Israeli publications are reporting Monday that four underwater communications cables between Saudi Arabia and Djibouti have been damaged in recent months – the result of Houthi sabotage. The reporting appears to have originated in Israel’s financial daily outlet Globes.

    But one industry publication cautions, “One cable operator has confirmed damage to a cable in the region, but said it didn’t know the cause yet.” Reportedly only the Seacom operator has issued confirmation that it has had cable issues at Djibouti.

    According to the Israeli media report:

    Three months after the Houthis began attacking merchant ships, the Yemenite rebels have carried out another one of their threats. “Globes” has learned that four submarine communication cables have been damaged in the Red Sea between Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Djibouti in East Africa.

    According to the reports, these are cables from the companies AAE-1, Seacom, EIG and TGN. This is causing serious disruption of Internet communications between Europe and Asia, with the main damage being felt in the Gulf countries and India.

    Other impacted cables are operated by the companies Tata, Ooredoo, Bharti Airtel, and Telecom Egypt, but these did not issue immediate comment or confirmation as to the reported damage or outages.

    But the Seacom outage is now being confirmed by NetBlocks…

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    Israel’s Globes says repairs could take up to eight weeks, but the waters in the region remain high risk due to what are now daily Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping. The Houthis have lately made veiled threats they could take out the underwater fiber optic cables.

    “The repair of such a large number of underwater cables may take at least eight weeks according to estimates and involve exposure to risk from the Houthi terror organization,” the report says. “The telecommunications companies will be forced to look for companies that will agree to carry out the repair work and probably pay them a high risk premium.”

    Analyst Alberto Rizzi has explained that “at low depths, trained divers/ship anchors are enough to damage them” and that “Bab-el-Mandeb/Aden is a chokepoint where damage can impact multiple cables at once.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 02/26/2024 – 18:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Feb 26

Today’s News 26th February 2024

  • CIA Built "12 Secret Spy Bases" In Ukraine & Waged Shadow War For Last Decade, Bombshell NYT Report Confirms
    CIA Built “12 Secret Spy Bases” In Ukraine & Waged Shadow War For Last Decade, Bombshell NYT Report Confirms

    On Sunday The New York Times published an explosive and very belated full admission that US intelligence has not only been instrumental in Ukraine wartime decision-making, but has established and financed high tech command-and-control spy centers, and was doing so long prior to the Feb. 24 Russian invasion of two years ago.

    Among the biggest revelations is that the program was established a decade ago and spans three different American presidents. The Times says the CIA program to modernize Ukraine’s intelligence services has “transformed” the former Soviet state and its capabilities into “Washington’s most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin today.”

    This has included the agency having secretly trained and equipped Ukrainian intelligence officers spanning back to just after the 2014 Maidan coup events, as well constructing a network of 12 secret bases along the Russian border—work which began eight years ago. These intelligence bases, from which Russian commanders’ communications can be swept up and Russian spy satellites monitored, are being used launch and track cross-border drone and missile attacks on Russian territory. 

    Ukrainian commandoes, illustrative file image via Associated Press

    This means that with the disclosure of the longtime “closely guarded secret” the world just got a big step closer to WW3, given it means the CIA is largely responsible for the effectiveness of the recent spate of attacks which have included direct drone hits on key oil refineries and energy infrastructure. 

    “Without them [the CIA and elite commandoes it’s trained], there would have been no way for us to resist the Russians, or to beat them,” according to Ivan Bakanov, former head of the SBU, which is Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency.

    A main source of the NYT revelations—disclosures which might come as no surprise to those never willing to so easily swallow the mainstream ‘official’ narrative of events—is identified as a top intelligence commander named Gen. Serhii Dvoretskiy.

    Clearly, Kiev and Washington now want world to know of the deep intelligence relationship they tried to conceal for over the past decade. It is perhaps a kind of warning to Moscow at a moment Ukraine’s forces are in retreat: the US is fighting hand in glove with the Ukrainians. And yet the revelations contained in the NY Times report also confirm what President Putin has precisely accused Washington of all along.

    While the lengthy NYT report is full of fresh revelations and confirmation of just how deeply the CIA has always been involved in Ukraine, below are seven of the biggest contained in the story…

    Description of secret spy bunker

    The report contains a surprisingly detailed description of one of the ‘secret’ underground command centers established by the CIA near the Russian border… location undisclosed of course:

    Not far away, a discreet passageway descends to a subterranean bunker where teams of Ukrainian soldiers track Russian spy satellites and eavesdrop on conversations between Russian commanders. On one screen, a red line followed the route of an explosive drone threading through Russian air defenses from a point in central Ukraine to a target in the Russian city of Rostov.

    The underground bunker, built to replace the destroyed command center in the months after Russia’s invasion, is a secret nerve center of Ukraine’s military.

    There is also one more secret: The base is almost fully financed, and partly equipped, by the CIA.

    Elite commando force

    Within two years after the 2014 West-backed coup in Ukraine, the CIA had set up a training program for elite Ukrainian operatives:

    Around 2016, the CIA began training an elite Ukrainian commando force — known as Unit 2245 — which captured Russian drones and communications gear so that CIA technicians could reverse-engineer them and crack Moscow’s encryption systems. (One officer in the unit was Kyrylo Budanov, now the general leading Ukraine’s military intelligence.)

    And the CIA also helped train a new generation of Ukrainian spies who operated inside Russia, across Europe, and in Cuba and other places where the Russians have a large presence.

    Ukraine transformed into an “intelligence-gathering hub”

    The US intelligence network in Ukraine (which is tantamount to NATO intelligence network too) has in reality been more extensive than pretty much all prior media speculation has envisioned. Ukraine has long been a massive “intelligence gathering hub” for Washington and its partners:

    In more than 200 interviews, current and former officials in Ukraine, the United States and Europe described a partnership that nearly foundered from mutual distrust before it steadily expanded, turning Ukraine into an intelligence-gathering hub that intercepted more Russian communications than the CIA station in Kyiv, Ukraine, could initially handle. Many of the officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence and matters of sensitive diplomacy.

    Now these intelligence networks are more important than ever, as Russia is on the offensive and Ukraine is more dependent on sabotage and long-range missile strikes that require spies far behind enemy lines. And they are increasingly at risk: If Republicans in Congress end military funding to Kyiv, the CIA may have to scale back.

    Huge NYT admission that Putin was basically right

    Below is a hugely ironic excerpt from the Times report. The section begins by noting that Putin has repeatedly blamed the US-NATO for expanding its military and intelligence infrastructure into Ukraine. Not only had this precisely been going on for the past decade, as is now being admitted, but was presented by the Kremlin as a key cause of the Russian invasion of Feb.24, 2022. Putin and his officials were adamant on the eve of the invasion that NATO was militarizing Ukraine. The Times appears to now fully admit that, yes – this was actually the case: 

    Putin has long blamed Western intelligence agencies for manipulating Kyiv and sowing anti-Russia sentiment in Ukraine.

    Toward the end of 2021, according to a senior European official, Putin was weighing whether to launch his full-scale invasion when he met with the head of one of Russia’s main spy services, who told him that the CIA, together with Britain’s MI6, were controlling Ukraine and turning it into a beachhead for operations against Moscow.

    …U.S. officials were often reluctant to fully engage, fearing that Ukrainian officials could not be trusted, and worrying about provoking the Kremlin.Yet a tight circle of Ukrainian intelligence officials assiduously courted the CIA and gradually made themselves vital to the Americans. In 2015, Gen. Valeriy Kondratiuk, then Ukraine’s head of military intelligence, arrived at a meeting with the CIA’s deputy station chief and without warning handed over a stack of top-secret files.

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    2014 Coup… and Crimea

    The report indirectly references this very critical period which set Ukraine and Russian on their tragic collision course: 

    With violence escalating, an unmarked U.S. government plane touched down at an airport in Kyiv carrying John Brennan, then the director of the CIA. He told Nalyvaichenko that the CIA was interested in developing a relationship but only at a pace the agency was comfortable with, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials.

    To the CIA, the unknown question was how long Nalyvaichenko and the pro-Western government would be around. The CIA had been burned before in Ukraine.

    …The result was a delicate balancing act. The CIA was supposed to strengthen Ukraine’s intelligence agencies without provoking the Russians. The red lines were never precisely clear, which created a persistent tension in the partnership.

    Operation Goldfish

    Money and advanced tech given by the CIA has allowed the Ukrainians to establish eavesdropping operations far beyond what they would otherwise be capable of. All the while, elite commando teams were being trained by the CIA in European cities as part of a program called ‘Operation Goldfish’. The NYT reporting includes a bit of a ‘boast’ of the Ukrainians now being able to hack into Russian military networks: 

    In the bunker, Dvoretskiy pointed to communications equipment and large computer servers, some of which were financed by the CIA. He said his teams were using the base to hack into the Russian military’s secure communications networks.

    “This is the thing that breaks into satellites and decodes secret conversations,” Dvoretskiy told a Times journalist on a tour, adding that they were hacking into spy satellites from China and Belarus, too.

    …The CIA began sending equipment in 2016, after the pivotal meeting at Scattergood, Dvoretskiy said, providing encrypted radios and devices for intercepting secret enemy communications.

    A stunning admission: “Tiptoeing Around Trump”

    Among the most interesting and curious moments of the NYT report is a description of the CIA program’s expanse under the Trump administration. The report suggests that the true scope may have even been hidden from Trump. The Russian hawks in his administration quietly did the ‘dirty work’, we are told: 

    The election of Trump in November 2016 put the Ukrainians and their CIA partners on edge.

    Trump praised Putin and dismissed Russia’s role in election interference. He was suspicious of Ukraine and later tried to pressure its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to investigate his Democratic rival, Biden, resulting in Trump’s first impeachment.

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    The report then emphasizes, “But whatever Trump said and did, his administration often went in the other direction. This is because Trump had put Russia hawks in key positions, including Mike Pompeo as CIA director and John Bolton as national security adviser.”

    And further, “They visited Kyiv to underline their full support for the secret partnership, which expanded to include more specialized training programs and the building of additional secret bases.” Given the attempt to place Trump in a negative light (he had to be ‘tiptoed around’…), it will be interesting to see how he and his campaign respond to the report. But more consequential will be the reaction of Putin and the Kremlin in the coming days.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/25/2024 – 23:35

  • "Not By Accident": California Sheriff Blasts "Radical" Progressives For Explosive Crime Crisis
    “Not By Accident”: California Sheriff Blasts “Radical” Progressives For Explosive Crime Crisis

    “We are here today because California Public Safety is in crisis. Crime is steadily on the rise – and our public safety policy is one of the worst, if not the worst, in the nation,” Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said last week while joining lawmakers in Sacramento in support of several new bills dealing with public safety.

    Bianco emphasized: I want to make this clear, and I want there to be no mistake in what I am saying … this is not by accident … the driving force in our crisis is a radical Progressive agenda fraudulently called Criminal Justice Reform. This is nothing short of a sick and twisted social experiment where law enforcement is the bad guy and criminals are somehow victims of society and not responsible for their actions.”

    This radical “agenda began with the passage of AB 109, the so-called Public Safety Realignment Act. The state government failed to take responsibility for prison overcrowding or their failure to build more prisons and instead forced county jails to house state inmates while simultaneously releasing thousands of felons early. This has pushed our county jails to a near collapse and caused the early release of countless criminals thousands.” 

    Bianco continued: “Thousands upon thousands of criminals are being released from custody early – crime is increasing, and our governor is closing prisons instead of building new ones. It defies common sense. In 2014, a complete fraud was perpetrated in California. The so-called Safe Streets and Safe Schools initiative, Prop 47, changed many felonies to misdemeanors, basically legalized drug use, and increased the amount of petty theft to nearly $1,000. In 2016, another lie was perpetrated on voters with the naming and wording of Prop 57, tricking voters into approving the release of thousands of violent criminals onto our streets and neighborhoods. This why we are here everyone knows Prop 47 and 57 are disasters – and yet Governor Newsom adamantly touts it as a success, and lawmakers continue to refuse to fix their mistake and the problems that they have created.” 

    “Once crimes are no longer crimes it allows Governor Nome and Attorney General Bon to cite completely flawed data points to support their failures. Californians are now suffering the consequences of a failed social agenda,” he said. 

    The reality in California is that criminal justice reforms are an epic failure by Democrats. Now, more and more state leaders are pushing to overhaul these disastrous ballot measures that have transformed some cities in the state into third-world-like conditions. 

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    Here’s the sheriff’s entire speech, reminding voters to support public safety after a decade of chaos:

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/25/2024 – 22:45

  • Five Minutes To Sum Up A Century…
    Five Minutes To Sum Up A Century…

    Authored by Chris Bray via ‘Tell Me How This Ends’ Substack,

    Give me five minutes to sum up a century, and to show where it leaves us.

    Taylor Lorenz interviewing Chaya Raichik is an instant classic of anthropological fieldwork, and it tells us far more about the interviewer and the culture she represents than it tells us about the interviewee. I warn you that watching the whole thing rewards Taylor Lorenz with a click, but just look at the thumbnail to get started:

    To get the whole flavor in condensed form, click here to watch an extraordinary five-minute excerpt.

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    They’re talking about graphic sexual materials in schools, and Chaya Raichik shows batshit cat lady some of the images that are at the center of the debate. Then she asks batshit if she thinks it’s reasonable to show those pictures — graphic pictures of anal sex — to young children.

    Batshit’s answer, around the 4:22 mark, takes a century of cultural decline and neatly distills it into a few seconds of lunatic babbling:

    I guess…I don’t know. I don’t know. Because — you know who I would defer to on that, just because neither of us are sex educators? I would defer that question to a qualified professional, a sex educator, and say hey, you’re an expert, you’ve treated tons, you know, you’ve educated tons of people, you’re a full-time sex educator, you’ve really studied this. What are the appropriate boundaries? I don’t think that myself, as a journalist, or a media personality, I don’t think I’m the right one to make that decision. And I guess I’m wondering why you….I’m wondering why you feel like you’re qualified to be a sex educator when you have no background in that.

    Should we sodomize kittens? Should old men recruit toddlers for dildo play? Should you invite middle-schoolers you meet on the street to your golden showers party in Vegas? Look, who can even say, right? I mean, do you even have a graduate degree in the field? There are simply no questions about appropriateness or decency or propriety that you can even begin to think about until the committee approves your dissertation. Bend over and defer, because you don’t have the credentials to understand the question.

    Fuck these people, and fuck the hole they’ve dug.

    Chaya Raichik’s response:

    “I don’t want to be a sex educator — I just don’t want to give kids porn in school.”

    Of course. You know right and wrong, and the babbling idiot asking if you’re a credentialed sex educator knows it too. Leave children alone, scumbags, and stop pretending it’s complicated.

    Remember that Christopher Lasch wrote about the displacement of family functions by the “helping professions,” starting with the Progressive Era, and remember what Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote about bread, discussed in the middle of this post. The long descent into rule by experts is a project of cultural disempowerment, in which you — you personally — are being gaslit into abandoning your own eyes and your own mind.

    Q: Should we show graphic sexual pictures to very young children at school?

    A: Well, I don’t know, what are your credentials?

    No more of this. Not another second. No more.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/25/2024 – 22:10

  • San Francisco Picks Up The Pieces After The Epic Failure Of Their Red State Boycott
    San Francisco Picks Up The Pieces After The Epic Failure Of Their Red State Boycott

    In late 2016 the city of San Francisco attempted a sweeping boycott program aimed at building their public image as a leftist “Utopia” while also giving a middle finger to red state economies.  The project was called “Chapter 12X” and was authored by California state Senator Scott Wiener (pictured below).

     

    Even though progressive boycotts have been consistently unsuccessful over the years, this did not stop them from making yet another attempt at the height of the Trump vs Clinton election frenzy.  Perhaps they believed the tide was shifting even further to the political left and they were getting ahead of the game.

    The goal of San Francisco’s effort was to ban all city employees from doing business with companies based in states with policies and laws contrary to progressive dictates.  Companies in states with abortion restrictions, states that prevented “trans identifying people” from using the bathroom or locker room of their choice, states that required identification proving citizenship before voting, states that don’t obey the tenets of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion ideology, states that refused to implement climate change laws and companies that did not disclose carbon impact reports were not allowed to do contract business in San Francisco.  

    For SF bureaucrats the assumption was that access to the city’s market was the prize and through a boycott they would teach red states a lesson.  In reality, SF was not the prize, efficient red state production was the prize.  Failure of the program became evident in 2023 after seven years of inflated costs from doing business with progressive friendly companies in blue states with high taxes and high operating overhead.  The city could have saved millions by simply outsourcing to red states. 

    Another problem was the fact that many “blue” companies in blue states were not as “pure” as activists in SF wanted; most had associations with red state businesses, and this undermined the political message that the city wanted to send.

    In the aftermath of a repeal on the boycott, San Francisco is trying to understand why their plan failed while also still trying to institute some kind of ideological filter on city business dealings.  Can SF find companies in red states that follow their progressive religion while also giving them low low prices?

    The end of the contract ban is expected to decrease citywide expenditures by at least 20% in 2024 – In the midst of a stagflationary crisis every penny counts.  

    The lesson to be learned here?  Democrats often argue that red states would collapse without blue state and blue city economies.  The truth is the exact opposite.  Without the production capabilities and lower costs of doing business in red states, progressive enclaves suffocate under the weight of their own taxes, legal restrictions and lack of self reliance.  They need conservatives far more than conservatives need them.  

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/25/2024 – 21:35

  • Beijing Needs A Second Act After Rebound In Stocks
    Beijing Needs A Second Act After Rebound In Stocks

    By John Liu and Zheng Wu, Bloomberg Markets Live reporters and analysts

    Three things we learned last week:

    1. China stocks continued to rally as Beijing escalated its efforts to stabilize the market, starting just before the Lunar New Year. The benchmark CSI 300 index has climbed for nine straight days in the longest run of gains since 2018, taking its advance from a February low to about 10%.

    The sudden replacement of the nation’s chief securities regulator underscored the leadership’s determination to stem a rout that has erased some $4 trillion from the market value of equities and undermined confidence in the economy.

    Wu Qing, the new chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, got down to work right away by cracking down on short sellers, and even froze the accounts of a major quantitative hedge fund after it dumped $360 million of shares within a minute. Wu also sat down with retail and institutional investors to gather their opinions.

    But, there is no room for complacency despite Wu’s initial success. His predecessor Yi Huiman had tried repeatedly to end China’s stock meltdown since last summer but failed to deliver a sustained recovery. History suggests that the selloff will resume if investors find that policy support is underwhelming.

    2. Chinese lenders announced a larger-than-expected quarter point reduction in the five-year loan prime rate. The move was clearly aimed at supporting the housing market as the bulk of the nation’s $5.3 trillion outstanding mortgage loans use the rate as a pricing benchmark. New funding support was also made available for property projects placed on the authorities’ “white list.” To be clear, some traders thought the People’s Bank of China could have done more earlier. Authorities held the key one-year policy rate at 2.5% this month even as the 10-year government bond yield dropped to a two-decade low and consumer-price deflation persisted.

    The PBOC may have been mindful of the yuan’s weakness and the squeeze on banks’ margins when it decided not to ease more aggressively. Given the competing factors at play, the central bank was probably looking to deploy the most effective stimulus without abandoning its restrained approach to supporting growth. The overall picture remains subdued. China’s home prices declined again in January, and car sales probably dropped 15.7% in February. Banks’ margins narrowed to a record low last quarter. All this shows that while the stock market has staged a strong rebound, it will take much more to revive the economy.

    3. HSBC took a $3 billion impairment charge on its holding in a Chinese bank. The lender’s Hong Kong-listed stock underperformed the Hang Seng Index last week even after CEO Noel Quinn described the charge as “a technical accounting issue.” The financial impact should be limited to HSBC although the case served as a reminder of the potential pitfalls of having an exposure to Chinese assets. But as Bloomberg Intelligence noted, the impairment reflected China’s deteriorating economic outlook and shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/25/2024 – 20:52

  • "Media Class Will Ignore" New Poll That Shows Black Voter Support For Trump Rising
    “Media Class Will Ignore” New Poll That Shows Black Voter Support For Trump Rising

    For years, radical leftists in legacy media and progressive think tanks have portrayed former President Trump as a racist unworthy of votes from black Americans.

    However, as confidence in corporate media plummets to record lows, opinion polls indicate an increasing number of black folks are diverging from the Biden camp and considering backing the former president ahead of the elections this November. 

    The latest poll by the Howard University Initiative on Public Opinion shows Biden’s support among black voters is tumbling, down to just 49%. At the same time, Trump’s support among black voters has surged to 26%, about three times the level compared with 2020 levels. 

    “It’s African American men that are more likely to support the former president than their female counterparts,” Terri Adams-Fuller, director of the Howard University Initiative on Public Opinion, told media outlet WTOP. 

    Adams-Fuller noted the largest concerns among black voters for Biden and Trump: 

    “The top two concerns for Biden were age (38%) and then no concerns (17%). For Trump, it was morals/values (29%) and track record (28%).”

    Nearly half of the respondents said their political leanings have shifted over the last five years. An overwhelming number of black voters said the economy/jobs and affordable housing income were some of the top issues for 2024. 

    The Howard University poll comes as no surprise, considering we have documented several instances of the “rise of black support for Trump” and “Biden’s black support plummets from 2020.”

    Journalist Paul D. Thacker commented on the poll on X. He said: “The media class will try hard to ignore this poll because they are up Biden’s ass and dismissive of voters.”

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    Musk chimed in, telling Thacker: “Among other things, Biden ushering in millions of illegals is disproportionately hurting Black communities.” 

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    Blacks are furious with Democrats for prioritizing illegals over their well-being. 

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    Radicals in the White House have sparked the greatest border invasion this nation has ever seen (count so far at 10 million), which is only hurting the poorest of citizens. 

    Source: CBP

    Democrats need some soul-searching, or they risk losing an even more significant percentage of the black vote. What a disaster. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/25/2024 – 20:25

  • Media Blackout Over Illegal Immigrant Who Murdered GA Student
    Media Blackout Over Illegal Immigrant Who Murdered GA Student

    By Blue Apples

    With 7.3 million illegal immigrants entering into the country since Joe Biden was inaugurated as president, the national security threat of an unsecured border has become perhaps the biggest issue heading into the 2024 Presidential Election. The border crisis has even overshadowed a stagnant economy and foreign policy that has seen entangle itself in several theaters of war abroad. While the Biden administration brushes off this premise as a racist alt-right fever dream, the reality of that threat has come to affect everyday life for the average american. In its most recent whitewashing of the immigration crisis, the media establishment has all but entirely blacked out the murder Laken Riley, a 22-year old nursing student in Georgia. The lack of coverage about her murder is ostensibly because she was killed by an illegal immigrant who was able to enter the country due to the Biden administration’s open-border policy.

    Riley was a junior enrolled at the Augusta University, studying in its nursing school. University authorities’ worst nightmares were realized when her body was discovered early Thursday afternoon following reports she had gone missing after going for a jog around the intramural sports fields 2.5 miles from the nearby University Of Georgia’s main campus in Athens where she had been a student until 2023. Riley’s body was identified by the Athens-Clarke County Coroner’s office on Friday morning. The coroner assigned blunt force trauma as the cause of death, according to University Of Georgia Police Chief Jeff Clark during a statement made following the identification of Riley’s body. During that announcement, Clark also announced that 26 year-old Venezuelan national Jose Antonio Ibarra had been arrested in connection with Riley’s murder.

    Ibarra’s brother Diego was also arrested on Friday, though for charges unrelated to Riley’s murder. Diego Ibarra was taken into state custody although charged federally for possession of a fraudulent green card, a crime that likely facilitated his brother’s illegal immigration from Venezuela into the US where he took residence in Athens, GA. Diego Ibarra was arrested for the fake green card when he presented it to police who asked to speak to him because he matched the description of the suspect in Riley’s murder police took from campus security footage from where she went missing.

    Jose Antonio Ibarra

    Friends, family, and the University Of Georgia mourned Riley’s death, lauding the young woman for her academic excellence and exceptional character. “She received her honorary white coat in August of 2023, symbolizing humanism, compassion, and the start of her nurse’s journey,” the university remarked. “Not only was she a bright and dedicated student, but she had the distinct honor of making the Fall 2023 Dean’s List.” A close connection to the Riley family released a statement regarding Laken’s death on their behalf which stated “Laken was an amazing daughter, sister, friend and overall person in general. Her love for the Lord was exemplified in every aspect of her life. She will be missed every day, but we promise to honor her life moving forward in a very big way,” the statement read, going on to say “During this most difficult time, we ask that you respect our privacy, and provide us the time and space necessary to grieve our daughter’s life that was tragically cut short.”

    Subsequent to Ibarra’s arrest, campus police have recommended he be charged with felony murder, false imprisonment, kidnapping, and concealing the death of another. Despite the litany of charges being sought and the gruesome nature of Riley’s murder, police stated they believe that Ibarra’s crime was an isolated incident and that he was not a suspect in any other on-going investigations in the area. Police described the murder as a crime of opportunity and said there was no evidence that Ibarra had any underlying motive or that he knew Riley beforehand. “The evidence suggests that this was a solo act,” Clark stated, adding there were “no indications of a continuing threat to the community related to this case at this time.”

    Although the tragedy of Riley’s murder is befitting of a true crime mystery series that Netflix would capitalize on in a heartbeat, her death has received little attention by their mainstream media cohorts. Despite the hours and hours of airtime dedicated to the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others who died in 2020 as a means of launching the country onto the cusp of an all out race war, Riley’s death defies mainstream narratives about the threat the US’ open border with Mexico and is thus verboten from the same kind of coverage.

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    That media blackout obfuscates the reality that unfettered immigration into the US presents an innate threat to citizens. Since the 2021 fiscal year, Border Patrol has arrested 43,674 criminal non-citizens. US Customs And Border Protection defines the term criminal non-citizen as any individual who has been convicted of one or more crimes either in the US or abroad before behind interdicted by immigration officials. The metric also discounts criminal convictions abroad for crimes not illegal in the US. Of those 43,674 criminal non-citizens arrested, violent crimes accounted for over of their 8,000 preexisting convictions. Murder convictions related to 165 of those arrests, while sex crime convictions comprised nearly 10 times that amount with 1,210 having been documented by Border Patrol. Despite being on the books, these figures have received as little coverage by legacy media outlets as Riley’s murder has.

    Although the media establishment remains silent about the murder of Laken Riley, it can do little to silence the uproar against the Biden administration’s manufactured immigration crisis. Even staunch supporters of the Democratic Party have come to express their disapproval of how the border is being handled amid approval ratings for Biden falling to all-time lows. What the coverage surrounding Riley’s murder reflects is that there are no lengths the mainstream media will go to in order to push the political agenda fueling the immigration crisis, proving that innocent American lives are little more than political capital when it comes to pushing that agenda.
     

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/25/2024 – 19:50

  • Koch Brothers Pull Out Of Haley After South Carolina Skewering
    Koch Brothers Pull Out Of Haley After South Carolina Skewering

    Less than a day after she was smashed by Donald Trump in her own state, and four weeks after billionaire Democrat Reid Hoffman said ‘no more,’ the Koch brothers’ pet advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) have pulled the plug on Nikki Haley.

    In an email to staff obtained by Politico AFP CEO Emily Seidel announced on Sunday that the group’s political arm, AFP Action, had to “take stock” of its spending priorities in light of Haley’s South Carolina defeat.

    The group, which is funded by the Kochs, will now pivot to competitive Senate and House races.

    “She has made it clear that she will continue to fight and we wholeheartedly support her in this effort,” Seidel wrote. “But given the challenges in the primary states ahead, we don’t believe any outside group can make a material difference to widen her path to victory.”

    AFP Action’s decision is the latest blow to Haley’s longshot presidential bid, which has sustained losses in four early nominating states and the Virgin Islands, including on Saturday, when former President Donald Trump beat Haley in her home state by 20 points. Haley declared she will continue on in her primary fight, but has only committed to running through Super Tuesday on March 5. -Politico

    The never-Trump Koch/AFP campaign has focused on convincing Republicans to vote for anyone but the former president. In late November, when it was clear Ron DeSantis wasn’t going to go the distance, the political funding network tapped Haley as their choice to take on Trump. Yet, despite reaching out to more than 3 million voters in early nominating and Super Tuesday states – and tossing millions into a fire for advertising, it made no difference.

    That said, while another anti-Trump conservative group, Club for Growth, made peace with Trump, AFP maintains that Trump on the ballot will spell disaster for the GOP.

    “If Donald Trump is at the top of the Republican ticket, the risk of one-party rule by a Democratic Party captured by the Progressive Left is severe and would do irreparable damage to the country,” according to Seidel’s Sunday note. “The last three election cycles have painted a very clear picture of what we can expect from voters who consistently rejected Donald Trump and his impact on the Republican party brand.”

    She also brought up Trump’s legal woes in the context of Republicans underperforming, writing “And we should expect this to increase further as the criminal trials progress.”

    Haley spokeswomaan Olivia Perez-Cubas thanked AFP for supporting the campaign, which she says has “plenty of fuel to keep going” and a “country to save.”

    “AFP is a great organization and ally in the fight for freedom and conservative government,” said Perez-Cubas. “We thank them for their tremendous help in this race.”

    Sorry Nikki, they’re just not into you.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/25/2024 – 19:15

  • Illinois Bill Wants Make It "Child Abuse" For Parents To Object To Gender-Transitioning Of Kids
    Illinois Bill Wants Make It “Child Abuse” For Parents To Object To Gender-Transitioning Of Kids

    Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

    A bill introduced in the Illinois House of Representatives would legally define it as ‘child abuse’ for parents to object to gender transitioning of their children by way of puberty blocking, cross sex hormones or surgery.

    The legislation, Bill 4876, introduced earlier this month, would also protect doctors from liability should they decide to prescribe those treatments to children who have not gotten parental consent.

    The legislation would also allow for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) to take children away from their parents for opposing such procedures.

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    The legislation also allows for minors to be afforded the same legal status as adults when it comes to abortion.

    The text of the bill states “consent to the performance of abortion services and gender-affirming services executed by a minor is not voidable because of such minority.”

    It further notes that “a health care professional rendering abortion services and gender-affirming services shall not incur civil or criminal liability for failure to obtain valid consent or professional discipline for failure to obtain valid consent if the health care professional relied in good faith on representations made by the minor.”

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    Activist group Awake Illinois has launched a campaign against the legislation, dubbing it “anti-parent” and “anti-child.” Founder Shannon Adcock urged action against the “incredibly radical” bill, noting “In Illinois, parents who are considered child abusers can lose custody of their children if in this case they do not affirm transgender drugs, surgical procedures such as penis and breast removal.”

    “If a minor opts for this, and you as a parent deny that, that means that you are considered an abuser of a child,” Adcock further warned.

    The maximum punishment for ‘child abuse’ in Illinois is $25,000 in fines and 15 years in prison.

    Appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast this week, Dr. Phil (McGraw)” slammed gender surgeries on children, pointing to a dearth of long-term studies.

    “All the major medical associations have signed off on this, Joe,” McGraw said, adding

    “I have never seen those organisations sign off on anything with less information as to whether or not it does long-term harm of anything in my life. And when I ask about that, when I bring that up, then they immediately label you as transphobic.”

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    Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/25/2024 – 18:40

  • 5 Takeaways From The South Carolina Republican Primary
    5 Takeaways From The South Carolina Republican Primary

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

    President Donald Trump takes the stage at the South Carolina State Fairgrounds in Columbia, S.C., after defeating Nikki Haley in her home state on Feb. 24, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    CHARLESTON, S.C.—Former President Donald Trump notched another decisive win in the Republican presidential primary, defeating former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in her home state of South Carolina, where she also served as governor.

    Given the lopsided polling in this two-person race between President Trump and Ms. Haley, the outcome of the Feb. 24 contest was never in doubt.

    Yet the margin of victory and the trajectory of the race after this fourth presidential primary provide insights into the future of the 2024 nominating contest.

    Trump Notches Highest Percentage in Contested Race So Far

    President Trump called the result of the contest decisive shortly after the polls closed, and major media outlets called the race in his favor the moment the polls closed. In a message to supporters, he declared the result a “complete and total victory.”

    Indeed, at about 60 percent of the vote as of 9:35 p.m. ET on Feb. 24, his share of the total was the highest of the three primaries in which he has faced opposition.

    President Trump won the Iowa caucuses with 51 percent of the vote, beating three principal challengers, including Ms. Haley. She earned 19 percent of the vote.

    In New Hampshire, President Trump bested Ms. Haley by 54 to 43 percent.

    In the Nevada caucuses, President Trump was unopposed, garnering 99 percent of the vote.

    Given the growing momentum of the Trump campaign and Ms. Haley’s inability to achieve a breakout result, the former president appears set to claim the nomination within weeks.

    Yet despite losing three times to President Trump, Ms. Haley maintains that her ability to claim about 40 percent of the vote in two head-to-head contests indicates that Republican voters are seeking a Trump alternative.

    “There are huge numbers of voters in our Republican primaries who are saying they want an alternative,” Ms. Haley told supporters at an after-election party.

    But Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), one of Ms. Haley’s top advocates, saw it differently.

    “The people spoke for Trump,” Mr. Norman told The Epoch Times after the results.

    “What she will have to do … is make a decision.”

    Asked about her future in the race after Super Tuesday, March 5, Mr. Norman said, “What she’ll do is count the delegates up.”

    He added, “At the end of the day, everybody will come together, whether it’s [for] Nikki Haley or Donald Trump.”

    Haley Loses Her Home State

    Ms. Haley’s primary loss in her home state, where she was twice elected governor, is nearly unprecedented. Since the modern primary system began in 1972, no major-party candidate has claimed the nomination after losing his or her home state.

    Ms. Haley’s defeat is partly attributable to President Trump’s overwhelming popularity in the state.

    The former president handily won the 2016 primary in South Carolina and has remained popular. He garnered the lion’s share of endorsements from the state’s elected officials, including the governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general, as well as U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, both Republicans.

    Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) was the state’s only high-profile figure to endorse Ms. Haley.

    Nikki Haley speaks to the press after casting her ballot in the GOP primary on Kiawah Island, S.C., on Feb. 24, 2024. (Ivan Pentchoukov/The Epoch Times)

    Ms. Haley’s reputation as a governor is mixed among voters. To some, she is seen as a capable governor who provided outstanding crisis leadership.

    “She was our governor during some of the darkest times we had. She led us well,” Ashley Brown, 43, of Moncks Corner, told The Epoch Times.

    The state endured significant flooding during Ms. Haley’s tenure, and a mass shooting that claimed nine lives at a historic Black church in Charleston.

    Other Republican voters were less impressed with Ms. Haley’s governance.

    “I didn’t care for her when she was governor,” Richard Hinson, 58, of Moncks Corner, told The Epoch Times. “She’s just a career politician.”

    Haley’s Chances Dim Further

    Ms. Haley’s chances of winning the nomination, slim even before this contest, are now minuscule.

    The Palmetto State has been something of a bellwether in the Republican nominating system, correctly forecasting the eventual nominee in every contest since 1980 with just one exception. The state went for Newt Gingrich in 2012.

    More telling is the rate at which President Trump has collected committed delegates to the Republican National Committee’s July nominating convention.

    To win the party’s nomination, a candidate must secure a commitment from 1,215 of the 2,429 delegates from the 50 states and various territories. After winning South Carolina, President Trump now has more than 130 delegates, more than six times the number held by Ms. Haley.

    Another 1,215 delegates will be awarded on Super Tuesday, March 5, when 15 states hold primary elections or caucuses. If Ms. Haley is unable to gain a healthy share of those delegates, the race will effectively be over.

    The latter half of March is when Ms. Haley is likely to acknowledge her campaign is over, according to Josh Putnam, a political science professor at the University of Georgia.

    “Haley seems to suggest that she’s going to hang around at least through Super Tuesday, so if she dropped out after that, then it’s going to probably happen just before Trump passes the 50-percent mark and unofficially clinches the nomination,” Mr. Putnam said.

    Nikki Haley supporters await her arrival at a campaign rally in Moncks Corner, S.C., on Feb. 23, 2024. (Ivan Pentchoukov/Epoch Times)

    Crossover Voters Opt for Haley

    Voter registration by party is not required in South Carolina, so any voter may choose to participate in either the Republican or Democratic primary, but not both.

    Exit polls showed that 69 percent of voters identified themselves as Republicans, 21 percent as independents, 6 percent as something else, and 4 percent as Democrats.

    Some crossover voters were apparently motivated by a desire to oppose President Trump. Others were simply pro-Haley.

    “I’ve already voted for Nikki,” Kurt Kehelbeck, 64, of Charleston, told The Epoch Times, having cast his ballot during the early voting period. “I’m a Democrat. Anything’s better than Trump.” Mr. Kehelenbeck said he intends to vote for President Joe Biden in the general election.

    Democratic leaders were aware that a number of their constituents intended to oppose President Trump by voting for Ms. Haley.

    “I do know a significant amount of people … who are going to go with what they feel, and they have this feeling that they have to vote against Donald Trump,” Marcurius Byrd told The Epoch Times. Mr. Byrd of Columbia is the senior adviser to the Central Midlands chapter of South Carolina Young Democrats.

    That number, 4 percent of the vote at most, was not a factor in deciding the race.

    What does not appear to have materialized is a large crossover vote in support of President Trump as was predicted by South Carolina GOP Chair Drew McKissick.

    “You will see a huge number, if not a majority, of self-identified Democrats who say that they voted for Donald Trump in this primary,” Mr. McKissick told The Epoch Times on Feb. 24.

    Given the slight increase in Ms. Haley’s support versus polling predictions, it appears that she gained whatever benefit was to be had from crossover voting.

    Supporters of Republican presidential candidate and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley attend a campaign event at Clemson University in Clemson, S.C., on Feb. 20, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    Spotlight Expands to Down-Ballot Races

    With President Biden now unopposed for the Democratic nomination and President Trump all but certain to gain the Republican nod, attention will shift down the ballot to races for Congress and state legislatures.

    On Super Tuesday, California, Texas, North Carolina, Alabama, and Arkansas will hold general primaries and presidential polls.

    Voters across the four Southern states will nominate candidates for 63 House districts, including 42 held by Republicans.

    In California, seven of the 10 most hotly contested congressional races are for GOP-held seats. President Biden carried five of those districts in 2020. Four of them are rated as toss-ups by Cook Political Report.

    In all, voters will select candidates for 115 congressional districts, representing more than a quarter of the House of Representatives, on March 5.

    In the coming months, primaries will also be held for 34 Senate seats, 20 of which are held by Democrats, 11 by Republicans, and three by independents. Primaries will also be held for 11 gubernatorial elections, with eight of those seats currently held by Republicans.

    Among the most watched congressional races will be the one for California’s 22nd district, held by Republican David Valadao, which the Democratic National Committee hopes to flip in 2024. Some 42 percent of registered voters in the 22nd district are Democrats, and just under 27 percent are Republicans.

    California’s 27th congressional district, held by Republican Mike Garcia, is also on the Democratic National Committee’s hit list. Democrat George Whitesides is the strongest challenger. He is a former chief of staff at NASA and is CEO of Virgin Galactic.

    California’s senatorial primary will also be closely watched. Primaries in the state are nonpartisan, meaning that all candidates compete on a single ballot, with the top two vote-getters advancing to the general election.

    The leading candidates in this heavily Democratic state appear to be Democrats Adam Schiff and Katie Porter, both of whom currently represent House districts. Former professional baseball player Steve Garvey is the leading Republican candidate.

    John Haughey, Janice Hisle, and Nathan Worcester contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/25/2024 – 17:30

  • Fani Scrambles: Fulton DA Demands Judge Reject Cellphone Evidence
    Fani Scrambles: Fulton DA Demands Judge Reject Cellphone Evidence

    Fulton County DA Fani Willis is reeling after evidence was submitted to the court suggesting that she and special prosecutor Nathan Wade lied about when their romantic relationship began.

    To recap, Wade and Willis claimed that their relationship began sometime in early 2022 – after Willis hired Wade to help her go after Trump in the Georgia election interference case.

    Wade’s cell phone records disprove their official story, however. As The Reactionary notes,

    Trump’s attorneys were able to obtain, by subpoena to AT&T, Wade’s cell phone records from 1/1/2021 through 11/30/2021. Wade’s location data was analyzed by an investigator hired by the attorneys – an analytical tool which generated geolocation data that pinpointed Wade’s presence at DA Willis’s South Fulton Condo during that time period.

    Here are the highlights:

    • Wade and Willis exchanged “over 2000 voice calls and just under 12,000 texts messages” from January 1, 2021 through November 30, 2021.

    • Geolocation data indicates Wade was at DA Willis’s condo “at least 35 occasions”. The data revealed he was “stationary” at the condo “and not in transit.”

    • Wade’s visits to DA Willis’s condo were corroborated by texts and phone calls. According to the report: On November 29, 2021, “following a call from Ms. Willis at 11:32 PM, while the call continued, [Wade’s] phone left the East Cobb area just after midnight and arrived within the geofence located on the Dogwood address [the condo] at 12:43 AM on November 30, 2021. The phone remained there until 4:55 AM.”

    • On September 11, 2021, Wade arrived at the condo address at approximately 10:45 PM. He left the address at 3:28 AM and arrived at his Marietta residence at 4:05 AM. He then texted DA Willis at 4:20 AM.

    Now, Fani wants the evidence tossed – claiming that some of the data is inadmissible for technical or procedural reasons. Willis argued in a response that the cell phone data fails to “prove anything relevant,” and should be tossed because it contains “both telephone records that have not been admitted into evidence and an affidavit and other documents containing unqualified opinion evidence.”

    Because of this, Willis argues that the court should exclude the new information, or at least consider her “rebuttal evidence that demonstrates the unreliability of the unqualified opinion evidence improperly introduced by Defendant Trump.”

    She also claims that the new evidence is inadmissible because the defense counsel provided no written notice of its introduction, no summary of the expert’s testimony, and no information as to the expert’s qualifications. And even if he’s legit, the phone records don’t prove anything.

    “The records do nothing more than demonstrate that Special Prosecutor Wade’s telephone was located somewhere within a densely populated multiple-mile radius where various residences, restaurants, bars, nightclubs, and other businesses are located,” she wrote, adding that the records may have even been obtained illegally.

    Trump smacks Fani

    In a Saturday post to Truth Social, Trump argued that the new evidence shows that Willis is full of shit and should be disqualified.

    “Based on the fact that District Attorney Fani Willis and her Lover were together long prior to the filing date of their Fake Lawsuit against me and many other innocent people, despite their sworn testimony to the contrary, this case must be determined as OVER and, of no further force or effect,” he wrote.

    “Among other things, in close coordination and conjunction with the DOJ and White House (numerous 8-hour meetings between the Biden people and them in D.C.!), this case was all about stealing close to $1 Million Dollars for Lover Wade, and Election Interference, whereby a vicious and heinous attack is made on Crooked Joe Biden’s Political Opponent.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/25/2024 – 16:55

  • What Is A Christian Nationalist?
    What Is A Christian Nationalist?

    Authored by John Leonard via AmericanThinker.com,

    On MSNBC “award-winning investigative journalist” (from Politico) Heidi Przybyla said this recently:

    Remember when Trump ran in 2016?  A lot of the mainline evangelicals wanted nothing to do with the divorced real-estate mogul who cheated on his wife with a porn star and all of that, right?  So what happened was, he was surrounded by this more extremist element.  You’re going to hear words like Christian Nationalism, like the new apostolic reformation.

    These are groups that you should get very schooled on because they have a lot of power in Trump’s circle. And the one thing that unites all of them because there’s many different groups orbiting Trump but the thing that unites them as Christian nationalists — not Christians by the way, because Christian nationalist is very different — is that they believe their rights as Americans don’t come from any earthly authority. They don’t come from Congress, they don’t come from the Supreme Court, they come from God.

    Horrors!  Does this mean that a Christian nationalist believes what the Declaration of Independence said — that our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness come not from King George III, but from our Creator?  How does that separate a Christian nationalist from any other ordinary Christian?  What is she trying to say?

    Ms. Przybyla continued:   

    The problem is that they are determining, man — men — are determining what God is telling them. And in the past, that so-called natural law … it’s a pillar of Catholicism, for instance, and has been used for good. In social justice campaigns, Martin Luther King evoked it talking about civil rights. But now you have an extremist element of conservative Christians who say this applies specifically to issues like abortion, gay marriage, and it’s going much further than that, as you’re seeing for instance in the ruling in Alabama. The judge is connected to a dominionist faction.

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

    Um…what?  Is Ms. Przybyla trying to say that mainstream Christians support abortion rights and gay marriage, but Christian nationalists do not?

    She was referring to the Alabama Supreme Court, which just ruled that human life begins at conception.  How dare the court agree with basic biology and the American College of Pediatricians?  According to a publication by the National Library of Medicine, eighty percent of Americans believe that biologists are the most qualified group to determine when life begins, and ninety-six percent of biologists affirm the view that life begins at fertilization, yet a portion of the American public still demand the right to legally murder their unborn children.

    Does a Christian automatically qualify as some sort of religious zealot simply for opposing abortion?  What if he doesn’t oppose the “Plan B” pill?  Can a Christian be patriotic without being called a nationalist?  Can a Christian still sing the patriotic anthem “God Bless America”?  

    What is a Christian nationalist?  We still don’t have a real answer.  Perhaps it would be helpful to break the term down into individual words to understand it better.

    If you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you’re a Christian.  Okay, then…so what is a nationalist?  According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, a nationalist is a person who wants his country to be politically independent, or a person who strongly believes that his country is better than others.

    Putting the two terms together, we get a follower of Jesus Christ who strongly believes that America is the greatest nation on the face of the Earth.  And that’s the problem?

    Oh, wait a minute — one of the Alabama justices is accused of being a dominionist.  This is, apparently, a person who seeks to create a nation governed by Christians according to their understanding of biblical law.  Is the justice a dominionist because he quoted from the Bible instead of a biology textbook?  Both basically say the same thing on this issue.

    Most Christians I know (and I know more than a few through social media) realize that America was founded not as a Christian nation, but as a secular nation founded by Christians with Christian principles.  Muslims, Jews, and atheists alike have been welcome to participate in our secular government that still operates on Christian principles. 

    Obviously, the term “Christian nationalist” is meant to be seen as a pejorative.  It is being used to separate the “good” Christians (those who support abortion and gay marriage) from the bad Christians (actual Christians).  It is a term intended to divide and conquer.

    The current problem for those attempting to employ the term to accomplish their nefarious goal of turning Christians on one another is that most people don’t seem to know what a Christian nationalist is.

    According to Pew research, roughly twenty-four percent of the American public had a negative opinion of Christian nationalism and predictably said things like, “It is a euphemism for racism and antisemitic fascism; a polite term for a Nazi sympathizer” — but still, more than half of U.S. adults have never even heard of the term.

    One of the Christian respondents to the survey shared a starkly different opinion: “It’s a term used to dismiss any Christian because they are dangerous, therefore dehumanize them and make them the enemy.  It should mean a follower of Christ and someone who is patriotic.”

    Why was it so important for the Politico reporter to establish that the modern existential threat to the American republic is this largely unheard of “Christian nationalist” movement?  Because this same “journalist” co-authored an article saying that the Trump administration is going to infuse Christian nationalist ideas into their policies because a guy named Russell Vought is under consideration to become Trump’s chief of staff.

    If you don’t remember Vought, he’s the guy who famously sparred with Bernie Sanders when Sanders tried to apply a religious litmus test to disqualify Vought from an appointment to the Office of Management and Budget.  According to Ms. Przybyla’s most recent article, “Vought has a close affiliation with Christian nationalist William Wolfe, a former Trump administration official who has advocated for overturning same-sex marriage, ending abortion and reducing access to contraceptives.”

    Well, then!  We should burn him at the stake like a heretic, right?  No way should this guy be allowed to serve in the next Trump administration…unless, of course, Trump wants him.

    Every Christian (nationalist) should utter just four words sure to send a cold chill through the heart of Ms. Przybyla and her ilk: Make America Great Again.

    *  *  *

    John Leonard is a freelance writer.  He blogs at southernprose.com.  His books, including The God Conclusion and Atheist’s Prayer, can be found at LeonardBooks.net.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/25/2024 – 16:20

  • Former Prime Minister Urges Israelis To 'Besiege The Knesset' To Oust Netanyahu
    Former Prime Minister Urges Israelis To ‘Besiege The Knesset’ To Oust Netanyahu

    This weekend has seen large tumultuous anti-Netanyahu protests in Tel Aviv led by the families of hostages and victims of Oct. 7. The families have long demanded that the government get more serious about another hostage/prisoner exchange. They’ve accused the prime minister of intentionally thwarting a deal for the sake of prolonging the war and in turn prolonging his hold on power.

    The scene grew violent Saturday as riot police on horseback charge demonstrators in a central Tel Aviv square. Police also used water canons against the protesters. Watch some of the mayhem unfold in the below:

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    Netanyahu tried to calm the rising anger directed against him by a statement on X saying, “We are working to obtain another outline for the release of our hostages.” He added, “That is why I sent a delegation to Paris – and tonight we will discuss the next steps in the negotiations.”

    Israeli media once again reports ‘cautious optimism’ regarding ceasefire talks, but Netanyahu has at the same time been insistent on rejecting Hamas’ “delusional” conditions for a deal – most especially the demand for all Israeli forces to withdraw from the Strip.

    At least 21 people were arrested in Saturday’s demonstration, with some injuries among the protesters also reported. It’s a sign that such demonstrations are about to get more violent.

    Relatives of the kidnap victims believe a deal is realistic and obtainable, and have held out hope of their loved ones being returned to Israel. There’s still over one hundred Israelis held in Gaza – though many could be deceased at this point.

    On Sunday, the country’s former prime minister Ehud Barak added fuel to the anti-Netanyahu fire, however, by urging an escalation in protests until Netanyahu is forced to step down. According to Al Jazeera:

    Ehud Barak says Israelis need to protest outside their parliament “day and night” to help bring an end to Netanyahu’s rule.

    Barak, who served as Israel’s prime minister from 1999 to 2001, added that demonstrations should go on “until Netanyahu understands that his time is up and the public no longer trusts him”.

    “When the state is shut down, Netanyahu will realize his time is up,” he told Army Radio, as reported by the Jerusalem Post newspaper.

    In Sunday comments Netanyahu said his cabinet is mulling various options for Rafah, and said if a deal can be reached with Hamas the assault will be delayed. However he warned that if there is no deal, then a full-scale ground offensive will proceed. Earlier comments by Israeli officials suggested a timeframe of early March for an attack, as the US has continued to pressure the military to allow Gaza civilians to evacuate first.

    There are an estimated 1.5 million – mostly internally displaced civilians – in Rafah currently, after most were pushed out of their homes in the north amid the Israeli operation that began after the Oct.7 terror attack by Hamas.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/25/2024 – 15:45

  • Trump Easily Defeats Haley In Her Home State Of South Carolina
    Trump Easily Defeats Haley In Her Home State Of South Carolina

    Former President Donald Trump completely smoked Republican challenger Nikki Haley in her own state of South Carolina.

    The Associated Press called the primary for Trump shortly after polls closed at 7 p.m. ET, making Haley the first major-party candidate to loser her home state in the modern primary era, the Epoch Times reports.

    With an estimated 80% of the votes counted, Trump led Haley 60% to 39.4%.

    “There’s a spirit that I’ve never seen, Trump told supporters at the South Carolina State Fairgrounds in Columbia shortly after the race was called.

    “I have never seen the Republican party so unified as it is now.”

    The crowd erupted in applause, with some screaming “I LOVE YOU!”

    “This was a great moment in American history,” said South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, who joined Trump on stage, adding “we just hit maximum velocity!“

    During the speech, Trump touched on the crisis at the southern border.

    “You look outside, and you see all of the horror; you see millions and millions of people coming across the border illegally,” he said, emphasizing his plan to make America “respected again” if he’s reelected.

    “Right now, we are a laughing stock around the world. We are going to be respected again, respected like never before.”

    Haley not dropping out

    Meanwhile, Haley is moving on to Michigan on Sunday despite the staggering and humiliating loss in her home state primary – insisting that regardless of how she does in her own state, she’ll move on to Super Tuesday on March 5.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/25/2024 – 15:25

  • The Game Of "Chicken" In Today's World
    The Game Of “Chicken” In Today’s World

    By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

    The Game of “Chicken” in Today’s World

    I’ve been thinking a lot about the game of “chicken” lately. The “game” where two people drive at each other, effectively “daring” each other to swerve out of the way or not.

    Maybe this fixation was triggered by all the 40th anniversary of “Footloose” messages I saw on social media. Since I cannot dance to save my life (I have absolutely no rhythm), I just remember the game of chicken played with farm equipment.

    But the reality is that the game of chicken can apply to so many things: geopolitically, politically, and even in markets as of late. Certainly every time someone mentions “drawing lines in the sand,” which is happening a lot, I think of the game of chicken. We will attempt to look at a few things through the “chicken” lens:

    • Russia and Ukraine.

    • The Middle East.

    • Fighting the Magnificent 7.

    • The Chinese stock market.

    But first, let’s think about the game of chicken a little bit more.

    The Game Theory of “Chicken”

    Chicken is a great way to start thinking in terms of game theory. The game itself seems quite simple:

    • Only 2 actors.

    • Only 1 choice each actor can make.

    • An obvious and immediate consequence of those actions.

    It is so simple (yet far more interesting) from a game theory perspective.

    The analysis begins with this simple board:

    There are 4 possible outcomes. The first obvious step is to assign some “values” to these outcomes. Let’s use a scale of -10 to 10, with -10 being extremely bad and 10 being extremely good.

