Jan 24

Today’s News 24th January 2024

  • Conspiracy Theorists Were Right About Climate Lockdowns
    Conspiracy Theorists Were Right About Climate Lockdowns

    Authored by Bobbie Anne Flower Cox via The Brownstone Institute,

    Well folks, I really hate to say this, but it’s another win for the conspiracy theorists. They can take off their tinfoil hats and take a deep bow. Yet another one of their outrageous “predictions” is coming true. For anyone keeping score, sadly the score card is rather one-sided. I think the count is something like Conspiracy Theorists = 1,000,000 wins vs. Logic & Normalcy = 0 wins. Boy how I wish we could win some on the “Logic & Normalcy” scale!

    So, I acknowledge that I do have a rather dry sense of humor. I throw sarcasm in there a bunch. A couple of my friends tell me they cannot always tell when I’m being serious or if I’m joking. This makes me think that quite a few of you will be wondering, “Is she serious or is she joking with the title to her article?” To that I answer, I will tell you what I know, and then you decide. (You know how I love to promote critical thinking)…

    Last week, our unfortunate Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, issued a TRAVEL BAN for an entire county. You read that correctly. No, not a travel advisory, but a full on travel ban! Meaning, New Yorkers in Erie County were forbidden from going anywhere. What’s another name for that? Well, if you live in a rural or very suburban area (which most of New York State is), where driving on a road is the way you get from point A to point B, then I would say a synonym would be “lockdown.”

    And what was Dictator Hochul’s, I mean Governor Hochul’s, reason for this lockdown of close to one million New Yorkers that live in Erie County? Wait for it. Ready? It was going to SNOW! For anyone who does not live in New York, or who has never been to Western New York in the winter, that area of our state gets a lot of snow. Often. And yet, the governor thinks (all of a sudden, out of nowhere) everyone living there is so ignorant, they must be confined to their homes until she says it’s safe for them to rejoin the world again. Either that, or she’s just testing you to see how far she can take her totalitarian desires. Or both.

    For all the keyboard critics who love to jump in and twist my words, I’ll cut you off at the pass and say that I am not admonishing a governor’s desire to keep people safe in the wake of a storm. That’s not at all what I am saying. If a natural disaster is approaching, people should be warned, emergency services ready to roll, and help made readily available. Encourage people to stock up, stay home, and hunker down? For sure! Forbid people from leaving their homes? NO.

    There is a big difference between caring about New Yorkers’ safety, and wanting to control people. Huge.

    And in fact, Hochul was banning people from leaving their homes even if it was NOT snowing! Sound unbelievable? It sure does. But remember in my article last week, I cited an ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, who fittingly said, “The truth often evades being recognized due to its utter incredibility.” 

    Put another way, when something is so outrageous, it is often cast aside as untrue. Well, here’s what comrade Kathy posted on her Twitter:

    She went on to post several other times about the snow and her travel ban. I was actually encouraged to read that most of the comments she received were negative, logical rebuttals to her power grab.

    Here are a few…

    Ok, so digging a bit into travel bans, you’ll recognize that there have been travel bans based on big storms in the past here in New York. However, those are issued by the local government (i.e. County Executive), after a state of emergency is declared. They are not issued by the Governor, nor are they issued without an emergency declaration.

    Does anyone see the correlation here between government overreach, their quest for “centralized” power, and their fear-mongering? It’s the same thing the Governor and her DOH have been doing with their hideous “quarantine camp” regulation that I have been fighting in court for nearly two years now! The name of that case is Borrello v. Hochul, and you can read the details and case history here. Connecting the dots to the analysis at hand, you will note that the quarantine camp regulation tried to take the power from (elected) judges (in keeping with our law) who have the authority to temporarily quarantine sick, dangerous people, and shift that power to unelected, statewide, DOH employees and appointees who have zero accountability to We the People.

    Under their quarantine camp reg, the Governor and her DOH would have centralized control over 19 million New Yorkers, to force you to lock down in your home, or they could force you (with the use of police) to go to a quarantine center/ facility/ camp (pick your noun), without any proof you are sick, indefinitely, with no procedure by which you can regain your freedom, and with no declared state of emergency! The fear factor used to try to justify the authoritarian power grab here is the threat of death…If we don’t lock people up who are possibly exposed to a disease, then you might die. Swap out “possibly exposed to a disease” and put in its stead “unclean.” What does that make you think of?

    My next question: do you see any similarities here to Hochul’s probably illegal climate lockdown? 

    I say “probably illegal” because I couldn’t find the supposed legal authority that she’s relying upon to prohibit people from driving. If you know what she is relying upon, feel free to post it in the Substack comment section below.

    Before you draw your own final conclusion about all this, I will add one last thing for you to consider.

    In December, a month before Hochul issued this Erie County travel ban, the (Democrat) County Executive, Mark Poloncarz, set up an online portal so residents could check and see if they would be deemed “essential workers” and thus exempt from any futuristic travel bans. Oh, and he coordinated with their “partners” in the federal government to come up with the list!

    Sound familiar, folks?!

    Remember Governor Cuomo’s C19 lockdown (“Just 2 weeks to flatten the curve”), which lasted for months, and all the “essential workers” that he exempted? Here’s an article about Erie’s coincidentally-just-in-time-for-a-travel-ban portal, “Erie County’s new online portal will identify essential workers exempt from travel bans.”

    So… after taking in all that, is it 1,000,000 to 1… or is it 1,000,001 to 0?

    *  *  *

    Republished from the author’s Substack

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 23:40

  • Kari Lake Demands Resignation Of "Corrupt" GOP Chair Caught Trying To Bribe Her
    Kari Lake Demands Resignation Of “Corrupt” GOP Chair Caught Trying To Bribe Her

    Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake called on the state’s GOP chair Jeff DeWit to resign after a recording emerged of him trying to bribe Lake to stay out of politics for two years.

    In the recording, first reported by the Daily Mail, DeWit, 51, can be heard asking lake to name her price not to run.

    “There are very powerful people who want to keep you out,” he can be heard telling her in a conversation recorded last March.

    Jeff DeWit and his wife Marina with President Donald Trump.

    He then, after asking her not to mention the conversation to anyone, makes his first offer:

    “So the ask I got today from back east was: “Is there any companies out there or something that could just put her on the payroll to keep her out?“

    Lake is taken aback.

    “This is about defeating Trump and I think that’s a bad, bad thing for our country,” she replied.

    DeWit later framed it in a different way.

    “Just say, is there a number at which –

    “I can be bought?” Lake interjected. “That’s what it’s about?”

    “You can take a pause for a couple of years. You can go right back to what you’re doing,” DeWit replied.

    Lake repeatedly shuts him down, and says she wouldn’t pull out for a billion dollars.

    “This is not about money, it’s about our country,” she says (one her own recording, we’re guessing).

    Listen (via Collin Rugg):

     Following the report, Lake called on DeWit to resign.

    “He’s gotta resign. We can’t have somebody who is corrupt and compromised running the Republican Party,” she told an NBC reporter during Trump’s New Hampshire primary victory party.

    Just one question…

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

    What say you now Eric Garcia, senior Washington Correspondent of The Independent?

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

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 23:20

  • Oklahoma Bill Seeks To Criminalize Sexting Outside Of Marriage
    Oklahoma Bill Seeks To Criminalize Sexting Outside Of Marriage

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    It appears that Anthony Comstock is having something of a revival in Oklahoma. The founder of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice fought to criminalize the mailing of any obscene work, a broadly define category that included protected political speech. Now, a  bill not only contains an expansive definition of lewd material but would criminalize even the viewing “obscene materials” by unmarried individuals.

    Oklahoma Senate Bill 1976 would also make posing or exhibiting such images illegal. The law would define unlawful depictions as including “lewd exhibition of the uncovered genitals, buttocks, or, if such person is female, the breast, for the purpose of sexual stimulation of the viewer”; any depiction of “physical restraint such as binding or fettering in the context of sexual conduct”; and the undefined category “sadomasochistic abuse.”

    The range of that definition would cover not just porn but personal images sent between consenting adults. However, it is expressly not meant to “prevent spouses from sending images of a sexual nature to each other.” So what about consenting unmarried adults? They have a right to intimacy, privacy, and expression.

    Moreover,  it would be a crime to “buy, procure, view, or possess” any “obscene materials.” Thus, you could receive a lewd image from your lover and be criminally charged for viewing it?

    In a 2002 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against a provision of federal law that banned computer simulations and virtual pornography under the first amendment. In Ashcroft v. The Free Speech Coalition, Justice Kennedy in a 6-3 decision found that the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 was “overbroad” and swept within its prohibitions many valuable and artistic works.

    “Pictures of what appear to be a 17-year-old engaging in sexually explicit activity do not in every case contravene community standards . . . The (Act) also prohibits speech having serious redeeming value, proscribing the visual depiction of an idea — that of teenagers engaging in sexual activity — that is a fact of modern society and has been a theme in art and literature for centuries.”

    The bill is presumptively unconstitutional in my view, but the Court made an unholy mess of this area in its rulings on obscenity. That lunacy was summed up in the ridiculous statement of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in the case of Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964): “I shall not today attempt further to define [it] … But I know it when I see it.”

    As written, this bill is too vague and too broad to pass constitutional muster under existing precedent.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 23:00

  • US Gun Demand Hits Highest Level In Eight Months As Protection Needs Persist
    US Gun Demand Hits Highest Level In Eight Months As Protection Needs Persist

    Fears over the continued lawlessness in Democrat-run cities, President Biden’s southern border invasion, Democrats’ crusade in attempting to ban firearms, criminal gangs targeting neighborhoods nationwide, and, of course, mounting geopolitical risks with threats of major conflict, could be some of the reasons why Americans continue buying guns. 

    According to data from the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), unadjusted criminal background checks rose 2.9% to 2.73 million in December, the highest in about eight months. However, compared with a year ago, gun buying has slumped 10% from 3.04 million. 

    Seasonal NICS data shows gun-buying remains well above a two-decade average; an indication gun buying remains elevated in a dangerous world where threats of war linger abroad and domestic policies, such as social justice, have backfired in recent years, igniting a crime wave across liberal cities. 

    Recall that NICS data is a proxy for gun sales because there is no national database tracking firearm purchases. Also, a background check doesn’t necessarily mean a gun sale occurred. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 22:40

  • The Bitcoin Halving: Why This Time Could Be Different
    The Bitcoin Halving: Why This Time Could Be Different

    Authored by ‘Shinobi’ via BitcoinMagazine.com,

    The fourth Bitcoin halving is almost upon us, and this one has the potential for some very interesting surprises. This halving marks the reduction of the Bitcoin supply subsidy from 6.25 BTC every block to 3.125 BTC per block. These supply reductions occur every 210,000 blocks, or roughly every four years, as part of Bitcoin’s gradual, disinflationary approach to its final capped supply in circulation.

    The finite supply of 21 million coins is a, if not the, foundational characteristic of Bitcoin. This predictability of supply and inflation rate has been at the heart of what has driven demand and belief in bitcoin as a superior form of money. The regular supply halving is the mechanism by which that finite supply is ultimately enacted.

    The halvings over time are the driver behind one of the most fundamental shifts of Bitcoin incentives in the long term: the move from miners being funded by newly issued coins from the coinbase subsidy — the block reward — to being funded dominantly by the transaction fee revenue from users moving bitcoin on-chain.

    As Satoshi said in Section 6 (Incentives) of the whitepaper:

    “The incentive can also be funded with transaction fees. If the output value of a transaction is less than its input value, the difference is a transaction fee that is added to the incentive value of the block containing the transaction. Once a predetermined number of coins have entered circulation, the incentive can transition entirely to transaction fees and be completely inflation free.”

    Historically the halving has correlated with a massive appreciation in the price of bitcoin, offsetting the impact of the miners’ subsidy being cut in half. Miners’ bills are paid in fiat, meaning that if the price of bitcoin appreciates, resulting in a larger income in dollar terms for the lower amount of bitcoin earned per block, the negative impact on mining operation is cushioned.

    In light of the last market cycle, with not even a 4x appreciation from the prior all time high, the degree to which price appreciation will cushion miners from the effects of the halving is an assumption that might not consistently hold true. This coming halving, the inflation rate of bitcoin will drop for the first time below 1%. If the next market cycle plays out similarly to the previous one, with much lower upwards movement than seen historically, this halving could have a materially negative impact on existing miners.

    This makes the fee revenue miners can collect from transactions more important than ever, and it will continue to become more central to their sustainability from a business perspective as block height increases and successive halvings occur. Either fee revenue has to increase, or the price needs to appreciate at a minimum by 2x each halving in order to make up for the decrease in subsidy revenue. As bullish as most Bitcoiners can be, the notion that a doubling in price is guaranteed to happen every four years, in perpetuity, is a dubious assumption at best.

    Love them or hate them, BRC-20 tokens and Inscriptions have shifted the entire dynamic of the mempool, pushing fees from somewhere in the ballpark of 0.1-0.2 BTC per block prior to their existence, to the somewhat volatile average of 1-2 BTC as of late — regularly spiking far in excess of that.

    THE NEW FACTOR THIS TIME

    Ordinals present a very new incentive dynamic to the halving this go around that was not present at any prior halving in Bitcoin’s history. Rare sats. At the heart of Ordinals Theory is that satoshis from specific blocks can be tracked and “owned” based on its arbitrary interpretation of the transaction history of the blockchain, based on assuming specific amounts sent to specific outputs “send that sat” there. The other aspect of the theory is assigning rarity values to specific sats. Each block has a coinbase, thus producing an ordinal. But each block is different in importance to the scheme. Each normal block produces an “uncommon” sat, the first block of each difficulty adjustment produces a “rare” sat, and the first block of each halving cycle produces an “epic” sat.

    This halving will be the first one since the widespread adoption of Ordinal Theory by a subset of Bitcoin users. There has never been the production of an “epic” sat while there was material market demand for it from a large and developed ecosystem. The market demand for that specific sat could wind up being valued at absurd multiples of what the coinbase reward itself is valued at in terms of just fungible satoshis.

    The fact that a large market segment in the Bitcoin space would value that single coinbase drastically higher than any other creates an incentive for miners to fight over it by reorganizing the blockchain immediately after the halving. The only time such a thing has happened in history was during the very first halving, when the block reward decreased from 50 BTC to 25 BTC. Some miners continued trying to mine blocks rewarding 50 BTC in the coinbase after the supply cut, and gave up shortly after when the rest of the network ignored their efforts. This time around, the incentive to reorg isn’t based around ignoring the consensus rules and hoping people come along to your side, it’s fighting over who is allowed to mine a completely valid block because of the value collectors will ascribe to that single coinbase.

    There are no guarantees that such a reorg will actually occur, but there is a very large financial incentive for miners to do so. If it does occur, the length for which it will go on ultimately depends on how much that “epic” sat could be worth on the market to pay for the lost revenue from fighting over a single block rather than progressing the chain.

    Each halving in Bitcoin’s history has been a pivotal event people watch, but this go around it has the potential to be much more interesting than past halvings.

    HOW AN EPIC SAT BATTLE COULD PLAY OUT

    There are a few ways this could play out in my opinion.

    • The first and most obvious way is that nothing happens. For whatever reason, miners do not judge that the potential market value of the first “epic” sat mined since Ordinals adoption took off is worth the opportunity cost of wasting energy reorging the blockchain and foregoing the money they could make by simply mining the next block. If miners do not think the extra premium the ordinal can fetch is worth the cost of giving up moving on to the next block, they simply won’t do it.

    • The next possibility is a result of nuanced scales of economy. Imagine a larger scale mining operation can afford to risk more “lost blocks” engaging in a reorg fight over the “epic” sat. That larger miner with more capital to put on the table can afford to take a larger risk. In this scenario, we might see a few odd reorg attempts by larger miners with smaller operations not even trying, and essentially minimal disruption. This would play out if miners think there is some premium they can acquire for the ordinal, but not a massive premium worth serious disruption to the network.

    • The last scenario would be if a market develops bidding for the “epic” sat ahead of time, and miners can have a clear picture that the ordinal is valued massively above the market value of the fungible sat itself. In this case, miners may fight over that block for an extended period of time. The logic behind not reorging the blockchain is that you are losing money, you are not only forgoing the reward of just mining the next block, but you are also continuing to incur the cost of running your mining operations. In a situation where the market is publicly signaling how much the “epic” sat is worth, miners have a very clear idea of how long they can forgo moving onto the next block and still wind up with a net profit by attaining the post-halving coinbase reward with the ordinal. In this scenario the network could see substantial disruption until miners begin approaching the point of incurring a guaranteed loss even if they do successfully wind up mining this block without it being reorged.

    Regardless of which way things actually play out, this is going to be a factor to consider each halving going forward unless the demand and marketplace for ordinals dies off. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 22:20

  • Trudeau's Orwellian Attack On Canadian Truckers Declared Unconstitutional
    Trudeau’s Orwellian Attack On Canadian Truckers Declared Unconstitutional

    Canada’s Federal Court ruled on Tuesday that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act in 2022 to punish protesting truckers was both unreasonable and unconstitutional.

    “I have concluded that the decision to issue the Proclamation does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness — justification, transparency and intelligibility — and was not justified in relation to the relevant factual and legal constraints that were required to be taken into consideration,” wrote Justice Richard G. Mosley in his ruling.

    The decision follows an application for judicial review requested by the Canadian Constitution Foundation, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and various other applicants who cried foul over the use of emergency measures to quell Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa, which allowed the government to freeze the bank accounts of protesters,  conscript tow truck drivers, and arrest people for participating in assemblies deemed illegal by Trudeau’s government.

    According to Mosley, Trudeau’s regulations had violated Charter rights – particularly against freedom of thought, opinion and expression. The Emergencies Act order was also found to infringe on the right to security against unreasonable search and seizure.

    “It is declared that the decision to issue the Proclamation and the association Regulations and Order was unreasonable and ultra vires the Emergencies Act,” reads the ruling.

    “It is declared that the decision that the Regulations infringed section 2 (b) of the Charter and declared that the Order infringed section 8 of the Charter and that neither infringement was justified under section 1.”

    The Canadian Constitution Foundation had initiated the judicial review, expressing concerns over what they deemed as a severe example of government overreach and violations of civil liberties during the pandemic.

    “The Trudeau government’s use of this extraordinary law may be the most severe example of overreach and violations of civil liberties that was seen during the pandemic,” said Van Geyn at the time. 

    “The use of this powerful law was unauthorized because the legal threshold to use the law was not met. The Emergencies Act contains a last resort clause: it can only be used when there is a national emergency and there are no other laws at the federal, provincial and/or municipal levels which can address the situation. Parliament cannot use the Emergencies Act as a tool of convenience, as it did in this case.” –TNC.news

    The government plans to appeal the ruling.

    Things are going great for Trudeau, eh?

    Read the entire ruling below:

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 22:05

  • Utility Bill Debt For Americans Hits Record As Heating Homes Now Seen As Luxury
    Utility Bill Debt For Americans Hits Record As Heating Homes Now Seen As Luxury

    The Biden administration has whined for months about the public’s negative views on the economy, arguing that people are operating on “false perceptions influenced by right-wing media.”

    Most Americans have figured out that government officials and the corporate media have a habit of misrepresenting economic data to convince the public that the economy has never been better. 

    Last June, the White House unleashed a media campaign with corporate media to blast out the message that “Bidenomics” worked and the economy has never been better. But polling data from Real Clear Politics shows that despite the PR blitz, the president’s polling data went down. 

    People know when their wallets are hurting, and gaslighting them has not been effective. 

    Yet another data point released Tuesday supports the public’s position that the nation is less prosperous than the government would like us to believe.

    Bloomberg cites a new report from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association that reveals US household utility debt hit a record as an alarming number of Americans can no longer afford heating and cooling their homes. 

    NEADA said one out of every six ratepayers is behind on energy bills, adding residential utility debt hit a new record last year of $20.3 billion. 

    The group, representing state-level directors of low-income utility assistance programs, pointed out household heating costs have soared 20% since the start of Covid. 

    Folks in New York and Michigan have been impacted the most by soaring energy bills, the report said. As of Sept. 30, there were more than 7 million households on utility bill assistance. 

    Looking at the US CPI Northeast Urban Household Energy index, a basket of household fuels, such as propane, kerosene, and firewood, as well as electricity prices, remains near record highs. 

    Meanwhile, more than 60% of Americans reported that their wages were lagging well behind inflation.

    People are voting with their empty wallets – and are not thrilled with lies coming from the White House.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 22:00

  • Feds Spent $20 Billion On Migrant Refugee Assistance
    Feds Spent $20 Billion On Migrant Refugee Assistance

    By Adam Andrzejewski of OpenTheBooks substack

    The U.S. border patrol made 2.5 million migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2023, an all-time high.

    Congressional budget justification FY2022 and FY2023 (numbers in the thousands) for Refugee and Entrant Assistance, The Administration of Children and Families (ACF).

    There seems to be no end in sight, or meaningful plan from the Biden administration to stop or slow the number of people coming over the border. Meanwhile, federal funds flowing to migrants are growing at an exponential rate.

    Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com looked at just one federal office to get an idea of how much spending is going towards accommodating, transporting, and providing migrants with various other services.

    The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), a part of Health and Human Services, is a major vehicle for migrant-related spending. Congress appropriated $20 billion in just two years on “refugee and entrant assistance.”

    Background

    Last year, we published an oversight report on the unaccompanied children program run by the agency: up to 85,000 minors were lost after “sponsorship” with a “vetted” guardian. The New York Times found credible allegations of child labor law violations and congressional whistleblowers detailed large-scale child trafficking.

    Now, our investigation into the agency reveals new oversight: 1. billion-dollar spending spikes in the adult refugee programs; and 2. potential conflicts-of-interest between agency leadership and its largest grant recipients. In fact, for decades, agency director Robin Dunn Marcos was employed in executive positions by two non-profit organizations that are among the agency’s largest grantees.

    Here is a five minute interview describing the big issues in our reporting:

    $20 Billion For Refugee Care (2022-2023)

    Refugee and entrant assistance totaled a stunning $20 billion over the last two fiscal years. The costs rose from $8.925 billion (FY2022) to $10.928 billion (FY 2023).

    Across all programs, the Administration of Children and Families (ORR’s parent agency) received funding of $2.94 billion in Afghanistan Supplemental Appropriation and additional supplementals just in fiscal year FY2022 (P.L. 117-43 and P.L. 117-70). Ukrainian refugees cost taxpayers $900 million in FY2022 and $1.775 billion in FY2023 (P.L. 117-128 and P.L. 117-180).

    In its latest Congressional Budget Justification, the agency suggested expanding its mandate still further by providing more services to a broader range of applicants, advocating that:

    • “Special Immigrant Juvenile Minors” within the “Unaccompanied Refugee Minor” program access the same benefits as refugees, which include access to Medicaid and the same foster care services as American children.
    • Legal assistance to Ukrainian and Afghan children and other URM-designated youth to legal assistance ensuring permanent residency.
    • Cash assistance to full-time college or technical school students for refugees.
    • Removing the need for refugees to obtain economic self-sufficiency “as quickly as possible.”

    All aspects of programmatic activities—from who is eligible to how much is spent—is authorized by Congress.

    An Explosion In Funding For Refugee And Entrant Assistance Discretionary Grants

    The Refugee and Entrant Assistance Grants are just one of many refugee-focused programs offered by the Administration for Children and Families.

    These grants are intended to serve those with the following legal status: asylees, refugees, survivors of torture, victims of trafficking, special immigrant visa holders (such as those from the Afghanistan Operation Allies Welcome) and entrants from Cuba and Haiti.

    The grants cover a wide variety of programs, such as the Individual Development Accounts program, which helps eligible people save for asset purchases like a car or a house, and the Refugee Microenterprise Development program, which helps qualified people build credit through business and personal loans.

    From 2013-2023, ORR doled out over $1.5 billion in grants under the Discretionary Grants category. But much of this spending occurred in 2022 and 2023.

    Between 2021 and 2022 grant spending went from $33 million to over $400 million. In 2023 this spending was $615,601,449.

    The “Preferred Communities Program” within the Refugee and Entrant Assistance category accounted for over half of all spending for this category in 2022: $275,949,105. In 2023 that spending was up to $436,247,481.

    These funds were split between just seven organizations.

    A summary of the benefits of ORR’s Preferred Communities Program reads: “offers intensive case management to overcome barriers” to “extremely vulnerable individuals.”

    One grantee lists the program’s benefits:

    • Emergency housing support (if necessary)
    • Work authorization application
    • Public benefits application 
    • Medical screening 
    • School enrollment 
    • Referrals to employment programs
    • Cultural orientation 
    • Mental health referrals 
    • Legal assistance referrals

    New Director From Big Grantee Organization

    Robin Dunn Marcos joined the agency as director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement in September 2022 with a base salary of $180,000.

    Dunn Marcos came to ORR after eight years with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) rising to their Senior Director for Resettlement, Asylum, and Integration.

    Previously, Dunn Marcos served as executive director of the International Rescue Committee Phoenix branch for fifteen years, for a total of 23 years with the nonprofit. She spent four years at Church World Service between her IRC stints.

    Both IRC and Church World Service have been some of biggest recipients of Refugee and Entrant Assistance Discretionary Grants over the years.

    From FY 2013-2023 IRC received over $180 million in these grants from ORR, and Church World Service received nearly $125 million.

    Top 5 Refugee and Entrant Assistance Discretionary Grants Recipients 2013-2023

    IRC is a huge international nonprofit, collecting over $924 million in contributions and grants in 2020, according to tax documents.

    That same year IRC executive director David Miliband earned a salary of over $1 million. (Interns, however, are never paid.)

    IRC provides several services related to ORR’s mission. In 2020 the organization claimed to have served 45,000 individuals in the United States with food, shelter, English classes, and legal advice.

    In 2023, IRC received funding for the first time from ORR’s Unaccompanied Children program: $13,005,424 for “home studies and post-release services”

    But even before then, the nonprofit worked in some capacity with unaccompanied children.

    According to one article “IRC Los Angeles…[provides] assistance with school enrollment, acquiring state medical insurance, and obtaining pro bono legal services from local partner organizations.”

    As spending at ORR swelled to new heights, IRC benefitted handsomely. The organization received over $235 million in spending in FY 2023 compared to $22 million in FY 2021.

    When reached for comment, a spokesperson for ORR said:

    “Consistent with the Ethics Pledge, Robin Dunn Marcos is recused from participating in particular matters involving specific parties in which IRC is or represents a party. That recusal obligation lasts for two years from her date of appointment, which was September 11, 2022.”

    Our auditors filed a Freedom of Information Act request for emails between Dunn Marcos and IRC officials in May 2023. We have not yet received a response.

    In April 2023 Dunn Marcos came under fire during a Congressional hearing regarding the 85,000 children the agency placed that are now unreachable, as reported in the New York Times.

    During questioning Dunn Marcos said she did not believe the sponsor vetting system was inadequate and would not state whether the 85,000 number is accurate. She also did not know what the rejection rate of sponsorship applications is.

    In June 2023 the HHS released an audit of ORR to investigate these and other allegations. The HHS found ORR went “above and beyond” its statutory requirements, although stated ORR would launch several initiatives to “enhance ORR services and supports,” such as a new “Program Accountability Team.”

    By The Numbers

    As reported by the Administration for Children and Families in their Fiscal Year 2024 Budget Justification, the number of people entering the U.S. under the ORR’s purview has increased tremendously in 2022, particularly under the category “Cuban and Haitian entrants” and “Unaccompanied Children.”

    “Afghan Humanitarian Parolees” is a new category created after the U.S. ceded Afghanistan to the Taliban in 2021. 

    Haitian and Cuban migrants receive an array of nationality-specific ORR benefits, including cash assistance and health insurance similar to Medicaid.

    Critical Quote

    Roger Severino, former HHS director of the Office of Civil Rights, wrote in a recent report:

    “HHS and ORR have forgotten their original refugee-resettlement mission and instead have provided a panoply of free programs that incentivize people to come to the U.S. illegally.”

    Conclusion

    The Office of Refugee Resettlement is just one office in one agency, and this report focused primarily on just a few major grant programs within the office. The universe of taxpayer spending is so much larger, especially when including state and local funds as well.

    As funding, mandates, and the overall number of entrants—legal and illegal—increases dramatically, American citizens and lawmakers would be wise to examine the web of incentives between the agency, nonprofit contractors, and the individuals eligible for these programs.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 21:40

  • 2024: The Super Election Year
    2024: The Super Election Year

    According to the Anchor Change Election Cycle Tracker and additional research from Statista, 2024 is seeing national elections in more than 60 countries worldwide.

    Around 2 billion voters – approximately a quarter of the world’s population – are expected to be heading to the polls this year.

    As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, 2024 has been dubbed a super election year or even the biggest election year in history – aided by closely watched elections in populous countries like United States, Mexico, India and Indonesia, among others, that will be going ahead this year.

    Infographic: 2024: The Super Election Year | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Two widely reported elections have already happened in January. 

    Taiwan elected a new president, Lai Ching-te, but stuck with the party formerly in power, the center-left Democratic Progressive Party. 

    Bangladesh, where President Sheikh Hasina was reelected, was criticized for irregularities on election day and and the previous arrests of thousands of opposition members, leading to the conclusion that the elections were not free and fair. According to Anchor Change, only 38 percent of elections listed for 2024 carry this label. 75 percent are classified as free or partially free.

    The narrative-shapers of the world have proclaimed that some countries with upcoming elections are also at risk from misinformation and disminformation (the latter referring to the deliberate spreading of false information for political or other gain). The issue was voted the biggest threat for India out of 34 risks by a panel of more than 1,000 experts surveyed by the World Economic Forum.

    It was identified as the 6th biggest risk out of 34 in the U.S., and the 11th highest in Mexico and the U.K., where elections are scheduled for 2025 but would be brought forward to this year.

    Other elections are at risk altogether.

    In Burkina Faso, recent coups have called into question if the planned general election will go ahead.

    Parliamentary elections in Chad have already been rescheduled several times before the current date was set for October 2024. The accompanying presidential election would see the son of deceased President Idriss Deby Itno – who had come to power in a coup – face off against opponents.

    Mali’s presidential election is also on its second attempt and has again been postponed slightly. 

    While parliamentary elections didn’t place last year as planned, a new constitution passed via a referendum.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that he would not hold elections as admissible by martial law which the country has been under since the Russian invasion.

    Also going to the polls in a supranational election this summer are residents of the 27 European Union countries to pick a new European Parliament.

    A notable subnational election is taking place in Somaliland, a autonomous and relatively stable part of Somalia.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 21:20

  • California Landscapers Brace For Gas-Powered Lawn Equipment Ban
    California Landscapers Brace For Gas-Powered Lawn Equipment Ban

    Authored by Ethan Brown via RealClear Energy,

    For Jazz Montgomery, it was a new career path. After opening Heavenly’s Lawn Care in 2020, he built a four-person crew, offering residential lawn care, pruning, and yard maintenance to customers in Costa Mesa, California.

    “But ever since that stupid rule change…”

    Montgomery wasted no time in our phone conversation addressing the elephant in the room. On January 1, 2024, California Assembly Bill 1346 took effect, banning the sale of gas-powered leaf blowers, lawn mowers and other small off-road engines across the Golden State. These engines do present real concerns for air pollution, noise pollution, and climate change. But for a small growing business like Heavenly’s Lawn Care, the regulation has proved crushing.

    “I actually scaled down my crew,” Montgomery told me. “It used to be four of us. And then I scaled it down to two because I had to try to make up the cost to be able to get the equipment.”

    Heavenly’s Lawn Care isn’t alone. Per the California Air Resources Board’s own estimates, the cost of transition for professional users is expected to reach $1.29 billion. The state government only set aside $30 million to help cover transition costs. With nearly two million pieces of professional gas-powered equipment in use across the state, these funds amount to a mere $15 per piece of equipment.

    “What if one of us doesn’t get qualified for one of those programs?” said Montgomery. “That’s over $30,000, $40,000 [for an electric riding mower]. That’s coming out of our pockets. And there’s no work around.” 

    Moreover, according to the California Landscape Contractors Association (CLCA) website, zero emission technology is improving, but not yet able to handle the workload of a full workday. CLCA members report issues with short battery life, availability of extra batteries, and lack of sufficient resources to repair zero emission equipment. In Montgomery’s experience, using battery-powered equipment can sometimes take twice as long.

    But many environmental and public health advocates support regulations like California’s.

    “The push mowers and the handheld equipment are so egregiously polluting,” said Kirsten Schatz, Clean Air Advocate for CoPIRG Foundation. “Ultimately, we should just not have those on store shelves.”

    Working on air quality in Colorado last year, Schatz was surprised to learn that gas-powered lawn and garden equipment is a top contributor to the state’s major ozone problem, second only to the oil and gas industry. After diving into the issue, Schatz co-authored a report published in October which found operating a commercial lawn mower for just one hour produces as much ozone-forming pollution as driving 300 miles in a car. Worse yet, a commercial leaf blower emits as much ozone-forming pollution in an hour as driving 1,100 miles in a car — about the length of a trip from Los Angeles to Denver. Ground-level ozone is the main ingredient in smog, and has been shown to reduce lung function, worsen asthma, and even lead to premature death.

    In 2020, lawn and garden equipment in the U.S. also emitted more than 21,800 tons of fine particulates — equivalent to the pollution from 234 million typical cars. Short-term exposure to fine particulates can trigger cardiovascular events, hospitalization episodes, and mortality, while long-term chronic exposure can increase risk of strokes, coronary heart disease, and premature death.

    According to a 2016 American Thoracic Society (ATS) report, California and Los Angeles are the worst state and city in the nation for ozone and fine particulate health impacts, with 3,632 excess mortalities, 7,686 excess morbidities, and 6,741,955 adverse impact days across the Golden State annually due to these pollutants. If Los Angeles attained ATS recommendations for ozone and fine particulate concentrations, the city would avoid 1,341 deaths, 3,255 morbidities, and 2,892,029 impacted days each year.

    Tony Dutzik, Associate Director and Senior Policy Analyst at Frontier Group and a co-author on Schatz’s report, explained why lawn equipment spews such high quantities of these pollutants.

    “With two-stroke engines, in particular, incomplete combustion is a big issue. They are just not burning the fuel as efficiently or completely.”

    Two-stroke engines, favored in handheld equipment due to their light weight, are the worst polluters, especially as it pertains to fine particulates. Increasingly, lawn equipment manufacturers have opted for more efficient four-stroke engines, but these engines still lack the advanced emissions controls that reduce pollution from automobiles.

    “The emissions control technology that we enjoy on our vehicles and has helped reduce some emissions in the cars and trucks we drive is just too expensive and doesn’t make sense to put on handheld lawn tools,” said Schatz.

    These inefficiencies illuminate the large climate impact of gas-powered lawn equipment as well. In the United States, lawn and garden equipment powered by fossil fuels released more than 30 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2020 — more than the annual greenhouse gas emissions from the city of Los Angeles. Carbon dioxide is the primary driver of human-caused global warming.

    Critics of gas-powered lawn equipment have also voiced frustration with noise pollution. Dr. Erica Walker, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Brown University, performed an experiment in Lincoln, Massachusetts, measuring noise from two backpack leaf blowers and one hose vacuum at 0, 50, 100, 200, 400, and 800 feet away. The study, published by Environmental Toxicology in 2017, found that even at 800 feet away (nearly three football fields), sound from this equipment exceeded the World Health Organization’s outdoor daytime standard of 55 decibels.

    “The sounds did decrease the further we moved away from the leaf blower activity, but not by much,” recounted Walker. “It gave me profound appreciation for what people go through when that leaf blower activity is happening because it’s annoying.”

    Walker clarified that nuisance is not just an inconvenience, but a serious health concern.

    “That feeling of annoyance sets off a stress response in your body that’s very similar to the stress response you would have if you were walking down a dark alleyway, and out jumps a ferocious pitbull. It’s your body telling itself to either prepare to fight that threat or flee that threat. […] Consistent stimulation of that stress response can lead to increased risk for some pretty serious cardiovascular related illnesses like hypertension or cardiovascular related mortality.”

    In a community setting, Walker added that noise pollution contributes to disrupted sleep, mental health issues, and decreased quality of life. And for workers who use this equipment, Walker contended that hearing protections have been insufficient remedies.

    “The hearing protection doesn’t mitigate that vibrational component, which is a significant part of leaf blower activity.”

    The problems with gas-powered lawn equipment are grounded in science. But the path forward — particularly the viability of electric alternatives — remains up for debate.

    According to George Kinkead, President of Turfco Manufacturing — a small landscape equipment manufacturing company in Minnesota — the electric technology isn’t proven out for commercial use yet.

    “We’ve spent six figures developing an applicator that was run electrically, and it simply wouldn’t be up to our standards of what we’d sell to any customer. It doesn’t last long enough. There’s questions on reliability.”

    Kinkead also draws a distinction between smaller handheld equipment such as leaf blowers, and larger riding equipment that requires more power.

    “I think the technology on smaller stuff is more credible… but the stuff where you’re riding on it, and it’s doing applications, I don’t think they’re there yet,” said Kinkead. “Unfortunately, we all got kind of grouped in as a bunch of leaf blowers.”

    Kinkead shared that California’s new ban will prevent Turfco from selling equipment in the state at this time. However, he did express optimism that viable electric equipment is not far away.

    “I think we’re five years out before they have some credible solutions for people,” said Kinkead. “I’d feel a lot better if it was phased in, kind of like, percentages of your fleet, allow us to put prototypes out there. And then they run and then we find out what’s wrong. And then we bring in another batch.”

    Kinkead maintained that a more gradual phase-in would also help businesses set up infrastructure to charge their equipment, allow opportunity to purchase higher quality equipment that comes out a few years down the line, and alleviate unforeseen strains on California’s electric grid.

    Yet not everyone shares that perspective.

    “We can’t afford to wait,” said Dutzik. “Sitting around and waiting for the perfect technological gizmo to come out of the lab is not really how any of this tends to work. It works by getting good, beneficial equipment out there into the world as quickly as we can and learning from that experience.”

    Schatz agreed with that viewpoint. She discussed a variety of policy options beyond California’s ban that could accelerate a transition, including seasonal or geographical use restrictions, financial incentives to discount cleaner and quieter equipment, or vouchers for individuals or businesses who make the switch.

    Schatz and Dutzik’s report did acknowledge commercial users have different needs than homeowners, pointing out that homeowners may even save money in the long-run due to the change. However, even on the commercial side, they argued electric equipment was up to the task. As one example, Schatz pointed to Clean Air Lawn Care, a company with franchises nationwide offering lawn mowing and landscaping services with electric and biodiesel powered equipment.

    “The gap with gas has really closed within the last five years,” said Kelly Giard, CEO of Clean Air Lawn Care. “In terms of the operation, we use a solar system on our truck. […] We have two batteries per piece of equipment. One battery is used and the other one is getting charged on the solar as we move around during the day.”

    Giard acknowledged some downsides to the approach — some equipment such as gas-powered aerators can’t be replaced yet, and the battery-powered leaf blowers make fall cleanups take significantly longer. But he also recounted a variety of benefits, including no fuel expenses, healthier environments for employees, and fulfilling customers’ desire for cleaner, quieter lawn care.

    “You go down a street on a Tuesday afternoon in a residential neighborhood and you’re going to see all kinds of work trucks, and the neighbors pay attention to what’s going on. When they see somebody’s doing it quieter, cleaner, I think that’ll pique their interest, and the business doing it that way would benefit from the word of mouth.”

    Of course, most small businesses don’t have the capacity to immediately replicate Clean Air Lawn Care’s solar-powered generator setup. That’s why Giard says time and sensitivity are key in creating legislation.

    “We’re working with different people like Kirsten on legislation, and I think that these are small business owners and it needs to be sensitive to their [needs], giving them time to transition if they’re going to be asked to do that. I think time is the most critical thing.”

    Despite backlash from many landscaping professionals, California’s ban on the sale of gas-powered lawn equipment took effect on January 1, 2024. The ban only applies to new purchases; homeowners and businesses can continue using their gas-powered equipment until the end of its life.

    Kinkead told me that he’s all for change, but he worries about how aggressive policies like California’s could hamper aspiring entrepreneurs looking to enter the industry.

    “Landscaping could be a gateway for someone without a college education. [With] one truck, the guy could have a business. He could grow that business to five, ten trucks. It’s kind of a gateway to American prosperity. Whereas some of these technological changes all of a sudden cut that off. Now, only big companies can afford to do this. And it’s kind of unfortunate because in our industry, we see a lot of first generation immigrants. You know, they’ve gotten into this business, they’ve built a successful business, but they didn’t need a lot of capital to do that.”

    As for Heavenly’s Lawn Care, Montgomery anticipates that the coming months will be tough. But letting out an exasperated chuckle, he assured me that he’ll find a way forward.

    “One thing about being a lawn care tech is that you gotta adapt to every scenario, and we’ll adapt to it. It’s a pain in the butt, but we’ll adapt to it.”

    Ethan Brown is a Social Mobility Fellow for Young Voices with a B.A. in Environmental Analysis & Policy from Boston University. He is the creator and host of The Sweaty Penguin, an award-winning comedy climate program. Follow him on Twitter @ethanbrown5151

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 21:00

  • "Only A Matter Of Time" Before US Troops Are Killed In Iraq & Syria, Biden Officials Say
    “Only A Matter Of Time” Before US Troops Are Killed In Iraq & Syria, Biden Officials Say

    White House officials were cited in a New York Times piece describing that it’s “only a matter of time” before American troops are killed in Iraq or Syria as Iran-linked militant groups continue launching rockets and drones on US bases and positions. The report begins with this: “Another day, another barrage of rockets and another spark that American officials fear could set off a wildfire of violence across the Middle East”—and then transitions to the following astounding and frank admission:

    The latest attack on American troops in the region over the weekend resulted in no deaths, but President Biden and his advisers worry that it is only a matter of time. Whenever a report of a strike arrives at the White House Situation Room, officials wonder whether this will be the one that forces a more decisive retaliation and results in a broader regional war.

    Al Asad Air Base/US Army National Guard

    The report goes on the suggest that Iran could be hit hard in a direct US response in the scenario of American troops being killed. This would of course raise the likelihood of broader regional war, and an expanse of US intervention in the Middle East.

    Speaking of the internal Biden administration debate, the Times report says, “They (admin officials) do not want to let such attacks go without a response, but on the other hand do not want to go so far that the conflict would escalate into a full-fledged war, particularly by striking Iran directly.” However, “They privately say they may have no choice, however, if American troops are killed.”

    And then this surprise emphasis: “That is a red line that has not been crossed, but if the Iranian-backed militias ever have a day of better aim or better luck, it easily could be.”

    As of last weekend, international reports tallied that already at least 140 attacks have been launched on US troops in Iraq and Syria since the start of Israel’s Gaza offensive. Further this has included “nearly 70 U.S. personnel wounded, some of them suffering traumatic brain injuries”—but the majority of cases are considered minor.

    On the question of whether the White House might give the order to attack Iran directly, this is anything but clear give it would be unprecedented. So far both sides have been fighting via proxy, for example in the context of the Syria war.

    The US might instead choose to continue conducting airstrikes or major missile attacks on either locations in Iraq or Syria, targeting ‘pro-Iranian groups’, such as the Iraqi popular mobilization units.

    Regardless, as the developing crisis in the Red Sea demonstrates, at this point a mere tit-for-tat slow escalation scenario is unlikely to deter the ongoing attacks on US positions in Syria and Iraq. However, a tiny minority of Congressmen have pointed out that the problem won’t exist at all in Iraq and Syria if Washington brings the troops home.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 20:40

  • Appeals Court Denies Rehearing For Trump Gag Order
    Appeals Court Denies Rehearing For Trump Gag Order

    Authored by Catherine Yang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has denied former President Donald Trump’s request for a rehearing in the appeal of his federal gag order.

    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)

    A panel of three judges issued the order on Jan. 23. President Trump had also requested the appeal be heard by the whole bench of 11 judges, but that was also denied.

    “Upon consideration of appellant’s petition for panel rehearing filed on December 18, 2023, and the request for administrative stay, it is ORDERED that the petition be denied,” it reads.

    Prosecutors had argued against President Trump’s petition for a rehearing, stating it was “unwarranted” because he did not show the court erred.

    In the now-paused federal criminal case in which President Trump was charged for obstruction and conspiracy for his actions related to Jan. 6, 2021, he was gagged by a broad order that the appeals court later narrowed.

    Timeline

    On Oct. 17, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a gag order that prevented President Trump from making statements that would “target” several parties related to the case, including prosecutors and potential witnesses or the substance of their potential testimonies.

    The order came after prosecutors filed a motion to prohibit President Trump from making certain “inflammatory” statements about the case, which they argued could sway potential jurors to his side.

    The judge later briefly lifted the gag order when President Trump took the issue to the appeals court, only to reinstate it days later. She clarified in the subsequent order that the word “target” was meant to prevent both criticism or praise of potential witnesses, which may sway them in their testimony.

    On Nov. 3, the appeals court temporarily lifted the gag order, scheduling a hearing for Nov. 20.

    During the hearing, a panel of three judges pressed both sides to present a useful test for whether the defendant’s statements would cross a line and cause harm and received none.

    On Dec. 8, the court reinstated a narrowed gag order, finding that Judge Chutkan had erred in using the word “target,” which made the gag order too broad.

    Under the amended gag order, President Trump is prohibited from “making or directing others to make public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses concerning their potential participation in the investigation or in this criminal proceeding.”

    The new order would, for example, allow him to accuse the prosecutors of bias or allege they are politically motivated, which was unclear before, and name public figures in a campaign speech even if they may be related to his case.

    Threats?

    Three days after President Trump was indicted, he posted on Truth Social, “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!” Prosecutors took this to be a “public threat“ and made more than one request for a protective order regarding President Trump’s speech or use of social media.

    “Similar attacks continue to this day in other pending cases involving the defendant,” the prosecutors argued in opposition to President Trump’s petition for a rehearing.

    The defense team maintains that prosecutors have not shown any basis for a gag order on President Trump, who also happens to be the likely Republican Party nominee and faces a busy campaign schedule. They have argued that prosecutors have not produced threats linked to President Trump’s speech, nor any witness who has suffered intimidation due to President Trump’s speech.

    Prosecutors argued that special counsel Jack Smith, his family, his staff members, and trial witnesses have been targeted in President Trump’s speech and there is a “pattern stretching back years” which links his speech to harassment by his supporters.

    President Trump’s attorneys, meanwhile, argue that he cannot be held liable for the actions of third parties unknown to him, including many who are anonymous.

    Appeals court judges agreed in part, noting that public figures, including Mr. Smith, generally understand that public criticism comes with the office and a gag order should not be used just to shield them from criticism.

    The judges showed a concern for staffers who were not public figures, however, pointing to a New York gag order that prohibited President Trump from making any statements about a judge’s staff. The judge and clerk had produced hundreds of threatening voicemails they alleged were linked to President Trump’s speech, and that gag order had been upheld by a state appeals court.

    Referencing these threats, the federal appeals court found a gag order necessary, and kept much of it intact after altering the language to limit only speech directly related to the case.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 20:20

  • AP Calls New Hampshire Primary For Trump
    AP Calls New Hampshire Primary For Trump

    Update (2002ET): With just under 20% of the votes counted, the Associated Press has called the New Hampshire primary for Trump – who so far has 54.2% of the vote to Haley’s 44.8%. The former president is performing roughly in line with expectations, and the former UN Ambassador doing better than expected so far.

    0.6% of voters crossed their arms and voted for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis anyway, despite his dropping out of the race and endorsement of Trump.

    According to AP:

    The result was a setback for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who invested significant time and financial resources into winning the state. She was the last major challenger in the race after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ended his presidential bid over the weekend, allowing her to campaign as the sole alternative to Trump. Haley intensified her criticism of the former president, questioning his mental acuity and pitching herself as a unifying candidate who would usher in generational change.

    The appeals failed to resonate with enough voters. Trump can now boast of being the first Republican presidential candidate to win open races in Iowa and New Hampshire since both states began leading the election calendar in 1976, a striking sign of how rapidly Republicans have rallied around him to make him their nominee for the third consecutive time.

    Biden ‘insurgent’ rival and Bill Ackman pick Dean Phillips is garnering a shocking 20.4% vs. the sitting president, with thousands of write-in votes uncounted, Bloomberg reports.

    Phillips, a US representative from Minnesota, told Bloomberg News Monday that anything less than 80% for the president would signal weakness for Biden as he appears headed for a rematch with former President Donald Trump.

    Biden allies noted that the president didn’t campaign in the state, and that any win by a write-in candidate is extraordinary.

    And what’s this?

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

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

    *  *  *

    With record turnout expected in New Hampshire’s COP Primary, and despite the on-the-ground polls saying otherwise, the ‘uniparty’ and its establishment media puppets continue to push Haley as a potential spoiler of Trump’s triumphant return.

    One member of the Washington elite (thouhg he’d likely not appreciate that association) who won’t be supporting her is Senator Rand Paul who appeared on Tucker Carlson tonight to make his feelings clear.

    “…it’s one thing to find Nikki Haley distasteful, to acknowledge that she’s a bloodthirsty feminist harpy who should be nowhere near power. Most reasonable people have reached that conclusion. But to start a website: Never Nikki, suggests a level of anti-Nikki commitment that’s interesting and worth talking about,” Tucker Carlson says to Paul.

    His response pulled no punches:

    “Well nobody ever accused me of going halfway into anything. And it really, it gets to me at a very basic level, it gets to me when I see people who I think care more about the borders of Ukraine than they care about our own southern border.

    And I see these people every day because they’re the entire Democrat caucus up here. But they’re half of my caucus, half of my Republican caucus is, as we speak, ready to sell out. And they’re ready to sell out fake border reform in exchange for what they really want, which is to send more of your tax dollars to Ukraine. I think Nikki Haley fits right in that camp.

    I think she’s from the McConnell-Dick Cheney wing of the party. And this is the antithesis of everything I believe in. I’ve spent a few years trying to promote the ideals of liberty. There is a wing of the party that believes in that, and I wanted to make sure anybody that follows what I do knows that there’s no way, shape or form I could support Nikki Haley.”

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

    And we suspect Paul won’t have to worry for long. Following Trump’s convincing 30-point win in last week’s Iowa caucuses and Ron DeSantis’ decision to drop out of the race and endorse the former president, it looks like tonight’s Republican presidential primary in New Hampshire is Trump’s to lose.

    According to the latest polls (via RealClearPolitics), Trump holds over 55 percent support among likely GOP voters in the state, leading his closest competitor and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley by 1around 20 percentage points.

    Florida Gov. DeSantis stood at just 6 percent in the poll, which was conducted before he announced the end of his presidential bid on Sunday. Assuming that many of his supporters follow his endorsement and support Trump going forward, the former president’s lead could be even bigger than the latest poll indicates.

    As Statista’s Felix Richer notes, if the results from New Hampshire actually go Trump’s way, he would be the first non-incumbent Republican candidate to win in Iowa and New Hampshire, two states often considered crucial in the presidential primaries as they host the first contests in the nomination process.

    Winning in Iowa and/or New Hampshire can make or break a candidate’s momentum and many presidential bids have hit an early wall in either of the two states.

    As Statista shows in the chart below, the majority of Democratic and Republican candidates who won in Iowa and/or New Hampshire went on to win their party’s presidential ticket.

    Infographic: How Decisive Are Iowa and New Hampshire in the Primaries? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Since 1972, 9 out of 13 Democratic winners in the Iowa caucuses won the nomination, while 7 out of 12 Republican winners did the same.

    New Hampshire appears to be even more decisive in the race for the Republican candidacy, as 11 out of 13 Republican winners in the state’s primary elections won the nomination since 1972.

    Trump remains the strong favorite to win the Republican party nomination…

    For Democratic candidates, the New Hampshire results aren’t quite as important, with “just” 7 out of 13 winners ending up winning the Democratic nomination.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 20:03

  • Toyota Chairman Says Electric Cars Will Never Dominate Global Market
    Toyota Chairman Says Electric Cars Will Never Dominate Global Market

    Toyota’s chairman and former CEO, Akio Toyoda, is at it again: providing the public with a dose of reality that electric vehicles will never dominate the global car market.

    Toyoda, grandson of the founder of the world’s largest car manufacturer, expressed at a business event this month, as reported by The Telegraph, that EVs will never capture 30% of global market share. 

    Toyota President Akio Toyoda gestures at a briefing on electric vehicle battery strategies at the company’s showroom in Tokyo, on Dec. 14, 2021. (Behrouz Mehri/AFP via Getty Images)

    He explained that petrol-burning vehicles and hybrids, along with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, will dominate. 

    Toyoda made the point: How can EVs be the future when a billion people on Earth have no electricity? 

    Data from Statista shows nearly a billion people in the world are living without electricity.

    He noted: “Customers — not regulations or politics — should make that decision.” 

    Over the years, Toyota has openly demonstrated defiance against governments and NGOs pushing for 100% EVs in just a few decades, if not earlier. 

    In October, Toyoda told reporters at an auto show in Japan that EVs aren’t the silver bullet against the supposed ills of carbon emissions they’re often made out to be.

    Toyota has a history of being at the forefront of adopting new technologies. However, its slow EV adoption is because of its mistrust of lithium-ion batteries, and it has positioned itself to be a leader in hybrid vehicles.  

    Perhaps Toyoda has been vindicated to some extent as EV demand slumps. 

    In recent days, Ford announced plans to slash production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning in April “to achieve the optimal balance of production, sales growth and profitability.” 

    For those who purchased EVs during the Covid mania, the average price of a used Tesla has collapsed. 

    And used Tesla prices are likely to slide more as rental car company Hertz Global Holdings has decided to dump 20,000 EVs onto the already sliding used car market.  

    BloombergNEF data shows prices of EVs that were part of rental car fleets have also crashed. 

    Toyoda concluded: “Engines will surely remain.”

    Will Elon Musk respond to Toyoda’s comments?

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 20:00

  • In Early 2020, A Chinese Source Trusted By FBI Said COVID Leaked From Wuhan Lab, Sources Say
    In Early 2020, A Chinese Source Trusted By FBI Said COVID Leaked From Wuhan Lab, Sources Say

    Authored by Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag via Public subsatck,

    FBI’s entire 25-person Chinese intelligence squad knew of reliable human intelligence that SARS-CoV-2 Covid leaked from a lab…

    Over the last several months, Public has reported on a growing body of evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the Covid pandemic escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China. Last year, Public and Racket were the first to report that US government officials had identified that the first patients to become sick with Covid worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

    Now, Public has learned from multiple sources that the FBI knew since at least March 2020 that Covid was the result of a lab leak. A Chinese national from Wuhan, working as a confidential human source (CHS) for the FBI, told their handler at the FBI’s Chinese Intelligence Squad. The sources said it was probable that the whole squad of 25 people knew.

    “A person working at the Virology Institute lab in Wuhan, China was infected, left the building, and spread the virus outside the lab in Wuhan,” the CHS told the FBI, according to a source.

    “It didn’t have anything to do with the wet market or the bat soup story they were going with.”

    The sources asked Public to protect their identities and those of their colleagues. The sources say they are speaking up now out of concern over abuses of power within the FBI. They reached out to Public after seeing our story yesterday about how scientists, who Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) had in the past funded, sought to insert a furin cleavage site right where it exists on SARS-CoV-2.

    The sources added that the FBI trusted the CHS because the person’s information had been corroborated at least three times previously.

    “The CHS was from Wuhan, had been vetted, and the person had provided information on three prior occasions that they were able to corroborate as true and reliable.”

    Another source said the FBI had considered the information “good intel.”

    …

    Two sources said that the CIA may have been conflicted in investigating its origins because it didn’t want to compromise investigations of the Wuhan lab that predated the outbreak of Covid-19.

    “There was a clear lack of interest in a robust analysis of Chinese military connections to WIV research, connections between Chinese military and civilian research, and connections that could be drawn between US research and WIV activity,” the whistleblower said.

    Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe suggested that there could be additional reasons behind the CIA’s lack of disclosure about COVID’s origins. 

    …

    Fauci may have also tried to influence the FBI. 

    …

    ‘Public’ subscribers can read the full report here…

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 19:40

  • 21 Israeli Soldiers Killed In Single Deadliest Incident Since Gaza Offensive Began
    21 Israeli Soldiers Killed In Single Deadliest Incident Since Gaza Offensive Began

    Israel’s military has suffered its single deadliest incident of the Gaza war, which left twenty-one soldiers killed after they came under attack by (presumably) Hamas militants who fired a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) which triggered a bigger detonation.

    It happened Monday but what was made public Tuesday, resulting in the Israeli defense ministry raising the official death toll from the ground offensive to 219 (though some analysts believe the true figure could be much higher). According to Israeli media, “The buildings were being rigged for demolition by troops when Palestinian gunmen fired an RPG at a tank securing the forces.”

    Images source: Anadolu/IDF

    “A second blast then occurred in the buildings, possibly as a result of a second RPG, leading to their collapse,” The Times of Israel (TOI) continued.

    It happened very close to Israeli territory in northern Gaza. The IDF noted of the troops laying explosives to the building, “They were destroying structures and Hamas sites as part of the army’s efforts to establish a buffer zone to allow residents of Israeli border communities to return to their homes.”

    Initially two IDF soldiers standing ground level beside the tank were killed directly by the RPG fire, but the majority of soldiers were apparently killed when the larger explosions in the building were detonated and the entire structure came down. “Rescue forces described the scene as reminiscent of the aftermath of an earthquake,” TOI noted.

    Fighting across the Gaza Strip resulted in a total of 24 IDF troops deaths on Monday, which includes the building collapse incident. A separate attack incident saw three officers killed.

    Currently, the heaviest fighting is still focused on the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. Israel’s military says it has completely encircled the city, and its three hospital have been crowded with displaced Palestinians seeking shelter and safety.

    Some commentators say the IDF unit was rigging explosives to Palestinian homes when the RPG attack occurred, but it remains unclear what particular buildings detonated and collapsed…

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    Bodies are said to be piling up, and it appears that another siege situation is emerging, akin to what happened earlier in the conflict when hospitals in Gaza City become a focal point of fighting and ground operations. Palestinian sources were quoted in BBC as saying that “Israeli blockades and the storming of hospitals since Monday had left the wounded and dead beyond the reach of rescuers.”

    “The dead were being buried inside the grounds of Nasser hospital because it has been unsafe to leave in order to reach the cemetery,” the eyewitness accounts said.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 19:20

  • Public Education's Alarming New 4th 'R': Reversal Of Learning
    Public Education’s Alarming New 4th ‘R’: Reversal Of Learning

    Authored by Vince Bielski via RealClearInvestigations.com,

    Call it the big reset – downward – in public education.

    The alarming plunge in academic performance during the pandemic was met with a significant drop in grading and graduation standards to ease the pressure on students struggling with remote learning. The hope was that hundreds of billions of dollars of emergency federal aid would enable schools to reverse the learning loss and restore the standards.

    Four years later, the money is almost gone and students haven’t made up that lost academic ground, equaling more that a year of learning for disadvantaged kids. Driven by fears of a spike in dropout rates, especially among blacks and Latinos, many states and school districts are apparently leaving in place the lower standards that allow students to get good grades and graduate even though they have learned much less, particularly in math.

    It’s as if many of the nation’s 50 million public school students have fallen backwards to a time before rigorous standards and accountability mattered very much.

    “I’m getting concerned that, rather than continuing to do the hard work of addressing learning loss, schools will start to accept a new normal of lower standards,” said Amber Northern, who oversees research at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a group that advocates for academic rigor in schools.

    The question is—why did the windfall of federal funding do so little to help students catch up?

    Northern and other researchers, state officials and school leaders interviewed for this article say many districts, facing staffing shortages and a spike in absenteeism, didn’t have the bandwidth to take on the hard work of helping students recover. But other districts, including those that don’t take academic rigor and test scores very seriously, share in the blame. They didn’t see learning loss as a top priority to tackle. It was easier to spend the money on pay rises for staff and upgrading buildings.

    The learning loss debacle is the latest chapter in the decade-long decline in public schools. Achievement among black and Latino students on state tests was already dropping before COVID drove an exodus of families away from traditional public schools in search of a better education. Although by lowering standards and lifting the graduation rate districts have created the impression that they have bounced back, experts say that’s the wrong signal to send, creating complacency when urgency is needed.

    “There is a lot of fatigue among educators in looking at this issue and how to deal with it,” says Karyn Lewis, a research director at assessment group NWEA. “But if we just accept this as the new normal, it means accepting achievement gaps that have widened exponentially. That is what’s most concerning.” 

    The Depths of Learning Loss

    Test scores in 2022-23 resembled those of the 1970s, before the era of education accountability.

    The Nation’s Report Card/National Center for Education Statistics

    During COVID all types of students fell behind, partly because of chronic absenteeism of more than 25% that persisted even after they returned to in-person schooling. On average, students fell behind by the equivalent a half year’s worth of learning in math and a bit less in reading, while those in high poverty cities like St. Louis regressed three times that much, according to a joint Harvard-Stanford study. Reading scores in 2022-23 resembled those of the 1970s, before the era of school accountability.

    What’s even more worrisome is that students have not been recovering. NWEA has examined the test scores of 6.7 million students since the fall of 2020 when all schools resorted to remote learning. Researchers found that after an initial drop off in performance when compared to pre-pandemic scores, the pace of learning returned to normal in 2021-22. That seemed like good news. But then learning slowed again the next year. This means students have been losing more ground even after returning to classrooms, lacking the skills to keep up with a curriculum that keeps advancing.

    “It’s alarming to us that the academic growth in 2022-23 was actually more sluggish than the previous year,” said Lewis, co-author of the study.

    “The students are missing those building blocks in their skills that allow them to understand grade level content.”

    The consequences for students with learning loss could be serious, affecting everything from lifetime earnings to incarceration rates. In a paper co-authored by Harvard’s Thomas Kane, researchers estimate that K-12 students on average face a drop in lifetime earnings of almost 2 percent, totaling $900 billion.

    As learning declined, so did academic standards. More than 40 states eased requirements beginning with the class of 2020, according to a report in Education Week. Graduation tests and required courses were eliminated, and the number of credits needed to graduate was reduced. Schools also backed off on standard grading with credit-no credit scores, limits on low grades and more.

    “I had a high schooler during COVID who was told that she just needed to show up to class and turn in assignments that were less intense than before,” said Douglas Harris, a Tulane professor who focuses on the economics of education.

    Open-book tests “made it easy to get good grades,” he said. “It required almost no effort to pass classes.”

    A Gusher of Federal Funding

    COVID rescue spending may be the single largest investment ever in public education … 

    John Guccione www.advergroup.com

    The federal government’s COVID rescue spending made what may be the single largest investment ever in public education. The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds provided almost $190 billion to schools, starting in March 2020 and ending this September. That amounts to an average annual funding increase of about 6% for each school district over four years, according to University of Chicago researchers.

    … but that money is running out.

    ESSER FAQ’s (Page 3, Question 7)

    Researchers say the problem is that districts were given almost free rein in how they spent the money with little accountability. For example, the final batch of ESSER funding approved in March 2021 only required that at least 20 percent of the funds be spent on learning loss. That percentage, set by Democrats in Congress, seems remarkably low given that researchers had revealed five months earlier, in November 2020, that a significant learning deficit, particularly in math, had already set in nationwide.

    No one knows exactly how districts have been spending the money. State officials are supposed to oversee and report on their districts’ spending. But like other COVID spending programs that have been plagued by fraud and waste, ESSER reporting rules are vague. As many as 20 states either don’t know, or haven’t revealed, how their districts spent the money beyond the total amount deployed, says Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown’s Edunomics Lab.

    How much districts have deployed to address learning loss is also unclear, although they submitted plans to devote only about a quarter of the ESSER total to the problem, according to an analysis of 5,000 districts and charters by FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown. That’s about the same amount that they planned on spending on facility upgrades, from improving ventilation systems, a worthy repair during a pandemic, to new athletic fields and tracks, a low priority when students are falling behind in class.

    Roza says that while reversing learning loss is a priority in some districts, in others it isn’t. Some school leaders simply aren’t worried about plunging test scores of their students, reflecting today’s dismissive view of high academic standards and accountability.

    “It has become very fashionable to poo-poo state assessments and student outcomes as not being valuable,” Roza said.

    “Some districts might not even track how big a hit their students took. That’s the mood right now in some states.”

    In states that do report how their districts used the money, almost half of it went to staffing, making it the largest category of spending, Roza says. Many planned to hired new staff, including math and reading specialists, to help students catch up. They also planned to give salary increases and retention bonuses to existing teachers.

    Education Secretary Miguel Cardona called on districts to devote ESSER funding to pay raises for teachers to address staffing shortages in some parts of the country, a position also promoted by the National Education Association, the large teachers’ union that supports President Joe Biden’s re-election bid.

    “If districts are doing across the board pay rises, including for senior teachers, I don’t know if students suffering learning loss are getting much value out of that,” Roza said.

    Learning Loss Programs Flop

    “Our everyday learners are really suffering. I don’t know if they will ever catch up.”

    Andrea Piacquadio

    More concerning, experts say, is that many of the targeted efforts to address learning loss were ineffective. An assessment of districts in 10 states by CALDER, a group of education scholars at many universities, concluded that “recovery efforts often fell short of original expectations for program scale, intensity of treatment, and impact.”

    A widespread problem is that most of the programs have been voluntary and held after school or in summer. Although this approach is easier for schools because classroom space is available and the sessions don’t disrupt the daily schedule, the downside is that most kids who need extra help don’t show up, reflecting the continuing crisis in classroom absenteeism.

    Parents haven’t been much help. Most of them are not getting the message about the dive in test scores or just don’t care, according to a University of Southern California study. Parents focus on grades, and today’s inflated scores may give them the impression that their kids are doing fine and don’t need to attend recovery programs.

    The low turnout in Connecticut’s Waterbury School District, with many of its 19,000 students from low-income families, is typical of programs across the country. Only 551 high school students took part in the Waterbury summer learning program.

    “I consider this to be low,” says Tom Van Stone, a Waterbury school commissioner.

    “Our everyday learners are really suffering. I don’t know if they will ever catch up.”

    Intensive Tutoring Gets Results

    Experts favor “high-dosage tutoring,” if it’s part of the regular school day. Otherwise, it’s foiled by absenteeism.

    John Schnobrich

    It is possible for students to recover at least some of what they lost. Experts have rallied around small group tutoring, in which instructors can customize lessons to target their students’ deficits, as a very effective approach. But for it to work, tutoring must be integrated into the school day so it’s taken seriously and occur at least three times a week. Hence the name – “high-dosage tutoring.”

    A decade ago, public schools in Chicago, in collaboration with the University of Chicago Education Lab, rolled out high dosage tutoring for ninth grade math in 12 high schools. Some 2,000 students received small group tutoring in an elective class during the school day. Researchers found that they learned twice as much math over the course of a year compared with their peers who didn’t receive the extra help. The results were replicated the following year.

    “We saw really impressive gains,” said Monica Bhatt, senior research director at the university lab. “It was very heartening.”

    When the pandemic hit, the Chicago school district eagerly expanded the program to 200 schools and hire 800 tutors with the help of $50 million in ESSER funding.

    For high-dosage tutoring to be effective, administrators and teachers must be willing to put in the hard work to change business as usual. The daily schedule must be revamped to accommodate a fleet of newly hired tutors and find classrooms to add hundreds of tutoring sessions. Teachers and tutors have to coordinate instruction and track progress of students.

    Districts in Connecticut are making the effort, supported by $11.5 million in ESSER grants from the state. More than a third of the state’s 200 districts applied for funds to deploy high dosage tutoring, a sign that they will do what it takes to follow best practices, says Ajit Gopalakrishnan, chief performance officer at the state education department. If the program lifts math performance, then the state plans to support other districts in adopting the model.

    But so far, high dosage tutoring hasn’t caught on nationwide. In the wake of the pandemic, only 2 percent to 10 percent of students received it, said USC’s Amie Rapaport, adding that the number should be “significantly higher” given all the ESSER money districts received.

    University of Chicago researchers say some schools lack the will to make the big changes that the practice requires. Inertia is a powerful force.

    “When schools are faced with the possibility of change, they tend to do fewer of the hard things that will help students and more of the easier things that are likely to have fewer learning benefits for children,” wrote Chicago’s Jonathan Guryan and Jens Ludwig.

    A New Normal in Academic Standards

    Lowering the bar: Most states now offer flexibility for high school graduation. See interactive map.

    Education Week

    With students far behind, districts have opted to keep academic standards depressed in what some experts fear could become a lasting change.

    “COVID triggered the lowering of standards, but there have been other concerns like equity in education and mental health that make it hard for districts to go back to the pre-pandemic standards,” said Tulane’s Harris.

    Researchers are sussing out the new normal in academic standards by comparing grades with state test scores over time. Before the pandemic in Washington, grades in a variety of subjects rose a little, along with a corresponding general increase in test scores, according to a CALDER study. It makes sense that the two measures would move more or less in tandem. 

    But after the pandemic in 2021-22, they diverged. While grades were slightly elevated over pre-pandemic levels, test scores were well below them. That means students had learned much less but were getting better grades. Other studies, including one in North Carolina, reveal a similar divergence, suggesting that the grading bar remains low in many states.

    The high school graduation rate, a marker of a school’s performance, is even more startling. A falling rate is bad optics for district officials and a bad outcome for students. As with grades, the drop in test scores hasn’t harmed the graduation rate. In fact, it rose to an all-time high of nearly 88% in 2022, based on state reported figures from schools, says Harris, who will publish the finding in coming months.

    Districts treat the graduation rate as a balancing act between the need to maintain challenging standards and the desire keep poorer performers in school where they still can learn. Had administrators not lowered graduation requirements, Harris says, there would have been a “precipitous drop” in the rate.

    But lower standards may not be doing any favors to the at-risk students they are meant to help. To some degree, students’ performance will rise or decline based on the expectations set for them.

    In a recent study of ninth graders in North Carolina, lower performing students exposed to easier grading responded by showing less effort in school. They had an increase in absences but no boost in grade point average, despite the fact that the lenient policy automatically provided such a lift. On the other hand, top performers had no jump in absences and a higher GPA, widening the achievement gap between the two groups.

    It’s the opposite outcome that lowering standards is meant to achieve.

    “I worry about this. You want students to be challenged,” Harris said. “If schools keep going down this route, there is a point where it’s no longer helping.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 19:00

  • "Rural Renaissance": Venture Fund Plans New Community In Appalachia To Escape Soros-Enabled-Hellhole Cities
    “Rural Renaissance”: Venture Fund Plans New Community In Appalachia To Escape Soros-Enabled-Hellhole Cities

    A majority of Americans are fed up with imploding progressive metro areas transforming into violent crime hellholes because Soros-backed District Attorneys refuse to enforce common sense law and order. Americans are tired of radicals in the Biden administration who knowingly push for open southern borders. At the same time, tax-payer-funded non-governmental organizations facilitate the greatest invasion this nation has ever seen of unvetted individuals – some of whom are on the FBI’s Terror Watch List. The president’s collapsing polling data is a symptom the American people have rejected this mumbling, silent generation president who should be in a nursing home or on a La-Z-Boy recliner at his beach house in the elite-only beach town of Bethany.

    In recent years, the tyrannical overreach of government during Covid, BLM riots, and nationwide violent crime eruption, plus the 30-year fixed mortgage rate under 3%, unleashed the greatest-ever exodus of Americans from Demcorat-controlled states and metro areas for safer areas in red states. 

    The migration trends of the Covid period are still happening today, just less because of housing affordability woes. 

    However, an entirely new trend is emerging: a venture fund in rural Kentucky is building a new community for folks who want to escape all the chaos of progressive cities. 

    Called the “Highland Rim Project” (HRP), venture fund New Founding is developing “rural towns and communities nestled in the bucolic hills of the Eastern Highland Rim area of Tennessee and Kentucky.” 

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    HRP’s website stated, “Our nation is in the midst of a generational people movement to small towns and rural areas.” 

    “Remote work enables a revolution in where people live and how they organize themselves into communities. People are, especially since Covid, proactively seeking communities that align with their values and way of life. The knowledge economy worker can now work and live in a small town, uplifting areas that have struggled with economic depression for decades,” it pointed out.  

    The firm said HRP is a partnership with “business owners, pastors, and other community leaders.”

    Joshua Abbotoy, Managing Director of the New Founding organization, said the community’s leadership would be predominantly Protestant Christians. 

    “The whole point of it is to plant a flag and say this small town is where our people are gathering. And the question is: who is going to grab the land? Is it going to be good, based people who want to build something inspiring that’s culturally authentic to the region’s history? Or is it going to be Bill Gates and BlackRock and hippies from California?” Abbotoy said in a video. 

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    Leftist corporate media outlets called Abbotoy’s HRP a place for the ‘far-right community’. 

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    Abbotoy said on social media platform X that HRP has “struck a nerve” with corporate media. 

    He said the number of people signing up to be on a waiting list for HRP is “overwhelming.” 

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    How can progressive media be mad at HRP for wanting to build a “Rural Renaissance” for families when far-left Democrats build trash-covered ‘autonomous zones.’ 

    To sum up, Americans who are sick of progressives destroying cities and the nation should keep voting with their feet. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 18:55

  • Why Walmart Pays Its Truck Drivers 6 Figures
    Why Walmart Pays Its Truck Drivers 6 Figures

    By Rachel Premack of FreightWaves

    One Walmart truck driver says he has 15 years left of working, and he intends to spend them hauling loads for Walmart. “Barring a lottery win or marrying a sugar mama, I don’t see myself going anywhere,” said the Texas-based driver, who asked not to have his name included as he is not authorized to speak on behalf of the company.

    Such loyalty to a single company is unusual in trucking, an industry notorious for massive turnover. And the Texas trucker isn’t alone in his dedication to Walmart. One of the best jobs you can get in trucking is at Walmart. The uber-retailer says truck drivers can make up to $110,000 in their first year at the company. That’s twice the nationwide median pay of a truck driver, and certainly above the $17.50 an hour that the average Walmart associate earns. Home time, paid vacation and good health insurance are also guaranteed for Walmart company drivers. These offerings are elusive in the trucking world.

    It’s not out of the goodness of Walmart’s corporate heart that it pays truck drivers a truckload. Rather, truckers are key to Walmart’s retail dominance — and they have been from the start. Without a highly engaged trucking workforce, it’s not likely that the company would have flourished in the way it has. The Fortune 1 company prioritized supply chain long before it became a buzzword.

    “At Walmart, we believe in offering our drivers a competitive compensation package to attract the best drivers in the industry,” a Walmart spokesperson told FreightWaves in an emailed statement.  

    Walmart employs some 14,000 drivers, which makes it comparable to some of the largest for-hire fleets in the U.S. It’s added 5,800 drivers to the company in the past five years alone. 

    Recently, Walmart has shifted some of its strategies around recruiting those new drivers. In 2018, Walmart changed its truck driving recruitment program to allow more drivers to pass its program. A senior vice president at Walmart told Yahoo! Finance at the time it was because of a “shortage” of truck drivers. (Those who study the trucking industry dispute that such a shortage exists, concluding that drivers leave the industry for jobs with better pay and hours.)

    Last year, Walmart announced another key pivot. The company said in January 2023, building on a pilot it launched the year before, that it would allow Walmart associates living in participating locations to apply to a 12-week CDL program. For perhaps the first time, a Walmart company driver doesn’t need years of experience to get behind the wheel of its branded 18-wheelers. It may be that Walmart’s tack on trucking is changing. 

    Operating in the boondocks forced Walmart to become a distribution whiz

    Decades before Walmart became the biggest company in the world — raking in $611 billion in revenue last year — its leadership team couldn’t find anyone to haul freight to its first stores. Walmart operated mostly in the boondocks, far from where most trucking companies wanted to go.

    “We couldn’t find anybody who wanted to run their trucks 60 or 70 miles out of the way into these little towns where we were operating,” Don Sonderquist, an early Walmart executive, explained in an interview published in 1992. “We were totally ignored by the distributors and the jobbers. That’s not only how we came to build our own distribution system, it’s also how we got used to beating the heck out of everybody on prices.”

    This forced founder Sam Walton to build up his own network of suppliers, too. Walmart elected to work directly with the brands it sells in-store, which still allows the company unusual control over the minutiae of the products of some very large companies, according to journalist Charles Fishman, the author of the 2006 book “The Wal-Mart Effect.”

    Walmart employed 2.1 million associates, per its 2022 financial statement. It’s the largest private employer in the world. (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

    This hyperfocus on supply chain and distribution shaped key decisions from the top to the bottom of Walmart’s operations. That’s according to two people who have closely studied Walmart: Fishman and historian Nelson Lichtenstein, author of the 2006 book “Wal-Mart: The Face of Twenty-First-Century Capitalism” and professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

    When Walmart sought to open a new store, Fishman and Lichtenstein explained, it built the distribution center. Then, it built stores within a one-day drive of that distribution center. This might seem like an obvious strategy in 2024, but it was somewhat revolutionary in the mid-20th century. Kmart, for example, targeted the same blue-collar Americans that Walmart did. However, Kmart would simply plop stores into suburbs that had plenty of customers. Distribution was an afterthought.

    “Walmart has become the largest company in human history by doing something that was already being done, better than anyone else did it,” Fishman said. “Logistics and transportation is one of the things that made Walmart, Walmart, and allowed them to outcompete.”

    So … why is Walmart so obsessed with its truckers?

    Kroger, Home Depot, Target and the like all operate huge supply chains and obviously manage to get their shelves robustly stocked — without the front-and-center obsession on supply chain. Walmart’s supply chain, though, is different for a few key reasons. Professor Brian Gibson, executive director of the Center for Supply Chain Innovation at Auburn University, laid it out:

    • Walmart is just, well, bigger than any other retailer. It has 4,616 stores, compared to fewer than 2,000 for Target, around 2,200 for Home Depot and 2,750 for Kroger. Walmart also has a larger average square footage per store, too.
    • Walmart has a mix of grocery and general merchandise, which adds complexity to its trucking network.
    • As a result of its large, private fleet, Walmart has unusual clout among equipment manufacturers and other trucking service providers. It’s the type of status that’s usually reserved for companies that only do trucking.

    “Walmart’s mission is to save people money so they can live better,” the Walmart spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “Managing our own distribution and trucking networks helps us better serve our customer and manage costs.”

    The importance of distribution is perhaps incredibly obvious. If stuff is not on the shelves, customers aren’t going to be buying that stuff. Customers would ultimately buy less during that visit and, if they get fed up by a consistent lack of stuff, eventually not at all. The stuff has to be moved safely and on time across the country. If paying top dollar makes that happen, then it’s sensible for Walmart to agree to do that. 

    “They wanted to pay them good money because it was the absolute core of their, of their business — to get this stuff from the distribution center to the store at precisely the right time with no screw-ups,” Lichtenstein said. “That was crucial.”

    Paying truck drivers top dollar also makes sense because Walmart doesn’t employ that many of them. The company has about 14,000 truck drivers and 1.6 million associates. Each of those truck drivers holds a lot of power over the shopping experience of a Walmart store.

    “One associate here or there can have a positive impact, but it’s not going to change the economics of the store,” Fishman said. “A truck driver is going to really matter. They have an outsized impact on the way the company runs.”

    Paying six figures to 14,000 employees may seem reasonable enough for Walmart. “It’s not even 1% of their staff,” Fishman said. 

    Walmart is remodeling some of its trucker policies 

    Walmart is now changing its truck driver hiring policies. Until 2022, the company required 30 months of driver experience before one could be considered for the company driver role. That year, the company began piloting a program that allowed Walmart associates to go to a 12-week driver training program and become fleet drivers. Walmart expanded the program nationwide. (Outside applicants still need 30 months of training, and not every associate who applies is admitted to the program.)

    “We started the Associate-to-Driver program because we wanted to tap into our own talent pool of incredible associates and give them opportunity to develop their career,” the Walmart spokesperson said in a written statement. “It’s been a great opportunity for our associates to continue to grow their careers without having to leave the company.”

    The spokesperson said the company requires all trainees to pass the same skills assessment as external hires. Then, they’re partnered with a mentor for six weeks of continued training.

    It’s a sensible move for Walmart to train from within; its current CEO, Doug McMillon, started as an hourly associate. “I think it’s a recognition that [you value] your own employees better than somebody walking in off the street,” GIbson said.

    The truck driver shortage debate appears… again

    Some Walmart drivers aren’t delighted. 

    The Texas-based Walmart truck driver, who joined the company two years ago, said the retailer could attract more drivers by raising its pay. “Raise the driver’s pay and you’ll retain and attract [experienced drivers],” he said.

    Another Texas-based truck driver, who joined Walmart seven years ago, said he fears it’s a sign that Walmart is approaching trucking in the same way as large for-hire fleets, which see typical turnover rates around 94%.

    “Back in the day, you used to need a decade before you’re even looked at to get on with Walmart,” he said. (The driver asked not to have his name included as he is not authorized to speak on behalf of the company.)

    Both complaints get at the heart of an ongoing debate in the trucking industry: the so-called truck driver shortage. Trucking employers maintain that they’re unable to hire drivers due to a persistent shortage — caused largely by demographic issues and the lifestyle of trucking. However, researchers (and truck drivers themselves) disagree. Studies suggest the massive turnover seen by large fleets keeps them scrambling to hire new workers; one March 2019 study published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics concluded that “price signals” would lead to a more stable trucking workforce.

    A company, like Walmart, that pays six figures and offers good benefits should not struggle with turnover. On the other hand, Walmart needs to hire more drivers as the retailer expands operations and current truckers retire. Walmart has hired nearly 6,000 new drivers in the past five years. 

    Experts believe Walmart wants more control over training its truckers

    From the perspective of these supply chain experts, it doesn’t seem like the associate-to-driver program is necessarily a way to cut costs. Gibson said Walmart has been “very aggressive” in recruiting drivers in recent years. It may have simply tapped out of the current supply of drivers. 

    “I think this is just the latest in the evolution of the hiring process for Walmart,” Gibson said. “Going internal has been proven to be a good strategy by other organizations.”

    Many trucking fleets hire new drivers to save money on wages, but that might not be Walmart’s tactic here. (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

    What’s more, the associate-to-driver program could be a way to better mold the Walmart truck driver. 

    “You take somebody who’s been with another company, they’ve developed habits, they’ve developed styles, they know certain systems –  for the good and the bad,” Gibson said. “If they’ve developed any bad habits over time, you can train your new drivers the way you want, the way you need on your systems and try to focus on the skills, capabilities and safety issues that are directly of importance to your organization.”

    Fishman agreed. An associate-turned-driver might not bring years of trucking experience, but they certainly get Walmart. 

    “It’s possible in this wave of hiring that [outside trucking hires] are diluting this Walmart culture,” Fishman said. “Truck drivers are famously independent.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/23/2024 – 18:20

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Jan 23

Today’s News 23rd January 2024

  • The Globalists' New Weapon
    The Globalists’ New Weapon

    Authored by Robert Malone via The Brownstone Institute,

    On the heels of Davos (World Economic Forum) week, the MSM hysterical propaganda push from the globalists regarding “Disease X” is in full swing.

    Just take a gander at a few of the Corporate Mockingbird Media headlines…

    Almost every major news outlet in the world has run black propaganda pieces about Disease X. Why do I write black propaganda – because the “experts” aren’t actually named, the peer-reviewed papers supporting the thesis of “a deadly pathogen causing 20 times more deaths than COVID-19” or “killing 20 times more people than COVID-19” or “killing 50 million people” are non-existent. Yet these narratives are all headline news in mainstream media.

    This is just another exercise in globalized messaging to support the WHO (World Economic Forum) and WEF-pushed narrative that governments must pour billions into the largest transnational corporations in the world to “cure” a non-existent disease.

    What isn’t black propaganda but rather grey propaganda is that this fearporn is being pushed by the WEF and the WHO. WHO officials are most of the featured speakers and panelists on “Disease X” at the Davos meeting this week. From the WEF website:

    World leaders are set to discuss preparation for the next pandemic at the World Economic Forum in Davos… 

    Officials from across the globe will be heading to the annual meeting in Switzerland, with the risk posed by what’s known as Disease X one of the key items on the agenda.

    The meeting will address new warnings from the World Health Organisation (WHO) that the unidentified disease could kill 20 times more people than the coronavirus pandemic.

    The big push from the WHO and the WEF is that “Disease X” will be zoonotic. That money to surveil every speck of land in the world is the path forward to stopping “Disease X.” What a coincidence that the brand new CIA/intelligence agency designated to run the National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center to surveil pathogens intends to do just that. And that this happens to be intended to run in parallel with the CIA mission to surveil the world for other (nefarious?) purposes.

    According to the WHO, Disease X is all about One Health solutions. The World Health organization describes One Health as the following:

    Government officials, researchers and workers across sectors at the local, national, regional and global levels should implement joint responses to health threats. This includes developing shared databases and surveillance across different sectors, and identifying new solutions that address the root causes and links between risks and impacts.

    Basically One Health gives public health officials total control and surveillance across AI, the internet, agriculture, climate change, public health, medical systems, ecological sites, urban, and rural areas. It can encompass just about anything. It also values animal and plant life as equal to human life. The WHO goes on:

    investigating the impact of human activity on the environment and wildlife habitats, and how this drives disease threats. Critical areas include food production and distribution, urbanization and infrastructure development, international travel and trade, activities that lead to biodiversity loss and climate change, and those that put increased pressure on the natural resource base – all of which can lead to the emergence of zoonotic diseases.

    We have seen this playbook before…

    The International Journal of Arts of Social Science published the paper titled: “The World Economic Forum, “The Lancet,” and COVID-19 Knowledge Gatekeeping.” That paper is seminal in understanding just how corrupting the WEF as well as the WHO have become to scientific journals, scientists, universities, and media (fact-checkers).

    Abstract:

    The study investigated the links that the World Economic Forum has established with organizations and persons linked to the Lancet article titled Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19. Guided by the Gatekeeping Theory, appended by the Political Economy of Knowledge Theory, the study implemented an integrative literature review (textual synthesis). 

    Relevant online pieces of literature were sampled through a snowballing technique using the Google search engine platform to elucidate on the funding and ownership of the Lancet, and the 27 authors of the said article and their affiliations with higher learning institutions vis-à-vis their connections with the World Economic Forum to highlight their implications to gatekeeping and COVID-19 knowledge production in journal publications, particularly that of the Lancet.

    Results revealed that the WEF has penetrated all knowledge institutions that benefit from the natural COVID-19 virus origins hypothesis and the silencing of contrarian hypotheses, including the lab-leak narrative. A model of the WEF knowledge production complex against the lab-leak hypothesis was presented to visually represent the influence of the WEF on scientific journal gatekeeping in the context of the Lancet.

    This is the paper being discussed:

    The latter was the scientific paper that stopped the “spread” of “misinformation” that Cvoid-19 could have originated from a lab. This paper was crucial in shutting down “lab-leak” investigations at the WHO and in the US. In fact, the WHO Report published on February 2021 on the origins of the virus concluded that the lab-leak hypothesis was “Extremely unlikely.” They later scuttled a second investigation, because WHO officials claimed China was uncooperative – while never even admitting that the US may have had a significant role in both funding and directing the Wuhan laboratory research program.

    Back to that original 2020 Lancet paper, the 27 WEF affiliated authors included both Peter Daszak and Jeremy Farrar (Chief Scientist at the World Health Organization since 2023. He was previously the director of The Wellcome Trust from 2013 to 2023).

    From the 2020 Lancet paper:

    The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.

    What Brian Bantugan, the author of “The World Economic Forum, ‘The Lancet’, and COVID-19 Knowledge Gatekeeping” discovered is shocking. The publishers, the authors, the affiliated universities, the NGOs, and the funding sources – are almost all directly linked to the WEF. They all continued to suppress information about the lab leak through out the pandemic. He writes:

    Through content analysis, by way of a matrix of analysis, the study established the connections that exist between The Lancet and the WEF. The study argued through the Gatekeeping and Political Economy of Knowledge Production that the connections found between The Lancet and the WEF suggest likely collusion that led to the marginalization of the lab leak origin narrative as early as February 2020 and a network of disinformation within established but invisible networks of knowledge production.

    Furthermore, scientific journals used what is called “gatekeeping” to withhold information.

    According to author Brian Bantugan:

    The term “gatekeeping” was coined by Kurt Lewin to refer to a process of blocking “unwanted or useless things by using a gate” (communicationtheory.org, n.d., para. 2). The theory asserts that “(t)he Gatekeeper decides what information should move to group or individual and what information should not” (para. 3). According to Shoemaker and Vos (2009), gatekeeping is the “… process (that) determines not only which information is selected, but also what the content and nature of messages… will be” (para. 1). Initially, it was used to describe the process of news production in mass media involving “selecting, writing, editing, positioning, scheduling, repeating, and otherwise massaging information to become news” (Vos & Reese, 2009, in Omlette à la Chantal, 2021).

    First off, the Lancet is owned by Elsevier which is owned by the WEF partner RELX Group. This fact, by the way, is not transparent on the Lancet website.

    But it gets worse.

    Some examples of this effort were Elsevier Novel Coronavirus Information Center, Center, the Wiley COVID-19 Resources and News portal, the Springer Nature COVID-19 resources centre, and the Frontiers Coronoravirus Knowledge Hub (Matias-Guiu, 2020). Elsevier is owned by WEF partner RELX Group. John Wiley & Sons published Schwab‟s Stakeholder Capitalism (WEF, 2022). Springer Nature is owned by WEF partner Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. Frontiers was founded by WEF-affiliated Henry Markram (WEF, 2022).

    So, all of these publishers have direct ties to the WEF… and yet they have been the gatekeepers of what got published during Covid-19. Including publishing the original animal origins paper.

    <Of note, Frontiers in Pharmacology (founded by WEF-affiliated Henry Markram) was the publication that back-tracked on publishing any early treatment for Covid-19 studies. I was editor of the special edition for early treatment. When this happened, I and the other four senior editors all resigned.>

    But the paper goes on to document that almost all of the 27 Lancet authors and their universities have strong affiliations to the WEF. The details of those relations are laid in a series of tables, which can be found here. But the paper goes on:

    The fact that the authors of the controversial article in The Lancet are all quite involved with high- profile organizations like the UN-FAO, WHO, and the USAID reveals much about why they decided to support the actions that led to the immediate “conspiratorialization” of other hypotheses on the virus origins, and mass immunizations they heavily promoted not long after the lockdowns were in place all over the world.

    Assuming that the UN-FAO, WHO, and the USAID operate within a seamless system, embodied by the One Health approach they championed years before the pandemic happened, it would not be difficult to think that the editorial processes linked to and supported by their system will work towards their and the WEF’s benefit and advantage.

    The data show that the WEF is part of the micro and macro environments that shape editorial gatekeeping. There is a playing field biased towards their system and only ideas that promote their system will have a chance to be heard. That the lab-leak hypothesis is silenced is what the article of the 27 authors may have likely aimed to ensure. Figure 1 below shows the network supporting the natural origins hypothesis of COVID-19.

    Figure 1 below, based on the data above <tables found in the article>, shows the complex relationships on which the WEF has firmly established itself. Through the influence of the WHO and UN-FAO, WEF is not only shaping WEF- affiliated higher education institutions but also those that look up them as models.

    However, recent developments have shown that it is not only the Lancet that was rendered questionable by its decision to privilege the work of the 27 authors affiliated with WEF-linked universities, resulting in the marginalization of competing but equally valid theories on the origin of the Covid-19 virus, but also NatureMedicine (Campbell, 2022) which is also under an organization affiliated with the WEF.

    Clearly, gatekeeping in scientific journals is seen here as equally vulnerable to the influence of the political and economic elite, like the rest of mainstream and social media. Given that leaked and redacted documents linking Fauci to some of the authors in the controversial Lancet article have emerged (showing that some of the authors were communicating directly with him before the article was published) (Peak Prosperity, 2022), and the web of relationships in Figure 1, it is not surprising that the controversial article was released in no time. “Scientific” gatekeeping and “truth” -making seems to be favoring the interest of the WEF, above all

    Put together with the data in Tables 2 and 3, one can infer that the WEF has penetrated all the institutions that shape the minds of people, through their policies and programs.

    The top executive editors of the Lancet, its owners, and funding agencies aside, the WEF has undeniably positioned itself to influence future leaders, policymakers, and knowledge gatekeepers like the Lancet, especially those in prestigious schools that can only be accessed by the privileged and the wealthy. It is not difficult to think that the interest of the WEF would be top-of-mind among the students and graduates of such universities compared to the multitude who have no interest in the workings of the WEF at all.

    Right now, Disease X and One Health are being propagandized in the mainstream media as being the solution to save the world from a massive die-off` – this propaganda is being driven by the WEF in collaboration with the WHO. The EcoHealth Alliance is also at the forefront of the One Health initiative and has collected millions of dollars for their research projects into One Health. The Davos meeting is being used to prop up support for the WHO Pandemic treaty that removes national sovereignty over public health by promoting.

    The WEF and the WHO envision solutions to the imaginary “Disease X” that involve more loss of freedoms. They want control over food systems, more money, more censorship, more surveillance, control over the climate change agenda – all in the name of public health. But even worse, they want all this codified in a document that turns over national sovereignty to the WHO.

    The WEF and the WHO know that One Health and the pandemic agreement are their best pathways to more world control.

    Without ever consulting sovereign nations, the WHO has placed the global “rights in nature” movement on par or above humans. This is why the One Health model must be rejected.

    Listen below to The World Economic Forum’s 2024 Discussion “Preparing For Disease X” as Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, the WHO Director General, speaks about the Pandemic Agreement:

    To have better preparedness and to address disease X we have Pandemic Agreement. The Pandemic Agreement can bring all the experience and all the challenges we have faced all in one…This is a common global interest and very narrow national interest should not come in the way. Of course, national interest is natural but it is NARROW national interest that can be difficult and affecting the negotiations as we speak…

    Dr. Tedros, Davos 2024

    This is the face of the enemy.

    This particular embodiment of enemy comes in the form of the WEF and the WHO.

    They now control the buttons for the mainstream media, the fact-checkers, academic institutions, the publishers of the scientific journals, and heads of state.

    The list of who they own or have bought off is almost endless.

    The fight in front of us is vast. Now is not the time to give up.

    *  *  *

    Republished from the author’s Substack

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/22/2024 – 23:40

  • Visualizing Racial Diversity Across All US States
    Visualizing Racial Diversity Across All US States

    As of 2020, there was a 61.1% likelihood that two people chosen at random will be from different ethnicities in America.

    This number comes from the Census Bureau’s Diversity Index, which ranges from 0% to 100% per jurisdiction. A value closer to 0% means that a population is more homogenous, while 100% means that a population has more racial diversity.

    This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu and Dorothy Nuefeld, maps the most diverse states in the U.S., based on the most recently available data.

    Racial Diversity Across U.S. States

    Below, we rank states based on their Diversity Index score in 2020. Each score represents the probability that two people chosen at random will be of different racial or ethnic backgrounds:

    In Hawaii, the most diverse U.S. state, 44% of marriages are interracial. Overall, the Hawaiian population is 36.5% Asian, 21.5% white, 10.2% Native Hawaiian or Pacific, and 9.5% Latino or Hispanic.

    Meanwhile, California ranks as the second most-diverse state in the country. As the largest ethnic population in the state, Hispanics and Latinos make up 39.4% of residents, followed by 34.7% white, and 15.1% Asian.

    In terms of counties, the Aleutians East Borough in Alaska is the most diverse in the country. The least diverse state is Maine, and it also ranks as the oldest state in the country by median age.

    Diversity in America, meanwhile, has increased roughly 6% according to the Diversity Index since 2010.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/22/2024 – 23:20

  • Iran Mobilizes To Drive US Troops Out Of Iraq
    Iran Mobilizes To Drive US Troops Out Of Iraq

    Via Middle East Eye,

    When Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani arrived in New York City in September for the UN General Assembly, a delicate truce was in balance between the two foreign powers that loom over Baghdad. Iraqi paramilitaries, backed by Iran, had frozen their attacks on US troops in the country. Iraq’s new leader arrived in New York City amid the lull. He was feted on a circuit of swanky receptions with western businessmen and diplomats on the sidelines of the General Assembly, as he pitched Iraq’s oil-rich but corruption-riddled economy as an investment destination.

    Four months later, the Iraqi leader is condemning Iran and the US for launching deadly strikes in his country and his investment pitch to the global elite at Davos Switzerland is overshadowed by his call for the US military and its coalition partners to leave Iraq. Since the Hamas-led attacks on October 7 and the war in Gaza, Iranian-backed militias have launched at least 70 attacks on US forces in Iraq.

    Iraqi security forces deploy near the gate of the Green Zone in Baghdad, AFP.

    In early January, the US hit back with its most powerful response yet, launching a drone strike in Baghdad that killed Mushtaq Taleb al-Saidi, also known as Abu Taqwa, a senior commander in the Popular Mobilization Units, an umbrella organisation of Iraqi state-funded and Iran-aligned, Shia militias.

    Baghdad hit out at the strike as “a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty”. But no sooner was Iraq chastiszing the US for the strike, when Iran launched a barrage of ballistic missiles into the Iraqi city of Erbil, killing four people, including a prominent Kurdish real estate developer and his one-year-old daughter.

    Baghdad slammed Tehran’s allegation that the house struck in Erbil was an Israeli Mossad “spy center”. At Davos, Sudani called the strike “a clear act of aggression”. Iraq has recalled its ambassador to Tehran and says it will file a complaint at the UN Security Council.

    The dual rebukes of Iran and the US underscore the tightrope Baghdad is walking as the war in Gaza seeps out beyond the besieged Mediterranean enclave’s borders. Across the region, Tehran and Washington are flexing their muscles, vying to outflank each other in a deadly proxy war. The shadowy conflict has taken on different flavours that reflect local and geopolitical realities.

    In Lebanon, the US is trying to de-escalate fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, with both sides wary of being dragged into a wider conflict. Meanwhile, Iran-backed Houthi fighters in Yemen have made themselves targets of US air strikes as a response to their attacks on commercial shipping.

    But the conflict is perhaps at its most intense, and complex, in Iraq. “The Iraqi government is weak, divided and fundamentally can’t control conflict on its borders from foreign powers,” Renad Mansour, director of the Iraq Initiative at the Chatham House think-tank, told Middle East Eye.

    “It emerged as the playground of choice, where the US and Iran can fight it out. The risk of escalation here is lower for both. And they can show force and compete for influence.”

    Syria, through Iraq 

    For Iran and its Iraqi allies who dominate Baghdad’s government, the war in Gaza has presented an opportunity to drive home their goal of expelling the US from Iraq. A former senior US official and an Iraqi official told MEE that there has been increased coordination between Iranian-backed paramilitaries in Iraq and Lebanese Hezbollah with that aim. According to media reports, a top Hezbollah official, Mohammad Hussein al-Kawtharani, arrived in Baghdad earlier this month to oversee the operations.

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

    “Instead of attacking Israel, what we are seeing in Iraq are more attacks on US forces,” Andrew Tabler, a former Middle East director at the White House’s National Security Council, told MEE. The pressure building in Baghdad to expel US troops has been underlined by Sudani’s public calls for an exit since the assassination of Abu Taqwa. If he follows through, experts say it would present a strategic victory for Iran.

    Roughly 2,500 US troops are in Iraq to advise and train local forces as part of a coalition to defeat the Islamic State militant group. They are mainly based in Baghdad and northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region. The latter is especially important for providing logistical support to 900 US troops in northeastern Syria.

    The US’s legal justification for being in Syria is also based on its agreement with Baghdad. “Erbil is crucial for supporting Syria,” Tabler said, referring to the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region. “The US needs to have the ability to move troops and supplies on the overland route between the Iraqi frontier and Syria.”

    Speaking in Davos on Thursday, Sudani said that “ISIS is no longer a threat to the Iraqi people,” and that “the end of the international coalition mission is a necessity for the security and stability of Iraq”.

    The Biden administration and Baghdad were already negotiating the future of the US-led coalition in Iraq before the war in Gaza erupted, a former senior US official told MEE, but the war changed Washington’s approach to the talks. “It doesn’t look good to be discussing a drawdown when the Iranians are attacking US soldiers with missiles and drones. So there is a sense from the administration that we need to pause these talks.”