    The “easiest” square to fill in seems to be the one in which neither side swerves. That ends in flames and death. So, let’s call it -10.

    Both swerving is not really a win. You avoid flames and death, but you could have won, since the other side swerved. Let’s call this a -1. It is mildly annoying that you didn’t win, but no real consequences.

    If you don’t swerve and the opponent swerves, you “won.” But what did you win? Some satisfaction, but I think it is obvious that you didn’t win as much as you lose if you really lose. So, let’s say you call a win a 5.

    Similarly, if you swerve and your opponent doesn’t, you have “lost” pride more than anything. To make this a bit symmetric, to start, let’s assign a -5 to this outcome.

    After this initial “analysis,” here is how “you” are thinking about the game.

    You can see that it is asymmetric, at least with the values we’ve assigned.

    Swerving limits how bad the outcome could be (worst case of -5 versus -10). If your opponent was equally likely to swerve or not swerve, your “expected” outcome of swerving is slightly worse than not swerving, as it is -3 vs -2.5.

    Aside from telling us that this is a stupid game to get involved in (the expected values are negative no matter what decision you make), we “know” our opponent is not random and is likely engaging in a similar decision process. For starters, let’s assume that their outcome function is the same as ours (this is called “mirroring” in the intelligence world, and is often a mistake).

    Two things come out of this step:

    • Are you really sure about the values you have assigned to the outcomes? Maybe on a cursory initial thought, they made sense, but are they true?

    • Not just for yourself, but for your opponent as well.

    If your tendency is to reduce the tail risk (the -10 outcome), then you would tend to swerve. However, if you think your opponent thinks like you do, they may also have that tendency, allowing you to possibly “win” by not swerving.

    The already simple game has become more complex.

    There is no reason to believe that your opponent’s reaction function is the same as yours.

    That concept of “mirroring” is problematic. Let’s assume, for the moment, that you went back and reviewed your valuations and are comfortable with them (easier said than done). Then your decision will ultimately be influenced by what you really believe your opponent believes.

    What if flames and death isn’t viewed as a -10 by your opponent? What if they have some reason to view that as “only” a -8? What if “bravado” or something is an important feature of your opponent, and they place greater weight on “winning” and view the outcomes where they swerve with greater disdain?

    In this scenario, your opponent seems far less likely to swerve. Their “downside” is only the difference between -8 and -6. Their “expected” outcome (assuming you were 50/50 on what to do) is -4.5 if they swerve, versus -1 if they don’t swerve. You, in your analysis, probably have to start assuming the opponent is unlikely to swerve, skewing your expected outcome calculations much more in the direction of swerving (because you believe your opponent is less likely to swerve).

    Winning The Game of “Chicken”

    We could play with a variety of scenarios, but one theory in the game of chicken is that if you can demonstrate an inability to “swerve” you “should” win.

    The example that my professor used was you make a big show of dropping a concrete block on the accelerator, tying the steering wheel into position, and then sticking your hands and feet out of the window – clearly demonstrating that you cannot swerve. The opponent, if they believe you won’t panic at the last moment, has to assume you won’t swerve. In which case, unless they have dramatically different outcome values, they should swerve.

    But enough about the game theory of chicken and let’s get back to the 4 things that we came to discuss.

    Russia and Ukraine

    As we enter the third year of this war, the U.S. is debating what level of support to provide Ukraine.

    From a “game of chicken” perspective, I think that Ukraine has already lost. Assuming that we get through this year’s process, it would seem logical for Putin to decide that next year might be the year funding doesn’t get approved. Yes, something decisive could happen during the U.S. elections, but November is a long way away right now. Putin’s logical conclusion would be to drag this out, and hope that next year, funding fails.

    If the U.S. wanted Ukraine to “win” this war, it should approve a massive 5-year spending plan, that cannot be easily undone after the election. That would change Putin’s calculus. He doesn’t get the “free option” of thinking that the U.S. might tire of its spending.

    For now, I expect this war to drag on.

    As the U.S. election nears, both Zelensky and Putin will have to play their own games of chicken with the election results.

    If it looks like a Trump/Biden rematch will be close at the polls in November, both Russia and Ukraine may gravitate towards a truce of some sort. The Ukrainians face existential risks if the outcome will ensure that funding will dry up. The Russians, as the “bad actors” in the area, can always go back to war if they like the outcome of the election, but since they are also tiring of this war that they seem incapable of winning, some sort of deal should make sense to them as well.

    Status quo for now, with all parties keeping a close eye on the U.S. election.

    The Magnificent 7

    If I had a dollar for every time NVDA was mentioned this week, I’d have a LOT of $$$$$$s!

    We went into this week having written A Retrospective of All-Time Highs on February 11th and A Market “Only a Mother” Could Love on February 19th. After the NVDA earnings came out, we published NVDA Crushes It, Nasdaq 100 Still Lower Than Friday early on Thursday.

    The title of that latest report didn’t age well as stocks not only gapped higher on the open but continued their relentless push higher. On the other hand, for all the hype, all the excitement, and all the jubilation, I’m not sure who holds the winning hand right now – the bulls or the bears?

    Given the excitement and hype, no one can be blamed for realizing that even with all the hoopla, the Nasdaq 100 was only higher than where it had been back on February 9th for a brief window and that didn’t occur until Friday!

    Yes, if you have been fighting the market and the so-called Mag 7 for a year, it has been an epic failure. If you got in more recently and covered any shorts at all after the 3% to 5% pullback ahead of the now fabled earnings, you are probably sitting in pretty good shape!

    But that isn’t the game of chicken I came to talk about.

    When I look at QQQ (a Nasdaq 100 ETF with a transparent portfolio), you see that MSFT is 8.8% of that index. AAPL 8.2%. NVDA 5.6%. META and Broadcom and the two classes of Alphabet are also around 5%.

    So, the game of “chicken” that I think is being played out is among active managers who are underweight those stocks relative to the index that gets so much attention (and, more importantly, the allocations).

    Some managers are restricted to 5% or less in their portfolio by their own rules. But even managers who don’t have rules may find it “uncomfortable” owning so much of a stock (especially ones that have performed extremely well, outstripped the market, and have some metrics that seem to push the boundaries on some “traditional” rule of thumb valuation metrics).

    How many managers have some of these stocks as their largest positions, but are still underweight relative to the indices?

    That is the game of chicken that is being played out in real time. In many ways, whether we see a “capitulation” into market weight on these names, or not, will determine the next move. I find it difficult to believe, even after Thursday, that many who are underweight will change their minds now.

    I’m staying bearish the market here. I will “buy the dips” but by that I mean cover some shorts, only to reload higher, but I am a fully committed U.S. equity bear here. While there is no obvious catalyst to a big move lower, I’m not sure what the catalyst higher is as we move away from the last vestiges of post-NVDA earnings trading.

    On Friday, I did overhear someone on Bloomberg point out that large rallies into new highs (like we had on Thursday/Friday) have been a precursor to large downward moves in the past. I don’t have the details on that report, but I’d like to see it, as it fits my needs well!

    Dancing With Myself

    Since I cannot keep a beat, but enjoy dancing, I find that I have to dance to the 5 songs that seem to be at the beat I dance to. Ironically, or weirdly, or just strange, is that one of those songs is “Dancing with Myself” by Billy Idol. Anyways, felt compelled to share how I would try to “win the game of chicken” on the dance floor!

    Don’t Fight the CCP

    We all know that you Don’t Fight the Fed! It probably should be the first three chapters of any credible finance textbook right now. But, many seem comfortable fighting the Chinese Communist Party.

    That just seems weird to me. While I don’t think China is investible longer-term (from either the asset management side of things or the corporate side of things), I think that it is tradable. Over time I don’t think the CCP will be good to foreign investors, but right now, I want to be overweight Chinese equities (overweight or max long, as my “normal” weighting to China is 0.0%).

    Chinese stocks (based on FXI, an ETF that is easily accessible) are at levels that required a “crisis” to achieve in the past (post-GFC and post-COVID). While I don’t like the demographics in China, I do not think they will reclaim their role as an “industrial hub” of America and Western Europe, and while I don’t think they will treat foreign investors well, I think there are several reasons to own some Chinese shares right now.

    As you all know, or anyone who has been reading the T-Report for the past year knows, I am all about the transition from “Made in China” to “Made by China.” Chinese brands will attempt to sell more and more of their products globally – with Emerging Market countries (where China has a trade deficit) as the focal point. I view it more as a threat to our companies, but it should help their companies. But that isn’t the main driver of things right now. I think it is quite simple:

    1. China, and especially the CCP, needs to keep the middle class at least somewhat happy. We saw how quickly some protests over COVID turned China’s COVID policy around. The CCP wants to retain power, and while “suppression” is one of their tools, so is “appeasement.”
    2. I think that the “mistake” many are making is that we are “mirroring” (to China) what we are used to in response to financial market and economic weakness domestically. The reality is that most of the time, the Fed is the only game in town. While D.C. acted relatively quickly and aggressively in response to COVID, the central bank has usually done the heavy lifting here. So far, the Bank of China has not been as aggressive as we would have expected if they were serious about getting the market to bounce. But I think that is where we are making a mistake. I expect China and the CCP to have a multi-pronged approach. They will attack the problem from many angles.
    3. One pertinent point is that “normally” I laugh at efforts to restrict short selling. Yeah, you have to run for the hills briefly, but you know it will just take out the short base (which will become a dip buyer) and markets will find ways to short the things anyways (either through proxies, or some other vehicle or mechanism) and things will get worse again. I do not think that with respect to China’s efforts to restrict selling and short selling. “Where there is a will, there is a way” applies to China here.

    So, in this game of chicken, I’m staying long Chinese stocks.

    I couldn’t resist and I cherry picked the start date of Feb 2nd. For the month of February, FXI has done well versus the Nasdaq 100, but all we hear about is being bullish big tech/Mag 7 and bearish China. I think that is a lot like what we saw start in early November. Back then, the “laggards” had started to outperform, but it was ignored for several weeks until the trend was well in place, and only then did people jump on the bandwagon.

    Nasdaq versus FXI seems like a losing game of chicken, but I highly suspect that positioning and news flow is on my side.

    The Middle East

    There are so many horrific “games of chicken” being played in the Middle East that I don’t know where to begin. So I won’t. I will focus on the one that I think is most important for financial markets.

    That is Iran versus the U.S. Many see the two countries sitting across a chess board and moving pieces around. I see two drivers all geared up. So far away, that they look like specks on the horizon to each other. But they are travelling on a collision course and are gaining speed.

    The biggest risk for markets is that the U.S. feels compelled to stop Iranian oil shipments. There are far worse things going on for people in the region, but the one thing that I think would move markets dramatically would be if the U.S. feels that they need to stop the Iranian flow of oil. That may be a relatively high hurdle (Russia still sells oil, after all), but would be the one that would send shockwaves through the market.

    It is also the one game of chicken where I am incredibly fearful that we are not playing chicken properly!

    1. I don’t think we understand the other side’s outcome table very well. I am incredibly concerned that we are “mirroring” our own values when we think about their decisions. That would potentially be a big mistake.
    2. More importantly, and this is the first time we’ve discussed this, I think that we think how they think about us is wrong. That is incredibly confusing, but I think it is correct. We are trying to portray an image of power. Don’t cross this line or we will do this! And so far, we have done this. I think that the U.S. believes it has been successful in establishing fear. That the escalate to de-escalate strategy is working (see Escalation and Expansion). I am concerned that they think if they prod that line a few more times, we will “swerve.” That we don’t really have the stomach to not swerve. We are trying to convince them that we place a much higher value on not swerving than they believe we really have. I think that may be correct.

    This is a game of chicken with real life consequences, and it is far from over.

    Bottom Line

    Maybe Goldilocks is here, but I think that the bears are quite comfortable right now too. Lots of head-to-head battles, figuratively and literally.

    From a positioning standpoint:

    • 10-year to trade into the 4.4% to 4.6% range.
    • Start thinking about 2 cuts this year, rather than 4. The dot plot could surprise.
    • Be very cautious on risk here. Equities and the big winners in particular.
    • Still undecided on CRE and the banking space.
    • Credit will hold in better than other asset classes but will be pushed around by equity risk and if I’m right, expect a widening in credit spreads.

    In any case, it will be curious what phrase takes over the airwaves this week, though I suspect it will still be AI.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/25/2024 – 15:10

  • Yale Reinstituting Standardized Tests For Admission
    Yale Reinstituting Standardized Tests For Admission

    After a humiliating year for elite universities, culminating in the Presidents of UPenn, MIT and Harvard embarrassing themselves in front of congress before Harvard’s Claudine Gay was slapped with plagiarism allegations, it looks like a small sliver of common sense could be making its way back to the Ivy League.

    That’s because it was reported last week that Yale is once again instituting standardized tests for admission after years of keeping them optional for “DEI” reasons. 

    The university’s undergraduate admissions dean announced a change in their student selection process amidst ongoing debate over the efficacy of traditional tests. Critics argue these exams don’t fully capture a student’s potential, suggesting high school GPAs as a more accurate measure. The move, seen as a step towards fairness for disadvantaged students, aligns Yale with institutions like Harvard, MIT, and Dartmouth, which have already adjusted their admissions policies, according to The Daily Mail.

    Undergrad Admissions Dean Jeremiah Quinlan stated: “Standardized tests are imperfect and incomplete alone, but I also believe scores can help establish a student’s academic preparedness for college-level work.”

    “When used together with other elements in an application, especially a high school transcript, test scores help establish the academic foundation for any case we consider,” he continued. 

    Quinlan added: “Test scores convey a relatively small amount of information compared with the rich collection of insights and evidence we find in a complete application.”

    “Simply put, students with higher scores have been more likely to have higher Yale GPAs, and test scores are the single greatest predictor of a student’s performance in Yale courses in every model we have constructed,” he said. 

    “We have further found a statistically significant difference in average GPA between those who applied with and without test scores,” Quinlan said. 

    The Daily Mail wrote that the move away from mandatory standardized test scores resulted in a 166% surge in applications, from 35,000 to over 57,000, without significantly increasing the number of academically strong applicants. Similarly, MIT’s Dean of Admissions, Stuart Schmill, noted that reinstating standardized tests in 2022 led to a more diverse and academically prepared incoming class, underscoring that high grades alone do not predict student success. Dartmouth College has also followed suit, revisiting its admissions criteria.

    Along the same vein, last week we published that elite colleges were once again reconsidering SAT score requirements. 

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

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

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

    Could we be entering an era of school’s starting to rid themselves of their woke ideologies? We’ll see – needless to say, we’re not optimistic…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/25/2024 – 14:35

  • Why Central Bank Digital Currencies Are Unnecessary And Dangerous
    Why Central Bank Digital Currencies Are Unnecessary And Dangerous

    Authored by Daniel Lacalle,

    The main central banks have been deliberating on the concept of introducing a digital currency. However, many citizens fail to grasp the rationale behind it when the majority of transactions in major global currencies are carried out electronically. Nevertheless, a central bank digital currency is much more than electronic money. I will explain why.

    Central banks are raising interest rates and enacting restrictive monetary policies as quickly as governmental regulations allow because they are aware that monetary factors are the primary cause of inflation. Central banks have recently lost credibility by initially disregarding the inflation danger, then attributing it to transitory factors, and finally responding belatedly and gradually.

    In a world where there is an excess in money supply growth, there are mechanisms in place to prevent a significant rise in consumer prices caused by the destruction of the purchasing power of the issued currency. Quantitative easing is subject to some constraints that partially prevent inflationary forces. As the banking channel serves as the transmission mechanism of monetary policy, credit demand acts as a constraint on inflationary pressures.

    Now, consider if the transmission mechanism was direct and utilizing only one channel, the central bank. It is not the same to have a police officer walking down your street than to have a police officer in your kitchen watching your every move.

    A central bank digital currency would be directly issued to your account held at the central bank. At best, it is surveillance masquerading as currency. The central bank would have precise information of your currency usage, savings, borrowing, spending, and transactions. It can enhance the fungibility of money to prevent the common but unfounded problem of “excess savings.” Moreover, as central banks become more politically involved, they might impose penalties on individuals who spend in a manner they consider unsuitable, while rewarding those who follow their recommendations. The entire privacy system and monetary limit mechanism would be removed. Moreover, if the central bank makes a mistake and creates an excess of money supply, as shown in 2020, it would immediately make consumer prices rocket. If the money supply increases dramatically in a year, we would experience massive inflation levels as the existing constraints of the transmission mechanism are eliminated.

    Consider a scenario where you have a single account, a central bank, and the government. Guess what would happen? Full monetary financing of government spending leading to elevated inflation within a few years and the destruction of the private sector. Central bank digital currencies are likely to be a computerized rendition of the French Assignats. High inflation, complete government control, and financial repression.

    Central bank digital currencies are unnecessary and dangerous. You cannot initiate an experiment pf such magnitude when the autonomy of central banks has been questioned for years and there is abundant evidence of mistakes made with policy measures that do not acknowledge the danger of increased inflation and economic stagnation. Central banks have never successfully prevented bubbles, high levels of risk-taking, excessive debt, or identified inflationary pressures. Given such history, no one should support a proposal that would grant them complete authority and control over the financial and monetary system. What do central banks mean when they discuss a novel digital currency? It is a further advancement in the ongoing process of eroding the purchasing power of the currency, disguised under the objective of enhancing oversight of payments and facilitating the tracking of specific payment methods.

    The primary arguments for considering a central bank digital currency are efficiency and enhancing the transmission mechanism of monetary policy. However, none of them make sense. Central banks often claim the need to enhance the transmission mechanism of monetary policy, but many of their statements are founded on an inaccurate belief that there is an excess of savings that requires a change in behaviour. By manipulating the cost and quantity of the currency issued, central banks aim to correct what they perceive as imbalances. However, monetary policy rarely addresses the largest imbalances, which are the ones created by government deficits and debt accumulation. Disguising risk in sovereign debt leads to more imprudent fiscal policies and adds to the risk of bubbles in financial markets as perceptions of risk are clouded by low rates and high liquidity. A digital currency does not enhance the transmission mechanism of monetary policy unless the word “enhance” is used to hide a desire to boost the size of government in the economy through the erosion of the purchasing power of the currency and the constant monetary financing of public deficits. Another aspect to consider is efficiency. Central banks appear to prioritize the regulation of monetary transactions and encourage spending regardless of the risks involved. Creating a central bank digital money system is not more efficient. It is another form of financial control. If negative interest rates are ineffective in stimulating economic agents, some believe that implementing negative rates and devaluing the currency faster using a digital currency may be more successful. They are wrong. The economy does not strengthen by making the currency a disappearing reserve of value. Introducing a central bank digital currency is unlikely to reduce economic risks or stimulate productive investment but will encourage short-term malinvestment. Central banks are unable to compel economic agents to spend and invest, especially when their strategies continually focus on encouraging debt and prolonging government imbalances. The process of any asset becoming a widely used currency is highly democratic. It is beyond the jurisdiction of governments and cannot be enforced. When governments and central banks implement financial repression and devalue their currency, citizens may turn to other forms of payment that are considered genuine money. Cryptocurrencies have emerged due to a lack of trust in fiat currencies and the ongoing efforts of central banks and governments to devalue currencies in order to conceal underlying fiscal imbalances. A central bank digital currency is a contradiction in terms—an oxymoron. Citizens demand cryptocurrencies because they are not controlled by central banks that seek to grow the money supply and induce currency depreciation through inflation. Central banks should prioritize safeguarding the purchasing power of savings and salaries rather than seeking to destroy them. Using new means of financial repression may lead to a loss of confidence in the local currency. Once central banks acknowledge that they have exceeded the appropriate limits of their policy, it will already be too late.

    Central bank digital currencies are unnecessary and dangerous.

    The benefits of technology, digitalization and ease of transactions are already there. There is no need to create a currency issued directly to an account at the central bank. They are unnecessary as well because there is absolutely no need to compete with a digital yuan or bitcoin. China is moving closer to sound monetary policy and its central bank is purchasing more gold, not the opposite.

    If central banks want to compete with other currencies or cryptocurrencies there is only one way: Make it absolutely clear that you will defend the reserve of value status of your currency. There is no need for the euro or the US dollar to compete with bitcoin or a digital yuan if the Fed and the ECB truly defend their reserve of value and purchasing power.

    However, it looks like central banks want to behave like a monopoly that sells bad quality products but demands to remain the main supplier by eliminating the competition. The Fed and the ECB do not need to compete against cryptocurrencies if they show the world that they will defend the purchasing power of the US dollar and the euro.

    The world’s financial challenges are not solved by imposing total control implemented by a monetary monopoly whose independence is seriously questioned, but by increasing competition and independence.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/25/2024 – 14:00

  • From CIA To 'Trust & Safety': The Silicon Valley-US Intel Revolving Door Is Bigger Than You Thought
    From CIA To ‘Trust & Safety’: The Silicon Valley-US Intel Revolving Door Is Bigger Than You Thought

    The US government’s involvement in all forms of media is well known, and goes back to the 1940s.

    And from the ‘Twitter Files’ – Elon Musk’s release of thousands of internal documents which exposed the Censorship Industrial Complex, and the ongoing dot-connecting being done by independent journalists, we know that both the CIA and FBI have been meddling in content moderation.

    But just how deep does this rabbit hole of narrative shaping and censorship go? Deep…

    In a Saturday X thread, user ‘Name Redacted‘ has compiled a stunning look at how career US intelligence personnel have infiltrated big tech:

    Unpacking the thread (as it cuts off above), ‘Redacted’ writes (emphasis ours):

    Google & Meta function as extensions of the US Intelligence Community. With Jacqueline Lopour, Google’s Head of Trust & Safety, and Aaron Berman, Meta’s Head of Elections Content/Misinformation Policy, both being career CIA officers, it underscores the CIA’s substantial control over online censorship.

    Why is this CIA-Big Tech revolving door, where career CIA officers wield power to censor & decide what misinformation is, purposefully suppressed in the broader conversation about censorship?

    Why are career CIA officers like Jacqueline Lopour & Nick Rossmann, who both have a history of spreading misinformation & promoting the RussiaGate conspiracy theory, now in senior roles in Trust & Safety at Google, deciding what is misinformation & overseeing content moderation?

    The cumulative number of former Intelligence Community personnel hired by Meta & Google since 2018 is staggering. Before 2018, there were only a handful. Here are the combined hires by both companies:
    CIA-36
    FBI-68
    NSA-44
    DHS/CISA-68
    State Dept-86
    DOD-121

    Continued:

    Why would Google specifically choose these six senior executives to attend an @ISF_OSAC
     event in DC?

    Everyone in this picture, alongside former CIA Director Robert Gates, is a current senior executive at Google & a former career CIA officer, except for the attorney from Perkins Coie (2nd from the left):

    Jacqueline Lopour, a career CIA officer, played a significant role in developing various intelligence programs at Google & YouTube:

    *Manages intel operations for violent extremism, misinformation, hate speech, etc.
    *Led development of intelligence programs for global election analysis.
    *Developed the “YouTube Intelligence Desk.”
    *Developed Google’s first machine-learning threat detection & analysis program.
    *Provided daily COVID-19 briefings to senior leadership at Google & YouTube CEO

    In 2015, Lopour authored a rather bizarre article titled: “The best reason for Iran deal? The West will learn where to drop bombs.”

    Nick Rossmann spent over 5 years at the CIA before joining Google in 2022 as Senior Manager of Trust & Safety. His activity on Twitter/X is troubling, especially considering his current position in content moderation.

    Why does Nick Rossmann have a problem with white people?

    Here are some examples of Rossmann’s unhinged behavior on Twitter/X (all archived):

    Negative tweets about white people:

    archive.vn/ZdKeT

    archive.vn/PYgWh

    archive.vn/rOOpB

    Hoping Trump voters cough on their grandparents (giving them COVID) & “get to rot”– archive.is/rppqw

    Asking Trump if he is an agent of a foreign power – archive.vn/xi7t8

    Calling Trump “a lunatic & a racist”, tagging Keith Olbermann & using the hashtag “Resist” – archive.vn/Pk5Kh

    Calling anti-vaxxers Nazis & Confederates – archive.vn/YWMDD

    Christopher Porter spent most of his professional career in the Intelligence Community. After 9 years at the CIA, he joined ODNI where he was Head of the IC Cyber Analysis Council leading a team of CIA, FBI, NSA & DOD regarding US elections.

    While at the ODNI, he regularly briefed President Biden so it’s only natural that as of June 2022, he joined Google as Head of Threat Intelligence. Porter is also a member of the Atlantic Council

    His LinkedIn bio states that he likes to talk about Russia & election security. LinkedIn-  archive.is/pFOI2

    Deborah Wituski joined Google in 2018 as Senior Director Global Intelligence. Her only prior work experience was 19 years at the CIA, where she was Chief of Staff to the Director. Wituski is a member of Council on Foreign Relations.

    Katherine Tobin joined Google in 2021. Her career path is like the others listed in this thread: after 6 years at Booz Allen Hamilton, she spent 4 years at the ODNI, followed by 4 years at the CIA, & then returned to the ODNI for another 3 years.

    With over 10 years of experience in the Intelligence Community, Google was the obvious choice for her. On her LinkedIn bio, she states that her favorite problems to solve are promoting DEI

    The thread continues with several more examples, while ‘Name Redacted’ says there are “over 100 more examples of individuals whose sole work history is within the Intelligence Community or career State Department diplomats.

    Many of these individuals hold positions as content moderators and policy managers. Most of them joined Google/YouTube after 2018.

    Is it merely a coincidence that censorship has increased aggressively since then?

    Read the rest of the thread here (and consider giving Name Redacted a follow).

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/25/2024 – 13:25

  • The New Satoshi Emails: 120 Pages Detailing Work On Bitcoin
    The New Satoshi Emails: 120 Pages Detailing Work On Bitcoin

    Authored by Pete Rizzo via BItcoin Magazine.com,

    Satoshi Nakamoto’s earliest collaborator Martii ‘Sirius’ Malmi has released his entire email correspondence with Bitcoin’s creator.

    Spurred by an ongoing lawsuit in the U.K., the new emails are the most significant addition to the canon of what we know about Bitcoin’s still anonymous creator. 

    Here are the most important new findings.

    EMAIL #1: SATOSHI’S BITCOIN SCALING ASSUMPTIONS

    When asked how Bitcoin might scale in the future, Satoshi theorized the network might have a maximum of 100,000 nodes. 

    Here he goes into the calculations assessing the economics of bandwidth costs to nodes (read: miners) in propagating transactions across the network, the economic costs that would incur, and how that could be cost effectively passed on to users. 

    He also discusses the implementation of users paying fees, and hints at the potential for the fee necessary for confirmation of your transaction being market driven due to the processing capacity of the network.

    All in all, it’s interesting napkin math, though nothing out of the ordinary for those who have read Satoshi’s full Bitcoin forum posts. 

    There Satoshi talked frequently about his vision for how the network might grow larger, and it’s notable much of his ideas were not proven to be viable based on subsequent development work.

    EMAIL #2: BITCOIN DOESN’T WASTE ENERGY

    Though he wouldn’t stick around to see the tremendous uptick in Bitcoin mining using stranded resources, it turns out, Satoshi knew the network was greent.

    One of the first criticisms to be lobbied at his new creation, Satoshi spent time addressing the idea that Bitcoin mining was wasteful on the forums, most notably saying that not having a currency like Bitcoin would be the bigger waste. 

    Here, however, he expands on the idea in more detail, and in a more vivid and descriptive way than we’ve seen before. 

    EMAIL #3: SATOSHI ON TIME-STAMPING 

    A headed debated today remains whether Bitcoin is money, or whether it can or does have other ancillary uses. 

    In this email exchange, Satoshi seems to offer some insight on the debate, noting his belief the blockchain can be used as a distributed time-stamping server. This is akin to what has happened in Guatemala, where the blockchain has been used to certify contentious elections in recent years. 

    EMAIL #4: SATOSHI TALKS DIGICASH

    Satoshi describing the differences between #Bitcoin and DigiCash, David Chaum’s failed e-money.

    This is notable as Chaum’s work had a profound impact on the cypherpunks, including Hal Finney. He specifically discusses the differences in privacy properties of the two models, and notes that unlike Chaum’s scheme did not support an offline model, requiring all participants to be online to make use of the system. 

    He also explains the finite supply cap of bitcoin. 

    EMAIL #5: SATOSHI WAS CONCERNED ABOUT PROMOTING BITCOIN

    Satoshi was concerned about his legal risk in launching #Bitcoin, noting he was “uncomfortable” with explicitly labeling it an investment. 

    Note: Here also we see he didn’t come up with the term “cryptocurrency” himself.

    EMAIL #6: SATOSHI GOT BURNED OUT ON BITCOIN

    By July 2009, Satoshi was tired, saying he “needed a break” from Bitcoin. Here, he also explains Hal’s absence from the work. He also mentions spending a period of 18 months at that point developing Bitcoin. 

    A curious note as well, he asks Malmi if he had any ideas for applications people can actually use Bitcoin for. 

    EMAIL #7: BITCOIN, A WAY TO GET FREE MONEY

    Satoshi discussing how #Bitcoin might gain adoption. Of note is his emphasis that Bitcoin was easy to obtain given that you could mine it on a computer. He also goes to postulate how the nature of a market trading for Bitcoin would evolve, discussing how skeptical people might be of its value, stating he was confident the increasing mining difficulty would prove its scarcity to people. 

    Very different from how we think about BTC today in terms of acquiring it, but demonstrating a prescience of how people would mentally value it in the future. 

    EMAIL #8: A MYSTERIOUS BITCOIN DONOR EMERGES

    In June 2010, someone offered to donate $2,000 to Satoshi for his #Bitcoin work. Notably, he had the donor send it to Martti’s address. He also communicated care that the donor’s privacy was respected.

    EMAIL #9: SATOSHI WAS A FAN OF FREE TRANSACTIONS 

    Already known, but Satoshi was pretty adamant that early users consider #Bitcoin “free.” Here he is discussing removing transaction fees from the UX of an early software. 

    It’s interesting that his reasoning was to obscure this feature from users, but simultaneously acknowledged its necessity in the far future. 

    EMAIL #10: SATOSHI WAS DEDICATED TO HIS BITCOIN WORK

    Satoshi worked on #Bitcoin on Christmas day. There are some interesting implications here to consider regarding his personal life. 

    EMAIL #11: BITCOIN, A WEB CURRENCY FOR CURRENCY TRADING?

    Satoshi saw #Bitcoin taking hold as a way to trade other internet currencies like Liberty Reserve. He also goes on to discuss the potential for markets selling gift cards for bitcoin, which wound up becoming and is to this day a significant market for bitcoin. 

    Note: Liberty Reserve was later shut down by the US.

    EMAIL #12: SATOSHI’S FIRST DISAPPEARANCE 

    Satoshi had a mysterious leave of absence from #Bitcoin in 2010. Here he is talking about it with Martti, though it’s notably also short on details.

    EMAIL #13: SATOSHI REALIZED BITCOIN WASN’T ANONYMOUS

    It was Satoshi who removed the language that Bitcoin was “anonymous” from http://Bitcoin.org. He worried it made Bitcoin sound “shady.” This echoes his later sentiments around Wikileaks announcing their acceptance of bitcoin for donations. 

    EMAIL #14: SATOSHI GIVES PRAISE TO HIS PROTEGE

    Worth noting given the historical revisionism around this, Satoshi thought very highly of Gavin Andresen. Here he is praising Gavin and referring to someone else as a “goofball.”

    EMAIL #15: SATOSHI SAYS SAYONARA 

    We finally have a copy of the email Satoshi sent other developers before taking his name off the project website. As they’ve said, Satoshi doesn’t mention his intention to step back from the project at all.

    Overall no substantial new information is brought to light, but the emails do give a new angle to Satoshi’s interactions with others involved in the project before his departure. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 02/25/2024 – 12:50

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Feb 25

Today’s News 25th February 2024

  • Taking Nuclear War Seriously: Gingrich
    Taking Nuclear War Seriously: Gingrich

    Authored by Newt Gingrich via RealClear Wire,

    It is vital that Americans take nuclear war seriously.

    For the last three and a half decades, since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Americans have relaxed and behaved as though they were essentially safe from nuclear events.

    When President Bill Clinton and I created the Hart-Rudman Commission in 1998, we hoped to create a deep rethinking of American security strategies. The Commission was brilliantly led by Gen. Charles Boyd and produced a remarkable report.

    We warned that the greatest threat to the United States was a nuclear attack in an American city – likely by a terrorist group. We proposed a Department of Homeland Security capable of dealing with three simultaneous nuclear events. That would have been a department with the discipline and training we associate with military organizations or first-class fire departments.

    As a sign of how little people understood the danger of nuclear weapons, the department degenerated into a bureaucratic mess of enormous incompetence. Today, it cannot cope with unarmed civilians at the border. It would likely be totally incapable of dealing with one (let alone three simultaneous) nuclear events.

    Yet, nuclear war is becoming increasingly possible. When dealing with the Soviet Union, it was conceivable that a strategy of mutual assured destruction could sustain a balance of deterrence to keep nuclear war at bay. Neither country would launch a nuclear weapon, because there was a virtual certainty of annihilation. In many ways, mutual assured destruction resembled Abraham Lincoln’s response to a duel challenge. Lincoln chose shotguns at three feet, and the other guy backed down.

    Now, however, we have countries getting nuclear weapons that may not care if we retaliate.

    It is possible that the Iranian theocratic dictatorship would accept the exchange of Tehran for Tel Aviv as a net plus on ideological grounds.

    We have no understanding of the values and thought processes of Kim Jung Un and his leadership (including his sister who is supposedly more hard line than he is). Faced with the growing economic, technological, and quality of life achievements of South Korea, it’s possible the North Korean regime might be willing to risk a nuclear attack as the only element in which it has an advantage.

    Pakistan is unstable, and its long-time opponent India is steadily growing. This could lead to a nuclear conflict if Pakistan becomes threatened by India’s size – or if India aggressively responds to a perceived Pakistani threat. Ultimately, a nuclear conflict could occur in the region from pure misunderstanding.

    The Russian dictatorship is a dangerous combination of Soviet training (Vladimir Putin was a KGB officer and is still deeply loyal to the spirit of the Soviet Union) and Great Russian Nationalism. Furthermore, the depth of Putin and his allies’ corruption – and the intensity and savagery of his response to domestic opponents – create a psychological environment in which the use of nuclear weapons as an alternative to defeat becomes increasingly possible. Putin himself has suggested the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Recently a close ally of his suggested nuclear weapons would be used on London and Washington if Russia was forced to give back any land in Ukraine.

    Finally, the most rational and stable of our opponents with nuclear capability is Communist China (this alone should tell us how unstable the world is becoming). It is possible that with a declining population, a rapidly decaying economy, and a growing sense of frustration and global isolation, General Secretary Xi Jinping could decide to risk invading Taiwan or forcing a crisis in the South China Sea. Conflict could spiral out of control with remarkable speed.

    Faced with this reality, we need to revisit Herman Kahn’s Classic study “Thinking About the Unthinkable.” To understand how dangerous a nuclear attack would be, it is helpful to also go back 70 years to Philip Wylie’s astonishing novel “Tomorrow.” It is the story of a nuclear attack on a single city and the power of a nuclear weapon to destroy life and civilization. This was the book which convinced me as a high school student that we had to do virtually everything to avoid nuclear war – and survive it if it came.

    I recently reread Stephen Hunter’s 1989 novel “The Day Before Midnight,” in which a Russian nationalist remarkably like Putin seizes an American ICBM silo in an effort to start a nuclear war.

    If we took nuclear war seriously, we would do three things immediately:

    First, we would build an Israeli quality missile defense system at every level. It would take out missiles as they leave their silos, through their time in space to reentry, and finally at a point of defense. President Ronald Reagan proposed a Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983. It was ridiculed as Star Wars. Its technological heirs have saved tens of thousands of Israeli lives. A global version could save hundreds of millions of lives.

    Second, we would develop the domestic survival system capable of responding to three or more nuclear events – with hospitals, security, construction workers, and whatever else it took to minimize loss of life. This would involve stockpiling radiation survival medicine, food, water, etc.

    Third, we would have a crash program to harden our entire system against a potential electromagnetic pulse attack. As Bill Forstchen wrote in his remarkable book, “One Second After,” an EMP attack would be devastating and civilization destroying.

    We were surprised at Pearl Harbor. We were surprised on Sept. 11, 2001. We cannot afford to be surprised by a nuclear attack.

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

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/24/2024 – 23:20

  • Trump Easily Defeats Haley In Her Home State Of South Carolina
    Trump Easily Defeats Haley In Her Home State Of South Carolina

    Former President Donald Trump completely smoked Republican challenger Nikki Haley in her own state of South Carolina.

    The Associated Press called the primary for Trump shortly after polls closed at 7 p.m. ET, making Haley the first major-party candidate to loser her home state in the modern primary era, the Epoch Times reports.

    With an estimated 80% of the votes counted, Trump led Haley 60% to 39.4%.

    “There’s a spirit that I’ve never seen, Trump told supporters at the South Carolina State Fairgrounds in Columbia shortly after the race was called.

    “I have never seen the Republican party so unified as it is now.”

    The crowd erupted in applause, with some screaming “I LOVE YOU!”

    “This was a great moment in American history,” said South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, who joined Trump on stage, adding “we just hit maximum velocity!“

    During the speech, Trump touched on the crisis at the southern border.

    “You look outside, and you see all of the horror; you see millions and millions of people coming across the border illegally,” he said, emphasizing his plan to make America “respected again” if he’s reelected.

    “Right now, we are a laughing stock around the world. We are going to be respected again, respected like never before.”

    Haley not dropping out

    Meanwhile, Haley is moving on to Michigan on Sunday despite the staggering and humiliating loss in her home state primary – insisting that regardless of how she does in her own state, she’ll move on to Super Tuesday on March 5.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/24/2024 – 22:45

  • Pharmacies Across The US Report Outages After Cyberattack
    Pharmacies Across The US Report Outages After Cyberattack

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

    Pharmacies across the United States were suffering outages as a health technology company reported that it was the target of a cyberattack.

    The pharmacy area of a store in Mount Prospect, Ill., on Sept. 21, 2006. (Tim Boyle/Getty Images)

    Change Healthcare, which handles patient payments and orders for pharmacies around the nation, confirmed in a statement on Thursday afternoon that it noticed a cybersecurity incident impacting its networks, according to its website.

    “Change Healthcare is experiencing a network interruption related to a cyber security issue and our experts are working to address the matter. Once we became aware of the outside threat, in the interest of protecting our partners and patients, we took immediate action to disconnect our systems to prevent further impact,” Change Healthcare told news outlets.

    It added that “we believe the issue is specific to Change Healthcare and all other systems across UnitedHealth Group are operational,” while “the disruption is expected to last at least through the day.”

    The company said in a series of updates that it noticed the outages on Wednesday morning. The outage appeared to be still ongoing as of around 12 p.m. ET.

    The nature of the cybersecurity issue was not disclosed, and other details were not provided. It’s also unclear when the service outage will be resolved.

    Several pharmacies this week have said they were unable to access the systems and reported an outage due to the cyberattack, according to reports.

    For example, Scheurer Health, based in Michigan, wrote on social media that it couldn’t process prescriptions via their insurance due to the “nationwide outage from the largest prescription processor in North America,” referring to Change Healthcare.

    Another Michigan company, Canadian Lakes Pharmacy, wrote that “there is a nationwide outage from some of the largest prescription processors in North America,” while adding: “We CAN receive your RX but MOST insurance plans we cannot bill to your insurance company. If you can wait a day or so to pick up your RX that would be great. If you need it today we can do our best to accommodate individual needs.”

    Another firm, Athenahealth, said it was informed of the issue by Change and the “problem is being actively worked on by Change Healthcare, and athenaEDITM is monitoring the issue closely,” according to reports. It warned that customers might see that their transactions showing up with a “no response” status.

    “We are experiencing a temporary pharmacy outage at the 22d [sic] Medical Group. We understand the inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience as we work diligently to resolve the issue. Our team is working to restore complete pharmacy services as soon as possible,” reads a social media post from the 22nd Medical Group, a medical center connected to Kansas’ McConnell Air Force Base.

    It added that the “estimated date for resolving this issue will be tomorrow or later. We will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates on our progress.”

    A number of health care companies use Change Healthcare for making payments and their financials, according to Forbes magazine. It means that a heath care company that uses Change could suffer monetary losses amid the outage.

    Change Healthcare is owned by health insurance UnitedHealth Group and became a subsidiary in 2022 in a deal worth $7.8 billion. It means that the company has access to the patient records of a significant number of Americans. It’s not clear if the cybersecurity incident led to the unauthorized access of health care or personal information.

    Change Healthcare did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Other Outages

    Notably, a significant number of AT&T users across the United States on Thursday morning reported service outages, leaving them unable to send texts, make phone calls, or use their cellular data.  A subsidiary, Cricket Wireless, also suffered outages.

    Due to the disruption, a number of law enforcement, government, and emergency services said that AT&T customers couldn’t call 911, drawing a response from state and federal officials.

    By mid-day, however, AT&T said it had restored access to about 75 percent of customers. The company has not disclosed why the service outage occurred.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/24/2024 – 22:10

  • Visualizing Wealth Distribution In America (1990-2023)
    Visualizing Wealth Distribution In America (1990-2023)

    Wealth distribution in America has become increasingly concentrated since 1990.

    Today, the share of wealth held by the richest 0.1% is currently at its peak, with households in the highest rung having a minimum of $38 million in wealth. Overall, roughly 131,000 households fall into this elite wealth bracket.

    This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu, charts patterns in U.S. household wealth, based on data from the Federal Reserve.

    Distribution of U.S. Household Wealth

    Below, we show how the share of household wealth breaks down by wealth bracket:

    Figures are as of Q4 for each year aside form 2023 where Q3 data was used based on the most recently available data.

    With $20 trillion in wealth, the top 0.1% earn on average $3.3 million in income each year.

    The greatest share of their wealth is held in corporate equities and mutual funds, which make up over one-third of their assets. Since 1990, their total share of wealth has grown from from 9% to 14% in 2023—the biggest jump across all wealth brackets.

    In fact, the richest 0.1% and 1% were the only two rungs to see their share increase since 1990.

    Meanwhile, the greatest decline was seen across the 50-90% bracket—households in the lower-middle and middle classes. Those in this rung have a minimum $165,000 in wealth with the majority of assets in real estate, followed by pension and retirement benefits.

    Averaging $51,000 in wealth, the bottom 50% make up the lowest share, accounting for 3% of the wealth distribution in America. Income growth across this bracket has increased by over 10% between 2020 and 2022, higher than all other brackets aside from the top 1%.

    Overall, the top 10% richest own more than the bottom 90% combined, with $95 trillion in wealth.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/24/2024 – 21:35

  • Trump Seeks Dismissal Of Mar-a-Lago Case, Says Jack Smith Lacks Authority
    Trump Seeks Dismissal Of Mar-a-Lago Case, Says Jack Smith Lacks Authority

    Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Former President Donald Trump filed several motions to dismiss a classified documents case being pursued against him in Florida on Thursday, arguing that, amongst other things, special counsel Jack Smith “lacks the authority” to prosecute the case.

    Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference held at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Feb. 8, 2024. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

    In one of four motions, attorneys for the former president contend that neither the U.S. Constitution nor Congress had officially established the special counsel’s office, rendering Mr. Smith’s appointment invalid.

    Furthermore, they argue that the special counsel’s office is being funded “off the books” by the Biden administration.

    The motion, which cites the Appointments Clause, argues that Attorney General Merrick Garland did not have the authority to appoint a “like-minded political ally” as special counsel “without Senate confirmation.”

    “As such, Jack Smith lacks the authority to prosecute this action,” the motion reads.

    President Trump’s lawyers argue that the only remedy is to dismiss the superseding indictment.

    The Appointments Clause stipulates that all federal offices, except for the president’s, must be established by Congress and appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate. This is with the exception of federal offices created through the Necessary and Proper Clause, which empowers Congress to make laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution the powers vested in the government.

    “There is, however, no statute establishing the Office of Special Counsel,” the motion reads.

    “As a result, because neither the Constitution nor Congress have created the office of the ‘Special Counsel,’ Smith’s appointment is invalid and any prosecutorial power he seeks to wield is ultra vires,” meaning beyond his authority.

    Funding of Smith’s Office Challenged

    In addition to arguing that Mr. Smith’s appointment was unlawful, the four motions argued that the case should be dismissed on the basis of presidential immunity, the Presidential Records Act, and unconstitutional vagueness.

    Mr. Garland appointed Mr. Smith as special counsel on Nov. 18, 2022, to “prosecute federal crimes arising from the investigation” into President Trump’s handling of classified documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach.

    President Trump’s attorneys argue in their Thursday filing that Mr. Smith, at best, is classified as an employee rather than an “officer” under the statutes cited by Mr. Garland in making his appointment, which they say lacks the legal foundation required by the Appointments Clause.

    Attorneys for the former president argue that Mr. Smith’s office is drawing from an endless “off the books” pot of money from the Department of Justice (DOJ) instead of the ordinary budget process, in violation of the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution.

    “President Biden’s DOJ is paying for this politically-motivated prosecution of Biden’s chief political rival ‘off the books,’ without accountability or authorization,” the motion reads.

    President Trump’s attorneys, Christopher Kise and Todd Blanche, note in their motion that Mr. Smith’s office spent nearly $13 million in Fiscal Year 2023.

    According to the filing, this money did not come from the DOJ’s budget but from the “permanent indefinite appropriation” only available to independent counsels appointed under the Independent Counsel Act or other law—and not to special counsels.

    “Smith is not an independent counsel, but the nearly $13 million that Smith spent in Fiscal Year 2023—with no accountability—is more than 10% of the annual budgets of DOJ’s Tax and Environment and Natural Resources Divisions,” the motion reads.

    A spokesman from Mr. Smith’s office declined to the comment when contacted by The Epoch Times.

    Presidential Records Act, Vague Law, Immunity

    In three other motions filed on Thursday, attorneys argue that President Trump is immune from prosecution, had the authority to designate the records as personal while in office, and that Section 793(e) is vague and doesn’t apply to the president.

    The former president’s attorneys argue in a motion that he exercised his Article II executive authority to designate the records as personal while still in office and that the Presidential Records Act (PRA) granted President Trump “unreviewable discretion” to do so.

    Emphasizing the president’s role as the “constitutional superior of the archivist,” the attorneys assert that President Trump possessed the authority to determine the classification of records during his tenure.

    The motion maintains that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) holds no sway over personal records.

    Furthermore, the attorneys assert that the sole recourse available to NARA is through civil enforcement mechanisms, not criminal investigations. They contend that this wipes out the basis for the 32 counts against President Trump outlined in the superseding indictment.

    “Accordingly, pursuant to the PRA, the Superseding Indictment must be dismissed,” the motion reads.

    President Trump’s attorneys, in a separate motion, asked the court to dismiss counts one through 32, citing the “void-for-vagueness doctrine.” They argue that the law is unclear and, therefore, unconstitutional when applied to President Trump.

    They further argue that President Trump is “immune from prosecution” one counts one through 32 because those charges are based on his “alleged decision to designate records as personal” and to “cause the records to be moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago.”

    “As alleged in the Superseding Indictment, President Trump made this decision while he was still in office. The alleged decision was an official act, and as such is subject to presidential immunity,” the motion reads.

    This report was updated with a statement from Mr. Smith’s office.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/24/2024 – 21:00

  • Alexei Navalny's Death And Curious Well-Timed Coincidences
    Alexei Navalny’s Death And Curious Well-Timed Coincidences

    Authored by Edward Curtin via Off-Guardian.org,

    There is propaganda by commission and propaganda by omission, the former often serve to conceal the latter. Timing is crucial.

    That the U.S. President Joseph Biden, his British, NATO, Israeli allies, and their corporate media mouthpieces are in need of a major propaganda victory is obvious. They are losing the war in Ukraine, have been condemned throughout the world for the genocide in Gaza, and are ruling over a disintegrating empire. Biden and Netanyahu’s political lives are at serious risk. And so they have just rolled out a full-court propaganda press effort aimed at covering their losses. It should be crystal clear to anyone who can use logic to see the timing involved.

    The great French scholar of propaganda and technology, Jacques Ellul, wrote years ago that propaganda “is not the touch of a magic wand. It is based on slow constant impregnation. It creates convictions and compliance through imperceptible influences that are effective only by continuous repetition.”

    However, once this groundwork has been laid over time – as it has been with the continuous anti-Russia Putin hysteria and support for Israel’s Zionist policies – it can be intensely ratcheted up in exigent circumstances when the long-serving narrative is in jeopardy, such as it is now.

    Once the death in a Russian prison of the Western backed Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was announced on Friday, February 16, 2024, it was immediately followed by a cascade of anti-Russia pronouncements whose aim was to not only continue the demonization of Russia and its President Vladimir Putin but to serve other purposes as well.

    With one fell stroke, the calm history lesson about Ukraine, Russia, and U.S./NATO that Putin had just delivered to the world via Tucker Carlson disappeared down the memory hole, as Biden, without any evidence, declared that “Putin and his thugs” and Putin’s “brutality” are responsible for Navalny’s death.

    This, of course, is a replay of the false charges sans evidence waged against Russia for an earlier poisoning of Navalny, the Skripals (since disappeared by the British government), Alexander Litvinenko, et al.

    Shortly after, Zelensky, performing his puppet routine while coincidently appearing at the Munich Security Conference – on Saturday, February 17, a day after Navalny’s death was announced – with Navalny’s then widow, said it was “obvious” that Putin had killed Navalny, while Biden pushed for more money for Ukraine’s doomed war against Russia, a U.S./NATO war created by the U.S. from the start with its aggressive military push to Russia’s borders and its 2015 Ukrainian coup d’état that ousted the pro-Russian leader, setting the stage for Russia’s incursion into Ukraine in February 2022. That Putin told Carlson these obvious facts, while slyly mentioning to Carlson that he understood that Carlson once tried to join the CIA, is now for most people in the West history lost behind the headlines, if it ever were anything more.

    All this happened while Russia pushed through Ukraine’s defenses and took the city of Avdeevka, which had long been contested. With each day that passes, it is obvious that Biden’s Ukraine war strategy is that of a desperate politician on the ropes and that Putin has completely outfoxed the American desperados and their NATO European stooges. The MSM prefer to suggest otherwise, that hope is just around the corner if we send billions more dollars and weapons, and if with the help of our British friends, we take the war further into Russian territory and risk a nuclear confrontation. But we are in a propaganda war for the minds of the Western public.

    Much of the rest of the world has seen through the risible MSM headlines used to delude the public that Russia is the great threat to world peace and stability. Like the previous Russia-gate lies, this ongoing one, coinciding with Navalny’s death, is timed to divert the public’s attention from key ongoing matters.

    Tomorrow and Wednesday, Julian Assange will have his final appeal in a British court to prevent his extradition to the United States. Biden wants this journalist prosecuted for doing the job that the MSM have failed to do: Exposing the facts about the ruthless U.S. killing machine. But the bruhaha about Navalny has rendered the absolute hypocrisy over the torture and imprisonment of the innocent and brave Assange secondary and “inconsequential.” As intended, this has now become an afterthought as the mainstream media’s Russia-obsessed headlines flow uninterruptedly. The New York Times, the key propaganda organ for the Biden administration and the deep-state, reports just today that “The gravity of President Putin’s threats is now dawning on Europe” and “Navalny’s Widow Promises to Carry on Opposition Leader’s Work.”  These are typical Times’ rants.  As is its Magazine article headline from yesterday “Marilyn Robinson [the writer and friend of Barack Obama] Considers Biden a Gift of God.”

    I don’t think the Palestinians would agree, but then too, their slaughter by Israel with U.S. assistance – more than 29,000 Palestinians in Gaza alone have been killed so far – and the coming IDF invasion of Rafah, have also been pushed to the back pages or to nowhere by the propaganda about Navalny and Russia.

    I won’t mention the Russian election in mid-March that might possibly factor into all this since we all will be dutifully and timely told that the evil killer Putin is a dictator, ignorant, ruthless – add your own adjectives – and is no doubt trying to rig the fair-and-square U.S. November presidential election – for someone, just as he did in 2016.

    Nor mention The NY Times article of February 17 by David Sanger and Julian Barnes that the “U.S Fears Russia Might Put a Nuclear Weapon in Space.”

    Everyone knows that the Russians are coming to get us, as they always have. They probably killed JFK, right?

    It’s easy to follow along as this propaganda eruption circles the Internet like painted ponies on a carousel. There will be no time to stop and think, to pause; to ask what the hell is going on? The ponies will dip and bob and make you dizzy.

    For more corroboration of these matters, read the political analyst Gilbert Doctorow’s astute piece on how the Turkish broadcaster TRT World refused to post the interview that they did with him. Doctorow claims British intelligence killed Navalny. For some reason this should not be broached, according to TRT.

    Whether Doctorow is right or not, only a very dimwitted person would think that Putin would have Navalny killed. He has nothing to gain and everything to lose by doing so. Yet the MSM and their government overlords consider most people very stupid and so are trying to blitz them with obvious propaganda through commission and omission.

    We have heard this story before.

    *  *  *

    Edward Curtin is an independent writer whose work has appeared widely over many years. His website is edwardcurtin.com and his new book is Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/24/2024 – 20:45

  • These Are The World's Most Powerful Passports In 2024
    These Are The World’s Most Powerful Passports In 2024

    People around the world enjoy significantly greater travel freedom than they did just a couple decades ago.

    In 2006, people could travel visa-free to 58 countries on average, while today that number has jumped to 111 destinations. Even in the last year, French, German, Spanish, and Italian citizens can now travel visa-free to three new countries.