    While the US continues to conduct small-scale raids against IS cells in the region, Washington views its military footprint in northeast Syria as a key counterweight to Iran and Russia, which back the Bashar al-Assad government in Syria. “The US mission in northeast Syria depends on Iraq,” Joel Rayburn, a former US special envoy for Syria, told MEE.

    ‘Same foxhole’

    The US military presence in Iraq has ebbed and flowed since the invasion 20 years ago. In 2011, the US pulled all of its forces from Iraq, only for them to return in 2014 at the invitation of Baghdad to fight IS. But in that period, Shia paramilitaries backed by Iran emerged as the most powerful armed groups in Iraq. Trained and funded by Iran, the Popular Mobilisation Units also fought IS.

    Some groups, like Kata’ib Hezbollah, have been at the forefront of attacks on the US in Iraq. The group’s founder, Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, was killed in the same US strike that assassinated the Iranian commander, Qassem Soleimani.

    Via Fox News

    Today, the PMUs boast more than 150,000 fighters. They maintain vast patronage networks and many are incorporated into Iraq’s official state security apparatus, with the Iraqi government paying their salaries. They have been accused of kidnappings, assassinations and suppressing peaceful protests.

    The inability of successive Iraqi governments to rein in the sweeping powers of the PMUs has sown discord between Baghdad and Washington. Not only have US forces come under attack from the paramilitary groups, but Washington funds Iraq’s security system. In 2022, Iraq received $250m in military aid from the US.

    Despite sporadic outbursts of fighting between the paramilitaries and Iraq’s security services, “the cost of going against the militias for the Iraqi government is far higher than the cost of keeping them,” Abbas Kadhim, head of the Iraq Initiative at the Atlantic Council, told MEE. “For Washington, it’s an urgency because they are under attack, but it’s not a crisis for the Iraqi state. The militias are fighting in the same foxhole as the Iraqi government.”

    Pay raise for Iranian militias

    Sudani is supported by the Coordination Framework, a coalition of Tehran-backed Shia political parties that are tied to many of Iraq’s paramilitaries. While Sudani negotiated a six-month truce that saw attacks on US forces in Iraq stop, the PMUs have gained more influence under his rule, experts say.

    “Iran-backed militias have a more visible presence on Baghdad’s streets during Sudani’s tenure,” setting up new checkpoints, Michael Knights, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote, adding that they have also deepened their business activities.

    This year, Sudani’s government passed a three-year budget that allocated $700m more dollars to the PMUs, which will allow them to add almost 100,000 new fighters to their ranks, according to analysts. But current and former US and Iraqi officials say Baghdad wants to maintain good relations with Washington.

    Sudani has framed his call for quick exit of US-led coalition troops as necessary to preserve “constructive bilateral relations” with the US, which he told Reuters could include training and advising Iraqi security forces. His comments are a reflection of the unique ties Baghdad maintains to both Washington and Tehran.

    The dollar trap

    Iran and Iraq share a thousand-mile border.  The two Shia-majority countries have an estimated ten million border crossings annually, with many Iranian pilgrims visiting shrines in Karbala and Najaf. Iraq is the second most important destination for Iranian exports and is dependent on Iran for about 35 to 40 percent of its power needs.

    Iran has never shied away from flexing its economic weight over its neighbor. But Iraq’s finances are also intricately tied to the US.

    The second largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Iraq depends on its oil revenue to fund its government – including to pay the salaries of Iranian-backed paramilitaries. The proceeds from Iraq’s oil sales are deposited in the US Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

    A recent US crackdown on money laundering in Iraq has helped fuel a currency crisis in Iraq, showcasing the immense sway Washington has over Iraq’s finances because of its dependence on the dollar. The US has also backed Sudani’s appeal for international investments in Iraq.

    When Baghdad threatened to expel US-led coalition forces from Iraq after the 2020 assassination of Soleimani, the Trump administration threatened to cut Iraq’s access to its dollar reserves and stop issuing sanctions waivers for Iraq to buy Iranian energy, former US officials familiar with the talks told MEE.

    The same officials say that cudgel is an option the Biden administration retains if demands for a US exit grow, but some question whether the administration would use it, after trying to reset relations with Baghdad after the tumultuous Trump years. “The US can’t be expelled from Iraq if it doesn’t want to be,” Rayburn, the former US special envoy for Syria, told MEE.

    “If the US doesn’t have a military presence in Iraq, then the US need not do other things on behalf of the Iraqi government. Like facilitating dollar supply from the Federal Reserve, protecting against lawsuits, and issuing sanctions waivers,” he said.

    While Iranian-backed militias want to expel the US from Iraq, experts say even the most hardline groups like Kata’ib Hezbollah benefit from Iraq’s economic links to the West. “Even the most anti-American leaders in Iraq realize they need some kind of relationship with the US,” Mansour told MEE. “Iraq is a lifeline for Iran. Its access to US dollars and financial markets is key.”

    Kadhim, at the Atlantic Council, believes the focus among policymakers in Washington to merely protect US troop presence in Iraq is shortsighted. “Of course, Iran’s ideal goal is to get the US out of Iraq completely, but their practical goal is to make the US presence a liability,” which he says, the Iranians have already achieved.

    “Basically, you have a small number of US troops in Iraq sequestered to their barracks. They can’t even go to town,”   he said. “In the long run, someone is going to ask why are we here.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/22/2024 – 23:00

  • 6 Attorneys Allege DOJ Seeking Retribution Against Journalist For Recent Jan. 6 Coverage
    6 Attorneys Allege DOJ Seeking Retribution Against Journalist For Recent Jan. 6 Coverage

    Authored by Joseph Hanneman via The Epoch Times,

    Attorneys for a journalist threatened with prosecution for being at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, are challenging federal prosecutors to try his case outside the District of Columbia, suggesting prosecutors are seeking retribution for his recent reporting on possible Capitol Police perjury and the Jan. 6 pipe bombs.

    Six attorneys who said they volunteered to represent Stephen Baker of Raleigh, N.C., released a statement on Jan. 22 expressing belief that the DOJ is seeking even more serious Jan. 6 charges as retaliation.

    Mr. Baker, a former independent journalist, now writes for Blaze Media.

    “We now have information that Steve’s reporting has so agitated officials in multiple federal agencies that an effort is now underway to find a basis to charge Steve with more serious crimes and to use those more serious crimes as a pretext for early morning raids to execute search and arrest warrants on him and his family,” the statement read.

    “If this is true, and search and arrest warrants are used to drag Steve out of his house in the early morning hours someday soon, that will be evidence of retaliation against a journalist exercising his First Amendment rights to report information that is embarrassing to government officials.”

    The statement is signed by five well-known Jan. 6 defense attorneys: James Lee Bright, Brad Geyer, Phillip Linder, William Shipley, and Edward Tarpley Jr. It was also signed by Mr. Baker’s Raleigh-based attorney, Matthew Ceradini.

    Mr. Geyer and Mr. Shipley were federal prosecutors for more than two decades.

    “After not having indicted me for three years, it is clear that any move to do so now will be in retaliation for my reporting,” Mr. Baker wrote in a news release.

    “I will not be intimidated. I will continue to report the findings of my investigation into the evidence being made available to me to review,” he said.

    Questions Over Jurisdiction

    The attorneys challenged the DOJ to try any case against Mr. Baker in the eastern district of North Carolina where Mr. Baker lives, or the northern district of Texas, where his employer, Blaze Media, is located.

    “Are citizens of those two districts not suitable jurors in Steve’s case?” the statement asked.

    “Is the federal judiciary in those two districts not able to provide a fair and impartial trial?

    “On what basis does the United States Department of Justice believe the ‘United States’ can only get a fair trial in the District of Columbia and not one of those ‘United’ States?”

    The Epoch Times asked the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia for comment, but did not receive a response before press time.

    Mr. Baker’s most recent coverage identified the person who found one of the two pipe bombs on Jan. 6 as an undercover U.S. Capitol Police officer and not a “passerby.”

    Since October 2023, he wrote a series of stories that said events described under oath by two Capitol Police officers in the first Oath Keepers trial in 2022 could not have happened, based on Mr. Baker’s examination of security video.

    Mr. Geyer suggested that reporting should result in the Oath Keepers’ convictions being thrown out.

    Mr. Baker was one of dozens of journalists at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

    His video footage appeared in an HBO film and was licensed by the BBC, The New York Times, and The Epoch Times.

    Mr. Baker was first contacted by the FBI in July 2021 about his presence at the Capitol. He voluntarily sat down with FBI special agents in November 2021. He said he was told the DOJ was considering charging him with interstate racketeering because he received money from licensing his Jan. 6 video.

    In March 2023, he said he was warned by a high-profile journalist that his reporting was chafing some high-level DOJ officials.

    In August, he was served a subpoena for his Jan. 6 video.

    In December, the FBI told his attorney that his arrest was imminent, although that plan was subsequently delayed.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/22/2024 – 22:20

  • As China Stocks Crash, Beijing Proposes Multi-Trillion Market Rescue Package
    As China Stocks Crash, Beijing Proposes Multi-Trillion Market Rescue Package

    Earlier today, we lamented the latest implosion in Chinese markets, which we discussed in “China Stocks Crash Through ‘Snowball Derivatives’ Trigger Levels Overnight“, in which we pointed out the unprecedented failure of the centrally-planned market to halt its collapse be it through short selling bans, or even the latest impotent intervention by the “National Team”, China’s Plunge Protection Team, which today failed to spark even a modest rebound in the relentless selling which had triggered key liquidation levels.

    We then summarized just how badly Beijing had boxed itself, noting that “after short selling ban did nothing, China PPT stepped in… and couldn’t do jack. Beijing trapped.” We concluded that “either they watch liquidation cascade as snowball derivatives are knocked in sparking rout and leading to social unrest, or they stop talking and finally do something.”

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    Well, just a few hours later we were proven correct again, because shortly after China reopened on Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that according to “people familiar with the matter, asking not to be identified” – i.e., government sources eager to do a market test, China is considering a package of measures to stabilize the plummeting stock market, after earlier attempts to restore investor confidence fell short and prompted Premier Li Qiang to call for “forceful” steps.

    Specifically, Beijing is reportedly seeking to “mobilize” about 2 trillion yuan ($278 billion), mainly from the offshore accounts of Chinese state-owned enterprises, as part of a stabilization fund to buy shares onshore through the Hong Kong exchange link; it has also earmarked at least 300 billion yuan of local funds to invest in onshore shares through China Securities Finance Corp. or Central Huijin Investment Ltd.

    In other words, what was already a nationalized stock market is about to get even more nationalized, and instead of ad hoc interventions by the Plunge Protection Team, such market purchases by official state authorities will now become institutionalized.

    Or maybe not: after all, China isn’t actually doing anythjing. Yes, it is mulling stuff, just like it has been mulling a 1 trillion yuan fiscal stimulus and a 1 trillion yuan “special “bond stimulus. but nothing has actually happened yet, because Beijing is absolutely terrified of the market reaction if and when the country with the 300% debt/GDP stats layering on more trillions in debt. Alas, at this point that’s just a matter of time, because either Beijing keeps mulling stuff and does nothing as it watches it cities burn amid the recent surge in strikes and protests…

    … or it goes back to what it has been doing for the past 25 years, and floods the economy with new debt to boost contain the property crash, stabilize the economy and normalize the soaring youth unemployment. And since it really has no choice, it will be the latter… the only question is how much pain will Beijing suffer first before it capitulates.

    Anyway, going back to the official Bloomberg report, it notes that “officials are also weighing other options and may announce some of them as soon as this week if approved by the top leadership”, but again, “the plans are still subject to change.” And they will, because either stocks soar and don’t drop, thereby obviating the need for an actual rescue package, or they resume their plunge and China will be forced to do even more when it actually does something in the very near future.

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    In any case, the report of panicked deliberations underscores that just as we predicted earlier today, there is an “elevated level sense of urgency” among Chinese authorities to stem a selloff that sent the benchmark CSI 300 Index to a five-year low this week. Calming the nation’s retail investors – many of whom have also been bruised by the protracted property downturn – is also seen as key to maintaining social stability. And if there is anything Beijing fears more than anything in this world, it is 1 billion angry lower and middle-class Chinese heading toward Beijing, armed with torches and pitchforks.

    Which brings us to the next question: as even Bloomberg admits, it is unclear is these measure will be enough to end the rout is far from certain. We can help Bloomberg: it won’t be anywhere near enough, and indeed, after a modest bounce in the Shanghai Composite which pushed it in the red on the Bloomberg report, the index has once again slumped in the red, just as we said it would.

    We weren’t the only ones to unleash a gusher of cynicism in response to the news: others agreed as well that this is a disaster..

    Daisy Li, fund manager at EFG Asset Management HK.

    “The biggest question I have is how the SOEs will come up with 2 trillion yuan from their offshore accounts and why they will choose to invest onshore through the Hong Kong exchange link. We are in need of a white knight to boost some confidence, given how bad things have been.”

    Aninda Mitra, a macro and investment strategist at BNY Mellon

    “The stock market package is a welcome measure, and shows some responsiveness from the authorities. But at under 2% of its GDP, we fear this is still inadequate. This amount falls short of even the reduction in the market cap, from early December to now, of Chinese enterprises listed in the Hong Kong stock exchange. These measures also need to be twinned with longer-term reforms to boost confidence in broader corporate sector.”

    Michelle Lam, economist at SocGen’s HK Branch.

    “Larger stimulus aimed at turning around the economy is needed for a sustained rally. What I think is critical for us to see a turnaround in market confidence is a step-up in PBoC’s PSL to support project completion and urban village redevelopment and a decisive increase in fiscal deficit which partly support household income.”

    Rajeev De Mello, macro portfolio manager at GAMA

    “The boost to China’s markets from any rescue package will only lead to a short-term rebound as more fundamental changes are needed. Frequently, packages which target the stock market do have an effect but it can be very short-lived if not accompanied by more fundamental changes.Without more forceful economic and regulatory policy actions, it will not lead to the beginning of a bull market in China.”

    Alvin Tan, head of Asia FX strategy at RBC in Singapore

    “I am doubtful that the rebound in Chinese equities on the back of this rescue package news is sustainable so long as the fundamental growth trajectory doesn’t change”

    And now that the market has called Beijing’s bluff in less than an hour, the panic will be truly palpable and instead of just focusing on the market, China will now be bombarded on all sides by a relentless collapse: the property crisis, depressed consumer sentiment, tumbling foreign investment and diminished confidence among local businesses after years of volatile policymaking are exerting strong downward pressure on both the economy and financial markets.

    Which means China now has two options: pretend that the failed policies it has been doing (or pretending to do) so far has been successful, which it likely will until there is just too much blood on the streets, or it will finally capitulate and unleash the biggest fiscal stimulus ever seen in China: we are talking multiple trillions here, and in dollars not yuan, consequences be damned, because we are nearing the point of peak panic where Beijing will do anything at all to buy social order and stability for just a few more months. And once all those tens of trillions in Chinese deposits start fleeing, that’s when the real meltup in non-fiat assets – read gold, silver, crypto, fine art, wines, etc – will truly start.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/22/2024 – 22:09

  • Watch: Relatives Of Israeli Hostages Storm Parliament Demanding More Be Done
    Watch: Relatives Of Israeli Hostages Storm Parliament Demanding More Be Done

    Update: Israel has made a substantial proposal for a new ceasefire deal that includes multiple phases at the end of which all remaining hostages held in Gaza would be released.

    *  *  *

    Over 100 Israelis remain held in captivity in the Gaza Strip, but there have been no signs of any renewed hostage exchange deal on the horizon, leaving loved ones despondent over their fate. Arab media sources have blamed the Israeli government for the collapse of ceasefire negotiations, but talks have remained delicate and complicated, and have been on again off again.

    Lack of any clear plan or strategy to gain the release of the captives has continued causing deep anger within Israeli society, amid growing suspicions that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will keep the war going in part to ensure his own political survival. The protest movement led by the relatives, who feel that Israeli leadership just isn’t doing enough, has escalated as a group burst into a closed-door session of Knesset Monday in order to demand action. Watch:

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    The group of about 20 protesters were able plow forward past Knesset security staff to barge into a hearing of Knesset Finance Committee, and the incident was all caught on video and is being featured on Israeli media frontpages. One man was physically being held back by a security guard but still bulled forward.

    “You will not sit here while our children die,” the protesters yelled. “What about ransoming captives?” It reportedly took physical force for security to eventually remove them, and at least one protester required treatment by paramedics.

    While PM Netanyahu was not present at the session, the protest movement has escalated its tactics against him, having set up tents outside his residence to hold round-the-clock demonstrations.

    Of the some 250 people kidnapped on Oct.7 – 105 were freed back in November as a result of Qatari-mediated negotiations. Of the rest which remained in captivity, the Israeli miliary has since confirmed 31 have died or been executed. Three of these were killed in a tragic friendly fire incident which outraged Israeli society.

    More footage of Monday’s incident…

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    The protesters further accused lawmakers of playing politics with their family members’ lives. In many cases, the wait is all the more agonizing for family members given they have no proof of life from Hamas. 

    As fighting has intensified, especially in south Gaza’s Khan Younis, hopes have faded for a new substantial prisoner swap deal with Hamas. In November, hundreds of Palestinians were released from Israeli jails as part of the deal. There have since been rumors that the two warring sides were close to reaching another deal, but one hasn’t materialized. The ongoing Gaza operation and the question of long-term strategy has been an increasing source of tension and division in Israeli society.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/22/2024 – 22:00

  • The Real Story Of The Two Americas
    The Real Story Of The Two Americas

    Authored by Stephen Moore, op-ed via The Daily Caller,

    For the past thirty years or so the left has invented a narrative that there are two Americas.

    A group of very super-rich people (the one percenters) who have prospered over the past several decades, and everyone else who has gotten poorer.

    It’s a fairy tale narrative because almost all Americans have seen financial progress.

    The median household income adjusted for inflation rose by more than 40% since 1984.

    Prosperity isn’t an “us versus them” zero-sum game. A rising tide really does lift all boats.

    But there really are Two Americas today.

    First, there are the cultural and over-educated snobs – the kind of people who religiously read the New York Times, drive EVs, wear Harvard or Yale sweaters, and have never even heard of NASCAR or eaten at Popeyes or ridden a John Deere tractor.

    And then there is normal main street America. The snobs thumb their collective noses at the unrefined working-class Americans. The elites believe they are intellectually, culturally, and morally superior to the working class and rural America. You won’t see too many elites at a Trump rally with 30,000 people.

    A group I helped found, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, just published a study entitled “Them Vs. U.S.” examining how America’s cultural elites (defined as at least one postgraduate degree, $150,000+ annual income, high-density urban residence, and attended an Ivy League school) are hopelessly out of touch with ordinary Americans. Pollster Scott Rasmussen did the research.

    Here are some of the key jaw-dropping revelations from the survey:

    • Financial Well-being: Nearly three-quarters of the elites surveyed, believe they are better off now financially than they were when Joe Biden entered the White House. Less than 20% of ordinary Americans feel the same way.

    • Individual Freedom: Elites are three times more likely than all Americans to say there is too much individual freedom in the country. Astonishingly, almost half of the elites and almost six-of-ten ivy leaguers say there is too much freedom.

    • Climate Change: An astonishing 72% of the Elites – including 81% of the Elites who graduated from the top universities – favor banning gas cars. And majorities of elites would ban gas stoves, non-essential air travel, SUVs, and private air conditioning. That means no air travel with the kids to Disney World.

    • Education: Most elites think that teachers unions and school administrators should control the agenda of schools. Most mainstream Americans think that parents should make these decisions.

    Oh, and about three-quarters of these cultural elites are Biden supporters. Surprised?

    The Grand Canyon-sized divide between the elites in America and ordinary Americans is so profound that it is as if they live in two different countries.

    Silicon Valley, Manhattan, and Washington, D.C. have become bubbles that have lost contact with everyday Americans. This explains why the political class – which is a big part of the elite group – is confused by poll numbers showing that voters are feeling financially stressed out. The elites are doing fine, so they believe that everyone is prospering. I suspect that most don’t want radical change in the public schools because their kids attend blue-chip private schools. They are fine with abolishing SUVs because in big cities Americans generally don’t drive those cars – if they drive cars at all.

    Crime, illegal immigration, inflation, fentanyl, and factory closings aren’t keeping the elite up at night because in their cocoons they don’t encounter these problems on a daily basis the way so many Americans do today.

    Not too many main street Americans are losing sleep about climate change or LGBTQ issues.

    The elites in America tend to work in the “talking professions” – university professors, journalists, lawyers, actors, and lobbyists. They keep talking and normal Americans are more than ever not listening to them.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/22/2024 – 21:40

  • Lawmakers Push Funding To Replace The Ultra-Expensive Weapons Used In Yemen
    Lawmakers Push Funding To Replace The Ultra-Expensive Weapons Used In Yemen

    Via The Libertarian Institute,

    As the White House has started an open-ended and unauthorized war in Yemen, some members of Congress are pushing for legislation that would provide funding to replace the munitions dropped on the Middle East’s poorest nation. 

    Politico reports, “As American warships burn through expensive missiles against Houthi targets in the Red Sea and Yemen, lawmakers, lobbyists, and the Navy are angling to use a multibillion-dollar national security supplemental to replenish the military’s inventory of munitions.”

    And the real winners of the expanding conflict are…

    In November, the Houthis announced that Yemeni forces would target Israeli-linked shipping in the Red Sea until Tel Aviv ends its military campaign in Gaza. Two weeks ago, President Joe Biden, without consulting Congress, authorized strikes on the Houthis. 

    In response, the Houthis began targeting American-linked shipping transiting the region. The White House is ordering attacks on Yemen nearly every day. However, the White House claims it is not at war with Yemen, and it does not need Congressional authorization for the operations. 

    Biden’s war in Yemen could drag on for some time. US officials told the Washington Post the administration has “no end date” and “little exit strategy” for its military operations in Yemen. President Biden has admitted that the strikes are not deterring the Houthi attacks. 

    Additionally, the US operations against Yemen are expensive. Washington has combated drone and missile attacks from Yemen on ships in the Red Sea by using expensive interceptors to down the inexpensive Houthi munitions. The White House has largely relied on ship-fired Tomahawks to hit targets in Yemen. Some lawmakers worry the operations against the Houthis will impact Wasington’s ability to dominate the globe. 

    Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said fighting in Yemen means Congress needs to add further spending for munitions to a supplemental military funding package. “As I’ve warned for weeks, using million-dollar missiles to defend against thousand-dollar drones strains an already insufficient inventory of long-range capabilities,” he added. “The supplemental is our chance to expand our capacity to meet the national security challenges we face.”

    Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) argued that additional missiles are needed to confront China. “We’re looking — one of the parts of the supplemental is to make sure we have the rounds we need, whether it’s [the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile] or possibly things like [the] Tomahawk that we have for the Western Pacific.” He continues, “And that is a capability we would need if we ever got in a conflict with China.”

    Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) said “a big plus up” in munitions funding is imperative for Tomahawks, Naval Strike Missiles, and Harpoons. He also explained that the weapons are needed for global dominance. “And those kinds of weapons systems are critical everywhere, Taiwan in particular,” the Senator said. 

    Politico notes that Pentagon officials and lobbyists for arms makers are also pushing for increased funding for munitions production in a supplemental defense spending bill.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/22/2024 – 21:00

  • Harvard Teaching Hospital To Retract Papers As Falsified Data Scandal Unfolds
    Harvard Teaching Hospital To Retract Papers As Falsified Data Scandal Unfolds

    Weeks after Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned amid a plagiarism scandal, the university’s teaching hospital is set to retract or correct dozens of papers authored by four of their top researchers, following claims of data falsification.

    Dana–Farber Cancer Institute CEO Laurie Glimcher, one of several people whose work is under fire.

    Six papers have already been selected for retraction, and 31 others are in the process of being corrected by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, according to the Harvard Crimson, citing the hospital’s research integrity officer, Dr. Barrett Rollins.

    The corrections come amid claims of data manipulation against DFCI President and CEO Laurie H. Glimcher ’72, Executive Vice President and COO William C. Hahn ’87, Senior Vice President for Experimental Medicine Irene M. Ghobrial, and Harvard Medical School professor Kenneth C. Anderson. The allegations of misconduct were first compiled and publicized in a Jan. 2 blog post by data sleuth Sholto David.

    In the statement, Rollins wrote that David contacted DFCI with allegations of data manipulation in 57 manuscripts. According to Rollins, 38 were articles in which DFCI researchers “have primary responsibility for the potential data errors.”

    Four of the researchers at the Dana-Faber center have faculty appointments with the Harvard Medical School.

    The data manipulation claims came to light after investigator Sholto David published a blog post several weeks ago alleging irregularities among 57 papers. He had previously alleged “data forgery” – which included discrepancies in images consisting of duplications of blots, bands and plots, according to the report.

    David, who holds a doctoral degree in biology from Newcastle University, alleged that three papers authored by Glimcher, 12 by Hahn, 10 by Ghobrial, and 16 by Anderson contained “data forgery,” including five co-authored by both Anderson and Ghobrial. As is typical for scientific research, all of the papers referenced by David have several co-authors, though his post focused on the four DFCI researchers.

    The papers, published between 1999 and 2017, most commonly have duplications of blots, bands, and plots within images, David alleged. In a Saturday interview, David said he used a combination of artificial intelligence image analysis software ImageTwin and manual detection to look for errors in the papers. -Harvard Crimson.

    In short, AI is going to absolutely wreck a lot of ivory tower copycats…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/22/2024 – 20:40

  • Journalist Who Attacked Top Tennis Player For Refusing COVID Vaccine Dies Suddenly
    Journalist Who Attacked Top Tennis Player For Refusing COVID Vaccine Dies Suddenly

    Events have been so frenetic over the past few years that it may be difficult for some to remember, but at the height of the covid panic there was a massive media campaign to destroy the image of any celebrity that publicly refused to take the vaccine.  They could be TV or film celebrities, famous scientists, politicians or even sports figures; it didn’t matter.  Anyone with a “platform” and an audience was expected to toe the line on the government covid narrative, or suffer the consequences.

    One could argue that the mandates and vaccines were more a loyalty test than an effort to save lives:  Those who complied were considered devout collectivists or at least people who could be controllable, and those who refused to comply immediately stood out as a potential threat.  This is how a world-class tennis player from Serbia, Novak Djokovic, was treated when it was revealed that he was not vaccinated when he entered the Australian Open in early 2022. 

    Djokovic was subsequently removed from the tournament and had his travel visa revoked.  Keep in mind the player had a clean bill of health at the time, but his example of defiance of the jab was considered unacceptable by Australian authorities.  What would follow was an endless attack on his character and intelligence on social media, which a number of corporate journalists joined in on.

    One of the lead instigators of this attempt at cancellation was Mike Dickson, a prominent British sports journalist working for the Daily Mail.  Dickson is noted as being relentless in his criticism of Djokovic, calling the player “arrogant and deplorable” for refusing to submit. 

    This week, Mike Dickson is reported to have collapsed and “died suddenly” at the age of 59 while covering the Australian Open.  The cause of death has been kept confidential.

    Despite Dickson’s attempts to paint Novak Djokovic as a global villain, the player had only kind words for the journalist upon news of his passing, offering his condolences.  Contrary to all the accusations, very often it’s the covid cultists that act like villains while the people they criticize display character and honor.    

    Australia proved to be an exceptionally submissive country when it came to the mandates, and some may blame the lack of complete info available that debunked frantic mainstream claims.  However, even in 2022, there was considerable evidence contrary to government assertions on covid and the vaccines.  

    For example, it was well known that the vaccines do not necessarily prevent transmission or infection of the virus, as was originally argued when they were distributed.  And the proof is in the fact that there are endless breakthrough cases (people who are vaccinated but who still get infected).  The FDA doesn’t even require evidence that a vaccine can prevent transmission or infection for the product to be approved.

    It is was also a fact that covid infections and fatalities from the original strain dropped dramatically well before the vaccines were widely distributed.  

    Then there was the Infection Fatality rate, which dozens of studies show to be around 0.23% regardless of how many vaccinated or unvaccinated people there are in a particular region, and the vast majority of deaths were among people with multiple preexisting conditions.  Why take an experimental vaccine for a virus with a 99.8% survival rate, especially if you are a top athlete?

    All of this information and more was available to journalists from 2021 onward, but they ignored it in favor of creating artificial panic.

    The chaos of covid hysteria has faded and cooler heads have prevailed, but the event still offers a lesson on the fragility of civil liberties and how vulnerable they are to mob mentality and mass fear. 

    Those that championed the destruction of the lives and careers of the unvaccinated are discovering that nothing guarantees longevity, and taking other people’s freedoms is not the path to safety.       

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/22/2024 – 20:25

  • White Americans Are Quiet-Quitting Our Leading Institutions
    White Americans Are Quiet-Quitting Our Leading Institutions

    Authored by Jeremy Carl via American Greatness,

    As the work-from-home trend took off during the COVID-19 pandemic, the term “quiet quitting” entered the contemporary lexicon.

    According to the Harvard Business Review:

    “Quiet quitters continue to fulfill their primary responsibilities, but they’re less willing to engage in activities known as citizenship behaviors: no more staying late, showing up early, or attending non-mandatory meetings.”

    Simply put, having perceived their jobs to not have value and meaning, they do no more than absolutely necessary.

    There is debate among scholars as to the extent of the quiet quitting phenomenon, but there is increasing evidence that white Americans are increasingly quiet quitting America’s leading institutions. And the possible implications of that for American society are profound.

    This phenomenon is a consequence of the trends I write about in my forthcoming book, The Unprotected Class, about the rise of anti-white racism in American culture and how both formal and informal anti-white discrimination have become a factor in almost every area of American public life.

    Little surprise then, that more and more young whites, especially young white men, are looking at the overall environment and saying, “Thanks, but no thanks,” to our leading institutions. Last week, the armed forces announced that the number of white recruits had fallen precipitously over the last five years.

    According to a report at Military.com, most of the Army’s much-discussed incoming recruiting shortfall is due largely to this dramatic decline. While a bit more than 44,000 white Americans signed up to join the army in 2018, that number cratered to just over 25,000 by 2023—a stunning drop in a short period of time when black and Hispanic recruiting was largely flat. As a result, white recruits went from 56.4% of soldiers in 2018 to 44% in 2023.

    Even military leaders attribute this decline in significant part to the souring of conservative whites, who have traditionally formed the backbone of the military, but are now looking at the woke anti-white military under Joe Biden and opting out. 

    “There’s a level of prestige in parts of conservative America with service that has degraded,” a senior army official told Military.com. Or, as conservative talk show host and U.S. marine combat veteran Jesse Kelly put it on X, “My sons will not serve. I don’t have a single veteran friend who’s encouraging his sons to serve. Most are actively discouraging them from doing so.”

    A collapse in any demographic’s willingness to serve in the military would be a concern, but a collapse in (disproportionately conservative) whites in the military is more likely to precipitate a readiness crisis. White soldiers are far more likely than non-whites to be the “tip of the spear,” taking on the most dangerous and important combat tasks. In Iraq and Afghanistan, approximately 80% of special forces were white. Despite heavy diversity recruitment efforts in recent years, 84% of Navy SEALs are white. These special forces teams are filled with objective qualifications, performance, and candidate interest. It may be politically incorrect to say, but as a matter of math, in the current environment, a military that is less white is also a military that’s almost certainly less capable.

    Even before the current recruiting collapse, we were already seeing the results of diversity uber alles in military performance. A recent article in Palladium Magazine described this growing competence crisis, and how it affects not just the military but all American institutions. On the military side, in a short period of just three months in 2017, there were three warship collisions resulting in 17 deaths. In 2020, there was a fire that resulted in the destruction of the USS Bonhomme Richard, a $750 million navy ship, resulting in 63 injuries. According to Palladium, a subsequent off-the-record interview with dozens of Navy officers (both current and retired) laid the blame for the incidents at the Navy prioritizing diversity training over warfighting capability. Yet, the armed forces are busy eliminating or de-emphasizing meritocratic tests for service in an attempt to “improve” diversity.

    It’s not just the military.

    Whites, as a percentage of medical school students, are well below their population numbers. 

    White college enrollment for 18-24 year-olds has dropped from 43% in 2010 to 38% in 2021, the sharpest drop for any major ethnic group (it is now essentially equal with African-Americans, though African-American students are, on average, far less college-ready than whites) Enrollment is down particularly sharply among white men, the group that has historically led America’s institutions, having collapsed from just 41% to 33%—an attendance rate far below Asian-Americans and just a couple of points above African-Americans and Hispanics.

    Given that SAT Scores are on, average, much higher for whites than either blacks or Hispanics, it is clear that whites make up a hugely disproportionate number of the students qualified for college but not attending.

    Discriminated against by race-based preferences in both academia and the workplace, young white men in particular are increasingly dropping out. There has been an almost a continuous drop in white male labor force participation over decades now, a drop sharper than seen in any other ethnic group.

    In the mid-twentieth century, American employers began focusing more intensely on objective measures to assess human capital, as standardized tests for everything from college entrance to the military reigned supreme. This differentiation allowed talented people from modest social and financial backgrounds to ascend the professional ladder. But, however well intended, the Civil Rights Act and its later interpretations, particularly disparate impact and affirmative action, have ended that brief meritocratic moment. Desperate to balance leadership demographics for political reasons and increasingly unable to game any objective system to reduce white influence further, colleges and even law schools and medical schools are dispensing with standardized tests entirely in the name of “equity.”

    For decades now, the government has dispensed valuable contracts to preferred constituencies on the basis of their not being white—at the federal level, such contracts for which whites are ineligible run to tens of billions of dollars annually. As Palladium notes, racial and other quotas have even come to the supposedly sacrosanct halls of corporate finance. As of 2021, Goldman Sachs, perhaps the world’s most prestigious investment bank, will not underwrite the initial public stock offerings of companies that do not have at least two non-straight white men on their board. Interestingly, their gender board diversity rules do not apply to their clients in Asia.

    There were certainly many problems, discrimination among them, in the old white-dominant regime that ran America from its founding through the mid-to-late twentieth century, but whatever its flaws, this was the America that people from all over the world—from every different color and creed—have scrambled to join.

    Can America’s institutions run as well in the 21st century if white Americans are quiet quitting them in despair?

    It looks like we’re about to find out.

    *  *  *

    Jeremy Carl (@realJeremyCarl) is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, His book, The Unprotected Class, on the rise of anti-white racism, is available for pre-order and will be published this spring.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/22/2024 – 20:20

  • Mother Of Daughter Raped And Murdered By Illegal MS-13 Gang Member Sues Biden DHS For $100 Million
    Mother Of Daughter Raped And Murdered By Illegal MS-13 Gang Member Sues Biden DHS For $100 Million

    The mother of a 20-year-old autistic woman who was raped and murdered by an illegal immigrant MS-13 gang member in 2022 is suing the federal government for playing “Russian roulette with our lives.”

    Kayla Hamilton was raped and strangled to death by the 17-year-old El Salvadorian, who she was living with in a trailer which the suspect, according to Aberdeen, Maryland police. Authorities arrested him in January 2023 based on DNA evidence from the crime scene. He was charged with first-degree murder, as well as rape and robbery, and is currently being held without bail ahead of his June 28 trial.

    Tammy Nobles, Getty Images

    “For me this not a political issue this a safety issue for everyone living in the United States,” said her mother, Tammy Nobles, during testimony last Thursday in front of the House Homeland Security Committee.

    “This could have been anyone’s daughter. I don’t want any other parent to live the nightmare that I am living. I am her voice now and I am going to fight with everything I have to get her story told and bring awareness of the issue at the border,” Nobles continued.

    Nobles is seeking $100 million from US government, and has accused the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services of failing her daughter by allowing the unidentified migrant into the country without confirming his identity, neglecting to confirm a verified sponsor, and allowing him to be placed at a holding facility – from which he ran away and ultimately ended up as Hamilton’s roommate.

    “Nobody at the border did their job and checked his background,” Nobles said two days later during an interview with NewsNation.

    Kayla Hamilton (twitter @tammy_kay18)

    “We’re bringing this lawsuit because we’re tired of being held hostage in our own country. We’re tired of DHS playing Russian roulette with our lives,” said family attorney, Brian Claypool.

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    Over 300,000 migrants crossed the southern border in December, according to CBP. In 2023, US authorities encountered almost 140,000 unaccompanied minors at the US-Mexico border – of which nearly 10,000 are still in the custody of the DHHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/22/2024 – 20:00

  • As Delinquencies Spike, Banks Are "Granting Fewer Credit Lines", Fed Analysts Warn
    As Delinquencies Spike, Banks Are “Granting Fewer Credit Lines”, Fed Analysts Warn

    Authored by Sam Bourgi via CreditNews.com,

    With credit card delinquency rates at their highest levels in more than a decade, getting approved for a new line of credit is getting harder, Fed analysts warned.

    According to a new report from the Philadelphia Fed, 3.19% of credit card balances were at least 30 days past due by the end of the third quarter of 2023.

    That’s up from 2.76% in the second quarter and the highest level since 2012.

    Just as concerning, the percentage of balances that were at least 60 days and 90 days past due shot up to the highest levels since the beginning of Covid.

    “All stages of delinquency rates now exceed pre-pandemic levels for the first time,” Fed economist Gene Huang and senior analyst Anna Veksler wrote in the report.

    In even more bad news, the Fed researchers found that only 33.18% of accounts paid their balance in full—suggesting that 1 in 3 Americans are carrying a balance every month.

    That’s the highest level since 2020.

    Since 2020, “the share of accounts making the full payment has moderated, driven by strong consumer spending and dwindling government support,” the researchers said.

    “Greater consumer fragility,” as the Fed described it, makes banks think twice before granting new lines of credit. According to the researchers, banks’ rejection rate today is the highest in the past year.

    Natural rebound or something to worry about?

    While experts generally agree that rising delinquency rates are a source of concern, they’re split on how bad the problem is—and what it says about consumer finances.

    On the one hand, Smead Capital Management CEO Cole Smead said, “We’re coming off really low delinquencies” in 2022, “so you’re going to see a natural uptick.”

    CFRA bank analyst Alexander Yokum adds that rising delinquencies aren’t a big deal “with unemployment under 4%,” suggesting that Americans will continue making payments so long as they’re employed.

    But according to Odeon Capital analyst Dick Bove, banks are getting red flags from retailers, who’ve warned for months that customers are having trouble paying their debt.

    Credit card losses are “the big issue that certain banks have to worry about,” he told Yahoo Finance. Currently, credit card issuer Capital One and digital bank Ally Financial face some of the biggest risks.

    “I think we’re going to see a wave of loan losses for both these companies,” Bove said.

    The good news is that banks seem to be prepared for a delinquency spike and have set aside cash to cover bad loans, according to Stephen Biggar, an analyst at Argus Research, a New York-based market research firm.

    Banks are “thinking that the higher interest rate environment, what the Fed was doing to take the heat off of such high inflation, was going to result in a downturn and an uptick in unemployment,” he said. So they’ve increased the amount of dry powder they have.

    The real reason delinquencies are rising

    Credit card delinquencies don’t happen in a vacuum, but rather depend on the overall debt households carry, according to Wells Fargo economist Seery Grein.

    “Households who have other debt, so student or auto loans, for instance, are actually seeing delinquencies rise fastest in terms of their credit card purchases,” she said, adding that delinquencies tend to jump when interest rates increase.

    Creditnews has recently reported on a sharp rise in auto delinquencies, especially among subprime borrowers.

    In September, the percentage of subprime borrowers who were at least 60 days behind on their car payments increased to 6.11%—the highest since at least 1994.

    Student debt is another mounting issue after the government resumed mandatory payments in October. So far, millions of borrowers have refused to pay.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/22/2024 – 19:40

  • San Fran Police Recruitment Drops 72% From 2019 Despite $112,000 Rookie Salary
    San Fran Police Recruitment Drops 72% From 2019 Despite $112,000 Rookie Salary

    San Francisco is (believe it or not) having trouble recruiting new police officers. After all, who wants to try and be the police in a ‘woke’ city where lawlessness is encouraged and the police are hated just for doing their jobs?

    Things have gotten so bad in the Bay Area that the city is now trying to entice rookie officers with a massive starting pay of $112,398 per year – and the city is still having trouble finding new officers for its force, according to Yahoo/Bloomberg. 

    According to the report, San Francisco’s police force faces a severe recruitment crisis, with only 26 recruits joining in 2023, a 72% drop from 2019 and the lowest in over a decade.

    The city’s police staff has declined by 13% since 2020, from over 1,800 to just under 1,600, the report says. Currently, only 23 trainees are at the academy, with no certainty of graduation. The six figure payday offer for new San Francisco cops marks the highest for rookies in major U.S. cities, surpassing Chicago’s $88,746 after 18 months. 

    Ted Schwartz, acting police chief in Ithaca, added: “Twenty years ago, we would have hundreds of people knocking down our door to be police officers. That’s not true in our society anymore.”

    San Francisco, despite cutting $120 million from police budgets under protest pressure, isn’t alone in struggling to recruit officers. Cities like Arcata, Ithaca, and Chicago are offering up to $50,000 bonuses, while Alameda, California, leads with a $75,000 bonus and a starting salary of $113,654, more than San Francisco.

    Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, commented to Bloomberg: “These bonuses sound more like sports teams than a civil service position. I’ve never seen anything like it. It feels like desperation.”

    In 2022, police officer resignations surged by 47% and retirements increased by 19% compared to 2019, reveals a survey by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, covering nearly 200 police agencies.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/22/2024 – 19:20

  • 2024 – America's Year Of Living Dangerously
    2024 – America’s Year Of Living Dangerously

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

    Lame-duck presidencies, especially in the last six months of their final term, in general can offer opportunities for America’s enemies to take advantage of a perceived vacuum as one government transitions to the next.

    But these normal changeover months are especially dangerous when a perceived weak or appeasing lame-duck president is likely to be replaced by a strong deterrent successor that will likely serve as a corrective to his disastrous policies.

    James Buchannan (1857-1861), a northern but pro-South president, was a particularly anemic chief executive. He had done little if anything to try to deal with the growing rift between North and South, especially the furor over the Dred Scott decision and Bloody Kansas. Even when warned, Buchannan did little to beef up the U.S. Army or increase its weapon stockpiles to deter any potential secessionist state.

    After Buchannan declined to run for a second term, the South understood that the abolitionist and anti-slavery Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln might well be elected in 1860—given the North/South split within the Democratic Party. And they understood that President Lincoln might well use force to stop secession.

    Therefore, in the waning days of the Buchannan administration, after Lincoln’s victory, seven southern states seceded during the presidential transition, a confused North reacted little, more would follow, and a terrible Civil War became inevitable.

    During the waning days of the crippled second term of Richard Nixon in summer 1974, communist North Vietnam saw a once deterrent president fatally weakened by Watergate. It was encouraged by a renewed antiwar movement, a likely soon anti-war Congress, and the next president, Gerald Ford—a probable caretaker soon to be replaced by an anti-war Democrat. And so in late 1974 and 1975, the communists renounced ignored peace accords, judged correctly that the directionless US would not help South Vietnam stop a massive invasion from the North, and thereby won the 12-year-long war.

    As the Jimmy Carter administration began to wind down and as it was increasingly judged as weak abroad, the new theocratic revolutionary government in Iran stormed the U.S. embassy and took hostages in November 1979. Throughout the next year, Tehran systematically humiliated the U.S., mocked an impotent Carter administration, and rebuffed all U.S. efforts to secure the return of the hostages.

    The Soviet Union as well saw the dying and still inert Carter term as ripe for exploitation and so invaded Afghanistan a month later, in December 1979. It too concluded that there would be a year of continued timidity in Washington before a likely remedy from a Republican president—in this case, Ronald Reagan, who had declared his candidacy a little over a week after Iran took hostages with clear promises to restore U.S. deterrence abroad.

    We are now once again entering one of these dangerous moments, compounded by a weakening of the armed forces. During Biden’s tenure, the U.S. military has suffered historic shortfalls in recruitment, the disastrous humiliation in Afghanistan, a new DEI commissariat that wars on meritocratic promotions and assignments, the politicization of generals and admirals, the hyped but otherwise inane effort to root out mythical white supremacists and “domestic terrorist” bogeymen from the ranks, and the expulsion of some of our best soldiers for their reluctance to be vaccinated, many of them having developed natural immunity from prior infection.

    The Pentagon is short on ships and planes. U.S. weapons stocks are dangerously low, drained by the abandonment of billions of dollars of equipment to the Taliban, the resupply efforts to Ukraine and Israel, the failure of the Biden administration to fund the restocking of our munitions and to ramp up resupply production—and a $35 billion national debt fed by $2 trillion annual deficits.

    Add eight million illegal aliens who pranced over a nonexistent southern border, nearly uninhabitable big-city downtowns, an epidemic of violent crime, and a president who resuscitates mostly to blast half the country as “semi-fascists” and “ultra-MAGA” extremists.

    Add it all up, and the world abroad agrees America is in a strange, self-inflicted decline and will not or cannot defend its interests, or for that matter itself.

    In particular, both enemies and neutrals have accordingly drawn a number of self-interested conclusions about the waning Biden administration and what may follow:

    1. That Joe Biden, to their apparent delight, has in the last three years reversed the Trump deterrence policies and thus has green-lit their aggressions.

    2. That given the ensuing chaos, they have further agreed that Biden’s growing unpopularity with the American people makes it likely that both he and his appeasement policies will be gone by January 2024.

    3. That Donald Trump may well return to office. That would mean a much worse deal for Russia, China, Iran, and its terrorist satellites, and thus recognition that 2024 is a brief window of opportunity for aggression.

    Putin remembers that Trump blasted 200 Russian mercenaries in Syria, got out of a bad missile deal with Moscow, upped sanctions on Russian oligarchs, flooded the world with cheap oil, destroying Russian oil export profits, sold once-canceled offensive weapons to Ukraine, and warned what would happen if Putin invaded Ukraine. Of the last four administrations, Trump’s was the only one that saw no Russian cross-border invasions.

    China remembers that Trump slapped tariffs on its mercantilist market economy, accused China of birthing the COVID virus at its Wuhan virology lab, increased military spending, forced NATO to spend another $100 billion on munitions, and jawboned more alliance members into upping their military contributions. Beijing knew that to send a spy balloon across the continental United States between 2017-21 would have meant its destruction the minute it entered U.S. airspace. China did not serially threaten Taiwan during the Trump era—and may believe that this year could be the last chance in a decade to confront Taiwan.

    Iran has concluded two things about 2024:

    1) they do not wish to see another Trump presidency on the horizon that took out its top-ranking terrorist-general Qasem Soleimani, slapped sanctions on its oil, yanked the U.S. out of the flawed Iran Deal, declared the Iranian Houthi satellites a foreign terrorist organization, cut off all aid to the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, moved the U.S. closer to Israel, and warned Hezbollah of consequences should it start a war with Israel; and

    2) that the present Biden abdication will likely be short-lived and thus now may be the time to take advantage of a currently directionless global superpower that either will not or cannot deter Iranian aggression.

    So what should we expect in 2024?

    • Lacking a strong U.S. patron and sponsor, Israel will be subject to more international calls to leave Gaza, to negotiate with Hamas, and to give up the idea it can “destroy” Hamas.

    • Hezbollah will likely up its daily barrage of missiles into Israel.

    • Iran will become more overt in supplying Russia, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis with weapons.

    • China will increase its threats to Taiwan and weigh carefully the costs-to-benefits of attacking the island.

    The common denominator?

    All our enemies are right now calculating how best to use their gift of the next 12 months from a non-compos-mentis president and his neo-socialist team that either believes the U.S. is at fault for much of the world’s pathologies or is too terrified to do anything about them.

    In sum, adversaries believe there is a rare window of opportunity in which the U.S. uncharacteristically does nothing to deter its enemies, back its allies, or win over neutrals. And over the next year, we can only pray they are mistaken.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/22/2024 – 19:00

  • Israel Offers Substantial 2-Month Gaza Ceasefire For Release Of All Hostages
    Israel Offers Substantial 2-Month Gaza Ceasefire For Release Of All Hostages

    In a huge and surprise development, Israel has made a substantial proposal for a new ceasefire deal that includes multiple phases at the end of which all remaining hostages held in Gaza would be released. The negotiations front has been quiet and considered to be a failure for the past couple months, leading to general pessimism that Israel had a new proposal in the works. At the same time the Red Sea crisis and damage to global shipping through the vital transit waterway has reached a boiling point.

    Israeli officials have confirmed the deal on the table to Axios, which has involved Qatari and Egyptian mediators, but it’s still too early to know whether Hamas will seriously contemplate it, given continued fierce ground fighting happening in the southern Strip, focused particularly on the city of Khan Younis. Yet it’s a rare hopeful sign after weeks of regional escalation and worsening news.

    Axios writes in the breaking Monday report that “While the proposal doesn’t include an agreement to end the war, it is the longest period of ceasefire that Israel has offered Hamas since the start of the war.” The proposed deal envisions a two-month long pause in fighting.

    AFP via Getty Images

    Presumably the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would not retreat from their positions in northern Gaza, but would likely initiate some degree of pullback in the south. Aerial bombardment would cease, but it would also require Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) to halt their rockets launched into southern Israel.

    Over 130 hostages still remain in Gaza, though there are fears some could have already died or have been executed. Inside Israel, domestic pressure is growing on the Netanyahu government to strike a deal. Increasingly large and angry protests have been sustained, led by victims’ families who have demanded that Netanyahu gain captives’ freedom at any cost.

    Of the some 250 people kidnapped on Oct.7, there were 105 freed back in November as a result of Qatari-mediated negotiations. Of the rest which remained in captivity, the Israeli miliary has since said that 31 have died or been executed. Three of these were killed in a tragic friendly fire incident which outraged Israeli society. All of this has contributed pressure on the government to offer a serious proposal.

    Israeli officials have been cited as saying their outlook remains “cautiously optimistic.” Biden’s envoy Brett McGurk is in Egypt working with Qatar and other parties on hammering out the deal. According to more of the details via Axios: 

    • Under the proposed deal, Israel and Hamas would agree in advance on how many Palestinian prisoners would be released for each Israeli hostage in each category and then separate negotiations on the names of these prisoners would take place, the officials said.
    • The Israeli officials said the proposal includes Israel redeploying Israeli Defense Forces so that some would be moved out of main population centers in the enclave and allowing a gradual return of Palestinian civilians to Gaza city and the northern Gaza strip as the deal is being implemented.
    • The Israeli officials said the proposal makes clear Israel will not agree to end the war and will not agree to release all 6,000 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons.

    The Israelis have yet to promise that will halt all military actions, but targeting would likely become more focused and smaller in scale. In the November deal, which included a successful ceasefire that held for a week, hundreds of Palestinians were freed from Israeli prisons.

    A key reason why it wasn’t extended is that Israeli leaders accused Hamas of seeking to separate family members. Israel said that in separating children from their mothers, Hamas was seeking to inject last-minute leverage. The November ceasefire collapsed and wasn’t renewed over disagreements regarding which hostage groups would be freed in follow-up rounds. 

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    Thus even if Hamas is amenable to this new deal on the table, the two sides would have to agree on which hostages go free in specific phases. Hamas is also likely to push for multiple thousands of Palestinians to be let from from jails, if not all of them. And Tel Aviv has already said that is a non-starter.

    Gaza’s health ministry has meanwhile said the Gaza death toll has surpassed 25,000 – and is made up of mostly civilians. For this reason Israel finds itself under increasing scrutiny and isolation from the “international community” – but the US and UK have stuck firmly by its side, and are even stepping up intelligence assistance and surveillance drone flights over the Strip. 

    If the brakes don’t get applied to the Gaza war anytime soon, the ongoing regional spillover could explode into a huge regional conflagration with unforeseen consequences…

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    If there actually were a two-month pause, this could mean a good chance of a lasting peace. However, Netanyahu shows no signs of backing down from his ultimate war aim of completely eradicating Hamas. Regardless, a substantive and far-reaching offer of a deal in and of itself helps him politically at this tense moment.

    At this point it’s entirely unclear how many battlefield losses Hamas has suffered, but it’s likely in the thousands, yet by all account the jihadist militant group remains intact, and is effectively using the vast Gaza tunnel network in guerilla and insurgent operations.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/22/2024 – 18:40

  • The Sinister Links Between Jeffrey Epstein, CBDCs, & Bitcoin
    The Sinister Links Between Jeffrey Epstein, CBDCs, & Bitcoin

    Authored by Aaron Day via The Brownstone Institute,

    he purpose of this article is to create awareness of the urgent threat of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), to discuss and describe Jeffrey Epstein’s potential involvement in both funding CBDCs as well as his possible role in changing the underlying purpose of Bitcoin, rendering it unusable as a cash alternative for day-to-day transactions.

    The article also provides a snippet from my book, The Final Countdown, which goes into detail and further provides practical advice for avoiding CBDCs. 

    The CBDC Threat

    Imagine a future where every dollar you spend is tracked – not by a bank, but by the government. This isn’t a distant sci-fi scenario; it’s a real possibility with the advent of Central Bank Digital Currencies, or CBDCs. These are not just new forms of money; they are potentially powerful tools for monitoring and controlling human behavior.

    The concept is simple yet profound – a digital currency issued by the government that can be programmed with specific rules. For instance, your savings could be frozen if your online activities don’t align with governmental standards, or mandatory spending could be enforced to stimulate the economy. This level of control could extend to everyday choices, dictating the groceries you buy or the vacations you can access, all based on a digital scoring system.

    My book delves into this topic, painting a picture of a future where CBDCs could lead us into a dystopian society and the first chapter is available here. 

    The urgency of this matter propelled me towards cryptocurrencies and precious metals in 2019, when I completely exited the dollar. It compelled me to author a book, and even run for presidential office to shed light on these critical issues. As a fellow at Brownstone Institute, my current focus is to educate and empower others about the potential risks of CBDCs, with possible implementation before the 2024 elections.

    In my travels, I’ve encountered significant gaps in public awareness about CBDCs. Over 80% of Americans have never even heard of them, as mainstream media seldom covers the topic. Those who have view CBDCs as a distant future concern, or believe they offer financial convenience and inclusivity, a belief held particularly among younger generations.

    This article aims to clarify and warn about the current state of CBDC technology in the US, explain the existing political momentum for their adoption, and highlight the intriguing yet concerning connections between Jeffrey Epstein and cryptocurrency developments. Epstein’s link to the MIT Multimedia Lab, which played a pivotal role in significant CBDC trials and influenced changes to Bitcoin’s functionality, suggests a narrative far from the revolutionary currency Bitcoin once was, and potentially melding it into a tool for the elite.

    Documents released by the US District Court for the Southern District of New York have only deepened the mystery surrounding Epstein’s motives and actions. His interest in cryptocurrency has been documented as early as 2017, and while the full extent of his involvement remains unclear, the ties are enough to warrant scrutiny. 

    In raising the alarm on Epstein’s connection to the crypto and CBDC ecosystem, I aim to challenge any narrative that paints CBDCs in a purely positive light. Proponents of CBDCs, such as the WEF, World Bank, UN, Central Banks, and politicians like Senator Elizabeth Warren. claim that CBDCs promote financial inclusions and fight terrorism and money laundering. This is not the true intent, only clever marketing. They are about control, which should be acutely apparent after experiencing the tyranny and erosion of personal freedoms during Covid. This article, along with upcoming video interviews, will aim to peel back the layers of this complex issue and explore the potential consequences to our financial liberties.

    CBDCs Coming to America (edited excerpt in part from Chapter 4 of The Final Countdown)

    The US stands at a critical juncture, as the government’s pursuit of CBDCs gains unprecedented momentum. Within the next 12 months, the cherished American ideal of freedom could be undermined by a centrally controlled digital currency. Unbeknownst to many, the Federal Reserve has already conducted three successful wide-ranging CBDC pilots, while President Joe Biden has championed the cause through the sweeping Executive Order 14067. This order has set in motion a multi-agency effort to lay the foundation for digital currencies, bringing the dystopian scenarios outlined at the beginning of this article and further detailed in my book. 

    In this section, we will examine President Biden’s Executive Order, delve into the three CBDC pilot programs, and explore the implications of FedNow infrastructure, launched nationwide in July 2023, which could enable the rapid deployment of CBDCs in the US. The situation is more dire than it even appears on the surface, as they want to be able to not only control and program money but also digital assets.

    Imagine if stocks, bonds, homes, cars, computers, literally any assets could be tracked centrally by the government and the sale or transfer of those assets could be blocked by multiple 3rd parties (including the government, Federal Reserve, and other centralized 3rd parties). The shock, alarm, and anger provoked by these revelations should serve as a rallying cry for those seeking alternatives, striving to share this crucial information and take action to stop this before it’s too late. 

    Executive Order 14067

    On March 9, 2022, President Biden signed Executive Order 14067, “Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets.” The order directs the US government to take a whole-of-government approach to the development of digital assets, including CBDCs. The order is expansive in its scope, covering a wide range of issues related to digital assets, including their potential impact on the financial system, national security, and consumer protection. The order also directs the US government to work with international partners to develop ‘responsible standards’ for digital assets (enter UN, WEF, IMF, World Bank, and BIS).

    Jim Rickards, a respected expert on financial markets and geopolitics, has sounded the alarm bell about the significant problems and overreach in this Executive Order. He believes that the order is too broad and does not provide enough guidance on how the government should develop and implement a CBDC. He is also concerned that the order could lead to the erosion of privacy and financial sovereignty. Rickards explains, “Executive Order 14067 is a dangerous step towards a cashless society. It gives the government too much power to track and control our financial transactions.” He further adds, “The order is also a threat to privacy and financial sovereignty. It could lead to the erosion of our right to control our own money.”

    To be very clear, the President of the United States has put forward a framework that looks like the dystopian nightmare we are so desperately trying to avoid. Rickards warns, “The order is a missed opportunity to promote innovation and competition in the payments system. Instead, it is a recipe for government control and surveillance.”

    US CBDC Pilot Programs

    Even prior to Biden’s Executive Order, the Federal Reserve was well underway in researching, developing, and piloting CBDCs.

    Let’s take a closer look at the key CBDC initiatives: Project Hamilton, Project Cedar, the Regulated Liability Network (RLN) program, and explore what they mean for the future of money and personal freedom in the United States. As you explore this keep in mind that all 3 of these pilots received funding from the MIT Multimedia lab which has direct ties to Jeffrey Epstein. 

    Project Hamilton

    Project Hamilton, a joint venture between the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and MIT, explored the use of a retail CBDC during a pilot program that ran from 2020-2022. A retail CBDC is a digital form of fiat currency that is issued by a central bank (in this case the Federal Reserve) and can be accessed directly by the public. This form of electronic cash would replace the dollar and would be used to make payments, saved, or used to make investments.

    A recently published whitepaper details the pilot program’s results, which include signs that a digital dollar can handle a large number of transactions safely and securely. The pilot managed to process approximately 1.7 million transactions per second at its fastest. By comparison, the current US banking system can only handle 150,000 transactions per second. Clearly, this new CBDC has the technical capacity to replace the existing financial infrastructure. 

    The group leading Project Hamilton, the MIT Digital Currency Initiative, was funded in part by the MIT Media Lab, which has received contributions from prominent donors including Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein. These connections suggest a potential globalist agenda aimed at consolidating power and compromising individual sovereignty. Joi Ito, the former director of the MIT Media Lab, and Bill Gates are reported to have visited Epstein’s infamous island multiple times. Joi Ito stepped down from his position as head of the MIT Media Lab a day after Ronan Farrow’s exposé in the New Yorker, titled ‘How an Elite University Research Center Concealed Its Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.’

    To provide an accurate picture, the full extent of Epstein’s financial involvement with the MIT Media Lab remains opaque. Nonetheless, we have some insights from the New Yorker article:

     Epstein was acknowledged for facilitating at least $7.5 million in donations for the lab, which included $2 million from Gates and $5.5 million from [Leon] Black. These contributions were described in emails as being ‘directed’ by Epstein or made at his insistence.

    The lab staff’s awareness of Epstein’s involvement was so pervasive that some members of Joi Ito’s office informally referred to Epstein as Voldemort or ‘he who must not be named.’

    In a statement, MIT’s president, L. Rafael Reif, expressed regret, stating, ‘In retrospect, we acknowledge with humiliation and distress that our institution contributed to enhancing his prestige, inadvertently helping to deflect attention from his egregious behavior. No expression of regret can reverse that.’

    In addition to Epstein’s direct and indirect investments in the MIT Multimedia Lab, as reported by the Washington Post, Epstein also invested $1.2 million for Ito’s own investment funds. 

    We also know from this Slate article that Joi Ito visited Epstein’s Island as part of the courtship process. 

    Project Cedar

    Contrasting with other initiatives, Project Cedar sets its sights on investigating the potential applications and use cases of a CBDC specifically within the context of the wholesale market. This project is a joint venture involving the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, several prominent banking institutions, namely JPMorgan Chase, Bank of New York Mellon, and State Street, along with the BIS and the MIT Media Lab, which also played a role in Project Hamilton.

    To better understand, the wholesale market refers to a financial environment where transactions are typically large in scale and high in value, conducted predominantly between financial institutions like banks, businesses, and other financial entities. It’s a behind-the-scenes arena where substantial monetary exchanges take place, far from the realm of individual or retail transactions.

    Thus, the primary audience for Project Cedar encompasses the financial institutions and stakeholders who operate within this wholesale market. The goal of the project is to comprehend how a digital dollar could be utilized in this setting, facilitating these significant transactions efficiently, securely, and seamlessly. 

    As part of the pilot program, Project Cedar scrutinizes numerous aspects of a wholesale CBDC. This includes the technology’s capacity to enable instantaneous, secure settlements between institutions, the potential regulatory challenges that may arise, and the compatibility of the digital dollar with the existing financial infrastructure. 

    Technically speaking, the pilot program has been successful, paving the way towards the next phase of the project: selling the concept to the public and gaining consensus among central banks.

     Regulated Liability Network (RLN)

    In addition to Project Cedar (which is in its second pilot phase) the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is also involved in another pilot called the Regulated Liability Network (RLN) that “will participate in a proof-of-concept project to explore the feasibility of an interoperable network of central bank wholesale digital money and commercial bank digital money operating on a shared multi-entity distributed ledger.” 

    What does this mean, exactly? Imagine a future where every asset you buy (stocks, bonds, homes, cars, electronics, jewelry, etc.) is issued as digital tokens that can be tracked and settled by the government and other third parties through a centralized framework. In addition to being able to censor and freeze your money if you don’t behave the way those in control demand, they can also block the sale and perhaps even the use of your assets.

    Imagine that you buy a computer with a CBDC. A digital token is created that is associated with that computer. If you engaged in behavior that the authorities didn’t like, they could track your computer and remotely disable your ability to use it or sell it. In Chapter 1 we discussed how the government could control your UBI based on your social credit score. With something like the RLN, they could also potentially block your ability to sell your car, home, or even impair your ability to use your assets remotely through this type of digital asset tracking and remote monitoring.

    Like the other two pilot programs, the RLN pilot has ties to globalist organizations including the BIS and the MIT Media Lab (who is involved with all 3 CBDC pilots).

    The RLN pilot is a collaboration between a number of leading financial institutions, regulators, and technology providers. It is a significant step forward in the development of a regulated digital asset ecosystem.

    MIT Media Lab

    The Throttling of Bitcoin

    The opening line of the Bitcoin Whitepaper, which describes Bitcoin’s functionality, states, “A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.” From its inception, Bitcoin was intended to be an improved form of currency, offering people worldwide the chance to possess ‘sound money’ that could be spent at any time and anywhere. With negligible transaction costs—a mere fraction of a penny—funds could be transferred almost instantaneously. 

    However, in 2017, Bitcoin underwent significant changes that rendered it virtually useless as money. During that year, Bitcoin faced substantial growing pains, resulting in high transaction fees and delays. The Bitcoin community was embroiled in an intense debate on how to scale the network to manage the rising volume of transactions. Key figures in this debate included developers who received indirect funding from Joi Ito of the MIT Multimedia Lab, coinciding with Jeffrey Epstein’s first and sole interview about Bitcoin. Here is what we understand about Bitcoin’s state in 2017: 

    1. High Fees and Transaction Delays: Bitcoin’s transaction fees soared amid the congestion of 2017. In December of that year, the average transaction fee hit a peak of approximately $55, a stark increase from the sub-dollar fees seen the previous year. The network also suffered from severe delays; transactions that should have been confirmed within about 10 minutes could take hours or even days, particularly if the attached fee was insufficient to incentivize miners.

    1. Specific Example of Transaction Issues: The 2017 holiday season exemplified these problems. The surge in transaction volume led to significant delays and exorbitant fees for many users. Here are some actual tweets from disappointed users from late 2017. 

      • @ChrisPacia Bitcoin fee for median size tx = $30.72 Dec 20, 2017

      • @beijingbitcoins Bitcoin Core’s average transaction fee has gone up nearly 600% in the last two weeks alone. This isn’t sustainable. Dec 21, 2017

      • @ErikVoorhees At $40 fee, we’re well past coffee. Even a $250 purchase now doesn’t make sense with Bitcoin.Dec 21, 2017

    2. Impact on Retailers and Websites: The impractical transaction conditions caused numerous large retailers and websites to reconsider or cease accepting Bitcoin as a payment method. Notably:

      • Steam: A popular platform for digital game distribution, stopped accepting Bitcoin in December 2017 due to high fees and volatility.

      • Stripe: A payment processing company, ended Bitcoin support in April 2018, citing slow transaction times, high fees, and fewer use cases.

        • Here is a direct quote from Stripe explaining their decision to stop using Bitcoin for payments: “Over the past year or two, as block size limits have been reached, Bitcoin has evolved to become better-suited to being an asset than being a means of exchange. Given the overall success that the Bitcoin community has achieved, it’s hard to quibble with the decisions that have been made along the way. (And we’re certainly happy to see any novel, ambitious project do so well.) But it’s no longer feasible to support Bitcoin as a payment option.”

      • Microsoft: Temporarily halted Bitcoin payments in January 2018, citing the same concerns as other companies. They later resumed Bitcoin support.

      • Fiverr: An online marketplace for freelance services, stopped accepting Bitcoin in February 2018 due to the high fees and slow transaction times.

      • Expedia: A travel booking website, stopped accepting Bitcoin in June 2018, citing the same reasons as other companies.

      • Reddit: The popular online forum stopped accepting Bitcoin payments for Reddit Gold in March 2018, citing the high fees and transaction times.

    3. Influence of Joi Ito and the MIT Media Lab: Joi Ito, as the director of the MIT Media Lab, influenced the Bitcoin community through the lab’s Digital Currency Initiative (DCI). The DCI was engaged in a variety of cryptocurrency-related research and development projects. Joi Ito’s association with Digital Garage, which funded the DCI, meant that he indirectly affected Bitcoin’s development. The DCI supported prominent Bitcoin core developers like Wladimir van der Laan and Cory Fields, who played critical roles in updating and refining Bitcoin’s codebase, including the implementation of Segregated Witness (SegWit). I won’t go into detail about SegWit in this article, but will just say briefly that SegWit was a technical change that was critical in transforming Bitcoin from a medium of exchange (digital cash) to a store of value (digital gold). 

    4. Jeffrey Epstein’s Public Comments on Bitcoin in 2017: Against the backdrop of Bitcoin’s scaling issues and the involvement of Joi Ito and the MIT Media Lab’s DCI, the article “Billionaire financier weighs in on the future of Bitcoin” by Dylan Love, published by the Next Web on October 10, 2017, takes on added significance. Jeffrey Epstein’s portrayal of Bitcoin as more of a store of value than a currency reflects the shifting narrative of Bitcoin’s identity during this period—a change concurrent with SegWit’s implementation and the scaling debates. This shift aligns with the period during which the MIT Media Lab, indirectly funded by Epstein, was involved in Bitcoin’s development, leading to speculative links about Epstein’s potential impact on Bitcoin’s evolution.

    The developments in 2017 underscored Bitcoin’s scalability challenges and set off a search for resolutions. Although SegWit was introduced to address some of these issues, the debate over Bitcoin’s scalability endures, with the community still seeking sustainable solutions to manage an increasing transaction volume effectively.

    What Does All This Mean?

    Here’s the crux of the situation:

    1. The Federal Reserve has executed three successful CBDC pilots in partnership with the MIT Media Lab.

    2. Joi Ito, Chair of the MIT Multimedia Lab, received funding directly from Jeffrey Epstein and also from other sources, such as Bill Gates, via Epstein. Many of these contributions were marked as anonymous.

    3. Concurrently, the DCI provided funds for developers like Wladimir van der Laan and Cory Fields, whose modifications transformed Bitcoin from a peer-to-peer digital cash system to a store of value.

    4. At the same time, Jeffrey Epstein made his only public remarks about Bitcoin, explicitly referring to it as a store of value rather than a currency.

    5. Following the release of the New Yorker story detailing Ito’s involvement with Epstein, Ito resigned within a day. In response, MIT revised its policies and pledged to donate an amount equivalent to the funds received from any Epstein foundation to a charity that supports victims of sexual abuse.

    Do we have conclusive evidence linking Epstein’s funding directly to the CBDC pilots or to the transformation of Bitcoin from a medium of exchange to a store of value? No, not directly. In fact, most of the CBDC pilots began after Epstein was arrested for the last time on July 6, 2019. I doubt Epstein had any involvement with Project Cedar or Regulated Liability Network. However, Project Hamilton was announced in 2020 (presumably the funding was lined up prior to announcement). 

    Nonetheless, it is evident that Americans should be wary of the progress in CBDC development, President Biden’s intentions to implement them, and maintain a healthy skepticism regarding the intentions and involvement of Joi Ito, the MIT Multimedia Lab, and Jeffrey Epstein concerning both the deployment of CBDCs and the restriction of Bitcoin’s capabilities.

    I intend to further investigate the specific area of Epstein’s potential funding of Project Hamilton (which replaces cash) as well as SegWit (which transformed Bitcoin from digital cash to digital gold). Just as Bitcoin was gaining in adoption as an alternative to the dollar, it was throttled. Shortly thereafter, a project was launched to create a government-controlled CBDC alternative. Certainly topics worthy of more investigation. 

    To go in depth on many of these topics, check out my book, The Final Countdown. It outlines a potential dystopian future shaped by CBDCs and social credit systems. It discusses the global progression of CBDCs, the impending collapse of the dollar and fiat currency at large, and presents tangible measures to avert CBDCs by adopting and utilizing self-custody cryptocurrencies, gold, and silver for transactions within a parallel economy.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/22/2024 – 18:20

  • Airbus A330 Flight Cancelled After Passenger Spots 4 Missing Fasteners On Wing
    Airbus A330 Flight Cancelled After Passenger Spots 4 Missing Fasteners On Wing

    “Well, at least it’s not a Boeing.”

    That was likely the thoughts of everyone in the Boeing C-suite, exhaling a collective sigh of relief, when the latest airline safety mishap began making its rounds through the newscycle Monday.

    That news was the cancellation of an Airbus A330 flight bound for New York after 41 year old passenger Phil Hardy looked out the window and noticed “screws missing from the plane’s wing,” according to the New York Post.

    The plane, set to take off as Flight VS127 from Manchester Airport, had “four missing fasteners,” according to the report.

    Hardy, a frequent flyer, said: “I’m a good flyer, but my partner was not loving the information I was telling her and starting to panic, and I was trying to put her mind at rest as much as I could.”

    He continued: “I thought it was best to mention it to a flight attendant to be on the safe side.”

    Photo: NY Post

    Engineers showed up to examine the plane and the flight was eventually cancelled. 

    A representative for Virgin Air said the flight was cancelled to “provide time for precautionary additional engineering maintenance checks, which allowed our team the maximum time to complete their inspections.”

    They continued in a statement: “The safety of our customers and crew is always our top priority and this was not compromised at any point. We always work well above industry safety standards and the aircraft is now back in service.”

    An Airbus chief wing engineer said the panel was supplemental and was secured properly: “Each of these panels has 119 fasteners, so there was no impact to the structural integrity or load capability of the wing, and the aircraft was safe to operate.”

    “As a precautionary measure, the aircraft underwent an additional maintenance check, and the fasteners were replaced,” he concluded.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/22/2024 – 18:00

  • Bienvenidos! Supremes Roberts, Barrett Join Libs In Allowing Biden To Remove Texas Border Wire
    Bienvenidos! Supremes Roberts, Barrett Join Libs In Allowing Biden To Remove Texas Border Wire

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

    The Supreme Court voted 5–4 vote to allow U.S. Border Patrol agents to remove razor wire that was set up along the U.S.–Mexico border by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott while a legal challenge plays out.

    Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court pose for their official photo at the Supreme Court in Washington on Oct. 7, 2022. (Front L–R) Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Samuel Alito and Justice Elena Kagan. (Back L–R) Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

    In a brief order, the high court vacated a ruling issued in mid-December by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh voted to deny the application to vacate that lower court injunction, which would have prevented Border Patrol agents from removing the barrier.

    Chief Justice John Roberts as well as Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor sided with the Biden administration. No one provided an explanation for their vote.

    The order represents a win for President Joe Biden’s administration, which has struggled to curb illegal immigration into the United States since he took office in 2021, amid an ongoing battle with Mr. Abbott, a Republican, over the border.  The administration had filed an emergency request to the Supreme Court and argued that Texas was blocking federal agents from carrying out their duties.

    In arguments to the high court, Biden administration lawyers claimed that the barrier prevented agents from reaching illegal immigrants who already entered the United States. Lawyers for the state of Texas, however, have said that Washington has not been able to secure the border as Mr. Abbott’s administration set up razor wire fencing under the Operation Lone Star plan.

    They argued that the razor wire blocks agents from gaining access to “the very border they are charged with patrolling and the individuals they are charged with apprehending and inspecting.”

    “Like other law-enforcement officers, Border Patrol agents operating under difficult circumstances at the border must make context-dependent, sometimes split-second decisions about how to enforce federal immigration laws while maintaining public safety,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote to the Supreme Court. “But the injunction prohibits agents from passing through or moving physical obstacles erected by the State that prevent access to the very border they are charged with patrolling and the individuals they are charged with apprehending and inspecting.”

    In the application, she also rejected the idea that federal agents have done anything illegal or improper.

    “Border Patrol agents’ exercise of discretion regarding the means of enabling the apprehension, inspection and processing of noncitizens in no way suggests that they cut wire for impermissible purposes,” the solicitor general wrote.

    In court papers, the administration also said that, in any case, federal immigration law trumps Texas’s efforts to stem the flow of migrants into the country.

    That was submitted after the Fifth U.S. Court of Appeals sided with Texas several weeks ago, saying that “the public interest supports clear protections for property rights from government intrusion and control.”

    Earlier this year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration and multiple federal agencies and officials for destroying the razor wire. He and other state officials have argued that federal agents cut the wire to help groups crossing illegally through the river before taking them in for processing.

    Illegal immigrants walk toward a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Sept. 28, 2023. (John Moore/Getty Images)

    “Federal agents have developed and implemented a practice of destroying Texas’s concertina wire to encourage, induce, and assist thousands of aliens to illegally cross the Rio Grande and enter Texas,” he said in a release in October. “Federal agents in some cases attempted to ease aliens’ ability to illegally climb up the riverbank into Texas by attaching ropes or cables to the back of pickup trucks. Federal agents regularly cut new openings in the wire fence, sometimes immediately after Texas officers have placed new wire to plug gaps in fencing barriers.”

    Mr. Abbott also has authorized installing floating barriers in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass and allowed troopers to arrest and jail thousands of migrants on trespassing charges. The administration also is challenging those actions in federal court. A federal appeals court last month forced federal agents to stop cutting the concertina wire. Large numbers of migrants have crossed at Eagle Pass in recent months.

    In a separate case, the U.S. Fifth Court of Appeals in December ordered Texas to do away with a 1,000-foot-long buoy barrier in the Rio Grande, also designed to block illegal immigration. The court sided with the Biden administration, which argued that the barrier makes the Rio Grande difficult to navigate.

    This month, Texas denied entry to Border Patrol agents around Shelby Park in Eagle Pass after Mr. Abbott said that the state won’t allow agents “on that property anymore,” widening a dispute with the Biden administration.

    “We said, ‘We’ve had it. We’re not going to let this happen anymore,’” the governor said earlier this month, referring to the dispute.

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/22/2024 – 17:40

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Jan 22

Today’s News 22nd January 2024

  • The House Panel Giving Washington A Reality-Check On China
    The House Panel Giving Washington A Reality-Check On China

    Authored by Terri Wu and Eva Fu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Through the back door of a New York City building, some of the most potent American business leaders were smuggled in for a tabletop exercise simulating a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images, Shutterstock, Photoshop )

    The secrecy made it look like they were “in a witness protection program because they were so concerned about retaliation from the CCP [Chinese Communist Party],” said Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), who hosted the exercise in September 2023.

    “If this retaliation is how the CCP will treat business partners in peacetime, think about how it would act in war—and the ramifications to our economy, especially our critical supply chains, including pharmaceuticals and semiconductors, in a Taiwan invasion scenario,” Mr. Gallagher told The Epoch Times.

    The idea of the tabletop simulation stemmed from his exchanges with financial executives.

    One told him there is “zero” chance that the CCP will invade Taiwan. Another said the United States will never sanction China, even if it invaded the self-governed island.

    “It’s clear that, in many cases, Washington and Wall Street are living in two different worlds. One is the real world, the other a fantasy land,” said Mr. Gallagher.

    The New York City simulation didn’t focus on military conflicts but on areas of economic warfare such as shipping routes, supply chains, and money transfers.

    “We saw that if China were to invade Taiwan, the losses across our financial system would dwarf the write-downs taken at the outset of the Russia–Ukraine war. The entire U.S. economy and banking system would be imperiled,” Mr. Gallagher said.

    “Equity markets would drop precipitously as global shipping lanes closed, shipping insurance premiums skyrocketed, supply chains broke down, and the specter of global conflict grew. Americans would see their pensions shrink and their bank accounts hemorrhage cash.”

    A man walks past a military-themed mural at a public park on Pingtan Island, the closest point in China to Taiwan’s main island, in Fujian Province, China, on Jan. 14, 2024. (Greg Baaker/AFP via Getty Images)

    The wargame participants—financial, pharmaceutical, and mining executives—walked away from the simulation with a different understanding: The United States must immediately prepare an economic contingency plan to reduce critical supply chain dependence on China and curb Beijing’s access to U.S. funds to support its aggressions.

    In addition, the United States can’t afford to rely on economic means alone to deter China from taking Taiwan by force; credible military deterrence is a must-have.

    “I think the executives who took part left aware of the danger, but many remain afraid to speak out,” Mr. Gallagher said.

    Restricting U.S. outbound investment to China is a top priority of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, also known as the Select Committee on the CCP.

    When such investments help Chinese companies develop technology that the regime then uses to advance its military capabilities, the panel views it as the United States funding its own destruction.

    With bipartisan support, the Senate has passed language addressing this issue, initially as an amendment to the 2024 annual defense act. A similar bill passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

    House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) left the language out of the yearly defense act that was passed in December 2023; an updated version for a House floor vote is expected this year.

    In addition to addressing China-related economic security issues, several of the select committee’s Taiwan policy recommendations were included in the 2024 annual defense act, including a new program of military cybersecurity cooperation with Taiwan and increased congressional oversight of weapons sales to the island to reduce backlog.

    (L-R) Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) watch a video during a press conference unveiling the results of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) investigation into the biolab discovered in Reedley, Calif., in Washington on Nov. 15, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    Bipartisan Product

    Since its launch last January, the Select Committee on the CCP has demonstrated a rare bipartisan culture on the Hill.

    Chairman Gallagher and the committee’s ranking member, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), have spoken in lockstep during hearings and often held press conferences together.

    Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), a committee member, said the two leaders have been accommodating to different views.

    The group’s economic policy recommendations released in December had the endorsement of all but one member.

    “Our product is a consensus work product,” Mr. Johnson told The Epoch Times.

    Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa), another select committee member, also credits Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Krishnamoorthi for leading “the most substantive, bipartisan work in Congress.”

    In an email to The Epoch Times, she highlighted a roundtable event the panel held in her home state of Iowa regarding the CCP’s agricultural theft as an example of how the panel used “firsthand knowledge” and “real experiences” to “craft the policy blueprint to ensure the U.S. is competing with China rather than enabling their malign and destructive behavior.”

    The committee’s work hasn’t gone unnoticed by its subject of focus: the CCP.

    Chinese propaganda articles label the committee an “anti-China pioneer” and often report its action as another “restless move.”

    U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) asks a question during a hearing focused on the strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 28, 2023. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

    A September 2023 paper published by China’s Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security and Strategy warned that the committee might transform into a “center coordinating China policies for all parts of the U.S. Congress.”

    The article warned that the panel could raise the American public’s awareness of the China threat, which it labeled “misinformation.”

    To some committee staff members, criticism from the CCP is an endorsement of their work. A sign in their office says: “Have we worked harder than our CCP counterparts today?”

    A Deal Contingent on Taiwan

    Since the inception of the Select Committee on the CCP, Mr. Gallagher has repeatedly warned that the current timeframe is the “window of maximum danger” related to Taiwan.

    However, some analysts don’t view military conflict over Taiwan as inevitable.

    If regime leader Xi Jinping sees hope in a “peaceful unification” of Taiwan, he may be incentivized to hold off an invasion, said Bonnie Glaser, a managing director for the German Marshall Fund think tank.

    Shi Shan, a China expert with decades of journalist experience both in the mainland and in Hong Kong, said that view was “correct in theory.” He uses an alias to avoid reprisals from the CCP.

    Mr. Shi has learned from CCP insiders that Xi has to deliver Taiwan to his Party within a certain timeframe in exchange for his lifetime CCP leadership—a prize, that if achieved, would elevate him to the level of Mao Zedong, who established communist China in 1949 and drove his political enemies to Taiwan.

    Xi began his third term last year after removing the two-term or 10-year limit in China’s Constitution. The constitutional amendment was passed in March 2018. At the 19th Party Congress a year ago, Xi persuaded CCP senior leaders to extend his reign by promising them Taiwan, Mr. Shi said.

    A woman of the Miao ethnic minority watches the opening session of the 19th Communist Party Congress on a smartphone in Jianhe, Guizhou Province, China, on Oct.18, 2017. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

    In his 2024 New Year address, the 70-year-old communist leader reiterated that the unification of China is a “historical inevitability.”

    Mr. Gallagher and Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, said that when authoritarian dictators warn the world about their plans, we should heed them.

    Mr. Shi told The Epoch Times more about Xi’s inflexible internal situation.

    “Xi is preparing China for a war with Taiwan. Because of that, the Party needed a leader beyond the previous term limit. If he gives up on the goal, the disagreeing forces within the Party will hold him accountable because he has made himself an exception and made the economy suffer. He has so much on the line that he cannot change his course.”

    Xi has been working toward the goal for a while.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/21/2024 – 23:55

  • Deflation is Making China's Growth Look Much Better Than It Really Is
    Deflation is Making China’s Growth Look Much Better Than It Really Is

    By John Liu and Zheng Wu, Bloomberg markets live reporters and strategists

    Three things we learned last week:

    1. China met its 2023 growth target but the data understated challenges. Data released Wednesday showed the world’s second-largest economy grew 5.2% last year, above Beijing’s official target of around 5%. Besides a low base in 2022, when stringent Covid curbs severely disrupted economic activities, the nation’s longest deflation streak since 1999 also boosted the headline growth number.

    China’s gross domestic product was reported in real terms, after discounting the price factor in nominal growth. As consumer and factory-gate prices fell last year, the price adjustment effectively inflated the growth rate.

    The difference, known as the GDP deflator, is now the biggest “inflator” in GDP calculation in 14 years. Some private-sector economists say last year’s actual growth was much lower.

    2. Investor anxiety is growing over Beijing’s plan to fix the economy this year. News that China is considering 1 trillion yuan ($139 billion) of new special sovereign debt, only the fourth such sale in the past 26 years, did little to help market sentiment. The MSCI China index has dropped nearly 10% so far this year, down 60% from its peak in 2021. Disappointed local investors paid a premium of more than 10% for exchange-traded funds to chase Japanese stocks instead.

    Investors had hoped for stronger public spending to offset weak consumption but were disappointed after Premier Li Qiang downplayed the idea of big stimulus again at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The People’s Bank of China’s surprise move to hold its key policy rate unchanged Monday also curbed their enthusiasm. Officials even avoided acknowledging that the economy is in deflation.

    3. Youth unemployment data returned after a six-month halt. The 14.9% jobless rate for December still looks concerning, although it was down from a record 21.3% in June, after which authorities suspended releasing such data.

    While the government said its new methodology, which excludes students, reflected a more accurate picture of unemployment, some economists cautioned the fresh criteria made it hard to assess the December number. Still, more transparency is better.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/21/2024 – 23:20

  • Wearing A Continuous Glucose Monitor: Troubling Trend Or Health Hack?
    Wearing A Continuous Glucose Monitor: Troubling Trend Or Health Hack?

    Authored by Sheramy Tsai via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times)

    In January 2023, 42-year-old Jenni Southerington reached a pivotal moment in her health. Skeptical about her prediabetes diagnosis, she started using a continuous glucose monitor. The device’s two-week data revealed unexpected morning glucose spikes despite strict fasting. Ms. Southerington found that certain foods would worsen her condition. “Eating a spoonful of rice had the same effect as half a cup,” she said.

    Her experience underscores a growing trend of people without diabetes monitoring their blood sugar, either out of concern over disease or to optimize their health. But while these devices can offer valuable insight, many people may not need them and could suffer unneeded expense and stress from using them, experts warn.

    CGMs Demystified

    Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) are small, wearable devices that provide real-time data on blood sugar with a sensor typically placed on the arm or abdomen.

    Unlike traditional fingerstick tests, CGMs don’t require repeated skin punctures. CGMs gauge glucose in the interstitial fluid—the fluid between body tissues. The collected data is wirelessly relayed to a user’s choice of device, be it to a smartphone app, a watch, or directly to an insulin pump, typically every five minutes or about 288 times a day.

    Continuous glucose monitors were once reserved for people with diabetes, but more and more health-conscious people are wearing them as a way to monitor their blood sugar.(Dragoljub Bankovic/Shutterstock)

    “At their core, CGMs provide knowledge, and knowledge is power. Any person wearing a CGM can better understand how different foods and activities affect their glucose levels,” Dr. Andrew Demidowich, assistant professor in the Division of Endocrinology at Johns Hopkins Medicine, told The Epoch Times.

    Not everyone shares Dr. Demidowich’s enthusiasm.

    The Central Role of Glucose in Metabolic Health

    Glucose, a simple sugar, is a key fuel source for the body, but it creates problems if it builds up in the blood. High blood glucose is more than just a marker for diabetes—it’s a central player in poor metabolic health. Metabolic diseases, which include diabetes, obesity, and heart disease, are increasing globally. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention highlights that more than one-third of U.S. adults suffer from a cluster of conditions known as metabolic syndrome, which includes high blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal cholesterol levels.

    Processed foods, including refined grains and sugars, as well as an increasingly sedentary lifestyle are wreaking havoc on people’s metabolic health. The rise of diabetes and obesity have been linked to processed foods that cause significant spikes in blood sugar. And while exercise can help manage these effects, especially after eating, many people prefer more passive forms of entertainment.

    (The Epoch Times)

    Rapid fluctuations in glucose can stress the body and trigger inflammation, which can lead to chronic diseases such as heart disease, arthritis, and certain cancers. Watching glucose levels can help people understand what improves their blood sugar level—and what makes it worse.

    “I often tell my patients that we are all unique, and how one person’s sugar levels react to a certain food, like a banana or orange, may be completely different in how it may affect another person,” Dr. Demidowich said.

    CGMs for All

    CGMs were once limited to diabetes care. Initially vital for the 1.9 million Americans with Type 1 diabetes requiring daily monitoring, CGMs are now being used by a much broader demographic. This shift is significant in a nation in which an estimated 38 million people live with diabetes.

    Continuous glucose monitors are small devices that measure glucose in the interstitial fluid using a small sensor probe. (Illustration by The Epoch Times/Shutterstock)

    CGMs can provide real-time insights into the effects of lifestyle choices on glucose levels. Diet is just one of the many factors affecting glucose levels—exercise, stress, sleep, illness, dehydration, and pain also play significant roles.

    More people are using CGMs as a way to self-optimize their health and make better decisions about food, physical activity, and more. The growing use of CGMs signifies a shift toward personalized, data-driven health and wellness strategies.

    A 2018 Stanford University study, led by professor Michael Snyder, uncovered frequent and previously undetected blood sugar spikes in healthy individuals.

    “There are lots of folks running around with their glucose levels spiking, and they don’t even know it,” Mr. Snyder said in a statement, underscoring the risk these spikes pose for cardiovascular disease and insulin resistance, a diabetes precursor.

    The study, using CGMs on participants, suggests that even those without diabetes can experience significant glucose fluctuations.

    “We think that these continuous glucose monitors will be important in providing the right information earlier on so that people can make changes to their diet should they need to,” Mr. Snyder said.

    Echoing these potential benefits, a related study by George Washington University researchers found that 90 percent of CGM users reported shifts toward healthier living, with nearly 50 percent of them more inclined to exercise after noticing blood glucose spikes and 87 percent modifying their diets based on the feedback from their devices.

    Dr. Demidowich has seen these effects himself, which is why he encourages patients with prediabetes to use the devices.

    “I’m a big proponent of people with prediabetes wearing a CGM, even if just for a short time like 2 to 4 weeks, to better understand how to optimize their lifestyle and diet to avoid progression to diabetes,” he told The Epoch Times.

    Real-time data can change patient behavior, he said.

    “As providers, we can recommend cutting out sugary beverages or processed foods, but when patients see their sugar levels spiking in real-time, that becomes a powerful impetus for change.”

    Too Much Information?

    However, not everyone shares this enthusiasm for widespread CGM use. Dr. Robert H. Shmerling, senior faculty editor at Harvard Health Publishing, raises an issue with the devices’ utility for non-diabetics. He says there isn’t conclusive research demonstrating benefits for this group, pointing out that most people without diabetes naturally maintain normal blood sugar levels.

    “Just because you can measure something doesn’t mean you should,” Dr. Shmerling wrote in an article. CGM use in the nondiabetic population may be premature and driven more by marketing than medical necessity, he cautioned. He noted that unnecessary monitoring could lead to false alarms, increased anxiety, and possibly harmful interventions.

    Some people simply don’t know what healthy blood sugar looks like, and that can lead to confusion and fear, which can undermine, rather than improve, health.

    Dr. Shmerling’s skepticism is echoed by 70-year-old Bob Volat, a Type 1 diabetes patient since age 59 who praises CGMs as a transformative tool in his health journey, calling them “an absolute gift.”

    However, in a conversation with The Epoch Times, Mr. Volat questioned the utility of such advanced technology for nondiabetics, viewing it as overly complex and potentially motivated by profit. The devices aren’t cheap and he believes people may be swayed by aggressive marketing.

    Rather than purchasing devices, he advises that people take a more holistic approach to health that goes beyond a singular focus on glucose levels.

    Decoding Blood Sugar: Understanding Spikes and Glucose Tolerance

    Prediabetes and diabetes are diagnosed based on specific blood glucose levels and A1C test results. The A1C test, measuring average blood sugar over two to three months, offers a comprehensive view of long-term glucose control.

    Beyond these diagnostic benchmarks, there’s an increasing focus on the intricacies of blood sugar regulation, especially the health impacts of frequent sugar spikes, which CGM devices can adeptly identify.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/21/2024 – 22:10

  • As Chinese Purchases Of US Farmland Soar, It's Becoming Impossible To Track How Much It Owns
    As Chinese Purchases Of US Farmland Soar, It’s Becoming Impossible To Track How Much It Owns

    The topic of China’s ownership of US farmlands is starting to boil over.

    Six months after we reported that a “Bipartisan Bill Aims To Block Chinese Purchase Of US Farmland”, more are starting to pay attention yet as even Bloomberg notes that America “is seeing more and more of its most fertile land snapped up by China and other foreign buyers” the big problem remains: it’s difficult to know just how much farmland China has bought due to problem with how the US tracks such data.

    Here’s what we do know: according to Department of Agriculture data foreign ownership and investment in US farmland, pastures and forests jumped to about 40 million acres in 2021, up 40% from 2016; but an analysis conducted by the US Government Accountability Office — a non-partisan watchdog that reports to Congress — found mistakes in the data, including the largest land holding linked with China being counted twice. Other challenges include the USDA’s reliance on foreigners self-reporting their activity.

    As a result, foreign ownership of US cropland is drawing attention from Washington as concern rises about possible threats to food supply chains and other national security risks. And, as we reported last summer, lawmakers have called for a crackdown on sales of farmland to China and other nations.

    Foreign investors own 37.6 million acres of U.S. agricultural land, which is 2.9% of all privately held agricultural land and 1.7% of all U.S. land.
    (Source: USDA)

    “Without improving its internal processes, USDA cannot report reliable information to Congress or the public about where and how much US agricultural land is held by foreign persons,” the report said.

    The GAO made six recommendations, including that the USDA share more timely and complete data with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, an interagency panel led by the Treasury Department that reviews foreign business deals. And yet, with typical bureaucratic “speed”, it is certain that none of these will be implemented for years, in the meantime allowing Chinese state and private oligarchs to keep snapping up fertile US farmland.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/21/2024 – 21:35

  • US Supreme Court Action Alters Course Of Jan. 6 Defendant Sentencings
    US Supreme Court Action Alters Course Of Jan. 6 Defendant Sentencings

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

    A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to review a case called Fischer v. United States, which experts say could weaken prosecutors’ hand in hundreds of Jan. 6 cases, including former President Donald Trump’s, is already upending some defendant cases and sentencing proceedings.

    In December, the Supreme Court decided it would take up the appeal by Jan. 6 defendant Joseph W. Fisher of the Biden administration’s novel use of an Enron-era evidence-tampering law to prosecute hundreds of defendants for obstruction of Congress during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incident.

    The obstruction of Congress charge—which carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison—is the most widely charged felony in Jan. 6 cases, including against President Trump.

    Mr. Fischer was indicted for various alleged offences for his role in the Jan. 6 incident, including obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder, violent entry, and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds—and obstruction of Congress based on 18 U.S. Code Section 1512(c)(2), or “Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant.”

    This is an evidence-tampering provision that’s part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which experts say was conceived largely to curb wrongdoing on Wall Street—but is now used by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in Jan. 6 cases.

    Mr. Fischer challenged the obstruction charge, claiming that 1512(c)(2) does not prohibit his alleged conduct on Jan. 6. A district court agreed but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit reversed that decision, siding with a broader reading of the provision, namely that it applies other forms of obstructive conduct, not just ones related to investigations and evidence.

    While it’s unclear when the Supreme Court will hold the first hearings in Mr. Fischer’s appeal, several legal experts told The Epoch Times in earlier interviews that the high court is likely to find that 1512(c)(2) is being improperly used against Jan. 6 defendants.

    If the challenge proves successful, the Supreme Court’s decision could have far-reaching consequences, potentially erasing some charges against President Trump and overturning felony convictions for numerous Jan. 6 defendants.

    The implications extend beyond individual cases to the core strategy employed by the Justice Department (DOJ) in securing convictions.

    Meanwhile, the fact that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear Mr. Fischer’s challenge to the provision is already having an impact on some Jan. 6 cases.

    Challenges Based on Supreme Court Review

    Since the Supreme Court agreed in mid-December to take up the Fischer appeal, a number of Jan. 6 defendants have asked judges to pause their trials and sentencing proceedings pending the outcome of the case.

    One of these is John Strand, a former underwear model convicted of obstructing Congress on the basis of 1512(c)(2), who describes himself as a “political prisoner.” He was sentenced to 32 months in prison.

    On Jan. 19, Mr. Strand’s attorneys filed a motion for release pending the Fischer appeal and a motion for reduction of sentence based on the zero-point offender guideline, which gives defendants with no criminal history an extra two points off their sentencing calculations, court filings show.

    The DOJ has taken the position that Jan. 6 defendants are ineligible for sentence reduction on the basis of the zero-point offender guideline, which has some exceptions, including for violent crimes.

    Noteworthy in Mr. Strand’s filing is the singling out of the obstruction charge, which in his case is the only felony he’s been found guilty of.

    “In particular, a substantial question exists as to whether the statute underlying Strand’s sole felony conviction, 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2), applies to his conduct on January 6, 2021, in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to grant certiorari in United States v. Fischer.”

    While it’s too early to know whether the judge in Mr. Strand’s case will side with his request to reduce his sentence, several other Jan. 6 defendants have won early release based on the Supreme Court’s decision to review the Fischer case.

    Early Release and Postponement

    Last week, a federal judge ordered the early release of Thomas Adams, who was found guilty of two counts for his role on Jan. 6, including the obstruction charge, his sole felony.

    U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta noted in his Jan. 10 order that Mr. Adams would probably have received a lighter sentence than the 14 months he was given (in addition to 36 months of supervised release) absent the obstruction charge.

    While prosecutors argued Mr. Adams should be kept in jail, the judge disagreed, saying that the Supreme Court’s decision to take up the case suggests the outcome is a “close question” at a minimum.

    One day after Judge Mehta ordered Mr. Adams to go free, U.S. District Judge John Bates ordered the release of Alexander Sheppard, who was previously sentenced to 19 months in prison for several misdemeanors and one felony (the obstruction charge).

    Mr. Adams’s attorneys asked that he be released from prison at the end of his misdemeanor convictions, citing the pending Fischer appeal. The judge agreed, with the caveat that if the Supreme Court rules against Mr. Fischer and upholds his sentencing based on the obstruction charge, Mr. Sheppard may be required to serve out his full sentence.

    “The Court will order Sheppard released after he has served six months in prison—on May 2, 2024. The parties shall contact the Court within three days of the Supreme Court issuing its decision in Fischer with their positions as to what if any further proceedings are necessary,” Judge Bates wrote in his order.

    “The Court may ultimately conclude that a further period of incarceration is warranted upon a potential remand after a decision in Fischer,” the judge added.

    Three other federal judges have postponed pending Jan. 6 cases in which obstruction is the only felony charge, according to Politic, which cited a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington as saying that around 100 Jan. 6 defendants face charges in which 1512(c)(2) is the only felony charge.

    The same law challenged by Mr. Fischer is instrumental in charges against President Trump. Should the Supreme Court limit or disagree with the Justice Department, it could have a significant impact on the former president’s trial, currently set for March, potentially leading to a retrial.

    Concerns of Overreach

    Defense lawyer Kira Anne West, who has been involved in more than 50 Jan. 6 cases, has accused the Justice Department of overreach in prosecuting some of the approximately 1,300 Jan. 6 cases.

    Ms. West, who volunteered to defend dozens of Jan. 6 defendants, said during a recent C-SPAN “Booknotes” podcast that most of her Jan. 6 clients had neither a criminal history nor did they engage in any violence that day.

    “Some simply went into the building, turned around, and went out,” she said. “Many were in for a very short period of time, less than 20 minutes. Yet the government is charging them with felony charges that you can get up to 20 years in prison for. That makes absolutely no sense to me.”

    She said it’s unusual for so many minor cases to go to federal trial, calling it a waste of money.

    “I think in my whole career, I’ve had one misdemeanor case in federal court before Jan. 6. Now, I have tons of them,” Ms. West said.

    While she did not downplay whatever violence took place that day, saying it was a “serious crime” for people to attack police officers, she did say she saw the Biden administration’s approach to Jan. 6 cases part of a longstanding pattern of federal “overreach.”

    “What I’ve experienced as a defense lawyer, which I’ve experienced for years, is that there is quite a bit of government overreach as far as who they’re prosecuting and what they’re charging them with,” she said.

    Jim Burling, vice president of legal affairs for the Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit public interest law firm that challenges government abuses, told The Epoch Times in a recent interview that it is “utterly absurd” for the Biden administration to charge Jan. 6 protesters with the felony obstruction charge that carries a 20 year sentence.

    “I think both the liberals and the conservatives on the Supreme Court are going to be very wary of this overcharging,” he said of the Fischer case that the high court will weigh.