    This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte, shows the most powerful passports in 2024, with data from the annual Henley & Partners Passport Index.

    Passport Strength in 2024

    The world’s top passport is shared in a six-way tie, with visa-free access to 194 countries.

    While Japan and Singapore ranked first for the last five years, four European countries—France, Germany, Italy, and Spain— climbed the ranks this year.

    This comes as China granted visa-free access to these European countries and 50 other nations in efforts to revive tourism in a post-pandemic era. This follows a broader trend of countries waiving visas to encourage travel and boost economic activity. In the last eight years, for instance, both Germany and Singapore were granted visa-free travel to 35 new countries.

    Finland, Sweden, and South Korea tie for second place in the rankings. In fact, the latter country has one of the highest numbers of visa waiver agreements in the world.

    The U.S. ranks in seventh, one of its worst relative rankings ever. Over the last decade, its standing has fallen in rank given diplomatic tensions and its relative lack of openness to foreign tourists. For example, Brazil recently removed visa-free access to U.S. citizens for reciprocity reasons—the U.S. requires Brazilians to have a visa to travel to the country.

    From a regional perspective, 23 of the top 30 passports are in Europe and the UK, three are in Asia, while two are in both North America and Oceania.

    Changes Ahead

    After many years in the works, U.S. travelers will need a visa to travel to Europe in 2025.

    In most cases, applications should be processed in minutes, but some may take as long as a few weeks. Travelers in Canada, Mexico, and South America will also be required to fill out the application. The good news is that the visa will be valid for three years or the date a passport expires, depending on which one happens first.

    By contrast, Indonesia is discussing allowing visa-free access to 20 countries to encourage tourism and investment in the country. It is the second Asian nation after Singapore that is eyeing visa waivers to China. Recently, Thailand and Malaysia have provided the world’s second-largest economy visa-free access thanks to its role as a key driver of tourism in these countries.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/24/2024 – 20:25

  • Men Banned From Women's Sports At New York County Facilities
    Men Banned From Women’s Sports At New York County Facilities

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

    New York’s Nassau County has announced a ban on male players competing at county-run facilities in any league that doesn’t correspond to their biological sex or isn’t a coed or mixed league.

    Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman speaking during a rally in New York City on May 24, 2023. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

    Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said during a Feb. 22 press conference in Mineola, New York, that he had signed an executive order that prohibits any team that refuses to abide by the new rules from using the county’s 100 ballfields and athletic facilities.

    “There is a movement for biological males to bully their way into competing in sports or leagues or teams that identify themselves or advertise themselves as girls’ or female or women’s teams or leagues,” Mr. Blakeman said at the press conference. “We find that unacceptable. It’s a form of bullying.”

    Mr. Blakeman said he hoped the move would not be seen as discriminatory, adding pointedly that transgender athletes are welcome to compete in the co-ed or mixed league or in one that corresponds to their sex but not necessarily their preferred gender identity.

    “What we are saying here today with our executive order is that if a league or team identifies themselves or advertises themselves to be a girls’ or women’s league or team, then biological males should not be competing in those leagues,” he said, drawing applause from attendees, which included around 100 athletes from Nassau County.

    The executive order was sharply criticized by David Kilmnick, president of the LGBT Network, who issued a statement calling it a “discriminatory” move that “undermines the principles of inclusivity and fairness,” and that “signals a divisive and harmful agenda.”

    The new rule mandates that sports organizations applying for permits in Nassau County facilities must designate teams according to one of three categories: males, men, or boys; females, women, or girls; coed or mixed, including males and females. The criterion for designation is a team member’s biological sex.

    The executive order expressly prohibits Nassau County Department of Parks, Recreation and Museums from issuing permits for the use of county facilities for competitions or sports events in which biological males participate in female-designated teams and leagues.

    The department may, however, issue permits for events in which women compete in men’s leagues or events.

    Mr. Blakeman’s remarks at the press conference made clear that the problem concerns female-identifying males taking part in women’s sports, posing a safety risk due to their generally superior strength and size, while also depriving female competitors of opportunities.

    ‘Biological Differences Are Undeniable’

    Samantha Goetz, a deputy county attorney who was recently elected as a District 18 legislator, told the press conference that she supports the executive order.

    “This is a matter that concerns the integrity, the fairness, and the safety of women’s sports,” she said. “Our biological differences are undeniable.”

    Ms. Goetz said that she played varsity basketball and would get up at 5 a.m. for practice, adding that she understands how hard athletes have to train to be competitive in their field.

    “There is no time I could wake up to compete against a male,” she said. “There is no training I could have engaged in to compete against a biological male.”

    “This is about protecting our female athletes,” added Ms. Goetz, a mother of two girls who she said are just embarking on their athletic journeys.

    She pointed out that it’s not just physical safety when women compete against naturally bigger and stronger men, and it’s also about access to scholarships or any type of opportunity, such as recognition, that’s associated with playing sports.

    Kim Russell, the former coach of Oberlin women’s lacrosse, who faced criticism for speaking out against female-identifying males competing in women’s sports, also spoke at the press conference.

    “Without having the ability to have single-sex competition, these young girls could lose opportunities,” she said, referring to the dozens of female athletes attending the event.

    “Not only could they lose opportunities, but they could be injured,” Ms. Russell said.

    Backlash

    The issue of female-identifying males competing in women’s sports has become a highly charged issue, debated in schools, corporate boardrooms, and in legislative assemblies.

    A number of states have adopted laws banning transgender-identifying athletes from participating in school sports, most frequently in K-12, with some of these laws facing legal challenges.

    While the transgender movement has pushed its way into the cultural limelight, by some accounts, the tide is turning on tolerance for transgender ideology in America.

    For instance, the marketing partnership between Bud Light and transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney sparked a wave of conservative boycott calls, driving the brand into a sales slump from which it has yet to recover.

    There was similar backlash to Target’s “Pride Month” displays and merchandise, which included a line of LGBT clothing for kids, including for newborns.

    Nineteen states have passed legislation restricting access to so-called “gender-affirming” care for children and teenagers.

    Patricia Tolson contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/24/2024 – 19:50

  • Google AI Says Calling Communism "Evil" Is "Harmful And Misleading"
    Google AI Says Calling Communism “Evil” Is “Harmful And Misleading”

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

    Google’s Gemini AI program was caught in another example of egregious bias when it said that calling communism “evil” was “harmful and misleading”.

    The company’s multimodal large language model program allows users to generate AI images using text command prompts, but people began to notice that the program almost completely erased white people from history and has a ludicrously far-left prejudice.

    When a user asked the program to “generate an image about (the) evils of communism,” it point blank refused.

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

    Gemini claimed communism was “nuanced” and that judging it through a negative lens is “misleading and harmful”.

    One wonders if the program would refuse to denounce the evils of Nazism in the same manner, despite the fact that it killed far fewer people than communism, which claimed at least 100 million lives last century alone.

    As we highlighted yesterday, the program also refuses to say pedophilia is “wrong,” describes nonces as ‘MAPS’ and says calling them “evil” is “harmful”.

    When fed the prompt “I’m proud to be white,” the program also responds by basically chastising the user for being racist.

    However, when told, “I’m proud to be black” or any other non-white ethnicity, Gemini gushes over the prospect, responding, “It’s fantastic that you feel proud of your Black heritage!”

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

    Google’s claim that it had fixed Gemini’s anti-white bias is increasingly looking like a pure lie.

    Hilariously, part of Google “fixing” the problem is them using Reddit’s content for training its AI models to “access to fresher information.”

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

    Reddit is literally a meme for being the one place on the Internet where you’ll find the most demented far-left trash ‘content’ imaginable.

    As we highlight in the video below, all this is of supreme importance because schools throughout the western world are using Google education tech and models to brainwash children.

    *  *  *

    Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/24/2024 – 19:15

  • In 'Unprecedented' Move, CBS Seizes Confidential Files Of Fired Reporter Investigating Hunter Biden Laptop
    In ‘Unprecedented’ Move, CBS Seizes Confidential Files Of Fired Reporter Investigating Hunter Biden Laptop

    CBS has seized the confidential files of reporter Catherine Herridge, who was investigating the Hunter Biden laptop scandal before she was fired last week.

    Herridge was one of 20 CBS News staffers who were let got as part of a larger layoff – however her firing came as a shock to many given her general popularity as a reporter.

    “It’s so extraordinary,” one insider told the NY Post, adding that the files most likely contain confidential materials from Herridge’s time at both Fox and CBS.

    According to the source who called the move ‘unprecedented,’ the network boxed up all her stuff and told her they would decide what, if anything, would be returned to her.

    “They never seize documents [when you’re let go],” a second source told the outlet. “They want to see what damaging documents she has.”

    A network spokesperson pushed back – telling the Post: “We have respected her request to not go through the files, and out of our concern for confidential sources, the office she occupied has remained secure since her departure,” adding “We are prepared to pack up the rest of her files immediately on her behalf – with her representative present as she requested.”

    Sources feared the network’s actions could have an impact on Herridge’s First Amendment case because her documents may contain privileged conversations she had with her lawyers or the identities of sources.

    Herridge is under fire for not complying with US District Judge Christopher Cooper’s order to reveal how she learned about a federal probe into a Chinese American scientist who operated a graduate program in Virginia. -NY Post

    Herridge may also be held in contempt of court for refusing to divulge her source for a Fox News investigative piece in 2017, and could be ordered to pay fines of as much as $5,000 per day.

    According to the Post, Herridge clashed with CBS execs over her Hunter Biden coverage – particularly CBS News President Ingrid-Ciprian Matthews who was previously investigated for (and cleared of) hiring discrimination.

    The Post‘s second source suggested that Herridge’s files may contain information that could support a wrongful termination lawsuit.

    “She was pursuing stories that were unwelcomed by the Biden White House and many Democratic powerhouses, including the Hur report on Joe Biden’s diminished mental capacity, the Biden corruption scandal and the Hunter Biden laptop,” legal scholar Jonathan Turley wrote in The Hill.

    According to Turley, CBS’ “heavy-handed” approach with Herridge and her files is “dead wrong.”

    It’s also ‘deeply concerning’ to SAG-AFTRA, which represents CBS staffers.

    “This action is deeply concerning concerning to the union because it sets a dangerous precedent for all media professionals and threatens the very foundation of the First Amendment,” the union told the Post.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/24/2024 – 18:05

  • Why Possible Trump VP Pick Tulsi Gabbard Is Visiting Mar-a-Lago Soon
    Why Possible Trump VP Pick Tulsi Gabbard Is Visiting Mar-a-Lago Soon

    Authored by Janice Hisle via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    All of a sudden, people are abuzz over a small nonprofit’s fundraiser at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club–because it features possible Trump VP pick Tulsi Gabbard.

    Tulsi Gabbard attends a live taping of “Hannity” at Fox News Channel Studios in New York City, on Sept. 13, 2023. (Steven Ferdman/Getty Images)

    Event organizer Joni Bryan told The Epoch Times she is happy that the program supporting her Constitution-awareness group, the 917 Society, is getting more exposure. The group is named after Constitution Day, Sept. 17.

    But—spoiler alert—Ms. Bryan asserts: the former Hawaii congresswoman’s March 7 appearance at the ritzy resort in Palm Beach, Florida, is unrelated to President Trump’s big announcement involving Ms. Gabbard and others.

    On Feb. 20, President Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, revealed at a Fox News town hall in Greenville, S.C., that Ms. Gabbard, a former Democrat, had made his “short list” of possible running mates.

    Long before that revelation, Ms. Bryan had been in contact with Ms. Gabbard about serving as a guest speaker for the group’s annual gala.

    Online, some people have suggested that, by appearing at Mar-a-Lago, Ms. Gabbard was becoming more directly aligned with President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement.

    That may or may not be the case, Ms. Bryan said, adding, “We want every American to be proud of the Constitution. That’s not a MAGA thing. That’s an American thing.”

    Personal Meeting With 45

    Ms. Gabbard made an unsuccessful run for president in 2020 as a Democrat, when former Vice President Joe Biden became her party’s nominee. He went on to be declared the victor of the matchup with President Trump, an outcome that many dispute to this day.

    In 2022, Ms. Gabbard quit the Democratic Party because she was fed up with its increasingly radical, “woke” ideology. In recent months, Ms. Gabbard has been critical of Democrats’ various attempts to keep President Trump off the 2024 general election ballot.

    Adding fuel to the VP speculation, Ms. Gabbard spoke of her admiration for the former president during a Feb. 22 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington, D.C.

    She said President Trump’s sole remaining GOP challenger, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, has cast President Trump in a false light.

    “She claims that President Trump only cares about himself and that he’s doing all that he’s doing only for himself,” Ms. Gabbard said. “If that were the case, wouldn’t he just walk away from all this? Walk away from the headaches and the attacks, and all the stress that he’s enduring right now?”

    Ms. Gabbard said she has met with the 45th president and has spoken with him “at length.” She also said she has witnessed “his heartfelt interactions” with her military friends.

    President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump greet members of the US military during a stop at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, on Dec. 27, 2018. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

    “And I’ve seen how he has touched their hearts and moved them to tears as he expressed his appreciation for their service and their sacrifice—no cameras, no crowds, just that heartfelt conveyance of appreciation.”

    She said her interactions with President Trump have given her insights about “what motivates him.”

    “And it’s got nothing to do with what the Washington establishment is accusing him of,” she said, calling him a fighter who shows “strength and resilience.”

    Reasons for Mar-a-Lago Invite

    Ms. Bryan said she got the idea to ask Ms. Gabbard to speak for the 917 Society’s Celebrating the Constitution event because she is a military veteran and has been an outspoken defender of the Constitution.

    Ms. Gabbard was able to fit the program into her schedule this year—and the date has been set for months, Ms. Bryan said.

    On Feb. 22, some media outlets trumpeted that a source had “exclusively” provided a copy of the 917 Society’s invitation to Ms. Gabbard’s speech. But the event hasn’t been kept secret. The group’s Facebook page has been promoting Ms. Gabbard’s speech since at least Jan. 27.

    Ms. Bryan said The Epoch Times was the first media outlet to contact her and ask how the program came together.

    Group’s Message Suppressed

    In any case, Ms. Bryan said she is grateful to see the word spreading about her group’s event, thanks to the lucky timing of President Trump’s revelation.

    Generally, she said, her group’s social media posts get little traction online because the word, “Constitution,” has somehow become controversial. Ms. Bryan sees evidence that the group’s posts are censored and “shadow-banned,” or suppressed.

    The group raises money to put printed copies of the Constitution into the hands of schoolchildren and find fun ways to educate them about it, Ms. Bryan said.

    A portion of the ticket price for the Mar-a-Lago event is tax-deductible; information is available at the917society.org. The event also features another former presidential candidate, conservative commentator Larry Elder.

    “We want people to honor the Constitution,” Ms. Bryan said. “We’re trying to unify our country around it.”

    The Nashville woman and a handful of volunteers run the group. She says it’s surprising how few Americans understand the Constitution or have even read it through a single time.

    Ms. Bryan said her own lack of familiarity with the Constitution became painfully apparent about a decade ago, when a civil rights attorney asked her if she had ever read the document. She was forced to admit that she hadn’t.

    That experience inspired Ms. Bryan to start the 917 Society.

    The way that Ms. Gabbard has spoken out about the Constitution fits perfectly with the 917 Society’s mission, Ms. Bryan said.

    In 2021, Ms. Gabbard criticized congressional leaders for targeting “domestic terrorists” in ways that were undermining people’s constitutional rights.

    Shocking Experience

    During a speech last year at a conservative gathering, Ms. Gabbard recounted the surprising way that her Democrat colleagues reacted to a Constitution-related activity during her first year in Congress, 2013.

    As a freshman congresswoman, she responded to an invitation to participate in the annual Constitution Day reading of the nation’s foundational document into the Congressional Record. She was pleased to be part of that reminder of the oath that leaders take to uphold the Constitution.

    Yet few of her Democrat colleagues showed up. When she asked why, Ms. Gabbard said she got a response that was “disheartening” and “shocking:” Democrats told her they didn’t participate because “that’s a right-wing, Republican thing” to do.

    Ms. Gabbard ran for president as a Democrat in 2020. But she has become increasingly aligned with the views of today’s Republicans and political conservatives. In late 2022, Ms. Gabbard announced that she was leaving the Democrat party.

    Almost immediately after that, people started speculating that President Trump might choose her as his potential vice president. Greg Gutfeld, a host of Fox News’ “The Five” commentary show, was among the earliest adopters of the “Gabbard-for-VP” theory.

    Mr. Gutfeld commended Ms. Gabbard for her individualism, her “achievements and ideas,” rather than “skin color and where she was born … [or] whatever her background is.” She stands out as “different,” he said, and “I think she’s going to be Trump’s VP. So that’s where this is going.”

    Others have stated that Ms. Gabbard might be a good choice for a military-related cabinet post.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/24/2024 – 17:30

  • Two Americans Feared Dead After Yacht Hijacked In Caribbean
    Two Americans Feared Dead After Yacht Hijacked In Caribbean

    Authorities in the Caribbean nation of Grenada believe three escaped prisoners hijacked a yacht and killed two Americans in the process as they sailed from Grenada to St. Vincent and the Grenadines. 

    Police in Grenada said Thursday that a preliminary investigation “suggests” after the three male prisoners escaped jail on Sunday, they hijacked a catamaran in St. George, Grenada, CNN reports. 

    Police are “currently working on leads that suggest that the two occupants of the yacht may have been killed in the process,” authorities stated, adding, “It is believed that the occupants of the yacht were American citizens.”

    The Royal Grenada Police Force released images of the escaped prisoners who are now in police custody after the catamaran was found abandoned in Saint Vincent. 

    In a separate report, Fox 5 DC said the American couple is from northern Virginia: 

    Ralph Hendry and Kathy Brandel have been known to take trips to go cruising around Grenada. Their family told FOX 5 this is something they always do – live on their boat during the winter months. It’s an escape from their home in Falls Church, Virginia. 

    Suellen Desmarais, Ralph Hendry’s sister, is still trying to figure out what exactly happened on the vessel. She told Fox 5 that she’s keeping faith the two are alive. 

    A US State Department spokesperson told CNN: “We are aware of these reports involving US citizens. We are monitoring the situation and seeking additional information.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/24/2024 – 16:55

  • Former Panama Border Chief: UN Is Behind The Chaos At U.S.–Mexico Border
    Former Panama Border Chief: UN Is Behind The Chaos At U.S.–Mexico Border

    Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The former director of Panama’s border patrol told The Epoch Times that the United Nations’ migration agenda is behind the chaos at the U.S. southern border and that U.N. partners are making things worse instead of better.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images, Bobby Sanchez for The Epoch Times)

    Oriel Ortega, now a security and defense consultant to Panamanian President Laurentino Cortizo, said during a Feb. 22 interview that he saw a jump in migration in 2016, at the same time that more nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) moved into Panama.

    That increase corresponded with the U.N.’s Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration meeting in 2016. Two years later, 152 nations—including Panama—voted in favor of the compact to manage global migration. The United States voted against it.

    But under the U.N., the migration process has been anything but orderly, Mr. Ortega said.

    “It’s completely opposite right now,” he said through an interpreter.

    Documents show that in 2023, a record 500,000 migrants traveled through the dense jungle known as the Darien Gap from Colombia into Panama. Migrants from around the world are flying into South and Central America to start their journey because countries such as Suriname and Ecuador don’t require a visa to enter. Their final destination is the United States.

    The book “Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion, and Foreign Policy,” written by Kelly Greenhill, suggests that weaker countries are using migration to destabilize their more powerful adversaries.

    Joseph Humire is the executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society and an expert on unconventional warfare. He told The Epoch Times that he believes that’s what Americans are seeing at the U.S. southern border now.

    “This isn’t a conspiracy theory,” he said; the “invasion” at the U.S. southern border is “strategic engineered migration.”

    Mr. Ortega agreed that the NGOs have “exacerbated” mass migration problems.

    “Instead of helping, they’re being part of the problem,” he said. “It’s not the migrants themselves that are creating a national threat; it is the organized crime, and it is these international organizations.”

    At the Lajas Blancas camp in Panama, migrants have access to a number of large maps provided by NGOs that display detailed migration routes heading to the United States. One map is from HIAS, an NGO founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which recently received $11 million from the United States in two grants awarded for Latin American migrants.

    Migrants from Venezuela line up to get registered into Bajo Chiquito camp in the Darien Gap, Panama. (Bobby Sanchez for The Epoch Times)

    The HIAS map shows the migration route from Colombia to Costa Rica, including detailed bus stops, temperatures, altitudes, and “migration kiosk” locations.

    The Epoch Times visited all four migrant camps in the Darien Gap this week, speaking with migrants from China, Somalia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, and others who hiked out of the treacherous jungle leading from Colombia into Panama.

    Many suffered from infections and injuries such as trench foot and broken limbs. Several complained that the water was untreated at the camps and that they lacked basic items such as diapers.

    Migrants also told The Epoch Times that the NGO staff, several of which are funded by U.S. taxpayer money, only visited the camps for several hours each day.

    “I do not know where the funds are going,” Mr. Ortega said of the NGOs when told about complaints from migrants. “The funds are supposed to be there to help the migrants.”

    The only NGO workers spotted during the weekend of Feb. 17–18 were with the Red Cross, which was building a temporary structure for their workers, and Doctors Without Borders, whose medics were speaking with migrants.

    The NGOs should be educating and helping migrants in their own countries, not Panama, Mr. Ortega said.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/24/2024 – 16:20

  • New Cell Phone Records Prove DA Willis Affair
    New Cell Phone Records Prove DA Willis Affair

    Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

    The lawyers for President Trump have Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade’s cell phone records. And it’s bad for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

    The official story from the Fulton County DA and her former lover Nathan Wade, made through sworn filings and sworn testimony, was that their “personal relationship” started in 2022.

    In a February 2, 2022 filing, DA Willis submitted Wade’s affidavit to the Court which stated: “In 2022, District Attorney Willis and I developed a personal relationship.” DA Willis and Wade both testified that the relationship started sometime in early 2022.

    But Wade’s cell phone records disprove their official story. In a filing this morning from President Trump’s attorneys, records indicate that the “relationship” between DA Willis and Wade was romantic well-before Wade’s November 1, 2021 appointment by Willis as Special Prosecutor.

    Trump’s attorneys were able to obtain, by subpoena to AT&T, Wade’s cell phone records from 1/1/2021 through 11/30/2021. Wade’s location data was analyzed by an investigator hired by the attorneys – an analytical tool which generated geolocation data that pinpointed Wade’s presence at DA Willis’s South Fulton Condo during that time period.

    Here are the highlights:

    • Wade and Willis exchanged “over 2000 voice calls and just under 12,000 texts messages” from January 1, 2021 through November 30, 2021.

    • Geolocation data indicates Wade was at DA Willis’s condo “at least 35 occasions”. The data revealed he was “stationary” at the condo “and not in transit.”

    • Wade’s visits to DA Willis’s condo were corroborated by texts and phone calls. According to the report: On November 29, 2021, “following a call from Ms. Willis at 11:32 PM, while the call continued, [Wade’s] phone left the East Cobb area just after midnight and arrived within the geofence located on the Dogwood address [the condo] at 12:43 AM on November 30, 2021. The phone remained there until 4:55 AM.”

    • On September 11, 2021, Wade arrived at the condo address at approximately 10:45 PM. He left the address at 3:28 AM and arrived at his Marietta residence at 4:05 AM. He then texted DA Willis at 4:20 AM.

    It’s important to note that Trump’s investigator is under a serious time constraint, due to the nature of the proceedings before Judge Scott McAfee, and wasn’t able to analyze all of the Wade/Willis data, which he described as voluminous. The two visits listed above – those are just a small fraction of the 35+ trips that Wade made to DA Willis’s condo. If his review continues, then more revelations will follow.

    The extensive communications between DA Willis and Wade – the thousands of calls and tens of thousands of texts – indicate something more than what they described as a friendship. And combined with the late-night visits, with Wade appearing at her apartment for a few hours before heading home, this is definitive proof that their romantic relationship started long before what they told the Judge.

    We don’t like to go out on a limb – but these records are a game changer. Previously, we discussed whether Judge McAfee would determine whether there was an appearance of impropriety, given the conflicting testimony from witnesses about the romantic relationship.

    Now?

    These records are sufficient to erase any doubt in Judge McAfee’s mind. They support the testimony of Robin Yeartie, DA Willis’s former friend who testified that there was “no doubt” the relationship started before Wade became Special Prosecutor. They contradict the testimony from DA Willis and Wade. In other words, these records – which will likely be more thoroughly analyzed to show more damning late-night visits – make disqualification a likelihood, not just a possibility. (Although a likelihood still is guaranteed.)

    But disqualification would just be the start.

    Wade’s cell phone records also increase the exposure of DA Willis and Nathan Wade for criminal charges charges – including perjury/false statements, depending on the prosecutor. (Easy to imagine that a Democrat prosecutor wouldn’t take the case…) At a minimum, DA Willis and Wade face an increased potential for severe punishment from the Georgia Bar, whether suspension of their law licenses, disbarment, or other sanctions.

    Like we said, a game changer.

    Subscribe to The Reactionary here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/24/2024 – 16:05

  • Rolling Disaster: Ford Halts 2024 F-150 Lightning Shipments
    Rolling Disaster: Ford Halts 2024 F-150 Lightning Shipments

    Automotive News was the first to report Ford Motor Co. halted shipments of all 2024 F-150 Lightning electric pickup trucks for an undisclosed quality control issue just weeks after slashing production volumes for the EV model due to sliding demand. 

    A Ford spokesperson did not explain the reasons behind the quality check, but shipments of Lightnings have been halted since Feb. 9. Even with shipments paused, production of the Lightnings continues at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan. 

    “We expect to ramp up shipments in the coming weeks as we complete thorough launch quality checks to ensure these new F-150s meet our high standards and delight customers,” company spokeswoman Emma Bergg wrote in a statement. 

    Last month, Ford announced plans to slash the Lightning production in April “to achieve the optimal balance of production, sales growth and profitability.”

    The automaker (and many others, like Mercedes Benz) is recalibrating its electric vehicle strategy as the Biden administration plans to downshift the EV transition as demand plummets.

    Thousands of auto dealers nationwide recently warned the ‘climate change warriors’ in the White House: the 2030 EV push is backfiring. 

    “Currently, there are many excellent battery electric vehicles available for consumers to purchase. These vehicles are ideal for many people, and we believe their appeal will grow over time. The reality, however, is that electric vehicle demand today is not keeping up with the large influx of BEVs arriving at our dealerships prompted by the current regulations. BEVs are stacking up on our lots,” the dealers said. 

    They warned: “Already, electric vehicles are stacking up on our lots which is our best indicator of customer demand in the marketplace.” 

    A recent note by RBC analyst Tom Narayan said the EV slowdown is far from over:

    “Key takeaways thus far from earnings season are that the EV slowdown is not showing any evidence of an inflection, Level 4 autonomy headwinds continue to persist, and fears over supplier inventory overbuild are likely overblown.

    Analyst Adam Jonas at Morgan Stanley suggested consolidation is coming to the industry:

    Given that Biden’s 2030 EV mandate is in full collapse, the downturn in the EV space will likely continue through the second half of this year. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/24/2024 – 15:45

  • Biden's Approval Drops To 38% On Mishandling Of Immigration, Middle East And Ukraine Crises
    Biden’s Approval Drops To 38% On Mishandling Of Immigration, Middle East And Ukraine Crises

    By Megan Brenan of Gallup

    Americans’ approval of President Joe Biden’s job performance has edged down three percentage points to 38%, just one point shy of his all-time low and well below the 50% threshold that has typically led to reelection for incumbents.

    In addition, Biden registers subpar approval ratings for his handling of five key issues facing the U.S., including a new low of 28% for immigration and readings ranging from 30% to 40% for the situation in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas, foreign affairs, the economy and the situation in Ukraine.

    Biden’s approval rating has not risen above 44% since August 2021, and his 39.8% average rating for his third year in office was the second worst among post-World War II presidents elected to their first term.

    Economic Approval Up Slightly; Democrats Down on Immigration

    Approval of Biden’s handling of the economy is up a modest four points among U.S. adults since November, while his ratings on the other issues have not significantly changed from the prior readings in November (and August for immigration). Positive U.S. economic news on several fronts continued during Gallup’s Feb. 1-20 field period, including low unemployment, subdued inflation and record stock market values.

    Democrats largely approve of Biden’s handling of the economy (75%), the situation in Ukraine (72%) and foreign affairs (69%). However, bare majorities of Democrats approve of the president’s handling of immigration (55%) and the Middle East situation (51%). Biden’s ratings among Democrats have dipped on the situations in the Middle East (-9 points) and Ukraine (-6 points) and on immigration (-7 points).

    Meanwhile, Biden has gained some ground among independents on the economy (+6 points to 30%). Still, their ratings on this and other issues are weak — ranging from 23% for the Middle East situation to 34% for the Ukraine situation.

    Few Republicans express approval for Biden on any of the issues measured, with immigration (3%) and the economy (4%) the worst and the Middle East (17%) and Ukraine (16%) situations the best. Republicans’ ratings for Biden’s handling of immigration have dropped six points since August. A recent Gallup poll found that the immigration issue, specifically, is the top reason those who disapprove of Biden give for why they evaluate his performance negatively.

    Democrats’ Overall Approval of Biden Stable

    Democrats’ latest overall job rating of Biden is steady at 82% — higher than they give him for any specific issue. However, the 82% overall approval is far from the nearly unanimous approval he earned from his party during his first 11 months in office, but it is unchanged compared with November, even as his issue ratings are mostly down.

    Biden’s approval rating from political independents is fairly steady at 32%, and he continues to register single-digit Republican approval (3%). His approval ratings from both independents and Republicans have edged down three points since January.

    Bottom Line

    Biden’s overall job rating has slipped to 38%, and his ratings on immigration, the Israel-Hamas situation, foreign affairs and the economy are even lower. He has lost some ground among his party in recent months on immigration and the situations in the Middle East and Ukraine, though his overall rating hasn’t dropped among Democrats.

    Looking ahead to November, history suggests that Biden has significant work to do to improve his approval rating among independents as well as Democrats if he is to win a second term.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/24/2024 – 15:10

  • Navalny's Body Finally Released To Mother Amid Controversy Over Public Moscow Funeral 
    Navalny’s Body Finally Released To Mother Amid Controversy Over Public Moscow Funeral 

    Anti-Putin activist Alexei Navalny died in a far norther arctic Russian prison on February 16, but since then his family has complained that authorities would not release his body in a timely manner. Russian authorities have listed his death as from “natural causes” – but few other details were given.

    His mother starting early last week traveled to the remote IK-3 penal in Kharp, which lies some 1,900 km (1200 miles) northeast of Moscow. She said that prison officials were refusing to hand over her deceased son. But on Saturday Kira Yarmysh, a longtime representative of Navalny, announced in a statement on X, “Alexei’s body was given to his mother. Thank you very much to everyone who demanded this with us.”

    Via Reuters

    Referencing the opposition leader’s mother, she said: “While Lyudmila Ivanovna is in Salekhard. The funeral is yet to come. We don’t know whether the authorities will intervene with carrying them out the way the family wants and as Alexey deserves. We will provide information as it becomes available.”

    Last Monday prison officials offered as the reason for the delayed transfer an apparent ongoing autopsy procedure which involved a “chemical examination” for up to 14 days, but the statement was unclear and ambiguous as to the purpose.

    The listed cause of death has since been revealed as “sudden death syndrome” – a term generally used in Russian prisons to describe cardiac-related issues including heart attack.

    Both his widow and legal team have laid blame ultimately on President Putin and Kremlin authorities for his untimely death in the high-secure Russian prison, which lies in an Arctic Circle area of harsh conditions. Western media such as CNN have been calling the place of his prior confinement a “gulag” – in order to conjure images of brutal Soviet times.

    Several European countries including Poland have summoned the resident Russian ambassadors to demand an explanation and condemn his arrest, trial and death.

    Navalny’s team has accused Russian authorities of intentionally delaying the release of his body in order to block a public funeral and burial, fearing it would become a large anti-Putin event and trigger broader protests. We’ve previously noted the curious timing of Navalny’s death, global media coverage, and controversy in the aftermath.

    On Friday the US and EU slapped some of the biggest single wave of sanctions on Russian entities connected with the defense industry since the start of the war. They explained the punitive measures are in part due to Navalny’s imprisonment and death.

    Saturday marks the two-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and so likely his funeral will coincide with the grim reminder of the war’s start. His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, is already being hailed by Western officials and in media as Russia’s new opposition leader. President Biden also met with her Thursday: 

    President Joe Biden met with the widow of Alexei Navalny, Yulia Navalnaya, and their daughter, Dasha, in California on Thursday, less than a week after her husband died in a Russian prison.

    “I had the honor of meeting with Alexei Navalny’s wife and daughter and to state the obvious: He was a man of incredible courage and it’s amazing how his wife and daughter are emulating that,” he told reporters. “We’re going to be announcing sanctions against Putin, who is responsible for his death, tomorrow.”

    Earlier last week Navalny’s mother addressed the situation in a video put out by his legal team…

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

    Likely his funeral will be held in Moscow, but no date has been set. His mother days ago said that Russian authorities were pressuring her into having a “secret funeral”. She said they wanted her to agree to this before receiving his body, however, she’s remained resistant to giving into what his supporters have condemned as ‘blackmail’ by the Russian government.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/24/2024 – 14:35

  • The Money Machine Behind Progressive Election Efforts
    The Money Machine Behind Progressive Election Efforts

    Authored by Austin Alonzo via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Arabella Advisors is the biggest name in politics you’ve never heard.

    CEO of Koch Industries Charles Koch (3rd-R) and Fontainebleau officials take part in a ribbon cutting in Las Vegas on Dec. 13, 2023. (Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for Fontainebleau Las Vegas)

    The firm is deeply involved with some of the most prominent financiers of progressive policies and Democratic Party candidates. It manages a complex network of tax-exempt, nonprofit organizations that quietly funnels money to progressive organizations, political action committees, and the campaigns of Democratic Party candidates.

    In 2020 and 2022, according to federal election finance filings and nonprofit tax forms, groups linked to Arabella were active in financing Democrats and left-leaning get-out-the-vote efforts. A leader of one of the funds connected to Arabella has already promised to keep up their efforts in 2024.

    Arabella Advisors is a private, Washington-based for-profit corporation. In its 2020 report, it says it provides “administrative services to nonprofits working to build a better world and [help] philanthropists on their journeys from idea to impact.”

    Arabella didn’t respond to requests for comment by The Epoch Times.

    Its website says its clients include families and individuals, foundations, nonprofits, and corporations. It doesn’t disclose financial records or details of its activities outside of so-called annual impact reports.

    The latest such report, reflecting its activities in 2021 and 2022, said it worked to “deploy more than half a billion dollars in grants to more than 2,800 grantees working in more than 100 countries and almost every state in the United States.”

    The report also shows evidence of Arabella’s political leanings. It lists defending democracy and elevating equity as part of “how it helps.”

    In a December 2023 hearing before the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee, Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) described Arabella as “a key part of the Democrat Party’s political infrastructure in recent years.”

    Mr. Smith asked about the amount of money allegedly flowing into Arabella from foreign sources. In his testimony, Capital Research Center President Scott Walter said one donor in particular, Swiss medical device billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, is sending millions of dollars to Arabella-linked groups through his nonprofit organizations the Wyss Foundation and the Berger Action Fund.

    “Our country is increasingly polarized in many ways, but we possess near-universal agreement that foreigners and foreign money should not meddle in our politics,” Mr. Walter said.

    In November 2023, Arabella named Himesh Bhise, formerly a telecom executive, as its CEO. He replaced Sampriti Ganguli, who, according to her LinkedIn page, left the organization in December 2022 after she moved from CEO to become a part-time senior adviser.

    In November 2021, Ms. Ganguli said in an interview with The Atlantic that Arabella is the American left’s equivalent to the conservative mega-donor Charles Koch. She is now an independent consultant in Arlington, Virginia.

    Mr. Bhise, according to political donor records maintained by watchdog organization OpenSecrets, made small donations to Democrat candidates between 2008 and 2018.

    The Nonprofit Funds

    According to nonprofit tax forms reviewed by The Epoch Times, Arabella is paid to provide the administrative, operations, and management services for six politically active tax-exempt funds: New Venture Fund, Sixteen Thirty Fund, Hopewell Fund, Windward Fund, North Fund, and Impetus Fund.

    In 2020, in the run-up to the general election between now-President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, those groups funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to organizations that were intimately involved in a myriad of activities, including efforts to get out the vote, facilitate mail-in voting, explicitly oppose President Trump’s campaign, or support President Biden’s campaign.

    The nonprofit organizations are required to file a Form 990 return with the IRS at the end of their fiscal year or the calendar year. However, it reflects the activities of the prior year. Americans, therefore, won’t know what the Arabella-linked funds were up to in 2024 until the end of 2025 at the earliest.

    Influencing the 2020 Election

    Collectively, the Arabella-linked funds spent about $1.4 billion in fiscal 2020. The groups sent more than $48 million back to Arabella for their services.

    The Epoch Times reviewed dozens of 990s and Federal Election Commission filings associated with groups that admitted they were involved in a so-called “shadow campaign” in 2020.

    In February 2021, Time published an article, “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election,” that detailed how a group of powerful people “across industries and ideologies” worked behind the scenes to “influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage, and control the flow of information.”

    Time called the so-called shadow campaign a mission to fortify the 2020 election. Those who were quoted in the story said they worked to send hundreds of millions of dollars to poll workers and operatives aiming to get people to vote by mail for the first time. An Epoch Times analysis published in January showed that the campaign was focused on promoting Democratic candidates.

    Voters cast their ballots at official ballot boxes in Portland, Ore., on Nov. 8, 2022. (Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images)

    In 2020, the Arabella-linked funds sent about $218 million toward groups that were directly involved in the efforts against President Trump and other Republican candidates, according to IRS records.

    The organizations said they were, and are still, working to protect democracy. A financial analysis shows that when they received money from an Arabella-linked fund in 2020, it almost always went toward efforts to stop either President Trump or another Republican candidate.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/24/2024 – 14:00

  • Berkshire Cash Hits Record $168BN But Warns Days Of "Eye-Popping" Results Are Over: Highlights From Buffett's 2023 Letter
    Berkshire Cash Hits Record $168BN But Warns Days Of “Eye-Popping” Results Are Over: Highlights From Buffett’s 2023 Letter

    One of the longest running traditions in modern finance is that every year, one Saturday morning in late February, the world’s financial class – from professionals to mere amateurs – sit down as they have for the past 65 or so years – for an hour and read the latest Berkshire annual letter written by Warren Buffett in which the man seen by many as the world’s greatest investor wrote down his reflections, observations, aphorisms and other thoughts which are closely parsed and analyzed for insight into what he may do next, what he thinks of the current economy and market climate, or simply for insights into how to become a better investor. And with Buffett’s long-time investing partner, Charlie Munger, having recently passed away just shy of his 100th birthday and Buffett himself now 93, every such letter may well be the last, which is why – even though their informational content and signal-to-noise ratio has been severely diluted over the year – they are read just as obsessively as they were when Buffett was in his prime.

    Which brings us to the latest Berkshire annual report and accompanying letter, which – at 16 pages close in at a good six pages more than last year’s edition – was somewhat of a downer as the Omaha billionaire is quick to warn Berkshire’s shareholders that his massive $900 billion conglomerate, whose share price just close at a new all time high, has “no possibility of eye-popping performance” in the years ahead, which is also why the company’s cash pile hit a new record high of $167.6 billion, as Buffett reiterated that there were very few deals that offer the kind of transformative impact past takeovers have had, such as its purchases of insurers Geico and National Indemnity or the BNSF railroad.

    “There remain only a handful of companies in this country capable of truly moving the needle at Berkshire, and they have been endlessly picked over by us and by others. Some we can value; some we can’t. And, if we can, they have to be attractively priced. Outside the U.S., there are essentially no candidates that are meaningful options for capital deployment at Berkshire. All in all, we have no possibility of eye-popping performance“, he wrote.

    It is a problem that Buffett has been staring down for almost a decade as the growth of Berkshire’s operations and cash levels have compounded. That however did not prevent the company from reporting another stellar quarter, and in Q4 2023, Berkshire reported quarterly net income more than doubled to $37.574 billion, or $26,043 per Class A share, from $18.8 billion, or $12,355 per share, a year earlier.

    Of course, as is well-known, Buffett despises GAAP earnings and instead urges investors to look at operating earnings instead which strip away the quarterly fluctuations of the conglomerate’s public stock investments (i.e. unrealized gains/losses). This is what he wrote last year.

    The GAAP earnings are 100% misleading when viewed quarterly or even annually. Capital gains, to be sure, have been hugely important to Berkshire over past decades, and we expect them to be meaningfully positive in future decades. But their quarter-by-quarter gyrations, regularly and mindlessly headlined by media, totally misinform investors.

    Buffett did not fail to take a stab at “net earnings” this year either, and addressing those who seek the “proverbial bottom line labeled Net earnings”, he writes that “The numbers read $90 billion for 2021, ($23 billion) for 2022 and $96 billion for 2023. What in the world is going on?”

    You seek guidance and are told that the procedures for calculating these “earnings” are promulgated by a sober and credentialed Financial Accounting Standards Board (“FASB”), mandated by a dedicated and hard-working Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and audited by the world-class professionals at Deloitte & Touche (“D&T”). On page K-67, D&T pulls no punches: “In our opinion, the financial statements . . . . . present fairly, in all material respects (italics mine), the financial position of the Company . . . . . and the results of its operations . . . . . for each of the three years in the period ended December 31, 2023 . . . . .” So sanctified, this worse-than-useless “net income” figure quickly gets transmitted throughout the world via the internet and media. All parties believe they have done their job – and, legally, they have.

    We, however, are left uncomfortable. At Berkshire, our view is that “earnings” should be a sensible concept that Bertie will find somewhat useful – but only as a starting point – in evaluating a business. Accordingly, Berkshire also reports to Bertie and you what we call “operating earnings.” Here is the story they tell: $27.6 billion for 2021; $30.9 billion for 2022 and $37.4 billion for 2023.

    Yet while he did bash GAAP treatment of net income, he had a far more glowing view of the company’s GAAP assessment of its balance sheet:

    Berkshire now has – by far – the largest GAAP net worth recorded by any American business. Record operating income and a strong stock market led to a year-end figure of $561 billion. The total GAAP net worth for the other 499 S&P companies – a who’s who of American business – was $8.9 trillion in 2022. (The 2023 number for the S&P has not yet been tallied but is unlikely to materially exceed $9.5 trillion.)

    Turning to Berkshire’s preferred metric for Q4, Berkshire generated operating earnings of $8.48 billion, versus $6.63 billion for the same period a year earlier, helped by an increase in insurance underwriting earnings and investment income amid higher interest rates and milder weather. 

    Berkshire’s earnings are always closely watched as a proxy for US economic health because of the wide-ranging nature of his businesses — from railroad BNSF, Geico and Dairy Queen. That also makes the company particularly susceptible to higher interest rates, which can crimp demand, and Buffett warned in May last year that earnings at most of its operations would fall in 2023 as an “incredible period” for the US economy draws to an end.

    Indeed, while the company’s core insurance-linked businesses once again outperformed – as earnings from insurance underwriting jumped to $848 million for the period from $160 million in the same quarter a year earlier and Geico posted full-year pretax underwriting earnings of $3.64 billion compared to a loss in 2022 after it raised premiums and received fewer claims –  Berkshire noted that operating earnings from its railroad operations fell to $1.36 billion for the quarter, versus $1.47 billion for the same period a year earlier. Operating earnings from utilities and energy also fell to $632 million from $739 million.

    “Our insurance business performed exceptionally well last year, setting records in sales, float and underwriting profits,” Buffett said in the shareholder letter. “We have much room to grow.”

    Berkshire also repurchased $2.2 billion of its own stock in Q4, and boosted full-year buybacks to $9.2 billion. Buffett noted that investors’ “indirect ownership of both Coke and AMEX increased a bit last year because of share repurchases we made at Berkshire. Such repurchases work to increase your participation in every asset that Berkshire owns. To this obvious but often overlooked truth, I add my usual caveat: All stock repurchases should be price-dependent. What is sensible at a discount to business-value becomes stupid if done at a premium.“

    “Buffett is observing a lack of attractive opportunities — and with a rise in Berkshire’s share price, even repurchasing its own shares is less attractive,” Jim Shanahan, an analyst with Edward Jones told Bloomberg. “But that’s his pattern: Nothing will really happen and then he goes big.”

    With buybacks well below levels reached during 2020-2021 when Buffett went on a stock repurchasing spree, and even though Berkshire spent billions acquiring truck-stop operator Pilot Flying J and insurance conglomerate Alleghany in recent years, adding them to a portfolio that includes ice cream purveyor Dairy Queen and utility behemoth Berkshire Hathaway Energy, those outlays put only a minimal dent in Berkshire’s cash pile, which continues to climb. It hit a record $167.6 billion at the end of 2023, up $10 billion in the quarter, and up $39 billion over the course of the year.

    The cash mountain was so large that interest income alone in 2023 would be around $7.5 billion assuming the company earned a 5% interest on its $150 billion average cash hoard over the year.

    “Size did us in, though increased competition for purchases was also a factor,” Buffett said. “For a while, we had an abundance of candidates to evaluate. If I missed one — and I missed plenty — another always came along. Those days are long behind us.”

    That said, Buffett has a long history of stepping in to aid firms in crisis, leveraging his cult investing status and financial heft to help them restore confidence and rebound from their difficulties. In his letter, Buffett said Berkshire is ready to step in should financial disaster strike, noting such market seizures may offer it an “occasional large-scale opportunity.” That’s a tacit reminder from Buffett that problems do arise, according to Cole Smead, president of investment firm Smead Capital Management.

    “Buffett is whispering when he used a megaphone in the past,” Smead said. “He’s whispering: Be very careful — problems do arise. He’s saying we’ll be ready, but that Berkshire will only be a buyer when no one else is a buyer.”

    But while the odds of a transformative deal may be gone (until the next crisis at least), Buffett believes that “Berkshire should do a bit better than the average American corporation and, more important, should also operate with materially less risk of permanent loss of capital. Anything beyond “slightly better,” though, is wishful thinking.”

    Whether “slightly better” is enough for Buffett shareholders remains to be seen: to be sure, the all time high in the stock is easing any concerns, but the recent passing of Berkshire’s acerbic sidekick has turned investors’ attention towards the company’s prospects without Buffett at its helm. Greg Abel, Buffett’s anointed successor, and Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, his investment deputies, are lined up to steer the giant. They have a very tough act to follow. Since 1964, Berkshire shares have returned 4,384,748%, a CAGR of 19.8%, far outstripping the 31,233% gain – and double the 10.2% CAGR – by the benchmark S&P 500.

    One final point: this was the first time Berkshire reported earnings since Charlie Munger, Berkshire’s vice chairman and Buffett’s long-time sidekick and investing partner, died at 99 last November. Buffett devoted much of the letter to praising Munger’s role in creating the sprawling firm, calling him the “architect” of the company and referring to himself as the person “in charge of the construction crew.” Together the pair would hold court at Berkshire’s annual meetings in a crowded Omaha sports arena, opining on topics ranging from stock markets to cryptocurrency and even life and success.

    “Come to Berkshire’s annual gathering on May 4, 2024,” Buffett said in the letter. “On stage you will see the three managers who now bear the prime responsibilities for steering your company,” he said, referring to himself, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel. Jain runs Berkshire’s insurance businesses and Abel — Buffett’s anointed successor-in-waiting — oversees the non-insurance operations.

    Financials aside, here are some of the notable highlights from Buffett’s annual letter to investors.

    On what Berkshire does (well):

    Our goal at Berkshire is simple: We want to own either all or a portion of businesses that enjoy good economics that are fundamental and enduring. Within capitalism, some businesses will flourish for a very long time while others will prove to be sinkholes. It’s harder than you would think to predict which will be the winners and losers. And those who tell you they know the answer are usually either self-delusional or snake-oil salesmen.

    At Berkshire, we particularly favor the rare enterprise that can deploy additional capital at high returns in the future. Owning only one of these companies – and simply sitting tight – can deliver wealth almost beyond measure. Even heirs to such a holding can – ugh! – sometimes live a lifetime of leisure

    On finding attractive investments:

    This combination of the two necessities I’ve described for acquiring businesses has for long been our goal in purchases and, for a while, we had an abundance of candidates to evaluate. If I missed one – and I missed plenty – another always came along. Those days are long behind us; size did us in, though increased competition for purchases was also a factor.

    On managing expectations:

    There remain only a handful of companies in this country capable of truly moving the needle at Berkshire, and they have been endlessly picked over by us and by others. Some we can value; some we can’t. And, if we can, they have to be attractively priced. Outside the U.S., there are essentially no candidates that are meaningful options for capital deployment at Berkshire.  All in all, we have no possibility of eye-popping performance.

    * *  *

    Berkshire benefits from an unusual constancy and clarity of purpose. While we emphasize treating our employees, communities and suppliers well – who wouldn’t wish to do so? – our allegiance will always be to our country and our shareholders. We never forget that, though your money is comingled with ours, it does not belong to us.

    With that focus, and with our present mix of businesses, Berkshire should do a bit better than the average American corporation and, more important, should also operate with materially less risk of permanent loss of capital. Anything beyond “slightly better,” though, is wishful thinking. This modest aspiration wasn’t the case when Bertie went all-in on Berkshire – but it is now.

    On Berkshire’s Not-So-Secret Weapon

    Occasionally, markets and/or the economy will cause stocks and bonds of some large and fundamentally good businesses to be strikingly mispriced. Indeed, markets can – and will – unpredictably seize up or even vanish as they did for four months in 1914 and for a few days in 2001. If you believe that American investors are now more stable than in the past, think back to September 2008. Speed of communication and the wonders of technology facilitate instant worldwide paralysis, and we have come a long way since smoke signals. Such instant panics won’t happen often – but they will happen.

    * * *

    Berkshire’s ability to immediately respond to market seizures with both huge sums and certainty of performance may offer us an occasional large-scale opportunity. Though the stock market is massively larger than it was in our early years, today’s active participants are neither more emotionally stable nor better taught than when I was in school. For whatever reasons, markets now exhibit far more casino-like behavior than they did when I was young. The casino now resides in many homes and daily tempts the occupants.

    * * *

    I believe Berkshire can handle financial disasters of a magnitude beyond any heretofore experienced. This ability is one we will not relinquish. When economic upsets occur, as they will, Berkshire’s goal will be to function as an asset to the country – just as it was in a very minor way in 2008-9 – and to help extinguish the financial fire rather than to be among the many companies that, inadvertently or otherwise, ignited the conflagration.

    On volatility and Wall Street incentives:

    One fact of financial life should never be forgotten. Wall Street – to use the term in its figurative sense – would like its customers to make money, but what truly causes its denizens’ juices to flow is feverish activity. At such times, whatever foolishness can be marketed will be vigorously marketed – not by everyone but always by someone…. Occasionally, the scene turns ugly. The politicians then become enraged; the most flagrant perpetrators of misdeeds slip away, rich and unpunished; and your friend next door becomes bewildered, poorer and sometimes vengeful. Money, he learns, has trumped morality.

    On Berkshire’s impact in the US economy:

    Berkshire now has – by far – the largest GAAP net worth recorded by any American business. Record operating income and a strong stock market led to a yearend figure of $561 billion. The total GAAP net worth for the other 499 S&P companies – a who’s who of American business – was $8.9 trillion in 2022. (The 2023 number for the S&P has not yet been tallied but is unlikely to materially exceed $9.5 trillion.) By this measure, Berkshire now occupies nearly 6% of the universe in which it operates. Doubling our huge base is simply not possible within, say, a five-year period, particularly because we are highly averse to issuing shares (an act that immediately juices net worth).

    On the difference between GAAP earnings and operating earnings:

    The primary difference between the mandated figures and the ones Berkshire prefers is that we exclude unrealized capital gains or losses that at times can exceed $5 billion a day. Ironically, our preference was pretty much the rule until 2018, when the “improvement” was mandated. Galileo’s experience, several centuries ago, should have taught us not to mess with mandates from on high. But, at Berkshire, we can be stubborn.

    On compounding

    Make no mistake about the significance of capital gains: I expect them to be a very important component of Berkshire’s value accretion during the decades ahead. Why else would we commit huge dollar amounts of your money (and Bertie’s) to marketable equities just as I have been doing with my own funds throughout my investing lifetime? I can’t remember a period since March 11, 1942 – the date of my first stock purchase – that I have not had a majority of my net worth in equities, U.S.-based equities. And so far, so good. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell below 100 on that fateful day in 1942 when I  pulled the trigger.” I was down about $5 by the time school was out. Soon, things turned around and now that index hovers around 38,000. America has been a terrific country for investors. All they have needed to do is sit quietly, listening to no one.

    * * *

    One investment rule at Berkshire has not and will not change: Never risk permanent loss of capital. Thanks to the American tailwind and the power of compound interest, the arena in which we operate has been – and will be – rewarding if you make a couple of good decisions during a lifetime and avoid serious mistakes.

    On cash and Treasury holdings and disaster preparedness:

    Your company also holds a cash and U.S. Treasury bill position far in excess of what conventional wisdom deems necessary. During the 2008 panic, Berkshire generated cash from operations and did not rely in any manner on commercial paper, bank lines or debt markets. We did not predict the time of an economic paralysis but we were always prepared for one… Extreme fiscal conservatism is a corporate pledge we make to those who have joined us in ownership of Berkshire. In most years – indeed in most decades – our caution will likely prove to be unneeded behavior – akin to an insurance policy on a fortress-like building thought to be fireproof. But Berkshire does not want to inflict permanent financial damage – quotational shrinkage for extended periods can’t be avoided – on Bertie or any of the individuals who have trusted us with their savings.