    Matthew Vadum contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/21/2024 – 21:00

  • These Are The 25 Best Countries For Retirement
    These Are The 25 Best Countries For Retirement

    In 1881, Otto von Bismarck proposed a radical idea for retirement: people above the age of 70 would be given a state pension, encouraging them to stop working.

    This model has since been adopted en masse and most countries now have a retirement age, after which workers can claim benefits paid through years of their work.

    However, modern-day retirement is much more than just finances. Wealth management company Natixis analyzed 44 nations on four main categories affecting the ability for their residents to retire well in the 2023 Global Retirement Index. Each category has subindices, from which they averaged scores out of 100 to create this ranking.

    The categories are:

    • Health: Per capita spend on healthcare, life expectancy, and non-insured health spend.

    • Quality of Life: Happiness levels, water and sanitation, air quality, environment, and biodiversity.

    • Material Well-being: Per capita income, income equality, and employment levels.

    • Retirement Finances: Government debt, old-age dependency, interest rates, inflation, governance, taxes, and bank non-performing loans.

    ℹ️ This index quantifies general retirement welfare in a country and does not account for countries which are retirement destinations—usually because of lower costs of living or better weather.

    So, with one-third of the world expected to be 65 and older by 2050, how are countries stacking up against each other when it comes to creating supportive environments for retirement?

    Of the countries analyzed for the best retirement conditions, Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao and Niccolo Conte created the graphic below to highlight the top 25.

    What Are the Best Countries for Retirement?

    Norway ranks first as the best country for retirement in this study, helped by top scores in health and material well-being.

    For health metrics, Norway was one of the few countries to see life expectancy improve over the pandemic. It now sits at 83.3 years at birth, and is one of the highest rates in the world. This is in contrast to many other countries in the index (Canada, Austria, the U.S.) that saw life expectancies drop recently due to the higher mortality rate during the pandemic.

    For well-being, Norway’s current low unemployment rate (3.8%) reduces undue pressure on their social security net.

    In fact, Norway along with the next top three countries (Switzerland, Iceland, and Ireland) all retain their rankings from last year, along with Estonia, which is ranked 25th. Every other country gained or lost a spot as seen below.

    Rank Country Score Rank Change
    (from 2022)
    1 🇳🇴 Norway 83% 0
    2 🇨🇭 Switzerland 82% 0
    3 🇮🇸 Iceland 81% 0
    4 🇮🇪 Ireland 80% 0
    5 🇱🇺 Luxembourg 79% +2
    6 🇳🇱 Netherlands 79% +2
    7 🇦🇺 Australia 78% -2
    8 🇳🇿 New Zealand 77% -2
    9 🇩🇪 Germany 76% +2
    10 🇩🇰 Denmark 76% -1
    11 🇦🇹 Austria 75% +3
    12 🇨🇦 Canada 74% +3
    13 🇫🇮 Finland 74% -1
    14 🇸🇪 Sweden 74% -1
    15 🇸🇮 Slovenia 73% +6
    16 🇬🇧 UK 73% +3
    19 🇧🇪 Belgium 72% +1
    17 🇮🇱 Israel 72% -1
    18 🇨🇿 Czech Republic 72% -8
    20 🇺🇸 U.S. 71% -2
    21 🇰🇷 South Korea 70% -4
    22 🇲🇹 Malta 69% +1
    23 🇫🇷 France 69% +1
    24 🇯🇵 Japan 68% -2
    25 🇪🇪 Estonia 67% 0

    Other highlights in the top 25 include: Australia, at 7th, which is the highest-ranked non-European country in the index. The country scores well in retirement finances due to its superannuation pension fund system, currently worth $3.5 trillion, fifth-largest in the world.

    Meanwhile, France, just outside the top 20, saw widespread protests in early 2023 when a law to raise the retirement age to 64 was passed through special constitutional powers. Raising the retirement age will presumably keep people working longer, paying mandatory payroll tax to fund retirement benefits, and will improve their steadily worsening old-age dependency ratio.

    A worsening old-age dependency ratio is where the share of older, dependent people to younger, employed people keeps increasing, reducing the sustainability of retirement benefits.

    How Countries are Preparing for the “Silver Tsunami”

    France is not the only country trying to keep its population working longer. The Chinese government is also looking to raise its retirement age in gradual shifts, as it grapples not only with an aging population but also a declining one.

    Immigration has also been frequently cited as a near-term measure to boost the working-age population and increase the benefits pool. Canada, for example, had 6 workers for every retiree in 1980. In 2015 that had dropped to 4. By 2030, it will drop further to 3. As a result the country has pursued aggressive immigration for more than a decade now and has grown its population by 10 million since 2010.

    Finally, there has been a push towards increasing overall productivity by targeting technological advancements and automation. However both need to occur in tandem with re-skilling so that they don’t result in net job losses, which will only further burden social security systems.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/21/2024 – 20:25

  • RFK Seeks Path To Victory By Forcing House To Elect President
    RFK Seeks Path To Victory By Forcing House To Elect President

    Authored by Jeff Louderback via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    To win the 2024 election as an independent, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is firstly hoping for an outright win, but the second path to victory is to make sure no other candidate wins 270 electoral votes.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images, Shutterstock)

    If no candidate reaches 270 electoral votes in a presidential election, the winner is decided in a contingent election by the House of Representatives, where each state votes as a bloc.

    The House has picked the president twice in American history.

    In 1800, Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson were deadlocked after the electoral votes were counted. The House cast their ballots to elect President Jefferson, who received 61 percent of the popular vote.

    When none of the four presidential candidates received an electoral vote majority in 1824, the House elected John Quincy Adams on Feb. 9 the following year.

    “People are starting to realize that Bobby can win, with where he is in the polls,” Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, the campaign manager of Mr. Kennedy, told The Epoch Times.
    “They are starting to see that, for the first time in their lifetime, the two-party system can be broken and they can vote for somebody who excites them rather than having to vote for the lesser of two evils,” she said. Ms. Kennedy is also the candidate’s daughter-in-law.

    The Green Room in the White House in Washington, circa 1962. A portrait of President John Quincy Adams by George P.A. Healy hangs above the fireplace. (Archive Photos/Getty Images)

    Ms. Kennedy said Mr. Kennedy could be considered a preferred candidate over former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, the likely Republican and Democrat nominees.

    The prospect of Mr. Kennedy winning as a compromise candidate is relatively slim because a contingent United States election is decided by state delegations. Republicans currently hold a four-vote delegation lead, according to a tally maintained by ProPublica.

    The next House of Representatives, composed of lawmakers elected in 2024, would vote in a contingent election. A consensus forecast by 270toWin based on an aggregate of forecasts by five major analytics firms sees Republicans keeping their delegation majority in the House in 2024.

    Few independent and third-party candidates have won electoral votes. In 1912, former President Theodore Roosevelt ran as an independent against his former protégé, President William Howard Taft, after failing to win the Republican nomination.

    President Roosevelt carried eight states and gained 27 percent of the popular vote but won just 88 electoral votes compared to Democrat Woodrow Wilson’s 435.

    Independent candidate and former Alabama Gov. George Wallace won five states in 1968. He needed to prevail in only one more state with 10 or more electors to prevent Richard Nixon from an Electoral College majority.

    In 1992, Ross Perot captured around 19 percent of the popular vote, won several counties, and placed second in two states, but he did not secure electoral votes in a race won by Bill Clinton over President George H.W. Bush.

    Brian Seitchik, a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign staff member, told The Epoch Times that the strategy to capture enough electoral votes to send the presidential election to the House is “absurd.”

    “It was talked about in 1992 when Ross Perot was running. It was talked about when George Wallace was on the ballot many years ago,” Mr. Sietchik said.

    “It’s a fantasy that Republican nerds like to talk about—just like they like to talk about a brokered convention. We haven’t had a brokered convention since the 1960s, so these are just sort of political fantasies.”

    David Carlucci, a former New York state senator and a Democrat strategist, told The Epoch Times that Mr. Kennedy faces a “daunting challenge” to get electoral votes.

    “Regardless of your political affiliation—Democrat, Republican, or Independent—it’s undeniable that the Electoral College poses challenges to an independent candidate. The strategy of winning states necessitates a precise campaign focused on specific demographics, leaving little room for candidates like RFK Jr. to impact safe red and blue states, which constitute the majority,” Mr. Carlucci said

    “With fewer than 10 swing states, an independent candidate faces an uphill battle against the targeted efforts of Democrats and Republicans in these crucial areas,” he said.

    Mr. Kennedy is traveling the country to private fundraising events and rallies designed to collect signatures to get him on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/21/2024 – 19:50

  • "You Need An F-16, Not An AR-15" – Biden Once Again Suggests US Govt Could Murder Gun-Owners
    “You Need An F-16, Not An AR-15” – Biden Once Again Suggests US Govt Could Murder Gun-Owners

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

    President Joe Biden told a group of mayors that they would be instrumental in implementing his Second Amendment policies, including a ban on some types of semiautomatic rifles, so-called “assault weapons.”

    U.S. President Joe Biden arrives to address mayors attending the U.S. Conference of Mayors Winter Meeting in the East Room of the White House in Washington on Jan. 19, 2024. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

    President Biden welcomed a bipartisan group of mayors attending the U.S. Conference of Mayors Winter Meeting at the White House on Friday.

    He told the mayors that the American Rescue Plan has spent $15 billion on infrastructure and public safety.

    The president said much of that money went directly to cities to hire and equip police officers, institute violence intervention programs, and fund other crime prevention programs.

    “You’ve done a tremendous job putting those resources to work. You know how to do it,” President Biden said. “Mayors are the people who get things done.”

    He said that, at the urging of his staff, he is continuing his push for a revival of the 1990s-era “Assault Weapons Ban.”

    The ban, which he said he helped the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif) write, was in place from September 1994 to September 2004.

    President Biden claimed the ban reduced violent crime, including mass shootings. That claim has motivated his administration to push for a renewal of the policy.

    “My staff came to me and said, ‘We need a White House office dedicated to getting guns off the streets and treating the trauma from violence,” he said.

    “I’m still committed to banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

    “When we passed the Second Amendment, guess what? You weren’t allowed to have a cannon.”

    During his speech Friday, President Biden drew chuckles from the mayors as he derided an argument sometimes made by Second Amendment advocates against “assault weapons” bans.

    “You’ve heard, ‘the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots?’ Guess what, man? I didn’t see a whole lot of patriots out there walking around making sure that we have these weapons. If you really want to worry about the government, you need an F-16. You don’t need an AR-15,” President Biden said.

    The president’s remarks drew laughter from the mayors.

    A Rand Corporation study completed in 2020 and updated in 2023 found limited evidence that “high capacity magazine” bans reduced mass shootings and inconclusive evidence on the effect of banning “assault weapons” on the incidents of mass shootings.

    President Biden also touted the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act,” (BSCA) passed in June of 2022 as “the first gun safety law in 30 years.”

    Under the BSCA, President Biden has issued numerous executive orders, directed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to change or write many sometimes controversial rules, and established a “White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention” last September.

    Vice President Kamala Harris speaks about gun safety at the White House in Washington on Sept. 22, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    The White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention is led by Vice President Kamala Harris and staffed by veterans of the gun control movement. Stefanie Feldman, President Biden’s staff secretary, runs the office with Greg Jackson and Rob Wilcox.

    Previously, Mr. Jackson led the Community Justice Action Fund, which focused on the impact of violent crime involving guns on minority communities.

    Mr. Wilcox worked at Brady, served on the Board of Directors of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, and practiced law in New York City.

    Recently, Ms. Harris announced the office’s “Safer States Agenda” to push similar programs at the state level.

    “We’re deploying teams to meet with communities that have been victimized, to make sure they get the help they need,” President Biden told the mayors.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/21/2024 – 18:40

  • Russia Suspends LNG Exports At Huge Baltic Sea Terminal After Ukraine Drone Attack
    Russia Suspends LNG Exports At Huge Baltic Sea Terminal After Ukraine Drone Attack

    Russian gas giant Novatek said it had been forced to suspend some operations at its huge Baltic Sea fuel export terminal on Sunday due to a fire started by what Ukrainian media said was a drone attack, Reuters reported.

    The giant Ust-Luga complex, located on the Gulf of Finland about 170 km (110 miles) west of St. Petersburg, is used to ship oil and gas products to international markets. It processes stable gas condensate – a type of light oil – into light and heavy naphtha, kerosene and diesel to be shipped by sea.

    According to Reuters, it was not clear how long the disruption would last, how many tankers would have to idle outside the port, and what the knock-on effect would be on international energy markets.

    The Interfax-Ukraine news agency said the fire was the result of a special operation carried out by Ukraine’s security services.

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

    “The Ust-Luga Oil terminal in the Leningrad region is an important facility for the enemy. Fuel is refined there, which, among other things, is also supplied to Russian troops,” it cited one source as saying. Of course, the fuel is also used to supply Europe where energy prices are now expected to spike as a result of this latest supply disruption.

    “A successful attack on such a terminal not only causes economic damage to the enemy, depriving the occupiers of the opportunity to earn money to wage war in Ukraine, but also significantly complicates the logistics of fuel for the Russian military.”

    While Reuters was not able to confirm that the fire resulted from a Ukrainian drone attack, it writes that if it did “such an attack would demonstrate Kyiv’s ability to conduct strikes deeper into Russia than usual using what are believed to be domestically produced drones at a time when it is on the defensive on the battlefield and struggling to secure as much Western financing as it wants.”

    Such an attack, the latest in a spate of apparent strikes in recent days targeting Russian energy facilities, would also raise questions about the quality of Russian air defense systems around key infrastructure facilities.

    The incident, along with what Russia says was a Ukrainian artillery strike on civilians in a Russian-held city in eastern Ukraine that left at least 25 dead, is sure to prompt broader Russian retaliation in a war which shows no sign of ending.

    Alexander Drozdenko, the Leningrad region’s governor, said on the Telegram messaging app, that there had been no casualties at the Ust-Luga terminal and all workers had been safely evacuated. Russian news agencies reported that two storage tanks and a pumping station had been damaged, but that the fire had been brought under control.

    Novatek, which is Russia’s largest liquefied natural gas producer, said in a statement it had suspended some operations after the fire which it said was the result of “external influence.”

    “The technological process at Novatek-Ust-Luga has been stopped, and an operational headquarters has been established to eliminate the consequences. Damage assessment will be carried out later,” the company said.

    Russian news outlet Shot reported that local residents had heard a drone operating nearby followed by several explosions.

    Russia and Ukraine have targeted each other’s energy infrastructure in strikes designed to disrupt supply lines and logistics.  On Friday, a drone attack hit an oil depot in Russia’s western region of Bryansk, bordering Ukraine, for which Moscow blamed Kyiv. That came a day after an attack on a Russian Baltic Sea oil terminal that Russian officials said was unsuccessful.

    Baza, a Russian news outlet known for its security services contacts, posted footage on Telegram on Sunday of large flames shooting into the sky over what appeared to be an industrial complex.

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

    Three international tanker ships were anchored near the Ust-Luga terminal, though there were no reports of damage to them from the fire, the St Petersburg-based Fontanka outlet said.

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

    Drozdenko said a “high alert regime” had been introduced and that officials had gathered for an emergency meeting.
    Novatek processed 3.4 million tons of stable gas condensate at the complex in the first half of 2023, according to the most recent data available, up 0.6% from the same period a year earlier.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/21/2024 – 18:05

  • Pennsylvania Gun Restrictions For Adults Under 21 Struck Down By Federal Court
    Pennsylvania Gun Restrictions For Adults Under 21 Struck Down By Federal Court

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Pennsylvania’s ban on adults under 21 carrying guns in public violates the U.S. Constitution, a federal court ruled on Jan. 18.

    GREELEY, PENNSYLVANIA – OCTOBER 12: Pistols and other weapons are displayed at a shooting range during the “Rod of Iron Freedom Festival” on on October 12, 2019 in Greeley, Pennsylvania. The two-day event, which is organized by Kahr Arms/Tommy Gun Warehouse and Rod of Iron Ministries, has billed itself as a “second amendment rally and celebration of freedom, faith and family.” Numerous speakers, vendors and displays celebrated guns and gun culture in America. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

    The Constitution’s Second Amendment, which says that “the people” have the right to “keep and bear arms,” applies to all adults, a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit panel said in a split decision.

    “The words ’the people’ in the Second Amendment presumptively encompass all adult Americans, including 18- to-20-year-olds, and we are aware of no founding-era law that supports disarming people in that age group,” U.S. Circuit Judge Kent Jordan wrote for the majority.

    In a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision, the nation’s top court found that gun restrictions must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

    Pennsylvania law bars carrying guns in a concealed manner in public without a license. People under 21 cannot apply for a permit.

    While most Pennsylvania adults are typically allowed to carry guns openly in public, only those who met certain criteria, such as having a license, were able to do so legally once a state of emergency was declared for the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Those restrictions violated the constitutional rights of adults under 21, plaintiffs argued in a lawsuit filed in 2020.

    U.S. District Judge William Stickman IV ruled against them in 2021. He said that per guidelines outlined in a 2008 Supreme Court decision, the restrictions were “longstanding” and “presumptively lawful” and thus fell “outside the scope of the Second Amendment.”

    The Firearms Policy Coalition and the other plaintiffs appealed, arguing the ruling was wrong. When the Supreme Court issued its 2022 ruling, the plaintiffs notified the appeals court. The 2022 ruling established that the right of adults to carry guns in public “is squarely protected by the Second Amendment” and Pennsylvania “has not carried its burden in proving that the State’s restrictions as to 18-to-20-year-olds are analogous to any historical restrictions,” the plaintiffs said.

    Pennsylvania officials argued that the regulations still fell outside the scope of the Constitution, in part because adults aged 18 to 20 are not part of “the people” and should not be struck down.

    Judge Jordan, in the new ruling, said that’s not true.

    “18-to-20-year-olds are, like other subsets of the American public, presumptively among ’the people’ to whom Second Amendment rights extend,” he wrote.

    That means Pennsylvania officials would have to identify historical laws that limited the population’s gun rights, and they did not do so, the judge added. In fact, an act passed by Congress shortly after the Second Amendment was ratified required all men to enroll in a militia when they turned 18. They were then armed.

    “We understand that a reasonable debate can be had over allowing young adults to be armed, but the issue before us is a narrow one. Our question is whether the Commissioner has borne his burden of proving that evidence of founding-era regulations supports Pennsylvania’s restriction on 18-to-20-year-olds’ Second Amendment rights, and the answer to that is no,” Judge Jordan said.

    U.S. Circuit Judge D. Brooks Smith joined with Judge Jordan. Both were appointed by former President George W. Bush, while Judge Stickman was appointed by former President Donald Trump.

    U.S. Circuit Judge L. Felipe Restrepo, appointed under former President Barack Obama, offered a dissent.

    “There is no dispute that there is some age threshold before which the protection of the Second Amendment does not apply,” Judge Restrepo wrote, adding later that consultation with various sources led him to believe that “the scope of the right, as understood during the Founding-era, excludes those under the age of 21.”

    The decision reversed the earlier ruling against the plaintiffs.

    Reactions

    The Firearms Policy Coalition cheered the new ruling.

    “We applaud the Third Circuit’s decision in this case confirming that 18-to-20-year-old adults have the same right to armed self-defense as any other adult,” Cody J. Wisniewski, counsel for the coalition, said in a statement. “If it wasn’t for 18-to-20-year-old adults being empowered to exercise their right to defend themselves, their loved ones, and their communities, our nation wouldn’t exist–it would be a deep perversion of the Constitution to prevent them the same right today.”

    “Today’s ruling ensures that these individuals have the ability to defend themselves during a state of emergency,” Adam Kraut, the Second Amendment Foundation’s executive director, added. The foundation was also part of the suit.

    Other plaintiffs included Madison Lara, an adult under 21 who owns a rifle and handgun and said she wants to be able to carry them around for self-defense, and Logan Miller, another affected Pennsylvania resident who lawyers said has abstained from carrying guns to avoid being charged with a felony.

    The Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) was the named defendant in the case.

    “PSP has no comment, as our attorneys are still reviewing the ruling,” a spokesman told The Epoch Times in an email.

    The office of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, did not respond to a request for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/21/2024 – 17:30

  • Wobble… Then Soar?
    Wobble… Then Soar?

    By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

    Wobble, Then Soar?

    Last weekend we went with “Weebles Wobble” and the week started with more “wobbling” for stocks.

    Stocks seemed poised to break much lower on Wednesday but managed to claw back much of the early losses, and then took off on Thursday and Friday (the Nasdaq 100 gained 3.5% in those two days).

    There was much to like about how stocks performed this week.

    • This rally occurred even as markets priced in fewer rate cuts and moved rates higher across the curve.

      • According to Bloomberg’s WIRP function (World Interest Rate Probability), the chance of a March cut dropped to 47% from 79% last Friday.

      • Total cuts for 2024 went from 6.7 cuts (of 25 bps each) to “only” 5.4 cuts.

      • The 10-year yield went from 3.94% to 4.12%.

      • Stocks rallying as they downplayed the “Fed Pivot” is impressive.

      • My call remains 3 cuts (of 25 bps, 50 bps, and 25 bps), most likely starting at the April/May meeting and ending in July, though starting in March is far more likely than starting in June. I continue to believe that the Fed will want to be quiet on monetary policy at the September and November meetings as monetary policy is likely to become a campaign issue probably long before then. I still have a 4.3% target on 10s and 0 on 2s vs 10s but think I may be low on both.

    • Earnings and the outlook for semiconductors seemed to be the biggest single spark. It wasn’t just AI (like many of the bumps have seemed to be driven by in the last year), but it was also more demand, and the outlook for more “mundane” chips bodes well for cell phones and other consumer goods! There has been a lot of worry about a slowdown in consumer spending, especially in some tech areas (I’m in that camp), but if that narrative is not true (and this week’s data point suggested that it is not), then that is a legit reason to be bullish.

    • The consumer keeps spending and inflation is contained. I’m less convinced on the consumer, but have been a big believer that much of what drove inflation has changed direction – rather dramatically for goods, and just starting for services (see COVID Inflation Bumps).

      • Geopolitical, supply chain, reshoring, and even ESG are all putting upward pressure on inflation, so now is not the time to be complacent.

      • Having said that, the housing calculations in CPI are all but guaranteed to keep inflation lower. The lags missed it on the way up (IOER, the main measure of housing inflation, was the highest when all signs pointed to rents dropping in the real world), so we are seeing the impact of rent declines that occurred months ago showing up in the data today and somehow treating it as relevant.

      • University of Michigan’s CONsumer CONfidence had inflation expectation dropping. I know the Fed looks at that, so it is important, but I struggle to figure out the value of the data as a reliable predictor of anything.

    I really liked that stocks could rally on good news, even as yields went higher, and some of the data makes me question my outlook on the economy over the coming months.

    There are some things to pick on.

    • Even after the bounce on Thursday and Friday, the Russell 2000 finished lower on the week. I haven’t been pounding the table for the so-called “laggards” since late December, but that inability to rally is striking. What I find very “odd” is that ARKK was down on the week. You can look at the major holdings and understand why (probably a peek at Bitcoin helps explain it too). But, for me, ARKK is one thing that I look to for signs of “aggressive” risk taking. I feel it should trade at a higher beta than the Nasdaq 100. Bitcoin was also weak, but I think that had more to do with far too many people running it up and positioning ahead of the launch of the ETFs.

      • On the bright side, there was differentiation indicating “thought” in the rally, though the negative, for me, is that we’ve reverted back, at least to some extent, to the trade that worked for much of last year. That seems too simple.

    • Pricing out a recession. Interest rates are always tricky, but my view is that much of what occurred at the front end of the yield curve (the part driven by the Fed) resulted from far less concern of a recession. While I admit the data tilted in that direction, as a contrarian, I think the risk of something other than a “soft” or “no” landing is realistic. Stocks rose, even as rate cuts were priced out, because the market is back to “no” or “soft” landing as highly likely.

    • I remain convinced that none of the issues that made markets wonder “Who Will Buy Treasuries Ever Again?” have been resolved and are likely to push longer yields higher, as those issues get more attention again. That is why I’m thinking that 4.3%, which seemed “bold” at 3.8%, seems insufficient here. Heck, 15 bps is like a day of trading.

    • We seem back to a world where being right or wrong on a given day can be incredibly meaningful. Having to be “right” every day is difficult (impossible, or there would be more day-trading billionaires). It weighs on individuals (less so on algos). It does tend, over time, to cause risk management to reduce risk (though many will have done so of their own volition, to manage the topsy-turvy markets). So, one thing I don’t like about the price action (neither on up days, nor down days) is that it feels day-trader, or momentum, or simply “pile-on” driven, so the noise may be far greater than the signal.

    Bottom Line

    Still stuck on higher yields and less inversion. Really want to move to a 4.5% target on 10s.

    Still believe that credit will do well, and that we will be talking about “new” ranges for credit soon.

    On equities, the performance was almost enough to make me change my mind. The drivers of the strength were more impressive than the issues I point out. I am not there yet, but positioning has to be small to medium here, more use of options, and some nimble trading is required. Commodities, commodity stocks, and now Chinese stocks (for a trade) top the list of what I like, and I’m increasingly bullish the former and starting to pound the table on the latter. One call, that I don’t think you can disagree with, is that I’ve managed to work out of the Carolinas for the next 3 to 4 weeks, which seems like a good macro strategy, from my perspective!

    The Fed meeting on January 31st could be interesting, since no one is really listening to what the Fed says until then. Powell effectively contradicted himself at the last meeting, so why listen to anything from the Fed until he speaks after their decision? Expect more “excessive” volatility in the meantime as the trading year and positioning get ramped up.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/21/2024 – 16:20

  • Zelensky Lashes Out At Trump Over 'Very Dangerous' Plan To End War
    Zelensky Lashes Out At Trump Over ‘Very Dangerous’ Plan To End War

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has lashed out at former President Trump over his Ukraine stance and recent rhetoric, particularly the GOP presidential front-runner’s claim that he can negotiate peace between Kiev and Moscow within 24 hours.

    Trump’s persistent statements saying he would intercede diplomatically and end the war has been met with mockery among top Ukrainian officials. Zelensky in a fresh interview with UK’s Channel 4 News has called Trump’s rhetoric “very dangerous”. 

    “Donald Trump, I invite you to Ukraine, to Kyiv. If you can stop the war during 24 hours, I think it will be enough to come,” he said in the interview published Friday.

    “(Trump) is going to make decisions on his own, without … I’m not even talking about Russia, but without both sides, without us,” Zelensky continued. “If he says this publicly, that’s a little scary. I’ve seen a lot, a lot of victims, but that’s really making me a bit stressed.”

    The Ukrainian leader added: “Because even if his idea (for ending the war) – that no one has heard yet – doesn’t work for us, for our people, he will do anything to implement his idea anyway. And this worries me a little.” It was within this context Zelensky followed by saying this is “very dangerous.”

    Trump has repeatedly pledged while doing campaign rallies, “I will have it solved within one day, a peace between them.”

    The Biden White House has so far resisted any serious efforts to get Moscow at the same table talking to the Ukrainian side, given that realistically it would involve having to make territorial concessions.

    The US has only supported Zelensky’s plan, which demands that Russian troops immediately given up all seized territory in eastern Ukraine, relinquish Crimea, and pay war reparations to the Kiev government.

    Zelensky and his top officials were at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos this past week pushing for more countries, and especially representatives of the Global South, to get behind the plan.

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    Last week, Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak said that Kiev now believes it is crucial for China to be at the table for future talks on its peace formula. “China needs to be involved in talks to end the war with Russia,” the Ukrainian top representative said following diplomatic meetings related to the WEF. China remains the most influential Global South country widely viewed as squarely in Russia’s corner, having refused to rebuke Moscow or join Western-led sanctions after two years of the conflict.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/21/2024 – 15:45

  • DeSantis Drops Out Of 2024 Race, Backs Trump
    DeSantis Drops Out Of 2024 Race, Backs Trump

    Update (1520ET): Shortly after Bloomberg broke the news, DeSantis dropped out of the Republican presidential primary Sunday.

    In a video message, he endorsed Trump.

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    *  *  *

    After coming up short, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his top aides are reportedly having internal discussions over when and how he should drop out of the 2024 presidential race, according to Bloomberg, citing people briefed on the campaign’s conversations.

    The discussions are fluid, with the governor and his wife, Casey, as the final decision-makers, but one possibility is to leave the race before voting starts in New Hampshire on Tuesday, January 23 to avoid an embarrassing third-place finish. -Bloomberg

    According to a new poll by CNN and the University of New Hampshire, DeSantis has just 6% of the state’s Republican vote, vs. Trump at 50% and Haley at 39%.

    Speaking of CNN, Jake Tapper is hearing the same thing as Bloomberg…

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    That said, ABC News is reporting that DeSantis’ team is ‘pushing back’ on speculation that he may soon suspend his White House bid, after the Florida governor canceled high-profile scheduled appearances on NBC, CNN and WMUR, a New Hampshire TV station. He was also slated to spend most of the weekend campaigning with his allied super PAC, Never Back Down, but is instead returning to New Hampshire on Sunday for an event in Manchester.

    “The media hits were canceled due to a scheduling issue and will be rescheduled. The governor will be traveling Sunday morning with the campaign and has public events scheduled Sunday evening through Tuesday in NH,” campaign spokesperson Bryan Griffin posted Saturday on X.

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/21/2024 – 15:20

  • The Many Faces Of Kevin Morris – Hunter Biden's Financial Patron
    The Many Faces Of Kevin Morris – Hunter Biden’s Financial Patron

    Authored by Jonathan Turley, op-ed via The Hill,

    “Who was the real me? I can only repeat: I was a man of many faces.”

    Those words by author Milan Kundera could well have been written for Kevin Morris, a critical figure in the unfolding Hunter Biden scandal.

    Morris (picture left below) was largely unknown to most people until he emerged as the Democratic donor who reportedly paid Hunter Biden millions to handle his unpaid taxes and maintain his lavish lifestyle.

    The Hollywood lawyer and producer portrayed himself as a good Samaritan on a biblical scale — a good man who simply found a desperate stranger on the road and gave him more than $5 million.

    His counsel, Bryan M. Sullivan stated that “Hunter is not only a client of Kevin’s, he is his friend and there is no prohibition against helping a friend in need, despite the inability of these Republican chairmen and their allies to imagine such a thing.” 

    The statement captures the problem for Morris. It is increasingly hard to determine what Morris was at any given moment: Democratic donor, lawyer, friend. Indeed, that problem that some of us have raised for months.

    Lawyers are not supposed to pay the bills of their clients.

    Specifically, California Bar Rule 1.8.5(a) states that “[a] lawyer shall not directly or indirectly pay or agree to pay, guarantee, or represent that the lawyer or lawyer’s law firm will pay the personal or business expenses of a prospective or existing client.” They are required to maintain clear representational boundaries. This is also now the subject of a new bar complaint filed by a conservative legal group this week.

    Friends have described Morris as a “rule-breaker” and admit that his relationship with Hunter raises eyebrows. “Certainly it’s not careful, but he’s a gunslinger,” one told the Los Angeles Times. “This is how he rolls.”

    But the legal ethics rules are designed to avoid gunslinging generally and ambiguity specifically.

    Hunter calls him both his lawyer and his “brother.” Lead counsel Abbe Lowell observed, “I have never in any of my representations of any other client — other than someone who is an immediate family member of one of my clients — known anyone who is like Kevin.”

    When the relationship began, Morris was playing the role of loyal Democratic donor.

    He was introduced to Hunter at a 2019 political fundraiser by another producer and Democratic deep pocket, Lanette Phillips. Soon thereafter, Morris was giving Hunter copious amounts of money and legal advice. That would include reportedly paying off Hunter’s long-delinquent taxes before criminal charges were filed. It also included paying for Hunter’s lavish lifestyle.

    Morris may be most eager to avoid the label “democratic donor” because these payments could be viewed as an unreported campaign donation. Morris was brought in during Joe Biden’s campaign for president. Then, on February 7, 2020, Morris flagged how the taxes represented a “considerable risk personally and politically.” He seems to have sought to resolve that political liability by paying off the taxes and calling it a “loan.”

    Those “loans” would continue, and Morris insists that it was all standard “loan” stuff. Except he is not a bank. He was repeatedly referring to Hunter as his “client.” 

    It is also important that these millions are treated as loans because, if they are actually gifts, they could create a new tax problem. Hunter has to declare such “gifts.” 

    Few would view Hunter as a good risk for a loan, given his history of stiffing a wide array of businesses and associates. Indeed, he reportedly even faced a complaint over failure to pay for alleged high-end prostitutes. He was even accused of using a credit card connected to his father to pay off an alleged Russian call-girl. Even the art dealer who recently sold Hunter’s art reportedly testified that Hunter never reimbursed him for the costs of the shows.

    That art adds an interesting twist to the mysterious role of Morris. Recently, art dealer Georges Bergès blew away White House claims that Hunter had been barred from knowing the names of purchasers under a comprehensive ethics system. He admitted that Hunter knew the identity of 70 percent of the purchasers. 

    It was not hard. Despite news reports of buyers flocking to buy the art, it turns out it was largely Morris who bought the art.   Notably, however, Morris only reportedly paid Bergès’ 40 percent commission on the $875,000 purchases. It is not clear whether Morris used the sales to wipe out part of the loan debt.

    That would be a clever way to treat the money as a loan, if it were used for that purpose.

    • You simply have Hunter crank out dubious pieces of art and arrange for an ally to throw art shows in New York.

    • You then have media allies write how buyers were “floored” by Hunter’s talent.

    • Finally, you pay the commission on the excessive prices for the art while writing off the value of the art as a type of in-kind payment of the loan.

    While many mocked at the Pablo Picasso-level pricing of Hunter’s art pieces (some works approached half a million dollars), those inflated prices would be useful to count as direct or indirect payments for the loans.

    We still do not know how these purchases or the loans were treated, and whether Morris was acting as a donor, friend, or lawyer. Now, Morris is adding a new role to this pile of identities, reportedly supporting a new movie on Hunter Biden. 

    Call it “Mr. Biden Goes to Washington,” an effective rewrite of Frank Capra’s classic, only the corrupt establishment apparently wins.

    In the movie, a young novice appointed to the U.S. Senate fights the corruption of Washington, where his senior senator has sold access and influence to James Taylor, a wealthy businessman. Taylor scoffs at the notion that the establishment can be challenged. After all, they control the media, and what the public will read and hear. As Taylor assured the senior senator, “I’ll make public opinion out there within five hours! I’ve done it all my life…You leave public opinion to me.”

    Morris is still fighting to shape public opinion, and, in Hollywood, movies make reality.

    Morris “makes public opinion,” and the media can be expected, again, to assist in those efforts.

    Many in Washington believe that Hunter’s stunts in holding a press conference defying his subpoena, and later crashing his own contempt hearing, were literally made-for-television moments. These scenes were captured on film and will no doubt be featured in the new film on his heroic struggle.

    The question is the audience for the film. Clearly, in the Beltway, audiences are likely to be sobbing with emotion as Hunter fights against inquiries into influence peddling. They will cheer at Joe Biden’s moment channeling John Wayne, when he declared, “No one f**ks with a Biden.”

    However, most audience members would not have felt the same thrill if, at the end of the original movie, the corrupt Sen. Joseph Paine and the wealthy Taylor had emerged as the victors, fighting off the do-gooders and “boy rangers” supporting Jimmy Stewart’s main character.

    The question is also who would play Morris — or more accurately, how many would have to play this “man with many faces.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/21/2024 – 15:10

  • Where WEF 'Experts' See False Information Posing The Biggest Threat
    Where WEF ‘Experts’ See False Information Posing The Biggest Threat

    In an unprecedented year for elections, false information is one of the major threats that people around the world will face according to experts surveyed for the World Economic Forum’s 2024 Global Risk Report.

    In the chart below, Statista’s Anna Fleck shows the varying degrees to which misinformation and disinformation are rated to be problems for a selection of analyzed countries in the next two years, based on a ranking of 34 economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological risks.

    Disinformation is defined as situations where the author has purposefully sought to mislead their audience.

    Misinformation describes information which is spread out of genuine belief, but can be just as harmful – like is sometimes the case with conspiracy theories.

    Infographic: Where False Information Is Posing the Biggest Threat | Statista

    This data is based on 1,490 expert opinions across academia, business, government, the international community and civil society, with a survey collected Sep. 4 – Oct. 9, 2023.

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    India is the country where the risk of disinformation and misinformation was ranked highest. Out of all risks, misinformation and disinformation was most frequently selected as the number one risk for the country by the experts, coming before infectious diseases, illicit economic activity, inequality (wealth, income) and labor shortages. The South Asian nation’s next general election is expected to be held between April and May 2024 in a country of some 1.4 billion people.

    Fake news had allegedly been rife in India’s 2019 election, with Vice reporting how parties had “weaponized the platforms [of Whatsapp and Facebook] to spread incendiary messages to supporters, heightening fears that online anger could spill over into real-world violence.” More recently, misinformation also became an issue during the Covid-19 pandemic in India, again via WhatsApp.

    Other countries facing a high risk of the impacts of misinformation and disinformation are El Salvador, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Romania, Ireland, Czechia, the United States, Sierra Leone, France and Finland, all with the threat considered to be one of the 4th-6th most dangerous risks facing the country out of 34 in the coming two years.

    In the United Kingdom, misinformation/disinformation is in rank 11 of the perceived threats.

    WEF analysts conclude:

    “The presence of misinformation and disinformation in these electoral processes could seriously destabilize the real and perceived legitimacy of newly elected governments, risking political unrest, violence and terrorism, and a longer-term erosion of democratic processes.”

    Be afraid America, very afraid… and tune in to your friendly local government propaganda provider to know how (and what) to feel about it

     

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/21/2024 – 14:35

  • Get Woke, Go Broke: Mass Layoffs At Sports Illustrated After Publisher Loses License
    Get Woke, Go Broke: Mass Layoffs At Sports Illustrated After Publisher Loses License

    Sports Illustrated rights holder Arena Group has had its license to publish the magazine revoked by Authentic Brands Group after inability to make $3.75 million quarterly payment at the end of 2023.  In other words, the publisher likely isn’t bringing in enough profit to maintain the brand.  Under contract, Arena Group is required to pay another $45 million to ABG because of the loss of the license.  As a result, Sports Illustrated has been forced to layoff their entire staff while discussions are underway to salvage the arrangement. 

    In a statement, Sports Illustrated Union and The NewsGuild of New York vowed to “fight for every one of our colleagues.”   But how could this have happened?  One of the oldest and best known names in sports commentary is now essentially defunct.

    The signs were all there.

    The shutdown takes place only thee years after the company committed to major layoffs in 2020 back when they were run by Maven, shaving $27 million from their costs compared to 2018.  Apparently, this wasn’t enough and ownership was acquired by Arena Group.  In November of 2023, SI was caught using fake journalists and AI generated content, further indicating that they were on the verge of going broke. 

    The true cause will be conveniently ignored by the corporate media, but the woes of Sports Illustrated began directly after they tied the publication to woke messaging.  For example, the magazine began parading plus-sized (fat positivity) models in their sponsored runway shows and swimsuit additions in 2017.  For a publication that is supposed to be focused on athletic excellence, the idea of fat positivity is an obvious anathema for their core readership.  People who are incapable of athleticism in most arenas should not be used as representatives of the sporting world (or the pinnacle of beauty, for that matter).  

    The company then latched onto the feminist “equal pay” movement for women’s sports, arguing that female athletes and clubs should be offered pay equal to male sports.  The movement completely ignored the key factors of audience interest; male athletes tend to make more money because far more people are interested in watching men’s sports. 

    Sports Illustrated also began featuring transgender women (men dressed as women) in their women’s swimsuit editions, perpetuating the gender fluid ideology.  This led to a conservative boycott of the magazine in 2023, and now, here they are, out of business.

    The carnage falling upon woke companies in the past couple years has been relentless.  Numerous Big Tech and entertainment platforms are suffering a string of layoffs and budget cuts and no one in the mainstream wants to acknowledge that the wokification of the corporate world is a primary contributor to their downfall. 

    The bottom line? The vast majority of American consumers do not want woke content and will not pay for it.  Furthermore, the people that do want this kind of content are usually activists with no money to spend. 

    Despite this reality, companies continue to embrace far-left ideology and promote it through their products and marketing to their own detriment.  This explains why the political left has been so hostile to free markets and the notion of catering to consumers – In a free market people can always walk away from woke businesses.  It doesn’t matter how much they saturate media with propaganda, all people have to do is not open their wallets.    

    In a socialist or ESG-based world, such companies would be fully supported by governments and tax dollars.  In other words, you would be forced to pay for the transgender swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated, whether you want to or not.  For now, thankfully, “Get Woke, Go Broke” is still a rule that widely applies.  

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/21/2024 – 13:25

  • "F**k These Cops, It's A Lesson To Him": NYC Woman Makes Self-Incriminating Statements After Car-Ramming Attack Caught On Video
    “F**k These Cops, It’s A Lesson To Him”: NYC Woman Makes Self-Incriminating Statements After Car-Ramming Attack Caught On Video

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Sahara Dula, 24, is a New England College criminal justice graduate who wants to specialize in “crisis communication.”

    If so, she has a bit to learn after intentionally hitting a police officer with her Lexus and then declaring “F— these cops, it’s a lesson to him.”

    A video captures Dula driving the wrong way on Park Avenue near East 71st Street around 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday when an officer approaches the vehicle to turn it around.

    She then floored the black Lexus and hit the officer.

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    She was later found to be high on marijuana.

    She told investigators:

    “I told the cop I wanted to go straight, and he wouldn’t move, so I hit him. I did it on purpose. F— these cops! He wouldn’t move!”

    The wounded officer suffered a broken leg and extensive bruising. However, Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Lucy Shephard did not charge Dula with attempted murder. Instead, she will face an array of charges for first-degree attempted assault, attempted aggravated assault upon a police officer, second-degree assault, second-degree reckless endangerment and operating a vehicle while ability impaired by drugs and reckless driving.

    Dula has a record of past arrests including a criminal mischief arrest in March 2022 after destroying property.

    The charges were dropped. 

    She was also arrested at least twice in New Hampshire, including an arrest in 2020 for failing to stop at an intersection in the town of Henniker and striking another vehicle.

    She then fled the scene. She was also arrested for simple assault after an incident at Concord Hospital.

    There are reports that Dula has been under treatment for mental illness, including possible bipolar illness.

    It is difficult for courts to balance such elements.

    This is a person who has gone to school and reportedly supports her mother and family while struggling with mental illness.

    On the other hand, she just admitted to intentionally striking down an officer.

    It is not clear if the defense will argue the mental illness as a defense and argue that she was experiencing an uncontrolled episode due to medication problems. Yet, how is a judge to handle such a claim? Dula is not institutionalized due to a view that she is able to function in society. The defense could argue that the episode showed that she requires institutionalization and treatment, but that she was not in control of her actions.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/21/2024 – 13:00

  • Davos, Trust, & The End Of "Comfortable Wolves"
    Davos, Trust, & The End Of “Comfortable Wolves”

    Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

    Last fall I poked the slumbering bear of the #ungovernble set by taking extreme umbrage with calling people “Sheeple.” For the record I absolutely detest that word.

    Instead I shot back with a very reflexive, “Bullshit!” There are very few things that trigger me more than consigning 90% of humanity to that of herbivores orders of magnitude more stupid than my goats.

    In that frustration I coined the phrase, “comfortable wolves.” Sometimes you just have what alcoholics call “a moment of clarity.”

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    In most situations, public conversations reveal the truth of who we are. Twitter is a one of the best mirrors of our true personality and state of mind than anything else devised yet, in my opinion. There is such a low barrier to contracting ‘foot-in-mouth disease’ that we all pass it around like 1st graders while generally acting like them in public.

    This exchange revealed one person’s nihilism and condescension as defense mechanism while it revealed my stubbornness in believing we’re not all just quadriplegics in canoes headed for Niagara Falls.

    This was an idea that quickly set my little corner of Twitter on fire, with two camps emerging quickly. You never know what is going to capture people’s imagination when you do this stuff for a living. But it seemed at the time that people were waiting for someone to stand up to the bullies doomporning it up all over social media and give them a little credit.

    I still don’t think this idea is that far out there. Honestly, the more I think about it the more it should inspire people to action. You’re not a bad person, stupid or apathetic, you’re comfortable. You know it. I know it. I know what I am.

    I’ve never agreed with Janis Joplin that “freedom is just another word for ‘nothing left to lose,’” but I empathize with the sentiment.

    But at the heart of my observation is; who will you really become when you have nothing left to lose. Or better yet, where’s your loss threshold before the real you bares your canines?

    Because that’s literally all I was saying. We all have a limit. And the idea that because your limit isn’t as low as mine or some rando on the intarwebz makes you a sheeple is exactly the type of condescending and unearned sense of entitlement that drives the very ghouls that are convening at Davos this week to force us to rebuild our trust in them.

    We’re now into 2024. 

    Davos is admitting that they finally have a real threat to their Great Reset agenda. They admitted it. And most people haven’t even begun to reach their limit yet. The ‘comfortable wolves’ metaphor is even more relevant today than ever before.

    This is part of the reason why I think we’re now feeling the Great Acceleration. The operational tempo has risen sharply because time is running out on Davos before more wolves get the idea that these psychopathic Alpha wannabes aren’t all that powerful.

    We only think they are.

    Klaus Schwab and his pack believe themselves to be the Alpha wolves of the planet. They have zero restraints on their behavior and Schwab himself has no one to tell him, “No, this is a bad idea.”

    Adam Savage gets it. This short bit of self-reflection is the key to understanding the insanity of Davos:

    Schwab’s just the figurehead, the face of evil, not the evil itself. The people behind Schwab have curated at least two generations (likely a lot more) of psychopaths to run their “system” that they are trying to save this week.

    It doesn’t matter if it’s newly resurrected David Cameron telling the delegation at the breakfast for Ukraine, “I have already told my American colleagues: you spent 10% of the defense budget, which made it possible to destroy 50% of Russian weapons without a single American life lost. This is simply an excellent result,” or Ursula Von der Leyen saying that the way to rebuild trust is to simply ban ideas that disagree with theirs.

    Their responses always reveal equal parts bloodthirst and disdain. They forget the basic lessons of wolf culture, of course. When the Alpha is too abusive to the pack, the Omega is driven out to find a new pack to found.

    Davos‘ desire for global control at its core, like those who believe 90% of humans are sheep, rejects the idea we are anything like wolves. There is no new pack to form. So, just stand in the bread lines, get your citizenship jabs, keep your head down.

    That is the greatest of their psy-ops, convincing us we are something we aren’t.

    And yet, who is man’s best friend? Who did we bond more strongly with than any other species on the planet? The one that shares our social structure. Dogs aren’t our slaves, they are our partners.

    Without dogs there is no Klaus Schwab. There is no Germany or Great Migration into North America.

    This article from Zerohedge about modern cities in the US becoming “Food Deserts” resurrected this idea because no one is willing to keep a business open in a place where looting is encouraged.

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    The world Davos made reversed the impetus for cities. Now people living in cities have to travel to the ‘burbs among the urban sprawl to forage for food that used to be delivered to them. Now the cost of the last mile of food delivery is higher than traveling to the food.

    It reminded me of conversations I had with a friend over Christmas, one who disagreed with my wolf metaphor. He and his family were here on vacation from California. And he kept repeating the line, “I live in a place where there are tons of people and no food,” and his goal was to get to a place were there was more food than people.

    But he hasn’t made the switch because he is, for the first time in a long time, comfortable. Who am I to begrudge him that? Who am I to quietly judge him a sheep?

    He and his family are doing the cost/benefit analysis of uprooting his life for what still feels like, to him, a low probability event and making the rational choice. It’s completely fair.

    Last year’s Davos saw brief moments of opposition to Schwab’s lunacy and nihilism. This year multiple people are walking into the hallow halls of globalism and letting them have it with both barrels. In the past it used to just be Putin. Now it’s a think tank from K Street in DC and the leader of Argentina.

    Texas is now arresting illegals coming across the border, defying Joah Bii-Den! and forcing a confrontation over the definition of sovereignty.

    From the beginning of this Great Reset agenda, when they started rolling out the slogans and the advertising for it, I said they were courting chaos to create fear. They used the fear over COVID-19 to cow the beta wolves for another few years.

    But chaos, by its very nature, isn’t controllable. And Schwab’s “system” is control personified.

    So, now, after continually amping up the chaos, they are getting what you would expect from wolves, not sheep… a search for the exit by some to start new packs, open challenges to the pack order by some of the lieutenants, like Viktor Orban in Hungary, and intractability from those whose fear centers are on overload.

    This is why “sheeple” pisses me off more than the WEF does. Because it betrays the snake in our emotional garden. It is born from the same impulse that rules Schwab, entitlement. And it creates the same dynamic that leads to the same conclusion.

    In response to those triggered by me having the temerity to have a little faith in people by calling them “Comfortable Wolves” here’s my sermon from my Digital Mount for today:

    The whole “People are sheep” idea is itself a psy-op to keep leaders from emerging from the dissident class (both left and right).

    If you believe the task is too big, will you do it? Will you do the cost/benefit analysis and say, “Fuck it, who wants pie?”

    Divide and conquer takes many forms. This idea is one of them.

    Bleeding off the energy of those who see the corruption earliest extends the lifespan of the tyrannical system. The very personality types who should emerge as leaders against the psychotic Alphas are the ones handed a platform like Twitter to vent their nihilism and hatred of humanity.

    It’s not just the shitlibs who are gaslit NPCs folks.

    So, stop being gaslit by morons, stop tuning out, chuckling in ‘collapsitarian,’ and work a little harder. There are people out there who aren’t leaders, but also aren’t doormats either. They are, like you, without hope.

    They are looking for someone to provide the direction, the activation energy, to see some hope. Calling them sheep is to say they are irredeemable.

    We’ve all been abused by these psychotic Alphas. Having empathy, not derision, for that abuse is the first step towards making things better. But, if this makes me naive or a hopeless romantic in your eyes, I would tell you maybe that mirror you’re holding up to me should be turned around.

    Ask yourself where this impulse to degrade potential allies really comes from. Because that whole idea of people loving their misery because it’s comfortable takes many, many forms.

    All of them are toxic. All of them.

    So, yes, I’m not just standing up for my idea of people being ‘Comfortable wolves,” I’m doubling down. This is your call to action. Embrace it or remain in the service of those you profess to hate.

    HTTPS://TWITTER.COM/TFL1728/STATUS/1701566783344304280

    *  *  *

    Join my Patreon if you want a pack that doesn’t hate you

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/21/2024 – 12:50

  • Will Trump-Ramaswamy Alliance Have An Impact In New Hampshire?
    Will Trump-Ramaswamy Alliance Have An Impact In New Hampshire?

    After it became clear that Donald Trump was going to win the Iowa caucuses, Vivek Ramaswamy – who marked a distant fourth-place finish in the Hawkeye state, announced that he was dropping out and endorsing the former president.

    The next day, Jan. 16, Ramaswamy joined Trump at a rally in New Hampshire, where he sang Trump’s praises, while Trump returned the compliments.

    “He has a big, beautiful, bright future ahead,” Trump said of the 38-year-old “anti-woke” investor.

    Now, with New Hampshire’s Jan. 23 primary fast approaching, people are wondering whether Ramaswamy’s support will make a dent in a state which is relatively friendly to Trump’s most serious threat (for various values of ‘threat’), former UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, the Epoch Times reports.

    Republican political consultant James Hartman, who supports Haley but isn’t working on her campaign, told the Epoch Times that Ramaswamy’s backing could help Trump, but added: “The thing with endorsements, however, is they don’t usually translate in a one-to-one ratio when you’re changing venues because there are so many other variables.”

    “Mr. Ramaswamy has positioned himself as Trump 2.0 from the get-go. So, certainly, we would expect his folks to move in that direction. Nonetheless, don’t underestimate the ability of voters to think for themselves,” Hartman continued.

    Mr. Hartman pointed out that Iowa hasn’t predicted non-incumbent nominees very often. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) won it in 2016. It went to then-Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) in 2012. In 2008, Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee beat former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), and other contenders in the Hawkeye State. The last non-incumbent to take Iowa was George W. Bush, whose name is emblematic of the older Republican leadership from which many younger GOPers are seeking to separate themselves.

    But President Trump is no ordinary non-incumbent—and few liken his populist message to that of the younger Bush. -The Epoch Times

    Vanderbilt University economics professor Mathias Polborn, who studied the New Hampshire primary, agrees – but went further.

    “It’s highly likely that, for many of Mr. Ramaswamy’s supporters, Mr. Trump is the second choice, so he is the most likely to benefit,” he told the Times. “The same is true for Mr. DeSantis if he were to drop out. Those media outlets that are talking about the ‘non-Trump vote’ and add the vote shares for all the other candidates are living in a fantasy world.”

    Maybe not?

    Wayne Steger, a DePaul University professor, has been a vocal skeptic of Ramaswamy’s candidacy – predicting in June of last year that there will be a “near-zero chance that Vivek Ramaswamy gets traction.”

    “His departure from the race won’t make much of a difference.” He elaborated, suggesting that most of Ramaswamy’s support would naturally align with Trump. “Most of these votes are going to Trump, which they would anyway, even if he remained in the race. He might have done okay in New Hampshire, but I doubt it.”

    “I would anticipate Haley doing better in New Hampshire, [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis worse, and Trump about the same,” Steger predicted – roughly in line with the latest polling reported by RealClearPolitics – which showed that from Jan. 4 through Jan. 17, Trump, with 46.3% of the vote, was towering over Haley at 33.5%, and DeSantis at 6% in New Hampshire.

    Trump Troubles

    Former President Donald Trump sits in the New York State Supreme Court during his civil fraud trial in New York City on Jan. 11, 2024. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

    While it looks more and more likely that Trump will secure the GOP nomination, Polborn laid out an improbable, but not impossible, scenario which could lead other candidates to matter more in the end.

    “If Trump eventually has to drop out; say, he is offered a deal by the DOJ [Department of Justice] that gets him out of all legal troubles, in exchange for dropping out of the race—not that likely, but not an impossible scenario either—then it conceivably matters who was the ‘last non-Trump candidate standing’ in order to make a claim on the nomination,” he said, adding “The Republican primaries are simply not a good institution to deal with this scenario.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/21/2024 – 12:15

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Jan 21

Today’s News 21st January 2024

  • Americans Are Fighting For Control Of Federal Powers That Shouldn’t Exist
    Americans Are Fighting For Control Of Federal Powers That Shouldn’t Exist

    By Brian McGlinchey via Stark Realities

    It’s no secret that politics in the United States is growing increasingly acrimonious — to the point that a 2022 poll found 43% of Americans think a civil war is a least somewhat likely in the next decade. 

    But here’s what few people realize: The intensity of our division springs from a federal government operating far beyond the limits of the Constitution — fueling a fight for control over powers that were never supposed to exist at the national level.

    To put it another way, if the federal government were confined to its actual granted authorities, federal elections would be of little interest to the general public, because the outcome would be largely irrelevant to their everyday lives. 

    America’s founders drafted the Constitution with great trepidation. Having just escaped British tyranny, the people of the separate states that would comprise the proposed union were wary of centralizing too much power at the federal level, and thus sowing the seeds of a new tyranny. 

    They therefore set out to create a federal government to which the states delegated only certain limited powers, with all other subjects of governance reserved to the states. 

    Those powers — only 18 of them — are listed, one by one, in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. They include such things as the power to raise armies, maintain a navy, declare war, borrow money, coin money, establish punishments for counterfeiters and pirates, set standards of weights and measures, secure patents and establish post offices. 

    Reassuring those who were considering the enormously consequential decision of whether to ratify the Constitution, James Madison wrote, 

    “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. [Federal powers] will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce…The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people.” 

    To win over those would-be ratifiers who still feared the proposed federal government would undercut state sovereignty and infringe individual liberties, ten amendments were drafted — the Bill of Rights. The 10th Amendment codified Madison’s previous assurance about the division of authorities between the federal and state governments: 

    “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” 

    We arrive then at a hard fact: Today’s sprawling federal government, which involves itself in almost every aspect of daily American life, is almost entirely unconstitutional. 

    To rattle off just a random fistful of the federal government’s unauthorized undertakings and entities — brace yourself — there is zero constitutional authority for the Social Security, Medicare, federal drug prohibitions, the Small Business Administration, crop subsidies, the Department of Labor, automotive fuel efficiency standards, climate regulations, the Federal Reserve, union regulation, housing subsidies, the Department of Agriculture, workplace regulations, the Department of Education, federal student loans, the Food and Drug Administration, food stamps, unemployment insurance or light bulb regulations. Even that sampling doesn’t begin to fully account for the scope of the unsanctioned activity. 

    Don’t let your affinity for any of those enterprises short-circuit your intellectual honesty: Even if you view some of them as benign, that doesn’t render them constitutional. And if you’ve ever invoked the Constitution to spotlight a different kind of government overreach, it would be hypocritical to nod approvingly when it’s violated in ways where you deem the result beneficial.

    So how did we get to this place where the intended relationship between federal and state powers has been completely inverted — with a federal government wielding powers that are now “numerous and indefinite” rather than being “few and defined”? 

    Much of the current state of affairs has been driven by the Supreme Court’s extreme and expansive interpretations of certain clauses of the Constitution. Among the most significant are the General Welfare and Commerce clauses. 

    The General Welfare Clause, found at the start of Article 1, Section 8, says: 

    The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States…

    Embedded in a clause focused on the power to tax, the words “general welfare” were meant to ensure that Congress’s taxation and spending would be confined to purposes that were broadly beneficial, rather than catering to narrow or localized interests. 

    The clause’s language was copied from the Articles of Confederation, where, as Madison explained, “it was always understood as nothing more than a general caption to the specified powers.” Indeed, he said, it was copied for the very reason that its prior use and understanding would hopefully minimize the risk of it being misinterpreted as a grant of power. 

    James Madison’s design has been corrupted by the Supreme Court (via Britannica)

    It flies in the face of reason that the drafters of the Constitution would take pains to carefully list the Congress’s specific authorities, yet simultaneously say Congress could also do anything it thinks generally beneficial. 

    Countering those who sought to interpret the clause that way, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “To consider the…phrase…as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please, which might be for the good of the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless.”

    Clearly, based on context and history, those two words, general welfare, do not bestow an authority. Indeed, they’re present to limit an authority — the power to tax and spend. 

    The forces seeking to reshape the federal government by exploiting those two words were held at bay, but only for so long. In 1937, the Supreme Court used the imaginatively expansive interpretation of the General Welfare Clause to turn back a constitutional challenge to the Social Security Act — and to set a precedent that would fundamentally change the nature of our federal government. 

    That decision — Helvering v. Davis — came as the court was under intense institutional duress. Following a wave of high court decisions rightly striking down various pieces of New Deal legislation as unconstitutional, President Roosevelt — emboldened by his massive landslide reelection in 1936 — pushed a legislative scheme that would enable him to appoint as many as six more justices to the Supreme Court. 

    An editorial cartoon mocked FDR’s plan to “reform” the court by packing it with justices willing to approve New Deal provisions

    Whether to derail that plan or to merely cave to the overwhelming public opinion manifested in FDR’s jaw-dropping 523-8 electoral college landslide, the court — thanks in great part to swing-vote Justice Owen J. Roberts — began stamping its approval on New Deal legislation, with Helvering among the first. 

    Fittingly for a ruling that eviscerated limited government in America, Helvering’s very language had its own air of authoritarianism: 

    “Congress may spend money in aid of the ‘general welfare.’ There have been great statesmen in our history who have stood for other views. We will not resurrect the contest. It is now settled by decision.” 

    As if that proclamation didn’t do enough to demolish the concept of limited federal government, the court proceeded to amplify the damage. While acknowledging that determining what falls under “general welfare” requires discretion, the court declared, “the discretion…is not confided to the courts. The discretion belongs to Congress.” Thus, the court not only granted broad new power to Congress, but also limited the extent to which that power would be subject to checks and balances. 

    We don’t have to imagine how the “Father of the Constitution” would feel about the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the welfare clause. In 1792, Madison wrote, “The federal government has been hitherto limited to the specified powers…If not only the means, but the objects [purposes] are unlimited, the parchment had better be thrown into the fire at once.”

    While the Welfare Clause has been abused to expand federal spending power, Commerce Clause abuse has unleashed sprawling federal regulatory power. As with the Welfare Clause, what was meant to curtail government intrusion into the lives of Americans has perversely been used to expand it. 

    The Commerce Clause gives Congress the power to “regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” The Supreme Court’s sham interpretation focuses on “among the several states.” 

    It’s important to consider that the Constitution was drafted to replace the Articles of Confederation. Among the woes that prompted that evolution was the imposition of tariffs by individual states against other states. The Commerce Clause was intended to enable a free trade zone within the union, by empowering Congress to bar interstate tariffs. 

    “It grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the non-importing,” wrote Madison, “and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government.” 

    Those working to expand federal authority have argued that “commerce” doesn’t merely apply to trade, but also encompasses manufacturing and agriculture or even “all gainful activity.” 

    However, in the constitutional ratification debates, the word “commerce” uniformly and narrowly referred only to mercantile trade or exchange — not to manufacturing, agriculture or retail sales, much less to any gainful activity. 

    Thomas Jefferson underscored the intended scope of the clause:

    “The power given to Congress by the Constitution does not extend to the internal regulation of the commerce of a State, (that is to say of the commerce between citizen and citizen,) which remain exclusively with its own legislature; but to its external commerce only, that is to say, its commerce with another State, or with foreign nations, or with the Indian tribes.” 

    However, the Commerce Clause is now used to justify federal regulation of nearly every aspect of our existence, including activities that happen entirely within a single state. On this front, the Supreme Court did its greatest harm with its 1942 decision in Wickard v Filburn.

    In a move that would leave founding farmers aghast, the federal government had fined Ohio farmer Roscoe Filburn for growing more wheat on his small farm than allowed by the Agriculture Adjustment Act of 1938. 

    Filburn wasn’t even growing the wheat for sale — only to feed his own family and animals, and for future planting. This clearly wasn’t commerce as meant by the Constitution’s authors and ratifiers, to say nothing of the fact that Filburn’s activity lacked any interstate character whatsoever. 

    That didn’t stop the Supreme Court from upholding the law on Commerce Clause grounds. The court creatively declared that, by choosing not to buy wheat in the marketplace, individuals like Filburn could collectively have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. 

    Roscoe Filburn was punished for growing wheat on his own property, an injustice the Supreme Court upheld on preposterous Commerce Clause grounds

    As Rand Paul wrote in a 2012 Supreme Court amicus filing, “Wickard stands for the sad proposition that Congress can prevent a man from feeding his family in his own home with food he grew himself.” Of course, it does far more than that, serving as a key precedent that subjects any activity to the federal government’s control and punishment. All that’s needed is a theoretical, tangential link to the economy — something every single aspect of life has to some degree.

    We’d be far better off had the founding arrangement endured. The decentralization of power and governance reduces political discord and results in more people being governed in ways they find agreeable. If our federalism matched the constitutional design, we’d see citizens focusing most of their political energy on state and local governments — where they have far more meaningful representation compared to the federal legislature, which now has the average House member representing 761,000 people. 

    If state law, rather than federal law, were preeminent on the vast majority of topics, we’d also see sharper differentiations in what life is like in each of the 50 states. Americans would be presented with a more diverse selection of places to live, while enjoying the freedom to choose the one that best comports with their views on how things should be. 

    As it is, the Supreme Court-enabled concentration of power in Washington locks us all into a massive, winner-take-all steel-cage match, forcing us to fight over who gets to impose their philosophy on 332 million people across 3.8 million square miles of territory. 

    Even when the states comprising the union were far fewer in number and occupied far less territory, the prospect of centralized government was anathema to the likes of George Mason. At Virginia’s ratifying convention, he asked:

    “Is it to be supposed that one national government will suit so extensive a country, embracing so many climates, and containing inhabitants so very different in manners, habits, and customs?” 

    How can we close the Pandora’s box the Supreme Court has opened? Though Helvering, Wickard and similar decisions are objectively outrageous, it’s hard to imagine the Supreme Court setting things right by overturning them. 

    There’s another long-shot avenue — amending the Constitution. Under Article V, a constitutional amendment convention must be convened if two-thirds (34) of the state legislatures call for one. Such a movement is already underway: As I previously covered, 19 states have now requested a convention, with one of the goals being to limit federal jurisdiction and power. 

    If we don’t bend the union back into proper shape, it will surely break under the pressure of intensifying discontent with concentrated power and one-size-fits-all governance. Barring a burst of constitutional-amendment momentum, expect the country’s simmering secession movements to grow far more substantial and numerous.

    Stark Realities undermines official narratives, demolishes conventional wisdom and exposes fundamental myths across the political spectrum. Read more and subscribe at starkrealities.substack.com 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 01/20/2024 – 23:20

  • Johns Hopkins Says Gun-Control Will Prevent Second Civil War
    Johns Hopkins Says Gun-Control Will Prevent Second Civil War

    Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

    A new study published by Johns Hopkins own Bloomberg School for Public Health outlines the action items on the billionaire-funded gun control lobby’s wish list and makes the claim that those specific gun control provisions are crucial to stopping an armed insurrection in the United States.

    The policy recommendations made by the study include regulating the public carry of firearms, prohibiting “paramilitary” activity, enacting unconstitutional red flag laws that remove due process, and finally (and maybe most sinisterly) repealing state-level preemption laws.

    The study’s authors are all gun control lobby veterans. A quick glance at their LinkedIn pages revealed a work history within gun control groups before starting at Johns Hopkins.

    In the study, the authors reference a study titled “Views of American Democracy and Society and Support for Political Violence.” Conducted in 2022, the study features a statistic that half (50.1%) of survey participants agreed that “in the next few years there will a be a civil war in the United States.” This statistic is featured prominently within the Johns Hopkins study.

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

    The solutions proposed by the study are currently gun control priorities from the anti-gun lobby, particularly the repeal of state-level preemption laws. For those unfamiliar, state preemption laws say that local governments cannot impose regulations on firearms tighter than State law. This helps to stop a web of inconsistent laws in States where some counties may disagree with State law.

    For example, take this recent case in Maryland, in Maryland Shall Issue Inc, et al v. Montgomery County, where the court threw out a local gun restriction because of Maryland’s preemption law.

    But because local laws are easier to change than State law, gun control groups like Giffords and Everytown have sought out State lawmakers to convince them to overturn their preemption laws.

    In 2021, Giffords convinced Colorado to overturn its state preemption law, which allowed the city of Boulder to pass its own assault weapons ban later.

    In an article from governing.com about the overturn of the preemption law, Allison Anderman, senior counsel for the Giffords Law Center, was reported to have spoken with other states about overturning their laws and that the discussions were still “in the early stages.”

    It seems as though gun control groups are so frustrated at not being able to pass laws through Congress that they’ve started looking to local jurisdictions to pass their legislative priorities. Interestingly, this strategy mirrors the Soros district-attorney campaigns.

    Johns Hopkins’ study looks to increase the legitimacy of these preemption overturn policies and, therefore, make them more appealing to state lawmakers to pass.

    Gun Owners of America stands ready to fight the anti-gun lobby, whether on the federal, state, or local level.

    *   *   *

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

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 01/20/2024 – 22:10

  • India Set To Cement Role As New GDP Growth Champion
    India Set To Cement Role As New GDP Growth Champion

    The growth of most highly developed economies has tapered off since the turn of the century due to an already high level of economic performance.

    Yet, as Statista’s Florian Zandt reports, two countries that are now among the nations with the highest gross domestic product worldwide have continued their ascendancy through the ranks: India and China.

    While the former is still projected to show significant real GDP growth over the next few years, the latter’s economic upturn is estimated to slow considerably, according to the most recent IMF World Economic Outlook from October 2023.

    Infographic: Which Countries Have the Highest GDP Growth Rate? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    The People’s Republic reportedly showed real GDP growth of 5.2 percent in 2023, 0.2 percent above target.

     A recent Reuters report still proposed a grim outlook with a “deepening property crisis, mounting deflationary risks and tepid demand casting a pall over the outlook for this year”.

    With the country’s population declining again this past year after 2022 saw the first net decrease in six decades and interest rates not likely to be cut soon, experts are united in suggesting only a broad range of stimuli could help the country’s economy out of its ongoing slump. The lack of said stimuli led the IMF to project China’s real GDP growth to dip below four percent from 2027 onwards.

    On the other hand, India is projected to see constant growth of about 6.3 percent over the next five years.

    The country’s central bank recently revised its growth forecast for its fiscal year of 2023/2024, which ends on March 31, to 7.3 percent. If this trend continues, S&P Global estimates that the country is set to become the world’s third largest economy by 2030.

    This new-found economic success is not shared equally among Indians, however.

    In an opinion piece for Nikkei Asia published in December 2023, corporate economist and head of Indonomics Consulting Ritesh Kumar Singh illustrated how large companies prosper due to benefits, tax cuts and lackluster competition control. Meanwhile, smaller corporations are increasingly entangled in a tightening bureaucratic net and households are subjected to ever-increasing economic pressure connected to rising taxes financing said benefits.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 01/20/2024 – 21:35

  • David Frum And The Axis Of Errors
    David Frum And The Axis Of Errors

    Authored by Francis P. Sempa via RealClear Wire,

    Writing in The Atlantic, David Frum, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and cheerleader for endless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Global War on Terror, warns us that if Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election NATO will be wrecked, our allies around the world will suffer “potential disaster,” and “above all” Ukraine will be left to the mercy of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

    Given Frum’s track record of advice about wars, one wonders why anyone would take his advice.

    Frum takes credit for Bush’s phrase the “axis of evil” to describe Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.

    Frum’s advice about war should be labeled the “axis of error.”

    The twin debacles of Iraq and Afghanistan and the endless Global War on Terror – the wasted blood of American soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen (and women) and the wasted American treasure provided to the “military-industrial complex” – should make Frum more humble about giving war advice.

    How many times does Frum have to be wrong before he fades away into the obscurity he so richly deserves?

    But here he is again spouting the neoconservative line about the importance of Ukraine to U.S. national security.

    He condemns Republican Senators who have voiced support for Trump even though they know he will “cut off Ukraine” and “wreck NATO.”

    Of course, while he was president, Trump did not “cut” Ukraine and did not “wreck” NATO.

    In fact, NATO unfortunately expanded under Trump–Montenegro joined in 2017 and North Macedonia joined in 2020. Trump did and does demand that NATO members contribute more to their own defense–something that U.S. policymakers and legislators have done for the last 50 years or more.

    Trump does question the wisdom of providing aid to Ukraine–which is fighting to hold on to its eastern provinces and to take back Crimea–when America is experiencing a broken southern border and faces the existential threat of Communist China.

    Respected national security experts such as Frank Gaffney, Elbridge Colby, and others–as opposed to a neoconservative speechwriter–agree with Trump on that issue.

    How easy it is to advocate war abroad from an office in Washington or New York. Unlike American troops, David Frum didn’t suffer the casualties for 20 years that resulted from his “axis of error,” and he does not suffer today from his war advocacy in Ukraine. If he feels so strongly about it, perhaps he should join–or even lead–an Abraham Lincoln-type brigade of volunteers. In the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), writers, professors, journalists, lawyers and others volunteered to fight on the Republican side. They put their lives on the line for a cause they believed in.

    Frum and others in the neoconservative camp (like Max Boot, Robert Kagan, and Bill Kristol) seem to jump from war to war, crusade to crusade, always searching for the next enemy for other Americans or “allies” to fight.

    In a recent post on X, Frum promoted Anne Applebaum’s recent article opposing a ceasefire in Ukraine entitled “The West Has to Defeat Russia.”

    In another post, Frum writes that the 2024 election will decide the outcome of the war in Ukraine.

    “If Trump wins, Ukraine will be betrayed. If Biden wins, Russia loses its last and only route to victory and must accept defeat.”

    Will Frum be right this time?

    Or is this just another mistake in his axis of errors?

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 01/20/2024 – 21:00

  • "F**k These Cops, It's A Lesson To Him": NYC Woman Makes Self-Incriminating Statements After Car-Ramming Attack Caught On Video
    "F**k These Cops, It's A Lesson To Him": NYC Woman Makes Self-Incriminating Statements After Car-Ramming Attack Caught On Video

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Sahara Dula, 24, is a New England College criminal justice graduate who wants to specialize in “crisis communication.”

    If so, she has a bit to learn after intentionally hitting a police officer with her Lexus and then declaring “F— these cops, it’s a lesson to him.”

    A video captures Dula driving the wrong way on Park Avenue near East 71st Street around 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday when an officer approaches the vehicle to turn it around.

    She then floored the black Lexus and hit the officer.

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

    She was later found to be high on marijuana.

    She told investigators:

    “I told the cop I wanted to go straight, and he wouldn’t move, so I hit him. I did it on purpose. F— these cops! He wouldn’t move!”

    The wounded officer suffered a broken leg and extensive bruising. However, Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Lucy Shephard did not charge Dula with attempted murder. Instead, she will face an array of charges for first-degree attempted assault, attempted aggravated assault upon a police officer, second-degree assault, second-degree reckless endangerment and operating a vehicle while ability impaired by drugs and reckless driving.

    Dula has a record of past arrests including a criminal mischief arrest in March 2022 after destroying property.

    The charges were dropped. 

    She was also arrested at least twice in New Hampshire, including an arrest in 2020 for failing to stop at an intersection in the town of Henniker and striking another vehicle.

    She then fled the scene. She was also arrested for simple assault after an incident at Concord Hospital.

    There are reports that Dula has been under treatment for mental illness, including possible bipolar illness.

    It is difficult for courts to balance such elements.

    This is a person who has gone to school and reportedly supports her mother and family while struggling with mental illness.

    On the other hand, she just admitted to intentionally striking down an officer.

    It is not clear if the defense will argue the mental illness as a defense and argue that she was experiencing an uncontrolled episode due to medication problems. Yet, how is a judge to handle such a claim? Dula is not institutionalized due to a view that she is able to function in society. The defense could argue that the episode showed that she requires institutionalization and treatment, but that she was not in control of her actions.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 01/20/2024 – 20:25

  • "Easy Decision": Trump Believes Supreme Court Will "Intervene" Soon
    "Easy Decision": Trump Believes Supreme Court Will "Intervene" Soon

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

    Former President Donald Trump said he believes the U.S. Supreme Court will “intervene” in multiple cases to prevent him from appearing on state ballots, forecasting that the three justices he nominated to the high court will rule in his favor.

    Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court pose for their official photo at the Supreme Court in Washington on Oct. 7, 2022. (Front L–R) Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Samuel Alito and Justice Elena Kagan. (Back L–R) Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

    Speaking to Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Thursday evening, the former president said that the justices are “not going to take the vote away from the people” because of “three great justices” and “other great justices up there.” During his term in office, President Trump nominated Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

    “I’m sure the Supreme Court is going to say, ‘We’re not going to take the vote away from the people,’” he continued to say, saying that Democrats are the real “threat to democracy” in the United States.

    Last month, the Colorado Supreme Court issued a 4–3 decision to prevent the former president from appearing on state ballots, citing their interpretation of the “insurrection” clause of the Constitution’s 14th amendment. They claimed that they believed President Trump engaged in an insurrection against the U.S. government despite him having not been convicted or charged with the crime in any court.

    Days later, Maine’s Democratic secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, issued a unilateral decision to bar the former president from that state’s ballots under similar pretexts. Unlike Colorado, which is expected to lean heavily Democratic in the 2024 election, Maine could be considered a battleground state, and President Trump won one of the state’s four electors during the 2020 contest.

    Meanwhile, according to the former president, the Supreme Court justices should factor in his strong poll numbers and recent win in the Iowa caucuses. National polling averages show that he has a 50-point advantage over the second-place and third-place GOP presidential candidates—former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

    “But I don’t think the Supreme Court would [agree with decisions to keep him from ballots] because you can’t take the vote,“ the former commander-in-chief added to Mr. Hannity. ”You know, I’m leading in every poll … I’m leading the remaining Republicans … they’re barely hanging on. How can you possibly take the vote away?”

    In a Truth Social post earlier on Thursday, President Trump said he hoped that it would be “an easy decision” for the Supreme Court. “God bless the Supreme Court,” he added.

    The former president several weeks ago appealed the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court before the high court accepted it. Arguments in the case are scheduled for next month.

    Other Activity

    This week, more than 170 congressional Republicans—including some of its leadership—filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, arguing to keep President Trump on the 2024 ballots.

    “Disqualification under Section 3 is an extraordinarily harsh result, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s own text confirms that Congress, representing the Nation’s various interests and constituencies, is the best judge of when to authorize Section 3’s affirmative enforcement,” the lawmakers wrote in their brief.

    The Colorado Supreme Court’s decision, they added, “will only supercharge state officials to conjure bases for labeling political opponents as having engaged in insurrection.“ What’s more, the nine justices should overturn that ruling to reduce the ”partisan incentive“ to remove political opponents from ballots under the 14th Amendment’s Section 3, or ”insurrectionist ban,” according to the lawmakers.

    Also this week, a Maine Superior Court judge concluded she lacked authority to stay the judicial proceedings but she wrote that she did have authority to send the case back to the secretary of state with instructions to await the outcome of the U.S. Supreme Court case before withdrawing, modifying or upholding her original decision.

    In the decision, the judge said that the issues raised in the Maine case mirror the issues raised in the Colorado case before the U.S. Supreme Court. She wrote that her decision “minimizes any potentially destabilizing effect of inconsistent decisions and will promote greater predictability in the weeks ahead of the primary election.”

    Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump talks to supporters during a campaign rally at the Sheraton Portsmouth Harborside Hotel in Portsmouth, N.H., on Jan. 17, 2024. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    Days before that, in Oregon, the state Supreme Court issued a statement saying that it would not rule on a ballot-related challenge against President Trump “for now” until the U.S. high court renders its decision.

    A number of other federal and state judges in different jurisdictions have also rejected similar ballot-related lawsuits seeking to bar the former president from appearing on the ballots.

    The nation’s highest court has never ruled on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office. Some left-wing legal scholars and activists say the post-Civil War clause applies to President Trump, while some have noted that he was never charged with those crimes.

    In California, Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom released a statement last month rejecting a push to bar the former president from his state’s ballots in 2024, writing that in the Golden State, “we defeat candidates at the polls.” He added, “Everything else is a political distraction.”

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 01/20/2024 – 19:50

  • Furries Are Infiltrating Our Schools
    Furries Are Infiltrating Our Schools

    Authored by Nicole James via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    As I sat at the Christmas dinner table, my fork poised over a baked potato crisped to perfection, I found myself enrolled in an impromptu seminar on the curious world of “furries,” courtesy of my teenage relatives.

    Furry enthusiasts attend the Eurofurence 2014 conference in Berlin, Germany, on Aug. 22, 2014. (Adam Berry/Getty Images)

    These bright-eyed purveyors of contemporary oddities regaled tales from a Sydney satellite city’s school, a veritable hotbed of furry fandom. I’d heard whispers of this subculture—apparently false reports of cat litter being offered up in schools—but the depth and fervour of this phenomenon had previously eluded my grasp.

    So, what in the Dickensian landscape of modern subcultures are “furries”?

    The term defies a neat, one-size-fits-all definition. But if one were to ask Kathleen Gerbasi—a scholar armed with a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Rochester in New York—a “furry” is an individual who finds themselves spiritually aligned with, or even adopting the traits of, a specific animal species.

    Ms. Gerbasi isn’t a mere casual observer in the furry fray; she was the pioneering mind behind a 2008 scholarly paper that delved into the intricacies of “fursonas.”

    This revelation at the dinner table, nestled between the gravy boat and the cranberry sauce, left me bewildered and bemused, with a forkful of potato suspended in mid-air as I pondered the depths of human identity and expression.

    As I ventured further into this festive feast of absurdity, my youthful informants—let’s affectionately label them Hannah, Olivia, and Izzy—served up a narrative far more peculiar than the conventional understanding of “furries.”

    In their academic jungle, a peculiar breed flourished: students who, in the early wilderness of years 7 to 9, donned their furry personas with the fervour of a Shakespearean actor in a sold-out show.

    But, as the curtain fell on Year 9, these fur-clad thespians seemed to vanish into thin air.

    Had they retreated to more domestic pursuits, like purring on the laps of doting mothers or honing their mousing skills?

    The trio couldn’t say.

    Dedication to Stay in Character

    The truly baffling aspect, as relayed by my earnest narrators, was the unwavering commitment these furries had to their roles.

    Not once did they break character within the hallowed halls of school.

    Speech was forsaken for meows and barks; answers to teachers’ questions were met with stoic silence. These furry aficionados, eschewing the drab garb of school uniforms, adorned themselves with sewn-on tails and headbands crowned with furry ears.

    Year seven students arrive to Elevation Secondary College in Craigieburn, Melbourne, Australia, on Oct. 12, 2020. (AAP Image/James Ross)

    Hannah recounted a tale that bordered on the Kafkaesque: a non-furry lad from Year 9 dared to bark at a furry and found himself chastised by the teacher, who sternly reminded him to respect the feline identity of the student.

    “The teachers just let them do their thing,” Olivia chimed in, while Izzy added that this furry phenomenon was not exclusive to their school, although was conspicuously absent from the city’s private education where the girls were now enrolled.

    Izzy shared a surreal episode about a girl who, perched atop a tree during lunch, refused to descend until the principal’s arrival. Upon alighting, she flapped her arms bird-like, then barked—a furry identity crisis if ever there was one.

    According to this teenage trio, the furry hierarchy at their school was dominated by cats, dogs, and, intriguingly, lorikeets.

    As I digested this feast of the bizarre, alongside my impeccably baked potato, I found myself marvelling at the ever-evolving teenage expression, a world where the lines between human and animal, reality and fantasy, were not just blurred, but enthusiastically erased.

    It’s Everywhere

    This furry frenzy isn’t just an Aussie fad. It’s a global epidemic, spreading faster than a kangaroo on a hot tin roof.

    It started in the United States but now even the Brits are hopping on the bandwagon.

    The Sun splashed across its pages that the UK’s “Safer Schools” group was telling teachers and parents to keep their eyes peeled for kids prancing about as furries.

    The advice? Don’t mock or make a fuss.

    Easy for them to say—they don’t have a kid in a cat costume purring on their dining table!

    Some cats drool when they purr. (kwanza/Shutterstock)

    Meanwhile, in Wollongong, another satellite city outside Sydney, a state school has become a veritable zoo.

    As reported in the Herald Sun, kids are crawling on tables, meowing in packs, and grooming each other like it’s a feline beauty parlour.

    Over in the world of social platform X, UAP Senator Ralph Babet has been sounding the alarm. He reckons this is what happens when the “radical left” runs amok, unchecked, and untamed.

    He wrote, “Can we just put a stop to this garbage right now? You go to school to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic.”

    Then there’s Michael Carr-Greg, a child psychologist who’s seen it all, except, apparently, an abundance of these fur-clad youngsters.

    As reported in the Herald Sun, he says it’s a rare spectacle. These furry fellows, he observes, are leading pretty normal lives, apart from the occasional meow.

    The big question, he muses, is whether this is a passing cloud or a full-blown storm of mental illness.

    The jury’s still out, but Mr. Carr-Greg’s got his eye on the impact on the trifecta of life: friendships, school, and family. If these get muddled up by the furry business, then, and only then, does he start to worry.

    Bridging this concern with the broader cultural spectacle, it’s evident that while experts like Mr. Carr-Greg ponder the psychological ramifications, the wider world is grappling with its own perceptions and reactions.

    As the fur flies in this increasingly barmy debate, one thing’s clear: in the world of fursonas, it’s a jungle out there, and everyone’s just trying to find their way—on foot, paw, or claws.

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

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 01/20/2024 – 18:40

  • 'Not Tough, Smart, Or Respected Enough To Be My VP' – Trump Taunts Haley, Dominates New Hampshire Polls Despite MSM Onslaught
    'Not Tough, Smart, Or Respected Enough To Be My VP' – Trump Taunts Haley, Dominates New Hampshire Polls Despite MSM Onslaught

    The mainstream media appears to have got the message from the ‘uniparty’ – Nikki Haley is our gal. The neocon’s recently improving trend in New Hampshire Republican Primary polls has sparked a wave of supportive headlines (and anti-Trump sub-texts) pushing Haley as the last, best hope for bringing down the advance of ‘literal Hitler’ to become the Republican candidate and into The White House.

    “We always wanted to be strong in Iowa and even stronger in New Hampshire, and we’re on track to do that,” Haley Campaign manager, Betsy Ankney, told reporters at a luncheon hosted by Bloomberg News in Manchester.

    “Beating Donald Trump is not easy. He’s a juggernaut. But how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time,” she said.

    But although she’s shot up 30 points over four months in the Granite State, she still trails Trump by nearly 16 points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls.

    But that won’t stop the media trying…

    Here’s Bloomberg today – running three separate stories within hours of each other about how great Haley is doing…

    Trump at a rally in Concord, New Hampshire, on Friday evening said Haley was “OK” when serving as his UN ambassador but did not have “presidential” material.

    “Now when I say that, that probably means that she’s not going to be chosen as the vice president,” Trump said, adding that:

    “She’s not tough enough. She’s not smart enough. And she wasn’t respected enough. She cannot do this job. She’s not going to be able to deal with President Xi. She’s not going to be able to deal with Putin and Kim Jong Un.”

    The war of words continued as Haley accused the Republican frontrunner of “telling a whole lot of lies.”

    “If he’s gonna lie about me, I’m gonna tell the truth about him,” she added.

    But, much to the chagrin of the media’s recent fixation on Haley, Trump has expanded his nationwide lead among Republican voters…


     

    But Washington is not giving up in their OrangeManBad efforts.

    Echoing warnings that Vivek Ramaswamy recently issued, Tucker Carlson laid out the potential ‘cunning’ plan underway to  push Washington’s favorite heel-wearer over the ‘Orange Tyrant’.

    In Iowa – before he ended his presidential primary run – Ramaswamy warned that the current system “wants to narrow us down to a two-horse race between Donald Trump and a puppet who they can control,” namely Nikki Haley.

    Carlson extends the thinking…

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

    As Ron Faucheux writes at RealClearPolitics, there is one fragile, complicated scenario that gives Haley (or DeSantis) a glimmer of hope – and that’s if the dynamics of the race change because of a Trump conviction.

    The first step, they believe, is for Haley or DeSantis to quickly become the “last woman (man) standing” against Trump, and to consolidate Republican voters who are resistant to supporting the former president. While that bloc of votes – three out of 10 – isn’t enough to win the nomination, it could add up to decent showings in a few key states. And that, they think, would keep their campaigns on life-support while waiting for the big break.

    The big break is entirely out of the control of either Haley or DeSantis – and that’s a Trump guilty verdict, one that resets the race. The problem is that there may not be a verdict in time. Even if there is, it may not be guilty, and even if it’s guilty, it may not reset the race.

    If there is a guilty verdict before the July convention, the Trump resistance could try to release delegates from their earlier commitments. It’s possible some Trump delegates would rethink their support for him if, as a convicted felon, he no longer appeared to be electable in November. But rest assured, Trump’s hardcore supporters would hit the barricades to stop such a maneuver.

    This scenario may be a vanishing star for Haley and DeSantis to wish upon, but it is effectively the strategic underpinning of their current campaigns; it’s all they have left.

    But, it won’t be easy.

    Despite Haley reportedly spending $4 million on an advertising campaign in her home state of South Carolina, JustTheNews reports that Tony Fabrizio, a Trump-aligned pollster on Friday, circulated a private memo including survey results that showed Trump ahead of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley by 39%, The Hill reported.

    Trump claimed 64% support in the survey, while Haley claimed 25% and Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis earned 8% support.

    “President Trump is set to deliver a South Carolina smackdown to Nikki Haley in her home state where she is best known,” Fabrizio said of the poll results.

    News of Trump’s lead in South Carolina comes after South Carolina GOP Sen. Tim Scott endorsed Trump on Friday evening –  a direct blow to Haley who appointed Scott to the Senate in 2012.

    “We need a president who understands that the American people are sick and tired about being sick and tired,” Scott said, joining Trump at his rally. “We need a president our foreign adversaries are afraid of and our allies respect.”

    Scott is now the third major candidate who previously ran for the 2024 Republican nomination to back Trump.

    North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and Ohio entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy also joined Trump in recent days to throw their support behind him.

    Trump told supporters Friday evening that New Hampshire “could end it.”

    “We’ll finish it off,” he said. “And then we can focus on the worst president,” he added, looking ahead to a likely rematch with Joe Biden.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 01/20/2024 – 18:05

  • Alec Baldwin Indicted By Grand Jury In 'Rust' Shooting
    Alec Baldwin Indicted By Grand Jury In 'Rust' Shooting

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

    Actor Alec Baldwin was indicted by a New Mexico grand jury over the 2021 death of “Rust” cinematographer Halyna Hutchins after a prop gun fired a live round and struck her, according to court documents.

    Actor Alec Baldwin attends the 2019 PEN America Literary Gala In New York, on May 21, 2019. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)

    According to several media outlets, the move to indict Mr. Baldwin was confirmed Friday after the grand jury heard evidence presented by special prosecutors. He was charged with involuntary manslaughter.

    Specifically, he was charged with involuntary manslaughter—negligent use of a firearm—or, in the alternative, involuntary manslaughter—without due caution or circumspection—reported ABC News. Both are fourth-degree felonies.

    His lawyers suggested to several news outlets Friday that they would fight the charge. “We look forward to our day in court,” Baldwin lawyers Alex Spiro and Luke Nikas said in a statement.

    The “30 Rock” actor’s initial involuntary manslaughter charges were dropped in April 2023. At the time, prosecutors said they could be brought again, however.

    “Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez was charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter as well. She faces an additional charge of evidence tampering.

    The special prosecutors, Kari Morrissey and Jason Lewis sent the gun for more forensic testing several months ago. Experts who evaluated the firearm found that it could have only fired if the trigger was pulled.

    “This fatal incident was the consequence of the hammer being manually retracted to its fully rearward and cocked position followed, at some point, by the pull or rearward depression of the trigger,” their report concluded. “Although Alec Baldwin repeatedly denies pulling the trigger, given the tests, findings and observations reported here, the trigger had to be pulled or depressed sufficiently to release the fully cocked or retracted hammer of the evidence revolver.”

    While the proceeding is shrouded in secrecy, two of the witnesses seen at the courthouse included crew members—one who was present when the fatal shot was fired and another who had walked off the set the day before due to safety concerns.

    Mr. Baldwin, the lead actor and a co-producer on the Western movie, was pointing a gun at Ms. Hutchins during a rehearsal on a movie set outside Santa Fe in October 2021 when the gun went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza. But Mr. Baldwin has said he pulled back the hammer but not the trigger, and the gun fired.

    An earlier FBI report on the agency’s analysis of the gun found that, as is common with firearms of that design, it could go off without pulling the trigger if force was applied to an uncocked hammer, such as by dropping the weapon.

    The only way the testers could get it to fire was by striking the gun with a mallet while the hammer was down and resting on the cartridge or by pulling the trigger while it was fully cocked. The gun eventually broke during testing.

    The 2021 shooting resulted in a series of civil lawsuits, including wrongful death claims filed by members of Hutchins’ family, centered on accusations that the defendants were lax with safety standards. Mr. Baldwin and other defendants have disputed those allegations.

    Ms. Hutchins’ widower, Matthew Hutchins, also filed a lawsuit after the incident, reaching a settlement in 2022. It allowed for insurance funds and a portion of “Rust’s” profits to help the couple’s child.

    When the settlement was reached, Mr. Hutchins said he didn’t assign blame to Mr. Baldwin.

    “I have no interest in engaging in recriminations or attribution of blame (to the producers or Mr. Baldwin),” he said at the time, according to reports. “All of us believe Halyna’s death was a terrible accident. I am grateful that the producers and the entertainment community have come together to pay tribute to Halyna’s final work.”

    The Rust Movie Productions company has paid a $100,000 fine to state workplace safety regulators after a scathing narrative of failures in violation of standard industry protocols, including testimony that production managers took limited or no action to address two misfires on set before the fatal shooting.

    The filming of “Rust” resumed last year in Montana under an agreement with the cinematographer’s widower, Matthew Hutchins, that made him an executive producer.

    The movie’s assistant director, David Halls, was named as the individual who gave the firearm to Mr. Baldwin on the day of the shooting. Last year, he signed a plea deal for the “charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon” and received six months’ probation, according to prosecutors.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 01/20/2024 – 17:30

  • US Mulls More Aggressive, Stepped-Up Measures Against Houthis
    US Mulls More Aggressive, Stepped-Up Measures Against Houthis

    On Saturday the Pentagon conducted yet another round of airstrikes on Houthi positions in Yemen, which marks likely the seventh round of such Western coalition attacks. It follows a round of strikes the day prior. 

    Even after this steady progression of escalation, which comes in response to near daily Houthi attacks on commercial ships transiting the Red Sea, the Pentagon still says the US government does not believe it is at war in Yemen. It was only on Thursday that President Biden issued a surprise admission, saying that the bombing is not working, yet it will continue anyway. The comments to the media included Biden responding when asked whether the strikes are deterring Houthi aggression: “Well, when you say ‘working’ — are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes,” the president said. 

    US Navy file image

    And now the US administration is mulling bigger escalation, though it remains anything but clear whether the Houthis will actually halt their war on Red Sea shipping, given also Israel is persisting in its Gaza operation. 

    According to fresh reporting in Bloomberg, “The US and the UK are exploring ways to step up their campaign against Houthi militants in Yemen without provoking a broader war, with a focus on targeting Iranian resupplies and launching more aggressive pre-emptive strikes, people familiar with the matter said.”

    But the fear is that it would put Washington on a collision course with Iran. Already there are widespread allegations that Iran has elite IRGC operatives on the ground advising the Houthis. The US has also accused Tehran of giving the Yemeni rebels intelligence information to help with targeting. The White House says it doesn’t want a wider war in the Middle East.

    Bloomberg, based on administration sources, said that an internal debate is raging over the course of action:

    The people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations, said the US and UK are examining ways to better disrupt Iranian efforts to resupply the Houthis at sea, especially given that it will be harder to sever land routes. A British official echoed that argument, saying officials are weighing various types of military operations to disrupt Iranian weapons flows to the Houthis.

    Advocates for more aggressive action also argue that the time is ripe because of what they see as an emerging Iranian weakness. People familiar with the US stance say that the leadership in Iran may have overextended itself with its support for the Houthis along with launching attacks in Pakistan and Iraq, and may not respond to further escalation.

    The US Navy last week intercepted a dhow in the Arabian Sea, off Somalia, that looked “suspicious”. It was found to have been transporting Iranian-made missile components, and was believed bound for Houthi territory. 

    Tragically, the operation wasn’t without a cost, as two Navy Seals were lost at sea, and are presumed dead, as search and rescue efforts have persisted for many days.

    Iran’s allies in the Middle East are seeking to pressure US troops out of the region….

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

    Israel itself appears to be stepping up its anti-Iran intervention in Syria, on Saturday striking a Damascus suburb. Iran later confirmed that several high-ranking IRGC officers were killed. Tehran is vowing revenge, and things are set to get even more chaotic in the region in the coming days. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 01/20/2024 – 16:55

  • National Security Experts Raise Alarm Over Biden’s EV Push
    National Security Experts Raise Alarm Over Biden’s EV Push

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

    A coalition of 17 retired military officials led by retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. James Marks have warned that President Joe Biden’s push for mass electric vehicle (EV) adoption is a threat to national security.

    An electric vehicle charging station in Irvine, Calif., on Nov. 28, 2023. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

    In a Jan. 17 letter to President Biden and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan, the group of national security experts said they oppose the Biden administration’s aggressive EV push because Chinese dominance of EV supply chains poses national security risks for the United States.

    In particular, regulatory initiatives meant to incentivize EV adoption “intensify America’s vulnerability to political interference by the Chinese Communist Party,” the experts wrote.

    Since taking office, President Biden has signed a number of executive orders to boost the sales of EVs, while outlining a plan that seeks to have 50 percent of new vehicles be either plug-in hybrids or fully electric by 2030.

    Further, the EPA in April 2023 proposed tough new vehicle standards that seek to reduce the number of cars that produce emissions by 2032.

    The White House said at the time that the EPA’s strict emission standards are part of a “clear pathway for a continued rise in EV sales and protecting future generations from the impacts of climate change.”

    This reflects the Biden administration’s often-repeated messaging that rapid electrification of transportation would lower greenhouse gases quickly and so reduce global warming, though this is a view that has been challenged, including by climate strategists who generally back climate action but warn that the dash to go electric could lead to unsustainable costs and needless damage to the environment.

    EPA Rule In Focus

    The retired military officials singled out EPA’s tailpipe emissions proposal for particular criticism because they say it would force up to two-thirds of new vehicles sold in America to be electric by 2032.

    “At a nearly tenfold increase over current electric vehicle sales, this proposed rule is a clear example of tone-deaf policymaking that favors the geopolitical advantages currently held by China in this market,” the retired military officers wrote.

    While the experts said that they believe EVs will play a significant role in diversifying America’s transportation systems, they believe the Biden administration’s various quick-adoption initiatives “will rush our transition to EVs before the infrastructure necessary to support it is in place.”

    “This trajectory will only position the U.S. to become more reliant on China for critical minerals and manufacturing that are necessary for the rapid expansion of EV markets this administration envisions.”

    “And even more concerning is the fact that this reliance hinges upon China’s goodwill to export those minerals and manufactured goods to the U.S. This will undoubtedly open the U.S. up to economic manipulations by China,” which poses a “major threat to our national security.”

    “We do not believe now is the time to make ourselves vulnerable to such easy political pressures,” they added.

    The EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.

    Car Dealers Oppose Biden’s EV Push

    There has been other notable opposition to the Biden administration’s EV push in general and the EPA’s strict new tailpipe emissions standard proposal.

    Several thousand car dealership owners around the country in November signed an open letter to the Biden administration, saying they oppose its aggressive EV push.

    More than 3,800 auto dealers wrote in the letter that EV demand isn’t sufficient, even though they said they believe that EVs “are ideal for many people” and that “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 [battery electric vehicles] arriving at our dealerships prompted by the current regulations,” the dealers said. “BEVs are stacking up on our lots.”

    The dealers noted that enthusiasm for EVs “has stalled” and their supply is building “even with deep price cuts, manufacturer incentives, and generous government incentives.”

    They said the EPA’s emissions goals are “unrealistic” and that EVs in general have major hurdles to overcome before adoption can ramp up widely, including a lack of EV charging infrastructure.

    Range Anxiety

    A major worry among Americans considering the wisdom of switching to an EV is range anxiety, which is the fear of driving an EV and running out of power without being able to find a charging port—and ending up stranded on the side of the road.

    A recent study by the American Automobile Association (AAA) found that EV range can fall by up to a quarter when the vehicle is carrying heavy loads.

    “Range anxiety remains a top reason consumers are hesitant to switch from gasoline-powered vehicles to EVs,” Adrienne Woodland, spokesperson for AAA, said in a statement.

    Another recent study by consultancy Ernst & Young—in collaboration with European energy industry body Eurelectric—found that range anxiety is the second-most cited concern about switching to an EV, with a lack of public charging stations in the top spot.

    The study points to an estimated need for 68.9 million chargers across the United States and Canada by 2035 to support the pace of the EV transition.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 01/20/2024 – 16:20

  • Earnings Call Sentiment: "Red Sea" Mentions Hit Record High As Fears Mount Of Snarled Supply Chains
    Earnings Call Sentiment: "Red Sea" Mentions Hit Record High As Fears Mount Of Snarled Supply Chains

    Earnings-call mentions of “Red Sea” surged to record highs in recent weeks as the fourth-quarter earnings season kicks off. 

    Management teams and analysts are particularly worried about shipping disruptions as major shippers suspend sails through the critical waterway. At the same time, US and allied forces unleashed bombing raids on Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. Still, the rebels have been able to strike commercial vessels with missiles and drones this past week, as the chaos in the region could last months.

    Using the Document Search function on Bloomberg, earnings-call mentions of “Red Sea” topped 41 this week, a record high. As the earning season progresses, the mentions will likely increase. 

    Here’s a list of corporate executives discussing the Red Sea situtaion in the latest earnings calls. 