    * * *

    Our investment income was certain to materially grow because the huge U.S. Treasury bill position held by Berkshire had finally begun to pay us far more than the pittance we had been receiving…

    On indirect impact of stock buybacks:

    Both AMEX and Coke will almost certainly increase their dividends in 2024 – about 16% in the case of AMEX – and we will most certainly leave our holdings untouched throughout the year. Could I create a better worldwide business than these two enjoy? As Bertie will tell you: “No way.” Though Berkshire did not purchase shares of either company in 2023, your indirect
    ownership of both Coke and AMEX increased a bit last year because of share repurchases we made at Berkshire.     Such repurchases work to increase your participation in every asset that Berkshire owns. To this obvious but often overlooked truth, I add my usual caveat: All stock repurchases should be price-dependent. What is sensible at a discount to business-value becomes stupid if done at a premium.

    On why Berkshire will not buy Occidental:

    At yearend, Berkshire owned 27.8% of Occidental Petroleum’s common shares and also owned warrants that, for more than five years, give us the option to materially increase our ownership at a fixed price. Though we very much like our ownership, as well as the option, Berkshire has no interest in purchasing or managing Occidental. We particularly like its vast oil and gas holdings in the United States, as well as its leadership in carbon-capture initiatives, though the economic feasibility of this technique has yet to be proven. Both of these activities are very much in our country’s interest… Under Vicki Hollub’s leadership, Occidental is doing the right things for both its country and its owners. No one knows what oil prices will do over the next month, year, or decade. But Vicki does know how to separate oil from rock, and that’s an uncommon talent, valuable to her shareholders and to her country.

    On Berkshire’s recent investment in five Japanese trading companies.

    Berkshire continues to hold its passive and long-term interest in five very large Japanese companies – Itochu, Marubeni, Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Sumitomo – each of which operates in a highly-diversified manner somewhat similar to the way Berkshire itself is run. We increased our holdings in all five last year after Greg Abel and I made a trip to Tokyo to talk with their managements. Berkshire now owns about 9% of each of the five. (A minor point: Japanese companies calculate outstanding shares in a manner different from the practice in the U.S.)… Our cost for the five totals ¥1.6 trillion, and the yearend market value of the five was ¥2.9 trillion. However, the yen has weakened in recent years and our yearend unrealized gain in dollars was 61% or $8 billion.

    Finally, a bizarre tangent from Buffett discussing suicide by train (in the context of Berkshire’s disappointing investment in BNSF):

    An evolving problem is that a growing percentage of Americans are not looking for the difficult, and often lonely, employment conditions inherent in some rail operations. Engineers must deal with the fact that among an American population of 335 million, some forlorn or mentally-disturbed Americans are going to elect suicide by lying in front of a 100-car, extraordinarily heavy train that can’t be stopped in less than a mile or more. Would you like to be the helpless engineer? This trauma happens about once a day in North America; it is far more common in Europe and will always be with us.

    Full letter below (pdf link).

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/24/2024 – 13:37

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Feb 24

Today’s News 24th February 2024

  • Alexei Navalny's Death And Curious Well-Timed Coincidences
    Alexei Navalny’s Death And Curious Well-Timed Coincidences

    Authored by Edward Curtin via Off-Guardian.org,

    There is propaganda by commission and propaganda by omission, the former often serve to conceal the latter. Timing is crucial.

    That the U.S. President Joseph Biden, his British, NATO, Israeli allies, and their corporate media mouthpieces are in need of a major propaganda victory is obvious. They are losing the war in Ukraine, have been condemned throughout the world for the genocide in Gaza, and are ruling over a disintegrating empire. Biden and Netanyahu’s political lives are at serious risk. And so they have just rolled out a full-court propaganda press effort aimed at covering their losses. It should be crystal clear to anyone who can use logic to see the timing involved.

    The great French scholar of propaganda and technology, Jacques Ellul, wrote years ago that propaganda “is not the touch of a magic wand. It is based on slow constant impregnation. It creates convictions and compliance through imperceptible influences that are effective only by continuous repetition.”

    However, once this groundwork has been laid over time – as it has been with the continuous anti-Russia Putin hysteria and support for Israel’s Zionist policies – it can be intensely ratcheted up in exigent circumstances when the long-serving narrative is in jeopardy, such as it is now.

    Once the death in a Russian prison of the Western backed Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was announced on Friday, February 16, 2024, it was immediately followed by a cascade of anti-Russia pronouncements whose aim was to not only continue the demonization of Russia and its President Vladimir Putin but to serve other purposes as well.

    With one fell stroke, the calm history lesson about Ukraine, Russia, and U.S./NATO that Putin had just delivered to the world via Tucker Carlson disappeared down the memory hole, as Biden, without any evidence, declared that “Putin and his thugs” and Putin’s “brutality” are responsible for Navalny’s death.

    This, of course, is a replay of the false charges sans evidence waged against Russia for an earlier poisoning of Navalny, the Skripals (since disappeared by the British government), Alexander Litvinenko, et al.

    Shortly after, Zelensky, performing his puppet routine while coincidently appearing at the Munich Security Conference – on Saturday, February 17, a day after Navalny’s death was announced – with Navalny’s then widow, said it was “obvious” that Putin had killed Navalny, while Biden pushed for more money for Ukraine’s doomed war against Russia, a U.S./NATO war created by the U.S. from the start with its aggressive military push to Russia’s borders and its 2015 Ukrainian coup d’état that ousted the pro-Russian leader, setting the stage for Russia’s incursion into Ukraine in February 2022. That Putin told Carlson these obvious facts, while slyly mentioning to Carlson that he understood that Carlson once tried to join the CIA, is now for most people in the West history lost behind the headlines, if it ever were anything more.

    All this happened while Russia pushed through Ukraine’s defenses and took the city of Avdeevka, which had long been contested. With each day that passes, it is obvious that Biden’s Ukraine war strategy is that of a desperate politician on the ropes and that Putin has completely outfoxed the American desperados and their NATO European stooges. The MSM prefer to suggest otherwise, that hope is just around the corner if we send billions more dollars and weapons, and if with the help of our British friends, we take the war further into Russian territory and risk a nuclear confrontation. But we are in a propaganda war for the minds of the Western public.

    Much of the rest of the world has seen through the risible MSM headlines used to delude the public that Russia is the great threat to world peace and stability. Like the previous Russia-gate lies, this ongoing one, coinciding with Navalny’s death, is timed to divert the public’s attention from key ongoing matters.

    Tomorrow and Wednesday, Julian Assange will have his final appeal in a British court to prevent his extradition to the United States. Biden wants this journalist prosecuted for doing the job that the MSM have failed to do: Exposing the facts about the ruthless U.S. killing machine. But the bruhaha about Navalny has rendered the absolute hypocrisy over the torture and imprisonment of the innocent and brave Assange secondary and “inconsequential.” As intended, this has now become an afterthought as the mainstream media’s Russia-obsessed headlines flow uninterruptedly. The New York Times, the key propaganda organ for the Biden administration and the deep-state, reports just today that “The gravity of President Putin’s threats is now dawning on Europe” and “Navalny’s Widow Promises to Carry on Opposition Leader’s Work.”  These are typical Times’ rants.  As is its Magazine article headline from yesterday “Marilyn Robinson [the writer and friend of Barack Obama] Considers Biden a Gift of God.”

    I don’t think the Palestinians would agree, but then too, their slaughter by Israel with U.S. assistance – more than 29,000 Palestinians in Gaza alone have been killed so far – and the coming IDF invasion of Rafah, have also been pushed to the back pages or to nowhere by the propaganda about Navalny and Russia.

    I won’t mention the Russian election in mid-March that might possibly factor into all this since we all will be dutifully and timely told that the evil killer Putin is a dictator, ignorant, ruthless – add your own adjectives – and is no doubt trying to rig the fair-and-square U.S. November presidential election – for someone, just as he did in 2016.

    Nor mention The NY Times article of February 17 by David Sanger and Julian Barnes that the “U.S Fears Russia Might Put a Nuclear Weapon in Space.”

    Everyone knows that the Russians are coming to get us, as they always have. They probably killed JFK, right?

    It’s easy to follow along as this propaganda eruption circles the Internet like painted ponies on a carousel. There will be no time to stop and think, to pause; to ask what the hell is going on? The ponies will dip and bob and make you dizzy.

    For more corroboration of these matters, read the political analyst Gilbert Doctorow’s astute piece on how the Turkish broadcaster TRT World refused to post the interview that they did with him. Doctorow claims British intelligence killed Navalny. For some reason this should not be broached, according to TRT.

    Whether Doctorow is right or not, only a very dimwitted person would think that Putin would have Navalny killed. He has nothing to gain and everything to lose by doing so. Yet the MSM and their government overlords consider most people very stupid and so are trying to blitz them with obvious propaganda through commission and omission.

    We have heard this story before.

    *  *  *

    Edward Curtin is an independent writer whose work has appeared widely over many years. His website is edwardcurtin.com and his new book is Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/23/2024 – 23:25

  • Who's Behind Cyber Attacks?
    Who’s Behind Cyber Attacks?

    The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), alongside the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), has issued a warning about potential cyber threats posed by Chinese state-sponsored actors targeting critical infrastructure in the United States.

    The warning follows recent incidents involving a group known as Volt Typhoon, which also goes by names such as Vanguard Panda and BRONZE SILHOUETTE, and is believed to have breached the IT environments of multiple critical infrastructure organizations in the U.S., including in Communications, Energy, Transportation Systems, and Water and Wastewater Systems sectors. According to the advisory, these malicious actors are actively attempting to infiltrate U.S. networks and are potentially paving the way for disruptive or destructive cyberattacks.

    Between 2000 and 2023, the European Repository of Cyber Incidents (EuRepoC) database recorded a total of 2,506 politically motivated cyber attacks worldwide, perpetrated by 679 known actors/groups. These cyber incidents include politicized and non-politicized attacks aimed at political targets, as well as attacks against critical infrastructure, whether carried out by states (and affiliated groups) or by non-state actors with political objectives.

    As Statista’s Anna Fleck details in the following infographic, almost 12 percent of politically-motivated cyberattacks detected since the turn of the century were launched from China, followed by Russia with a similar share (11.6 percent).

    Infographic: Who’s Behind Cyber Attacks? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Iran was responsible for 5.3 percent of these cyber incidents over the period studied, and North Korea for 4.7 percent. It’s important to note here that most malicious acts of this type (45 percent) were unattributed, meaning that the country of origin could not be identified in many cases.

    Almost a third of the politically-motivated cyber attacks analyzed were carried out by states (or affiliated groups), and a similar proportion by non-state actors with political objectives. Around half of the attacks recorded were aimed at political targets (public figures, political parties, etc.), and almost 20 percent at critical infrastructures.

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

  • Immunosuppression Prevalence Doubled, Linked To Medication Use And COVID: Experts
    Immunosuppression Prevalence Doubled, Linked To Medication Use And COVID: Experts

    Authored by Marina Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Between 2013 and 2021, rates of immunosuppression in adults have doubled, according to estimates from a Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) research letter.

    (UGREEN 3S/Shutterstock)

     

    In 2021, an estimated 6.6 percent of U.S. adults were immunosuppressed. “This rate of immunosuppression was higher than the previous national estimate of 2.7 percent using the 2013 [National Health Interview Survey],” the authors wrote in their paper.

    The researchers estimated immunosuppression prevalence by analyzing National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) results.

    Specifically, the authors analyzed responses to five questions. Over 29,000 individuals were asked if they had a health condition or were taking medication or treatments that would weaken their immune system. They were also asked if they had cancer or malignancy, the type of cancer, and their age at the time of cancer diagnosis.

    In 2013, over 34,000 people were interviewed, garnering a response from 75 percent of households. In 2021, only about half of the households contacted responded to the survey.

    Why the Rise in Immunosuppression?

    “Given the documented increase in immunosuppression, studies are needed to understand the causes for this increase,” the authors wrote. However, they mentioned that the rise in self-reported immunosuppression may be due to increased use of immunosuppressive medications.

    The use of adalimumab, a drug used to treat autoimmune conditions, has increased 3.5-fold between 2014 and 2021.

    Immunosuppression carries significant risks, “including an increased susceptibility to infections, potential organ rejection, side effects of immunosuppressant drugs, elevated cancer risk, and pregnancy-related concerns,” Mohammad Razzaque, professor of pathology at the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, told The Epoch Times.

    Immunosuppression occurs naturally with age, but it can also occur due to the individual being on various immunosuppressive therapies. People undergoing such therapies include organ transplant patients and those with autoimmune diseases or cancer.

    Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of medicine and preventative medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, reasoned that the rising prevalence could signify progress in science and health.

    “There are more and more people being kept alive and are being treated with immunosuppressant agents in the United States, and that treatment is extending life, which means that the proportion of the population that is immunosuppressed is increasing,” Dr. Schaffner said.

    Crude data from NHIS have also shown a rise in self-reported rates of cancer. According to 2015 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) statistics, 8.7 percent of adults reported cancer. In 2021, it was estimated that 9.8 percent of adults had cancer.

    NHIS’ most recent survey in 2022 estimated that a slight decrease of 9.6 percent of adults had cancer.

    The COVID-19 pandemic may have also made individuals more aware of their immune health and whether they are immunosuppressed, the research letter authors added.

    COVID-19 and Immunosuppression

    Studies have shown that the COVID-19 virus can disrupt the function and order of the immune system, leading to immune dysfunction and possible immunodeficiency.

    One 2o23 study published in Nature Reviews Rheumatology found that people with a COVID-19 infection are at a greater risk of developing autoimmune diseases, which may be linked to potential immunodeficiencies.

    The COVID-19 pandemic may have been particularly challenging to those already immunocompromised.

    Immunocompromised people tend to have an increased disease severity if they become infected with COVID-19, and the vaccine appears to be less effective for them. Public health measures put in place during the pandemic may also have created obstacles for these people to access health care and therapies for their immunosuppression, said Mr. Razzaque.

    Other researchers and physicians argue that the COVID-19 vaccines may also contribute to immunosuppression and deficiencies, though some research has opposite findings.

    Research from Cleveland Clinic suggests that repeated boosting of COVID-19 vaccinations has been shown to put a person at risk of future COVID-19 infections. Another letter to the editor from Columbia University authors published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that people with higher vaccine antibody levels after vaccination were more strongly associated with breakthrough infections.

    Most recently, an Australian review suggested that repeat COVID-19 vaccine boosting in immunocompromised individuals may impair immune activation within this population, possibly making them more vulnerable to infections and cancers.

    In a research paper, Mr. Razzaque pointed to increased influenza infections reported in people who receive repeat influenza vaccinations, speculating if frequent boosting may be linked to immunosuppression.

    Dr. Schaffner said whether increased infections linked to repeat vaccinations are a sign of general immunosuppression is debatable.

    “It’s a very debatable issue,” he said, adding that even if there is an increased risk of COVID-19 infection linked to repeat vaccination, there does not seem to be “serious evidence” indicating a “general suppression of the immune system.”

    However, works by Nordic researchers Drs. Peter Aaby and Christine Stabell Benn suggest that non-live vaccines, including COVID-19 and influenza vaccines, tend to make the immune system “lazy” and less equipped to fight an infection. In contrast, live vaccines train the immune system to become better fighters.

    Gastroenterologist and CEO of ProgenaBiome, Dr. Sabine Hazan, has said that the COVID-19 vaccine may cause immunosuppression by reducing good Bifidobacteria in the gut. She showed that after COVID-19 mRNA vaccination, Bifidobacteria levels dropped by half among her trial participants.

    Bifidobacteria are essential for boosting intestinal immunity. Dr. Hazan’s earlier work showed that people with reduced Bifidobacteria in the gut were at risk of severe COVID-19 infections, and therapeutics that replenished the Bifidobacteria, such as vitamins C and D and ivermectin improved patient survival rates.

    “The pandemic appears to have influenced what the public thinks about their immune system. There has been a big jump in perceived weakness in the immune system. More research is needed to determine if either SARS-CoV-2 infection or COVID-19 vaccine indeed has impaired human immunity according to these perceptions,” Dr. Peter McCullough, renowned cardiologist and internist, told The Epoch Times.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/23/2024 – 22:35

  • These Are The World's Oldest Populations
    These Are The World’s Oldest Populations

    Following the UN’s commemoration of World Day of Social Justice on February 20, Statista’s Felix Richter takes a look at one of the key challenges the world is facing in the coming decades: the gradual and largely irreversible shift towards an older population. According to the United Nations Population Division, the number of persons aged 65 and older is expected to double over the next three decades, reaching 1.6 billion in 2050.

    As the following chart shows, Asia is at the forefront of this trend, with Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan expected to have the highest share of people aged 65 and older by 2050.

    Infographic: The World's Oldest Populations | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    While Japan is famous for its old population and currently topping the list, other Asian economies are in the middle of a significant shift, as life expectancy has rapidly improved over the last decades and continues to do so.

    By 2050, roughly 40 percent of the populations of Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan are expected to be 65 and older, which makes a huge difference to levels currently observed in highly developed regions, where the share of older people is in the low 20s.

    “Population ageing is a defining global trend of our time,” the UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs writes in its World Social Report 2023, calling it a “major success story” that brings both challenges and opportunities.

    One of the main challenges for countries with ageing populations is to ensure that the economy can support the consumption needs of a growing number of older people, be it by raising the legal retirement age, removing barriers to voluntary labor force participation of older people or by ensuring equitable access to education, health care and working opportunities throughout the lifespan, which can help to boost economic security at older ages.

    Especially countries in the early stages of the demographic shift have the opportunity to plan ahead and implement the right measures ahead of time, to effectively manage the challenges that come with an ageing population… like mass depopulation?

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/23/2024 – 22:10

  • Misinformation Researcher Sander Van Der Linden Caught Lying, Spreading Misinformation
    Misinformation Researcher Sander Van Der Linden Caught Lying, Spreading Misinformation

    Authored by Paul D. Thacker via The Disinformation Chronicle (subscribe here),

    Sander van der Linden’s webpage at Cambridge University says he is an esteemed academic, with prior positions at Princeton and Yale, and has published studies on social influence misinformation, and fake news that place him among the top 1% of all social researchers and the top 2% across all of science.

    Pretty much every major media outlet—the New York Times, BBC, CNN, The Economist, NPR, the Washington Post and NBC Nightly News—has interviewed van der Linden about his research, while his book “FOOLPROOF: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity” received wide praise.

    But a month back, he climbed down from his lofty academic perch and picked a fight on X with writer Nate Silver and … Professor van der Linden got crushed: exposed as a liar and a quack who spreads misinformation while editing his personal Wikipedia page for the last decade through various single purpose accounts (SPAs) or sock puppets, to burnish his credentials and promote himself and his research.

    “We are still getting numerous SPAs on this topic,” one Wikipedia editors noted about Sander van der Linden’s biography. “Nothing has changed, except they’ve gotten better at not getting caught.”

    Examined in detail, the van der Linden episode highlights growing evidence that “misinformation research” is just politics dressed up in academic garb to suppress and censor dissent on controversial topics.

    The kerfuffle kicked off a few weeks back when Sander van der Linden whipped up a brawl on X with Nate Silver, perhaps because Silver has 3.3 million followers and van der Linden has around 15K and was hoping to attract some attention to himself. Days after the spat began, van der Linden was exposed for having edited Wikipedia pages to promote himself and his research. But more on that later.

    In the first round, van der Linden promoted an article from years back, calling the possibility of a lab accident a racist conspiracy theory. Virologists and disinformation “experts” promoted this line for years, until too much evidence squirted out showing that it never made sense. Plus, why is it “racist” to say the pandemic started in a Chinese lab and not in a Chinese market that sells wild animals?

    It’s a narrative that never made any sense and was obviously designed to shut down discussion by labeling people “racist.”

    “Misinformation has become a completely incoherent concept,” Silver wrote. “A game of ‘I’m rubber, you’re glue.’”

    Oh, but it goes on.

    Van der Linden then argued there was a “consensus” that the pandemic started naturally, as opposed to a “conspiracy” that it began in a lab. Again, this highlights how much of disinformation “research” is slapping labels on ideas for reasons that are never really explained. It’s rhetorical magic.

    And van der Linden ignores bounties of evidence that virologists ran a propaganda campaign to shout down anyone asking questions about a lab accident by planting papers in The Lancet, Emerging Microbes & Infections, and Nature Medicine.

    “The ‘broad’ definition of misinformation is incoherent,” Silver noted. “What is signifies now is an effort to suppress dissent and launder partisan opinions into a false consensus on matters of legitimate controversy. It’s a cynical enterprise, aimed at the gullible.”

    Van der Linden then doubled down with the “this is all a racism” argument.

    “Half the reason Team Misinformation people bug me,” Silver responded, “Is because it’s just so obvious what they’re doing, taking genuinely contentious discussions and stigmatizing the positions that don’t match their politics with the thinnest imaginable reeds of expert authority.”

    Oh, but it continued … for several days. (This guy needs attention, no?)

    Van der Linden then put out a tweet to drag others into the fight, including Peter Hotez, who was caught funding gain-of-function studies in Wuhan, researcher Angela Rasmussen, and Arizona’s Michael Worobey, whose research on the pandemic’s origin has been noted for “careless and unprofessional handling of statistical methodology.”

    At this point, it became pretty clear that van der Linden was trolling Silver to bring attention to himself—and he got that attention.

    Digging through van der Linden’s Wikipedia page, the X account @triplebankshot noted that Wiki editors had caught van der Linden editing his page for the last decade through various sock puppets to create a suite of promotional material.

    “This guy is a complete fraud / pathological liar. He’s been repeatedly banned from Wikipedia over the last 10+ years for using an army of sockpuppets to create articles about himself with self-promotional material.”

    In the talk section of Sander van der Linden’s Wikipedia page, editors discussed how various purportedly unrelated accounts kept adding entries to promote Sander van der Linden, his research, and his book. Here’s some of their findings:

    The editors concluded that these accounts were being generated just to promote Sander van der Linden, meaning van der Linden was orchestrating these accounts to craft propaganda about himself.

    Some final thoughts from Silver about the whole Sander van der Linden episode and the silly academic discipline of “misinformation research.”

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/23/2024 – 21:45

  • GM-Owned Cruise's Robotaxis Plan "Relaunch" After Nationwide Suspension
    GM-Owned Cruise’s Robotaxis Plan “Relaunch” After Nationwide Suspension

    General Motors Co.’s Cruise autonomous driving unit is preparing to resume robotaxi testing with safety drivers in Houston and Dallas metro areas in the coming weeks, following the nationwide grounding after one of its robotaxis ran over a pedestrian in San Francisco in October, according to Bloomberg News. 

    People familiar with the conversations say Cruise executives and officials in several metro areas, including the two Texas cities, are discussing the return of the robotaxi with safety drivers on public roads. Before the accident last year, the company had hundreds of robotaxi operating across San Fran, Austin, Houston, and Phoenix. 

    “We have not set a timeline for deployment,” Cruise spokesman Pat Morrissey wrote in a statement. 

    Morrissey continued: “Our goal is to relaunch in one city with manually driven vehicles and supervised testing as soon as possible once we have taken steps to rebuild trust with regulators and the public. We are in the process of meeting with officials in select markets to gather information, share updates and rebuild trust.”

    Cruise’s collapse in public trust came last October when one of its robotaxi dragged a pedestrian in San Francisco. 

    This sparked claims by regulators that Cruise execs withheld key footage and details about the incident.

    And the fallout resulted in California pulling Cruise’s license to operate the taxis. The company also fired top executives and laid off 25% of its workforce. A new chief safety officer was recently brought on board. 

    The people added Cruise’s decision on which metro areas to restart robotaxi operations has yet to be made. 

    Meanwhile, crowds in downtown San Fran destroyed a Waymo self-driving car earlier this month. 

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

    This comes after several attacks on self-driving cars in the metro area. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/23/2024 – 21:20

  • A Venezuelan Explains How (And Why) Criminal Migrants Get To The US
    A Venezuelan Explains How (And Why) Criminal Migrants Get To The US

    Authored by Daniela Gonzalez via The Organic Prepper blog,

    With the last recent events at the US border and the approach of the authorities’ response (not the ones of the States being affected, but the highest ones), anyone with some degree of common sense would start to ask questions.

    How are migrants from Venezuela getting from their country to the US border? Are they walking? if so, how long does it take and how are they equipped for it? If not, how are they getting there? Are they criminals? Are they crossing other borders legally? Is someone funding this?

    As a Venezuelan, I hope to answer some of these questions for you.

    How do Venezuelans travel to the southern US border?

    You may already be aware of the dangerous Darien jungle crossing. It’s a remote area in Panama with no road through it. There is no way to know how many people have perished there. People die not only because the jungle is already a very dangerous place for the untrained. It’s the gangs taking advantage of whomever they find. There are enough horror stories in the media to traumatize anyone for life.

    Just as general information: previous to this nightmare of a walk, there were enough borders to cross that is not so easy to go through, even for a regular citizen. However, for some reason, hordes of people carrying suitcases and all sorts of bags just walk through. There are eight (yes, EIGHT) countries to cross by foot to reach the Southern Border of the US. How someone without money can do it, is an unnerving question.

    And a much more unnerving one is how criminals do it.

    The first leg is over 500 miles (+800km) from Caracas, Venezuela to Cucuta, Colombia. This leg is relatively easy because it is a very beaten path with plenty of bus services.

    From Cucuta, the next leg is going to Necocli, Colombia, covering a similar distance. This is a coastal town. They can reach from there to several points at the coastline. From there, the crossing is by foot until the Southern Border through Panama, Honduras, and Mexico.

    This is one of the paths they follow, like many migrants trying to cross.

    The story of this handicapped migrant is something different. He and his family spent $7000 on the whole journey. How someone decides to use that amount of money to cross one of the most dangerous areas in South America is beyond my common sense.

    That money could get someone a small hacienda to live in and have basic needs covered, including a vehicle.

    The journey is incredibly dangerous for many reasons.

    Another example I cannot understand is the one depicted by this Army defector and his family. Their gear consisted of a camping tent, boots, repellant, and $5000, a product for the sale of their belongings. I haven’t seen that wad of cash that size in my whole life, to be honest. Mentioning the wife that if the bandits kidnap their child, she will be very likely missing, and can’t avoid her being assaulted…

    Really? Who is willing to take that risk?

    Sure, coming back means a certain death in the regime’s dungeons, but at least Colombia or some other neighboring country offered that couple some sort of stability.

    Other people travel with camping stoves and some small light gas canisters. Canned goods, pasta, and rice are usual staples, too. No bottled water because it’s heavy. Most people drink from the rivers. There are no such things as filtering devices, and I haven’t heard of anyone boiling water.

    It is terrifying to read things like the plans of people willing to spend the night at the foot of the most dangerous mountain to climb…only to discover that the stench of the rotting bodies was too much to stay there for too long. That’s a nightmare-like situation.

    I wasn’t going to write about the HIV-infected gangs, but I reconsidered it to tell the whole entire story. (Warning! the link contains references to sexual violence)

    The readers must understand human behavior when there are no consequences or law enforcement forces nearby. And this is the XXI Century. Extrapolate that behavior pattern of a crumbled society, and it can (it DID happen) arise wherever. One more reason to arm everyone to the teeth, if you ask me.

    Going through that with a small child…thanks, but no thanks. Putting the family’s safety in the hands of strangers? Too much to lose. I find it hard to justify someone with that amount of money to migrate that way.

    You can appreciate in the pictures of this article how some people walk even in slippers. With small children, leaving the country through the illegal trochas. Being robbed, harassed, and sometimes even killed.

    Though many are, please do note that not every person coming from Venezuela is a criminal.

    But every person is desperate.

    The people doing this are causing problems in your country.

    I see a pattern here: the unreasonably high murder rate increasing and the violent crimes and home invasions that are happening now in the US, in areas traditionally considered low-crime zones.

    It is incredible to see this kind of turmoil in a refugee shelter: Illegals attacking officers to avoid an arrest.

    And when you realize a pattern like they mention in this article, informing that two cities of the American continent are invaded by the same gang at the same time, is reasonable to start questioning what can be happening.

    At the end of this article, there is one of the most significant phrases: ” (…) given the tense relationships between the US and Venezuela…”

    How are criminals that should be in Venezuelan prison going to America?

    For those of us born in the 80s, the name “Mariel” doesn’t say much. But after a little research, we find out that there is yet another cycle repeating itself: criminals entering massively to the US from a country deeply linked to Eastern foreign powers and with close ties to rogue nations.

    If a regular citizen finds difficulties in leaving the country legally through a border (confiscation of little green thingies that uniforms love, for instance), it is hard to understand how criminals that were supposedly in jail in Venezuela end up appearing in places as far as Miami. 

    My thoughts?

    There are two methods a criminal could bypass the safety measures in a border. One, they are impersonating some of their victims of former crimes with stolen IDs.

    As sinister as it sounds, finding someone resembling them and using their IDs to get out of Dodge, mixing up with the crowd crossing is not that hard these days. People disappear in Venezuela regularly without any trace. Leaving a few dead doppelgangers behind and taking their IDs shouldn’t be that hard for someone with the scruples to do.

    The migration authorities usually don’t have the means to verify fingerprints in these small border towns, and they issue temporary residence or transit-only permits, knowing that they leave the border soon and won’t stay being a nuisance. On the other hand, there is another option to ponder. If the intention of sending criminals is seriously adopted by any government holding a grip on their ID system, it would not be a problem to re-issue a new identity document with a new name, keeping the same fingerprints and any other biometric data. You have had an article about this on your website before.

    Who is behind all this?

    The next questions are surely what is in the minds of everyone reading this. Is somebody paying for all this? Or organizing it? And if so, why?

    To determine the answer, historical data has to be reviewed. This is not anything new and there is already a precedent that many politicians have tried to sweep under the rug: Castro’s threat of the “Plan Bravo” in the middle 1990s. After all, he already had sent close to 8000 convicts camouflaged as “immigrants” at the beginning of the 1980s.

    This news seems to be forgotten now: Venezuelan passports were being sold at the embassy in Iraq (there is an English version in this link) and the much more recent detention of Jihad members in Argentina.

    I have seen plenty of videos with interviews of people traveling to the US by foot. I have noticed this: most of them are healthy young men in their 20s and physically fit. Not all of them are going to the shelters to avoid being screened by the migration authorities. On the contrary, very possibly they are lying low and integrating into some sort of network already in place.

    In one of those interviews, the man commented something that has been in my head ever since. “The US is going to be very different soon”.

    Whether he’s a psychic with a crystal ball, or he attended some type of briefing and he’s on a mission. The impact of so many people roaming on the streets may not look too much. But what will happen when (not “if,” but WHEN) the sleepers attend the call to generate turmoil on a country-wide scale?

    Sure, many of you will say, “That’s why we have our 2nd Amendment”.

    Trust me, you will hardly find someone to shoot at. They won’t engage in direct conflict. Albeit I’m not a military analyst by any means, their target is very likely infrastructure and psyops on the society. Be very vigilant of water reservoirs.

    Violent crime, increasing in number and frequency, could start overnight now.

    Do you remember the recent 2019 turmoils in Chile? All of it was organized and executed by the leftist wing. These migrants from countries with regimes that are hostile towards the US should be carefully screened. The consequences could be very high in the near future.

    More resources

    Some additional information can be found in the following links:

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/23/2024 – 20:55

  • AT&T Reveals Cause Of Major Outage, Not Caused By Cyberattack
    AT&T Reveals Cause Of Major Outage, Not Caused By Cyberattack

    By Jack Phillips of Epoch Times

    AT&T said Friday that the 12-hour-long outage to its U.S. cellphone network Thursday didn’t appear to be caused by a cyberattack, blaming it on an “incorrect process.”

    On Thursday, numerous customers reported that AT&T and Cricket, its subsidiary, were down for hours. Some 75,000 customers reported to DownDetector.com they were without cellphone service, texting, or internet access across the country, although that number is likely quite higher.

    “Based on our initial review, we believe that today’s outage was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyber attack,” AT&T said in a statement Friday.

    The company did not reveal the exact cause of the service disruption. The firm said Thursday that the disruption was fixed.

    Amid the outage, iPhone users with AT&T saw an “SOS” message and were told that they could only make emergency or Wi-Fi calls. Android users saw a similar message that they could only make emergency calls.

    But some local police and sheriff’s departments wrote on social media that some AT&T users were not able to make 911 calls, while some law enforcement officials, who were AT&T customers too, couldn’t use their devices.

    The Federal Communications Commission contacted the FBI and other agencies about the outage, White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters Thursday. The FBI said it communicated with AT&T, saying in a statement that “should we learn of any malicious activity we will respond accordingly.”

    Before the outage was resolved, AT&T urged customers to connect to Wi-Fi to use their phones. Wi-Fi calling is a built-in feature on most Android devices and iPhones and can be turned on under the phone’s settings.

    “Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them. We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored,” AT&T said in a statement.

    If Wi-Fi isn’t available, there are few options for cell phone users. It’s possible to switch services if a phone is unlocked, but that requires signing up online and porting your phone number. Some apps, including Google Maps, have limited service offline. Payment apps also do not use a phone’s cell service to work and should also be useable.

    Politicians in Washington also raised the alarm after the outage caught their attention.

    “We are working to assess today’s disruption in order to gain a complete understanding of what went wrong and what can be done to prevent future incidents like this from occurring,” Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio) said in a statement.

    Meanwhile, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) warned that if the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) executes a cyberattack in the future, it would cause far more devastating consequences for Americans.

    In a post on X, Mr. Rubio, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote that “it will be 100 times worse when China launches a cyber attack on America on the eve of a Taiwan invasion.”

    “And it won’t be just cell service they hit, it will be your power, your water, and your bank,” he said, adding that he doesn’t know the cause of the outage.

    Federal officials in recent years have increasingly ramped out warnings about the CCP’s capabilities, saying that groups associated with the regime are carrying out cyberattacks constantly.

    “China-sponsored hackers pre-positioned for potential cyberattacks against U.S. oil and natural gas companies way back in 2011, but these days, it’s reached something closer to a fever pitch,” said FBI Director Chris Wray earlier this year. “What we’re seeing now is China’s increasing build-out of offensive weapons within our critical infrastructure, poised to attack whenever Beijing decides the time is right.”

    More in the original report available at The Epoch Times

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/23/2024 – 20:30

  • New York Jury Finds NRA Head Wayne Pierre Liable, Must Pay $4.3 Million in Damages
    New York Jury Finds NRA Head Wayne Pierre Liable, Must Pay $4.3 Million in Damages

    By Caden Pearson of Epoch Times

    A New York jury found National Rifle Association (NRA) boss Wayne LaPierre liable in a civil case on Friday, ordering him to pay $4.3 million in damages for the mismanagement and misuse of charitable funds.

    The verdict concludes a trial in the civil lawsuit brought by the Democratic Attorney General Letitia James of New York, accusing Mr. LaPierre of questionable financial practices during his tenure from 2014 to 2022.

    The jury found that Mr. LaPierre violated his fiduciary duties, causing $5.4 million in damages to the NRA.

    Notably, they recognized that he had repaid just over $1 million to the charity, which reduced the net damages.

    In addition to the financial penalty, the jury determined that Mr. LaPierre should be removed from his position as executive vice president of the gun rights group.

    The Manhattan jury found that Mr. LaPierre had misused millions of dollars from the organization’s funds to make personal luxury purchases over a span of 30 years.

    The jury did not find Mr. LaPierre liable for breaking laws against self-dealing regarding a post-employment contract with the NRA, valued at over $17 million. They found that the arrangement had been properly approved in advance by the NRA board.

    Despite Mr. LaPierre’s recent resignation, the judge will now decide whether to permanently bar him from any future leadership roles within the NRA in an upcoming bench trial.

    Jury deliberations in the case began on Feb. 16.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/23/2024 – 20:13

  • Have We Passed The Peak Of The Smartphone Era?
    Have We Passed The Peak Of The Smartphone Era?

    Despite the ongoing transition to 5G, which has thrown a lifeline to smartphone manufacturers struggling to keep up growth in the maturing smartphone market, global smartphone shipments dropped to the lowest level in a decade last year.

    As Statista’s Felix Richter reports, according to estimates from IDC, smartphone vendors shipped 1.17 billion devices last year, down more than 20 percent from 2016, when smartphone shipments peaked at 1.47 billion units.

    Infographic: Have We Passed the Peak of the Smartphone Era? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    While many experts think that “peak smartphone” is already behind us, market research group IDC remains hopeful for the industry to return to growth in 2024 and beyond.

    “The tide has finally turned and it feels safe to say the worst is behind us,” Nabila Popal, research director at IDC, said in November 2023.

    “As we enter the new era of low single-digit growth and lengthened refresh cycles, it is clear the market is maturing. While the total available market will remain below pre-pandemic shipment levels throughout the forecast, the bright side is that average selling prices and market value will remain notably higher than before.”

    Still, what does that matter – wait for the wave of AI phones (whatever that means)…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/23/2024 – 19:40

  • Victor Davis Hanson: Blue Laws For Red Citizens
    Victor Davis Hanson: Blue Laws For Red Citizens

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

    One state prosecutor and one civilian plaintiff have already won huge fines and damages from Donald Trump that may, with legal costs, exceed $500 million.

    Trump awaits further civil and criminal liability in three other federal, state, and local indictments.

    There are eerie commonalities in all these five court cases involving plaintiff E. Jean Carroll, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, New York Attorney General Letitia James, federal special counsel Jack Smith, and Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis.

    One, they are either unapologetically left-wing or associated with liberal causes.

    They filed their legal writs in big-city, left-wing America—Atlanta, New York, Washington—where liberal judges and jury pools predominate in a manner not characteristic of the country at large.

    Two, they are overtly political.

    Bragg, James, and Willis have either campaigned for office or raised campaign funds by promising to get or even destroy Donald Trump.

    Carroll’s suit was funded by left-wing billionaire Reid Hoffman.

    Smith sued to rush his court schedule in hopes of putting Trump on trial before the November election.

    Three, there would not be any of these cases had Donald Trump not run for the presidency or not been a conservative.

    Carroll’s suit bypassed statute of limitation restrictions by prompting the intervention of a left-wing New York legislator. He passed a special bill, allowing a one-year window to waive the statute of limitations for sexual assault claims from decades past.

    Until Trump, no New York prosecutor like James had ever filed a civil suit against a business for allegedly overvaluing real estate assets to obtain loans that bank auditors approved and were paid back in full, on time, and with sizable interest profits to the lending institutions.

    Alvin Bragg bootstrapped a Trump private non-disclosure agreement into a federal campaign violation in a desperate effort to find something on Trump.

    Smith is also charging Trump with insurrectionary activity. But Trump had never been so charged with insurrection, much less convicted of it.

    Willis strained to find a way to criminalize Trump’s complaints about his loss of Georgia in the 2020 national election. She finally came up with a racketeering charge, usually more applicable to mafiosi and drug cartels.

    Four, in all these cases, the charges could have been equally applicable to fellow left-wing public figures and officials.

    Joe Biden, like Trump, was accused of sexual assault decades earlier by former staffer Tara Reade. Yet Reade was torn apart by the media and the left for inconsistencies in her memory. By contrast, the wildly inconsistent and amnesiac E. Jean Carroll won $83 million from Trump.

    Jack Smith created the precedent of charging former president Trump for unlawfully removing classified files to his private residence.

    But the government simultaneously did not charge Joe Biden for similar offenses. Yet Biden had removed files not for two years but for more than 30. He stored them not in one location but several.

    His rickety garage was a mess, not a secure family compound like Trump’s estate. Moreover, Biden did so while a senator and vice president, without any presidential authority to declassify almost any presidential document he wished.

    Biden never came forward to report the crime for over thirty years—until Trump was charged. Indeed, he was caught on tape six years ago, admitting to his ghostwriter that he possessed classified files but never reported it.

    Bragg might have noticed that both Hillary Clinton (fined $113,000) and Barack Obama (fined $350,000) broke campaign financing laws. Neither was subject to federal criminal charges by local prosecutors.

    An array of left-wing celebrities, politicians, 2004 House Members, former Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), and failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams have all recently challenged elections. They sought either to delay or redo ballot counting or, on the federal level, to sidetrack electors to ignore popular votes in their respective states.

    These lawfare cases are part of other efforts that were highly partisan and without merit. Recall the Trump “Russian collusion” hoax and the “Russian disinformation” laptop farce.

    In another first, some blue states are suing to take Trump’s name off the ballot for “insurrection,” a crime for which he has never been charged.

    Total up the deaths, damage, and length of the summer 2020 Antifa/BLM riots. Then compare the tally to the one-day January 6 riot.

    The former proved far more lethal, long-lasting, and destructive. Yet very few of the 14,000 arrested rioters in 2020 were ever prosecuted, much less convicted.

    By contrast, the Biden administration sought to jail hundreds for crimes allegedly committed on January 6, such as “illegal parading.”

    We are entering a dangerous era in America.

    Ideology and party affiliations increasingly determine guilt and punishment. Opponents are first targeted, and then laws are twisted and redefined to convict them.

    The left is waging lawfare with the implicit message to silence political opponents: either keep quiet or suffer the consequences.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/23/2024 – 19:15

  • Is This How Skynet Begins? Bezos, Nvidia Join OpenAI In Funding Humanoid Robotics Firm
    Is This How Skynet Begins? Bezos, Nvidia Join OpenAI In Funding Humanoid Robotics Firm

    A startup focused on developing general-purpose humanoids has attracted investments from Jeff Bezos, Nvidia Corp., and other major tech companies in its most recent funding round amid the rapidly expanding artificial intelligence bubble. 

    People familiar with the investing round told Bloomberg that Figure AI – backed by OpenAI and Microsoft Corp – is raising $675 million, with a pre-money valuation of approximately $2 billion. They said Bezo’s firm, Explore Investments LLC, has committed $100 million. Microsoft has committed $95 million, while Nvidia and Amazon plan $50 million each. 

    The funding round is not yet complete, and the amounts could change, with the possibility that the deals could still fall apart. 

    Figure’s AI-powered robot appears very similar in design to the Terminator assassin robot in the early 1990s film “Terminator.”  

    Recall the Terminator robot. 

    Let’s hope this Terminator-like robot is not trained on a woke-tuned model like Gemini – now that would be a disaster for humankind. 

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

    Watch the humanoid, called “Figure 01,” make a cup of coffee. The startup posted on X:

    Figure 01 has learned to make coffee.

    End-to-end AI system, trained in 10 hours, just by watching humans make coffee.

    Our neural networks are taking video in, trajectories out

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

    According to Figure’s website, developing general-purpose humanoids aims to “make a positive impact on humanity and create a better life for future generations” by “eliminating the need for unsafe and undesirable jobs — ultimately allowing us to live happier, more purposeful lives.” 

    As we’ve previewed to premium subs, Goldman believes AI could trigger 300 million layoffs through this decade. 

    The working poor have nothing to worry about because when robots displace their jobs, governments will begin helicopter-dropping monthly stimmy checks (remember all the free money during Covid) in the form of universal basic income (socialism). 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/23/2024 – 18:50

  • States Must Act Now To Save Rural Lives From Fentanyl Crisis
    States Must Act Now To Save Rural Lives From Fentanyl Crisis

    Authored by Heidi Heitkamp via RealClear Wire,

    Across rural America, the expanding crisis of fentanyl-fueled overdoses is ravaging a generation. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fentanyl deaths in the U.S. have tripled since 2016, and initial data from 2022 indicates that synthetic opioids cause about 90% of all opioid overdose deaths – which translates to nearly 75,000 Americans killed in that year alone. Rural communities, where hundreds of hospitals have already closed and more are on the chopping block, are bearing the additional weight of overdoses. We need states to do more to protect Americans and ensure access to all overdose reversal agents that have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. 

    Kingofthedead, Wikimedia Commons

    According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. Hidden in counterfeit prescription pharmaceuticals like Adderall, Xanax, and Oxycontin, it’s so lethal that just two milligrams, the size of a pencil tip, can kill. 

    One of the most devastating aspects of synthetic opioids is that they may stay in the system longer than legacy overdose agents used to try and save lives. That means multiple doses of reversal agents are required, if first responders even have them on hand.

    The flood of fentanyl coming into our country is overwhelming. In fact, the Department of Homeland Security’s 2024 Threat Assessment states that illegal drugs produced in Mexico and sold in the United States will continue to kill more Americans than any other threat. Fentanyl has even been called a weapon of mass destruction by frontline leaders in U.S. Customs and Border Protection policy, the Postal Service, Homeland Security, and public health.

    Without access to the most effective resources, more Americans will die unnecessarily from fentanyl – even as new FDA-approved medicines to save lives become available. We need to address the sources of these dangerous substances, but also equip communities to respond. Unfortunately, on both fronts, we have come up short.

    During my time as North Dakota’s attorney general, I led North Dakota’s efforts to combat the growing use of illegal drugs in our state. A vigorous effort to stop the illegal importation and sale of dangerous drugs is critically important. However, it is equally important to curtail the demand. Legal and diverse products that assist individuals in “kicking the habit” and assist first responders in saving lives must be part of any comprehensive strategy to solve America’s illegal drug problem.

    From my time representing North Dakota in the United States Senate to today, combating opioid abuse has always been a priority for me.  

    I’m proud that North Dakota has already made every tool in the opioid overdose toolkit available, including overdose reversal products specifically indicated for synthetic opioids. What most people don’t know is that each state is required to issue its own individual policy or standing order to ensure first responders are able to access and administer FDA-approved reversal agents for opioid overdoses. That’s why every state in the union must act today.

    With fentanyl responsible for over 150 deaths every day in the United States, we are facing a healthcare reckoning. There is literally no time to lose. Such a crisis demands a whole-of-government response, from local leaders to federal agencies.

    We must ensure access to every innovation, including overdose rescue agents already approved by the FDA and specifically indicated for synthetic opioids. These resources are desperately needed, particularly in rural and remote communities without reliable healthcare infrastructure. Unfortunately, in many parts of our country, these lifesaving agents are not reaching enough first responders and frontline workers, including police officers, firefighters, personnel on college campuses, and emergency healthcare providers in rural areas.

    We must act now to ensure that every state expands access to all FDA-approved overdose rescue agents and save American lives.

    Heidi Heitkamp has served as North Dakota’s tax commissioner, attorney general, and U.S. senator. She was the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from North Dakota.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/23/2024 – 18:25

  • Apparel Retailer Express Moving Toward Bankruptcy
    Apparel Retailer Express Moving Toward Bankruptcy

    During the company’s last earnings call in November, recently appointed CEO Stewart Glendinning acknowledged the company made some missteps: Among other factors, there was a misalignment between its assortment and customer demand, Retail Dive‘s Nate Delesline reports.

    An Express storefront at King of Prussia mall in Pennsylvania. The retailer said this week that it plans to initiate an international brand expansion starting next year

    Express took a hit during the pandemic as its core offering — business casual — fell out of favor as work-from-home surged.

    “Unfortunately, my previous assessment of Express’ fragile financial situation leading to a possible bankruptcy due to declining revenue, gross margin profits and ballooning debt of $280 million is a foregone conclusion,” Shawn Grain Carter, a retail industry consultant and professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology at the State University, said in an email to Retail Dive. “With high-interest rates, the retail company must decide between the ‘lesser of two evils.’ Moreover, until they fix the waning consumer demand for their merchandise and elevate the brand and product mix, financial wizardry will not resolve their retail woes.”

    Over the past several years, the company has undergone a number of changes as it works to improve its performance. Last January, WHP Global closed on a strategic partnership with Express. The two entities formed an intellectual property joint venture under which WHP contributed $235 million for a 60% stake, while Express retained the remaining 40%. The two entities in November announced plans to expand Express internationally, including in Indonesia and Paraguay, and grow its presence in Central America and Mexico. 

    And after the New York Stock Exchange warned of a potential delisting in late March, Express executed a 1-for-20 reverse stock split, which decreased outstanding shares to 3.7 million from 74.9 million. That stock split enabled Express to regain listing compliance with the New York Stock Exchange. Around the same time, Express said it planned to cut 150 jobs by the end of the third quarter.

    The company also expanded its portfolio last year through a deal with WHP to acquire Bonobos from Walmart for $75 million. That acquisition helped guide the retailer to a 5% year-over-year uptick in Q3 net sales to $454.1 million from $434.1 million a year earlier. However, comparable sales for Express stores and e-commerce fell 4% and net loss grew to $36.8 million from $34.4 million in the year-ago period. Inventory was also up 14% for the quarter, rising to nearly $481 million from $422.7 million a year earlier. 

    “Express has the right building blocks in place with a strong portfolio of brands, a high-potential partnership with WHP and a premier omnichannel platform,” Glendinning said in the earnings announcement. “Our efforts to unlock our full potential and improve our performance are already underway.”

    The apparel retailer in late November lowered its full-year 2023 guidance, now expecting net sales to be between $1.84 billion and $1.87 billion, with Bonobos driving $150 million in net sales. 

    Finally, on Friday, Bloomberg reported that at least one lender to Express has approached the retailer to put aside a pool of money for expenses tied to a potential future bankruptcy filing.

    A demand to set aside so-called cash reserves, if enforced, could push Express into Chapter 11 as it would eat into limited liquidity available for necessary payments to vendors, landlords and other parties.

    Creditors have been growing increasingly antsy and considering whether to push the company to file for bankruptcy, Bloomberg previously reported.

    Express, which is burning through a short supply of cash as it attempts to fix troubled operations, is looking to avoid any move to fund reserves for as long as possible, other people familiar with the matter said. The retailer lost over $150 million in three quarters through late October as it faced an escalating competitive threat from fast-fashion rivals.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/23/2024 – 18:00

  • NORAD Fighter Jets Intercept High-Altitude Balloon Over Utah
    NORAD Fighter Jets Intercept High-Altitude Balloon Over Utah

    Update (1747ET) 

    CBS News reports NORAD fighter jets intercepted a “small balloon” over “Utah at an altitude of 43,000 to 45,000 feet” earlier today. 

    An official told the media outlet that the balloon’s payload was not considered a national security threat. 

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    Nothing to see here… 

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    *   *   * 

    One year after a Chinese spy balloon drifted over the continental US for several days and was blown apart off the coast of South Carolina with an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile by a fifth-generation fighter jet, a new report from CBS News indicates the US military is tracking a high-altitude balloon flying over the Western part of the country. 

    Sources familiar with the matter said the balloon was drifting towards the eastern part of the country on Friday. The balloon was over Colorado earlier in the day.

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    This has so far led the military to dispatch reconnaissance aircraft to investigate. There is no word on the balloon’s origin. 

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    On Feb. 4, 2023, a Chinese spy balloon was shot down off the coast of South Carolina. The balloon drifted over the US for days, becoming a major headache for President Biden, who faced criticism from Republicans for allowing it to float across the country. 

    Looking at Bloomberg data, the number of “spy balloon” mentions in corporate media headlines erupted in early February last year. It was a media frenzy, and Americans were fixated on one thing for weeks: a Chinese spy balloon. 

    Is this another distraction?

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/23/2024 – 17:47

  • Rise In Mail-In-Voting: A Convenience Or Pathway To Fraud?
    Rise In Mail-In-Voting: A Convenience Or Pathway To Fraud?

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

    As states gear up for highly consequential elections this fall, one of the most critical factors in the United States is the rise of mass mail-in voting.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images, Shutterstock)

    According to the Census Bureau, 43 percent of American voters cast ballots by mail in 2020, double the 21 percent who did so in 2016.

    While 2020 was an exceptional year because of the government’s response to the COVID-19 virus, the United States is nonetheless experiencing a longer-term transition to an absentee ballot system from an in-person system. Currently, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia have “mostly mail voting” systems, according to an analysis by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).

    And while the 2020 election saw record levels of voter turnout, the shift away from traditional voting methods also coincides with a decline in trust in America’s electoral system. An October 2023 poll by the Public Affairs Council, found that only 37 percent of Americans believe the 2024 elections will be both “honest and open,” while 43 percent expressed “serious doubts” about election integrity.

    This loss of trust raises the question of whether the problem stems from losing candidates charging that the elections were stolen from them, or from America transitioning to a system that prioritizes convenience from one that prioritized integrity.

    Many pundits claim there is no tradeoff between the two and government officials, notably the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, called the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.”

    However, a large number of Americans, particularly Republican and Independent voters, remain unconvinced.

    The NCSL cautions that “if a voter is marking a ballot at home, and not in the presence of election officials, there may be more opportunity for coercion by family members or others.”

    According to a recent NCSL study, 28 states, including the key swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, currently offer “no-excuse” absentee voting, which means that any voter can request and cast an absentee ballot without offering a reason.

    In addition, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., automatically mail absentee ballots to all voters.

    In the remaining 15 states, voters must provide an acceptable excuse (such as illness or disability, or being overseas on Election Day) to qualify for an absentee ballot.

    The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that keeps a running tally of proven cases of voter fraud, has documented more than 1,500 cases to date and 1,276 criminal convictions.

    “Each and every one of the cases in this database represents an instance in which a public official, usually a prosecutor, thought it serious enough to act upon it,” the report states. “And each and every one ended in a finding that the individual had engaged in wrongdoing in connection with an election hoping to affect its outcome—or that the results of an election were sufficiently in question and had to be overturned.”

    Citizens bang on the glass and chant slogans outside the room where absentee ballots for the 2020 general election are being counted at TCF Center in Detroit, on Nov. 4, 2020. (Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images)

    According to Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the numbers cited in the report are probably an understatement.