    In one earnings call, paint and coating company PPG Industries executives mentioned Red Sea disruptions could affect their raw material purchases. 

    An Indian executive at plastics company Supreme Industries warned that the Red Sea chaos “has disrupted the normal flow of business.” 

    “And just to build on that, zooming out a bit. Of course, if the conflict in the Red Sea were to escalate or to endure, it’s going to affect everybody,” the CEO of British electrical and telecommunications retailer and services company Currys plc said. 

    Disruptions in the critical waterway could have significant consequences for global growth. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 01/20/2024 – 15:45

  • Advocates Outraged That Feds Asked Banks To Search Customers' 'Religious Texts' Purchases
    Advocates Outraged That Feds Asked Banks To Search Customers' 'Religious Texts' Purchases

    Authored by Mark Tapscott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Faith leaders and religious liberty advocates are up in arms over news that the federal government encouraged banks and other financial institutions to search customers’ private accounts using the search term “religious texts.”

    Tony Perkins (C), president of the Family Research Council, speaks during an interfaith roundtable on the Chinese Communist Party’s threat to religious freedom in Washington on July 12, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    The “religious texts” search term was among those federal officials asked financial institutions to use following the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol, a congressional source with direct knowledge confirmed to The Epoch Times on Jan. 18.

    Other terms that banks, credit card companies, and financial firms were asked to use in the searches included “MAGA” and “Trump,” according to the House Judiciary Committee. Federal officials at the Department of Justice and the Treasury Department sought the data from such searches as part of their investigation of the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

    Religious liberty advocates interviewed by The Epoch Times were unanimous in condemning the searches, which were conducted without judicially authorized search warrants.

    “This is beyond alarming,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins told The Epoch Times. “If we did a word search in history of the type of activities the Biden administration is engaged in, it would return words like ‘KGB,’ ’totalitarian,‘ ’repressive,’ ‘anti-democratic,’ and ‘grave threat to freedom.’”

    Family Research Council is a Washington-based nonprofit advocacy group that works on behalf of traditional values, including and especially defense of the family and religious freedom.

    “The last place you would anticipate this kind of government intrusion into freedom of speech is America and yet it is rife with this administration and with the ‘deep state,’” Liberty Counsel founder and Chairman Mat Staver told The Epoch Times.

    “It is a very serious concern and it should be a serious concern, no matter your political beliefs because if this is permitted, then it just depends on who is in power. This is what despotic governments do to suppress people that they don’t agree with,” he said.

    Mr. Staver’s organization, Liberty Counsel, is an Orlando, Florida-based nonprofit religious liberty defense foundation.

    ‘Mockery of Our Laws’

    Kelly Shackelford, president, CEO, and chief counsel for the Plano, Texas-based First Liberty Institute, told The Epoch Times the searches exposed by the House panel represent a threat to religious freedom.

    “It’s outrageous and frankly chilling that the federal government may be urging banks to monitor Americans for exercising their religious freedom by simply purchasing a Bible or other religious text,” Mr. Shackelford said.

    “Weaponizing the federal government against religious Americans freely exercising their constitutionally protected freedom is outrageous and a danger to all our freedoms. It makes a mockery of our laws. When religious people are attacked and religious freedom is not upheld, all other civil liberties—including economic freedom—soon start crumbling.”

    “This news should serve as a wake-up call for every American,“ warned Jeremy Tedesco, senior vice president of corporate engagement for Alliance Defending Freedom. ”The revelation that the government is working with financial institutions to flag everyday American citizens as ’threats’ because they shop at Cabelas, Dick’s Sporting Goods, or buy religious texts is terrifying.

    “No one should live in fear that law enforcement or a financial service provider will flag their account based on the exercise of their constitutionally protected rights.”

    House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said in a Jan. 17 statement that the searches were sought by the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Stakeholder Integration and Engagement in the Strategic Operations of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), in conjunction with the FBI.

    Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) accused the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division of politically based prosecutions while questioning U.S. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke during a House hearing about “Oversight of the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division” in Washington on Dec. 5, 2023. (Screenshot via NTD)

    Mr. Jordan wrote a Jan. 17 letter to Noah Bishoff, the former FinCEN director who is now the anti-money laundering officer for Plaid Inc., a San Francisco digital financial platform developer and marketer.

    “According to this analysis, FinCEN warned financial institutions of ‘extremism’ indicators that include ‘transportation charges, such as bus tickets, rental cars, or plane tickets, for travel areas with no apparent purpose,’ or ‘the purchase of books (including religious texts) and subscriptions to other media containing extremist views,’” Mr. Jordan wrote.

    “In other words, FinCEN used large financial institutions to comb through the private transactions of their customers for suspicious charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression.”

    Officials’ Testimony Sought

    Mr. Bishoff was asked to provide testimony to the House Judiciary panel about the searches, as was Peter Sullivan, senior private sector partner for outreach in the Strategic Partner Engagement Section of the FBI.

    “Freedom of Religion is a fundamental right enshrined in the Constitution,” Mr. Jordan told The Epoch Times. “It should frighten every American that the federal government is watching people based on their purchases. This is as wrong as it gets and we will continue to expose this blatant attack on faith and civil liberties.”

    In a Jan. 17 letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Mr. Jordan explained that Mr. Sullivan’s testimony “will help to inform the [House Judiciary] Committee and Select Subcommittee [on the Weaponization of the Federal Government] about the FBI’s mass accumulation and use of Americans’ private information without legal process; the FBI’s protocols, if any, to safeguard Americans’ privacy and constitutional rights in the receipt and use of such information; and the FBI’s general engagement with the private sector on law-enforcement matters.”

    Congressional leaders also told The Epoch Times the searches warrant further investigation and corrective action.

    FBI Director Christopher Wray looks over notes as he arrives for a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 10, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) also commented.

    “The Biden administration is bringing back ‘Operation Chokepoint’ from the Obama-Biden era to weaponize our financial system against their political opponents. House Republicans, under the leadership of Chairman Jordan and the House Judiciary Committee, will not tolerate this un-American abuse of power.” Mr. Emmer said.

    He was referring to a Department of Justice investigation in 2013 of firearms dealers, payday lenders, and other businesses thought to be vulnerable to money laundering.

    Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told The Epoch Times that “digging through American citizens’ private financial transactions, based on political phrases, is a clear weaponization of the federal government and those responsible must be held responsible.”

    Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called the searches “outrageous” and claimed “the Biden administration is using federal law enforcement to engage in financial surveillance of Americans. … Shockingly, the government is even monitoring people for purchasing religious texts like the Bible. This is an Orwellian invasion of privacy, and it should have never happened in the United States. Biden’s bureaucrats running this horrendous financial surveillance system must be held accountable.”

    Similarly, Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) told The Epoch Times: “This is yet another example of the federal government being weaponized against Joe Biden’s political opposition, as well as people of faith. This sort of activity is highly concerning and warrants further investigation. I applaud the House Judiciary Committee for digging into this issue and I look forward to investigators exposing and rooting out this misconduct.”

    Tactics of Marxism

    Shea Bradley-Farrell is an international development professional and president of the Washington-based Counterpoint Institute for Policy, Research, and Education. She told The Epoch Times that the searches are typical of the control measures used by totalitarian regimes to counter dissidents and other groups not approved by the authorities.

    “Weaponizing the federal government against private citizens for their political or religious beliefs is straight out of the playbook of Marxism, and was also used to identify, crush, and control the occupied peoples under the communist Soviet Union,” Ms. Bradley-Farrell said.

    “As I explain in my book, ‘Last Warning to the West,’ these are totalitarian, police-state tactics used to impose ‘docility, discipline and controllability of subject populations. These are warrantless searches that violate the Fourth Amendment.”

    A spokesman for Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 01/20/2024 – 15:10

  • Prediction Consensus: What The 'Experts' See Coming In 2024
    Prediction Consensus: What The 'Experts' See Coming In 2024

    As we look ahead to 2024, there is no shortage of expert forecasts and predictions for the world’s economy, markets, geopolitics, and technology to track in this new year.

    In this now fifth year of our Prediction Consensus (part of our comprehensive 2024 Global Forecast Series), we’ve summarized 25 of the most common predictions and forecasts by experts into a single visual of what’s expected to happen in 2024.

    Drawing from our predictions database of over 700 forecasts compiled from reports, interviews, podcasts, and more, Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte created the Prediction Consensus “bingo card” and this article to offer an overview of the most cited trends and opportunities that experts are watching for the rest of the year.

    This visual is from our 2024 Global Forecast Series Report:

    Get full access to the series, which compiles insights from 700+ expert predictions for what will happen in 2024, by becoming a VC+ member today.

    The Economy and Markets in 2024

    Based on the hundreds of economic forecasts and predictions we’ve sifted through, many analysts and experts share similar views on what’s ahead for inflation, interest rates, and economic growth in 2024.

    Inflation: After inflation’s steady decline across economies in 2023, many analysts see inflation continuing to cool off towards target levels. While some note that the last stretch to these targets could be the toughest, few foresee the possibility of inflation surging again like we saw in 2022.

    Interest Rates: With inflation largely expected to be tamed in 2024, every major bank and institution forecasts interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, and Bank of England by the middle of the year. Forecasts from analysts on how much rates will be cut vary between three and six cuts, with Federal Reserve board members themselves forecasting two to three cuts.

    Markets: With interest rate cuts on the horizon, experts have echoed tentatively positive forecasts for both stocks and bonds in 2024. Falling rates should see bond yields fall as well, while equities should continue to benefit from the growing AI theme. Portfolio diversification is a common theme in the 2024 investment playbook, especially as geopolitical risks loom.

    Real GDP Growth: The outlook for growth around the world is muted. Global GDP growth forecasts range from 2.5-3%, which is slightly lower than the 10-year average (2013-2022) of 3.1%. The U.S. is also forecasted to see slowing growth, with the IMF’s forecasts of 2.4% in 2023 moving down to 1.5% in 2024, while Europe is also expected to continue seeing slow growth at 0.9% in 2024.

    When looking at other nations, many experts are predicting we’ll see India outpace China when it comes to real GDP growth this year, especially if the trend of manufacturing and foreign investment shifting away from China continues.

    “The transition is two-sided: India is investing in infrastructure and courting foreign investment, while China is investing in aircraft carriers and turning its gaze inward to deal with youth unemployment and sectors crashing.”

    – Scott Galloway

    Geopolitical Predictions for 2024

    After the past couple of years brought geopolitics back to the forefront with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s war with Hamas, experts don’t see global tensions cooling off anytime soon. In fact, many cite further geopolitical sparks and potential escalation as their top risk to watch out for in 2024, requiring diversified and nimble positioning.

    With ongoing strikes from Yemen’s Houthi militants on container ships in the Red Sea resulting in marine shipping disruptions, retaliatory U.S. strikes are now likely cementing the potential for ongoing disruption for marine shipping around the world.

    Outlooks for the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars are equally indecisive, with few to no experts foreseeing true resolutions for either conflict in 2024, and most citing further escalation and additional country involvement as the more likely scenarios.

    Along with these ongoing geopolitical issues, 2024 is a key year for elections around the world. With the U.S., Russia, Ukraine, India, Mexico, and many other countries holding elections this year, there’s little stable ground in geopolitics without the potential for seismic shifts this year.

    Further Boom or Regulatory Bust for AI in 2024?

    After its breakout year in 2023, artificial intelligence faces new challenges in 2024 which is set to be another pivotal year for the technology.

    While advances in the technology are inevitable, the less exciting reality of regulation and legal disputes around training data is already a key issue, as seen in the New York Times’ lawsuit against OpenAI. Along with this, the growing potential for malicious AI use around the many global elections this year could spur further calls for greater regulation.

    Experts see these topics acting as a bit of a damper on another potentially explosive year for AI product growth and distribution. Many are expecting the EU to clamp down faster and harder than the U.S. when it comes to regulation.

    2024 Forecasts: Everything is Connected

    While the global economy, markets, geopolitics, and technological advancements have always affected each other in various ways, in 2024 these connections feel stronger than ever.

    One such example is how escalating conflicts in the Middle East are affecting shipping insurance costs and routes, which could drive up inflation again and lead central banks to hold off on cutting interest rates this year, thus affecting myriad economic factors and markets around the world.

    2024 feels full of both good and bad interconnected possibilities, from forecasts around AI advancements ushering in a new bull market and golden age of productivity to the potential job disruptions it could cause that our labor markets and society might not be ready for.

    Despite the world growing more polarized and geopolitically fractured in the past couple of years, these predictions and forecasts remind us of how deeply dependent the health and future of the global economy is on the interconnected nature of these factors.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 01/20/2024 – 14:35

  • Decode Your Hospital Bill To Catch Overcharges
    Decode Your Hospital Bill To Catch Overcharges

    Authored by George Citroner via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Millions of Americans are trapped in a maze of inflated hospital fees and opaque billing codes. Yet they either pay these crushing bills or watch their credit score plummet.

    But what if patients could decode hospital charges and gain the upper hand? Armed with such knowledge, they may reveal errors, negotiate costs, access aid programs, and protect themselves from crippling medical debt.

    (zimmytws/Shutterstock)

    Patients Pay the Price as Hospitals Fail Billing Standards

    Recently published research in the Journal of the American Medical Association analyzed data from a 2022 survey by The Leapfrog Group. This nonprofit issues an annual review assessing the quality of care and billing accountability standards across U.S. hospitals.

    The analysis focused on responses from 2,270 hospitals. It found that 754 facilities (33.2 percent) had taken legal action against patients who could not pay bills in full or on time. Additionally, over 1,000 hospitals failed to provide itemized bills within 30 days, possibly violating legal billing requirements.

    The bill most patients get in the mail is usually a consolidated summary, “making it impossible to assess whether you’re charged correctly or not,” Patrick Haig, CEO and co-founder of Goodbill, a startup dedicated to making hospital bills transparent and affordable for patients, told The Epoch Times.

    Furthermore, 125 hospitals (5.5 percent) lacked billing representatives who could investigate errors, offer price adjustments, or discuss payment plan options. In total, 1,415, or over 60 percent, of the facilities surveyed did not satisfy all three critical billing quality standards.

    Over 50 percent of hospital bills reviewed by Goodbill contain inaccuracies, according to Mr. Haig. These range from coding mistakes to charges for unnecessary medical procedures.

    “That’s kind of crazy when you think about it,” Mr. Haig said, “because so many people feel like they have no choice but to just pay their bills, or they go into debt because they can’t afford to pay their bills.”

    Vague Hospital Invoices Hide Behind Fake ‘Itemization’

    If you have concerns regarding hospital charges, request an itemized bill within 30 days. This line-item invoice details all services and supplies involved in your care.

    An accurate itemized bill includes standardized diagnosis, procedure, and billing codes that determine costs, Mr. Haig said—specifically, Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes, Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) codes, and others. These codes clearly convey how insurance companies reimburse hospitals, enabling “apples-to-apples” charge comparisons with other providers, he added.

    “For example, a charge for an acute emergency room visit might go by different names, depending on the hospital—like ‘Level 5 ED visit,’ or ‘ER visit Lvl 5,’ but universally has only one CPT code: 99285,” he said.

    If the itemized bill lacks sufficient coding detail, request the UB-04 claim form submitted to insurers for payment. It contains the clearest procedure coding available, according to Mr. Haig. Simply requesting the hospital’s proprietary “itemized bill” could yield useless internal classifications rather than standardized descriptors.

    “We’ve seen that hospitals sometimes have their own version of an ‘itemized bill’ with internal codes that aren’t helpful at all,” he said. “Requesting your UB-04 claim form is a much more specific ask that is difficult to misconstrue.”

    Emergency Care Springboards People Into Debt

    According to a nationwide poll by KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization focusing on health care and health policy research and analysis, the medical debt crisis extends far beyond hospital bills alone. Factors like credit cards, personal loans, and borrowing from friends used to pay outstanding health care fees were also considered.

    Key findings reveal that about 25 percent of adults with medical debt owe over $5,000. About 20 percent said they believe they’ll never pay it off. For many, the initial debt stems from one-time or short-term emergency care.

    Additionally, nearly 50 percent of adults couldn’t afford an unexpected $500 medical bill without taking on debt. Over a third currently owe less than $1,000—an amount with serious financial consequences.

    Up to 40 Percent Qualify for Hospital Aid, but It Goes Unused

    However, up to 40 percent of the medical debt seen by Goodbill qualifies for hospital financial assistance, Mr. Haig said.

    “Nonprofit hospitals, which comprise the majority of hospitals in the United States, are required by law to offer financial assistance to patients who fall below certain household income thresholds,” he added. “At some hospitals, that threshold can be well over $100,000.”

    However, qualifications go widely unadvertised, and many patients don’t know to ask. “Patients can save up to 100 percent off their portion of the bill,” Mr. Haig said. “It’s one of the most underutilized benefits in health care.”

    Other ways to protect yourself against inflated medical bills include the following:

    • Seeking pre-approvals for covered care.
    • Negotiating costs even if correctly billed.
    • Understanding new surprise billing guardrails.

    The No Surprises Act shields insured patients from many unexpected medical bills. This includes bills sent by out-of-network providers that were beyond the patient’s control.

    The new rules enable uninsured and cash-pay patients to access good-faith cost estimates before receiving care.

    Finally, if you have a problem with debt collection due to surprise medical billing, you can submit a complaint online to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) or call (855) 411-CFPB (2372).

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 01/20/2024 – 14:00

  • Ballistic Missiles May Have Been Used In Huge Strike On US Base In Iraq
    Ballistic Missiles May Have Been Used In Huge Strike On US Base In Iraq

    Update(1355ET): Details have continued trickling out and are scant, but by all accounts the Saturday attack on Al-Asad airbase in Western Iraq, which houses US forces, was a big one. Reuters cites an official who said “the base was hit by ballistic missiles but he left open the possibility it was struck by rockets.” This has led to some speculation that ballistic missiles could have been fired on the US outpost from Iranian territory.

    But Reuters also notes, “Two security sources in Iraq and one government source said the base was hit by multiple rockets fired from inside Iraq.” One regional analyst has gathered sources to detail the following…

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

    This is the very same base that Iran retaliated against with ballistic missiles in January 2020, as revenge for the US assassination by drone strike of IRGC Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani.

    * * *

    A missile barrage has reportedly struck the Al-Asad Airbase — a U.S. military facility maintained in Iraq since 2003 — according to Reuters accompanied by videos on X alleging to show the missiles raining down:

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

    The Al-Asad base is the same that suffered retaliatory strikes in January of 2020 after then-President Trump killed Iranian military officer Qasem Soleimani.

    US defense officials at the time said just 10 missiles managed to make contact with the base. It appears fewer than 20 missiles were fired in Saturday’s attack — with an unknown number intercepted by missile defense systems — though the story continues to develop.

    According to further details:

    US personnel suffered minor injuries and a member of Iraq’s security forces was seriously wounded in an attack on Iraq’s Ain al-Asad air base on Saturday, a US official said, citing initial assessments, which are subject to change.

    At least a dozen missiles were fired at a military base used by US-led coalition forces in western Iraq, a US defense source and Iraqi police told AFP.

    Al-Asad was the second largest base constructed during George Bush’s “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” — wherein ‘freedom’ in Neocon-speak of course refers to 300,000 dead Iraqi civilians — an operation which ostensibly ended in December of 2011.

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

    The Iran Observer said to “expect US retaliatory strikes against Iraqi resistance forces.”

    This follows an Iranian strike on what they deemed foreign “espionage centers” and “anti-Iranian terrorist gatherings in parts of the region” with ballistic missiles, killing four though no Americans.

    One regional correspondent, Joyce Karam, pointed out that last Monday was an exceptional day in terms of the number of hugely escalatory events close in time.

    She wrote that the “Middle East is imploding, in one day”…which has included the following:

    • Attack on US ship by Yemen Houthis 
    • US intercepting 2nd attack in Red Sea
    • Israel strikes in Gaza [and Syria]
    • Stabbing & car ramming near Tel Aviv
    • IRGC attack in Iraq
    • IRGC attack in Syria

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 01/20/2024 – 13:55

  • Israeli Airstrike Kills Several High-Ranking IRGC Officers In Damascus
    Israeli Airstrike Kills Several High-Ranking IRGC Officers In Damascus

    Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

    Five members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) serving in an advisory capacity were killed Saturday in the Syrian capital of Damascus when Israeli warplanes struck a residential building they were staying in. Iran confirmed the deaths of the Guard members.

    Syrian state media reported that the attack was carried out against the Mazzeh neighborhood by planes operating in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Israel has yet to comment on the incident. Some reports say ten people in total were killed in the attack.

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

    The slain reportedly included a Quds force general, and the Revolutionary Guard identified the slain, but did not include their ranks or duties within Syria. Notably, the Guard’s names did not include the Quds force general, though it also did not deny he was killed. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported five Iranians and an unidentified Syrian were amongst the slain.

    Syrian state media identified the killed Iranians simply as advisers, and Iran followed up the incident with a statement condemning Israel for “organized terrorism,” and threatened retaliation at a time and place of their choosing.

    A witness reported hearing at least five separate explosions during the attack, and saw bodies being taken away, including three surviving wounded. The media reports said the building was heavily guarded at the time.

    Iran has had advisory forces in Syria since 2011, and played a big role in trying to help them organize the fight during the protracted civil war. Israel presented this as a threat along their border, and has regularly attacked Iranian targets within Syria when it has identified them.

    Without knowing more about the victims, it is impossible to know how much of an impact this will have on the Iranian mission within Syria, though if history is any indicator, it will not mean any kind of ending to it.

    With Israel escalating fighting in several border regions already and tensions soaring, Syria will no doubt hope for advice to continue apace.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 01/20/2024 – 13:25

  • The Fundamental Value Of Bitcoin
    The Fundamental Value Of Bitcoin

    Authored by Kane McGukin via BombThrower.com,

    It’s the second layer of the internet and more valuable than price

    In this piece, I will explain how Bitcoin is built like TCP/IP, the two protocols that are at the foundation of the internet. Without protocols, there would be no digital revolution and our entire lives would be drastically different.

    Throughout, are snippets from Flavio Copes’ Valley of Code that I’ll use to explain why the value in Bitcoin lies more in the protocol than in the asset.

    Flavio’s site is dedicated to programming and learning other web-related skills. Several years ago, I stumbled across his work and was very impressed at how simply one of his tutorials broke down the core foundation of the internet: TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol).

    In the past, I’ve written a few related pieces here and here. In this update, I hope to explain the fundamental value behind why Bitcoin/bitcoin is important.

    Fundamentals are more important than price.

    Over the long term, fundamentals are the true driver of any asset. Fundamentals are rooted in having a low time preference (Bitcoin Standard). Even though this mantra is a core ethos to the Bitcoin community you still consistently see fiat-brained, high time preference behaviors… Especially, near the end of bull markets.

    This is classic TradFi behavior. A human emotion I’m almost convinced we’ll never be able to remove as long as price is part of the equation. “Money” or rather currency makes us all do crazy things!

    What shocked me about Flavio’s breakdown was how simply he explained a rather complex topic, and how well it also describes Bitcoin. Having been more than two decades since I dove into protocols, network architecture, and other related details. This was a nice refresher. A basic description of the internet is:

    At the core of Bitcoin, you’ll find many of these same characteristics with nodes networked together to support Bitcoin wallet addresses that make transactions that are compiled and processed by miners that act similar to ISPs (traditional Internet Service Providers). 

    The latter confirms and bundles transactions so that transfers happen across the Bitcoin Network.

    This technology is transitioning us from an Industrial Society to a Digital one and the move is just as drastic as our last hop from an Agrarian to an Industrial Society (18th – 20th centuries).

    Future winners will be rewarded just as handsomely, and losers will find themselves just as debilitated as those during the last major transfer of wealth. The one thing that’s for sure is we’ll all be operating in a “new world” with a different set of standards.

    The power of a digital world is that everything will be connected.

    In a networked world, the value of the network is much more powerful than sparsely linked silos. What’s different about the 21st Century is that we’ve “Made Math Great Again”. Power Law statistics (exponential growth) and Metcalfe’s Law are the drivers of the new age which operates with data as the new oil.

    We’ve watched this story before -> the evolution and adoption of the traditional internet (TCP/IP). We saw what happens when information, business, and communication are made accessible to almost everyone, everywhere. Now, with the emergence of Bitcoin, we’ll see it happen with money. Effectively, we’ll get API-money.

    In the new world, banks, self-sovereign digital wallets, nodes, people, businesses, media, etc. all will have an address that can post data or receive money. It creates optionality. Something truly for the people.

    We’ve never had this before with this level of integration potential, but we have seen the ramifications of digitization across almost every industry. This wave will be much bigger and much more drastic. Especially when you consider the potential of AI, but that’s outside the realm of this discussion.

    Local area networks (digital) are now a dominant part of our lives. Some sort of local network touches pretty much everything we do. Because our networks are still rather siloed, it’s great when we have access but not so great when we can’t connect. Unless we have an FTP, cloud, or some sort of remote server access, we can be left out.

    This sounds very much like our current state of banking when you read between the lines.

    By and large bankers, specifically central bankers, have fended off digital transformation with regulation, bureaucracy, and intentional faux interest for a whole host of reasons. I’ll let you guess them, though they are quite obvious.

    Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are bridging the gap not only for disjointed and disconnected money but also paving the road for new digital infrastructure that is more connected, more integrated, and more available than our existing TCP/IP setup.

    Of course, some are more secure (Bitcoin) than others (Crypto). But, together they will bring about a new wave of innovation that paves the way for the next Google, Amazon, Netflix, etc.

    The Bitcoin protocol acts in the same manner as TCP but with security and cryptography as a core foundation. Bringing ownership back to the user rather than the platform.

    More direct, peer-to-peer, communication happens without the need for an intermediary who historically has siphoned off the data for their own personal gain or has imposed some form of censorship whenever it behooved the platform to do such a thing.

    This is fundamentally what is different about the Bitcoin Protocol that sits atop TCP/IP; the traditional internet protocol.

    To make things simple on the internet, we don’t have to remember IP addresses, servers, etc. We just need to type the Domain name (google.com, espn.com, enterwebsitename.com), and the information is displayed.

    Bitcoin is currently (and quickly changing) at the state where we are entering the IP addresses and having to know the details of the servers, etc. BUT, that will and is changing. I imagine soon, the next wave will bring a host of applications (they’re rolling out) that will have better UI/UX so that much of this is hidden.

    You’re starting to see similar domain names and pay-to-a-user email type functions much like we are comfortable with on the traditional internet. That’s when Bitcoin goes mainstream. When the long complicated addresses are removed, much like not having to use IP addresses on the internet.

    A friend, Mark Jeftovic who runs a traditional internet domain business, has done some early work on what domains might look like in Bitcoin. So, this type of innovation is coming, and it’s needed if we want to get 4-6 billion people onboarded onto Bitcoin.

    What’s important when referencing these early internet RFCs is that there structured exactly like the Bitcoin Improvement Process. These RFCs are how DARPA built the early stages of the internet. RFC 793

    How they voted and intellectually hashed out what *standards* were needed to run a functional information system accessible by the entire world. These were some of the smartest of smartest “hackers” building out a system that powered the next major wave of human evolution – the digital revolution.

    15 years ago, Satoshi did the same. Whomever he, she, they, or whatever global group it was that created the Bitcoin Protocol, seems to have recognized the value of building a global system in the same manner.

    It appears Satoshi copied this template while also figuring out how to incorporate cryptography. Most importantly, Satoshi solved the double spend problem. For the first time, digital money could not be copied. Allowing money and data to live on the same chain. In my opinion, this has a much greater implication than cloud computing and we have a reference for how that turned out.

    As we enter into a new era, we have created a base layer digital money that can harness new energy sources, better integrate and power commerce, and continue a history of technological innovation throughout the entire world. Not just in centralized portions of the globe.

    Today, Bitcoin Core Developers carry on this torch, “hacking” and having high-level, extremely intelligent debates to build a more connected and secure monetary system.

    Like TCP/IP, Bitcoin is in search of its secondary protocol (layer 2) to be the lightweight option that’s faster, less clunky, and cheaper. UDP, reminds me of Lightning Protocol for Bitcoin, or potentially Fediment or any other L2 that eventually becomes the layer that:

    “This implies that it’s faster, each packet sent is more lightweight, as it does not contain all the information needed in TCP, and it does have a lighter handshake process. The drawback is that UDP is not as reliable as TCP.” RFC 768

    In the traditional currency space money acts much the same. In the US, we have gold as the base clunky layer and treasuries and dollars as the lightweight faster L2. In China, they have the Yuan as the base and the Renminbi as the L2.

    While Bitcoin is a new innovative protocol, it’s just another addition to better connect our global systems, people, and money. It’s also a case of, “there’s nothing new under the sun”.

    As innovation happens, time, names, technology, and money change but human emotion does not.

    The ride will be the same but feel different based on our behaviors and the advisories who feel threatened.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 01/20/2024 – 12:50

  • Massive Deficit Spending Keeping The Economy Out Of Recession (For Now)
    Massive Deficit Spending Keeping The Economy Out Of Recession (For Now)

    Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

    Economic growth continues to defy expectations of a slowdown and recession due to continued increases in deficit spending. In fact, the U.S. Treasury recently reported the December budget deficit, which shows the U.S. collected $429 billion through various taxes while total outlays hit $559 billion.

    As noted, the problem remains on how the economy has avoided a recession despite the Fed’s aggressive rate hiking campaign. Numerous indicators, from the leading economic index to the yield curve, suggest a high probability of an economic recession, but one has yet to occur. One explanation for this has been the surge in Federal expenditures since the end of 2022 stemming from the Inflation Reduction and CHIPs Acts. The second reason is that GDP was so grossly elevated from the $5 Trillion in previous fiscal policies that the lag effect is taking longer than historical norms to resolve.

    However, that red line in the chart above is the most interesting. Notice that while Federal expenditures are rising, Federal tax receipts are falling. Such is why the national deficit is increasing. When we discussed this previously, many thought the shortfall was temporary. To wit:

    “California’s tax payments are delayed due to the emergency declaration. However, that doesn’t account for the magnitude of the decline in filings. Secondly, given the shuttering of the entire economy in 2020, which also delayed filings nationwide, the extent of the current decrease seems more than just a single event.”

    Given the length of time and the fact the collection rate fell further, it suggests there is more to the decline.

    Tax Receipts Send A Warning

    The change in Federal receipts is essential as the Government’s revenue is from the taxes on both corporate and individual incomes. Unsurprisingly, if revenues and incomes decline, such would reflect economic activity. As shown below, there is a very high correlation between the annual change in Federal receipts and economic growth. Historically, when the yearly change in Federal receipts falls below 2% annual growth, such has preceded economic recessions. Federal receipts’ yearly rate of change is currently a negative five percent (-5%).

    We see the exact correlation by smoothing the data and using inflation-adjusted tax receipts on a 24-month rate of change. Again, a recession follows when tax receipts fall below 2% annual growth rates. I like this measure better as it accounts for the “lag effect” in the economy. The 2-year yearly change in receipts has fallen well below the 2% warning line and is currently at -5.77%.

    While tax receipts suggest economic weakness is more pervasive than headlines suggest, the deficit spending flows keep economic growth from becoming recessionary.

    The Frog And Deficit Spending

    If we look at the current economy, there is no noticeable collapse in the dollar, private capital, rampant Inflation, or recession. However, like bringing the water to a slow boil, the frog doesn’t realize it is in trouble until it’s too late.

    The government’s serious endeavors into deficit spending began with Ronald Reagan in 1980. Since then, politicians concluded that a lot should be better if a little deficit spending is good. For politicians, there are only positive benefits of deficit spending increases. More spending provides a short-term boost in economic activity, which gets them re-elected to office.

    However, the water temperature is clearly rising in the longer term.

    While the dollar hasn’t collapsed under the weight of deficit spending, the negative strength trend relative to other currencies is slowly rising in temperature.

    Of course, as the dollar weakened and deficits grew, Inflation, for both producers and consumers, rose.

    While deficits may not appear to crowd out private investment, the rise of behemoth companies like Apple, Google, and others do crowd out innovation and new company formations. Such activities require capital, and a reasonable correlation exists between the ebbs and flows of deficits and capital acquisition.

    Not surprisingly, as the dollar weakens, the movement of capital slows, and Inflation rises, the economic growth rate slows. Such should not be surprising as debt used for non-productive purposes diverts money from productivity to interest service.

    The one thing that deficits have not led to is surging interest rates and massive increases in borrowing costs.

    However, that suppression of interest rates has come from two primary sources.

    1. Slower rates of economic growth

    2. Massive interventions by the Federal Government to suppress rates.

    Given the sharp increases in Federal debt since 2008 to support economic growth, the economy can not sustain higher borrowing costs for long.

    The Economy Is Close To Recession

    While economic growth continues to defy expectations on the surface, if it weren’t for increases in deficit spending, economic growth would be flirting with recessionary levels at just 0.7% in Q3 rather than 6.21%

    In GDP accounting, consumption is the most significant component. Since deficit spending doesn’t filter down into the average household, it is no wonder why Presidential approving ratings are so dismal.

    Should governments use deficit spending for “productive investments” during economic downturns? That answer is clearly in the affirmative category.

    However, once the economy returns to growth, the deficits should be reversed into surpluses to prepare for the next inevitable downturn. Such is the entire underlying premise of Keynesian economic theory. But, unfortunately, politicians, in their ongoing endeavor to get reelected, ignore the part about repaying debts.

    While short-term deficits may have no consequences, the rising levels of corporatism, wage disparities, and wealth inequality provide ample evidence that something has gone wrong.

    Are all the problems in the U.S. solely the result of rampant deficit spending? Of course not. The U.S. has also spent four decades making poor political and economic choices.

    1. Massive increases in consumer and corporate debt.

    2. A shift from productive to non-productive labor.

    3. Poor immigration policies.

    4. The slow erosion of the rule of law; and,

    5. An undermining of capitalism and a move to socialistic policies.

    If you ignore all of the anecdotal evidence, an argument can be made for running continual economic deficits. However, suggesting “deficit spending” has no consequences is entirely wrong.

    We can continue our path for quite some time, and probably longer than most imagine.

    But, just because we haven’t realized it yet, it doesn’t mean we aren’t slowly being “boiled by deficits.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 01/20/2024 – 11:40

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Jan 20

Today’s News 20th January 2024

  • Reviving ISIS: A US Weapon Against The Resistance Axis
    Reviving ISIS: A US Weapon Against The Resistance Axis

    Via The Cradle,

    Is it a coincidence that the world’s foremost terror organization is being revived just as the US struggles under a multi-front assault on its hegemony in West Asia? More curiously, both ISIS and Washington’s targets are exactly the same…

    Iraqi security sources are warning of an ISIS revival in the country, which coincides all too neatly with the spike in Iraqi resistance operations against US bases in Iraq and Syria, and with widening regional instability caused by Israel’s military assault on Gaza. 

    More than six years after declaring victory over the terrorist organization, Iraqi intelligence reports now indicate that thousands of ISIS fighters are emerging unscathed, under the protection of US forces in two regions of western Iraq.

    The missing piece of the puzzle

    According to intelligence reports reviewed by The Cradle, at its height, ISIS consisted of more than 35,000 fighters in Iraq – 25,000 of these were killed, while more than 10,000 simply “disappeared.”

    As an officer of one Iraqi intelligence agency recounts to The Cradle: 

    “Hundreds of ISIS fighters fled to Turkey and Syria at the end of 2017. After the appointment of Abdullah Qardash as the leader of ISIS in 2019, following the death of Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the new Caliph began to restructure the organization, and ordered his followers to return to Iraq. The organization exploited the long border with Syria, the security disturbances, and the diversity of forces on both sides of the border to infiltrate the Iraqi territory again.”

    Imprisoned ISIS officials admit that infiltrating that border is not an easy task, because of the strict control imposed by the Iraqi Border Guards and the use of modern technologies, such as thermal cameras. 

    It therefore became necessary for the terror group to identify intermediaries capable of breaking through or bypassing these fortifications to transport its fighters across borders. 

    An Iraqi security source, insisting on anonymity, tells The Cradle that the US plays a vital role in enabling these border violations:

    “[There are] several incidents that confirm the American assistance in securing the crossing route for ISIS members – mainly, by shelling Iraqi units on the border, especially the Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs), to create gaps that allow ISIS fighters to cross the border.” 

    The Iraqi security source adds that there are confirmed reports of US Chinook helicopters transporting fighters from eastern Syria to the Anbar desert in western Iraq and Jebel Hamreen, in the country’s east.

    Munir Adib, a researcher specializing in Islamist movements, extremist organizations, and international terrorism, confirms the possibility of the return of ISIS after the organization’s “dozens of attacks in Syria and Iraq in the past few weeks,” which led to the death of tens of civilians and soldiers. 

    According to Adib, “the international community’s preoccupation with the Gaza and Russia-Ukraine wars gave ISIS an opportunity to reorganize its ranks, while continuing to receive internal and external logistical support.”

    Manufacturing and harboring terrorism

    Houran Valley is the largest of its kind in Iraq, extending 369 kilometers from the Iraqi-Saudi border to the Euphrates River near the city of Haditha in Anbar Governorate. Its topography is marked by soaring cliffs ranging in height between 150 to 200 meters, and includes the hills surrounding the valley and the sub-valleys that extend into its surroundings.

    The valley was and still is one of the most dangerous security environments in the state. Terrorist groups use it as a safe haven because of its desert terrain, and distance from congested urban areas. The valley and its environs have witnessed numerous security incidents, most notably in December 2013, when ISIS killed the commander of the Iraqi army’s Seventh Division, his assistant, the director of intelligence in Anbar Governorate, eight officers, and thirteen soldiers.

    Iraqi MP Hassan Salem has called for launching a military operation to clear Houran Valley of terrorist fighters. He confirmed to The Cradle that “there are thousands of ISIS members in the valley receiving training in private camps, under American protection,” noting that US forces have “transferred to this area hundreds of ISIS members of different nationalities.”

    US foreign policy, of course, is rife with historical evidence of the creation of proxy armed militias in West Asia and Latin America, often utilizing these organizations to overthrow governments in target countries. We know Washington has no aversion to allying with Islamist extremists largely because of its direct involvement with arming and financing the Afghan Mujahideen, from which the Taliban and Al Qaeda emerged.

    An early US-ISIS connection exists quite clearly: the terrorist group’s founding and second rank leaders were among the inmates of Camp Bucca prison in southern Iraq, an internment facility run by the US military. The roster of high-value terrorists captured, then set free by the Americans is quite extraordinary: ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, his successor Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, Haji Bakr, Abu Abdulrahman al-Bilawi, Abu Ayman al-Iraqi, among others.

    Camp Bucca, known for abuses against its detainees, brought together extremist elements, slow-boiled this combustive formula for six years (2003-2009), then let the now well-networked extremists go free.

    The religious officials of ISIS even say they used their time at the prison to obtain vows from prisoners to join the terrorist group after their release.

    US intelligence also protected the terrorist organization indirectly, by allowing ISIS convoys to move between the cities that were under its control. Other forms of protection, according to Iraqi security experts, include refusing to implement death sentences issued by Iraqi courts against detained ISIS members, and establishing safe havens for the organization’s members in western and eastern Iraq.

    ISIS: US foot soldiers in the regional war

    In a speech on 5 January, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah warned that the US was supporting an ISIS revival in the region.

    The Cradle obtained security information monitoring the new activity of extremists in Lebanon, communications between these elements and their counterparts in Iraq and Syria, and suspicious money transfer activities among them.

    Lebanese Army Intelligence also recently arrested a group of Lebanese and Syrians who were preparing to carry out security operations.

    Importantly, this surge in terror activities comes at a time when the Lebanese resistance is engaged in a security and military battle with Israel, which may expand at any moment into open war. It is also notable that renewed ISIS activity is concentrated in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran; that is, in the countries that support the Palestinian resistance politically, militarily, and logistically.

    On 4 January, ISIS officially claimed responsibility for two bombings in the Iranian city of Kerman that targeted memorial processions on the anniversary of the assassination of Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani by US forces. The dual explosions killed around 90 people and injured dozens, in an unprecedented attack targeting the biggest US-Israeli adversary in West Asia – just one day after Tel Aviv killed top Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut.

    Before that, on 5 October 2023, ISIS drone-attacked an officers graduation ceremony at the Military College in the Syrian city of Homs, killing about 100 people. These attacks, and others in Iraq, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Africa, indicate that fresh blood, money, and weapons are being pumped into the ISIS organization’s arteries again.

    A high-ranking PMU officer, who asked to remain unnamed, tells The Cradle that US forces are preventing Iraqi forces from approaching Houran Valley by attacking any security forces approaching the area. “This happened when American aircraft targeted units of the PMU that were attacking ISIS in the region,” he reveals, citing intelligence reports confirming the presence of dozens of ISIS members and other extremist organizations in the valley, where they receive training and equipment from US forces.

    Security sources in the Anbar Operations Command confirm this information:

    “Noticeable activity by the organization had been recorded a few weeks ago in the west of the country. Near the Rutba desert, ISIS fighters were spotted digging underground hideouts. Information indicates that the organization is in the process of carrying out terrorist operations in many locations,” they tell The Cradle.

    Concurrently, ISIS is expanding its operations in the east of Iraq, within the geographical triangle that includes eastern Salah al-Din Governorate, north-eastern Diyala, and southern Kirkuk, particularly in the geographically challenging Makhoul, Hamrin, Ghurra, Wadi al-Shay, and Zaghitoun areas.

    It should be noted that US forces are deployed in Iraq under the umbrella of the International Coalition to Combat ISIS. Last week, four years after the Iraqi parliament first voted to expel foreign forces, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani weighed in on the “destabilizing” impact of US troops and demanded a “quick and orderly” exit of those combat units. 

    Washington not only countered by saying it has “no plans” to withdraw from Iraq, but announced on 14 January that it would be sending an additional 1,500 troops to Iraq and Syria illegally, and without the consent of either nation.

    One irony here is that ISIS appears to regain momentum each and every time Baghdad raises the issue of US military withdrawal from Iraq. 

    It can also no longer be seen as a coincidence that the terror group is now re-assembling its forces to target Washington and Tel Aviv’s most capable regional foes – the Axis of Resistance – just when the US and Israel are struggling to handle a region-wide, multi-front assault from the Axis. 

    The extraordinary synergies between the Americans and the world’s foremost terror group can no longer be ignored: their targets are one and the same, and ISIS is only now entering the fray, just as Washington begins to lose its hold on West Asia.

    *  *  *

    The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ZeroHedge.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/19/2024 – 23:40

  • EVs In Chicago Are No Match For Polar Vortex
    EVs In Chicago Are No Match For Polar Vortex

    Average temperatures across the Chicago metro area plunged below zero this week. 

    Resulting in a double whammy for electric vehicle owners: paralyzed charging networks and battery degradation because of the cold blast. 

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

    One woman complained she was stranded because one charging station “was all broken.”

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

    “When it’s cold like this, cars aren’t functioning well, chargers aren’t functioning well, and people don’t function so well either,” Javed Spencer, an Uber driver, told The New York Times. He said he’s worried about being stranded again with his Chevy Bolt. 

    For years, the Davos elites have pitched to the masses about a ‘green’ new world of EVs and how nothing could go wrong. But these elites are not fortune tellers and are sometimes very wrong in their predictions, as EVs are no match for a polar vortex. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/19/2024 – 23:20

  • Digital Kill Switches: How Tyrannical Governments Stifle Political Dissent
    Digital Kill Switches: How Tyrannical Governments Stifle Political Dissent

    Authored by John and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “No president from either party should have the sole power to shut down or take control of the internet or any other of our communication channels during an emergency.”

     – Senator Rand Paul

    What’s to stop the U.S. government from throwing the kill switch and shutting down phone and internet communications in a time of so-called crisis?

    After all, it’s happening all over the world.

    Communications kill switches have become tyrannical tools of domination and oppression to stifle political dissent, shut down resistance, forestall election losses, reinforce military coups, and keep the populace isolated, disconnected and in the dark, literally and figuratively.

    As the Guardian reports, “From Ukraine to Myanmar, government-run internet outages are picking up pace around the world. In 2021, there were 182 shutdowns in 34 countries… Countries across Africa and Asia have turned to shutdowns in a bid to control behaviour, while India, largely in the conflict-ridden region of Jammu and Kashmir, plunged into digital darkness more times than any other last year… Civil unrest in Ethiopia and Kazakhstan has triggered internet shutdowns as governments try to prevent political mobilisation and stop news about military suppression from emerging.”

    In an internet-connected age, killing the internet is tantamount to bringing everything—communications, commerce, travel, the power grid—to a standstill.

    Tyrants and would-be tyrants rely on this “cloak of darkness” to advance their agendas.

    In Myanmar, for example, the internet shutdown came on the day a newly elected government was to have been sworn in. That’s when the military staged a digital coup and seized power. Under cover of a communications blackout that cut off the populace from the outside world and each other, the junta “carried out nightly raids, smashing down doors to drag out high-profile politicians, activists and celebrities.”

    These government-imposed communications shutdowns serve to not only isolate, terrorize and control the populace, but also underscore the citizenry’s lack of freedom in the face of the government’s limitless power.

    Yet as University of California Irvine law professor David Kaye explains, these kill switches are no longer exclusive to despotic regimes. They have “migrated into a toolbox for governments that actually do have the rule of law.”

    This is what digital authoritarianism looks like in a technological age.

    Digital authoritarianism, as the Center for Strategic and International Studies cautions, involves the use of information technology to surveil, repress, and manipulate the populace, endangering human rights and civil liberties, and co-opting and corrupting the foundational principles of democratic and open societies, “including freedom of movement, the right to speak freely and express political dissent, and the right to personal privacy, online and off.”

    For those who insist that it can’t happen here, it can and it has.

    In 2005, cell service was disabled in four major New York tunnels, reportedly to avert potential bomb detonations via cell phone.

    In 2009, those attending President Obama’s inauguration had their cell signals blocked—again, same rationale.

    And in 2011, San Francisco commuters had their cell phone signals shut down, this time, to thwart any possible protests over a police shooting of a homeless man.

    With shutdowns becoming harder to detect, who’s to say it’s not still happening?

    Although an internet kill switch is broadly understood to be a complete internet shutdown, it can also include a broad range of restrictions such as content blocking, throttling, filtering, complete shutdowns, and cable cutting.

    As Global Risk Intel explains:

    “Content blocking is a relatively moderate method that blocks access to a list of selected websites or applications. When users access these sites and apps, they receive notifications that the server could not be found or that access was denied by the network administrator. A more subtle method is throttling. Authorities decrease the bandwidth to slow down the speed at which specific websites can be accessed. A slow internet connection discourages users to connect to certain websites and does not arouse immediate suspicion. Users may assume that connection service is slow but may not conclude that this circumstance was authorized by the government. Filtering is another tool to censor targeted content and erases specific messages and terms that the government does not approve of.”

    How often do most people, experiencing server errors and slow internet speeds, chalk it up to poor service? Who would suspect the government of being behind server errors and slow internet speeds?

    Then again, this is the same government that has subjected us to all manner of encroachments on our freedoms (lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, contact tracing programs, heightened surveillance, censorship, overcriminalization, shadow banning, etc.) in order to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, preserve the integrity of elections, and combat disinformation.

    These tactics have become the tools of domination and oppression in an internet-dependent age.

    It really doesn’t matter what the justifications are for such lockdowns. No matter the rationale, the end result is the same: an expansion of government power in direct proportion to the government’s oppression of the citizenry.

    According to Global Risk Intel, there are many motives behind such restrictions:

    “For instance, the kill switch serves to censor content and constrain the spread of news. This particularly concerns news reports that cover police brutality, human rights abuses, or educational information. Governments may also utilize the kill switch to prevent government-critical protestors from communicating through message applications like WhatsApp, Facebook, or Twitter and organizing mass demonstrations. Therefore, internet restrictions can provide a way of regulating the flow of information and hindering dissent. Governments reason that internet limitations help stop the spread of fake news and strengthen national security and public safety in times of unrest.”

    In this age of manufactured crises, emergency powers and technofascism, the government already has the know-how, the technology and the authority.

    Now all it needs is the “right” crisis to flip the kill switch.

    This particular kill switch can be traced back to the Communications Act of 1934. Signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Act empowers the president to suspend wireless radio and phone services “if he deems it necessary in the interest of national security or defense” during a time of “war or a threat of war, or a state of public peril or disaster or other national emergency, or in order to preserve the neutrality of the United States.”

    In the event of a national crisis, the president has a veritable arsenal of emergency powers that override the Constitution and can be activated at a moment’s notice. These range from imposing martial law and suspending habeas corpus to shutting down all forms of communications, restricting travel and implementing a communications kill switch.

    That national emergency can take any form, can be manipulated for any purpose and can be used to justify any end goal—all on the say so of the president.

    The seeds of this ongoing madness were sown several decades ago when George W. Bush stealthily issued two presidential directives that granted the president the power to unilaterally declare a national emergency, which is loosely defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.“

    Comprising the country’s Continuity of Government (COG) plan, these directives (National Security Presidential Directive 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20), which do not need congressional approval, provide a skeletal outline of the actions the president will take in the event of a “national emergency.”

    Just what sort of actions the president will take once he declares a national emergency can barely be discerned from the barebones directives. However, one thing is clear: in the event of a perceived national emergency, the COG directives give unchecked executive, legislative and judicial power to the president.

    The country would then be subjected to martial law by default, and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would be suspended.

    The internet kill switch is just one piece of the government’s blueprint for locking down the nation and instituting martial law.

    There may be many more secret powers that presidents may institute in times of so-called crisis without oversight from Congress, the courts, or the public. These powers do not expire at the end of a president’s term. They remain on the books, just waiting to be used or abused by the next political demagogue.

    Given the government’s penchant for weaponizing 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, it’s only a matter of time before this particular emergency power to shut down the internet is activated.

    Then again, an all-out communications blackout is just a more extreme version of the technocensorship that we’ve already been experiencing at the hands of the government and its corporate allies.

    Packaged as an effort to control the spread of speculative or false information in the name of national security, restricting access to social media has become a popular means of internet censorship.

    In fact, these tactics are at the heart of several critical cases before the U.S. Supreme Court over who gets to control, regulate or remove what content is shared on the internet: the individual, corporate censors or the police state.

    Nothing good can come from techno-censorship.

    As Glenn Greenwald writes for The Intercept:

    “The glaring fallacy that always lies at the heart of pro-censorship sentiments is the gullible, delusional belief that censorship powers will be deployed only to suppress views one dislikes, but never one’s own views… Facebook is not some benevolent, kind, compassionate parent or a subversive, radical actor who is going to police our discourse in order to protect the weak and marginalized or serve as a noble check on mischief by the powerful. They are almost always going to do exactly the opposite: protect the powerful from those who seek to undermine elite institutions and reject their orthodoxies. Tech giants, like all corporations, are required by law to have one overriding objective: maximizing shareholder value. They are always going to use their power to appease those they perceive wield the greatest political and economic power.“

    As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, these censors are laying the groundwork to preempt any “dangerous” ideas that might challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.

    Whatever powers you allow the government and its corporate operatives to claim now, whatever the reason might be, will at some point in the future be abused and used against you by tyrants of your own making.

    By the time you add AI technologies, social credit systems, and wall-to-wall surveillance into the mix, you don’t even have to be a critic of the government to get snared in the web of digital censorship.

    Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/19/2024 – 23:00

  • Judge Orders Wind Farm Dismantled In Win For Tribal Sovereignty
    Judge Orders Wind Farm Dismantled In Win For Tribal Sovereignty

    Authored by Bonner Russell Cohen Via RealClear Wire,

    Capping a legal battle that had raged for over a decade, a federal judge in late December handed the Osage Nation a major victory by ordering wind farm developers to dismantle dozens of turbines they had erected on tribal land in northeastern Oklahoma.

    By ordering the scuttling of 84 turbines spread over 8,400 acres of land, along with the removal of underground lines, overhead transmission lines, and meteorological towers, U.S. Court of International Trade Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves essentially ruled that the renewable energy project, known as Osage Wind, should never have been constructed in the first place because the developers – Osage Wind LLC, Enel Kansas LLC, and Enel Green Power North America – did not have the required lease from the Osage Minerals Council.

    “The developers failed to acquire a mining lease during or after construction, as well as after issuance of the 10th Court of Appeals’ decision hold that a mining lease was required,” Choe-Groves ruled, according to Tulsa World (Dec. 22). 

    “On the record before the Court, it is clear that Defendants are actively avoiding the leasing requirement,” Choe-Groves said. “Permitting such behavior would create the prospect for further interference with the Osage Mineral Council’s authority by Defendants or others wishing to develop the minerals lease.

    “The Court concludes that Defendants’ past and present refusal to obtain a lease constitutes interference with the sovereignty of the Osage Nation and is sufficient to constitute irreparable injury.”

    The reference to minerals is key to understanding the case. Wind turbines not only soar into the air from the surface of the land. Their construction also requires the subsurface smashing of rocks and other excavation necessary to ground the turbines.  The Osage Nation and its Minerals Council have claimed for years that this subsurface excavation activity constitutes mining and is covered by the tribe’s mineral rights.  And for that the developers needed a lease from the Osage Mining Council which they never sought. The developers began leasing the surface rights in 2013 but never bothered to acquire the subsurface mineral rights.  In the end, that was their undoing.

    “A Win for Indian Country”

    Still, the long, and expensive, court battle took its toll on the ultimately victorious Osage Nation.

    “I hope no other tribe has to do what we had to do,” Osage Minerals Council Chairman Everett Walker to Tulsa World in an interview. “This is a win not only for the Osage Minerals Council; this is a win for Indian Country.”

    “There are a lot of smaller tribes that couldn’t have battled this long, but that’s why we’re Osages,” Walker added. “We’re here, and this is our homeland, and we are going to protect it at all costs.”

    The battle between the Osage Nation and the wind-farm developers got underway in 2011 and has lasted through the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations.  Throughout the litigation, the Interior Department, which administers the tribe’s mineral rights, has supported the Osages’ claims. Even the Biden administration, whose political appointees at Interior have enthusiastically greenlighted wind and solar projects on federal land, stuck with the tribe on the question of mineral rights.

    While seeing 84 giant wind turbines disappear will be a bitter pill to swallow for Biden climate crusaders at Interior, they appear to have concluded that this was the wrong fight under the wrong circumstances.

    Bonner Russell Cohen, Ph. D., is a senior policy analyst with CFACT.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/19/2024 – 22:20

  • Global Warming? North America Snow Coverage Hits "Decadal Highs"
    Global Warming? North America Snow Coverage Hits “Decadal Highs”

    Americans suffer from climate catastrophe fatigue after leftist corporate media outlets push endless climate doom headlines that seemingly never come true. Another round of climate doom headlines came this week at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Many elites attending the event who spoke and or commented on the sidelines sound like broken records. They warn of imminent doom that never comes. 

    While the rest of us who don’t have private jets and gas-guzzling motorcades live in reality, the Lower 48 has been battered by a multi-week polar vortex blast of cold air that has made life absolutely painful. On top of freezing temperatures, snowstorms have hit many parts of the US. 

    “Talk about a turnaround or reversal of fortunes! North American #snow cover goes from record low to decadal highs in just a couple of weeks, thanks to the vagaries and whims of the #PolarVortex,” Judah Cohen, Director of Seasonal Forecasting at Verisk’s Atmospheric and Environmental Research, wrote in an X post. 

    And take a look at the snow coverage map. 

    Before the polar vortex split, corporate media outlets unleashed a flurry of headlines blabbering about global warming. 

    Next week’s forecast shows warmer air for the Lower 48, which means corporate media will be blasting headlines about global warming (again). 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/19/2024 – 22:00

  • Rufo: "The Only Hope For A Diverse Nation Is…"
    Rufo: “The Only Hope For A Diverse Nation Is…”

    Authored by Christopher Rufo via City-Journal.org,

    A New Civil Rights Agenda

    The only hope for a diverse nation is a regime of colorblind equality…

    This year’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was marked by contentious debate about the state of civil rights law in America.

    On the left, as always, the failure to achieve equal outcomes along racial lines requires greater state intervention.

    On the right, a different critique has gained traction, most notably in Christopher Caldwell’s Age of Entitlement and Richard Hanania’s The Origins of Woke, books arguing that American civil rights law has metastasized into a “second Constitution” that has led inexorably to left-wing racialism as the nation’s new orthodoxy.

    This critique has merit.

    The modern civil rights regime has assumed unprecedented power to reshape public and private life, regulating not only instances of outright discrimination but also the minutiae of thought, behavior, speech, and association. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 appealed to the noble principle of equality, but over time the legal structure that it helped establish has metamorphized into an intrusive “diversity and inclusion” bureaucracy that discriminates against supposed “oppressor” groups—namely whites and Asians—and imposes left-wing ideology.

    The question is what to do about it.

    Libertarians have long argued that the Civil Rights Act compromises core freedoms of speech and association to such a degree that only repealing the law can restore them.

    Another faction argues that the solution to minoritarian identity politics is majoritarian identity politics—that is, if the legal regime has become a racial spoils system, then Americans of European descent must develop “white racial consciousness” and fight for their share.

    Both these approaches are misguided.

    Some conservatives seem to have forgotten that the Civil Rights Act was a response to state-sanctioned racial injustice in the United States and that, at its best, the civil rights movement appealed to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the language of the Fourteenth Amendment. The libertarian proposal for abolishing the Civil Rights Act, like most libertarian proposals, is unfeasible. The white identity proposal, which I have previously criticized, is a recipe for permanent racial division, more akin to “prison gang politics” than republican virtue.

    Happily, another avenue is open to us: reform.

    The ideological capture of the Civil Rights Act is neither fixed nor inevitable. Rather than argue for its abolition, Americans concerned about the excesses of the DEI bureaucracy should appeal to higher principles and demand that our civil rights law conform to the standard of colorblind equality. The answer to left-wing racialism is not right-wing racialism—it is the equal treatment of individuals under law, according to their talents and virtues, rather than their ancestry and anatomy. This policy does not require radical innovations. Embracing the philosophy of the American Founding—with its emphasis on natural rights and liberties—will suffice.

    What would this new civil rights agenda look like in practice?

    • First, reformers should outlaw affirmative action and racial preferences of any kind. Both policies are euphemisms for racial discrimination. The next president should rescind Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 Executive Order 11246, which established “affirmative action” and marked the initial deviation from the standard of colorblind equality. Congress should strengthen this principle by amending the language of the Civil Rights Act to make indisputably clear that the law will not permit state-sanctioned discrimination toward any racial group, whether in the minority or the majority.

    • Second, reformers must eliminate the “disparate impact” provisions in the Civil Rights Act of 1991 and overturn Griggs v. Duke Power Co., both of which have entrenched the doctrine that disparate group outcomes are de facto evidence of racial discrimination. This is a preposterous standard: a system of equal rights necessarily means unequal outcomes, as different groups have different preferences, talents, and capacities. Under a just system, the criterion for assessing biased treatment would not be disparate outcomes but specific, concrete discrimination, driven by animus. Much as libel law requires actual malice, anti-discrimination law should require proof that an individual or institution sought to discriminate. The change in standard would have an immediate effect, reducing the number of frivolous lawsuits and changing the incentives that have driven institutions toward racialist ideology as a defensive strategy.

    • Third, legislators should abolish the DEI bureaucracies in all American institutions, which openly discriminate against disfavored racial groups, impose ideological orthodoxies on American citizens, and restrict freedoms of speech and association. In addition, federal legislators should radically reduce the size of the federal departments of civil rights enforcement. Bureaucracies are designed to discover—or, if the supply is low, fabricate—whatever transgression they are tasked with eliminating. While a large civil rights enforcement apparatus may have been necessary to enforce non-discrimination law in the past, it is no longer necessary. Americans are a tolerant, cooperative people; a “night watchman” civil rights state and a competent courts system would be sufficient to resolve disputes and ensure compliance with the law.

    The goal of these reforms is finally to realize a regime of full colorblind equality. The principle, first promised by the Declaration and supported today by a large majority of Americans, would mean that the state would treat all Americans equally, regardless of ancestry, and leave as much discretion as possible to individuals to determine their own futures, without the government imposing or requiring racial favoritism of any kind. Rather than pit ourselves against one another, we should aspire to a higher standard that subordinates racial faction to a broader national identity.

    Americans do not have to accept the bigotries of the past or the present. In a vast and diverse country, colorblind equality is the only way forward.

    *  *  *

    Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of America’s Cultural Revolution.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/19/2024 – 21:40

  • Florida On Alert For Falling Iguanas Ahead Of Weekend Polar Blast
    Florida On Alert For Falling Iguanas Ahead Of Weekend Polar Blast

    As Florida faces freezing temperatures this weekend, residents should be cautious for iguanas from trees falling from trees. 

    “*FALLING IGUANAS* possible this weekend in Southwest Florida as the coldest air of the season moves in Sunday morning,” WINKNews meteorologist Matt Devitt posted on social media platform X. 

    Devitt pointed out, “We have a pretty sizable iguana population from Sanibel to Cape Coral to Naples. Locally, lows will dip into the 40s, wind chills in the 30s by sunrise.”

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    In the past, the National Weather Service has issued unofficial “falling iguana” advisories for Floridians. 
    “Iguanas are cold-blooded. They slow down or become immobile when temps drop into the 40s. They may fall from trees, but they are not dead,” the weather service said. 

    The northern parts of Florida are under freeze-watches and warnings into Saturday. 

    Brr! 

    The good news: global warming returns next week. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/19/2024 – 21:20

  • Most Young Voters Want Abortion Limits, Say Legal Rights Begin In Womb: Poll
    Most Young Voters Want Abortion Limits, Say Legal Rights Begin In Womb: Poll

    Authored by Samantha Flom via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A majority of Gen Z and millennial voters say legal rights should begin in the womb and that abortion should only be an option under certain circumstances, according to a new poll.

    Pro-life leaders Kristan Hawkins (C) and Penny Nance (R) celebrate the overturning of Roe v. Wade in Washington on June 24, 2022. (Courtesy of Students for Life of America)

    The Students for Life Action/YouGov poll released on Jan. 16 found that 54 percent of voters ages 18 to 42 believe human rights should begin in the womb, compared with 32 percent who said they should begin after birth.

    Additionally, 65 percent of voters said they supported at least some limits on abortion—the same percentage as last year. However, 75 percent supported restrictions at or before viability, up 10 percent from 2023.

    By contrast, 25 percent of respondents expressed support for unlimited abortion through all nine months of pregnancy—including 9 percent who would allow the death of a baby born alive in a botched abortion.

    “Changing hearts and minds on the human rights issue of abortion means being specific,” said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America (SFLA) and the Demetree Institute for Pro-Life Advancement.

    “In light of ballot initiatives, misinformation on protections in place for women’s lives, and radical abortion policies pushed by those who don’t care about what happens to mothers and their preborn children, we wanted to explore just what the Youth Vote—Gen Z and millennials—are thinking. Far from being lock-step for abortion, many are open to conversation and willing to consider pro-life policies.”

    One key finding of the poll was that the vast majority of Gen Z and millennial voters want to see more legislative support for mothers, newborns, and families. Measures like paid family leave for new parents, child tax credits, childcare subsidies, support services and programs, and laws to keep the health care costs of pregnancy affordable all received overwhelming support, with just 5 percent of respondents rejecting all of the options presented.

    “Reaching the key voting bloc that is the Youth Vote doesn’t mean running away from the issue of abortion. It means talking specifically about how to protect life in law and in service and about plans to help women survive their exposure to an abortion industry that profits from death,” Ms. Hawkins said.

    “The Youth Vote, like most Americans, rejects the late-term abortion extremism seen in numerous state ballot initiatives, Biden administration regulation, and Pelosi-pushed policies.”

    Abortion on the Ballot

    With the 2024 election just months away, initiatives to legislate abortion at the ballot box have cropped up in states around the country.

    In November, abortion proponents in several states will look to replicate the recent success of Ohio’s Issue 1, a citizen-led ballot initiative that cemented a right to abortion in the state’s constitution.

    Pro-life advocates, however, have criticized such efforts as deceitful attempts to confuse voters. Measures like Issue 1, they say, are deliberately crafted with vague language to trick voters into allowing loopholes for late-term abortions.

    With its latest survey, Students for Life sought to determine the impacts of abortion-related misinformation on young voters, finding that only 14 percent were aware that all 50 states currently allow abortion in circumstances where the mother’s life is at risk. One-third (35 percent) said they believed most states had such protections in place, and nearly half (49 percent) said they believed that was true of “only some or a few” states. Another 2 percent said they believed women’s lives were not legally protected at all.

    Additionally, 64 percent of voters said they were more concerned than ever about women’s lives being at risk due to unplanned pregnancies, with 58 percent attributing their heightened concern to media reports.

    Most voters (57 percent) also said they want required reporting of abortion data to track complications from abortion and other statistics. Currently, no such requirement exists at the national level.

    Political Perspectives

    Gen Z and Millennial voters are on track to make up a majority of the American electorate by 2028, according to the Brookings Institution. And the survey shows that most of them—55 percent—rank abortion among their top three political issues.

    Moreover, 40 percent said they prefer candidates who support abortion limits, with 16 percent preferring those who fight “strongly in favor of abortion restriction.”

    Yet in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, the largely pro-life Republican Party has openly struggled to connect with voters on abortion, unable to articulate a stance that most party members can support.

    Some candidates, fearing political suicide, have opted to avoid the issue completely. But Ms. Hawkins contended that the survey’s results show it would benefit the GOP to adopt a clear position.

    “On the human rights issue of our day—abortion—the fine print matters,” she said. “Those urging GOP politicians to ignore this vital issue are making a mistake and should take a look at these findings to develop concrete plans and policies.

    “The humanity of the preborn matters to many people, and support for the practical policies that help young families builds good will with young voters,” she added. “A swing in the pro-life/pro-family Youth Vote voter participation rate can become a game changer in this election.”

    The Students for Life Action/YouGov survey was conducted in early January and has a margin of error of 3.52 percentage points.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/19/2024 – 21:00

  • Houthis Declare Safe Passage For All Russian, Chinese Ships In Red Sea
    Houthis Declare Safe Passage For All Russian, Chinese Ships In Red Sea

    In a remarkable development, and at a moment European retailers and factories are beginning to bear the brunt of the global shipping chaos and soaring Red Sea transit risk, the Houthis have declared safe passage for Russia and China.

    A senior Houthi official, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, mentioned these US rivals by name in an interview with the Russian outlet Izvestia on Friday. “As for all other countries, including Russia and China, their shipping in the region is not threatened,” he said, stipulating this will remain as long as they are not linked to Israel or its supporters.

    Getty Images

    “Moreover, we are ready to ensure the safe passage of their ships in the Red Sea, because free navigation plays a significant role for our country,” he added, but then underscored that attacks on ships will continue if they are “in any way connected with Israel.”

    The spokesman went on to blame the Red Sea crisis on Israel’s (and its backers) refusal to reverse course in Gaza, given its aerial and ground campaign as continued. “Ansar Allah [the group’s formal name] does not pursue the goal of capturing or sinking this or that sea vessel,” he claimed. “Our goal is to raise the economic costs for [Israel] in order to stop the carnage in Gaza.”

    Some of the vessels which have come under attack thus far actually have connection to dozens of countries, but ships with Russian or Chinese ownership, or deep ties, have yet to be attacked. 

    Another Houthi official told Reuters separately that the group doesn’t seek to expand its campaign, after a fragile peace took effect with Saudi Arabia and the EUA concerning the Yemeni civil war: 

    Yemen’s Houthis have said they do not intend to expand their attacks on shipping in and around the Red Sea, beyond their stated aims of blockading Israel and retaliating against the US and Britain for airstrikes.

    In an interview with Reuters, spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam, who is also the chief Houthi negotiator in peace talks over Yemen’s decade-old civil war, said the group had no plans to target its longstanding foes Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

    “We do not want the escalation to expand. This is not our demand. We imposed rules of engagement in which not a single drop of blood was shed or major material losses,” said Abdulsalam. “It represented pressure on Israel only, it did not represent pressure on any country in the world.”

    The US-UK coalition patrolling the Red Sea has at this point launched four rounds of airstrikes against Houthi positions, but this appears to have only deepened Houthi resolve. 

    As for Russia and China, they’ve been foremost among Washington’s powerful rivals to criticize Israel’s mass bombing of the Gaza Strip. They both have close ties with Iran, as well as with Assad’s Syria, and China is busy inking multi-billion dollar infrastructure and energy deals with Iraq. Of course, these ‘defiant’ countries are under US sanctions as well.

    Meanwhile, cue “Putin is behind Red Sea attacks” narrative…

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

    In December, Russian President Vladimir Putin assured to the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas that “Russia will continue to supply the Gaza Strip with essential goods, including medicines and medical equipment.” But overall, Moscow has been relatively quiet when it comes to the Red Sea crisis, but has condemned the ‘escalation’ of US coalition ships launching missiles on Yemen. Moscow and Beijing remain fiercely critical of the soaring Palestinian civilian death toll, and tensions with Israel’s government have persisted. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/19/2024 – 20:40

  • DEI Destroys Excellence, Military Cohesion At Service Academies
    DEI Destroys Excellence, Military Cohesion At Service Academies

    Authored by Bruce Fleming via RealClear Wire,

    Applicants who self-identified as a member of a race the Academy wished to privilege—at the time I was on the Admissions Board it was African American, Hispanic, and Native American—were briefed separately to the committee not by a white member but by a minority Navy lieutenant. Briefings (a minute and forty seconds per applicant, no more) ran through a number of factors quite quickly and offered a recommendation that we had been told was appropriate: “qualified” for USNA if grades A/B for white applicants (but not minorities, who needed only C grades), 600 score in each part of the SAT for white applicants (but about 550 for minorities who come to USNA without remediation), and Whole Person Multiple (points given for grades/tests, school leadership positions, and sports) of at least 55,000 for whites, no bottom for minorities.

    This is aside from the fact that 20 percent of the class could be sent to the remedial, taxpayer-supported prep school for a year, also with no minimum for scores. Other possible recommendations included a year at a civilian prep school that the Naval Academy Foundation pays for, where they also do a thirteenth year (the profile for this was white lacrosse players, not black football players), and USNA “pool,” a sort of wait list for nonrecruited whites, who typically weren’t tracked to NAPS or Foundation schools. The athletic department offered its list of recruits that were invariably deemed “qualified” no matter how low in scores, because many if not most to go to NAPS and only a few to USNA directly.

    Race in America is a complex question that we have no silver bullet for. We’d like to see everybody playing happily in the academic sandbox together, as well as elsewhere in society at large. However, in academic institutions with limited places, we have a problem—especially at an institution touted for academic rigor and that taxpayers fund for one specific job. Blacks, on average, consistently score lower than whites (who score lower than Asians) on standardized tests. The choices are simple. If you want students who look a certain way but tend to score lower than others, you accept the lower scores and stop talking about your standards. Or you go with the class that can meet these standards and stop talking about the way they look. The Naval Academy tries to square the circle by both bragging about its standards and letting in half the class to lower standards. No wonder they were furious that I pointed this out. All educational institutions have this problem to some degree; the academies are just worse than others. And in 2023, the Supreme Court said we’re legal in doing so, whereas all others are not.      

    I’ve had some brilliant black students over three decades, and quite a few really nice ones. I’ve taught classes at both ends of our ability spectrum—our honors classes and our remedial precollege English classes, which are almost all filled with black and Hispanic students, most of whom have just come from the remedial, taxpayer-funded thirteenth grade at the prep school. I usually love them as people, and the warmth I show them usually melts the ice when they heard they got Professor Fleming, the one who “hates the football team.” I don’t hate the football team. I just don’t think we should be recruiting them to play Division I, which takes up slots better all-around qualified candidates (like your kids?) could have filled. But they got the offer, and here they are, so I’m going to give it my all, and hope to inspire them to do the same.

    Some of the African American kids are the most disappointed of all. One brilliant young woman from New York City announced in my office some years ago, “I should have gone to Howard.”

    “Why?” I said.

    “Because I am so tired of being stereotyped as black,” she said. “In New York nobody is anything. But here they want me to join the gospel choir. I can’t sing. And I hate this channeling of the black kids so the administration looks good.”

    “Yeah,” I said. “It’s a problem. But don’t give up. Just be you.”

    “Hmmm,” she said. “Hard at this place.”

    “Tell me about it,” I said.

    In 2021, the Academy issued a Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan whose lead picture has a black male midshipman standing as Brigade Commander in front of a phalanx of white males. A former military instructor in the History Department and USNA graduate J.A. Cauthen, in an article entitled “The US Naval Academy is Adrift” objects—and it’s hard to disagree with him that this plan “will erode the competency of future officers and imperil our national security.”

    He quotes the plan as saying that the Naval Academy “will develop a diversity and inclusion checklist and schedule to inventory and assess all academic classes and training events,” something I saw beginning as I was being forced out of the classroom. It will “partner with Academic Departments in conducting comprehensive curriculum review prioritizing the inclusion of marginalized scholarship and hidden histories within midshipmen education.” And he asks a question relevant to my situation: “What will be the fate of those who will not comply, given their belief in, and right to, academic freedom?”

    I can answer that question already. Academic freedom doesn’t exist at Annapolis. And those who do not repeat the party line unquestioningly, such as (um, yes) your humble correspondent, will be relentlessly pursued and fired. Cauthen goes on with his quote: The Naval Academy “will develop a confidential process for reporting bias incidents”—for what it calls “nonpunitive informational purposes” to “identify areas for potential additional training.” My experience suggests that “nonpunitive” is bunkum. Indeed, Cauthen points out that all of this comes with the whip hand of the UCMJ and quotes Article 917 as saying that

    “Any person subject to this chapter who uses provoking or reproachful words or gestures toward any others person subject to this chapter shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”

    All this comes with something called the DPE Program, Diversity Peer Educator Program, including a confidential system to report “bias incidents.” I’ve seen it all before with sexual assault training. And he asks: “will a DEI agenda propagating woke ideology prepare future leaders to wage and win wars against our enemies? Those who believe so are either blind or worse.” But of course, the service academies have long since moved on from preparing leaders to wage and win wars. Now they’re about enforcing by military rather than constitutionally permitted means (even against civilians) the obsessions of a certain sector of society.

    Over the course of my decades teaching literature, I’ve had to answer these questions:

    What’s the point of reading (say) Shakespeare? Or Toni Morrison? Is the point different for future officers than for anybody else? If so, how? I don’t think the point is to check the box through reading works by someone of a certain skin color or sexual orientation. There has to be a higher purpose. But teaching everything according to categories of race, gender, and sexual orientation is what has supplanted sexual assault training as topic A at Annapolis: hiring and teaching courses in gay, Latino/a, and African American literature focused on the experiences of recent immigrants to the exclusion of almost everything else, usually to emphasize how tough they had it. For example, two out of three upper-level senior seminars English majors could choose from in Spring 2023 were “The Queering of the Renaissance” and “Queer Communities in Film and Literature.” We have courses in post-colonial studies, African American studies, and Native American Studies, and a “diversity” requirement. I guess we’re really with the Zeitgeist!

    Recent hiring emphasizes minority racial and sexual-orientation groups. And now the faculty get relentless “training” in DEI with newly hired administrators to enforce the rules—Diversity, Equity, and  Inclusion. In our English Department, there is now a faculty committee to vet faculty syllabi to ensure that an acceptable number of works about and by nonwhite authors are taught. It’s all intensely political, and usually with an edge of resentment: our kind didn’t get or don’t have as much as your kind! In fact, these kinds of resentment studies have nothing to do with being a good officer. Having a sense of what separates people, sure. How about what unites them? And if you as an officer see yourself as radically different from people with a different skin color––and groups of your subordinates with different skin colors as lacking a common goal––military cohesion is torn asunder. This is military suicide, shooting ourselves not merely in the foot but in the head. How about we emphasize commonality and deal with difference as it comes up rather than assuming it? It’s insulting to say “I see that you have a different skin color, so I can tell you we have little in common”—aside from destructive of military cohesion.

    Bruce Fleming has taught at the U.S. Naval Academy since 1987. 

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/19/2024 – 20:20

  • Obama DOJ Wants To Jail Peter Navarro For 6 Months For Same Thing Eric Holder Got Away With
    Obama DOJ Wants To Jail Peter Navarro For 6 Months For Same Thing Eric Holder Got Away With

    Former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro – the only guy who openly stood up to Anthony Fauci’s authoritarian lockdown ‘science’ – is facing six months in jail and a $200,000 fine if the Biden DOJ gets its way, after Navarro defied a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 select committee.

    Navarro was arrested at a DC airport in June of 2022 on two misdemeanor contempt of Congress charges for doing exactly what Obama AG Eric Holder did (with zero consequences), and more recently, Hunter Biden – ignore a Congressional subpoena when he told the Jan. 6 committee to pound sand.

    “The Defendant chose allegiance to former President Donald Trump over the rule of law,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Aloi in a 20-page sentencing memo submitted Thursday night, Politico reports.

    He will be sentenced by a federal judge next week after being convicted in September of said charges, after Aloi said that he “thumbed his nose at Congressional authority” and would likely do so again if it meant serving the “political interests of his allies and patrons.”

    The prosecutor said Navarro summarily refused to aid the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation into the causes of the violent assault at the Capitol — including efforts by Trump to subvert the 2020 election and derail the transfer of power. Navarro worked with allies in Congress on a strategy to help slow Congress’ counting of electoral votes via a strategy that he and fellow Trump ally Steve Bannon dubbed “The Green Bay Sweep.”

    The Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed Navarro to discuss those efforts, but he quickly told them that his testimony was barred by executive privilege, and he declined to participate in their probe. -Politico

    Navarro was held in contempt in April 2022, after which the DOJ obtained a grand jury indictment for refusing to provide documents and testimony. According to prosecutors, Navarro knew that Trump had never actually asserted executive privilege to bar him from testifying, and that such an assertion would not preclude him from testifying about at least some of the subjects demanded by the committee.

    “At no time did the Defendant provide the Committee with any evidence supporting his assertion that the former President had invoked executive privilege over the information the Committee’s subpoena sought from the Defendant, or otherwise challenge the Committee’s authority or composition,” wrote Aloi. “The Court was left with only the Defendant’s fan fiction version of what the Defendant wished or hoped the former President might have wanted but left unsaid.“

    Eric Who?

    Obama Attorney General Eric Holder famously also defied a congressional subpoena, and was held in contempt for concealing documents related to the “fast & furious” scandal, which was tied to the death of an estimated 150 Mexican civilians – while Navarro is refusing to answer House Democrats’ questions surrounding the 2020 election and the January 6th riot.

    Where’s the ‘equity’ in that?

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/19/2024 – 20:00

  • Economic Results Of California Banning Gas Vehicles
    Economic Results Of California Banning Gas Vehicles

    Authored by Anne Johnson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    As a result of California Governor Gavin Newsom’s executive order, gas-powered vehicles will be banned by 2035. This refers to new vehicles and existing gas-powered cars and trucks that will be allowed on California roads for the moment.

    Other states are following California. But with electric vehicles (EVs) comes an investment. What are the economic ramifications of banning gas-powered vehicles? Can California afford it? Can America afford it?

    (Shutterstock)

    California Banns New Gas-Powered Vehicles 2035

    Gov. Newsom’s executive order was announced in 2020 and was followed by the California Air Resources Board’s approval in August 2022. Automakers and car dealers will be restricted to selling only cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks that generate zero tailpipe emissions by 2035.

    To prepare for this, California’s Advanced Clean Cars II rule requires 35 percent of new cars and light trucks to have zero emissions by 2026. Sixty-eight percent must reach that goal by 2030.

    Power Grids and Demand

    There are ramifications to the gas-powered ban. One of these is the need to upgrade the power grid.

    In the past, California residents have been plagued with planned rolling blackouts. Some of these were designed to cut the risk of wildfires. In high-risk areas, electric utilities are often preemptively shut off during windstorms, but many blackouts resulted from the strain on the power grid. Residents were asked to conserve energy.

    California has experienced more outages in the last five years than any other state except Texas. On average, a California blackout lasted roughly 10 hours, with the longest lasting two and a half days.

    Electric vehicles are dependent on the grid. If the power goes out, so does the car.

    Cost of Upgrading California Power Grid

    Preventative fire measures aside, California’s power grid will need to be upgraded to handle the increase in EV usage.

    In 2021, analytics firm Kevala conducted a study for the California Public Advocates Office. Kevala found that without load management of other mitigation measures, system-level peak load would increase as much as 56 percent between 2025 and 2035.

    This increase would mainly be due to EVs. Kevala estimated that upgrading the grid would cost $50 billion.

    However, the California Public Advocates Office created a different number using a different model. They estimated the usage based on the addresses of all vehicles in California to predict where EV increased usage would likely occur. They then modeled the expected charging load.

    The Public Advocates Office estimated the figure was $15–20 billion. But as a caveat, they said, “No single study or pair of studies, particularly this early in the electrification process, can definitively answer such a complex question as what the costs of distribution grid upgrades will be.”

    The bottom line is that billions of dollars will need to be invested to upgrade the power grid to handle the additional strain of EVs.

    Lack of Charging Stations

    In 2022, at 14.3 million, California had more registered automobiles than any state nationwide. The overall number of registered motor vehicles was nearly 31.4 million. California also has the most new car sales. In 2022, new car sales amounted to $1,667,831 worth of vehicles.

    With those million-plus potential EV sales, the need for charging stations will soar. Currently, there are approximately 51,000 public charging stations across the nation. As of March 2023, California has the most, with 14,040.

    A report by the California Energy Commission shows that California needs 1.2 million electric vehicle chargers by 2030. This doesn’t take into the account the additional 157,000 chargers needed by 2030 for medium, heavy-duty and electric buses.

    There are three types of chargers, and their cost ranges from $1,500 to $20,000. But that’s just for the equipment. There’s also the installation cost.

    Regardless of which type of equipment is chosen, the installation can cost $100,000 to $200,000. These high-voltage items must have specialized electricians and laborers to install them.

    Splitting the difference with $150,000 per charger, it would take roughly $180 billion to build the 1.2 million chargers needed to accommodate the 2035 mandate.

    Banning Gas-Powered Vehicles Tax Revenue

    With electric vehicles comes a decrease in gas consumption. Fuel taxes are a significant contributor to state transportation funds. It contributes 40 percent of funding. The majority of funding could disappear in the coming decades.

    To replace lost revenue, many states have added fees to EV owners. California charges $100 annually for a zero-emissions vehicle. As of January 2021, this fee was indexed to the Consumer Price Index.

    Economic Hardship on Middle and Lower Classes

    The average EV costs $66,000. The Inflation Reduction Act EV tax credit of $7,500 can be written off when filing income taxes, but the consumer must still make the initial downpayment and finance. This could give them a hefty car payment, which not many may be able to afford.

    In California, low-income individuals could be eligible for $9,500 in grants or rebates. If you take both discounts, it comes to a $49,000 vehicle. That’s still a big-ticket item for most middle to low-income Californians.

    The high cost is because batteries are more expensive than internal combustion engines—a lithium battery for an EV costs between $5,000 and $20,000. And batteries are easy to damage and difficult to repair.

    States Banning Gas Vehicles

    But California isn’t the only state with this on its agenda. Nine states have also announced a restriction on new gas-powered vehicle sales. These states are:

    • Connecticut
    • Massachusetts
    • Maryland
    • New Jersey
    • New York
    • Oregon
    • Rhode Island
    • Washington

    These states eight states are following the Advance Clean Cars II.

    In 2022, the ninth state, Vermont, lawmakers required zero-emissions by 2030.

    California and EV Economics

    California is currently facing a $68 billion dollar deficit. Its debt for 2022 was $145.03 billion. That compares to the 2000 debt of $57.17.

    Chris Hoene, head of the California Budget and Policy Center, blamed climate change for the state’s shortfall. This was because the state’s fires interfered with cash.

    The goal with California is to reduce emissions to help prevent these climate issues.

    However, the cost of converting the most populated state to EVs may not be feasible. Billions of dollars must be invested to upgrade the power grid and build chargers.

    Manufacturers will need to drastically reduce prices to make it possible for middle America to afford EVs.

    The Epoch Times copyright © 2024. The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors. They are meant for general informational purposes only and should not be construed or interpreted as a recommendation or solicitation. The Epoch Times does not provide investment, tax, legal, financial planning, estate planning, or any other personal finance advice. The Epoch Times holds no liability for the accuracy or timeliness of the information provided.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/19/2024 – 19:40

  • New DNC Pipe-Bomb Video Can "Utterly Demolish The Jan6 Narrative": Darren Beattie
    New DNC Pipe-Bomb Video Can “Utterly Demolish The Jan6 Narrative”: Darren Beattie

    “If the Republicans step up, if the speaker steps up, if the relevant congressional figures step up, this is the chance to utterly demolish the January 6th narrative that the regime is using to weaponize the national security state against the American people, and to take Trump off the ballot.”

    Having acquitted himself extremely well (and calmly) during the ZeroHedge Debate on January 6th, Darren Beattie brandished his considerable tome of facts to discuss with Tucker Carlson the impact of newly-released footage surrounding the pipe-bomb incidents of January 6th (well 5th).

    Carlson begins by quite appropriately pointing out the fact that the FBI’s ongoing efforts to apprehend those involved (or not) in the Capitol riot contrasts greatly with their apparent inability to identify the person responsible for the pipe bombs:

    “The FBI wants you to know that if you were there, you can’t hide,” highlighting the extensive use of surveillance technology in these efforts.

    Except if you hide in plain sight…

    Beattie’s analysis of the discovery of the DNC pipe bomb, published on Jan. 18 by Revolver.news raises questions about the authorities’ response to the bomb at the DNC.

    The video shows a man (circled in red in the photo below) – now identified by congressional investigators as an undercover US Capitol Police officer – approached an SUV owned by the Metropolitan Police Department just after 1:05 p.m. on Jan. 6.

    Then he walked to an adjacent dark SUV belonging to the Secret Service and spoke to someone in the driver’s seat, Revolver reported.

    The vehicle was parked in a driveway of the DNC building at the intersection of Canal Street Southeast and South Capitol Street Southeast in Washington D.C.

    But, as Beattie points out, their response is described as “utterly unconcerned.”

    “What the individual in the backpack is doing is alerting the Metro PD and the Secret Service of the fact that there is a pipe bomb just feet away,” underlining the lack of urgency in their actions.

    As Joseph Hanneman details, the undercover officer walked off camera back toward the park bench and the bomb at 1:06:34 p.m., the video shows.

    Two occupants of the MPD vehicle exited the SUV at 1:07:25, and a third emerged 35 seconds later.

    The driver went back into the vehicle to retrieve a COVID mask.

    The first indication on Capitol Police radio dispatch that the DNC bomb had been discovered came at 1:07 p.m., according to audio files obtained by The Epoch Times.

    “987-Adam, I’m going to declare a 10-100 at the DNC as well,” an officer broadcast on the OPS2 radio channel. “Similar device as was found at the RNC as well. Advising the units on scene what’s going on.”

    At 1:09 p.m., the security camera pivoted and zoomed in on the bench, indicating that the U.S. Capitol Police Command Center was aware of the bomb.

    In fact, it took more than two minutes for the Secret Service detail protecting Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to visibly react to the presence of the bomb.

    Ms. Harris was inside the DNC building at the time the bomb was discovered.

    A group of children were allowed to walk near the bench where the bomb sat after the undercover officer discovered the device, Revolver reported.

    Children walk past the Democratic National Committee and a pipe bomb (location marked with a circle) found minutes earlier by a Capitol Police undercover officer. (U.S. Capitol Police/Graphic by The Epoch Times)

    In the nearly seven minutes after the undercover officer approached the Secret Service detail, the streets were not closed, the sidewalks were not cordoned off, and pedestrians were allowed to walk right past the bomb location, security video shows.

    Agents walked back and forth on the driveway and sidewalk near the bomb, and one officer walked close enough to snap a photo of the device before waving at the other officers.

    The FBI later determined the bomb was planted the night of Jan. 5, along with a similar device left in an alley near the Republican National Committee, which is where the conversation between Carlson and Beattie goes next.

    Beattie mentions that the bomb was found by a pedestrian, Karlyn Younger, in a back alley with a timer set to go off at 1 p.m., coinciding with the certification of the electoral vote, raising questions about the intent and timing of the bomb placements:

    “We’re told that the RNC bomb was sitting behind a trash can in a back alley, undiscovered for over 16 hours, and yet was randomly stumbled on.”

    Beattie then discusses the characteristics of the bombs, noting that they were not designed for remote detonation, suggesting they were not intended to explode but rather serve as a diversion.

    He also questions how the discoverers of the bombs could be so accurately timed, noting:

    “The person who planted the bombs presumably would have had to count or just simply be the luckiest person alive.”

    In conclusion, Beattie and Carlson discuss the political implications of the January 6th narrative and the lack of thorough investigation into the pipe bombs.

    As we started with at the top of this note, Beattie emphasizes the importance of challenging the official narrative, particularly in the context of the upcoming 2024 election.

    Watch the abridged discussion below:

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    Watch the full interview here at TCN…

     

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/19/2024 – 19:20

  • Biden Won’t Be Removed For Corruption In Ukraine But New Allegations Can Still Have An Impact
    Biden Won’t Be Removed For Corruption In Ukraine But New Allegations Can Still Have An Impact

    Authored by Andrew Korybko,

    The Republicans could make support for more Ukrainian aid conditional on a joint investigation into these claims and thus doom any deal and/or the Biden Administration or the Zelensky regime could leak evidence if the other doesn’t do their bidding given their blackmail of one another due to these joint crimes.

    Former Ukrainian MP Andrey Derkach dropped a bunch of bombshells about Biden’s corrupt dealings in Ukraine in a recent interview with Italian-American journalist Simona Mangiante. The takeaways can be read here, but they basically boil down to bribes and money laundering, among other crimes. While they might boost the Republicans’ impeachment efforts in the House where the opposition has a slim majority, their lack of a two-thirds majority in the Senate means that he won’t be removed from office.

    Even so, these new allegations can still have an important impact on events, one that might be much more significant than his superficial impeachment by the House. Proceedings at that level have become politicized as proven by the Democrats’ witch hunt against Trump, which isn’t to say that the Republicans are carrying out their own against Biden, but just to emphasize that impeachment by the House has no tangible significance. At most, it’ll strengthen both parties’ efforts to get out the vote in November.

    Where the actual importance of these latest allegations lies is in the larger context of the Ukrainian Conflict, which began to wind down late last year following the failure of Kiev’s counteroffensive and the consequent dwindling of Western aid. The Republicans already made their agreement on any more such deals contingent on robust border security reforms, but they might now also include the additional condition of a comprehensive joint investigation with Ukraine into Derkach’s bombshells about Biden.

    If the opposition makes such a proposal, then there’s no way that the Democrats would agree, thus capsizing the possibility of any compromise on this issue until next year after November’s elections, which could shake up the congressional dynamics and potentially lead to Biden’s ouster as well. Furthermore, Zelensky’s regime can’t be counted on to assist any theoretical joint investigation in good faith since leading figures are also implicated in this corruption per Derkach’s revelations.

    That particular point adds a curious twist to this scandal since it suggests that they might also be able to blackmail the Biden Administration, which provides a new layer of understanding to why the incumbent and his team have been so gung-ho about perpetuating NATO’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine. Zelensky knows that any outcome short of the maximalist victory that he fantasizes about would kill his political career so he has self-interested reasons in wanting to turn this into a so-called “forever war”.

    The US’ objective national interests aren’t served by depleting even more of its stockpiles and therefore reducing its ability to flexibly respond to foreign crises as they arise, or rather might even be provoked by America or its partners, hence why it’s become popular to talk about freezing the conflict. Former NATO Supreme Commander Admiral James Stavridis’ Korean-like “land-for-peace” armistice proposal last year could be a starting point but only if the West agrees to Russia’s security guarantee requests in Ukraine.

    They’ve been reluctant to do so, however, hence why no progress has been made on this. One reason behind the US’ recalcitrance might not just be that it’s concerned about “losing face” upon reaching a pragmatic series of mutual compromises with Russia, but that Zelensky is blackmailing the Biden Administration that he’ll spill the beans if they dare to pursue this policy. Given his prior “godlike” status in the Western media, any corroboration of Derkach’s claims might be widely believed by Westerners.

    They know that Zelensky isn’t a so-called “Russian agent” and have convinced themselves that he’s a “democratic freedom fighter” so it would be very damning to the incumbent Democrats’ reputation if he engaged in a “limited hangout” by sharing some relevant information. He of course wouldn’t implicate himself or his most loyal allies, but he could take down a couple less politically reliable officials in that event (perhaps as part of a purge) while possibly dooming Biden’s re-election and flipping the Senate.

    Republican control of the White House and Congress coupled with what many regard as the right-leaning Supreme Court could lead to the Democrats’ worst nightmare of their opponents reversing most of Biden’s policies. Meanwhile, Zelensky’s worst nightmare is that Biden bows to the popular sentiment among Americans to scale back their country’s participation in this proxy war and coerce him to resume peace talks with Russia, so each can therefore keep the other in check through this mutual blackmail.

    The legitimacy of both the Biden Administration and Zelensky’s regime is therefore dependent on each of them staying silent about their corruption scheme, but one or the other could at least in theory reveal some details about this if they begin to distrust the other or want to get rid of them. For instance, the Biden Administration could leak some information about Zelensky’s corruption to pro-Democrat media to pressure him into resuming peace talks or to pave the way for a “government of national unity”.

    That proposal was pushed by a member of the influential Atlantic Council think tank last month in an article for Politico and could credibly be interpreted as a signal that the Biden Administration is beginning to get fed up with Zelensky. As for the Ukrainian leader, it was already explained that he might be the first to leak certain details about this scheme if he feels that the Democrats’ support for this proxy war is faltering, which could be one of his “nuclear options” in that case alongside a major false flag.

    Circling back to Derkach’s latest corruption allegations, their impact in terms of the Ukrainian Conflict is much more important than the possibility of them aiding the Republicans’ efforts to impeach Biden in the House since they can’t remove him due to a dearth of support in the Senate. The Republicans could make support for more Ukrainian aid conditional on a joint investigation into these claims and/or the Biden Administration or the Zelensky regime could leak evidence if the other doesn’t do their bidding.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/19/2024 – 19:00

  • National Self-Reliance Is On The Rise: China & The US
    National Self-Reliance Is On The Rise: China & The US

    Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    Balancing globalized trade and capital flows with domestic self-reliance and control of credit and capital is a positive development for everyone.

    This week’s focus is on self-reliance, a topic of increasing relevance than is more complex that it may seem.

    The flip side of the decline of hyper-globalization is the rise of national self-reliance. We can see this dynamic expanding in real time across the globe, particularly in China and the U.S.: though still bound by trillions of dollars / RMB in investment and trade, the two nations are seeking to balance their dependency on the other by increasing their self-reliance with their own resources and technologies.

    This reduction of a potent source of instability (dependency) in favor of national self-reliance is a positive development. Just as household self-reliance doesn’t mean self-sufficiency (something I explain in Self-Reliance in the 21st Century), national self-reliance doesn’t mean self-sufficiency: trade and diplomatic ties with other nations are beneficial, but it doesn’t serve anyone’s interests to be so beholden to other nations that blackmail become a temptation.

    But withdrawing from the world has risks, too. The ideal is a dynamic balance between national interests and global ties that benefit everyone, that is, ties that nurture cooperation and global stability.

    In other words, national self-reliance is not a substitute for global engagement and cooperation, it is a stabilizing force that enables beneficial global ties. Dependencies are sources of instability and risk, as each side is under pressure to preserve whatever is viewed as essential, and this tends to increase the risk of rash decisions and actions.

    The ideal global arrangement is a transparent flow of ideas and information that enables every participant to adapt to changing conditions. From this perspective, the risk isn’t that China seeks to become less dependent on Western technology, i.e. becoming more self-reliant; the risk is China blocking the flow of ideas from outside sources with the Great Firewall. (My sources report no U.S. news sites are available in China except a handful of anti-establishment sites.)

    In the long sweep of its history, China has opened to the world and prospered, and then closed itself off and stagnated. A century after the glories of Admiral Zheng He’s massive fleet reaching the shores of Africa in the early 1400s, China banned all oceangoing vessels and suppressed maritime trade sought by other nations.

    That outside ideas are viewed as potential threats to the domestic status quo is a common feature of history. Many national elites have tried to block ideas and information while seeking to attract technologies and capital, as these benefit not just the domestic economy but the elites’ personal wealth and their power base.

    Capital and technology are tricky, however. Capital flowing into a developing nation can be beneficial, but it can also overwhelm and exploit the domestic economy, leading to the neo-colonialization of the nation’s productive assets. Capital flowing out of a nation with excess savings can be a positive source of investment opportunities, but this draining of capital can also hollow out the economy, especially if it is accompanied by a parallel loss of human capital leaving for better opportunities elsewhere.

    Cheap credit looks attractive to credit-starved nations, but it comes with a terrible cost as the debt levels quickly rise to unsustainable levels and both borrowers and lenders are forced to absorb losses and retrench. China is receiving a 21st century education in these dynamics via the Belt and Road Initiative, which has been dialed back as loans sour and asset transfers ignite fears of neo-colonialism from the East.

    Technology that’s borrowed ends up stagnating unless the entire system that enabled the development of that technology is also imported. The key feature of that technology-engine isn’t money, though that is one ingredient; the most important feature is the free flow of ideas and information, unencumbered by elite / political interference.

    Balancing domestic self-reliance and global trade and capital / information flows is not easy. Closing the door to outside ideas, capital and information tends to lead to stagnation, while opening the floodgates with no constraints tends to lead to destabilizing dependencies, credit bubbles, exploitation and neo-colonialism.

    National self-reliance has spawned an entire vocabulary. In China, President Xi Jinping has called for a “whole-nation approach” to increase domestic production of technology. In the U.S. the vocabulary includes reshoring, onshoring, friend-shoring and strategic alliances.

    Hyper-globalization wreaked havoc on many levels in many places. Balancing globalized trade and capital flows with domestic self-reliance and control of credit and capital is a positive development for everyone. A more balanced global economy offers the potential for continued global cooperation and engagement and domestic development for every nation that pursues the dynamic stability of both self-reliance and global engagement.

    Gordon Long and I discuss trade and supply chains in depth in our podcast on Self Reliance (45 min).

    *  *  *

    I began my study of China over 50 years ago when I earned a degree in Philosophy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where I was a student of two widely admired professors of Chinese philosophy, Chang Chung-yuan and Cheng Chung-Ying. It seems to me that Chinese philosophy–Confucianism, neo-Confucianism, Legalism (Mencius et al), Chan Buddhism, Taoism and in the 20th century, China’s version of Marxism–remain foundations beneath the great flux of China’s often tumultuous history. In this sense, Chinese philosophy is perhaps the ideal path to understanding the history and culture of China.

    I haven’t maintained a list of the many books I’ve read on China; I’ve listed a few below that I recall. Please note that I am not an expert or a scholar, I am merely an informed observer.

    1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline

    Creativity and Taoism: A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art and Poetry

    The Long March: The True History of Communist China’s Founding Myth

    The Man Who Loved China (Joseph Needham)

    Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250-1276 (Southern Song Dynasty)

    Red Roulette: An Insider’s Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today’s China

    The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes: The Ancient World Economy and the Empires of Parthia, Central Asia and Han China

    The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of Tang Exotics

    Foreign Devils on the Silk Road 

    All the Tea in China

    Red Sorrow: A Memoir

    The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China’s Search for Security (Andrew J. Nathan)

    The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices (Xinren Xue)

    Here are a few books which illuminate the complexities of the flow of trade, ideas and capital from the Bronze Age to the present:

    The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good

    Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century

    The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History

    The Loss of El Dorado: A Colonial History

    Tristes Tropiques

    The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time

    Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol. 1: The Structure of Everyday Life (Fernand Braudel)

    Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol. 2: The Wheels of Commerce

    Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol. 3: The Perspective of the World

    *  *  *

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

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

    Subscribe to my Substack for free

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/19/2024 – 18:20

  • Majority Of Biden's $136 Billion Student Loan Forgiveness Scheme Going To "Public Servants"
    Majority Of Biden’s $136 Billion Student Loan Forgiveness Scheme Going To “Public Servants”

    President Joe Biden is heaping another $5 billion onto a $136 billion pile of taxpayer-funded student loan debt forgiveness, as one of his signature 2024 (vote buying) schemes heading into the 2024 election.