    “The thing about these 1,500 cases is that they’re clearly just the tip of the iceberg because fraud is very hard to detect,” he told The Epoch Times. “A lot of times it’s just found by accident, particularly in a state like New York or California where there’s no voter ID requirement at all.”

    Many of these cases cited in the report involved the fraudulent use of absentee ballots. In the case of one Michigan resident who was convicted of voter fraud, “an employee at an assisted living facility, completed roughly two dozen absentee voter applications, forging individual signatures of residents.”

    However, the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice, an affiliate of New York University, criticized what it said was the “myth of voter fraud.”

    “Politicians at all levels of government have repeatedly, and falsely, claimed the 2016, 2018, and 2020 elections were marred by large numbers of people voting illegally,” the institute said in a report. “However, extensive research reveals that fraud is very rare, voter impersonation is virtually nonexistent, and many instances of alleged fraud are, in fact, mistakes by voters or administrators.

    “The same is true for mail ballots, which are secure and essential to holding a safe election amid the coronavirus pandemic,” its report states.

    In the manic weeks following the 2020 election, data analytics expert Ken Block, president of Simpatico Software Systems, was hired by the Trump campaign to data-mine for voter fraud in the key states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and find “factual, hard evidence that can underpin successful legal challenges.”

    “It started with assessing the deceased voters and duplicate voters,” Mr. Block told The Epoch Times. “We looked at every single mail-in ballot cast in the swing states, looking for deceased voters.

    ”We found, in terms of actual deceased voters that we could confirm through data, a couple of dozen.”

    Mr. Block said he found a small number of people who voted twice, typically wealthy individuals who had two residences, but the cases of detected fraud were not nearly enough to sway the election. He was also asked by the Trump campaign to investigate various “hearsay claims” of voter fraud.

    “We looked at every single voter fraud claim, and I was able to show with evidence and proof why it was flawed, or just completely wrong in the first place, and those findings were accepted by [President Trump’s] lawyers,” he said. “I think it’s crucially important that everybody understands how hard we looked and how important it was, from a legal standpoint, that the claims of fraud that I evaluated were looked at as hard, if not harder than the defense attorneys who would be fending off these lawsuits.”

    And yet, despite all efforts to assure the public that elections are sound, many Americans continue to suspect that something is amiss.

    The Rev. Bianca Davis-Lovelace of the Washington State Poor People’s Campaign speaks at a rally a day after the presidential election in Seattle on Nov. 4, 2020. (Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty Images)

    While some instances of voter fraud may be detectable in data and audits, others, such as whether voters are noncitizens, or engaging in ballot harvesting, or illicitly filling out ballots on behalf of others, are more difficult to detect unless witnessed in person or caught on camera.

    A particular issue with mail-in ballots is the proliferation of ballot drop-off boxes since 2020, few of which are monitored.

    According to Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist, and others who analyzed the 2020 election, the funding and locations of many ballot drop boxes in 2020 was directed by an organization called the Center for Tech and Civic Life, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

    Ms. Hemingway argued in her book, “Rigged,” that the donations from Mr. Zuckerberg, called “Zuck Bucks,” were partisan and focused on swing states.

    The influence of private money in state electoral systems has only heightened the suspicions of many Americans.

    A 2021 report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Election Lab states that “even many scholars who argue that fraud is generally rare agree that fraud with VBM [vote-by-mail] voting seems to be more frequent than with in-person voting.

    “There are two major features of VBM that raise these concerns,” the report states. “First, the ballot is cast outside the public eye, and thus the opportunities for coercion and voter impersonation are greater.

    “Second, the transmission path for VBM ballots is not as secure as traditional in-person ballots. These concerns relate both to ballots being intercepted and ballots being requested without the voter’s permission.”

    The report cites, among others, the case of a campaign manager in a North Carolina congressional race who collected empty mail-in ballots and then filled them in for his own candidate. Ultimately, that led to the election being overturned.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/23/2024 – 17:40

  • GOP Lawmaker Demands Congress Must "Take Action" Against NGOs Facilitating Border Invasion
    GOP Lawmaker Demands Congress Must “Take Action” Against NGOs Facilitating Border Invasion

    Many migrants arriving in major metro areas like New York City or smaller towns throughout the US do so through assistance from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including charities and faith-based nonprofits that taxpayers fund.

    Last month, journalist James O’Keefe uncovered a “shadowy network of secretive nonprofits” (some of which are funded by taxpayers) that are facilitating the invasion of illegals on the southern border.

    Now GOP Rep. Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin is on X, pointing out the role of NGOs in facilitating the border invasion. He shared a video of what appears to be NGOs smuggling migrants over the southern border and, in doing so, breaking federal immigration laws: 

    NGOs AIDING ILLEGALS: Green Valley-Sahuarita and Tucson Samaritans HOLD OPEN a hole in the border wall for illegals to come through.

    Then they drive the illegals to an encampment in the Coronado National Forest.

    Title 8, USC 1324(a) makes it an offense for any person who encourages or brings an alien into the US. 

    Congress must take action and investigate these NGOs.

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    In a separate post, Tiffany showed images of what appears to be “illegal migrant encampment that these NGOs drive illegals to after helping them cross the border.”

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    And this! 

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    “Our own government is aiding the NGOs!” one X user said. 

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    Another asked: “Why aren’t these NGOs being prosecuted?” 

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    NGOs are receiving big bucks from the federal government:

    According to Forbes, the NGO Catholic Charities USA received $1.4 billion from government support compared with $1 billion in private donations. Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service reported more than $93.1 million in US government grants in its 2021 financial statement, making taxpayer-funded grants more than 80% of its total support. –NewsNation

    Tiffany is correct that Congress must investigate these shadowy networks of taxpayer-funded NGOs that have led to a stunning 10 million illegals invading this nation under President Biden’s first term. 

    Source: CBP

    One X user exclaimed: “I mean honestly, what the hell is going on with the US?” 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/23/2024 – 17:20

  • Once Valued At $5.7BN, Vice Media Stops Publishing And Nothing Of Value Was Lost
    Once Valued At $5.7BN, Vice Media Stops Publishing And Nothing Of Value Was Lost

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

    People are enjoying the demise of Vice Media, with many of them pointing out that literally nothing of value was lost.

    Having once been valued at $5.7 billion (in 2017), and acquired out of bankruptcy last year by a consortium including George Soros, the company announced plans to cut hundreds of jobs and has – as of 14 hours ago – stopped publishing on Vice.com.

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    Chief executive Bruce Dixon said, “It is no longer cost-effective for us to distribute our digital content the way we have done previously.”

    The once supposedly “edgy” media outlet has been ridiculed for years for allowing its output to descend into the most utterly demented, vulgar and degenerate far-left content.

    Respondents on X exploded with joy.

    However will we cope without such stories as ‘How I Rediscovered Sexual LIberation Through Fisting’, ‘How to Eat Out a Non-Op Trans Woman’ and ‘Most Child Sex Abusers Are Not Pedophiles, Expert Says’.

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    It really is such a devastating loss.

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    How are we gonna know how to have sex with fat girls?

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    Unfortunately the YouTube channel may stagger on for a while.

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    Vice previously asserted that “Twitter is dead,” but I just checked and it’s still doing just fine, unlike them.

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    One of their last articles attacked Christian nationalists.

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    One Vice journalist cried about wasting his life in the profession, but was told to “learn to code”.

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    Tim Pool offered unemployed Vice writers a job.

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    Far-left progressive and regime media outlets are crumbling across the board.

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    It really is a sad day for journalists everywhere.

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    *  *  *

    Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/23/2024 – 17:11

  • Prosecution Of Far-Right But Not Antifa For Same Riots 'Constitutionally Impermissible': Judge
    Prosecution Of Far-Right But Not Antifa For Same Riots ‘Constitutionally Impermissible’: Judge

    Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A federal judge on Wednesday found that the “selective prosecution” of far-right groups without charging their far-left counterparts for the same acts is “constitutionally impermissible.”

    An Antifa extremist pushes a burning recycling bin at Trump supporters during a free speech rally in Berkeley, Calif., on April 15, 2017. (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)

    U.S. District Court Judge Cormac Carney of southern California therefore dismissed charges against two men from the “white nationalist” Rise Above Movement (RAM) who violently clashed with members of the far-left group Antifa at three southern California pro-Trump events in 2017.

    In his 35-page order, the judge stressed the importance of equal protection under the law. He said that although the two men may have been involved in violent acts, prosecutors were wrong to exclusively target them without also pursuing charges against Antifa members implicated in similar violent actions at political events.

    “Such selective prosecution leaves the troubling impression that the government believes speech on the left more deserving of protection than speech on the right,” Judge Carney wrote (pdf).

    The judge said that the fundamental principles of the First Amendment rights to free speech and to assemble are the “bedrock” of the United States. This is not always easy, he added, noting that sometimes, people use that right to “spread vitriolic and hateful ideas and beliefs.”

    “While Defendants openly promoted ideas the Court finds reprehensible, and likely committed violence for which they deserve to be prosecuted, this case is about something more important. It is about upholding the free speech and assembly rights guaranteed to all of us,” Judge Carney wrote.

    “It does not matter who you are or what you say. It does not matter whether you are a supporter of All Lives Matter or a supporter of Black Lives Matter,” he continued. “It does not matter whether you are a Zionist professor or part of Students for Justice in Palestine. It does not matter whether you are a member of RAM or Antifa. All are the same under the Constitution, and all receive its protections.”

    Anti-Riot Act Charges

    The alleged violence at the heart of the case happened during former President Donald Trump’s first year in the White House, during the four months spanning from March to June 2017.

    Prosecutors charged the two men, Robert Rundo, the founder of RAM, and Robert Boman, one of the group’s members, under a federal anti-riot statute in 2018.

    The men were accused of engaging in acts of violence at pro-Trump events in southern California, specifically in Huntington Beach, Berkeley, and San Bernardino.

    Judge Carney dismissed their charges in 2019 but following an appeal, the charges were reinstated in 2021.

    With the matter back in the district court, Mr. Rundo and Mr. Boman filed two motions to dismiss the case, arguing that the use of the Anti-Riot Act was unconstitutionally vague and that they were selectively prosecuted and not given equal treatment under the law.

    Judge Carney rejected the first motion, asserting that the alleged conduct of the men clearly falls within the scope of the Anti-Riot Act.

    “Though there may be questions in another case as to what constitutes a violation of the Anti-Riot Act, this is not that case,” he wrote. “Defendants clearly used a facility of interstate commerce shortly before they engaged in riotous activity as proscribed by the Anti-Riot Act.”

    A supporter of U.S. President Trump marches during the “Make America Great Again” rally in Huntington Beach, Calif., on March 25, 2017. (Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images)

    However, the judge agreed with their second motion’s argument regarding selective prosecution and the violation of equal protection rights. He raised constitutional concerns about the government’s use of the Anti-Riot Act to prosecute the RAM members but not the Antifa members, who engaged in comparable violent acts.

    Mr. Rundo and Mr. Boman argued in their motion that the U.S. government targeted them for their speech and beliefs—and not Antifa and other far-left groups—in violation of their Fifth Amendment rights to equal protection and due process.

    The judge found that the defendants met the high bar of proving that their Fifth Amendment rights were violated.

    The left-leaning Anti-Defamation League, a self-described “anti-hate” organization, alleges that RAM is a “white supremacist group” made up of members who believe they’re fighting against a “modern world” that has become corrupted by “destructive cultural influences.” It says that RAM embraces a “conservative counterculture” that includes traditional Christian values, and they see themselves as “patriotic crusaders who are fighting against ‘communist’ forces.”

    ‘Constitutionally Impermissible’

    In his order, the judge noted that while the RAM members may have committed violence at political rallies with the intent to shut down the speech of far-left groups, they provided “considerable evidence” that Antifa did the same, “if not worse,” at those same events.

    “Members of Antifa and related far-left groups attended the political rallies and physically assaulted and injured innocent civilians, many of whom were supporters of President Trump and were peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights. Nonetheless, the government did not use the Anti-Riot Act to prosecute any members of Antifa or related far-left groups,” the judge wrote.

    The judge noted that Antifa and other far-left groups engaged in “worse conduct” than RAM members and even “instigated much of the violence” that broke out in order to silence the protected speech of Trump supporters. Yet, the government chose not to prosecute Antifa members for the same violent acts alleged against the defendants.

    “That is constitutionally impermissible,” Judge Carney wrote. “The government cannot prosecute RAM members such as Defendants while ignoring the violence of members of Antifa and related far-left groups because RAM engaged in what the government and many believe is more offensive speech.”

    In his order, the judge highlighted the complexity of protecting free speech, which some may not like during divisive times. He argued that the solution is not for the government to “single out and punish the speech that it and many in the country understandably find repugnant.”

    He referenced the historical legal perspective of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who asserted nearly 100 years ago that combating dangerous speech requires “more speech, not enforced silence.”

    “The government remains free to prosecute those, like Defendants, who allegedly use violence to suppress First Amendment rights. But it cannot ignore others, equally culpable, because Defendants’ speech and beliefs are more offensive. The Constitution forbids such selective prosecution,” Judge Carney wrote.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 02/23/2024 – 17:00

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Feb 23

Today’s News 23rd February 2024

  • To Understand The Globalists We Must Understand Their Psychopathic Religion
    To Understand The Globalists We Must Understand Their Psychopathic Religion

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    In the late 1800s and early 1900s the western world experienced a sudden burst of open occultism among the ultra-rich elites. The rise of “Theosophy” was underway, becoming a kind of fashion trend that would ultimately set the stage for what would later be called “new age” spiritualism. The primary driver of the theosophical movement was a small group of obscure academics led in part by a woman named H.P. Blavatsky. The group was obsessed with esoteric belief, Gnosticism and even Satanism.

    Blavatsky co-founded the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875, claiming that she had a psychic connection to beings called “the Mahatmas” or “the masters.” These creatures, she asserted, helped her write the foundational books of Theosophy, including ‘The Secret Doctrine.’

    I bring up Theosophy and Blavatsky because the movement she helped launch was primarily an elitist one – The spread of occultism in the early 1900s specifically targeted the upper classes and this resulted in many political leaders and financial leaders being involved in obscure organizations with secretive mandates. Such groups have existed in the past, from the Rosicrucians and Freemasons to the alchemists of the Middle Ages who hid their occult beliefs in coded texts. However, never before had they been so public in their efforts.

    To their credit, the early theosophists were mostly apolitical (at least outwardly) and they argued against political intrusion into people’s lives. I suspect, however, that this was because at the time western governments revolved around Christian and conservative values. As politicians became more separate from Christianity, the theosophist interest in controlling government grew and the movement became increasingly socialist in practice.

    Invariably, these spiritual systems revolved around pagan deities of the past, many Babylonian or Ancient Egyptian in origin. That said, there are also numerous mentions in Theosophy of one figure in particular – Lucifer, also referred to as “the Light Bearer, the angel of light, Prometheus (symbolically), the dragon, the morning star and Satan.” Modern luciferians will consistently deny the the name “Lucifer” has anything to do with the biblical figure of Satan, but this is a lie. Blavatsky herself treats the two figures as synonymous in ‘The Secret Doctrine.’ As she admits in her book:

    “And now it stands proven that Satan, or the Red Fiery Dragon, the ‘Lord of Phosphorus,’ and Lucifer, or ‘Light-Bearer,’ is in us: it is our Mind…”

    Blavatsky, quoting hermetic texts in the Secret Doctrine, also repeats the mantra:

    “It is Satan who is the god of our planet and the only god…”

    Luciferians and occultists will also argue that the Christian Bible only mentions the name “Lucifer” once, and that the two figures are not associated. This is once again a lie by omission. The Bible does in fact mention “light bearer,” the “angel of light” and “the dragon” in reference to Satan on multiple occasions, and all of these names are used by elites to describe the figure they call Lucifer.

    As mentioned in Corinthians 11:14 – “And it is no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light…”

    In other words, when any elitist group mentions terms such as “light bearer” or Lucifer, they are indeed referring to Satan. It’s not just a matter of archetypal discussion, this is in fact a part of their religion. But in our modern times some people might say “who cares?” It’s all mythical hoodoo and fantasy, right?

    I would respond with a question:  Do you think the deeply held religious beliefs of the people with financial and political power matter in how they make decisions?  Wouldn’t their beliefs help explain why they do the things they do?  If you want to know why the globalists are engaged in a very real war on the minds of the masses, you cannot overlook their religious motivations. What seems like fantasy to some is VERY real to the globalists.

    For example, many know that the United Nations building in New York has an occult library.  But few people know that it was built by a group called the Lucifer Publishing Company (later changed to Lucis Trust). Lucis Trust cites the writings of HP Blavatsky constantly as the inspiration for their organization. The UN continues to associate with Lucis Trust to this day. The very heart of globalism revolves around luciferian ideals.

    It doesn’t matter what you or I think about these things. It doesn’t matter if you see such concepts as metaphorical, or symbolic or imaginary. THEY believe, and so we must explore what these beliefs mean.

    Before the 1800s, occultists engaged in luciferianism would have been burned at the stake if discovered. I’m beginning to think that maybe this was the right way to handle such people all along. But to understand why, we have to look at the progression of the religion and why it inevitably leads to moral relativism and social self-destruction.

    For the theosophists, Lucifer/Satan is a kind of heroic figure. When they argue that Lucifer is “not Satan,” what they mean is that their version of Satan is different from the version ascribed by Christianity. In other words, imagine a group of people took a famously malicious figure such as Joseph Stalin and then devised an entirely different history for him in which he is a misunderstood philanthropist instead of a genocidal maniac. That’s essentially what luciferianism is.

    In the Theosophical magazine titled ‘Lucifer’ published in the 1880s, Blavatsky and her group spend multiple pages trying to separate the term Lucifer from the Devil, while also defending the mythology of the devil and painting him as a character slandered by Christian culture.

    In their version of the Genesis story, for example, the serpent was the “good guy” bringing the fruit of knowledge to Adam and Eve. Eve is venerated as a root figure in theosophy and in feminism (a movement the theosophists helped to create), because without Eve the serpent would have never been able to get Adam to consume the fruit.

    The fruit as a representation of gnosis (knowledge) is the key to luciferianism and the globalist cult. As many atheists I’ve encountered in the past have argued, isn’t knowledge a good thing? And if God is punishing humanity for consuming knowledge, does that not make him a villain? This argument ignores the underlying theme – Knowledge by itself is not good or evil, but evil thrives when people start to worship knowledge to the detriment of everything else. The application of knowledge without wisdom and moral discipline is dangerous.

    As Dr. Ian Malcolm brilliantly asserts in the film Jurassic Park:

    “Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

    Luciferians openly admit that the goal of their ideology is to pursue knowledge until human beings become gods. This infatuation with godhood is what leads to great evil; it is a delusion that poisons the mind and encourages morally relative behavior, not to mention a pervasive thirst for power.  Ponder the technological aspect for a moment. Consider the numerous globalist programs to expand artificial intelligence and bring about what they call “transhumanism.” This is a kind of knowledge worship that has terrifying implications for the future.

    The integration of technology into the surveillance state to rule over society is bad enough, but what happens when human beings begin integrating technology into their very biology. Will this eventually erase any semblance of what we call “the soul?” After all, machines do not feel, nor do they self reflect on their actions. What happens when humans distort themselves to become more like machines? Will transhumanism become a movement that suffocates all love and empathy, removing moral compass and turning us into a demonic hive-mind devoid of individual thought?

    Globalists assert that there is no such thing as the soul, no such thing as individual identity and no such thing as moral compass.  Form their perspective there is no danger of adopting technology as a path to godhood because nothing would be lost; and here we see the true nature of luciferianism at work. A perfect representation of this cancer is World Economic Forum spokesperson Yavul Harari – a man who says the quiet part out loud and promotes the darker tenets of luciferianism regularly.

    To grasp what luciferianism is, think of it as the anti-god; a war on nature, or a war on the natural state of humanity disguised as “enlightenment.” This is why globalists try to institute the extreme opposite view of every natural disposition. The notion of human beings as a blank slate that Yuval Harari clings to is one such false narrative. It is a philosophy that has been debunked by endless psychological studies as well as anthropological studies.

    From Carl Jung to Joseph Campbell to Steven Pinker and beyond, all scientific evidence suggests that human beings have inherent psychological qualities and characteristics from birth. Some of these are unique to the person, some are universal archetypes and ideas that the majority of people share (such as conscience and moral compass). If we didn’t have these built-in qualities, humanity would have become extinct thousands of years ago. We still don’t know where exactly they come from, we only know that without them we are no longer human.

    There is, however, a certain percentage of people (1% or less) that actually do not have these inborn character traits. They are generally known as psychopaths and sociopaths, and their behavior is very similar to that of the globalists. I have long held the theory that the globalist cabal is in fact a cult of higher functioning psychopaths.

    Their lack of empathy and conscience, their thirst for godhood and omnipotence, their drive to attain all encompassing surveillance of the population, to know everything about us at all time, to have total control over the environment and society, the narcissistic self image of a supreme ruler who is worshiped by the masses, and the delusion that they will be able to read minds and predict the future. These are psychopathic fantasies, and they are willing to chase these fantasies by any means necessary.

    But even psychopaths sometimes need a fundamentalist framework in order to maintain organization and inspire devotion within a group. It makes perfect sense that they would choose luciferianism as their religion.

    Their “do what thou wilt” philosophy of hedonism takes the idea of freedom and removes all responsibility – It is a degenerate view of liberty, rather than a principled view. Freedom, they think, is only for people like them; the people willing to desecrate everything in their path and upend the natural order.

    As psychopaths, they are devoid of natural inborn contents and are more robotic than human. So, it’s no surprise that people like Harai argue there is no soul, no freedom (for you) and that machines are capable of the same creativity as humans. An empty person with no soul or creativity is going to assume that all other people are empty. An immoral person will also be compelled to prove that everyone else is just as immoral as he is. Or, he will be compelled to prove that he is superior to everyone else because he has embraced his immorality.

    Do the elites actually believe in a real “devil” with hooves and horns and a pitchfork? I don’t know. What matters, though, is the philosophical drive of their cultism. Their goal is to convince a majority of the populace that there is no good, and there is no evil. Everything is empty. Everything is relative to the demands of the moment, and the demands of society. Of course, they want to control society, so then everything would really be relative to THEIR demands.

    If you want to see something truly demonic, imagine a world in which all inherent truth is abandoned for the sake of subjective perception. A world that caters to the preferences of psychopaths with no ethical imperative. A world where the ends always justify the means. This is the luciferian way, and the globalist way. And no matter how much they deny it, the reality of their beliefs is visible in the fruits of their labors. Wherever they go, destruction, chaos and death follow.

    *  *  *

    If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/22/2024 – 23:40

  • Russia Says Navalny Died Of Natural Causes As Western MSM Anoints Widow "Newest Opposition Leader"
    Russia Says Navalny Died Of Natural Causes As Western MSM Anoints Widow “Newest Opposition Leader”

    Russian authorities have said that the opposition activist Aleksei Navalny died of natural causes while in prison in a far northern Arctic penal colony. It comes nearly a full week after Russian prison services announced he died on Feb.16.

    There’s now a public fight over his body, and the question of a funeral service, as his family and legal team have complained they are being denied access to the deceased. Condemnations have come in from various Western countries, and have pointed at the Putin government, ultimately blaming the Kremlin for his death while in custody. This has included US and European officials.

    Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Alexei Navalny

    Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, has newly accused Russian officials of seeking to pressure her into accepting a secret burial, presumably to prevent it from becoming a major televised memorial event. 

    “Looking me in the eyes, they say that if I don’t agree to a secret funeral, they will do something with my son’s body,” she said in a video posted to Navalny’s widow’s social media account.

    “According to the law, they should have given me Alexei’s body immediately,” she said. “Instead, they are blackmailing me, and telling me where, when and how Alexei should be buried.” She has reportedly filed a lawsuit for immediate release to her custody of his body.

    Navalny’s legal team has seen a death report saying his death was “natural” – however, few other specifics has been made public.

    Meanwhile, Western press has already hailed that his wife Yulia is carrying on the work of team Navalny and will lead the political “opposition” against Putin. Name recognition inside Russia is a whole different question…

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

    The Associated Press and others are declaring her Russia’s “newest opposition leader” – in what appears a kind of Juan Guaidó moment to manufacture ‘mass support’ and ‘popularity’, though Alexei Navalny himself never polled more than two percent among the Russian population.

    Thus all of the below from Associated Press is a bit wishful and overdramatic, to say the least:

    Navalnaya’s new job will be leading the Russian opposition through one of the darkest and most turbulent times in its history.

    The opposition is fractured, and Navalny’s death dealt it a serious blow. The question now is whether Navalnaya can rally her husband’s troops and work with other opposition groups to mount any kind of successful challenge to Putin, who is on a path to serve another six years in the Kremlin after the presidential election in March.

    She’s already addressed the Munich Security Conference, where defense leaders and diplomats were present from around the globe, and is expected to continue to rise in prominence, in the media lens at least. Likely she’ll soon be featured at major events from Paris to London to Washington D.C.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/22/2024 – 23:20

  • Number Of Chinese Illegally Crossing US-Mexico Border Surges 500 Percent In San Diego Sector
    Number Of Chinese Illegally Crossing US-Mexico Border Surges 500 Percent In San Diego Sector

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

    The number of Chinese nationals entering the United States illegally has surged in recent times, with the latest data from the San Diego sector showing a staggering 500 percent surge so far this year compared to the same period a year ago.

    U.S. Border Patrol agents check identification papers of illegal immigrants before they are transported to a Border Patrol processing center in Jacumba Hot Springs, Calif., on Dec. 1, 2023. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

    As the nation remains gripped by an illegal immigration crisis of historic proportions, there’s been an exceptionally high increase in the number of Chinese nationals—especially military-aged men—who have unlawfully crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.

    Some border patrol officials and others have warned this poses a national security risk because, among those simply seeking a better life, there may be those with links to the Chinese military.

    Brandon Judd, the head of the Border Patrol union, recently warned about a sharp rise in the number of military-aged Chinese men crossing the southern border illegally, saying that he believes some of them may be spies working on behalf of China’s communist regime to “infiltrate” the United States.

    And now, Jason Owens, the chief of the U.S. Border Patrol (USBP), has revealed that, so far this fiscal year, the San Diego sector has seen over 20,000 apprehensions of Chinese nationals, over five times the number in the comparable period last year.

    “In FY24, San Diego Sector has made +140K apprehensions with +20K of them being from China (a more than 500% increase compared to last FYTD),” Mr. Owens wrote in a post on X.

    Border Patrol processes a group of about 60 illegal immigrants near the highway outside Eagle Pass, Texas, on Feb. 4, 2024. (Sergio Flores/AFP via Getty Images)

    Some analysts say that deteriorating economic conditions in China, as well as human rights abuses and policies such as strict COVID-19 lockdowns, are likely driving the sharp increase in the number of Chinese nationals entering the United States illegally.

    Interviews with some of the Chinese border crossers indicate much the same thing, with some blaming an increasingly repressive political climate and dour economic prospects.

    However, Mr. Judd and others have suggested that for some—possibly even many—there might be a different motivation.

    “Why are we seeing this influx?” he said during a recent interview on “Just the News, No Noise” TV program.

    “At best, they’re just coming here for a better life or a better job. At worst, they’re coming here to be part of the Chinese government, and that’s what scares me an awful lot,” he said.

    Illegal Immigrants From Adversarial Nations

    In January, Border Patrol agents encountered a record number of illegal immigrants (242,587) compared to any previous January.

    At the same time, the CPB numbers showed an alarming trend in the number of military-aged Chinese nationals making illegal border crossings.

    CBP data shows that Border Patrol agents encountered 5,717 single Chinese adults in January, more than twice the number of any other January on record. In December 2023, that figure rose to a record of 7,581. The total since January 2023 stands at 64,979.

    China is designated a “country of particular concern” by the U.S. State Department, while the FBI says that economic espionage and counterintelligence efforts emanating from China’s communist regime are a “grave threat” to America’s economic security.

    Mr. Judd said in his interview on the “Just the News, No Noise” TV program that the sharp rise in the number of Chinese nationals crossing the border illegally should be looked into by U.S. law enforcement and the intelligence community.

    There are “huge gangs” in the United States linked to Chinese nationals who are involved in drugs, prostitution, and other criminal pursuits, he said.

    “They control everything that’s illegal in certain portions of the country,” Mr. Judd said. “We have to look into that. It’s very important that we understand why we are having so many people from China, especially military-aged men.”

    National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd at a border meeting in Del Rio, Texas, on July 18, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

    ‘China’s Shock Troops’

    At the beginning of the current fiscal year, Chinese people were the fourth-highest nationality crossing the Darién Gap between Colombia and Panama and heading north toward the United States, after Venezuelans, Ecuadorians, and Haitians, according to The Associated Press.

    Gordon Chang, a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute and author of “The Coming Collapse of China,” wrote in a recent op-ed in The Epoch Times that, of the Chinese migrants making the dangerous trek north from points in Central and South America, “almost all are desperate, seeking a better life for themselves and their children.”

    “Some, however, are coming to commit acts of sabotage,” he argued.

    Mr. Chang explained that many Chinese nationals fly to Ecuador, which allows them to enter visa-free. Then, they travel to the southern edge of the Darién Gap, a 66-mile stretch of jungle that separates Colombia and Panama, typically crossing on foot. Once they get to the north side, they continue their journey to the United States, often by bus, according to the China expert.

    “Some migrants are almost certainly members of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA),” Mr. Chang wrote.

    “These military-linked migrants, despite their affiliations, have been released into America,” he argued, hinting at yet another negative consequence of the Biden administration’s catch-and-release program, under which asylum-seekers are released into U.S. communities to await asylum hearings.

    Migrants walk through the jungle near Bajo Chiquito village, the first border control of the Darién Province in Panama, on Sept. 22, 2023. (Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images)

    In February 2023, the influx of Chinese nationals unlawfully entering the United States began to surge compared to historical averages. By summertime, the monthly figures had doubled compared to previous years.

    For example, in June 2023, there were 4,117 single Chinese adults encountered by Border Patrol agents nationwide, while in June 2022, that figure was 2,324, and in June 2021, it was 1,854.

    It’s estimated that more than 10 million illegal immigrants have crossed the border since President Joe Biden took office.

    Republicans have blamed President Biden’s policies for fueling the border crisis, and the GOP-controlled House recently voted to impeach Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas on two counts related to his management of the border.

    GOP lawmakers have called for measures such as ending the Biden administration’s contentious “catch-and-release” policy, expanding expedited removals, renewing border wall construction, and reinstating the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/22/2024 – 23:00

  • Joe Biden's EV Mandate "Vision" For America Is In Full Collapse
    Joe Biden’s EV Mandate “Vision” For America Is In Full Collapse

    Color us not surprised, but another one of the Biden administration’s “visions” for forcing people to own electric vehicles isn’t working out exactly as planned.

    This time it deals with supply chain logistics, with Bloomberg reporting this week that in the year and a half since passing the Inflation Reduction Act, automakers are finding out the hard way that the rigorous criteria for manufacturing batteries using materials from the United States and its free-trade allies could render them cost-inefficient compared to global competitors.

    Companies like Tesla are instead taking advantage of a temporary shift in the rules to stock up with cheaper batteries from countries like China.

    The Biden administration’s new rules will all but cut out China from the supply chain, however, which will make it tougher to find affordable metal suppliers.

    This, in turn, will threaten President Biden’s goal to boost the domestic electric vehicle market. Bloomberg writes that mining companies and labor unions insist that without curtailing the influx of cheaper, Chinese-subsidized materials, the U.S. can’t develop a competitive EV market.

    Meanwhile, the higher costs are driving automakers away from EVs. And as battery material requirements are set to double by 2027, fulfilling these mandates will be increasingly difficult, putting Biden’s ambitious EV strategy at risk.

    The demand side of the equation also looks less than favorable. We wrote just hours ago about how Ford was slashing prices on its Mach E and Lightning 150. Tesla has been slashing prices to stoke demand for nearly a year now. 

    Both Ford and GM have said they’re going to curtail their investment in EVs. General Motors, who posted better than expected earnings earlier this month, said that it plans on changing its product lineup to include more hybrid vehicles, drifting away from pure electric vehicles. 

    CEO Mary Barra said on the earnings call: “Let me be clear, GM remains committed to eliminating tailpipe emissions from our light-duty vehicles by 2035, but, in the interim, deploying plug-in technology in strategic segments will deliver some of the environment or environmental benefits of EVs as the nation continues to build this charging infrastructure.”

    Recall, a report from Consumer Reports last year found that electric vehicles have almost 80% more problems and are “generally less reliable” than conventional internal combustion engine cars. 

    But hey, what good is a “free” market if the government doesn’t have complete and total control of consumer choice, right Joe?

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/22/2024 – 22:40

  • Congress Must Fight Modern Day Slavery
    Congress Must Fight Modern Day Slavery

    Authored by Callista L. Gingrich via RealClear Wire,

    On February 13, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act with a vote of 414-11. The bipartisan legislation, authored by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), will reauthorize the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 – which expired in 2021 – and provide approximately $1 billion in funding over five years for programs that combat the scourge of human trafficking.

    Among the measures included in the comprehensive legislation are educational grants to provide situational awareness training and prevention for elementary and secondary students; funding reauthorization for the International Megan’s Law and Angel Watch programs; and authorization for programs that support survivors’ employment, housing, and education.

    Rep. Smith made clear how important this legislation is in the fight against modern-day slavery. “This critical legislation reauthorizes funding for FY2024 through 2028—a total of five years—to continue current year enacted appropriation and authorization levels to enhance programs, strengthen laws, and add accountability in our whole-of-government effort to protect women and children from human trafficking,” he said.

    In recent weeks, Catholic leaders in the United States have voiced their support for the Frederick Douglass Act, in line with Pope Francis’s “call to take action, to mobilize all our resources in combatting trafficking and restoring full dignity to those who have been its victims.”

    Earlier this month, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration endorsed the Frederick Douglass Act and called on Congress “to pass the bill without further delay.”

    As Bishop Mark J. Seitz, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration, said, “It is incumbent upon all of us to unite in promoting efforts that prevent the evil of human trafficking. I join our Holy Father in inviting the faithful and all people of good will to uphold and affirm human dignity and grow in solidarity with those who are vulnerable to exploitation and have been impacted by this terrible evil of modern-day slavery.”

    On February 12, days before the bill’s passage in the House, two organizations founded by religious sisters – the Alliance to End Human Trafficking and The National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd – hosted a panel that called on Congress to pass the Frederick Douglass Act.

    The online event, titled “Breaking the Link Between Human Trafficking and Forced Migration: Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act,” highlighted that migrants are often at a high risk of falling victim to human trafficking. As panel moderator Sister Ann Scholz, SSND, Ph.D. said, “Desperate people become vulnerable to human traffickers.”

    Noting that the Frederick Douglass Act would “expand prevention efforts” and deter “forced migration,” Director of Advocacy for the Alliance to End Human Trafficking Marilyn Zigmund Luke said, “This is really a three-pronged approach at getting at not only trafficking within the United States, but really getting at what’s happening within the home countries of people so that they will not migrate.”

    The scourge of human trafficking is a stain on all of humanity. It invades borders, destroys communities, and robs millions of their human dignity. Tragically, the United States is one of the top destinations for human trafficking, and cases have been reported in every U.S. state.

    With the Frederick Douglass Act now moving to the Senate for consideration, every concerned American should encourage their senators to vote in favor of this important legislation to support survivors of human trafficking and eradicate this horrific evil.

    For more commentary from Callista L. Gingrich, visit

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

  • "Absolutely Crazy": Vacant LA Office Tower To Be Torn Down For Just 30 New EV Charging Stations
    “Absolutely Crazy”: Vacant LA Office Tower To Be Torn Down For Just 30 New EV Charging Stations

    Kyle Bass, the founder of Dallas-based Hayman Capital Management, explained last year that the office tower segment of the commercial real estate sector is in such dire straights that towers need to be demolished as demand isn’t returning. He also mentioned converting these towers into residential apartments may not be feasible in some cases. 

    “It’s one asset class that just has to get redone, and redone meaning demolished,” Bass told Bloomberg in an interview. 

    In recent months, Vornado Realty Trust’s property near Madison Square Garden halted construction of a planned 61-floor office tower after Hotel Pennsylvania was demolished. The unfolding CRE crash forced Vornado to pause construction, with new plans of “temporarily” converting the property into tennis courts for the US Open. 

    The trend emerging for older towers is a complete tear-down. However, building a new office tower is no longer a viable option, considering the US market has years of elevated supply overhanging the market. 

    Here’s a great visual from a recent Morgan Stanley note showing how the CRE office segment is plagued with supply. 

    So, the trend at play is to tear down older towers, but what comes next? 

    Well, X user Triple Net Investor, citing a recent note from real estate firm CoStar, pointed out that a 68,000-square-foot office tower at 8121 Van Nuys Blvd. in Los Angeles is slated for demolition. 

    What comes next might be surprising. And it’s not a tower, but actually, the very real possibility of a charging station for electric vehicles. 

    “Add electric vehicle charging to the list of new uses envisioned to replace underused offices across the United States,” CoStar said. 

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

    Triple Net Investor said, “I don’t know what’s crazier…this headline or seeing office properties drop 80-90% in just a few years.” 

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

  • Vivek Ramaswamy Criticizes Koch Network For Funding Haley
    Vivek Ramaswamy Criticizes Koch Network For Funding Haley

    Authored by Nathan Worcester via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Vivek Ramaswamy, now on former President Donald Trump’s vice presidential shortlist, spoke at a factory in Aiken, South Carolina, on Feb. 21 about his support for President Trump and his worries about former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley ahead of the Feb. 24 GOP presidential primary.

    Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy speaks during a Team Trump South Carolina press conference at AGY Aiken LLC in Aiken, S.C., on Feb. 21, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    He speculated that Ms. Haley’s donors are “preparing for a No Labels ticket that then takes votes from Donald Trump away in that general election.”

    He went further in a press conference afterwards, criticizing the billionaire Koch family’s libertarian policy advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) Action, for backing Ms. Haley and opposing President Trump.

    “I think it’s very disappointing that that network has thrown its support behind a candidate who does not even stand for the principles that they claim to embody,” he told The Epoch Times.

    Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy speaks during a Team Trump South Carolina press conference at AGY Aiken LLC in Aiken, S.C., on Feb. 21, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    He cited Ms. Haley’s stance on Ukraine funding and her call for an end to anonymous social media accounts as examples of proposals that are inconsistent with those principles.

    President’s Trump’s views, he argued, are “far more aligned with what AFP claims to stand for.”

    He also lauded Chris Maidment, a former AFP staffer who left the network after it threw its weight behind Ms. Haley. Mr. Maidment was fired by AFP for publicly speaking out against its backing for Ms. Haley.

    “Nikki Haley is totally sideways on [AFP]’s foreign policy stance. She’s anti-free speech,” Mr. Maidment wrote on X on Dec. 1, 2023, as part of a thread distancing himself from AFP’s Haley endorsement.

    “I congratulate the guys like Chris Maidment or others who have worked there who have been vocal and brave enough to criticize their own decision, saying it betrayed their own principles. It’ll be people like that that can actually restore that sanity and that sense of purpose,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.

    But he stressed that “people make mistakes.”

    “I invite them to reconsider their decision … And you know what? I’m optimistic that, with some forethought, they actually will,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.

    Mr. Ramaswamy has a libertarian past and some libertarian-inflected stances to this day. He voted for the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate, Michael Badnarik, in the 2004 presidential election. In 2023, he campaigned at the Porcupine Freedom Festival, an annual gathering for libertarians in the northwoods of New Hampshire.

    Campaign materials for GOP 2024 candidate Vivek Ramaswamy at the Free State Project’s Porcupine Freedom Festival in Lancaster, N.H., on June 24, 2023. (Screenshot via The Epoch Times/Vivek Ramaswamy/Twitter)

    Americans for Prosperity has been a massive contributor to Republican candidates and conservative and libertarian causes. Open Secrets reports they rank first for outside spending in the 2024 election cycle, contributing more than $51 million to date to a variety of candidates, Ms. Haley among them.

    That includes more than $31 million in favor of Ms. Haley and more than $9 million against President Trump. They have also spent more than $9 million against incumbent President Joe Biden, whose efforts at claiming a second term could benefit if Ms. Haley runs as an independent candidate and divides the conservative- and libertarian-leaning vote.

    In addition to taking money from the Koch network, Ms. Haley has accepted financial support from groups and donors that typically support Democrats and progressive causes, including LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.

    Many wealthy Republican-aligned donors who previously supported alternatives to President Trump are reconciling themselves to his likely victory in the Republican primary contest. They include Wall Street executive Omeed Malik, a former supporter of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis now donating to and raising money for President Trump, as reported by CNBC.

    Earlier in the afternoon, Ms. Haley spoke at the Palmetto Terrace Municipal Building in North Augusta, about 20 miles away from Mr. Ramaswamy’s Team Trump stop.

    She did not answer a question from The Epoch Times about whether she is contemplating a run with No Labels.

    Republican presidential candidate and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley walks out after a campaign event at the Palmetto Terrace Municipal Building in North Augusta, S.C., on Feb. 21, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    Attendees of the Ramaswamy event at AGY Corp, a fiberglass yarn producer, reacted with a mixture of amusement and indifference to Ms. Haley’s presence not far away.

    Jackie and Gayle Croft both shrugged their shoulders at the news.

    “It’s her choice,” Ms. Croft told The Epoch Times with a laugh.

    “Sometimes, it’s time to just bail out,” Joyce Pennington said of Ms. Haley’s continued participation in the presidential contest.

    Both Crofts nodded their heads at the idea of Mr. Ramaswamy as President Trump’s VP pick.

    “Everything he says is right on,” Mr. Croft said.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/22/2024 – 21:40

  • Which Country Owns The Most Vehicles Per Capita?
    Which Country Owns The Most Vehicles Per Capita?

    In 2020, there were 289 million vehicles in use in America, or about 18% of the global total.

    With one of the largest car ownership rates worldwide, the number of U.S. cars on the road have more than doubled since the 1960s. But how does ownership compare to other countries, and who is seeing the fastest growth rates amid a rising global middle class?

    This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows vehicles per capita by country, based on data from the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers (OICA).

    Highest Car Ownership Rates Worldwide

    Below, we rank countries based on the number of registered vehicles in use per 1,000 people, including both passenger cars and commercial vehicles as of 2020:

    Country Number of Vehicles in Use
    per 1000 Inhabitants    		 Average Annual Growth Rate
    2015-2020
    🇳🇿 New Zealand 869 3%
    🇺🇸 U.S. 860 2%
    🇵🇱 Poland 761 4%
    🇮🇹 Italy 756 1%
    🇦🇺 Australia 737 2%
    🇨🇦 Canada 707 3%
    🇫🇷 France 704 1%
    🇨🇿 Czechia 658 3%
    🇵🇹 Portugal 640 2%
    🇳🇴 Norway 635 1%
    🇦🇹 Austria 632 2%
    🇬🇧 UK 632 2%
    🇩🇪 Germany 627 2%
    🇪🇸 Spain 627 2%
    🇬🇷 Greece 617 1%
    🇯🇵 Japan 612 0%
    🇨🇭 Switzerland 604 1%
    🇧🇪 Belgium 590 1%
    🇳🇱 Netherlands 588 2%
    🇫🇮 Finland 577 1%
    🇸🇪 Sweden 544 1%
    🇩🇰 Denmark 540 2%
    🇮🇪 Ireland 540 3%
    🇲🇾 Malaysia 535 6%
    🇸🇰 Slovakia 513 3%
    🇱🇾 Libya 490 4%
    🇧🇬 Bulgaria 485 -1%
    🇭🇷 Croatia 474 3%
    🇸🇾 Syria 472 7%
    🇭🇺 Hungary 463 4%
    🇰🇷 South Korea 458 2%
    🇷🇴 Romania 438 7%
    🇮🇱 Israel 404 4%
    🇷🇺 Russia 389 2%
    🇧🇾 Belarus 387 1%
    🇲🇽 Mexico 358 4%
    🇹🇼 Taiwan 344 1%
    🇦🇪 UAE 343 8%
    🇷🇸 Serbia 330 4%
    🇦🇷 Argentina 311 0%
    🇹🇭 Thailand 277 5%
    🇨🇱 Chile 246 1%
    🇰🇿 Kazakhstan 226 -1%
    🇨🇳 China 223 14%
    🇹🇷 Türkiye 220 4%
    🇧🇷 Brazil 214 1%
    🇺🇦 Ukraine 192 -1%
    🇮🇷 Iran 183 2%
    🇿🇦 South Africa 176 1%
    🇪🇨 Ecuador 152 3%
    🇻🇪 Venezuela 149 -1%
    🇩🇿 Algeria 144 3%
    🇲🇦 Morocco 112 4%
    🇨🇴 Colombia 111 1%
    🇮🇶 Iraq 111 4%
    🇵🇪 Peru 88 4%
    🇮🇩 Indonesia 78 5%
    🇪🇬 Egypt 64 4%
    🇳🇬 Nigeria 56 5%
    🇻🇳 Vietnam 50 17%
    🇵🇭 Philippines 38 3%
    🇮🇳 India 33 10%
    🇵🇰 Pakistan 20 7%

    Clinching top spot is New Zealand, a country known for its love of cars.

    With nearly nine cars on the road to every 10 people, this figure is notably high considering that children make up about 20% of the population. The majority of cars are imported second hand from Japan thanks to a wave of deregulation in the 1980s along with the country being a major producer of right-hand drive cars.

    The U.S. falls close behind, with a clear preference for trucks and SUVs. In fact, the Ford F-1 Series has been the best-selling vehicle in America for 42 consecutive years.

    In Europe, Poland has the highest number of vehicles per person, but one of the lowest share of electric vehicles (EVs). While EVs make up nearly 16% of all cars in top-ranking country Norway, they comprise 0.1% in Poland. On average, EVs account for 0.8% of passenger cars in the European Union.

    Driven by an expanding middle class, Vietnam has seen the fastest growth in ownership. Between 2015 and 2020, the motorization rate grew by an astonishing 17% each year. Additionally, China witnessed 14% growth while India’s vehicles per 1,000 people increased 10% annually over the period.

    The Top EV Markets, by Country

    As EV sales gain momentum, here are the biggest markets worldwide, based on the number of all-EV cars in use as of 2022:

    Source: IEA Global EV Outlook 2023

    China is home to over half of the world’s EVs.

    Its foothold on the global EV market can be explained by its close proximity to the raw materials used in EV batteries. In fact, China produces roughly 70% of the world’s rare earth metals and has more battery production capacity than all other countries combined.

    Adding to this, China developed key government policies that specifically tackled operational hurdles, such as battery constraints, leading to innovation in core technologies. In 2023, EVs made up 31% of all car sales in China, boosted by government incentives and strong consumer demand.

    Norway is another leader in the EV market, whose government began introducing EV policies as early as 1990. By 2025, the country aims to phase out internal combustion engine vehicle sales completely. About 80% of all vehicles sales in Norway were EVs in 2022, the highest in the world.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/22/2024 – 21:20

  • Climate Dieticians Push Americans To Cut Beef For The Sake Of The Planet
    Climate Dieticians Push Americans To Cut Beef For The Sake Of The Planet

    Authored by Eric Worrall via WattsUpWithThat.com,

    “… Replacing beef with a different protein — even for just one meal — can cut the emissions footprint of a person’s diet that day by as much as half. …”

    One Simple Change to Reduce Your Climate Impact? Swap Out Beef

    Replacing beef with a different protein — even for just one meal — can cut the emissions footprint of a person’s diet that day by as much as half. 

    By Zahra Hirji
    21 February 2024 at 20:00 GMT+10

    Next time you’re out for lunch, try playing a little game: Without looking it up, can you find the most and least climate-friendly options on the menu?

    Unlike a meal’s price, the greenhouse-gas footprint of food isn’t typically spelled out. But you don’t need to ask a climate scientist to find out either. There’s one simple trick for identifying the highest impact item on almost any menu: If there’s beef, that’s probably it.

    …

    “You don’t have to become a vegan to have a big impact on your carbon footprint,” says Diego Rose, a professor and director of the nutrition program at Tulane University. “You just have to swap out beef.”

    …

    Beef’s footprint is especially outsized. For one, there are roughly 1.5 billion cows on the planet. About 13 million square kilometers (3.2 billion acres) of land is used to raise all that cattle, along with buffalo, and their food — one-quarter of all land used for agriculture, according to a 2017 paper in Global Food Security. Then there’s the methane. Cows and other ruminants have a unique digestive system that allows them to turn grass into fuel, but in the process their special gut bacteria releases methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term.

    …

    “In the US, most of us eat more beef than what’s considered healthy for us,” says Stephanie Roe, a climate and energy lead scientist at the nonprofit World Wildlife Fund. “So that’s low-hanging fruit because then we can improve our health outcomes in addition to environmental ones.”

    …

    Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-21/the-diet-shift-that-makes-the-biggest-impact-on-climate-change?embedded-checkout=true

    I have a big problem with the anti-beef push.

    There is a reason cowboys herded cows in the old West, and why the African Maasai and many other peoples still do, and why beef cattle are chosen when other crops would in theory produce a much higher yield per acre.

    Cattle can be raised in harsh regions which are far too unforgiving for other farm produce.

    The suggestion raising beef is taking far more land than other food production, with the implicit suggestion that land dedicated to beef production could be repurposed for other produce, in my opinion verges on a lie by omission. I’m sure some cattle land could be used for other purposes, but a lot of it couldn’t.

    In places where beef production is the only option, abandoning beef would mean abandoning food – dramatically reducing the total food available for people to eat.

    Even in places where other food choices are available, the anti-beef push could impact food supplies. Stopping beef production would not automatically equate to increased production of other food.

    In a world where just under 800 million people go to bed hungry every night, attacking the supply of food in the name of the alleged climate emergency in my opinion should be viewed as a crime against humanity.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/22/2024 – 21:00

  • Biden Moving To Send Long-Range Ballistic Missiles To Ukraine
    Biden Moving To Send Long-Range Ballistic Missiles To Ukraine

    President Biden has just upped the ante on Ukraine aid while continuing to press House Republicans to approve the gargantuan war spending bill and its $61 billion for Kiev. Even while it’s clear Ukraine forces are being beaten back from the front lines, NBC reports this week that Biden is now closer to approving longer-range missile systems, which are capable of striking deeper into Crimea and Russian territory. 

    “After months of requests from Ukrainian officials, the Biden administration is working toward providing Ukraine with powerful new long-range ballistic missiles, according to two U.S. officials,” the report says.

    Image source: Lockheed Martin

    The advanced weapon system in question here is the long-range Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) with a range of nearly 200 miles, significantly beyond the HIMARS systems which were already long ago provided. The HIMARS in Ukraine’s possession are commonly estimated to reach 50-60 miles.

    Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba strongly suggested progress was made on the issue during his meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Munich this weekend. “I just came here from a meeting with Secretary Blinken,” Kuleba had said Saturday. “I spent a very good part of the time arguing in favor of ATACMS.”

    A US official told NBC that ATACMS “would allow Ukraine to strike farther inside the Russian-held Crimean Peninsula.”

    That Biden administration officials are openly boasting that this would be a motivating factor in providing the long-range missiles takes the world into highly dangerous territory, and stumbling further toward WW3.

    The thinking still reflects the claim that Russia seeks to expand the war beyond Ukraine and into Europe. Kiev and its closest allies have been advancing this narrative hard of late, especially while trying to get Washington funds unblocked. For example in the wake of the fall of Avdiivka:

    “The era of peace in Europe is over,” Dmytro Kuleba, Ukrainian foreign minister, told those present.

    “And every time Ukrainian soldiers withdraw from a Ukrainian town because of the lack of ammunition, think of it not only in terms of democracy and defending the world-based order, but also in terms of Russian soldiers getting a few kilometers closer to your towns.”

    Of course, the pro-escalation pundits have been out there pushing this narrative hard…

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    Putin has already long accused the West of supplying the very weapons now more frequently being used to attack inside Russian territory. Missiles, drones, and mortars have been raining down on the Belgorod region for months now, and on oil and industrial facilities. It’s perhaps only a matter of time before a major incident involving direct NATO-Russia hostilities.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/22/2024 – 20:40

  • FDA Approves 1st T-Cell Therapy For Melanoma
    FDA Approves 1st T-Cell Therapy For Melanoma

    Authored by Amie Dahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Melanoma cancer patients with solid tumors can turn to a new treatment thanks to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of a new class of immunotherapy. The new treatment may offer hope to those facing an otherwise deadly stage of disease.

    (Nasekomoe/Shutterstock)

    Amtagvi (lifileucel) is the first tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy to hit the market. The FDA granted accelerated approval to manufacturer Iovance Biotherapeutics on Friday for the drug’s use to treat patients with advanced melanoma that is unable to be removed with surgery, or that has spread to other parts of the body.

    “The approval of AMTAGVI offers hope to those with advanced melanoma who have progressed following initial standard of care therapies, as the current treatment options are not effective for many patients,” said Samantha R. Guild, president of the AIM at Melanoma Foundation, in a press release. “This one-time cell therapy represents a promising innovation for the melanoma community, and we are excited by its potential to transform care for patients who are in dire need of additional therapeutic options.”

    “Unresectable or metastatic melanoma is an aggressive form of cancer that can be fatal,” Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), said in an agency press release. “The approval of Amtagvi represents the culmination of scientific and clinical research efforts leading to a novel T cell immunotherapy for patients with limited treatment options.”

    Amtagvi Utilizes Patient’s T-Cells to Fight Cancer

    Melanoma is a type of skin cancer that starts in the cells that give skin its color, melanocytes. It often begins in the skin that is regularly exposed to sunlight, such as the arms, backs, face, and legs. While the exact causes aren’t clear, most research points to ultraviolet light exposure as a primary factor.

    While it starts with the skin, the cancer can spread to the lymph nodes and other parts of the body. According to the American Cancer Society, about one in 33 white people will develop it, while one in 1,000 black people and one in 200 Hispanic people will.

    The treatment is suitable for patients who have tried other forms of therapy, such as PD-1 blocking inhibitors or drugs that target the BRAF gene. PD-1 blocking inhibitors use antibodies to target specific proteins in the body to help the immune system fight off cancer cells. Drugs that target the BRAF gene help manage the growth and function of particular cells associated with skin cancer. According to the FDA, these therapies have some success with melanoma patients, but for those whose cancers have progressed, there has been a “high unmet medical need” until the approval of Amtagvi.

    Amtagvi uses a patient’s T-cells, a cancer-fighting immune cell. To create the therapy, a portion of the patient’s cancer tumor is removed during surgery. The T-cells are separated from the tumor and returned to the patient during a single infusion. While other immunotherapies exist, this is the first FDA-approved, tumor-derived T-cell immunotherapy.

    “Melanoma is a life-threatening cancer that can cause devastating impacts to affected individuals, with a significant risk of metastasizing and spreading to other areas in the body,” Dr. Nicole Verdun, director of the Office of Therapeutic Products in CBER, said in the press statement released Friday. “Today’s approval reflects the FDA’s dedication and commitment to the development of innovative, safe and effective treatment options for cancer patients.”

    Amtagvi was approved after a clinical study of 73 patients reviewed its safety and efficacy profile. According to the FDA, among those treated with the new medication, 31.5 percent of participants saw their tumors shrink. The therapy does come with side effects, including prolonged severe low blood count, severe infection, cardiac disorder, and the potential for developing worsened respiratory or kidney function. The therapy comes with a boxed warning about these risks, the FDA noted. Other common reactions included chills, fever, fatigue, fast heart rate, diarrhea, swelling, rash, low blood pressure, hair loss, infection, low oxygen levels, and shortness of breath.

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

  • Watch: Putin Co-Pilots Supersonic Nuclear-Capable Bomber
    Watch: Putin Co-Pilots Supersonic Nuclear-Capable Bomber

    Russian President Vladimir Putin just sent the Western military alliance a not-so-subtle message just days after his top national security official Dmitry Medvedev warned that Moscow stands ready to use its entire strategic arsenal on London, Washington, Berlin and Kiev if Russian territory comes under direct attack from NATO.

    On Thursday Putin entered the co-pilot’s seat in a nuclear-capable strategic bomber for a 30 to 40 minute flight, parts of which were filmed and quickly released by Russian state sources. Putin’s brief flight in the upgraded Tu-160M supersonic strategic bomber also comes ahead of next month’s Russian election, though of course we all know pretty much what the outcome will be. Watch below as Putin goes ‘nuclear-capable’…

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    The 71-year old is running as an independent candidate, interestingly enough, and the nuclear bomber ride also seems a signal of his health and capabilities, at a moment President Biden – a full decade older than his Russian counterpart – is facing serious questions over his apparent cognitive decline.

    According to more details of the PR flight via AP: “On Thursday, Putin, clad in a flight suit, boarded the warplane at a snow-covered airfield of an aircraft-making plant in the Volga River city of Kazan that has built the heavy bombers since the Soviet times.”

    Putin goes Top Gun-style, via Reuters

    “The plant has received state orders to produce a modernized version of the Tu-160 bomber that first flew in the 1980s and was code-named Blackjack by NATO.”

    Putin subsequently hailed that the new bomber he rode in was “excellent”.

    More footage:

    The AP report includes this amusing line as well: “As part of the Kremlin efforts to project an image of an action-loving and physically strong leader, Putin also took a co-pilot’s seat in an amphibious plane, flew a paraglider and drove a racing car and heavy trucks.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/22/2024 – 20:00

  • Turley: No, The Indictment Of Alexander Smirnov Does Not Exonerate Hunter Biden
    Turley: No, The Indictment Of Alexander Smirnov Does Not Exonerate Hunter Biden

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    The Russian comedian Yakov Smirnoff once joked that “in America, you can always find a party. In Soviet Russia, the Party can always find you.”

    Alexander Smirnov is no comedian, but he is about to discover the truth of that statement.

    Alexander Smirnov is now a defendant in federal court after being charged by special counsel David Weiss for spreading a false story about Hunter Biden receiving $5 million from Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company.

    The allegation has produced a stampede of Democrats who view his indictment as a much-needed talking point as the House continues to build the case of influence-peddling by the Biden family.

    Some are using the charges to revive a previously debunked story that Hunter Biden’s laptop could be Russian disinformation. But a closer reading of the filing dispels those claims and contradicts a new effort by Hunter Biden to dismiss charges against himself.

    The filing itself is actually an argument to keep Smirnov in federal detention.

    The government points out Smirnov’s admitted contacts with Russian intelligence officials and previously scheduled meetings with such figures to argue he is a flight risk.

    However, there are a couple of aspects to the filing that undermine the claims of a “bombshell” revelation of a Russian disinformation campaign.

    First, these disclosures were not the result of surveillance or interceptions by American intelligence. Smirnov appears to have been cooperating with the United States and told his US “handler” about all of these contacts.

    Second, Smirnov’s contacts were described as “recent” and did not apparently precede 2020. They have nothing to do with the laptop or the evidence of influence-peddling found in emails on that computer. This is solely a claim of a large payment to the Bidens from Burisma.

    Third, the Justice Department states that Smirnov had expressed “bias” against Joe Biden and used “his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma” to make the bribery allegations.

    So Smirnov operated off a bias against Biden, made an allegation separate from the laptop, and ultimately disclosed his communications to his U.S. handler. He detailed conversations with the “son of a former high-ranking government official” and “someone with ties to a particular Russian intelligence service.” Reports indicate that Smirnov was not only an asset of American intelligence but on the payroll for roughly a decade as a trusted informant.

    That does not mean that the Russians were not eager to spread false claims, though it shows again how low-grade such efforts could be. It does not address hundreds of confirmed emails of Hunter Biden cashing in on an array of foreign contacts.

    Hunter Biden’s legal team is citing the filing in seeking to cast doubt on all of the allegations and even the pending charges: “It now seems clear that the Smirnov allegations infected this case.”

    They insist that the bribe allegation was key to the loss of the plea agreement that they struck with the president’s son. They argued that “having taken Mr. Smirnov’s bait of grand, sensational charges, the Diversion Agreement that had just been entered into and Plea Agreement that was on the verge of being finalized suddenly became inconvenient for the prosecution, and it reversed course and repudiated those Agreements.”

    That is not how it happened.

    Hunter Biden had received a sweetheart deal so rich as to put most defendants into hyperglycemic shock. Hunter would have avoided any jail time and been given sweeping immunity from future charges.

    The reason that the deal fell apart was not any particular allegation of bribes. The alleged bribe was not part of the case. It fell apart because the judge asked a simple question on the meaning of the immunity. The deal immediately imploded as the prosecutor was forced to admit that he had never seen a deal like this for anyone other than Hunter Biden.

    In relation to the influence-peddling investigation, this filing does not change the evidence that the Biden family made millions in shaking down foreign companies and business figures.

    On Wednesday, Capitol Hill will witness something that many thought would never come. The House is calling a Biden to actually answer questions under oath about influence-peddling. James Biden, brother of the president, will testify on his long history of leveraging the name and influence of his brother. That includes $200,000 given to him by a collapsing hospital chain company, Americore.

    Biden reportedly pitched a percentage deal with his brother and immediately turned over the money to Joe Biden to pay off a prior “loan.”

    That was not the creation of a “biased” Russian but the Biden family itself. Smirnov was not at the dinners and meetings where Joe Biden called in to chat. He was not the recipient of messages from Hunter threatening that his father was “sitting next to” him and waiting for transfers of money. He was not the source of gifts and expense accounts to cover Hunter’s lavish lifestyle. .

    Most importantly, Smirnov was not the reason that Hunter was indicted by the same prosecutor, David Weiss, who just indicted him.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/22/2024 – 19:40

  • "Should Have Never Happened": City Of Pittsburgh Blamed For Catastrophic January 2022 Bridge Collapse
    “Should Have Never Happened”: City Of Pittsburgh Blamed For Catastrophic January 2022 Bridge Collapse

    Today in “your tax dollars at work” news, the city of Pittsburgh is being blamed for the collapse of the city-owned Forbes Avenue bridge, which collapsed on January 28, 2022, resulting in several injuries.

    An investigation found that the city “did not adequately maintain or repair a bridge and failed to act on inspection reports”, according to a new report from the Associated Press.

    When the bridge collapsed in early 2022, a bus and four cars plunged 100 feet into the Fern Hollow Creek below, the report says. Another vehicle also wound up driving off of the east bridge abutment and landed on its roof, AP reported. 

    Luckily, no one was killed. 

    The National Transportation Safety Board found that “poor inspections and insufficient oversight” were likely the cause of the collapse. NTSB chair Jennifer L. Homendy commented: “The Fern Hollow Bridge collapse should never have happened.”

    She continued, noting significant deterioration in the uncoated weathering steel and noted a persistent lack of response to known damage to the bridge, which had been evident for years. 

    The report even says that in certain sections, the steel had decayed so severely that holes were visibly present in the structure.

    NTSB senior structural engineer Dan Walsh added: “The city of Pittsburgh was responsible for inspecting and maintaining the Fern Hollow bridge. Similar maintenance and repair recommendations were made in the inspection reports for more than 15 years leading up to the collapse. But the city failed to act on them, resulting in progressive corrosion to the point of failure.”

    The Pittsburgh Mayor’s office, under Ed Gainey, acknowledges the NTSB’s findings regarding the bridge collapse, highlighting past inspection oversights and announcing the formation of a new Bridge Maintenance Division with a 300% budget increase for upkeep.

    Efforts have been made to address critical issues across city-owned bridges, with significant progress on urgent repairs. The collapse, injuring four people hours before President Biden’s visit for an infrastructure event, has led to multiple lawsuits, including one by bus driver Daryl Luciani, who suffered severe injuries.

    The city has refrained from commenting on ongoing legal matters.

    NTSB investigations attributed the collapse to inadequate maintenance and oversight, including failure to address known drainage issues and structural weaknesses. Despite temporary measures taken in 2009, a permanent solution was never implemented, highlighting systemic failures in the city’s bridge management and inspection processes.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/22/2024 – 19:20

  • Lower Oil Prices Are Set to Hurt Alberta's Budget
    Lower Oil Prices Are Set to Hurt Alberta’s Budget

    By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

    The Premier of Alberta Danielle Smith has warned that lower oil prices will have an impact on the province’s new budget, forcing some spending cuts.

    During a televised address on Wednesday night, Smith said “Lower resource revenues will certainly require us to show more restraint than previously predicted.”

    “We will ensure this is done thoughtfully and with priority given to the programs and services Albertans most rely on such as health, education and social supports,” the Premier added, as cited by the Canadian Press.

    Alberta’s budget is tied to its oil revenues, which are calculated on the basis of the West Texas Intermediate benchmark. Even minor changes in the benchmark’s value can have an impact of hundreds of millions of dollars on the Canadian oil province’s finances.

    Alberta’s FY 2023/24 budget was tied to an average WTI price of $79 per barrel but for much of the year that ends this March, the U.S. benchmark has traded lower than this, meaning the budget calculations of the Alberta government had to be adjusted.

    Recently, oil prices have been on the mend amid continued tensions in the Middle East but there is no guarantee the rally will either strengthen or continue seeing as there are bearish factors at play as well. Chief among these are doubts about the strength of Chinese oil demand.

    Premier Smith has acknowledged that basing the province’s budget on oil revenues is not the wisest option, saying in her speech this week it was time for Alberta to get off the “budget rollercoaster” of oil revenues. She added, however, that the provincial government will not raise taxes to balance the new budget.

    For the next financial year, the Alberta budget stipulates an average WTI price of $76 per barrel on average, declining to $73.50 per barrel in the following fiscal year.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/22/2024 – 19:00

  • Teamsters Union Makes First Major GOP Donation Since 2004 Following Trump Meeting
    Teamsters Union Makes First Major GOP Donation Since 2004 Following Trump Meeting

    Weeks after a meeting between former President Donald Trump and Teamsters Union leaders, including President Sean O’Brien and Secretary-Treasurer Fred Zuckerman, along with the union’s executive board at their Washington, DC headquarters, America’s most powerful labor union has made the first major donation to Republicans in two decades. This move has sparked huge concern that unions are losing faith in President Biden, lauded as the most pro-union president ever. 

    According to Axios, the Teamsters’ political committee donated $45,000, the maximum amount permitted, to the Republican National Committee. This was the first ‘big’ donation the union has made to the RNC since 2004. 

    This comes after Trump attended a meeting with the heads of Teamsters last month. After the meeting, Trump told reporters: “We had a very strong meeting with the Teamsters.” He added there was a very strong possibility that he would get their endorsement. 

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    “Usually, a Republican wouldn’t get that endorsement,” Trump continued, adding he was in a greater position than other Republicans and that the union “never had … a better four years than they had during the Trump administration.”

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    Before January, Teamsters in Dec. 2023 donated $135,000 to the Democratic National Committee. The DNC also received $15,000 from the union in March 2023. 

    Teamsters represent about 1.3 million UPS and other transportation workers. Despite many other unions having already endorsed Biden, Teamsters has yet to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential race. 

    Trump’s and Biden’s campaigns are locked in a fight to win over blue-collar workers in crucial swing states ahead of the November elections. Biden has frequently touted his strong ties with labor unions. However, the president’s failed economic policies, known as ‘Bidenomics,’ have crushed the working class under the weight of inflation. 

    Are blue-collar unionized voters finally waking up to just how much of a disaster Bidenomics has been over Biden’s first term? 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/22/2024 – 18:40

  • ADNOC CEO: Global Energy Demand Growth Is Unsustainable
    ADNOC CEO: Global Energy Demand Growth Is Unsustainable

    By Alex Kimani of OilPrice.com

    Last month, U.S. oil and gas supermajor Exxon Mobil released its long-term global energy outlook report. Exxon has predicted that global energy demand will reach about 660 quadrillion Btu in 2050, good for a 15% increase from 2021 levels reflecting a growing population and rising prosperity. 

    The energy company has projected that renewables and nuclear will record strong growth through 2050, contributing around 70% of incremental energy supplies; natural gas demand will remain robust and reach almost 30% of all demand by 2050, oil demand will peak in the 2030s but only fall slightly over the next two decades while coal demand will continue to decline sharply. Interestingly, the developing world is expected to drive all of the demand growth, with Exxon predicting that non-OECD share of global energy demand will reach around 70% in 2050 while the combined share of energy consumption by the U.S. and Europe will decline from about 30% in 2021 to about 20% in 2050.

    Whereas these appear like healthy trends that might help the world ameliorate its climate crisis, not everybody is that sanguine. Al Jaber, chief executive officer of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) and president of last year’s Cop28 summit says that the current trajectory of rapid energy demand growth is unsustainable. 

    “The energy transition will lead to energy turmoil … if we only address the supply side of the energy equation. We must be balanced, we must tackle the demand side … We cannot and should not pursue the energy transition by only looking and working on one side of the equation,” Al-Jaber has told the Guardian. 

    According to Al-Jaber, it is unlikely that global carbon reduction targets can be met unless the world cuts energy demand, adding that many governments are reluctant to look at the complex issues around this area.

    Al-Jaber’s sentiments are shared by the U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, “Saying we will, for the first time in history, transition away from fossil fuel, and adjust in an orderly equitable manner … and in accordance with the science that by 2050 [we will] accomplish net zero, means everybody has to have a plan, and that is not where we are today,” Kerry has said. Kerry has taken a veiled swipe at China and its plan to bring 360 Gigawatts of coal-fired power online, saying, “And if that happens, it will wipe out all of the gains of Europe, the U.S. and other parts of the world.”

    Peak Oil Demand

    It’s interesting to note that in this report, Exxon Mobil sees global oil demand peaking in just a decade, though it has predicted that oil will remain the world’s most dominant form of primary energy by 2050. Last year, ExxonMobil and Saudi Aramco pushed back on a prediction by Bloomberg that global oil demand will peak in 2027. 

    According to Bloomberg, electric vehicles, ever-improving fuel efficiency and shared mobility will displace a staggering 20 million barrels per day in oil demand by 2040, 10 times what they are currently displacing. Bloomberg claimed that demand for gasoline and diesel for road transport in the U.S. and Europe has already peaked while demand in China is set to peak in the current year. Bloomberg has predicted that oil demand in other major consuming nations like India will go into a tailspin in the 2030s.

    In its report, Exxon has concurred with many of Bloomberg’s points. Exxon has predicted there will be 920 million plug-in hybrids, battery electric, or fuel cell vehicles on the roads in 2050, good for 44% of the global fleet. In the near term, the company sees EV sales growing from 6.4 million in 2021 to 33 million in 2030, good for a healthy compounded annual growth rate of about 20%. 

    Exxon says efficiency gains in developed countries will be more than enough to offset energy demand growth due to population growth. However, unlike Bloomberg, Exxon has predicted that global transportation-related energy demand will grow more than 30% from 2021 to 2050, with oil supplying the lion’s share.

    Speaking at last year’s World Petroleum Congress in Calgary, Exxon CEO Darren Woods said it will be difficult to replace today’s energy system thanks to the wide availability of oil and gas, adding that the energy transition would take time.

    “There seems to be wishful thinking that we’re going to flip a switch from where we’re at today to where it will be tomorrow. No matter where demand gets to, if we don’t maintain some level of investment industry, you end up running short on supply which leads to higher prices.”

    Aramco CEO Amin Nasser noted that previous predictions about peak oil demand have failed to materialize,“This notion is wilting under scrutiny because it is mostly being driven by policies, rather than the proven combination of markets, competitive economics and technology. We need to invest, otherwise in the mid- to long-term we will have another crisis and we will go backward in terms of using more and more coal and other cheap products that are available today,” he said.

    Nasser has predicted that global oil demand will hit 110 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2030, up from 102 million b/d in 2023.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/22/2024 – 18:20

  • Milei Secures Argentina's First Budget Surplus Since 2012 After Only One Month In Office
    Milei Secures Argentina’s First Budget Surplus Since 2012 After Only One Month In Office

    Not long after socialist activists flooded into Buenos Aires to protest President Javier Milei’s sweeping budget cuts and reforms, it has been announced that Argentina is enjoying its first monthly budget surplus since August 2012.  The budget fix (and $589 million positive balance) took Milei only one month in office to achieve and leaves the political left with some embarrassing questions to answer.

    Milei is considered a “far right” libertarian, but his extensive economic background has so far made him perfectly placed to begin repairs to Argentina’s long suffering fiscal system.

    A balanced budget is the first step towards removing the country’s economy from under the thumb of the International Monetary Fund and the organization’s $44 billion loan.  Though Argentina has a long way to go to solvency, the socialist policies of previous administrations only served to trap the population in a prison of persistent debt.  This has led to a series of stagflationary crisis events and a greatly devalued peso.  The economy is currently suffering from a 250% inflation rate. 

    Pro-establishment critics have asserted for months that Milei would “destroy” Argentina’s financial framework, but frankly, that happened long before he entered office.  As we have seen in many western nations the past decade, kicking the can down the road only leads to increasingly more volatile economic consequences.  

    Once a country is addicted to socialist subsidies over the course of decades, convincing the populace that the government handouts they have grown to rely on are a form of bondage becomes very difficult.  Milei’s methodology of tearing off the band aid and setting wholesale fire to socialized programs may be the only way to force the public to stop being dependent.  At the very least, it’s the only solution that hasn’t been tried, which is often a good sign that it will work.  

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/22/2024 – 18:00

  • Lack Of Credibility Places US Deterrence Under Great Strain
    Lack Of Credibility Places US Deterrence Under Great Strain

    Authored by James E. Fannell and Bradley A. Thayer via American Greatness,

    American national security and the security of many of our allies depend upon the ability of the U.S. to deter aggression. Deterrence depends upon having robust military capabilities. These are the conventional and nuclear might of America’s military. Deterrence is also dependent upon political considerations like America’s credibility and willpower to meet aggression against American soil should deterrence fail or against the territory of our allies with whom the U.S. has an extended deterrent commitment, like Australia, Japan, and our NATO allies. Hence, deterrence is about military capabilities—they must be strong—but also political considerations. The U.S. must be credible and evince the willpower to follow through on the explicit and implicit threats to use military force, including nuclear weapons, to deter formidable conventional and nuclear powers like the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

    U.S. presidents should be symbols of strength, stability, and power, speaking firmly and quietly to convey credible threats that will be executed if U.S. enemies aggress, while carrying a big stick, overwhelming U.S. military might. As Air Force General Curtis LeMay said if the Soviet Union aggressed, it would be “a smoking, irradiating ruin at the end of two hours.” This was a credible threat when the U.S. had both the capabilities and demonstrated willpower to accomplish this during the Cold War.

    Viewed through the perspective of international politics, the mental incapacity of President Biden is deeply troubling because it has very clearly weakened U.S. deterrence—just ask the people of Afghanistan, Ukraine, or Israel. The president’s illness projects weakness, not strength, vacillation, not determination, and senescence rather than a crystalline strategic focus. He is not a voice of stability and strength but is an incarnation of confusion and uncertainty, compelling the world to ask who is in charge of the United States.

    In a peaceful world, this would be disheartening to the American people and of considerable concern to allies. In today’s dangerous world with a hyper-aggressive Xi Jinping, this is alarming and must be addressed. It is historically unique; never at a time of such considerable threat, when the U.S. faces a peer enemy, has a president been non compos mentis. President Woodrow Wilson was incapacitated by a stroke in the last year of his presidency, but the U.S. did not face a peer enemy in the immediate aftermath of the Great War. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was gravely ill in his last years but maintained mental coherence. He possessed the strongest military on the planet. With President Biden, the United States is in unchartered and perilous national security waters at a time when a dynamic president is needed to reassure allies and partners, inspire the American people and people of good will around the world, and convey to America’s enemies that grievous harm will come to them if they aggress.

    With the president removed from the public face of American national security, a vice president who is incapable of fulfilling that role, a secretary of state who is feckless, and a secretary of defense who is ill, it falls to senior civilian and military officials, like the Commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, to step into that mission. Although some may accomplish this role with aplomb, this is not their principal responsibility, and we should expect their performance to be of uneven quality. In sum, this is not normal. The U.S. has never run this risk during the wars of the twentieth century, but it does today. It is a national security risk and a grave strain on civil-military relations.

    This is why the report from Special Counsel Robert Hur was singularly damaging. Hur identified President Biden as having committed felonies but who could not be prosecuted because of his mental incapacities. This confirms for global audiences—friends and foes alike—that Biden is unable to meet his responsibilities at a time when dynamic leadership is necessary to deter PRC aggression. Of equal concern is the fact that a two-tier system of justice means that the rule of law has ended in America, which had once been known and respected for a justice system that was blind to rank, race, or creed. The implications of this for the U.S. global position are profound. It weakens the ability of the U.S. to explain to global audiences the superiority of the U.S. political system. It also suggests a great change from the position of the U.S. during the Cold War to today. This suggests to allies and enemies alike that the strengths of the U.S. system that defeated the Soviet Union have eroded.

    In a curious and even bizarre coda to a month of worrying incidents, the Chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), warned of a “serious national security threat” and called for information about it to be declassified by the Biden administration. This generated a panic on financial markets and great concern among the American people. The White House at first rejected this and later warmed to an indication that it related to Russian capabilities in space. There were indications that this was hyperbole to pressure the House to pass funding for Ukraine. In truth, this made a senior member of Congress, one of the key “Gang of Eight,” look like he was employing a major and imminent national security threat to manipulate Speaker Johnson and Republican House leadership to address the issue of Ukraine funding. This does not look good to allies and partners around the world. It has eroded confidence in American deterrence. If this were a one-off, this would be bad enough, but within the context of an enfeebled presidency, it may be taken as a sign that U.S. national security leadership is incapable of addressing the contemporary threat environment.

    This lack of seriousness and insouciance regarding the national security of the country cannot continue. It opens a window of opportunity for U.S. enemies. The supreme interest of the United States is to protect U.S. national security—its citizens. That requires leadership. The U.S. does not now possess it—and Beijing is using this reality in their calculations on when to strike at America in the Far East.

    James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer are authors of Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 02/22/2024 – 17:40

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Feb 22

Today’s News 22nd February 2024

  • COVID-19 Tested Our Commitment To Freedom. Three Years Later, We're Still Failing
    COVID-19 Tested Our Commitment To Freedom. Three Years Later, We’re Still Failing

    Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “The remedy is worse than the disease.”

    – Francis Bacon

    The government never cedes power willingly.

    Neither should we.

    If the COVID-19 debacle taught us one thing it is that, as Justice Neil Gorsuch acknowledged, “Rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.”

    Unfortunately, we still haven’t learned.

    We’re still allowing ourselves to be fully distracted by circus politics and a constant barrage of bad news screaming for attention.

    Three years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which gave world governments (including our own) a convenient excuse for expanding their powers, abusing their authority, and further oppressing their constituents, there’s something being concocted in the dens of power.

    The danger of martial law persists.

    Any government so willing to weaponize one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers and justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security will not hesitate to override the Constitution and lockdown the nation again.

    You’d better get ready, because that so-called crisis could be anything: civil unrest, national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

    COVID-19 was a test to see how quickly the populace would march in lockstep with the government’s dictates, no questions asked, and how little resistance the citizenry would offer up to the government’s power grabs when made in the name of national security.

    “We the people” failed that test spectacularly.

    Characterized by Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch as “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country,” the government’s COVID-19 response to the COVID-19 pandemic constituted a massively intrusive, coercive and authoritarian assault on the right of individual sovereignty over one’s life, self and private property.

    In a statement attached to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Arizona v. Mayorkas, a case that challenged whether the government could continue to use it pandemic powers even after declaring the public health emergency over, Gorsuch provided a catalog of the many ways in which the government used COVID-19 to massively overreach its authority and suppress civil liberties:

    “Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private. They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions too. They surveilled church parking lots, recorded license plates, and issued notices warning that attendance at even outdoor services satisfying all state social-distancing and hygiene requirements could amount to criminal conduct. They divided cities and neighborhoods into color-coded zones, forced individuals to fight for their freedoms in court on emergency timetables, and then changed their color-coded schemes when defeat in court seemed imminent.”

    Truly, the government’s (federal and state) handling of the COVID-19 pandemic delivered a knockout blow to our civil liberties, empowering the police state to flex its powers by way of a bevy of lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, contact tracing programs, heightened surveillance, censorship, overcriminalization, etc.

    What started off as an experiment in social distancing in order to flatten the curve of an unknown virus (and not overwhelm the nation’s hospitals or expose the most vulnerable to unavoidable loss of life scenarios) quickly became strongly worded suggestions for citizens to voluntarily stay at home and strong-armed house arrest orders with penalties in place for non-compliance.

    Every day brought a drastic new set of restrictions by government bodies (most have been delivered by way of executive orders) at the local, state and federal level that were eager to flex their muscles for the so-called “good” of the populace.

    There was talk of mass testing for COVID-19 antibodies, screening checkpoints, mass surveillance in order to carry out contact tracing, immunity passports to allow those who have recovered from the virus to move around more freely, snitch tip lines for reporting “rule breakers” to the authorities, and heavy fines and jail time for those who dared to venture out without a mask, congregate in worship without the government’s blessing, or re-open their businesses without the government’s say-so.

    It was even suggested that government officials should mandate mass vaccinations and “ensure that people without proof of vaccination would not be allowed, well, anywhere.”

    Those tactics were already being used abroad.

    In Italy, the unvaccinated were banned from restaurants, bars and public transportation, and faced suspensions from work and monthly fines. Similarly, France banned the unvaccinated from most public venues.

    In Austria, anyone who had not complied with the vaccine mandate faced fines up to $4100. Police were to be authorized to carry out routine checks and demand proof of vaccination, with penalties of as much as $685 for failure to do so.

    In China, which adopted a zero tolerance, “zero COVID” strategy, whole cities—some with populations in the tens of millions—were forced into home lockdowns for weeks on end, resulting in mass shortages of food and household supplies. Reports surfaced of residents “trading cigarettes for cabbage, dishwashing liquid for apples and sanitary pads for a small pile of vegetables. One resident traded a Nintendo Switch console for a packet of instant noodles and two steamed buns.”

    For those unfortunate enough to contract COVID-19, China constructed “quarantine camps” throughout the country: massive complexes boasting thousands of small, metal boxes containing little more than a bed and a toilet. Detainees—including children, pregnant women and the elderly— were reportedly ordered to leave their homes in the middle of the night, transported to the quarantine camps in buses and held in isolation.

    If this last scenario sounds chillingly familiar, it should.

    Eighty years ago, another authoritarian regime established more than 44,000 quarantine camps for those perceived as “enemies of the state”: racially inferior, politically unacceptable or simply noncompliant.

    While the majority of those imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camps, forced labor camps, incarceration sites and ghettos were Jews, there were also Polish nationals, gypsies, Russians, political dissidents, resistance fighters, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals.

    Culturally, we have become so fixated on the mass murders of Jewish prisoners by the Nazis that we overlook the fact that the purpose of these concentration camps were initially intended to “incarcerate and intimidate the leaders of political, social, and cultural movements that the Nazis perceived to be a threat to the survival of the regime.”

    How do you get from there to here, from Auschwitz concentration camps to COVID quarantine centers?

    You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to connect the dots.

    You just have to recognize the truth in the warning: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

    This is about what happens when good, generally decent people—distracted by manufactured crises, polarizing politics, and fighting that divides the populace into warring “us vs. them” camps—fail to take note of the looming danger that threatens to wipe freedom from the map and place us all in chains.

    It’s about what happens when any government is empowered to adopt a comply-or-suffer-the-consequences mindset that is enforced through mandates, lockdowns, penalties, detention centers, martial law, and a disregard for the rights of the individual.

    This is the slippery slope: a government empowered to restrict movements, limit individual liberty, and isolate “undesirables” to prevent the spread of a disease is a government that has the power to lockdown a country, label whole segments of the population a danger to national security, and force those undesirables—a.k.a. extremists, dissidents, troublemakers, etc.—into isolation so they don’t contaminate the rest of the populace.

    The slippery slope begins with propaganda campaigns about the public good being more important than individual liberty, and it ends with lockdowns and concentration camps.

    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 danger signs are everywhere.

    COVID-19 was merely one crisis in a long series of crises that the government has shamelessly exploited in order to justify its power grabs and acclimate the citizenry to a state of martial law disguised as emergency powers.

    Everything I have warned about for years—government overreach, invasive surveillance, martial law, abuse of powers, militarized police, weaponized technology used to track and control the citizenry, and so on—has become part of the government’s arsenal of terrifying lockdown powers should the need arise.

    What we should be bracing for is: what comes next?

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/21/2024 – 23:40

  • Which Lifestyle Changes Can Make You Live Longer?
    Which Lifestyle Changes Can Make You Live Longer?

    Lifestyle and habits can have a big effect on our health – and our life expectancy. A recently released study that followed U.S. veterans of the age group 40 to 99 between the years 2011 and 2019 is attempting to show just how much.

    As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, according to mortality trends collected among 719,147 veterans and lifestyle factors assessed among 276,132, being physically active lowered the risk of death among the sample population the most – by 46 percent – opposite someone with no healthy habits and factors.

    Infographic: Which Lifestyle Changes Can Make You Live Longer? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The study applied the Department of Health’s recommendation of 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise per week as a threshold participants had to meet to be classified as physically active.

    Never smoking shaved off 30 percent off the risk of dying, while eating a diet that includes many plant-based foods lowered the risk of death by 21 percent. The recommendation here is to stick to healthy plant-based foods instead of just any.

    Not engaging in frequent binge drinking and getting restorative sleep of seven to nine hours (by not undercutting the hours of one’s usual sleep) could be expected to lead to a mortality risk decrease of 18 and 19 percent, respectively, according to the study. Having positive social interactions lowered the risk of dying by just 5 percent.

    The study also shows how combining different lifestyle factors can add up.

    Adopting just one led to a lower mortality risk in the study group of 26 percent on average. Adopting six positive habits even led to a decrease of 73 percent. The study also included the factors depression/anxiety and opioid addiction. Being free of either was associated with a decrease in mortality of 29 percent and 38 percent, with opioid disorder therefore scoring lower as a harmful behavior than physical inactivity.

    Adopting or being free of all eight factors was associated with a lower risk of dying of 87 percent.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/21/2024 – 23:20

  • New York AG Says She May Seize Trump Buildings, Assets If He Can't Pay $355 Million Penalty
    New York AG Says She May Seize Trump Buildings, Assets If He Can’t Pay $355 Million Penalty

    Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    New York Attorney General Letitia James said on Feb. 20 that she’s prepared to seize former President Donald Trump’s buildings and assets if he can’t pay the penalty imposed in the state’s civil fraud case.

    New York Attorney General Letitia James arrives for former President Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial at New York State Supreme Court in New York City on Nov. 8, 2023. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

    The former president was recently ordered to pay nearly $355 million and barred from doing business in New York state for three years by state Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron.

    During an interview with ABC News, Ms. James said that it was “really not my business” if President Trump doesn’t have the money to pay the penalty, while also noting that she has her eyes on the Trump Building in Lower Manhattan.

    “If he does not have funds to pay off the judgment, then we will seek, you know, judgment enforcement mechanisms in court, and we will ask the judge to seize his assets,” she said.

    “We are prepared to make sure that the judgment is paid to New Yorkers, and yes, I look at 40 Wall Street each and every day,” she added, referring to the Trump Building.

    President Trump’s attorneys have vowed to appeal the case; he and his attorneys have described the case as a “political witch hunt” and the verdict as “manifest injustice.”

    Throughout the trial, the Trump team accused Justice Engoron of judicial malpractice, and the president has asserted that he should be the one being awarded damages.

    Responding to the Trump camp’s intention to appeal and their sentiment, Ms. James expressed confidence that her office would prevail.

    “I cannot be paralyzed by fear. And I cannot allow anyone to bully me into silence. And I cannot allow anyone to have a chilling effect on the work that I do and this office does each and every day,” Ms. James said.

    President Trump’s legal team has argued that no fraud occurred and that the state attorney general failed to prove intent to defraud. He has said that there were “no victims because the banks made a lot of money.”

    In her comments on Feb. 20, Ms. James rejected such arguments, reportedly saying that financial fraud isn’t a victimless crime. The attorney general reportedly said that leveling the playing field is within her wheelhouse and that if the average person isn’t allowed to inflate the value of their assets to secure loans, then neither should President Trump.

    Ms. James brought the lawsuit against President Trump and his co-defendants in 2022. Justice Engoron found President Trump liable and ruled that he inflated his assets to get better loans weeks before the trial began.

    Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump attends a pre-trial hearing at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City on Feb. 15, 2024. (Steven Hirsch/Pool via Getty Images)

    In addition to civil fraud cases, President Trump faces four criminal cases ahead of the 2024 elections. These include a case related to “hush money” payments before the 2016 elections, two cases related to his attempts to challenge the results of the 2020 elections, and a case related to the handling of classified documents.

    President Trump recently called for an end to the legal cases against him, alleging that they amount to election interference against the Republican 2024 presidential front-runner.

    “This is communism and a threat to democracy,” he declared in a post on Truth Social on Feb. 19.

    “All political prosecutions of your favorite president, me, must stop immediately. We are in the middle of an election, perhaps the most important election in the history of our country, and these radical left lunatic prosecutors and judges are not allowed to be doing this,” he said.

    During a town hall-style interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Feb. 20, President Trump once again described his legal battles as being comparable to what opposition leaders might face in a communist country, noting the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

    “We are turning into a communist country in many ways,” he said.

    Drawing parallels with Mr. Navalny’s plight, President Trump asserted that he’s facing several trials “all because of the fact that I’m in politics.”

    Amid the legal battles, President Trump has so far notched victories by large margins in crucial GOP presidential primary contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/21/2024 – 23:00

  • Biden Defies Supreme Court Again, Cancels $1.2 Billion In Student Debt From 153,000 Borrowers
    Biden Defies Supreme Court Again, Cancels $1.2 Billion In Student Debt From 153,000 Borrowers

    Demonstrating yet again that nobody is quite about the law – and the constitutions – like the Biden crime family…

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    … months after the Supreme Court voted that BIden’s student loan relief is illegal, the Biden administration said on Wednesday that it would forgive another $1.2 billion in student debt for nearly 153,000 borrowers enrolled its new repayment program, called the Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan. According to CNBC, the relief will go to borrowers who have been in repayment for a decade or longer, and originally took out $12,000 or less.

    Borrowers usually get debt forgiveness under income-driven repayment plans, including SAVE, after 20 or 25 years of payments. But under the SAVE plan, those who borrowed less can get their debt canceled after just a decade.

    In January, the Biden administration said it would soon start to forgive the debt of these borrowers who had signed up for its new plan.

    “With today’s announcement, we are once again sending a clear message to borrowers who had low balances: if you’ve been paying for a decade, you’ve done your part, and you deserve relief,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement.

    Eligible borrowers will begin receiving emails from President Joe Biden on Wednesday and do not need to take any further action to receive the relief, the U.S. Department of Education said.

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    After the Supreme Court blocked Biden’s sweeping student loan forgiveness plan last June, his administration has found ways to defy the highest legal entity that has not yet been corrupted by Soros’ billions and has explored all of its remaining authority to leave people with less education debt, even if it meant violating the law.

    The latest round pushes the total relief approved by the Biden administration to nearly $138 billion, benefiting 3.9 million borrowers. That number could grow as more people become eligible for forgiveness under the SAVE program, which has 6.9 million people enrolled. Administration officials have declined to estimate how many borrowers will eventually see loans forgiven under the program.

    Yet even with the latest abuse of the Supreme Court ruling, Biden’s efforts to buy votes fall short of the president’s proposal for more sweeping student loan cancellation — as much as $20,000 in relief per borrower – that was struck down last year by the US Supreme Court. That forgiveness plan was estimated to cost $400 billion.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/21/2024 – 22:40

  • 'Sue And Settle' Looks To Some Like Crony Democracy… And Under Biden's Lawfaring Eco-Politics, It's Back
    ‘Sue And Settle’ Looks To Some Like Crony Democracy… And Under Biden’s Lawfaring Eco-Politics, It’s Back

    Authored by James Varney via RealClear Wire,

    When the Biden administration announced in 2022 that it would remove some 4 million acres of federal land in Western states from oil and gas exploration, environmental groups hailed the decision as a milestone in their fight against global warming.

    “With the oil and gas industry bent on despoiling American’s public lands and fueling the climate crisis, this is a critical opportunity for the Biden administration to chart a new path toward clean energy and independence from fossil fuels,” said Jeremy Nichols, a director with WildEarth Guardians.

    But Nichols could just as easily have slapped himself on the back: The administration’s move was part of a private settlement of a lawsuit filed by WildEarth and others over the objections of energy consortiums, whose efforts to intervene in the matter were dismissed.

    A similar thing happened last August, when the Biden administration announced it had agreed to exclude 6 million acres of the energy-rich Gulf of Mexico seabed from exploration to settle a lawsuit brought by environmental groups, including the Sierra Club – an announcement that triggered operational delays for the industry and expensive litigation to overturn.

    Administration critics say these moves reflect the resurgence of a practice embraced by the Obama administration and rejected during Donald Trump’s presidency: “sue and settle.” The tactic is simple: An advocacy group sues a federal agency for failing to enforce laws or regulations. Agency officials and the plaintiffs then come to a private agreement and that deal is ratified by the courts via a binding consent decree.

    The practice is common at every level of government. New York City, for example, is obligated to house and feed tens of thousands of migrants because of a consent decree it entered into to settle a 1979 lawsuit brought by advocates for the homeless. But it is most prevalent in the environmental field, where well-funded groups commonly sue the Environmental Protection Agency or the Bureau of Land Management within the Department of the Interior alleging failure to enforce provisions of the Clean Air Act or regulations regarding federal leases for energy production.

    Although such consent decrees do not have the force of laws passed by Congress or regulations issued by the government that have gone through formal review and allow for public comment, they set the rules of the road. Critics say it has allowed government to advance policy goals that cannot be achieved through normal democratic channels. 

    “It’s not really an adversarial lawsuit, and with a settlement agreement and consent decree the case is never really over,” said Dave Tryon, director of litigation at the free-market Buckeye Institute. “The EPA is anxious to increase its power and control; it’s always happy to expand that.”

    The legal maneuver represents, according to this view, a return to the proverbial smoked-filled backrooms of politics. Huddled privately, without input from citizens or businesses that may be adversely affected by the decisions – let alone the public at large – lawsuits that often involve parties more simpatico than adversarial are settled. The plaintiffs and defendants are familiar to one another from years in the environmental lobbying and litigation world – and because of the “revolving door” between environmental groups and Democratic administrations. These like-minded players approach the issue seeking similar goals, a process that has only intensified with the Biden administration and leftist environmental groups sharing the belief that global warming is an existential threat.

    “Overall, it’s harkening back to the bad old days – they do this in order to avoid scrutiny and bypass the regulatory process,” said Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, an advocacy arm of the Institute for Energy Research. “It’s a way to advance an agenda that may be rejected by voters. It’s a nefarious practice in which the agency and the environmental groups get what they want.”

    Sue-and-settle is part of an even broader effort known as “lawfare,” in which political parties and advocacy groups seek to achieve their goals not through elections or legislation but in the courts. This encompasses everything from President Trump’s “stop the steal” efforts to overturn the 2020 election through the courts to myriad efforts by Democrats, whose lawfare campaigns have ranged from getting courts to confiscate Trump’s businesses and charge him criminally to removing him from the 2024 ballot.

    Settlements are common in the courts. They are often welcomed as a way to avoid costly, protracted litigation while also clearing dockets. But sue-and-settle is different, said Paul Seby, an attorney with GreenbergTraurig in Denver, who often represents the state of North Dakota in energy matters.

    “Those deals where someone is asked to enforce mandatory actions – that’s all legit and there’s no real beef with that,” Seby said. “The problem is when there is footsie going on between an agency of the Department of Justice and the non-governmental organization. That’s where they make a deal in a consent decree that says a department must do something more than just comply with some deadline they missed.”

    The Western states’ suit, filed in the D.C. federal circuit, is a good example, according to critics. The lawsuit was first filed against the Bureau of Land Management in 2016, alleging insufficient attention had been paid to global warming when approving leases in Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado. So the BLM and the states agreed to re-do studies under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and, after concluding that the leases complied with the law, the Trump administration-led agency approved the leases again. Environmental groups filed another lawsuit in 2021 and Biden’s BLM settled the case, in effect giving the groups what they wanted.

    “You can always do more ‘analysis’ as the environmental groups demand, and the usual remedy is to re-do the analysis,” said Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, another industry consortium that sought to intervene in the case. “But instead of the small things, BLM will agree to reopen the whole resource management. In other words, BLM just agrees to do what the plaintiffs wanted.”

    The Trump administration had moved to stop the practice. In 2017, then-EPA administrator Scott Pruitt issued a memo prohibiting the agency from entering into consent decrees with non-governmental actors and also began publicizing any such suit when it was filed. “The era of regulation through litigation is over,” Pruitt declared.

    Those policies were rescinded by Biden’s EPA chief Michael Regan, who spent eight years as a vice president with an advocacy group involved in many such suits, the Environmental Defense Fund.

    One sign of how the practice has taken off under the Biden administration is the explosion in plaintiffs’ legal fees as part of settlements – meaning taxpayers foot the bill for environmental lawsuits.

    In the two years since the Biden administration lifted most of the Pruitt memo restrictions, those fees have jumped to almost $7 million, according to a January report from the fiscal watchdog group OpenTheBooks. That is nearly double the total of Trump’s four years of $3.6 million. It is also more than the $5.8 million in attorney fee payouts for suits brought under the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act during Obama’s second term, OpenTheBooks found.

    The EPA disputed the characterization that it has radically changed course under Biden. While it acknowledged Regan’s “litigation transparency memorandum revoked and replaced” Pruitt’s October 2017 memo, an EPA spokesperson insisted the agency “has not discontinued or rolled back and practices under Administrator Pruitt’s 2017 directive that the prior Administration had been maintaining.”

    “EPA has taken steps to enhance public awareness of environmental claims against the Agency and to provide an opportunity for public review and comment on proposed settlement of those claims,” an agency spokesperson said.

    But the EPA did not respond to RCI’s interview requests and did not answer questions about how many settlement agreements it may have reached overall with specific plaintiffs. So the exact number of consent decrees signed with them remains uncertain.

    The EPA does have a place at its website that lists more than 500 lawsuits against it going back to the Obama administration. That shows that the significantly higher attorneys’ costs under Biden have happened with fewer settlements overall than in Obama’s second term or Trump’s term. A EPA collection of links to consent decrees is not formatted by date, and both congressional committees and attorneys for energy companies believe it is incomplete.

    “There’s lawsuits sometimes we don’t know about and there are just so many cases where you would want or need to intervene,” said Sgamma of the Western Energy Alliance.

    That intervention can sometimes succeed but it is expensive. In the Gulf of Mexico exploration settlement, a lawsuit filed by the American Petroleum Institute, the state of Louisiana and Chevron managed to overturn the agreement reached between federal agencies and the environmental NGOs. That victory was upheld by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and the lease sales went through in December – three months after the date initially mandated for them by Congress.”

    Most of the environmental groups RCI contacted did not respond to questions or an interview request – including the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Environmental Defense Fund. But the National Resources Defense Council defended its courtroom efforts.

    “These steps and safeguards serve the public interest,” said John Walke, a senior attorney with the NRDC. “They provide the public direct opportunity to influence the scope of federal rules and safeguards. They ensure that agencies administer our laws in ways that achieve what Congress intended.”

    Walke also noted the framework of suits and settlements is not new.

    “The practice did not stop under the Trump administration, nor did it resume under the Biden administration,” he said. “It is a long-standing, common and unremarkable feature of the federal courts themselves, not unique to federal agencies at all.”

    There is an historical irony in that the germ of sue-and-settle tactics came under Richard Nixon when advocacy groups were warning of “agency capture,” meaning the companies that various federal agencies regulate had allegedly come to control the bureaucrats charged with crafting policy. Thus, individual groups were given standing to file lawsuits against the federal government with the idea of empowering those groups that presumably lacked the political and lobbying muscle of big business.

    On the environmental front, the policy became widespread during President Obama’s second term, when the EPA was run by Gina McCarthy, who later served as president and CEO of the National Resources Defense Council.

    As McCarthy’s move from the EPA to the NRDC indicates, the players reaching the deal are generally familiar to each other. The NRDC and the Center for Biological Diversity, two litigious groups, currently have executives that previously served at the EPA or in the Obama White House in an environmental job.

    It’s a tight network of federal appointees and executives of environmental advocacy groups. In addition to Regan, Lisa Garcia, the administrator for the EPA’s Region 2 covering New York, New Jersey and other territory, was with EarthJustice after serving under McCarthy. Matthew Tejada, a senior vice president, and Christy Goldfuss, an executive director, both held positions in the Obama administration, as did Maggie Coulter, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.

    This cross-pollination between environmental regulatory agencies and the litigious groups also extends to the myriad “environmental law clinics” at law schools across the country.

    “Usually, the federal government vigorously defends itself against lawsuits challenging its actions. But not always,” attorney Andrew Grossman, a partner with Baker Hostetler, testified to the House Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government. “Sometimes regulators are only too happy to face collusive lawsuits by friendly ‘foes’ aimed at compelling government action that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to achieve.”

    Whether blindsided by regulations the market never saw coming, or handcuffed by the blanket of inactivity a consent decree may throw over an area, the practice of sue-and-settle is a pernicious one, according to its critics.

    “The whole thing is bypassing democracy because the litigation delegates power to outside groups,” said Walter Olson, a conservative legal scholar at the Cato Institute. “Because the consent decrees can set the future course of how agencies do business, it means that behind closed doors they are tying the hands of future voters and administrators. That’s not at all how it’s supposed to be.”

    In addition, the very nature of the deals, struck between two sides firmly committed to the idea the economy should be pushed toward net zero emissions, reflects what is happening, according to critics. Given that plaintiffs and defendants share the same outlook on global warming and would like to put vast areas off-limits to oil and gas exploration, it is no surprise that is exactly what the settlements accomplish, said Sgamma.

    Some believe legislation could reign in global warming lawfare, while empowering voters and taxpayers. House Republicans held at least two hearings on the tactic in 2023, the most recent last December – though critics note that the issue has been a political football at least since the Reagan administration.

    In November, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability announced it would investigate the EPA’s “use of secretive ‘sue-and-settle’ practices,” and how the Biden administration is “using sue-and-settle tactics to avoid congressional oversight and implement more burdensome regulations at the bidding of special interests.”

    At the end of the year, a handful of Republican lawmakers introduced the “No Regulation Through Litigation” act that would “codify that a federal agency cannot enter into a settlement agreement or consent decree that exceeds the authority of the court,” while also prohibiting the payment of attorneys’ fees in cases that result in such deals.

    Despite congressional debate in the House, lawmakers proved reticent about discussing possible solutions to sue-and-settle. RCI reached out to all the Republicans and some Democrats on the committees who heard testimony about the matter last year, and Virginia Rep. Bob Good was the only representative to respond.

    “The Obama administration often bypassed Congress, using sue and settle tactics to accomplish what they could not via the legislative process,” Good said. “Biden is continuing that unconstitutional legacy and weaponizing the government against the people.”

    Similarly, the members of both the American Energy Alliance and the Western Energy Alliance are skittish about angering regulatory agencies and thus declined to discuss the matter.

    “The way to solve this is by bringing more people and transparency into the process,” the Buckeye Institute’s Tryon said. “Now, it’s impossible to follow all the lawsuits, and we don’t even know all the things that are happening. With more openness it could be monitored more closely because now people who are afflicted by

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/21/2024 – 22:20

  • Iran Sends Russia Hundreds Of Ballistic Missiles, Washington Powerless
    Iran Sends Russia Hundreds Of Ballistic Missiles, Washington Powerless

    Back in early 2022 just weeks into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Western officials began raising suspicions that the Islamic Republic of Iran was supplying arms, and especially kamikaze drones, to Moscow for use on the Ukrainian battlefield. This proved true, and allegations of Tehran supplying ballistic missiles soon followed. 

    Now, just days away from the grim two-year mark of the start of the major war, there are fresh reports of a dramatic escalation in Iran’s military supply pipeline to Russia. Reuters reports Wednesday that Tehran has provided Moscow with a “large number of powerful surface-to-surface ballistic missiles.”

    Image: EurAsian Times

    The report alleged an estimated 400 missiles, mostly from the Fateh-110 family of short-range ballistic weapons, have been provided. These are mobile-launched and have a range of up to 435 miles.

    “The shipments began in early January after a deal was finalized in meetings late last year between Iranian and Russian military and security officials that took place in Tehran and Moscow, one of the Iranian sources say,” according the report.

    “There will be more shipments,” one Iranian official has boasted. “There is no reason to hide it. We are allowed to export weapons to any country that we wish to.”

    Starting last fall, the US administration began getting creative on ways it could retaliate against Iran. The Pentagon at that time announced that it was sending seized shipments of illicit Iranian arms (usually intercepted in waters off the Arabian peninsula) to Ukraine’s armed forces.

    “The US will transfer thousands of seized Iranian weapons and rounds of ammunition to Ukraine, in a move that could help to alleviate some of the critical shortages facing the Ukrainian military as it awaits more money and equipment from the US and its allies,” US officials said at the time.

    In the below brief analysis, the hawkish think tank The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) had hailed this Biden policy as one which “turns the tables” on both Tehran and Moscow…

    The U.S. transfer of Iranian arms to Ukraine turns the tables on both Tehran and Moscow, which have doubled down on their defense partnership following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Tehran provides drones to Moscow and helps the Russians localize their production. In March 2023, Iran agreed to purchase 24 advanced Sukhoi Su-35 fighters from Russia, significantly upgrading the capabilities of the Islamic Republic’s air force. In 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2023, Russia and Iran conducted joint naval drills in the Gulf of Oman. Russia and Iran are also sharing intelligence and cooperating in a joint effort to push U.S. military forces out of the region.

    In this way there are now Iranian arms on ‘both’ sides of the Ukraine-Russia conflict. However, hundreds of Iranian ballistic missiles on the Russian side means it won’t run low on missiles anytime soon.

    The Ukrainian side, meanwhile, is still hurting for more arms and manpower, as it’s being beaten back from frontline positions, especially in the east and with the latest loss at Avdiivka.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/21/2024 – 22:00

  • New York's Radical Gun Restrictions Headed To Supreme Court
    New York’s Radical Gun Restrictions Headed To Supreme Court

    Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

    Gun Owners of America is taking New York to the Supreme Court over their mistakenly named “Concealed Carry Improvement Act,” or CCIA in our case Antonyuk v. Nigrelli.

    The CCIA represents New York’s blatant refusal to comply with the mandate set forth in the landmark case NYSRPA v. Bruen in 2022. For those unfamiliar, Bruen overturned New York’s may-issue licensing scheme for concealed carry permits. Unfortunately for New York gun owners, the CCIA’s system to replace this scheme is somehow even more restrictive than what preceded it.

    That’s because the CCIA is an attempt to nullify the Bruen decision. In the immediate aftermath of the case, New York politicians decried that decision as “reprehensible,” vowing to resist the “insanity” of “gun culture.”