    Not only has moral hazard been reduced to an academic concept, shouldn’t taxpayer funds be used to bail out poverty-stricken Americans before people with college degrees who signed their names to a contract for non-dischargeable debt? We digress.

    Around 74,000 student loan borrowers will now see debt canceled as a result of administrative changes enacted by the US Department of Education in the latest round of relief – including borrowers enrolled in the government’s income-driven repayment and public service loan forgiveness programs, Bloomberg reports.

    Each program requires at least a decade of payment or service to be eligible for relief. Mismanaged federal student-loan plans have left some borrowers without promised relief after making payments for as long as 25 years. -Bloomberg

    “My administration is able to deliver relief to these borrowers – and millions more – because of fixes we made to broken student loan programs that were preventing borrowers from getting relief they were entitled to under the law,” Biden said in a Friday statement written by other people.

    Of those receiving taxpayer-funded assistance, roughly 60% are taxpayer-funded “public servants” – so the snake continues to eat its tail. So, buying votes with voters’ money.

    Biden’s bailout comes as civil rights groups, labor unions, and borrowers’ advocates have pressured his administration to expand the scope of his earlier $400 billion initiative that was struck down by the Supreme Court.

    The second bite at the apple is much narrower than the original plan which would have forgiven up to $20,000 in student loans for around 40 million Americans.

    Nearly 70 groups, including the AFL-CIO and NAACP, asked Education Secretary Miguel Cardona in a letter Thursday to hold another session in the rulemaking process and to include targeted relief for borrowers who have experienced hardship.

    The goal is to allow more young people, people of color and low-income borrowers to be eligible for relief. -Bloomberg

    According to the report, Biden’s support has weakened among black, hispanic, and young voters – demographics which have been historically critical for Democrats.

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    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/19/2024 – 18:00

  • FBI, CISA Warn Of Risks Posed By Chinese-Made Drones
    FBI, CISA Warn Of Risks Posed By Chinese-Made Drones

    Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A new DJI Mavic Zoom drone flies during a product launch event at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York City on Aug. 23, 2018. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    The FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a new memo and report on Wednesday, warning U.S. owners and operators of critical infrastructures not to use Chinese-manufactured unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) due to security risks.

    “Our nation’s critical infrastructure sectors, such as energy, chemical and communications, are increasingly relying on UAS for various missions that ultimately reduce operating costs and improve staff safety,” said David Mussington, executive assistant director for CISA’s Infrastructure Security, in a memo that accompanied the report, titled “Cybersecurity Guidance: Chinese-Manufactured UAS.”

    “However, the use of Chinese-manufactured UAS risks exposing sensitive information that jeopardizes U.S. national security, economic security, and public health and safety.”

    Mr. Mussington added that “urgent attention” must be paid to “China’s aggressive cyber operations to steal intellectual property and sensitive data from organizations.”

    Chinese-made drones have long been a concern in the United States, particularly those made by China-based Da Jiang Innovations (DJI), the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial drones. In December 2020, the Commerce Department added DJI to its export control list for being complicit in the Chinese regime’s human rights abuses. Two years later, the Pentagon added DJI to its list of “Chinese military companies.”

    The report does not mention DJI or other Chinese UAS manufacturers by name.

    Chinese Laws

    However, it highlights the risks associated with using Chinese-made drones by pointing to different Chinese laws, including the National Intelligence Law that went into effect in 2017, which compels Chinese companies to hand over data collected within China and elsewhere to Beijing’s intelligence agencies.

    “The 2021 Data Security Law expands the PRC’s access to and control of companies and data within China and imposes strict penalties on China-based businesses for non-compliance,” the report says, referring to China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.

    “The 2021 Cyber Vulnerability Reporting Law requires Chinese-based companies to disclose cyber vulnerabilities found in their systems or software to PRC authorities prior to any public disclosure or sharing overseas,” the report adds.

    “This may provide PRC authorities the opportunity to exploit system flaws before cyber vulnerabilities are publicly known.”

    The report points out three major vulnerabilities that Chinese-made drones can exploit: data transfer and collection, patching and firmware updates, and a broader surface for data collection. Drones controlled by smartphones and other internet-of-things devices could allow foreign intelligence gathering on U.S. critical infrastructure.

    Sensitive imagery, surveying data, and facility layouts are some of the vulnerable data that “allow foreign adversaries like the PRC access to previously inaccessible intelligence,” according to the report.

    “Without mitigations in place, the widespread deployment of Chinese-manufactured UAS in our nation’s key sectors is a national security concern, and it carries the risk of unauthorized access to systems and data,” said Bryan Vorndran, assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, in a statement.

    The memo encourages owners and operators of U.S. critical infrastructures to buy drones that are “secure-by-design,” including those made by U.S. companies. The report provides several cybersecurity recommendations.

    Responses

    Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), issued a joint statement in response to the report.

    “The new Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency report makes clear that Communist Chinese drones present a legitimate national security risk to our critical infrastructure and must be banned from the U.S.,” the two lawmakers stated.

    “The CCP has subsidized drone companies such as DJI and Autel in order to destroy American competition and spy on America’s critical infrastructure sites. We must ban CCP-backed spy drones from America and work to bolster the U.S. drone industry,” they added.

    Last November, a bipartisan group of 11 House lawmakers, including Mr. Gallagher and Ms. Stefanik, sent a letter to the Biden administration, calling for an investigation into Chinese drone maker Autel Robotics, citing national security concerns. The group said the firm is openly affiliated with the Chinese military and “poses a direct threat to U.S. national security as local law enforcement and state and local governments are purchasing and operating Autel drones.”

    Mr. Gallagher and Ms. Stefanik also introduced the Countering CCP Drones Act (H.R.2864) last April to prevent DJI technologies from operating on U.S. communication infrastructure.

    Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, advised people interested in purchasing Chinese-made drones to read the security report.

    “For years, I’ve been concerned about the security risks associated with drones, including those made in the PRC. This memo represents a good first step to studying that, and I hope anyone considering purchasing a Chinese drone reads it carefully,” Mr. Warner wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/19/2024 – 17:40

  • Fani Fingered: Jilted Wife In Trump-Georgia Fiasco Drops Bank Statements Revealing Lavish Vacations
    Fani Fingered: Jilted Wife In Trump-Georgia Fiasco Drops Bank Statements Revealing Lavish Vacations

    Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

    The jilted wife of DA Fani Willis’ alleged lover and outside counsel Nathan Wade dropped receipts in a Friday court filing, revealing that Wade purchased plane tickets in Willis’ name, with alleged travel to places such as Napa Valley, California, Florida and the Caribbean, according to the Daily Caller.

    According to records filed in the Wade divorce, Wade bought tickets for he and Fani to travel on both Norwegian and Royal Caribbean cruise lines.

    According to the report, Wade made two payments to Royal Caribbean cruise lines in the same day in the amount of $1,387 and $1,284, on Oct. 4, 2022.

    As the Caller further notes;

    Wade filed to divorce his wife on Nov. 2, 2021, the day after his contract with the District Attorney began. His wife alleged in prior filings that he did not disclose his earnings from the county to her but continued to draw from her bank account.

    Wade’s firm has been paid nearly $654,000 from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office since 2022, county data shows.

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    The Friday filing was made in response to Willis’s attempt to quash a subpoena for her to testify in the divorce proceedings – with Willis accusing Joycelyn Wade Thursday of seeking to “harass and embarrass” her to obstruct the Trump case.

    Wade’s wife hit back Friday, calling Willis’ arguments “disingenuous,” and said that the evidence is clear “Ms. Willis was an intended travel partner” for several trips.

    “It is regrettable that Ms. Willis has filed such an inflammatory Motion, which has left Defendant with no other choice than to respond forcefully and with supporting evidence in a case that is very personal in nature,” reads the filing.

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    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/19/2024 – 17:20

  • Scuttling 'Chevron' Precedent Will Put Ship Of State Back On A Constitutional Course
    Scuttling ‘Chevron’ Precedent Will Put Ship Of State Back On A Constitutional Course

    Authored by Mark Chenoweth via RealClearPolitics.com,

    Like North Atlantic squalls pounding away at the New England shoreline, judicial deference doctrines have eroded the civil liberties ordinary Americans enjoy. No one can hold back the tide, but the Supreme Court has the opportunity to stop the erosion of civil liberties in a marquee case it will hear this week. My organization, the New Civil Liberties Alliance, is proud to represent the fishermen plaintiffs in this case, Relentless v. Department of Commerce.

    Relentless poses a constitutional challenge to Chevron deference. Chevron is a court-made legal doctrine from 1984 requiring judges to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguity in a statutory provision it administers. It falsely treats ambiguity – and even statutory silence – as implicit delegations of rulemaking power from Congress to agencies.

    At first, Chevron supporters thought that by empowering agencies the doctrine would rein in judicial activism.

    In time though, constitutionalists have come to recognize that Chevron enables the administrative state to arrogate power to itself while flouting due process guarantees that protect all Americans.

    This case provides one stark example.

    For some 30 years federal fisheries agencies have randomly placed observers aboard commercial fishing vessels to log the crew’s activities and ensure compliance with catch quotas.

    Placing observers is expensive.

    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concedes that the cost runs at least $700 per day, per observer. That’s multiple thousands of dollars over the course of the typical fishing voyage, in a business where profit margins are tight.  

    The government bore the cost until 2020 when, concerned that congressional appropriations no longer sufficed to cover the cost of the program, NOAA crafted a new rule that charged the cost to fishermen instead.

    NCLA’s clients operate commercial fishing vessels. We challenged the 2020 rule, arguing that federal law does not authorize NOAA to mandate industry-funded observers. The agency countered by citing an allegedly “ambiguous” provision of the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Act, which it interpreted to allow burden-sharing. The agency demanded Chevron deference to its strained interpretation, and a federal trial court in Rhode Island duly obliged. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed.

    These courts did not decide that NOAA’s interpretation of the statute was better than our clients’ interpretation; instead, they merely held that NOAA’s interpretation was “reasonable” – even if our clients’ interpretation was better. Now before the Supreme Court, we argue this judicial deference accorded under Chevron is unconstitutional in at least two respects.

    First, deference doctrines allow bureaucrats to hijack the judicial power that Article III of the Constitution properly vests in the federal judiciary.

    Construing the law is the essential and exclusive role of the courts. The defining characteristic of this task is independent judgment, and judges are duty-bound to provide litigants their own views on a statute’s meaning, not just to assess the agency’s reasonableness.

    For its part, an executive branch agency, like anyone else, cannot be trusted to render judgment in its own case. The agency has a policy agenda and is subject to the president’s political influence. Regulators will invariably interpret (or, as in this case, seek out) “ambiguous” provisions to benefit their power-expanding agendas. That no man can be the judge of his own case is an ancient principle of justice so basic that it should not need restating. But as we have seen, the administrative state imperils first principles.

    Here, NOAA has salvaged its preferred regulatory program in the face of lapsing congressional appropriations by discovering latent authority to pass costs on to fishermen in a 40-year-old statute.

    The Founding Fathers anticipated this problem. Hamilton explains in Federalist 78 that the separation of powers reflects a division among will, force, and judgment. Without the independent judgment of the judiciary, the people have no defense against the force of the executive, particularly where it has been conjoined with fictitiously delegated legislative will. For this reason, myriad provisions in the Constitution protect judicial independence. Most notably, judges are appointed for life, cannot serve simultaneously in other branches of government, and cannot have their pay cut by Congress. But all those parchment protections are for naught if judges defer to an agency’s legal interpretation instead of providing their own judgment.

    The second reason Chevron is unconstitutional is that it violates due process of law principles.

    Due process requires that disputes be resolved with neutral rules in a neutral forum by impartial judges. But Chevron makes a mockery of neutrality. It requires a judge to pre-commit to resolve legal ambiguity in favor of one party – and the most powerful party at that – the federal government. Put differently, Chevron systematically injects pro-government bias into legal proceedings; it puts a Leviathan-sized thumb on the scales of justice.

    Separation of powers disputes are not esoteric. They pose the question fundamental to any republic – who decides? Nor are these issues arcane for our clients, commercial fishermen who will be forced to pay government agents for performing government functions on their boats, when Congress has never legislated that.

    If NOAA can get away with snatching unlawful administrative power to force fishermen to pay for its regulatory regime, then with apologies to Billy Joel there will be no (Rhode) Island left for Rhode Islanders like my clients. The Court must scuttle Chevron and chart a new course, before it wrecks the F/V Relentless and takes the rule of law down with it.

    Tyler Durden
    Fri, 01/19/2024 – 17:00

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jan 19

Today’s News 19th January 2024

  • The Silent Epidemic Eating Away Americans' Minds
    The Silent Epidemic Eating Away Americans’ Minds

    Authored by Marina Zhang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Billy was a bright 10-year-old boy with two Ivy-League-educated parents. He was book smart—got straight A’s in school—but lacked street smarts.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    He was also a poor sport. Billy would frequently lie and cheat when playing board games or participating in team activities and have full-blown meltdowns when he lost. His friends, who had been with him since kindergarten, began losing patience. His parents recognized that something had to be done.

    So Billy’s parents brought him to Dr. Victoria Dunckley, a pediatric psychiatrist specializing in screen use.

    After a four-week “screen fast” prescribed by Dr. Dunckley, which eliminated all TVs, phones, and video games, Billy’s problems miraculously cleared up. His parents were so pleased that they decided to maintain the fast.

    Six months passed, and Billy’s friends were no longer avoiding him, and his sportsmanship had improved markedly. Billy decided to run for class president and delivered a speech, something that would have previously terrified him.

    Billy is one of Dr. Dunckley’s many patients whose mental and behavioral problems disappeared once they eliminated or significantly reduced screen time.

    Excessive use of screens has become an epidemic silently eroding lives with little resistance. Gallup’s 2012 survey found that around 60 percent of young adults admit to spending too much of their time on the internet; a subsequent survey estimated that 83 percent of smartphone users say they keep their phone near them “almost all the time during their waking hours.”

    Screens can overstimulate our brains, resulting in a perpetual, highly stressed, fight-or-flight state. This then makes us prone to meltdowns, depression, and anxiety when even minor changes in the environment occur.

    Rising Problem

    The initial link between screen time and poor mental health was spotted through generational studies by Jean Twenge, who has a doctorate in psychology and is a professor of psychology at San Diego State University.

    “I got used to changes that would grow slowly and steadily over time,“ but then after 2010, ”I started to see some changes that were much more sudden—I had really never seen anything like it,” Ms. Twenge said in a TEDx talk.

    Around 2010, social media and internet use saw a dramatic increase, followed by an increase in major depression. (The Epoch Times)

    Between 2005 and 2012, the change in rates of depressive episodes in teens aged 12 to 17 barely exceeded 1 percent. However, between 2012 and 2017, there was an almost 4 percent increase.

    Additionally, fewer teenagers are going outside or reading books, while their time on social media and the internet is dramatically surging.

    In 2008, psychotherapist Tom Kersting, who worked as a school counselor for 25 years, saw a rise in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses in children over age 8.

    ADHD tends to be detected in early childhood after a child starts school. However, he has witnessed increasingly delayed diagnoses in teenagers and adults. While it could be possible that some of these teens were missed by clinicians when they were young, Mr. Kersting suspects that some developed symptoms of ADHD due to screen use.

    ADHD diagnosis has been on the rise. (The Epoch Times)

    Around 2012, when 30 percent of teenagers had a smartphone, he started to see rebellious behavior and anxiety disorders becoming more common among children. Young adults and teenagers growing up now also tend to be more antisocial and have reduced emotional resilience, which may be related to insufficient in-person socializing due to spending most of their time behind screens.

    “It’s not just the amount of time spent in the cyber world,” Mr. Kersting told The Epoch Times, “but also what they missed out on: outside play and social learning.”

    During the pandemic, adolescents’ screen time doubled.

    Few studies investigated internet addiction in children during the pandemic, but a large study done in adults in 2021 showed that adults who were considered at risk of internet addiction were 2.3 times more likely to have depression and 1.9 times more likely to have anxiety than the general population. Furthermore, people with definite or severe addiction were 13 times more likely to have both depression and anxiety.

    Fast forward to post-pandemic times, with teachers reporting that the latest generation—Gen Alpha, also known as “iPad kids”—is aggressive, undisciplined, and regulates emotions poorly in the classroom.

    Dr. Clifford Sussman, a psychiatrist specializing in screen addiction, has focused his practice on treating this condition due to increasing need. Especially after the pandemic, “demand for help with this issue exploded,” he told The Epoch Times.

    How Screens Hook You

    Screen activities—whether they include video games, social media, internet scrolling, or video streaming—offer an escape. These activities are also highly stimulating for the brain due to their bright colors and seamless integration into the virtual world, professor and psychotherapist David Rosenfeld at Buenos Aires University told The Epoch Times.

    When presented with anything new and exciting, the brain releases dopamine, and anything that induces dopamine release can be addictive. Dopamine produces a feeling of pleasure, while a drop in it is linked to irritability and poor mood.

    Dopamine produces a feeling of pleasure, while a drop in it is linked to irritability and poor mood. (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    Screen activities have been designed to capture our attention by feeding us regular doses of dopamine. Like playing an immersive video game, giving you a thrill when you level up, defeat a boss, or find a new item, screens entice you to spend more time in the virtual world.

    “Video games are governed by microscopic rules,” Bennett Foddy, who teaches game design at New York University’s Game Center, said in the book “Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked” by Adam Alter, as excerpted by The Guardian.

    These micro-rules can be a “ding” sound or a white flash whenever a character moves over a particular square and are synced to the player’s actions so they feel they were the one who caused it. This micro-feedback generates a sense of reward, hooking people into continuously playing the game.

    This system may also explain why interactive screen activities may be more problematic for children than passive screen activities, like watching TV.

    Dr. Dunckley has observed that while two hours of TV is linked to signs of dysregulation in children, only 30 minutes of interactive screen activities is stimulating enough for signs to occur.

    Many video games also employ strategies used in gambling, such as loot-box rewards, where players are rewarded at random intervals throughout the game. Since players do not know when the next reward drop will come, they are further compelled to play the game—even if they are not enjoying it.

    This strategy came from the works of psychologist Burrhus Frederic Skinner. Skinner put pigeons in a box with a button, rewarding them with food whenever they pressed it. He found that the pigeons rewarded irregularly were more compelled to press the button than those rewarded with every button press.

    This compulsion also exists in humans.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 01/18/2024 – 23:40

  • "Food Deserts" Rise In Democrat Run Cities As Grocers Leave In Droves
    “Food Deserts” Rise In Democrat Run Cities As Grocers Leave In Droves

    The panic is palpable.  Democrat controlled cities across the nation are experiencing something they might never have experienced before:  Consequences for their terrible criminal prosecution policies.  And, they don’t like.  Not one bit.

    Democrats have argued for the past couple years that crime rates are actually falling in the US compared to previous decades, but this does not seem to be represented on the streets as retailers in numerous metro areas are closing up shop after many years of operations due to increasing theft.  If crime rates are falling, why are so many businesses leaving blue areas?

    Boston, for example, has been bleeding retailers in recent months, with companies like Walgreens closing down four stores in the area in a single year.  Residents and officials are “outraged”, arguing that these companies have a civic duty to stay and service communities in need.  It’s estimated that Massachusetts retailers are losing more than $2 billion per year to criminal theft.  Maybe if the community stopped robbing them on a daily basis, these companies wouldn’t feel the need to shut down.

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    The series of closures in Boston is similar to what is happening in San Francisco, with some neighborhoods slowly but surely losing nearby access to grocers.  Companies have in some cases tried to hide the reason for shutting down (high crime) by suggesting that they are “improving” the area by opening land up for development, but locals know the real cause.

    Conclusion – Crime is not falling at all in leftist run cities.  Crime rates rely on reports and arrests.  If leftist officials are making policies which discourage arrests and reporting, then crime rates go down – It’s like magic.

    Due to changes in the way data is being collated by the FBI during the covid years, many major cities are not actually required to provide full crime rate information until 2024-2025, and quite a few are taking advantage (at least 30%).  San Francisco will not be reporting complete crime stats until 2025.   

    This means that when Democrats argue that crime is going down (ostensibly because of their leadership), this is based on a false and incomplete picture of the data.  Lack of data, as mentioned, is also coupled with lack of arrests, lack of prosecution, and the consistent release of repeat offenders in blue cities.  Lack of arrests and convictions does not mean there’s less crime.  

    Again, using San Francisco as an example, the police department’s closure rate on cases remains dismal because the city’s District Attorney refused to prosecute; for every 100 suspects arrested, three are charged and one is convicted.  Until he was recalled in a July 8, 2022, election, San Francisco’s DA was Soros-backed radical leftist Chesa Boudin.  The Soros connection is widely considered one of the prime indicators of crooked DA’s and prosecutors, as well as high crime rates for a city.

    Soros DAs run several other major prosecutorial offices, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, St. Louis, New York, Baltimore, Albuquerque, Orlando, and three urban counties in Northern Virginia.  In Massachusetts, Soros-backed federal prosecutor Rachael Rollins was forced to resign after the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General and the Office of Special Counsel released devastating reports outlining her serious ethical lapses and partisan political activity.  It’s not surprising that wherever Soros influenced DAs and prosecutors run things, food deserts seem to follow.        

    Once this dynamic of corruption is understood, it becomes clear why so many grocers and retailers are uprooting their stores and leaving.  It’s no longer profitable to stay because Democrat city governments have chosen criminals over businesses.     

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 01/18/2024 – 23:20

  • Adverse Events More Likely With Some COVID-19 Vaccine Batches: Data
    Adverse Events More Likely With Some COVID-19 Vaccine Batches: Data

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Some lots of COVID-19 vaccines caused significantly more adverse events than others, according to newly published information.

    The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is prepared for administration at a vaccination clinic on Sept. 22, 2021. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)

    Some batches were linked to as many as 1,650 serious problems, while some produced zero reported issues, according to the data, which was obtained by the Informed Consent Action Network and presented on the website OpenVAERS.

    The network received the data through Freedom of Information Act requests from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

    “Certain lots had an unusually high number of adverse reactions,” the network said in a statement.

    The data undercut a 2022 statement from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). The department said at the time that an analysis by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) showed “no unusual concentration of reports with a single lot or small group of lots.”

    The HHS is the parent agency of the CDC and the FDA.

    Mr. Johnson told Dr. Mandy Cohen, the CDC’s director, and Dr. Robert Califf, the FDA’s commissioner, in a new letter that the newly disclosed data “paint a very concerning picture.”

    “As a former manufacturer, this data provides strong evidence that the vaccine manufacturing process was not in control,” Mr. Johnson wrote. If the data are accurate, “then your agencies have kept this vital information hidden from Congress and the American people for years, despite my requests for this data beginning in December 2021,” he added.

    Spokespersons for the CDC and FDA said the agencies received the letter. The spokespersons said the agencies would respond at a later time to Mr. Johnson.

    The HHS did not respond to a request for comment.

    According to independent research reviewed by Mr. Johnson in 2021, as many as 5,297 adverse event reports were linked to certain vaccine batches, while other lots had as few as one reported adverse event.

    The reports were made to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which is co-run by the FDA and CDC. The system accepts reports from anybody but studies have shown most reporters are health care workers. Reporters face penalties if they enter information later found to be false, and many reports have been verified by health authorities.

    Melanie Anne Egorin, the assistant HHS secretary for legislation, made the 2022 statement to Mr. Johnson before adding that the number of reported events may vary by lot due to “important factors such as the lot size and the length of time a lot has been in use.”

    She said that COVID-19 vaccine lots are backed by certificates from manufacturers and that the FDA has visited sites to ensure quality, safety, and effectiveness.

    More on New Data

    The Informed Consent Action Network submitted multiple FOIA requests for lot information, and eventually sued when the data was not released.

    Updated datasets were provided on Dec. 13, 2023, the network said.

    The nonprofit shared the data with OpenVAERS, which describes itself as a project “developed by a small team of people with vaccine injuries or who have children with vaccine injuries.”

    Before receiving the data, “it was impossible to determine the Serious Adverse Event (SAE) rate by lot number because we did not know the total number of doses in the lot,” OpenVAERS said on its site. With the new data, “we can now confirm that some batches of Covid-19 vaccines are significantly more dangerous than others.”

    The project linked the lot information with VAERS reports that included batch data to produce the total number of reported serious adverse events, and rates of serious adverse events, per batch.

    Serious adverse events were defined by the definition used by VAERS, which is an event that leads to an emergency room visit, a hospitalization, permanent disability, or death, or is life-threatening or results in a birth defect.

    Many lots had between 10 and 500 reported serious adverse events linked to them, according to OpenVAERS. Twenty-two had between zero and nine reported adverse events. Forty-five had 501 or more adverse events.

    Reported deaths following vaccination were also higher for certain lots, particularly for some Moderna batches.

    The data cover the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.

    Pfizer and Moderna did not respond to requests for comment.

    Some lots were flagged by Pfizer for deviation from quality standards, according to FDA documents recently produced under court order, but still released to the public.

    Mr. Johnson urged the FDA and CDC to provide responses to questions by Jan. 26. He asked for the analysis the FDA allegedly performed to look into whether certain lots were associated with unusual concentrations of reported adverse events, whether the agency took any issue with the OpenVAERS’ analyses, and what steps the agency would take if it did determine any COVID-19 vaccine lots were associated with higher rates of adverse events.

    HHS says in a guide that VAERS “is used to continually monitor reports to determine whether any vaccine or vaccine lot has a higher than expected rate of events.”

    Danish researchers reported in 2023 that they examined rates of serious adverse events across batches of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and found that certain batches were linked to many more events than others. They noted that leaked data showed there was a “significant difference” between the amount of modified messenger RNA between batches of the Pfizer vaccine.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 01/18/2024 – 23:00

  • Lavrov Says West Is Aware Zelensky Getting 'Out Of Control'
    Lavrov Says West Is Aware Zelensky Getting ‘Out Of Control’

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in fresh Thursday statements says the West is trying to reign in Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky as he’s doing everything possible to stamp out dissent and cling to power, including canceling an expected presidential election this year.

    Lavrov characterized the situation as one wherein America’s man in Kiev is increasingly “out of control” but that his Western backers “would have liked to have more flexibility,” according to state media translation of the new remarks.

    Image source: PassBlue

    The Russian top diplomat further said that all the latest rhetoric coming from the Ukrainian presidency’s office “only reflects the wish of that individual and his associates… to keep power as much as they can.”

    That’s when Lavrov asserted that having Zelensky run a re-election campaign “would put him more in line with Western interests, because he has been increasingly getting out of control.”

    However, this claim is uncertain given that all commentary on this matter by the Biden administration as well as US mainstream media has focused on justifying the election cancelation based on there being martial law and a state of war in the country. Biden officials have previously stated that it would not be practical, and even logistically impossible, to have fair elections. 

    Thus the US has defended these anti-democratic moves of Zelensky at every turn. It’s also an open question of whether there will even be parliamentary elections, which was due to change over this year. However, US officials do seem open to entering serious negotiations to end the war, behind the scenes at least, given Ukraine’s mounting battlefield losses.

    Lavrov’s critique came as Zelensky is seeking to push an unrealistic peace plan at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. To review: 

    Zelensky’s plan requires a full Russian withdrawal from the territory it has captured since February 2022, Russia giving up Crimea, war crimes tribunals, and Russia paying reparations to Ukraine. Kyiv has no shot at implementing any aspect of the Peace Formula since its counteroffensive failed, and Ukrainian forces are now focused on defense and facing manpower shortages.

    Despite the reality on the ground, Zelensky’s “Peace Formula” has received backing from the US and other Western nations. “There was the most representative meeting of national security advisors regarding the implementation of the Peace Formula. More than 80 countries and international institutions were represented,” Zelensky said in Davos.

    Given these latest words of Zelensky, it remains clear that Kiev’s plan is a non-starter for Moscow, and for the war to end Ukraine will have to at the very least recognize Russian possession of Crimea, and likely the four annexed territories as well. 

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    Meanwhile, Zelensky has continued pushing hard for the Western allies to give his forces more advanced weapons, including longer range missiles and advanced fighter jets. Yet public opinion polls in the West have continued to show Zelensky’s popularity is slipping.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 01/18/2024 – 22:40

  • Supreme Court Conservatives Appear Open To Rolling Back Power Of Federal Agencies
    Supreme Court Conservatives Appear Open To Rolling Back Power Of Federal Agencies

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

    A bureaucracy-empowering judicial doctrine that critics blame for the explosive growth of the U.S. government in recent decades should be overturned, the Supreme Court heard on Jan. 17.

    Associate Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito poses for the official photo at the Supreme Court in Washington on Oct. 7, 2022. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

    The court may overturn the so-called Chevron deference doctrine that the Supreme Court enunciated in 1984, or narrow its application. “Chevron deference,” as lawyers call it, holds that an agency’s interpretation of a statute it administers is entitled to deference unless Congress has said otherwise.

    The court’s ultimate ruling might alter the current balance of power among Congress, executive agencies, and the nation’s judiciary by curbing the legal underpinnings of the modern administrative state, which critics deride as an illegitimate fourth branch of government.

    In the landmark ruling in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the court held that while courts “must give effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress,” where courts find “Congress has not directly addressed the precise question at issue” and “the statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue, the question for the court is whether the agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute.”

    Conservatives and Republican policymakers have long been critical of the doctrine, saying it has contributed to the dramatic growth of government and gives unelected regulators far too much power to make policy by going beyond what Congress intended when it approved various laws. The authority of regulatory agencies has been increasingly questioned in recent years as the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has grown.

    Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch have expressed skepticism of the Chevron doctrine.

    Those on the other side say the Chevron doctrine empowers an activist federal government to serve the public interest in an increasingly complicated world without having to seek specific congressional authorization for everything that needs to be done.

    The court heard two related cases: Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.

    In the cases at hand, in 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its National Marine Fisheries Service implemented a final rule to compel fishing companies to pay for human monitors aboard their vessels.

    The companies say the burden of paying for the monitors is a hardship that significantly reduces their profit margins.

    Relentless Inc. attorney Roman Martinez told the justices that Chevron deference must be overruled.

    “For too long, Chevron has distorted the judicial process and undermined statutory interpretation,” he said.

    “Chevron violates the Constitution. Article III empowers judges to say what the law is … [and] to interpret federal statutes using their best and independent judgment. Chevron undermines that duty. It reallocates interpretive authority from courts to agencies, and it forces courts to adopt inferior agency constructions that are issued for political or policy reasons.

    “In doing so, Chevron blocks judges from serving as faithful agents of Congress. It mandates judicial bias and encourages agency overreach, and by removing key checks on executive power, it threatens individual liberty. Chevron also violates the APA,” referring to the Administrative Procedure Act.

    The APA “contemplates that courts, not agencies will authoritatively resolve ambiguities in statutes,” Mr. Martinez said.

    “This court’s only justification for Chevron is the implied delegation theory, but that theory is a fiction. There’s no reason to think that Congress intends every ambiguity and every agency statute to give agencies an ongoing power to interpret and reinterpret federal law in ways that override its best meaning.

    “In this case, the agency misinterpreted the MSA [i.e., Magnuson–Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act] to force struggling fishermen to pay up to 20 percent of their annual profits to federal agents.”

    The government is arguing that “even if all nine of you agree with us that the agency’s construction is worse than ours, you should nonetheless defer to that construction and uphold their program under Chevron.

    “That’s not consistent with the rule of law. If we have the best view of the statute, we should win this case,” the lawyer said.

    Justice Clarence Thomas told Mr. Martinez, “Your argument is that Chevron deference is problematic.”

    “How do we know where the line is?” he said.

    Justice Elena Kagan offered a hypothetical to show the difficulty that lawmakers could face if deference to agencies were overruled.

    The justice asked how lawmakers would decide if a product aimed at alleviating bad cholesterol was a dietary supplement or a drug. Having specialized agencies staffed with experts who understand these things can be helpful, she said.

    Along similar lines, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she saw Chevron as “doing the very important work of helping courts stay away from policymaking.”

    “I’m worried about the courts becoming uber-legislators,” the justice said.

    Justice Samuel Alito suggested that Chevron became popular because it was viewed as a way of discouraging judges from imposing their own views in a case.

    Justice Alito asked Mr. Martinez if he agreed “that one of the reasons why Chevron was originally so popular was concern that judges were allowing their policy views consciously or unconsciously, to influence their interpretation of the statutes in question.”

    Mr. Martinez replied, “yes.”

    That fear has diminished over time because nowadays courts rely less “on legislative history and on more free-form analysis that I think made it easier for policy considerations to infect the judicial decision-making process,” the attorney said.

    But the Supreme Court has “now made clear that, really, we should be text-focused, we should be focused on faithful agency to Congress.”

    The late Justice Antonin Scalia backed away from his initial enthusiasm about Chevron deference after he realized the APA “had text that actually bore on this question,” he said.

    “When you’re enforcing that text, you come to the same place as our Article III argument, which is that courts have to exercise independent judgment.”

    Justice Alito suggested Mr. Martinez was arguing that courts decide cases arbitrarily.

    “Do you think that the canons of interpretation that we have now and all of the other tools that we have in our statutory interpretation toolkit are like the enigma machine? And so we have these statutes and they’re sort of written in code and we run them through the enigma machine and –abracadabra—we have the best interpretation? Do you really think that’s how it works?”

    Mr. Martinez said the problem with Chevron is that “you’re not trying to find the best interpretation anymore. You’re, in fact, agreeing that you have to impose the not-best interpretation because you have to defer.”

    This means that Chevron is the only canon “that says to courts, ‘you can stop doing your normal interpretive function and we’re going to allocate that interpretive function outside of Article III,’” the attorney said.

    Responding to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Mr. Martinez said the Supreme Court “has tried to rein in Chevron in numerous ways, but I think that what all of those efforts show is that you kind of need a secret decoder ring to figure out what the law means under this court’s approach.”

    Loper Bright attorney Paul Clement said Chevron deference hurts small businesses.

    “Commercial fishing is hard,” he said. Space on vessels “is tight, and margins are tighter still.”

    For his clients to have “to carry federal observers on board is a burden, but having to pay their salaries is a crippling blow.”

    Chevron deference “is unworkable as its critical threshold question of ambiguity is hopelessly ambiguous. It is also … a reliance-destroying doctrine because it facilitates agency flip-flopping.”

    U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the court that Chevron deference should be affirmed.

    “The Chevron framework is a bedrock principle of administrative law with deep roots in this court’s jurisprudence,” she said.

    “Overruling a precedent is never a small matter. But overruling a precedent as foundational as Chevron should require a truly extraordinary justification. And petitioners don’t have one.”

    The other side argues that Article III “requires de novo review of all statutory interpretation questions.”

    De novo review is when a court rules on an issue without giving deference to a previous decision, as if the case were being heard for the first time.

    “But that’s flatly inconsistent with precedent going back” to the early days of the American republic, she said.

    They are wrong to argue that Chevron violates due process because “the application of deferential standards of review doesn’t constitute impermissible bias.”

    And the contention that the APA requires de novo review is “inconsistent with the statute’s history and the way it’s been understood ever since its enactment, including in the more than 70 cases in which this court has relied on Chevron to sustain an agency’s interpretation.”

    Overturning Chevron deference would cause upheaval and lead to “endless litigation,” Ms. Prelogar said.

    “Thousands of judicial decisions sustaining an agency’s rulemaking or adjudication as reasonable would be open to challenge, and that profound disruption is especially unwarranted because Congress could modify or overrule the Chevron framework at any time.

    “Congress has many times considered proposals to do so, but it’s never taken that step,” she added.

    Justice Neil Gorsuch told the top government lawyer that, “Maybe a dozen or more circuit judges have written asking us to overrule Chevron. And … it also may be why one of your colleagues last year said I don’t know what ambiguity means at this lectern.”

    “And should that be a clue that something needs to be fixed here, that even the federal government at the podium can’t answer the question what triggers ambiguity?”

    Even “here in this rather prosaic case,” lower court judges “can’t figure out what Chevron means,” the justice said.

    Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “Most scholars of statutory interpretation consider Chevron to be an interpretive canon, much like clear statement rules, rule of lenity, judicially created.”

    Ms. Prelogar said she didn’t think of it as “a canon,” but instead regards it as “fundamentally rooted … in kind of setting the ground rules for how all three branches of the government are operating together.”

    The Supreme Court has been “recognizing that there are legitimate reasons why Congress cannot answer every question itself and why it will want to go hand-in-hand with an agency by charging that agency with administering the statute.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 01/18/2024 – 22:20

  • DoorDash To Raise NYC Delivery Fees After New Minimum Wage Law
    DoorDash To Raise NYC Delivery Fees After New Minimum Wage Law

    A new law in December guarantees fair compensation for 65,000 gig workers in New York City, who are essential for food delivery services. The minimum wage law forces food-delivery apps, like DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats, to pay gig workers at least $17.96 an hour.

    As a result of higher hourly wages, The New York Post obtained a memo from DoorDash informing NYC restaurants about new delivery fee hikes. 

    The memo explained customer fees will rise “to help offset the increased costs.” However, there was no mention of how much. 

    Food-industry insiders told NYPost that DoorDash could add between $2 to $4 per order:

    The result: A typical dinner that’s delivered in New York City — whether it’s a burger, a chicken burrito or a plain cheese pizza — is likely to get $4 pricier, on average.

    A DoorDash spokesperson confirmed to the newspaper about the increase in delivery fees but declined to comment on a specific amount: 

    “We have made clear from the start that we planned to introduce fees when the new minimum pay rate was first introduced.” 

    The spokesperson said the fees will be introduced in the “coming weeks.” 

    The memo also stated that DoorDash’s maximum commission per order will be raised from 20% to 23% for delivery orders and 5% to 8% for pick-up orders. 

    Uber Eats and Grubhub have also warned that the minimum wage law will result in higher prices for consumers. 

    “All options are being considered, including changes that may negatively impact small restaurants, as we try and adapt to the city’s poorly thought out rule,” an UberEats spokesman told NYPost. 

    NYC is one of many places where minimum-wage laws are being introduced and about to increase takeout food prices. 

    In Los Angeles, the owner of four Fatburger franchises said menu prices will have to be hiked and employee hours trimmed in anticipation of a new minimum wage of $20 per hour in April. 

    And two large Pizza Hut operators in the Golden State laid off all their delivery drivers ahead of a new minimum-wage law.

    Food inflation is here to stay. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 01/18/2024 – 22:00

  • Washington Democrats Want To Make Armed Self-Defense Illegal At Dangerous Bus Stops
    Washington Democrats Want To Make Armed Self-Defense Illegal At Dangerous Bus Stops

    While violent criminals in Seattle have no compunction about carrying weapons wherever they go, Washington Democrats want to strip law abiding citizens of the ability to match force in self-defense in various public places.

    As journalist Jason Rantz notes;

    Their newest bill bans weapons, including legally purchased guns and knives, at bus stops and transit centers.

    SB 5444 isn’t just an overreach; it’s a direct attack on law-abiding citizens. And it disproportionately affects those demographics the Democrats always claim to champion. The irony is as thick as it is infuriating.

    While current law prohibits weapons in courtrooms, bars, and other restricted areas, the new bill adds several new categories of prohibited areas, such as public libraries, zoos, aquariums, parks, community centers, and other public buildings – which emboldened criminals will promptly ignore as they prey on victims.

    The bill prohibits full-time mass transit users from carrying weapons for self-defense, depriving low-income residents of their right to bear arms.

    According to Rantz, western Washington saw a spate of high-profile violent crimes in 2023 – many of which occurred in places that SB 5444 would rob law-abiding citizens of the ability to match force with assailants.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsIn November, a 21-year-old man was murdered on the metro – shot dead as he was apparently sleeping. That same month, a 64-year-old man was stabbed after getting off a Metro bus in Seattle. In the Parkland area of Seattle, two young men were shot dead last year at a bus stop across the street from an elementary school.

    Rantz further notes that Seattle mass transit is unsafe, period – and Democrats want to eliminate ‘reasonable means of defending ourselves.’

    Washington Democrats routinely push legislation making it easier for criminals to suffer fewer — if any — consequences for their crimes. But at least the rest of us have been left with means to protect ourselves and our families from the criminals Democrats keep out of jail. But if this bill passes, we’ll again be sitting ducks.

    It’s unclear what bill sponsor State Senator Javier Valdez (D-Seattle) hopes to accomplish. He did not respond to a request for comment. It’s safe to say the intent is not to add more jail time to criminals caught with weapons because that’s already against the law, and Democrats are pushing legislation that lessens punishment for gun-related crimes. This specifically targets law-abiding citizens, disproportionately impacting low-income communities that rely on mass transit. -mynorthwest

    According to King County Metro data, law-abiding black residents will be most disadvantaged by the new bill, as they are more likely than white people to ride the bus.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 01/18/2024 – 21:20

  • TIA Warns Congress Of Rampant Fraud In Trucking
    TIA Warns Congress Of Rampant Fraud In Trucking

    By John Gallagher of OilPrice.com

    Rampant fraud in trucking has become an $800 million problem and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is not addressing the problem, according to the lobby representing 3PLs and brokerage firms.

    “There’s a surge of malicious actors engaging in illegal activity, registering with FMCSA as carriers and perpetrating fraud, theft and holding freight hostage in situations without any legal consequences,” said Jeffrey Tucker, testifying on behalf of the Transportation Intermediaries Association at a hearing before the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Wednesday.

    “While this is obviously an economic problem, hurting consumers and businesses alike, it also raises safety and security concerns. Unfortunately, FMCSA is failing to enforce the law or investigate the tens of thousands of fraud complaints lodged with it.”

    Asked during the hearing the types of fraud he sees being committed, Tucker, who is also CEO of Tucker Company Worldwide, a New Jersey-based freight brokerage, said the problem is criminals masquerading as brokers as well as trucking companies.

    “It shouldn’t be seen as either carrier fraud or broker fraud. These are just criminals,” Tucker said.

    Tucker testifying on Wednesday. Credit: House T&I Committee

    He pointed to similar cases of fraud involving dispatch services that are often based in another country but are not required by FMCSA to obtain a license or registration, as is the case with U.S.-based services.

    “FMCSA must stop dabbling in non-safety commercial considerations like what dollar amount a performance bond should be or what commercial terms are included inside a private contract between two parties. Until there are effective measures to address and enforce solutions for this issue, the continued dysfunctionality of the supply chain and its adverse impact on the broader economy will persist.”

    Driver shortage?

    In addition to freight fraud, Tucker addressed the contention made by sectors within the trucking industry as well as within the Biden administration that there is a driver shortage.

    “There is no driver shortage nor has there been one,” Tucker testified. “That is a false narrative that may lead to unintended consolidation in the industry and to weakening America’s supply chain. A more than doubling of American carriers and an increase of 1 million drivers has occurred over the last 10 years. We must have a more nuanced conversation about this.”

    U.S. Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., a former trucking company owner, challenged Tucker.

    “If you’re out there dealing with it every day, there is” a driver shortage, Bost said, adding that the increasing legalization of marijuana among individual states is exacerbating the problem.

    “You may have a lot of people who may be good drivers, but they prefer to smoke dope on the weekend and they can’t get clean by Monday. It’s not like having a beer on Sunday during a football game.”

    Red Sea supply chain costs

    Lawmakers were also concerned about the recent attacks on cargo vessels in the Red Sea by Houthi rebels and the ripple effect on the global supply chain.

    “The initial impact is the delay of vessels arriving both in Asia and coming back to the United States,” testified Stephen Edwards, CEO of the Virginia Port Authority.

    “So ocean carriers are rescheduling all of those ships and detouring around Africa” instead of going through the Suez Canal, he said, which will settle into a pattern of ships bound for the U.S. East Coast taking an extra seven days in transit.

    “You can take the view … that the extra seven days could be offset by the loss of the Suez Canal fees. But that is not true for [vessels moving from] Asia to the Mediterranean or Asia to North Europe.”

    Tucker added that another concern is special fees related to the disruption and delays that the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission is allowing ocean carriers to charge their customers.

    “There is concern that maybe those fees are not applicable to the situation, and shippers would like to see more oversight on it,” Tucker said. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 01/18/2024 – 21:00

  • "End Of The World Bunker" Listed On Zillow: 10,000SqFt, Blast-Doors, & EMP Shielding
    “End Of The World Bunker” Listed On Zillow: 10,000SqFt, Blast-Doors, & EMP Shielding

    Elites have spent the last decade building and or purchasing underground doomsday bunkers. Whether it’s to survive the next global conflict, civil war in America, a tyrannical government that locks down the economy because of a virus, out-of-control BLM riots, and or possibly a solar storm that zaps that nation’s power and communications grid, bunker demand has been smokin’ hot.

    X account “Zillow Gone Wild” posted Thursday about a 10,000 sqft bunker hidden in Polo, Missouri, that was recently listed. 

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    “In an era where even technology titans are grabbing headlines for their investments in personal safety, such as his end-of-the-world bunker, this property emerges as a true testament to visionary planning,” the Zillow listing said. 

    The bunker offers 10,007 sqft of modernized underground space and is located just 35 minutes away from Kansas City. 

    “It has 2.5 foot thick concrete walls, EMP-resistant copper shielding, and 2 3,000 pound blast doors,” Zillow Gone Wild said. 

    The bunker’s price is $2 million – and that’s affordable compared with other bunkers listed for tens of millions of dollars. 

    And in the world of bunker-building news, corporate media recently shined a spotlight on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s underground bunker being built in Kauai, Hawaii. Almost as if he knows something…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 01/18/2024 – 20:40

  • "We've Memory-Holed How Awful Things Were" – Axios Beclowns Itself In Anti-Trump Rant
    “We’ve Memory-Holed How Awful Things Were” – Axios Beclowns Itself In Anti-Trump Rant

    Establishment friendly news outlet Axios has gone full BuzzFeed in a ham-handed ‘gotcha’ – suggesting that Trump supporters are ‘selectively’ touting the former president’s pre-pandemic economic record, whilst ignoring a once-in-a-century exogenous event that no reasonable person would ever blame any sitting president for.

    According to Axios, “[Trump’s] economic record is only good if you leave off what happened from March 2020 to the end of his administration.“

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    Yes, idiots, and what could have happened during that time period that was completely outside of his control? Perhaps the same mysterious event that Biden ignores while taking credit for ‘record job creation’ since entering office?

    Buried within the article, Axios notes that it was only after the pandemic hit that unemployment spiked to 14.8%. They also undermine themselves by citing Paul Krugman, who noted that giving Trump a pass on the pandemic economy is ‘understandable’ since “Countries around the world faced similar struggles to the U.S. at the time.”

    “We may have memory-holed just how awful things were back in 2020,” Axios author Emily Peck writes.

    No Emily, Trump supporters – well, any rational person – are giving Trump a pass on something that was completely outside of his control, and focusing on what he actually did before the pandemic.

    The replies, as usual, are hilarious.

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 01/18/2024 – 20:20

  • 3 Gun Rights Cases Before the Supreme Court You Should Know About
    3 Gun Rights Cases Before the Supreme Court You Should Know About

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

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Getty Images, Shutterstock)

    Both sides of the Second Amendment debate will be watching the U.S. Supreme Court closely in 2024 as it applies the standards from previous decisions to new high-profile cases.

    In the 2022 New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen decision, the Supreme Court ruled that, to be constitutional, new gun laws must match the plain text of the Constitution and the “history and tradition” of the United States.

    “The test that … applies today requires courts to assess whether modern firearms regulations are consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority in June 2022.

    One of the first major post-Bruen cases, United States v. Rahimi has court watchers curious about how Bruen will be applied. The high court heard oral arguments on Rahimi on Nov. 7, 2023.

    Federal law currently bars those who are under domestic violence restraining orders from possessing guns. The Supreme Court in the Rahimi case will decide if it stays or goes.

    Gun control advocates say the “text and tradition” standard of the Bruen decision, if applied in Rahimi, would allow violent abusers access to guns, resulting in the deaths of domestic violence victims.

    “The Supreme Court must reverse this dangerous [Bruen] ruling,” Janet Carter, senior director of issues and appeals at Everytown Law, wrote on the Everytown for Gun Safety website. “Domestic abusers do not have—and should not have—the constitutional right to possess a firearm.”

    Gun rights advocates say the Rahimi case has been mischaracterized as an attempt to arm violent criminals when it’s really about protecting society without preemptively suspending constitutional rights.

    Members of the public shoot a variety of rifles and other weapons at a shooting range during the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival in Greeley, Pa., on Oct. 9, 2022. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

    “It’s going to answer one issue, which is, do we as a country have a historical tradition of disarming people that we believe to be dangerous?” William Kirk, a Washington state-based lawyer who specializes in the Second Amendment, told The Epoch Times.

    “And the answer is, ‘Yes, we do.’”

    Second Amendment lawyers predict that the Supreme Court will uphold the federal domestic violence law in Rahimi. They hope that the court will also ensure that due process rights are protected and an avenue for returning confiscated firearms is preserved.

    “The real issue being decided goes far beyond the narrow question,” Tom Grieve, a Wisconsin criminal defense lawyer, told The Epoch Times.

    Mark Smith, a constitutional attorney and author, agreed. He said it’s vital that the court protect the due process rights of gun owners.

    “The most important thing Second Amendment supporters should want the Supreme Court to state in the Rahimi case is that the government may not disarm any American citizen unless there is first and foremost a court finding that a person is violently dangerous, after a robust evidentiary hearing with counsel, live witnesses, and ample due process,” he wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.

    According to court records, Zackey Rahimi is a drug dealer based in Arlington, Texas, who abused his girlfriend and had a penchant for shooting at people when he was angry.

    In 2019, he was placed under a domestic violence restraining order that barred him from possessing or purchasing firearms. Mr. Rahimi reportedly agreed to the order during a court hearing. He later assaulted a different woman and was involved in at least five more shootings, court records show.

    He was indicted by a federal grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas for violating the restraining order after police found guns, drugs, and cash in his home.

    He asked the Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which covers Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, to toss the indictment because the restraining order was issued before he was convicted of any of the crimes for which the order was issued.

    The court upheld the indictment. He pleaded guilty to violating the restraining order and was sentenced to 73 months in prison.

    After the Bruen decision, the 5th Circuit reversed its decision, according to a petition filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

    The Department of Justice in Washington on Jan. 4, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

    “The Fifth Circuit at first affirmed [the indictment], reasoning that its decision in McGinnis foreclosed Rahimi’s Second Amendment challenge. But after this Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Fifth Circuit withdrew its opinion. After receiving supplemental briefing on Bruen, the court reversed,” the petition reads.

    The 5th Circuit ruled that, under the Bruen standard, 18 USC 922 (g) (8), which relates to unlawful possession of a firearm, didn’t align with the text of the Second Amendment and that there was no historical analog to indicate that the law was in line with the United States’ history and tradition of firearms regulation.

    The court ruled that Mr. Rahimi had been deprived of his Second Amendment rights.

    Define ‘Dangerous’

    DOJ lawyers told the court that the 5th Circuit had misread the Bruen decision.

    At that time, Republican-appointed Chief Justice John Roberts asked Mr. Rahimi’s lawyer, J. Matthew Wright, “You don’t have any doubt that your client is a dangerous person, do you?”

    When Mr. Wright said it depends on what was meant by ‘dangerous person,’ the chief justice responded with, “Well, it means someone who’s shooting, you know, at people. That’s a good start,” according to The Associated Press.

    However, Justice Samuel Alito, a Bush appointee, expressed concern that someone could receive a domestic violence restraining order without “any finding of dangerousness” before losing their Second Amendment rights.

    “Now, suppose someone is later prosecuted for violating that provision. Would it be a defense for that person to say that the state law in question did not require such a finding and, in fact, there was no such finding in my case?” he asked U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.

    Mr. Kirk, who also hosts a YouTube channel focused on Second Amendment issues, expects the court to be particular in its decision.

    “It’s going to be a narrow, tailored opinion, and it’s going to answer one issue, which is, do we as a country have a historical tradition of disarming people that we believe to be dangerous? And the answer to that question is, ‘yes, we do,’” Mr. Kirk told The Epoch Times.

    Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts arrives at the Senate chamber for impeachment proceedings at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 16, 2020. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    While he agrees with Mr. Kirk on what the court will likely decide, Mr. Grieve said that the bigger question is how the justices will come to their conclusions.

    “There’s a lot of ways this can go, right and wrong. And I think we may see a mixture of both,” he said.

    Mr. Grieve pointed out that under Bruen’s text requirement, the justices will need to determine the definition of “the people.”

    “What are the limits of the phrase ‘the right of the people?’ Is it just law-abiding citizens? Is it everyone?” he said.

    The justices will also have to determine what constitutes “tradition.” How far back do they have to trace a law’s lineage before it can be considered a tradition?

    Conflicting Ideas on Tradition

    According to Mr. Grieve, many gun control advocates point out that the Second Amendment was incorporated into the states under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law.

    But most gun rights activists say tradition requires the court to consider the law in the context of the year that the Constitution was ratified, 1791. At that time, there were far fewer gun regulations.

    “There is seemingly no end to the directions this could be going,” Mr. Grieve said.

    And while it’s not as significant in the Rahimi case, some gun rights advocates expect due process to be a factor.

    This was evidenced by Justice Alito’s question about whether “a finding of dangerousness” should be required before firearms are confiscated.

    Aidan Johnston, director of federal affairs for Gun Owners of America, said this is crucial since many state red flag laws don’t have any due process requirements. He said this could result in the disarming of people who need protection during contentious divorce proceedings.

    “Often, an innocent victim is deprived of the right to defend themselves. The Second Amendment is actually about empowering the victims,” Mr. Johnston told The Epoch Times.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 01/18/2024 – 20:20

  • Netanyahu In Blistering Rebuke Of US Post-War Plans: "Israel Will Control Entire Area From The River To The Sea"
    Netanyahu In Blistering Rebuke Of US Post-War Plans: “Israel Will Control Entire Area From The River To The Sea”

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that he informed the White House that he firmly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state in any postwar scenario, after also saying that the operation to eliminate Hamas could continue all the way into 2025.

    In statements that run directly counter to what the US has expressed (namely a desire for a two state solution), Netanyahu said, according to the widely circulated Hebrew translator’s words, “In any future arrangement … Israel needs security control all territory west of the Jordan. This collides with the idea of sovereignty. What can you do?”

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    The Israeli leader added that he had “told this to the Americans” and then stressed, “The prime minister needs to be capable of saying no to our friends.” 

    He also said Israel seeks a “decisive victory” over Hamas and that war is “not about the lack of a Palestinian state but the existence of a Jewish one.”

    “Every area that we evacuate, we receive terrible terror against us. It happened in south Lebanon, in Gaza, and also Judea and Samaria… and therefore I clarify that in any other arrangement in the future the state of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea.”

    “This truth I say to my American friends.” He emphasized that questions of Israeli sovereignty can’t be “imposed” from the outside, even from the “best of friends” – in a reference to Washington.

    The prime minister’s word choice of “from the river to the sea” is interesting given that this is the very phrase often used by groups opposed to the state of Israel and pro-Palestine supporters. Critics have called it a pro-Hamas, antisemitic and pro-genocidal slogan when shouted at pro-Palestine demonstrations. Netanyahu without doubt used the phrase specifically to show that Israel doesn’t plan to give even an inch of statehood to the Palestinians.

    It has for weeks been clear that Israeli and US officials have been clashing on a vision for the Hamas “day after”. The US has called for the Palestinian Authority (PA) to eventually resume control of the Gaza Strip, but the Netanyahu government has firmly rejected this, calling the PA terror sympathizers, and saying this won’t solve Israel’s security problems.

    ABC News/Google Earth

    Tel Aviv’s resistance to the United States’ more “moderate” stance has been deeply awkward for the Biden administration, given it is the US that has given the weaponry and support Israel needs to execute the war in the first place, which has taken a reported over 24,000 Palestinian lives, with the majority of these being civilians.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 01/18/2024 – 20:00

  • At Least 9 Killed In Suspected Jordanian Airstrikes On Syria
    At Least 9 Killed In Suspected Jordanian Airstrikes On Syria

    Via The Cradle,

    Airstrikes, believed to have been carried out by the Jordanian air force, have killed at least nine civilians in the southern Syrian city of Suwayda on Thursday. 

    “Jordanian warplanes carried out airstrikes targeting residential areas and a warehouse in the southeastern province of Suwayda, killing at least nine people, including two girls and four women,” the opposition-linked war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has reported. 

    Unconfirmed image: ETV Baharat National

    “The death toll is likely to increase due to people [trapped] under the rubble and information about other victims, in addition to massive destruction to houses” in the area, SOHR added. 

    Local news outlet Suwayda24 said the strikes were likely carried out by Amman, and killed at least ten.

    SOHR director Rami Abdel Rahman said that Jordan regularly attacks Syria under the “pretext of combatting drug smuggling.” He said in this case that it remained unclear whether or not those killed in the strikes were involved in the drug trade. 

    However, Rayan Maarouf from the Suwayda24 news website said that the casualties were likely drug traffickers. On January 5, Amman confirmed via state media that its air force had launched two air raids on Syria while “in pursuit” of drug smugglers. 

    Alleged Jordanian airstrikes reportedly killed a number of civilians in Syria on December 18. On the same day, a Jordanian army statement said that a smuggling operation on their northern border with Syria had been foiled, but officials denied that any airstrikes had taken place at the time. 

    In May 2023, the Jordanian Army conducted an airstrike in southern Syria that allegedly led to the killing of a well-known Syrian drug trafficker, Marai al-Ramthan, along with his wife and children. 

    Drug smuggling has surged on the Syrian-Jordanian border, despite a recent boost in border security measures between Amman and Damascus.

    Jordan has accused the Syrian state of taking the drug smuggling threat lightly. Narcotics, quite commonly Captagon amphetamine pills, are smuggled into Jordan via Syria regularly.

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    The drug trade, among other political issues, has resulted in tensions in the already turbulent Syrian governorate of Deraa, which lies in close proximity to the Jordanian border.

    The Minister of Government Communications in Jordan and spokesman for the Council of Ministers, Muhannad Mubaydeen, said on December 19 that Amman is interested in further coordination with Damascus to combat the drug smuggling problem. 

    On Wednesday, Suwayda-based Syrian Druze leader Hikmat al-Hijri expressed support for Jordanian efforts to combat smuggling, but called on Amman to avoid harming civilians. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 01/18/2024 – 19:40

  • Dem Rep. Doesn't Understand 'Legal' Vs. 'Illegal' Immigration – Wants To Remove Statue Of Liberty
    Dem Rep. Doesn’t Understand ‘Legal’ Vs. ‘Illegal’ Immigration – Wants To Remove Statue Of Liberty

    They aren’t sending their best…

    On Wednesday, while the House Oversight and Accountability Committee discussed H.R.2, the House GOP’s Secure the Border Act, Freshman Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) revealed himself to be a complete moron.

    While several Democrats attacked the bill, Frost decided to perform a dramatic diatribe which included a mock bill to remove the Statue of Liberty.

    “My colleagues from the other side of the aisle, let’s be honest with immigrants who deserve better than what you’re offering them. Don’t welcome immigrants if you plan to reject them. If you keep pushing your bigoted H.R. 2 bill, then also pass this bill. I’ve taken the liberty of drafting it for you,” Frost said, holding up the draft.

    “It removes the Statue of Liberty, our largest symbol that tells people to come here,” he continued – apparently unaware that there is a legal immigration process currently being subverted by the those H.R. 2 is aimed at stopping.

    “This is who you are, removing the fabric of America. So, I want to know which Republican, who supports and voted for H.R.2, will introduce this bill,” Maxwell continued. “If you’re gonna support H.R.2 and these bigoted measures, the least you can do is not be a damn liar,” Fox News reports.

    The replies were priceless:

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    Meanwhile…

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    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 01/18/2024 – 19:20

  • Legal Blow: Hunter's Defense Hammered By Discovery Of Cocaine On Gun Pouch
    Legal Blow: Hunter’s Defense Hammered By Discovery Of Cocaine On Gun Pouch

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Attorney Abbe Lowell has faced a series of legal blows in his defense of Hunter Biden, but not quite as literal or lethal as what came this week in his client’s gun prosecution.

    After Lowell sought to dismiss the federal indictment as a trumped-up political prosecution, the Justice Department lowered the boom and revealed that Hunter’s gun was found in a pouch covered in cocaine.

    The disclosure is devastating for a defense that Lowell just rolled out late last year.

    In October, Lowell argued that Hunter had not lied on ATF Form 4473 when he indicated he was not an unlawful user of, or addicted to, narcotics.

    “At the time that he purchased this gun, I don’t think there’s evidence that that’s when he was suffering,” he said.

    It was a curious shift, since Hunter, President Biden and the media have repeatedly used his addiction to forgive everything from corruption to influence-peddling.

    Hunter released a book that had laid the foundation of that defense, and “Beautiful Things” was heralded by many in the press.

    Reviews gushed about “an astonishingly candid and brave book about loss, human frailty, wayward souls, and hard-fought redemption.”

    The image of a clean, redemptive soul is strikingly out of sync with a gun pouch that was reportedly covered in coke.

    What is clear is that the sobriety defense now seems as risky as it is implausible.

    In the special counsel’s filing, the court was informed that “an FBI chemist subsequently analyzed the residue and determined that it was cocaine. To be clear, investigators literally found drugs on the pouch where the defendant had kept his gun.”

    Hunter bought and possessed the Colt Cobra 38SPL revolver for 11 days between Oct. 12 and Oct. 23, 2018.

    That possession ended when his sister-in-law Hallie Biden tossed the firearm into a dumpster in Wilmington, Delaware.

    Hallie, the widow of Hunter’s deceased brother, had begun a sexual relationship with him and she apparently became concerned about what he might do with the gun.

    According to Hunter’s own memoir, that would make the window of sobriety a mere blink in time for a defense.

    The defense will likely challenge the admissibility of police testing due to the gun being tossed into the dumpster.

    Of course, Lowell can now argue that Wilmington dumpsters are so saturated with cocaine that any item would come out covered in coke.

    It is more likely that they will cite the break in the chain of custody as making the test unreliable and prejudicial.

    What is clear is that the sobriety defense now may be as risky as it is implausible.

    The government could argue that it should be able to use the testing as circumstantial evidence to rebut the claim or even impeach Hunter if he takes the stand (which seems unlikely).

    Hunter wrote about being a crack addict and alcoholic throughout this period, writing in his book that at some points he was “drinking a quart of vodka a day by yourself in a room is absolutely, completely debilitating” as was “smoking crack around the clock.”

    The most pressing problem is not the government portraying Hunter as Tony Montana from “Scarface,” it’s Hunter himself.

    He’ll have a tough time changing that story now.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 01/18/2024 – 19:00

  • Baltimore-Philadelphia In "Hammer Zone" Of Next Winter Storm
    Baltimore-Philadelphia In “Hammer Zone” Of Next Winter Storm

    A winter storm earlier this week ended a nearly two-year snow drought in cities including Washington, DC, Baltimore, and New York City. Another storm threatens metro areas along the I-95 Corridor on Friday morning. 

    Private weather forecaster NY NJ PA Weather wrote on social media platform X that a “winter storm is developing from Philadelphia to the New Jersey coast.” 

    “Tranquil and cold conditions today will give way to a significant winter storm by tomorrow for the Philadelphia metropolitan areas to the New Jersey Coast,” the weather firm said. 

    The forecast calls for the bulk of the snow just north of Baltimore City to Philadelphia to Trenton; those areas are labeled in different zones with corresponding snowfall estimates. 

    In a separate forecast, meteorologist Mike Masco expects intense snowfall rates between Baltimore and Philadelphia. 

    FRIDAY’S STORM WILL HAVE 3 ZONES TO CONSIDER… ONE ZONE WILL GET NEAR NOTHING WHILE THE OTHER GETS DUMPED ON WITH SNOW..

    The dynamics of this system will dictate the forecast outcome. I’ve highlighted 3 zones as it relates to what the upper air pattern will be doing Friday- Friday Night and how it develops our #Norlun trough — which will be responsible for “Intense” snow rates. If you’ve been following me.. I’ve been very specific that I like an area around #Philadephia esp it’s NJ suburbs and northern DE into central NJ (mostly south of #NYC and the Driscoll Bridge).

    Here’s my 3 zones I’ll be focusing in on.

    Zone 1 (Lehigh Valley, NNJ, Northern Philly Suburbs): Is in the left front quadrant of the jetstreak allowing for enough lifting to produce light to moderate zone. This area will high MUCH higher snow ratios (nearing 20:1) during the event which will yield 2-4″ (possibly localized more) as the area will work off limited moisture .15-.20″ of QPF

    Zone 2 (Central NJ, Southern NJ, Northern DE): Is the Hammer zone! It’s the area that will see focused lifting at 700mb and 800mb, located in the left front quadrant of the jet streak, and have maximum moisture .20-.40″ of QPF

    Zone 3 (DMV/Baltimore): Is the “screw zone”. This area is underneath the 500mb vorticity lobe but in the right front quad of the jetstreak thus sinking air will be prominent. The other factor is the intense snowrates and lifting over SNJ/DE/PA will lead to sinking air in another area and I do feel that will be over #Baltimore # DC area. I may need to revise my totals here a couple times once we get into now casting.

    Another cold blast is expected this weekend for parts of the Lower 48. 

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    After more than a week of most Americans freezing… 

    …global warming returns early next week across the nation. 

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 01/18/2024 – 18:40

  • The World's Coal-Fired Power-Generation Hit A Record High In 2023
    The World’s Coal-Fired Power-Generation Hit A Record High In 2023

    By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

    Global coal-fired power generation reached a record-high level in 2023, per data from environmental think tank Ember reported by Reuters columnist Gavin Maguire.

    As countries, especially in Asia, looked to meet growing electricity demand and ensure their energy security, coal use in power generation hit record highs.

    Per Ember data, global electricity generation from coal was 8,295 terawatt hours (TWh) between January and October, up by 1% compared to the same period in 2022.

    Meanwhile, global coal exports also rose last year to more than 1 billion metric tons for the first time ever, per cargo tracking data by Kpler, cited by Reuters’s Maguire. In 2023, worldwide thermal coal exports hit 1.004 billion metric tons, rising by 6.6% from the prior year.

    Global coal demand likely rose by 1.4% in 2023 and surpassed a record-high level of 8.5 billion tons for the first time, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report in December.

    Moreover, the three top coal producers in the world – China, India, and Indonesia – are boosting production, which is reaching new highs, the IEA said in its Coal 2023 annual report.

    While coal demand in the United States and the EU was set for a 20% record decline in 2023, coal use in emerging economies “remains very strong, increasing by 8% in India and by 5% in China in 2023 due to rising demand for electricity and weak hydropower output,” the IEA said.

    China’s coal demand is expected to drop in 2024 and plateau through 2026, and global demand is set to decline to 2026, “but China will have the last word,” the IEA noted.

    The outlook for coal in China will be significantly affected in the coming years by the pace of its clean energy deployment, weather conditions, and structural shifts in the Chinese economy, according to the agency.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 01/18/2024 – 18:20

  • Chinese Lab Sequenced COVID-19 Weeks Before Beijing Disclosed Data
    Chinese Lab Sequenced COVID-19 Weeks Before Beijing Disclosed Data

    Once again the timeline surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted – this time with the revelation that a researcher based in Beijing had already mapped the COVID-19 sequence two weeks before the CCP revealed its details to the world, raising questions over what other critical information China may have obscured from view – and why.

    The sequence came from a 65-year-old Chinese deliveryman who was hospitalized with high fever and coughing on Dec. 18, and became critically ill four days later.

    According to documents released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Ren Lili – a current Beijing-based recipient of US federal grants via US nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance, uploaded the COVID-19 sequence into an NIH US government genetic database on Dec. 28, 2019 – when Chinese official were still calling the disease an unknown pneumonia, and ordered health workers not to spread any information about the disease or face harsh penalties.

    Over two weeks later on Jan. 12, Beijing shared the genetic sequence with the World Health Organization. Two days later, the CCP acknowledged that the disease could spread between humans.

    The NIH’s GenBank repository to which the sequence was uploaded by Ms. Ren subsequently notified her that the submission was “incomplete” and “lacked the necessary information required for publication,” according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Ren – who works at the state-run Institute of Pathogen Biology – was asked by the NIH for more information, but the agency never heard back, resulting in the removal of the sequence from the database on Jan. 16, 2020. During the same period, GenBank received a near-identical COVID-19 genetic sequence from a different researcher, which was published Jan. 12, 2020, according to a letter released by the Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday.

    The newly unearthed information points to yet more evidence of the CCP’s lack of transparency on the origins of COVID-19.

    “This significant discovery further underscores why we cannot trust any of the so-called ‘facts’ or data provided by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) and calls into serious question the legitimacy of any scientific theories based on such information,” said committee chair McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Subcommittee on Health chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY), and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations chair Morgan Griffith (R-VA), in a joint letter, the Epoch Times reports.

    Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) testifies during a Republican-led forum on the origins of the COVID-19 virus at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 29, 2021. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

    “The American people deserve to know the truth about the origins of SARS-CoV-2, and our investigation has uncovered numerous causes for concern, including how taxpayers’ dollars are spent, how our government’s public health agencies operate, and the need for more oversight into research grants to foreign scientists.”

    As the Epoch Times‘ Eva Fu notes further;

    Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, praised the House committee for the findings and criticized the Biden administration for “lack of interest in understanding the basic facts of how this pandemic originated.” The declassified COVID origin report, compelled by a 2023 law, “obscured more than it illuminated,” and the Energy and Commerce Committee only received information after threatening subpoena, he noted.

    The virus genome data that Ms. Ren submitted, the earliest kind known by far, appears to have come from a 65-year-old Chinese deliveryman, who was hospitalized with high fever and coughing on Dec. 18 and became critically ill four days later.

    A Chinese microblogger said their private firm in the southern Chinese city Guangzhou had analyzed the virus samples on Dec. 26, 2019. Deeming the findings too sensitive, their company decided to withhold making them public and shared the findings with Ms. Ren’s institute the following day after they pieced a “nearly complete genetic sequence” together.

    “In terms of how I see this whole incident, most of all is disappointment, pain, and anger. We had been so timely on this, how come it’s still not under control?” the person wrote on Chinese social media. “It has less to do with science or technology, and more with policy and media.” A Chinese media report citing the incident has been deleted.

    Ms. Ren has led the discovery of several emerging viruses in China, including human rhinovirus A21 subvariant, and, like other prominent Chinese virology researchers, has come out in defense of the CCP on the virus origin issue.

    In correspondence from September 2021, now published in the medical journal Lancet, Ms. Ren and over a dozen other Chinese medical researchers dismissed the chances that the virus may have leaked from Wuhan Institute of Virology—another EcoHealth subgrantee that had, for years, been working on dangerous bat coronaviruses—demanding instead that the origins of COVID-19 would best be “investigated worldwide.”

    Chinese media have lauded her role in isolating and synthesizing the virus genome, citing approving statements from the World Health Organization that lent her credence. Ms. Ren’s work was recognized by the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences—the highest state-level Chinese medical research institute that her research center is affiliated with—as one of 40 “major national medical developments of the year.”

    Scrutiny has increased over the lab leak possibility.

    Dr. Francis Collins, director of the NIH until late 2021, said in recent closed-door congressional testimony that the theory that COVID-19 could have come out of a lab in Wuhan “is not a conspiracy theory.”
    National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’s former head Dr. Anthony Fauci made a similar statement when questioned days earlier by the same House panel investigating the COVID pandemic.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 01/18/2024 – 18:00

  • The Biggest, New Reporting Law For Business That You Probably Never Heard Of Is Ripe For Political Abuse
    The Biggest, New Reporting Law For Business That You Probably Never Heard Of Is Ripe For Political Abuse

    By Mark Glennon of Wirepoints

    Ownership of almost all small businesses has always been private. If their stock isn’t publicly traded, most companies haven’t needed to disclose the identify of owners anywhere.

    That’s over for most U.S. companies.

    The Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) went into effect January 1, requiring most businesses to identify their beneficial owners (someone who owns at least 25% of the company or who has “substantial control” over it) to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).And there’s certainly a high risk of political abuse.

    Just yesterday, news came of evidence that the FinCen is flagging for attention transactions that include words like “MAGA” or Trump. And who trusts the federal government not to leak what are supposed to be confidential reports? Even Trumps tax returns were leaked.

    The new law applies to U.S. corporations, limited liability companies and any other entities created by the filing of a document with a secretary of state or any similar office in the U.S. It also applies to companies formed under the law of a foreign country that have registered to do business in the U.S.

    Exemptions are described here, but they generally are narrow. Also, the law does not apply to companies (a) with at least 20 full-time employees in the U.S.; (b) that file a U.S. federal income tax or information return showing more than $5,000,000 in U.S. gross receipts or sales for the prior fiscal year; and (c) have an operating presence at a physical office in the U.S.

    It’s a dramatic change and will be a headache for many small companies. An estimated 30 million U.S. businesses will now have to file. The filed disclosures do not become public but may be used for law enforcement and national security. The law is intended to help stop and prosecute things like money laundering, tax fraud, terrorist funding and other illegal activities.

    Penalties for non-compliance can be harsh. The CTA establishes civil penalties ($500 per day, up to a total of $10,000) and criminal penalties (up to two years of imprisonment) for individuals who willfully fail to file

    The Illinois Secretary of State office will be taking on the task of notifying Illinois businesses about the law and developing materials to help explain it, which the Chicago Sun-Times wrote about here. Salute to both of them for that. Secretary of State Giannoulias and the state are not responsible for the new federal law in any way, so his office’s assistance will no doubt welcome to many unaware or perplexed small business owners.

    The law enforcement reasoning behind the CTA is no doubt valid, but it’s also true that many law-abiding businesses and their owners have valid reasons for privacy. They won’t be happy with the new law.

    Based on over thirty years earlier practicing corporate law and making venture capital investments, I can attest to many instances where privacy of ownership was important for a variety of business or personal reasons. I am not now a practicing lawyer, so please obtain your own legal advice.

    The law passed in 2021 as part of related legislation with bipartisan support, overriding a veto by President Trump. It also had substantial support in the financial community and with some business groups, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

    You won’t find many news reports on the CTA but plenty of good law firms have published advisories about the new law, which you can find by searching “Corporate Transparency Act.” Filing is done online at FinCEN’s website, which also links to FAQs and further information.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 01/18/2024 – 17:40

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Jan 18

Today’s News 18th January 2024

  • A Primer For American Patriots And Preppers Facing An Uncertain Future
    A Primer For American Patriots And Preppers Facing An Uncertain Future

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    This article contains excerpts from Alt-Market’s survival newsletter – The Wild Bunch Dispatch

    The average patriot (or prepper) is usually a middle class conservative or libertarian with a tendency towards independent thinking and some experience with economic struggle in their past. Most of us have made something of ourselves from very little, or, we had parents that made something of themselves from very little and we watched as children while they climbed their way up the ladder through hard work and merit.

    Our philosophy is based on experience and a willingness to look beyond the veil. Most of the western public is bombarded with endless messaging about how stable and safe and “prosperous” our society is. We are constantly slapped in the face with propaganda telling us that patriots are not only crazy, but also dangerous.  We are the bumbling bad guys in every film and TV show.  We’re the “extremists” that refuse to accept that the system works, and if we would just stop trying to be independent from the system, we will find safety and happiness.

    We are told a lot of things that aren’t true, and this is really the first thing that sets the preparedness culture apart from everyone else – A healthy sense of skepticism when it comes to establishment claims and mainstream assumptions. We will NOT be sitting idle listening to the band play while the Titanic sinks. We understand, however, that there’s a considerable number of people out there that are content to do so…

    There are numerous and unique motivations for people who delve into the patriot life and I think there’s a perception that it requires some kind of abnormal shift in routine or a complete upending of one’s existence.  If you become a patriot or prepper you have to live in a compound and wear army garb everyday and be suspicious of everyone.  It’s really a very simple addition to the daily grind, a hobby more than anything else.  No one is joining a cult; all we are doing is seeking self sufficiency wherever possible and taking a second look at the claims made by people in power.

    Which behavior is more bizarre? Being prepared and aware? Or, being willfully ignorant and constantly vulnerable?

    It’s also about realism, not pessimism. It’s not about living under a cloud of constant doom, only accepting that there are extreme problems in the world that may require extreme solutions. All I can say is, as I balance the good with the bad I find that I still remain an optimist. I believe free people have a chance to turn the tide and dismantle the cabal of influence that has created the instabilities we now face.

    But, to do this requires something beyond a vague understanding of freedom and a will to live. To change the path of our civilization requires a significant level of dedication to something greater. We need a personal foundation, a mantra, a philosophy that adds structure to our efforts. In other words, preparedness is not only about you.  Survival is not the end game. Preparedness is just a means to an end, which is why patriotism is also essential – We prepare so that we can fight for a better future, a future some of us may not live to enjoy.

    To this point, I will list what I believe are the top most important ideals for the modern patriot/prepper. These are the rules that I plan to follow in the chaotic world going forward, and I think that if a majority of those dedicated to liberty do the same we may just make it through the pyre with the majority of our humanity intact.

    Rule 1: Prepare For Others, Not Just Yourself

    In the midst of crisis there will come a time when you will have to help other people. You may not like other people, you may not trust other people, you might feel better crawling into a bunker and never dealing with another living soul until the breakdown has run its course. It doesn’t matter. If you have a conscience then you will be faced with the reality of need – Other people’s need.

    Do they deserve what they get? Maybe some of them do, while others do not. Knowing which is which will be up to you. Having the means to aid the innocent is paramount. Trust me on this – You DO NOT want to find yourself in a situation where good people need your help and you are incapable because you failed to plan ahead. You do not want that weighing on your spirit.

    Rule 2: Survival Alone Is Not Victory

    If you are alive but the rest of the world is enslaved, then you have ultimately lost. “Winning” is not possible until the root enemy is erased from existence. If the oligarchy that sabotages us is able to use a collapse to gain power while avoiding consequences, then they have prevailed and no matter how well you think you can hide eventually they will find you too.

    Do not think for a second that your life is worth more than the freedom of humanity as a whole. It’s not.

    Rule 3: Fear Is Transitory, Regret Is Forever

    Many people’s lives are ruled by fear. They are incessantly worried about what they could lose if they take action, if they deviate from the norm, if they upset the wrong people or rock the wrong boat. Human beings naturally seek acceptance and validation from their peers and from society. We want to belong to a tribe. We also want to remain comfortable and secure, avoiding struggle and conflict at all costs.

    But there are worse things than struggle and pain and disapproval, such as regret. Knowing that we could have done something profound, yet we chose instead to sit on our ass and do nothing because standing up is scary. That kind of regret is a poison that eats most people alive, especially in old age when we are less physically able to intervene in the course of history.

    Personally, I don’t really understand the fear of death, or the fear of confrontation or conflict, or the fear of facing adversity. I don’t get it. None of us is going to live forever, so we do what we can to make this life count. What I do fear, perhaps more than anything, is being useless when I’m called to make a difference. Do not let fear hold you back from what you know is right.

    Rule 4: You Do Not Need To Become The Monster To Defeat The Monster

    War is hell, that’s not in question. And make no mistake, we are in the middle of a war right now. But, ask yourself what you are fighting for in the first place. Is it a set of principles and beliefs, or is it simply to win no matter the cost?

    On the other hand, there are also people with a tendency to use the “turn the other cheek” mantra to argue against taking any action in self defense. Sometimes they are afraid, sometimes they truly believe that principles must be held to the letter, even to the detriment of everything else.

    It’s a razor thin line to walk between righteous non-violence and monstrous indifference. My position? When someone declares war on you, you fight back and put them down flat. Just make sure you don’t lose your soul in the process.

    Rule 5: Be Invisible When You Must, Be Visible When You Must

    Many preppers and patriots are obsessed with the concept of invisibility; the concept of the “Gray Man” and the tactic of blending in and going unnoticed. While this serves a purpose in some situations there are also advantages to being seen, to being visible.

    There is an old story of a Roman General talking to a Roman Senator as they walk around the markets of the capitol. The Senator takes note that many of the slaves within Rome looked like regular citizens and lamented the fact that he could not tell them apart from everyone else. He suggested to the General that they force the slaves to wear armbands as identification.

    The General spoke up, saying that the idea was a foolish one.

    The Senator was shocked by the General’s opposition and asked why? The General explained – “The slave population is vast, but the slaves have no idea. As you say, they blend in with the citizens and the leadership. If we give them all armbands they will see how many of them there are. They will realize they greatly outnumber us and will be tempted to revolt. Better that they not know.”

    There are times when visibility is more important that invisibility. There are times when invisibility is the path to defeat.

    Rule 6: In Every Moment Of Chaos There Is A Moment Of Peace

    Chaos is mostly a product of a mental reaction, a subconscious decision to panic instead of remaining calm and lucid. Chaos is created by people more than events; it’s how we process those events that makes them a disaster or a moment of triumph. That is to say, in every moment of chaos there is a moment of peace. The question is, can you restrain your impulse to panic and instead act with conscious and deliberate calm?

    To be sure, preparedness has a lot to do with this. There is a common misconception about preppers that we are “always afraid and paranoid.” The reality is the opposite – We are rarely afraid or paranoid because we have trained ourselves to be ready for most dangers. The people that are afraid, the people who usually panic, are those that are unprepared.

    Beyond this, though, is a deeper mindset that has embraced the inevitability of chaos. We know that the world is built upon a precarious house of cards and history shows us that this house of cards will inevitably fall. To assume otherwise is naive or insane.

    Rule 7: What We Do Now Echos In Eternity

    I can’t help but quote this piece of wisdom from Marcus Aurelius; I don’t think I could say it any better. Understand that the future is a summation of the actions we take today. Whether we are personally remembered or not is irrelevant; tomorrow is decided by what we do or don’t do. There is nothing that can stop this. We are the decision makers – Not the globalists, not governments, WE are the people who decide what the next era will look like.

    There are moments in history, rare moments, when the confluence of events and crises rest at the point of a fulcrum. It is a nexus, a crossroads that will determine the course of civilization for centuries to come. There are people who will encounter this storm and do nothing more than sit back and drift along with the tides of fate. There are others who are battling for the chance to control the rudder of the ship, aiming humanity to either free shores or the depths of the abyss.

    When all our lives are tallied in the great beyond we each may be faced with the terrible question: “What did you contribute?” As patriots and freedom fighters, I hope when that moment comes we will be able to say that we left nothing undone. That we conducted ourselves with honor. That we set the world right again.

    *  *  *

    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
    Wed, 01/17/2024 – 23:25

  • Trump Vows To "Never Allow" A Central Bank Digital Currency
    Trump Vows To “Never Allow” A Central Bank Digital Currency

    Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday vowed to never allow the use of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), as it would “give the government absolute control over your money.”

    “This would be a dangerous threat to freedom – and I will stop it from coming to America. We are also going to put in place strong protections to stop banks and regulators from trying to de-bank you for your political beliefs. That will never happen while I am your president,” Trump told a crowd in Portsmouth, New Hampshire – as first reported by The National Pulse.

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

    Trump’s comments come hours after Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) revealed that federal agencies have been flagging financial transactions using politically sensitive words such as “MAGA” and “Trump” in yet another egregious example of the establishment targeting political rivals.

    As we’ve reported for years, CBDCs – touted by globalists such as French Central Bank deputy governor Denis Beau as “the catalyst for improving cross-border payments by enabling the build-up of a new international monetary system” – are in fact the ultimate tools of oppression.

    Even Fed Governors know ‘this way lies danger’:

    “In thinking about the implications of CBDC and privacy, we must also consider the central role that money plays in our daily lives, and the risk that a CBDC would provide not only a window into, but potentially an impediment to, the freedom Americans enjoy in choosing how money and resources are used and invested,” Federal Reserve Governor Michelle Bowman told a Harvard Law School Program on International Financial Systems last year.

    Central bank digital currencies are part of a broader “war on cash.”

    A cashless society is sold on the promise of providing a safe, convenient, and more secure alternative to physical cash. We’re also told it will help stop dangerous criminals who like the intractability of cash.

    But there is a darker side – the promise of control.

    The elimination of cash creates the potential for the government to track and control consumer spending. Digital economies would also make it even easier for central banks to engage in manipulative monetary policies such as negative interest rates.

    But they seem to be an inevitability, as according to data from the Atlantic Council CBDC Tracker, 130 countries – representing over 98% of global gross domestic product – are exploring or developing CBDCs, marking an outsized increase from just a few years ago.

    Via cbdctracker.org

    They’re even starting to experiment with them for international settlement… In November, Zurich issued a CHF 100 million ($113m) digital bond via the SIX Digital Exchange – the most distinctive aspect of which is that it settles using a wholesale central bank digital currency (wholesale CBDC) issued by the Swiss National Bank (SNB).

    Resistance!

    Last April, Democratic Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (who is now working to create a new political party to qualify for the ballot in various states), vehemently opposed the Fed’s announcement of a “FedNow” CBDC, calling it a “slippery slope to financial slavery and political tyranny.”

    “While cash transactions are anonymous, a #CBDC will allow the government to surveil all our private financial affairs. The central bank will have the power to enforce dollar limits on our transactions restricting where you can send money, where you can spend it, and when money expires,” he wrote on X. “A CBDC tied to digital ID and social credit score will allow the government to freeze your assets or limit your spending to approved vendors if you fail to comply with arbitrary diktats, i.e. vaccine mandates.”

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

    In July, Kennedy promised to back the US Dollar with Bitcoin if he’s elected president.

    Also in July, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) vowed to kill FedCoin on “day one” of his presidency, telling Tucker Carlson at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa, “If I am the president, on day one, we will nix central bank digital currency. Done. Dead. Not happening in this country,” adding “They want to get rid of cash. They want no cryptocurrency. They want [CBDCs] to be the sole form of legal tender. It will allow them to prohibit ‘undesirable purchases’ like fuel and ammunition.”

    More recently, several states opposed to CBDC have launched bills which would prohibit classifying digital currency as money.

    If successful, Utah, South Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee would become the first states to exclude CBDC as a medium exchange – potentially creating significant roadblocks to CBDC in the United States.

    Finally, for those still unsure, we don’t need to look as far as China to understand the implications here in the West. As Laura Dodsworth wrote in October of the dystopian nature of CBDCs, via The Brownstone Institute:

    In 2019, Mastercard and Doconomy launched a credit card with a carbon footprint calculator that can switch off your spending when you reach your carbon max. This functionality is voluntary, but it could be an automatic aspect of a CBDC.

    Tom Mutton, a director at the Bank of England, said that the Government would be required to make the final decision on whether a UK CBDC should be programmable. Sir Jon Cunliffe, a deputy Governor at the Bank, said:

    “You could think of giving your children pocket money, but programming the money so that it couldn’t be used for sweets. There is a whole range of things that money could do, programmable money, which we cannot do with the current technology.”

    As this quote reveals, CBDCs won’t just alter our relationship with money but with government. Governments around the world have shown increasingly authoritarian tendencies during the management of the Covid pandemic, and more recently to discourage driving in cities. Behavioural science has been leveraged to manipulate, incentivise and coerce us into behaving as model citizens. Do we want to negotiate with Daddy State to be allowed to spend our ‘pocket money’ as we wish?

    An account-based CBDC would give the government enormous power over your money as your identity is connected to the money. A 2020 Bank of England discussion paper gave examples of programmability, for example that smart cars could automatically pay for fuel directly at the dispensing pump, with automated taxation and charitable donations at point of sale.

    That all sounds very convenient. But politicians pushing Net Zero goals on an unwilling population could choose to go a step further. If you insist on keeping your private car, despite the inconvenient 20 MPH speed limits, the ULEZ and congestion charges, and the Low Traffic Neighbourhood barriers, they could simply dictate a maximum fuel spend in a given time period. Just ten of your Britcoins on petrol this month, Sir, no more driving for you.

    Interestingly, we have not heard from the Biden administration with regard their support (or lack thereof) of CDBCs. Given their recent authoritarian over-steps, it shouldn’t be too hard to guess which side of the ‘more centralized power and control’ vs ‘freedom and personal sovereignty’ fence they might come down on.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/17/2024 – 23:05

  • A Technicality Could Sink South Africa's Genocide Case vs. Israel At The Hague
    A Technicality Could Sink South Africa’s Genocide Case vs. Israel At The Hague

    Via Consortium News

    In its defense last Friday before the World Court against allegations by South Africa that it is committing genocide in Gaza and must be stopped, Israel made a legal argument that could torpedo the case if the court buys it. In order for a claim to reach the International Court of Justice, there must be an established dispute between two states. Israel’s argument is that such a dispute was never established and thus the ICJ lacks jurisdiction to hear South Africa’s claim. 

    There would be a political outcry from those who seek to stop Israel’s ongoing slaughter in Gaza if the Court decides to dismiss the case on this technicality. But given the pressure the Court is no doubt feeling from the United States, Germany and other allies of Israel it might be the best, if not the only way for the Court to escape without having to decide that it’s merely plausible that Israel is committing genocide.

    The World Court in The Hague hearing South Africa v. Israel. (ICJ)

    That is the bar that needs to be met at this preliminary stage of the case for the Court to issue provisional measures to order Israel to cease its military operation.

    The Dispute Over a Dispute

    Last Thursday, South Africa tried to build a case, probably in anticipation of Israel’s bid, that this was indeed a dispute between Israel and South Africa and it indeed belonged before the World Court.  

    John Dugard, a South African professor of international law, told the Court:

    “The South African Government repeatedly voiced its concerns, in the Security Council and in public statements, that Israel’s actions had become genocidal. On 10 November, in a formal diplomatic démarche, it informed Israel that while it condemned the actions of Hamas, it wanted the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the leadership of Israel for international crimes. 

    On 17 November South Africa referred Israel’s commission of the crime of genocide to the International Criminal Court for ‘vigorous investigation’. In announcing this decision President Ramaphosa publicly expressed his abhorrence ‘for what is happening right now in Gaza, which is now turned into a concentration camp where genocide is taking place’.

    To accuse a State of committing acts of genocide and to condemn it in such strong language is a major act on the part of a State. At this stage it became clear that there was a serious dispute between South Africa and Israel which would end only with the end of Israel’s genocidal acts.

    South Africa repeated this accusation at a meeting of BRICS on 21 November 2023 and at an Emergency Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on 12 December 2023. No response from Israel was forthcoming. None was necessary. By this time, the dispute had crystallized as a matter of law. This was confirmed by Israel’s official and unequivocal denial on 6 December 2023 that it was committing genocide in Gaza.”

    Dugard argues that there is a dispute between Israel and South Africa. Dugard added that “as a matter of courtesy” before filing the case with the ICJ on Dec. 29, South Africa sent a “Note Verbale to the Embassy of Israel to reiterate its view that Israel’s acts of genocide in Gaza amounted to genocide — that it, as a State party to the Genocide Convention, was under an obligation to prevent genocide from being committed.”

    “Israel responded,” Dugard said, “by way of a Note Verbale that failed to address the issues raised by South Africa in its Note and neither affirmed nor denied the existence of a dispute.”

    On Jan. 4, South Africa sent another Note Verbal highlighting Israel’s failure to respond adequately to South Africa’s concerns, and concluded that the dispute between the nations was “plainly not capable of resolution by way of a bilateral meeting.” In addition, on Nov. 20 Israel recalled its ambassador to South Africa in protests over South Africa calling Israel’s operation in Gaza “genocidal,” which can clearly be interpreted as a dispute. 

    Israel Says There is No Dispute

    For its part, Israel on Friday argued that no such dispute exists and therefore the Court lacks jurisdiction over the case. Quoting from Article IX of the Genocide Convention, British attorney Malcolm Shaw KC, representing Israel, told the Court:

    “Whether or not a dispute in these terms exists at the time of the filing of the Application is a matter for objective determination by the Court, ‘it is a matter of substance, and not a question of form or procedure’. The Court will ‘take into account in particular any statements or documents exchanged between the Parties as well as any exchanges made in multilateral settings’, the Court has said.

    The key point here is the use of the term ‘exchange’ between the parties. Unilateral assertion does not suffice. There needs to be some element of engagement between the parties. The element of interchange and bilateral interaction is required. A dispute is a reciprocal phenomenon.”

    Shaw made clear Israel does not believe such an exchange took place:

    “South Africa cites only a couple of general public statements by Israel referencing merely a press report by Reuters and a publicity release from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. These responses were not addressed directly or even indirectly to South Africa. There is no evidence of ‘positive opposition’ as required by the Court.

    Further, South Africa cites no relevant exchange between the Parties, which would be the normal fashion for the expression and determination of a dispute between States. This actually typifies how South Africa has approached this matter. It seems to believe that it does not take two to tango. It is sufficient if one State determines there is a dispute, leaving the other party flummoxed.

    It is thus disingenuous for Professor Dugard to conclude that ‘Israel must have been aware from South Africa’s public statements, démarche and referral to the International Criminal Court of Israel’s genocidal acts that a dispute existed between the two States’. This is not a dispute, it is a ‘unispute,’ a one-sided clapping of hands.” 

    Shaw said Israel did respond to the Notes Verbale on Dec. 26 by offering to arrange a meeting between the two foreign ministries at South Africa’s “earliest convenience.” The Israeli embassy tried to deliver this note on Dec. 27 to the South African foreign ministry but the ministry was closed because of a holiday, Shaw said.

    He claims Israel was informed by the South Africans on Dec. 28 that the note should be hand-delivered on Jan. 2, but on Dec. 29 filed the case with the ICJ, allowing no time for the states to have a dialogue. That South Africa did not wait for this bilateral meeting before filing with the court puts its case at risk.  

    Legal Experts Weigh In

    “There does have to be a position stated by one side and rejected by the other before there is a dispute,” John Quigley, professor emeritus at the Moritz College of Law of Ohio State University, told Consortium News. “But there was probably sufficient statement by [South Africa] that it thought Israel was committing genocide, and sufficient statement by Israel that it was not committing genocide for there to be a ‘dispute” between the two.’”

    Quigley added, “If the court wants to avoid giving provisional measures, it could use this.” He made clear, however, that he thought this was unlikely to happen. 

    Analyst Alexander Mercouris concurred. He told CN: 

    “In a sane world it should not defeat the claim.  After all, in what sense has Israel been prejudiced? And given that the case is about genocide there is a strong case for acting with urgency.  However if the Court wants to find some way out of hearing the case, this lapse has provided it.   

    If the Court were to take this view, South Africa would have the option of requesting the Israeli response, and then re-filing, either when Israel provided its reply or, in the event that Israel inordinately delayed its reply, when that became clear.”

    American academic Norman Finkelstein, told an interviewer: “It will completely discredit the Court if they issue a decision — we have decided not to pursue this case of genocide because we don’t think there is a dispute. That just can’t work.” 

    Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, represented Bosnia-Herzogovina at the ICJ where he brought a case of genocide against Yugoslavia in 1993. “To the best of my knowledge the [Yugoslavs] did not know of my genocide lawsuit until the Registrar informed them of it,” Boyle said in an email. “Again, this created no problems for me with the Court on winning my first Order of Provisional Measures of Protection on April 8 [1993].” 

    Boyle added that Bosnia’s then president, Alija Izetbegovic was at the time “pretty busy negotiating” the Vance-Owen peace deal at U.N. headquarters in New York. “I don’t think he said anything about my genocide lawsuit to the [Yugoslavs] there before I sued them.” Thus the fact that Sarajevo and Belgrade never directly disagreed about a genocide claim did not affect the Court’s decision to issue provisional measures against Yugoslavia. 

    In an article published on Consortium News on Sunday, former British diplomat Craig Murray, who was in the public gallery for both days of the hearing, wrote that simply refusing to respond to an allegation of genocide cannot become a way for a nation to continue committing it with impunity. He wrote:

    “The case could be technically invalid, and then [the judges] would neither have to upset the major Western powers nor make fools of themselves by pretending that a genocide the whole world had seen was not happening. For a while, they looked visibly relieved.  Israel is hoping to win on their procedural points about existence of dispute …

    The obvious nonsense [Israel] spoke about the damage to homes and infrastructure being caused by Hamas, trucks entering Gaza and casualty figures, was not serious. They did not expect the judges to believe any of this. The procedural points were for the court. The rest was mass propaganda for the media.”

    Murray added: “I am sure the judges want to get out of this and they may go for the procedural points. But there is a real problem with Israel’s ‘no dispute’ argument. If accepted, it would mean that a country committing genocide can simply not reply to a challenge, and then legal action will not be possible because no reply means ‘no dispute’. I hope that absurdity is obvious to the judges. But they may of course wish not to notice it…”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/17/2024 – 22:45

  • 2024: Too Many Things Going Wrong
    2024: Too Many Things Going Wrong

    Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,

    It will be an interesting year.

    We know that the age of peak performance for humans varies, depending upon the activity. Peak performance for an athlete tends to come between ages 20 and 30, while peak performance for a person writing academic papers seems to come between ages 40 and 50 years. By the time people are 80 years old, they have a strong suspicion that health and other aspects of performance will deteriorate in the next 20 years.

    Economies, in physics terms, are similar to human beings. Both are dissipative structures. They require energy of the appropriate kinds to keep their systems growing and operating normally. For humans, the main source of this energy is food. For an economy, it is a mixture of energy that the economy is specifically adapted to. Today’s economy requires a certain mixture of energy directly from the sun, plus energy from fossil fuels, burned biomass, and nuclear energy. Electricity is a carrier of energy from different sources. It needs to be available at the right time of day and the right time of year to allow today’s economy to continue.

    Most people don’t realize that economies grow and eventually collapse. For example, we know that the Roman Empire started its growth in 625 BCE and reached its peak extent in 211 CE. It declined somewhat between 211 CE and 456 CE, when it finally collapsed after several invasions. The growth and collapse of economies is very much expected because of their nature as dissipative structures.

    In 2024, the world economy is acting more and more like an 80-year-old man than like a young vigorous economy. Perhaps the economy can continue for quite a few more years, but it increasingly looks like it is in danger of falling apart, or of succumbing as a result of what might be regarded as minor problems.

    Trying to predict precisely what will happen in the year 2024 is difficult, but in this post, I will examine some of the things that are going wrong in this increasingly creaky old economy.

    [1] Too many parts of the world economy are changing from growth to shrinkage.

    The blue circles can illustrate many different things:

    • The total goods and services produced by the economy;

    • The quantity of energy required to produce the total goods and service produced by the economy;

    • The total population that is supported by these goods and services (which will generally be rising or falling, too);

    • Goods and services per person (which tend to rise during periods of growth and fall in a shrinking economy);

    • And, strangely enough, the ability of the economy to maintain complexity. Without enough energy, structures such as governments tend to fail.

    As the economy moves away from growth, toward shrinkage, major changes can be expected.

    [2] In a growing economy, repaying debt with interest is very easy. In a shrinking economy, repaying debt with interest becomes close to impossible.

    If an economy is growing, there will likely be an increasing number of jobs available over time, and they will pay relatively more. If a person loses his/her job, it is not very difficult to get a position that will pay as much or more. Paying back a loan on a house or an automobile tends to be easy.

    A corresponding situation occurs for businesses. If the business can count on an increasing number of customers, overhead becomes easier and easier to cover with a growing consumer base.

    The reverse is obviously true in a shrinking economy. Jobs may be available if a person loses his/her current job, but the jobs don’t pay very well. Businesses may face periods with suddenly lower demand, as in 2020. There is a sudden need to reduce overhead, such as payments for office space, if the space is no longer being utilized by employees.

    Clearly, if interest rates rise, it becomes increasingly difficult for borrowers of all kinds to repay debt with interest. Raising interest rates is thus a way to intentionally slow the economy. If the economy is growing too quickly (like a 20-year-old sprinter), then such a change makes sense. But if the economy is behaving like an 80-year-old, hobbling along on a walking stick, it becomes likely the economy will figuratively fall and become severely injured. This is the danger of raising interest rates when the world economy is having difficulty growing at an adequate rate.

    [3] The physics of the system dictates that as the system shifts in the direction of shrinkage, the wealth of the system is increasingly distributed toward the rich and very powerful, and away from those of modest means.

    Physicist Francois Roddier writes about this issue in his book, The Thermodynamics of Evolution. He likens energy (and the goods and services produced using this energy) as being like energy applied to water. When energy levels are low, the less wealthy members of the economy tend to be squeezed out, just as (low energy) frozen water turns to ice. The reduced amount of energy available (and goods and services produced using this energy) increasingly bubbles up to the small number of economic participants at the top of the economic hierarchy. This issue tends to make the already rich even richer.

    In some sense, the self-organizing economy seems to preserve as much of the economy as it can, when energy supplies are inadequate. The wealthy seem to be important for keeping the whole system operating, so the physics tends to favor them.

    Inflation, in general, is a problem, especially for people with limited income. Higher interest rates also take a big “bite” out of spendable income. This problem is greatest for low income people. The benefit of higher interest rates, and of capital gains, tends to go to high income people. 

    High food prices especially affect the poor because, even in good times, food tends to be a high share of their income. For example, in a poor country, if food costs amount to 50% of a person’s income when food prices are moderate, a 20% increase in food prices will lead to food prices costing 60% of income. Such a situation quickly becomes intolerable because there is not enough income left for other essential goods. 

    Figure 2. Chart by the Federal Reserve of St. Louis showing the Share of the Total Net Worth Held by the Top 1% of US Citizens (99th to 100th percentile).

    The figure above shows that between 1990 and 2022, the share of total wealth held by the top 1% of US citizens rose from 23% to 32%. This means that other citizens were increasingly squeezed out of the benefits of the growing economy.

    [4] With their newfound power (arising from the growing concentration of wealth), the wealthy are tempted to exert increasing control over the economic system.

    The fact that the world economy was likely to reach annual limits of fossil fuel extraction about now has been known for a very long time. I have referred to a 1957 speech by US Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover pointing out this bottleneck many times. Wealthy individuals have known about this bottleneck for a very long time. They have been asking themselves, “How can we increasingly benefit from this change?”

    Clearly, reducing the population growth rate has been one of the goals of some of these wealthy individuals. With fewer people to share the resources available, everyone will benefit.

    But the wealthy can also see that hiding the energy bottleneck would be of huge benefit in keeping the current system operating as usual. These individuals, through the World Economic Forum and other organizations, have pushed for zero global warming emissions. They have tried to reframe the problem of inadequate inexpensive-to-produce fossil fuels as a problem of too large a quantity of fossil fuels for the system to handle. In their view, we can decide to transition away from fossil fuels without significantly adverse impacts.

    By hiding the energy bottleneck, companies selling vehicles can claim they will be useful for many years. Educational systems can claim that we are well on our way to finding substitutes for fossil fuels, and that there will be good jobs available in the new systems. With the bottleneck problem hidden, politicians do not have to present citizens with a very concerning and intractable issue. Since a happily-ever-after narrative is desired by all, it is easy for the wealthy (and politicians who want to be reelected) to influence the major news outlets to present only this view to readers. 

    [5] Major cracks in the economy are likely to start showing soon. The energy bottleneck is already pulling the economy down, even if major news media are reluctant to discuss the problem.

    The problem displays itself in several different ways:

    (a) The economy has moved toward two widely differing views regarding today’s energy situation.

    The narrative presented in the press is that we have an excessive amount of fossil fuels. In this view, any shortage of fossil fuels (or any other resource) would be quickly accompanied by rising prices. These rising prices would allow an increasing quantity of these materials to be extracted, quickly solving the problem. But the real story, for anyone who examines the details, is quite different. Affordability becomes very important, holding prices down. History shows that nearly every civilization has collapsed. Populations tend to grow but the resources supporting the economies don’t grow quickly enough. Rising prices don’t fix the problem!

    People who work with fossil fuels know how essential they are for our current civilization. The story about intermittent wind and solar substituting for fossil fuels sounds very far-fetched if a person thinks about the need for heat in the winter and the difficulties associated with long-term storage of electricity. The two widely differing narratives surrounding our energy future sound like they could have come from the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.

    (b) Repaying debt with interest gets to be an increasing problem.

    Strange as it may seem, added debt can temporarily act as a placeholder for additional energy. Debt is a promise for goods and services that will be made with future energy. This placeholder can allow capital goods, such as factories, to be made which allow more goods and services to be made in the future. This placeholder can also be used as the basis for money to pay workers, so that they can afford to purchase more goods.

    At some point, the debt becomes too much for the system to sustain. We are seeing some of this in China, where there have been debt defaults in the real estate market. In the US, the commercial real estate market is experiencing high vacancy rates. There is increasing concern that, in many places, commercial real estate can only be sold at a huge loss. In this situation, the holders of debt are likely to sustain massive losses.

    (c) Political parties start differing widely on whether to increase government debt. 

    The more conservative parties do not want to keep adding more debt, but the more liberal parties insist that there is no other way out: If there isn’t enough energy of the right kind, the added debt can perhaps be used to fund projects in the renewable energy sector that will create the illusion of progress toward an adequate supply of energy of the right kind at the right price. The added debt can also be used to continue the many social programs promised to citizens and to provide support for activities such as the war in Ukraine.

    So far, adding debt has worked for the US because the US dollar is the world’s reserve currency and because the US has tended to keep its target interest rates high, encouraging other countries to invest in US securities. If other countries try to add substantially more debt, their currencies will tend to fall, leading to inflation. 

    The US may soon also run into an inflation problem because of added debt. This happens because it is possible to “print money,” but it is not possible to print goods and services made with inexpensive energy products. For example, the temptation is to bail out failing banks and pension plans with added debt. To the extent that this debt gets back into the money supply, but there aren’t added goods to match, the result is likely to be inflation in the prices of the goods and services that are available.

    (d) Broken supply lines are another sign of an economy reaching limits.

    When there aren’t quite enough goods and services to go around, some would-be buyers of goods have to be left out. 

    In the last three years, all of us have experienced at least some problems with empty shelves in stores and the unavailability of needed parts for repairs. Many kinds of drugs are in short supply around the world. Heavy industry has been encountering problems, as well. In 2022, Upstream Online wrote, “Drill pipe shortages causing headaches for US producers [of oil and natural gas].” 

    If we are reaching the limit of inexpensive fossil fuel available for extraction, an increasing number of these problems can be expected. These supply line problems tend to raise costs in a different way than “regular” inflation. Often, a more expensive product must be substituted, or a higher cost workaround is needed. For example, a person may need to use a rental vehicle while his current vehicle is being repaired because of unavailable replacement parts. 

    (e) Conflicts arise when there are not enough goods and services to go around.

    Part of the conflict comes from wage and wealth disparity. For example, an increasing number of people are finding reasonably-priced housing impossible to find. The combination of high interest rates and high housing prices tends to make home-buying a luxury, available only to the rich. An increasing share of young people are also finding automobiles too expensive to afford. One way “not-enough-goods-and-services-to-go-around” manifests itself is by many people not being able to afford the products in question. 

    There is often a belief that a more equitable distribution of income would solve the problem. But, if the economy cannot build more cars or homes because of energy shortages, this doesn’t fix the problem. Providing more money to the poor would instead cause inflation in the price of the goods that are available.

    Another way this conflict manifests itself is in conflicts among countries. Countries selling fossil fuels, such as Russia, would like higher fossil fuel prices, so that the standards of living of their own people can be higher. However, if fossil-fuel-importing countries, such as those in Europe, are forced to pay higher prices for the fossil fuel they use, it becomes difficult for companies in these countries to manufacture goods profitably. Also, the higher fossil fuel prices make the cost of growing food higher. Customers often cannot afford higher food prices.

    In the case of the fight between Israel and Gaza, at least part of the conflict relates to the natural gas field that Israel is developing, but which arguably belongs to Gaza. If Israel can develop this resource, it may be able to keep its own economy expanding for a while longer. The people of Gaza will remain very poor.

    (f) Manufacturing around the world seems to be reducing in quantity. It definitely is not rising to keep up with population growth.

    The big shortfall today is in goods, rather than in services. This is what a person would expect if an energy problem is giving rise to the problems we are currently experiencing.

    The organization S&P Global Market Intelligence puts out an index called the Purchasing Managers Index, for 15 countries, including a global average. The manufacturing portion of this index is in contraction on a worldwide basis, as of the latest data available. The extent of this manufacturing contraction is especially significant for the US, the European countries included, for Japan, and for Australia. The countries that are not in contraction are India, Russia, and China. 

    If manufacturing is in contraction, we would expect more broken supply lines in the months and years ahead.

    [6] How will all this turn out, in 2024 and long term?

    I don’t think we know. Things are likely to get worse economically, but we don’t know how much worse. We know that an elderly person can easily succumb to some illness. In the same way, we know that if the economy has enough weak points, a major collapse might occur, even without a huge decline in energy availability.

    At the same time, the economy seems to have a lot of resilience. Leaders of the US, and perhaps of other countries, as well, seem likely to take the route of adding increasing amounts of debt, to bail themselves out of whatever problems arise. If banks get into trouble, some new funding facility will be developed. If Social Security or private pensions need more funding, it will likely be provided by more government debt. This leads me to suspect that in the US, at least, there is likely to be a higher risk of hyperinflation (lots of money but very little to buy) rather than deflation (very little money, but also very little to buy).

    The Universe came into being, apparently out of nothing. The Universe has grown and continues to grow. Eric Chaisson, in his 2001 book, Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature, shows that the trend in the Universe has been toward ever greater complexity. 

    Figure 3. Image similar to ones shown in Eric Chaisson’s 2001 book, Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature.

    Together, it appears that the Universe, itself, acts like a dissipative structure. Self-organization leads the Universe to grow and become more complex, as long as it has adequate energy. The question becomes, “Where is the expanding energy supply for the Universe as a whole coming from? Can the expanding energy supply continue indefinitely, or until whatever force started it, chooses to stop it?”

    It seems to me that there is something from outside pushing the whole Universe along. Economists talk about “an invisible hand.” People from a religious background might say that there is a God who created the Universe, and is continuing to create it every day, through involvement in the things that take place on Earth, including the strange happenings in 2020. 

    If I am correct that there is an outside force influencing the economy today, perhaps Earth’s problems are temporary. One possibility is that eventually a new type of energy solution will be found. There is also the possibility that, at some point, whatever force started the Universe may cause the operation of the Universe to cease. A replacement (which we can think of as heaven) might be provided instead. 

    The popular narrative tends to see ourselves as having a great deal of power to manage problems with our current economy, but I don’t think that we have very much power to influence the system we find ourselves embedded in. The economic system behaves on its own, based on market forces, just a child grows up, matures, and eventually dies. The system within which we live is very much guided by what we call self-organization, which is outside our power to control.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/17/2024 – 22:05

  • New Jersey Adds MTA As Defendant In Lawsuit Over Planned NYC "Congestion Fee"
    New Jersey Adds MTA As Defendant In Lawsuit Over Planned NYC “Congestion Fee”

    New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy has added New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority to an amended lawsuit complaint that the state had filed against the US Department of Transportation.

    The lawsuit has argued that New York’s plan to charge drivers a congestion fee for driving through Manhattan’s central business district is unconstitutional and discriminatory against New Jersey residents, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

    New Jersey argues in the revised complaint that the congestion pricing policy breaches the dormant commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, the report says. This clause restricts states from implementing legislation that unfairly discriminates or places excessive strain on interstate commerce.

    The complaint points out that the plan does not allocate any of its generated revenue to New Jersey, nor does it provide tax breaks to its residents. Furthermore, it doesn’t impose the same charge on district residents, who are New Yorkers, for driving within the area.

    According to Bloomberg, the lawsuit reads: “New Jersey will not receive any of the revenue from the tolling scheme. Instead, the congestion pricing scheme solely benefits in-state economic interests, the MTA Capital Program, based on revenue it receives from out-of-state commuters, including New Jersey residents.”

    New Jersey is requesting both preliminary and permanent injunctions to prevent the MTA from carrying out construction or imposing new tolls related to the plan, as stated in the amended complaint.

    This direct approach seeks to suspend the plan’s progress and halt MTA’s activities pending a more extensive environmental review.

    On Tuesday, Governor Murphy said: “The federal government and the MTA can no longer be permitted to fast-track a proposal that solely benefits New York’s transportation system at the expense of hardworking New Jerseyans.”

    The MTA plans to start tolling drivers by late May or June, with E-ZPass users paying $15 during peak times to access the area south of 60th Street in Manhattan. The toll is projected to generate $1 billion annually.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/17/2024 – 21:45

  • US Coalition In Another Wave Of Strikes On Houthi Positions To Thwart Red Sea Launches
    US Coalition In Another Wave Of Strikes On Houthi Positions To Thwart Red Sea Launches

    Update 2143ET: In the overnight and early morning hours (local), the Pentagon has announced another round of strikes against Houthi launch positions, reportedly as the militants were preparing more attacks on Red Sea shipping:

    The U.S. has launched a new retaliatory strike against Houthi targets in Yemen amid the group’s continued attacks on international ships in the area, officials said Wednesday.

    Five areas were targeted in the U.S. strikes on Yemen: the governorates of Hodeidah, Taiz, Dhamar, Bayda and Saada, according to the Houthi state media, the Sanaa-Saba press agency.

    US Central Command detailed of the fresh attack, which marks at least the third or fourth round of such an assault, as follows:

    In the context of ongoing multi-national efforts to protect freedom of navigation and prevent attacks on U.S. and partner maritime traffic in the Red Sea, on Jan. 17 at approximately 6 p.m. (EST), U.S. Central Command forces conducted strikes on 14 Iran-backed Houthi missiles that were loaded to be fired in Houthi controlled areas in Yemen.

    These missiles on launch rails presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and U.S. Navy ships in the region and could have been fired at any time, prompting U.S. forces to exercise their inherent right and obligation to defend themselves. These strikes, along with other actions we have taken, will degrade the Houthi’s capabilities to continue their reckless attacks on international and commercial shipping in the Red Sea, the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, and the Gulf of Aden.

    * * *

    On Wednesday, just as the Biden administration has redesignated Yemen’s Houthis (or Ansar Allah movement) a global terrorist organization, the group has again launched an attack on a commercial vessel in the Red Sea, which suffered a direct hit.

    The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) issued a new alert describing an incident 60 nautical miles southeast of Yemen’s Aden. The report indicates that “vessel has been hit on the port side by an uncrewed aerial system.”

    This marks a handful of serious attack incidents in the vital waterway since the weekend, also following the US conducting a third round of missile strikes on Houthi launch sites on Tuesday, but which were smaller than the prior waves of attacks.

    A spokesman for the Yemeni group has specifically responded to Washington’s terror designation, telling Reuters that the “attacks on ships in the Red Sea heading to Israel will continue despite the designation.”

    The Wednesday announcement from the White House reverses a 2021 decision wherein the Iran-linked group was delisted, as part of efforts to achieve peace between the rebels and Saudi-UAE coalition, which have been waging a brutal war since 2015.

    According to details of the Wednesday terror designation:

    Officials said the “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” (SDGT) designation, which targets the group with harsh sanctions, was aimed at cutting off funding and weapons the Houthis have used to attack or hijack ships in vital Red Sea shipping lanes, as a response to Israel’s war on Gaza.

    “These attacks fit the textbook definition of terrorism,” said one of three administration officials who briefed reporters ahead of the announcement, on condition of anonymity.

    The White House’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the designation, which comes into effect in 30 days, could be reevaluated if the Houthis stop their attacks in the Red Sea.  

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

    With Gaza’s civilian death tolls till soaring, the Iranians are likely to also remain undeterred in funding and assisting the Houthis. In the meantime, US coalition airstrikes on Yemen are likely to continue – and simultaneously Houthi drone and missile launches will persist. 

    Maritime monitoring source Tanker Trackers has observed that vessels have increasingly opted for an interesting security measure: “There are now close to 50 vessels worldwide which broadcast AIS messages stating that they have nothing to do with Israel (some; even USA), including one which won’t even pass through the Red Sea area at all as it is heading to Malaysia from the Atlantic Ocean.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/17/2024 – 21:43

  • Gun Rights Face Whirlwind Of Federal Action In 2024
    Gun Rights Face Whirlwind Of Federal Action In 2024

    Authored by Michael Clements via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours)

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    Eighteen months after it was enacted, President Joe Biden credited the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) for “saving lives.”

    “I am proud to have taken more executive action than any president in history to combat gun violence in America, and I will never stop fighting to get even more done,” President Biden said in a Jan. 5 statement. 

    “Congress must enact universal background checks, ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, end the gun industry’s immunity from liability, and pass a national red flag law.” 

    President Biden credited the enhanced background checks in the BSCA for denying “more than 500 illegal gun purchases by people under 21 years old who presented a danger to our communities.” 

    He has also touted the disbursement of $1.5 billion to schools to add safety measures, and an increase in prosecutions of gun dealers due to a “revised definition” in the BSCA. 

    Second Amendment advocates, on the other hand, say that the BSCA has done nothing but restrict the rights of law-abiding Americans.

    Mark Oliva, managing director of public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said the Biden administration has used the BSCA “as a launching point for executive overreach.”

    He said the president has issued executive orders, promoted new laws, directed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to write new rules, and changed legal definitions to get the gun control he wants. 

    “And that, of course, would be illegal. The executive branch cannot gin up or just miracle out of thin air their own criminal law,” Mr. Oliva told The Epoch Times.

    White House officials didn’t respond to an email from The Epoch Times seeking comment for this story.

    A San Mateo County sheriff’s deputy enters the crime scene area as law enforcement officials investigate a mass shooting in Half Moon Bay, Calif., on Jan. 23, 2023. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

    Federal officials said that violent crime involving firearms was on the rise, especially from 2019 to 2022 during the pandemic, and the BSCA was crafted to address the problem.

    According to FBI crime statistics, violent crimes, including homicides, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery spiked during the pandemic.

    Homicides increased from 14,678 in 2019 to 18,965 in 2020, according to FBI data. In 2022, they had reached 19,200 nationwide.

    Many experts blame lockdowns, school closures, business shutdowns, and other pandemic-related issues for the increase.

    In addition, the May 2020 death of George Floyd during an arrest by Minneapolis police officers sparked riots and calls to defund the police. Many of America’s largest cities heeded those calls, either cutting police department budgets or diverting funds to other programs.

    This resulted in fewer officers on the streets and a hesitancy by some police officers to interact with citizens, out of concern over how the action might be portrayed in the media.

    Protesters hold signs in support of defunding the police in Oakland, Calif., on July 25, 2020. (Natasha Moustache/Getty Images)

    Those localized issues may have skewed the numbers, according to a research group.

    A study by the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) found that 2 percent of U.S. counties accounted for 56 percent of murders in 2020. The study, published in January 2023, showed that the vast majority of communities didn’t have a serious violent crime problem.

    Homicides fell by an average of 14 percent nationally in the first nine months of 2023, compared to the year-earlier period, according to FBI data, although the agency says not all law enforcement agencies supplied data. And the homicide rate remains higher than pre-pandemic 2019.

    The 2023 decrease is one of the statistics that the Biden administration hails as proof of the BSCA’s success.

    “There’s more work to do, but we’re making real progress: there was a significant drop in crime in 2023—including one of the largest-ever yearly declines in homicides in history,” President Biden said in the Jan. 5 statement.

    But, several factors other than the BSCA could have played a role, said Second Amendment rights advocate Alan Gottlieb, the founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation.

    A woman prepares to fire a rifle at a gun range during the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival in Greeley, Pa., on Oct. 9, 2022. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

    He said that even before the BSCA was enacted, courts and local and state governments had been affirming and expanding gun rights. And, changes that had been made in the wake of the 2020 riots were being rolled back in some areas.

    Many cities, including Chicago, New York, and Portland, Oregon, that had downsized their police department budgets, reversed course as crime increased.

    According to the National Association for Gun Rights, 27 states now allow so-called “Constitutional carry,” the carrying of firearms without a license. So, criminals in those states know their intended victims are more likely to be armed than previously had been the case.

    Between 2019 and 2023, 14 states adopted Constitutional carry laws. Six of those states, Alabama, Ohio, Indiana, Nebraska, Florida, and Georgia, adopted Constitutional carry in 2022.

    “I don’t think [the BSCA] has had much impact other than to provide [President Biden] with talking points,” Mr. Gottlieb told The Epoch Times.

    Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) talks to reporters as he walks through the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington on June 23, 2022. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    In addition, changes in how the FBI gathers crime data means that fewer police departments reported data for 2021 and 2022, including those in some of the nation’s largest cities such as Los Angeles and New York.

    The FBI said that in 2022, 15,724 agencies submitted data out of the 18,884 eligible “state, county, city, university and college, and tribal agencies.”

    Republicans who supported the BSCA promised the law would address violent crime without infringing on the rights of law-abiding gun owners.

    Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) took heat for helping broker the deal with Democrats. In a Jan. 2 email to The Epoch Times, Mr. Cornyn’s press secretary, Tatum Wallace, wrote that the senator stands by his decision.

    “Since the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act became law in June 2022, Texas colleges, universities, school districts, and community organizations have received nearly $40 million for school safety, community violence prevention, and mental health resources,” Ms. Wallace said.

    In addition, she wrote that the BSCA has led to nearly 20 indictments of violent offenders in jurisdictions across the country and provided $200 million in new Byrne JAG formula grant funding for crisis intervention programs, mental health courts, veterans treatment programs, and drug treatment courts.

    “Every state, including states with Republican governors, has accepted this funding pursuant to an implementation plan,” Ms. Wallace wrote.

    In September 2023, barely 16 months after the BSCA was signed, Mr. Cornyn and 16 other senators were criticizing a decision by Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to cut funding for archery and hunter safety programs in public schools to comply with the BSCA. According to a letter signed by Mr. Cornyn and 16 other senators, Mr. Cardona misread the law.

    In response to Mr. Cardona’s decision, Mr. Cornyn, Sen. Kyrstyn Sinema (I-Ariz.), and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) introduced the Protecting Hunting Heritage and Education Act to clarify that students may have programs and activities such as archery and hunting safety education under the BSCA.

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/17/2024 – 21:25

  • Watch: The Most Ridiculous 75 Seconds Of Bullshit From Davos Yet On "Ecocide"
    Watch: The Most Ridiculous 75 Seconds Of Bullshit From Davos Yet On “Ecocide”

    Just when you thought you had heard it all…

    This lady (we are presuming she/they is/are a lady) – who looks like she has not missed a meal in her life – explains – with no sense of irony or shame – that farming the land, fishing for food, and worse still ‘making money’ is now on par with mass murder or genocide.

    Jojo Mehta – founder of ‘Stop Ecocide Now’ – explains in her upper-class English accent to her ultra-rich peers in Davos that:

    “We have this cultural, very ingrained habit of not taking damage to nature as seriously as we take damage to people or property.”

    Her goal is to have “mass damage and destruction of nature” legally recognized as “a serious crime.”

    “With human rights, mass murder and genocide are serious crimes, but there is no equivalent in the environmental space.”

    “Unlike an international crime like genocide that involves a specific intent, with ecocide, what we see is that people are trying to do is make money, is farm, is fish… and what’s missing is an awareness of the side effects and collateral damage that happens…”

    Enjoy…

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    You literally cannot make this shit up! The socials quickly responded…

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    “Do as I say, not as I do…”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/17/2024 – 21:05

  • OPEC Sees Strong Oil Demand Growth In 2025
    OPEC Sees Strong Oil Demand Growth In 2025

    Higher global economic growth and solid Chinese activity will lead to a strong rebound in global oil demand, which will grow by 1.8 million barrels per day in 2025, OPEC said on Wednesday in its first detailed assessment and outlook of next year’s demand levels.  OPEC expects global economic growth at 2.8% in 2025, up from the 2.6% growth predicted for 2024, according to the cartel’s closely-watched Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) today. 

    “With this, global oil demand in 2025 is set to grow by a robust 1.8 mb/d, y-o-y, sustained by continued solid economic activity in China, and expected firm growth in other non-OECD countries,” OPEC said.

    Oil demand growth next year will be driven by nearly 1.7 million bpd growth in non-OECD countries, mostly in China, the Middle East, and India.

    Growth in 2025 is primarily set to come from the U.S. liquids production, expected to expand by 600,000 bpd, mainly from Permian crude, non-conventional NGLs, and the Gulf of Mexico. Other main growth drivers are expected to be Brazil, Canada, Norway, Kazakhstan and Guyana, with new field start-ups, ramp-ups, or the optimization of existing projects, OPEC said.    

    OPEC brought forward its first outlook for the next year by several months to provide longer-term guidance to the market.

    For 2024, OPEC left demand growth forecast unchanged from the previous month’s projection, at 2.2 million bpd, according to OilPrice.com.

    “The undertaking to reach beyond the previously established time horizon of short-term forecasting serves to support the understanding of market dynamics and to support the continued commitment of the OPEC and non-OPEC Participating Countries in the Declaration of Cooperation (DoC) to achieve and sustain a stable oil market, and to provide long-term guidance for the market,” OPEC said.

    In terms of supply, non-OPEC production is set to rise by 1.3 million bpd in each of 2024 and 2025, according to the organization.  

    Non-OPEC oil supply in 2025 will be supported by expected healthy demand and upstream investment, OPEC said. Oil and gas upstream capital expenditure in non-OPEC countries is expected at around $473 billion next year, according to the cartel.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/17/2024 – 21:05

  • Biden Is Fast-Tracking His Student-Loan-Forgiveness Plan
    Biden Is Fast-Tracking His Student-Loan-Forgiveness Plan

    Via CreditNews.com,

    Last week, the Biden-Harris Administration announced a plan to accelerate the forgiveness timeline for the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan.

    Starting next month, eligible borrowers – those who have made at least 10 years of monthly payments and initially borrowed $12,000 or less for college expenses – will have their entire balances forgiven.

    The Education Department is fast-tracking this debt relief months ahead of the original July 1, 2024 date.

    “Beyond being the most affordable student loan repayment plan ever available, the Biden-Harris Administration designed the SAVE Plan to put community college students and other low-balance borrowers on a faster track to debt forgiveness than ever before,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

    The Education Department urges all borrowers who originally borrowed $12,000 or less to apply for SAVE as soon as possible.

    The loans of eligible recipients will be discharged automatically, requiring no action on their part.

    “I want folks to recognize [that it takes] 10 minutes to fill out the SAVE plan, and you could be getting an email as early as February telling you that your debt is cleared out,” Cardona said.

    SAVE enrollments are on the rise

    SAVE—an income-driven repayment plan that adjusts borrowers’ monthly payments based on income and family size—has seen a massive surge in enrollment lately.

    As of early January, 6.9 million borrowers had already enrolled in the SAVE Plan, more than double the number of people who enrolled in the Revised Pay As You Earn (REPAYE) plan that the SAVE Plan replaced in August.

    Borrowers on SAVE are repaying an estimated $374 billion in federal student loans, which amounts to nearly 30% of all Direct Loans dollars in repayment, deferment, or forbearance.

    SAVE enrollees have been reporting significant financial benefits compared to the previous REPAYE Plan, with 3.9 million reportedly having a $0 payment and others saving an estimated $117 a month.

    “With lower monthly payments, protection from runaway interest, and faster timelines to debt forgiveness, President Biden’s SAVE plan is not only benefiting millions of current borrowers but also providing the students of today and tomorrow with a more affordable pathway to college degrees and credentials,” Cardona said.

    More forgiveness to come?

    The SAVE Plan forgiveness is yet another initiative by the Biden-Harris Administration to take the burden of student debt off Americans’ shoulders.

    According to Creditnews Student Debt Tracker, the administration has already approved nearly $132 billion in targeted relief for over 3.6 million borrowers.

    Next up are the 6.9 million SAVE borrowers, with potentially more to come as Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign goes into full swing.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/17/2024 – 20:45

  • Judge Threatens To Kick Trump Out Of Courtroom; Trump Says He Would 'Love It'
    Judge Threatens To Kick Trump Out Of Courtroom; Trump Says He Would ‘Love It’

    A Manhattan judge overseeing the defamation case against Donald Trump warned that he would toss the former president out of the courtroom if he kept making snarky comments that the jury could hear.

    (Shannon Stapleton-Pool/Getty Images)

    “Mr. Trump has a right to be present here,” said Judge Lewis A. Kaplan. “That right can be forfeited and it can be forfeited if he is disruptive, which is what has been reported to me, and if he disregards court orders.”

    Kaplan then addressed Trump directly, saying: “Mr. Trump, I hope I don’t have to consider excluding you from the trial,” to which Trump replied: “I would love it.”

    “I understand you’re probably very eager for me to do that because you just can’t control yourself,” Kaplan replied, to which Trump shot back “You can’t either.“

    The exchange followed an objection raised by Shawn Crowley, one of E. Jean Carroll’s attorneys, over the issue of Trump speaking loudly enough to potentially be within earshot of the jury, after Trump told his attorney that Carroll’s allegation “really is a con job” and a “witch hunt,” Crowley told the judge.

    Carroll has been testifying under direct examination for hours Wednesday, telling jurors that her life was upended by Trump’s defamatory statements about her after she accused him in 2019 of raping her in the mid-1990s. 

    Judge Kaplan also repeatedly admonished Habba during the proceeding, including during a testy exchange at the beginning of the day before the jury entered the courtroom. –The Messenger

    Kaplan also told Habba to “sit down” after she requested an adjournment tomorrow so Trump could attend his mother-in-law’s funeral – a request Kaplan had previously denied.

    Wednesday’s trial began after Trump denied Carroll’s claim that he had raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. Trump claimed he didn’t know Carroll, and said that she only branded him as a rapist to boost sales of her memoir.

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    Carroll, 80, testified that Trump’s lies destroyed her reputation for telling he truth, and is seeking $10 million on top of a May award of $5 million.

    “I am here because Donald Trump assaulted me, and when I wrote about it, he said it never happened,” Carroll said, adding “He lied, and it shattered my reputation.”

    She fought back tears when her lawyer Roberta Kaplan, who is not related to the judge, showed her a message from an unknown sender suggesting that she stick a gun in her mouth and pull the trigger.

    “I was attacked on Twitter, I was attacked on Facebook, I was attacked on news blogs, I was brutally attacked in messages,” Carroll said. “It was a new world.”

    Carroll said she now gets just eight letters a month from readers seeking advice, down from 200, and that the attacks haven’t let up.

    “Yesterday I opened up Twitter, and it said ‘hey lady, you’re a fraud,'” Carroll said. “Now I’m known as a liar, a fraud and a whack job.“

    Asked if she regretted speaking up, Carroll said: “Only momentarily. I am very glad I took action.” -Reuters

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/17/2024 – 20:40

  • Iran, Pakistan On Brink Of Military Conflict Following Missile Strike – China Urges Calm
    Iran, Pakistan On Brink Of Military Conflict Following Missile Strike – China Urges Calm

    Iran’s Tuesday missile and drone strikes targeting Sunni jihadists in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province have as expected unleashed a diplomatic war between Tehran and Islamabad.

    Pakistan started its response by recalling its ambassador from the Iranian capital Wednesday, while also booting the Iranian ambassador from Pakistan. Pakistani officials say that two children were killed in what Iran said was a response to the January 3rd suicide bombings of Kerman city, which killed over 100 people.

    Illustrative via Fars News

    “Last night’s unprovoked and blatant breach of Pakistan’s sovereignty by Iran is a violation of international law and the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations,” Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mumtaz Zahra Baloch has stated. “It is even more concerning that this illegal act has taken place despite the existence of several channels of communication between Pakistan and Iran.”

    “Pakistan reserves the right to respond to this illegal act. The responsibility for the consequences will lie squarely with Iran,” the spokeswoman added. “We have conveyed this message to the Iranian Government. We have also informed them that Pakistan has decided to recall its ambassador from Iran and that the Iranian Ambassador to Pakistan who is currently visiting Iran may not return for the time being.”

    Iranian state media has said the attack destroyed two sites belonging to the terrorist organization Jaish al-Adl. It is a region that Tehran authorities have long viewed as a hotbed of terrorism and the source of frequent cross-border attacks: 

    Authorities in Balochistan province told CNN two girls had died and at least four people were injured. The girls, aged eight and 12, were killed in houses that were damaged in the attack in the village of Koh-e-Sabz in Kulag, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Panjgur district, on Tuesday evening, according to the district’s deputy commissioner Mumtaz Khetran. Khetran also said a mosque near the homes was targeted and hit in the strikes.

    Koh-e-Sabz — about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Pakistan’s border with Iran — is known to be the home of Jaish al-Adl’s former second-in-command Mullah Hashim, who was killed in clashes with Iranian forces in Sarawan, an Iranian region adjacent to Panjgur, in 2018.

    Interestingly, China has intervened diplomatically, urging both sides to react with calm and restraint. The Chinese Foreign Ministry Wednesday urged for both sides to “avoid actions that would lead to an escalation of tension and work together to maintain peace and stability in the region.”

    Map source: BBC

    To review of fast-moving events Wednesday, according to a regional correspondent:

    • Pakistan recalls ambassador in Tehran, kicks out Iran ambassador
    • Iranian reports on border clashes
    • IRGC commander killed 
    • China mediation failed: local media 
    • Unconfirmed reports that border shut 
    • Saudi mediating 
    • India statement backs Iran

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    The United States was among those countries that condemned Iran’s attack which was deep into Pakistani territory. The situation remains dangerous also because Pakistan is a nuclear power. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/17/2024 – 20:25

  • Parents Are Winning The Battle For School Choice
    Parents Are Winning The Battle For School Choice

    Authored by Jackson Elliott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Florida mother of five Nicole Andrews puts it bluntly when asked why she sends her children to a charter school instead of the assigned public school for their community.

    (Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

    She “absolutely, desperately” wants her youngsters in charter school because it has “a different culture,” she told The Epoch Times. Other parents feel the same way.

    “There is a different level of expectation and rigor” at St. Johns Classical Academy, Ms. Andrews said.

    “There is a different value set. There is a different mindset as to the value of education.”

    There’s also a waiting list for slots at both of the school’s campuses, in Fleming Island and Orange Park, in the northeastern area of the state. The school opened in August 2017 and is free to attend.

    Ms. Andrews is among hundreds of thousands of parents across America who are making the switch from public schooling to some other form of education as part of a nationwide rallying cry for “school choice.”

    In general, school choice allows parents to request that the taxpayer dollars assigned to their child for education be used for other options. That could mean transferring the money to a charter school, using it for tuition for a private school, or taking it as reimbursement for homeschooling expenses.

    Recently, many states have adopted legislation to put into place some form of school choice program.

    Presently, 10 states have what’s known as universal school choice, meaning it’s open to any child. Those states are Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, West Virginia, Indiana, and North Carolina.

    Many other states have a school-choice program for at least some children, with a range of criteria to qualify. Some serve children in a low socio-economic demographic. Others offer assistance to children with learning disabilities or other special needs.

    In some states, programs allow public dollars set aside for each child’s education to follow a child leaving public school. Then, that money can be used for tuition for private schools. Or the money may be transferred to fund that child’s slot at a charter school.

    Charter schools are publicly funded, but operate independently from the public school system.

    In some states, school choice means that even parents who choose to homeschool can use public dollars allotted to educate their children on things like curriculum and tutoring.

    The options vary from state to state. And the amount of public money set aside for each child usually ranges from between $5,000 to $8,000, depending on the state.

    A school crossing sign warns drivers in front of an elementary school in Miami on April 19, 2023. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

    The Department of Education reports that the government spent an average of $14,295 per student in public schools from elementary through 12th grade in the 2020–2021 school year.

    Many conservatives support the idea of school choice, saying it will force failing public schools to improve or lose students. And more importantly, they say, those failing schools will lose the funding they receive to educate the children who leave.

    Some parents who’ve previously paid for their children’s private school tuition or homeschooling expenses on their own, with no government assistance, say school-choice programs bring about much-needed fairness.

    That’s because—by paying taxes—those parents contribute to the public money used to pay for public education. But they’ve received none of the benefit, and still have to cover the costs of their children’s education.

    There’s also a strong lobby movement that’s against school choice.

    Public schools are deeply connected to some of the most potent activist groups in American society—the teachers’ unions.

    And though polls show parents strongly favor school choice, unions are adamant in their opposition.

    “Vouchers take scarce funding from students in public schools and give those resources to unaccountable private schools,” the National Education Association (NEA) states on its website.

    The NEA also say that vouchers, used in school choice programs, don’t support disabled students, don’t protect the human and civil rights of students, and “exacerbate segregation.”

    The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) states on its website that evidence “does not support the argument that vouchers and other methods to establish a market system of schools will improve school or student performance.”

    The NEA and AFT are two of America’s largest unions, with a combined total of more than 4.7 million members.

    The Epoch Times contacted both unions but received no response by publication time.

    Parents told The Epoch Times they hope school choice and the competition it creates will eventually make education better for everyone.

    “I think that once you take an institution, and make it a public institution, and have large governmental control over it, you’re going to lose some quality,” Ms. Andrews said.

    “Lord willing, public institutions will have to change their game a bit, and everyone will benefit.”

    School Choice Options

    School-choice programs vary widely.

    Some states, such as Indiana, Iowa, and West Virginia, offer the use of an education savings account (ESA). An ESA gives money to parents in a bank account, and funds can be spent on educational expenses, such as school tuition, textbooks, private tutoring, and school supplies.

    Other states, such as Florida, Arkansas, and Wisconsin, offer vouchers, which take the money set aside to educate children in public schools and allow parents to spend it on tuition for private schools. Voucher money also can be transferred to a charter school.

    Aisha Thomas (R) is learning teaching skills with the teacher Alexxa Martinez, in her classroom in Nevitt Elementary School, in Phoenix, Ariz., on Oct. 26, 2022. (Olivier Touron/AFP via Getty Images)

    Still others offer tax-credit scholarships. These allow taxpayers to receive tax credits when they donate to nonprofits that provide scholarships to private schools. Parents can apply for these scholarships for their children.

    In other states—including Alabama, Illinois, and Louisiana—qualifying parents receive tax credits for paying for their children’s private schooling.

    Alaska offers state funding for some private schooling through “correspondence study programs.” These programs allow a student to receive an individualized learning program and options normally unavailable in public schools, such as resources from religious groups or private tutoring.

    Many states allow families to open college savings investment accounts to help with educational expenses. These accounts allow families to deposit pre-tax money into investment accounts. Recently, some states have changed the rules on these accounts so parents can spend some of this money on childhood education expenses.

    In 1990, school-choice options like these were practically nonexistent.

    As of 2023, America had about 700,000 school-choice programs, according to statistics from EdChoice, an Indiana nonprofit that promotes school choice.

    With so many Americans increasingly taking advantage of school-choice options, this may be just the beginning of a movement that would fundamentally reshape American public education, EdChoice president Robert Enlow told The Epoch Times.

    “This year has been the year of universal choice, where we now have 10 states that basically allow every single student in the state to attend whatever setting works best with them—public, private, charter, at home, or online,” Mr. Enlow said. “We’re really excited about that growth.”

    For homeschooling parents, receiving state money can make a huge difference, homeschooling mother Kimberly Ebbers told The Epoch Times.

    She quit her job to give her three sons an education at home. She’s been teaching them for 22 years.

    “In the beginning, we didn’t take vacations and buy new clothes and eat out,” said Ms. Ebbers, who lives in Florida. “We sacrificed so that I could stay home.

    “It was just important to us to be with our children and for our children to be with each other.”

    In 2023, Florida passed legislation allowing for universal school choice, which means even homeschooling children are eligible for funding from the state for educational expenses.

    Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during an event in Philadelphia, Pa., on June 30, 2023. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

    But surprisingly, the Ebbers family isn’t interested in using the state’s money.

    State money can mean state control over education to some degree, Ms. Ebbers said.

    “In the future, it may lead to them choosing our curriculum or other choices like that,” she said.

    However, money from the state could be a blessing to families with children with disabilities, she said.

    “I do have friends that have kids with special needs that have to have services, like speech pathology, or physical therapy, or occupational therapy. And it’s expensive, going every week to those appointments and paying out-of-pocket costs.”

    Florida homeschooling mother of five Michelle Jernigan told The Epoch Times she greatly appreciates new laws that give homeschoolers aid in educating their children.

    “I’m very grateful to the state for making it so we’re able to afford things we were never able to afford before for my kids,” Ms. Jernigan said. “And it has made a big difference in their education.”

    Read more here…

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/17/2024 – 20:05

  • Cold Blast Takes Half Of North Dakota's Oil Production Offline
    Cold Blast Takes Half Of North Dakota’s Oil Production Offline

    Bone-chilling temperatures in the US Midwest have forced oil and gas producers in North Dakota to curb output because of operational disruptions stemming from freeze-offs and shut-ins. 

    Bloomberg reports 650,000 to 700,000 barrels of oil output a day have been taken offline. The state, home to the Bakken shale formation, produced 1.2 million barrels a day on average in October. 

    Average temperatures across the state have averaged below zero for nearly a week. The good news: Temps are expected to rise to 30-year norms by the end of the month, but forecasts at the moment show another possible cold blast slated for early Feb. 

    Average temps across the Midwest region are expected to rise from about zero to the 30-year trend of around 30F by next week. 

    In natural gas markets, energy research firm Criterion Research said Rockies NatGas production is set to return to normal levels following operational disruptions.  

    Within the Rockies production areas, temperatures remain brutally cold in the Williston Basin for the next three days. The DJ Basin (Colorado/Wyoming) will see a return to the 15-20F range as well by the end of the week, whereas San Juan/New Mexico temps gradually warm into the weekend.

    As of today, Rockies supply levels remain at lows of 9.36 Bcf/d.

    Besides disruptions to oil and NatGas production, several power grids have been under strain because cold weather has boosted heating demand to record highs. Texas’s power grid had issues earlier this week, while the Tennessee Valley Authority asked customers Wednesday morning to conserve power.

    Also, in Texas, critical energy export terminals in the Gulf were disrupted earlier this week due to the cold. 

    News today: Motiva Enterprises’ Port Arthur Refinery, the largest oil refinery in North America, with a capacity of 630,000 barrels per day, in Port Arthur, Texas, suffered disruptions due to cold weather. 

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    Someone needs to tell the unelected officials at WEF that folks in the Western Hemisphere would like more global warming ASAP.  

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/17/2024 – 19:45

  • DNA Contaminants In COVID Vaccines Are 'Beyond The Pale': Florida Surgeon General
    DNA Contaminants In COVID Vaccines Are ‘Beyond The Pale’: Florida Surgeon General

    Authored by Marina Zhang and Jan Jekielek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    On Jan. 3, the office of Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo issued a statement calling for the halt in the use of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, citing the recent discovery of DNA contaminants in the vaccine vials.

    On the Jan. 12 episode of EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders,“ Dr. Ladapo explained why he called for a halt, saying that while there are also safety concerns with the COVID mRNA vaccines linking them to a multitude of adverse events, the recent discovery is ”beyond the pale.”

    “DNA is a common contaminant of many biological products,” he told the show’s host, Jan Jekielek. “We can use DNA to produce different drugs like insulin, other biologics—and that’s a wonderful innovation, and normally, that DNA doesn’t pose a problem.”

    Human cells are resistant to DNA entry, and this prevents harming the integrity of the cell’s DNA.

    However, since the mRNA vaccines use lipid nanoparticles, which deliver mRNA into the cells directly, DNA contaminants could also be able to enter the cells. Some scientists, like Dr. Ladapo, are concerned that the DNA from the vaccine may integrate with the human genome.

    Prominent officials at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) disagree.

    On Dec. 6, Dr. Ladapo sent a letter to FDA commissioner Dr. Robert Califf and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director, Dr. Mandy Cohen.

    In his letter, he asked if there have been risk assessments of the vaccine DNA integrating into human DNA, especially regarding the controversial SV40 promoter/enhancer region found in Pfizer’s vaccine.

    Other questions included whether risk assessments have been done on DNA integration in reproductive cells and if the current levels of DNA residuals are acceptable under the FDA’s standards.

    Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, replied to Dr. Ladapo on Dec. 14.

    “We’ve gotten … lengthy responses that don’t answer the question,” Dr. Ladapo said.

    In his response, Dr. Marks wrote that DNA integration “is quite implausible,” adding that animal studies show “no evidence indicative for genotoxicity.”

    No tests were mentioned that would assess if DNA integration is occurring.

    Dr. Ladapo believes it would be reckless not to test for DNA integration, a potential risk once DNA enters the cell.

    “Their position is, oh, no, it’s fine. Everything’s fine; safe and effective. That’s not only not good enough, but it’s completely unacceptable,” Dr. Ladapo said. “And that’s why I made that determination, and it’s absolutely the correct call.”

    DNA Contamination: The SV40 Promoter Controversy

    Both Moderna and Pfizer mRNA vaccines contain DNA contaminants, but only the Pfizer vaccines have also been found to contain SV40 promoter/enhancer DNA, which has since become a topic of debate.

    SV40, or simian vacuolating virus 40, is a DNA virus that sometimes causes cancer in animals.

    However, the SV40 promoter/enhancer found in the vaccines is only a tiny section of the DNA; it is not equivalent to the entire SV40 virus or its protein.

    Promoter-enhancers are sections of DNA that can control the activity of other DNA.

    “With DNA, there are different regions that tell other parts of DNA whether to be active or not,” Dr. Ladapo said. “This type of control process is very important … The absence of control can, for example, lead to cancer … [and] other metabolic abnormalities.”

    In his letter to the FDA, Dr. Ladapo asked about the additional risk of the SV40 promoter/enhancer region’s DNA integration.

    Dr. Marks answered that there were no genes for SV40 proteins nor SV40 proteins themselves present in the vaccine.

    But Dr. Ladapo believes Dr. Marks is intentionally not answering the question.

    “No one’s talking about SV40 protein … we talked about the promoter/enhancer region. They have to be doing it intentionally,” Dr. Ladapo said.

    The Risks of DNA Integration

    It is currently unknown whether DNA introduced into the body is being integrated into the cell’s human genome; and if it’s integrated, what impact will it have.

    Only around 1 percent of the human DNA produces protein; the job of the other 99 percent of DNA is mostly unknown.

    “There’s … a lot of uncertainty about our genome—what it does, how it supports life and creates life, and creates the miracle of each individual human being,” Dr. Ladapo said. “What we do understand is that some of the potential risks of DNA integration include development of cancers, because … of the regulation of different aspects of DNA and cell growth.

    “Other possibilities include the disruption of the normal expression of some proteins, which then subsequently could lead to disruption of normal human function.”

    Since biodistribution studies in rats have shown that the mRNA vaccines can accumulate in the reproductive organs, Dr. Ladapo’s letter expressed concern that there may also be DNA integration of reproductive cells.

    “We are the most complex beings—the most complex machines, if you will—living machines that exist on this Earth. So I do believe that our genome is part of our connection to God. So that is to say that there’s quite a lot at risk in terms of not taking proper precautions and sensible precautions, with maintaining the integrity to the best that we can—life ain’t perfect, but to the best that we can with our human genome.”

    Note: Lapado appeared with Tucker Carlson as well this week

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/17/2024 – 19:25

  • Jim Jordan Demands Answers After Biden Admin Caught Flagging "MAGA" And "Trump" To Track Political Opponents' Financial Transactions
    Jim Jordan Demands Answers After Biden Admin Caught Flagging “MAGA” And “Trump” To Track Political Opponents’ Financial Transactions

    Jim Jordan, Chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on Wednesday, announced that it had obtained documents revealing that federal agencies have flagged financial transactions for financial institutions for people using politically sensitive words such as “MAGA” and Trump.”

    In a letter to Noah Bishoff – who was a former FinCEN Director (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) – and now an Anti Money Laundering (AML) officer at fintech company Plaid, Inc. Jordan described situations in which Americans buying bibles or shopping at sporting good stores might find their transactions flagged.

    New documents obtained by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government reveal that the federal government flagged terms like “MAGA” and “TRUMP” for financial institutions if Americans used those phrases when completing transactions. Individuals who shopped at stores like Cabela’s or Dick’s Sporting Goods, or purchased religious texts like a bible, may also have had their transactions flagged. This kind of pervasive financial surveillance, carried out in coordination with and at the request of federal law enforcement, into Americans’ private transactions is alarming and raises serious concerns about the FBI’s respect for fundamental civil liberties. -Judiciary.house.gov

    “The Committee and Select Subcommittee have obtained documents indicating that following January 6, 2021, FinCEN distributed materials to financial institutions that, among other things, outline the ‘typologies’ of various persons of interest and provide financial institutions with suggested search terms and Merchant Category Codes (MCCs) for identifying transactions on behalf of federal law enforcement,” reads the letter.

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

    “These materials included a document recommending the use of generic terms like ‘TRUMP’ and ‘MAGA’ to ‘search Zelle payment messages’ as well as a ‘prior FinCEN analysis’ of ‘Lone Actor/Homegrown Violent Extremism Indicators,” the letter continues. “According to this analysis, FinCEN warned financial institutions of ‘extremism’ indicators that include ‘transportation charges, such as bus tickets, rental cars, or plane tickets, for travel to areas with no apparent purpose,’ or ‘the purchase of books (including religious texts) and subscriptions to other media containing extremist views.’ In other words, FinCEN urged large financial institutions to comb through the private transactions of their customers for suspicious charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression.”

    The Committee announced that it’s seeking interviews with senior intelligence officials, including Bishoff.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/17/2024 – 19:05

  • Yet Another Recession Red Flag: Net Saving Is Negative
    Yet Another Recession Red Flag: Net Saving Is Negative

    Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

    Net saving as a percentage of gross national income has been negative since the first quarter of 2023.

    The current period of negative net savings is only the third time that net saving has gone negative in more than 75 years.

    Looking back to the late 1940s, we find that the overall trend in net saving increased during the post-war period of economic retrenchment in the 1950s and early 60s.

    With the Guns and Butter era of the late 1960s, however, net saving went into decline, and the general downward trend has continued ever since, following a similar trend to mounting federal deficits. 

    The only other times net saving has gone negative is in the lead-up to the great recession, and during the covid recession.

    In general, net saving tends to fall steeply in the early periods of recessions, and this can be seen in the graph, going back several cycles. (A similar trend exists for gross saving as a percent of GNI.) This likely reflects a few different trends, one being the fact that the federal government continues to go more deeply into the red when tax revenues are weak as they are now.

    But one thing is clear: net saving has worsened rapidly since the fourth quarter of 2020, dropping from 2.9 percent in that quarter to -0.7 percent in the third quarter of last year.

    Such a rapid drop virtually always indicates the US has either entered a recession or will soon enter one. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/17/2024 – 18:45

  • "The Western World Is In Danger": Milei Warns Of DEI Doom, As Dimon Touts Trump On 'Critical Issues'
    “The Western World Is In Danger”: Milei Warns Of DEI Doom, As Dimon Touts Trump On ‘Critical Issues’

    Argentina’s President Javier Milei had a warning for those attending the annual WEF meeting in Davos, Switzerland; ‘the Western world is in danger’ from ‘collectivist experiments’ such as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), and has called on the world to reject socialism and instead embrace “free enterprise capitalism” to end global poverty.

    Fabrice Coffrini | Afp | Getty Images

    “Today, I’m here to tell you that the Western world is in danger,” Milei toild the audience. “And it is in danger because those who are supposed to have to defend the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to poverty,” he added.

    The self-described “anarcho-capitalist” criticized Davos itself for its “socialist agenda, which will only bring misery to the world,” according to Reuters.

    “The main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism. We’re here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world — rather they are the root cause,” Milei said, adding “Do believe me, no-one [is] better placed than us Argentines to testify to these two points.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsDimon: Trump was right

    Also at Davos, of course, was JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who told CNBC that people are voting for Donald Trump because he was right about the economy, immigration, and China, and that people should be respectful of MAGA.

    “I don’t like how Trump said things, but he wasn’t wrong about those critical issues. That’s why they’re voting for him. People should be more respectful of our fellow citizens…I think this negative talk about MAGA will hurt Biden’s campaign,” said the billionaire.

    Watch:

    We’re sure Davos elites are listening with bated breath.

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/17/2024 – 18:25

  • OpenAI Attempts To Dispel Fears Of AI-Meddling In Elections
    OpenAI Attempts To Dispel Fears Of AI-Meddling In Elections

    Authored by Savannah Fortis via CoinTelegraph.com,

    As 2024 anticipates a global election cycle, OpenAI says it wants to prevent AI misuse, bring transparency, and enhance voter access to accurate voting information.

    OpenAI, the creator of the popular chatbot ChatGPT, released a new blog post outlining its approach to the 2024 elections on a global scale. 

    Its main emphasis is to bring transparency, enhance access to accurate voting information and prevent the misuse of artificial intelligence (AI).

    While highlighting the need to protect the integrity of the collaborative nature of elections, OpenAI wants to make sure its AI service “is not used in a way that could undermine this process.”

    The company said protecting the integrity of elections is an effort involving everyone, and it wants to make sure its technology “​​is not used in a way that could undermine this process.”

    “We want to make sure that our AI systems are built, deployed, and used safely. Like any new technology, these tools come with benefits and challenges.”

    OpenAI says it has a “cross-functional effort” dedicated explicitly to election-related work that will quickly investigate and address potential abuse.

    Among these efforts include preventing abuse, which it defines as “misleading deep fakes,” chatbots impersonating candidates or scaled influence operations. It said one of its measures has been implementing guardrails on Dall-E to decline requests for image generation of real people, including political candidates. 

    In August 2023, regulators in the United States were even considering regulating political deep fakes and ads generated using AI before the 2024 presidential elections.

    Politicians in the U.S. have expressed skepticism that tech companies will be able to rein in their powerful AI systems.

    At a congressional hearing in May where OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman testified, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) used a demonstration of his AI-generated voice reading a statement to highlight the risks.

    “What if it had provided an endorsement of Ukraine surrendering or Vladimir Putin’s leadership?” he said.

    Altman responded to some of the concerns by asserting that OpenAI’s chatbot was “a tool, not a creature,” and “a tool that people have great control over.”

    OpenAI said building applications for political campaigning and lobbying is currently not allowed.

    Already, a politician running for U.S. Congress already employs AI as a campaign caller to help reach more potential voters.

    The AI developer said it’s also working on constantly updating ChatGPT to provide accurate information from real-time news reporting around the globe while directing voters to official voting websites for more information. 

    AI’s influence on elections has been a major topic of discussion already, with Microsoft even releasing a report on AI usage on social media having the potential to sway voter sentiment.

    Microsoft’s Bing AI chatbot has already been under scrutiny after Europe-based researchers found that it gave misleading election information.

    Google has been particularly proactive in its stance regarding AI and elections. In September, it made AI disclosure mandatory in political campaign ads, along with limiting answers to election queries on its Bard AI tool and generative search.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 01/17/2024 – 18:05

Digest powered by RSS Digest

Jan 17

Today’s News 17th January 2024

  • RFK Jr. Says "There Was Good Reason" For His Father To Authorize FBI Wiretaps Of Martin Luther King Jr.
    RFK Jr. Says “There Was Good Reason” For His Father To Authorize FBI Wiretaps Of Martin Luther King Jr.

    Authored by Jeff Louderbeck via The Epoch Times,

    While in Atlanta for a voter rally on the eve of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. talked about his family’s relationship with the civil rights leader and said that “there was good reason” for his father, Robert F. Kennedy, to authorize FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s to wiretap Dr. King when John F. Kennedy was president.

    Before delivering a speech at the event, where he collected signatures to get on the Georgia presidential general election ballot, Mr. Kennedy told Politico that his father, who was attorney general, granted permission for Mr. Hoover to electronically monitor Dr. King’s conversations “because J. Edgar Hoover was out to destroy Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement and Hoover said to them that Martin Luther King’s chief was a communist.”

    “My father gave permission to Hoover to wiretap them so he could prove that his suspicions about King were either right or wrong. I think, politically, they had to do it,” Mr. Kennedy said.

    Mr. Kennedy noted that his father and his uncle knew that Mr. Hoover was “a racist” and “left no doubt where he stood on those issues” regarding civil rights organizations.

    If President Kennedy had been elected to a second term, he would have fired Mr. Hoover, the 2024 independent presidential candidate said, adding that be believes his uncle alerted Dr. King of Mr. Hoover’s wiretaps in a private conversation.

    President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

    Dr. King, who was born and raised in Atlanta, was shot and killed by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tenn. on April 4, 1968.

    After speaking at a campaign event in Los Angeles during his bid to secure the Democrat Party’s presidential nomination, Robert F. Kennedy was shot on June 5, 1968. He died the next day.

    On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Mr. Kennedy posted a video on X, formerly Twitter, sharing stories about the relationship between his father and Dr. King.

    In 1967, Dr. King delivered a speech “in which he came out against the Vietnam War,” Mr. Kennedy said in the video.

    It was an unpopular stance among other civil rights leaders who thought Dr. King should focus solely on the civil rights movement, Mr. Kennedy explained.

    Dr. King noted that black soldiers represented “half of the paratrooper units in Vietnam” and black soldiers were dying for freedoms in Vietnam that they did not have in their own country,” Mr. Kennedy said.

    “He also said that the poverty program which Lyndon Johnson and my uncle had launched was being impoverished itself because of the cause of the Vietnam War.”

    President Lyndon B. Johnson shakes the hand of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the signing of the Civil Rights Act while officials look on in Washington on July 2, 1964. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

    A year after delivering that address, Dr. King was murdered, and Mr. Kennedy said his father broke the news to a crowd in Indianapolis.

    “My father was running against the Vietnam War at that time and was going into a ghetto in Indianapolis, Indiana. The sheriff warned him that he shouldn’t go because people didn’t know that Martin Luther King Jr. was dead, and the sheriff and the local police believed they would lose control of the city when the black population learned about his death,” Mr. Kennedy said.

    Robert F. Kennedy ignored the sheriff’s warning and climbed on a flatbed truck to deliver an impromptu speech that his son calls one of the best addresses he had delivered.

    After telling the audience that Dr. King was shot and killed, Mr. Kennedy “did something that he never had done before, which is he talked publicly about his brother’s death.,” his son said in the video.

    “He reminded the crowd that his brother was killed by white men as well. And he called on the crowd to do something that was counterintuitive, which was to react peacefully. Quoting the Greek poet Aeschylus, he said that our job now as Americans was to “tame the savageness of men and make gentle the life of this world.”

    More than 100 cities were ravaged by riots that night, but not Indianapolis.

    “It was the only major city that avoided rioting that night. People have attributed that to my dad’s speech,” Mr. Kennedy said.

    “When my dad died in 1968, two months later, after Dr. King, Coretta King was in the hospital with me and my siblings, [in] Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. And my father died. And then she was on the airplane with us, which took my father’s casket back to New York, and she was on the train with us when we brought his body on a seven-and-a-half-hour train ride with two and a half million people on the track to Washington DC.”

    At the Atlanta voter rally on Jan. 14, Mr. Kennedy was joined by Angela Stanton-King, the goddaughter of Alveda King, who is Dr. King’s niece.

    Ms. Stanton-King, who works for Mr. Kennedy’s campaign, was pardoned by President Donald Trump after a conviction in 2006 for conspiracy to defraud the government in connection with a luxury car theft operation.

    In 2020, she registered as a Republican and unsuccessfully ran against civil rights leader and incumbent Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.).

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/16/2024 – 23:40

  • Increasing Psychopathic Behavior Is A Sign That Society Is On The Verge Of Breaking Down
    Increasing Psychopathic Behavior Is A Sign That Society Is On The Verge Of Breaking Down

    Discussions on collapse often turn to signs and signals – The economy, politics and social tensions have become increasingly unstable for many years now, and much like adding more and more weight to a man standing on a frozen lake, eventually the ice is going to break.  The question is, how do we know when that moment will be?   

    As cultural systems begins to dissolve due to political clashes and economic decline the real evil tends to slither out of the woodwork.  It happens slowly at first, then all at once.  A sure sign of accelerating collapse is the growing prevalence of psychopaths and psychopathic behavior in the open.

    The US appears to have entered the middle stages of such a collapse with many sociopaths and psychopaths beginning to feel that they might be able to act out their worst impulses without consequences.  They are beginning to test the waters to see what they can get away with.

    In the past ten years there has been a dramatic uptick in mass violence and theft.  With the advent of social media it is now easier than ever for spontaneously planned riots to form with little warning, and in most cases these mobs are random in who and what they attack.  They might organize in the name of politics or activism, but they tend to lash out at whatever targets are closest or easiest rather than the people they blame for their travails.

      

    In most cases these events result in simple property destruction in urban areas, but more and more there has been an underlying and aggressive impulse to hurt people.  There will come a time very soon when the the goal is not just to steal or vandalize, but to use instability as a smokescreen; a distraction the provides opportunities to harm others.

    Psychopaths like to exploit the chaos of political turmoil to indulge their violent tendencies, or to convince others to do the same.  If no one acts to eliminate the first wave of criminal actions during a social breakdown, then thousands of other criminals will also move to take advantage.  The first wave becomes an avalanche, all because the system no longer provides sufficient incentives to behave.

    The root psychology is hard to explain, but look at it this way – Imagine a spoiled toddler is kept in check by his parents in the pristine halls of a delicate museum.  The toddler might throw fits, screaming and shouting because he wants to touch the many fragile items around him, but at least his parents are there to hold him back.  He has not yet learned the responsibility and maturity necessary to have access to these treasures.  Now imagine removing the parents entirely and telling the toddler there are no rules anymore?

    The rush of joy he experiences is exhilarating; it is the feeling of sudden and unearned power.  No one is around to stop him, therefore, he is going to test his own limits.  He sees the ordered environment around him and he becomes frustrated.  How dare this place restrict him with boundaries and structure.  His first inclination is to destroy anything that he can get his hands on.  

    Now understand that there is a portion of any given adult population that has these same tendencies.  They never grew up.  They want to take or destroy what they cannot have; they are only waiting for the opportunity to do so without repercussions.     

    At this phase of a breakdown when the dominoes begin to topple, law enforcement generally folds and retreats, leaving the public with no first line of defense.  Gangs and looters organize quickly and take territory rather than just taking people’s possessions.  Organized crime at the local level leads to large scale death and minimal opposition.  People are so isolated and busy trying to scrape together a meager economic lifeline that they have no time or motivation to fight back.  

    The point of no return comes when regular people are afraid to leave their homes.  Organization at the neighborhood level with an aggressive posture must be enacted or the most vicious attacks will be visited on the population.  

    Sometimes, though, the psychopaths we have to deal with during a collapse are within the very government that is supposed to protect our liberties.  This is a situation in which the criminals are given license to use violence against the citizenry through the illusion of law.  The populace is then confronted with the inevitable question – Are laws worth following when psychopaths write them?

    When corrupt people run government, good becomes evil and evil becomes good.  Consider the extreme double standards in place between the treatment of leftist activist mobs and conservative protesters.  Look at the government and media response to the BLM riots versus their response to the Jan 6 event.  In the case of the capitol “riots”, police fired rubber bullets and tear gas into the otherwise peaceful crowd, then when the protesters reacted violently, they were accused of “insurrection.”  

    Is there any example of this kind of setup used against the political left?  No.  Instead, the media and public officials describe the destructive mobs as “fiery but mostly peaceful.”

    The double standard is absurd, but then again, it’s meant to be.  Why?  Because the psychopaths among the political left were being rewarded and encouraged.  Conservatives and moderates are supposed to feel defeated, making them unwilling to fight back any longer.  These are the kinds of conditions that fuel unhinged and predatory people, unleashing them on the population.  

    When psychopaths feel protected, total upheaval quickly follows. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/16/2024 – 23:20

  • Americans Warned About Dating Apps After 8 Suspicious Deaths In Colombia
    Americans Warned About Dating Apps After 8 Suspicious Deaths In Colombia

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

    The State Department has issued a warning to American travelers, urging them not to use dating apps while in Colombia after reports of multiple “suspicious deaths” of U.S. citizens in the South American country.

    A man texts on his smartphone as he walks along a street in New York on March 4, 2015. (Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images)

    Colombia has been marked as a “reconsider travel” destination for Americans since Jan. 2, with the State Department citing concerns about crime, terrorism, civil unrest, and kidnapping risks.

    “Violent crime, such as homicide, assault, and armed robbery, is widespread,” the State Department states in the advisory. “Organized criminal activities, such as extortion, robbery, and kidnapping, are common in some areas.”

    More recently, the State Department issued a warning of a new threat—with the use of dating apps being a common denominator.

    Suspicious Deaths

    The U.S. Embassy in Bogota, the capital of Colombia, was made aware of eight “suspicious deaths” of private U.S. citizens in Medellín between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31, 2023, according to a Jan. 10 advisory.

    “The deaths appear to involve either involuntary drugging overdose or are suspected homicides,” the advisory states.

    While it’s not believed that the deaths are directly linked as each involved “distinct circumstances,” a number of them involved the use of online dating apps, along with possible drugging, overdose, and robbery.

    Disturbing Trends in Crime Against Foreign Visitors

    Local authorities in Medellín have noted a significant increase in crimes against foreign visitors.

    Observatory of the District Personnel of Medellín reports that the number of thefts committed against foreigners (with the exception of Venezuelans) jumped 200 percent in the latter part of last year.

    Additionally, violent deaths of visitors from other countries have jumped 29 percent—with a notable majority of the victims being U.S. citizens.

    Dating Apps as Tools for Criminal Activities

    Criminals in Colombia are reportedly using dating apps to lure victims, particularly foreigners, to meet them in places like hotels, restaurants, and bars—with the aim of robbing them.

    “Numerous U.S. citizens in Colombia have been drugged, robbed, and even killed by their Colombian dates,” the advisory warns.

    The U.S. Embassy notes that these incidents are on the rise, with major cities like Medellín, Cartagena, and Bogotá being hotspots for such crimes.

    While such incidents are reported regularly to the U.S. Embassy in Colombia, it’s likely that the scale of the problem is greater than it seems as these types of crimes “routinely go underreported” because victims are often embarrassed and reluctant to pursue legal action.

    Precautionary Measures

    Some key actions to take include being cautious when using online dating apps and meeting strangers only in public places.

    Travelers to Colombia are also advised to avoid isolated locations when meeting people who they found through dating apps, and informing friends or family members about plans for the meeting.

    The advisory also suggests taking extra security measures when meeting new acquaintances and not physically resisting any robbery attempt.

    “Victims of crime who resist robbery are more likely to be killed,” the advisory states.

    The Colombia travel advisory—and the warning about criminals using dating apps to lure victims—comes after the State Department issued a worldwide caution alert for Americans traveling abroad after the outbreak of the Israel–Hamas war last October.

    Worldwide Caution Alert

    The State Department’s worldwide caution alert cites increased tensions globally and the potential for terrorist attacks, demonstrations, or violent actions against U.S. citizens and interests.

    The latest alert was prompted by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, which came after Hamas (a designated terror group) attacked parts of Israel, killing hundreds of civilians and leading to an extensive Israeli bombing campaign targeting Gaza, the area Hamas controls.

    This caution alert comes after the last worldwide advisory in 2022, which followed a U.S. strike that killed al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/16/2024 – 23:00

  • How Many People Are Killed By Police In The US?
    How Many People Are Killed By Police In The US?

    The Washington Post counted 1,153 people in the U.S. who were shot and killed by police in 2023.

    In previous years, about as many people – around 1,000 annually – have died this way.

    As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz shows in the infographic below, most of those killed by police were male and armed.

    Infographic: How Many People Are Killed by Police in the U.S.? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    While the race of more than a third of those killed by police in 2023 is not known, 372 of the deceased were white, while 213 were Black. This equals 53 percent and 30 percent, respectively, of those for whom a race is known. The share of Black people is elevated here, keeping in mind that only close to 14 percent of Americans belong to that race group.

    Around 60 percent of those shot and killed by police carried a gun themselves.

    But in the case of more than 180 people, they were either unarmed or it is unknown whether they carried a weapon.

    In 27 cases, the deceased had been seen with a replica weapon that was mistaken for the real thing.

    Out of the 1,153 killed, 147 were listed as having shown signs of mental illness.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/16/2024 – 22:40

  • This Hamlet Looks Like Tolkien's Shire, Believed 5,000 Years Old – And People Still Live Here Off-Grid
    This Hamlet Looks Like Tolkien’s Shire, Believed 5,000 Years Old – And People Still Live Here Off-Grid

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

    There are no iPhone chargers plugged into the stone walls, no microwave ovens, or light switches in the hamlets of Bavona Valley.

    (DjemoGraphic/Shutterstock)

    It is, and for centuries has been, a daunting lifestyle for those inhabiting a string of lost homes in this Italian-speaking region, here in the southern Swiss Alps. Akin to hobbit dwellings from a Tolkien book or a fairytale town, cave-like abodes permeate under and in between gargantuan stones. Scattered everywhere are the remnants of earth-trembling rockslides.

    Harshness aside, the scenery is gorgeous—bordering on magical. How surprising is it anyone would want to live here?

    “These days, we just blow up boulders that are in the way,” Flavio Zappa told Houses of Switzerland. “But that wasn’t possible before. So people built their homes underneath them, above them, anywhere they could.”

    A historian and medievalist, Mr. Zappa, with his little round glasses and rugged features, has conducted extensive excavations and mapped most of these distinctive rock homes—called splüi by locals—throughout the valley.

    A hamlet in Bavona Valley, Switzerland. (Courtesy of Sylvia Michel Photography)

    Paths wind into town in the valley. (Courtesy of Sylvia Michel Photography)

    A house built under a monolithic boulder. (DjemoGraphic/Shutterstock)

    Nested in a pretty trough valley with sheer cliff walls on either side and debris on the valley floor covered in blankets of moss and encroaching woodland, less than 2% of this land is arable. Agriculture had to be introduced in novel ways by resourceful folks, making use of plots as little as 1 square meter; terraced gardens were dug into the sides of cliffs, some at dizzying heights, to grow food; while soil-covered rocks, called balòi, allowed small kitchen gardens to be planted.

    “It’s rocky, steep, and unforgiving,” Mr. Zappa said. “But if all the other good land has been taken, you’ve no choice but to look elsewhere.”

    But despite the harsh, rugged conditions, the inhabitants of Bavona Valley live here by choice—albeit mostly in summer—because living off-grid plugs them into their roots. Life without electricity isn’t seen as a disadvantage, Mr. Zappa said. They are accustomed to using wood for warmth and candles when it gets dark. The region’s sometimes sunless days make an ample store of candlesticks essential, yet the cooler weather allays the need for refrigeration.

    A view of dwellings in Bavona Valley. (Courtesy of Sylvia Michel Photography)

    A home built beside a massive boulder in Bavona Valley. (dosmass/Shutterstock)

    While people living in hamlets like Foroglio and Sonlerto once stayed year-round, today, and for several centuries, most spend winters down the pass in towns like Cavergno and Bignasco, where there are more comforts and amenities. In summer, they drive livestock up to graze in the cooler, higher pastures of Bavona Valley again, adopting a practice called transhumance.

    Both man and animal must cope with precious little space for living. While livestock find shelter under massive stones in excavated stables, humans have built up—erecting high-rise stone structures to increase real estate. There are houses, medieval churches, blacksmith shops, and whatnot. Amid the stone buildings, tight laneways navigate the unforgiving boulder-strewn environment.

    Evidence of settlements in Bavona Valley is believed to trace back 5,000 years, though a Roman necropolis toward the south shows that ancient European empire visited as early as the first century B.C.

    A stone church with a view of the valley. (Courtesy of Sylvia Michel Photography)

    A stone bridge. (Mario Krpan/Shutterstock)

    A pastoral economy with herds of goats produced hard cheese and modest farming practices. The region’s now famous terraced “hanging meadows” helped inhabitants win back land to grow rye, millet, potatoes, onions, and hemp.

    Eventually, the Little Ice Age around 1500 A.D. began unraveling their modest way of life. Winters got longer and summers wetter, with rain causing hundreds of waterfalls to overflow rivers, taking away already scarce farmland. The people of Bavona Valley lost all hope of staying, and a mass exodus down the mountain pass soon followed.

    There were also landslides. These “dropped an incredible amount of rock down on the valley floor,” Rachel Gadea Martini, coordinator of the Bavona Valley Foundation, told Swiss Info. “The locals no longer felt safe there and start to move away from the valley.”

    A home tucked under a colossal stone. (Martin Lehmann/Shutterstock)

    Rock roofs in Bavona Valley. (Stefano Ember/Shutterstock)

    Coupled with the fact that no roads reached here until 1955, this exodus left settlements looking lost in time. Locals would return only during the summer to lead their rustic way of life—as they preferred.

    Even as late as the 1950s, when hydroelectric power arrived in Bavona Valley, the vast majority living in the towns were happy to remain off-grid. Talks were held but amounted to nothing; the valley’s 12 hamlets gathered for a vote and 11 out of 12 chose to stay unplugged, preferring to live more simply.

    A breathtaking view of a river with stone structures in Bavona Valley. (Courtesy of Sylvia Michel Photography)

    Looking over the stone roofs of houses in Bavona Valley. (Courtesy of Sylvia Michel Photography)

    A stone dwelling. (Mario Krpan/Shutterstock)

    A view of the valley with a waterfall. (Courtesy of Sylvia Michel Photography)

    Today, you can hike Bavona Valley on day trips from the nearby cities of Lugano and Locarno or stay in picturesque accommodations in Bignasco; the cheese gnocchi in butter sage sauce is a local specialty. A ride to the top in San Carlo’s cable cars offers an awe-inspiring panorama.

    By most accounts, the inhabitants of Bavona Valley are just fine with their candles and no power. Other than the odd rooftop solar panel, providing a few watts for a freezer, most enjoy making do with less. Phone chargers and microwaves be darned.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/16/2024 – 22:20

  • Fire Federal Employees Who Walk Out Over Gaza Policies: Speaker Johnson
    Fire Federal Employees Who Walk Out Over Gaza Policies: Speaker Johnson

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

    House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) criticized federal employees reportedly planning a walkout over America’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas and called for terminating their employment.

    “Any government worker who walks off the job to protest U.S. support for our ally Israel is ignoring their responsibility and abusing the trust of taxpayers. They deserve to be fired,” Mr. Johnson said in a Jan. 14 post on X (formerly Twiter). “Oversight Chairman Comer and I will be working together to ensure that each federal agency initiates appropriate disciplinary proceedings against any person who walks out on their job,” he added, referring to Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.).

    House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) speaks during a news conference following the House Republican caucus meeting at the US Capitol in Washington on Nov. 29, 2023. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

    The House Speaker’s comments came in response to a tweet by Joyce Karam, the senior news editor at Al-Monitor, saying that “hundreds of U.S. gov. employees plan walkout on Tuesday over Biden’s Gaza policies.” In total, workers from 22 government agencies are expected to be involved in the walkout, she said in a Jan. 13 post.

    A list obtained by Al-Monitor showed that departments involved in the walkout include the National Security Agency, the Executive Office of the President, the Naval Research Laboratory, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the Departments of State, Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs.

    A walkout by federal employees could count as a strike, which is prohibited per law.

    Title 5 Section 7311 of the U.S. Code states: “An individual may not accept or hold a position in the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia if he … participates in a strike, or asserts the right to strike, against the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia.”

    Further, Title 18 Section 1918 prescribes the punishment for such an action. Violators of Section 7311 “shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year and a day, or both.”

    A major strike by federal employees over four decades ago triggered government action. In 1981, around 13,000 air traffic controllers took part in a strike over pay and work schedules.

    At the time, President Reagan declared the strike to be a “peril to national safety,” fired 11,000 workers, and barred them from ever joining the federal government again.

    ‘Day of Mourning’

    The walkout is being organized by a group called “Feds United for Peace” who claim that they will mark 100 days of Israel’s operations in Gaza by observing a “day of mourning.” The organizers remained anonymous.

    One of the organizers of the walkout told Al-Monitor that their initiative “grew out of a collective desire to do what we could to influence the Biden administration’s policy on this issue … What you’re seeing with this effort is something very unusual, and that is for dissent to be manifested via a physical act.”

    Hamas’ attack in Israel on Oct. 7 had killed around 1,200 individuals and led to the kidnapping of roughly 240 people. It is this attack that triggered the current Israel-Gaza conflict. In October, Israel launched a ground offensive in Gaza.

    South Africa has accused Israel of committing state-led genocide against Palestinians, claiming at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that the offensive has led to the deaths of almost 24,000 people.

    In a Jan. 11 X post, Lior Haiat, a spokesperson for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, called South Africa’s claims “one of the greatest shows of hypocrisy in history, compounded by a series of false and baseless claims.”

    South Africa “completely ignored the fact that Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel, murdered, executed, massacred, raped, and abducted Israeli citizens, simply because they were Israelis, in an attempt to carry out genocide,” he wrote.

    “Hamas’ representatives in the court, the South African lawyers, are also ignoring the fact that Hamas uses the civilian population in Gaza as human shields and operates from within hospitals, schools, UN shelters, mosques, and churches with the intention of endangering the lives of the residents of the Gaza Strip.”

    Pro-Hamas Stance

    This isn’t the first time that federal employees have been entangled in a controversy over the Israel-Hamas conflict.

    On Nov. 28, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) wrote a letter to cabinet-level inspector generals asking for a full investigation into reports that over 500 federal employees representing the Biden administration signed an open letter asking the president to demand a ceasefire.

    Such a demand “only stands to benefit Hamas,” Mr. Rubio argued. As the letter claimed to have been signed by workers from several government agencies and political appointees who were confirmed by the Senate, there is “ample opportunity for the signers to abuse their positions to carry out their self-declared goal,” he warned.

    “These range from officials at the U.S. Department of State insisting on prolonging the review periods of arms sales to Israel to supervisors denying promotion and salary increases to employees that support Israel.”

    “Therefore, I urge you to conduct a full investigation to determine which employees signed the letter, publicize their names, and assess to what extent they have used their positions to work counter to the policies of the president,” Mr. Rubio said.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/16/2024 – 21:40

  • China Population Plunges With Lowest Birth Rate In 74 Years As GDP Miraculously Tops Target Amid Strong Data Dump
    China Population Plunges With Lowest Birth Rate In 74 Years As GDP Miraculously Tops Target Amid Strong Data Dump

    Confirming Premier Li’s earlier leak, China’s economy grew at 5.2% YoY – comfortably and miraculously beating the all-knowing official target of ‘around 5%’ (which is the lowest target in decades), as industrial production and investment climbed in the final stretch of the year.

    However, thew GDP print at +5.2% was weaker than the +5.3% consensus estimate.

    While GDP accelerated, other indicators were mixed in the final month of 2023:

    • Industrial output rose 6.8% in December from a year ago, better than a 6.6% increase projected by economists

    • Retail sales grew 7.4%, weaker/worse than the forecast for an 8% gain

    • Fixed-asset investment climbed 3% in the year, slightly better than a predicted 2.9% rise

    • The urban jobless rate was 5.1% last month, up/worse from 5% in November

    “China’s economy withstood external pressures and overcame domestic challenges to rebound and improve in 2023,” the NBS said in a statement accompanying the data.

    The agency warned, though, that economic development “still faces some difficulties and challenges.”

    China released its jobless rate among young people (which it decided to stop issuing once it hit a record high above 20%) – but in the wonderfully Chinese way, the new series (at 14.9%) is entirely incomparable as it ‘excludes students’.

    A bigger problem for liquidity-hypers was that Li explicitly pointed out that China’s growth rate last year – a rise from the figure of 3% in 2022 when the country was hit by its arcane Zero-COVID policies – was achieved without resorting to “massive stimulus” and the economy was making “steady progress”.

    “We did not seek short-term growth while accumulating long-term risks, rather we focused on strengthening the internal drivers,” he said.

    “Just as a healthy person often has a strong immune system, the Chinese economy can handle ups and downs in its performance. The overall trend of long-term growth will not change.”

    The biggest threat to the economy remains the housing sector and China’s property crisis is not getting any better at all as the number of cities seeing home price increases continues to collapse…

    Finally, China’s population shrank faster last year, falling by 2 million people.

    The 9 million births was the lowest total since at least the start of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and 11 million people died.

    That number was probably boosted by the COVID pandemic, but there’s no detail in today’s data about cause of death.

    And that’s a big problem – because you can’t print people… and dependents are soaring.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/16/2024 – 21:22

  • Chicago Public Schools: Hundreds Of New Sexual Abuse Allegations Should Get All The Attention
    Chicago Public Schools: Hundreds Of New Sexual Abuse Allegations Should Get All The Attention

    By Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner of Wirepoints

    A glance at the news coverage of the recent Inspector General report on financial and sexual misconduct at Chicago Public Schools shows it’s the fiscal mismanagement that’s getting all the attention. The media is highlighting more than $23 million in missing laptops among other material fraud.

    But it’s the more urgent issue of sexual abuse in CPS that should dominate the headlines. The IG reported a total of 446 sexual allegations made in 2023, ranging from misconduct and sexual harassment to nonsexual conduct that raises “the appearance of impropriety or possible grooming concerns.” That’s similar to 2022’s 470 allegations.

    The IG also substantiated eight cases of adult-on-student sexual abuse.

    Instances of abuse continue despite the Chicago Tribune’s exposure in 2018 of the school district’s sexual abuse crisis, when the newspaper found police had investigated more than 520 cases of juvenile sexual assault and abuse in Chicago’s public schools from 2008 to 2017.

    Some things have improved since the publication, like the passage of Faith’s Law and the creation of the OIG’s Sexual Allegations Unit, but until CPS is subject to massive outside scrutiny and public outcry – much like the Catholic Church rightfully received for its own abuse scandals – count on cases of abuse to continue.

    A lack of management and accountability

    The problem at CPS is a lack of control and oversight, something the OIG office openly admits:

    “Among cases closed by the agency’s general investigations unit from July 2022 through June 2023, Inspector General Will Fletcher said there’s a consistent theme: ‘Where you find vulnerabilities in management controls (and) exercising oversight — you will find fraud.’”

    Those same vulnerabilities allow for continued instances of sexual abuse. 

    What’s worse, sexual abuse is harder to detect than stolen laptops or missing funds. There’s nothing “missing” for a manager to notice. The prevalence of texting and video also makes abuse easier to perpetrate and harder to detect.

    There are also likely many cases that go unreported and undiscovered due to shame or fear of retribution. That was certainly the case for the Catholic Church, which saw most accusations take years or decades to emerge.

    And then there’s the CTU and its collective bargaining agreement. Their “myriad” and “tedious” rules are more about protecting the union and its members than they are about protecting children.

    In sum, the deck is already stacked against parents and their children when it comes to abuse. The system’s continued mismanagement only makes things worse.

    Needed reforms

    The Chicago Tribune’s “Betrayed” series should have opened the door to massive changes and extreme transparency. It should have spurred the creation policies mirroring the Catholic Church’s own reforms, including:

    • A strict “one strike and you’re out” zero tolerance policy, as established in the Church’s Dallas Charter.

    • Removal of accused employees from school until an investigation is completed.

    • A public and easily accessible website that lists all offenders, their histories and their whereabouts, so these teachers don’t become tutors or get hired by another school system.

    • A rigorous screening process obsessed with a hiree’s character.

    • Robust and mandatory “safe environment” training for all employees and vendors.

    And it should have spurred State Attorney General Kwame Raoul to open an investigation of his own. 

    Instead, Raoul’s office dedicated itself to a multi-year reinvestigation of the Catholic Archdiocese, decades after the Church’s strict controls and safety processes had already been put in place.

    Bureaucratic blocking

    Not only has CPS failed to implement best practices for its own investigations, but its processes make it nearly impossible for private groups and citizens to conduct their own inquiries.

    A report by KidsToo, a Chicago-based nonprofit dedicated to child protection, recently outlined its attempt at investigative reporting needed to get to the truth about the depths of sexual abuse at CPS.

    It’s vital work because the OIG is always overwhelmed: “Every year, the OIG receives more credible allegations than it has the resources to investigate, so the investigations that are opened are the result of an assessment of the severity of the allegations and the potential impact or deterrent effect of investigating certain subject matter.”

    Unsurprisingly, KidsToo’s efforts were often thwarted for a host of reasons, which they laid out in detail in their “In Loco Parentis” report, including:

    • A FOIA process designed to “limit and filter information” rather than freely provide it.

    • Difficulty in gaining access to appropriate teacher data, including license information.

    • The teachers’ collective bargaining agreement allows CTU representatives to be part of the investigative process, creating a “myriad of steps” and “tedious” processes.

    • Other contract rules, including “grievance” and “mediation” processes, create even more investigative delays.

    • The revocation or suspension of teaching licenses is hampered by the State Superintendent having ultimate control over the process.

    To be clear, these investigations involve serious allegations and so should be treated seriously, but the process should not be so labyrinthine for those trying to gather information.

    *  *  *

    That CPS is such a poor steward of taxpayer dollars is bad enough, but the failure to catch fraud and theft pales in comparison to the continual harm done to Chicago’s children. Not only are a vast number pushed out of the system without the basic skills they need to succeed in life, but some also end up victims of sexual abuse.

    It’s a sad reminder of how inept, corrupt and morally bankrupt CPS really is.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/16/2024 – 21:00

  • US To Relist Yemen's Houthis As Designated Global Terrorists After Biden Removed Them In 2021
    US To Relist Yemen’s Houthis As Designated Global Terrorists After Biden Removed Them In 2021

    It’s about time? Late in the day Tuesday the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Biden administration is belatedly moving to put Yemen’s Houthi rebels back on the terrorist list.

    Ironically it was Biden that removed the Houthis in the first place, as WSJ highlights: “The designation as a foreign terrorist organization, which the U.S. plans to formally announce on Wednesday, reverses a decision taken early in President Biden’s term to remove the Houthis from the list over concerns it hurt the prospects for peace talks and further crippled the economy of an impoverished nation at risk of famine.”

    The Houthis were removed from the list in 2021 after they were first designated previously under the Trump administration, also given they have long been armed and backed financially by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

    Anadolu via Getty Images

    Since last week, the US and UK-led coalition which also includes Australia, Bahrain, Canada and the Netherlands have conducted several rounds of airstrikes and missile attacks against Houthi positions in Yemen.

    The repeat Houthi attacks, which are now almost daily, have threatened to completely shut out commercial vessels from the vital Red Sea transitway. 

    The Houthis have claimed this is all part of the war against Palestinians, and their military operations are meant as retaliation against Israel and its most powerful backer the US. 

    “The international coalition that America announced under the pretext of protecting maritime navigation in the Red Sea is an alliance to protect the Israeli entity and to protect Israeli ships. It is an integral part of the aggression against the Palestinian people, Gaza, and the Arab and Islamic nations,” the group previously said in a statement.

    The Saudi-UAE-US coalition has waged a brutal air war against Yemen and the rebel Houthis going back to 2015, unleashing a dire humanitarian crisis. It was during that time, especially when Washington was more deeply involved in helping Saudi pilots with targeting information, that the Houthis were first placed on the US terror list.

    In light of everything that has happened over the past couple months regarding Houthi attacks on civilian vessels, it’s interesting to revisit Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s words in February of 2021:

    Effective February 16, I am revoking the designations of Ansarallah, sometimes referred to as the Houthis, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) under the Immigration and Nationality Act and as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, as amended.

    This decision is a recognition of the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen. We have listened to warnings from the United Nations, humanitarian groups, and bipartisan members of Congress, among others, that the designations could have a devastating impact on Yemenis’ access to basic commodities like food and fuel.

    If the fresh WSJ reporting is confirmed, this will mark a somewhat unprecedented reversal which will see the same group go from a terror listing to being de-listed to being listed again—all within a matter of a few years.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/16/2024 – 20:40

  • Retirement Savers Are Putting More Money Into Stocks
    Retirement Savers Are Putting More Money Into Stocks

    Authored by Simon White, Bloomberg macro strategist,

    Retirement savers want more stocks in their portfolios as a hedge against inflation, potentially offering a long-term tailwind for equities as societies age, according to the latest Bloomberg Markets Live Pulse survey.

    Almost half of the 252 respondents said they were putting more funds into stocks as a response to rising prices – far eclipsing the 6% who said they’d be adding the traditional inflation hedge, gold.

    After the biggest jump in consumer prices for a generation, the survey highlights the range of strategies that pension investors have turned to as a counter. Real estate and commodities – also assets that historically have weathered inflation fairly well – were among the other choices. But shares of companies, whose earnings are expected to rise with prices, were clearly the preferred option.

    That doesn’t make them the right one, of course – in the inflationary 1970s, stocks were the worst-performing asset in real terms.

    There’s a fierce academic argument over the likely effects of demographic trends on economies and markets – and over one issue in particular: Will aging populations tend to push bond yields up, or down?

    In the MLIV survey, that’s the question that provoked the most individual responses. Reflecting the wider debate, the findings were exactly split down the middle.

    For those who expect yields to rise as societies age, the focus is on the mounting fiscal expense – and the knock-on inflationary effect – of supporting populations with a longer life expectancy when there are fewer workers.

    As one respondent put it: Medical and health costs grow faster than what the government can finance through tax, hence more debt must be issued.

    Among those making the opposite case – that yields will trend down – the most common argument was that there’ll be higher demand for fixed income from those close to or in retirement.

    Several respondents mentioned Japan, the country that is furthest along the aging track. It already has about 66 dependents for every 100 people of working age, while yields on Japan’s government debt have been below 2% for almost all of this century.

    One thing that could determine how yields behave as populations age is simply whether politicians are willing to push them down via what’s known as “financial repression” – essentially, government action that directs private capital flows into public debt markets. There are many ways to achieve this. One example is rules that require pension funds to own government debt to match their liabilities.

    One MLIV survey participant suggested that financial repression is exactly what will happen as states aren’t able to sell enough debt.

    All of this means that anyone shifting funds from bonds to stocks as a hedge against inflation may find that they’re jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

    Nonetheless, that’s the direction suggested by responses to the MLIV question on which asset class will see the biggest positive impact from aging societies.

    Stocks and real estate were the two most popular answers. The latter is a more proven inflation hedge. Land is in finite supply while typically demand for housing rises as populations age and the average household size falls.

    Around a quarter of respondents chose bonds, while some of the other answers given included healthcare stocks, gold, and Bitcoin.

    Another finding to emerge from the survey was a strong belief that the retirees of today and tomorrow will take a different approach to their pension portfolio compared to the baby boomers. Almost 60% of respondents took this view.

    Gen Z and millennials are set to have lower incomes and less wealth than their parents.

    That doesn’t mean they will mimic traditional approaches to pension investing by increasing bond allocations the closer they get to retirement age – which in any case may not be the most prudent strategy if elevated inflation turns out to be a feature rather than a bug.

    That not only has implications for current generations when they retire, but for the whole structure of the market that’s been in place for most of the past three decades.

    It’s too early to say exactly what that means for investing – but one thing is clear: aging populations mean the rules have changed.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/16/2024 – 20:20

  • John Deere Partners With Elon Musk's Starlink To Unlock "Vast Opportunities"
    John Deere Partners With Elon Musk’s Starlink To Unlock “Vast Opportunities”

    Deere & Company, the world’s largest tractor maker, announced Tuesday morning it “entered into an agreement” with Elon Musk’s SpaceX company to provide high-speed satellite internet to farmers across the US and Brazil in the second half of this year. 

    “Utilizing the industry-leading Starlink network, this solution will allow farmers facing rural connectivity challenges to fully leverage precision agriculture technologies,” Deere wrote in a press release. 

    This will allow “John Deere customers to be more productive, profitable, and sustainable in their operations as they continue to provide food, fuel, and fiber for their communities and a growing global population,” the company continued. 

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

    “The value of connectivity to farmers is broader than any single task or action. Connectivity unlocks vast opportunities that were previously limited or unavailable,” said Aaron Wetzel, Vice President of Production and Precision Ag Production Systems at John Deere.

    According to all-things ag website Precision Farming Dealer, only 30% of the largest US farms have “high quality” internet.

    While Starlink supplies rural America with high-speed internet, the Federal Communications Commission, weaponized by the Biden administration, recently rejected Musk’s company from receiving $885.5 million in rural broadband subsidies.

    SpaceX said it was “deeply disappointed and perplexed” by the FCC decision, adding Starlink “is demonstrably one of the best options – likely the best option” to achieve the goals of the rural internet program.

    “Last year, after Elon Musk acquired Twitter, President Biden gave federal agencies the green light to go after him,” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr wrote in an X post last month. 

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

    We suspect many more partnerships are coming down the pipe as Starlink gears up for an IPO, with some reports indicating as early as the end of this year.

    Musk is the ‘uncancellable’ billionaire, and the Biden administration hates this.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/16/2024 – 20:00

  • "2025 Is When The World Will Be Short Of Oil": Occidental CEO Warns Oil Supply Crunch Begins Next Year
    “2025 Is When The World Will Be Short Of Oil”: Occidental CEO Warns Oil Supply Crunch Begins Next Year

    By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

    • The ratio of discovered resources versus demand has dropped in recent decades and is now at around 25%.
    • Oxy CEO Hollub: “2025 and beyond is when the world is going to be short of oil.”.
    • Oil industry executives have been warning that new resources, new investments, and new supply will be needed just to maintain the current supply levels as older fields mature.

    The world would find itself short of oil from 2025 onwards as exploration for longer-producing crude reserves is set to lag demand growth, Vicki Hollub, chief executive of Occidental Petroleum, said at the Davos forum on Tuesday.  

    For most of the second half of the 20th century, oil companies were finding more crude than global consumption, around five times the demand volumes, Hollub said, as carried by Reuters.

    The ratio of discovered resources versus demand has dropped in recent decades and is now at around 25%.

    “In the near term, the markets are not balanced; supply, demand is not balanced,” Oxy’s CEO said.  

    “2025 and beyond is when the world is going to be short of oil.”

    According to the executive, the oil market will find itself moving from an oversupply in the near term to a long period of supply shortages.

    Oil industry executives have been warning that new resources, new investments, and new supply will be needed just to maintain the current supply levels as older fields mature.

    One of the most persistent warnings has come for years from Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil exporter, and its state oil giant Aramco.

    The Kingdom and Aramco have repeatedly said that the focus of the energy sector and the debates on the energy transition should be on how to cut emissions, not on reducing oil and gas production. 

    Speaking at the Energy Intelligence Forum in October, Aramco’s chief executive Amin Nasser said that the Saudi oil giant is working on renewables, e-fuels, hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage (CCS). But the world will need oil and gas for decades and renewables won’t meet this need for decades, he added.

    The additional oil and gas demand over the coming decade needs new upstream investments to offset the 5-7% annual decline rates, Nasser noted.  

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/16/2024 – 19:40

  • COVID-19 May Have Come From Chinese Laboratory, Dr. Fauci’s Former Boss Says
    COVID-19 May Have Come From Chinese Laboratory, Dr. Fauci’s Former Boss Says

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    COVID-19 may have come from a laboratory in China, a former National Institutes of Health (NIH) director said in recent closed-door testimony.

    Dr. Francis Collins speaks in Washington on Sept. 9, 2020. (Michael Reynolds/Pool/Getty Images)

    Dr. Francis Collins, the NIH director until late 2021, said that the theory that COVID-19 came from a lab in Wuhan “is not a conspiracy theory,” according to the U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

    The panel has released a summary of Dr. Collins’ transcribed interview since it took place on Jan. 12.

    Dr. Collins, 73, who is still President Joe Biden’s science adviser, was director of the NIH from 2009 to 2021. He was the boss of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who helped craft the U.S. pandemic response.

    Dr. Fauci, 83, who left the government in 2022, also told members in recent closed-door testimony that the lab leak hypothesis is not a conspiracy theory, according to the subcommittee.

    The former officials were brought in as the panel investigates how the government responded to the pandemic.

    Dr. Collins and Dr. Fauci “prompted” the drafting of a paper called “Proximal Origins” that was published in early 2020 and claimed to disprove the lab leak theory, according to an email from one of the authors. Neither Dr. Collins nor Dr. Fauci were named in the acknowledgements or listed as a co-author of the paper.

    Two months after the paper was published, Dr. Collins wrote to Dr. Fauci about public discussions about the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

    “I hoped the Nature Medicine article on the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 would settle this… Wondering if there is something NIH can do to help put down this very destructive conspiracy … Anything more we can do?” Dr. Collins wrote at the time.

    Dr. Fauci, meanwhile, promoted “Proximal Origins” from the White House podium before alleging he could not recall the names of the authors.

    A number of experts and outlets have backtracked on their earlier position that COVID-19 did not come from a lab, including The Washington Post and the U.N.’s World Health Organization.

    Dr. Collins told the subcommittee that Dr. Fauci invited him to attend a Feb. 1, 2020, conference call that featured scientists who went on to write “Proximal Origins,” according to the subcommittee.

    “This testimony directly contradicts Dr. Fauci’s previous statements and raises further concerns about the U.S. government’s role in suppressing and vilifying the lab-leak hypothesis,” said the panel, which is chaired by Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio).

    Other Statements

    Dr. Fauci said that social distancing, or rules that required or advised people to maintain six feet of distance from others, was likely not based on any data.

    “It just sort of appeared,” Dr. Fauci was quoted as saying.

    Dr. Collins also said that social distancing “was likely not based on any science or data,” according to the subcommittee. Social distancing underpinned a range of measures, including forcing children to stay home from school on some days after schools reopened.

    Dr. Collins also reiterated attacks he’s made against the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for protecting vulnerable people like the elderly and letting younger, healthy people live largely without restrictions, the subcommittee said.

    Dr. Collins told Dr. Fauci via email on Oct. 8, 2020, that the declaration was written by “three fringe epidemiologists,” even though the authors included professors from Harvard Medical School and Stanford Medical School, and that “there needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises.”

    “You have a federal government figure abusing his power,” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, one of the authors, told The Epoch Times previously. “Why? Because he couldn’t stand the idea that there were prominent scientists that disagreed with him about pandemic policy.”

    Transcripts of the testimony from Dr. Collins and Dr. Fauci have not yet been released, though members of the subcommittee say they will be disclosed at some point.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/16/2024 – 19:00

  • Conservative Billionaire Buys Baltimore Sun Newspaper
    Conservative Billionaire Buys Baltimore Sun Newspaper

    Maryland’s largest daily newspaper, the Baltimore Sun, has been acquired by a conservative billionaire who is the biggest owner of local television stations in the US and has provided favorable coverage for former President Donald Trump. 

    Axios reports David D. Smith, the executive chairman of Sinclair, has acquired The Sun in a private deal from Alden Global Capital. This investment firm is one of the country’s largest newspaper operators. 

    The purchase returns The Sun to local ownership. It is unclear how much Smith paid for the newspaper. 

    “I’m in the news business because I believe … we have an absolute responsibility to serve the public interest,” Smith told The Washington Post. 

    He continued: “I think the paper can be hugely profitable and successful and serve a greater public interest over time.” 

    So what could Smith mean when he stated “greater public interest over time”? 

    Well, firstly, the purchase of the newspaper comes as the 2024 presidential election cycle has kicked off. The paper has been analyzed by various media bias websites, such as Media Bias Fact Check, and found “slight to moderate liberal bias” in news reporting. 

    Under new ownership, the paper could be shifted from supporting leftist causes to more of a center-conservative bias. 

    At Smith’s flagship WBFF TV station in Baltimore, investigative reporters like Chris Papst have made considerable efforts to uncover corruption in Maryland. Taking the TV station as a guide, this might only suggest that Smith’s newspaper venture could begin a new focus on exposing corrupt Democrats who have controlled Baltimore City for more than half a century, as well as radical progressives in Annapolis. 

    Triffon G. Alatzas, the publisher and editor-in-chief of the newspaper, told the newsroom on Monday that Smith had bought The Sun “to support his hometown newspaper.”

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/16/2024 – 18:40

  • Art Dealer Testifies That Hunter Expressly Asked For Buyer Information
    Art Dealer Testifies That Hunter Expressly Asked For Buyer Information

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    More details are emerging from the recent testimony of Hunter Biden’s art dealer, George Bergès.

    We previously discussed how Bergès confirmed that the accounts of buyers flocking to buy Hunter’s art was false and that most of the art was purchased by his Democratic donor patron, Kevin Morris.

    Not only did Bergès shatter White House claims of a carefully constructed ethical system to keep Hunter from knowing the identity of purchasers, Bergès testified that Hunter expressly demanded to know the identity.

    Various experts objected to the sales as a serious ethical problem of donors using the purchases to assist President Biden and his family.

    The media dutifully reported at the time how the White House was grappling with the ethical questions and, according to the Washington Post, “the White House officials have helped craft an agreement.”

    It was portrayed as unprecedented and unyielding.