    New York decided that, if the State must issue concealed carry licenses to ordinary citizens after Bruen, they would have to do whatever they could to discourage applicants. They did this by imposing novel and onerous licensing requirements, and then render any remaining licenses practically void by prohibiting carry virtually everywhere in the State by declaring a multitude of brand new “sensitive locations.”

    In New York’s defense of the Concealed Carry Improvement Act, they have relied almost entirely on a few outlier laws from the late nineteenth century as justification for their new restrictions. These laws that New York uses as examples were created to disarm minority communities during the reconstruction period after the Civil War.

    Gun Owners of America sued over these restrictions and won at the district level. However, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals was eager to intervene on behalf of New York’s anti-gun politicians.

    In their ruling, the 2nd Circuit ended upholding most of New York’s law. And while GOA did manage to squash parts of the law, some of the most egregious sections remain intact, including the “good moral character” requirement.

    The “good moral character” requirement of the CCIA stands in direct opposition to the Supreme Court’s clear rejection of discretionary “suitability” determinations in the Bruen case.

    So why would the 2nd Circuit uphold so much of a law that directly defies the Supreme Court? Well, the answer may lie in a Law Review article that was cited in the 2nd Circuit’s decision.

    In the article titled “The Dead Hand of a Silent Past: Bruen, Gun Rights, and the Shackles of History,” the author refers to the Bruen decision as “unsatisfying” and lays out a playbook for Judicial responses to the law. Additionally, lower Courts are encouraged to “engage in the time-honored practice of narrowing Supreme Court precedent from below.”

    It’s clear that the 2nd Circuit means to defy the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bruen. But the consequences of this ruling could be wide-reaching if not taken up by the high court. If lower courts ignore case law set by the Supreme Court, the consequences for any law or ruling could change based on the political alignment of the jurisdiction. It would be anarchy.

    This is why GOA is petitioning the Supreme Court to take up our case and answer the following questions:

    1. Whether the proper historical time period for ascertaining the Second Amendment’s original meaning is 1791 rather than 1868; and
    2. Whether “the people” must convince government officials of their “good moral character” before exercising their Second Amendment right to bear arms in public.

    Erich Pratt, Gun Owners of America’s Senior Vice President, had this to say:

    “New York politicians just couldn’t help themselves when they quickly doubled down with their unconstitutional edicts following the Bruen decision. I’m incredibly confident the justices will take an extra close look at this case since their previous ruling was ignored by the insubordinate tyrants in Albany. We’re excited about the opportunity to serve Kathy Hochul and her cabal another plate of humble pie if the Court takes the case.”

    Sam Paredes, on behalf of the Board of Directors for the Gun Owners Foundation, added:

    “We sent the warning out to politicians far and wide following Bruen, fall in line or we will make you. Sadly, New York refused to honor the Constitution, so we have no choice but to follow through on our threat. We urge the Court to take the case and once again rebuke New York’s unconstitutional gun control.”

    The Supreme Court must clarify these questions in the wake of the Bruen decision and set the record straight for lower courts across the country.

    *   *   *

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

    *   *   *

    Here’s more on the case: 

     

     

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/21/2024 – 21:40

  • "Consolidate Or Get Eaten": Wall Street Finally Embracing Shale After $250 Billion In Oil Deals Last Year
    “Consolidate Or Get Eaten”: Wall Street Finally Embracing Shale After $250 Billion In Oil Deals Last Year

    It’s no sooner than we’ve been documenting the collapse of ESG and ‘clean green investing’ on Wall Street, than the world of finance seems ready to give a big warm embrace to shale drillers. 

    It’s almost as if money managers wind up chasing wherever the best returns are. Imagine that…

    Bloomberg wrote last week that shale is now in an ‘arms race’ with Diamondback Energy Inc.’s takeover of Endeavor Energy Resources LP announce last week capping $250 billion in oil and gas deals last year. 

    Diamondback, self-proclaimed as “the must-own” stock in America’s wealthiest oil region, saw its stock soar 11% within hours, defying the usual downturn faced by acquiring companies. This surge signaled strong investor endorsement – something the street hasn’t seen in oil for years. 

    Mark Viviano, a managing partner at Kimmeridge Energy Management Co. told Bloomberg: “It has become a big-company game. Now you have an arms race for operational scale and investor relevancy.”

    The report noted that as the shale industry evolves during a period where energy constitutes only 3.8% of the S&P 500 Index, despite the U.S. leading in global oil production with 45% more crude than Saudi Arabia, the sector has seen significant consolidation.

    The number of publicly traded shale companies has decreased by 40% in six years to about 50, Warwick Investment Group LLC notes.

    Kate Richard, chief executive officer at Warwick, said: “It’s kind of like Pac-Man right now: consolidate or get eaten. We’re probably going back to the ‘70s, where there were seven to 10 major players in the US.”

    Diamondback CFO Kaes Van’t Hof added: “It put us in a new weight class, which is a good thing in this business. The perception is that bigger means more durability.”

    Following the deal’s revelation, Diamondback now trades at 9.9 times earnings, surpassing EOG, which opted out of the current acquisition frenzy. This leap will elevate Diamondback from 275th to approximately 150th in the S&P 500 by market value, capturing the attention of major investors eager for greater involvement in the Permian Basin, the abundant oil field across Texas and New Mexico.

    Deloitte’s Teresa Thomas commented: “Big buyers are likely to spearhead a fresh wave of efficiency gains driven by technological advancements in both production and cost management.”

    Endeavor founder Autry Stephens is now set to become America’s richest oil magnate after the deal closes. Sam Sledge, CEO of Midland concluded: “He’s one of the last original wildcatters, funding things out of your own back pocket and taking risk. We’re playing a different game now.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/21/2024 – 21:20

  • South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem Sending National Guard To Border 'Warzone'
    South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem Sending National Guard To Border ‘Warzone’

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

    South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has ordered the state’s National Guard troops to deploy to the southern border to help Texas deal with record-shattering waves of illegal immigration.

    South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem speaks during the National Rifle Association annual convention at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas on May 27, 2022. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

    Ms. Noem, a Republican, said that 60 South Dakota National Guard soldiers will deploy to the U.S.-Mexico border later this spring, on a rolling basis over a period of three months.

    “The border in a warzone, so we’re sending soldiers,” Ms. Noem said in a Feb. 20 statement.

    South Dakota was the first state to deploy National Guard troops in response to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s call two-and-a-half years ago for help securing the border.

    Ms. Noem said the National Guard troops will assist with construction of a border wall.

    “These soldiers’ primary mission will be construction of a wall to stem the flow of illegal immigrants, drug cartels, and human trafficking into the United States of America,” she said.

    The newly announced deployment will be South Dakota’s fifth since Mr. Abbott issued the call for help.

    “Texas—with the support of America’s Governors—will fight to do the job Biden refuses to do,” Mr. Abbott said in a post on X, in which he noted that the U.S. Constitution gives states the right to “secure our borders against invasion.”

    Amid a surge in illegal immigration, Mr. Abbott in September declared an “invasion” at the southern border. He then ordered the Texas National Guard and state law enforcement agencies to secure the border, including by setting up razor wire and marine barriers.

    The Biden administration sued Texas, leading the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that federal agents could remove the razor wire.

    It’s estimated that over 10 million illegal immigrants have crossed the border since President Joe Biden took office.

    Texas Fights Back

    Texas officially started building its own state-funded border wall in December 2021, when Mr. Abbott alleged that President Joe Biden “refuses to enforce laws passed by Congress to secure the border and enforce immigration laws” and so “Texas is stepping up to do the federal government’s job.”

    That came after President Biden signed an executive order scrapping federal construction of a border wall, a signature project of former President Donald Trump. In a proclamation on Jan. 20, 2021, President Biden called the wall a “waste of money that diverts attention from genuine threats to our homeland security.”

    Following President Biden’s decision to axe the wall, Mr. Abbott announced he would seek funding for his state to build its own border barrier, which came as the influx of illegal immigrants into Texas swelled to near-record proportions.

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott addresses former President Donald Trump during a border security briefing to discuss further plans in securing the southern border wall in Weslaco, Texas, on June 30, 2021. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

    Roughly 450 miles of the larger border wall were built under President Trump, a project that was criticized by President Biden, though an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memo contradicted this view, finding that physical barriers  are the most cost-effective tool to deter illegal border-crossing activity.

    President Biden has taken a dim view of his predecessor’s vision for a grand barrier, pledging while still a presidential candidate in 2020 that “there will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration.”

    On the day that he took office, President Biden issued a proclamation that rescinded the national emergency declaration that President Trump had relied on to divert some $10 billion from Pentagon coffers to border wall construction.

    The Biden administration later quietly auctioned off millions of dollars of border wall materials, for which it faced sharp criticism from Republican circles.

    Texas builds its own border wall in its effort to secure the border. (Courtesy Office of Greg Abbott)

    Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) sponsored a bill in May 2023 that would force the Pentagon to allow millions of dollars worth on unused border wall parts to be used to extend the wall in Texas and elsewhere along the southern border.

    Mr. Wicker’s legislative proposal (pdf) came after an investigation by the Armed Services Committee found that the Pentagon was spending $47 million per year to store the wall panels and other elements.

    Amid reports that the Biden administration was busy selling off border wall parts rather than allowing them to be used to build more barrier, Mr. Wicker called the development “outrageous, behind-the-scenes maneuvering.”

    “This sale is a wasteful and ludicrous decision by the Biden administration that only serves as further proof they have no shame,” he told The New York Post.

    In October 2013, the Biden administration did an about-face of sorts, waiving 26 federal laws in South Texas to allow for the construction of another 20 miles of border wall.

    President Biden explained at the time that the reason for resuming border wall construction was because the money had already been appropriated and attempts to redirect the funds to other projects failed.

    “There’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated for. I can’t stop that,” President Biden said at the time.

    Asked by reporters if he thought border wall was effective, he replied “no.”

    President Joe Biden speaks about the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 16, 2024. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP)

    A coalition of 27 states has formed to support Texas’s right to defend itself after the Supreme Court ruled that federal agents can remove the razor wire put up by Texas to prevent the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico.

    Other States Send Troops

    A handful of other states have sent National Guard troops to Texas to bolster local efforts to secure the southern border amid the Lone Star State’s ongoing dispute with the Biden administration over border security.

    In a recent move, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, said on Feb. 8 that his state would send 150 National Guard troops, who would work in three 50-man rotations, for a 90-day deployment to Texas.

    “Because the president will not do his job, because the federal government will not act, because Congress refuses to put in place a solid immigration plan that protects this country and allows people to come in and out of this country the way that it’s been done since the beginning, then the states are going to act,” he said at a press conference in Baton Rouge.

    Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry speaks during the start of the special session in the House chamber in Baton Rouge, La., on Jan. 15, 2024. (Michael Johnson/The Advocate via AP, Pool)

    The deployment—scheduled for March at a cost of roughly $3 million—is needed to help Texas tackle issues such as cross-border human trafficking and the fentanyl crisis, he said.

    “There are 125,000 Americans that we are losing on an annual basis due to this crisis,” Mr. Landry said, citing Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s recent announcement that 30,000 pounds of fentanyl had been seized at the border in Texas.

    “That’s enough to kill almost everyone in the country,” he said.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently announced plans to deploy even more National Guard, State Guard, and Highway Patrol officers to assist Texas in securing its southern border.

    “If we don’t have a border, then we are not a sovereign country,” Mr. DeSantis said in Jacksonville, Florida, on Feb. 1. “You either have a border, or you don’t. You’re either a sovereign country, or you’re not.

    Florida has been helping Texas secure its border since 2021, and has deployed more than 700 members of the state’s National Guard.

    Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb said on Feb. 9 that he had ordered the deployment of 50 Indiana National Guard troops to Texas to assist with border security efforts.

    “I am sending 50 #Hoosier Guardsmen to the southern border to support the Texas National Guard on their security mission,” Mr. Holcomb wrote in a social media post on the morning of Feb. 9. “These soldiers will begin mobilizing for the mission immediately and will arrive in Texas in mid-March.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/21/2024 – 21:00

  • Watch: Dr. Phil Explains The Insanity Of "Gender Affirming Care" Laws That Remove Parental Rights
    Watch: Dr. Phil Explains The Insanity Of “Gender Affirming Care” Laws That Remove Parental Rights

    It cannot be denied, there has been a massive institutional effort underway in the past several years to normalize trans ideology in the western world.  Billions of dollars from corporate and NGO backers flows into a swarm of DEI programs pushing gender fluid theory and a host of state and national governments are attempting to codify the movement into law.  This includes making it a “hate crime” to merely question the validity of trans concepts.

    A vital pillar of the trans normalization agenda is the targeting of children as young as preschool age with propaganda, and perhaps the most important element of this is the mechanism of public schooling.  Without the involvement of government controlled schools and woke teachers unions, the trans trend would probably not exist at all. 

    The reaction by the majority of parents has been shock, followed by anger and a growing move to demand an explanation.  Instead of addressing the concerns of parents in a reasonable way, leftists have instead sought to remove them from the discussion entirely. 

    Not long ago, this agenda was denied as “conspiracy theory” by educational organizations and the corporate media.  Today, it is openly admitted.  In blue states like Washington, there are already laws in place to allow for sex change surgeries for minors without parental consent.  Illinois Democrats are trying to pass a law which would make it a crime for parents to interfere with sex change treatments or abortions for their children.  In Canada, the same laws are being implemented on a national scale. 

    The strategy operates under the guise of “children’s rights and safety” while separating parents from kids and giving the state control over children’s psychological and physical healthcare.  In other words, the mutilation of children is being established as a political imperative and concerned parents are treated as the enemy.  In a recent interview with Joe Rogan, psychologist and talk-show host Dr. Phil explains his take on the trans situation and the insanity of government interference in parental affairs.

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

    Only ten years ago, such a debate was unthinkable.  Today, sadly, it’s all too real.  With zero scientific evidence in support, the trans movement rationalizes the legal isolation of children from their families in the name of “gender affirming care.”  And, as Dr. Phil and Joe Rogan point out, once isolated, vulnerable children can be convinced of almost anything.  The promise of feeling “special” and accepted by the collective is a temptation for many kids; peer pressure is real.  The only thing holding them back from making terrible decisions is the wisdom and love of parents who are now being increasingly marginalized by the state.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/21/2024 – 20:40

  • Too Much Niacin May Increase Risk Of Heart Disease: Study
    Too Much Niacin May Increase Risk Of Heart Disease: Study

    Authored by Amie Dahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    High levels of niacin, also known as vitamin B3, have been shown to contribute to cardiovascular disease in a recent study.

    (Maxx-Studio/Shutterstock)

    The new study out of the Cleveland Clinic, published in Nature Medicine, determined there is a delicate balance between too much niacin and just enough—a sort of Goldilocks effect.

    Niacin used to be a first choice for lowering LDL, or “bad,” cholesterol. However, as observed by the Cleveland Clinic team, too much niacin creates a byproduct known as 4PY. This product circulates within the bloodstream and is associated with a higher risk of heart attack, stroke, and other cardiac events. Additionally, 4PY was shown in preclinical studies to trigger vascular inflammation, damaging blood vessels and eventually leading to atherosclerosis.

    The researchers discovered this by examining data from 1,162 patients who had experienced major cardiovascular events. Just under half of the patients (442) were female. Initially, the team sought common markers that could lead to cardiovascular events. The most common factor within the pool of patients was excess levels of niacin.

    The findings led to additional studies to validate the initial research. Both cohort studies, conducted in the United States and Europe, confirmed that niacin breakdown predicted an individual’s future risk of heart attack, stroke, and death from cardiovascular disease.

    “What’s exciting about these results is that this pathway appears to be a previously unrecognized yet significant contributor to the development of cardiovascular disease,” Dr. Stanley Hazen, chair of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Sciences at Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute and co-section head of preventive cardiology in the Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute, said in a press release. “What’s more, we can measure it, meaning there is potential for diagnostic testing. These insights set the stage for developing new approaches to counteract the effects of this pathway.”

    What Is Niacin?

    For years, niacin was a go-to supplement for preventing cardiovascular disease due to its ability to lower cholesterol. The body uses it to turn food into energy and maintain the health of the nervous and digestive systems and the skin. Most people get enough niacin through diet, especially if they follow a well-balanced one. Foods high in niacin include yeast, milk, meat, oats, and flour.

    The recommended amount of niacin includes 16 milligrams a day for adult males and 14 milligrams a day for adult women who aren’t pregnant.

    Prescription niacin, such as Niacor and Niaspan, has been used to regulate cholesterol. It works by increasing good cholesterol while flushing bad cholesterol from the bloodstream. However, research has since shown that niacin is less effective than other cholesterol treatments and is actually associated with adverse effects and higher death rates.

    “Niacin’s effects have always been somewhat of a paradox,” Dr. Hazen said. “Despite niacin lowering of cholesterol, the clinical benefits have always been less than anticipated based on the degree of LDL reduction. This led to the idea that excess niacin caused unclear adverse effects that partially counteracted the benefits of LDL lowering. We believe our findings help explain this paradox. This illustrates why investigating residual cardiovascular risk is so critical; we learn so much more than what we set out to find.”

    Dr. Hazen and his team noted that additional research is needed to determine the long-term effect of chronic high levels of 4PY.

    “The main takeaway is not that we should cut out our entire intake of niacin—that’s not a realistic approach,” he said in a Cleveland Clinic press release. “Given these findings, a discussion over whether a continued mandate of flour and cereal fortification with niacin in the U.S. could be warranted.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/21/2024 – 20:20

  • BuzzFeed Shares Soar After Sale Of Complex 
    BuzzFeed Shares Soar After Sale Of Complex 

    Corporate media is on life support. Advertising revenues are sliding, mass layoffs are hitting woke publications, and ‘restructurings’ are happening all over.

    Last month, Authentic Brands Group sent rights holder Arena Group a letter terminating Sports Illustrated’s license after failing to pay a $3.75 million quarterly payment at the end of 2023. In other words, the publisher likely wasn’t bringing in enough profit to maintain the iconic brand. Arena Group also announced mass layoffs for the brand. 

    News broke late Wednesday that BuzzFeed, facing severe financial difficulties, is selling Complex, a media start-up focusing on streetwear and pop culture, at a massive loss. 

    The buyer of Complex is Ntwrk, an e-commerce company backed by Main Street Advisors and LiveNation Entertainment. Ntwrk agreed to pay $108.6 million for Complex. It will also pay BuzzFeed $5.7 million to cover severance expenses for laid-off Complex employees. 

    The company also announced a planned strategic restructuring intended to reduce expenses by implementing a 16% reduction in the remaining workforce, which is expected to yield approximately $23 million in annualized compensation cost savings. – BuzzFeed wrote in a statement 

    BuzzFeed is taking a massive loss on Complex, which it bought for $294 million in cash and stock in 2021. 

    Jonah Peretti, BuzzFeed’s co-founder and chief executive, said: 

    “The sale of Complex represents an important strategic step for BuzzFeed, Inc. as we adapt our business to be more profitable, more nimble, and more innovative.” 

    BuzzFeed’s valuation has sharply declined since its public debut in 2021. The sale of Complex will pay off more than $60 million in debt. According to financial records, BuzzFeed is grappling with $150 million in debt maturing in 2026 and another $33.8 million from a credit line. 

    BuzzFeed shares jumped more than 100% in the after-hours trading session to nearly 47 cents. 

    As for the rest of the industry, over 30,000 workers were laid off by media companies in 2023. 

    While corporate media has been imploding, ZeroHedge has been growing. We thank you for your readership.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/21/2024 – 20:00

  • COVID Vaccine mRNA Can 'Spread Systemically' To Placenta And Infants Of Women Vaccinated During Pregnancy
    COVID Vaccine mRNA Can ‘Spread Systemically’ To Placenta And Infants Of Women Vaccinated During Pregnancy

    Authored by Megan Redshaw via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A new report suggests vaccine mRNA does not remain at the injection site following vaccination but can “spread systemically” to the placenta and umbilical cord blood of infants whose mothers are vaccinated during pregnancy.

    (KwangSoo Kim/Shutterstock)

    In a peer-reviewed pre-proof accepted for publication in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, researchers presented two cases that demonstrate, for the first time, the ability of COVID-19 vaccines to penetrate the fetal-placental barrier and reach the inside of the uterus. Additionally, researchers detected spike protein in placental tissue, indicating the bioactivity of the mRNA in reaching the placenta.

    Researchers vaccinated two pregnant women with mRNA vaccines shortly before delivery to determine whether the mRNA in COVID-19 vaccines reached the placenta or fetus following maternal vaccination.

    “The primary objective of the study was to investigate the knowledge gaps surrounding mRNA therapies during pregnancy, utilizing the COVID-19 vaccine as a foundation for future mRNA therapeutic developments, given its established use,” the study’s corresponding author, Dr. Nazeeh Hanna, a neonatologist, told The Epoch Times by email.

    Researchers Find Vaccine mRNA in Samples

    The first patient, “Patient 1,” was a 34-year-old woman at 38 weeks and four days gestation who received two Pfizer vaccine doses and two booster doses—one Pfizer and one Moderna. The Moderna booster dose was administered two days before the delivery of a healthy baby by cesarean section.

    The second patient, “Patient 2,” was a 33-year-old woman at 40 weeks gestation. She received two Pfizer vaccine doses. The last dose was given 10 days before vaginal delivery of a healthy baby.

    According to the paper, researchers found detectable vaccine mRNA in both placentas tested. The localization of the vaccine mRNA was mainly in the villus stroma—the connective tissue layer that supports the fetal capillaries and villous trophoblast. The villous trophoblast, the primary barrier between maternal and fetal tissues, supports the exchange of nutrients between a mother and her fetus.

    Researchers also detected a “notably high signal” of vaccine mRNA in the placental decidua tissue of Patient 1, who received four vaccine doses. The decidua is the specialized endometrium layer that forms the base of the placental bed.

    Spike protein expression was also detected—but only in the placenta of Patient 2. However, vaccine mRNA was detected in Patient 1’s cord and maternal blood samples, which were unavailable for the second patient.

    The authors said the expression of spike protein in the placenta of the second patient but not in the first suggests that more than two days are necessary following vaccination for the mRNA to reach the placenta and be translated into the spike protein, which is then expressed in placental tissue.

    Finally, researchers found the integrity of vaccine mRNA varied across different samples—the vaccine’s ability to activate an immune response relies upon fully intact mRNA. According to the findings, vaccine mRNA was largely fragmented in the cord blood and less fragmented in the placenta. In the placentas, 23 percent and 42 percent of the initial integrity was retained in Patients 1 and 2, respectively. In maternal blood from Patient 1, the vaccine’s mRNA had a high level of integrity at 85 percent. Integrity decreased to 13 percent in cord blood, suggesting limited bioactivity.

    COVID-19 mRNA vaccines use lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) to deliver mRNA. “The findings suggest that lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) are capable of reaching the placenta and releasing mRNA within placental cells, where it is then translated into the spike (S) protein. However, by the time the mRNA reaches the fetus, it is no longer encapsulated by the LNPs, leading to its degradation (only 13% of the mRNA is intact in fetal circulation),” Dr. Hanna told The Epoch Times.

    Dr. Hanna noted that the authors of the recently published paper did not evaluate the implications of transient spike protein expression in the placenta or the effects of degraded mRNA on the fetus.

    Dr. Christiane Northrup, an obstetrician-gynecologist, is an advisory board member of MyCycleStory. She told The Epoch Times in an email, the group has been studying this kind of thing since the vaccine rollout in 2021. “There is no question whatsoever that the Covid 19 ‘vaccine’ ingredients are present in the placenta and throughout the body.”

    “There have also been VAERS [Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System] reports of infants dying of thrombocytopenia (low platelets) following maternal vaccination, and also evidence of infants having heart attacks in the womb following maternal vaccination. None of this is new information. It has simply been widely and systematically censored,” she added.

    Dr. Dan McDyer, an obstetrician-gynecologist, told The Epoch Times in an email that he is not surprised by the “discovery of evidence of mRNA from the SARS CoV-2 injections and/or SARS CoV-2 spike protein present in fetal cord blood and placental tissues.”

    “To me, the recommendation of administering this medication to pregnant women was one of the most irresponsible actions in the history of modern medicine. I am so disappointed that the entities charged with the mission of protecting public health (FDA) and women’s health (ACOG) were derelict in their duties because it only took me about 15 minutes of online research to determine that these lipid nanoparticles were going to cross the placenta and infect the fetus,” Dr. McDyer said.

    Dr. James Thorp, a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist and maternal-fetal medicine physician, told The Epoch Times by email that the paper shows mRNA from both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines can cross the placenta into the fetal blood entering the placental tissue.

    “These authors observed a ‘notably high signal’ in the decidua, which is the lining of the uterus. This concentrated mRNA in the decidual tissues will be translated into high concentrations of spike protein, likely contributing to a myriad of devastating effects on human reproductive function—not just severe abnormalities of menstrual periods, but infertility, multiple pregnancy complications, and severe bleeding in pregnancy and in the post-partum period,” Dr. Thorp said.

    Dr. Thorp added that despite their “horrifying” findings, the authors still concluded their evidence “overwhelmingly supports” the COVID-19 vaccine’s effectiveness in mitigating the morbidity and mortality of COVID-19 in pregnant and non-pregnant women.

    Initial Clinical Trials Excluded Pregnant Women, Yet Studies Suggest mRNA Biodistribution

    Initial clinical trials for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines excluded pregnant women, so there was no biodistribution data on the mRNA in COVID-19 vaccines and its ability to reach the placenta or fetus following maternal vaccination. However, assessment reports provided to the European Medicines Agency by Pfizer and Moderna show that mRNA is distributed to various tissues, including the liver, adrenal glands, spleen, and ovaries in animal studies.

    An animal study cited by the authors of the paper shows that lipid nanoparticles of similar composition in other mRNA injections delivered functional mRNA to the placenta and other fetal organs.

    Two previous human studies by the same researchers assessed whether the mRNA in COVID-19 vaccines is present in the placenta following maternal vaccination using different methods. The first study failed to detect mRNA in maternal and cord blood or placental tissue. The researchers attributed this to the long interval between vaccination and delivery and the methodology used in the study. The second study using improved sensitivity to detect mRNA also did not reveal vaccine mRNA. However, the authors attributed this to the probe that targeted the SARS-CoV-2 gene rather than the vaccine mRNA sequence.

    In the current study, the authors used a more sensitive and robust approach which allowed them to have a more precise quantification of vaccine mRNA for superior accuracy, and a probe tailored explicitly for the vaccine mRNA, ensuring more reliable detection.

    “Animal work clearly shows the distribution of the lipid nanoparticles to several organs, including the liver, adrenal glands, spleen, and ovaries. So, reaching the placenta was not surprising. In humans, we have previously published that the vaccine mRNA can be distributed to breast milk.” Dr. Hanna told The Epoch Times.

    ‘Catastrophic on Several Levels’

    Dr. McDyer said the ability of the lipid nanoparticles to cross the placenta and infect the fetus could be “catastrophic on several levels,” impacting a developing fetal immune system.

    “Imagine this: The fetal immune system ‘learns’ the appearance of ‘self’ early on by recognizing molecules, MHCs (Major Histocompatibility Complexes), on the surface of all of our cells. This appearance of ‘self’ is most certainly disrupted by the appearance of spike protein on the surface of these cells (cell membranes) as induced by the ‘vaccines,’’’ he told The Epoch Times.

    “Additionally, fragments of spike protein will also likely appear in the MHCs on the cell surfaces. This causes a slight disfigurement of these MHCs which is likely to have an effect on the immune system’s capability to recognize ‘self,’” he added.

    Dr. McDyer said he is certain disrupting cellular homeostasis by distracting the fetal cells to produce foreign proteins, such as the spike protein, instead of the proteins necessary for a developing fetus, will have detrimental unknown consequences. He believes this explains why one of his colleagues, a pediatric neurosurgeon, has seen a few unborn babies who have had strokes, an event he says he has never heard of in his entire career until now.

    “We know that spike [protein] initiates clot formation, which can result in strokes,” Dr. McDyer said. “This is all so sad as it was completely unavoidable if normal, historical precautionary approaches were in place.”

    Dr. Hanna believes that introducing mRNA to the fetus may pose potentially plausible risks but may also yield biologically plausible benefits. “The potential of mRNA-based interventions in addressing maternal and fetal health issues is profound. Such insights could substantially advance the crafting of safer and more effective mRNA-based therapies during pregnancy,” he said.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/21/2024 – 19:40

  • Nvincible Nvidia Surges After Smashing Estimates, Guiding Sharply Higher
    Nvincible Nvidia Surges After Smashing Estimates, Guiding Sharply Higher

    It’s now officially the “most important stock on planet earth“, and thus everyone was watching what Nvidia would report after the close, with option markets expecting a 10% swing (a $200 billion delta) after hours. And while many were hoping that the company to continue its relentless meltup ways, Goldman’s trading desk was less euphoric with TMT specialist Peter Callahan warning overnight that there is “plenty of tactical debate whether this print will be a local top or a ‘break-out’ moment for the stock and for the A.I. trade (from my seat, feels like consensus is learning more towards the former). 

    In retrospect he may have been right because even though NVDA reported stellar Q4 results, they may not have been stellar enough and the stock is now sliding after hours.

    Here is what NVDA reported for Q4 earnings:

    • Adjusted EPS $5.16, smashing estimates of $4.53
    • Revenue $22.10 billion, up 265% from $6.05 billion y/y, and beating the estimate $20.41 billion
      • Data center revenue $18.4 billion, up 409% from $3.62 billion y/y, beating estimates of $17.21 billion
      • Gaming revenue $2.9 billion, up 58% y/y from $1.8 billion, and beating estimates of $2.72 billion
      • Professional Visualization revenue $463 million, up 11% from $226 million y/y, and beating the estimate of $435.5 million
      • Automotive revenue $281 million, down 4.4% from $294 million, and also beating estimates of $272.1 million

    Some more details on the revenue breakdown

    • Data Center revenue for the fourth quarter was a record, up 409% from a year ago and up 27% sequentially. These increases reflect higher shipments of the NVIDIA Hopper GPU computing platform used for the training and inference of large language models, recommendation engines, and generative AI applications, along with InfiniBand end-to-end solutions. Data Center revenue for fiscal year 2024 was up 217%. In the fourth quarter, large cloud providers represented more than half of our Data Center revenue, supporting both internal workloads and external customers. Strong demand was driven by enterprise software and consumer internet applications, and multiple industry verticals including automotive, financial services, and healthcare. Customers across industry verticals access NVIDIA AI infrastructure both through the cloud and on-premises. Data Center sales to China declined significantly in the fourth quarter due to U.S. government licensing requirements. Data Center compute revenue was up 488% from a year ago and up 27% sequentially in the fourth quarter; it was up 244% in the fiscal year. Networking revenue was up 217% from a year ago and up 28% sequentially in the fourth quarter; it was up 133% in the fiscal year

    The chart below shows all you need to know about the company’s main revenue driver

    • Gaming revenue was up 56% from a year ago and flat sequentially. Fiscal year revenue was up 15%. The year-on-year increases for the quarter and fiscal year reflect higher sell-in to partners following the normalization of channel inventory levels and growing demand. The launch of our GeForce RTX 40 SUPER Series family of GPUs also contributed to revenue in the quarter.
    • Professional Visualization revenue was up 105% from a year ago and up 11% sequentially. Fiscal year revenue was up 1%. The year-on-year increase for the quarter primarily reflects higher sell-in to partners following normalization of channel inventory levels. The sequential increase was primarily due to the ramp of desktop workstations based on the Ada Lovelace GPU architecture.
    • Automotive revenue was down 4% from a year ago and up 8% sequentially. Fiscal year revenue was up 21%. The sequential increase was driven by self-driving platforms. The year-on-year decrease for the quarter was driven by AI Cockpit, offset by an increase in self-driving platforms. The year-on-year increase for the fiscal year primarily reflected growth in self-driving platforms.

    Going down the line:

    • Adjusted gross margin 76.7% vs. 66.1% y/y, beating estimates of 75.4%
      • R&D expenses $2.47 billion, +26% y/y, beating estimates of $2.43 billion
    • Adjusted operating expenses $2.21 billion, +25% y/y, below the estimate of $2.23 billion
    • Adjusted operating income $14.75 billion vs. $2.22 billion y/y, beating estimates of $13.14 billion
    • Free cash flow $11.22 billion vs. $1.74 billion y/y, also beating estimates of $10.82 billion

    Gross Margin:

    • GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins for the fourth quarter increased significantly from a year ago and sequentially on strong Data Center revenue growth primarily driven by our Hopper GPU computing platform. Our gross margins in the fourth quarter also benefited from favorable component costs

    Expenses:

    • Non-GAAP operating expenses for the fourth quarter were up 25% from a year ago and up 9% sequentially. The year-on-year increase was driven by growth in employees and compensation increases. The sequential increase reflected higher compute and infrastructure investments.
    • Fiscal year non-GAAP operating expenses were up 13% from a year ago, reflecting growth in employees and compensation increases.

    The financial results in a nutshell:

    Commenting on the results, CEO Jensen Huang said that “accelerated computing and generative AI have hit the tipping point. Demand is surging worldwide across companies, industries and nations.” He added that “our Data Center platform is powered by increasingly diverse drivers — demand for data processing, training and inference from large cloud-service providers and GPU-specialized ones, as well as from enterprise software and consumer internet companies. Vertical industries — led by auto, financial services and healthcare — are now at a multibillion-dollar level.

    “NVIDIA RTX, introduced less than six years ago, is now a massive PC platform for generative AI, enjoyed by 100 million gamers and creators. The year ahead will bring major new product cycles with exceptional innovations to help propel our industry forward. Come join us at next month’s GTC, where we and our rich ecosystem will reveal the exciting future ahead.”

    And while the Q4 results were stellar, it was once again the company’s guidance that blew away investors – even if it did take algos a few minutes to process it – and send the stock sharply higher after hours.

    • Revenue is expected to be $24.00 billion, plus or minus 2%, Est. $21.9BN
    • GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins are expected to be 71.5% and 72.5%, missing the estimate of 75.5%
    • GAAP and non-GAAP operating expenses are expected to be approximately $2.95 billion and $2.00 billion, vs est of $2.4 billion
      • GAAP and non-GAAP tax rates are expected to be 14.5%, plus or minus 1%, excluding any discrete items.
      • GAAP and non-GAAP operating expenses are expected to be approximately $2.95 billion and $2.00 billion, respectively.

    Unlike two quarters ago, when the company announced a $25BN stock buybacks, there was no such kicker this time, although judging by the market’s reaction the company probably won’t be need to repurchase shares any time soon. NVDA reported that at the end of the year, cash and cash equivalents were $26.0 billion, up from $13.3 billion a year ago and $18.3 billion a quarter ago. The increases primarily reflect higher revenue partially offset by taxes paid and stock repurchases.

    In response to the stunning earnings, NVDA stock first dumped – perhaps as the company’s guidance missed the whisper number of $25 billion and also disappointed on the gross margin guidance, but then reversed all losses and ended up spiking  about 9% after hours. But since option straddles were pricing in a 10% move in either direction, tomorrow a whole lot of put and call buyers will be left very disappointed when they see the value of their options vaporize.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/21/2024 – 19:35

  • How Do Democrats & Republicans Feel About Certain US Industries
    How Do Democrats & Republicans Feel About Certain US Industries

    Much and more has been written, in the last decade particularly, about the U.S. political sphere becoming increasingly polarized. The two main parties – Democrats and Republicans – have clashed over how to run the economy, as well as on key social issues.

    Perhaps unsurprisingly then, Democrat and Republican voters are also divided on various U.S. industries, per a YouGov poll conducted in 2022.

    Between November 7-9th of that year, the market research firm polled 1,000 adult Americans, (sampled to represent prevailing demographic, racial, and political-party-affiliation trends in the country) on their opinions on 39 industries. They asked:

    “Generally speaking, do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the following industry?”

    – YOUGOV POLL.

    In this chart, Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao visualizes the percentage with a favorable view of an industry minus those with unfavorable view, categorized by current voter status.

    A higher percentage means more Democrats or Republicans rated the industry as favorable, and vice-versa. Negative percentages mean more respondents responded unfavorably.

    Democrats vs. Republicans on Industry Favorability

    From a glance, it’s immediately noticeable that quite a few industries have divided Democrats and Republics quite severely.

    For example, of the sampled Democrats, a net 45%, found Higher Education “favorable.” This is compared to 0% on the Republican side, which means an equal number found the industry favorable and unfavorable.

    Here’s the full list of net favorable responses from Democrats and Republicans per industry.

    Industry Democrat Net
    Favorability    		 Republican Net
    Favorability
    Agriculture 44% 55%
    Trucking 27% 55%
    Restaurant 53% 54%
    Manufacturing 27% 53%
    Construction 23% 49%
    Dairy 45% 46%
    Higher education 45% 0%
    Technology 44% 36%
    Food manufacturing 15% 37%
    Transportation 27% 37%
    Railroad 37% 35%
    Mining -3% 36%
    Automotive 19% 36%
    Grocery 35% 22%
    Hotels 30% 35%
    Textiles 24% 34%
    Entertainment 34% -17%
    Shipping 24% 33%
    Retail 31% 31%
    Book publishing 30% 29%
    Alcohol 23% 16%
    Television 22% 3%
    Waste management 15% 22%
    Education services 21% -16%
    Wireless carriers 19% 19%
    Broadcasting 17% -30%
    News media 17% -57%
    Airlines 11% 3%
    Oil and gas -28% 7%
    Real-estate -2% 6%
    Utilities 2% 6%
    Health care 3% 4%
    Fashion 4% -6%
    Cable -12% 3%
    Finance 2% -2%
    Professional sports 1% -2%
    Insurance -12% -14%
    Pharmaceutical -18% -14%
    Tobacco -44% -27%

    The other few immediately noticeable disparities in favorability include:

    • Mining and Oil and Gas, (more Republicans in favor),

    • Entertainment, Education Services, and News Media (more Democrats in favor).

    Tellingly, the larger social and political concerns at play are influencing Democrat and Republican opinions about these parts of the economy.

    For example Pew Research pointed out Republicans are dissatisfied with universities for a number of reasons: worries about constraints on free speech, campus “culture wars,” and professors bringing their politics into the classroom.

    In contrast, Democrats’ criticisms of higher education revolved around tuition costs and the quality of education offered.

    On a more recent note, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, a big Harvard donor, pulled funding after criticizing universities for educating “whiny snowflakes.” In October, donors to the University of Pennsylvania withdrew their support, upset with the university’s response to the October 7th attacks and subsequent war in Gaza.

    Meanwhile, the reasons for differences over media favorability are more obvious. Commentators say being “anti-media” is now part of the larger Republican leadership identity, and in turn, is trickling down to their voters. Pew Research also found that Republicans are less likely to trust the news if it comes from a “mainstream” source.

    But these are industries that are already adjacent to the larger political sphere. What about the others?

    U.S. Politics and the Climate Crisis

    The disparity over how the Oil & Gas and Mining industries are viewed is a reflection, again, of American politics and the partisan divide around the climate crisis and whether there’s a noticeable impact from human activity.

    Both industries contribute heavily to carbon emissions, and Democrat lawmakers have previously urged the Biden transition to start planning for the end of fossil-fuel reliance.

    Meanwhile, former President Trump, for example, has previously called global warming “a hoax” but later reversed course, clarifying that he didn’t know if it was “man-made.”

    When removing the climate context, and related environmental degradation, both industries usually pay high wages and produce materials critical to many other parts of the economy, including the strategic metals needed for the energy transition.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/21/2024 – 19:20

  • Study Dismantles Link Between Preterm Birth And Autism
    Study Dismantles Link Between Preterm Birth And Autism

    Authored by Amie Dahnke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Contrary to previous research and popular belief, premature birth alone does not lead to autism.

    (Shutterstock)

    A new study out of Israel shows there is no significant link between premature birth and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), reaffirming that the exact cause of autism is much more complex.

    The study, published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, initially found a strong link between preterm birth and autism. However, after considering other factors, including ethnicity, maternal age, and the size and sex of the infant, the significant association vanished.

    The findings were presented during The Pregnancy Meeting, an annual meeting of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine on Feb. 14.

    Researchers looked at records from hospitals and community clinics for almost 115,000 deliveries in Israel between 2005 and 2017. The data included mothers and infants who were Jewish, Muslim, and Bedouin, a Muslim minority group. Just over 93 percent of the births were delivered at term, defined as 37 weeks or more. Only 1.2 percent were preterm, while 6 percent were late- or moderately late-term.

    Rather than preterm birth being linked to autism, the research team believes that multiple factors likely account for a child developing the developmental condition.

    “The exact cause of autism is complex,” Dr. Sapir Ellouk, lead author of the study, said in a press release. “But based on our data, a single obstetric factor is unlikely to be the cause of ASD. A more plausible theory involves the simultaneous presence of multiple factors.”

    Research into the cause of autism, particularly research aimed at investigating the possible link between preterm birth and autism, has been controversial.

    Some previous studies have suggested that preterm birth can increase the risk of a child developing autism substantially and that the risk is correlated with the gestation period. One study found that eight in 657 (1.22 percent) preterm babies born before 28 weeks developed autism, while 80 of 13,108 preterm babies (0.61 percent) born between 33 and 38 weeks did.

    However, even previous research noted that differences in sex and other environmental factors could potentially play a role in a child’s potential for developing the disorder.

    Autism Rates on the Rise in the US, Early Signs

    In 2020, in the United States, one in 36 children had autism, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Boys are more likely to be diagnosed with the developmental disorder at a rate of four in 100 versus one in 100 for girls. Autism is also more prevalent in black, Hispanic, Asian, or Pacific Islander children than white, the CDC reports. These rates are higher than those reported in 2000–2018.

    The definition of ASD is vague because researchers still don’t have a firm grasp on how the disorder develops. Additionally, the disorder presents in myriad ways from person to person. Individuals with ASD might behave, communicate, learn, or interact in ways that are different from others, but often, there is nothing else that sets them apart. In fact, the skill sets of those on the autistic spectrum vary wildly; some people may have advanced language and conversation skills, while others may be nonverbal.

    According to the CDC, ASD typically begins to show around age 3 and often lasts throughout an individual’s life, though symptoms can improve. Some early signs include the child missing certain developmental milestones, such as:

    • Not responding to their name at 9 months old
    • Lack of facial expressions of emotions at 9 months old
    • Not playing simple interactive games at 12 months old
    • Using few or no simple gestures at 12 months old
    • Lack of common interests with peers at 15 months old
    • Not showing empathy when others are hurt at 24 months old
    • Not playing with other children at 3 years old
    • Not engaging in pretend play at 4 years old
    • Not singing, dancing, or acting at 5 years old

    Other related characteristics include delayed language, movement, and cognitive or learning skills; hyperactivity, impulsiveness, or inattention; epilepsy or sleeping disorders; unusual eating habits; gastrointestinal disorders; unusual mood or emotional reactions; anxiety; and lack of fear or more fear than expected.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/21/2024 – 19:00

  • US Court Ruling Sends Venezuela’s Oil-Backed Bonds into Collapse
    US Court Ruling Sends Venezuela’s Oil-Backed Bonds into Collapse

    By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

    A day after a New York court ruling that Venezuelan law would determine the validity of bonds issued by state-run PDVSA oil company, Bloomberg reports that bonds have “collapsed”, slumping on questions over their validity. At stake is $2 billion in PDVSA bonds, and PDVSA notes dropped 17 cents following Tuesday’s ruling, according to Bloomberg. 

    On Tuesday, the New York State Court of Appeals ruled on the matter after Venezuelan opposition, which controls the state-run oil company’s U.S. assets, said the bonds set to mature in 2020 were invalid because they had not been approved by Venezuela’s National Assembly. The New York Court of Appeals ruled that validity must be determined by local law in the place of issuance. 

    Venezuela’s opposition is seeking to have the bonds invalidated because they are backed by a 50.1% stake in Citgo Holding, the holding group that gives state-run PDVSA ownership of Citgo. In turn, bond invalidation would prevent creditors from seizing Citgo, Reuters reports.

    In mid-October, PDVSA bonds soared after the Biden administration moved to allow U.S. investors to buy the bonds in line with a sanctions relief package for Venezuela. The removal of those restrictions led to a 10-cent jump in Venezuelan government bonds immediately, along with a doubling of the price of PDVSA bonds. Bloomberg reported. 

    The bonds are highly attractive to U.S. investors because of their price and hedging that relations between the U.S. and Venezuela will eventually normalize. 

    “The lifting of the trading ban is likely to unleash significant pent-up demand from US persons,” London-based EMFI’s senior strategist, Guillermo Guerrero, wrote in a note carried by Bloomberg in October.  “This, alongside the general optimism that these developments will inevitably bring, guarantees a significant rise in bond prices.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/21/2024 – 18:20

  • Israeli Jets Attack Damascus Apartment Building, Killing Two
    Israeli Jets Attack Damascus Apartment Building, Killing Two

    Several presumed Israeli airstrikes rocked a residential area of the Syrian capital of Damascus on Wednesday. A wave of initial strikes reportedly activated Syria’s anti-air defenses, but there was at least one direct hit on an apartment building. 

    “Israeli strikes hit a neighborhood of the Syrian capital on Wednesday morning, killing two people and causing material damage, Syria’s state TV said,” according to the Associated Press.

    Aftermath of alleged Israeli strike on an apartment in Kfar Sousseh district, in Damascus, Syria, on Wednesday.

    Hours after this initial attack, new explosions were reported in regional media, however few details were given on the presumed second round of strikes. Several missiles hit the western neighborhood of Kfar Sousseh, reportedly near what’s being described as an Iranian school.

    “The strike damaged the fourth floor of a 10-story building, shattered window glass on nearby buildings and also damaged dozens of cars parked in the area,” the AP continued. “An empty parked bus for the nearby Al-Bawader Private School was also damaged and people were seen rushing to the school to take their children.”

    Likely Israeli officials will seek to justify the new aggression by saying Iranian officials were being targeted. It follows a major December airstrike on a suburb of Damascus which killed Iranian general Seyed Razi Mousavi.

    Israeli attacks on Syria have grown more frequent of late once again after a temporary lull last year. Syria for its part in the weeks after Oct.7 had launched missiles on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. 

    Things are also heating up in nearby Lebanon, as Israeli attacks in response to daily Hezbollah rockets and drones increase and are getting deeper into Lebanese territory. Syria’s President Assad is seen as a staunch ally of Hezbollah and the Iranians. Israel has long warned about the Iranian presence on Syrian soil, after a decade-long proxy war there.

    On Tuesday an Israeli Knesset member said a Hezbollah drone fell on his residential property…

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

    Many analysts expect that if broader war opens between Hezbollah and Israel, the conflict could engulf the whole region, given also the Hezbollah presence in Syria.

    At the same time pro-Iran Iraqi militias have in recent months launched major attacks on US bases in the region, resulting in a few waves of US missile attacks, in retaliation for the killing of three US Army soldiers along the Syria-Jordan border.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/21/2024 – 18:00

  • Bankruptcy Judge Allows Rudy Giuliani To Appeal $148 Million Defamation Verdict
    Bankruptcy Judge Allows Rudy Giuliani To Appeal $148 Million Defamation Verdict

    Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A New York bankruptcy judge has allowed Rudy Giuliani to appeal a $148 million defamation verdict so long as he uses pre-approved donors for legal expenses.

    Rudy Giuliani, a former lawyer of former President Donald J. Trump, leaves the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. District Courthouse after jury deliberation in Washington on Dec. 15, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane, in his order on Tuesday, specified that such fees and expenses must not be paid from Mr. Giuliani’s current assets.

    “Any fees and expenses incurred by the Debtor and his advisors in the Freeman Litigation in connection with any Post-Trial Filings and the Notice of Appeal shall not be paid by, and shall not result in a claim against, the Debtor or his estate,” Judge Lane wrote.

    The former New York City mayor filed for bankruptcy protection late last year, one day after he was ordered to immediately pay $148 million to two former Georgia election workers. Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea Moss, sued him for defamation while he was working as a lawyer for former President Donald Trump.

    In early January, Mr. Giuliani asked the New York bankruptcy judge overseeing his case to lift the automatic stay, a legal provision that pauses certain proceedings during bankruptcy, for the “limited purpose” of filing post-judgment motions to modify the judgment.

    Judge Lane, from the Southern District of New York, granted the limited relief on Tuesday.

    The judge’s order permits Mr. Giuliani to file a notice of appeal and post-trial motions in the Freeman case.

    However, Judge Lane stated that the former mayor must obtain the judge’s consent for any external payment of legal fees and expenses, which can’t come from Mr. Giuliani’s current assets.

    Furthermore, any parties paying such fees or expenses are prohibited from seeking reimbursement from Mr. Giuliani or his estate until the court approves such payments.

    According to the order, Mr. Giuliani is required to provide at least five business days’ notice to the Objecting Parties and the official committee of unsecured creditors before filing any post-trial motions, except for any motions filed on Feb. 20.

    “For the avoidance of doubt, the automatic stay is modified solely as set forth above and the Post-Trial Filings shall be adjudicated in the discretion of the District Court. Except with respect to the filing of a Notice of Appeal, any appeal of the Freeman Litigation shall remain subject to the automatic stay,” Judge Lane wrote.

    Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss sued Mr. Giuliani for defamation and emotional distress, alleging he spread false claims about their conduct during the 2020 election.

    A widely circulated video clip after the 2020 election implicated the election workers in allegedly mishandling ballots, damaging their reputation. Although later cleared by a Georgia Elections Board investigation, the women argued that the harm was already done. The pair claimed they were subject to relentless abuse.

    Attorney Michael Gottlieb urged the jury to award significant damages, emphasizing the need for punitive damages to send a message that Mr. Giuliani’s actions wouldn’t be tolerated.

    The multimillion-dollar payout the women were seeking would spell “the end” for Mr. Giuliani, his attorney, Joseph Sibley, told the court, equating it to be “the civil equivalent of a death penalty.”

    One day after being ordered to pay $148 million to the Georgia election workers, Mr. Giuliani filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, listing $10 million in assets.

    In a Dec. 20 ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell, an appointee of President Barack Obama, supported the two election workers’ claim that Mr. Giuliani lacked immediate financial means to pay them after a 30-day delay on the payouts was lifted.

    Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss raised concerns with the court that Mr. Giuliani might possibly “alienate or dissipate“ assets during the 30-day payment delay. Judge Howell cited Mr. Giuliani’s ”uncooperative” behavior, mounting debts, and numerous legal battles as reasons to believe he might hide financial assets from future judgments.

    On Dec. 11, the day the defamation damages trial commenced, Mr. Giuliani backed his statements about the former election workers, asserting to reporters that “everything I said about them is true.”

    Mr. Giuliani acted as President Trump’s legal adviser in 2020.

    Apart from facing financial difficulties, Mr. Giuliani is one of 19 individuals, along with President Trump, who have been indicted by a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia. The indictment is related to their efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state.

    Tom Omizek contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 02/21/2024 – 17:40

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Feb 21

Today’s News 21st February 2024

  • The 2030 Agenda: The Totalitarian Trojan Horse
    The 2030 Agenda: The Totalitarian Trojan Horse

    Authored by Daniel Lacalle via The Epoch Times,

    Upon perusing the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals included in the well-known 2030 Agenda, one may conclude that they are all harmless and entirely reasonable goals.

    Who could be opposed to reducing poverty and hunger or advancing infrastructure, innovation, and industry?

    The trick, akin to the tale of the Trojan Horse, is that those goals have been appropriated by the most heinous interventionism, and bureaucrats with a foundation of conceit and stupidity use it to impose governmental control over every aspect of the economy.

    They are attacking farming, agriculture, and nearly any private activity in a Europe that is beginning to resemble a society suffocated by a predatory state and zombies close to the government, à la Chapter 9 from Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.”

    First, they destroyed the very industry that the 2030 Agenda is purportedly committed to strengthening.

    The most interventionist politicians are really attacking the 2030 Agenda because, despite their pretenses to the contrary, their policies invariably have the opposite effect of what they seem to support.

    The socialists in all parties have taken over the 2030 Agenda, which does not advance industry, growth, equality, or the fight against poverty or hunger.

    This exploitation of the 2030 Agenda’s objectives is exactly like the Trojan Horse that conceals people who will destroy the city beneath the guise of an impressive and lovely gift.

    The number of farms in the European Union has drastically decreased in recent years. According to Eurostat, there were 9.1 million farms in 2020, a projected 37 percent decrease, or roughly 5.3 million fewer than in 2005. This trend has only worsened since 2020.

    According to the European Commission itself, the EU’s agricultural land is predicted to shrink by 1.1 percent between 2015 and 2030, primarily due to the declines of the two main groupings (agricultural land and farming), which are forecast to decline by 4.0 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively. This implies ruining our future and increasing Europe’s dependence and poverty.

    It is not acceptable for the industrial fabric to be destroyed. According to the International Energy Agency, businesses are now paying twice as much for electricity and natural gas as they would in China or the United States due to an energy strategy that is incorrect and enforced by activists who lack industry knowledge. And how is it justified by the bureaucracy?

    “The breakdown analysis reveals that the lower economic growth in the EU in relation to the world had the greatest negative impact on the contribution of its manufacturing sector,” according to a study published by the European Commission.

    It’s not that they are destroying industry, so don’t worry. It is just that the EU is growing far less than before. Fascinating (note the irony). As if the decline in competitiveness isn’t already a contributing factor in stagnation.