    The White House continued to swat down questions by citing an ethical plan created for the sales. Andrew Bates, a spokesperson for the White House, said in a statement that “the President has established the highest ethical standards of any administration in American history, and his family’s commitment to rigorous processes like this is a prime example.”

    Then White House spokesperson (and now MSNBC host) Jennifer Psaki stated:

    “Well, I can tell you that after careful consideration, a system has been established that allows for Hunter Biden to work in his profession within reasonable safeguards […] But all interactions regarding the selling of art and the setting of prices will be handled by a professional gallerist, adhering to the highest industry standards. And any offer out of the normal course would be rejected out of hand. And the gallerist will not share information about buyers or prospective buyers, including their identities, with Hunter Biden or the administration, which provides quite a level of protection and transparency.”

    Yet, Bergès reportedly testified that he had no contacts with the White House and Hunter knew the identity of the purchasers of most of the art.

    Notably, Bergès was reading these same reports in the news but never objected to the alleged misrepresentation.

    He admitted that he read of those reports and was confused.

    A staffer asked:

    “When you’re seeing in the press that the White House is putting in certain safeguards regarding an ethics agreement but you’ve had no conversations with [the] White House, I mean, did you ever say to Hunter Biden, ‘Hey, where’s this coming from?’”

    Bergès responded:

    “I might have. I probably did, yeah.”

    He admitted that he was surprised by the coverage “[b]ecause I hadn’t had any communication with the White House about an agreement.”

    That, of course, was never reported. Instead, the media dutifully reported how there was this comprehensive ethical plan in place.

    What was particularly notable is that, despite the false White House claims and extensive coverage, Hunter appears to have discarded any such limits.

    Berges testified that artists usually do not know who buys their art.  So not only did Hunter not comply with the agreement with the first, this was a departure from standard operating procedure to let him know about the purchasers: “…I don’t know how it was phrased or—but I remember that there—that that was the difference…That part was different. Normally, the gallerist does not let the artist know who the collectors are…The first one was that I was required to disclose who the buyers were. In the second one, I was required to not disclose the buyers.”

    The most important testimony, in my view, is still the massive purchase by Morris. This Democratic donor was introduced to Hunter at a Democratic fundraiser for the first time not long before reportedly giving him millions to pay off his taxes and support his lavish lifestyle. He then reportedly purchased most of the art as the media was reporting how hot Hunter was as a new emerging artist. The claims of walling off the identity of purchasers and the high demand for his art proved to be false.

    For his part, Bergès says that he no longer carries Hunter’s art.

    He did confirm that he previously did speak with President Biden in person and on the phone during the period when he was selling his son’s art.

    The media, however, now appears to be, again, largely ignoring the story and what it says about not just the ethical questions but its own prior coverage.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/16/2024 – 18:20

  • NYC Ends 701-Day Snow Drought As Old Man Winter Returns
    NYC Ends 701-Day Snow Drought As Old Man Winter Returns

    An El Niño winter and a split in the polar vortex have created the perfect weather conditions for New York City to break its 701-day streak without significant snowfall. 

    “It’s been 701 days since Central Park last recorded an inch of snow on a calendar day,” the National Weather Service of New York wrote in a post on social media platform X. They said Central Park received 1.4″, which was enough to break the snow drought. 

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    The longest snow drought on record for the metro area ends. 

    Scenes from NYC. 

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    Washington, DC, and Baltimore also ended a snow drought. 

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    With snow on the ground and teeth-chattering cold plaguing the eastern half of the US, we wonder how sanctuary cities will fare with millions of new illegals from areas of the world that are in the tropics. 

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    Democrats better keep praying for global warming. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/16/2024 – 18:00

  • Recession Signal: Private-Sector Job Growth Is Being Replaced By Gov't-Sector Job Growth
    Recession Signal: Private-Sector Job Growth Is Being Replaced By Gov’t-Sector Job Growth

    Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

    Over the past two years, the Biden administration has repeatedly insisted that job growth is amazing, and that the administration has “created” millions of jobs.

    In reality, of course, much of the job growth that did exist was the predictable job growth that came with the end of forced business closures and lockdowns. Job growth was also fueled by rising aggregate demand fueled by runaway growth in government spending. After all, during 2020 and 2021, the regime’s easy money policies meant that the central bank and private banks created approximately seven trillion dollars during that period. 

    Since early 2021, however, the job growth we’re seeing has been increasingly fueled by growth in government-sector jobs. In other words, the job growth we do see in the government sector does not represent the result of private investment, saving, or demand. It’s not organic economic growth. Rather, these government positions are positions that only exist as the result of wealth transferred from the private sector to the government sector.  

    Government-funded jobs are not drivers of growth. They are obstacles to growth, as stated by Ludwig von Mises: 

    …there is need to emphasize the truism that a government can spend or invest only what it takes away from its citizens and that its additional spending and investment curtails the citizens’ spending and investment to the full extent of its quantity.

    Looking at month-to-month job growth since 2021, the graph shows government jobs as a percentage of all new job growth (according to the establishment survey.) This has accelerated over the past six months as government job growth has comprised from 21 percent to 58 percent over that period. Indeed, over the past year, from December 2022 to December 2023, private sector jobs grew at half the pace of government jobs, with private sector payrolls rising 1.5%. During that time, government payrolls increased 3 percent. 

    The relationship between government jobs and private sector jobs also can also indicate approaching recessions in many cases.

    Here is a graph that shows year-over-year growth in private sector jobs (gray) and government jobs (red), each as a proportion of all job growth. We can see how in numerous cases, the portion of all jobs that is private tends to deteriorate as recessions approach. For example, as the 1991-1992 recession, approached, we see that new government jobs became a larger and larger share of all new jobs during 1990 and 1991.

    Government jobs made up about 20 percent of all new job growth in early 1990, but by December of that year, government jobs has provided about half of all new job growth. We can clearly see a similar trend with the lead up to the great recession: private-sector jobs began to collapse as early as late 2006 even though government job creation continued to buoy overall job growth in that period.  

    During times of strong economic growth, we find that government jobs rarely comprise more than twenty percent of all new jobs.

    Since September of this year, however, government jobs has taken up more than twenty percent of all new jobs in each month. In December, government jobs reached 24.9 percent of all new jobs.

    That’s the largest proportion since the covid panic in March 2020. 

    Daniel Lacalle has said that the United States is in the midst of a “private sector recession.” What he means is aggregate numbers can still show good economic trends—such as job growth—while the private sector is stagnating or shrinking. That is, if government spending and government job creation is robust enough, it will mask private sector weakness in the aggregate statistics. 

    That may be the trend we are facing right now. The job growth we do see is increasingly being driven by government spending, and not by private investment. Even worse, the government spending we see is largely deficit spending, meaning the economic “good news” is reliant on massive amounts of new government debt. 

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/16/2024 – 17:40

  • US Conducts New 'Preemptive Strikes' On Houthi Launch Sites
    US Conducts New ‘Preemptive Strikes’ On Houthi Launch Sites

    On Tuesday US forces carried out another round of strikes on Houthi sites in Yemen, but this time the operation is being dubbed a “pre-emptive” attack that came in response to militants preparing missile launches on the ground in real time.

    “US forces struck and destroyed four Houthi anti-ship ballistic missiles,” a Central Command (CENTCOM) statement saud. “These missiles were prepared to launch from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and presented an imminent threat to both merchant and US Navy ships in the region.”

    US Navy/DoD

    Over the course of the prior day, two commercial ships were hit by Houthi missiles, including the Zografia, in an incident we detailed earlier.

    US defense officials explained of this third significant wave of American strikes against the Houthis, per Politico: 

    The Tuesday attacks were on a much smaller scale and “dynamic” in nature, meaning they were not pre-planned and rather taken in self-defense against missiles that presented an imminent threat to international shipping, one of the officials said. All of the officials were granted anonymity to speak about a sensitive operation before an official announcement.

    These Houthi launches targeting Red Sea transit are coming daily at this point, and so it’s very likely there will be many more counter-attacks to come from the Operation Prosperity Guardian coalition patrolling off Yemen. CENTCOM has has also continued upping its counter-Iran operations in regional waters, also as Tehran is believed to be supplying the Yemeni rebel group with weapons.

    Shell plc multinational oil and gas company has been the latest to suspend tanker operations through the Red Sea. 

    In earlier analysis we explained how the number of commercial vessels that have transited the Red Sea/Suez Canal route has more than halved over the past month amid rising tensions off Yemen, but more than 100 ships, including oil tankers, have crossed the water lane since the US and UK navies advised operators on Friday to steer clear of the route.

    A total of 114 commercial vessels — including oil tankers, bulk carriers, and container ships — have continued with their routes and transited into or out of the Red Sea through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, according to vessel-tracking data monitored by Bloomberg.

    The Houthis have declared war on Red Sea shipping in connection with Israel’s ongoing operation in Gaza. The White House has so far backed away from calling for permanent ceasefire, also as over 100 Israeli hostages remain in Hamas captivity…

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    While attending the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, national security adviser Jake Sullivan strongly suggested the region will soon see more US offensive strikes in Yemen. “We did not say when we launched our attacks, they’re gonna end once and for all,” he warned in the fresh remarks.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/16/2024 – 17:20

  • Progressive Lawmakers Line Up Behind Costly Fix For Error They Made In Renewable Energy Plan
    Progressive Lawmakers Line Up Behind Costly Fix For Error They Made In Renewable Energy Plan

    By Mark Glennon of Wirepoints

    Oopsie.

    When Congress voted to spend hundreds of billions to switch electricity production to solar and wind, it forgot something: transmission lines. New ones will be needed going to the locations of the new power sources, but nobody bothered to figure out who will pay for it or how much it will cost.

    Congressmen Sean Casten (D-IL) and Mike Levin (D-CA) introduced a bill last month to fix their omission, largely at your expense. The bill has already picked up 76 co-sponsors, including eight from Illinois.

    Grab your wallet. Here are the details:

    In 2022, Congress passed the mislabeled Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which will cost an estimated $1.2 trillion, far exceeding initial claims. The IRA actually was the largest energy bill in U.S. history. Tax credits for renewable energy production, among the biggest elements of the law, are estimated to cost $263 billion.

    No cap was placed on those tax credits and they were generous – 30% of project costs. That’s part of the reason for the cost overrun but it also means that new solar and wind production projects are underway. All the better, say IRA supporters.

    Now, however, there’s widespread, bipartisan recognition that those projects are futile without transmission linking them into the electrical grid. Progressive economist Paul Krugman, for example, cheered the IRA but wrote despairingly in the New York Times that “we may need a third, bureaucratic miracle to fix the electricity grid and make this whole thing work.”

    Casten, also an avid IRA supporter, now admits to the gravity of the problem saying that “80% of the clean energy progress we made with the Inflation Reduction Act will be lost unless we reform transmission and permitting.”

    Enter Casten and Levin with their solution, the Clean Electricity and Transmission Acceleration Act (CETA), which they introduced in the House last month.

    What’s in it?

    More tax credits, which is to say more subsidies by taxpayers. A 30% tax credit would go toward qualifying new transmission lines going to renewable sources. The total amount of credits available is again uncapped.

    That’s just part of the 210-page bill. It would also amend the IRA to let the Department of Energy finance transmission facilities designated by DOE as “national interest.”

    It would give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission exclusive siting authority for “national interest” transmission lines, directing FERC to base its decision to exercise such authority on factors that include enabling the use of renewable energy. That’s important because it appears to be an attempt to override growing roadblocks local citizens have been putting up to new renewable projects on their landscape.

    The bill also contains a range of provisions under the label of “empowerment.” It would, among many other things, establish an Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights; codify the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights in the EPA; codify the White House Environmental Justice Interagency Council; provide for development an Interagency Federal Environmental Justice Strategy to address “current and historical environmental injustice,” and designate “Tribal Community Engagement Officers” in each agency.

    The bill has 76 House co-sponsors and counting, all Democrats, in addition to Casten and Levin, including Illinoisans Jan Schakowsky, Nicole Budzinski, Jonathan Jackson, Eric Sorensen, Bill Foster, Brad Schneider, Raja Krishnamoorthi and Mike Quigley.

    What will all this cost?

    So far, I have seen nothing at all from bill sponsors or in the press. As always, cost matters little if the results are green.

    But lots of evidence suggests that the cost would certainly be many tens of billions and perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars. For example, interconnection costs sometimes 10 times higher than projects that ultimately got built. Earlier this year, a renewable executive told The New York Times that interconnection costs have become the “no. 1 project killer.” For Texas alone, according to one study, extending the reach of transmission lines to connect more zero-carbon power sources would cost $11 billion by 2035.

    And stories abound about individual projects facing huge interconnection problems. CNBC devoted a three-part series to it.

    Remember that the cost to the government from tax credits or grants to fix the problem is just the start. Utilities would bear a large part of the remaining cost which gets passed through to consumers in rate increases. Insofar as other private sector investors fund the rest of the price, there’s an opportunity cost of capital that might have been invested elsewhere.

    The bill has no chance of passing in its current form in the Republican-majority House. It’s important nevertheless because it represents the progressive starting point of negotiations on a massive problem that both parties recognize. Republicans unanimously opposed the IRA in the House and Senate, but may negotiate a bill to address the problem in order to salvage something of value from what’s already been spent.

    The new bill is also important because it reflects the thinking of progressives and what they’d like to do if they regain full control of Congress. “While acknowledging that the bill stood little chance of passage in the current House,” The Hill reported, “Casten said it would serve as an ‘anchor of democratic energy policy when a window opens up to have that conversation again.”

    Is the public ready to pay up once again for renewable electricity? Most Americans support renewable sources but want a balance with traditional, fossil fuel sources. Good. That’s sensible. But where’s the balance?

    There’s a final, huge kicker near the end of the bill that has nothing to do with energy or transmission lines: It would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit disparate impact discrimination.

    I found the buried section by chance when going through the bill. No bill sponsor or reporter has mentioned it. “Disparate impact” is a critical issue in discrimination cases. It’s about whether the mere fact of unequal outcomes proves illegal discrimination and what excuses there may be for it. It’s complicated, and Supreme Court rulings depend on who is getting sued, among other variables.

    Suffice it to say, however, that Section 603 of CETA would vastly expand the scope of what would constitute illegal discrimination under the Civil Rights Act, making it easier to sue based on unequal outcomes.

    Why did they hide this proposal in an energy bill. Afraid of what voters would think it they put it up straight as a standalone bill?

    Getting back to the main thrust of CETA, when Paul Krugman wrote that it would take a “bureaucratic miracle to fix the electricity grid and make this whole thing work,” he must have been fantasizing about CETA.

    CETA is that fantasy and more.

    Tyler Durden
    Tue, 01/16/2024 – 17:00

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  • Dissecting A Modern Vaccine Propaganda Piece
    Dissecting A Modern Vaccine Propaganda Piece

    Authored by ‘A Midwestern Doctor’ via ‘The Forgotten Side Of Medicien’ Substack,

    Recently, I published an article which discussed how science been hijacked by corporate interests and turned into a dogma no one is allowed to question. After Pierre Kory shared it, it ended up going viral on Twitter.

    It got enough traction that even Hotez himself “responded” to it (normally he hides from every chance to debate) by retweeting a zealous adherent of his narrative.

    Note: one of the most remarkable things about these tweets is that they disprove themselves, as they deny Hotez believes any of that, but simultaneously states that he does indeed believe it. As this article will show, that type of “logic” is a recurring theme with Peter Hotez.

    Based on the feedback I received, I realized a lot of people were interested in knowing what was inside the book and why Hotez is such a frequent target of criticisms. Additionally, given Hotez’s “response,” I felt it was important to share exactly what he proposed doing to those who disagree with him and how the WHO is working behind the scenes to make that happen.

    Why Is Peter Hotez Dangerous?

    Hotez has long drawn the ire of the vaccine safety community because he will relentlessly defend the narrative and attack anyone who questions vaccine safety.

    For example, many parents believe vaccines cause autism because they had a child who was completely normal who then received their vaccines, had a bad reaction to them and then rapidly regressed into permanent autism. Conversely, I do not know of any cases of a child rapidly regressing into autism immediately before their vaccination appointment (which one would expect to happen if the autistic regression “happened by chance”).

    Note: I personally believe vaccines cause autism because I and colleagues have seen countless children who:

    • Have similar adverse reactions to vaccination (e.g., high fevers or a non-stop piercing cry) which is then followed by rapid autistic regression.

    • Have numerous signs that microstrokes occurred (e.g., impaired function of the nerves that innervate the face) along with a variety of biomarkers indicating they are trapped in the cell danger response or a hyper inflammatory state—all of which has also been observed by many other clinicians and are a common side effect of vaccination.

    • Improve once the blood flow to the brain is restored, the cell danger response is resolved, or the inflammation in their system is reduced. While this rarely results in a 100% recovery (due to the brain tissue that is permanently lost), we have many cases where we’ve observed remarkable improvements, even in cases that were treated decades after the initial injury.

    Peter Hotez (a pediatrician) in turn has spent years speaking on the mainstream media to debunk any link between autism and vaccines, which eventually led him to write a book about his autistic daughter to “definitively” prove vaccines don’t cause autism that he then brandished around each time he spoke in public.

    Note: Hotez’s book doesn’t actually disprove the link between vaccines and autism. Rather, it shares his own subjective trains of logic which predictably led him to conclude that it doesn’t make any sense vaccines could cause autism. Conversely, he reveals the limits of his pediatric knowledge (as he had to take his autistically regressing daughter to a specialist to get a diagnosis) and reveals that his daughter had numerous signs of a debilitating vaccine injury (e.g., the piercing cry) that Hotez to this day has not recognized.

    While many things in it were quite cruel, some of the most noteworthy included:

    • Denouncing parents who wanted to consider the possibility vaccines caused autism because…it diverts some of the funding away from the social support offered to autistic individuals (which cannot come close to meeting the demand for it as caring for autistic individuals is expensive and more and more people are developing autism).

    • Insisting the only reason parents consider the autism vaccine link was because of a retracted paper Andrew Wakefield wrote (rather than because a lot of people witnessed severe injuries immediately following vaccination). This brief clip illustrates why I don’t support this gaslighting:

    Note: for context, Wakefield’s infamous 1998 Lancet paper was simply a case study where 12 children who had experienced both neurological regression (i.e., autism) and gastrointestinal issues (e.g., abdominal pain) shortly after MMR vaccination then had their bowels examined where it was shown they did indeed have bowel inflammation. I have often thought the reason why this paper is still viciously attacked decades later is to both to dismiss the idea people might have a legitimate reason for believing vaccines cause autism and to send a harsh warning to the medical journals to never publish anything which threatens the narrative. I am mentioning that here because Hotez frequently utilizes a similar tactic to dismiss any notion severely injured patients might have that the COVID vaccine was responsible for their illness.

    Due to his experience in “combatting vaccine misinformation” as public resistance grew towards the slew of mandates that were enacted across the nation during Obama’s presidency, Hotez became much more vocal in both denouncing the antivaccine movement. In turn, Hotez went on a speaking tour across the country calling for Silicon Valley to censor all criticisms of vaccination online.

    During Trump’s presidency, Hotez began actively denouncing each science related policy Trump put forward, but once the Pandemic began, Hotez (an avowed left-wing partisan) became a constant cheerleader for Biden’s vaccine program.

    In May of 2020, he published an article about COVID-19 and the antivaccine movement which concluded:

    To mitigate the consequences of a reinvigorated antivaccine movement in America it will be essential for the White House, together with the NIH and other elements of our science infrastructure, to shape a well-crafted vaccine communication plan. They must also designate a trusted spokesperson who can articulate and carry the message.

    While Hotez repeatedly criticized the coronavirus vaccination development efforts during Trump’s presidency (including doing so before Congress), once the administrations transitioned, Hotez quickly worked to become that spokesman and before long was seen on every network zealously promoting whatever the current vaccine messaging was.

    Note: After George W. Bush won the nomination, he assigned Dick Cheney to determine who his vice president should be, who as we know was ultimately chosen for that role. I have often wondered if Cheney inspired Hotez to assume the role Hotez worked to create.

    Remarkably (as shown later in this article), in addition to contradicting his previous warning against the vaccines, he quickly began contradicting what he had previous said on television (as the vaccines continually failed to meet their promise and the goal posts had to be moved again and again).

    During his previous vaccine tour, like many, I erroneously assumed Hotez was a clown (as much of what he said was so absurd I didn’t see how anyone could take it seriously) and the best thing that could be done was to ignore him. This was a big mistake as Hotez’s speaking tour paved the way for the deadly mass censorship of lifesaving COVID-19 treatments and reports severe vaccine injuries we saw throughout the pandemic.

    In his current tour, Hotez has continually advanced the idea that anyone who disagrees with the narrative (e.g., by questioning the safety or efficacy of the vaccines) is a danger to society and must be censored. Before long, that turned into for calls for the government to be mobilized against anyone who challenged the corporate “scientific” narrative):

    Many of us recognized how dangerous Hotez’s message was and a successful grassroots campaign was conducted which took the wind out of this PR campaign.

    Unfortunately, they haven’t given up. Hotez has been given a lot of media time to relentlessly promote a new book which argues “not trusting the science” will bring catastrophic death and the destruction, while the WHO in tandem is pushing for a treaty which will give them the ability to outlaw any dissent against their next pandemic response: (fwd to around 26:00)

    Note: this video is really important to watch and it cuts to the heart of why Hotez’s book (which represents the tip of the spear to push the WHO’s provisions forward) is so important to expose.

    From reviewing Hotez’s book, it’s quite clear it was targeted to an uninformed audience who are not aware of the broader context which immediately refutes most of his points. For this reason, I believe it’s important to provide that context.

    Note: the degree of gaslighting in this book is astounding, and I would in turn advise against reading it if you were seriously harmed by the COVID-19 pandemic policies and are sensitive to someone saying all of that was in your head (this is also why so many parents of autistic children hold great disdain for Peter Hotez).

    First Order Thinking

    In medical education, one of the primary metrics everyone (e.g., both the students and schools) are judged on is their performance on board examinations, so a “subculture” exists which revolves around the intricacies of those examinations.

    One of its foundational concepts are first order vs. second order vs. third order questions. In first order questions, you simply have to recall a testable factoid (e.g., which of the following is a side effect of ciprofloxacin), while in second order questions, you need to be able to link two memorized facts together (which of the following would be an expected side effect of the first line antibiotic to treat this infection), while in third order questions, you need to link three chains of memorized facts together (e.g., based on the patients symptoms, for the condition those symptoms suggest [with the condition not being stated in the question], what is the most common side effect of the drug that would be used to treat it).

    Initially medical students receive more first order questions. Then, later in their training as they have more medical knowledge (e.g., they can instantly identify the infection being described by the question stem) their examinations test a great proportion of second or third order questions (you have to pass quite a few to get a medical license).

    In the previous article, I argued that the main reason the vaccine propagandists won’t ever agree to public debate is because much of what they espouse has a high enough discordance with reality that it instantly falls apart under cross examination and second order thinking.

    Note: in another article I provided numerous examples where the press allowed an open debate on a national vaccination campaign program and in each case public opinion rapidly turned agains the campaign. This predictably led to all discussions which did not wholeheartedly endorse the mantra “safe and effective,” being phased out of the media after Clinton enacted regulations in 1997 that allowed the pharmaceutical industry to buy out the press.

    More than anyone else in America, Peter Hotez exemplifies this strategy as he constantly is brought on by compliant news hosts who echo everything Hotez says, but simultaneously, Hotez will never even go in front of a neutral audience who exposes his statements to a basic degree of scrutiny.

    After I read his book, I had a realization; the majority of Hotez’s “arguments” are first order statements which immediately are invalidated if you know the related context. Furthermore, Hotez often provided the context that disproves his first order argument in another part of his book. This is remarkable and something I very rarely see authors do.

    For example, he justifies the need for everyone to get a polio vaccination by…the fact people are catching polio from the polio vaccine.

    Poliovirus strains continue to circulate in the environment primarily because gaps in vaccination facilitate ongoing transmission. In the US and UK cases, the poliovirus discovered was derived from a strain that originated from the live oral vaccine (vaccine-derived poliovirus, or VDPV) but mutated until it acquired characteristics that resembled a wild-type poliovirus. It can then propagate among the unvaccinated. Therefore, the presence of VDPV is a biomarker for “significant numbers of unvaccinated people.

    Likewise, Hotez denounces RFK Jr. for falsely claiming that Hotez pushed to make criticizing Anthony Fauci a felony “I never said criticizing Dr. Fauci should constitute a felony.” Beyond failing to mention that RFK Jr. was simply referencing Hotez’s recent publication which called for criticizing scientists to become a hate crime, Hotez actually repeats that call that later in his book.

    Note: this duplicity is analogous to how Hotez frequently says public statements which are disproven by previous public statements he’s made.

    When this ridiculous style of rhetoric is used, it’s very easy to pick it apart. As a result, it can only work on an audience if they are put placed into a tunnel which emotionally hammers that narrative to the viewer (which sadly aptly describes much of the mainstream media), and likewise illustrates why those venues can never host a scientific debate.

    Note: many medical students have shared with me how frustrating they find it that many of their supervising doctors will tell them something they are expected to perfectly memorize and fully believe, but simultaneously those doctors never do the work to provide the full context to their medical factoid and share the nuances behind it. Remarkably, those doctors often feel they “did an excellent job ‘teaching’ the material,” despite them having done nothing except repeat their own soundbites. This is very similar to Dr. Hotez’s method of “educating the public,” as he frequently refers to it as a heroic effort to educate the public, but all he actually does is repeat and repeat the first-order statements which conform to the current narrative.

    Remarkably, in many cases, what Hotez proposes is so absurd, both sides of the political spectrum oppose it. For example, this is what an LGBTQ organization said in response to Hotez’s hate crime proposal (which Hotez of course refused to comment on):

    Why the Hypocrisy?

    No one is perfect, so to some extent everyone is hypocritical and because of this I frequently try to avoid having hypocrisy be a basis for attacking someone’s position.

    In general, I find that subtle hypocrisy can only be recognized with second or third order thinking, whereas blatant hypocrisy is often evident to a first order thinker. For this reason, I typically only critique the most egregious examples.

    In turn, one of the remarkable themes throughout the book is how often Hotez accuses the other side of doing what he is doing. For example he:

    • Laments the fact people are “persecuting” him by challenging or mocking his less than truthful statements, yet Hotez simultaneously calls for those he disagrees with to be silenced, cancelled and punished and omits to mention the professional, economic or criminal consequences those who oppose the narrative have faced (e.g., consider what Washington’s medical board just did to Ryan Cole because he saved people’s lives by prescribing ivermectin to them).

    • Falsely accuses the vaccine safety community of using the default approach he and the mass media use to defend the narrative:

    Its propaganda campaigns employ multiple channels and media approaches in a blitz that is sometimes referred to as a “firehose of falsehood.” The messaging is described as high volume, multichannel, repetitive, and without consistency or even reality”

    • Attributes many of the well-known side effects of the vaccines to not enough people vaccinating:

    Especially worrisome are the findings from Oxford University researchers showing gray matter brain degeneration from long COVID, with associated cognitive impairments. Such neurologic damage across large segments of the US population might also have been prevented if vaccines were accepted. There is an increasing body of evidence to suggest that COVID-19 vaccinations not only keep individuals out of hospitals and ICUs and prevent deaths but also reduce the frequency and impact of long COVID. The bottom line: We have not even begun to imagine the scope and scale of the mental health devastation that will result from long COVID, loss of parents and other caregivers, and heightened levels of anxiety from a traumatized American public. This occurred in no small measure because a critical mass of Americans refused COVID-19 vaccinations.

    This conduct has of course led many to question what is motivating Hotez to do this. Presently, I believe three plausible explanations exist.

    First, Hotez has fallen into such a deep hypnosis around his ideology (i.e., a “mass formation”) that he has lost the capacity to recognize how hypocritical and discordant with reality many of his positions are.

    Second, Hotez’s business model revolves around branding himself as a champion of “science” and “neglected tropical diseases” (he even wrote a paper bragging about this) so he can get grants to develop vaccines for those diseases of poverty. This in turn requires him to get as much free advertising as possible (e.g., being brought on every day to speak about the COVID vaccines while simultaneously always being sure to mention his grift). His grift in turn has been remarkably successful as over the decades, he has diverted at least 100 million of grant money to his projects—much of which went into funding the creation of his hookworm vaccine which has still gone nowhere.

    Note: I have often wondered if Hotez’s left-wing leanings have been influenced by the fact rapidly partisan liberal news networks were happy to give a platform to anyone who criticized Trump during his presidency.

    Third, he (and likely the WHO) are aware that the public is waking up to what they pulled throughout COVID-19, and as a result, has realized the only option Hotez has is to double down on his audacious lies.

    Note: it was repeatedly observed in the USSR that as their governments began to collapse (e.g., due to the communist economy imploding), the propaganda used to sustain the government became increasingly absurd and at odds with reality.

    While I disagree with the overall message of Hotez’s book, I think many of the individual points he makes are valid. One of those is that there have been many previous periods in history where the public (or the government) eventually turned against its doctors or scientists. Hotez understandably pleads for this not to happen, but simultaneously fails to recognize that the dishonesty from many members of his profession is what’s actually causing that to happen and that if wants to prevent the public from rebuking his profession, honesty and humility rather than hypocrisy and manipulation is what’s needed to restore the public’s trust in science. People don’t like being gaslighted and no amount of propaganda can change that.

    Demonizing the Opposition

    One of the most frequent tactics used to defend an argument you can’t defend is to attack the other side’s character rather than their argument (which is known as an ad-hominem attack).

    This tactic is the most common approach in Hotez’s book, and continually reminded of a well-known internet meme:

    Hotez’s primary approach has been to associate much of the modern conservative movement with the term “far right,” a term that has become so broad it has become nothing more than a meaningless slander (e.g., I used to be “liberal” but now I’m “far right” because I always opposed catastrophic wars occurring overseas which squander our national budget to enrich war profiteers). Hotez in turn tries to make the “far right” sound as evil as possible while simultaneously associating “not trusting the science” with belonging to the “far right.” For example:

    • He continually tries to associate “anti-semitism” with any criticism of the COVID science.

    • He continually tries to associate individuals opposed to the January 6th protests with anti-vaccine sentiments, and hence argues that individuals with anti-vaccine views are also dangerous insurrectionists.

    • He continually emphasizes that certain Conservative groups like the Proud Boys (which have been labeled as being “far right”) are sometimes seen protesting in concert with anti-vaccine groups, and hence tries to juxtapose all the nasty labels the media has given to those groups onto everyone else there too.

    Note: my own experience was that the only groups I saw behave in a fascist manner throughout the last 8 years were left-wing ones. However, since the media selectively focused on the right-wing ones, those without the complete context (e.g., first-order thinkers) were left with a very negative impression of the immense danger these right wing groups represented.

    • He chose to depict Canada’s trucker convey as a horrible act on the people of Canada (which I would argue was quite misleading). Additionally, Hotez emphasized that Swastikas were there in order to argue the protest was infested with Nazis, while neglecting to mention (which even Snopes acknowledged) that a small number on Nazi symbols were there and were clearly directed at protesting Canada’s Nazi-like behavior, not to be an endorsement of Nazism.

    • He continually repeats the trope that anti-vaccination content is Russian propaganda being flooded to destabilize the United States and implies anyone who doesn’t support the vaccine narrative is a traitor to the country (likewise Hotez repeatedly claims he and his fellow scientists are the “true patriots”).

    Likewise, he used many other made-up slanders, which are non-sensical, but leave an uninformed reader with a very bad impression of what’s happening:

    Berenson and other prominent vaccine skeptics, including those connected to the “Intellectual Dark Web,” who challenge liberal ideologies while in some cases openly espousing anti-vaccine viewpoints, have appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience, one of the most popular podcasts around the world, with more than 100 million downloads per month.

    Note: one of my favorite Hotez-isms was how he “addressed” the fact that people who hold opposing views to him have a much better case for their position by saying the following:

    Oftentimes, the arguments of the contrarian intellectuals are extremely clever, using real facts woven together in devious ways to spin false narratives about the ineffectiveness or harmful outcomes of COVID-19 vaccinations and other prevention measures.

    In parallel to this, Hotez repeatedly asserts that many people died as a result of their choice not to follow the COVID-19 mitigation policies (e.g., he repeatedly cites the claim 200,000 people died because they weren’t vaccinated during the Delta Wave), and in turn uses this relentlessly argue that “antiscience” can’t be ignored because it’s killing a lot of people.

    The problem with this argument is that there’s a great deal of data showing the exact opposite of everything Hotez claims (additionally, keep in mind how many times Hotez stopped claiming much of what he previously said about the vaccines when he tried to sell them to America over the News Networks—and in many cases then denied ever having said his original statements).

    For example, across the world, after the vaccines were introduced, deaths significantly increased, which was the opposite of what had been expected to transpire with the virus over time (as we’d already developed a degree natural herd immunity to the virus, the most vulnerable members of society had already died, more was known about treating it, and over time viruses typically mutate to less deadly variants). Yet, instead COVID became much more deadly once the COVID-19 vaccines hit the market (something quite a few people had sadly predicted would happen).

    Note: to some extent Hotez acknowledges this by stating—”In 2021, the third year of the pandemic [and the year the vaccines hit the market], the deaths from COVID-19 really began to climb. Initially it was a terrible wave from the Alpha variant in the winter, followed by a summer–fall Delta wave.”

    Furthermore, in each case where it was possible to track the change in excess deaths once the vaccines was received by a large group of people, the same pattern was seen:

    Note: current estimates are that the vaccine has killed around 1 in 800 people, or around 17 million people world wide. Tragically, this does not even account for the far more common debilitating but not life threatening injuries many have experienced after vaccination (e.g., one large survey found 34% of Americans believed they experienced a minor side effect from the vaccines while 7% believed they’d experienced a major one).

    Additionally, in the one case where it was studied in a large group over time, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic found that vaccination made you more likely to catch COVID not less likely (which may explain why repeatedly boosted individuals are now getting COVID far more than the unvaccinated):

    Hotez’s 200,000 deaths estimate was based on the assumption that the unvaccinated were 16.3 times as likely to die from COVID as the vaccinated and that at least 80% of the 245,000 deaths which were attributed to COVID during the Delta Wave [May 1 2021-Dec 31 2021] occurred in the unvaccinated. There are a variety of issues with these assumptions (e.g. what I mentioned above and the fact that many hospitalized vaccinated individuals were mislabeled as “unvaccinated” in the official statistics). Of the sources I’ve seen refuting his claims however, I believe they are best shown by this graph:

    From looking at this, it should be quite clear it’s intellectually dishonest to say the vaccine almost completely eliminates your risk of dying of COVID and hence that 80% of all COVID deaths must be attributed to vaccine refusal.

    However, Hotez of course does not do that, and then proceeds to argue again and again that this “200,000” death toll proves the far-right activity which gave rise to “antiscientism” and hence must be stopped at any cost. Additionally, he made a point to use every opportunity available to slander anything associated with conservatism while claiming the high ground for doing so:

    Moreover, I felt that many politicians who endorsed an anti-vaccine agenda did so not out of ignorance but for reasons of partisan expediency. When I began expressing my disgust and anger toward those willing to sacrifice American lives for political gain, that too caused many viewers (judging by the e-mails and notes on social media I received) and journalists (judging by the interview requests following a cable news appearance) to take notice.

    A meme I saw shared after the previous article aptly describes the new normal Hotez has pushed for:

    Gaslighting

    Since Hotez has a very weak case for his narrative, like many gaslighters before him, he has to continually:

    • Completely rewrite the history of what happened.

    • Cite the opinions of rapid partisans as proof of his points.

    • Claim he is a faultless victim everyone is just being mean to.

    Note: many internet memes exist to describe individuals who continually poke at hornet’s nest and then complain about getting stung.

    This aptly describes Hotez, who is happy to fling very dangerous accusations against anyone who does not support his narrative and simultaneously laments how terrible and unjustified it is that people then tell him they don’t like him.

    Indeed, during our calls, Peter [another individual directly involved in creating COVID-19] confirmed his distress and expressed concerns for the safety of his family. What also came through in our conversations was his righteous indignation. He became a scientist to help humankind, only to be vilified as an enemy of the state. For me as well, this aspect of the situation is especially demoralizing. We became scientists to help the nation and the world; as I have explained to Peter on several occasions, we are the true patriots, not the phony ones who attack us.

    Some of these same groups even tried to draw me into GOF or lab leak accusations by falsely asserting that our coronavirus vaccine development efforts somehow supported GOF-related work.

    Note: this tweet, seen by over a million people concisely describes how Hotez, did in fact do just that and then worked tirelessly to cover it up.

    More remarkably, he frequently equated these “unfounded” criticisms against him and Fauci to being treated as an enemy of the state by the totalitarian regimes of the past (e.g., the USSR)—even though most of the press bends over backwards to defend Hotez and his colleagues.

    As I explained earlier, attacking science itself rarely suffices in a rising authoritarian regime, whose leaders soon find it necessary to go after individual scientists. We had become enemies of the state.

    In parallel to repeatedly dramatizing the suffering he’s experienced from people disagreeing with him, Hotez also makes numerous absurd arguments to support his contention that the pushback he’s gotten (for being the national vaccine spokesman) are completely unfair and unjustified.

    For example, Hotez continually claims the animosity he’s received was simply because of the terrible scourge of anti-semitism.

    On many occasions I lost my concentration at work or woke up in the middle of the night because I was so upset by these unfounded accusations. In addition to sadness, my other emotion was righteous indignation. After all, I obtained my MD and PhD and worked all my life to develop lifesaving interventions for diseases of the poor. Now a segment of American society sought my public execution in a manner befitting a Nazi doctor. The fact that I am Jewish and had family members suffer in the Holocaust made this period especially demoralizing. Increasingly, I began to notice a connection between anti-science and anti-Semitism. I was targeted in this manner in part because I am a Jewish scientist, and many elements of the far-right embrace attacks on and harassment of the Jewish people.

    Yet, Fauci (who is not Jewish) has received far more pushback than Hotez (which Hotez even admits). This hence suggests the pushback they received is the result of something besides bigotry, such as the immensely harmful policies Fauci and Hotez relentlessly promoted and shoved down the public’s throat throughout the pandemic.

    Note: like Hotez I am Jewish. One of the major issues I and many in my circle hold towards Hotez is that whenever someone uses “anti-semitism” an excuse to dismiss criticisms of their egregious conduct, it creates genuine animosity towards Jewish people, especially if the individual continually does so on a large public platform.

    Similarly, Hotez continually says science should not be politicized and constantly laments that the “far right” is persecuting America’s scientists, but simultaneously, Hotez continually attacks conservatives (and comes up with a variety of rationales to support him politicizing science).

    In my case, it is not so much that I care to enter into political disputes, but rather, what I desperately seek is to find ways to convince far-right groups to shun the anti-science element. Because anti-science is such a killer and destroyer of lives in America, my message is to say: This is not ”“your fight. You are entitled to your conservative political views, even extremist views in many cases, but please distance yourself from the anti-science. Too often, however, my efforts to uncouple the anti-science from political extremism are interpreted as something other than my best efforts to save lives. Particularly if I say this on CNN or MSNBC, considered by the mainstream GOP and far-right groups to represent liberal views, my efforts to defeat anti-science are misinterpreted as political theater.

    Note: If you explore Hotez’s twitter feed, there are countless examples of him demonstratig that he is very left wing and committed to his political ideology.

    Much of this partisan divide emerged during Obama’s presidency, after he made the choice to ally his party with the pharmaceutical industry and support a WHO plan to push childhood vaccine mandates across the country (which at the time Sherri Tenpenny told us was being done to pave the way for adult vaccines in the future). Since much of the public opposed these mandates (e.g., because there were many parents with vaccine injured children), they were met with significant protest. In turn, in each state where it was debated, Democratic legislators voted in unison for the mandates while the Republican legislators (who were not bought out) were eventually persuaded by their constituents to veto the mandates.

    This caused vaccination to become a political issue (previously almost everyone in both parties agreed with it). At the time, the pharmaceutical industry was very worried about the issue becoming politicized and turned into a debate. In turn, numerous articles came out (e.g., see this one and this one) that chastised anyone politicizing vaccination and cautioning against legislative actions which could further politicize the issue. Remarkably, it seems that this position was abandoned during COVID-19, which I suspect was the result of the industry concluding the mRNA vaccines were so dangerous the only way they could be pushed on the public was through blind partisan loyalty.

    Silencing the Opposition

    As health freedom propaganda accelerated in the United States during the previous decade, it became clear that the counteroffensive to halt its progress was insufficient. Private nonprofit and government-led vaccine advocacy groups made heroic efforts to promote positive vaccine messages and provide timely and accurate vaccine information to the public. However, such pro-vaccine advocacy needed parallel efforts to confront anti-vaccine and anti-science aggression and its political ties to conservative politicians, news outlets, and other far-right elements. Health freedom politics proceeded mostly without strong opposition. Then there was the community of professional scientists. While the biomedical scientific community was not exactly invisible, it often lacked the drive and capacity to work aggressively and strategically to dismantle anti-vaccine and anti-science activities.

    After arguing “antiscience” was a grave threat to society, Hotez proposed a predictable solution to this “problem”—silence everyone who challenges the scientific narrative, which he quantified through this diagram.

    Note: leaked documents recently revealed the Federal Government has begun working with private contractors to censor all dissent online (e.g., by destroying the character of people who speak out so there is an excuse to overtly censor them and by removing their access to the financial system). This approach is done so that the government can bypass the constitutional restrictions prohibiting it from directly censoring speech (e.g., Biden vs. Missouri, the largest government censorship case in modern history, resulted in an injunction being placed against the government working behind the scenes to censor content on social media). When you review Hotez’s suggestions, you’ll notice much of what he is calling for the government to do is what those contractors are already doing behind the scenes and the WHO is trying to publicly enact across the world.

    Some of Hotez’s (and presumably the WHO’s) suggestions included:

    The fact that the DHHS and US surgeon general have responded at all and that they now work with the major social media platforms is a positive development and one that should continue to be encouraged. However, these actions do not address those generating the content from the far-right, the role of the disinformation dozen in monetizing the Internet, or the Russian government’s weaponized health communication. Given the 20 years of relative neglect by the US government in tackling anti-science aggression [anti-vaccine content], I believe we must realize that this issue goes way beyond the health sector. We need input from other branches of the federal government such as the Departments of Homeland Security, Commerce, Justice—and even State, given the Russian involvement.

    Until now, such agencies have been employed to combat more conventional and globalizing threats [e.g., terrorism]. Anti-science aggression now warrants this level of engagement and a counterresponse.

    We must seek ways to demonetize the use of the Internet by the disinformation dozen or halt the anti-science aggression emanating from Fox News and elected officials, but in ways that do not violate the Bill of Rights or the US Constitution.

    The type of risk-management help should range from legal advice to managing online threats and even assistance with law enforcement. Another opportunity might be to expand the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, adopted in 2021 to protect Asian-Americans against political violence, to protect American scientists as well.”

    Along those lines, the White House should consider establishing an interagency task force to examine such possibilities and to make recommendations for action to slow the progression of anti-science.

    In the meantime, the US government response to anti-science aggression remains modest. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) focuses its energies on Facebook and the social media companies, encouraging them to adjust their computer algorithms to reduce the tidal wave of disinformation. While helpful, this approach by itself does very little to stop the far-right from generating dangerous Internet content or the elected officials who campaign on their successes in attacking science and scientists. The Biden administration is concerned, but so far it has not tapped expertise outside the health sector and sought advice from cabinet departments ranging from Homeland Security to Justice and State. Similarly, the UN agencies wring their hands about the “infodemic” but do not raise this issue with authoritarian leaders in the UN Security Council or General Assembly. Halting anti-science aggression both within their borders or internationally remains a second-tier priority. Regarding GOP extremism, an umbrella under which falls this new anti-science, the Nobel laureate in economics, Paul Krugman, writes, “it cannot be appeased or compromised with. It can only be defeated.” He may be correct.

    Finding strategies to slow the spread of anti-science by authoritarian regimes or entities has become one of our great challenges. While the US government and Office of the Surgeon General focus on Facebook or the other social media companies in spreading misinformation, few governments or United Nations agencies wish to confront the source. Therefore, anti-vaccine or health disinformation generated by Russia and other authoritarian governments now proceeds without significant interference…As the State Department and major US intelligence agencies work to diffuse Russian bots and trolls, there is still no national plan to confront anti-science aggression from the far-right and authoritarian regimes. We now face our own internal authoritarian ecosystem whose leaders portray scientists as threats. Some political scientists express concerns that such activities, especially in the context of the January 6, 2021, storming of the US Capitol, threaten the future of democracy in the country.

    In parallel, I have suggested to the Biden administration the creation of an interdisciplinary task force of experts from departments such as Homeland Security, Commerce, Justice, and others in recognition of the fact that the loss of human life on this scale, as a result of partisan politics and defiance, is far bigger than what can be managed only by the Department of Health and Human Services. To date, there are no efforts planned to hold congressional hearings on the origins of vaccine refusal leading to this American tragedy. Certainly, there is no enthusiasm for creating an entity that resembles a truth-and-reconciliation commission at the national level similar to efforts made in post-Apartheid South Africa during the 1990s, in order to identify those individuals or groups who encouraged vaccine defiance.

    Note: Hotez is effectively saying not only does he want to win, but he wants everyone who disagreed with him to be put through struggle sessions where they are forced to prostrate themselves and apologize for ever not supporting vaccination. That is evil.

    This media and political empire is causing unprecedented losses of human life. The pervasive role of disinformation from this segment of society has not gone unnoticed by the Biden administration. In 2021, they proposed forming a new disinformation advisory board through the Department of Homeland Security to begin tackling issues related to not only COVID-19 prevention but also the 2020 US presidential election and other key issues. However, these efforts met with significant opposition from the Senate GOP. As one former intelligence official in Homeland Security pointed out, “You can’t even use the word ‘disinformation’ today without it having a political connotation.” For now, the advisory board has been tabled, and the anti-science political ecosystem continues largely unchallenged.

    Conclusion

    Now that you have read this entire article, I hope you can appreciate the full context behind the videos I showed at the beginning and I sincerely hope you were able to watch: (fwd to 26:00)

    It is my belief that if Hotez can be seen for the deranged individual he is, that will be the most effective way to show the absurdity of what his book puts forth and halt the much darker plans the WHO has been working on behind the scenes.

    Fortunately, as the last few years have shown, much of what the vaccine zealots push is so absurd that if we simply use humor to show what they are doing, that is enough to destroy their credibility and derail their plans (and arguably the most effective approach).

    Lastly, I need to mention that fellow substacker Maryl Nass MD has been doing a lot of incredible work behind the scenes to stop the totalitarian WHO pandemic treaty. If you would like to know more about her critical work, please consider visiting her non-profit’s website.

    *  *  *

    I sincerely thank each of you for your support of this publication (sharing critical stories really helps) and how much each of you has done to help shift a narrative I originally thought was an insurmountable mountain could never be challenged.

    The Forgotten Side of Medicine is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/15/2024 – 23:35

  • Global Warming? 142 Million Americans Under Dangerous Wind Chill Alerts
    Global Warming? 142 Million Americans Under Dangerous Wind Chill Alerts

    Legacy media spent last week fearmongering Americans into believing 2023 was the “hottest year” ever on record. 

    Perhaps the eruption in climate doom headlines was to satisfy corporate elites and world leaders attending the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos this week who can point to these news stories to further their radical Marxist climate agenda. 

    But how is it, we ask? Two weeks after the hottest year on record, 142 million Americans are under wind chill alerts, and 100 million are under winter alerts to start the new week. 

    Brr! New record-breaking low temperatures this morning. 

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

    The power grid operator in Texas asks customers to conserve energy. 

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

    A winter storm is set to hit the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast later today. 

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

    Let’s not forget over the weekend, the Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Buffalo Bills playoff game had to be postponed due to bone-chilling weather. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/15/2024 – 23:00

  • Catch The Gold-Wagon, Or Lose Your Fortune: Von Greyerz
    Catch The Gold-Wagon, Or Lose Your Fortune: Von Greyerz

    Authored by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com,

    With the US shooting itself in the foot again, we are now certain that this is the final farewell to the bankrupt dollar based monetary system…

    More about this follows but, in the meantime, an extremely important warning: 

    If you have never been a goldbug, this is the time to become one. 

    I decided 25 years ago that the destiny of the world economy and the financial system necessitated the best form of wealth preservation that money could buy. 

    And physical gold performs that role beautifully just as it has done for several thousands of years as every currency or fiat monetary system has collapsed without fail throughout history. 

    Thus, at the beginning of this century we told our investor friends and ourselves to buy gold for up to 50% of investable liquid asset. 

    So at $300 we acquired important amounts of gold and have never looked back. We have of course never sold any gold but only added since. 

    I have never called myself a goldbug, just someone who wanted to protect assets against the risk of the destruction of the financial system including all currencies. But now is really the time to become a real gold bug. 

    So, today just over 20 years later, gold is up 7 – 8X in most Western currencies and multiples of that in weaker economies like Argentina, Venezuela, Turkey etc.

    The total mismanagement of the US financial system has led to the dollar losing 98% of it’s value since Nixon closed the gold window in 1971. Most other currencies have followed the dollar down at varying speeds. 

    But now comes the really exciting phase of this race to the bottom. 

    We have only 2% left for the dollar based currency system goes to ZERO. 

    As Voltaire said in 1728, “Paper money always returns to its intrinsic value – ZERO.”

    What we must remember is that the dollar doesn’t just have a further 2% to fall to reach zero. Because to reach zero, it will next fall 100% from where it is today. 

    I know the sceptics will say that this is not possible. But these sceptics don’t know their history. Since fiat currencies’ record is perfect, no one must believe that because we live today, it is different to a 5,000 year faultless record of success, or shall we call it failure, of currencies always reaching zero. 

    THE US CONTINUES TO SHOOT ITSELF IN THE FOOT

    How many times can you shoot yourself in the foot and still walk upright with pride?

    Well, the US government certainly has wounded itself mortally with both feet being so full of holes that there is hardly any space left for another hole. 

    So, the latest hole in the US dollar foot is a proposal to steal $300 billion of Russian reserves and use the funds for the reconstruction of Ukraine.

    A deadline has been set for the G7 nations to come up with the detailed proposal by 24 February. 

    The proposal has obviously come from the US backed by its faithful lapdog the UK. 

    Now don’t get me wrong, I really like the US and also the UK and their people but that doesn’t mean that I concur with the idiotic decisions taken by their governments without the consent of their people. 

    So will 2024 be the year which, when all the evils which the West has created, erupt in the most violent chain of events political, civil wars, geopolitical, more war, terrorism, economic collapse including the fall of the monetary system. 

    Well the ingredients are certainly present to create a picture similar to The Triumph of Death painting by Bruegel.  

    We obviously hope that this is not where the world is heading but all the ingredients are sadly in place for the start of a series of events which will be both unpredictable and uncontrollable. “The Financial System has reached the End”

    MOST MAJOR WARS SINCE WWII HAVE BEEN INSTIGATED BY THE US

    As Merkel admitted, since the Minsk agreement in 2014, it was always the intention of the US to push Ukraine into a conflict with Russia. 

    This war is still going on with more than 500,000 having been killed. (Since propaganda from both sides is a major part of a war, we will never know the correct figure.) 

    It will obviously be very tempting for the G7 to use the $ 300 billion funds blocked stolen, for the war since many countries’ parliaments are becoming reluctant to fund this war. 

    So is the US and its allies going to set a precedent that should also apply for other wars?

    Since the US initiated the attacks on Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Syria and many other countries, should not the US foreign reserves be applied for the reconstruction of all these nations? 

    But as always, it is one rule for the mighty US and another rule for its enemies. 

    As Bush Jr said, “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.”

    THE LAST PHASE OF THE DOLLAR DEBASEMENT NEXT

    This very final phase of the dollar debasement to zero really started on June 29, 2022 when the US decided to seize all Russian financial assets. 

    That action was the nail in the coffin (as well as the shot in the foot) of the Petrodollar system. This has been in place since 1973 to support the dollar with a payment system for black gold since yellow gold was no longer supporting the dollar. 

    To seize a major sovereign state’s (Russia’s) assets can never end well. And then to give those assets to an enemy of that state (Ukraine) is guaranteed to seal the fate of the dollar dominant currency system and its backers. 

    An economically weak EU gave its support with the Brexit UK always obeying its US master’s. 

    A historical post mortem of this total submission to the command of the US will clearly conclude that it was totally disastrous for the German economy as well as the rest of Europe. But sadly weak leaders always make disastrous decisions. 

    And as the West has a massive surplus of weak leaders, it is running from one crisis to the next.

    Is Treasury Secretary Yellen blind to what is happening to her economy or is she just giving the world the propaganda lies that all politicians must do to buy votes?

    This is what Yellen said to House Financial Services Committee in August 2023:

    “The dollar plays the role it does in the world financial system for very good reasons that no other country is able to replicate, including China. We have deep liquid open financial markets, strong rule of law and an absence of capital controls that no country is able to replicate….. But the dollar is far and away the dominant reserve asset.”

    “Deep liquid financial markets” means “we” have until now been able to create unlimited amounts of worthless fiat money. “Strong rule of law” means that whoever totally obeys the US increasingly totalitarian system, like for example the Patriot Act, is protected by the law. And as regards capital controls, FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) that the US forced upon the world’s finical system in 2014 has led to a total US control of the global financial system.  

    And as regards “the dollar is far and away the dominant reserve asset”, not for long Mrs Yellen. 

    Has Janet heard of de-dollarisation, has she heard go the BRICS and has she understood that the runaway debts and deficits are destroying the fabric of the US economy and financial system?

    Yes of course she knows all of this and she also knows that she can’t do anything about it except to print more money. So her principal role is to keep the pretences up and hope that the system will not collapse on her watch. And then hopefully she canunscathed pass the baton to the next treasury secretary so that he/she can get the blame. 

    BRICS

    The BRICS already has 10 members, India, China, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia. 

    In addition, another 30 countries want to join including for example Venezuela. 

    The BRICS produce just under 50% of global oil. 

    But if we look at oil reserves, the existing BRICS plus aspiring members like Venezuela, have over 20X the oil reserves of the US. 

    PEAK ENERGY

    Another major economic crisis for the world is the contracting energy system.

    The world economy is driven by energy which means fossil fuels. Without sufficient energy the living standards would decline fatally. Currently fossil fuels account for 83% of the world’s energy. The heavy dependence on fossil fuels is unlikely to change in the next few decades.

     And as I have always believed, even electric vehicles are no longer the holy grail that world governments are trying to push onto consumers. There are just too many problems such as cost of buying and cost of repairs, range and questionable CO2 benefits. Also environmentally EVs are a disaster since batteries have a short life and cannot be recycled. 

    But that’s not the only problem. For the first 60-70,000 miles an EV produces more CO2 than an ordinary vehicle.

    Stocks are building up of unsold EVs, exacerbated by companies like Hertz selling off 20,000 vehicles. 

    Also, to produce ONE battery takes 250 tons of rock and minerals. The effect is 10-20 tons of CO2 from mining and manufacturing even before the vehicle has been driven 1 metre. 

    In addition, car batteries cannot be recycled but go to landfill which has major environmental implications. 

    And as concerns renewable energy, it is unlikely to replace fossil fuels for a very, very long time even if this is a politically uncomfortable view for the climate control activists. What very few realise is that most renewable energy sources are very costly and also all dependent on fossil fuels whether it is electric cars, wind turbines or solar panels.

    As the graph shows, the energy derived from fossil fuels has declined for the last few years. This trend will accelerate over the next 20+ years as the availability of fossil fuels decline and the cost increases. The economic cost of producing energy has gone up 5X since 1980.

    What very few people realise is that the world’s prosperity does not improve with more debt but with more and cheaper energy.

    But sadly, as the graph above shows, energy production is going to decline for at least 20 years.

    Less energy means lower prosperity for the world. And remember that this is in addition to a major decline in prosperity due to the implosion of the financial system and asset values.

    The graph above shows that energy from fossil fuels will decline by 18% between 2021 and 2040. But although Wind & Solar will proportionally increase, it will in no way compensate for the fall in fossil fuels. For renewable energy to make up the difference, it would need to increase by 900% with an investment exceeding $100 trillion.  This is highly unlikely since the production of Wind & Solar are heavily dependent on fossil fuels.

    Another major problem is that there is no efficient method for storing Renewable energy.

    Let’s just take the example of getting enough energy from batteries. The world’s largest battery factory is the Tesla Giga factory. The annual total output from this factory would produce 3 minutes of the annual US electricity demand. Even with 1,000 years of battery production, the batteries from this factory would produce only 2 days of US electricity demand.

    So batteries will most probably not be a viable source of energy for decades especially since they need fossil fuels to be produced and charged.

    Nuclear energy is the best available option today. But the time and cost of producing nuclear means that it will not be a viable alternative for decades. Also, many countries have stopped nuclear energy for political reasons. The graph above shows that nuclear and hydro will only increase very marginally in the next 20 years.

    Of course the world wants to achieve cleaner and more efficient energy. But today we don’t have the means to produce this energy in quantity from anything but fossil fuels.

    So stopping or reducing the production of fossil fuels, which is the desire of many politicians and climate activists, is guaranteed to substantially exacerbate the decline of the world economy.

    We might get cleaner air but many would have to enjoy it in caves with little food or other necessities and conveniences that we have today.

    So what is clear is that the world is not prepared for even the best scenario energy case which entails a major decline in the standard of living in the next 20-30 years at least.

    IMMINENT DECLINE OF THE WORLD ECONOMY

    The above explanation, of the world economy as an energy driven system, is important to grasp in order to understand the effect of the declining energy production. This decline together with the increased energy cost of producing energy will exacerbate the decline of the world economy. 

    To add to this longer term energy crisis which very few people discuss or fathom, the world is facing the end of the current monetary system.

    Yes, the BRICS countries will over time assume the mantle of the waning Western empire. 

    But it won’t happen overnight, especially since the world’s second biggest economy, China, also has a debt problem almost as big as the US one.

    Just look at the growth of China’s money supply in this century. No country has survived such an explosion of money supply without serious consequences.

    The advantage that China has is that their financial and currency system is principally domestic and can therefore be resolved “in-house”.

    JUMP ON THE GOLD WAGON

    No one can forecast with certainty when an event will take place.

    But what we can determine with great certainty is that the risk is imminent for the world economy and the Western monetary system to go through an uncontrollable  reset of proportions never seen before in history. 

    What we also feel certain about is that the gold price very soon will reflect the major problems that the world economy is facing. 

    In this century, gold has performed very strongly against all currencies as the table below shows. 

    All major central banks will do all they can to support the gold price. 

    The BRICS and other Eastern countries will accelerate their already substantial purchases of gold. And the West, led by the US will accelerate the debt creation and spend unfathomable amounts in futile attempts to save their collapsing economies. 

    In June 2016 I advised investors to jump on the Goldwagon when gold was $1,300. https://goldswitzerland.com/get-on-the-goldwagon-to-10000/

    Today with gold at $2,050 gold is still very cheap and anyone with some savings, small to very big, must now jump on the goldwagon and buy as much physical gold (and a bit of silver) as you can afford and then some more. 

    Owning gold will not solve all our problems, but it will at least give us a very important nest egg and protection against the coming financial debacle that will hit the world. 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/15/2024 – 22:25

  • Ukraine Urges China To Be Involved In Swiss-Hosted Peace Summit
    Ukraine Urges China To Be Involved In Swiss-Hosted Peace Summit

    President Volodymyr Zelensky appears increasingly more serious about pursuing peace negotiations to end the war, and this was on display in comments issued by his top aide headed into the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. 

    Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak on Sunday explained that Kiev now believes it is crucial for China to be at the table for future talks on its peace formula. “China needs to be involved in talks to end the war with Russia,” the Ukrainian top representative said following diplomatic meetings going into the WEF. China remains the most influential Global South country widely viewed as squarely in Russia’s corner, having refused to rebuke Moscow or join Western-led sanctions after two years of the conflict.

    Illustrative: prior WEF, AFP/Getty

    Importantly, Chinese Premier Li Qiang is leading the delegation from Beijing at the WEF this week, which presents a significant opportunity for serious engagement on the question of Ukraine peace. There’s also the potential that Li and President Zelensky could meet, given Yermak said “let’s see” when he was asked by a journalist whether they would directly engage.

    Meanwhile, Zelensky has successfully cobbled together a peace summit proposed within the context of world leaders gathering in Davos, and the Swiss government has agreed to play official host, and yet Russia – the other crucial party capable of ending the war – is not invited…

    Switzerland agreed to host the summit at Zelenskiy’s request, a Swiss government spokesperson said, adding that further details were being worked out.…

    “We would like the Global South to be present…. It is important for us to show that the whole world is against Russia’s aggression, and the whole world is for a just peace,” he said.

    The outcome to the summit, expected to be initiated Tuesday, is likely to be merely be more of the same…

    A high-level meeting to discuss peace in Ukraine ended without a significant resolution, as talks were held on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos with the second anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s invasion fast approaching.

    Representatives of more than 83 countries were involved in the fourth and final such meeting of national security advisers, but little common ground was found towards ending a conflict that appears stuck in a grinding deadlock.

    Ignazio Cassis, the foreign minister of host nation Switzerland, said the gathering helped clarify certain points for future discussions but that it was clear none of the warring parties were willing to make territorial concessions.

    It remains that there are some key aspects of Ukraine’s 10-point peace plan which Moscow sees as a non-starter. For example, here is Point 6 of Zelensky’s ten point peace plan:

    To cease the hostilities, Russia must withdraw all its troops and armed formations from the territory of Ukraine, plain and simple. Ukraine’s full control over its state border, recognized internationally, needs to be restored.

    Without this, no long-lasting peace can be achieved. Each day Russian soldiers remain on Ukrainian land, Ukrainians have to fight and die to protect their homes and to shield the world from the long-lasting consequences of this aggression. 

    Additionally, Zelensky has issued the following words on X: “I will also discuss the return of Ukrainian children stolen by Russia, sanctions, ways to use frozen Russian assets, humanitarian mine clearing, financial assistance, and recovery,” he wrote.

    China is seen as key to getting Russia to make significant compromise, yet both Xi and Putin know that Russian military success in Ukraine means Kiev has no cards to play. Ultimately, without China being on board with such initiatives to woo Global South countries to take a firmer anti-Russian line, there’s little that will come out of it.

    Still, it seems each side is at least inching toward possible near-future talks. “Liu Jianchao, head of the International Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, told an event in the US that Russia has showed enthusiasm to have peace talks with Ukraine, when Chinese officials talked with them,” according to Bloomberg last week.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/15/2024 – 21:50

  • Appeals Court Rules The Homeless Have A Right To Camp On Sidewalks
    Appeals Court Rules The Homeless Have A Right To Camp On Sidewalks

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    The 9th circuit court of appeals affirmed the constitutional right of vagrants to sleep on sidewalks, in parks, and even on the steps of court houses.

    Please consider the Coalition on Homeless v. the City of San Francisco, San Francisco Police Department filed January 11. 2024.

    In the ruling, the court sided with the Coalition on Homeless and against the city to “prevent the City and County of San Francisco from enforcing any ordinance that punishes sleeping, lodging, or camping on public property“.

    The ruling was based on an extreme interpretation of the 8th Amendment to the Constitution.

    Eighth Amendment

    The 8th amendment says “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”

    In a 53-page ruling, the Appeals Court ruled that it is “cruel and unusual punishment” to prevent camping on sidewalks or any public property, presumably even courthouse steps.

    The last 36 pages of the ruling (first link) was a blistering dissent by circuit judge Patrick J. Bumatay. Here are some pertinent snips.

    Today, we let stand an injunction permitting homeless persons to sleep anywhere, anytime in public in the City of San Francisco unless adequate shelter is provided. The district court’s sweeping injunction represents yet another expansion of our court’s cruel and unusual Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. Our decision is cruel because it leaves the citizens of San Francisco powerless to enforce their own health and safety laws without the permission of a federal judge. And it’s unusual because no other court in the country has interpreted the Constitution in this way.

    Based on a misreading of the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, the district court now dictates to San Francisco how it may manage its sidewalks, streets, and parks. The result of the district court’s far reaching injunction is that homeless persons now have a choice to sleep, lie, or sit anywhere they want in public at any time until San Francisco can provide them shelter. That ruling is far removed from the original meaning of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause and disregards the long history of anti-vagrancy laws in this country. And the district court goes beyond even our circuit’s extraordinary reading of the Clause.

    The Coalition on Homelessness sued San Francisco seeking to enjoin enforcement of State and local laws barring sleeping on sidewalks at certain times, public lodging and camping, and obstructing streets and parks. See Cal. Penal Code §§ 148(a), 370, 372, 647(e); S.F. Police Code §§ 168, 169. Based on an underdeveloped factual record, and apparently without even considering how these individual laws fit within our Martin/Grants Pass framework, the district court agreed to enjoin enforcement of the laws against “involuntarily homeless individuals.” Worse yet, the district court didn’t even define what it means to be “involuntarily homeless” and gave conflicting signals on the point—an issue we address in our concurrently filed memorandum disposition. To top it off, the district court then set a novel end date for the injunction. It continues “as long as there are more homeless individuals in San Francisco than there are shelter beds available.” Never mind that injunctions usually terminate at the end of litigation, or that the relief here is merely meant to be preliminary. This sweeping injunction has no basis in the Constitution or our precedent. San Francisco should not be treated as an experiment for judicial tinkering.

    Supreme Court Agrees to Hear the Case

    Due to the overwhelming and unprecedented stupidity of the 9th Circuit ruling, the US Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal from local governments in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Phoenix.

    The Wall Street Journal noted that California Governor Gavin Newsom argued in a friend-of-court brief that “courts are not well-suited to micromanage such nuanced policy issues based on ill-defined rules.”

    The Journal’s comment is quite the hoot: “We look forward to Mr. Newsom’s constitutional communion with Justice Clarence Thomas.“

    The Hotel California Wealth Tax Advances, You Cannot Leave to Escape It

    On January 10, I commented The Hotel California Wealth Tax Advances, You Cannot Leave to Escape It

    Wealth Tax Details

    • The bill would impose an annual excise tax of 1.5% on the worldwide net worth of every full- and part-year California resident that exceeds $1 billion, starting this tax year.

    • Come Jan. 1, 2026, the state would tax wealth that exceeds $50 million at a rate of 1% each year, with an additional 0.5% tax on assets valued at more than $1 billion.

    • Part-time residents would be taxed on a pro rata share of their wealth based on the number of days they spend annually in California.

    • The tax would also apply to nonresidents who have recently left the state.

    • Democrats exempted real property from the tax as a favor to their high-end real-estate industry and Hollywood donors. 

    • To spread the wealth around to plaintiff-bar donors, the bill would apply the state’s False Claims Act to wealth-tax records and statements. This means plaintiff attorneys could sue affluent individuals on behalf of the state for allegedly under-reporting assets. Plaintiff attorneys would be entitled to a share of the state’s recovery.

    If the wealth tax passes, I look forwards to another mind meld of a different nature with the US Supreme Court.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/15/2024 – 21:15

  • Trump Gives Speech After Winning Iowa Caucus; Ramaswamy To End Campaign
    Trump Gives Speech After Winning Iowa Caucus; Ramaswamy To End Campaign

    Update (2323ET): As predicted, Donald Trump has been declared the winner of the Iowa Caucus by the Associated Press. Trump beat both Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley by nearly 30 points and 40 points respectively, in line with the final NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll.

    Trump won every county counted.

    According to Bloomberg, Vivek Ramaswamy is ending his 2024 campaign and endorsed Trump.

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    Trump, likely after finding out that Ramaswamy wouldn’t continue, credited Vivek for doing a ‘hell of a job.’

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

    Here’s what an aggregate of popular betting markets think right now:

    Now all the Republicans need to do is ensure it’s a fair election. Hilarious.

    *  *  *

    In chilly Iowa, Republican candidates are making their final appeals before gathering for a 7 p.m. Caucus – during which party members will plead their case for various candidates they would like to see on the ballot. All times mentioned are local.

    Voters eager to participate in the caucus are expected to face temperatures of -2 degrees, and 35 degrees below zero with wind chill factor, which would break the state’s 1972 record for coldest caucus day by a longshot, per the Des Moines Register.

    Donald Trump – the party’s clear frontrunner by a wide margin, plans to call caucus captains throughout the day, and will release a video message for supporters.

    The former president canceled in-person rallies scheduled over the weekend due to sever weather, but will hold a watch party at the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines.

    Did we mention the wide margin? The former president is also way ahead in endorsements by fellow Republicans.

    Trump has the backing of well over 100 GOP governors and members of Congress — including more than 20 U.S. senators and top House members like Speaker Mike Johnson — outpacing his rivals for the party’s nomination in all of those categories. On Sunday he added more: Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. –NPR

    Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will hold three campaign events today – stopping in Sergeant Bluff, Council Bluffs, and Cedar Rapids.

    He will also attend an evening caucus before proceeding to his campaign watch party in West Des Moines, the Epoch Times reports.

    DeSantis has the backing of key Iowans, including the state’s GOP governor, Kim Reynolds. He is also endorsed by Iowa evangelical leader, Bob Vander Platts.

    Nimrata ‘Nikki’ Haley will appear at a tele-town hall at 5 p.m., while her watch party will be held at 8 p.m. in West Des Moines.

    Haley, while lacking notable endorsements in Iowa, did pick up a key endorsement from the next state on the primary calendar, New Hampshire, where Gov. Chris Sununu (R) has thrown his support behind her.

    Vivek Ramaswamy started the day with a town hall meeting in Urbandale, after which he held a 10:30 a.m. rally in Waterloo. Later, he will appear in Cedar Rapids at 1 p.m., before moving on to the Surety Hotel in Des Moines for a 5 p.m. caucus night party.

    Stay tuned for updates…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/15/2024 – 20:48

  • White House 'Swatted' After False Emergency Phoned In
    White House ‘Swatted’ After False Emergency Phoned In

    The White House was ‘swatted’ on Monday, after a person called 911 to falsely claim that there was a fire at the residence and that someone was trapped inside.

    Multiple vehicles from DC Fire and Emergency Medical Services responded just after 7 a.m. ET, after which officials concluded that it was a false alarm.

    And while no cops were involved, “it’s in the same spirit” of “swatting” incidents that have more recently targeted public officials, according to Noah Gray, communications director for DC fire and EMS, NBC News reports.

    In so-called swatting incidents, someone makes a false report of a crime in progress to draw police to a certain location.

    It’s unclear who made the call or where it came from. A Secret Service spokesperson said any fire at the White House would have been immediately detected — and there clearly wasn’t one.  

    President Joe Biden was at Camp David when the call to 911 was made. He later traveled to Philadelphia to participate in a service event at a food bank to mark the birthday of the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

    In recent weeks, politicians from both parties have been ‘swatted’ – including ‘Georgia Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene, whose home was raided by authorities on Christmas Day following a suicide hotline tip, New York Rep. Brandon Williams and Florida Sen. Rick Scott. on the Republican side,’ (per the NY Post), and on the Democrat side – Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, George Soros, and Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who booted Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 ballot last month.

    George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley was also swatted recently, as was the Hunter Biden laptop repair store owner, John Paul Mac Issac.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/15/2024 – 20:40

  • Fani Opens Up: Fulton County DA Says 'You Cannot Expect Black Women To Be Perfect And Save The World'
    Fani Opens Up: Fulton County DA Says ‘You Cannot Expect Black Women To Be Perfect And Save The World’

    Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis implied she was guilty of something – telling a Sunday congregation at the Big Bethel AME Church ahead of Martin Luther King Jr. Day that “you cannot expect black women to be perfect and save the world,” and that “we need to be allowed to stumble.”

    Fulton County DA Fani Willis speaks during a worship service at the Big Bethel AME Church on Sunday, Jan. 14, 2024 (Miguel Martinez/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

    Watch:

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    Willis has come under fire for hiring a man named Nathan Wade (without proper approval), a private attorney in the midst of a divorce who “has little to no experience trying felony cases, much less complex RICO actions,” according to a 127-page filing in former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election trial in Georgia.

    Wade ended up pocketing nearly $700,000 from Fulton county taxpayers – with which he allegedly took Willis on lavish vacations. He also billed taxpayers $2,000 to talk to the Biden White House about prosecuting Biden’s political opponent.

    Allegations surfaced last week from one of Trump’s co-defendants, Mike Roman, a political operative who served as Trump’s director of Election Day operations on his 2020 reelection campaign, who accused Willis and Wade of engaging in an “improper” romantic relationship.

    Citing “sources close” to both Willis and Wade, Roman’s lawyer, Ashleigh Merchant, claimed the pair have been involved in an “ongoing, personal and romantic relationship,” and went on vacations together. The filings argued the alleged relationship, which Merchant claims started before the election interference began, makes the indictment “fatally defective” and requests it be dismissed. –The Hill

    Willis then played the (double-reverse) race card, saying: “I’m a little confused. I appointed three special counselors. It’s my right to do, paid them all the same hourly rate. They only attack one.”

    “I hired one white woman, a good personal friend and a great lawyer, a superstar, I tell you. I hired one white man — brilliant — my friend and a great lawyer. And I hired one Black man, another superstar, a great friend and a great lawyer,” she continued, without referencing Wade by name.

    “The Black man I chose has been a judge for more than 10 years, run[s] a private practice more than 20 [years],” said Willis. “Represented businesses in civil litigation … served a prosecutor, a criminal defense lawyer, special assistant attorney general.”

    Willis then pretended to talk to God, asking: “God, isn’t it them who’s playing the race card when they only question one?”

    “They’re playing the race card when they constantly think I need someone from some other jurisdiction in some other state to tell me how to do a job I’ve [done] almost 30 years.“

    Did the other two attorneys she hired take her on lavish vacations?

    House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) will get to the bottom of it – after launching an investigation into Wade.

    “According to a recent court filing, you have been paid more than $650,000—at the rate of $250 per hour—to serve as an ‘Attorney Consultant’ and later a ‘Special Assistant District Attorney’ in the unprecedented investigation and prosecution of the former President and other former federal officials,” wrote Jordan in a Friday letter reported by Just the News.

    “This filing also alleges that while receiving a substantial amount of money from Fulton County, you spent extravagantly on lavish vacations with your boss, Ms. Willis.”

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/15/2024 – 20:05

  • Americans Divided On Progress Made Since 'I Have A Dream' Speech
    Americans Divided On Progress Made Since ‘I Have A Dream’ Speech

    Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday in the United States that honors the memory of the influential civil rights activist and baptist minister who called for an end to racial segregation through non-violence.

    The civil rights leader’s assassination in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee, caused an international outcry at the time. His campaign of non-violent resistance to further equal rights for all citizens in the United States, no matter the color of their skin, had made him one of the most iconic and popular leaders in American history.

    As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, King was a Baptist minister and drew on his faith for his campaigns. He held his best known and often quoted speech “I Have A Dream” at the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963 as part of the March on Washington, with a quarter of a million people attending. The father of four children he had with his wife Coretta Scott King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize a year later, in 1964.

    He was gunned down by convicted criminal James Earl Ray who was apprehended two months after King’s murder and served 29 years in prison until his death. The FBI under its notorious director J. Edgar Hoover tried to brand King a communist and had him observed. King forcefully denied having anything to do with the communist movement, which by default is staunchly atheist.

    Infographic: Facts About Martin Luther King Jr. | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    It’s six decades since King delivered the world-changing “I have a dream” speech and U.S. adults have mixed feelings over the progress made towards racial equality in the country.

    As Statista’s Anna Fleck points out, according to a poll taken by the Pew Research Center in April, while 52 percent of respondents thought that either a “fair amount” or a “great deal” of progress has been made in the time that lapsed, a third said that there has been “some progress” and 15 percent said that there has been either “not much” or none at all.

    Infographic: Americans Divided on Progress Made Since March on Washington | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Tellingly, when looking at the breakdown by race, wide disparities still exist.

    As the chart above shows, white respondents were twice as likely to say a “fair amount” or a “great deal” of progress had been made than Black respondents, signalling to an imbalance in perceptions between white respondents who think progress has been made, and Black respondents who are more affected by racial inequality and say otherwise.

    There are differences along party lines too. According to Pew Research Center, 67 percent of Republicans or Republican-leaning voters thought that a great deal or a fair amount of progress had been made since the March on Washington, while the share of Democrats and Democrat-leaning voters holding the same opinion stood at 38 percent.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/15/2024 – 19:30

  • Pro-Palestinian Rioters Nearly Breach White House Gate In Clash With Police
    Pro-Palestinian Rioters Nearly Breach White House Gate In Clash With Police

    Authored by Kos Temenes via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A pro-Palestinian protest in the nation’s capital on Jan. 13 led to clashes between protesters and riot police, during which an exterior gate of the White House was nearly breached.

    Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather in front of the White House during the “March on Washington for Gaza” in Washington on Jan. 13, 2024. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)

    Police and federal agents reportedly waited near the White House in anticipation as protesters crashed toward the reinforced gate amid attempts by some rioters to scale it.

    “During the demonstration near the White House complex Jan. 13, a portion of the anti-scale fencing that was erected for the event sustained temporary damage,” the U.S. Secret Service told Fox News in a statement, adding that “the issues were promptly repaired on site by U.S. Secret Service support teams.”

    The gate was placed as an added security measure to the existing primary gate. One rioter could reportedly be heard shouting to tear down the structure, while another could be heard screaming toward the White House, “You support the murdering of children.”

    The riot led to a partial evacuation of staff members from the White House, as rioters threw bottles and other objects, video footage obtained by Fox News shows.

    “As a precaution, some members of the media and staff in proximity to Pennsylvania Avenue were temporarily relocated while the issue was being addressed,” the Secret Service statement reads.

    The White House reported no damage to the main and adjacent buildings, and no arrests were made by Secret Service personnel, Fox News reported.

    In a separate statement to Fox News, Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela A. Smith, who oversees police in the District of Columbia, said that any kind of lawless behavior during protests wouldn’t be tolerated.

    “The right to peacefully protest is one of the cornerstones of our democracy, and the Metropolitan Police Department has long supported those who visit our city to demonstrate safely,“ she said in the statement. ”However, violence, destructive behavior, and criminal activities are not tolerated.”

    Rioters on the evening of Jan. 12 were protesting the United States’ recent launch of Tomahawk missiles and fighter jets in a retaliatory move against attacks from Yemen’s Houthi terrorist group on commercial ships in the Red Sea.

    Chants of “Yemen, Yemen make us proud, turn another ship around” could be heard at the scene of the White House protests.

    The recent drone attacks on commercial shipping have caused multiple casualties as well as disruption of one of the world’s most important trade routes. The United States has since advised U.S. vessels to stay clear of the area pending further risk of air attacks.

    President Joe Biden issued a statement on Jan. 11 calling the strikes a direct response to the Houthi attacks, and will continue as necessary.

    “These strikes are in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea—including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history. I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary,” the president’s statement reads.

    The Biden administration’s support of Israel has further led to widespread criticism from several advocates and human rights groups, who are denouncing what they refer to as a genocide on the Gazan people.

    Hamas Badge Spotted in Protest

    Some have also called out possible infiltration by affiliates of the Hamas terrorist group in the protests outside the White House.

    According to investigative journalist Sam Shoemate, evidence has surfaced that could indicate involvement by Hamas-affiliated groups.

    “A D.C. cop working the protests outside the White House sent me this picture,” a post by Mr. Shoemate on X says. “This patch is Al Qassim Brigades, a Hamas terror group. He said the guys dressed like this were spotting and assessing (which is done to collect intel).”

    The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    From NTD News

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/15/2024 – 18:55

  • "90% Of The Population Will Be Dead Within A Year" – Dennis Quaid Warns Tucker Of Inevitable Major Solar Storm Destroying All Tech
    “90% Of The Population Will Be Dead Within A Year” – Dennis Quaid Warns Tucker Of Inevitable Major Solar Storm Destroying All Tech

    “Basically, there is a 100% probability that our sun, generating what they call a GMD, which is a solar storm, that hits hard, hits our Earth, and the magnetic field we have around the Earth, and can fry everything that is electric above the ground, including our entire grid,” actor Dannis Quaid explained to Tucker Carlson in one of the former Fox anchor’s most surreal yet terrifying interviews yet.

    Scared yet? You should be.

    Accomplished actor and musician Quaid shares insights on his upcoming documentary titled “Grid Down, Power Up”, highlighting the inevitability of a massive solar storm (a Carrington event such as occurred in 1859) impacting Earth in catastrophic ways.

    At the time, Quaid notes, the GMD (geomagnetic disturbance) devastated the then-existing telegraph system, and asks Carlson to consider the potential magnitude of such a disaster in today’s electrically-dependent society. He notes:

    “imagine what that would do now with a very large storm… it would take out not only the electricity but all of our infrastructure,” the actor exclaims, adding that:

    “There wouldn’t be water in your tap. You couldn’t get gas for your car because the whole system is broken down.”

    Quaid hopes that by bringing attention to the potential catastrophe he can nudge politicians into action to harden the grid against such events (natural or terrorist-driven)…

    “It’s something we don’t like to think about but it’s… whether from the Sun or a bad actor this is something that 100% chance it’s going to happen and we are just no nowhere no way prepared for it.” ;

    …although he is not optimistic given the challenges posed by regulatory agencies and the private ownership of power companies.

    “President Trump actually signed an executive order to harden our grid to protect ourselves against an event like this happening. Obama tried to get that going as well and it’s stuck in these Regulatory Agencies.“

    And if we don’t do something about it, basically all the worst bits from the bible…

    “Everything that we rely upon would be gone. The food would melt in our refrigerators…” Quaid states, warning that “within a year, 90% of the world’s population would be dead from starvation, disease, or killing themselves in total and utter social catastrophe.”

    He concludes the interview with thoughts on American democracy and the need for balanced political discourse, advocating for education about the values that make us a nation and urging for cooler heads to prevail in politics.

    Watch the full interview here (from behind a pillow)…

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/15/2024 – 18:20

  • Iran Launches Ballistic Missiles Against Foreign 'Espionage Centers' In Iraq's Erbil
    Iran Launches Ballistic Missiles Against Foreign ‘Espionage Centers’ In Iraq’s Erbil

    Multiple large explosions have been reported overnight (local) near the US Consulate in Erbil, Iraq, in what appears to be a major escalation from Iran.

    The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has already taken responsibility for the attack against what a statement dubbed foreign “espionage centers” and “anti-Iranian terrorist gatherings in parts of the region” with ballistic missiles.

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    ABC News is reporting that four people were killed in the fresh missile attack, however, no Americans have been hurt. US officials have told regional media that no American facilities were impacted by the missile strikes in Erbil, even though many initial reports said it took place near the vicinity of the US consulate.

    Very close in time to this attack, possibly within as little as five minutes of the Erbil incident, Israel launched airstrikes against Iran-linked targets outside Aleppo International Airport in northern Syria.

    One regional correspondent, Joyce Karam, pointed out that Monday has been an exceptional day in terms of the number of hugely escalatory events close in time. She wrote that the “Middle East is imploding, in one day”…which has included the following: 

    • Attack on US ship by Yemen Houthis
    • US intercepting 2nd attack in Red Sea
    • Israel strikes in Gaza [and Syria]
    • Stabbing & car ramming near Tel Aviv IRGC attack in Iraq
    • IRGC attack in Syria

    As for the IRGC action in Syria, a statement said it targeted an ISIS site, in retaliation for the twin suicide bombings in Kerman city in southeast Iran on Jan.3. ISIS had taken responsibility for the attack which killed over 100 people who were attending memorial events commemorating the death of Qassem Soleimani.

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    The IRGC statements made so far include acknowledgement of the following military actions Monday (some of which occurred in the overnight hours Tuesday, local time):

    • Attack on anti-Iranian terrorist sites (i.e. US military sites) in Iraq’s Erbil
    • Attack on ISIS terrorist sites inside Syria
    • Attack on Mossad HQ in Kurdistan, Iraq

    According to more details in Reuters from Iran’s attack on northern Iraq: “Explosions were heard in an area some 40 kilometers northeast of Erbil in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, three security sources said, in an area near the U.S. consulate as well as civilian residences.”

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    All of this is spillover from the Gaza War, as things continue to slide into a possible broader regional conflagration. 

    More video from the Erbil attack, however which remains unverified…

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    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/15/2024 – 18:08

  • Bitcoin Vs Marx: Two Competing Geopolitical Domino-Theories
    Bitcoin Vs Marx: Two Competing Geopolitical Domino-Theories

    Authored by Robert Malka via BitcoinMagazine.com,

    Marxism and Bitcoin have one thing in common, the idea that a radical change in the structure of society will happen in a bottom up decentralized fashion. Which of them, if either, will succeed in that goal?

    Marx tells us the revolution will be decentralized.

    The Have-nots will tire of the great inequity of capitalism, and the few thousand Haves will suffer from the worldwide rebellion they encouraged through their greed.

    Building central banks and controlling the money supply will force the onset of Communism.

    Centralization of wealth leads to decentralized rage; the overthrow is inevitable. Class will be the deciding factor, and people of all stripes and sexes among the most developed nations will rebel first. The dominos will fall until the least developed countries finally industrialize, experience the same inequities, and become communists themselves.

    This is not what happened, of course. Lenin adapted Marxism to suit his needs, and with the help of Communist sympathizers in the United States, Communism was implemented top-down in underdeveloped Russia. The dominoes toppled forcefully. Country after country fell into or out of Communism thanks to top-down or outside interests throughout the Cold War, always at the expense of the citizenry, and rarely at their behest.

    Ironically, we discover, Communism has always been propped up by top-down physical force and moneyed interests, the very people Marx himself despised.

    Versions or elements of Communism now exist in China and the United States. One is an initially poor, now dystopian regime that plays capitalist games, and the other is a regime struggling between political correctness, a limp conservatism, and a central bank barely holding the economy together.

    Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym for the creator(s) of Bitcoin, makes no political statements.

    In his nine-page whitepaper and public postings, we learn how Bitcoin works, and whether it might succeed — by which he meant a high volume of transactions processed and a failure of entities to attack and delegitimize the network.

    It is, however, well-established that Bitcoin’s deflationary monetary policy and peer-to-peer structure have roots in the insights of Austrian economists such as Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, and others — thinkers who developed their work in direct contrast to Marx and the historical, political bent of his dialectical materialism. It is no surprise then that theories have emerged about the political implications of adopting Bitcoin.

    According to one theory, the most developed countries, particularly the United States, are closest to the fiat money printer. The strongest central bank is the one that runs the world’s reserve currency. The few who run that central bank can print unlimited amounts of money and launder it to suit their interests. Such interests will never align with that of their people’s, and particularly never of the countries forced to tether themselves to today’s global reserve currency, the US dollar. The dollar, not tied to gold or other hard money, will inflate into nothingness. Other central banks also printing money will suffer doubly. Their money is debasing, and the dollar on which their money relies is also debasing.

    The people will figure this out, and tire of it. They will realize that they cannot store the value of their days’ work in a debasing currency, and will pull their money out of the fractional reserve banks that enable this endless printing. They will put this money into a hard asset, initially gold, and eventually Bitcoin.

    Slowly, then suddenly, the revolution will be decentralized. The citizens of developed countries will invest in Bitcoin, but as relative winners in the fiat game, they will use it as a currency last. Similarly, the governments of the most developed countries will fail to take Bitcoin seriously, or be hostile to it. But the citizens of poor countries, and those with debased currencies, will leap to Bitcoin first. The poor will realize Bitcoin’s volatility is not so bad when their country’s currency hyper-inflates far faster. Its monetary policy is at least transparent. Who knows what happens in the offices of the Federal Reserve?

    The citizens of smaller, poorer countries will store their value in bitcoin and transact with it. Smaller, poorer governments will see that Bitcoin gives them a way out of fiat’s approach of debt and debasement, adopting it as legal tender. The dominoes will fall. The Haves of the central banks will be overthrown, replaced by the Have-nots who had bitcoin first. The developed countries will be the last to catch on. And finally, thanks to Bitcoin’s deflationary monetary policy, the poor countries will have a leg up in this Orange New World. Someday we will live in a free-market paradise, where no one is in control of the money supply and economies can grow as The People will.

    In both theories, the economic situation leads to a decentralized emotional/cultural phenomenon, namely a struggle against a corrupt oligopoly.

    But when it comes to Bitcoin, this hasn’t happened as expected either.

    When Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador and head of the party Nuevas Ideas, made his country the first to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, citizen interest in Bitcoin in El Salvador was virtually 0%. Only a few bitcoiners from developed countries, who had made their home in touristy El Zonte beach, knew anything about Bitcoin. Today, the degree of citizen-wide adoption of Bitcoin in El Salvador is over 35% and rising, with some of the thanks going to the government’s Chivo wallet, and some to non-profit efforts such as Mi Primer Bitcoin. El Salvador’s domino fell mostly from top-down efforts, and as poor a country as it is, its other legal tender is the US Dollar, the world’s reserve currency. While El Salvador doesn’t have control of the dollar’s monetary policy, it is certainly doing better by adopting it compared to Argentina or Lebanon, whose currencies are terribly debased as of this writing.

    Further, there are obvious falsities here. The United States hasn’t adopted Bitcoin as legal tender, but it sure has a lot of bitcoin. The IRS has holdings. Rumor even has it that other agencies confiscate, keep, and purchase bitcoin from time to time, the latter being particularly easy for a country that’s routinely printing money.

    The list of countries mining bitcoin for free money, some of which is kept, is too long a list to name. So, certainly developed countries, whether or not they acknowledge Bitcoin’s relevance publicly, are invested. So much for a leg up for the poor countries.

    Finally, there is also the geopolitical exercise of using bitcoin.

    Russia is accepting bitcoin for natural gas, and the UAE is warm to the asset. Both are far from poor or underdeveloped countries.

    On the other hand, Nigeria isn’t rich. The Nigerian people transact in bitcoin more than anyone besides Americans. Yet the government is hostile to it, going so far as to push their CBDC, the e-Naira, on the populace. Meanwhile, savvy citizens in Argentina and Lebanon mine and save in bitcoin, while their governments don’t seem to see the urgency in using it.

    So, is Bitcoin, or rather Bitcoin Economic Theory, destined to a history as murky and ubiquitous as Communism’s? Can any theory encompass this asset’s trajectory? Further, given that Bitcoin, by its nature, challenges central banks, and by extension certain normalized tenets of Communism, we should expect to see them challenge one another geopolitically — right?

    Which economic incentive structure wins? Is it a soft win, forcing countries like China to accommodate the network without sacrificing their political structure? Or does it extinguish centralization altogether? Or is Bitcoin snuffed out by some ingenious circumstance none of us yet foresee?

    • As it stands, Bitcoin is certainly the underdog, whose main advantage is its decentralization through its proof-of-work consensus mechanism.

    • Meanwhile, fiat has a hold on every major institution on earth — including the military needed to get its way.

    The geopolitical theories surrounding Bitcoin rely on the assumption that it cannot be stopped. As a computer network, anyone can run a node, anyone can transact with anyone else, and anyone can mine to secure the network and make money. It is, in fact, the most secure computer network ever built, with 99.99999999% uptime and zero successful attacks made against it.

    Laws cannot stop people from using Bitcoin. Though it is possible to track purchases made on the ledger, allowing governments to arrest or harm people who defy such laws, theoretically, people will move out of such places and move to places where they can transact in their money of choice. People who try to attack the network by co-opting hashrate will find they’ll make more money supporting the network rather than investing energy to work against it.

    The fact that it’s hard money means everyone — including those who despise it — will eventually opt into storing their value within the network, preventing them from wanting to sabotage it and lose their wealth. Only the few closest to the money printer have the most to lose in moving to a Bitcoin Standard. They cannot navigate a world in which they lose control of the predominant money. If they can’t beat them, they’ll join them.

    I would be remiss without mentioning Major Jason Lowery’s theory, which, while controversial, makes for a compelling story: As Bitcoin finds its way into every nook and cranny, nation-states will come to adopt Bitcoin and wield it as a geopolitical weapon, sublimating the motivation to go to war. Instead, there will be warring hash rates, and geopolitical divisions along the lines of bitcoin mining. This is a compromise of sorts between both ideas, whereby Bitcoin is co-opted by the present authorities — members of the central bank included — but Bitcoin finds a way to shift their incentives in its favor.

    To the extent that they can hoard the remaining bitcoin, and attempt to dominate the network by conquering hashrate, Major Lowery’s proposed economic ‘game’ may find some reality. While there are several valid critiques of Lowery’s thesis, a version of such an event may occur. Per Limpwar, countries that adopt Bitcoin as legal tender first, attempting to leverage it against other countries, may find themselves trapped. Adversarial countries could sell their bitcoin during a competing country’s recessions, further plummeting the purchasing power of that country in the short term. If a military initiative follows that up, it could be the difference between a win or a loss.

    Similarly, a government could hoard bitcoin for just such a response against its people. As its people commit to revolution, having primarily committed their assets to Bitcoin, the government may sell a substantial sum of bitcoin, weakening its people’s assets. Perhaps other countries or citizens would purchase that bitcoin, once again raising the price. Perhaps it would take longer than expected. As we’ve seen, bear markets can reliably last more than a year, and it only takes a few whales to shift the price of bitcoin dramatically. There is not yet any reason to believe that the Bitcoin economy will behave differently in the future.

    My position is that imposing a framework onto Bitcoin indicates a lack of integrity. The network will thrive where it is needed, and falter where it is not. It is not yet obvious that it will be equally needed everywhere, or have equal value everywhere. Gulf countries, for example, may come to hoard bitcoin, but find no need to spend it, preferring to transact in their fiat currency, grounded in the value of their natural and digital assets. The citizens of such regimes may do the same, feeling no need to transact internationally, and possessing no strong economic incentive to use bitcoin.

    Struggling countries may be similarly slow to adopt Bitcoin, preferring to clamp down on their citizens, who may not be prepared to suffer for transacting with digital assets. The people of China may experience such a fate. Certainly, this seems to Bitcoiners like a geopolitical medium-term stupidity. But many regimes engage in such stupidities.

    And finally: would a Bitcoin economy look dramatically different from the way the economy looks today? It seems very likely that the economy will be similar under a Bitcoin Standard as it is under the fiat system. Any large changes to such a system would take generations, and even such changes might simply be iterations to the current system rather than the radical vision of a few Bitcoiners. There will still be credit. Many people will sill prefer to leave their money with intermediaries. Countries will still have central bodies managing the purchase, sale, and holdings of bitcoin, along with how they legally navigate the network and the transactions that it services. Perhaps countries will spend less than they do today, or focus less on GDP – but is it really so wild to believe that, when push comes to shove, countries won’t continue to spend more than they have? We believed before World War One that spending more money than a country had was impossible – but Europe kept the war going for what was believed to be an impossibly long time. Bitcoin will never be able to eliminate that instinct. Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way.

    So, perhaps Bitcoin will win over centralization, Communism, and the threat of infinite inflation in the long term. In the short- and medium-term, perhaps a societal chiropractic adjustment will be recognizable, to those of us who are watching.

    *  *  *

    Marx believed that all culture and politics was built atop the economic structure of a people. Our economics defines us, and its historical progression, from tribal bartering to feudalism to the free market, to communism and beyond, is inevitable. There are a non-zero number of Bitcoiners who also presume an historical teleology for Bitcoin, in fact only disagreeing with Marx on which inevitability to expect: Communism or Bitcoin. Red or Orange. Many, but not all, of the prominent Maxis are Christians. Hegel, who inspired the dialectical materialism of Marx, undoubtedly (and, given Marx’s atheism, ironically) borrowed from Christian theology to devise The Phenomenology of Spirit. It makes some sense then that in economics both see a kind of savior of history. Both, therefore, believe that only their asset, or approach, will win, and that a new politics will broadly be inspired from it. Whether a new politics is brought about from one or the other is not only possible, but proven. We see how Marxism has inspired virulent political strands of itself. Bitcoin may very well do the same.

    But to believe, as both may, that only their approach will come to dominate — Marx’s because of the fundamental (and necessarily-always-growing) inequity born of the Haves always taking from the Have-nots, and Bitcoin’s because no other asset is a superior storer, transferrer, and protector of energy and value — seems shortsighted. It may also be true that the whole framing of this problem is wrong. Perhaps economics is not the base upon which cultural and political superstructures are built – that, instead, economics merely influences some, but not nearly all, of a society’s functions. Believing otherwise puts us in too narrow a framing, risking the chance we miss the roots of other deep cultural or political issues. Addressing such an issue would require that we address whether, as Marx believed, all philosophical issues fundamentally stem from the material world, and whether new philosophies can only emerge from new material conditions.

    Regardless, we see that both philosophies haven’t played out the way anyone expected. And, for the first time since Marx wrote, we have a real application of Austrian economics. The latter never had a political chance against the zealotry of Marxism until Bitcoin’s emergence. However, given that Marxism is fundamentally a philosophy of ressentiment, and though bitcoin may displace it, it is unrealistic to believe it will eliminate it altogether.

    Fundamentally, the workers of the world who remain resentful, even if Bitcoin wins, will either infect elements of it with their philosophy — technology, too, can be driven in unexpected directions — or they will bide their time until the next opening.

    In another 300 years, who knows what will come of Bitcoin? Who knows whether the integrity of such a system will last, or whether central banks not only remain, but thrive in a new form?

    Maxi fanaticism is not ungrounded. Bitcoin has shifted the economic landscape of whole countries, and saved the wealth of many. It promises to shift the very fabric of money and the way we navigate energy.

    And yet it seems that no clear theory can encapsulate it. Bitcoin is filling up, slowly but surely, a great space where once there was ocean. Will it continue to fill every space until we navigate with it, as fish do water? And who knows if other such economic theories won’t continue to compete. But the way there will be long and bumpy, and undoubtedly the dominos will not fall in any of the ways we can possibly imagine.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/15/2024 – 17:45

  • Defense Secretary Austin Finally Leaves Hospital After 2 Weeks, Refuses To Resign
    Defense Secretary Austin Finally Leaves Hospital After 2 Weeks, Refuses To Resign

    Amid a backdrop of scandal and controversy while still rebuffing calls to resign, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has been released from the hospital Monday, following a full two week stint there, with the first four days of that in ICU wherein the White House was kept in the dark.

    Austin had been admitted to Walter Reed hospital on January 1st for complications following prostate cancer surgery. A new Pentagon statement says he is still going to work remotely from home “for a period of time” before returning to his office. The statement sought to assure that he has “full access” to secure communications capabilities.

    Wiki Commons

    “Secretary Austin’s prostate cancer was treated early and effectively, and his prognosis is excellent,” Austin’s doctors have assessed.

    It was on Jan. 5th that the Pentagon first disclosed to the public that he had been hospitalized. For the initial part of that week prior, even the White House didn’t know, and his deputy Kathleen Hicks was also unaware of the full status of his condition while on vacation in Puerto Rico. 

    The Pentagon has since claimed that she was running things from her hotel room. But this is dubious given she appears not to have been fully aware that she was effectively in charge. She merely was tasked with certain duties instead.

    The National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby has also asserted that Austin’s overseeing the country’s national security from the hospital while recovering “was no different than it would be on any other given day, except that he was briefing the president on options and engaged in the discussions from the hospital.”

    But bipartisan Congressional leaders have demanded answers, which have not been forthcoming. A letter from Senate armed services committee chair, Jack Reed (D) and Senator Roger Wicker (R) have demanded an explanation for the serious lapse and breach in protocol:

    “We are concerned that critical notification procedures were not followed while you were receiving medical care the past several weeks,” they wrote, adding that their committee “has serious questions about this incident, and members need a full accounting to ensure it never happens again”.

    Essentially there was no one at the helm of the Department of Defense while the nation is embroiled in several hotspots from Ukraine to the Red Sea and Yemen. 

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    To review, CBS previously compiled a timeline of major events related to Austin’s absence from his post as Pentagon chief:

    • Early December 2023: Medical providers identify prostate cancer, which requires treatment. (Statement from officials at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center officials, Jan. 9) 
    • Dec. 22: Austin undergoes an elective medical procedure while on leave. (Ryder discloses procedure on Jan. 5; Ryder discloses the date of the procedure on Jan. 7)
    • Dec. 23: Austin is discharged and goes home. (Ryder briefing, Jan. 8)
    • Jan. 1, 2024: President Biden holds a call on the situation in the Middle East with Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan. (National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby briefing, Jan. 8).
    • Jan. 1: Austin experiences “severe abdominal, leg, and hip pain” and is transported to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Initial evaluation reveals a urinary tract infection. (Walter Reed Statement, Jan. 9). 
    • Jan. 2: Austin is transferred to the intensive care unit for close monitoring and a higher level of care. (Walter Reed Statement, Jan. 9) 
    • Jan. 2: Some operational responsibilities are transferred to Hicks. (Ryder briefing, Jan. 8)
    • Jan. 2: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. C.Q. Brown is notified Austin has been hospitalized. (Ryder briefing, Jan. 8)  
    • Jan. 2: Pentagon press secretary, Austin’s chief of staff and Austin’s senior military adviser learn Austin is in the hospital. (Ryder briefing, Jan. 8.)
    • Jan. 4: The U.S. conducts a strike in Baghdad at 12 p.m. local time, according to a defense official. Ryder said on Jan. 8 that Mr. Biden and Austin had approved the strike before Austin was hospitalized. 
    • Jan. 4: Defense Department chief of staff notifies deputy secretary of defense and the White House that Austin is in the hospital. President Biden learns Austin has been hospitalized. (Ryder briefing, Jan. 8; Kirby briefing, Jan. 9)
    • Jan. 5: Senate Armed Services Committee is informed of Austin’s hospitalization. (A Senate Armed Services Committee aide told CBS News). 
    • Jan. 5: Pentagon releases first public statement that says Austin has been hospitalized since Jan. 1. 
    • Jan. 5: Austin resumes full duties from Walter Reed in the evening. (Ryder statement, Jan. 7)
    • Jan. 6: Austin releases a statement taking responsibility for delayed disclosure. 
    • Jan. 6: Mr. Biden and Austin speak; the president says he has full confidence in Austin. (U.S. official, Jan. 8). 
    • Jan. 8: Austin is no longer in ICU and is recovering in a private area of Walter Reed. (Ryder briefing, Jan. 8)
    • Jan. 9: Pentagon releases statement from Walter Reed Military Medical Center disclosing that the procedure Austin had undergone was a prostatectomy “to treat and cure prostate cancer.”
    • Jan. 9: President Biden is informed of Austin’s diagnosis. (Kirby briefing, Jan. 9) 

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/15/2024 – 17:10

  • FDA Launches Fresh Bid To Toss Out High-Profile Ivermectin Case
    FDA Launches Fresh Bid To Toss Out High-Profile Ivermectin Case

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is seeking to persuade a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit challenging its repeated advisories against using ivermectin to treat COVID-19.

    The FDA in a sealed motion asked the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas to dismiss the suit, which was brought by three doctors who allege the FDA’s warnings were illegal.

    The late 2023 motion was sealed because exhibits the government cited “include confidential information” from a separate legal proceeding, according to a government brief.

    Government lawyers said they would file redacted versions of the motion for public perusal but still have not done so.

    Attorneys for the doctors said on Jan. 12 that the court should reject the government’s fresh bid to throw out the case.

    “The FDA exceeded its authority by repeatedly issuing public directives not to use ivermectin for COVID-19, even though the drug remains fully approved for human use,” they wrote.

    One of the directives said: “You are not a horse. Stop it with the #Ivermectin. It’s not authorized for treating #COVID.”

    The government motion came after an appeals court found the FDA likely overstepped its authority with the warnings.

    “FDA can inform, but it has identified no authority allowing it to recommend consumers ’stop’ taking medicine,”  U.S. Circuit Judge Don Willett, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, wrote in the ruling.

    The appeals court remanded the case back to U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, who said in 2022 that the doctors failed to prove their allegations.

    The FDA in the sealed motion asked Judge Brown, another appointee of President Trump, to dismiss the case.

    According to lawyers for the doctors, the FDA’s motion includes arguments that claim the plaintiffs have not suffered injuries that are traceable to the FDA, and that cannot be remedied by a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs.

    “The FDA is wrong,” the lawyers said. “Plaintiffs have suffered interference with their practice of medicine and the doctor-patient relationship, economic harm, reputational harm, and increased exposure to malpractice liability, and have been subject to disciplinary proceedings and forced resignations, all of which clearly trace to the FDA’s campaign against ivermectin and would be remedied by equitable relief.”

    The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act enables the FDA to authorize or approve drugs for a specific use but doctors are free to prescribe cleared drugs for other purposes, in what’s known as “off-label” prescribing. The law does not grant authority to the FDA to regulate off-label use.

    The plaintiffs include Dr. Robert Apter, who was investigated by medical boards in two states for prescribing ivermectin to treat COVID-19. The referrals to the boards include some of the FDA’s warnings against using the drug as a COVID-19 treatment.

    The FDA’s position in seeking a dismissal stems in part from the negative actions against the plaintiffs being taken by third parties such as pharmacies, according to a description of the sealed motion. It was quoted as saying that the referrals “are not fairly traceable” to the FDA’s statements.

    An exhibit included by the FDA, however, showed one of the referrals came from a pharmacist who cited FDA documents as a reason for “increased scrutiny” with regard to ivermectin prescriptions. The pharmacist wrote that Dr. Apter would not provide a “valid medical reason” for the ivermectin prescription and was thus engaging in “inappropriate prescribing.”

    “The FDA is the common thread through all of [the] plaintiffs’ injuries, which began only after the FDA embarked on its campaign to stop the use of ivermectin for COVID-19 and which often involve explicit invocation of the FDA’s directives and recommendations,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers said.

    They are seeking an order that would force the FDA to rescind or amend its warnings. That would remove the justification of the parties that have taken negative actions against the plaintiffs, the lawyers added.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/15/2024 – 16:35

  • Lawfare Against Trump Is Running Out Of Gas: VDH
    Lawfare Against Trump Is Running Out Of Gas: VDH

    Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

    Prosecutors are discovering that the more they seek to rush to judgment before the election and gag Trump from speaking publicly about these proceedings, the more he rises in the polls…

    We should dispense with the tired narrative that four conscientious state and federal prosecutors – independently and without contact with the Biden White House or the radical Democrats in Congress – all came to the same disinterested conclusions that Donald Trump should be indicted for various crimes and put on trial during the campaign season of 2024.

    The prosecutors began accelerating their indictments only once Trump started to lead incumbent Joe Biden by sizable margins in head-to-head polls. Moreover, had Trump not run for the presidency, or had he been of the same party as most of the four prosecutors, he would have never been indicted by any of them.

    Yet now they are in a doom loop of discovering that the more they seek to rush to judgment before the election and gag Trump from speaking publicly about these star-chamber proceedings, the more he rises in the polls.

    In truth, each succeeding cycle of corrupt leftwing lawfare that ends in failure—the Russian collusion hoax, the weaponized first impeachment, trying ex-president Trump in the Senate as a private citizen, the laptop disinformation set-up, the Alfa bank ping caper, the pathetic attempt to erase Trump from state ballots, and the unfolding Fani Willis moral debacle—does not return things to zero.

    Rather, they serve as force multipliers for each other. Each overreach geometrically increases the dangers to democracy, ever more turns the public off, and ironically cascades sympathy and poll numbers for the very target of their paranoias.

    Some of the prosecutors have colluded with White House lawyers and congressional liaisons. Some had run for office, offering campaign promises to get Trump convicted for something or other.

    Now, after years of delays and deadends, all four are rushing to synchronize their trial dates to ensure that the front-running Trump is on the docket daily and not out on the 2024 campaign trail.

    Do we recall when leftist legal eagles claimed that of all the iffy Trump indictments, Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis had the best case against Trump?

    The phone call, we were told, was proof of “election interference.” It was Willis who got the first Trump “mug shot.” It was Willis, we were assured, who got Trump with the goods on tape, begging election officials to “find” the requisite missing votes that would prove his victory (note that he did not say “invent” the votes but to look for a supposedly existing trove of them).

    And now Willis’s signature case is in shambles.

    We learn, allegedly, that

    1) Willis hired her stealth boyfriend Nathan Wade as a special counsel, the day before he filed for divorce (whose records were then mysteriously sealed by the court);

    2) that Wade so far has received over $650,000 as special counsel, reportedly including a miraculous ability to charge for 24 hours of continuous legal service in a single day;

    3) that Willis and Wade allegedly have used her greenlighted windfall to him to go on a number of pricey junkets and cruises;

    4) that to try an ex-president and the leading candidate in the 2024 presidential election, Willis picked Wade who had never tried a single felony case and was previously a “personal injury/accident” lawyer;

    5) that the supposedly apolitical Willis had consulted with the January 6 partisan congressional special committee, while Wade had met for marathon meetings with the Biden White House legal counsel (and apparently billed Georgia taxpayers for receiving such federal tutorials).

    The legal community’s initial dismissal of this sordid prosecutor’s office is reminiscent of the immediate efforts to downplay Claudine Gay’s plagiarism. But the charade will eventually end the same way, in this case with the resignation and likely indictment of the prosecutor, along with her boyfriend, who concocted quite a scheme at the expense of the taxpayers. Both have made a mockery of their indictment of an ex-president and, if the allegations are true, will be disbarred and prosecuted.

    The other three indictments are even weaker.

    Alvin Bragg claims that Donald Trump’s efforts a near decade ago to enact nondisclosure agreements and payments to remain silent about embarrassing behavior constituted “campaign finance violations.”

    If so, what then defines campaign violations when Ms. Clinton brazenly destroyed nearly 30,000 subpoenaed campaign-era emails, ordered subpoenaed communication devices smashed, illegally hired a foreign national to find dirt on a campaign rival, and used three paywalls to hide her hush payments to British subject Steele to concoct a smear dossier—with help from Russian sources—to destroy her 2016 rival?

    Letitia James, apparently for the first time in New York history, believes a bank was somehow wronged when its seasoned auditors viewed Trump’s assets, approved a loan to him, profited from his timely payments of interest and principles, and lodged no complaints against Trump or his company.

    James apparently believes that Donald Trump is the first and most egregious real estate baron in New York history who inflated the value of his holdings. Her indictments thus supposedly have nothing to do with a left-wing political activist who ran for attorney general on promises to get Trump.

    As far as Jack Smith, he supposedly was to be focused on Trump’s removal of classified presidential files to an insecure location at his Mar-a-Lago home and Trump’s “insurrectionary” actions on January 6. But he seems way beyond that now and is trying to put a gag order on the presidential frontrunner and to ensure Trump is in court during the 2024 campaign—challenging the very administration that appointed Smith in the first place.

    In truth, Trump was the first ex-president in history to be indicted for a dispute with archivists over the status and security of removed classified files. Such disagreements were historically adjudicated bureaucratically rather than criminally, and certainly not with performance-art FBI swat raids into an ex-presidential residence.

    Moreover, true insurrectionists do not instruct protestors to assemble peacefully and patriotically. Insurrectionists themselves do not try to overthrow governments while unarmed and accompanied by bare-chested buffoons with cow horns and slow-moving septuagenarians draped in American flags. And during an “insurrection,” unarmed “rebels” are usually not invited into the government quarters by supposed government doormen, among them perhaps 150-200 FBI informants. They are usually not shot and killed for the crime of entering a broken window while unarmed. And governments need not lie about the violence of insurrectionaries if they are truly insurrectionists.

    Jack Smith’s problem—aside from his similar previous effort as special counsel to bankrupt and destroy the life and career of former Virginia governor Bob McDonald, a conviction overturned 9-0 by the Supreme Court—is that his indictments are so asymmetrical as to be surreal.

    If the Department of Justice really wishes to prosecute insurrection, then it should concentrate on 120 days of arson, looting, killing, and violent protests that destroyed $2 billion in property, led to over 35 deaths, injured 1,500 law enforcement officers, and saw a federal courthouse, a police precinct, and a historic church torched by protestors, months of violent chaos planned and orchestrated by Antifa and Black Lives Matter, and enabled by leftwing inert mayors and governors.

    The future Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, sought to organize bail for violent rioters. She boasted on television that the protests would not stop, should not stop, and would continue beyond the 2020 elections. Could she have at least suggested to the rioters to protest “peacefully and patriotically?” And just last week, President Biden praised that months-long violent summer of looting, violence, arson, and destruction, calling it “the historic movement for justice in the summer of 2020.”

    Or Smith could investigate the well-orchestrated and increasingly violent pro-Hamas rallies. These are “insurrections” that have stormed the California legislature, occupied the Capitol rotunda, defaced and defiled iconic federal monuments and cemeteries, shut down key bridges and freeways, attacked law enforcement, and led to violence and assaults.

    If Trump is guilty of removing files that he had the statutory right as president to formally declassify, then what was senator and subsequent Vice President Joe Biden guilty of when he stealthily and unlawfully removed hundreds of files, kept the removals secret (until his administration went after Trump for the same offense), and sloppily stored them in his insecure garage?

    At each juncture of these extra-legal efforts, past precedents, former customs, and accepted traditions are being destroyed by the Left, whose endless miscarriages of justice are the real threats to constitutional government. And the more impotent these serial and unending gambits become, the more strident and desperate they appear.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/15/2024 – 15:30

  • Houthi Militants Attack US Container Ship With Ballistic Missiles Days After Biden Attack On Yemen
    Houthi Militants Attack US Container Ship With Ballistic Missiles Days After Biden Attack On Yemen

    So much for the billions in taxpayer funds spent on Operation “Prosperity Guardian“, the Biden admin’s brilliant plan to “protect” shipping through the Red Sea against Houthi attacks.

    On Monday, Houthi militants struck another US-owned container ship with an anti-ship ballistic missile, underscoring how catastrophic Biden’s attempt to protect one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes has been, and that the world’s most important trade artery remains too risky for navigation despite explicit US guarantees for safe passage.

    The Gibraltar Eagle, a Marshall Islands-flagged, U.S.-owned and operated container ship, was struck at about 4 p.m. local time in the Gulf of Aden, US Central Command said on X. Nobody was injured, the vessel avoided significant damage and was able continue its journey, it said.

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    Eagle Bulk Shipping, operator of Gibraltar Eagle, confirmed the ship was hit by a projectile and suffered limited damage to a cargo hold before sailing away from the area. It was carrying steel products.

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    The strike underscores warnings from the US, reported by a top industry trade group, that ships should steer clear of the Red Sea. Pete Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation also issued a warning to US merchant ships Monday telling them to avoid the area until further notice, thus confirming that Prosperity Guardian has been a total multi-billion dollar flop.

     2024-001B-Red Sea and Gulf of Aden-Potential Retaliatory Attacks by Houthi Forces

    There continues to be a high degree of risk to commercial vessels transiting the Southern Red Sea between 12N and 16N. While the decision to transit remains at the discretion of individual vessels and companies, it is recommended that U.S. flag and U.S. owned commercial vessels remain North of 18N in the Red Sea or East of 46E in the Gulf of Aden until further notice. Additional updates will be provided when available. This alert will not automatically expire and will be updated or cancelled as needed. Any questions regarding this alert should be directed to U.S. Naval Forces NCAGS at +973-1785-0033 (Primary/Watch Desk), +973-3940-4523 (Alternate), m-ba-navcent-ncags@us.navy.mil

    The latest attack on a US-owned and operated ship comes just days after US and UK forces had theatrically bombed targets in Yemen following months of attacks on commercial ships by Houthi militants, who had been targeting vessels with any kind of connection with Israel. The Houthis warned of reprisals against US and UK ships for the bombing, and sure enough, they did just that. Meanwhile, the Biden admin is keeping it “retaliatory” attacks to the barest optical minimum as it is terrified that if it strikes too hard at Iranian targets, some or all of Iran’s precious 4mmb/d in oil would be pulled from the market, leading to an explosion in oil prices and devastation for Biden in the Nov elections.

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    The DOT’s navigation warning, posted on LinkedIn by the world’s largest international shipping association Bimco, cited advice from the US Naval Forces Central Command. It warned the current instability could yet last for “some time.”

    “Coalition forces and Bimco continue to recommend shipping companies to consider avoiding shipping operations in the area,” the trade group said, crushing any credibility the Biden admin may have had of preserving stability in the Red Sea, and making a mockery of US attempts to contain the Houthi rebels.

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    The maritime industry had already been warned on Friday to stay away from the region, but initial guidance suggested the pause might only last for three days. That was echoed by the Department of Transportation’s own 72-hour warning on Friday, which became on indefinite one on Monday. Unfortunately, due to the sheer incompetence of the US military, which is more concerned with being inclusive and equitably accepting of overweight trannies with blue hair than actually being in fighting shape, what was a 3-day lockdown is now indefinite.

    The attacks are driving up shipping costs as vessels avoiding the area are forced to sail thousands of miles further around Africa instead. That’s raised the specter of a renewed wave of inflation and means delays to the delivery of every thing from commodities to manufactured goods.

    Gas tankers from Qatar are among the latest vessels that have seemingly been forced the long way around but numerous shipowners have heeded the warnings. On Friday, multiple tanker companies said they were pausing transits through a stretch of water that’s vital for the shipment of everything from oil to manufactured goods.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/15/2024 – 15:00

  • Death, 'Disease X', & "Rebuilding Trust" With The Denizens Of Davos
    Death, ‘Disease X’, & “Rebuilding Trust” With The Denizens Of Davos

    Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

    “I have decided to unilaterally rebrand Disease X! It is now Disease DIC! Debt Implosion Cover-up”

    – Edward Dowd

    The nabobs and panjandrums of the World Economic Forum (WEF) meet up at Davos, Switzerland, the next several days to lay plans for their latest assault on humanity.

    This year’s theme is “Rebuilding Trust.”

    Did you just blow your coffee through your nose?

    The outfit that coordinated the world-wide Covid-19 response (that perhaps birthed the very concept of Covid-19 itself), and especially pushed mRNA vaccines on the credulous global public — this gang of super-wealthy, super-connected, super-important celebrity punks, poohbahs, pricks, and predators wants a cuddle.

    This Davos crowd — moiling around the opening soirée amid drool-worthy trays of crab puffs, asparagus gougères, lobster crostini, waygu morsels, Prosciutto-Fig bites, chickpea panisse, stuffed castelvetrano olives, wild boar and quinoa dolmas, fava bean puree toasts, pigeon pea fritters, and Nürnberger rostbratwurst pigs-in-a-blanket, all washed down by bottomless flutes of Roederer Cristal Millésime Brut— could not stop chattering about the debut of the latest viral confection, “Disease X”, said to be twenty times deadlier than Covid-19.

    Imagine the opportunities this one will provide for the WEF’s Davos prom date, the World Health Organization (WHO). And just in time to create enough hysteria for the May vote on the new WHO treaty binding the world’s governments to its pandemic diktats. In that new disposition of things, whatever Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says, goes! Lockdowns. Quarantine camps. Mandatory (improved) safe-and-effective vaccines. Nevermind what the actual citizens of Countries A, B, or C might otherwise decide for themselves under the obsolete system of national sovereignty. Follow the science, useless eaters of the world! (And please quit carping about it!)

    Any resemblance of “Disease X” to the remaining global free speech platform (Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter), is just another bothersome conspiracy theory. Of course, theories imply the discovery of proofs, and it so happens that the unelected European Commission, under its Digital Services Act (passed in Nov., 2022), has already threatened Mr. Musk’s X to remove so-called hate speech, illegal content, and disinformation or face a fine amounting to 6-percent of its annual global revenue.

    Hate speech and disinfo are whatever the EU says it is, including information that is true but disagreeable to the agenda of all supranational orgs such as the EU, the WEF, and the WHO. 

    Reminds us of something Pete Hogwallop once said to Ulysses E, McGill:

    Last time around, those mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna proved to be super-effective at one thing: disordering all the cells and organs in the human body so as to produce a severe auto-immune reaction resulting in death and disability. The artificial spike protein replication induced by the vaxxes has a special yen for heart tissue, the linings of blood vessels, and the reproductive organs — thus, all those world-class soccer players dropping dead in mid-kick, all the massive clots the size of shipworms discovered by the morticians, and all the spontaneously aborted babies over the past three years.

    By the way, having seen all this, the CDC Director, Mandy Cohen, is still pushing “updated” mRNA shots, down to six-month-old babies. No, I’m not making this up. Read the CDC’s latest recommendations, released five days ago:

    It happens that Dutch virologist Geert Vanden Bossche warned a month ago that — per his earlier warnings about the dangers of vaccinating into the teeth of a pandemic — the world can expect a soon-to-come crisis of 30-to-40 percent mortality in highly vaccinated countries with the emergence of a new Covid variant that won’t be stopped by vaxx-damaged immune systems.

    Let that sink in.

    It means not just a bone-chilling, unprecedented mega-wave of deaths, but the likely dysfunction of every complex system that advanced nations depend on for normal operation as the people who know how to run them succumb. That is, farewell to normal modern life as we have known it. Geert’s just sayin’.

    It’s even possible that some of the things that cease operation will include the WEF, the WHO, the EU, and the CDC, considering their presumably multi-vaxxed and boosted members.

    Enjoy the scrumptious canapés while you. can, ladies and gentlemen of Davos. We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when.

    *  *  *

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

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/15/2024 – 14:30

  • "It's All Over": Powell's WSJ Mouthpiece And JPMorgan Confirm Imminent End Of QT
    “It’s All Over”: Powell’s WSJ Mouthpiece And JPMorgan Confirm Imminent End Of QT

    On December 13 the financial world was stunned when, just two weeks after Jerome Powell had said he it was “premature” to speculate on rate cuts, the Federal Reserve did a shocking U-turn and pivoted dovishly, ending the Fed’s hiking cycle with inflation still running at double the Fed’s target of 2%, and said that it had in fact discussed the start of rate cuts, contrary to what Powell said just two weeks earlier.

    Or rather, we should say “the financial world that had not read Zero Hedge was stunned” because just one week ahead of the Fed’s December FOMC meeting, we correctly predicted the Fed’s pivot due to one simple reason: as we laid out in “The Canary Just Died: Sudden Spike In SOFR Hints At Mounting Reserve Shortage, Early Restart Of QE“, the Fed no longer had a choice and was forced to pursue a dovish pivot because the liquidity in the all-important systemic and interbank plumbing had hit dangerously low levels, resulting in the highest SOFR print on record, and the biggest spike since the last time there was a repo market crisis in March 2020.

    As we said at the time, “the spike caught almost everyone by surprise, even such Fed-watching luminaries as BofA’s Marc Cabana because it was with “no new UST settlements, lower repo volumes, and lower sponsored bi-lateral volumes.”  And yet, the spike was clearly there and ominously it was consistent “with the slow theme of less cash & more collateral in the system” – i.e., growing reserve scarcity –  and “may have been exacerbated by elevated dealer inventories, bi-lateral borrowing need, and limited excess cash to backstop repo.”

    And the punchline: “If funding pressure persists, it risks Fed re-assessment of ample banking system reserves & potential early end to QT“, and depending on how bad the funding shortage gets, an early restart of QE.

    One week later, the Fed capitulated on tight monetary policy and ushered in the era of rate cuts, just as we said it would. But more importantly, one month later it was Dallas Fed president (and former head of the NY Fed’s plunge protection team) Lorie Logan who said the quiet part out loud when she confirmed our “canary in the coalmine” note, namely that the Fed’s QT is effectively over due to the sudden, unexpected slide in systemic liquidity, primarily due to the rapid drain in the reverse repo facility which now has just $600 million left and is set to be fully drained some time in March…

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    … and that by extension, another round of QE may be on deck.

    Of course, it’s one thing for a regional Fed president to opine on such things, it’s something entirely different for Powell’s preferred media leak conduit to confirm it, and yet this morning that’s precisely what happened when Nick Timiraos, aka Nikileaks, aka Powell’s favorite media mouthpiece confirmed that QT’s days are now numbered writing that “Fed officials are to start deliberations on slowing, though not ending, that so-called quantitative tightening as soon as their policy meeting this month. It could have important implications for financial markets.“

    If that wasn’t enough, Nikileaks also confirms our suspicion about the driver behind said QT runoff: the financial plumbing is starting to clog up:

    But whereas the Fed expects to cut short-term interest rates this year because inflation has fallen, its rationale for tapering bond runoff is different: to prevent disruption to an obscure yet critical corner of the financial markets.

    Five years ago, balance-sheet runoff sparked upheaval in those markets, forcing a messy U-turn. Officials are determined not to do that again.

    Several officials at the Fed’s policy meeting last month suggested beginning formal conversations soon, so as to communicate their plans to the public well before any changes take effect, according to minutes of the meeting. Officials have indicated that changes aren’t imminent and that they are focusing on slowing—not ending—the program.

    As we first explained almost two months ago, the reason for the Fed’s panic is that the central bank wants to avoid the same repo market cataclysm that market both the liquidity drain in Sept 2019 and the violent eruption in basis trades that sparked bond market contagion in March 2020; here is Timiraos confirming as much:

    … in September 2019, a sharp, unexpected spike in a key overnight lending rate suggested reserves had windled to the point they were either too scarce or difficult to redistribute across the financial system. The Fed began buying Treasury bills to add reserves back to the system and avoid further instability.

    In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic created a huge dash for dollars. To prevent markets from seizing up, the Fed resumed buying huge quantities of securities. It stopped buying in March 2022 and three months later set the process into reverse, once again shrinking the portfolio.

    … which brings us to today, when the Fed did the math and realized that doing $60BN in QT per month once the reverse repo is fully drained will crash the market:

    Policymakers have several reasons to consider slowing runoff. First, the Fed is shrinking its Treasury holdings by $60 billion a month—twice as fast it did five years ago. Continuing to run at this rate raises the risk that the Fed drains reserves so quickly that money-market rates jump as banks struggle to redistribute a dwindling supply of reserves.

    Slowing the pace of the runoff later this year might allow the Fed to continue the program for longer than otherwise by “reducing the likelihood that we’d have to stop prematurely,” Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan said in a recent speech.

    And by “stop prematurely” she of course means suffering a market crash in an election year, one which would drag the economy into a recession in days. And we all know by now (thanks to former NY president Bill Dudley) that is unacceptable, especially when the alternative is a Trump presidency.

    Timiraos also confirms that we were right in cautioning that it’s all about the accelerating rate of decline in the reverse repo facility (see “How Treasury Averted A Bond Market “Earthquake” In The Last Second: What Everyone Missed In The TBAC’s Remarkable Refunding Presentation“):

    there are signs that the cash surplus in money markets is rapidly diminishing. The Fed allows money-market firms and others to park extra cash that would otherwise end up in reserves in an overnight reverse repurchase facility. The facility has shrunk by around $1 trillion since late August to around $680 billion. Logan endorsed slowing runoff once that facility is nearly drained of cash because, after that, forecasting demand for bank reserves will be more uncertain.

    This “faster-than-expected decline” in the overnight reverse repurchase facility’s balances is spurring the Fed’s movement toward contingency planning around how to slow runoff:

    “It has been a surprise to everyone that overnight reverse repurchase balances have fallen this quickly and that reserves have actually increased over this period,” said Brian Sack, who managed the Fed’s Plunge Protection Team at the New York Fed from 2009 to 2012.

    Actually Brian, you and others may have been surprised, but it certainly wasn’t “everyone”: we’ve been warning this would happen since the start of the year, and most recently one week before the Fed’s pivot.

    There is another reason why the December SOFR spike freaked out the Fed: whereas previously the central bank was wrong repeatedly in estimating what level of reserves would be seen as “ample” by the market, this time around, officials told TImiraos they are going to rely more on market signals in identifying the right level of reserves.

    “Last time, we had lots of estimates of where we thought that terminal level of reserves was, and our estimates were too low,” Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker said in an October interview. “At the end of the day, the market will dictate where we are.”

    Indeed it will, and that’s precisely why our premium subscribers were fully aware that the “canary in the liquidity coalmine” died at the start of December, and the Fed’s dovish pivot, the end of QT, and the coming QE are now logically following just as we said they would.

    And just in case Timiraos’ conveying Powell’s message that QT is effectively done wasn’t enough, here is JPM’s head of fixed income strategy with a note overnight admitting the same

    This is how JPM sees the wind down of QT: “We now expect that the FOMC will have the outline of a timeline at the January meeting, communicated mid-February minutes to that meeting. We expect that this plan will be formally agreed to at the mid-March meeting and will be implemented beginning in April” at which point the monthly cap on the runoff of Treasury securities to be reduced to $30bn/mo, from $60bn/mo (full note available to professional subscribers in the usual place).

    Bottom line: after several years of tightening, 2024 is when the liquidity floodgate reopen and not only does the Fed start to cut rates aggressively, but with QT tapering, we fully expect the next QE to be launched in the near future, sending the dollar into its next, and possibly final, reserve currency death spiral as printer goes BRRRR.

    Tyler Durden
    Mon, 01/15/2024 – 14:00

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Jan 15

Today’s News 15th January 2024

  • 'Just Say No!' – Non-Compliance Is The Answer
    ‘Just Say No!’ – Non-Compliance Is The Answer

    Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,

    Just Say No

    The train wasn’t scheduled for another 20 minutes, so I had a chance to contemplate the official sign on the door of the huge elevator leading to the platform.

    It said that only four people are allowed in because we must all practice social distancing. There was a helpful map of the interior of the elevator with stick figures telling people exactly where to stand.

    Yes, these stickers are still everywhere. I recall when they first went up, sometime in April 2020. They seemed oddly uniform and appeared even permanent. At the time I thought, oh, this is a huge error because within a few weeks, the error of the whole of this idiocy is going to be known by all.

    Sadly, my worst fears came true: It was designed to be a permanent feature of our lives.

    Same with the strange arrows on the ground telling us which way to walk.

    They are still everywhere, stuck on the floor, an integral part of the linoleum. If you walk this way, you will infect people, which is why you have to walk that way, which is safe.

    As for masks, the mandates keep popping up in strange places and strange ways. My inbox fills with pleas for how people can fight this stuff.

    Orwell Couldn’t Even Imagine It

    The essential message of all these edicts: You are pathogenic, a carrier, poisonous, dangerous, and so is everyone else. Every human person is a disease vector. While it’s fine you are out and about, you must always create a little isolation zone around you such that you have no contact with other human beings.

    It’s so odd that no dystopian novel ever imagined a plot centered on such a stupid and evil concept. Not even in 1984 or The Hunger Games or Equilibrium or Brave New World or Anthem, was it ever imagined that a government would institute a rule that all people in public spaces must stand six feet away in all directions from any other person.

    That some government would insist on this was too crazy for even the darkest imaginings of the most pessimistic prognosticator. That 200 governments in the world, at roughly the same time, would go there was unimaginable.

    And yet here we are, years after the supposed emergency, and while governments are not enforcing it, for the most part, many are still pushing the practice as the ideal form of human engagement.

    Except that we’re not doing it.

    No One Takes It Seriously

    In this train station, no one paid any attention to any of the signage. The exhortations were entirely ignored, even by those who are still masked up (and, one presumes, boosted seven times).

    When the moment arrived for people to get into the elevator, a crowd began to pour in, quickly beyond four, then eight, then 12. I stood there shoulder to shoulder with fully 25 other people in one elevator with a sign that demanded only four people get in at any one time.

    I sort of wanted to ask the crowd if they saw the sign and what did they think. But that would have been absurd, because, actually, no one even cares. In any case, one guy asking a crowded elevator such a question would have raised suspicions that I was deep state or something.

    It was never clear in any case who was enforcing this. Who issued the rule? What are the penalties for not complying? No one ever said. Sure, there was in the past usually some flunky bureaucrat or Karen who yelled at people and said do this and don’t do that. But those people seem long ago to have given up.

    It’s not even a thing anymore. And yet the signs still exist. Probably they will stay forever.

    There is an enormous disjunction that still persists between what we are told to do and what we actually do. It’s as if incredulity toward official diktat is now baked into our daily lives.

    Making Sense of It All

    My first thought is that it doesn’t make much sense at all, even from the point of view of those who aspire to control our lives, to issue commands to which no one listens or obeys.

    On the other hand, there might be some meta-rationale for this, as if to say, “We are nuts, you know we are nuts, we know you know we are nuts, but we are in charge and can continue to do this anyway.”

    In other words, edicts to which no one complies serve a certain purpose.

    They’re really a visual reminder of who is in charge, what those people believe, and the presence of a Sword of Damocles hanging above the whole population: At any point, anyone can be snatched away from normal life, made a criminal, and be forced to pay a price.

    The nuttier the edicts, the more effective the message.

    Thus do we live in insane times. There seems to be a huge and widening gulf separating the rulers from the ruled, and this gulf pertains to values, aims, methods and even vision for the future.

    Whereas most of the population aspires to live a better life, we cannot shake the sense that someone out there who has more power than the rest of us aspires for us to be poorer, more miserable, more afraid, more dependent and more compliant.

    After all, we are just barely shaking off the most grandiose experiment in universal human control in the historical record, the attempt to micromanage the whole of everyone belonging to the human race in the name of gaining control over the microbial kingdom.

    The effort petered out over time but how in the heck does anyone with ruling-class power expect to maintain any credibility after such a destructive experiment?

    They’ll Never Admit They Were Wrong

    And yet there is a reason we have heard precious few concessions that it was all bogus and unworkable, and why there is still a dripping sound of papers telling us that the whole scheme worked pretty well and that people who say otherwise are disseminators of disinformation.

    There are still publishing opportunities out there to trash repurposed generics and praise the shots and boosters. The power is still with the crazy people, not with those who question them.

    And the people who threw themselves into COVID controls as the greatest years of their lives are still at it. Hardly a day goes by when there is not a freshly written hit piece on the resistance and efforts to trash those with enough sagacity to see through all the baloney.

    Far from being rewarded, those who protested and opposed are still living under a cloud that comes with being an enemy of the state.

    We all know that it is not just about these dumb stickers and these virus controls. There is more going on.

    Noncompliance Is the Answer

    Coincident with the pandemic restrictions came the triumph of woke ideology, the intense push for EVs, a wild ramp-up in weather paranoia with the discovery that climates change, a rampant gender dysphoria and denial of chromosomal reality, an unprecedented refugee flood that no one in power is willing to mitigate, a continued attack on gas including even stoves and a host of other inane things that are driving rational people to the brink of despair.

    We long ago gave up the hope that all of this is random and coincidental, any more than it so happened that nearly every government in the world decided to plaster social distancing signs everywhere at the same time.

    Something is going on, something malevolent.

    The battle of the future really is between them and us but who or what “them” is remains opaque and too many of “us” are still confused about what the alternative is to what is happening all around us.

    Noncompliance is an essential start regardless.

    That crowded elevator, assembling spontaneously in open defiance to the blasting signage, is a sign that something in the human longing to be free to make our own decisions still survives.

    There are cracks in the great edifice of control.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/14/2024 – 23:20

  • Dems Hatch "Republicans For A Day" Scheme To Boost Haley Vs. Trump In Iowa Caucuses
    Dems Hatch “Republicans For A Day” Scheme To Boost Haley Vs. Trump In Iowa Caucuses

    Iowa Democrats and independents have a plan to make a dent in former President Donald Trump’s massive lead over the rest of the GOP field – help Nikki Haley by becoming “Republicans for a day” during the Iowa caucuses.

    According to Axios, “crossover” voting is a low-key tradition in the Iowa event, as the state allows day-of party registration for voters, while Democrats aren’t holding in-person presidential  caucuses this year – providing the perfect opportunity for uniparty Democrats to support yet another perpetual war candidate.

    As Don McLeese of west Des Moines told Axios, the crossover voting scheme gives anti-Trumpers “a chance to diminish Trump’s inevitability,” adding “I’ll hold my nose and caucus for Haley.“

    Iowa Republican precinct captain for Haley, Lyle Hansen, acknowledged that “there could be a good crossover” vote for Haley, because Democrats “get to come over and pick the candidate for Biden to oppose.”

    Des Moines Democrat Jonathan Neiderbach told the outlet “I believe all Americans should cast a vote against Donald Trump every chance we have.”

    Reality bites…

    As Axios notes, the crossover votes are “are highly unlikely to help Haley catch Trump, who’s consistently had a big lead in Iowa polls.”

    • But GOP strategist David Kochel said that if crossovers see Haley as the best Republican alternative to Trump, they could help her finish a solid second in Iowa, ahead of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
    • “If you even had 5,000 or 7,500 people across the state cross over for her, that might be the difference between her and Ron DeSantis,” Kochel said.

    The intrigue: There’s some risk for Iowa’s Democratic Party if many of its members cross over to vote with Republicans.

    • People who switch parties to participate in a caucus sometimes don’t switch back, Tim Hagle, a political scientist at the University of Iowa, tells Axios.

    Responding to the ‘threat,’ Trump senior adviser Chrris LaCivita brushed aside any concerns. 

    “If that is something they are relying on to get through the night, then poor people, I feel bad for them,” he told Axios.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/14/2024 – 22:45

  • The Deception Of Today's Push For Diversity
    The Deception Of Today’s Push For Diversity

    Authored by Todd Hayen via Off-Guardian.org,

    “We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the constitution says, but everyone made equal…”

    Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

    A recurring theme in movies, television, and literature, is the “big lie.”

    We’ve always heard the adage, “if you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, more people will believe it.” I think the original version of that quote is attributed to the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Although like with most historical references, Goebbels may never have said this.

    Anyway, might as well say he did, eh? Easy enough.

    “Diversity” and the efforts toward achieving it, as described by the agenda, is a lie. A Big Lie. So is “inclusion” and “equity”—nice ideas, and in a sane world, nice ideals to work toward. But in our current “Bizarro World,” all lies. In fact, as you well know, most of everything out there instigated and implemented by the “government” are lies. Big ones.

    Sad but true.

    Why are these things labelled “Big Lies” and not just plain ‘ol little lies?

    The “woke culture” calls anyone who points out diversity as a bigot or racist. For example, if a person comments on the unique apparel of an ethnic group he runs the risk of being called a racist. A person who comments on an attribute of a particular race (good or bad), he is called a profiling bigot. If someone recognizes diversity and points it out, he is a racist. You don’t honour diversity by cancelling anything that is culturally diverse. That doesn’t make sense. Since these things have worked their way into the culture so deeply, identifying them and labelling them the way the culture does, qualifies as a big lie.

    I wrote a previous article about this titled: “Pseudo-diversity”. The points I made then are slightly different than the points I am making now, but all similar. Here is a quote from that article that falls more in alignment with today’s thoughts:

    It seems I am stumbling with the term “diversity.” Isn’t that what all the fuss is about these days? Everyone seems to want to be identified and seen as unique, but at the same time they wish to have no uniqueness at all. The culture seems to be wanting to cancel out any thought, thing, idea, concept, skill, culture, biology, gender/sex, that claims uniqueness, a strength or weakness, a difference good or bad, but at the same time wants a unique title for all this as well as a recognized exclusivity. Inclusivity and exclusivity: there seems to be no tolerance for sameness, but also no tolerance for difference. Now THAT’S the formula for a mess.

    At the time that I wrote this, I was a bit perplexed as to why such a thing was happening. As with most stuff happening these days, it just didn’t make sense. Why would they say one thing and then do another?

    Why would the “woke culture” be so ready to decimate someone for a “non-inclusionary” remark, yet at the same time advocate the blind acceptance of such unique and eclectic views, not understanding that such unique and eclectic people are by their very nature are “not included.”

    Am I the only one who sees this paradox?

    For a culture to truly be accepting of diversity, that culture must first allow diversity and not be so focused on making everyone the same—and thus unnoticeable. There is a fine line between bigoted prejudice and tolerance.

    Tolerance is the operative word in a stabilized society.

    Tolerance, flexibility, and resilience are on the side of the “unique, diverse, individual or group.” As well as with the “majority” group which may be accused of cultural bigotry.

    Yes, hateful prejudice is a trait to attempt to eliminate, but not a realization that people are different. We must encourage an awareness of differences, and along with awareness of differences, people should be allowed, within reason, to express their awareness of those differences. “Oh look, that man is black, that person has a penis but is dressed like a woman, these people are different than I am, I notice that, and I accept it, but some of it may make me uncomfortable.”

    Maybe some of it I don’t like, and if I feel it encroaches on my own quality of life, I may express that fact without violence or hate.

    (A clear example of this is the plethora of trans “storytelling” events in elementary schools. Cannot we reject such activities without being labelled hateful toward trans persons?)

    To force people (through shaming) to love every lifestyle choice people make, and if they don’t, to then be accused of being bigots, or worse, are arrested for a human rights violation, is not a good thing. People should be allowed to be different. This axiom does not only apply to people who are attempting to be contrary to the “middle of the bell curve majority,” but also to people who are in the “middle of the bell curve majority.” They have just as much right to be accepted for who they are, including their own beliefs about self and worldview, and not be bullied or legally threatened into agreeing with choices they simply do not agree with (such as a requirement to address people by their chosen pronoun.)

    Yes, there is a grey area with all of this, and I do not mean to be bulldozing through this grey area with my sweeping comments. Although in my own personal worldview, I believe people even have the right to be racist, as long as they do not hurt anyone through their bigotry. I also believe a “better society” is created if these bigotries are eliminated. I believe the core of bigotry is a natural suspicion of differences. More integrated humans are less threatened by other people’s differences. Although we may have a “right” to be threatened, it generally makes for a better society if we are not.

    “Live and let live” is the fundamental model for peaceful co-existence here. And we have, throughout our human history, tried to make a go of it. It is only recently that we seem to be making some serious inroads in this regard—until the agenda came along and mucked it all up. In other words, I do not believe that what we are experiencing regarding this insane “woke” crap is a natural organic phenomenon. The devil is making us do it, maybe quite literally.

    Once again, the carrot-to-stick tactic is being used. The carrot is the noble ideal of diversity, equity, and inclusion to all people of all cultures and ethnicities. Yeah, that’s nice, we can go along with that! But then tell us all that we are despicable human beings for thinking men with penises and testicles should not be competing in women’s sports, or that a person of colour should not get the top brain surgeon position when they are not the most competent.

    Tell us we are bigots and transphobic if we don’t believe we should be required to guess someone’s fantasy pronouns and wind up in jail or with a hefty fine if we fail. Tell us we are wrong to think of certain cultures as having certain identifiable traits, particularly from different periods in history (such as a person born and raised in the Chinese tradition having particular dress attributes) without being accused of extreme insensitivity and a disgusting violator of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

    Then we are punished for actually recognizing that people are different.

    And we are being punished for believing that not everyone is entitled to every prize out there, but indeed some people who have worked hard, or shown a particular skill are “included” in a special group exploiting those gifts, and others are indeed excluded.

    That is equity.

    Where is the equity in making everyone the same, everyone, regardless of their specialness or uniqueness or skill or talent or hard work, being herded into a singular “sameness” with everyone else?

    Don’t fall for this DEI carrot. It is a big lie and a nasty one at that. It creates resentment, anger, frustration, confusion, and sadness. And above all, it creates the opposite of what it claims to create.

    Just what the doctor ordered, and we all know where orders from the doctor lead us.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/14/2024 – 22:10

  • Law-Abiding Americans Reject Biden's Border Invasion & Imploding Cities By Buying More Guns
    Law-Abiding Americans Reject Biden’s Border Invasion & Imploding Cities By Buying More Guns

    New data shows that 2023 firearm purchases among law-abiding Americans remain elevated. This comes as the Biden administration floods the nation with millions of illegals on the southern border, and Democrats controlling major metro areas have sparked a violent crime crisis in recent years due to failed social justice reforms. 

    Americans know the country is in big trouble. The government is allowing an invasion of the southern border, and Democrat-run metro areas resemble scenes from the violent video game ‘Grand Theft Auto.’ 

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    Folks are waking up that stripped-down police forces (remember, Democrats pushed ‘defund the police’) aren’t going to rescue them in a time of need, and they must rely on what the Founding Fathers granted them: Second Amendment.

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    That’s why new data from the National Shooting Sports Foundation shows nearly 16 million gun sales in 2023, with December alone seeing upwards of 1.7 million. 

    “Further, 2023 continued a 53-month-long running trend of consumers purchasing over a million firearms per month,” website Gun.com wrote. 

    Mark Oliva, NSSF’s director of public affairs, had this to say about elevated gun buying:

    “Americans showed they want their Second Amendment rights by the millions – once again.

    “These are solid figures that reflect the mood of Americans and the desire to exercise Second Amendment rights. These figures are a reminder of the importance law-abiding citizens place on their personal safety and freedoms, even as the Biden-Harris administration is using a ‘whole-of-government’ approach to chill and ultimately eliminate those rights.”

    Meanwhile, the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System ended the year with 29,854,186 checks, which surpassed 2022’s figure of 28,904,713. 

    Former President Trump was correct last year when he said the US is a “third-world hellhole” run by “pervert criminals and thugs.”

    “Millions of illegal aliens have stormed across our borders, it is an invasion, like a military invasion. Our rights and liberties are being torn to shreds,” Trump said, adding, “Your country is being turned into a third-world hellhole, run by censors, perverts criminals and thugs.”

    It sure looks like an invasion.  

    Here’s more from Trump… 

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    Lawful firearm possession is the only deterrent against criminals as Democrats shred common-sense law and order for chaos – if that is on the southern border or in imploding progressive metro areas. 

    We’ll leave readers with this quote: “An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life,” Robert A. Heinlein.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/14/2024 – 21:35

  • Jim Jordan Says Democrat Border Proposal DOA
    Jim Jordan Says Democrat Border Proposal DOA

    Update (2130ET): While word of a stopgap seemed like a done deal over the weekend, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) warned that it’s unlikely to be smooth sailing – telling Bloomberg Television that there’s no way the Senate border compromise would pass the House, and that he’s confident Speaker Mike Johnson will reject it as such.

    “We’ve got to see the plan, but based on what’s leaked out thus far, there’s no way I’m going to go for that. There’s no way Speaker Johnson’s going to go for that,” said Jordan.

    On Saturday, Johnson suggested that he wasn’t having it…

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    According to the report, lawmakers aren’t quite as close as previously reported – though they are laying the groundwork for a possible stopgap funding deal that would keep the lights on until sometime in March.

    House Republicans will speak tonight via conference call to discuss concerns over the border and a path forward on spending, Jordan told the outlet.

    Meanwhile, Jordan said he and his staff are working to reissue a subpoena for Hunter Biden to testify in private as part of his committee’s investigation into the Biden family business dealings.

    *  *  *

    You’ll never guess what happened…

    That’s right, folks! Our wise and benevolent lawmakers have once again averted debt ceiling disaster – after lawmakers in the House and Senate reached a bipartisan spending deal that will extend two major deadlines and keep the government operating … for six more weeks!

    Until we get to do this all over again.

    According to NBC News (so who knows), “The deal would keep the government funded until March, buying legislators more time to craft longer-term, agency-specific spending bills, following the agreement last weekend to set the overall spending level for fiscal year 2024 at $1.59 trillion.”

    The new agreement moves upcoming government funding deadlines for different departments from Jan. 19 and Feb. 2 to March 1 and March 8.

    The short-term bill, known as a continuing resolution or “CR,” will need to pass both the House and Senate before Friday at 11:59 p.m. to avoid a partial government shutdown.

    Speaker Mike Johnson is set to hold a call with fellow House Republicans at 8 p.m. Sunday to discuss spending negotiations. Several hard-right Republicans have objected to the top–line spending deal he previously cut with Senate Democrats and have urged Johnson to go back on it, though he said Friday that the agreement remains intact. -NBC News

    “The bipartisan topline appropriations agreement clears the way for Congress to act over the next few weeks in order to maintain important funding priorities for the American people and avoid a government shutdown,” said Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries – the top Democrats in both chambers.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/14/2024 – 21:31

  • Gonzalo Lira, Who Claimed Ukraine Tortured Him, Confirmed Dead By State Department
    Gonzalo Lira, Who Claimed Ukraine Tortured Him, Confirmed Dead By State Department

    Update (2106ET): The US State Department has confirmed the death of journalist Gonzalo Lira, who was arrested in Ukraine, which claimed that he “publicly justified” Russia’s invasion.

    According to journalist Breanna Morello, the State Department ‘confirmed the death of U.S. citizen Gonzalo Lira in Ukraine.”

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    During Lira’s first stint in Ukrainian prison, he claimed that he was tortured, explaining that “two thugs held my head and used a toothpick to scratch the whites of my left eye, while asking me if I could still read if I had just one.”

    He was re-arrested while making a run for the Hungarian border. More recently, he wrote in a letter to family that: “I have had double pneumonia (both lungs) as well as pneumothorax and a very severe case of edema (swelling of the body). All this started in mid-October, but was ignored by the prison.”

    If Lira’s claims are accurate, Ukraine tortured him, then ignored a severe health crisis, and now he’s dead. Don’t hold your breath for the MSM to demand justice as they did with Jamal Khashoggi.

    And again, we’re sure this asshole is happy.

    *  *  *

    Journalist Gonzalo Lira has died while in Ukrainian custody, according to his father.

    “Gonzalo Lira, Sr. says his son has died at 55 in a Ukrainian prison, where he was being held for the crime of criticizing the Zelensky and Biden governments,” wrote Tucker Carlson on X. “Gonzalo Lira was an American citizen, but the Biden administration clearly supported his imprisonment and torture.”

    In May, Lira was arrested by Ukrainian authorities because he “publicly justified” the Russian invasion, according to a press release by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).

    The statement from Kiev said that Lira “has the citizenship of one of the countries of Latin America” but omitted that he is also California-born U.S. citizen, as ZeroHedge contributor Space Worm reported at the time.

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    Following his release, Lira said he was tortured in a Ukrainian prison, explaining that “two thugs held my head and used a toothpick to scratch the whites of my left eye, while asking me if I could still read if I had just one.” Lira informed followers that he was making a mad-dash via motorcycle towards the Hungarian border:

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    According to journalist Alex Rubernstein, Lira said that he had double pneumonia (both lungs), which was ignored by the Ukrainian prison holding him.

    “I have had double pneumonia (both lungs) as well as pneumothorax and a very severe case of edema (swelling of the body). All this started in mid-October, but was ignored by the prison. They only admitted I had pneumonia at a Dec. 22 hearing,” reads the letter. “I am about to have a procedure to reduce the edema pressure in my lungs, which is causing me extreme shortness of breath, to the point of passing out after minimal activity, or even just talking for 2 minutes.”

    In response to Lira’s reported death, his father allegedly wrote: “I cannot accept the way my son has died. He was tortured, extorted, incommunicado for 8 months and 11 days and the US Embassy did nothing to help my son. The responsibility of this tragedy is the dictator Zelensky with the concurrence of a senile American President, Joe Biden.”

    We’re sure this asshole is happy.

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/14/2024 – 21:07

  • Canceled! Are You At Risk Of Losing Your Home Insurance?
    Canceled! Are You At Risk Of Losing Your Home Insurance?

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    Insurance costs are soaring and companies are canceling policies and upping rates. Don’t blame climate change. I address the real reasons for this mess.

    Dropped

    I had been working on this insurance idea for a few days. The tweet below by Adam drives the message, but only for fire insurance. I added hurricane and river flooding. 

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    There are other flood zones along any major river or low areas. Hurricanes also cause flooding. People need wind and flood insurance in some zones. Judging from the map, some places in Florida are at risk for several reasons.

    The link in the above Tweet is paywalled.

    Buying Home and Auto Insurance Is Becoming Impossible

    The Wall Street Journal reports Buying Home and Auto Insurance Is Becoming Impossible

    After Allstate suffered billions of dollars in losses and failed to get the rate increases it wanted, it resorted to the nuclear option.

    The insurance giant threatened last fall to stop renewing auto insurance for customers in three states that hadn’t given in to its demands, which would have left those policyholders scrambling for coverage. The states blinked.

    In December, New Jersey approved auto rate increases for Allstate averaging 17%, and New York, a 15% hike. Regulators in California are allowing Allstate to boost auto rates by 30%, but still haven’t decided on its request for a 40% increase in home-insurance rates after the insurer refused to write new policies.

    Farmers Insurance Group increased home-insurance rates by more than 23% last year for tens of thousands of policyholders in both Illinois and Texas, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Nationwide Mutual said it won’t renew 10,525 home-insurance policies in hurricane-prone areas of North Carolina.

    State Farm racked up $13 billion in property-casualty underwriting losses in 2022, its worst ever. Last year, it stopped writing new home-insurance policies in California. The state’s regulators last month approved a 20% home-insurance rate increase.

    In California’s wildfire-prone San Bernardino County, insurers in 2021 refused to renew 1,355 policies in a zip code that abuts Lake Arrowhead, north of San Bernardino, up sharply from 157 refusals in 2015, according to an analysis by research firm First Street Foundation.

    In November, Chaucer Group, a London-based reinsurer, named several regions once considered low risk for wildfires that it said are “quickly becoming areas of concern for catastrophic wildfire insurance losses.” They include mountainous areas between Salt Lake City and Denver, and the Appalachian Mountains from Tennessee to New York. 

    Another concern is Texas, partly because of increased development on the fringes of metropolitan areas stemming from migration from California, the report said.

    Despite some concessions from regulators, insurers are bracing for a tough future. Allstate’s Wilson said that everywhere in the country is at some risk from increasingly severe weather. “There is no place that’s safe,” he said, “and no place that’s not going to be impacted.”

    Reinsurers to the Rescue?

    Also consider the WSJ report The Insurance Market Is Healing

    Going into last year, rising interest rates helped lead to a slower influx of capital into reinsurance, which is the backstop that insurers use to protect against so-called tail risks such as hurricanes and earthquakes. That finally gave the upper hand to reinsurers in pricing negotiations, after several years of seeing their pricing struggle to keep up with the rising losses on global catastrophes. That in turn led primary insurers that sell coverage to individuals and businesses to bear more of their own risk.

    Global reinsurers posted a return on equity of 21% on average in the first nine months of 2023, up 18 percentage points from the prior year, according to Fitch Ratings. Meanwhile, primary carriers have cited higher reinsurance costs for decisions such as halting sales of new homeowners policies in places like California. Property-casualty insurers overall are projected to have seen a drop in underwriting performance and returns in 2023, according to Fitch.

    Is the Market Healing?

    In Florida, the insurer of last resort is now the main provider of home coverage.

    Perhaps one can make a claim “the market is healing” but customers facing 30 percent rate hikes likely will not see it that way.

    Climate Change Nonsense

    Politicians will be all over this story, but none of this has anything to do with climate change.

    In nature, fire is a natural occurrence. Decades of fire suppression coupled with decades of accumulation of dead brush created these tinder boxes such that once big fires start, they are difficult to extinguish.

    Please note blatant incompetence by PG&E, California’s electric utility.

    PG&E equipment has repeatedly been linked to major wildfires, including the 2018 Camp Fire that killed 85 people. PG&E has faced several fines in relation to its connection with wildfires, including a $150 million settlement for the 2020 Zogg Fire. That fire burned 56,338 acres, or roughly 88 square miles.

    On top of PG&E and California regulatory incompetence, please factor in home prices

    Consumer Price Index Items

    Since 2020, home prices are up 45 percent. It’s safe to assume the price of labor fixing things after any kind of storm or fire damage is up even more.

    Consumer Price Index Change Since January 2020 Key Items

    • Home Prices (Through October): +45 Percent

    • CPI: +19 Percent

    • CPI Excluding Food and Energy: +18 Percent

    • Rent of Primary Residence: +21 Percent

    • Food: +25 Percent

    Assessing the Insurance Fiasco Blame

    • Inflation

    • PG&E

    • Failure to clear brush

    • Building in flood and hurricane zone

    • Climate change policy Itself (not failure to address climate change)

    If insurance has doubled or tripled or cancelled, blame inflation, regulators in California and elsewhere for allowing homes to be built in flood zones and for not clearing brush in fire zones.

    None of this has a damn thing to do climate change. It’s a combination of inflation coupled with poor policies, building in flood zones, and not clearing accumulated brush.

    North Carolina

    A reader just sent this story on North Carolina: Insurers ask NC to hike homeowners rates by 42.2%

    Is Inflation Down? That’s What President Biden Says

    To highlight the discussion, I ask Is Inflation Down? That’s What President Biden Says

    The irony is Biden’s climate change regulations coupled with his free money policies that are stoking inflation everywhere that’s to blame for this insurance mess, not climate change itself.

    Nonetheless, have no fear, this insurance mess will all be blamed on “climate change”.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/14/2024 – 21:00

  • Debt-Saddled Consumers Embracing Even More "Doom Spending"
    Debt-Saddled Consumers Embracing Even More “Doom Spending”

    Via SchiffGold.com,

    In a disturbing (but unsurprising) trend, more than 1 out of 4 US consumers are throwing in the towel with defeatist “Doom Spending” sprees — despite already being saddled with crippling levels of debt. This behavior is akin to someone who, feeling overwhelmed, indulges excessively in a habit they know isn’t beneficial. In a similar vein, these Americans, perhaps feeling a sense of despair, are accumulating unprecedented levels of new debt through spending sprees that are beyond their financial means.

    In fact, the average household owed a staggering, unsustainable $103,358 last year, with Q2 consumer debt totaling $16.84 trillion nationally according to Experian.

    The result is a deeper and more terminal state of consumer financial decline than ever, but don’t tell that to National Retail Federation CEO Matthew Shay. He was unsurprisingly delighted to find a record number of shoppers turned out for Black Friday deals in 2023 despite ballooning consumer debt and broader economic and political uncertainty.

    “Shoppers exceeded our expectations with a robust turnout. Retailers large and small were prepared to deliver safe, convenient, and affordable shopping experiences with the products and services consumers needed, and at great prices.”

    Never mind that many of these shoppers took out loans to pay for it all. With last year’s reports of a return to pre-pandemic holiday spending, an optimistic outlook appeared superficially tempting. However, inflation isn’t likely to be calmed in 2024. That means that the usual New Year’s resolutions to spend less and save more aren’t going to be enough to stop the credit-fueled doom spending trend. 

    One major reason is that so-called “resilient” consumers still haven’t paid off their debt from last year’s holidays, have blown through their savings, and are now going deeper in debt than ever. With little hope left, doom spending has become a self-contradictory psychological palliative and, in some cases, a way for despondent consumers to trick themselves into presenting a veneer of normalcy.

    While politicians love calling high spending a sign of economic strength, they tend to neglect to mention important facts, such as that consumers are maxing out their credit cards in the process. Ironically, a large subset of consumers respond to financial stress by digging an even deeper hole for themselves, but perhaps they’re just following the example set by the US government and central bank. 

    Ignoring the specter of trillions in post-Covid money still swirling around in the economy, the Fed claims that it has sufficiently reduced inflationary pressures and can start to lower rates again next year. After declaring inflation “transitory” in 2023, Jerome Powell blamed everything but Federal Reserve monetary policy for rising prices:

    “It was a combination of very strong demand, without question, and unusual supply-side restrictions, both on the goods side but also on the labor side, because we had a [labor force] participation shock.” 

    Now we’re led to believe that rate cuts are on the horizon. And while cheaper borrowing in 2024 may be a good sign for the price of gold, it’s a terrible choice for a central bank claiming to have won its war against inflation after such an unprecedented historic frenzy of Covidian money printing. As Peter Schiff remarked about 2023’s final FOMC meeting,

    “The Fed surrendered. Inflation won the fight…it is a pivot in defeat. The Fed stopped hiking rates because it can’t hike them anymore…now that the Fed has said, “Mission Accomplished, the dollar is going to tank.”

    Unable to stuff the inflation genie back in the bottle, consumers aren’t likely to get the relief they need to start actually saving again this year. And while a tanking dollar may be good for gold, for doom spenders, diminishing purchasing power coupled with the availability of cheaper debt will only reinforce their habit. The psychology of doom spending indicates that a lower cost of borrowing will only tempt them to feed their addiction with more borrowed money. Meanwhile, the last of their savings are being wiped out, they’re hitting their current cards’ credit limits, and previous debts are increasingly being left unpaid.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/14/2024 – 19:50

  • When DEI Becomes DIE: FAA Now Hiring People With "Severe Intellectual And Psychiatric Disability"
    When DEI Becomes DIE: FAA Now Hiring People With “Severe Intellectual And Psychiatric Disability”

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    Americans were stunned on Sunday afternoon after Fox News reported the Federal Aviation Administration, overseen by Mayor Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s Transporation Department, rolled out a new “Diversity and Inclusion” program to hire people with “severe intellectual disability” and “psychiatric disability” (among various other disabilities), just days after the latest mid-air near-disaster involving a Boeing 737 Max heightened the public’s attention to the potentially deadly impact of woke Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies in the skies.

    “Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring,” the FAA’s website read.

    “They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism.”

    The FAA’s “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) hiring plan claims that “diversity is integral to achieving FAA’s mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel across our nation and beyond.” 

    When satire becomes a reality… 

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    This is scary. 

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    We hope that the purpose behind the FAA’s DEI hiring spree isn’t aimed at addressing the air traffic controller shortage. This won’t end well. 

    This development comes after a Boeing 737 Max 9 jetliner’s door ripped off the plane while flying over Portland earlier this month. X users have said Boeing prioritizes DEI initiatives, which could jeopardize safety. 

    “Do you want to fly in an airplane where they prioritized DEI hiring over your safety?” Elon Musk wrote on X last week. “That is actually happening.”

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    Welcome to the new society of the clown world (thank the Marxists in the White House pushing the woke agenda – while mega-corporations do the same). 

    At this point, DEI is clearly going too far… or do people first have to DIE for this to become common knowledge?

    Musk is correct: “DEI must DIE.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/14/2024 – 18:40

  • NBC News Admits 'Deep State' Exists… To Save Us From Trump's Return
    NBC News Admits ‘Deep State’ Exists… To Save Us From Trump’s Return

    The last time Donald Trump got within striking distance of the Oval Office in 2016, the Clinton campaign, the Obama administration, and various foreign accomplices invented a hoax accusing the real estate tycoon of being a secret Russian agent, who would use the power of the United States to do Vladimir Putin’s bidding (Which begs the question; why wouldn’t Putin have just invaded Ukraine when his ‘puppet’ Trump wouldn’t have waged a proxy war?).

    And when Donald Trump asked Ukraine about obvious corruption by the Biden family, one of the key ‘deep state’ players in his impeachment behind the scenes was none other than Mary McCord – who went from taking down Michael Flynn after the FBI set him up, to helping Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) to peddle a “whistleblower” complaint about Trump’s Ukraine call.

    McCord is back with a new hoax to peddle, telling NBC News that the Deep State is preparing for Trump’s return – and is taking action to limit his ability to ‘become a dictator’ and use the military to those ends.

    “We’re already starting to put together a team to think through the most damaging types of things that he [Trump] might do so that we’re ready to bring lawsuits if we have to,” McCord – executive director of the Institution for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law – told the outlet.

    The quotes from this fine piece of yellow journalism from NBC are simply hilarious…

    • “Donald Trump is sparking fears among those who understand the inner workings of the Pentagon that he would convert the nonpartisan U.S. military into the muscular arm of his political agenda as he makes comments about dictatorship and devalues the checks and balances that underpin the nation’s two-century-old democracy.”

    • “A circle of appointees independent of Trump’s political operation steered him away from ideas that would have pushed the limits of presidential power in his last term.”

    • “In a new term, many former officials worry that Trump would instead surround himself with loyalists unwilling to say no.”

    • “He’s a clear and present danger to our democracy.“

    • “His support is solid. And I don’t think people understand what living in a dictatorship would mean.”

    • “There are an array of horrors that could result from Donald Trump’s unrestricted use of the Insurrection Act.”

    • “The military is hundreds of thousands of people strong, and ultimately Trump will find people to follow his legal orders no matter what … The Insurrection Act is a legal order, and if he orders it there will be military officers, especially younger men and women, who will follow that legal order.“

    This one might be the best: “We’re about 30 seconds away from the Armageddon clock when it comes to democracy,” said William Cohen, a former Republican senator from Maine and defense secretary in the Clinton administration. “I think that’s how close we’re coming to it when you have a presidential candidate who can be indicted on 91 counts, who can be [found liable for] sexual aggression, who we have seen lies pathologically, who has flouted every rule in the book.”

    Wow!

    Narrative: Trump is going to appoint loyal peons to subvert democracy and declare himself a dictator.

    But wait, the deep state cavalry is here!

    “Now, bracing for Trump’s potential return, a loose-knit network of public interest groups and lawmakers is quietly devising plans to try to foil any efforts to expand presidential power, which could include pressuring the military to cater to his political needs.”

    Part of the aim is to identify like-minded organizations and create a coalition to challenge Trump from day one, those taking part in the discussions said. Some participants are combing through policy papers being crafted for a future conservative administration. They’re also watching the interviews that Trump allies are giving to the press for clues to how a Trump sequel would look.

    Other participants include Democracy Forward, an organization that took the Trump administration to court more than 100 times during his administration, and Protect Democracy, an anti-authoritarian group.

    …

    Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., is crafting a bill that would clarify the act and give Congress and the courts some say in its use. Its chances of passage are slim given that Republicans control the House and are largely loyal to Trump.

    You tell us what that sounds like… 

    deep state
    noun

    • a body of people, typically influential members of government agencies or the military, believed to be involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy.

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    “We are preparing for litigation and preparing to use every tool in the toolbox that our democracy provides to provide the American people an ability to fight back,” according to Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward. “We believe this is an existential moment for American democracy and it’s incumbent on everybody to do their part.”

    Ah yes, another ‘existential moment.’

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    Remember, the first rule of ‘Deep State’ is you do not talk about ‘Deep State’.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/14/2024 – 18:05

  • The Propaganda That Is Selective Science
    The Propaganda That Is Selective Science

    Authored by Lori Weintz via The Brownstone Institute,

    I am calling for a halt of the use of mRNA Covid-19 vaccines.

    Dr. Joseph Ladapo
    Florida Surgeon General
    January 3, 2024

    It is hard to believe Dr. Ladapo actually issued that statement.

    Dr. Paul Offit
    Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
    January 5, 2024

    For those who are not doctors, which happens to be most of us, we depend on those few who have dedicated years of their lives to the scientific and medical fields to help inform us so we can make good decisions about our own health. Heading into the pandemic, a public largely jaded toward media and the government still placed high trust in their doctors. That trust has largely been betrayed during the Covid-19 pandemic years. CDC and FDA consultant Dr. Paul Offit’s response to concerns that the mRNA Covid shots may not be safe is an example of that betrayal.

    In this specific case, the Florida Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, called for an end to the use of Pfizer and Moderna mRNA Covid-19 shots, due to the discovery of DNA fragments in the vaccines, including the SV-40 promoter, which is associated with cancer. The concern is integration, which is when foreign DNA becomes incorporated into chromosomal DNA, becoming part of the human genome. 

    Dr. Ladapo wrote to the FDA on December 6, 2023 asking if the proper assessments have been conducted on the mRNA shots to address the following risks, identified by the FDA in a 2007 publication about plasmid DNA vaccines:

    • DNA integration could theoretically impact a human’s oncogenes – the genes which can transform a healthy cell into a cancerous cell.

    • DNA integration may result in chromosomal instability.

    • The Guidance for Industry discusses biodistribution of DNA vaccines and how such integration could affect unintended parts of the body including blood, heart, brain, liver, kidney, bone marrow, ovaries/testes, lung, draining lymph nodes, spleen, the site of administration and subcutis at injection site.

    The FDA’s December 14, 2023 response was basically this: That 2007 document you cite is irrelevant because mRNA vaccines aren’t DNA vaccines, besides “it is quite implausible that the residual small DNA fragments…could find their way into the nucleus…and then be incorporated into chromosomal DNA.” The FDA claims to have made a “thorough assessment of the entire manufacturing process” and is “confident in the quality, safety, and effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccines.” 

    The FDA sounds like a parent telling a child, “Don’t worry. Everything will be all right.” But we are not children, and the concerns the FDA so arrogantly dismisses are valid. For example, a 2023 study of people suffering from Long Covid analyzed their cellular DNA, and unexpectedly found genes uniquely specific to the Pfizer Covid vaccine in their blood cells. In other words, mRNA Covid vaccines permanently integrate into the DNA of some Covid-vaccinated people.

    Yet the FDA claims to have “global surveillance data on over one billion doses of the mRNA vaccines that have been given, and there is nothing to indicate harm to the genome, such as increased rates of cancers.” When an ostrich buries its head in the sand, the danger isn’t gone. The FDA completely ignores the millions of Covid vaccine injuries and deaths that continue to be reported around the world, and instead claims that the real danger is the “ongoing proliferation of misinformation and disinformation about these vaccines which results in vaccine hesitancy that lowers vaccine uptake.”

    Dr. Ladapo notes the FDA’s failure to provide data or evidence to support its claims, and correctly states, “If the risks of DNA integration have not been assessed for mRNA Covid-19 vaccines, these vaccines are not appropriate for use in human beings.”

    But Dr. Paul Offit, advisor to the FDA during the Covid-19 vaccines approval process, says Dr. Ladapo is wrong. In a January 5 rebuttal to Ladapo’s call for a halt to mRNA vaccination, Offit provides a stark example of propaganda – long on claims and short on facts. Offit either ignores or denies the shocking rise in myocarditis, pericarditis, strokes, neurological injuries, rapidly progressing and/or returning cancers, and lowered birth rates worldwide since the rollout of the vaccines. Offit continues to call the vaccines “safe and effective” and claims that the benefits of Covid vaccination outweigh the risks.

    So there. That’s all you need to know, as far as Dr. Offit is concerned. He sounds much like then prime minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern who said during the pandemic, as she enforced unprecedented and unscientific brutal Covid policies on her citizens, that they should consider the government and its mouthpieces their “single source of truth,” and should “dismiss everything else.”

    But the FDA, Dr. Paul Offit, and the others whose reputations and financial benefits are entwined in the official Covid narrative, practice Selective Science. That is, they tell us only what they want us to hear, and they present only the data that supports their narrative, which is in a word: Propaganda.

    Physician and biochemist Dr. Robert Malone, a pioneer in mRNA technology in the 1980s, has been an outspoken critic of the failed Covid-19 vaccines, which do not prevent infection or transmission of disease. Malone notes that Offit apparently has no detailed training in molecular virology, gene therapy technology, or genetic vaccines. Malone finds Offit’s supposed “debunking” of Dr. Ladapo’s concerns both “childish and absurd…It is hard to imagine that this person has been trusted to provide FDA or CDC advice on these mod-mRNA products.”

    Dr. Malone points out that the lipid nanoparticle delivery system, new to the mRNA shots, does indeed carry the DNA fragments into the human cells. Retired professor of microbiology in the UK, Dr. David Livermore, notes that most DNA fragments that reach the cytoplasm are likely degraded; however if some of the nanoparticles remain intact within the cytoplasm, transfection could occur.

    Dr. Malone states, “The issue is whether there is a safe threshold for DNA fragment contamination when co-delivered via self-assembling cationic lipid nanoplexes together with modified-mRNA. If so, show us the data which proves that this is a safe level of adulteration. [Dr. Ladapo] asked the FDA to show those data, and FDA’s director of CBER (Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research) Peter Marks responded with lies, falsehoods, gaslighting and a complete failure to disclose such data – which apparently do not exist. Much like the approach used here by Offit.”

    Dr. Offit seeks to put DNA fragments into perspective as harmless, by pointing out that the trillions of bacteria living on your body are also foreign DNA. “Assuming you live on this planet and you eat animals or plants on this planet,” says Offit, “you are ingesting foreign DNA.” Offit also states that all vaccines are made in cells, and “any viral vaccine that’s made in cells will have residual quantities of DNA…There is no avoiding that.”

    Dr. Livermore counters that Dr. Offit is essentially comparing apples to oranges. Naturally occurring DNA is not the same thing as the fragments found in the Covid shots. Livermore states, Dr. Offit “omits the point that the mRNA and any contaminating DNA [from the Covid mRNA shots] is contained inside lipid nanoparticles, designed to cross biological membranes. These deliver their payload into cells. Ergo any contaminating DNA reaches the cytoplasms.” Transfection is not only possible, it is a reality. (see here and here)

    However, Dr. Livermore believes that the Covid shots are of concern for greater and more common reasons than transfection:

    [T]he simpler good reasons to avoid these vaccines and to stop their use in the vast majority of people are that (i) they simply don’t provide any lasting protection, (ii) repeated boosters may distort innate immunity so as to increase vulnerability and (iii) most of us have achieved, through infection, the same sort of immune equilibrium we ‘enjoy’ with other respiratory coronaviruses. Why take anything with some potential hazard and no lasting benefit?

    Gastroenterologist Dr. Lisbeth Selby states, “The most fundamental reason to dispute the way the COVID vaccines were used is that the studies were not conducted to assess even medium term safety signals since the placebo groups were basically dissolved way before the proposed end dates for the studies….If the [pharmaceutical] companies cannot be trusted to follow the plans they laid out for initial study, why would they feel compelled to follow good manufacturing practices?” (see here and here)

    The continuing controversy of the Covid mRNA shots centers on multiple regulatory agency failures to comply with long-established protections for the public. From the truncated clinical trials and the suppression of serious adverse reactions that occurred in 1 out of every 800 shots given, to the concerted effort to ignore abundant proofs of massive vaccine harms, to the dogged (and incorrect) claim that Covid vaccines have saved millions of lives, the public has been denied accurate information regarding the Covid-19 shots.

    Retired physician Steven Kritz notes that there are valid reasons why full vaccine evaluation, prior to release for general use, usually takes 5-10 years. Operation Warp Speed was not a miracle of modern medicine. It was a rush job to release a product that still needed years of work before being proven safe for mass administration to the population. Dr. Kritz states, “To recommend/mandate the jab for people at virtually zero risk from the virus, and it was known early on who was at greatest risk and who was at almost zero risk…amounts to assault and battery.”

    Internal medicine physician Clayton J. Baker says the matter of whether or not the Covid shots should continue to be administered is a simple “No,” for two main reasons: 

    1) The jabs are adulterated with the DNA that isn’t supposed to be in there…Adulterated medical products, by law and by any ethical standard, should be pulled from the market. 

    2) Nobody, not Paul Offit or anyone else, really knows the dangers of this DNA contamination. Anyone can say they do, or can say injury is highly unlikely, or conjure up odds of harm, but they don’t know. The burden of safety is on the MANUFACTURER, not the consumer. Full stop.

    We are in an information war, and medicine is one of the battlegrounds. It might be easy to dismiss Dr. Offit as simply an incompetent government official, and move forward. However, Offit is part of something very ugly that seeks to control the population of the world through top-down “emergency mandates” declared due to a virus, or climate change, or civil unrest, or international conflicts. Any emergency will do.

    Evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein points out in a January 5, 2024 interview that the mistake the elites made during Covid is that they “took all of the competent people, all of the courageous people, and shoved them out of the institutions where they were hanging on.” They “created in so doing, the Dream Team – every player you could possibly want on your team to fight some historic battle against a terrible evil.”

    The small group of dissidents upended their narrative. Uptake rates on the new boosters are in the low single digits…Now I’m troubled by the fact that at the same time, we don’t see a massive majority acknowledging the vaccination campaign was a mistake in the first place…It’s important to stand up and say “I was had,” and I think all of us were.

    Bret Weintsein, PhD
    Evolutionary biologist

    The deciding factor is distilled down to this: Do you want your future ability to participate in the public square to be based on which medicines and injections you take?

    If that sounds like a preposterous question to you, you have forgotten that during the Covid-19 pandemic, the ability to work, to travel, and to participate in society, was largely based on two medical interventions: wearing a face mask, and showing proof of Covid vaccination. Many complied so as to not make waves, or in the hopes that if they conformed, they would get their lives back. But unfortunately, a pattern was set by those who will try it again. 

    The World Health Organization is attempting to revise the International Health Regulations treaty in a manner that dissidents will be silenced the next time there is a pandemic (see here and here). Weinstein explains that the WHO’s pandemic plan is designed to be confusing and hard to understand, making the changes sound minor and procedural, but they’re not minor. Weinstein states, 

    I think it is fair to say that we are in the middle of a coup…We are actually facing the elimination of our national and our personal sovereignty…

    That is the purpose of what is being constructed…

    Come May of this year your nation is almost certain to sign onto a [WHO] agreement [in which] a public health emergency which the director general of the World Health Organization has total liberty to define in any way he sees fit, in other words nothing prevents climate change from being declared a public health emergency that would trigger the provisions of these modifications…

    …the provisions that would kick in are beyond jaw dropping.

    Weinstein says what has been proposed are a number of measures that would be imposed by the WHO in the event of an arbitrarily declared “public health emergency,” including mandated gene therapy injections, vaccines, no travel without a vaccine passport, and forbidding the use of medications other than those authorized by the WHO. Central to the plans under discussion is the control of “misinformation,” which of course, is anything that goes against the official narrative.

    People like Dr. Paul Offit are squarely in the camp of silencing dissent and mandating medical interventions as soon as they can drum up the next emergency. However, there are more people who do not want the life that the technocrats, corrupt government officials, and globalists are planning for us, than those who do. As tired as we are of thinking about the pandemic, we have a moral responsibility to push back and preserve our freedoms and way of life for ourselves, and especially for future generations.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/14/2024 – 17:30

  • Two Navy Seals Missing Off Somali Coast After Nighttime Boarding Mission
    Two Navy Seals Missing Off Somali Coast After Nighttime Boarding Mission

    There has been more bad news to come out of the already chaotic waters of the Middle East region, as over the weekend it’s been widely reported that two US Navy Seals have gone missing off the cost of Somalia in the Gulf of Aden.

    The missing Seals “fell into the water during a nighttime boarding mission” on Thursday, according to US military officials, with the incident only being disclosed this weekend after the search and rescue mission has yielded no results. The fact that they went overboard in the dark would make it very hard for rescuers to immediately locate them.

    Illustrative: US Navy/Military.com

    The search and rescue mission is said to be ongoing, but given the vastness of these waters, each day that passes makes it less likely that they survived.

    According to military statements printed in The Associated Press: 

    A U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details that have not yet been made public, told the Associated Press the missing SEALs were on a mission not related to Operation Prosperity Guardian, the U.S. and international mission to provide protection to vessels in the Red Sea.

    The SEALs were on an interdiction mission, the official said, when one of them fell off a ship after high waves hit the vessel, prompting another SEAL to go after him to attempt a rescue.

    The Seal boat had reportedly been headed toward a suspicious vessel off the Somali coast when the elite operators went overboard.

    The Gulf of Aden has become dangerous for commercial vessels and tankers due to Somali piracy, which in the last couple decades has remained a significant problem and danger. 

    The New York Times issued further details as follows:

    Navy ships and aircraft were immediately dispatched to the scene, where search and recovery efforts have been underway, the officials said. The military’s Central Command noted the rescue operations in a statement on Friday, but made no mention of the sailors being members of a SEAL team or any details of the incident.

    Military officials have started the process of notifying the families of the commandos involved in the episode, a former official said.

    Somali militants have long threatened these waters, but given that the bulk of diverted Red Sea traffic must now travel via the Cape of Good Hope around Africa due to ongoing Houthi attacks, this could result in an increase of maritime traffic nearer the Somali coast, leading to more ‘opportunity’ and ample potential targets for piracy.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/14/2024 – 16:55

  • US Secretly Sent 'Targeting Officers' To Aid Israel's War In Gaza
    US Secretly Sent ‘Targeting Officers’ To Aid Israel’s War In Gaza

    Via The Cradle,

    The US Air Force is discreetly providing Israel with intelligence for its brutal assault on Gaza and has deployed “intelligence engagement officers on the ground,” The Intercept has reported, citing a deployment order obtained under Washington’s Freedom of Information Act. 

    “The information used to conduct airstrikes and fire long-range artillery weapons — has played a central role in Israel’s siege of Gaza. A document obtained through the Freedom of Information Act suggests that the U.S. Air Force sent officers specializing in this exact form of intelligence to Israel in late November,” the outlet wrote. 

    Illustrative: IDF/US Army

    Just days after Hamas’ Oct.7 attack, US President Joe Biden announced that his administration would share intelligence and deploy experts from across the US to “advise the Israeli counterparts on hostage recovery efforts.”

    But on November 21, the US Air Force issued deployment guidelines for officers being sent to Israel, which The Intercept said would be used “to provide satellite intelligence to the Israelis for the purpose of offensive targeting.” 

    Lawrence Cline, a former US intelligence engagement officer in Iraq, told the outlet that those being sent are “targeting officers.” The document cited by The Intercept provides specific instructions to US Air Force officers – some of whom specialize in providing sensitive intelligence to the Israeli army. 

    Rights groups say the US is complicit in Israeli war crimes by aiding it militarily and providing it with intelligence to help it target Palestinians in Gaza. 

    “As a general matter, US officials who are providing support to another country during armed conflict would want to make sure they are not aiding and abetting war crimes,” said Brian Finucane of the Crisis Group NGO. 

    In mid-November, a New York-based rights group filed a suit against Biden’s government for “failure to prevent and complicity in the Israeli government’s unfolding genocide” in Gaza. Nonetheless, despite publicly urging Israel to protect civilians, Washington continues to fuel the Israeli war effort. 

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    As of early December, Washington had already provided Tel Aviv with roughly 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells. This includes 100 BLU-109, 2,000-pound bunker buster bombs which have killed scores of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/14/2024 – 16:20

  • Americans Identifying As Democrats Hits Record Low
    Americans Identifying As Democrats Hits Record Low

    A Gallup poll released on Friday reveals that a record low percentage of Americans who identify as Democrats in 2023 hit a record low, when independent ‘leaners’ are excluded.

    Just 27% of Americans self-identify as Democrats, the smallest figure in the party’s history according to the survey. That said, self-identifying Republicans also hit 27%, though it did not mark the lowest figure in the party’s history – which was in 2013 when just 25% of Americans identified as such. The previous low for Democrats was in 2017 and 2015 at 29%.

    Independents, meanwhile, take the cake – with 43% of Americans identifying as such.

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    More via Gallup:

    Independent Leanings Give Republicans a Slight Edge in Party Preferences

    All Gallup survey respondents who identify as independents are then asked whether they lean more toward the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. Last year, slightly more independents leaned Republican than leaned Democratic. As a result, a combined 45% of U.S. adults identify as Republicans or lean toward the GOP, while 43% are Democrats or Democratic leaners.

    The 2023 figures are similar to those from 2022, when Republicans had a one-point advantage (45% to 44%). Republican advantages have been rare since Gallup first began measuring independent political leanings on a regular basis in 1991. In fact, 2023 is just the third time Republicans have had even a slight edge, along with 1991 and 2022.

    In most years, there have been more Democrats and Democratic leaners than Republicans and Republican leaners, though the two partisan groups were tied in 2002, 2003 and 2011.

    Conservatives, Moderates Tie for Top Ideological Identification

    In addition to measuring their affiliation with either of the major political parties, Gallup asks Americans in each survey to describe their political views on a liberal to conservative spectrum. In 2023, on average, 36% of U.S. adults described their political views as conservative, 36% as moderate and 25% as liberal. Ideological identification has changed little in recent years; the latest figures essentially match the averages over the past 10 years.

    From a longer-term perspective, the notable change has been the increase in liberal identification, which was under 20% from 1992 to 2000 and in 2002 and 2004. Both conservative and moderate identification have dipped slightly over the past two decades, but there has been a larger drop for moderates than conservatives since the trend began — moderates were the biggest group from 1992 to 2002.

    As Gallup has previously documented, the increase in liberal identification reflects big shifts in how Democrats describe their political views. Last year, 53% of Democrats identified as liberal, 35% as moderate and 11% as conservative. While similar to the level in 2022, the 53% liberal figure is up from 43% in 2013, 32% in 2003 and 25% in 1994 (the first year Gallup analyzed ideology by party identification).

    Nearly three-quarters of Republicans, 73% (essentially unchanged from 2022, but also up long term), describe themselves as conservative, with most of the rest, 22%, saying they are moderate.

    Following the normal pattern for independents, the plurality of this group, 48%, identify as political moderates, while 30% are conservatives and 20% liberals.

    Implications

    As 2024 begins, the parties are closely matched based on political party identification and leanings. However, Democrats are clearly in a weaker position than they have been in any recent election year. This is based on the new low percentage of U.S. adults identifying as Democrats, as well as the Republican advantage in leaned party identification. In the past four presidential election years, Democrats had at least a five-point advantage in leaned party identification. They won the popular vote each of those years, though Republican Donald Trump won the 2016 election based on the Electoral College vote.

    This presidential election year is likely to see a drop in the percentage of political independents, as has occurred in six of the past seven presidential election years (all but 2012), amid intense focus on national politics and the two major parties. Still, even with a slight election-year drop — which has ranged from two to five points — independents will remain the largest, and arguably most persuadable, group of voters. In what is expected to be a close election contest, it is critical for each party, but especially Democrats, to nominate a candidate who can appeal to independent voters.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/14/2024 – 15:55

  • COVID-19 Shots Linked To Autism In Vaccinated Rats: Study
    COVID-19 Shots Linked To Autism In Vaccinated Rats: Study

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

    A study from Turkey discovered that female rats injected with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines gave birth to offspring exhibiting symptoms of autism and lower neuronal counts in the brain.

    A 6-year-old child is comforted by her mother as she receives her first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in Novi, Michigan, on Nov. 3, 2021. (Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images)

    The peer-reviewed study, published in the Neurochemical Research journal on Jan. 10, examined the links between COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders, with a focus on autism. It analyzed the offspring of pregnant rats injected with Pfizer’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccines during gestation. Researchers found that the vaccines had a “profound impact on key neurodevelopmental pathways,” with the male offspring exhibiting “pronounced autism-like behaviors, characterized by a marked reduction in social interaction and repetitive patterns of behavior.”

    “Furthermore, there was a substantial decrease in neuronal counts in critical brain regions, indicating potential neurodegeneration or altered neurodevelopment. Male rats also demonstrated impaired motor performance, evidenced by reduced coordination and agility.”

    In the study, female rats were randomly assigned into two groups. Those in Group 1 received an intramuscular saline injection on the thirteenth day of gestation, while rats in Group 2 received Pfizer shots on the same day. There were seven female rats in Group 1 and eight in Group 2, totaling 15 rats.

    A total of 41 offspring were born—20 among the saline group and 21 among the vaccinated. The offspring were subjected to multiple behavioral tests 50 days after their birth, with researchers noting down their performances:

    • Open Field Test, which tested for general locomotor activity and anxiety.
    • Novelty-Induced Rearing Behavior, which evaluated the offspring for their exploratory behaviors.
    • Three-chamber Sociability and Social Novelty Test, which assessed the offspring’s sociability.
    • Rotarod Test, which analyzed the offspring’s motor skills and endurance.

    Researchers found a “significant difference” between males and females in the vaccine group in terms of motor coordination and balance, with the male offspring exhibiting “more pronounced” impaired abilities.

    However, no such sex-based differences in motor coordination and balance were observed in the offspring born from rats administered with saline.

    In sociability tests, the male offspring in the vaccine group were seen spending “significantly less time” with rats who were strangers to them compared to the male offspring of the saline group.

    This difference did not exist when comparing the vaccine group’s female offspring with the saline group’s female offspring.

    The findings “underscores the importance of considering sex as a biological variable in vaccine research and highlights the need for targeted studies to further explore the implications of these sex-specific effects.”

    The study was funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkiye, with authors declaring no conflicts of interest.

    Brain Analysis

    After the offspring rats were tested, researchers euthanized them, extracted their brains, and subjected them to biochemical and histological evaluations. Histology refers to the microscopic structure of organs, tissues, and cells.

    Similar to behavioral tests, the biochemical and histological evaluations also found that the male offspring in the vaccine groups were affected.

    These offspring had “significantly decreased neuronal counts” in certain regions of the hippocampus compared to the males from the saline group. The hippocampus is the part of the brain that is tasked with forming new memories, learning, and emotions.

    Similarly, the Purkinje cell count in the cerebellum was also “significantly lower” in the male offspring of the vaccine group. Purkinje cells are a type of neuron located in the brain.

    “No significant differences” were found between females of the vaccine and saline groups in terms of neuronal counts in the hippocampus or in Purkinje cell counts.

    The researchers also looked at brain BDNF levels and WNT gene expression among the offspring.

    BDNF is a protein that influences brain functions, such as inducing new neuronal growth, preventing the death of existing brain cells, and supporting cognitive functions. Low BDNF levels have been linked to poor neural development, Alzheimer’s, and neurotransmitter dysfunction.

    Meanwhile, WNT has been linked to the secretion of signaling proteins involved in neurodevelopment.

    In both male and female offspring of the vaccine group, brain BDNF levels were found to be “significantly decreased” when compared to their counterparts from the saline group.

    WNT gene expression was “significantly decreased” in male offspring of the vaccine group compared to males from the saline group. In females, offspring from the vaccine group showed “non-significantly higher” WNT gene expression than the saline group.

    “The COVID-19 mRNA vaccine seems to induce autism-like behaviors in male rats, impacting the WNT and BDNF pathways in both genders,” the study said. “This gender-specific outcome emphasizes questions on the vaccine’s influence on brain function and structure.”

    “There’s a notable higher prevalence of ASD (autism spectrum disorder) in males than females, pointing to innate biological factors affecting the manifestation of neurodevelopmental disorders differently between sexes.”

    The authors asked that further research be conducted on these topics to “validate these findings in human populations and to unravel the complex mechanisms underlying the observed effects.”

    ‘Shocking’ Study

    The study evoked intense reactions from the scientific community. Radiologist and cancer researcher William Makis called study findings “shocking” in a Jan. 12 X post.

    “It’s time to immediately halt COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines and begin assessing the incalculable damage done to the next generation,” he said.

    Citing the study, journalist Sally Beck pointed out that media outlet BBC “relentlessly pushed covid vax on pregnant women.”

    The Association of American Physicians & Surgeons (AAPS) shared the study through their X account. Last month, AAPS called for COVID-19 injections to be “withdrawn from the market.”

    “COVID-19 genetic injections have not been shown in randomized, controlled trials to be effective in preventing infection, transmission, hospitalization or death,” it said in a Dec. 31 statement.

    “There are numerous safety signals, including excess sudden deaths, that would in the past have prompted immediate withdrawal of vaccines or drugs from the market.”

    A study published in the journal Vaccines in October also linked COVID-19 vaccines with neurological issues.

    The study found that about 31.2 percent of vaccinated individuals developed post-vaccination neurological complications, particularly among those injected with the AstraZeneca jab.

    The neurological risk profile of the AstraZeneca vaccine included headaches, tremors, muscle spasms, insomnia, and tinnitus, while the risk profile of the Moderna vaccine included sleepiness, vertigo, diplopia (double vision), paresthesia (a feeling of numbness or itching on the skin), taste and smell alterations, and dysphonia (hoarseness or loss of normal voice).

    As for Pfizer vaccines, researchers found “an increased risk” of cognitive fog or difficulty concentrating.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/14/2024 – 15:10

  • Trump Wrecks Ramaswamy Ahead Of Iowa Caucus, Calls Him "Deceitful", "Sly", And "Not MAGA"
    Trump Wrecks Ramaswamy Ahead Of Iowa Caucus, Calls Him “Deceitful”, “Sly”, And “Not MAGA”

    Vivek Ramaswamy has apparently flown too close to the sun, drawing the ire of the leader of the Republican party – like it or not – Donald J. Trump.

    While Ramaswamy has been making headlines for dicing MSM journalists into bite-sized pieces (though, oddly not reflected in polling), and more recently predicting that the establishment is about to position Nikki Haley as Trump’s chief GOP rival into primaries, Trump – perhaps sensing Vivek’s growing popularity among his base – has drawn a line.

    “Vivek started his campaign as a great supporter, ‘the best President in generations,’ etc. Unfortunately, now all he does is disguise his support in the form of deceitful campaign tricks,” Trump said in a Saturday night statement on Truth Social.

    “Very sly, but a vote for Vivek is a vote for the “other side” — don’t get duped by this,” adding “Vote for ‘TRUMP,’ don’t waste your vote! Vivek is not MAGA.”

    Questions abound. Does Trump fear that Vivek will siphon enough ‘MAGA’ votes to give Haley the nomination, amid growing calls for Ramaswamy to pull out of the race and throw his full weight behind Trump?

    Or does Trump want to quash all notions that Vivek would be the logical choice as his VP, given that Ramaswamy has no chance of winning the primary?

    But the most obvious answer is Vivek’s new campaign tactic – seen just days before the Iowa Caucus in which he is posing next to supporters wearing shirts that say “Save Trump, Vote Vivek” (via Modernity.news) – as opposed to “I’m dropping out and supporting Trump.”

    Now people are posting that Ramaswamy ‘funded the lipid nanoparticles‘ used in mRNA vaccines.

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    Ramaswamy responded Saturday night with a lengthy post on X, which he called “an unfortunate move by his campaign advisors,” adding “I don’t think friendly fire is helpful.:

    He goes on to note that he’s “stood up against the persecutions against Trump, and I’ve defended him at every step,” and that he’d ” pledged to remove myself from Maine’s & Colorado’s primary ballots if they remove Trump, calling on DeSantis and Haley to do the same.”

    Yet, “we have to open our eyes. Last time it was a man-made pandemic & Big Tech election interference. Now, the same billionaires funding the lawsuits against Trump are the ones trying to prop up Nikki Haley,” his post continues.

    In short – vote for Vivek because the establishment won’t let Trump win.

    Meanwhile, Pollster Frank Luntz (who was recently seen leaving a ‘Nikki Haley for President’ campaign event), thinks Trump will win the election in November.

    “If you had to bet $150,000 dollars on who was going to win in November, who would you bet on?” Luntz was asked.

    “I never dreamed I would say this, but I would bet on Trump,” he responded, adding “I never…I thought he was done, I thought it was over.”

    “You don’t come back from an impeachment, you don’t come back from January 6, you don’t come back from any of this, but he’s come back,” said Luntz, adding that Trump is a “survivor,” and Biden is “having so much trouble.”

    Watch:

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    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/14/2024 – 14:35

  • Kyle Bass Blasts US Gov't For Giving China 'Micro Nuclear Battery' Tech
    Kyle Bass Blasts US Gov’t For Giving China ‘Micro Nuclear Battery’ Tech

    Dallas-based hedge fund manager Kyle Bass blasted the US Department of Energy in a post on social media X for transferring nuclear battery technology to China. 

    “What’s going on in the US Department of Energy? Why did we hand this technology over to the Chinese Government?” Bass wrote on X while commenting on Hu Xijin’s, the editor-in-chief of Chinese state media Global Times, post. 

    Bass pointed out, “The Chinese company didn’t steal this technology. It was given to them — by the US Department of Energy. First in 2017, as part of a sublicense.” 

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    “In 2021, as part of a license transfer. An investigation by NPR and the Northwest News Network found the federal agency allowed the technology and jobs to move overseas, violating its own licensing rules while failing to intervene on behalf of US workers multiple times,” the China Hawk hedge fund manager continued. 

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    The Chinese company in focus is “Betavolt,” It recently announced it had created an “atomic energy battery that mainly uses nickel-63 as the energy source and diamond semiconductor as the energy converter.” 

    According to tech blog Tom’s Hardware, Betavolt’s nuclear battery will have a lifespan of 50 years and will target aerospace, AI devices, medical, MEMS systems, intelligent sensors, small drones, and robots. 

    This means that charging a smartphone may become obsolete in the future. 

    If Bass’ claims are correct, why did DoE allow China to obtain such a game-changing technology? 

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/14/2024 – 13:25

  • Air Force Whistleblower's Concerns "Legit" Over US Govt UFO Program Cover-Up; House Oversight Committee
    Air Force Whistleblower’s Concerns “Legit” Over US Govt UFO Program Cover-Up; House Oversight Committee

    Authored by Wim De Gent via NTD News,

    A classified briefing on UFOs delivered to members of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Friday elicited a mixed response, with some saying they were dissatisfied by the fragmented information presented, while others were grateful to receive some more clarity.

    Interest in UFOs, which officials now call unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), surged in July 2023 when the Oversight Committee invited Air Force veteran David Grusch to speak after he’d filed a formal complaint with the Inspector General of the U.S. intelligence community, claiming “the U.S. government is operating with secrecy—above Congressional oversight” on the subject.

    David Grusch, former National Reconnaissance Officer Representative on the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Task Force, arrives to testify during a House Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs hearing titled “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security Public Safety and Government Transparency,” on Capitol Hill in Washington, on July 26, 2023. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

    During that hearing, Mr. Grusch accused the Pentagon and its private contractors of covering up a “multi-decade” program to reverse-engineer technology retrieved from crashed UFOs piloted by “non-human” beings, or “biologics” as he called them.

    He also mentioned knowledge of people harmed or injured in efforts to cover up or conceal the extraterrestrial technology program.

    Though apparently only limited information was disclosed during Friday’s 90-minute briefing at the Capitol Building in Washington, the attendees agreed that the hearing seemed to confirm Mr. Grusch’s claims.

    “Based on what we heard,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said, “many of Grusch[’s] claims have merit!”

    “I think everybody left there thinking and knowing that Grusch is legit—if they didn’t think that before,” attested Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.).

    The Tennessee legislator, one of the stronger voices calling for transparency on the issue of UAPs, nevertheless left the meeting somewhat frustrated, saying the meeting was just “more of the same.”

    “By design this issue is very compartmentalized,” he explained. “It’s like looking down the barrel of a .22 rifle. All they know is just right in that little circle.”

    “Now it’s just whack-a-mole—you go to the next [briefing], until we get some answers.”

    For Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) the limited information presented only proved there was a “concerted effort to conceal as much information as possible—both in Congress and to the general public.”

    “I asked very specific questions and was unable to get specific answers,” he said. “And so that’s a problem, and we’re not going to stop until we get the truth.”

    Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mont.) was a bit more optimistic, calling the briefing a step in the right direction.

    “I think that some people were looking for things,” he said. “This was not the venue to determine those things, but for me, I got a lot of clarity,” he added.

    Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) was glad that “everyone that was in the room received probably new information.”

    Earlier this week, Mr. Garcia introduced the Safe Airspace for Americans Act, along with Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wisconsin), a bill that enables civilian pilots and personnel to report UAP sightings with the Federal Aviation Administration.

    During the July hearing, Mr. Grusch said he hoped that unearthing the non-human reverse engineering programs will act as “a catalyst for a global reassessment of our priorities.”

    A Pentagon spokesperson replied at the time that it has not found “any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently.”

    “This is not about whether there are aliens or there are not aliens,” Mr. Moskowitz, a member of the UAP Caucus, said in early December. “The problem is when we ask those questions, rather than being provided information that would prove it false, they stonewall the information, and that is what piques the interest.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/14/2024 – 12:50

  • Over 50% Of All Buildings Damaged Or Destroyed In Gaza Strip
    Over 50% Of All Buildings Damaged Or Destroyed In Gaza Strip

    Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip has reached 100 days, throughout which time cities in the north and south have been relentlessly bombed, and in some places entire neighborhoods, streets, and city blocks have been wiped out almost as if they were never there.

    A new report in Axios has made the shocking claim that over half of all buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, based on fresh satellite data.

    Palestinians there have increasingly said there’s no place to go, after much of the northern half of the Strip has been largely emptied out, and an estimated 85% of the population remains displaced. 

    “Damage is greatest in the north, where between 70-80% of buildings are damaged or destroyed, according to the analysis of satellite data, which was conducted by Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University and Corey Scher of CUNY Graduate Center,” writes Axios, while offering the below visual…

    Israel’s military (IDF) is heavily reliant on US munitions, even including mammoth 2,000 pound bombs capable of obliterating large buildings.

    This month, Israel has declared its forces have moved to a third phase of the war, which reportedly will see bombings and airstrikes scaled back in intensity, in favor of more “targeted” operations. Currently, there’s still heavy fighting and air raids focused on Khan Yunis, in the south of the Strip. 

    This “shift” in IDF strategy and tactics comes after weeks of requests from Washington for the IDF to reign in the indiscriminate air campaign as international pressure mounts over the immense Palestinian death toll.

    Israel has also said it is calling many reservists back home at this point; however, the ground war rages on. Even the largest of bombs dropped from the air cannot dismantle the sprawling network of tunnels used by Hamas for ambushes. Israel has been pumping sea water into many of them; however, they are so vast that it’s likely impossible to flood all of them. 

    This means the ground war is likely to press on for months, with prior Israeli government statements foreseeing that fighting will continue through this entire year.

    Tyler Durden
    Sun, 01/14/2024 – 12:15

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