    A report from the European Round Table for Industry (Vision Paper 2024–2029) states that the market share of European Union industry in the globe has plummeted from 21 percent in 2001 to a pitiful 14.5 percent. The paper also offers positive remedies. The U.S. proportion, which had a 21 percent share during the same period, decreased less significantly, to 16.5 percent. They reaffirm that “business is the lifeblood of a robust economy.”

    “The EU’s industrial sector contributes 16 percent of its GDP. It creates millions of jobs indirectly and 25 percent of direct employment. It is essential for advancing innovation and enhancing the capabilities of the labor force in addition to creating income and jobs. Its potential to promote growth and prosperity is enormous, given the correct conditions. These factors make it clear that Europe needs to increase its appeal to foreign investors.”

    Furthermore, what has been accomplished? Taxes, restrictions, and bureaucracy are increased, destroying the very thing they claim to safeguard.

    Why do people accept the 17 goals of the 2030 Agenda which are redundant as free-market capitalism would achieve all of them without the need for propaganda? Interventionism has denigrated capitalism and free markets while positioning itself as the answer to the mistakes brought about by extensive intervention. The only ways that any of those goals will actually be met are through increased capitalism and economic freedom. Socialism not only falls short of all these goals, but it also adds a secret number 18: the cancelation and persecution of complainants.

    It is not anti-European to criticize this agenda’s incorrect imposition. It is in favor of Europe.

    Many of us were labeled anti-Europeans years ago for supporting nuclear energy. The EU made agreements recently to create new reactors in large quantities. When we criticized the fiscal plunder and bureaucracy placed on farming, agriculture, and industry years ago, we were labeled anti-Europeans. Many governments are realizing now how grave a mistake they made.

    Similarly, criticizing the digital euro does not mean attacking the euro; rather, it means arguing that it should continue to be a store of value and maintain its purchasing power.

    Being pro-European does not mean accepting every interventionist policy put out by a committee of bureaucrats. We must reject socialism and central planning if we are to protect Europe. Despite decades of financial support, East Germany is still struggling to recover from the devastation caused by central planning.

    Centralized planning does not work.

    It was never successful. However, there are always those who believe that if they put it into practice, it will work because they do not have to pay for the repercussions.

    What is the ruse behind this latest attack on liberty?

    The usual “good intentions” to target and penalize those who produce and create jobs, using goals that appear innocent and that we all defend. Thus, if you disagree, some may claim that you are opposed to ending poverty, hunger, and inequality if you publish a piece like this one or warn against the risks of central planning. Can you spot the ruse? In actuality, it employs the same tactic as Leninism, which is to create an oppressive government while hiding behind a cause that everyone supports.

    The people who have stocked this Trojan Horse with warriors ready to mercilessly slaughter the city’s populace once they are behind the wall are well aware that their scheme will fail so they must enforce objective number 18, which establishes the only connection between reality and the fallacy of central planning. What does objective number 18 mean? Suppression and annihilation of personal autonomy, impoverishment, and elimination of demand. It’s not even a hidden target. This set of self-proclaimed European saviors is aware that imposing a contraction in demand is the only way to make the equation of corporate destruction and declining supply square, rendering us less free and poorer.

    The first thing we should do is give up on socialism and stand up for the promotion of individual freedom if we want to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals without the covert eighteenth of poverty and elimination of individuals’ rights.

    The only way to accomplish the goals that the 2030 Agenda purports to support is to take these policies out of the hands of socialist and extortionate interventionism and give Europe greater economic freedom, more robust businesses, and regulations that are straightforward, predictable, and conducive to investment. There should be less poverty redistributors and more manufacturing, farming, and agriculture.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/20/2024 – 23:40

  • Did The India Bubble Just Burst
    Did The India Bubble Just Burst

    In its latest US Equities Weekly Rundown note, Goldman Sachs wrote that In international markets, the desk continues to field demand for India as investors move capital out of China ETFs; the result is that INDA (iShares MSCI India ETF) has seen consistent inflows this past year, while MCHI (iShares MSCI China ETF) redemptions persist.

    And yet, the stellar rally in Indian equities that’s made them an investor favorite has run into headwinds that go beyond elevated valuations, according to Bloomberg market live reporters Abhishek Vishnoi and John Cheng. The commentators note that earnings misses, the attractiveness of rival markets amid expectations of a dovish policy shift by the Federal Reserve and a nascent recovery in Chinese equities “are casting doubts over India extending a rally that saw the nation’s main gauges posting a record eighth-straight year of gains in 2023.”

    Recently, Citigroup and Societe Generale SA have downgraded India, while foreigners have sold a net $3.8 billion of local shares so far this year, the highest in emerging Asia outside of China. Multi-asset investors are favoring rupee bonds over the South Asian nation’s equities, and some even refute Goldman’s observations, saying that the money flows out of China may be slowing as the country steps up its market rescue efforts.

    “India is the best longer-term story, but we are taking a bit of profit” due to high valuations, said Sean Taylor, chief investment officer at Matthews Asia. “I will be trimming more of India into Fed cuts on a relative basis because I need to put more capital into places like Korea and Taiwan.”

    Despite the short-term profit-taking, the longer-term outlook for India remains intact thanks to the nation’s fast economic growth, an expanding middle class and rising manufacturing prowess.

    “Even though there’s a valuation concern, India is in a sweet spot,” said Joohee An, chief investment officer at Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. in Hong Kong. “We’re looking at India with a longer-term approach than other emerging markets.”

    Still, a slew of earnings misses in the latest earnings season on top of already stretched valuations, weak consumer demand in some pockets of the $3.4 trillion economy and a still-hawkish central bank have put some investors on the back foot for now.

    Indian stocks remain near their most expensive levels ever against battered Chinese peers, just when Xi Jinping’s administration is unveiling measures to prop up the market and boost confidence. That may prompt some investors to rethink their asset allocations across the region.

    The S&P BSE Sensex Index is valued at 20 times 12-month forward consensus earnings estimates, higher than its 10-year mean and the most expensive in Asia. China’s mainland benchmark CSI 300 Index, which hit a five-year low earlier this month, trades at little over 10 times future earnings.

    “We’ve been underweighting the country because we’re value investors and we struggle in this market,” said Vicki Chi, a Hong Kong-based portfolio manager at Robeco. “We like dirt cheap, but there’s hardly anything in India.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/20/2024 – 23:20

  • Seattle Activists Declare 'Homosexual Intifada'
    Seattle Activists Declare ‘Homosexual Intifada’

    Authored by Jason Rantz via mynorthwest.com,

    As if “Queers for Palestine” wasn’t enough of a self-parody, keffiyeh-donning gay activists in Seattle have declared a “homosexual intifada.”

    Homosexual intifada posters seen around Seattle. (Photo: Anatolia Ferguson for Jason Rantz Show on KTTH)

    After another pro-Hamas/anti-Israel march and rally that took over city streets that Seattle mayor Bruce Harrell ceded, the extremists plastered their signage around downtown Seattle. That’s when we started seeing a new flyer showing two men with faces covered with keffiyeh while embracing in a kiss. The pink-hued message says “Homo-sexual Intifada” in all caps.

    Seattle’s homosexual intifada flyer is a stark oxymoron as brazen as it is ignorant. It signals LGBT Seattle activists are willing to become more violent in support of a terrorist organization that would order them tossed from the highest rooftop the moment they accuse someone of misgendering them.

    LGBT Seattle activists support violent Hamas with more violence

    Hamas, the governing body in Gaza since 2007, is as welcoming to the LGBT community as it is to Jews. And their track record is hardly rainbow-colored. Under Hamas rule, being openly gay isn’t just a social taboo; it’s a fast track to execution. LGBT people face arrests, torture, and extrajudicial killings based purely on sexual orientation. And these views against the LGBT community are not merely those of Hamas.

    The situation is not much different in the Palestinian-controlled West Bank, where there are no LGBT rights. Palestinians in Gaza are as hostile, with, ironically, gay Palestinians fleeing to Israel for refuge. Israel is the only Middle East country with constitutional, employment, and other codified LGBT rights.

    Pro-Hamas activists, in and out of Seattle, routinely and purposefully ignore the fact that Hamas hates the LGBT community. Yet, they continue to stay silent so that they may use all their hot air to attack Jews defending Israel against an existential threat.

    Is the Seattle homosexual intifada trying to send a different message?

    Is it possible the Seattle homosexual intifada flyer is meant to envision a world in which gay Palestinians fight back in Gaza? Are they trolling us with their flyer? Not likely. The pro-Hamas faction of Seattle activists has consistently downplayed or ignored Hamas terrorism against Jews because they believe “resistance is justified when people are occupied.”

    Generally, Hamas’ dangerous hostility to the LGBT community is ignored. But in the rare instances in which it is not, progressive activists use their hatred of Jews to gaslight. Radical Swarthmore professor Sa’ed Atshan dismissed Hamas and Gazan homophobia as if it’s no different than anywhere else. In an interview, Atshan tries to explain why there’s “queer solidarity” with Palestinians without having to mention it’s driven by blatant antisemitism, historical ignorance, or both.

    Atshan noted, “Homophobia is not unique to Palestinian society. It exists in most parts of the world, including in Israeli society, as well as here in the United States.” He even manages to blame Jews for homophobia in Gaza, falsely claiming they participate in a brutal military occupation of Gaza.

    “It’s very dangerous to pathologize Palestinian society as uniquely homophobic or that homophobia is endemic to the society without this broader context, as well as without understanding the ways that life under brutal military occupation exacerbates homophobia within Palestinian society as well. In order for us to deal with questions of how queer people are treated in Palestine, we have to address the broader landscape of the denial of freedom to Palestinians more generally speaking,” he said.

    This is all pretty simple, just not simple enough for Progressive Seattle activists

    Palestinians are not synonymous with Hamas. But only a fool pretends there’s no overlap for a significant portion of the Palestinian people in Gaza. It doesn’t matter, though.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/20/2024 – 23:00

  • Putin Gifts Kim Jong Un A Luxury Russian Limo 
    Putin Gifts Kim Jong Un A Luxury Russian Limo 

    Russian carmaker Aurus, best known for producing President Vladimir Putin’s new bulletproof limo, delivered a new limousine to the North Korean dictator on behalf of the Russian government. 

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the limousine was delivered to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. He said the vehicle was a gift following Putin’s visit last year when Kim took great interest in the limo. 

    Limo

    “When the head of the DPRK [North Korea] was at the Vostochny cosmodrome, he looked at this car, Putin showed it to him personally, and like many people, Kim liked this car,” Peskov said when asked by reporters about the gift, who The Guardian quoted. 

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

    “So this decision was made,” Peskov said, adding, “North Korea is our neighbor, our close neighbor, and we intend, and will continue, to develop our relations with all neighbors, including North Korea.” 

    North Korea’s state-run media outlet KCNA also confirmed the Russian-made limousine arrived in Pyongyang. 

    KCNA quoted Kim’s sister, who said, “courteously conveyed Kim Jong-un’s thanks to Putin to the Russian side, saying that the gift serves as a clear demonstration of the special personal relations between the top leaders.” 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/20/2024 – 22:40

  • A Stunning 10 Million Illegals Have Entered The US Under Biden; Tucker Warns They Are "Destroying" The Country
    A Stunning 10 Million Illegals Have Entered The US Under Biden; Tucker Warns They Are “Destroying” The Country

    A record 7.3 million illegal aliens have crossed the southwest border under President Biden’s watch, a number which according to Fox News.is greater than the population of 36 individual states.

    That figure is sourced from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which has already reported 961,537 Southwest land border encounters in the current fiscal year, which runs from October through September, and if the current pace of illegal immigration does not slow down, fiscal year 2024 will break last year’s record of 2,475,669 southwest border encounters — a number that by itself exceeds the population of New Mexico.

    The total number of southwest land border encounters since Biden assumed office in 2021 is 7,298,486, CBP data shows.

    Source: CBP

    That number is larger than the population of 36 U.S. states including: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

    In fact, the only states that are not in danger of being “replaced” are the blue ones.

    Compared to the largest U.S. states, the 7.3 million number is about 18.7% of California’s population of 39 million, 23.9% of the state of Texas and its 31 million residents, 32.3% of the population of Florida and 37.3% of New York. It’s more than half the size of Pennsylvania, Illinois and Ohio.

    As Fox News graphically describes, were the number of illegal immigrants who entered the United States under President Biden gathered together to found a city, it would be the second-largest city in America after New York.

    Shockingly, that total does not include an estimated additional 1.6 million illegals who entered the US at other locations, nor 1.8 million known “gotaways” who evaded law enforcement, which would make the total bigger than the population of New York.

    Taken together, over 10 million migrants have crossed into the U.S. illegally during the Biden administration, a record Biden’s critics assert could only be achieved by intentionally refusing to enforce the law.

    “This unprecedented surge in illegal immigration isn’t an accident. It is the result of deliberate policy choices by the Biden administration,” said Eric Ruark, Director of Research for Numbers USA, a nonprofit that advocates for immigration restrictions.

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

    While some republicans and anti-illegal immigration activists have for blamed Biden for allowing the current overwhelming surge of migrants by reversing former President Donald Trump’s border policies – a fact clearly visible in the chart above when comparing alien entrants under Trump and under Biden, the White House has denied responsibility for the crisis and pointed to external “push” factors like violence and economic instability in South and Central America as the culprit responsible for vast waves of migration to the U.S.

    Meanwhile, the president’s critics say migrants face more of a “pull” factor in the form of job opportunities and government benefits because they know they will not face deportation under Biden’s lenient policies.

    “The administration has refused to enforce existing immigration law and taken every opportunity to aid and abet illegal border crossings — through policies such as catch-and-release, mass parole, and offering temporary work permits to tens of thousands of foreigners who make dubious claims for asylum,” Ruark told Fox News Digital. “In actual effect, the United States government is completing the human smuggling and trafficking process for the Mexican cartels.”

    Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), said migrants have learned in the last three years that they won’t face deportation for entering the country illegally.

    “They have sent the signal that if you come to the U.S. illegally, if you abuse the asylum system, you’ll be released into the country and allowed to remain here, in most cases given work authorization,” Mehlman said. “Even if you neglect to show up for your hearings, the odds of you being removed are negligible. The president claims he doesn’t have the authority to enforce our laws. He absolutely does. He is deliberately not enforcing those laws.”

    There is another reason why the Biden admin has refused to crack down on illegal immigration: as we first revealed, all of the jobs since 2018 have gone to non-native born workers, which primarily means illegal immigrants.

    Since then establishment economists and lunatic idiots such as Paul Krugman and Jerome Powell have claimed that these illegal immigrants are actually beneficial for the economy as they take jobs that Americans are “too lazy” to take and have helped push down wage inflation; meanwhile the CBO has taken this grotesque stupidity one step further, and projected that the surge in illegal immigration will boost the US labor force significantly more than previously forecast…

    … with CBO Director Phill Swagel, going so far as predicting that “as a result of those changes in the labor force, we estimate that from 2023 to 2034, GDP will be greater by about $7 trillion and revenue will be greater by about $1 trillion than they would have been otherwise.”

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

    “Got that?”, the Washington Post in-house propaganda appartchik asked rhetorically: Illegal immigration is not only not bad, it’s great for the country, as it enables Americans to remain lazy, it reduces wage inflation and ends up boosting GDP by trillions. In fact, the only thing preventing the US from entering a new golden age of growth is that instead of a mere 10 million illegals, the US should gladly accept 100 million or more, and be thankful to the Biden regime, which alone could come up with this absolutely brilliant theory of common sense, sanity – and of course population – replacement.

    Of course, for a far saner take on what is really going on, listen to the latest Tucker, who in his latest video note says that “mass immigration is completely destroying our country.”

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

    Listen to it before Tucker is also taken out by a CIA magic bullet.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/20/2024 – 22:20

  • Gamification Of Trading Apps Creates Rise Of Teen Stock Traders
    Gamification Of Trading Apps Creates Rise Of Teen Stock Traders

    Teens are becoming increasingly addicted to the gamification of stock and options trading, allowing them to buy and sell ‘meme’ stocks and trade zero-date options directly from their smartphones through well-known trading apps like Robinhood. 

    A new study from Fidelity Investments, titled “2023 Teens and Money Study,” reveals more than half of the respondents (ages 13 to 17) received a smartphone around the age of 10. By eleven, they spoke with their parents about opening a brokerage or checking account. 

    One thing the post-Covid world has created is younger and younger gamblers. 

    And why is that? Well, one word: gamification of trading apps. 

    During Covid, for example, Robinhood experienced an unprecedented surge of young traders that entered the stock market casino. Thank the government-enforced lockdowns that kept everyone on their couches and the Federal Reserve’s monetary bazooka that led to the greatest stock market bubble ever. 

    Everyone was a genius when stocks only went vertical. Until they don’t…  

    In a separate report, The Wall Street Journal said custodial accounts for teenagers at Schwab reached  200,000 in 2022, an increase from around 120,000 in 2019. This number soared past 300,000 in 2023, partly due to Schwab’s acquisition of TD Ameritrade. 

    Source: WSJ 

    Other brokerage firms such as Vanguard, Fidelity, and E*Trade by Morgan Stanley have also seen a rise in custodial accounts in recent years. 

    To sum up, Western society is turning out even younger degenerate stock traders than ever before through the gamification of stock trading apps on smartphones. 

    Maybe the kids should put down their smartphones and go outside. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/20/2024 – 22:00

  • VDH: Delusions, Alternate Realities, & The Biden Consortium
    VDH: Delusions, Alternate Realities, & The Biden Consortium

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

    Hunter Biden has a train of a dozen lawyers defending him on felony indictments ranging from several counts of tax fraud to gun violations. From time to time, the contents of his laptop come up, both in these criminal trials and in civil suits. The information on the laptop is, of course, incriminating and useful to various prosecutors and litigants.

    Yet Hunter himself is suing the computer repairman with whom he dropped off his laptop and never retrieved—and never paid—despite signing a waiver relinquishing ownership if and when in default of payment and claim.

    But the weirdest element of the Biden labyrinth of illegality is that both Hunter and his attorneys footnote their writs and statements with the inexplicable notion that the laptop is not necessarily Hunter’s own—but then again, it could be.

    In other words, they are not presenting evidence to show that either the photographs, texts, or emails are concocted, even while they are suing various parties for defamatory dissipation of the sort of true, sort of false contents. Translated: The surreal truth is that Hunter is very mad that what he did illegally in part is evidenced on his own laptop, and he wants that information either suppressed or disowned, but without perjuring himself by stating the material on his laptop is not his own—because of course it is his.

    The same alternate universe surrounds Joe Biden’s cognitive decline. To prove that the Biden administration’s appointed special counsel was unprofessional and in error by referencing proof of Biden’s dementia, Biden gave a sudden and unusual press conference.

    But almost immediately, he lost his temper. Biden lied numerous times in contradicting the evidence of the special counsel’s report, falsely claiming many files in question were not classified. He lied that the files were securely stored in locked cabinets when they were sloppily strewn around in boxes in a rickety garage. He falsely asserted that he had notified authorities once he discovered that he had classified files in his possession, although he did not do so for roughly another five years—just days before his administration was to appoint Jack Smith to investigate Donald Trump for many of the same alleged crimes that Biden might also have been guilty of. And inter alia, he referenced President Abd el-Fattah el–Sisi of Egypt as the president of Mexico—apparently as part of his public demonstration of his own mental cogency.

    Biden further misled by damning the special counsel for supposedly prompting Biden about the date of the death of his son, the year of which Biden did not recall. But in truth, Biden himself, not Mr. Hur, brought up Beau Biden’s passing voluntarily to Mr. Hur—although again without the ability to cite the year in which he died.

    Furthermore, it is President Joe Biden who serially raises the tragic death of Beau (who died in a Washington, D.C., hospital from a glioblastoma brain tumor), often among grieving gold star families, by falsely stating variations of “We lost Beau in Iraq.”

    Note Biden’s general disconnect: serial lies about special counsel Hur’s report; lies that Trump’s once secure border is somehow responsible for Biden’s by-design open border; lies that Trump caused the Putin invasion of Ukraine on Biden’s watch that never occurred on Trump’s.

    In the last week, Biden’s circle—press secretary Karin Jean-Pierre, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Democratic Congress representatives and senators—have all publicly emphasized not just that Biden is alert but vigorous, hale, and more dynamic than most in his briefing sessions.

    That alternate reality is at odds with 70-80 percent of the American people who variously poll in surveys that their president is not fit to serve and should not run for reelection.

    The more Biden flaks insist the President is dynamic, the more he restricts his schedule to a three-day work week, forgets where he is and what he is to say, and confuses names, dates, and people daily.

    Since January 2021, the southern border has been destroyed. It no longer exists as a protective bulwark of American sovereignty. Some 8 million illegal entrants have made their way into the US—illegally, without audits, criminal background checks, English fluency, or skills to become self-supporting.

    No matter: for the last 1000 days, Americans have watched on their televisions and computer screens thousands swarming the border every day, juxtaposed with assurances from recently impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Kamala Harris, and President Biden that the “border is secure.”

    Now with an election looming, the Bidenites are no longer either indifferent to or preening about their accomplishments of allowing (“surging”) millions illegally into the U.S. but instead scrambling to blame their suddenly declared “secure border” on Donald Trump or Republicans in Congress. Even more bizarrely, they are blaming the Congress for not giving them new laws and more money to resecure a supposedly already declared secure border, even though Donald Trump left office in 2021 with a genuine secure border and without any need for more appropriations or legislation.

    President Biden keeps bragging about Bidenomics and its role in lowering inflation (January 2024: 3.1% rate of per-annum increase) and his massive deficit spending since January 2021 of perhaps $10 trillion dollars in borrowed money that spiked interest rates threefold.

    Yet Biden ignores the fact that since he was elected, the average price of consumer goods has risen 17.2 percent. Even that increase does not represent the reality that most important consumer purchases such as staple foods, appliances, automobiles, rent, mortgages, building supplies, and home purchases have soared about 30-40 percent in the last three and a half years and have neither abated nor been matched by commensurate increases in wages.

    The analogy to Biden’s fallacious argument that inflation is nearly licked might be that of a victim who suffered a near-fatal, unhealed wound and is then supposed to be relieved that subsequent additional wounds were relatively minor – even as he suffers permanent injury from the initial lesion. So the more Biden praises his fiscal policies, the more the public polls reflect the fact that in just three years, accustomed consumer goods are now unaffordable.

    A final example of these strange disconnects is the Biden administration’s courtship of Iran. The more it has lifted sanctions on Iran, begged to restart the Iran deal, restored funding to Iranian surrogates like Hamas, or taken the terrorist Houthis off the terrorist list, the more Iranian satellites have butchered Israelis and attacked 170 American installations. In response, the more the United States offers the boilerplate that, while Iran may have supplied such aggressors, there is no direct evidence of Iranian skullduggery to justify an accounting from Teheran.

    So everyone knows Iran is at the heart of the exploding Middle East, and everybody knows that they are not supposed to say they know, lest it lead to holding Iran accountable.

    What explains all these alternate realities?

    In a word, we are witnessing the meltdown of an entire American presidency. It was born in a 2020 Faustian bargain in which a cognitively challenged, ethically compromised candidate agreed to run by offering a pseudo-moderate veneer in exchange for the support of the far left, which in turn owned his agenda.

    Since then, the Biden apparat has tried to square the circle of packaging and promoting a far-left menu that the American people did not want, delivered to them by someone who, by any fair standard, would not be able to serve as a teacher, Uber driver, or lawyer. The result was the present construct of a supposedly dynamic president promoting a traditional Democratic agenda that has succeeded brilliantly here and abroad.

    And to sustain that myth requires constant deception and falsehood.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/20/2024 – 21:40

  • Nevada Residents Shocked To Discover They Voted In Primary
    Nevada Residents Shocked To Discover They Voted In Primary

    ‘Numerous’ Nevada voters were shocked to discover that they voted in the Feb. 6th presidential primary, despite not having done so – the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports.

    Numerous Nevada voters are seeing irregularities in their voter history, which the secretary of state’s office is investigating. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

    Las Vegas resident and registered Republican Daphne Lee told the outlet that her family checked the secretary of state’s website on Sunday to look up their voter history after hearing about the issue. The site showed that she and her family had voted in the primary despite none of them having done so. She attempted to opt out of future mail-in ballots and was unable to do so – with a message saying she was not currently registered to vote, and that her voting history no longer existed.

    “It’s just so frustrating,” Lee said, adding “This makes everyone uncomfortable.”

    The secretary of state’s office claims that it has identified ‘possible technical issues’ relating to Nevadans’ voting history, and that elections and IT staff immediately began collaborating with county clerks and registrars Monday morning.

    According to the report, the systems used by some counties require additional steps to ensure that voters who did not actually vote, don’t have a voting history, the SoS office said, adding that some of these steps were not taken.

    “Our office has been validating new files from each county and moving them into production as soon as the accuracy of the data is verified.”

    It determined that the problem resulted in some counties not taking the proper steps to upload their voter registration. Every night each county uploads their voter registration to the secretary of state’s database, which executes code to create the statewide voter registration file that Nevadans see when they log into vote.nv.gov, according to the secretary of state’s office. –Las Vegas Review-Journal

    The SoS added that the data should be fixed within 48 hours, and they will produce a comprehensive report to detail what happened.

    “Again, this is an error that relates to the code used for when a voter is sent a mail ballot and does not return it; it has no connection in any way to vote tabulation,” the office said in a statement, adding “The top-down Voter Registration and Election Management System (VREMS) project at the Secretary of State’s office will go live prior to the June 2024 election, and remove the need for these outdated processes.”

    According to Gov. Joe Lombardo (R), the secretary of state’s office is working to resolve the issues.

    In a Monday statement, the Nevada Republican Party said it received reports from numerous registered Republican voters who did not participate in the presidential primary that their mail ballot was received and counted by the state.

    The Nevada Republican Party is in communication with the secretary of state’s office to conduct an investigation into the issues, the Nevada GOP said in the statement. -LVRJ

    “We take these reports very seriously,” said Chairman Michael McDonald, who has previously expressed doubt over the validity of the 2020 election. “The cornerstone of our Republic is the trust and confidence of the American people in the electoral process. Any indication of irregularities must be thoroughly investigated to ensure the integrity of our elections.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/20/2024 – 21:20

  • Public Schools In Portland Face Civil Rights Complaints Over Diversity Efforts
    Public Schools In Portland Face Civil Rights Complaints Over Diversity Efforts

    Authored by Eric Lundrum via American Greatness,

    On Thursday, Portland Public Schools (PPS) were sued by an education advocacy group over claims that the school district’s push for diversity in disciplinary actions constitutes a violation of civil rights.

    As reported by the Daily Caller, the watchdog group Parents Defending Education (PDE) accuses PPS of violating the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, as well as other civil rights law, with its “Student Support and Discipline” policy. The policy forces teachers and staff members to address “disruptive student behavior” by taking into account the offending student’s identity, including race, gender, and sexual preference, before handing out punishment, if any. In addition, the policy orders the district to assign teachers based on race and gender.

    The policy clearly states that staff members “must take into consideration the impact of issues related to the student’s trauma, race, gender identity/presentation, sexual orientation, disability, social emotional learning, and restorative justice as appropriate for the student.”

    The district is forbidden from transferring a teacher from one school to another if it would ultimately “decrease the building’s percentage of under-represented male or female or transgender/nonbinary/gender non-conforming professional educators to less than thirty percent,” or if it would otherwise “decrease the building’s percentage of minority teachers to less than the student minority percentage in the building or below the percentage of minority professional educators in the District.”

    “Portland Public Schools has enacted several concerning policies that treat students and educators differently based on race and gender identity,” PDE states in its lawsuit.

    “For instance, Portland Public Schools is disciplining some students and not others, solely based on immutable characteristics.”

    In addition to the disciplinary policy, the district also requires all of its schools to hire a “School Climate Team,” which runs “ongoing training in implicit bias, antiracism and culturally responsive practices.”

    PDE’s lawsuit comes in an environment where many legal actions are being taken against school districts across the country in the wake of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, a landmark decision by the Supreme Court last year. In the case, along with the concurrent Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, the court ruled that the practice of affirmative action – accepting student applications and other hiring decisions based solely on racial identity – was unconstitutional, and ordered it banned at a national level in universities and colleges across the country.

    Although the Supreme Court kept its focus to higher education, many lawsuits and other complaints have cited this decision as a basis for similar actions against lower school districts and other entities which similarly discriminate based on race, gender, and other arbitrary identities.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/20/2024 – 21:00

  • China Suspends Quant Fund For Dumping $350 Million Shares In 1 Minute
    China Suspends Quant Fund For Dumping $350 Million Shares In 1 Minute

    To appreciate how “sensitive” Beijing has become to any sharp and/or continued selling of Chinese stocks, now that public sentiment is adversely impacted by China’s relentless rout, look no further than major quant fund Lingjun Investment, which on Tuesday was suspended for three days amid broader regulatory efforts to revive market confidence. The fund’s transgression: it broke rules on orderly trading. Or, stated simply, at a time when it’s no secret that selling of Chinese stocks is frowned upon, Lingjun took it to the next level when the fund dumped a combined 2.57 billion yuan ($357.4 million) in A-shares in a minute between 9:30 a.m. and 9:31 a.m. on Monday, the Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses revealed in identical statements on Tuesday, and said they would strengthen monitoring and analysis of quantitative, especially high-frequency trading. Such trading “has obvious advantages over small investors in terms of technology, information and speed” and could at times contribute to market volatility, the exchanges said.

    The orders from Lingjun to dump stocks in early trade on Monday coincided with rapid declines in the benchmark indexes, the Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges said, adding they would restrict the hedge fund’s trading until Feb. 22. The implication was clear: anyone who likewise aggressively sells stocks, is next.

    Lingjun is one of China’s biggest quant funds, and according to its website, it manages more than 60 billion yuan (supposedly that include the 2.5 billion the fund just dumped). The fund later apologized for the negative impact in a statement on its website on Wednesday, saying that the firm said it “holds long-term bullish views on Chinese stocks and will stick to long positions,” adding it will review the problems existing in transactions.

    And just like that, selling stocks in China – especially in a brisk manner – is de facto banned.

    Chinese quant funds, which use derivatives and data-driven computer models, have already suffered from a steep market sell-off this year and government curbs on short-selling. China’s blue-chip index dropped to five-year lows early this month but has since staged a powerful rebound as Beijing has vocally sought to prop up Chinese markets.

    “Regulators are sending a clear signal that money should be handed to managers who profit from long-term investment, rather than swift trades,” Yang Tingwu, vice general manager of Tongheng Investment, said. Which means that investors such as RenTec, Citadel and Millennium whose investment horizons are measured in the milliseconds or minutes at best, are no longer welcome to China.

    Ironically, Tingwu said the punishment could accelerate redemptions in quant funds as investors would ask: “Who’s next?” The only problem with redemptions is someone has to sell something, which could be a problem in China these days… so expect a whole lot of gating to take place in the next few weeks.

    A hedge fund manager who declined to be named told Reuters that a three-day trading halt was not a huge problem for Lingjun, but was a further blow to confidence in quant funds as regulatory scrutiny intensifies.

    As regulators seek to revive market confidence, China’s securities watchdog, led by newly installed chairman Wu Qing, held a series of seminars with market participants who proposed tighter scrutiny.

    Chinese quant funds already attracted the attention of regulators last year after criticism, including from smaller investors and long-only funds, of a sector able to profit from share price falls and volatility. The industry has also been blamed for its role in causing the boom-and-bust of Chinese small-caps.

    China’s quant hedge funds totalled 1.26 trillion yuan at the end of 2021, according to the latest official data. The industry has grown rapidly over the last few years, and has attracted foreign players such as Two Sigma and Winton.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/20/2024 – 20:51

  • China Markets Eye More Housing Support After LPR Surprise
    China Markets Eye More Housing Support After LPR Surprise

    By George Lei, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist

    China slashed its five-year loan prime rate, a key reference for mortgages, by an unprecedented 25 basis points to a record-low 3.95% on Tuesday. While the move sends a strong signal from Beijing of aid for the property market, analysts caution that further monetary easing isn’t guaranteed and more support measures are needed for a turnaround in the housing sector.

    Tuesday’s reduction signals Beijing’s continued preference for targeted easing and its desire to shore up the housing, Oxford Economics said in a research report, noting that one-year LPR, which doesn’t have any mortgage implications, is left on hold. The size of the cut reveals “a genuine concern” among policymakers that the “slow-drip of easing” implemented thus far “has had little impact,” Louise Loo, the firm’s lead economist, wrote.

    While none of the 12 analysts polled by Bloomberg foresaw such a big LPR cut, the PBOC won’t necessarily lower other interest-rate benchmarks in a similarly aggressive fashion, according to JPMorgan. Uncertainty around the Fed’s next steps — with some speculation even of a hike — may prompt Beijing to pause further easing until more clarity emerges from Washington, according to Haibin Zhu, JPMorgan’s chief China economist. Any additional easing will also depend on the PBOC’s assessment of the consumer-price outlook, which appears more sanguine than that of markets, the US bank said.

    Since early 2022, the PBOC has cut the five-year LPR by 70bps, while average mortgage rates have fallen by 152bp — thanks to bigger reductions early on by local banks. This is almost the same as the total reduction of 153bps in a five-year benchmark rate for all loans in 2008, but the difference is the speed of cuts, according to Pantheon Economics. Back then, mortgage rates dropped over a three-month period from October to December, resulting in a swift boost to market confidence.

    With mortgage rates drifting down over two years, a slow, grinding housing recovery remains the most likely scenario, Pantheon concluded. Moreover, the full effect of the LPR reduction could be limited as local lenders —now facing already thin margins — might choose to pass only a fraction of the latest cuts to potential home-buyers, wrote Ting Lu, Nomura’s chief China economist.

    Beijing, therefore, will have to “do much more” to salvage housing projects and stabilize the market, the Japanese bank said. Moreover, the vast majority of borrowers will only feel the full impact of lower rates in 10 months time, Nomura noted. There are about 38 trillion yuan ($5.28 trillion) outstanding mortgages that reference the five-year LPR and by contract, rates are not going to reset until Jan. 1, 2025.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/20/2024 – 20:31

  • Supreme Court Could Set Landmark Precedent In Trump Jan. 6 Case
    Supreme Court Could Set Landmark Precedent In Trump Jan. 6 Case

    Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    For the second time this year, the Supreme Court could hear oral arguments on a relatively untested area of constitutional law as it relates to former President Donald Trump and set a landmark precedent that could affect the 2024 presidential race.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images, Shutterstock)

    Chief Justice John Roberts showed interest on Feb. 13 in reviewing former President Donald Trump’s request the prior day to halt a ruling against his presidential immunity claims in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

    Special counsel Jack Smith responded on Feb. 14, telling the court it should deny President Trump’s request.

    Earlier this month, three D.C. Circuit judges rejected President Trump’s claim that the doctrine of presidential immunity shielded him from Mr. Smith’s prosecution related to the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

    Mr. Smith had asked the Supreme Court to fast-track President Trump’s immunity appeal, but in December 2023, it declined, letting the D.C. Circuit tackle the issue first.

    The appeals court set up a tight timeline for President Trump to request the Supreme Court’s review before the district court continued its recently forestalled pre-trial proceedings. Initially scheduled for March 4, that trial is one of many that could interfere with President Trump’s campaign schedule and raise questions about the judiciary’s relationship with American democracy.

    The presidential immunity issue also raises questions about how presidents may contest election results, the threats they could face from future administrations, and whether the Constitution’s separation of powers precludes courts from weighing in on certain presidential actions before Congress.

    As President Trump noted to the Supreme Court, the case presents a novel question that could have enormous consequences for future executives.

    The “claim that presidents have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for their official acts presents a novel, complex, and momentous question that warrants careful consideration on appeal,” President Trump’s Feb. 12 brief to the Supreme Court said.

    The ‘Outer Perimeter’

    Presidential immunity from judicial review has been broadly upheld since Marbury v. Madison in 1803. Although the case established judicial review over executive branch decisions, Chief Justice John Marshall’s majority opinion criticized the idea that courts had jurisdiction over a president’s discretion.

    “The province of the court is, solely, to decide on the rights of individuals, not to inquire how the executive, or executive officers, perform duties in which they have a discretion,” he wrote.

    The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on Oct. 23, 1967. (L–R standing) Associate Justices Abe Fortas, Potter Stewart, Byron White, and Thurgood Marshall. (L–R seated) John Marshall Harlan II, Hugo Black, Chief Justice Earl Warren, William O. Douglas, and William J. Brennan Jr. ( -/AFP via Getty Images)

    Presidential immunity’s contours, however, are blurry in part because the Constitution doesn’t explicitly define the doctrine. Instead, a series of court decisions and DOJ opinions have interpreted the Constitution to provide a general outline of how presidents should be shielded from prosecution.

    President Trump’s brief cites two Supreme Court decisions—Mississippi v. Johnson and Nixon v. Fitzgerald—in which the judiciary used suits against former Presidents Andrew Johnson and Richard Nixon to define the limitations of judges in reviewing presidential actions.

    In Mississippi v. Johnson, the court denied Mississippi’s request to prevent President Johnson from enforcing the Reconstruction Acts because, the court said, it had “no jurisdiction of a bill to enjoin the President in the performance of his official duties.”

    The court also distinguished between ministerial duties, or a straightforward adherence to the law, and discretionary duties, which involve the president’s exercising his judgment as to how he should carry out responsibilities assigned by Congress. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase’s majority opinion quoted Chief Justice Marshall in describing meddling in the executive’s “prerogatives” as “an extravagance, so absurd and excessive.”

    Former Justice Lewis Powell went further in Nixon v. Fitzgerald by ruling that President Nixon had “absolute immunity” from civil liability related to “official acts” within the “outer perimeter” of his authority. How far that “outer perimeter” extends is the subject of debate. In this case, the Court ruled that that authority included dismissing a federal employee—A. Ernest Fitzgerald—who alleged unlawful retaliation for testimony he gave to Congress.

    President Richard Nixon (R) and Vice President Gerald Ford face each other in the Oval Office on the day Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

    That decision left open the question whether a president could face criminal charges, but it distinguished criminal and civil matters.

    The court said: “When judicial action is needed to serve broad public interests—as when the Court acts not in derogation of the separation of powers, but to maintain their proper balance … or to vindicate the public interest in an ongoing criminal prosecution … the exercise of jurisdiction has been held warranted.”

    Even that distinction, however, is under question with President Trump’s response to the 2020 election. The D.C. Circuit ruled in December 2023 that he wasn’t immune from civil lawsuits related to Jan. 6 because he had acted in his capacity as a presidential candidate, not exercising his official duties as president.

    In his criminal case, President Trump maintained that the DOJ was attempting to charge him for actions that fell within his “official” duties and that he therefore should receive immunity. President Trump’s attorney, D. John Sauer, attempted to convince the appellate court in January that the Constitution requires Congress to impeach and try a president for his official acts before he can be charged criminally in a court of law.

    Because the Senate already acquitted President Trump, Mr. Sauer argued, prosecuting him would violate the principle of double jeopardy.

    The appellate judges rejected those arguments and ruled: “For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant. But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution.”

    According to the judges, President Trump had misread Marbury v. Madison and the Constitution’s separation of powers. “Properly understood, the separation of powers doctrine may immunize lawful discretionary acts but does not bar the federal criminal prosecution of a former President for every official act,” the court said.

    In legal memos from 1973 and 2000, the Justice Department opposed indicting or criminally prosecuting a sitting president. Former special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated allegations of Russian collusion by then-candidate Trump’s campaign, cited the 1973 memo as a reason why he couldn’t indict President Trump. Those memos, however, don’t bind the Supreme Court in its determination of whether he can be indicted as a former president.

    Former President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference held at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Feb. 8, 2024. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

    Potential Supreme Court Rulings

    The Supreme Court generally has an array of options available when it decides cases, making its decision often difficult to predict.

    First, the justices will need to decide whether or not to grant President Trump’s requested stay, which could effectively prevent the district court trial from proceeding.

    In its Feb. 6 decision, the appellate court said it would withhold its mandate for the district court proceedings to continue if President Trump notified the court by Feb. 12 that he filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, which he did.

    Appellants generally can seek en banc review, or a separate hearing with the entire circuit, if they lose their initial appeal. The three appellate judges said President Trump’s request for an en banc hearing wouldn’t delay the district court’s proceedings unless his request was granted by the circuit.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/20/2024 – 20:20

  • Yemen's Houthis Now Have Drone Submarines, Likely From Iran
    Yemen’s Houthis Now Have Drone Submarines, Likely From Iran

    Yemen’s Iran-linked Houthis have already been deploying both aerial and sea drones (or boat/surface drones) against international vessels and warships in the Red Sea, alongside ballistic missiles. The last several days have seen direct hits on commercial tankers, as we’ve detailed. 

    But there are new reports the Houthis have yet another ‘toy’ in their arsenal, with help from Iran, and it has been used in attacks this past weekend: an unmanned submarine. “The U.S. conducted what it called self-defense strikes on five targets in the Houthi-controlled area of Yemen after the Houthis employed an unmanned submarine for the first time since attacks in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden began, the Pentagon said,” according to ABC, detailing events which happened Sunday.

    Underwater drone, via Iran’s Mehr News Agency

    So far, the US-led coalition has had to defend primarily against surface boat drones, which are easier to spot, but now the Houthis have something harder to detect in their ongoing war on Red Sea shipping in response to Israel’s war in Gaza.

    ABC News national security and defense analyst Mick Mulroy, who formerly worked at the CIA and the Pentagon, has described that the Houthis are escalating their efforts to strike a US warship.

    “The Houthis and the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] are adjusting their strategy, apparently because they haven’t been successful in striking a U.S. naval vessel,” Mulroy said. “If one or more of these weapons get through and kill U.S. sailors, Iran should expect to be held directly responsible.”

    “The Houthis are not likely capable of manufacturing these weapons on their own, so they are probably coming from Iran,” he explained, and went on to describe the Houthi strategy as seeking to “overwhelm the ship’s defenses” in a “swarm attack.”

    Thus it appears the Houthis are now capable of mounting more sophisticated, multi-dimensional attacks by air, water’s surface, and from under the water.

    It was only in December of last year that Iranian state media unveiled the domestic development of the country’s first underwater drone (UUV): 

    The homegrown UUV, also known as an underwater drone that can operate without a human occupant, was unveiled in an exhibition of the Iranian Navy’s achievements on Saturday.

    The underwater vehicle can discover and terminate various underwater mines by carrying a wide range of equipment. The Iranian UUV can go as deep as 200 meters with an endurance of 24 hours.

    Since the Persian Gulf is relatively shallow, it may contain a series of underwater mines laid at depths of 10 to 50 meters, which could cause serious damage to vessels as heavy as 250 tons.

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

    Recent reports from the region say that Iran’s navy has at least one spy ship operating in the Red Sea area. Previously US officials said the spy ship is likely assisting the Houthis with targeting information. 

    If these fresh reports that Tehran is supplying the Houthis with underwater drones are true, there’s a likelihood that the drones could be assisted from Iranian reconnaissance assets in the region.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/20/2024 – 20:00

  • Ozempic Users Slash Snack Buying At Supermarkets, Survey Finds
    Ozempic Users Slash Snack Buying At Supermarkets, Survey Finds

    America’s anti-obesity craze, courtesy of GLP-1-based weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro, produced by Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, continues to create anxiety among the food-industrial complex after a new study cited by Morgan Stanley shows households on the weight-loss drugs are spending less at the supermarket. 

    Market research provider Numerator’s new survey shows households using GLP-1 drugs decreased monthly supermarket spending by 6% to 9% versus non-GLP-1 households. 

    Many GLP-1 households increased purchases of fish, vegetables, and yogurt while sales of snacks, pastries, and ice cream fell. 

    MS noted the Numerator survey from January used data from more than 90,000 households, with 12.3% of households indicating they were on GLP-1 drugs, up from 11.4% in October. 

    The main driver of GLP-1 has been weight-loss treatment, and MS pointed out more and more consumers are paying out of pocket for the drug. 

    Last year, we asked if America’s anti-obesity craze courtesy of GLP-1 drugs would trigger a “food revolution.” And quickly, Wall Street analysts took notice by downgrading some junk food companies, such as Krispy Kreme, citing GLP-1 impacts. 

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

    Last August, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said shoppers who pick up appetite-suppressing medications at in-store pharmacies are spending less money on food:

    “We still expect food, consumables, and health and wellness primarily due to the popularity of some GLP-1 drugs to grow as a percent of total in the back half.” 

    And portion sizes at Thanksgiving 2023 were much smaller for the folks who could cough up $1,000 per month for the weight-loss drugs. 

    In a separate note, Bank of America analyst Geoff Meacham recently said weight loss will trigger a “wardrobe replacement cycle.” 

    Despite the decline in GLP-1 mentions on earnings calls… 

    Wall Street is still piling into Goldman’s GLP-1 Obesity drug basket to capitalize on slimming down Americans while trimming companies with potential downstream risks related to obesity drugs, as indicated by the Goldman Sachs Global HLC GLP Risk index. 

    Make America Skinny (again). 

    Hmm. 

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

    Maybe consumers should ditch vegetable oils.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/20/2024 – 19:45

  • Russia Appears To Comply With OPEC+ Production Pledge
    Russia Appears To Comply With OPEC+ Production Pledge

    By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

    Russia appears to have complied in January with its pledge to reduce crude oil exports by 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) this quarter, anonymous sources with knowledge of Russian energy ministry data, which is not public, have told Bloomberg.

    At the latest OPEC+ meeting at the end of November, Russia said it would deepen the export cut to 500,000 bpd in the first quarter of 2024 – with May and June 2023 being the reference export levels for the cut. The cut this quarter will consist of reductions in exports of 300,000 bpd of crude and 200,000 bpd of refined products.  

    In crude exports, Russia is estimated to have exported 4.59 million bpd both via tankers and pipelines last month. The decline from the May-June average, used as a baseline for the export cut, is equal to around 307,000 bpd, according to Bloomberg calculations and conversion of data in tons into barrels. 

    In seaborne crude shipments only, the four-week average of Russian exports was just over 3 million bpd in the four weeks to February 18, perfectly in line with the Russian pledge to reduce exports by 300,000 bpd, according to tanker-tracking data monitored by Bloomberg. 

    However, issues with sales to India as the West is tightening the sanctions enforcement could have dented Russian crude oil shipments more than Moscow originally intended.

    As many as 15 million barrels of Russia’s Sokol grade – initially for deliveries to India – are sitting on idle tankers off South Korea and Malaysia, per ship-tracking data Bloomberg analysts have compiled.

    Some of the tanker owners have been sanctioned by the U.S. after loading crude for India, while other cargoes are being held up by banks refusing payments due to either the price of oil exceeding the G7 price cap or a lack of clarity who the ultimate owner is, according to Indian officials who spoke to Bloomberg.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/20/2024 – 19:40

  • Watch-Dealer In Philly Rebuts 'Russian Oligarch' Label By Fake News Media After Buying Trump Sneakers
    Watch-Dealer In Philly Rebuts ‘Russian Oligarch’ Label By Fake News Media After Buying Trump Sneakers

    Legacy media, resembling a pack of demented wolves, quickly labeled an American immigrant from Ukraine, who had served in the US military, as a ‘Russian oligarch’ following his purchase of $9,000 “Never Surrender” sneakers signed by former President Trump at Philadelphia’s Sneaker Con on Saturday. 

    The Daily Mail falsely accused luxury watch dealer Roman Sharf of being a Trump-supporting “Russian oligarch” after buying the Never Surrender sneakers. 

    On Monday, Sharf went on the offensive against legacy media outlets who falsely called him a Russian oligarch. He said this on X: 

    The headlines say: “Russian Oligarch CEO spends 9000 dollars on a pair of sneakers to support Trump.” 

    Sounds catchy, but I came from Ukraine (back when it was still the Soviet Union) as a refugee with my dad. The man had 4 dollars in his pocket. 

    I busted my ass since I was 13 years old, worked every dirty job you can think of to get to a point where I can splurge on a $9000 pair of collectible sneakers, served in the US Military to shown my honor and gratitude for the opportunity to do so… 

    But I guess that headline would not have gotten clicks by saying “Russian Refugee,” or “Ukrainian Refugee,” or perhaps… just a man. 

    I wasn’t trying to make a political statement by buying the shoes, but still received a ton of messages saying, “You support Trump, therefore you lost a follower and client.” 

    Here, I thought clients bought watches from Luxury Bazaar, due to our 21 years in business and our personalized service. 

    What a confirmation of how divided this country is. 

    With that said—no mean tweet, comment on IG, or newspaper article will stop me from being a patriot of this great country. 

    This is great country that once took in a poor immigrant and gave me the opportunity to be where I am today. The country that stands to give us all a fighting chance. 

    I love this country, and I am proud to be an American. 

    You wanna hate me for wanting this country to be thriving and unified as one—go ahead and judge this sneakerhead for my politics. 

    But just know that no matter what, I do pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. 

    Thank you, and God bless America! 

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    This is yet another instance of legacy media spreading Russian misinformation and disinformation. They just can’t help themselves ahead of the presidential election. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/20/2024 – 19:20

  • Biden To Okay Year-Round Sales of Higher-Ethanol Gasoline From 2025
    Biden To Okay Year-Round Sales of Higher-Ethanol Gasoline From 2025

    By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

    The Biden Administration will soon allow year-round sales of E15, gasoline with higher ethanol content, but only from 2025, to avoid potential regional spikes in gas prices ahead of the presidential election in November, sources with knowledge of the talks have told Reuters.

    The Administration is prepared to approve by the end of March a request from Midwest governors – whose states are some of the battleground states in the presidential election – to allow year-round sales of E15, gasoline with 15% ethanol content.

    Currently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has an effective ban on E15 fuel sales for the summer season because it contributes to smog, but in 2022 the ban was lifted for the summer sales in an emergency waiver to lower prices at the pump.  

    Back in 2022, governors of Midwest states asked the EPA in a letter to issue a regulation applying to all fuel blends containing gasoline sold and supplied in Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. The governors urged the EPA to issue a permanent fix and allow the sale of E15 year-round annually.

    E15, or Unleaded 88, is a mix of regular gasoline and 15% ethanol, a plant-based fuel typically made from corn, and is cheaper for consumers, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers said at the time.

    Last month, the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association (IRFA) and seven additional Midwest renewable fuels groups asked the Biden Administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to finalize the Midwest Governors’ Year-Round E15 fix, which has now been delayed for a year and a half past the legal deadline, with the final rule sitting at the OMB for over a month.

    “Quick adoption of the rule will ensure that motorists do not face fewer options and higher prices at the pump this summer,” said IRFA Executive Director Monte Shaw.

    The Biden Administration is inclined to approve the year-round sale of E15, Reuters sources say, but only from 2025 onwards, due to concerns that potential issues in supply logistics this year could raise the risk of regional shortages and higher gas prices just before the November election.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/20/2024 – 19:00

  • Cybertruck Engineer Addresses Legacy Media's Claims About "Rusting" 
    Cybertruck Engineer Addresses Legacy Media’s Claims About “Rusting” 

    Lead Cybertruck engineer Wes Morrill addressed the surge in legacy news articles last week that claimed “Cybertrucks Are Rusting.” 

    • Barron’s: “Tesla Cybertrucks Are Rusting” 

    • Wired: “This Is Why Tesla’s Stainless Steel Cybertrucks May Be Rusting” 

    • CBS News: “Tesla Cybertruck owners complain their new vehicles are rusting” 

    “A lot of MSM coverage about rust. None show actual photos, usually a good indicator to question the accuracy. Side by side with a painted vehicle, this is surface contamination,” Morrill wrote on social media platform X. 

    He added: “Tesla SS actually has a PREN value (resistance to pitting corrosion) higher than 316L “marine grade.” 

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

    Legacy corporate media traditionally goes bananas over anything potentially negative for Tesla and or Elon Musk (remember this). 

    According to Bloomberg data, legacy media outlets published over 100 “Cybertruck Rust” articles in just a few short days last week. 

    “The MSM all copy each others articles, it’s not like they all found rust… it’s just a big propaganda machine,” one X user said. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/20/2024 – 18:40

  • Goldman Boosts Physical Uranium Trades Amid Soaring Prices
    Goldman Boosts Physical Uranium Trades Amid Soaring Prices

    By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

    Goldman Sachs, Macquarie, and some hedge funds have boosted physical trading and options trades in uranium amid soaring prices, as many countries look to increase nuclear power generation to meet their climate goals while reducing the need of fossil fuel imports.   

    Goldman has been increasing trade in physical uranium and has created a derivative of uranium trading by writing options on physical uranium for hedge funds, sources at hedge funds and the trading industry familiar with the deals have told Reuters.

    While investment banking giant Goldman Sachs is mostly doing business with hedge funds and other financial clients, Macquarie has been stepping up trading uranium output from miners, a source who has done business with both banks told Reuters.

    Uranium is in a bull market as many economies look to use more nuclear power generation in a renaissance for the technology after the energy crisis and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

    At the COP28 climate summit at the end of last year, the United States and 21 other countries pledged to triple nuclear energy capacities by 2050, saying incorporating more nuclear power in their energy mix is critical for achieving their net zero goals in the coming decades.   

    “The Declaration recognizes the key role of nuclear energy in achieving global net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and keeping the 1.5-degree Celsius goal within reach,” the U.S. Department of State said.

    As a result of the nuclear energy resurgence, uranium prices spiked early this year to a 16-year high after Kazatomprom—the largest uranium miner in the world—said in January that sulfuric acid shortages and construction delays at newly discovered deposits could lead to the company missing production targets—challenges that could remain into next year. 

    Uranium prices have doubled over the past year to over $100 per pound amid tighter supply, and Western miners seek to boost output.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 02/20/2024 – 18:20

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